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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBoston Globe: Evidence mounts of Mitt Romney’s continuing ties to Bain after 1999
Only a week before the election for Massachusetts governor in 2002, Democratic candidate Shannon O’Brien launched a television ad in which a laid-off steelworker accused Mitt Romney, O’Brien’s Republican opponent, of firing laborers at a Kansas City steel mill, leaving them without health insurance and destroying their families.
Eight years earlier, Senator Edward M. Kennedy deployed a similar attack — with devastating effectiveness — in a campaign against Romney, the wealthy founder of private equity firm Bain Capital.
But this time, Romney had a strong rebuttal, one that would become a bedrock of his political career for the next decade: He said he was not responsible for the struggles of the worker and his colleagues because he had left Bain Capital in February 1999, two years before the Bain-owned steel mill went bankrupt.
It was a response echoed again and again in televised interviews Friday, as Romney did not budge from his position. “I had no role whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after February of 1999,’’ he told CBS.
http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/07/13/evidence-mounts-mitt-romney-continuing-ties-bain-after/w9vGMpkCKg1GaYdaU8l8GL/story.html
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Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)Is he actually this arrogant? Does he actually think he's entitled to the presidency?
Reporters will keep on digging and digging and digging until he comes clean. There is no escape from this.
Confusious
(8,317 posts)
malaise
(269,054 posts)He has lied all his life - he has gotten away with lots of stuff all his life.
BeyondGeography
(39,374 posts)Drunken Irishman
(34,857 posts)Seems the Globe is backtracking.
Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)The meat of the story is still there which are multiple pieces of evidence that he was still involved with Bain well after 1999.
Drunken Irishman
(34,857 posts)It does end by giving weight to Romney's lies...err...account, though.
Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)What carries more weight? A prospectus (which is basically a brochure) or official SEC documents, a salary from Bain, sworn testimony of participation in board meetings, annual reports filed in Mass and Romney's own words?
Drunken Irishman
(34,857 posts)As well as received money. He's in big shit.
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)in MA while living in Utah.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/48181661#48181661
God I love Rachel Maddow.
quaker bill
(8,224 posts)To state that he did not know what the company he owned and made 100s of thousands from each year was doing? Given you take his story at face value, why is personally profiting at a level few of us could ever imagine, from a company he owns which was plundering pension funds and shipping jobs overseas suddenly become OK because he was not actually directing it, when he clearly could have sent it in another direction with a phone call?
Even if you believe him (and I don't), why does his lack of oversight for a company he owns make it better? Based on the SEC filings, all this stuff was being done in his name.
The bottom line is that this sort of stuff was normal business and unremarkable in that cloistered community of the 1% in the same business as Bain at the time. If Mitt had believed that outsourcing, off-shoring, and plundering pension funds on the path to bankruptcy were immoral activities, he could and would have done something about it. At the time, this was just business as usual, so at best, he saw nothing remarkable, and made no remarks. At worst, he thought it a good idea and rewarded the people doing it.
I am still not getting where the upside is.
