A grotesque picture

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'Harvest': Bain looted firms
October 2, 2012

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- As a presidential contender, Mitt Romney says he "helped create over 100,000 jobs" during his years at the Bain financial empire -- but in a new-discovered video, Romney boasted that Bain took over corporations to "harvest them at a significant profit."

Romney grew rich at Bain, which specialized in "leveraged buyouts": using borrowed money to buy controlling interest in firms, after which the firms become liable for the large loans that were incurred to buy control of them. Some of these debt-burdened companies went bankrupt and workers lost their jobs. Others had their operations moved to China or other low-wage nations.

Firms looted by Bain included American Pad & Paper, KB Toys, Stage Stores, Sensata, Dade Behring, GST Steel, etc. Bain stockholders reaped fat profits from such corporations, while their employees were victimized.

Bain "staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs, and stuck others with the bill," Rolling Stone magazine said last month.

Now a different magazine, Mother Jones, has unearthed a 1985 promotional video that Romney made for Bain. He told investors:

"Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit."

"Harvesting" corporations enabled Romney to boost his inherited wealth into a $250 million fortune -- part of which now lurks in the Cayman Islands and Swiss bank accounts.

After the 1985 video was discovered, the Democratic presidential campaign released this statement by Randy Johnson, who lost his job when American Pad & Paper went kaput:

"Romney's business experience was never about creating jobs. Romney's own words prove that his focus was putting profits before people from the very beginning."

During the GOP primary, rival Republicans accused Romney of "vulture capitalism." Newt Gingrich said Romney's career amounted to "rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job." Rick Perry said Bain would "come in and take companies apart so they can make profits and have people lose their jobs.... It's all about how much money can we make, how quick can we make it, and then get out of town and find the next carcass to feed upon."

A few weeks ago, Jimmy Carter's grandson helped Mother Jones reveal a secret video of Romney telling a private $50,000-a-plate gathering of rich Republicans that 47 percent of Americans "believe that they are victims... believe the government has a responsibility to care for them... believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.... My job is not to worry about those people."

What a grotesque picture. The GOP nominee thinks nearly half of Americans are parasites, and corporations are targets to be harvested at a significant profit.

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