Mitt Romney's campaign first started trying to
deflect attention from the $8 million Romney has in the Bain fund that controls Sensata Technologies to President Barack Obama's pension as an Illinois state senator a couple weeks ago. Then Romney himself
ramped up the attack on Obama's pension at Tuesday night's debate. Romney didn't name Sensata, but that's clearly what's putting him so ridiculously on the defensive about his own Chinese investments. How ridiculous is this line of attack? Ludicrous. Absurd. Farcical. Preposterous.
There's a number that illustrates this: $11. See, the Illinois State Board of Investment, which invests for not only the General Assembly pension plan that Obama is a part of but also for the State Employee Retirement System, has a $1 million loan to Sensata. With roughly 90,000 people in the pension systems holding that loan, each of them, including former state Sen. Barack Obama, has $11 of Sensata. He can't collect that $11 until he turns 62, in 11 years.
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, got himself more than $100,000 (the maximum value of Obama's entire pension) in tax deductions for moving Sensata stock to his Tyler Charitable Foundation. That's a foundation, by the way, that's given at least $260,000 to conservative organizations including think tanks and groups working on teen abstinence, "praying away the gay," and opposition to birth control mandates.
Sensata workers are fighting for their lives, and they're fighting for our lives, too. They lose their jobs to China on the day before the election. If Mitt Romney wins the election, the Sensata workers are going to have a lot more company, and there are going to be a lot more holes in the safety net.
Send a message of support to the brave Sensata workers as they fight for their jobs and shine a light on what a Romney economy would look like.