Mitt Romney testified to Massachusetts officials in 2002 that he maintained business ties during his Olympics work, undermining his argument that he had no connection to Bain Capital or related companies after 1999. Notably, his campaign has refused to deny whether or not he ever held meetings with Bain during his time in Salt Lake City.
Romney, who at the time was trying to convince the state Ballot Law Commission that he should be allowed to run for office in Massachusetts despite living in Utah the last three years, did not directly address his work with Bain Capital. But, in testimony obtained by the Huffington Post, Romney said that he returned home for “a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth.”
Romney noted that he remained an active member of the board at Staples, where Bain was an early investor and a company Romney frequently cites on the trail, and LifeLike, a toy company where Bain was heavily invested at the time.
I hope that establishment punditry’s steadfast defense of vulture capitalism will be the straw that broke the tote-bag’s back, that people like my parents friends’ will realize that their beloved columnists are corporatist hacks, that David Gergen belongs in front of a firing squad, not a public tv camera.
schrodinger's cat
Aiming for the Moore award early in the morning?
Face
A bit too harsh, no?
General Stuck
Loving Mitt Romney means you never have to say you’re sorry.
FlipYrWhig
Media bigshots really have been horrible on this whole set of issues. Their view seems to be that this is just the way Rich People World works, so they scoff at the naïveté they perceive in anyone who calls attention to the loathsomeness of that world.
Bulworth
Debunked!
La La La La…
Debunked!
schrodinger's cat
Has Bobo weighed in on the Bain controversy from the Applebee’s salad bar yet?
rlrr
Being a rich white Republican, Romney may get away with this…
DougJ
@schrodinger’s cat:
I love the smell of Moore in the morning.
Bulworth
But, debunked!
“There’s all sorts of confusion as to what constitutes ‘board meetings’ and ‘business trips’ and ‘so forth’.”
Debunked!
beltane
My totebagger, News Hour watching mother-in-law will be visiting next week. I guess I’ll have to do some educating during her stay.
Bulworth
“I don’t know what any of this stuff means, but Debunked! No evidence!”
Fmbjo
Romney has a problem knowing where he lives. He also voted in the Mass election while living elsewhere. BTW, what,s his official residence now?
NonyNony
@FlipYrWhig:
Media bigshots ARE rich people. Anyone who appears on your television on a nationally broadcast show is not making anything close to the national average, let alone the national media. Find me someone on that television who isn’t making at least 6 figures.
This is the thing that people need to understand – television personalities are rich. There are a handful who come from humble backgrounds and/or have some empathy with people at the bottom, but the vast majority of television personalities are wealthy men and women who don’t even understand what it’s like to make less than 6 figures.
Is it any wonder that tax cuts for high income people have become THE national agenda in this country?
SP
I don’t know, Kessler might believe it now because they found a Republican (by the name of Mitt Romney) to contradict Mitt Romney’s claims. We all know that’s the only way that something can be true.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Hope springs eternal. There’s a greater chance of a lasting Israeli-Palestinian settlement than there is of this.
The only thing that will shut these fucktards up is another big Obama win in the fall. Oh wait, that didn’t shut them the fuck up after the last big Obama win in the fall. Nevermind.
waynski
He was also paying taxes in Utah (lower than Mass, natch)and had to pony up the $54,000 difference in state tax bills to finally settle his residency matter.
Poopyman
@Face: Bankers, “media”, one-percenters. They all realize they can say anything without fear of consequences. History tells us that if the rest of us let them go on for too long, eventually the resulting backlash is “a bit too harsh”.
I’m afraid that modern America is too complacent by half, and when it final wakes up the results are going to be more like what DougJ imagines.
(Edited to try to ungarble my thoughts this AM)
the Conster
Can we put Luke Russert in front of Gergen? Let’s not even waste a bullet on him. What a useless piece of shit that no talent nepotistic hack is, and makes Chuck Todd look like Edward R. Murrow. So far this morning it’s all about optics and both sides, and who wins the day. Fucking shoot them all.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@waynski:
This is essentially how he’s lived his life: do everything in your power to avoid paying taxes.
NPR actually did some half-assed journalism this morning and sent a reporter down to Bermuda to look up Rmoney’s tax havens down there. And it became very clear during the piece that much of his energy is aimed at dodging every tax dollar he would hafta pay if he were a regular shmuck like us.
Nothing illegal as his spokesdrones like to say but the image it creates? Given the economic meltdown underway in 2008, it’s no wonder McGrumps passed on the man as VP.
gbear
How ironic that Romney was invested in a company called LifeLike.
HelpThe99ers
In science news today, researchers at CERN have identified yet another new particle that may push back the boundaries of physics.
The new particle, tentatively dubbed the romnon, appears to posses the ability to change its position instantaneously, depending on the observer.
“This new particle is going to make us rewrite our standard physics textbooks,” said Dr. Janus Palindrome, noted researcher. “Instead of the famous Schroedinger’s Cat, we’ll have to use the example of Mitt’s Dog.”
schrodinger's cat
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Are you saying he is worse than the Ice Queen? Why is Romney running for President? His tax dodging ways would have never come to light if he was a private citizen.
Butch
@Face: Not at all, and joined by the parade of useless pundits such as Brazile and Castellano and a whole, big bunch more.
But on the badder note, I’ve avoided discussing the presidential race with any members of my family because I know there is no force on God’s green earth that would ever persuade them to vote for a Democrat, no matter what kind of candidate the R’s put forth.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
A Daily Kos link about a story related to Romney’s dealings with Bain includes this from a long article (yes, references inside references):
beltane
@FlipYrWhig: The media bigshots have been horrible on every set of issues they deign to cover. These are people with no moral or ethical grounding whatsoever, thus their obsession with “civility” that two-faced impostor of morality.
Blue Neponset
I think the smoking gun here is that Romney got a six figure salary to do something for Bain in 2001 and 2002. In practice, people get paid for doing nothing all the time, but in a political campaign it is going to be hard to explain what Romney did during those year to earn his salary.
This issue seems to be taking a back seat and I think it would do a ton of damage to Swiss Mitt if someone started asking Romney and Bain what his salary was for in 2001 and 2002 it will lead to a ton of other unanswered questions and this train will keep rolling.
ETA: the firing squad thing isn’t cool.
Valdivia
I love the smell of DougJ shrill in the morning. :)
JPL
“Vote for me and the buck will stop over yonder”
Ash Can
Maybe I’m just tired and cranky this morning, but I am very much not liking this talk of shooting and firing squads. It’s really unnecessary. Worse, it’s detracting from this great story about Romney basically testifying against himself, which is at least as damning as the SEC documents. LGF covered this yesterday, and I was hoping someone here would cover it too.
scav
The Mitt Romney that “confessed” to working for Bain is the Mitt Romney behind ObamaCare boohiss! and his lips can’t be trusted to utter WordsOfIneffableAndNecessaryPurity ™ unlike the PostDated Mitt Romney who has never sullied his hands with Off-shoring or FetusDumping or, you know Mere Work.
ETA: In other words, gotta keep your Mitts straight and it all becomes clear. Bit like keeping track of which pea is under the shell company tax haven, but . . . .
eric
@Blue Neponset: dude, whooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaa slow down, rich people always earn their money. It is definitional.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Butch:
We had lunch with my dad yesterday. He hasn’t voted for a Democrat since Kennedy (and I’m not totally sure about that) and he said he’s been telling pollsters that he’s planning to vote for Dr. Ron Paul.
This should be encouraged in hopeless Republicans, IMO. If you have an elderly relative who would never, ever vote for Obama under any circumstances, try to get them to vote for Paul. It’s better for Obama if they throw their vote away on a protest candidate than if they hold their noses and vote Romney.
Nina
What is so toxic in the Bain history between 1999 and 2002? Some folks have suggested it was the Stericycle investment – the company that helped abortion clinics with medical waste disposal. But I suspect that there’s more.
Remember 2001? Not September 11, but before it. Enron, Worldcom, the tech crash…
Bain did something that year, I’m sure of it. Romney was probably in it up to the tips of his coiffure.
dmsilev
Lets agree to seek a bipartisan centrist compromise, and strap the rifle to the camera.
Scott S.
@Face: Not harsh enough. The elite media pundits have worked very, very hard to make America crash and burn, and we should treat them the way we’d treat national enemies.
Cacti
Well, the previous sworn statements of Mitt Romney are unreliable, because they’re partisan, because back then he was campaigning as a centrist, and now he’s severely conservative.
Centrist Mitt Romney gets 4 pants-on-fire pinnochios for making partisan statements that contradict severely conservative Mitt Romney.
The fact checker hath spoken.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Blue Neponset:
I am watch The Last Word from last night and I learned for the first time that the $100,000 figure is “a range” in other words it was at least that amount, but probably more, all that had to do was disclose that it was at least that amount. It will be interesting to find out exactly how much he was being paid to do nothing.
Brian R.
You know what the saddest thing about the Glenn Kessler fuckup is?
It reminds me that today newspapers have a single guy they’ve designated as a fact checker, when it used to be that EVERYONE at the newspaper was a fact checker.
The simple idea that they’ve relegated fact checking to a single guy — the same way they’d push off the farm report or wedding vows — is pathetic.
NonyNony
@Blue Neponset:
fasteddie9318
Allow me to write Glenn’s response for him: I totally already looked at this and it was a big snoozer, yawn, because there were, like, Democrats on that ballot board and stuff, plus yadda yadda and I already did a Romney story today so what do you want from me, it’s called BEING NON-PARTISAN, you freaks, like truthiness and stuff you morans wouldn’t understand.
mai naem
I don’t want to minimize the Bain stuff but didn’t Mitt offsource(yeah, its intentional) in the state of Massachusetts while he was governor? The call center for calling about state benefits? Is he going to say he wasn’t governor then?
cmorenc
@Blue Neponset:
Exactly this. Questioning why Romney continued to receive a 100K annual salary for being President/CEO of Bain for at least three years while claiming to have no further involvement with it is an easy and straightforward issue for voters to understand, and one that is equally difficult and convoluted for the Romney campaign and its media enablers to attempt to explain away in any fashion that seems credible to ordinary people. In fact, there’s no way to attempt to spin this fact into irrelevance that doesn’t come across as mendaciously slippery and repugnant.
I’d like to see an ad by a democratic group outside the Obama campaign that asks this simple question (and does a bit of connect-the-dots with Bain’s offshoring and laying-off business activities).
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@schrodinger’s cat:
As inferred in one comment above, the political calculation in 08 by the McCain team could have been that Rmoney’s financial history, if properly vetted by the press during the campaign, would have been damning to his campaign. Look at the context of the times: an economic meltdown with people standing on Wall Street holding signs saying “JUMP FUCKERS JUMP!” And into that, you as the party’s nominee want to bring in as your VP a guy who will correctly be seen as one of those fuckers you want to jump.
It wouldn’t have helped McGramps with a crapload of voters facing foreclosure, layoffs and bankruptcy. Plus, Rmoney wouldn’t have helped him with the as-then-yet-unamed teatards or the Talibangelists. At least Caribou Barbie did that.
My point is, that in terms of the political calculation of that moment in 08, it’s possible the McCain people looked at both of them and felt she was the “better” choice. Obviously they didn’t vet her enough but her issues at least didn’t directly pertain to the economic disaster making the headlines.
And yeah, none of his tax-avoiding plans would have mattered if he were just another guy worth $250 million. The fact that he and his team still seem so shocked over this again reinforces the idea that he’s lived in an incredible bubble his entire life and, despite having been running for president for the last 12 years, is still one of the worst politicians at this level of competition.
redshirt
I am so loving all of this! Spin Repukes, spin! Let the dissonance – the, shall we say, Mittonance – swirl around you, nigh to the heavens!
General Stuck
Not to worry, Captain Ed spots Daffodils blooming in the Elephant shit. As the David Axelrod beatings continue until morale improves.
Mercy, sending Ed to the fainting couch of many vapors.
The strong stench of desperation is in the air.
Indeedy
Lawnguylander
@Ash Can:
This place has become fake Internet tough guy central, hasn’t it? Or at least it’s giving Protein Wisdom some competition. It’s pretty embarrassing. Still, I’ll take talk of firing squads over the “tumbrel ride” stuff. That’s especially cringeworthy.
NonyNony
@mai naem:
Right now Mitt is running away from his record as governor and not talking about it. He wants to talk about what an awesome CEO he was. The Obama Team is just being helpful and keeping the conversation where Mitt wants it.
If Mitt wants to start talking about his tenure as governor, I’m sure that Team Obama would just love to chat with him about Governor Romney’s record in Massachusetts.
I imagine that if Romney has any topic at all that he wants to discuss the Obama Team has something on hand to discuss with him. They’re a very prepared group of people from what I can tell and they’ve had a solid 4 years to be looking into Romney’s past. (Or longer if they were researching him as a possible VP candidate for McCain or thought he might actually win the nomination in ’08).
Right now I think they’re kind of letting Romney drive the “Who Is Mitt Romney” part of this conversation. They don’t really care if Mitt Romney wants to talk about CEO Romney or Governor Romney. If you get to know any version of Mitt Romney you’ll hate him, because he’s objectively horrible. So why not be polite and let him pick which Mitt Romney we’re going to talk about today? It’s not like it will help him much.
beltane
@cmorenc: Romney was paid “at least” $100,000 a year by Bain during that time period. He could have been paid quite a bit more but we will never no the exact figure until he releases his tax returns.
schrodinger's cat
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Your analysis is accurate, but the thing is not much has changed, the financial situation is just as dire and Wall Streeters are less loved than used car salesmen.
As the representative of the .01% is Mitt the right guy for the times? If he couldn’t pass the muster 4 years ago as a Veep choice.
amk
Gallup – America’s confidence in television reporting has dropped to an all-time low from 46% in ’93 to 21% now.
Gee, wonder why americans are such cynical fucktards.
catclub
“his campaign has refused to deny whether or not he ever held meetings with Bain during his time in Salt Lake City.”
Sounds like an opportunity for a reporter who can come up with minutes of Bain Board meetings in 2000-2002.
catclub
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: It was not long after 2008 that we learned that everyone in the 2008 GOP race hated Mitt. I think this alone was enough to eliminate him as a choice for McCain’s VP.
Marc
I view the Gergen comment as roughly equivalent to the Hitchhikers Guide quote about corporate shills being “the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes”.
Villago Delenda Est
@Face:
Too easy, too painless.
Public hanging. Or vivisection.
Zach
Romney made a big deal in August 2001 about announcing that he was giving up his 100% voting control of Bain Capital and stepping down as CEO. Go do a Lexis search on him from that time. It’s not a secret. I get that he can complain about not “really” controlling what was going on since he had some sort of leave-of-absence, but it’s insane if there’s still any debate as to whether or not he was CEO.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@NonyNony:
Another side benefit of this is clearly how the Rmoney team is on the defensive. His primary brethren helped grease those skids to a certain extent.
Yeah, the Villagers are doing everything they can to mitigate this so they can keep the horse race meme running thru November but I’m pretty amazed at the general tone of reporting over the last couple of weeks. It really is as if they smell blood in the water and the Rmoney team is flailing around like a swimmer in ‘Jaws’.
quannlace
Yes, Romney believes America is the land of promise and opportunity. He just felt his money would have more opportunity in Bermuda and the Cayman islands.
Jazzman
@Brian R.: Amen to that. And that lone “fact checker” might well be some Filipino subcontractor working for Journatic.
amk
@quannlace: yup. mittbot’s money- america born. foreign bred.
SGEW
Speaking of straws breaking backs, I think that calling for the public execution of a media figure is where you lose me, Doug. Even in jest, I’ve kind of had enough the violent revolutionary rhetoric.
And if this is just about trolling Andrew Sullivan, I suspect that all you’re actually going to do is discredit Balloon Juice and, ironically, give credence to the Moore Award.
amk
@Brian R.:
Didn’t nyt’s public editor say recently “gee, if the public wanted us to check facts, then they should have told us” ?
Cacti
@Zach:
He really can’t even complain about that.
Filings with the SEC listing him as sole owner, CEO, President, and Chairman of the Board would have made him liable in any Court of Law for work done by subordinates during that period.
He’s trying to make a false distinction.
Zach
@Cacti: Yeah; just saying that his position was important enough to announce that he was leaving in Summer 2001 in a public enough way to get several news articles written about it in prominent newspapers.
danielx
@schrodinger’s cat:
Nope. I’m sure you’ll be disappointed, but Bobo’s latest missive is all about how things were so much better when White Anglo Saxon Protestant elites were running things as opposed to today’s meritocratic elites.
Consider this jewel, for example.
Silly me, I thought it was because deregulation and the conversion of Wall Street firms from partnerships to corporations allowed these firms to make bigger and bigger bets with other peoples’ money, not because of any failure of virtue. Of course, I’m not gifted with that special vision and virtue possessed by Villagers. That virtue being best illustrated by an old joke:
“What kind of girl do you think I am?”
“We’ve settled that, now we’re discussing price.”
Come to think of it, that pretty much covers Wall Street virtues and those of our supposed elites as well.
FlipYrWhig
@danielx: At what point was banking conducted by persons of fine moral character? Even in It’s a Wonderful Life the Bailey family is treated as an exception.
schrodinger's cat
@danielx: What meritocracy is Bobo blabbering about? The fact that Bobo has a NYT column proves that meritocracy does not exist.
DougJ
@SGEW:
Are you SFAW under a new name?
catpal
1) Romney admitted that he “Retired From Bain Capital” in August 2001 – to go into “Public Service.” Run for Governor of Utah or MA. Deseret News Aug 2001
2) Romney then testified in MA that he was still involved in Bain in order to confirm his eligibility to run as Gov in MA.
C’mon News Media — this is SOOOOOOO obvious that Romney is LYING.
danielx
@FlipYrWhig:
That would be never, to the best of my knowledge. They were less able to bring down the global economy back in the day, but they were no more possessed of any particular virtue than any other whores – er, financial entrepreneurs.
amk
@schrodinger’s cat: Beat me to it.
JGabriel
LifeLike Toys? Sounds porny.
.
Kilkee
I know it’s hopelessly naive, but is it really impossible to think that some intrepid reporter will ask Mitt a simple question like this? “Governor, your SEC filings indicate that while at least titular head of Bain Capital from 1999 to 2003 you were paid a salary of “at least” $100,000. Can you tell us what the actual salary was? Was it more than $500,000? More than a million? More than $10 million? And am I right that your position is that you didn’t do any actual work for Bain to earn that money?” Ok, ok, I guess it won’t happen, will it? Seems so easy, in a world where reporters shout out questions to the President when he’s not giving a press conference.
Cacti
@JGabriel:
It would be a hoot if Mitt was invested in aborted fetus disposal AND blowup dolls.
The cog dis from religious conservatives would be too choice for words.
JGabriel
Bobo via danielx:
I don’t know about “more talented and open” but I’d guess the many failings of the today’s financial elites can be traced back to five decades of adolescent immersion in Ayn Rand’s Asshole Training Manuals.
.
redshirt
@Cacti: Won’t matter to the 27% – no facts would. But it’s that 10-15% of “normal” people who might be influenced by all this news that matters.
beergoggles
I’m OK with the shooting squad, as long as we don’t waterboard him first.
SGEW
@DougJ: Nope (though we’ve been misidentified as each other before). I’m the other one, who used to comment here a while ago.
hueyplong
I hope this doesn’t spoil some drip drip drip master plan, but I’m kind of anxious for someone loudly to proclaim that if Mitt is honestly claiming that he did no work and had no involvement in Bain’s business as its salary drawing President and CEO in the period 1999-2002, then he’s one of those infamous Moochers about whom we’ve heard so much from Republicans and their pundits.
And why does this Kessler guy think we need a GOP-appointed member of the SEC tell us what the public filings say/mean? They’re fking public filings, whose wording was entirely the work of Bain, and they exist in order to give information to plain English-speaking (and reading) investors. No expert interpretation is required here. No authentication is required. Anyone can pull them down on the internet.
The extent to which Kessler considers me stupid is something that offends me. The extent to which Kessler thinks wobbly Romneyites are stupid is something that kind of amuses me.
JGabriel
__
__
SGEW:
When I think of the pain, suffering, and death rained down upon the lower and middle classes daily due to the greed of our conservative financial elites, the health care system they’ve constructed for the rest of us, the stagnation of wages over the past 30 years, and the resulting impoverishment of the bottom 90%, then I think you’re right: I get tired of the violent revolutionary rhetoric too — it makes me want to see some actual violent revolution against them instead.
Face it. Conservatives are engaged in a systematic pillaging of American society that is already having violent consequences. And you want us to watch our rhetoric?
.
schrodinger's cat
@Cacti: Everything is OK as long he tithes 10% to his church. If Rev Wright was fair game, why isn’t anyone talking about Romney being the bishop in his church. What about separation of Church and State, imagine an imam running for President, or even Congress for that matter.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
No coverage of this on local radio media BTW.
The former Governor of MA either (1) filed a false SEC report or (2) lied under oath in 2002 about flying back to MA for ‘board meetings’ so could meet residency requirements and run for Governor here.
I will repeat: Either (1) or (2) above must be true.
You’d think local media would give a shit. Guess not.
Disingenuous Fuckers.
Rabble Arouser
@Lawnguylander: Hey, it’s nothing but REAL(tm) internet tough guys around here, buddy!
Wilson Heath
Was Romney’s testimony transcribed by a court reporter who’s a registered Dem? That would mean it never happened per Kessler, right?
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
Any time you come across a religious conservative, tell them you can’t vote for Romney because he’s not Christian. It’s loads of fun to watch them sputter.
jon
So Bain Capital is like a company vehicle that Romney sold to no one in 1999, kept it registered in his name, may or may not have insured and kept the title and earned money from leasing it or renting it out or something for a few years, and it may or may not have been involved in some accidents during those times? Plus he still earns money from its use by others.
McCain got in trouble for not knowing how many houses he owned. This tool doesn’t know how many corporations he’s strangled to death or sold into debtors prison or whatever it is he didn’t do all those years. He doesn’t even know what his job was or if he did it. If that makes him a natural to be President, then I’m fit to be Jesus because I haven’t hit anyone in years.
Cacti
@redshirt:
Natch concerning the 27-percenters.
As for the rest of the population, I have a feeling the best is yet to come.
The only person who’s seen a full disclosure of Romney’s business dealing is John McCain…
And he decided Sarah Palin was preferable.
SGEW
@JGabriel:
This is my point, I guess. I am against the idea of actual violent revolution in the modern day U.S.A., both as a pragmatic and philosophical matter.
catpal
@Wilson Heath: lol. that is probably the next thing to be claimed by Mr. “Not-a-Real-Fact-Checker” Kessler.
Rafer Janders
@NonyNony:
Except he wants to be addressed as “Governor Romney”, and not “Mr. Romney”, as he should more properly be known. So he wants the title, but no analysis or looking into what he actually did as Governor of the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Which really fits right in with the Republican id — all of the perks, none of the responsibility.
Boots Day
This Glenn Kessler guy is really amazing. Here’s his latest from this morning:
So he’s just hand-waving away the fact that Romney was claiming in SEC documents that he was still running the company by saying, “Eh, doesn’t mean anything. People lie to the SEC all the time.” At the same time, though, he’s charged the Obama campaign with lying about Romney’s tenure at Bain for committing the sin of taking Romney at his word.
redshirt
@Cacti: That is a most telling fact – they chose Sarah over Mitt.
Big skeletons still to come!
JGabriel
@SGEW:
When local police forces beat, electrocute, gas, and break heads of Occupy and other peaceful unarmed activists on behalf of shutting down any protest against the existing economic system and its moneyed elite, what makes you think we don’t already have violent revolution?
We do. It’s being waged by the servants, public and private, of wealthy conservatives against the rest of us. But you would prefer that we not only don’t respond in kind, but that we don’t even talk or joke about responding in kind?
Maybe you’re right. But after living through nearly 50 years of this shit, my patience has worn thin and I’m more than a little tired, frustrated and angry.
.
DougJ
@SGEW:
Cool, I’ll think about what you’re saying then. (SFAW was kind of a troll.)
Lawnguylander
@JGabriel:
I don’t object to violent rhetoric on moral grounds. Maybe I would except it’s just so fucking embarrassing that I never get that far in my thought process. People in this thread and others here are no more likely to start lining the 1% against the wall than any given Ace o’ Spades commenter is to head on over to Waziristan to track down Mullah Omar. Our version of chickenhawks.
Rafer Janders
What? What? WHAT????
Um, the whole purpose of an SEC filing is EXACTLY to let the government know who is actually managing the company so that the public can know whose hand is on the tiller.
An investor reading these filings should reasonably be able to assume that someone who was “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president” was, you know, perhaps more than a little bit involved in the management of the enterprise. If that was not true, and if someone else was actually managing while they gave the impression that it was Romney, then the filings could be a false and material misstatement, since they would have misled investors as to who was actually in charge at the place.
Rafer Janders
@Rafer Janders:
Also, too, there is no such thing as “boilerplate” in an SEC filing. It has to be 100% accurate and is submitted under penalty of perjury.
The Other Chuck
@Boots Day:
Give Kessler a break. His title may say that he’s the “Fact Checker” for the Washington Post, but that doesn’t mean he does any work or has any actual responsibility to check facts or anything.
Boots Day
And Kessler has now awarded the Obama campaign three Pinocchios for the crime of believing what Mitt Romney told the SEC.
rob!
I think you’ll enjoy Sullivan sticking it to Kessler today: http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/07/the-bain-of-his-campaign-ctd.html
rikyrah
@Blue Neponset:
:
stop repeating this falsehood.
that’s what I learned last night.
it was not 100k in salary.
it was AT LEAST 100K IN SALARY.
the REAL amount in salary – IS IN THE TAX RETURNS
Catsy
@catpal:
This, this right here.
The SEC filings allow a little wiggle room, because they let Romney claim that he had nothing to do with the company and had already effectively left. It’s bullshit and it says all sorts of unflattering things about his competence and leadership, but it gives him an out with people who are just glancing at the story, or looking for a reason to believe him.
But Romney gave sworn testimony that he had an active role at Bain during that time. Worse, he gave that testimony specifically to ensure his eligibility to run for office.
There is no wiggling out of that. Because every time he claims he had no active role at Bain after 1999, he is effectively saying that he committed perjury and was ineligible to run for governor.
As far as what the truth actually is, I think the overwhelming weight of the evidence is that he was still actively working at Bain during that time, and lied about it when he realized it might be a political liability because that’s all he does.
Heliopause
Doug is aiming for a Moore Award just about every week. I think he might have a dependency problem. Intervention?
jon
Saying someone belongs in front of a firing squad rather than some media cameras is a horrible call for censorship! As a result, DougJ should be kicked off the intertubes forever and the permanent record scrubbed of all references to his heretic writings.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Catsy:
This is why the local media markets in MA have disappointed me so much about this.
We very well might have had a fraudulent governor from 2002-2006. You’d think this would be story #1 or #2 up here, but… crickets.
If (current Dem gov) Deval Patrick had been caught doing the same thing, Howie Carr, Dan Rhea, Keller-at-Large and the rest of the screaming talk-radio monkeys would be all over the story like flies on a turd.
More than anything else, it’s the blatant double standard that has me so enraged about this. “Nation of Laws, not Men” my arse.
Haydnseek
Gergen? Firing squad? Dibs on the pearls and the fainting couch!
eli
“Firing squad” is daft. I don’t put up with assassination rhetoric on the right, I don’t want to see those on my side droop to the same crap. Just being ruthlessly correct should suffice. Best leave the violent revenge fantasies to the mouth-breathers.
eli
“Firing squad” is daft. I don’t put up with assassination rhetoric on the right, I don’t want to see those on my side droop to the same crap. Just being ruthlessly correct should suffice. Best leave the violent revenge fantasies to the mouth-breathers.
jon
A firing squad isn’t an assassination, you nitwits! Even death squads at least have a quasi-governmental function. You people will be fucking useless in the revolution! Sub-useless!