It looks to me like the Romney campaign doesn’t know how to respond to the story about their candidate’s “shadow years” as faux-CEO of Bain Capital. His spokesman came out and just flatly denied that the story was true without offering any explanation for how that could possibly be the case. He was listed as the CEO with the SEC. That fact is not in dispute. He testified before the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission that he was merely on a leave of absence. Now David Axelrod is tweeting that Romney filed false statements with the SEC, which is something Romney’s lawyers must be taking a look at.
It’s never easy to admit you’ve been telling gigantic lies, but it’s better than committing financial fraud. But even if Romney is essentially telling the truth about not having anything to do with Bain’s day-to-day operations, he doesn’t want to have to explain why he received a $100,000 salary for doing nothing. This is particularly true because last night he accused the entire NAACP membership of just wanting free handouts from the government. How about no-work jobs? I thought only the mafia created those. Is that really what Romney wants to argue? That he got paid to do nothing? Wasn’t he trying to act like a big man at the time by ostentatiously refusing payment for his work on the Olympics? That’s easy to do when when Bain is paying you $100,000/yr. Of course, his salary was just pocket change compared to his financial interest in the company itself.
So, the Romney campaign is going to have to come out and say that this is all normal. It’s totally unremarkable for a man to be paid a six-figure salary for doing no work and to make representations to the government and to investors that they are the CEO of a company that they no longer work for. They can do this for years and it only looks weird because SEC compliance forms are complicated.
They’ve had weeks to prepare for this story, and they have nothing.
The nerve of these guys is just amazing. They do these incredible, illegal things and somehow think no one will notice even if they run for president!
What’s funny is Factcheck.org has been having a pissing match with the Obama administration over this issue for a couple of weeks now and their position is that Romney should be prosecuted for a felony if he made any business decisions at Bain after 1999.
I love the pissing match. DK is reporting that Politico (!?!) is calling bullshit on factcheck, and factcheck is refusing ot respond to inquiries.
Love it. I hope factcheck has to admit they’re wrong, and that Romney’s a felon.
If not for this then for his stinking 401K with, what, a hundred million in it or some insane thing? No way that was legal. The guy is ripe to have his administration ruined by an endless impeachment controversy, if he wins but faces a Democratic congress.
FactCheck better come out within 24 hours with a well sourced response or their whole reputation is smack. Better to apologise now and jump in with the facts.
Romney’s now caught between IRS, SEC & FBI with people like David Corn hot on the story.
I’m waiting for Mitt to say people are mean to him and that he’s quitting to go spend time with his money.
Hopefully this will all unleash a flood of media analysis finally stripping the whole 2%’ers of their VIP cocoon and get the voters to wake up.
What will George Will say this weekend?
Hopefully this will all unleash a flood of media analysis finally stripping the whole 2%’ers of their VIP cocoon and get the voters to wake up.
Really?
pffft! David Corn’s sure havin fun with it, Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone, WaPo, NYT and even CNN waded in. Fox seems to permanently put ‘never mind’ on their crawl.
Mitt’s the perfect poster boy to draw attention to his ilk.Give yourself a moment of hope here, eh?
Most of the time, they don’t.
“How about no-work jobs?”
That may be perfectly fine for the private sector, however, in this state, if a government employee is receiving a salary or anything else of value for doing essentially nothing, its considered to be a class D felony.
“(c) A person employed by a governmental entity who, knowing that he has not been assigned any duties to perform for the entity, accepts property from the entity commits ghost employment, a Class D felony.”
Despite the right wing line that “government is a business” its really not.
They’ve had weeks to prepare for this story, and they have nothing.
Not enough attention has been paid to the fact that Mitt Romney is an incompetent politician.
He is still the guy who just could not come close to matching John McCain’s political and messaging skills.
I’m at a loss as to why he would try to distance himself politically from a company that he never divested himself from financially. This was clearly an impossible lie to maintain.
He got his cut on the back end, regardless of whether he was “actively managing” the firm by hustling up new business and structuring consulting and management fees and whatnot. He owned the thing outright. It was all his, even if he left the day-to-day to other managers.
The only thing I can figure is that it’s the abortion nuts that are at the root of this. The Stericycle thing. The outsourcing thing wouldn’t have been a career killer back at the turn of the century, and lord knows, it’s not like he was able to hide his wealth to voters. But a Mormon fetus-incinerator probably doesn’t have much a future in the GOP, no matter how much he’s worth.
But, but, but, he has great hair!
…and magic underwear!
They’ve had weeks to prepare for this story, and they have nothing.
Weeks? They’ve had almost 4 years. As soon as Cranky McSame and Queen Dumbass of the Northwoods lost, Willard knew he was running in 2012. And yet he, and his team, look so unprepared. The question to ask is why.
Arrogance.
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.
You could have a point. Even the race part.
In a few months we’ll find out if a candidate can half-ass his way to the White House without being a Bush.
How is this different from what Thomas did? A SCOTUS justice, signing a false statement for 7 years in a row? Aren’t lawyers disbarred for less? Yet Thomas was allowed to amend the statement, and was not even censured.
Now we have Romney making millions, making false statements to the SEC, and people call him a “bidnessman”. It’s an appalling indictment of the lack of ethics in business today.
because, for every kind of judge,
EXCEPT FOR THE SUPREME COURT
what Thomas did would have been ILLEGAL
but for him being on the Supreme Court, charges could have been brought up on him
IOKIYAR
Well, yeah, that too. But rikyrah is, as usual, on point. The Supreme Court has different rules than lower courts.