Why Romney lost

Yes, Obama was constanly on radio & TV in Florida, and even in banner ads with blaring, highly compressed audio on some websites.

"FACT: we are running out of oil." Bull-s*it. We're being pummeled by an asshole that's going to price us green.

But I don't care... make it $15/gallon. ...Jim Thompson

In your case you want to head due north to Alberta:

1. Take the ramp on the left onto I-17 N/US-60 W Continue to follow I-17 N

1. Take exit 340A to merge onto I-40 E toward Albuquerque

1. Take exit 201 toward US-89 N/Page

1. Turn left onto Country Club Dr/U.S. 180

1. Take the 2nd right onto U.S. 89 N Entering Utah

1. Turn right onto S 100 E

1. Continue onto E Center St

1. Continue onto U.S. 89 N/N 300 W Continue to follow U.S. 89 N

1. Turn right onto U.S. 89 N/N Main St Continue to follow U.S. 89 N

1. Turn left onto UT-20 W

1. Turn right to merge onto I-15 N toward Beaver

1. Slight left to stay on I-15 N

1. Slight right to stay on I-15 N (signs for Pocatello) Passing through Idaho Entering Montana

1. Keep right at the fork, follow signs for Interstate 15 N/Interstate 90 E/Butte and merge onto I-15 N/I-90 E

1. Take exit 227 to merge onto I-15 N toward Helena

1. Take exit 228 to merge onto U.S. 287 N toward Augusta/Choteau

1. Turn right onto U.S. 287 N/Main St Continue to follow U.S. 287 N

1. Turn left onto 1st Ave NW

1. Take the 1st right onto 1st St NW

1. Take the 1st left onto U.S. 89 N/N Main Ave Continue to follow U.S. 89 N

1. Turn right onto SE Boundary St

1. Continue onto Duck Lake Rd

1. Turn right onto U.S. 89 N Entering Canada (Alberta)

1. Continue onto Alberta 2 N

1. Continue straight onto AB-5 E

1. Continue onto Alberta 2 N

1. Turn left onto Crowsnest Hwy/AB-3 W

1. Take the AB-2 N ramp to Calgary

1. Merge onto Alberta 2 N

1. Slight left onto Macleod Trail SE/Alberta 2A N (signs for Trans Canada Highway W/AB-1 W/Alberta 2 Alternate N)

1. Continue onto Macleod Trail SE (signs for Trans Canada Highway/AB-1 W)

I have said that since the '70s and been wrong every time.

Long term - yes. Short term - no. James Hamilton writes very effectively about oil markets here:

The thing about long term is that as resources are applied to exploration, new fields are still found, but they're in inconvenient locations or require a lot more technology to get to.

Political instability is the rising factor in oil price uncertainty.

It's not over yet. Something still needs to be done to put the sleaze into prison for life. His entire career has been one scandal after another, and all these corporations that have any affiliation with him whatsoever need t o be boycotted. Here's his record at Marriot, there's just no end to it. I don't know what kind of crap country America has become that it allows scum like Romney to walk around free.

Mitt Romney, who makes his hands-on business experience a talking point in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, was a member of th e board of directors and audit committee of a global company when it paid m illions of dollars to settle charges of extracting kickbacks that cheated c lients.

The company is Marriott International and the accusers were hotel owners wh o had hired Marriott to manage their properties under the Marriott name.

In recent weeks, Romney has come under fire for his role at Bain Capital, w ith critics faulting Bain for putting employees out of work when it bought up ailing companies and loading them with unsustainable debt?charges that Romney rejects.

But his actions as an independent director at Marriott in the late 1990s an d again just two years ago open another window on the candidate?s record in business and leadership qualities.

As a board member, Romney held oversight responsibilities at a time when Ma rriott was repeatedly accused of obtaining secret rebates that enriched Mar riott at the expense of hotel owners who had hired Marriott to run the hote ls on their behalf. A series of owners also accused Marriott of falsifying financial statements to conceal the arrangements?charges that Marriott ha d denied, and yet still paid $24 million to settle.

The allegations concerning kickbacks were contained in a series of lawsuits and complaints that extended from 1998, when Romney served on the Marriott board, to past 2002, when he left. They were still occurring when Romney r eturned to the board for another term from 2009 to 2011. The $24 million se ttlement that took place during Romney?s tenure came in response to compl aints that Marriott obtained secret rebates from suppliers while billing pr operty owners full price for goods and services. These incidents led to si x lawsuits, in a series of episodes that tarnished Marriott?s name within the industry.

William Brewer, a hotel litigation attorney, said that buying goods and ser vices on nationwide contracts and taking kickbacks not known or agreed to b y the hotel owners had grave financial implications for a hotel management company like Marriott.

?Marriott?s stock price is based, in large part, on the belief it has l ong-term management contracts that will not be terminated early,? he said . Had Marriott lost any of the lawsuits, it risked having to give up reven ues collected through the disputed practice. Other owners could also use th e finding to argue for terminating their agreements, cutting off this reven ue stream to the company, said Brewer. He added that such a scenario could have threatened Marriott?s survival.

To be sure, Romney?s was only one voice of ten on the board. What he may have said privately at board meetings or to Marriott executives about the s ecret rebates and the risk to shareholders and the company is not known. Wh at is known is that during his tenure the company continued a practice that had come under severe reprimand by the courts, and there is no record that Romney ever denounced or criticized the practice.

In addition, the company failed to disclose the mounting disputes to the Se curities and Exchange Commission despite the risk they represented to the c ompany?s stock price, and did so only after they culminated in public law suits.

With law and business degrees from Harvard University, Romney was well-scho oled in understanding the legal and business risks to the company from thes e charges. Romney was one of the designated ?independent,? members of t he Marriott board, which meant that neither he nor his family were to have financial ties to the company. Indeed, no Romney had been an employee of Ma rriott or the company?s auditor.

On personal and political levels, however, bonds between the Romney and Mar riott families run deep. The company founder J. Willard Marriott was close to Romney?s father George. Both families are important in the Mormon Chur ch. Romney was named Willard (the W. in his name), in Marriott?s honor.

In 1994 the Marriott family gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Romney ?s campaign for the U.S. Senate. In 2008, CEO J. Willard ?Bill? Marri ott, the founder?s son, was national finance co-chair of Romney?s campa ign for the Republican presidential nomination. Bill Marriott has so far do nated $500,000 to Romney?s current campaign through the pro-Romney ?sup er PAC,? Restore Our Future, while his brother, Richard Marriott, has giv en the same.

The Romney campaign did not respond to requests for comments or to e-mailed questions. A Marriott International spokesman also declined to comment.

A Series of Complaints

Marriott International is one of the world?s leading hotel companies, wit h revenues in 2010 of $11.7 billion, mostly from managing nearly 3,700 inve stor-owned properties in more than 70 countries.

In the 1990s, Marriott was eager to expand its brand of hotels, in part by developing an upper-tier international presence. In 1997, it paid Hong Kong companies CTF Hotel Holdings and its affiliate HPI (Hotel Property Investm ents) $1 billion for the Renaissance brand name and the right to manage 66 Renaissance hotels around the world.

Before long, CTF complained of a steep drop in income from the hotels Marri ott took over. In 1998, it collected evidence that it believed proved that Marriott was extracting kickbacks. It demanded an end to the practice, to n o avail, said KC McDaniel, a New York lawyer who helped prepare the CTF cas e. The following year, CTF handed Marriott a default notice, giving it 30 d ays to correct the problem or face the agreement?s termination.

McDaniel said she was surprised that Marriott did not disclose the default notice in its public filings with the SEC. By law, a company must disclose any ?material event? that could alter its stock price.

Noting that Marriott had paid steeply for the Renaissance brand name and ma nagement portfolio of the 66 hotels, she said: ?This notice indicated th at a lot of those assets might go away pretty quickly.? She added, ?Thi s type of risk falls within the zone of a standard auditor inquiry. Auditor s ask about claims and threatened claims which could result in this scale o f loss.? But Marriott?s directors and audit committee offered no publi c disclosure of the risk.

John C. Coffee Jr., a Columbia Law School professor and Director of the Col umbia Center on Corporate Governance, agreed with McDaniel?s view.

In 1999, a year after the first complaints surfaced, Marriott signed an int erim settlement with CTF with a three-year horizon. It included a $24-milli on payment to compensate for what the owners described as improper charges, self-dealing, accounting manipulation and refusal to provide information a bout such practices. In a later legal filing, they said that Marriott promi sed transparency regarding kickbacks, soft-dollar payments and other simila r arrangements going forward in the settlement. (Soft-dollars are redeemabl e credits.)

Failure to Disclose

But just as the charges were never publicly disclosed, neither was the sett lement?not to the company?s shareholders, potential investors or the pu blic at large. Coffee said that Marriott should have notified shareholders of the interim settlement, noting, ?$24 million isn?t necessarily a mat erial amount to Marriott, but the possibility of a major number of franchis ees walking away would be the kind of risk factor that should be disclosed. ?

These were not the only allegations of illicit kickbacks that Marriott face d while Romney was on the board. Another of Marriott?s partners, Strategi c Hotel Capital of Chicago, also accused Marriott of double-dealing in kick backs and rebates. Marriott ran a string of premier hotels in California fo r Strategic, including the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel, the Rancho Las Palma s Marriott and the Renaissance Beverly Hills. Strategic sued Marriott in 20

Strategic?s suit charged Marriott with pocketing ?millions of dollars i n suspect rebates? and failing to disclose these payments on Marriott? s financial statements. Strategic demanded restitution, the payback of prof its and other undisclosed income that it claimed Marriott had obtained thro ugh unlawful and deceptive practices. It sought punitive damages as well an d asserted Strategic?s right to terminate the hotel contracts. The result was a confidential settlement whose terms were not disclosed, but that inc luded changes in contracts.

In other cases, hotel owner dissatisfactions that began heating up while Ro mney served on the board provoked lawsuits that were filed just after he st epped down in April 2002 to run for governor of Massachusetts.

In May 2002, In Town Limited Partnerships, owner of the Charleston Marriott Town Center Hotel, filed suit against Marriott. In Town alleged that Marri ott had engaged in undisclosed self-dealing with its affiliates and related parties, and used these relationships to camouflage kickbacks from contrac ts signed by Marriott, as well as Avendra and Marketplace, two Marriott aff iliates that purchased goods and services for the hotel. The suit accused M arriott of falsifying financial statements to the owners. The legal complai nt asked the court to sever Marriott?s management rights, order Marriott to pay back some $18.5 million in management fees, as well as compensatory and punitive damages.

A few months later, in August 2002, the Flatley Family Trust, owner of the Boston Marriott Quincy Hotel, also sued Marriott over suspect rebates.

In both cases, Marriott settled without disclosing the terms.

Silent Steward

Coffee said the CTF settlement and the series of other complaints should ha ve prompted action from Romney and the rest of Marriott?s corporate board . ?You would think a director would want some kind of study,? said Coff ee, ?as to whether the company was encountering these problems because it was following a consistent pattern of questionable operation,? one that could jeopardize Marriott?s relationships with property owners.

As a member of the board?s audit committee, which is charged with asking management and accountants about risks and investigating suspected impropri eties, Romney?s role during this period was even more critical. His posit ion afforded him even greater awareness and focus on issues of this kind.

?Everybody on the board only has one voice,? said Nell Minow, a board m ember of Governance Metric International. ?The question is, what you do w ith that voice? Are you going to ask questions? Are you going to argue with people? Are you going to vote ?No? on various things? Are you going to quit in protest?

?Those are all options that you have for exercising that voice,? Minow said.

If the practices troubled Romney, there is no evidence that he voiced objec tions.

In April 2002, CTF sued Marriott International. It complained that Marriott had failed to honor the interim settlement of 1999 and had solicited ?hu ndreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of dollars in commercial bribes ?? since the last settlement was signed.

In its quarterly filing to the SEC, Marriott dismissed the suit as ?witho ut merit.? Chief Financial Officer Arne Sorenson told the Wall Street Jou rnal that Marriott?s actions were ?consistent with the terms of our agr eement with [CTF],? and that any rebates were collected with the owner? s ?knowledge and consent.? Marriott again settled, this time agreeing t o end the relationship with CTF.

While the complaints by CTF and Strategic began in 1999, the first court ca se to be filed against Marriott was in March 2001 by Green Isle Partners, o wner of the Ritz-Carlton on Isla Verde beach in San Juan. Florida entrepren eur Harvey Sandler charged that Marriott had falsified records while engagi ng in kickback schemes and self-dealing using Avendra, its affiliated buyin g agent. The suit and charges were noted in Marriott?s annual report to t he SEC for the year ending 2001.

In an SEC quarterly filing, Marriott said the charges by CTF and Green Isle were ?without merit.? The case ended when Green Isle went bankrupt, an d the issues were never adjudicated.

When Romney resigned from the board to run for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, CEO J.W. Marriott, Jr. praised him as ?an extraordinarily effectiv e director and visionary leader.? He credited Romney with ?incisive ana lysis, unerring judgment, and a tremendous dedication to help our company b ecome the world?s hospitality leader,? adding, ?Mitt has been an acti ve, hands-on director.?

In 2009, Romney returned to the board, this time chairing the finance commi ttee. Allegations of improper rebates continued.

Declaring that, ?This situation did not happen overnight. It has been bui lding up over a period of years,? the Lewis Trust Group, UK, owner of the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach Hotel, served Marriott with a notice of default in February 2011. In July, it filed a lawsuit alleging secret ?rebates, all owances and other kickbacks.?

Marriott spokesman Thomas O. Marder declined repeated requests for comment on the charges raised by the lawsuits or to provide the company?s legal r esponses in the cases.

Romney has never spoken publicly about the rebate schemes. He resigned from Marriott International in January 2011 to concentrate on seeking the Repub lican nomination for president.

I agree, but in America Money is King, and only the most visible and greedy (and stupid) manipulators like Bernie Madoff see prison time. Romney only knows how to make money from money, by shuffling it around and playing financial games and cooking books, and he is apparently ignorant about the details of manufacturing and technology and energy industries that he proposed would kick into high gear under his "leadership". Trickle down economics doesn't work, as any extra money rich people get, or are allowed to keep, is just invested in what they see as a sure thing, and they do not have the knowledge or entrepreneural spirit that enabled companies like Microsoft and Apple to sprout and flourish.

Perhaps Obama may not be very technologically oriented, or even as knowledgeable about economics as played in the US financial stratosphere, but he has much more common sense and a closer tie to the common man, so he will act with the goal of helping ordinary people get through our present difficulties, and he will listen to good advice on how to proceed most effectively. Hopefully his experience as a community organizer will enable him to bring together a majority of people and give them reason to hope for a better future, based on realistic expectations and hard work.

The government does not and should not be run as a business, especially a model such as Mitt Romney exemplifies. If the goal is putting more people to work, maximizing efficiency and making workers more productive has the opposite effect, as can be seen in manufacturing. The government provides services that people want and for which they should be willing to pay. Government spending either directly employs people, or enables businesses to start and grow and hire workers, and all of them will be spending most of their paychecks on other goods and services, as well as contributing a portion back to the government in the form of taxes. This is a principle

that right wangers don't understand or refuse to accept, because it may affect their immediate income and wealth, but they can choose to invest directly in businesses to lessen their tax "burden". But direct investment requires more hard work, knowledge, and risk, than indirect investment playing games at the stock market casino, or wheeling and dealing in speculation and manipulation of money, as Romney seems to have been doing. Thank goodness, and the majority of sensible American people, that he was not elected.

Paul

Shouldn't that be "California is to the US as Greece is to Europe"?.

Perhaps. Each to his own metaphor ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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So you have set out your new shingle as an insufficiently educated, ethically bankrupt, experimental sociologist? OK. Announcement accepted.

?-)

For once you have made a post that I can agree with.

The Repugnicon Party has to rid itself of all the moon howling nutters, Rilegious Right Zealots and Tea Pot Party Fanatics. But will there be enough of a rump of sensible people left to be a major party if *they* are excluded? You do realise that you are excluding yourself here?

Viewed from overseas it seems like you have to be an angry old white gun toting right wingnut to belong in the Repugnicon Party.

Fair enough. Contraception is cheaper though (see (2)).

Free medical treatment according to need is merely a generalisation of that approach to healthcare. All civilised countries provide universal healthcare to all their citizens and for a lower unit cost.

Actually it is the same as (1) but slightly earlier on. Of course both of these upset the Rilegious Right who want women to be enslaved.

I think calling it marriage is odd, but declaring any properly recorded monogomous relationship equivalent for tax and inheritance purposes seems fair enough to me.

"Free" education used to work OK in the UK until Thatcher got the idea from America that only the rich should be educated. Educating the next generation is one of the most important things that a society can do. These days students leave university with debts of £40k or more and the cunning ones leave the country so they never pay the grants back!

Pointless. You want the most talented people to use their "free" education to either teach others or go into industry where they will generate the greatest return on that educational investment.

"Rilegious (sic) Right who want women to be enslaved" was a phrase made up by the left to whip women up into a non-thinking frenzy... successful wasn't it?

As for "You do realise that you are excluding yourself here?", I am only strident about military strength and balanced budgets. Everything else, I'm really a Libertarian.

Oh, yeah, guns... guns are for killing leftists when they come thievin' How could anyone object to that ?:-) ...Jim Thompson

No matter what country they sneak in from. :(

One can now see why you've never married... you fear strong women.

I prefer women on top >:-)

Getting back to serious: Both my daughters hold executive job positions. You couldn't hold a candle to them. Both would trash your ass in a blink. [snip]

"Biblically inaccurate"? What a bunch of biased crap. Whose God, whose Bible, who cares? It's time to get religious bias OUT of our politics. ...Jim Thompson

It becomes a little problematic when it's Jim-out-of-touch-with- reality-Thompson who gets to identify precisely who is a leftist thief before shooting them.

He reported me to the FBI as "dangerously anti-American" which must have destroyed any credibility he might had previously had with them. Letting him play with guns would be terminally irresponsible.

The Republicans ( Reagan in particular ) courted the RR so they can get into office.

Now you want them to go away !

Religious bias is the call of the land, whether here or in the Middle East.

In case you missed it:

1984 Reagan carried 49 out of 50 states in the 1984 election, further solidifying the Religious Right's influence over mainstream politics.

They are NOT going away.