2012 Republican Presidential Candidate Race

[kuronosan]

Wow, Gwyn, for someone so intellectual you're such a fucking retard. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around how you could believe what you're saying is legitimately founded on anything rational.

Someone thinks another human who takes advantage of others is too filthy stinking rich so they must be a Marxist?

I wish I could say you were trolling and that you were being funny, but holy fuck. That's just...

Man. I need to go to work and try not to laugh.

[solanis]

Gwyn's post is pretty solid. the people acting butthurt about it are being absurd tbh. you should read it again with unbunched panties kuro, a lot of what he's saying works very well with your worldview. :/

also yeah I'm finishing my degree, I refuse to be ashamed for working while going to school lol

[Gwynplaine]

Someone thinks another human who takes advantage of others is too filthy stinking rich so they must be a Marxist?

I didn't say he was in fact a Marxist. The idea he's presenting of labor exploitation is the sine qua non of Marxist theory. Everyone knows this it's not some kind of new controversial suggestion, them's just the facts. Any historian or economist would tell you precisely the same.

[Gwynplaine]

Even more controversial, here's something on topic:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/13...t-judge-rules/

A federal judge has ruled against four GOP presidential candidates seeking a spot on Virginia's March 6 primary ballot: Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.
Those four had sued the state's board of elections because they were left off Virginia's ballot.
Virginia requires candidates to obtain 10,000 signatures from registered voters in the state, with at least 400 signatures coming from each of the commonwealth's 11 congressional districts.
Huntsman and Santorum did not file such a petition with the Virginia State Board of Elections. Gingrich and Perry filed petitions that were later rejected by the Republican Party of Virginia for not meeting requirements.

Seems extremely likely Romney is on his way to being the candidate now.

[Ksandra]

also yeah I'm finishing my degree, I refuse to be ashamed for working while going to school lol

I gave up high school and college to start a business, and my ideal career is to be a jeweler since I'm an artfag. I sacrificed that to work 90+ hour weeks in investment banking, making a ton of money but not having enough time to sleep let alone have a life.

I smell a pile of bullshit.

I'll believe it when I see the receipts.

You are like the maxtm version of internet autism, except internet " rich economist".


Keep your bs shit out of here and I wouldn't mind you arguing the other side, but constantly bringing up these "facts" that are completely inconsistent to act like you know more than the rest is just absurd.

[solanis]

I meant that I gave up a normal high school/college social life and experience, which should be pretty obvious since people don't work in finance without a high school diploma, nahmean? stop making yourself look like a tryhard idiot in your attempt to discredit me :/ it aint a good look for you sweetie

on topic: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...LEFTTopStories

Three former factory workers featured in a film about layoffs at companies bought by Mitt Romney's Bain Capital say they weren't laid off by Bain, as the film implied, but got promotions and raises after Bain bought the plant they worked in.

The workers' charges of inaccuracy involve "When Mitt Romney Came to Town," a 28-minute film also known as "King of Bain." The film has become a focal point of the Republican presidential race in the past week. It was cited by rival Newt Gingrich at a televised debate last weekend and has been posted online by Winning Our Future, a group supporting Mr. Gingrich's candidacy. The group is also airing ads in South Carolina cut from the film.

Some Republicans are worried that Mr. Gingrich and other GOP candidates questioning Bain's work are adding credibility to similar attacks leveled by Democrats seeking to undermine Mr. Romney. On Friday, Mr. Gingrich called for Winning Our Future to address concerns about the movie.

more @ source

[Ksandra]

So now it's you are going to college and have a business and work 90+ hours as a banker that lets you go home to ny on the school holidays?

Just stop with the bs. Trying to go off on "no one works as hard as me!" then exaggerating/makes shit up just weakens any defense you have.

[solanis]

I sold the business years ago, I work full time on breaks and part-time while I'm working on my degree. my firm has offices in chicago so it's easy to check in with my team. give up your crusade against me ksandra and spend that time becoming a better tutor or w/e it is you do

[Ksandra]

full time while you're in NY? and who would buy a loli skirt selling business? keep trying. seriously no company would pay you well with that kind of system. Stop trying to come up with this stuff. Without any proof you still sound completely full of shit.

[edit] also means you are working "90 hours" as a banker at max 3 months out of the year, so ya, way to exaggerate to try to sound like you work harder than everyone else.

[Talint]

http://www.thegrumpypaladin.com/priv...kerpopcorn.gif

A total derailment, but I'm okay with this.

[solanis]

I work more hours between full and part time than anyone I know outside the industry, and I do it while aggressively progressing my career and getting my degree done. I have no shame about it and tbh you just sound pathetic the least you could do is link a thread-relevant article instead of continuing to derail, miss mod

[Ksandra]

I work more hours between full and part time than anyone I know outside the industry, and I do it while aggressively progressing my career and getting my degree done. I have no shame about it and tbh you just sound pathetic the least you could do is link a thread-relevant article instead of continuing to derail, miss mod

it's something you keep bringing up so it's not a complete derail when you act like it's proof you know more than others. and idc whether you think you work more, fact is you used it as an attempt to exaggerate to make yourself sound better and got called out on it. Don't try to back pedal it.

[solanis]

all I see is a butthurt 30-something year old woman who's been riding my dick for months and months ever since you made a fool of yourself in that feminism thread tbh

in another attempt to bring the thread back on topic, since you can't seem to do your job:

About the best that can be said about the Republican attacks on Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital is that President Obama is going to do the same thing eventually, so GOP primary voters might as well know what's coming. Yet that hardly absolves Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and others for their crude and damaging caricatures of modern business and capitalism.

Bain's business model is little more than "rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company," says Mr. Gingrich, whose previous insights into free enterprise include years of defending the taxpayer-fed business of corn ethanol.

A super PAC supporting the former House Speaker plans to spend $3.4 million in TV ads in South Carolina portraying Mr. Romney as Gordon Gekko without the social conscience. The financing for these ads will come from a billionaire who made his money in the casino business, which Mr. Gingrich apparently considers morally superior to investing in companies in the hope of making a profit.

Mr. Perry, who has no problem using taxpayer financing to back his political allies in Texas, chimes in that "I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips, whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out. Because his company Bain Capital, with all the jobs that they killed, I'm sure he was worried he'd run out of pink slips."

Politics isn't subtle, and these candidates are desperate, but do they have to sound like Michael Moore?
***

We have our policy differences with Mr. Romney, but by any reasonable measure Bain Capital has been a net job and wealth creator. Founded in 1984 as an offshoot of the Bain consulting company, Bain Capital's business is a combination of private equity and venture capital. The latter means taking a flyer on start-ups that may or may not pan out, something that neither Mr. Gingrich nor Mr. Obama seem to find offensive when those investments are made by Silicon Valley firms in "clean energy."

One Bain investment during Mr. Romney's tenure was to back an entrepreneur named Tom Stemberg, who was convinced he could provide savings for small-business owners if they were willing to shop at a store instead of taking deliveries. Today, the Staples chain of business-supply stores employs 90,000 people.

Bain also backed a start-up called Bright Horizons that now manages child-care centers for more than 700 corporate clients around the world. Many other venture bets failed, but that's capitalism, which is supposed to be a profit and loss system.

The loss part is what seems to trouble the Gingrich-Perry-Obama critics, especially in Bain's private-equity business. Like some 2,300 other such U.S. equity firms, Bain looks to buy companies that are underperforming or undervalued and turn them around.

Far from "looting," this is a vital contribution to capitalism and corporate governance. One of the persistent gripes of the left is that too many CEOs make too much money even as their companies flounder. Private-equity firms target such companies or subsidiaries, replace their management, and try to unlock the underlying value in the enterprise.

Private equity helps to promote dynamic capitalism that creates wealth, rather than dinosaur capitalism of the kind that prevails in Europe and futilely tries to prevent failure. Sometimes this means closing parts of the company and laying off employees, but the overriding goal is to create value, not destroy it.

A Wall Street Journal news story this week reported that Bain in the Romney era differed from many equity firms in buying more young and thus riskier companies. This contributed to a higher rate of bankruptcy or closure—22%—for companies held by Bain after eight years.

Bain disputes the Journal's calculations, but one test of overall success is whether investors keep entrusting a firm with their money. Mr. Romney and his colleagues raised $37 million for their first fund in 1984. Today, Bain Capital manages roughly $66 billion. Its investors include college endowments and public pension funds that have increased their investments in private equity to get larger returns than stocks and bonds provide. The people who benefit from those returns thus include average workers.

Bain's turnaround hits include Sports Authority and tech-research outfit Gartner Inc., which was once a small division of an advertising firm and is now a public company worth more than $3 billion. Another success was Steel Dynamics, which used Bain money to build a new steel factory and now employs 6,000 people.

The tougher questions for Mr. Romney involve the cases in which Bain took early payouts in dividends and management fees after purchasing existing businesses that ultimately went bankrupt. There are several in this category, including another steel company called GSI, though its hundreds of job losses were far fewer than the jobs created at Steel Dynamics.

The medical-equipment maker once known as Dade International is now much larger than it was when Bain bought it in the 1990s. But Mr. Romney's company later sold its stake, and heavy debts taken on during the Bain years forced Dade to spend two months in bankruptcy in 2002 and cost 2,000 jobs. The company later resumed its rapid growth, and Siemens bought it in 2007 for $7 billion.

Certainly Bain Capital made sure that its investment partners were paid first, but the larger truth is that the invisible hand worked pretty well. Notice that because the overall job statistics for Bain investments are by all accounts positive, many critics attack the Romney record with claims about private equity in general. The left is cheering a study commissioned by the Census Bureau that found that companies bought by private-equity firms suffer more job losses soon after a buy-out than similar firms that didn't experience buy-outs.

But this is hardly surprising since the companies were acquired in part because they were underperforming. The critics also don't mention that the Census study found that firms acquired in private-equity transactions created more new jobs in the ensuing decade. Imagine what might have happened if Chrysler or GM had been bought by private equity two or three decades ago. They might have been turned around much earlier, at far less pain to fewer workers, and without any taxpayer cost.
***

The larger political point is that Mr. Romney has a good story to tell if he is willing to elevate this ugly rumble into a debate over free enterprise and America's future. This is not Mr. Romney's strength, as he prefers to talk in personal terms ("I'm an optimist!") or to lapse into his default mode as the corporate technocrat. This invites personal attacks in return and it leads him into mistakes like this week's gaffe that "I like being able to fire people who provide me services."

Mr. Romney needs to rise above the personal and base his claim to office on a defense of the system of free enterprise that has enriched America over the decades and is now under assault. Mr. Obama will attack Mr. Romney as Gordon Gekko because the President can't win by touting his own economic record. Mr. Romney's GOP opponents (with the admirable exception of Rick Santorum) are embarrassing themselves by taking the Obama line, but Mr. Romney should view this as an opportunity to stake his campaign on something larger and far more important than his own business expertise.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...491449164.html

interesting article about Bain, bolded for your pleasure. refutes a lot of the complaints levvied against the firm

[Mazmaz]

>create new politics forum because people were doing personal attacks in old forum and it won't be tolerated here
>mod comes into threads in forum and personally attacks posters

Stay classy.

[Ksandra]

there is a huge difference between calling someone retarded because they are republican/democrat/conservative/liberal/etc. (which is what we want to avoid in this forum) and calling someone out on an obvious exaggeration. I am not personally attacking him on his beliefs, I'm attacking him on his lying/exaggerating in attempts to try and make himself sound more knowledgeable on a topic than others.

[Mazmaz]

Whatever makes you happy.

[Weeks]

I work more hours between full and part time than anyone I know outside the industry, and I do it while aggressively progressing my career and getting my degree done. I have no shame about it and tbh you just sound pathetic

4 of his 6 apartmentmates agree that you sound pathetic btw.

[kuronosan]

Hey Weeks, haven't seen you in weeks.

And thank you for clarifying, Gwyn. Still sounds a little retarded to me, but okay.

[Ragnus]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vid...orum_clip.html

Bit of comedy relief. Provided my Santorum.

[Talint]

Jon Stewart's "Definitely Not Coordinating with Steven Colbert Super PAC" has released it's first ad in South Carolina: "Mitt Romney is a Serial Killer".

Took me a second, but yeah. It's narrated by John Lithgow too.