The Massachusetts economy was in free fall in 2002, shedding thousands of jobs each month as the collapse of the technology bubble severely damaged the state’s most important industry. In just a year, the state unemployment rate had nearly doubled, with tens of thousands of more jobs in jeopardy.
Into this shattering recession — from which the state has yet to fully recover — rode Mitt Romney, fresh from saving the troubled Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and promising another turnaround for Massachusetts if elected governor.
Comments
This is obviously untrue and I know this because I listened to Deval Patrick's convention speech. He said that Romney trashed Massachusetts but Obama is our savior.
Did you even bother to read the article?
"... fresh from saving the scandal-plagued Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City ..." Romney borrowed $1.5 billion from the Federal Government for his effort to 'save' the Olympics, or about 7 times more than the prior six Olympic games had cost. The cost was approximately $664k per Olympic athelete. So the cost of $250k per employee of the Bristol Myer move to Massachusetts seems like a bargain by contrast. Way to go, Mitt. At the rate of 31,000 new jobs over his four years as governor, we can anticipate about 1.5 million jobs during the first four years of a Romney administration. And oh yeah, I knew he was joking about Massachusetts' liberals while down South for the last two years of his term here. He was after all running for president. But I did not realize he was also lambasting the business climate while he was at it, probably costing the state job opportunities. Wow. No thanks Mitt. It's not even close. Obama 2012.
It was an unremarkable 4 years to say the least. The only good thing he did was the health reform bill and he plans on reversing that effort if elected. Romney used the people of Masachusetts to get to the national stage. We should have elected Shannon O'Brien instead.
NOT TRUE! There is no comparison between the two men: Perhaps, your young reporters,
Megan Woolhouse and Michael Rezendes need a history lesson.Why do you claim that?
How about tabulating the percentage of time out of state while in office?
I am no fan of Mitt Romney - but the actions of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital pale in comaparison to the actions being carried out by our own State Street Corp, and its current CEO Jay Hooley. Over the past three years State Street has shipped off more than 3,200 US jobs to INDIA (by my count, I worked there for 14 years) and is in the process of shipping off 750 Fund Administration jobs in downtown Boston as we speak. Jay Hooley makes Mitt Romney look like Julie McCoy and Bain Capital look like the Love Boat.
http://www.wgbh.org/programs/Greater-Boston-11/episodes/July-19-2012State-Street-outsourcing-40276
Where would MA have been if Romney hadn't focused on cutting spending in the face of the huge drop in revenue and employment (that's what CEO's do when those things happen)? I don't dispute the points that he didn't sell the State as aggressively as Patrick has or that he spent too much time testing the Presidential waters but I do think both Romney and Patrick did some good and some bad in their time here and in many ways, each was right for the State at the time they held office. That Patrick is so ideological and unable to honestly share MA's lessons learned is what disappointed me this week.
Deval Patrick's attacks on Mitt Romney this week were sad to me. Patrick would've been a one-term Governor and our State's economy would've been a much deeper disaster through the 2008-2009 economic crisis if not for Romney having cut spending so much before Patrick came into office. He ought to be thanking Romney for that. And then in an interview he says our MA healthcare plan was the one effective thing Romney did yet here we are with the highest individual healthcare costs in the country and Patrick trying to force the health industry to reign in costs under threat of regulation. He could be honest and say Romney actually did not do that great a job with the healthcare thing because it drove costs up, not down but that would be counter to getting President Obama re-elected and keeping the Affordable Care Act in place so he can't.
Patrick condemns what Romney did right and praises what he did not all because of partisan politics and ideology. Imagine the kind of country we could have if we actually shared our lessons learned between States and with the Federal government and used them to improve instead of masking and twisting them for the sake of elections. And what if we admired each other across party lines for what we got right even while disagreeing about philosophy and overall direction?
Too funny. If the Romney record is "mixed", then the Obama record can only be termed disastrous. Curious as to when the Globe will report "objectively" on Obama's mis-management . . . er management of the economy.