“The Circle Of Money”: Romney Fund Bankrolled Sheldon Adelson
A fund partially owned by Mitt Romney lent GOP mega donor Sheldon Adelson’s company $3 million, according to hundreds of pages of previously confidential documents obtained by Gawker and published today.
Romney and his wife have millions of dollars invested in a blind trust, which owns dozens of opaque funds and investment vehicles, including one called Sankaty High Yield Partners II LP. The content of the fund and others like it were a mystery before the documents came to light. While there will undoubtedly be more discoveries to come from the cache, one immediate revelation is that Sankaty fund, based in Delaware for tax purposes, lent over $3 million to Las Vegas Sands, the casino company owned by Adelson. The fund made two loans of $2.4 million and $600,000 in 2009 to the Sands. Romney’s IRA held between $250,000 and $500,000 in the partnership, and made $50,000 and $100,000 from it in 2011.
Adelson has become the largest donor to the Republican Party and conservative outside groups, dropping at least $70 million. Adelson initially supported Newt Gingrich in the GOP primary, but switched his allegiance to Romney and has since given $10 million to the main super PAC backing the presumed GOP nominee.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, August 23, 2012
“I Can’t, I’m Mormon!”: A Special Cause, Mitt Romney’s Pious Baloney On Tax Returns
After months stonewalling on releasing more tax returns, Mitt Romney invoked a brand-new explanation for demurring in an interview with Parade magazine set to hit newsstands this weekend: religion. “Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given [to the LDS Church]. This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church,” Romney told the magazine when asked about his returns, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
While it’s certainly understandable that Romney would prefer to keep his church giving private, this isn’t really a convincing argument for hiding his returns. For one, he’s not actually hiding anything as the cat’s already out of the bag. We already know how much Romney gave to the Mormon church in 2010 and 2011, the years for which he has released tax returns. Mormons are encouraged to tithe 10 percent of their income and, indeed, Romney gave about that — $4.1 million of the $40 million he earned in those two years. His Tyler Charitable Foundation gave another $4.8 mil to the faith. So if we already know how much he gave in 2010 and 2011, why should any other year be kept secret?
Secondly, the whole reason presidential candidates release tax returns is because former Republican presidential candidate George Romney started the tradition in the late 1960s by releasing 12 years of returns. George Romney was also a Mormon and a leader in the church, but apparently had no problem with how much he had given to the church (he was also Mitt Romney’s father). Over the 12-year period covered by the returns, George and his wife, Lenore Romney, gave 19 percent of their income to the LDS church.
Moreover, most churches (or synagogues or mosques or temples) expect their congregants to donate, and since every presidential nominee since forever has been religious, at least publicly, Romney is asking to be excused from a standard that everyone else has been held to. There’s nothing in his answer that suggests Mormons should have special cause to be exempted, and it’s reasonable to assume that a protestant like Barack Obama or a Methodist like George W. Bush would also prefer to keep their religious giving private, if given their druthers. But they both released their tax returns. (For what it’s worth, Obama was pretty stingy in his religious donations, giving just 1.4 percent of his income.)
If Romney wants to keep the rest of his tax returns private — as he certainly does, and has promised to do — he’ll need to come up with a better reason than this pious baloney, to quote Newt Gingrich.
BY: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, August 24, 2012
“The Romney-Ryan Emperors Have No Clothes”: The Republican Party Deserves The Todd Akin Mess
I am going to get in trouble for this.
For years many of my Republican friends have admitted to me that they couldn’t give a damn about social issues—abortion, gay marriage, or the Ten Commandments being posted on schools and public buildings. They are contemptuous of the religious right and find many of them “wackos.” In short, the religious right has driven them crazy for years.
But these are political people and they know they need the religious right to activate the Republican base. Ever since the late 1970s and the rise of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, Republicans have made sure they were inside the tent. They were not Ronald Reagan’s cup of tea but he brought them in, as did the Bushes.
But, more and more, the Michele Bachmanns, Paul Ryans, Todd Akins are the Republican Party and some political pros have begun to worry. In fact, a leading voice of the anti-tax conservative movement, Grover Norquist, is known to have contempt for the right wing social activists. He has admitted when his guard was down that he thinks the issues are “nuts.” But he has also said that it is so easy just to push these hot button social issues and boy, off they go, in full gallop!
The problem now—as illustrated by Rep. Todd Akin, a sincere and true believer in these issues, his church, and a strict religious moral code—is the “regular Republicans” who have used these religious activists now want to jettison them or at least keep them quiet. I debated Todd Akin at Harvard a number of years ago—we disagreed heartily but I found him to be a very committed and consistent social conservative. He was not a cynic; he was not going through the motions. He was a believer and he lived his values.
Now, the Republican Party operatives find themselves so wedded to this faction after exploiting it for nearly 30 years that they don’t know what to do when the mechanisms of the party have been taken over by the far right. The Republican Party platform for the last three cycles, including this year, makes no exception for terminating a pregnancy caused by rape and incest. It does not even allow for the life of the mother. Women (and men) are not supposed to notice? The party embraces “personhood” amendments and refuses to support the morning-after pill, again even if a rape is involved. “De-fund Planned Parenthood” is their battle cry.
And no one at this Tampa convention has the guts to speak up. All they do is condemn Todd Akin—because, really, he presents a “political problem.” But they are as quiet as church mice when it comes to amending the Akin anti-abortion platform plank.
Some of these religious conservatives should be hopping mad. They are being played. They are being used by presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. No one in his Boston headquarters wants the public to know that his VP pick Rep. Paul Ryan has been locked at the hip with Todd Akin. Their views are exactly the same on these issues, one slip of the tongue on rape not withstanding. They want the religious right’s money, they want them to work on their campaign, they want them to turn out at the polls, but they want them quiet, behind the curtain. They have no intention of overturning Roe v. Wade, they know that the train has left the station on gay and lesbian rights, they know that tolerance and diversity will rule the day, but they won’t change their party platform because the far right that they used over the past three decades has taken over their party. They do not want the public to know where they stand on these issues, because they know their deficit with women could be 20 points. They could lose the suburban vote, they could further anger young voters, they could be unmasked as the right wing, extremist party that their 2012 platform says they are.
In short, they want Todd Akin and others to leave the limelight right now because that light shows what we all know—the Republican emperors of Romney-Ryan have no clothes. (And we’re not talking about skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee!)
By: Peter Fenn, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, August 23, 2012
“Serious As A Snakebit”: The Ryan-Romney Flim-Flam Ticket
Let’s talk budget! Yes, the wonky wonderland of the federal budget, with page after page of numbers — what fun, eh?
No. Most people would prefer a root canal to a budget discussion (indeed, I’ve heard that some dentists use a recording of budget numbers to anesthetize their root-canal patients — everything from the neck up quickly goes numb). But Paul Ryan is different.
The GOP’s vice presidential nominee is touted as Mr. Budget, a guy who gets excited by running his fingers through fiscal things. That’s why the Washington cognoscenti have declared him to be “serious,” rather than just another political opportunist riding the right-wing wave of tea party ridiculousness.
Being branded as “serious” means never having to admit you’re a flim-flam man. Thus, the widely ballyhooed Ryan Budget is called “honest” and “responsible” by insiders who obviously haven’t run the numbers on it.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, however, has tallied Ryan’s budgetary giveaways to the rich and take-backs from the middle-class and the poor. Far from balancing the federal budget, as the self-proclaimed deficit hawk claims, the analysts found that Ryan’s plan increases the federal deficit. And not by a little, but by about $2.5 trillion! So, yes, he is serious — serious as a snakebite.
Then there was Ryan’s explosive admission recently that the budget plan of his presidential partner, Mitt Romney, is also a con game. Despite Romney’s repeated assertion that — by golly — his nifty plan will balance the federal budget in only eight years, Ryan confessed that they don’t really know that, because “we haven’t run the numbers on that specific plan.”
Say what? What? Hello — a budget is nothing but numbers — numbers that have, in fact, been run! Otherwise, it’s just a political hoax.
During his run in the presidential primaries this spring, when he was trolling for votes in the shallow waters of the Republican fringe, Romney embraced the Ryan budget, calling it a “bold and exciting effort” that is “very much needed.” And, hoping to glom onto Ryan’s “wow” appeal to the hyper-energized right wing, Romney brought Mr. Budget onboard for the fall run — with one interesting condition: The veep candidate has had to jettison his budget.
That document, which Ryan had rammed through the U.S. House in 2011, would have provided another gold mine for the one-percenters, with millionaires-and-up averaging around $300,000 a year in tax breaks. The rest of us would’ve gotten the shaft, including tax increases, privatization of Medicare, deep cuts in student aid and job training programs, and federal abandonment of food stamps and health care for the poor.
Yet Ryan is on the Republican presidential ticket specifically because his budget whackery has enthralled the GOP’s far right. Anti-government guru Grover Norquist, for example, has gushed that the six-term Wisconsin congress-critter would be the Dick Cheney of economic policy. Sheesh — that’s not a threat to be taken lightly!
But the very bauble that got him to the GOP’s No. 2 political slot turns out to be so widely and wildly unpopular with voters in the deeper waters of the general election that it’s already been trashed by the party’s No. 1. “I have my own budget plan,” Romney backpedaled the day after he knighted Sir Ryan, “and that’s the budget plan we’re going to run on.” Yes, the budget with no numbers.
That aside, it’s kind of strange (and a bit unsettling) to see a candidate for president straining to explain that he’s the one in charge, not the young ideologue. Romney even went on national TV to tell us that, while Ryan would certainly be among the people he asks for advice, “I have to make the final call in important decisions.” Sure, Mitt — you da man! But was he trying to convince us … or himself? Or Ryan?
Embarrassingly, at the staged event where Romney introduced his VP selectee, he bungled his line, presenting Ryan as “the next president of the United States.” Was that just another Romney gaffe? A Freudian slip? Or an eerie moment of candor?
After all, Romney has no unwavering principles or solid commitment to any policy except, “Elect me, and I’ll lower my taxes.” Republican leaders are now trying to downplay Ryan’s extremism, but if they were honest with voters, their bumper sticker would read: “Ryan-Romney in 2012.”
BY: Jim Hightower, The National Memo, August 22, 2012
“I Voted To Send People To War”: Paul Ryan’s Big Foreign Policy Credential Is On The Wrong Side Of History
Defending himself against the perception that he has no significant foreign policy experience, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has drawn fresh attention to one of the most controversial acts of the past decade: the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq before UN weapons inspections were completed. Ryan now points to his vote for war as a token of his readiness to serve in the White House, but he is on the wrong side of both history and public opinion.
The Wisconsin Congressman may come to regret his flippant response to Carl Cameron last Saturday, when the Fox News reporter asked how he would respond to critics who question his weak national security resume. “I’ve been in a Congress for a number of years,” he said. “That’s more experience than Barack Obama had when he came into office.” Perhaps he should have stopped there, but instead blundered on: “I voted to send people to war.”
Does Ryan believe that voting for war constitutes foreign policy experience? If so, it is a kind of experience that reflects very poorly on him. Even he must realize that the underlying premise of the war, Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, quickly proved to be nothing more than a Bush administration hoax, along with the secondary claim that Saddam’s regime had some connection with the 9/11 attacks. After casting his party-line vote for a ruinous war because he accepted a faked argument, Ryan never spoke up against its continuation. He ratified every troop escalation and every supplemental appropriation.
Unlike the American people, who turned decisively against the war years ago, and have condemned it by large majorities as a waste of blood and treasure, he apparently still believes it was a swell idea. Concerned as he supposedly is about excessive federal spending, Ryan believes that the Iraq misadventure was worth three trillion dollars it has cost so far (and presumably the lost and destroyed lives of Americans and Iraqis, all the dead, wounded, orphaned, and traumatized, as well).
Except among the neoconservative advisers cocooned in the Romney campaign, such enthusiasm for the war is a very peculiar and distinctly minority perspective. Over the past few years, polls have shown between one-third and one-fifth of voters agreeing that the war was “worth the cost.” Roughly two-thirds to three-fourths of the electorate rejects that assessment and supports President Obama’s withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. That lopsided margin is fair warning for any politician who stakes his reputation on the Iraq war.
What Ryan cites as his chief qualification to serve as commander-in-chief is a series of votes that represent the most fateful, expensive, inexcusable error in recent American history. For him to cite that vote to draw a contrast with President Obama, who got the Iraq issue right, is startling. It reveals something that Americans need to know before he gets any closer to executive power.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, August 20, 2012
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 