President Obama targeted Mitt Romney in an advertisement that highlights laid-off workers from a steel company in Kansas City. The problem is that Mitt Romney was out of Bain Capital for a full two years before the lay-offs happened. Interestingly, there is no "blame" to the managing Director who was there at the time, Jonathan Lavine (a strong Obama supporter, who has raised $100,000 for the president). One would naturally assume that if there was any blame to go around for the layoffs ten years ago, it would be assigned to people who actually worked at the company at the time of the event.
The stretch in the truth implies that there is very little dirt on Mitt Romney to attack. After all, the President has many resources to find the dirt, should it exist. According to the LA Times, "A recent $25-million wave of positive Obama ads in battleground states was only an opening round." With all of his resources, Obama can't do better than this?
Perhaps calling the advertisement a downright lie is not correct, because maybe Obama was saying that Mitt Romney, while not employed for two years at Bain Capital when this steel company went under, was still a part of the industry that the advertisement likened to as "Vampires." Maybe?
No, that cannot be it, because as pointed out by RealClearPolitics, "On the very day that the ad was released, President Obama attended a fund-raiser in New York City hosted by a senior executive at the Blackstone Group, a leading private equity firm and frequent co-investor with Bain Capital on turn-around projects." So, Obama is not against Bain Capital, just Mitt Romney.
Can't go after Romney? Attack his Donors!
It seems as though camp Obama really doesn't have much to say, there is not much on Romney, and Obama knows better than to talk about his own record... so what can he do? Oh, he can attack Romney's donors, in another outrageous attempt to portray not only Romney, but his supporters, as the evil 1 percent and lawless to boot!
Obama for America's website, "KeepingGOPHonest," states, "A closer look at Romney's donors reveals a group of wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records. Quite a few have been on the wrong side of the law, others have made profits at the expense of many Americans, and still others are donating to help ensure Romney puts beneficial policies in place for them."
Question, if "quite a few [of Mitt Romney's donors] have been on the wrong side of the law," perhaps the President should have the DOJ look into that? Why are they not in jail?
As stated in the Wall Street Journal, "Any president who targets a private citizen for his politics is de facto engaged in government intimidation and threats." Americans should feel very uncomfortable with this strategy, whether they support Obama or not.
The bottom line is that Obama has a gazillion dollars; if there was dirt on Romney, he would find it. Instead, he must resort to making the same old tired statements about Mitt being "out of touch," in "bed with the 1 percent," a part of evil capitalism, etc. As aptly stated in the RealClearPolitics piece, "Obama handlers must do everything they can to make people imagine that President Romney's stewardship of the economy would be worse, an assault on the interests and values of "average" Americans.
Watch the Obama attack ad here:
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Comments: 45
Obama should be bathed at least thrice that...
Renee, we are soon to find out if there will be a Romney landslide, or if 51% of the American People have been successfully duped, propagandised, or are audacious and selfish enough to vote for every handout under the Sun. Let us hope, for a change, that money is the least-common denominator. As you have stated, Obama sure as Hell has access to plenty of it...
Ohhhh I pray for a landslide. A big. fat. landslide.
If we do not have a landslide, I am sure we will hear about how the votes were fixed, like in the Bush/Gore election. (selected, not elected...)
But second, did Bain Capital change its way of business after Romney left? When was the steel company acquired by Bain Capital? If the company continued as before and if the steel company was acquired while Romney was in charge, then he does bear some (not all) responsibility for those layoffs.
If Bail Capital changed its business model and the nature of its activities upon Romney's departure and if the new top guy was responsible for those changes and if the steel company was acquired after Romney left and if no preparations to acquire that company were made on "Romney's watch" (lots of plans "in the works" get carried out when management changes just to keep the company in operation). then the Obama ad is just lying.
So we need the relevant context here. We don't have enough information to judge fairly.
The steel company in question was indeed acquired by Bain while Romney was in charge (in 1993), Bain invested 100 million dollars into the failed company, Romney left in 1999 and the company filed for bankruptcy in 2001.
Bain also invested in companies that turned out to do very well, such as "Staples" and "Dominos" that ended up employing thousands of dollars.
The idea, as I understand it, is that the venture capital company is not acting as a "savior", but as an investor in a company (the company makes the choice to take the capital) and over time, obviously if they are losing money in the investment, they will have to at some point, make the decision to bail. Should Bain have continued to throw money at a company that was failing? It is very sad that people lost jobs, but others were certainly created elsewhere. Mitt Romney, in whatever role he had in making that initial investment, I am sure used the calculations made by such groups to determine that it was a good bet.
Unfortunately, in this case, it was not. Because Bain invests in them (with their consent), are they taking the responsibility to ensure that their employees have a job forever? It is a business, not a charity and oftentimes the investment reaps rewards and sadly, sometimes it does not. The company, for whatever reason, could not stay afloat, but it is certainly a stretch to blame Bain for not continuing to invest in a company that is failing...
Who knows what happened in the two years Romney was gone? Even if he was there, honestly, knowing that it is Bain's best interest that the company provide a return on their investment, they did not make the decision to throw that away lightly.
Did Bain lose money on this steel company investment? (That may be impossible to determine.)
Was that a loan of $100 million which paid less than one percent interest or did Bain acquire all the company for that amount an took out only $900,000 per year? I am confused. :-)
"When Jay Carney was questioned about the failed company, he said that "you cannot measure the success based on one company or another." Unfortunately, it is not just one company. The Obama administration has already spent billions on 'green energy' companies, with many of them resulting in bankruptcy and massive layoffs. Ener1, First Solar, SunPower, Abound Solar, Amonix, The Willard & Kelsey Solar Group, Mountain Plaza Inc., Babcock & Brown (an Austrailian company), A123 Systems, Eastern Energy, Fisker Automotive, The National Renewable Energy Lab, Nevada Geothermal Power, Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar Inc., Olsen's Mills, and SpectraWatt also filed for bankruptcy or had layoffs."
Perhaps Mitt Romney should use Jay Carney's line in defending the companies that Bain may have had to let go.
Do you want a digression to the subject of the Administrations aid to "green" companies?
Indeed. And the penultimate reason that Government has no business in Business.
The main reason? Because, with risk of loss, it is more likely that reasonable and more useful ventures will be pursued...and not this foolishness of the kind of a Solyndra. Only Government would use its influence to further its AGENDA and force the People into, and also force them to PAY, for nonsense of this sort. When it is viable, the Private Sector will find a way...and we, The People, will have a CHOICE.
I think you will find that the private sector and the public sector overlap to a considerable degree. You will find, I believe, that business is heavily involved in government and that government is heavily involved in business (mostly at the request of business).
I don't think the Administration's aid to green companies is relevant to whether the Obama ad was a lie.
On it's own merits it is worth discussing, of course.
"I don't think the Administration's aid to green companies is relevant to whether the Obama ad was a lie." True, but if your concern is that under Mitt's watch, people lost their jobs - than it is relevant, I think.
I don't see how Obama's actions tell us much about how the employees fared when their companies were bought by Bain Capital.
It seems to me that the whole issue of Bain's actions is not relevant to whether Romney would make a good President. It's just more "guilt by association" in politics. Our economic system makes it possible for companies to legally make large profits by actions which result in unemployment for thousands. That's the "fault" of our system, not of those who participate in it.
But if one is looking for character in a candidate, one evaluates the choices that candidate has made in life for indications of character. If one chooses a career / job which one can reasonably expect to involve creating pain and suffering in others (the job of executioner, for example) then it's reasonable to assume (and it is an assumption) that one either enjoys the pain of others or that one does not care about pain in others.
But there is far more to being a good President than character. There have been some Presidents whose character was pretty loathsome (here I am thinking mostly of FDR and Nixon) but whose actions as President did far more good than harm.
I agree completely.
He was even looking too to be the main shareholder, through an international group of holdings, of Lockheed. This failed due to the weaponry involvement.
Not so much, actually
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. And during that same period, Damon Corp. was busy submitting fraudulent reimbursement claims to Medicare to the tune of millions of dollars charged for unnecessary blood tests.
According to federal government prosecutors, Damon was misleading physicians into ordering unnecessary blood tests, assuring the doctors that the testing would be covered by Medicare.
By the time Damon Corp. 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 kind in Massachusetts history—Bain was long gone having sold the company in 1993 to Corning, Inc.
Terrible. But, this is precious little information to make the leap that Bain Capital had something to do with it. Did it come out in court that Mitt Romney oversaw this act? How many people were involved? Don't you think if Romney was vaguely aware of this action, Obama would scrap that other commercial and focus on this for his attack ad? So there was dodgy stuff happening under his nose. Ron, are you ready to crucify him without knowing more details?
How many were involved?
Did Mitt ever find out, and what did he do if/when he did?
What happened in court?
Your other article (from ThinkProgress? a less biased source is in order) is not even an article but a slam piece. Do you think that every company that Bain invested in was going to be a success story. How many jobs were created versus lost? If a company goes bankrupt, clearly that is not in Bains best interest, right?
Ron, really, Do you think Mitt just forced money on struggling companies than hopes they fail in an effort to force people out of their jobs?
Thanks, Larry. I agree.
I know this articles is about politics, but when other countries can under bid contracts because they can pay their workers so little the added expense of shipping the product is cheaper than making it here, they you have to wonder...
Our country has out sourced labor... and we get "customer service" people who read from a script because English is not their first language ... they aren't even sitting at a desk in America... we get crappy drywall that has to be removed from China because it is made with God knows what...
Sometimes we need to look at all this than who ever is at the helm of a company, unless the company itself is laying off Americans while outsourcing jobs to other countries... which was not the case here.
Why am I so passionate about this point? My husband was laid off by IBM in 2007 after 9 years... with 1,000 other people that month. A friend who was a manager had all people who lived in the US working for her. She mentioned after the series of layoff's, 1,000 each month for many months... she had to make a trip to India to deal with her new staff. When my husband worked at IBM... they had people filling up 5 1/2 floors of the building... now they fill less than 1 floor of that building. There used to be two places to use the IBM credit union 5 years ago. Now both locations closed down. Does that not say something about "out sourcing"? And 2 years after he was laid off, we went to a Walmart and another manager he knew rang us up, yes her new job was as a cashier.
So when I read an article about someone blaming someone for people losing their jobs... even though it could be more of a political debate... I think the deeper problem here is how did this situation of people losing jobs begin....
The whole system is off... considering how many times products we find are made in places like China... and not the US... we are literally putting our own selves out of work.
I think it was appalling that the Martin Luther King Memorial Statute was made in China... now people can do what they want with their money... but I have to agree... there is something wrong here...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8715823/Martin-Luther-King-memorial-made-in-China.html
"As for corporate taxes, the maximum rate may be higher, but through various loopholes and subsidies, what they actually pay is lower than in most countries, that is a myth." Do you have sources?
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/18/v-fullstory/2596300/in-miami-story-of-profits-and.html
Daniel, you point to a company that Bain invested in, and the company ended up not doing well, despite Bain's investment. Many companies did quite well. So, the question is, does Bain's investment serve as a guarantee? Is Bain now responsible if the company fails? That is silly, the company itself wants to stay afloat and Bain has a vested interest in it staying afloat.
Ron, you keep saying that, about "vulture capitalism" as if these companies were not struggling on their own, Bain seemed like the only hope for many of them, I'm sure. And if it didn't work, that is sad, but I am sure that Bain and the company both tried to make it work.
Tell me, how is the investment from Bain different than when companies failed under the stimulus? (aside from the fact that the government gambled with US tax dollars with zero accountability while Bain used their own money).