“Romney is hiding Bain abortion profits in his tax returns,” says Tampa foe

Equal Protection for Posterity | August 16, 2012

[EternalVigilance]

Equal Protection for Posterity

Baldwin: “Disclose your tax returns and everything else about Stericycle.”

Bain investment “would make Herod blush”

TAMPA, FL (Thursday, August 16, 2012) – Republican spokesmen for a rising “DUMP ROMNEY” rebellion today charged that Mitt Romney is “hiding Bain abortion profits in his tax returns” from investments that “would make Herod blush.”    

Steve Baldwin, former Republican Whip of the California State Assembly, said recent journalism about the actual date of Romney’s departure from Bain Capital “has almost certainly revealed the real reason Romney refuses to release any more than two years of personal IRS data:  Bain’s craven investment in Stericycle corporation – a vendor to Planned Parenthood – lined Romney’s pockets with profits from the incineration of aborted human fetuses.  Mitt, it’s time to disclose your tax returns and everything else about Stericycle.”

Baldwin, also former Executive Director of the Council for National Policy (CNP), an influential conservative organization in Washington, said, “Tampa’s GOP delegates will shame themselves if they don’t conscientiously abstain from Romney on the first ballot to derail the worst nominee in our party’s history. We’re convinced Mitt Romney is hiding Bain abortion profits in his tax returns.”  Baldwin cited the following facts and sources to back up his charges:

 ·         Despite claiming to have quit Bain in early 1999, Romney evidently controlled Stericycle via Bain for years thereafter: In July, The Boston Globe reported evidence that Romney maintained control of Bain and its investments for years after the date he claimed to have relinquished it.  The Globe cited a June, 2012 federal filing by Romney’s campaign which said, “Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way.’’ That, however, contradicted the findings of a July 2, 2012 Mother Jones investigation: “Citing SEC documents, the magazine said Romney had control of Bain Capital’s shares in Stericycle, a medical waste company, in November 1999. Talking Points Memo reported this week on additional SEC filings listing Romney’s position with Bain in July 2000 and February 2001.”

 ·         Bain joined a $75 million investment in Stericycle: The Mother Jones story cited prior reporting by Huffington Post during the early 2012 presidential primaries to show that Romney “had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics….But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to do with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney's exit from Bain.”

          Stericycle was handling fetal remains years before Bain and Romney took control: Two days after the Mother Jones story (entitled “Romney Invested in Medical-Waste Firm That Disposed of Aborted Fetuses, Government Documents Show”), the pro-life website LifeNews.com oddly defended Romney by arguing that because a 2011-12 pro-life Campaign to Stop Stericycle documented no Stericycle waste disposal contracts with abortion clinics prior to 2003,  Romney therefore could not have profited from Stericycle’s abortion-related activities. The Mother Jones story itself, however, cited public OSHA violations by Stericycle from 1991 – well before the Bain investment – which included improperly keeping “body parts, fetuses, and dead experimental animals in unmarked storage containers, placing workers at risk.”

 ·         Romney personally signed for “voting and dispositive” control over Stericycle, the abortion disposal firm: According to the Mother Jones investigation,

Here's what happened with Stericycle. In November 1999, Bain Capital and Madison Dearborn Partners, a Chicago-based private equity firm, filed with the SEC a Schedule 13D, which lists owners of publicly traded companies, noting that they had jointly purchased $75 million worth of shares in Stericycle, a fast-growing player in the medical-waste industry. (That April, Stericycle had announced plans to buy the medical-waste businesses of Browning Ferris Industries and Allied Waste Industries.) The SEC filing lists assorted Bain-related entities that were part of the deal, including Bain Capital (BCI), Bain Capital Partners VI (BCP VI), Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors (a Bermuda-based Bain affiliate), and Brookside Capital Investors (a Bain offshoot). And it notes that Romney was the "sole shareholder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of BCI, BCP VI Inc., Brookside Inc. and Sankaty Ltd."

The document also states that Romney "may be deemed to share voting and dispositive power with respect to" 2,116,588 shares of common stock in Stericycle "in his capacity as sole shareholder" of the Bain entities that invested in the company. That was about 11 percent of the outstanding shares of common stock. (The whole $75 million investment won Bain, Romney, and their partners 22.64 percent of the firm's stock—the largest bloc among the firm's owners.) The original copy of the filing was signed by Romney. Another SEC document filed November 30, 1999, by Stericycle also names Romney as an individual who holds "voting and dispositive power" with respect to the stock owned by Bain. If Romney had fully retired from the private equity firm he founded, why would he be the only Bain executive named as the person in control of this large amount of Stericycle stock?

 ·         Stericycle is just one more immoral Bain/Romney investment: “Rusty Leonard, president of Stewardship Partners, says Romney … - who is aggressively courting “religious right” voters - owns stock in at least a dozen companies with active ties to abortion… and pornography.” (http://www.danburrell.com/?p=442)

 ·         Additional Rescources:

o    “Mitt Romney’s Abortion Business Made Him $50M”

o    National Catholic Reporter, August 10, 2012, on Romney and Stericycle

o    YouTube: “Romney Invested in Abortion Cleanup Company Stericycle”

o    “Stericycle’s Burning of Aborted Babies at North Carolina Incineration Plant Exposed”

o    “Stericycle Slammed with Fines for Illegally Dumping Aborted Babies”

o    Mother Jones follow-up: “What about the various SEC documents—some of which Romney signed—that identify him as controlling assorted Bain entities and large blocs of shares in firms in which Bain invested after February 1999? The Obama campaign letter cited at least 63 SEC filings after March 1, 1999, that describe Bain entities as "wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney." [The pro-Romney] rebuttals did not take into account all the evidence…. — such as this May 10, 2001, document—that describe Romney as a member of the "management committee" of Bain funds. The Romney campaign and Bain insist that Romney had not a thing to do with Bain after February 1999, though he signed filings and pocketed millions. But they won't answer specific questions about Romney and Bain during this period—just as Romney won't come clean on his tax returns.”( http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mystery-mitt-romney-exit-bain-stericycle).

o    YouTube: Stericycle Servicing Visit Planned Parenthood Denver Stapleton ...

o    YouTube: Stericycle Servicing the Second Largest Planned Parenthood ...

o    Slate: “The Conversion: How, when, and why Mitt Romney changed his mind on abortion”

o    Slate Video: “Romney’s Abortion Record: Spin vs. Truth”

o   “RomneyCare Now Funding FREE Abortions: A Disqualifier for Mitt Romney's Candidacy

,”

o   National Review: “Coming Obama Attack Coming Down the Road: Stericycle?”

Although media have suggested that Romney’s alleged early 1999 Bain departure was mainly to avoid being tied to the outsourcings and bankruptcies of firms in which Bain invested thereafter, Baldwin of the “DUMP ROMNEY” campaign argues that personal profiting from Bain’s later stake in Stericycle – the nation’s leading incinerator of aborted fetuses and other medical waste – is by far the most explosive reason for Romney to want to keep his tax returns secret from voters and especially, from delegates to the August 27 Republican National Convention in Tampa.

Baldwin said, “Sure, lying on federal SEC or FEC forms is a felony, but that overlooks the elephant in the room and undoubtedly hiding inside Romney’s tax returns:  Through Bain, Romney bought shares in the leading immolator of aborted babies.”

Delegates to the GOP Convention began receiving a strategy memo last week entitled, “DUMP ROMNEY: Why Tampa’s Republican Delegates must Dump Romney to Defeat Obama.” It contends that no delegates are actually “bound” by law or GOP rules to vote for Romney and that, to win the White House and toss-up Senate seats, delegates must exercise their right to “conscientiously abstain” from Romney on the crucial first ballot, aiming for a stronger ticket leader in subsequent convention voting rounds.  Also the title and core of a hard-hitting new 80,000 word book, the entire 9-page “DUMP ROMNEY” memo to GOP delegates can be read free online via Amazon Kindle Cloud Reader.

Dr. Gary Cass, a Presbyterian minister and Baldwin’s co-spokesman in the “DUMP ROMNEY” push said, “It seems the Republican Party is on the very brink of nominating a man who’s hiding a bloody record of such Biblical proportions, it would make Herod blush. We fear that Mitt Romney’s secret tax returns will show that he has financed and profited, like some ancient priest of Moloch or Baal, from the burning of human babies, from child sacrifice. If that’s so, could the GOP sink any lower than to nominate this man?” 

#[NOTE:  For interviews with Mr. Baldwin, Dr. Cass or another contributor, researcher or GOP activist behind the book “DUMP ROMNEY: Why Tampa’s Republican Delegates must Dump Romney to Defeat Obama,” please contact Rod Mitchell at (281) 350-5506 or by email: mediarod@aol.com].

 

[Boogieman]

If you’d have bothered to read the article, it actually was advocating that the GOP delegates select a better candidate at the convention, not for people to vote for Obama.

[Boogieman]

“This is like blaming the owners of Waste Management when a murder victim gets thrown in their dumpster.”

BS. When you make contracts with Planned Parenthood, you know darn well that you will be transporting aborted babies. They made a fully conscious decision to participate in a vital function of that industry, and in doing so, help support its continued existence. They were free to turn down those contracts, but they took the money, so they can be held responsible for that decision without any qualms.

[Boogieman]

“Disposing of medical waste, regardless of what is involved, is essential to prevention of mass contagion.”

Yes, that is true. Which is why, if abortion providers could not obtain contracts with disposal companies, they would not be able to lawfully operate their death factories. Public health laws alone would prevent it.

The waste disposal firms have a moral choice. They can participate in an immoral industry, or not participate. If they choose not to participate, someone else will probably still pick up those dead childrens’ bodies. If nobody else does, then those who murder those children would simply be forced to stop. There is no risk of an actual public health epidemic, no matter what choice they make, so that shouldn’t even factor into the moral calculus.

[Boogieman]

“If someone murdered a bunch of babies I would not be offended if the funeral home made a profit on the funerals. Why should I be offended if the bodies were the result of an abortion?”

Well, what if the funeral home made a contract with the murderer, in advance, to dispose of 1000 infant bodies a year for the next 10 years? Don’t you think that makes a little bit of difference when you assign moral responsibility to the parties?

These bastards are profiteering from an immoral industry, and in doing so they help it continue to exist. If everyone that had to help the abortion mill run, from the disposal company, to medical suppliers, to the payroll processing firms, simply refused to participate, then those abortionists would have to close shop. They may not be as directly responsible as the abortionists themselves, but they do have some degree of culpability nonetheless.

[Boogieman]

“Other wise all body parts and other medical trash would pile up in the streets.”

No, they wouldn’t, that is patently ridiculous. If an abortion mill piled up dead babies in the street, it would be shut down for local health and sanitation violations. There are plenty of examples of abortion mills that tried to skimp on their expenses by unlawfully disposing of the bodies, and that is the consequence: they get shut down.

[SnakeDoctor]

Then again, every dollar they take from planned parenthood is a dollar that can’t be used to kill another baby. They should raise their prices.

Turning down the contract wouldn’t save a single baby. Keep your eye on the ball. Abortion is the abomination ... lets stay focused on those actually committing it and keeping it legal — not Stericycle, or Bain Capital, or Mitt Romney.

SnakeDoc

[Mrs. Don-o]

The Huffington Post boostered this idea into the blogosphere, that Romney "profiteers" on abortion by indirectly funding the disposal of its corpses (Stericycle). This is irrelevant. Many of us as pro-lifers have buried the bodies of aborted babies, so we have done directly and intentionally what Romney is accused of doing at a triple remove, indirectly and even inadvertently: interring the remains.

I have personally seen and handled bloody shreds of babies recovered literally from back-alley Hefty bags, thrown out with office paper waste, microwave popcorn leftovers and assorted trash.

There are substantive things to talk about in this race: we don't have to run down the rabbit-trails of Huffpo-invented gotcha issues.

Obama is an abortion extremist. Romney is a squish. But it's Obama who is about knocking down the limits on any abortion, by anyone, for any reason, at any time before live birth and for a few gasping, writhing minutes after birth.

I would grimly but intentionally steer my car full of children into a Romney tree to avoid going over an Obama cliff.