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Mitt Romney: This you? [1]

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Date: 2022-08-30

Senator who leeched millions off American taxpayers whines about student loan forgiveness

Every so often, I notice the few decent votes Romney has cast and I think he’s not bad; but that is because it doesn’t take much to be better than most Republicans seen on the national stage. Romney is no Cheney or Kitzinger. Now the baron of bankruptcy thinks he has the moral standing to discuss debt relief.

Another heir to a significant fortune who made money stealing from the people who do real work for a living, Romney chides those who tried to improve the value of their labor by getting an education.



Left in the wake of Romney’s merger and acquisition deals through Bain Capital are thousands of pensioners who saw their retirement programs slashed and their jobs disappear as Bain prepared companies for bankruptcies: assets like equipment and patents were sold as Bain-run companies amassed debt and then spun off parts of the business into bankruptcy. In the process, Romney paid himself millions in commissions and left small businesses who were creditors to Mitt’s “reputable” companies with losses. Where was Romney’s compassion for the employees at Dade Behring or Kansas City’s Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill whose companies were one of dozens closed by Bain Capital in leveraged buyout schemes? How bad does Mitt feel that US taxpayers $44 million to bail out the pension plan in the steel company whose death was orchestrated to line Romney’s pockets?

I remember teaching my high school economic students about the revisions to US bankruptcy laws made in 2005; that the law had allowed for leverage buyouts and other corporate practices that would make it possible for the greediest Americans to saddle the rest of us with the responsibility for taking care of neighbors. I stressed to my students that millionaires had written a law that spared investors the consequences of bad business decisions and even encouraged some to cheat the system as Romney and much of Wall Street. I also reminded my students that the new law would not let them discharge student loan debts they took on to give themselves a chance to make a living wage.

Since that time, my sons, with the help we could give, had paid off their student loans—more than $100,000 in addition to what they had paid before the law was changed. None of us feel that it is now unfair to provide financial relief to those who are saddled with student loans. We know the real inequities are in the way the laws have been written and interpreted to let con men like Romney and TFG play accounting/investing games and cheat honest folks out of their earnings. It is time to revisit the bankruptcy and corporate laws and eliminate leveraged buyouts and the ability of business owners to file bankruptcy and then buy their failed business’s assets for nickels on the dollar and reopen. And is time to remind Romney, and every other business owner who is whining about student loan forgiveness but has filed bankruptcy or accepted government bailouts, that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. That’s the classroom version of what Romney should be told about his effort to pit the folks who drive trucks and bake cakes and trim trees against the folks who have taken out loans to become veterinarians and teachers and nurses, the folks who are all working to keep our communities alive.

www.reuters.com/...

www.jayweller.com/…

sandiegofreepress.org/...

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/30/2119802/-Mitt-Romney-This-you

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