“Weak, Weak, Weak”: Romney Doubling Down On Nonsense, Looking Silly And Trapped
Honest question: does anyone think Romney helped himself with this round of television interviews? This is more fact-finding than rhetorical. And the people whose opinions I’d be most curious to hear are those of Republican operatives — people who want the answer to be ‘yes’ but are politically sophisticated enough to know if it’s not.
The headline in the Times is “Romney Seeks Obama Apology for Bain Attacks”.
In the Journal “Romney Defends Bain Capital Tenure”.
This is ‘bitch slap’ politics played with a gusto and coldness seldom seen from Democrats, at least since the Bill Clinton days. Asking for an apology is losing. Saying you want something you clearly have no power to get is losing.
There’s a meta-politics Obama is playing by slashing at Romney with suggestions he might be a felon. He’s wounding Romney, who is clearly rattled and angry about the charges, but just as clearly can’t defend himself or strike back. As I’ve noted many times, a thick layer of presidential politics (in a way that’s distinct from US politics at really every other level) resides at the brainstem level of cogitation — with gambits to assert power and demonstrate dominance. Obama looked in control of this situation; Romney didn’t.
TPM Reader JL could barely contain himself …
Bitch slap politics at it’s finest.Step 1. Obama tells Romney to man up and take responsibility.
Coming soon …
Step 2. Romney whines that it’s beneath the office.
Step 3. BO Surrogates tell Mitt, you’re running for President for God’s sake. Don’t be such a girly man!!
I love it!! Are we sure Obama’s a Dem?
There’s another part of this equation: I’m not sure how many people watching this spectacle even remember that it’s nominally about whether Romney is responsible for outsourcing Bain did post-February 1999 or its investment in a company that serviced abortion clinics. I barely remember it myself. What’s driving this now is that the Obama camp has backed Romney into a position in which he looks ridiculous — something much more lethal for presidential candidates than most people appreciate.
Romney had absolutely nothing to do with Bain after 1999, no responsibility for anything it did, barely even knew what it did. Only he was the owner, the Chairman of the Board and the CEO. At least according to all the official documents, many of which he signed. Only he wasn’t any of those things, says Romney.
Partisans can be walked through the arguments of how this might be true, just as you could explain what John Kerry meant by saying he was for a bill before he voted against it. But it still makes no sense. And doubling down on nonsense makes you look silly and trapped. That’s especially dangerous for someone already saddled with a reputation for shifting his stories and positions to suit the moment.
This is and will remain a low single digit race. But the President’s team is making Romney look shifty and silly and weak. (I half expect them to start goosing surrogates to call him Slick Willard.) And they’re well on their way to defining him in a way that will be difficult to undo.
By: Josh Marshall, Editor and Publisher, Talking Points Memo, July 13, 2012
“Not Squaring With Common Sense”: Romney Stayed Longer At Bain Beyond The Date He Said He Ceded Control
Government documents filed by Mitt Romney and Bain Capital say Romney remained chief executive and chairman of the firm three years beyond the date he said he ceded control, even creating five new investment partnerships during that time.
Romney has said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ending his role in the company. But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.”
Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.
The timing of Romney’s departure from Bain is a key point of contention because he has said his resignation in February 1999 meant he was not responsible for Bain Capital companies that went bankrupt or laid off workers after that date.
Contradictions concerning the length of Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital add to the uncertainty and questions about his finances. Bain is the primary source of Romney’s wealth, which is estimated to be more than $25o million. But how his wealth has been invested, especially in a variety of Bain partnerships and other investment vehicles, remains difficult to decipher because of a lack of transparency.
The Obama campaign and other Democrats have raised questions about his unwillingness to release tax returns filed before 2010; his offshore assets, which include investment entities based in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands and a recently closed bank account in Switzerland; and a set of “blind trusts” that meet the Massachusetts standards for public officials but not the more rigorous bar set by the federal government.
Romney did not finalize a severance agreement with Bain until 2002, a 10-year deal with undisclosed terms that was retroactive to 1999. It expired in 2009.
Bain Capital and the campaign for the presumptive GOP nominee have suggested the SEC filings that show Romney as the man in charge during those additional three years have little meaning, and are the result of legal technicalities. The campaign declined to comment on the record. It pointed to a footnote in Romney’s most recent financial disclosure form, filed June 1 as a presidential candidate.
“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,’’ according to the footnote. Romney made the same assertion on a financial disclosure form in 2007, during his first run for president.
Evidence emerged last week in a report by Mother Jones that Romney had maintained an ongoing leadership role at Bain beyond February 1999. Citing SEC documents, the magazine said Romney had control of Bain Capital’s shares in Stericycle, a medical waste company, in November 1999. Talking Points Memo reported this week on additional SEC filings listing Romney’s position with Bain in July 2000 and February 2001.
According to a statement issued by Bain Wednesday, “Mitt Romney retired from Bain Capital in February 1999. He has had no involvement in the management or investment activities of Bain Capital, or with any of its portfolio companies, since that time.”
A former SEC commissioner told the Globe that the SEC documents listing Romney as Bain’s chief executive between 1999 and 2002 cannot be dismissed so easily.
“You can’t say statements filed with the SEC are meaningless. This is a fact in an SEC filing,” said Roberta S. Karmel, now a professor at Brooklyn Law School.
“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to say he was technically in charge on paper but he had nothing to do with Bain’s operations,” Karmel continued. “Was he getting paid? He’s the sole stockholder. Are you telling me he owned the company but had no say in its investments?”
The Globe found nine SEC filings submitted by four different business entities after February 1999 that describe Romney as Bain Capital’s boss; some show him with managerial control over five Bain Capital entities that were formed in January 2002, according to records in Delaware, where they were incorporated.
A Romney campaign official, who requested anonymity to discuss the SEC filings, acknowledged that they “do not square with common sense.” But SEC regulations are complicated and quirky, the official argued, and Romney’s signature on some documents after his exit does not indicate active involvement in the firm.
A spokesman for the SEC said the commission could not comment on individual company filings or address the meaning of Romney’s name and title on the documents.
Karmel, the former SEC commissioner, said the contradictory statements could have legal implications in some instances.
“If someone invested with Bain Capital because they believed Mitt Romney was a great fund manager, and it turns out he wasn’t really doing anything, that could be considered a misrepresentation to the investor,’’ she said. “It’s a theory that could be used in a lawsuit against him.”
Romney first deployed the defense that he left the firm in February 1999 as a candidate for governor in 2002, when Democrat Shannon O’Brien featured a laid-off worker from a Kansas City steel mill that went bankrupt in 2001, after Bain Capital had reaped a handsome profit from its investment in the company. “Romney has taken responsibility for making the initial investment but has said he could not be blamed for management decisions at the company,” the Globe reported at the time.
Romney’s exit from Bain Capital also served as a ready-made rebuttal when in May President Obama’s reelection campaign began its public scrutiny of Romney’s business record with an ad focusing on former laborers at the same mill, GST Steel. But the SEC filings examined by the Globe indicate Romney remained at the helm of Bain Capital when the steel mill declared bankruptcy, in February 2001.
And financial disclosure documents Romney filed in Massachusetts show that he was paid as a Bain Capital executive while he directed the Olympics.
When he was named chief executive of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee on Feb. 11, 1999, Romney declared that he would not accept the job’s $285,000 annual salary until the Games were over and he had proven his turnaround worth.
Romney continued to draw a six-figure salary from Bain Capital, according to State Ethics Commission forms.
In Romney’s 2002 race for governor, he testified before the state Ballot Law Commission that his separation from Bain in 1999 had been a “leave of absence” and not a final departure.
By: Callum Borchers and Christopher Rowland, The Boston Globe, July 12, 2012
“Winking With A Blind Eye”: Where Are The Pro-Life Reactions To The Romney-Stericycle Story?
Yesterday, David Corn reported in Mother Jones that Mitt Romney may have played an active role Bain Capital’s $75 million investment in Stericycle, a company that disposes of medical waste from abortion clinics. According to Corn, Bain had previously claimed that Romney left the firm in February 1999 and that Romney probably had nothing to do with the deal.
Since this could potentially lose Romney some enthusiasm among social conservatives, I initially thought I would write a post about reactions to the story in the pro-life blogosphere.
Except… I couldn’t find any. Guys, I looked, but as of Tuesday afternoon, here’s where it stands:
Lila Rose’s Twitter feed? No mention as of this writing.
National Right to Life? Top headline as of July 3, 3:57 central time was “Supreme Court Decision Means Americans Must Elect Mitt Romney and a Pro-Life Congress Committed to Repealing ObamaCare.”
Susan B. Anthony List? Its president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, wrote a column for National Review Online yesterday titled “Pro-Lifers Must Unite Behind Romney.” (The discussion in the comments thread did make its way around to the Stericycle story, with folks chiming in both to support and criticize Romney.)
Americans United for Life? Again, as of 4 p.m. central, their online media center made no mention of it.
LifeSiteNews, which previously reported on a Romney fundraiser at the home of a pharmaceutical executive whose company makes the morning after pill, and which published a piece in January calling Stericycle a “medical waste giant allied with the abortion industry” didn’t turn up anything when I did a search for “Romney” and “Stericycle,” and the story wasn’t in their top headlines.
Jill Stanek? Again, no mention in the top headlines and a site search turned up nothing.
World Magazine, which is currently taking a critical stance toward the National Association of Evangelicals over the latter’s acceptance of a grant from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy? Again, my site search turned up nothing.
It could be that nobody’s gotten around to writing about it yet, I guess. Or, it could be that the pro-life blogosphere isn’t thrilled to learn about Romney’s possible role in the Stericycle investment; but, particularly on the heels of the Supreme Court decision, cares most about defeating Obama. In any case, the question will be whether it has any effect on voter enthusiasm. If no likely Romney supporters hear about it, I rather imagine it won’t.
By: Sarah Morice-Brubaker, Religion Dispatches, July 3, 2012
“Caught In Another Lie”: Mitt Romney Invested In Medical Waste Firm That Disposed Of Aborted Fetuses
Mitt Romney’s Bain problem just got a lot worse.
According to a new report by Mother Jones’ David Corn, Bain Capital made a $75 million investment in Stericycle — a medical waste disposal firm that has been attacked by right wing groups for disposing of aborted fetuses — while Romney was still actively involved in the company in 1999. This news is sure to upset social conservatives, and it also directly contradicts Romney’s account of when he left Bain.
Romney’s connection to Stericycle was first reported in January by The Huffington Post, but the story never gained traction because Bain Capital claimed that Romney left the firm to run the Winter Olympics in February of 1999 — meaning that he had nothing to do with the deal. According to SEC documents unearthed by Corn, however, Romney was still actively involved in the firm’s leadership through the end of that year:
The SEC filing lists assorted Bain-related entities that were part of the deal, including Bain Capital (BCI), Bain Capital Partners VI (BCP VI), Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors (a Bermuda-based Bain affiliate), and Brookside Capital Investors (a Bain offshoot). And it notes that Romney was the “sole shareholder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of BCI, BCP VI Inc., Brookside Inc. and Sankaty Ltd.”
The document also states that Romney “may be deemed to share voting and dispositive power with respect to” 2,116,588 shares of common stock in Stericycle “in his capacity as sole shareholder” of the Bain entities that invested in the company. That was about 11 percent of the outstanding shares of common stock. (The whole $75 million investment won Bain, Romney, and their partners 22.64 percent of the firm’s stock—the largest bloc among the firm’s owners.) The original copy of the filing was signed by Romney.
Another SEC document filed November 30, 1999, by Stericycle also names Romney as an individual who holds “voting and dispositive power” with respect to the stock owned by Bain. If Romney had fully retired from the private equity firm he founded, why would he be the only Bain executive named as the person in control of this large amount of Stericycle stock?
As Corn points out, the SEC documents have implications that reach farther than Stericycle. The Romney campaign repeated its assertion that Romney left Bain in February 1999 when rebutting a recent Washington Post story reporting that Bain acquired companies that outsourced jobs. According to these SEC filings, that is not true.
The issue here is not that Romney was investing with a company that disposed of aborted fetuses; after all, abortion is legal, something must be done with the medical waste produced by them, and according to Corn the investment was quite profitable for Bain and its investors.
The issue is that Romney has once again been caught in a lie about his past, and once again he has given voters a reason to be suspicious over his record at Bain — which he’s used as the central thesis of his campaign.
Romney is already having a difficult time talking about his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, given that he is now running against the signature achievement of his term. If voters reject his version of the Bain Capital story as well, then it is hard to see what his campaign’s message could be moving forward.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, July 2, 2012
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