NY Times/Charles Blow re: PREVARICATING WILLARD MITT ROMNEY

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/

CAMPAIGN STOPS November 1, 2012, 12:25 AM533 Comments

Liberty to Lie

By CHARLES M. BLOW

This election may go down in history as the moment when truth and lies lost their honor and stigma, respectively.

Mitt Romney has demonstrated an uncanny, unflinching willingness to say anything and everything to win this election. And that person, the unprincipled prince of untruths, is running roughly even with or slightly ahead of the president in the national polls.

What does this say about our country? What does it say about the value of virtue?

The list of Romney’s out-and-out lies (and yes, there is no other more polite word for them) is too long to recount here. So let’s just take one of the most recent ones: the utterly false claim that General Motors and Chrysler shipped, or planned to ship, American auto jobs to China.

First, let’s take on the Chrysler claim.

On Saturday, The Des Moines Register endorsed Mitt Romney because it thought that he would be “the stronger candidate” to forge “compromises in Congress.” On Tuesday, the news side of that same publication fact-checked Romney’s Chrysler-China claim and found that it was a lie.

According to the Register:

Mitt Romney first told a crowd in Ohio on Thursday that Chrysler was shifting the production of Jeeps to China. Then he aired an ad claiming that President Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.” (The clear impression in the ad is that American jobs will be lost.) Neither is true.

The paper continued:

Jeep sales have nearly tripled since 2009, according to Chrysler, and the company has added 4,600 jobs to its Jeep plants since then. Another 1,100 jobs will be added at an Ohio plant next year. Sales of Jeep in China have grown in recent years and Chrysler plans to resume vehicle production there, but not at the expense of American jobs.

Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York TimesGM’s facility in north Texas is undergoing an expansion project that is expected to create over a thousand new jobs by the end of November.

Now on to GM. The Romney ad claims that “under President Obama, GM cut 15,000 American jobs, but they are planning to double the number of cars built in China, which means 15,000 more jobs for China.”

This drew a sharp rebuke from GM:

We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days. No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.

Factcheck.org went into more detail to disprove Romney’s claim:

The Romney radio ad also claims — correctly — that GM has cut 15,000 U.S. jobs under Obama. It’s true that 13,000 U.S. hourly employees and 5,000 salaried workers accepted a buyout offer in 2009 to either retire early or voluntarily leave the company, according to GM’s 2009 annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Web site continued:

But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. GM eliminated old brands and shuttered dealerships when it went throughbankruptcy in 2009 — resulting in fewer jobs. The alternative was to go out of business entirely.

And made one further point:

The radio ad goes on to falsely claim that the reduction in GM’s U.S. payroll “means 15,000 more jobs for China.” That’s not true. As we wrote once before, GM is expanding operations in China to meet increased demand there for its vehicles. The increase in its China operations is unrelated to its U.S. operations.

Romney wouldn’t acknowledge the truth if it kissed him on the cheek. In fact, Romney seems to have decided that the only things standing between him and the White House are stubborn facts. He continues to roll right over them.

The question is: will this scurrilous tactic have negative consequences?

Unfortunately, there is some evidence that facts and the people who check them don’t carry the same weight that they once did.

First, the right’s disinformation machine is, explicitly and implicitly, making the argument that facts (science, math, evidence) are fungible and have been co-opted by liberal eggheads.  They have declared war on facts in response to what they claim is a liberal war on faith.

This is an utterly false and ridiculous argument, but it works on some people.

According to a Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News Swing State poll released Wednesday, President Obama has a 9 percentage point lead over Romney in Ohio among likely voters on the question of who is honest and trustworthy (most people thought that the president was honest while most would not say the same about Romney). But that same poll found that the president only had a 5-point lead in the horse race numbers in Ohio.

The president had a similarly large lead on the honesty question in Florida in Virginia, but in those states the poll found the race to be virtually tied — the president had a small lead that was within the margin of error.

How is it that so many people are willing to support a man who they don’t believe is honest or trustworthy?

The poll also found that most voters didn’t believe that Romney cared about their problems. On the other hand, at least 60 percent of voters in each state said that they believed that the president cared about their problems.

Who votes for a man who doesn’t care about you over a man who does?

I recognize that Obama hatred is a real thing, but disliking the president so much that you would do harm to yourself by voting for someone who you admit you don’t trust seems to be taking things to extremes.

All the voters who are aware of Romney’s fact-mangling but vote for him anyway must ask themselves this question: are they granting him the liberty to lie?

SPOILED RICH BULLY MITT ROMNEY AND THE "CAPITAL STRIKE" OF 2009-2012

Alas, poor Willard Mitt Romney, that spoiled rich bully: his “sins have found him out.”  Texas’ late Governor Ann Richards could have been describing Romney in 1988, speaking of George H.W. Bush: “poor George, he can’t help it -- he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”  Ex-corporate consigliere and ex-Governor  Romney is the first-ever candidate to:

1.  Write-off 47% of the American people as shiftless parasites, “dependents,” “victims” (insulting our veterans, elderly, disabled, students, workers and unemployed);

2.  Accumulate more than $250 million (including $100+ million IRA), through amoral “venture/vulture capitalism,” firing workers, wrecking companies/careers, exporting our jobs to China and India;

3.  Hoard much of his money in foreign countries, in secretive offshore accounts;

4.  Laugh when asked about his own violent hate crime – assault and battery (at age 18, enlisting a gang of five to hold down a fellow student , while Romney forcibly hacked off his long bleached-blonde hair, earlier stating “he can’t look like that – that’s wrong!”);

5.  Laugh when asked about transporting his dog on the roof of a car (13-hour summer drive);

6.  Destroy public records of The Peoples’ Business (as Massachusetts Governor and 2002 Olympics CEO);

7.  Earn a Harvard law degree while erroneously claiming that he “never went to law school” (2012 video);

8.  Obtain a law license but instantly convert it to “Inactive” status (immune from otherwise mandatory legal ethics rules since August 3, 1976), never using his skills for pro bono legal work;

9.  Do nothing for eight (8) years after his “Inactive” law license was “suspended” (for nonpayment of Michigan Bar dues, 2004 to June 2012, until just days after I asked the Bar about it – mutatis mutandis, Romney is now in dues-free “Emeritus” status, member of the Michigan Bar’s “Master Lawyers Section”); 

10.  Inspire “chuckles” talking about how his campaign benefits from concerted economic disinvestment. (Study the videotape/transcript, May 17, 2012 Boca Ratón fundraiser: Romney bragged “we’ll see capital come back” that is “if--if--if-if” he is elected, “without” his “actually doing anything.")

Romney lacks empathy, with a 47-year history as an űber-bully, as his “capital strike” comment proves.  

Some $2.5 trillion dollars cash is being withheld from our economy by Big Business and the wealthy – this record-level 3.5 year old "capital strike" aims to defeat President Barack Obama and his reforms.  

This is economic warfare — blackmail abused by House Speaker John Boehner, VP nominee Paul Ryan, et al. to make indecent demands.  Koch Brothers fund groups soliciting business pledges to hire no employees until Obama leaves – one Georgia crane company’s trucks advertise this “policy.”

Small businesses can’t get credit. Bailed-out banks are stingy with credit, though it’s our money.   People are suffering. Enough.

Willard Mitt Romney – who opposed Chicago teachers’ strike – supports Big Businesses’ “capital strike.” 

This is the most foolish economic warfare tactic since Confederates burned 2.5 million bales of cotton in 1861, expecting to blackmail Great Britain into diplomatic recognition/alliance.  Slaveowners’ economic blackmail failed.

Big Business mounted 1907 and 1937 “capital strikes,” aimed at halting Teddy and Franklin Roosevelts’ prosecuting/regulating  Big Business wrongdoing.  TR called them “malefactors of great wealth.”  FDR called them “economic royalists.”  Both “blew the whistle” on “capital strikes,” FDR initiated investigations.  

Antitrust laws forbid anti-competitive collusion "in restraint of  trade."  Concerted group economic boycotts are “per se” antitrust law violations, as our Supreme Court reaffirmed after court-appointed D.C. criminal defense law firms illegally “struck” D.C. courts, refusing new cases, demanding higher fees. 

It's up to us.

Protect our middle class, free enterprise, competition and our democracy from wrongdoers.  Vote against the greediest 0.01%.  Re-elect President Barack Obama.

Ed Slavin, B.S. Foreign Service, Georgetown University, J.D. Memphis State University (now University of Memphis), former editor of the Appalachian Observer, uncovered the largest mercury pollution and worker exposure event in world history (Oak Ridge, Tennessee Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, 4.2 million pounds).  He has 38 years of journalism, legislative, legal, activist  and business experience, and is a former lawyer for ethical employee “whistleblowers” raising legally-protected concerns about environmental, nuclear, safety, fraud, waste and abuse. 

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY's SON TAGG MAKES JOKE ABOUT WANTING TO PUNCH PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA -- ROMNEY FAMILY'S TRUE COLORS EMERGE

October 18, 2012

Romney's son jokes he wanted to 'take a swing' at Obama during debate

By Jill Mahoney

The Globe and Mail

Tagg Romney made the remark when asked for his reaction when the President said his father didn't http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/romneys-son-jokes-he-wanted-to-take-a-swing-at-obama-during-debate/article4620349/tell the truth

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's eldest son wasn't happy with Barack Obama after when the President suggested his father hadn't been telling the truth during the debate earlier this week.
Asked by an interviewer for his reaction to Mr. Obama's comments, Tagg Romney chuckled before responding during an interview Wednesday.
"Well, jump out of your seat and you want to rush down the debate stage and take a swing at him," he told radio host Bill LuMaye [http://billlumaye.blogspot.ca/2012/10/tagg-romney-drops-by-bill-show.html?spref=fb] of WPTF in North Carolina.
"But you know you can't do that because well, of course, because there's a lot of Secret Service between you and him but also because this is the nature of the process. They're going to try to do everything they can do to try to make my dad into someone he's not. We signed up for it. We've got to kind of sit there and take our punches and then send them right back the other way."
The remarks are drawing criticism from Democratic supporters who argue they show a lack of respect for the President. They're also playing on Twitter [http://https://twitter.com/search?q=%23taggromney&src=hash], where some are contrasting them with the elder Mr. Romney's insinuation during the debate thatsingle parents should be blamed for violence among youth.
Tagg Romney has recently taken a larger role in his father's campaign, including speaking at events. He also told Mr. LuMaye that his father gets "terrified" before debates, before clarifying: "Terrified's too strong a word. But he like anybody gets the butterflies a little bit and then once he's in it two or three minutes he's forgotten about the nervousness and he's amped up and ready to go."
Mr. Romney is not the only son of a Republican politician who has made ill-advised remarks in recent days.
The campaign of Senate candidate Tommy Thompson apologized on Monday for the former Wisconsin governor's son's remark that the election gives Republican voters the chance to send Mr. Obama back to Kenya.
"We have the opportunity to send President Obama back to Chicago – or Kenya," Jason Thompson, who does appearances for his father, told a Republican brunch [http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/wisconsin-gubernatorial-candidates-son-says-we-h] on Sunday. The remarks were secretly videotaped and made public.
Last year, Mr. Obama released a detailed version of his birth certificate after so-called "birthers" mounted a campaign suggesting that he was born overseas and was therefore ineligible to be president under the U.S. Constitution. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii to an American mother and Kenyan father.

PLUTOCRAT MITT ROMNEY E-MAIL: HE WANTS YOU TO "DIG DEEP" TO PUSH BACK

Weird WILLARD MITT ROMNEY sends me E-mails -- he asks me for money every day.  His rich friends are tapped out, and he's belatedly trying to raise money from the grass roots.  Fascist hate groups have even sent their surly, expensive mailings to at least one dead dog.  We pity these fools -- the election will soon be over.

Ed, I hope you watched the debate last night. I needed America to know that a real recovery is within our reach -- we just have to choose it. Tonight is crucial to a Republican victory on November 6 -- it's the last major fundraising deadline of the election. Your contribution before midnight will help us hold our ground and finish strong. Contributions from supporters like you have gotten us this far. And you're not working alone -- our 108,000 volunteers have made 3.5 times more phone calls and knocked on 13 times more doors than at the same time during the '08 campaign. The strength of our efforts speaks to the importance of our goal. Together, we will restore the America we love. We're almost there. Now is the time to dig deep -- and push back. Contribute now to help us finish strong. Thank you, Mitt Romney Paid for by Romney for President, Inc. www.MittRomney.com

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY AND THE CAPITAL STRIKE OF 2009-2012: DID ROMNEY, 1%, PARTICIPATE IN ILLEGAL BOYCOTT IN VIOLATION OF ANTITRUST LAWS?

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY AND THE CAPITAL STRIKE OF 2009-2012: DID ROMNEY, 1%, PARTICIPATE IN ILLEGAL BOYCOTT IN VIOLATION OF ANTITRUST LAWS?

2100 words
Copyright © Ed Slavin 2012 All Rights Reserved.
Ed Slavin
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-377-4998
EASlavin@aol.com

Investor and Investors Place columnist LAWRENCE MEYERS,  wrote in June 2012:
Here’s the ugly truth the left-wing doesn’t want you to know about: There has been an ongoing capital strike in this country, and that’s one of the reasons why unemployment remains high and why two million people have given up looking for work. Of course, there’s a reason why there’s a capital strike at all. For that, you can thank the anti-business, anti-capitalist President Barack Obama.....  Ask yourself why public companies have record amounts of cash on their balance sheets (as of Q1, 2012):
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL): $97 billion
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT): $51.7 billion
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG): $45 billion
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN):  $9.5 billion
Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A, BRK.B): $37.5 billion
Dell Computer (NASDAQ:DELL): $13.8 billion
General Electric (NYSE:GE): $137 billion
And ask what happens if Mitt Romney –- of Bain Capital, a businessman –- wins in November?
The capital strike ends.
http://investorplace.com/investorpolitics/a-romney-win-ends-the-capital-strike/


Ipse dixit. (“He said it”).  Do tell.

In July 2010, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer reported that wealthy investors and reporters have written that there is an ongoing “capital strike,” with companies angry at government regulation withholding their investments.   http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/07/13/krauthammer_we_are_having_a_capital_strike.html

There’s more than a trillion dollars in idle Fortune 500 cash, sitting out of our economy.

The 1% are betting against our country – they are betting that by being misers, that by not creating jobs and not investing in our future, they can coerce voters into voting against President Obama.  It almost worked.  Then WILLARD MITT ROMNEY confessed to the plan, on May 17, 2012.  Thanks to Mother Jones Magazine and President Jimmy Carter’s grandson and namesake, we now have irrefragable evidence: WILLARD MITT ROMNEY acknowledged seeking to benefit from the anti-Obama “capital strike” – in his infamous 47% speech to $50,000 contributors on May 17, 2012. stating “we’ll see capital come back” that is – “ if-- if-- if if” -- he is elected, “without” his “actually doing anything.”   Talking to the 1% in a nearly 16,000 square foot South Florida mansion, ROMNEY stated:
if it looks like I'm gonna win the market-- markets will be happy.  If it looks like the president's gonna win, the markets should not be terribly happy.  It depends on, of course, which markets you're talking about.  Which types of commodities and so forth.
But my own view is that if we-- if-- if-- if we win on November 6th there will be-- a great deal of optimism about the future of this country.  And we'll see capital come back and we'll see-- without-- without actually doing anything, we'll (CHUCKLES) actually get a boost in the economy.
If the president gets reelected, I don't know what'll happen.  I can't-- I can never predict what the markets will do.  Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would I ex-- would have expected.  But I-- my own view is that-- that-- if we get a tax-- a Taxageddon, as they call it, January 1st, with this president-- and with a Congress that can't work together and I-- it's-- it really is frightening.  It's really frightening in my view.

Be afraid, be very afraid.  We know that MITTENS thinks “corporations are people, my friend”: note how ROMNEY talks markets as being “happy” with him.

“We’ll see capital come back?” So where did all the capital go?

“We’ll see capital come back?”   Sounds like a plan.

Banks are refusing to lend to small businesses, although they sit on hordes of cash.  One St. Augustine, Florida businessman says it is the tightest credit market he has seen in some 40 years.
One blemish on a credit application is enough for banks to turn down small business loans.

Banks are sitting on our money, while small businesses die, towns are destroyed and American workers lose our jobs.  (As Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis said, banks need to be reminded that they hold and invest “Other Peoples’ Money.”)
 
Some disgruntled American employers openly brag they’re not hiring because they want to see President Obama defeated with poor numbers.  

This is a strike by capital – this is not like a labor strike.  It is unAmerican and may be illegal under our antitrust laws, which must be enforced.

Today, noisome right-wingers funded by the likes of the petrochemical-emitting, government corrupting KOCH BROTHERS are peddling smear and fear, using extremist anti-Obama rhetoric resembling the Old Confederacy – talking about “taking back America” (e.g., from the 99%, who at last have some leaders who care about us).  That’s not all folks.

Fortune 500 companies report holding on to more than one trillion dollars in cash – a “capital strike” perhaps inspired by Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

Today, while emitting perverse crocodile tears and projecting with cries of “class warfare,” the 1% are destroying our Nation.  The 1% are truly engaged in a “capital strike” – economic behavior that could mildly be described as unAmerican.

This “capital strike” may violate antitrust laws, which make it a crime and allow triple damages and attorney fees for  “every contract, combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade.” (15 U.S.C. § 1, Sherman Antitrust Act of 1990).

In an antitrust case, FTC v. D.C. Superior Court Trial Lawyers Assn., 493 U.S. 411 (1990), the Supreme Court ruled against a strike by capital intended to achieve economic and political ends.
http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/US/493/493.US.411.88-1393.88-1198.html

Underpaid lawyers for low-income criminal defense lawyers engaged in a horizontal conspiracy to withhold their services until their compensation was increased by the D.C. government.  The FTC won its case before the Supreme Court, which rejected the D.C. criminal defense lawyers’ putative free speech justifications and found that they were engaged in a strike by capital, not a labor strike, and that their conspiracy in restraint of trade violated our antitrust laws.  In that case, the defendant criminal defense lawyers agreed in haec verba:
“We, the undersigned private criminal lawyers practicing in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, agree that unless we are granted a substantial increase in our hourly rate we will cease accepting new appointments under the Criminal Justice Act."

Within ten days, the D.C. criminal justice system was “on the brink of collapse.”  FTC charged "a conspiracy to fix prices and to conduct a boycott" and concluded that they were engaged in "unfair methods of competition in violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act."  An FTC Administrative Law Judge and the United States Court of Appeals said “no harm done.” But the commissioners of the FTC and the United States Supreme Court found an unlawful conspiracy in restraint of trade and issued a Cease and Desist Order.

The Supreme Court found that economic self-interest guided the criminal defense lawyers, and that unlike a prior case where Mississippi citizens boycotted businesses because of race discrimination, “[n]o matter how altruistic the motives of respondents [the D.C. criminal defense lawyers]  may have been, it is undisputed that their immediate objective was to increase the price that they would be paid for their services.”

It is undisputed that in the current self-confessed admitted “strike by capital,” 2009-2012, the explicit agreement is not to invest in jobs or companies until President Barack Obama is defeated and WILLARD MITT ROMNEY is elected.  The purpose is to make money at others’ expense.  Thus, the U.S. Supreme Court has already rejected any putative free speech defenses by the 1%.

So is WILLARD MITT ROMNEY in pari delicto with the 1% and their capital strike?

Owners of capital are withholding their gazillions and not creating jobs because they want President Barack Obama to fail.

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY recently admitted the existence of the capital strike, even as he targeted the 99% this way: as perceiving we are “victims,” “dependent” on the government.  His “47%” number includes the physically and mentally disabled, the unemployed and some16 million senior citizens who pay less in taxes through federal tax breaks.

To tape-recorded 1% “CHUCKLES (sic),” WILLARD MITT ROMNEY stated on MAY 17, 2012 that the capital strike would end upon his election, “without” his “actually doing anything.”  This a stunning, irrevocable admission of his being the knowing beneficiary of a planned economic attack by Benedict Arnold corporations with no loyalty to the United States of America.

Background: On MAY 17, 2012, surrounded by one-percenters at the home of MARC  J. LEDER, Republican presidential nominee WILLARD MITT ROMNEY covertly practiced class warfare: every person attending (except the formally-dressed waiters) had to pay $50,000.  WILLARD MITT ROMNEY, the quarter-billionaire, lugubrious goober gave it away with his remarks about the “47%” of Americans whom he considers “dependents” and “victims,” whom he claims don’t pay federal income taxes and are incapable of taking “responsibility” to care of themselves.  The speech was at the home of a “private equity sex party boy,” MARC J. LEDER.

The time and the place: The home of MARC J. LEDER, at 18249 Long Lake Drive, Boca Ratón, Florida, consists of  15,865 square feet, on 1.08 acres.  LEDER mansion’s April 2002 a purchase price: $4,450,000.00.  (Those were the days).  2012 Palm Beach County Appraiser’s  appraisal: $2,925,179 (down from $3,161,815 in 2010).  The LEDER castle includes a boat dock, fountain, pool, patios, decks.  A former Vice President of Lehman Brothers, LEDER has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the WILLARD MITT ROMNEY campaign.    LEDER co-owns SUN CAPITAL PARTNERS, which has $8 billion in investment assets and specializes in buying and selling small- to medium-sized companies, and has invested in some 305 companies with combined sales in excess of $45 billion.  SUN CAPITAL’s Global Reach embraces offices in Boca Ratón, New York, Los Angles, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Shanghai and Shenzhen.  MARC LEDER is the recipient of BUYOUT MAGAZINE’s PRO OF THE YEAR AWARD for 2003.

This reminds me of a story.

During the American Civil War foolish Confederate leaders staged an informal cotton boycott to coerce and pressure cotton-dependent England and France into recognizing the slaveocracy south of the Mason-Dixon line.   Confederates burned 2.5 million bales of cotton.  It didn’t work.  It was one of the most foolish decisions in the history of modern economic warfare. Great Britain turned to British colonies in Egypt and India and to independent Brazil for its cotton needs,  pushing them to produce more.  Confederates figuratively cut off their noses (trade) to spite their faces (any chances of formal British diplomatic recognition and alliance).  The Confederates lost the Civil War.

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY and his funders have sold out America.  Their narcissistic and sociopathic personalities – and their sins — have found them out.  Ipse dixit.

Their actions are not unlike Confederates burning millions of bales of cotton during the Civil War – only in this self-declared uncivil war, the Money Power has decided to sacrifice millions of jobs, laughing all the way to the banks where they have stored all that cash.  Ipse dixit, Messrs. ROMNEY, KRAUTHAMMER, MEYERS, et al.

This was not the only strike by capital in American history.  Notorious Robber Baron Jay Gould famously threatened a “capital strike.”

Then, in 1937, there was a planned recession, allegedly because petulant New Dealer haters sat on their cash, refusing to invest to make political points at the cost of millions of American jobs.

President Franklin charged that there was a “capital strike” by organized money, seeking to torpedo the New Deal.  

“Organized wealth, which has controlled the government so far seizes the opportunity to decide whether it is to continue to control the government or not.”  Those words were spoken by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the White House on November 6, 1937 – 75 years to the day before our 2012 Presidential election.  On October 31, 1936, FDR said that “We nnow know that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.”  Of the 1%, FDR said, “I welcome their hatred.”

FDR’s Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, Sr. said that the power of the wealthy, “unchecked, would lead to a Big Business Fascist America – an enslaved America.”

President Roosevelt ordered the FBI to investigate possible crimes in the capital strike.  In 1937, lawyer Robert Houghwot Jackson, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department Antitrust Division, said that “certain groups of Big Businesses were engaged in a strike of capital to liquidate the New Deal.”  Under Jackson, FDR indicted some industrial-strength antitrust conspirators, including Big Oil companies.  Jackson was promoted to Solicitor General, Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice and was our Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.)

Robert Kennedy said, “If we do not attack organized criminals with weapons and techniques as sophisticated as their own, they will destroy us.”

Boy, do we need another Robert H. Jackson now, to investigate the 1% today.

-30-

Ed Slavin, B.S., Foreign Service, Georgetown University, J.D. Memphis State University (now University of Memphis, is a former whistleblower lawyer, former antitrust paralegal, and community activist in St. Augustine, Florida (our Nation’s Oldest European-founded city).

2100 words
Copyright © Ed Slavin 2012 All Rights Reserved.
Ed Slavin
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-377-4998
EASlavin@aol.com

The dodgy (extra)legal career of Willard Mitt Romney

"The dodgy (extra)legal career of Willard Mitt Romney"

by Ed Slavin

Copyright (c) 2012 All Rights Reserved Ed Slavin

PO Box 3084

St. Augustine, Florida 32085

904-377-4998

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY “joked” August 24 that no one ever asked to see his birth certificate. True, but in five years seeking the presidency, has anyone in journalism or politics ever bothered about checking up on ROMNEY's law license?

This is a story about a wealthy, superbly legally-trained rich man, someone who wants be your next President.
Like President Obama, WILLARD MITT ROMNEY (a/k/a “MITTENS”) earned a Harvard Law degree. Unlike President Obama, WILLARD MITT ROMNEY never practiced law. Wonder why?

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY went from committing a serious hate crime at age eighteen (18), in a Michigan preparatory school (never prosecuted) to graduating from Harvard Law School, to becoming a Michigan lawyer (but converting to "inactive" license status on the same day).

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY then became rich, very rich, using legal loopholes he learned at Harvard. He helped export jobs by the thousands to India, China and elsewhere.

It happened in America, in 1965.

As documented by the Washington Post in May 2012, WILLARD MITT ROMNEY, the fortunate son of former American Motors CEO and Michigan Governor George Romney was angry at John Lauber, who was a fellow student at his Bloomfield Hills, Michigan boarding school.

Legally an adult in Michigan, where his father was Governor, biogoted homophobe prep school senior WILLARD MITT ROMNEY retaliated by committing the crime of assault and battery, enlisting five colleagues to join in the felony.

At age eighteen (18), WILLARD MITT ROMNEY returned from a three-week Spring Break and observed in his dormitory a Gay, bleached-blonde, long-haired fellow student at his Michigan prep school, Cranbrook. WILLARD MITT ROMNEY reportedly reacted angrily, stating, as the Washington Post has reported, "He can't look like that. That's wrong. Just look at him!" At eighteen, the Michigan Governor's son, a leader of a wolfpack of rich young men, WILLARD MITT ROMNEY persuaded five fellow students to hold the young man down, crying, while Romney cut his long bleached blonde hair off.

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY laughed it off after the Washington Post broke the story. John Lauber, the apparently Gay fellow Michigan prep school student who got the assaultive WILLARD MITT ROMNEY “haircut” was later expelled for smoking one (1) tobacco cigaratte. Nothing happened to WILLARD MITT ROMNEY for the assault and battery -- his father was the Governor of Michigan, and he led a charmed life ever since.

While his classmates fought and died in Vietnam, WILLARD MITT ROMNEY flew to France as a Mormon missionary for two years.

Some eleven (11) years later, WILLARD MITT ROMNEY graduated both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School at the same time.

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY took and passed the Michigan Bar Exam.

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY passed Michigan's character and fitness tests.

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY became a Michigan lawyer, subject to Michigan's Bar rules and standards for investigation, hearings, suspension and disbarment for ethics rule violations.

Subject to those rules, WILLARD MITT ROMNEY was sworn in to the Michigan State Bar as an attorney before the Oakland County Circuit Court on August 3, 1976.

Then, a funny thing happened -- WILLARD MITT ROMNEY immediately converted his active Michigan law license to an "inactive" license. Why?

“I've never heard of that,” said one prominent Harvard Law School graduate.

As a student at Harvard Law School (HLS), Romney received the benefits of a prestigious joint MBA and Law Degree -- WILLARD MITT ROMNEY was one of only 15 of 1300 law and business students at the time to do so.

As an HLS graduate, WILLARD MITT ROMNEY got all of the benefits of an exclusive law school education, with not one (1) of the responsibilities.

No one would ever ask WILLARD MITT ROMNEY to represent the poor or the unpopular.

No one would ever file a Bar complaint against WILLARD MITT ROMNEY.

No one could.

Unlike President Obama, WILLARD MITT ROMNEY never filed a civil rights case, or faced consequences.

"Ideas have consequences," as my Georgetown University School of Foreign Service Political Theory Professor, Jose Sorzano (later Assistant UN Ambassador under fellow professor Jeanne Kirkpatrick).

The "consequences" of WILLARD MITT ROMNEY immediately converting his Michigan law license to "inactive" meant that he was "giving up most of the rights and obtaining relief from most of the responsibilities of membership in the Bar," as the late Vanderbilt University Law Professor L. Harold Levinson wrote in 1999 for the American Bar Association about the meaning of "inactive" status.

After nearly three months, the Michigan Bar has offered opinions about how many lawyers might do this, but not one statistic.

When Willard Mitt Romney and his Bain & Company colleagues filed disclosure statements with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, no one could file a Bar complaint that his statements were untrue and therefore unethical.

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY "inactive" status meant he could not be touched. Untouchable. Sure, WILLARD MITT ROMNEY and his partners could be sued (but securities laws were weakened by Congress over President Clinton's veto in 1996). But WILLARD MITT ROMNEY would never attract any of those disciplinary complaints that licensed attorneys may receive, especially those working on high-profile cases for controversial clients.

(Full disclosure: I am a disbarred lawyer formerly licensed in Tennessee and the District of Columbia, who once clerked for the Chief Judge of the U.S. Department of Labor, then for years proudly represented environmental, nuclear, weapons and trucking whistleblowers, and other discrimination victims).

After Harvard, WILLARD MITT ROMNEY was doubling his investors' money every single year, as he haughtily exported American jobs to China and India. But no matter what Mitt Romney ever did, no one could ever complain to the Bar that his actions were unethical -- Romney's law license was always "inactive."

When Willard Mitt Romney and his Bain partners took investments, no one could holler to the Michigan Bar, "That's wrong !"

To borrow the immortal words of that hoary 'ole American Express television ad, "Inactive Michigan Bar license, no Bar complaints, a quarter billion dollars of net worth using/abusing the legal system -- priceless!"

For eight (8) years, commencing in 2004, WILLARD MITT ROMNEY's Michigan inactive law license was "suspended" for nonpayment of Bar dues. Romney's Michigan law license remained "suspended" for nonpayment of Bafr dues for eight years, until June 14, 2012. That was several days after I asked the Michigan Bar for details and documentation.

On June 14, 2012, Willard Mitt Romney's "suspended" Michigan law license was, hesto presto, mutatis mutandis, belatedly and graciously converted to "Emeritus" status, reserved for people licensed more than 30 years or people over age 70. Emeriti lawyers in Michigan are not required to pay Bar dues.

On June 16, 2012, ROMNEY told C-SPAN “I did not go to law school,” quickly correcting himself. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/clip/3342320

Keeping a current address on file with the Michigan Bar is the sort of administrative detail that most wealthy people delegate, relying on their staff to take care of it. WILLARD MITT ROMNEY's staff has not responded to questions.

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY's legal record is execrable -- he got a law license and gave it up in one day, becoming "inactive" ab initio. Romney never argued or advocated to reform a thing. WILLARD MITT ROMNEY never once spoke out against an injustice, anywhere despite a superior mind and the tools of a first-rate education at an expensive law school. WILLARD MITT ROMNEY never "comforted the afflicted" -- he was too busy enriching the comfortable, insulting the disadvantaged and afflicting the afflicted.

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY is no Abraham Lincoln, no Robert Kennedy and no Barack Obama.

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY never used his Harvard-trained legal skills to represent the poor or the unpopular, or to stand up for the rights of others.

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY was all about one thing -- making money for the very rich.

Michigan's Supreme Court changed its rules effective 2004, requiring that “inactive” lawyers pay Bar dues. Many, including graduates of Michigan's well-regarded law schools, had gone "inactive" years before, upon taking the Bar and leaving the state, and many “inactive” Michigan-licensed lawyers had forgotten to file new addresses, as was technically required by Michigan Supreme Court Rules. The problem persisted for years, as mail was returned. Apparently, the son of Michigan Governor George Romney did not learn of his Michigan Bar dues requirement, 2004-2012 – eight (8) years.

Romney's failing to file his address with the State Bar of Michigan was a technical violation of Michigan court rules, but it is unlikely that Romney will be fined for it.

Yet we expect the national media to uncover such facts about someone who has been running for president since  January 3, 2007.  

We await comment from the Romney campaign.

To be continued....

Copyright (c) 2012 All Rights Reserved Ed Slavin

-30-

For more information, please see June 19, 2012, August 27 and September 4, 2012 correspondence from the State Bar of Michigan:

JUNE 19, 2012 E-mail

Mr. Slavin,

In response to your most recent e-mail to State Bar Executive Director Janet Welch regarding Mr. Romney, please note the following.

Your request for records regarding a member of the State Bar is governed by the Bar's Access to Record Policy, a copy of which is attached, and Rule 19 of the Supreme Court Rules Concerning the State Bar of Michigan. Reduced to its essentials, the Bar will provide a member's name, firm and business address, admit date, P number, membership status, committee and section involvement and other contact info, as a matter of course. The member information available on Mr. Romney is disclosed in the Bar's online member directory, which I believe you have already visited.

Reading Mr. Romney's current status, State Bar of Michigan member, Willard M. Romney (P40351), is currently Emeritus and in good standing with the State Bar of Michigan. He was sworn in at Oakland County Circuit Court on August 3, 1976. He joined SBM as an Inactive member on August 3, 1976. On information and belief, it does not appear that he actually ever practiced law in Michigan. (Emphasis added).

In 2003 the Michigan Supreme Court changed the SBM dues structure beginning fiscal year 2003-2004.This change required Inactive members pay bar dues. As the Bar had many Inactive members on its rolls that had not been heard from in years, sometimes decades, notifying some of these Inactive members of the newly imposed requirement that they pay Inactive dues proved problematic as the addresses provided years previously were no longer current.

Attorney Romney’s (P40351) status was changed to suspended for non-payment of dues on March 1, 2004, as was the status of many other similarly situated Inactive members. This was an administrative suspension and not related to complaints or discipline. Attorney Romney’s (P40351) status was updated to Emeritus on June 14, 2012. (Emphases added).

The State Bar is not responsible for handling attorney discipline issues. That responsibility rests with the Attorney Grievance Commission (http://www.agcmi.com/) and the Attorney Discipline Board, both of which are agencies of the Michigan Supreme Court. Disciplinary history questions can be directed to the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board at 313-963-5553 or looked up on their website,www.adbmich.org. In reviewing the online records of the ADB, it does not appear Mr. Romney has ever been the subject of disciplinary proceedings in Michigan, which is not surprising given that it does not appear he has ever practiced in Michigan.

I trust this is responsive to your request. If not, feel free to contact me.

Clifford T. Flood

General Counsel, State Bar of Michigan

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 E-mail

Hello, Ed.

I do recall we spoke at some length during a telephone conversation in June (apparently 38 minutes). I also recall that I tried to answer all of your questions and that in response to your request, I agreed to see if the Bar could determine what percentage of its members sought Inactive membership status upon admission to the Bar. My August 27th e-mail was in response to your request.

Attached is a copy of the Bar's Access to Information Policy. It governs requests for information relating to the Bar and its members.

Cliff Flood

>>> <easlavin@aol.com> 8/31/2012 5:19 PM >>>

Dear Cliff:

In June you agreed (in our 38 minute telephone conversation) to check the computerized records.

I understand about paper records, but the Michigan Bar first got computers in the 1980s.

Please get me some statistics to support your opinion.

Thank you.

Happy Labor Day.

Thanks,

Ed
904-377-4998

-----Original Message-----
From: Cliff Flood <CFLOOD@mail.michbar.org>
To: easlavin <easlavin@aol.com>
Sent: Mon, Aug 27, 2012 3:24 pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mittens Romney law license comparitors

Ed, it would take days and days to go through the records as many of the years covered are before computers were widely used and as a consequence, the data has not been digitized. I do not see where the effort is justified, especially since the information is not subject to disclosure under the Bar's Access to Information Policy.

Cliff

Can your IT person please derive statistics from computer records? Thank you.



-----Original Message-----
From: CFLOOD@mail.michbar.org
To: Ed Slavin
Sent: Mon, Aug 27, 2012 6:04 am
Subject: Re: Mittens Romney law license comparitors

>>> <easlavin@aol.com> 8/27/2012 2:20 PM >>>

Ed,

No statistics are maintained on the number of members sworn into the Bar who select Inactive status within a year or less or the same day. I am informed, however, that it is not unusual for members to do so immediately upon application to the Bar and even less unusual to do so within a year of admission. (This was especially true prior to 2004, when those selecting Inactive status were not required to pay any annual dues. I suspect it happens less frequently now than in the past because Inactives are now assessed dues equal to about 75% of the dues Active members pay.) The University of Michigan Law School, for example, graduates many students who hail from other states who take the Bar here but then promptly move on to careers that either do not require licensure in the local jurisdiction (law school jobs, for example) or do not require licensure at all... Similarly, it is not unusual for Michigan raised students matriculating in law schools in other states to take the Bar here but then not pursue practicing here.

Cliff Flood

>>> Ed Slavin <easlavin@aol..com> 8/24/2012 4:34 PM >>>

Dear Mr. Flood :
Were you ever able to locate statistics on any other persons sworn into the Bar and going inactive the same day, or within a year or less ?
Thanks,
Ed Slavin
904-377-4998

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone

On Lying Plutocrats Buying Elections to End Liberty and Justice for All as We Know Them

Empowered by the Supreme Court's infamous Citizens United decision, our right-wing friends are busily working overtime again this election year – hating, lying, misleading, misrepresenting, inflaming, spreading “fear and smear.” The 0.1% are spending billions of dollars of corporate cash to buy our elections.

They resemble holograms of 1930s caricatures of “vulture capitalism” of whom FDR famously said, “I welcome their hatred.”

Study smarmy screeds written by soreheads – sore winners, or sore losers? You've seen them for years, emitted by nattering negative “aginners,” always against someone or something, always demonizing. Many are inspired by Ann Coulter. (Like the Baptist lady said about the Devil, “she's no slouch.”)

With each passing year, do rightists get goofier, angrier, more unhinged and more narcissistic? They mock democracy, advocate theocracy, and vilify working people.

As recently retired St. Johns County, Florida Commission Chairman Mark Miner said about a controversial local hate site operator and Republican fundraiser and PR chair, Michael Gold (Historic City News), they “spew venom.”

They are always itching for a fight. They go out of their way to taunt, demean and debase honorable citizens and officials and cheapen public debate.

In pure puerility, they are unmatched.

Ill-behaved brutes and bullies spoke before our St. Johns County Commission on November 1, 2011 and called my mentor Robin Nadeau (d. 1/6/2012) and those of us supporting a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, www.staugustgreen.com, “Communists” and “Nazis,” comparing us to Hitler and Goebbels.

moderate Republican County Commissioners, discussing the National Park and Seashore for the first time in 72 years, were afraid, voting no, while refusing to enforce their own civility rule against the libelous loudmouth Tea Party bullies.

These pitiful National Park-haters are what Scott Peck calls “people of the lie” and what F. Buckley, Jr. would call “anti-literate energumen.”

They are poor tortured souls, in the spirit of the ideological perversions of the Koch family-founded John Birch Society, which actually called Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt “Communists.” (Buckley's rightist National Review magazine rightly denounced the John Birch Society; it also fired Ann Coulter for bigotry – some misguided local rightists worship both of them and solemnly call President Barack Obama a Kenyan and a “Communist.” On St. George Street, you can see these McCarthyites wearing ersatz, inauthentic Colonial garb and brandishing a “big red sign,” with which they pose with amused and annoyed tourists: “Obama is a Communist.”

Local Obama-hating Tea Partiers here in St. Augustine recently hosted a John Birch Society speaker to denounce civil rights laws, Those laws were enacted to enforce our Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. But Angry Tea Partiers never have a happy day, apparently. They want to turn back the clock and erase more than 140 years of American progress.

They can only ululate when talking about our country and its future.

They run down our economy and some pointedly refuse to hire new workers until 2013. They want to steal elections at any cost. They want to shrink government to where it is “just small enough to fit in your bedroom.”

You see, the 0.1% wants you to “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid“ of government -- unless it is granting them favors or giving them money, like the four generations of Republican VP nominee-designate Paul Ryan's family who grew rich from government contracts.

Robert Kennedy said that “government belongs wherever there are people in distress who cannot help themselves, or wherever evil need an adversary.”

President Ronald Reagan helped end the Soviet's “Evil Empire” and Cold War, using the levers of power – government (military spending) was the solution, bankrupting the Soviet Union, which could not match our defense budget. We won. Yet President Reagan said that “government is the problem.” He was half-right and half-wrong.

Government is a tool. It is not our enemy.

Like a hammer used instead of a screwdriver, government can create problems when it is the wrong tool – when it overreaches, as when it reaches out to crush someone or oppress people's rights. Think Tuskegee, Alabama syphilis experiments. Think Bull Conner fire-hosing black people in Birmingham, Alabama, Think Waco. Think nuclear weapons plants poisoning workers and waterways. Think corporate-operated government nuclear labs experimenting unethically on unsuspecting patients with plutonium inoculations and radionuclide vitamins. Think CIA assassination plots. It all happened. It was wrong.

Think Vietnam. Think “War on Drugs.” We lost both.

Think retaliation against ethical resisters (whistleblowers). It's wrong.

But the simple palpitating truth of the matter is that Governments often solve problems. That's why our Founders created so many of them, leaving us their wisdom and owner's manuals in our Declaration of Independence, and in our federal and state Constitutions and Bills of Rights.

They wrote in the Virginia and Tennessee Constitutions that, “Government being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of non-resistance to arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.”

Government can often solve problems relatively swiftly.

Think about the hole in the Earth's ozone layer and the Cuyahoga River on fire – government regulation of CFCs and water pollution solved those problems. We won.

Think about the race to the Moon. We won.

Think about Hitler, a genocidal maniac. Hitler would have conquered the world were it not for government employees like all of those putative “Communists” (FDR, Eisenhower, my father and 12.5 million Americans in uniform, and millions more in war industries) -- who ended Hitler's “Evil Empire” – and successive generations who won the Cold War. We won.

Left to their own devices, piratical corporations like Texaco Oil would have continued doing business with Hitler (Senator Harry Truman called it “treason”). But Government listened to the people, not corporate Quislings. Our Government gave the orders, corporations filled and followed them, and soon there were enough weapons to stop three “Evil Empires” (Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy and Tojo's Japan). We won.

Think about “Jim Crow” segregation. In the last 40 years, have you ever seen a “Colored Water Fountain” sign (outside of a museum)? We won.

Why? Thank God for for liberal Republicans in Congress, 1861-1969, without whom there would be no civil rights laws. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson predicted that civil rights would make Southern whites vote Republican. Nixon's “Southern Strategy” made it happen.

Today's Republican Party has expelled the liberals, using liberal as an epithet, as we saw in the 2012 Republican Presidential Primaries and again in our county Republican primary.

Today's rightists have a bad case of “Ideologues' Amnesia”: they say they want “state's rights” but forget that many state and local governments were the problem – they created and enforced segregation laws while lynchings, shootings, bombings, beatings, illegal arrests and lawlessness proliferated.

As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, 48 years ago, St. Augustine, Florida was the “most lawless” city in America. Where once our City violated human rights, today we honor them, with two civil rights monuments in our Slave Market Square in a City were civil rights are increasingly respected and not neglected.

It takes a village. It takes a free country, one where the genius of a free people has ruled and survived.

Our freedom is at risk.

We can survive and overcome the Citizens United case, which freed corporations to buy elections. We survived and overcame the Supreme Court's Dred Scot and Plessy v. Ferguson decisions, which said African-Americans had no rights.

It is up to us.

Our federal government first ended Nazism in the 1940s. Then we ended segregation in our military, then everywhere in the 1940s to 1960s. In the 1980s and 1990s, we helped end Communism. Three cheers for our country!

As JFK said,”here on Earth, God's work must truly be our own.”

Thank God for our Federal Gummint. Let's hope to reform it so that it can continue to protect you and your grandchildren, protect our environment, create National Parks – and defeat polluters, price-fixers, corporativists, organized crime, crooks, racists, “Evil Empires” and war criminals, too.

What do you reckon?

Ed Slavin

Box 3084

St. Augustine,Florida 32085

904-377-4998

easlavin@aol.com