Obama Attack on Bain Capital & Romney is Deceptive

[deacon blues]

There is a current ad campaign painting Romney and his Bain Capital years as destructive to people's lives and unjust. The Obama campaign cherry picks some folks who lost their jobs under the restructuring that Bain Capital did while Romney was there.

The big picture of what private equity firms do is actually very positive. Private equity firms like Bain take failing companies that are headed for bankruptcy or completely shutting down and rescuing them to live and operate another day. There may be some jobs lost in the meantime, but overall the stats show (according to Erin Burnett of CNN) that there is only a 1% net job loss after private equity firms restructure and realign companies. That's not a bad stat when you consider that the percentages would be much higher if companies would fall into bankruptcy or 100% loss if they went out of business. The ad campaign is dishonest. It's the same dishonest angle Newt Gingrich was using in the primaries.

Meanwhile Obama as he is running ads criticizing Romney for his years at Bain, just had a fund raiser with a group of private equity folks and raised millions of dollars.

[Sam]

The Gingrich PAC film/ad was pretty much the same.

People who appeared in the Gingrich ad have been interviewed and have told how their comments were edited, etc and did not actually represent what they had said.


I assume this ad for Obama does the same.

[Pressing-On]

Obama's argument is that he believes there are people who do good works in the private equity area, but that their priority is to maximize profits, which isn't always going to be good for communities, workers or businesses. He goes on to argue that as President, your job is not to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everyone in the country gets a fair shot and how to work with the unemployed, how do we set up an equitable tax system so that everybody is paying their fair share that allows us then to invest in science and technology and infrastructure, all of which are going to help us grow.

That will be his strong argument against Romney and Bain Capital. The "vulture capitalism" term is at the forefront of this argument.

Romney's strong argument, although he hasn't gone there with it, should be on emphasizing specific remedies, i.e., eliminating monstrous carried-interest deduction, which allows private-equity partners to pay such a low tax rate, and limiting the tax deductibility of interest payments on the debts that firms like Bain Capital pile upon firms they acquire.

It would settle the differences once and for all. We will see who wins on the argument.

[Pressing-On]

Originally Posted by Sam

The Gingrich PAC film/ad was pretty much the same.

People who appeared in the Gingrich ad have been interviewed and have told how their comments were edited, etc and did not actually represent what they had said.


I assume this ad for Obama does the same.

Gingrich called for the Withdrawal of the PAC ad, so don't make it sound like Newt paid for it.

Misleading and exaggerated claims in a film portraying Mitt Romney as a heartless job killer led Newt Gingrich to ask on Friday that the group behind it change or withdraw it, even though Mr. Gingrich is the intended beneficiary of the film.

“I’m calling on them to either edit out every single mistake or to pull the entire film,” Mr. Gingrich said at the opening of a campaign office in Orlando during a swing through the critical primary state of Florida. “They cannot run the film if it has errors in it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/us...pagewanted=all

[BeenThinkin]

How many folks lost their jobs when Obama gave GM to the union and so many dealerships had to close their doors?

The man is the biggest hypocrite that has ever slept in the White House and doesn't know the first thing about truth!

I hope America has learned it's lesson!

BT

[AreYouReady?]

Heh. Obama denounces wild republican debts...says "I'm not an over spender".
http://news.yahoo.com/president-obam...-politics.html

[Jermyn Davidson]

Originally Posted by Pressing-On

Obama's argument is that he believes there are people who do good works in the private equity area, but that their priority is to maximize profits, which isn't always going to be good for communities, workers or businesses. He goes on to argue that as President, your job is not to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everyone in the country gets a fair shot and how to work with the unemployed, how do we set up an equitable tax system so that everybody is paying their fair share that allows us then to invest in science and technology and infrastructure, all of which are going to help us grow.

That will be his strong argument against Romney and Bain Capital.

The "vulture capitalism" term is at the forefront of this argument.

Is there anything wrong with the bolded above?

[Jermyn Davidson]

Originally Posted by BeenThinkin

How many folks lost their jobs when Obama gave GM to the union and so many dealerships had to close their doors?

The man is the biggest hypocrite that has ever slept in the White House and doesn't know the first thing about truth!

I hope America has learned it's lesson!

BT

Those dealerships were going to have to close their doors anyway if GM had just simply ceased to exist.

Besides, the usual criticism is the BHO used the government to sieze GM-- like a dictator or whatever else we can think of that is simply un-American.

Giving the company over to it's own employees is not a bad thing, generally speaking.

[Sam]

Originally Posted by Jermyn Davidson

Is there anything wrong with the bolded above?

"...that allows us to invest in....."

does this mean that allows us to invest tax dollars in pet projects or in the projects of those who pay us large donations (bribes)?

[Jermyn Davidson]

Originally Posted by Sam

"...that allows us to invest in....."

does this mean that allows us to invest tax dollars in pet projects or in the projects of those who pay us large donations (bribes)?

Probably a combination of well intentioned projects for the greater good of the country with certain individuals and companies as benefactors-- but such is the case with politics in every situation.

Exhibit 1: Haliburton



With that aside, is there anything else wrong with the approach laid out in the bolded print?