A Mind Blowing Expose of Mitt Romney

Thanks to the folks at Evangelical Outpost, I found a couple of newspaper articles about Mr. Businessman Mitt that are pretty amazing. First is a New York Times piece detailing just what Mitt's business experience really is.

Citing his business experience, he urges voters to reject “lifetime politicians” who “have never run a corner store, let alone the largest enterprise in the world.”

Mr. Romney, though, never ran a corner store or a traditional business. Instead, he excelled as a deal maker, a buyer and seller of companies, a master at the art of persuasion that he demonstrated in the talks that led to the forming of Bain Capital.

“Mitt ran a private equity firm, not a cement company,” said Eric A. Kriss, a former Bain Capital partner. “He was not a businessman in the sense of running a company,” Mr. Kriss said, adding, “He was a great presenter, a great spokesman and a great salesman.”

Then there is a quote from Boston.com describing how Bain Capital essentially looted AmPad, an American company.

In 1992, Bain Capital acquired American Pad & Paper, or Ampad, from Mead Corp., embarking on a ''roll-up strategy'' in which a firm buys up similar companies in the same industry in order to expand revenues and cut costs.

Through Ampad, Bain bought several other office supply makers, borrowing heavily each time. By 1999, Ampad's debt reached nearly $400 million, up from $11 million in 1993, according to government filings.

Sales grew, too - for a while. But by the late 1990s, foreign competition and increased buying power by superstores like Bain-funded Staples sliced Ampad's revenues.

The result: Ampad couldn't pay its debts and plunged into bankruptcy. Workers lost jobs and stockholders were left with worthless shares.

Bain Capital, however, made money - and lots of it. The firm put just $5 million into the deal, but realized big returns in short order. In 1995, several months after shuttering a plant in Indiana and firing roughly 200 workers, Bain Capital borrowed more money to have Ampad buy yet another company, and pay Bain and its investors more than $60 million - in addition to fees for arranging the deal.

Bain Capital took millions more out of Ampad by charging it $2 million a year in management fees, plus additional fees for each Ampad acquisition. In 1995 alone, Ampad paid Bain at least $7 million. The next year, when Ampad began selling shares on public stock exchanges, Bain Capital grabbed another $2 million fee for arranging the initial public offering - on top of the $45 million to $50 million Bain reaped by selling some of its shares.

Bain Capital didn't escape Ampad's eventual bankruptcy unscathed. It held about one-third of Ampad's shares, which became worthless. But while as many as 185 workers near Buffalo lost jobs in a 1999 plant closing, Bain Capital and its investors ultimately made more than $100 million on the deal.

Hillary or Obama would hardly need to even get out of bed in the morning to slaughter Mitt in the general election and this doesn't even begin to touch upon his offshore tax havens or his treatment of dogs.

Wow.

Update: Imagine how easy the Democrats' campaign would be against "Gordon Gecko" Romney in the general election if we really do enter a recession. As people start losing their jobs, do you think that anyone would vote for a investment banker who closed down AmPad, cutting hundreds of jobs while making $100,000,000 for his firm? A dead possum could run that campaign and just massacre Romney.