comMITTed to Romney!

Tags: Mitt Romney

February 23rd, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

The office of Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, sends along this chart, showing that ‘America’s Per Capita Government Debt Worse Than Greece,’ as well as Ireland, Italy, France, Portugal, and Spain:

Isn’t this, and shouldn’t this be the most important and almost only issue? Who is most qualified to remove our debt?

~ Mike: Twitter, Personal Blog

Newt

February 22nd, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

Newt did a great job when he spoke about media bias. He is a great politician, and I would vote for him if all a president did was go around and argue with the media… That is important, but I still believe after all these years that Romney will do a better job once in office…

Mitt Romney Dog

February 19th, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney Dog

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/transcript

Labor unions often encourage inefficiency

February 15th, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

A former running back from the University of Arkansas named Bruce Lee ran the western region for the United Auto Workers, and was in charge of the Fremont Union Local 1364. Now normally, somebody like Bruce Lee is supposed to defend his union members no matter what. But even he says they were awful.

Bruce Lee

It was considered the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the United States. And it was a reputation that was well earned. Everything was a fight. They spent more time on grievances and on things like that than they did on producing cars. They had strikes all the time. It was just chaos constantly.

Jeffrey Liker

The Fremont, California plant for General Motors was bad by GM standards, and GM’s average was bad by Toyota standards, so this is the worst among the bad mediocre plants in GM.

Frank Langfitt

Again, that’s Jeffrey Liker, who’s interviewed workers and management at Fremont for his research.

Jeffrey Liker

One of the expressions was, you can buy anything you want in the GM plant in Fremont. If you want sex, if you want drugs, if you want alcohol, it’s there. During breaks, during lunch time, if you want to gamble illegally– any illegal activity was available for the asking within that plant.

Frank Langfitt

Sounds like prison.

Jeffrey Liker

Actually the analogy to prison is a good analogy. Because the workers were stuck there, because they could not find anything close to that level of job, and pay, and benefits, at their level of education and skill. So they were trapped there. And they also felt like, we have a job for life, and the union will always protect us. So we’re stuck here, and it’s long term, and then all these illegal things crop up so we can entertain ourselves while we’re stuck here.

Rick Madrid

A lot of booze on the line. I mean, it was just amazing– and as long as you did your job, they really didn’t care.

Frank Langfitt

What kind of booze, what were people drinking?

Rick Madrid

Whiskey, gin.

Frank Langfitt

That’s Rick Madrid. He began working at the plant in 1955. He mounted tires on Chevy trucks.

Rick Madrid

When I was mounting tires, we’d drink. You know, I’d bring a thermos of screwdrivers with me. But I never was into drugs.

Frank Langfitt

Sex?

Rick Madrid

Love it.

Frank Langfitt

Did you ever have sex at the plant?

Rick Madrid

Yeah.

Frank Langfitt

Frequently?

Rick Madrid

I wasn’t that fortunate.

Peter Ross

There was a guy in there, he would be selling the pot.

Frank Langfitt

Peter Ross repaired machinery on the assembly line at GM.

Peter Ross

I’d be walking through the plant with my tools and my radio. You see a big cloud of smoke, you don’t want to inhale it, you’d get a contact high.

Frank Langfitt

If you’re wondering how people kept their jobs, well, back then the UAW was still quite powerful. Under the union contract, it was almost impossible to fire anybody, and if management ticked off the union, workers could just shut the plant down in minutes.

With that sort of leverage, absenteeism became absurd. On a normal day, one out of five workers just didn’t show up. It was even worse on Mondays. Billy Haggerty worked in hood and fender assembly. He says so few workers showed up some mornings, management couldn’t start the line.

Billy Haggerty

They brought a lot of people off the street to fill in when they didn’t have enough people.

Frank Langfitt

Who would they find?

Billy Haggerty

Right across the street to the bar and grab people out of there and bring them in.

Frank Langfitt

Workers filed grievances– formal complaints against management– over all kinds of things. Someone who isn’t your boss asks you to clean something up? Hit him with a grievance. A manager steps in to do a job that isn’t his? Grievance. The strategy was simple. Pile up grievances real or imagined by the thousands, then use them to squeeze money or concessions out of management.

And Fremont workers struck back at their bosses in other ways. They’d intentionally screw up the vehicles. Put coke bottles or loose bolts inside the door panels so they’d rattle and annoy the customer. They’d scratch cars. Richard Aguilar inspected vehicles at the plant. He saw one guy do something even worse.

Richard Aguilar

He left some loose bolts on the front suspension. That was dangerous. I went and told the system manager right away. They went out there and they checked, and there was like 400 cars he had done that to. He was mad because they had suspended him for drinking.

~ Mike: Twitter, Personal Blog

We should prohibit unions from using dues automatically deducted from paychecks for political purposes

February 15th, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

Explanation:

Prohibits Political Contributions by Payroll Deduction. Prohibitions on Contributions to Candidates. Initiative Statute. Restricts union political fundraising by prohibiting use of payroll-deducted funds for political purposes. Same use restriction would apply to payroll deductions, if any, by corporations or government contractors. Permits voluntary employee contributions to employer or union committees if authorized yearly, in writing. Prohibits unions and corporations from contributing directly or indirectly to candidates and candidate-controlled committees. Other political expenditures remain unrestricted, including corporate expenditures from available resources not limited by payroll deduction prohibition. Limits government contractor contributions to elected officers or officer-controlled committees. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Increased state implementation and enforcement costs of up to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, potentially offset in part by revenues from fines.

Reasons to agree:

Money in politics should be freely given. The current system is not fair, because unions have access to money they can steal from their workers paychecks. It is bad enough that government takes taxes from your paycheck. It is OK for the government to take money from dead-beat-dads, but unions shouldn’t be able to just steal a portion of worker’s paychecks. “Paycheck protection” is a good thing.

We should require all union elections to use the secret ballot

February 15th, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

Reasons to agree:

Secret ballots are good because people can’t threaten you to vote a certain way. A non secret ballot means nothing, but that thugs are running things. A non secret ballot is an affront to freedom.

The US does not currently have enough money to set up a permanent moon base by 2020

February 12th, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

As of February 12, 2012 our debt per taxpayer is $135,000.

It would be too expensive to build a moon base by 2020

Reasons to agree:

John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University and founder of the school’s Space Policy Institute says a moon base today could cost somewhere between $250 billion to $500 billion. However he does not show us any of his math, and his moon base was not as ambitious as Newt’s plan. Newt’s plan calls for a moon colony of 13,000.
John Derbyshire says the following: “The cost of the Apollo program, which put twelve men on the Moon for a few days each, was 170 billion in 2005 dollars, according to NASA. Allowing for seven years’ worth of inflation, let’s round to $200 billion, say $16 billion per astronaut. Newt’s plan calls for a moon colony of 13,000, so we’re looking at a price tag of $200 trillion or so.That’s very rough and ready, of course. There would be economies of scale. On the other hand, there’d be huge things to be done — building living quarters, supplying colony-scale food and air, and so on — that Apollo didn’t have to think about. Still, let’s be optimistic and suppose the project could come in at 100 trillion dollars, say eight billion per colonist.” It would be great to go to the moon, if we had the money. We don’t. We shouldn’t.

We don’t have enough money to make our current obligations

Reasons to agree:

As of February 12, 2012 we have a national debt of 15 trillion and 343 billion dollars.
As of February 12, 2012 our debt per taxpayer is $135,000.

We don’t have the money to build a safe moon base by 2020

Reasons to agree

We don’t have enough money to make our current obligations. (Idea score: +2)
It would be too expensive to build a moon base by 2020. (Idea score: +2)
We have to prioritize things we would like to spend our money on.
We really have to prioritize things we are willing to go into more debt to pay for. Money is not infinite. Money does not grow on trees. When you borrow money, you have to pay interest.
There are many things that we should fund before we build a permanent space colony on the moon.
A moon colony would be nice, but we should wait until technology

An assignment to a moon colony built by 2020 would be a death sentence

There are many technological problems we need to figure out before we commit to building a self sustainable moon colony

Reasons to agree:

Power
1. The long lunar night would impede reliance on solar power. A moon day is 708 hours, or 59 days. This means you each moon night would last 29 days. We don’t have batteries that could last 29 days.
2. A nuclear reactor on the surface of the moon would be prone to damage.
3. It would be very difficult to bury a nuclear reactor under the surface of the moon, as there are currently no backhoes on the moon, no gas to run a backhoe, and no dealerships to repair a broken backhoes. Any other heavy equipment necessary to build living quarters, dig into the moon’s crust, extract, or refine metals, would be to heavy to transport into space.
4. Sure, launching rockets from the moon is easier than earth, because its gravity is 1/6th that of earth, but there are no spare rockets just sitting around on the moon. It would take way more energy to send a rocket from here, slow it down and land it on the moon, and then shoot it off to the mars again. Until we have industrialized the moon so much that we are capable of building a rocket on the moon, it doesn’t make any to talk about the advantage of shooting rockets from the moon, because it would obviously be easier to go straight to mars, instead of going to the moon, landing, and then building up the momentum needed to get to Mars.
Temperature
1. A Newt moon colony would have to withstand large temperature extremes. The lack of a substantial atmosphere for insulation results in temperature extremes and makes the Moon’s surface conditions somewhat like a deep space vacuum. During the day (about 354 hours) the moon has an average temperature of about 107 °C (225 °F). However it can rise as high as 123 °C (253 °F). The night period (also 354 hours) has an average temperature of about −153 °C (−243 °F).
2. Because robots can deal better with cold temperate, why not send more of them to the moon before we send people?
Gravity
1. Low (one-sixth g) gravity on the Moon is not strong enough to prevent detrimental effects to human health in the long term. Muscles and bones weaken if they are not used. Exposure to weightlessness over month-long periods has been demonstrated to cause deterioration of physiological systems, such as loss of bone and muscle mass and a depressed immune system.
2. Because robots can deal better with low gravity, why not send more of them to the moon before we send people?
Radiation
1. It also leaves the Lunar surface exposed to radiation raising the issues of the health threat from cosmic rays and the risk of proton exposure from the solar wind. Shielding against solar flares during expeditions would be problematic.
2. Because robots can deal better with readiation, why not send more of them to the moon before we send people?
Plasma Sheets
1. When the moon passes through the magnetotail of the earth, the plasma sheet whips across its surface. Electrons crash into the moon and are released again by UV photons on the day side but build up voltages on the dark side. This causes a negative charge build up from −200 V to −1,000 V. 1,000 volts is more than enough to kill you. 120V, and 240V in your house can kill you. 1kV would be much worse. Not to speak of what this would do to electronics…
Meteors
1. The lack of an atmosphere increases the chances of the colonial site being hit by meteors, which would impact upon the surface directly, as they have done throughout the Moon’s history. Even small pebbles and dust (micrometeoroids) have the potential to damage or destroy insufficiently protected structures.
Moon Dust
1. Moon dust is an extremely abrasive glassy substance formed by micrometeorites and unrounded due to the lack of weathering. It sticks to everything and can damage equipment, and it may be toxic. (Lunar explorers face moon dust dilemma”. msnbc.com. Retrieved 2008-02-16, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15607792/))
2. Because robots can deal better with toxic moon dust, why not send more of them to the moon before we send people?
Food
1. Growing crops on the Moon faces many difficult challenges due to the long lunar night (354 hours), extreme variation in surface temperature, exposure to solar flares, nitrogen-poor soil, and lack of insects for pollination. Due to the lack of any atmosphere on the Moon, plants would need to be grown in sealed chambers. The use of electric lighting to compensate for the 354-hour night might be difficult: a single acre of plants on Earth enjoys a peak 4 megawatts of sunlight power at noon.
2. Because robots don’t need food, why not send more of them to the moon before we send people?
One of the less obvious difficulties lies not with the Moon itself but rather with the political and national interests of the nations engaged in colonization. Assuming that colonization efforts were able to overcome the difficulties outlined above - there would likely be issues regarding the rights of nations and their colonies to exploit resources on the lunar surface, to stake territorial claims and other issues of sovereignty which would have to be agreed upon before one or more nations established a permanent presence on the moon. The ongoing negotiations and debate regarding the Antarctic is a good case study for prospective lunar colonization efforts in that it highlights the numerous pitfalls of developing/inhabiting a location that is subject to the claims of more than one sovereign nation.
Carbon, Nitrogen, and Hydrogen
1. The Moon is highly depleted in important light elements (volatiles), such as carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen. No sufficient means exists for recovering these volatiles on the Moon. These elements would need to be imported from some other source to support life and industrial processes. Also, volatiles would need to be stringently recycled. This would limit the colony’s rate of growth and keep it dependent on Earth. Also the technology does not currently exist for importing volatiles from other parts of the solar system.

We should wait to go to the moon for technology to advance

Reasons to agree:

Solar panel technology, which you would need on the moon, continues to advance.
Battery technology, which you would need on the moon, continues to advance.
Lightweight computer technology, which you would need on the moon, continues to advance.
Material Science technology continues to advance.
Low cost rocket technology, which you would need to get to the moon, continues to advance.
There are many things that we should fund before we build a permanent space colony on the moon
It would be too expensive to build a moon base by 2020. We don’t have enough money to make our current obligations
We don’t have the money to build a safe moon base by 2020
An assignment to a moon colony built by 2020 would be a death sentence
There are many technological problems we need to figure out before we commit to building a self sustainable moon colony
Fuel sell technology, which would be needed on the moon, continues to advance.
Proton Exchange Membrane cells have not yet been tested in space.
Algae-based gas exchanger technology is still advancing, which would be needed for life support.

There are many things that we should fund before we build a permanent space colony on the moon

Reasons to agree:

We should pay off our debt before we go to the moon.
We should fix poverty before we build a colony on the moon.
We should fix global warming before we build a colony on the moon.
We should ensure freedom of the press everyone on the planet before we colonize the moon.
We should colonize the ocean before we colonize the moon.
We should colonize death valley before we colonize the moon.
We should re-colonize Detroit before we colonize the moon.
A moon colony would inspire our kids kids to daydream a little bit. Interest in further exploration of the Moon was beginning to wane among the American public in the 1970s, but it would go up a bit if we said we were going to build a permanent moon base. But kids would all be daydreaming from a bleak world of poverty. The reality of trying to build a permanent colony of 13,000 people before 2020 would bankrupt our kids future.

The media is liberal

February 11th, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

Reasons to agree:

75% to 85% of reporters self identify themselves as democrats. Some say “Democrats are not liberal”, but they are more liberal than the general public. The point is, obviously, that the media is more liberal than an impartial observer, which they pretend to be.
People who go into journalism are different than people that go into more practical careers. We need all kinds. We need journalist. I’m just pointing out that people are different. People who go into journalism are choosing a less practical career choice. Again I am not making a value judgment as which choice is better, I’m just saying they are different. People who choose journalism are choosing a more touchy feely idealistic career. Liberalism tends to be more idealistic, and Conservatism tends to be more practical. We all like the idea of socialism, conservatives are just more practical and realize that socialism has unintended consequences. We all like the idea of reforming criminals, but conservatives are less idealistic, or optimistic about our chances for success. We all would like to live in a world where government can be big and efficient, just because it is the right thing to do, but conservatives are pessimistic about human motivation, and governments capacity to do good with their big power. Again journalist and liberals are more idealistic, and have more trust in human nature. Liberals because of their political philosophy, journalist because of their idealistic and less practical career choice. These artsy types don’t want to be constrained with putting food on the table. They want the government to take care of all of these so they can sit around and talk about how smart they are.
“Indeed, the media elites covering national politics would be indistinguishable from the Democratic Party except the Democratic Party isn’t liberal enough. A higher percentage of the Washington press corps voted for Clinton in 1992 than did his demographic category: ‘Registered Democrats.’” — Ann Coulter, P. 56. For all of you Ann Coulter haters, don’t tell me that just because she said it, that it is false… You have to argue with what she said, not with the fact that someone you don’t like said something. No one is wrong 100% of the time, and this talking past each other is the cause of our problems. When ever you give a quote from someone, people who disagree with you will always try to change the subject from the actual words that the person said, and if what they said is true or not, and try to change the subject to talking about the person talking. This is stupid, counterproductive, and one of the reasons it is painful to try to have a meaningful conversation with anyone.
Public media (NPR PBS) is liberal.
1. NPR gets its money from the Government. They pay check requires them to believe that government should be involved in the arts. Conservatives believe in limited government, and so, of course, people who get their money from the government, are not going to support policies that would remove their job. What’s funny is NPR and PBS often tells its listeners that they are less biased than media that gets its funding by advertisements, but they are, of course, more biased. Even if you could try to not be biased, subconsciously you would assume the government should be doing all sorts of stuff, because, after all, you wouldn’t believe that your life work is meaningless, or not valuable.
The people who “moderate” the debates are all democratic hacks.
1. George Stephanopoulos was the Bill Clinton press secretary
2. Chris Matthews was a presidential speechwriter during the Carter administration
“It was revealed that the Democratic Party received a total donation of $1,020,816, given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), while the Republican Party received only $142,863 via 193 donations.” That is 7 times the amount that republicans got. Obama, Democrats got 88 percent of 2008 contributions by TV network execs, writers, reporters.” Wikipedia http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/obama-democrats-got-88-percent-2008-contributions-tv-network-execs-writers
“A study cited frequently by critics of a “liberal media bias” in American journalism is The Media Elite, a 1986 book co-authored by political scientists Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Lichter. They surveyed journalists at national media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the broadcast networks. The survey found that most of these journalists were Democratic voters whose attitudes were well to the left of the general public on a variety of topics, including such hot-button social issues as abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights. Then they compared journalists’ attitudes to their coverage of controversial issues such as the safety of nuclear power, school busing to promote racial integration, and the energy crisis of the 1970s. The authors concluded that journalists’ coverage of controversial issues reflected their own attitudes, and the predominance of political liberals in newsrooms therefore pushed news coverage in a liberal direction. They presented this tilt as a mostly unconscious process of like-minded individuals projecting their shared assumptions onto their interpretations of reality.”~ Wikipedia, R. Lichter, S. Rothman, and L. Lichter, The Media Elite. New York: Hastings House, 1991.
In a survey conducted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1997, 61% of reporters stated that they were members of or shared the beliefs of the Democratic Party. Only 15% say their beliefs were best represented by the Republican Party. This leaves 24% undecided or Independent. ASNE report”. Retrieved 2007-03-28, http://www.asne.org/kiosk/reports/97reports/journalists90s/journalists.html
A 2002 study by Jim A. Kuypers of Dartmouth College, Press Bias and Politics, investigated the issue of media bias. In this study of 116 mainstream US papers, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, Kuypers stated that the mainstream press in America tends to favor liberal viewpoints. They claimed that reporters who they thought were expressing moderate or conservative points of view were often labeled as holding a minority point of view. Kuypers said he found liberal bias in reporting a variety of issues including race, welfare reform, environmental protection, and gun control. Professor’s Study Shows Liberal Bias in News Media – 09/17/2002, http://web.archive.org/web/20080205062048/http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200209/CUL20020917b.html
Financial reporters are never allowed to write about companies in which they have an interest, while political reporters routinely refuse to answer questions that might reveal their own political positions and thus allow the reader to adjust for any bias, whether conscious or subconscious, that their reporting might contain. If financial reporters have to regulate their self interest, so should political reporters.
During a 2006 exchange with Hewitt, longtime Washington Post reporter and columnist Thomas Edsall said that Democrats outnumbered Republicans 15-25 to 1 among members of the mainstream media (”The Hugh Hewitt Show”. Hughhewitt.townhall.com. 2011-12-06. Retrieved 2011-12-10., http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/Transcript_Page.aspx?ContentGuid=2a63c078-2e33-46d8-b85a-a91a5257fca2)

“Today we borrow almost forty cents of every dollar we spend. That is unconscionable. It’s unsustainable. It’s reckless. It’s immoral. And, if I am President, it will end.” Mitt Romney

February 10th, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

If you want to put it on twitter, you have to shorten it a bit: “We borrow almost $0.40 of every $1 we spend. This is unconscionable, unsustainable, reckless, immoral & if I am President, it will end”~MR

Tell me something about yourself that only people who know you well know

February 5th, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

Tom Bevan: Switching gears to a lighter subject, for our readers to get a better sense of who you are as a person, tell me something about yourself that only people who know you well know.

Governor Mitt Romney: I love practical jokes and humor. That there’s frankly no joke that I don’t think is funny. I love practical jokes, but I don’t like being scared. My sons will tell you that when they have jumped out of the tree when I’m coming from work in the middle of the night and said “boo” to me, that there is swift and severe retribution.

I have five boys in the family, and it’s constant competition, sport, humor, and practical jokes. For instance, when we gathered for my big - was it the announcement day, no I guess it was the big fund raising thing, we were going to have a January national call day - all my sons came back to gather for that. We were there at the dinner table and someone said, “hey, should we go have a 440 race at the high school?” Sure enough, we all went upstairs and found our respective jogging shorts, put on tennis shoes or running shoes, went over to the high school and had a 440 competition at the track.

Tom Bevan: Who won?

Governor Mitt Romney: I came in last. I was thinking I could beat my son Ben but, boy, even though he’s in medical school and has gotta be out of shape, he still beat me, darn it!

Tags: Football

http://myclob.pbworks.com/

Mike Laub’s advice to Mitt Romney

February 5th, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

I run this site:

because I am interested in politics, and I wanted to create Mitt’s beliefs as a starting off point for arguments. I would love it if Mitt created a site, that allowed people to submit reasons to agree and disagree with his beliefs, similar to what I’m trying to do. In brief, this would allow him to lead a cause, and for us to get involved. It shouldn’t be about one person, but about leading a cause.

To this end, I would love for Romney to create a website like this:

http://debatepedia.idebate.org/

or this:

http://www.createdebate.com/

I have similar goals to those websites, but want to do things a bit differently. I figured if I built the site, it would become popular, and people would want to join and help me make it better… I wanted to create a grass roots movement… It hasn’t worked so well… I mean I have hundreds of pages, all of Romney’s press releases, speeches, and I feel it is pretty organized, and has a lot of good content… but no one cares. Let me give you some stats about the site. Here are the stats over the last month for the number of visits that the different pages get:

1. http://myclob.pbworks.com/w/page/21956775/Ann%20Romney 15,240 visits last month

2. http://myclob.pbworks.com/w/page/21957741/George%20Romney 4,619 visits last month

3. http://myclob.pbworks.com/w/page/21959098/Photography 4,276 visits last month

4. Why did your father not give you any of his inheritance 2,362 visits last month

It is sort of depressing, but it seems that people care about Ann Romney, George Romney, want to see photos from Mitts life, and want to know about how Romney got his wealth. None of my other pages gets more than 1,000 visits a month. Its depressing to me on a couple of accounts: it seems like Romney supporters are not engaged in trying to help him win specific arguments, they are just curious about his biography. And it seems I was able to build a better Ann Romney page than Romney’s web guys.

If you google “Ann Romney” many of the top ranked images come from my site, but none of the top ranked images come from a Mitt Romney official website. How is it that his website sucks so bad? I suck at making website… I was just ticked off that all the Ann Romney photos were photo-shopped to show her in her underwear. I work full time as a Sr. Electrical engineer, have 3 kids, have no formal website design training, but I was able to build a better Ann Romney website than Mitt’s guys. What gives?

Romney’s website has 3 issues: Jobs, Healthcare, and Foreign Policy. I know Obama tried to do too many things, never focused on Jobs, and was spread to thin. It is important to focus, but on every issue someone else is going to define Mitt Romney, unless he defines himself.

I think Romney needs to read this article:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/wired40_ceo.html

change course, invite us all to help him, and lead our causes.

Romney has made many arguments over his career. These arguments need to be better organized than just dumped under 3 headings. Couldn’t he try to harness people power to do something like Wikipedia for his arguments? Couldn’t he be a little more transparent?

Am I wrong? Is it a problem that none of Ann Romney’s photos come from MittRomney.com? Should Romney be a major content provider? Should he his site be better organized? Should he follow the advice of the Wired article? Would it help people get to know him more? And should he do some sort of wiki or online project as as a way of getting people involved? I guess he is winning, so why criticize? Is he waiting for the general election to become more specific? Let me know what you think.

Tags: Mitt Romney, Web2.0

1st hand* memories of Mitt by those who worked with him

February 4th, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

* Not necessarily important or “positive”. In their own words. Preferable long quotes, so they are not “taken out of context”. Please help me find the rest of the quote, or new ones. If you know him or worked with him, please contact me, give me proof of who you are, and I’ll add your comments to the list.

School
- Stuart White, Cranbrook classmate of Romney’s
  - Mitt’s father, George, was the governor of Michigan all the years that I knew Mitt at the Cranbrook school. This meant that a Michigan state police detail was at their home all the time. Mitt befriended some of the officers and they left police gifts with him: a shirt, a faux badge, a light, a police belt. Mitt had an innate wackiness, and he, our friend Butch McDonald and I hatched a plot to use some of those gifts to frighten our unsuspecting dates from Kingswood, Cranbrook’s sister school. The school policy was that the girls could sign out until 11 p.m. on weekends. Earlier in the afternoon of our date, we planted empty beer bottles in Butch’s trunk. We agreed that at 10:45 p.m., our car would slowly approach a secluded section of dirt road near the school, and that we would pull over and turn out the lights. Mitt, driving a dark ‘65 American Motors vehicle (his father had revived that ailing car company before running for governor) topped with a revolving red light, and dressed in his goofy police uniform with a U.S. Air Force hat and dark glasses, came up behind us and approached the driver’s window. In a gravelly voice, he asked the two of us to exit the vehicle and open the trunk. The bottles were discovered and rattled for effect. “Step back into the car, boys,” the “officer” said, and returned to his vehicle. We expressed mock alarm, peeled out on the dirt road and rushed the girls into the school parking lot just in time. Minutes later, at the local drive-in, we three perpetrators reveled in our success.
- Gregg Dearth, Cranbrook classmate
  - Mitt Romney and I were members of the Cranbrook pep squad, also called cheerleaders. We were un-coached and only barely organized. Someone gave me a domesticated duck and suggested I bring it to one of our football games as the unofficial school mascot. We were the Cranbrook Cranes, and the school mascot, an elegant, regal, long-legged crane, is emblazoned in many places around campus. So I thought it was quite the joke for the pep squad to show up with a squat, fat pseudo-crane mascot to cheer on the football players. The problem came after the game. We had no place to keep the duck. Giving it to a restaurant was all I could think of. Then Mitt stepped forward and volunteered to take charge of our little mascot. He’d put it at his parents’ house, where there was a small pond and it could live in a natural, duck-friendly setting until the next game. ¶ But Mitt showed up at the next game sans duck. It seems that when he went to get the duck to bring it to the game, all he could find was a small patch of feathers. A fox had gotten there first. Mitt could have laughed this off, as probably the rest of us would have. But he didn’t. It was quite obvious that he not only felt sorry for the duck, he also felt sorry that he had let us down. We tried to let him off the hook as best as we could, but I suspect that to this day, he still feels bad about that duck. In fact, as the years went by, it was one of those things you knew not to bring up.
His “mission”
- Dane Mcbride, served as a missionary in France with Romney
  - Mitt Romney had about the same success as a Mormon missionary in France as most people had: not much. I served with him in Bordeaux and Paris off and on for 18 months. A common way of making contacts is by knocking door to door. We would introduce ourselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and could we have a moment of their time. Usually the answer was: “Non, merci.” It was an exercise in humility. But Mitt always knew how to encourage us to keep going. Primarily, he led by example. During our service, some missionaries had begun to feel that in keeping with their ministerial calling, it was inappropriate to laugh out loud very much. Mitt always had a strong laugh and at the time of the proposed laughing ban, he was the top leader in the mission, assistant to the mission president. So he really dispelled the anti-laughing crowd, mostly with his humor. During his service in France, he was the driver in an automobile accident in which a woman who was very dear to us was killed. He could have been much more morose, but he led us through that difficult time and returned to his cheery self. While we were there, we read the book Think and Grow Rich!’ by Napoleon Hill. Some of our church leaders recommended we use those concepts of positive thinking to overcome doubt and discouragement so we could perform at a higher level. They meant it as applied to our missionary work, but of course it could be applied to business as well. I’ve often said that Mitt and I read that book at the same time but he read it better than I did.
Work
- Tom Stemberg, founder and former president and chief executive of Staples Inc.
  - “Mitt was just really nice, humble, listened, asked questions…” “And he talked about how at Bain, unlike other venture capitalists, they would actually help you run the business.”
- Coleman Andrews, co-founded Bain Capital with Romney in 1983
  - Mitt had hired me as a young associate at Bain & Co. in 1978, and we worked together occasionally between then and 1983, when we laid the foundations for the creation of Bain Capital. For six months, we traipsed around the United States, Europe and Latin America, seeking investors to back our plan, getting plenty of “no, thank yous” along the way. One potential investor was concerned that we would spend lavishly on fancy offices and needless expenses. I could tell that this bothered Mitt, because he is very careful about spending. Finally, I told the gentleman: “You need to understand how frugal Mitt is. When he and Ann go to the movies, they pop their own popcorn in advance. Mitt figures the home-popped Orville Redenbacher costs him only 62 cents, which is a whole lot cheaper than $4.50 for the big tub at the movie counter.” Coleman Andrews, co-founded Bain Capital with Romney in 1983
- William Weld, Republican former governor of Massachusetts
  - When Mitt was at Bain Capital, I referred a couple of deals to him. In that business, you have to be a vacuum cleaner and amass more facts about the investment than anyone else in the world. That’s a skill set that serves him well. Romney was so successful as a private equity investor that he was able to command a 30 percent share of the profits for Bain as general partner. That figure normally would be 20 percent. He was the most successful private equity investor in the country and with his track record, people were happy to give a 30 percent share to Bain. If you pay sufficient attention to detail you have less risk. And with him, nothing is left to chance unless it has to be. He is running his campaign that way - marvelous planning at all levels.
Bishop
- Bryce Clark, a filmmaker in Utah
  - “He told me that, as human beings, our work isn’t measured by taking the sum of our good deeds and the sum of our bad deeds and seeing how things even out… He said…. The only thing you need to think about is: Are you trying to improve, are you trying to do better? And if you are, then you’re a saint.’ ” “He talked a lot about the Savior, and what the atonement means,” Mr. Clark said. “He said, ‘I just want you to know you are not alone.’ ” In the months and years that followed, Mr. Romney wrote the young man notes of encouragement, frequently reminding him of what he had said that summer night, about always “trying to improve.” Mr. Clark says he still has them.
    - As quoted in, “For Romney, a Role of Faith and Authority” By SHERYL GAY STOLBERGPublished: October 15, 2011 in the New York Times
- Philip Barlow
  - He was highly motivated and “hands-on,” said Philip Barlow, a professor at Utah State University, who as a graduate student was one of Mr. Romney’s top aides as bishop. If somebody’s roof leaked, Mr. Romney would show up with a ladder to fix it. Mr. Barlow remembers Mr. Romney picking butternut squash and yanking weeds on the church’s communal farm.
    - For Romney, a Role of Faith and Authority” By SHERYL GAY STOLBERGPublished: October 15, 2011 in the New York Times
- Clayton Christensen, a Harvard business professor
  - “He said, ‘I was just driving home from work, and I had a feeling that I needed to stop by and tell you that God loves you.’ ” Mr. Christensen was so moved, he recalled, that he wept.
    - As quoted in, “For Romney, a Role of Faith and Authority” By SHERYL GAY STOLBERGPublished: October 15, 2011 in the New York Times
Olympics
- Fraser Bullock, chief operating officer and chief financial officer of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee
  - When Mitt assumed leadership as president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, the Justice Department was considering indicting us as an organizing committee, finances were troubling and we simply didn’t have the money to put on the Games. Mitt immediately worked on raising revenue and on cutting costs. Before he arrived, the organizing board used to have elaborate lunches accented with elegant decorations. I wasn’t there, but that high-end catering was the stuff of rumors. For Mitt’s first meeting, he served pizza and charged a dollar a slice. The message was clear: Be responsible about how you spend money.However, the budget challenge was nothing compared with the obligation to keep people from 83 nations safe at the Olympics just five months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.I will never forget the opening ceremonies and watching Mitt, President Bush and Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, standing at attention as the flag from the World Trade Center was brought in to the stadium. A hushed, reverent crowd, more than 50,000 strong, listened as our national anthem was played.- Fraser Bullock, chief operating officer and chief financial officer of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee
- Tom Stemberg, founder and former president and chief executive of Staples Inc.
  - I will never forget Mitt calmly rattling off and quantifying the different financial problems of the Salt Lake City Olympics. He had been running the operation for a few weeks, and the magnitude of the issues was coming into focus. Tens of millions here, tens of millions there, and the media and sponsors riveting their attention on the scandals he had inherited. I asked how I could help. Because his Bain Capital had been my first institutional investor at Staples and he had been a member of our board for 15 years, he said he knew full well that I was too cheap to buy an Olympic sponsorship for $10 million or so. A few months later he called with a different opportunity. He had personally solicited Office Depot and Office Max to be Olympic sponsors. Both had turned him down, so he could now offer me an opportunity to become an official Olympic “supplier.” Much less money, but the ability to use the rings and tickets. I jumped at it. However, for weeks his normally crackerjack staff did not follow through. Then Mitt called. “Tom, I am terribly sorry. Right around the time of our meeting, IMG persuaded the brand new Office Depot CEO to take a major sponsorship. You are out. I feel terrible given my history with you and Staples, but I have to respect what is best for the Games versus my personal relationships. I will get you guys some tickets, but unfortunately they will not be great.” I wasn’t happy, but I knew it was how Mitt operated: He did the right thing, whether his friends liked it or not.- Tom Stemberg, founder and former president and chief executive of Staples Inc.
Governor
- Judith Dushku, associate professor of government at Suffolk University in Boston
  - I had known Mitt Romney for more than 20 years when I went to speak to him in his campaign office in early 1994. We attended the same church and I know a couple of his children quite well and they’re all lovely people. But there’s a difference between being a lovely family and being a knowledgeable leader. When I went to see him, he had recently announced that he was running against Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and I thought it would be important for him to hear from someone who’d been active in women’s politics in Massachusetts.I congratulated him on taking a pro-choice position, one reason I had been open to working with him. I remember his response was something like: “Well, this is Massachusetts. I realized I had to take this position,” which was the first indication to me that what I had understood to be his personal view was a stance he was actually taking pragmatically. He went on that day to talk about an aunt of his who had died during a botched abortion and how he thought legalized abortion was important. But those around him, and people who knew him closely in the ward, knew that it was a position he had taken because he thought he had to in order to win.- Judith Dushku, associate professor of government at Suffolk University in Boston
- Kerry Healey, lieutenant governor of Massachusetts during Romney’s term as governor
  - After we were sworn in as governor and lieutenant governor in Massachusetts, Mitt and I received some very sobering news: The true budget gap was more than $3 billion (out of a $23 billion budget), up from the projected $1 billion gap. We had campaigned during the fiscal crisis of 2002-03, when many states, including Massachusetts, saw their tax revenue collapse and vowed to close the gap without raising taxes. Mitt asked his managers to accomplish the same work, with fewer resources, by developing new approaches. So instead of inspecting wetlands from the ground, the new leaner environmental affairs office increased enforcement actions by taking regular aerial photos of endangered wetlands. A plane could cover more ground more cheaply and effectively than a bureaucrat in a car. Two parks departments, one a legendary haven for no-show patronage positions, were merged despite the howls from legislators who counted on securing well-paid summer jobs by the public pool for kids of their friends and relatives. Mitt provided leadership in tough times, spurred innovation, honored the work behind each tax dollar and respected families.- Kerry Healey, lieutenant governor of Massachusetts during Romney’s term as governor

Raising taxes hurts working people and scares away jobs

February 4th, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

“I said no to a tax hike; raising taxes hurts working people and scares away jobs. I also said no to more borrowing; borrowing just shifts our problems to the backs of our kids . . . Instead, I went after waste, inefficiency, duplication, and patronage.”

Governor Mitt Romney, Boston Globe, October 24, 2005

Do you agree with Romney that “raising taxes hurts working people and scares away jobs”? I want to use his candidacy to advance his cause. This means arguments. This means debate. Thomas Jefferson said we should list pros and cons. Here is my list of reasons to agree, please help me advance the argument:

Raising taxes hurts working people and scares away jobs
Reasons to agree

Ireland lowered taxes, and brought all sorts of jobs there.
We can’t get red of all taxes, but relatively speaking, the higher taxes, the less money companies have to hire people. You say, yes, but taxes can be given to working people. The question is who gives money to working people more efficiently: businesses through jobs or government through handouts. Handouts usually go to the very poor, discourage work, not working people, and they often reward laziness instead of rewarding work.
If New York has a lot higher taxes, people will move their worldwide headquarters to Houston or London.

Jan 10th 2003 ROMNEY SEEKS EXPANDED AUTHORITY TO BALANCE BUDGET Calls for shared sacrifice in order to avoid disproportionate cuts to poor and needy

February 1st, 2012 | Comments Off | Posted in Mitt Romney

Saying the choice is between disproportionate cuts to programs serving the most needy citizens of Massachusetts or shared reductions in spending, Governor Mitt Romney today filed legislation to broaden his authority to bring the state budget into balance in the current fiscal 2003 year.

“A true partnership means sharing in good times and bad. In good times, the Commonwealth shared its prosperity with cities and towns,” said Romney in an address to the Massachusetts Municipal Association.

“Now that the state has hit hard times, we need cities and towns to join us in tightening their belts,” Romney said.

Romney said he anticipates a significant shortfall for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2003, which was not foreseen a few short months ago. Most of the focus had been on a looming budget gap in the 2004 fiscal year.

“Our problem is simple: spending is high and cash is low. When we began our transition two months ago, every indication was that the current budget was balanced. That is not the case, and immediate, hard action is required to achieve fiscal balance,” said Romney.

The proposed legislation would permit the Governor to review local aid and higher education accounts in addressing deficiencies in revenue for the current fiscal year. Those accounts are currently beyond the reach of Romney’s so-called “9C authority” to reduce spending.

According to Romney, his current “9C authority” would force disproportionate cuts on the elderly, poor and disabled.

“If we are forced to balance this budget on the backs of our seniors and the poor, we will expose the core services of government to disproportionate cuts,” said Romney. “That is not fair. The best solution is to spread the burden.”

Romney tasked Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey with the job of acting as liaison to cities and towns during the fiscal emergency. She will work with mayors and local officials to devise a package of changes designed to give them the flexibility to manage their local budgets.

Healey will collect information in direct meetings with mayors and electronically via the Internet.

“Over the next few weeks, I will be traveling the state meeting with mayors and local officials to solicit their advice on how we can make the coming months less challenging for local communities,” Healey said.

“We view this moment of economic crisis as an opportunity to remove some of the financial and bureaucratic burdens the state has saddled local government with over the years,” she added.

Healey said she has already heard from local officials seeking relief with transportation issues, purchasing requirements, unfunded mandates and onerous construction regulations.

Due to balance of power issues, Romney’s proposed legislation does not affect the Judiciary or the Legislature, although each will be asked to make voluntary reductions in their own spending.

“I do not believe the best way to find solutions to our fiscal problems is to sit on Beacon Hill and simply issue directives and orders to our cities and towns. Instead, I believe we must come together to find the least painful path through this crisis,” said Romney.

“We must have the cities and towns at the table as we craft our answer to the budgetary challenges that confront us so that the solutions we propose do not unfairly target health and human service programs,” he said.