ROMNEY THE LIAR: SHREDDING THE EVIDENCE, SHREDDING THE TRUTH

Charles Pierce, as usual, nails the sickening, outrageous essence of the most dishonest, deceitful candidate in modern American history: Willard. Pierce talks about how Willard loves to destroy or conceal the evidence.

Let us take a step back from Willard Romney's Excellent European Adventure -- I can't wait until he gets to Poland and asks three people to change a lightbulb -- and, now that's he's outside of the country, let's take stock of the campaign he has presented to the Help in his attempt to become CEO of the United States Of Capital Gains, LLC. He has based his campaign on two-and-a-half pillars: 1) his experience at Bain Capital and general economic awesomeness; 2) his stewardship of the 2002 Winter Olympics in the middle of nowhe...er...Salt Lake City, and 3) his brief sojourn as governor of the Commonwealth (God save it!) of Massachusetts. (That's the half-a-pillar, by the way.) Of course, the Help is only allowed a very limited assessment of all two-and-a-half pillars. The Help can't really judge fully his performance at Bain because The Help is not entitled to see any more financial documents than he's already released. The Help can't really judge fully his performance with the Olympics because a whole bunch of documents went into the shredder. And the Help can't really judge fully his time as governor because he and his staff scarfed the hard drives from a whole bunch of computers at the State House in the aftermath of his barely distinguishable leadership. That is his whole campaign theme: Mitt Romney: Take It Or Leave It.

Willard is CORRUPT, and he's hiding a lot of skeletons in that closet. He also shows his CONTEMPT for us in another way:

WHERE ARE YOUR TAX RETURNS, WILLARD? WHY CAN'T WE SEE THEM?!?

ROMNEY THE LIAR: CORRUPT AND LYING ABROAD AS WELL AS AT HOME

Willard's big foreign policy trip has been a comedy of errors as Not-Ready-for-the-Big-Time Mittens thoroughly alienated the people of our closest ally, the UK. But more than that: he was fund-raising over there--and, yet again, breaking his word . 


Not only did Romney fail at that no-brainer [burnishing his foreign policy credentials], he also put a foot through stateside customs. Before leaving on his overseas tour, he said that he would not criticize the current president on foreign soil, a long-standing, universally respected tradition in American politics. But then he spoke at an exclusive, closed-door fundraising dinner (tickets went for $50,000 to $70,000 apiece) sponsored by Barclays bank, which is currently in the middle of a whopping financial crisis. Eleven members of Parliament wrote a letter to the bank’s board members, demanding that they stop swelling Romney’s war chest and instead focus on repairing their own problems. Will Americans express outrage at this whiff of foreign influence? Obama catches hell when he raises money from Hollywood movie stars. What would happen if he flew to London or Paris and raised money from European movie stars (who don’t have as much influence as, say, European bankers). [My emphases above.]


Of course Willard lied when he said that he wouldn't criticize President Obama overseas. And of course he's thick as thieves with the Barclays boys. You remember them.

THEY'RE  THE ONES WHO HELPED CAUSE THE BIGGEST FINANCIAL SCANDAL ON THE FREAKING PLANET RIGHT NOW. AND THEY'RE RAISING MONEY FOR WILLARD.

(See the BBC's timeline of the scandal here.) 


Not only does the stench of lies hang around Willard. Just as offensive is the stench of corruption. Willard was a corporate raider who rose to great wealth with the help of, uh, should we say some questionable characters. The Boston Globe had the story a month ago. I quote:

It was at the height of the 1980s buyout boom when Mitt Romney went in search of $300 million to finance one of the most lucrative deals he would ever manage. The man who would help provide the money was none other than the famed junk-bond king Michael Milken.


What transpired would become not just one of the most profitable leveraged buyouts of the era, but also one of the most revealing stories of Romney’s Bain Capital career. It showed how he pivoted from being a relatively cautious investor to risking his reputation for a big payoff. It is one that Romney has rarely, if ever, mentioned in his two bids for the presidency, perhaps because the Houston-based department store chain that Bain assembled later went into bankruptcy.


But what distinguishes this deal from the nearly 100 others that Romney did over a 15-year period was his close work with Milken’s firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. At the time of the deal, it was widely known that Milken and his company were under federal investigation, yet Romney decided to go ahead with the deal because Drexel had a unique ability to sell high-risk, high-yield debt instruments, known as “junk bonds.”


...Romney, meanwhile, once referred to the deal as emanating from “the glorious days of Drexel Burnham,” saying, “it was fun while it lasted,” in a little-noticed interview with American Banker magazine.


The “glorious” part, for Romney at least, was that he used junk-bond financing to turn a $10 million investment into a $175 million profit for himself, his partners, and his investors. 


Don't forget the other questionable characters connected with the start of Bain Capital (see this story here and this story here. ). Money funneled through Panama, money that is hard to trace. Money from Salvadoran right-wingers. Money from international conman and thief Robert Maxwell. And now Romney is raising money for his campaign in a FOREIGN COUNTRY in an effort being led by the MOST CORRUPT BANK IN THE WORLD.


Romney isn't just a liar; he's the dirtiest, most corrupt liar out there. Maybe that's why he won't answer this question:

WHAT'S IN YOUR TAX RETURNS YOU DON'T WANT US TO SEE, WILLARD?

ROMNEY THE LIAR: MAN OF SECRETS

ROMNEY THE LIAR IS LYING ABOUT HIS RELATIONSHIP TO NETANYAHU

Willard always loudly proclaims his fealty to Israel, and claims that he and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, are "old friends". Funny. Netanyahu doesn't see it that way. Check out this quote (and this story) here:

“Israel’s current prime minister is not just a friend, he’s an old friend,” Mitt Romney, with whom Netanyahu worked at the Boston Consulting Group in the 1970s, told aipac in March. (Romney, Netanyahu suggests, may have overstated the tie. “I remember him for sure, but I don’t think we had any particular connections,” he tells me. “I knew him and he knew me, I suppose.”)


Is there ANYTHING Willard will NOT lie about?


Oh, and before I forget?

WHY CAN'T WE SEE YOUR TAX RETURNS, WILLARD?

ROMNEY THE LIAR: FOREIGN POLICY FOOL

My oh my, have you been hearing about the way Willard has simply crashed, burned, and made an idiot out of himself during his trip to the UK? When a British official describes you as "Worse than Sarah Palin", that's GOTTA hurt. And so does being called out publicly by the Mayor of London after you publicly question London's readiness for the Olympic Games:

London Mayor Calls Out Mitt Romney Over Olympics Criticism

And some wonderfully cruel tweets from British citizens:


 #AmericanBorat sounds like Herman Cain on foreign affairs, but w/o the awesome lines from Pokemon Movie song 


 Mitt Romney: From #AngloSaxonHeritage to #americanborat in one day. 


 You can tell @MittRomney's doing badly when he starts getting booed by rich white people 


 65 year-old w/ #AngloSaxonHeritage, no business experience since 1999, seeks position, possibly as Leader of the Free World 


 "Not since WWII has London seen a bombing as thorough as Mitt Romney's."


Mitt Romney retroactively cancels visit to London.





Yeah, Willard's a real "expert" [Read: dangerous buffoon] in foreign policy. Here are some of Mittens' greatest "hits":


1. He “has been especially vague about how many U.S. forces he would keep in Afghanistan” and has no detailed plan for our engagement in the country. 


 2. His campaign said “real Americans” don’t care what Romney’s Afghanistan policy is. 


 3. Before Osama bin Laden’s death, he said he wouldn't go into Pakistan if we had bin Laden in our sights and that it was “not worth moving heaven and earth” to find bin Laden. 
[Of course he lied about it later.]


 4. He pledged “to do the opposite” of what President Obama has done for Israel, which includes record-level security funding. 


 5. He called Russia, a strategic partner of the United States on vital issues, America’s “number one geopolitical foe.” 


 6. When asked how he’d approach going to war with Iran, he has said he’d defer to his lawyers: “You sit down with your attorneys” so they can “tell you what you have to do.” 
YOUR LAWYERS???


 7. He has said that bringing all our troops home from Iraq was “tragic” and that it was a “naked political calculation.” 


 8. He “fled down a hallway and escaped up an escalator” to avoid answering a reporter about his position on the NATO mission in Libya. 


 9. He called the fading power of Venezeula’s leader Hugo Chavez a serious threat to our national security. 


10. His campaign said President Obama was not doing enough to protect Czechoslovakia—a country that no longer exists—from “the Soviets.”


Why, sure, he'd be a terrific foreign policy leader--if we want Bush's third term.

ROMNEY THE LIAR OUTDOES HIMSELF AT THE VFW CONVENTION

Willard continues to sink into depths of brazen dishonesty that I hardly would have thought possible prior to his campaign of NON-STOP LIES.  This week, he spoke to the VFW. (I love that Charles Pierce cracked that when Willard was of draft age, he did his utmost to prevent being a V of the FW of the time.) Dana Milbank has the story here. 

There have been many mendacious moments in this presidential campaign, but it will be hard to top what Mitt Romney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars conference this week.


President Obama is seeking “an arbitrary, across-the-board budget reduction that would saddle the military with $1 trillion in cuts,” the Republican said. “Strategy is not driving the president’s massive defense cuts. In fact, his own secretary of defense warned that these reductions would be devastating, and he’s right. . . . This is no time for the president’s radical cuts in our military.”  


Come again?


Romney is referring to the automatic spending cuts, or “sequestration,” required by the Budget Control Act of 2011. For those suffering memory loss of the sort afflicting Romney, that legislation came about when Republicans threatened to throw the country into default unless Democrats agreed to automatic budget cuts if a “supercommittee” couldn’t reach a bipartisan agreement (which it couldn’t, naturally).


If the defense cuts are Obama’s, they are also John Boehner’s, Eric Cantor’s, Mitch McConnell’s and Jon Kyl’s. The bill passed with the votes of a majority of House and Senate Republicans and the encouragement of — wait for it — Mitt Romney. A Romney spokeswoman at the time said he applauded Boehner’s negotiating prowess. [My emphasis.]


How--HOW--can this lying sack of crap be essentially tied with President Obama? We have to go to political WAR to stop Willard and his Flying Monkeys (TM) from devastating this country. Give money to the President's campaign. You can do that right HERE. And we need to pound Willard on his tax returns again and again. He KNOWS we could destroy him with them. So every day, in every medium we can find, we have to say,

WHY CAN'T WE SEE YOUR STINKING TAX RETURNS, WILLARD?

ROMNEY THE LIAR CALLED OUT BY AP FOR LIES ABOUT OBAMA SPEECH

Yes, Willard will indeed lie about ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. He's been hawking a particularly nasty lie about what President Obama allegedly said about businesses and how they are created. The Associated Press won't stand for that nonsense.

Mitt Romney says Barack Obama doesn't think entrepreneurs built their businesses. The problem is that's not what the president said.


The brouhaha over Obama's comments on small-business success shows no sign of fading and the president pushed back hard with new ads scheduled to run in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada in which the president directly counters Romney's claims. Romney and his allies continue to hammer Obama for comments taken wildly out of context, pummeling the president as a government-obsessed figure who thinks Washington gets the credit for the success of small businesses.


That was not Obama's point when he spoke in Virginia on July 13 about the government's supportive role in providing a stable environment in which businesses can thrive. Nor was it Romney's point when he used similar phrasing in 2002 about Olympic athletes who benefited from supportive parents and coaches


But in a campaign that makes facts secondary to a good attack, the context doesn't seem to matter.


"Those ads taking my words about small business out of context? They're flat out wrong," Obama says, looking into the camera and addressing voters in the 30-second ad. "Of course Americans build their own businesses." (My emphasis)


And of course Willard is lying his A*S off. It's his only hope.
If he tells the truth, he's finished. Just as in this case:

WHERE ARE YOUR TAX RETURNS, WILLARD, YOU LYING SOCIOPATH? WHAT ARE YOU HIDING?

ROMNEY THE LIAR: ENEMY OF THE AMERICAN WORKER

Has there EVER been a candidate for President who was just more of an outright ENEMY of ordinary people than Willard? EVERY position he's taken, EVERY move he's made, has been AGAINST the interests of American working men and women. This item got me fired up. Check this out, but be warned: you may be consumed by fierce anger after you read it.

Since the Republican presidential primary, Dade Behring, which made blood-testing machines and conducted animal tests at its Miami plant, has become something of a focus. Bain Capital, GOP presidential hope Mitt Romney's firm, had bought Dade and shuttered its factory in Puerto Rico in 1998. The closings continued under Bain's management.


It's become a familiar tale about Romney and Bain's business dealings. The New York Times reported that Bain pushed the profitable company into bankruptcy. The Miami Herald followed with its own chronicle of the mass layoffs and mass profits for Romney and company. The Tampa Bay Times reported that Dade had received millions in tax breaks to promote job creation in Puerto Rico one year before it closed the factory there.


Bain, of course, walked away with a huge profit. In 1999, the private equity firm grabbed $242 million after it pressured Dade to borrow more millions to buy up Bain's shares in the company. (My emphasis)


So many Dade workers lost their jobs -- 1,700 in the United States, 850 in Miami alone -- that the Bain-Dade dealings have become a symbol of corporate bloodletting and a painful memory to those who witnessed the layoffs.


Fred Gregory, an information technology consultant, said he was brought in to assist the plant closing in Miami. The cafeteria scene [during the mass layoffs] also stuck with him. At a certain point, he told HuffPost, he stopped eating lunch there. "I didn't want to see the women crying," he explained.


Bastard. Thieving, lying, job-destroying, sociopathic bastard. And remember--


Willard wanted to DESTROY the U.S. auto industry. ("Let Detroit go bankrupt.")


Willard wanted NO HELP for people struggling with the prospect of losing their homes. ("Let it hit bottom.")


Willard helped DESTROY a number of other PROFITABLE companies.


Along with Ayn Rand-worshiping fanatic Paul Ryan, he wants to DESTROY MEDICARE.


He helped OUTSOURCE American jobs.


He kept money in FOREIGN countries instead of in the U.S. where it could actually be borrowed by Americans.


He wants to GUT MEDICAID. 


He wants to give himself a huge tax break and actually RAISE taxes on poor Americans.(!!!)

Willard Mitt Romney is the ENEMY of the average American. That he has a chance to become president is a shocking indictment of the power of years of right-wing lies and propaganda, lies that have convinced millions of people to vote against their own interests.

And on top of everything--

WHERE ARE YOUR TAX RETURNS, WILLARD? WHAT ARE YOU HIDING FROM US, YOU LEGALIZED THIEF?

MORE ON ROMNEY THE LIAR'S BIG "I SAVED THE OLYMPICS" LIE

It seems that not only did Romney get federal money for the Salt Lake City Olympics on a scale that dwarfed federal support for any other U.S.-based Olympics, much of the money he obtained went to his FRIENDS AND CRONIES, people who are now channeling money into Romney's campaign. This video (with, admittedly, somewhat over-dramatic music) has the goods. Note especially how John McCain denounced the whole deal and called for an investigation into it.

FORGETFUL ROMNEY THE LIAR

THE DARK SIDE OF ROMNEY THE LIAR'S EARLIEST FINANCIAL BACKERS

Where did the capital for Willard's predatory financial outfit come from? Disturbing evidence here hints at its troubling sources:



Some of the first investors in Mitt Romney’s firm Bain Capital, according to a report on the Los Angeles Times, were Salvadoran families living in Miami with members accused by the US government of funding death squads in the brutal civil war in El Salvador. 

When Bain Capital was founded in 1984, Romney and his partners had trouble raising funds for their initial investments. “$9 million came from rich Latin Americans,” the Times reports, “including powerful Salvadoran families living in Miami.… At the time, U.S. officials were publicly accusing some exiles in Miami of funding right-wing death squads in El Salvador. Some family members of the first Bain Capital investors were later linked to groups responsible for killings.”


*****
The Salvadorans hid their investment in Bain by working through shell companies set up in Panama, “then known for tax advantages and unusual banking secrecy.” The Times quoted Steven H. Hagen, a Miami lawyer who provides tax advice to offshore companies and international investors, describing Panama in the 1980s as “the country of choice for foreigners wanting to make investments on a confidential basis.”


Of course, Willard's defenders will argue that none of the DIRECT investors were affiliated with death squads--just other members of their families. ("Hey, I'm not killing people! That's my brother who's doing that!") But there's more here than meets the eye--count on it.


Oh, and once again,

WHY ARE YOU HIDING YOUR FREAKING TAX RETURNS FROM US, WILLARD?

ROMNEY THE LIAR ***LYING*** ABOUT OUTSOURCING--AGAIN

With "friends" like Willard, American working men and women don't need enemies. Check this latest item about Willard's flagrant lies regarding sending American jobs overseas.

In recent weeks, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have accused each other of being an "outsourcer in chief," as their campaigns have tussled over Romney's past at Bain Capital and the (non)release of his tax returns. But all this scuffling hasn't taken into account an until-now unreported fact about Romney's days at Bain: When he was running the private equity firm, he invested tens of millions of dollars in a pair of companies that specialized in outsourcing high-tech manufacturing and that developed offshore production facilities in Mexico, China, and elsewhere to build electronics for US firms.


In March 1999, shortly after Romney left Bain to take over the troubled Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Brookside Capital Investors Inc., a Bain-related entity wholly owned by Romney, filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission that listed dozens of companies in which Brookside held a stake the previous quarter. The roster included investments in Singapore-based Flextronics International ($13 million) and Florida-headquartered Jabil Circuit Inc. ($41 million), two companies that were leaders in the fast-growing field of outsourcing electronics manufacturing and offshoring production to low-wage countries. Together, these two investments represented almost 10 percent of Brookside's $559 million portfolio.


[And of course we know Willard didn't REALLY leave Bain.]


With the outsourcing debate still raging in the 2012 race—the Obama crew has not let up on its Bain attacks, and Romney's camp has (falsely) accused Obama of wasting stimulus money on green-tech firms that used the funds overseas—Romney's past investments have become a potential political liability. On the campaign trail, Romney has denounced China for poaching US jobs, and he has cried foul when Obama blasted him for having once been an outsourcing profiteer. Yet when he was in charge of a half-billion-dollar investment fund, it acquired hefty positions in US and foreign firms that profited from US companies shipping manufacturing (and jobs) to China, Mexico, and elsewhere. [My emphasis.]


Man. Is there any way Willard HASN'T been terrible for working people? Guys like Willard see these people as disposable. The hired help. People you basically wipe your feet on. Not the "right" kind of people--like him.


Oh, and before I forget--

WHERE ARE YOUR TAX RETURNS, WILLARD? WHY ARE YOU HIDING THEM FROM US? WHAT DON'T YOU WANT US TO SEE?

ROMNEY THE LIAR IS FLAT OUT ***LYING*** ABOUT WHEN HE LEFT BAIN

Hurrah for the Boston Globe! They're not letting Willard lie his way out of responsibility for Bain's ugly predations. They've got more right here--a lot more. Highlights:

Interviews with a half-dozen of Romney’s former partners and associates, as well as public records, show that he was not merely an absentee owner during this period. [1999-2002] He signed dozens of company documents, including filings with regulators on a vast array of Bain’s investment entities. And he drove the complex negotiations over his own large severance package, a deal that was critical to the firm’s future without him, according to his former associates.


Indeed, by remaining CEO and sole shareholder, Romney held on to his leverage in the talks that resulted in his generous 10-year retirement package, according to former associates. 


“The elephant in the room was not whether Mitt was involved in investment decisions but Mitt’s retention of control of the firm and therefore his ability to extract a huge economic benefit by delaying his giving up of that control,” said one former associate, who, like some other Romney associates, spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the company.


Willard says he left Bain in February 1999 and isn't responsible for anything after that, like the SIX THOUSAND AMERICAN JOBS BAIN DESTROYED DURING THAT PERIOD.  That's an out-and-out damned lie. We're going to keep hitting Willard on this again and again. Oh, and I ask again--

WHY CAN'T WE SEE YOUR TAX RETURNS, WILLARD?

ROMNEY THE LIAR'S "I SAVED THE OLYMPICS" LIE

One of the many suspicious and fraudulent items on Willard's resume is his contention that he "saved" the 2002 Winter Olympics after its organizers were caught behaving scandalously. That nonsense is destroyed definitively right here. Let's take a look:

The Games would go on with or with out Mitt. This was never in doubt. What was in doubt was who would profit and who would have the inside track. What was in doubt was how to rake in profits without having to make investments. What the grifters needed was a leverage artist. What they needed was Mitt. And Mitt delivered...

When the dust settled, Mitt’s lobbying effort brought over $1.5 Billion to the SLC Games. In 2000 the GAO did an audit of US taxpayer support for Olympic Games in the country. Taxpayers spent $74,654,000 for the LA Games in 1984; and $608,512,000 for the 1996 in Atlanta. These were both summer Olympics and so you would expect them to cost more. But, the 2002 Winter Games in SLC blew the doors off the Treasury—taxpayers paid $1.5 Billion to bail out Mitt.


For the LA Games, taxpayers only paid for the Federal role during the games. In the Atlanta and SLC Games, taxpayers paid the most money to help the host city prepare their infrastructure. We spent $423,919,000 to help Atlanta and almost thrice that ($1.25 Billion) for Salt Lake City—and this is where the post-Olympics scandals can be found.


Read about how Willard's friends cashed in as the Federal $$$ flooded into Utah--and be reminded once again of what a lying sociopath Willard really is.


Oh, and once again--

WHERE ARE YOUR TAX RETURNS, WILLARD?

WHY ROMNEY THE LIAR WANTS TO DENY HE WORKED AT BAIN UNTIL 2002

That's because Bain was still inflicting terrible damage on American workers. The story is here. These are the job losses that Willard is desperately trying to avoid taking responsibility for: 

–GS Industries – 750 Jobs Lost 


–KB Toys – Up to 3,500 Jobs Lost 


–Dade International – 1,700 Jobs Lost 


–DDi Corporation – 275 Jobs Lost


And the kicker?


MITT ROMNEY'S COMPANY MADE OUT LIKE A BANDIT ON ALL OF THEM. Over six thousand Americans thrown out of work, and Willard is lining his pockets. Quite a deal, Mittens.


Read the whole thing, if you can avoid getting physically ill reading about this vulture's company.


Oh, and once again--

WHY ARE YOU HIDING YOUR TAX RETURNS, WILLARD?

ROMNEY THE LIAR KEEPS HIS PROFITS, DUMPS HIS LOSSES ON ***US***

Of all of Willard's endless lies, one of the most insulting is that his "business expertise" and "job creating skills" [retch] qualify him to be president. Now this item from Bloomberg destroys that nonsense rather nicely. Have a look at some excerpts. (Oh, and the highlighting is from me.)

What’s clear from a review of the public record during his management of the private-equity firm Bain Capital from 1985 to 1999 is that Romney was fabulously successful in generating high returns for its investors. He did so, in large part, through heavy use of tax-deductible debt, usually to finance outsized dividends for the firm’s partners and investors. When some of the investments went bad, workers and creditors felt most of the pain. Romney privatized the gains and socialized the losses. 

Thanks to leverage, 10 of roughly 67 major deals by Bain Capital during Romney’s watch produced about 70 percent of the firm’s profits. Four of those 10 deals, as well as others, later wound up in bankruptcy. It’s worth examining some of them to understand Romney’s investment style at Bain Capital.


********
In 1992, Bain Capital bought American Pad & Paper by financing 87 percent of the purchase price. In the next three years, Ampad borrowed to make acquisitions, repay existing debt and pay Bain Capital and its investors $60 million in dividends. 


As a result, the company’s debt swelled from $11 million in 1993 to $444 million by 1995. The $14 million in annual interest expense on this debt dwarfed the company’s $4.7 million operating cash flow. The proceeds of an initial public offering in July 1996 were used to pay Bain Capital $48 million for part of its stake and to reduce the company’s debt to $270 million. 


From 1993 to 1999, Bain Capital charged Ampad about $18 million in various fees. By 1999, the company’s debt was back up to $400 million. Unable to pay the interest costs and drained of cash paid to Bain Capital in fees and dividends, Ampad filed for bankruptcy the following year. Senior secured lenders got less than 50 cents on the dollar, unsecured lenders received two- tenths of a cent on the dollar, and several hundred jobs were lost. Bain Capital had reaped capital gains of $107 million on its $5.1 million investment.


Read the whole thing, and tell me this:

How exactly does ANY of this qualify Willard for the presidency? Why does this LIAR, this PREDATOR, this VULTURE, this borderline THIEF think he has the right to govern this country?

And one more time...

WHAT'S IN YOUR INCOME TAX RETURNS THAT YOU DON'T WANT US TO SEE, WILLARD?

***WOW!***QUESTIONS FOR ROMNEY THE LIAR

Since Willard is claiming he left Bain [Vulture] Capital in February 1999 to go "save" the 2002 Winter Olympics (i.e., beg for taxpayer money to fix it), he can't be held accountable for any of the nasty things that Bain did in the years after that. (Hmmm. Funny. To prove his residency in Massachusetts in order to run for governor there, he swore that he regularly attended BUSINESS MEETINGS in the state.) Needless to say, Romney's shifty conduct has raised questions. In fact, Forbes' T.J. Walker has THIRTY-FIVE of 'em right here. Here are some of them:

5. You earned at least $100,000 as an executive from Bain in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings according to filings with State of Massachusetts. Can you give an example of anyone else you personally know getting a six figure income, not dividend or investment return, but actual income, from a company they had nothing to do with?


9. In 2002, you are listed as one of two managing members of Bain Capital Investors LLC in its annual report. What does this mean?

15. Isn’t it possible that if Bain had made an investment during 1999 to 2002 that you felt was truly odious, for example ownership of a legal Nevada brothel, that you could have and would have used your authority to veto such a decision?


19. According to the Boston Globe, “Romney also testified that ‘there were a number of social trips and business trips that brought [him] back to Massachusetts, board meetings’ while he was running the Olympics. He added that he remained on the boards of several companies, including the Lifelike Co., in which Bain Capital held a stake until 2001.” You testified that while running the Olympics you took a number of business trips to Massachusetts and for board meetings for companies including Lifelike Co. Bain had a stake in this company until 2001. Are you contending that you could attend board meetings for Lifelike Co at the same time Bain Capital had a stake in Lifelike Co and at the same time you owned the stock of Bain Capital, but that somehow your attending a board meeting for a company partially owned by Bain had nothing to do with Bain because you were on the board as Mitt Romney the individual, not as the representative of Bain?


24. Why do SEC documents claim you were Chief Executive Officer, President, and Managing Director of Bain Capital 2000 and 2001 if you were merely the sole owner? 


25. Did you sign this SEC document? 


26. Is this accurate or not?


27. If you didn’t sign it, is someone guilty of lying to the SEC? 


28. True or false, it is a felony to lie on SEC filings?


Why don't I think Willard will be answering any of these any time soon?

DID ROMNEY THE LIAR BREAK THE LAW?

Could be, could be. David Corn is on the trail. 

The ongoing hullabaloo over the timing of Mitt Romney's exit from Bain has become a bit absurd. The Romney camp and Bain insist that Romney fully retired in February 1999 from the private equity firm he founded and owned—even though in the past he and Bain have described his departure as a part-time leave—and evidence has emerged (including Securities and Exchange documents I first reported) showing that Romney was involved to some extent in Bain as late as 2002, while he continued to maintain his ownership of the firm and its various entities. Romney has been working hard to avoid being held responsible for any post-February 1999 Bain deals that might have resulted in bankruptcies or outsourcing. But there is another reason for the Romney crew to worry about this controversy: Romney may have made a false statement on a federal financial disclosure form, and doing so is a felony punishable by up to one year of imprisonment and a $50,000 fine.

Read the whole thing. Geez, is this guy slimey. And remember, every day, we need ask Willard the same question:

Why can't we see your tax returns? 

***ROMNEY THE LIAR NAILED BY HIS OWN TESTIMONY!***

This is BIG folks! Willard has repeatedly said that he left Bain [Vulture] Capital in February 1999, and that he was too busy organizing the 2002 Olympics top be involved in Bain.

NOW HE'S BEEN PROVEN A LIAR BY HIS OWN TESTIMONY!

Check out the story here:

Mitt Romney's repeated claim that he played no part in executive decision-making related to Bain after 1999 is false, according to Romney's own testimony in June 2002, in which he admitted to sitting on the board of the Lifelike Co., a doll maker that was a Bain investment during the period.


Romney has consistently insisted that he was too busy organizing the 2002 Winter Olympics to take part in Bain business between 1999 and that event. But in the testimony, which was provided to The Huffington Post, Romney noted that he regularly traveled back to Massachusetts. "[T]here were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth," he said. 


Romney's sworn testimony was given as part of a hearing to determine whether he had sufficient residency status in Massachusetts to run for governor. 


Romney testified that he "remained on the board of the Staples Corporation and Marriott International, the Life Like Corporation" at the time.


Yet in the Aug. 12, 2011, federal disclosure form filed as part of his presidential bid, he said, "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." [Emphasis added]


Perjury! Felony lying to the Federal Government! If Willard was still actively managing Bain as late as 2002, that he means he was ACTIVELY involved in:


--OUTSOURCING AMERICAN JOBS TO CHINA
--APPROVING AN INVESTMENT IN A COMPANY THAT DISPOSED OF ABORTED FETUSES
--DESTROYING MORE AMERICAN COMPANIES AND AMERICAN JOBS.


Read the whole thing, and then SPREAD IT AROUND!


Let's wring Willard's political neck with this!

ROMNEY THE LIAR: OBAMACARE SUPPORTERS JUST WANT "FREE STUFF"

What a jackass.  

YES! 50,000+ PAGE VIEWS!! TO CELEBRATE, HERE'S ***ALL***OF ROMNEY'S LIES IN ONE LIST!

You can see it here. Again, THANK YOU for helping out with this project as much as you are! Spread this blog FAR AND WIDE, everywhere you can think of. Because the TRUTH is our ally.


But if we let the radical Right shout us down, the truth will be drowned out. That's why I need YOU to help me in another way. Go HERE and help us spread the truth!


LET'S WIN THIS THING--TOGETHER!!

ROMNEY THE LIAR'S TAX LIES (AND REPUBLICAN TAX LIES IN GENERAL) ***DEMOLISHED!***

Jon Perr, of the outstanding site Perrspectives (which I link to in the side menu), has written the most thorough refutation of all the Republican Party's LIES about taxes, especially the LIES told by Willard, that I've ever seen. No fair-minded person could read this and conclude that Willard and his Flying Monkeys (TM) are doing anything other than BS'ing 24/7 on this subject. It's a thing of beauty, and it's right here. Here's one of the many highlights:


[On the Estate Tax, called the "Death Tax" in right-wing propaganda]:

That tax is currently paid by less than a quarter of one percent of American estates each year. Despite Republican mythology to the contrary, the Tax Policy Center reported that in 2009 fewer than 2,700 family farms and businesses owed the tax to Uncle Sam. But thanks to successful Republican brinksmanship, the December 2010 tax cut compromise lowered the rate from 45 percent to 35 percent while boosting the estate tax exemption to $10 million per couple, dropping the number of families impacted to just 40 a year. Now, Mitt Romney wants to make sure those 40 richest estates estimated to now pay the tax each year could keep billions of dollars away from the federal government.


And among those 40 estates would be his own. With President Romney zeroing out the estate tax, his five sons and 18 grandchildren would get a golden shower when their grandparents Mitt and Ann leave the scene. Their payday courtesy of all other American taxpayers could reach $84,000,000, that is, 35 percent of $240 million. (The Romney clan's winnings courtesy of the U.S. Treasury pale in comparison to the billions to be saved by the billionaires who back Mitt Romney and his Super PAC.)


Go read the whole thing. And consider Willard's and the Republican Party's lies on taxes DEMOLISHED.

MORE ON ROMNEY THE LIAR'S INVESTMENT IN A FIRM THAT DISPOSED OF ABORTED FETUSES.

Wow. I mean, just wow. Take a look at this video. Cenk Uygur is just layin' the LUMBER to Willard on this issue. And he asks a key question: What if Barack Obama had done this? What would the Republicans say?

LISTEN TO ROMNEY THE LIAR TALKING ABOUT JOB LOSSES WHEN HE WAS A GOVERNOR

Remember how Willard has been saying that EVERY JOB LOST SINCE 20 JANUARY 2009 is somehow Obama's fault? The job market started turning up six months into Obama's term. Here's Willard talking about how unfair it was to blame him for the fact that jobs continued to decline in Massachusetts FOR ELEVEN MONTHS AFTER HE BECAME GOVERNOR:




The ability of this jackass to lie with a straight face about EVERYTHING should make the prospect of Willard becoming president an ALARMING one for all.


BTW, PLEASE contribute to President Obama's campaign. Willard just raked in $100 million in June to spread his lying BS. We need YOUR help. Here's where you can, right here.:

LISTEN TO ROMNEY THE LIAR'S ***PATHETIC LIE*** ON THE MANDATE

READ ALL ABOUT ROMNEY THE LIAR'S ***INCREDIBLY*** SHADY BUSINESS PRACTICES

Willard says his chief "qualification" (Ha!) to be president is his "business expertise". But a new article in Vanity Fair raises troubling questions about Willard's ugly tactics, his ability to manipulate the law, and what looks like attempts to game the system. You really should read the whole thing, but here are some highlights:


Particularly jarring [in the VERY limited tax records Romney released] were the Romneys’ many offshore accounts. As Newt Gingrich put it during the primary season, “I don’t know of any American president who has had a Swiss bank account.” But Romney has, as well as other interests in such tax havens as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

To give but one example, there is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as “a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.” It could be that Sankaty is an old vehicle with little importance, but Romney appears to have treated it rather carefully. He set it up in 1997, then transferred it to his wife’s newly created blind trust on January 1, 2003, the day before he was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s governor. The director and president of this entity is R. Bradford Malt, the trustee of the blind trust and Romney’s personal lawyer. Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an “excepted investment fund” that would not need to be on his disclosure forms. He finally included it on his 2010 tax return. Even after examining that return, we have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romney’s wealth is even greater than previous estimates. While the Romneys’ spokespeople insist that the couple has paid all the taxes required by law, investments in tax havens such as Bermuda raise many questions, because they are in “jurisdictions where there is virtually no tax and virtually no compliance,” as one Miami-based offshore lawyer put it. 

That’s not the only money Romney has in tax havens. Because of his retirement deal with Bain Capital, his finances are still deeply entangled with the private-equity firm that he founded and spun off from Bain and Co. in 1984. Though he left the firm in 1999, Romney has continued to receive large payments from it—in early June he revealed more than $2 million in new Bain income. The firm today has at least 138 funds organized in the Cayman Islands, and Romney himself has personal interests in at least 12, worth as much as $30 million, hidden behind controversial confidentiality disclaimers. Again, the Romney campaign insists he saves no tax by using them, but there is no way to check this.


**********

A report by Bain and Co. itself, looking at the period from 2002 to 2007, concluded that there is “little evidence that private equity owners, overall, added value” to the companies they took over: nearly all their returns are explained by broad economic growth, rising stock markets, and leverage. Josh Kosman, who researched the subject of private equity for his book The Buyout of America, singles out Bain Capital in particular. “They take pride in pushing the leverage envelope [i.e., use of borrowed money, which magnifies returns, while off-loading the risks onto others] more than their peers,” he says. “I have heard that from limited partners in Bain’s funds. I have heard that from bankers who lend money to finance their leveraged buyouts. Bain always prided itself on ‘We’ll push leverage more than the others.’ They brag about that, behind closed doors.”


********
One cannot properly understand Wall Street’s size and power without appreciating the central role of offshore tax havens. There is absolutely no evidence that Bain has done anything illegal, but private equity is one channel for this secrecy-shrouded foreign money to enter the United States, and a filing for Mitt Romney’s first $37 million Bain Capital Fund, of 1984, provides a rare window into this. One foreign investor, of $2 million, was the newspaper tycoon, tax evader, and fraudster Robert Maxwell, who fell from his yacht, and drowned, off of the Canary Islands in 1991 in strange circumstances, after looting his company’s pension fund. The Bain filing also names Eduardo Poma, a member of one of the “14 families” oligarchy that has controlled most of El Salvador’s wealth for decades; oddly, Poma is listed as sharing a Miami address with two anonymous companies that invested $1.5 million between them. The filings also show a Geneva-based trustee overseeing a trust that invested $2.5 million, a Bahamas corporation that put in $3 million, and three corporations in the tax haven of Panama, historically a favored destination for Latin-American dirty money—“one of the filthiest money-laundering sinks in the world,” as a U.S. Customs official once put it.


Read this article folks. And then tell me you believe Romney deserves to anywhere NEAR the presidency. And answer me this question:

WHY WON'T ROMNEY RELEASE MORE THAN TWO YEARS OF HIS TAX RECORDS? WHAT IS ROMNEY HIDING?

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

It's the 236th birthday of the United States of America. Let's hope that by 4 July 2013 that You-Know-Who is just a vague and tiresome memory. 

***SCANDAL!*** ROMNEY THE LIAR LIED ABOUT INVOLVEMENT WITH COMPANY THAT DISPOSED OF ABORTED FETUSES

Although right-wingers are inflexible in many ways, they are most intense when it comes to abortion. And Willard, who is either Pro-Choice or Pro-Life, depending on whether it will help him politically, is caught up in the abortion controversy in a BIG way. Moreover, it involves something else Willard is lying about: just how long he was Bain Capital. Let's look here: 

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics... 


But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney's exit from Bain.


Ho-lee crap! Willard PERSONALLY signed off on the deal, made a ton money off of it, and then LIED about his involvement with it. Willard has LIED about his time with Bain. He did NOT truly leave in February 1999, not by a long-shot. This puts him UP TO HIS NECK in the outsourcing deals Bain was running at the time as well.


This ain't goin' away, folks.


We'll see to that. You KNOW we'll see to that.

ROMNEY THE LIAR REVS THE LIES UP EVEN HIGHER IN RESPONSE TO HEALTH CARE RULING

I tell ya Willard is on FIRE, I mean just on FIRE with his new LIE about the health care law. Check this flaming pile of horse manure:


"Obamacare raises taxes on the American people by approximately $500 billion. Obamacare cuts Medicare, cuts Medicare, by approximately $500 billion. And even with those cuts, and tax increases, Obamacare adds trillions to our deficits and to our national debt and pushes those obligations on to coming generations.


“Obamacare also means that for up to 20 million Americans, they will lose the insurance they currently have, the insurance that they like and they want to keep. Obamacare is a job killer. Businesses across the country have been asked what the impact is of Obamacare. Three quarters of those surveyed by the Chamber of Commerce said Obamacare makes it less likely for them to hire people.”

From beginning to end, this is incredibly misleading. The Affordable Care Act doesn’t cut $500 billion from Medicare services; it ends the Medicare Advantage program, which cost the government a huge amount of money with few benefits. Likewise, the law doesn’t add “trillions to our deficits.” By most accounts, the law reduces the deficit over the next decade and works to reduce the overall rate of health care spending by the federal government. And on the claims that the law will cause “up to 20 million Americans” to lose their insurance, and make it harder for businesses to hire, Romney is simply lying. Under the law, you can maintain your current health insurance if you like it. As for small businesses, since the Affordable Care Act hasn’t actually been implemented, there’s no way that it can be responsible for sluggish hiring.

In short, Willard wouldn't know the truth if it walked up and bit him on the rear end. But at least his medical insurance would cover the bite.


Too bad he wants to take away the insurance of 30,000,000 other people.


And lie about why he's doing it.