THE GUYS AROUND ROMNEY---FRIGHTENING

Romney has remained an enigma, even after the Republican Convention. As if his "Etch-A-Sketch" has been stuck in constant "shake up" clear-off mode and there is nothing on his slate to examine. He will not reveal his tax reports, he keeps his Mormonism, and his past as governor of Massachusetts under wraps, and focuses only on the fact that he is a very rich,white guy---and not Obama. So no one knows how he will govern. But what he can not hide from us is the identify of are his close advisors. They stand there visible to all. That information is all we have to give us insight into how Romney will govern as a president. The view is frightening.

It appears that Mitt Romney, perhaps like many in the capitalist class, is understandably concerned only with the bottom line, and not often dismayed or distracted by the source of donations or the nature of the people with whom one has to rub shoulders, as long as in the end, the entrepreneur in Mitt finds his tally sheet in "the black" and/or his actions lead to profit. For example the Los Angeles Times has reported (August 8, 2012) that 40% of Bain Capital’s start up money (about $9 million dollars) came from wealthy Salvadoran investors, members of the politically-connected families who supported the death squads in El Salvador (or with direct ties to the same), and whose agents, among other terrible acts, assassinated Catholic Archbishop Romero and tortured and brutally murdered the four American Maryknoll nuns during that nation's brutal civil war. This story is all the more important because Romney has placed Bain in the forefront as his most important achievement -- the “pearl in his crown” of credentials he offers as credibility for the highest job in the land. Romney who characterizes himself as a deeply committed and faithful Mormon, seems to have put his faith and moral misgivings aside and taken the money from these men with only a cursory examination of their backgrounds and the source of their funds.

We learn too (August 31, 2012) in a Rolling Stone piece by Matt Taibibi, that Romney, who famously advised the President deny bail-out money to GM and let it go under, himself made good use of bail out money for and Federal help when his parent-organisation Bain and Company (under his direction at the time) had to seek help to avoid default on its loans. This penchant for turning a blind eye to any disturbing or unpleasant facts and focusing like a laser on his “goal”, may have been part of Romney's success in building Bain Capital's portfolio and profit margin, but it becomes more troubling for a man who hopes to become the chief executive of our diverse nation and one of the most powerful men of the free world--the President of the USA. This same predeliction for ignoring the backgrounds of financial supporters for Bain Capital (and ignoring the embarrassing fact that he used government largess to stave off bankruptcy) can be also seen in the choice of people with whom Romney surrounds himself on his Presidential campaign. Below, I give brief sketches (except where I was so flabbergasted by my research, that I just could not help expanding the text perhaps a bit longer than necessary) of three men Romney has chosen as advisors and financial supporters.

Romney who professes to be morally opposed to gambling, and who drinks no alcohol, coffee, or tea, has had no trouble accepting millions of dollars from Sheldon Adelson, whose funds are derived from his international gambling casinos and one of the top eight richest men in the USA. He has no compunction about taking foreign policy advice and cozying up to Dan Senor, one of the most tarnished men in the Bush ensemble who helped to lead us into the disaster of Iraq and the chaos of civil war in that nation. And finally, he has chosen Paul Ryan, one of the most conservative, nay reactionary, Congressmen in the House as his closest advisor and Vice President.

SHELDON ADELSON

Mr Adelson was born in Boston Mass, (August 4, 1933), and briefly attended CityCollege in NY. He was a salesman and investor and is presently the CEO of the Las Vegas, Sands Hotel and Casino, The Venetian Macao Ltd,Macao, and Sands Expo and Convention Center, Las Vegas, and is the owner of the Israeli daily, “Israel Ya Yom”. He is listed as the eighth wealthiest American, with a net worth of over $25 billion dollars. His Las Vegas complex is the largest in the world, with over 4thousand suites, and a similar number of hotel rooms and a 120,000square foot casino. Adelson is a unabashed and vocal supporter of Israel and the far right wing policies of the present Netanyahu government. Romney’s carelessness in choice of advisors (or was it a purposeful intention of finding the most right wing, reactionary, fringe elements to associate with, so as to curry favor with the base of the “new”Republican Party) led him into a foreign policy morass on his recent trip to the UK, Israel, and Poland. While in the UK, Romney, in a play designed to score points at home, and underscore his “experience” as an Olympic organizer, 'dissed' the preparations being made by the City of London for the 2012 Olympics He was immediately and rightly attacked by the UK press, as well as the Prime Minister, Mr. Cameron, of the present Tory government, as a “jerk” and a “bounder” for mouthing the self-serving comments.

He stumbled again when he arrived in Israel, with Sheldon Adelson in tow (or visa-versa). Again, focusing “like a laser” on his goals, sometimes leads Romney far off the trail and into dangerous territory. In a “A Glimmer of Daylight” Hannah Gross, Aug 6, 2012 comments that Romney added Israel to his itinerary to please “mega-donors like Sheldon Adelson” who came along on the trip, perhaps to make sure Romney would deliver on his pro-Israel stance and other promises. Gross concludes that Romney “held out” by refusing to publicly support the release of the infamous American-citizen and Israeli spy, Jonathan Pollard, who is currently serving a life sentence in US Federal prison. According to The Daily Beast, Adelson has been urging Romney to come out in favor of Pollard’s release, but according to Gross, so far, Romney has held out (so far). Eli Lake and Dan Ephron report:But Romney did deliver, for Adelson (and Dan Senor) in a frightening display of ineptness, and blatant and dangerous pandering to Jewish voters at home.

While in Israel Romney gave a speech in front of Adelson and a group of like-minded Israeli donors during which he made a sophomoric comparison between the “culture” of the Jews and those of the Palestinians. A group Adelson has denigrated and termed “an invented people”.

Romney, practically reading from the pages of Dan Senor’s best-seller book (more on this below) claimed that it was the “cultural differences” which separated the two people and resulted in a great entrepreneurial and business surge in Israel but left the West Bank in a economic slump. This example shows how uniformed, weak, and subject to pressure by agggressive advisors Romney actually is. I find these dangerous traits in a leader.

Romney blamed the poverty of the occupied West Bank on the “culture” of the people, and slipped

in a bit or quasi-religious, moral innuendo by stating that the “hand of God” was also apparent. That hand helped the Israelis, a people, who according to Romney’s faith were chosen by God, as were the Mormons.

Roger Cohen, NYT, Aug 6, 2012. responded to Romney" in a column “Dream Baby Dream,” stating: “But the heart of the matter, lies elsewhere: Obama actually believes in a Palestinian state. Romney is loved by Netanyahu’s Likud party because he gives signals he does not. In Jerusalem, he attended a breakfast fundraiser with Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire American casino mogul and largest donor to the Romney super Pac. Adelson is the man who famously stated "Newt Gingrich was right to call the Palestinians an 'invented people'.” Romney then suggested Palestinians are culturally inferior, incapable of showing the “economic vitality” of Israel — as if a people under occupation, without a port or an airport, controlling neither their territorial (sic) nor their air space, facing roadblocks, walls, barriers, fences, labyrinthine bureaucracy and capricious humiliation are somehow deficient in not turning themselves into Singapore.” I ask is this the kind of person we would like to see in the Oval Office advising President Romney of what course to take in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world?

DAN SENOR

Dan Senor was born in Utica, NY, raised in Canada,and educated in Israel (Jerusalem's Hebrew University). Senor returned to the US to attend Harvard Business School. After graduation, he worked briefly for a business firm with ties to the Bush family. He left there to start his "political career" as an intern with the AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee),the infamous and powerful pro-Israeli lobby in Washington where (he claims) his ideas on politics were formulated. He has stated that his experience at AIPAC "prepared me for my work in politics.”

His Bush family contacts gave him entrée into the George W Bush Administration where he first served as assistant to the Press Secretary, but later, was GW's choice to be spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq during the early years of the war. Michael Breen, VP of the Truman National Security Project who served in Iraq as an Army Captain while Senor was at the CPA as a civilian spokesperson, stated that “There is no greater aberration in American policy than that of the 2003-4 period in Iraq (when) Dan (Senor) was the spokesman for the CPA...The CPA was the most dysfunctional organization of any in the last 100 years of American history and now he’s a foreign policy adviser for Mitt Romney. That was literally the time and the place (when) that country descended into chaos, and he was the guy telling the American people that it was 'going well'.”

Senor’s right-wing extreme "pro-Israel” credentials were cemented in 2009,when he co-founded the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI)—a pressure group that promotes U.S. military intervention in the Midle East. His co-founders were leading neo-conservative figures William Kristol and Robert Kagan.In the lead up to the disastrous Iraq invasion and war Senor (with his biased background?) was a Pentagon and White House advisor(?)based in Qatar at US Central command. He soon went to work for General Jay Garner during the final days of fighting in southern Iraq. Senor was located in Baghdad on April 20, 2003, where he served as chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority(CPA) in Iraq, and as a Senior Advisor to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer,and an adviser to the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Senor's tenor as Bremer's front-man and spokes person where his half-truths, obfuscations and purposeful misleading statements earned him the distasteful epithet "Bush's spinmeister" by the frustrated journalist corps in Baghdad.

Senor's close ties with Israel and Saul Singer a journalist and American emigre living and working in Israel resulted in the publication of a best seller "Start Up Nation" (ranked fifth on the NYT business best seller list). The book is a glowing "tub-thumping" story of Israel's economic miracle, in which the authors probe the question of how a small nation (6-7 million population) only sixty years old, and surrounded by enemies, has become an astounding entrepreneurial success. The book notes that there are more than "63 companies listed on NY's NADAQ, more than any other foreign nation". Singer, Senor's co-author, is the American-born Israeli and former editor of the Jerusalem Post and brother-in-law of Senor. He apparently brought the writing and editing skills to the team, while Senor had the US contacts and name recognition for a modern successful publication. The book is written from an Israeli perspective that according to Jon Rosen (USA Today) "may irk those with reservations about Israeli foreign policy".

Maureen Farrell(Forbes) states that the book is "worth reading as a history of Israel"and of capitalism, "but ignores the effects of US foreign aid". In Israel, Ruth Schuster (Haaretz) states the book "is tarnished by a jarring, patriotism (for Israel)". While the CSM reviewer notes that the story of Israel's success is more complex than the simple idea of immigration and required military service that the authors attribute for its success. The cause of Israeli success "is more complex than (the authors) paint it to be". Economist Yusuf Mansour, writing in the Jordan Times, argues that two of the factors to which Senor and Singer attribute Israel's success,the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and Soviet-Jewish immigration, have only been sustainable because of the foreign aid that Israel receives from the United States and private sources, mostly from America. Mansour also faults the authors for suggesting that the disparity between entrepreneurship in Israeli-Arab and Jewish sectors is rooted in the exemption of Arabs from military service, rather than what Mansour perceives to be "the discriminatory policies of Israel against its Arab citizens," particular in educationand the labor market. Gal Beckerman, writing in 'The Forward' magazine, observes that the book "presents Israel in an extremely positive light as a bastion of entrepreneurial spirit and technological achievement. It skirts a discrussion of the conflict with the Palestinians, or even the wealth-inequality within Israel, thereby dovetailing nicely with recent public relations efforts by Israel to shift attention away from its problems and toward its achievements."

Watch out for this guy. He would be a just as big a disaster as he was in Iraq, next to a President Romney in the Oval Office..

PAUL RYAN

Born in Janesville Wisconsin (Januay 29, 1970) to a prominent business family. Ryan's father, also Paul, was a lawyer, who worked for the Ryan family construction concern--Ryan Central Construction Corporation. The senior Paul Ryan died at an early age. Ryan lived a middle-class, privileged life in small-town Janesville and upon graduation attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he majored in economics. He claims to have avidly read the fictional works of far-right Russian emigre', Ayn Rand and right-wing economists Von Mises, Hayek, and Friedman.

Though steeped in Ayn Rand policies and the fantasy fiction of super Randian entrepreneurs, soon after graduation in 1992, he made a bee-line, not to New York and a business career, but to Washington, where he accepted a Congressional position in government as staff economist in Rep. Robert Kasten (R-Wi) office in Washington D.C. From there he moved on to Empower America (in Washington) a conservative lobby group founded by iconic right wing Republicans Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick and William Bennett. Six years later, Ryan was elected to his own seat in Congress from the First Congressional District in Wisconsin, to becoming the second-youngest member of the House. He has been in the Congress since 1998.

His relatively isolated First District, is not served by major news outlets. As a result, he is infamous for saying one thing to his news-outlet isolated constituency at town meetings, while speaking in much different terms to his right-wing colleagues in Washington, assured that little of Washington conversations will reach his voters on the evening news broadcast. These circumstances, and his perfidy, have given him great freedom to follow a course designed to advance his own personal political career, and a fuzzy concept of what is the "truth".

With his freedom in Congress from voter-oversight, his actual political-output has been scanty. In his fourteen years in office, he has authored only two bills: one renaming a district post office, and another on reducing the excise tax on arrow shafts! Ryan presents himself as a young, moderate reasonable conservative...but his votes, his co-sponsored bills and his rhetoric condemn him as a hard-nosed reactionary.

Some facts about Ryan which will able one to see the man beneath the moderate, reasonable veneer.

Ryan, credits the late Ayn Rand, author of dated, barely passable fiction, inspired as a reaction to the Russian Revolution of 1917, as the inspiration for him to follow a career in public service. He stated as a Congressman in 2005 that "The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand." In fact, Ryan demanded that all of the congressional interns in his office read Rand's writings. He also gave copies of her novel "Atlas Shrugged" to his staff as Christmas presents. In typical self-serving fashion, Ryan, when he was recently under consideration as VP material for Mitt Romney, only in April 2012, quickly and abruptly abandoned quoting and pushing the anti-religious, anti-Catholic, pro-abortion stances of Ayn Rand.

When the Catholic Bishops criticized his budget and Medicare proposals, as anti-Catholic, and unfair to the poor and needy, Ryan came out with a statment rejecting Rand's philosophy "as an atheistic one, as it reduces human interactions down to mere contracts.” Rand no longer served his purposes, though all those Christmas gifts and demands for reading Randian fiction by his staff will be difficult to sweep under the rug.

Ryans reputation as a "hawk economist" focused in fiscal responsibility, deficit reduction, and specialist in fiscal matters and a "wonk" with mastery of facts and figures relating to fiscal policy is weak too. Though he tries to present himself, now during the Obama Administrationa as a fiscal hawk, he was a "big spending" conservative in the second Bush (GWB jr.) Administration.

In those years, rather than a deficit hawk, he toed the Bush line, by voting for the two deficit-exploding Bush tax cuts (in 2001 and 2003), the giant spending bill-- Medicare Part D--that gave a windfall to the pharmaceutical giants, and which added greatly to the deficit. He also voted for Bush's 'Troubled Asset Relief Program', and for Bush he voted for the 2008 $700 billion bank bailout. He voted for Bush's unpaid for wars and tax cuts for the wealthy, all of which drastically increased the deficit.

But when Obama took office Ryan became a deficit hawk and voted against the only "reasonable" deficit reduction proposal to come out of Congress--the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan.

In 1999, Ryan voted in favor of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, which repealed certain provisions of the Depression-era, Glass–Steagall Act that had sucessfully regulated banking for forty years. The repeal of that bill, which had wisely forced the separation of normal savings-and-loan banking functions from investor funded financial institutions which dealt with risky bonds and derivative funds, ultimately led to the banking and financial collapse and the Great Recession of 2007-2008.

That is one vote that Ryan should have scrawled across his forehead, so that when he castigates President Obama for the present financial circumstances, we all can be reminded of his perfidy. In addition, Ryan co-sponsored a 2008 bill that would repeal the requirement that the Federal Reserve System reduce unemployment by quantitative easing.

Ryan's other "against" votes. He voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 for equal pay for women. He voted against the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009 which prevented banks from taking unfair advantage of credit card users. He called out "Nay" when the Dodd–Frank, Wall-Street-Reform and Consumer Protection Act was up for a vote. This is the bill which Ryan characterized as "class warfare."

On education, Ryan stands with the knuckle draggers and troglodytes of the far right. He voted to cut outlays for education, stating that improved education could come only through more effective utilization of resources, rather than more resources spent. Ryan's stated plans for education would spend 1/3 less on training, employment and social services than the Obama proposals over the next decade. For students applying for Pell Grants, Ryan would lower the income level qualifications from $33,000 dollars to $23,000 dollars and it has been calculated that this alone would deny more than one million students access to higher education over the next decade. In addition students would be responsible for the interest accruing on these loans while they were still in training, rather than having these rates begin after they graduated and had an opportunity to earn a living.

On medicare, Ryan proposed legislation, called the Ryan Plan, which outlined changes to entitlement spending, including a controversial proposal to replace Medicare with a voucher program for seniors.

On April 1, 2009, Ryan introduced an alternative to the 2010 United States federal budget. It would have also phased out Medicare's traditional fee-for-service model, instead offering fixed sums, in the form of vouchers, for Medicare beneficiaries with which to buy private insurance, starting in 2021. The federal government would no longer pay for Medicare benefits for persons born after 1958. The plan attracted criticism since the voucher payments would not be set to increase as medical costs increase, leaving beneficiaries partially uninsured.

In 2010, citing data from the Tax Policy Center, economist and columnist Paul Krugman criticized Ryan's contention that his plan would reduce the deficit, opining that this contention is due to the"effects of his proposed spending cuts — period. It didn't address the revenue losses from his tax cuts."Krugman further called the proposed spending cuts a "sham" because they depended on making a severe cut in domestic discretionary spending without specifying the programs to be cut, and on "dismantling Medicare as we know it," which is politically unrealistic.

Ryan describes himself as "as pro-life as a person gets" and has been described as an "ardent, unwavering foe of abortion rights. During Ryan's 1998 campaign for Congress, he "expressed his willingness to let states criminally prosecute women who have abortions," telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the time that he "would let states decide what criminal penalties would beattached to abortions," and while not stating that he supports jailing women who have an abortion, stated: "if it's illegal, it's illegal." He believes that a woman should not be allowed to end a pregnancy even if it resulted from rape or incest. Ryan voted to cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood and Title X family planning program (preventive health grants to poor and uninsured families). He co-sponsored the Sanctity of Life Act, which would provide that fertilized eggs "shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood" and would have given "the Congress, each State, the District of Columbia, and all United States territories the authority to protect the lives of all human beings residing in its respective jurisdictions." This could lead to laws that would "criminalize all abortion, as well as invitro fertilization and some forms of birth control."

Ryan supports a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, was against repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, would prevent same-sex couples to adopt, and voted against the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes PreventionAct (an act that would protect gays from violence).

Ryan has been described as "very very pro-gun". He voted against a bill for stronger background checks at gun shows, and supports federal legislation which would permit a person who can carry a concealed weapon in one state to be able to carry a firearm in every other state.

He voted against the DREAM Act, which would have permitted conditional permanent residency to illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as childrenif they attend college or serve in the military, are of good moralcharacter, and meet other criteria.

In foreign affairs has been called "truly a man of the George Bush era," (Daniel Larison, The Conservative). Ryan voted for George Bush's Iraq War and Bush's disastrous troop surge in Iraq. In 2007, he voted to increase defense spending, including increases for various expensive, unneeded and deficit-expanding weapons systems-- and for the war in Afghanistan.

Ryan's First Congressional District in Wisconsin stretches west from Racine on the shores of Lake Michigan to Janesport on the western boundary. It has a population of nearly 670,000, with a median income of about $50,000, or just about even with the national average. The population is predominantly urban (84%), and white (90%). Nearly sixty percent (57.7%) of the workers are employed in 'white collar' jobs, while 27% are employed in blue collar ones. The Cook PVI rating (a measure of the intensity of support for one or the other of our two political parties) of R+1, indicates it trends Republican.

In Ryan's first campaign in the First District he used misleading statements and catch phrases such as Ryan's "Paycheck Protection Plan" to garner votes. Though a government employee since graduation, he often posed with a yellow hard hat in front of a construction sithacker a place where he actually worked, to give the impression that he was a "businessman". Or appearing with his sister and her young baby at a time when he was not married, to suggest to voters he had a family. Ryan, who was in favor of reducing and gutting Social Security, got his constituents to believe (by means of misleading catch phrases) that he was in favor of actual protection of their social security benefits while his political objectives were really very different. Ryan has moved upward in Congress and now to the VP slot on the Romney ticket...but he continues to use his phony representations and mistruths to obfuscate and misinform. Watch out for him.

We must keep this guy under wraps in Wisconsin's First District. Perhaps his constituents will get the picture now that he is exposed on the nation's stage.

Get the picture?

rjk