Mitt Romney (Mittens) is retiring after one term as a US Senator representing Utah, and the Salt Lake City Tribune was effusive in its praise so here’s an antidote to the hagiography:

The Tribune, which is Utah’s so-called liberal paper, loves them some Mittens because he was “a principled Republican opponent” of one Donald J. Trump. But anyone who know Romney’s history can tell you that he is light-years from “principled”.

Back in 2018, when Romney ran for the Senate seat vacated by Orrin Hatch, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Tribune expressing my surprise that they haven’t connected the bankruptcy of Toys ‘R’ Us with Mittens since he made his millions at Bain Capital, the private equity company at the heart of the bankruptcy story. It’s hard to believe that in a state that claims to value families and children the saga of a well known toy company that was driven into bankruptcy and who’s employees lost their pensions in the process would not be newsworthy. In other parts of the country the shocking and tragic bankruptcy has been reported on, while even Congress has gotten involved. Perhaps the fact that Toy ‘R’ Us is stiffing workers on their severance, after petitioning the bankruptcy court in September to pay executives $20 million in incentive bonuses, was too obvious a case of looting to ignore.

Indeed, USA Today featured an op-ed by Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Congressman whose district included the company’s headquarters for 16 years: Amazon didn’t kill Toys R Us, greedy Wall Street profiteers did it.

Still, Mitten is nothing if not shameless. Back in 2018, after he won the Republican primary election, all but guaranteeing him a senate seat in red-state Utah, he lectured us on the evils of debt. “The country should live within its means.”

Ha, ha. That’s pretty rich coming from Mittens. 

Gonzo journalist, Matt Taibbi, well describes how Romney made his millions in an article that Utah journalists should be familiar with but somehow are not. “And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a “turnaround specialist,” a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.”

Americans are unaware of Mittens backstory because the corporate media maintains a discrete silence about this dark underbelly of our “new economy”, while they heap fulsome praise on the “makers”. All the Tribune, was concerned with was what role Romney might play in regards to President Trump. Would he be, “a counterpoint or a cheerleader?” This follows a familiar pattern. For years they’ve been running a series of clueless articles wondering why Trump won the 2016 election, and why Utah’s continue to support him.

Trump won because Republicans like Mittens are presented as respected job creators and a moral counterpoints to the president, while in reality they’re both criminals who’ve looted the republic under the watchful eye of the corporate media.  Trump also won because of the behavior of the so-called opposition party. Obama ran on a platform of Hope and Change but delivered neither. Instead he bailed out the bankers who destroyed the economy, while turfing millions of Americans out of their homes.

The important takeaway is that Mittens and Obama are emblematic of the culture of elite meritocracy and class, while Trump is a crass and unsophisticated oaf and worse he is stirring up forbidden populist sentiments lying dormant in American.

The problem for, our elite, like Obama, Romney and all of the rest of them is that they have a recognizable track record of failure that includes deindustrialization and the resultant inequality, the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, the 2008 Wall Street Crash and subsequent banker bailout, Covid 19, etc., all with a consistent and stunning lack of accountability.

Running for president in 2012, Mittens told a heckler who was complaining about the domination of the US political process by corporations–“Corporations are people too, my friend”.

But sociopaths, like Mittens and the rest of our soi-disant elite, are people too and they have more than a little in common with corporations.