Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry have tried to warn us. Mitt Romney is not who he appears to be. In fact, not only has he morphed from a liberal governor into a faux conservative, he’s managed, as a complicit board member, to avoid being prosecuted for his knowledge of massive Medicare fraud he failed to address.
Defining the role of members of a company’s board of directors, Findlaw.com states that: “As suggested by its name, the board of directors ‘directs’ the corporation's affairs and business path. The board of directors also has ultimate legal responsibility for the actions of the corporation and its subsidiaries, officers, employees, and agents.
"The board of directors also has ultimate legal responsibility for the actions of the corporation and its subsidiaries, officers, employees, and agents."
Clearly, that means a member of the board is legally responsible not only for the regular business dealings of any given company, but equally for any illegal activity committed by the company’s “officers, employees, and agents.”
Forbes.com is reporting that in 1989, Bain Capital, the now infamous venture capital firm run by Romney, acquired a controlling interest in Damon Corporation, a medical testing company. To keep a finger on the pulse of Bain’s investment, Romney sat on the board of directors from 1989 to 1993, at which time the company was sold to Corning.
What critical here is Romney's responsibilities at Damon didn't comprise just sitting on the board. He also managed the company.
According to Forbes.com, during Romney’s tenure as a director, Damon convinced doctors to order unnecessary blood tests, the tab for which was picked up by Medicare. The action constituted a then record-setting $25 million worth of Medicare fraud.
As a member of the board and manager of the company he had to have known about the Medicare fraud. I find it absolutely stunning that Mitt Romney was not held legally responsible for the highly fraudulent business dealings of a company he managed and on whose board he sat.
Even though Bain had sold the business back in 1993, the inevitable happened in 2002. As is the case with too many companies that have enjoyed the dubious benefits of Bain’s capital infusions, Damon began taking on water and ultimately foundered in bankruptcy court, sending thousands of employees into the leaky life rafts of the unemployment lines.
According to Findlaw’s description above, as a director and manager Romney had to have been aware that the company's financial statements were not legitimate. He was a seasoned investor and knew well how to navigate his way through complex financial statements and determine if something was amiss. He in fact did just that, but his account of the events involved in this case is emblematic of how his stories undergo remarkable transformations, always somehow tapping him as the hero in the end.
During his campaign for the Massachusetts governorship, he was challenged about his involvement with Damon. Romney characteristically flip-flopped like a newly caught shark. He first claimed he knew nothing about an investigation or company wrongdoing, but then said he did have "some knowledge" of the chicanery.
Ultimately, he conjured up a a heroic account in which he claimed that it was he who discovered the activity, ordered the board’s legal team to investigate, and, based on its findings, he and other board members unearthed the gnarly secret. Were it true it would be admirable. But, in fact, they did nothing. The fraud, he lied, had stopped in December of 1992 because he and the board demanded Damon take corrective action. His account is the stuff of fairytales.
The Boston Globe decided to look onto the case, and the result of its investigation, together with court records and what prosecutors had to say, the illegal practices continued until Damon entered negotiations with Corning in 1993, not In December 1992 as Romney claimed.
In essence, not only did he know about the illegal activity, which should have made him legally responsible, he lied about it throughout the evolution of his varying accounts of the events that led to the huge fine.
Unfortunately, that’s not all that unusual for Romney. This man has an uncanny way of avoiding trouble and possesses a near sociopathic disregard for the damage done to too many of the employees and families employed by some of the companies on which Bain has at some point branded its name.
While most people would have trouble sleeping at night having destroyed the many lives Romney et. al. have, he doesn’t seem to care. When confronted about it by Gingrich, a true capitalist, Romney shrugged his shoulders and arrogantly explained, “sometimes things don’t work out.”
While that’s true and there is nothing wrong with true capitalism, what he practiced was predatory, and he’s made his fortune on the backs of a lot of good, hard working people.
While that’s not criminal, per se, his knowledge that Damon was filing fraudulent claims with Medicare clearly is. As a director and manager, he should have been charged as a co-conspirator, but never was. It must be nice to have lots of powerful friends in Massachusetts, especially those who can help you get out of criminal liability for the actions of a company over which you exercised extremely poor oversight and did nothing to stop the fraudulent activity about which you knew.
Let’s face it, this man, the fractured companies left in his wake, his record as governor and obvious liberal predilections of the past, present no winning foil to the way Barack Hussein Obama has framed his campaign strategy.
Flip flopping aside, Romney’s record of success—of which he is so proud—plays perfectly into Obama’s class warfare strategy. And with massive amounts of money behind both men, they share the same problem. Neither can run on their record. It will be a campaign won not on the superiority of the merits of one’s political policies and ideas, but rather which is left standing when the advertising napalm cools and the radioactivity begins to fade.
Frnkly, Romney is unfit to be GOP nominee on the weight of the Damon story alone, much less the many other highly questionable views and decisions of a man with immaculately covered flaws. He’s positively Nixonian in his ability to smile through the lies. But this story will emerge as a focal point of Obama’s attacks, and it definitely constitutes illegal behavior.
If Romney wins the nomination, the electorate will be forced into a choice it has had to face too many times in the recent past: Pull the lever or punch the chad for the lesser of the evils rather than voting for the candidate with the best ideas about how to get us out of the cratering mess we’re in.
With the soul of the nation at stake, we must defeat Obama, and Romney’s wealth vulnerability aside, according to some there’s not much difference between he and Obama.
As reported by Newsmax.com, George Soros gave a chilling interview to Reuters, in which he said, "Well, look, either you’ll have an extremist conservative, be it Gingrich or Santorum, in which case I think it will make a big difference which of the two comes in. If it’s between Obama and Romney, there isn’t all that much difference except for the crowd that they bring with them."
Whether Soros is right or wrong, it would appear that he and Romney have more in common than do Romney and Obama. Both engaged in illegal acts. Romney got off scot-free, while Soros is a convicted felon in France, where not even his vast wealth and influence could beat an insider-trading rap.
This story has legs and will damage Romney’s campaign if he wins the nomination. But those who are fed up with the status quo may well defy GOP establishment convention by nominating someone with a record on which he can run. TEA partiers and grass rooters need to stand up and say, "ENOUGH!" If they don’t and Romney wins, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
