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    Mitt Romney?

    What’s Willard hiding?

    by | 10, Add your Comment | Jul 13, 2012

    His stash of cash, mostly. Why? It goes with the territory. Obsessive accumulators hide things. Squirrels do it; pack rats do it; and so do the bees in their hives. Hoarding and hiding are like that proverbial horse and carriage.

    Former Governor of Massachusetts and a perenial Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney by DonkeyHoteyBarack Obama’s operatives are more verbose.

    1) Mitt Romney refuses to release multiple years of taxes, ignoring decades of precedent.

    2) He won’t disclose his “bundlers,” the people raising millions for his campaign.

    3) He is the sole owner of a questionable shell corporation in Bermuda.

    4) Until recently, Romney kept cash in a Swiss bank account.

    5) According to the Globe, he hasn’t been honest about when he was running Bain Capital, even though legal documents refute his claims.

    It may just be a quirk of his personality, this secrecy thing. Or maybe he’s a secret sharer, a year-round secret Santa. More likely, Willard’s penchant for making things disappear are like the magician’s tricks keep the audience’s attention fixed.

    So, what is it we’re not supposed to notice while the press serves up this kerfuffle that is Willard Mitt? My guess would be all the House and Senate seats Republicans aim to retain and claim so their agenda to deplete the public purse can be achieved.

    Why would they want to do that? Well, the American people need to be punished and they need to be taught who’s boss. This government BY the people thing, a notion that’s catching on from Bolivia to Tunisia and beyond, has to be stopped. People need to be ruled by people who know what’s good for them, whether they like it or not. If they have to be tricked into voting right, so be it. The Tea Party diversion worked in 2010. Why not Willard with his disappearing act in 2012?

    Maybe it’s a Michigan tradition?

    ###

    Monica Smith

    Monica Smith writes Hannah's Blog. Born in Germany, she came to the United States as a child, living first in California, then after an interval in Chile, in New York. Married to a retired professor at the University of Florida, where she lived for 17 years, she moved to St. Simons Island, Georgia, in 1993 and now divides her time between Georgia and New Hampshire. (New Hampshire, she says, is always interesting during a presidential election.) She and her husband have three children and five grandchildren. Ms. Smith says she "learned long ago that I am not a good team player when I got hired at the Library of Congress, fresh out of college with a degree in political science and proficiency in four foreign languages, to 'edit' library cards and informed my supervisor that if she was going to insist I punch the clock exactly on time, my productivity was going to fall from being the highest to being the same as everyone else's. The supervisor opted to assign me to another building where there was no time-clock. After I had the first of our three children, I decided a paycheck wasn't worth the hassle."

     

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    • http://likethedew.com Lee Leslie

      This guy is some kind of automaton who uses a human cruise control where he doesn’t have to think about anything, stand for anything, judge anything. He can’t be bought because he just does and says what he’s either been told or is expected of him. There a days he sounds sociopathic, which plays well to an audience that largely is. He doesn’t seem to think any of this deceit or the injury he has done to people is wrong -- I guess once you partake of the sacrament and are forgiven, you don’t have to disclose. Thanks you, Monica.

      • Del Olds

        If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that
        you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as
        you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland
        is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so
        little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own
        contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about
        matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is
        used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is
        knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find
        yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard;
        you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond
        what the evidence warrants.

        – Bertrand Russell, “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish,” 1943

    • Maximus

      1) Obama refuses to release tax records and academic transcripts. Obama
      has set political disclosure back decades in this country. But no one
      cares because he is a lightbringer.

      2) Who are Obama’s bundlers, pray tell? Bill Ayers and Bernie Dohrn? The
      Weather Underground who tried to bomb the U.S. Capitol? Maybe Rev.
      Wright, the hate-filled racist who preached to Obama hate-filled racism
      for 20 years.

      3) Why does the left hate business owners so much? God forbid someone
      become successful in this country and not a ward of the state.

      4) Swiss bank accounts? The guy is rich. That is not a crime no matter
      how much the left wants it to be. Everyone so fortunate is wise to keep
      funds secure -overseas in case this crop of Marxists gets re-elected. If
      Obama is re-elected, I’d be long Swiss bank stocks because money will
      fly away from these shores.

      5) Obama lied about ObamaCare. It’s a tax and that’s all it ever was.
      Obama has a kill list. Obama is the proprietor of Club Gitmo. Obama
      plays more golf than Tiger Woods. Obama’s wife takes $250,000 vacations
      on the taxpayer nickel. Obama’s attorney general ran guns to Mexico,
      lied to Congress about it and should be impeached.

      6) Obama must be defeated.

      • http://likethedew.com Lee Leslie

        1) President Obama released his tax records four years ago and each year since. Academic records are just part of the birther crap and a made up issue. Move on.
        2) Obama’s bundlers are disclosed. The Ayers, Dohrn and Wright stuff is just baiting and has no place in this forum.
        3) The left does not hate business -- look at the records. Since in office, the Dems have provided more tax breaks to small business than anyone in history.
        4) We the people have a right to know who the people we are voting for. The only reason to have a Swiss account is to hide money and transactions. While it may not be a crime, we should expect more of our leaders.
        5) The maximum penalty for the first year is $95 -- get over it. The rest is silly stuff and really doesn’t belong in this forum.
        6) What specifics, and there are not many, that Romney has published are at best described as a rehash of the W Bush policies that destroyed the economy for the 99.9%, made the world a much more dangerous place economically and politically, and would be an irrational vote against self-interest. Best of luck to us all.

    • Monica Smith

      There is a difference between public records and private records,
      such as school transcripts. Aside from the fact that the latter are
      virtually meaningless.

      Apparently, the bundler question hit a nerve since three from
      Arkansas have just been revealed. In addition to my friend, the Lord of
      Little Rock, Warren Stephens, there’s a Tyson, of chicken fame, and
      Claiborne Deming. That Stephens is not only being identified but issued
      a statement,

      “President Obama has had over three years to fix our economy and it is
      clear that he is in over his head. Mitt Romney has a decades-long record
      of job creation and the pro-growth plan to get the country on the right
      track. We all look forward to working our hardest to help provide the
      resources needed to defeat President Obama and turn around the country.”

      tells me that Stephens is looking to get publicity without actually
      putting himself out there as a candidate. Since when is the President of
      the United States in charge of the economy? As a good Republican,
      Stephens knows that’s the purview of the private sector. So, that’s a
      faux charge and LOL.

      Obamacare is a brand name that was actually assigned by Republicans.
      The legislation was devised and passed by Congress as a compromise
      between doing nothing and reining in the insurance middlemen, whose cut
      of the medical industrial dollar is pure gravy. It was, perhaps, better
      than nothing, but not something I’d crow about. Nor would I want my name
      attached to it.

      Swiss banks used to guarantee secrecy. That was their only attraction.
      But, the war on terror has pretty much written finis to that. And the
      war on terror is a Republican invention, for the record.

      Since money is worthless unless it is spent, I don’t really care
      where Willard hides his. But, the obsession with secrecy is concerning.
      It suggests that he’s either instinct-driven or terribly insecure, a
      tool or likely to be incapacitated by fear. Not a good predicate for
      public office.

    • Monica Smith

      SEC filings state that Romney was sole owner and CEO of Bain until 2002. That’s according to the Boston Globe.

      “Fast and Furious” was a Bush Administration initiative. One rogue
      agent “sold” weapons in hopes of having them traced to Mexican drug
      lords. Investigations are on-going so it would be foolish to make the
      evidence public and thereby invalidate it.

      There is, by the way, a difference between secrecy and privacy. Public
      officials enjoy neither in the performance of their duties, unless
      exceptional circumstances warrant it. That the law is different as it
      applies to public officials and individual persons is something that is
      not universally understood. Public officials are mandated to perform
      certain duties (positive directives); individual persons are only
      prohibited from committing injurious acts (negatives). Some seek public
      office to be above the law when public officials are ipso facto
      subservient.

      Willard Romney serving anyone but himself seems a stretch.

      • Del Olds

        Barry Obama serving only his cronies and himself is not a stretch. His real estate deal in Chicago and the funding of failed business of his political contributors.

        Fast and Furious was stopped under Bush and revived under the Obama administration in an effort to create a problem that could be solved by passing more gun control legislation (“hanging on to our guns and bibles”) which is what the documents that are hidden under executive privilege will show. Only foolish if you “have something to hide.”

    • Del Olds

      What’s he hiding? Probably that he gives a lot of money to his
      church and charities like he did with his inheritance. It’s his money,
      he can put it in any bank he wants and earn better interest in a Swiss
      Bank and not have to pay onerous taxes on it. Don’t blame him for that.

      Politifact has disproved the claim that he was at Bain longer than he said. But the narrative lives on…..

      Check on who the owners of Solyndra gave money for political campaigns. Oh, gee, Obama. Who would have thought.

      Pass the bill and see what’s in it. Oh and in the interest of
      transparency, let’s claim Executive Privilege on all the Fast and
      Furious Documents.

    • Marietta Mary

      His first name, for starters.

    • hannah

      For a more nuanced review by an investment industry insider see this piece in Bloomberg News
      http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-15/romney-s-bain-yielded-private-gains-socialized-losses.html

  • Worthy of Comment



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