Posted on 02/21/2011 2:19:42 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
As I tell the Michele Bachmann supporters: We don’t elect congressmen/women to our nation’s highest office. It’s only happened twice, and one of those was a freak five-way race. Rep. West has barely had time to find the gym and the cafeteria. We elect governors, vice-presidents, generals and senators.
Yes, he would make a very good VP candidate--he would appeal to the pro-aborts, gay activists, and socialists.
Im with you, West is best! WEST/PALEN 2012
Garfield is the only one I can think of who was elected while a Congressman. John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State when he won the Presidency—he served in the House of Representatives after the end of his Presidential term. Of course several Presidents had served in Congress earlier in their careers, including Madison, Lincoln, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.
lol
lol
Romney who?
Abraham Lincoln is the other one, a former congressman with no other government experience. All the other s had something else (governor, VP, senator, etc.) on their resumes.
The GOP running Romney takes a main issue off the table: ObamaCare. Try criticizing ObamaCare when running RomneyCare
Romney is a Liberal RINO...and running Obama-Lite is not the way to beat Obama. Need a real conservative...right now the closest thing is Michelle Bachmann....the total anti-thesis of Obama
Hoover never held any elective office before becoming President--he had been Secretary of Commerce under Harding and Coolidge...but he had actually done something of note in the private sector before getting a government job.
Romney is Obama without the tan.
He also ran the Food Commission for President Wilson during WWI and European/Soviet relief after World War I.
Likely Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been out on the pre-campaign trail this month saying he is the man to get Americans back to work, despite a spotty jobs record while on Wall Street.
However, the former private equity firm chief’s fortune — which has funded his political ambitions from the Massachusetts statehouse to his unsuccessful run for the White House in 2008 — was made on the backs of companies that ultimately collapsed, putting thousands of ordinary Americans out on the street. That truth if it becomes widely known could become costly to Romney, who, while making the media rounds recently, told CNN’s Piers Morgan that “People in America want to know who can get 15 million people back to work,” implying he was that person.
2012 Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney recently said he can put Americans back to work, but his record as a private-equity owner speaks otherwise.
Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, bought companies and often increased short-term earnings so those businesses could then borrow enormous amounts of money. That borrowed money was used to pay Bain dividends. Then those businesses needed to maintain that high level of earnings to pay their debts.
Romney in 2007 told the New York Times he had nothing to do with taking dividends from two companies that later went bankrupt, and that one should not take a distribution from a business that put the company at risk.
Yet Geoffrey Rehnert, who helped start Bain Capital and is now co-CEO of the private equity firm The Audax Group, told me for my Penguin book, “The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy,” that Romney owned a controlling stake in Bain Capital between approximately 1992 and 2001. The firm under his watch took such risks, time and time again.
Bain and Goldman Sachs, for example, put $85 million down in a $415 million 1994 leveraged buyout of Baxter International’s medical testing division (renamed Dade Behring), which sold machines and reagents to labs.
Former Dade CEO Scott Garrett, who managed the business for the first few years after the takeover, said Romney “was far more in tune with what was going on throughout his firm, and even the portfolio companies, than you might expect.”
Bain reduced Dade’s research and development spending to 6 to 7 percent of sales, while its peers allocated between 10 and 15 percent. Dade in June 1999 used the savings as part of the basis to borrow $421 million. Dade then turned around and used $365 million from the loan to buy shares from its owners, giving them a 4.3 times return on their investment.
A Dade executive, who requested anonymity, said he confronted new CEO Steven Barnes after a boardroom meeting within a week of the distribution.
“You really think it’s a good idea to borrow, you know, one times sales?” he asked.
“Oh. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that’s fine,” Barnes responded. “You know companies do that all the time.”
The executive then told Barnes, “Well, that’d be like me going out and borrowing the amount of money I make in a year and then trying to pay it off and pay for my house and feed myself and everything else. That doesn’t make sense.” The executive said he let it drop after that.
In August 2002, Dade filed for bankruptcy.
This was not an isolated case.
* Bain in 1988 put $5 million down to buy Stage Stores, and in the mid-’90s took it public, collecting $100 million from stock offerings. Stage filed for bankruptcy in 2000.
* Bain in 1992 bought American Pad & Paper (AMPAD), investing $5 million, and collected $100 million from dividends. The business filed for bankruptcy in 2000.
* Bain in 1993 invested $60 million when buying GS Industries, and received $65 million from dividends. GS filed for bankruptcy in 2001.
* Bain in 1997 invested $46 million when buying Details, and made $93 million from stock offerings. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2003.
Romney’s Bain invested 22 percent of the money it raised from 1987-95 in these five businesses, making a $578 million profit.
While I have not investigated all of Romney’s Bain investments and there may be cases where he made money and improved businesses, there’s little question he made a fortune from businesses he helped destroy.
Mitt Romney, through his spokesman, did not return calls. Bain declined comment.
Bain of his existence
Romney said:
He was not involved in decisions to take distributions from two Bain Capital businesses that later failed. New York Times, June 3, 2007
“People in America want to know who can get 15 million people back to work.”
Romney did:
Owned a controlling interest in Bain Capital when it took payments from five companies that later failed.
Made fortunes by bankrupting five profitable businesses that ended up firing thousands of workers.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/ad_mitt_mistakes_jRmd2LHaPIb0bbNn1ZkgaJ#ixzz1EdmBGJXZ
One word.
RINO
Willard is a guaranteed loser against any RAT. Why will this ass-clown not take the hint and just get lost.
But his ego, and the fact that he want’s to go one better than his father makes him get into a race where a great many on his own side, adamantly oppose him.
Willard....STFU and just go away. You did a nice job on the Oloympics, and a lousy job as governor.
True leaders, eh?
Hmm. That´s troubling. I didn´t know that. Has he said why?
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