Ebenezer Romney

[hvn_nbr_2]

At the Plutocrats' Self-Benefit Dinner, Ebenezer "W"illard Romney said this*:

...back in my private equity days we went to China to buy a factory there. It employed about 20,000 people. And they were almost all-- young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23. They were saving for potentially becoming married and they work in these huge factories. They made various-- small appliances.
And-- as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day...

You say you want a 40-hour work week with weekends off? Ebenezer "W"illard Romney and the plutocrats say, "Bah! Humbug!"

...the number of hours they worked per day and the pittance they earned...

You say you want a fair day's pay for a fair day's work? Ebenezer "W"illard Romney and the plutocrats say, "Bah! Humbug!" Even the minimum wage of a burger flipper is way too much for the "job creator" class to pay to their peons. If you want more than a pittance, you're greedy and lazy.

...living in dormitories with-- with little bathrooms at the end of maybe 10-- 10-- rooms. And the-- and the rooms, they had 12 girls per-- per room. Three bunk beds-- on top of each other.

You say you want to earn enough to have a home and the American dream? Ebenezer "W"illard Romney and the plutocrats say, "Bah! Humbug!" All you deserve is a pittance and a dorm room with 12 people per room and 120 people per bathroom. If you want the American dream, you're greedy and lazy.

And you've seen 'em. You've seen 'em.

As the voice in the background ("Oh, yeah.&quot says, these plutocrats have seen the conditions of the third world slaves they exploit, and they love it. "Bah! Humbug!"

And-- and-- and around this factory was a fence, a huge fence of barbed wire, and guard towers. And-- and we said, "Gosh, I can't believe that you-- you know, you keep these girls in." They said, "No, no, no. This is to keep other people from coming in, because people want so badly to come work in this factory that we have to keep them out or they'll just come in here and start working and-- and-- and try and get compensated. So we-- this is to keep people out."

If the girls (Ebenezer W's word--18 to 23 years old is not a "girl&quot were allowed to leave the barbed wire area, the guy at the factory would have answered the question with something about their being allowed out whenever they want or to go home at night or on weekends or for monthly visits or whatever it was. He completely evaded the issue of the "girls'" freedom of movement.

And they said, "Actually, at Chinese New Year's the girls go home. Sometimes they've decided they've saved enough money and they don't come back to the factory." And he said-- and so on-- on the weekend after Chinese New Year there'll be a line of people, hundreds long, outside the factory, hoping that some girls haven't come back and they can come to the factory.

So the "girls" *are* allowed out of the compound--for Chinese New Year. Ah, the wonderful life of a slave--you can even go home once a year for New Year's Day.

Now it may seem obvious to any normal person that the factory guy's answer about the barbed wire and guard towers was preposterous, but Ebenezer W Romney believed him and that makes it even worse. Slave hours for slave wages and slave living conditions is the plutocrats' utopian vision for the world and for America, and Ebenezer W wanted to believe it. "Bah! Humbug!"

When the plutocrats talk about "job creators" and creating jobs, these are the jobs they mean--slave hours, slave wages, slave living conditions. This is their vision for America--that the masses of people will be so desperate and their lives so bleak that they'll line up by the hundreds for a chance at a third world slave's life. This is their vision for America: "Bah! Humbug!"

For the "Bah! Humbug!" plutocrats like Ebenezer W Romney at the Plutocrats' Self-Benefit Dinner, Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is not an uplifting Christmas story of redemption. Rather, it is a dystopian tragedy of the lamentable fall of the once-great Ebenezer Scrooge. The great and heroic job creator Scrooge, beset relentlessly by the bleeding-heart demonic spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, succumbs to their browbeating and falls from his high moral state by showing kindness to the real villains of the story, the sick boy Tiny Tim who will die without the medical treatment that his family can't afford and the boy's greedy father Bob Cratchit who is so well off working for Scrooge that his family actually has a home instead of a dorm room shared with twelve others and a bathroom at the end of the hall shared with 120 people. Ebenezer is so misunderstood and unfairly berated.



* Source of all block quotes: http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/18/13943563-full-video-and-transcript-of-leaked-romney-fundraiser-remarks?lite
Additional note to DU rule enforcers: The numerous quotes in this post are all extracted from four paragraphs of the source. I just split them up into more than four pieces to address specific parts of the paragraphs.