Barack Obama has released a new ad in which Bain Capital, the private equity firm where Mitt Romney worked, is called a “vampire.”
President Obama’s campaign is out with a tough new ad, “Steel,” attacking former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s record on job creation.
The two-minute ad focuses on GS Technologies, a steel mill in Kansas City, Mo., that was bought by Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital and went bankrupt soon after.
The ad paints Romney as out of touch with the needs of the local workers and concerned only with Bain’s own profits.
“We view Mitt Romney as a job destroyer,” says one former mill worker in the ad. Another calls Bain “a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us.”
Bain, along with two partners, bought the steel firm in 1993. The author of the WaPo article, Rachel Weiner, makes crystal clear that she is simply another campaign worker in the tank for Obama. Her words:
The two-minute ad focuses on GS Technologies, a steel mill in Kansas City, Mo., that was bought by Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital and went bankrupt soon after.
and then
Bain bought GST in 1993. According to a January profile of the takeover by Reuters, less than a decade later, the plant closed,
A “decade later” is “soon after”? Seriously?
So what ever became of this steel firm? This:
In 1993, Bain and two partners (GE Capital and Leggett & Platt) took over a century-old Kansas City steel plant known as GSI that badly needed investment capital for modernization. The Bain-led group pumped $100 million of investment capital into the plant, merged the plant with the company’s Georgetown plant within two years, and raised an additional $250 million through two bond offerings. Bain was paid roughly $900,000 in management fees during the Romney period (1993 thru 1999), and its investors ultimately yielded an estimated $50 million on an investment of $24.5 million. In the late 1990s, union relations deteriorated, steel prices nosedived, and raw materials and energy prices ballooned. The company filed for bankruptcy reorganization in 2001. The Georgetown plant was sold and temporarily shutdown, and then reopened over a four year period. Hundreds of Georgetown employees lost their jobs during the temporary shutdown. Georgetown locals blame the temporary shutdown on the owner that followed Bain, and most had no knowledge of Romney’s involvement in the company until the candidates started making their allegations. The plant is now owned by the world’s largest steelmaker and operates two shifts daily. Bain defends its actions at GSI, claiming that it generated substantial investment capital for the company and committed “many thousands of hours to upgrade its facilities and make the company more competitive.”
Now let’s turn to the irony portion of our program. While attacking Mitt Romney’s background in private equity Barack Obama held a fundraiser hosted by a private equity firm:
President Obama is attending a fundraiser today in New York City that will be hosted by Hamilton E. James, the chief operating officer and president of Blackstone. The financial firm Blackstone is “one of the world’s largest private equity fund businesses,” according to its website.
But ironically, Obama today is using Mitt Romney’s background in private equity as the basis of an attack on his Republican rival.
But that’s not the best part. No, THIS is the best part. While Romney wasn’t at Bain when the steel firm went bankrupt, one of Obama’s top bundlers was at Bain:
As Katrina reports, Mitt Romney left Bain Capital in 1999 to manage the Winter Olympics, two years before GST Steel declared bankruptcy. But that hasn’t stopped President Obama from blaming him for the company’s 2001 collapse. In a new Obama campaign video, ex-steel workers criticize Romney for being “out of touch” with the “average working person.” Left unmentioned (and blameless) is Jonathan Lavine.
Lavine, according to the Los Angeles Times, is a top Obama bundler and a managing director at Bain Capital. Lavine, who has raised over $100,000 for the president, was at the firm when GST Steel declared bankruptcy. So according to the Obama team’s logic, Romney, who had left Bain, is responsible for GST Steel’s demise, but Lavine, who was there, is not? Expect to hear more about this connection.
Moreover, Obama’s bailout of the auto industry resulted in the loss of at least 50,000 jobs.
Bill Clinton is right. Obama IS an amateur.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.