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Muso
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 Posted: Fri May 25, 2012 4:51 pm Post subject: Bain Backfire |
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Forget Bain — Obama’s public-equity record is the real scandal
| Quote: | Despite a growing backlash from his fellow Democrats, President Obama has doubled down on his attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. But the strategy could backfire in ways Obama did not anticipate. After all, if Romney’s record in private equity is fair game, then so is Obama’s record in public equity — and that record is not pretty.
Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters — leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions. Consider just a few examples of Obama’s public equity failures:
*Raser Technologies. In 2010, the Obama administration gave Raser a $33 million taxpayer-funded grant to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. According to the Wall Street Journal, after burning through our tax dollars, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. The plant now has fewer than 10 employees, and Raser owes $1.5 million in back taxes.
*ECOtality. The Obama administration gave ECOtality $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009 for, among other things, the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. Obama even hosted the company’s president, Don Karner, in the first lady’s box during the 2010 State of the Union address as an example of a stimulus success story. According to ECOtality’s own SEC filings, the company has since incurred more than $45 million in losses and has told the federal government, “We may not achieve or sustain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future.”
Worse, according to CBS News the company is “under investigation for insider trading,” and Karner has been subpoenaed “for any and all documentation surrounding the public announcement of the first Department of Energy grant to the company.”
*Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP). The Obama administration gave NGP a $98.5 million taxpayer loan guarantee in 2010. The New York Times reported last October that the company is in “financial turmoil” and that “[a]fter a series of technical missteps that are draining Nevada Geothermal’s cash reserves, its own auditor concluded in a filing released last week that there was ‘significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.’ ”
*First Solar. The Obama administration provided First Solar with more than $3 billion in loan guarantees for power plants in Arizona and California. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek report last week, the company “fell to a record low in Nasdaq Stock Market trading May 4 after reporting $401 million in restructuring costs tied to firing 30 percent of its workforce.”
*Abound Solar, Inc. The Obama administration gave Abound Solar a $400 million loan guarantee to build photovoltaic panel factories. According to Forbes, in February the company halted production and laid off 180 employees.
*Beacon Power. The Obama administration gave Beacon — a green-energy storage company — a $43 million loan guarantee. According to CBS News, at the time of the loan, “Standard and Poor’s had confidentially given the project a dismal outlook of ‘CCC-plus.’ ” In the fall of 2011, Beacon received a delisting notice from Nasdaq and filed for bankruptcy.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. A company called SunPower got a $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, and as of January, the company owed more than it was worth. Brightsource got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee and posted a string of net losses totaling $177 million. And, of course, let’s not forget Solyndra — the solar panel manufacturer that received $535 million in taxpayer-funded loan guarantees and went bankrupt, leaving taxpayers on the hook.
Amazingly, Obama has declared that all the projects received funding “based solely on their merits.” But as Hoover Institution scholar Peter Schweizer reported in his book, “Throw Them All Out,” fully 71 percent of the Obama Energy Department’s grants and loans went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.” Collectively, these Obama cronies raised $457,834 for his campaign, and they were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.35 billion. Obama said this week it’s not the president’s job “to make a lot of money for investors.” Well, he sure seems to have made a lot of (taxpayer) money for investors in his political machine.
All that cronyism and corruption is catching up with the administration. According to Politico, “The Energy Department’s inspector general has launched more than 100 criminal investigations” related to the department’s green-energy programs.
Now the man who made Solyndra a household name says Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital “is what this campaign is going to be about.” Good luck with that, Mr. President. If Obama wants to attack Romney’s alleged private equity failures as chief executive of Bain, he’d better be ready to defend his own massive public equity failures as chief executive of the United States. |
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notageek
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 05 Jun 2008
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Location: Bangalore, India
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| Posted: Fri May 25, 2012 4:55 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, but nobody's making ads on Obama.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Sat May 26, 2012 11:28 pm Post subject: |
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swiftboat fail
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dmitchell
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 2:57 am Post subject: |
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For all I know he's exactly right, but Marc Thiessen is a piece of shit and I'm not going to read him. Sorry.
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wswartzendruber
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 3:45 am Post subject: |
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| Now we just need to wait for Dan Rather to come forward with forged documents proving that Romney was at Bain during that time. |
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big dave
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 4:04 am Post subject: |
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correct me if i'm wrong... haven't looked into it a lot. the whole scandal with romney and bain was basically that bain was a huge asset management company that basically bought failing/stagnant companies, cut the fat, and either flipped the company or let it operate at profit. the worse that ever came from it was mass layoffs... not financial fraud.... is this correct?
if that is correct, this is like hitler saying you should support him instead of osama bin laden because osama killed a bunch of people. |
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wswartzendruber
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 4:25 am Post subject: |
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| But it gets better. Romney wasn't even there for what Obama accused him of. He had been gone for two years. |
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notageek
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 4:36 am Post subject: |
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That doesn't matter. Romney doesn't seem to be refuting them strongly. Therefore Swiftboat.
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Prenj
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 4:47 am Post subject: |
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| big dave wrote: | correct me if i'm wrong... haven't looked into it a lot. the whole scandal with romney and bain was basically that bain was a huge asset management company that basically bought failing/stagnant companies, cut the fat, and either flipped the company or let it operate at profit. the worse that ever came from it was mass layoffs... not financial fraud.... is this correct?
if that is correct, this is like hitler saying you should support him instead of osama bin laden because osama killed a bunch of people. |
You could try arguing and maybe even win the thread, but you had to drag Hitler into it and forfeit?  |
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richk449
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 4:58 am Post subject: |
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...
Last edited by richk449 on Sun May 27, 2012 5:04 am; edited 1 time in total |
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notageek
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 5:02 am Post subject: |
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How about Kenneth Lay and Bernie Madoff, instead?
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Muso
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 7:11 am Post subject: |
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All Bain Capital would do is look for companies approaching bankruptcy and make a decision on whether or not to inject capital if they found a possibility of a viable business model. These companies were already fuct. Some of them had potential. Those that had piqued the interest of the Bain investors became a gamble. Romney ended up with an 80% success rate. Compare that with Obama's 0%.
And, again, the mian difference is the money Romney was using was voluntary. Obama used stolen money taken by threat of force.
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sugar
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Joined: 07 Aug 2004
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Location: Morrinsville, New Zealand
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 7:30 am Post subject: |
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| Muso wrote: | All Bain Capital would do is look for companies approaching bankruptcy and make a decision on whether or not to inject capital if they found a possibility of a viable business model. These companies were already fuct. Some of them had potential. Those that had piqued the interest of the Bain investors became a gamble. Romney ended up with an 80% success rate. Compare that with Obama's 0%.
And, again, the mian difference is the money Romney was using was voluntary. Obama used stolen money taken by threat of force. |
How is babby formed.
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big dave
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 9:49 am Post subject: |
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| Prenj wrote: | | big dave wrote: | correct me if i'm wrong... haven't looked into it a lot. the whole scandal with romney and bain was basically that bain was a huge asset management company that basically bought failing/stagnant companies, cut the fat, and either flipped the company or let it operate at profit. the worse that ever came from it was mass layoffs... not financial fraud.... is this correct?
if that is correct, this is like hitler saying you should support him instead of osama bin laden because osama killed a bunch of people. |
You could try arguing and maybe even win the thread, but you had to drag Hitler into it and forfeit? |
i'm just saying that the guy directly giving handouts to his friends to commit financial fraud cannot complain about the guy who reformed companies, laying some people off. and any supporters complaining about that issue are fucking insane. |
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sugar
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 10:50 am Post subject: |
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| big dave wrote: | | Prenj wrote: | | big dave wrote: | correct me if i'm wrong... haven't looked into it a lot. the whole scandal with romney and bain was basically that bain was a huge asset management company that basically bought failing/stagnant companies, cut the fat, and either flipped the company or let it operate at profit. the worse that ever came from it was mass layoffs... not financial fraud.... is this correct?
if that is correct, this is like hitler saying you should support him instead of osama bin laden because osama killed a bunch of people. |
You could try arguing and maybe even win the thread, but you had to drag Hitler into it and forfeit? |
i'm just saying that the guy directly giving handouts to his friends to commit financial fraud cannot complain about the guy who reformed companies, laying some people off. and any supporters complaining about that issue are fucking insane. |
| Quote: | It is reasonable to ask whether some highly leveraged buyout deals, of the kind that Bain and other private-equity firms often conduct, should fall into the same thumb-on-the-scale category as insider trading.
Suppose a company is failing and appears beyond rescue. Suppose a private-equity firm buys the company with borrowed money, burdens it with more debt, and then spends the next few years firing workers, selling assets, eliminating pension plans — all the while collecting handsome “management fees.” Then the company fails anyway, as it was fated to do.
What higher economic purpose has been served? Why is this not what Perry memorably called “vulture capitalism”? |
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-924854-highlight-.html
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Muso
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 11:04 am Post subject: |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 11:16 am Post subject: |
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| big dave wrote: | | correct me if i'm wrong... haven't looked into it a lot. the whole scandal with romney and bain was basically that bain was a huge asset management company that basically bought failing/stagnant companies, cut the fat, and either flipped the company or let it operate at profit. the worse that ever came from it was mass layoffs... not financial fraud.... is this correct? |
No, it's that a small portion of Bain's business was to do that.
| big dave wrote: | | if that is correct, this is like hitler saying you should support him instead of osama bin laden because osama killed a bunch of people. |
Obama has to stay on the attack because, with his record, if he gets put on the defensive, his campaign will start to go down in flames. He can only attack what's there:
a. Romney's commercial record
b. Romney's record as Governor of Massachussets
c. Romney himself
d. Teh 3v1l Republifascists in general
So that's what we're going to see. The military analogy would be "suppressive fire". You unleash and sustain a continuous barrage of fire so intense that your opponent is to busy not getting shot to shoot back. Problem is, sooner or later you run out of bullets, and it's a long way to election time.
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