My candidate for the biggest campaign lie of 2011 is one the see-saw Republican front-runner and default nominee Mitt Romney loves to repeat every time a reporter shoves a microphone in his wood-carving of a face: corporations are job creators. Neither the facts nor the logic of capitalism support this contention.



The facts: Big Business in America destroys jobs at home and creates jobs abroad. If you don't believe it, here's a story journalist David Wessel filed in April of this year (The Wall Street Journal, 4/19/2011):



"U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization's effect on the U.S. economy.



The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That's a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad.



In all, U.S. multinationals employed 21.1 million people at home in 2009 and 10.3 million..."



That's right, the "job creators" cut 2.9 million jobs in the first decade of the 21st century, while creating 2.4 million jobs overseas. Today, US companies employ almost half as many workers abroad as they do in the US. How's that for job creation!



This year, Merck and Co., one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, announced plans to "cremate" 13,000 jobs by the end of 2015. About 40 percent of the cremated jobs will be lost here in the U.S. Here are few more examples:



Company Layoffs



Borders 16,700

Cisco Systems 6,500

Lockheed Martin 6,500

Perkins and Marie Callender's Inc. 2,500

Medtronic 2,000



At the same time, governments at all levels are operating in the red and find themselves under heavy pressure from Republican demagogues and Tea Party Know-nothings, to cut deficits without raising taxes on anybody or anything for any reason. Thus the U.S. Postal has announced 7,500 job cuts, and several states including Connecticut (6,500), Alabama (2,000), and Iowa (2,000), are following suit.



Corporations don't just create jobs, they also destroy them. And the cremation is often done in a way that's disrespectful to the corpses and devastating to local economies: suddenly, ruthlessly, and without remorse.



The facts simply don't support the idea that giant corporations are great job creators. But it's not facts alone that prove the point and point to the fallacy of Republican and Chamber of Commerce propaganda about the "job creators". Logic and life itself points to the same conclusion: business exists to make a profit, not to do good in the world.



Business is not about charity or compassion. It's not about political stability, social justice, economic sustainability, or fair elections. It's about making money, for shareholders perhaps, but especially for the top management of giant corporations who are the new plutocrats, the super rich. The 1%.



To expect business to be troubled by things like poverty, homelessness, air pollution, water quality, climate change, a lack of affordable health insurance, marginal public schools or unsafe neighborhoods is foolish.



In one of his rare utterances as president, Calvin Coolidge declared, "The business of America is business." He was wrong. The business of business is business. What Coolidge failed to say was that the business of government is to govern.

So blame Coolidge. Blame Washington. Blame Congress. And, yes, blame President Obama, who can't decide if he wants to be FDR or "Silent Cal".



It's the job of government to regulate business and banking in the interests of society. Blaming business for opposing state regulation or cutting labor costs or lobbying Congress for tax breaks is like shopping for fine wine at a Family Dollar store.



More than three years after the financial crisis that kicked off the Great Recession, Washington has done nothing to force financial reform. It is still business as usual for too-big-to-fail banks and the "risk management" industry. Meanwhile, foreclosures continue, major banks sit on mountains of cash reserves, and major corporations lay off workers by the thousands.



So it's a safe bet that US companies will continue to create jobs overseas where labor is cheap and abundant, health and safety standards are non-existent, and the EPA holds no sway. And that Washington will make no move to disincentivize this behavior.



A "commercial republic" - that's what James Madison called the system he was instrumental in creating. Ironically, America's blind faith in the power of commerce to make the world a better place now threatens the very survival of the republic.



