I was in Hillsboro Illinois on August 19, 2014, with other retirees from the State of Illinois attending a meeting where Bruce Rauner was to appear. The meeting was supposed to be a targeted audience, that is the people there were Rauner supporters but we sort of snuck in. Any way Bruce started his speech and some of the first words that came out of his mouth were--- state employees were receiving benefits far and above the private sector and this has to change. In particular retirees from the State of Illinois were all retiring in in their early 50s and making millions in retirement and becoming millionaires. We know this is not true. But the point is Bruce wants to drag public sector employees down to the level of the private sector which was one of the main points he repeated in the meeting. Well I ask all why we can’t drag the private sector up without dragging the public sector down. Well after reading this article I know why Bruce cannot do this. The following quote is from the article “Regardless of the funds’ performance, GTCR makes money, thanks to its annual management fee of up to 1.5 percent. In addition, the partners split a percentage of whatever profits the firm’s investments generate. Through the years, Rauner has invested largely according to Gilder’s winning formula: Find a business that’s difficult to make profitable locally but that could be profitable regionally or nationally. Select a star CEO. Give him a couple hundred million dollars to buy companies in the same fragmented industries that are ripe for consolidation and economies of scale. Take the business public. Repeat. The goal was never glitz or glamour, just profits. GTCR would buy mom-and-pop funeral homes, for example, then scoop up ancillary businesses: flower shops, coffin makers, cemeteries. Rauner once told a reporter that the funeral industry was “immune to downturns” and could “generate considerable profits.” He found the laundry industry equally attractive. “We have a locked-in customer base,” he explained to the Sun-Times. “If prices go up, the tenants still use it.” Elsewhere, he put it another way: “People have to wash their underwear, even if there’s a recession.” Rauner in his GTCR office in 2010 Photo: William DeShazer/Chicago Tribune Other businesses on Rauner’s shopping list: security, ATM networks, school buses, outdoor advertising, pay phones, fleet refueling, crushed stone, debt collection, check authorization, and steel tube manufacturing. “Over 19 years, we have generated gross returns of about 40 percent,” Rauner told the Sun-Times in 1999. “After fees, investors have averaged a 30 percent profit.” One success, according to Crain’s, was “a $1 million stake in a chain of psychiatric hospitals yield[ing] a $10 million return when it was sold just one year after the original investment.” Then there was a $200 million investment in American Medical Laboratories, which was sold to Quest Diagnostics for $500 million in 2002. VeriFone, a provider of electronic payment systems, in which GTCR acquired an 88 percent stake in 2002, remains one of Rauner’s favorites. “We turned $60 million into $860 million,” he boasted to this magazine in 2011. VeriFone is also a favorite of the Quinn campaign because it outsources much of its manufacturing to China, Singapore, and Brazil, providing Quinn with a sound-bite-ready example of how Rauner has hurt local workers. Quinn has also repeatedly criticized Rauner for the job cuts that typically follow the consolidations at the core of GTCR’s profits. And expect him to make more hay with allegations raised during the primary that GTCR plundered nursing homes, causing care to deteriorate and residents to die. “Bruce Rauner makes Mitt Romney look like Gandhi,” insists Doug Ibendahl, the former general counsel of the Illinois Republican Party. (In a televised debate in March, Rauner called ads citing the nursing home allegations “an outrageous political attack, taking advantage of a death or suffering of a family to score political points.”)” BECAUSE RAUNER MADE HIS 40% PROFIT BY DRAGGING WORKERS DOWN. HE BOUGHT SMALL COMPANIES CONSOLIDATED THEM THEN LAID OFF WORKERS, OUT SOURCED WORK TO OTHER COUNTRIES AND RAISED FEES BUYING UP ALL THE COMPENSATORS IN THE INDUSTRY IN AN AREA THEREFORE THERE WAS NO COMPETITION AND THE CUSTOMERS HAD TO PAY THE HIGHER FEES. This is why he was against a raise in minimum wage and why he wants to eliminate it. If he raised minimum wage it would have reduced is profit margin. So please don’t argue with me he is running for governor to make workers life’s better. He had a chance to do this but it is very clear his whole life has being devoted to making a profit of workers by dragging them down the economic ladder as far as he can. Please don’t expect this to change if he becomes governor.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 16:08:43 +0000
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