Posted on 01/28/2008 11:19:52 PM PST by Tigen
Originally, there were to be three acceptable choices the right-wing media elites would champion. All three had large corporate backing and each had their group of insiders on K street. Unfortunately, once the posturing was over and the voting began, the Republican primary attendees had the unmitigated gall to vote for someone who wasn’t one of “The Chosen.” Things were further complicated when one of the triumvirate decided he would rather play the part of a District Attorney on TV then a presidential candidate in real life. Another acceptable candidate took a cue from his fellow New Yorkers and retired to South Florida rather than run a national campaign. This left Mitt Romney, the one-term governor from Massachusetts as the only viable candidate in the eyes of the chattering class.
If you have listened to talk radio or perused a conservative column in the last 60 days, you know two things. Mitt Romney is a true conservative and the next best thing to Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Governor Romney had something going for him besides personal wealth and central casting looks. The governor was the founder of Bain Capital, a private equity group. The company specializes in leverage buyouts and made billions of dollars throughout the eighties and nineties. This is the company that made Mitt Romney a wealthy man, with a net worth around $250,000,000. Romney, who stepped down in 1999 when he took over the Salt Lake City Olympics, is still a silent partner in the company and, according to the governor’s financial disclosure, will continue to receive profits from Bain Capital through February 2009. These facts alone might seem innocuous enough, but consider the latest acquisition Bain has its eye on.
Romney is a former CEO of Bain & Company, a management consulting firm, and the co-founder of Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm. From 1978 to 1984, Romney was a vice president of Bain & Company, Inc., another management consulting firm based in Boston. In 1984, Romney left Bain & Company to co-found a spin-off private equity investment firm, Bain Capital.[11] During the 14 years he headed the company, Bain Capital's average annual internal rate of return on realized investments was 113 percent,[12] making money primarily through leveraged buyouts.
On November 16, 2006, Clear Channel Communications agreed to be acquired by Bain Capital and Thomas Lee Partners for nearly $19 billion.
Clear Channel Communications (NYSE: CCU) is a media conglomerate company based in the United States. Clear Channel, founded in 1972 by Lowry Mays and Red McCombs, wields considerable influence in radio broadcasting, concert promotion and hosting, and fixed advertising in the United States through its subsidiaries. The largest U.S. radio station owner owns over 1,100 full-power AM, FM, and shortwave radio stations, twelve radio channels on XM Satellite Radio, and more than 30 television stations in the United States, among other media outlets in other countries. The present head of the company is Mark Mays, and its headquarters is located in San Antonio, Texas.
The term "clear channel" comes from AM broadcasting, referring to a channel (frequency) on which only one station transmits. In U.S. and Canadian broadcasting history, "clear channel" (or class I-A) stations had exclusive rights to their frequencies throughout most of the continent at night, when AM stations travel very far due to skywave. WOAI in San Antonio, one of Clear Channel's first acquisitions, was such a station. On November 16, 2006, Clear Channel announced plans to go private, being bought out by two private-equity firms, Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners for $18.7 billion, which is just under a 10 percent premium above its closing price of $35.36 a share on November 16 (the deal values Clear Channel at $37.60 per share).[1][2] The new ownership of Clear Channel has also announced that all of its TV stations were for sale, as well as 448 radio stations that were outside of the top 100 markets.[3] All of the TV stations and 161 of the radio stations were sold to a Providence Equity Partners, a private-equity firm, on April 23, 2007, pending FCC approval. Premiere Radio Networks is a US-based radio network. It is the largest syndication company in the United States based on popularity of programming. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications and was headed until recently by Kraig Kitchin who is currently transitioning out, handing the reins over to CC Executive Charlie Rahilly.
Premiere programs are heard on over 5000 radio stations worldwide, primarily in the United States and Canada and through streaming audio over the Internet on their system called Streamlink. Several programs are heard on XM Satellite Radio, of which XM is the exclusive satellite provider for Premiere. Programs
The Glenn Beck Program Weekdays 9A-12A The Rush Limbaugh Show Weekdays 12P-3P Rush Limbaugh Week in Review Weekends TBA Just to name a few!There are hundreds more. 24/7 Radio Networks Fox News Radio - Premiere feeds this network thanks to a programming agreement between Fox News and Clear Channel. Fox Sports Radio - Premiere completely owns and operates this network and distributes it to AM, FM, Worldspace, and XM. ReachMD - Exclusively on XM Satellite Radio National Lampoon Comedy Radio - Handles sales and distribution of the network, which is currently only planned for digital radio platforms. John Hogan is CEO of Clear Channel Radio[1] (a subdivision of Clear Channel Communications) in San Antonio, Texas. A 25 year radio veteran, he is responsible for the operations of nearly 1200 U.S. radio stations and nationally syndicated radio shows; including those of Rush Limbaugh, Ryan Seacrest, Casey Kasem, and Donald Trump.
Clear Channel has purchased interest in, or outright acquired, companies in a number of media or advertising related industries. Bain Capital LLC is a Boston, Massachusetts-based private equity firm founded in 1984 by Mitt Romney. Romney was the Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007. In addition to Romney, the firm was also founded by two other partners from the consulting firm Bain & Company: T. Coleman Andrews III and Eric Kriss. Bain Capital was originally conceived as a combined equity start-up and leveraged buyout fund, """an innovative strategy at the time"""
Zzzzzzzzzzz...
This is garbage. Romney’s not been with Bain Capital for 10 years now. I saw people try to connect him with the Chinese defense deal that Hunter tried to pin on him, but what everyone doesn’t seem to understand is how private equity firms like Bain Capital operate. The company itself does not have ownership that Romney would own a piece of. Bain Capital consists of investments are discrete and separate from one another and can each have an entirely different mix of investors. The fund manager (Bain) would control how the fund operates—a lot like how a mutual fund works.
The likelihood that Romney is an investor in the Clear Channel deal is pretty small, so no, Romney does not have talk radio on his hook.
Your conspiracy theory would have made more sense if they had been supporting Romney all along, but they support him now because he’s more conservative than McCain or Huckabee, the only other primary winners.
Mass:Taxachusetts Robs Lawyers Who Helped It Rob the Tobacco Industry
BOSTON – A lawyer for the two law firms that helped Massachusetts win $8.3 billion as part of the 1998 tobacco settlement accused the state Tuesday of breaking promises and penalizing the firms for being too successful.
The lawyers, awarded $775 million by an arbitration panel, have sued Massachusetts to recover an additional $1.25 billion over the next 25 years they say they're owed for negotiating a landmark settlement with tobacco companies. Richlin says this amount is equivalent to $17,000 for each hour they worked on the case.
More hands in our pockets. How sweet!
First Massachusetts firefighter fired for smoking
"who is caught smoking tobacco products on or off duty."
I listen to all major talk radio and read 10 hours a day and have never found Romney described as a TRUE conservative .
This was something that occurred during the Clinton administration when state governments saw the inherent money spigot of frivolous civil litigation against legitimate corporate entities.
The ambulance-chasing parasites who initiated these lawsuits should have known beforehand that the government was going to get its take.
Public smoking foes target the holdouts/MASS
that the public's health is more important than the bar or restaurant owner's wealth.
Mass is a FARCE!
Exactly. I love how all the failings of Massachusetts now seem to fall squarely on the shoulders of Romney, even when if they had nothing to do with his policies.
Not a chance. I've heard no person say that.
I looked high and low in your post for some mention that Romney was recently endorsed by the NY Times but you left it out. What gives?
Fred Thompson couldn’t get traction because he blew his chance. The mainstream interest for Fred was HUGE over the summer, but he decided to wait to declare his intentions. By then, every other candidate was somewhat established. He also had a very lazy campaign. It might’ve worked in Tennessee, but nationwide he had to project energy. It was a huge mistake, and it was his fault.
Duncan Hunter, well, I agree with nearly everything he said, but he was unelectable. FReepers might scream over that, but its the fact, he was essentially Pat Buchanan with more sensible ideas. He was percieved as too far right by many and plus he wasn’t exactly known before the election. Hey, it’s just like Tom Tancredo, smart guys but not exactly known or big names.
We all know MSM hearts the left, but all those candidates have had doomed candidacies, one way or another.
I like Fred ,Duncan, Mike, Rush,Fox news,and I will vote for who is on the republican ticket in november.
Oh sure. Defend the Mormon. Good luck!
Oh, and by the way, obviously you have no idea what a "silent partner" means either. It pretty much means that Romney would have zero control over what Bain does.
Furthermore, of course Romney would continue to receive profits from Bain. What you fail to realize is that these residual profits would have been from investment funds he managed back when he was with the company (10 years ago!) and not any of the investment funds Bain entered into since that time. Really, you need to educate yourself on how private equity firms work.
“I looked high and low in your post for some mention that Romney was recently endorsed by the NY Times but you left it out. What gives?”
Maybe because it never happened? They endorsed McCain, and slammed all the other Republicans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25fri2.html?ref=opinion
All of these anti-Romney threads and smears are so yesterday. Yawn..... If a tree falls in the forest....
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