How Romney Lost the Summer- Great article by Robert Shrum

[cali]

<snip>

Or take the controversy over Mitt’s refusal to release his tax returns, just supercharged by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s report that a Bain investor told him Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. GOP surrogates and commentators, who have never seen the returns, rushed to the barricades of the Sunday talk shows to label Reid “a liar.” They were uniformly indignant—and unconvincing. All they did was pour fuel on the fire. As veteran Republican strategist Ed Rollins said on Fox News, the questions are “gonna dog [Romney] all the way,” and the only way to “to put it behind him” is to “release more taxes.”

I am now convinced Romney can’t. Either his closest confidants have convened around a table and concluded that there’s political disaster in those returns, or the candidate already knows this all too well and won’t show them to any of his handlers lest the information leak. Logic and my own experience in presidential politics persuade me that the only reason to withhold something like this is if its release could put a near end to the campaign.

For Romney and his operatives to find themselves in this situation is inexplicable, except on grounds of heedless greed. The man has known he was going to run for president for eight years or more, and perhaps for his whole adult life. So close the Swiss bank accounts and offshore investments in tax havens in, say, 2005 or 2006; he’d get away with disclosing just five years of returns. And he could have made sure he paid a reasonable percentage in income taxes each and every year. He didn’t have to jump through every loophole, moneybags in hand. To the horror of his accountants, he could have skipped some deductions. How about last year’s $77,000 deduction for that dancing horse?

In short, Romney needed to straighten out his financial affairs, and those around him should have told him to do it long ago. And if he is his own principal adviser on this, then he has an adviser who’s a fool—a very rich fool. His ignorance about the political fallout seems to be matched only by his arrogance in assuming that he can be simultaneously a plutocrat and presidential nominee.


<snip>

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/08/mitt-romney-lost-the-summer-tax-returns-overseas-gaffes-more.html

[SemperEadem]

1. my avatar, Bubbles, says it all

[Cosmocat]

2. SPOT ON!

Romney has known he would run for president this go around since at least ...

THE LAST TIME HE RAN.

Common sense would indicate that he should have shored up his taxes over the last five years, and Shrum hit it square on the head.

PURE UNADULTERATED GREED to spend the last five years squeezing blood from a stone on his taxes when he should have been preparing to have the taxes brought to light to show him in a good light.

This is scorpion and frog stuff, and highlights who he is as a person.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. Bingo and this is what happens when

over the years, one is told - "Okay, jump 10 feet" and everyone who runs does so. And then the black man arrives and suddenly the rules change and you demand that he must "jump 12 feet" and you laugh off to the side. But then all of a sudden, he manages to not only jump those 12 feet, but goes an extra 2 for a total of 14 feet. So then when people demand that the next one along should "jump 14 feet", and then they not only balk, but refuse to even do the 12 feet OR the 10 feet, and want to get rid of the rules altogether.

This sort of shit keeps biting them in the ass time and time again when they change goal posts, and then try to change them back, or try to get rid of them for their own lazy benefit. THAT is the history of this country.

[Ikonoklast]

4. Because he is a wealthy, arrogant asshole that got away with pissing on everyone else

his entire life, and it always worked for him before.

Why change what always worked?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. "Yet another airhead son of a famous father."

[barbtries]

6. highly recommended

read the whole article is worth it.

[yellowcanine]

7. He didn't do it because he is greedy and no amount of money was enough.

The $100 million IRA proves that. No one needs that kind of money in a retirement account and it is not even clear how Mitt legally put that much money there.

[JenniferJuniper]

8. "The man has known he was going to run for president for eight years or more

....In short, Romney needed to straighten out his financial affairs, and those around him should have told him to do it long ago."

Absolutely true.

So the question is begged, is this guy dumber than GWB on his worst day, or did greed overwhelm his decades long desire to be president?

Either way, the man is unfit for office.

[starroute]

12. I think it was neither -- see what I posted below

I think he locked himself into a highly favorable deal with his former partners at Bain back in 2002 and couldn't change it. So his only option is to lie.

[Dustlawyer]

9. He thinks he can pound home lies about Obama w/unlimited money and still win!

[cali]

10. yep. that's the bottom line.

and his bottom line is deep.

[starroute]

11. I think it's becoming clear that Romney *couldn't* have done it differently

There's an excellent TPM item quoted at another thread that hasn't gotten much attention. It's a description from someone with experience in equity funds. Here's the key part of the explanation:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/08/missing_the_key_issue.php?ref=fpblg

The corporate structure of most private equity firms is such that there is a management company (holding company) above a set of LLCs or limited partnerships which are the actual funds investing the capital and collecting the fees/distributing the profits. Romney was both a general partner in the funds and the sole shareholder of the management company.

The management company shares are generally considered to have relatively nominal value (i.e. you can conceivably put them into an IRA) as there generally isn’t a lot of (or any) income/revenue associated with them — however, since the management company owns the brand name and controls the funds and all hiring/firing/compensation decisions (within Bain Capital), if Romney’s partners wanted to continue using the name “Bain Capital” and take over control of the private equity firm and funds in the future, they would have to buy back Romney’s shares over a period of several years for hundred+ of millions of dollars. This is not uncommon in private equity firms undergoing an ownership transition. Since these shares (could) have been contributed to an IRA over the years, the Romney’s income 2002 to 2009 would largely be from his partners at Bain buying back shares that he’s already contributed to his IRA, and just like any trading you do in your IRA, the sale of these shares would be tax free until after he turns 65 (and/or withdraws from said IRA) and he’d pay zero income taxes on that.

What fascinates me about this explanation is that it seems to tie together three parts of the Romney story:

1 - How he could have up to $100 million in an IRA when you can only put in a maximum of $30,000 a year.

2 - How he could pay little or no taxes for ten years.

3 - Why it would have taken three years (from 1999 to 2002) for him to negotiate the terms of his departure from Bain Capital.

(On edit: Add #4 -- why Harry Reid says Romney has to be worth a lot more than $250 million.)

Item #3 is particularly interesting, because people have tended to assume Romney's version of why it took so long is a lie and that he never really meant to leave Bain until he decided to run for governor of Massachusetts. But given the description at TPM, I'm prepared to believe it really did take three years, first for his tax professionals to work out the most advantageous terms for his departure and then for him to negotiate over those terms with his former partners.

But if this is the case, and if the main source of Romney's income from 2002 to 2009 was his former partners paying hundreds of millions of dollars to buy back shares he had placed in his IRA (at nominal value), then he would effectively have been locked into the deal. There would be no way to change it when he started running for president in 2007. There would be no way he could pretty things up by simply foregoing a few loopholes.

And now he's stuck, and all he can do is lie and conceal.