The Vampire Diaries [Reader Post]

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Barack Obama has released a new ad in which Bain Capital, the private equity firm where Mitt Romney worked, is called a “vampire.”

President Obama’s campaign is out with a tough new ad, “Steel,” attacking former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s record on job creation.

The two-minute ad focuses on GS Technologies, a steel mill in Kansas City, Mo., that was bought by Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital and went bankrupt soon after.

The ad paints Romney as out of touch with the needs of the local workers and concerned only with Bain’s own profits.

“We view Mitt Romney as a job destroyer,” says one former mill worker in the ad. Another calls Bain “a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us.”

Bain, along with two partners, bought the steel firm in 1993. The author of the WaPo article, Rachel Weiner, makes crystal clear that she is simply another campaign worker in the tank for Obama. Her words:

The two-minute ad focuses on GS Technologies, a steel mill in Kansas City, Mo., that was bought by Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital and went bankrupt soon after.

and then

Bain bought GST in 1993. According to a January profile of the takeover by Reuters, less than a decade later, the plant closed,

A “decade later” is “soon after”? Seriously?

So what ever became of this steel firm? This:

In 1993, Bain and two partners (GE Capital and Leggett & Platt) took over a century-old Kansas City steel plant known as GSI that badly needed investment capital for modernization. The Bain-led group pumped $100 million of investment capital into the plant, merged the plant with the company’s Georgetown plant within two years, and raised an additional $250 million through two bond offerings. Bain was paid roughly $900,000 in management fees during the Romney period (1993 thru 1999), and its investors ultimately yielded an estimated $50 million on an investment of $24.5 million. In the late 1990s, union relations deteriorated, steel prices nosedived, and raw materials and energy prices ballooned. The company filed for bankruptcy reorganization in 2001. The Georgetown plant was sold and temporarily shutdown, and then reopened over a four year period. Hundreds of Georgetown employees lost their jobs during the temporary shutdown. Georgetown locals blame the temporary shutdown on the owner that followed Bain, and most had no knowledge of Romney’s involvement in the company until the candidates started making their allegations. The plant is now owned by the world’s largest steelmaker and operates two shifts daily. Bain defends its actions at GSI, claiming that it generated substantial investment capital for the company and committed “many thousands of hours to upgrade its facilities and make the company more competitive.”

Now let’s turn to the irony portion of our program. While attacking Mitt Romney’s background in private equity Barack Obama held a fundraiser hosted by a private equity firm:

President Obama is attending a fundraiser today in New York City that will be hosted by Hamilton E. James, the chief operating officer and president of Blackstone. The financial firm Blackstone is “one of the world’s largest private equity fund businesses,” according to its website.

But ironically, Obama today is using Mitt Romney’s background in private equity as the basis of an attack on his Republican rival.

But that’s not the best part. No, THIS is the best part. While Romney wasn’t at Bain when the steel firm went bankrupt, one of Obama’s top bundlers was at Bain:

As Katrina reports, Mitt Romney left Bain Capital in 1999 to manage the Winter Olympics, two years before GST Steel declared bankruptcy. But that hasn’t stopped President Obama from blaming him for the company’s 2001 collapse. In a new Obama campaign video, ex-steel workers criticize Romney for being “out of touch” with the “average working person.” Left unmentioned (and blameless) is Jonathan Lavine.

Lavine, according to the Los Angeles Times, is a top Obama bundler and a managing director at Bain Capital. Lavine, who has raised over $100,000 for the president, was at the firm when GST Steel declared bankruptcy. So according to the Obama team’s logic, Romney, who had left Bain, is responsible for GST Steel’s demise, but Lavine, who was there, is not? Expect to hear more about this connection.

Moreover, Obama’s bailout of the auto industry resulted in the loss of at least 50,000 jobs.

Bill Clinton is right. Obama IS an amateur.

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Garbage like this ad might have worked pre-internet.
But nowadays even TV newscasters have staff who check the web for refutations of stories like this one.
It only took a few hours for Dan Rather’s ”fake, but accurate,” memo to be exposed as a complete fabrication designed solely to try to be an October Surprise against George W. Bush.
In this instance the facts behind the Obama ad were debunked within an hour!
October Surprises are a thing of the past….unless they are 100% true.
Which is interesting in light of the fact that Obama allowed a blurb biography of himself to say he was born in Kenya!
LOL!
Obama’s at the very least a crappy fact-checker!

Private equity companies basically make the balance sheets of companies look good—primarily by cutting expenses, e.g., cutting employee costs (generally the greatest expense for any company)—and then borrow money on the part of the company. They take their share, and then make the company responsible for the entire amount. Some companies survive, some don’t. Romney’s goal was to make money for the shareholders, not increasing employment. In my opinion, this goal is not the main job of government—making money for a few shareholders (that’s like Fascism).

Obama has now sunk lower than this.
His has moved to disenfranchise DEMOCRATS who vote for anyone other than HIM in their state’s primaries!
Arkansas sees this dictatorial tactic first:
“[D]elegates Wolfe might claim won’t be recognized at the national convention.”
John Wolfe Jr.says, “They want a coronation. They’re conflating [Obama] with the party. Are we supposed to call him ‘Dear Leader’? Is this some kind of North Korea thing?”
Yup.
That’s what Obama wants all right.
A coronation.
Preferably for life.
Wolfe says that if he is prevented from seating delegates he earns through the primary election he will take his own party to court.
The primary is May 29th.
Keep an eye out for the fireworks.
Wolfe noted:
STRONG PEOPLE DON’T MIND DISSENT.
Obama is not a strong person, is he?

Bain’s business activity is the modern equivalent of shipwrecking. They only thrive when other people’s ships are running up on the rocks.

Do you really want a man who has always profited more from failures than from successes put in charge of the whole U.S. economy?