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I don�t understand how anyone with half a brain can be repub
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No_hite_pls



Joined: 05 Mar 2007
Location: Don't hate me because I'm right

PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 3:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

visitorq wrote:
Despite all the nonsense from the left about him being a corporate raider, his success rate was actually remarkable.


To tell the truth, I have only heard the negatives myself. What are some of his success story's from Bain capital?
What company's did Bain acquire and created job growth?

My perception is that Bain capital made profits from net job losses.
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wishfullthinkng



Joined: 05 Mar 2010

PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 6:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

visitorq wrote:
But regardless, he is far more qualified than Obama (who knows nothing about economics) when it comes to fixing the economy. It's just hard to know his motives for sure, since he is such a flip-flopper. It's possible we could get lucky and he actually would try to roll back government regulation and cut taxes to help small businesses. I wouldn't hold my breath though...


you do realize that the president is pretty much a glorified figurehead right? sure he has some power but you really think he doesn't have a world-class team of economists in his cabinet? obama, nor any other president, ever single handedly "fixed" the economy.
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visitorq



Joined: 11 Jan 2008

PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 6:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

actionjackson wrote:
visitorq wrote:
As much as I distrust Romney, when it comes to the economy I actually believe he understands how to fix it. He was one of the top consultants in the world (at Bain Capital) and actually something of a prodigy. His whole career was taking failing companies and turning them around[b].

I think your idea of prodigy and my idea of prodigy must differ because I always thought prodigy meant being really good at something.
Quote:
Thanks to leverage, 10 of roughly 67 major deals by Bain Capital during Romney�s watch produced about 70 percent of the firm�s profits.

In 1992, Bain Capital bought American Pad & Paper by financing 87 percent of the purchase price. In the next three years, Ampad borrowed to make acquisitions, repay existing debt and pay Bain Capital and its investors $60 million in dividends. As a result, [b]the company�s debt swelled from $11 million in 1993 to $444 million by 1995. The $14 million in annual interest expense on this debt dwarfed the company�s $4.7 million operating cash flow. The proceeds of an initial public offering in July 1996 were used to pay Bain Capital $48 million for part of its stake and to reduce the company�s debt to $270 million. From 1993 to 1999, Bain Capital charged Ampad about $18 million in various fees. By 1999, the company�s debt was back up to $400 million. Unable to pay the interest costs and drained of cash paid to Bain Capital in fees and dividends, Ampad filed for bankruptcy the following year. Senior secured lenders got less than 50 cents on the dollar, unsecured lenders received two- tenths of a cent on the dollar, and several hundred jobs were lost. Bain Capital had reaped capital gains of $107 million on its $5.1 million investment.
Bain Capital�s acquisition in 1994 of Dade International, a supplier of in-vitro diagnostic products, was 81 percent financed by debt. Of the $85 million in equity, about $27 million came from Bain with the rest coming from a group of investors that included Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
From 1995 to 1999, Bain Capital tripled Dade�s debt from about $300 million to $902 million.
In the two years following the acquisition in 1993 of GS Industries, a steel mill, for $8 million, Bain Capital increased the company�s debt to $378 million on operating income of less than a 10th of that amount. By the time the company went bankrupt in 2001, it owed $554 million in debt against assets valued at $395 million. Many creditors lost money, and 750 workers lost their jobs.

Bain Capital�s acquisition of Stage Stores, a department- store chain, in 1988 was 96 percent financed by debt (mostly in junk bonds) -- an extreme level for a cyclical and very competitive low-margin business. Bain sold a large part of its stake in 1997 for a $184 million gain, three years before the company filed for bankruptcy because of its inability to service its $600 million debt.

This is a gross distortion of what happened. Here is a statement issued by Bain Capital directly:

Throughout Bain Capital�s 28-year history, we have been focused on growing businesses and improving their operations. We acquired Ampad from Mead Corp. in 1992, and grew the overall business during the four years we controlled the company. The Marion plant was a challenging situation in a business that was performing well overall, growing revenues and adding jobs. Our control of Ampad ended in 1996, fully four years before it encountered financial difficulties due to overwhelming pressure from �big box�� retailers, declines in paper demand, and intense foreign price pressures. Despite political attacks that emphasize the few companies that have struggled, the facts are that during Bain Capital�s ownership, revenues grew in 80 percent of the more than 350 companies in which we have invested.

Quote:
visitorq wrote:
Despite all the nonsense from the left about him being a corporate raider, his success rate was actually remarkable.

I hate to burst your bubble but if you watch the video the man himself says the plan is to harvest them for a significant profit, he says those exact words in the first 15 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EsxNYXW5i8

I'm not sure what it is you imagine his meaning to be, but when he says "harvest the companies for profit" it most certainly does not mean taking them to a chop shop and selling off all their assets as scrap. Rather, it means they try to improve the companies and make them profitable, and then harvest the profits (i.e. reap the reward of their investment). Bain Capital has a track record of returning far more companies to profitability than in allowing them to fail. Of course it is a difficult business to be in, and there were certainly some failures on their watch, but overall they are one of the most successful firms of their type in the world.
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actionjackson



Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Location: Any place I'm at

PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 7:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

visitorq wrote:
I'm not sure what it is you imagine his meaning to be, but when he says "harvest the companies for profit" it most certainly does not mean taking them to a chop shop and selling off all their assets as scrap. Rather, it means they try to improve the companies and make them profitable, and then harvest the profits (i.e. reap the reward of their investment). Bain Capital has a track record of returning far more companies to profitability than in allowing them to fail. Of course it is a difficult business to be in, and there were certainly some failures on their watch, but overall they are one of the most successful firms of their type in the world.

I guess using the word harvest in the context of talking about business brings to mind, in my mind anyway, nefarious intentions.


Last edited by actionjackson on Thu Nov 01, 2012 8:02 pm; edited 4 times in total
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 7:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Visitorq,

Why are you defending Bain? Pick your battles, man. Remember that the Feds had to bail out Bain under Romney's tenure.

The amusing thing about all this: Romney did an above average job as Governor of Massachusetts. He should have leveraged a New England Republican image as soon as he left the primaries. Instead, he recruited Paul Ryan and waited all the way to the first debate to ambush Obama.
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actionjackson



Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Location: Any place I'm at

PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 8:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

double post

Last edited by actionjackson on Thu Nov 01, 2012 8:18 pm; edited 1 time in total
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actionjackson



Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Location: Any place I'm at

PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 8:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

triple post, boom, hat trick
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Steelrails



Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System

PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 9:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I see nothing wrong with firing a bunch of employees in order to keep a company viable and appealing to additional investment. Better that than them going belly up and EVERYONE losing their job. Of course that's assuming the Execs aren't giving themselves massive bonuses and salaries. Which is in all likelihood, not the case.
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visitorq



Joined: 11 Jan 2008

PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 9:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kuros wrote:
Visitorq,

Why are you defending Bain? Pick your battles, man. Remember that the Feds had to bail out Bain under Romney's tenure.

Yeah, except that this is not actually true. You shouldn't believe everything that's printed in Rolling Stone magazine (Matt Taibbi et al just flat out lie about many things). Just FYI:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-06/romney-s-bain-and-co-dot-didn-t-get-bailout-reality-check

Anyway, it's not like I really enjoy defending Romney, but when the truth is being distorted I feel the need to point it out...
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Fox



Joined: 04 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 9:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Steelrails wrote:
Of course that's assuming the Execs aren't giving themselves massive bonuses and salaries.


Over-payment of executive management is the baseline standard in America. There ought to be a basic progression: lower executive salaries before lowering worker salaries, lower worker salaries before firing, and fire minimally as an absolute last resort. This is humanitarian; this shows we're in it together, and acknowledges that the well-being of a factory worker's family is a greater priority than the CEO getting to buy another boat. Instead, workers are treated as a disposable resource (a disposable resource expected to go deeply into debt in order to train itself sufficiently to earn the privilege of being a disposable resource!) and excessive executive enrichment is taken as a baseline standard.

I'm not going to demonize the rich here, and I'm not going to say executives don't work hard: they generally do (though the same is not true of investors). A degree of disparity in income is justifiable, but only a degree. Henry Ford's "virtuous cycle" has been inverted into a vicious cycle, wherein the executives take ever more, the average worker earns ever less (or is shut out of the economy entirely), and then people furrow their brows and wonder why our society face problems.

"But if we don't hand over hundreds of millions to our CEOs, they'll leave the country and take their magic job-making powers with them!" Put up some serious trade barriers and tell them to go to Hell. America is a market of hundreds of millions, and the nation is reasonably resource rich. It can afford to throw its weight around here.
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actionjackson



Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Location: Any place I'm at

PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 10:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In keeping with the topic, death by deregulation.
Quote:
I doubt Lilian Cary, 67, would be voting for Mitt Romney or any Republican this year. Actually, Lilian won't be voting for anyone next week, because she died of meningitis, weeks after being injected with steroids for back pain. She is one of 25 people so far to have died from contaminated vials of epidural steroids. Her husband was also given those injections at the same clinic and could be facing a similar fate. As of late October, 338 people have been stricken by infection. In all, over 14,000 people have been injected with these contaminated steroids. There will undoubtedly be more illnesses and deaths before this mass tragedy is over.

The tainted vials were made by a pharmacy, New England Compounding Center (NECC). A deadly black fungus, Exserohilum, found in the vials was also found throughout the facility. "The entire pharmacy was an incubator of bacteria and fungus. The pharmacy knew this through monitoring results, and chose to do nothing," said former FDA officer Sarah Sellers who left the agency in 2008 after unsuccessfully pushing it to increase regulation of compounding pharmacies. Employees knew about the unsterile conditions and violated established protocols, but the pharmacy chose to do nothing about it. Inspectors found multiple breaks in sterile techniques, including that employees had turned off the air conditioning at night to save the company money, undermining the conditions needed to prevent growth of contaminating organisms. Every drug the company made is now suspect.

Welcome to a glimpse of Mitt Romney's and the Republican's Party's Holy Grail for economic revival - a free market on steroids, and a war on regulation. Virtually all government regulatory functions are under attack. Drug manufacturing, food safety, environmental protections, health care, banking and financial regulations, work place safety, and non-discrimination protection have all been placed on the altar of the free market under the cloak of "freedom, job creation" or the discipline and joy of "personal responsibility."

While the Republican's wage an overt war on regulation, they also wage a covert war by demanding budget cuts to virtually all regulatory agencies, further neutering their ability to function. With the GOP demand for budget austerity, first on their list of things to cut is "discretionary spending," which, among other things, means spending on enforcing regulations.

For example, even though President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act into law - giving the FDA wider power to prevent food-borne illness outbreaks - the number of Americans who became sick or died because of contaminated food increased 44% over the last two years, according to a new report from the US Public Interest Research Group. But the FDA remains unable to implement the reforms because of Republican refusal to fund them.

Typical of the Republican thought process is this statement last year from Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA): "The food supply in America is very safe because the private sector self-polices, because they have the highest motivation. They don't want to be sued; they don't want to go broke. They want their customers to be healthy and happy."

This is how wildly successful this self policing strategy is: 76 million illnesses occur annually from contaminated food, with 128,000 requiring hospitalization and 3,000 people dying - every year - as many as died in the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center (remember contaminated spinach, peanut butter, hamburger, and cantaloupes?). We have spent trillions of dollars on the "War on Terror," the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, homeland security, and Mitt Romney wants the sky to be the limit on even more defense spending, yet spending a few million to prevent contaminated food - which kills far more people - is something that the entire Republican Party just can't tolerate.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/12463-fatalities-in-the-gop-war-on-regulation

And to be fair, it's my understanding that a lot of these types of regulations would be sent to the state level, if I'm wrong please correct me, which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing. But then you get into how do you regulate from state to state? I mean what's good for one state is bad for another. Then you've got air pollution, water runoff into rivers, etc., my mind starts hurting thinking about it all.
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visitorq



Joined: 11 Jan 2008

PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 10:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

^ Are you kidding? Some people die from contaminated steroid injections and it's a giant republican conspiracy?

I've got news for you: the government will not keep you safe. All the regulation in the world will not prevent such incidents from occurring, and in fact there is reason to believe that it is actually harmful to the consumer. Think about Monsanto feeding us all their GMO garbage with no labeling even allowed in supermarkets, or Big Pharma trying to inject us all with dangerous vaccines (subsidized by the gov't). This is your loving, caring, socialist government at work.

I trust the free-market, "buyer beware" way of doing things far, far more than I trust government agencies like the FDA. I actually loathe the FDA and hold it responsible for so much that has gone wrong. As far as I'm concerned, it deserves to have its funding cut, or better yet be abolished. Firms that engage in criminal negligence should be held criminally accountable, but that is the only regulation we need.

(Also, I've got other news for you: Republicans are just in favor of regulation as Democrats, since it allows them to shut their competition through regulatory capture/lobbying).
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bucheon bum



Joined: 16 Jan 2003

PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2012 3:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

actionjackson wrote:
In keeping with the topic, death by deregulation.
Quote:
I doubt Lilian Cary, 67, would be voting for Mitt Romney or any Republican this year. Actually, Lilian won't be voting for anyone next week, because she died of meningitis, weeks after being injected with steroids for back pain. She is one of 25 people so far to have died from contaminated vials of epidural steroids. Her husband was also given those injections at the same clinic and could be facing a similar fate. As of late October, 338 people have been stricken by infection. In all, over 14,000 people have been injected with these contaminated steroids. There will undoubtedly be more illnesses and deaths before this mass tragedy is over.

The tainted vials were made by a pharmacy, New England Compounding Center (NECC). A deadly black fungus, Exserohilum, found in the vials was also found throughout the facility. "The entire pharmacy was an incubator of bacteria and fungus. The pharmacy knew this through monitoring results, and chose to do nothing," said former FDA officer Sarah Sellers who left the agency in 2008 after unsuccessfully pushing it to increase regulation of compounding pharmacies. Employees knew about the unsterile conditions and violated established protocols, but the pharmacy chose to do nothing about it. Inspectors found multiple breaks in sterile techniques, including that employees had turned off the air conditioning at night to save the company money, undermining the conditions needed to prevent growth of contaminating organisms. Every drug the company made is now suspect.

Welcome to a glimpse of Mitt Romney's and the Republican's Party's Holy Grail for economic revival - a free market on steroids, and a war on regulation. Virtually all government regulatory functions are under attack. Drug manufacturing, food safety, environmental protections, health care, banking and financial regulations, work place safety, and non-discrimination protection have all been placed on the altar of the free market under the cloak of "freedom, job creation" or the discipline and joy of "personal responsibility."

While the Republican's wage an overt war on regulation, they also wage a covert war by demanding budget cuts to virtually all regulatory agencies, further neutering their ability to function. With the GOP demand for budget austerity, first on their list of things to cut is "discretionary spending," which, among other things, means spending on enforcing regulations.

For example, even though President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act into law - giving the FDA wider power to prevent food-borne illness outbreaks - the number of Americans who became sick or died because of contaminated food increased 44% over the last two years, according to a new report from the US Public Interest Research Group. But the FDA remains unable to implement the reforms because of Republican refusal to fund them.

Typical of the Republican thought process is this statement last year from Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA): "The food supply in America is very safe because the private sector self-polices, because they have the highest motivation. They don't want to be sued; they don't want to go broke. They want their customers to be healthy and happy."

This is how wildly successful this self policing strategy is: 76 million illnesses occur annually from contaminated food, with 128,000 requiring hospitalization and 3,000 people dying - every year - as many as died in the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center (remember contaminated spinach, peanut butter, hamburger, and cantaloupes?). We have spent trillions of dollars on the "War on Terror," the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, homeland security, and Mitt Romney wants the sky to be the limit on even more defense spending, yet spending a few million to prevent contaminated food - which kills far more people - is something that the entire Republican Party just can't tolerate.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/12463-fatalities-in-the-gop-war-on-regulation

And to be fair, it's my understanding that a lot of these types of regulations would be sent to the state level, if I'm wrong please correct me, which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing. But then you get into how do you regulate from state to state? I mean what's good for one state is bad for another. Then you've got air pollution, water runoff into rivers, etc., my mind starts hurting thinking about it all.


When you look at the FDA's powers, it is clear who determined them: the pharma industry. I wouldn't put sole blame on the GOP either; it applies to the Dems as well.

Dems pass this crap because they can hype their progressive record (we're making sure your drugs our safe!), while Republicans do it so a) they can say they are looking out for our interests and giving themselves a "human touch" b) a sop to big pharma corporate interests (as visitorq noted).

Not to sound like caniff, but it is all a load of crap.
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Ya-ta Boy



Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2012 4:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It was remarkable 4 years ago that more than one person on this site bemoaned the decline of the Right, but there was no such dejection in '68 or (especially) '80 when the liberals went down to defeat.

For better or worse, our country has a 2-party system. That's just the way it is and has been for a couple of centuries (with temporary variations). Since at least '80 we have had a dominant conservative governing philosophy (I think longer), but at least since the days of RR we have had an aggressive anti-government ("Government is not the solution, government is the problem" view).

The liberals have failed to offer an alternative plan. The result has been a 'steady' (lurch is a better word) to the right. As a consequence, we are now faced with a candidate who may be a 'moderate' in his own views (who knows?) but is hostage to Grover Norquist and the Tea Party. Should Romney be elected next week, he will have no choice but to be severely conservative or face a primary challenge in '16.

Clinton and Obama, who are probably liberals at heart, have had to govern from the center because there has not been a countervailing pull from the left. Not that that has done them any good since the Right has morphed into a reactionary and highly destructive movement.

No? Under almost any other circumstances, if the opposition party meets the same day an electee takes office and makes a corrupt deal among themselves to oppose any and all policy proposals while the country is faced with the worst financial disaster in almost a century? In almost any country in almost any time in almost any situation, would that not be considered treason? (More or less like the Federalists at Hartford?) Think last summer and the debt ceiling debacle.

And now we are a couple of days away from that party being rewarded with election to the highest office in the land. Washington warned of the dangers of partisanship, and we could be hours away from the worst consequences of it. I don't think it will happen. My faith in the people is too strong...but then we have the treasonous party also playing games with voter registration.

To borrow from Mr. Lincoln: You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Next Tuesday, the conservative movement will almost certainly find that they haven't fooled enough of the people this time.
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bucheon bum



Joined: 16 Jan 2003

PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2012 7:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Speaking of Republicans, they're dying out in California

Quote:
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) � California has reached an all-time high of 18.2 million registered voters, while the number of registered Republicans has fallen below 30 percent, signaling a worrisome decline for the state's minority party, officials said Friday.


And it isn't just the % of people registered Republican, the actual number of voters registered as Republican has dropped too. The OP would appreciate this comment from John Burton:

Quote:
[The stats are] "an indication of how totally out-of-touch the Republican Party is with voters in California, and how intelligent Californians are compared with some of the rest of the country."


And speaking of John Burton, here is an amusing piece from the Daily Show last year about how messed up California is (includes clips of an interview with Burton):

Link
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