Voting machines being used in swing states owned by Bain Capital controlled company.

Here is more from the Daily Dolt:

Hart InterCivic is a national provider of election voting systems that are used in swing-states Ohio and Colorado, as well as in states we don’t really care about so much because we already know how they’ll turn out (e.g., Texas, Oklahoma, and Hawaii). Private equity firm H.I.G. Capital, LLC bought out a “significant” portion of Hart in July of 2011, and now the majority of Hart’s board directors are employees of H.I.G. (It’s not entirely clear how much of the voting machine company H.I.G. owns, but the financial advisors responsible for the transaction state that “Hart Intercivic was acquired by HIG Capital.”) 

H.I.G., in turn, has ties to Bain & Co. and Mitt Romney directly: 

H.I.G. was founded by Tony Tamer, a former Bain employee and bundler for Mitt Romney’s campaign. 

Of H.I.G.’s 22 American directors, 21 donated to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. One person made no political donations at all; one person donated to both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama; the remaining 20 directors donated exclusively to Mitt Romney in 2012. (See below for links to donations.) 

Of these 22 American directors, seven of them (nearly one-third) are former Bain employees. Now, we should note (as a reader helpfully pointed out), this is Bain & Co., which Mitt Romney left in order to start the affiliated Bain Capital. The connection is therefore a little more tenuous, but we still find H.I.G.’s overwhelming allegiance and financial support of the Romney campaign surprising (not that it’s surprising that a private equity company would lean Republican, but this level of support is pretty unusual). 

Four of H.I.G.’s directors, Tony Tamer, John Bolduc, Douglas Berman, and Brian D. Schwartz, are Romney bundlers along with former Bain and H.I.G. manager Brian Shortsleeve. 

Two of H.I.G.’s managing directors, Douglas F. Berman and Brian D. Schwartz, were present at the $50,000 per plate fundraiser where Mitt Romney made his notorious ”47%” comments. 

H.I.G. employees currently make up the majority of the Hart InterCivic’s five-member board of directors. Two of these three directors of the voting machine company, Neil Tuch and Jeff Bohl, have donated directly to Mitt Romney’s campaign. 

H.I.G. is the 11th largest donor to Mitt Romney’s campaign. H.I.G. employees have given $338,000 to the Romney campaign, outpacing even Bain Capital itself, which gave $268,000.

Republicans of course will call us paranoid and conspiracy theorists for being troubled by this, but we have already seen that the Republican party and Mitt Romney will do ANYTHING to win, so why would we NOT consider this a serious problem?

After all we do remember what happened in the 2004 election, don't we?

Let's face it folks our very democracy has been under attack for the last twelve years and if we are not extremely vigilant the Republicans will essentially make voting in this country an exercise in futility for ALL Americans. And we are already almost there.

The ONLY thing that beats this kind of cheating is a HUGE voter turnout for the Democrats.  So whatever else you do to help, make damn sure you VOTE!

Bain Capital under investigation for tax evasion.

Courtesy of Forbes:

The New York Times is reporting that Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, is among a number of firms being investigated by New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, for failing to pay taxes. 

The New York AG’s Taxpayer Protection Bureau has issued subpoenas to at least twelve financial firms, including Bain, looking into whether the companies converted management fees (taxed as ordinary income) paid by investors into fund investments which are taxed at a dramatically lower rate. 

The controversial tax avoidance scheme came to light last month when Bain Capital internal financial information was published online by Gawker.com , however the investigation had reportedly commenced prior to the publication and is not believed to be tied to the document dump. 

While Governor Romney has not been active at Bain Capital for quite some time, he does continue to receive profits from the company and held investments in some of the funds that utilized the tax avoidance strategy. 

The Romney campaign issued a statement indicating that the Governor had not benefited from the practice.

Well of COURSE the Romney campaign will say that  Mitt the Twit did not benefit from these practices. But since they refuse to release his tax results we can't know that, now can we?

However THIS is a very big deal, and it cannot help but cast a shadow over Mitt Romney, and the company that he helped to found. Of course this will make absolutely NO difference to those who were always going to vote for the Republican ticket, but it might have a withering effect on the3 undecideds whose vote might still be up for grabs.

Yet another no-nonsense, FACTUALLY based, Obama ad. Keep them coming DNC!

I keep hearing people acting surprised that the Obama team and the Democrats are being so aggressive.

My response is that if we had been kicking ass for the last fifteen years this country would NEVER have suffered the setback that it has under Republican leadership.

The new Democratic platform should read, "No More Mr Nice Guy!"

Mitt Romney quotes "Popeye the Sailor Man," and a deeper examination of Bain documents obtained by Gawker reveals probable tax fraud.

"Mo money, mo money, mo non-taxable money for me!"

Courtesy of Politico:  

Mitt Romney conceded President Barack Obama has succeeded in making him a less likable person, but he offered a defiant retort to those hoping he will open up this week: “I am who I am.” 

Romney quoted that Popeye line three times in a 30-minute interview with POLITICO about his leadership style and philosophy, swatting away advice from Republicans to focus on connecting with voters in a more emotional, human way at this convention. Instead, he vowed to keep his emphasis — in the campaign and any administration to follow — on a relentlessly goal-driven, business-minded approach that has shaped his life so far. 

“I know there are some people who do a very good job acting and pretend they’re something they’re not,” Romney said. “You get what you see. I am who I am.” 

Seriously?  So Romney's big excuse for being robotic and unlikeable is that OTHER people also have personal flaws but are just better at faking that they are more personable?

So don't believe who Mitt Romney appears to be, just trust that he is who he, and of course his wife Ann, say that he is. Faith over observable facts, now where have I heard that argument made before?

So just "who am" Mitt Romney?

Well according to information revealed in those Bain documents he is a man who has done everything in his power to defraud the government by not paying his fair share of taxes.

This from Veracity Stew:

Management fees for running a private equity firm are classified as earned income, and are taxable at a rate of 35%. However, if that money is then shifted offshore through the Bain maze, it can be disguised as “carried interest” and the earner pays a much lower 15% Capital Gains tax rate. Does the reader now see why Mitt Romney’s Budget Plan proposes the elimination of taxes on Dividends and Capital Gains? As Victor Fleischer – Professor of Law, University of Colorado explains: 

"Because the management fees for a large private equity fund can be ten or twenty million per year, the tax dodge can literally save millions in taxes every year. The problem is that it is not legal."

But that is not all. Not by a long shot.

Just a tape of Mitt Romney bragging about being impressed with Chinese slave labor while working for Bain Capital. Update!

Here is the transcript: "95% of life is set up for you if you were born in this country. And, I remember going to ah, uh, sorry just to bore you with stories. 

When I was back in my private equity days, we went to China to buy a factory there. It employed about 20,000 people. And they were almost all young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23. They were saving for potentially becoming married. 

And they work in these huge factories, they made various uh, small appliances. And uh, as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pitance they earned, living in dormitories with uh, with little bathrooms at the end of maybe 10, 10 room, rooms. And the rooms they have 12 girls per room. 

Three bunk beds on top of each other. You've seen, you've seen them? (Oh...yeah, yeah!) And, and, and around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire and guard towers. And, and, we said gosh! I can't believe that you, you know, keep these girls in! They said, no, no, no. This is to keep other people from coming in. 

Because people want so badly to come work in this factory that we have to keep them out. Or they will just come in here and start working and, and try and get compensated. So we, this is to keep people out. And they said, actually Chinese New Year as the girls go home, sometimes they decide they've saved enough money and they don't come back to the factory. 

And he said, so, on the weekend after Chinese New Year there will be a line of people hundreds long, outside the factory, hoping that some girls haven't come back. And they can come to the factory. And, and so as we were experiencing this for the first time, going to see a factory like this in China some years ago. 

The Bain Partner I was with turned to me and said, you know, 95% of life is settled if you are born in America. This is uh, this is an amazing land and what we have is unique and fortunately it is so special we are sharing it with the world." 

-Mitt Romney- 

"The barbed wire and guard towers were there to keep people out." Just when I thought I had heard the STUPIDEST thing I would ever hear from Mitt Romney.

The man admits, no BRAGS, about the fact that he witnessed this exploitation of poor women in China and came away impressed rather than disgusted. According to the Washington Post Bain Capital invested in a number of companies that sent jobs overseas to China and other locations where the wages were essentially slave wages.  Who here wants to bet on whether or not Bain invested in the company that Romney describes above and kept the labor situation exactly the same?

THIS is the man who wants to fix America's economy. I'll give you two guesses as to how much he respects the middles class workers in this country.

Some have questioned the authenticity of this tape.  All I know is that the voice we are hearing is DEFINITELY Mitt Romney's, and that it was uploaded by Rachel Maddow. I am pretty convinced that it's legit.

Update: It appears I was incorrect, Maddow had nothing to do with this video.

YouTube account has nothing to do with me, the show, or MSNBC: is.gd/JxpAA6 Working with YouTube on getting it taken down.
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) August 25, 2012

However I am going to leave the video up, at least until I have confirmation that it is not on the level. Like I said, THAT certainly SOUNDS like Mitt.

Gawker gets the goods! Update!

"Wait, how did you guys get that?"

Courtesy of Gawker:  

Mitt Romney's $250 million fortune is largely a black hole: Aside from the meager and vague disclosures he has filed under federal and Massachusetts laws, and the two years of partial tax returns (one filed and another provisional) he has released, there is almost no data on precisely what his vast holdings consist of, or what vehicles he has used to escape taxes on his income. Gawker has obtained a massive cache of confidential financial documents that shed a great deal of light on those finances, and on the tax-dodging tricks available to the hyper-rich that he has used to keep his effective tax rate at roughly 13% over the last decade. 

Today, we are publishing more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested—at minimum—more than $10 million as of 2011 (that number is based on the low end of ranges he has disclosed—the true number is almost certainly significantly higher). Almost all of them are affiliated with Bain Capital, the secretive private equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984 and ran until his departure in 1999 (or 2002, depending on whom you ask). Many of them are offshore funds based in the Cayman Islands. Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his wealth, the exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy that benefit him, the unlikely (for a right-wing religious Mormon) places that his money has ended up, and the deeply hypocritical distance between his own criticisms of Obama's fiscal approach and his money managers' embrace of those same policies. They also show that some of the investments that Romney has always described as part of his retirement package at Bain weren't made until years after he left the company. 

Holy shit! This is an amazing get, and it is going to be BIG trouble for Romney going forward in this campaign.

You can read through many of these documents yourself by going here.

Let's put it this way, and I am sure this will be to the surprise of nobody, Mitt Romney has not been at all honest with the American people.  And possibly not with his own church either.

Update: That last part might be the crux of Romney's fear about releasing his tax returns. Here is his latest argument against doing so:

"Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given," Romney tells Parade magazine in an edition due out Sunday. "This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church."

You know I have mentioned before that I thought the tithing that Romney has done to support his church, and the fact that he might have been less than forthcoming with them, was at the heart of his refusal to release his tax records. And now I believe that more than ever!

The "bane" of Mitt Romney's political life will always be his connection to another "Bain."

"Wait I didn't want to look THAT closely at my business record."

Courtesy of The Big Picture:  

Ignore the anecdotal attacks from both opponents and supporters. Thanks to two intrepid Wall Street Journal reporters, the full Romney/Bain record has been reviewed. During the GOP primaries, Mark Maremont of the Journal completed a comprehensive assessment of Bain Capital, including all “77 businesses Bain invested in while Mr. Romney led the firm from its 1984 start until early 1999.” And on August 5, Brett Arends released the ebook The Romney Files, which includes extensive reviews of Bain Capital. 

Let’s start with the WSJ article. Among its key findings: 

• $1.1 billion invested generated $2.4 billion in gains for its investors over 16 years; 
• 22% of the companies either filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors; 
• An additional 8% ran into so much trouble that Bain lost 100% of client money invested in each deal; 
• Bain’s returns came from just a small number of investments. Ten deals produced more than 70% of the total dollar gains. (4 of the 10 of these businesses later ended up in bankruptcy court). 
• Several of Bain’s biggest successes became household names: Staples, Domino’s Pizza Inc. and Sports Authority.

So essentially in a fifteen year period Bain Capital was able to double their investor's money MOSTLY because they got lucky with about ten of the 77 businesses that they invested with.

I'm not a business guy, but does THAT sound like it gives Mitt Romney bragging rights?

Apparently not:  

Brutal new ad slams Mit Romney for illegal tax shelters.

Haven't heard of the "Son of Boss" scandal?

Then here let CNN fill you in:  

Romney has had a close, long-standing, personal and business connection with Marriott International and its founders. He served as a member of the Marriott board of directors for many years. From 1993 to 1998, Romney was the head of the audit committee of the Marriott board. 

During that period, Marriott engaged in a series of complex and high-profile maneuvers, including "Son of Boss," a notoriously abusive prepackaged tax shelter that investment banks and accounting firms marketed to corporations such as Marriott. In this respect, Marriott was in the vanguard of a then-emerging corporate tax shelter bubble that substantially undermined the entire corporate tax system. 

Son of Boss and its related shelters represented perhaps the largest tax avoidance scheme in history, costing the U.S. many billions in lost corporate tax revenues. In response, the government initiated legal challenges that resulted in complete disallowance of the losses claimed by Marriott and other corporations. 

In addition, the Son of Boss transaction was listed by the Internal Revenue Service as an abusive transaction, requiring specific disclosure and subject to heavy penalties. Statutory penalties were also made more stringent to deter future tax shelter activity. Finally, the government brought successful criminal prosecutions against a number of individuals involved in Son of Boss and related transactions not associated with Marriott, including principals at major law and accounting firms. 

In his key role as chairman of the Marriott board's audit committee, Romney approved the firm's reporting of fictional tax losses exceeding $70 million generated by its Son of Boss transaction. His endorsement of this stratagem provides insight into Romney's professional ethics and attitude toward tax compliance obligations.

I think this leaves little doubt that Romney is a notorious tax cheat which undoubtedly goes a long way to explain why he simply REFUSES to release his tax returns. I think we can all agree that Mitt Romney is nothing more than a money grubbing crook, who did everything in his power to avoid paying his fair share of taxes to the nation that he now wants to be put in charge of.

And this guy was the BEST the Republicans had to offer this election cycle? So much for their much vaunted confidence that Obama was "easy to beat after four years of poor job growth."

If they really felt that way they would have found a much better candidate than Mitt "It's my turn dammit!" Romney.

(H/T to Politicususa.)

Worst talking point ever!

"Wait, what did I just say?"

Courtesy of The Hill:

Gillespie on Sunday sought to clarify the matter, saying that Romney initially thought he would be leaving Bain on a temporary basis, but the challenges of the Olympics led him to “retire retroactively.” 

"There may have been a thought at the time that it could be part time, but it was not part time," Gillespie said. 

"He took a leave of absence and in fact he ended up not going back at all, and retired retroactively to 1999 as a result," he added.

He "retired retroactively?"

Well isn't THAT convenient?

Let's face it Romney WAS working for Bain Capital several years after he claimed that he had retired, and documents prove he was still listed as a "managing member" as late as 2002.

And then there's this from testimony in front of the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission:


“When I left my employer in Massachusetts in February of 1999 to accept the Olympic assignment,” Romney testified before the state Ballot Law Commission on June 17, 2002, “I left on the basis of a leave of absence, indicating that I, by virtue of that title, would return at the end of the Olympics to my employment at Bain Capital, but subsequently decided not to do so and entered into a departure agreement with my former partners.” 

Romney’s lawyer at the hearing said that Romney’s work in the private sector continued unbroken while he ran the Olympics. 

“He succeeded in that three-year period in restoring confidence in the Olympic Games, closing that disastrous deficit and staging one of the most successful Olympic Games ever to occur on US soil,” said Peter L. Ebb from Ropes & Gray. 

“Now while all that was going on, very much in the public eye, what happened to his private and public ties to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? And the answer is they continued unabated just as they had.” 

"Retroactive retirement." give me a break!

Tony Soprano explains Bain Capital.

There, youse still got any questions?

I din't think so!

Perhaps THIS has something to do with why Mittens will not release his tax returns.

Jesus what could have been so frightening in those returns that McCain would have overreacted so severely?

I think the American people have the right to know, don't you?

Lawrence O'Donnell addresses Mitt Romney's investments in a fetus disposal company.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This is not the only place where the story is showing up.

New York magazine, the Atlantic Wire, and the Examiner are also hot on the trail.

If this continues to receive attention from news outlets it could prove to be a very difficult stumbling block for Mittens to overcome.

Personally I waiting to see Mitt's reaction the first time a reporter gets the opportunity to ask him about this. The guy has NO poker face.

Ever wonder WHY Mitt Romney has long had the support of Right Wing radio? Follow the money.

Courtesy of (I can't believe I am citing these people) Infowars:

Well, it turns out that Bain Capital is one of the primary owners of Clear Channel. Yes, you read that correctly. The company that Mitt Romney ran for so long is one of the “big bosses” over virtually all conservative talk radio in America. 

Of course Mitt Romney is not running Bain Capital anymore. He is a “retired partner”, but he still has a huge financial stake in Bain Capital. We’re talking about millions upon millions of dollars. If you doubt this, just check out page 34 of this public financial disclosure report. So if you have been wondering why so many conservative talk show hosts are being so incredibly kind to Mitt Romney, this just might be the answer.

Okay just so you all know, Infowars is a website run by Alex Jones who is a conspiracy focused nutjob, and a huge Ron Paul supporter. So of coure you have to take most of what he says with a huge grain of salt.

However I did some checking and this time he has his facts in order. Clear Channel was indeed taken private by Bain Capital and their partners, and that fact was even admitted to on the air by Rush Limbaugh.

Now the Right Wing talking heads that work for Clear Channel will deny that this has ANYTHING to do with their gentle coverage of Mitt Romney and their rather aggressive defense of Bain Capital.  However as we all know, the first thing that good radical conservative radio talk show hosts learn is to NEVER piss off their corporate masters.

Besides, in the immortal words of Mitt Romney, "Corporations are people my friend."

You're so Bain. Excellent musical homage to Romney's time at Bain Capital.

Okay now THAT was a catchy tune!