Archive for Bain Capital

Romney’s Bain investment record: Three times the bankruptcies of fed investments

Cartoon via Lalo Alcaraz

Your Daily Dose of BuzzFlash at Truthout, via my pal Mark Karlin:

Jon Stewart lacerated the myth of Romney’s alleged expertise as a venture capitalist the other night. (See video here.) Quite simply, under Mitt’s leadership, Bain Capital had a worse investment record than the federal government’s backing of alternative energy companies (e.g., Solyndra).  

In fact, Romney’s record at Bain showed him picking firms that went into bankruptcy at three times the rate of the fed record.

Stewart started by quoting part of Romney’s “closing argument” to the American voters:

The government of the United States is not a very good venture capitalist …. [Obama] doesn’t just like picking winners and losers, he likes picking losers.  Half of the ones [alternative energy companies that the government has invested in under Obama] have gone bankrupt.

[...]

Whoa! So Romney’s accusation of a 50 percent bankruptcy rate as a result of Department of Energy financial support (in loans and subsidies) to alternative energy firms is at best actually 8 percent. [...]

So that’s 8% failure for government investments in alternative energy firms vs. a 22% bankruptcy record under Mitt Romney’s leadership at Bain. [...]

When Romney’s bankruptcy record, as he ironically promotes himself as a “job creator,” is just about three times the rate of Obama’s as president, it’s clear the “job creator” is really (particularly when combined with his slash and burn labor strategies) a job destroyer.  He’s also a liar, and his dissembling is meant to hide one of the greatest myths of the campaign: that private investment is more effective at stimulating the economy, when Romney’s own record as the CEO of Bain Capital shows that it isn’t.

Please read the entire post here.

VIDEO– Romnopoly: To Mitt Romney, “your job and our economy are just a game.”

“Your job and our economy are just a game.”

This is a memorable, creative recap of Willard M. Romney’s economic priorities, from gutting education to “let Detroit go bankrupt” to his bankrupting-companies days at Bain to cutting retirement programs to pay for tax breaks for the very rich.

Check out the dog-on-the-car-roof game piece. Gold.

(Democratic super PAC ):

From opposing the auto recovery plan and laying off workers during his time at Bain to gutting education to pay for tax cuts to the rich, the ad runs through the many reasons that if Mitt Romney wins, the middle class will lose.

Learn more, please visit Romnopoly.org

Supporting Facts for “Romnopoly”:

Romney Wanted To “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” And Said The Demise Of The Auto Industry Would Be “Virtually Guaranteed” By A Government Bailout. According to Romney, “If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed. Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.” [Romney Op-Ed, New York Times, 11/19/08]

Bain Owned GS Industries Filed For Bankruptcy And 750 People Lost Their Jobs. “Bain acquired GS Industries in 1993. The steelmaker borrowed heavily to modernize plants in Kansas City and North Carolina, as well as pay dividends to Bain investors. But as foreign competition increased and steel prices fell in the late 1990s, the company struggled to support the debt, according to Mark Essig, the former CEO. GS filed for bankruptcy in 2001, and shut down its money-losing Kansas City plant, throwing some 750 employees out of work.” [Boston Globe, 1/27/08]

Workers at the paper plant in Marion were fired hours after Bain Capital purchased the plant. According to the Boston Herald, “Hours after Bain-owned Ampad Corp. bought the plant July 5 from Smith Corona Corp., the plant’s 250 union workers were fired and told they could re-apply for their old jobs. Ampad scuttled Smith Corona’s contract with the United Paperworkers International, seeking to make wage and labor conditions similar to its three other non-union plants. Drug tests were also required.” [Boston Herlad, 9/23/94]

Tax Policy Center: Romney Tax Plan Would Raise Taxes On Families With Children With Income Below $200,000 By $2,041. According to a Tax Policy Center analysis of Romney’s tax plan and promises, families with children that earn below $200,000 a year would see tax increases of $2,041. [Tax Policy Center, 8/1/12]

Tax Policy Center: Top 0.1% Would See $246,652 Tax Cut Per Year Under Romney Plan. According to a Tax Policy Center analysis of Romney’s tax plan and promises, the top 0.1% would receive a tax cut of $246,652 per year. [Tax Policy Center, 8/1/12]

Romney Held Investments In Off-Shore Tax Havens And An Unusually Large IRA In Places Like Switzerland, Bermuda and The Cayman Islands. According to Bloomberg, “Romney’s extensive investments in tax havens are drawing intensifying media scrutiny at the same time that revenue- starved governments around the world are cracking down on such practices. In recent weeks, Romney has faced increasing pressure to release additional years of tax returns because of questions over his 13.9 percent personal tax rate, his Swiss bank account, an IRA valued at as much as $102 million and his investments in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.” [Bloomberg, 08/06/12]

Romney Said He Would Not “Promise” Government Money To Help Students Pay For College But Suggested They Shop Around For Schools. According to New York Times, “The high school senior who stood up at Mitt Romney’s town hall meeting here today was worried about how he and his family would pay for college, and wanted to hear what the candidate would do about rising college costs if elected…The answer: nothing. But his warning was clear: shop around and get a good price, because you’re on your own. ‘It would be popular for me to stand up and say I’m going to give you government money to pay for your college, but I’m not going to promise that,’ he said, to sustained applause from the crowd at a high-tech metals assembly factory here. ‘Don’t just go to one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education. And hopefully you’ll find that. And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.’ There wasn’t a word about the variety of government loan programs, which have made it possible for millions of students to get college degrees. There wasn’t a word urging colleges to hold down tuition increases, as President Obama has been doing, or a suggestion that the student consider a work-study program.” [New York Times, 3/5/12]

VIDEO– “Bainport”, Illinois fired Sensata workers to Mitt Romney, “Just be honest.” “Save our jobs.”

If you need a brief recap of this ongoing story, the Bain-owned company, Sensata, is outsourcing Freeport, Illinois jobs to China; employees wanted Mitt Romney to intervene. The soon-to-be-ex-workers have been forced to train their own Chinese replacements. Their jobs are being shipped to China in November.

Welcome to Mitt Romney’s America.

All our Sensata posts are here (scroll).

Ed Schultz went to Freeport, now nicknamed “Bainport,” and broadcast his show from there. This is a must-see, must-share:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bonus Cartoon of the Day- Binders Full Of Women

LOL. Via.

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VIDEO: Former supporter, Sensata worker speaks out on Romney: “He’s a bald-faced liar.”

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

To refresh your memory, the Bain-owned company, Sensata, is outsourcing Illinois jobs to China; employees want Mitt Romney to intervene. The soon-to-be-ex-workers have been forced to train their own Chinese replacements. Their jobs are being shipped to China in November.

America first! Go Mitt!

Sensata worker Mary Jo Kerr:

“Once it closes, it’s devastating for the whole entire town. Everybody’s just walking around slumped over not knowing what they’re gonna do.”

“[I thought Romney's] gonna create American jobs. He says that’s what he’s gonna do… And when I found out that he owned Bain Capital and Bain Capital owned Sensata and they were shipping our jobs to China, I was furious.”

“He’s a bald-faced liar. I mean, he’s going out there saying I’m gonna create American jobs when, no he’s not. He’s profiting off of jobs going overseas.”

“Having to train somebody [Chinese workers] to take your job and you don’t have any control over it, it was probably the hardest thing I had to do.”

Thanks to Ed Schultz for staying on this story.

All of our Sensata posts are here.

Ronald Reagan’s budget director: Romney “job creator” claims “dead wrong.”

David Stockman was Ronald Reagan’s budget director, and he is challenging, skewering, dissecting, and examining in great detail something that the “mainstream media” won’t in his lengthy article in Newsweek: All that boasting by Mitt Romney about being a “job creator” who could successfully run this country as a business and create miraculous wealth for Americans.

Shorter Stockman: Oh come now:

Bain’s billions of profits were not rewards for capitalist creation; they were mainly windfalls collected from gambling in markets that were rigged to rise. Nevertheless, Mitt Romney claims that his essential qualification to be president is grounded in his 15 years as head of Bain Capital [...]

Except Mitt Romney was not a businessman; he was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. He did not build enterprises the old-fashioned way—out of inspiration, perspiration, and a long slog in the free market fostering a new product, service, or process of production. Instead, he spent his 15 years raising debt in prodigious amounts on Wall Street so that Bain could purchase the pots and pans and castoffs of corporate America, leverage them to the hilt, gussy them up as reborn “roll-ups,” and then deliver them back to Wall Street for resale—the faster the better.

That is the modus operandi of the leveraged-buyout business, and in an honest free-market economy, there wouldn’t be much scope for it because it creates little of economic value.  [...]

I know the pitfalls of private equity. The whole business was about maximizing debt, extracting cash, cutting head counts, skimping on capital spending, outsourcing production, and dressing up the deal for the earliest, highest-profit exit possible. [...]

The credentials that Romney proffers as evidence of his business acumen, in fact, mainly show that he hung around the basket during the greatest bull market in recorded history. [...] Bain’s acclaimed success with another retailer—Staples—is also not what it is touted to be. [...] The Romney campaign’s feckless narrative that private equity generates real economic efficiency and societal wealth is dead wrong.

VIDEO: Mitt Romney “should lose the election just on this issue.”

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

United Steelworkers’ Leo Gerard spoke out on behalf of the non-union workers on the Ed Show:

“This is a disgrace! [Mitt Romney] should lose the election just on this issue.”

“This can’t be the America we’re headed to. We’ve gotta stop this from happening.”

To refresh your memory, the Bain-owned company, Sensata, is outsourcing Illinois jobs to China; employees want Mitt Romney to intervene. The soon-to-be-ex-workers have been forced to train their own Chinese replacements, and to add insult to injury, had to take down the American flag (added: temporarily). That’s right, Bain Capital forced Sensata to take down an American flag and put up a Chinese one.

Their jobs are being shipped to China in November.

How’s that for patriotism? America first, right Mitt?

New York Times:

“[Romney] owns about $8 million worth of Bain funds that hold 51 percent of Sensata’s shares.  If Sensata saves money by closing the Freeport plant, that could add money to Mr. Romney’s trust accounts, now or after the election.”

The company is located in Freeport, Illinois, but now they soon-to-be-ex-employees are calling it “Romneyville, suburb of Bainsport.”

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