Wednesday, September 05, 2012

New Pipe Dreams.









Anyone who reads my blog knows I'm a tried and true liberal. So that means I'm definitely not for Mitt Romney. Much of this has to do with his business experience. I'm not against anyone who becomes successful, just how and what they do after their success.

Romney's main business experience was forming Bain Capital as a side company from Bain & Co. Bain & Co. was a venture capital company that invested money in up and coming businesses whereas Bain Capital is a Private Equity company that finds struggling businesses and takes them over to make it run more efficient. Most of the time that means losses in jobs, pensions and 30% of the time the loss of the business.

Bain Capital was part of the hostile takeover fad that was prevalent in the 1980s. Many companies with decades of history was gone after hiring Bain Capital to fix up things. A lot of the jobs were outsourced to other countries or just disappeared.

The one that stuck in my craw was KB Toys. It was a toy store in pretty much every mall in the country. I liked it better than Toys R Us and part of any visit to the mall would involve me going into a KB Toys. Bain Capital came to the "rescue" when it was struggling and soon it struggled more and finally went out of business.

This is a joke based on the "one issue" voter. My man Buck is a flexible voter and thought Romney would make a good choice. But he's a toy collector and was appalled he is supporting a guy whose company put KB Toys out of business.

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