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Is Cutthroat Capitalism Pushing a Growing Number of Baby Boomers to Suicide? | Alternet

Is Cutthroat Capitalism Pushing a Growing Number of Baby Boomers to Suicide? | Alternet
"In winner-take-all capitalism, if your job disappears during a massive sustained job crunch, you will have a hard time finding another one. In fact, the older you are, the more likely you are to enter the ranks of the long-term unemployed (out of work a year or longer)."

Koch Brothers: Vulture Capitalists

Charles Koch Reflects on Last Election, Promises to Do More to 'Persuade Politicians' | The Nation

Charles Koch Reflects on Last Election, Promises to Do More to 'Persuade Politicians' | The Nation
"Why the obsession with global warming? The “freedom” Koch discusses seems to relate to the freedom to pollute. Koch’s business empire, according to an estimate by Brad Johnson, emits several hundred milliontons of carbon dioxide a year. The political suppression of climate science, and any reasonable response to the climate crisis, clearly benefits Koch Industries’ bottom line—and such selfish lobbying at the expense of the common good is the very worst example of crony capitalism."

The Bain Way: Let the States Pick Up the Tab on National Debt?

The Bain Way: Let the States Pick Up the Tab on National Debt?
"Romney has had one major business experience - founding and running a private equity firm called Bain Capital, something very different than his father, who ran a car company. In the past several weeks there have been two detailed investigative stories on how he ran his private equity firm, and there has been much discussion in the media on how he ran his business differently than others: It has been dubbed, "The Bain Way"."

What the Bain way would mean for America

Lawrence O'Donnell talks with Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, about his article that examines how Mitt Romney and Bain Capital really operated, and how those business practices destroyed jobs.

Sick Money: How Mitt Romney's Bain Investments Are Exploding the Deficit and Harming Our Health | Alternet

Sick Money: How Mitt Romney's Bain Investments Are Exploding the Deficit and Harming Our Health | Alternet
"Few individuals or organizations have been as influential as Mitt Romney and Bain Capital in worsening our runaway healthcare costs, causing unnecessary suffering, or accelerating our government's long-term deficit problem. Their highly leveraged investment strategy puts healthcare companies under enormous pressure to increase revenue. They often respond by overbilling -- or worse, by encouraging unnecessary medical treatments that can include anything from non-invasive tests to heart surgery."

Greed and Debt: The True Story of Romney and Bain Capital | Common Dreams

Greed and Debt: The True Story of Romney and Bain Capital | Common Dreams
"By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. 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. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House."

Former Employees of Companies Controlled by Bain Capital Speak at DNC

The US Chamber of Commerce's Multimillion-Dollar Attack Plan | Common Dreams

The US Chamber of Commerce's Multimillion-Dollar Attack Plan | Common Dreams
"The 2012 elections in many ways represent a crossing-the-Rubicon moment. Can the democratic system survive being swamped by hundreds of millions of dollars of Super PAC money? Can it endure the rise of superfunders like Sheldon Adelson (Newt Gingrich’s backer in the primaries, who has since thrown his financial muscle behind Romney’s campaign), Foster Friess (Rick Santorum’s sugar daddy), Texas billionaire Harold Simmons and the powerful Koch brothers, as well as the overwhelming clout of organizations like the Chamber of Commerce? Will citizens rally around investigations such as the one launched by Schneiderman, and will they demand limits to independent expenditures during elections as well as the disclosure of those who seek to buy the country’s elections and legislative process? Or will ever more politicians who oppose the Chamber’s values simply suffer the fate that befell Alan Grayson in 2010?"

Taibbi: Mitt Romney Was The Guy Who Fired You From Your Job

Taibbi: Mitt Romney Was The Guy Who Fired You From Your Job
"Are you kidding? Mitt Romney was the guy that fired you from that $22.50 an hour job, and helped you replace it with two $9 an hour jobs! He was a pioneer in the area of eliminating the well-paying job with benefits and replacing it with the McJob that offered no benefits at all. One of the things that killed him in the Senate race against Ted Kennedy were Kennedy ads that reminded voters that Mitt’s takeovers resulted in slashed wages and lost benefits. He was exactly the guy that eliminated that classic $22.50 manufacturing job, like in the case of GST Steel, where Bain took over with an initial investment of $8 million, paid itself a $36 million dividend, ended up walking away with $50 million, and left GST saddled with over $500 million in debt. 750 of those well-paying jobs were lost.

What kinds of jobs were left for those fired workers to look for? Well, in the best-case scenario, you might have found one at Ampad, another Bain takeover target, where workers had their pay slashed from $10.22 to $7.88 an hour, tripled co-pays, and eliminated the retirement plan."

PERRspectives: How We Built Bain Capital

PERRspectives: How We Built Bain Capital
"As it turns out, the silence about Mitt Romney's old company and the Republican sham that "you didn't build it" are related. Because when it comes to Bain Capital, in a very real sense you did build it. After all,your United States tax code doesn't merely allow the "carried interest exemption" that enables the likes of Mitt Romney to pay a lower rate than many middle class families. Without the public subsidy that is thecorporate debt interest deduction, there might not be a Bain Capital--or a private equity industry as we know it--at all."

Greed and Debt: The True Story of Romney and Bain Capital | Common Dreams

Greed and Debt: The True Story of Romney and Bain Capital | Common Dreams
"By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. 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. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House."

Sensata Workers React to Romney Bragging about Chinese Sweatshops

Sensata Workers React to Romney Bragging about Chinese Sweatshops
"Employees of the Bain-owned company Sensata, about whom Kenneth blogged about back in June trying to save their jobs from being outsourced, watched the video and were asked for their reactions."

HuffPost: Romney asserted active role in Bain to claim half-million dollar tax deduction in 2010

HuffPost: Romney asserted active role in Bain to claim half-million dollar tax deduction in 2010
"In other words, if Romney's deduction was legal, it means his claim to have had no involvement with Bain after February of 1999 was pure fiction, because as late as 2010, he claimed more than $500,000 in expenses related to his Bain investments. Of course, if it wasn't legal, Romney has other problems."