THE BLACKBURN REPORT: July 2012

Friday, July 13, 2012

ALL of Romney's Lies in One Place! UPDATED YET AGAIN!

Sun May 06, 2012 at 07:07 PM PDT

Mitt Romney was attacking Obama about our failing education system. He has a point. We are graduating millions of people in this country who are so lacking in basic analytical skills, they are considering voting for Mitt Romney." –Bill Maherl

What an evil little man is Mittens Robbedme.

He denied running Bain capital from 1992 to 2002 since he knew that the tactics of the now infamous vulture capitalist corporation, which cost thousands of American jobs, and destroyed numerous thriving businesses., would not look good to readers.

Diligent reporting has recvealed documents which prove he was in fact was the managing director of Bain during those years, and sole owner, as well.

here is our annual list of Romney's lies:

ALL of Romney's Lies in One Place! UPDATED YET AGAIN!

Huzzah! Following in the footsteps of Avenging Angel, who has done yeoman's work in exposing the stinking pile of mendacious horse manure that is Mitt Romney, I have been working to gather all of Willard's grotesque falsehoods into one central blog. I don't carry advertising on it, and I have not "monetized" it in any way. It's strictly a labor of love/hate. It can be found here. You see, I loathe and despise liars. I'm 60. I've been following politics since I was 12 (yes, a misspent youth). I vividly remember such world-class prevaricators as Richard Nixon. But for the life of me, I have never seen a more brazen liar than Romney running for president in my entire life. By God, I won't stand for it, not without a fight. Hey, I'm just one little person. But just as a few hundred thousand small fires can make a conflagration, a few hundred thousand dedicated truth-tellers can out Mitt Romney for the lying, unprincipled, morally bankrupt sociopath that he is. So, with this conviction in mind, here are Romney's lies all exposed:

Monday, July 9, 2012

Why Obama Campaign Should Keep Attacking Romney Over Bain Capital

The Bain attacks could help Obama hold down losses among blue-collar whites, a group with which he has always struggled, says Peter Beinart.

The Daily Beast

Punditry is a strange business. On the one hand, many television pundits—especially those who also work as reporters—are supposed to be objective. On the other hand, they’re supposed to offer their opinions.

“Objective” pundits are like referees terrified of alienating either side. Their lives get easier when members of one team admit that the call should go the other way. That’s what Cory Booker, Deval Patrick, and now Bill Clinton have done with their critiques of the Obama campaign’s attacks on Bain Capital. Now that pundits have cover to critique Obama’s strategy too, the conventional wisdom has quickly congealed: attacking Bain was stupid.

I disagree. Obama has to attack Romney hard: the economy simply isn’t good enough for him to mount a 1984-style “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” campaign. Romney’s central narrative is that he’s a businessman who knows how to fix the economy. Yes, the Obama campaign can attack him as a flip-flopper; they can attack his record as governor of Massachusetts; they can call him a right-wing extremist (although attacks Nos. 1 and 3 contradict each other).

But since none of these attacks challenges Romney’s core claim, their value is limited. It’s possible, for example, to imagine a situation in which the Obama campaign effectively uses issues like abortion, gay marriage, and health care to convince Americans that Romney lacks core convictions (many probably believe that already), but that belief doesn’t cripple Romney, because voters actually like the idea of a nonideological problem solver willing to do whatever it takes to end the economic pain. It’s worth remembering that while the Bush campaign did weaken John Kerry with its flip-flop attacks in 2004, those attacks alone would never have been enough had the Swift-Boaters not cast doubt upon Kerry’s core message: that because of his Vietnam heroism, he could be trusted on national security in a post–Sept. 11 world.

There was also good reason to believe the Bain attacks might work. No matter what conservatives say, presidential campaigns often appeal to class resentment. The right has been particularly effective at it. Think about the Bush campaign’s ad showing Kerry windsurfing. Or Karl Rove’s showing Obama surrounded by celebrities. Asked how he would have run against his own candidate in 1988, George H.W. Bush’s campaign manager, Lee Atwater, said he would have shown ads featuring Bush on his private tennis court alongside images of his waterfront mansion in Kennebunkport, Maine, before having the narrator intone: “No wonder he wants to cut capital gains taxes on the wealthy.”

There’s a reason Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum went after Bain: because Romney’s super-rich, out-of-touch image was hurting him among white, working-class voters. And as The New Republic’s Alex MacGillis has shown, Ted Kennedy’s campaign used Bain’s layoffs to devastating effect in his Senate victory over Romney in 1994. The Kennedy folks even flew workers laid off by companies Bain had invested in to Massachusetts to campaign.

The Bain attacks were never likely to be terribly popular with the media, which given their upper-middle-class orientation, skew left on cultural issues like gay marriage, but right on economic ones like free trade. But Obama can’t win reelection simply with the votes of young, single, and minority voters. He needs to hold down his losses among blue-collar whites, a group with which he has always struggled. Using Romney’s stewardship at Bain to drive a wedge between him and the culturally conservative working-class whites whose turnout he desperately needs made a lot of sense, especially if the Obama campaign had tied Romney’s record at Bain to his support for unpopular Republican budgetary proposals.

But all that is now theoretical. The Booker, Patrick, and Clinton attacks virtually guarantee that the media will greet any additional anti-Bain attacks with scorn. The biggest flaw in Obama’s strategy, it appears, is not that swing voters can’t stomach his populist attacks, but that his fellow Democratic politicians can’t. Desperate for campaign cash, the Democratic Party has since the 1980s become deeply enmeshed with the finance industry.

I don’t think Booker, Patrick, and Clinton are throwing Obama overboard to fatten their campaign coffers. (Clinton isn’t running for anything, and Booker’s comments have probably done him more harm than good since he’s now seem as something of a turncoat by Democratic partisans.) It’s more subtle than that. Politicians, like all of us, are creatures of our experience. I suspect that spending so much time in the company of Wall Street has truly influenced the way many Democratic politicians see the world.

If Obama abandons his attacks on private equity, conservatives will say it proves that ordinary Americans admire places like Bain. But there’s not much evidence for that. What the last couple of weeks really illustrate is how difficult it is to run against the financial industry in a political system where it wields so much influence. Like it or not, those are the rules of the game that Obama must win this fall.

Peter Beinart,

New America Foundation

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Help Win Justice for Lal Bibi

18 year-old Lal Bibi was kidnapped, raped, tortured and chained to a wall for five days by a gang of powerful Afghan police officers. But she stood up to do what women in Afghanistan are told not to -- she is fighting back, and together we can help her and all Afghan women win justice.
According to deep cultural mandates, as a raped woman, Lal Bibi has been "dishonoured" and will kill herself -- and she publicly says she must, unless her rapists are brought to justice to restore her honour and dignity. Afghanistan's justice system routinely fails to pursue these cases and so far the chief suspects in Lal Bibi's case have not been prosecuted, likely in the hopes that international attention will die down. Every day that passes without an arrest pushes Lal Bibi closer to suicide -- but there is hope.
This weekend, the US, UK, Japan and other major donors are expected to pledge 4 billion dollars to Afghanistan -- money that will pay for the very police forces responsible for Lal Bibi’s rape. But an international outcry can shame donor countries into action, conditioning their aid on real action to fight rape and protect women. We don't have much time left -- click below for change that could save Lal Bibi’s life and our petition will be delivered right into the donor conference in Tokyo:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/justice_for_lal_bibi_c/?bIhVddb&v=15774
Local custom in some parts of Afghanistan dictates that women are shamed by rape and must kill themselves to restore their family's honour for generations to come. Amazingly, Lal Bibi and her family courageously are seeking to save her life by insisting on the prosecution of her torturers and shifting the blame to the perpetrators, in society's eyes.
The Afghan police force responsible for the rape depends heavily on foreign funding that will be pledged this weekend, when all of Afghanistan’s major donors gather in Tokyo. Donor countries can and should require that funds are not spent to grow a police force that acts with appalling impunity and that police officers work to protect women, not attack them!
There are hundreds of women and girls all across Afghanistan who are subject to the “tribal justice” meted out to Lal Bibi. Thousands more are watching carefully to see how the Afghan government and the world will respond to the girl who is fighting back and refuses to die quietly. Let's stand with her -- sign the petition below and tell everyone:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/justice_for_lal_bibi_c/?bIhVddb&v=15774
The global war on women is relentless. But time and time again our community joins together to win. We helped stop the illegal stoning of Sakineh Ashtiani in Iran, and fought for justice for rape survivors in Libya, Morocco and Honduras. Let’s show the global power of our community to help win justice for Lal Bibi and millions of women in Afghanistan.
With hope and determination,
Dalia, Emma, Alaphia, Ricken, Laura, Antonia and the rest of the Avaaz team

P.S. Avaaz has launched Community Petitions, an exciting new platform where it's quick and easy to create a campaign on any issue you care strongly about. Start your own by clicking here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/start_a_petition/?do.ps.lal_bibi

More Information:
Rape case tests Afghan justice (Radio Free Europe)
http://www.rferl.org/content/rape-case-tests-afghan-justice/24604549.html
Afghan rape case turns focus on local police (New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/world/asia/afghan-rape-case-turns-focus-on-local-police.html?pagewanted=all
Afghanistan expects $4 billion in aid pledges at the July conference (CNBC)
http://www.cnbc.com/id/47900279/Afghanistan_expects_4_billion_in_aid_pledges_at_July_conference
Tokyo Declaration to push donors, Afghanistan to make better use of aid (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/02/us-afghanistan-aid-idUSBRE8610CL20120702

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Mittens Romney, Job Killer

The Romney Record at Bain: Bankruptcies, Bailouts, & Mass Layoffs

Mitt Romney’s pitch is that he’s a “businessman” who understands the “real economy,” in contrast to President Obama who Romney says “doesn’t understand how the economy works.” During a presidential debate in November, Romney reminded the audience of the source of his “real economy” experience: “I worked at one company, Bain, for 25 years.” That quote has now been replayed thousands of times in Romney television ads in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Florida and has been viewed more than 168,000 times on YouTube.
Here’s how the Los Angeles Times described Romney’s tenure as CEO of Bain Capital:

Romney and his team also maximized returns by firing workers, seeking government subsidies, and flipping companies quickly for large profits. Sometimes Bain investors gained even when companies slid into bankruptcy.
Romney himself became wealthy at Bain. He is now worth between $190 million and $250 million, much of it derived from his time running the investment firm, his campaign staffers have said.
Bain managers said their mission was clear. “I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation,” said Marc B. Walpow, a former managing partner at Bain who worked closely with Romney for nine years before forming his own firm. “The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors.”

Here’s the rundown on Mitt Romney’s devastating record as CEO of Bain Capital, a tenure marked by bankruptcies, bailouts, and mass layoffs — all while Romney and his partners raked in billions of dollars in profits for the firm and Romney himself amassed a quarter-billion dollar fortune.
Romney’s Bain Capital Caused Mass Layoffs, Sent Jobs Overseas
Thousands of Americans were laid off by Bain Capital at companies it purchased, managed, and, at least a quarter of the time, drove into bankruptcy. Here’s an infographic from Americans United for Change laying out some of the carnage:

In addition to jobs lost at companies that Romney and Bain drove into bankruptcy, other jobs were sacrificed to maximize profits or simply sent overseas.
A Bailout Caused by Bain Capital
ThinkProgress’ Travis Waldron explains how one Romney target had to be bailed out by a federal agency after it went bankrupt, even as Bain walked away with a handsome profit:

Romney, whose time as CEO of Bain Capital has been a centerpiece of his campaign, as he has criticized President Obama for not having experience in the “real economy,” opposed both the 2008 bank bailouts under President George W. Bush and Obama’s rescue of the auto industry. But when Kansas City’s Worldwide Grinding Systems went belly-up less than a decade after Bain became its majority stakeholder, the company, which had been in operation since 1888, had to turn to a federal insurance agency to bailout its pension program in large part because Bain had “saddled” it with “such a heavy debt load”:

Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they’d been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 (258 pounds) a month.

What’s more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company’s underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.

Romney’s Bain Capital Made Billions While Bankrupting Nearly One-Quarter Of The Companies It Invested In
According to the Wall Street Journal, Romney and company drove nearly a quarter of the firms they bought into bankruptcy, but that didn’t stop them from raking in billions of dollars in profits at the same time:

The Wall Street Journal, aiming for a comprehensive assessment, examined 77 businesses Bain invested in while Mr. Romney led the firm from its 1984 start until early 1999, to see how they fared during Bain’s involvement and shortly afterward.
Among the findings: 22% either filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors by the end of the eighth year after Bain first invested, sometimes with substantial job losses. An additional 8% ran into so much trouble that all of the money Bain invested was lost. [...]
The Journal analysis shows that in total, Bain produced about $2.5 billion in gains for its investors in the 77 deals, on about $1.1 billion invested. Overall, Bain recorded roughly 50% to 80% annual gains in this period, which experts said was among the best track records for buyout firms in that era.[...]
Mr. Mehran, a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said the rate at which Bain’s target companies ran into trouble at some stage “seems large.”

Conservatives Attack Romney For “Looting” Companies, Firing Workers
It’s not just those who were laid off by Romney’s Bain and progressives who are now calling attention to his record at Bain Capital. In recent days, some of his 2012 rivals have stepped into the fray. ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes has a roundup of the latest attacks from right:

JON HUNTSMAN: “What’s clear is he likes firing people, I like creating jobs.” [1/9/12]
NEWT GINGRICH: “Those of us who believe in free markets and those of us who believe that, in fact, the whole goals of investment is entrepreneurship and job creation, would find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever, legal ways to loot out a company.” [1/8/12]
RICK PERRY: “Now, I have no doubt Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips — whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out because his company, Bain Capital, of all the jobs that they killed. I’m sure he was worried that he would run out of pink slips.” [1/9/12]
GINGRICH: Bain Capital was a “small group of rich people manipulating the lives of thousands of people, and taking all the money.” [1/9/12]
PRO-GINGRICH SUPER PAC: “A story of greed, playing the system for a quick buck. A group of corporate raiders led by Mitt Romney, more ruthless than Wall Street. For tens of thousands of Americans, the suffering began when Mitt Romney came to town.” [1/9/12]
GINGRICH: “I would just say that if Gov. Romney would like to give back all of the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain, that I would be glad to listen to him.” [12/12/11]

A Golden Parachute for Mitt Romney
As the New York Times reported in December, Romney may have left Bain Capital more than a decade ago but he still enjoys millions of dollars a year in profits from the firm:

In what would be the final deal of his private equity career, he negotiated a retirement agreement with his former partners that has paid him a share of Bain’s profits ever since, bringing the Romney family millions of dollars in income each year and bolstering the fortune that has helped finance Mr. Romney’s political aspirations.
The arrangement allowed Mr. Romney to pursue his career in public life while enjoying much of the financial upside of being a Bain partner as the company grew into a global investing behemoth.

And because of an unfair tax loophole that Romney both supports and personally takes advantage of, he only pays a maximum tax rate of 15 percent — a far lower rate than many middle class workers. Since Romney still refuses to release his tax returns, we can’t say for sure just how low a rate he pays only that it is certainly lower than that paid by tens of millions of middle class Americans.
IN TWO SENTENCES: Mitt Romney has an economic agenda of, by, and for the wealthiest 1 Percent of Americans at the expense of the other 99 Percent. He may claim to be a job creator, but Romney’s record at Bain Capital shows that he personally made hundreds of millions of dollars by bankrupting companies and laying off thousands of Americans.

Darrell Issa Calls Hezbollah "Legitimate"

Jihad Darrell announced that terrorist group Hezbollah is legitimate and has never been involved with terrorist activities, according to the Tehran Times, IRNA (the official Iranian news agency), and the Beirut Daily Star.
Oh really? I guess he forgot about that insignificant event in the early ’80s, in which Hezbollah blew at least 241 U.S. Marines to bits in Beirut – not to mention several other Americans the group murdered between 1975 and 1990, for a total of at least 261 dead Americans. This charming organization committed the torture, murder and hanging display of the body of U.S. military attach? Col. Richard Higgins’ body. These are the monsters who kidnapped CIA Chief William Buckley in the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, transferred him to Iran, and tortured and bludgeoned him to death.
They are all turning over in their bloody graves, thanks to congressional useful idiot, Darrell Issa. Talk about aid and comfort to the enemy.
Then there’s that stubborn little fact that Hezbollah, Arabic for “Warriors for Allah,” or “Party of Allah” (hint: it’s not a birthday party), is one of the three major components of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network, according to the Wall Street Journal and countless other sources.
Jihad Darrell’s new Hezbollah buddies officially support “the use of hostages” and “suicide in jihad operations.” When the State Department released this year’s terrorist list, Hezbollah was on it – yet again. Hezbollah’s response: “We regard the hostile [act] of the American administration as proof that we are following the right path.” Hezbollah declares that, “it is the duty of all Muslims to engage in Islamic jihad if it ensures the ultimate goal, which consists in inflicting losses on the enemy.” That enemy is the West, particularly America. Maybe these were the “humanitarian” actions of Hezbollah that Jihad Darrell was quoted as praising.
“I have a great deal of sympathy for the work that Hezbollah tries to do,” he told the Beirut Daily Star. Hmmm. To which work is Jihad Darrell referring? Is it 1986 Hezbollah’s torturing to death of Ibrahim Benesti, aged 54, of Beirut, and his elderly relatives, Yehudah and Yosef, whose only crime was being Jewish? Benesti, whose family – like many Lebanese Jews – had been in Lebanon since 2,000 B.C. (before the birth of Mohammed), was a charitable and kindly candy store owner who gave free candy to children of all religions. Or maybe Jihad Darrell was referring to the “humanitarian” 1985 Hezbollah torture-murder of Isaac Tarab, 63, and Chaim Halala Cohen, 39, also guilty of being Jewish.
This man, Darrell Issa, is digusting.
More disgusting is that Issa was representing the House International Relations Committee on which he serves, leading a congressional delegation including Arab-American Congressman Nick Joe Rahall, D-Va.
And he hangs out with disgusting people. Issa partied with terrorist-in-chief Yasser Arafat, gushing over him as “a charismatic individual, despite being a very small man and very old. He gives you food off his plate if you sit next to him.”
Sickening.
Political consultant and columnist, Michael Andreen, an Issa constituent, is outraged, saying it’s time for apologist Issa to go. But he still has “a good laugh at Arafat using the na?ve junior congressman as his own personal food taster.”
Issa also hung out in Syria, the country which sanctions Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, and which allowed Hezbollah to get its explosives through security checkpoints to kill the 241 U.S. Marines.
Issa buddy Arafat provided much of the explosive weaponry and was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, mining the perimeter of the U.S. embassy in Iran during the hostage crisis, the torture-murders of U.S. Ambassador to Sudan Cleo Noel and Charge D’Affaires George Curtis Moore (the highest ranking black in the U.S. Foreign Service at the time) – beaten so badly authorities couldn’t tell which was black and which was white.
If he sounds familiar, Jihad Darrell is the same congressman who threw a temper tantrum, screaming about profiling, when he showed up an hour late for an Air France flight, with a suspicious one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia, and was refused entry to the already boarded plane. Issa didn’t fool security, but he managed to charm others with his phoniness. Columnist Debra Saunders wrote a whole column, “Ahsan Baig’s Molehill,” lauding Issa for denouncing racial profiling lawsuits and advocating that Arabs “adjust” and make “sacrifices in wartime.” Problem is, at the same time, he was telling every other press source about his plans for new, anti-profiling legislation against airlines, to line Arabs’ and their trial lawyers’ pockets and risk our security.
Many advocate that America emulate Israel in its dealings with terrorism. That’s a great idea, with regard to Issa. Recently, Israel stripped Arab Member of the Israeli Knesset, Azmi Bashara, of his immunity from prosecution for urging the Palestinians to attack Israel and copy Hezbollah, its murders and suicide bombings. Israel is prosecuting Bashara, and we should do the same with the treasonous Issa.
Ironically, Jihad Darrell’s last name, Issa, means “Jesus” in Arabic. But, instead of turning the other cheek in 2002, voters in his 48th district should eagerly mark the ballot for his opponent.

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Friday, July 13, 2012

ALL of Romney's Lies in One Place! UPDATED YET AGAIN!

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Monday, July 9, 2012

Why Obama Campaign Should Keep Attacking Romney Over Bain Capital

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Help Win Justice for Lal Bibi

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Mittens Romney, Job Killer

The Romney Record at Bain: Bankruptcies, Bailouts, & Mass Layoffs

Darrell Issa Calls Hezbollah "Legitimate"

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