Special report: Romney's steel skeleton in the Bain closet

[Liberal_in_LA]

Special report: Romney's steel skeleton in the Bain closet

The young men in business suits, gingerly picking their way among the millwrights, machinists and pipefitters at Kansas City's Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill. Gaping up at the cranes that swung 10-foot cast iron buckets through the air. Jumping at the thunder from the melt shop's electric-arc furnace as it turned scrap metal into lava.

"They looked like a bunch of high school kids to me. A bunch of Wall Street preppies," says Jim Linson, an electronics repairman who worked at the plant for 40 years. "They came in, they were in awe."

Apparently they liked what they saw. Soon after, in October 1993, Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney, became majority shareholder in a steel mill that had been operating since 1888.

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Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they'd been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month.

What's more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company's underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/06/us-campaign-romney-bailout-idUSTRE8050LL20120106

[Trajan]

1. Hah .... Wall Street Job Killers ....

That is the reality .... They don't create jobs, they destroy them ...

[Old and In the Way]

2. Mitt Romney wants to be President to fix the problems his class created?

Somehow, I doubt it. I think he wants to be President because he sees it as a personal trophy and public vindication for the megaprofits he made looting businesses while destroying the livelihood of thousands of Americans.

[BeyondGeography]

3. That would make Mitt a whah welfare case