The College Fix

All this Bain Capital talk is sure getting annoying, as every member of Team Obama is out to prove that Mitt Romney is still secretly in charge of the company, personally killing off precious American jobs as we speak. Here is the definitive rebuttal to this absurdity, from FactCheck.org:

New reporting cites strong evidence that Mitt Romney wasn’t actively managing Bain Capital while he was running the Olympics, despite what the Obama campaign (and some news reports) would have voters believe. …

None of the SEC filings show that Romney was anything but a passive, absentee owner during that time, as both Romney and Bain have long said. It should not surprise anyone that Romney retained certain titles while he was working out the final disposition of his ownership, for example. …

We would reassess our judgment should somebody come up with evidence that Romney took part in specific management decisions or had any active role (not just a title) at Bain after he left to head the Olympics. But nothing we’ve seen directly contradicts Romney’s statements — which he has certified as true under pain of federal prosecution — that he “has not had any active role” with Bain or “been involved in the operations” of Bain since then.

Update, July 13: The Post’s Kessler awarded three of his “Pinocchios” to the Obama camp’s claim that SEC filings show Romney might be guilty of a felony.

On the broader question of Romney’s involvement with Bain during this time, we concur with Kessler’s conclusion. “The Obama campaign is blowing smoke here,” he says, adding “the weight of evidence suggests that Romney did in fact end active management of Bain in 1999.”

Unfortunately, now someone on the other side of the aisle–Rush Limbaugh–has also made a wildly untrue claim about Bain Capital… and Batman. Here was Rush’s take:

Have you heard, this new movie, the Batman movie — what is it, the Dark Knight Lights Up or something? Whatever the name of it is. That’s right, Dark Knight Rises, Lights Up, same thing. Do you know the name of the villain in this movie? Bane. The villain in the Dark Knight Rises is named Bane. B-A-N-E. What is the name of the venture capital firm that Romney ran, and around which there’s now this make-believe controversy? Bain. The movie has been in the works for a long time, the release date’s been known, summer 2012 for a long time. Do you think that it is accidental, that the name of the really vicious, fire-breathing, four-eyed, whatever-it-is villain in this movie is named Bane?

What Rush doesn’t seem to realize is that Bane is an iconic Batman villain who first appeared in comic books 20 years ago. As Reason’s Calvin Thompson sarcastically notes:

When writers first created the character of Bane in January 1993, they wanted a name that would inspire terror. Plus, they obviously knew that 19 years later, Romney would run for the American presidency. So they had to set in motion a sequence of events whereby a movie adaptation of their comic would emerge in 2005, with the series culminating in the summer before the 2012 election.

Everybody needs to chill out about Bain. And Bane.

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