2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[Dark Sage]

...says the guy who keeps bringing up Solyandra, a scandal (I use the term loosely) that has yet to seem as important to anyone in Washington as even Whitewater was during the Clinton administration.

[Roy Karrde]

...says the guy who keeps bringing up Solyandra, a scandal (I use the term loosely) that has yet to seem as important to anyone in Washington as even Whitewater was during the Clinton administration.

Solyndra was a scandal with Government money that involved Obama Donars and a coverup, mind showing how that is comparable here?

[Dark Sage]

You bring up the bad parts of the President's past, he's going to bring up the bad parts of Romney's past. Turnabout is fair play.

Besides... If Romney is such a good job creator... I seem to remember him saying that he likes to fire people.

And don't try to explain that, and say that there was a benign meaning to it. Saying it in ANY way is bad. NO employer should EVER like to fire people.

[Roy Karrde]

You bring up the bad parts of the President's past, he's going to bring up the bad parts of Romney's past. Turnabout is fair play.

Except Solyndra happened under Obama's watch, this event did not happen under Romney's watch.

Besides... If Romney is such a good job creator... I seem to remember him saying that he likes to fire people.

Yes if a company is failing, it needs to be stripped down and rebuilt from the bottom up. If nothing was wrong with the company then Bain would never have needed to step in and no one would need to be fired. But mind you in turn as the company is being rebuilt more people are highered and it becomes successful again.

And don't try to explain that, and say that there was a benign meaning to it. Saying it in ANY way is bad. NO employer should EVER like to fire people.

Context helps, Romney wasn't speaking as a employer, he was speaking as a consumer.

"“I want individuals to have their own insurance,” Romney said on Monday. “That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.

“You know, if someone doesn’t give me a good service that I need, I want to say I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.”"

If you are being provided poor service by your insurance company would you keep them around? I sure as hell wouldn't.

[Magmar]

Yes if a company is failing, it needs to be stripped down and rebuilt from the bottom up.

Hooray, finally my grad school major appears in a TPM thread! Org behavior bot here we go!

If a company is failing, what will fix it? Change--a huge element of performance management. How is change most successful? Change from the top down. Change starts with leadership change, and not necessarily turnover. Turnover is an element of change that will come naturally as those who are resistant to change (higher customer service ratings as a change initiative for example) begin to stand out and either receive poor performance reviews and fail to advance, or leave the company due to disappointment in the change initiatives. Change also takes several years but adequate performance management on its own can increase productivity and performance by a fairly reliable 25 percent, other factors (job duties, etc.) staying the same.

You can't just get rid of all the lower-level employees, start over and call it change. If nothing about the culture changes, then the things that led to employee failure are still present in the organizational culture. You can't say, "My business is failing. It is because all of my employees except me can't do their job! Exterminate! EXTERMINATE *Dalek explosion*" That model does not lead to future success and will cause old problems to reappear in the future.

And this is all just the bare bones on organizational change...

[Roy Karrde]

Hooray, finally my grad school major appears in a TPM thread! Org behavior bot here we go!

If a company is failing, what will fix it? Change--a huge element of performance management. How is change most successful? Change from the top down. Change starts with leadership change, and not necessarily turnover. Turnover is an element of change that will come naturally as those who are resistant to change (higher customer service ratings as a change initiative for example) begin to stand out and either receive poor performance reviews and fail to advance, or leave the company due to disappointment in the change initiatives. Change also takes several years but adequate performance management on its own can increase productivity and performance by a fairly reliable 25 percent, other factors (job duties, etc.) staying the same.

You can't just get rid of all the lower-level employees, start over and call it change. If nothing about the culture changes, then the things that led to employee failure are still present in the organizational culture. You can't say, "My business is failing. It is because all of my employees except me can't do their job! Exterminate! EXTERMINATE *Dalek explosion*" That model does not lead to future success and will cause old problems to reappear in the future.

And this is all just the bare bones on organizational change...

I never said you just get rid of all the low level employees, however if a company has too many low level employees and it is causing it to run at a loss, you will need to "cut the excess fat". Obviously you will get rid of those in upper management that ran the company into the ground. But you obviously cannot keep all the lower level employees, especially if many of them are not absolutely needed.

Bain Capital usually steps in when a company is at the edge of bankruptcy, where it is about to fail, as such radical changes are needed to keep such a company afloat. That includes shutting down low performing stores, trimming the workforce, firing the management, changing the business practices, reworking contracts with unions, etc etc.

Lets use the example of Domino's Pizza, a business that Bain Capital successfully helped. Now obviously you are going to get rid of the upper level management, but you are also going to look at low performing stores, stores that are in proximity of other stores, etc etc, and begin to cut the stores that are absolutely unneeded.

[Plantae]

I don't think anyone would argue that downsizing is not an occasional, necessary evil. I also agree that saying Mitt Romney "likes to fire people" is taking his comments out of context.

However, saying that he always or even generally created jobs during his time at Bain Capital would be a significant fabrication. Bain Capital's buyouts often resulted in large layoffs and entire plant closures. Oftentimes, Bain Capital's acquisitions resulted in profits for them, while the companies still went bankrupt anyway. As a head of a private equity firm, Mitt Romney's goal was most certainly creating the maximum return for investors; it was not job creation.

That's not to say that he hasn't had experience in creating jobs. Certainly his role in the success of Staples, Inc. is notable. However, I think one should be wary of touting this success while ignoring Romney's other obvious failures.

Moreover, the real question for me is Romney's motives. I don't exactly trust a man who made much of his wealth as the result of acquisitions of troubled companies. As president, would this man be adequately interested in workers' rights? It's not just whether Romney has created jobs; it's whether his model for doing so is an appropriate means of repairing the American economy, and whether his intentions are pure.

[Dark Sage]

Romney's speech on the debt yesterday (where he blamed Obama for it, basically) appears to have been more full of holes than Swiss cheese. Here's a comaprison to some things he said to the actual facts:

ROMNEY: "America counted on President Obama to rescue the economy, tame the deficit and help create jobs. Instead, he bailed out the public sector, gave billions of your dollars to the companies of his friends, and added almost as much debt as all the prior presidents combined."

THE FACTS. Hardly. Presidents from George Washington through George W. Bush ran the national debt up to $10.62 trillion, the amount it was on the day Obama took office. Today, it is $15.67 trillion, according to the Treasury Department's Bureau of Public Debt. So it has gone up by $5.05 trillion under Obama. That's roughly half of the amount amassed by all the other presidents combined.

In short, the debt has gone up by about half under Obama. Under Ronald Reagan, it tripled.

ROMNEY: "I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno. We will stop borrowing unfathomable sums of money we can't even imagine, from foreign countries we'll never even visit. I will bring us together to put out the fire."

THE FACTS: Romney's tax and spending plans don't support his vow to dampen the debt fire. He proposes to cut taxes and expand the armed forces, putting yet more stress on the budget, and his promise to slash domestic spending isn't backed by the big specifics. Romney's tax plan would cut the top income tax rate to 28 percent from 35 percent and other rates by 20 percent each. He says he'd broaden the tax base and eliminate many deductions in the process, but details are missing.

A study by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concluded earlier this year that Romney's plans would not make a dent in deficits, and could worsen them considerably. That study was done before Romney upped his tax cuts, inviting even deeper debt.

That's not to say he can't at some point lay out the spending cuts necessary to achieve his aims. But he would have to slash domestic programs by more than 20 percent — far more than the 5 percent in immediate cuts he has proposed. It is nearly unthinkable that Congress would approve the evisceration of basic federal functions such as food inspection, air traffic control, the Border Patrol, FBI, grants to local governments, health research, housing and heating aid for the poor, food aid for pregnant women, national parks and much more.

Nowhere in Tuesday's speech was there a new idea of how Romney would accomplish the promised deficit reduction. He spoke generally of reforming Social Security and Medicare, eliminating duplicative government programs, and transferring some functions to the states or the private sector, adding that he would "streamline everything that's left."

The closest he has come to laying out a specific spending plan has been in his endorsement of the budget blueprint passed this year by House Republicans, which also fails to produce his promised deficit reductions.

ROMNEY: "The people of Iowa and America have watched President Obama for nearly four years, much of that time with Congress controlled by his own party. And rather than put out the spending fire, he has fed the fire. He has spent more and borrowed more. ... When you add up his policies, this president has increased the national debt by $5 trillion."

THE FACTS: Much of the increase in the debt is due to lower tax revenues from depressed corporate and individual incomes and high joblessness in the worst recession since the Great Depression. The recession officially began in December 2007, when George W. Bush was president and the national debt stood at just over $9 trillion. Financial bailouts, stimulus programs and auto rescue spending that started under Bush and continued under Obama contributed to the run-up of the debt.

But so did the Bush-era tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003. With bipartisan support, Congress has extended the tax cuts until the end of this year, and Romney's proposals for big cuts of his own would risk another squeeze on revenue.

To be sure, Obama as a presidential candidate in 2008 was just as eager as Romney is now to pin blame for mounting debt on a president from the other party.

Ignoring economic circumstances and the role of both parties in Congress, Obama accused President George W. Bush in that campaign of driving up debt by $4 trillion "by his lonesome" and taking out "a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children."

My opinion? Romney and the rest of the GOP need to stop watching Fox News. They're starting to become just as dishonest as they are.

[Dark Sage]

Roy, when George H.W. Bush lost his re-election bid, there was an additional factor: Bill Clinton. He was charismatic, and people actually liked him.

In many ways, Clinton stood for the common man, while Bush represented greed in all its forms.

Romney is no Bill Clinton.

[Roy Karrde]

Roy, when George H.W. Bush lost his re-election bid, there was an additional factor: Bill Clinton. He was charismatic, and people actually liked him.

In many ways, Clinton stood for the common man, while Bush represented greed in all its forms.

Romney is no Bill Clinton.

No doubt but Bill Clinton's "Its the Economy Stupid" hammered home the problems we were having and made the election a referendum on Bush's economic policies, and not on the Gulf War. In many ways this election mirrors that one, a poor economy with a President running on a popular foreign policy in the hopes that people will ignore the economy.

[Dark Sage]

Roy, I have a deal to make with you.

You keep saying that Mr. Obama should stop associating with the Super PAC that accepted donations from Bill Maher.

Well, I'll agree with you, on the condition that Romney stops accociating with the sleazy one mentioned in THIS article.

Read it. It's quite an eye-opener.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/us...6pLid%3D161806

In a nutshell, Roy, I'm starting to think that the Justices on the Supreme Court were drunk when they made that decision. The only good Super PAC is a bankrupt one.

[Roy Karrde]

Roy, I have a deal to make with you.

You keep saying that Mr. Obama should stop associating with the Super PAC that accepted donations from Bill Maher.

Well, I'll agree with you, on the condition that Romney stops accociating with the sleazy one mentioned in THIS article.

Read it. It's quite an eye-opener.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/us...6pLid%3D161806

In a nutshell, Roy, I'm starting to think that the Justices on the Supreme Court were drunk when they made that decision. The only good Super PAC is a bankrupt one.

Old News is Old News.

A: Romney has condemned the attacks saying.

"“I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they’ve described. I would like to see this campaign focus on the economy, on getting people back to work, on seeing rising incomes and growing prosperity — particularly for those in the middle class of America. And I think what we’ve seen so far from the Obama campaign is a campaign of character assassination. I hope that isn’t the course of this campaign. So in regards to that PAC, I repudiate what they’re thinking about … It’s interesting that we’re talking about some Republican PAC that wants to go after the president [on Wright]; I hope people also are looking at what he’s doing, and saying ‘why is he running an attack campaign? Why isn’t he talking about his record?’”"

B: The Super PAC has denied the attack.

" On Thursday afternoon, the Ending Spending Action Fund super-PAC, run by billionaire Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts, put out a statement rejecting the plan to spend $10 million to link Obama and Wright in a “big, attention-arresting way.”

The proposal “reflects an approach to politics that Mr. Ricketts rejects and it was never a plan to be accepted but only a suggestion for a direction to take. Mr. Ricketts intends to work hard to help elect a President this fall who shares his commitment to economic responsibility, but his efforts are and will continue to be focused entirely on questions of fiscal policy, not attacks that seek to divide us socially or culturally,” according to a statement from the Ending Spending Action Fund."

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/05/1...remiah-wright/

So you were saying about Obama and his Super PAC?

[Dark Sage]

I'll repeat it.

Saying it in ANY way is bad. NO employer should EVER like to fire people.

And I'm sticking to it.

[Roy Karrde]

And I'm sticking to it.

So consumers should not be able to enjoy firing people that have provided them poor service? Are you telling me no one has enjoyed blowing up at a restaurant and telling the manager how poorly they were treated? This is not firing people in the context that a person is actually getting fired, this is choosing to take your business elsewhere as a consumer. Was it the best choice of words? No.

[Dark Sage]

Roy, there are times when a company is in trouble, and downsizing becomes necessary. There are times when employees have to be laid off because they can't do their jobs right, or because they're simply incompetant.

But if thew boss actually enjoys doing this, then he's a pretty sorry excuse for a boss. Every employer I know says that they hate having to fire their employees when that becomes necessary.

If someone likes doing it, he symbolizes the whole problem that the OWS people are upset about: Rich people who look down on everyone else.

Was it a bad choice of words? Oh yeah... You bet it was...

[Roy Karrde]

Roy, there are times when a company is in trouble, and downsizing becomes necessary. There are times when employees have to be laid off because they can't do their jobs right, or because they're simply incompetant.

But if thew boss actually enjoys doing this, then he's a pretty sorry excuse for a boss. Every employer I know says that they hate having to fire their employees when that becomes necessary.

If someone likes doing it, he symbolizes the whole problem that the OWS people are upset about: Rich people who look down on everyone else.

Okay do you have dyslexia? Do you honestly have a reading disorder?

He was NOT talking about firing in a employer/employee context. He was talking about a business/consumer context. Read again and this time take it slow and sound out all the words.

"“I want individuals to have their own insurance,” Romney said on Monday. “That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.

“You know, if someone doesn’t give me a good service that I need, I want to say I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.”"

Edit: Mitt Romney has responded with a new Ad of his own.