The community organizer vs. The vulture capitalist

[NNN0LHI]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama

Barack Obama

Chicago community organizer and Harvard Law School

Two years after graduating, Obama was hired in Chicago as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Roseland, West Pullman and Riverdale on Chicago's South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988. He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens. Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney

Mitt Romney

Bain Capital's leveraged buyouts sometimes led to layoffs, either soon after acquisition or later after the firm had left. How jobs added compared to those lost due to these investments and buyouts is unknown, due to a lack of records and Bain Capital's penchant for privacy on behalf of itself and its investors. In any case, maximizing the value of acquired companies and the return to Bain's investors, not job creation, was the firm's fundamental goal, as it was for most private equity operations. Regarding job losses, Romney later said, "Sometimes the medicine is a little bitter but it is necessary to save the life of the patient. My job was to try and make the enterprise successful, and in my view the best security a family can have is that the business they work for is strong." Bain Capital's acquisition of Ampad exemplified a deal where it profited handsomely from early payments and management fees, even though the subject company itself ended up going into bankruptcy. Dade Behring was another case where Bain Capital received an eightfold return on its investment, but the company itself was saddled with debt and laid off over a thousand employees before Bain Capital exited (the company subsequently went into bankruptcy, with more layoffs, before recovering and prospering). Bain was among the private equity firms that took the most fees in such cases.

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Speaking as someone who watched my job moved out of the country during this same time period I sure am looking forward to seeing this comparison played out during the presidential race.

In this corner we have Romney who became filthy rich off of other peoples misery that he caused.

Then in the other corner we have President Obama who attended Harvard as Romney did and then during this same period was using his education to assist the same kind of working people who Romney had just destroyed their lives.

Amazing, isn't it?

Don

[bayareamike]

1. A great dichotomy..

Although Obama went to Harvard after his time as a community organizer. Columbia ain't too shabby, either

[Dawson Leery]

2. kick