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Vail Valley Voices: The party against America, and Romney’s lies

Henry Bornstein
Vail, CO, Colorado

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” He made this statement on Oct. 23, 2010, and repeated it.

“Thus began a carefully planned and executed Senate strategy of historically unprecedented filibuster and obstructionism,” wrote Melinda McWilliams in a letter published Oct. 29 in the Sky High News. “It has been party first to the detriment of the country. To hear Romney claim he will lead in a bipartisan way is disingenuous and hypocritical.”

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s lies, distortions and hypocrisy never end. Even when he is caught in a lie, he and his ads continue to spew his lies, etc., without a single word of remorse or correction. Here are but a few of his non-stop lies and distortions:



Sarah Jones in Politicus Oct. 21: “In spite of Romney’s claims that a businessman can fix what’s broken, his record in one term as governor of Massachusetts (2003-07) tells another story. In one term, he managed to explode the debt per capita and decimate job growth, in addition to raising taxes and fees on everyone but the wealthiest residents.

“That’s because in just one term, Romney drove the state down to 47th out of 50th in job creation, increased per capita debt to the largest in the nation, left his successor a $1 billion deficit, and pushed through a tax cut that overwhelmingly benefited 278 of the wealthiest residents while raising taxes and fees on everyone else. And he did all of this while refusing to work across the aisle.”

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According to USA Today, Jan. 1: “Unlike Obama, Romney took office during an economic uptick. Massachusetts had a net job growth of 1.4 percent under Romney. However, that was far slower growth than the national average of 5.3 percent. As Romney’s opponents have frequently, and correctly, noted, Massachusetts ranked 47th in job growth over the entirety of Romney’s term. The only states that did worse: Louisiana, Michigan and Ohio.”

In one of Romney’s very recent ads, the gist is that he worked with the Democratic Legislature in Massachusetts while Obama blamed his inability to accomplish many of his objectives on an obstructive opposition from the House and Senate Republicans.

This is another Romney and Republican lie, and Obama is correct. Obama tried to reach out to the Republicans for nine months and got absolutely zero cooperation.

The GOP’s sole objective from the minute he became president has been as described by McConnell above.

The Boston Globe: Romney “was perhaps the most vetoing governor in Massachusetts history. He claimed in the debate with Obama that he was good at working with the opposition party which controlled 87 percent of the Legislature. In reality he was an obstructionist, the embodiment of ‘no.’ Because the Legislature 707 times overrode his 844 vetoes, he was an ineffectual governor. … Romney vetoed an increase in disability payments to a policeman injured in a fall. He vetoed a bill recognizing students’ rights to refuse to carve up living or dead animals in biology and pre-med classes. … In cases when the Senate challenged him, Romney was overridden every time. When the House challenged him, Romney was overridden more than 99 percent of time.”

Romney claims credit for the Massachusetts health-care program, but he merely went along with the work that the Democratic legislature started and wrote the legislation, and had enough votes to override any veto.

Romney defeated $220,000 in programs to give to the homeless shelter. Theissues.org reports: “Budget Item 7004-3036 was reduced by the Governor from $1,221,925 to $1,000,000; the Governor disapproved $141,000 for Just-A-Start housing stabilization conflict management services, a program to prevent homelessness; and $80,925 for the Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance.”

According to FactCheck.org, in 2006 Romney vetoed a minimum wage increase, but was overridden unanimously by the Legislature.

FactCheck went on to say, “It is misleading to claim that Romney closed the deficit without raising taxes. He increased government fees by hundreds of millions of dollars.”

According to Michel Wines of The New York Times: “Statehouse Democrats complained he (Romney) variously ignored, insulted or opposed them. Unemployment dropped less than a percentage point during his four years.”

Romney complains of a $900,000 subsidy to PBS while ignoring the billions in subsidies to big oil companies and the trillions of subsidies in corporate welfare to war profiteers. Romney wants to de-fund PBS.

Huff Post Politics, Oct. 29: “In one of Romney ads, he claims sole credit for saving the 2002 winter Olympics. Missing from the ads, and Romney’s own telling of the story, is how that hope for the 2002 Olympics was also restored through $342 million in direct federal funding and an additional $1.1 billion in indirect financing from Washington. …Throughout Romney’s candidacy, his campaign and affiliates have used the event to tout Romney as an Olympics savior.”

Another Romney lie, which this alone should cause any objective individual who plans to vote for Romney to give serious reconsideration and then vote for Obama.

Sarah Jones, Politicus, Oct. 25: “Romney said, ‘I saw a story today, that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China. I will fight for every good job in America, I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair, America will win.’ The truth is that Chrysler is not moving its Jeep production from America to China. As Chrysler said today, ‘Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China.’ “

In case Romney is still confused, “Chrysler Group announced that it will invest $500 million at the Toledo Assembly Complex (Ohio) for the production of the next generation Jeep SUV in 2013. As a result, the company will add a second shift of production or about 1,100 jobs in the third quarter of 2013,” Jones writes.

Despite Romney’s arrogant stupidity and distortion of the facts, at least as of today he has not recanted his scare tactic lie. The negative response to Romney’s lie is universal.

Wall Street Journal: “So far, the Romney campaign hasn’t issued a public statement on the flap.”

Henry Bornstein is an Edwards resident.


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