Do You Trust Mitt Romney?

Mitt Romney gives me the creeps - for many reasons.

First, he has a long track record of saying anything to be elected. If he needs to be anti-abortion, he will adopt that position. If he needs to be pro-health care or anti-health care, he is comfortable with both positions. He told the state of Massachusetts that he would govern to the left of Ted Kennedy; now he pleads for conservatives to let him carry their water.

Second, he made his several hundred millions as a greedy corporate raider who put profit over people.  Similar to the fictional character Gordon "Greed is Good" Gecko of the movie Wall Street, Romney made his loot by bleeding dry companies purchased by leverage buy outs. Here's one example:


In 1992, Mitt Romney was running Bain Capital, a private equity firm. Bain Capital bought American Pad & Paper Co. (Ampad) for $5 million.

Over the next several years Romney's firm bled the company dry. Hundreds of workers lost their jobs. Stockholders were left with worthless shares. Creditors and vendors were paid less than 50 cents on the dollar. While they were exploiting the company, Romney's firm charged Ampad millions of dollars in "management fees." In all, Romney and his investors reaped more than $100 million dollars from the deal. source

Third, not only did Romney amass his fortune at the cost of thousands of American jobs, he used shady tax loopholes to pay a lower tax rate than the average middle-class family - 14%. Additionally, he had millions of dollars in a Swiss bank account and hidden in the Cayman Islands - both notorious for serving as havens for people trying to hide money or escape tax collections.

Romney's tax forms show he had a bank account in Switzerland, which he closed in 2010, and accounts in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. All three have reputations as offshore havens where the extremely wealthy keep their cash, sometimes to avoid paying taxes. source

Most of all, Romney, who has declared Corporations are People, embodies virtually every economic inequality that has crushed the American middle-class for the last 30 years. And now he wants to be our president - like I said, Mitt gives me the creeps.