Gerrymandering

Every decade, following the decennial census, the state legislatures of the United States are told how many representatives their state will send to the United States House of Representatives. Representation in the House is based on state population and there are a total of 435 representatives, so some states may gain representatives while others lose them. It is the responsibility of each state legislature to redistrict their state into the appropriate numbers of congressional districts.

-- Rosenberg

The epidemic of gerrymandering poses a growing threat to our democracy. The completion of the 2010 Census and start of the 2011 redistricting cycle makes this an especially important time for the Brennan Center's advocacy and public education efforts on redistricting and reapportionment. 

It's an open secret: more and more legislative districts reflect calculations by those in power about how they can best preserve that power, while fewer and fewer give meaningful representation to communities of voters. Incumbents carve the citizens of their state into districts for maximum personal and partisan advantage, and democracy suffers: neighborhoods are split, competing candidates are drawn out of contention, groups of voters are ‘cracked' or ‘packed' to manipulate their voting power. We like to think that voters choose their politicians-but in the redistricting process, politicians choose their voters.

Well-designed redistricting systems, in contrast, can help ensure that elected public servants actually serve their public. Moreover, they can inspire public confidence in both a process and an outcome recognized as fair.

-- Brennan Center for Justice

Gerrymandering, or redistricting, is the movement of political boundaries for the advantage of a political party. District borders are redrawn to maximize the chances of incumbents or the party's showing in future elections; sometimes it has been used to disempower particular population demographics based on race, religion, or other characteristics.

First printed in March 1812, this political cartoon was drawn in reaction to the state senate electoral districts drawn by the Massachusetts legislature to favour the Democratic-Republican Party candidates of Governor Elbridge Gerry over the Federalists. The caricature satirizes the bizarre shape of a district in Essex County, Massachusetts as a dragon-like "monster.

The word gerrymander (originally written Gerry-mander) was used for the first time in the Boston Gazette on March 26, 1812. The word was created in reaction to a redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts under the then-governor Elbridge Gerry (pronounced /ˈɡɛri/; 1744–1814). In 1812, Governor Gerry signed a bill that redistricted Massachusetts to benefit his Democratic-Republican Party. When mapped, one of the contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble the shape of a salamander. The term was a portmanteau of the governor's last name and the word salamander.

-- Wikipedia, Gerrymander 

Gerrymandering can be designed to carve more voters into a district that is assured of a win-- just rending their votes moot-- a process known as packing. Voters who would tend to vote for the opposition are packed into far fewer districts, meaning more districts will go to the gerrymandering party.

Gerrymandering can also carve out districts that follow demographics favorable to the gerrymandering party; this is known as cracking. Both types can lead to bizarre shapes on the map, as in both illustrations above-- or they can split districts, as with the map of Congressional District 4, below.

In 1985 the U.S. Supreme court ruled that manipulation of political borders to give advantage to one political party was unconstitutional. Earlier, in 1962, the Court ruled districts

In 1842 Congress passed the Reapportionment Act: districts must be contiguous, unlike Congressional District 4, above.

Nope, I take it back. Upon closer inspection, there's a tiny line at the left, connecting the two otherwise separate land masses. It's the median strip of an interstate highway.

Unlike in-person voter fraud, gerrymandering is a systematic way of affecting elections-- and an effective one, at that, which explains its long history. For more than 200 years, gerrymandering has been an assault on American voters by rendering their votes ineffective. The Supreme Court has declared it illegal-- wouldn't it be nice if those who do it were punished?

Sources

Redistricting. Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Read it here.

Rosenberg, Mark. Gerrymandering: How states create congressional districts based on census data. About.com. Read it here.

Systematic Election Fraud

Two posts back I wrote about in-person voter fraud-- how it exists, and how it is rare, how suspected cases turn out in most cases to be untrue, and how those that aren't are often due to confusion on the part of ages voters.

In an extreme case an election in a small town could be swayed by this type of election fraud, but it in no way has much of an impact on the outcomes of elections. It's not as if a number of voters independently wake up one day and decide hey, let's throw an election. It's just not happening.

This means the purported panic on the part of the Republican party about voter fraud is a red herring. It's meant to distract while they engage in massive election fraud on a grand scale-- something that has changed and is changing the outcomes of levels at every election.

In future posts I'll be talking about systematic election fraud. Hang on to your hats.

Karl Rove's Unique Take on Voter Suppression

I'd hoped I'd have are rest before some political type somewhere opened his big mouth, making me feel the need to write. Come on, guys, can't you give a girl some rest?

Karl Rove isn't a politician; he's one up on that. He's a kingmaker. And while Speaker of the House John Boehner was saying, "Uh, maybe Obamacare isn't as bad as we made it out to be," Rove was accusing Obama of suppressing the vote.

Say what?

So how is Obama suppressing the vote? According to Rove, by talking stuff about Mitt Romney during the election campaign. It was all true, of course, but in the Rovian mind, Obama was suppressing the vote by persuading the people to vote for him. True story!

I'm in the middle of an arc about election fraud and voter suppression, and believe me, Barack Obama is not one of the players. Rove, on the other hand, is. He's one of the cynical masterminds of the Republican Party, and amazing things come out of his mouth. Not long ago his group Crossroads GPS declared President Obama had declared a war on women ("Watch the left hand, don't watch the right!"). Of course we know which party has passed hundreds of bills to deprive women of the right to health care, reproductive choice, and equal employment, right?

What's particularly reprehensible about Rove's remark about Obama is he makes it at a time when state-controlled Republican legislaturs have taken extraordinary measures to remove peoples' right to vote.

You should be scared, and as soon as everyone stops misbehaving I'll resume my series on electron fraud and tell you why.

Sources

Parkinson, John. (2012, 8 November). Boehner exclusive: Raising taxes "unacceptable," but will put new revenue on table. ABC News. Read and watch video here.

Siddiqui, Sabrina, & Stein, Sam. (2012, 8 November). Boehner says Obamacare is the law of the land, but still favors repealing legislation. Huffington Post. Read it here.

Terkel, Amanda. (2012, 8 November. Obama won "by suppressing the vote." Huffington Post. Read and watch video here.

Election Fraud is Rampant, and It's Not What You Think

Republicans have been screaming about voter fraud and have been using this almost-nonexistent crime to systematically disenfranchise millions of registered voters 

They'd like you to think (and many people do think) in-person voter fraud is rampant. And yet fraud by voters is not only rare, it's exceedingly rare.

In this and following posts, I'll talk about four types of election fraud: in-person voter fraud, petition fraud, irregularities at the polling place, and voter repression; that is, systematic attempts to disenfranchise legitimate voters and prevent registered voters from voting.

In-Person Voter Fraud

In-person voter fraud occurs when a voter intentionally casts a fraudulent vote in an election-- by voting twice, by voting in more than one location, or by impersonation another voter, alive or dead.

I'll hit you with some numbers in a moment, but first, when voter fraud does occur, it's typically something like this:

Last year, the Richland County Prosecutor’s Office received a report of voter fraud from the local board of elections. A man had voted twice: once with an absentee ballot and again on Election Day. 

Further investigation revealed the man was elderly and suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, and he simply forgot about his first vote. Richland County First Assistant Prosecutor Brent Robinson said it would have been illogical and nearly impossible to prosecute the man for violating Ohio’s law against voting twice. 

Most allegations of double voting in Ohio end in a similar way. Local prosecutors said they rarely convict offenders of trying to rig elections. 

“It’s not that it never happens, but proven instances are quite rare,” said Daniel Tokaji, an election law professor at Ohio State University.

-- Balmert, 2012

There are lots of reports like this one-- just Google "voter fraud."

So, is in-person voter fraud a problem?

Here's what the Brennan Center for Justice has to say:

* Fraud by individual voters is both irrational and extremely rare. 

* Many vivid anecdotes of purported voter fraud have been proven false or do not demonstrate fraud. 

* Voter fraud is often conflated with other forms of election misconduct. 

* Raising the unsubstantiated specter of mass voter fraud suits a particular policy agenda. 

* Claims of voter fraud should be carefully tested before they become the basis for action.

Efforts to measure the extent of voter fraud by compiling criminal cases have indicated that the problem isn’t particularly widespread. One study last month, conducted by a group of journalism students through a project called News21, found 2,068 cases of alleged voter fraud in the U.S. since 2000, including 10 cases of voter impersonation.

-- Blalik, 2012

The most extensive study of  in-person voter fraud in the United States was conducted by News21, a Carnegie-Knight investigative reporting project.

To get the data, News21 reporters sent records requests to elections officers in all 50 states seeking every case of fraudulent elections activity, including registration fraud, absentee ballot fraud, voter impersonation fraud and casting an ineligible vote. News21 said it received no useful responses from several states. With some states, including Massachusetts, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota, the cases included in the database came from a survey of alleged election fraud conducted by the Republican National Lawyers Association. And in some states, some but not all local jurisdictions responded, and some responses were missing important details about each case. Despite those issues, News21 defends its work as "substantially complete" as the largest collection of election fraud cases gathered by anyone in the country.

-- Carson, 2012

News21 found 2068 cases of alleged election fraud in the United States between 2000 and 2112. That's election fraud, now, not voter fraud. Just under 31% of reported cases were suspected voter fraud-- that's 67 cases in 13 years or five cases per year. Most of those 67 cases were due to confusion, as with the Ohio man with Alzheimer's Syndrome described above.

In short, in-person voter fraud, while certain wrong, and while it should certainly be prosecuted when it occurs, is not much worth worrying about.

The right-wing nonprofit True the Vote is scrambling to find cases of voter fraud, but their case is built primarily on the twin pillars on voters registered in more than one state and deceased voters who remain on the rolls. They act as if every American who has moved to another state and registered to vote without deactivating their registration in their former state is a felon, or at least likely to become one.

Citing the federal requirement that citizens must cast ballots at their permanent residences, True the vote has alerted authorities about several hundred cases of what they consider interstate voting fraud and almost certainly isn't.

Certainly states are lax about removing the names of deceased voters from their records and certainly there's no bureaucratic mechanism for tracking people who move from state to state, but that doesn't correspond to widespread voter fraud. Conservative group Election Integrity Maryland, after an review of % of Maryland records, found (unsurprisingly) some 1500 deceased  people still on the rolls and just under 700 duplicate registrations-- most of people who had moved out of state. They discovered two people who became registered after they died-- probably because their paperwork was processed after their deaths; neither of them voted. Two dead voters showed up to cast ballots (unless the zombie apocalypse is upon us, this was certainly fraudulent), and one elderly woman had voted twice.

So yes, in-person voter fraud happens, and yes, it should be dealt with, but it's no cause for hysteria and it's certainly no cause for disenfranchizing legitimate voters-- both of which have occurred and are occurring.

Bottom Line-- in person voter fraud is not the widespread menace Republican fearmongers would have the populace believe.

Sources

Balmert, Jessie.  (2012, 4 November). Voter fraud: Prosecution of double voting rare. Coshocton (Ohio) Tribune. Read it here.

Blalik, Carl. (2012, 1 September). Counting voter fraud. Wall Street Journal. Read it here.

Carson, Corbit. (2012, 12 August). Exhaustive database of voter fraud cases turns up scant evidence that it happens. News21. Read it here.

Gazanijan, Glynis. (2012, 30 September). Dead people voted and registered to vote, watchdog group finds; hundreds of deceased still on rolls. MarylandReporter.com. Read it here.

Policy brief on the truth about voter fraud. Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Read it here.

PolitFact Georgia. In-person voter fraud "a very rare phenomenon." Read it here.

Your Rights as a Voter are Rapidly Disappearing

On this eve of a national Presidential election, I'd like to say please vote. Vote your conscience, but please vote.

Our rights as American voters is under attack. Many of us have been threatened, intimidated, removed without cause from registration rolls, forced to show identification despite our already having done so when we registered, and the hours during which we vote have come under attack. If we work for certain right-wing-managed companies, we are told how to vote. And if we do manage to vote, we are surrounded at the polls by "observers" who do far more than observe. We vote on electronic voting machines that don't provide paper records and were made by companies with extreme partisan leanings and which may well be selectively counting ballots. Ballot workers are often unabashedly partisan.

A number of states have been taking and will continue to take extreme measures to prevent you from voting. The purported cause is widespread voter fraud-- which absolutely is not happening. In-person voter fraud is almost nonexistent.

I'll be writing about all this over the next couple of weeks.

Why Are There No Democrats in This Blog?

The reason so many Republicans are featured in this blog has nothing to do with my politics. While my politics might color what I have to say about them, inclusion here has everything to do with how badly a politicians behaves-- and for a long time now Republicans have been trying to outcompete one another in bad behavior.

Be it ridiculous, racist, sexist, anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-immigrant, anti-government, or just anti to be anti, this blog has been a parade of Republicans-- and deservedly so. And yet I've been able to cover so very little of this bad behavior!

I'm aware of some misbehavior on the part of Democrats, but it's just not been bad enough to see here-- not with we're in the midst of such a circus of buffoonery (although if Anthony Weiner's private part flashing had occurred during my watch I would have taken a poke at him if only because of his last name).

I recently had some correspondence with an old acquaintance. He was on about how bad a president Obama had been, accusing him of selling out Israel (big for him because of his Christian fate), ass-kissing and apologizing to other nations, not having fixed the economy, running up the national bedt, and being soft on terrorism, and being a deceitful liar.

I asked him to provide examples about the lying, and the best he could come up was that Obama was running again despite promising not to unless he brought the unemployment rate below 7%.

What??

Just because Romney Romney says something doesn't mean it's true. In fact, if Romney says it, it's assuredly not true!

And Romney didn't say it. What he said in his 47% speech was that Obama had promised unemployment wouldn't exceed 8%-- which it certainly.

And Obama said no such thing.

Romney told donors he would win over waving voters by reminding them that Obama said "he'd keep employment below 8 percent." 

Obama didn't say that. Rather, his Council of Economic Adversers predicted that the stimulus would hold it to that level. Their report included heavy disclaimers that the projections had "significant margins of errors" and a high degree of uncertainty due to a recession that is "unusual both in its fundamental causes and its severity."

-- Politifact, 2012

And what if he had? How could that possibly make him duplicitious compared to the constellation of falsehoods that has come out of Mitt Romney's mouth during this campaign (and probably throughout his entire life)?

The reason it's impolitic to talk about religion and politics is that people tend to operate on the basis of their beliefs and to ignore facts. My friend will undoubtedly vote for Romney, but he should admit to himself it's on the basis of unfounded allegations about Obama and untested testimonials to Romney's character, history, and performance.

Me, I'll continue to trust, but verify.

Source

Romney Says President Obama promised "he'd keep unemployment below 8%" if the stimulus passed. PolitiFact. Read it here.

Major Newspapers, Politicians, Endorse Obama

General Colin Powell Endorses Obama for President, Uncomfortable with Romney 

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg Endorses Obama for President

Read Bloomberg's endorsement here.

Colin Powell. Michael Bloomberg. The editors at The Economist magazine. What do all these three have in common? They are all harbour Republican sympathies, yet they are all endorsing Barack Obama for a second term. 

For Mitt Romney these are dangerously sensible people to be throwing their lot in with Mr Obama, and he doesn’t have anyone on the other side to match them with. The Economist endorsement (courageous, given their readership) is also a terrible sign for Mitt. If the magazine of free-markets and the ‘one per cent’ can’t bring themselves to hold their noses and endorse Mr Romney, who can?

-- Stuttaford, 2012 

New York Times endorses Obama for second term: Read here.

Washington Post endorses Obama for second term: Read here.

Other key newspaper endorsements for Obama include the Tampa Bay Times, the Denver Post, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Philadelphia Inquirer. See here for a list of newspaper endorsements for both candidates.


Source

Stuttaford, Andrew. (2012, 2 November). Powell, Bloomberg, & The Economist (endorse Obama). National Review Online. Read here.

Mitt Makes Millions In Detroit Bailout

The November 5th issue of The Nation features an article by Greg Palast titled "Mitt Romney's Bailout Bonanza."

Palast points out that Romney has to date successfully concealed the fact that he and his wife Ann made at least $15.3 million on the offshoring of GM parts manufacturer Delphi Automotive-- and more than four billion dollars for his friends and fellow investors.

Delphi, an American operation, was closed by hedge funds which had gained control and shipped entirely offseas. There is no more Delphi Automotive in the United States of America.

Delphi Automotive was once part of General Motors. It was spun off in 1999 as a separate entity and continued to provide GM with critical parts. Without Delphi, General Motors could build no cars.

Delphi did not do well on its own, and in 2005 declared bankruptcy. Vulture hedge funds, led by Silver Point Capital, began buying Delphi's debt for pennies on the dollar. Paul Singer of Elliott Management was one of the flock. Another was John Paulson & Co.

It all starts with Delphi Automotive, a former General Motors subsidiary whose auto parts remain essential to GM’s production lines. No bailout of GM—or Chrysler, for that matter—could have been successful without saving Delphi. So, in addition to making massive loans to automakers in 2009, the federal government sent, directly or indirectly, more than $12.9 billion to Delphi—and to the hedge funds that had gained control over it.
One of the hedge funds profiting from that bailout—
$1.28 billion so far—is Elliott Management, directed by 
Paul Singer. According to The Wall Street Journal, Singer has given more to support GOP candidates—$2.3 million—than anyone else on Wall Street this election season. His personal giving is matched by that of his colleagues at Elliott; collectively, they have donated $3.4 million to help elect Republicans this season, while giving only $1,650 to Democrats. And Singer is influential with the GOP presidential candidate; he’s not only an informal adviser but, according to the Journal, his support was critical in helping push Representative Paul Ryan onto the ticket.

Singer, whom Fortune magazine calls a “passionate defender of the 1%,” has carved out a specialty investing in distressed firms and distressed nations, which he does by buying up their debt for pennies on the dollar and then demanding payment in full. This so-called “vulture investor” received $58 million on Peruvian debt that he snapped up for $11.4 million, and $90 million on Congolese debt that he bought for a mere $20 million. In the process, he’s built one of the largest private equity firms in the nation, and over decades he’s racked up an unusually high average return on investments of 14 percent.

Other GOP presidential hopefuls chased Singer’s endorsement, but Mitt chased Singer with his own checkbook, investing at least $1 million with Elliott through Ann Romney’s blind trust (it could be far more, but the Romneys have declined to disclose exactly how much). Along the way, Singer gained a reputation, according to Fortune, “for strong-arming his way to profit.” That is certainly what happened at Delphi.

-- Palast

Knowing the importance of keeping Delphi operational, General Motors and the U.S. Treasury proposed a bailout deal they had hammered out with the help of the United Auto Workers union. Knowing this, the hedge funds accelerated their purchases of Delphi debt, deliberately torpedoing the GM/government deal.

In June 2009 the hedge funds used their combined bonds to buy enough Delphi stock to control the company. Two years later they took Delphi public, with stock opening at $22 per share, a profit of 3000%-- and that was before the stock began to rise in price. Thanks to U.S. taxpayers ( for the U.S. had loaned the troubled Delphi $12.9 billion), Elliott Management's investors made $904 million, Third Point $390 million, and Silver Point $890 million. and Paulson (which has sold only half it's stock) $2.6 billion. And the Romneys? They made millions.

Altogether, in direct and indirect payouts, the government padded these investors’ profits handsomely. The Treasury allowed GM to give Delphi at least $2.8 billion of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to keep Delphi in business. GM also forgave $2.5 billion in debt owed to it by Delphi, and $2 billion due from Singer and company upon Delphi’s exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The money GM forgave was effectively owed to the Treasury, which had by then become the majority owner of GM as a result of the bailout. Then there was the big one: the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation took over paying all of Delphi’s retiree pensions. The cost to the taxpayer: $5.6 billion. The bottom line: the hedge funds’ paydays were made possible by a generous donation of $12.9 billion from US taxpayers.

-- Palast

The hedge fund controllers of Dephi then held GM and Chrysler hostage, threatening to withhold critical components unless they were paid $350 million immediate ("Or we'll shut you down").

Without the Delphi parts, the auto bailout would have utterly failed. GM and Chrysler had no choice but to comply.

Now in control, the hedge funds slashed benefits for workers, stripping them of their pensions. Retirees were stripped of their health fund, saving the hedge funds only $70 million, but devastating millions of retired workers; the latter happened in February, 2009, before the hedge funds gained control, but apparently upon their assistance).

Then the hedge funds fired 25,000 American workers and shipped the entire Delphi operation overseas to China. Today they brag:

Third Point’s Daniel Loeb, whose net worth of $1.3 billion owes much to his share in the Delphi windfall, told his fund’s backers this past July that Delphi remains an excellent investment because it has “virtually no North American unionized labor” and, thanks to US taxpayers, “significantly smaller pension liabilities than almost all of its peers.”

-- Palast

Having made billions of dollars by conniving against American business and the American people, there was only one thing left to do beside count their money-- blame Barack Obama. And that's just what they did.

But there was still a bit of unfinished business: President Obama needed to be blamed for the pension disaster. In a television ad airing in swing states since September, one retired Delphi manager says, “The Obama administration decided to terminate my pension, and I took a 40 percent reduction in my pension.” 

Another retiree, Mary Miller, says, “I really struggle to pay for the basics…. I would ask President Obama why I had no rights, and he had all the rights to take my pension away—and never ever look back and say, ‘Not only did I take it from Mary Miller, I took it from 20,000 other people.’” 

These people are real. But it’s clear that these former workers, now struggling to scrape by, were hardly in the position to put together $7 million in ad buys to publicize their plight. The ads were paid for by Let Freedom Ring, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit advocacy organization partially funded by Jack Templeton Jr., a billionaire evangelical whose foundation has sponsored lectures at the Manhattan Institute (the anti-union think tank whose board of directors includes not only Singer but Loeb). The ads also conveniently leave out the fact that the law sets specific ceilings on what the PBGC is allowed to pay retirees—regardless of what they were originally owed.

-- Palast

I'm infuriated by that those bastards have done-- they should be in prison, in my book-- and aghast that this has until now gone unreported by the media. As Palast says:

So, where is the New York "Paper of Record?" Or, for that matter, MSNBC?
Bill Press explained it to me when I was on his show this morning: "Sorry, Greg. There's no more investigative reporting in America. No reporters, just repeaters."
That's why I fear Jimmy Carter's statement that, "The American people deserve a president as good as they are." Now I'm afraid that's exactly what we'll get.

I'll soon talk more about Mitt and Ann Romney's involvement in all this.

Greg Palast's book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps is free with a donation of $35 to the nonprofit Truthout and at booksellers.

Sources

Palast, Greg. (2012, 23 October). Romney & Co. shopped every single Delphi UAW job to China. Huffington Post. Read it here.

Palast, Greg. (2012, 5 November. Mitt Romney's bailout bonanza. The Nation. Read it here.

US Unemployment Rate Under Clinton, Bush, Obama

Here's an interesting chart of the country's unemploymenet rate since 1993. Notice any trends?

Source

Barack Obama or Mitt Romney: Who Will Win The 2012 U.S. Presidential Election?
Read more at http://marketdailynews.com/2012/11/01/barack-obama-or-mitt-romney-who-will-win-the-2012-u-s-presidential-election/#Zlll8hOriuVUekVv.99 

Bust-Out!

Bust-out. Here's how it works if you're Tony Soprano.

One of your friends owns a sporting goods store. He's done well with the business but has had a lot of expenses lately-- sending kids to college, this and that. And he has a gambling problem-- a bad one. He gets in deeper and deeper and finally he comes to you for help. He needs $50,000 to pay the bookie so his legs won't get broken.

Before you hand him the money you put him on notice-- he is a friend after all-- telling him if he takes the money whatever ensues will be business. He of course takes the money.

You put Paulie in charge. Before your friend knows it Paulie is ordering expensive sporting goods you can't hope to sell-- who can get rid of so many Igloo Coolers?-- and things not even remotely related to sporting goods, like Cutty Sark.

The bills pile up and pile up-- as Tony and his pals sell off everything, including the shelves, until finally the utility companies turn off the lights and the bank seizes your building. You're left with no business and a huge debt which only you are responsible for. Meanwhile, Tony and his crew are casting about, looking for a new victim.

That's exactly what Bain Capital did-- bust-outs-- but on a much higher level and with no armed goons.

And that's why Mitt isn't a businessman-- he's an anti-businessman. He dismantled American companies, sent American jobs overseas, and left American workers without jobs, without pensions, and without hope.

Mitt should have gone to prison for that. Unfortunately, it's not illegal (merely immoral), and now he gets to run for President.

Read more here.

Romney's Secrecy

Click here for Alex MacGilli's New Republic well-documented and thought-provoking discussion of Mitt Romney's secrecy in regard to his personal and campaign finances.

Romney vs. Obama Around the World

Looks like respondents in all but one of these countries polled by the BBC prefer Obama over Romney as the next US President.

The only country that doesn't? Unsurprisingly, Pakistan, which is sore because Obama took out Osama Bin Laden at his hideout in Islamabad.

Source

BBC Poll: Rest of world favours Obama. BNC News. Read here.

New Yorker Romney Cover

Romney's Fake Disaster Response Trumps Ryan's Fake Photo Op

A couple of weeks ago Paul Ryan showed up unannounced at a soup kitchen in Youngstown, Ohio for a photo op. In a suit and tie, he pretended to wash pots and pans (most were already clean). Note the spotless apron. I once worked as a dishwasher. I did NOT have a spotless apron. Ever. Nor would I have worn a wristwatch, as it would have immediately gotten soaked. I pronounce this picture a fakerooni.

And so did Bryan J. Antal, President of the Mahoning County St. Vincent de Paul Society:

The head of a northeast Ohio charity says that the Romney campaign last week “ramrodded their way” into the group’s Youngstown soup kitchen so that GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan could get his picture taken washing dishes in the dining hall. 

Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, said that he was not contacted by the Romney campaign ahead of the Saturday morning visit by Ryan, who stopped by the soup kitchen after a town hall at Youngstown State University. 

“We’re a faith-based organization; we are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” Antal said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there, and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.” 

I thought Ryan had trumped his running mate, but Romney one-upped him with a fake response to Hurricane Sandy.

Both events were pulled off with calculated cynicism.

Yesterday, Romney's campaign – facing the challenge of a president in command of natural disaster relief – converted an Ohio political rally into a political rally disguised as providing voluntary charitable contributions to help hurricane victims on the East Coast. The problem was that collecting canned goods and other items is not what agencies such as the Red Cross want. In fact, attempting to process such relatively small donations hinders massive assistance efforts, according to non-governmental organizations.

Loading donated cans of Campbell's Soup and jars of peanuts into a rental truck makes for a nice photo-op, but it won't help any hurricane victims. Nine will get you ten that the donations will be dropped off at some pantry in Ohio, far away from the damage from Sandy.

On top of that, BuzzFeed reports that allegedly $5,000 was spent at Walmart by the Romney campaign so that Mitt could be photographed amidst an abundant supply of granola bars and diapers.

This last-minute "relief effort," of course, is consistent with the Romney/Ryan belief that individual charitable contributions can somehow take care of areas with billions of dollars in damage. Did anyone bring a house, bridge or subway to the Romney "compassion" charade? Doubt it, wouldn't fit in the rental truck.

Romney's notion of non-governmental resolution of natural disasters is as fecklessly quaint as his "horses and bayonets" notion of our military needs. Since Romney refuses to repeat his promise to dismantle FEMA since Hurricane Sandy struck, he can only offer a feeble photo showing him accepting a six pack of Gatorade. It was so Disneyesque!

The Ohio stunt provides a one-two punch of opportunistic displays of ambition disguised as compassion. Just last week Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, practically broke into a soup kitchen in Youngstown in order to get a photo of him washing pans with his wife. But don't think the Ayn Rand acolyte was going soft. It was all for show.

-- Karlin, 2012 

Sources

Karlin, Mark. (2012, 31 October). Romney's hurricane "relief effort" was as fake as Paul Ryan's soup kitchen photo op. Buzzflash. Read it here.

Philip, Abby. (2012, 31 October). Aid organizations prefer cash to canned food. ABC News. Read it here.

Sonmez, Felicia. (2012, 15 October). Charity president unhappy about Paul Ryan soup kitchen "photo op." Washington Post. Read it here.

Why Republicans Say You Shouldn't Vote for Romney

Romney on FEMA

Before the Hurricane Sandy Disaster

During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA's cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.

"Absolutely," he said. "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"

"Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.

"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."

-- Grim, 2012 

There’s another nugget here worth highlighting, though. In that appearance, Romney also suggested it would be “even better” to send any and all responsibilities of the federal government “to the private sector,” disaster response included. So: Romney essentially favored privatizing disaster response.

-- Sargent, 2011 

During the Hurricane Sandy Disaster

Watch From 57 Seconds

The Romney campaign stressed Monday that states should take the lead in responding to emergencies like hurricanes. But the campaign said Romney would not abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

-- Restucca, 2012

After the Hurricane Sandy Disaster

Sources

Grim, Ryan. (2012, 28 October). Mitt Romey in GOP debate: Shut down federal disaster agency, send relief to the states. Huffington Post. Read it here.

Restucca, Andrew. (2012, 29 October). Romney would give more power to the states, would not abolish FEMA. Politico. Read it here.

Sargent, Greg. (2012, 29 October). The morning plum. On the auto bailout, Mitt has run out of answers. Washington Post. Read it here.