Posted on 01/10/2012 3:24:25 PM PST by Laissez-faire capitalist
Some now on talk radio and cable news are portraying Perry and Gingrich as attacking capitalism, but if it turns out after months of examination during the election cycle that taxpayers got stuck with a $10 million bill, employees were tossed and Romney and others ended up with $4 million, it's over. The GOP will be branded as super, ultra, mega hypocrites.
Is this free-market capitalism? If not, then why are Perry and Gingrich being attacked? Regardless if this was allowed under the FDUC or wharever loss, voters won't forget that employees were tossed, taxpayers got stuck with the bill, and Rombey and others made $4 million - if it's all true. And believe me, we will know, and all the anti-Solyndra arguments, anti-banker bailout arguments, anti-crony capitalism arguments the GOP was planning to use against Obama will be gone. And Romney will lose, as more than one media outlet have apparently shredded the argument Romney has put forward that he created 100,000 jobs.
So, if this isn't true free-market capitalism, then why defend Romney and attack Newt?
Bain has donated more to Odumbo than Romney.
So, that takes bail outs off the table. RomneyCare takes ObamaCare off the table. If he wins the nomination, Mittens might adapt a new slogan, “Take Your Pick; there really isn’t any difference.”
Nice find! : )
Why should American taxpayers be forced to pay for Willard’s business incompetence and greed?
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Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they’d been promised, and their pension benefits were cut..
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.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/01/bain-drip-drip-drip/
Newt is a loser. Newt is not attacking Romney’s Bain stint for the specific federal bailout or any other specific things Romney did wrong there.
He is attacking Venture Capitalism, which is high risk / high reward game that works ruthlessly to deploy capital and reap rewards.
I simply loathe Newt (and now Perry) for doing it.
There was excellent piece in the Weekly Standard that rightly goes after Romney for his Bain stint. That intellectually honest attack is something that works with me.
Right now the GOP isvcaught between a rock and a hard place.
Dem-lite Romney cannot defeat Dem not lite. It never works.
The GOP has a choice: either dump all crony capitaliam, corporate welfare and vulture capitalism in which bailouts occur and people get millions nonetheless while employees get tossed - or lose elections.
Your choice. I have tried to warn you that Romney will be savaged over this and lose badly. No more warnings. This is it.
If Romney cannot take the attacks from Gingrich over Bain, he will surely lose from the attacks by Obama and MSM.
Gingrich is simply fire-testing Romney for what is to come.
Romney as the Republican nominee is a disaster in the general election because:
1) Bain - Obama will paint this organization as a Wall Street monster whose only function is to scarf up companies and split them up, fire employees, only to make a profit for the share-holders. Romney, given his distaste to actually fight tough, will give some mealy-mouth explanation that will explain nothing. Advantage - Obama
2) ObamaCare - there is no difference between ObamaCare and RomneyCare, at least none the 3-second-attention-span public will understand. The issue (which is one of the defining issues of this election IMO) will be off the table. Advantage - Obama
3) Everyone has said this will be a down-n-dirty smear-fest election from the Democrooks. Look for 3 stories a day from the MSM, after Romney is the nominee, about how his church, the one he’s been in all his life, didn’t recognize blacks as equal until 1978. Yup, this will be a trash-fest of the Mormon “religion” and it will be vicious and relentless. Advantage - Obama
Election- Obama
Done, go home, the party is over.
anybody can play quid-pro-quo anecdotal peek-a-boos... question is, is this what we as Americans are willing to be reduced to?
I simply loathe Newt (and now Perry) for doing it.
__________________________________________________
And you’re going to loathe Obama for doing it as well.
I could care less, Newt is disgracing himself making what Rush Limbaugh says are leftist arguments.
No one on FR should be bothered that Romney was in business and (God Forbid!) the business actually fired people.
Further, if being in business and hiring and firing people is an issue that you don’t think can stand up to democrat attacks, give up right now.
The contrast with Obama is glaring I think this issue will just dig Obama’s political grave.
...just like to watch rats eyes widen with that fact...*smiles*
How do you know that Perry and Newt don’t know about this?
If you can’t suppirt Bewt or Perry for the reasons you gave, then how could you with straight face turn around and suppirt crony-capitalism, bailout capitalism.
How can the GOP attack Obama dir bailouts and crony capitalism and not attaxk Rimney for this also?
Those who villify Obama’s crony capitalism now have egg on their faces if they say nothing about this.
I don’t care for Romney. He can or can’t defend these “attacks” (marxist bombs).
Our guys railing against venture capitalist way of life is disgusting. It can’t be forgiven.
It is vintage Newt. His attack against Paul Ryan budget was no fluke. He is a vile selfish and disgusting human being.
you are 100% correct.... I would not have said this ten days ago but as we learn about Bain, it dooms a Romney run against Obama. David Axelrod is salivating at running his boy against Romney
I need to spell check more often. :) Typing too fast.
He is attacking Venture Capitalism, which is high risk / high reward game that works ruthlessly to deploy capital and reap rewards.
I simply loathe Newt (and now Perry) for doing it.
I agree completely.
I absolutely can't stand Romney, but it is stupid to attack him over this.
That is how capitalism works -- you do the best for your business. You fire people if you need to. If the government is handing out money, you take it -- even if you're politically against it. For example, even if you're politically against interest rate deductions, you should still take them.
The people against letting people run their businesses as they see fit are not real conservatives. The Democrats will be against the way Romney ran his companies, but the Republicans should not.
It's another sign that Newt Gingrich is a liberal on the inside. Please don't be fooled by this slimy character.
I can't stand Romney, but we need to defend him on this.
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Agree completely. I'm done with Newt.
Rush was trying to tell everyone today that all this teaches us something about Newt.
I remember just a year or two ago Rush had to challenge Newt because Newt wanted to co-opt global warming and other liberal issues. It was in Newt’s book.
I get all the mistrust of Romney, but I’m not sure which one is the more recent liberal. Actually, I think it’s Newt.
VC is only part of what Bain was up to. They were also corporate raiders who extracted the maximum from failing companies. They stripped them and left the taxpayers to pick up the tab for the pensions...... This is the part of the Bain story that Obama will be talking about every week if Romney runs against him. Newt and Rick Perry are not tainted like this
Bain also made millions on some honest corporate turn arounds but Obama won't be talking about this. And all Mitts attempts to correct and clarify this will fail
Bye America, It was good while it lasted. Hello Tyranny.
I think free market capitalism is the best economic system humanity has devised.
However, if Mitt Romney is going to claim that he’s most qualified for President because he created many thousands of jobs, then it’s reasonable to see if those claims are true (just as we do reference checks for new employees).
The evidence out there seems to show that while he did make money for his shareholders, many thousands of people lost there jobs to companies that went bankrupt under Bain’s leadership.
In some cases, Bain just slashed R&D while putting more debt on the companies’ books. In many cases while doing this, Bain also awarded themselves dividends from the companies’ balance sheet (justified by these short-term profits). All of these things made it much harder for those companies to succeed in the future, as it had less innovation and cash.
I don’t think the problem we are having discussing Romney is that we don’t have the right vocabulary word for what he did at Bain. When I re-read my paragraph above, it doesn’t sound like capitalism to me. Was capitalism intended to allow a few investors to take over a firm and then slowly sabotage it with debt, which eventually doesn’t get paid because the company goes bankrupt, all the while taking money out the side door through dividends and stock sales?
To me this seems less like capitalism, and more like that scene from Goodfellas when they take out insurance on the restaurant and then burn it down to collect premium.
I support venture capitalism, but not all forms of it.
According to Forbes.com, Bain received federal subsidies. Is that kind of venture capitalism ok?
According to WaPo, debt was driven up in companies, so as to allow earlier dividend returns for investors. This debt can sink companies, employees lose jobs yet the upper crust in the company walk away fine and dandy.
Do you support that kind of venture,, debt-driven capitalism?
Do you support it when Dems do this, because they do.
Now that you've quoted Ted Kennedy, who is next Karl and Josef?
Being in business to do what? I have no idea what Bain does. Do they make a product? Provide a service?
I don’t post very often therefore I don’t know the link rules very well and I certainly don’t want to get anyone into trouble. BUT, I urge you go to legalinsurrection.com and look for the article “Selling out capitalism in defense of Romney and Bain”. At the bottom of the article is a video of Newt on Scarborough and he gives an EXCELLENT response to this whole Bain problem for Mitt.
Venture capitalism with taxpayers money? I'm willing to bet that these "investors" have raped the taxpayers many times over for their fortunes. I support honest people practicing honest capitalism not these hucksters.
If this not prevent Romney from winning the GOP nomination, the GOP is not a conservative party.
I have a better campaign slogan: "Pick me, my wife's not a bitchy, white-hating Wookie."
I have a better campaign slogan: "Pick me, my wife's not a bitchy, white-hating Wookie."
I have a better campaign slogan: "Pick me, my wife's not a bitchy, white-hating Wookie."
Geez, a double-post is bad enough - but a triple?! Sorry, folks.
I wouldn’t have to quote Ted Kennedy if that moron Romney wasn’t a RINO.
Secondly, your attacking the messenger (me, via Ted) does not bolster your argument.
Deal with the info in the video instead (the message) and think on how moron Romney is jacking up the GOP and setting the GOP up for a massive defeat.
Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post,
Townhall. Hell, I could go on. The point is these are not liberal websites and they are racking Willard Gekko over the coals for the lowlife deals that were made at Bain.
And when taxpayers bail have to bail out companies because Willard’s Bain vultures took all the money and ran, then folks there is not too ethical about it. I hope this opens up Willard Gekko like a can of worms and ruins him. I for one don’t want to see the democrat in republican clothing destroy the Republican Party and he’s well on his way.
I do too. However, our system has been bastardized by those "inside the beltway" elites and their various "friends" around the country. Crony capitalism isn't confined to just the politicians in government. It applies to every dirty scoundrel that comes in contact with them. It applies to every person who uses the system to extract "free money" from the bureaucracies built just for that purpose.
I was really hoping the tea party would succeed in ending this system of government. As I watch what is happening in this election, I am nothing but totally pissed!
Broad shoulders, thin skinned..never mind attacks, he can't even take questions, just ask Bret Baier.
We haven’t had free-market capitalism in a long time. It’s crony capitalism, government/power brokers choosing winners and losers, and capitalizing the profits while socializing the losses.
Federal aid
The US Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp, which insures company retirement plans, determined in 2002 that GS had underfunded its pension by $US44 million. The federal agency, funded by corporate levies, stepped in to cover the basic pension payments, but not the supplement the union had negotiated as a hedge against the plant's closure.
For Joe Soptic, who worked at the plant for 28 years, that meant a loss of $US283 per month, about 22 per cent of his pension. Others lost up to $US400 per month, according to documents supplied by the union.
Comparatively, the GS bailout was one of the pension guarantor's smaller hits. The federal fund swung from a $US7.7 billion surplus to a $US3.6 billion deficit that year as it struggled to cover bankruptcies in the steel and transportation industries. The failure of LTV Steel, for example, cost the agency $US1.9 billion.
The agency's woes prompted Congress in 2006 to require companies to contribute more toward their pensions. Press accounts said this change accelerated the shift away from pension plans toward 401(k)s and other defined-contribution retirement plans that offer less security for workers.
Exactly.
Why indeed?
Bain Capital underfunded the pension plans at these companies and then stuck the taxpayers with the bill.
How about this as an example of Romney’s idea of free-market *cough* capitalism:
RomneyCare
Sad, isn’t it? But indeed quite true.
If you haven’t read “What is American Corporatism?” at FrontPageMag, I recommend that you do so.
You succintly and effectively describe what that article is all about.
Sad to see Dems & Repubs doing the same thing. Almost a one-party system...
I have run a company for 30 years and when you have hard times you make hard decisions. My company tried to hang on for a long time before I finally decided it was time to downsize. I had to lay off folks I cared about. I had to downsize offices or completely close them. Did I like it? NO. But I had to do it to survive and save my company. Am I a greedy SOB like Newt portrays me? I pray not. I supported many families over the years; trained folks with new skills; paid by taxes and raised a family.
As a result of trying to keep from laying off people I wound up with a Loss Carry Forward to a couple of Million Dollars. Is this another way of saying I got a credit from the Government? That other taxpayers paid for my survival mode?
Have you ever owned a small or mid-sized company? If not, then you have no idea of how complicated economics can get. Life is not a bowl of cherries. It’s hard work, hard times and hard decisions you make over a lifetime.
The ad can run but it has a lot of inuendos in it. I suspect that is why Kennedy didn’t run it.
I hope the GOP takes note of your warning because once they have committed, there is no turning back.
Romney’s also on record for supporting the following “free-market capitalist” ideas:
TARP
bailouts
taking over GM as a good idea
Obama’s $trillion stimulus package
mandates
What a small minded, egocentric man. Newt is not Presidential material. I am glad he showed his true colors to us. I am glad Rush also told us how it is with Newt - a big government politician.
Funny how some here are still trying to portray Bain as true, free-market venture capitalists.
And then they turn on Newt and Perry when all the stuff posted here about Bain is shown to them. They try to divert attention...
If they aren’t Romney supporters and can’t stand Newt or Perry, then their only option left is Ron Paul, Santorum or Huntsman.
Any of those 5 is better than RINO vulture capitalist Romney.
As I have said before, Romney is Obama lite.
Time for dinner. It has been a pleasure conversing with you. Good discussion.
Until next time...
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