Bain Probe

IBD Editorials

Bain Probe In New York Too Well Timed To Be Legitimate

 Posted 09/04/2012 06:50 PM ET

Ethics: The Obama-connected New York state attorney general has Mitt Romney's Bain Capital in his viewfinder. His liberal activist background — and the timing — makes it obvious his probe is politically motivated.

Eric Schneiderman, New York State's ultraleft attorney general, has subpoenaed documents from Bain Capital and other private equity firms to investigate whether they improperly converted management fees into capital gains, thus avoiding taxes.
His timing is absolutely impeccable, coming as the home stretch of the presidential election begins, and at a time when the Romney campaign has touted the countless jobs the GOP nominee's private equity firm created in the private sector.
Writing in the New York Daily News earlier this year, Schneiderman declared: "The reckless deregulation and irresponsible conduct that brought down the American economy must be systematically investigated."

An article in the May American Prospect revealed just how far left this former chief fundraiser for New York state senate Democrats is. Schneiderman "served 12 years as the de facto leader of liberal Democrats in the New York Senate ... where he had consistently spurred progressive organizations to mount grass-roots campaigns in support of legislation."

His fight against lenders "opened the door to the kind of investigation into the banks that liberals had long sought" and in so doing Schneiderman met "with the leaders of the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union, MoveOn.org, financial-reform groups, and community-housing advocates."
And Schneiderman's leftism began early, the magazine recounted.

"At 15, he marched in the 1970 anti-war demonstration on Wall Street where hard hats attacked the protesters. At 18, he volunteered at a family-planning clinic in Washington, D.C., where he would drive to the airport to pick up women from Southern states who were flying into the District to obtain a legal abortion. (His father served on the board of the National Abortion Rights Action League for nearly two decades.)"

The cherry on top is what Schneiderman told the magazine about Occupy Wall Street:
 "'They gave voice in a more flamboyant way,' he said, 'to what people all around America were saying: that we needed accountability, that there had to be one set of rules for everyone.' The wide acceptance of Occupy's message, he says, created a more favorable terrain on which he maneuvered to bring the banks to justice."
Clearly, Schneiderman is a political fisherman, not an above-the-fray prosecutor.