Thursday, May 24, 2012

Romney and Mandel: A Real Lack of Ethics


••••  Does anyone know how many of Mitt Romney sons attended public schools?  Romney suddenly thinks he knows everything about public schools and wants to take federal education money and give it to states.  Really?  Do you really think that some governors can be trusted to use that money for education?  Why does Romney dislike and disrespect public school teachers so much???

>>>>>  Mitt Romney was interviewed recently. He said that, according to USA Today, that
 "I understand, for instance, how to read a balance sheet."
Really?  So can I, and millions of others.Unfortunately, Romney made his money by raiding companies, firing workers, absconding with their pensions, and still managing to collect millions of dollars for himself.  His riches were accomplished by destroying the lives of others.  How is that ethical????


****  In case you missed it------ Ohio's roaming Treasurer Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate for the Senate, has been the subject of an investigation by the FBI over some over the top campaign contributions.  The Toledo Blade reports that the Mandel campaign is giving back the campaign donations:

Ohio state Treasurer Josh Mandel, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, has returned $105,000 in campaign contributions that are under investigation by the FBI for possible campaign finance violations.

The money came from the employees of a North Canton business and their spouses and had sparked questions because contributions were made by individuals who did not have a record of making campaign donations and who did not appear to have high incomes.....

Will Josh Mandel ask for his thank you notes back? (See Plunderbund for an explanation about the Mandel thank you notes.)


•  Why does the Ohio GOP want to prevent you from voting??? 

Slate:

...While nobody has uncovered an epidemic of vote fraud, it’s true that a good deal of what goes wrong with elections is due to the human mistakes of poll workers. And presumably if those mistakes are not the fault of the voter, it makes no sense to reject that ballot. 

But these and other provisions were challenged last month when Tom Niehaus, president of the Ohio Senate, and Lou Blessing, a state representative, filed an action in the Ohio Supreme Court calling the consent decree into question. A few weeks ago the federal district judge who had issued the 2010 consent decree, ordered the two to stop challenging it in the state Supreme Court because, as he explained, as leaders of Ohio’s General Assembly suing in their “official” capacities, they were bound by the very consent decree they were challenging. Now Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted says he will seek to invalidate the consent decree, including the obligation to count ballots where government workers make mistakes. He will file a brief making his case by June 6. That means that the person in charge of administering the presidential election in Ohio is seeking to be relieved of his obligation to count ballots that, according to Ohio law, are valid. Should this battle continue to escalate, it could set up a massive confrontation between federal and state courts over state election law.......

....What possible reason could the Ohio GOP offer for expressly prohibiting poll workers from assisting voters in completing election forms or locating their correct polling place? One can only suppose that the objection to counting good ballots tainted only by worker error stem from that same noxious paranoid soup that has infected all modern electoral politics: mistrust for voters, mistrust for government workers, and mistrust for the single most basic premise of any democracy—that we want more people to vote, not fewer. Almost every aspect of the recent efforts to “improve the integrity” of the voting system actually ends up undermining the integrity of the system. But punishing voters for poll-worker error and silencing poll workers best placed to help voters achieves new lows in cynicism. The net effect will serve no purpose other than to raise doubts about voting as a whole. 

The Ohio Republicans are idiots!  They don't want you to vote, and they will do everything they can to prevent you from voting.