The problem with Mitt Romney is he appears to only do those things that will enhance his public image or personal fortunes. A guy like that will never let ethics stand in the way of a good payday. No matter who gets hurt. Take this latest scandal, which started on the Daily Beast and then was quickly removed.
"SALT LAKE CITY ? A new report raises questions about one of Mitt Romney's sources of campaign money, who was also a key figure in the Olympic bribery scandal and the subsequent trial.
The Daily Beast reports the donor, New Jersey travel-company executive Sead Dizdarevic, became an immunized witness during the 2003 trial stemming from the Olympic bribery scandal.
He testified at the corruption trial of Salt Lake Olympic directors Tom Welch and David Johnson that he and his sister-in-law had delivered $131,000 in cash contributions to the defendants in hopes of securing an exclusive Olympic hospitality contract.
The report says after Romney took over running the Olympics, Dizdarevic was awarded an exclusive, elite travel package contract anyway. The Daily Beast says now Dizdarevic, his family, his company and his business associates have donated more than $1 million to Romney's campaign."
Romney controlled over 2 billion dollars in contracts as the "Savior of the Salt Lake Olympics". The money came from the U.S. taxpayer, and was assailed by such notables as John McCain for being an outrageous example of taxpayer abuse. Romney also had his eye on becoming POTUS long before the Olympics.
After the Olympic scandal became public, it appears that Romney cut his own little deal with Dizdarevic and still awarded him the monopoly on travel packages and event tickets. Undoubtedly, Dizdarevic, who was at the center of the scandal, should have been excluded based on that which Romney holds nearest and dearest, the appearance of gross impropriety.
The real question, of course, is when is Romney working for U.S. taxpayers and when is he working for his own self-enrichment? The POTUS has trillions of dollars in contracts he can influence through the use of Executive Orders and the bureaucracy. Why be a billionaire at other's expense when you can be a trillionaire?
Greed is just as big a part of Romney's persona as any other attribute, and greed leads to ethics scandals. Some view Dizdarevic as nothing more than a monopolistic Olympic ticket scalper, who looks at bribes as just the cost of doing business.
"Dizdarevic's base of operations is in Far Hills, N.J., and his companies have seven other offices around the world. Business has more than tripled since the Athens Olympics of 2004, Jet Set President Mark Lewis said.
The key to that success is simple: Dizdarevic knows tickets are the currency of Olympic travel. Olympic organizations sell tickets to the public for as much as $1,100 a seat at premier events. For those that he controls, Dizdarevic adds at least a 20 percent markup on top of face-value prices.
But the same tickets can generate a much higher profit margin when combined with hotels, transportation and meals to form expensive packages.
These packages are, for the most part, unregulated by Olympic officials, who allow Dizdarevic's companies to charge whatever he wants to sponsors, corporate VIPs and the general public.
Exercising his rights as an official Olympic "sponsor" for the host city's organizing committee and many other Olympic organizations around the globe, Dizdarevic buys a secret pot of tens of thousands of tickets that he controls and resells. He also sews up large numbers of the best hotel rooms in every host city ? often years in advance.
His companies amassed 125,000 tickets for Vancouver and Whistler ? about 8 percent of the 1.6 million total.
"We are the largest buyer of tickets to the Olympics," Lewis said, adding that the companies also control as many as 2,000 hotel rooms. Dizdarevic's dual roles as a ticket broker and travel-package provider give him convenient options: He can transfer tickets from one market to the other ? in some cases, his critics say, artificially creating supply and demand according to his own whim.
"In effect, CoSport and Jet Set have a monopoly on legally valid tickets," says Moriarty, the Houston lawyer, who researched Olympic ticketing after getting scammed by another agency for Beijing tickets. "And what they seek to do is screw the consumers by bundling housing and tickets together to get more than what the housing is worth, and what the tickets are worth, because without them, you don't go." (Source)
Artificial demand drives prices up that much further, and thanks to Mitt Romney, the man who was at the center of the Salt Lake Olympic's scandal, was still permitted to make a significant profit from it. By accepting 1 million dollars from the man who some blame for the Salt Lake Scandal. Mitt Romney shows that he was never as interested in cleaning things up as he was in profitting from the mess.
Ron Paul will benefit as more scandals come to light. After all, he doesn't have any reported ethical lapses like the slick Mittster. If somehow Romney did win, we could expect more Congressional investigations into his other business dealings. After all, his greed has made him an easy target
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go Ron Paul !
