It Turns Out That Mitt Romney Really Does Enjoy Firing People

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Reading a bit more through the full transcript of the Romney fundraiser, we come to this passage:

Audience member: The government in Washington right now is just permeated by cronyism, outright corruption….And I think people are fed up with that….Nancy Pelosi was supposed to give us an honest Congress and has given us just the opposite as speaker. And I think that’s a campaign issue that can work well. I’m optimistic that you’ll be elected president. And my recommendation would be clean house, immediately. The SEC, the CFTC are disaster areas.

Romney: I wish they weren’t unionized, so we could go a lot deeper than you’re actually allowed to go. Yeah.

Sadly, Romney didn’t elaborate on just which civil service slackers he wishes he could fire with the stroke of a pen, but this might be a fruitful area for someone to explore further. Does he specifically want to fire lots of people at the SEC and the CFTC? Or just fire lots of low-level workers in general? Inquiring minds want to know.

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Russian bots are impersonating us. Trump and his allies want to silence us. AI wants to (and does!) steal our content. The list goes on. But with 50 years of experience, we know we were built for this moment: We’re ready to keep diving deep and uncovering the truth, then getting that to you right here, completely accessible and never behind a paywall.

While our work is free to read, watch, and listen to online, it’s incredibly costly to make. Court documents, travel, research: It all adds up. Because we’re a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on reader support to fund our investigations. Will you stand with us in these extraordinary times, as headlines clamour for our attention and disinformation is rampant? We can’t get the truth out without you.

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