Trailer for Anti-Romney movie

[RecycleMichael]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_evS-T-c35M&mid=574

They say he got rich by destroying small businesses...

[RecycleMichael]

Here is the guy who made the film...

Meet the Billionaire Who Wants to Help Newt Gingrich Destroy Mitt Romney

By Dashiell Bennett | The Atlantic Wire

Newt Gingrich may not be able to win the Republican presidential nomination, but with the help of a wealthy casino magnate with powerful allies around globe, he's going to do everything he can to make sure Mitt Romney doesn't either. After pledging for months to avoid negative campaigning, a pro-Gingrich "super PAC" is now pushing an anti-Romney documentary that features interviews with working-class people who were the victims of Bain Capital layoffs. Advertisments promoting the film will run across South Carolina in the run-up to next week's primary.

That PAC — called Winning Our Future — is paying for the ads with a huge influx of cash that it just got from Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas billionaire with ties to China, Israel, and the Bush family. That's him on the far right, sitting next to Israeli President Shimon Peres and George W. Bush in 2008. Adelson, who Forbes listed at the third-richest American in 2008, has quietly become Gingrich's biggest backer. On Saturday it was announced that he gave $5 million to Winning Our Future, and some reports say he plans to spend as much as $20 million before the campaign is over. It may not be enough to save Gingrich's bid, but it could be enough to burn down the Republican front runner in the process.

Adelson grew up in the working class neighborhoods outside Boston and got started in business selling toiletries to hotels. He later dropped out of college, became a mortgage broker and ran a tour business. According to this profile from The New Yorker in 2008 (which is an excellent primer on Adeleson's rise to power), he made and lost more than one fortune, but then in 1979, he started a computer trade show in Las Vegas. (Comdex, an ancient ancestor of this week's CES.) Within a decade, his success with the show led him to purchase the old Las Vegas Sands Hotel. That was was he went from "merely rich" to a billionaire. He built a massive convention center next door, turning the city into a huge business destination, then tore down the aging casino itself and built the Venetian, a massive complex with shopping, restaurants, spacious hotel rooms, indoor canals, and of course, a glittery casino that exemplified the "new" opulent Las Vegas.

It was around the time that he bought the Sands that Adelson, who grew up as a Massachusetts Democrat, had a conversion to Republicanism, after befriending William Bush, the brother of George H. W. Bush. A relative newcomer to the world of the super rich, Adelson had the same proverbial epiphany that most newly rich people make when they see their 1040, arguing: "Why is it fair that I should be paying a higher percentage of taxes than anyone else?" The rest is obvious history.

As Adelson gained influence in Vegas, he began to spread his reach around the globe. In 2004, he made a deal with the Chinese government to open the first American-owned casino in Macao, a move that multiplied his wealth fourteen times in the last decade. As a demonstration of his closeness China, he allegedly helped kill a Congressional bill denouncing Beijing's 2008 Olympic bid.) He has also been a major player in Israel-American politics, donating millions to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, until abandoning the group after they supported an increase in aid to the Palestinians, who he considers an "invented people." He met with President George W. Bush in the White House to lobby against peace negotiations and worked to oust former Israel Prime Minister (and former friend) Ehud Olmert after he declared a willingness to negotiate a two-state solution. In 2007, he opened in his own free daily newspaper in Israel that has been called a mouthpiece for current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In America, the 78-year-old billionaire has aligned himself with Gingrich who shares similar views on Israel. He was the biggest supporter of  American Solutions for Winning the Future, a different PAC that Gingrich personally ran before he was a candidate, and was replaced with the "independent" Winning Our Future. Legally, Winning Our Future and the Gingrich campaign must remain separate, but this latest move only underscores how flimsy those rules are and how massive an influence super PACs are having on the primary. When essentially one person can keep an entire ad campaign alive, even after the candidate it means to support ceases to be viable, that's a discouraging fact of American politics.  It's also one that won't quell any fears about the power of the 1%.

In any case, it's clear that Gingrich's supporters, with Adelson's help, mean to take down Romney, no matter what it does to Gingrich's reputation or the general election chances of any Republican nominee. Like Gingrich, Adelson appears to be a man who doesn't forget or forgive a slight, and isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. And also one with a nasty temper.

One more story from The New Yorker article gives some insight into his personal business style. As the story goes, a former colleague once recorded a meeting where Adelson was giving orders to his staff and when Adelson later complained that they didn't follow his instructions, the colleague offered to play the tape to prove that they had. Adelson's response: 'What are you guys, crazy? Who are you gonna believe, me or the tape?'

[Gaspar]

Lets see. . .Bain is an investment firm.  Part of what they do is to invest in companies that are failing and attempt to save them.

Romney's business was to purchase companies that were in bankruptcy and either save them, or liquidate them.  Out of all of the businesses they purchased 22% could not be saved, and had to be liquidated.  The liquidation of those assets saved the creditors millions, avoiding a negative bankruptcy situation.  It also saved many smaller investors from bankruptcy. 100% of the employees of those companies lost their jobs.  Wow! That's exactly how many would have lost their jobs if Bain hadn't intervened.

78% of the companies that Romney invested in were turned around and made profitable (an unbelievable record for an investment capital firm). As part of the restructuring of those companies, wasteful practices were eliminated and that includes thousands of jobs!. . .but without Bain, all of the jobs at all of those companies would be gone.  So, that means that the tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of jobs that exist today, would not be there if Bain had not intervened.

To any logical person, that is very positive.  In fact, it seems to mirror exactly what needs to take place in our government right now.  The left may be able to play this note with their base, but it won't fly with educated people.

[RecycleMichael]

You must have missed stories like this...

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/06/romney-company-profited-as-steel-mill-it-owned-closed-government-bailed-out-pension-plan/

Mitt Romney company profited as steel mill it owned closed, government bailed out pension plan

Reuters Jan 6, 2012 – 10:17 AM ET 
It was funny at first.

The young men in business suits, gingerly picking their way among the millwrights, machinists and pipefitters at Kansas City's Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill. Gaping up at the cranes that swung 10-foot cast iron buckets through the air. Jumping at the thunder from the melt shop's electric-arc furnace as it turned scrap metal into lava.

"They looked like a bunch of high school kids to me. A bunch of Wall Street preppies," says Jim Linson, an electronics repairman who worked at the plant for 40 years. "They came in, they were in awe."

Apparently they liked what they saw. Soon after, in October 1993, Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney, became majority shareholder in a steel mill that had been operating since 1888.

It was a gamble. The old mill, renamed GS Technologies, needed expensive updating, and demand for its products was susceptible to cycles in the mining industry and commodities markets.

Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they'd been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as US$400 a month.

What's more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44-million to bail out the company's underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12-million on its $8-million initial investment and at least $4.5-million in consulting fees.

[Gaspar]

Hey, they tried to save several companies that couldn't' be saved.  If you look at this realistically, then again, it's not a negative.

Worldwide Grinding Systems was facing immediate bankruptcy, because it did not have the funds to update and compete. All of those jobs would be gone.  Bane stepped in and restructured the company, investing in the new equipment that they needed to continue operating.  The company remained in business for 10 more years, before Bane made the determination that additional investment could not produce a profitable enterprise.

So, the workers in this plant got 10 additional years of employment that they would not have, and an opportunity to turn the company around that they would not have. 

To blame Romney because one of his investments failed after a 10 year resuscitation is kinda like blaming the paramedics for saving your grandmother.  Sure, she lived for another 10 years after her heart-attack, but she still died!

[AquaMan]

Except the paramedics didn't make 4.5 million in consulting fees and 4 million for services rendered.

I have no opinion of Bain Capital except for its implications for Mitt. I think most people are unaware that such companies exist and are surprised that people who have never gotten their hands dirty have such influence on workers lives. It reinforces that 1% image that he carries around.

Kind of like that hilarious commercial a stock brokerage company used to run so successfully, "We make money the old fashioned way....we work for it".

[RecycleMichael]

Mitt says, "I like firing people."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBOqLxzGTx8

[carltonplace]

Corporations basically have two driving factors:
1. Sell lots of stuff (mostly to the middle class)
2. Make the stuff as cost effectively as possible (employ as few of the american middle class as possible through increased production or outsourcing).

Mitt Romney is a smart corporate leader.

[nathanm]

I don't have a problem with Romney buying up failing companies and doing (or at least trying to do) what needs to be done to save them. I do think it's a little odd how he manages to make a profit even on the ones that go bust, though. It makes me suspect that he, at least in some cases, was parting out otherwise profitable companies at the expense of other stakeholders because he stood to make more money for himself that way.

[Teatownclown]

Strong stuff....POTUS OBAMA will destroy Mitt

http://www.webcasts.com/kingofbain/

[we vs us]

Perry Doubles Down on "Vulture Capitalist"

"There's a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism," Perry told Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity Tuesday night. "Venture capitalism we like. Vulture capitalism, no. And the fact of the matter is that he's going to have to face up to this at some time or another, and South Carolina is as good a place to draw that line in the sand as any."

Perry cited two companies in Gaffney and Georgetown, S.C., that he said had lost jobs while the venture capital firm took in millions of dollars. He accused Romney and Bain of "picking their bones clean" rather than working to "clean up those companies, save those jobs."

I love this line of attack -- which Gingrich also seems to relish.  It simultaneously validates some of the Occupy core ideas and indicates that there's some appetite within the GOP for those ideas. 

Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich are both 99%ers. Who'd'a thunk.   

[Conan71]

Perry Doubles Down on "Vulture Capitalist"

I love this line of attack -- which Gingrich also seems to relish.  It simultaneously validates some of the Occupy core ideas and indicates that there's some appetite within the GOP for those ideas. 

Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich are both 99%ers. Who'd'a thunk.   

Meh, no different than "voodoo economics" in 1980.  This is the same Perry who was lambasted for calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme.  Remember?

Gingrich and Perry are circling the drain, they are desperate.

[we vs us]

Meh, no different than "voodoo economics" in 1980.  This is the same Perry who was lambasted for calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme.  Remember?

Gingrich and Perry are circling the drain, they are desperate.

Well sure, I definitely agree.  But they both still think that nailing Romney on his 1%ness is good politics.  They wouldn't be selling if people weren't buying. 

[Conan71]

Well sure, I definitely agree.  But they both still think that nailing Romney on his 1%ness is good politics.  They wouldn't be selling if people weren't buying. 

Not sure about Perry, but Gingrich would be a 1%'er.  Romney would do well at this point to continue to focus on Obama and brush off the anti-Romney's like dandruff on his shoulder.

[AquaMan]

I read that they are trying to quiet the whole Bain thing down. I think its short sighted for the party to try and muffle Gingrich et al on this subject because they think it might look like they are attacking capitalism. They are best to face it now rather than during the general. Perry may actually be doing the party a favor. Let's see how Mitt responds.