Pic Of The Moment: Romney Pays Top Staff $200,000 In Bonuses

[EarlG]

Familiar?: Mitt Hands Top Staff Hefty Bonuses While Borrowing Millions

Romney campaign hits a financial snag

Follow @demunderground

[Zambero]

1. What? ONLY $200k split up???

C'mon Mitt, stop being so stingy. Based on where you're at right now they deserve at least a million bucks each.... Just make sure they stay the course!!!

[beac]

2. "Bonuses"??

Is that what we are calling hush money now?

Too bad, Mittens! I predict "Game Change II" is gonna be a best seller.

[unblock]

3. i think it's more like "please don't quit on me" money.

[JohnnyRingo]

5. I believe you're right

It would indeed be pretty hard to walk out right after cashing a hefty bonus check. Probably something Mitt learned in Harvard Business.

[unblock]

6. truth is, a lot of people do that anyway, at least in the business world.

wall street bonuses are typically paid in december or january, and it's common for people to jump ship in february.
if you're thinking of leaving in october, why not stick it out a few more months to collect that bonus that's 75% accrued?

but politics is different, it's all about appearance and for top advisors, it would NOT look good to do that.

[yurbud]

33. how do those bonuses affect the bottom line?

are they counted as labor expenses, profit-taking, or what?

[unblock]

34. labor expenses.

generally wall street has billed the annual bonuses as backward-looking; if the company, your business unit, and you do great then you get a big fat bonus, less so otherwise. but the reality is that bonuses are used by management to keep the people they want to keep and get rid of the people they want to get rid of. so really, they're forward-looking.

i found this out the hard way when i had a great first half of a year and then got into a car accident (actually i was a passenger in a cab on the way home from a late night *at work*). i still made some great contributions in the second half, but all my boss's boss saw was me out for physical therapy a lot. notwithstanding that i was nearly all better by bonus time, management thought there was a big disconnect between my performance over the year and my likely performance in the future. so the bonus i got was about one third of what it should have been (i know this for a fact because i had discussions with my then-boss after we both had left that company).


in any event, bonuses could be done as profit-sharing, but that would HAVE to be backward-looking. they do it as labor income so that they can use their judgement, i.e., screw people like me.

[yurbud]

35. that makes it seem less like just skimming from the company to pay off cronies but

is there any reasonable explanation for the bonuses on Wall Street after they crashed the world economy and needed to be bailed out?

The "keep the people you want" justification seems shakier when your employees have nowhere to go that's likely to offer them more or be in better financial shape.

[unblock]

36. well, bonuses at that point were definitely dickish and politically unwise.

but they could certainly argue that as long as there were at least TWO investment banks left, there's a need to pay the rainmakers big bucks to keep them from going to the other place.

[yurbud]

37. I figured the only justification was the collectively conned the Federal government

so they earned them in that sense.

[SunSeeker]

7. Too little too late for campaign co-chair Tim Pawlenty.

$200K is chump change compared to what he'll make at his new job as a bank lobbyist.

[MADem]

15. +1,000,000! C'mon--that's a good two months' salary, guys!!! C'mon, maaaaan! nt

[Cha]

18. lol Do Not Tell Alls!

Gag Orders?

[wordpix]

4. bonuses for doing such a heckuva job & wasting his minions' million$

I'm loving it

[Cha]

19. You

Gotta love it!

[pacalo]

22. "Heckuva job!" was my first thought, too.

You deserve bonus points for pointing out Rob-me's welfare racket.

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. wonder how much they were paid before the bonuses.

I have yet to hear anything about Dems using their campaign donations to buy expensive clothes, pay off personal bills, etx
whcih we have heard so much of Republican campaigns doing. (remember Palin and her clothing bills??)
Then again, who audits how campaigns spend?

[progressivebydesign]

10. That's the FIRST thing I thought, just like Bain. Take other people's money for yourselves.

The donors should be pissed beyond belief. I would sue him to get my donation back. Seriously. You don't pay bonuses to campaign staff. He is FLEECING his donors!! They are doing the Bain model. Get money from other people, trash the organization, pay yourself and your pals, then cry poverty.

[Major Nikon]

11. This is the funniest one yet

Rmoney will take presidential matching funds also, which also means he's a parasite.

[MADem]

16. AND a 47 percenter, with his grubby little hand out!!!

Amazing how this guy can be a one percenter one day, and a forty seven percenter the next!!

Maybe he'll grab himself a piece of cardboard box and write a slogan on it and call himself one of the 99 percent, too!

[dynasaw]

12. Republican Ethos: Reward Failure

[Vox Moi]

13. My big, fat non-profit bonus story

Here's two I got while working for a leading non-profit Boston Hospital, no less.
I got $600 for nothing I did, in particular. We all got a share of the loot.
The hospital needed to increase it's overhead in order to avoid showing a profit that year. It worked.

The second bonus was more revealing. I was traveling with a group of Harvard MDs for a conference, at hospital expense.
We all got bumped from a flight due to weather and the airlines gave us each a $300 voucher. We were re-scheduled and actually arrived at our destination before the original timetable.
The docs were all grinning over this windfall but I suggested that since the hospital was footing the bill, the hospital owned the vouchers. The MDs seemed to think that this was quite naive. They kept the change.
When I got back I went to the travel office and offered to give my voucher to the hospital. Nobody had done anything like that before and the office explained that there was no accounting procedure to accept the voucher and I ought to keep it.
It occurred to me that with all the travel that MDs and senior administrators do, there must have been many instances like this and nobody had ever offered to give up the voucher. Maybe it was one of those little perks that best go unmentioned.

In both cases I had done nothing to deserve something extra; I was simply drifting on money stream that is health care in the USA.

When getting a bonus is detached from any measure of merit, it's not a bonus. I'm not sure what word to use but 'dishonesty' comes to mind. Any suggestions?

[patrice]

26. We used that 30% overhead figure on Tea Partier counter-demonstrations at one

congressional office or another around here during the health-care debate in 2010.

I made special effort to be sane and to be understood about that 30% as I directed brief comments to TP-ers over and over.

Not one ever reacted like it meant anything at all.

Not. one.

[Cha]

20. "Loot"?

Welcome to DU, Vox Moi!

[patrice]

25. "drifting on a money stream that is health care in the USA" happens even in low-end elder care &

long-term-care for the disabled, both of which cohorts have NO options.

[Initech]

14. In the hole financially? Give the people who screwed up huge bonuses! It's the Wall St. way damn it!

[alp227]

21. To whom is the debt owed? Tiffany's?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

23. You're so Bain Mitt

[patrice]

24. Royal cream rises until it putrifies. Q. What kind of business is this? A. BAD for business . . .

Bribery to do the minimum and look-the-other-way.

[NewJeffCT]

27. If he really wanted to run it like a CEO

he would also lay off a bunch of low level staffers, and then claim the bonuses are rewards to the top guys for saving money.

[lonestarnot]

29. And then selling off to the highest bidder, but wait, he's already done that.

[lonestarnot]

28. Like a cheap two dollar tip to mitwitt. Means nothing to him.

[Hubert Flottz]

30. "Wanted to run America like a business"

Overload it with debt so it becomes bankrupt with nobody working there anymore and then sell off anything of any value left of our company/country to the Chinese?

[erpowers]

31. This Man Should Not Be President

Most of these staffers should be fired or forced to take deep cuts in pay. Why are these staffers, especially the campaign manager, the policy advisor, or the communication team, getting bonuses? The only thing a supporter of these staffers can say is that Mitt Romney does not listen to anyone so the problems with his campaign are probably not the fault of his staff.

[yurbud]

32. in fairness, he probably had to pay at least that much to keep them from fleeing

I'd demand a statement too that said Romney ignored all my campaign advice which is why he is doing so poorly.