Excerpt: "You know, there's that tenet of some forms of extreme Muslim religions where it's OK to lie to the infidel. And I think Mitt Romney has a little bit of that."
Matt Taibbi at Skylight Studio in New York, 10/27/10. (photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)
Matt Taibbi: Romney's Secret? Greed, Debt and Forcing Others to Foot the Bill
03 September 12
new article by reporter Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone sheds new light on the origin of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s fortune, revealing how Romney’s former firm, Bain Capital, used private equity to raise money to conduct corporate raids. Taibbi writes: "What most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth."
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. We are broadcasting from PBS station WEDU in Tampa, Florida. This is "Breaking With Convention: War, Peace and the Presidency," Democracy Now!'s special coverage from the Republican National Convention, inside and out. I'm Amy Goodman.
We continue our coverage now by turning to an issue that's been raised repeatedly during the campaign: the personal wealth of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. A new article by reporter Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone sheds light on the origin of his fortune, revealing how Romney's former firm, Bain Capital, used private equity to raise money to conduct corporate raids. Matt Taibbi writes, quote, "what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time," Taibbi writes. He goes on to say, "In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on [planet] Earth."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2EKyDMaZ_4
Well, Matt Taibbi joins us now, contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine. His most recent in-depth piece called "Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital," author of the book also, "Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History."
Matt Taibbi, welcome to Democracy Now!
MATT TAIBBI: Good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: Lay it out for us. Excellent piece, investigative piece, on Mitt Romney's wealth. Where did it start?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, you know, for me, it started when I had to cover this campaign earlier this year, and I was listening to Romney's stump speech about debt. You know, he came up with this whole image of a prairie fire of debt raging across America that was literally going to burn children alive in the future. And I kept thinking to myself, does nobody know what this guy did for a living and how he made his money? You know, Mitt Romney is unabashedly a leverage buyout artist. And a leverage buyout artist is a guy who borrows lots of money that other companies have to pay back. And that's the simple formula.
He started out-his most famous deals, of course, are essentially venture capital deals like the Staples situation, where he built a company from the ground up. But after Staples, he switched to a different model, that he preferred for the rest of his professional career, in which he took over existing companies by putting down small amounts of his own cash, borrowing the rest from-typically from a giant investment bank, taking over controlling stakes in companies, and then forcing those companies to pay him either through management fees or through dividends. And that's his business formula.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what private equity is.
MATT TAIBBI: Well, that is what a private equity fund does. They're essentially-it's a synonym for what in the '80s we called the leverage buyout business. It's a small group that raises capital and then goes and leverages takeovers of companies using borrowed money. In the '80s, these-this sort of business was glamorized through a couple of things, in particular, in pop culture. One was the movie Wall Street, where Gordon Gekko, the famous Michael Douglas character from the Oliver Stone movie, was essentially a private equity guy. He was a leverage buyout takeover artist. And the other one was a book called Barbarians at the Gate, which was a true story of the takeover of RJR Nabisco by a company called KKR, which was another Bain Capital-like takeover company. And that's what they are. They're essentially guys who borrow money to take over companies and extract wealth from those companies to pay off their investors.
AMY GOODMAN: Matt, you say that Mitt Romney is not the flip-flopper that critics say he is.
MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. I mean, this is a sort of a subtle point about Mitt Romney. It's funny. I don't want to stretch this comparison too much, but, you know, there's-it's almost like he has a kind of a religious conviction about being able to lie to people outside of the tent, so to speak. You know, there's that tenet of some forms of extreme Muslim religions where it's OK to lie to the infidel. And I think Mitt Romney has a little bit of that. He seems to believe that it's OK, that there's nothing particularly wrong with changing one's mind about things, and he does it repeatedly in a way that I think is different from other politicians. For him, it's just changing a business strategy, and he doesn't see why everybody should get so upset about it.
AMY GOODMAN: You say that Mitt Romney has a vision, that he's trying for something big. Lay out what that vision is.
MATT TAIBBI: Well, Mitt Romney is really the representative of an entire movement that's taken over the American business world in the last couple of decades. You know, America used to be-especially the American economy was built upon this brick-and-mortar industrial economy, where we had factories, we built stuff, and we sold it here in America, and we exported it all over the world. That manufacturing economy was the foundation for our wealth and power for a couple of centuries. And then, in the '80s, we started to transform ourselves from a manufacturing economy to a financial economy. And that process, which, you know, on Wall Street we call financialization, was really led that-sort of this revolution, where instead of making products, we made transactions, we made financial products, like credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. We created money through financial transactions rather than building products and selling them around the world. And that revolution was really led by people like Mitt Romney. And the advantage of financialization, from the point of view of the very rich and the people who run the American economy, is that it was extremely efficient at extracting wealth and kicking it upward, whereas the old manufacturing economy had the sort of negative effect of spreading around to the entire population. In the financialization revolution, you can take all of the money, and you don't have to spread it around with anybody. And Mitt Romney was kind of a symbol of that fundamental shift in our economy.
AMY GOODMAN: Yesterday, Democracy Now!'s Mike Burke caught up with the Texas governor, Rick Perry, and asked him about his comment about Mitt Romney, calling him a vulture capitalist. Let's take a listen.
MIKE BURKE: You described Mitt Romney, compared him to a vulture. What did you mean by that? And you said his work with Bain Capital was indefensible.
GOV. RICK PERRY: How are you?
MIKE BURKE: Those were your words during the primary season, Governor. Do you have any comment at all?
AMY GOODMAN: What you were just listening to was the silence of Governor Perry not responding to Mike's question. Yes, Governor Perry called Mitt Romney a "vulture capitalist." Matt Taibbi, what does that mean?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, look, again, this is what-how companies like Bain made their money. And a great example was a company that I went and visited-well, the place where it used to exist-KB Toys, which used to be headquartered out in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. They took over the company with like $18 million down. They financed the other $302 million. So that's borrowed money that subsequently became the debt of KB Toys. This is an important distinction for people to understand. When they borrowed that money to take over that company, they didn't have to pay it back, KB had to pay it back. Once they took over the company, they induced it to do a $120 million, quote-unquote, "dividend recapitalization," which essentially means that the company had to cash in a bunch of shares and pay Bain and its investors a huge sum of money. And in order to finance that, they had to take out over $60 million in bank loans. So, essentially, you take over the company, you force them to make enormous withdrawals against their credit card, essentially, and pay the new owners of the company. And that's essentially what they did. They took over a floundering company that was sort of in between and faced with threatening changes in the industry, and they forced them to cash out entirely and pay all their money to the new owners.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, just for the record, Governor Perry's comment about Mitt Romney was very interesting. He said, "They're vultures that sitting out there on the tree limb waiting for the company to get sick, and then they swoop in, they eat the carcass, they leave with that, and they leave the skeleton."
MATT TAIBBI: That's exactly right. That's exactly what they do. Again, they borrow money, they take over the company, the company now has this massive new debt burden. So, if the couple was already in trouble, if it was already having trouble meeting its bottom line, suddenly, not only does it have its old problems, now it has, you know, $300 million in new debt service that it has to pay. So it might be, you know, paying millions and millions of dollars every month.
A great example is Dunkin' Donuts, whose parent company was taken over a couple years ago by a combination of Bain Capital and the Carlyle Group. Dunkin' was induced to do one of those dividend recapitalizations. They had to pay half-a-billion dollars to their new masters. And just to pay the debt service on the loan they took out to make that payment to Bain and Carlyle, they're going to have to sell like two-and-a-half million cups of coffee every month just to pay the debt service. So, that's extraordinary. They are-they're essentially vultures who hang out waiting for companies to get sick, then they forcibly take them over, and they extract fees, commissions and dividends, by force, essentially.
AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this week, Democracy Now! spoke to two workers from what's now Sensata Technologies, which Bain Capital is majority owner. A hundred seventy workers there at the Sensata plant in Freeport, Illinois, are calling on Romney to help save their jobs from being shipped to China. The plant manufactures sensors and controls that are used in aircraft and automobiles. This is Tom Gaulrapp, a former-well, he's a Sensata worker now, talking about the response that they've received.
TOM GAULRAPP: We're there trying to save our jobs, and we were called communists. For trying to save our jobs from going to China from the United States, we were called communists. They-if there hadn't been a large police group in there, I'm sure we would have been more threatened. They started this "U.S.A." chant. It's like, yes, we're all for the U.S.A., too. That's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to keep well-paying manufacturing jobs from being moved out of this country to China. And they make it sound like we're not patriotic. And it boggles the mind as to what they're thinking.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Tom Gaulrapp, and he's describing going to an Iowa Romney campaign event last week-Romney was maybe seven rows in front of him-and asking about their jobs, their company owned by Bain, being sent to China. In fact, some of them went to China, the workers, to train the workers in China, so that they could take over their jobs. Their last day will be the Friday before the elections. They'll be on the unemployment line to apply for unemployment on Monday. On Tuesday, they vote. Can you comment on this situation, Matt?
MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, no, it's absolutely typical of a private equity transaction. I think one of the glaring misconceptions about this kind of business that's persisted throughout Mitt Romney's campaign for the presidency is that what these companies do is turn around and fix companies, that they're in the business of helping these companies. Romney constantly uses this term, that he-that, you know, "help." "I'm either helping this firm, or I'm helping it turn around." He wrote a book called Turnaround. But they are not in the business of turning companies around and creating jobs. That is a complete mischaracterization. What they're in the business of doing is repaying the investors who lent them the money to take over those companies. The workers are completely irrelevant in this scheme.
Romney is-you know, the old-school industrialists, like Mitt Romney's father, they were men and women who built communities. They had factory towns. They were very anxious to leave, you know, hard legacies that people could see: hospitals, churches, schools-you know, the Hersheys of the world, the Kelloggs. But these new owners have absolutely no allegiance to American workers, American places, American communities. Their only allegiance is to the investors and to themselves. And so, it's not at all uncharacteristic to have these situations where people are pleading for their jobs or they're saying, you know, "We'll tighten our belts, if you just make this concession and keep us." That's irrelevant to the Mitt Romney-slash-Bain Capital-slash-Carlyle Groups of the world. They're entirely about making profits. And if that means shipping jobs to China or eliminating jobs, that's what they're going to do. And that's the new generation of corporate owners in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: Matt, last month, Mitt Romney gave a series of TV interviews defending his role at Bain Capital. This is Mitt Romney speaking to CNN's Jim Acosta.
MITT ROMNEY: There's nothing wrong with being associated with Bain Capital, of course. But the truth is that I left any role at Bain Capital in February of '99. And that's known and said by the people at the firm. It's said by the documents, offering documents that the firm made subsequently about people investing in the firm. And I think anybody who knows that I was out full time running the Olympics would understand that's where I was. I spent three years running the Olympic Games. And after that was over, we worked out our retirement program, our departure official program for Bain Capital, and handed over the shares I had. But there's a difference between being a shareholder, an owner, if you will, and being a person who's running an entity. And I had no role whatsoever in managing Bain Capital after February of 1999.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Mitt Romney on CNN. Matt Taibbi, he's referring to the-that time gap, 1999, when he said he left, to 2000, 2001, 2002. The significance of this?
MATT TAIBBI: You know, I don't think it's terribly important whether he was actively sitting at the helm during that time or whether he was just passively accepting the vast amounts of money that were sent his way as the result of the deals that were concluded at that time. Again, Mitt Romney-well, I'm sorry, Bain Capital took over KB Toys during that disputed time period and made an enormous profit. I think their profit was something like $100 million out of that deal. And Mitt Romney shared in that, in that largesse, even whether he was, you know, actively strategizing or not. You know, the groundwork for deals like that had been laid in the decades before that where he was actively involved in deals like taking over a company like Ampad, which was a very similar deal to the KB deal. So, it's irrelevant to me, and I think it should be irrelevant to everybody, whether he was actually working there or not. He shared in the profits and clearly didn't have a problem with any of those deals.
AMY GOODMAN: Matt Taibbi, you have said that Mitt Romney's fortune would not have been possible without the direct assistance of the U.S. government.
MATT TAIBBI: Yes, there's a tax deduction for all that borrowed money. So, when Mitt Romney or Bain Capital, when they want to go take over a company like KB Toys and they borrow $300 million to do it, and that new debt becomes the debt of KB Toys, when KB pays the debt service, the monthly service on that debt, that service is deductible. And if that were not true, if they did not have that deduction, these deals would not be economically feasible. They wouldn't be possible. I spoke to one former regulator from the SEC, who worked both in the SEC and as an accountant at a Big Four accounting firm, and he reviewed a number of these deals in both a public and private capacity. And he said, without that deduction, he's never seen a deal that would have been economically-a private equity deal that would have been economically feasible. So, this entire business model depends upon a tax break.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Romney's role in Bealls Brothers and Palais Royal. And how is Michael Milken involved with this?
MATT TAIBBI: Sure. And just generally speaking, these private equity deals, they're made possible by these sort of get-rich-quick, easy-money schemes that started appearing on Wall Street in the '80s. Again, in the old days, the real power in the American economy was-belonged to the industrialists, the guys who-men and women who actually made things, because they had-they were the primary sources of cash and revenue. But in the '80s, we started to develop all these new methods of simply creating money out of thin air. And the first great one in the '80s was Mike Milken's junk bonds. And this ability to conjure instant millions gave people, like the fictional Gordon Gekko, the power to take over, you know, mighty companies-airlines, you know, industrial companies-whereas 10, 15, 20 years ago, somebody who didn't have his own fortune would never have been able to take over those companies.
And that's what happened with this transaction with Bealls. Romney used Mike Milken's junk bonds to take over a couple of department store chains, which he subsequently merged. And even after finding out that Milken was under investigation and would shortly have to go to court to defend himself on fraud charges, Romney pressed ahead with the deal anyway and ended up making, you know, another tidy profit on that deal.
AMY GOODMAN: Matt, finally, what do you feel reporters here at the Republican National Convention should be asking Mitt Romney about his time at Bain?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, I just think that the-
AMY GOODMAN: And what his plans are for the presidency?
MATT TAIBBI: Sure. I just think the one unanswered question that reporters just don't ask either of these people is-they're making their entire platform about debt. Paul Ryan, his entire political profile is based on this idea that he's an enemy of debt and a, you know, budget slasher. And Mitt Romney has-again, he's banked his entire campaign rhetoric on the sort of prairie fire of debt theme. And yet, this is a guy who spent-who made his fortune creating debt. Somehow, this question has not been asked to him. How is that not hypocritical? It hasn't been asked of either of them, and I would like to see the mainstream press at least ask that question. I think it's an ideal debate question that should be asked somewhere down the line.
AMY GOODMAN: Matt Taibbi, I want to thank you very much for being with us, contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine. His most recent article in Rolling Stone is "Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital." Matt Taibbi is author of the book Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to the floor of the convention. Stay with us.
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Have a couple of shots of Monsanto Juice, or maybe a BP or Fukushima cocktail, to celebrate.
Soon, RightForAReason . Very soon.
Does human decency toward other human beings have any place in this "free" market, or is that just some old sentimental nonsense from some other time, irrelevant today?
Low cost goods from foreign countries that don't have regulations also means that we end up with more questionable products. And eventually someone is going to pay for their toxic waste dumps.
Will we ever be able to calculate the damage from the BP spill in the Gulf? In my opinion the reason BP polluted our gulf is because there were not enough regulations and officials that were suppose to be our watchdogs were happy getting their pockets stuffed .
Slave Labor also creates the goods and services at higher quality and lower costs so we don't have to live in caves and eat roots and occasional rabbits. Why don't you just cut out the middleman? Go for the Gold? It's the Real Thing!
Name me 1 "free enterprise"? it's mythology not reality. From the railroads (who got free or cheap land from the government) to Silicon Valley (which wasn't created by wiz kids in their basements or garages but was due to government defense contracts) all major US industries were built with huge government intervention (whether through protective legislation, tax breaks, loans, guarantees, purchases etc).
The "free market" is about as real as the tooth fairy
Accelerate revenues and defer expenses.
Those ARE formulas, but very selfish ones.
Accelerate revenues and defer expenses.
"Insert here: Get the hell out of there With all the money before the whole thing collapses."
Those ARE formulas, but very selfish ones.
and no, most stockholders have no vote. Do the employees get to vote? Is the employee pension plan secure without a Union plan or private plan, separate from the company?
right, it's not like any of the accounting firms have been found to be in collusion with the industries they are supposed to be "objectively" auditing and of course the ratings agencies have never been known to make "mistakes" not to mention that the forumulas used to evaluate and establish risk are "proprietary" and so even if your eyes are wide open you can't look at anything...and, of course, the ceo's would never do anything against the best interest of their shareholders as the shareholders from Enron and AIG will no doubt attest.
DO VOTE, never set out another election and let this happen to us again. Every vote counts and don't let anyone make you think it doesn't. That is the last power we still have.
Because TARP was a Bush act.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/rulings/promise-kept/
I hope that you judge yourself by the same strict standards to which you hold others. But somehow I doubt it.
"Doesn't get any credit for doing what he said he would do"?? You are clearly not aware of the track record of most politicians.
Cheer up, humanmancalvin. I don't think it was GWB's extreme evangelicalism that prompted him to invade Iraq. I think it was greed - oil greed, and the possibility of all those juicy Halliburton contracts. That it was wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross doesn't really change that - just makes it all the more cynical.
from Joeseph Smith (and his golden plates) on down to the present.
This frankly says a lot about the state of journalism in America today (or has it always been this way?).
"This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time."
Yes, it's absolutely essential that there is a truly mighty effort made before the election to get this message out: the GOP has been harping and screaming about the debt, about being the "enemy of debt," when in point of fact their presidential candidate could only have made his fortune by creating debt!!!!
An equally important issue that needs more focus and attention is how an issue like this one "eludes America's top political journalists" not just over a period of months, but years!!!?
This type of activity ought to be a crime. It's essentially seizing hold of others' assets AS IF they were one's own.
Jobs and lives were ruined so that this selfish narcissist could buy a bigger yacht.
Add to his ilk the amoral likes of Ralph Reed, Dick Abramoff, and the Scrooge of our times, Grover Norquist and the portrait of the Repubican party gets uglier than Dorian Gray, once he was exposed.
The sad fact is, however, that big capital controls both parties and thus the more objectionable the behavior and hubris of the Republicans, the greater the cover extended to Democrats to lean right in support of their money masters. Some of these deep pockets merely pay off both "teams." The return on such investments is almost as good as Bain Capital's profit sheet. If by purchasing a lawmaker a policy is instituted that gives your corp. carte blanche to pollute, that's mega dollars in savings... a cost externalized to the great Mother Earth.
I'd be fascinated to know your understanding of economics, and particularly how Romney created "tons of jobs plus wealth for himself and many others." Unless you're talking about China. I agree - we need a lot more of that - but by that I mean creation of "tons of jobs" here in the US. Can you demonstrate how Romney has done that?
So what you are really saying is that "trickle-down" does not work. This is really a "pump-up" model that required the efforts of 100 people to sustain your lifestyle. Plus, the number of employees at the 3 other firms you site and the goods they supplied to you. Therefore, they had to "pump" not only what you and yours required, but also enough for their own livelihoods. Plus, they had to "pump" enough to pay the company utilities and finally your profits, so you can have a nice vacation. Must be really tough to "Manage" all those cattle.
I think the definition of "trickle-down" should be: piss on my head and tell me it is raining".
Yes! you would be wasting your breath, because we don't buy into your american dreamworld anymore. "Pump-up" is the opposite of "trickle-down". YOUR profits do NOT trickle down to us, WE pump-up the profits to you. You and your wife's combined incomes was less than some of your employee's wages? Not many people have enough assets already compiled to be able to ride it out, like that. Aren't you thankful your employees provided you with enough profit to be able to do that?
I knew beforehand that you weren't in the cattle biz (my research says Nortex Modular). I was referring to We The Employees as being cattle, "worshiping the quicksand you walk on". Well, we are tired of businesses being Subsidized with a plethora of Tax Breaks and Loopholes, and then acting like they earned the icing on the cake; when in reality, it is those who labor for your benefit that you owe your supposed success to. "Trickle-Down" = pissing on the heads of the laborers.
Please tell us WHAT your business was and WHERE it was located, for that is VERY important
I am really sorry for the loss of your business. I also started a business, (in 1980) so I can imagine how devastating it must be to loose all you and your coworkers worked for.
I am in an area where my business has been, and is doing very well. Had I been in a less affluent area, I might also have lost my business.
It is catering, and I also opened a restaurant, that is doing well in spite of the bad times. We can feel it, for we are growing a little slower, but still growing, because we have very good healthy food and excellent service.
I hope something will work out for you.
The average wage at staples is about $10 an hour which for a family of 4 is still poverty. That's Mitt's idea of a good job...jobs that make him lots of money while paying his workers poverty wages.
Great example of the "free market".
Thanks
I did NOT. It liquidated jobs in the USA. Those typically well paying jobs were eliminated, and those American workers went on unemployment. They stayed on unemployment because they couldn't find comparable new jobs.
Note: Many of those who lost their jobs also lost health insurance and sometimes their homes. What you call "the American dream" has become THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY.
Yeah? But the jobs he created were in other countries and the way he did it was so horrible that he should have been given the same treatment as Mussolini.
Now yer talkin', my friend. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Who knew?
More and better batsh*t crazy bipartisanship with these batsh*t crazy republicans is just what the country needs.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&site=&source=hp&q=obama+ready+to+compromise&oq=obama+ready+to+compromise&gs_l=hp.12...8999.14011.0.16631.24.9.0.0.0.0.87.87.1.1.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.y6ynDTz9lQY
The way Romney came by his wealth is the human equivalent of a vulture circling weak game. He expresses the moral fortitude of the "wreckers" who made a fortune at the turn of the 19th (into the 20th) century down in Key West. These creeps purposely erected light- houses to give passing ships the illusion that they'd come upon a safe port. To the contrary, the waiting rocks and coral were sure to cut into the ship. The booty, then made available is what the Wreckers "harvested upon." And this was considered a viable, prosperous business back then. It's enough to make one believe in reincarnation.. . like Romney learned his particular dark arts of "commerce" back then!
Get mad as hell? Hell no, let's get even. Get to the poles, use boycotts of media such as Fox, have massive demonstrations before Congress and the Supreme Court. We don't have to see them executed, as is done in China...but we certainly have the power to neuter them...if we act with coordinated efforts.
The new Pew Research Study shows that since 2008, the lower class has grown from 25% to 32%, the middle class has shrunk from 53% to 49% and the upper class has shrunk from 21% to 17%.
Who here is happy about this? Or are you to firmly entrenched in the empty promises of the past to start considering that maybe there might be a better way?
Just for your information, jimattrell...or should we refer to you as one of the Cantrell Raiders type of camp followers:
Most of the contributors to this site that I've been reading have been veterans who served during the wars (not armchair mouth pieces who feign patriotism), as well as holders of professional degrees in sundry fields of study (e.g. I served during the Korean War, and have practice law for many years.
They also have other qualities to be emulated: they have a great love for others and our environment. They're lovers of justice and fair play, and they're not afraid to think and evaluate on their own. They're also not lock-step puppets sucking up to Wall Street robber barons.
They believe that all labor is valuable and should be respected with dignity and fair wages, that public funding of education is a prerequisite for a vibrant and civilized society, that universal health care is necessary for a healthy society. No, they don't believe in the burning of books nor assaults on science by fanatical American Taliban forms of religious fundamentalism.
In short, you better hope that the oligarchs don't prevail in their objectives for our nation...becaus e even the Right-Winger rank and file will end up eating dust.
You are out of your mind if you think installing Romney/Ryan in the White house will unify the country, when MORE than half the country despise them. Yes, I say MORE than half, for a LOT of the ones, who MAY vote for them will do so, only because they are racists and can't stand a black family in the White House.
Also you are waaaaay of the mark, I feel fine about well to do people, although not rich I am comfortable, and I certainly wish for many other people to be the same.
BEAUTIFULLY put, and so true.
Can't find it! What's the link?
I am afraid we are "speaking" to a hermetically closed mind. jimattrell is so steeped in the Fox poison, that he simply can NOT hear truth..
While I do not resent or envy well to do people. Some do feel they deserve more, than most of us. Several times, catering a wedding, I was asked to just write Reception, so the father of the bride could write it off on his taxes.
In essence asking me to help pay for it. For the taxes he would not pay will be borne by the rest of us who are not wealthy enough to write off our expenses.
During the Bush years, the top one or two percent got BIG tax breaks. The middle class salaries FLATLINED,..... BUT cost WENT UP and especially medical cost went through roof. That was equal to a huge tax on the middle class!!
That is what destroyed so many people. They used heir homes as ATMs when they desperately needed money.
So when the crash happened, they had NO safety net, since their home was worth less and they had higher mortgages.
We are not envious of wealthy people , BUT we are royally p....d off that the middle class and the working poor are being made out to be the bad guys in this mess.
I think you also conveniently forgot that Bush started 2 WARS and an expensive medical program to win the seniors, before the election in 04.
AND ALL OF IT WENT ON THE CREDIT CARD, AND OFF THE BOOKS.
THAT is what we NOW have to pay for, since Obama put everything back ON the books.
You really MUST be watching Fox, or you could not possibly be THAT misinformed. No matter how angry you are, you can not change the facts. TOO MAY OF US KNOW!!
Unfortunately Obama didn't know HOW AWFUL the situation was, so he promised more than is humanly possible.
It was NOT POSSIBLE to clean up all the mess Bush and CO created in 3--4 years. smart people DO understand that.
Rommney just grins his evil little grin.
excellent point. Which is also why it is disaster when Wal-Mart moves into an area. For they kill of a lot of other businesses. And offer only minimum wage jobs.
In my area South West of LA a very nice town called Torrance. The mayor allowed a W M to open. It will in a few weeks, but I will never set foot in the store. I think Macy,
J C Penny, Sears and smaller stores could be wiped out by that disgusting outfit.
From your comments it appears that you didn't seriously read or watch the Matt Taibi interview. I suggest that you watch the interview and maybe take some notes.
Re- the Pew research stats you quote also supports other research which shows an increasing wealth disparity and shift of wealth in america to a smaller and smaller percentage of the U.S. population.
See; Wealth, Income, and Power http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
MATT TAIBBI reported above: "Well, look, again, this is what-how companies like Bain made their money. And a great example was a company that I went and visited-well, the place where it used to exist-KB Toys, which used to be headquartered out in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. They took over the company with like $18 million down. They financed the other $302 million. So that's borrowed money that subsequently became the debt of KB Toys. This is an important distinction for people to understand. When they borrowed that money to take over that company, they didn't have to pay it back, KB had to pay it back. Once they took over the company, they induced it to do a $120 million, quote-unquote, "dividend recapitalizatio n," which essentially means that the company had to cash in a bunch of shares and pay Bain and its investors a huge sum of money. And in order to finance that, they had to take out over $60 million in bank loans. So, essentially, you take over the company, you force them to make enormous withdrawals against their credit card, essentially, and pay the new owners of the company. And that's essentially what they did. They took over a floundering company that was sort of in between and faced with threatening changes in the industry, and they forced them to cash out entirely and pay all their money to the new owners."
Are you being deliberately obtuse?
You said it Todd.
Uses, Abuses, Rides 'em Hard ... and Hangs 'em up Wet!
And yet we let them subsidize this shit with our tax dollars. Up til now, we have let them get away with robbing our labors to feather their nests.
That is just one reason why they laugh at us like those loathsome high school jocks pounding on a nerd.
But from personal observation, the only way to handle a bully is to teach him/her one on one; without his/her comrades propping their egos up.
We carry them around in their "sudan chairs", like royalty of old, as they refer to us as leeches. I really think we are beginning to realize who the real leeches are in this scenario.
You have actually answered your own question - bankruptcy would be so much cheaper. They don't want cheaper, they want to suck as much blood as is legally possible. (and illegally if necessary)
I think the reason for OUR confusion is precisely because it is not intended to make sense. These shenanigans are designed to bamboozle anyone that is not in on "the take".
You may remember a 1967 film called "The Flim-Flam Man" with George C. Scott; in which, people's greed would repeatedly overcome their logic and allow themselves to be "takin'" by a smooth-talkin' grifter's nonsense. For me, the central theme to this delightful film was "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man", but this seems to be especially true in the world of high finance.
I agree that Matt is superior, but I also think vulture capitalist economics are a deliberately confusing method to reap reward from their marks. Clarifying it would be similar to a doctor trying to explain to a farmer what is happening to his body at a molecular level, when all he really has to say is "you got cancer, my friend ... you got cancer".
O My God........The trouble is that TOOOOOOO many listen to Limbaugh. That horrible drug addict is poisoning people's mind with his sick drivel.
He obviously got you. And it is too bad you do not understand Taibbi...It would seem that quite a lot of us, understood him.
Limbaugh will simplify things for a reason.......a lot of his listeners are not the brightest. Make it simple, angry and full of hate, and many of them will get it to the detriment of the country, and the rest of us.
So ask what % of that was rung up by Reagan and Bush and how much of that was rung up by Obama having to repair the Bush damage? Lately the disloyal opposition has been spreading the lie that Obama has borrowed more than all others before him. Now that IS true of both Reagan and Bush, but not Obama.
Of course the mess created under the Republicans cannot be cleaned up in a few years. Yet the Republicans oppose any corrective reform of a corrosive system. The damage is too great, and much of the same systemic corruption still has a grip on our nation.
Are some Democrats also to blame. Yes, of course they are, just as are the dim-witted followers of Limbaugh, Coulter and Fox. Yet the support and encouragement of corruption, outright ignorance and irresponsibilit y have been turned into an art-form by Republicans.
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