True to his word (for a change), team Romney finally released an ad today that flat out calls President Obama a ‘liar’ and dishonest and so on for saying things about Mitt’s business record that we now know are true. The ad cites the judgment of Glenn Kessler, chief fact checker at the Washington Post Kaplan, Inc. loss leader.
Maybe Kessler could argue his case with what he knew at the time, but today’s news (which should have credited TPM and MoJo for original reporting, but did not) would make most people think twice about calling a statement that is now clearly true “misleading, unfair and untrue”.
Needless to say Kessler is not most people. Having made his judgment, dammit, Keller defends it with an argument that rests on two legs. One, the SEC guy who gave a quote might have a motive.
The story seems to hinge on a quote from a former Securities and Exchange commissioner, which would have more credibility if the Globe had disclosed she was a regular contributor to Democrats.
Um, ok. The SEC filings themselves did not donate to any political party and should not be similarly tainted, but I guess we should ignore those. Two, being owner, board chariman, president and CEO of a firm does not necessarily mean that a guy runs the firm.
What does the Obama campaign have in rebuttal? Very little, and none of it convincing in our judgment.
Much of the Obama campaign’s letter is devoted to quoting portions of documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In summary, the letter states there are “at least 63 filings with that agency after March 1, 1999 that list various Bain entities and describe them as ‘wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.’” That’s true, but not relevant.
We have never disputed that Romney remained the owner of Bain while he was running the Olympics committee. The issue always has been, who was running Bain? Nothing in the SEC documents contradicts what Romney has certified as true.
Outsourcing and abortion services? That’s totally not my bag, baby.
Comrade Mary
Kessler has no shame, does he?
hells littlest angel
Glenn who?
The Bain story dug Romney’s grave, and Joe Biden just nailed shut his gold-plated coffin. Next stop for Romney is Kolob.
Trentrunner
This is really delicious. Please let the media take 2-3 weeks to hash all this out on the airwaves and online. Yes, let’s get to the very very bottom of what the outsourcing/offshoring CEO Director Chairman of the Board Owner knew and when he knew it.
Mwah ha ha ha. It doesn’t hurt that Romney is himself a grade-A asshole.
Do what you do, media. Swirl around bullshit for a month. Right into Labor Day.
Hey, and what about Mitt’s tax returns?
LGRooney
Anything else you need to know about the cowering-from-the-GOP press in America?
burnspbesq
Ridiculous. Kessler has reached the point-and-laugh stage of his career.
eric
So, the business is 100% his and according to Kessler, we must assume he had no input despite the fact that the titles listed on SEC filings usually mean something like “i was overseeing the business” or “i exercised due care in supervising others” But, no. According kessler, there is no reason to think that the SEC filings are true in the way they are true for every other filer of such documents. Toady, does not cover it.
If Bain did business with other persons and those other persons did business because of Romney’s stated involvement, then that is fraud. Bain was Romney and Romney was Bain. To believe Romney is to disbelieve the way legitimate companies do business and report their affairs to the SEC.
burnspbesq
@Trentrunner:
The heck with his tax returns. I’d like to see his FBARs.
amk
Boston Globe busted the balls of wapo by scooping the story (at least in msm) and they give this piss poor know nothing ignoramus in return ? Way to go into irrelevancy wapo.
Hill Dweller
Kessler is such a f’n hack. He questions the former SEC official’s motive because she donated to Dems, but takes Romney, a compulsive liar, at his word.
AnonPhenom
Also too:
Southern Beale
Yeah it’s interesting Romney’s ad debuts the same day all of the news is reporting Romney lied about not being CEO of Bain after 1999 when the SEC shows he was.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Think of the things this story gives Obama:
1. If Romney says that while he was in-name charge of Bain, he really didn’t know what was going on, Obama can ask if this is how he’s going to run the country.
2. If Romney says that some underling misfiled these, then Obama can talk about how Romney is willing to blame others to save his skin.
3. Anything else Romney says can be labeled as mismanagement.
amk
twitterdom
Yet another pathetic attempt from the rw to muzzle the truth.
Darius
Haha, wow, Kessler really screwed the pooch on this one.
@Southern Beale: Bad timing for Romney, if you ask me. The “liar” narrative is going to boomerang and bite him in the ass.
Randy
I’d love to think that this is the lie that will finally do some real damage Rmoney, but I doubt it.
I can hope, though.
Roger Moore
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The biggest thing is that he appears to have told different branches of the US government different things. He told the SEC that he was the boss of Bain until 2002, while he told election officials that he stopped being boss in 1999. Unless he was somehow boss under SEC standards but not under election standards, he must have been lying to somebody.
Violet
Someone commented in the previous thread about how the MSM wasn’t going to look into this because it would hurt the horse race narrative and thus ratings.
I think that’s still an option, but for ratings, the only thing better than a horse race would be a complete meltdown of one of the candidates. If Romney implodes and still tries to hang on for the convention, other candidates fight him at the convention, especially Paul and his dedicated followers, that’s fireworks and ratings galore.
I think the media is still on the fence as to which way they will go with it, but I’m sure a few have considered this option.
General Stuck
Them ‘filings’ prolly writ on tree hugger eco terror recycled paper, or worse, hemp. No telling what that did to Romney’s words.
JPL
@Hill Dweller: plus Kessler has a long nose and it keeps growing longer.
Turgidson
@LGRooney:
Seriously.
Jesus fucking Christ, if the roles were reversed here, the House would have already voted to impeach Obama and even the liberal New York Times would be questioning whether Obama still has the moral authority to be president.
Romney gets caught in a bald lie and self-proclaimed media fact checking watchdogs get caught totally fucking blowing it? Meh, whatever, this is bad news for Obama because they don’t have the whole thing on videotape. God dammit. It’s a wonder this country has staggered this far with such fucking repellant clowns wielding influence.
Bulworth
Why does the story ‘hinge’ on a quote? What does an SEC commissioner’s quote have to do with the actual filings?
cmorenc
There’s both bad news and good news for the Romney campaign in the timing of today’s new revelations about the SEC filings and the 1999 Bain investment in a Chinese job-offshoring company: ALSO RELEASED TODAY is the Penn State report, which will suck a substantial portion of the media oxygen out of attention to the fresh Bain revelations. This will give the Romney campaign more time to manufacture a response and attempt to gain control of the narrative before less distracted media attention is focused on it.
Also, as relatively easy as it is for us typical BJers to follow the latest Romney revelations, the story is a bit more complex to be quickly absorbed by the general public, unless it can be succinctly, simply packaged in a memorable way AND the Obama campaign can prod the media into picking up on it instead of allowing the Romney campaign to use its breathing room to obfuscate and attempt to bury it. So much easier to understand the JoePa & Penn State coverup than the Romney coverup.
Turgidson
@Darius:
You’d hope so, but some anonymous poster at DailyKos called Obama a liar once, so if anything they’re both liars.
Anoniminous
Unless the regulations have been changed – I don’t keep track of that shit anymore but I think I’d heard if they had been – SEC filings are public documents. It would have taken an intern about 2 hours to truck on over to the SEC office and look at the paperwork.
THAT, of course, would not be proper journalism as practiced by the WaPo.
muddy
@Violet: I would be glad to boost their ratings watching the rabid creatures tear one another to shreds. I might even watch Fox to see how they are trying to pretend this is a good thing for the party – “not like the communist demosheeple”.
I don’t usually go for reality shows, but that would be some sweet tv.
jimmiraybob
Ran this through the FutureTron 5000 (settings: Romney Presidency 2015):
“We have never disputed that Romney remained the president of America while he was running various other concerns. The issue always has been, who was running America?”
It appears that the always efficient business model really will set us free.
RP
Kessler’s story is really remarkable.
RaflW
It looks like we may get a towfer: Romney in massive damage control mode, and Kessler making it plain as day that he’s an arrogant asshole who is in the tank for Romney.
General Stuck
I need some help decoding a little wingnut. No surprise the whiz kids over at Powerline up in their arms that the liberal MSM is writing “silly gotcha” stuff on their candidate, Mitt Romney. But am puzzled at the following.
How does one “lie” to their “autobiography” and is it against any law other than sour grapes doctrine from butthurt wingnut bloggers.
Scratches head/
hep kitty
“Obama is a liar”
Okay, stop right there. “Obamacare” = “Romneycare” The biggest lie of all is that “Romneycare” would destroy America, right Mitt?
I can’t wait to ask everyone who says they despise and fear Obamacare (I prefer ACA) how they can vote for the man who created the model for Obamacare?
Bulworth
Is Glenn Kessler Romney’s publicist/campaign manager?
Dave
Filing false financial disclosure forms…pretty sure that qualifies as a felony.
jimmiraybob
Then ran through the PastTron 6200 (settings: Similarities):
“We have never disputed that George W remained the president of America while he was running various other concerns, such as Texas bushwacking. The issue always has been, who was running America?”
Dang. The test model’s already been run.
Bulworth
Fxd
Jon Rockoford
Sorry, off topic alert: Steve M. and BJ on CJR: http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/manufactured_quotes.php?page=2 about Olivo, Npr, etc.
burnspbesq
@Anoniminous:
Ever heard of EDGAR? SEC filings have been on-line since 1995.
TaMara (BHF)
That ad has been running in the Denver Market for weeks. Welcome to a battleground state. I may shoot my TV and Radio before the presidential season it over. And now they’re invading my HULU.
When is someone going to come out and call RMoney a liar and list all the fact checking to substantiate it?
Oh, right, I forgot, we’re Dems we don’t do that. Sigh.
amk
The screws are being tightened on mittbot
Stef Cutter of Obama campaign (via politico)
The lying fucker is boxed in either way. By his own fucking lies.
Violet
@General Stuck: Poor wording, I think they meant “lied in his autobiography.” Apparently at least one of the women he writes about in his books, an old girlfriend, is a composite of a couple of women. Or something. Therefore he lied. Nevermind that he was trying to give the woman/women some privacy.
Turgidson
From Sargeant at the Plum Line:
Kinda makes you think the Obama team has their ducks in a row on this one. Would be fun if they’re sitting on some smoking gun evidence to refute whatever bullshit Romney and his press enablers trot out to try to defuse the issue.
beltane
Maybe a grand jury needs to be convened to get to the bottom of this.
Anoniminous
@burnspbesq:
Yes I have. But in a proper investigation one checks the original document(s.) (YMMV)
General Stuck
@Violet:
Yea, I remember now. Thanks. But didn’t Obama say in the prologue of his book(s), that some of the characters were going to be ‘composites’ of people he knew?
buckethead
These days, I’m rarely amazed at the lengths our media will go to to carry water for Republicans, but this amazes me.
Brian R.
Kessler is getting HAMMERED in the comments there, but the “top comments” are all low-rated ones that approve of him.
LGRooney
@Dave: I think only after SOx came into effect.
JPL
@Turgidson: Good news for Sarah Palin. You know she is drooling at the news. Her party loves her.
burnspbesq
@Dave:
The filing has to be false as to a “material” matter, which is normally defined as something that would have caused a reasonable investor to act differently had he/she known the truth.
If Romney and his apologists have to argue about materiality, they have a big, big problem.
Violet
@Turgidson: I hope they drip, drip, drip it out and Romney is left wondering what they have, do they have ALL of it? Do they really know about THIS or THAT?
Worry, worry, squirm, squirm, as each new explanation only addresses what’s been released, not the whole story. Because he can’t explain the whole thing since that’ll prove him the liar he says he’s not.
Drip, drip, drip.
Rafer Janders
What? What? WHAT????
amk
Obama rubbing it in
Brian R.
@amk:
Boom. Exactly.
I love Cutter. She’s the best Democratic communications person in ages.
Rafer Janders
Um, no. Not it does not. The story does not “hinge on” a quote — it hinges on the actual SEC filings. The quote merely restates what is already in the filings.
Rafer Janders
@Anoniminous:
SEC filings are available online. It should have taken a report about 2 minutes to pull them from the site.
amk
@Turgidson: You betcha. Also. Too.
Fry this fucker.
Older_Wiser
Rmoney’s MA tax returns verify the SEC filings for those years, BTW.
“Lying for the Lord” Romney is done. Stick a fork in him.
Roger Moore
@Violet:
The other thing the media has to consider is the 24 hour news cycle. They may prefer the horse race narrative over the long haul, but they know that a scandal will win this cycle. If somebody else is breaking a scandal, they have to be on it too or face irrelevance. That short-term need to trump the other media outlets can wind up driving the overall narrative even if each individual company would really prefer a horse race.
kindness
Jesus have you read the comments over at the WaPo for this article?
The hamsters are spinning their wheels overdrive to contain the damage. They are still denying it even with the SEC docs.
Lying sacks of shit.
RSA
@Turgidson: Sargent also makes the point that people naturally expect the CEO/chairman of the board/sole stockholder to actually take some responsibility for the actions of a company.
Romney seems to think that an inversion of “I was only following orders” will work. “Hey, I was only making money–I have no idea what was going on.”
rikyrah
Only a rich, entitled White man like Willard could think that he should be elected President of a country:
1. he refused to serve when asked to (military)
2. that he doesn’t want to pay taxes to
3. that isn’t good enough for him to invest his money in.
Hill Dweller
@General Stuck: They’re probably referring to the hacks at Politico, who claimed Obama lied in his autobiography. They alleged Obama lied about some women’s identities in is first book, until it was pointed out to them he clearly states in the prologue some of the characters are composites. Politico then tried saying Obama didn’t inform people of the composites in the first printing, but that was also proven false.
It was a pathetic display from Politico, but they still enjoy credibility among the Villagers. Of course the wingnuts still hold on to the original erroneous reporting.
General Stuck
@Roger Moore:
Very true. Scandal sells, and makes careers. They can’t help themselves once they get a whiff.
Zach
I recommend everyone submit a tip for the WP fact checker blog to fact check Kessler’s last post.
jibeaux
@General Stuck: Now that is hilarious. I am picturing him holding up a copy of the book and saying to it, “yeah, Morgan Fairchild, yeah, that’s the ticket!”
Violet
@Roger Moore: You’re right about that. Everyone will be afraid to be left out of the scandal du jour. But a scandal can have legs. John Edwards’ did. Clinton and Lewinsky did. If this undercut’s Mitt’s candidacy, with the convention looming, that’s nothing but delicious day after day scandal. Especially with a possible felony, the SEC involved (the public hates rich bankers and CEOs right now, what’s better for ratings than a Presidential candidate who may turn out to be yet another scummy one of those guys?), plus Ron Paul’s delegates ready to fight.
The whole thing is a delicious scandal stew. The networks will be salivating.
burnspbesq
@Anoniminous:
Since about 1997, Ks and Qs have been filed electronically only. What’s on EDGAR is the original.
Anonne
Sounds a lot like the ad that has been running in Florida for weeks, except it uses Hillary Clinton’s “Shame on you Barack Obama” line.
Davis X. Machina
“Hey, they put papers in front of me. I sign the papers. What’s the big deal? In fact, that’s what a president, hell, the President does. That and schmooze
potential investorsforeign leaders.”JPL
“You can’t expect me to tell the truth, gosh darn, I’m running for President”
Brian R.
@Zach:
Brilliant.
amk
When even your personal ball licker sez this, you’re toast
feebog
I already posted the Boston Globe story on my facebook page. It may be too complicated for the average voter, but it is going to leave a lot of conservatives sputtering.
Bulworth
@Rafer Janders: This is apparently a new entry in the Beltway media elite protection racket: SEC documents don’t mean anything; the fact that someone “owns” a business doesn’t mean they have anything to do with that business, and all you nail-polishers need to leave the He Men and Women of Industry allloonnnnneeee.
Turgidson
@amk:
Assuming the Obama campaign does have this teed up to milk for all it’s worth, let me just say it’s so fucking awesome to have a Democratic campaign team that’s actually good at this whole elections thing. And not afraid to put on some fucking brass knuckles when called for.
Bob Shrum, bless his well-meaning but massively incompetent heart, clearly doesn’t have anyone’s ear in this campaign.
General Stuck
Mittens Willard Romney
Bulworth
@feebog: Yeah but my uncle’s cousin’s neighbor who used to go to high school with my aunt’s nephew sent me a chain email about Obama that is Totally Serious.
Turgidson
@Turgidson:
This is OT but related to my “these guys are good” comment. The campaign’s statement about the GOP’s “zomg Chavez!” hissy fit yesterday was also quite good:
quannlace
Saw the VP’s speech at NAACP today. I do love me some Biden!
Brian R.
Does anyone remember when the Washington Post had actual … fuck, what were they called? … journalists?
Litlebritdifrnt
Don’t know how many of you are on twitter but Joan Walsh is taking the piss out of Michelle Malkin for thinking that Joe Biden was talking about Jeremiah Wright when he discussed a “Reverend Wright” who’s church he used to sit in.
Cris (without an H)
@Rafer Janders: WHAT?
scav
@Davis X. Machina: I think they have to be able to pick up telephone receivers at 2 am as well. Something like that.
Brian R.
@Turgidson:
Daaaaamn! That’s well played.
amk
@RSA: I am so stealing this
Violet
@Turgidson: Oooohhhhhh, that is good. “They’re acting like he’s ten feet tall.” “They’re only giving him the attention he wants.” Beautiful. Romney and his campaign are a bunch of middle schoolers that need to be taught how to deal with bullies and grandstanders. Excellent.
rea
@Violet: Apparently at least one of the women he writes about in his books, an old girlfriend, is a composite of a couple of women. Or something. Therefore he lied. Nevermind that he was trying to give the woman/women some privacy.
And you know, it isn’t as if he didn’t say right in the book that he was doing that.
amk
Dems getting their act together. Finally.
@ChrisVanHollen
Today @NancyPelosi & I announced petition to bring #DISCLOSEact to a vote. GOP can’t con’t to run away from disclosure
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Rafer Janders: Make it ten minutes. The intern will probably have to go through the EDGAR tutorial first.
This assumes that he knows what a 10-K is.
Turgidson
@quannlace:
He’s been killing it in every excerpt I’ve seen of his speeches for weeks if not months.
He’s portraying the proper amount of urgency about the stakes of the election, disgust for Romney/GOP, and also is clearly enjoying himself.
I was always sort of meh on Biden when he was a Senator and wasn’t that thrilled when Obama picked him for VP. But, Obama is smarter than me. Biden was a really good choice.
amk
@Turgidson: ooo, stop giving me orgasms.
Roger Moore
@Turgidson:
Competence. It’s nice to see it in at least one candidate.
eric
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): A 10K is a romney wager. duh.
NotMax
Romney’s campaign is accomplishing one thing, which is making the last multi-millionaire who ran for president via touting his business acumen – Herbert Hoover – look positively saintly.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
Especially because arguing that the identity of the 100% shareholder, chairman, and CEO is not material seems like an uphill battle.
Violet
@rea: Well yeah, but that’s not a good story.
Cermet
@Violet: When you say
There has been no felony committed in any way or fashion by that shit hole Mitt on the national level; as long as the SEC papers are valid he can say ANYTHING to the public and reporters and it is legal – called free speach. What he files to State agencies is another matter but that depends on the State laws (here he may have done something wrong but that is gonna be hard to prove and may be no more than a minor offense of rules. To rise to felony level is not likely.)
the Conster
@Turgidson:
They’ve prepared to run against Romney since he first announced. I read that they believed he was the only one of the candidates who announced that had the resources and the campaign staff to prevail, so they’re playing their cards like they know how Romney’s going to play his cards, because they know what his cards are.
Mino
@amk: Stefanie Cutter wraps it up with a bow. She’s one of the best Dem debaters/surrogates I’ve seen in a long time.
trollhattan
It would appear that the campaign 2012 strategy can be summarized as Rope-a-(filthy rich)Dope.
lacp
At least Kessler didn’t do something unpardonable, like saying that Willard was more comfortable around white people.
Downpuppy
@Anoniminous: SEC filings are submitted electronically by the companies & posted to Edgar. It’s not like there’s a pile of paper retyped or summarized.
joeyess
@Dave: This:
Yeah, that.
Heliopause
Tim, you don’t understand, this is the post-accountability era.
Rafer Janders
@Turgidson:
That…is a thing of beauty.
This is how you play the game: insert knife. Now twist slowly, first clock-wise, then reversing into a smooth counter-clockwise motion. Repeat as needed.
Rafer Janders
@amk:
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that….
Roger Moore
@Violet:
Another point is that the supposed fear that SuperPACs won’t spend if the Presidential election isn’t close seems dubious. The SuperPACs already have a ton of money; they aren’t going to sit on it just because Rmoney crashed and burned. If they don’t think they can influence the Presidential race, they’ll try to influence Senate and Congress races, or important State races. That money is going to get spent on political ads one way or another. If anything, a Romney crash and burn would be good for media outlets in non-swing states, since it would guarantee more spending on local races across the country, rather than concentrating it in swing states.
Rafer Janders
@Cermet:
Yes, but he’s now saying that the SEC filings were not valid. That’s the problem. “Free speech” is rather limited when it comes to the accuracy of public securities filings.
Turgidson
@the Conster:
For sure. They’ve probably been doing oppo on Romney since 2009, and maybe had already started during the last cycle.
It must have also been nice for his campaign to rest easy that if Romney somehow lost to one of those clown car freaks in the GOP primary, the general election campaign would be as simple as “point and laugh!” Which they’re doing a pretty good job of reducing Romney to as well, if I don’t say.
I remember from 2004, every Bush campaign statement read like an amused, disdainful dismissal of the most recent Kerry campaign attack. Of course I found that infuriating being on the other side (and knowing BushCo were a bunch of lying assholes), but it sure is nice being the side pointing and laughing this time. I just hope they can keep it up.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@amk
:The lying fucker is boxed in either way. By his own fucking lies.It really shows how out of touch Mittens is. All of this would have solved if Mitten’s never lied about it in the first place and this out there with his own spin on it years ago.
JCT
@Turgidson: I saw this — the Obama campaign *loves* to tweak Romney as some sort of scaredy-cat sissy with Daddy issues. It must make brave, brave Sir
RobinMittens completely nuts. Delicious.amk
@JPL: stolen.
NCSteve
Jesus Screaming Christ on a whole wheat cracker!
Romney represents to the fucking SEC in a filing made under penalty of perjury, punishable under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 perjury section by up to 20 years in the slammer, that he was Chairman of the Board, CEO and President of the fucking company and Kessler doesn’t consider that meaningful evidence that a serial liar’s unsworn statement during the course of a political campaign claim that he wasn’t running the thing is a lie?
Seriously?
So, basically, for two years, there was a company with its fingers in billions of dollars worth of corporate assets that was running with no management or executive involvement or oversight by its Chairman of the Board, the Chief Fucking Executive Officer, or its President? Well, who the fuck was running the goddamn thing, then, Glen, his secretary? The mail room clerk? The pissboy?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Dunno, but it’s about time for whoever it is to draw their gladii get busy carving the praetorians up, because they’re more corrupt and evil that Nero.
Litlebritdifrnt
Even Sully is piling on
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/07/the-bain-1.html
the Conster
@NCSteve:
Glen Kessler has tied himself to the mast of the SS. Romney that has just taken another torpedo below the waterline. Be glad his career is going down with the ship.
dp
They all need to brush up on the first rule of holes.
Violet
@Cermet: The felony part comes in if the SEC filings are not true. Then he’s lied to the SEC. As Rafer Janders pointed out, he’s now saying the SEC filings aren’t valid. Can’t wait to see how he tries to worm out of that one.
Litlebritdifrnt
They really are beginning to look like amateurs “Mitt Romney Campaign Scraps $50,000 Per Plate Jerusalem Fundraiser On A Jewish Fasting Day”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12/mitt-romney-jerusalem-fundraiser_n_1668271.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003
Brian R.
Be sure to check out the comments at the Kessler piece.
He’s getting hammered 30-to-1 in there, but the “top comments” are from the asskissers, even though they only have a couple recommends. It’s beyond pathetic.
slag
I love how seriously Republicans take their “personal responsibility” mantra.
“I own the company and am the company CEO and yet…IT WASN’T MY FAULT!”
What’s next? Locusts? A terrible flood?
And here they want to hold Obama solely accountable for an economy that, primarily, they created and that they’re still sabotaging to this very day.
The Other Chuck
What kind of countertops does the SEC official have? We deserve to know!
srv
Someone needs to start asking for Mitt’s phone and email records during the period as evidence of his non-involvement.
Linda Featheringill
@Turgidson: #77
Ouch.
[Boy, am I glad I’m not in a bitch fight with Team Obama!]
trollhattan
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Am beginning to wonder whether Willard did a friendly acquisition of Meg Whitman’s campaign crew, because they seem similarly inept at everthing other than spending heroic wads of cash.
amk
Factfuckingcheck org weighs in finally
“We see little new in the Globe piece. So far nobody has shown that Romney was actually managing Bain (even part-time) during his time at the Olympics, or that he was anything but a passive, absentee owner during that time, as both Romney and Bain have long said,” Brooks Jackson, a co-author of the FactCheck piece, told POLITICO today.
Roger Moore
@srv:
Sorry, but they were all mysteriously destroyed at about the time Mitt decided to run for President. It’s a complete coincidence, and anyone who suggest otherwise deserves Four Pinocchios with their Pants on Fire.
NonyNony
@NCSteve:
You know, even if it were true that Romney’s name was on the papers but he wasn’t making the decisions – how exactly does that make it good for Romney?
Either Romney was in charge or he wasn’t. If he was in charge he’s responsible for Bain’s decisions – good or bad. If he WASN’T in charge but his name was on the SEC paperwork saying he was … how does that make him look like the kind of responsible individual people want to have as a President?
scav
I wonder if in 2016, forms will be found that assert that RomBott’12 wasn’t actually technically in charge of this campaign so he can’t be called a failed presidential candidate.
Davis X. Machina
@the Conster: There’s a plethora of lifeboats big and small, media, think-tank, academic.
Don’t worry about Mr. Kessler.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
I dearly wish he’d hire Carly Fiorina’s. I’d love to see more ads from the creator of Demon Sheep.
amk
@the Conster: Nice analogy for all players.
Litlebritdifrnt
@NonyNony:
Or as someone else said upthread, if he couldn’t be involved in Bain cause he was too busy running the Olympics what makes him think he can run the country?
JPL
The NYTimes Caucus has an article mentioning Obama’s statement about CEO Romney and questioning Romney’s truthfulness.. My comment is not posted but basically I said …
Truthfulness? You are better than that either Romney signed fraudulent paperwork with the SEC or lied to the American public. Neither of those fall under the category of truthfulness.
NotMax
Dear Mitt,
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with it as you normally don’t inconvenience yourself with such paltry sums, but the operative phrase is “The Buck Stops Here.”
Yours from the afterlife,
Harry Truman
elmo
I particularly liked the dismissal of the SEC rep.
Government employee describing public documents = not to be trusted, incentive to lie, donated to other candidate.
Candidate himself, contradicting what he said in public documents = to be trusted implicitly, no incentive to lie whatsoever.
Brian R.
As someone noted in the WaPo thread, Mitt’s been claiming credit for all the jobs Bain created during the early 2000s at Staples and elsewhere. He can’t have it both ways.
Roger Moore
@Brian R.:
Of course he can. He’s a MOTU, so he’s entitled to his own reality. It’s only peons who can’t have things both ways all the time.
Valdivia
sorry isn’t this the FactChecker equivalent of technically true but collectively nonsense famous quip by McMegan?
Violet
@Brian R.: Savannah Guthrie asked Mitt’s rep this question on the Today Show. He stumbled trying to answer. She didn’t follow up, but it was clear he was uncomfortable and didn’t have a good answer so settled for talking points.
scav
@Brian R.: Privatize the upsides, socialize the downsides. He’s only responsible for the good stuff that happened, it was in his contract.
JPL
@Brian R.: Yes he can because everyone knows he would have approved of the job creation but disapproved of the fetus thing.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
That would be pretty sweet. Instead of sheep they could dress all the Osmonds in Emperor Palpatine Palpatine robes, complete with glowing red eyes.
amk
Suddenly dems are developing backbones
Glad to see dems are not wimping out on this as they usually do.
quannlace
But I thought the campaign is now saying the Sec filings aren’t valid.
See, he’s such an experienced, hands-on business man who can turn this economy around.
Martin
Obama campaign is digging in hard on this. They aren’t going to drop it – they smell blood – and rightly so. I think Mitt is truly fucked here.
pseudonymous in nc
@Turgidson:
It’s a gift that keeps giving:
– “I created all those jobs at Bain!” // “So you’re taking responsibility for the years when Bain-owned companies were outsourcing and offshoring jobs as well?”
– “I signed the forms saying I was boss, but that was just paperwork! I wasn’t in charge!” // “Is that what you’re planning to do in the White House?”
Turgidson
@amk:
Shorter Factcheck: (with hands on ears and eyes shut) “LALALALALALA WE CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!!”
What clowns.
Rafer Janders
@amk:
When your defense boils down to “I was passive and absentee”, well, it’s not exactly a strong recommendation for why we should pick him as president. Considering he also basically checked out of being governor of Massachusetts the last two years he was in that job.
Jack
I completely buy that Romney wasn’t running Bain those last few years because he was running the Olympics. He wasn’t running Massachusetts towards the end of his term as Governor because he was running for President.
My question is – if he wins the presidency, how long will he do that job until he gets bored and moves on to something else? Two years? Three?
IM
superman
Close, so close.
Actually the Obama campaign is turning Romney into Lex Luthor.
trollhattan
TBogg notes Ann’s prancing pony (“Pop n Lock”) lives better than you or I. Nice diggs.
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2012/07/11/to-the-manor-barn/
amk
@LOLGOP
pseudonymous in nc
You have to wonder whether the fart-chuckers are under instruction to stop this election from being declared a walkover by September.
amk
Iceland Has Hired An Ex-Cop To Hunt Down The Bankers That Wrecked Its Economy
Order for tumbrels too.
JPL
“It’s hard work asking the govmint to bail out the Olympics. How was I suppose to know as chief executive officer that Bain was disposing of fetuses and outsourcing. Golly, gee!”
Litlebritdifrnt
Bain responds and someone tweets
NonyNony
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Meh. Taking a leave of absence from a job to focus on something important is understandable. I mean it’s a luxury for most of us – how many people can really afford to take an unpaid leave of absence from their job to go work on a private project – but understandable.
The part that ISN’T understandable is that if he’s the Chairman, CEO and sole shareholder of the company then IT’S HIS FUCKING COMPANY and he’s responsible for it. It’s as if I own a dog and instead of kenneling her when I go off on a trip I just leave the dog in my backyard with some food and water and tell her to be good. If my dog jumps the fence and mauls a few people, I can’t get off the hook by saying “well sure my name is on the dog’s registration and I’m the sole owner, but I was out of town when she did that so you can’t hold me responsible for her actions”.
It just doesn’t work. And from what I’ve read, Bain did a lot more damage to people than a hungry dog let loose on a neighborhood.
And that’s without even touching the legal questions about the filing of fraudulent SEC documents here.
Thor Heyerdahl
@Zach:
Done! Thanks for the tip
scav
@Litlebritdifrnt: Give them a litte time. Bain’s got to backdate things and remember what letterhead and kerning they used then.
Guard LiveBlog
Turgidson
@Zach:
That, or to fact-check whether Kessler currently has severe head trauma that caused him to write such a steaming pile of horseshit.
JPL
@NonyNony: Give him a break.. He was in the oval office talking to Condi and Bush about bail outs and the Olympics. It took quite a few exercises to convince them it was necessary.
Rafer Janders
@NonyNony:
Yes, but most of us don’t get paid $100,000 a year while on that leave of absence. Again, one of his strongest defenses has turned out to be “I got paid $100K for a no-show, no-responsibility fake job.”
Not sure how well that’s going to go over with working and middle-class voters who actually have to, you know, show up and work in order to get paid.
the Conster
@NonyNony:
I’ve worked with corporate lawyers forever, and our clients who file SEC documents would never, EVER in a million years sign an SEC document about their company if they didn’t know about absolutely everything they were attesting to. NEVER. The lawyer that prepares these things for you would be liable for malpractice if they let you. Everyone with any knowledge of business and/or law knows now that he’s just a filthy lying liar. Whether it changes peoples’ minds about voting for him is another thing entirely.
patroclus
@amk: Well, I see little new in the “response” from FactCheck. So far, no one has shown that Romney was not the sole owner and CEO of Bain until 2002; instead of, he has consistently claimed, 1999. He made election filings stating 1999, he has campaigned on 1999 being the key date, FactCheck “verified” that it was 1999, and, instead, it’s 2002. So, howsoever absentee he, as CEO from 1999-2002, may have been, he nonetheless was the owner and CEO, for that period. And, he therefore is responsible for what Bain did during that period. As even absentee owners and CEO’s always are.
So, whatever outsourcing, overleveraging, plant closings and worker firings that were done by Bain during the period from 1999-2002 are Romney’s responsibility.
Berial
Sigh. I can hear the wingnut response to this whole thing already. It’ll go something like this:
amk
politifact has caught romney’s pants on fire on many issues. Guess only 200% blatant lies qualify for this.
Litlebritdifrnt
@scav: Thanks for the link, from there this little snippet.
slag
@NonyNony:
Or as if you reasoned that the responsible place to put the dog during your road trip was on the roof of your car. What could go wrong?
kay
@NonyNony:
That part is bullshit too, apparently:
JPL
@scav: Nice! Thanks for posting that.
Hill Dweller
I’s trying my best not to get my hopes up, but this is starting to feel like the Obama campaign is rolling this out in stages, letting the usual cast of hacks stake their reputations on defending Willard, only to drop the hammer with definitive proof of his involvement after ’99.
rikyrah
@amk:
goddamn.
this is beautiful.
the Conster
@Berial:
His taxes have gone down. That’s the answer.
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
It wasn’t unpaid. He was getting $100K/year from Bain during those years he was supposedly on a leave of absence. Now maybe Romney can treat $100K/year as not being paid, but that just goes to show how far his existence is from the 99%.
amk
@Berial: Who gives a shite about what wingnuts think ? They can and will continue to vote for shooting themselves in their face.
redshirt
@Berial: You got. As always, newspaper comments sections are the best and fastest way to gauge how the wingnuts will respond. Go check out some of the wonderful comments on the Globe’s story.
Summed: “You stupid liberal hate Americans that actually work!”
slag
@Berial: So, the Rmoneys of the world get all the benefits of being “job creators” and “economic drivers” without retaining any of the responsibility for the job creation or economic performance. Nice place to be. Heads they win; tails you lose.
burnspbesq
FactCheck:
If that is true, then it becomes awfully difficult to avoid the conclusion that all of SEC filings in question were materially false.
danimal
This one’s got legs, and it appears that camp Obama is going to let the story develop in dribs and drabs. Rmoney is in real trouble, because the average American is going to see the story as complicated, but “if there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
Unless there’s an email from Rmoney ordering a subordinate to outsource American jobs, the story won’t be a kill shot, but it will definitely be a powerful body blow, sucking up media time and defining Rmoney as who he is.
NonyNony
@kay:
Wait wait wait.
So he’s claiming that he took a PAID leave of absence from the company where he’s CEO, sole share holder and Chairman to go do unpaid work for the Olympic bid, but he had no input in what the company did during that time?
Not only does that not pass the smell test, the stench from that might be flammable.
I could see him making that defense if someone else were the CEO while he was gone, but if he’s the CEO of record then he’s responsible.
Expecting people to believe that he wasn’t actually responsible for the job he was drawing a salary for while he was away really does show his contempt for the thought processes of “normal” people, doesn’t it?
scav
‘nother thought. 1999 to 2002. That’s Three, Four years where RommBott wandered off and apparently didn’t bother managing something because something else more interesting turned up. What if governing a country don’t catch his fancy? Do we backdate the election?
Litlebritdifrnt
Ha Ha from the Guardian Liveblog
Turgidson
What makes this story so awesome is that even if this explanation is totally true (and I have a feeling we’ll be educated to the contrary soon enough), it still makes Romney look like a dipshit on more than one level and will damage him.
And if they’re bullshitting us and get pantsed even further than they already have, that will be worse.
Comrade Mary
Nice piece from the Business Insider:
twiffer
look, just because he was owner, board chairman and CEO doesn’t mean he knew what the company was doing. just like those poor guys at ENRON! they had no idea what the company was doing, it was all the people that worked for them that did bad things! and that’s why they got off scot fre…oh, wait, no. they went to jail for fraud.
it’s almost as if being a company CEO means you’re responsible for what it does!
Rafer Janders
@burnspbesq:
And if Romney wasn’t managing Bain, then who was? If someone other than Romney was the actual manager, then that should have been disclosed in the SEC filings, and if it was not, then that’s a felony, since the whole point of filing with the SEC is to establish a public, verifiable record of who actually has their hands on the controls.
Bobby Thomson
As toxic as it is for him to argue that
(1) he got paid six figures every year to do absolutely nothing, and
(2) that his job as CEO was so inconsequential that he didn’t even need to hire an interim while he was away (suggesting that even when he was “at” Bain, he did jack shit), and
(3) that he’s such a lightweight that he couldn’t even perform those meaningless tasks (that required no replacement) while also working on the Olympics,
his people obviously have decided that the alternative is even worse.
Just think about that for a minute.
Roger Moore
@Comrade Mary:
There’s one problem with that logic. If the head of an organization gets credit or blame for everything that organization does, doesn’t that mean CinC Obama really does deserve credit for killing Osama bin Laden, even if he hadn’t given explicit orders for the raid where he was killed? That can’t possibly be true, because we know that was all about the Seals and Obama doesn’t deserve one iota of credit. Therefore Mitt doesn’t deserve any blame for anything that went wrong at Bain. See how that works?/wingnut
Rafer Janders
@Litlebritdifrnt:
So who WAS in charge? And why weren’t they listed on the SEC filings rather than Romney, as required by law?
Heliopause
Let me say, I’d be perfectly willing to accept Romney’s version of this. “Yes, I was sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president of Bain at that time but I had nothing to do with running the company. Now, vote for me for President of the United States.” Perfectly happy to accept that.
the Conster
@Bobby Thomson:
Stericycle.
twiffer
@Turgidson: as far as the general public is concerned, owning a company means you are responsible for it.
talk to someone who knows that if someone slips on ice on their property, they are responsible for it. or if their 18 year old kid throws a party at their house while they are out at dinner, they are responsible if anyone gets drunk and has an accident. or if their kid borrows their car and lends it to someone else, they are responsible for it.
you own something, you are responsible for it. very hard to divorce the two in the public mind.
kay
@NonyNony:
Well, either that or people like Mitt Romney get paid six figures for doing absolutely nothing.
I’ve felt throughout this whole thing that this is about more than Mitt Romney, the secretiveness and the misrepresentations, it’s about a whole group of people like Romney. They don’t want this stuff discussed, the offshore accounts, the tax returns, the crazy-big retirement accounts.
All the special perks they get.
Calouste
@danimal:
Team Obama is letting this story go out in dribs and drabs because they know the sole reaction of Romney will be to lie about every drib and drab that comes out, which can then be disproven with the next drib or drab.
The man reminds me of every single recruiting agent I have ever had to deal with: unable to tell the truth to save his life.
Kane
If TeamRomney is willing to call the President of the United States a liar, they had better be prepared to back up the accusation with factual evidence beyond what a random online fact-checker says.
the Conster
@kay:
Then why on earth are they throwing all their money behind Romney? What else was going to be talked about?
Jim
“The story seems to hinge on a quote from a former Securities and Exchange commissioner, which would have more credibility if the Globe had disclosed she was a regular contributor to Democrats.”
Um, no. The story seems to hinge on the idea that a CEO, owner, and 100% stock holder is legally, and politically responsible for the actions of that company.
I’d love for someone to ask Mitt what he did to earn those three years of $100k+ salary he was collecting while he wasn’t doing anything at Bain.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Rafer Janders:
According to someone in the comments at the Fact Checker piece all of the jobs that Romney said he helped create, at Staples for instance, happened after 1999. So it is either one or the other, which is it?
Original Lee
@burnspbesq: Ditto!
And not in a Ghost kind of way, either.
FlipYrWhig
Let’s say the fact-checkers are totally right, and Romney was only nominally in charge between 1999 and 2002. The way they tell the story, Romney was the involved, engaged, swashbuckling leader of the enterprise, and then he stopped and became an owner-slash-figurehead. In that case, what is it that proves he was any more hands-on _before_ 1999? Maybe his business years were like George W. Bush’s, always the front man, never the “decider.”
the Conster
For those of you who care, light is dawning over Sully’s marblehead about the importance of this Bain info. He’s like a dog with a new bone today.
scav
Clearly, this is evidence of the simply unconscionable amount of job-strangling paperwork that is choking our businesses. They had to play time-travellers and write loads of abject nonsense and lies so that they could pay some sole stockholder, President, CEO and MOTU to do nothing. My GSD, people who expect something from nothing from their government make one sick.
General Stuck
It makes the most sense to me that Romney chose to have his name at the letterhead for his company, for the purpose of calming possible investors and the like in Bain dealings, rather than cast doubt for ongoing deals in the works, as well as those in the queue for the time away at the Olympics. I don’t doubt that others were making a lot of the decisions at Bain whilst Mitt spent his time organizing the Olympics. But I seriously doubt he had absolutely no dealings with the company, and made no decisions on its behalf.
I don’t know much about the finance world. But do know that it runs on fear and impressions of whether a company is being run well, as it had been, or not. Toward deciding to have biz dealings with. And I suspect is why the SEC requires such paperwork as a matter of openness to those with ideas of doing bizness with a company like Bain Capital. Just a guess on my part, about that world.
Litlebritdifrnt
From Twitter
slag
@Bobby Thomson:
I’ve been thinking about that for a while, and I’ve been wondering whether or not the “empty suit” rhetoric Republicans have been gleefully throwing at Obama from even before day one could possibly come back at them. That is, have we Americans become so enthralled by our own bullshit that we’re simply incapable of seeing a suited white guy born into wealth and privilege as just a suited white guy born into wealth and privilege? Or has the MOTU mystique become fully ensconced in our collective consciousness. The double election of GW Bush is evidence for the fact that it has. But maybe Rmoney could provide evidence of hope?
scav
@General Stuck: So, that still leaves us that they lie about his active involvement in Bain one way for business purposes and lie the other way political ends. Perhaps entirely understandable but not exactly in the top ten bumper sticker material sort of way.
Turgidson
@Kane:
I forgot that angle. They, hilariously, without a hint of irony, call the president a liar. And their example of his supposed lie…gets completely demolished that very same day and in fact demonstrates that Romney himself was lying about that very thing (not to mention the 71953 other things he lies about daily).
I mean, that part won’t have a huge impact beyond political junkies who are following this stuff hourly, but still. What an epic faceplant.
the Conster
@General Stuck:
No one who files documents with the SEC would sign a document without knowing exactly what was going on in the company, since you’re attesting to the information contained therein under pain and penalty of perjury. You’d be out of your mind to do it given the potential liability, and we know how much risk Willard tolerates (zero), and every corporation has either outside or in-house counsel vetting everything that goes to the SEC, and they’d be liable for malpractice letting Mitt sign something knowing that he was merely a figurehead and misrepresenting his role. He’s just lying about his role to the peons. He didn’t lie to the SEC. He’s too much of a coward. He was relying on his bucks and the lazy corporate media to get away with his lies to us – see: Kessler, Glen.
Alex S.
This should open the eyes of many republican-leaning small business owners.
dmsilev
@Hill Dweller:
If nothing else, Obama is a patient man with a tendency towards long-game strategies. True in his campaigns, true in how he’s run his Presidency.
And while I realize it may not be technically accurate in this situation, I’m irresistibly drawn to the phase “rope-a-dope”.
Davis X. Machina
@Alex S.: You can’t refute a theology.
catclub
@Turgidson: “gets completely demolished that very same day and in fact demonstrates that Romney himself was lying about that very thing”
So we know that Obama ran a good campaign in 2008 against Hillary. Maybe they have upped their game. Wasn’t it an open secret that Romney was going to come out with an “Obama is lying” ad?
Did Team Obama tip the Globe to look closer at The TPM and MoJo articles?
General Stuck
@the Conster:
That’s kinda what I figured. And if he wants to keep his happy ass out of prison, he should step up and tell everyone he was running the company, and just wanted to sleaze by Obama’s attacks of being part of the downsizing, corporate raiding, and outsourcing of jobs. Delicious Dill Pickle the Mittster and the GOP has bit into. All that is left is what flavor of kool aid to drink. Wondering if Newt is sober these days? Or Perry? Santorum would be dem manna from heaven.
cursorial
What baffles me is, Romney seems like he’s been planning to run for President his entire adult life. When political careers end over not paying the nanny’s social security taxes 20 years ago, who does this kind of stuff? It doesn’t seem possible that he’s so relentlessly calculating and inept at the same time.
AdrianLesher
The former SEC official is named Roberta Karmel, and is probably not a guy.
Kessler objects to the Boston Globe not revealing that she had given to Democratic campaigns. Kessler, perhaps, should routinely disclose that he is descended from corporate stock when covering cases involving corporations.
“Kessler is a great-grandson of Jean Baptiste August Kessler, who was largely responsible for the growth and development of the Royal Dutch Shell (Shell Oil Company) and a grandson of Geldolph Adriaan Kessler, who helped create the Dutch steel industry.[31] He was born in Cincinnati, where his father, Adriaan Kessler, was an executive at Procter & Gamble, and he attended high school there and in Lexington, Kentucky.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Kessler_(journalist)
Litlebritdifrnt
According to Sully Kessler is doubling down.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/
Original Lee
@Berial: This has been all over Facebook for several weeks already. It doesn’t matter that it’s the House of Representatives, not the President, who sets the budget.
slag
@the Conster:
Dude, did you read the LA Times article on some of these people?:
A Rmoney donor actually said this. TO A NEWSPAPER REPORTER.
After seeing such a precious combination of arrogance and ignorance, I can easily find it within myself to believe that these people just really don’t get out very much.
danimal
The beauty of this issue is that Rmoney’s sins are commonplace in the financial sector. The outsourcing, the financial offshore company shell games, the materially untrue signed SEC documents, and most of all, the spigot of money flowing to people who don’t really earn it, are all symptomatic of what ails the
Americanworld economy. So the Masters of the Universe all line up to back Rmoney and don’t see why that enrages us little people.If the MOTU stand by Rmoney, they may all go down with him. There is still a lot of untapped anger out there.
MattR
@burnspbesq:
It depends on what you mean by “on line”. They were available via Lexis Nexus subscription in 1995, but they were not available to the general public over the internet until 1998 (maybe late 1997). A minor nitpick I know, but I was involved in the white box testing of the process that sends validated documents to the website’s database during the summer and fall of 1997.
General Stuck
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Sounds like another case of ‘both sides do it’, with the twist that Romney is both sides. This could get deep, so put on yer hip boots.
catclub
@scav: “They had to play time-travellers and write loads of abject nonsense and lies so that they could pay some sole stockholder”
and Obama had hired all the time travelers to go to Hawaii in 1961 and type those long form birth certificates.
FlipYrWhig
@Litlebritdifrnt: Why is Kessler coming up with “reasonable to assume” scenarios? He works for a prestigious media organization. Don’t assume, just fucking ask them what was going on. ETA: like, whatchamacallit, a journ-o-list. Then evaluate whether it holds water. What a dimwit.
FlipYrWhig
@catclub: They outsourced their time-travelers? The scandal snowballs…
Roger Moore
@catclub:
And it’s worth pointing out that Romney has basically nothing else on his plate. Meanwhile, Obama hasn’t quit his day job of being the President of the United States of America, and he’s still running circles around Mitt. Which one of these guys do you want in charge if two major crises happen in the same week?
JPL
@Litlebritdifrnt: So according to Kessler he was a terrible CEO who allowed his company to outsource.
I just scanned the papers and except for the Boston Globe not one has it at the top if they have it at all.
Fortunately, the President can call accurately say he was CEO during the time of outsourcing.
Catsy
@the Conster:
In which case he also lied on his Public Financial Disclosure Report, which says this:
Both are official documents filed under penalty of perjury. And they cannot both be true.
Rafer Janders
@cursorial:
The Bush Administration, 2001-2009. See, specifically, the Iraq War; Bin Laden, failed hunt for; Afghanistan, occupation of.
“Simultaneously calculating and inept” is practically the brand identity of Republicans.
Bobby Thomson
@Litlebritdifrnt: Kessler is focusing on Romney’s ownership but deliberately ignoring that Romney was Chair, CEO, and President. (There’s no other way to interpret this. Kessler may be corrupt, but nobody is that stupid.) Which is why people should be focusing entirely on the fact that Romney was Chair, CEO, and President and ignoring the fact of his ownership except in a “oh yeah, that too” sense. That takes away any opportunity to muddy the waters. Focus on Romney’s CEO position and there is literally no response that doesn’t make him look very bad.
Berial
@Original Lee: Yeah, that whole “budget is set by congress” ‘thing’, always seems to not register with the wingnuts I talk to. It’s almost like they think they are electing a dictator or something and no other official matters.
JPL
@Catsy: He signed his resignation in 2002 and postdated it to 1999.
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson: I still want to be shown how this period of alleged non-managerial, non-operationally-involved figurehead status from 1999-2002 differed from Romney’s role from 1977-99. Because if he was only nominally in charge in the later period, doesn’t that create the possibility that he was only ever nominally in charge?
slag
@danimal:
I have a dream that more of the vocal so-called progressives would grok this very salient point and get back onto the correct side of the field. But that dream assumes far too much.
Roger Moore
@Catsy:
This. Unless Romney can pull a rabbit out of his hat and claim the reporting requirements are different for the two documents, he’s been lying under oath to somebody.
Davis X. Machina
@FlipYrWhig: The money is in charge — it just passes through you to on its way wither it will, to do its work. It’s like grace, that way.
Blessed be the Market, the righteous judge.
Captain C
@Roger Moore: This is not unlike what got former AZ governor J. Fife Symington III (R-Blatant Corruption) busted. While he was running his development company, he’d go to one bank with paperwork stating that the company was, say, $4 million in the black, so please to lend him some serious bucks. Then, (and IIRC, at least once or a few times on the very same day) he’d go over to the bank to whom he owed millions with paperwork stating that the company was, say, $4 million in the hole, so he couldn’t make whatever payments were due. While his conviction was overturned due to a (ticky-tacky) techinicality, 2 of the 3 appellate judges said that he was pretty much guilty as sin and would be found so on retrial, and if Clinton hadn’t pardoned him Symington likely would have been convicted again and done some jail time.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig: Oh, I think there’s more than a possibility of that. In the above thread Kessler is now citing an offering memo Bain put out after 1999 that doesn’t identify Willard as a “key investment professional.” What’s missing is an offering memo before 1999 that does identify him in that way. (Not that there would be any reason to. Willard was just the CEO and didn’t do any real work. His value was that, like Junior Bush, he was well-connected.)
Catsy
@JPL:
And?
That has no bearing on the factual question of whether or not he made false filings to the SEC or on his campaign finance disclosure forms. He is welcome to “postdate” his resignation to 1999. It doesn’t change what he did in the intervening years, or remove his signature from those documents.
burnspbesq
A blogger at Fortune is making a big deal about the fact that Romney wasnot listed among the managers of a Bain Capital-sponsored venture capital fund in its 2000 offering documents.
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/12/mitt-romney-bain-exit/
That’s fine, but if we’re arguing over whether inconsistencies between various SEC filings create enough doubt that Romney might be able to beat the rap, hasn’t Romney lost?
JC
@kindness: Yes, kindness@58, I have read some of the comments. Thanks for asking and My blessings to you.
the Conster
@burnspbesq:
Romney never claimed to be a hands on manager – his company hired people to be the hands on managers – happens all the time in big investment companies. Nothing about what that blogger is saying is relevant as to what Romney represented as his role in the company HE OWNED.
Citizen Alan
@Catsy:
I think that was meant as sarcasm on the part of JPL.
Catsy
@Citizen Alan: Clearly I need my detector calibrated.
Heliopause
@burnspbesq:
To repeat myself, fine with me if they sell this explanation. “A rich stockholder, president, and CEO had nothing to do with the company in question.” Like that’s going to endear him to the average voter.
Heliopause
@burnspbesq:
To repeat myself, fine with me if they sell this explanation. “A rich stockholder, president, and CEO had nothing to do with the company in question.” Like that’s going to endear him to the average voter.
The Lodger
I’m not a corporate lawyer, but isn’t there a lot of paperwork involved in buying or selling a private company (as there is for buying and financing a house, or declaring bankruptcy) and isn’t a fair amount of that paperwork required to be public record? Read the documents, get the names of the people who had signature authority for Bain and see if the chairman, CEO and sole stockholder isn’t one of them.
I think Romney is already nailed here, but a little additional information can’t hurt.
Captain C
@NotMax: Hoover actually had a successful business record that didn’t involve legal bust-outs. He also helped save a lot of lives in Europe after World War I by organizing relief efforts. He just totally bricked as president by being unwilling to move away from his demonstrably wrong ideology which said that government couldn’t do much, if anything, to help out when the entire economy went pear-shaped.
schrodinger's cat
To summarize, he is lying about being the CEO to the SEC, or he was getting a salary as a CEO for doing nothing. Wonderful.
ETA: He can even say, I am not a crook and mistakes were made.
Captain C
@Jack: @Jack:
Probably the first crisis that he can’t solve by throwing money at it, or by buying up whatever is causing it and then busting it out.
the Conster
@The Lodger:
Private companies don’t disclose anything publicly. Publicly traded companies or private companies that hold a certain threshold of stock ownership have to report their holdings, or file prospectuses when they’re soliciting investors or offering certain securities. Mitt’s companies did the latter.
NotMax
@Captain C
Which is kind of the point, isn’t it? There are parallels in their resumés and campaigns, so looking at Hoover’s performance in office as a metric is not out of line.
Romney isn’t running for mining engineer-in-chief.
Captain C
@NotMax: Definitely not out of line. I think Hoover comes off looking much better by comparison. He did some real good, and was just out of his depth in correcting the Depression. All Mitt has done with his life is using his connections and ruthlessness to make big bucks at other people’s expense. And used the state of Massachusetts as a launch pad for his presidential run.
A Streeter
@Captain C:
I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. Didn’t he oversee major improvements in Massachusetts’ health care delivery systems which served as models for the ones subsequently adopted nationwide?