Mitt Romney rarely visited the University of Massachusetts as governor, but on July 18, 2005, he called a news conference at the system’s Boston campus. It was sweltering out, but he barely broke a sweat. Standing in an underground parking garage so dilapidated it endangered the buildings above, he pledged $50 million for repairs.
What happened next would be part of a pattern marking his four-year effort to change higher education. His plan went nowhere.
Comments
Mr. Romney's penchant to destroy public institutions and move them to the private sector says a lot about his constituency. He favors stacking the deck for private business while depleting opportunities for those who cannot afford their price. It is absolutely ironic that Republicans call products of Harvard "elites" then do everything in their power to make sure that only their constituency is able to attend a university.
This is a good example of a fallacy of "business executive" having more ability to fix the economy than the incumbent. Executives are accustomed to having those below them "jump to" and are skilled at figuring out the ONE best solution, then executing. Public servants must deal with the democratic process (including with the rest of us), so that "influence," collaboration and compromise are essential to getting things done. Romney's awfully skilled at making money but has proved time and again that, when faced with the above, he thinks he can think and order his way out of public service responsibilities. He doesn't use those skills and his approach doesn't work. Sorry, Mitt, but to do things your own way would require a change in our constitution, giving you absolute power over everything. And short of that, your shortcomings in the process will just result in improvement for your buddies and wholesale degradation of everything for the rest of us.
Romney has a history of looking at problems, stating the obvious, patting himself on the back for having addressed the problem, and never thinking about it again. He then says he doesn't get into the details.
"Instead, believing he was an obstacle to his own university, Bulger announced on Aug. 3, 2003, that he would resign." Bulger resigned for ethical reasons??? The writer must be new to Boston to write something as naive as that!
Ms. Carmichael - were you living here when Governor Mitt Romney was working with a DEMOCRATIC legislative? Gov. Romney accomplished more with one term, than your man Deval who has had 2 terms - and is MIA and oblivious of any issue.
Good to remember that the U-Mass garage was part of the reason for the Ward Commission of 1980 investigating corruption in public construction; it was doomed to fall apart from the beginning. Also I recall that President Bulger resigned because Gov. Romney threatened to put Howie Carr, Alan Dershowitz and Judge Dahir on the Board, one of Mitt's finest and funniest moments.