{"id":8023,"date":"2012-06-11T10:38:20","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T17:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=8023"},"modified":"2012-06-11T10:38:20","modified_gmt":"2012-06-11T17:38:20","slug":"bain-anything-for-a-buck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/11\/bain-anything-for-a-buck\/","title":{"rendered":"Bain: Anything for a Buck!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of the evaluation we have seen of Bain Capital has been in its vulture capitalist roll as a corporate raider.  However, Bain had other roles too, and one of those roles was to serve as a consultant for other companies.  This can prove very useful for companies that need an \u201copinion\u201d predetermined to fit what the company wants to hear to provide them cover.  Here is a case in which Bain\u2019s advice matched the character of it\u2019s founder with catastrophic effects.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

A Book Review by Greg Palast, for FireDogLake.com<\/a><\/p>\n

on Poisoned Legacy: the Human Cost of BP’s Rise to Power (St. Martin’s Press) by Mike Magner.<\/p>\n

Here’s my bead on Magner’s book….<\/p>\n

\"11BainBP\"I almost fell off the barstool when I read that it was Bain Capital (Mitt Romney, former CEO), that told oil giant BP it was a good idea to cut costs. The cuts would lead to death, mayhem and the destruction of the Gulf Coast (not to mention BP\u2019s poisoning of Alaska, Africa, Central Asia and Colombia).<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2007, after BP’s criminal negligence and penny-pinching led to the explosion at the BP oil refinery on the Gulf Coast, in Texas City, Texas, the company brought in industry pooh-bah James Baker, their lawyer and former Secretary of State, to write a report. Baker is Big Oil’s BFF, but in this case, he was horrified, and told BP to get its act together and spend some real money on operating safety<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

BP didn’t like Baker’s recommendation nor did it like another report by its own consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton which advised the company to …get its act together and spend money on safety<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

When two respected industry voices agree that you’d better start spending and thinking while you’re operating in a deadly business, a corporation’s CEO has only one choice: find a consulting house of ill repute to contradict the others and tell you what you want to hear<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

That’s what BP’s CEO Tony Hayward did. In 2008, he hired Bain Capital to say the company would be better managed if it spent less money<\/strong>. Bain used consulting BS terms like reducing "complexity," but it all meant the same thing: cut, cut, cut.<\/p>\n

After all, Bain’s motto is, "We like to fire people." The oil company then fired 5,000 employees in response to the Bain report.<\/p>\n

To hell with safety<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Greg Palast<\/a>><\/p>\n

Now, integrity demands that I reveal that this occurred after Romney went on leave of absence from Bain Capital.  However, as founder, he set the ethical standard that the company followed, and it did not change in his absence.  In addition, Romney has claimed credit for creating jobs at Bain.  The vast majority of the jobs he claims occurred after after his leave of absence.  To quote a prominent misanthrope, \u201cWhat\u2019s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.\u201d  If he claims responsibility for the successes after his time, he must take responsibility for the failures too.<\/font><\/p>\n

In short, had BP been unable to find a company as disreputable as Mitt Romney\u2019s firm and had followed the reputable advice they had received to spend money on safety, Deepwater Horizon would probably not have happened.<\/font><\/p>\n

If elected, Romney will do for America what Bain did for the Gulf of Mexico.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of the evaluation we have seen of Bain Capital has been in its vulture capitalist roll as a corporate raider.  However, Bain had other roles too, and one of those roles was to serve as a consultant for other companies.  This can prove very useful for companies that need an \u201copinion\u201d predetermined to fit […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}