“Mitt Romney’s Entitlement Society”: Winning For Losing, Money That Flow’s To The Wealthy
Mitt Romney, who secured the number of delegates needed for the Republican nomination last week, said early on that this election is a choice between President Barack Obama’s “entitlement society” in which people are dependent on government benefits, and his “opportunity society” where business is free to flourish.
But if you take Romney’s own life as representing a governing philosophy, he has the dichotomy backward. Romney is the one who has taken advantage of government entitlements — the ones that flow to the wealthy. And his interest in opportunity lies with rich investors who exploit government rules, often to the detriment of Main Street. Romney’s use of the federal bankruptcy courts to extinguish debts owed to suppliers, shops and service providers is a perfect example — more on that later.
For starters, let’s tick off some of Romney’s favorite government entitlements:
• Special tax rules allow him to pay federal income taxes of just 15 percent on his millions in “carried interest” profits, capital gains and dividends. The rest of us pay a rate of up to 35 percent on income from work.
• Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded and ran from 1984 to 1999, only succeeded due to a major tax loophole. Bain was able to deduct the interest on the massive loans taken out to finance the purchase of its takeover targets — loans secured with the companies’ own assets. In 2008, Germany put limits on this kind of tax shenanigans, but don’t expect anything that enlightened to happen here.
• Romney’s firm also enjoyed government largess in the form of job creation tax breaks. Just the year before Dade Behring, a Bain company, closed its operations in Puerto Rico in early 1998, with nearly 300 workers losing their jobs, the company received federal tax break of $3 million for promoting jobs there and a $4.1 million tax exemption from Puerto Rico.
But there is no big government entitlement as magical or beloved by Romney and Bain than the get-out-of-debt-free card bestowed by federal bankruptcy court.
Dade Behring went bankrupt, leaving Main Street creditors empty-handed, but not before Romney’s firm took $242 million out of it. In fact, of Bain’s 10 top business investments that made up 70 percent of the $2.5 billion Bain made for investors, four eventually went bankrupt, according to the Wall Street Journal.
That’s called winning for losing, a game perfected by top 1 percenters.
For a closer look at one destructive bankruptcy, read “Romney Economics: Cheat Main Street,” a column by Leo Gerard in the Huffington Post (http://tinyurl.com/dylorbl).
Gerard documents the way Bain left Main Street businesses licking their financial wounds as it legally absconded with millions in management fees, dividends and other distributions. His featured example is American Pad and Paper Co. (Ampad) that Bain bought from Mead Corp. in 1992. Bain remained the company’s largest single shareholder through 1999, and three Bain executives sat on its board. In 2000, the company filed for bankruptcy, leaving debts to suppliers of more than $180 million. Even so, Bain came out smelling like money. It had invested $5 million and took out more than $100 million.
Eleven years after Ampad filed for bankruptcy, as Gerard points out, the company’s nearly 1,300 unsecured creditors finally got a pittance of what was owed: Green Bay Packaging Inc. was owed $75,500 and received $137; Lakeway Container Inc. was owed $47,100 and received $89; American Coffee Break Service was owed $1,300 and was paid $2.56. The bankruptcy trustee’s final report lists page after page of Main Street businesses receiving less than a penny on the dollar. Had that $100 million flowed to Ampad’s suppliers rather than Romney and Bain investors, it would have covered more than half the debts.
Romney desperately wants to convince the public that Bain operated in the best interests of Main Street and that he didn’t get fabulously rich under government-rigged rules. But the man exemplifies the special tax breaks and legal shields from creditors that the wealthy see as their right.
That’s Romney’s “entitlement society.”
By: Robyn E. Blumner, Columnist, Tampa Bay Times, June 3, 2012
“We Are The Whiners”: About Those ‘53 Percent’
Republicans have been preoccupied for much of the year with those Americans who don’t make enough money to qualify for a federal income tax burden. Some are working-class families who fall below the tax threshold; some are unemployed; some are students; and some are retired. These Americans still pay sales taxes, state taxes, local taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare/Medicaid taxes, and in many instances, property taxes, but not federal income taxes.
This, apparently, annoys the right to no end. It’s why all kinds of Republican officials — including Mitt Romney and Rick Perry — want to “fix” what they see as a “problem,” even if it means raising taxes on those who can least afford it.
This argument is even manifesting itself in a new “movement” of sorts, intended to respond to progressive activists calling for economic justice.
Conservative activists have created a Tumblr called “We are the 53 percent” that’s meant to be a counterpunch to the viral “We are the 99 percent” site that’s become a prominent symbol for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Tumblr is supposed to represent the 53 percent of Americans who pay federal income taxes, and its assumption is that the Wall Street protesters are part of the 46 percent of the country who don’t. “We are the 53 percent” was originally the brainchild of Erick Erickson, founder of RedState.org, who worked together with Josh Trevino, communications director for the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, and conservative filmmaker Mike Wilson to develop the concept, according to Trevino.
The overriding message is that the protesters have failed to take personal responsibility, blaming their economic troubles on others.
There are all kinds of problems with the right’s approach here, including the fact that they seem to want to increase working-class taxes and also seem entirely unaware of the fact that it was Republican tax cuts that pushed so many out of income-tax eligibility in the first place. There’s also the small matter of some of those claiming to be in “the 53 percent” aren’t actually shouldering a federal income tax burden at all, but are apparently unaware of that fact.
But putting that aside, take a look at Erick Erickson’s argument, presented in a hand-written message posted to the Tumblr blog: “I work three jobs. I have a house I can’t sell. My family insurance costs are outrageous. But I don’t blame Wall Street. Suck it up you whiners. I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain.”
Just for heck of it, let’s take this one at a time.
The very idea that Erickson works “three jobs” is rather foolish.
Blaming financial industry corruption and mismanagement for Erickson’s troubles selling his house is actually quite reasonable.
If Erickson’s reference to “family insurance costs” is in reference to health care premiums, he’ll be glad to know the Affordable Care Act passed, and includes all kinds of breaks for small businesses like his.
And the notion that victims of a global economic collapse, who are seeking some relief from a system stacked in favor of the wealthy, are “whiners” is so blisteringly stupid, it amazes me someone would present the argument in public.
If there are any actual “whiners” in this scenario, shouldn’t the label go to millionaires who shudder at the idea of paying Clinton-era tax rates?
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly-Political Animal, October 11, 2011
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