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Friday, June 29, 2012

Romney's Job Killing Healthcare Logical Contradiction

AMERICAN PROSPECT


Romney's Other Health-Care Contradiction

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Washington Post Denies Romney Request For ‘Outsourcing’ Story Retraction


TPM



TPM2012

Washington Post Denies Romney Request For ‘Outsourcing’ Story Retraction

Washington Post Denies Romney Request For ‘Outsourcing’ Story Retraction




2448

The Washington Post is standing by its reporting on Bain Capital’s outsourcing under Mitt Romney, and will not retract a recent story despite complaints from the Romney campaign.

“We are very confident in our reporting,” Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti told TPM, adding that meetings with people concerned about coverage are common.
Romney campaign officials on Wednesday met with top editors at the Post to request the paper retract the story. According to Politico’s Dylan Byers, who broke the news of the meeting, Romney staffers intended to argue that the article’s charges were incomplete or inaccurate. The Romney campaign did not respond to TPM’s request for comment.

The Obama campaign picked up the Post’s report as evidence that the campaign’s point about Romney has been made. David Axelrod told reporters last week that “[p]eople really have a fundamental choice in this election. The question is, do they want an outsourcer-in-chief in the Oval Office or do they want a president who’s going to fight for American jobs and American manufacturing and the American middle class.”

The Romney campaign insists that the Post doesn’t make the distinction between “outsourcing” and “off-shoring” — the latter being when American firms are replaced by workers in off-shore locations. The Post reported that, according to SEC filings, Bain Capital under Romney owned companies that were “pioneers” in shipping jobs oversees.

Bill Burton, the head of the super PAC backing President Obama’s reelection campaign, said it’s uncommon for campaign officials to seek a retraction almost a week after publication. He said the Romney campaign’s efforts were too little, too late.

“Their response came a week after the story ran, provided no factual basis for their complaints and failed miserably because they had repeatedly denied requests for comment on the front end,” Burton told TPM in an email. “So basically, their response was neither rapid nor an actual response.”
The Obama campaign did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment.



Bain Capital, Mitt Romney, the washington post

David Taintor
David Taintor is the Front Page Editor at TPM, where he contributes to TPM's Livewire coverage, among other areas. David is from Chanhassen, Minnesota, where, yes, it gets very cold. Reach him at taintor [at] talkingpointsmemo.com



Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas




Mitt Romney’s financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.

During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.



While economists debate whether the massive outsourcing of American jobs over the last generation was inevitable, Romney in recent months has lamented the toll it’s taken on the U.S. economy. He has repeatedly pledged he would protect American employment by getting tough on China.

“They’ve been able to put American businesses out of business and kill American jobs,” he told workers at a Toledo fence factory in February. “If I’m president of the United States, that’s going to end.”

Speaking at a metalworking factory in Cincinnati last week, Romney cited his experience as a businessman, saying he knows what it would take to bring employers back to the United States. “For me it’s all about good jobs for the American people and a bright and prosperous future,” he said.

For years, Romney’s political opponents have tried to tie him to the practice of outsourcing American jobs. These political attacks have often focused on Bain’s involvement in specific business deals that resulted in job losses.

But a Washington Post examination of securities filings shows the extent of Bain’s investment in firms that specialized in helping other companies move or expand operations overseas. While Bain was not the largest player in the outsourcing field, the private equity firm was involved early on, at a time when the departure of jobs from the United States was beginning to accelerate and new companies were emerging as handmaidens to this outflow of employment.
Bain played several roles in helping these outsourcing companies, such as investing venture capital so they could grow and providing management and strategic business advice as they navigated this rapidly developing field.
Over the past two decades, American companies have dramatically expanded their overseas operations and supply networks, especially in Asia, while shrinking their workforces at home. McKinsey Global Institute estimated in 2006 that $18.4 billion in global information technology work and $11.4 billion in business-process services have been moved abroad.

While the export of jobs has been disruptive for many workers and communities in the United States, outsourcing has been a powerful economic force. It has often helped lower the prices that American consumers pay for products and created a global supply chain that has made U.S. companies more nimble and profitable.

Romney campaign officials repeatedly declined requests to comment on Bain’s record of investing in outsourcing firms during the Romney era. Campaign officials have said it is unfair to criticize Romney for investments made by Bain after he left the firm but did not address those made on his watch. In response to detailed questions about outsourcing investments, Bain spokesman Alex Stanton said, “Bain Capital’s business model has always been to build great companies and improve their operations. We have helped the 350 companies in which we have invested, which include over 100 start-up businesses, produce $80 billion of revenue growth in the United States while growing their revenues well over twice as fast as both the S&P and the U.S. economy over the last 28 years.”

Until Romney left Bain Capital in 1999, he ran it with a proprietor’s zeal and attention to detail, earning a reputation for smart, hands-on management.
Bain’s foray into outsourcing began in 1993 when the private equity firm took a stake in Corporate Software Inc., or CSI, after helping to finance a $93 million buyout of the firm. CSI, which catered to technology companies like Microsoft, provided a range of services including outsourcing of customer support. Initially, CSI employed U.S. workers to provide these services but by the mid-1990s was setting up call centers outside the country.



Two years after Bain invested in the firm, CSI merged with another enterprise to form a new company called Stream International Inc. Stream immediately became active in the growing field of overseas calls centers. Bain was initially a minority shareholder in Stream and was active in running the company, providing “general executive and management services,” according to SEC filings.

By 1997, Stream was running three tech-support call centers in Europe and was part of a call center joint venture in Japan, an SEC filing shows. “The Company believes that the trend toward outsourcing technical support occurring in the U.S. is also occurring in international markets,” the SEC filing said.
Stream continued to expand its overseas call centers. And Bain’s role also grew with time. It ultimately became the majority shareholder in Stream in 1999 several months after Romney left Bain to run the Salt Lake City Olympics.
Bain sold its stake in Stream in 2001, after the company further expanded its call center operations across Europe and Asia.

The corporate merger that created Stream also gave birth to another, related business known as Modus Media Inc., which specialized in helping companies outsource their manufacturing. Modus Media was a subsidiary of Stream that became an independent company in early 1998. Bain was the largest shareholder, SEC filings show.

Modus Media grew rapidly. In December 1997, it announced it had contracted with Microsoft to produce software and training products at a center in Australia. Modus Media said it was already serving Microsoft from Asian locations in Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan and in Europe and the United States.

Two years later, Modus Media told the SEC it was performing outsource packaging and hardware assembly for IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Computer Corp. The filing disclosed that Modus had operations on four continents, including Asian facilities in Singapore, Taiwan, China and South Korea, and European facilities in Ireland and France, and a center in Australia.
“Technology companies, in particular, have increasingly sought to outsource the business processes involved in their supply chains,” the filing said. “. . . We offer a range of services that provide our clients with a one-stop shop for their outsource requirements.”

According to a news release issued by Modus Media in 1997, its expansion of outsourcing services took place in close consultation with Bain. Terry Leahy, Modus’s chairman and chief executive, was quoted in the release as saying he would be “working closely with Bain on strategic expansion.” At the time, three Bain directors sat on the corporate board of Modus.

The global expansion that began while Romney was at Bain continued after he left. In 2000, the firm announced it was opening a new facility in Guadalajara, Mexico, and expanding in China, Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea.
In addition to taking an interest in companies that specialized in outsourcing services, Bain also invested in firms that moved or expanded their own operations outside of the United States.



One of those was a California bicycle manufacturer called GT Bicycle Inc. that Bain bought in 1993. The growing company relied on Asian labor, according to SEC filings. Two years later, with the company continuing to expand, Bain helped take it public. In 1998, when Bain owned 22 percent of GT’s stock and had three members on the board, the bicycle maker was sold to Schwinn, which had also moved much of its manufacturing offshore as part of a wider trend in the bicycle industry of turning to Chinese labor.

Another Bain investment was electronics manufacturer SMTC Corp. In June 1998, during Romney’s last year at Bain, his private equity firm acquired a Colorado manufacturer that specialized in the assembly of printed circuit boards. That was one of several preliminary steps in 1998 that would culminate in a corporate merger a year later, five months after Romney left Bain. In July 1999, the Colorado firm acquired SMTC Corp., SEC filings show. Bain became the largest shareholder of SMTC and held three seats on its corporate board. Within a year of Bain taking over, SMTC told the SEC it was expanding production in Ireland and Mexico.

In its prospectus that year, SMTC explained that it was in a strong position to meet the swelling demand from other manufacturers for overseas production of circuit boards. The company said that communications and networking companies “are dramatically increasing the amount of manufacturing they are outsourcing and we believe our technological capabilities and global manufacturing platform are well suited to capitalize on this opportunity.”

Just as Romney was ending his tenure at Bain, it reached the culmination of negotiations with Hyundai Electronics Industry of South Korea for the $550 million purchase of its U.S. subsidiary, Chippac, which manufactured, tested and packaged computer chips in Asia. The deal was announced a month after Romney left Bain. Reports filed with the SEC in late 1999 showed that Chippac had plants in South Korea and China and was responsible for marketing and supplying the company’s Asian-made computer chips. An overwhelming majority of Chippac’s customers were U.S. firms, including Intel, IBM and Lucent Technologies.

A filing with the SEC revealed the promise that Chippac offered investors. “Historically, semiconductor companies primarily manufactured semiconductors in their own facilities,” the filing said. “Today, most major semiconductor manufacturers use independent packaging and test service providers for at least a portion of their . . . needs. We expect this outsourcing trend to continue.”


Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this article.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Why is Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital such a target?

Yahoo! News


Why is Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital such a target?

Press reports this week detailed jobs sent abroad and executive profits made when firms failed during Mitt Romney's time running Bain Capital. Are such charges fair, and will they stick?

Mitt Romney’s record running the Bain Capital investment firm continues to get close and sharp-edged scrutiny, giving the Obama campaign ammunition as it tries to defend its own record during rough economic times.

Specifically, critics say that Bain during the years of Romney’s leadership had a direct hand in sending US jobs abroad. A long piece in the Washington Post this week details such activity when Romney ran the firm.

“During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission,” the Post reported. “While Bain was not the largest player in the outsourcing field, the private equity firm was involved early on, at a time when the departure of jobs from the United States was beginning to accelerate and new companies were emerging as handmaidens to this outflow of employment.”

Mitt Romney's five biggest liabilities as GOP nominee

The Romney camp fired back that the Post story was “fundamentally flawed” because it didn’t differentiate between “domestic outsourcing versus offshoring nor versus work done overseas to support US exports” – a distinction hard to explain in a soundbite or on Twitter.

But it was clearly on the defensive as political opponents piled on.
“This simply doesn’t change the fact that Bain, under Romney, invested in companies whose sole purpose was to move jobs to other countries, directly countering the narrative that Romney has been trying to set,” declared the Think Progress liberal blog.

Within hours, the Obama campaign picked up on the story.
“Today it was reported in The Washington Post that the companies [Gov. Romney’s] firm owned were ‘pioneers’ in the outsourcing of American jobs to places like China and India,” Obama said during a speech in Tampa, Fla. “Pioneers!”

The campaign quickly launched an online map showing the 14 countries where Romney’s company had opened call centers and plants or provided manufacturing services.

The day after the Washington Post story, the New York Times detailed instances when Romney and other Bain executives earned large sums at a time when some companies they were involved with failed.

A key paragraph:

“The private equity firm, co-founded and run by Mitt Romney, held a majority stake in more than 40 United States-based companies from its inception in 1984 to early 1999, when Mr. Romney left Bain to lead the Salt Lake City Olympics. Of those companies, at least seven eventually filed for bankruptcy while Bain remained involved, or shortly afterward, according to a review by The New York Times. In some instances, hundreds of employees lost their jobs. In most of those cases, however, records and interviews suggest that Bain and its executives still found a way to make money.”

The New York Times published this response from Bain Capital:
“We understand that in a political campaign some may distort or our investment activity by cherry picking a few negative situations while ignoring our overall track record. But, the truth is that less than 5 percent of our companies filed for bankruptcy while under our control, a figure consistent with the broader economy, and revenues have grown in 80 percent of the more than 350 companies in which we have invested.”

Will any of this make any difference?

“Republicans argue publicly that the attacks have failed to move the needle in polling, so why engage, and that voters are more concerned about their own lives,” writes Maggie Haberman at Politico.com. “But privately, some Republicans believe and/or fear there will be an aggregate effect in key states among middle class voters from the Bain assault.”

As they try to frame an answer for dismal jobs and unemployment figures, that’s what the Obama camp is hoping for.

The pro-Obama Priorities USA Action superpac has launched a series of TV ads featuring employees of companies it says were shut down by Bain.
You can expect more such political thrust and parry as the presidential campaign continues.

Mitt Romney's five biggest liabilities as GOP nominee

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Saturday, June 23, 2012

Mitt Romney’s Disturbed Character Reveals Psychopathic Mindset

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Mitt Romney’s Disturbed Character Reveals Psychopathic Mindset


JeffFenske.wordpress.com

May 23, 2012

Mitt Romney’s Disturbed Character Reveals Psychopathic Mindset — He demonstrates a lack of empathy, no remorse or guilt for past assaults or mistreatment, a high degree of narcissism, and a capacity to ceaselessly lie and manipulate to get what he wants.

While Romney may not display the level of psychopathy necessary to be considered diagnosable as a psychopath, he does fit what Silver and Schouten call, “almost a psychopath.” He demonstrates a lack of empathy, no remorse or guilt for past assaults or mistreatment, a high degree of narcissism, and a capacity to ceaselessly lie and manipulate to get what he wants. If there was any doubt, his inability to stop laughing while recalling these events, when others have been harmed, proves this is a man with a highly questionable character.
* * *
From: sott.net
Mitt Romney’s Disturbed Character Reveals Psychopathic Mindset
Deborah Foster
Politicus USA
Sat, 19 May 2012 12:39 CDT
There are three major patterns of qualities that characterize a psychopath: 1) interpersonal conduct such as dishonesty, narcissism, and arrogance, along with a marked lack of consideration for the rights and well-being of others 2) affective deficits such as lack of empathy or guilt, and 3) impulsiveness or risk-taking. Based on established criteria, psychologists estimate that approximately 1% of the population or 3 million people could be classified as having a psychopathic personality. However, these are people who meet the cutoffs for diagnostic criteria, which make it seem like people either have it or they don’t. Psychopathy doesn’t work that way. It occurs on a continuum with some people having none at all and others having the range from a few tendencies to a full blown diagnosable personality disorder. James Silver, co-author of Almost a Psychopath: Do I (or Does Someone I Know) Have a Problem with Manipulation and Lack of Empathy? explains,
Almost psychopaths differ from true psychopaths not in the types, but, rather, in the frequency and intensity of their remorseless and damaging behaviors.”
[…]
An alarming anecdote shared by Rachel Maddow on her show does point to Romney’s issues with lack of empathy or remorse.
On May 10thMaddow played an excerpt from an interview with Romney in which he relayed a story from his past along with many inappropriate chuckles:
Romney: “I have a few connections with the State of Wisconsin. One of the most humorous I think relates to my father. You may remember, my father, George Romney, was the President of an automobile company called American Motors. And as the President of the company, he decided to close the factory in Michigan and move all the production to Wisconsin…they had a high school band that was leading each of the candidates, and his band did not know how to play the Michigan fight song. It only knew how to play the Wisconsin fight song. So every time they would start playing, “On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin,” my dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop because they didn’t want people in Michigan to be reminded that my dad had moved production to Wisconsin.”
This was Mr. Romney’s idea of funny, people losing their jobs and getting upset when being reminded about it.
In the same segment, Maddow discussed two of Romney’s other psychopathic behaviors, the recent revelation that he forcibly held down another teen in high school and cut off his hair as he cried and screamed and the now famous story where Romney strapped his dog to the roof of his car in a kennel for hours in defiance of Massachusetts law as he drove 60 miles per hour. In both cases, she played Romney’s “apologies” for the incidents, in which he laughed inappropriately throughout each.
These incidents and the insincerity of the apologies that followed them provide some of the strongest evidence of his psychopathy.
Entire Article Here
Related:
Seven Signs of a Sociopath — “Sociopaths never accept the slightest responsibility for anything that goes wrong, even though they’re responsible for almost everything that goes wrong. You’ll never hear a sincere apology from them.”
[video] Clive Boddy: Corporate Psychopaths Rule Over Us — The key thing about psychopaths is they’ve got no conscience. If you caught them lying, they wouldn’t be flustered. They come across as almost better than everybody else, and they can make you feel as if you’ve just met your next best friend. By the time that you realize who they really are…
[3-minute video] The Hermeneutics of Language: Few still say “You’re welcome.” | The Benchmark of the Psychopathy: The almost organic inability to look back, to recognize error, hurt, disappointment and pain — an inability to appreciate consequence and to take responsibility for actions of one’s past
The Boot-Camp Factor: The Hate & Anger Factory Where Men are Programmed to Kill and Then Become Our Dads?!! Our Pastors?!!!
Study: Politicians share personality traits with serial killers

Scrutiny of Mitt Romney’s Character Reveals Psychopathic Tendencies

Scrutiny of Mitt Romney’s Character Reveals Psychopathic Tendencies












People tend to associate the word psychopath with serial killers or other violent criminals. The word conjures up images of anti-social monsters who are unable to fit into everyday society. This makes sense since everything in our media teaches us that psychopaths are predatory murderers. Indeed, experts on psychopathy have estimated that up to 25% of prison populations include people who could be labeled as psychopaths. However, people with psychopathic personalities are not exclusively found among criminals. In reality, they are often described as “charming” and quite normal, even functioning in high profile professions. Recently, Sherree DeCovney made controversial headlines by making the assertion that as many as 1 in 10 financial services workers on Wall Street were psychopaths, which was probably an overestimation.  But, DeCovney was on to something. There are many highly successful people who can also be observed to have psychopathic tendencies, and recently, evidence has been piling up that one of them is none other than presidential wanna-be Mitt Romney.

There are three major patterns of qualities that characterize a psychopath: 1) interpersonal conduct such as dishonesty, narcissism, and arrogance, along with a marked lack of consideration for the rights and well-being of others 2) affective deficits such as lack of empathy or guilt, and 3) impulsiveness or risk-taking. Based on established criteria, psychologists estimate that approximately 1% of the population or 3 million people could be classified as having a psychopathic personality. However, these are people who meet the cutoffs for diagnostic criteria, which make it seem like people either have it or they don’t.  Psychopathy doesn’t work that way. It occurs on a continuum with some people having none at all and others having the range from a few tendencies to a full blown diagnosable personality disorder. James Silver, co-author of “Almost a Psychopath: Do I (or Does Someone I Know) Have a Problem with Manipulation and Lack of Empathy?” explains,
“Almost psychopaths differ from true psychopaths not in the types, but, rather, in the frequency and intensity of their remorseless and damaging behaviors.”
It would probably have been more accurate for DeCovney to have stated that Wall Street employees had a greater than average overall tendency toward psychopathy than to suggest that so many would fit the diagnostic criteria necessary to be labeled with the actual personality disorder.

James Silver and his co-author, Ronald Schouten, explain in their book  that people who could be described as “almost a psychopath” are quite plentiful. They estimate that up to 15% of the general population fits the profile of people who use manipulation to get what they want and who lack empathy or a capacity for guilt, all while displaying grandiosity, egotism and disregard for others.

Mitt Romney ran Bain Capital, a company that operated a business model nearly exclusively built on firing employees, canceling pensions, loading businesses with debt, taking millions in profit, and walking away. His claim is that he saved businesses but nearly a quarter of those Bain Capital touched went bankrupt; this occurred even with previously healthy companies. Countering the notion that Romney and Bain Capital were venture capitalists who developed new jobs, Aaron Goldenberg, wrote:

“Mitt Romney was NOT primarily a venture capitalist. A venture capitalist invests in early-stage businesses with the hope that they grow and prosper…By contrast, Mitt Romney was primarily what is affectionately known as a vulture investor. Bain Capital invested in failing companies with the intention of either restructuring their business or stripping the business and selling its assets.”
Goldenberg goes on to say that while what his company did may not have been evil or immoral (which is debatable), it was absolutely predicated on the belief that eliminating jobs was the best way to go even when bankrupting businesses could have taken other measures. It shows that Romney’s track record as a job-creating businessman is abysmal. It would take a  hardened heart to look in the mirror each day, knowing that your business was in the business of forcing people out of their livelihoods, regardless of the justification. But, in and of itself, this fact doesn’t prove that Romney is a psychopath. Instead, an alarming anecdote shared by Rachel Maddow on her show does point to Romney’s issues with lack of empathy or remorse.
On May 10th, Maddow played an excerpt from an interview with Romney in which he relayed a story from his past along with many inappropriate chuckles:
Romney:  “I have a few connections with the State of Wisconsin. One of the most humorous I think relates to my father. You may remember, my father, George Romney, was the President of an automobile company called American Motors. And as the President of the company, he decided to close the factory in Michigan and move all the production to Wisconsin…they had a high school band that was leading each of the candidates, and his band did not know how to play the Michigan fight song. It only knew how to play the Wisconsin fight song. So every time they would start playing, “On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin,” my dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop because they didn’t want people in Michigan to be reminded that my dad had moved production to Wisconsin.”
This was Mr. Romney’s idea of funny, people losing their jobs and getting upset when being reminded about it.

In the same segment, Maddow discussed two of Romney’s other psychopathic behaviors, the recent revelation that he forcibly held down another teen in high school and cut off his hair as he cried and screamed and the now famous story where Romney strapped his dog to the roof of his car in a kennel for hours in defiance of Massachusetts law as he drove 60 miles per hour. In both cases, she played Romney’s “apologies” for the incidents, in which he laughed inappropriately throughout each.

These incidents and the insincerity of the apologies that followed them provide some of the strongest evidence of his psychopathy. In the case of the attack with the scissors against his classmate, Romney claims to have no memory of an occasion that still haunts the eyewitnesses to the event. Nevertheless, despite not remembering it, he also claims he must not have done it because the boy was presumed gay, because no one talked about homosexuality in the 1960s, despite evidence to the contrary. It takes a remarkably callous and disturbed individual to forget causing another human being to scream out in terror, let alone to have instigated the incident at all. With regard to the abuse of his dog, the story takes a particularly disturbing twist when one learns that his dog appeared to have developed diarrhea as a result of stress and fear. In response, Romney simply hosed off his SUV and continued the trip with the dog still atop the roof.

There is abundant evidence that Romney doesn’t maintain any strong convictions, but rather forms opinions in service of his ultimate political goals. For example, where he once promised to be “better than Ted Kennedy on gay rights,” he now promises to be the most regressive Republican presidential candidate on gay rights in over a decade. The money he donated to Planned Parenthood has morphed into promises to shut them down. This sort of deceit is characteristic of a psychopath.

Showing that he also displays the impulsivity characteristic of psychopathy, there were recent revelations about his repeated issues with losing his temper, including to the point of two skirmishes with law enforcement. Here he repeatedly shows contempt for people in positions of authority, even getting himself arrested for directly defying the instructions of an officer. If he weren’t an incredibly wealthy man, one wonders how often his flaunting of laws the little people have to follow would have gotten him in trouble.

While Romney may not display the level of psychopathy necessary to be considered diagnosable as a psychopath, he does fit what Silver and Schouten call, “almost a psychopath.” He demonstrates a lack of empathy, no remorse or guilt for past assaults or mistreatment, a high degree of narcissism, and a capacity to ceaselessly lie and manipulate to get what he wants. If there was any doubt, his inability to stop laughing while recalling these events, when others have been harmed, proves this is a man with a  highly questionable character.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas

Washington Post


Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas


Mitt Romney’s financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.

During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

While economists debate whether the massive outsourcing of American jobs over the last generation was inevitable, Romney in recent months has lamented the toll it’s taken on the U.S. economy. He has repeatedly pledged he would protect American employment by getting tough on China.

“They’ve been able to put American businesses out of business and kill American jobs,” he told workers at a Toledo fence factory in February. “If I’m president of the United States, that’s going to end.”

Speaking at a metalworking factory in Cincinnati last week, Romney cited his experience as a businessman, saying he knows what it would take to bring employers back to the United States. “For me it’s all about good jobs for the American people and a bright and prosperous future,” he said.

For years, Romney’s political opponents have tried to tie him to the practice of outsourcing American jobs. These political attacks have often focused on Bain’s involvement in specific business deals that resulted in job losses.

But a Washington Post examination of securities filings shows the extent of Bain’s investment in firms that specialized in helping other companies move or expand operations overseas. While Bain was not the largest player in the outsourcing field, the private equity firm was involved early on, at a time when the departure of jobs from the United States was beginning to accelerate and new companies were emerging as handmaidens to this outflow of employment.
Bain played several roles in helping these outsourcing companies, such as investing venture capital so they could grow and providing management and strategic business advice as they navigated this rapidly developing field.
Over the past two decades, American companies have dramatically expanded their overseas operations and supply networks, especially in Asia, while shrinking their workforces at home. McKinsey Global Institute estimated in 2006 that $18.4 billion in global information technology work and $11.4 billion in business-process services have been moved abroad.

While the export of jobs has been disruptive for many workers and communities in the United States, outsourcing has been a powerful economic force. It has often helped lower the prices that American consumers pay for products and created a global supply chain that has made U.S. companies more nimble and profitable.

Romney campaign officials repeatedly declined requests to comment on Bain’s record of investing in outsourcing firms during the Romney era. Campaign officials have said it is unfair to criticize Romney for investments made by Bain after he left the firm but did not address those made on his watch. In response to detailed questions about outsourcing investments, Bain spokesman Alex Stanton said, “Bain Capital’s business model has always been to build great companies and improve their operations. We have helped the 350 companies in which we have invested, which include over 100 start-up businesses, produce $80 billion of revenue growth in the United States while growing their revenues well over twice as fast as both the S&P and the U.S. economy over the last 28 years.”

Until Romney left Bain Capital in 1999, he ran it with a proprietor’s zeal and attention to detail, earning a reputation for smart, hands-on management.
Bain’s foray into outsourcing began in 1993 when the private equity firm took a stake in Corporate Software Inc., or CSI, after helping to finance a $93 million buyout of the firm. CSI, which catered to technology companies like Microsoft, provided a range of services including outsourcing of customer support. Initially, CSI employed U.S. workers to provide these services but by the mid-1990s was setting up call centers outside the country.

Two years after Bain invested in the firm, CSI merged with another enterprise to form a new company called Stream International Inc. Stream immediately became active in the growing field of overseas calls centers. Bain was initially a minority shareholder in Stream and was active in running the company, providing “general executive and management services,” according to SEC filings.

By 1997, Stream was running three tech-support call centers in Europe and was part of a call center joint venture in Japan, an SEC filing shows. “The Company believes that the trend toward outsourcing technical support occurring in the U.S. is also occurring in international markets,” the SEC filing said.
Stream continued to expand its overseas call centers. And Bain’s role also grew with time. It ultimately became the majority shareholder in Stream in 1999 several months after Romney left Bain to run the Salt Lake City Olympics.
Bain sold its stake in Stream in 2001, after the company further expanded its call center operations across Europe and Asia.

The corporate merger that created Stream also gave birth to another, related business known as Modus Media Inc., which specialized in helping companies outsource their manufacturing. Modus Media was a subsidiary of Stream that became an independent company in early 1998. Bain was the largest shareholder, SEC filings show.

Modus Media grew rapidly. In December 1997, it announced it had contracted with Microsoft to produce software and training products at a center in Australia. Modus Media said it was already serving Microsoft from Asian locations in Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan and in Europe and the United States.

Two years later, Modus Media told the SEC it was performing outsource packaging and hardware assembly for IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Computer Corp. The filing disclosed that Modus had operations on four continents, including Asian facilities in Singapore, Taiwan, China and South Korea, and European facilities in Ireland and France, and a center in Australia.
“Technology companies, in particular, have increasingly sought to outsource the business processes involved in their supply chains,” the filing said. “. . . We offer a range of services that provide our clients with a one-stop shop for their outsource requirements.”

According to a news release issued by Modus Media in 1997, its expansion of outsourcing services took place in close consultation with Bain. Terry Leahy, Modus’s chairman and chief executive, was quoted in the release as saying he would be “working closely with Bain on strategic expansion.” At the time, three Bain directors sat on the corporate board of Modus.

The global expansion that began while Romney was at Bain continued after he left. In 2000, the firm announced it was opening a new facility in Guadalajara, Mexico, and expanding in China, Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea.
In addition to taking an interest in companies that specialized in outsourcing services, Bain also invested in firms that moved or expanded their own operations outside of the United States.

One of those was a California bicycle manufacturer called GT Bicycle Inc. that Bain bought in 1993. The growing company relied on Asian labor, according to SEC filings. Two years later, with the company continuing to expand, Bain helped take it public. In 1998, when Bain owned 22 percent of GT’s stock and had three members on the board, the bicycle maker was sold to Schwinn, which had also moved much of its manufacturing offshore as part of a wider trend in the bicycle industry of turning to Chinese labor.

Another Bain investment was electronics manufacturer SMTC Corp. In June 1998, during Romney’s last year at Bain, his private equity firm acquired a Colorado manufacturer that specialized in the assembly of printed circuit boards. That was one of several preliminary steps in 1998 that would culminate in a corporate merger a year later, five months after Romney left Bain. In July 1999, the Colorado firm acquired SMTC Corp., SEC filings show. Bain became the largest shareholder of SMTC and held three seats on its corporate board. Within a year of Bain taking over, SMTC told the SEC it was expanding production in Ireland and Mexico.

In its prospectus that year, SMTC explained that it was in a strong position to meet the swelling demand from other manufacturers for overseas production of circuit boards. The company said that communications and networking companies “are dramatically increasing the amount of manufacturing they are outsourcing and we believe our technological capabilities and global manufacturing platform are well suited to capitalize on this opportunity.”
Just as Romney was ending his tenure at Bain, it reached the culmination of negotiations with Hyundai Electronics Industry of South Korea for the $550 million purchase of its U.S. subsidiary, Chippac, which manufactured, tested and packaged computer chips in Asia. The deal was announced a month after Romney left Bain. Reports filed with the SEC in late 1999 showed that Chippac had plants in South Korea and China and was responsible for marketing and supplying the company’s Asian-made computer chips. An overwhelming majority of Chippac’s customers were U.S. firms, including Intel, IBM and Lucent Technologies.

A filing with the SEC revealed the promise that Chippac offered investors. “Historically, semiconductor companies primarily manufactured semiconductors in their own facilities,” the filing said. “Today, most major semiconductor manufacturers use independent packaging and test service providers for at least a portion of their . . . needs. We expect this outsourcing trend to continue.”

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this article.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Ann Romney Dances on Dangerous Ground as She Paints the Obamas as Elitists


Ann Romney Dances on Dangerous Ground as She Paints the Obamas as Elitists






Ann Romney, wife of Republican presidential presumptive nominee W. Mitt Romney, told Detroit’s WJR Frank Beckmann that she “doubted” she and Mitt would take as many overseas trips as the Obamas, because their happiness “comes from being with our children and our grandchildren.”

Mrs. Romney probably shouldn’t be making digs about vacations, with her husband having taken off 212 days of his last year as governor.

Frank Beckmann was a good choice for the Romney campaign to place surrogate Ann Romney, allegedly W. Mitt’s best public face. Beckmann once railed on about former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm creating the Michigan Climate Action Council, because everyone knows climate change is a hoax. He also rated second as the most biased commentator in an informal poll.
Thus it was Beckmann who first threw out the completely inaccurate hot potato that the Obamas take a lot of “overseas trips”. One wonders if he was referring to the President’s job, but no, Ann assumed he meant as vacations, and that choice infers her tacit agreement with the faulty premise.
The Hill reported:
Romney was responding to a question from WJR Detroit’s Frank Beckmann, who asked Romney if her family would be vacationing abroad as frequently as the Obamas.

“I doubt that,” Romney replied. “Our vacations and our happiness come from being with our children and our grandchildren.”
How many things are wrong with this? Well, number one, President Obama hasn’t taken any overseas vacations. He does travel overseas for work. You know, as President and all. And yes, even though Cokie Roberts thought Hawaii was exotic, it is still in the United States and not considered “abroad”, and it’s where the President’s family resides.

Number two; the trips Michelle has taken have been with her kids, sorta like “happiness” coming from being with “children.”

And number three, W. Mitt Romney was basically on vacation the entire last two years of his term of Governor of Massachusetts. He pulled a Palin, only he never announced it.

It all started when W. Mitt bet heavily on his party taking over in the midterms in an attempt to set himself up for his 2008 run. Republicans lost big. It was a “stunning defeat” for Romney according to the Boston Globe. Instead of fighting, Romney just gave up and walked away from the job. In the last year of his term, he ended up spending on average more than 4 days out of the week traveling to drum up support for his 2008 White House bid.

Salon noted, “He spent 212 of them out of the state, racking up more than 200,000 miles in the air and traveling to nearly 40 other states to lay the groundwork for his 2008 White House campaign. He kept the title of governor, sure, but ask just about anyone in the Bay State and they’ll tell you: He walked out on the job. He quit — just like Palin.”

Ouch, but the comparisons to Palin don’t end there, “His polls numbers were dropping (by October ’06, his favorable rating was barely above 30 percent), with voters expressing regret at having elected him in the first place.”
Wondering why his poll numbers were so low? Turns out that Romney’s approval ratings sank down to barely 30% because he ruled a bit like a King. Vanity Fair described the setting:
Referring to the time later when Romney was governor of Massachusetts, a Democratic lawmaker recalls, “You remember Richard Nixon and the imperial presidency? Well, this was the imperial governor.” There were the ropes that often curtailed access to Romney and his chambers. The elevator settings restricted access to his office. The tape on the floor told people exactly where to stand during events. This was the controlled environment that Romney created.
While we note that the description offered is from a Democrat, it does echo sentiments from Republicans about Romney’s persona and style. Tape on the floor is nothing new, but roping off his chambers is excessive and sings of the pomposity that already clings to Romney.
Can you imagine what would have happened to our country if President Obama gave up when his party lost in the midterms? It’s really rather troubling to see elected officials just give up and walk away from a position of trust, especially an executive position like Governor. No one can guarantee a Governor or a President a friendly legislature. If Romney can only operate within that context, he had better hope that if he does get elected, Democrats have short memories of the infamous Republican obstruction that has so tainted Congressional Republicans.

Furthermore, Republicans and conservatives would avoid the issue of vacations if they were tethered to reality and facts, with Obama taking significantly less time off than all of the three previous Republican presidents from Reagan to the both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.
Bush spent 1,020 days of his presidency on vacation. To put this into context, John F. Kennedy spent fewer days in office, 1000, than George W. Bush spent on vacation. Bush spent 487 days at Camp David, 490 days at his Crawford ranch, and 43 days in Kennebunkport. George W. Bush spent 69 days in Crawford during his first year in office. In contrast, according to FactCheck.org, Obama spent all, or part of, 26 days of his first year in office on vacation. This was less than all three previous Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, but more than the two previous Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
But Ann was meant to sound folksy and down to earth as she claimed that she and Mitt would rather spend time with family than travel overseas — a one-of-you kind of lady. This pretty picture was somewhat sullied when she added that she “was excited a horse she jointly owns, Rafalca, had qualified to compete in the Olympics in dressage, an equestrian sport.” Because it’s so every-womanish to own a dressage horse.

Though Ann Romney tried to make it sound as if her horse was jointly owned, and it is, according to W. Mitt, she also owns plural Austrian Warmbloods. Perhaps the Romneys will need a horse elevator next?

Ann Romney’s attempt to every-woman herself on the issue of vacations is also perilous ground given the many vacation homes the Romneys own, replete with their own lobbyist and car elevators. For most Americans, a family trip involves renting a house, staying in a hotel or camp grounds or staying with family, not flying via private jet to one of our 12 million dollar ocean-front, 8,000 square foot, staffed homes where we can choose which among a fleet of cars we wish to drive whilst on vacay.

Ann Romney’s attempt to paint the Obamas as elitists is further proof of her sense of entitlement and privilege. She expects that the press will not report on the truth. Maybe she doesn’t even realize how most of us live, but then, why was she trying to so hard to paint her vacations as family get togethers, while implying that the Obamas’ vacations are not?

Whatever happened to “leave the families out of it” anyway? Oh, that’s right. It was then Senator Barack Obama who made that statement regarding the press’ treatment of Sarah Palin’s family. It was Obama’s campaign that condemned hecklers of Mitt Romney, while Romney refuses to condemn the hecklers of Obama.

Thus, America is given the stone-throwing, glass-house living quittler Mittler who dined under Hitler, trying to paint the Obamas as elitists. Still, the Obamas appear lonely encased in their manners and real family values.

Maybe the Obamas are elitists after all; that is, if it’s character we’re after.

3 Disturbing Finds From Digging Deeply Into Mitt Romney’s Tax Return

3 Disturbing Finds From Digging Deeply Into Mitt Romney’s Tax Return















There’s but one definitive modern-day adjective that does full justice to Mitt Romney – sketchy. Read the full 203 pages of his joint 2010 income tax filing and see if you don’t agree. I do believe he’s a good family man. He’s certainly sleazed up a lucrative path for Tagg, one of his sons.

Mitt Romney has released a single income tax return (back in January), not two as the media keeps telling you. So he has made his 2010 filing available to the public. As for 2011, it’s all estimates. It was due April 17th and he promised to release it on that date. “When my tax returns are complete for this year, when they’re completed this year in April, I’ll release my returns in April and probably other years as well.” On April 17th he filed for a six-month extension. None of the “probably other years as well” have seen the light of day either. His dad and the president released multiple returns, as should Romney. I’d especially like to see his 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 returns. They could make fascinating reading.

Romney claims his 2010 income was $21,646,507. His taxes amounted to roughly 14%. His finances are odd at best and highly suspicious at worst. He’s got 3 blind trusts. There’s the Ann and Mitt Romney 1995 Family Blind Trust; the W. Mitt Romney Blind Trust and the Ann D. Romney Blind Trust. The ’95 trust and the Ann Romney trust seem to get most of the action.
The income tax form 1040 was filed jointly as a married couple by Willard M. and Ann D. Romney. The couple realized about 12 ½ million in Capital Gains. Mitt doesn’t want capital gains taxed AT ALL. Nor does he want to tax dividend and interest income. Most of the remaining Romney swag comes from ta ta!!! dividend and interest income. He hauled in $528.871 in author and speaker fees and a little more cabbage in Director bucks.

One truly puzzling aspect of the Romney return is the paucity of money coming from his overseas investments. And he’s got plenty of them. But many of them make but a few dollars. I’m talking $14 for instance. Some will get into the low five figures, but Gross Foreign Source Income seems low at $2,731,550.
Here were some of ‘Mitt and Ann Romneys’ favorite foreign investing holes. There was, of course, the infamous UBS Ann Romney blind trust account that was closed in 2010 after too many embarrassing questions. That’s the same account that yielded piggy-bank sized interest, though little was said about dividend payouts. Olten, Switzerland commanded some Romney money as well. How odd! The population is around 17,000 or so. The actual company the trust is doing business with is called “Swiss Prime Site”. It’s a high-end commercial and retail realtor. So did they buy some property in yodeland? The trust shows a gain of $71.00.

Our next stop on the ‘hide-the-money-so-we-won’t-have-to-pay-full-taxes’ tour takes us to Deutsche Beteiligungs AG in Frankfurt. DB is a big old private equity firm specializing in Mid-sized companies. Romney shows a profit of $14.00 in one account, and an apparent loss of $7.00 in another. Let’s now all gather at International ‘B’ and hop a plane for Dublin with a side trip to neighboring Luxembourg while we’re at it. Bain Capital operates an ‘office’ in Munsbach. The most recent population figures put the number of residents at 585. What’s with a tiny-town address to conduct major league investment action? There are other major equity houses in Munsbach as well. Itty-bitty village
notwithstanding, Romney managed to produce $20,255 in dividend income from their cobblestone streets. There are at least 4 Luxembourg-originated accounts.
URSA funding is another Romney favorite in Luxembourg. URSA calls itself an ‘Administrative Assistance’ company.. They’ll help you out with your tax and wealth management structure. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. They’re located at 16 Avenue Pasteur, Luxembourg City along with 36 other mostly financially oriented firms. Luxembourg is pint-sized, very wealthy and secretive. Ideal Romney country. The return listed $6.00 in dividend income and $143.00 in capital gains from URSA. Really?
Now let’s pop over to Dublin. BNY (Bank of New York) Mellon of Ireland is Mitt’s firm of choice here. In case BNY seems familiar it might be for their New York bank’s role in working with UK’s Barclay’s bank to allegedly screw the U.S. out of a billion in investor tax dollars in what were characterized as abusive tax shelters. BNY Ireland wasn’t mentioned in the April Press Release, but it’s odd how the Romney name pops up as a client of the likes of UBS and BNY. A second BNY Ireland account shows about 500 dollars in profits for Romney. Really?
My favorite Romney Irish account is Barracuda Investments. You just know they’ll fight for you. I won’t even bother with the details of foreign currency transactions from the U.S. to Ireland or other potential conflicts of interest that abound.

We haven’t hit the Grand Cayman’s yet, so come aboard. Castle Garden Funding (Ann Romney Blind Trust) is an apparent subsidiary of Ogier SVCS LTD. Both do the Romney’s bidding in this far-flung paradise. There are 439 companies that call this tax haven home. In addition to the Caymans, Ogier, a ‘legal services’ law firm, has tax-avoidance encampments in numerous other ‘screw Uncle Sam’ destinations including Dublin and Luxembourg. While we’re in the vicinity, there’s also an Ann Romney Blind Trust foreign partnership in George Town (they split the name over there)..

Let’s not forget Centro Properties in Glen Waverly, Victoria mate. That’s a suburb of Melbourne. Centro specializes in shopping centers. The Romney’s 1995 Family Trust claimed a $2.00 loss on that one.

One more fund worth mentioning is the hedge fund/leveraged loans/distressed/stressed debt firm set up in 1997 in Bermuda called the Sankaty High Yield Asset fund, a credit affiliate of Bain Capital. It has $15.5 billion in assets. Even the guy who set it up describes it as nothing more than a ‘mail drop’. At Sankaty you can buy U.S. companies and pay no taxes.

Let’s close with the family sleaze I was telling you about. ThinkProgress did a great job nosing into the details. In 2008, Mitt gave son Tagg $10 million seed money from the Ann Romney trust to set up an equity company called Solamere Capital. The Boston Globe at the time uncovered a list of subsequent investors that had also been substantial donors to the Romney presidential nominee campaign. In total, Tagg and his two partners stand to make $16.8 million in management fees alone. Even old Mitt grabs $115,000 per annum as a company director. In all, 64 investors fed the fund nearly $244 million. How many of those were campaign donors and what kind of favors will they seek for that giant money?

Final question. If the seed money came from a “blind” trust, where the principals are to have no input or knowledge of what goes on, how did $10 million end up in the hands of Tagg Romney? Did Tagg just ask the trustee for the loot from mommy’s trove?

I’ve barely skimmed the surface. This guy is a PLAYUH!!! The oval office is the last place you’d want to find him.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

I Like To Fire People: Romney Made $20,000 For Every Worker He Laid Off


I Like To Fire People: Romney Made $20,000 For Every Worker He Laid Off






A lot can be said about a man and how he makes his money. You have those who add wealth by creating things –  Henry Ford falls into this category. Then you have people like Mitt Romney, he invests money, that’s it! He then tells the industrialist, like Henry Ford, to lay off workers, in order to increase his own personal wealth.

Well, Mitt Romney has profited handsomely by laying off people for his own personal gain. In fact he made, $20,000 per laid off worker.

In an article by The Street.com they break down how Romney profited immensely off the suffering of his fellow American citizens.

So, as Romney tours the country, telling Americans he knows how to create jobs better than President Obama, remember how he became so wealthy.
Here is the breakdown from the article:

• American Pad & Paper: Bain invested $5 million in the small paper company in 1992, and reportedly collected $100 million in dividends on that investment. AMPAD went bankrupt in 2000, laying off 385 employees.
• Dade Behring: Bain Capital invested $415 million in a leveraged buyout in 1994, borrowed an additional $421 million, and ultimately walked away with $1.78 billion. Dade filed for bankruptcy in 2002, and 2,000 workers lost their jobs.
• DDI Corporation: Bain Capital reportedly invested $46.3 million in 1997, reaping $85.5 million in profits and an additional $10 million in management fees. When the company later went bankrupt, 2,100 workers were laid off.
• GS International: In a somewhat less profitable transaction, Bain Capital invested $60 million in 1993 and received $65 million in dividends. This company, too, went bankrupt in 2002, and 750 workers lost their jobs.
• Stage Stores: Bain invested $5 million to purchase the company and took it public in the mid-’90s, reaping $100 million from stock offerings. Stage filed for bankruptcy in 2000, and 5,795 workers reportedly were laid off.

America can not afford a President who puts profits before people, ever!






Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Mitt Romney's Blueprint for Privatizing American Education

CommonDreams.org



On 23 May, the Romney campaign released its education policy white paper titled A Chance for Every Child: Mitt Romney's Plan for Restoring the Promise of American Education. If you liked the George W Bush administration's education reforms, you will love the Romney plan. If you think that turning the schools over to the private sector will solve their problems, then his plan will thrill you.


 

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney visits a charter school in Philadelphia. (Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images)


The central themes of the Romney plan are a rehash of Republican education ideas from the past 30 years, namely, subsidizing parents who want to send their child to a private or religious school, encouraging the private sector to operate schools, putting commercial banks in charge of the federal student loan program, holding teachers and schools accountable for students' test scores, and lowering entrance requirements for new teachers. These policies reflect the experience of his advisers, who include half a dozen senior officials from the Bush administration and several prominent conservative academics – among them, former Secretary of Education Rod Paige and former Deputy Secretary of Education Bill Hansen, and school choice advocates John Chubb and Paul Peterson.

Unlike George W Bush, who had to negotiate with a Democratic Congress to pass No Child Left Behind, Romney feels no need to compromise on anything. He needs to prove to the Republican party's base – especially evangelicals – that he really is conservative. And this plan is "mission accomplished".

Romney offers full-throated support for using taxpayer money to pay for private-school vouchers, privately-managed charters, for-profit online schools, and almost every other alternative to public schools. Like Bob Dole in 1996, Romney showers his contempt on the teachers' unions. He takes a strong stand against certification of teachers – the minimal state-level requirement that future teachers must pass either state or national tests to demonstrate their knowledge and/or skills – which he considers an unnecessary hurdle. He believes that class size does not matter (although he and his children went to elite private schools that have small classes). Romney claims that school choice is "the civil rights issue of our era," a familiar theme among the current crop of education reformers, who now use it to advance their efforts to privatize public education.
When it comes to universities, Romney excoriates Obama for the rising cost of higher education. He claims that more federal aid leads to higher tuition, so he offers no new federal funding to help students burdened with debt. His plan does not mention the fact that tuition has increased in public universities (which enroll three-quarters of all students) because states have reduced their investments in higher education and shifted the burden from taxpayers to students. Romney will encourage private-sector involvement in higher education, by having commercial banks again serve as the intermediary for federal student loans – an approach Obama had eliminated in 2010 as too costly. (Until 2010, banks received guaranteed subsidies from the federal government to make student loans, while the government assumed nearly all the risk. When the program was overhauled by the Obama administration, billions of dollars in bank profits were redirected to support Pell Grants for needy students.) To cut costs, Romney encourages the proliferation of for-profit online universities.

The Romney education plan says that no new money is needed because more spending on schools will not fix our problems. However, he proposes to dedicate more taxpayer money to the priorities that he favors, such as vouchers, charter schools, and online schools. He also wants more federal money to reward states for "eliminating or reforming teacher tenure and establishing systems that focus on effectiveness in advancing student achievement". Translated, that means Romney is willing to hand out money to states if they eliminate due process rights for teachers and if they pay more to teachers whose students get higher scores on standardized tests and get rid of teachers whose students do not.

In making the case for vouchers – which provide government funding to pay the tuition at any private or religious school that parents choose – Romney exaggerates the evidence; indeed, some of his claims are simply false. He points to the DC voucher program, which began in 2004, the first program to use federal tax dollars to subsidize private-school tuition – as "a model for the nation". He asserts that "after three months, students [in the DC voucher program] could already read at levels 19 months ahead of their public-school peers."

This is flatly wrong. A congressionally-mandated evaluation of the DC program found that students with vouchers made no gains in either reading or math. As the report stated:
"[T]here is no conclusive evidence that the OSP [Opportunity Scholarship Program] affected student achievement."
Romney claims that 90% of voucher students graduated from high school, as compared to only 55% in the low-performing public schools of DC. But here, he exaggerates. The federal evaluation of the program said that 82% of the students receiving vouchers graduated from high school, as compared to 70% of the students who applied to the voucher program and were not accepted. This is a respectable gain, but nowhere near as large as the numbers Romney cited. Because students who enter a lottery tend to be more motivated than those who do not, reputable social scientists usually compare the outcomes of those who won the lottery and those who did not.

Paradoxically, Romney's campaign takes credit for the fact that Massachusetts leads the nation in reading and mathematics on the federal tests known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But Romney was not responsible for the state's academic success, which owes to reforms that are entirely different from the ones he is now proposing for the country. Signed into law a full decade before Romney began his tenure as governor in 2003, the Massachusetts Education Reform Act involved a commitment by the state to double state funding of public education from $1.3bn in 1993 to $2.6bn by 2000; to provide a minimum foundation budget for every district to meet its needs; to develop strong curricula for subjects such as science, history, the arts, foreign languages, mathematics, and English; to implement a testing program based on the curriculum (because of costs, the state tested only reading and math); to expand professional development for teachers; and to test would-be teachers. In the late 1990s, again before Romney assumed office, the state added new funds for early childhood education.

Romney's plan, by contrast, is animated by a reverence for the private sector. While little is said about improving or spending more on public education, which is treated as a failed institution, a great deal of enthusiasm is lavished on the innovation and progress that is supposed to occur once parents can take their federal dollars to private institutions or enroll their child in a for-profit online school. Massachusetts attained success by raising standards for new teachers, not by lowering them. Nor did Massachusetts eliminate teacher tenure – that is, the right to a hearing for experienced teachers before they can be fired.

Higher education, we are assured, will flourish when "innovation and skill attainment" matter more than "time in classroom". Put in plain English, the last sentence is claiming that higher education will become more affordable when more students enroll in online universities, most of which are low-cost and for-profit. Of course, online universities are cheaper; they have no capital costs, no library, no facilities, and minimal staff. Some are under investigation for fraud because of their methods of recruiting students; they have fended off federal regulation by a heavy (and bipartisan) investment in lobbying.

The Obama administration's first response to Romney's proposals was to scoff and say that Obama's K-12 policies had the enthusiastic support of prominent conservative Republican governors, such as Chris Christie of New Jersey and Susana Martinez of New Mexico. Unfortunately, this is true. Apart from vouchers and the slap at teacher certification, Obama's Race to the Top program for schools promotes virtually everything Romney proposes – charters, competition, accountability, evaluating teachers by student test scores. If anything, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been as outspoken on behalf of charters and test-based accountability as Mitt Romney. And, like Romney, Duncan has disdained the issue of reducing the number of students per teacher.
Romney's proposal for private-school vouchers is red meat for the rightwing base of the Republican party, especially evangelicals. Vouchers have been the third rail of education politics since Milton Friedman proposed them in 1955; they have been put before the voters in several state referenda and have been consistently rejected. As a general rule, the public does not want public money to support religious schools. And many religious schools are wary about accepting public money and the regulations that eventually are tied to it. But in the past few years, vouchers have been revived by state legislatures in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Louisiana without resorting to a popular vote.

The results are already troubling. In Louisiana, where Governor Bobby Jindal's education reform legislation was enacted in mid April, the new law declares that students in low-performing schools are eligible to take their share of state funding to any accredited private or religious school. About 400,000 students (more than half the students in the state) are eligible, but only some 5,000 places are available in the state's private and parochial schools. When the state posted the list of participating schools, the one that registered to accept the largest number of voucher students was the New Living Word School, which offered to enroll 315 of them. But its current enrollment is 122, and it has no facilities or teachers for the new students, though it promises to erect a new building in time for the beginning of the school year this fall. Most of its instruction is delivered on DVDs.

Another school, the Eternity Christian Academy, which currently has 14 students, has agreed to take in 135 voucher students. According to a recent Reuters article:
"[Students] sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains 'what God made' on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution."
The pastor-turned-principal explained:
"We try to stay away from all those things that might confuse our children."
Some of the other schools that have been approved to receive state-funded vouchers "use social studies texts warning that liberals threaten global prosperity; Bible-based math books that don't cover modern concepts such as set theory; and biology texts built around refuting evolution".

The Reuters reporter described the Louisiana law as "the nation's boldest experiment in privatizing public education, with the state preparing to shift tens of millions in tax dollars out of the public schools to pay private industry, businesses owners and church pastors to educate children". Next year, all students in Louisiana will qualify for a voucher to take courses from private vendors or corporations offering courses or training. Expect a boom in new education businesses in Louisiana.

What Governor Jindal is doing sounds like a template for the Romney plan. With no increase in funding, all the money for vouchers and private vendors and online charters will be deducted from the state's public education budget. Governor Jindal and Mitt Romney should explain how American education will be improved if taxpayer dollars are used to send more students to sectarian schools and to take their courses from profit-making businesses and online schools.

In the vision presented by Mitt Romney, public dollars would flow to schools that teach creationism. Anyone could teach, without passing any test of their knowledge and skills and without any professional preparation. Teachers could be fired for any reason, without any protection of their freedom to teach. In some states and regions, teachers will be fearful of teaching evolution or global warming or any controversial issues. Nor will they dare to teach books considered offensive to anyone in their community, like Huckleberry Finn.
And candidate Romney should explain how privatizing the way we school our children will further his goal of "restoring the promise of American education". "Restore" suggests a return to the past. When in American history did the for-profit sector run American schools? Which state ever permitted it until the advent in our own time of for-profit charter corporations and for-profit online corporations? Which founding fathers ever railed against public education? John Adams, that crusty conservative, said this:
"The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves."
Restoring the promise of American education should mean rejuvenating public schools, not destroying them.

Diane Ravitch
Diane Ravitch is a historian of education at New York University. She is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. She has written many books and articles about American education, including: The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform, (Simon & Schuster, 2000); The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (Knopf, 2003); The English Reader: What Every Literate Person Needs to Know (Oxford, 2006), which she edited with her son Michael Ravitch.