I suspect Romney doesn’t really believe that 47% of the electorate are moochers; he was just dialing for dollars. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see how the man who mouthed those words, whether he believes them or not, can be elected President.
John Cassidy points out, “The Romney campaign is incompetent. Romney is incompetent.” We had eight years with Bush already. We don’t want another incompetent president do we? So make sure you cast your vote.
Where does this disdain for workers come from? Some of it, obviously, reflects the influence of money in politics: big-money donors, like the ones Mr. Romney was speaking to when he went off on half the nation, don’t live paycheck to paycheck. But it also reflects the extent to which the G.O.P. has been taken over by an Ayn Rand-type vision of society, in which a handful of heroic businessmen are responsible for all economic good, while the rest of us are just along for the ride.
In the eyes of those who share this vision, the wealthy deserve special treatment, and not just in the form of low taxes. They must also receive respect, indeed deference, at all times. That’s why even the slightest hint from the president that the rich might not be all that — that, say, some bankers may have behaved badly, or that even “job creators” depend on government-built infrastructure — elicits frantic cries that Mr. Obama is a socialist.
Workers at Sensata, which owned by Bain Capital, are fighting to save their jobs from being shipped to China by the end of this year. Romney who has a major investment in the company is the workers’ only last hope. I would love to be wrong, but it’s not going to happen. Romney simply doesn’t give a damn about these people. So there goes Romney’s job creation… in China.
Somehow, asking whether our economy might ever have victims is itself an act of victimizing Mitt. Resentment based in a sense of under-appreciation can be unattractive.
If you’re having money problem I feel bad for you, son. Mitt got 99 problems but a poor ain’t one.
[T]here are 47 percent who are with [Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them… These are people who pay no income tax… [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
My wife asked me earlier today, “Why would Romney run for President? He’s all set for life.” My answer was that because he wants to protect his wealth as well as the wealthy’s wealth. His talk above proved my point.
James Surowiecki on “Clarifying Romney”:
Naturally, Romney will keep bringing up the weak job market, but, barring an economic cataclysm, we should expect to hear him talk less about that and more about how Obama is trying to hurt seniors and hand out free money to the feckless. Having tried to clarify and failed, Romney must now try to muddy.
Sorry Barack, I am not going to vote for you this November even though I will work hard to get you more votes. My vote is reserved for our lovely First Lady. What a powerful speech she delivered. Barack, you’re one lucky guy.
Grab a cup of coffee and read this piece by Matt Taibbi. If you’re in a hurry, however, just read this portion:
Here’s how Romney would go about “liberating” a company: A private equity firm like Bain typically seeks out floundering businesses with good cash flows. It then puts down a relatively small amount of its own money and runs to a big bank like Goldman Sachs or Citigroup for the rest of the financing. (Most leveraged buyouts are financed with 60 to 90 percent borrowed cash.) The takeover firm then uses that borrowed money to buy a controlling stake in the target company, either with or without its consent. When an LBO is done without the consent of the target, it’s called a hostile takeover; such thrilling acts of corporate piracy were made legend in the Eighties, most notably the 1988 attack by notorious corporate raiders Kohlberg Kravis Roberts against RJR Nabisco, a deal memorialized in the book Barbarians at the Gate.
Romney and Bain avoided the hostile approach, preferring to secure the cooperation of their takeover targets by buying off a company’s management with lucrative bonuses. Once management is on board, the rest is just math. So if the target company is worth $500 million, Bain might put down $20 million of its own cash, then borrow $350 million from an investment bank to take over a controlling stake.
But here’s the catch. When Bain borrows all of that money from the bank, it’s the target company that ends up on the hook for all of the debt.
Now your troubled firm – let’s say you make tricycles in Alabama – has been taken over by a bunch of slick Wall Street dudes who kicked in as little as five percent as a down payment. So in addition to whatever problems you had before, Tricycle Inc. now owes Goldman or Citigroup $350 million. With all that new debt service to pay, the company’s bottom line is suddenly untenable: You almost have to start firing people immediately just to get your costs down to a manageable level.
“That interest,” says Lynn Turner, former chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission, “just sucks the profit out of the company.”
Fortunately, the geniuses at Bain who now run the place are there to help tell you whom to fire. And for the service it performs cutting your company’s costs to help you pay off the massive debt that it, Bain, saddled your company with in the first place, Bain naturally charges a management fee, typically millions of dollars a year. So Tricycle Inc. now has two gigantic new burdens it never had before Bain Capital stepped into the picture: tens of millions in annual debt service, and millions more in “management fees.” Since the initial acquisition of Tricycle Inc. was probably greased by promising the company’s upper management lucrative bonuses, all that pain inevitably comes out of just one place: the benefits and payroll of the hourly workforce.
Once all that debt is added, one of two things can happen. The company can fire workers and slash benefits to pay off all its new obligations to Goldman Sachs and Bain, leaving it ripe to be resold by Bain at a huge profit. Or it can go bankrupt – this happens after about seven percent of all private equity buyouts – leaving behind one or more shuttered factory towns. Either way, Bain wins. By power-sucking cash value from even the most rapidly dying firms, private equity raiders like Bain almost always get their cash out before a target goes belly up.
This business model wasn’t really “helping,” of course – and it wasn’t new. Fans of mob movies will recognize what’s known as the “bust-out,” in which a gangster takes over a restaurant or sporting goods store and then monetizes his investment by running up giant debts on the company’s credit line. (Think Paulie buying all those cases of Cutty Sark in Goodfellas.) When the note comes due, the mobster simply torches the restaurant and collects the insurance money. Reduced to their most basic level, the leveraged buyouts engineered by Romney followed exactly the same business model. “It’s the bust-out,” one Wall Street trader says with a laugh. “That’s all it is.”
Người đọc trả lời bài tôi viết sáng nay:
Thưa Ông,
Gần bốn năm qua chỉ toàn nói láo và hứa cuội…chẳng làm được gì.. Chia rẻ, hận thù, tôn giáo và giai cấp…
Cả gia đình của Obama tiêu tiền của quốc gia như nước cho sứơng thân, trong khi dân chúng một ngày một nghèo……
Vận động bầu cử không có gì thành công để khoe nên chỉ biết vu cáo, dựng chuyện, bới móc đời tư, dùng lời lẻ hạ cấp, bẩn thỉu như tên Joe Biden….
Dùng mọi thủ đọan ma giáo, đê tiện để kiếm phiếu …những kẻ ăn trợ cấp, nhập cư bất hợp pháp, và dễ tin (dù đã gần 4 năm rồi vẫn còn mơ ngủ và tin CHANGE…)
Cũng thưa ông rằng nếu ông không biết hay không muốn biết những gì ông Obama đã làm bốn năm qua thì tôi cũng miễn bàn. Còn “dùng mọi thủ đoạn ma giáo, đê tiện để kiếm phiếu” từ những kẻ nhập cư bất hợp pháp thì quá phi lý. Bất hợp pháp thì sao mà đi bầu được mà lấy phiếu. Còn những kẻ ăn trợ cấp, chẳng lẻ cộng đồng Việt Nam lúc chân ước chân ráo đến Mỹ không ăn tiền chợ cấp sao? Tôi dám tin chắc trong số đó cũng có ông.