At Bain, Romney created wealth, not jobs

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In case you missed it, here was PolitiFact on Friday:

Romney was the company's founder, and we think it worth a broader look at Bain’s investment practices, starting in the early 1990s...

Our research shows that outsourcing was well established by the time Bain began buying shares in the companies described in the recent articles. To call these companies pioneers is a stretch.

"This had been going on for decades," said Tim Sturgeon a researcher who focuses on outsourcing at the Industrial Performance Center at MIT.

Outsourcing grew significantly starting in the early 1990s thanks in part to the expansion of the Internet and changes in the rules of international trade. Bain was one of scores of private equity firms that participated.

"They were part of the herd," said Sturgeon. "To say they picked the pioneers gives (Bain) too much credit for being innovative. It was a mainstream strategy by that point."

Every expert we contacted agreed that when Bain invested in the companies in question, it was counting on high returns that included the results of outsourcing.

Bain may not have been a pioneer of outsourcing, but it was deeply involved in it. Because it -- and Romney personally -- was all about making money, not creating jobs. If making money required that jobs be sent overseas, so be it. If making money required that jobs be destroyed without regard, you know, for the actual human beings in them, whatever.

So much of the talk right now, and understandably so, is about whether Romney was still at Bain, or still in some way responsible for its activities, after he left in 1999. But we also need to look at what Bain did, and what Romney himself oversaw and approved, before he left, that is, when he was fully in charge of the firm. There may have been some success stories, the ones Romney brings up to tout his business acumen, but the record in all its ugliness and brutality is getting clearer and clearer.

As Greg Sargent wrote yesterday: "The larger point here is that Romney's business background was about creating wealth -- regardless of the impact it had on American jobs -- and that in so doing, his company invested in firms that outsourced and ultimately moved jobs overseas, even as Romney remained listed as CEO and sole shareholder."

Care to go back on the talk-show circuit to try to defend yourself, Mitt?

Behind the Ad: The facts behind Mitt Romney's record on job exporting

By Richard K. Barry 

(Another installment in our "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: The Obama-Biden campaign.

Where: Eight battleground states.

What's going on: The Obama campaign is continuing to hammer Mitt Romney on his record at Bain Capital as a job exporter, juxtaposing his comments about being tough on China with his record of outsourcing jobs to China.

It should be noted that there is a controversy around the claim that Romney was involved in any of the outsourcing of jobs at Bain. On the one hand, an independent group called FactCheck.org has argued that Romney had left Bain in February of 1999 prior to work the firm did to outsource jobs. On the other hand, the Obama campaign has cited evidence in a letter to FactCheck.org that:

"Romney took an informal leave of absence but remained in full legal control of Bain and continued to be paid by Bain as such. Governor Romney would have the period of Bain service understood differently, for the obvious reason that there is much in this l999-2002 period that he would prefer to avoid accountability for."

[The Obama campaign] cites statements by Romney, his wife Ann, lawyer Bradley Malt, and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission as evidence that he maintained significant managerial and financial ties with the company during the period when the outsourcings referenced in Obama TV ads occurred.

Romney said he would "stay on as a part-timer with Bain, providing input on investment and key personnel decisions," the Boston Herald reported in February 1999 after an interview with the private equity executive. The letter also cites dozens of SEC filings from after March 1, 1999, which shows various Bain holdings as "wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney."

If the argument by the folks at FactCheck.org is that the ad is inaccurate because Romney was no longer running the company, despite the fact that he was involved in providing advice on investments and personnel decisions and had financial and managerial ties to organization, I find that absurd.

If this is the bar, I can only imagine what their Lie-o-Meter would do when it assessing anything Romney says. My guess is it would explode.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Romney at Bain is fair game

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

Outsourcing? Excellent... Now release the hounds!

With the Obama campaign just now starting to get into full swing, and starting to define its opponent (a key task of any presidential campaign), Mitt Romney has taken a lot of heat lately over his work at Bain Capital.

It started during the Republican primaries, if you recall, when his Republican opponents, desperate to fine something to bring him down, used Bain to brand him a job-destroying vulture capitalist -- which he was. He weathered that storm largely because his opponents were so awful, such bad messengers, but also because Republicans, and particularly the extremists who vote in the party's primaries, aren't terribly comfortable with anything that smacks of a critique of capitalism, including of the ugly vulture variety. ("He made a shitload of money destroying other people? Good for him! God bless America!")

But things are much more difficult for him now: Obama is vastly superior to Republicans like Gingrich and Santorum, the campaign's gone national, people are starting to pay attention, and independents and others not on the Republican right are -- oh, how shall I put it? -- less forgiving of Romney's practices. It's not that he's made a lot of money, not that he's been a "successful" businessman, it's how he made that money -- and how he continues to make it given his ongoing ties to Bain (and of course what he's done with it since).

And recently it's been reported very publicly that Bain made a lot of money, with Romney benefitting in huge ways, by outsourcing jobs. As the Post put it:

Mitt Romney's financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.

During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

On top of that, making matters worse, there's been "aborted fetus-gate," suggesting that Romney and Bain would do anything for a buck (or, rather, millions of bucks).

As far as I'm concerned, this is all fair game. Just as Romney's finances (tax returns, tax shelters in Switzerland and the Caymans, etc.) should be out in the open, so should his work at Bain -- what he did when he was there and how he's continued to profit off its activities in the years since.

And I think it's a winning issue for Obama, who can draw a clear distinction between what he's done to bring the country back from the edge of the abyss and Romney's bloodthirsty business record. And if Romney actually wants to push back on it, defending his record and his tenure at Bain, so much the better:

The Romney campaign will begin to aggressively push back against President Obama's accusations that the Republican was an "outsourcing pioneer" today, a source privy to the the campaign's strategy told BuzzFeed.

As Obama's predecessor might have said... Bring. It. On.

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Aborted fetus-gate: This won't help Romney with conservatives

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Anything for a buck. Absolutely anything for millions.

David Corn reports:

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate's reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion.

But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission -- and obtained by Mother Jones -- list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents -- one of which was signed by Romney -- also contradict the official account of Romney's exit from Bain.

Make sure to read the whole piece.

I doubt this will become much of a campaign issue now. The mainstream media likely won't pay it all that much attention (it's an ugly and somewhat complicated story) and it's not like Obama really wants to get into a row over abortion (unless he can use it to portray Romney as in line with the anti-choice, anti-woman extremists who run the Republican Party).

To the extent it gets any significant attention at all, it could hurt Romney among conservatives already uncomfortable with him as their party's nominee given his moderate past and questionable right-wing bona fides. If nothing else, it's another straw on the camel's back -- and possibly a heavy one at that.

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign can continue to tie Romney to Bain, portraying him not as a job creator, as he and his defenders would have us believe, but as a vulture capitalist who destroyed jobs (outsourcing them for profit, where possible) and ruined lives, making a fortune in the process -- one he keeps adding to in his post-Bain years.

It's the right strategy, given Romney's immense vulnerability, and it seems to be working.

Romney, Bain, and outsourcing: A key issue for Obama

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There are some who seem to think that the Obama campaign's recent shift from Romney's work at Bain Capital to his tenure as Massachusetts governor closes Romney's vulture capitalism as an issue, that the Obama campaign saw that it didn't have much traction as an issue and basically caved in to Democrats, such as Bill Clinton, uncomfortable with the line of attack the campaign was taking.

I don't buy it. Not. One. Bit.

The fact is, the campaign hasn't really started yet in earnest. It has for Romney, perhaps, but then he's been running hard since last year and is now coasting on the momentum he picked up during the GOP primaries. And while Obama has indeed been out campaigning, in that presidential way of making some speeches and doing presidential things, and while his campaign has certainly started to paint a picture of Romney in anticipation of when the campaign gets underway in earnest with the conventions later this summer, there's still a long way to go with many more twists and turns to come, including from the Obama campaign, which hasn't rolled everything out yet because there hasn't been any need to.

And the other fact is, Romney's work at Bain -- making a fortune off vulture capitalism, destroying jobs and ruining lives -- is absolutely positively fair game. And not just that, it's an issue that has, in my view, a great deal of traction particularly at this time of ongoing economic uncertainty and in light of Obama's ongoing efforts to keep moving the economy in the right direction, a Herculean task that he will highlight again and again the rest of the way.

It's not that Romney has made a fortune. This isn't about punishing the rich or criticizing capitalism. It's about how Romney made a fortune, about criticizing a certain strain of capitalism that makes the rich richer at the expense of everyone else. And there's more about this in today's Post:

Mitt Romney's financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.

During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

While economists debate whether the massive outsourcing of American jobs over the last generation was inevitable, Romney in recent months has lamented the toll it's taken on the U.S. economy. He has repeatedly pledged he would protect American employment by getting tough on China.

"They've been able to put American businesses out of business and kill American jobs," he told workers at a Toledo fence factory in February. "If I'm president of the United States, that's going to end."

He can say whatever he wants. But do you believe him?

The Obama campaign will certainly have to be careful how it pushes this issue, particularly given that Republicans will counter by stressing Romney's supposed business acumen and accusing Obama of trying to wage class warfare (and, of course, of being a socialist).

But the president has a strong record to run on -- stimulating the economy, saving the auto industry -- and should be able to make the case effectively out on the campaign trail. In key swing states like Ohio, where so many jobs have been lost because of people like Romney, that could make all the difference.