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Tagg Romney Followed Mitt’s Advice: “Borrow Money…from Your Parents; Start a Business.”

Posted: May 1, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , |31 Comments

Who names their kid "Taggart?"

The New York Times has an interesting story about Solamere Capital, a private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney’s son Tagg (short for Taggart) shortly after his dad’s last campaign for POTUS ended in 2008.

About a month after Mitt Romney ended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in February 2008, his eldest son, Tagg, and Spencer Zwick, the campaign’s top fund-raiser, met with a beef company executive who had been a major campaign donor over dinner at the posh Torrey Pines resort in San Diego….

Neither had experience in private equity. But what the close friends did have was the Romney name and a Rolodex of deep-pocketed potential investors who had backed Mr. Romney’s presidential run — more than enough to start them down that familiar path from politics to profit.

I’m sure you recall Mitt Romney’s advice to community college students at a recent campaign appearance in Ohio.

WESTERVILLE, Ohio — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney offered a group of college students this advice on Friday: If you want to start a business, borrow money from your parents.

Romney, a wealthy former investment banker who has struggled to soften his image as a member of America’s super elite, was discussing ways of achieving the American dream at Otterbein University. He said, “We’ve always encouraged young people: Take a shot, go for it. Take a risk. Get the education. Borrow money if you have to from your parents. Start a business.”

Well, Mitt knows whereof he speaks! He kicked in $10 million to help Tagg and some friends start up Solamere. On top of that, he gave his eldest son access to his superrich campaign donors. What a guy.

The small firm, including Tagg Romney, 42, Mr. Zwick, 32, and a third partner they brought in, Eric Scheuermann, 47, the only one with a private equity background, is in line to collect at least $16.8 million in fees over the first six years of the fund, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm has earned a 20 percent return since 2010, despite having invested only about half of its money so far.

And guess what? Solamere’s employee roster is practically a who’s who of Romney campaign personnel:

While Solamere has not operated exactly as a subsidiary of the Romney campaign, it has seemed that way at times. The firm shared its first address with the Romney campaign headquarters in Boston. Later, the company was located in the same building as Mr. Romney’s leadership PAC, Free and Strong America, before moving to trendy Newbury Street in Boston.

Please go read the whole article. If Mitt Romney is elected POTUS this time, will he be the leader of the American people or will the U.S. government simply become a wholly owned subsidiary of Romney family enterprises?

31 Comments on “Tagg Romney Followed Mitt’s Advice: “Borrow Money…from Your Parents; Start a Business.””

  1. bostonboomer says:
    May 1, 2012 at 12:33 pm

    Solamere doesn’t even find businesses to invest in. It just makes money off other firms that invest in businesses. From the NYT article, p. 2:

    Solamere settled on a strategy tailored to wealthy individuals, requiring a minimum $10 million investment, with some exceptions. Unlike many private equity funds that specialize in scouting out companies to invest in directly, Solamere is a “fund of funds” that invests in 22 other private equity funds. The firm has also made eight co-investments, which give its investors the option of putting additional money into deals arranged by other firms.

  2. Pat Johnson says:
    May 1, 2012 at 12:45 pm

    Off topic but if the name “Taggart” doesn’t blow your mind try the name given to Jessica Simpson’s new baby girl. Maxwell Drew.

    That’s right Maxwell who will be called “Maxi” by her family from her on in.

    Somehow I can hear the sounds of “Maxi Pad” trailing off the lips of her future classmates as this poor kid traverses life dragging around the name Maxwell.

    What is wrong with these people who would do this to a baby for god’s sake?

  3. bostonboomer says:
    May 1, 2012 at 12:58 pm

    NYT:

    Another investor was Meg Whitman, the former eBay chief executive and a national finance co-chairwoman of the 2008 campaign. She invested more than $1 million, according to financial disclosures, and was a featured speaker at Solamere’s investor conference last year.

  4. Wonk the Vote says:
    May 1, 2012 at 1:02 pm

    Fitting little Romney anecdote for May Day.

  5. Wonk the Vote says:
    May 1, 2012 at 1:27 pm

    Mitt… Tagg… see it’s the double consonants… could be a superstitious thing.

  6. RalphB says:
    May 1, 2012 at 3:21 pm

    Charlies Pierce on Occupy today.

    The ‘End’ of Occupy and the Corruption of Our Country

    This was a banana republic. It was a failed state in everything except the fact that no tanks rolled in the streets. The terrorists were not hiding in Waziristan. They were having lunch at Cipriani’s and sitting in luxury boxes at the Meadowlands. The government existed only to increase their profits and to provide a quasi-legal context for organized piracy. There was an extraordinary contempt for the law, for the institutions of government, and for the people the law and those institutions were supposed to serve. The country was cored out. It was a shell of a country and a shell corporation, and it has not recovered yet.

    From the start, I said that the best thing about the Occupy movement was that at least they were yelling at the right buildings. I think, at the start, some of the Tea Party people felt the same way, but they were so easily and quickly assimilated into conventional right-wing politics that their most lasting contribution has been to push the Republican party so far out into the fringes that they might as well televise their convention this summer on River Monsters. This is because, from the start, they yelled at the wrong buildings. They yelled at the Congress and at the state legislatures, as though they were anything more than the simple vehicles through which the real work of stealing the country got done.
    […]
    If the Occupy people want to march, I say let them march. If they resist conventional politics, that may be because conventional politics are worth resisting. What I do know is that, if i weren’t for the people in the streets last autumn, the Obama people would be running a very different campaign and Willard Romney wouldn’t look half as ridiculous as he does. Somebody has to care enough not to care.

  7. RalphB says:
    May 1, 2012 at 3:40 pm

    Apparently the trial court judge, a Dubya appointee, wasn’t sufficiently wingnutty. Texas women are screwed as of the present. Perhaps a normal 3 judge panel will reverse him.

    Republican Judge Jerry Smith Blocks Pro-Planned Parenthood Order Just Hours After It Was Issued

    Last month, Republican Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith pitched a tantrum in open court, demanding that the Department of Justice respond to some imprecise political rhetoric by President Obama in an attempt to embarrass the president. Today, the staunch Republican judge raised further doubt about his ability to separate politics from the law by suspending a decision benefiting Planned Parenthood just hours after it was handed down by another judge.

  8. RalphB says:
    May 1, 2012 at 3:54 pm

    I’ll bet we don’t see a “Mission Accomplished” sign.

    Obama, Under Veil of Secrecy, Visits Kabul to Seal Agreement

    KABUL, Afghanistan – President Obama landed here Tuesday, on a surprise visit, to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan meant to mark the beginning of the end of a war that has lasted for more than a decade.

    Mr. Obama, arriving after nightfall under a veil of secrecy at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, flew by helicopter to the presidential palace, where he was to meet President Hamid Karzai before both leaders signed the pact. It is intended to be a road map for two nations lashed together by more than a decade of war and groping for a new relationship after the departure of American troops, scheduled for the end of 2014.

    Mr. Obama was scheduled to address the American people from Afghanistan on Tuesday evening, which would be the middle of the night in Afghanistan. The address – on the first anniversary of the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan – will give Mr. Obama a new opportunity to make an election-year case that he has wound down two expensive and now unpopular wars, here and in Iraq.

  9. ecocatwoman says:
    May 1, 2012 at 5:10 pm

    For Dr. Boomer: this story of psychological studies on NPR this afternoon left me shaking my head. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/01/151764534/psychology-of-fraud-why-good-people-do-bad-things Seriously? The conclusions drawn that people make bad decisions if they are in “business” mode, which isn’t “ethical” mode? And auto inspectors will pass a car that should be charged with violations to correct if the car is a Honda Civic versus a BMW. Really?

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