Addictinginfo has broken this story:
A video–that has yet to be authenticated–tells the story of a man who happens to sound an awful like Mitt Romney touring a Chinese factory that Bain Capital was set to buy. The tale documented near slave labor and shocking living conditions.
It never goes so far as to say that Bain actually bought the factory, so it never examines whether Bain cleaned up the conditions (which is probably doubtful), but the most damning part of the video isn’t the non-revelation that many American goods are made in sweatshops. It isn’t even that Romney might have been involved with companies that use Chinese sweatshops. That’s pretty much old, although admittedly under-reported, news at this point.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/...
Here is the transcript, detailing the grotesque living conditions of the Chinese workers:
“95% of life is set up for you if you were born in this country. And, I remember going to ah, uh, sorry just to bore you with stories.
When I was back in my private equity days, we went to China to buy a factory there. It employed about 20,000 people. And they were almost all young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23. They were saving for potentially becoming married.
And they work in these huge factories, they made various uh, small appliances. And uh, as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with uh, with little bathrooms at the end of maybe 10, 10 room, rooms. And the rooms they have 12 girls per room.
Three bunk beds on top of each other. You’ve seen, you’ve seen them? (Oh…yeah, yeah!) And, and, and around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire and guard towers. And, and, we said gosh! I can’t believe that you, you know, keep these girls in! They said, no, no, no. This is to keep other people from coming in.
Before I move on let me place emphasis
on the fact that this has yet to be authenticated.
But as Addictinginfo notes this is the most startling revelation of the video. It is when (allegedly Romney) says:
The Bain Partner I was with turned to me and said, you know, 95% of life is settled if you are born in America. This is uh, this is an amazing land and what we have is unique and fortunately it is so special we are sharing it with the world.”
Why is this important?
Mitt Romney, with his refusal to pay his fair share in taxes, is proving himself to be the most ungrateful, most insidious type of American. If this video is real, he’s admitting that his American birthright accounts for 95% of his success. If he was truly honest with himself and with us, he’d admit that at least another 4% of his success came from the fortune and business acumen handed down to him from his father.
This is the video in question:
I hope we can get a confirmation soon if this is true.
Something else that needs to be emphasized is that the video was posted under a fake Rachel Maddow account, which neither authenticates nor falsifies the video as addictinginfo mentions.