Mitt Romney: Eine Heuschrecke im Weißen Haus? / A Locust in the White House?

US private equity groups are known in Germany as Heuschrecke ("Locust") for their standard business practice of acquiring cash-generating businesses, loading them with unsustainable levels of debt, paying themselves lavish dividends and "management fees" and then allowing the business to fall into insolvency, and finally bankruptcy and liquidation.  In the United States, these private equity investors are paradoxically called "job creators"; in fact, they are job destroyers. (Read my blog post on the sad story of Honsel AG). 

DIe Welt has a pessimistic 2012 scenario where Mitt ("Mittens") Romney - locust extraordinaire - takes the White House:  Eine Heuschrecke im Weißen Haus? Mitt Romney wird Präsident.

Romney, Jahrgang 1947, ist der erste Mormone im Weißen Haus. Der starke evangelikale Flügel der Republikaner überwand seine tiefen Vorbehalte gegen den einstigen Bischof der "Heiligen der Letzten Tage" in Boston, als alle alternativen Kandidaten, zuletzt Newt Gingrich, implodierten und das alte Parteiestablishment sich verzweifelt hinter Romney scharrte. Ungeliebt, hölzern mit dem einfachen Wahlvolk, gewann der Multimillionär genug Vertrauen bei parteiungebundenen Wählern, die zu den Verlierern der Wirtschaftskrise zählen und in Scharen aus Obamas Lager überliefen.

(Romney, born in 1947, is the first mormon in the White House.  The strong evangelical wing of the Republican Party overcame its deep reservations abou the one-time bishop of the "Latter Day Saints" in Boston, after all other candidates imploded, including, finally, Newt Gingrich, and the old party establishment stood behind Romney in desperation.  Unloved, wooden in his interaction with everyday voters, the multi-millionaire won enough support from independent voters, who saw themselves as victims of the economic crisis and defected in droves from Obama's camp.)

We will be hearing much about "Romney the Job Creator" but in fact, during his Bain Capital years he was a classic locust, enriching himself while destroying jobs in the US, outsourcing others to China, and leveraging Bain's portfolio companies with enormous amounts of debt. 

For a glimpse of what America might look like with a locust at the helm, read this article from the New York Times:  After Romney Deal, Profits and then Layoffs. 

Comments

[Hattie]

The important strategy is just to point out, over and over, that Romney is a Mormon. I refuse to be called a bigot for doing that. I don't like Mormons, I don't like what they stand for, and I would hate to have a Mormon in the White House.

[James]

"enormouse"

"enormous"

[Steven Janiszewski]

Mitt Romney's campaign does not like a recently published novel, The Assassination of Spiro Agnew:

http://www.amazon.com/Assassination-Spiro-Agnew-novel-ebook/dp/B0083EGJXC

It tells too much about the Mormons' superiority complex and how that fuels racism, sexism, and jingoism on the ground.

It tells too much about the Mormons' anti-federal government temperament.

Mitt Romney would not like this book.
It is literary and subtle, and Mitt Romney would not grok its subtlety, but he would not like it on the surface, either.
On the surface, it shows the similarities between Islam and Mormonism, and it tells too much about the secrets of Mormon mind control.

It is a good book.

With a clarity of language and vision unsurpassed in contemporary American prose, Steven Janiszewski's Assassination of Spiro Agnew takes us into a U.S. mazed with madness and Mormonism and all things Utah, a U.S. that was then and still is. Do we need a novel, even as brilliant as this one, about a young man on a divine mission to assassinate the Vice President because he is too liberal? Yes, now more than ever. Readers, welcome to a masterpiece.

Tom Whalen
www.tomwhalen.com

You should read it.