If Mitt Romney runs the country like he ran Bain Capital, the IRS would rake in trillions from clever tax gimmicks*, government officials would make eight figures for a three-day work week and the unemployment rate would be forty percent.
(*) Plus selling off our pensions, which is to say Social Security and Medicare. Thanks to Moses for the tip.
WereBear
But who would he sell the country’s assets to? The French might have a leg up on that.
Odie Hugh Manatee
It needed a small tweak.
Suffern ACE
@WereBear: Well the Audtralians tend to buy that stuff. Oh, that was a rhetorical question.
Moses2317
And they would raid our pensions (i.e., Social Security and Medicare) to pay for it all.
El Cid
Actually, I think the more apt comparison is to anticipate how it would work if Bain Capital LLC ETC took over the United States in a private equity hostile / loaned promised cash / junk asset takeover.
He wouldn’t run the US like he did Bain Capital. He’d run the US as if he had just taken it over.
Hey, is that contract signed yet? Oh, yeah, okay, now it’s legal, so all those promises we made about how we’d take care of you workers (citizens) and your various assets and divisions (national properties, investments, and public institutions)? Yeah, not in the contract.
Job One would be to extract everything out for the partners and shareholders, as quickly as possible, and Job Two would be to get out when that was done.
Mitt Romney, his peers, and his most powerful backers and allies are the Bain Capital partners and shareholders.
We’re the company to be taken over.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@El Cid:
Hasn’t this been the real policy of the 1% since about 1980 or so?
It’s not an accident that one-percenters like Saverin (and their Tory enablers like Sullivan) buy into that “elite global citizen of no particular fixed abode” meme so readily.
Brachiator
Promises, promises.
Amazingly, as with other odd decisions, the GOP is doubling down on Mitt’s Bain Wizardry. It seems like only yesterday when Newt and Perry were slamming Romney over Bain; now they’re all singing from the same page of the free market hymnal.
Villago Delenda Est
We need to find a yardarm somewhere to deal with vermin like Rmoney properly.
Paul Belliveau
I’m over-analyzing a brilliant bit of snark, I know. But you’re conflating running the country with running the government. More and more, those are two different things. And Romney would exacerbate that trend.
Ruckus
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
It’s not an accident that one-percenters like Saverin (and their Tory enablers like Sullivan) buy into that “elite global citizen of no particular fixed abode” meme so readily.
The reality is that the 1%s and especially the .1%s, don’t need a particular country any more. They can live in pretty much any country they want, in pretty much the way they want. Hell they can literally own a number of them. And do. Their income doesn’t suffer, their lifestyles don’t change. And the cost just doesn’t matter.
LanceThruster
We are talking monkeys on an organic spaceship engaged in poo-flinging. Our monkey business is orchestrating and rationalizing the extent, intensity, and targets of our poo-flinging. Power is a force multiplier, and to the extent that poo-flingers are irrational, amazingly simple to harness when playing to the ignorance and prejudices of the poo-flinging masses. Any attempt at rising above the status quo is most likely hobbled by the lowest common denominator poo-flinger. Machiavellian poo-flingers use this as justification for taking their flinging to the extreme. Fling, or be flung upon.
THAT is the LAW!
Sally Rakowski
A pretty big if since he’s not proposing doing that.
An equally absurd hypothetical would go something like this:
“If Barack Obama runs the country like he organized communities……”
Both Sides Do It
@Sally Rakowski:
Nope, the analogy doesn’t work. Community organizing is about helping citizens band together to influence institutions in unusual ways or to demand just treatment from those institutions.
Being President is about ordering those institutions to do the fuck you want them to do. Kinda different.
Bain uses economic leverage to enrich itself at the expense of others. If that’s not a great definition of the work of a politician it’ll do until the great definition gets here.
Or, y’know, we can just skip all this silliness and RECOGNIZE A JOKE based on AN ACCURATE BUT RARE CHARACTERIZATION OF WHAT ONE OF THE CANDIDATES DID BEFORE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT when we see one
LanceThruster
“Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s the other way around.”
Mnemosyne
@Sally Rakowski:
… then people would be more involved in their government and their government would be more responsive to the needs of its citizens?
I really think you have to come up with some kind of downside to running the government like a community organizer if you’re going to try and use that analogy.
Sally Rakowski
@Mnemosyne:
The point should be obvious to you, Mnemosyne. Obama touted his experience as a community organizer in 2008 as one of his main qualifications for why he should be president. He hasn’t run our government anything like a community organizer. Because he can’t. Nor can Romney run our government like he ran Bain Capital, not to mention he never claimed he would.
Both hypotheticals are absurd.
Kane
@Sally Rakowski:
He would ensure that government is there to provide aid and assistance when citizens suffer through hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods rather than watching them die in the streets for days begging for help.
He would attempt to save the American auto industry, rather than advocating to let it die.
He would sign legislation that provides access to healthcare for 50 million Americans.
He would support economic equality and marriage equality.
He would provide competent leadership.
Sally Rakowski
He didn’t do any of those things as a community organizer, Kane.
As to saving the auto industry, just ask the employees of all the auto dealerships that were shut down if they thought the OBama administration acted more like a community organizer or Bain Capital when their jobs were eliminated.
Kay
Glad to see the Obama-ites are taking the concerns about the vicious, unprovoked ATTACK on private equity dead serious :)
When the Romney campaign planned on running exclusively on Bain “creating jobs” did they not expect the other side of that to come into play? Who could have predicted THAT?
I’m starting to have some doubts on Romney’s managerial ability, I really am. Between this and declaring the auto industry dead, is he even a good manager?
Kay
Maybe next we can discuss leveraged buyouts, unless that’s an attack on leveraged buyouts, in which case we should discuss it anyway.