FARK.com: (7063674) Everything you need to know about Mitt Romney can be summed up by this article detailing his stint with Bain Capital

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		Everything you need to know about Mitt Romney can be summed up by this article detailing his stint with Bain Capital (browardpalmbeach.com)		373
		More: Scary, Mitt Romney, Bain Capital, profit shared, annual percentage yield, management fees, Kennedy family, capitalism

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rev. dave		2012-04-22 04:38:22 AM

After reading the article, I think he was involved in the downfall of my father's career after his company was bought and everyone laid off in the 80's. That was a bad event in my life and my father went from being self sufficient to poverty. He stayed poor for the rest of his life.

Also after reading the article, I now know how truly evil Romney is. No wonder he is the clear Republican choice! Has anyone checked under his hairline for the mark of the beast yet?

winterwhile		2012-04-22 04:48:07 AM

rev. dave: After reading the article, I think he was involved in the downfall of my father's career after his company was bought and everyone laid off in the 80's. That was a bad event in my life and my father went from being self sufficient to poverty. He stayed poor for the rest of his life.

Also after reading the article, I now know how truly evil Romney is. No wonder he is the clear Republican choice! Has anyone checked under his hairline for the mark of the beast yet?

You missed the part where you call him a racist

Gyrfalcon		2012-04-22 04:51:21 AM

It's interesting...just about the same time (1998-2000) the same sort of thing was happening to a company you'd think would be immune to this kind of b/s--Disney. They pulled the same crap: Hiring in outside managers with zero experience in the field, changing rules willy-nilly so that long-term employees (the ones with actual pensions & retirement plans) could be fired, requiring everyone to reapply for jobs they already had...and the consequences to the company were dire. Those were the years of such debacles as the "Light Magic" parade, the Tomorrowland remodel and so on, and the first of the massive price increases.

However, the Disney family still owns a lot of the company and Disney is a public corporation...I wonder if that made a difference. This kind of evil was so rampant in the first decade of the 2000's, its a wonder the country is still standing.

yelmrog		2012-04-22 04:58:51 AM

Gyrfalcon: However, the Disney family still owns a lot of the company and Disney is a public corporation...I wonder if that made a difference. This kind of evil was so rampant in the first decade of the 2000's, its a wonder the country is still standing.

The U.S. is pretty big. We're gonna circle the drain for a while before we go down.

winterwhile		2012-04-22 04:59:05 AM

Gyrfalcon: It's interesting...just about the same time (1998-2000) the same sort of thing was happening to a company you'd think would be immune to this kind of b/s--Disney. They pulled the same crap: Hiring in outside managers with zero experience in the field, changing rules willy-nilly so that long-term employees (the ones with actual pensions & retirement plans) could be fired, requiring everyone to reapply for jobs they already had...and the consequences to the company were dire. Those were the years of such debacles as the "Light Magic" parade, the Tomorrowland remodel and so on, and the first of the massive price increases.

However, the Disney family still owns a lot of the company and Disney is a public corporation...I wonder if that made a difference. This kind of evil was so rampant in the first decade of the 2000's, its a wonder the country is still standing.

Yes yes yes... more evil business

No way these guys ever make any evil money or employ anybody

The answer... socialism... works every place it is tried...right?

Gyrfalcon		2012-04-22 05:06:18 AM

yelmrog: Gyrfalcon: However, the Disney family still owns a lot of the company and Disney is a public corporation...I wonder if that made a difference. This kind of evil was so rampant in the first decade of the 2000's, its a wonder the country is still standing.

The U.S. is pretty big. We're gonna circle the drain for a while before we go down.

Well, it took Rome about three hundred years to take that final slurp.

Summercat		2012-04-22 05:35:28 AM

Weaver95: winterwhile: So Obama kills with obamacare alone 2 million jobs

And there is no outrage?

nope - no outrage...

best part? forever!

For gallantry in thinking for yourself and daring to challenge your assumptions, and for taking a stand right where you believe, and for making me take a spittake and laugh my ass off at work, I hereby award you the title of Honorary Otter Furry, and a coupon for a supply of clams.

Best partof that supply? ...you guessed it, FOREVER!~

/Thanks, TheOnion, for helping me understand why Bain is such an evil corporation, and part of the reason why I feel modern capitalism is going to choke on the waste it produces.

Jim_Callahan		2012-04-22 05:55:31 AM

TheOnion: I don't know what all happened with Romney and Bain, but this article is pretty obviously not giving an objective history, so I'm going to ignore it. I'd like to know the real story though. Wikipedia wasn't much help.

There's really not any Romney-related history that reflects well on him.

If you go with a really thorough evaluation, you have basically what the article is setting out, that he (and Bain in general) made money by destroying the long-term outlook of various companies in favor of short-term profits plus bailing out right before things went down.

If you take a slightly wider view, Romney's money comes form speculation. Still not exactly great as connotations.

If you back out basically as far as you can go and ignore his employment history, his political positions have reversed themselves several times.

Basically, politically the guy is a trainwreck. I wish him good luck with the general election, mostly because even with the best luck humanly possible there's no goddamned way he's even getting within ten points of Obama. Weirdly, the crazy extremist guys would have probably done better in a general election, since they'd have at least held on to the base. Tehy'd still have lost, but not as hard as Romney is going to lose.

Trapper439		2012-04-22 06:03:31 AM

RowdyRough: One thing that I feel was missed from the whole Onion fracas was another method bain had of getting capital from the banks. They would actually secure their loans for a new purchase, with the pension fund of the company they had yet to purchase.

That is just evil.

And it ties in with this from the last page of the article:

"Romney's economic views were on stark parade during this year's Michigan primary. He ripped President Obama for bailing out the auto industry, arguing that it should have been dealt with in his favorite resting place: bankruptcy court.
He was particularly incensed that the president rescued workers' pension funds before covering Wall Street's bad loans."

This is the thing that really makes me angry. Workers go to their jobs every day, thinking that the way they've done so under pre-agreed terms and conditions actually means something. And yet they lose the benefits they earned with their hard work the minute some financial speculator (speculation being a form of gambling) gains the power to screw them over. Working hard every day apparently means nothing, but if some rich asshole made a loss on their gamble because they were stupid, the workers pension fund gets raided to cover their loss.

Again, that is just evil.

rev. dave: After reading the article, I think he was involved in the downfall of my father's career after his company was bought and everyone laid off in the 80's. That was a bad event in my life and my father went from being self sufficient to poverty. He stayed poor for the rest of his life.

And that is the cost of letting these sociopathic clowns run the whole circus. Or at least the most significant cost.

PS I suspect that you were just trolling, TheOnion, but even so, fark you with a rusty chainsaw. And fark Mitt Rmoney.

for good or for awesome		2012-04-22 06:06:48 AM

Jim_Callahan: If you take a slightly wider view, Romney's money comes form speculation. Still not exactly great as connotations.

And how he keeps money on off shore accounts to avoid taxes. He does lots of things that are technically legal but expecting a creep like him to be elected is crazy. I expect more and more articles like this. The fact that Romney refuses to talk about Bain and to release his taxes indicates that there's plenty more dirt.

pacmanner		2012-04-22 06:07:08 AM

"When Bain Capital took over, it seemed like everything was being neglected in our plant," says Sanderson. "Nothing was being invested in our plant. We didn't have the necessary time to maintain our equipment. They had people here that didn't know what they were doing. It was like they were taking money from us and putting it somewhere else."

These are the assholes that are running things now. Sounds awefully familiar.

Animatronik		2012-04-22 06:29:14 AM

An alternative perspective:

http://www.ingramsonline.com/Feb_2012/btl.html

Animatronik		2012-04-22 06:36:55 AM

Nightmaretony: And one wonders why we lost so many jobs.

Can't wait till this shiat is fixed up and Romney ends up behind bars.

Forever.

Romney was hardly involved in those restructerings, and the story in this article is as told by union bosses.

All the unionized steel companies with obsolete equipment are gone, replaced by foreign firms. The reasons for that have nothing to do with Bain.

But dont let reason and logic take the place of lies told by union bosses and marxist-socialists.

/No room left for middle class workers OR capitalism in the modern Democratic Party.

dumbobruni		2012-04-22 07:10:04 AM

the derp in here is pretty strong.

i'm not a private equity apologist (for every great firm there are many bad firms), but there's quite a lot of foaming at the mouth hyperbole being thrown around in here.

private equity is a no risk business? hilarious. the only part that could be considered no-risk is the management fee, which is usually 2% of assets, and covers overhead of running the firm.

as for job losses caused by private equity, the net overall effect is just 1% across all firms in the long run.

Link

now there are plenty of reasons to bash private equity, such as tax rates on carried interest in the US, dishonest performance reporting (really big problem), and deal recycling.

the 88% annual return cited in the article sounds like bullshiat. PE firms cite IRR, but IRR breaks down if losses occur after the initial investment. PE firms still use IRR, but then usually ignore the bad years when presenting results

UCFRoadWarrior		2012-04-22 07:13:42 AM

Although no fan of New Times publications (they are quite liberal, and not accurate), however, they pretty much got it right about Bain

Bain does not make money by running companies. They made money by running companies into the ground.

As the general campaign goes along, these will be the things that Obama will use to clobber Romney

The GOP pretty much threw the 2012 election to Obama by "selecting" Romney. A candidate like Romney is not one your run in lean economic times. The GOP never learned this when running against FDR 70-80 yrs ago

Hobodeluxe		2012-04-22 07:16:06 AM

TheOnion: Why would they be acting against their own self-interest to forsake a greater profit over the long term in exchange for a small profit immediately?

why do people who win lotteries take the immediate lump sum at a huge loss instead of the long term payout over 20 or so years?

Hobodeluxe		2012-04-22 07:23:13 AM

wow the threadshiatters have found this thread and are trying to derail any and all conversation en masse. we must have really hit close to the heart with this one. when they all rally to Mitten's defense by deflecting and shiatting all over the thread you know they are afraid.

Halli		2012-04-22 07:23:33 AM

Animatronik: An alternative perspective:

http://www.ingramsonline.com/Feb_2012/btl.html

Link

Yep that guy sems trustworthy.

You're such a tool.

DirkValentine		2012-04-22 07:32:49 AM

TheOnion: Somacandra: TheOnion: And high risk demands a higher return. If they had gotten unlucky seems like they'd have gone out of business. Not to say that neither they nor Romney acted unethically, but making high risk investments and getting high returns on them sometimes isn't unethical inherently.

Yeah--you didn't read the article, did you? The entire point is that by charging hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly for management fees and siphoning capital out of the company, Bain investors are paid immediately. They don't have to wait for dividends. And if the company can't survive and the jobs are lost, Bain doesn't suffer and neither do their investors--they already got paid. You really might try at least skimming TFA.

I read the whole article but, as I said, it's clearly pushing an agenda, so I just ignored it.

Let's say they buy a business. They have to at least pay whatever it is worth, right? And presumably they can't then extract more than it is worth. I mean, where is the money that they're taking out of the business coming from? No one is gonna sell a business for $10 if they could extract $100 from it, right?

Wow. Your grasp of reality is hanging by a thread.

You might be in the abyss by now. How in the hell can you possibly defend this?

Debeo Summa Credo		2012-04-22 07:39:50 AM

larrycot: TheOnion: I don't know what all happened with Romney and Bain, but this article is pretty obviously not giving an objective history, so I'm going to ignore it. I'd like to know the real story though. Wikipedia wasn't much help.

Probably just to ignore it. Neither Romney nor Bain will disclose exactly what happened, so I'm sure it was all on the up-and-up, and the reporter in TFA is just a commie.

You're much closer to the truth than the article itself.

Though the employees of the acquired firms suffered hardships and Bain and other PE firms can be assholes in instances, this article is biased tripe. Anyone who doesn't understand that is an idiot.

intelligent comment below		2012-04-22 07:48:53 AM

Debeo Summa Credo: Though the employees of the acquired firms suffered hardships and Bain and other PE firms can be assholes in instances, this article is biased tripe. Anyone who doesn't understand that is an idiot.

Don't bother to address anything, just pass it off as biased and wrong and move on. That's the best way to troll.

Rann Xerox		2012-04-22 08:13:04 AM

---------------------------------------------------------------------

= i78.photobucket.com

spiral_fishcake		2012-04-22 08:13:42 AM

TheOnion: Weaver95: TheOnion: If a company defaults on a multi million dollar loan as a business strategy, they're not going to be getting many loans.

why not? the fed isn't charging any interest on the loans and when the loans default, the taxpayer picks up the tab for the default. the ONLY ones who lose in this transaction are you and me, and we don't matter to the folks on wall street OR the guys inside the beltway. besides, they just use new shell companies every time they get another loan. it's not like anyone over at the SEC cares. God knows congress isn't going to investigate either.

To claim that the government is giving millions in public money to a private equity firm, over and over, as they default each time, is a pretty amazing claim, and would require serious, direct evidence for me to believe. The linked article is not enough.

Bain Capital is not defaulting on the loans, the companies BC buys are defaulting. The main way they're screwing taxpayers is through deals they work with local governments regarding special tax breaks and utility discounts based on expected growth of the company. They can show on paper how much more money the company is making, which usually means the company will expand to create new/more revenue, but in this business model the profits are going immediately to the investors, not to the expansion of the company. The company then collapses under its own ineffectiveness, leaving taxpayers to pay for the corporate welfare, bankruptcy court, and unemployment (*someone* read TFA).

I also felt a heavy bias in this article, but I think it's much more right than wrong.

Animatronik		2012-04-22 08:18:34 AM

Halli: Animatronik: An alternative perspective:

http://www.ingramsonline.com/Feb_2012/btl.html

Link

Yep that guy sems trustworthy.

You're such a tool.

No, you are.

You're willing to accept any story told by union bosses responsible not just for one conpany's fate, but for running ENTIRE INDUSTRIES into the ground.

/I'd agree that it would be nice to read more about the histories of these things from objective sources. If its even possible to find one these days.

bugontherug		2012-04-22 08:24:05 AM

TheOnion: Seems like it was super high risk.

For Romney himself, there was no risk. The first checks he wrote out of bought out companies' treasuries were to himself for his million dollar "management fees."

Halli		2012-04-22 08:24:28 AM

Animatronik: Halli: Animatronik: An alternative perspective:

http://www.ingramsonline.com/Feb_2012/btl.html

Link

Yep that guy sems trustworthy.

You're such a tool.

No, you are.

You're willing to accept any story told by union bosses responsible not just for one conpany's fate, but for running ENTIRE INDUSTRIES into the ground.

/I'd agree that it would be nice to read more about the histories of these things from objective sources. If its even possible to find one these days.

Union bosses? Ok whatever you say.

crispyone		2012-04-22 08:24:46 AM

Wow, that but-hurt rant went on for 5 freaking pages??

Boils down to "Dik suking Union lover" researches 3000 companies Bain Capital purchased...finds worst case scenario...then uses that brush to paint Romney as "Captian Destructo!!"

The sad thing is that so many of you farktard idiots buy into this.

starsrift		2012-04-22 08:26:26 AM

Debeo Summa Credo: larrycot: TheOnion: I don't know what all happened with Romney and Bain, but this article is pretty obviously not giving an objective history, so I'm going to ignore it. I'd like to know the real story though. Wikipedia wasn't much help.

Probably just to ignore it. Neither Romney nor Bain will disclose exactly what happened, so I'm sure it was all on the up-and-up, and the reporter in TFA is just a commie.

You're much closer to the truth than the article itself.

Though the employees of the acquired firms suffered hardships and Bain and other PE firms can be assholes in instances, this article is biased tripe. Anyone who doesn't understand that is an idiot.

The article gives examples to back up their statements. Do you have counter-examples or just emotional arguments?

bugontherug		2012-04-22 08:27:30 AM

spiral_fishcake: TheOnion: Weaver95: TheOnion: If a company defaults on a multi million dollar loan as a business strategy, they're not going to be getting many loans.

why not? the fed isn't charging any interest on the loans and when the loans default, the taxpayer picks up the tab for the default. the ONLY ones who lose in this transaction are you and me, and we don't matter to the folks on wall street OR the guys inside the beltway. besides, they just use new shell companies every time they get another loan. it's not like anyone over at the SEC cares. God knows congress isn't going to investigate either.

To claim that the government is giving millions in public money to a private equity firm, over and over, as they default each time, is a pretty amazing claim, and would require serious, direct evidence for me to believe. The linked article is not enough.

Bain Capital is not defaulting on the loans, the companies BC buys are defaulting. The main way they're screwing taxpayers is through deals they work with local governments regarding special tax breaks and utility discounts based on expected growth of the company. They can show on paper how much more money the company is making, which usually means the company will expand to create new/more revenue, but in this business model the profits are going immediately to the investors, not to the expansion of the company. The company then collapses under its own ineffectiveness, leaving taxpayers to pay for the corporate welfare, bankruptcy court, and unemployment (*someone* read TFA).

I also felt a heavy bias in this article, but I think it's much more right than wrong.

Is it possible that the article isn't so biased, but that the way vulture capitalism works is so morally repugnant on its face that merely describing it objectively sounds biased?

"The child molester penetrated the five year old boy's anus with his penis."

TheOnion: That's so biased! Why does the author hate child molesters? I want to see some fairness and balance. What does Fox News have to say about this?

FuturePastNow		2012-04-22 08:28:55 AM

If you read that, and you don't hate Mitt Romney afterward, you are inhuman scum.

X-boxershorts		2012-04-22 08:37:46 AM

Animatronik: Nightmaretony: And one wonders why we lost so many jobs.

Can't wait till this shiat is fixed up and Romney ends up behind bars.

Forever.

Romney was hardly involved in those restructerings, and the story in this article is as told by union bosses.

All the unionized steel companies with obsolete equipment are gone, replaced by foreign firms. The reasons for that have nothing to do with Bain.

But dont let reason and logic take the place of lies told by union bosses and marxist-socialists.

/No room left for middle class workers OR capitalism in the modern Democratic Party.

These stories are told by hourly skilled labor.

Why do you hate American skilled labor?

Evil Twin Skippy		2012-04-22 08:51:03 AM

marfar: larrycot: TheOnion: I don't know what all happened with Romney and Bain, but this article is pretty obviously not giving an objective history, so I'm going to ignore it. I'd like to know the real story though. Wikipedia wasn't much help.

Probably just to ignore it. Neither Romney nor Bain will disclose exactly what happened, so I'm sure it was all on the up-and-up, and the reporter in TFA is just a commie.

It can be pretty hard to trust an article that starts off with a picture comparing Romney to insects.

A flatworm is a worm. And a tick is an arachnid. Neither is an insect.

Rozotorical		2012-04-22 08:52:48 AM

Huggermugger		2012-04-22 08:54:00 AM

TheOnion: I read the whole article but, as I said, it's clearly pushing an agenda, so I just ignored it.

And yet you believe anything and everything that Fox News says.

/Roger Ailes has you people trained well

Bigdogdaddy		2012-04-22 08:54:27 AM

Oh, so before he tied his dog to the top of his car and drove it to Canada, he tied 258 workers' jobs to the top of his car and drove them to Mexico? How fitting.....

What a human piece of crap.

More_Like_A_Stain		2012-04-22 08:57:26 AM

Evil Twin Skippy:

A flatworm is a worm. And a tick is an arachnid. Neither is an insect.

And the drawing of Mittens was easily more alive and vibrant than the actual Mitt. Your point?

jojostan		2012-04-22 08:59:35 AM

Bigdogdaddy: Oh, so before he tied his dog to the top of his car and drove it to Canada, he tied 258 workers' jobs to the top of his car and drove them to Mexico? How fitting.....

What a human piece of crap.

Couldn't of said it better...This Shiatstain should be in supermax prison, not the oval office...

Jim_Tressel's_O-Face		2012-04-22 09:00:13 AM

Animatronik: You're willing to accept any story told by union bosses responsible not just for one conpany's fate, but for running ENTIRE INDUSTRIES into the ground.

crispyone: Boils down to "Dik suking Union lover" researches 3000 companies Bain Capital purchased...finds worst case scenario...then uses that brush to paint Romney as "Captian Destructo!!"

Took a few hours, but we got the official Rmoney response: EVIL UNIONS!

dogdaze		2012-04-22 09:04:59 AM

Jorn the Younger		2012-04-22 09:05:01 AM

crispyone: Wow, that but-hurt rant went on for 5 freaking pages??

Boils down to "Dik suking Union lover" researches 3000 companies Bain Capital purchased...finds worst case scenario...then uses that brush to paint Romney as "Captian Destructo!!"

The sad thing is that so many of you farktard idiots buy into this.

No, the sad thing is that you have to come in here and levy baseless "insults" against the article's author, hoping to divert attention from the actual issue at hand.

The reason I put the word insults in bunny-rabbit-ears is because that sort of terminology is only actually an insult amongst people completely insecure with their own sexual identity, such as homophobes. Rather telling, really- shows what kind of audience you're used to appealing to.

Unless of course you have a link to information detailing a few examples of companies Bain bought under Romney that grew and prospered, and weren't devolced into bankruptcy to enrich the private coffers of Romney and his ilk. It's possible the link in your comment got farkied somehow, and if that's the case, once you have successfully posted such a link, I'll apologize.

SuperTramp		2012-04-22 09:05:34 AM

Evil Twin Skippy
A flatworm is a worm. And a tick is an arachnid. Neither is an insect.

Yeah, but they're both PARASITES.

It doesn't require much imagination to see Bain Capital as any different.

Jurodan		2012-04-22 09:06:50 AM

You know, at times like this, I really wish there were a hell for people who cause as much misery as Mitt Romney.

Bigdogdaddy		2012-04-22 09:08:30 AM

What's the difference between Mitt Rmoney and a catfish. One is a scum sucking bottom dweller and the other one is just a fish.

Pops

El Morro		2012-04-22 09:15:57 AM

Evil Twin Skippy: marfar: larrycot: TheOnion: I don't know what all happened with Romney and Bain, but this article is pretty obviously not giving an objective history, so I'm going to ignore it. I'd like to know the real story though. Wikipedia wasn't much help.

Probably just to ignore it. Neither Romney nor Bain will disclose exactly what happened, so I'm sure it was all on the up-and-up, and the reporter in TFA is just a commie.

It can be pretty hard to trust an article that starts off with a picture comparing Romney to insects.

A flatworm is a worm. And a tick is an arachnid. Neither is an insect.

The image in the article is cropped from the "Voice" paper. Just above those images, it says "Parasites".

/the title would be correct

LouDobbsAwaaaay		2012-04-22 09:24:35 AM

I don't know what all happened with Japan and Pearl Harbor, but this article is pretty obviously not giving an objective history, so I'm going to ignore it. I'd like to know the real story though. Wikipedia wasn't much help.

SuperTramp		2012-04-22 09:26:00 AM

Nightmaretony		2012-04-22 09:32:29 AM

Karac		2012-04-22 09:33:49 AM

Plant: "Gee, Mitt, our plant is doing great. We're putting on a third shift, doing the best we have in years. Employees are getting a piece of the profits, everyone's got health insurance and a pension, it's just great. We don't really need you."

Mitt: "Well, maybe I could come in with you, take a part of the joint"

Plant: "I don't know, do you have any experience running a steel mill? Have you ever been in one, say a million times?"

Mitt: "I don't know nothing about the steel business. All I know is how to sit down and draw loans. Let's do this."

So now the plant's got Mitt as a business partner. Anything that's not a problem he takes to Mitt. Maintenance on the machines, employees, pension, insurance, managers who know how to run the place - it calls Mitt. But now it has to pay Mitt a management fee every month no matter what. And Mitt can run up bills on the business's credit. And why not - it's not like he has to pay for it anyway. Loans go in the front door and management fees go out the back. It doesn't matter, it's all profit. Finally, when there's nothing left; when the pension funds dry, when the plant can't borrow another buck from the bank, you bust the joint out. File it for bankruptcy. None of the bills are in Bain's name anyhow.

trotsky		2012-04-22 09:40:17 AM

trotsky		2012-04-22 09:43:45 AM

I love the shills with the Union Derangement Syndrome. Yes, Unions are the cause. A bunch of workers who organized a collective for evil stuff like living wages, decent working conditions and benefits. Evil mother farkers intent on destroying the American dream.

The worst part is that the morons really believe this and will vote for this worm, smiling as he ships their job the Mexico.

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