This post was almost called, Attack of the One Issue Voters. Now I am not sold on Romney yet, but how can these "Evangelicals" totally ignore Mr Gingrich's past transgressions? He isn't on his 2nd marriage... He is on his third !!! On top of that he has a questionable ethics record at best. And according to Wiki, he is on his 3rd version of Christianity.
Whereas Romney appears to be a devout Mormon, Husband, Father, etc. Yet somehow the pious church members want to support the individual that aggressively broke one of the top 10 twice. Thoughts?
WP Gingrich and Evangelicals
Huff Post Gingrich Ethics
Wiki Romney
Wiki Gingrich
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A lot of people are sinners, and understand how it happens that other people sin. We know a lot of what Newt Gingrich has done. It's out in the open. What are Mitt Romney's sins? Apart from offloading the pension obligations of companies he acquires to the taxpayers?
--Hiram
Hiram,
Tell me more about "off loading pension obligations". What precisely does that mean and do you have any sources?
Many companies go bankrupt, that's why their pensions trusts are supposed to be fully funded. So this concept puzzles me.
FactCheck.org King of Bain
How about this, and I did not think it up by myself: When your house is on fire, do you question the moral purity of the firemen?
J. Ewing
I am hoping to not have a 4 to 8 yr relationship with my firefighter.
If your business had problems, would you want to have faith in your potential partner/savior's values. Would you be comfortable if they had failed at 2 marriages and had ethical challenges at time?
It seems at least a little relevant, and the Evangelicals are just blowing it off.
Maybe Hiram's right, they are just forgiving folks. Or are they they are religiously intolerent folks who fear a Mormon in the White House.
One or the other...
What precisely does that mean and do you have any sources?
That's Mitt Romney's business. During the campaign, we will be going through the Bain deals Mitt was involved in pretty much one by one. I think what you will generally find is that the business he was in, was reorganizing existing businesses in such a way that they would give tax advantages ot potential acquirers, and the shifting away of existing obligations to the government, or to no one at all.
He wasn't a pizza delivery guy. He was the guy who helped the pizza delivery guy with his taxes, and who made sure he didn't have health insurance.
Lots of people fool around in business. If you only did business with people who didn't, your scope of activity would be limited.
==Hiram
When your house is on fire, do you question the moral purity of the firemen?
No, but once the fire is over, you could quite fairly ask whether the fireman was the guy who set it, if that's what the evidence showed. Mitt Romney style capitalism, the kind that produces nothing, adds nothing to our economy, which does little more than facilitate businesses in their desire to shift the cost of doing business onto the rest of us, is one of the things that harming this country. For Democrats, Mitt Romney style capitalism is what we will be running against during the presidential campaign. In a way, it's fortunate to have Mitt himself as the actual candidate.
--Hiram
I am still looking forward to seeing your sources.
I am thinking whether companies like Bain are heroes, villains or just a commonplace necessity.
They are heroes because they weed out the wastes and help American companies to be more competitive, therefore saving American jobs.
They are villains because they weed out wastes and therefore employee compensation drops if the company was paying more than market. (ie too much) Or people lose their jobs if there are too many people.
Seems like they serve a necessary function if we want American business to stay competitive in the world market. Which provides all of us our jobs, even the public sector. And I am guessing the government and it's bureaucracies could use a good effectiveness and efficiency consult.
"I am hoping to not have a 4 to 8 yr relationship with my firefighter."
I would be perfectly happy with that, if that's how long it takes to put out the fire. It's a HUGE fire, and the Arsonist-in-Chief is still spraying [$5/gal] gasoline all over the place.
Look at it another way. If somebody was doing great harm to your small children, say, by forcing them into a debt slavery they could never escape, would you be concerned if the Sheriff that stepped in and hauled that despicable evil-doer away had a mistress on the side? Or two or three?
J. Ewing
Pension obligations:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/06/us-campaign-romney-bailout-idUSTRE8050LL20120106
Bain argues that the financials justified the company taking out a huge debt to pay back Bain partners. But did the business justify it?
--Hiram
Reuters Romney and Steel
That was an interesting read. It looks like Bain did give a pretty sustained effort to make it work and there were a lot of contributing factors for the failure.(including the Union) See the quotes below...
And as factcheck noted, he was gone from Bain before the Steel firm failed.
"Charles Bradford, an analyst at Bradford Research, blames the union, in part, for the failure of GS Industries to survive in the new global marketplace.
"If you look at the steel companies that went under at the time, all of them were unionized," he said. "I'm not saying this was the only factor -- these firms faced other headwinds such as cheap labor and a strong dollar ... but the unions held them back."
Union officials blame the Bain managers for saddling the company with too much debt for a capital-intensive, cyclical industry such as steel. "They look at ways to try to leverage the financial resources of the company during an uptick in the markets, stream money out of it and leave wreckage behind them," said the union's Foster."
I wonder if Foster's comment may have been strongly biased and maybe not factually correct.
That assumes the Sheriff will haul out the evil doers and not join them if the grass looks greener being in the slave business. I'd be happier if the Sheriff had a history of consistent behavior and follow through on his commitments.
Personally I don't care how many times Gingrich has been unfaithful or divorced. That is between him, his wives and his mistresses.
What I find interesting is that the same people that condemned Bill Clinton for his extra marital activities, don't seem to mind Newt's. It is just interesting.
Bain extracts value, puts a lot of debt on the books, resells the property they acquire, and leaves it to it's fate.
Debt is a problem for a capital intensive business in a cyclical industry. It's not just union officials who thinks so.
Looks like most of the debt went to factory improvements.
Now why were the employees not able to attain the required efficiency and effectivity gains.
Often it comes to one word: UNION
Now that I am back to my keyboard, let me clarify. When everyone was bashing Bain, I had visions of Richard Gere's character in Pretty Woman. Corporate raiders who bought under performing companies to sell off their parts for a profit ASAP.
Yet after reading the Reuters report I understand that they did spend ~10 years trying to turn this company around. Probably in hopes of spinning it off for a sizeable profit. I am sure they weren't too happy when it tanked either.
As for my Union comment. As long as compensation is based on "Years of Service" instead of "Results and Effectiveness", companies in competitive fields are doomed to failure. This is why Unions are only proliferating in the Public sector.
Another interesting point. CNN Romney Tithing
I bet the Evangelicals wish they had that money coming in from every member... I am guessing their membership is probably giving 3 to 5%.
Typical mainline churches actually collect more like 1-2%, though evangelicals do just a touch better.
J. Ewing
Republicans have a problem. There economic policies fail when they are put into practice. Eight years of the Bush Administration cost this nation millions of jobs and plunged us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. How, exactly, do you spin that? The Republican answer is to find scapegoats. So they blame the housing crisis. Not of course the free market environment that led to the easy money policies that they so fervently supported, and which inflated the budget. Instead, they blame Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose major blunder was to join the party late. Republicans also blame, basically us. We shouldn't have bought homes, we shouldn't have taken out mortgages. We should have been content with our lot in life. And finally, Republicans blame unions. The fact that the union movement is in irreversible decline, a decline which, by the way curiously coincides with the decline of the middle class begun with Ronald Reagan's assault on PATCO, doesn't seem to faze them. It's better even for the Republican attack on unions, that unions are in such a greatly weakened position. It means that they find it very difficult to defend themselves.
--Hiram
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