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The government employees union AFSCME is running an ad featuring a member who says he collects Mitt Romney's garbage. The worker, a black man, claims Romney doesn't care about "invisible people" like him and the services they provide.
See for yourself:
Maybe AFSCME should have also consulted with some of their members who are public librarians before they produced the ad. If they had, they might have learned that in his 2010 book No Apology; The Case for American Greatness Mitt Romney specifically wrote about garbage collectors, including a line about them being invisible to the suits:
"During my campaign for governor, I decided to spend a day every few weeks doing the jobs of other people in Massachusetts. Among other jobs, I cooked sausages at Fenway Park, worked on asphalt paving crew, stacked bales of hay on a farm, volunteered in an emergency room, served food at a nursing home, and worked as a child-care assistant. I'm often asked which was the hardest job - it's child care, by a mile.
"One day I gathered trash as a garbage collector. I stood on that little platform at the back of the truck, holding on as the driver navigated his way through the narrow streets of Boston. As we pulled up to traffic lights, I noticed that the shoppers and businesspeople who were standing only a few feet from me didn't even see me. It was as if I was invisible. Perhaps it was because a lot of us don't think garbage men are worthy of notice; I disagree - anyone who works that hard deserves our respect. - I wasn't a particularly good garbage collector: at one point, after filling the trough at the back of the truck, I pulled the wrong hydraulic lever. Instead of pushing the load into the truck, I dumped it onto the street. Maybe the suits didn't notice me, but the guys at the construction site sure did..." (251)
Here is a picture of Mitt working as a garbage man:
Thomas Lifson adds: Is it surprising that the "close enough for government work" mentality exists at a government employees' union?
