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"How can you be the president with the worst  unemployment record since the Great Depression  -and pick a fight over job creation?  There's a point where this becomes ludicrous..." ___________________________________________________________________ "Bain as an issue doesn't work, because people look at it on balance... and they say 'wait a second -yeah- you can pick a couple companies that lost. You can pick a lot of companies that succeeded.' And as even as the governor of Massachusetts said last week, it is a good company." "This is going to fall flat on its face ... Obama picking a fight on the economy is probably...

After nearly two weeks of heated debate over whether President Obama should attack Republican Mitt Romney’s tenure at a private-equity firm, Democratic leaders across the country say they are largely united behind the strategy, even as some concede an uncertain outcome and new polls show Obama has lost ground nationally. The Democratic leaders, in numerous interviews over the last week, said they are hearing little or no resistance among the party faithful in their states to a strategy that Republicans have characterized as anti-capitalist. And Obama has no plans to back off; his campaign will roll out more stories in...

President Obama’s reelection campaign press secretary, Ben LaBolt rebuffed criticism that the campaign’s acceptance of donations from Bain Capital employees is hypocritical. Bain has been castigated by Obama for preying upon vulnerable businesses and looting them for selfish gain. Bain is the firm that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney worked for before he became governor of Massachusetts. “Those who don’t understand the President’s thinking imagine that he is inconsistently benefiting from the ill-gotten gains of those engaged in reprehensible conduct,” LaBolt said. “In reality, he is recovering this money, purifying it, and putting it to use is his crusade to...

Despite a growing backlash from his fellow Democrats, President Obama has doubled down on his attacks on Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital. But the strategy could backfire in ways Obama has not anticipated. After all, if Romney's record in private equity is fair game, then so is Obama's record in public equity — and that record is not pretty. Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters — leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal...

Though the Obama campaign has repeatedly attacked Mitt Romney for his career at Bain Capital, President Obama still accepted $7,500 in campaign contributions from three Bain executives. His campaign press secretary, Ben LaBolt told The Politicker the president has no intention of giving the money back. “No one aside from Mitt Romney is running for President highlighting their tenure as a corporate buyout specialist as one of job creation, when in fact, his goal was profit maximization,” said Mr. LaBolt. ”The President has support from business leaders across industries who have seen him pull the economy back from the brink...

<p>One of President Barack Obama’s top campaign spokesmen is a private equity manager whose firm has shut down several factories and laid off hundreds of people amid a stalled economy.</p> <p>Federico Pena’s role at Vestar Capital Partners has emerged as Obama’s aides and deputies continue their effort to portray former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney‘s investment career as ruthless, job-destroying, profit-maximizing “vulture capitalism.” Pena has been a partner at Vestar since 2000.</p>

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This attack on Bain... I told you this was gonna happen. I told you this is why Obama wanted Romney. Way back during the Republican primaries I said Republicans are gonna nominate Romney. That's what Obama wants because of health care, and because of Wall Street. That's what Occupy Wall Street's about, going after Romney. And Obama has now come out and admitted it, that this campaign is gonna be about Bain Capital. It's backfiring everywhere you look, from Cory Booker to now Fast Eddie Rendell, governor of Pennsylvania All these Democrats are piping in, "Wait a...

Why now? Because Team Obama is proving itself to be too smart by half, and too incompetent by three-quarters. There is a way to do Bain, but I’m done giving that advice. Rehashing old news, which already has been out for months, isn’t going to do the trick. (VIDEO AT LINK) Cory Booker stuck a fork in the balloon, putting Obama and AxelPlouffe on the defensive, but Booker didn’t say anything that already wasn’t percolating to the top anyway. Yet Think Progress already is going after Booker; they’re eating their own! And AxelPlouffe seems surprisingly tongue tied: (VIDEO AT LINK)...

Democrats balk at Obama campaign’s sustained attack on Bain CapitalBy Cameron Joseph - 05/22/12 08:35 PM ET Some influential Democrats on and off Capitol Hill are refusing to give President Obama political cover for his attacks on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital. Despite pushback from more than a half-dozen Democrats, the Obama campaign on Tuesday defended how it has scrutinized Romney’s business background. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a widely respected member of Congress, stopped short of criticizing the president, but made it clear that the campaign should pivot. “It’s done,” she said. “Go on to other things now.” Sen....

Ironically, despite making Mitt Romney’s former company Bain Capital and other private equity firms the target of its latest attack, the Obama campaign held a near-$36,000 per plate fundraising dinner at the home of Tony James, president of the nation’s largest private equity firm, Blackstone Group. Citing the president’s latest Romney-hit-piece, Glenn Beck blasted the hypocrisy shown by the president when it comes to private equity firms. Obama’s condemnation of private equity hinges on the familiar narrative that the industry is renown for commandeering companies and slashing jobs, leaving untold numbers jobless — which is why it is doubly ironic...

Bain Capital has been used as a political weapon against Mitt Romney since 1994, but now his opponents might be rethinking ads about attacking him for his time at the private-equity firm as the ads are being criticized by some Democrats as well as Republicans. President Obama planned to set the political tone for the week with a new ad about an Indiana company that was bought by Bain and then shuttered, as the firm made millions of dollars and workers lost jobs. The biggest problem with the online video: Even Democrats say it attacks the business of private equity...

Obama raised most from private equity, hedge funds in 2008 By Jonathan Easley - 05/22/12 09:52 AM ET President Obama raised far more cash from hedge fund and private equity donors than any other candidate in the 2008 election cycle. According to an analysis by the nonprofit group Open Secrets, Obama took in nearly $3.5 million from large private-equity donors that year — nearly twice what his general-election rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), pocketed. The data bring into focus the thin line Obama must walk in attacking presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s background in the industry, which has sparked...

NBC's Andrea Mitchell says the media has given Mitt Romney a "free ride" by not dwelling on how long it took for his former primary rivals to formally endorse him. Mitchell says the media has always laid off of examining Romney's record and the clash between the elements that make up the Republican party. "They believe that the Bain Capital record is their best argument against Mitt Romney," NBC's Andrea Mitchell said about the Obama campaign. "What you pointed out in your opening segment, and the lead in to the Cory Booker interview, was that the media have not really...

NBC's Andrea Mitchell says the media has given Mitt Romney a "free ride" by not dwelling on how long it took for his former primary rivals to formally endorse him. Mitchell says the media has always laid off of examining Romney's record and the clash between the elements that make up the Republican party. "They believe that the Bain Capital record is their best argument against Mitt Romney," NBC's Andrea Mitchell said about the Obama campaign. "What you pointed out in your opening segment, and the lead in to the Cory Booker interview, was that the media have not really...

Campaign 2012: Newark's mayor succumbs to administration thought control after going off-script and praising the private-equity firm that succeeded in creating net jobs, unlike presidential investment Solyndra. The White House must have had a bad case of the vapors when Newark Mayor Cory Booker, viewed in some quarters as a practical, non-ideological problem-solver, praised the record of Mitt Romney's former private firm Bain Capital, before a national audience on NBC's "Meet The Press," and eschewed attacks of a type he found "nauseating." "I have to just say from a very personal level, I'm not about to sit here and indict...

[Bain Capital] is not a distraction, this is what this campaign is gonna be about. Meanwhile, back at campaign headquarters, Team Obama is in full meltdown mode after Newark Mayor Cory Booker went off script, undermining and mocking "what this campaign is going to be about." ABC News: The Obama campaign is in full damage-control mode one day after Newark Mayor Cory Booker publicly derided Democrats’ assault on presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney over his record at Bain Capital. Chief Obama strategist David Axelrod today publicly rebuked Booker, a popular and high-profile surrogate for the campaign, saying he was “just...

Mitt Romney, who has been silent up to this point on the Obama campaign's extensive attacks on his private equity career, defended his experience in an interview with conservative blogger Ed Morissey, distancing himself from the closing of a steel factory at a Bain-owned company and accusing the president of talking out of both sides of his mouth on private equity. Here's what he said: "The most recent attacks are really off target and I think they know. They said, oh, gosh, Gov. Romney at Bain Capital closed down a steel factory. But the problem, of course, is that the...

The ad is certainly gripping and emotional. It is also, however, completely wrong. The company was shut down in 2001. Romney left Bain in 1999, long before the plant closing, to run Winter Olympics. Two years is an eternity in the business world. Blaming Romney for decisions made two years after the left the company is at best disingenuous. However, there was a political power-player serving as a director of Bain at the time of the company's bankruptcy and layoffs--Jonathan Lavine. Lavine joined Bain in 1993. He is currently Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer. He is also a major...

The Obama campaign's 2-minute ad on Mitt Romney's Bain Capital is record is out, and it is brutal. Targeting Romney's involvement in the acquistion of GST Steel, the commercial shows workers at a shuttered plant pinning Romney and Bain with the blame. “They made as much money off it as they could and they closed it down, they filed for bankruptcy, without any concern for the families or the communities,” says Joe Soptic, a former steelworker. “It was like watching an old friend bleed to death.” The spot directly contrasts the steelworkers' testimonials with Romney's words touting his business experience,...

The Obama campaign is out with a new two-minute attack ad, hitting Mitt Romney on his past at Bain Capital. The ad, set to run in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia and Colorado, plays up the “vulture capitalism” angle. “It was like a vampire,” says a former GS Steel worker named Joe Cobb. “They came in and sucked the life out of us.” The Romney campaign is expected to push back aggressively on what they view as a major distraction from the president’s disastrous economic record. It shouldn’t be terribly hard. The bankruptcy and layoffs occurred in 2001, two years after...

UPDATE for yesterday's post: As it turns out, Mitt Romney as governor was a wholly-owned subsidiary of China. Rep. Duncan Hunter, member of the House Armed Services Committee excoriated Romney in 2008, advising voters then to steer clear of a pro-China Romney. To this date Romney has failed address the problem, demonstrating further how unserious a candidate he is for Commander-in-Chief - although there's very lttle anyone could say to save himself from the inevitable disqualification this type of footsie with a hostile regime that has called for "exterminating the US population" brings. From Newsmax, 2008: "As the founder of...

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s campaign is taking aim at rival Mitt Romney’s tenure at the helm of Bain Capital..... [SNIP] Back in January, when Perry and Gingrich were hitting the former Massachusetts governor hard on his Bain tenure, Santorum had told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “I hate to sit here and be a defender of Mitt Romney, but to me this is federal capitalism, and I have to say that this is an attack probably not warranted.” “Bain Capital, at least from the record I looked at, had a lot of success,” Santorum said at the time. “I mean they...

BEIJING — As the Chinese government forges ahead on a multibillion-dollar effort to blanket the country with surveillance cameras, one American company stands to profit: Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney. In December, a Bain-run fund in which a Romney family blind trust has holdings purchased the video surveillance division of a Chinese company that claims to be the largest supplier to the government’s Safe Cities program, a highly advanced monitoring system that allows the authorities to watch over university campuses, hospitals, mosques and movie theaters from centralized command posts.The Bain-owned company, Uniview Technologies, (浙江宇视科技有�公�) produces...

Gonna be having dinner with a Romney supporter this weekend. I know everything I need to know about "Bain Capital" and their way of skimming the cream off the top of failing companies, but I need all the information I can get.

Mitt has a problem. He’s had his chance to run away with the GOP nomination – but the man that so many were eager to name the “GOP frontrunner” has won only one primary, the same number as his two major competitors, Gingrich and Santorum. One would think that Romney might have had more success in the primaries so far, given the clear weaknesses of his competition. The most distinctive things about Santorum are his religion and his sweater vests. Newt has his own problems, named Jackie, Marianne, and Freddie Mac. Romney gets to be the “frontrunner” by default, but...

Here is the answer for anyone who wondered what the true underlying connection was between Whitman and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, and where John Donahoe fits in. The connector is the El Salvador Poma family business empire and a corporate raiding firm. In 1984, Bain Capital was financed by Ricardo Poma, Salvadoran billionaire. The founding partners were Mitt Romney, T. Coleman Andrews III, and Eric Kriss. Bain Capital was a spinoff of Bain & Company, whose executives included Mitt Romney (CEO), Meg Whitman (8yrs, VP) and John Donahoe (17 yrs, Managing Director). See if you can see eBay parallels...

Axelrod: Solyndra loan not as bad as Romney work for Bain CapitalBy Meghashyam Mali - 01/29/12 04:46 PM ET Obama campaign senior adviser David Axelrod hit at Mitt Romney over his tax returns and work at Bain Capital on Sunday and dismissed comparisons between the government’s investment in failed solar firm Solyndra and bankruptcies at Bain-backed companies. "Leverage buyouts of the sort that Governor Romney profited off of are quite different," said Axelrod on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “Where you buy a company, load it down with debt, strip it down, let it go bankrupt and then make...

The buy-out industry is under attack for destroying jobs. Its returns to investors are the real problem IF STEVE SCHWARZMAN thought it was valid in 2010 to compare Barack Obama’s “war” against business to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, what can he be thinking now? Private-equity executives must be hoping the boss of Blackstone will keep his opinions to himself. More bad publicity is the last thing the industry needs. Other Republican presidential candidates are competing to see who can say the most damning thing about Mitt Romney’s career at Bain Capital. Newt Gingrich’s supporters have even made a sort of...

This Tuesday, voters in Florida will have their chance to tell the country which Republican candidate they favor. The winner will say the people have spoken, thank them for their support and move on. The losers will say they’re moving on to the next primary. The media and DC powerbrokers will hype it all like it matters, but if it goes the way they’re predicting, the way they want, nothing will change. Given the millions of dollars he’s dumped into the state, both directly and through supportive SuperPACs, and the early voting in Florida, Mitt Romney is expected to win....

Debating in Tampa, Florida in late-January, while falsely characterizing Newt Gingrich’s income from his government consulting work, Mitt Romney denied that Bain did “any work with the government like Medicaid and Medicare”. Now we learn that Bain, under Romney’s “supervision”, purchased and ran the Damon Corporation, who pled guilty to Federal conspiracy charges as a result of tens of millions of dollars in systemic Medicare fraud committed under Romney’s and Bain’s control. Damon was fined over $119-million which was, at the time, the largest criminal healthcare fine in Massachusetts history and Mr. Romney’s participation was characterized in 1996 by Corporate...

As NewsBusters has been reporting, the Obama-loving media are in a full-court press depicting Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his former company Bain Capital as ruthless, Wall Street raiders willing to step on anybody for money.

Bain Capital is a classic “strip and flip” shop — a private equity firm that made its money buying businesses and sucking profit out of them by any means possible that often resulted in a stack of pink slips for everyday Americans. Romney “made fortunes by bankrupting five profitable businesses that ended up firing thousands of workers.” Here’s how it often went down. Romney’s Bain would buy a company and increase its short-term earnings through firing workers and shuttering plants in order to borrow enormous amounts of money. The borrowed money was used to pay Bain dividends, however, those businesses...

Republican Former Massachusetts Governor Willard Mitt Romney and Bain Capital and Numerous Health Care Corporations Today's Wall Street Journal summarized the investments made by Bain Capital, a venture capital and private equity firm lead by Governor Romney, The Wall Street Journal, aiming for a comprehensive assessment, examined 77 businesses Bain invested in while Mr. Romney led the firm from its 1984 start until early 1999, to see how they fared during Bain's involvement and shortly afterward. Among the findings: 22% either filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors by the end of the eighth year after Bain first invested,...

Debating in Tampa Florida this month, Mitt Romney strongly denied that his investment company Bain Capital did "any work with the government like Medicaid and Medicare." However, under Romney's "supervision," Bain purchased and ran the Damon Corporation which pled guilty to Federal conspiracy charges - as a result of tens of millions in systemic Medicare fraud... According to a cited Forbes report, in 1989, Bain Capital purchased controlling interest in Damon Corp. a medical testing company located in Needham, Massachusetts. "During the time that Bain held its ownership of the company, Mitt Romney personally sat on the board of directors.."...

Goldman Sachs Ties Enrich Romney No other company but Bain so closely intertwined with candidate's public, private lives By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, PETER LATTMAN and KEVIN ROOSE When Bain Capital sought to raise money in 1989 for a fast-growing office-supply company named Staples, Mitt Romney, Bain’s founder, called upon a trusted business partner: Goldman Sachs, whose bankers led the company’s initial public offering. When Mr. Romney became governor of Massachusetts, his blind trust gave Goldman much of his wealth to manage, a fortune now estimated to be as much as $250 million. And as Mr. Romney mounts his second bid for...

Romney Faces Medicare Attacks in Florida By Alan Silverleib January 27 (CNN) -- GOP presidential front-runners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich barnstormed across Florida on Friday, trying to rally supporters and break away in the polls four days before what is shaping up to be a pivotal primary in that state. The morning after a heated CNN/Florida Republican Party debate in Jacksonville, a pro-Gingrich super PAC hit the airwaves with a television ad essentially accusing Romney of committing Medicare fraud. One of Gingrich's top Florida backers, former state Attorney General Bill McCollum, also raised questions about Romney's past service on...

I’m so tired of the refrain that a critique of Mitt Romney’s work at Bain is “an attack on capitalism.” Capitalism means that you RISK capital, so that you will profit if things go well and you will incur a loss if things go poorly. Private equity firms, like Bain, are in the business of maximizing profit for investors (not to “create jobs” as characterized by Romney supporters), which is perfectly reasonable and legal. To do that, private equity firms often make investments then extract “consulting fees” and “special dividends” in excess of the original investment to ensure that no...

In 1989, Bain Capital purchased controlling interest in Damon Corporation, a medical testing company located in Needham, Massachusetts. During the time that Bain held its ownership of the company Mitt Romney personally sat on the Board of Directors. And during that same period, Damon Corporation was busy submitting fraudulent reimbursement claims to Medicare to the tune of millions of dollars charged for unnecessary blood tests. ... By the time Damon pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States Government of $25 million - and paid a total of $119 million in what was, at that time, the largest penalty of its...

U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital LLC is looking at investing in financial services companies in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia, a senior executive at the fund said on Tuesday. “It’s fair to say there are some opportunities in financial services in the Middle Eastern region we’ve looked at and we’ll continue to look at,” Steve Pagliuca, managing director at Bain Capital, told Reuters on the sidelines of a private equity conference. Bain Capital and Advent International recently agreed to buy the global merchant services business, which includes the payment business Worldpay, from Royal Bank of Scotland for...

Say it ain't so.....truth is Stranger than fiction In 1992, Bain Capital, with Mitt Romney at the Helm, bought American Pad and Paper from the Meade Corporation. In 1999 American Pad and Paper was bankrupted. Bain, with Mitt still in leadership, sold Ampad to a Bahrainian company, Crescent Capital Investments, now named Arcapita. The company is headed by Muslims who make all of their investment decisions based on Sharia law. So Chickenhawk Romney fears radical Muslim Jihadists now after he was perfectly comfortable with them before. Are we reminded of a continuing pattern here?

Our national commentariat is twisted in an impossible yoga pose trying to compare anti-Bain Capital coverage to the famous 2004 “Swift Boat” ad campaign. The two situations are not close to analogous. I have a more-than-passing acquaintance with the Swift Boat ads - I helped produce them. Our liberal news media continue to fabricate and fantasize about the Swift Boat saga, which proved to be a decisive moment in the 2004 election. In the parlance of the media, the ads run by a group of veterans opposed to John Kerry were a “smear” and were “discredited.” They were neither, and...

President Barack Obama is in full 2012 reelection mode. Part of that process is preparing to possibly take on Mitt Romney – whom (it appears) he thinks has the strongest chance to be his Republican opponent. Which he and many Democrats think is very good news. Romney fits right into the Left’s absurd anti-capitalism, “robber baron,” Occupy Wall Street anti-1%-er, scorched earth storyline. Romney is very wealthy, which for Obama and his Democrats is the height of eee-vill (except – these Donkeys are mostly rich…). Never mind that Romney’s wealth is right in line with many past Presidents and candidates...

John Roco argues that a pattern of increasing power enabling access to a female 'of more desire to him' has defined Newt Gingrich for the election, debates, presidential race of 2012, as well as leaving a wife when she was 'baggage' of being ill, and seemingly not to serve his purposes. John Roco also argues of Newt Gingrich's attack ability at debates, whether South Carolina, Florida or future, actually becomes an extreme deficit of one who would want to be leader of our nation, needing to 'contain' outbursts and expressions of ego empowerment. Admiral Patrick Walsh is mentioned as one...

Get familiar with the names BCIP Associates III Cayman and Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd. If Romney is the Republican nominee they will become a household names. Why? Let me explain. BCIP Associates III Cayman and Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd are basically nothing more then P.O. boxes in Bermuda and the Grand Cayman Island. The number of words in the names of these companies is greater then the total sum of employees on the payroll. No secretaries, no janitors, no interns. Just a few lawyers working out of their own offices with a plaque on the...

President Barack Obama’s first paid TV ad of the 2012 campaign had one basic purpose, Democrats say: to ensure that Solyndra doesn’t become the Bain of the president’s existence. Typically, the kickoff ad in a presidential reelection campaign has a gauzy, upbeat, “Morning in America” vibe. Not this one — it was a pointed response to a $6 million ad campaign, paid for by the Koch brothers-linked nonprofit group Americans for Prosperity, which hits Obama on the semi-scandal surrounding the now-defunct, government-subsidized maker of solar power components. It’s clear Obama’s campaign staff in Chicago sees the Solyndra attacks as a...

Drudge Report this morning Jan. 18: From information in some tax reports released, showing Romney gave $4 million + to LDS church during past 5 years, plus shares and stakes in Bain holding companies including Burger King, Domino's, etc.

Jeffrey Zients will serve as President Obama's new acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), but the president's decision might undercut attacks on Republican Mitt Romney's career as a venture capitalist, because Zients and Romney are both alumni of Bain & Company. "I'm pleased to designate Jeff Zients to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Since day one, Jeff has demonstrated superb judgment and has provided sound advice on a whole host of issues," Obama said in a statement accompanying the announcement today.

How exactly has Mitt Romney managed to attract a polling surge in the middle of the attacks from Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry over his Bain Capital days? According to a new Rasmussen poll, it’s because Republicans appear to be ready for a downsizing artist in the White House. And Republicans don’t appear to be alone, either: Voters are closely divided over whether Mitt Romney’s business career is a plus or a minus, but most Republicans see it as a plus. Additionally, a plurality of all voters think he would do a better job than President Obama dealing with the...

The Huntsman Corporation, a leading chemical company, said yesterday that Bain Capital Inc., the buyout firm that owns Domino's Pizza and Sealy Mattress, agreed to buy a $600 million stake in the closely held business. Huntsman said it would use part of the money to buy out Imperial Chemical Industries' 30 percent share of Huntsman.