Half of a pittance

Half of a pittance is still a pittance, so please hold the parade for the part-time governor and full-time presidential aspirant who called in from the campaign trail to restore 50 percent of the promised pay raise he stole from underpaid human services workers in Massachusetts this festive season.

Governor Mitt Romney's quick reversal of millions of dollars in budget cuts on Friday exposed the deceit at the heart of his "emergency" action last month: There was no emergency. Just as the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation predicted, healthy tax receipts made Romney's drastic cuts to services for psychiatric patients and special education students, to rent subsidies for the poor, and to pay hikes for direct care workers as needless as they were cynical.

The lame-duck governor is off to Asia in an equally transparent attempt to buff up his nonexistent foreign policy credentials, so he will be unavailable tomorrow to walk down Beacon Hill to the Cathedral of Saint Paul to hear just why it is so unconscionable to play politics with the wages of low-income workers.

So starts the column by Eileen McNamara in this Sunday's Boston Globe.

Hopefully, Romney's transparency will be equally obvious to others outside the state and his hoped for presidential run will get derailed. He did not prove himself a capable governor, he is less likely to prove himself a capable president.

Read the full article here or in one of the links above.


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