The Bain of Romney's Existence - Part Three

Another day and more damning commentary and conflicting statements from the Romney campaign.  Yes, I believe that Romney has lied through his teeth on his post 1999 involvement with Bain Capital and its management.  I likewise believe that the reason that Romney refuses to release his tax returns boils down to the simple fact that they must contain something Romney desperately wants to hide.  It may be obscene income levels or huge payments from Bain even as Romney continues to lie that he left the firm in 1999 despite SEC filings, video clips of Romney himself and other sworn statements to the contrary.  Here's a sampling of pundits on Romney's Bain fiasco.  First, Andrew Sullivan:

The claim that he committed a felony by falsely reporting his role at Bain Capital under oath is what has really gotten under Romney's skin. But it seems pretty clear to me that he signed a federal financial disclosure form, under the penalty of perjury, saying he had not been involved "in any way" with Bain after he left for Utah in February 1999. That's a strong statement. And it is directly undercut by Romney's own statement in his 2002 attempt to prove residency to run for governor:

Romney 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...

So the question of whether Romney committed a felony in his financial disclosure form is a very real one - because Romney and Romney's lawyer provide the strongest evidence that it was perjury. Now we have more contemporaneous evidence that Romney perjured himself:

During the 2002 hearing — in a remark that has not been previously reported — Romney said that after he departed Bain in February 1999 he went through a transition period regarding his work in Boston.

When a lawyer challenging his eligibility asked Romney, "Did you remain more or less continuously in Salt Lake City from February '99 to the end of the year," Romney answered: "Actually, there was some transition away from my work in Boston for the first few months and then I pretty much stayed there after."

David Frum, a man who is no liberal Democrat adds in with these remarks:

It's not just his [Romney's] arguments that are weak. For the past year, we have watched him be pushed around by the radical GOP fringe. He's been forced to abjure his most important achievement as governor, his healthcare plan. In December, he was compelled to sign onto the Ryan budget plan after months of squirming to avoid it. Last fall he released an elaborate economic plan. On the eve of the Michigan primary, he ripped it up and instead accepted a huge new tax cut - to a top rate of 28% - that has never been costed (and that he now tries to avoid mentioning whenever he can). Romney has acknowledged in interviews that he understands that big rapid cuts in government spending could push the US economy back into recession. Yet he campaigns anyway on the Tea Party's false promise that it's the deficit that causes the depression, rather than (as he well knows) the other way around.

The hope for many of us was that a Republican president could do a better job constraining them than Barack Obama has been able to do - especially if (as I personally also hoped) the very act of electing such a president would deflate the radicalism of the congressional GOP and revive a more constructive spirit.

But at every point, Romney has surrendered to the fringe of his party. Weak. And now in his first tough encounter with Barack Obama, Romney is being shoved around again. This is not what a president looks like - anyway, not a successful president.

Then from a liberal perspective, we have Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post blasting Romney as well.  Here are highlights:

Mitt Romney has every right to cloak his personal and professional finances in secrecy — and voters have every right to assume he has something embarrassing to hide. If this seems unfair, Romney has only himself to blame.

Through a series of miscalculations, Romney has managed to turn what should have been a minor hiccup into what may be a defining moment, and not in a good way. Attacks by President Obama’s campaign serve mainly to draw attention to the train wreck.

On the Sunday morning talk shows, even Republicans urged Romney to release more tax returns while wondering what secrets he’s trying to keep. And the campaign’s latest attempt to explain how and when Romney left Bain Capital — he’s supposed to have “retired retroactively” at some unspecified date — became an instant punch line.

The only reason anyone cares when Romney left Bain Capital, the private equity firm he founded and ran, is because Romney made a totally unreasonable claim: When Democrats pointed to outsourcing and job cuts at companies Bain owned or controlled, Romney denied any responsibility since these unfortunate developments took place after he left to run the Winter Olympics in 1999.  This was an absurd position to take.

As late as 2002, Bain’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission list Romney as chairman, chief executive and sole stockholder.    If you look at Romney’s signature on those documents and listen to what he’s been saying on the campaign trail, you have to conclude that either he lied to the SEC or he’s lying to voters now. 

All of this flows from a fundamental misrepresentation: Bain Capital’s purpose wasn’t to create jobs, it was to create wealth. If Romney had spoken honestly from the beginning about his company’s goals and actions, his campaign surrogates wouldn’t have to be out there trying to explain how retroactive retirement works.

Romney has spent the better part of a decade running for president. Did it never occur to him that if he ever won the Republican nomination, surely there would come a time when he was under pressure to release multiple years’ worth of tax returns?  


The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that Romney believes that while stonewalling on his taxes may cost him some support, releasing them would cost him more.

Some conservatives are becoming restive; Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, for example, said Sunday that it was “crazy” for Romney not to release more than the one tax return he has grudgingly surrendered. If Romney is trying to hide something, what might it be? Could there have been more offshore accounts? Some additional undisclosed mansions? Might Romney have made some kind of profitable — but impolitic — bet against the U.S. economy?

 

Romney has created this disaster himself through lying and the probable unbridled greed that his tax return would document.  I for one cannot find a shred of sympathy for the man.

Black Pastors Once Again Play Uncle Tom Role For Maggie Gallagher and NOM

This blog has vented many times over the way that black pastors - or at least the ignorant ones who are dumb as bricks and utterly ignorant of history, including the racist history of the lily white Christianist "family values" organizations - time and time again act as the water carrying house slave for the likes of the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") and similar organizations which might as well have KKK membership as a prerequisite for involvement within their ranks. Despite the endorsement of same sex CIVIL marriage by President Obama and the NAACP, some cretins and morons within the black pastor community have yet again come groveling and licking the boots of Maggie Gallagher as if she were Miss Scarlett at Tara.   While hypocrisy certainly sets me off, conscious decisions to embrace ignorance really puts me in a rank.  Yes, some will find my remarks offensive, but that doesn't make them any less the truth.  Think Progress looks at the black pastor crowd that are still doing the bidding of the descendants of their slave owning masters.  Here are highlights:

In March, confidential memos detailed the National Organization for Marriage’s strategy to drive a wedge between the gay and black communities (and nullify the existence of people who are both black and gay in the process). Unfazed by the backlash, NOM doubled down on the strategy, following through on it in North Carolina and refusing to apologize, even after internal emails showed how particular the group was about highlighting black religious leaders at events.

Now, NOM has redoubled its effort to “fan the hostility” by propping up the overstated Coalition of African-American Pastors and its founder (and NOM’s new spokesperson), Rev. Bill Owens, who likes to compare homosexuality to bestiality. The organization has released a new video, featuring Owens, the vitriolic Bishop Harry Jackson, Pastor Ericka McCrutcheon (who says gays “sodomize each other and practice other deviant behaviors in society), and others, criticizing the NAACP for “pandering to the President” and joining him in supporting marriage equality.

While technically CAAP is a coalition of black pastors, it’s not actually representative of anybody except the few radicals who’ve joined it. When CAAP had the gall to demand a meeting with the President two weeks ago, it admitted that it does not speak for any denomination, including the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Church of God in Christ. The group’s only purpose since its founding has been to attack marriage equality, and only since partnering with NOM has its anti-gay tantrums received any legitimate media attention. Unsurprisingly, in the vein of all of NOM’s failed online campaigns, CAAP’s 100000 Signatures 4 Marriage campaign has garnered a full 46 Likes on Facebook.

NOM’s media effort has been to paint CAAP as being some huge conglomeration of black pastors, when in fact it seems to have at best tens of active members (despite Owens’ claim of 1,300 members), and they clearly do not speak on behalf of their community. National polls have shown that a majority of African-American voters support marriage equality, even at higher rates than the national average. 

I will concede that likening a fat bloviating cow Maggie Gallagher to Scarlett is a stretch, but Rev. Bill Owens kisses Gallagher's and NOM's ass just as thoroughly as the house slaves at Tara pandered to Scarlett. I suspect he even kiss up to the white supremacist linked Tony Perkins of Family Research Council.  Owens and his compatriots make whores look virtuous.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

HRBOR July 19th Third Thursday at Sassi Cakes

It's hard to believe that a month has already flown by since HRBOR's 5th Anniversary celebration last month.  This month's Third Thursday networking event will be at Sassi Cakes and Sweets on 22nd Street in Ghent in the Palace Station Shops.  The desserts are wonderful and there's a lunch and snack menu too.  Here are event details:

Sassi Cakes and Sweets offers an intimate yet relaxing atmosphere, delectable treats and sensational martinis and much more. You must experience it to believe it! They have everything from cake covered in various types of chocolates, to mini cakes that is fit for individuals or couples to share, to the big holiday/birthday specialty cakes that you can share with family and friends. Additionally, Sassi hosts a sit down bar area where you can experience some of the best Martinis in Virginia and our separate "other than dessert" menu that challenges you to a culinary experience.

What: HRBOR Third Thursday Networking Event

Event Hosts:

Sassi Cakes and Sweets/Stephanie Wadnola, Owner/Chef

757-321-6759

http://www.sassicakesandsweets.com

Where:  330 W 22^nd St, Norfolk VA 23517

When: July 19th, 6pm - 8 pm

Parking: Ample

Featured Non-profit and Bar Sponsor:

 

Cost: Free to Members, $15 Guest Fee to Prospective Members

Invite friends and colleagues. 

 

Exciting Raffle Opportunity for Two Tickets to EV & a Tysinger Mercedes

Target Selling Same Sex Union Cards Nationwide

The list of boycott targets for American Family Association and the One Million Bitches crowd just got longer.  I can just imagine the spittle that will be flying when these gay haters realize that Target has added cards for same sex unions to their greeting card inventories nationwide.  Maggie Gallagher and Linda Harvey will have a cow and Robert Knight may well blow a gasket.  With a huge national retailer like Target making this move, it's yet another sign that over the longer term the hate "family values" groups and professional Christian set are losing the marriage equality battle.  Here are highlights from LGBT Nation:

MINNEAPOLIS — Placed on greeting card racks under the headings of “For two special men” and “For two special women,” Minneapolis-based Target Corp. is now stocking greeting cards to celebrate same-sex unions.

The gay-themed greeting cards hit Target stores nationwide last month, just weeks after the retailer began selling gay pride-themed t-shirts online, reported the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The cards are addressed to: “Two very special women, one very special love” and “Mr. & Mr.” and included greetings which include “…a love story whose time has come! Congratulations.”

Company spokeswoman Molly Snyder said that “Target is focused on diversity and inclusivity,” and now offers a range of greeting cards that appeal to a variety of audiences, including the LGBT community.

The cards are made by Carlton Cards, a unit of American Greetings, whose spokeswoman Patrice Sadd said the company and Target jointly decided to offer “wedding cards relevant for everyone.”
The move is the latest step by Target to appeal to gay and lesbian consumers.

In November, Minnesotans will vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Target has not yet taken a position on the amendment, and said it’s going to remain neutral, having been burned by its political involvement in the past.

2012: The Rich Versus the Rest.

Mitt Romney's defenders are unhappy that the media - with the help of the Obama campaign, of course - is focusing on Romneys almost obscene wealth and his cynical and ruthless investment stratagems that cared nothing for the consequences other than how fast to make a buck.  Or more accurately, lots of bucks.  It's impossible to ever truly get inside of someone else's head, but Romney's career at Bain Capital is telling and it paints an ugly picture that ranges from betting against American businesses to throwing people out on the street without jobs.  A column in the New York Times notes why it IS appropriate to focus on these issues no matter how much Romney and his sycophants protest.  Here are excerpts:

A lot of people inside the Beltway are tut-tutting about the recent campaign focus on Mitt Romney’s personal history — his record of profiting even as workers suffered, his mysterious was-he-or-wasn’t-he role at Bain Capital after 1999, his equally mysterious refusal to release any tax returns from before 2010.

[T]his election really is — in substantive, policy terms — about the rich versus the rest. 

The story so far: Former President George W. Bush pushed through big tax cuts heavily tilted toward the highest incomes. As a result, taxes on the very rich are currently the lowest they’ve been in 80 years. President Obama proposes letting those high-end Bush tax cuts expire; Mr. Romney, on the other hand, proposes big further tax cuts for the wealthy. 

The impact at the top would be large. According to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the Romney plan would reduce the annual taxes paid by the average member of the top 1 percent by $237,000 compared with the Obama plan; for the top 0.1 percent that number rises to $1.2 million. No wonder Mr. Romney’s fund-raisers in the Hamptons attracted so many eager donors that there were luxury-car traffic jams. 

What about everyone else? Again according to the policy center, Mr. Romney’s tax cuts would increase the annual deficit by almost $500 billion.  .   .  .   Realistically, those big tax cuts for the rich would be offset, sooner or later, with higher taxes and/or lower benefits for the middle class and the poor. 

So as I said, this election is, in substantive terms, about the rich versus the rest, and it would be doing voters a disservice to pretend otherwise.

How are voters supposed to know who’s telling the truth? In fact, earlier this year focus groups given an accurate description of Mr. Romney’s policy proposals refused to believe that any politician would take such a position.  .   .   .    Trust me: you will see very few news analyses saying that Mr. Romney proposes huge tax cuts for the rich, with no plausible offset other than big benefit cuts for everyone else — even though this is the simple truth.

So how can the Obama campaign cut through this political and media fog? By talking about Mr. Romney’s personal history, and the way that history resonates with the realities of his pro-rich, anti-middle-class policy proposals.  Thus the entirely true charge that Mr. Romney wants to slash historically low tax rates on the rich even further dovetails perfectly with his own record of extraordinary tax avoidance — so extraordinary that he’s evidently afraid to let voters see his tax returns from before 2010.

[T]alking about Mr. Romney’s personal history isn’t a diversion from substantive policy discussion. On the contrary, in a political and media environment strongly biased against substance, talking about Bain and offshore accounts is the only way to bring the real policy issues into focus. And we should applaud, not condemn, the Obama campaign for standing up to the tut-tutters. 

More Sunday Male Beauty

Hate Groups Attack Alan Chambers for Speaking the Truth that Gays Can't "Change"

I've noted in prior posts on how Alan Cambers and the "ex-gays for pay" at Exodus International have taken a major step and admitted that reparative doesn't work and that there is no such things as a "ex-gay."  Sadly, Chambers and company continue to cling to the discredited Bible passages that have been used to stigmatize gays and label us as "sinners."  That said, the admission that reparative therapy is nothing but a huge fraud knowing perpetrated on the gullible and religiously brainwashed is huge.  And not surprisingly, the Bible thumpers and certified hate group leaders are veritably foaming at the mouth over Chambers/Exodus' belated honesty.  A case in point is hate group leader Linda Harvey (at left) who has ZERO, that's right ZERO credentials that make her a credible commentator on sexual orientation and/or medical and mental health issues (we traded e-mails some years back and she conceded her academic business background have ZERO to do with the things she now pretends to have expertise about).  Right Wing Watch looks at Harvey's attacks on Chambers and those who are willing to admit that the whole "ex-gay" storyline is a lie (Note: she claims thousands of gays have "changed" but offers up ZERO evidence):

Recently, the "ex-gay" organization Exodus International shocked the Religious Right when it announced that it would no longer promote so called "reparative therapy" which claims to help gays change their sexual orientation.

The announcement has, not surprisingly, angered professional anti-gay activists and today Linda Harvey lashed out at Exodus president Alan Chambers, saying that his admission that he still struggles with same-sex attraction demonstrates "very poor judgment" and blasting the idea that gays can be Christians because the Christian Church would never welcome a "compassionate pedophile":

For one, Chambers has said he doesn't believe a person can change his or her so-called sexual orientation. Now, there's not anything like this invented term called "sexual orientation" in Scripture in the first place, but then he also says that he still struggles himself with sexual feelings for other males. This shows very poor judgment as the leader of this ministry to, first of all, be experiencing this and secondly, to announce it to the whole world.

Of course a person can leave homosexuality; there are thousands of people who have done it and God's word clearly states that he can deliver us from sin. And the proud, open sinner who is publicly proclaiming it as good in defiance of God's word? It is highly questionable that such a person is saved.
...
We would not be making this exception for well-adjusted adulterers would we? How about a compassionate pedophile? What about incest like two brothers involved in homosexuality? Why not just defy God's word on this?

This is plain old rebellion and worship of self and our own impulses, not the worship of our Creator and Savior. Please join me in praying for Alan Chambers and Exodus, but also in praying for Alan's influence to diminish unless he recants this untruthful misrepresentation of the Gospel.

1.  Chambers needs to come fully clean and jettison the whole antiquated religious brainwashing that seeks to condemn many millions of individuals around the world based on the misinterpreted writings of ignorant, uneducated Bronze Age nomads and herders.  I'm sorry, but to pretend that the Bible is the "inerrant word of God" insults the intelligence of pre-teenager much less that of a supposedly mature adult. f

Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan on Romney's Bain Fiasco

As I've acknowledged before, I have zero sympathy of Mitt Romney who I view as a cynical calculating liar.  He will literally say anything that he deems expedient. And as his Bain "problem" intensifies, I can only savor every moment that Romney twists on the rope of his own making.  He's knowingly lied, he's contradicted himself, and he's had his minions lie for him.  Now, it's deservedly biting him in the ass big time.  Andrew Sullivan sums up the situation, particularly the double standard that Mitt "Pinocchio" Romney would inflict on Barack Obama:

So either Ed Gillespie and Romney are lying now, or Romney and his lawyer were lying then. Which is it? They were and are obviously trying to have it every which way to suit whatever purpose at the moment. But legally, CEOs are responsible for their companies, whether they are managing them full time, part time or even retroactively retiring while managing them. Period. The buck stops with the CEO, just as much as it stops with a president. As a Bain partner at the time said today:

“Mitt’s names were on the documents as the chief executive and sole owner of the company,” Ed Conard, who served as a partner at Bain Capital from 1993 to 2007, said in an exclusive interview with Up w/ Chris Hayes. Asked again if Romney was chief executive officer of Bain Capital from 1999 to 2002, Conard said, “Legally, on documents, I suppose, yes.”

Romney, in other words, doesn't have a leg to stand on. He has been running a campaign against the "Obama economy" insisting that the president own every single month he has been in office in order to condemn his economic management all the more - despite at least a first year in which Obama cannot really be held responsible for the fallout of an economic collapse he inherited. So Romney insists on maximal responsibility for Obama and the economy.

But responsibility for Bain? Think about it. No one disputes that Romney co-founded Bain, hired most of its staff, and honed its methods and strategies from 1984 to 2002. No one can dispute that he was paid at least $100,000 from 1999 to 2002 for being CEO. There is no massive difference between the kind of strategies Bain pursued from 1984 to 1999 when Romney was managing full-time and from 1999 to 2002, when he was managing part-time and by his own lawyer's assertion that his Bain activities "continued unabated just as they had." Is Romney saying that nothing that happened at Bain after 1999 is his responsibility but that everything that happened after January 2009 is all Barack Obama's fault?

Yep, that's what he's saying. It's a pathetic double standard argument from a suddenly pathetic and panicking campaign. The only way he can dig out of this hole - yes, Bill Kristol is right - is to release 12 years of tax returns just as his father did. Until he does, the Obama campaign has every right to double and triple their insistent criticism of Romney's Bain record. And there will be more and more blood in the water.

Will Romney release his tax returns?   I for one am not holding my breath.  One simply does not act as if he's hiding something - in this case whatever picture will be shown by Romney's tax returns - unless they have something to hide.  I fully believe that Romney will not release his tax returns either (i) because they will confirm his continued Bain involvement or (ii) because they would show a level of income that would shock the conscience of most Americans.  Either way Romney loses big time.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty