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



August 22, 2012

MMD NewswireTAMPA, FL (MMD Newswire) 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 (entitled "Romney Invested in Medical-Waste Firm That Disposed of Aborted Fetuses, Government Documents Show"),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, 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 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?"