The fact was, however, that it wasn’t distressed and it wasn’t in need of a turnaround. What it came down to, in all likelihood, was that some very smart analysts, far removed from the little factory next to the Apple River, having pored over spreadsheet after spreadsheet, decided that a move to Mexico could push up margins. And if it didn’t, they could still do what they do: earn a management fee, load Robertshaw up with debt and milk it for dividends payments, and all that jazz. The Robertshaw gamble is a gamble private equity makes all the time. Often they win. Occasionally they lose.

The bad news is that Hanover is the more typical private-equity story. Much more often, Appelbaum and Batt found, private equity engages in rent-seeking, rather than “win-wins” for the economy. Taxpayers are pilfered, but we don’t notice. Employees, however, do feel the economic punch, even if they’re not always sure who’s punching them: The research on net job effects, Appelbaum says here, “clearly shows that there’s a huge loss of jobs compared to other companies that could have been taken over—similar companies that were not.”

But enough of that. After all, this analysis misses a rather obvious point: that the most deeply felt consequences, ultimately, are not economic.

* * *

“Truly and honestly, who is going to hire us?” an older woman asked. It was July, and the layoffs had been coming piecemeal. She and 30 others gathered over pizza at the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Club adjacent to the factory. (Robertshaw had told employees not to speak to the media, which made many in Hanover worried that speaking out would jeopardize their severance payments. For that reason, I do not include the names of employees.)

In Bears jerseys and plaid shirts, women and men talked about their futures over Cokes and beers—and the electric buzz of a ceiling fan. Many of the soon-to-be-laid-off assemblers, the same woman noted, are now in their late 50s and early 60s. They’d worked at the factory for 30 or even 40 years, and expected to retire from there some day. Another Robertshaw employee told me that three older women at the factory have cancer, and are anxious about losing their health insurance while they try to recover.

“My dad stormed Normandy beach in WWII. We beat their butts because of the people in America’s factories, and the people that fought.” This guy was sitting next to a vase filled with plastic flowers and a small American flag. “With these CEOs, it’s, ‘I just gotta have a little bit more. I don’t have enough. I gotta move it to Mexico or someplace.’ And they’re killing this country.”

The fact that Invensys, or Robertshaw, or Sun Capital—whoever it is—is carving out Hanover to pad their investors’ pockets doesn’t sit well with locals here, to say the least. They remembered the 47 percent remark made by Romney and ask, who, exactly, is the parasite here? Who is feeding off of whom?