Gordon Gekko for President

At one time Mitt Romney was my neighbor. Well, I use the term ‘neighbor’ loosely but he did live in Belmont, just not in my section of town. Where I live there are predominantly two or three family houses and, from what I understand, former Governor Romney lived in a mansion.

I remember when Romney was running for Governor and talked about riding around with his future wife in a Rambler. What he failed to say was that his father owned the company that manufactured Ramblers. There are times Romney leaves certain facts out of his statements.

It puzzles me how a man so obviously in the spotlight can say to one audience, “I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there.” Then, according to Rolling Stone, at another audience he’ll say, “I was not planning on signing up for the military. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam.”

So Mitt doesn’t want to place himself in the face of death in a foreign country, yet he speaks hawkish when he criticizes Obama for not wanting to leap into war with Iran. It may be true that Iran verbally attacks us but if we choose to go to war with any country that speaks to our faults, it would do well for us to remember what happened to other empires when they stretched out so far that they fell apart.

Mitt Romney speaks of being frugal with our money, yet when he was in charge of the 2002 Winter Olympics, he spent $1.5 million in taxpayer money, more than the other seven Olympic Games held in the United States combined.

According to the Rolling Stone, in 2010 a company called Carlyle teamed up with Bain to drain $500 million out of a company known as Dunkin Donuts in what might be called a “hostile” takeover. Dunkin Donuts had to borrow $1.25 billion to stay afloat and pay dividends to their new owners.

I like Dunkin Donuts. I don’t like the fact that they’re going to have to sell people like me 2,011,834 small cups of coffee to pay off the $500 million dividend sucked out of them by the firm that Romney built.

If Mitt Romney becomes our president, what will he do with our money? When Mitt was running to win the Primary a few months past, he stated that he was going to decline Medicare for himself and his family. I wish we all had that option.

I also wonder why our Congress opts out of Social Security and Medicare and has their own retirement plan separate from ours. Obviously, the money that we pay them has come from our taxes.

The difference between Mitt Romney and his father was that his father made money building things, like cars, that we all can use. Mitt Romney builds transactions and makes his money buying and selling companies.

Mitt puts down 5% of the value of a company with a solid cash flow; it becomes his and then he borrows the rest of the money from an investment bank to confirm his controlling interest. Now the company has a giant debt to pay off. The management company (Mitt operating under the name of Bain) starts to fire people to manage the debt. The interest on the loan sucks the profit from the company and they have to slash employee benefits, and the company has to pay Bain management fees.

By vacuuming the cash value from the rapidly dying firm, Bain wins and gets out with a profit while the company and possibly the small town the company kept alive is shuttered. I

wonder what Mitt Romney’s plans are for the United States. Just recently, that famous statement Romney made about not caring about the 47% of the United States that is poor keeps echoing in my mind.

If Mitt Romney wins, how much damage can he do in four years, possibly eight years? I think of the Supreme Court Justices who are appointed for life. Two appointments are coming up. It may be Mitt who appoints those two Justices, affecting the direction of the United States for the next 50 years. Justice Ginsburg was born in 1933, which makes her 79 years old. Justice Kennedy was born in 1936, the same year Justice Scalia was born—making them both 76 years old. I wonder; if Romney replaced Justice Ginsburg, in which direction would the Supreme Court lean?

If Mitt Romney wins, how much damage, I repeat, can he do in four years?

Look back, if you will, at the last four years of George W. Bush. Our debt is outstanding! Maybe we need Bain & Co. to straighten it out, eh?

–Marc D. Goldfinger