Sunday, November 4, 2012

Romney Charged With Ethics Violation: The Mitt Has Hit The Fan


So much for the days of the October surprise, this may prove to be the November bomb.
We have just discovered at least a few of the reasons why he refused to release his records before 2010.

In 2009, Ann Romney, along with one of Mitt’s key donors, Paul Singer, bought controlling interest in Delphi Auto, the former GM parts division.  Singer’s company, Elliott Management, then threatened to cut off GM's supply of steering columns unless GM and the government's TARP auto bail-out fund provided Delphi with huge payments.  Although the US Treasury balked at the concept, referring to it as extortion, ultimately, GM paid $12.9 billion. Now let’s put this in perspective, the auto industry which had made their family rich almost goes bankrupted and what do the Romneys do, they extort them to get some of that TARP money, money that he later told the media that GM shouldn’t have received.

That’s not going to make voters in auto making states happy and I can’t imagine those who resented TARP in the first place appreciating the idea that Mitt made sure he got his slice of the pie.
The Romneys made at least $15 million off the deal, which was then placed in an off-shore account in a limited partnership inside a trust. (For those of us in the ‘you people’ category, that’s like taking your extortion money to your sister-in-law’s house, placing the money in a teddy bear and placing it underneath the floor boards in the basement. Not, like you are trying to hiding anything, mind you.  Just keeping  it safe.) Then, interestingly enough, when it came time to fill out his Public Financial Disclosure Report to the Office of Government Ethics Mitt and Ann simply forgot to mention this windfall because they didn’t disclose the underlying holdings of their private equity and limited partnership funds.  (Because we’ve all forgotten where we left $15 million in our time, haven’t we?  Tell me the truth, if a man can claim that he forgot that he had $15 million dollars and forgot where he put it, do we really want him running the country?)

You see the reason this is important, by law, presidential candidates may not have major investments which could be affected by the candidate should be become president.  And owning a controlling interest in a company that can extort the largest automobile company in America definitely qualifies as having an effect.  And, as we are now aware that he has lied about one, we have to wonder what other financial investments he has that would be a conflict of interest.

Yesterday a formal complaint was made with the Office of Governmental Ethics charging Mitt Romney with an ethics violation, specifically of having a conflict of interest and demanding that he turn over his financial records in order to determine just that.

One has to wonder how the Republican Party and its voters are willing to hold up to the concept of a potential president who has ethics charges against him even before the polls open.

It was one thing when Mitt lied like a normal politician but as this campaign has gone on we have discovered that he may also be willing to perjure himself and “conveniently forget” to include information on financial disclosure forms.  We have to wonder if Mitt Romney is capable of telling the truth about anything. Does the American people believe him when he claims that he wants to help America or do we question if the vulture capitalist is looking at the United States as just another company to plunder for his own profit?







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