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If someone can "refudiate" the claims of the author in the following article, I'd be interested in hearing it. This was all I was able to find. I don't anticipate unemployment levels to change appreciably between now and primary season. Job creation will be a big area of contention in the debates. Apparently, Romney's record of in this area is less than stellar. In case you're wondering, Alaska is one of only two states to have created jobs since the start of the recession.
[...]
The Republican contender was the governor of Massachusetts from January 2003 to January 2007. And during that time, according to the U.S. Labor Department, the state ranked 47th in the entire country in jobs growth. Fourth from last.
The only ones that did worse? Ohio, Michigan and Louisiana. In other words, two rustbelt states and another that lost its biggest city to a hurricane.
[...]
This was after four years. So far Obama has been in office for just one year. How was Romney's performance by his first anniversary?
Fiftieth out of fifty.
That's right. In Romney's first year in charge, Massachusetts ranked dead last in America in jobs growth.
What makes this worse for Romney is that he actually ran on a jobs platform. Romney -- who made his fortune building Bain Capital into one of the biggest venture capital firms in the world -- promised the voters of Massachusetts that as governor he'd use his business savvy and connections to bring new jobs to the state.
[...]
Read the entire article here. ("Mitt Romney plays the jobs card," by By Brett Arends, WSJ.com and MarketWatch)
12 comments:
I remember reading about some of the lousy job growth in Massachusetts quite a while ago. It will be interesting to see some of the feedback as to whether or not the rumors are true and if so, what the spin is.
Here is a quote from and article that explains Romney side of the story...
Romney acknowledges that he is not satisfied with the pace of job creation, but he paints the economy in a positive light and says his administration has turned deficits into surpluses.
“When Governor Romney came into office, the state was losing jobs by the thousands every month,” said Romney communications director Eric Fehrnstrom. “Today we are adding jobs, and the unemployment rate is almost a full point lower [than] it was when we took office. But we have more work to do.”
The unemployment rate when Romney took office was 5.7 percent, compared to 5.8 percent nationally. By November, it was 4.9 percent, compared to 5 percent nationally.
Fehrnstrom said that economic growth has been modest and that significant impediments remain, notably the high cost of housing. He called on the Legislature to pass the economic stimulus plan that Romney filed almost a year ago, which proposed, among other things, a cut in the unemployment insurance rate and new funding to attract companies to Massachusetts.
The above article explains that mass unemployment was going down. Though job growth remained moderate, it was still growing. Mass was moving in a positive direction. Perhaps the democratic legislature should have taken Romney's advice and passed his economic stimulus plan and then maybe they could have experienced job growth at a faster pace. But either way, the facts show that Mass was moving in a positive direction.
I agree with Anon and Tracy.
Both of these articles give some insight to the conditions in Massachusetts when Romney took over.
Mass. Speaker Hits Mitt Romney On Slow Economic Recovery, Jobs
Romney passes up $135K governor salary
On a personal note:
As a life long resident of Massachusetts and a successful business man and owner of a mid-sized business, I can tell you FIRST HAND that before Mitt Romney took office, businesses were bailing out of Massachusetts at an accelerated rate.
To give you an example, the once thriving route 128 business area with one huge facilities after another, were 40-50% empty. These were miles of brand new, multi-million dollar buildings with for sale or for lease signs on them.
Romney took over and actively went looking for businesses. Made companies willing to relocate here offers that they couldn't refuse. within 2 years, these buildings were full and companies were thriving once again.
So those numbers you posted, didn't tell the whole story. We were in deep dodo here. Under Romney leadership, we saw the light. We would have recovered even quicker if the Democratic legislature would have passed further stimulus that Romney wanted.
Considering what he had to deal with at the state house, This Massachusetts business man, gave Romney an A+.
Sorry to hijack this thread but I am/WAS a long time reader and quasi contributor to ROS until I was recently banned for questioning the practices of the ROS hierarchy. After their technical glitch, I was accidentally allowed access to the site. Although I refuse to ever contribute to that site again as long as AG still patrols the comments and blog section, I do, on occasion, catch up on my daily Republican news. While reading the site, I came across your guys site. I was pleasantly surprised to find some of the regular contributors branching off. Has this caused any riffs with the ROS high priests? Just curious.
I like what I see so far.
JR
JR (Jersey Republican?), I was banned by AG too. Welcome.
Thanks RW and yes that's me. I spent over two years contributing my time to that site but I made the "mistake" of questioning their banning practices when my brother was banned for questioning someone's post. My emails went unanswered and my posts and comments were deleted as fast as they were posted. The final nail was when I wrote a friendly, farewell blog to the many good people on the site. I needed a break from the bickering and I could not tolerate a site that would ban my brother for an honest question of someone's blog post. Loyalty runs deep in my family. That blog post was also deleted.
JR
JR,
Welcome to Right Speak.
As to causing rifs at ROS, I know that Doug and myself would more than regularly make front page there on a daily bases. We haven't made front page since this site was launched.
People were dropping like flies over there. Some of the guys I brought over from Fox Nation found that they couldn't sign in. They hadn't said anything that deserved banning. My guess is that Aron went after the Palin supporters and Kris went after the Romney supporters.
At any rate, this new site is a NO BAN ZONE.
Bosman, thanks for the welcome. I assume they must be losing some money due to their own stupidity. I guess Kavon didn't have the time or lost interest in the site. He always seemed fair.
I understand the Romney supporters concerns regarding Kris BUT Kris barely had a presence on that site but Aron was patrolling the site daily and made it his personal mission to sculpt it the way he saw fit.
But, that is in the past and I look forward to reading your blog and commenting on future posts. Between your site and GOP12...there will be no reason for me to go back to ROS.
Congrats and good luck on the endeavor.
JR
BTW, you gotta disable that Palin, ET, link...it even hurts my ears when I refresh the page...and you know how i feel about Palin.
JR
JR - Welcome and please sigh up here. Good to see you found us.
Bosman is right. I posted a Huck article the other day and while I never expect FP I though it would make it, since the overwhelming majority of the articles posted were polls.
A FP Contributor later made a terse remark about the subject (2012) saying we need to focus on the mid-terms. Later when other posts about 2012 when up, he made posted comments on those threads in a much warmer tone. Is it me? I'll let others decide. Perhaps they don't like the competition.
Hey, hey, great to see you Jersey.
OHIO JOE
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