Romney and the Bain Capital Problem

[mundame]

Romney has a problem about how he made his money at Bain Capital. It's not selling well, and recently took a big negative turn, according to the Wall Street Journal's poll they published last week. I was fascinated at their point that of the 12 battleground states (the only ones anyone needs to care about; the rest have all been slotted into their Electoral College columns), nearly all show Obama ahead and they nearly all show Romney's popularity DECREASING.

And it's the Bain Capital thing, with the Obama campaign ads having a lot of effect.

What the ads say, according to the WSJ (I haven't seen any) is 1) Romney at Bain bought companies going downhill and broke them up and fired people and sold off assets. And 2) sent lots of those jobs overseas to foreigners.

So a conservative I respect explained some of this to me brilliantly (okay, it was my husband), viz:

1) Better they should save something about the company rather than it go bankrupt and fire everyone!

Okay, I'll buy that because I was in a situation like that. Ancient printing company in Darkest Baltimore, no parking, people had to commute thru the ghetto, terribly dangerous, many employees could not read. I don't mean couldn't read the Wall Street Journal: I mean they could not READ. This is a true story. So we were bought, moved, many fired, the people who could read and drive a car to commute to a better location kept on, and the company survived and hired.

2) This conservative defended the jobs Romney sent overseas by saying that maybe they were grossly overpriced union people.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....................conservative s generally don't like unions, *I* don't like unions, but wouldn't we all rather see unionized Americans working rather than Bangladeshis getting all the jobs?

I don't think Romney can recover from a perception that he made a lot of money sending our jobs overseas. That's just totally lose-lose for Americans. Apparently since April (everything happened in April this year, somehow) Romney's stats in the battleground states have fallen to an 8-point difference against Obama and his "favorable impression" is decreasing.

Romney sorely needs to reply to these ads, but he isn't.......maybe he isn't replying because they're true and he has no good argument back?

What do other people think about this problem?

[Missileman]

Romney has a problem about how he made his money at Bain Capital. It's not selling well, and recently took a big negative turn, according to the Wall Street Journal's poll they published last week. I was fascinated at their point that of the 12 battleground states (the only ones anyone needs to care about; the rest have all been slotted into their Electoral College columns), nearly all show Obama ahead and they nearly all show Romney's popularity DECREASING.

And it's the Bain Capital thing, with the Obama campaign ads having a lot of effect.

What the ads say, according to the WSJ (I haven't seen any) is 1) Romney at Bain bought companies going downhill and broke them up and fired people and sold off assets. And 2) sent lots of those jobs overseas to foreigners.

So a conservative I respect explained some of this to me brilliantly (okay, it was my husband), viz:

1) Better they should save something about the company rather than it go bankrupt and fire everyone!

Okay, I'll buy that because I was in a situation like that. Ancient printing company in Darkest Baltimore, no parking, people had to commute thru the ghetto, terribly dangerous, many employees could not read. I don't mean couldn't read the Wall Street Journal: I mean they could not READ. This is a true story. So we were bought, moved, many fired, the people who could read and drive a car to commute to a better location kept on, and the company survived and hired.

2) This conservative defended the jobs Romney sent overseas by saying that maybe they were grossly overpriced union people.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....................conservative s generally don't like unions, *I* don't like unions, but wouldn't we all rather see unionized Americans working rather than Bangladeshis getting all the jobs?

I don't think Romney can recover from a perception that he made a lot of money sending our jobs overseas. That's just totally lose-lose for Americans. Apparently since April (everything happened in April this year, somehow) Romney's stats in the battleground states have fallen to an 8-point difference against Obama and his "favorable impression" is decreasing.

Romney sorely needs to reply to these ads, but he isn't.......maybe he isn't replying because they're true and he has no good argument back?

What do other people think about this problem?

Not sure it's a REAL problem...

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/07/02/Wapo-backs-off-romney-outsource-claim

[mundame]

Not sure it's a REAL problem...

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/07/02/Wapo-backs-off-romney-outsource-claim


Yeah, I just looked at a Paul Krugman article on this (yes, in the Washington Post) -- Krugman differentiates between off-shoring jobs and out-sourcing jobs and says the Romney campaign yelled bloody murder about being accused of Romney off-shoring jobs.

That is, Krugman is saying the Romney campaign denies his company sent jobs to Bangladesh. I'd like to hear a little more about that, however, before I accept it. I'm no fan of off-shoring.


Krugman says out-sourcing jobs is bad, too, because sub-contractors don't pay good wages or benefits. I'm not too interested in that argument. If they are American jobs, let competition flow freely.


So your breitbart.com article says they are now denying that Romney HIMSELF participated even in out-sourcing; maybe somebody else at Bain did that bad stuff, but never Romney, so Romney is one of the good guys.........


Hmmmmmm. Considering all the money he made at a high level at Bain, that sounds like a weak argument to me.

[Missileman]

Yeah, I just looked at a Paul Krugman article on this (yes, in the Washington Post) -- Krugman differentiates between off-shoring jobs and out-sourcing jobs and says the Romney campaign yelled bloody murder about being accused of Romney off-shoring jobs.

That is, Krugman is saying the Romney campaign denies his company sent jobs to Bangladesh. I'd like to hear a little more about that, however, before I accept it. I'm no fan of off-shoring.


Krugman says out-sourcing jobs is bad, too, because sub-contractors don't pay good wages or benefits. I'm not too interested in that argument. If they are American jobs, let competition flow freely.


So your breitbart.com article says they are now denying that Romney HIMSELF participated even in out-sourcing; maybe somebody else at Bain did that bad stuff, but never Romney, so Romney is one of the good guys.........


Hmmmmmm. Considering all the money he made at a high level at Bain, that sounds like a weak argument to me.

I read the outsourcing happened after Romney left the company.

[mundame]

I read the outsourcing happened after Romney left the company.


Yes, I see that's what the Romney campaign is claiming.

Well, maybe that will work for him. "Bain didn't go rogue till after I left." Hmmmmm. That wouldn't sound great, somehow.

Apparently they don't want the candidate himself to address it, only the campaign.

[Kathianne]

Yeah, I just looked at a Paul Krugman article on this (yes, in the Washington Post) -- Krugman differentiates between off-shoring jobs and out-sourcing jobs and says the Romney campaign yelled bloody murder about being accused of Romney off-shoring jobs.

That is, Krugman is saying the Romney campaign denies his company sent jobs to Bangladesh. I'd like to hear a little more about that, however, before I accept it. I'm no fan of off-shoring.


Krugman says out-sourcing jobs is bad, too, because sub-contractors don't pay good wages or benefits. I'm not too interested in that argument. If they are American jobs, let competition flow freely.


So your breitbart.com article says they are now denying that Romney HIMSELF participated even in out-sourcing; maybe somebody else at Bain did that bad stuff, but never Romney, so Romney is one of the good guys.........


Hmmmmmm. Considering all the money he made at a high level at Bain, that sounds like a weak argument to me.

Did you read the article in WaPo that Breitbart article was about? That convoluted mess in WP was their fact checker basically saying the author lied, Obama & Co lied off of it, etc.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-new-attacks-on-romney-and-outsourcing/2012/06/29/gJQA5FbbCW_blog.html?wprss=rss_campaigns


Obama’s new attacks on Romney and outsourcing Posted by Glenn Kessler (http://www.washingtonpost.com/glenn-kessler/2011/03/02/ABzNymP_page.html) <!-- --> at 06:02 AM ET, 07/02/2012

...

[mundame]

Did you read the article in WaPo that Breitbart article was about? That convoluted mess in WP was their fact checker basically saying the author lied, Obama & Co lied off of it, etc.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-new-attacks-on-romney-and-outsourcing/2012/06/29/gJQA5FbbCW_blog.html?wprss=rss_campaigns



Whoa, great article! Thanks for posting it. Okay, what I take from this is that there is a useful distinction, the one Krugman makes, between "outsourcing" jobs (to other Americans, perhaps not unionized, to American subcontractors) and "offshoring" jobs (all those enthusiastic Indian voices on our phones when we try to get something straightened out).

That Bain Capital did a whole lot of both, no question. But that a good case can be made that the off-shoring trend generally started after Romney left Bain Capital to run the Olympics and so Romney himself was not involved in the offshoring Bain did do. Naturally, the Obama campaign is not differentiating between these two words, outsourcing and offshoring, because they want to tar Romney with the offshoring brush.

I hate offshoring: what a bad thing that was for American jobs. And completely idiotic customer service, too. I mean, you gotta love these cheerful, chatty Indians in a way, but could we just hire Americans who know what they're talking about viz. the local paper subscription? Am I asking too much here, not to have to talk to New Delhi about my newspaper not getting delivered? Darn.

Okay, this has been a good thread for me. I see that there was indeed a lot of offshoring and outsourcing going on by Bain Capital, which actually has been a leader in offshoring, oh, nice. But that Romney left before all that got started.

I don't think the Obamites can make a case against outsourcing per se: subcontracting out a company's janitorial services, for instance, as is now commonly done. That's antiunion and pro-capitalism and nobody much likes unions anymore. So they are trying to munge it all together and pretend it's all offshoring and it's all bad and it's all Romney's fault, but there are some truth holes in that. Your article, Kathianne, said Factcheckers wouldn't give any Pinocchio's for all this, but I don't know --- I think pretending offshoring and outsourcing are the same thing is subtle, but it's a powerful form of lie.

Ten or eleven battleground states have BIG negatives for Romney and an average of 8 polling points against him because of this issue. That's huge. The main thing I take from this is that finally, FINALLY, Americans are turning seriously against offshoring our jobs to Bangladesh, and high time, too.

[red states rule]

Romney has a problem about how he made his money at Bain Capital. It's not selling well, and recently took a big negative turn, according to the Wall Street Journal's poll they published last week. I was fascinated at their point that of the 12 battleground states (the only ones anyone needs to care about; the rest have all been slotted into their Electoral College columns), nearly all show Obama ahead and they nearly all show Romney's popularity DECREASING.

And it's the Bain Capital thing, with the Obama campaign ads having a lot of effect.

What the ads say, according to the WSJ (I haven't seen any) is 1) Romney at Bain bought companies going downhill and broke them up and fired people and sold off assets. And 2) sent lots of those jobs overseas to foreigners.

So a conservative I respect explained some of this to me brilliantly (okay, it was my husband), viz:

1) Better they should save something about the company rather than it go bankrupt and fire everyone!

Okay, I'll buy that because I was in a situation like that. Ancient printing company in Darkest Baltimore, no parking, people had to commute thru the ghetto, terribly dangerous, many employees could not read. I don't mean couldn't read the Wall Street Journal: I mean they could not READ. This is a true story. So we were bought, moved, many fired, the people who could read and drive a car to commute to a better location kept on, and the company survived and hired.

2) This conservative defended the jobs Romney sent overseas by saying that maybe they were grossly overpriced union people.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....................conservative s generally don't like unions, *I* don't like unions, but wouldn't we all rather see unionized Americans working rather than Bangladeshis getting all the jobs?

I don't think Romney can recover from a perception that he made a lot of money sending our jobs overseas. That's just totally lose-lose for Americans. Apparently since April (everything happened in April this year, somehow) Romney's stats in the battleground states have fallen to an 8-point difference against Obama and his "favorable impression" is decreasing.

Romney sorely needs to reply to these ads, but he isn't.......maybe he isn't replying because they're true and he has no good argument back?

What do other people think about this problem?

Seems to me Pres Obama did the same thing when he used taxpayer mney to bailout the auto companies.

Thousands of dealerships were closed and thousands lost their jobs

OPf course, the liberal media ignores this fact

[red states rule]

Whoa, great article! Thanks for posting it. Okay, what I take from this is that there is a useful distinction, the one Krugman makes, between "outsourcing" jobs (to other Americans, perhaps not unionized, to American subcontractors) and "offshoring" jobs (all those enthusiastic Indian voices on our phones when we try to get something straightened out).

That Bain Capital did a whole lot of both, no question. But that a good case can be made that the off-shoring trend generally started after Romney left Bain Capital to run the Olympics and so Romney himself was not involved in the offshoring Bain did do. Naturally, the Obama campaign is not differentiating between these two words, outsourcing and offshoring, because they want to tar Romney with the offshoring brush.

I hate offshoring: what a bad thing that was for American jobs. And completely idiotic customer service, too. I mean, you gotta love these cheerful, chatty Indians in a way, but could we just hire Americans who know what they're talking about viz. the local paper subscription? Am I asking too much here, not to have to talk to New Delhi about my newspaper not getting delivered? Darn.

Okay, this has been a good thread for me. I see that there was indeed a lot of offshoring and outsourcing going on by Bain Capital, which actually has been a leader in offshoring, oh, nice. But that Romney left before all that got started.

I don't think the Obamites can make a case against outsourcing per se: subcontracting out a company's janitorial services, for instance, as is now commonly done. That's antiunion and pro-capitalism and nobody much likes unions anymore. So they are trying to munge it all together and pretend it's all offshoring and it's all bad and it's all Romney's fault, but there are some truth holes in that. Your article, Kathianne, said Factcheckers wouldn't give any Pinocchio's for all this, but I don't know --- I think pretending offshoring and outsourcing are the same thing is subtle, but it's a powerful form of lie.

Ten or eleven battleground states have BIG negatives for Romney and an average of 8 polling points against him because of this issue. That's huge. The main thing I take from this is that finally, FINALLY, Americans are turning seriously against offshoring our jobs to Bangladesh, and high time, too.

and Obama is using our tax money to outsource green jobs to other countries

Here is one example





The U.S. government is spending $20 million to “help clean energy projects in Africa get started.” Those projects include wind farms and solar panels, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced at the recent Rio +20 Conference in Brazil.But the government watchdog Judicial Watch criticized the spending as wasteful, given the administration’s track record in trying to pick green energy winners.

“The U.S.-Africa Clean Energy Finance Initiative will help clean energy projects in Africa get started,” said Clinton in her June 22 speech. “This is an innovative partnership between three United States government entities – the State Department, OPIC (the Overseas Private Investment Corporation), and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency. We want to drive private sector investment into the energy sector.”

Clinton said the initial $20 million grant will "leverage much larger investment flows from OPIC,” which is the U.S. government's development finance institution. “That will open the door then for hundreds of millions of dollars of OPIC financing, plus hundreds of millions of more dollars from the private sector for projects that otherwise would never get off the drawing board.”

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-administration-spend-20-million-green-energy-plan-africa

[mundame]

and Obama is using our tax money to outsource green jobs to other countries

Here is one example


Not the same issue. That's supposed to be green energy for Africa, not for us. It's foreign aid, that's all.

All the money will be stolen by kleptocrats and nothing at all will come of any of it. Africans aren't able to do this sort of thing; even we aren't able to do much with "green energy."

I wish we would reduce our deficit rather than throwing money at Africans who funnel it all into their Swiss bank accounts.

[red states rule]

Not the same issue. That's supposed to be green energy for Africa, not for us. It's foreign aid, that's all.

All the money will be stolen by kleptocrats and nothing at all will come of any of it. Africans aren't able to do this sort of thing; even we aren't able to do much with "green energy."

I wish we would reduce our deficit rather than throwing money at Africans who funnel it all into their Swiss bank accounts.

Outsourcing is outsourcing

and we have this

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/06/27/why-is-obama-outsourcing-national-security-jobs/

[Toro]

I look at it this way.

Here are your choices

1.) An enormously successful businessman and investor who started one of the most respected investment firms in the world. He started in business advising companies on how to get better. He then started an investment firm based on those principles. Some companies he funded were enormously successful and some failed. Some expanded employment dramatically, some laid people off and shipped jobs to China.

2.) A community organizer, law professor and state politician with zero experience in business and economics presiding over one of the weakest economies on record as President.

Who do you think understands how to grow the economy and jobs best?

[Roo]

The Jobs report yesterday is a bigger problem...Obama's Keynesian shit is a failure.

[Anton Chigurh]

It's really not a issue that has been good for the Obama CREEP team, resonating pretty much only with people who are going to vote for him anyway. Outside of that, hardly a ripple of interest - most people see it for the deflection tactic it is.

Obama can't talk about his accomplishments or tick off any successes, so he must try to demagogue and demonize the opponent. Alinsky's rules.

[Roo]

It's really not a issue that has been good for the Obama CREEP team, resonating pretty much only with people who are going to vote for him anyway. Outside of that, hardly a ripple of interest - most people see it for the deflection tactic it is.

Obama can't talk about his accomplishments or tick off any successes, so he must try to demagogue and demonize the opponent. Alinsky's rules.

Javier Bardem is my fav actor :)

[red states rule]

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/Foden20120707-Mirage20120707125735.jpg