"The Salt Lake City Olympics that Romney ran received $1.5 billion in government funds"

[ProSense]

9:32: Former Olympians take the stage to highlight Romney’s leadership during the 2002 Games. The Salt Lake City Olympics that Romney ran received $1.5 billion in government funds and cost taxpayers 1.5 times the combined inflation adjusted amount spent on all seven previous Olympics held in the United States.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/08/30/778781/rnc-thursday/

Romneyland defends shredding Olympic documents: It wasn't Mitt's fault. He'd already retired.

by Jed Lewison

So yesterday we learned that despite Mitt Romney's pledge to run the most transparent Olympic Games in history, the archival records of the 2002 Winter Olympics are either under lock and key at the University of Utah's Marriott Library or have been completely destroyed. Now the Boston Globe reports:

But some who worked with Romney describe a close-to-the-vest chief executive unwilling to share so much as a budget with a state board responsible for spending oversight. Archivists now say most key records about the Games’ internal workings were destroyed under the supervision of a staffer shortly after the flame was extinguished at Olympic Cauldron Park, after Romney had returned to Massachusetts.

“Transparency? There was none with [the Salt Lake Organizing Committee] when he was there,” said Kenneth Bullock, a committee member who represented the Utah League of Cities and Towns. “Their transparency became a black hole. It was nonexistent.”

But don't worry, Mitt Romney had nothing to do with that, because according to the campaign, he no longer worked at the Olympics:

According to Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul, “Mitt Romney resigned from SLOC in early 2002 to run for governor of Massachusetts and was not involved in the decision-making regarding the final disposition of records.”

Well isn't that convenient ... Romney isn't to blame because he'd retired. Retroactively, no doubt. Is there nothing that he'll take responsibility for?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/24/1113294/-Romneyland-defends-shredding-Olympic-documents-It-wasn-t-Mitt-s-fault-He-d-already-retired

Made in China: Olympic Pin Shaped Like Mitt Romney’s Face

<...>

Salt Lake 2002 Olympics paraphernalia obtained by ABC bears “Made in China” and “Made in Bangladesh” stamps...A collectible tin and several pins, including a cartoonish Romney likeness and a 9/11 pin bearing the words “United We Stand,” were manufactured in China by Aminco...the pin-maker, produced licensed memorabilia for the U.S. Olympic Committee, Romney did not work for that organization. He served as president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, which planned the games.

We’ve found no mention of the memorabilia by Romney, a businessman brought in to save the Olympics from scandal and fiscal peril, but he did address the notion of cutting costs by buying from China in another area of Olympic organizing.

When Romney’s Salt Lake Organizing Committee developed the Gateway plaza in Salt Lake City, offering patrons and residents the chance to buy bricks for $100 and have their names inscribed, the committee used granite bricks from China, despite an abundance of granite in the nearby Wasatch mountains, the Salt Lake Tribune reported at the time.

“It’s extraordinary,” Romney told the paper, “but it’s cheaper to get it from China.”

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/made-in-china-olympic-pin-shaped-like-mitt-romneys-face/

Tax Expert: Mitt Romney Is An Olympic Level Athlete At The Tax Avoidance Game

by eXtina

Sure, we've had lots of speculation as to what Mitt Romney's hiding by not releasing his taxes (save for a partial one from 2010). In his defense Romney has said he "has paid all the taxes that are legally due", which theoretically could be zero. He also says that his financial disclosure forms are more than enough for you people. Here they are for 2006, 2010, and 2011. They consist of an interminable stack of spreadsheets showing every 'entity' that contains Mitt's money, with an amount range checkbox filled in - page after page of this.


I've paid every penny of taxes legally due.

Of course, we know now that his financial disclosure forms don't tell us anything but his estimated financial net worth, as revealing the partial tax return told us of previously unknown bank accounts in the Caymans and Switzerland. So who knows what is lurking in those unreleased returns. But Michael J. Graetz, a professor of tax law at Columbia, and former deputy assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy from 1990 to 1991, takes an informed look in an article in the New York Times.

Right off the bat Graetz dismisses the possiblity that Romney hasn't paid taxes on the Swiss bank account, as too brazen and easy to get caught.

I can’t imagine that he would have engaged in such blatant tax cheating. He is far too smart for that.

But with other aggressive tax strategies Romney has likely avoided paying tens of milions in taxes.

He goes on to list what he considers the two most likely possibilities of what is lurking in Willard Mitt Romney's unreleased tax returns. The possibility of paying even less than 13.9% is more likely. It's more plausible, and because of the potential political damage this could cause, gives Romney incentive to withhold the returns. Romney's claim that parking his money offshore hasn't saved him any money on his taxes, but the one year he's released casts doubt onto this.

- more -

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/05/1116875/-Tax-Expert-Mitt-Romney-Olympic-Level-Athlete-At-The-Tax-Avoidance-Game

[grasswire]

1. taxpayers built that Olympics n/t

[ProSense]

2. Doesn't matter

Clint Eastwood was talking to a chair.

[ProSense]

3. Kick! n/t