Paper Plant Victim of Romney Takeover: 'When we built that stage it was like building my own coffin'

[bigtree]

This grim ad features an interview with one man, Mike Earnest, who worked at a paper plant in Marion, Ind., that closed down. He talks about building a stage for reasons he didn’t understand and then having bosses take to the stage to announce that everyone was fired.

“Mitt Romney made over a hundred million dollars by shutting down our plant, and devastated our lives,” the man says. “Turns out that when we built that stage, it was like building my own coffin.”

www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/obama-super-pac-ad-says-romney-helped-man-build-my-own-coffin/2012/06/23/gJQAopBcxV_blog.html

[bullwinkle428]

1. Sociopaths come in many forms.

[randr]

2. Perfect analogy to voting Republican

Voting for a Republican is the same as nailing the coffin of our nation shut.

[olegramps]

4. I can only wish that the working class Republicans will come to their senses.

Unfortunately, I am convinced talking to several that their racist attitudes overrule their lack of common sense. I know of four guys all of whom worked at different companies that were laid off and replaced with younger workers when their companies were reorganized. None of them is able to connect the dots and remain staunch Republicans even blaming Obama for the plight. Really it is difficult having a lot of sympathy for them. Their kids are just as blind as they are and parrot the same crap. I have gotten to the point that I just shake my head. I remember my mom, who was from the South, would look up to heaven and say "Bless their little heart."

[amerciti001]

15. See, it's all about...

simply put,-White Priviledge- these stauch working class-Repuggish- are never going to connect the dots to together because their main concern is that of the vested interest they hold in -White Priviledge.
It's like, they surmise that as long as there is a higher upper that is "white", well just by them being"white", gives them priviledges that those -Others- should not, nor ever, enjoy or have to enjoy. They are basically Un-American.
Yes, "bless their little hearts" and "little minds" as well.
Learn whom Tim Wise is to understand what "White Priviledge" is all about.

[hfojvt]

3. too bad the ad is Romey specific

instead of "If Republican policies pass, the middle class loses".

2008 made it pretty obvious, we need to do more than just defeat McCain, defeat Republicans in the House and Senate, we need to discredit their policies. Otherwise we can win the elections and still lose the policy debate.

[tclambert]

7. I agree. We should attack the entire Republican party.

Whoever their frontman is doesn't really matter. It's their toxic policies that threaten this nation.

[AdHocSolver]

13. I agree. Republicans in Congress are already damaging this country.

Even with an Obama win, the Republicans will work hard to sabotage his efforts to solve problems as they have been for the past three and one-half years.

The Democrats have to get the public to understand that the current crop of Republicans are not conservative, but reactionary. The Republican agenda for America is to turn this country into a feudal system managed by a corporatocracy led by members of the military-industrial-religious fundamentalist complex.

[bigtree]

14. this is from the Democratic pac men

. . . no 'coordinating' with the campaign allowed.

Anyone know how to appeal to or make suggestions to the pac?

[quaker bill]

18. They have selected the perfect candidate

for us to run this policy debate against. While they pretend to not like him much, Republican economic policy is all about creating Romneys, as many as possible and as rich as possible. He should be their hero, because he is everything they think will save the country.

He is the case in point, and they have been kind enough to nominate him.

[hfojvt]

24. yes, but

the ad says "If Romney wins, the middle class loses"

instead of

"If Republicans win, the middle class loses"

The trouble is, though, that Democrats won big in 2008 and the working class STILL lost. Apparently because the Democrats mostly ran as "Republican lite". Granted, 90% Repiublican policies are much better than 100%, but it would be nice to get down to 20%, or at least below 50%.

[Scurrilous]

5. K & R

[Life Long Dem]

6. I bet they felt like it must have been a joke

Another one of Romney's pranks.

[Lifelong Protester]

8. Good Ad,

and may I say, I'm sick of the meme that "making money is OK in and of itself" so we don't offend anyone who has made a pile.
Really? I'm sick of that crap. How about asking how moral the making of that money was or is? The immorality of one man profiting (or his corporation, or whatever fund it was) while so many suffer is IMMORAL. I don't care about offending some rich SOB who was "only making money". We have to start looking at the immorality of making that money at the expense of others.

[freshwest]

10. +1

[tsuki]

17. I remember an interview of Michael Hudson. When asked

what is meant by "free markets" today, he said the following

Free from regulation and laws
Free from environmetal concerns
Free from criminal prosecution
Free to produce whatever toxic product you wish
Free from taxation of wealth
Any way of making wealth is as good as any other productive method of making wealth.

If production i measured by how much income is generated, then the short run becomes the long run economic market.

Is it any wonder Dr. Hudson is not on programs like Meet the Museum Pieces and 60 Minutes of My Life That I'll Never Get Back?

[chieftain]

9. Total Contempt

There are so many appalling aspects to this guy and his enablers. The audacity of having his record of middle class destruction while posing as the man who can create jobs is beyond immoral. He and the rest of the GOP think they can sell absolute BS to the American people and they will buy it. Maybe they have enough money to do it but if so we will all have our coffins built for us.

[freshwest]

11. I worked at one job at the corporation I worked for and knew we were working to eliminate our job.

But there were other positions to go work in. And it was a big city, so the devastation was nowhere near what these people suffered.

The thing is that the rural people often vote GOP for what they feel is a good reason. They need low taxes or no taxes to keep their homes in these areas. When the nearest job folds for the community for the profit motive of their GOP boss, they go to work at jobs maybe a hundred miles or more one way to get enough to hold on.

And they don't take much interest in anything but religion which explains to them why they are poor, and issues that really have no impact on their economic lives. That is left to those in the big city to stay informed and keep the system intact to regulate the really big businesses.

If we don't, this will keep on happening. I don't know if what Romney did to those towns was related to the cities, counties or states they lived in but I suspect all their GOP officials blamed it all on Democrats and regulations.

I hope this man will be able to convince their neighbors to vote against the GOP, so that those of us want this ended, will have sufficient votes to do so and help them along with ourselves. If not, we can do little for him.

[INdemo]

16. Marion,IN located in Grant County is heavily Republican

and is also home to a GM stamping plant that was saved by President Obama's push for Government loans/investment in General Motors..but the majority of voters in this county are Republican..

[NBachers]

12. So the question is: How many of these fired workers are voting Republican?

[Chipper Chat]

19. zero

[DefenseLawyer]

23. Wishful thinking in Marion, Indiana

I bet most of them are life-long Republicans and will keep voting against their own interests until they die.

[Chipper Chat]

26. Believe me - it's zero.

I live here. Some of my family members were victims. Yes, some are republicans, but they will never vote for Romney.

[MsPithy]

20. They fired people from a "stage" built for the purpose.

Wow. No symbolism, there.

"We're above you, you are worthless peons."

"Pay no attention to the fact that you peons built the very stage we are standing on. That fact is in no way symbolic of this company or the entire economy."

[freshwest]

21. Same scene with Michael Douglas in Wall Street. The peons never knew what was coming.

I can see Romney giggling now.

[DefenseLawyer]

22. I was chatting with a jail guard the other day

while waiting to see a client at a small town jail in southeast Indiana. Middle aged guy, around 50 I'd say. He told me he had been a foreman at a local factory for like 20 years until the factory moved to Mexico, and had to take a 2/3rds cut in pay to take his current county job in order to get insurance, after his wife, a teacher, also lost her job. The worst part, he said, was after being fired he and several others were given the "opportunity" to work as contract employees in Mexico for 3 weeks to train the people who took their jobs.

[Flatulo]

25. I've been through this three times now. Although I didn't construct the stage

(it was always held in an auditorium), I was always aware that we were fucked. There were usually a half dozen impeccably dressed VPs and board members telling us how happy we should be that the company was going to be able to reduce its expenses so much by sending all the jobs to the Far East.

We used to later track to fortunes of the smiling gents on that stage through Yahoo! Finance. On average, their payout was about $20m or so, sometimes more.

I went from making $135K per year as a highly sklled mechnical engineer to making zero per year in only three years. I now live off my savings and what little I can scrape up on various small consulting jobs. No one will ever hire me again because I am 56 years old and have degenerative disk disease, which renders my back pretty much useless for a sit-down job. I need a cane to walk, which is a death sentence in the first 30 seconds of the interview.

My wife still works and we get our health plan through her firm, even though it costs over $850 per month out of pocket.

Needless to say, I don't like slick guys in suits who destroy perfectly good companies so they can make a killing. If someone was to shoot them at their happy little meetings where they announce the happy news, I wouldn't shed a tear.

I'm lucky that I made so much money that I was able to sock away enough to live for a long time if I'm careful, and hopefully SSDI will come through for me, if it doesn't get stolen first.