Romney and Bain's wealth Built on Bailout

[Irish Stout]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-federal-bailout-that-saved-mitt-romney-20120829

I think the demand to see Romney's returns will skyrocket soon.

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.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-federal-bailout-that-saved-mitt-romney-20120829#ixzz259RKz6jg

[DenverBrit]

This will get interesting.

http://lindagalindo.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/spinning-top1.jpg

[Play2win]

So, BAIN is a Socialist company, financed by the state!

LOL

[Smiling Assassin27]

Rolling Stone. The desperation is just too cute.

Google 'Spieckerman'

[DenverBrit]

Rolling Stone. The desperation is just too cute.

Google 'Spieckerman'

The story is easily verified.....and if true, what are your thoughts?

[Requiem]

Smilin Assassin, ROFL. What a turd sucker.

[Play2win]

So, BAIN is a Socialist company, financed by the state!

LOL

[Irish Stout]

Rolling Stone. The desperation is just too cute.

Google 'Spieckerman'

I don't know what the desperation is... they actually have a lot of the federal documents on their website that they relied on to write the article. I'll give you that the article is written from an "attack" perspective, but it appears to be 100% factual.

Also googled Spieckerman... took me awhile to figure out that you meant Lee Spieckerman. Read the rebuttal...didn't address the core premise of the rolling stone article, which is that Bain Capital relied on a bailout at the same time they were paying BIG bonuses.

[Irish Stout]

Here's the Lee Speickerman blog referenced earlier:

http://spieckerman.blogspot.com/2012/08/desperate-to-distract-dispirited-obama.html

This "rebuttal" actually has nothing to do with the article this thread is about, but rather a separate OpEd piece in Rolling Stone attacking Romney's Greed. The article referenced in this thread is less OpEd and more actual journalism, uncovering a WHOLE lot of documents showing Bain took bailout $.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Smilin Assassin, ROFL. What a turd sucker.

:yep:

He's not even good at deflection.

[Rigs11]

So wait he took gov money and introduced healthcare? Soshalist!

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/309099_520603387957214_865338544_n.jpg

[GreasyQtip]

this is awesome. I would have come up with sso much reasoning against logic to make excuses for every single thing coming out. I am glad I do not have to just sit around with my only way to defend lies by saying "liberal media" with a smirk. Well I suppose arguing with your own logic comes easily to the religious majority. Go with your heart!

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Government documents on the bailout obtained by Rolling Stone show that the legend crafted by Romney is basically a lie.

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.

The Federal Bailout That Saved Mitt Romney | Politics News | Rolling Stone
(http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-federal-bailout-that-saved-mitt-romney-20120829)
Government documents prove the candidate's mythology is just that.

[nyuk nyuk]

This message brought to you by the Democratic National Committee.

I am Barack Obama and I approve this message.

Rolling Stone is a liberal rag. Dare I say they're bigger partisan hacks than Fox News, and by a long shot at that.

[Requiem]

Didn't know that government documents on financial bailouts were able to choose a political tendency. Learn something new every day.

[peacepipe]

LOL If you can't dispute the facts attack the messanger.

[nyuk nyuk]

What I'm trying to figure out is how a red diaper baby with zero experience in the business arena is remotely qualified to do squat? May explain the debt problem?

[bowtown]

What I'm trying to figure out is how a red diaper baby with zero experience in the business arena is remotely qualified to do squat? May explain the debt problem?

You are being a little harsh on GW there, but I guess if the shoe fits...

[peacepipe]

What I'm trying to figure out is how a red diaper baby with zero experience in the business arena is remotely qualified to do squat? May explain the debt problem?



http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/02/17/sorry-mitt-romney-good-businessmen-rarely-make-good-presidents



Successful business experience is the central rationale for former Gov. Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. To support Romney one must, at a basic level, believe that being good at business either generates experience or hones qualities that are likely to produce successful presidential leadership at a reasonably high rate. One assumes that the validity of this proposition is testable against the historical record. If Romney is correct, presidents with significant business experience should outperform those without—and this fact should be reflected in the presidential rankings that have been compiled by a bipartisan group of historians since 1948. If Romney is wrong, if business leaders perform as well or less well than the average, then business success is at best immaterial and may actually be detrimental to presidential leadership. In that case a core tenet of Romney's presidential candidacy evaporates.

[See a collection of political cartoons on Mitt Romney.]

We have had 20 presidents in the modern era (i.e., since 1900). Five of those had significant business careers before entering politics. Unfortunately for Romney, the results are not good for the businessmen.

None of the great or near-great presidents—Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, or Woodrow Wilson—was a businessman. Truman was a failed businessman (a haberdasher) before entering politics, but that hardly constitutes a ringing endorsement of Romney's claim for private sector ascendency.

For that matter, none of the better-than-average presidents was a businessman either. In this category think of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton.

Probably the most successful president with real business experience (and success) was George H.W. Bush. Before going into politics he founded Zapata Petroleum, which ultimately became Pennzoil. Bush 41 ended up a one-term president unable to kick-start an economy in a recession and seemingly out of touch with the problems of the common man. Sound familiar?

It gets worse from here. Jimmy Carter, another one-term president beset with economic woes, was a success in agribusiness (peanut farming) before getting into politics. He generally falls into the lower half of the historians' rankings.

[Read about the 10 Worst Presidents.]

And then we get the big three—the men widely considered by historians to be the worst presidents of the modern era: Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, and George W. Bush. One left the country on the verge of a depression, one left the country in a depression, and one presided over such corruption and ineptitude that despite the failings of the other two he still manages to get the lowest ranking of them all. And yet all three made millions of dollars in the private sector before entering politics. All three were successful businessmen (a newspaper publisher, a mining tycoon, and the owner of a professional baseball team). Bush 43 even went to Harvard business school, like Romney, and like Romney promised to bring business principles to the Oval Office.
With this kind of track record, maybe voters should apply some market principles to the core Romney Rationale and choose a different brand of dog food.

[TonyR]

...what are your thoughts?

LOL As if that guy thinks. And he never responds when challenged. Just runs away and hides.

[TonyR]

Bain Capital. I guess Romney didn't build that!

[Requiem]

What I'm trying to figure out is how a red diaper baby with zero experience in the business arena is remotely qualified to do squat? May explain the debt problem?

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzjsp4d13a1qe11kdo1_500.png

[nyuk nyuk]

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/02/17/sorry-mitt-romney-good-businessmen-rarely-make-good-presidents

Except that's subjective and I didn't ask for subjective opinion. Notice your link says OPINION ARTICLES?

:wave:

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

LOL If you can't dispute the facts attack the messanger.

Exactly.

But what do expect from the DramaLlama in drag? Ha!

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/480533_524436584248524_272374482_n.jpg

[peacepipe]

Except that's subjective and I didn't ask for subjective opinion. Notice your link says OPINION ARTICLES?

:wave:

you are deflecting. although it may be opinion on who's worse,it is not opinion as to what their policies led to. hoover gave us the great depression & GWB gave us the great recession. it's an historical fact.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Another day, another ironic Romney contradiction...

Mitt Romney is Son of Welfare-Receiving, Mexican Immigrant, Mother Says

The GOP presidential ticket of Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan is fond of attacking 'social entitlements,' but their campaign has failed to mention that Mitt Romney's father George Romney was on "welfare relief" when he first arrived in the U.S., according to an interview with Romney's mother Lenore recorded in 1962.

George Romney was running for governor in Michigan in 1962, so this interview was part of Lenore's effort to help him get elected, which he was (video below).

George Romney was born in Mexico and moved with his family to El Paso, Texas, during the Mexican Revolution, reports addictinginfo.org.

The family received $250, food, clothing, and other supplies from the U.S. government. The family later invested some of their money in the stock market and used that cash to send George Romney to college.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_DgB3WASwXA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Smiling Assassin27]

Oddly, I don't see any of the dyed in the wool Dems giving back the HUGE amounts of money that Bain has made for them:

As Democrats convene in Charlotte this week, they likely will double down on their claim that Bain Capital is really the Bain Crime Family. They will accuse Republican nominee Mitt Romney and Bain’s other “greedy” co-founders of stealing their profits, evading taxes, and lighting cigars with $100 bills on their yachts. But Democrats will ignore this inconvenient truth: Bain’s private-equity investments have enriched dozens of organizations and millions of individuals in the Democratic base — including some who scream most loudly for President Obama’s reelection.

Government-employee pension funds are the chief beneficiaries of Bain Capital’s economic stewardship. New York–based Preqin uses public documents, news accounts, and Freedom of Information Act requests to track private-equity holdings. Since 2000, Preqin reports, the following funds have entrusted some $1.56 billion to Bain:

Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund ($2.2 million)
Indiana Public Retirement System ($39.3 million)
Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System ($177.1 million)
Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension System ($19.5 million)
Maryland State Retirement and Pension System ($117.5 million)
Public Employees’ Retirement System of Nevada ($20.3 million)
State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio ($767.3 million)
Pennsylvania State Employees Retirement System ($231.5 million)
Employees Retirement System of Rhode Island ($25.0 million)
San Diego County Employees Retirement Association ($23.5 million)
Teacher Retirement System of Texas ($122.5 million)
Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System ($15.0 million)



Major universities have profited from Bain’s expertise. According to Infrastructure Investor, Bain Capital Ventures Fund I (launched in 2001) managed wealth for “endowments and foundations such as Columbia, Princeton, and Yale universities.” The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman noted on July 18 that Harvard “has also invested with Bain.” Thus, Michelle and Barack Obama’s undergraduate campuses (Princeton and Columbia, respectively) and the university where they earned their law degrees (Harvard) all have enjoyed Bain Capital’s financial prowess.

According to BuyOuts magazine and S&P Capital IQ, Bain’s other college clients have included Cornell, Emory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Notre Dame, and the University of Pittsburgh. Preqin reports that the following schools have placed at least $424.6 million with Bain Capital between 1998 and 2008:

Purdue University ($15.9 million)
University of California ($225.7 million)
University of Michigan ($130 million)
University of Virginia ($20 million)
University of Washington ($33 million)



All these Dems care about is the frickin' money:

Why on Earth would government-union leaders, university presidents, and foundation chiefs let a company with Bain Capital’s reputation oversee their precious assets?

“The scrutiny generated by a heated election year matters less than the performance the portfolio generates to the fund,” California State Teachers’ Retirement System spokesman Ricardo Duran recently told the Boston Globe. CalSTRS has pumped some $1.25 billion into Bain. Since 1988, Duran says, private-equity companies such as Bain have outperformed every other asset class to which CalSTRS has allocated the cash of its 856,360 largely unionized members.

“We remain focused on investment performance for all of our commitments, including Bain,” Jodi O’Neill, a spokeswoman for the Indiana Public Retirement System, told Reuters. “Election rhetoric has neither a positive nor negative impact on our assessment of a fund’s performance.”

“These government-union pension funds call the shots,” says my friend Brett A. Shisler, a Manhattan financier and former private-equity executive. “They want Bain to do one thing: make money. They do not evaluate Bain on how many jobs they create or environmentally friendly products they launch. No, they just care about money. If Team Obama is concerned about ‘greed,’ they should not blame private equity. They should blame the pension funds. What they demand is a far cry from conscious capitalism.”



http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/315709/obama-s-base-banks-bain-deroy-murdock

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

^

National Review?

L0L! Ha!