The Cory Booker PR kerfuffle resulted in President Obama's clearest explanation yet on his criticism of Bain Capital: that being good at private equity is not the same as being president — which is to take care of everyone, not just investors.
After giving a speech at the NATO summit today in Chicago, Obama defended his campaign’s relentless scrutiny of Mitt Romney's business career.
"The reason this is relevant to my campaign is because my opponent, Governor Romney — his main calling card for why he should be president is his business experience. He's not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts; he's saying I'm a business guy, I know how to fix it."
To the president, Bain is fair game as an election talking point. "If the main basis for him suggesting he can do a better job is his track record as the head of a private equity firm, then both the upsides and the downsides are worth examining."
You can expect more where that came from. "This is not a distraction," Obama insisted. “This is what this campaign is going to be about."
Obama avoided bring up Booker and his recent comments, only referring to him as an "outstanding mayor.”
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Did I hear Obama talk about his investments of tax payers and borrowed dollars to the gone belly up in just a few years "green energy" companies he failed at? Did I hear him talk about the discouraged former employed people that have simply left labor force, most of them women as 90% of the 5,000,000 people who have lost their jobs during his administration were women (the true "war on women", his failed economic record)?
Obama and his surrogates (and that previously included Mayor Cory Booker, until his integrity got in the way of reciting "approved Obama campaign talking points) won't tell the truth of the facts that 3&1/2 years after his $800 billion "stimulus", the corporations and small businesses in our nation are still laying off more people each month than they hire, as the rate of new unemployment claims to new jobs each month is 21/2-3 to 1. The only marginal improvement in the national unemployment rate has come due to the shrinking labor force each month (some of these dissapearing workers are green carded immigrants who have returned to their countries of origin in the better economies of the developing world), so there are no kudos going to the Obama administration there, either.
Well, lets say that today's economy is Obama's. What would it mean? Well that his policies have been put in practice. So, tell me Keith, how many of Obama's policies have even being brought to the floor in the congress? None. Do you know how government works in the US. It is composed of THREE HOUSES OR BRANCHES. Bill or proposals go to the congress, then to senate and THEN IF THEY HAVE PASSED BOTH HOUSES THEN AND ONLY THEN THEY GO TO THE PRESIDENT FOR SIGNING.
So, it the president has not been able to pass anything through this GOP saboteur congress how can this be his economy. It is amazing, yes, that even with a bad congress he has managed to put this country IN THE POSITIVE SIDE OF THE GRAPHS. It is thanks to his intelligence and his resourcefulness.
So, Keith, you can say what ever, but you cannot change the way the government it is supposed to work. The GOP congress does not work. Imagine what President Obama can do with working Democratic congress.
Are you from the top 20% or are you struggling like all the rest of us?
Obama has presented three budget proposals that have included increased deficit spending for his further stimulus efforts his brilliant mind believes will solve the economic downturn while calling for increased taxes on the "rich" (any individual making $200K or more in any one hear, or any couple making $250K or more are his "rich" that need to be soaked). Not a single Democrat has voted for his budgets.
The Senate voted NO unanimously 99 to this year, last year 97 to 0. The House since 2010 election had passed budgets with sizable majorities including Democrat members votes, but Harry Reid, Senate majority leader has refused to take those instruments up.
Don't tell me I don't know the facts of life in Washington, DC, fool! I suggest you do your homework before you debate me bysimpy repeating MSNBC commentator's Democrat Party approved talking points. BTW, were you aware that our national deficit now is right up there with Spain's and Portugal's and Italy's as a percentage of our annual Gross Demestic Product as the ""bigger government and stimulus infused processes" of the last 3&1/2 years has failed to produce results of a growth of the private sector? Troubled times ahead if the present Administration is around much longer.
Now, Bain capital is not running for president. But, Romney's record at Bain is fair game because he is running on his record. Neither the president not Mr. Booker are against private equity or their profits. We have had capitalism in the country for ever.
But if nobody in the US isn't against vulture capitalism then shame on them. They should be ashamed of Romney assuming that everybody agrees with the way he made his profits. There are always losers in deals. But when people lose their retirement due to the greed of those who are supposed to protect it then that is not losing because of markets fluctuations.
I consider Romney a greedy and calculative person who is only thinking about himself, the future of his children's capital, and his friends or contributors.
Because he agrees with the Ryan plan, which actually makes the children of the bottom middle class and working poor pay more taxes than what they are paying and keeps from taxing those who can afford it, we can say that he expect the bottom 87% of the population to pay for the elite's excesses. That is unjust and criminal.
The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.” - Berger, John
“Ours is a system of corporate socialism, where companies capitalize their profits and socialize their losses...in effect, they tax you for their accidents, bungling, boondoggles, and mismanagement, just like a government. We should be able to dis-elect them." - Ralph Nader
“Money and Corruption Are ruining the land Crooked politicians Betray the working man, Pocketing the profits And treating us like sheep, And we're tired of hearing promises That we know they'll never keep”. - Ray Davies
Bzin's record, 78% of buyouts, restrucutings, and workouts or formerly failing companies have been successes. That's Romney's record as the founder of the nations leading private equity investment firm, and as its active managing CEO for 25 years, ending in 1999 when he left to manage the failing Winter Olympics of 2000and then run for Senator and Governor of Massachusetts.
BTW, the few companies that are focused on by the Obama Administration attack ads that went to bankrupcy recourse were in troubled industries affected harshly by the duel recessions of the 1999-2002 years caused by the dot.com financial asset bubble burst of the clast of the Clinton Administration years followed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks that sent a fledgling recovery reeling again. That Paper and Pads company went that had survived for 8 years under Bain's restructuring went South in 2001, and the steel mill that also enjoyed another good 8 years under Bain went down thru bankruptcy in 2002...at a time of China (given most favorable nation trade status during the Clinton Administration) was dumping cheap steel on our markets.
Do some homework!
Why are you following the GOP attack on a promising progressive champion like Mayor Booker, especially when Rachel gave you a great way to leave off? He was not conflating the issues and it was a mistake to draw the comparison. Do not do the GOPs work for them.
"America's technology has turned in upon itself; its corporate form makes it the servant of profits, not the servant of human needs" Alice Embree
What? who are the "they" that allowed low wages, high prices -what do you mean undue fees and fines
“A successful economy depends on the proliferation of the rich, on creating a large class of risk-taking men who are willing to shun the easy channels of a comfortable life in order to create new enterprise, win huge profits, and invest them again”
George Gilder
The word to watch for in that quote is "proliferation", which means "to increase or to make numerous". Have our economic system make the wealthy proliferate. Only by birth. So then whoever is left behind are the bottom who must work to keep those who are on the top class. We have been sucessful making policies that protect the wealthy and their children by keeping wages low and prices of goods and services high. By mandating the purchasing of things not necessary for living.
By not providing the proper benefits to workers. We have told corporations that it is OK to only think of bringing profits to their share/stock holders without taking in consideration empathic and compassion and a sense of appreciation for those who work hard to put them in the wealthy class.
There is not one wealthy person that have not taken advantage at one time or another of the minimum wage, tax loopholes, and deregulation of monopolies. Now, in most states people are even losing the power of their vote through a law that should not exists. The private manager law. In some states even water is being privatized so the citizens are fined if they are caught collecting rain water. Why? Well, water that comes as rains is supposed to be let run through the companies systm or sewers and water collecting containers. EX: CO
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
-- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
Ref: The Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)
I learned new and pertinent information from Last Word's coverage of this issue. Thanks.
Thank you Afrommi. I always look forward to your informative, clear comments-especially on the economy & other current issues.
You've got to be kidding....afronmi repeats talking points without facts and figures to back them up only, fool.
Ah, I see Grandpa--formerly Lt. Sonny Fuzz from the "Beetle Bailey" comics--is back in his tent writing his latest letters to the Pentagon and anyone else who will listen. Of course after his short stint in the service Fuzzy spent his time in the psych wards; oh, he wasn't a patient, he was one of those who "kept order," but you had to look close to be able to tell the difference. A lot of us cabbies recognize 'em on sight, one reason we hang out at the airport a lot where the TSA screens most of them out...
And when he's not resorting to name calling, I see he's even borrowed the tactics some of us brought here with that "talking points" charge. If someone could show me where there were ever formal "Democratic" or "progressive" talking points memos, I would be all ears, but such claims are as mythical as the facts and figures in his spin. The same is not true of RNC talking points, something no FAUX Noise pundit would be without--well, except perhaps Shepherd Smith...
Fuzzy talks tough but he's got a glass jaw... When you land a solid factual punch or two, he resorts to name-calling or paranoid shrieking... He seems to think because it worked for him back in the asylum it ought to work everywhere...
A bitter old racist homophobe, who, fortunately, is probably on the endanged species list...
Sorry, I'm not so funny today folks; I'm waiting for his next Freudian typo...
Well, you know my academic history as having two BA's and Teaching in Vocational Education, which led to my work in the VA as a Vocational Rehabilitation Specialist, which included contracting for employment opportunities for rehabilitating veterans in programs know as Veterans Industries and Veteran's Construction Teams.
I think you confused me with your drunken self, there sot, hanging out in the detoxes and rehab wards.
I guess you didn't hear Mayor Booker admit on Meet The Press Sunday (probably sleeping one off, no doubt) that he was an official surrogate for the Obama campaign, and that (gesturing) he referred to his file of "talking points" that he was supposed to refer to. And exactly why do you think that the dumbfounded host of the NBC show seemed so peeved at his remarks about not joining the crusade against private equity investment firms like Bain Capital? Or the virulent reaction of your hero Chris Mathews on his "Low Ball Show Monday) at Booker's sinking in 15 minutes the Obama Campaign's ridiculous strategy to attack Romney's business credentials and his character, which Mathews admitted was so very important to Obama's reelection chances!
As to my political leanings, I'm a registered Indpendent voter, which effectively means I can not vote in Republican or Democrat Party primaries in my home state. I sample MSNBC and Fox News judiciously, but rely on CNBC, Bloomberg News, CNN primarily for my television news, while reading the Wall Street Journal, The Hartford Courant, and The Economist regularly, and occassionally Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report
And while gainfully employed in a federal career at professional level I also served as Steward, Executive Board Member, and Contract Negotiator with the National Association of Government Employees, and as a Steward and Organizor with the American Federation of Government Employees. And i drew on my Public Administration College major backed by minors in Economics and Business Administration in my work and union activities. Of course we have covered that before, so your statement of my employment backgrond just proves you, sir, are a lying sack of crap!
Book-smarts doesn't automatically equate to common sense-smarts. You're a prime example of this, Keith ...
Further, anyone that has to brag about their "credentials" is, more often than not, full of @!$%#. Congrats, dolt.
Of course I read Paynes treatise "Common Sense" in my education. You probably never heard of it, fool!
Insults aren't refutations. I've had a full life of success in academics, family life (two wonderful well adjusted society serving children and three grandchildren coming along to that are my prime achievements), and my accomplishments in my professions that included traaching, and working for Psychology and Social Work Departments of the Department of Veteran's Affairs and Department of the Army besides other supportive employments aren't bragging, they're simply stating facts which makes a lie of the Cab Driver's denigrations, that spring from his deep seated jealousy as he has quit on eveything in his life including sobriety so many times he can't recall the number.
Additionally, to the above I also provided community service as a very active member of my Massachusetts community's Planning Board, Board of Appeals, and Industrial Development Finance Authority.
I can understand in your ignorance that that might disqualify me from making cogent arguments that should be respected, but there it is, vfeinstein, no?