Mitt Romney believes in America. Well not so much. News started breaking a couple weeks ago about how Romney and his band of vultures raided Delphi and sent the jobs to China.
Truthout reports:
As I reported in this week's The Nation magazine cover story "Mitt Romney's Bail-out Bonanza," the Romneys are in a special partnership with the vulture fund that bought Delphi, the former GM auto parts division.
The Romney vulture fund investment syndicate shipped every single UAW production job - every job - to China.
Just after The Nation broke the story, Washington newsletter The Hill received the Romneys' admission of profiteering:
"Romney's campaign did not deny that he profited from the auto bailout in an email to The Hill, but it said the report showed the Detroit intervention was 'misguided.'"
The truth? On June 1, 2009, the Obama administration announced that Detroit Piston's owner Tom Gores, GM and the US Treasury would buy back Delphi.The plan called for saving 15 of 29 Delphi factories in the US.
Then the vulture funds pounced.
The Nation discovered that, in the two weeks immediately following the announcement of the Delphi jobs-saving plan, Paul Singer, Romney's partner, secretly bought up over a billion dollars of old Delphi bonds for pennies on the dollar.
Singer and partners now controlled the company - and killed the return of Delphi to GM.
These facts were revealed in a sworn deposition of Delphi's Chief Financial Officer John Sheehan, confidential, but now released on the Web.
Sheehan said, under oath, that these speculators threatened to withhold key parts (steering columns), from GM. This would have brought the auto maker to its knees, immediately forcing GM's permanent closure.
The extortion worked. The government money that was supposed to go to save jobs went to Singer's hedge fund, Elliott Management Corporation and its partners, including the Romneys.
Once Singer's crew took control of Delphi, they rapidly completed the move to China, sticking the US taxpayers with the bill for the pensions of the Delphi workers cut loose.
Dan Loeb, a million-dollar donor to the GOP, who made three-quarters of a billion dollars off the legal scam, proudly announced that, once he and Elliott took control, Delphi kept "virtually no North American unionized labor."
In all, three hedge funds run by Romney's million-dollar donors have pocketed $4.2 billion, a return on their "investment" of over 3,000 percent - all care of the US taxpayer. The Romneys personally earned a minimum of $15.3 million, though more likely $115 million - a range their campaign does not dispute.
Frankly, I'm no fan of the way Obama handled the Delphi bail-out. Allowing these speculators to crank the US taxpayers for $12.9 billion in subsidies - and losing almost all the auto parts jobs in the process.
But when I heard that Son of a ... Detroit, Mr. Romney, tell us, "I would do nothing to hurt the US auto industry," I thought I'd lose my dinner. I suggest Romney repeat this directly to the Naylor family of Kokomo, Indiana.
"Clay, I am proud to have made your acquaintance, and also know you are a committed patriot who's not just messin' around! Thank you!" - Doug Burlison, Springfield, MO City Councilman
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