14 Jan 2012, 10:23 am
rickyp wrote:ray. If you believe in free enterprise, you can't fault people if they are playing by the rules. As to job statistics, you also have to look at what would have happened to these companies if private equity did not come in.
Absolutely true. But when you are electing people who make up a lot of those rules, then the sense of unfairness that pervades the current economic and politcal climate (from both tea Party and OWS) is key to the Bain issue.
What is "fair" about Solyndra? Didn't Obama risk capital that was not his own to suit his own ideology, ultimately resulting in a failed venture in which taxpayers were put at the end of the line by virtue of "negotiations" by the Administration?
Further, they were not forthcoming (at the very least) about releasing of negative information until after the election. People may not understand the benefits of venture capitalism, but they can surely realize taxpayer money being squandered and then the ensuing cover-up. Didn't we have a right to know Solyndra was firing workers, since it was our money being dumped?
he Obama administration knew before the 2010 election that Solyndra LLC, a solar-panel maker that received a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee, planned to fire workers, according to e-mails released today.
The messages don’t indicate that anyone from the White House directed Solyndra to delay announcing the layoffs until after the vote. Previously released e-mails, indicating the Energy Department urged Solyndra to postpone the cuts, have been cited by House Republicans who say politics influenced Solyndra’s award and last-ditch rescue bid that put taxpayers behind $75 million in private investment.
“Here’s the deal -- Solyndra is going to announce they are laying off 200 of their 1200 workers,” Heather Zichal, a White House adviser, wrote to Carol Browner, then director of the office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, and other officials on Oct. 27, 2010. “No es bueno.”
At the end of the day, which is worse: a business which risks its own money and has successes and failures, or a government which rewards its friends by giving them our money?
I'm not afraid of that debate.
Examples of where past actions and current words conflict will be a constant problem for Mitt.Dollerama. Bain made nearly a billion dollars buying 50% of Dollerama and turning that sub Walmart retailer into a monster winner. Then Mitt campaigns on fighting China's unfair trade policies taking jobs from Americans. You have to search pretty hard to find products in Dollerama that aren't Chinese imports.
So, let me get this straight: one should not take advantage of profit-making opportunities if one knows that down the road one might have to critique the source of those opportunities? In other words, Bain should have let Dollarama go out of business, costing jobs, rather than allow it to import stuff from China?
Um, I guess you want to shutter most businesses in the US? Try to go shopping and buy nothing made in China--I try and it ain't easy. Apple is an evil company? How many other successes should close their doors?
Example: Mitts answer to the auto industry collapse was to let them go bankrupt. Compared to the successful bailout ....
First, that is the "right" thing to do. If not, industries will have little reason to worry about poor business practice. Just wait for the government bailout.
Second, we don't know that it was successful yet. Some of the GM repayment scheme is based on stock options--and the stock ain't all that yet.
Third, what was done in the restructuring was illegal. Just as in Solyndra, legitimate bondholders were put at the back of the line. Who went to the front? Obama's buddies, the unions. The auto bailout is another example of crony capitalism.
those who work in the auto sector will understand that the bailout has worked out pretty good and that the dislocation of as complete bankruptcy would have destroyed a lot of middle class families ...
That's a hypothetical you can't prove.
Those companies would have been reduced in size or sold in parts. Many corporations in those situations come back stronger. In this case, they would not have had as much government interference (star witness: the Volt). The truth is you don't know what would have happened.
They understand that the collateral damage of a bankruptcy, seen as necessary but regretful by the monied managers like Mitt, falls on their families. And that seeming lack of empathy, plays pretty well when his public persona is also so inauthentic.
You know what I look forward to? You critiquing Obama for all the outright lies he tells. Please tell me how "authentic" the Man is.
The reason Tea Party members don't vote for Mitt, is largely that they see him as a figure that will continue a lot of what they also see as unfair. And thats why he's been taken back a notch by the Bain swift boating....
You have no idea what will happen in South Carolina. You don't even have any "friends" in the Tea Party movement, so you have no idea how much antipathy they have for the socialist ideology of President Obama. When it comes down to it, they will go to vote if a ham sandwich is the GOP nominee because they know Obama represents bankruptcy for America.
