From PERRSPECTIVES : BRINGING DARKNESS TO LIGHT – *MUST READ ARTICLE!!!
Excerpt:
In recent weeks, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has tried to redefine the calendar by inserting the new milestone “AB”–or “After Bain”— into the timeline of human history. Defending its man from damaging reports that he profited when Bain Capital invested in companies that shipped jobs overseas, extracted massive dividends and fees from firms that later failed and even harvested cash from medical waste, the Romney camp routinely protested that most of these episodes occurred “after Mitt left Bain.”
Unfortunately for the Republican, Americans are catching on to Mitt Romney’s “after Bain” immaculate deception. A growing mountain of evidence suggests that Romney continued to play an active role at Bain even after his supposed February 1999 departure for the Salt Lake Olympics. And as the New York Times documented back in December, Romney’s sweetheart deal with the Bain Capital private equity firm he founded ensures that Mitt continues to make millions every year from his old employer.
Mitt’s claims that he left the building in 1999, but BAIN LIVES ON.
And check out Stephanie Cutter’s letter to Factcheck.org debunking Romney’s claim he left Bain in 1999.
OH, BUT AMERICANS ARE BUYING MITT’S STINT AT BAIN, JOEY SCAR AND THE CARNAGE HE’S LEFT BEHIND.
NEW AD – “Believes”: Mitt Romney doesn’t only has a history of shady financial practices, but supports policies that encourage outsourcing – maximizing profits for himself and his partners at the expense of the middle class.”Believes” is airing in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
An EYE-OPENING LOOK AT ROMNEY
Salon.com:“This pattern of elusiveness is hardly confined to Romney’s finances, but rather defines his public life.” http://bit.ly/KRdh3V
The Nation: “The public has a right to know about ethics and probity, not mere legality, of Romney’s personal and professional financial history. Romney has made business experience the central pitch of his candidacy, so how can he claim that how he manages his money is irrelevant?” http://bit.ly/MsXePt
Think Progress: Five Shady Financial Tactics Employed by Mitt Romney: http://bit.ly/MTkUdo
Seeing the Forrest: Why Romney Won’t Release More Tax Returns: http://bit.ly/LuVnFx
Blue Mass Group:“It’s an eye-opening look at why Mitt Romney is really, really nothing like you.” http://bit.ly/LVEWGR
Atlantic Wire: “ If the Romney campaign says there’s nothing unusual about Romney’s finances — that people of his wealth often have offshore accounts to protect them from paying taxes — that only strengthens Obama’s case.” http://bit.ly/R3u6NL
2 Political Junkies: Vanity Fair Shows Us the Money: Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Switzerland: http://bit.ly/R3u0pj
Daily Kos: “By connecting Romney’s Bain experience with the policies he is proposing as a presidential candidate and contrasting those policies with President Obama’s, the ad goes beyond a purely negativepersonal attack, instead framing the choice between Obama and Romney.” http://bit.ly/NtyAsk
VANITY FAIR INVESTIGATES ROMNEY’S OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS
Where the Money Lives
On Romney’s mysterious Bermuda corporation: “To give but one example, there is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as ‘a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.’… Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an “excepted investment fund” that would not need to be on his disclosure forms. He finally included it on his 2010 tax return. Even after examining that return, we have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romney’s wealth is even greater than previous estimates. While the Romneys’ spokespeople insist that the couple has paid all the taxes required by law, investments in tax havens such as Bermuda raise many questions, because they are in ‘jurisdictions where there is virtually no tax and virtually no compliance,’ as one Miami-based offshore lawyer put it.”
On Romney’s Cayman Islands funds: “Because of his retirement deal with Bain Capital, his finances are still deeply entangled with the private-equity firm that he founded and spun off from Bain and Co. in 1984. Though he left the firm in 1999, Romney has continued to receive large payments from it—in early June he revealed more than $2 million in new Bain income. The firm today has at least 138 funds organized in the Cayman Islands, and Romney himself has personal interests in at least 12, worth as much as $30 million, hidden behind controversial confidentiality disclaimers. Again, the Romney campaign insists he saves no tax by using them, but there is no way to check this.”
On Romney’s accounts in foreign tax havens, including his Swiss bank account:“These, plus the mandatory financial disclosures filed with the Office of Government Ethics and released last August, raise many questions. A full 55 pages in his 2010 return are devoted to reporting his transactions with foreign entities… The media soon noticed Romney’s familiarity with foreign tax havens. A $3 million Swiss bank account appeared in the 2010 returns, then winked out of existence in 2011 after the trustee closed it.”
On who Romney raised capital from for Bain’s first fund: “Private equity is one channel for this secrecy-shrouded foreign money to enter the United States, and a filing for Mitt Romney’s first $37 million Bain Capital Fund, of 1984, provides a rare window into this. One foreign investor, of $2 million, was the newspaper tycoon, tax evader, and fraudster Robert Maxwell, who fell from his yacht, and drowned, off of the Canary Islands in 1991 in strange circumstances, after looting his company’s pension fund. The Bain filing also
names Eduardo Poma, a member of one of the ‘14 families’ oligarchy that has controlled most of El Salvador’s wealth for decades; oddly, Poma is listed as sharing a Miami address with two anonymous companies that invested $1.5 million between them. The filings also show a Geneva-based trustee overseeing a trust that invested $2.5 million, a Bahamas corporation that put in $3 million, and three corporations in the tax haven of Panama, historically a favored destination for Latin-American dirty money—‘one of the filthiest money-laundering sinks in the world,’ as a U.S. Customs official once put it. Bain Capital has said it did everything required by the U.S. government to check that the investors were not associated with unsavory interests. U.S. law doesn’t require Bain to enforce the tax laws of its investors’ home countries, but the presence of Swiss trustees, Bahamas trusts, and Panama corporations would raise red flags with any tax authority.”
On the special “carried interest” tax treatment Romney receives, allowing him to pay a lower rate than ordinary Americans: “Romney’s personal tax rate is a particular point of interest. In 2010 and 2011, Mitt and Ann paid $6.2 million in federal tax on $42.5 million in income, for an average tax rate just shy of 15 percent, substantially less than what most middle-income Americans pay. Romney manages this low rate because he takes his payments from Bain Capital as investment income, which is taxed at a maximum 15 percent, instead of the 35 percent he would pay on ‘ordinary’ income, such as salaries and wages.
Many tax experts argue that the form of remuneration he receives, known as carried interest, is really just a fee charged by investment managers, so it should instead be taxed at the 35 percent rate. Lee Sheppard, a contributing editor at the trade publication Tax Notes, whose often controversial articles are read widely by tax professionals… ‘Romney is the poster boy, the best argument, for taxing this profit share as ordinary income,’ says Sheppard.”
On the legality of it all: “The assertion that he broke no laws is widely accepted. But it is worth asking if it is actually true. The answer, in fact, isn’t straightforward. Romney, like the superhero who whirls and backflips unscathed through a web of laser beams while everyone else gets zapped, is certainly a remarkable financial acrobat. But careful analysis of his financial and business affairs also reveals a man who, like some other Wall Street titans, seems comfortable striding into some fuzzy gray zones.”
READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/08/investigating-mitt-romney-offshore-accounts
Here’s a good segment from The Last Word with David Corn of Mother Jones: