Romney Causes Cancer

[nathanm]

Uncertainty is the problem

Hey, we agree on something! Uncertainty is indeed a problem. As long as we continue to have an overhang of consumer debt with no end in sight and the Eurozone continues to dance around any real solution, there can be no certainty. No business in its right mind would be sitting on anything less than a mountain of cash. Do you not remember 2008, when short term lending went essentially to zero, bankrupting many businesses and nearly bankrupting a whole raft more? Cutting taxes on the wealthy and eliminating regulation does absolutely nothing to address this fundamental problem.

Looming debt and a healthcare program that no one can wrap their heads around even enough to provide a short term forecast of expenses.  As long as everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop, no one is willing to spend.  Furthermore, additional attempts at stimulus only serve to fuel uncertainty and reinforce the failures.

There have been no additional attempts at stimulus. We even had a tax increase thanks to the Republicans in Congress. Facts unfortunately seem to evade any consideration in your grand philosophical screeds. You may not remember this because you seem to have forgotten all of the Bush years, but the budget and health care have both been issues for the past decade. Perhaps you don't remember all the stories of massive and unpredictable increases in health care premiums year after year. None of this is new. There is no good reason to believe that either of these issues are a significant economic drag at the present time.

The issues are actually quite simple, as are the solutions.  Emancipate markets, eliminate the mechanisms of uncertainty, and pledge to dismantle the burdens imposed.

Funny how this is your refrain no matter how the economy is performing, and no matter what the problem is to be solved. When the economy is doing well, deregulate and lower taxes. When it's doing poorly, deregulate and lower taxes.  If inflation is high, deregulate and lower taxes. If inflation is low, deregulate and lower taxes. I guess when all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Gaspar, if you still believe the government created the housing bubble, you are absolutely one of the people who refuses to face facts. The fact of the matter is that most subprime lending was not done by regulated entities under the CRA. The fact of the matter is that during the bubbliest of the bubble years, Fannie and Freddie's lending was at its lowest relative to non-GSE funding. Below 50%, IIRC. The fact of the matter is that the only reason the banks aren't where Fannie and Freddie are is that we decided that the Fed should prop them up with trillions of dollars worth of lending, and not make them solely use equity funding.

Government regulators dropped the ball. That is not at all the same thing as creating the crisis, and you know it.

[Townsend]

I know no presidential candidate, vice-presidential candidate, political party, et al really cares about you, me or our families.

I just can't want someone to win when their minions posts things like:

Lets put a AMERICAN back in the White House and give Kenya their GOAT Organizer back !!

I don't want them to think they have a call to arms with any kind of win.

[heironymouspasparagus]

No, the source of the problem was a rather large bubble, created by government intervention.  Decried against, and warned about 17 times before congress. Dismissed 17 times.  Inevitable is inevitable, that's whats inevitable about it.

You really can't make government look like the hero here.  

Just to be crystal clear, I certainly wouldn't lift a finger to make the government look like a hero.

As for the bubble, well that is just one of many items that have been decried against and warned about for decades.  And yet, so many companies still seem to continue and operate and thrive.  If a company cannot figure out how to make the business work when the economic world around it is improving every day, as has been happening for over 3 years, then that company probably doesn't deserve to continue in business.  In particular, as relates to hiring people to do a job that needs to be done right now - well, the "uncertainty" defense is beyond lame.

Specifically, Gaspar, you have mentioned looking for people a couple of times.  Why would you need to hire someone if there is all that uncertainty??  Just make the existing personnel do until there is less uncertainty.  They must have plenty of hours in the evening and very early morning when they can do more.

[Gaspar]

Specifically, Gaspar, you have mentioned looking for people a couple of times.  Why would you need to hire someone if there is all that uncertainty??  Just make the existing personnel do until there is less uncertainty.  They must have plenty of hours in the evening and very early morning when they can do more.

Funny that you asked.  We opted to hold off until someone can give us an idea of costs are going to be.  We can contract until then.  We're also splitting some contract labor with one of our biggest venders.  Everyone is waiting.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Funny that you asked.  We opted to hold off until someone can give us an idea of costs are going to be.  We can contract until then.  We're also splitting some contract labor with one of our biggest venders.  Everyone is waiting.

But you still hired someone - as a contractor.  Most likely costing dramatically more, incrementally, than hiring a full time, but it is expedient.  And your vendor has either hired, or temped out the work.

We kind of do similar thing.  At any given time, probably 5% are temps.  Then become full time after a time.  One of the things about seasonal manufacturing is that we can "load level" by building stock during off times, then run behind during peak, but have inventory to cover the difference.  Works well.  Saves us a ton of money and keeps the employee level very near the needed levels.

Waiting is still a retrograde maneuver at this point - you can be getting someone up to speed, getting "ahead" on projects, maybe put some "infrastructure" in place.  Test, integration, documentation, ?? - since I don't really know what your company does, hard to say what would benefit by some extra man hours (or woman hours), but there IS something.  At this point, the only problem is that you probably won't be able to get that added resource as cheap as you could have some time ago.

Now, if you market is going away, or someone taking business and/or the company is less "survivable", then yeah, no point in hiring anyone at all...just ride it into the ground and then look for the next big thing...

[Townsend]

Obama, Romney Campaign Ads Hit New Level of Dishonesty


http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/susan-milligan/2012/08/15/obama-romney-campaign-ads-hit-new-level-of-dishonesty

The most frustrating job in politics or journalism these days must be working for the campaign ad fact-checking operations at major newspapers and places like PolitiFact. Oh, it's not that these scrubbers lack material—quite the opposite, in fact. But it seems it doesn't matter what they find or report. People want to believe what they want to believe, and all of the cold, hard facts in the world won't shake that. The fact that a substantial group of people still believes President Barack Obama is a Muslim proves that. But this campaign has taken the misinformation to a new level.

First, there's an ad on behalf of the Obama campaign, done by the super PAC Priorities USA, that essentially blames Mitt Romney for a woman's cancer death. The ad is misleading on so many levels, it's difficult to know how to dissect it. The man in the ad says he lost his job at a steel company Bain Capital had a part in closing, lost his health insurance, and years later, his wife died of cancer. Iffy enough as it is, the ad is even worse—Romney was working on the Olympics at the time of the steel plant closure, the wife had gotten health insurance from her own employer, and it appears she waited a while before seeking treatment. It's a sad story, to be sure, and we can all feel sorry for this widower. But to throw her blood on Romney's face is over the top.


It doesn't matter, either, that the ad was roundly criticized in the media and by the Romney campaign. In fact, the controversy just ended up drawing more attention to the ad, which was only available on the web anyway.

Then we have Romney's campaign accusing Obama of trying to "gut" welfare reform by taking out the requirement that people work or enter a job training program. This is patently untrue; the Obama administration merely issued rules allowing states to get waivers so they have more flexibility in reaching the goals and rules of the law (oh—and Romney sought  a different sort of waiver on the welfare reform law when he was governor of Massachusetts). Obama, in this case, was forced to run his own ad repudiating the Romney ad.


Maybe the ads will work; maybe they won't. But it made a lot for money for campaign ad-makers, and both ads helped reassure committed Romney and Obama supporters of what they believe—even if it's not based in fact. So either Obama is just another liberal giving away hard-working taxpayers' money to (substantially African-American) poor people, or Romney's a mean-spirited liar.

Is it any wonder people are turned off by politics?

[Teatownclown]

OK, let's just imagine if this shoe were on the other foot and it was POTUS OBAMA raising funds utilizing this character.

TUE AUG 14, 2012 AT 03:12 AM PDT
Romney event hosted by convicted cocaine trafficker

Heckuva way to start your Florida campaign swing, Willard.

According to local and national press reports, the Republican nominee held a campaign event in Miami last night hosted by Reinaldo Bermudez, a convicted cocaine trafficker.

The AP reports that Bermudez was part of a conspiracy uncovered by a federal investigation that seized over a ton of cocaine smuggled from Colombia:

Bermudez was identified as one of 12 people accused in a Colombian drug smuggling operation. The arrests followed a seven-month investigation led by the FBI and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.  Agents seized about 2,850 pounds of cocaine at three South Florida ports over several months.
Bermudez pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine and served three years in a federal prison.
The campaign has thus far not answered media inquiries about Romney's ties to Bermudez, but the cocaine trafficker was succinct in his explanation:  "Here in Miami there are a lot people with money who have had problems with the law."

Well -- Willard's gonna need a lot of that money.  He's running for office, for Pete's sake!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/14/1119948/-Romney-event-hosted-by-convicted-cocaine-trafficker

I plan to keep pounding away at the mirror reflecting back on all those viscous mean spirited spineless people who convicted POTUS OBAMAS' affiliation with Wright, Ayers etc. We have grounds to ask, "what's up with this connection?" If Mittens were in bed with past drug traffickers then would that mean he has been bought by them? If he were Amish, would that mean his intention might be to take us back to the horse and buggy? I just wonder if his blatant and constant lying is a product of his church or being a descender of multiple partners.

[Conan71]

If Bermudez served his time, he's not currently engaged in the illicit drug trade, and he's not funneling drug funds into Romney's campaign, what's the issue?

I have a better question for you Clown:

If the venture capital industry and Bain Capital in particular are so evil, what the hell is President Obama doing accepting money from Jonathan Lavine and other execs at Bain and the VC industry?

[Teatownclown]

If Bermudez served his time, he's not currently engaged in the illicit drug trade, and he's not funneling drug funds into Romney's campaign, what's the issue?

I have a better question for you Clown:

If the venture capital industry and Bain Capital in particular are so evil, what the hell is President Obama doing accepting money from Jonathan Lavine and other execs at Bain and the VC industry?

NOT ANOTHER FALSE EQUIVALENCY, COCO!

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/top-obama-donor-tied-to-bain-layoffs/
Alex Stanton, a spokesperson for Bain Capitol, does not dispute that Lavine was on the board of Ampad, but insists that he had nothing to do with the workers being laid off in Marion, Indiana.
"Jonathan Lavine was not at Bain Capital when Ampad was acquired by the firm, and was not involved on the investment during the challenging situation at the Marion plant.  The assertion he had any involvement with those events is totally false," said Stanton in a statement.

You do realize that to carry on lies makes you a liar too, don't you?

When will all this dishonesty stop? Nov.7th for a day....maybe.




CUT DEFENSE! If we can't afford Medicare and Social Security, which are mainly self supporting, we sure as hell can't afford to spend over half our income on defense. I'm sick of this 20% of the GDP crap. It is over half of the taxes and fees collected by the Federal government and that doesn't include costs incurred because of defense such as interest on previous spending, veterans benefits and homeland security. Hell, Eisenhower justified the Interstate system on defense. We should count it, too. Too much defense spending bankrupted the Soviet Union.
Teabaggers/GOP are such liars. The American Public will wake up to these shenanigans. And then you will witness GoldwaterII!

[Conan71]

NOT ANOTHER FALSE EQUIVALENCY, COCO!
You do realize that to carry on lies makes you a liar too, don't you?

When will all this dishonesty stop? Nov.7th for a day....maybe.


CUT DEFENSE! If we can't afford Medicare and Social Security, which are mainly self supporting, we sure as hell can't afford to spend over half our income on defense. I'm sick of this 2% of the GDP crap. It is over half of the taxes and fees collected by the Federal government and that doesn't include costs incurred because of defense such as interest on previous spending, veterans benefits and homeland security. Hell, Eisenhower justified the Interstate system on defense. We should count it, too. Too much defense spending bankrupted the Soviet Union.
Teabaggers/GOP are such liars. The American Public will wake up to these shenanigans. And then you will witness GoldwaterII!

Busted on your original point so change the topic when your candidate is busted for his outright lies and hypocrisy?  Were you aware that although Romney was no longer at the helm of Bain, Lavine was a director when GST was shut down (also getting back to relevance with the original thread topic.)

But there is another major problem with linking the end of GST to Mitt Romney's work with Bain. Romney wasn't with Bain when GST went down. Romney had left Bain Capital in 1999, two years before GST's 2001 collapse.

But there was at least one guy linked to today's political landscape that was still at Bain when GST went down the tubes. Obama donor and a Bain managing director Jonathan Levine was working at Bain when GST went belly up.

So, the only person that worked for Bain when GST died was an Obama bundler that raised over $100,000 for Obama.

Curiously enough, that fact wasn't in the Obama ad video, either.

Then there's this. Even former Obama economic adviser Steve Rattner thinks the ad is "unfair."

Interesting anecdote from a former GST employee who relates how the unions were getting their fair share of blood out of GST:

Along those lines, a former GST worker told the National Review, the unions were the ones bleeding GST dry, not Bain.

I nearly choked on my Cheerios when I read that GST employees were blaming Bain for their downfall. I worked at GST Steel in Kansas City for four months in 1997 immediately after leaving the Navy.

Why only four months? Quickly after I started, I surprised to learn that several of my fellow USW Local 13-represented employees, mostly millwrights and electricians, we're making between $100-130k. This was mainly due union-mandated overtime which, at least on a few occasions, consisted of the employees bringing in sleeping bags and pillows and sleeping in the shop. It would be hard for any company to stay competitive while paying double-time union wages to get their beauty sleep, but that's not the half of it. The union employees obviously didn't think they had it easy enough, so they went on strike in March of '97. The plant shut down for a couple of weeks until it re-started under the operation of management and non-union workers. The strike lasted a couple more months. I had a family to support, so I couldn't afford to wait. I took another (non-union) job with another company. They shuttered the plant for good a few years later.

That's Bain's fault? Just classic.

http://www.chicagonow.com/publius-forum/2012/05/fail-obama-ad-attacks-romney-for-bain-bought-company-that-laid-people-off...-but-romney-didnt-work-there-then/

[Teatownclown]

Lies on top of lies.....Is this the type of people we want in the highest office of the land? It is getting to a point that those on the right will say anything to justiify their radical positions......These are the same people who had no problem running up the deficit under Bush and involving us in two unjustified wars....without the slightest intent on paying for them.

[Conan71]

Lies on top of lies.....Is this the type of people we want in the highest office of the land? It is getting to a point that those on the right will say anything to justiify their radical positions......These are the same people who had no problem running up the deficit under Bush and involving us in two unjustified wars....without the slightest intent on paying for them.

Gee, what about all of Obama and his handler's lies?  Is that the sort of leadership we want?  Doesn't seem to have worked very well so far.

[nathanm]

If the venture capital industry and Bain Capital in particular are so evil, what the hell is President Obama doing accepting money from Jonathan Lavine and other execs at Bain and the VC industry?

I have an even better question for you. Why do you and the other right wingers who post around here insist on conflating LBO and VC? LBO shops make money by arbitraging the tax code and shifting risk away from equity owners and onto debt holders. VCs lose money (on average) by supporting crazy ideas in the hopes of striking it rich in the market. How long do you think any of Bain's acquisitions would have lasted were it not for the implicit 35% rebate on the cost of capital?

[heironymouspasparagus]

If Bermudez served his time, he's not currently engaged in the illicit drug trade, and he's not funneling drug funds into Romney's campaign, what's the issue?

THAT is the attitude that thinks Oliver North is a "great American hero".

[Red Arrow]

THAT is the attitude that thinks Oliver North is a "great American hero".

So you don't believe one can ever repay their debt to society and start fresh?