More reasons Mitt Romney is unfit for president

Offshore Tax Shelters Factor Into Romney's Business Success
Offshore Tax Shelters Factor Into Romney's Business Success
By Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 17, 2007
BOSTON -- Second of two parts

ON ?'MEET THE PRESS': Mitt Romney regularly touts his successful business background while campaigning, but rarely describes his experience in international high finance.

Offshore dealings like those of the Republican presidential candidate trouble many, but they're legal.

-- While in private business, Mitt Romney utilized shell companies in two offshore tax havens to help eligible investors avoid paying U.S. taxes, federal and state records show.

Romney gained no personal tax benefit from the legal operations in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. But aides to the Republican presidential hopeful and former colleagues acknowledged that the tax-friendly jurisdictions helped attract billions of additional investment dollars to Romney's former company, Bain Capital, and thus boosted profits for Romney and his partners.

Romney has based his White House bid, in part, on the skills he learned as co-founder and chief of Bain Capital, one of the nation's most successful private equity groups. His campaign cites his record while governor of Massachusetts of closing state tax loopholes; his involvement with foreign tax havens had not previously come to light.

In the Cayman Islands, Romney was listed as a general partner and personally invested in BCIP Associates III Cayman, a private equity fund that is registered at a post office box on Grand Cayman Island and that indirectly buys equity in U.S. companies. The arrangement shields foreign investors from U.S. taxes they would pay for investing in U.S. companies.

Romney still retains an investment in the Cayman fund through a trust. Campaign disclosure forms show the investment paid him more than $1 million last year in dividends, interest and capital gains.

In Bermuda, Romney served as president and sole shareholder for four years of Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd. It funneled money into Bain Capital's Sankaty family of hedge funds, which invest in bonds and other debt issued by corporations, as well as bank loans.

Like thousands of similar financial entities, Sankaty maintains no office or staff in Bermuda. Its only presence consists of a nameplate at a lawyer's office in downtown Hamilton, capital of the British island territory.

"It's just a mail drop, essentially," said Marc B. Wolpow, who worked with Romney for nine years at Bain Capital and who set up Sankaty Ltd. in October 1997 without ever visiting Bermuda. "There's no one doing any work down there other than lawyers."

Investing through what's known as a blocker corporation in Bermuda protects tax-exempt American institutions, such as pension plans, hospitals and university endowments, from paying a 35% tax on what the Internal Revenue Service calls "unrelated business income" from domestic hedge funds that invest in debt, experts say.

Kevin Madden, Romney's campaign spokesman, said there was nothing improper about the Bermuda arrangement, or in Romney's investment in the Cayman fund. In neither case, Madden said, did Romney gain the ability to defer or avoid paying U.S. taxes.

"I would disagree that these could be described as tax loopholes," he said. "These are perfectly normal and perfectly legal arrangements that American companies put together to be successful in the market."

The Cayman fund is registered at P.O. Box 908GT on Grand Cayman Island, corporate records show. Like the Bermuda company, it maintains no office or staff overseas.

Romney first purchased a 3.25% share of the Cayman fund, and was listed as a "general partner (passive)" before his retirement from Bain Capital in late 2001, records show. He put his financial assets into a blind trust in January 2003, when he took office as Massachusetts governor.

Brad Malt, who controls Romney's financial trust, said Bain Capital organized the Cayman fund to attract money from foreign institutional investors.

"This is not Mitt trying to do something strange," he said. "This is Bain trying to raise some number of billions from investors around the world."

The privately held Cayman fund does not disclose its total investment pool. But Securities and Exchange Commission records show it has invested through a Delaware partnership in a California-based network of healthcare centers, a Texas real estate group, a New Jersey phosphate manufacturer and numerous other companies.

Romney is the wealthiest candidate running for president, with a personal fortune of up to $250 million, according to financial disclosure forms he filed in August. His financial trust retains investments in at least 32 Bain and Sankaty equity, hedge and debt funds, among other assets, the documents disclosed.

Under his retirement agreement, Romney retains a share of the profits at Bain Capital, as well as the right to make new investments in Bain funds through his trust, until February 2009.

Malt said he had repeatedly increased Romney's stake in the Cayman fund since 2003. He said he was unaware of the specific figures, but added that he knew he "wrote a lot of checks," and that it paid a return of 20% to 30% a year.

Malt said he was "pretty confident" that he had invested in additional offshore funds for Romney since taking over the trust. "I don't care whether it's the Caymans or Mars, if it's organized in the Netherlands Antilles or the Jersey Islands," he said. "That means nothing to me. All I care about is whether it's a good fund or a bad fund. It doesn't affect his taxes."

Connections with offshore companies became a presidential campaign issue in April, when the Washington Post reported that Democratic candidate John Edwards had worked as a paid advisor to the Fortress Investment Group. Fortress incorporated hedge funds in the Cayman Islands, allowing its partners and foreign investors to avoid or defer paying U.S. taxes. The disclosure embarrassed Edwards, who has called for reducing financial inequalities in America and who had sharply criticized corporations that utilize offshore tax shelters.

Eugene Steuerle, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan Washington-based think tank, said he was troubled by the growing use of offshore jurisdictions, even for legitimate purposes.

"There's clearly something wrong when you have to use post office boxes to conduct business," he said. "You ideally want a world where setting up shell corporations wouldn't be necessary."

But offshore companies are now "part and parcel" of America's booming private equity and hedge fund business, said Kurt Schacht, managing director of the Centre for Financial Market Integrity at the CFA Institute, which represents chartered financial accountants, in Charlottesville, Va. He defended the practice.

"I don't think they're loopholes," he said. "It's not like they're trying to break the law. It's just taking advantage of what's available under current tax laws."

As a presidential candidate, Romney regularly touts his successful business background. But he rarely describes his unusual experience in the rarefied world of international high finance.

After starting as a management consultant, Romney helped found Bain Capital in 1984. Initially launched as a venture capital fund to provide seed money to start-up companies, Bain Capital quickly evolved into a leveraged-buyout shop. Romney and his partners borrowed money to buy dozens of troubled companies, and then charged high fees to revamp management, consolidate operations and, in some cases, lay off workers. To cash out and pay the underlying debt, they resold the companies or took them public as quickly as possible.

Romney took a leave of absence from Bain Capital in February 1999 to take over the scandal-marred 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. By then, Bain Capital already had opened its first offshore entities.

According to a report by Fitch IBCA, a major credit-rating service, Bain Capital managed more than $5.5 billion in assets by mid-1999. The total included $2 billion managed by Sankaty Advisors, which included at least two Bermuda-based subsidiaries set up during Romney's tenure.

Public documents do not disclose how much of the $2 billion was channeled through Bermuda. The Sankaty funds are named for a red-and-white lighthouse on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket.

Romney legally remained the top executive at Bain Capital during his leave of absence. On Feb. 20, 2001, a Bain filing to the SEC described Romney as "sole shareholder, a director and president of Sankaty Ltd. and thus . . . the controlling person of Sankaty Ltd." The company, it added, was organized "under the laws of Bermuda."

Today, Bain Capital manages $60 billion in assets, according to a spokesman. The total includes $23 billion in Sankaty debt and credit funds. Half a dozen Sankaty affiliates now are active in Bermuda, corporate registry records show.

The Sankaty debt hedge funds are organized as partnerships in Delaware that produce taxable business income by investing in fixed-income bonds and other debt instruments. Under tax law, even tax-exempt U.S. institutions may face a 35% tax if they invest directly in such hedge funds. By investing instead through a Bermuda corporation, the taxes are legally blocked, experts say.

In Congress, both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee held hearings in September that examined whether the use of such offshore blocker corporations allowed tax-exempt U.S. organizations to improperly engage in business.

"A lot of people are looking at this," said a Senate investigator, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to deal with the media. "It grates that these people are only using these offshore arrangements to avoid paying taxes."

Janne Gallagher, vice president and general counsel of the Council on Foundations, a nonprofit membership group of 2,100 charities and grant-making foundations, said the practice was "pretty prevalent" in her field as portfolio managers sought to spread risk through hedge funds.

"It's a substantial tax, and that's what generally has led people to invest in these offshore blockers," she said. "I think everyone would prefer not to if they could avoid the consequence."

Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) introduced legislation that would allow tax-exempt institutions to make such investments without going offshore. The bill passed the House but has drawn little support in the Senate.

As governor, Romney helped raise at least $300 million in much-needed state revenue by closing what he called tax loopholes. Critics called the strategy a backdoor way to raise taxes, and Romney failed in an effort to give state officials the authority to penalize corporations that lowered their tax bills by moving their profits out of state.

As a presidential candidate, Romney calls for lowering the corporate tax rate, lowering income taxes and eliminating taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains for those earning less than $200,000. He does not discuss the use of offshore tax havens on his campaign website.
------------------------------------------------

Times staff writer Walter F. Roche in Washington contributed to this report.

Romney and Bain Capital
Romney and Bain Capital
A timeline of the GOP presidential hopeful's path to wealth.
December 17, 2007

Romney and Bain Capital

1978: Mitt Romney joins Bain & Co., a Boston-based management consulting group founded by William W. Bain Jr.

1984: Romney tapped by the company founder to lead a spin-off called Bain Capital, a venture capital and private equity group.

October 1997: Bain Capital launches the Sankaty group of U.S.-based debt hedge funds. To assist U.S. tax-exempt and foreign investors, Sankaty organizes a subsidiary in Bermuda called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd.

February 1999: Romney takes a leave of absence from Bain Capital. Bain Capital at midyear has $5.5 billion in assets under management, including $2 billion in the Sankaty funds, according to an independent evaluation.

February 2001: Romney is listed in SEC documents as president and sole shareholder of the Sankaty company in Bermuda.

August 2001: Romney announces plans to retire from Bain Capital to run for governor of Massachusetts. Before he steps down, he invests in BCIP Associates III Cayman, a private equity fund organized in the Cayman Islands.

January 2003: He puts his financial holdings into a blind trust.

2003-2007: Romney's trustee continues to invest in the Cayman fund.

2006: The Cayman fund pays Romney more than $1 million in interest, dividends and capital gains. He retains a profit share in Bain Capital until 2009, as well as investments in more than 30 Bain funds.

2007: Bain Capital manages $60 billion in assets, including $23 billion in Sankaty funds.

Source: Los Angeles Times

To assess Romney, look beyond the bottom line
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-mittbain16dec16,1,1665158.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=7&cset=true

To assess Romney, look beyond the bottom line
He created jobs, closed factories, made enemies and inspired colleagues.
By Bob Drogin
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 16, 2007
WASHINGTON ?- First of two parts

-- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa.

"I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

In speeches, and on his campaign website, Romney offers few details about his role as a high-stakes corporate deal maker, however. He usually calls himself an entrepreneur, or cites his years in "venture capital," implying he only launched new companies or nurtured their growth.

His record is more complex -- and more controversial.

From 1984 until 1999, Romney led Bain Capital, a Boston-based private equity group that earned jaw-dropping profits through leveraged buyouts, debt hedge funds, offshore tax havens and other financial strategies. In some cases, Romney's team closed U.S. factories, causing hundreds of layoffs, or pocketed huge fees shortly before companies collapsed.

Even Romney's staunchest supporters acknowledge that his business record exposes him to criticism.

"The story that gets written is he made lots of money and he's an evil person, that he's a robber baron," said Charles Baird Jr., a former managing director at Bain Capital. "People should be proud of the people he hired, the jobs he created and the pension funds he helped."

During Romney's tenure at Bain Capital, outside experts say, most of the companies he and his colleagues helped manage ended up stronger and more profitable. Although exact figures are impossible to obtain, more companies clearly added jobs than cut them.

Some of Romney's colleagues recall him as vain, however, and focused only on the bottom line. They saw him as impatient and unconcerned about those affected by his decisions.

"They're whitewashing his career now," said Marc B. Wolpow, a former managing director at Bain Capital who opposes Romney's White House bid. "We had a scheme where the rich got richer. I did it, and I feel good about it. But I'm not planning to run for office."

As a business leader, Romney displayed skills that might prove useful in the Oval Office. He recruited a talented team of aggressive acolytes, pored over data before making decisions and relied on charm as well as tenacity to win over adversaries.

But Romney sometimes showed the strain. In tense meetings, he sometimes perspired so heavily it became an office joke. Or he nervously flapped his tie and said, "Oooohhh, what do we do now?" former colleagues said.

Romney joined Bain & Co., a management consulting group, in 1978. He quickly drew notice in Bain's hypercompetitive climate. At one point, he helped anxious colleagues save a business proposal to help an ailing hospital group.

"It was due the next day, and we were in tough shape," recalled Baird. "He got involved and literally stayed up all night, writing huge portions of the proposal, driving us all, and we ultimately got the biggest bid that Bain had ever gotten. He didn't yell or scream, or blame other people. He focused on fixing the problem."

In 1984, William W. Bain Jr., the consulting group's founder, tapped Romney to lead a spinoff they called Bain Capital.

Rather than just advising corporate clients for a fee, Romney and four colleagues at Bain Capital planned to invest directly in start-up companies, provide hands-on management to get them going, then sell the stake in five years or so. They raised $37 million for their first equity fund.

The venture capital model is common today, but it was a nascent industry at the time. And Romney's young team inspired little confidence: He was the eldest at 36.

"We were all younger than the people we were dealing with," recalled Geoffrey S. Rehnert, one of the co-founders. "But Mitt had a personal network from his family background that gave him the ability to carry himself with greater stature. He was the adult in our group."

From the start, colleagues recall, Romney enforced a discipline of aggressive analysis, sharp-elbowed deals and intense peer review. He embraced a Socratic style in meetings, asking endless questions and taking an opposing view to understand all the options.

"He felt his role was to be the devil's advocate," said Michael F. Goss, now a managing director and chief operating officer of Bain Capital. "Mitt was the guy you had to convince."

An early bonanza came when Thomas G. Stemberg, a local entrepreneur, sought financing to build a national chain of office supply "superstores." Until then, small stationery shops and other retailers filled the need.

"Many venture capital guys thought the plan was a dumb idea," recalled Stemberg. "Who in the world would want to save money on paper clips, pencils and computer diskettes? Mitt, who was a very frugal person, got the idea."

Romney's team called local lawyers, businesses and small companies to ask how much they spent on such supplies. The answer was far less than Stemberg had said. He urged them to check again. "I said, 'These companies don't know what they spend. Go back and check the invoices.' I thought I'd never hear from them again," Stemberg recalled.

Ten days later, Romney's team phoned back. They would invest $650,000, with more to follow.

"They really did their homework," Stemberg said. "And the night before we opened our first store, Mitt came over and bought everyone pizza and gave a motivational speech."

Bain Capital cleared $13 million when Staples went public three years later. Today, Staples Inc. is the world's largest office products retailer.

Staples proved to be a high-profile success, but the take-home was small change compared to future paydays.

To boost profits, Romney and his team hatched an audacious plan to take control of established companies, not just start-ups. To do so, they used bank loans or other debt to leverage, or sharply increase, their investments.

To help pay off the debt, Romney's group immediately pulled money out of target companies, typically by stripping assets and paying itself high monthly management fees, preferred dividends and numerous other payments. They then sold their stake, or took the company public, as early as possible.

Two of Bain Capital's earliest deals proved how lucrative such leveraged buyouts could be.

In 1986, Romney's team put up $1 million in cash and $10 million in debt to buy equity in Calumet Coach, which built mobile medical systems. By the time Bain Capital sold its stake just over two years later, it had recouped 34 times its investment, corporate documents show.

Romney's team hit the jackpot again with Accuride, a truck wheel and rim company. They posted a down payment of $2.6 million in cash, but structured the deal with 40-to-1 leverage. After revamping production and imposing other changes, they sold Accuride a year and a half later for 24 times their investment.

With such payouts, the buyout business is "like the joke about sex," said Howard Anderson, head of a venture capital firm and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "When it's good, it's very, very good. And when it's bad, it's still pretty good."

Just how good became clear when Bain Capital and another private equity group bought and sold credit reporting service Experian in just seven weeks, netting $251 million each. The Wall Street Journal dubbed it "one of the quickest big hits in Wall Street history."

For investors, Bain Capital rained money as it bought and sold more than 100 companies. During Romney's tenure, according to an outside investment firm, Bain Capital's first five private equity funds returned an average of 173% each year on realized investments, an astonishing record.

"It was Wild West financing, with profits to match," said Goss, the company's chief operating officer. "They kept rolling over their winnings."

One such deal carried a hidden cost, however. In 1994, Romney took a leave of absence to seek the U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts held by Edward M. Kennedy, the longtime Democratic incumbent.

Making his first bid for elected office, Romney boasted that he had helped create more than 10,000 jobs at companies he had retooled. But Kennedy painted him as someone "who puts profits over people," and an ugly labor dispute soon helped sink Romney's campaign.

Bain Capital had bought a controlling interest in a paper products company called Ampad for $5 million in 1992. Two years later, after Ampad bought a factory in Marion, Ind., the new management team dismissed about 200 workers, slashed salaries and benefits, and hired strikebreakers after the union called a walkout.

"We were just fired," Randy Johnson, a former worker and union officer at the Marion plant, recalled in a telephone interview. "They came in and said, 'You're all fired. If you want to work for us, here's an application.' We had insurance until the end of the week. That was it. It was brutal."

In October 1994, Johnson and other striking workers drove to Massachusetts to protest Romney's Senate campaign. "We chased him everywhere," Johnson recalled. "He took good jobs with benefits, and created low-wage, part-time, no-benefit jobs. That's what he was creating with his investments."

At first, Romney tried to justify the Indiana layoffs as necessary in "the real world." He then sought to distance himself, arguing that he took a leave of absence from Bain Capital before Ampad bought the factory. The dispute proved potent, however, and Kennedy trounced him in the election.

When Ampad permanently shut the Marion plant several months later, Romney, then back at Bain Capital, expressed his regrets in a letter to Johnson. Romney wrote that he had tried to end the strike "privately without fanfare. It included communicating my strong personal desire that the strike be settled and that the plant remain open, offering my ideas for a possible settlement, and relaying the sentiments of the workers I met with in Boston."

That's not how Wolpow, the former managing director at Bain Capital, remembers Romney's role, however. Wolpow had been installed on Ampad's board of directors as part of the leveraged buyout, and he reported directly to Romney before and after the Senate race.

"He was in charge," recalled Wolpow, now co-director of the Audax Group, another private equity group. "He could have ordered me to settle with the union. He didn't order me to do that. He let me make decisions that would maximize the value of the investment. That was the right business decision as CEO of Bain Capital. But let's not pretend it was something else."

Ampad prospered briefly after Bain Capital took it public in 1996. But saddled with increasing debt, Ampad began laying off workers, closing plants and losing money within a year. It filed for bankruptcy protection in 2000. By then, Bain Capital had reaped $102 million in advisory fees, sales of stock and other payments, corporate documents show.

Romney and his team gained huge profits from at least half a dozen companies that soon crashed into bankruptcy.

In 1997 Romney and his team purchased a stake in DDi Corp., an Anaheim-based maker of printed electronic circuit boards. Three years later, Bain Capital netted a $36-million profit after it took the company public. Romney sold his own shares for $4.1 million, according to federal securities records, although his profit margin is unclear.

But DDi's stock soon collapsed, and the company filed for bankruptcy in August 2003, laying off more than 2,100 workers. Bain Capital and DDi executives jointly settled a federal class action lawsuit in March, agreeing to pay $4.4 million to shareholders who argued that DDi was poorly managed and "hemorrhaging cash" before the stock offering, court records show. Romney was not named in the suit.

Still other troublesome cases emerged when Romney ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. Chief among them was Damon Corp., a medical testing company based in Needham, a Boston suburb.

Romney had joined Damon's board of directors after Bain Capital purchased a stake in 1990. He remained there until Corning Inc. bought the company three years later. Bain tripled its investment.

Romney personally profited on the sale, claiming more than $100,000 in capital gains on sales of his own Damon stock, records showed.

But in 1996, Damon pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston to massive overbilling of the Medicare system and paid $119 million in criminal and civil fines.

Then-U.S. Atty. Donald K. Stern called it "a case, pure and simple, of corporate greed run amok." No one at Bain was implicated in the fraud.

Asked about the case during his gubernatorial campaign, Romney told reporters that he "blew the whistle" on the overbilling scheme while still on the Damon board, and had taken "corrective action."

In a recent telephone interview, Stern said he had no recollection of Romney alerting investigators or taking other action. Court records in the case showed the illegal scam continued unabated until Bain Capital sold Damon in 1993.

Romney's aides now argue that reporters misunderstood his claim back in 2002.

Romney and other members of the board had hired a New York law firm to review Damon's billing practices after a rival medical company had pleaded guilty to fraud, Damon records showed. The law firm recommended Damon change billing procedures but found no evidence of fraud.

Despite the failures, outside experts say Romney led his company to extraordinary success.

"It's a puzzle that people criticize him for making a lot of money" said Steven N. Kaplan, professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. "He ran his company for his shareholders. That was his job."

Romney lied about his father marching with MLKtgbb
Romney fields questions on King - Campaign says claim not literal
December 20, 2007
BY TODD SPANGLER
FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said he watched his father, the late Michigan Gov. George Romney, in a 1960s civil rights march in Michigan with Martin Luther King Jr.

On Wednesday, Romney's campaign said his recollections of watching his father, an ardent civil rights supporter, march with King were meant to be figurative.

"He was speaking figuratively, not literally," Eric Fehrnstrom, spokesman for the Romney campaign, said of the candidate.

The campaign was responding to questions raised by the Free Press and other media after a Boston publication challenged the accuracy of Mitt Romney's account.

In a major speech on faith and politics earlier this month in Texas, Mitt Romney said: "I saw my father march with Martin Luther King."

He made a similar statement Sunday during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press." He said, "You can see what I believed and what my family believed by looking at our lives. My dad marched with Martin Luther King. My mom was a tireless crusader for civil rights."

Romney's campaign cited various historical articles, as well as a 1967 book written by Stephen Hess and Washington Post political columnist David Broder, as confirmation that George Romney marched with King in Grosse Pointe in 1963.

"He has marched with Martin Luther King through the exclusive Grosse Pointe suburb," Hess and Broder wrote in "The Republican Establishment: The Present and Future of the GOP."

Free Press archives, however, showed no record of King marching in Grosse Pointe in 1963 or of then-Gov. Romney taking part in King's historic march down Woodward Avenue in June of that year.

George Romney told the Free Press at the time that he didn't take part because it was on a Sunday and he avoided public appearances on the Sabbath because of his religion.

Romney did participate in a civil rights march protesting housing bias in Grosse Pointe just six days after the King march. According to the Free Press account, however, King was not there.

Broder could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

The Boston Phoenix reported Wednesday it could find no evidence that Romney and King ever marched together.

Mitt Romney's older brother, Detroit attorney Scott Romney, said he recalls his father telling him the elder Romney marched with King, possibly in 1963, but he could not remember exactly when the event took place.

Fehrnstrom called the Romney brothers' recollection and the historical materials a "pretty convincing case that George Romney did march with Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders in Michigan."

The governor's record was one of supporting civil rights. He helped create the state's first civil rights commission and marched at the head of a protest parade in Detroit days after violence against civil rights marchers in Selma, Ala., in 1965.

Mitt Romney's campaign planned today to further research George Romney's papers for evidence of his march with King.
----------------------------------------

Free Press Library Director Alice Pepper contributed to this report.

That's such a perfect little Romney thing that it might really hurt him, even though it's relatively minor in and of itself.

Soz


I detest Romney because he is a fraud. He's trying to buy the presidency and I would love to see him lose his millions in failure. He's an opportunist who will adapt his "beliefs" to whatever he thinks will win his election. His being a Morman is of no consequence to me other than he doesn't have the brains to recognize a cult. I'm tired of so-called businessmen who think they can govern best. Spare me from any more MBA idiots. Governing is not the same as running a business. Romney is not smart enough to understand that, but he doesn't care as long as his ego is rewarded.

BBB

Re: Soz

The sad thing is that he is not a fraud. His early work in Mass. on healthcare was excellent and the desire he showed to go out and find a really good solution and then push it even when it was not popular is something we need in the White House. At one time he was a moderate Republican, a species once plentiful, but now endangered and close to extinction. But all that is gone. He is running away from any trace on moderation in his record, pandering to the worst elements of intolerance and bigotry in his party and is clearly unfit for President because of it. Too bad.

Re: Soz


Do you also detest Senator Clinton because she is a fraud? Or are you a fraud?

Okie
Okie, look in the mirror and you will see an involuntary fraud.

BBB

Senator Clinton made 100,000 on a 1,000 dollar investment as a political favor by a crony, obviously not an honest deal, so if you cared about fraud, you would apply the same yardstick, but you obviously are not, so the obvious conclusion is your article is not about fraud, but politics.

And as so many people have suggested, why don't you post the link instead of posting reams of mostly pointless drivel, as if the stuff was so earth shaking?

Okie
Okie, your response continues to make my point.

BBB

BBB, you continue to post lengthy opinion articles, which are obviously partisan opinions, then you imply that is the final word as to what the conclusion should be by everyone about a candidate, and if anyone disagrees, we are ignorant. If other people posted lengthy opinions as you do, imagine the reams of opinions to wade through.

To look at your articles, the first one implies that since Romney does not expect to choose a Muslim on his cabinet, then he is unqualified to be president, is that the conclusion? I think that is a rather stupid conclusion, as how many presidents have chosen Muslims up to now? I think his stated reason was probably not the best answer, because we should not appoint cabinet positions based on percentage of a group of the population. I would imagine however, that he may provide a better answer next time. That column was pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel to find a criticism of a candidate to find grounds to unqualify someone.

The second column says that since Romney has used legal tax shelters, he is unqualified. Another lame excuse in my opinion. Lets go onto the next one.

The third one says that Romney uses legal ways to make money. Gee, that is a surprise.

The fourth one says he is focused on the bottom line, and sometimes lays off people, etc. , and he is intense and perspires when he mulls over business decisions. Now there is another disqualifier?

The last one says that there is doubt that Romney saw his father march with MLK, etc. He now clarifies that the statement was figurative and he didn't personally see the two of them together side by side. It has been verified that his father did march with Civil Rights marches at least once, plus Romney's brother confirms a similar story about his father marching with MLK, so he may have, there is no proof that he did not, plus there is proof that he did march with at least one civil rights march. But because a newspaper cannot find proof that they marched arm in arm yet, Romney is a liar. Who is the liar here? But beyond that, I wish Romney would not see it necessary to enter into that kind of stuff, as I think it is unnecessary pandering, but until his claims are disproven, I don't see it as a negative. And his claims have been proven to an extent.

BBB, I know your side is desperately looking for a limb they can place any Republican on, and then they will begin to start sawing. And this is the method used against any Republican candidate that they think has the strongest chance to beat your savior, Senator Clinton. As I have pointed out, I think it is obvious that this is all political spin, because you fail to apply the same yardsticks to your own candidate.

Update, score one for Mitt Romney, add more strikouts to BBB's batting average. Witnesses have come forward in regard to Romney marching with MLK.

http://youdecide08.foxnews.com/2007/12/22/witnesses-say-mitt-romneys-father-martin-luther-king-marched-together/