Romney: A rich bully who preyed on gays, workers

Entitled jerk.

To workers victimized by Mitt Romney when he was CEO of Bain Capital, the news that he was a prep school bully should come as no surprise.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Romney, then the son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, led a vicious attack on a gay student at his prestigious prep school:

Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenage son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

Now let's review what happened to workers at an Indiana file-folder manufacturer company after Bain Capital bought it, looted it, then drove it into bankruptcy. National Public Radio reported:

Jerry Rayburn, who worked on the factory floor at SCM, remembers the day when Bain took over.

"We knew something was going on when, toward the end of the day, we saw all the security guards starting to surround the plant," he says.

Then employees were told the company had been acquired by Ampad, and they had all been terminated. They were told they were welcome to re-apply for their own jobs.

"You could hear a pin drop," Rayburn says. "Everybody was in shock."

Most people did reapply, but things were different. The union was over. Lots of employees took a pay cut. Plant rules were different. The workers went on strike.

Romney insisted that the company end the strike. They did it by closing the factory. It didn't bother Bain that the company went bankrupt. They had yanked out plenty of money for themselves before it happened.