Romney is avoiding raider background

John Edward Jordan, Henderson

Friday, Jan. 13, 2012 | 2:02 a.m.

Mitt Romney’s comment following his win of the New Hampshire primary, according to The Washington Post, was, “This country already has a leader (President Barack Obama) who divides us with the bitter politics of envy.”

Romney does not define “politics of envy.” Romney’s comment, however, rings true of most obstructionist views of Barack Obama’s presidential pledge of restoring “hope” to American people swindled out of their standard of living. That was caused by the financial crisis and the bailouts initiated under the preceding Republican administration. The same types of charges were leveled at President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Romney tries to sidestep his role as a corporate raider in the 1980s and ’90s, which resulted in the loss of many American jobs, by suggesting that Obama’s signing of the GM bailout ultimately cost many American jobs. The truth is that many of Romney’s corporate contemporaries ran GM into the ground to qualify for government bankruptcy relief that shed GM’s responsibility for bad management decisions and union contract obligations.

Rick Perry characterizes firms like the one Romney led to “vultures, waiting for a company to get sick.”

Leverage buyouts and hostile takeovers of the past four decades usually resulted in raiding pension plans, breaking up companies, selling off assets and putting most of the employees out of work while stuffing the pockets of those like Romney.