Tag Archives: mitt romney

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Econ, Mitt Romney

K.L. South: Romney’s behavior at Bain is a question of character, not capitalism.

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K.L. South writes in the famed Furthermore Blog that the issue with Mitt Romney’s behavior at Bain is a question of character, not capitalism:

There is a huge difference between capitalism and ‘predatory capitalism’ or ‘corporate raiding’. The latter is more of a chop-shop mentality of ‘creative destruction.’ It is still a form of capitalism, sure, even if not held in high regard. That is not the issue. And, I agree most capitalism is moral… the problem is that people defend ALL OF IT equally. You cannot. But, the court of public opinion doesn’t do nuance very well.

No rational person would defend ALL matters of transportation equally; drunk driving, car hijackings, exploits of TSA agents in airports; are abusive or exploitative practices. As is a car salesman who knowingly sells you a lemon where the car will predictably break down 6 months later. Hereto, it is a free market transaction, right? It is capitalism, too.

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Mitt Romney has been a rank opportunist throughout his political career. Mitt Romney was a clever money-making opportunist throughout his business career. The leveraged buyout business, which does not have to be an evil business, is a business that is ripe for heartless exploitation of vulnerable companies and individuals.

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What about Romney benefiting from a $10 million federal bailout and pocketing $4 million dollars directly? It’s not difficult to understand why Romney is not against federal bailouts, having been the beneficiary of them. Perhaps Romney should explain to us how TARP and federal bailouts are free-market capitalism? Romney’s main accomplishment in his one term as governor was RomneyCare, which openly funded abortions for a $50 co-pay. Do Romney supporters call that capitalism too?

Bain defunded pension funds and kept the money – when companies went bankrupt, the pensions had to be paid out of ERISA – government insurance – paid for by those of us who pay taxes. A federal government insurance agency ponied up $44 million to bailout one of Bain Company’s underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.

While at Bain, and as Governor, Romney showed an example of the government stepping into the marketplace, picking winners and losers, providing profits to business owners and leaving taxpayers stuck with the bill. Romney’s Bain made avid use of public-private partnerships, something that many conservatives consider being “corporate welfare.” It is a commitment that carried over into his term as governor. Bain Capital has been a corporate welfare hog under Romney’s tenure and beyond. If one can make millions of dollars whether a company succeeds or fails then where is the risk-taking Romney speaks of so fondly?

Bain, at times, pursued a practice of socializing their losses to banks and pension insurers while privatizing their gains in the same kind of Wall Street practice that led to the mortgage crisis. They leveraged government assistance to boost profits. Is it anti-capitalist to ask if an average worker is an expendable line on a spreadsheet as that worker’s tax dollars were needed to bailout Bain and financiers? And let’s note; as a supporter of the TARP Wall Street bailout, Romney’s “creative destruction” applied only to Main Street, not Wall Street.

And this just scratches the surface folks. Read on at Furthermore…

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Mitt Romney

Huckabee: Mitt has tried to become the nominee by destroying the people around him….

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Huckabee in 2008: “McCain and me. We’ve been on the receiving end of millions of dollars of Mitt Romney’s negative attack ads. So we understand that Mitts tried to become the nominee by destroying the people around him.”

 

2012 Primary, Elite Media, Mitt Romney, True Talking Points

Poll citing 21 point Romney lead in SC is bogus…

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I just saw the Reuters poll showing Mitt Romney with a 21 point lead in South Carolina.

The poll is a joke for two reasons

1- Because half of the sample were Democrats. Why would you poll Democrats about a REPUBLICAN primary??? (Answer: to reflect the candidate the media wants to run against Obama.)

2- The sample was merely “registered voters” and not “likely voters” which skews the sample to the left.  Since “Motor Voter” almost every non-voting Joe is registered to vote.

2012 Primary, Mitt Romney

Democrats: Romney’s job creation claims are fundamentally dishonest

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The Democrats are already jumping on the Romney/Bain bandwagon. While these critiques are not totally fair they will have an impact.

Democrats:

Reuters has a firsthand example of this. Today’s special report chronicles the story of GS Technologies in Kansas City, Missouri, a steel mill that had been in business since 1888—and for decades was a major local employer. The mill work was hard, but the wages were fair, and the mill lifted “countless families into the middle class,” allowing them to buy homes, cars, and college educations.

That is, until Bain showed up.

“Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they’d been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month. What’s more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company’s underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.”

That’s right. The man who denounced President Bush’s bank bailouts in 2008 and President Obama’s successful rescue of the auto industry relied on a federal bailout to profit off a bankrupt company.

Mitt Romney has made the central argument of his candidacy the fact that he has been a private-sector job creator—to the tune of 100,000 jobs.

That is fundamentally dishonest—and it’s a slap in the face to those who have lost their livelihoods to Mitt Romney’s profiteering ways.

2012 Primary, Budget, Econ, Health Law, Mitt Romney

The Truth About RomneyCare

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Why is it that Mitt won’t talk about the whole story on RomneyCare. Keep in mind that this is the policy he refuses to walk away from… price controls and all…..

PJ Media Paul Hsieh, MD:

Now that Mitt Romney has shown himself politically vulnerable after Iowa, more people are taking a closer look at his claims about the “RomneyCare” health care plan he helped create as Massachusetts governor. In this interview from April 2010 which recently recirculated last month, Romney attempts to draw some distinctions (as well as acknowledge similarities) between his RomneyCare plan and the national ObamaCare plan. One of the alleged virtues of RomneyCare over ObamaCare is that Romney’s plan does not contain “price controls,” whereas ObamaCare does. But how does this stack up against reality?

Romney’s claim may have been technically true at the time the plan was enacted. But according to the New York Times, this was a deliberate choice on the part of Romney and the Massachusetts lawmakers when they passed the law in 2006. They aimed for “universal coverage” first, and decided to worry about controlling costs later. In other words, they knew that costs would be a problem but chose to kick the can down the road. It’s like borrowing money from a loan shark then saying, “At least I don’t owe him any money right now!”

But even before Romney’s 2010 claims, the state had already implemented some price controls. As Michael Tennant notes, “Requiring insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions at the same rates as healthy individuals –  another feature of the Massachusetts law that Romney praises — surely qualifies as a price control.”

Similarly, requiring insurance companies to provide numerous mandatory benefits (including lay midwives, orthotics, and drug-abuse treatment) and then denying insurers’ requests for rate increases to cover their increased costs is another form of price control.

Yet another price control considered (but ultimately not implemented) was a proposal to compel doctors to accept patients covered by the state’s “Affordable Health Plans” at government-set payment rates or else lose their state medical licenses.

And because costs continue to rise faster in Massachusetts than in the rest of the country….

Read the rest HERE.

2012 Primary, Culture War, Editorial, Mitt Romney, Newt, Obama

Romney doesn’t get Reagan.

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REAGAN

Mitt Romney’s latest comments about not having strident criticisms of President Obama is an indicator of how he is absorbed by a beltway mentality that is the antithesis of Ronald Reagan. Romney also said in multiple interviews that people in the primary are making bombastic comments that by implication they do not believe.

Bombastic. You know like when Mitt Romney told Rick Perry that one cannot be too against illegal immigration.

What statements has Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum or John Huntsman or Herman Cain said about Barack Obama that was not demonstrably true?

This thinking comes from the “beltway” idea that most voters lean liberal, that if we go directly after Democrats foolishness and corruption that they will send voters into the Democrats arms; as if the Democrats never say bombastic things about Republicans such as

Republicans want to bring back Jim Crow
Republicans want dirty air and water
Republicans hate old people
Republicans hate children….

…All of which are common fare from the Democrat Party leadership.

The numbers show that in 2009 and 2010 that independents responded to the traditional/conservative TEA Party message in a big way, including women and Catholics in nine of the top ten swing states.

Here is a novel idea Mitt Romney, instead of saying things that you think beltway independents want to hear, how about you show us that you have a core and tell us what you genuinely believe, assuming of course there is anything. David Axelrod says that do not have a core. You are proving him correct.

As far as President Reagan, he savaged the left, he savaged Jimmy Carter. Reagan did it with the truth because he understood that truth is indivisible.

Reminder to the ‘Civility Police’: Reagan Savaged Carter and the Democrats With the Truth

In this piece I quote President Reagan and show you his speech at Liberty Island where he blasted the left and Jimmy Carter. Please click the link above for the video.

The Carter record is a litany of despair, of broken promises, of sacred trusts abandoned and forgotten. Eight million — eight million out of work. Inflation running at 18 percent in the first quarter of this year. Black unemployment at 14 percent, higher than any single year since the government began keeping separate statistics. Four straight major deficits run up by Carter and his friends in Congress. The highest interest rates since the Civil War, reaching at times close to 20 percent, lately they’re down to more than 11 percent but now they’ve begun to go up again. Productivity falling for six straight quarters among the most productive people in the world.

Through his inflation he has raised taxes on the American people by 30 percent, while their real income has risen only 20 percent. The Lady standing there in the harbor has never betrayed us once. But this Administration in Washington has betrayed the working men and women of this country.

Gallup: Americans Say Reagan is Greatest President

Here is more of Ronald Reagan being strident.

Reagan’s short stories: Leftist college student vs. capitalist. The story of the Little Red Hen

Reagan didn’t just go after the failed apparatchiks of the leviathan state, he went after the core of their belief system.

And the elite media didn’t like it either….

Reagan vs. Obama

Media Research Center: How the Elite Media Worked to Distort, Dismantle and Destroy Reagan’s Legacy