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Mitt Romney's Golden Touch
by C.M. Jacks, for ElectionDebates.com
The Obama Administration has worked day and night to tar Mitt Romney and Bain Capital with the brush of capitalist infamy (for a few queasy weeks earlier this year, Romney's opponents in the Republican primary did much the same). To hear Obama and his class-warfare allies tell it,  Romney is the snickering, moustache-twirling embodiment of Wall Street villainy, exploiting the impoverished underclasses and reaping all the profits for himself and his plutocratic buddies.
Conspicuously absent from this absurd caricature are the enormous benefits derived by the lower and middle classes as a direct result of Romney's and Bain's undertakings.
Yes, it is true -- Romney and his colleagues have profited handsomely over the years in the world of venture capital. But unlike the executives pampered with loan guarantees from Barack Obama's Department of Energy ATM, Romney and Bain at all times toil in the very real shadows of risk and loss. The same cannot be said of Obama's well-connected crony capitalists.
It is instructive to place the ventures of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama side by side for comparison. To do so is to gaze for yourself on the stark contrast between entrepreneurialism and statism, accountability and recklessness, profit and loss, success and failure.
Mitt Romney's
Venture Capitalism |
Barack Obama's
Venture Socialism |
In 1986, Bain seeded Staples with $650,000, allowing the office supply superstore to expand from one location to over 2,000 in 2011. Staples now employs 88,000 people, who produced $25 billion in revenues last year.
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Raser Technologies scored a $33 million stimulus grant from the Obama Administration. Alas, its alternative-energy ambitions vaporized, and it went bankrupt in April last year.
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Bain invested in sporting goods retailer Sports Authority, which has since expanded from 10 stores to almost 700 outlets and 15,000 employees. |
Ener1 won a $118.5 million government grant to develop electric-car batteries. It had to power down permanently in late January. |
Brookstone was said to be “in dire straits” in 1991 when Bain made its investment in the troubled retail chain. Brookstone was subsequently able to open 104 new shops, hire 741 people, and triple its net sales from $95 million to $270 million by 1999. |
Aptera received a $150 million federal loan to build three-wheeled electric cars. Lack of market demand ran them off the road for keeps in December of 2011.
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In addition to private capital, Bain adds management expertise, which it focuses on its portfolio companies in order to refine, manufacture, and sell their market offerings. When Bain's efforts succeed, they reap the fruits of their labors. When they fail, they eat their losses and soldier on. |
The Obama Administration has “invested” more than $34 billion in grants, loans, and loan guarantees for various and sundry “green” companies. Obama's Energy Department claims that these federal investments have created 60,000 jobs. That adds up to $578,333 per new job -- nine times the equivalent private-sector cost.
At least 10 green-energy companies receiving this federal largesse have gone broke.
President Obama has expressed no misgivings about his record of unrelieved failure investing taxpayer dollars in green energy. |
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