If "RomneyCare" doesn't bury Mitt's Presidential hopes, this should.

[freshjiva]

http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/115412-mitt-rewrites-himself/



Mitt Rewrites Himself
A new Apology
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | February 11, 2011

Update: Read the Talking Politics blog for David Bernstein's excerpts and analysis of the new paperback edition of Mitt Romney's book "No Apology."


When Mitt Romney's second book, No Apology, came out a year ago, it looked like he was moving away from the far-right demagoguery of his 2008 bid for the presidency, and toward a more moderate centrism for the 2012 election cycle. (See "New and Improved Romney," Talking Politics, February 10, 2010.)

But times change, and so does Mitt. A year later, with the Tea Party–fueled extremism of the 2010 midterms foretelling a rightward tilt to the GOP presidential primaries, Romney is tacking back — as evidenced by changes made to two sections of the text in the new paperback edition of No Apology.

The first rewrite excises a relatively even-handed assessment of the 2009 economic-stimulus package. In the original, Romney wrote that it "will accelerate the timing of the start of the recovery, but not as much as it could have." The paperback pronounces the stimulus "a failure," and blasts Obama's "economic missteps" with conservative red-meat language — for example: "This is the first time government has declared war on free enterprise."

The other major change comes in a chapter on health care. In the original hardcover, Romney tried to carefully distinguish between the Massachusetts law and the national version that was nearing passage as he wrote.

But the Massachusetts model has become Romney's bête noire among conservatives, who loathe the national reform they call "Obamacare." The rewritten paperback swings much harder, proclaiming that "Obamacare will not work and should be repealed," and "Obamacare is an unconstitutional federal incursion into the rights of states."

Other additions in that section blame the Massachusetts legislature for altering his plan, and the current Democratic administration of Governor Deval Patrick for botching the implementation.

Asked about the changes, Eric Fehrnstrom, spokesperson for Romney's Free and Strong America PAC, responded by e-mail: "The book was originally written in the months immediately following President Obama's inauguration. A lot has occurred over the last two years, and these updates reflect those happenings."

That's true. Of course, it's also true of many other topics in No Apology, virtually all of which is reproduced exactly from the hardcover.

"I'm sure he saw what happened to Trey Grayson, Mike Castle, and Sue Lowden last year," says Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling in North Carolina, referring to Republicans who lost US Senate primaries to Tea Party–backed candidates in Kentucky, Delaware, and Nevada. "It's those same voters who nominated Sharron Angle [for US Senate in Nevada] who are going to choose the Republican presidential nominee."

Romney certainly appears to be targeting those voters in the paperback's new introduction, in which he bemoans the "elite" liberals' destruction of everything the Founding Fathers stood for — especially "freedom," a word that appears 25 times in the introduction. "Constitution" shows up 11 times. The Tea Party gets mentioned by name, as does the Glenn Beck–promoted 9/12 movement — even Joe the Plumber gets a shout-out.

The subtitle has also changed, from "The case for American greatness" to the more campaign-sloganish "Believe in America." Whether Tea Party voters can believe in the ever-shifting Romney is still a question.

[american.swan]

ooooooooo NICE find!

[malkusm]

+rep!

[libertybrewcity]

swweett

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

mitt will use his pimp dollars to buy 100000 online tickets with dead people's names

[Batman]

I couldn't stomach the guy after his crappy answer on DADT on national TV.

[jdmyprez_deo_vindice]

Sadly, the average GOP voter will care less because Mitt is "a good business guy". Honestly, people do not even care about truth or dignity anymore. All the GOP base seems to want is the awe inspiring animal known as the pander bear.

[eduardo89]

If this doesn't sink him then I propose a chip in for a transvestite prostitute to seduce him on tape

[Krugerrand]

If this doesn't sink him then I propose a chip in for a transvestite prostitute to seduce him on tape

http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/u162/laughing%20dog.gif

[freshjiva]

bump.

I will bring this to the front of RPF from time to time. It's THAT important for everyone here and around the nation to know about.

[Original_Intent]

Reposted to the "LDS Freedom Forum". There is a quite a strong anti Mitt sentiment there...(very Pro Ron Paul, also!)

[specsaregood]

Sadly, the average GOP voter will care less because Mitt is "a good business guy". Honestly, people do not even care about truth or dignity anymore. All the GOP base seems to want is the awe inspiring animal known as the pander bear.

But he doesn't know shit about economics. Review the debates, he propagated the myth that the economy was all good. He didn't see the housing crisis or economic crisis coming when the signs were right in front of his nose.

[freshjiva]

BUMP!

This huge scam by Romney must be known by ALL.

[ItsTime]

Wait am I reading this right? He actually flip flopped within the same book when it went from hardcover to softcover?!

[Kregisen]

lol +rep to OP

[HOLLYWOOD]

Finally the country is catching on to Mitt Romney... finally! Mitt Romney's BAIN CAPITAL

http://thespeechatimeforchoosing.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/mitt-romney-didn%E2%80%99t-create-jobs-as-a-businessman-he-destroyed-them/


February 25, 2011 · 4:55 pm
↓ Jump to Comments (http://thespeechatimeforchoosing.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/mitt-romney-didn%e2%80%99t-create-jobs-as-a-businessman-he-destroyed-them/#comments)
Mitt Romney Didn’t Create Jobs As A Businessman, He Destroyed Them


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8s-HDD1qEZE/SxNPSCbtnlI/AAAAAAAAAIg/v9K3Mq3B-CY/s1600/Romney-Democrat-Puppet.jpg (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8s-HDD1qEZE/SxNPSCbtnlI/AAAAAAAAAIg/v9K3Mq3B-CY/s640/Romney-Democrat-Puppet.jpg)
By Gary P Jackson
One of the greatest myths floating around these days is the one claiming Mitt Romney would be a “great president” because of his business experience and ability to create good jobs.
First off, it’s been proven time and time again that “business experience,” even at the executive level, doesn’t always translate into the ability to successfully govern. Mitt Romney just happens to be Exhibit A!
We reported earlier that Mitt Romney, who ran for Governor on his ability to create jobs, was totally unable to fulfill that promise (http://thespeechatimeforchoosing.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/roflmao-mitt-romney-calls-obama-out-on-lack-of-job-creation/%20), and his state was ranked 50 out of 50 at job creation after a full year of his “expertise.”
But still you say: “He was a successful businessman.” Well, as Josh Kosman at the New York Post points out, Romney’s “success” came on the back of the employees of businesses his company, Bain Capitol, destroyed. What this shows is, rather than creating successful businesses, Romney and company engaged in the “turn and burn” quick buck artisty many corporate raiders are known for. This is a devastaing read:
Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, bought companies and often increased short-term earnings so those businesses could then borrow enormous amounts of money. That borrowed money was used to pay Bain dividends. Then those businesses needed to maintain that high level of earnings to pay their debts.
Romney in 2007 told the New York Times he had nothing to do with taking dividends from two companies that later went bankrupt, and that one should not take a distribution from a business that put the company at risk.

Yet Geoffrey Rehnert, who helped start Bain Capital and is now co-CEO of the private equity firm The Audax Group, told me for my Penguin book, “The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy,” that Romney owned a controlling stake in Bain Capital between approximately 1992 and 2001. The firm under his watch took such risks, time and time again
.
Bain and Goldman Sachs, for example, put $85 million down in a $415 million 1994 leveraged buyout of Baxter International’s medical testing division (renamed Dade Behring), which sold machines and reagents to labs.

Former Dade CEO Scott Garrett, who managed the business for the first few years after the takeover, said Romney “was far more in tune with what was going on throughout his firm, and even the portfolio companies, than you might expect.”

Bain reduced Dade’s research and development spending to 6 to 7 percent of sales, while its peers allocated between 10 and 15 percent. Dade in June 1999 used the savings as part of the basis to borrow $421 million. Dade then turned around and used $365 million from the loan to buy shares from its owners, giving them a 4.3 times return on their investment.

A Dade executive, who requested anonymity, said he confronted new CEO Steven Barnes after a boardroom meeting within a week of the distribution.
“You really think it’s a good idea to borrow, you know, one times sales?” he asked.
“Oh. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that’s fine,” Barnes responded. “You know companies do that all the time.“

The executive then told Barnes, “Well, that’d be like me going out and borrowing the amount of money I make in a year and then trying to pay it off and pay for my house and feed myself and everything else. That doesn’t make sense.” The executive said he let it drop after that.

In August 2002, Dade filed for bankruptcy.

[HOLLYWOOD]

More on business destroyer Mitt 'MANDATE' Romney and BAIN CAPITAL This going viral alone will destroy Romney's political career.


http://www.democracynow.org/images/nav/dn_logo.png

January 17, 2008 (http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2008/1/17) Romney’s Bain Capital Profited Through Offshore Tax Havens, Closing U.S. Factories, Laying Off Workers

Share7 (http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.democracynow.org%2F2 008%2F1%2F17%2Fat_times_romneys_bain_capital_profi ted&t=Romney%27s%20Bain%20Capital%20Profited%20Through %20Offshore%20Tax%20Havens%2C%20Closing%20U.S.%20F actories%2C%20Laying%20Off%20Workers&src=sp)

http://www.democracynow.org/images/story/81/16381/RomneyWeb1.jpg During his campaign, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has preached a message of economic populism by vowing to fight to keep jobs in America. We take a look at Romney’s days heading up the buyout firm Bain Capital with Los Angeles Times reporter, Bob Drogin. He writes, "From 1984 until 1999, Romney led Bain Capital, a Boston-based private equity group that earned jaw-dropping profits through leveraged buyouts, debt hedge funds, offshore tax havens and other financial strategies. In some cases, Romney’s team closed U.S. factories, causing hundreds of layoffs, or pocketed huge fees shortly before companies collapsed."





TRANSCRIPT (portion)




BOB DROGIN: Yeah, that’s correct. I mean, the first thing is, it’s not an investment firm, as someone just said. An investment firm is something where you make an investment. It’s a buyout firm. In 1984, he was tapped to set up a—what began as a venture capital spin-off of a management consulting firm in Boston called Bain & Company. And Bain Capital began with these small investments in what were then startup companies, but very quickly, within a year or two, it became what’s known as a leveraged buyout company. They would put up a million dollars or so and borrow ten or twenty or fifty more and buy into troubled companies and then strip assets and lay off workers and close factories and do whatever they needed to do, charge enormous fees and sell it as quickly as possible.


Over the years, by the time he took a leave of absence in 1999, they had bought and sold more than a hundred companies. And it’s a little difficult to figure out how many jobs were lost or how many jobs were created, and I’m sure that overall there was probably a net gain in jobs in that period, but there are a number of cases that I was able to track where they did close companies, close factories, where they made staggering profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars, shortly before companies crashed off into bankruptcy.


You know, this was the so-called decade of greed, and these were guys who were very much in the model of the Gordon Gekko. I mean, these were—and it’s not illegal, it’s not improper; it’s—you know, it’s the way the system works. They went in, they bought up troubled companies. In some cases, they made them better; in some cases, they just, you know, shredded them and took the money and ran. So, that’s the broad background.


A side light of that was Bain Capital, which today has assets of about $60 billion—that’s their—the number that they officially say—and about a third of that comes from these offshore operations that Romney set up when he was still there, in particular, companies that are set up—really, they’re just mail drops, they’re mailboxes; they don’t have any staff, they don’t have any operations. The one on Grand Cayman Island is a Post Office Box 60D, I think, on Grand Cayman Island, and the ones in Bermuda are also at a lawyer’s office. But they’ve got them in other places as well. And they bring in somewhere above $25 billion a year.

And again, it’s—these are companies—these are operations set up through various systems. They’re blocker corporations. They are investment—or rather, equity groups that are set up to attract, for the large part, foreign capital. And the reason these are set up overseas is so that foreign investors in these private companies can avoid paying US taxes. Mitt Romney and his colleagues don’t get that advantage. So it’s not like they are avoiding taxes through this. It’s simply—what happens is, they’re helping other people avoid paying US taxes, and as a result they make enormous profits.


JUAN GONZALEZ: And how, precisely, do the foreign investors avoid taxes? Are these companies that are based there—are they investing in US companies?

BOB DROGIN: For the most part. They also have holdings offshore. Bain now has—I can’t really recall, because I really didn’t look into it. I mean, it has operations in Hong Kong, in England and a number—I think it’s got eight affiliates offshore—that is, overseas. And I know the one in Italy, for example, recently got some attention, because it was buying into something that had ties to the Iranian regime and Iranian oil. But it’s—those are sort of separate from what I was looking at. For the most part, the ones that Bain Capital in Boston set up through these tax havens, these, you know, islands, basically—Bermuda, the Caymans, the Jersey Islands and whatnot—were really about investments in US companies.


AMY GOODMAN: Bob Drogin, you write about Romney being the wealthiest candidate, a personal fortune of up to, what, $250 million?


BOB DROGIN: I think that’s a conservative estimate, but it’s at least—you know, it’s somewhere in that range.


AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about Brad Malt and what he told you.


BOB DROGIN: Brad Malt is head of Ropes & Gray. He’s a lawyer. He is the trustee for what was originally set up as a blind trust for Mitt Romney’s financial holdings, when he was elected governor of Massachusetts in 2002. The blind trust is no longer quite so blind, because last year, as part of his campaign disclosure forms, that we suddenly got to see what’s in the trust in very broad terms. Among the things that we learned is that, even though Mitt Romney claimed to have left Bain & Company in 1999, in fact he was still there, still on the books, until he—basically until he ran for governor. And he still has the right to invest and the right to continue to draw his profit share on his margin until 2009, and he still retains equity in—I believe I counted thirty-two, or identified thirty-two separate Bain-related investment funds, as well as other funds that he has access to.


What Brad Malt told me was—and I was specifically trying to understand these offshore operations—was that it really didn’t matter whether these were set up, you know, in the Cayman Islands or Mars, the point was it was a way of attracting what he described as billions of dollars. And, of course, that’s exactly right. That’s what they were able to do. And he said he has—these have been very sound investments for Romney. He’s only looking at Romney’s personal fortune here, that they’ve paid upwards of, he said, 20% to 30% a year, which obviously, you know, beats T-bills or something, and that he’s made, you know, numerous investments in those funds since taking over the trust. So he was arguing, making the case, as the campaign did, that not only is there nothing wrong with these—these are not tax loopholes, in the sense that Mitt Romney doesn’t gain any tax advantage from it—but in fact that they’re quite wise investments on his part.

[ItsTime]

Bump for a laugh

[Aratus]

if he becomes most humble as he credits SCOTT BROWN to the 90 or 95 percentile
for the exact and precise wording of romneyCare, we indeed do have the historic
celebrated & glorious McKinley Tariff of 1890 as a most "previous and prior" classic
example of a bill NOT BEING the brainfreeze of the guy who is handed THE credit

[HOLLYWOOD]

Bump for a laugh

Just Imagine a couple of counter 30 second commercials against Romney's Flip-Flopping on all the issues, terrible credibility, corporatism, and destroyer of American companies and jobs. He doesn't have a chance, especially since voters use 30 second sound bites to base their decisions to vote.

Romney's political is so over... he can't run for either of the duopoly parties

[ItsTime]

^ exactly but this election we must make sure Romney voters jump ship to Ron Paul.

[Aratus]

senator scott brown is very loyal to ex-gov mitt romney, and he could get elected again for the senate
even if he took credit for our state's romneycare to a 99.99 percentile. methinks think it would take a
claim of being the author to a 99.99999 percentile that could cut short any re~election campaign like that.

[Aratus]

if we all are VERY critical of mitt romney or ex-gov sarah palin right now, we have to be sure someone like
sen. scott brown or sharron angle does not step into the duopoly machine political vacuum in a big way!
if you think getting libertarians to act in unison is worse than herding cats, having GOP RNC types move
over to a more honest mindframe is even more difficult, one has to ease them all as a group to the right

[Aratus]

i see sharron angle as being excellent veep material! -- i would
totally happily vote for a Ron Paul/Sharron Angle ticket in 2012!

[Aratus]

Wait am I reading this right? He actually flip flopped
within the same book when it went from hardcover to softcover?!

i'd have to buy both the hardcover and the softcover to examine the flipflops?
my gut is telling me this may be a solid YES answer and it's no surprise at all...

[madfoot]

I don't care about RomneyCare, but I hope he doesn't get the nomination anyway because he's a total hack.

[HOLLYWOOD]

^ exactly but this election we must make sure Romney voters jump ship to Ron Paul.

They (Romney Delegates) did in Nevada GOP caucus, which all decided to unite to represent Ron Paul at the presidential nomination. The NVGOP arbitrarily shutdown the vote / counting of the ballots and arbitrarily declared McCain the winner days later and sent 3 establishment neocon hacks to Minneapolis to nominate McCain. When the ballot box was found and counted, facts show, count put all 3 of Nevada's delegates to Ron Paul.

So the "ESTABLISHMENT" will continue to pull dirty operations and all activists must remain cognizant in the future with candidates like PAWlenty, Romney, Newt, Huckabee, etc.

[freshjiva]

THIS THREAT DESERVES A HUGE BUMP, now that Romney has announced an exploratory committee.
Every voter in America should know about this dishonest flip-flop Romney tried to pull.

[reduen]

In my opinion, all Romney ever was/is is a way to take votes from Ron Paul. He had no chance last time and he has no chance this time with the conservative crowd. (Way too much baggage....) The thing that he will do is keep those of his faith from voting for another candidate. (Ron Paul...)

[freshjiva]

B-U-M-P.

Now that Mr. Romney has officially launched his Presidential campaign, so should we the People launch a careful investigation into this fraud.

[Aratus]

yes... he is being VERY official about running!
mitt romney in campaign mode is like watching
richard nixon putting out his newNixon/oldNixon
personas before the public simultaniously. his father
george romney was a liberal republican and a senator.
mitt romney has discovered his father's old political rival
barry goldwater as of late, let alone the TEA PARTY! he now
wants to be more libertarian aware? sign of the times! this is now
coming from the guy who polled for 2 months before jettisoning his tie!

[PaulConventionWV]

If this doesn't sink him then I propose a chip in for a transvestite prostitute to seduce him on tape

I think they tried that with Ron Paul once.

[freshjiva]

B-U-M-P

This needs to be widely publicized.