Thursday, July 19, 2012

Stop questioning Mitt's offshoring of profits made from offshoring financed by offshoring

U.S. Republican presidential candidate and former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney addresses supporters during his Wisconsin and Maryland primary night rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 3, 2012. REUTERS/Darren Hauck (UNITED STATES  - Tags: POLITIC I love my tax returns like I love my children, except I'll happily show you my children. (Reuters) So the Romney camp has decided on their response to his tax return problems: accuse Barack Obama of not being American enough. The exact logic of this escapes me, although it seems to revolve around the notion that saying anything bad about any businessman, ever, is a very un-American thing to do. To be fair, Republicans have felt that way for quite a few years now. Corporations are people, and the economy is run for benefit of the market titans, and voting is a privilege, not a right, and questioning your business overlords is the path towards Kenyan Marxist Communist Hitlerism. Now eat your Freedom Fries and shut up already.

I suppose the irony of this is probably wasted on the right people, then, but we can certainly enjoy it:

When Mitt Romney launched Bain Capital in 1984, he struggled at first to raise enough money for the untested venture. Old-money families like the Rothschilds turned down the young Boston consultant.

So he and his partners tapped an eclectic roster of investors, raising more than a third of their first $37-million investment fund from wealthy foreigners.

Oh noes! Mitt Romney's vast wealth was bankrolled by foreigners! Foreigners who weren't even American! Those are the worst kind of foreigners! Well, the worst kind of foreigners would probably be ones who later got convicted of stock fraud, but Mitt managed to inadvertently score that one too:
Records show the first investment in Bain Capital ' $1.25 million in June 1984 ' was in the name of Jean Overseas Ltd., registered in Panama by Marcel Elfen, a Swiss money manager. Later, the investment was doubled.

The Panamanian shell company apparently was a vehicle for [Jack] Lyons, the British businessman and philanthropist.

... who worked as a consultant for Bain for the next six years until he was convicted for unrelated fraud. I don't know what this world is coming to when you can't trust fabulously wealthy people operating Panamanian shell companies.

Now, I think we can all agree that there is nothing Republicans hold more dear than money. Money is speech, money is freedom, money is liberty, money is your vote, money is the thing that makes you better than the lower-class people who were too stupid to get born into rich families like decent folks should.

But I still don't quite understand the logic of why the guy who criticizes the guy who made his money by collecting offshore money and using it to offshore jobs via his company's innovative ideas in the lucrative new field of offshoring while offshoring the profits in offshore accounts is the one who needs to be more American. If I didn't know better I'd begin to suspect that maybe the Mitt Romney campaign is just staffed by assholes. Which is ridiculous, because assholes can be hired at much cheaper prices in other countries, and Mitt would usually be all over something like that.


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