Ann Coulter explains the Romney-Bain-Ampad-Marion thing.
Excerpted below by CtH for length. Read the full article here.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/01/strongest-case-against-romney-a-few-sheets-short-of-a-ream/
Mitt Romney has spent more than 20 years in private enterprise, making thousands of business decisions affecting hundreds of companies that led to more than 100,000 new jobs and billions of dollars for employees and investors. So you can see why the left despises him.
Among Romney’s thousands of business decisions, the one I gather his opponents consider his absolute worst was the decision to close a paper plant in Marion, Ind. – which wasn’t his decision at all.
The “King of Bain” movie that a pro-Newt Gingrich super-pac just bought with money donated by a gambling magnate cites only one company closed by Bain when Romney was even there.
Guess which one? That’s right: Ampad.
[CtH: This is the thing that pushed me away from Newt and toward Mitt. I expect more from the people I support.]
The Democratic National Committee has retained “salt of the earth” Randy Johnson to go on tour to describe all the ways Romney “didn’t care about workers.”
The bitter and lying Randy Johnson happens to have been the union president who led the strike that forced Ampad to close the plant.
Bain Capital specialized in rescuing troubled companies.
In 1992, it bought the faltering paper-based office products business, Ampad, from the Mead paper company. Far from shutting down Ampad, Bain started buying up more firms in the industry to add to Ampad’s portfolio, hoping to create efficiencies and synergies, including Smith-Corona’s struggling paper business – home to the famed Marion plant.
Smith-Corona went bankrupt the next year. Nobody uses typewriters anymore.
Seeking to succeed where Smith-Corona had failed, Bain’s Ampad sought to renegotiate a suicide pact-union contract at the Marion plant. But instead of renegotiating, union president Randy Johnson thought it would be a great idea to immediately go on strike.
The mid-1990s was NOT a good time for workers in an industry made vulnerable by the new, paperless information age to stage a long, acrimonious strike. Union president Randy Johnson thought it was. The Democrats (and some Republicans) apparently do, too.
Romney wasn’t even at Bain during Ampad’s acquisition of the Smith-Corona business, much less for the strike at the Marion plant. In any event, it’s highly unlikely that Bain would have anything to do with a day-to-day management decision to close a plant, anyway.
Bain did not drive Ampad to bankruptcy by looting it.
To the contrary, Bain built up the company until, in 1996, Ampad was being described in Chief Executive magazine as “a stronger, profitable competitor in a consolidating – and reviving – domestic industry.”
Alas, people kept using those damn computers and shopping for discount paper at Staples and similar stores, and in 1999, Ampad had to file for bankruptcy protection. The company would have gone bankrupt a lot sooner if it hadn’t closed down the non-producing Marion plant.
I don’t know how Mitt Romney is supposed to explain free-market capitalism to career politicians, much less describe the intricacies of a thousand business decisions in two minutes during a debate.
[CtH – I don’t think he should have to be doing it at all to the likes of Newt Gingrich.]
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