Romney Sends Perry to Nevada. Sorry, But We'd Rather Have the Truth.

Today, none other than Rick Perry will be returning to Nevada to open Mitt Romney's new Elko campaign office! Remember him? Oh yes, Rick Perry really made his BFF Brian Sandoval proud!

And now, Perry is set to appear in Elko to speak up for his new BFF, Mitt Romney. Remember what Perry said about Romney earlier this year? I don't think he wants you to.

Why? See for yourself.

Apparently, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry committed "the unforgivable sin": They "released the kraken" that is Mitt Romney's dirtiest secret, and the GOP establishment is demanding they stuff that genie back in the bottle and toss it out to sea. Too bad for them that genies like this one really can't be recaptured and contained. This one will indeed be coming back to haunt the G-O-TEA this fall. [...]

It also speaks volumes that the RNC is begging its own not to mention Mitt Romney's stint at Bain Capital, and that Romney himself says that matters of economic injustice are only allowed to be discussed "in quiet rooms". [...]

Again, the contrast couldn't be any greater. Romney profits off government sponsored corporate welfare, then he says discussions of economic inequality are all "about envy". Romney lies about President Obama's economic record, then his GOP establishment surrogates throw a temper tantrum when anyone tries to tell the truth about Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital. And we're supposed to believe he can boost job creation as US President?

Romney is clearly angry that this election may very well be decided on matters of economic inequality... Especially since he's the one who stands to lose the most from it.

Oh, dear. I had a hunch this story wouldn't die in January. But my goodness, I didn't know my words from then would turn out to be this prophetic.



Now, Mitt Romney is backtracking and claiming these are all just pesky lies. It's too bad for Mittens that Mitt Romney himself has confirmed his role at Bain Capital early last decade. And not only that, but Romney still had an active role at Bain!

If you're still wondering why this is such a big deal, remember that Romney wants to be absolved of any and all responsibility for Bain's more unsavory business practices, such as the gutting of American companies that had created American jobs, as well as the outsourcing of those jobs overseas. If Romney indeed was still CEO and sole stockholder in Bain Capital all the way to 2002, as SEC documents now show, then he has to take responsibility for those unsavory business practices that now threaten his Presidential Campaign.

And here's why this is his worst nightmare: It's all too deja vu for Mittens.

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And especially since none other than Rick Perry was alluding to this during the G-O-TEA primary season, he won't have an easy time shrugging this off in Elko today. Again, remember that Rick Perry himself denounced Mitt Romney's vulture capitalism! Are we all supposed to forget that now? I think not.

Why Harry Reid Busted Mitt Romney

There he goes again. When Harry Reid gets badass, the Beltway press corps have to pay attention. So of course, he's making them pay attention to this.

“[Mitt Romney] not only couldn’t be confirmed as a cabinet secretary, he couldn’t be confirmed as dog catcher,” Reid told reporters at a Capitol press briefing, in response to a question from TPM. “Because a dog catcher, you’re at least going to want to look at his income tax returns.”

“The long report that we have in the Boston Globe today indicates that, as one of his own employees said, it doesn’t make sense,” Reid continued. “He said he left Bain to go to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and stopped any association with Bain. But his SEC filings indicated that he was Chief Executive Officer, sole stockholder, and ran the corporation for at least 3 more years. And that’s why people who say there’s been advertisements where businesses were closed, people laid off - and he says oh I wasn’t there, I left in 1999. As his own operative said, it doesn’t make sense. And it doesn’t.”

Reid said the issue is important because Bain was accused of being involved with outsourcing jobs in those ensuing years, and Romney’s campaign has argued that he had left by then.

Senator Reid was talking about this explosive Boston Globe story debunking Mitt Romney's claim that he wasn't in charge of Bain Capital when his company began massive layoffs early last decade. While Romney claimed he left Bain in 1999, the documents Bain Capital filed with the SEC listed Romney as 100% owner and CEO, and that Romney earned a $100,000 annual salary in 2001 and 2002 on top of his Bain investment earnings.

So why does this matter? Here's why.



Need more details? Read this from Kevin Drum.

SEC documents show that he was CEO and owner of the firm between 1999 and 2002. In a political context, there's just no way to weasel your way around that, and Romney is going to look increasingly weaselly if he tries. Your average Joe sees a multi-gazillionaire trying to claim that he was only technically CEO and isn't reponsible for what happened during his technical CEO-ship. That's like a Mafia don taking the Fifth. It's not going to fly, especially from a guy who's constantly yammering away about personal reponsibility and accountability.

So Romney has a problem, and he'd better figure out a better way of dealing with it than releasing increasingly tortured explanations of the definition of "CEO." Voters want a president who takes responsibility, not one who tries to blame other people when something goes wrong.

And while we're on the subject, check out David [Corn's] latest piece on Bain's investment in a Chinese manufacturing company that "depended on US outsourcing for its profits—and that explicitly stated that such outsourcing was crucial to its success." This happened in 1998, when Romney was unequivocally in charge. This stuff is piling up, and it doesn't look very salt-of-the-earth to those independent blue-collar voters Romney is so anxious to court. He'd better figure out an answer.

And speaking of David Corn's explosive Mother Jones article, it reveals even more lurid details on what Mitt Romney was doing at Bain Capital... And another outfit that's just starting to make headlines.

On April 17, 1998, Brookside Capital Partners Fund, a Bain Capital affiliate, filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission noting that it had acquired 6.13 percent of Hong Kong-based Global-Tech Appliances, which manufactured household appliances in a production facility in the industrial city of Dongguan, China. That August, according to another SEC filing,Brookside upped its interest in Global-Tech to 10.3 percent. Both SEC filings identified Romney as the person in control of this investment: "Mr. W. Mitt Romney is the sole shareholder, sole director, President and Chief Executive Officer of Brookside Inc. and thus is the controlling person of Brookside Inc." Each of these documents was signed by Domenic Ferrante, a managing director of Brookside and Bain. [...]

At the time Romney was acquiring shares in Global-Tech, the firm publicly acknowledged that its strategy was to profit from prominent US companies outsourcing production abroad. On September 4, 1998, Global-Tech issued a press release announcing it was postponing completion of a $30 million expansion of its Dongguan facility because Sunbeam, a prominent American consumer products company and a major client of Global-Tech, was cutting back on outsourcing as part of an overall consolidation. But John C.K. Sham, Global-Tech's president and CEO, said, "Although it appears that customers such as Sunbeam are not outsourcing their manufacturing as quickly as we had anticipated, we still believe that the long-term trend toward outsourcing will continue." Global-Tech, which in mid-1998 announced fiscal year sales of $118.3 million (an increase of 89 percent over the previous year), also manufactured household appliances for Hamilton Beach, Mr. Coffee, Proctor-Silex, Revlon, and Vidal Sassoon, and its chief exec was hoping for more outsourcing from these and other American firms.

And in case that isn't damning enough...

Brookside downsized its Global-Tech holdings later in 1998. An SEC filing submitted on December 21, 1998, reported that the Bain affiliate now controlled only 4.63 percent of the company's shares. But Brookside was sharing its stake in Global-Tech with Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors LTD—a Bermuda-based corporation of which Romney was the "the sole shareholder, a director, and President." That is, Romney had split his Global-Tech holdings between two of his various business entities. (The SEC filing doesn't indicate why he did that.)

Sankaty is a story in itself. It was recently the focus of an Associated Press investigation that reported that Sankaty "is among several Romney holdings that have not been fully disclosed" and that there is a "mystery surrounding" Sankaty. Reporting on this Romney entity, Vanity Fair noted that "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." With Sankaty, Romney was using a mysterious Bermuda-based entity to invest in a Chinese firm that thrived on US outsourcing.

Wow. This is even worse than I had originally thought. I just knew that Mitt Romney was/is a vulture capitalist who profited from destroying American jobs. Now we know he's caused even more damage to our economy by outsourcing formerly American jobs to China AND by hiding his money in offshore Bermuda based investments!



But really, should we be surprised? This truly is the Mitt Romney way. He makes money while American workers suffer.Desert Beacon warned us back in May. His voodoo economics, as well as his embrace of just plain voodoo emanating from Donald Trump's ass, should have been enough of a warning for us.

And this is why Harry Reid said what he said this morning. Mitt Romney can't be trusted to speak the truth on his own financial records. Mitt Romney can't be trusted to protect American jobs. Mitt Romney can't be trusted to stick to the same position on anything. Is there anything Mitt Romney can be trusted on?

The Bain of Romney's Campaign

It's here. OFA launched RomneyEconomics.com earlier this week, reminding America of what Mitt Romney wanted us all to forget when his G-O-TEA primary opponents stumbled upon Romney's history of job destroying "vulture capitalism".



Remember that? Remember Bain Capital? Romney was hoping you'd forget, but his record can't stay hidden or forgotten altogether. After all, Romney's fellow Republicans were first to point out Romney's record of destroying American businesses and taking away Americans' jobs.



But now, Mittens' Bain scandal is looking even worse. Rural Northern Nevada can be added to the growing list of communities hit hard by Bain.

[...] Between 2000 and 2002, Stage Stores, a clothing chain, shut down three stores in rural Nevada as part of a bankruptcy.

The stores’ closures came after Bain Capital had sold off its interest in the company in 1999. Obama’s campaign said the chain had been saddled with debt after an aggressive expansion under Bain, and after Bain made $170 million profit from the investment.

Nationally, 5,795 workers at Stage, which sells name-brand clothing in small to mid-sized cities, were laid off between 1999 and Feb. 2002, according to the Obama campaign.

It’s unknown how many workers were laid off in the Nevada stores in Winnemucca, Elko and Fallon.

In Winnemucca, 166 miles northeast of Reno, Rich Stone, owner of a dry cleaner next to the former Stage Store, remembers the retailer as a fine fit for the community.

Since it closed, residents of the small town of 8,900 and surrounding Humboldt County can’t buy non-Western-themed clothes there. They have to travel to Reno or shop online, Stone said.

“It’s a void,” said Stone, who is also a city councilman and a Republican. “We lose a lot of sales tax revenue.”

Stone then added that this was just "capitalism" and no one should expect "welfare". Actually, no one there was. However, what consumers were hoping for was another option for clothes shopping. And what local workers were hoping for was an employer willing to treat them right and simply reward them for the hard work they put into those stores. It looks like Bain did neither when it bankrupted Stage Stores and forced it to close Stage's Nevada locations.

As Desert Beacon has said before, the "capitalism" that Romney practiced at Bain Capital is not the kind of capitalism our Founding Fathers wanted for America. Rather, Romney practiced "financialism" that enriched himself and fellow Bain executives while impoverishing formerly middle class American workers. While Bain had one of the "best track records" in making Wall Street plenty of money, it's also had one of the "best track records" in giving workers the shaft.



Do these workers look like they're after "welfare" and "handouts"? No. They just did a good job... And they lost their jobs as soon as Bain lost interest and moved onto other companies to pump up to destroy. And no matter how hard Mitt Romney tries to hide this from the American people, he can't change the facts and he can't make history go away.