As a student with a communications-based major, I thought it would be interesting to try viewing the content of “Romney, Corporate Welfare King” from the perspectives of each of the three major television news networks for this assignment. In addition to this, my author category doesn’t exist yet so I just submitted it under “Purposeful Summaries”.

FOX News (Conservative)

It seems counterintuitive that to leave behind a shell of a company would be a success, but for Bain Capital, the private equity firm headed by Mitt Romney in the years before his 2012 presidential run, it was. Romney & Bain took advantage of chances presented by a flagging industrial sector to succeed, providing capital to revive companies such as Indiana’s Steel Dynamics to both save jobs and make profits for Bain’s investors. Even when Bain’s target corporations did not come back from their troubles (which only occurred on less than half of their deals), Romney still fulfilled his main purpose – to make money for his investors. An example of this can be seen in Bain’s salvaging of a $58.4 million profit out of a failing South Carolina steel mill. This was accomplished through wise usage of opportunities presented by the United States’ tax code as well as other public-private partnerships available to all aspiring entrepreneurs. While this may seem hypocritical given Romney’s anti-entitlement stance on the campaign trail, it actually represents a savvy needed to identify loopholes present in the tax code and the social safety net so that they can be closed to make a more fair and free market for everyone.

CNN (Moderate/Neoliberal)

It seems counterintuitive that to leave behind a husk of a company would be a success, but for Bain Capital, the vulture capitalist firm headed by Mitt Romney in the years before his 2012 presidential run, it was. In the stormy years following the collapse of the manufacturing sector, owners of small companies such as Indiana-based Steel Dynamics & South Carolina-based GS Industries were faced with no choice but to sell to firms like Bain. Bain would purchase these companies using high-interest loans and government subsidies, which loaded the struggling firms with debt but also lowered their tax burden, providing a slim chance for revival. However, this chance comes at a cost – if profits do not come quick, Bain would resell the flailing company, often leaving them for dead. When viewed in the context of Romney’s “pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps” campaign rhetoric, this liberal usage of government help seems hypocritical and immoral, if not illegal. Such hypocrisy would be worrisome if Romney were to take the nation’s highest office, where he would be faced with the prospective collapse of programs such as welfare and social security.

MSNBC (Leftist)

It seems counterintuitive that anyone could profit from the death of the American manufacturing sector, but Mitt Romney and his brood of vampire capitalists at Bain Capital have found a way. Bain, which takes advantage of the inequities and flaws of the capitalist system and US tax code to enrich its investors, utilizes a business model that breaks the back of struggling companies with debt, often leading to their demise. In addition to this, as employees like thirty-eight-year veteran South Carolina steel worker James Sanderson can attest, Bain also ferments labor strife, using it as a strategy to fire longtime employees and chop away at the benefits of those left standing to boost the bottom line. While those such as Sanderson and his laid-off coworkers at recently closed GS Industries suffer, Bain and their investors got away with a golden parachute to the tune of a $58.4 million dollar profit. When these skeletons in Mitt Romney’s closet are compared to his campaign talk of slashing welfare and social security, they represent not just hypocrisy but an existential threat to the American way of life.