The vulture capitalist feeding cycle
>>> the net worth of richard nick son, ronald reagan , george h.w. bush and bill clinton and george w. bush and barack obama the peak life time wealth of those presidents and double it, you double that combined amount, that is the associated press's estimate of the ballpark wealth of mitt romney . interestingly, even though mitt romney is worth double the peak lifetime wealth of all those presidents combined, he's only worth about two rick scotts. rick scott is the governor of florida , he was elected in 2010 , rick scott is a stizillionair. spent $73 million o a lot in florida politics, personal money or campaign money. mitt romney and his support ers are outspending newt gingrich 5-to-1. despite mr. gingrich post south carolina surge, if the polls in florida hold through tomorrow, mr. gingrich looks like he will be bury tomorrow under an avalanche of romney bucks. part of the reason that mitt romney is so personally wealthy has to do with florida . in 1994 , bain capital , which he was running at the time, bought a medical company that had roots in florida . in 1996 and 1997 , bain helped the company take over two more medical companies. they also started, as they say, cutting costs. they closed a plant in puerto rico , eliminated between 300 and 400 jobs there. they also shut down operations in miami . that move eliminated 850 miami jobs. cut out $30 million in payroll t employees received as salary. taken out of the miami economy when bain shut the plant down. two years later, bain made sure bain got paid. they had the same company where they fired all the workers take on a huge amount of debt, for the purpose of paying bain capital . after the layoffs in puerto rico and miami and the debt. bain walked away with $242 million for themselves and their investors. in 2002 , a few years later the medical company filed for bankruptcy. it was buried under all the debt and it was bankrupt for five years before it came out and was bought by another company. this is one of those deals mitt romney worked on while he was running the show at bain . but then the deal continued paying off for him after he left the company. his arrangement with bain capital is that he still gets paid now. so part of why mitt romney is worth more money than richard nixon , gerald ford , jimmy carter , ronald reagan , bill clinton , the bushes, and barack obama combined times two is because 850 people lost their jobs in miami in 1997 . making money is one thing. making money is one thing. having money is another. this is something that has received sort of here and there attention in the last week since mr. romney released his tax returns , since we learned he only pays a special mini tax rate that is reserved for people who don't work, but who live off long term investments on their giant piles of money. but making money and having money are a different thing. if you would like to choose between which one of those ways is a nicer way to make a living, just having money and living off the interest it makes? in the big piles? is a much easier way to do it. much more lucrative way to do it. mini tax rate , 13.9% in the one year he's given full tax returns , that mini tax rate has not been around forever. relatively modern tax loophole says if you're jk is earned on investments you had more than a year, if your income is earned on giant piles of money instead of wages, you only have to pay 15%. mr. romney left bain in 1998 but still every year gets paid a huge amount of money from bain . still, now. on the deals he did while he was there. and he pays taxes at that tiny little mini tax rate . why does that little tax rate exist? it exists because a company called bain lobbied for it. on this i must defer to the master, jon stewart .
>> in 2007 there was a bipartisan bill to make private equity investors pay the ordinary income tax rate of 35% on their carried interested earnings instead of 15% they were paying since 1987 . funny story.
>> do you suspect the tax treatment for carried interest will be changed?
>> listen, if i could tell you about the number of lobbyists hired in the last two months to work this issue, you would know that it would be very risky for me to predict what would happen on this.
>> may i make a prediction because i'm in the future? yeah, they killed it. by the way, who were those lobbyists? who had so much influence over our government that charlie grassly, the republican senate financial committee ranking guy, co-sponsored the bill to adjust the tax rate . who were the lobbyists so powerful this guy [ bleep ] like he's talking about baltimore. it was the private equity counsel, a lobbying group surprise surprise by the biggest private equity firms including bain capital . now, to be fair, bain is not romney , romney is not necessarily bain . this whole issue could be an issue they part ways on and roll tape from 2007 .
>> have you come out on the proposals coming out of the democratic congress to raise taxes on hedge funds , private equity funds , venture capital funds so forth?
>> yeah, i don't think it's a good idea to raise taxes.
>> yeah! because they are your taxes! not to say mitt romney doesn't believe -- not to say mitt romney doesn't believe the tax system need not be reformed. there are certain taxes he feels should be raised.
>> 47% of americans paying no income tax that is a heck of a big number.
>> yes. the tax code is so unfair to you. to clarify the millions of dollars that mitt romney saves because of the aggressively lobbied 15% tax rate is legal and fair, and he's entitled to that from the government, no strings attached. but where does romney stand on other such government largesse?
>> i like the idea people receiving assistance, welfare assistance have a responsibility of working.
>> he wants us to become entitlement society. people feel they are entitled to something from government.
>> poor people have [ bleep ] lobbyists.
>> the great jon stewart of comedy central . he did that segment last week and that was a sort of a rip off of jon stewart by showing you that, but b, i don't think anybody showed it better or more clearly, that was an homage to mr. stewart. mother jones posted a piece about the issue but other than that overlooked piece on the daily show last week, genius and mother jones doing this today, this otherwise is not sinking in. the reason mitt romney pays only a mini tax on the money he made closing factories at bain because bain uses their share of the money they made closing factor is to lobby for executives to keep paying that rate. so yeah, poor people do have sucky lobbyists.
>>> on the eve of the florida primary , mitt romney is getting paid for laying people off in florida . but money from his campaign and from his super pac has bought a whole lot of tv ads that make it look like he would be great for florida . americans are always
