Bad Deeds for 12-7-2011

 

Romney Spent Nearly $100,000 to Hide His Records – Mitt Romney spent nearly $100,000 in state funds to replace computers in his office at the end of his term as governor of Massachusetts in 2007 as part of an unprecedented effort to keep his records secret. When Romney left the governorship of Massachusetts, 11 of his aides bought the hard drives of their state-issued computers to keep for themselves. Also before he left office, the governor’s staff had emails and other electronic communications by Romney’s administration wiped from state servers, state officials say.

Those actions erased much of the internal documentation of Romney’s four-year tenure as governor, which ended in January 2007. Precisely what information was erased is unclear.

 

Republicans Vote to Kill the Federal Agency Charged With Preventing Tampering of Voting Machines – Republicans in state legislatures across the country have spent the past year mounting an all-out assault on voting rights, pushing a slew of voter ID and redistricting measures that are widely expected to dilute the power of minority and low-income voters in next November’s elections. Now that effort has come to Capitol Hill, where the U.S. House voted Thursday to pass a GOP-backed bill to end the Election Assistance Commission (EAC)—the last line of defense against fraud and tampering in electronic voting systems around the country. The bill is now in the Senate, referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration.

Good-government groups, including the Campaign Legal Center, the League of Women Voters, and People for the American Way, have leaped to the commission’s defense, arguing that eliminating it poses a “threat to the health of our democracy and yet another distraction from the vital and unfinished business before the House.”

“There is no doubt that a voter suppression effort is underway in this nation,” Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) charged on the House floor. “Abolishing the Election Assistance Commission, an agency charged with ensuring that the vote of each American counts, is just another step in the voter suppression effort and would completely remove oversight of the most important process in our democracy.”

 

House Republicans Pushing Bill To Shift Regulation Authority To Congress – Congress would gain major new power over government regulations under legislation set for approval by the Republican-run House. The Office of Management and Budget said the bill “would throw all major regulations into a months-long limbo.” While Republicans insist the bill would help businesses by giving them cost savings to create jobs, the White House said the legislation would be “impeding business investment that is vital to economic growth.”

Besides the $100 million economic impact figure, the bill would apply to proposals that could lead to a major increase in costs or prices; or those that potentially would have a significant adverse effect on competition, employment, investment, productivity, innovation or competitiveness.

The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, an alliance of consumer, small business, labor, environmental and other groups, said the bill would:

_Undermine the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.

_Delay consumer product safety rules affecting toys, cribs and thousands of other consumer products.

_Make it more difficult for the Food and Drug Administration to ensure the safety of food and prescription drugs.

_Delay rules for Americans with disabilities.

_Endanger workers employed in mines, factories and other workplaces where on-the-job hazards exist.

 

Mitt Romney’s Pork Barrel Past – Far from decrying Washington’s spendthrift ways, Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, sought to position his state to hoover up every federal dollar it could. According to memos, emails, and other records now housed in the state archives, the Romney administration made the pursuit of federal funding a top priority, establishing a federal grants office to scour for opportunities and bolstering its presence in DC by retaining a powerful lobbying shop for help. Internal documents show the administration bemoaning its low ranking in an annual “pork list” detailing which states brought home the most federal bacon, and aggressively planning to boost that ranking. Which they did: Between 2003, when Romney took office, and 2006, Massachusetts climbed as high as nine spots in the pork rankings.

That Romney once coveted the spending he now denounces reinforces his image as a politician whose positions change with the political headwinds.

 

The Republican Effort to Restrict Voting Rights – Republican legislatures and governors across the country have launched an unprecedented effort to restrict voting rights among traditionally Democratic voting blocs. Learn more, and find out what Democrats are doing to fight back.

Regards,

Jim