RomneyVille
Mitt Romney has finally come out yesterday and announced his exploratory committee for President of the United States. What would the economy look like after 4 years of his administration? Well, all we have to do is look into his personal business. As CEO of Baine Capital, he oversaw the buy-outs of many American companies, busted them up and sold off pieces of them for profit. He also took many companies and sent them to China and other low wage countries.
According to the Los Angeles Times-From 1984 until 1999, Romney led Bain Capital, a Boston-based private equity group that earned jaw-dropping profits through leveraged buyouts, debt hedge funds, offshore tax havens and other financial strategies. In some cases, Romney’s team closed U.S. factories, causing hundreds of layoffs, or pocketed huge fees shortly before companies collapsed. During Romney’s tenure he only cared about the bottom line of Bain Capital, if it destroyed communities, it wasn’t his problem.
“They’re whitewashing his career now,” said Marc B. Wolpow, a former managing director at Bain Capital who opposes Romney’s White House bid. “We had a scheme where the rich got richer. I did it, and I feel good about it. But I’m not planning to run for office.”
The United States’ middle class can not afford any more factories, manufacturing companies or telecommunication companies sending their labor offshore. From 2000-2010 the United States has lost over 50K factories to low wage countries.
Do you believe a Romney Administration would put forward or enforce a rule called “Buy American” for our infrastructure projects, as I pointed out Obama did in a previous post?
On top of pushing more and more of our factories offshore, he helped investors find a way not to invest in America. According another LA times report- While in private business, Mitt Romney utilized shell companies in two offshore tax havens to help eligible investors avoid paying U.S. taxes, federal and state records show. Romney gained no personal tax benefit from the legal operations in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. But aides to the Republican presidential hopeful and former colleagues acknowledged that the tax-friendly jurisdictions helped attract billions of additional investment dollars to Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, and thus boosted profits for Romney and his partners.
So let’s take a look at candidate Romney,
He believes he can do a better job with the economy, yet he advocated in the private sector to outsource American jobs to low wage countries.
Here are some of the companies he has destroyed and families who have suffered.
– In 1992, the firm acquired American Pad & Paper. By 1999, the year Romney left Bain, two American plants were closed, 385 jobs had been cut and the company was $392 million in debt. The next year, Ampad was forced into bankruptcy.
– Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs bought Dade International for about $450 million in 1994. The firm quickly fired or relocated at least 900 workers. Over the next several years, it sunk increasingly into debt and laid off 1,000 workers. In 2002 — after Romney had left Bain — it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
– A 1997 buyout of LIVE Entertainment for $150 million resulted in 40 layoffs, roughly one in four of the company’s 166 workers. The job cuts affected all aspects of the company, from production and acquisition to legal and public relations.
– In 1997, Bain bought a stake in DDI Corp., a maker of electronic circuit boards. Three years later, Bain took the company public and collected a $36 million payout. But by August 2003, the company filed for bankruptcy protection, laying off more than 2,100 workers.
He wants to be the leader of this country, yet while in the private sector he helped wealthy investors find a way not to invest in education or the infrastructure of our country.
This country needs a leader that will stand for a living wage and American jobs, not a CEO looking to bolster a bottom line at the peril of the American standard of living.
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Tsohg Tirips
Apr. 12th, 2011 at 3:06 pm
He sent work over to China? Is there a link or citations for this? I do not like Romney at all, but I thought he LOVED America. This is the opposite of what someone who LOVES America would do. I need to research this, as I am fairly ticked off right now. Romney is a tool.
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Ray Medeiros
Apr. 12th, 2011 at 3:45 pm
We’re seeing jobs leave our state [Massachusetts] and go to Asia. It’s a wonderful thing in some respects, but a little frightening in others. We’ve had jobs go from our state in the past. Textile came here [South Carolina], and ultimately left here and went off to Asia. We’ve had low end jobs leave our country before… But now we are seeing some high end jobs also leave our country… This is great news that they [developing countries] are getting into the world economy… They’ll be able to buy our products and services from this country. So it’s good news, but it’s also a challenge because we want to make sure that this country always remains the superpower economically and militarily of this planet.”
Feb. 23, 2006 Mitt Romney
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Tsohg Tirips
Apr. 12th, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Hmm, I am not sure I agree it is a good thing. If we are not producing anything, what is there to buy from us? If we send out services and products overseas, I fail to see how they would be purchasing anything from us.
Romney, being both GOP and Mormon, should be absolutely adamant that work should NOT go to China of all places. It really hurts us, this outsourcing and breaking down our own companies.
Sure, McDonalds’ is hiring 50,000 people, but what about HP? Intel? Police? Walmart? Dell? Exxon with its own tax break and surplus? Instead, America is outsourcing everything and we have Romney not only lying but contributing? sick.
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Enjay in E MT
Apr. 12th, 2011 at 4:06 pm
I am not fond of Romney for a number of reasons – his flip flop on Health Care Reform being #1
He was hired to “chop-shop” US businesses to maximize profits for investors; regardless of the consequences to workers, suppliers, and community. Obviously, he did his job well. Unfortunately, in a capitalistic society – this is common when investors are ONLY concerned with the bottom line.
I do not doubt Romney loves America – but it does make you wonder how he feels about AMERICANS doesn’t it?
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Anne
Apr. 12th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
Although Romney has been keeping a relatively low profile, and not joined in the zaniness of the other prospective GOP nominees, he still espouses the same morally bankrupt economic ideology. I don’t trust him any more than I do the others, and his perceived lack of “charisma” has nothing to do with it. I am reminded of Rick Snyder, the current governor of Michigan, who ran as a “tough nerd” and a moderate. The moment he took office, he exposed his true colors as a tyrannical jackass. I also have no doubt that Mitt Romney would show his fangs the minute he took office in the event that he won the White House. I am glad to hear about his actual record, because it only reinforces my reservations about him. He is also running away from one of the few decent things he enacted, namely Romneycare. It will be interesting to see how he spins it in his efforts to gain the nomination of a party that has already gone off the deep end.
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Ray Medeiros
Apr. 12th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
the funny thing about Romneycare…is it’s birthday was yesterday, the same day as his announcement for exploratory committee. OOPS!
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majii
Apr. 12th, 2011 at 7:19 pm
He’s already spinning it, Anne. He is on the record as saying that RomneyCare was good for the state of MA, but wasn’t meant to be used as a template for the entire country. I read this on Steve Benen’s blog, The Washington Monthly, a couple weeks ago.
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Anne
Apr. 12th, 2011 at 7:33 pm
So, is that what he plans to tell his fellow Republicans? I will say one thing for him–he is one of the most famous flip floppers in recent American politics.
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Dorothy Rissman
Apr. 12th, 2011 at 8:16 pm
Actually I read that the bill itself proclaims to be the model for creating a national health care plan. I suspect this will do Romney in with the baggers and the ultraconservatives. He signed the bill. He was not forced.
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Reynardine
Apr. 12th, 2011 at 5:00 pm
This is not a very scientific thing to say, but somehow, Romney sweats lies. It was a trait very carefully expressed by the actor who portrayed Senator Salimbeni in the Italian crime series, “The Octopus”: the glassbead eyes, the too-facile smile. As I said, that was a trait that had to be carefully studied by an actor. Romney isn’t acting.
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Dorothy Rissman
Apr. 12th, 2011 at 8:18 pm
I think he is a total fraud. The eyes of a snake.
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Reynardine
Apr. 12th, 2011 at 9:08 pm
Don’t insult snakes, poor things. Though I did once name a Hemingway kitten Romney, because he had big mitts.
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Ricardo Garcia
Apr. 13th, 2011 at 12:39 pm
If you want to solve the illegal immigration problem, vote for Romney for president and Sarah Palin for vice. The economy will collapse, and all illegals will move back to their original countries.
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allen
Apr. 13th, 2011 at 9:23 pm
i have to comment on this post b/c i was personally affected by this mans ideology and would like to give readers of this blog a personal story about what the radical right economic agenda is all about.
everything in this post can be verified via a internet search.
short and to the point:
in the beginning of this article, 3rd paragraph, there is a quote from Marc B. Wolpow. This man is co-CEO of private equity firm Audax. Must be the business he started after working with Romney.
They (Audax) bought the company I worked for called Winchester Electronics located in Wallingford CT.
To make this even briefer, they eviscerated the CT workers and also workers in their South Carolina plant (Kings Electronics)while sending ALL the jobs to China and mexico. (So any souhtherners reading this blog, you are no longer immune to the radical free trade ideology)
These were companies that combined had operated for well over 100 years in the United States of America. Winchester once had over 1000+ approx employees in the state of Connecticut.
WIPED OUT…lives ruined (suicide’s i’ve been told)so these vicious scumbags like Wolpow and Romney can live in what 5, 6 7 mansions or however many and the rest of the workers get to die on the vine.
these people are parasites and blood suckers of the middle class. This is the horror unleashed when Reagan took the government off the back of US Corporations in the early ’80′s.
Every so often a republican will proudly tout that he will run the government like a business if elected. Many right wingers have used that line over the years.
This sociopathic behavior is the last thing i would want in our government and i hope more United States citizens raise their voices and are heard.
These scumbags need to pay up… they have killed the middle class… and i want it back… every god damn bit of it
thank you
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Sarah Jones
Apr. 13th, 2011 at 9:26 pm
That’s a good point, because the entire point of government is that is is NOT for profit, it is there to protect the country and the citizens. To what degree is a matter of ideological debate, but our govt was never supposed to be running the country to show a profit at the expense of citizens.
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