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.
"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."
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