Mitt-Math: Only count the positive

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Willard "Mittens" Romney has finally been called out on his bogus claim that he created "over 100,000 jobs" while at Bain Capital, a claim that fact-checkers have found to be unverifiable. It turns out that "Mittens" Romney is using newfangled "new math," Mitt-Math, in which you only count the positive.

Steve Benen expains at the Political Animal – Setting the standards for the jobs debate:

It has quickly become a standard talking point for Mitt Romney: during his tenure at Bain Capital, he created “over 100,000 new jobs.” Campaign officials have been reluctant to back up the claim, and fact-checkers haven’t been able to substantiate the claim in any way.

But that changed this week, when Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom presented his argument to the Washington Post’s Glenn Kesler.

Fehrnstrom says the 100,000 figure stems from the growth in jobs from three companies that Romney helped to start or grow while at Bain Capital: Staples (a gain of 89,000 jobs), The Sports Authority (15,000 jobs), and Domino’s (7,900 jobs).

This tally obviously does not include job losses from other companies with which Bain Capital was involved — and are based on current employment figures, not the period when Romney worked at Bain. 

This is just fascinating. The Romney campaign is not only taking credit for jobs created at these companies after Romney left his firm, the campaign is also choosing to ignore all layoffs when coming up with the figure. Romney and his team are only counting hits, not misses.

This is a bit like a coach saying his team is undefeated, just so long as you overlook the team’s losses. Or as Paul Krugman put it, “By that standard, everyone who’s spent a lot of time with slot machines is a big winner, since only the pluses count.”

But wait, it gets better. Greg Sargent noted that the Romney campaign is also using one standard for counting jobs when it comes to Bain and a completely different standard when it comes to the Obama presidency.

Romney is only counting jobs gained at companies restructured at Bain during and after his years there — and is not factoring in jobs lost — in claiming he created over 100,000 jobs.

Meanwhile, as the Romney camp concedes to Kessler, in making the claim Obama is a job destroyer, Romney is factoring in the jobs that were lost during Obama’s presidency — before Obama’s policies went into effect. In other words, Romney is calculating a “net” number for Obama, and isn’t calculating a net number for himself. Just wow.

UPDATE: Greg Sargent calls this The GOP’s Big Lie on Obama and jobs:

[I]t perfectly reveals the reason the Republican presidential hopefuls are insisting on using the “net” jobs metric: It’s the only way they can continue to attack Obama as a job destroyer, even as jobs continue to be created on his watch.

Romney, and now Gingrich, are basing their case that Obama has failed on the economy — and worse, that Obama has actually destroyed jobs — on the assertion that overall, jobs have been lost on Obama’s watch.

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But they reach this conclusion by factoring in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs that the free-falling economy continued to shed in the months that passed after Obama took office but before his stimulus took effect.

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So at some point news outlets are simply going to have to press the GOP candidates to justify it. Right?

Isn’t "Mittens" Romney the vulture capitalist who succeeded in business by laying off thousands of American workers while bankrupting businesses and liquidating the assets? Why, yes he is! Political Animal – The anti-jobs candidate:

I think Romney’s biggest problem is that the message brings to the fore his key weaknesses — Romney’s record on jobs is atrocious.

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And this is the part of Romney’s record he’s most proud of. Romney slashed American jobs as if his career depended on it — and it did.

Complicating matters, during Romney’s only service in public office, his state’s record on job creation was “one of the worst in the country.” Adding insult to injury, “By the end of his four years in office, Massachusetts had squeezed out a net gain in payroll jobs of just 1 percent, compared with job growth of 5.3 percent for the nation as a whole.”

How bad is Romney’s record? During his tenure, Massachusetts ranked 47th out of 50 states in jobs growth.

Yes, Romney has a simple message: “I’m a successful businessman, I’ll create jobs and fix the economy.” It also comes with an equally simple response: “Mitt Romney is the anti-jobs candidate.”

And to that we can add that he doesn't know how to do simple math.

UPDATE: See Paul Krugman opinion today Bain, Barack and Jobs – NYTimes.com.