50 Shades of Bain: Why Attacks Have Only Just Begun

[swag]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-13/50-shades-of-bain-why-attacks-have-only-just-begun.html

. . .

Consider:

Pensions. Layoffs at some Bain-owned firms were accompanied by huge losses in workers' pensions.

Tax Rate. Romney's refusal to reveal years of tax returns has led to Democratic charges that he is "the most secretive" candidate since Richard Nixon, which I don't think they mean as a compliment. If Romney resists pressure to release his taxes, the attacks will escalate. If he buckles to pressure and releases them, Democrats will pummel Romney for taking advantage of low tax rates due to carried interest, capital gains, the deductibility of leverage and other breaks that benefit high-income investors more than waitresses and plumbers. And then there are words like "Cayman" and "Swiss," which are just not standard vocabulary in a presidential finance discussion.

Republican elites shut down these same attacks on Romney when Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry made them in the primaries because they alarmed donors and threatened to make collateral damage of party policy -- especially calls for additional tax cuts for the wealthy. The Obama forces intend to finish the job that Gingrich and Perry started.

In Phase II, Obama can equate the less savory elements of Romney's creative destruction with current economic conditions and the Republican platform.

In shorthand, each private act has a public corollary: Firing workers = rising unemployment; Outsourcing = low U.S. wages; "Looting" pensions = privatizing Medicare and Social Security; Preferential tax treatment for private-equity managers = a tax system stacked against the middle class.

. . . more

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-13/50-shades-of-bain-why-attacks-have-only-just-begun.html