Not Competent Enough To Lead: Mitt Romney Has a Dismal Record of Disaster Management

Not Competent Enough To Lead: Mitt Romney Has a  Dismal Record of Disaster Management

Now that he's again decided to mention (obliquely) that he was our governor once, and we're all up here in the Commonwealth (God save it!) being awakened by the sweet sounds of woodchippers in our streets, we should look back at the one natural disaster (locally, anyway, Katrina being a whole 'nother story) that occurred while Willard Romney was still nominally governor of Massachusetts: the great Mother's Day floods of 2006.

The entire region was under flood warnings, but the problem was especially acute along the Merrimack River, especially in the city of Lowell, where Romney's response was considered, well, leaky. The right-leaning Lowell Sun was particularly displeased.

We find it inconceivable that Gov. Mitt Romney claims the state can do nothing to help those residents still struggling to rebuild homes and businesses after the May flood. Massachusetts is sitting on millions in unspent emergency funds from Hurricane Katrina and more than $1 billion in cash reserves, yet Romney has failed to even respond to the Lowell delegation's requests to discuss additional aid for victims. The governor's spokesman — since Romney can't be bothered to comment now that the photo opportunities have dried up even though some residents' basements haven't — said the state will not consider spending its own money for flood victims until it's clear how much cash the federal government will give.

Then, he joined several of his predecessors in being something of a deadbeat:

Governor John Lynch today wrote Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to tell him that New Hampshire will take legal action if Massachusetts doesn't act to pay the $3.2 million it owes New Hampshire communities for flood control dams. "Nearly 50 years ago, New Hampshire communities agreed to sacrifice land and future property tax revenues in order to build flood control dams to help protect the people of Massachusetts. We saw during the floods of Mother's Day Weekend just how valuable those dams were in saving lives and property," Governor Lynch said. "Yet despite the proven value of these dams to the citizens of Massachusetts, Massachusetts is still reneging on the commitments it made when our two states established the flood control system," Governor Lynch said. "It's time for Massachusetts to meet its obligations and pay what it owes New Hampshire, or we will take legal action." New Hampshire and Massachusetts entered the Merrimack River Valley Flood Control Compact in 1957. Under the Compact, Massachusetts agreed to reimburse New Hampshire 70 percent of the amount of property taxes lost because of the acquisition and ownership of the dams and reservoirs comprising the Merrimack River Valley Flood Control Project. Massachusetts made no payment to New Hampshire in 1994, only partial payments from 1995 to 2002, and has not paid anything since 2003.

That would track with Governors Weld, Cellucci, and Romney, Republicans all, by the way.

At the time, Romney pretty much had given up his job as governor and was gearing up for the seven-year run at the presidency that will climax, one way or the other, next Tuesday night. He was just beginning the job of polishing up his conservatism, and abdicating on government flood relief was one of the first steps he took in that direction. (This is the very public process that he's now pretending didn't happen. Not even last spring, when he was talking about chloroforming FEMA, which he now says he didn't mean.) At the same time, he was using the federal government as alibi, scapegoat and ATM machine.

Romney has said that he would abolish FEMA. You know, because a modern complex society like the USA don't need no stink'n professional response to disasters. Romney seems to have based hos management style on the old incompetence Soviet Politburo. 

Why Is CNN Pushing Factually Wrong Picture of Paul Ryan Medicare Plan

Why Is CNN Pushing Factually Wrong Picture of Paul Ryan Medicare Plan

CNN's Sanjay Gupta claimed that the proposed changes to Medicare that Congressman Paul Ryan has offered would allow seniors to choose between "a voucher" system and "traditional Medicare," while keeping the system affordable. In fact, experts say the Ryan plan would threaten Medicare's long-term viability and potentially would increase seniors' medical costs by thousands of dollars.

CNN's Gupta: Ryan Plan Will Give Future Seniors Option To Retain "Traditional Medicare"

Sanjay Gupta Claimed Ryan's Proposal Will Give Future Seniors A Choice Between Voucher System And Traditional Medicare. On the September 28 edition of CNN's Early Start, CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta reported on the differences between the Ryan Medicare plan and the Affordable Care Act and claimed that the Ryan plan would offer those under 55 "the option of getting a voucher to purchase private insurance, or they could stick with traditional Medicare":

    GUPTA: Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan proposed to cap malpractice insurance, cut Medicaid by $810 billion dollars over the next 10 years, give states more control over their Medicaid funds, overhaul Medicare. The overhaul? People now younger than 55, when they reach retirement, would have the option of getting a voucher to purchase private insurance. Or, they could stick with traditional Medicare. [CNN, Early Start, 9/28/12]

But Experts Say Ryan's Plan Threatens Medicare's Long-Term Viability

CBPP: Ryan's Promise To Ensure "Traditional Medicare Remains An Option" Cannot Be Kept. Paul Van de Water, an economist and senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote in March that Congressman Paul Ryan's plans for Medicare in his latest budget could lead to the unraveling of traditional Medicare:

    Chairman Ryan claims that his proposal "ensur[es] that traditional Medicare remains an option." Unfortunately, that's not the case. Under premium support, traditional Medicare would tend to attract a less healthy pool of enrollees, while private plans would attract healthier enrollees (as occurs today with Medicare and private Medicare Advantage plans). Although the proposal calls for "risk adjusting" payments to health plans -- that is, adjusting them to reflect the average health status of their enrollees -- the risk adjustment process is highly imperfect and captures only part of the differences in costs across plans that stem from differences in the health of enrollees.

    Inadequate risk adjustment would mean that traditional Medicare would be only partially compensated for its higher-cost enrollees, which would force Medicare to raise beneficiary premiums to make up the difference. The higher premiums would lead more of Medicare's healthier enrollees to abandon it for private plans, very possibly setting off a spiral of rising premium costs and falling enrollment for traditional Medicare. Over time, traditional Medicare would become less financially viable and could unravel -- not because it was less efficient than the private plans, but because it was competing on an unlevel playing field in which private plans captured the healthier beneficiaries and incurred lower costs as a result. Ryan also would allow private plans to tailor their benefit packages to attract healthier beneficiaries and deter sicker ones, which only makes this outcome more likely. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/28/12]

CBPP: Voucher Systems That Include Medicare Option Could "Threaten Traditional Medicare's Long-Term Viability." In a September 2011 report titled, "Converting Medicare to Premium Support Would Likely Lead to Two-Tier Health Care System," CBPP explained that under a "premium support" system such as the one in the Ryan plan that was passed by the House in April 2011, "inadequate risk adjustment" could lead to healthier seniors abandoning traditional Medicare for private plans. The report explained that could leave only the less healthy in the traditional Medicare program, which could "drive up its costs and threaten traditional Medicare's long-term viability." [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 9/26/11]

Brookings Institute: Financing For Ryan Plan Would "Throw Into Doubt The Very Survival Of The Program." Brookings Institute senior fellow Henry Aaron evaluated the Ryan Medicare plan and concluded that "the financing for traditional Medicare would become progressively less adequate, throwing into doubt the very survival of the program":

Liberal media. The only people who think the media is liberal are the same people who dance with ghosts and think the Loch Ness monster talks to them in the shower - oh, and Republicans.

NBC’s David Gregory is a hack. he is of that right-of-center no real news school of journalism. Democrats says world id round, Republicans disagree. Though he has moved on to just making crap up like his conservative brethren - NBC’s David Gregory Misquotes Obama, Falsely Claims President Said ‘Al Qaeda Has Been Defeated’

Mitt Romney: Free Speech Is for Billionaires, Not School-Teachers

Two Faced Scott Brown (R-MS) Supports Todd Akin's Rape Agenda Even As He Calls On Akin To Quit

Two Faced Scott Brown (R-MS) Supports Todd Akin's Rape Agenda Even As He Calls On Akin To Quit

Scott Brown has donated thousands of dollars to fellow Republican candidates after they sponsored legislation to redefine rape as “forcible rape”

As Rep. Todd Akin’s despicable comments on “legitimate rape” rightfully provoke outrage, the Massachusetts Democratic Party reminds voters that Republican U.S. Senator Scott Brown has given thousands of dollars to other Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate who would redefine rape as “forcible rape” and threaten women’s rights if, with Brown, they gain control of the U.S. Senate.

Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan also supports the bill.

Brown’s PAC, SCOTTPAC, has made campaign contributions to four House members, including three U.S. Senate candidates, after they cosponsored the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.

Scott Brown is supporting a Vice Presidential nominee and three of his fellow senate candidates who want to redefine rape, excluding protections to victims of violent sexual assaults. Brown donated to current Senate candidates Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), and Rep. Rick Berg (R-ND), as well as Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA). The Republican nominee for Vice President, Paul Ryan, also cosponsored the bill.

“Scott Brown is supporting Republicans with a dangerous agenda for women throughout the Commonwealth and across the country,” said Massachusetts Democratic Party Executive Director Clare Kelly. “Brown is doling out his campaign cash to aid extreme conservatives who want to redefine ‘rape’ and roll back critical protections for women – and they will, if they gain control of the Senate and the White House.”

Scott Brown has made campaign contributions to the following supporters of the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act that would redefine rape:

Scott Brown's PAC contributed $5,000 to Jeff Flake for US Senate Inc[OpenSecrets.org, Accessed 8/20/12]

Scott Brown's PAC contributed $10,000 to Montanans for Rehberg [OpenSecrets.org, Accessed 8/20/12]

Scott Brown's PAC contributed $5,000 to Berg for Senate [OpenSecrets.org, Accessed 8/20/12]

Scott Brown's PAC contributed $10,000 to Denham for Congress [OpenSecrets.org, Accessed 8/20/12]

Sleaze Bag of the Week Paul Ryan (R-WI) - His Votes in Congress Added $6.8 Trillion to Our Nation’s Federal Deficits

Sleaze Bag of the Week Paul Ryan (R-WI) - His Votes in Congress Added $6.8 Trillion to Our Nation’s Federal Deficits

The reputation of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as a fiscal hawk is at odds with his record of supporting nearly every single budget-busting law of the past decade. Since 2001 he has voted for at least 65 separate pieces of deficit- and debt-increasing legislation, with the total tab for all those votes a whopping $6.8 trillion in cumulative deficits.

Rep. Ryan has served as a member of the House of Representatives since 1998. That year the budget was in surplus and stayed that way for the next three years. But with the start of the George W. Bush administration came the return of the red ink. In January 2001, before any Bush administration policies had been passed, the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, was projecting budget surpluses totaling $5.6 trillion over following decade. Instead, we got cumulative deficits totaling $6.1 trillion, an $11.7 trillion difference. CBO estimates that laws passed by Congress and signed by Presidents Bush and Barack Obama are responsible for $8.5 trillion of that difference. Rep. Ryan cast his vote for about 80 percent of that $8.5 trillion.

Indeed, during the period when the bulk of the deficit-increasing legislation was passed during the Bush administration Rep. Ryan’s record as a fiscal hawk is even more dismal. From 2001 to 2008, Congress passed and President Bush signed legislation that increased the deficit (just in that period) by a cumulative $4 trillion (policies passed during those years added over $6 trillion to the deficits through 2011). Rep. Ryan voted for well over 90 percent of that. (see figure 1).

Those debt-increasing votes began with the first round of Bush tax cuts—estimated at the time to reduce the projected surplus by nearly $1.3 trillion—and continued with every subsequent round of tax cuts. In total, since 2001 Rep. Ryan voted for over $2.5 trillion worth of deficit-financed tax cuts.

Rep. Ryan also voted, repeatedly, to increase federal spending without paying for it. Most notably, he voted in support of every single defense spending bill over the past 11 years. These votes, on both the regular defense appropriations bills and on a series of “emergency supplementals,” have added nearly $1.9 trillion to the deficit since 2001.

Rep. Ryan also voted numerous times to increase nondefense spending. Of course, the most well-known of these votes was on Medicare Part D, which added over $270 billion in unpaid-for spending. But there are many lesser-known examples. In 2002 he voted for an agriculture bill that added $80 billion to the deficit. He voted for changes to military retirement in 2003 that cost $20 billion in added spending. And he voted for increased borrowing authority for flood insurance that increased federal spending by $17 billion.

Rep. Ryan also voted in favor of many of the annual appropriations bills that authorized spending increases for “nondefense discretionary programs.” To be sure, Rep. Ryan occasionally voted against a handful of these, but the net effect of all of his votes was to increase nondefense spending by $1.3 trillion.

All told, Rep. Ryan voted in favor of increasing federal spending by $3.2 trillion—all without offsetting the costs. Combined with his support for $2.4 trillion in tax cuts, Ryan’s votes contributed to adding trillions of dollars to the national debt, which itself led to more spending as the interest payments on that debt grew. Put it all together, and Rep. Ryan voted for over $6.8 trillion worth of cumulative deficits over the past 11 years.

Republicans have always been big spenders. They just never pay for what they put on the tax payer credit card. So the borrowed money has to be paid, plus interests. They know that the general public regularly votes to throw out whoever is in power. That makes it easy to blame Democrats who inherit the crazy irresponsible debt that Republicans leave behind. Republicans cat this way because of the twisted psychology of the right-wing conservative mind. They hate democracy, the had the concept of government by and for the people, so they just do not care how much damage they do to America as long as it benefits the Republican party. Today's icing on the lying hypocrite cake - Paul Ryan denied he sought stimulus fundsQuestioned, he acknowledges his requests. When you get close to Ryan that stink is the thick layer of unwashed hypocrisy.

Sleaze Bag Liar Mitt Romney Is At It Again, Deceptively Edits Video To Put Words In President's Mouth About Bailing Out Every Industry

Sleaze Bag Liar Mitt Romney Is At It Again, Deceptively Edits Video To Put Words In President's Mouth About Bailing Out Every Industry

The Romney campaign, which has apparently exhausted the selectively edited clip of President Obama saying “you didn’t build that,” has seized on a new soundbite to distort. The campaign sent an email blast Thursday afternoon featuring a video of an Obama rally in Colorado from earlier that day and falsely claimed that he wants the government to bail out every industry. “I Want To Do The Same Thing With Manufacturing Jobs … In Every Industry,” it read.

The distortion comes from Obama’s speech in Pueblo, Colorado, touting his administration’s successful revival of the auto industry, which came back from the brink of collapse to add thousands of jobs and is now poised for its strongest sales since 2007. Obama said he wanted to help other flagging industries experience the same kind of success. Conservatives, however, are using the clip to make it sound like Obama wants to bail out every industry.

Here is what he actually said:

    OBAMA: I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back and GM is number one again. So now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs not just in the auto industry, but in every industry. I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China. I want them taking root in places like Pueblo.

Just a few months ago, Romney tried to “take a lot of credit” for the auto industry’s rescue. Now, his campaign is warning against boosting similar prosperity in other industries that have suffered in the economic downturn.

The Drudge Report also featured a huge front and center link to a disparaging Politico story, which has since been “updated to reflect the president’s intent to express his support for manufacturing success. An earlier version was unclear about his intent.”

Deliberate misinterpretation is now a standard tactic from the Romney campaign playbook, starting with Romney’s very first ad, which ran a clip of Barack Obama saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” Obama was in fact using the quote to criticize his 2008 presidential opponent, John McCain on his refusal to discuss the economic crisis.

For those who have not heard of Matt Drudge, he is an Anti-American proto-fascist who acts as a propaganda outlet for the disinformation put out by conservatives. 

This election cycle has seen quite a bit of deceptively edited video by people who claim they have values and claim to be patriots. Romney video deceptively edits Obama speech to make it sound anti-business. So much for having good values and real patriotism. Would a patriot act like the propaganda minister for a right-wing regime.

New Groundwater Study Exposes Deep Folly of Fracking

Republicans don't hate women, they just want to treat them like plantation slaves, Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri: Ban The Morning-After Pill

Mitt Romney Is A Capitalist The Way A Bank Robber Is A Champion Of The Free Market

Mitt Romney Is A Capitalist The Way A Bank Robber Is A Champion Of The Free Market

A splendid accidental benefit of this year’s Republican presidential primary is that one of the most abusive dark corners of American capitalism, so-called private equity, is coming in for belated scrutiny and scorn. Delectably, the disclosures and criticisms are coming from leading Republicans, in a blatant undermining of cherished Republican ideology. Even before Democrats lay a glove on Romney, he will be assaulted by an investigative documentary that is more Michael Moore than Adam Smith. In politics, it doesn’t get much better than this.

“Private equity” was rebranded in the 1990s. It used to be called, more honestly, leveraged buyouts. While the job-killing aspect of many of the deals done by Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital and kindred financial engineers has come in for withering criticism, that is only one part of the mischief.

The phrase “private equity” conjures up images of venture capitalists pooling their funds and backing promising new ventures or contributing new equity and new management to companies in need of restructuring. But that is not how the game really works most of the time. Typically, private-equity companies borrow a ton of money, sometimes in collusion with incumbent management and sometimes in opposition to it, and take a company private. That is, the company’s shares are no longer publicly traded.

This maneuver has several advantages to the new owners. First, despite the picture of investors putting in equity, most of the money is usually borrowed. That produces a huge tax break, since the interest is tax-deductible. Second, the new owners can pay themselves large management fees as well as “special dividends.” Typically, they take out far more than they put in, by incurring debts carried on the books of the operating company.

For instance, when Bain masterminded a private-equity deal for HCA, one of America’s largest for-profit hospital chains (which has gone from private to public twice and which paid a multibillion-dollar fine for defrauding Medicare), Bain paid itself a management fee of $58 million, even though it had only put up 6.3 percent of the buyout fund.

Another big plus: The main regulatory principle protecting investors and by extension, the system as a whole, is disclosure. Under the securities laws administered by the Securities and Exchange Commission, management must disclose information deemed “material” to the interests of the investing public, including salaries, earnings, losses, assets, liabilities, and risks. But these laws flow from the fact that a corporation’s shares are publicly traded. A company owner by a private-equity outfit like Bain can operate completely in the shadows.

Then, there are three possible ways to cash in.  If the company turns out to be a success, like Staples (one of Bain’s big winners), the private-equity owners can take their legitimate share of the reward. But that turns out to be the exception. If the company, newly loaded up with debt, starts to falter, it can be broken up, with massive layoffs and cuts in health and pension benefits, and resold, usually at a profit for the private-equity owners.

Or the company can simply declare bankruptcy under Chapter 11 and shed its debts. Normally, shareholders think twice about incurring risks that could result in  bankruptcy, because one of the consequences is that the stock becomes worthless. But private-equity owners typically have already made their bundle on management fees and special dividend payouts, so even if the operating company goes bankrupt, they are still in the money.

And all of this is legal.

Oddly, as one abuse after another was exposed following the financial collapse, the predations of private equity have sailed merrily on. There is a terrific 2009 book on the subject, which I reviewed for the Prospect, Josh Kosman’s The Buyout of America. Read Kosman, and you will learn chapter and verse about how Bain, Carlyle, Blackstone, Texas Pacific Group, and the others plunder operating companies with taxpayer subsidies thanks to the borrowed money.

Among the tales Kosman tells: Thomas H. Lee Partners buys Warner Music, the world's fourth-biggest music company, and loads up the company with debt to finance the buyout and to pay itself $1.2 billion in dividends. One-third of the workforce is fired. CD&R, The Carlyle Group, and Merrill Lynch buy Hertz, the nation's largest auto-rental company, putting up just $2.3 billion in cash out of a $15 billion deal. The private-equity owners quickly recoup more than half of their down payment by loading up the company with even more debt. Funds for rental operations are cut by 39 percent, and Hertz's market share falls. In another example, Bain Capital, the company that made Mitt Romney rich, invests just $18.5 million in KB Toys, extracts $85 million in dividends, then takes the company into bankruptcy, stiffing employees, investors, and creditors.

In their tactical attack on Mitt Romney, the other Republicans have painted themselves into a corner. They owe it to the public to explain just what is improper about what private-equity operators do, what should be illegal, and what should be subject to disclosure.

Many Americans, bless them, have some naive ideas about how modern capitalism works in the USA. Many, if not most think if you work hard you earn money. You might get promotions and rises based on merit. You get ahead mostly by playing fair and being a decent human being. That is pretty much the way things operate for most Americans. Romney, Bain, Carlye group, and Blackstone operate by different rules. They make money as parasites on the value or capital created by others. That is not capitalism or even Americanism, it is moral corruption of the worse kind. No nation in history that has fallen so deep into this kind of depraved behavior has survived unscathed. We are well on our way to be a nation not of and for the people, but of and for the upper 1%. They used to call that tyranny.

CNN Facilitates Romney's Deceptive Highly Edited Video Attack Ad Against Obama and

Romney To Release Misleadingly Edited Obama Video As An Ad

Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic nominee for Senate in Massachusetts, has said that the Libor scandal calls the integrity of the entire financial system into question. Her opponent the morally bereft Scott Brown doesn't care because without a corrupt system where are his contributions going to come from.

Republican Lies About Spending and Deficits Exposed

Republican Lies About Spending and Deficits Exposed

We’re at the edge of the cliff of deficit disaster!  National security spending is being, or will soon be, slashed to the bone!  Obamacare will sink the ship of state!

Each of these claims has grabbed national attention in a big way, sucking up years’ worth of precious airtime. That’s a serious bummer, since each of them is a spending myth of the first order. Let’s pop them, one by one, and move on to the truly urgent business of a nation that is indeed on the edge.

Spending Myth 1:  Today’s deficits have taken us to a historically unprecedented, economically catastrophic place.

This myth has had the effect of binding the hands of elected officials and policymakers at every level of government.  It has also emboldened those who claim that we must cut government spending as quickly, as radically, as deeply as possible.

In fact, we’ve been here before.  In 2009, the federal budget deficit was a whopping 10.1% of the American economy and back in 1943, in the midst of World War II, it was three times that -- 30.3%. This fiscal year the deficit will total around 7.6%. Yes, that is big. But in the Congressional Budget Office’s grimmest projections, that figure will fall to 6.3% next year, and 5.8% in fiscal 2014. In 1983, under President Reagan, the deficit hit 6% of the economy, and by 1998, that had turned into a surplus. So, while projected deficits remain large, they’re neither historically unprecedented, nor insurmountable.

More important still, the size of the deficit is no sign that lawmakers should make immediate deep cuts in spending. In fact, history tells us that such reductions are guaranteed to harm, if not cripple, an economy still teetering at the edge of recession.

A number of leading economists are now busy explaining why the deficit this year actually ought to be a lot larger, not smaller; why there should be more government spending, including aid to state and local governments, which would create new jobs and prevent layoffs in areas like education and law enforcement. Such efforts, working in tandem with slow but positive job growth in the private sector, might indeed mean genuine recovery. Government budget cuts, on the other hand, offset private-sector gains with the huge and depressing effect of public-sector layoffs, and have damaging ripple effects on the rest of the economy as well.

When the economy is healthier, a host of promising options are at hand for lawmakers who want to narrow the gap between spending and tax revenue. For example, loopholes and deductions in the tax code that hand enormous subsidies to wealthy Americans and corporations will cost the Treasury around $1.3 trillion in lost revenue this year alone -- more, that is, than the entire budget deficit. Closing some of them would make great strides toward significant deficit reductions.

Alarmingly, the deficit-reduction fever that’s resulted from this first spending myth has led many Americans to throw their support behind de-investment in domestic priorities like education, research, and infrastructure -- cuts that threaten to undo generations of progress. This is in part the result of myth number two.

Spending Myth 2: Military and other national security spending have already taken their lumps and future budget-cutting efforts will have to take aim at domestic programs instead.

The very idea that military spending has already been deeply cut in service to deficit reduction is not only false, but in the realm of fantasy.

 There are a few other details at the link, including the ridiculous Republican urban myth that Obamacare will increase the deficit ( that is utterly false), that government health care (Medicare) is too expensive and we should privatize it Medicare is more cost effective than private insurance). Why do Republicans use these myths as a crutch; because they cannot win the battle on ideas based on facts. Conservative constantly engage in the sleaze of fake patriotism - hiding their freakish agenda behind the flag, and behind the Bible. They should be ashamed, but they seem to lack the moral conscience to feel shame.

Conservative Republicans are actively trying to stop job creation. Not exactly how a patriot should act.

Conservative Republican Journalist and Pervert James O'Keefe Fails To Find A Scandal, Union And Public Works Edition

Mitt Romney, Like The Republican Party is Out to Destroy Capitalism

Mitt Romney, Like The Republican Party is Out to Destroy Capitalism

Mitt Romney touts his business acumen and job-creation record as a key qualification for being the next U.S. president.

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.

What’s less clear is how his skills are relevant to the job of overseeing the U.S. economy, strengthening competitiveness and looking out for the welfare of the general public, especially the middle class.

Thanks to leverage, 10 of roughly 67 major deals by Bain Capital during Romney’s watch produced about 70 percent of the firm’s profits. Four of those 10 deals, as well as others, later wound up in bankruptcy. It’s worth examining some of them to understand Romney’s investment style at Bain Capital.

In 1986, in one of its earliest deals, Bain Capital acquired Accuride Corp., a manufacturer of aluminum truck wheels. The purchase was 97.5 percent financed by debt, a high level of leverage under any circumstances. It was especially burdensome for a company that was exposed to aluminum-price volatility and cyclical automotive production.

Casino Capitalism

Forty-to-one leverage is casino capitalism that hugely magnifies gains and losses. Bain Capital wisely chose to flip the company fast: After 18 months, it sold Accuride, converting its $2.6 million sliver of equity into a $61 million capital gain. That deal, which yielded a 1,123 percent annualized return, was critical to Bain Capital’s early success and led the firm to keep maximizing the use of leverage.

In 1992, Bain Capital bought American Pad & Paper by financing 87 percent of the purchase price. In the next three years, Ampad borrowed to make acquisitions, repay existing debt and pay Bain Capital and its investors $60 million in dividends.

As a result, the company’s debt swelled from $11 million in 1993 to $444 million by 1995. The $14 million in annual interest expense on this debt dwarfed the company’s $4.7 million operating cash flow. The proceeds of an initial public offering in July 1996 were used to pay Bain Capital $48 million for part of its stake and to reduce the company’s debt to $270 million.

From 1993 to 1999, Bain Capital charged Ampad about $18 million in various fees. By 1999, the company’s debt was back up to $400 million. Unable to pay the interest costs and drained of cash paid to Bain Capital in fees and dividends, Ampad filed for bankruptcy the following year. Senior secured lenders got less than 50 cents on the dollar, unsecured lenders received two- tenths of a cent on the dollar, and several hundred jobs were lost. Bain Capital had reaped capital gains of $107 million on its $5.1 million investment.

It always seems that some essential ingredients are missing from how conservative Republican views capitalism versus moral patriotic Americans. Romney and conservatives are out to exploit the system, to plunder, to sneak around ethical concerns, to undermine competitive markets - to create loads of money for themselves by any means necessary. Normal patriotic capitalists see the free market as a place to compete - to offer goods and services at competitive prices. To engage in meaningful dignified employment. To enjoy our families and lives.To buy the basics like food, shelter and clothing to provide the basic comforts. Republican believe in making America into a kind of corporate collective - a weird mirror image of Marxism - with the corporate lite at the top, and the powerless workers below.


Romney's 'Free Stuff' Speech Is a New Low