Is Mitt Romney a Criminal?

Mitt Romney is a liar who is always ready to take campaign contributions from corrupt bankers.

Next week, Mitt Romney flies to Europe to put his foreign policy diplomatic abilities on display. In connection with that, he has two campaign appearances planned at which he hopes to rake in large campaign contributions. These events have been organized by powerful American bankers.

One of the events was organized with the help of Bob Diamond, the recently resigned CEO of Barclay’s, who stepped down from his post when he was accused of inciting his colleagues to manipulate the LIBOR interbank interest rate. Apparently, representatives of the most important major banks had gotten together and agreed to manipulate interest rates in order for their banks to profit, possibly at their customers’ expense. Although Diamond’s name no longer appears in connection with Romney’s appearances, we again see the major political issue of private sector influence over political policy.

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Romney is the symbol of this dangerous connection. Romney uses it to attract votes on the basis of the business expertise he claims would make him the ideal president. He claims that as CEO of Bain Capital Investments, he rescued failing businesses and created new jobs, two talents sorely needed at present in the United States.

Meanwhile, documents have been made public that tend to diminish his performance as Bain’s CEO. Romney has always maintained he dropped all contact with Bain in February 1999 in order to take the helm at the Winter Olympics in the Mormon state of Utah. The documents on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission show, however, that he continued as Bain’s CEO and sole owner until 2002. During that time, he drew a six-figure salary for his services. That may not appear spectacularly interesting at first glance, but during that period Bain made a number of investments that could prove quite embarrassing for Romney.

Romney, who rarely if ever misses a public opportunity to warn of the dangers China poses to the U.S. labor market, invested in businesses whose practice it was to organize the transfer of jobs overseas. That encouraged the exodus of call centers to India.

Another example is the case of the company Modus Media, which provided wall-to-wall services to facilitate the wholesale transfer of jobs overseas for firms such as IBM and Dell. Many of those jobs also emigrated to China. Those companies were also major stakeholders in Bain Capital, a circumstance with which Romney wants desperately to avoid any connection whatsoever. For completely different reasons, Bain wants to hide its 1999 connection to the medical waste removal company Stericycle, which provided for the removal of aborted fetuses from clinics. Knowledge of that fact would cause a moral uproar among the Republican’s conservative base.

Romney vehemently denies any operational connection whatsoever with Bain after 1999. But why, then, was he listed as Bain’s CEO and drew a salary as such? He tries to explain it away by saying he was in a transitional status, but that would mean he lied to the Securities and Exchange Commission, an act that could even entail criminal prosecution. Because of that possibility, some analysts are going so far as to say the Republican Party might dump him at their national convention in August and nominate someone else.

Romney is a hypocrite and a liar ready to take donations from corrupt bankers at the drop of a hat. I won’t speculate as to whether he’s a criminal or not because people like him are rarely ever prosecuted. Morally, however, these newly discovered facts amount to the declaration of a Romney bankruptcy.

Barack Obama is, of course, no saint in this regard either. He also accepts large donations from the banking industry and has thus far waged a highly negative and polarizing campaign against Romney. Nevertheless, there’s still a world of difference between the two candidates. For years now, Romney has paid just 15 percent income tax on his more than $20 million — and has millions of dollars more stashed away in tax havens like the Cayman Islands in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes on it. He has donated nearly as much to the Mormon Church as he has paid in taxes and repeatedly brags that the government gets so little of his money. Such a man shouldn’t be given responsibility for the common welfare of the American people.