Black and White Sydney Skyline wallpaper
Given their sleazy history, one in which they have to constantly invent new stories, it is to be expected that conservatives would not come up with a counter attack on Romney’s behalf. Thus this ridiculous story from Fortune magazine, Documents: Romney didn’t manage Bain funds. A reporter is being hand fed documents from Mittens’ friends that swear to goodness Mitt did not do any hands on management of Bain after 1999. Despite official documentation the same people who want us to believe what Mitt’s friends say also do not believe that President Obama was born in the U.S. The same Mitt Romney who refused to denounce Donald Trumps birtherism wants us to believe his buddies at Bain. Did Romney sign off on the daily petty cash receipts, order toilet paper for the executive washroom or sign every signal document that passed through Bain? No, probably not, but to pretend that he was as detached from Bain completely is farcical. Mitt Romney’s Own 2002 Testimony Undermines Bain Departure Claim
Mitt Romney’s repeated claim that he played no part in executive decision-making related to Bain Capital after 1999 is false, according to Romney’s own testimony in June 2002, in which he admitted to sitting on the board of the LifeLike Co., a dollmaker that was a Bain investment during the period.
Romney has consistently insisted that he was too busy organizing the 2002 Winter Olympics to take part in Bain business between 1999 and that event. But in the testimony, which was provided to The Huffington Post, Romney noted that he regularly traveled back to Massachusetts. “[T]here were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth,” he said.
Romney’s sworn testimony was given as part of a hearing to determine whether he had sufficient residency status in Massachusetts to run for governor.
Romney testified that he “remained on the board of the Staples Corporation and Marriott International, the LifeLike Corporation” at the time.
Yet in the Aug. 12, 2011, federal disclosure form filed as part of his presidential bid, he said, “Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way.”
In an SEC filing by Bain in 2001 ( 3 years after Romney says he had nothing to do with Bain) it says,
As member of the Management Committee of each of BCIP and BCIP Trust, W. Mitt
Romney and Joshua Bekenstein may be deemed to share voting and dispositive power
with respect to the 1,376,377 shares and presently exercisable warrants to
purchase an additional 7,716 shares for a total of 1,384,093 shares or 2.9% of
Outstanding Shares held by BCIP and BCIP Trust.
Fortune might want to stop playing the loyal serfs for Mitt. As these and other SEC documents show Romney was in charge as sole owner of all Bain shares. In the document above he made a decision about how many voting shares there would be and their dispositive power. He also claims the right to purchase more shares. Also at the Fortune link is the Obama campaigns’ reply – good to see they are having some backbone,
After being informed of the Bain Capital documents, Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt emailed over the following statement:
“Mitt Romney either misled the American people or misrepresented himself to the SEC. Romney has said he had no authority or responsibility for managing Bain since 1999, but that has been proven false. Regardless of whether he was on the management committee for this particular deal, he remained President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board and he was legally responsible for every investment and decision made by Bain.”
It stretches all reasonable doubt to claim that a company engaged in hundreds of millions of dollars in business transaction – for which Romney was legally responsible – was never ever discussed in e-mails, phone, letters or other legal documents. As a matter of fact they were. From a 2001 investigative report, Buyout Profits Keep Flowing to Romney
Though Mr. Romney left Bain in early 1999, he received a share of the corporate buyout and investment profits enjoyed by partners from all Bain deals through February 2009: four global buyout funds and 18 other funds, more than twice as many over all as Mr. Romney had a share of the year he left. He was also given the right to invest his own money alongside his former partners. Because some of the funds and deals covered by Mr. Romney’s agreement will not fully wind down for several years, Mr. Romney is still entitled to a share of some of Bain’s profits.
This is the Romney and conservative noise machine version of events. Romney is sitting at home in 2002 and gets a phone call from Bain. You did what, Mitt asks. You made deals totally without my knowledge in 4 global buyouts funds and 18 others. That is so cool. I am completely surprised, I had no idea. It would be so neat if we made money on those deals, but in the future if Fortune calls remember to tell them I was like so totally out of the loop.
But the family’s Bain holdings are still considerable: in his 2011 disclosure, Mr. Romney reported Bain assets between $12.4 million and $60.9 million, which provided between $1.5 million and $9.3 million in income. The blind trust for his wife, Ann, held at least another $10 million, generating income of at least $4.1 million. Because the campaign is required to provide only a minimum value for some Bain assets now held by Mrs. Romney, the total could be far more.
A spokesman for Bain declined to comment on the specifics of the arrangement, citing confidentiality agreements with Mr. Romney.
In regular households checks in the hundreds of dollars are scrutinized every month. In the Romney household apparently millions of dollars just flows into their accounts and they have no clue what so ever how the money gets in there. To sum up, Romney says he left Bain in 1999. As the SEC filings show he was listed as owner and only stock holder in the years 1999 to 2002. By default that makes him responsible for what went on at Bain even if he was not involved in the daily minutia. Or if we assume that he somehow was 100% disengaged from any company operations, he cashed checks from Bain for doing nothing to earn them as companies were shuddered and jobs outsourced. The last sentence above seems odd since someone at Bain is how pushing documents on Fortune which would be confidential, right? Here are four companies that folded or downsized in the three year period after Romney claimed to have left Bain Capital:
– GS Industries – 750 Jobs Lost: In a series of ads earlier this year, the Obama campaign hit Romney over Bain Capital’s purchase of GS Industries, a steel company that closed its Kansas City plant and eliminated 750 jobs in February 2001. The Romney campaign responded by claiming that Romney had left Bain Capital well before 2001, and was therefore not tied to the collapse of the GS. Bain Capital and its executives, including Mitt Romney, earned at least $12 million on the initial investment.
– KB Toys – Up to 3,500 Jobs Lost: During the primary season, Newt Gingrich’s 30 minute documentary on Romney and Bain Capital spent a significant amount of time focused on KB Toys, a retail chain bought by Bain in 2000. At the time, the Romney campaign, with an assist from fact-checking groups like PolitiFact, pointed to the calendar. As these new filings show, Romney was still very much at Bain Capital when they purchased KB Toys, and profited mightily when the company took out crippling loans to pay Bain Capital an $83 million dividend.
– Dade International – 1,700 Jobs Lost: Months after Romney claims to have left the company, Bain Capital received a $242 million bounty for its stake in the medical supply company. Romney profited substantially from the deal. In 2002, Dade International filed for bankruptcy, costing more than 1,700 people their jobs. At the time, Romney was the 100 percent owner of Bain Capital, the new documents show.
–DDi Corporation – 275 Jobs Lost: In 1996, the circuit board manufacturer was bought by a group of investors, with Bain Capital in the lead, for more than $40 million. By December 1999, DDi closed a Colorado plant and fired 275 workers. Bain Capital, with Romney still listed as Chairman and CEO, then proceeded to take DDi public, raising $170 million during the company’s IPO in 2000. Over the next few months, Bain began selling off its stock, raising almost $100 million, more than doubling its investment. The stock plummeted shortly thereafter.
Over the next couple of months these are some possibilities – some reporter is going to start digging more into SEC filings and financials transactions with Romney’s signature with Freedom of Information requests. Someone is going to request e-mails for the period 1999 to 2002 – if they are not produced that will be just as damning. Some ex-executive with one of the companies that Bain and Romney slashed and burned for profit will come forward with documentation.
Glenn Kessler of WaPo’s “fact checking” site is sticking with the Romney was clueless story even though it strains any reasonable assessment of Romney’s association with Bain in light of those SEC documents and the financial transaction that directly benefited Romney – One-Hundred-Thirty-Seven Pinocchios for Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, as He Tells Untruths About Mitt Romney. Glenn has dug himself a deep hole and has his back up so it is very unlikely he will publish a correction.
In other conservative versions of reality: Poor people and Fannie May caused the greatest recession since 1929 by intimidating banks into making bad loans. Or the truth being that the banks preyed on ordinary working class Americans, Wells Fargo Will Settle Mortgage Bias Charges
Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest home mortgage lender, has agreed to pay at least $175 million to settle accusations that its independent brokers discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers during the housing boom, the Justice Department announced on Thursday. If approved by a federal judge, it would be the second-largest residential fair-lending settlement in the department’s history.
An investigation by the department’s civil rights division found that mortgage brokers working with Wells Fargo had charged higher fees and rates to more than 30,000 minority borrowers across the country than they had to white borrowers who posed the same credit risk, according to a complaint filed on Thursday along with the proposed settlement.
Wells Fargo brokers also steered more than 4,000 minority borrowers into costlier subprime mortgages when white borrowers with similar credit risk profiles had received regular loans, a Justice Department complaint found. The deal covers the subprime bubble years of 2004 to 2009.
Just one or two percentage points can mean paying thousands more over the lifetime of the loan.
Is Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) wacko?
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) raised eyebrows last week when he called the IRS “the new Gestapo.” Soon after, he issued a statement saying “the use of the word Gestapo has clouded my message,” but in person, the governor didn’t sound especially apologetic.
[ ]….So, in the mind of the governor of Maine, the IRS reminds him of Nazis, then he’s sorry, then he’s comfortable saying the IRS is headed in the “direction” of Nazis and “killing a lot of people.”
It is tempting to say that LePage has just mentally lost it, joining in the ranks of regular fonts of Republican crazy like Allen West (R-FL). There is also the possibility that LePage is fully conscious of what he is saying. That would make him evil rather than crazy.
On this day in history: July 13, 1943: Alexander Schmorell, co-founder of White Rose anti-Nazi resistance group, was executed.
The Long Goodbye 