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Afternoon Open Thread: Romney’s Fetus Disposal Bonanza and Other Horrors

Posted: July 3, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Mitt Romney, open thread, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , |26 Comments

This is going to be a quickie, because I have to go out pretty soon. I just posted a lot of this in a comment on the morning thread, but I was thinking I should do it as a post in case anyone wants to investigate further on some of the Romney news that has broken over the past few days.

Vanity Fair has a new article on Romney’s finances that is a must read: Where the Money Lives.

It’s all about Romney’s secrecy about his fortune and his many offshore holdings. He may actually have much more money than we know, because most of it is hidden in tax havens around the world. I repeat: this is a must read!

Then there’s Romney’s engineering of Bain Capital’s $75 million investment in Stericycle, a corporation that disposes of medical waste, including aborted fetuses. Bain and Romney “cleaned up” on that one. David Corn had an investigative piece on it at Mother Jones yesterday, but Sam Stein actually reported on it in January. It went nowhere then, but now it could catch on. When will the corporate media start reporting on it?

Well, here’s something at MSNBC on why we shouldn’t believe Romney’s claims that he wasn’t involved with Bain when the deal happened. David Corn addresses this at Mother Jones also.

Romney has never really left Bain. He still gets most of his income from Bain investments. Are we supposed to believe he has no say in their activities? Give me a break! Jezebel has a post on Romney’s lies about his investment in fetus disposal.

Until I read that Vanity Fair piece and started googling, I didn’t realize that Tagg Romney’s investment firm, Solamere, was originally a subsidiary of Alan Stanford’s Stanford Capital. Stanford is now in jail for the huge ponzi scheme he ran there.

Mitt and Tagg both claim they haven’t been investigated for their involvement with Stanford’s ponzi scheme, but in fact they are still being investigated.

Finally, another of Mitt’s cronies got into trouble today. Robert Diamond was forced to resign from Barclays today and then called off a planned fundraiser for Romney in London. More on this from Bloomberg.

It’s a big day for embarrassing Romney news. The Obama campaign and the DNC need to get on this stuff stat!

26 Comments on “Afternoon Open Thread: Romney’s Fetus Disposal Bonanza and Other Horrors”

  1. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    July 3, 2012 at 1:50 pm

    And then there are all the big Conservatives who are ragging on the Romney campaign. Rupert Murdoch tweeting criticism over the past couple of weeks and then today Jack Welch chimed in.

    ROMNEY CAMP GETS TOP CEO HEAT – Corporate titans keep ripping the Romney campaign operation. First it was News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch. Now it’s former GE CEO Jack Welch (@jack_welch) who Tweeted last night: “Hope Mitt Romney is listening to Murdoch advice on campaign staff playing in league with Chicago pols. No room for amateurs.” Both Welch and Murdoch tend to strongly support Republicans and their public comments reflect widespread concern in GOP-leaning corporate circles that the former Massachusetts governor could lose an election he should win because of a weak campaign staff (also see Fehrnstrom health care gaffe below). A number of Wall Streeters MM has sat down with recently are not impressed with Romney’s Boston campaign operation, calling it overly risk-averse and nowhere near as nimble or responsive as Obama’s Chicago team.

    They are also alarmed that the Romney campaign has allowed the soon-to-be GOP nominee’s Wall Street record to get defined as such a negative so early. Many also view the candidate himself as fairly wooden and uninspiring and capable of blowing what should be a clear opportunity to take out an incumbent in a soft economy. Some of these execs are focused on the debates, hoping Romney can reintroduce himself and make the sale as a strong alternative for voters who don’t trust Obama on the economy and are eager to try something new. But they also view the debates as an enormous challenge for Romney. “He is going up against one of the best debaters I’ve seen,” one financial CEO told MM recently. “Obama is very smart and incredibly good in these things.”

    • northwestrain's avatar northwestrain says:
      July 3, 2012 at 2:35 pm

      Obama a great debater????????????????????????

      Not against Hillary Clinton.

      Sorry the blunt honest truth — 0bama isn’t so good at thinking on his feet or talking without his teleprompter. Neither is Mittens.

      • Seriously's avatar Seriously says:
        July 3, 2012 at 2:56 pm

        They’re must be trying to lower expectations for Romney because if Obama is an “incredibly good” debater, I’m the Empress of China. 😉 A debate between O and M will be the ultimate pissy condescending-off.

        How does someone who’s being investigated for involvement in a ponzi scheme become the nominee of a major party? How?

      • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
        July 3, 2012 at 4:23 pm

        Obama is better than Romney.

  2. minkoffminx's avatar JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
    July 3, 2012 at 2:12 pm

    Oh I love the Bagley cartoon!

  3. dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
    July 3, 2012 at 2:47 pm

    I’ll start reading these links! Thanks! All my years in banking and finance taught me that you can get away with robbing a bank as long as you are its CEO.

    I’ve been taking mid day siestas. The heat is awful here. I’ve started working at night when the sun goes down and staying up later than usual.

    • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
      July 3, 2012 at 3:09 pm

      Alarms bells sounding …

      These, plus the mandatory financial disclosures filed with the Office of Government Ethics and released last August, raise many questions. A full 55 pages in his 2010 return are devoted to reporting his transactions with foreign entities. “What Romney does not get,” says Jack Blum, a veteran Washington lawyer and offshore expert, “is that this stuff is weird.”

      The media soon noticed Romney’s familiarity with foreign tax havens. A $3 million Swiss bank account appeared in the 2010 returns, then winked out of existence in 2011 after the trustee closed it, as if to remind us of George Romney’s warning that one or two tax returns can provide a misleading picture. Ed Kleinbard, a professor of tax law at the University of Southern California, says the Swiss account “has political but not tax-policy resonance,” since it—like many other Romney investments—constituted a bet against the U.S. dollar, an odd thing for a presidential candidate to do. The Obama campaign provided a helpful world map pointing to the tax havens Bermuda, Luxembourg, and the Cayman Islands, where Romney and his family have assets, each with the tagline “Value: not disclosed in tax returns.”

      http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/08/investigating-mitt-romney-offshore-accounts

  4. minkoffminx's avatar JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
    July 3, 2012 at 2:47 pm

    I don’t understand why the Dems are dragging their feet with all these Romney reports, seems like a goldmine of goodies…

    So sad to hear about Andy Griffith, I will be writing about it in tonight’s post.

    One thing I want to share however: Sen. Marty Golden Holding Event Teaching The “Feminine Presence” [UPDATED] | City & State

    Later this month, Republican State Sen. Marty Golden’s office is holding a career-development event for women in his southern Brooklyn district teaching them “Posture, Deportment and the Feminine Presence.”

    That’s according to a taxpayer-funded mailing being sent out in Golden’s district, which an offended reader passed along. The taxpayer-funded event – presented by a “certified protocol consultant” – is part of a series teaching women in Brooklyn “what’s new in the 21st century as it relates to business etiquette and social protocol.” More details are also available on Golden’s Senate website, including the fact that women in attendance will be taught to, “Sit, stand and walk like a model,” how to, “Walk up and down a stair elegantly” and “Differences in American and Continental rules governing handshakes and introductions.”

    The event is being held in Bay Ridge Manor, the catering hall formerly owned by Golden, which is now owned by Golden’s brother and run by his wife.

    A spokesman for Golden said the goal of the event was simply to help young women land jobs.

    Wow…that is some way to get these women gainfully employed!

    Whoa….

    • Seriously's avatar Seriously says:
      July 3, 2012 at 3:06 pm

      Awesome. Now if we can just master Advanced Sweater Selection, we’ll be gainfully employed in the pool at Sterling Cooper Draper Price in no time. What’s the next symposium, Gracefully Allowing Your Boss to Take Credit for Your Work, Remaining Indifferent to Sexual Harassment?

      • HT's avatar HT says:
        July 3, 2012 at 4:27 pm

        C’mon seriously, you forgot about the pearls and the proper way to center a pillbox hat. It’s obvious that you haven’t taken the course. Oh and that stuff about your Boss taking credit – he’s more important obviously, so one has to get used to that.

        I wish that was just snark, but damme it still pisses me off.

      • HT's avatar HT says:
        July 3, 2012 at 4:36 pm

        We women should be like those Cows with Guns. Women with Uzis?

    • northwestrain's avatar northwestrain says:
      July 3, 2012 at 3:14 pm

      Stepford wives??? Or the submissive woman — the GOP ideal woman.

    • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
      July 3, 2012 at 4:27 pm

      WTF?!!

    • ecocatwoman's avatar ecocatwoman says:
      July 3, 2012 at 5:36 pm

      Okay, girls, now you’ll learn to walk gracefully while balancing a book on top of your heads. POSTURE, POSTURE, POSTURE. Head up, shoulders back – ahhh, this brings back my childhood.

  5. northwestrain's avatar northwestrain says:
    July 3, 2012 at 2:54 pm

    How can the information in the Vanity Fair article about Mittens wealth hiding be dumbed down?

    One of the comments asked — if Romney can’t be honest about how much money he has and exactly how he got to be richer than a small country — then how can he be trusted?

    Of course the people of MA — know how dishonest and secretive Romney was as Governor. And now we know that a huge part of his hidden wealth is from looting companies and probably their pension funds.

    • Pat Johnson's avatar Pat Johnson says:
      July 3, 2012 at 3:42 pm

      If someone invents something and makes a fortune from it I have no problem with that.

      But if the only way to earn millions like some of these fools do, by merely pushing paper and betting on the outcome, then my admiration goes way down to levels that suggest perhaps a little shadiness may be involved.

      For someone to take money that was earmarked as a pension from some poor soul who worked years to be able to retire and live comfortably, this is an area that makes me sick.

      An area that Romney seems to wallow and takes pride in doing so. The thing is that they never are forced to look these pensioners in the eye as they walk away with something that they themselves have not earned.

  6. RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
    July 3, 2012 at 4:46 pm

    We’re back to debtors prisons. This has been going on for years and I didn’t know. Plantation America indeed!

    Poor Land in Jail as Companies Add Huge Fees for Probation

    Three years ago, Gina Ray, who is now 31 and unemployed, was fined $179 for speeding. She failed to show up at court (she says the ticket bore the wrong date), so her license was revoked.

    When she was next pulled over, she was, of course, driving without a license. By then her fees added up to more than $1,500. Unable to pay, she was handed over to a private probation company and jailed — charged an additional fee for each day behind bars.

    For that driving offense, Ms. Ray has been locked up three times for a total of 40 days and owes $3,170, much of it to the probation company. Her story, in hardscrabble, rural Alabama, where Krispy Kreme promises that “two can dine for $5.99,” is not about innocence.

    It is, rather, about the mushrooming of fines and fees levied by money-starved towns across the country and the for-profit businesses that administer the system. The result is that growing numbers of poor people, like Ms. Ray, are ending up jailed and in debt for minor infractions.

    • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
      July 3, 2012 at 5:16 pm

      That’s what Romney did in Mass.– jacking up the fees, I mean.

      • RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
        July 3, 2012 at 5:35 pm

        That makes balancing the budgets on the backs of the poor an even worse meaning. Cash crunches for localities and states can’t really excuse this stuff.

      • northwestrain's avatar northwestrain says:
        July 3, 2012 at 7:25 pm

        I’ve been yapping about traffic tickets as an unseen tax — fees attached to traffic ticket — insurance companies jack up rates.

        The thing is that from 15 to 25% of the traffic ticket are a lie — radar in the hands of cops is mostly a joke. Also the cops have quotas.

        People tend not to notice unless they are stopped by the lying cops — when we know we were going the exact speed limit or under the speed. I was so pissed that I did the research and went to court. The a-hole cop lied and I could prove it — with the help of an engineer. You just can’t go to court and tell the judge the cop lied — because frankly the judges are in on the take. But so many of these bogus tickets are so flat out dishonest that by going to court you cost the system money — I was ready to go to the next level — and the dishonest judge didn’t want that.

        In the cases above — all started with a traffic stop which could have been a con job by the cop. Then the crooks just heap on more fines and turn the poor into slaves for the county crooks.

        I’m glad that this con job happening in too many places is being exposed.

        From my research — the money from tickets is unreported in most counties so we don’t know how much money the county crooks are making in bogus traffic tickets which most people don’t fight — even when they are innocent.

        Third world country — that’s what huge segments of the USA is.

      • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
        July 3, 2012 at 8:14 pm

        You should see what we pay here for parking tickets!

  7. RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
    July 3, 2012 at 5:33 pm

    A little more good news to go along with the SC upholding the ACA.

    Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion already covering a half-million Americans

    Over the past two years, five states have quietly executed the Affordable Care Act’s largest coverage expansion to date, extending benefits to more than 500,000 Americans.

    It’s not the high risk pools, nor is it the end to pre-existing conditions for kids. Instead, these five states have increased coverage by voluntarily participating in the health law’s Medicaid expansion early. That’s the exact same provision a number of Republican governors are now choosing not to implement

    The health law’s Medicaid expansion does not officially start until Jan. 1, 2014. It did, however, give states the option of starting enrollment even earlier. Five states – California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and Washington — as well as the District of Columbia took the Obama administration up on the offer.

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