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    icon Nov 01, 2012
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Report Details Major Pipeline Threat to the Great Lakes

 

Another immensely disturbing report has surfaced about the lapse of our State Legislature when it comes to protecting Michigan's Great Lake water resources, while under-scoring the importance of voters to approve Proposal 3.

 

The National Wildlife Federation is releasing a report warning the public about an enormous threat to the Great Lakes; Line 5 of the Lakehead System owned by Enbridge Energy. Just east of the Mackinac Bridge lay two aging oil pipelines, beneath the Straits of Mackinac, which are slotted for expansion without any major improvements or additional pipeline safety measures.

 

Enbridge Energy owns these 59-year-old pipelines and has begun work to stealthily expand Line 5 by almost 1.2 million barrels per day. This project is part of a system wide expansion that will have enormous impacts throughout the entire Great Lakes basin, as Enbridge gears up to push incredible amounts of toxic tar sands oil throughout waters to refineries that dot our lakes.

 

There is very little known about the integrity of Line 5, because Enbridge and agencies charged with pipeline oversight refuse to provide the pubic maintenance records or inspection history.

 

The Review urges you to contact your State Representatives and Senators and demand they take action to protect us against the impacts these expansions will have on the largest freshwater drinking source in the world.

 

Voting Machines Tied to the Romneys Could Decide the Election in Ohio

Could the 2012 Presidential race turn into a repeat of Florida in 2000 when voting machines created by Diebold helped tip the election to George W. Bush? Could a voting machine company with deep financial ties to the Romney family help Republicans steal the presidential election in Ohio?

It could happen. If this year's presidential election comes down to the electoral votes in Ohio, the deciding votes could be cast on electronic voting machines manufactured by Hart Intercivic. A 2007 study conducted by Ohio's Secretary of State showed that Hart Intercivic's touch screen voting machines could be easily corrupted. The New York Times reports: “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.”

Hart Intercivic is majority owned by H.I.G. Capital which controls two of the five seats on the Hart Intercivic board. An investment fund with deep ties to the Romney family and the Mitt Romney for president campaign, H.I.G. Capital was founded by Tony Tamer, a major bundler for the Romney campaign, and it is one of the largest partners of Solamere Capital, an investment fund founded by Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick, Mitt Romney's chief fundraiser from the 2008 presidential campaign. This makes the Romney family part owner of the voting machine company, through it's interest in H.I.G. Capital.

What's more, three other H.I.G. Capital directors are major fundraisers for the Romney campaign, and H.I.G. Capital is the 11th largest contributor to the Mitt Romney campaign. And as if the ties between Tagg Romney's Solamere, Romney contributors at H.I.G. Capital, and Hart Intercivic weren't astonishing enough, two members of Hart Intercivic's 5-member board of directors made direct contributions to the Romney campaign.

It is disturbing and dangerous that Hart Intercivic, the company that makes the machines that will count many of the votes in Ohio on election night has deep financial ties to family members of Mitt Romney. And the fact that these machines are easily corruptible touch screen voting machines makes matters even worse.

Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama are locked in a tight election race which could very well be decided by Ohio's 18 electoral votes. The Justice Department needs to independently monitor and audit these machines to assure and protect the integrity of our democracy.

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