Huffington Post Tries to Connect Governor Romney to Death Squads

What do Mitt Romney and El Salvadoran death squads have in common? Well if you’re the Huffington Post the answer is a lot. If you happened to be one of the few people who went to the Huffington Post website on August 8, you probably saw the following provocative and ridiculous headline: “Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital with Money from Families Tied to Death Squads.”

The article asserts that when Romney was looking for money to form Bain Capital in 1983, he turned to several Central American investors, investors who supposedly had ties to death squads throughout El Salvador. While the article accurately presents what the death squads in El Salvador were and who supported them, the connection to Mitt Romney is far from accurate or complete.

The focus of the El Salvadoran death squads originates from a man named Roberto D’Aubisson and a right-ring political party he founded known as ARENA, the military led group which ran El Salvador during the Salvadoran Civil War. The United States has a long history of supporting nations and governments who oppose Communism including ARENA. Between 1979 and 1992, ARENA was engaged in a brutal civil war with the FNLN, a left-wing guerilla group backed by Cuba and Fidel Castro (doubtless with the additional blessing of the Soviet Union).

While the United States did support ARENA because of their anti-Communist sentiments, their massacre of 70,000 El Salvadorans remains a black stain for the United States. Romney did receive financial support for Bain from individuals who backed the anti-communist ARENA government but so did the United States during their civil war. To assert that Mitt Romney is a grand supporter of death squads in El Salvador because he received money from anti-Communists is unsubstantiated and false.

There is no evidence that Mitt Romney ever supported the brutal tactics of ARENA, but his association with anti-Communists is enough for the Huffington Post to connect him to the death squads in El Salvador.

To borrow a phrase the Left likes to use these days, liberals quite simply were "on the wrong side of history" in the 1980s when they made excuses for or outright supported leftist Communist movements in Central and South America.

Yes, U.S. foreign policy is never black and white, often times requiring our government to make tough political choices. In this instance our government chose to back a regime that sought to defeat left-wing guerrillas funded by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Unfortunately, the practices used by ARENA were horrific and our government has since regretted such actions including the assassination of Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, which it is believed D’Aubisson ordered killed. At the same time, the Communist-affiliated Marxist movements in El Salvador and elsewhere in the Americas were equally if not more brutal in their repression of human rights and squelching of political dissidents.

There is really nothing new to this story.

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Here is the answer for anyone who wondered what the true underlying connection was between Whitman and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, and where John Donahoe fits in. The connector is the El Salvador Poma family business empire and a corporate raiding firm.

In 1984, Bain Capital was financed by Ricardo Poma, Salvadoran billionaire. The founding partners were Mitt Romney, T. Coleman Andrews III, and Eric Kriss. Bain Capital was a spinoff of Bain & Company, whose executives included Mitt Romney (CEO), Meg Whitman (8yrs, VP) and John Donahoe (17 yrs, Managing Director). See if you can see eBay parallels in the following:

Bain Capital’s business was in venture capital and leveraged buyouts of companies. After increasing value by applying “the Bain Way” Bain would hopefully sell at a profit. The Bain Way, unavoidable in the business of corporate raiding, typically meant slashing jobs, closing plants, moving production overseas. The objective is bottom line return for investors regardless of jobs, local impact, environmental or other considerations, or in some cases evens the long term health of the business. Bain Capital made $100 million on bankrupting Ampad for example. Bain Way for Ampad was the “rolling up” strategy of buying out competitors which was funded by heavy debt and paying millions in fees to Bain. Ampad’s revenues were skewered by superstores like Staples, who were funded by Bain by the way. Jobs were lost, businesses shut, shareholders left with worthless paper, creditors left holding the bag, but Bain investors reaped enormous profit.

Meanwhile, Bain & Company - the consulting firm parent company - saw its revenues plummet in the 80’s, the senior partners accused of looting the company for retirement featherbedding. Romney, a bright guy, used the Bain Capital methods to take control of Bain Company. Basically a hostile raid of his own parent company, and applied the “Bain Way” in restructuring: layoffs, financial restructuring, replacing his former bosses and partners while deflating the retirement packages.

To me there are fascinating threads and connections with eBay’s practices - the Bain Way as learned by Whitman and Donahoe under Romney’s tutelage. The above just scratches the surface - in eBay there are broader connections and direct practices of Bain methods that merit exploration.

I haven’t had time to delve deeply into the involvement of Salvadoran businessman Ricardo Poma who originally funded Bain Capital. For the basics, the Poma family is one of Central America’s oldest and largest family enterprises. They acquired the GM dealership during the Depression, somehow built ALL of the Salvadoran malls, and were chased to Miami by the Salvador Civil War, while somehow keeping their grip on the Salvador businesses. Ricardo Poma is the third generation scion, still sitting on the board of the Bank of Miami and Bain Capital. Something tells me that digging into the history and business would unearth some similarly fascinating information.

I hope that some readers are intrigued enough to indulge in a bit of their own research. If nothing else, those who are mystified by the policies devised and introduced by Whitman and Donahoe have one possible answer: that they are applying the “Bain Way”, taught to them by the corporate raider and perhaps influenced by the methods of the Salvadoran tycoon family. If you want to understand eBay’s objectives, look at Bain Capital and Mitt Romney.

Democratic Bundler in Bed with Congolese Warlord

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2849300/posts

A prominent Obama administration trade advisor is one of the central players in a series of scandals and ethical rows that have reportedly placed him in cahoots with corrupt Congolese warlords and other questionable figures.

Kase Lawal, an oil mogul with longstanding ties to the Clinton family, was appointed in 2010 as a member of Obama’s Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations.

Since his selection to the trade board, Lawal has become enmeshed in a pact to purchase large quantities of illegal gold from a violent Congolese warlord, according to a U.N. investigation and various reports.

You really misread Harry. He has a 2-fer going with that one.

First, ol'Har didn't say Romney failed to pay taxes that were due, just that he didn't pay taxes ~ and if you work it so you don't owe any then you don't pay any.

The Leftwing newsmedia doing the follow up on his claim didn't bother asking if it was a case of Romney simply not owing anything.

Second, there's this crazy Hannity story of 47% of working people not paying ANY taxes. The number arises out of IRS analysis of who pays federal personal income taxes, but that's not all the taxes in this country. Everyone knows you can't escape taxes ~ there's always something.

Harry pretty much shut Hannity and the other proponents of that unproductive piece of class warfare down on that one ~ took it right out of the news media ~ and even Hannity has only mentioned it once since ol'Har decided he could play at it as well.

It is not possible to totally escape taxes of some kind in modern America. Saying that anybody, or tens of millions of people, escaped taxation is just crazy talk. Believing it is a sign of having a sort of dementia that's probably not treatable.

Now, the "death squads" I know a lady who was a working team leader in a Salvadoran t-shirt factory. Everybody in El Centro America wears t-shirts, and they are a major export item. One day she went to work and the Commies had blown up the factory, killed a bunch of people, put thousands of people in her town out of work.

She came to the US (the hard way).

Last time I saw her she was still starting up new businesses 'back home' ~ where she had 15 people living in her 2 or 3 room house. She was against the "death squads" until the commies blew up the factory.

It's unfortunate we still have Leftwingtards in this country who still feel sorry for the people the government had to kill.

I don't see the analogy between Bain and eBay.

As I recall, Meg Whitman was brought in to eBay which at the time was having increasing problems servicing the volume of transactions, technical I believe (e.g. servers crashing) and customer service (con men getting payment and not delivering product).

I was very impressed when I heard Whitman speak some time after she had joined, early 1999 I believe. She seemed very down to earth, talked about how she liked to spend time each day talking to the ladies who were getting customer calls to hear what were the concerns and what kinds of transactions were increasing.

As for Bain Capital, it is a misnomer to call them a "corporate raider". A raider is hostile to existing corporate management and takes a speculative position by buying a block of the corporation's stock. They often seek only to get bought out ("greenmail"). Bain in contrast either comes in at the invitation of management to put in capital and take a lead role on the Board (as with Staples), or buy an unwanted operation of the corporation, e.g. a "corporate orphan", and as the new owners of that piece, dedicate full focus on it.

I am amazed how poorly Whitman's and Romney's expertise and personalities translate on the political stump.

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