Obama’s Original Sin
What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these. Chronic unemployment remains a constant, painful reminder of the havoc inflicted on the bust’s innocent victims. As the ghost of Hamlet’s father might have it, America will be stalked by its foul and unresolved crimes until they “are burnt and purged away.”
Pops lays into the Mittster ("The savior of the working stiff!" Barf.) too:
[...] As for his fifteen years in the corporate-buyout business, he was best known for the jobs Bain shredded at the once-profitable companies it took over and then demolished for parts.
It’s a record Romney perennially tries to cover up. It may have cost him his Senate race against Ted Kennedy in 1994. In that campaign, Romney was stalked by a “Truth Squad” of striking workers from a Marion, Indiana, paper plant who had lost jobs, wages, health care, and pensions after Ampad, a Bain subsidiary, took control. Ampad eventually went bankrupt, but Bain walked away with $100 million for its $5 million investment. It was an all-too-typical Romney story, which is why Mike Huckabee could nail him with his memorable 2008 wisecrack: “I want to be a president who reminds you of the guy you work with, not the guy who laid you off.” Stephen Colbert recently topped Huckabee, portraying Romney as a cross between Gordon Gekko and Jack Kevorkian because of the profitable mercy killings of companies in Bain’s care (my em). When Romney was governor, his record was no better. A Northeastern University analysis of his term (2003–6) found that Massachusetts was one of only two states to have no growth in their labor forces. The other was Louisiana, which happened to have an excuse named Katrina.
That one's personal. Mrs G was the first to tell me, years ago before Pops and the media either heard about it or would dare report on it, that Romney's fortune (the part he didn't inherit) was made as an asset-stripper. She worked for sixteen years for the wes' coas' branch of The Morilla Co. which was the country's largest wholesale distributor of artists' materials. They were competitors of American Pad & Paper Co. (Ampad). Ampad bought them out and were very good to their employees. Then came Bain (after Mrs. G left to move to the mountains) and now Ampad and its jobs are history.
Savior of the working stiff my ass.
This is an extensive piece by Daddy Frank. He really lets it fly against others as well, like he had a lot of built-up things to say and let a lotta toads outta the bag at once. Go read.
Welcome back, Pops. No need to tell him to write if he gets work. Heh.
2 comments:
... the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Indeed, but accountability by the business and political classes is a thing of the past. There should be a buncha banksters in jail along with most of the last administration. I hope nobody's holding their breath.
And by the way, it's great to see Pops back at the grindstone.
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