The Problem with Mitt Romney

The Problem with Mitt Romney

Recently it has come to light that Mitt Romney’s firm, Bain Capital, filed papers with the SEC showing that from 1999 to 2002 he was involved in Bain’s day to day operations. Mitt has said that he wasn’t; that he was working on the Olympics.

During this period of time Bain among other things: shipped jobs overseas, and raided corporate pension funds of companies that ultimately went bankrupt. Mitt has said he had nothing to do with any of that he was working on the Olympics.

This puts him in a tricky spot. If it’s true that he had nothing to do with it and yet his name is on the papers filed with the SEC then he is guilty of a felony. Otherwise, he’s guilty of lying, which he would do to make himself look better to the voting public.

He has come out and said that he can’t recall being at any meetings during that time at Bain Capital or taking part in any decisions. The papers filed with the SEC were holdovers, minor clerical errors; someone filed the papers from the last time and never changed the names. The papers filed with the SEC in that time period and before show that Romney is the guy at Bain. It was, and is, his company.

This is a pattern with Romney. It seems to run through his life. He can’t remember being the head of a gang in prep school that held another student down on the floor while he Mitt cut off the kid’s hair. Yet, everyone else involved can.

He has done any number of practices that while legal apparently are certainly questionable from a moral or patriotic viewpoint. There are the business practices of Bain. They took over cash rich companies, extracted all the money, took out loans on the assets and then set them adrift where they failed and the government had to come in and bail out the pension funds.

There’s the hidden money in various off shore accounts: in the Caymans, in Switzerland, in the Bahamas. Why do people put money in those places? The only reason I know of is to avoid paying taxes. It may be legal but it sure isn’t patriotic.

There are the unfounded statements. The one that gets me is that he knows how to create jobs. Really? What’s the proof? He didn’t do it at Bain, the other executives admit that. He didn’t do it as governor of Massachusetts. So where exactly did he create these jobs? What is in his resume that suggests he knows how to create jobs? Nothing that I can find. There’s the statement he keeps repeating on the campaign trail that he’s going to repeal Obamacare on day one of his taking office. Really? How is he going to do that? Declare himself emperor or czar, disband the Congress and repeal the Affordable Health Care Act? He says he’s going to replace it with sensible options and he lists them. Every option he lists is in the Affordable Health Care Act now. This reminds me of an episode of Cheers where Phil the bartender is going to take over another bar and open a place of his own. The guys at the bar ask him what his concept is. He says there’s a big neon sign on the top of the building that says “Joe’s,” named after the current owner. He going to take that down and put up “Phil’s.” The guys at the bar look at him slack jawed. Finally, one of them says, “Yeah?” Phil says that it. That’s the concept.

Then there’s the draft issue. Rather than serving his country he went to France to try and convert people to Mormonism. Really? Apparently, according to the records, nothing much happened in France. No one got converted. He was involved in a bad auto accident. He came home when his girl friend started seeing someone else. So he went to France rather than going to Vietnam. I can understand that, maybe everybody at that time should have done that. And in the 2004 Presidential election Kerry got attacked for serving in Nam and speaking French? Wow.

There are his prep school activities that really get me. In prep school everyone plays a sport every season. In the fall it’s football or soccer, in winter it’s hockey, basketball, or wrestling, in spring it’s track, lacrosse, or baseball. Everyone plays. It’s part of your education. It doesn’t matter how good you are. You play. Coaches generally put every player in the game at some point so they know what it’s like. There are always one or two kids that are so uncoordinated or somehow unable to play. They become the team manager. The manager carries the first aid kit and the stat book. Romney was a manager of the hockey team. He was a cheerleader of the football team. A cheerleader? In prep school? What was he doing standing on the sidelines yelling into a megaphone ra-ra-sis-boom-bah to the few people standing around?

Then there’s his team of advisors on the election committee. They are the same people that were around W – neocons. These are the same folks that got us into two wars, one of which certainly was on unfounded grounds; but it fit their political narrative, not the facts. They didn’t even try to pay for either war. This is the crew that allowed Enron to exist and defraud people in California that created the rolling blackouts. This is the crew that oversaw the largest reversal of economic status for this country. This is the crew that cut benefits to veterans and blithely said they were paid professionals they knew what they were getting into. This is the group that refused to pay to have military vehicles be outfitted with stronger armor because it wasn’t one of their companies and so our soldiers died until they could get one of their companies to provide the plating.

With Mitt Romney I’ve been asked to believe the unbelievable over and over again.

There’s the out of touch issues. He knows football team owners; that’s what he said when he was asked about football. He doesn’t know what a donut is. Brain fart? Maybe, or maybe he doesn’t know what a donut is.

What I see in Mitt is a man who has slid by, avoided responsibility, helped himself and everyone else be damned. It doesn’t matter if it’s a company he owns or a country he says he wants to be President of Mitt is in it for Mitt. And if he gets called out, Well, gosh gee, I certainly did or didn’t mean to do that. If I had done it and it’s bad I don’t recall; if it’s good, even if I didn’t do, it I’ll take credit for it.

If this man becomes president I think the bad years of W’s administration will pale in comparison to what the raptors that he has caged will unleash on this country and the world. He all the while will say, “Gosh gee, I didn’t know about that.”

The basic problem with Mitt is he won’t stand up and admit he did anything.