“Heads, I win; tails, you lose” is no way to run a country

"To me, Mitt Romney takes from the poor and the middle class and gives to the rich," says Rayburn. "He's just the opposite of Robin Hood."

Last week we introduced you to Romney economics: making millions in profit while loading companies up with debt, driving them into bankruptcy, and putting thousands out of work without pensions or health care. Mitt Romney spent nearly two decades in the private sector doing just that, and today, he considers it his top qualification for the presidency.

That idea—that 20 years of putting profit over people somehow makes you qualified to lead the country—is a slap in the face to workers in Marion, Indiana, who watched their jobs and livelihoods disappear when Romney and his Bain Capital partners took over their paper plant. And today, those workers are speaking out. Valerie Bruton, a former employee, says, "I really feel in my heart, people need to know what Mitt Romney did to Marion, Indiana, in 1994."

The SCM paper plant Bruton worked at provided good-paying jobs with good benefits. The work was hard, but it instilled a sense of pride in the plant employees, who made file folders, index cards, and other office supplies. Another former employee, Randy Johnson, says, "We had good jobs that you could raise a family on. It was a lot of work, but you really felt like you'd accomplished something."

In 1994, Bain Capital–owned Ampad bought SCM. Armed guards showed up at the front doors, and employees received this memo: "As of 3:00 p.m. today, Tuesday, July 5, 1994, your employment with SCM Office Supplies Inc. will end. Health insurance with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Indiana will continue through the end of the week." Those who were re-hired as Ampad employees found their wages sharply reduced and benefits like retirement funds taken away.

"This was the worst day of my life," says Bruton.

"I understand if you've gotta cut back, layoffs, that's part of the business; we've accepted that over the years when we were there," says former employee Jerry Rayburn. "But you don't come in and take everything everybody's got and destroy a business. I mean, that's what they did."

By 2000, Ampad was so saddled with debt that it had to declare bankruptcy, and 1,500 people lost their jobs. Romney and his partners, however, walked away with more than $100 million in profit.

"To me, Mitt Romney takes from the poor and the middle class and gives to the rich," says Rayburn. "He's just the opposite of Robin Hood." And it offends Rayburn to his core to see Romney on television claiming to be a job creator: "It makes me sick to my stomach when I sit there and watch Mitt Romney tell the American people about how he creates all these jobs."

The point here is not to challenge the merits of private equity or even Romney's right to run his business as he saw fit. But stories like these prove how fundamentally dishonest it is to style yourself as a job creator when your business model was to run companies and livelihoods into the ground while turning a profit for yourself. These former Ampad employees know that. Even Romney's former business partners at Bain acknowledge that Romney is not fit to call himself a job creator.

The Romney economics philosophy of "heads, I win; tails, you lose" is no way to run a country. What Romney did in the private sector has implications for what he'd do as president. "Mitt Romney's philosophy for doing business is to take over companies just to get some money from them, dump the business no matter what," says Johnson. "If that's his approach to the American economy, I can't imagine it being very pretty for the workers."

Source: http://www.democrats.org/news/blog/heads_i_win_tails_you_lose_is_no_way_to_run_a_country

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