An interesting observation from commenter Catsy.
He’s just lying about his role to the peons. He didn’t lie to the SEC.
In which case he also lied on his Public Financial Disclosure Report, which says this:
Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way.
Both are official documents filed under penalty of perjury. And they cannot both be true.
See here for a bit more context.
Is it true that Romney told mutually excusive stories to two government agencies, the FEC and SEC, and both under threat of perjury? It would be nice to have someone who knows the relevant law shed some light on this.
Ed Drone
Why not? He signed each with a different face, after all.
Ed
Jewish Steel
Hey, you know what might clear all this up? 12 years worth of tax returns.
Or stonewalling. You could go for stonewalling too.
anthrosciguy
But it wasn’t about a consensual affair, so who cares?
Warren Terra
I like Bain Capital’s current explanation: Rmoney did leave Bain in 1999, completely, honest. Bain just took three years to cross the t’s and dot the i’s and get the paperwork filed to recognize his by-then long-ago departure.
For those of you keeping score at home, the story is now that a firm specializing in takeovers and the transfer of corporate ownership was unable to formalize a change in its own ownership until three years had elapsed.
Well, I‘m convinced.
Nutella
Taxes are for the little people. Felony charges, too.
He’ll get away with because he is a MOTU.
rlrr
Is it true that Romney told mutually excusive stories to two government agencies, the FEC and SEC, and both under threat of perjury?
He’s white, rich, and Republican – so he gets a pass.
beltane
If this were the presumptive Dem nominee I’d be furious right now, even more furious than I was with John Edwards for thinking he could get away with hiding his affair. Mitt is not well liked even by his own party; one has to wonder if there is a faction in the GOP that’s readying their long knives in anticipation of his demise.
Zifnab
Pff. Laws are for little people.
Cassidy
@anthrosciguy: Or a tweeted picture of his dick.
This is good news for…Ron Paul?
beltane
@Warren Terra: How odd. I’m sure all the “common” people whose employment was terminated by Bain did not take three years to disappear from the books.
LanceThruster
Oh, Great God of Kolob, please see that Mittens does time for his perfidy (hopefully cleaning out the Augean stables).
Alexandra
I sense a big showy VP announcement being bought forward.
Ron
@Warren Terra: And even after he left, they continued to pay him “executive” salary. I want THAT gig.
Cassidy
@Alexandra: Paul Ryan is oiling up as we speak. Get that image out of your head.
Bulworth
Apparently the Beltway media now wants us to believe that being the owner, CEO, Managing Director, and getting paid $100k per year is the same thing as “not having an active role”.
schrodinger's cat
@Alexandra: At this point which sane person would want to be Mitt’s VP?
beltane
@Alexandra: The thing is, if he picks someone who is too well liked by the GOP base there will be murmurings that he should step down in favor of the allegedly more electable VP pick. Or maybe he can just pick Sarah Palin, I hear she’s available.
freelancer
@Cassidy:
Awww fuck you. That’s not cool.
4tehlulz
the biggest loser: Rob Portman.
Mitt has no choice but to go for a “game changer” vp pick now.
Warren Terra
@beltane:
How dare you suggest that any person ever “had their employment terminated” by Bain. Bain and Rmoney will be quick to say that while the termination of peoples’ employment is a major problem under Obama, Bain merely engaged in “Rightsizing”, or “the enabling of external employment possibilities”.
Glenn Kessler will rate Bain and Rmoney’s rebuttal “mostly true”, and denounce your perfidious smears.
Jay S
I’ve never seen a campaign finance report issue sink a candidate. They drag on until after an election and are seldom resolved with any thing but fines. I find it hard to see this story getting legs.
mercurino
@Bulworth:
not to be pedantic, but I think this is the defense they’re going to go with. and, quite frankly, i think they’ll get away with it. need i remind people that Jamie Dimon was CEO and had an active role in losing
$2 billion$5 billion$9 billion and counting? how’s he doing now, by the way?Brian R.
Don’t worry, Glenn Kessler will tell us he was telling the truth both times.
Comrade Dread
@beltane: True, the base does hate Romney, but the thing about that to keep in mind is that he’s not black or a Democrat, so I’m pretty sure Mitt Romney could machine gun down a 100 Americans on live TV and he’d still draw 27% of the vote based on those two criteria alone.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
Where does sanity enter the equation? We’re talking about Republicans!
japa21
@schrodinger’s cat: Well, since the terms “sane person” and “prominent Republican” are mutually exclusive, the question is not really pertinent.
Villago Delenda Est
BREAKING NEWS
A fifth alarm has been called in the ongoing Rmoney crusts fire, which threatens to rage out of control.
Davis X. Machina
@Jay S: This isn’t a campaign, though. This is an IPO.
dmsilev
@Cassidy:
I hate you.
Litlebritdifrnt
Romney campaign to file formal correction request with Boston Globe:
http://wapo.st/NtmH9R
Ha Ha that worked well the last time!
Brachiator
Wait a minute. I thought that Romney was incapable of telling a lie. That’s what the good right wing goobers would have you believe.
Or is that, Romney is incapable of telling the truth?
@Warren Terra:
Corporations are people, too, my friend, but with stranger, more complicated gestation periods.
beltane
LOL, the Romney campaign is now demanding that Obama apologize for highlighting Mitt’s perfidy http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/romney-campaign-calls-on-obama-to-apologize-over
I’ve got to hand it to Rmoney, for someone who’s not much of a working man he is quite handy with a shovel. Keep digging, my friend.
Berial
@Bulworth: I could certainly use that kind of pay for one of those ‘not active roles’.
And here’s a head scratcher. Why do Republican’s label people that collect small sums of money from the government for ‘doing nothing’ ‘moochers’, but people collecting LARGE sums of money from a corporation are labeled as ‘MOTU‘ or ‘job creators‘ or apparently here (as in this case)’CEO‘?
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
yeah, well, Geitner didn’t pay some taxes and Obama still hasn’t produced hid kindergarten report card.
GregB
Shorter Romney, the blame lies with the little people below me.
The bucks still stop with me.
Steve in DC
@beltane:
There is a faction already. Pat Buchanan (of all damn people) has been writing tirades about how greedy finacial types are fucking everything up and driving people away from capitalism and how their will be riots.
The populist right is going to savage him something fierce.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
Kirk: “
NormanGlenn Kessler, Harry Mudd is lying to you. Everything Harry Mudd says is a lie!”Mudd: “
NormanGlenn, I’m lying to you!”cmorenc
@Bulworth:
If Romney was indeed being paid 100k per year for being CEO during the 1999-2002 period, that fact alone would make his claim that he was simply a pro forma paper officer/owner during that period seem implausible and offensive to the sensibility of quite a few voters, who know they could never get anywhere close to that kind of money for doing nothing unless they got lucky and won the lottery.
Patricia Kayden
@beltane: I’m just seeing the demand for an apology on MSNBC. What chutzpah!
The Bobs
If Mitt was the CEO and President of the company wouldn’t his signature be required on any binding document or contract entered into by the company while he held such positions?
Davis X. Machina
@Villago Delenda Est: The rich don’t have to lie. They have people for that.
waynski
Virtually nobody goes to jail for lying to the FEC (except John Edwards almost). Lying to the SEC is a much different story. So it was a risk management strategy all along. Romney will have the Village press mesmerized watching the rotors on top of their own collective beeny by calling the liberal media “hysterical” and “just another example of how Obama doesn’t understand how business works” and then this will all go away.
schrodinger's cat
@mercurino: Jamie Dimon is not running for President, none of this would have mattered if Romney was a private citizen.
ding dong
Dude,he flip flopped like he has done on everything else. You common people are just so dense sometimes.
dmsilev
Romney campaign: WAAAAAAHHH, Obama is mean to us!:
Coming from the group of people who think driving a honking bus around their opponents campaign events and who just yesterday released an ad calling the President a liar, this is rich. Guess they’re like that stereotypical bully who dishes it out all day but falls down and cries the moment any of their victims dares to fight back.
schrodinger's cat
@japa21: I do think there are some islands of sanity left in the Republican party, however they are quickly submerging under the rising tide of BS. There is a reason why Christie or Jeb Bush did not run this year.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I think he’s incapable of telling the difference.
Arclite
@beltane:
Except for one thing: they hate communist, muslim, black Obama more.
Comrade Mary
@Cassidy: You just made me think of Ron Paul’s dick. I hate you.
@Cassidy: You just+++
ATH0
NO CARRIER_
4tehlulz
@dmsilev: Whine moar, Mittens.
Seriously, what a baby.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
You know, these guys are reaching nadirs that I thought had been thoroughly explored by Sarah Palin, but they’re finding new nadirs even further down than Sarah has!
22over7
@Cassidy:
Thanks a lot. Now all I can hear is Dr. Frankenfurter singing about how, in just seven days, he can make him a man.
beltane
@Villago Delenda Est: The Republicans are Nadirites!
Kane
If you’re a potential VP candidate, do you even want to get on board this sinking ship? Do you really want to spend the next few months explaining the semantics of outsourcing and off-shoring? Do you want to be the defender of Romney’s Bain record? And if you’re a rising star within the GOP, do you really want to tie yourself to a candidate who many in the party consider a RINO?
Tim F.
@Litlebritdifrnt: Ha. If the Washington freaking Post told Mitt to get lost then he has no chance with the Globe. Familiarity, contempt etc.
Legalize
@mercurino:
Dimon isn’t running for president. If he was, he’d be fucked because he’d be a shit candidate just like Mitt is – and for pretty much the same reason. No one believes that anything will come of this legally – it’ll just be a hoot to listen to him deny that he is a felon for the next 4 months, and to give legalistic responses about “materiality” and such. By the time the debates roll around he’ll be nice and soft for the Kenyan – who can just pull a W – I don’t believe that Willard lied on his SEC disclosures or that he is a felon.
Bruce S
“mutually exclusive stories” is the substance of Mitt Romney’s political life. It would be hard to believe it was actually the same Mitt Romney if there weren’t two mutually exclusive stories.
mercurino
@schrodinger’s cat: not arguing with that. just saying that the “I didn’t know what was going on in my company even though I was Chairman and CEO” defense seems to have worked quite well until now. In that sense, this situation is entirely in keeping with the current culture of Wall Street. Let’s hope Obama pounds away at that connection.
DMcK
@waynski: Well, the SEC isn’t exactly known for its aggressive enforcement tactics these days, so my guess is Romney gets a pass and this blows over in a few weeks.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Tim F.:
It seems to me to be a stupid move, like it was the last time, keep their traps shut and it dies down, now their whining for a retraction and it just stays in the news longer.
Linda Featheringill
@beltane:
Gasp! Surely not!
I would like to watch Gingrich get his teeth into this. Such fun!
Jewish Steel
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Anytime someone points their finger at Romney and says, “Bain,” the Romney campaign go into hysterics and shout BAIN BAIN BAIN BAIN.
I can’t believe how blessed we are with their incompetence. Am I dreaming?
Edited to be rendered in English.
Litlebritdifrnt
Weigel tweets
Nick
Why did he bother to take a salary from an entity he owned? There had to be an advantage, possibly the preservation of some legal status or for preferential tax consequences. Any ideas?
Catsy
It’s even worse than that. Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager, Stephanie Cutter, has been tearing up the twitters today with a bunch of examples of Bain filings from after 1999 with Mitt Romney’s signature.
It’s completely and irrefutably damning. Regardless of how much involvement he actually had in the day-to-day operations of Bain (and my guess is: not a lot), his signature could not appear on these documents at all if he did not have the authority and active role in the company necessary to make those signatures meaningful. It’s not just some yearly statement that got a pro forma signature from him, it’s multiple documents over a period of years authorizing things like the release of shares.
I just don’t see a path out of this for Romney.
JCT
@dmsilev:
Sounds about right!
“He is packing it in and packing it up
And sneaking away and buggering up
And chickening out and pissing off home,
Yes, bravely he is throwing in the sponge…”
Sounds like the Marquis du Mittens to me….
Redshift
@cmorenc: You would think that claiming he was being paid for doing nothing was a ludicrous argument, but Romney’s “retirement” agreement from Bain guarantees him a share of the profits basically forever, so…
NCSteve
@Ed Drone: Just FYI, I suspect the penalty for lying to the SEC–up to twenty years in federal prison–is a lot stiffer than whatever he’d get for lying on the state form.
On the other hand, the SEC form has a designated
patsysignatory, and it wasn’t Romney.Legalize
@dmsilev:
Jesus, they are weak. Obama should come out and say that he doesn’t think that Willard lied on his SEC forms, and doesn’t not believe that Willard is a felon.
vitaminC
@cmorenc: So if Willard wasn’t the CEO, who the hell was? Who was running Bain from 1999-2002? Do they even know?
Ash Can
You know, with all the bullshitting and flip flopping and sheer stupidity Romney was spewing in all directions, on a daily basis, you had to figure that sooner or later something was going to come back and really bite him in the ass. It’s long been said that the best defense is a good offense, but the Romney campaign has nothing to go on offense with (and they sure as hell have no real defense). The Obama campaign has a golden opportunity to box these guys in so tightly that every time they try to lash out they’ll just hit themselves in the face, and it sure looks like that’s exactly what’s happening. I sense a popcorn OD coming on.
Linda Featheringill
@22over7:
Dear pi:
Cool name!
Me.
Culture of Truth
“As Bain Capital has said, as Governor Romney has said, and as has been confirmed by independent fact checkers multiple times, Governor Romney left Bain Capital in February of 1999 to run the Olympics and had no input on investments or management of companies after that point,” Ms. Saul said in a statement.”
What was the $100,000 for, then?
schrodinger's cat
@Nick: Probably something to do to avoid taxes. This is just a guess on my part.
Another Halocene Human
Never mind, I realized who I was responding to.
Which makes me wonder, is Steve in DC a freeper?
Litlebritdifrnt
Damn Weigel is on a roll today
James E. Powell
I never have any confidence that stories like this will penetrate through the crossfire of claims and denials or the could of ‘both sides do it’ that leads so many voters to simply disregard new information.
The Village Press does not want this to be a big story because it goes to the heart of how the privileged class operates. Shielding that from public scrutiny is more important than shielding Romney, but he will benefit from their reflex response. My sense is that they are looking for a reason, any reason, to stop the Obama campaigns attacks on Romney’s ways of doing business.
waynski
@Litlebritdifrnt: He still thinks he’s dealing with the business press which will issue a retraction the minute a CEO of one of their advertisers says, Boo! Our MSM might have little, tiny baby balls, but they’re not complete and utter eunuchs the way the business press are. Mittens doesn’t seem to get that yet.
Redshift
@dmsilev: I can’t bear to read Romney press releases, so I only know whatever part of their contents I see online or on Maddow. But it seems like the campaigns responses to almost everything is to say “That’s absolutely untrue! It’s wildly inappropriate for you to make such accusations!” without actually disputing any part of them.
Do they actually think this is going to work to tamp down any of this? I can’t decide whether they’ve taken disaster-management lessons from BP, or if they just refuse to admit to themselves that it’s a disaster that needs to be managed.
In any case, since Mitt’s people seem inclined to play along, I’m all for continuing to make them deny it.
jp7505a
lET’S see, same set of facts except the name on the documents is Obama or Clinton . It would be time to conviene a trial of the century. The GOP spend almost 8 years investigating a lousy land deal and lying about sex, but there is nothing to see here just move along. Even if the signatures were just a formality and he wasn’t running the company on a day to day basis he was still CEO as far as the law was concerned. Why lie about it, unless there is more to hide.
As a vetran of multiple bank mergers I know that the paper work has to be done, all the legal ‘i’ dotted and ‘t’s crossed. The argument that Bain just didn’t get around to it or it would have been to expense to change all of the pesky legal forms is in a word BS
Amir Khalid
A few days ago, i was saying here that if Mitt wanted to accuse Obama of lying, the Obama ampaign should let Mitt have it with both barrels. But now it seems that Mitt is taking aim with said both barrels at his own feet. I swear, the way Mitt is running his campaign, you’d think he wanted Obama to win.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Alexandra:
It’s a shame that Spiro Agnew is dead. Just the sort of lively distraction Mitt needs right about now…
Rafer Janders
@Legalize:
No no, he should say that “I take Mitt Romney at his word that he was not lying to the SEC, and to my best of my knowledge, and given the evidence we’ve seen so far, it does not appear that Mitt Romney committed any felonies.”
Redshift
@Legalize:
Yeah! Though I could more easily imagine it from Biden. Stretching it out slightly more to make sure the rope is there for him to hang himself:
“Mr. Romney signed SEC filings as CEO until 2002, and I can’t imagine that he would have lied on those filings, because that would be a felony. Obviously, I don’t think Mr. Romney is a felon…”
Culture of Truth
phone sex is one thread down
Culture of Truth
This is worse than Whitewater!!!*
* admittedly a low bar
Nick
“schrodinger’s cat Says:
@Nick: Probably something to do to avoid taxes. This is just a guess on my part.”
If it was done to avoid taxes, then I would think he’s guilty of fraud by collecting a paycheck he didn’t really earn, but rather asserted solely so as to be able to avoid taxes.
Either he worked at Bain and received payment (in which case he lied on his FEC filing), or he received payment for not working.
If he was paid for not working, that doesn’t make sense without some benefit being derived. After all, he was the sole owner and could have withdrawn earnings at any time (and probably did).
If he sought to acquire some beneficial tax status because he was employed by Bain, then he committed fraud if he now asserts that he didn’t actually work.
Finally, If he didn’t actually work but still took the salary, that seems like a withdrawal of retained earnings disguised as a salary, which also seems fraudulent (although I would have thought the withdrawal of retained earnings would have a smaller tax consequence than $100,000 in income).
FlipYrWhig
@Culture of Truth: “Sure, he was the CEO and president after that, and continued to get paid and sign official documents, but other than that, he barely did anything. But before that, as CEO and president, he took an active role in managing the firm, as proven by these many official documents he signed and the money he banked.”
Another Halocene Human
@Linda Featheringill: It’s sort of meta, in the sense that a name–or any other identity–is only an approximation of that which is irrational and transcendental.
mercurino
@James E. Powell: normally, i’m inclined to agree, but i wonder if this one will continue to have legs. seems to me the he-said-she-said, where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire approach of the mainstream media actually serves obama right now. every time obama levels an accusation, the press has to cover it and romney has to respond.
jtadetroit
He is probably more worried about the investment in Stericycle than anything else
waynski
@jp7505a: Did he remain the titular head of Bain and they kept his name on the filings so they could tell investors that the great Mr. Romney was still the Captain of the ship (wink, wink, nod, nod, say no more). Wouldn’t that be defrauding the shareholders?
Another Halocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: Romney, so heroically paying taxes on that $100K stipendium (the millions are safeguarded with carried interest, offshoring, and other trix).
Rob in CT
While I certainly think it’s quite clear that Romney is, once again, lying, I doubt that all that many of the low-info voters will care. But maybe a few more might decide that he’s a slimy huckster and vote D. Every little bit helps.
The hoped-for total implosion basically never happens, even when it should.
burnspbesq
@mercurino:
Losing money’s not a crime. Materially misstating facts in connection with the purchase or sale of a security is.
maya
@jp7505a: “As a vetran of multiple bank mergers I know that the paper work has to be done, all the legal ‘i’ dotted and ‘t’s crossed. The argument that Bain just didn’t get around to it or it would have been to expense to change all of the pesky legal forms is in a word BS”
I believe this was also the excuse GWB used about not filing insider trading report to SEC when he was on Harken board and realized $800,000 on stock that was actual only worth $400,000. He got away with it.
R-Jud
@dmsilev: Wow. That’s Church of Scientology-worthy whining.
pseudonymous in nc
I just want to quote this bit of one of the SEC filings that Cutter linked to, to show the Russian-doll workings of Bain Capital, with Mittens as the big matroshka:
(i) VMM Merger Corp. (“VMM”), a Delaware corporation, by virtue of its deemed beneficial ownership of 5,376,400 shares of Common Stock;
(ii) Bain Capital Fund VI, L.P. (“BCF VI”), a Delaware limited partnership, as the sole stockholder of VMM;
(iii) Bain Capital Partners VI, L.P. (“BCP VI”), a Delaware limited partnership, as the sole general partner of BCF VI;
(iv) Bain Capital Investors VI, Inc. (“BCI VI Inc.”), a Delaware corporation, as the sole general partner of BCP VI; and
(v) W. Mitt Romney (“Mr. Romney”), a citizen of the United States, as the sole stockholder of BCI VI Inc.
Another Halocene Human
@Nick:
Yeah. Somehow I wonder if he just was testing the waters at the Olympic Committee and kept one foot at Bain, then later tried to distance himself from those years when politics started paying off. Just a theory.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@beltane: if there is a faction in the GOP that’s readying their long knives in anticipation of his demise.
Did I just hear Ron Paul chuckle?
mercurino
@burnspbesq: true. my point was more that the “i didn’t do it” defense seems to have worked for MOTU CEOs up to this point. hopefully, Romney’s clumsy handling of this situation will change that. if so, there’s going to be a lot of pissed off plutocrats who will want to string the Mittster up for ruining a good thing.
Another Halocene Human
@maya: I guess that’s why W’s SEC, rather than investigating crimes and sending perps to prison, was all “Cool story, bro,” even when they were getting tips about major frauds like Madoff. (Frauds even WS thinks are frauds, as opposed to the stock promoting they all wish they could engage in as openly as Jim Cramer.)
Ash Can
Hell, if Romney was telling the truth and Bain basically kept him on the payroll beyond 1999 and paid him for not working, Obama’s just cornered the market on the GOP’s “Chicago politics” smear.
Another Halocene Human
@pseudonymous in nc: wow.
Allan
It’s nice that the Romney campaign has finally noticed how effective Stephanie Cutter is. Congratulations, and keep it up.
Tonal Crow
@4tehlulz:
Sa-rah! Sa-rah! Sa-rah!
redshirt
I’d just like to point out how nerdly cool it is that Bain might bring down Romney’s chances the same summer that Bane is fighting Batman on the big screen.
Not sure what this means, but it’s something!
danielx
@Nutella:
Exactly. Perjury is totally for the little people, as Dick Cheney and George W. Bush will both be happy to tell you. Poor Scooter Libby didn’t really perjure himself, it was just a little matter of irreconcilable facts on outing a CIA agent- not the same thing at all. Lying about a blow job, on the other hand, is an impeachable offense. Just ask Newt Gingrich.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Lots of cheering in here, but I Just listened to NPR which killed my mood, I’ll try to quote:
“Romney and Obama are fighting over being called Liars. Romney just released an Ad calling Obama a Liar about his outsourcing of jobs. Obama points to OFFICIAL SEC documents showing that Romney was head of Bain until 2002, and Mass. documents showing he earned money until 2002. Romney called this allegations “dangrous” and pointed to his ad that claims that Obama is a liar as well.”
So, media breakdown === Both sides do it.
gVOR08
@schrodinger’s cat: Were any sane people being considered?
mercurino
from David Corn’s piece at MoJo on Bain’s investment in Stericycle — the fetus disposal company.
unfortunately, corn’s link to the herald is bad. if the quote is accurate, shouldn’t we put more trust in what Bain and Romney said at the time than some post hoc rationalization?
redshirt
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: Wait, wait, don’t tell me! Even the liberal NPR thinks both sides do it? Well then, nothing to see here. Politicians just being politicians.
Culture of Truth
Here’s the thing on ‘both sides do it’ – a tie favors Obama, because if they’re both liars, or neither are, Romney is still an outsourcer.
Turgidson
@dmsilev:
I eagerly relate the Obama campaign’s statement in reply. They’ve been on a roll lately and I want to see it continue.
mercurino
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: i read it differently: Romney calls Obama a liar, Obama points to federal documents filed by Romney and fact that Romney drew a salary, Romney calls Obama a “dangerous” liar.
the fact that he was drawing a $100K salary is probably the best line of attack.
“If he wasn’t working for the company, why was he drawing a salary?”
i think i smell the overwhelming scent of flopsweat coming from Romney HQ.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
@GregB:
I think you mean the BUCKS stop with me. As in I get all the money.
Kane
Let Romney try explain to voters how it’s possible that he was listed as Bain’s sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president, and documents show his signature and he received a six-figure salary, but he wasn’t employed there.
If Team Romney thinks the public is going to buy that, they are fooling themselves.
James E. Powell
@redshirt:
The people at NPR know that the minute they stop saying ‘both sides do it’ there will be no more funding for NPR. They are even less free to speak the truth than the corporate press/media. While the latter are constrained by their advertisers, NPR only has one customer to worry about: the speaker of the house.
Culture of Truth
They must really hate him:
schrodinger's cat
@gVOR08: I have no insight or information about the inner workings of Romney campaign. FWIW, I think Romney has to choose a crazy person to cement his support with his crazy base (aka the 27%)
Calouste
@schrodinger’s cat:
And that excludes exactly how many Republicans?
Julia Grey
Hey, maybe he drew a salary in order to keep his Social Security account up-to-date. After all, isn’t 100K about the cut-off point where they stop taking the SS out of your wages?
I mean, hey, he has just now turned 65, right? And he wants to collect every dime he’s entitled to. Maintaining the max salary for his entire career would make his Social Security check as high as it could possibly be. In 1999-2002, he didn’t know the future, and therefore didn’t want to burn his Social Securitized salaried bridges. So he kept himself on the payroll.
Oh, you think that piddling little check wouldn’t matter to a guy with Mitt’s kind of money? You don’t understand the pathologically rich.
Besides, he had to stay CEO. It was HIS company. You think he’d let other people run it?
All that’s coming back at him now. Dumb bitch.
Tonal Crow
NYT has picked up the story, though (as usual), they bend over backwards to excuse Romney.
We must harp on this lie nonstop until the election. Time for a deluge of letters to the editor.
Culture of Truth
Saying I wasn’t in charge during the outsourcing is such a clown move, anyway. It immediately cedes the entire arugment to Obama that outsourcing is indefensible (which is hardly beyond debate) and further cedes away Romney’s business experience, which is the foundation of his campaign. Clown, move, bro.
Tonal Crow
Romney’s Uncertainty Principle: A strange state of being in which a conscious entity is simultaneously President, CEO, Chairman of the Board, and sole owner of a business, and entirely uninvolved in its operation. [Inspired by a comment at NYT]
Jay in Oregon
@Catsy:
Maybe Romney can get more CEOs to chime in on how they don’t actually have any responsibilities in the multimillion-dollar positions they’re in—is Jamie Dimon available? What about Jon Corzine?—and how parking your money in offshore accounts is just smart business. That’s gotta be a winning strategy.
Tony J
@Culture of Truth:
Really? There’s nothing else in the quote that totally contradicts that statement? Because if not, there’s a carcess out there so ripe that even the hungriest wolf isn’t going near it.
scav
@Culture of Truth: Ow!
Rex Everything
I just got online 5 minutes ago after spending all day away from a computer. I gotta say, my first response is, this story is a real stunner. There’s a good chance that Romney’s fucked, really fucked. Not for certain … he is, as has been amply noted, extremely rich and extremely white … but this is kind of a big deal.
Tonal Crow
@Culture of Truth:
Further, he thereby admits to profiting from outsourcing our jobs to China. Awesome!
Rex Everything
@Brian R.:
EPIC WIN.
catclub
@Steve in DC: “The populist right is going to savage him something fierce”
Important if true! But are they going to do this before or after the election?
Rex Everything
@Catsy: Bingo. Dude is not getting out of this looking good.
I have a feeling I’m really going to enjoy the upcoming news cycle.
FlipYrWhig
“I have a demonstrated track record of running a profitable investing firm, except for those years I spent not really running it, when I just took in money for doing nothing while other people did an array of bad things, but the successes of the businesses we invested in during those years when I swear I wasn’t at all involved show the strength of my leadership and acumen. These are the skills i will bring to the table as President.”
Rafer Janders
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac:
Can we get Joe Olivo to weigh in here? I think it would be valuable to get the views of a small business owner on the issue of when he is or isn’t actually in charge of his own business.
dmsilev
@redshirt:
I think it means that Obama is Batman. Which, honestly, I could sort of believe.
Gopher2b
Find the correspondence to Bain’s investors when he left to manage the Olympics and within you’ll find the silver bullet you’re seeking. The golden boy doesn’t leave in two weeks without some comforting words about how you’ll be playing a continuing role in the firm. That’s prob why he stayed on as CEO, President, etc.
Culture of Truth
@Tony J: You might also like this:
CNN:
North Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones urged Romney to make the information public sooner rather than later. “I think he should release his financial records and I think if he does it in July it would be a lot better than in October,” Jones told CNN.
“Obviously people know he’s rich, nobody holds that against him,” Jones said, but added, “whenever you are asking for the vote of the American people that you need to fully disclose what your holdings are, if you have any.”
Jones said he’s not a financial expert, but he said Romney should release the last 6 -7 years of records.
El Cid
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: ‘It’s true that evidence ties Mitt Romney to both the locations and the weapons used in the grisly series of disappearances and brutal murders and dismembering of several dozen teenage girls throughout the Northeast, in direct contradiction to hundreds of alibis he has been using.
‘However, accusations are flying back and forth just as quickly — Republican officials speaking off the record suspect that many of Obama’s descriptions of locations he has visited in his autobiographies were potentially exaggerated, including a visit to New York in which skyscrapers were described as being far, far taller than they physically could have been at the time.
‘It’s another day of campaign rough-housing and bitter charges hurled from either side.’
Calouste
@Culture of Truth:
Or in other words: “Can we get this shit out now so that I have 4 months to run away from it rather than 3 weeks?”
JGabriel
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Roger Moore:
I think he’s incapable of caring about the difference.
.
donnah
@mercurino:
This. I think the Penn State scandal overshadows this through the weekend and it loses steam by the first of next week. On the online news coverage, it’s being framed as Obama being a name-caller and all of this being ginned-up campaign rhetoric.
I don’t know how they make this last. The media doesn’t want to make it a story and it won’t be.
gee, I’d love to have to eat my words!
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
@Litlebritdifrnt: Who ARE these people????????
Tony J
@Culture of Truth:
Think I sat on the keyboard, because this is the second edit.
Jeebus H. Christo. If they’re running away from the ‘Tao of Mitt’ this quickly then come morning the only backers Romney has left should be Romney Mate 0.1 and Karl Rove’s barber.
Ever feel like going to bed because you just – know – that you’ve got a treat coming tomorrow, and that’s only the start of Glee Week?
Let’s find out.
Death Panel Truck
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
I say dig that motherfucker up. Prop up his corpse at campaign events. Even the strongest Rmoney supporter will have to concede ol’ Spiro’s got more charisma dead than Willard’s had on his best day alive.
chopper
@dmsilev:
Romney only comes off this angry when he’s scared and hiding something. keep swinging, mr. prez.
Tonal Crow
@donnah:
WE make this last by never ceasing to discuss it. And by writing letter after letter after letter to the editor raising it.
22over7
@Another Halocene Human:
I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but meta is a new one. I thought I was just irrational. Love it.
NonyNony
@James E. Powell:
Never, ever, ever underestimate the power of narrative in modern media reporting and political campaigns.
The press may not want to report it, but Obama’s team will continue to bring it up in campaign ads and Romney, fool that he is, will continue to whine about how unfair it is – giving the Obama team reason to bring it up again and demand that if he’s going to whine about it he actually point out where they’re wrong.
The narrative is “Mitt Romney is a rich, self-important, over-entitled asshole who likes to bully other people but can’t stand it when other people punch back.” That’s the narrative hole that the Obama team is wanting to fit the Mitt Romney peg into.
Honestly I thought he’d be better at it than this. As far as I can tell instead of forcing Mitt Romney into that hole the Obama team might have to get out of his way as he stampedes past them to jump into it.
Ivy vann
I think one of the reasons romney’s name stays on at Bain is to keep his Massachusetts residency. Also, as mentioned up-thread, to keep investors happy.