Category: Presidential Campaign

Cameras are Everywhere, Mitt

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Mother Jones has found a video of Mitt Romney in a private meeting with his millionaire supporters:

During a private fundraiser earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support President Barack Obama. He dismissed these Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, who don’t assume responsibility for their lives, and who think government should take care of them. Fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in November, Romney replied:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: “[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

 Mother Jones has obtained video of Romney at this intimate fundraiser—where he candidly discussed his campaign strategy and foreign policy ideas in stark terms he does not use in public—and has confirmed its authenticity.

I don’t think that calling 48% of the country, and probably more than 60% of its senior citizens, moochers, is a death blow, if just because there has been so much bad ink over the past few weeks, whether it was his stumble on foreign policy, or the reports that his campaign staff is at each others’ throats. that it’s hard to tell which disaster will actually gain traction.

H/t Cthulhu at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Good News Out of Florida

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Federal Judge Robert Hinkle has announced that if the Appeals court remands or dismisses the state of Florida’s appeal, he will issue a permanent injunction against their voter suppression law:

A federal judge said Wednesday he would permanently remove harsh restrictions on third-party voter registration groups that have handicapped registration efforts in Florida this year. U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle said he would grant a motion to permanently remove the restrictions once he receives confirmation that a federal appeals court has dismissed the case (the state of Florida has agreed to dismiss their appeal).

Hopefully, this will happen in the rest of the states that are trying to people from voting while black.

The Story Behind the Story

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OK, one of the inevitable cliches of modern Presidential campaign coverage is the veepstakes, followed by the post mortem of this decisions.

Well, this article has a deeply interesting back-story:

Gov. Chris Christie wasn’t willing to give up the New Jersey statehouse to be Mitt Romney’s running mate because he doubted they’d win, The Post has learned.

Romney’s top aides had demanded Christie step down as the state’s chief executive because if he didn’t, strict pay-to-play laws would have restricted the nation’s largest banks from donating to the campaign — since those banks do business with New Jersey.

But Christie adamantly refused to sacrifice his post, believing that being Romney’s running mate wasn’t worth the gamble.

“[Christie] felt, at one point, that [President] Obama could lose this. And, look, there still is that chance. But he knows, right now, you have to say it’s unlikely,” one source said.

The tough-talking governor believed Romney severely damaged his campaign by releasing only limited tax returns and committing several gaffes during his international tour in July.

Certain Romney was doomed, Christie stuck to his guns — even as some of his own aides pushed him to run, another source said.

OK, why is this story different from all the other useless veepstake gossip?

It isn’t the pay to play rules, which are straightforward: If a governor is running, the big banks pretty would have to choose between contributing to Mitt, or doing pension business with New Jersey.

The big story is that this article was published in the The New York Post.

That’s right, it was published in Rupert Murdoch’s house organ (there is the Wall Street Journal, but they have to preserve the illusion of credibility in non-business news).

I’ve racked my brain, and I can come up with only two reasons for Murdoch allowing a story like this to be published:

  • He is convinced that Romney is going to lose.
  • He has Barack Obama’s genitals in his back pocket.

It could be both.

Basically, when you look at Murdoch’s media empire, much of it depends on regulatory arbitrage, allowing him to form defacto monopolies, and skirt media cross ownership rules.

It’s why his continued ownership of dead tree newspapers make sense:  To a much greater degree than the broadcast medium, they can engage in long form journalism that sets the tone for a campaign, and so politicians curry favor with him.

The papers may not generate profits, but they allow him to curry favor with politicians and regulators, which in turn make the size and scope of his broadcast and satellite operations possible.

H/t Cthulhu at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Hun, Some of Rmnney’s Tax Evasion Was Pretty Simple

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Basically, he took management fees and converted them to carried interest, in order to secure the lower capital gains rate:

Two and Twenty. Private equity fund managers are compensated in two primary ways: management fees and carried interest. The management fee, traditionally two percent annually, is paid to the managers to cover overhead, salaries, and so forth. The carried interest, traditionally twenty percent, is a share of the profits from the underlying investments. My paper Two and Twenty described the typical arrangement. Management fees are taxed at ordinary income rates; carried interest is often taxed at capital gains rates. I focused in the article on why the carried interest portion is better viewed like bonus compensation and should be taxed at ordinary income rates.

Management Fee Conversion. Current law on carried interest is already a sweetheart tax deal for private equity, but why not make it better? Private equity folks are not the type to walk past a twenty-dollar bill lying on the sidewalk. In the 2000s it became common for private equity fund managers to “convert” their management fees into carried interest. There are many variations on the theme, but here’s how many deals worked: each year, before the annual management fee comes due, the fund manager waives the management fee in exchange for a priority allocation of future profits. There is minimal economic risk involved; as long as the fund, at some point, has a profitable quarter, the managers get paid. (If the managers don’t foresee any future profits, they won’t waive the fees, and they will take cash instead.) In exchange for a minimal amount of economic risk, the tax benefit is enormous: the compensation is transformed from ordinary income (taxed at 35%) into capital gain (taxed at 15%). Because the management fees for a large private equity fund can be ten or twenty million per year, the tax dodge can literally save millions in taxes every year.

The problem is that it is not legal. Because the deals vary in their aggressiveness, there is some disagreement among practitioners about when it works and when it doesn’t. But in my opinion, and the opinion of many tax practitioners, the practices that were common in the private equity industry in the 2000s became very, very questionable, and it’s unlikely that they would have stood up in court.

Tax attorney and professor Victor Fleischer does the dumpster diving in Gawkers Bain document dump and this is the first bit of specific skulduggery that I’ve seen as a result.

Pass the Popcorn…

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Gawker has acquired a cache of nearly 1000 internal documents detailing activities at Bain Capital, and they appear to show some fairly arcane tax avoidance schemes used by Rmoney to hide income from the IRS:

Mitt Romney’s $250 million fortune is largely a black hole: Aside from the meager and vague disclosures he has filed under federal and Massachusetts laws, and the two years of partial tax returns (one filed and another provisional) he has released, there is almost no data on precisely what his vast holdings consist of, or what vehicles he has used to escape taxes on his income. Gawker has obtained a massive cache of confidential financial documents that shed a great deal of light on those finances, and on the tax-dodging tricks available to the hyper-rich that he has used to keep his effective tax rate at roughly 13% over the last decade.

Today, we are publishing more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested—at minimum—more than $10 million as of 2011 (that number is based on the low end of ranges he has disclosed—the true number is almost certainly significantly higher). Almost all of them are affiliated with Bain Capital, the secretive private equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984 and ran until his departure in 1999 (or 2002, depending on whom you ask). Many of them are offshore funds based in the Cayman Islands. Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his wealth, the exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy that benefit him, the unlikely (for a right-wing religious Mormon) places that his money has ended up, and the deeply hypocritical distance between his own criticisms of Obama’s fiscal approach and his money managers’ embrace of those same policies. They also show that some of the investments that Romney has always described as part of his retirement package at Bain weren’t made until years after he left the company.

H/t Americablog, and the documents can be examined here.

It also appears that it’s getting coverage in the main stream old media (ABC) as well.

Heh.

Paul Ryan, Insider Trader

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Click for full size


Found on Facebook

Brad Delong looks at Paul Ryans trading records in 2008, and concludes that he had to be trading on information from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury:

I don’t want to hire as my vice president and federal budget czar somebody who uses Congressional inside information to profit by switching his portfolio back and forth between Citigroup and Goldman five times a year: I want somebody with better ethics.

I don’t want to hire as my vice president and federal budget czar somebody who investing very part-time with no analytical support and without inside information switches his portfolio back and forth between Citigroup and Goldman five times a year: I want somebody with a better brain.

Look at the trades. He’s clearly trading on inside information.

Mitt Picks a Running Mate

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So, Mitt Rmoney has picked Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running.

Only in America could be someone who idolizes a virulently anti-religious atheist with the sexual morals of a rabid mink in heat could be considered the savior of the Republicans, and conservative politics.

Of sourse, it is America, so Paul Ryan, who is such a fan of hack writer Ayn Rand that he requires his staff to read every page of Atlas Shrugged.

He’s also the guy who put forward a budget that eliminated Medicare, which led to some very surprising losses in special elections for the GOP.

I can’t imagine that Willard needs to appease the party’s right-wing base this badly, so I gotta figure that this is a ploy to get Obama to stop talking about his tax returns, or lack thereof.

If you don’t know who Paul Ryan is, I would refer you to Charlie Pierce on what a contemptible piece or work he is.

BTW, Michael Moore had the tweet of the day:

Link

This might be unfair to Charles Manson.

Well This Might Explain the Whole Tax Return Thing

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Marcy “Emptywheel”  Wheeler finally has a decent theory as to why Mitt Rmoney is refusing to release his taxes.

Basically this theory concludes that Reid (a fellow Mormon) has good information that Romney has been shorting the Mormon Church on his tithes:

For the record, I think Mitt has multiple reasons to hide his tax returns. I think it’s largely about what his returns would say about his business practices, it’s partly about his tax shelters, and, one way or another, it’s about his relative loyalty to his church and his country.

But here’s a thought.

Harry Reid, Mormon, and Senator from Nevada, is the one leading the charge to return attention to Mitt’s tax returns.

He attributes his claim that Mitt paid no taxes for ten years to someone who invested with Bain. Now he may know his purported Bain-related source because he travels the halls of power. But Bain has very close cultural ties to the Mormon Church–according to some, improperly so. Moreover, because Mitt and other Bain execs have given so much to the Mormon Church in the form of Bain stocks, high ranking Mormon insiders may have a better idea of what Bain Capital actually does–and how Mitt valued his holdings before he gave them to the Church–than most others.

So Reid may be calling out Mitt not just as a former boxer, but as someone who shares a very wealth-based and close knit faith with Mitt.

Add in the practice–which even an outsider like me saw when I lived in UT and worked for a predominantly Mormon company in the 1990s–of gossip about tithing, notably whether Mormon colleagues tithed pre- or post-tax. That’s another reason why Reid may have a better sense of what Mitt’s tax practices look like than DC pundits might guess on face value.

Finally, though, there’s this. If one of the reasons Mitt is hiding his tax returns does have to do with under-tithing (as the returns Mitt released may suggest), and not just his business practices and tax shelters, remember that both CO (2.15%) and especially NV (over 5%) have larger Mormon populations than average. Nate Silver considers NV the state with the biggest return on investment per voter (CO is 6th). These are lean Democratic states that Mitt might need to win if Obama’s attacks on Bain outsourcing continue to turn the race in the manufacturing swing states (though if Mitt doesn’t win FL and VA, it may be moot anyway). Driving down the Mormon enthusiasm for Mitt might be one way to boost Obama’s chances.

It’s an interesting theory.

H/t Atrios.

Oh No You Didn’t!!!

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In an interview with Huffpo (no link, I don’t link to them), Harry Reid threw down in a most spectacular way:

Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office.

“Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying.

“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” said Reid. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?

Mitt Rmoney, you just been served.

High five to Harry Reid.

Fabulous!!!

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The Democratic Party has decided to place a marriage equality plank in the party platform:

The Democratic Party platform drafting committee approved on Sunday language endorsing same-sex marriage in addition to other pro-LGBT positions as part of the Democratic Party platform, according to two sources familiar with the drafting process.

Retiring gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who sits on the committee, told the Washington Blade on Monday that the 15-member panel unanimously backed the inclusion of a marriage equality plank after a national hearing over the weekend in Minneapolis, in which several witnesses testified in favor of such language.

“I was part of a unanimous decision to include it,” Frank said. “There was a unanimous decision in the drafting committee to include it in the platform, which I supported, but everybody was for it.”

Frank emphasized that support for marriage equality is a position that has been established for the Democratic Party, from the president, who endorsed marriage equality in May, to House Democratic lawmakers who voted to reject an amendment reaffirming the Defense of Marriage Act earlier this month.

There is a lesson to be learned here, if you relentlessly hound Barack Obama, protest his fund raisers, confront his contributors, and organize a donation boycott, then he will EVENTUALLY he’ll do the right thing.

Rmoron

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I’m generally not a superstitious person, but I have 2 rules:

  • I will not have anything to do with the Hope diamond. (Like that would happen)
  • I’ll avoid doing substantial on Tisha b’Av.  (Literally the 9th of the Hebrew month Av) The history is just too bad:
    • The reports of the spies, which led the Jews to spend 40 years in the desert.
    • The destruction of the 1st temple.
    • The destruction of the 2nd temple.
    • The crushing of the Bar Kokhba rebellion.
    • The first crusade, which set of an orgy of pogroms and murder.
    • The expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
    • The expulsion of the Jews from England.
    • The start of WWI.
    • Etc.

So, making a political trip to Israel on Tisha b’Av is not something I would do.

I’d move it a week one way or the other.

It is the saddest on the Jewish calendar, and it is observed by a day of fasting, and by listening by the chanting of Eicha (Lamentations).

One of the peculiarities of Tisha b’Av is that if it falls on a Shabbos, as it did this year, the observance is moved to the next day.

Whether you subscribe to my particular bit of superstitious silliness or not, it is self evident that if you decide to hold a $50,000 a plate fundraising banquet that starts while the fast is still ongoing, you don’t have a bad luck problem, you have a “Your an idiot problem”:

Presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will host a fund-raising event in Jerusalem this month at $60,000 or more per plate, The Jerusalem Post learned on Wednesday.

Delegates are set to fly in from the US for the event on July 29, which a Republican source said would be “a small meeting, but a big fund-raiser” as the Tisha Be’av fast ends. Immediately after the fund-raising meeting, Romney will host a conference in Jerusalem, where he will lay out his Middle East policy.

To be fair, the actual serving of food was not to start until after the fast was technically over, and once it blew up in Mitt’s face, they moved it to a breakfast get together the next morning.

But still, what sort of Rmorons does Mitt Rmoney have working for him?

‘Phants Ceding PA

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It looks like both the Rmoney campaign and the super PACS that support him, are pulling out of Pennsylvania:

One of the early peculiarities of the advertising campaign is the half-hearted effort in Pennsylvania—a state which figured prominently in the electoral calculus of the last three presidential elections. Despite that place in recent electoral history, Romney hasn’t aired any ads in Pennsylvania since the general election began. And although the Obama campaign and the super PACs have waged a low-intensity ad war in Pennsylvania, the most recent data suggests that even these limited efforts might be winding down.


For the first time in the campaign, Republicans are completely off the air in Pennsylvania. According to The Washington Post’s ad tracker, neither Crossroads nor Restore Our Future have aired ads in Pennsylvania since the beginning of July, and although Americans for Prosperity purchased buys for the early half of July, they appear to have gone off the air as well. This could be temporary, of course: there were weeks when the GOP went off the air in Michigan, only to return a few weeks later. Americans for Prosperity isn’t airing any ads this week, and they were carrying the load in Pennsylvania before dropping off the air, so they might start contesting Pennsylvania again once they return to the presidential race. But the decision to cease advertisements shouldn’t be overlooked: ads quickly lose their punch once the airwaves go quiet, so it’s important to remain persistent once advertisements begin.


Why is Pennsylvania falling off of the radar? Although the state is typically characterized as a white working class state reminiscent of the Midwest, the Democratic coalition in Pennsylvania is far more diverse and upscale than Ohio or Michigan. Democrats also have a large registration advantage in Pennsylvania, and a Romney victory would require a degree of crossover appeal that he has not yet demonstrated. Instead, Romney and his allies appear more interested in testing the waters of the Great Lakes, where demographics or electoral history are arguably more promising than Pennsylvania. Obama is more dependent on white working class voters in Michigan than Pennsylvania, and recent polls provide cause for Republicans to be hopeful about their chances. This week, Crossroads turned up the volume in Michigan and spent nearly $600,000 on advertisements. That’s not as much as other battleground states, but it’s a hefty investment. For comparison, Obama spent $1 million in Ohio—a slightly larger state, generally considered more likely to decide the election. The RNC has also announced it will invest in Wisconsin, a state where Obama looks strong but that Kerry won by just 14,000 votes in 2004.

This is unsurprising.

The last time that Pennsylvania went Republican was in 1988, and that was close.

For all the talk of it being a swing state, it isn’t.

I’ll Have a Side Order of Racist Ratf%$# with That

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Yes, the Rmoney campaign has denied it, but one of his surrogates just threw out a blatantly racist agitprop:

As the Republican presidential challenger accused Barack Obama of appeasing America’s enemies in his first foreign policy speech of the US general election campaign, advisers told The Daily Telegraph that he would abandon Mr Obama’s “Left-wing” coolness towards London.

In remarks that may prompt accusations of racial insensitivity, one suggested that Mr Romney was better placed to understand the depth of ties between the two countries than Mr Obama, whose father was from Africa.

“We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special,” the adviser said of Mr Romney, adding: “The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have”.

Mr Romney on Wednesday embarks on an overseas tour of Britain, Israel and Poland designed to quash claims by Mr Obama’s team that he is a “novice” in foreign affairs. It comes four years after Mr Obama’s own landmark foreign tour, which attracted thousands of supporters.

(emphasis mine)

Romney promptly disavowed whoever said this, and the most likely suspect for this is a Heritage Foundation puke by the name of Nile Gardiner, (he has denied it) who is rather fond of the the phrase.

Martin O’Malley 2012

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This has to be one of the best slams of the Presidential election so far:

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley introduced a new line of attack on Gov. Mitt Romney today, saying the public should be suspicious of him because in 2008 Sen. John McCain considered the now-presumptive Republican nominee to be his running mate…but picked Sarah Palin instead.

“What about running for the office of the presidency this year makes it less important than the job that he didn’t get over Palin the last time around?” O’Malley asked BuzzFeed, referencing the 23 years of returns Romney allowed McCain to examine while he was being vetted but hasn’t released to the public.

Pressed in an interview at the National Governors Association meeting here whether there would be anything in those returns that would disqualify Romney from the presidency, O’Malley said he doesn’t know — and that’s why Democrats want to see them.

“But why would you pick somebody — why would you pick Palin over Romney?” he asked.

(emphasis mine)

Sweet!

Here’s a Meme to Run On

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This is a rebate check from an insurance company because of Obamacare:


Click for full size.

The short version (more at link) is that insurance companies have to spend 80% of premiums on healthcare, as opposed to paying obscene bonuses to its executives.

Any excess has to be returned to the ratepayers.

I’m no political consultant, but I think that video of people holding up checks that they got back from insurance companies might play well on Youtube.

I’m just sayin’.

Quislings

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A number of West Virginia “Democrats” who qualify as super delegates have announced that they won’t be attending the convention because they do not want to be supporting Barack Obama:

Democratic West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin says he won’t attend the party’s national convention, citing serious problems with President Barack Obama.

A Tomblin spokesman, Chris Stadelman, said Monday that the governor has serious problems with Republican Mitt Romney, too.

Tomblin is an automatic superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention. He says his time is best spent working in West Virginia, not attending the four-day political rally in Charlotte, N.C.

In West Virginia’s presidential primary, Tomblin refused to say whether he voted for Obama.

Tomlbin isn’t alone in sitting this one out — West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin and congressman Nick Rahall say they don’t plan to attend the convention, either.

What they are really saying is that they don’t want to be seen as supporting Barack Obama, because their voters are from West Virginia, and he’s a Ni*bong*. (Blazing Saddles reference)

Wankers.

There is a level of sacrifice to be made by people in leadership positions, and this ain’t it.

I’m not saying that you have to go, but as a person in a leadership position in the party, you don’t advertise the fact.

The Aqua Buddha Running Mate

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I know that my track record sucks, but I am not predicting that Rand Paul will be Mitt Romney’s running mate:

A day after endorsing Mitt Romney, Sen. Rand Paul said it would be an honor to run alongside the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

“A year, year and a half ago, I was a physician in a small town,” Paul, the junior Republican senator from Kentucky, told CNN’s Don Lemon. “And it would be a great honor to be considered as a vice president for the Republican Party. I think that would be something that anybody who said otherwise would not be being truthful.”

Paul, who on Thursday came out in support of Romney, said on CNN he had not discussed with the candidate the prospect of joining the GOP ticket.

Paul, a tea party favorite and son of presidential candidate Ron Paul, said his father “has always been my first choice,” but that the nominating process favored Romney.

Rand Paul has said that he would have run this year had his dad, Ron Paul not run, and he is clearly very receptive to the idea of being Mitt’s running mate.

Additionally, he has serious teabagger cred.

I would not call him a slam dunk, but to my mind, he is the most likely selection right now.