quote:What’s clear from a review of the public record during his management of the private-equity firm Bain Capital from 1985 to 1999 is that Romney was fabulously successful in generating high returns for its investors. He did so, in large part, through heavy use of tax-deductible debt, usually to finance outsized dividends for the firm’s partners and investors. When some of the investments went bad, workers and creditors felt most of the pain. Romney privatized the gains and socialized the losses.
quote:There are many other examples of this debt-fueled strategy. In the two years following the acquisition in 1993 of GS Industries, a steel mill, for $8 million, Bain Capital increased the company’s debt to $378 million on operating income of less than a 10th of that amount. Some of this was used to pay Bain Capital a $36 million dividend in 1994. That degree of leverage was excessive in light of the cyclicality and capital-intensive nature of the steel industry.
By the time the company went bankrupt in 2001, it owed $554 million in debt against assets valued at $395 million. Many creditors lost money, and 750 workers lost their jobs. The U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which insures company retirement plans, determined in 2002 that GS had underfunded its pension by $44 million and had to step in to cover the shortfall.
Bain Capital’s acquisition of Stage Stores, a department- store chain, in 1988 was 96 percent financed by debt (mostly in junk bonds) -- an extreme level for a cyclical and very competitive low-margin business. Bain sold a large part of its stake in 1997 for a $184 million gain, three years before the company filed for bankruptcy because of its inability to service its $600 million debt.
Success, entrepreneurship, risk taking and wealth creation deserve to be celebrated when they are the result of fair play and hard work. President Barack Obama is correct in distinguishing the patient creation of value for the benefit of investors through genuine operational improvements and growth -- the true mission of private equity -- from the form of rigged capitalism that was practiced by some in the industry in the past when debt was cheap and plentiful.
While Bain Capital wasn’t alone in using financial engineering to turbo-charge its returns, it was among the most aggressive under Romney’s leadership. Enriching investors by taking leveraged bets isn’t a qualification for a job requiring long-term vision and concern for public welfare. It is appropriate to point that out to voters.
THE (relatively) NEW AND 'WTF' STUFF: The "You See, Romney Retroactively Retired" explanation.
quote:"Retroactively" is a word that might haunt Mitt Romney for some time.
The Republican nominee has been railing against President Obama's campaign ads, calling Obama's assertion that Romney lied about his time at Bain Capital "false and deceptive and dishonest."
The ads, however, are based on the Boston Globe's findings that Romney owned 100 percent of the company through 2002, despite his claim that he left in 1999 to run the Salt Lake City Olympics. Romney insists that despite the SEC filings, he was not playing any management role in Bain Capital after 1999. Today Romney's senior adviser Ed Gillespie went on CNN's State of the Union to try to clear things up. Instead, he likely made everything worse for the Romney campaign. As he explained to host Candy Crowley—
quote:There may have been a thought at the time that [Romney's leave of absence from Bain Capital] could be part-time. It was not part-time. The Olympics was in a shambles. The International Olympic Committee was going to pull the Olympics from the United States of America, which would have been a huge embarrassment. He took a leave of absence and in fact, ended up not going back at all and retired retroactively to February 1999 as a result.
Wait, what? The concept of "retroactive retirement" is confusing, to say the least. Some are calling it, "the worst talking point ever."
But there's no ignoring Bain Capital either: the Obama campaign's attacks have increased in past days, now that government documents show that Romney was listed as owner of the company during its time of bankruptcies and outsourcing jobs.
On NBC's Meet the Press, Sen. Dick Durbin had harsh words for the way Romney is trying to distance himself from Bain Capital.
quote:Why is Mitt Romney running away from his company, Bain Capital, like a scalded cat? Because there's abundant evidence that under Bain Capital they were exporting American jobs to low-wage countries and he doesn't want to be associated with it.
He may not want to be associated with outsourcing, but Romney probably doesn't want to be associated with the confounding phrase "retired retroactively" either.
quote:There's another contradiction that will only muddy the question of when Mitt Romney actually left an active role with Bain Capital.
On Thursday, The Huffington Post obtained June 2002 testimony from Romney in which he explained his role with Bain Capital after leaving to run the Olympics:
"There were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth," Romney said.
Now, here's what he told CBS' Jan Crawford Friday night, as part of a round of interviews battling back on Bain (the key part is bolded):
CRAWFORD: If I could then talk about before you left in 1999, Bain did invest in a series of companies that did expand overseas, sometimes at the expense of American workers -- are you responsible for those decisions?
GOV. ROMNEY: Well I'm not sure which ones you're talking about, but I can tell you the people who have looked at the charges that the Obama campaign comes out with, which is that somehow we outsourced jobs, they've said that those were false and misleading. That the ads are inaccurate. Some have given it multiple Pinocchios. The president keeps on trying to divert any attention he can from his failure to turn around the American economy, and that's what this campaign's about. But the president keeps on trying to find something about Bain which is simply not true. And I left Bain in February of 1999. People can point out how - I was in Salt Lake City for three straight years. I don't recall even coming back once to go to a Bain or management meeting. We were, I was out there running the Olympics and it was a full time job, I can tell you that.
That's a direct contradiction. Moreover, the claim that he spent "three straight years" in Salt Lake City is a little shaky. He talked about multiple trips to Washington in his book on the Olympics, called "Turnaround."
I guess he also retroactively skipped out on the meetings or something to retroactively have stayed in SLC for the full three years. God I love this guy~~
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Oh I'm sure he'll just use tax loopholes and other fiscal acrobatics to magically erase all our debt, while still shrinking the size of government.
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Obama could and should boil that down to a good talking point and go on the offensive. Romneys biggest pro is his business acumen, and the mystery way in which that acumen translates to good handling of government. So pull back the curtain of his business skills and ask how America is supposed to be better off with a business plan designed to leave someone holding the bag. His skills have nothing to do with running a business for the long haul, he bought companies, maxed out their debt then left them flapping in the wind. Now put that up against his utter lack of plans to solve ANY of our budget issues and that might start some heads scratching.
Frankly I was fine with the retroactive retirement line. If he left unofficially and passed off his duties to others but later made it official then fine...but it sounds like thats not even what happened.
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If Obama's team can't make the greedy tax dodging corporate raider image stick, they are incompetent.
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The stuff that is coming out is the kind of stuff that the right fervently dreams it could dig up on obama for the purposes of getting back the white house. I mean, Romney signed a filing for a company after 1999 that was in the business of fetus disposal. Honestly. If it was Obama who did this, could you imagine the sound and fury with which the hammer would come down? Except it's, you know, their guy who did this so they are content to instead mentally bypass the issue and just sort of mumble about it when it comes up.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: If Obama's team can't make the greedy tax dodging corporate raider image stick, they are incompetent.
I'm not necessarily one for a whole lot of hyperbole about politicians. But in this case, the pattern of lying, and the size and sheer scope of the lying seems practically sociopathic. Bush was a fairly awful business man who managed to not let that record hurt him much in the eyes of the public (until of course he was president, and was proven to be an incompetent), but Romney has actively portrayed his business and his experience as everything in the world other than what it actually was. And he does so as if he has sure knowledge tht the lie is so huge that the media will never be able to get their hands around it. And he might be right.
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The way it comes off to me is just like he is trapping himself trying to have his cake and eat it too. Or whichever other loose metaphor works better for this situation.
He has hung so much up on the idea that it is his business acumen that makes him a great presidential candidate, touting his record as a businessman and how his experiences qualify him to fix the economy.
Yet at the same time he is trying to run and hide from so much of what Bain is and what it did under him, and is even the first presidential candidate in who even knows how long to outright refuse to release his tax returns — using a reasoning even dodgier than his Bain reasoning.
BUT HEY after all we have such short lemmingbrain memories; who wants to bet he's setting aside his VP pick to flush out all this nonsense about Bain and his creative tax loophole abuse and the fact that his business acumen is not at all applicable to what he claims that it is?
I mean, we have to remember that this is a guy who signed the Norquist pledge, and then says that a vulture capitalist group leveraging wipeout levels of debt and tax kickbacks to profit a very few at the expense of entire industries, and was for obamacare's state level identical equal before it was politically expedient not to be, and, well.
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quote: Nevertheless, close and repeated study of his campaign in real-world situations has yielded a standard model that has proved eerily accurate in predicting Mitt Romney’s behavior in debate after debate, speech after speech, awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment after awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment, and every other event in his face-time continuum.
The basic concepts behind this model are:
Complementarity. In much the same way that light is both a particle and a wave, Mitt Romney is both a moderate and a conservative, depending on the situation (Fig. 1). It is not that he is one or the other; it is not that he is one and then the other. He is both at the same time.
Probability. Mitt Romney’s political viewpoints can be expressed only in terms of likelihood, not certainty. While some views are obviously far less likely than others, no view can be thought of as absolutely impossible. Thus, for instance, there is at any given moment a nonzero chance that Mitt Romney supports child slavery.
Uncertainty. Frustrating as it may be, the rules of quantum campaigning dictate that no human being can ever simultaneously know both what Mitt Romney’s current position is and where that position will be at some future date. This is known as the “principle uncertainty principle.”
Entanglement. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a proton, neutron or Mormon: the act of observing cannot be separated from the outcome of the observation. By asking Mitt Romney how he feels about an issue, you unavoidably affect how he feels about it. More precisely, Mitt Romney will feel every possible way about an issue until the moment he is asked about it, at which point the many feelings decohere into the single answer most likely to please the asker.
Noncausality. The Romney campaign often violates, and even reverses, the law of cause and effect. For example, ordinarily the cause of getting the most votes leads to the effect of being considered the most electable candidate. But in the case of Mitt Romney, the cause of being considered the most electable candidate actually produces the effect of getting the most votes.
Seriously, tell me how much of that you can read, eh? I made it about halfway through but also skipped to the flip-flops part.
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Romney ('94): "I also would abolish PAC's... I don't like them. I don't like the influence of money... I think we have to really become much more vigilant in seeing the impact on money... in politics."
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Well, to be fair. Romney would eventually go on to have a failed senate bid, a governor's race, a failed presidential bid, and now the current attempt.
That's a lot of green between here and then. I still find his comments about how great he'd be for the gay rights to be his most egregious flip flop.
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I don't know, I think his record on abortion is even better. He was pro-choice before he was pro-life before he was pro-choice before he was pro-life. Or was it pro-life before he was pro-choice before he was pro-life before he was pro-choice before he was pro-life? I am really not inventing this question, it is something I am really asking myself. The document outlines his constantly contradicting position on roe v. wade in particular. He lacks any sort of substance or conviction on the issue, his (asserted as moral) position is literally only ever what he finds politically expedient at that moment.
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Regarding Bain, why is the 1999 date important? Did Bain only start unsavory business practices after that date?
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The timeline is important. For a long time the attacks on Romney's business record went after certain companies that went bankrupt after 1999, the year that Romney left. The attacks had largely backfired.
What is happening is that people are now trying to tie Romney to Bain after 1999. If they can do this, they can then tell everyone they were right about the previous attacks.
There are democrats and even Obama supporters that work at Bain that say Romney did indeed leave in 1999 and did not have anything to do with the company after that period.
CNN reported last night that the accusations from Team Obama of felonious conduct are sheer nonsense and lies — and got that message from four executives at Bain, two of whom are “active” supporters of Barack Obama. John King spoke to all four, three of whom are Democrats, and all four said that Mitt Romney left Bain in a big hurry in 1999 in order to work full time on rescuing the Salt Lake City Olympics. The rushed departure created a lot of paperwork headaches as Bain tried to unwind Romney from leadership, which required a significant amount of time. That’s why the company had Romney’s name on their SEC paperwork the next two years, as King reports
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Geraine: I don't know anybody who believes Romney was actively working with Bain post 1999 because of anything President Obama has said. The Obama campaign is mostly riding on the coat tails of a Boston Globe article and several journalists I'm sure a furiously looking for a link.
But more than that, people who are persuaded that Romney's "say anything" attitude can be combined with perceptions that his business acumen is simply clever vulturing only the rich can do, will ultimately take him out of serious contention for the presidency.
Your claims of Obama's "Bill Ayers" ties to domestic terrorism was this sort of news four years ago, and nobody has found anything of substance, believe me, people have been trying.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Regarding Bain, why is the 1999 date important? Did Bain only start unsavory business practices after that date?
Not at all, really. I think maybe the only thing he explicitly avoids association with if he manages to convince everyone he was retroactivly retired (and, uh, simply earning six digits to do nothing for the company) is when Bain just started flat-out working with the Iranian government. Possibly some of the more egregious outsourcing numbers?
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More importantly: it was after 1999 that Bain started working with clinical abortionists. That's why they're pretending the timeframe matters.
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Even letting that timeframe matter, Romney got Bain involved in that stuff anyway. By 1999 Bain was already invested into Stericycle, in a way which Romney really can't realistically divorce himself from.
Well, I mean, he's going to try.
quote:But more than that, people who are persuaded that Romney's "say anything" attitude can be combined with perceptions that his business acumen is simply clever vulturing only the rich can do, will ultimately take him out of serious contention for the presidency.
I call this 'ugly lessons learned from swiftboating' — Romney can't use his governorship as a positive, because conservatives won't let THAT fly. He's left with his business acumen at Bain. And, uh, the olympics.
So you adapt a page from the Rovian campaign against Kerry and you turn his greatest strength into a weakness, by patiently and pervasively toxifying the Bain association, and making people's associative attitudes whenever Romney tries to talk up his business experience as "here is a guy who practiced dirty, vulture capitalism and outsourced jobs." You don't let up on it, and you let it stick and poison him.
Well, except this case kind of differs radically from Swiftboating in the plethora of evidence pertaining to both Bain as a corporation and Romney's lack of consistent integrity. "Etch-a-sketch" as a metaphor for Romney's positional mutability wasn't even made up for him by his opponents. He hands them that for free because, well, that's basically exactly what he's like.
It is kind of fun to watch people try to lawyer away the fishiness of all this, though, as if there's no reason to think the retroactive retirement is kind of ridiculous, not at all different from Romney's (admittedly admirable) talent for creative adaptations and constant loophole abuse.
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Amidst the, "I wasn't there, it wasn't me, I was too busy to read what I was signing" muddle, has Gov. Romney actually disavowed or even disapproved of what was (is?) going on at Bain?
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I don't think he has nor does he have any incentive to do anything other than try not to directly address it? I mean, it is practically 100% guaranteed that you can come up with quotes by him where at some point he is strictly against the sorts of things he did at Bain, but .. that's just him being Romney. If he is forced to address it somehow it will be fun to watch the response, but it's not likely.
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He's starting to get a lot of crap from big name Republicans on why he won't release his taxes. First time in decades a candidate has refused. A lot of "whats he hiding?"
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And just think about that for a minute. He selected Palin. She was the more attractive choice. I mean, wow. EIther the worst decision he ever made, or an indictment of Romney that can't really be matched.
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If he does it now, its old news by election day. People have 48 hour attention spans. If he holds off, its "whats Mitt hiding" for four months.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Geraine: I don't know anybody who believes Romney was actively working with Bain post 1999 because of anything President Obama has said. The Obama campaign is mostly riding on the coat tails of a Boston Globe article and several journalists I'm sure a furiously looking for a link.
But more than that, people who are persuaded that Romney's "say anything" attitude can be combined with perceptions that his business acumen is simply clever vulturing only the rich can do, will ultimately take him out of serious contention for the presidency.
Your claims of Obama's "Bill Ayers" ties to domestic terrorism was this sort of news four years ago, and nobody has found anything of substance, believe me, people have been trying.
I was drawing a similarity between the two. I know the Boston Globe article was what sparked the debate. It has since been researched and found to be false. The Obama administration just took it and ran with it without doing their due diligence in finding out all of the facts.
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Campaign. The Obama campaign is him running for president. The administration is him running the country. He doesn't use his administration to run his campaign- at least, the two are not the sme entity.
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quote:I know the Boston Globe article was what sparked the debate. It has since been researched and found to be false.
Errr...it has? Could I see where this was done? From what I've seen, the Romney campaign has disputed it, but not actually proven it to be wrong and in the process has said some things that are provably false.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: And just think about that for a minute. He selected Palin. She was the more attractive choice. I mean, wow. EIther the worst decision he ever made, or an indictment of Romney that can't really be matched.
I'm obviously not a fan of either Palin nor Romney, but I don't think that's quite accurate. Well, maybe the "worst decision ever" bit. But the new liberal narrative that McCain must really think poorly of Romney because he chose Palin is... faulty thinking. Remember that at the time, the selection of Palin was, if anything, seen as a bit of a coup for the McCain campaign. She's a woman! That'll bring in those ladyfolks that there always votin' for Democrats. She's a dynamic speaker (keeping in mind that 99.9% even of the punditry had never heard her talk)! She's a down-to-earth deer-shootin' hockey mom! She's even more mavericky than McCain! It's a slam dunk!
In short, the selection of Palin wasn't so much an indictment of Romney, who was seen in that campaign as the dull establishmentarian anyway, hardly an exciting VP pick - and certainly incongruous with McCain's maverick schtick. It was more much a failure to properly vet Palin. That McCain is still trying to defend his choice, even with the benefit of hindsight, is sort of adorable, but the Palin pick was made because McCain impulsively went for the most outsider-y option he had available, not because he had some secret scary dirt on Romney.
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Geraine: You are right, the Obama campaign ran with it. They even said he was guilty of felony, which is ridiculous by any objective standard. It's sad our politics have degenerated to this level. It's sad both sides are at the bit to smear the other. It makes me not want to vote for President Obama's reelection.
But it isn't Pres. Obama's job to do any due diligence, they simply pounced on what the press is indicating may be the case, they probably won't backpedal from jumping too soon, which is actually as much a statement about us as it is about the Obama campaign. We're to be apologetic, careful, compromising, keeping the moral high ground, we say he's weak and has no spine, ergo not worthy to be the president. I've seen him try that tact before, the whole healthcare reform drama years ago was a perfect example of this transition.
He simply mentions his intention to use Democrat majorities in the Legislature to get reform hammered out, invites the Republicans because he needs them for legitimacy, and the GOP poisoned the well from the very beginning. The stalled, dragged their feet, created smoke screens, misused procedural rules, agreed in private, threw out the agreements in public. Their objective was obvious and clear to anybody watching carefully. Stop anything from being passed, then talk about how weak and impotent the president is the rest of his administration, then make him a one term president.
Liberals are not immune to trying to slime up a conservative, Scott Walker taking Kennedy's seat was a very unwelcome development and it was resisted. But Republicans in the past 8 years have taken the 24 hour news cycle, and combined with with incredible party discipline, and message consistency, and created a propaganda machine that the Democrats have just been unable to match.
McCain in 2000, suddenly we're all talking about his having a bastard child who is black, and that he has severe post traumatic stress syndrome. The child is adopted, and to say McCain because of his service in Vietnam and subsequent ordeal at the Hotel Hanoi is insane and shouldn't be considered for office, is a vile slap against all veterans who have endured violence for this country.
Kerry in 2004, suddenly all of his service in Vietnam is useless he was outed by his *false* "former soldiers in arms" who claimed he was a coward.
Obama in 2008 it went into overdrive. His middle name is "Hussein", he's a Muslim, he's got ties to domestic terrorists, he's a communist, he's an atheist, he's an atheist Muslim extremist (not even making that up, years later a huge chunk of conservatives still think he is Muslim), he uses a teleprompter, his real home is in Kenya so he's not really an American (this particular one went on for years long after the necessary proof had been provided), he went to a Wahhabi school in Indonesia when he was young, he's got communists in his administration, he hates white people, he's an angry black man who thinks blacks deserve reparations, he's uppity, makes gang symbols with his wife the day he's elected, and on and on it goes.
Democrat labels of Romney pale in comparison. That isn't to say they are not there, or that they shouldn't do it. They shouldn't. But Republicans really do have no business trying to lecture Obama on proper campaign etiquette.
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Several books that have come out on the McCain campaign suggest Palin was a wild card, and McCain was totally aware how bad she was...they were hoping to train her but never got that far before she went rogue.
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quote: McCain in 2000, suddenly we're all talking about his having a bastard child who is black, and that he has severe post traumatic stress syndrome. The child is adopted, and to say McCain because of his service in Vietnam and subsequent ordeal at the Hotel Hanoi is insane and shouldn't be considered for office, is a vile slap against all veterans who have endured violence for this country.
The kid thing was vile, obviously. The insanity thing? I've read some accounts of his anger issues, and the extent of psychic trauma the man endured. It's a valid question- not that he should have been ruled out on that account all by itself. I'd say for a man who experienced what he did, not being dead of alcoholism or suicide, or living in a one room closet run by the VA is more than admirable. But we don't consider people for President out of fairness. I wouldn't want a man as commander and chief who had been through that experience, if given the choice. I realize it's not cut and dried, but there you have it. I'm sure I'm not the only person with such concerns. I was taught by vets of that war, and I've known others, and none of them had it as bad as he did, but some of them did have a lot of anger.
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Orincoro: By the time McCain was up for president he'd been serving in the Senate a long time. You'd think any serious mental issues would have come up then.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: And just think about that for a minute. He selected Palin. She was the more attractive choice. I mean, wow. EIther the worst decision he ever made, or an indictment of Romney that can't really be matched.
Of the two I think it was really just a boneheaded choice, probably motivated by a desperate pull for 'diversity' where no other really viable woman seemed available. If anything, they were as likely to have passed up Romney just because he is so soul-crushingly boring.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Orincoro: By the time McCain was up for president he'd been serving in the Senate a long time. You'd think any serious mental issues would have come up then.
The two jobs are a world apart, in a lot of ways. The president does a job that basically no-one is capable of doing and staying completely healthy or happy. And unlike even being a senator, there is essentially no quitting.
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You guys are missing the obvious. Like Romney (although to a lesser extent), McCain faced the problem of lack luster support from the conservative christian wing of the GOP. He picked Palin to excite that sector of his base and she succeeded in that quite brilliantly. Picking Romney would have made his troubles with the religious right even bigger. What he didn't anticipate is how thoroughly and completely she'd repel moderate republicans and swing voters.
It will be interesting to see what if anything Romney learned from McCain's mistake.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Campaign. The Obama campaign is him running for president. The administration is him running the country. He doesn't use his administration to run his campaign- at least, the two are not the sme entity.
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Orincoro: By the time McCain was up for president he'd been serving in the Senate a long time. You'd think any serious mental issues would have come up then.
The two jobs are a world apart, in a lot of ways. The president does a job that basically no-one is capable of doing and staying completely healthy or happy. And unlike even being a senator, there is essentially no quitting.
Oh I'll grant the jobs require different work loads. Congress is exceptionally lazy. But McCain was no danger (mentally) for the pressures of office and Bush's team knew it. I was concerned with McCain's age in 2000 to say nothing of 2008. Which was why when Sarah Palin showed up in '08 I was mortified.
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According to diligent research (or maybe just reading a title on reddit): Romney challenged kennedy in 1994 To release tax returns To prove kennedy "has nothing to hide".
if the democrats cannot saddle this guy with a flippy-floppy waffley image twice as bad as kerry could have ever gotten then i just have no idea what's going on
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I don't think the two situations are really comparable. I mean, we already pretty much know Mitt Romney has things to hide in his tax returns.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: According to diligent research (or maybe just reading a title on reddit): Romney challenged kennedy in 1994 To release tax returns To prove kennedy "has nothing to hide".
if the democrats cannot saddle this guy with a flippy-floppy waffley image twice as bad as kerry could have ever gotten then i just have no idea what's going on
It's that damn liberal media.
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