AP
It was one of the best smack-downs of his otherwise clunky campaign. Mitt Romney took Newt Gingrich’s beloved fantasy about building a lunar colony and dumped it in the large pile of loony Newtisms.
“I spent 25 years in business,” Romney told a bemused Gingrich at the GOP debate in Jacksonville, Florida, in January. “If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I’d say, ‘You’re fired.’”
Channeling his inner Donald Trump, this was the moment when the numbers-driven chief executive Romney displaced the pandering, fuzzy math candidate Romney.
So what would CEO Romney think of the candidate now campaigning in his name? What if the candidate walked up to the brains behind Bain and asked for some of their precious capital?
First, the private equity execs would not stand for the inflated numbers padding out Romney’s resume.
The former Massachusetts governor claims to have helped create 100,000 jobs at Bain, but that includes many years after he left the firm. Back when he was running to the left of Ted Kennedy for the Massachusetts Senate seat, Romney claimed in interviews and TV ads that he helped created just 10,000 jobs.
It’s strange that Romney likes to count jobs added after he left Bain because he does not take the same approach to job losses after he left the firm.
Talking to the right-wing talker and blogger Ed Morrissey this week, Romney said it was unfair to suggest that he was responsible for a steel factory that closed after his departure. “The problem, of course, is that the steel factory closed down two years after I left Bain Capital,” he said. “I was no longer there. So that’s hardly something that was done on my watch.”
Burnishing your legislative record might be standard in congressional races. Bike paths magically become “economic development.” Symbolic votes turn into historic battles for constituent groups.
But a tenfold exaggeration in your numbers would get you laughed out of the C-suite. Or possibly fired by someone like Mitt Romney.
Then there’s the small problem of the budget that doesn’t add up. At the core of any business plan is a spreadsheet proving how you’ll turn your brilliant idea of a lunar colony into a vastly profitable monopoly mining precious metals.
Romney’s big idea is that he can turn round the economy by cutting the deficit and government spending. So what does his spreadsheet show?
By his own admission, the spreadsheet has so few numbers in it, you can’t actually tell if it adds up. “I think it’s kind of interesting for the groups to try and score [the tax plan] because frankly it can’t be scored,” he told CNBC in March, “because those kinds of details will have to be worked out with Congress and we have a wide array of options.”
Hiding your numbers is not the best way to get investors or voters to trust you – or to prove your executive skills. Unless you’re a risk-management executive at JP Morgan Chase, the number-hiding strategy is generally unacceptable.
What we have seen of the numbers add up to this: a complete contradiction of Romney’s strategy.
It isn’t physically possible to cut the deficit while also cutting taxes and raising defense spending. And we’re not talking about small tax cuts or small hikes in the military budget, which already represent around one-fifth of federal spending. The United States already spends more on defense than the combined budgets of the next 20 military powers.
Romney would increase spending by another $2 trillion on defense over the next decade. His plan to cut taxes 20 per cent across the board, even beyond the Bush tax cuts, would add at least another $4 trillion to the deficit over ten years.
At this point, the private equity masters of the universe might just look at Romney’s record running other similar entities. Take the government of Massachusetts, for instance: a four-year period otherwise airbrushed out of the Romney campaign at this stage.
While managing the business known as the Commonwealth, Romney increased debt by $2.6 billion, with a jobs record that placed the state near the bottom of the nation.
Romney’s campaign says he’s a turnaround specialist. He could start by turning around his own nonsensical promises from the primaries. Drop the idea of cutting taxes beyond the Bush tax cuts and the notion of increasing the Pentagon budget. Don’t just attack the White House budget, write your own and reveal the numbers.
If you’re a turnaround CEO, campaign like one. Otherwise the voters might treat you like the board of Bain Capital.
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There are sixteen trillion reasons for not to vote for President Obama; why do we need to invent any more? wait it became sixteen trillion three million by the time I finished writing this comment!
blah blah blah. Lets put Romney in as POTUS and lets see how much better he'll do than Obama. You can't deny the fact that Romney is 10 times smarter than Obama. Obama has no clue what he is doing.
Ha Ha Haaa - Dream-On !!!!!
1) Alex spoke of Bain Capitasl as "creating wealth. It does not. Wealth is property, the strength of your arm, the power of your brain, the productivity of your farms and factories. Bain collects money, only a symbol of wealth. It loans money to collect money. It refurbs business wealth to collect money. It destroys business wealth to collect money, which it passes on to its executives and stockholders. It practices, thereby, a degenerste for of capitalism: making money without creating wealth
2) I don't know how else to get this message through. So I state it here: On asbout May ninth, Alex refered to "Mormon Monism." Hindu pantheism might be considered monistit (universe is a multiform expansion of the divine), and Science might be considered monistic (the universe is governed by the same universal laws everywhere at all times). But Mormonism is tri-theistic: Father and Son appear in human form, together, looking like identical twins, while the Spirit hovers about unseen, speaking privately to each believer, and publicly through the Living Prophet. All creatures have ther separate existences, and even "Spirit Children," before and after they find birth into this world, have separate existences. While I might have some details wrong, Of this I can be sure: Mormanism is not monistic.
Yes Roney Good
GOP , makes an attempt to criticize the Dem's for the Health Care Act passed by the Obama aadministration because they say that the government should not force insurance on the people because it violates constitutional protection of the freedom of choice. Wow! Well if you say that is true then you have to restrict the states from forcing auto insurance on those who drive an automobile. The both have the same risk so why would you impose a mandate on one type of insurance and scream bloody murder about another type. The GOP are only looking to protect the so called elite class because if you do some of the research , you will find that they do a lot of business with the elite. You also have to realize that the rich get rich off the meager and if you eliminate the meager the rich will devour themselves because the source will deplete. The money have to recycle to the meager which will recycle back to the rich because this is what the rich do , make money and they are good at it so they willl never be poor because they are scientist of weath procurement and need to let the system take its natural course. The middle class is the PHI that balances the world economy and if you kill it so goes the world. Take a look its already started.
I am Khaliph
Romney is not a job creator for these reasons. When you buy a company to break it up because the parts are more valuable than the whole , you are creating a corporate rummage sale like a use auto parts junk yard. When companies buy portions of a business you can bet that they have already redesigned their system for the incorporation of the new portion they just purchased to operate within their system without having to add any new employee or a very small amount. This will never make up for the loss of jobs due to the sale or take over of the Romney buyout. His inverstor may or may not make money but you can bet , for handling the sale his company will get paid lovely.
He then goes on to lie to the public , or maybe he don't even know himself that corporations are not people . They are artificial persons and there is a difference. An artificial person is a ficticious entity that is administered by the human factor or sentient human beings /natural people for operational purposes and have limited functionality simular to the people , which can sue or be sued, earn revenue, and be taxed. It is a legal strawman and it can only do business with other strawmen. The states had to create a bridge between the human factor and the strawmen becuase the human being would always have dominion over an artificial entity which can never legally own anything. The government can alway take it away base on the previledge of allowing the the strawman ie corporation to exist. In other word the people are the source of its existance so you can't own someting that created you. The actual bridge betwee the strawman and human are the adhesion contracts created by the state , one example is your DR. Lic. The name have to be in all CAPS which identifies the strawman. This is also how we are taxed. Romney is playing games with words and should not put this out in the public because if someone decides to research this info we will have hell on our hands. You would be surprise where the GOP get some of its info from and 40% is accurate but its not the way the system was ran when they had it. Now that Obama have it and will use it to the letter , they want him out because with him in there it will most definately affect the GOP and the associates pockets.. Stay tuned
I am Khaliph