Sunday, September 2, 2012
Friday, August 31, 2012
Trust Me
by Dee Newman
Were you watching the Republican National Convention last night?
I thought the whole point of an acceptance speech is to truthfully tell the American people what kind of president you will be – to tell us the hard truths we need to hear and what you will do to address the tough issues facing this nation – specifically our nation's high rate of unemployment.
In fact, that’s what New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Mitt’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, told us Mitt would tell us. I was actually really looking forward to finally hearing Mitt’s plan to put people back to work.
It seems to me, though it required a little effort and courage, he had a fairly easy task – “if you elect me, here's what I will do."
Unfortunately, by the time the balloons dropped last night, we had no better idea what Mitt would do in office than we had the day before.
I wasn’t looking for charts and a whiteboard, but I was expecting to hear something about what he intends to do with the enormous power of the presidency to solve a few of the nation’s problems.
So, I kept waiting and waiting to hear something, anything, that might resemble real substance, but (as you know) it never came.
His whole speech could be boiled down to: President Obama is a nice guy and he tried, but his efforts were inadequate; if you elect me, I will not fail; I will create 12 million jobs; Trust me.
Yeah, right.
He wants the American people to take a leap of faith based on nothing, but his word . . . without proposing any substance or specifics. Just the word of a proven thin-lipped liar, a flip-flopper, who continues to peddle the same old Bush-era policies of deregulation, tax cuts for the filthy rich and trickle-down economics. You know, the exact same thing that not only did not create jobs during W's 8 years in office, but got us into this mess in the first place.
By-the-way, his prevarications last night rivaled his running mate’s the night before.
Were you watching the Republican National Convention last night?
I thought the whole point of an acceptance speech is to truthfully tell the American people what kind of president you will be – to tell us the hard truths we need to hear and what you will do to address the tough issues facing this nation – specifically our nation's high rate of unemployment.
In fact, that’s what New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Mitt’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, told us Mitt would tell us. I was actually really looking forward to finally hearing Mitt’s plan to put people back to work.
It seems to me, though it required a little effort and courage, he had a fairly easy task – “if you elect me, here's what I will do."
Unfortunately, by the time the balloons dropped last night, we had no better idea what Mitt would do in office than we had the day before.
I wasn’t looking for charts and a whiteboard, but I was expecting to hear something about what he intends to do with the enormous power of the presidency to solve a few of the nation’s problems.
So, I kept waiting and waiting to hear something, anything, that might resemble real substance, but (as you know) it never came.
His whole speech could be boiled down to: President Obama is a nice guy and he tried, but his efforts were inadequate; if you elect me, I will not fail; I will create 12 million jobs; Trust me.
Yeah, right.
He wants the American people to take a leap of faith based on nothing, but his word . . . without proposing any substance or specifics. Just the word of a proven thin-lipped liar, a flip-flopper, who continues to peddle the same old Bush-era policies of deregulation, tax cuts for the filthy rich and trickle-down economics. You know, the exact same thing that not only did not create jobs during W's 8 years in office, but got us into this mess in the first place.
By-the-way, his prevarications last night rivaled his running mate’s the night before.
From RollingStone
The Federal Bailout That Saved Mitt Romney
Government documents prove the candidate's mythology is just that
By Tim Dickinson
August 29, 2012 7:00 AM ET
Mitt Romney likes to say he won't "apologize" for his success in business. But what he never says is "thank you" – to the American people – for the federal bailout of Bain & Company that made so much of his outsize wealth possible.
According to the candidate's mythology, Romney took leave of his duties at the private equity firm Bain Capital in 1990 and rode in on a white horse to lead a swift restructuring of Bain & Company, preventing the collapse of the consulting firm where his career began. When The Boston Globe reported on the rescue at the time of his Senate run against Ted Kennedy, campaign aides spun Romney as the wizard behind a "long-shot miracle," bragging that he had "saved bank depositors all over the country $30 million when he saved Bain & Company."
In fact, government documents on the bailout obtained by Rolling Stone show that the legend crafted by Romney is basically a lie. The federal records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Romney's initial rescue attempt at Bain & Company was actually a disaster – leaving the firm so financially strapped that it had "no value as a going concern." Even worse, the federal bailout ultimately engineered by Romney screwed the FDIC – the bank insurance system backed by taxpayers – out of at least $10 million. And in an added insult, Romney rewarded top executives at Bain with hefty bonuses at the very moment that he was demanding his handout from the feds.
With his selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, Romney has made fiscal stewardship the centerpiece of his campaign. A banner at MittRomney.com declared, "We have a moral responsibility not to spend more than we take in." Romney also opposed the federal bailout for Detroit automakers, famously arguing that the industry should be forced into bankruptcy. Government bailouts, he insists, are "the wrong way to go."
But the FDIC documents on the Bain deal – which were heavily redacted by the firm prior to release – show that as a wealthy businessman, Romney was willing to go to extremes to secure a federal bailout to serve his own interests. He had a lot at stake, both financially and politically. Had Bain & Company collapsed, insiders say, it would have dealt a grave setback to Bain Capital, where Romney went on to build a personal fortune valued at as much as $250 million. It would also have short-circuited his political career before it began, tagging Romney as a failed businessman unable to rescue his own firm.
"None of us wanted to see Bain be the laughingstock of the business world," recalls a longtime Romney lieutenant who asked not to be identified. "But Mitt's reputation was on the line."
Mitt Romney's Federal Bailout: The Documents
The trouble began in 1984, when Bain & Company spun off Bain Capital to engage in leveraged buyouts and put Romney in charge of the new operation. To free up money to invest in the new business, founder Bill Bain and his partners cashed out much of their stock in the consulting firm – leaving it saddled with about $200 million in debt. (Romney, though not a founder, reportedly profited from the deal.) "People will tell you that Bill raped the place clean, was greedy, didn't know when to stop," a former Bain consultant later conceded. "Did they take too much out of the firm? You bet."
The FDIC documents make clear what happened next: "Soon after the founders sold their equity," analysts reported, "business began to drop off." First came scandal: In the late 1980s, a Bain consultant became a key figure in an illegal stock manipulation scheme in London. The firm's reputation took a hit, and it fired 10 percent of its consulting force. By the time the 1989 recession began, Bain & Company found itself going broke fast. Cash flows weren't enough to service the debt imposed by the founders, and the firm could barely make payroll. In a panic, Bill Bain tapped Romney, his longtime protégé, to take the reins.
Government documents prove the candidate's mythology is just that
By Tim Dickinson
August 29, 2012 7:00 AM ET
Mitt Romney likes to say he won't "apologize" for his success in business. But what he never says is "thank you" – to the American people – for the federal bailout of Bain & Company that made so much of his outsize wealth possible.
According to the candidate's mythology, Romney took leave of his duties at the private equity firm Bain Capital in 1990 and rode in on a white horse to lead a swift restructuring of Bain & Company, preventing the collapse of the consulting firm where his career began. When The Boston Globe reported on the rescue at the time of his Senate run against Ted Kennedy, campaign aides spun Romney as the wizard behind a "long-shot miracle," bragging that he had "saved bank depositors all over the country $30 million when he saved Bain & Company."
In fact, government documents on the bailout obtained by Rolling Stone show that the legend crafted by Romney is basically a lie. The federal records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Romney's initial rescue attempt at Bain & Company was actually a disaster – leaving the firm so financially strapped that it had "no value as a going concern." Even worse, the federal bailout ultimately engineered by Romney screwed the FDIC – the bank insurance system backed by taxpayers – out of at least $10 million. And in an added insult, Romney rewarded top executives at Bain with hefty bonuses at the very moment that he was demanding his handout from the feds.
With his selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, Romney has made fiscal stewardship the centerpiece of his campaign. A banner at MittRomney.com declared, "We have a moral responsibility not to spend more than we take in." Romney also opposed the federal bailout for Detroit automakers, famously arguing that the industry should be forced into bankruptcy. Government bailouts, he insists, are "the wrong way to go."
But the FDIC documents on the Bain deal – which were heavily redacted by the firm prior to release – show that as a wealthy businessman, Romney was willing to go to extremes to secure a federal bailout to serve his own interests. He had a lot at stake, both financially and politically. Had Bain & Company collapsed, insiders say, it would have dealt a grave setback to Bain Capital, where Romney went on to build a personal fortune valued at as much as $250 million. It would also have short-circuited his political career before it began, tagging Romney as a failed businessman unable to rescue his own firm.
"None of us wanted to see Bain be the laughingstock of the business world," recalls a longtime Romney lieutenant who asked not to be identified. "But Mitt's reputation was on the line."
Mitt Romney's Federal Bailout: The Documents
The trouble began in 1984, when Bain & Company spun off Bain Capital to engage in leveraged buyouts and put Romney in charge of the new operation. To free up money to invest in the new business, founder Bill Bain and his partners cashed out much of their stock in the consulting firm – leaving it saddled with about $200 million in debt. (Romney, though not a founder, reportedly profited from the deal.) "People will tell you that Bill raped the place clean, was greedy, didn't know when to stop," a former Bain consultant later conceded. "Did they take too much out of the firm? You bet."
The FDIC documents make clear what happened next: "Soon after the founders sold their equity," analysts reported, "business began to drop off." First came scandal: In the late 1980s, a Bain consultant became a key figure in an illegal stock manipulation scheme in London. The firm's reputation took a hit, and it fired 10 percent of its consulting force. By the time the 1989 recession began, Bain & Company found itself going broke fast. Cash flows weren't enough to service the debt imposed by the founders, and the firm could barely make payroll. In a panic, Bill Bain tapped Romney, his longtime protégé, to take the reins.
To read the rest of the article click here.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
"We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."
by DeeNewman
On July 31, I wrote on this Blog: If there’s one thing we have learned about Mitt Romney over the last year, it is that he does not let facts get in his way.
While defending the campaign's patently false ads that claim the Obama administration removed work requirements from welfare, a Romney pollster, Neil Newhouse, boldly and unashamedly told a reporter this past week: "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."
Doubling down on that statement, last night during prime time we heard Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, at the Republican Convention level one falsehood after another against the President, while neglecting to give a single idea for how to put people back to work.
Ryan lied about Medicare. He lied about the Recovery Act. He lied about the deficit and debt. He even unfairly and deceitfully attacked President Obama for the closing of a GM plant in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin – a plant that closed under George W. Bush in December 2008.
Ryan disingenuously criticize and accused the president of not supporting the Simpson-Bowels Deficit Commission report, while conveniently failing to mention that he, Ryan, had in fact voted against it.
He also reiterating a number of false attack ads that accuse President Obama of funneling $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for Obamacare, while failing to mention that his own budget plan relies on those very same savings to help finance more tax cuts for the filthy rich.
Ryan dishonestly told the GOP delegates that President Obama was solely responsible for the Standard & Poor's downgrade of the U.S. debt. Of course, he failed to mention that the S&P downgrade was actually caused by the debt ceiling standoff, driven by House Republicans, led by no other than – Paul Ryan. In fact, in explaining the downgrade S&P wrote: “We have changed our assumption [on the debt] because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues.”
Yes, it seems that the Romney campaign has calculated that facts are irrelevant and even blatant lies will not hurt them with voters.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
From RollingStone
Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital
How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs – and stuck others with the bill
by Matt Taibbi / August 29, 2012
The critics couldn't be more wrong. Mitt Romney is no tissue-paper man. He's closer to being a revolutionary, a backward-world version of Che or Trotsky, with tweezed nostrils instead of a beard, a half-Windsor instead of a leather jerkin. His legendary flip-flops aren't the lies of a bumbling opportunist – they're the confident prevarications of a man untroubled by misleading the nonbeliever in pursuit of a single, all-consuming goal. Romney has a vision, and he's trying for something big: We've just been too slow to sort out what it is, just as we've been slow to grasp the roots of the radical economic changes that have swept the country in the last generation.
The incredible untold story of the 2012 election so far is that Romney's run has been a shimmering pearl of perfect political hypocrisy, which he's somehow managed to keep hidden, even with thousands of cameras following his every move. And the drama of this rhetorical high-wire act was ratcheted up even further when Romney chose his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin – like himself, a self-righteously anal, thin-lipped, Whitest Kids U Know penny pincher who'd be honored to tell Oliver Twist there's no more soup left. By selecting Ryan, Romney, the hard-charging, chameleonic champion of a disgraced-yet-defiant Wall Street, officially succeeded in moving the battle lines in the 2012 presidential race.
Like John McCain four years before, Romney desperately needed a vice-presidential pick that would change the game. But where McCain bet on a combustive mix of clueless novelty and suburban sexual tension named Sarah Palin, Romney bet on an idea. He said as much when he unveiled his choice of Ryan, the author of a hair-raising budget-cutting plan best known for its willingness to slash the sacred cows of Medicare and Medicaid. "Paul Ryan has become an intellectual leader of the Republican Party," Romney told frenzied Republican supporters in Norfolk, Virginia, standing before the reliably jingoistic backdrop of a floating warship. "He understands the fiscal challenges facing America: our exploding deficits and crushing debt."
Debt, debt, debt. If the Republican Party had a James Carville, this is what he would have said to win Mitt over, in whatever late-night war room session led to the Ryan pick: "It's the debt, stupid." This is the way to defeat Barack Obama: to recast the race as a jeremiad against debt, something just about everybody who's ever gotten a bill in the mail hates on a primal level.
Last May, in a much-touted speech in Iowa, Romney used language that was literally inflammatory to describe America's federal borrowing. "A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation," he declared. "Every day we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love." Our collective debt is no ordinary problem: According to Mitt, it's going to burn our children alive.
And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.
By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.
The unlikeliness of Romney's gambit isn't simply a reflection of his own artlessly unapologetic mindset – it stands as an emblem for the resiliency of the entire sociopathic Wall Street set he represents. Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it's dusted itself off, it's had a shave and a shoeshine, and it's back out there running for president.
Mitt Romney, it turns out, is the perfect frontman for Wall Street's greed revolution. He's not a two-bit, shifty-eyed huckster like Lloyd Blankfein. He's not a sighing, eye-rolling, arrogant jerkwad like Jamie Dimon. But Mitt believes the same things those guys believe: He's been right with them on the front lines of the financialization revolution, a decades-long campaign in which the old, simple, let's-make-stuff-and-sell-it manufacturing economy was replaced with a new, highly complex, let's-take-stuff-and-trash-it financial economy. Instead of cars and airplanes, we built swaps, CDOs and other toxic financial products. Instead of building new companies from the ground up, we took out massive bank loans and used them to acquire existing firms, liquidating every asset in sight and leaving the target companies holding the note. The new borrow-and-conquer economy was morally sanctified by an almost religious faith in the grossly euphemistic concept of "creative destruction," and amounted to a total abdication of collective responsibility by America's rich, whose new thing was making assloads of money in ever-shorter campaigns of economic conquest, sending the proceeds offshore, and shrugging as the great towns and factories their parents and grandparents built were shuttered and boarded up, crushed by a true prairie fire of debt.
Mitt Romney – a man whose own father built cars and nurtured communities, and was one of the old-school industrial anachronisms pushed aside by the new generation's wealth grab – has emerged now to sell this make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone ethos to the world. He's Gordon Gekko, but a new and improved version, with better PR – and a bigger goal. A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we'll all end up paying for the acquisition.
To read the entire article click here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
