What do you make of the article Employees of Romney Family’s Secret Bank Tied to Fraud, Money Laundering and Drug Cartels on truth-out.org?

As previously reported in by the Columbus Free Press, the Romney family, namely Mitt, Ann, G Scott and Tagg Romney, along with Mitt’s “6th son” and campaign finance chair have a secretive private equity firm called Solamere Capital Partners. This firms ties to Romney’s campaign and bundlers is already well documented, along with its connection to the manufacture and distribution of voting machines. What is not as well documented is a subsidiary of that private equity firm hiring employees of a failed firm tied to a Ponzi scheme that has a long history of money laundering for Latin American drug cartels and to the Iran-Contra scandal.

Is this just a tawdry attempt at guilt by association, or is this something to concern the voters who are thinking of voting for Mitt Romney?

Al Franken came to our area in support of Elizabeth Warren. We saw him in Worcester where this video was shot, and we saw him in Southbridge.

For all of you how are dying to see details of how Romney is going to cut the deficit while increasing tax cuts by $5 trillion, have I got the link for you 🙂

http://www.romneytaxplan.com/

Don’t forget to look at the bottom of the page for an additional link.

Don’t ever say that I don’t give you equal access to both sides even though I make no claims to balance. 🙂

Thanks to RogerS for bringing this to my attention.

A thoughtful but conservative friend sent me an email in which he said:

Romney talked about “the 47%” essentially being a waste of his time. Obama referred to the death of four Americans in Libya as “not optimal.” Without either of us offering further qualification or context to those remarks, could we agree that both statements were outrageous?

Responding as he requested with no context, I said:

Taken without context, referring to the death of four Americans in Libya as “not optimal” is so insensitive that I must believe there is some context around those remarks that is essential to understanding what he was saying. (My bullshit alarm goes off when you pose the question the way you did. Do you have a bullshit alarm?)

That is my first reaction, before looking up the quote. I will now go over to Google to find out what he really said.

I, mean, I cannot understand why you would want to react to someone’s remarks without understanding what he intended. That is how I always get in trouble with interpreting many of your remarks before I find out what is behind them.

Follow the link

The Daily Show
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listen to the video with an open mind and tell me again why it is that you have taken such a dislike to President Obama.

I took a chance by stating the beginning before I did the research. I think that the result of my research shows that my bullshit detector is working just fine.

I later remarked to this friend:

Before your email, I had been unaware that this piece of crap was causing a stir. With your help, we may be able to nip this in the bud before Faux Noise turns this into an issue.

I find it rather silly that Jon Stewart could try to make such a big deal out of the fact that Obama was open enough to the American people to let the information out as it was being gathered. If he had been more political, he would have tried to suppress the information until he had all the facts. Of course, if he had been more Republican he would be out declaring war before he knew the facts.

Do you like politicians who react before they have the facts? I am not saying you do, I am asking a serious question.

The way Obama describes how he works, is exactly how I described an engineering approach to politics. Find out what happened, and then if something is broken, figure out how to fix it. Do you do your engineering some other way?

This could be the most frightening ad that has run in this campaign so far.

How would you rate this compared to the Lyndon Johnson Daisy ad?

With new technology that is at your fingertips, you have much more political power than you may have realized. You ought to use it if you think the upcoming election is important.

In response to the fact that I had a previous post, Facebook Boosts Voter Turnout, I received an email about an interesting info-graphic.

I am part of a team of designers and researcher that put together an infographic showing how social media has affected elections in the past and how it will affect the US presidential election next month.

Here is the introduction that went along with the image Provided by: open-site.org.

The legal briefs are all available for Scott Brown to read. He claims to be a lawyer. How could he look at the briefs and misinterpret them so badly as he has been doing before he even made his disparaging remarks? He had no reason to believe the people in her ads were actors.

Scott Brown has dug himself such a deep hole that you’d think he would know enough to stop digging.

When the country is several trillion dollars behind in the upkeep of its infrastructure, costs are low, business in the construction industry is slow, interest rates are at historic lows, why isn’t now the best time of all to invest in the work we will need to do sometime in the future anyway? Should we wait until business is very busy and the costs will be higher and delays longer? Can anyone explain the logic to me?

Is the Republican strategy to do the work when it will cost the most and compete with private sector work that needs to be done? Are Republicans in favor of inflation and bubbles? It would seem so by the timing they choose to do things like infrastructure investing and deficit financing.

It must be an indication of how desperate the Scott Brown supporters in Sturbridge are. The first sign we had for Elizabeth Warren was free-standing. It did have an old VISE-GRIP^® attached to one leg to stabilize it and keep it from blowing away in the wind. One day, we found the sign, VISE-GRIP^® and all, were missing. I figure that nobody would steal an opposition sign if they thought their own candidate could win legitimately.

Being an experienced resident of Sturbridge, I have a number of signs in reserve. This one went up on October 17, 2012 with a few extra security measures to protect it from theft. I guard with vigilance the expression of my political views as one of my federally guaranteed civil rights.

There are very few people in this world who have tried to intimidate me and have come away from the experience feeling that they are better off or have accomplished their mission.

Supposing there were a central being whose concern was running a good world economy.

This being might rightly notice that “If I can cut (labor) costs without destroying the customers, I could make more profit.”

This is the issue being discussed in my previous posts, Low Wages And High Unemployment Are Paralyzing The Global Economy and The Labor Market Is Not Self-Regulating; Governments Must Support Worker’s Fight For Higher Wages.

It occurred to me that the reason why people might be so resistant to the ideas in these posts is because they are focused on the other, equally valid face of the global economy.

The central being posited above might also rightly notice that “If I can raise the buying power of the customers without increasing my (labor) costs to profit killing levels, I could make more profit.”

There is a range in the middle between extremely low wages and no customers and extremely high wages and no profits where the economy can do well.  Adjustments to keep the economy in this range should always be sought.

However, when you reach or pass the extremes of low wages, no customers or high wages, no profits, then you have to recognize which boundary you are at to apply the proper remedy.  If you apply the proper remedy for the wrong boundary, this leads to further disaster.

To convince people to let you apply the proper remedy for the boundary you are at right now, you have to assure them that you know there is the other extreme and you are not proposing to go there.

Rather than construct your rules and enforcing mechanisms to address only the boundary problem you now face, it would be best if you could come up with rules that recognize the full spectrum of conditions that do occur and adjust themselves accordingly.  This is a very difficult task.  However, if you do not  have a clear picture of what are your goals, then you might not see what is wrong with the changes you propose that only address the current problem.