Mitt Romney and Bain Capital--What liberals still do not grasp
Eric Golub
LOS ANGELES, May 24, 2012 – President Obama insisted recently that Governor Mitt Romney's work at Bain Capital is what the 2012 election is all about. What Mr. Obama still fails to admit is that he and his campaign shills have absolutely no idea what Bain Capital actually does, or what Mitt Romney actually did.
Every person anywhere in this world commenting on politics or business should be forced to honestly answer a three question test. Then their answers should be reviewed by unbiased sources.
1) Do you know anything?
2) Do you know how to do anything?
3) Have you ever done anything?
Any drunk in the town square can be an armchair quarterback. The danger is when armchair quarterbacks actually have a say in how the team is run. This is unfortunate in sports but downright destructive in politics.
During the George W. Bush presidency, liberals foamed at the mouth over Enron. Enron and President Bush were both from Texas. Enron went bankrupt, proving in leftist minds that George W. Bush was corrupt. Yet the one question most liberal critics of President Bush could not answer dealt with the business of Enron. Liberals secretly had no idea what Enron actually did.
The answer most often given was "something with oil," which meant President Bush was a criminal because he was an oilman and oil was evil. Eventually some liberals learned that Enron was an energy company and not an oil company. They insisted oil and energy are the same thing, except they are not.
In order to try to lose the war in Iraq, a non-scandal involving Halliburton was invented. Halliburton became a symbol for corruption since Vice President Dick Cheney used to work there. Yet when pressed further, many liberals had absolutely no idea what Halliburton actually did. The answer again involved people mumbling about the oil business. Yet anybody who bothered to educate themselves before speaking would know that Halliburton had a unique skill set that only one other company (Schlumberger, a French company) possessed. They won contracts not due to corruption, but because they were able to actually do the work. Their critics had no idea what that work actually was.
When liberals run out of creative ways to attack "big oil," they then go after "Wall Street." Barack Obama and Occupy Wall Street have attacked various employees in the financial services sector as evil without having a clue as to who they are or what they do.
This is where liberals sneer and ask "How do you know we have no idea what these people do?"
Because I listen to, observe, and ask them.
Barack Obama acts as if he has no idea what a hedge fund is or what it does. Hedge funds have "something to do with business" in the same way Halliburton has something to do with oil.
Sure, people could right now go to Google or Wikipedia and belatedly learn, but pretending to have knowledge after spouting off is as useful as knowing how to fix a sink after it has blown up and taken the entire house with it.
Anybody who does not know the difference between a stockbroker, an investment banker, a money manager, or a financial planner should be banned from discussing them, much less criticizing them.
Watching liberal academics pretending to understand the real world and how businesses work is a part of life that will never go away, like insects and tofu. What is unforgivable is those pretending to understand business attacking Wall Street in general and Governor Mitt Romney's work at Bain Capital in particular. The very essence of capitalism is under assault, and defending it at all costs is the only acceptable option.
For those who have let the desire to win an election get in the way of common sense, attacks on Governor Romney for being a venture capitalist are now the requirement for those trying to curry favor with the left wing of the Democratic Party.
The last few days saw several Democrats from Corey Booker to Harold Ford to Deval Patrick try to stop the reflexive anti-business madness of the Obama administration.
Like President Obama, Most people have no idea what a venture capitalist does. At the risk of dumbing it down for those who desperately need this, venture capitalists risk their money in the hopes of making more money. A venture is a risk. Capital is money. Sometimes these risks work. Sometimes they fail. Mr. Romney approached failing companies with the intent of turning them around. Sometimes he failed, but he succeeded more than he failed, and became wealthy through his successes.
The liberal myth is that Mitt Romney played the Danny Devito role of Larry the Liquidator. He took companies, stripped them dry, kept all of the money for himself, and destroyed everyone else. The left would have no idea how to explain how this actually works, but it sounds good. The problem with this "analysis" is that people and businesses have reputations. If this narrative of Mr. Romney as Conan the Financial Destroyer were accurate, potential clients would catch on after a few decades and stop doing business with him and Bain Capital. They are still in business precisely because their track record is quite good. Critics of Romney and Bain Capital know they dislike him and the firm, but cannot exactly articulate why.
Also, Governor Romney cannot and should not be responsible for any successful or failed deals that happened at Bain Capital before or after he left. Some leftist critics blame President George W. Bush for failing to deal with al Qaeda during the Clinton and Obama presidencies. Logic should remove those criticisms. Only the deals that occurred during the Romney tenure should matter. He had a 78% success rate, which is slightly better than the almost 0% success rate of the Obama environmental gambling spree.
So how did Governor Romney help create successful ventures? One way to turn around a business is to grow revenues. Yet what is also often needed is cutting costs. This involves firing people.
The nerve of Mitt Romney! How dare he have the gall to invest his own money in a business and then demand to have a say in how that business was being run!
If he were "sensitive," he could have been like Barack Obama. He could risk taxpayer funds instead of his own money, like Mr. Obama did with Solyndra. Solyndra and many other environmental gambles went bankrupt, and one thousand workers were fired. Yet Mr. Obama lost nothing.
Barack Obama presides over a bloated government that spends into oblivion, and dead weight remains the albatross around the neck of productivity.
Mr. Obama refuses to cut costs in anything (except defense). This is why his enterprise is on the verge of collapse.
Liberals want to live in a world where nobody ever gets fired and people are guaranteed stability, safety, and security. That world exists. It is called Europe, embodied by France, and it is falling apart at the seams. Unemployment is sky high and work stoppages and riots are continental hobbies, in addition to 35 hour work weeks with frequent breaks.
So while Barack Obama encourages America to become a nation of parasites, Mitt Romney has a track record of creating wealth for himself and many others.
Nobody on the Republican side should ever expect anti-business liberals to grasp this. Conservatives can be forgiven if academics with lifetime job security regardless of quality remain uninformed skeptics.
Anyone with a fully functioning brain should understand that what Mitt Romney did for a living is good for America. Even more important, Mitt Romney's career is what this entire nation used to be about when it worked properly.
Regardless of whether one supports legalizing drugs, perhaps it is high time that political candidates be publicly drug-tested. Athletes are not allowed to take the field if they fail drug tests. Maybe America would be better off if politicians acting under a haze be forced to suspend their campaigns when they stop making sense.
The business of America is business. Business is legal.
When a drunk driver kills somebody, America does not ban cars.
When a madman uses a gun in a crime, conservatives understand that the problem is the criminal and not the gun.
While heart disease is a problem, conservatives do not try to shut down food and beverage companies.
Capitalism creates jobs. Venture capitalism creates wealth. The expression "nothing ventured, nothing gained" means exactly that. Venture capitalists should be celebrated, not scorned.
Those wishing to criticize Governor Romney on actual issues based on ideology should do so. Those wishing to attack him for working hard should try doing what he did. He succeeded where most people fail. Top talent is called that for a reason.
For those angry at Mitt Romney while pretending to understand what he actually did, remember that three question test.
Do you know anything? Do you know how to do anything? Have you ever done anything?
Of course not. So please sit down, be quiet, and stop attacking capitalism and wealth creation. Being poor is bad. Being ignorant is worse. Being both are contagious, and the spread of that disease has already destroyed Europe.
The cure is so simple. America needs more people with capital who have the guts and desire to venture.
Bravo! This is, in thimble form, a priceless antidote to those who, like Beastie and others here, have no idea whatsoever what Bain Capital does, how it functions, or what the actual dynamics of its methods and techniques are, and to those who wish to send both the ignorant and the already educated to places like Rolling Stone
to an essay that, precisely, is nothing but a polemical screed by an economic illiterate who quite obviously has no idea what Bain actually does or how it works and who's claims are a potpourri of his own biases, prejudices and nostrums, bereft of actual substantive knowledge, or who, in classic postmodern fashion, see serious economic and political critique in a pop radical chic Hollywood screed made by a Limousine Marxist hypocrite with no more understanding of legitimate economics than my cat.The Democratic party would disintegrate tomorrow, before our very eyes, without the ravening passions of class envy at its very base propping up its pseudo-moral appeals to "compassion" and concern for "the most vulnerable among us" and other phony, sanctimonious drek.
Those of us who can see through the historic Left and its pretensions to humanitarian morality and intellectual superiority do not take lightly the very real danger to humanity and civilization it poses, and has posed for some two centuries.