Mitt Romney and the Republican Party in particular have continuously pushed the tenet that a business man is what America needs to solve its fiscal and economic woes. Anecdotally it seems many Americans buy into this fallacy.
America is not a business. The Chairman of America, our President must not look at America as a businessperson would look at his/her company.
A businessperson is tasked to maximize profits for his company in order to give him/her and/or the shareholders maximum return on investment. That is a perfectly legitimate goal. It is our capitalist system. Note that that businessperson is not responsible for the overall caring for anything or anyone that prevents that ultimate goal. It is for that reason that if a businessperson makes more profits by outsourcing, they will outsource irrespective of the negative consequences to people and community. It is for that reason that a businessperson would try to rid America of unions in order to depress wages to maximize the profits of a few. Capitalism is neither humane nor does it have a conscience.
Government mitigates the deficiency of the business model. It sets regulations that all businesses must follow and in doing so creates a level playing field, a platform. The regulations and policies set are what “we the people” consider to be our morals, our values, and our identity. We want a 40 hour week. We want employers to provide vacations. We want to minimize pollution. We want safe working conditions. We want healthcare. I could go on and on. Business by their nature want to minimize the above mentioned.
The President is responsible for balancing the good economic outcome of capitalism with the necessary humaneness that society’s morals and values demand. It is a complex balancing act. It is something that I think intrinsically disqualify people with the vulture capitalist mindset of Mitt Romney from holding elective office. While they can make a buck by pushing the limits of laws and capitalism, they do not see that the task of a President is to ensure every individual’s life have access to what is summarized in the preamble of our constitution.
I want to make one important statement. Mitt Romney was successful in making money using laws in our capitalist structure that I believe should be dramatically curbed. Mitt Romney did not create or oversee the creation or production of any product or service like his father or our capitalist magnates like Edison. Mitt Romney had no innovative ideas that resulted in a product or service like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Mitt Romney went into companies that created something, extracted the wealth, put many in debt, and then left with a bounty. There is nothing with that experience that can solve the myriad of problems (deficit, education, pollution, climate change, healthcare, etc.) we have in America.
Do not be fooled by the glitz and bylines. We must understand what we really need as a country. We must elect someone that shares real middle class American values and make sure they fulfill them. It is not about voting and then going home. It is about voting and keeping the pressure on those we elect.
Many articles have been written about Mitt Romney and Bain Capital. Matt Taibbi has written a comprehensive article that trumps them all. The excerpted paragraphs below are telling
And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.
By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you’ll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It’s almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.
I am amazed that the mainstream media has not made Mitt Romney’s dealings more of an issue. It has a material effect on us all. One could even make a case that given Mitt Romney’s refusal to release his tax returns, he may just use the presidency to effect laws that reward those that have offshored money allowing them spoils that he will benefit from as well. Read it! Share It. Comment on It. Vote!
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you don’t like the fact that Romneys company, Bain Capital borrowed from people and others had to pay it back.
how is that different from Obama spending 5,000,000,000,000 and letting my kids and my grandchildren to pay it back.
Lets be reasonable. Romney created alot of jobs with his company. Obama created about 4,000,000 as his ads state but they neglect to say the over 3.000,000 lost their jobs during the same time. 28 months of private sector jobs is BS.
james you skimmed past the meat. your first sentence is what the article is about. How, in your mind, does that help our country. Forget about obama just for a moment and answer yourself that question.
Have you forgotten how the large deficit was created? George Bush inherited a budget surplus that would have continued to bring down the national debt that you are so worried about. He and his Republican associates claimed that a tax cut on the wealth would “pay for itself” in increased government revenues. He lied to convince the America public to support 2 wars — without raising the funds (taxes) to pay for them. Now what part of the deficit belongs to Obama’s policies?
On the matter of jobs. Our Republican “friends” have been clamoring for reduction in public spending. As a consequence of their policies, more than 600,000 public sector jobs have been lost in the past 4 years. If these jobs were not removed from the employment rolls, then we would have an unemployment rate that is substantially lower. BTW, where do you get the idea that 3 million people lost their jobs because of the Obama administration?
Romney created a few jobs yes, but mostly Killed thousands of jobs @ Bain Capital for the interest of his own financial Gain. Period. He hid and continues to hide behind the pathetic title ‘turnaround kid’ ! All he turned around was his ability to use our tax codes to make even MORE money. Than abandons these poor company’s he invested in bankrupt & shut down. And we all wonder why he refuses to show his Tax Returns? This is no man I want in my Oval Office!!! He should be up on felony charges for what he did in the 80’s & 90’s to our hard working American built Companies!
yeah..well the last time we had a president that got elected on his “business acumen” was a guy named Hoover…and we all should know how that ended…
It is just incredible to me how so many people generalize and over simplify our country and its challenges. Our little company, Gaylord Construction has been a corporation for 30 years. We do not outsource. In fact, it is our policy to always Buy Bartow (within our county), even if the materials are a little more expensive. I would bet that most other small businesses do not outsource overseas either.
Small businesses and small business owners like us help drive the economy and support our local communities. From the Small Business Administration: Small businesses make up more than 99.7% of all employees; create more than 50% of nonfarm private GDP; create 75% or net new jobs. There are 22.9 million small businesses located in virtually every neighborhood. It is so unfair (and ignorant) to lump all corporations and businesses together as evil, uncaring and only in it for themselves. Please do not support these kinds of statements. Good article on U.S Small Business: http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/businessfinance/a/sbatopten.htm
We don’t castigate, or lump all businesses into one model. President Obama clearly stated that America supports the growth of small businesses. In fact, we also support the growth of corporate America. What we don’t support are vulture capitalists who wreck havoc on small and large businesses, and especially destroy the lives of the people who work in them, rob the companies of the wealth that was create by others, and then claim that they are doing good for America.
Mr. Romney claimed that corporations are people. This comment from the article provides the corollary: “Capitalism is neither humane nor does it have a conscience.” A corporation without a conscience is NOT a person! No matter what the ignorant members of SCOTUS claim.