Among the things largely absent from the 2012 Republican National Convention has been any mention of Bain Capital and any fidelity to the truth. After the first two days, the GOP's twin frauds about welfare and "we built that" were once again demolished, prompting Team Romney to protest that "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers." Adding to the embarrassment was a prime-time presentation on how to build your small business by selling to the government.

As it turns out, the silence about Mitt Romney's old company (which only ended on the ceonvention's last night) and the Republican sham that "you didn't build it" are related. Because when it comes to Bain Capital, in a very real sense you did build it. After all, your United States tax code doesn't merely allow the "carried interest exemption" that enables the likes of Mitt Romney to pay a lower rate than many middle class families. Without the public subsidy that is the corporate debt interest deduction, there might not be a Bain Capital--or a private equity industry as we know it--at all.

As the history shows, on his road to becoming a $250 million captain of private equity at Bain Capital, Mitt Romney had a lot of help from his uncle. Uncle Sam, that is. Writing in Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi explained how:

Essentially, Romney got rich in a business that couldn't exist without a perverse tax break, and he got to keep double his earnings because of another loophole - a pair of bureaucratic accidents that have not only teamed up to threaten us with a Mitt Romney presidency but that make future Romneys far more likely. "Those two tax rules distort the economics of private equity investments, making them much more lucrative than they should be," says Rebecca Wilkins, senior counsel at the Center for Tax Justice. "So we get more of that activity than the market would support on its own."

Then-Bain Capital CEO Mitt Romney concluded as much when he acknowledged, "There's a lot greater risk in a startup than there is in acquiring an existing company." So he fatefully redirected his firm from venture investments in new companies like Staples and instead became a leveraged buyout king. To understand both why he did that and how all American taxpayers helped make it possible, a little background is in order.

Private equity owes its success in no small part to that uniquely American provision of the corporate tax code. The New York Times recently helped explain why:

Companies can finance investment from either debt or equity. Companies can finance investment from either debt or equity. But profit on an investment financed with equity -- stock issued by the company -- is taxed. In contrast, if the project is financed with debt, then only the profit after interest payments are made is taxed. This means debt-financed investments are cheaper than equity.

And not just a little cheaper. As the Treasury Department recently explained, "The effective corporate marginal tax rate on new equity-financed investment in equipment is 37 percent in the United States. At the same time, the effective marginal tax rate on the same investment made with debt financing is minus 60 percent--a gap of 97 percentage points." The result:

This creates a bias by corporations toward debt.

Or, for the likes of Mitt Romney, a business model.

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I have been actively engaged in working in presidential politics since 1984, and one of the most important things I have learned is that people with a lot of secrets they don’t want the world to know should not run for President. Sooner or later, either the secrets come out or the desperate desire to hide them messes you up. Mitt Romney is learning some tough lessons on that score, and it will get worse before it gets better. Even a growing chorus of Republicans want to know what he is hiding, and more importantly why. Because here is the scary thing: given that the 2 years he was willing to release gave us secret bank accounts in Switzerland, the Caymans, and Bermuda; a mysterious IRA worth over 100 million dollars; continued interwoven financial ties with Bain even though he allegedly severed ties with them in 1999; and a variety of other information that has sounded horrible to average voters, what is it that he is hiding in the rest of his returns that is worse than that?

Then there is the when-was-it-I-left-Bain problem. As the sole owner of a business, I can assure you: I am going to be held legally, politically, and reputation-wise responsible for anything that happens in my company, even if I hand over many of the day-to-day duties to other people. Romney was Bain’s sole owner, listed multiple times multiple places as the CEO. He cannot escape responsibility from whatever Bain did in those years, and the longer he tries, the worse he looks.

As someone in Romney’s opposing camp, I am enjoying the spectacle. But this whole mess with Romney and his financial secrets reminds us again of a bigger, deeper truth: the rich - at least people who got rich the way Romney did - really are different than you and I. The story of how Mitt Romney got so wealthy, and then how he hid all that wealth and avoided taxes on it, is also the story of the modern decline of America’s middle class. Right around the time Mitt Romney went into business in the early ‘80s was the moment when, aided directly by Reagan administration policies and the kind of corporate sharks Romney became, the middle class in this country began to decline in size, strength and prosperity. Mitt Romney and his fellow Wall Street sharks became so stunningly wealthy precisely because most of the rest of us got poorer. The working and middle class in this country got laid off, down-sized, out-sourced; their wages went down or flat, their out-of-pocket health care costs went up, and their pensions disappeared; the price of energy and groceries and other necessities went way up; and when the bubble caused by the out of control speculation of Wall Street burst, their one remaining asset - their homes - lost much of its value. Meanwhile, the guys like Romney who were doing the out-sourcing, lay-offing, wage and benefit-slashing, and financial speculating got filthy rich, and then because of our unprogressive tax laws and because they used Cayman Island and Swiss bank accounts to hide their money, they paid a smaller share of their taxes than those hard-pressed folks in the middle class.

That is what is so beautiful about this ad:

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This is quite interesting, not the least for the reason that the administration kept it under wraps. Guess they're anticipating the howls of pain from those high-rollers anticipating their tax increases!

WASHINGTON — President Obama presented a far-reaching set of proposals on Monday that are aimed at the tax benefits enjoyed by companies and wealthy individuals harboring cash in offshore accounts.

These steps, he said, would be the first in a much broader effort to fix a “broken tax system.”

Mr. Obama made the announcement in the Grand Foyer of the White House, standing alongside Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and the Internal Revenue Service commissioner, Douglas Shulman. His remarks echoed the sentiment he voiced again and again during the presidential campaign, when he pledged to crack down on "illegal overseas tax evasion."

The proposed tax overhaul, which will be fully unveiled later this week when the administration presents a more detailed budget, could help raise $210 billion in revenues over 10 years, the administration estimates.

... The president thus set up an unusually frontal clash with big business over the tax advantages enjoyed by companies with extensive overseas operations.

Large multinational companies like Microsoft, General Electric and Cisco have been bracing for such an initiative from the Obama administration. Critics of the approach say that it could lead not to the administration’s hoped-for repatriation of jobs but rather to job losses or higher prices as companies try to compensate for a greater tax burden.

The Wall Street Journal adds:

The sweep of the administration's plan took some tax experts by surprise, and foreshadows potential fights with big businesses later this year over some of their most cherished breaks, particularly as Congress looks for revenue to pay for new initiatives.

Dave N.: It will be interesting to watch Republicans figure out a way to oppose this measure without looking too blatantly in the pocket of the wealthy. No doubt we'll be hearing more cries of "fascism" or "socialism" or maybe "satanism" in the process.