Capitalism, and Bain, defined; Obama's GA court appearance; Big government has only 29% approval; Electronic ballots unreliable; 4000 support Scott Walker in Wisconsin rally; Santorum money-raising; Voter fraud in SC; European capitalism under attack;

Wall St. Journal says what Romney should be saying: Not only did Bain Capital save America, but no matter what turn Mitt Romney's political career takes, Bain Capital may stand as the best of Mr. Romney's lifetime contributions to the nation's economic well-being. If only he'd tell the story.
We are of course putting forth "Bain Capital" as not merely the Romney private-equity house but as the stand-in for the period of American economic history that ran from 1980 to 1989. Back then it was called the Greed Decade, with asset-stripping barbarians at the gate. Virtually everything about this popular stereotype is wrong. Properly understood, the 1980s, including Bain, were the remarkable years when an ever-resilient America found a way to save itself from becoming what Europe is now—a global has-been.

Thousands of Mitt Romneys allied with huge pension funds representing colleges, unions and the like, plus a rising cadre of institutional money managers, to force corporate America to reboot. In the 1980s almost half of major U.S. corporations got takeover offers.
Singling out this or that Bain case study amid the jostling and bumping is pointless. This was a historic and necessary cleansing of the Augean stables of the American economy. It caused a positive revolution in U.S. management, financial analysis, incentives, governance and market-based discipline. It led directly to the 1990s boom years. And it gave the U.S. two decades of breathing room while Europe, with some exceptions, choked. http://online.wsj.com/article/wonder_land.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forbes adds [Oops!]: In 1989, Bain Capital purchased controlling interest in Damon Corp., a medical testing company located in Needham, Massachusetts.
During the time that Bain held its ownership of the company, Mitt Romney personally sat on the Board of Directors. And during that same period, Damon Corp. was busy submitting fraudulent reimbursement claims to Medicare to the tune of millions of dollars charged for unnecessary blood tests.
According to federal government prosecutors, Damon was misleading physicians into ordering unnecessary blood tests, assuring the doctors that the testing would be covered by Medicare. http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/01/21/romney-supervised-medical-testing-company-guilty-of-massive-medicare-fraud/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wayne Allen Root explains capitalism: My blue-collar butcher father used to always tell me, “Son, I’d love to hate rich people. But no poor person ever gave me a job.”  Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry need a lesson in capitalism from my father. Their attacks on Mitt Romney this week are not just disgusting and insulting, they are ignorant. They’ve ruined their Presidential ambitions and damaged their credibility as conservatives.

So we expect this kind of anti-business rhetoric and class warfare out of Democrats. But Newt and Rick? Now Republicans are turning on capitalism too? It’s time for a lesson in capitalism as it relates to Mitt Romney and Bain Capital. In a capitalist society, businesses (large and small) can run into trouble and face bankruptcy. I know. I’ve run businesses my whole life. When that happens you can either close the business, or go to an investor like Bain who is willing to risk their capital (i.e. cold hard cash) to save your company.
So businesses like Bain Capital come along and invest tens, even hundreds of millions into your dream. They are pure risk-takers, like a Wild West gunslinger combined with a riverboat gambler. Now comes the hard part- turning your failing company into a winner. Unlike government failures, failure in the private sector means the loss of hard, cold cash from the risk-taking investor’s personal pocket
So what does Bain Capital do?  They’ve got to work fast. They analyze every inch of the business. To give the most productive part of the company a chance to survive, the cost cutting begins. Nothing is off the table. Unproductive employees, fat-cat overpaid executives, failing product lines, and entire underperforming divisions are cut.

As painful as this may be to those whose jobs are eliminated, the alternative is closing the entire business and losing many more jobs. Unlike Barack Obama, Bain is actually saving jobs. Even better, if the game plan is successful, the company will now be positioned to expand and create jobs. In capitalism you must often cut first to expand later.
It is that simple.
That is the very essence of capitalism, accomplished with private capital, not some government program funded with money extorted (or as Obama calls it “redistributed”) from taxpayers.
But shouldn’t you be rewarded with a big payday for risking your own money to save and turn around companies that are failing, or under-achieving? If you think that is unfair, head to Cuba. Because without risk and reward there is no America. There is no capitalism. Without risk and reward, you get 1956 Oldsmobiles and donkeys pulling carts to your ramshackle hut in Havana. Socialism doesn’t create jobs. Socialism doesn’t work. No, there aren’t rich people (if you don’t count the corrupt people who take charge of the country), but unfortunately there aren’t jobs either. With Socialism, the misery is shared by all.
Do you know why government can afford to employ far more people than it needs (even if they are incompetent), pay them far more than they are worth, and keep them employed forever while losing billions of dollars? It’s because it’s not their money, so they don’t care. It’s YOUR money. When government bleeds losses, they just raise taxes, stealing more from the taxpayers, or borrow it from China, or just run the printing presses at the Fed (which steals from us all).

This is how the U.S. government has managed to employ an unfathomable 21 million employees, while building up an unsustainable $15 trillion debt, plus an additional $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities. This debt is so huge it can never be paid back. The fact is America is insolvent.
 http://www.rootforamerica.com/webroot/blog/2012/01/17/a-lesson-in-capitalism-for-newt-gingrich-and-rick-perry/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Redstate writes: Peter Hamby from CNN notes what is going to be a recipe for disaster for Mitt Romney as he tries to relate to the Republican base.
In South Carolina exit polls, Romney wins only the “moderate or liberal”, those with incomes in excess of $200,000.00, those with postgraduate education, those who oppose the tea party movement, and those who think religion does not matter at all.
Mitt Romney’s exit polling reflects he can get the votes of Washington, D.C. Republicans and those who think we should leave the fate of the country in their hands. But he cannot get the votes of those who think we need to reform and reduce the power of Washington, which I venture to say is a sizable portion of the base. http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/01/21/this-is-a-recipe-for-disaster/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CBS Atlanta reports: A judge has ordered President Barack Obama to appear in court in Atlanta for a hearing on a complaint that says Obama isn't a natural-born citizen and can't be president.

The hearing is set for Thursday before an administrative judge.  Deputy Chief Judge Michael Malihi on Friday denied a motion by the president's lawyer to quash a subpoena that requires Obama to show up. http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/16567672/ga-judge-orders-president-to-appear-at-hearing

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Daily Interlake reports: It turns out that Georgia has a state law requiring that every candidate for federal office “shall meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.” Seems reasonable enough. The law also permits any “elector” (which in common parlance means any person eligible to vote in Georgia) to raise a challenge to any candidate’s qualifications.
This is significant because, although there have been challenges in court to President Obama’s eligibility before, there has never been a case yet where evidence was presented and a verdict reached. If Judge Michael Malihi of the Georgia Office of State Administrative Hearings actually allows the case to proceed to a verdict, it is almost inevitable that it will be appealed by one side or the other all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and we can get a ruling — finally — on just what the Founding Fathers meant when they restricted the presidency to “natural born citizens.”
President Obama certainly can make a strong case that he meets the definition of a “natural born citizen,” especially if he presents a hard copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate instead of the digital copy released last year.
Yes, there are those who — taking their argument from Emerich de Vatell’s “The Law of Nations” of 1758 — insist that natural born citizens “are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens,” but there have been many others who have drawn the opposite conclusion as well. http://www.dailyinterlake.com/opinion/columns/frank/article_c90787ea-43dc-11e1-bc8b-001871e3ce6c.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Expose Obama writes: Barack Obama has outlined a defense strategy for a multitude of state-level challenges to his candidacy on the 2012 presidential ballot in a Georgia case that is scheduled to come before a judge later this month – simply explain that states have nothing to do with the eligibility of presidential candidates.
“Presidential electors and Congress,not the state of Georgia,hold the constitutional responsibility for determining the qualifications of presidential candidates,” Obama’s lawyer argues in a motion to quash a subpoena for him to appear at the hearings Jan. 26.

“The election of President Obama by the presidential electors,confirmed by Congress,makes the documents and testimony sought by plaintiff irrelevant,” the lawyer said.  http://www.exposeobama.com/2012/01/20/obamas-lawyer-proving-my-eligibility-is-unreasonable/

-----------------------------------------------------
American Thinker reports: The hint that public sentiment was shifting away from reliance on big government (and those that promoted it) came earlier in the week  when Gallup produced a poll showing that American's "satisfaction with the size and power of the federal government is at a record low 29%.

Gallup indicated that this made big government  a "highly susceptible " target for politicians this year.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/newts_third_law.html#ixzz1kBxDHIvR

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computerworld reports:  An electronic ballot scanning device slated for use in the upcoming presidential elections, misreads ballots, fails to log critical events and is prone to freezes and sudden lockups, the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission has found. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223187/E_voting_machine_freezes_misreads_votes_U.S._agency_says-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4,000 attended the Support Scott Walker rally [in the matter of his possible recall]...the silent majority isn't so silent after all. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Redstate reports: I can confirm tonight from multiple sources that phone calls are in fact occurring between Republicans in Washington and among evangelical leaders to raise money for Rick Santorum rapidly.
The sources tell me that this is not for a Santorum win, though the evangelicals I spoke to continue to hope it is possible. This is to stop Newt Gingrich. One evangelical leader I spoke to said, “If Newt wins, we won’t be able to make family values an issue in the general.” One lobbyist I spoke to said, “They [the GOP leaders in DC] are really nervous about Gingrich and they think he’d be a disaster. The best way to shut him down is to prop up Rick.”
Florida is going to get interesting. http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/01/22/money-for-santorum/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WTOC11 reports: South Carolina's attorney general has notified the U.S. Justice Department of potential voter fraud.

Attorney General Alan Wilson sent details of an analysis by the Department of Motor Vehicles to U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles.

In a letter dated Thursday, Wilson says the analysis found 953 ballots cast by voters listed as dead. In 71 percent of those cases, ballots were cast between two months and 76 months after the people died. That means they "voted" up to 6 1/3 years after their death.  [Does this mean that liberal protestations that voter fraud doesn't occur are simply wrong?]

The letter doesn't say in which elections the ballots were cast.  http://www.wtoc.com/story/16571904/south-carolinas-attorney-general-detects-voter-fraud-for-primaries

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Breitbart writes: Economic and political elites meeting this week at the Swiss resort of Davos will be asked to urgently find ways to reform a capitalist system that has been described as "outdated and crumbling." "We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations," said Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the annual World Economic Forum.  http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.be33fda73987ff722e71ca3a18f1bfaf.351&show_article=1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------