- Jun 6, 2007
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It isn't right that the establishment whether it be the media, the political class, etc. gives Mitt Romney special treatment, less scrutiny, than the other Presidential candidates. A perfect example is Mr. Romney's history with Bain Capital, the private equity business. Yes, it's been well commentated on that some of the businesses that Bain Capital bought when Mr. Romney was head of Bain failed where it sure seems like these businesses' employees were just thrown under the bus because Bain Capital ended up making a nice profit on these investments. But another aspect of Mr. Romney's experience with Bain Capital which is a big negative in regard to his qualifications to become President has received little attention by the establishment this aspect being how Mr. Romney structured these investment deals. Essentially Mr. Romney structured these deals as follows he bought a business for "X" amount of dollars, he designated ninety percent of that purchase price as being held in the form of preferred-stock ownership and the remaining ten percent as being held in the form of common stock ownership. Now as one knows preferred stocks are like bonds the holder of a preferred stock gets a certain amount of interest on their investment every year for Bain Capital deals it was ten to twelve percent per year. A key factor in Bain Capital deals included that when the business Bain capital invested in was sold after deducting the value of preferred stocks totally outstanding from the profit of the sale which of course was given back to the preferred stock holders "ninety" percent of the profits was distributed to the common stock holders and only ten percent was distributed to the preferred stock holders. What this structure did was resulted in holders of the common stock often getting returns on their investment of like three hundred percent, a thousand percent, two thousand percent and greater percentages. However, this is the real troubling factor of Bain's structuring which is that Mr. Romney made available to himself and Bain's employees the opportunity to invest in these "common" stocks for their Individual Retirement Accounts the point being that essentially Mr. Romney was arguably undervaluing these common stock and considering that there is monetary limits on how much an individual on a yearly basis can put into his or her IRA account and that if the common stock was valued in a reasonable manner it would have been two or three times the price Mr. Romney used so Mr. Romney and many of his employees would have only been able to put much less number of these common stock in their IRA account under the legal limits. This is critically important because profits from IRA accounts are not taxable until withdrawn so Mr. Romney with his undervaluing behavior here was able to shield a lot of investment income from Federal taxation. This claim of undervaluing can be further supported by considering that today private equity businesses don't structure investment deals in this nine to one ratio that Mr. Romney did, they value it in terms of like six to one or three to one so that the value of the common stock is not ten percent but rather sixteen or thirty three percent of the total business purchase price. This issue is not insignificant it is believed Mr. Romney has upwards of one hundred million dollars in his IRA account which begs the questions how much of such money would have gone to Uncle Sam in the form of owed federal taxes if Mr. Romney didn't undervalue common stock in Bain's investment deals. In a broader sense it looks like possibly Mr. Romney broke the law with respect to taxes and/or IRA accounts with these Bain investment deals or at minimum he manipulated or gamed the federal tax laws with such deals. The American people should be asking ourselves do we want to elect a person as President of the United States that holds such values, America is still trying to recover from its worst recession in seventy-five years brought on by executives in the financial industry manipulating and gaming America's laws, the American people want our government to restore the country in terms of bringing back a plentiful supply of middle class jobs which will never happen with top executives in our industries primarily guided by greed. Mr. Romney's history with Bain Capital provides conclusive proof that he holds values that ordinary Americans want to see no parts of in America's industries, these values of Mr. Romney are the problem not the solution for America!
One can see this special treatment for Mitt Romney if one considers this coalescing effort by the establishment to crumble the christian opposition to Mr. Romney's campaign. To get a sense of this neutralizing effort toward anti-Romney christians one can look at an editorial article published just this past week by E.J. Dionne titled "Religion and politics the right way". E. J. Dionne is probably the premier liberal democrat political commentator of our time he frequently appears on TV as well as having articles published in the nation's major newspapers. What makes Mr. Dionne's article so relevant is that the mentality and values behind it can quite accurately be said to be held by a segment of America often described as "Intellectual Elitists" a very powerful group in America. The tone and spirit of the article is one of mocking and disrespect of christian conservatives and the major theme of the article is to say you christian conservatives aren't being faithful to the christian faith when it comes to your political activity. Some of the details of the article are very telling. Mr. Dionne uses the word "tale" to describe the account of Jesus from the Last Supper through his passion, death and resurrection from his context one gets the impression that Mr. Dionne is trying to say this passion account is a piece of fiction, not actual events of Jesus the Son of God's life which truly Christian people believe. Mr. Dionne essentially writes that for this event approximately two-thousand years ago when Jesus' apostles found Jesus tomb empty three days after his death christians have doubts about what happened to person of Jesus implying that the belief that Jesus rose from the dead is somehow a useful answer to that question not the actual truth, Mr. Dionne there is no doubt amongst true christians that Jesus rose from the dead and he lives as King of this world and everyone's personal savior. Mr. Dionne tries to limit the Exodus story of the Israelites in the Old Testament and the Easter story of Jesus in the New Testament to make the claim that Judaism and Christianity are only about obtaining freedom he seems to restrain the potential of religion to just this narrow scope because if it offers more than the faithful are going to want authorities to deliver on that more. Many of us non-intellectuals Mr. Dionne believe that both the Old and New testaments give the message to humanity that if a people is faithful to God God will bless them and life will be good, their world will be good; so I am sorry Mr. Dionne but a faithful christian can be out there participating in the political process in America expecting the government to take steps that lead to a good world for all. Mr. Dionne writes that it is obvious that christians this election cycle have not conducted themselves in the best light I have to assume that what he is referring to here is conservative Christians en masse voting for Rick Santorum in the Republican primary elections over Mitt Romney. Mr. Dionne you and your elk don't get it and come November 6th you all are going to be surprised and very disappointed about how Mitt Romney lost a huge portion of the christian vote that generally goes Republican but did not vote in the Presidential election this year because the Republican candidate was a Mormon. To a faithful Christian Mr. Romney's Mormon faith is a big problem it is a deal breaker in getting that Christian's vote, the way these christians see things is that the Mormon faith is taking a lot of people that used to be christians into the Mormon faith, the Mormon faith because it is not a christian faith cuts these Mormon converts off from the grace of Jesus Christ a terrible thing to happen to these converts and since these converts are no longer christian the eternal salvation of their souls is in great peril no way could such a faithful christian vote for a Mormon for president and give that religion such a large increase in stature and prestige thereby aiding its work. Moreover, no way would such a faithful Christian who loves America vote for a Mormon for President for such a Christian believes that America owes its great history to the blessings of Jesus Christ who has blessed America because it has always been a christian nation from its first President George Washington to the current one President Barrack Obama and no way would he or she play any part in putting that blessing in jeopardy. Mr. Dionne in the latter half of his article tries to say that the christian faith calls the faithful to be more receptive, understanding, tolerant and the like to different views than their own and christianity calls the faithful to stop with the high energy, enthusiasm and the like for their cause be tempered, moderate and restrained in the goals they set. Mr. Dionne we don't want half a loaf, the entree without the meat, poultry or fish or half an enchilada we want the full promise of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God (a good world). Mr. Dionne us Christian conservatives as much as you would like to paint us otherwise aren't bringing new moral values into America as you frame it but rather we are being faithful to the christian values which built this nation for America has long been known to have benefited from a Protestant and Puritan mentality where there exists a right and a wrong and the government should be doing the right thing and if need be one must fight as hard as one can to stop the wrong thing from occuring in America. It is true that in some matters there is degrees of right but for many of the issues today the choice isn't between degrees of right it is between right and wrong, these trillion dollar deficits the country is running are absolutely wrong it is generaltional theft, the 2010 health care law is absolutely wrong for it will bring socialized medicine to America and with it a lot of substandard care. Mr. Dionne ends his article quoting a portion of a Catholic Eucharistic prayer and saying he finds this passage moving I think many Christians find the last phrase of that prayer noteworthy moving and would like to see it come true in America that phrase being "Christ our Lord, through whom you (God the Father) bestow on the world all that is good"!
One can see this special treatment for Mitt Romney if one considers this coalescing effort by the establishment to crumble the christian opposition to Mr. Romney's campaign. To get a sense of this neutralizing effort toward anti-Romney christians one can look at an editorial article published just this past week by E.J. Dionne titled "Religion and politics the right way". E. J. Dionne is probably the premier liberal democrat political commentator of our time he frequently appears on TV as well as having articles published in the nation's major newspapers. What makes Mr. Dionne's article so relevant is that the mentality and values behind it can quite accurately be said to be held by a segment of America often described as "Intellectual Elitists" a very powerful group in America. The tone and spirit of the article is one of mocking and disrespect of christian conservatives and the major theme of the article is to say you christian conservatives aren't being faithful to the christian faith when it comes to your political activity. Some of the details of the article are very telling. Mr. Dionne uses the word "tale" to describe the account of Jesus from the Last Supper through his passion, death and resurrection from his context one gets the impression that Mr. Dionne is trying to say this passion account is a piece of fiction, not actual events of Jesus the Son of God's life which truly Christian people believe. Mr. Dionne essentially writes that for this event approximately two-thousand years ago when Jesus' apostles found Jesus tomb empty three days after his death christians have doubts about what happened to person of Jesus implying that the belief that Jesus rose from the dead is somehow a useful answer to that question not the actual truth, Mr. Dionne there is no doubt amongst true christians that Jesus rose from the dead and he lives as King of this world and everyone's personal savior. Mr. Dionne tries to limit the Exodus story of the Israelites in the Old Testament and the Easter story of Jesus in the New Testament to make the claim that Judaism and Christianity are only about obtaining freedom he seems to restrain the potential of religion to just this narrow scope because if it offers more than the faithful are going to want authorities to deliver on that more. Many of us non-intellectuals Mr. Dionne believe that both the Old and New testaments give the message to humanity that if a people is faithful to God God will bless them and life will be good, their world will be good; so I am sorry Mr. Dionne but a faithful christian can be out there participating in the political process in America expecting the government to take steps that lead to a good world for all. Mr. Dionne writes that it is obvious that christians this election cycle have not conducted themselves in the best light I have to assume that what he is referring to here is conservative Christians en masse voting for Rick Santorum in the Republican primary elections over Mitt Romney. Mr. Dionne you and your elk don't get it and come November 6th you all are going to be surprised and very disappointed about how Mitt Romney lost a huge portion of the christian vote that generally goes Republican but did not vote in the Presidential election this year because the Republican candidate was a Mormon. To a faithful Christian Mr. Romney's Mormon faith is a big problem it is a deal breaker in getting that Christian's vote, the way these christians see things is that the Mormon faith is taking a lot of people that used to be christians into the Mormon faith, the Mormon faith because it is not a christian faith cuts these Mormon converts off from the grace of Jesus Christ a terrible thing to happen to these converts and since these converts are no longer christian the eternal salvation of their souls is in great peril no way could such a faithful christian vote for a Mormon for president and give that religion such a large increase in stature and prestige thereby aiding its work. Moreover, no way would such a faithful Christian who loves America vote for a Mormon for President for such a Christian believes that America owes its great history to the blessings of Jesus Christ who has blessed America because it has always been a christian nation from its first President George Washington to the current one President Barrack Obama and no way would he or she play any part in putting that blessing in jeopardy. Mr. Dionne in the latter half of his article tries to say that the christian faith calls the faithful to be more receptive, understanding, tolerant and the like to different views than their own and christianity calls the faithful to stop with the high energy, enthusiasm and the like for their cause be tempered, moderate and restrained in the goals they set. Mr. Dionne we don't want half a loaf, the entree without the meat, poultry or fish or half an enchilada we want the full promise of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God (a good world). Mr. Dionne us Christian conservatives as much as you would like to paint us otherwise aren't bringing new moral values into America as you frame it but rather we are being faithful to the christian values which built this nation for America has long been known to have benefited from a Protestant and Puritan mentality where there exists a right and a wrong and the government should be doing the right thing and if need be one must fight as hard as one can to stop the wrong thing from occuring in America. It is true that in some matters there is degrees of right but for many of the issues today the choice isn't between degrees of right it is between right and wrong, these trillion dollar deficits the country is running are absolutely wrong it is generaltional theft, the 2010 health care law is absolutely wrong for it will bring socialized medicine to America and with it a lot of substandard care. Mr. Dionne ends his article quoting a portion of a Catholic Eucharistic prayer and saying he finds this passage moving I think many Christians find the last phrase of that prayer noteworthy moving and would like to see it come true in America that phrase being "Christ our Lord, through whom you (God the Father) bestow on the world all that is good"!
