Excerpt:
GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is under fire after news reports surfaced showing that his company, Bain Capital, benefited from multiple federal bailouts amounting to well over $50 million. The top-tier Republican candidate has flip-flopped on the issue of whether or not taxpayers should be forced to bail out private firms, but critics have seized on his controversial work at Bain to attack his candidacy from all angles.
The scandal over Romney’s federal bailouts first surged to prominence after a former strategist for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy publicly released an unaired campaign ad — made nearly a decade ago when Romney was running for the Massachusetts Senate seat — exposing a $10-million federal bailout of Bain & Co. while Romney was at the helm. The attack ad, citing a 1994 report in the Boston Globe, noted that Romney worked with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) to bamboozle the American people out of money under the guise of “debt forgiveness.”
“Mitt Romney says he saved Bain & Company, but he didn’t tell you that on the day he took over, he had his predecessor fire hundreds of employees, or that the way the company was rescued was with a federal bailout of $10 million,” notes the narrator in Sen. Kennedy’s unreleased ad as pictures of newspaper articles fill the screen. “He and others made $4 million in this deal which cost ordinary people $10 million.”
As if that was not bad enough for one of the GOP front-runners, Reuters recently reported that a steel company taken over by Bain Capital went bankrupt and received another big handout from the government. After the Missouri mill’s approximately 750 employees were fired, a federal insurance agency had to bail out its underfunded pension plan to the tune of almost $45 million. But Bain still made millions in profits on the deal.
“His supporters say the pension gap at the Kansas City mill was an unforeseen consequence of a falling stock market and adverse market conditions,” Reuters reported in the article entitled “Romney's steel skeleton in the Bain closet,” published on January 6. “But records show that the mill's Bain-backed management was confronted several times about the fund's shortfall, which, in the end, required an infusion of funds from the federal Pension Benefits Guarantee Corp.”
Romney opponents from across the political spectrum have seized on the revelations to paint one of the GOP’s leading presidential candidates as a flip-flopping, taxpayer-fleecing insider. “This is more evidence that the so-called ‘fronrunners’ from the establishment represent more of the status quo that American voters are tired of — people who benefit from government bailouts on the taxpayers’ dime and seek office to help their buddies do the same,” said Jesse Benton, chairman of Rep. Ron Paul’s surging top-tier campaign for the Republican nomination.
Some Romney defenders such as the editors of National Review had recently claimed — inaccurately — that he “never” sought a bailout. But media pundits quickly exposed the error and mocked the neoconservative publication, borrowing a word from the NRO article to label its coverup of Romney’s federal rescues “asinine.”
Other Romney apologists have attacked his critics for exposing Bain Capital’s record. But because the former Massachusetts Governor has made his work at the firm one of the central focuses of his campaign, analysts said closer scrutiny of Romney’s career there should have been expected.
And the criticism is growing quickly. "Put it all together and even Barack Obama is to Mitt’s right on bailouts," wrote conservative commentator John Hawkins in a piece calling Romney the “Bailout King” of American politics. "Is this what conservatives will have to defend in 2012 in the name of 'capitalism' because Mitt Romney’s the nominee?"
BTTT
And all the local radio stations that carry rush and hannity.Ever wonder why the local guy you have listened to in the morning ,whom you thought was conservative, will not bash romney?He just might be getting his paycheck indirectly from bain capitol.
. . Zing!
Interesting
Great find, STARWISE. Another drip in the (nearly full) bucket.
I don’t see Rush, Hannity nor Levin in the tank for Romney total BS.
Bain Capital joined with private-equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners to buy Clear Channel in 2008, with the announcement made shortly before Romney’s 2008 run for the GOP nomination. The $25-billion deal included around 1,000 AM and FM stations, as well as dozens of televisions stations that were later sold off.
Clear Channel subsidiary Premiere Radio Networks — the largest radio syndication service in America with talk-show hosts including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity — was also part of the package. According to the company’s website, its radio programs reach nearly two-thirds of the American people each week through some 5,000 radio affiliations.
The economic disaster has apparently left a lot of formerly wealthy Rinos like fraux conservative radio hosts very susceptible to Romney's 30 pieces of silver. So they are cashing in for their 30 pieces of Romney’s silver and selling out to trash Newt!:
Mitt is the poster boy for Crony Capitalism!
Pure idiocy.
The left thinks Clear Channel is the reason there are no liberal talk radio stations...it’s a plot donchaknow...
Again? Obamaville premature disclosure. This would be a great topic for the Dems if the Romney the RINO won. I will be hoping for and working for Newt in the interim, but we must be mindful that half truths spread faster than Jane Fonda’s knees.
This is cute, but every one of those hosts named has alluded to the financial relationship Clear Channel and others have had or still have with Bain Capital. Bain’s current relationship to Mittens isn’t quite as clear. The news here is that somebody is trying to hurt the credibility of talk radio. No matter who they back or don’t.
Mr. niteowl77
