Remember that? Remember Bain Capital? Romney was hoping you'd forget, but his record can't stay hidden or forgotten altogether. After all, Romney's fellow Republicans were first to point out Romney's record of destroying American businesses and taking away Americans' jobs.
But now, Mittens' Bain scandal is looking even worse. Rural Northern Nevada can be added to the growing list of communities hit hard by Bain.
[...] Between 2000 and 2002, Stage Stores, a clothing chain, shut down three stores in rural Nevada as part of a bankruptcy.
The stores’ closures came after Bain Capital had sold off its interest in the company in 1999. Obama’s campaign said the chain had been saddled with debt after an aggressive expansion under Bain, and after Bain made $170 million profit from the investment.
Nationally, 5,795 workers at Stage, which sells name-brand clothing in small to mid-sized cities, were laid off between 1999 and Feb. 2002, according to the Obama campaign.
It’s unknown how many workers were laid off in the Nevada stores in Winnemucca, Elko and Fallon.
In Winnemucca, 166 miles northeast of Reno, Rich Stone, owner of a dry cleaner next to the former Stage Store, remembers the retailer as a fine fit for the community.
Since it closed, residents of the small town of 8,900 and surrounding Humboldt County can’t buy non-Western-themed clothes there. They have to travel to Reno or shop online, Stone said.
“It’s a void,” said Stone, who is also a city councilman and a Republican. “We lose a lot of sales tax revenue.”
Stone then added that this was just "capitalism" and no one should expect "welfare". Actually, no one there was. However, what consumers were hoping for was another option for clothes shopping. And what local workers were hoping for was an employer willing to treat them right and simply reward them for the hard work they put into those stores. It looks like Bain did neither when it bankrupted Stage Stores and forced it to close Stage's Nevada locations.
As Desert Beacon has said before, the "capitalism" that Romney practiced at Bain Capital is not the kind of capitalism our Founding Fathers wanted for America. Rather, Romney practiced "financialism" that enriched himself and fellow Bain executives while impoverishing formerly middle class American workers. While Bain had one of the "best track records" in making Wall Street plenty of money, it's also had one of the "best track records" in giving workers the shaft.
Do these workers look like they're after "welfare" and "handouts"? No. They just did a good job... And they lost their jobs as soon as Bain lost interest and moved onto other companies to pump up to destroy. And no matter how hard Mitt Romney tries to hide this from the American people, he can't change the facts and he can't make history go away.
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