UPDATE: Tagg has decided "the timing is not right" for him to run. So no, we won't have another Romney to kick around.

Tagg Romney was so angry at President Obama that he wanted to throw down on him to protect his father's honor or something.

Bill LuMaye, host, WTPF:

“What is it like for you to hear the president of the United States call your dad a liar? How do you react to that?”

Tagg Romney:

“Well, jump out of your seat and you want to rush down to the debate stage and take a swing at him. But you know you can’t do that because, well, first there’s a lot of secret service agents between you and him…”

The Romneys, keeping it classy. I think the Secret Service might be keeping a much closer eye on Tagg from here on in. They might even just pay him a little visit, as they take such talk very seriously.

Now Tagg is considering protecting the GOP by stepping in to sub for Scott Brown and try to take John Kerry's Senate seat in the upcoming special election.

Tagg Romney is considering a run in the special Senate election now that Scott Brown has opted out, the Truth Squad has learned.Related: Former Mass. Gov. Weld says no to Senate runCalls for Romney, 42, to join in the short campaign to replace Secretary of State John F. Kerry have increased since the Herald first reported heavyweight Republicans are urging both Romney and his mother, Ann, to get in. The eldest son of former governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney already has statewide name recognition and could quickly ramp up the campaign infrastructure for a short, five-month race.

The father of six was a regular on the campaign trail in both of his father’s failed races for president in 2008 and 2012, which would give him some political know-how while working to win over Bay State voters. But the younger Romney is weighing joining the fray against remaining with his successful venture capital firm, Solamere. Many Democrats also have noted Mitt Romney’s dismal Bay State returns in the most recent presidential election, losing the state by 23 points.

I'd love to send him home, crying over his own loss at running for public office after he's witnessed his father getting pummeled for two consecutive presidential races. I do hope that if he is going to follow his father's footsteps, if he has a dog---please refrain from tying him on to the roof of the car.

The Boston Globe this weekend offered a fascinating analysis of why Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election. But for all the impact of ground games, turnout models and campaign strategies, Mitt Romney lost not because he failed to define himself to the American people, but because he succeeded. At the end of the day, he was inevitably "reduced to caricature, as a calculating man of astounding wealth, a man unable to relate to average folks" because that is who Mitt Romney is. Voters sized him up as a hyper-ambitious, amoral opportunist more than willing to mislead them on almost any topic. As his number one son Tagg revealed to the Globe, Mitt Romney was a liar to the end, still pretending he never wanted to President in the first place.

Tagg, who now provides his father office space at the Solamere Capital private equity firm his parents' $10 million investment and priceless connections helped create, performed one final campaign task for Mitt. How disappointed could his father really be, Tagg suggested, if he never wanted to be President anyway?

"He wanted to be president less than anyone I've met in my life. He had no desire to...run," said Tagg, who worked with his mother, Ann, to persuade his father to seek the presidency. "If he could have found someone else to take his place . . . he would have been ecstatic to step aside. He is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them, but he has deep faith in God and he loves his country, but he doesn't love the attention."

Unfortunately, a mountain of documentation exists which confirms voters' suspicions that Mitt Romney was preparing to run for President of the United States even before he took the oath of office as Governor of Massachusetts 10 years ago. Contrary to the Romney clan's tall tale that it took the intervention of Tagg and Mitt's wife Ann to convince her husband to run again in 2012, Mitt Romney never stopped running even after his bruising GOP primary defeat in 2008: As the New York Times detailed in August:

Not long after Mitt Romney dropped out of the presidential race in early 2008, a titan of New York finance, Julian H. Robertson, flew to Utah to deliver an eye-popping offer.

He asked Mr. Romney to become chief executive of his hedge fund, Tiger Management, for an annual salary of about $30 million, plus investment profits, according to two people told of the discussions...

But Mr. Romney was uninterested. His mind -- and his heart -- were elsewhere, still trained in the raw days after his political defeat not on Wall Street but on the White House and an urgent quest: to be understood by an electorate that had eluded him.

Romney's quest for redemption was well underway by the time Barack Obama took the oath of office in January 2009:

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It wasn't that long ago that Mitt Romney was making the impassioned claim that Russia was our number one geopolitical foe and we should be aiming our military might at seeing to it they're cowed and put in their place. Of course, Romney's Reagan-era world view didn't stop him from making the big bucks helping Big Tobacco do business over there, but then, business is business and politics is just better business, right?

Evidently Tagg and Matt Romney agree with that philosophy. They are unafraid of the bogeymen in Russia. Quite the contrary. They welcome the opportunity to bring Russian oligarchs into the fold of vulture capitalism inhabited by American oligarchs, whether real estate or corporate equity just as their father did with his Latin American oligarchs in order to make his fortune.

Let's start with Matt, who took a little jaunt to Russia for the sole purpose of courting oligarchs to his newest venture. Like father, like son. Via New York Times:

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Last year I wrote about Tagg Romney's firm Solamere Capital, and Mitt Romney's $10 million investment in the firm. Crack investigative reporter Lee Fang picked up that report and released many, many more details about Tagg, Solamere, and the opaque transactions that would shield Mitt Romney from basic blind trust laws if he were (gulp!) elected in November. Here's a taste of that report:

The claim that Solamere Group didn’t invest directly in Solamere Advisors, the firm employing former Stanford employees, appears to have been an attempt to shield Mitt Romney. Mitt invested about $10 million into Tagg’s Solamere Capital venture, which would suggest Mitt has a direct financial relationship with folks involved in a Ponzi scheme. That’s because Solamere Capital pools together investment money to co-invest in other companies.

According to this form and this form filed with the SEC, Solamere Group owns a large stake in Solamere Advisors (referred to in the documents as “CAMG Solamere.”) So it is impossible to argue that Solamere Capital—the Romney family’s investment company—does not have direct financial ties with Solamere Advisors, the firm filled with executives who sold CDs as part of the Stanford fraud. The Stanford scandal is second only to the case of Bernie Madoff.

The disclosures are made on part of the SEC website enhanced by the new Dodd-Frank law, the Wall Street reform Romney says he wants to repeal.

So what does this have to do with Ohio? Well, one of the investments Solamere has made, according to Fang's deeper investigative report at The Nation was in HIG Capital:

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Despite the millions upon millions the oligarchs are pouring into their candidate, they're not running away with the election. Courts are pushing back on their voter suppression initiatives, and they're not getting a margin that guarantees their guy the win.

In the battle for control of our country, they're willing to use every weapon at their disposal. Today's weapon of choice is the employee intimidation spray gun.

Over at Koch Industries, a nice little voter pamphlet went out to 45,000 Georgia Pacific employees. Mike Lux found himself in possession of a copy and let us all in on the secret.

The packet arrived in the mailboxes of all 45,000 Georgia Pacific employees earlier this month. The cover letter, by Koch Industries President and Chief Operating Officer Dave Robertson, read:

While we are typically told before each Presidential election that it is important and historic, I believe the upcoming election will determine what kind of America future generations will inherit.

If we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions in borrowed money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies, put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses, prevent or delay important new construction projects, and excessively hinder free trade, then many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences, including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation, and other ills.

Enclosed with the letter was a flyer listing Koch-endorsed candidates, beginning with Romney. Robertson’s letter explained: “At the request of many employees, we have also provided a list of candidates in your state that have been supported by Koch companies or by KOCHPAC, our employee political action committee.”

The packet also included an anti-Obama editorial by Charles Koch and a pro-Romney editorial by David Koch. The letter went on to say, “We believe any decision about which candidates to support is—as always—yours and yours alone, based on the factors that are most important to you. Second, we do not support candidates based on their political affiliation.”

In the flyer sent to Oregon employees, all 14 Koch-backed state candidates were Republicans.

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For months, Mitt Romney like John McCain before him has tried to compare President Obama to Marie Antoinette, an Ivy League educated elitist who is out of touch with the American people. Of course, that task is a daunting one for the $250 million man who insists his personal finances remain a mystery to voters. And Romney's laughable case of projection became even more comical after he held three $75,000-a-head fundraisers in the Hamptons last weekend.

Obviously, Mitt Romney is the one who is badly out of touch. And here are just some of the ways you can tell.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he tells his guests in the Hamptons that "I spend a lot of time worrying about those that are poor" after previously declaring, "I'm not concerned about the very poor."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when one of his Hamptons donors explains "the common person" and "the lower income" voter "don't understand what's going on."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch he expresses his disdain for those common people who wear polyester and plastic rain ponchos, while praising his friends who own NASCAR and NFL teams.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he criticizes President Obama's call to let the Bush tax cuts expire for only the top two percent of earners as a "massive tax increase" for "on families, job creators, and small businesses," while proposing an average $264,000 annual windfall for the top 0.1%.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when his tax cut proposal supposedly focused on "the people in the middle" could save his own family tens of millions of dollars and his billionaire backers billions more by ending the estate tax.

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Listen to these consultants (Democratic and Republican) talk about how important pro-private sector politics is as they talk to members of the for-profit education industry about how to manipulate members of Congress

The Republic Report continues to do an excellent job in ferreting out the many conflicts of interest between politicians and their support for for-profit colleges. This one's especially interesting because Lee Fang tells us Tagg Romney is involved with the private equity firm behind Full Sail University:

When asked about his plan for higher education, Mitt Romney has taken to endorsing the for-profit higher education industry, even singling out a specific college business, Full Sail University. When speaking with a local newspaper before the Iowa caucus, he volunteeredFull Sail and other for-profit colleges as an answer to the rising costs of college tuition. He has also suggested Full Sail when speaking to college students in both New Hampshire.

Full Sail, like many for-profit colleges, is an odd choice for a conservative. These schools depend on billions in taxpayer aid, much of it wasted on advertisements and bonuses for executives. And as many have demonstrated, companies like Full Sail have a less than stellar track record when it comes to future employment and debt for their students.

As the New York Times pointed out, Full Sail is owned by a private equity firm called TA Associates, which is run by C. Kevin Landry, a major donor to Mitt Romney’s super PAC. According to Bloomberg News, Landry has now given $100,000 to Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney super PAC blanketing the airwaves in Republican primary states.

But what hasn’t been reported until now is the Romney family business connection to Full Sail. In 2008, Mitt Romney’s oldest son Taggfounded Solamere Capital, a “fund of fund” investment company that offered clients the unique opportunity to co-invest with an elite set of private equity firms. Many of the private equity firms connected to Solamere, it turns out, are prominent political allies of Tagg’s father. The line between business and politics becomes even more hazy given the fact that Mitt Romney and his wife provided a $10 million investment with Tagg’s firm, and Romney’s top campaign fundraising operative, Spencer Zwick, doubles as an executive with Solamere.

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(h/t Scarce)
Ruh roh...art imitates life:

The hit AMC TV show “Mad Men” took a not-so-subtle swipe at a Romney Sunday night — George Romney, the father of presidential contender Mitt Romney, that is.

In the 1960s-era series, the character Henry Francis, who in previous seasons worked as a political aide for New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, calls Gov. George Romney, who led the state of Michigan from 1963-1969, a clown.

“Well, tell Jim his honor’s not going to Michigan,” Francis says during a work-related phone conversation in Sunday’s episode. “Because Romney’s a clown, and I don’t want him standing next to him.”

Some media outlets are calling this "blasting" Romney, but seems fairly mild to me. Your mileage may vary.

But there was one person who took great umbrage to this throwaway line (and honestly, weren't viewers paying more attention to Betty than Henry this last episode?) and that's George Romney's grandson, Tagg, the eldest of the Romney sons.

Tagg tweeted his unhappiness this morning:

First of all, "lib media"? Give it a rest. "Mad Men" is not the media. It's a show--a fictional show, at that. Set in the early 60s when your grandfather was, in fact, the governor of Michigan. And I'm sure it's hard to hear, but there were obviously people who didn't like him. Just like EVERY. SINGLE. POLITICIAN. EVER.

Gotta grow a tougher skin, Tagg, if you want to play in the big leagues. You don't see the Kennedy kids clutching their pearls over the endless movies and teleplays on their families, none of which are entirely glowing with praise. You don't see the Nixon kids getting the vapors over "Frost/Nixon". You never see Chelsea Clinton taking umbrage at the startling number of hatchet jobs against both her parents.

It's part of the game. Those freedoms that your dad professes to want to protect as the highest officer in the country means dealing with those slings and arrows as people exercise their free speech.

Toughen up or get out.

Go back in time with me to 2009, just after President Obama's inauguration when the economy was in full meltdown mode thanks to Wall Street greed and the administration was trying desperately to pass some kind of stimulus package to keep us from spiraling into a full-blown depression.

First there was the Madoff Ponzi scheme scandal, which is the biggest in history. Then the Stanford Group Ponzi scheme scandal broke in 2009. The numbers were mind-boggling, but the deceit more so. $8 billion dollars stolen from investors. Allen Stanford on the run to parts unknown. Thousands of investors bilked of everything, and it happened because the SEC failed to act on warnings that there was rampant fraud taking place.

Even as I write, investors have not recovered any part of their investments. Assets are still frozen, and Allen Stanford claims to have some memory problems about what actually took place.

Ponzi schemes like the Stanford scheme happen all the time. Salesmen go out and sell fake investments they claim are safe -- Certificates of Deposit in this case. But the money is really invested in illiquid risky investments, and so to feed the cash beast, they have to go out and find more cash to keep the scheme going. Eventually it collapses, investors end up with nothing, and the only ones who seem to benefit are the salesmen who collect their commissions and move on.

This is why Lee Fang's investigative report for Think Progress is so devastating to Mitt Romney. Or at least, it should be.

Let's start with this:

Mitt Romney, his son Tagg, and Romney’s chief fundraiser, Spencer Zwick, have extensive financial and political ties to three men who allegedly participated in an $8.5 billion Ponzi scheme. A few months after the Ponzi scheme collapsed, a firm financed by Mitt Romney and run by his son and chief fundraiser partnered with the three men and created a new “wealth management business” as a subsidiary.

That graphic at the top illustrates all of the ties Romney has with these former Stanford Capital salesmen. But here is a bit more detail:

After news of the Ponzi scheme precipitated the collapse of Stanford in 2009, Taggpartnered with several of Stanford’s North Carolina executives to start a firm called Solamere Advisors. At least three prominent brokers who had worked for Stanford — Tim Bambauer, Deems May, and Brandon Phillips — joined Tagg to help run Solamere Advisors, a wealth management business located in Charlotte, North Carolina. “We are excited to be associated with such a highly capable group of financial advisors with a proven track record of meeting the needs of their clients throughout the Southeast,” said Tagg in a press release announcing Solamere Advisors, which borrows its the name from its parent company, Solamere Capital.

So to review, we have Mitt Romney coughing up $10 million to help start a firm that hired three brokers who sold bogus CDs for Stanford Financial and made some decent money on the deal, too. Not only that, but Spencer Zwick the lead fundraiser for Romney's campaign is a principal in the Solamere Capital firm along with these Stanford brokers. Spencer Zwick does business as SJZ, LLC, and has been paid over $2 million in fees by the Romney campaign.

I'm sure Republicans will simply shrug this off as a tempest in a teapot. They might get away with that, but for Romney's campaign platform, which promises to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law. As Fang notes:

The revelation about Romney’s ties to the Stanford ponzi scheme unmask the risks associated with removing new investor protections. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law, a reform Romney says he will repeal if he wins the presidency, attempts to address future Ponzi schemes by enacting new protections for whistleblowers to alert authorities when they find evidence of fraud. The law also creates a new Investor Advocate and Investor Advisory Committee within the Securities and Exchange Commission to detect and investigate future Ponzi schemes.

Mike Hudson, a reporter with iWatch News and author of a new book about how predatory Wall Street practices created the financial crisis, told ThinkProgress that Dodd-Frank “could be a game changer that helps the SEC identify and shut down Ponzis and Ponzi-like schemes.” But on the campaign trail, Romney, a fierce critic of efforts to reign in Wall Street practices, has called new investor protections like Dodd-Frank “extraordinarily burdensome.”

Oh yes. Burdensome, indeed, especially if one wants to be (at the very least) an accessory to fraud and still have a career in the financial industry after that.

Mitt Romney has a problem. A big problem, particularly in light of the ongoing Occupy protests. As Matt Taibbi pointed out last week, it's not banking they're protesting, it's cheating, and it would appear as though Republicans have a leading Presidential candidate who has no problem being in business with cheaters, and worse yet, supports giving them the tools with which to continue cheating.

This is one they cannot and should not shrug off, and we shouldn't let them.