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Hey guys! We'll be closing this thread shortly, but we will make an American politics megathread where we can continue the discussions in here. The new thread can be found here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=383301 | ||
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Defacer
Canada5052 Posts
On July 16 2012 12:48 Lightwip wrote: As I mentioned once before, it's funny that Romney campaigns on economic responsibility yet is currently trying to convince everyone that he wasn't involved in the company he owned. heh, that's a tidy way of putting it. | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On July 16 2012 12:48 Lightwip wrote: As I mentioned once before, it's funny that Romney campaigns on economic responsibility yet is currently trying to convince everyone that he wasn't involved in the company he owned. Hahaha, yeah, that's something else  | ||
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Romantic
United States1844 Posts
On July 16 2012 12:48 Lightwip wrote: As I mentioned once before, it's funny that Romney campaigns on economic responsibility yet is currently trying to convince everyone that he wasn't involved in the company he owned. Only a tad disingenuous to say that without mentioning he only contests 3 years of it where by nearly all accounts he really was busy doing other crap. That is politics for you. | ||
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BluePanther
United States2776 Posts
On July 16 2012 12:48 Lightwip wrote: As I mentioned once before, it's funny that Romney campaigns on economic responsibility yet is currently trying to convince everyone that he wasn't involved in the company he owned. Because it's been clearly proven that he wasn't involved with their actions at that time? The campaign is more up in arms about the Obama campaign attempting to spread disinformation than anything else. Mitt was simply clearing the air about what he is and isn't responsible for and what should and should not be attributed to him. I don't think it's funny or ironic or any of that. This is one issue he's clearly on the right side of. The Obama campaign should have been far more careful with these allegations. | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On July 16 2012 22:03 BluePanther wrote: Because it's been clearly proven that he wasn't involved with their actions at that time? The campaign is more up in arms about the Obama campaign attempting to spread disinformation than anything else. Mitt was simply clearing the air about what he is and isn't responsible for and what should and should not be attributed to him. I don't think it's funny or ironic or any of that. This is one issue he's clearly on the right side of. The Obama campaign should have been far more careful with these allegations. To me, that translates to "no no no he didn't do it I swear" | ||
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paralleluniverse
4065 Posts
On July 16 2012 22:03 BluePanther wrote: Because it's been clearly proven that he wasn't involved with their actions at that time? The campaign is more up in arms about the Obama campaign attempting to spread disinformation than anything else. Mitt was simply clearing the air about what he is and isn't responsible for and what should and should not be attributed to him. I don't think it's funny or ironic or any of that. This is one issue he's clearly on the right side of. The Obama campaign should have been far more careful with these allegations. The argument going around the news is that if Romney really wasn't involved in Bain beyond 1999, but was still on the SEC documents as a technicality, i.e. that he was essentially on extended leave but still owned the company, then it was a crime to be misrepresenting this on the SEC documents, because investors could have made decisions based erroneously on believing Romney was in charge, when in fact he wasn't. As for not releasing more tax returns, it's now basically proven that he has off-shore accounts that he is hiding from the public. If he didn't he could simply dispel all these negative attacks and prove the Obama campaign wrong and have a big gotcha moment. The fact he doesn't shows that he has something to hide. | ||
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Defacer
Canada5052 Posts
On July 16 2012 22:03 BluePanther wrote: Because it's been clearly proven that he wasn't involved with their actions at that time? The campaign is more up in arms about the Obama campaign attempting to spread disinformation than anything else. Mitt was simply clearing the air about what he is and isn't responsible for and what should and should not be attributed to him. I don't think it's funny or ironic or any of that. This is one issue he's clearly on the right side of. The Obama campaign should have been far more careful with these allegations. That's exactly where the irony is. In the corporate world of Republicans, you can be legally and technically responsible for a company, and even collect profits and salary form it, and still, somehow, deny accountability for it's actions. It's in this same world that Republican's blame Obama for the job losses in his first two months of his term, or the financial crisis, etc. Mitt's attempts to parse what is and what isn't part of his record at Bain -- conveniently, all the good things were him, and all the bad things weren't -- makes him exactly the kind of corporate-elistist douchebag that Democrats have stereotyped him as. Romney, Republicans And Responsibility It has always seemed to me that a core principle of Anglo-American conservatism has always been personal responsibility. We are all human and we all screw up all the time - but taking responsibility for both good and bad decisions is a prerequisite for democratic accountability in a free society. George W Bush famously summarized the GOP's current view of such accountability and responsibility by saying that in eight years, he had only one accountability moment - and that was the 2004 election. The authorization of a war on empirically false grounds, the resort to illegal torture, the tens of thousands of civilian deaths from the Iraq occupation: none of this was or is Bush's responsibility, according to the GOP. Bush even made a joke about the WMDs at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. This flight from responsibility is also, alas, baked deep in today's one percent, and marks them as very different from their wealthy predecessors in the American elite for much of the last century. The bankers whose recklessness precipitated our current recession see no reason to take responsibility for the misery their gambling and greed bestowed on so many others. Indeed, they shamelessly lobby to remove any constraints on their reckless ways, continue to gamble with glee (see JP Morgan), and continue to hand themselves bonuses and salaries out of any proportion to the benefits they bring to society as a whole. And the financial elite is mirrored by the political elite. Those directly involved with or openly supportive of war crimes under Bush and Cheney - far from being held accountable - were given op-ed columns at the Washington Post and sinecures at AEI. A vice-president who openly boasted of torturing prisoners just held a fundraiser for the current nominee. No one in the cabinet responsible for Abu Ghraib resigned. The Republicans refuse to take any responsibility for the massive debt we accumulated since 2000 and have, indeed, tried to shift the entire responsibility onto Obama's shoulders. Mitt Romney wants to take credit for all the successes at Bain while he was CEO, but also refuses to take responsibility for the actions of his own company which was still employing him and paying him a six figure salary. In fact even to ask a simple question as to whether he was CEO and therefore whether his testimony in 2002 was perjurious is to provoke Romney into a harrumph that included the words "disgusting". The reason America's elite finds itself under so much criticism is not that they are elites. It is that they have become self-serving, accountability-free elites. Romney's pique that he could even be challenged to take responsibility for a company of which he was legally CEO is a perfect symbol of this abdication of responsibility. Think of the contrast with his father - a man who actually ran an industrial business well, who expressed solidarity with the civil rights movement when so many didn't, released twelve years of tax returns to prove he wasn't gaming anything, and invited reporters in for a Sunday service at his local LDS church. George Romney clearly felt that with great wealth comes great responsibility and accountability. Mitt is fine with the wealth part; just not the responsibility and accountability. Which is a pretty good summary of what has gone wrong with American conservatism today. | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On July 17 2012 01:17 paralleluniverse wrote: The argument going around the news is that if Romney really wasn't involved in Bain beyond 1999, but was still on the SEC documents as a technicality, i.e. that he was essentially on extended leave but still owned the company, then it was a crime to be misrepresenting this on the SEC documents, because investors could have made decisions based erroneously on believing Romney was in charge, when in fact he wasn't. As for not releasing more tax returns, it's now basically proven that he has off-shore accounts that he is hiding from the public. If he didn't he could simply dispel all these negative attacks and prove the Obama campaign wrong and have a big gotcha moment. The fact he doesn't shows that he has something to hide. SEC rules are different for a private company. People don't publicly invest in Bain and if you are referring to one of their funds no one cares who the CEO is - what matters is who the fund managers are. | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On July 17 2012 01:46 JonnyBNoHo wrote: SEC rules are different for a private company. People don't publicly invest in Bain and if you are referring to one of their funds no one cares who the CEO is - what matters is who the fund managers are. That's outright false. People will react to the departure of the CEO/owner of a financial services company. Investors are not always reasonable for one, and will knee-jerk easily - and anyway, it's not like a CEOs don't do anything - they may not have a very hands-on approach but they certainly set the tone for how stuff is done within their firm. | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On July 17 2012 02:00 Djzapz wrote: That's outright false. People will react to the departure of the CEO/owner of a financial services company. Investors are not always reasonable for one, and will knee-jerk easily - and anyway, it's not like a CEOs don't do anything - they may not have a very hands-on approach but they certainly set the tone for how stuff is done within their firm. No one is going to knee-jerk dump their shares of a private corporation. It's too hard to do that and most likely anyone directly investing in Bain would be more than close enough to know what was really going on. If you are talking about fund investors... An offering memorandum to investors in Bain’s seventh private equity fund that was circulated in June 2000 also suggests that Mr. Romney was no longer actively involved in managing firm investments at the time. The memorandum, first published by Fortune, provides background on the “senior private equity investment professionals of Bain Capital.” Eighteen managers are listed; Mr. Romney is not among them. Source You don't look up obscure SEC docs when investing in a fund. You look at the offering memo / prospectus. | ||
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Ryuu314
United States12679 Posts
On July 17 2012 02:23 JonnyBNoHo wrote: No one is going to knee-jerk dump their shares of a private corporation. It's too hard to do that and most likely anyone directly investing in Bain would be more than close enough to know what was really going on. If you are talking about fund investors... Source You don't look up obscure SEC docs when investing in a fund. You look at the offering memo / prospectus. The root of the argument against Romney is that during the time he was on leave from Bain, he was still getting the benefits of being CEO/President/Sole stockholder/whatever. He was getting paid ~$100,000 a year, attended board meetings, and basically did all the good stuff. Yet Romney insists that all the bad things that happened wasn't his responsibility. Sure, he's probably right in that someone else made the decisions and he didn't have a voice, but the crux of it is, if he takes the benefits, he needs to take the responsibilities. Being President of the United States of America means you take on the responsibilities of EVERYTHING that happens. Even if you, the President, aren't the one making the decision, you take fucking responsibility. If your Secretary of State fucks something up, it's on you. If your military leaders make a wrong call and causes lots of American deaths, it's on you. Etc, etc... What Romney's doing now is showing that he's more than willing to reap the benefits of his position, but refuses to take responsibility. Honestly, this was a brilliant move by Obama's campaign. Either Romney continues to deny deny deny and he looks like an irresponsible, scummy asshole, or he releases his tax records. If he releases his tax records, even if he doesn't have any offshore $$$ (doubtful), the public will be able to see the extent to which the tax system for the rich is utterly fucked. With deductibles and ways of manipulating your taxes due to the taxation system for the rich right now, the very rich, like Romney, can pay as little as 10~11% tax on their 7 figure annual salaries. Showing that to the American public would not only mean loss of the election for Romney, but complete utter fuckage for Romney's backers, the "1%." EDIT: Was this a low blow by the Obama campaign? Maybe. Was this to distract voters/pundits from talking about the economy? Most definitely. Is it completely irrelevant to the election? Not really, no. | ||
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coverpunch
United States2093 Posts
On July 17 2012 02:37 Ryuu314 wrote: Being President of the United States of America means you take on the responsibilities of EVERYTHING that happens. Even if you, the President, aren't the one making the decision, you take fucking responsibility. If your Secretary of State fucks something up, it's on you. If your military leaders make a wrong call and causes lots of American deaths, it's on you. Etc, etc... Honestly, does that really sound like President Obama? You can't really say that with a straight face when Obama played this dirty trick on Romney as a way to besmirch his economic credentials. However, I do agree with you that it was a brilliant play. Obama instantly turned the tables on Romney from making this a referendum on his economic performance (which has been miserable if we're being frank) to a question about whether Romney, a dishonest financial guy, can really make things better or even wants to. | ||
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Budmandude
United States123 Posts
This Bain bullshit has been refuted by the major fact check sites. The fact that it's still going on is just hilarious. http://factcheck.org/2012/07/romneys-bain-years-new-evidence-same-conclusion/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/mitt-romney-and-his-departure-from-bain/2012/07/12/gJQAASzUfW_blog.html#pagebreak http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/02/when-did-romney-really-leave-bain/ Also, I can't believe people are letting it slide that the campaign manager for the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES is accusing opponents of being felons with no evidence. "And that's to be expected, because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things." -President Barack Obama, Democratic nomination acceptance speech, 2008 | ||
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Lightwip
United States5497 Posts
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Defacer
Canada5052 Posts
On July 17 2012 03:33 Budmandude wrote: Apparently owning a stake of a company (such as stock) now makes you responsible for their every action! This Bain bullshit has been refuted by the major fact check sites. The fact that it's still going on is just hilarious. http://factcheck.org/2012/07/romneys-bain-years-new-evidence-same-conclusion/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/mitt-romney-and-his-departure-from-bain/2012/07/12/gJQAASzUfW_blog.html#pagebreak http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/02/when-did-romney-really-leave-bain/ Also, I can't believe people are letting it slide that the campaign manager for the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES is accusing opponents of being felons with no evidence. "And that's to be expected, because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things." -President Barack Obama, Democratic nomination acceptance speech, 2008 All the independent fact-checkers have proved is that no, Romney did not make every decision or was involved with day to day operations at Bain from 1999 to 2003. HOWEVER, whether or not Romney should be held responsible for their activity is a different, subjective matter. A stock holder doesn't have the role of CEO or Managing Director added to his portfolio. Frankly, it's amazing that there are people like you that are willing to give Romney a free pass on this. Romney built that company, hired the team, and set it's strategy and agenda. Even if Romney was essentially a silent partner/owner for the last three years, he benefited directly from its activity. He was legally responsible. He went as far as to emphasize his part-time involvement -- IN COURT -- when running for the governor of Massachusetts. SO YEAH, He's responsible, even in his absence. What kind of leader accepts a salary and then throws his team under the bus when he takes a leave of absence? Seriously. | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On July 17 2012 03:48 Defacer wrote: All the independent fact-checkers have proved is that no, Romney did not make every decision or was involved with day to day operations at Bain from 1999 to 2003. HOWEVER, whether or not Romney should be held responsible for their activity is a different, subjective matter. A stock holder doesn't have the role of CEO or Managing Director added to his portfolio. Frankly, it's amazing that there are people like you that are willing to give Romney a free pass on this. Romney built that company, hired the team, and set it's strategy and agenda. Even if Romney was essentially a silent partner/owner for the last three years, he benefited directly from its activity. He was legally responsible. He went as far as to emphasize his part-time involvement -- IN COURT -- when running for the governor of Massachusetts. SO YEAH, He's responsible, even in his absence. What kind of leader accepts a salary and then throws his team under the bus when he takes a leave of absence? Seriously. Ok, so what would you like to hold Romney 'legally responsible' (GLHF proving the legality part BTW) for? Layoffs? If so then you need to show exactly what Bain capital's involvement in said layoffs were (which could take months to figure out assuming you could get your hands on any information) and then make an argument as to why the layoffs should be considered a bad thing. Edit: I doubt anyone feels as if they have been 'thrown under the bus.' | ||
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Defacer
Canada5052 Posts
On July 17 2012 04:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote: Ok, so what would you like to hold Romney 'legally responsible' (GLHF proving the legality part BTW) for? Layoffs? If so then you need to show exactly what Bain capital's involvement in said layoffs were (which could take months to figure out assuming you could get your hands on any information) and then make an argument as to why the layoffs should be considered a bad thing. Edit: I doubt anyone feels as if they have been 'thrown under the bus.' Hey man, I'm not the one squirming and dancing around Bain's record from 1999 to 2003. Romney is. That's the exactly the issue. Romney isn't defending Bain's activity during that period. He's denying any or all responsibility. | ||
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Defacer
Canada5052 Posts
On July 17 2012 04:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote: Layoffs? If so then you need to show exactly what Bain capital's involvement in said layoffs were (which could take months to figure out assuming you could get your hands on any information) and then make an argument as to why the layoffs should be considered a bad thing. BTW, are you fucking shitting me? I'm not the one running for president. I don't have to prove shit. Romney is the one that has to defend his record. Romney touts his record as a 'job creator.' Critics point out the Bain Capital made a great of money closing down plants, outsourcing and laying people off. Romney's response hasn't been, "Well, sometimes to improve a business you have to make sure they're more efficient .. etc." His answer has been to play dumb and say he wasn't there, when he obviously was still liable for it's actions. That's good enough for you? Really? | ||
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aksfjh
United States4853 Posts
On July 17 2012 03:33 Budmandude wrote: Apparently owning a stake of a company (such as stock) now makes you responsible for their every action! This Bain bullshit has been refuted by the major fact check sites. The fact that it's still going on is just hilarious. http://factcheck.org/2012/07/romneys-bain-years-new-evidence-same-conclusion/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/mitt-romney-and-his-departure-from-bain/2012/07/12/gJQAASzUfW_blog.html#pagebreak http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/02/when-did-romney-really-leave-bain/ Also, I can't believe people are letting it slide that the campaign manager for the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES is accusing opponents of being felons with no evidence. "And that's to be expected, because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things." -President Barack Obama, Democratic nomination acceptance speech, 2008 Not sure why you're quoting Obama. It's not like he's picking on Romney's family values or his haircut. He's painting the larger narrative that Romney is part of the crowd that is cut off from the rest of us, and will make it his goal to benefit people like that if elected. That's exactly the stuff he's proposing, but it's easier to convey with his history at Bain. | ||
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coverpunch
United States2093 Posts
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