Vulture Capitalism or Populist Demagoguery?
"They're vultures that are sitting out there on the tree limb, waiting for a company to get sick, and then they swoop in ... eat the carcass ... and ... leave the skeleton."
So Rick Perry colorfully characterized the private equity firm Bain Capital, once run by Mitt Romney.
How did Bain prosper? Says Perry:
"These companies ... come in and loot the people's jobs, loot their pensions (and) loot their ability to take care of their families."
Behind this depiction is a 28-minute documentary, King of Bain, being aired in South Carolina by a super political action committee that supports Newt Gingrich and is financed by Vegas-Macau casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson.
The truth, however, turns out to be less colorful, as The Washington Post has awarded the documentary four Pinocchios for "manipulative interviews" and a "highly misleading portrayal of Romney's years at Bain Capital."
Seems that two of the companies Bain allegedly looted were not acquired until after Mitt left the firm, and the closure of a third plant in Gaffney, S.C., was no communal disaster.
No one in Gaffney, writes The New York Times, seems to recall the company, and the local paper did not even report its demise.
King of Bain is a hit piece, a malicious libel full of so many errors and lies that even Newt said it must be corrected or pulled down.
Yet if Romney is nominated, we will see this avenue of attack pursued by the Democrats. For populist assaults on capitalists and capitalism, dating back to William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech to the 1896 Democratic National Convention, have a long and venerable history.
Moreover, the hysteria of Beltway Republicans and their Chamber of Commerce allies over the Newt-Perry attacks on Mitt "the predator" and Mitt "the vulture capitalist" testifies to the power of the narrative and Republicans' fear of it. And they would do well to be fearful.
To many Americans, the period from the Civil War to World War I, when U.S. production grew from half of what Britain produced to twice what Britain produced, was a legendary era of growth and prosperity.
To others, however, this was the Gilded Age of Jim Fisk and James Gould, of robber barons and the Pullman strike, of the Haymarket Massacre and the Homestead strike at Carnegie Steel, where armed Pinkertons came up the river in barges to break the strike, only to be shot, disarmed and beaten by strikers and their families.
In 1904, Ida Tarbell wrote The History of the Standard Oil Company, painting oil magnate John D. Rockefeller as a capitalist without conscience, a "money-mad ... hypocrite." "Our national life is on every side distinctly poorer, uglier, meaner, for the kind of influence he exercises."
In 1906, Upton Sinclair penned The Jungle, a novel depicting the horrors of the stockyards and meat-packing plants of Chicago.
Teddy Roosevelt said of these reformers, "The men with the muck rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck."
Yet T.R. himself took up the role of trustbuster. When J.P. Morgan wrote to him to protest Justice Department moves against one of his trusts—"Just send your man to my man and we can fix it up"—T.R.'s man at Justice retorted, "We don't want to fix it up; we want to stop it."
Teddy Roosevelt savaged the "malefactors of great wealth," and his cousin Franklin would echo him on taking office, denouncing "the money changers ... in the temple of our civilization."
They hate me, exulted FDR, "and I welcome their hatred!" He went on to crush and almost wipe out the Republican Party in 1936.
At the end of the Reagan era, which the left had decried, Barbarians at the Gate was published, portraying the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts as a manifestation of colossal greed.
Michael Lewis—author of Liar's Poker, about the fall of Salomon Brothers, and The Big Short—has built a successful career describing the amorality at the apex of corporate America.
Today, President Barack Obama, with his Osawatomie, Kan., attack on "breathtaking greed," channeling T.R., seeks to insert himself in that populist tradition.
Undeniably, Americans cherish their economic freedom and respect the men who helped make America great, inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison and industrialists such as Henry Ford.
But they do not revere the men who make millions and billions at the big casinos of capitalism. They do not admire a George Soros for winning his billion-dollar bet shorting the British pound.
They believe that a man's professional, as well as private, life should be guided by a conscience. And because they recoil from the teachings of Karl Marx does not mean they embrace the values of Ayn Rand.
Let-the-devil-take-the-hindmost capitalism, economic Darwinism, is neither conservatism nor Americanism.
Should Mitt Romney be nominated, he will need to make a national address defending his career at Bain Capital with the same conviction and passion with which he defended his faith in the campaign of 2008.
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This will be the main issue of the 2012 campaign. Everything Pat says is correct and you can look back to the 80's with firms like Bain executing LBO's and industry roll-ups and see the beginnings of the de-industrialization of the US. For example, they buy an American firm; shut down the factories and outsource to China; streamline operations while conducting M&A within the industry. Three years later......an IPO and hundreds of millions in profit for the investment bank. There are benefits to this approach as well as negatives on a deal by deal basis. However looking back over 30 years, these activities, in conjunction with 'free trade' treaties like NAFTA and GAAT, have created a USA service and consumer economy; built up a potential adversary in China; made a wasteland of the heartland of industrial America; and through strategies such as 'maximizing shareholder value' have created an economy where there is little future for college graduates or for those seeking a middle class blue collar job. Therefore, the GOP in nominating Romney (as the poster boy for these policies), will have to defend this conscious and deliberate wreckage of the US economy. In the pivotal states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, I am sure Obama will pound this message home. In the South, Romney will have to defend his religious cult affiliation. They don't call it the stupid party for nothing.
This will be an important election, for it will at last show decent Americans the GOP for what it really is: indifferent on culture and society, predatory on economics, cynical on religion confession, corrosive on national defense and destructive on foreign policy. Romney is the perfect and most bald-faced incarnation of this chimeric nightmare.
The flip side is that if this revelation is to give way to any positive good, America will have to survive another four years of Obama.
I have a question for those well-versed in American history.
Was Teddy Roosevelt using anti-industrialist rhetoric as
a) a whitewash to hide his own crony capitalist connections?
b) a genuine conviction to reform society?
c) a bit of both of the above?
All I know is that he was quite wealthy, and not many would attack their own class interests.
Prateek,
TR was a complex man and a very interesting character. On one occassion he was gut shot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin before delivering a talk but persisted in delivering his speech anyway before seeking medical attention. For all of his faults, he had in his imagination the Christian ideal of health and plenty with a fierce protestant / independent streak running through his patriotism. His reticence towards greed and gawdy displays of oppulence and ostentation were no doubt sincere and part of his upbringing as an educated gentleman of that time. What we refer to today as unbridled capitalism and the engine of America's global greatness was simply viewed as organized crime in TR's day. He was not a saint by any means and his "bully pulpit" was no doubt appealing to his own ego as well as his listeners but "he thanked his God for this in the least, he was born a man instead of a beast."
Thanks to Mr. Reavis for his excellent post.
Mr. Sanjay I think for Teddy Roosevelt it was both. Though not necessarily in the sense of 'whitewashing his own crony capitalist connections'. This is *partly because the imbalance culturally in the split or 'rational' West since the enlightenment, is toward an exaggerated individualism rather than toward one's group and the individualities composing it.
Of course in addition to loyalty among cronies, the rest of the *moral admixture whether one is realistically group oriented or imbalanced toward a an isolated sense of self, is an appropriate consideration to a civilization.
Yet regarding this 'reformation' of society the current Western split, wherein one is inevitably charged or influenced culturally with having to look out for number one, even when at the expense of the group distorts such sometimes well meaning attempts at reform(s).
This current cultural liability is what made the West such an easy game or prey to those yet appropriately group oriented culturally, whether such group(s) themselves are moral in addition to their being loyal to one another, or except for such loyalty are otherwise immoral which is often enough the case.
So Teddy Roosevelt was a fine example of both incidental loyalty to class or peers as well as ambition toward reformation of society, in this most recent, perchance context of an 'enlightened' West.
The sad irony is you can have other enemies, as well as being culturally self-contorted into being one's own [worst] enemy oneself. Like the proverbial cowboy who mistakenly shoots himself in the foot and yet of course still has to deal with all the others shooting at him in the coral too.
There's a lyric to a song sung in London: "If you don't mind having to go to China, it's a fine life, it's a fine life!!"
Why couldn't the others pick up on pjmulvey's great comments and add something useful instead of wasting time with TR? Who gives a.... Romney's longtime associate (handler) and the current chairman of Bain & Company is Orit Gadiesh, a former top-level agent of Israeli military intelligence. Another of Romney's apparent handlers is that old 911 specter, Israeli Michael Chertoff. And then there's Bain's ownership of Clear Channel and hence "conservative" talk radio. The list of Romney's biggest donors reads like a who's who of Wall Street banksterdom. This wooden ventriloquist's dummy will do nicely as the next figurehead.
I give credit to Bay Buchanan for any success Mr. Romney may have had up to this point in his campaign. She is the only living campaign strategist I know who could have done for Romney what he and all the King's horses and all the King's men could never have done for themselves--- put humpty-dumpty together again --- and win! I don't know how much she has been involved with the tactics but the strategy is nothing short of brilliant and has her mark all over it. She's had the press singing in unison like a bunch of middle aged cheerleaders --- "Perry, Perry, he's our man, if he can't do it it ? CAIN CAN!! --- Herman, Herman he's our man, if he can't do it, Gingrich can !! Newt Gingrich, he's our man, if he can't do it, Santorum can. Rick, Rick, he 's our man if he can't do it, Huntsman can ...etc."
Her talent for combined arms operations is almost Marine like, utilizing self destruction (ala Herman Cain), heavy liberal bias in the media for cheap artillery (When Governor Perry stumbled they kicked his teeth in for free), useful idiots and massive PAC attacks from the air in Iowa ( What did Newt think he would get this time around? a free lunch?) , a four year firewall in New Hampshire for VII day, and keeping three blind mice racing through South Carolina as flanking cover for a divide and conquer victory in South Carolina. All this while keeping most of the big accounts safe for use in Florida and the final nail in the GOP coffin. I have no idea if she was helping this time around or not, but having the full weight of Bob Dole's political machine thrown at you, Steve Forbe's endless supply of money in Arizona, and the liberal media howling for your candidates "hateful" scalp is something she has been accustomed to over the years. Even if she didn't direct this particular kind of fight, she sure as heck knows how.
I give credit to Bay Buchanan for any success Mr. Romney may have had up to this point in his campaign.
And to think she directed her brother's three presidential campaigns!
Now we know, I guess: never trust a L.D.S.
Nicholas,
" I have no idea if she was helping this time around or not, but having the full weight of D.C's political GOP establishment thrown at you, Steve Forbe's endless supply of money in Arizona,( when Pat had Dole down on one knee) and the media howling for your candidates "hateful" scalp ( when everything else had failed) is something she has been accustomed to over the years. Even if she didn't direct this particular kind of fight, she sure as heck knows how."
I like Bay Buchanan. She is sharp as a whip, difficult and demanding and capable of great charm and grace. Nothing really to dislike about her.
She endorsed Romney; that's a point against her in my book. Someone as smart as she ought to know better.
Dan, there's not much to qualify in pjmulvey's except to agree and perhaps add we live in a country that not only ships out our jobs but has us i.e. the taxpayer(s) pay for that as well via taxpayer guaranteed loans the bankers love, to the companies relocating, as well as outright taxpayer gifts via makeshift agencies like O.P.I.C. etc. paying for half of a company's construction costs if the new factory's built in China, Mexico etc. ... If they our government bill us to kill us what more is there to 'say'? It's just adding insult to injury that they also first have to be 'elected.' So much for "Enlightenment". 'They had all that had their hate: Love is like a lion's tooth.' -yeats ... Love&hate two sides, one coin; just a question of appropriateness. Organic. Whereas Enlightenment in brief is like, no there's only one side to the coin, face it up, and pretend only that side is the case, even given the opposites = false values. But the only oneness is the whole coin, which nonetheless has two sides (i.e. the opposites)...but, that ain't 'enlightened.' It's every man for himself with half a coin, now that's 'enlightened.' It's almost funny, except it's real life. I'm about to ask Mr. Sanjay for a loan. Hell's bells, I'll even build in Thailand. ... Mr. Sanjay, I'm kidding, although I would gladly pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today.
This Gadiesh is a piece of work. Majored in psychology before switching to business; undoubtedly picked up some potent manipulation techniques there. Gets into Harvard Business even though she could hardly speak English - a little help from certain high-ranking Israeli officials, perhaps? Dual citizenship, of course. Her top loyalties will be to Israel, career advancement, and clients. America? A shopping mall with a flag. A great cash cow for the milking. This, plus the well-known Mormon cabal in the upper echelons of the FBI. Way to go, Republican Party!
Why intelligent though? in response to yours herein Mr. Jacobi. Mormons cracked the organization nut, local Up = group. The rest of us out here in Christianity are yet thanks to the Enlightenment etc. for all practical intents and purposes atomized. What is a sacred heart although God's god, if not protected?
"Dan, there's not much to qualify in pjmulvey's except to agree."
Mr. Yurick,
Yes indeed. Once the driving issue in very election is the economy there is nothing to qualify. Bain Capital taught Mr. Romney about the private sector,has given more donations to Democrats than Republicans, with offices in Boston, Palo Alto, Mumbai, India and New Yawk City! the conservative Gingrich supported Sallie Mae, attempted marriage three times, says publicly a marriage is between one woman and a man but suggested to his second wife that it could involve several different types of men and women, Herman Cain has recently started a Solution Revolution after his nine nine nine solution was rejected, Governor Perry dropped out after creating more jobs in Texas than any candidate left standing, although (we are told) the number one issue for voter's is job creation, .....Santorum says he can win Penn. for the GOP although he lost by many in Pennsylvania his last time around. You can't make this stuff up. They make it up for us.
My advice is to short Gingrich, buy long calls on Romney and Obama, buy stock in manufacturers of prosthetic limbs if Romney wins in November and stock in your local pawn shop if its Obama. As Wild Bill Clinton famously remarked,"It's the economy, stupids."
At least Gilbert Jacobi realizes the implications of having such obvious Israeli agents calling the shots in Romney's campaign. Take a look at the masonic, anti-Christian symbolism at the Mormon Temple Square at Vigilant Citizen's "Sinister Sites" department. The connection between Mormonism and Freemasonry and all that implies is compelling. The essence of Freemasonry, on the authority of Pike himself, is the Kabala.
The Gingrich campaign was recently bought by Vegas gambling thug and ultra-Zionist, Sheldon Adelson, for a single donation of $5 million. According to an article on Veterans Today (on the DHS monitoring list, so be careful), Gingrich came close to being indicted after being caught in an FBI sting, supposedly for setting up millions in bribery money from the Israelis. The investigation was reportedly dropped on orders from Louis Freeh, who also just happens to be mucking up the investigation of MF Global/JPMorgan's outright theft of several billion in private accounts.
This is serious stuff. Another of the RNC's puppet clowns was Michele Bachmann, who also was supposedly a follower of some Israeli kabalist rabbi. Santorum defies explanation, other than saying there are way too many dolts and morons who think they're conservatives because they agree with Fox News.
Dan,
Israel is a country with enemies and allies like every other country. Its own electorate does not agree with all of Likud party politics any more than Roman Catholics in America pretend to read papal encyclicals. If it were not for all the evangelical Christians ( a meaningless term) supporting whatever the Likud party sends to America as "vital Israeli interests" the folks you mention would not have much of an audience. The names of those potential leaders and American statesmen in support of more war in the Middle East, going back to Iraq, more fodder for Afghanistan, more "stability" for Libya, Syria and who knows where else are Romney, Gingrich, Santorum and Perry led by Christian ministers( another meaningless term) named Rev. Hagee, the late Rev. Falwell, Pat Robertson ... . Not names like Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, Ilana Mercer, Paul Gottfried, Leon Hader or Christians such as the Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal of Jerusalem, the late John Paul II or Pope Benedict.
When Pat Buchanan famously mentioned The Amen corner in America, he was talking about Christian gentiles not Orthodox Jews.
Robert, I agree with you about the Israeli people and that without the so-called fundamentalists, like the ones you mention, a lot of this wouldn't be happening. There is the question, however, whether the Likud Party represents the people of Israel or dances to the tune of its backers in the US. In any case, the fact that Israel operates nearly all American politicians like sock puppets is inarguable and speaks for itself. Romney, Obama, Gingrich, and Santorum are all supported by the same cabal which conveniently controls the media as the only public forum in America and thereby controls the election process. Democrat vs. Republican, CNN vs. Fox News--it's starting to look an awful lot like the Leninist strategy of being your own opposition. These wooden figureheads and their backers and puppetmasters might have more in common with Lenin than with the Founding Fathers. Don't they all support the NDAA? If so, wouldn't it be true they're outdoing Stalin himself, who at least had to go through show trials to torture, assassinate, and imprison enemies of his regime.
I don't entirely disagree, but it's hardly fair to isolate Romney for what the entire post imperial capitalisam has turned into. Profit, as the sole motive, can be used to jusitify murder if we abolish all the moral views. It boils down to the question as to what do we (our legislature) allow, disallow, or favor. My view is considerably different - there were no PACs in my youth (1950s, 1960s) or I was unaware of them. I could be off chronologically but it seems to me that it was at the time of Richard Nixon's administration that we saw a large growth of various PACs. Like all other things on God's green Earth - this too could be used for good of for bad (in regards to the peoples' greater good). I could understand the Milk industry (or Cheese from Wisconsin) were the first few PACs that I remember fondly, but later some shady interests were being peddled (big oil, big banks, etc. etc.) - which was confusing to me as much as US Postal advertisment - if you already have deep pockets or the monopoly what's the use of advertizing? We simply stayed too quiet for far too long and allowed this device to be used against us. Exxon/Mobile have amassed greatest profits ever, while the consumers are paying astronomical fuel prices etc. etc. - what sort of a PAC would they need? Only a defensive PAC which would allow them to continue to pillage (far more than any other vulture capitalist).
Iliya Pavlovich