#Mitt Romney, American Parasite

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Mitt Romney, American Parasite

His years at Bain represent everything you hate about capitalism
http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-04-18/news/Mitt-Romney-american-parasite/

David Foster, a union official at Kansas City’s Armco steel mill,
says Bain drove the mill into the ground by placing its own interests
above customers’.
Jayme Halbritter
David Foster, a union official at Kansas City’s Armco steel mill, says
Bain drove the mill into the ground by placing its own interests above
customers’.

James Sanderson had encountered a rare moment of industrial harmony.
It was the early 1990s, and the 750 men and women at Georgetown Steel
were pumping out wire rods at peak performance. They had an abiding trust
in management's ability to run a smart company. That allegiance was
rewarded with fat profit-sharing checks. In the basement-wage economy of
Georgetown, South Carolina, Sanderson and his co-workers were blue-collar
aristocracy.

"We were doing very good," says Sanderson, president of Steelworkers
Local 7898. "The plant was making money, and we had good profit-sharing
checks, and everything was going well."

What he didn't know was that it was about to end. Hundreds of miles to
the north, in Boston, a future presidential candidate was sizing up
Georgetown's books.

At the time, Mitt Romney had been running Bain Capital since 1984,
minting a reputation as a prince of private investment. A future
prospectus by Deutsche Bank would reveal that by the time he left in
1999, Bain had averaged a shimmering 88 percent annual return on
investment. Romney would use that success to launch his political career.

His specialty was flipping companies—or what he often calls "creative
destruction." It's the age-old theory that the new must constantly attack
the old to bring efficiency to the economy, even if some companies are
destroyed along the way. In other words, people like Romney are the
wolves, culling the herd of the weak and infirm.

His formula was simple: Bain would purchase a firm with little money
down, then begin extracting huge management fees and paying Romney and
his investors enormous dividends.

The result was that previously profitable companies were now burdened
with debt. But much like the Enron boys, Romney's battery of MBAs fancied
themselves the smartest guys in the room. It didn't matter if a company
manufactured bicycles or contact lenses; they were certain they could run
it better than anyone else.

Bain would slash costs, jettison workers, reposition product lines, and
merge its new companies with other firms. With luck, they'd be able to
dump the firm in a few years for millions more than they'd paid for it.

But the beauty of Romney's thesis was that it really didn't matter if the
company succeeded. Because he was yanking out cash early and often, he
would profit even if his targets collapsed.

Which was precisely the fate awaiting Georgetown Steel.

When Bain purchased the mill, Sanderson says, change was immediate.
Equipment upgrades stopped. Maintenance became an afterthought. Managers
were replaced by people who knew nothing about steel. The union's profit-
sharing plan was sliced twice in the first year—then whacked altogether.

"When Bain Capital took over, it seemed like everything was being
neglected in our plant," Sanderson says. "Nothing was being invested in
our plant. We didn't have the necessary time to maintain our equipment.
They had people here that didn't know what they were doing. It was like
they were taking money from us and putting it somewhere else."

History would prove him correct. While Georgetown was beginning its
descent to bankruptcy, Romney was helping himself to the company's
treasury.

The Working Man's Villain

He should have known better. The year before Romney purchased Georgetown,
he mounted his career in politics, setting his sights on the biggest
target in Massachusetts: the U.S. Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy.

There were early signs that he might topple the Kennedy dynasty. Much
like today, Romney was pitching himself as a commander of the economy, a
man with the mastery to create jobs. Yet he suffered an affliction common
to those atop the financial food chain: He assumed that what was good for
him was good for all. Call it trickle-down blindness.

In the midst of that 1994 campaign, one of Romney's companies, American
Pad & Paper, bought a plant in Marion, Indiana. At the time, it was
prosperous enough to be running three shifts.

Bain's first move was to fire all 258 workers, then invite them to
reapply for their jobs at lower wages and a 50 percent cut in health care
benefits.

"They came in and said, 'You're all fired,'" employee Randy Johnson told
the Los Angeles Times. "'If you want to work for us, here's an
application.' We had insurance until the end of the week. That was it. It
was brutal."

But instead of reapplying, the workers went on strike. They also decided
the good people of Massachusetts should know what kind of man wanted to
be their senator. Suddenly, Indiana accents were showing up in Kennedy TV
ads, offering tales of Romney's villainy. He was sketched as a corporate
Lucifer, one who wouldn't blink at crushing little people if it meant
prettying his portfolio.

Needless to say, this wasn't a proper leading man's role for a labor
state like Massachusetts. Taking just 41 percent of the vote, Romney was
pounded in the election. Meanwhile, the Marion plant closed just six
months after Bain's purchase. The jobs were shipped to Mexico.

Yet Romney didn't learn his lesson. He seemed incapable of noticing that
his brand of "creative destruction" left a lot of human wreckage in its
wake. Or that voters might see him as more scumbag than saint.

Just a few months after being hammered by Kennedy, he set fire to another
company.

The Price of Incompetence

The move was classic Bain. Before buying Georgetown, Romney had purchased
the Armco steel mill in Kansas City, Missouri, which had been in business
for more than 100 years.

"We were setting a lot of records for production at that time," says
employee Steve Morrow. "We were making a lot of money because we were
getting profit sharing."

Bain combined Armco with the mill in Georgetown and foundries in Tempe,
Arizona, and Duluth, Minnesota, to form the newly christened GS
Industries.

Romney purchased Armco with just $8 million down and borrowed the rest of
the $75 million price tag. Then he issued bonds—basically IOUs—to borrow
even more to pay himself and his investors $36 million.

Within a year, he'd already made four times his initial investment while
barely lifting a finger. But he'd also run up a staggering $378 million
in debt on GSI's tab.

Steel is an infamously cyclical business, a worldwide commodity prone to
the same wild price fluctuations as oil. The Kansas City plant forged
parts for equipment used in mining gold and copper, leaving it
susceptible to the instability of those markets as well.

Yet the smartest guys in the room thought they could run the plant better
than the people setting production records.

"They were getting rid of old managers and hiring new managers that
didn't have any steel experience," Morrow says. "Some of the guys were
nice guys and everything, but they didn't have a clue what was going on."

Many of the new supervisors were ex-military, people who believed that
grown men and women are best motivated by punishment. Before Bain, says
Morrow, "everybody got along."

Afterward? "They wanted to run the plant like a disciplinary environment.
They wanted to discipline people for getting hurt on the job. They wanted
to put us in an environment like a war, where we were always fighting
with them."

Romney was charging GSI $900,000 a year in management fees to run the
company. The Kansas City mill received $900,000 worth of ineptitude in
return.

Although Bain borrowed $97 million to retool the plant so it could also
produce wire rods, it left the rest of the facility to rot.

To save costs, Bain went miserly on everything from maintenance to spare
parts and earplugs. Equipment deteriorated. Because the new managers
didn't know how to repair it, "they'd want to rent a new piece of
equipment out instead of maintaining what we had," Morrow says. The waste
and inefficiency was breathtaking.

Bain's plan all along was to streamline the company into greater
profitability, then reap the rewards with a public stock offering. But
the exact opposite was happening. Even Roger Regelbrugge, whom Bain
installed as CEO, knew the debt was crushing GSI from within, according
to Reuters. If a public offering didn't materialize, the company would
collapse.

Steel was about to enter a periodic downturn. Countries around the world
were locked in a war of tariffs and government-subsidized production,
creating a glut and driving down prices. Romney's strategy of the flip
was never meant to endure difficult times.

Workers saw the end coming; they were particularly worried that Bain was
badly underfunding their pension plan. So they went on strike in 1997,
bringing a traditional Rust Belt flair to the festivities by littering
the streets with nails and gunning bottle rockets at security guards.

When it was all over, the steelworkers union agreed to wage and vacation
cuts in exchange for extra health and pension safeguards should the plant
close.

Yet GSI was now hemorrhaging money, says David Foster, the union official
who negotiated the deal. He claims that Bain cursed the company by
placing its own interests above those of customers or long-term stability.

"Like a lot of private equity firms, Bain managed the company for
financial results, not production results," Foster says. "It didn't
invest in maintenance or immediate customer needs. All that came second
to meeting monthly financial goals."

It would take a few more years of bleeding, but GSI eventually fell to
bankruptcy.

The Kansas City mill closed for good; 750 people lost their jobs. Worse,
Romney had shorted their pension fund by $44 million. The feds were
forced to cover the difference, while workers saw their benefits slashed
in bankruptcy court.

The battered Georgetown plant and the foundries in Arizona and Minnesota
ultimately were bought out of bankruptcy by new companies. Their
workforces were halved.

Still, Romney walked away unbruised. All that debt was technically GSI's,
not Bain's. Because he'd repaid himself and his investors just months
after the purchase, Romney pocketed millions for running the company into
the ground.

"They were clever and ruthless enough to pay their own investors back at
a really high return rate," Foster says.

This was the beauty of Romney's racket. Even if he killed a company—and
he tended to kill them fairly often—he still made out, leaving others to
take the hit.

The Parasitic Capitalist

On the campaign trail, Romney describes his work at Bain as resurrecting
distressed companies. In this version, he's the white knight lifting
troubled firms from the precipice of failure.

Not true.

Private equity companies like Bain rarely buy anything but profitable
firms for one compelling reason: The patient must be healthy enough to be
force-fed all that debt. So it's something of a misnomer for Republican
opponents to slur him as a "vulture capitalist."

"Romney is not a vulture capitalist, as Rick Perry says, since vultures
eat dead carcasses," notes Josh Kosman, who has written about the private
equity business for 15 years. He's "more of a parasitic capitalist, since
he destroys profitable businesses."

Judging by the title of his book—The Buyout of America: How Private
Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy—it's safe to
assume that Kosman is no fan of the industry. But he concedes that the
business isn't inherently wicked.

The game works like this: Big-money investors write checks to people like
Romney, who pool that money to buy or invest in other companies. Internal
company documents show that a year before Romney left Bain in 1999, one
of his funds had reached a massive $10 billion.

Although Bain requires a $1 million minimum for a seat at the table, its
investors don't just come from the wealthiest 1 percent. They also
include college endowments and teachers' pension funds.

Jon Burgstone, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley's
Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, sees private equity as
essential to the economy. He might be a member of President Obama's
National Finance Committee, but he's still an admirer of Bain.

"Generally, private equity companies invest in larger firms that need
reorganization or in smaller companies that need growth capital," he
says. And their management can usually benefit from "very bright Bain
consultants."

That feeling is shared by Steven Kaplan, among the foremost scholars in
the field. The University of Chicago finance professor says that,
statistically speaking, firms like Bain improve a company's cash flow
while providing investors with a better return than the stock market.

There's no question that Romney had a gift for minting money. In 1986, he
bought medical-equipment manufacturer Calumet Coach for just $1 million,
later flipping it for $34 million. He made 16 times his initial
investment in the Gartner Group, a technology-research firm.

In what was perhaps his crowning achievement, he bought the money-losing
Wesley Jessen VisionCare for $6 million in 1994. Seven years later, it
was sold for a dazzling $300 million.

Kaplan argues that critics rarely mention these success stories,
preferring to "cherry-pick" deals that paint Romney as unmerciful and
gluttonous. "I think it's quite unfair," he says. "He was extremely
successful at Bain, generating returns for his investors. Bain Capital
had a tremendous track record. When you invest in dozens of companies,
some of those deals don't work out."

But if critics are quick to disregard Romney's triumphs, defenders are
equally swift to rationalize his catastrophes. They'll note that for all
of Romney's bankruptcies, most were rescued by new companies and survive
today. It's the final dollar tally that matters.

Yet they seem strangely incurious about the ruin he has delivered across
the country. Take Kansas City, for example.

The Armco plant closing involved more than the torching of 750 jobs,
Morrow says. Contractors and suppliers collapsed. Workers' children and
widows lost health care and pension benefits. And while Bain received
millions in tax breaks—paid for by the very people left holding the bag—
Romney walked away millions richer.

So one might forgive everyday Americans for feeling they're on the wrong
end of a rigged game, one where the wealthy always win—no matter how inept
—and the little guy is left to hack through the debris.

Bain is a private company, meaning it has no obligation to reveal its
practices. It has never made public a list of companies it has purchased
(nor would Bain or the Romney campaign comment for this story).

So in January, The Wall Street Journal did its best to piece together
Romney's track record, reviewing 77 investments made under his direction.
It turned out that nearly one in three of the companies experienced
severe financial trouble. One in five wound up in bankruptcy.

The more telling figure: Of Romney's 10 biggest moneymakers, he
ultimately destroyed four of them, leaving bankruptcy judges to clean up
the mess.

As Foster sees it, Romney was an early pioneer of gaming the system. It
would take another decade before large banks used many of the same
principles to detonate the mortgage industry.

"The great irony is that his entire management experience at Bain Capital
is buying companies and loading them up with debt and then looting the
balance sheet," Foster says. "It's the very model that drove the American
economy off the cliff then left other people to manage the wreckage."

The Job Assassin

Renee Fry doesn't recognize the tin man she sees on TV, the candidate so
congenitally wooden that he makes Al Gore seem like Flavor Flav. She was
Romney's deputy chief of staff when he was governor of Massachusetts. The
guy she served was warm and considerate, quick to distill data and seize
the big picture.

"I'm lucky because I know him from the day-to-day Mitt," Fry says. "He
liked going out and talking to people and learning from people. The Mitt
I know had a real appreciation for people."

But if Romney played the friendly politician, kindness wasn't his
specialty at Bain. Rewarding CEOs with huge bonuses, he was generous to
ranking executives. Yet he tended to treat those below his pay grade as
little more than machinery.

Romney has claimed to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain and says that
providing work for Americans was a primary company goal.

He cites Domino's, Sports Authority, and Staples, companies that added
jobs after Bain bought in.

But Bain bought Domino's just months before Romney left to run the Salt
Lake City Olympics, meaning someone else created those jobs. And he
didn't manage Staples or Sports Authority; Bain was a minority investor.

By Romney's logic, any large investor—say, the Texas teachers' pension
fund—also creates hundreds of thousands of jobs. The boast is so foolish
that his campaign has since backed away from it.

Even Kaplan admits that private equity firms rarely create jobs. Workers
are seen as costs, and costs are the enemy. According to Kosman, Romney
was in truth among the most heinous job-killers of them all.

While writing his book, Kosman conducted an interview with a Bain
managing partner. The man told him that when Bain was about to buy a
company, its partners would hold a meeting. "He said that about half the
time [they] would talk about cutting workers," Kosman says. "They would
never talk about adding workers. He said that job growth was never part
of the plan."

That claim was buttressed by the Associated Press, which studied 45
companies bought by Bain during Romney's first decade. It found that
4,000 workers lost their jobs. The real figure is likely thousands
higher, since the analysis didn't account for bankruptcies and factory
and store closings.

An example of Romney's cold-blooded approach is his 1994 purchase of Dade
International, an Illinois medical-equipment company. He soon merged it
with two similar firms, a move that tripled sales.

Once again, he couldn't help but raid the vault, peeling away $100
million for himself and investors at the same time Dade was laying off
1,700 American workers.

After Bain closed a Dade plant in Puerto Rico, human-resources manager
Cindy Hewitt was asked to lure a dozen of those employees to work in the
company's Miami factory.

But that plant soon closed as well. Although Romney was gobbling up
millions, Bain still wanted those laid-off employees to repay their
moving costs.

"They were treated horribly," Hewitt told The New York Times. "There was
absolutely no concern for the employees. It was truly and completely
profit-focused."

Yet Bain's molestation wasn't complete. It was trying to sell Dade but
didn't like the offers it received on the open market. So it created an
artificial market of its own.

In 1999, it forced Dade to borrow $242 million, which was used to buy
back company stock from Bain, Dade executives, and their banker, Goldman
Sachs.

Bain was again extracting profits with borrowed money. It had pushed
Dade's debt to a bracing $2 billion. To help pay for the deal, the
company laid off another 367 workers.

But that debt proved too much for Dade's shoulders to carry. Three years
later, the company was bankrupt.

Kosman calls it standard Romney operating procedure. To pump short-term
earnings, he would essentially "starve a company," whacking not just
employees, but also customer-service and research-and-development funding—
the ingredients of long-term prosperity.

"I think they're one of the worst, at least during Romney's time," Kosman
says. "They were very aggressive about dividends. They were very
aggressive about borrowing the most money they could. He's very driven to
be the best he could be, and that was to be as cutthroat as he could be.
But in the process, he hurt a lot of companies and cost a lot of jobs,
maybe tens of thousands of jobs."

Kosman says it's telling that Romney never cites companies he actually
managed as evidence of his job-building skills.

"If Romney had some stories to tell, he'd use those stories," he says. "I
think it's very interesting that he's not telling those stories because I
think they don't exist."

The Welfare Queen

Romney's economic views were on stark parade during this year's Michigan
primary. He ripped President Obama for bailing out the auto industry and
argued that it should have been dealt with in his favorite resting place:
bankruptcy court.

He was particularly incensed that the president rescued workers' pension
funds before covering Wall Street's bad loans.

But his faith in the free market wobbles when his friends need rescuing.
Romney just as vigorously defends the $10 billion government bailout of
Goldman Sachs, his investment partner at Bain.

After all, Romney frequently assumed the role of welfare queen himself.

In 1988, he bought South Carolina photo-album maker Holson Burnes. In
exchange for the firm's promise to build a new factory, the people of
Gaffney, South Carolina, gave Bain $5 million in bonds and $200,000 in
utility upgrades.

The plant closed just four years later. The 100 jobs there were later
shipped to Mexico.

At GSI, he dumped $44 million in pension shortfalls on the federal
government. And when he bought mattress maker Sealy in 1997, he took
$600,000 in welfare to move the firm from Ohio to North Carolina.

Even a company Romney cites as one of his greatest achievements—Steel
Dynamics, where he was a minority investor—was practically launched by
corporate welfare. Indiana taxpayers gave the firm $77 million to open a
plant. Residents of DeKalb County actually had their income taxes raised
solely to help Romney and his friends.

Tad DeHaven calls it "theft and redistribution."

He's no yammering Trotskyite; DeHaven is a former budget adviser to
Republican U.S. senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Tom Coburn of
Oklahoma. Yet he notes that firms like Bain often get governments to
subsidize their raiding parties.

The feds take $100 billion a year from everyday taxpayers and send it
straight to companies like Romney's, says DeHaven, who now works for the
Cato Institute, a conservative think tank.

But like most good Republicans, he's reticent to single out the candidate
for criticism. "It depends on what he knew and Bain's involvement in
obtaining subsidies," DeHaven says. "I don't know if it makes him a
hypocrite or not, but he should answer questions about it."

The President of Russia

Those answers won't be forthcoming. Romney refuses to discuss most of the
companies he purchased at Bain, nor will he release his tax records from
those years. As a result, voters are left to make their own call on his
catalog of creative destruction—and what he might be like as president.

Romney has professed his admiration for Ronald Reagan. But judging by his
business history, the president he most resembles is Vladimir Putin.
Romney has devoted his life to ensuring that every last penny rises to a
few hands at the top. And like Putin, he has never shown much concern for
the countrymen he tramples along the way.

"The word 'oligarchy' comes to mind," says Michael Keating when asked to
envision a Romney presidency.

Keating is a former business consultant and executive at Bertelsmann, a
multinational investment firm that operates in 63 countries. He asserts
that men like Romney "hide their antisocial actions behind a rhetoric of
free-market capitalist platitudes. But in the end, it's all about the
bottom line—and only their own bottom line . . ."

"I don't think Romney is so much dangerous as he is unimaginative,"
Keating adds. "And in the world we live in, that amounts to the same
thing."

pete...@villagevoicemedia.com

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Not dead, in jail or a slave? Thank a liberal!

[Steve]

On Sun, 2 Sep 2012 04:07:14 +0000 (UTC), 3159 Dead <de...@gone.com>
wrote:

>
>
>Mitt Romney, American Parasite
>
>His years at Bain represent everything you hate about capitalism
>http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-04-18/news/Mitt-Romney-american-parasite/
>
>David Foster, a union official at Kansas City&rsquo;s Armco steel mill,
>says Bain drove the mill into the ground by placing its own interests
>above customers&rsquo;.
>Jayme Halbritter
>David Foster, a union official at Kansas City�s Armco steel mill, says
>Bain drove the mill into the ground by placing its own interests above
>customers�.
>
>James Sanderson had encountered a rare moment of industrial harmony.
>It was the early 1990s, and the 750 men and women at Georgetown Steel
>were pumping out wire rods at peak performance. They had an abiding trust
>in management's ability to run a smart company. That allegiance was
>rewarded with fat profit-sharing checks. In the basement-wage economy of
>Georgetown, South Carolina, Sanderson and his co-workers were blue-collar
>aristocracy.

Anybody that believes anything a "union official" says is a fool....

[Slackjaw]

*YAWN* - the libs are getting so desparate.

--
---
Truth is the cure for liberalism.
---

[Winston Smith, American Patriot]

Steve <steven...@yahooooo.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012 01:02:23p

>
> Anybody that believes anything a "union official" says is a fool....
>

Are you fucking serious???

You preserved more than 500 lines of attributed text to give this one-line
reply???

Do you know how much needless bandwidth contributes to the now widely
acknowledged and accepted problem of anthropogenic global-fucking-warming,
you scumbag misanthrope!!???



--
Right-wing talking points show a popular appeal in
the same way that trainwrecks are morbidly fascinating.
But soon after the desire to be horrified at the spectacle passes,
the realization soon follows that it is all an ugly, bloody mess,
and it will only be cleaned up with leftist methods and a liberal in charge.

[Winston Smith, American Patriot]

"Slackjaw" <Okla...@spacealliance.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012 02:55:07p

> Steve wrote:
>
>
> *YAWN* - the libs are getting so desparate.
>

Do you know how much needless bandwidth is polluting the archives and
contributing to climate change as a result of archiving your inane thoughts??

Why would you post a 1-line reply and quote more than 500 lines of text, you
consumed-by-hate wingnut!!??? What is wrong with you trying to be a
responsible world citizen?


And for gawd sake, I realize it's a Usenet faux pas to criticize
spelling-which-is-not-an-obvious-typo-or-proofreading-fukup, but is it really
too much to expect you members of the right-wing filth brigade at least to
want to be literate if what little ejukayshun you get fails to bring the
enlightment of progressives to your stunted, atrophic brains?

[Slackjaw]

Winston Smith, American Patriot wrote:

> "Slackjaw" <Okla...@spacealliance.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012
> 02:55:07p
>
> > Steve wrote:
> >
> >

> > YAWN - the libs are getting so desparate.

> >
>
>
> Do you know how much needless bandwidth is polluting the archives and
> contributing to climate change

My post is "contributing to climate change"!?

(Another example of liberal intelligence)

> as a result of archiving your inane
> thoughts??
>
> Why would you post a 1-line reply and quote more than 500 lines of
> text, you consumed-by-hate wingnut!!??? What is wrong with you
> trying to be a responsible world citizen?

Well, mainly because I'm an American citizen - there is NO SUCH THING
as a "world citizen". That is an inane concept promoted and believed
only by loony socialists. (no offence)

>
>
> And for gawd sake, I realize it's a Usenet faux pas to criticize
> spelling-which-is-not-an-obvious-typo-or-proofreading-fukup, but is
> it really too much to expect you members of the right-wing filth
> brigade at least to want to be literate if what little ejukayshun you
> get fails to bring the enlightment of progressives to your stunted,
> atrophic brains?

I must have really touched a nerve there - they are even more desperate
than I thought.

[Steve]

On Sun, 2 Sep 2012 16:09:32 +0000 (UTC), "Winston Smith, American
Patriot" <Franz...@Oceania.WhiteHouse.GOV.invalid> wrote:

>Steve <steven...@yahooooo.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012 01:02:23p
>
>>
>> Anybody that believes anything a "union official" says is a fool....
>>
>
>Are you fucking serious???
>
>You preserved more than 500 lines of attributed text to give this one-line
>reply???

One line was more than it was worth..

>Do you know how much needless bandwidth contributes to the now widely
>acknowledged and accepted problem of anthropogenic global-fucking-warming,
>you scumbag misanthrope!!???

[Enraged Apostate, World Citizen (formerly Winston Smith, American Patriot)]

"Slackjaw" <Okla...@spacealliance.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012 07:44:54p

> Winston Smith, American Patriot wrote:
>
>> "Slackjaw" <Okla...@spacealliance.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012
>> 02:55:07p
>>
>> > Steve wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > YAWN - the libs are getting so desparate.
>> >
>>
>>
>> Do you know how much needless bandwidth is polluting the archives and
>> contributing to climate change
>
> My post is "contributing to climate change"!?
>
> (Another example of liberal intelligence)

No one with an intelligence far greater in magnitude than yours of "barely
stupid" is surprised to learn that you wonder that you contribute to climate
change.

>> as a result of archiving your inane
>> thoughts??
>>
>> Why would you post a 1-line reply and quote more than 500 lines of
>> text, you consumed-by-hate wingnut!!??? What is wrong with you
>> trying to be a responsible world citizen?
>
> Well, mainly because I'm an American citizen - there is NO SUCH THING
> as a "world citizen".

You'd be wrong, since I and millions others like me are in fact world
citizens.

> That is an inane concept promoted and believed
> only by loony socialists. (no offence)

The world is seeing its last spasms of the Ronald Reagans, the Derp Cheneys,
the Willard Romneys.

It's the White Male Power Structure ceding the road to your most horrifying
nightmares...the minorities you thought you had kept in their places.

All you have left is your greed and your gawd and your guns.

Don't worry: we promise to bury them with you in the grave we've set up for
you.

>> And for gawd sake, I realize it's a Usenet faux pas to criticize
>> spelling-which-is-not-an-obvious-typo-or-proofreading-fukup, but is
>> it really too much to expect you members of the right-wing filth
>> brigade at least to want to be literate if what little ejukayshun you
>> get fails to bring the enlightment of progressives to your stunted,
>> atrophic brains?
>
> I must have really touched a nerve there - they are even more desperate
> than I thought.

Not any more desperate than your kin, that Tex-Ass judge, who apparently is
ready for civil war if the "Kenyan socialist" gets another four years.

What's the matter? You some kinda chickenshit? Why am I not surprised?

[Enraged Apostate, World Citizen (formerly Winston Smith, American Patriot)]

Steve <steven...@yahooooo.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012 10:44:20p

> On Sun, 2 Sep 2012 16:09:32 +0000 (UTC), "Winston Smith, American
> Patriot" <Franz...@Oceania.WhiteHouse.GOV.invalid> wrote:
>
>>Steve <steven...@yahooooo.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012 01:02:23p
>>
>>>
>>> Anybody that believes anything a "union official" says is a fool....
>>>
>>
>>Are you fucking serious???
>>
>>You preserved more than 500 lines of attributed text to give this one-line
>>reply???
>
> One line was more than it was worth..

Let's add this post to the pile of evidence of your depraved indifference to
humanity, for which one day you will hopefully be judged most harshly in the
belief that justice is truly about the good triumphing over the bad.

[Steve]

On Sun, 2 Sep 2012 19:51:19 +0000 (UTC), "Enraged Apostate, World
Citizen (formerly Winston Smith, American Patriot)"

<Finding...@Every.Opportunity.invalid> wrote:

>Steve <steven...@yahooooo.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012 10:44:20p
>
>> On Sun, 2 Sep 2012 16:09:32 +0000 (UTC), "Winston Smith, American
>> Patriot" <Franz...@Oceania.WhiteHouse.GOV.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>>Steve <steven...@yahooooo.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012 01:02:23p
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Anybody that believes anything a "union official" says is a fool....
>>>>
>>>
>>>Are you fucking serious???
>>>
>>>You preserved more than 500 lines of attributed text to give this one-line
>>>reply???
>>
>> One line was more than it was worth..
>
>Let's add this post to the pile of evidence of your depraved indifference to
>humanity, for which one day you will hopefully be judged most harshly in the
>belief that justice is truly about the good triumphing over the bad.

...cold day in hell when I worry about your judgments.

[Slackjaw]

Enraged Apostate, World Citizen (formerly Winston Smith, American

Patriot) wrote:

> "Slackjaw" <Okla...@spacealliance.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012
> 07:44:54p
>
> > Winston Smith, American Patriot wrote:
> >
> >> "Slackjaw" <Okla...@spacealliance.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012
> >> 02:55:07p
> >>
> >> > Steve wrote:
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > YAWN - the libs are getting so desparate.
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >> Do you know how much needless bandwidth is polluting the archives
> and >> contributing to climate change
> >
> > My post is "contributing to climate change"!?
> >
> > (Another example of liberal intelligence)
>
>
> No one with an intelligence far greater in magnitude than yours of
> "barely stupid" is surprised to learn that you wonder that you
> contribute to climate change.
>
>
> >> as a result of archiving your inane
> >> thoughts??
> >>
> >> Why would you post a 1-line reply and quote more than 500 lines of
> >> text, you consumed-by-hate wingnut!!??? What is wrong with you
> >> trying to be a responsible world citizen?
> >
> > Well, mainly because I'm an American citizen - there is NO SUCH
> > THING as a "world citizen".
>
> You'd be wrong, since I and millions others like me are in fact world
> citizens.

I see, that's very interesting.

So you're a world citizen. Just out of curiosity, where's your capital?

>
> > That is an inane concept promoted and believed
> > only by loony socialists. (no offence)
>
> The world is seeing its last spasms of the Ronald Reagans, the Derp
> Cheneys, the Willard Romneys.
>
> It's the White Male Power Structure ceding the road to your most
> horrifying nightmares...the minorities you thought you had kept in
> their places.
>
> All you have left is your greed and your gawd and your guns.
>
> Don't worry: we promise to bury them with you in the grave we've set
> up for you.
>
>
> >> And for gawd sake, I realize it's a Usenet faux pas to criticize
> >> spelling-which-is-not-an-obvious-typo-or-proofreading-fukup, but is
> >> it really too much to expect you members of the right-wing filth
> >> brigade at least to want to be literate if what little ejukayshun
> you >> get fails to bring the enlightment of progressives to your
> stunted, >> atrophic brains?
> >
> > I must have really touched a nerve there - they are even more
> > desperate than I thought.
>
> Not any more desperate than your kin, that Tex-Ass judge, who
> apparently is ready for civil war if the "Kenyan socialist" gets
> another four years.
>
> What's the matter? You some kinda chickenshit? Why am I not
> surprised?

Winston, maybe you should get back on your meds.

[Slackjaw]

Winston Smith, American Patriot wrote:

> Steve <steven...@yahooooo.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012 01:02:23p
>
> >
> > Anybody that believes anything a "union official" says is a fool....
> >
>
> Are you fucking serious???
>
> You preserved more than 500 lines of attributed text to give this
> one-line reply???
>
> Do you know how much needless bandwidth contributes to the now widely
> acknowledged and accepted problem of anthropogenic
> global-fucking-warming, you scumbag misanthrope!!???

Decaf, Winston, decaf.

[Enraged Apostate, World Citizen (formerly Winston Smith, American Patriot)]

Steve <steven...@yahooooo.com> wrote on Mon 03 Sep 2012 12:31:43a

Hell too has been affected by climate change, with reports of freezing
temperatures.

Worried now?

[Enraged Apostate, World Citizen (formerly Winston Smith, American Patriot)]

"Slackjaw" <Okla...@spacealliance.com> wrote on Mon 03 Sep 2012 02:00:02a

So you inartfully avoided talking about your Tex-Ass kin there. Why is it
you right wingers will do anything, including and especially tearing apart
the republic, to maintain your power and impose your insidious cultural mix
of greed, gawd and guns?

Let's make a deal: We let you cut out a good swath of Georgia and the
Carolinas---that way you get a coastline and are not landlocked---and the
lot of you knuckle-dragging vermin can all migrate there where you can
indulge your psychopathologies free of liberals, and you can set up a
constitution where you end the lives of any who dares express a progressive
thought? That work for you? It's as good a deal as your jackass ancestors
of the Confederate States of America never got and should have been given.
Look at the bright side: you can own an Obama finally rather than having to
call him "Mister President."

[Enraged Apostate, World Citizen (formerly Winston Smith, American Patriot)]

"Slackjaw" <Okla...@spacealliance.com> wrote on Mon 03 Sep 2012 02:02:10a

Actually, the best combinination before undertaking the job of disinfecting
the world of right wingers would be a mix of cocaine and PCP.

FYI to the janitors.

Who's Winston?

[Steve]

On Mon, 3 Sep 2012 01:19:17 +0000 (UTC), "Enraged Apostate, World

Citizen (formerly Winston Smith, American Patriot)"
<Finding...@Every.Opportunity.invalid> wrote:

>Steve <steven...@yahooooo.com> wrote on Mon 03 Sep 2012 12:31:43a
>
>> On Sun, 2 Sep 2012 19:51:19 +0000 (UTC), "Enraged Apostate, World
>> Citizen (formerly Winston Smith, American Patriot)"
>> <Finding...@Every.Opportunity.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>>Steve <steven...@yahooooo.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012 10:44:20p
>>>
>>>> On Sun, 2 Sep 2012 16:09:32 +0000 (UTC), "Winston Smith, American
>>>> Patriot" <Franz...@Oceania.WhiteHouse.GOV.invalid> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>Steve <steven...@yahooooo.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012 01:02:23p
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Anybody that believes anything a "union official" says is a fool....
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Are you fucking serious???
>>>>>
>>>>>You preserved more than 500 lines of attributed text to give this
>>>>>one-line reply???
>>>>
>>>> One line was more than it was worth..
>>>
>>>Let's add this post to the pile of evidence of your depraved
>>>indifference to humanity, for which one day you will hopefully be judged
>>>most harshly in the belief that justice is truly about the good
>>>triumphing over the bad.
>>
>>
>> ...cold day in hell when I worry about your judgments.
>
>Hell too has been affected by climate change, with reports of freezing
>temperatures.

You must be getting reports from your deceased ancestors.. and I
suspect that they, like you, are not to be believed.

>Worried now?

Well, today, I am concerned about my cousin who is in the hospital up
in Montana.

[Slackjaw]

Enraged Apostate, World Citizen (formerly Winston Smith, American

Patriot) wrote:

> "Slackjaw" <Okla...@spacealliance.com> wrote on Mon 03 Sep 2012
> 02:02:10a
>
> > Winston Smith, American Patriot wrote:
> >
> >> Steve <steven...@yahooooo.com> wrote on Sun 02 Sep 2012
> 01:02:23p >>
> >> >
> >> > Anybody that believes anything a "union official" says is a
> fool.... >> >
> >>
> >> Are you fucking serious???
> >>
> >> You preserved more than 500 lines of attributed text to give this
> >> one-line reply???
> >>
> >> Do you know how much needless bandwidth contributes to the now
> widely >> acknowledged and accepted problem of anthropogenic
> >> global-fucking-warming, you scumbag misanthrope!!???
> >
> > Decaf, Winston, decaf.
>
> Actually, the best combinination before undertaking the job of
> disinfecting the world of right wingers would be a mix of cocaine and
> PCP.

Another left-wing plan to get on drugs and commit mass homicide?

>
> FYI to the janitors.
>
> Who's Winston?

If you're going to try to hide behind a new 'nym, you need to remember
*not* to sign your original name.

[Slackjaw]

I have "Tex-Ass kin"?

> Why
> is it you right wingers will do anything, including and especially
> tearing apart the republic, to maintain your power and impose your
> insidious cultural mix of greed, gawd and guns?

"tearing apart the republic"? I don't know any right-wingers who would
do that, it's mostly socialists and other left-wing losers.

(No offence.)

>
> Let's make a deal: We let you cut out a good swath of Georgia and
> the Carolinas---that way you get a coastline and are not
> landlocked---and the lot of you knuckle-dragging vermin can all
> migrate there where you can indulge your psychopathologies free of
> liberals, and you can set up a constitution where you end the lives
> of any who dares express a progressive thought? That work for you?
> It's as good a deal as your jackass ancestors of the Confederate
> States of America never got and should have been given. Look at the
> bright side: you can own an Obama finally rather than having to call
> him "Mister President."

Since conservatives outnumber leftists by a 2-to-1 margin, should we
get more land?

[Enraged Apostate, World Citizen (formerly Winston Smith, American Patriot)]

"Slackjaw" <Okla...@spacealliance.com> wrote on Tue 04 Sep 2012 08:30:20p

Even after I get your definition of "conservative" and "leftist," I'm pretty
sure your estimate would not stand up even to a slow-witted child's scrutiny.

But leaving that aside, with the offer of the paltry plot of real estate
given, what ever happened to those vaunted virtues and super skills of the
magnificent right wing wherein it can make something from nothing, turn
disadvantage into advantage, and conquer adversity with a show of prosperity?
I guess you're telling me that was all a load of bullshit...?

[Slackjaw]

Conservatives continue to make up the largest segment of political
views in the country, outnumbering liberals nearly two-to-one,
according to a new poll Thursday.

The Gallup survey found that 40 percent of Americans consider
themselves conservative; 35 percent consider themselves moderate; and
21 percent see themselves as liberal. The figures did not change from
2010.

For the third straight year, conservatives outnumbered both moderates
and liberals.

Read more:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71385.html#ixzz25X1wZF00

>
> But leaving that aside, with the offer of the paltry plot of real
> estate given, what ever happened to those vaunted virtues and super
> skills of the magnificent right wing

Ah, you've heard about those...

> wherein it can make something
> from nothing, turn disadvantage into advantage, and conquer adversity
> with a show of prosperity?

Thanks, I couldn't have put it better myself.

> I guess you're telling me that was all a
> load of bullshit...?

Of course not - it was those very attributes that built the U.S.A. into
the greatest nation in human history.

[Enraged Apostate, World Citizen (formerly Winston Smith, American Patriot)]

"Slackjaw" <Okla...@spacealliance.com> wrote on Tue 04 Sep 2012 07:08:51p

Winston's been around for the better part of a decade.

It's time for a metamorphosis---something I've already been contemplating
anyway. And a metamorphosis is certainly something not to be kept a secret,
but rather an event for which I would call upon many to witness. "Winston"
has never been a nym-shifting asshole like many a right winger who posted to
alt.politics.bush or the other political newsgroups. "Winston" never gave a
shit whether was on thousands of killfiles...the killfile keeper's loss, it
was.

This new nym will definitely last a while, since this world's greatest
scourge today is religion, as it seems to have been over the millenia. The
believers are more dangerous than ever, and need to be fed to the lions.


You can take credit---or blame, depending on one's point of view---for
providing the opportunity and the moment of the nym change. I am even
thinking of adding "made possible by Slackjaw" to the From line or to the
sig for the next several hundred posts, just so your ilk takes to reviling
you for your boneheaded act. Of course, you could take this time to make
your own metamorphosis, reject the Dark Side, come to your senses, and
repudiate the times that you were ever right wing scum. Progressives
welcome converts, and by nature are into forgiveness.

[Slackjaw]

> > remember not to sign your original name.

>
>
> Winston's been around for the better part of a decade.
>
> It's time for a metamorphosis---something I've already been
> contemplating anyway. And a metamorphosis is certainly something not
> to be kept a secret, but rather an event for which I would call upon
> many to witness. "Winston" has never been a nym-shifting asshole
> like many a right winger who posted to alt.politics.bush or the other
> political newsgroups. "Winston" never gave a shit whether was on
> thousands of killfiles...the killfile keeper's loss, it was.
>
> This new nym will definitely last a while, since this world's
> greatest scourge today is religion,

Are you referring to Islam?

> as it seems to have been over the
> millenia. The believers are more dangerous than ever, and need to be
> fed to the lions.
>
>
> You can take credit---or blame, depending on one's point of
> view---for providing the opportunity and the moment of the nym
> change.

Glad to help.

> I am even thinking of adding "made possible by Slackjaw" to
> the From line or to the sig for the next several hundred posts, just
> so your ilk takes to reviling you for your boneheaded act.

OK.

> Of
> course, you could take this time to make your own metamorphosis,
> reject the Dark Side, come to your senses, and repudiate the times
> that you were ever right wing scum. Progressives welcome converts,
> and by nature are into forgiveness.

No thanks, I was a liberal in my youth, before I got a job, and saw my
first paycheck. Then I became a conservative.

[Enraged Apostate, World Citizen (formerly Winston Smith, American Patriot)]

"Slackjaw" <Okla...@spacealliance.com> wrote on Wed 05 Sep 2012 12:36:48a

With the possible exception of Buddhism, there isn't a one of them that
hasn't been a scourge to the planet. More have been murdered or put to
death in religious wars in the names of Abraham, Jesus Christ, and Mohammed
than died by any other cause. Two in three people on the planet are the so-
called children of Abraham: it's time they grow up and are told that
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam exist to control and to fukup their lives.
You seem to be a smart guy and realize that.

>> as it seems to have been over the
>> millenia. The believers are more dangerous than ever, and need to be
>> fed to the lions.
>>
>>
>> You can take credit---or blame, depending on one's point of
>> view---for providing the opportunity and the moment of the nym
>> change.
>
> Glad to help.
>
>> I am even thinking of adding "made possible by Slackjaw" to
>> the From line or to the sig for the next several hundred posts, just
>> so your ilk takes to reviling you for your boneheaded act.
>
> OK.

Sig line now edited for the next several hundred posts. You may come to
regret that (association).

>> Of
>> course, you could take this time to make your own metamorphosis,
>> reject the Dark Side, come to your senses, and repudiate the times
>> that you were ever right wing scum. Progressives welcome converts,
>> and by nature are into forgiveness.
>
> No thanks, I was a liberal in my youth, before I got a job, and saw my
> first paycheck. Then I became a conservative.

So fear made you a conservative. The fear of not getting a paycheck or the
fear of not having a job.

It's precisely through fear that this is how they control you.

Religions.

And the Hitlers and the Himmlers and the Margaret Thatchers and the Stalins,
not to mention the Romneys and Ryans and Bushes and Cheneys and Reagans of
Washington, D.C.

They control YOU through fear.

As to religions, the high ranking of all the Christian sects learned in a
hurry that it was not this love-of-gawd shit through which the masses were
enthralled: it was the fear-of-gawd. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jim and
Tammy Faye, Jeffers, the Mormon "apostles,"...all these bastards scare the
shit out of the flock rather than appeal to their ideals and virtues.

Political leaders--including the would-be kind (some of whom are named
above)--of "evil" empires and nations throughout history have always ruled
through fear and understood that it was not high-minded ideals, including
sharing in the wealth of the nation, that kept them in power. You can't be
controlled by them appealing to your intelligence and education and them
showing you even the slightest respect for any skill or talent you offer
other than how you can use those skills and talents in service to that which
keeps them in power through fear. And once you do that, you have lost your
self-respect.

You are born into a society of humans. You are not born as an individual.
You were not born ALONE. That society helps you and shares its wealth and
burdens with you, and you do the same in kind. The Romneys and Bushes and
Cheneys encourage you to exalt selfishness and self-centeredness, because
this is part of the divide-and-conquer means by which they control through
fear and also keeping you disconnected from the group. They can't acquire
and keep their power if you connected to the group ("power in numbers"), and
especially if that group has some knowledge of ethics---information about
what is right and what is wrong. The kind of "capitalism" they preach is
the "I built that ALONE" rather than the "we built that together." It's
only in this way that they hold your scrotal sac in their hands. And they
are holding it.

Stop living in fear. It will eat you up.


--
The Enraged Apostate
Formerly Winston Smith, American Patriot. (reset your killfiles)
Made possible by Slackjaw

[Steve]

On Wed, 5 Sep 2012 01:59:10 +0000 (UTC), "bandaged prostate,
<Finding...@Every.Opportunity.invalid> wrote:

>You are born into a society of humans. You are not born as an individual.
>You were not born ALONE. That society helps you and shares its wealth and
>burdens with you, and you do the same in kind.

Actually, the society I was born into values individuality over group
think and herd mentality that leftists favor.

> The Romneys and Bushes and
>Cheneys encourage you to exalt selfishness and self-centeredness, because
>this is part of the divide-and-conquer means by which they control through
>fear and also keeping you disconnected from the group. They can't acquire
>and keep their power if you connected to the group ("power in numbers"), and
>especially if that group has some knowledge of ethics---information about
>what is right and what is wrong.

Ah yes, the leftists want you to join their group so they can make
sure you think and act as they want you to do.

> The kind of "capitalism" they preach is
>the "I built that ALONE" rather than the "we built that together."

It's kind of funny seeing how the leftist fruitcakes disparage self
interested individualism which is the single most important factor
that put mankind at the top of the food chain.

[Kurt Lochner]

On 9/5/2012 4:05 AM, Sleaze Crayonne whimpered:
>
> On Wed, 5 Sep 2012 01:59:10 +0000 (UTC), Enraged Apostate, World Citizen, wrote:
..

>> You are born into a society of humans. You are not born as an individual.
>> You were not born ALONE. That society helps you and shares its wealth and
>> burdens with you, and you do the same in kind.
>
> Actually, the society I was born into values individuality over
> group think and herd mentality that

..that right-wing zealots prefer, such as yourself, Crayonne..

>> You are born into a society of humans. You are not born as an individual.
>> You were not born ALONE. That society helps you and shares its wealth and

>> burdens with you, and you do the same in kind. The Romneys and Bushes and

>> Cheneys encourage you to exalt selfishness and self-centeredness, because
>> this is part of the divide-and-conquer means by which they control through
>> fear and also keeping you disconnected from the group. They can't acquire
>> and keep their power if you connected to the group ("power in numbers"), and
>> especially if that group has some knowledge of ethics---information about

>> what is right and what is wrong. The kind of "capitalism" they preach is

>> the "I built that ALONE" rather than the "we built that together."
>
> It's kind of funny seeing how the leftist fruitcakes disparage

While you try to disparage those who do agree to your 'group think
and herd mentality' of greed and sociopathic projections..

--Got any of those "magnetic capacitors" yet, skippy?

[Slackjaw]

Yes I fear the I.R.S. - that's for sure. But we have no choice.

[dot-5]

On 9/5/2012 5:23 AM, Kurt Lochner wrote:
> While you try to disparage those who do agree to your 'group think
> and herd mentality' of greed and sociopathic projections..
>
> --Got any of those "magnetic capacitors" yet, skippy?

================================
Poor, dumb Kurtie Licknutz Harrington had been following me all over
Usenet and desperately tracing my posts to try to find out were I
lived..

..that was... until I tricked him into admitting that he's been
hauled into court over child support payments and that he's supposed
to attend AA meetings...

See below:

Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:30:55 -0600

Canyon: "did the court let you settle for pennies on the dollar?"

Harrington: "Not that I'm aware of.. Did you have any other petty
remarks? "

Canyon: "did they see that your kids were better off if you weren't in
the picture? "

Harrington: "Why don't you go and find out for yourself, cartoon
hero..

Oh, that's right, you can't find anything past that, no
child custody filings, no further hearings on the settled
account and discontinuence.. Poor little cartoon hero..
You really are looking for something, anything to attack me
personally, with malice aforethought.. That'll be just
another in a long series of mistakes you've made today..

Canyon: "...say, are you attending those AA meetings regularly?"

Harrington: "Sure am, anything else you'd like to desperately try to
attack me personally with, or would you prefer to stop
now before you get into much more trouble?
--Or, do you just have nothing left to lose?"

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.rush-limbaugh/msg/7171c5a4bd29de81?hl=en.
================================


http://www.democrathallofshame.com/