I hope many people in Massachusetts watched Elizabeth Warren's dynamic speech at the Democratic National Convention. Mr. Brown and Ms. Warren are locked in a fierce race that could be critical to party control of the Senate. Please keep in mind that, although Scott Brown claims he is bipartisan, he votes with his party most of the time. Scott waits until the end, counts noses and consults with his leadership, voting with the Democrats to look bipartisan when the outcome is not in doubt---that was 34% of the time. Even if Republicans are successful in painting Mr. Brown as an independent politician capable of representing the whole Bay State if reelected, he would cast the deciding vote to give to control of the Senate to a largely very conservative group of Republican senators. Elizabeth Warren believes in putting people back to work especially in the public sector (firemen, policemen and teachers) and in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. Her opponent, Senator Brown ran on a jobs platform, but he voted against three job bills that would have created a significant number of jobs in Massachusetts.  On every major tax issue, when you look at the middle class vs. the wealthiest, Scott Brown has made it very clear who he sides with.

Sorry--never seen a double post quite like this --see below, please, for my real self.

She is a fraud and a complete phony. Scott Brown is the real deal.

 

Scott has voted 46% with Democrats, but for you people, it's got to be 100% or nothing. That's why gov't is so dysfuntional. Compromise ois the only way it works, and Obama does not budge from his left wing extreme ideology.

Warren will not win, and Obama is done! You Democrats would never accepot a miserable 4 year record (like Obama's) from a Republican. So why is his failure worthy of 4 more years?

You'd think for her first big moment on the national stage Elizabeth Warren's speechwriters could have written a brand, new speech for her to deliver. Instead, they simply cobbled together two dozen worn out phrases she's repeated ad nauseum on the campaign trail. Once again, Warren talked about growing up on the "ragged edge of the middle class" (so ragged, in fact, that the family had three cars at a time when most American families had only one). We heard -- again -- that "corporations aren't people." (Who does Warren think WORKS at corporations -- robots??) And of course, we couldn't get through the overlong speech without getting -- you guessed it! -- HAMMERED! The only thing missing from Warren's hastily stitched together sound bites, in fact, was some actual clarity on the institution doing the hammering. And contrary to Prof. Warren's Ivory Tower theories, it's not big banks or evil Wall Street robber barons. It's the government, that takes and takes and takes from American citizens, making it impossible for them to get ahead. Above all, Elizabeth Warren's remarks showed her to be exactly what Washington DOESN'T need -- another far-left, out-of-touch liberal who will vote in lock step with the partisan, divisive elements that already impede our nation's progress.

Great speech!  The "colonel" must be shaking in his boots!  Hopefully, Warren's political commercials will improve as a result of this speech.

I get to see her. Was she wearing her Indian garb? It's all about inclusion you know.

Rigging the system? What's rigging the system more than playing the affirmative action system when you are not a minority?

Why did the printed Globe include a version of this story that was clearly written in advance of Warren's speech? 

"Warren is a star of the Democratic left. And before she even began speaking, the crowd chanted her name."  Thus bespaketh the Boston Globe, the Massachusetts Democratic Party's house organ.  Forget that a lot of would-be Democrats are moderate, wishing for bipartisan statite-making here and there in the halls os Congress. This ethnically celebrated woman professor of Harvard Law bankruptcy law classes tries to pass herself off as a heroine of the American Middle Class, as if she could pass for membership in that august body. Well, she can't. She's a personal millionairess, claiming mentorhood to all sorts of things, including the "Occupy" movement; by example she is a high priestess of the Hate Wall Street hordes. Elizabeth Warren - known as Granny to some media hacks - is solidly on the left wing, with nary a hope nor desire to reach out to cooperate with any other struture of the U.S. political world. May she stay there in self-enjoyment and may she, please oh bird over Raleigh, avoid having to shuffle herself around the halls of Congress on anything but her own teensey weensey private seekings.

WesternSuburbDad wrote, "Rigging the system? What's rigging the system more than playing the affirmative action system when you are not a minority?" I tried to click "like" on your post, maybe about a dozen times, but it wouldn't register (another way or rigging the system?)

ccitizen, you complain that those working in the private sector don`t earn the salaries or the benefits that the public sector enjoys. They used to and even received pensions. Then corporate America decided to eliminate pensions, decrease benefits, and cut back on real wage increases, all to improve their bottom line. Why shouldn`t public sector workers make a decent wage and good benefits. Why is it only OK for the Romneys of this country. And by the way, there are probably more public sector workers earning lower wages as compared to private sector workers. It all depends on what the job is.

qccitizen, some of the biggest job losers during the recession were those working in the public sector, local, state and federal. Wages at the federal level were frozen. I retired from teaching in 2003 after 34 years. My average annual raise during my last 6 years was 1 1/2%., and that was during the strong economic period.

The system is rigged. The richest in our country have enormous tax advantages. Swiss and Cayman Island accounts to mention just two advantages allows them to "hide" their money legally. Who does Warren blame? Not Republicans, not Democrats, but WASHINGTON! She is absolutely correct. Where is the average person going to hide their meager savings...under the mattress?

This is the very best example, by Romney himself, on rigged systems: http://www.businessinsider.com/matt-taibbi-mitt-romney-bain-rolling-stone-2012-8 These are the highlights. You can easily click the article for the full investigative political report in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi. (I think Mike Taibbi, the former Boston reporter and now with NBC (?) is his brother. Matt is considered one of the best, if not the best, investigative political reporter working today and this piece is open to scrutiny and checking by everyone. So far, no rebuttals.

IMHO, this is important, so rather than have you paste it in your browser, I'm posting the abridged version:

  To Email Sent! You have successfully emailed the post. Matt Taibbi Lambastes Romney's Time At Bain—Here Are The Highlights! Linette Lopez | Aug. 31, 2012, 10:09 AM | 34,019 | 87 inShare9 Email More Share on Tumblr digg 9inShare Email   Share on Tumblr digg      

 

Bain Capital/Boston Globe

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We knew Matt Taibbi was working something, we didn't know that it was about Republican Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.

 

More specifically, it's about Romney's time at Bain and how he earned his fortune— something his campaign hasn't necessarily been completely transparent about. The piece is called "Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital," and it's this month's Rolling Stone cover story.

The piece is long, and of course, written in classic Taibbi style, so it goes fast, but we pinpointed 10 points that we found shocking/damning overall.

Here we go:

Mitt Romney decries the national debt, but his career was made by running up debt on companies on their last lifeline.

"The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place."

Mitt Romney shirked military service.

"I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there," he claimed years after the war. To a different audience, he said, "I was not planning on signing up for the military. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam."

Mitt Romney’s Bain was using the same trick as two-bit mobsters — the "bust out."

"Fans of mob movies will recognize what's known as the 'bust-out,' in which a gangster takes over a restaurant or sporting goods store and then monetizes his investment by running up giant debts on the company's credit line. (Think Paulie buying all those cases of Cutty Sark inGoodfellas.) When the note comes due, the mobster simply torches the restaurant and collects the insurance money. Reduced to their most basic level, the leveraged buyouts engineered by Romney followed exactly the same business model. "It's the bust-out," one Wall Street trader says with a laugh. 'That's all it is.'"

Mitt Romney coldly rebuffed a worker who wrote him a hand-written letter asking Romney to save his job.

"Romney has always kept his distance from the real-life consequences of his profiteering. At one point during Bain's looting of Ampad, a worker named Randy Johnson sent a handwritten letter to Romney, asking him to intervene to save an Ampad factory in Marion, Indiana. In a sterling demonstration of manliness and willingness to face a difficult conversation, Romney, who had just lost his race for the Senate in Massachusetts, wrote Johnson that he was 'sorry,' but his lawyers had advised him not to get involved."

He loves to manipulate people, even his own employees.

"Over the years, colleagues would anonymously whisper stories about Mitt the Boss to the press, describing him as cunning, manipulative and a little bit nuts, with 'an ability to identify people's insecurities and exploit them for his own benefit.' One former Bain employee said that Romney would screw around with bonuses in small amounts, just to mess with people: He would give $3 million to one, $3.1 million to another and $2.9 million to a third, just to keep those below him on edge."

Mitt Romney’s Bain still got paid, even when its acquisitions were floundering.

"In a typical private-equity fragging, Bain put up a mere $18 million to acquire KB Toys and got big banks to finance the remaining $302 million it needed. Less than a year and a half after the purchase, Bain decided to give itself a gift known as a 'dividend recapitalization.' The firm induced KB Toys to redeem $121 million in stock and take out more than $66 million in bank loans – $83 million of which went directly into the pockets of Bain's owners and investors, including Romney. 'The dividend recap is like borrowing someone else's credit card to take out a cash advance, and then leaving them to pay it off,' says Heather Slavkin Corzo, who monitors private equity takeovers as the senior legal policy adviser for the AFL-CIO."

Mitt Romney’s Bain financed one of its first takeover deals, with department stores Beals Brothers and Palais Royale with money dirtied by Michael Milken.

"...one of Romney's first LBO deals, and one of his most profitable, involved Mike Milken himself. Bain put down $10 million in cash, got $300 million in financing from Milken and bought a pair of department-store chains, Bealls Brothers and Palais Royal. In what should by now be a familiar outcome, the two chains – which Bain merged into a single outfit called Stage Stores – filed for bankruptcy protection in 2000 under the weight of more than $444 million in debt...But here's the interesting twist: Romney made the Bealls-Palais deal just as the federal government was launching charges of massive manipulation and insider trading against Milken and his firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert. After what must have been a lengthy and agonizing period of moral soul-searching, however, Romney decided not to kill the deal, despite its shady financing. 'We did not say, 'Oh, my goodness, Drexel has been accused of something, not been found guilty,' ' Romney told reporters years after the deal. 'Should we basically stop the transaction and blow the whole thing up?'"

Mitt Romney’s Bain sidled Dunkin’ Donuts with crushing debt.

"In 2010, a year after the last round of Hertz layoffs, Carlyle teamed up with Bain to take $500 million out of another takeover target: the parent company of Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins. Dunkin' had to take out a $1.25 billion loan to pay a dividend to its new private equity owners. So think of this the next time you go to Dunkin' Donuts for a cup of coffee: A small cup of joe costs about $1.69 in most outlets, which means that for years to come, Dunkin' Donuts will have to sell about 2,011,834 small coffees every month – about $3.4 million – just to meet the interest payments on the loan it took out to pay Bain and Carlyle their little one-time dividend. "

Mitt Romney’s fortune was gained by gaming the government.

"Which brings us to another aspect of Romney's business career that has largely been hidden from voters: His personal fortune would not have been possible without the direct assistance of the U.S. government. The taxpayer-funded subsidies that Romney has received go well beyond the humdrum, backdoor, welfare-sucking that all supposedly self-made free marketeers inevitably indulge in."

Mitt Romney ran a super wasteful Olympics.

"Not that Romney hasn't done just fine at milking the government when it suits his purposes, the most obvious instance being the incredible $1.5 billion in aid he siphoned out of the U.S. Treasury as head of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake – a sum greater than all federal spending for the previous seven U.S. Olympic games combined. Romney, the supposed fiscal conservative, blew through an average of $625,000 in taxpayer money per athlete – an astounding increase of 5,582 percent over the $11,000 average at the 1984 games in Los Angeles."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/matt-taibbi-mitt-romney-bain-rolling-stone-2012-8#ixzz25ja9lOHq