The Broke and the Beautiful: Mitt Romney Edition

This week on The Broke and the Beautiful, presidential hopeful Mitt Romney faces criticism from President Obama’s re-election campaign over the practices of his former employer, private equity firm Bain Capital. Also, Nadya “Octomom” Suleman’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy case has been tossed.

It’s been a while since we’ve blogged about Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney’s ties to private equity firm Bain Capital. But this week, the re-election campaign for President Barack Obama is trying to portray Romney as a callous corporate raider, The Wall Street Journal reported. In Obama’s first major attempt to paint a poor picture of Romney, the campaign highlighted a Kansas steel company that filed for bankruptcy eight years after being taken over by Bain and others. What happened to GST Steel after Bain took over “was like watching an old friend bleed to death,” former worker Joe Soptic noted in the ad.

The Toledo Blade noted that Romney was also accused of helping to effect the bankruptcy of a chain of department stores that located in 26 Ohio cities. In the 1980s, Bain bought a bunch of clothing stores and organized them into Stage Stores Inc., later expanding the chain and borrowing heavily against it with junk bonds. Bain then sold the leftover shares in 1997 at a profit. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2000. Romney’s campaign maintains that Stage Stores had success under Bain’s leadership.

Nadya Suleman, better known as “Octomom,” took a starring role in Broke after she filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy earlier this month. But Suleman’s bankruptcy case was dismissed Tuesday because she didn’t complete the required paperwork, the Orange County Register reported. Suleman, whose bankruptcy filing stayed a foreclosure auction of the California home she is living in, said she had between $500,000 and $1 million in debts but failed to include the accompanying financial documents and statements.

Now that the sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers is complete, the team can focus less on bankruptcy and more on its continuous lead in the National League standings. And according to the Los Angeles Times, the Dodgers’ new owners might get hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits from the settlement between ex-owner Frank McCourt and Major League Baseball. According to the deal, the bankruptcy court—and not the MLB—has the final say over the Dodgers’ TV revenue distribution, resulting in millions per year that otherwise could have been divided among other baseball teams. The settlement’s terms can stay in place for up to 40 years, say two people familiar with the matter.

Two weeks ago, Broke noted the curveball thrown at Mickey Mantle’s restaurant, which has been facing eviction from its spot in Central Park South. But the restaurant named after the baseball legend is safe from being relegated to the dugout for a little longer. According to New York One, investors were able to raise enough money—$71,000—to keep the restaurant from closing for a couple of weeks. Bill Liederman, a friend of restaurant owner Chris Villano who’s been helping raise money, still needs to come up with $400,000 to pay off back rent, though.