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31 Must-Read Articles: Romney/Republican Job-Killers
1. Mitt Romney and Bain CapitalWhat is Bain Capital? Co-founded by Mitt Romney in 1984, Bain Capital is a classic “strip and flip” shop — a private equity firm that made its money buying businesses and sucking profit out of them by any means possible that often resulted in a stack of pink slips for everyday Americans. As the New York Post reported, during his 15 years as head of Bain, Romney “made fortunes by bankrupting five profitable businesses that ended up firing thousands of workers.”
Here’s how it often went down. Romney’s Bain would buy a company and increase its short-term earnings through firing workers and shuttering plants in order to borrow enormous amounts of money. The borrowed money was used to pay Bain dividends, however, those businesses needed to maintain that high level of earnings to pay their debts. When they couldn’t, that meant plant closures, more layoffs, bankruptcies, and in many cases, the end of the business. Yet these bankruptcies still meant huge profits for Bain’s investors. Furthermore, Bain continued to collect management fees even as companies failed.
Read more: http://www.romneygekko.com/mitt/
2. Romney Economics: State by State
Mitt Romney spent nearly 20 years as a corporate buyout specialist, an experience he cites as a key qualification for his candidacy. Take a look at just some of the states where Romney's management decisions left companies bankrupt and Americans without jobs.
see http://www.barackobama.com/romney/economics/states/
3. Eight of the last nine recessions have been under Republican presidents
October 7, 2011
by Stephen D. Foster Jr.
Eight of the last nine recessions have been under Republican presidents.
Democratic presidents create 2 times as many jobs per year as Republican presidents. Republican presidents’ deficits are 3 times higher than Democrats’ and 2 times higher as a percent of GDP. The economy grows 41% faster under Democratic presidents and businesses invest 3 times as much under Democratic presidents. Those are revealing statistics.
Read more: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/10/07/what-you-can-do-for-your-country-occupy-together/
4. Romney's Bain made millions as S.C. steelmaker went bankrupt
January 14, 2012
by David Wren
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Boston-based Bain Capital LLC more than doubled its money on GS Industries Inc. — the former parent company of Georgetown Steel — under Mitt Romney's leadership in the 1990s, even as the steel manufacturer went on to cut more than 1,750 jobs, shuttered a division that had been around for 100 years and eventually sank into bankruptcy.
Bain Capital spent $24.5 million to acquire GS Industries in 1993, according to an investment prospectus for the company that was obtained by the Los Angeles Times and reviewed by McClatchy Newspapers. By the end of that decade, Bain Capital estimated its partners had made $58.4 million off its investment in GS Industries, according to the prospectus.
Bain Capital's partners also earned multimillion-dollar dividends from GS Industries and annual management fees of about $900,000. But by the time GS Industries filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001, it owed $553.9 million in debts against assets valued at $395.2 million.
"We were doing well and then Bain Capital bought us and they took everything they could out of the company without making the investments we needed to stay competitive," said James Sanderson, who has been with the mill since 1974 and served as its union president since 1988. "They ran the company into bankruptcy."
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/14/135889/romneys-bain-made-millions-as.html
5. Mitt Romney, American Parasite
April, 18 2012
by Pete Kotz
It was the early 1990s, and the 750 men and women at Georgetown Steel were pumping out wire rods at peak performance. They had an abiding trust in management's ability to run a smart company. That allegiance was rewarded with fat profit-sharing checks. In the basement-wage economy of Georgetown, South Carolina, Sanderson and his co-workers were blue-collar
aristocracy.
"We were doing very good," says Sanderson, president of Steelworkers Local 7898. "The plant was making money, and we had good profit-sharing checks, and everything was going well."
What he didn't know was that it was about to end. Hundreds of miles to the north, in Boston, a future presidential candidate was sizing up Georgetown's books.
Read more: http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-04-18/news/Mitt-Romney-american-parasite/
6. The limits of transactional politics
May 3, 2012
by Steve Benen
Obama even devoted a huge chunk of his American Jobs Act to hiring and saving jobs for first responders, like the firefighter Romney talked to on Tuesday. Republicans killed the proposal and Romney opposed the president's plan.
The disconnect is a real problem for the former governor (who, incidentally, has a record of laying off firefighters): he wants more public-sector layoffs, as well as pay cuts for public-sector workers, but he also wants to appear sympathetic to struggling first responders who won't benefit at all from his policy agenda.
In the bigger picture, this raises an often-overlooked problem for Romney's larger pitch: his entire platform is a failure of transactional politics.
Read more: http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/03/11522155-the-limits-of-transactional-politics
7. Private-sector jobs grew far more under Democratic than Republican presidents, 1961-2012
May 08, 2012
by Laura Clawson
Picture. A thousand words. Etc. The instant any Democrat uses this chart showing that between 1961 and 2012, the United States added 42 million private-sector jobs under Democratic presidents and 23.9 million private-sector jobs under Republican presidents, despite Republicans holding the presidency for 28 years during that period compared with 23 years for Democrats, PolitiFact will doubtless devote hundreds of words of dubious "context" to label it some form of untruth despite the clarity of the comparison. But whatever the relationship between correlation and causation here, this is a stark contrast:
Through April, Democratic presidents accounted for an average of 150,000 additional private-sector paychecks per month over that period, more than double the 71,000 average for Republicans.
Republican presidencies, though, saw slightly greater creation of public-sector jobs, which rose by 7.1 million under Republicans and 6.3 million under Democrats—a difference that would be entirely irrelevant if Republicans weren't always running around wailing about big government and demonizing public workers.
The presidents who averaged the most jobs created per month were Bill Clinton, at 217,000; Jimmy Carter, at 188,000; and Ronald Reagan, at 153,000. That's right. Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan. The only president to preside over a cumulative loss of private-sector jobs was, of course, George W. Bush.
Read more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/08/1089785/-Private-sector-jobs-grew-far-more-under-Democratic-than-Republican-presidents-1961-2012
8. Obama Campaign Goes After Romney’s Record At Bain Capital
May 14, 2012
by Pema Levy
... Joe Soptic, a former employee and steelworker for 30 years, and David Foster, the lead negotiator for the workers at GST Steel. The ad features former steelworkers, including Soptic, talking about losing their jobs.
“They made as much money off of it as they could. And they closed it down,” says Soptic. “We view Mitt Romney as a job destroyer,” another steelworker says. “To get up on national TV bragging about making jobs when he has destroyed thousands of peoples’ careers,” says a third.
Read more: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/obama-campaign-goes-after-romneys-record-at-bain
9. Obama seeks to undercut Romney's record on jobs
May 14, 2012
by Ken Thomas
President Barack Obama is casting Mitt Romney as a greedy, job-killing corporate titan with little concern for the working class in a new, multipronged effort that seeks to undermine the central rationale for his Republican rival's candidacy: his business credentials.
At the center of the push — the president's most forceful attempt yet to sully Romney before the November election — is a biting new TV ad released Monday that recounts through interviews with former workers the restructuring, and ultimate demise, of a Kansas City, Mo., steel mill under the Republican's private equity firm.
"They made as much money off of it as they could. And they closed it down," says Joe Soptic, a steelworker for 30 years. Jack Cobb, who also worked in the industry for three decades, adds: "It was like a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us."
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-seeks-undercut-romneys-record-jobs-061155752.html
10. The Bain Way: Take millions in job creation tax subsidies, then turn around and lay off hundreds
May 15, 2012
by Jed Lewison
The Tampa Bay Times reports on yet another example of Mitt Romney's "heads I win, tails you lose" business model: Millions of dollars in tax subsidies given to Bain-owned Dade Behring for creating jobs in Puerto Rico ... after which the company shut down its Puerto Rico operations.
The company under Bain's leadership sought and received millions of dollars in tax breaks for creating jobs in Puerto Rico - shortly before closing it's facilities, costing nearly 300 jobs.
The company in 1997 received a $3-million federal tax break aimed to promoting job creation in Puerto Rico. It also received a $4.1-million tax exemption from Puerto Rick in 1997 in the name of job creation. Dade ceased its operations in Puerto Rico in the first quarter of 1998.
Romney says he supports tax incentives at the state level, but note that this involved federal dollars—dollars that went to a Bain-owned company for creating jobs even though the company destroyed the jobs. Adding insult to injury: Romney's firm "earned" $342 million on it's $30 million Dade Behring investment, a profit of more than one thousand percent, even though it ended up firing 850 Floridians.
Read more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/15/1091874/-The-Bain-Way-Take-millions-in-job-creation-tax-subsidies-then-turn-around-and-lay-off-hundreds?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos%29
11. Faces of Romney economics: Joe Soptic, American steelworker
May 15, 2012
by Grant Fuller
But their hard work and responsibility never fully paid off. In 1993, Mitt Romney led a group of investors who took control of GST Steel. They cut costs, began extracting big profits in the form of dividends, and heaped debt on what had been a successful company. By 1995, the company's total debt had grown to $378 million, and there were mounting concerns that the employee pensions were being dangerously underfunded.
By 2001, the company's debt had grown to $500 million, and GST Steel was forced into bankruptcy.
Joe lost his job and only received a portion of the pension he had earned. Luckily, Joe found a new job as a school custodian, but it paid one-third of his previous salary and his wife was no longer covered by his health insurance plan.
Mitt Romney and his partners, on the other hand, walked away with more than $12 million in profit.
Read more: http://www.barackobama.com/news/entry/faces-of-romney-economics-joe-soptic-american-steelworker
12. Jim Cramer On Meet The Press: ‘Romney Is Known As A Job Destroyer, Not A Creator’
May 20, 2012
by Josh Feldman
“Romney’s known as a job destroyer, not a job creator. I just don’t think that this will stick. I think Bain sticks. I think the idea that you bring in Bain, which is what happened in the 80s, they fire a lot of people and that’s how they get prosperity for the rich. That is a more resonant theme, I think, than anything Romney’s come up with.”
Read more: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jim-cramer-on-meet-the-press-romney-is-known-as-a-job-destroyer-not-a-creator/
13. Bain Capital: 9 toughest attacks
May 22, 2012
by Mackenzie Weinger
Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital has been slammed from all sides since the former Massachusetts governor entered the presidential race, including by President Barack Obama on Monday. Here are the 9 harshest attacks:
1. “… Mitt Romney and Bain Capital were involved with what I call vulture capitalism.” — Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Jan. 10, 2012
2. “Those of us who believe in free markets and those of us who believe that in fact the whole goal of investment is entrepreneurship and job creation, we find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job.” — Newt Gingrich, Jan. 8, 2012
3. “If your main argument for how to grow the economy was ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors’ then you’re missing what this job [president] is about.” — President Barack Obama, May 21, 2012
4. “[Bain] made as much money off it as they could and they closed it down, they filed for bankruptcy, without any concern for the families or the communities. It was like watching an old friend bleed to death.” — former GST Steel worker Joe Soptic, Obama campaign ad out May 14
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76608.html#ixzz1yBnfcjX2
14. DNC Video: Romney Is ‘Not A Job Creator’
May 22, 2012
by David Taintor
The DNC is out with a new video continuing the attack on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. The video is filled with critical cable news soundbites that conclude “Mitt Romney is not a job creator.” Watch the video:
Read more: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/dnc-video-romney-is-not-job-creator
15. Romney Advisor Eric Fehrnstrom Recalls How Mitt Romney Joked About Firing a Maid
May 28, 2012
by Michael Allen
Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, recently recalled a joke about firing a hotel maid, to Washington Post chief correspondent Dan Balz.
Fehrnstrom said: “I tell you, he’s a closet prankster. I remember a trip he took as governor [of Massachusetts], one of the troopers who was assigned to his protection detail short-sheeted his bed.”
“The governor, in order to turn the tables on this trooper, sat down an composed a letter as if it had been written by the hotel manager, addressed it to himself as Governor the the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, apologized for the bad housekeeping and the short-sheeting of his bed, and informed him that we have taken action to fire the chambermaid responsible."
“The governor showed that to the trooper that had short-sheeted the bed and, of course, his face went white. He was aghast that something like that had happened.”
Read more: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/2012-election/romney-advisor-eric-fehrnstrom-recalls-how-mitt-romney-joked-about-firing#
16. President Obama’s campaign knocks Mitt Romney’s record as Massachusetts governor in boisterous rally at State House
May 31, 2012
by Callum Borchers
With the State House once occupied by Mitt Romney as his backdrop, Obama strategist David Axelrod on Thursday denounced what he described as Romney’s failed record as Massachusetts governor.
“After selling himself to Massachusetts as an economic savior, the Massachusetts record was alarmingly weak,” Axelrod said.
“As you’ve heard, under Governor Romney, the state was 47th in job creation -- fourth from the bottom.”
He went on to challenge Romney’s economic credentials, saying the successful businessman is a poor public servant.
“Governor Romney’s singular claim to the presidency is that his career in the corporate buyout business imbued him with insights that will grow our economy, create jobs, reduce the size of government and reduce debt,” Axelrod said. “And if that sounds familiar to you, it’s because the people of Massachusetts have heard it all before.”
Read more: http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2012/05/31/president-obama-campaign-knocks-mitt-romney-record-massachusetts-governor-boisterous-rally-state-house/wuW0LkwMDIE6HIU2nrlBZL/story.html
17. Focus group shows Bain image hurting Romney
June 8, 2012
by Maria Cardona
There has been much speculation about whether the ads that President Barack Obama's campaign and its supporters have been running that are critical of Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital will be effective. ... But something I saw last night indicates the Bain ads are starting to have an effect, and that women view Michelle Obama as a positive -- a conduit to the president.
I was invited to sit in remotely on two focus groups of so-called "Wal-Mart" moms in Richmond, Virginia, and Las Vegas. Both groups -- 23 women, in all -- were screened to ensure the moms were not strong partisans on either side, and most identified themselves as independents and undecided. The Las Vegas group was all Latinas.
It was a fascinating exercise that confirmed just how tight the presidential campaign will be. But what struck me most was that while Mitt Romney is still largely an unknown with these women -- and as such still has room and opportunity to define himself -- many of them said they did not like what they had heard described from ads about his time as head of Bain Capital...
When asked to use one word or phrase to describe Romney, the words or phrases they used included "Don't know that much about him," "selfish, "businessman who is concerned with making himself some money," "concerned about the wealthy," "can't be trusted," "scares me," and "lackluster" -- again, echoing some of what is being said in the Bain ads around the country . . .
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/08/opinion/cardona-romney-focus-group/
18. Romney Economics; Fewer Teachers; Fewer Firefighters; Fewer Cops
June 8, 2012
President Obama and Mitt Romney presented two very different views on America's teachers and first responders today. While the President urged Congress to pass a bill putting unemployed cops and firefighters back to work and preventing more layoffs, Mitt Romney argued that funding should continue to be cut.
Share this image and make sure your friends and family understand the choice we face in November.
Read more: http://www.barackobama.com/news/entry/they-deserve-our-support
19. Romney’s Long Assault On Firefighters
Mitt Romney has a long history of attacking firefighters and their unions, going back to his days in Massachusetts
June 11, 2012
by Alex Seitz-Wald
Mitt Romney came under fire this weekend from Democrats after he suggested that we shouldn’t hire more firefighters. Then top Romney surrogate John Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire, doubled down on Romney’s firefighter comments today, telling MSNBC they were not a “gaffe.” This is hardly the first time the presumed GOP nominee has tangled with firefighters.
In fact, he has a long, bitter history with them. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney often ended up sparring with firefighters and their unions. He proposed stripping collective bargaining rights for firefighters and police officers in a city that needed a state bailout, and cut funding to a fire station to be built on the site where six firemen died. He also proposed tripling the state police budget to deal with homeland security concerns in the years after 9/11, but didn’t offer a dime for firefighters, angering many at the time.
In 2004, when the city of Springfield was facing bankruptcy, Romney proposed a $52 million bailout package that included suspending collective bargaining and civil service benefits for the city’s unions, including public safety officers. “He hates us,” Robert McCarthy, the president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts, told the Associated Press at the time. “Unions are what made this state what it is,” he said, but Romney “won’t even talk to us.” Romney spokesperson Nicole St. Peter defended the suspension of union benefits, telling the AP that the “control board” the governor appointed to oversee the city’s finances “needs maximum flexibility to restore Springfield’s financial footing.” The Democratic-controlled state Legislature eventually overrode Romney and preserved the bargaining rights, though the control board remained controversial in the city.
Read more: http://www.salon.com/2012/06/11/romneys_fight_against_firefighters/
20. Romney's Profit from Bain's Buyouts: Up to $20,000 Per Laid-off Worker
June 15, 2012
by Lauren Bloom
• American Pad & Paper: Bain invested $5 million in the small paper company in 1992, and reportedly collected $100 million in dividends on that investment. AMPAD went bankrupt in 2000, laying off 385 employees.
• Dade Behring: Bain Capital invested $415 million in a leveraged buyout in 1994, borrowed an additional $421 million, and ultimately walked away with $1.78 billion. Dade filed for bankruptcy in 2002, and 2,000 workers lost their jobs.
• DDI Corporationj: Bain Capital reportedly invested $46.3 million in 1997, reaping $85.5 million in profits and an additional $10 million in management fees. When the company later went bankrupt, 2,100 workers were laid off.
• GS International: In a somewhat less profitable transaction, Bain Capital invested $60 million in 1993 and received $65 million in dividends. This company, too, went bankrupt in 2002, and 750 workers lost their jobs.
• Stage Stores: Bain invested $5 million to purchase the company and took it public in the mid-'90s, reaping $100 million from stock offerings. Stage filed for bankruptcy in 2000, and 5,795 workers reportedly were laid off.
Read more: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/06/15/romneys-profit-from-bains-buyouts-up-to-20-000-per-laid-off/
21. Their candidate wants to cut jobs for teachers, firefighters, and police officers
June 16, 2012
by Stephanie Cutter
[font size="3"]Romney in a landslide?[/font]
We're facing a tough political climate and an opponent who will stoop as low as he needs to—backed by a billion dollars pledged in outside-group spending.
Just a few days ago, one of Romney's allies, billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, wrote a single check for $10 million. For him, and for many of Romney's wealthy donors, that's equivalent to $40 from an American family worth $100,000.
Here's what I know. Their candidate wants to cut jobs for teachers, firefighters, and police officers. He wants to enshrine discrimination in the Constitution, repeal health reform, and gut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Romney is out of touch—he doesn't understand the problems middle-class Americans face, and you can't fix problems you don't understand.
Team Romney thinks this is already over. What do you say about it? ...
By Stephanie Cutter,
Deputy Campaign Manager
Obama for America
Read more: http://www.barackobama.com/news/entry/romney-in-a-landslide
22. John Boehner Is Deliberately Killing 3 Million Construction Jobs
June 18, 2012
by Rmuse
It is now the lead-up to the 2012 General Election, and Speaker of the House John Boehner says the American people want to know; “where are the jobs?” It has been a year-and-a-half since Boehner and Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and besides not producing any jobs, Boehner has revealed himself to be the most incompetent House leader in recent memory.
In a rare bipartisan move, the Senate passed a highway and transportation bill that saves 1 million construction jobs and creates 2 million more, but led by Speaker John Boehner, the teabagger extremists in the House are failing to hold a vote on the transportation bill to keep unemployment numbers high and damage President Obama’s re-election chances. What Republicans in the House did propose was an economically shortsighted bill that kills a half-a-million jobs next year alone. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, “It defies imagination that the Republican leadership and chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee would turn their backs on the needs of our country and pretend it is good government.” Even the ultra-conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce blasted the Republican version of the transportation bill as being “devastating to construction and related industries—materials, equipment, design, engineering. As important, in the long run, disinvestment results in a less competitive economy and a drag on GDP due to underperforming infrastructure.” In an even rarer letter to Rep. John Mica (R-FL), author of the Republican measure, two Democratic and two Republican representatives wrote, “Reducing investment in America’s transportation system at this time will have a negative impact on the construction, engineering, manufacturing and materials companies which are already struggling with high unemployment. Transportation infrastructure is one of the most cost efficient and effective ways to reduce unemployment and stimulate the economy. Studies suggest that for every $1 billion spent on transportation projects more than 35,000 jobs are created.”
The Senate’s transportation bill, worth $109 billion creates 3,815,000 construction jobs and yet, Republicans like Speaker John Boehner are asking; “where are the jobs?” They are sitting on your desk Speaker Boehner and you cannot see fit to hold a vote on helping the construction industry, the hardest hit by Bush-Republicans economic catastrophe, by creating over three-million construction jobs.
Read more: http://www.politicususa.com/john-boehner-deliberately-killing-3-million-construction-jobs.html
23. Romney's "Every Town Counts" Tour Skips Towns Battered by Bain Capitalism
June 19, 2012
by John Nichols
Mitt Romney's "Every Town Counts" bus tour brought the presumptive Republican presidential nominee across southern Wisconsin and into Iowa Monday and Tuesday. ... the tour scrupulously avoided towns where Romney's Bain Capital continues to put the hurt on American workers.
When Romney made stops in Janesville and Dubuque Monday, he was just up the road from the town of Freeport, Illinois.
But Romney did not stop in Freeport, a town that like Janesville and Dubuque has been hard hit by trade and fiscal policies that encourage corporations to shutter U.S. factories and ship jobs overseas -- and that has been even harder hit by speculators who buy up factories, strip the assets and close them.
On the day Romney was busing across the region, employees of Freeport’s Sensata Technologies plant gathered in front of the factory with handmade signs that read:
"Romney! Stop Bain Outsourcing to China."
"Mitt Romney Save Our Jobs"
Read more: http://www.thenation.com/blog/168477/romneys-every-town-counts-tour-skips-towns-battered-bain-capitalism
24. Romney Outsourced Jobs
June 20, 2012
by Pema Levy
The second ad, called “Come and Go,” highlights Mitt Romney’s background at Bain Capital, saying that as a “corporate raider” Romney outsourced jobs – and “as governor, he did the same thing, outsourcing state jobs to India.”
Read more: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/obama-camp-goes-after-romney-on-fees-outsourcing
25. Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas
June 21, 2012
by Tom Hamburger
Mitt Romney’s financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.
During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
While economists debate whether the massive outsourcing of American jobs over the last generation was inevitable, Romney in recent months has lamented the toll it’s taken on the U.S. economy. He has repeatedly pledged he would protect American employment by getting tough on China.
“They’ve been able to put American businesses out of business and kill American jobs,” he told workers at a Toledo fence factory in February. “If I’m president of the United States, that’s going to end.”
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/romneys-bain-capital-invested-in-companies-that-moved-jobs-overseas/2012/06/21/gJQAsD9ptV_print.html
26. WaPo: Romney's Bain Capital owned overseas outsourcing specialists that helped companies export jobs
June 22, 2012
by Eclectablog
This level of hypocrisy is almost breathtaking. What Mitt Romney knows how to do is to squeeze every last drop of profit out of a company, even if it means destroying the company and throwing Americans out of their jobs. While we've been saying this all along, we now have the proof.
As our country slowing gets back on its feet after eight years of economic decimation by the Bush administration, what we need is investment in American jobs and diversification of our industrial base. Investments in things like clean energy have the double impact of getting us off foreign-sourced fossil fuels that pollute our environment and ramping up a new industrial sector that is homegrown.
We also need investment in our country's infrastructure to ensure that we have the safest, most efficient transportation possible.
These are the types of things that President Obama is trying to do against a headwind of Republicans who are on the record as saying they will do anything in their power to ensure he is unsuccessful, even if it means destroying the economy and throwing Americans out of their jobs.
UPDATE: The Obama campaign issued this statement:
Tonight's story in the Washington Post exposed Mitt Romney's breathtaking hypocrisy. He has campaigned all over this country, vowing that he would be an advocate for American jobs. But tonight we learned that he made a fortune advising companies on how to outsource jobs to China and India. Maybe that explains why, despite his campaign rhetoric, Romney continues to support tax policies that would reward companies who send American jobs overseas.
Read more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/22/1102142/-NO-SURPRISE-Romney-s-Bain-Capital-owned-overseas-outsourcing-specialists-and-profited-handsomely
27. Obama Campaign: Romney Would Be ‘Outsourcer In Chief’
Jun 22, 2012
By Mary Bruce
The Obama campaign pounced this morning on a Washington Post article claiming Bain Capital invested in companies that helped ship American jobs overseas while Mitt Romney was at the helm of the firm, calling it a “significant moment” in this campaign.
“People really have a fundamental choice in this election,” Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod told reporters on a conference call. “The question is, do they want an outsourcer-in-chief in the Oval Office or do they want a president who will fight for American jobs, American manufacturing and the American middle class.”
The president’s campaign argues the article is further proof that Romney’s business record would not translate into economic growth if he were elected president.
“This is really significant because throughout this campaign Romney has suggested that the experience that he’s had in business gives him special insights into the economy and that would translate into jobs and growth and benefits to the American worker,” Axelrod said. “This article speaks more to the kind of experience he has, the kind of insights he may have drawn from that experience. And it goes to the fundamental question of whether that is the experience that we need in the Oval Office. Do we need the philosophy that embraces outsourcing and offshoring as a positive tool in our economy?”
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/06/obama-campaign-romney-would-be-outsourcer-in-chief/
28. Romney "Sick at Heart" Over Bain Job Losses
June 24, 2012
by Jon Perr
Back in 2007, Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney declared that taking a big payment from a company that later failed "would make me sick, sick at heart." If so, Romney by now must be badly in need of a quadruple by-pass. Because as the New York Times became just the latest to report, through massive consulting fees, sales of stock and, most perversely, dividend payments, Romney and his partners at Bain Capital reaped whirlwind profits even when the companies they acquired collapsed.
Back in January, McClatchy offered this primer on how private equity firms like Bain Capital work, at least on paper. As candidate Romney explained at a GOP debate back in June 2007, "Don't forget that when companies earn profit, that money is supposed to be reinvested in growth."
But as the New York Times documented Friday, large sums of that money were going to Mitt Romney and his Bain colleagues whether their portfolio companies were profitable or not. Put another way, Bain won either way:
Bain structured deals so that it was difficult for the firm and its executives to ever really lose, even if practically everyone else involved with the company that Bain owned did, including its employees, creditors and even, at times, investors in Bain's funds.
Read more: http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/romney-sick-at-heart-over-bain-job-losses
29. Mapping Mitt Romney's overseas job creation
June 25, 2012
by Laura Clawson
Since Mitt Romney's campaign wants to argue over whether the right word to use is "outsourcing" or "offshoring," let's put it this way: Here's a map of countries to which Bain Capital moved jobs under Mitt Romney's leadership.
The map includes the 150 jobs that photo album and picture frame maker Holson Burnes created in South Carolina, then moved to New Hampshire, then cut there while moving production to Asia. It includes Dade Behring, which Bain loaded up with debt and forced into bankruptcy, laying off 850 Florida workers and moving production to Europe. It includes Modus Media and Stream International, companies specializing in outsourcing services that were featured in Friday's Washington Post article on Bain's investments in offshore outsourcing. GT Bicycles and SMTC Corp., both of which relied on overseas manufacturing, are also featured on the map and in the Post.
Read more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/25/1102984/-Mapping-Mitt-Romney-s-overseas-job-creation
30. Mitt Romney and the New Gilded Age
June 27, 2012
by Robert B. Reich
But the real issue here isn’t Bain’s betting record. It’s that Romney’s Bain is part of the same system as Jamie Dimon’s JPMorgan Chase, Jon Corzine’s MF Global and Lloyd Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs—a system that has turned much of the economy into a betting parlor that nearly imploded in 2008, destroying millions of jobs and devastating household incomes. The winners in this system are top Wall Street executives and traders, private-equity managers and hedge-fund moguls, and the losers are most of the rest of us. The system is largely responsible for the greatest concentration of the nation’s income and wealth at the very top since the Gilded Age of the nineteenth century, with the richest 400 Americans owning as much as the bottom 150 million put together. And these multimillionaires and billionaires are now actively buying the 2012 election—and with it, American democracy.
The biggest players in this system have, like Romney, made their profits placing big bets with other people’s money. If the bets go well, the players make out like bandits. If they go badly, the burden lands on average workers and taxpayers. The 750 people at GS Technologies who lost their jobs thanks to a bad deal engineered by Romney’s Bain were a small foreshadowing of the 15 million who lost jobs after the cumulative dealmaking of the entire financial sector pushed the whole economy off a cliff.
Connect the dots of casino capitalism, and you get Mitt Romney. The fortunes raked in by financial dealmakers depend on special goodies baked into the tax code such as “carried interest,” which allows Romney and other partners in private-equity firms (as well as in many venture-capital and hedge funds) to treat their incomes as capital gains taxed at a maximum of 15 percent. This is how Romney managed to pay an average of 14 percent on more than $42 million of combined income in 2010 and 2011. But the carried-interest loophole makes no economic sense. Conservatives try to justify the tax code’s generous preference for capital gains as a reward to risk-takers—but Romney and other private-equity partners risk little, if any, of their personal wealth. They mostly bet with other investors’ money, including the pension savings of average working people.
Read more: http://www.thenation.com/article/168623/mitt-romney-and-new-gilded-age#
31. Conventional wisdom starts to turn on Bain
July 2, 2012
by Steve Benen
Last week, for example, the New York Times reported that Romney's Bain Capital rigged the game so that he would make millions, even when his investments failed. The week before, the Washington Post discovered that Romney's team were "pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States" to overseas.
The Times added over the weekend that "strategists in both parties" agree that President Obama's campaign is successfully raising doubts among voters as to Romney's commitment to the middle class, and the ads are "starting to make an impact on some undecided voters."
E.J. Dionne Jr. makes a very strong case today that "Romney's Bain problem" is serious.
The Bain ads have done double-duty, specifically undermining Romney but also serving as a parable for how aspects of the current financial system hurt workers and local communities. Profits and productivity can rise even as real wages stagnate or fall, and jobs can be offshored and outsourced. The Romney campaign's response to a recent Washington Post story describing Bain's record on outsourcing -- the campaign sought to "differentiate between domestic outsourcing versus offshoring" -- sounded more like bureaucratic gobbledygook than an effective answer. Obama picked up on the story immediately, calling Romney an "outsourcing pioneer."
Read more: http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/02/12525122-conventional-wisdom-starts-to-turn-on-bain
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--imm
Kicked, recommended and bookmarked.
Thanks for putting this together! 
And this is the land of opportunity.
Where even creeps can aspire to the highest office.
Heaven help us.
Stay Tuned
I'm collecting information and video clips for a few anti-Romney videos I plan to make during this campaign season and this is very helpful and a huge time-saver for me. Which means more videos produced. 
Thanks again!
