Americans must choose: do they want an incompetent gamekeeper, or an inveterate poacher?
The President in Office is Barack Obama. This is a brief resumé of his First Term:
1. Repeated signs of economic and fiscal illiteracy
2. Ignorant on Europe and chilly towards the traditionally reliable US ally, Great Britain
3. Pushes through a Public Health Bill during the worst deficit in American history
4. Fails to regulate Wall Street, or bring serious felons to justice
5. Obfuscates and dissembles about the American economy, and then gets found out
6. Fails to exert any influence over the collapse of the eurozone
7. Reaches out to Islam, and gets a spit in the face for his trouble
8. Introduces a Mortgage Relief Bill that costs billions and achieves zilch
9. Fails to use status as President to end deficit wrangle in Congress
10. Takes naive view of Arab Middle East rebellions.
The Republican challenger is Mitt Romney. These are his credentials for restoring American wellbeing:
1. Achieves support for his first Wealth Fund from international fraudster Robert Maxwell, San Salvadorean drug families, and Guinness booze perjurer
2. Makes $100m profit from buying and floating Ampad, 1992-96, during which period the company sees 53% compound growth. Ampad then ‘sees profit fall-off’, sues for bankruptcy in 2001. Investors lose their shirts.
3. 1993, Romney aquires Armco, plant closes 2003, all workers lose their jobs, creditors lose $553m….but somehow Romney’s Bain declares $58.4m profit, alongside a $44m hole in the Company pension fund. (Very Maxwell, that one)
4. In some 30% of all Bain deals, Romney moves jobs offshore, thus adding to US unemployment
5. By the time Romney leaves Bain to run 2002 Winter Olympics, it is revealed by SEC that he is 100% shareholder. Takes little role in running Bain but keeps all the action for himself.
6. In 2007, Howard Anderson, a professor at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, tells the Boston Globe “Bain Capital is the model of how to leverage brain power to make money.” Cites closure of factories, elimination of jobs, use of tax-sheltered offshore accounts, and driving the companies it had bought into bankruptcy as the key factors defining Bain Strategy. (Pure Gordon Gecko)
7. Attacks Tim Geithner for tax avoidance, but keeps most of his fortune in offshore tax havens
8. During 2011 candidature run-in, steadfastly refuses to release any data on his tax affairs from before 2010
9. Staunch Republican Rick Perry observes “something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else” are Romney’s modus operandi.
10. Vows to restore Special Relationship, visits London and predicts Brits might cock up the entire Olympic Games event.
So there you have it America: it’s a guy who promises to do something good, and then does nothing at all; or a guy who promises he’ll put things right in the future, having done all the wrong things in the past.
Seems to me it’s a clear choice. That’s democracy, my friends. So don’t waste your vote by casting it.
Vaguely connected: How the Olympics opening ceremony ploughed the furrow of Hitler and Beijing
The Slog 