David Corn’s Latest: Romney Lied in his Most Recent Financial Disclosure

Posted: July 13, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, open thread, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 8 Comments

At Mother Jones, Corn writes:

The ongoing hullabaloo over the timing of Mitt Romney’s exit from Bain has become a bit absurd. The Romney camp and Bain insist that Romney fully retired in February 1999 from the private equity firm he founded and owned—even though in the past he and Bain have described his departure as a part-time leave—and evidence has emerged (including Securities and Exchange documents I first reported) showing that Romney was involved to some extent in Bain as late as 2002, while he continued to maintain his ownership of the firm and its various entities. Romney has been working hard to avoid being held responsible for any post-February 1999 Bain deals that might have resulted in bankruptcies or outsourcing. But there is another reason for the Romney crew to worry about this controversy: Romney may have made a false statement on a federal financial disclosure form, and doing so is a felony punishable by up to one year of imprisonment and a $50,000 fine.

Like all presidential candidates, Romney has to submit a financial disclosure statement to the Office of Government Ethics. He filed his most recent one last month, and the disclosure contains a very clearly stated footnote:

Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake [Olympics] 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.

There’s no ambiguity there: not involved in Bain operations in any way. But that’s not true.

At the link, Corn enumerates many SEC filings that put the lie to Romney’s statement to the Office of Government Ethics. In addition, Corn blasts Glenn Kessler, “fact-checker” for the WaPo for his sycophantic defenses of Romney’s lies and half-truths. Read the whole thing at the link.

Also at Mother Jones, Adam Serwer has compiled a list of “everything we know so far about Romney and Bain.”

Please use this as an open thread. JJ will have a cartoon post later on.

Breaking . . . Mitt Romney Has Scheduled Interviews With Major Networks Today

Posted: July 13, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Breaking News, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , | 87 Comments

According to Buzzfeed,

Mitt Romney will sit down for interviews with all of the national networks today, according to a network source.

The source said Romney will sit down with ABC, NBC, and CBS, and will air on the nightly news broadcasts. The interviews will likely not be in person, the source said.

The news was confirmed by a Romney staff member.

Talking Points Memo has more detail:

Mitt Romney, beating back a wave of new reports and political attacks concerning his record at Bain Capital, is making a primetime media blitz Friday. He plans to give interviews to all three major networks, plus two cable networks.

Romney will speak from Laconia, New Hampshire with reporters for CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News and CNN Friday afternoon, with each segment possibly airing as soon as that night’s broadcast, the Romney campaign confirmed to TPM. Romney has typically been cautious in granting interviews, making his first appearance this election cycle on a non-FOX Sunday show just last month.

No interview for MSNBC. Gee, I wonder why Romney doesn’t want to be questioned by Rachel Maddow?

A little more info from the Caucus Blog:

Mitt Romney will submit to five network and cable television interviews this afternoon after several days of being hammered by President Obama’s campaign on his personal wealth and his time at Bain Capital.

The brief interviews — on CNN, CBS, ABC, Fox and NBC — will give Mr. Romney an opportunity to end the week on message. His campaign has been angrily accusing the president of lying about Mr. Romney’s record.

But it also will provide the networks an opportunity to press Mr. Romney on the accusations from Mr. Obama’s campaign, including questions about the timing of Mr. Romney’s departure from the private equity firm he founded.

This is interesting:

The interviews may in part be designed to bolster the reach of Mr. Romney’s advertising campaign, which has been hampered by a quirk in financing which has temporarily left Mr. Romney without the resources to mount an overwhelming response to the Democratic attacks, according to sources close to the campaign.

Most of the money that Mr. Romney has raised in the last several months can only be used in the general election, which begins after the party’s national convention later this summer, the sources said. The long and contentious Republican primary drained Mr. Romney of much of the money he could spend before then.

See, I told you Obama actually has more money than Romney so far. This makes it sound like Romney is going to try to dance around a little longer and try to pass off some bullsh*t to some weak interviewers. Too bad he doesn’t have to guts to talk to Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O’Brien.

I will continue to update in the comments as I get more information.

Friday Reads

Posted: July 13, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , , , , | 28 Comments

Good Morning!

There are so many headlines flying about at the moment of interest that it’s hard to pick just a few this morning.  Let’s start with some big ones that won’t go away.

A 267 page internal investigation of pedophile Jerry Sandusky shows that every knew and they all concealed the horrible crimes. Gawker sums up the shameful findings.

If you don’t have time to review the full 267-page internal investigationof the Penn State scandal, here’s the gist: Everyone knew. Former Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno knew. Former Penn State University president Graham Spanier knew. Former Penn State University vice president Gary Schultz knew. Penn State Athletic Director (currently on leave) Tim Curley knew. Everyone knew. As far back as 1998, when they learned of a criminal investigation of Sandusky related to an instance of suspected sexual misconduct with a boy in a PSU football locker room shower.

Here’s a paragraph from investigator Louis Freeh’s remarks sent out alongside his report that damns “the most powerful leaders at Penn State University” quite succinctly:

“Taking into account the available witness statements and evidence, it is more reasonable to conclude that, in order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at Penn State University – Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley – repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from the authorities, the Board of Trustees, Penn State community, and the public at large. Although concern to treat the child abuser humanely was expressly stated, no such sentiments were ever expressed by them for Sandusky’s victims.”

It’s really hard to put together the words that describe exactly how disgusted I am by this statement.  That last sentence just is shameful.  This sums up just about everything there is to say about how people in power with an agenda will behave when their interests are placed above everything else.

You wouldn’t know about the complete meltdown over Mitt Shady in the MSM and everyplace else if you hang out in right blogosphere or listen to Rush Limbaugh. It’s a wonderful day for race-baiting!  They’re stuck on the NAACP Romney appearance and appear oblivious to the continued uncovering of Romney’s lies to every one including two federal agencies.  Nope.  Rush just turns up the volume and hate. Here’s more on that from MoJo.

“Obama’s the Preezy,” Limbaugh told his listeners Wednesday, (get it? Cuz that’s how black people talk). “He’s confident they’ll boo Romney, simply ’cause Romney’s white. He’s confident of that.” I’m sure Limbaugh will have an impressive rationalization for why Vice President Joe Biden was so well received by the NAACP convention Thursday. This is, put simply, the dumbest thing Limbaugh has said since the time the 61-year old radio host revealed he didn’t know how birth control works.

Romney has now said he “expected” to get booed, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused Romney of wanting to get booed in order to make himself look politically brave. Like Limbaugh’s ridiculous comment, Romney and Pelosi’s statements are unfair to the NAACP. There has only been one black president of the United States in history, and Mitt Romney is not the first white presidential candidate to address the NAACP. When Ross Perot (!) adressed the convention in 1992, press accounts don’t describe any boos despite Perot referring to the audience as “you people.” Then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was well received. Former Republican Senator Bob Dole (R-Kan.) declined to speak, saying he wanted to talk to audiences he “could relate to.”Both Al Gore and George W. Bush addressed the convention in 2000, and neither were booed.

There are only two instances in the past thirty years or so in which a “white guy” of comparable status to Romney getting booed at an NAACP convention. Following his appearance in 2000, George W. Bush snubbed the NAACP for years as president, but when he finally did speak in 2006, he was booed when he brought up charter schools and the war in Iraq. Prior to that, you have to go back about twenty years of white guys not getting booed to 1983, when then-Vice President George H.W. Bush was booed because of his defense of the Reagan administration’s civil rights record. Even then, ABC News describes him as being “well received” when he returned as a presidential candidate in 1988.

Here’s something interesting from Paul Krugman quoted at Politico: “I miss Bush’s ‘honesty’.”

The “radicalized” GOP has gone so far off the deep end, according to Paul Krugman, that it has the New York Times columnist wishing for the days of George W. Bush.

Only one side’s to blame for our “nightmarishly dysfunctional political situation,” he tells Business Insider.

“It’s entirely one-sided,” Krugman said. “That’s one of those things, you know, the centrists — you want to be a centrist, and you want to blame both sides, and it’s one of those almost hilarious things because you see it again and again, the pundits who say, ‘Here’s what President Obama should do, he should reach out across the divide and propose some short-term stimulus but long-term spending cuts to balance the budget, and you say, ‘He’s actually proposed that.’”

“We have a radicalized, off-the-deep end Republican Party,” the Nobel Prize–winning economist added.

Krugman puts the GOP’s latest presidential candidate in that category.

“I find myself now, watching Mitt Romney campaign, I find myself wishing for the honesty of George W. Bush,” he said.

The FBI has released its report on George Zimmerman–shooter of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin–and has determined there is no evidence of racism present. CSM reports on the findings.

After interviewing 30 people familiar with George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain charged with killing African-American teenager Trayvon Martin, FBI agents found no evidence that the shooting was driven by racial bias or animus.

Before Thursday’s release of a Department of Justice report, both sides have argued over whether smatterings of racially charged testimony should be released to the public before the trial – in particular, the testimony of “Witness 9,” whom state prosecutors say has described an “act” by Mr. Zimmerman that suggests “he had a bias toward black people.”

The report released Thursday made clear that the FBI found no one willing to go on the record as saying Zimmerman is racist. Even one of the most skeptical local investigators with the Sanford, Fla., police department, Chris Serino, suggested to the FBI that Zimmerman followed Trayvon “based on his attire,” not “skin color,” and added that he thought Zimmerman had a “little hero complex,” but is not racist, according to the Orlando Sentinel, which obtained copies of the document.

Prosecutors say Zimmerman profiled Trayvon as a criminal (though the teen was doing nothing wrong), followed him, confronted him, and then killed him after a brief scuffle. Zimmerman says he shot Trayvon in self-defense after the teen jumped him, knocked him down, and bashed his head against a sidewalk. The case caused a national uproar over racial profiling and gun laws after local police originally declined to charge Zimmerman. Forty-four days after the shooting, a special state prosecutor charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder.

The report outlines how FBI agents asked each person interviewed whether Zimmerman “displayed any bias, prejudice or irrational attitude against any class of citizen, religious, racial, gender or ethnic groups.” No one said he had.

More information is available at the paper’s website.

I want to add a few interesting links since this is Friday! First, the CSM reviews DNA evidence that shows that indigenous Americans came to this side of the world in at least three waves.

Supporting a controversial view of how humans might have populated the Western Hemisphere, geneticists have found that groups from Asia traveled over the Bering Strait into North America in at least three separate migrations beginning more than 15,000 years ago — not in a single wave, as has been widely thought.

“We have various lines of evidence that there was more than one migration,” said Dr. Andres Ruiz-Linares, a professor of human genetics at University College London and senior author of a report on the findings that was published Wednesday by the journal Nature.The discovery was made possible by the sheer volume of genetic material the team was able to assemble and analyze, he said.

Ruiz-Linares and colleagues around the world analyzed DNA samples, primarily from blood, taken from hundreds of modern-day Native Americans and other indigenous people representing 52 distinct populations. These included Inuits of east and west Greenland, Canadian groups including the Algonquin and the Ojibwa, and a larger variety of people spanning the southern regions of the Americas from Mexico to Peru.

Investigating patterns in more than 350,000 gene variants, the scientists determined that most of the groups they studied did indeed descend from an original “First American” population.

One last link!  Ever wonder how dinosaurs had sex? Here’s some information on T-Rex’s Sex Life from the Daily Mail.  There’s even some paintings that depict the act.  Consider this!

Scientific illustrators have also attempted to capture the intriguing rituals of the huge beasts – including an illustrator who worked with Dr Halstead on a magazine article in 1988.

The physical challenges involved must have been formidable.

The penis of a tyrannosaur is estimated to be around 12 feet long.

Kristi Curry Rogers, Assistant Professor of Biology and Geology at Macalester College in Minnesota, told the Discovery Channel.

‘The most likely position to have intercourse is for the male behind the female, and on top of her, and from behind, any other position is unfathomable.’

So, that’s my offerings today!  That should get us started!  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Mitt Meltdown Open Thread

Posted: July 12, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, just because, open thread, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , | 66 Comments

I thought I’d put up an open thread to discuss the ongoing Mitt Shady meltdown–or anything else on your mind. I’m gearing up to listen to Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell and I’ll post anything interesting they have to say. If you’re watching or listening too, please join in.

I know you’re already aware that Romney demanded a retraction from The Boston Globe, and they informed him that their story is solid and they’re not backing down. Of course the Obama campaign laughed their asses off at Romney’s demand for an apology from them. Here are some of the latest headlines on the Mitt Shady meldown.

I really like this post by Brian Beutler: Cutting Through The Bain Bamboozlement

Technical questions are, for the moment, dominating the dispute over when Mitt Romney really left Bain Capital. But from my point of view, on the sidelines of this particular story, it all seems much, much simpler.

The reason this issue is in dispute at all is because Mitt Romney wants full political inoculation from anything Bain did between early 1999 and 2002, when he definitely truly left the company. He wasn’t in charge, except in a narrow, technical sense; he’d delegated his duties; Bain’s business practices from that period can’t be hung around his neck.

If you’re not already belly-laughing think about it this way.

For Romney to be truly off the hook politically for the stuff Bain was doing, he’d have to claim not lack of control, but lack of knowledge. And that’s just not going to wash with anyone. He could try going the “I didn’t have even the slightest idea what the company I technically still owned was doing” route, but he’d be marking himself as either dishonest or incompetent.

Here’s a story from The Boston Globe defending their original piece from this morning.

The Romney campaign did not dispute the contents of the documents reviewed by the Globe but insisted Romney had nothing to do with Bain Capital’s operations after he became chief executive of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.

“The article is not accurate,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. “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.” [….]

But a former SEC commissioner told the Globe that even if Romney did not have his hand in Bain Capital’s day-to-day operations, he was still responsible for them, as the firm’s boss.

“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,” said Roberta S. Karmel, now a professor at Brooklyn Law School. “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 Romney campaign claimed Karmel is biased, noting that she was appointed by Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Karmel did not donate to Obama in 2008 and has not given to the president’s campaign this year, either.

HuffPo: Mitt Romney’s Own Testimony Undermines Bain Departure Claim.

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 Life Like 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.”

Bain, a private equity firm, held a stake in the Lifelike Co. until the end of 2001, including during the period in which Romney claimed to have no business involvement with Bain entities. Bain had heavily invested in Lifelike, a company that Romney identified personally as an opportunity, in 1996 and sold its shares in late 2001. His involvement with Lifelike contradicts his assertion that he had no involvement with Bain business. His testimony is supported by his 2001 Massachusetts State Ethics Commission filing, in which he lists himself as a member of Lifelike’s board.

WaPo: Mitt Romney faces new round of calls to release tax returns.

For the Romney campaign, the calculation is complex, as his advisers are weighing the benefits of transparency against the potential problems he could face should the documents reveal — or even appear to reveal — that he has gamed the tax code.

For now, Romney’s advisers said that the candidate has been sufficiently transparent and that he has no plans to disclose additional tax filings. But with four months left until Election Day — and the near-certainty that Romney will face questions about his finances in any interviews and in the fall debates — his advisers might be forced to reevaluate their strategy if the issue damages his standing in the polls.

Even some Republicans are describing the Romney position as problematic. Former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, a onetime party chairman, said this week that he would provide more than two years’ worth of documents if he were in Romney’s shoes.

Strategist Mark McKinnon said the candidate’s reluctance to release his taxes feeds into the Obama campaign’s argument that Romney is hiding something and taking advantage of the system to enrich himself.

The longer Romney stalls, the worse this is going to get. He’s starting to sound like Nixon claiming “I am not a crook.”

Placing bets on which Romney Lie is the Felony Lie

Posted: July 12, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections, 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney | Tags: , , , , | 34 Comments

We’ve pretty much seen Mitt Romney take positions on all sides of issues.  We know he lies and repeats lies of others.  You can get away with a lot in the world of high finance these days.  This is especially true for the ways that Romney has conducted business.  He thrives in a world of little to no transparency where lawyers can work their way around just about anything.  Will this be the case for Willard now that David Corn and reporters at the Boston Globe have uncovered contradictory federal filings?  One has to be a lie.  Lying on either the SEC or the FEC form is a felony.  Which agency has the correct information?

Bostonboomer has been doing a lot of heavy lifting on telling us all about Mitt Shady. I had no idea about his dealings, his tenure as governor of her state, or his business as a corporate raider. ( I hesitate to call what Bain does equity capitalism because I have friends in venture capitalism and equity capital firms that create value.  Bain is anathema to them even. ) I had no idea he was such a complete sleaze.  I sent BB this David Corn article at MoJo last night. You can see from the threads last night and this morning that she jumped right on it. The Boston Globe article even goes further with evidence of Mitt Shady having commited felony lying.

In the words of Joe Biden, “this is a big fucking deal”.

There is some really good analysis on this out there today in the MSM including interviews with former SEC and FEC commissioners who believe that one of the filings must represent felony lying.  The deal is that filings made by Bain to the SEC and Romney to the FEC contradict each other on when Romney left Bain Capital.  This date is important for several reasons to the political campaign. It is part of an Obama campaign tactic to hang outsourcing and job loss on Romney.  The Romney defense was that he wasn’t there at the time so it wasn’t him.  Well, that’s what the FEC filings say.  However, that’s not what the SEC filings say.

Which one is the truth and which is the felony lie? This is from Peter Cohen writing for Forbes Magazine.

Why does this matter? It depends on whether the SEC and state filings are accurate. If those filings are correct, then Romney is in a weak position to claim that he had nothing to do with decisions to fire employees working for Bain Capital-controlled companies after 2002.

To wit, consider Bain Capital’s 1993 $24 million investment in GST Steel, a Kansas City, Missouri steel company. During his 2002 campaign for governor, Romney’s opponent pointed out that Bain Capital had profited to the tune of $50 million – after laying off 750 workers at GST.

And Romney replied that he was no longer at Bain Capital when the layoffs happened. But the SEC filings indicate that Romney was Bain Capital’s CEO in February 2001 when GST declared bankruptcy. And Romney made the same “not there then” claim when the Obama campaign raised this example in May 2012.

If the SEC filings are accurate, that means Romney was again in a grey area when he made the claims about GST. After all, if he was CEO and sole owner of Bain Capital in 2002, he would have had a responsibility to his investors to make key decisions about its investments — like whether GST should file for bankruptcy and fire its staff.

On July 11, Bain Capital issued a statement: “Mitt Romney retired from Bain Capital in February 1999. He has had no involvement in the management or investment activities of Bain Capital, or with any of its portfolio companies, since that time.”

To paraphrase Clinton, it depends upon what the meaning of the word retired is.

This is actually a big deal if the SEC filing is wrong because it leaves Romney open to huge lawsuits by buyers of 5 funds supposedly managed by Romney in 2002.  Any prospectus beyond the initial red herring has to have the truth or the SEC will come after you with the wrath of Khan. In the words of John Aravosis: “Romney told the SEC that he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president” up until 2002.”

But Romney said in a more recent financial disclosure form that he left Bain in 1999 – so the two federal forms contradict each other, at least one is a lie:

Mitt Romney Public Financial Disclosure Report, Aug. 11, 2011: 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 other words, Romney lied to the federal government either way. Either to the SEC, or in his more recent financial dislocure (sic) forms.  And either one appears to be a felony.

Interestingly, Politico now has up a post echoing what I already wrote, and reaching the same conclusion about a felony.

The Boston Globe article is damning.

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.

Contradictions concerning the length of Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital add to the uncertainty and questions about his finances. Bain is the primary source of Romney’s wealth, which is estimated to be more than $25o million. But how his wealth has been invested, especially in a variety of Bain partnerships and other investment vehicles, remains difficult to decipher because of a lack of transparency.

The Obama campaign and other Democrats have raised questions about his unwillingness to release tax returns filed before 2010; his offshore assets, which include investment entities based in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands and a recently closed bank account in Switzerland; and a set of “blind trusts” that meet the Massachusetts standards for public officials but not the more rigorous bar set by the federal government.

Romney did not finalize a severance agreement with Bain until 2002, a 10-year deal with undisclosed terms that was retroactive to 1999. It expired in 2009.

The Corn article at Mojo contains information on Sankaty–also something Boomer’s followed–which is another thread in the Mitty Shady’s dealings.

Sankaty is a story in itself. It was recently the focus of an Associated Press investigation that reported that Sankaty “is among several Romney holdings that have not been fully disclosed” and that there is a “mystery surrounding” Sankaty. Reporting on this Romney entity, Vanity Fairnoted that “investments in tax havens such as Bermuda raise many questions, because they are in ‘jurisdictions where there is virtually no tax and virtually no compliance,’ as one Miami-based offshore lawyer put it.” With Sankaty, Romney was using a mysterious Bermuda-based entity to invest in a Chinese firm that thrived on US outsourcing.

In early 1999, Romney’s investment in Global-Tech expanded again. An SEC report filed on March 25, 1999, stated that Brookside and Sankaty at this stage owned 9.11 percent of the firm’s stock. Romney was still listed as the sole shareholder and president of both Brookside and Sankaty.

By this point, according to the open-to-question account offered by Bain and the Romney campaign, Romney no longer had any involvement in Bain deals. But the series of SEC filings show active Brookside and Sankaty trading in Global-Tech Appliances while Romney fully controlled these firms. The two Romney companies repeatedly changed their ownership stake in this Chinese firm, which was not shy about its dependence on outsourcing. In its 2001 annual report, Global-Tech noted that US outsourcing was essential to its prospects: “Household appliance companies are focusing on their primary strengths of marketing and distribution, while increasingly outsourcing product development and manufacturing…Our ability and commitment to develop new and innovative, high quality products at a low cost has allowed us to benefit from the increased outsourcing of product development and manufacturing by our customers.”

In August 2000, Brookside and Sankaty sold their interest in Global-Tech, according to the SEC documents. With these filings disclosing minimum details about Romney’s investment in Global-Tech, there is no telling how much money he made—or lost—on the deal.

Democrats and the Obama Campaign are wasting no time issuing talking points about this.  The Romney campaign is firing back that The Boston Globe article is wrong and the Obama Campaign cannot hold Romney responsible for all that outsourcing because he was out rescuing the Olympics.  My question to you is if you were 100% owner in a company would you truly, completely ignore it for about 3 – 4 years?  Here’s Harry Reid firing off his salvo.  Needless to say, the rhetoric is getting pretty fierce out there.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said Thursday that new revelations about Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital mean he’d have trouble gaining Senate approval for pretty much any job.

“He not only couldn’t be confirmed as a cabinet secretary, he couldn’t be confirmed as dog catcher,” Reid told reporters at a Capitol press briefing, in response to a question from TPM. “Because a dog catcher, you’re at least going to want to look at his income tax returns.”

The bottom line remains, however.  These two filings contradict each other.  They can’t both be true. Both agencies will have to investigate.  Also, riddle me this. Who is in charge of the executive branch right now and probably won’t impede or stop these investigations?  Who would probably like to speed them up?

So, my next question is will we have a last minute rescue and nomination of Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, or perhaps, Michelle Bachmann or Ron Paul?  This puts Ron Paul in a very interesting position because his people have been wrangling up enough delegates to try to stage a floor fight anyway.

Even The Business Insider is tut tutting Mitt Shady.

As “Chairman, CEO, and President” of Bain, he damn well would have remained responsible for these decisions. In which case, saying he had “left” and implying that he had no involvement or responsibility whatsoever is highly misleading.

The CEO of a car company may not have input into the decision of what specific cars the company makes or where it makes them (though he or she obviously could if s/he wanted), but this CEO is unequivocally responsible for these decisions.

Similarly, if Romney was CEO of Bain at the time it made the Stericycle decision, as well as the company layoffs and other unpleasant facts that Candidate Romney would like to disown, he certainly was responsible for these decisions.

So, enough with walking a fine line rhetorically.

Here are the questions that the Romney campaign needs to answer:

  • Was Mitt Romney “chairman, CEO, and President” of Bain from 1999-2002 (even if he had physically “left” and was spending 100% of his time running the Olympics)? If the answer is “yes,” then Romney is responsible for what Bain did during that period–full stop.

OR

  • Were the filings submitted to the SEC inaccurate?

The answer to those two questions cannot be “both.”  It’s one or the other.

And if the answer is that Mitt Romney was chairman, CEO, and president of Bain for the years in which he has long tried to disavow any responsibility for what the firm did, the American public has every right to feel misled.

I know what I’ll be doing this week.

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