Just because it’s wrong doesn’t mean Mitt shouldn’t profit from it
by digby
I don’t know about you, but I think Obama should find a way to bring this into the foreign policy debate. Just for fun:
Mitt Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout has haunted him on the campaign trail, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio. There, in September, the Obama campaign launched television ads blasting Romney’s November 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” But Romney has done a good job of concealing, until now, the fact that he and his wife, Ann, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout—and a few of Romney’s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion. Their gains, and the Romneys’, were astronomical—more than 3,000 percent on their investment.
This happened through in investment in major Romney donor’s autoparts company, Delphi. Read the whole thing for the details. It’s an amazing tale.
Oh, and guess what else happened?
Romney has slammed the bailout as a payoff to the auto workers union. But that certainly wasn’t true for the bailout of Delphi. Once the hedge funders, including Singer—a deep-pocketed right-wing donor and activist who serves as chair of the conservative, anti-union Manhattan Institute—took control of the firm, they rid Delphi of every single one of its 25,200 unionized workers.
Of the twenty-nine Delphi plants operating in the United States when the hedge funders began buying up control, only four remain, with not a single union production worker. Romney’s “job creators” did create jobs—in China, where Delphi now produces the parts used by GM and other major automakers here and abroad. Delphi is now incorporated overseas, leaving the company with 5,000 employees in the United States (versus almost 100,000 abroad).
Between this and fetal tissue disposal and gaming his retirement fund, I’m beginning to think there isn’t one facet of American society that Mitt Romney condemns from which he hasn’t also made a huge profit. I guess everything he even breathes on just can’t help but make money.
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