Romney Family Investment Ties To Voting Machine Company That Could Decide The Election Causing Concern

By Rick Ungar | Forbes – Mon, Oct 22, 2012

It’s 3:00 a.m. on November 7, 2012.

With the painfully close presidential election now down to who wins the battleground state of Ohio, no network dares to call the race and risk repeating the mistakes of 2000 when a few networks jumped the gun on picking a winner.

As the magic boards used by the networks go ‘up close and personal’ on every county in the Buckeye State, word begins to circulate that there might be a snafu with some electronic voting machines in a number of Cincinnati based precincts. There have already been complaints that broken machines were not being quickly replaced in precincts that tend to lean Democratic and now, word is coming in that there may be some software issues.

The network political departments get busy and, in short order, discover that the machines used in Hamilton County, Ohio—the county home of Cincinnati— are supplied by Hart Intercivic, a national provider of voting systems in use in a wide variety of counties scattered throughout the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Colorado and Ohio.

A quick Internet search reveals that there may be reason for concern.

A test conducted in 2007 by the Ohio Secretary of State revealed that five of the electronic voting systems the state was looking to use in the upcoming 2008 presidential election had failed badly, each easily susceptible to chicanery that could alter the results of an election.

As reported in the NY Times “At polling stations, teams working on the study were able to pick locks to access memory cards and use hand-held devices to plug false vote counts into machines. At boards of election, they were able to introduce malignant software into servers.”

We learn that one of the companies whose machines had failed was none other than Hart Intercivic. With television time to fill and no ability to declare a winner so that the long night’s broadcast can be brought to a close, the staffs keep digging for relevant information to keep the attention of their viewers—and that is when it gets very real.

It turns out that Hart Intercivic is owned, in large part, by H.I.G. Capital—a large investment fund with billions of dollars under management—that was founded by a fellow named Tony Tamer. While is is unclear just how much H.I.G. owns of Hart Intercivic, we do learn that H.I.G. employees hold at least two of the five Hart Intercivic board seats.  A little more digging turns up a few tidbits of data than soon become ‘the story’. 

Tony Tamer, H.I.G.'s founder turns out to be a major bundler for the Mitt Romney campaign,  along with three other directors of H.I.G. who are also big-time money raisers for Romney.  Indeed, as fate would have it, two of those directors—Douglas Berman And Brian Schwartz were actually in attendance at the now infamous "47 percent" fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida.  With that news, voters everywhere start to get this queasy feeling in the pits of their stomach.  But wait—if you’re feeling a bit ill now, you’ll want to get the anti-acids ready to go because it’s about get really strange.

To everyone’s amazement, we learn that two members of the Hart Intercivic Neil Tuch and Jeff Bohl have made direct contributions to the Romney campaign. This, despite the fact that they represent 40 percent of the full board of directors of a company whose independent, disinterested and studiously non-partisan status in any election taking place on their voting machines would seemingly be a ‘no brainer’.

To Mr. Bohl’s credit, after giving a total of $4,000 to “Romney For President”, it must have occurred to him that it might not look so good for a board member of a company whose voting machines are to be a part of the presidential election to be playing favorites—so he gave $250 to Barack Obama to sort of balance the scales.

Mr. Tuch? Not so much. Interestingly, Mr. Bohl lists himself as an investor at H.I.G. Capital for his Romney contributions but his far smaller donation to Obama was done as “Jeff Bohl, self-employed innkeeper”.

And finally, we learn that H.I.G. is the 11th largest of all contributors to the Romney effort.

Did I say “finally”? My bad...because there is, indeed, more.

Can you guess who is reported to have a financial relationship with H.I.G. Capital? Numerous media sources, including Truthout, are reporting that Solamere Capital—the investment firm run by Mitt Romney’s son, Tagg, and the home of money put into the closely held firm by Tagg’s uncle Scott, mother Anne and, of course, the dad who might just be the next President of the United States—depending upon how the vote count turns out, in our little tale, in the State of Ohio—have shared business interests with H.I.G. either directly or via Solamere Advisors which is owned, in part, by Solamere Capital, including a reported investment in H.I.G. by either Solamere Capital or Solamere Advisors.

Lee Fang,in his piece for the Nation exploring the government related activities of various companies in which Solamere has an interest writes-

"Meanwhile, HIG Capital—one of the largest Solamere partners, with nearly $10 billion of equity capital—owns a number of other firms that are closely monitoring the federal government. "

While the Cincinnati scenario is —at this point—fiction, the rest of this story is all too true, including the part where the voting machines to be used in Hamilton County will be those provided by Hart Intercivic.

And while I am not suggesting conspiracies or that anyone would get involved in any foul play here, most particularly the GOP candidate for President, how is it possible that so many people could exercise so much bad judgment?

The sanctity of voting in America is supposed to be one of our most important virtues. So concerned are we with a ‘clean’ process that James O’Keefe has made a career entrapping, video taping and destroying those sympathetic to Democratic Party candidates and causes who cross the line when it comes to the voting process. And that's just fine. If Mr. O'Keefe can legitimately expose someone engaging in voter fraud, he most certainly should call them out.

So, why would these individuals who serve on the board of directors of Hart Intercivic go out of their way to make a contribution to any political candidate given the critical importance of their company remaining above reproach when it comes to the political process? And why would those who run the company that owns Hart Intercivic be giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to a political candidate? And why would a political candidate and his family have a financial relationship with a company that owns a chunk of the voting machine company that will be counting the actual votes given to that political candidate or his opponent?

Keith Olbermann was suspended from his job at MSNBC for donating a couple hundred bucks to a local candidate that was a friend of his. Why? Because his employer required that journalists at the network stay free of having given such contributions to any candidate for all the obvious reasons.

Is it really too much to ask that those who control the voting machines that record and count the votes of  our elections be held to at least the same standard?

Hopefully, everything will go swimmingly in Cincinnati on Election Day. And, if it doesn’t, it will no doubt be the result of honest error.

Yet, because of this uncomfortable chain of ownership, we now find ourselves with one more headache among the many headaches that accompany the important work of choosing an American president and believing that the process was a fair one—particularly when such an election comes down to a very few votes as may well be the case on Election Day, 2012.

Really, guys. You couldn’t find anything else to invest in? You couldn’t donate all those hundreds of thousands to charity rather than put it into political contributions so that your fellow countrymen would have no reason to ever doubt or question the results of so important an election—or any election for that matter, even if it's the choice of a county dogcatcher?

I truly wonder sometimes just what these allegedly smart people have inside their heads—or, more importantly, their hearts.

Thank you Sweetheart!

The rich, the poor, and the presidency

By James K. Galbraith and J. Travis Hale

October 22, 2012S

 

A recent paper from the Russell Sage Foundation reports that income-based residential segregation in America has risen sharply over the past 40 years; in 1970 about 65 percent of families lived in middle-income neighborhoods but only 44 percent do so today. The rest now live in neighborhoods that are distinctly either rich or poor, with affluent Americans being especially likely to be surrounded by their income peers. These findings parallel estimates we have been making, from different data, since 2005. In a generation, the spatial polarization of incomes has become an American fact of life.

Does this fact have political implications? We believe it may. Indeed, there seems to be a party that’s benefiting from increasing residential segregation by income – and, oddly enough, it’s the Democrats.

The Columbia political scientist Andrew Gelman has noted an apparent paradox: in presidential elections rich people tend to vote Republican, but rich states tend to vote Democratic. This can happen because the income-voting relationship differs from state to state. Thus in wealthy but arch-blue Connecticut the relationship is much weaker than in non-wealthy and arch-red Mississippi – a fact that prompted Gelman to ask, in the title to one article, “What’s the Matter with Connecticut?”

But why should the wealthy in (say) Connecticut (or California) tend to be Democrats while those in Mississippi (or Texas) so rarely are?  We suggest a possible explanation: It’s not where the wealth is that matters — it’s how insulated it is from where it isn’t.

While income inequality, measured between persons or households, is higher in Mississippi than in Connecticut, spatial segregation is greater in Connecticut. That is, in Mississippi, rich and poor tend to live quite near each other, inside the same towns, counties and school districts, while in Connecticut, which is a well-known mosaic of wealthy and working-class towns, they don’t. And that means that in local politics, at least, Connecticut’s rich and the poor are often not in direct political conflict. They don’t live in the same towns, sit on the same school boards, argue quite so much over zoning or local property taxes. So conflicts rooted in class (and also in race) tend to be muted. None of this makes it easier for the poor to be Republican. But it does make it a bit easier for the well-to-do to be Democrats; it weakens their class politics, at least at the national level.

If this explanation is about right, then spatially-segregated states should tend to vote Democratic in presidential elections, and spatially homogeneous ones should tend to be Republican. How well does this prediction hold up? Here are the results for 2000 and 2008.

In 2000, the ten most polarized states (by our measure, in order) were New York, Connecticut, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington, Maryland, Illinois, Virginia and Michigan. Of these only Virginia voted for George W. Bush. The ten least polarized states were South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, West Virginia, Vermont, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Arkansas and Wyoming; of these only Vermont and Iowa voted for Al Gore.

By 2008, the map had changed a bit. Michigan had dropped back in the rankings, while Florida entered the top-ten. Barack Obama won each of the ten most polarized states. Meanwhile the ten least polarized states had added Nebraska while losing Wyoming. Of the 10 least polarized states in 2008, John McCain lost only Iowa and Vermont.

And what does the list foretell for 2012? Here are the least polarized states, as of 2010: South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Iowa, Vermont, Mississippi, Nebraska, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Louisiana, Idaho, Maine, Alabama and Alaska. Of that list, based on current polls the president will carry Vermont and Maine for sure, and maybe Iowa – though the polls have Iowa closer this year than four years ago. The rest are Mitt Romney’s, almost for sure.

As for the most polarized states, they are New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, Hawaii, Arizona, Minnesota and Delaware. Is there a sure Romney state in the lot? Well, Florida is a battleground, and Virginia remains close enough in some polls. And there’s Arizona. Arizona went for Bush and of course for McCain, but it is, according to some polls, “Barely Republican,” this year.

Is the relationship between spatial segregation and electoral outcomes a statistical fluke? It could be: we haven’t tested alternative models and maybe the relationship we observe has another underlying cause. But we think there’s something to it. The adage that familiarity breeds contempt has, it seems to us, the awful ring of truth.

And if this is true, then the strong movement toward an income-segregated America – a movement led especially by rich folk escaping from big-city schools and property taxes – could have an interesting side effect. Down the road, by easing the class conflicts of an increasingly unequal nation, it could produce final defeat for the national Republican Party in presidential elections. After all, the Electoral College is winner-take-all – and while the fifteen most geo-polarized states have 253 electoral votes, the seventeen least polarized states have only 86.

It seems that “not getting out much” could carry a heavy cost, and not just this year, for Republicans.  Whether it will lead to a Democratic Party worthy of the name is another question.

THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE AMERICA WORK

Bearing Sons Can Alter Your Mind

by Melissa Lee Phillips on 26 September 2012, 6:25 PM

Something borrowed. Cells that migrate between mother and fetus during pregnancy can persist after the pregnancy ends.

Credit: Asdfghjk/Thinkstock

Giving a whole new meaning to "pregnancy brain," a new study shows that male DNA—likely left over from pregnancy with a male fetus—can persist in a woman's brain throughout her life. Although the biological impact of this foreign DNA is unclear, the study also found that women with more male DNA in their brains were less likely to have suffered from Alzheimer's disease—hinting that the male DNA could help protect the mothers from the disease, the researchers say.
During mammalian pregnancy, the mother and fetus exchange DNA and cells. Previous work has shown that fetal cells can linger in the mother's blood and bone for decades, a condition researchers call fetal microchimerism. The lingering of the fetal DNA, research suggests, may be a mixed blessing for a mom: The cells may benefit the mother's health—by promoting tissue repair and improving the immune system—but may also cause adverse effects, such as autoimmune reactions.
One question is how leftover fetal cells affect the brain. Researchers have shown that fetal microchimerism occurs in mouse brains, but they had not shown this in humans. So a team led by autoimmunity researcher and rheumatologist J. Lee Nelson of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, took samples from autopsied brains of 59 women who died between the ages of 32 and 101. By testing for a gene specific to the Y chromosome, they found evidence of male DNA in the brains of 63% of the women. (The researchers did not have the history of the women's pregnancies.) The male DNA was scattered across multiple brain regions, the team reports online today in PLoS ONE.

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Because some studies have suggested that the risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) increases with an increasing number of pregnancies, the team also examined the brains for signs of the disease, allowing them to determine whether AD correlated with the observed microchimerism. Of the 59 women, 33 had AD—but contrary to the team's expectation, the women with AD had significantly less male DNA in their brains than did the 26 women who did not have AD.
Whether that correlation means that fetal male DNA helps protect women against AD is unclear, however. "To me, this suggests that the presence of fetal cells in the female brain prevents disease," says cardiologist Hina Chaudhry of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.
In a study published online in Circulation Research late last year, Chaudhry and colleagues found that fetal cells in mice migrated to the mother's heart, differentiated into functioning cardiac cells, and accelerated repair to damaged heart tissue. So, Chaudhry says, a similar thing could be happening when fetal cells migrate to the brain. "I would bet these cells are getting into the maternal brain and are able to differentiate into neurons."
A 2010 study in Stem Cells and Development showed that fetal cells can migrate to the brain of a mother mouse and mature into neurons, Nelson says. But, she adds, it remains unclear if something similar is happening in humans—and it's also difficult to reach any firm conclusions about a potential link between microchimerism and AD. Part of the problem is that her team had little information about the pregnancy histories of the women in their study. "We have to say we really don't know," she says. "I hope that kind of work can be done in the future, but it's very difficult to do with human samples."