The issue is deeper than that. Bain Capital's fortunes, and Mitt Romney's, were always dependent on the kindness of strangers -- specifically, strangers in high government office. Bain's first big success was made possible because of tax concessions granted to it by the government of Massachusetts.
Romney's personal wealth was greatly increased by the Federal government's decision to treat much of his income as investment income and tax it at a much lower rate than many schoolteachers or secretaries pay. Romney was able to pay the low 15 percent rate, which was supposedly created to encourage personal investment, even at times when the income in question came from services fees and not from investing his own capital.
Romney and his partners also benefited from the fact that government leaders chose to offer this low tax rate even for investments that took jobs away, destroyed companies, or shipped jobs overseas. The failure to distinguish between productive and destructive investment was a choice -- a choice to reward destructive financial behavior as richly as we reward constructive financial behavior.
And that decision encouraged the growth of super-predator capitalism. After all, which is harder: To come up with a new idea and build a company around it, or to swoop down on companies, force them to acquire huge debts, use the borrowed money to pay yourself huge fees (for which you're taxed as if you were a real investor), and then use some of your new fortune to pervert the political process even more?
Enriched by government generosity, encouraged by government policy to act against the public interest: That's the Bain Capital story -- and the Mitt Romney story too. Romney wasn't born bad, in a financial sense. He was encouraged to be bad by government policy, which he then entered political life in order to continue the cycle of encouragement.
There's a moral to this story, and it's a simple one: If you reward predatory behavior, you will create more predators.
Stopping the Super-predators: It's Everybody's Job
But if our corporate predators have behaved poorly, so have our political and social leaders. They've failed to censure them for their misbehavior -- not just legally, but by using the "bully pulpit" to lecture them on their misdeeds. President Obama began to do that this year, ever so gently, and even these mild words have driven the corporate class into a frenzy.
Yet it is the misbehaving executives of corporate America, along with their political enablers (Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus: "Washington exists to serve the banks") that has led these executives into a life of "moral poverty."
John DeIulio defined moral poverty this way...
"It is the poverty of being without loving, capable, responsible adults who teach you right from wrong. It is the poverty of being without parents and other authorities who habituate you to feel joy at others' joy, pain at others' pain, happiness when you do right, remorse when you do wrong. It is the poverty of growing up in the virtual absence of people who teach morality by their own everyday example and who insist that you follow suit."
It's up to our leaders -- and us -- to lead tomorrow's corporate executives away from a life of corporate super-predation. Fortunately, you can help. You can be one of the adults who provides a moral role model the next generation of business leaders from turning into Corporate Super-Predators.
And you can help prevent Mitt Romney from becoming President of the United States.
Conscience of a Conservative
But if society turned Mitt Romney into a corporate predator, it is Romney's conscience that must carry the burden for his lack of remorse. He has never expressed regrets for the lost jobs or human suffering created by his work.
Whatever your disappointments with Obama, we cannot allow a member of the Super-predator Corporate Class to lead this nation. Members of the Super-predator Corporate Class reinforce each other's immoral behavior, whereas Obama's genteel remonstrations of corporate America -- buffered as they are by words of undeserved praise for the likes of Jamie Dimon -- have driven the Corporate Predator class into a frenzy.
To his great credit, John Iulio distinguished himself from the corporate predators -- and from Mitt Romney -- by expressing profound remorse for his actions. His expressions of regret, and his genuine efforts to undo the wrongs he had helped perpetrate, marked him as a human being of conscience and consciousness.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
