ABC News has a coup today, with two stories sure to impact the Presidential elections, featuring damaging stories about both GOP frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Delicious! Let’s start with Mitt:
Mitt Romney and the Cayman Islands
Sure, Jeff just wrote about Mitt Romney’s taxation and earning issues, which are mostly, and to that end most troubling, because they are about image. 15% effective tax rate? $362K earnings that Romney refers to in an offhand way? That’s not going to satisfy independent voters, though Romney likely violated no laws. Still, image is everything. So when ABCNews reports that Mitt Romney has uncounted millions of dollars stashed in the Cayman Islands in tax sheltered accounts, this isn’t going to help at all. Indeed, the whole country is going to wonder if these accounts, which are also likely completely legal, don’t allow Mitt Romney to avoid paying taxes at all. Perhaps next ABCNews can start reporting on the millions and millions of federal and state tax dollars Bain Capital took advantage of while looting all those companies, eh? As Joshua Holland at Alternet notes, that sure ain’t free market capitalism. I don’t suppose either of these issues will convince Romney supporters to jump off the bandwagon, but I’ll bet independent voters will shy from him even more now that it is clear Mitt Romney has been taking corporate welfare hand over fist in his career.
The Jaguar Speaks about Newt Gingrich
Who is “The Jaguar?” That’s Newt’s pet name for ex-wife Marianne Gingrich, according to how he referred to her when telling her he wanted a divorce. From Esquire:
He wanted to talk in person, he said.
“I said, ‘No, we need to talk now.’ ”
He went quiet.
“There’s somebody else, isn’t there?”
She kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?
She called a minister they both trusted. He came over to the house the next day and worked with them the whole weekend, but Gingrich just kept saying she was a Jaguar and all he wanted was a Chevrolet. ” ‘I can’t handle a Jaguar right now.’ He said that many times. ‘All I want is a Chevrolet.’ “
We find out what the Jaguar has to say tonight on ABC’s Nightline. This will definitely make for great theater. “Woman scorned” is how the Gingrich camp is handling what project to be startling revelations by Marianne Gingrich, Newt’s second wife. Here’s their take from the Washington Post:
The Gingrich campaign must be nervous, because it issued a preemptive statement from his two daughters from his first marriage, Kathy Lubbers and Jackie Gingrich Cushman: “Anyone who has had that experience,’’ the statement said, referring to divorce, “understands it is a personal tragedy filled with regrets, and sometimes differing memories of events.’’ A Gingrich aide prophylactically pinned the tried-and-true tag for ex-wives on her, saying she was still “probably very bitter.”
The Post goes on to wonder what Marianne Gingrich’s revelations could be that they would have an effect so many years after the fact, but the Gingrich camp’s reaction certainly shows they are scared. And that makes me gleeful.
Ah yes, ABCNews is leading the way today, but there is more reporting on both these fronts to come, and we can only hope these GOP candidates get more and more damaged as they work their way through the primary process. Will Ron Paul or Rick Santorum then have a chance? We have to hope so, and they are each completely unelectable.
I read that Bain Capital was started with seed money from Latin American investors. These people are apparently anonymous, but we do know that a key part of the Bain plan that attracted investors was that their money would be held in offshore accounts in the Caymans. This sounds suspiciously like the way Latin American drug cartels handled their money. We know now that even the largest American banks were once happy to launder drug cartel money.
So, did Bain Capital avail itself of this ready stream of capital –drug money– to kick off its campaign of corporate looting and burning? Like Fox News, I merely ask the question, you decide.
Certainly this would be an interesting question, and I don’t think it has been asked. Yes, many, many of Bain’s funds are registered in the Caymans, and there may be more Bain funds registered elsewhere offshore.