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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (114014)	5/21/2012 12:41:49 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

It is good to see that the Obama campaign has wrested the initiative from the Romney campaign and is focusing on Romney's claim that "has has the business experience and hence will create jobs." The Americans will be watching these ads told by common Americans on hos the Romney gang made money off of them. True, Americans want to be rich like Romney. But they want o do so through opportunities such as having jobs where they can work hard, enjoy the benefits etc. They do not like rich folks trampling them like the Romney gang did. Two comments: Americans never think it can happened to them.......and in the back their minds, they believe these people in Marion brought it on themselves. That's how steeped they are in Republican mysticism and BS. The Obama campaign needs to make Marion or some other community effected by Bain a cause celebre. The video is a good one but its too long........they need to make a slogan out of it.........like.....Remember Marion!

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (114014)	5/21/2012 12:50:24 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 149317

Mitt Romney's Bain Capital took $20 profit for every dollar invested in Ampad. Creditors got $0.002. + * by Jed Lewison Cue the Mitt Romney outrage machine about transfers of wealth... Via Maggie Haberman, these are some amazing statistics: For every dollar Mitt Romney's Bain Capital invested in Ampad, it received $20 back in profit—a 2,000 percent return—even though the company went bankrupt. For every dollar Ampad's creditors were owed its when the company bankrupt, they received two-tenths of a cent, $0.002—a 0.002 percent return. In all, Bain made $100 million on its $5 million investment. Creditors were paid $330,000 of the $170 million they were owed. So Bain's return was two thousand percent ... and the creditors were two tenths of one percent. On a dollars per dollars basis, that means Bain managed to do forty-two thousand times better than creditors, even though they both did business with the very same company. I guess the difference was that Bain had the good sense to be the outfit responsible for loading the company up with debt. And in the process, it creatively destroyed nearly $170 million owed to Ampad's creditors. As the Obama campaign said today in a conference call with reporters, things like this show that Mitt Romney saw his job as making money—not jobs. He was focused on short-term profits, not building a fundamentally sound economy. Romney was amazingly good at earning those profits—thanks to his heads I win, tails you lose approach to business. As campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt asked, "why did Mitt Romney and his partners always succeed even when the companies failed?" The answer is that Mitt Romney was able and willing to play by two different sets of rules: one for himself, and one for everybody else. That may have worked out exceptionally well for him at Bain Capital, but the question facing the country now is whether that sort of economic philosophy is what we want in the White House.

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (114014)	5/21/2012 2:54:33 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Even the Dem mayor of Newark believes Romney did good things. What Cory Booker finds 'nauseating' By Steve Benen - Mon May 21, 2012 8:00 AM EDT Newark Mayor Cory Booker, widely considered a rising star in Democratic politics, raised quite a few eyebrows yesterday when he denounced criticism of Mitt Romney's work at Bain Capital. On NBC's "Meet the Press," Booker said, "[F]rom a very personal level, I'm not about to sit here and indict private equity," adding he's "very uncomfortable with" the recent talk about Bain. Drawing a parallel between attacks on Jeremiah Wright and criticism of Romney's private-sector work, the mayor said, "[T]his kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides." It was an unexpected, and rather confusing, argument. For one thing, I've seen no evidence of Democrats attacking private equity in general, but rather, criticizing Romney's specific tactics: orchestrating leveraged buyouts, loading up companies with large debts, flipping them quickly for large profits, and treating thousands of laid off workers as collateral damage. For another, Obama isn't running around saying, "Vote for me because I was a member of Wright's church," so comparing Bain criticism to The Ricketts Plan is misplaced. As reports of Booker's comments spread -- Republicans were promoting them heavily -- the mayor felt the need to clarify matters in a YouTube clip. [watch clip] It's hard to see this as anything but a reversal. Whereas on "Meet the Press," Booker said in no uncertain terms, "Stop attacking private equity," the mayor said in his clip, "Let me be clear: Mitt Romney has made his business record a centerpiece of his campaign. He's talked about himself as a job creator. And therefore it is reasonable -- and in fact I encourage it -- for the Obama campaign to examine that record and discuss it. I have no problem with that." Apparently, upon further reflection, the scrutiny of Bain is less "nauseating" after all. Booker added, "In fact, I believe that Mitt Romney, in many ways, is not being completely honest with his role and his record even while a businessperson, and is shaping it to serve his political interest -- and not necessary include all the facts of his time there." The walk-back was no doubt welcome news at President Obama's campaign headquarters, but it may be a while before Booker lives this one down. The Newark mayor has been a popular Obama surrogate, but I suspect his role won't be as high profile going forward. To be sure, plenty of Booker's constituents work in private equity, so it stands to reason he's going to defend the industry -- though the industry is not itself under attack -- but when the Republican National Committee can exploit the on-air comments of a rising Democratic star, after he undermined one of his own party's key election-year messages, it's easy to imagine Booker riding the bench for a while. Incidentally, CNBC's Jim Cramer, who's generally not considered an Obama ally, also appeared on "Meet the Press" yesterday and said, "Romney's known as a job destroyer, not a creator.... 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."