The attacks on Romney in regards to Bain are being portrayed by the Romney lovers as a left wing attack on capitalism.
BS
Romney used Bain to raid workers pension funds then stuck the government (US taxpayers) with the bill. If criticism of that is anti-capitalist then I guess I am not a capitalist.
Go Newt!
Except Romney has decided the best way to put it in context is to say “Hey, Obama did the same thing trying to save GM”. That will go over well.
Romney went negative first.
Yeah, let us not let moralaity get in the way of capitalism right? Sorry, I’m one of the biggest supporters of capitalism, but I don’t believe you rape companies in order to get ahead. I know it’s a tough world out there, but enriching your stockholders by stealing from taxpayers is not what I consider capitalisam. Cleaning out a company and leaving the wreckage for us to pick up is not my idea of what makes this country great.
Fact:
Romney said yesterday “he likes to fire people”
Fact:
Today Romney likened what he did at Bane to the Obama auto bailouts.
Fact:
Bane Capital the company Romney co-founded bought a steel mill, bankrupted it and fired all the employees after looting their pension plans, then stuck the US Taxpayers with the a bill ($44 Million) for it.
Those are the facts.
Does anyone think Obama would not go after Romney on the same issue even without the other GOP candidates doing so first? It seem ludicrous to think not. It will be that and much more.
This is like Larry Flint saying that an attack on Hustler is an attack on capitalism.
I read the editorial this morning and I was puzzled by it. Unless I’ve missed something big, neither Perry nor Gingrich is criticizing capitalism.
Romney was trying to portray himself as a sort of captain of industry but he was actually involved in a speculative and potentially rapacious form of investment (not venture capitalism, but the so-called vulture capitalism) which led to great grief in the 1980s. Remember the raids on pension funds?
Romney needs to be truthful, come forward and explain exactly what he was doing, and he also has to do some explaining about how Bain got bailed out for several million dollars after a deal went bad. I fail to see how expecting him to be honest and explain this amounts to an attack on capitalism.
I’m starting to wonder if the people being critical of Newt on this are just conservatives looking for cover when backing Romney, but not wanting to look like sellouts.
The thing that bothers me is the fact that the sorts of things that went on with Bain have been going on for decades. If those practices were legal its only because federal regulators have ignored them or worse yet, made them legal to begin with.
Maybe its time to look at the regulators and regulations.
I don’t think this whole attack is going to work out for Gingrich. I just heard a 2010 clip of Newt praising Mittens for all of his work at Bain. The clip was a total 180 of what he is saying today. This is reminiscent of the attacks Gingrich made of Mittens mandates even though very recently, he was praising them.
Newt is coming off as the type of guy that will say whatever is politically expedient at the time. At least some of the Conservatives running have been consistent on their views over the years whether you agree with them or not.
The name Bain is unfortunate to begin with. I realize it was probably a guy’s name but the homonym bane has some pretty dire connotations.
[Yet that hardly absolves Newt Gingrich...]
To hell it doesn’t...he is the early warning system for our Republic.
Disregard it at your peril.
If it works now, it will work much better later in the general. Better to find out now.
Its a circular firing squad, and Romney is himself to blame as well. We better start focusing on winning the Senate...
The Wall Street Journal doing what it does best, leaving aside the beneficiary in this case. As a rule, although not always, populism excludes a forgotten man. In this case, the forgotten-man category is filled by the stockholders. Much like the Democrat populists who conflate the "oil companies" with rich old men in suits and/or bolos, forgetting how widely held oil stocks are, this crop of populists forget that ordinary people benefitted through their agents. Didn't Bain get pension money to manage?
Back in the 80-90’s, there was a CEO nicknamed hacksaw, or something to that effect. The fact is, you cannot make government smaller without firing a WHOLE bunch of people, even those that you like, like soldiers and teachers. Why can’t these Republicans stand up proudly for Right-sizing our government?
This article sums up best Bain’s work and is right on.
Romney and his executive provided a valuable service to businesses.
His real problem is he ain’t so great at defending his work or it’s virtues.
Fine by me.
Just what in the heck is going on with FR ?
The guy has two affairs and 3 wives and it is no problem.
We have him sitting on the couch with Pelosi and it is no problem
We have people here supporting a Federal lawsuit for VA and people gladly follow this.
We have people supporting openly leftist language and anti capitalist garbage.
We then are lectured on other threads on how principled conservatives are, and people on this site get ‘zotted’ for stuff not nearly approaching this abandonment of conservative principles. How anyone on this site can now support the above mentioned points I made, and then call themselves a “principled conservative” is beyond me.
For full disclosure I am supporting none of this lot as I find the whole field disgusting. I will not vote -except for down ticket- after being given this sorry group to vote for, can’t do it.
This, from the newspaper that was handed the facts and story on the world’s largest ponzi scheme run by Bernie Madoff no fewer than three times... and refused to publish the story.
The WSJ also was right there with Bloomberg and Fox news, filing FOIA’s for minutes of Fed meetings, right? The WSJ found out that the Fed had, at one time, committed over $16 trillion (NB the “T”) in US funds to the banking system here and abroad?
Um, no, they were not.
And they were right on top of the MF Global scam too, right?
Um, no, for the first week, they were re-hashing reporting done by Reuters, Bloomberg and Fox.
The WSJ has always turned a blind eye to financial irregularity. They’re the voice of the monied classes on Wall Street, always taking “the company line.” They’re going to peddle the company line on Mitt and Bain... until someone else drags the facts out into the room like bringing a road-killed deer carcass into the salon of some upper-crust matron on the upper west side and says “Feast your eyes on this, baby!”