@EastMeetsBarn: Another excellent part of last night’s Daily Show was the comparison between the financial health of the Green Energy companies that Obama’s administration funded, and the private sector companies that Bain invested in whilst Romney was at the helm.
The metric that “half” of the companies funded by the Green Energy programs have gone bankrupt is false. It’s really 5 companies out of 63. That’s 8% over the life of the program. The 50% failure rate was for the first two years of the program when there were far fewer companies involved— if one of 3 fails, it skews the numbers.
Compare with Bain’s 22% failure rate whilst Romney was at the helm, and anothr 8% of companies during the same time period staying in business BUT losing every penny that Bain had invested in them. (source: http://www.factcheck.org/2012/05/gillespie-twists-the-facts-on-bain-capital/_
So the takeaways from this comparison:
1. You cannot rely on the media or the campaigns to give you the full facts; those are going to be stretched as far as possible, to be as flattering as possible to the candidate that is releasing the numbers, and both parties will do this
2. Romney’s financial track record in this regard might not be as gorgeous as the spin doctors tell us
3. The numbers can be manipulated to show a favorable metric, no matter what the eventual outcome is. Don’t like the numbers Romney is showing for his term at Bain? Then release the numbers for the entire history of Bain, which are far more favorable, but don’t tell anyone what these numbers are based on
4. Please do research on your own before swallowing what either party tells you
Also, running a government is far different than running a for-profit, private-sector business. Consider that, to be successful as a business executive, your goal is to make as much profit for the shareholders as possible. Not to create jobs. Not to have happy employees or make life better for the customers. Those businesses are all in business to make money. If you think that the profit-driven skillset will translate well to the public sector, then by all means, Romney’s your man. I am not so sure that the skillset will transfer well, because a large part of being a successful politician is diplomacy, negotiation and compromise– things that do not lend themselves well to making the kinds of decisions needed to ensure maximum profits for a company.