In the first interview with the the GOP Presidential ticket team of Romney-Ryan, Bob Schieffer directed an excellent question about inequality and rules that favor the rich to Paul Ryan:
Bob Schieffer: You said yesterday, I'm going to quote you, Mr. Ryan, "America is a place where if you work hard, and play by the rules, you can get ahead." But the fact is, a lot of people don't think that's true anymore. They don't think the rules are fair. They think corporations and rich people are getting all these breaks and they're getting stuck with paying the bills. They see some of the wealthiest paying the lowest tax rates. How are you going to fix that?
To which Paul Ryan diverted and redirected: Solyndra! Crony Capitalism!
Paul Ryan: What I see is a new amount of crony capitalism and corporate welfare which both parties have been engaged in, but the president has brought this to a whole new level. Where President Obama is picking winners and losers based on connections, based on fads like Solyndra and basically giving handouts to businesses, giving preferences to tax code. We want to get Washington out of the business of picking winners and losers. We want entrepreneurs to have the barriers removed from in front of them, so that people can work hard and succeed. We want to turn the American idea back on. We want a system of upward mobility, and what we think we need to do is bring fairness back to the system of getting government bureaucracy and political clout out of the system. Those are the kinds of reforms we've been talking about.
60 Minutes
And yet with the Ryan family together with Mitt Romney we have an object lesson in not only crony capitalism but ethics violations to boot.
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/...
Romney may have breached state ethics laws as Governor of Massachusetts by holding a stake in a company that did lucrative work for his administration and was linked to the family of Paul Ryan, according to the Daily Telegraph
Imagitas, a marketing company, was contracted by the state of Massachusetts after receiving $5 million investment from Bain Capital, Romney’s investment firm.
DT has learned that one of Paul Ryan's brothers, Tobin Ryan, is a former Bain consultant. Both Romney and Tobin Ryan apparently stood to benefit from the $230 million sale of the company in 2005, while Romney remained governor of Massachusetts.
Massachusetts law requires that all state employees divest themselves of financial interests in private sector contracts with state agencies. At the time, failure to do so could have resulted in a $2,000 fine or a 2.5-year prison sentence.
Here's a breakdown:
- Tobin Ryan, Paul Ryan's 47 year old brother, worked for Bain Capital from 1995 to 1998.
- In March 1998 he went to work as vice president for Imagitas, a marketing company
- Bain Capital invested $5 million in Imagitas in 2000.
- With the cash infusion, Imagitas expanded and secured contracts with state governments, including Wisconsin, to produce vehicle registration mailouts on which they sold advertising. (Another example of a private company 'that built that' all without government help).
- The company gets a contract with MA
- Mitt Romney becomes governor of MA
- Bain sells Imagitas for $230MM while Romney is still in office
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...
Imagitas announced a similar partnership with Massachusetts in July 2002, shortly before Mr Romney was elected as the state’s Republican governor, and just after Tobin Ryan says that he departed the company. Its work for the state continued for several years under Mr Romney’s governorship. His officials boasted that it saved taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars a year.
So, Mitt Romney's company Bain Capital invests in Imagitas, Imagitas gets government contracts with Massachussetts, and Mitt Romney then becomes governor of the state, continuing to give Imagitas work. Bain then sold the company in 2005 for $230MM, and Romney stands to profit handsomely from the sale while still in office.
Romney's financial disclosures from 2002 did not specify individual companies such as Imagitas by name that Bain may have had investments in, even though
New state employees were obliged to prevent conflicts of interest with existing contracts...
The article says that Tobin Ryan now omits his time with Imagitas from his corporate resume, though a quick Google turns up virtually nothing on him. Perhaps someone on Linkedin can do a search and see what comes up. Romney's campaign repeatedly denied requests by DT to answer whether he profited from the sale of Imagitas, saying only
'you've seen his disclosure forms you know what's in them',
even though the disclosure forms do not list individual companies by name.
But Paul Ryan says he will solve the problem of income inequality and different rules that benefit the rich by getting rid of crony capitalism and not picking 'winners and losers' like President Obama did Solyndra. The hypocrisy never stops with these lowlifes. And does it even need to be said - just imagine if this story was about President Obama and VP Biden, this would be everywhere on the news, while the only media reporting it to date is a British newspaper.