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Monday, July 16, 2012

Working Minds Essay #99: Mitt Romney Got Caught

Willard Mitt Romney is a liar and a pirate, and possibly a sociopath.

Mitt professes to practice the Mormon religion, and yet he does nothing but lie and lie and lie all day long, every day since announcing his candidacy for President in April 2011.

(And this is the best that the Republican Party has to offer the American voter?)

Aside from the old news of Romney's mistreatment of his dog and his children and his employees, there are two recent scandals concerning Mitt's integrity.

The first is his refusal to disclose his financial records as is the longtime practice for presidential candidates. Romney flat refuses to be honest with the American people and make his tax returns public (not even redacted versions).

He also refuses to name his 'bundlers', the folks working to bring in the millions of dollars financing his campaign. Keeping these workers hidden from view brings up all kinds of conjecture, such as violations of employee/campaign restrictions, federal and state.

So the New York Times and the Boston Globe newspapers went looking, and soon discovered several falsities, some by ommission and some by commission.

Mitt Romney is the sole owner of a questionable (tax-dodge) corporation in the off-shore tax haven of Bermuda. Bain Capital
's corporate identity is based in a mail-drop in the Cayman Islands off-shore tax haven.

Until recently, Romney kept millions in cash in a secret Swiss bank account.

Maybe the information is being kept hidden because it will reveal dastardly deeds beyond piracy and vulture capitalism. Who is to say there isn't illegal business dealings, such as money laundering. With no data, we will never know.

But the second and most damaging part of these scandals is the revelation that Mitt Romney was running Bain Capital a full TWO YEARS after the date he has given over and over for when he left the company. He has stated many times that he left Bain in 1999, especially when accused of acts of piracy against viable companies and shipping the jobs overseas and leaving the firms bankrupt. His position was that such things happened only after he left.

Well, golly. That turns out not to be true. Mitt Romney is listed on official documents filed with the S.E.C. (Securities & Exchange Commission) as the sole owner, sole proprietor, and president and CEO of Bain Capital thru February 2001.

Ooops.

And he was paid $100,000 each year as head of the company. Probably one reason that he dares not reveal his tax returns – and what else is there in this category? (Either he did perform work for the salary and lied about it, or he performed no work for that money, which is immoral and un-American if not illegal.)

Ooops.

So Romney and the spin-doctors of his campaign team try to say that it was a formality, they had to send in the forms, it still doesn't prove that he ran the company after 1999.

Yes, it does. But wait a minute, maybe what the Romney folks mean is that Mitt signed legal documents that lied about his role at Bain Capital. Could that be his out? It was just another lie – this one delivered on official documents required by the S.E.C. from each and every American corporation.

Ooops. Violation of federal law, probably including perjury.

And all Romney's protests the last few days are on tape, uploaded to the internet a hundred places.

So Mitt Romney is in rather a pickle here: Mitt Romney either lied back then, on federal documents, under penalty of perjury – OR – Mitt Romney has been and still is lying to America on the campaign trail about his past.

* *          * *          * *          * *
Given that the faux-news media is owned by the fascists of the American Oligarchy, Mitt Romney may squeak by on this one. Perhaps another decades-long child molestation scandal will divert the American people. Or a lost little girl in Georgia will pre-empt more air-time than politics altogether. The American sheeple are easily diverted.

I expect that Barack Obama will win by a landslide because I am an idealist, and cannot concieve of an American voter population that is as brain-dead as the Republicans want and expect.

But what really worries me are the three probable negative options for the November 2012 election.

One: Romney will win, a disaster for democracy and for your grandchildren's future and for the future of life on this planet.

Two: Barack Obama wins the election, but the Republicans manage to steal it once again.

Three: Romney does not win at the Republican Convention on the first ballot. Bet you forgot about that. The convention then becomes a free-for-all, with possible candidates including Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachmann, Donald Trump, Darrell Issa – none of whom are qualified to hold public office, much less to occupy the White House.

Look again and try not to cringe: The above short list is the best that the Republican Party has to offer the American voter.

Having read all this, if you get a good night's sleep tonight you can consider yourself lucky (or maybe just another ignorant sheeple).

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

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