The New York Times' Ashley Parker reports on a trip that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney took to a metal fabrication shop in Dubuque, Iowa, and right at the top of the piece, she makes note of Romney's efforts to blend in to his surroundings:
Mitt Romney, clad in Tommy Bahama blue jeans and a blue plaid work shirt, took that stage at a metal fabrication shop here and offered two different scenarios a year from now.
Scene set, she then goes on to report that Romney -- casting himself as a "deficit slayer" -- advocated "making government simpler, smaller and smarter," and said he'd achieve this by repealing the Affordable Care Act and cutting organizations such as the "National Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities." With some pressing from the assembled voters, Romney also said that he'd opt to curtail funding for Planned Parenthood. These were among the things that Romney told the gathered crowd would lead to prosperity:
"I want to go to work to make America once again the most attractive place in the world, the most prosperous place in the world, for middle income Americans," he explained. "I want this to be a place where people around the world say, 'I wish I could be middle class in America.'"
But there's one part of his presentation that this Times piece makes no mention of -- Romney's plans for the federal workforce. Here's Crooks And Liars with the skinny on that:
"We have to cut back on the scale of the federal government," Romney declared. "And for me that will start by reducing federal employees by 10 percent. You do that through attrition."
"And then something else that is just as important, and that's to make sure the people who work for government don't get better pay and better benefits than people that work in the private sector."
He added: "The tax payers shouldn't have to have money taken out of their pay checks to pay people in government who are our servants who are making a lot more money than we are."
As my father used to say, "Who is we? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?" Romney has an estimated net worth "between $190 million and $250 million." And speaking of pockets, let's go back to the Times' lead paragraph, and make note of the Tommy Bahama jeans that were part of Mitt's man-of-the-people cosplay outfit. Those jeans will run you between $88 and $138 retail. Sure, you can spend more on Levi's if you work at it, but if either federal government employees or Iowa metal fabrication plant workers are spending that kind of scrilla on dungarees, then the recession is over.
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