July 12, 2012

MITT SWORE HE WAS A BAIN MAN

PDF Federal Disclosure Form

http://pfds.opensecrets.org/N00000286_2010_pres.pdf





" WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney's repeated claim that he played no part in executive decision-making related to Bain 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 doll maker 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. "There 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.



Romney has long said that he took a leave of absence from Bain because the work of organizing the 2002 Winter Olympics was so grueling, which has allowed him to deny responsibility for Bain activities during 1999 and 2002. His activities during that period also included Staples board meetings: "I returned for most of those meetings. Others I attended by telephone if I could not return." Bain was involved with Staples early in its life, taking the company public in 1989. Romney used his Bain position to obtain a seat on the board, which he held into 2002. He regularly cites the jobs that Staples created as reflecting positively on Bain's record. "The article is not accurate," spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement released to reporters following the Globe story. "As Bain Capital has said, as Governor Romney has said, and as has been confirmed by independent fact checker 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." Yet Romney's sworn testimony appears to back up the SEC filings and contradict his personal disclosure forms submitted to Massachusetts officials in 2002, in which he said that he retired from Bain on Feb. 11, 1999.




Romney's lawyer at the Massachusetts hearing said that Romney's work in the private sector continued "unabated" while he ran the Olympics: "He succeeded in that three-year period in restoring confidence in the Olympic Games, closing that disastrous deficit and staging one of the most successful Olympic Games ever to occur on U.S. soil. Now while all that was going on, very much in the public eye, what happened to his private and public ties to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? And the answer is they continued unabated just as they had." Instead of leaving in 1999, Romney suggested in his testimony that he only left Bain after the Olympics in 2002: “I left on the basis of a leave of absence indicating that I, by virtue of that title, would return at the end of the Olympics to my employment at Bain Capital, but subsequently decided not to do so and entered into a departure agreement with my former partners. I use that in the colloquial sense, not legal sense, but my former partners."





cont'




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12/mitt-romney-bain-departure_n_1669006.html


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July 12, 2012

OBAMA CAMP: 'PROVE IT!'

‘Prove It’: Obama Campaign Presses Romney For Bain Departure Details



The Obama campaign is challenging Mitt Romney to release more information about his taxes and time at Bain Capital in order to put to bed questions raised by SEC filings regarding his role at the company. “If the SEC filings aren’t accurate, then prove it,” Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter told reporters on Thursday. “If he wasn’t investing millions of dollars in shell corporations, tax havens, Swiss bank accounts overseas to gain a tax advantage, then prove it. Prove it by releasing your tax returns.” Romney said he left any managerial role at Bain Capital behind in February 1999, delegating all voting shares of stock to 26 managing directors and leaving day-to-day operations to focus on running the Olympics. But subsequent SEC filings list him as “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.” A 2001 SEC filing first reported by TPM lists his “principal occupation” as “Managing Director of Bain Capital, Inc.” and the Boston Globe reviewed additional filings containing similar claims.



Media fact-checkers have dismissed a number of previous Obama attacks on Bain Capital by noting that various companies where layoffs or outsourcing occurred under Bain were acquired after 1999, thereby absolving Romney of responsibility. The Obama campaign claims that Romney’s presence in numerous SEC filings related to Bain and affiliated companies should push the window to 2001 and force a re-evaluation. Both the Washington Post’s blogger The Fact Checker and FactCheck.org said they were unmoved by the latest reports. The Post noted that there are no contemporary reports of Romney being involved with major company decisions during the period in question, despite being listed as owner, sole stockholder, CEO and “managing director.”



Cutter said Romney needs to show positive proof of his supposedly passive role, which was not borne out by his SEC filings. “Romney actually has the ability to ask Bain to just release the minutes of meetings and other corporate records,” Cutter said. “Like his tax returns, he’s in a position to make sure they’re available for all of us to see.” Cutter even suggested there were possible criminal implications for not disclosing the details of Romney’s departure from Bain. “Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony, or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments,” she said on the call.



The Romney campaign told TPM that his initial departure in 1999 was a quickly enacted leave of absence to run the Olympics and the company only officially transferred his voting stock to Bain’s managing directors in August 2001. The campaign also noted that Romney’s 2002 retirement package, which was calculated based on his 1999 departure, would have been more generous if Romney had claimed he had continued working in some capacity in the intervening years. Romney was, however, running for governor at the time, where Bain’s investments became a major issue in the campaign. Romney surrogate John Sununu said in a statement that Romney would have been unable to handle both a role at Bain and his outside work at the same time. “The Obama campaign must think Mitt Romney is Superman,” Sununu said. “He was, in reality, rescuing the Olympics by working in Utah 24/7 for the years the Obama campaign also alleges he was running Bain Capital. Even though the Obama campaign may be wrong about his involvement in Bain Capital, it shows that even they can admit Mitt Romney is a great leader.”




http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/obama-bain-romney-prove-it.php?ref=fpa

July 12, 2012

The BAIN Of This Campaign

The Dish:



" The more I learn the more it seems to me that the Globe story (which was not a scoop as such and relied on TPM and others) could be a turning point in the campaign. And I'm learning from Dish readers as usual. One writes:

For me, there are two questions:

1. Did Romney mislead the SEC in those documents or is he misleading us now? Either way, he is guilty of either a felony or a whopper.

2. What was he paid $100,000 a year for? So far, no answer to either of these simple questions from Boston. The lack of a salient, immediate response is what strikes me. Maybe it will come. But this is seriously bad news for the GOP.



http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/07/the-bain-2.html

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July 12, 2012

Romney's Protests About Outsourcing Unravel. WHICH LIE DID HE TELL?

" Let's walk down memory lane and recall Ed Gillespie's defense of Mitt Romney's outsourcing activity last month. Then take a walk a little farther and recall how the Romney campaign pressured the Washington Post to alter their story about Romney's Bain Capital involvement in outsourcing jobs to China, and how they were able to co-opt Factcheck.org to carry their water.



It's time for Romney to give up the line in his stump speech about being tough on China's trade practices, because Mitt Romney personally and directly benefitted from them. If you look around your kitchen, I'll bet you'll find at least one product with parts manufactured in China. Chances are, those parts were manufactured by Global-Tech, a company with Mitt Romney's hands all over it.

The Boston Globe reports this morning that there is evidence Romney did not leave Bain Capital until 2002.







Lying on SEC documents is a very, very big deal. John Aravosis also goes back to FactCheck.org's defense of Romney's claims that he left in 1999 to point out that their defense puts him in a tight spot. Either he lied on SEC filings or he's lying about when he left Bain in order to duck responsibility for Bain deals that caused people to lose their jobs as more and more of our manufacturing sector was shipped off to China.



There's nothing illegal about Romney remaining in charge, so why is he lying about it? As Romney would say, it's perfectly legal. It is true legal doesn't necessarily translate to something patriotic, or appropriate for a candidate leading the United States. It should cause people to question his claims about whether or not he would be sensitive to American job losses or simply "restructure" this country out of all of our manufacturing base. Here's the bottom line: There's a lie here. It's either a lie on official documents subject to perjury enforcement, or it's a lie to the public. My money is on the latter, because this is what Romney does. He routinely lies in order to advance his cause or avoid confrontation. It's why he doesn't want to release additional tax returns and it's why he stubbornly clings to 1999 as his termination date. If you think about it, it's actually more reasonable to assume he did stay on at Bain through the Olympics, because those high-rolling corporate contacts could come in handy with efforts to revive an effort that was nearly dead and buried.






cont'


http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/romneys-protests-about-outsourcing-unravel


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July 12, 2012

OBAMA TEAM: Romney Committed A FELONY OR LIED To Voters

" Mitt Romney either lied in federal filings that show he worked at Bain Capital through 2002 and could be guilty of a felony, or has lied to the American people in saying he left the company in 1999, the Obama campaign is arguing in light of news reports on the firm’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “This is serious business,” said Bob Bauer, the Obama campaign’s counsel, in a conference call for reporters coming after the Boston Globe published a story Thursday that calls into question the timeline of Romney’s involvement of the firm that the Republican candidate has been promulgating for years. Deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter laid out the issue as the Obama team sees it: “Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony."




"Or," she said, "he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments,” including layoffs and the outsourcing of jobs. If the latter is true, she said, it’s a “real character and trust issue” that voters should be aware of as they decide who to vote for in the presidential election. If Romney was still at Bain through 2002, he's also "politically responsible for the consequences" of deals that the firm made through then. Andrea Saul, the Romney campaign's press secretary, countered that the Globe's "article is not accurate" because"[a]s 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."



The emergence of the SEC filings appears to conflict with that, the Obama campaign contends. There are “literally scores of filings that make it very, very clear that over a period of time that Gov. Romney claims that he was not active with Bain, the Securities and Exchange Commission was informed” that Romney was the chief executive officer, chairman of the board and sole shareholder of the company, Bauer said. SEC filings "are very carefully scrutinized by lawyers because of the very severe consequences that follow from making statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission that are not correct," he said. And if that's the case, and Romney's role in the firm was misrepresented in filings, "in the normal course would subject somebody in this position to every manner of investigation with all the consequences that you can imagine would follow."




People who interacted with Romney at Bain between 1999 and 2002 -- and who would corroborate the storyline suggested by the SEC filings -- haven't emerged. Nor have documents or other details that would suggest Romney has been lying about when he left the company. But, Bauer hinted, there might be new developments to come. “I would stay very much tuned on that,” he said.







cont'


http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/07/obama-team-romney-committed-a-felony-or-lied-to-voters-128757.html

July 12, 2012

THREE LIES: Mitt Romney On His BUSINESS RECORD

" On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney repeatedly lies about policy matters. He falsely claims that President Obama is adding regulations at a “staggering rate,” making “ the economy worse” and is constantly apologizing for America. He even claims that his tax plan is not a tax cut for the rich, when it is just that.
But according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents uncovered by the Boston Globe, TPM, and Mother Jones, Romney’s misrepresentations extend beyond partisan policy disagreements. He has lied about his main qualification for seeking the presidency: his own business record:

1) Mitt Romney left Bain Capital later than he claims. Securities and Exchange Commission documents show that Romney remained Bain’s chairman and president, owning 100 percent of Bain as late as 2002, the Boston Globe reports. Romney has contended he left in February 1999 in order to fend off attacks that he is responsible for Bain layoffs or outsourcing.



2) Mitt Romney said he created 100,000 jobs at Bain. But he downgraded that number to “thousands” after even Sarah Palin doubted its veracity. His campaign now admits the number is completely bogus. Romney’s tally did not even begin to include the thousands of layoffs at companies in which Bain invested.



3) Mitt Romney said his business investments aren’t responsible for outsourcing jobs. Romney’s campaign hoped to have the Washington Post retract its story on his outsourcing record. The paper, however, refused, after the Romney camp could provide no credible evidence to contradict the Post’s reporting.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/12/515403/romney-lies-business/


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July 12, 2012

Did Romney LEAVE Bain in 1999? HE Could Have LEGAL PROBLEMS EITHER WAY.

" The Boston Globe reports that according to corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mitt Romney remained CEO of Bain Capital until 2002, three years after he has claimed he left the company. If Romney really did leave Bain in 1999, as he claims, those filings could expose him to legal jeopardy, former SEC commissioner Roberta Karmel told the Globe:

And if Romney didn’t leave Bain in 1999? Well, for one thing, that would mean he’s been lying for years, and his defense that he didn’t have anything to do with outsourcing the company was involved in from 1999-2002 would fall apart. But that’s not all. As Politico’s Dylan Byers points out, earlier this month FactCheck.org wrote that if the Obama campaign were correct that Romney was still at Bain after 1999, “Romney would be guilty of a federal felony”:






So either Romney left Bain in 1999 and the SEC filings are wrong and Romney could be exposed to a lawsuit from a misled investor, or Romney didn’t leave Bain in 1999, in which case Romney would’ve committed a felony punishable by up to five years in federal prison by falsely claiming on financial disclosure forms that he had done so.




http://www.jamisonfoser.com/blog/2012/07/did-romney-leave-bain-in-1999-he-could-have-legal-problems-either-way.html


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July 12, 2012

NAACP OFFICIAL: Romney ‘RIGGED CROWD’ By Having Blacks ‘FLOWN IN’

" The director to the NAACP’s Washington Bureau revealed on Thursday that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney had conservative African Americans “flown in” to the 103rd convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to make it appear that he had more support than he really did.



During an interview with Fox News host Neil Cavuto, Romney said that he had met with a “number of African American leaders” after his NAACP speech and they told him “a lot of folks” were disappointed in President Barack Obama. On Wednesday night, MSNBC host Ed Schultz asked NAACP Washington Bureau Director Hilary Shelton which “African American leaders” Romney was referring to.




“The campaign actually gave me a list of African American VIPs that they brought in to the NAACP meeting,” Shelton explained. “So, I’m sure those are the one they set down with because, quite frankly, none of the rank-and-file NAACPers met with him.” “He’s talking about African American Republican politicians that were actually brought in — flown in — to the NAACP convention in Houston, Texas to be there for the [candidate] alone,” he added.



“That means that Mitt Romney rigged the crowd to support him there so he could go on TV and say, ‘You know, actually I got a lot of support among African American leaders,’” Schultz noted. “Apparently, that’s what the case is,” Shelton agreed. “They are bringing people in that they know will support his agenda from other places that aren’t active with the NAACP. These are people that were actually brought in to provide the cheering for him so there will be some support for him along those lines.”



While Romney did receive some sparse cheers and applause during the speech, the loudest reaction came when the crowd booed him for vowing to repeal “Obamacare.”




http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/12/naacp-official-romney-rigged-crowd-by-having-blacks-flown-in/

July 12, 2012

"MITT Has Something To Hide" ROMNEY Release Your Tax Returns NOW

July 12, 2012

Meet The HOUSE DEMS Who Voted To REPEAL ‘Obamacare’

House Republicans stood together in Wednesday’s 244-185 vote to repeal ‘Obamacare’ — the 33rd vote in the chamber to roll back the law.Five Democrats broke with their party to join them, two more than last year’s repeal vote. All five represent Republican-leaning districts. All five were among 39 Democrats to vote against final passage of the Affordable Care Act in March 2010.






Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT)

Matheson, a Blue Dog serving since 2001, voted against the GOP’s repeal effort last year. He flipped this time around to realign with Republicans against Obama’s signature law. “I have voted against the health care bill at every opportunity in the legislative process,” Matheson said in a statement about his vote. “Plain and simple, the bill is a flawed effort that fails to address the critical issue of rising health costs.”





Rep. Larry Kissell (D-NC)

Kissell, a second-term congressman, voted against the Republican repeal legislation last year. But he has been careful not to align himself with Obama, refusing to endorse his reelection bid. Kissell has broken with his party on multiple occasions, including on holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt.





Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-NC)

McIntyre, a Blue Dog who has represented rural North Carolina since 1997, joined Republicans last year to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. How conservative is his district? Here’s a hint: He has refused to endorse President Obama for reelection.





Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR)

Ross, a congressman since 2001 who serves as co-chair of the increasingly extinct Blue Dog Caucus, was an early Democratic opponent of the law and has consistently positioned himself it. He joined Republicans to vote to repeal it last year. Ross has sought to make himself amenable to his mostly conservative constituents by aligning against Obama and Democrats on numerous issues. He’s retiring at the end of his term.





Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK)

Boren, a Blue Dog who has served Oklahoma since 2005, last year voted with Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He has gone to great lengths to distinguish himself from Democrats, including by cosponsoring anti-abortion legislation and voting for a hard-right measure calling for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

He’s not seeking reelection this November.





http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/meet-the-house-dems-who-voted-to-repeal-obamacare.php?ref=fpnewsfeed


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