The Bainport Sensata Tragedy in Illinois

pic via bainport.com
This tragedy in Illinois has been going on since back in the spring, actually, because the announcement was made then that a car parts plant in Freeport, Illinois, was going under, thanks to Bain Capital. When stories of Romney's connection to Bain came out during the Republican Primaries, many wondered if Mitt Romney would visit the workers at the Sensata car sensor plant. But of course he brushed them off and now is ignoring their continuing protests.

I'm sure he would say that they need to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps" or some kind of nonsensical old-fashioned phrase. I'm sure he thinks it is easy to watch your small town fall apart when a large business closes down. I think people like Romney forget that even the loss of a few jobs has a ripple effect as restaurants and stores close down, and schools suffer lack of tax funding (which is important, Mr. Romney, whether you care or not).

Many people might say that lots of folks in this economy have lost their jobs, what is so special about the people in Freeport? Well, not only are they victims of Bain, but they have the outrageous task of training their Chinese counterparts as Bain outsources their jobs to Asia, leaving them on unemployment. This sorry situation is what Romney wants to do to the whole economy in a nutshell - let venture capitalists sell it off piece by piece to the highest bidder, stash the money offshore in tax havens, and damn the consequences for the 47% or the 99%.

So tomorrow night in the debate when Romney points at Obama and talks about our debt held by China, I hope the President won't forget the workers in "Bainport."

From The Ed Show tonight on MSNBC:

Ed Schultz: So where does this leave all of these families? What's going to happen to Freeport, Illinois?

Worker Mary Jo Kerr: It's going to become a ghost town. That's one major company in Freeport. We really only have a few big companies and that's Honeywell, Sensata, and Titan Tires. And once Sensata goes down, it's going to be hard for anybody to find a job because there's nothing around there.

Ed: Normally when a company's not doing very well, the employees know it. Was it record profits for Sensata? Was it good, and that makes it hard to understand why this is happening?

Mary Jo Kerr: Yeah, we don't understand why this is happening. From my understanding, they liked Freeport. They liked the location. But it was 'we need more money.'

From the Freeport Rock River Times

FREEPORT, Ill. — U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., will visit “Bainport” in Freeport, Ill., at 9:45 a.m., Tuesday, Oct. 16.

Bainport is an encampment set up at Stephenson County Fairgrounds, 2250 S. Walnut Road, Freeport, by workers facing outsourcing at the Bain Capital-owned Sensata Technologies plant. Created in 2006, Sensata develops, manufactures, and sells sensors and controls for major auto manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors.

Workers at the plant have been training their Chinese replacements, who have been flown to Illinois by the company. The final layoffs are expected to be made in November. The plant employs 170.

Workers began to camp outside the plant to protest Bain’s decision to ship their jobs to China and increase the pressure on Republican presidential candidate and former Bain co-founder/CEO Mitt Romney — who still profits directly from Sensata — to help save their jobs. The workers plan to stay at the encampment until Romney agrees to help save their jobs, or, as stated in a release from the group, “until middle-class voters nationwide understand the dangers of a Romney economy for our country.”

From the Freeport Journal-Standard

Also visiting Freeport this week will be activist Reverend Al Sharpton. He is scheduled to appear at the Sensata camp on Saturday at 4 p.m. to speak to the employees. The appearances this week follow an active summer of rallies that saw the arrival of Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond to Freeport.

The Sensata workers have also been involved in other acts of protest that include appearing at the Republican National Convention, a march at a fundraising event for Rep. Bobby Schilling that was attended by House Speaker John Boehner, and the attempted submission of petitions to both their employer and Romney, among other things.

Last weekend, 15 French workers from Samsonite, who lost their jobs to Bain Capital outsourcing in 2007, visited “Bainport” to show their support to the picketing workers. Sensata develops, manufactures, and sells sensors and controls for auto manufacturers. The closure of the plant will cost Freeport 170 jobs.

Romney's Harvest Home at Bain Reaps Profits

David Corn at Mother Jones has done it again - unearthed a video from 1985 in which a younger Mitt Romney brags about Bain "harvesting" companies to reap a profit. It was given to them by a former employee of Bain. Unbelievable! I don't know much, but I bet that even people in the business community must be just as sick of hearing about Bain Capital flipping companies for profit as we regular folk.

Romney sounds like the grim reaper, and I'm sure that's how the ex-employees of all those outsourced and ruined companies feel to this day. The Grim Reaper Romney.

Mother Jones Article Here

Mother Jones has obtained a video from 1985 in which Romney, describing Bain's formation, showed how he viewed the firm's mission. He explained that its goal was to identify potential and hidden value in companies, buy significant stakes in these businesses, and then "harvest them at a significant profit" within five to eight years.

The video was included in a CD-ROM created in 1998 to mark the 25th anniversary of Bain & Company, the consulting firm that gave birth to Bain Capital. Here is the full clip, as it appeared on that CD-ROM (the editing occurred within the original):

Mitt Romney:
TRANSCRIPT: Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit…

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900 Pages of Bain Capital Files Leaked

The website Gawker has obtained over 900 pages of financial disclosure files from Mitt Romney's Bain Capital. This is huge with the Republican National Convention looming next week.

The Bain Files: Inside Mitt Romney's Cayman Schemes

Almost all of them are affiliated with Bain Capital, the secretive private equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984 and ran until his departure in 1999 (or 2002, depending on whom you ask).

Many of them are offshore funds based in the Cayman Islands. Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his wealth, the exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy that benefit him, the unlikely (for a right-wing religious Mormon) places that his money has ended up, and the deeply hypocritical distance between his own criticisms of Obama's fiscal approach and his money managers' embrace of those same policies. They also show that some of the investments that Romney has always described as part of his retirement package at Bain weren't made until years after he left the company.

Bain isn't a company so much as an intricate suite of steadily proliferating inter-related holding companies and limited partnerships, some based in Delaware and others in the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and elsewhere, designed to collectively house roughly $66 billion in wealth in its many crevices and chambers.

Much, much more at these links, with apparently more to come:

Equity Swaps, AIVs, and Mitt Romney's Other Tax-Dodging Tricks

Mitt Romney's Endless ‘Retirement' Package

How Mitt Romney Puts His Money Where Obama's Mouth Is

Derivatives, Short Sales, and Mitt Romney's Other Exotic Financial Instruments

Mitt Romney Is the National Enquirer's Banker

From the last link, Romney not only is involved in the company that owns National Enquirer - that's odd enough - but he's involved with many gambling companies, just like his good pal Sheldon Adelson. Actually, these articles make Bain Capital's spin-off, Sankaty, sound like the Loan Shark of the Cayman Islands.

Sankaty High Yield Partners II also lent money to such un-Mormon concerns as Las Vegas Sands, LLC ($3 million), which operates casinos in Las Vegas and China; Motor City Casinos ($1.8 million), and Yonkers Racing Corporation ($214,000). Not to mention Core-Mark, a nationwide cigarette distributor ($13 million in bonds). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, for which Romney has served as a bishop and "stake president," opposes gambling and smoking. Mother Jones' David Corn has detailed another Romney holding—Brookside Capital Investors Inc.—that also held substantial gambling-related investments, despite Romney's record of opposing "access to gaming" due to its "social costs."

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I urge everyone to spend some time reading each link. It's a treasure trove of riches about Bain.

Romney & Ryan Use Steve Martin's "I Forgot" and "Excuuuuse Me!"

Comedian Steve Martin did a comedy skit on Saturday Night Live back in the 1970s that seems to be prophetic about the way both Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, deal with problems. First they say "I Forgot" then they say "Excuuuuse Me!"

SNL Transcript Here

You.. can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You say.. "Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?" First.. get a million dollars. Now.. you say, "Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, 'You.. have never paid taxes'?"

Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: "I forgot!" How many times do we let ourselves get into terrible situations because we don't say "I forgot"? Let's say you're on trial for armed robbery. You say to the judge, "I forgot armed robbery was illegal."

Let's suppose he says back to you, "You have committed a foul crime. you have stolen hundreds and thousands of dollars from people at random, and you say, 'I forgot'?"

Two simple words: Excuuuuuse me!!"

"Excuuuse ME!" is the seventies version of Mitt Romney's "retroactively" apologizing or scrubbing records.

For instance, Mitt Romney probably hasn't paid much - if anything - towards income taxes for the past ten years. First he said he paid "plenty of taxes," but didn't indicate what kind of taxes he meant. Then last week he said this via AtlanticWire:

I did go back and look at my taxes and over the last 10 year I never paid less than 13 percent. I think the most recent year is 13.6 percent or something like that. I paid taxes every single year. Harry Reid's charge is totally false. I'm sure waiting for Harry to put up who it was that told him what he says they told him. I don't believe it for a minute by the way. Every year I've paid at least 13 percent, and if you add in addition the amount that goes to charity, why, the number gets well above 20 percent.

But some are asking, 13% of what? Just his net worth, or his total portfolio? How much is sheltered overseas? We will probably never know.

Instead of risking being caught in another lie, he is simply not releasing his tax returns. When Harry Reid and the Dems call him out on it, he says "Excuuuuse Me, I have done the legally required minimum." His wife Ann vows "there will be no more returns for you," and figuratively "off with their heads if they ask" in every interview. "You People just don't deserve to know. Trust us, we're rich."

It's a classic Steve Martin defense. "Excuuuuuse Me!"

When Mitt was running for Governor of Massachusetts, he insisted that he had legally declared that state as his home on his income taxes instead of Utah where he actually resided. He needed to be a legal resident of Massachusetts in order to be the Governor - that makes sense, right? At one point, he listed his residence as the unfinished basement of his son Tagg. It was only when Romney got caught that he said "Excuuuse Me" and "retroactively" refiled his taxes with a Massachusetts address that he could run for governor. Whoops - I just forgot!

Romney was questioned about documents and letters he signed as CEO of Bain Capital when he was supposedly no longer involved in that company, having technically "quit" to work on the Utah Olympics, even though he was listed as CEO and Top Shareholder. Back in July, his top advisor Ed Gillespie explained to Candy Crowley of CNN that he had "Resigned Retroactively."
As Politicus snarks:

. . . Oh, and of course, he gets to tell you whatever he wants and you have to believe. Just trust. You wouldn’t understand. He’s a businessman (aka, divine, untouchable God).
Also, he can claim he was in Massachusetts to conduct business for Bain and therefore eligible to run for Governor, but years later he can say he had retired retroactively and just forgot to get around to filing stuff.
So, hey, Americans! Those tax returns you have to be so careful on, heck, you can just forget to file that you left that company you’re making all of that profit from — and you can forget to tell the SEC . . .

As Steve would say "I forgot!" That should be enough for anyone, right?

And now his sidekick and veep pick Paul Ryan is using the same defense. As a Congressman he spoke out against Obama's stimulus package for the states, and told a radio caller that he never requested funds, only then the AP found a bunch of letters signed by Ryan requesting jobs from the Department of Energy for his district in Wisconsin.

Ryan's repsonse ~ "Oh, those letters."

Yes sir - the ones with your signature, the ones you can see HERE.

ABC New Story

After repeated denials, Paul Ryan has admitted he requested stimulus cash even after sharply criticizing the program.
Ryan had denied doing so as recently as Wednesday, when he spoke to ABC’s Cincinnati affiliate, WCPO, in Ohio.

“I never asked for stimulus,” Mitt Romney’s new running mate said. “I don’t recall… so I really can’t comment on it. I opposed the stimulus because it doesn’t work, it didn’t work.”

Two years ago, during an interview on WBZ’s NewsRadio he was asked by a caller if he “accepted any money” into his district. Ryan said he did not.
“I’m not one [of those] people who votes for something then writes to the government to ask them to send us money. I did not request any stimulus money,” the congressman answered.

But as we’ve now learned, Ryan did write letters. He did request stimulus funds.
“The Olympics may be over but Paul Ryan could have gotten a gold medal in hypocrisy,” a senior administration official told ABC’s Jake Tapper. “As someone who spends all day every day railing against government spending, but then secretly seeks millions in funds for pet projects, he is as Washington as it gets.”

But that's okay ~ he just forgot! "Excuuuuuuuuuse MEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Romney's Bain Gave Italy the Business

I wrote earlier today about the economic dangers in the Eurozone, and the negativity of Italy's Prime Minister Mario Monti, who told Der Spiegel that Europe is going through a "psychological dissolution." Wow - that's a strong statement. But some of their problems stem back to the 1990s, when the Italian government was selling off assets to raise money to enter the Eurozone. One of those investors was Mitt Romney's Bain Capital.

Bloomberg has the story about Bain buying up Italy's telephone directory, then selling it back to them a few years later at a huge profit. This is a good insight into the way Romney did business - and yes, he was involved through his offices in Boston at the same time that he supposedly wasn't the CEO while working on the Utah Olympics.

Oh, and the profits? Most were hidden in the tax-shelter country of Luxembourg.

This past history in Europe is not as easily etch-a-sketched as Mitt's Olympic excesses or his absent tax returns in the U.S.

Bloomberg: Romney Persona Non Grata in Italy

Bain Capital, under Romney as chief executive officer, made about $1 billion in a leveraged buyout 12 years ago that remains controversial in Italy to this day. Bain was part of a group that bought a telephone-directory company from the Italian government and then sold it about two years later, at the peak of the technology bubble, for about 25 times what it paid.

. . . Romney himself probably earned more than $50 million, and possibly as much as $60 million from the Italian directory sale of Seat Pagine Gialle SpA, according to a person familiar with the matter. The deal turned into one of the biggest windfalls of his tenure.

. . . When Bain sold the directory business in 2000, Romney, while still holding the title of CEO, was in charge of preparations for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Romney has contended that he gave up management control of Bain in February 1999 to run the games.

“Mitt Romney and Bain played the role of successful financial speculators at the peril of the Italian government and the small stock-market investors who were burned by the sharp decline in Seat (PG) shares,” said Giovanni Pons, a journalist for la Repubblica and co-author of “L’Affare Telecom” (2002), which recounts details of the Bain deal.

. . . Bain moved profits through a series of subsidiaries in Luxembourg, a country that makes it easy to get cash out without paying taxes, according to corporate filings. Corporate records in Luxembourg show Bain carried out technical steps for a tax- free repatriation of profits to the U.S.

Romney Runs from Tax Transparency

Yesterday Mitt Romney was interviewed by ABC News and said this about his taxes:

"From time to time I’ve been audited — as it happens, I think, to other citizens as well — and the accounting firm which prepares my taxes has done a very thorough and complete job, pay[ing] taxes as legally due."
. . . "I don't pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don't think I'd be qualified to become president. I'd think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires."
. . . "I haven't looked at the tax rate paid year by year. I know that I pay a very substantial amount of taxes and [have] every year since the beginning of my career, so far as I can recall."

Yep, there you have it . . . "so far as he can recall."

It never ceases to amaze me that a man running on his sterling background in business and high finance can be so blatantly obtuse and vague about his own personal finances.

That interview must have raised new questions and we know how much Mitt hates those, so he must have put his little foot down. Ann Romney will get the last word when she said "We've given all you people need to know" about their income taxes. As of today, they just aren't going to answer any more of these persnickety tax questions, so there!

Now all you journalists and snoopy people, please slink out the back servant's door and leave us alone in our counting house!

CNN Reporting:

Mitt Romney's campaign said Monday they would not release any more of the candidate's personal income tax information, despite an acknowledgement from Romney that he had been audited in the past.

"Mitt Romney has paid his taxes in full compliance with U.S. Law, and he has paid 100 percent of what he has owed," Romney spokesman Ryan Williams wrote.

. . . He continued, "As has previously been reported, in 2011, the Romneys will pay more than $3.2 million in taxes on $20.9 million in mostly investment income and will have donated more than $4 million to charity. In 2010, The Romneys paid more than $3 million in taxes on $21.6 million in mostly investment income and donated nearly $3 million to charity."

Romney has disclosed his income tax returns from 2010, and released an estimate of his 2011 tax information in April. He has vowed to release 2011's full return one it's completed by his accountant.

Romney's "Strange" Taxes "Push Envelope to the Edge"

These two pundits really nail Romney on his mysterious taxes. Sorry, Ann, this story isn't going away any time soon.

Steve Rattner on CNN

"If you say to your tax people, as he seems to have done, 'I want every trick in the book. I want to push this to the edge,'" Rattner said during an appearance on "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on CNN. "I will tell you that as a private equity guy, I'm familiar with many of the things that he did. And I know many people who have done many of the things that he did. I do not know anyone who did everything that he did."
"Some of what he did, like the IRA, I have asked fellow private equity guys," Rattner said, referencing the account in which Romney has stored up to $100 million tax-free. "None of us had even known this was a possible trick, if you will. He has pushed the envelope all the way to the edge, to his benefit, and I think that Americans would find that pretty distasteful."

Chris Hayes on MSNBC Via RealClearPolitics

"Look, the taxes of high -- of extremely wealthy people are bizarre, strange and alienating," MSNBC's Chris Hayes said on "The Last Word" tonight. "And the reason is that they pay people a lot of money to game the system. That's explicitly what it is. And the more of that you see -- literally if you chose someone with Mitt Romney's net worth at random and looked at their tax returns, they would look crazy. You wouldn't be able to understand them. They would have all sort of bizarrely constituted corporations incorporated in the Cayman Islands. They might have a Swiss bank account to bet against the dollar. They would have all these things."

"What's so remarkable to me about the story is that the embarrassment here isn't personal," Hayes observed. "The embarrassment is about what this says about how the entire system functions. This is how the system functions. We no longer have the ability in this country to really tax people at the top. And that is the existential statement about the strength of the American state which is: Can you actually tax the wealthiest people in your society? If you can't, if you can't like Greece couldn't, we see how that goes." "Societies that are in decline or low on the development index have a very hard time extracting money, taxing money from the elites in their society. And that is the direction which we are headed and that is what is represented in the Mitt Romney tax return," he concluded. "Okay, that is an officially brilliant observation about what's going on here and what's at stake," host Lawrence O'Donnell said.

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Mitt Romney's Olympic Pins

Everyone knows that Mitt Romney is considered the "savior" of the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, and that he says he left Bain Capital in 1999 (retiring retroactively) so he could run the event. But did you know that there are "Mitt Pins" commemorating the event? Yes, these were official pins, except for one,  which has a colorful backstory:

"Romney allegedly used the F-word during an Olympic traffic jam, which resulted in the production of an unofficial Olympic pin featuring a red-faced Romney saying “Flip!” Utah’s sanitized version of the expletive."

Just when you think things couldn't get stranger . . .




Story from National Public Radio

"I've been given an enormous responsibility, and an entire country and the Olympic team from the United States and the world, to a certain extent, expect me to do the job well," Romney said. "And I want to fulfill that responsibility."
This image of Olympic savior was actually cast in collector-quality enameled metal cloisonne pins produced by the Salt Lake Olympic committee.

Critic Ken Bullock has them in his Olympic pin collection.

"We have Valentine's ones with all the Olympic mascots around saying, 'We love you, Mitt,' " Bullock says, as he pulls up images of the pins on his computer.

"We have him pulling a sled of some sort where some of the mascots are saying, 'Are we there yet, Mitt?' "



Ken Bullock scoffs at what he calls "the Superman" pin, which features Romney "with a Clark Kent chin," wrapped in an American flag.

"I don't know how to put words to describe how narcissistic they are," Bullock says.



Three Olympic pin collectors and experts consulted by NPR say they've never seen pins like these featuring the CEO of an Olympic organizing committee.
"There have been plenty of big-headed CEOs for Olympic Games, but none has ever had his or her likeness on a pin," says Ed Hula, a veteran pin collector and editor of aroundtherings.com, an independent news organization that focuses on the Olympics. "Maybe it's an indicator that Mitt Romney has a sense of humor."

Source for Images: Shuksan Tahoma on Daily Kos

Obama Camp Keeps Ads Coming

I can't get enough! :) Glad to see the Obama Campaign is taking advantage of Romney's tax tailspin and general confusion.




And yay - a second Dancing Horse Ad!

Romney's Returns - the Ugly Truth

The Romney camp is holding firm that he has "already released" all the tax returns he is going to release, meaning the single return from 2010. Considering the fact that everyone from George Will to Bill Kristol to Rahm Emanuel are calling Romney out on his taxes, it's almost unbelievable that they continue to stonewall.

Romney appeared on Fox and Friends this morning, sounding as if he is being nibbled to death by geese, LOL.

Via Think Progress

ROMNEY: The Obama people keep on wanting more and more and more. More things to pick through, more things for their opposition research to try make a mountain out of and to distort and to be dishonest about. We’re going to put out two years of tax returns.

Esquire has a great spin on why Romney is holding back:

Contempt for "the Help"

It is helpful always to remind yourself that, in the mind of Willard Romney, there are only two kinds of people — himself and his family, and The Help. Throughout his career, and especially throughout his brief political career, Romney has treated The Help with a kind of lordly disdain. . . .
. . . The Help has no right to go pawing through the family books, giggling at the obvious loopholes and tax dodges, running amok through all the tax shelters, and probably getting their chocolate-y fingerprints all over the pages of the Romney family ledger. And, certainly, those members of The Help in the employ of the president of the United States, who is also part of The Help, have no right to use the nearly comically ostentatious wealth of the Romney as some sort of scrimey political weapon. He does not have to answer to The Help. I mean, jeepers, he's running for office.
This isn't stubbornness. That's often an acquired trait. What this is, fundamentally, is contempt. Contempt for the process, and contempt for the people who make their living in that process, and contempt for the people whose lives depend on that process.

Good job by MSNBC's Luke Russert pushing Romney's surrogate, Gail Gitchco, to clear up the tax mess this morning. Epic fail on her part as "communications director." They just don't get it. Someone is eventually going to leak these tax returns, so it would be better if they just got it over with now. But when has the Romney camp ever been that bright? Never.

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Mitt's Sunday Show Train Wreck

It reminds me of the song "Sunday Will Never Be the Same." Even pundits on the Right know that their candidate is a disaster, and for some reason the Romney camp still can't get all their excuses straight. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion, and yet we can't look away. And I have to admit that I'm enjoying every minute of it, LOL.

I especially love the new "retroactively retired" meme started by Ed Gillespie. If you want to know what I mean, check out my post on Snark Amendment


. . . feel the embers die . . .




Romney Campaign Surrogate Ed Gillespie on CNN: "He took a leave of absence and in fact ended up not going back at all, and retired retroactively to February of 1999."



Republican George Will on ABC's This Week: Mitt Romney's losing it, and he's losing in a big way. If something is going to come out like this, get it out in a hurry. I do not know why, given that Mr. Romney knew the day that McCain lost in 2008 that he was going to run for President again, that he didn't get all of this out and tidy up some of his offshore accounts and all the rest. He's done nothing illegal, nothing unseemly, nothing improper, but lots that's impolitic. And he's now in the politics business.
. . . The Republicans have now nominated someone from the financial sector at a time when the financial sector has a bad odor. Hardly a day goes by - the LIBOR scandal, TARP . . . all of this conditions the atmosphere in which this is occurring.





Karl Rove Via Daily Caller 

“Two different attacks — one is he didn’t take a leave of absence to run the Olympics Committee and run Bain,” Rove said. “Total baloney — even The Washington Post said this was baloney. The fact of the matter is, look, when Steve Jobs was the CEO of Apple and took a leave of absence for medical reasons, nobody continued to say, ‘Well you are the guy who made the day-to-day decisions.’ Romney was busy running the Olympics and they were ready for this particular attack. I agree with Joe. They were not ready for the regular attack on the six companies that Obama raised [saying] these companies all outsource jobs. It took them a week to respond and say four of these companies didn’t outsource jobs, move a single job overseas. They created jobs at home and two companies were brought by Bain after Romney left.”

Rove added that, if the Obama campaign continues this line of attack, it could ultimately hurt the president.

“But the fact of the matter is, if the president makes the charge … [the] outrageous charge that Mitt Romney is guilty of felonious activity and committed a felony — that is it a big mistake. Remember who is up for grabs in this election: independent voters,” Rove said. “They were drawn to Obama in 2008 because he was going to change politics and would raise and elevate the discourse. This is gutter politics of the worst Chicago sort.”

Chicago mayor and Obama campaign surrogate Rahm Emanuel: Stephanie Cutter cited the law, and it's very clear. Either the filing with the SEC is accurate and his personal financial disclosure is not honest. Or that's honest and the SEC isn't. But both can't be accurate depicting a time when he said he was doing one thing or another.
George Stephanopoulos: He says it was just a formality during the time he was untangling his involvement with Bain.
Rahm Emanuel: George, he has made Bain Capital his calling-card for the Presidency. And when you look at it, it doesn't measure up to what he claims. And number two, on both of those filings, one is accurate and one isn't. And they both have consequences when one is not accurate. And that is what she (Cutter) stated.
And the other thing is, give it up about Stephanie. Don't worry about that. What are you going to do when the Chinese leader says something to you or Putin says something to you? Are you gonna whine as your way? You cannot do that? As Mitt Romney said once to his own colleagues, stop whining! I'd give him his own advice. Stop whining and if you want to claim Bain Capital as your calling card to the White House then defend what happened to Bain Capital. And what happened to those jobs that went overseas, those jobs that were actually cut and eliminated, and those companies that went into bankruptcy.
. . .
Stephanopoulos: The campaign has been pushing hard for Mitt Romney to release more of his tax returns. He says the public has everything they need to know to understand his finances, and we do know that Mitt Romney made a lot of money, we know he paid a relatively low tax rate. What more will the returns tell us that we don't know?
Rahm Emanuel: . . . Mitt Romnney's own father said you shouldn't release one year, and in my view he's released one year. . . . transparency and what that says. Okay, to the McCain campaign he released 23 years. And he's telling the American People, okay, I'm not going to give you what I gave John McCain's people in 2008. And when he gave them 23 years, McCain's people looked at it and said let's go with Sarah Palin. So whatever's in there is far worse than just the first year.
The Romney campaign isn't stupid. They've decided it's better to get attacked on lack of transparency, lack of accountability to the American people versus telling you what's in those taxes. They're not enjoying this.
Stephanopoulos: So what do you think is in there?
Rahm Emanuel: He can clear this up, just make it public. . . . he paid 14%, just about half of what a middle-class family pays. Second, we've learned in just one year about The Caymans, about the Bahamas, about Luxembourg, and about Switzerland, all about where his different accounts are. His tax filing looks more like the Olympic village than like a middle-class family. Third, the next four years the President of the United States is going to have tax reform. And you're going to have to debate it with Congress and shape it. And unless you have his taxes, and I've seen this in the Oval Office, George, there's going to be times when a President has to make trade-offs and choices, and will it be the middle class family trying to send their kid to college, or will it be to save the loophole in the Cayman Islands? . . .
He has fully used what is legal in the tax code, and that's the problem with the tax code.




From Face The Nation with Bob Schieffer on CBS

Obama spokesperson Stephanie Cutter said Romney's departure date matters, because his experience at Bain is "his sole rationale for being president."

"If you're signing an SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] document with your own signature that you're the president, C.E.O., chairman of the board and 100 percent owner of a company, in what world are you living in that you're not in charge?" Cutter said Sunday on "Face the Nation."

"If he wasn't the head of it, who was?" she asked.
Romney adviser Kevin Madden said what Romney has also said: that he left the company in 1999.

"The reason there is a document in 2002 that had his signature is, during that transition from 1999 to 2002 where there was transfer of ownership to the new partners of Bain, that there was a duty to sign those documents. But every single - even a bipartisan commission indicated Governor Romney left Bain in 1999," Madden told host Bob Schieffer. "This has been established, yet the Obama campaign, the president himself, continued to pursue these inaccurate statements, and I think it's to the detriment of the public right now."

"It doesn't make any difference that we're arguing the semantics of when Mitt Romney left Bain Capital," Cutter said. "He has put for his sole rationale being president his experience at Bain Capital, and that every decision he'll make as president should be seen through the lens of his experience with Bain Capital, and we're just getting a taste of that, whether it's investing in companies . . . and those investments happened before 1999 when Mitt Romney was, in his words, 'in charge' that became the pioneers in outsourcing, or whether it's investing in companies, loading them up with [debt] and pushing them into bankruptcy and yet you walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars but you're leaving workers without jobs, pensions, health care and companies decimated."

Cutter said Romney's responsibilities at Bain - and when those responsibilities began and ended - are legitimate discussions to have particularly, she said, because the presumptive GOP nominee "put it on the table.

"And the simple point is, if you're telling the SEC you're in charge but you're telling the American people that you bear no responsibility, one of those things is not true," she added.

Referring to Cutter's comment made to reporters last week in which she said an executive misrepresenting his role on SEC documents is a felony, Madden said her suggestion that Romney committed a felony is "troubling."

"First, I think it is very troubling that the president would direct this campaign to label someone like Governor Romney, who is a very good and honorable man, as a felon," Madden said.

Cutter said the Obama campaign is not going to apologize for the comment.

"Just a few months ago in the primary, Mitt Romney said to his opponents, who were crushing him at the time, 'Stop whining.' And that's a good message for the Romney campaign," Cutter said. "Instead of whining about what the Obama campaign is saying, just put the facts out there and let people decide, rather than trying to hide them.

"The tax returns is exactly just about that," Cutter said, pointing to Romney's refusal to release tax returns from before 2010. "If he didn't gain any tax advantages from having investments in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and a Swiss bank account, then show us. Show the American people. What are you hiding?"

Madden said Romney has gone "above and beyond" by releasing his 2010 returns and 2011 estimated taxes.

"Governor Romney has dutifully and according to the law filed all of his financial disclosure requirements. He's gone above the law," he said.

Cutter, however, said Romney's refusal to release his tax returns is an issue of transparency. "This discussion is about transparency and showing the American people what your perspective is and what judgments you're going to make as president," she said.

Bain is Plain and Mitt Needs to Explain

If you can't get enough of the Romneylicious Bain Denials, here are some links to peruse this Saturday:

Full Text of Mitt Romney's CBS Interview

Huffington Post: Romney's Five Network Blitz

Here's a Daily Kos Diary explaining that Romney can dismiss and deny his interactions with Bain after 1999, but the proof is in the rather old-fashioned but searchable database.
Mitt meet EDGAR Hammer meet Nail by 8ackgr0und N015eFollow

Rachel Maddow's Interview with the Boston Globe Reporter who wrote the original viral article that started all this:

Wonderfully effective new ad, found Via Political Carnival
 

The Bain Buck Never Stops Anywhere

Romney keeps explaining and explaining, but it still makes no sense that he CEO, President, and Top Shareholder at Bane Capital from 1999-2002, and yet he had no responsibilities to the company.

Although that does sound like the stereotype of a do-nothing CEO. But he also earned a ton of money in those years (and we'd know the exact amount if he would release his tax returns, but he just won't.) What was he paid for, exactly, if not for the jobs that were listed in the SEC filings? All this semantical denial just sounds lame and etch-a-sketchy.



Wall Street Journal ~ Romney Defends Bain Tenure

On Friday, President Barack Obama in an interview with Washington, D.C.'s ABC affiliate, directly addressed the matter. "My understanding is that Mr. Romney attested to the SEC, multiple times, that he was the chairman, CEO and president of Bain Capital and I think most Americans figure if you are the chairman, CEO and president of a company that you are responsible for what that company does," he said.

Mr. Romney said again that the buck did not stop with him at Bain Capital between 1999, when he left to head the Salt Lake City Olympics operation and 2002, when he transferred his shares in Bain to active partners.

"Actually when you leave an enterprise, when you have other people who are managing the enterprise, who take responsibility for all the investment decisions, who decide who's going to get hired and fired, who decide compensation decisions, they're the managers," he told CBS News. He also said: "The documents show that there's a difference between ownership, which is I owned shares in Bain, but I did not manage Bain."

Government officials and a Republican who ran the SEC from 2001 to 2003 said in interviews that it is not unusual for the top shareholder, or person with the "controlling" interest, to be listed on SEC documents.

Reports also emerged this week that Mr. Romney traveled back and forth from Utah to Massachusetts in 2002 to attend meetings for companies like Staples Inc., SPLS -0.24%one of Bain's investments.

Boston Globe: Romney Was Bain CEO Until 2002

Dear Romney - he should give up telling fibs and do something else for a living.

Bombshell from the Boston Globe

Romney has said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ending his role in the company. But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.”

Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

The timing of Romney’s departure from Bain is a key point of contention because he has said his resignation in February 1999 meant he was not responsible for Bain Capital companies that went bankrupt or laid off workers after that date.

. . . This is a fact in an SEC filing,” said Roberta S. Karmel, now a professor at Brooklyn Law School.

“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to say he was technically in charge on paper but he had nothing to do with Bain’s operations,” Karmel continued. “Was he getting paid? He’s the sole stockholder. Are you telling me he owned the company but had no say in its investments?”

The Globe found nine SEC filings submitted by four different business entities after February 1999 that describe Romney as Bain Capital’s boss; some show him with managerial control over five Bain Capital entities that were formed in January 2002, according to records in Delaware, where they were incorporated.

The Romney Camp demanded a retraction as reported by Politico

"The article is not accurate," Romney press secretary Andrea Saul said in a statement. "As Bain Capital has said, as Governor Romney has said, and as has been confirmed by independent fact checkers multiple times, Governor Romney left Bain Capital in February of 1999 to run the Olympics and had no input on investments or management of companies after that point."

In a conversation with POLITICO, Romney adviser Matt McDonald also said the Globe report was inaccurate. "Romney wasn't involved in any investment decisions," McDonald said. "He was on the SEC filings becasue he was still techinically the owner, but hadn't transferred ownership to other partners."

Now, The Boston Globe is pushing back, and standing by their story with good reasons - they checked the story using government documents filed by Bain Capital.

Dear Ms. Gitcho:

We received your request late this afternoon for a correction regarding this morning’s Globe story. Having carefully reviewed that request, we see no basis for publishing a correction. The Globe story was entirely accurate.

The Globe story was based on government documents filed by Bain Capital itself. Those described Governor Romney as remaining at the helm of Bain Capital as its “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president” until 2002. The story also cited state financial disclosure forms filed by Romney that showed he earned income as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

The Globe story accurately described the contents of those documents.

The Globe story also gave a full account of the Romney campaign’s position that, notwithstanding several years of regulatory filings, Mitt Romney “retired from Bain Capital in 1999 … (and) has had no involvement in the management or investment activities of Bain Capital, or with any of its portfolio companies, since that time.” In your correction request, you reiterate points that are fully detailed in the Globe story.

Sincerely,

Martin Baron
Editor, The Boston Globe

Romney Exposed by Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair has a bombshell investigative article on Mitt Romney's holdings in the Caymen Islands and elsewhere, as well as some explanation of how Bain Capital preyed on companies in order to raid their pension funds, which they would then roll into other sketchy investments.

Even though the reporters say several times that Bain isn't doing anything exactly illegal, I found the article quite disturbing. It's a must read!

Vanity Fair: Where the Money Lives

Something is fishy about all this - no pun intended. And I might add I normally wouldn't care, and most people in our country wouldn't care at all since we expect rich people to lie about their assets and hide them in shelters, but Mitt Romney is running for President! We have to hold him to some kind of standard. Remember how Hillary Clinton was dragged through the mud just for earning money on a legitimate investment? That was nothing compared to this.

The two paragraphs below were eye-opening. When is a "blind trust" not so blind?

Page One:

. . . there is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as “a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.” It could be that Sankaty is an old vehicle with little importance, but Romney appears to have treated it rather carefully. He set it up in 1997, then transferred it to his wife’s newly created blind trust on January 1, 2003, the day before he was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s governor. The director and president of this entity is R. Bradford Malt, the trustee of the blind trust and Romney’s personal lawyer. Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an “excepted investment fund” that would not need to be on his disclosure forms. He finally included it on his 2010 tax return. Even after examining that return, we have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romney’s wealth is even greater than previous estimates.

Page Two:

. . . All the assets on Mitt’s financial disclosures are in blind trusts or retirement accounts held by him and Ann. Blind trusts are designed to avoid conflicts of interest for those in public office by having politicians’ assets managed by independent trustees. The Romneys’ blind trust was created when Mitt was elected governor of Massachusetts. Curiously, the Romneys appointed Bradford Malt as their trustee. It’s certainly true that under Malt the trusts don’t appear to be as blind as they might be: for instance, in 2010 the Romneys invested $10 million in the start-up of the Solamere Founders Fund, co-founded by their eldest son, Tagg, and Spencer Zwick, Romney’s onetime top campaign fund-raiser; Solamere is now in the Ann Romney blind trust. Malt has said he invested in Solamere without consulting Mitt or Ann and explained he liked Solamere because of its diversified approach and because he knew the founders and had confidence in them

Excellent Anti-Bain Ad

Made by Crashing Vor on Daily Kos.

I'll let him do the talking . . .

Cory Booker ~ Democratic Concern Troll

Obama surrogate Cory Booker went on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday and did his best impression of Reince Priebus from the conservative side, insisting that Romney's company Bain Capital existed help the common people and even unions, if you can believe that. And it just went downhill from there, as he stated that Obama shouldn't "indict private equity," and then took false equivalency to new heights when he compared Obama's repudiation of Bain with the dredging up of Reverend Jeremiah Wright by the Republicans.

Mayor Booker: . . . I have to say from a very personal level I'm not about to sit here and indict private equity. To me, it's just, we're getting to a ridiculous point in America. Especially, I know, I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, they've done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses, and this to me, I'm very uncomfortable with.
. . . This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. It's nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough! Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop because what it does is it undermines to me what this country should be focused on. It's a distraction from the real issues. It's either going to be a small campaign about this crap, or it's going to be a big campaign in my opinion about the issues the public cares about.

Twitter and Other Reactions at Snark Amendment
After attacks on his Facebook and in the Media, Booker made it worse by trying to apologize on YouTube with a true Etch-A-Sketch moment:


Seriously? And this guy is supposed to be a Democrat? Oh wait - maybe he really isn't one. To me, Booker sounds like a guy on the fence, who might rather be a Republican if he didn't have to play up to his own constituency of Democrats back in Newark, NJ. Otherwise, why would he be spouting Republican Talking Points when he was the only Democrat on Meet the Press that day?

Anyone who reads a lot of politics on the Interwebs has seen this type of behavior before. It's usually done by vastly irritating people known as "Concern Trolls" who penetrate a discussion just so they can pretend to be the voice of reason, when really they seek to overturn one side or another. Such a person might be pretending to be on one side when really they are on the other, or worse, on the fence and loving it there with a board up their rear end. It never seems to occur to such people that they sound like a scolding nanny, or worse, they seem to lack any convictions of their own beyond steering the discussion or kissing up to one side or another.

From Wisegeek: What is Concern Trolling?

Concern trolling is a form of Internet trolling in which someone enters a discussion with claims that he or she supports the view of the discussion, but has concerns. In fact, the concern troll is opposed to the view of the discussion, and he or she uses concern trolling to sow doubt and dissent in the community of commenters or posters. Although this practice originated on the Internet, it has since spread to the real world as well, with concern trolls popping up in a variety of places from network television to op-ed columns.
. . . When a concern troll has done the job correctly, the discussion will split, factions will emerge, and support for the cause will have eroded. Concern trolling can also be highly distracting, as people band together to oppose the concern troll, rather than discussing serious issues, including valid concerns which should be addressed.
. . . When these cases are exposed, it can be quite embarrassing, as trolling is generally viewed as an underhanded and often questionable tactic.

Exactly - we should question Booker's motives. To me what Booker did is no better than Romney's etch-a-sketch weaseling. The only result has been a "with me or against me" discussion about Booker himself, and while he tries to sound so reasonable, he also doesn't sound like much of a Democrat. This year of all years, with so much at stake, Democrats cannot afford to be on the fence. Certainly no Concern Troll should ever be the spokesperson for a Presidential campaign - it's like having a fox in the hen house, and the end result is a bunch of squawking and feathers flying and nothing good at all. Which is why Mr. Booker needs to go back to New Jersey, where he can be Chris Christie's lapdog, and shut up until November is over.

Romney Camp Tries to Block Mitt from the Pain of Bain

Chris Matthews on Hardball made the point today that Romney's company "Bain," rhymes with "Pain."

Perhaps that explains somewhat why the Romney Campaign tried to block reporters from access to the candidate today in Florida.

From Politico.com

Reporters were told before the event that Romney wouldn't be taking questions. Regardless, after a speech today in St. Petersburg, Fla., a group of reporters and network embeds set off to the rope line.
First, a volunteer tried to block the path from the press area to where the crowd was assembled. Then a campaign staffer tasked with press relations stood arms spread trying to block reporters, informing them they couldn't walk into the general crowd area.
When reporters ignored her and kept going, she continued to argue that they wouldn't be allowed to shout questions. Her orders went unheeded and the press eventually made it to the line.
Reporters shouted, but over the crowd and the sound system with Romney flanked by Secret Service agents, it wasn't even clear that he could hear them.

A Romney spokesperson tried some damage control about the reporter block:

"This was an error on the part of the campaign staff and volunteers," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul told POLITICO's Dylan Byers. "We have reminded them that press is allowed on the rope line to record the governor’s interactions with voters."

Yeah, that's good - a Free Press, and all that. Oy vey! Not good PR for Romney!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Obama and Romney Fight Battle of the Bain

It's Dueling Videos today and all about the Steelworkers. The Obama campaign released a video called "Steel" about Bain Capital's negative effect on a company named GST. As a counter-punch, the Romney folks released a vid called American Dream about a company called Steel Dynamics which was created with Bain start-up money.