Mitt Romney Vetoed Flood Prep Funding In 2004, Blamed For Subsequent Flooding

WASHINGTON -- In the spring of 2004, Peabody, Mass., got drenched with rain, which flooded the downtown area. After the storm, then-Gov. Mitt Romney asked President George W. Bush to declare Essex, Middlesex and Suffolk Counties federal disaster areas, according to the Boston Globe.

That fall, the state legislature proposed spending $5.7 million on a flood prevention project to protect against future floods. Those funds would be matched by $22 million in federal money.

Romney vetoed it. This week, Romney has come under fire for suggesting that the federal government get out of the business of disaster relief. But his record in Massachusetts doesn't lend much support to the suggestion that states can handle it alone.

During the time of the Peabody fight, John Barrett, then the Democratic mayor of North Adams, was the vice president of the Massachusetts Mayors Association. He said the issue of flooding in Peabody was critical and that local officials had reached out to the legislature for help. "Every time it rained, it wiped out their downtown," Barrett told HuffPost.

Barrett chalked Romney's veto of the Peabody project up to a lack of familiarity with infrastructure in the state.

"This was not unusual for him. He didn’t understand infrastructure improvements. It was just the bottom line. He never visited communities. He never understood the issues. He never sat down with mayors or city managers. He never understood why those things were in the budget," Barrett said. "That money was requested by locals. It was a major league problem.”

... More at link: Huffington Post

[center][font size = 28]RECIPE FOR DISASTER[/font]
[font size = 6]MITT TO AMERICA: SINK OR SWIM [/font]
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Mitt Romney In GOP Debate: Shut Down Federal Disaster Agency, Send Responsibility To The States


... 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. ...

Full story at - HUFFPO

The most consequential polls of the day were probably in Ohio and Virginia.

The Ohio poll was a good one for Mr. Romney. The survey, conducted by the University of Cincinnati for a consortium of Ohio newspapers, showed the tied race, 49-49, with almost no undecided voters left. The same survey had given Mr. Obama a 5-point advantage before the Denver debate.

Some liberals have critiqued the Ohio poll for being out of date — it was in the field between Oct. 18 and Oct. 23, meaning that some of its interviews were conducted before the final presidential debate in Florida.

I think this criticism is probably overdone. There is little evidence that the race has changed all that much since the final debate; the FiveThirtyEight model finds that Mr. Obama has perhaps gained half a percentage point nationally since then, but probably not much more than that.

And apart from the timing, the poll has a lot going for it: it has a good track record and collected a reasonably large sample size, meaning that it gets a lot of weight in the FiveThirtyEight forecast.

But the poll should not be used to imply that the race is tightening further in Ohio. There have been 12 other polls of the state that also conducted at least some interviews after the Florida debate, and they showed Mr. Obama up by two points there on average, which is about where the FiveThirtyEight forecast now shows the state. If a candidate holds a two-point lead in a state, it is normal for some polls to show him tied or trailing by a point or so instead in contrast to others that might put him four or five points up.

That is pretty much what we see in Ohio right now, with the edge in the polling average remaining with Mr. Obama. The new poll reduced his chances of winning the state to 73 percent from 76 percent in the forecast.

... the potential for vote-tampering in Ohio through manipulation of Hart Intercivic's equipment is quite low. As the Cleveland Plain-Dealer reported, the Hart InterCivic machines used in Ohio don't record voters' selections directly — they are merely standalone scanners that tabulate paper ballots, so any close or suspect results could be confirmed through a recount:

Elections officials in Ohio's Hamilton and Williams counties — the only two of Ohio's 88 counties that use equipment made by Hart InterCivic — as well as company representatives say there's no way such meddling could occur.

Both counties use a paper balloting system in which results are tallied by scanners made by Hart InterCivic. All programming of the machines, diagnostic testing, and vote tabulation is done by elections staff in each county and no vote tabulation is done over the Internet, county election board representatives say. The paper ballots are there as backup and can be recounted with Democratic and Republican party representatives on hand.

"There is no truth to the idea that anyone could get into our system and tamper with the results," said Hamilton County elections board deputy director Sally Krisel.

Hamilton County’s primary voting source is a paper ballot. At the polling place, the voter scans the paper ballot into Hart InterCivic’s eScan digital imaging scanner. Hamilton County also provides Hart InterCivic’s eSlate Disabled Access Unit, so voter’s with disabilities may vote independently at the polling place.

In the video above, Moran clearly advised the fool in question, that it would be "tough" to vote for someone else, because of the required documentation. He humored him a bit, but indicated that he should commit his energy to a legit GOTV effort. Moran went on to suggest that there are places where GOTV would be fruitful. ... When Moran started to say "I don't want to see it" - meaning someone commit fraud, he was immediately cut off with a barrage of questions. Then, the interviewer started asking for names, which could be interpreted by Moran, to mean names to assist with a GOTV effort.

Most damning for O'Keefe - at roughly 17:20 minutes into the youtube video, O'Keefe CLEARLY inserts Moran's voice, his lips aren't moving. Yet, O'Keefe inserts the words "yeah a bank statement" in response to a question. The comment was (seemingly) lifted from another portion of the video, where Moran is advising on legitimate documentation. J.O. also changes the dialog, (which is again apparent) as the movement of Moran's lips do NOT match the words. It's the same thing O'Keefe did to Juan Vera. The face and lips were blurred and words apparently inserted. Not to mention, one can not see the interviewers face/words. The entire interview portion could be edited in.

WTF more do people need, to demonstrate that O'Keefe is a slimy fraud?

Moran leads the conversation back to legit GOTV efforts, over and over again. At 20 minutes in, Moran discourages the fool saying polls will be ready to enforce voter protection and are "cracking down on" fraud. He ends by suggesting again that the interviewer make phone calls.

The worst thing Moran did was perhaps humor the fraudster. While I wish he wouldn't have done so, it's a huge stretch to assert that Moran was involved in a conspiracy to commit voter fraud.

IMO, the only fraud involved in the questionable video, is O'Keefe.

As of Friday afternoon, Gallup's daily tracking poll of likely voters had Romney leading Obama by six percentage points, 51 percent to 45 percent.

The Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll, taken from a sample online, had Obama leading by three points on Friday and for much of this week. A Public Policy Polling daily survey had Obama leading by one point, Rand put him ahead by three points and Rasmussen showed the two candidates to be tied.

"Firms don't like being outliers - it causes a lot of self-doubt," said Harvard University political science professor Stephen Ansolabehere. "It's OK if you're wrong if everybody else is wrong with you. It's not OK to be wrong if you're all alone."

... Questions about the gap between Gallup's findings and those of other pollsters is the latest fuss this election season over polling methodology as partisan passions come to a boil in the heated final weeks before the November 6 presidential contest.

With a record of correctly predicting all but three of the 19 presidential races stretching back to 1936, Gallup is one of the most prestigious names in the business and its outlier status has other polling experts scratching their heads.

"They're just so out of kilter at the moment," said Simon Jackman, a Stanford University political science professor and author of a book on polling. "Either they're doing something really wacky or the other 18 pollsters out there are colluding, or something."

Gallup's editor in chief, Frank Newport, said he didn't know why his results didn't line up with others. Nor did he seem unnerved by the disparity.

"We try to keep our eyes on the boat and do the best job possible," he said. "We're going over some additional tweaks with our methodologists to make sure we're on top of it."

• American Pad & Paper: Bain invested $5 million in the small paper company in 1992, and reportedly collected $100 million in dividends on that investment. AMPAD went bankrupt in 2000, laying off 385 employees.

• Dade Behring: Bain Capital invested $415 million in a leveraged buyout in 1994, borrowed an additional $421 million, and ultimately walked away with $1.78 billion. Dade filed for bankruptcy in 2002, and 2,000 workers lost their jobs.

• DDI Corporation: Bain Capital reportedly invested $46.3 million in 1997, reaping $85.5 million in profits and an additional $10 million in management fees. When the company later went bankrupt, 2,100 workers were laid off.

• GS International: In a somewhat less profitable transaction, Bain Capital invested $60 million in 1993 and received $65 million in dividends. This company, too, went bankrupt in 2002, and 750 workers lost their jobs.

• Stage Stores: Bain invested $5 million to purchase the company and took it public in the mid-'90s, reaping $100 million from stock offerings. Stage filed for bankruptcy in 2000, and 5,795 workers reportedly were laid off.

And so on...

Bain made billions ... it purchased at least five companies that subsequently ended up in bankruptcy even as Bain walked away with eye-popping profits: