Romney’s Bain Years: New Evidence, Same Conclusion
 

July 12 ,2012


New reporting cites strong evidence that Mitt Romney wasn’t actively managing Bain Capital while he was running the Olympics, despite what the Obama campaign (and some news reports) would have voters believe.

Dan Primack, a senior editor at Fortune Magazine, reports on previously confidential “offering documents” that Bain circulated to potential investors in June 2000, September 2000 and again in January 2001. And he says that in each of those three documents Romney’s name is conspicuously absent from lists of senior investment managers at Bain.

Dan Primack, July 12: [T]he contemporaneous Bain documents show that Romney was indeed telling the truth about no longer having operational input at Bain…

This has become a key point of contention, because Obama TV ads accuse Romney of shipping U.S. jobs overseas. We reported that the Obama campaign had failed to back up its claims (“Obama’s ‘Outsourcer’ Overreach,” June 29), partly because Romney had left Bain in February 1999 to run the 2002 Winter Olympic and wasn’t actively in charge of the company at the time.

But the Obama campaign objected, claiming that Romney remained a part-time manager even while he was living in Utah and running the Olympics. We responded, finding the campaign’s evidence “weak or non-existent.”

Since then some other reporters have weighed in on Obama’s side. Articles in Mother Jones magazine and the Talking Points Memo website, and most recently a front-page Boston Globe story on July 12, all cite documents filed by Bain with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The TPM piece noted that in documents from July 2000 and February 2001 Romney listed his “principal occupation” as “Managing Director” of Bain, for example. And the Globe story reported that Bain repeatedly listed him on government filings as the man in charge.

On a media conference call about the Globe story, Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s deputy campaign manager, said the story proves that Romney had “full control” of Bain during this time and “therefore directly responsible” for decisions made at companies in which Bain invested. “Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony. Or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments,” Cutter said.

But we see little new in any of these SEC filings, and a University of Pennsylvania Law School professor we spoke to sees no basis for the Obama campaign’s claim that Romney committed a felony.

None of the SEC filings show that Romney was anything but a passive, absentee owner during that time, as both Romney and Bain have long said. It should not surprise anyone that Romney retained certain titles while he was working out the final disposition of his ownership, for example. We see nothing to contradict the statement that a Bain spokesman issued in response to the Globe article:

Bain Capital, July 12: Due to the sudden nature of Mr. Romney’s departure, he remained the sole stockholder for a time while formal ownership was being documented and transferred to the group of partners who took over management of the firm in 1999. Accordingly, Mr. Romney was reported in various capacities on SEC filings during this period.

Jill E. Fisch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and co-director of the Institute for Law and Economics, said Romney would not have committed a felony by listing himself as managing director — even if he now claims he had no role in running the company after February 1999. There is no legal obligation to describe how active one is in the day-to-day management of the company, she said. And just because he held title of managing director doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s responsible for decisions like layoffs or outsourcing.

“If that really mattered to investors, they might consider that a civil liability, but we wouldn’t be talking about a felony,” she said.

We would reassess our judgment should somebody come up with evidence that Romney took part in specific management decisions or had any active role (not just a title) at Bain after he left to head the Olympics. But nothing we’ve seen directly contradicts Romney’s statements — which he has certified as true under pain of federal prosecution — that he “has not had any active role” with Bain or “been involved in the operations” of Bain since then.

And we wish to note, we’re not alone in this judgement. Others include:

Fortune’s Dan Primack — who covers Wall Street “deals and dealmakers” — addressed the Mother Jones reporting in a July 2 article that came to the same conclusion we do. Primack’s more recent reporting we’ve already noted.
The Washington Post‘s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, rebutted the Boston Globe story in a July 12 piece. “Just because you are listed as an owner of shares does not mean you have a managerial role,” Kessler writes. We agree.
Before the Globe story broke, the Columbia Journalism Review’s Brendan Nyhan stated: “[T]he specific cases cited by the Obama campaign largely concern actions taken by those companies during a period in which Romney was not making operational decisions at the firm. Journalists must be clear about this distinction.” After the Globe story, CJR’s Greg Marx wrote “there’s less new in the Globe article than the attention it has drawn suggests.”
ABC News’ Devin Dwyer reported July 12, after the Globe‘s story appeared: “Team Obama does not provide any specific evidence to back up claims that Romney was actively managing Bain between 1999 and 2002.”

I am RIOT and I am wrong again.

As long as the public is focused on how much money Mitt and Nancy et al make overseas, Obama et al can keep 'giving away' our tax dollars to Afghanistan, Pakistan and any other 'an' that comes along, social security and medicare be damned. We have rich people here that can make up the difference. :zz:

Boston Globe repackages its 2002 Romney Bain CEO story as breaking news:

http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/07...breaking-news/

"Romney and Bain claim that he was not involved with Bain, but Bain and its portfolio companies in their required filings under the Securities Exchange Act continuously certified to the Securities and Exchange Commission say precisely the opposite — asserting without qualification that he was a controlling person, fully in charge of Bain, under the Federal securities law. Under normal circumstances, the question of the truth of this representation would result in an investigation by the SEC into possible criminal, as well as civil, violations of the law."

— Robert Bauer, Obama campaign counsel, July 13, 2012

Three Pinocchios
"Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...PpgW_blog.html

Funny how they don't deeply address Romney's attempts to be eligible to run for Governor of Mass - where he claimed, in writing, he never left Bain for the Olympics, but just took a leave.

I believe that Democrats spent a good bit of time and money trying to prove that Romney wasn't eligible to be on the ballot in 2002, and failed.

Yes. And that failure, Mitt's sworn testimony to the Mass. balloting board during that time, that he was a Bain employee, is in direct contradiction to his current claims. And Boston Globe has copies of that contradictory statements in Mitt's own writing. That's why the Globe refused Romney camps demand to retract the story. Globe has 100% proof, in Romney's handwriting.

i believe they also questioned mccains, since he was born in the canal zone.

mccain a canalzonien?...why didn't that come out during the election?....wait, he lost anyway...:)

oh, it was mentioned alright. how else would i know about it? but then he picked palin as his running mate, and that was waaaay more fun for the press!

It did, as soon as the racists started attacking Obama as a Kenyan not born in the country. They pointed out McCain was born in Panama.

Mitt's pants on fire...
 

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2...te-ar-2056041/


Liar liar pants on fire..

Forward - by continuing to look backward.

I guess when you piss away 4 trillion dollars on "growing the economy" and still have over 8% unemployment 3 and a half years later, there is hardly anything to actually look "Forward" to.

:tro:

:tro:

Obama is getting desperate. The lies just aren't flying like they used to.

Someone call a paralegal for him if he begins to faint.

http://www.examiner.com/article/medi...rom-paralegals

obama
 

OBAMA had to inherit a debt and start a new cycle for the USA. Republican only care about their type what ever that is, :p which is a bad thing for the country... United we Stand =Obama

OBAMA IS THE FUTURE......4MORE YEARS:tro:

Romney sucks he's a typical american only cares about his class
Obama is universal, he cares for all class rich or poor
and thats the difference maker in this election.
REPUBLICANS FKD everything up and here comes Obama to fix the country.
battling these HATERS..... MY PRESIDENT IS BLACK...

Its The American Way

"Now, my understanding is that Mr. Romney attested to the SEC multiple times that he was the chairman, CEO and president of Bain Capital. And I think most Americans figure if you're the chairman, CEO and president of a company, that you are responsible for what the company does," Obama said.

Which is of course 100% true... Unless you are me, I am not responsible for anything that happens in the outfit I am running.

Guy is ridiculous and no one ever calls him out on his nonsense.

Wow. Good Going. U R rite 4MOORE YEARZ!!!

The media in this country is controlled by the corporations which own congress and the executive branch. Thus you will never see anything that challenges their puppet.

You wind up with a populate of mindless, programmed sheep that refuse to think for themselves because it is easier to let someone else do that for them (RE: Already Home)


Even the resident board lunatic will attack you if you even mention the fact that it took 3 years and a private citizen to expose this fraud of a president's supposed birth - and then spends 3 pages trying to execute Romney over semantics, yet refuses to to even broach the topic of how the current fraud in chief lied about when he attended Columbia Law school, why he chose to flippantly disregard the Constitution of the US by refusing to provide his birth certificate when prompted prior to inauguration, why he continues to pass legislation that further erodes our civil rights and liberties guaranteed by the constitution that he wipes his ass with, and continues to believe that spending money we don't have = prosperity, etc.

I won't take 6 pages of incessant ramblings like Riot - most thinking adults not living in a perpetual stage of arrested development get it... Those that don't - have fun

every president since martin van buren has come into office with the country in debt.
and both parties have contributed to the current mess in d.c, with congress deserving the lion's share of the blame. no one person caused it, and certainly no one person can fix it. but keep trying to make it all about race. for some it is, for many it's not.

Yeah but the guy after Van Buren wasn't black. That's apparently very important.

lol race
 

wow just cause i say my Prezident is black, well if he or she was white
i'll be sayin My President is white.
and the only race that's going on is Romney vs Obama
i don't know why Romney is running against B/O, Obama is @the finish line With the Flag waving.

Bush fked everything up going to war because of his father and the machismo he had against the middle east. and that cause the country almost everything, and here comes Obama to set the future in motion and fix these stupid issues republicans started.

its so fked up the american dream is a nightmare......

fk politics who has the power has to do what ever is right for the country and its people plain and simple.

opps gotta go now is Hot, 94 and i'm gong in the pool.
water is 81 nice.............

for the record I'm not racist but my comment are @the edge

i love white people black people everyday people i'm like Obama universal
ohhh i love horses too.

Hey, they don't cotton to talk like that around here...but keep up the good work..:D:tro:

i mentioned race in my reply because you seem to always include it. and no, it's not just republicans that have caused the issues. and i doubt it's just dems who fix it.
and the race is far from over. i know you're a democratic/obama cheerleader-but it always puzzles me when fans get stars in their eyes and lose their ability to see the entire picture. this country has been going in the wrong direction for some time, and it's the collective inability by the entire fed to get things right that has caused our current issues. the banking de-regulation was signed into law by none other than pres. bill clinton. banking woes lead to failures in many areas.

and the wars were both approved by a democratic controlled congress, not just the republican president.

True, but presented with the whole truth and nothing but the truth, i very much doubt they would have rubber stamped dumya's plan...

Yup, so stupid he fooled them all.

bigrun, if the wool was pulled over anyone's eyes in that regard, why has there been no investigation? no hearings? no one has come forward and said anything was 'cooked'. why do you continue to claim that, when there's no evidence? congress was lied to, but did nothing? they will have hearings about drugs in horse racing, steroids in baseball, but they're not going to bother with lies from intelligence agencies? you really think that?

You mean the same information that both Bush and Congress had at the time that they voted on the wars? Please show any evidence that Bush had any different information than Congress, and many Democrats who voted for the wars, had at the time of the vote.

Our country is doomed when there are so many fools like this in it.

people like to say 'congress was lied to' as an excuse, a whitewash...but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny at all. it's simple common sense. fast and furious generated a contempt charge against the AG, but no one has had anything filed for 'lying to congress to cause two wars'. because it didn't happen. that scandal would have been huge, and heads would have been rolling like mad. a president was impeached for firing a member of his cabinet, another impeached for lying under oath about whether he had any shenanigans with an intern. but not one charge filed for causing not one war, but two? because it didn't happen.

Given that the Republicans were in the majority in the House from '95 - '06, I don't think this statement is quite accurate.

oh, sorry...guess my memory was faulty. didn't think the dems took over both houses til after that period
at any rate, congress certainly in lock step on the votes. one i believe was unanimous? the other was certainly vast majority vs very few.

Actually the majority of Democrats in Congress voted against the Iraq War Resolution. I think it was something like 60% against.

81 for, 126 against

update on bain/romney
 

saw this today on fact check:

http://factcheck.org/2012/07/bain-still-no-evidence/


The Obama campaign says a new Associated Press story backs up its claims that Mitt Romney “did not leave [Bain Capital] when he says he did,” and that he’s responsible for “American jobs that were outsourced” by Bain-controlled companies after February 1999. We don’t think so.

Some impressive reporting by the AP and others recently has shown that Romney retained ownership and corporate titles at Bain for a time after he took a hurried leave of absence on Feb. 11, 1999, to manage the 2002 Winter Olympics. That has been shown by any number of routine corporate disclosures with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Romney even signed some of them.

But we’ve seen no evidence so far to show that Romney was actually running Bain, even part-time and from a distance of nearly 2,100 miles, as the Obama campaign wishes voters to believe. And we’ve seen no evidence to contradict what Romney has certified repeatedly to be true (under pain of federal prosecution): that he “has not had any active role” with Bain or “been involved in the operations” since that time.

i thought the first vote, to invade afganistan, was unanimous? that's the one i was thinking of, not iraq. didn't know the party split, just that it was a majority vote.

yeah, like i said here:

at any rate, congress certainly in lock step on the votes. one i believe was unanimous? the other was certainly vast majority vs very few.

3/4 in one, over 2/3 on the other. had the controlling party wrong, but overall was talking about congress as a whole voting-wise.

And i was thinking of Iraq, guess i wasn't clear about that...

Now this is REAL entertainment.:zz: