Romney’s quote on firing people has created a debate liberal/progressive circles: is it fair to attack Romney saying he “likes firing people”. I think it is fair to ding Romney for this quote the given context.

Here it is in context:

“I like being able to fire people who provide services to me,” Romney said to an audience in Nashua, New Hampshire. “You know, if someone doesn’t give me a good service that I need, I want to say I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.”

and the video:

Who likes getting rid of their people? Or even thinking about it?

If it’s personal or medical services for you or your family, people like to find someone and use them. Dry cleaners, tailers, cobblers, grocers, babysitters, schools, doctors. If you pay people do services for you, quite often they become people that get christmas cards and bonuses from you, and can become quite close to the family. You just want to pick the right person. You don’t want to have to think about firing them. Ever.

A lot of folks heard this and point out that firing people generally sucks. It sucks for a lot of employers, supervisors and managers because you have to be the bad guy and/or you may be laying off a perfectly good worker. The emotional toll in mass layoffs can be stressful for all involved. In addition to that, a manager shouldn’t really like to fire someone. Employee turnover, recruitment and training is expensive. Firing employees either in discrete situations or in mass layoffs is not all peaches for those who operate a company. It says you may have hired wrong: too many too soon? Too many in the wrong role? Too many resources on a bad product? Stress increases while pay stagnates for workers you do keep. It can ruin the morale of a company. It can mean you didn’t hire well enough, or train well enough, or screen well enough or pay well enough last time. Employee turnover is not a good thing for a company’s operations. If you are someone running a company that creates jobs, you want to avoid losing employees as much as possible. “Like” and “firing” is not something a lot of folks outside of the “Devil Wears Prada” would say.

Romney wanted to let 2 of the 3 auto makers go bankrupt and wanted to let the whole foreclosure thing play out

The TARP bailout funds the George W. Bush administration approved for automakers in 2008 GM and Chrysler and the Obama administration approved for auto suppliers in 2009 continue to be attacked by Mitt Romney. Romney argued that those funds, used as operating capital by loans from TARP to survive long enough to go through managed bankruptcy and restructuring. That plan, which has put these companies back on the right track was designed and administered by the Obama AdministraGM, Chrysler and GMAC, shouldn’t have been provided and the auto makers should have been forced into managed bankruptcy immediately. This doesn’t seem to make sense. The automakers and suppliers needed the bridge tion. Last June, Romney is quoted in Politico as saying:

“The bailout program was not a success because the bailout program wasted a lot of money,” Romney said in the debate, arguing that the right thing to do was “letting these enterprises go through bankruptcy” with no public support.

Basically, Romney is arguing that more layoffs were in order and possibly the shutdown of Chrysler, GM which would have shuttered their suppliers. GM and Chrysler could not find any private investors prior to restructure. The government was the investor of last resort. Steve Rattner the “auto czar” for the Obama Administration, quantifies the job loss prior to the bailouts for Tom Walsh of the Detroit Free Press:

In sum, Rattner remains a fierce defender of the auto bailouts — as the alternative to liquidation — and he’s proud of the post-bankruptcy profits of GM and Chrysler. Yet he frets that they employ far fewer U.S. workers. The 113,000 jobs the U.S. auto industry added since mid-2009 is only one-third of the 334,000 lost in the year preceding the bailouts.

Emphasis on the part about liquidation is mine. Basically the Romney “private bankruptcy only” prescription for GM and Chrysler would probably have cost in the order of a million+ of jobs in the midst of the worst economy since the great depression vs. thousands lost under the TARP bailout and Obama administration’s managed bankruptcy plan (334K – 113K). Romney desire to allow financial ruin to run it’s course is hardly isolated to corporate bankruptcy.

“Don’t try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom.”October 17, 2011

That’s the first thing with Mitt’s statement: it betrays the sentiment that he believes that widespread financial ruin is something that makes sense. Advocating for foreclosures to run their course in this deep recession and for two US automakers to be left in the lurch basically is arguing for longer unemployment lines, abandoned communities and a deeper economic despair.

He created Shareholder Value, not Jobs

Romney didn’t “operate” companies that were bought out by Bain. What Romney did at Bain was good for shareholders. It is good for the folks in corner offices who need to lower cost so that they hit their revenue goals and get their bonuses. Creating wealth for those few by restructuring an existing company is not creating jobs, it’s extracting value. That’s what Romney was good at Bain: extracting capital for his investors. Bain was not brought in to grow a company, it was brought in to grow shareholder value. Bain is brought in when the owners feel that their employees aren’t delivering enough profit to them by doing their jobs. So they bring in Bain Capital to make it so by identifying people who aren’t giving them the “good service that they need”. Bain says so and is honest about it (from: Ezra Klein in the Washington Post):

[…]the Bain prospectus says “The objective of the fund is to achieve an annual rate of return on invested capital in excess of the returns generated by conventional investments in the public equity market and the private equity market.” It never mentions “jobs,” “job,” or “employees.” Those simply aren’t the objective. Sometimes, in fact, they’re collateral damage.

He got rid of those folks and got shareholders what they were looking for: money. He was a good consultant for them, but in no means was he ever tasked or proficient at creating jobs.

The Meet The Press Republican Facebook debate on Sunday became unbearable when David Gregory’s line of led to him begging the candidates to tell him about exactly how much pain needed to be doled out to real ‘murkins to balance the budget:

DAVID GREGORY: All right. We’re gonna come back to the question of obstacles to the nomination, but let me get to policy, Governor Huntsman. This is, by all accounts, an age of austerity for this country. A jobs crisis. Also a spending crisis in Washington. I wonder what specifically you would do to say to Americans, “These are cuts I’m going to make in federal spending that cause pain, that will require sacrifice?”

Esquire’s Charles Pierce panned Gregory’s thirst for painful policies…

Let’s talk substance. So Governor Huntsman, name three areas where Americans will feel real pain in order to balance the budget?

[…]

Jesus H. Christ on a banana boat, you usually have to pay $250 an hour to a nice lady in leather pants to beg for this much pain.

via Pain: The David Gregory Solution – Esquire

Instead of asking them to explain the rationale behind the policy prescriptions offered by Republicans, Gregory just assumes their correctness and then wants to know how gangsta they’ll be with their policy prescriptions if they are privileged enough to be president. It’s funny, in the worst economic crisis since the depression, Gregory seems to think that average Americans need to suffer more.

Watch for yourself below:

Sully re-posts a question by economist Robin Hanson…

“Why Do We Prohibit Long Hours?”

Safety is the primary concern. Work 80 hours in a cube, typos ensue. 80 hours on a forklift, fatigue sets in, reaction time degrades and life and limb may be lost.

And we don’t really prohibit all the long hours we should. Sometimes because of worker shortages other times because of pressures on workers. Overtime is not a strong deterrent to companies pushing shift/wage workers past the limits of safety. Health care field is one where those restrictions don’t really hold. Ask a registered nurse who works night shift how many times they only work 37.5 to 40 hours a week:

Health care workers are placed in systems and settings where errors are bound to happen. That is, the systems are designed to achieve a particular set of goals, but inadvertently produce a certain level of errors. For example, health care workers are sometimes expected to work 24-hour shifts to ensure patients are cared for and have some continuity of care, although it is known that overwork and fatigue lead to decreased mental concentration and alertness.

Kim Jong Il.

Jake Tapper wants the respect that’s due to him as earned by sitting in the seats assigned to his employers press corps. Tapper wants to go first:

Carney confronted Tapper after he noticed his reaction and said, “Jake, I’ve been doing this for months,” referring to his style of jumping around the press briefing room for questions.

Tapper responded by calling it “annoying.” Fellow reporters in the press room broke out in “ohs,” and “whoas,” in response to Tapper’s candid answer. “Oh I’m sorry, tell it to your colleagues,” Carney said. “I’ll get to you.”

Tapper asked if Carney was “going to break with decades of precedent,” referring to the tradition of the press secretary first taking questions from reporters seated in the front row.

From: Jake Tapper, Jay Carney Clash At White House Press Briefing (VIDEO).

Tapper then wastes his valuable time to ask Carney why Democratic President Obama’s budget plans doesn’t implement the stuff that Republican Paul Ryan proposes to do to privatize Medicare and Medicaid in his budget plan. Carney explains to Tapper the President disagrees with the opposition.

From Obama’s Speech to Troops at Fort Bragg – NYTimes.com:

Fort Bragg, we’re here to mark a historic moment in the life of our country and our military. For nearly nine years, our nation has been at war in Iraq. And you — the incredible men and women of Fort Bragg — have been there every step of the way, serving with honor, sacrificing greatly, from the first waves of the invasion to some of the last troops to come home. So, as your Commander-in-Chief, and on behalf of a grateful nation, I’m proud to finally say these two words, and I know your families agree: Welcome home! (Applause.) Welcome home. Welcome home. (Applause.) Welcome home.

The 9 years later, the Iraq War is drawn to a close.

It shouldn’t be a surprise as Sebelius did the same with mammogram recommendations. She said ignore the expert panel and then Republicans attacked health care anyway.

The advisory board recommendation that women at low risk of breast cancer should get fewer mammograms set off a firestorm of public debate this week and now it is going political too, affecting the health reform debate on Capitol Hill.

Two Republican Congresswomen, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., herself a breast cancer survivor, argued at a press conference today that the advisory board’s recommendation is a glimpse into what health care would be like if Democrats can pass their reform plans.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, meanwhile, told women to ignore the new advisory recommendations for now.

“The U.S. Preventive Task Force is an outside independent panel of doctors and scientists who make recommendations. They do not set federal policy and they don’t determine what services are covered by the federal government,” said Sebelius in a written statement.

Charles Pierce’s goes hard on Secretary Sebelius at his place at Esquire:

In today’s episode of Guess Who’s Running For Re-Election?, the administration throws beneath a bus the 51 percent of the population that would like to control its own damn reproductive systems without having to ask permission of The Voice of Rick Santorum’s Penis.

via Morning After Pill News – A Lesson for Kathleen Sebelius Regarding the Pill – Esquire

This is the Democrats equivalent of the GOP’s “98% of climate scientists agree, but what about the other 2%”. If you ask experts to investigate something to deliver a recommendation on something that is supposed to hinge on their expert opinion, then you should follow their opinion. Or else you open yourself up to criticism that you wasted money in hiring a commission you then ignored. Seblelius’s reasoning to keep all girls under 16 from accessing Plan B? Sexually active 11 year olds:

In her own statement, Ms. Sebelius said, “After careful consideration of the F.D.A. summary review, I have concluded that the data submitted by Teva do not conclusively establish that Plan B One-Step should be made available over the counter for all girls of reproductive age.” She was referring to Teva Pharmaceuticals, the pill’s maker. She noted that 10 percent of 11-year-old girls can bear children, so they needed to be studied as well.

11 year old girls and boys who would have access to Plan B would also have access to condoms, codeine based medications and other crap at your local drug store. If an 11 year old kid is looking for contraception, than their ability to purchase plan B is not the biggest problem they have.

Virginia Tech says a police officer has been shot and a possible second victim has been reported at a parking lot near the campus, where 32 students and faculty died in a 2007 rampage that was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

 

Authorities are seeking a suspect. A campus-wide alert tells students and faculty to stay inside and lock doors.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/va-tech-police-officer-shot-campus-15114207#.TuEDfmOVqn4

Watch the video below to see a picture of our future dominance! Reinstating child labor! Richard Engel reports for NBC’s Rock Center:

Could you imagine the free period for poor kids:
Study hall or art elective for all the rich kids! Poor kids: time to frack for Natural Gas!

Newt Gingrich’s stance on poor children:

“Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday,” Gingrich claimed.

“They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash unless it is illegal,” he added. via Newt Gingrich’s disgusting remarks about ‘really poor children’ – PostPartisan – The Washington Post.

What Democrats in swing districts should realize about these little crumb snatchers Newt hates so much is that a lot of them are in “Real America”™:

Rural Americans disproportionately rely on the Food Stamp Program to help purchase food for a healthy diet. Based on our analysis of data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP),22 percent of the nation’s population lived in non metropolitan or “rural” areas in 2001, but a full 31 percent of food stamp bene?ciaries lived there. Overall, 7.5 percent of the nation’s rural population relied on food stamps, compared with 4.8 percent of urban residents.

 

Louis C.K. sees women as the vanguard of progress in our society:

Overall, I think it’s a good time to have a girl in the 21st century because things are changing, with more opportunities for women. But girls are still the underdog, which means they’ll work harder, and everybody loves an underdog. The next Steve Jobs will totally be a chick, because girls are No. 2–and No. 2 always wins in America. Apple was a No. 2 company for years, and Apple embodies a lot of what have been defined as feminine traits: an emphasis on intuitive design, intellect, a strong sense of creativity, and that striving to always make the greatest version of something. Traditionally, men are more like Microsoft, where they’ll just make a fake version of what that chick made, then beat the shit out of her and try to intimidate everybody into using their product.

via Louis C.K.: The Next Steve Jobs Will Be A Chick | Fast Company.

The question is does the USA really have the opportunities open for women to lead, innovate and grow in this and coming generations or are other societies ahead of us in their readiness for the increased opportunities and achievements of women? There are measurable gains, but there is definitely need for more equity in opportunity and advancement.

It’s also interesting to note Louie is doing something revolutionary. He is identified as “white” American male even though he’s half Mexican but that doesn’t make him a number 2. He is a number two because he’s talent and talent doesn’t own the distribution channels. And as we see from NBA and NFL labor negotiations, talent never wins even when they organize. Louis CK is trying to buck this trend, he’s streaming his 12/10 Show from the Beacon Theater in NY live for five dollars. I hope this catches on.

This was incredibly bad judgement on the part of ?uestlove and incredibly disrespectful to a “guest” on the Jimmy Fallon show. Even worse was the “I apologize if you are all over sensitive about it” apology that doesn’t really acknowledge the misogyny involved:

“The performance was a tongue-in-cheek and spur of the moment decision. The show was not aware of it and I feel bad if her feelings were hurt. That was not my intention,” Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson said in a statement.

via Jimmy Fallon Drummer Calls Bachmann ‘Bitch’ Song ‘Tongue in Cheek’ – ABC News.

Completely unacceptable professionally and self sabotaging as a political statement.

Not to say a Late Night talk show is as important as a Sunday talk show, but instead of this interview revealing the awful platform Bachmann and her party mates want to implement if one of them gets elected, people will now focus on ?uestlove: that “Obama Supporter” and “rapper” is so angry that he felt he had to call Bachmann a “bitch” and “slut” on the sly.

I would guess he just cost himself some creative license as the musical director for the Jimmy Fallon show.