Mitt Romney Didn’t Build That

By Bill Maher

I encourage everyone to read the latest issue of "Rolling Stone." And not just for their glowing review of the new Dylan album (Five stars! And the guy sounds even more like a frog than ever!), but for Matt Taibbi's cover story on how, exactly, Mitt Romney made his millions. The short answer: debt. He saddled companies with debt, extracted what value he could, paid himself a big bonus, and walked away. As Matt puts it:

"This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time."

Matt's right: nobody that I'm aware of has made the connection between the theme of the GOP convention -- "We Built It" -- and what leveraged buyout outfits like Bain do, which is to un-build things. KB Toys had 1,300 stores when Bain took them over; now they have 0.  That's not building, that's un-building.  When Bain took over Ampad paper and stuck the company with $60 million in annual debt payments that resulted in bankruptcy and the firing hundreds of workers -- that's not building, that's un-building. There's a reason the euphemism for this is "creative destruction," and not "creative building." Because everyone involved knows that it's not about building.

And it's certainly not about creating jobs.