Free Republic

Democrats convened in Charlotte, NC, 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 winnings, evading taxes and lighting cigars with $100 bills on their yachts. But Bain’s private-equity executives have enriched dozens of organizations and millions of individuals in the Democratic base — including some who scream most loudly for President Obama’s re-election. Government-worker pension funds are the chief beneficiaries of Bain’s economic stewardship. New York-based Preqin uses public documents, news accounts and Freedom of Information requests to...

Very rich people have very much money in very many places. Currently, that’s the broadest possible takeaway from the 950 pages of confidential documents related to Mitt Romney’s finances obtained and published by Gawker. The files include “internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21” entities in which the candidate has invested over $10 million—many of them Bain Capital subsidiaries or investment vehicles based in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands. So far, there's nothing on income taxes, nothing incriminating, and nothing that should send either campaign reeling—but there are a couple of strings worth pulling on. Gawker’s John...

Jay Leno on Tonight Show Layoffs: 'We've Been Taken Over By Bain Capital' By Noel Sheppard Created 08/21/2012 - 10:18am Jay Leno on Monday addressed the recent announcement that there have been numerous layoffs at NBC's Tonight Show forcing him to take a pay cut to save some of his staff. Feeling the need to take a cheap shot at presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, Leno quipped, “Turns out now we've been taken over by Bain Capital" (video follows with transcript and commentary): Leno began his opening monologue saying, “Welcome to the Tonight Show, or as Comcast calls us,...

Mitt Romney cannot run from his record at Bain Capital. So, he might as well give this speech. ... Ladies and Gentlemen: You have heard plenty about my previous life as a rich businessman. Yes, I made some $250 million in free enterprise and am proud I did — just as Berry Gordy is proud that he produced millions at Motown and Steve Jobs was proud he yielded billions at Apple. Like these respected and wealthy entrepreneurs, I added value, delivered products and services that people wanted and created thousands of careers along the way. At Bain Capital, my team...

During the month of July, Barack Obama relentlessly attacked Mitt Romney with bogus charges of outsourcing American jobs during his tenure at Bain Capital.  Hypocrisy has become standard-operating-procedure for the Obama White House and campaign team.  However, some new information suggests that if Obama really wanted to rail against the big outsourcer he should have been talking to the man in his mirror. The Obama campaign spent millions on television ads accusing Romney of being the "outsourcer-in-chief."  But, when scrutinized by political truth-testers across the nation, the accusations proved to be false.Glenn Kessler, The Fact Checker at the Washington Post,...

Bain Capital, the investment firm that Mitt Romney made famous, made a leveraged buyout that saved the site of Barack and Michelle Obamas’ first kiss.

What do Mitt Romney and El Salvadoran death squads have in common? Well if you’re the Huffington Post the answer is a lot. If you happened to be one of the few people who went to the Huffington Post website on August 8, you probably saw the following provocative and ridiculous headline: “Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital with Money from Families Tied to Death Squads.” The article asserts that when Romney was looking for money to form Bain Capital in 1983, he turned to several Central American investors, investors who supposedly had ties to death squads throughout El Salvador. While...

Former steel worker Joe Soptic, who was prominently featured in President Obama's new anti-Romney ad, is actually a familiar face on the anti-Bain beat. In January, Soptic complained to Democracy Now, a liberal non-profit TV station, that when the steel company he worked for was bought out, they tried to buy him out. "I guess the first thing I noticed that when the company was bought out by GST, They became very union non-friendly, they started looking for ways to eliminate jobs," Soptic said. "In my case in my department, they actually offered to buy our jobs out from underneath...

Earlier today, pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA released an ad in which Joe Soptic discusses how he lost his job because Bain closed a GST Steel plant in Kansas City, Missouri, in 2001, and notes that his wife passed away of cancer not long after, suggesting that she waited to see a doctor (she had stage 4 cancer by the time she received medical attention) because of the couple’s lack of health insurance. Well, first it turned out that Soptic’s wife, Ranae Soptic, died in 2006 — five years after the GST Steel plant closed.

No description at YouTube, so my write up:CNN's Brianna Kielar spoke with Joe Soptic, a former steelworker featured in a new pro-Obama super PAC ad who was laid off in 2001 when Bain Capital closed the company he had worked at for a reported 30 years. Without directly accusing Soptic and Priorities USA of being despicable liars, CNN lets its reporting call them out as despicable liars. Soptic told CNN his wife had her own health insurance at her own job when he was laid off. Soptic said his wife quit her job a year or two later due to...

For months we’ve heard calls from Democrats for Mitt Romney to release his tax records. Last week Harry Reid even claimed he had it from “a number of people” had told him that Mitt Romney had not paid his taxes for a decade and demanded he release them. I’d like to suggest Mitt Romney actually go ahead and release his tax records. Much like pulling a Band-Aid off a wound, where the fear of the pain is actually worse than the pain itself, I suspect the speculative hay that Democrats will be making over the next three months will be...

Sounds solid. Mitt Romney, who's been running for political office for 20 years now, decided he'd gamble those prospects and risk time in a federal pen for tax evasion in order to save a few million dollars that he doesn't need.And he made this decision year after year, for 10 years.By the way, some random guy on the Internet told me Obama was born in Kenya. Now, do I know that's true? Well, I'm not certain. But let me just toss it out there. "His poor father must be so embarrassed about his son," Reid said, in reference to George...

Spending time at Huffington Post can be one interesting experience. It is impressive to watch an entire segment of society engaging in self-indulgence and self-delusion. If Barack Obama told them Mitt Romney was an alien from Remulak and his house had to be burned down and he had to be destroyed they'd do without so much as a thought. When confronted with facts, they simply deny them. They stick their fingers in their ears, close their eyes and yell "LALALALALALALA." "Liar" is the word of the day for Mitt Romney. A sampling: electricsoul: As if we didnt already know but...

On Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee plans to join the Obama campaign with a stepped up response to the “you didn’t build that” attacks on the president by Mitt Romney and the GOP. DNC spokesperson Brad Woodhouse emailed a broad outline of the Democraic pushback plan to reporters late Tuesday night, which the party says will include on-the-ground events in states and a national conference call targeting what the DNC called Romney’s “failed record and failed policies” on small business “as well as President Obama’s record as a consistent advocate for small businesses.” Based on the outline, many of the...

The man's nothing if not consistent. He campaigns as he governs, spending astounding sums to little effect. Despite concerted Democratic attacks on his business record, Republican challenger Mitt Romney scores a significant advantage over President Obama when it comes to managing the economy, reducing the federal budget deficit and creating jobs, a national USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds.By more than 2-1, 63%-29%, those surveyed say Romney's background in business, including his tenure at the private equity firm Bain Capital, would cause him to make good decisions, not bad ones, in dealing with the nation's economic problems over the next four years...The...

Private equity has been the focal point of this year’s presidential campaign. Democrats and the White House have used Republican Mitt Romney’s past private-equity deals to paint the image that Bain Capital helped destroy companies and put Americans out of work. Still, President Obama is closely aligning himself with supporters who have PE deals in their own closets with less than stellar results for Americans while the investors profited handsomely. Obama National Campaign Co-Chair Federico Pena led a buyout of a rural telephone company that looks very much like the criticized Romney deals, but has received little attention. Obama last...

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney built his $250 million fortune with the help of two of Britain's most disreputable business figures - Guinness fraudster Jack Lyons and crooked newspaper boss Robert Maxwell. In the 1980s both men invested large sums in the Republican candidate's first private equity fund, started during his years at Bain & Company, which launched his now highly controversial career in finance.

Oops! Here’s a little something that must have slipped out while David Axelrod and the rest of the President Barack Hussein “kill list” Obama reelection campaign committee weren’t looking. The Obama reelection campaign blamed Mitt Romney for the failure of GST Steel company in 2001. A May, 2012, TV ad focuses on the Bain acquisition of GST Steel, and it shows workers at a shuttered plant blaming Romney and Bain Capital for the closure and job losses. But there are two facts about this situation that the Obama campaign would rather that you not know. First, GST Steel failed in...

If you believe the Democratic Party, Bain Capital is nothing but a bunch of vampire capitalists. They outsource jobs to other countries, close steel mills and take lollypops from little babies. According to Open Secrets, during the present election cycle these Democratic Party candidates took a total of $340,750 from Bain, its lobbyists and employees. Even the Obama re-election campaign took money from Bain Capital. So if the Democrats believe Bain is so evil, why are these candidates taking their money? Note: The Barack Obama contributions are not from open secrets but directly from the FEC here and here. Candidate...

It was one of Barack Obama’s best lines — and best moments — in the 2008 presidential campaign. He had said we could save as much oil as we could get from domestic drilling if everybody properly maintained their cars and got their tires inflated. Now, that was hyperbole. But when conservatives, including his opponent, Senator John McCain, tried to turn tire gauges into a symbol of Obama’s pointy-headed liberalism (remember Dukakis and the endive!) and the sum total of his energy plan (if only!), Obama stood his ground. “It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.” The line...