The Interview Mitt Romney Will Never Give

Today Harry Reed Claims he got a communication from a Bain Capital High Ranking Investor a month ago that Mitt Romney paid no taxes for a ten year period.

Hypothetically if someone in Germany in 1932 prayed for the Nazis not to be elected, would God listen to that prayer?  It's a trick question of course.  The answer is "No, he wouldn't"

Fascism was brought in in gradual incriments.  Your tea party friends became mentally brainwashed in increments.  As if the saying goes, "They had seen the end result of what they would become, from the beginning, they would have been horrified and recoiled and turned away.  But they didn't.  They accepted each individual step in abandoning common sense.

Start by refuting the Newt Gingrich lie that the day a Republican gets elected that the economy will take off because money will pour into the economy.  No it won't.  Any recovery is driven by customers and buyers- - and not an influx of money from a rich benefactor.  If we are destined to have a double dip recession, it will be on Romney's watch.  Think of that when you go to the polls in November.

Here's what Mitt Romney should admit:

"Like most private equity guys, I was a white, male, something-cum-laude, Ivy League-type who spent my early career in management consulting and Harvard Business School before getting into the business, where I quickly made some serious money.

"Unlike my cousin Kleiner and his friends who work in Silicon Valley, I was not a venture capitalist who made my money starting companies or inventing things. Unlike Mayor Mike Bloomberg, I was not an entrepreneur who made my money building a company. Unlike folksy Warren Buffett, I was not a long-term investor who made my money from owning companies. And unlike my younger brother Hedge, I didn't make my money because I was really, really smart. (Hedge was a physics professor before starting his fund and still plays chess at a high level but he's too weird to be president.)

"No, I made most of my money from buying and selling a dozen or so companies with other people's money; mostly uninteresting mid-sized companies that nobody particularly wanted; and I got to keep 20% of the difference between the purchase and sale price plus any cash I could take out while I owned them.

"And I now recognize that this short-term buying and selling made me about as knowledgeable about business as George Steinbrenner was about playing baseball. I was an expert at telling business people how to do what I'd never done myself. And to tell you the truth, back when I was in private equity most 'real' businessmen -- the people running our largest companies and the entrepreneurs starting new businesses -- had about as much respect for money guys like me as Dave Winfield had for George -- close to zero.

me

"But despite the bashing it has taken in the press, I'm proud of our private equity system. It plays the vital role of flowing 'risk money' from large investors, mostly large pension funds and the wealthy, into situations where it can be put to good use. Money that allows companies to pursue activities that, while potentially rewarding, involve taking technology, market and operational risks.

"Our country needs investment to create economic growth, improve living standards and increase productivity. Risk money is particularly important not only because of its direct benefits -- profits for successful companies, new and improved products, employment and knowledge -- but also because it gives individuals and institutions the opportunity to exercise their rights to buy, to sell and to pursue their dreams.

"And only independent organizations like Bain have proven able to get the job done because the other candidates for doing the job -- government, angels, banks -- have proven too stupid, too lazy, too small or too bureaucratic.

"Unfortunately everything worth doing can be overdone and sometimes I went from taking risks that were already there to making risks that weren't. Why? Because the company I wanted to buy was too boring, too well run, or too expensive to give me a decent chance of making real money unless I increased the level of risk. And this risk, usually excessive borrowing that I forced the company to take on (usually so that I could buy it) was borne by the company and its employees, customers and vendors with occasionally dire consequences.

"I'm sick to death of making lame excuses -- 'it's all part of creative destruction,' 'the market made me do it,' 'bankruptcy is no big deal,' 'I'd already left Bain when it happened' -- I admit it and, as I told Piers, I felt terrible when a business failed, but risk-making was a small part of what I did.

Make an honest case for why you should be the first private-equity president.

John MacIntosh

"While experts disagree about whether I created any lasting value, there is no doubt that I extracted it wherever possible. Private equity guys are always on the lookout for opportunities to extract value from customers (can we charge more for less?), from vendors (can we pay them later?), from employees (can we outsource to India!), from sellers (can we partner up in the next auction?) and from buyers (can we push the accountants harder?).

"Extraction probably makes things more efficient, and I got to my keep 20% of the extract, but it can be a nasty business.

"I worked hard and am pretty talented, but a large part of how I got so rich was just the dumb luck of joining an industry that was an almost perfectly designed money machine during what turned out to be a 20-year bull run.

"The funds are so large (per person) that even mediocre performance supports big paydays as profits are shared by very few people; the widespread use of borrowed money leads to cycle-driven windfalls even when no value is created over time, and I helped make a lot of other people rich, too, since I created a steady stream of corporate transactions (purchases, sales, mergers, refinancings and restructurings) that generated enormous fees for the bankers, lawyers and consultants for whom private equity is the gift that keeps on giving.  "In private equity, I was surrounded by guys just like me and this can still make it hard for me to relate to regular people. I almost never dealt with women or minorities as true partners. And I'm still perplexed when people don't share my passion for money, efficiency and numbers.

"Weirdly, I don't even feel like I'm in the top .1% given that so many of my friends have a lot more money than me. (That's why I find it so hard to shake my politically suicidal resistance to closing the 'carried interest' tax loophole that has already allowed me and my friends to pocket billions in tax-advantaged compensation.)   "One last thing you probably already know: I wasn't very nice. I always acted in my own economic interest, I quantified everything, I thought creatively about what could be done (not what should), I treated people as means not ends, and I regularly did to others what I would never want done to myself, my friends or my family. You'll have to ask the secretaries, middle managers, nannies and limo drivers what kind of man I really was or how I compared to the other effortlessly superior hotshots who roamed private equity's hallowed halls. But I did some things I'm now ashamed of (the picture with dollars overflowing my pockets) and I still have the habit of saying things I probably shouldn't - 'let's make a $10,000 bet,' 'I enjoy firing people' and 'I'm not concerned about the very poor.'

"On the other hand, I left the private equity world a long time ago and have since done some pretty cool and impressive things -- like running the Olympics and being the governor of Massachusetts -- but my time in the industry remains important because I saw first-hand the worst of debt-induced risk making (rather than risk taking), how the unfettered market tends toward unsustainably large (and morally reprehensible) extremes of wealth and poverty, how globalization offers us both opportunities and threats, and that the perverse incentives in our winner-take-all financial system can lead individually rational people to make collectively insane decisions. But I also know how markets work and that they have no equal as the core organizing principle for our society.

"So as president I will be ideally positioned to do the obvious things that our country needs to get back on track -- like pass the Buffett Tax, close the carried-interest tax loophole, impose a small tax on corporate transactions with the proceeds used to fund oversight of the financial system and limit the tax-deductibility of acquisition-related debt -- without throwing the capitalist baby out with the bathwater.  "And as a rich businessman, I will have the moral authority to increase taxes on the wealthy in our time of national need while ignoring the shrieks of those who, either out of ignorance or malevolent self-interest, will make baseless claims about the adverse effects on jobs and growth."

A Dangerous "Empty Suit"

Mitt Romney and Barry Goldwater both campaigned on wanting to get the United States into a major war.  The difference is that Barry Goldwater was actually a conservative with a brain.  He had values and could process new information and weigh and evaluate it to see if it was wise to act on.  Romney with his etch-a-sketch personality is like an empty vessel awaiting to be filled up by the military junkeys around him.  Romney has taken to hanging out with Dick Chaney and John Boulton.  This was Bush's UN secretary who had before taking the job affirmed that he wanted to put an end to the United Nations, and he's the guy Bush picked for the job.  Today and yesterday in Israel Mittens was handing out with his good buddy Sheldon Adelson.  This is the man who said he was ashamed to wear the uniform of the United States.  Romney told people that the reason why Israel has a lot higher G N P as opposed to the occupied Palestinians is because "Israel's values are superior".  According to Romney apparently it has nothing to do with being an occupied, oppressed nation.  People are still scratching their heads over that "common Anglo-Saxon values' like where he stresses that President Obama does not share fundamental American values.  Mike Papentonio was reviewing all the screwy values of the tea party that Romney has never repuliated.  For instance there is UN "Resolution 21" that supposedly will bring about a socialist America where the government takes away all our guns.  Then there is the roomer that there secret plans under way to unite Canada, the US, and Mexico into one nation.  Of course Michelle Bachman had that remark about "Why should workers have rights and pensions, after all, that's not the way they do things in the Chinese economy" as though the US was amis in not taking the lead of Communist China.  Mike Papentonio talked about "Bio-Whores" or people who doctor up these scientific studies to state and tell those that hired them from the military that there Is no such thing as Global Warming".  The tea party loves this kind of stuff.  We are also reminded that the second amendment, the gun's rights amendment, was NOT enacted so that individual citizens could fire on the very government they just bled and fought for in the Revolutionary war and were now setting up officially.  The second amendment is all about setting up state militia as sort of a "minute man" outsit that could be ready at a moment's notice in liew of a "standing army".  But the thing is these people on the tea party right are complete scientific, economic, socialogical, and historical ignoramuses.  Perhaps this is because they are products of right wing home schooling where they don't believe in teaching these things.  Virtually none of them seem to have any record serving their country in time of war, and yet war is all they fantacise about.  They want perpetual war.  World War II lasted three & three-fourths year, and the European theater was less than three & a half.  And yet for these people, ten years is too short a period to wrap up a war, which is why Rick Perry proposed that we send troops back into Iraq.  Romney and his buddies WANT a war the way Bush and Chaney WANTED a war with Iran, to develope all that "political capital" and all.  It's thoughts like these that keep Romney warm at night.  The idea of cutting the Military ten percent as they agreed on in that debt crisis last year is too much for them to bear.  They intend to produce weapons the pentagon says they don't need, and then all they need is a war to use them on.  As to this talk about Romney saying "I believe in American excellence" (as though we ALL didn't believe that) could be turned around on him.  A reporter might ask, "Well it seems to me you didn't much pursue excellence for your Bain Capital clients.  You set the bar mighty low".  Romney also mentioned "I'm against any President who apologises for any misdeed of the United States abroad."  So I'm inferring if his troops killed a bunch of the enemy they weren't supposed to who were innocent, or if one lone nut just began shooting up the barics, then Romney would have no sense of owing an apology.  There is enough Romney material in this foreign trip for about ten attack campaign ads against Romney.

The Colorado shooter was officially charged today in court.  The judge barred cameras, which is one area where a judge has absolute discretion.  David Cruise and me personally favor cameras in the courtroom as a fulfillment of the sixth amendment of the Constitution, which says every American was entitled to a speedy PUBLIC trial.  To me "Public' means public, which means to not hide the identity of jury or prospective jury members.  Holmes was charged twice for each act of murder making 24, because he was charged with "either" complete indifference to human life and suffering, or else pre-meditated intent to cause bodily harm or loss of life, and the jury can take their pick.  So there are about 140 charges in all, which takes up quite a number of pages just to type out.  Some of the shooting victims were there wearing batman shirts.  Apparently because of this the judge thought seeing how people were dressed on TV audiences would be a "distraction".  I don't follow the logic of this reasoning.  They say that Holmes was more lucid and alert this time, answering questions.  But other reports continue to say he still seemed spaced out.  Holmes still has not made an official plea of guilty or not guilty, nor has the possible enactment of the Death penalty been determined.

Greetings to those who just discovered this blog.  I tend to be mostly liberal except on a few issues.  I believe in property rights and have a bias against emvoking "eminent domain".  I'm generally opposed to the 'nanny state' and believe many FDA regulations are more a function of common sense and a little research.  I am against the food police.  And I am certainly against the smoking police and believe smoking restrictions have gone way too far.  I'm also in favor of eliminating certain beaurocratic regulations on small businesses that are pointless and a pain in the ass.  I'm pro traditional marriage, just not for me.  And I am also staunchly anti abortion.  I am a creationist to the extent that I believe if we lose certain species that "they aren't coming back" and don't expect evolution to do the inherently impossible.  I believe in the wisdom of "mother nature" so to speak, and believe DNA engineering should be proceeded with, with the greatest of caution.  I have a bias against medical assisted suicide and believe in the preciousness of life.  I'm also in favor of religious rights- - - for people of ALL faiths.  Other than these enumerated issues I'm a liberal, so be warned.   Certain people claim to have read my material but it's obvious from talking with them afterward that they haven't.  I am insulted by this.  Some people like to posture in the name of "not hurting my feelings".  Please spare me the pretence.  That's another thing I hate is pretence and hypocracy.

Like the President's mother, it's possible I have former slaves as ancesters.  Just to let the new people know, I am the person who likes a variety of topics and styles.  I do discuss "other dimensions" we can't see.  This is not to say that we should believe in things we can't prove.  It's merely to state that we might be inherently limited in our perceptions of certain things by the way we are designed.  In terms of my personal money crisis, I took four fifty cent pieces today which helped in my buying a bargain pack of cigarettes to get me through Wednesday morning when I can go to the ATM machine and withdraw cash.  I hope not to repeat the monetery crises of May, June, and July, at the end of August.  I am hoping for better things.  I regard quitting smoking as something important I should do sometime.  But I don't regard it as "Urgent" and there IS a different.  Often what is important, like health care and energy regulation, can be screwed up by half-ass and ill thought out measures that at times can be worse than nothing.  In other words, I don't believe it's wise to "set yourself up for failure" because this only plays into the hands of the other side.  (Selah)  That basically means "meditate on this truth".

By Popular Demand - - A Thermonuclear War

It won't be any picnic for Mitt Romney next January after he wins the White House, and I did say "when" and not "if" because even Obama's own people are admitting it's virtually hopeless and the polls are unlikely to shift, and the status quo guarantees a Romney victory with the rigged voting machines and registration purges.  We know, if we believe the doom and gloomsters, that the economy is going to get worse in the next six months and that grocery prices will be substantially higher on 2013.  But that won’t be our biggest problem.  Mitt Romney is going to be elected and it’s a pretty good bet he will get us into a nuclear war with Iran.  This is something we have been predicting since the ‘eighties, that there would be a thermonuclear exchange in 2012 or so probably involving Irran and some allay.  That skit “Between the Wheels” we did last June 7^th appears less “fictional” with each poassing day.  He’s been meeting with Netenyaho and it seems that Nuking Iran is something they can agree on.  I guess they were already best buds from years ago.  One question Romney did NOT answer is what if Isrial chooses NOT to start a nuclear war with Iran, will Mitt Romney respect THAT, or like his cooligue Michelle Bachman will he personally do everything he can TO foment a war with Iran.  Keep in mind our allay Pakistan has a hundred Nukes- - where Iran at the moment has Zero.  You tell me who the bigger threat is.   The issue of Iran getting nukes had pretty much died away as a topic in the previous months when Israel decided that some kind of major air strike of their nuclear facilities was not doable.  Dr. Levy was going on a couple years ago about qualities he would not accept in people he would call his friends.  Well I’m sure Mitt Romney has all of them in spades.  If ever I would call a Presidential candidate of the US “evil” Mitt Romney would be it.  Were Romney a fictional character in a futuristic novel written back in 1984 I would object that “no one person could be the embodiment of that much evil”.  Yesterday Michael Steel was calling an Obama ad against Romney “misleading” because it merely stated that “Mitt Romney has used every trick in the book in order to avoid his fair share of taxes”.  There is nothing the LEAST bit misleading about that.  Steel said the ad implied Romney did something illegal.  The ad says nothing about illegality but on the contrary lays down the message that perhaps our tax laws should be changed to make them fair.  But the story doesn’t ende there.  Today Mitt Romney was asked point blank “Are there years where you have paid substantially LESS than the 14% you paid in 2010?  Romney says “actually I haven’t calculated that”.  Like Hell he hasn’t!  Do we really want to elect a man who is either that stupid or a bold faced liar, or both?  I would say that the selection of Michelle Bachman for his Vice President is still a real possibility.  After all it was two Saturdays ago that people were all talking about how Romney had the position for VP narrowed down to two people and he would “be making the decision next week”.  Now that week has come and gone, and the following week come and gone, and now we are starting yet another week, and this idea of the Vice Presidential pick isn’t even on the radar.  We did hear Dick Chaney make one lucid admission today.  He said that John Mc Cain made a major mistake in picking Sarah Palin.  Clearly Palin’s presence in the campaign was frought with frictions with the Mc Cain people continuously.

Just as an example of how people on the right get lies and falsehoods going this evening Pete Richards told me that Manuel Diaz had a criminal record with “guns or drugs, or something” and he goes on, ‘It was all inside the OC Register.  Just then I got a message from my friends from the other side Stu Sutcliffe and FH, who just happened to be together at the time, that this stuff was a another vicious lie spread by the right wing.  In an affort to be completely fair I Googeled Manuel Diaz drug record, and got virtually nothing except a reference to one “letter to the editor” in the OC Register, which naturally you-know-who and Judy take to be gospel truth.  I think the hypocracy of this letter is a little naked especially the part about “not rushing to judgement” meaning “rushing to the judgement that he was NOT guilty of the things this letter accuses him of.  Pete also said how wonderful the Anaheim police were and how some protestors have looted stores and others protest in front of Disneyland.  And here’s a twist “You know these people picked Disneyland because they are a big corporation with money and these minorities feel entitled and think Disneyland controls the police”.  The hate and hysteria of people like Paul and Judy can hardly be disguised.  Here is the OC Register letter.

What about the fact that Manuel Diaz, along with a couple of other known gang members, were involved in what appeared to suspicious activity to the police? What were they actually doing in that alley?  If they were not doing anything wrong, why did they run? Evidently, they ran to avoid contact with the police. What did they throw on the top of those buildings as they were running? Does an innocent person act this way? It would appear that the actions of Diaz and his compadres support the police suspicion that they were doing something they shouldn't have been.  What action did Diaz take toward the police who were chasing him? We just don't know all the facts. I know as much or as little as the protesters do. And if it is determined that the police acted erroneously or in bad faith, then the appropriate action should be taken against them. However, we, the people who were not there that night, should wait for the results of the investigation before passing judgment.

I told you if you asked me for the prognosticator with the best track record consistently over the years I’d do a Dick Chaney and recommend myself.  Let’s look at the prognostications of the other side.  Now they are predicting that Obama Care involves implanting these subcutaneous skin chips in the body with magnetic bar codes on them like on food prices.  Glen Beck predicted by now we’d have German style triple digit inflation.  Others predicted a collapse of the foreign bond market after that debt ceiling line was brushed up against.  So many including Thom Hartman have been predicting a double dip recession.  Others predicted a Unified European Union.  In my book in 1980 I said “there are just too many economic and cultural deivisions for that.  It will never happen”.  Who was right.  The latest possible date the Rapture of the Christians can occur is May of 1981, I kid you not.  Of course there are the ever present roomers of “Death Pannels”.  Rush Limbaugh predicted the President would pay the mortgage off of everyone with an underwater mortgage this September.  They keep talking about “Tax-Mageddon” coming in 2013.  Of course we know that Obama wants to take away your guns.  Now they say the President is reducing border enforcement so that more illegal aliens can get across.  Of course the President is guilty of leaking his own national security documents.  And of course the President is against anybody who built their own business.  Mitt Romney claims to know this “just by the tone of his voice”.  Rush Limbaugh goes on to say that “We know that roads and bridges were not built by the government because in China, where everything is run by the government, they have only half the mileage of roads and highways that we have in this country”.  Is Rush that dumb not to know that China has only been building up its infrastructure for 30 years and not for two centuries, as we have.  And we are reminded “The Government did not build the Internet- - - the defense department did.”  (?)  

As of right now I’ve had about seven cigarettes or five whole ones and four or five long butts, in the past one and three-quarters day working out to an average of one cigarette every six hours.  Of course the night is coming and I don’t usually smoke during the seven or eight hours that I am asleep.  I watched the USA defeat Montenegro in men’s water polo.  The Dodgers shut out San Francisco for the first time since leaving Brooklyn in 1957.  They swept the searies with the Giants this past weekend.  I trolled the grounds before dinner looking for a cigarette.  I didn’t find one.  We had Roast Beef and mashed potatoes and gravy and mixed vegetables.  They started seconds on the other side of the room for the zillionth time in a row, but Laura ran out really fast anyhow.  We had tapioca pudding for desert.  I fished a cigarette out of the ash tray that Gloria had placed there after she lit another right up.  I’m sure love to be in the boat of these people around here who are guaranteeing getting ten cigarettes every morning.  That would be a blessing.