A Letter to the Class of 2012. Greetings to you, the graduates and your families! We share with the thousands of families gathered for Commencement, the excitement, pride, and promise in our new MIT 2012 graduates. During the past four years you have been instructed, educated, and guided by our faculty; you are now launching your own careers and your contributions to our society will be the proudest product of our academic labors. At the same time, we are anxious about the world you are moving into: a dangerously volatile ecological environment; a depressed and uncertain economy; a political environment in which the major institutions supporting science and technology in our nation are having their budgets cut back; states disinvesting in public education and teachers, and continuing foreign wars.
MIT faculty do not have magic answers or prescriptions to these problems. We believe that science and technology must be used wisely, taking human needs and history into account. Deliberate and intentional? - Editorials. Romney: Rebuild Defense, Add 100,000 Troops. MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Thursday America must not economize on security but rather strengthen national defense by rebuilding the Navy and Air Force and adding 100,000 active duty personnel. "You would think that the president and the people in Washington would recognize the importance of the United States military and the need not to shrink our military budget but strengthen it," the former Massachusetts governor said.
He was speaking to about 60 veterans gathered on the hanger deck of the World War II-era aircraft carrier USS Yorktown. Romney said that the defense budget is now about 3.8 percent of the nation's gross domestic product and he would like to see that figure rise to 4 percent. "I don't believe we can economize on securing our nation," he said in the conservative, early primary state of South Carolina.
But he said he wouldn't, as European nations have done, reduce defense and put the savings into social programs. Romney’s Stupidest Idea Of The Week. One of the signature policy proposals that Mitt Romney outlined in his economic plan and highlighted in his USA Today op-ed last week is a policy that is as pernicious in practice as it sounds unthreatening. On page 61 of his plan, Romney proposes to cap the rate at which agencies would impose new regulations at zero. This means that if an agency is required by law to issue a new regulation, it must offset the costs, presumably by eliminating some other regulations.
Essentially, Romney is proposing to adopt pay-as-you-go budgeting to regulations. It’s not entirely clear if this rule applies to each agency—would the Food and Drug Administration have to eliminate some food inspection rules if they created some new regulations of food? Behind this policy response is a simple animosity towards any rules for businesses that come at the expense of profits. The bigger point to be made, however, is that regulations are not what are ailing our economy now, nor are they hindering growth. Donation helps Romney get some skin in the presidential game. Which makes the bond between Republican candidate Mitt Romney and Utah businessman Steve Lund look like a near-perfect union. Two companies linked to Lund — a founder of Nu Skin, which specializes in anti-aging creams — have donated $2 million to Romney’s primary campaign.
Sums like that would until recently have been the prize of the general election. But they are playing a new role in primaries this year, thanks to the evolution of committees known as super PACs. At first blush, the bonds between Romney and Lund look more than skin deep. Both are successful businessmen who have turned small companies into billion-dollar enterprises — Romney by buying cheap companies and Lund by selling expensive skin creams. Both served in leadership positions of the Mormon church. And both are family men who have used their success to do good — Romney by building a career in public service and Lund by running a charity for African children.
But Lund, 57, is no Romney when it comes to public life. Top Contributors to Mitt Romney. Did Romney launder a $1 million contribution to Perry's “pay to play” cash cow? - Rick Perry. “Follow the money” is an elementary rule for understanding American politics, and in the case of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the money trail leads to a case of apparent money laundering that involves his Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney and a $1 million contribution from the same Texas tycoon who bankrolled the “Swift Boat” attacks against the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, Sen.
John Kerry. Bobby Jack “Bob” Perry, a residential construction magnate in Houston, is not related to Rick Perry by blood, only money. But there has been lots of that. Bob Perry contributed $2,531,799 directly to Rick Perry from January 2001 to July 2011, TPJ reports in “Crony Capitalism: The Republican Governors Association in the Perry Years.” But to truly understand Rick Perry’s “pay-to-play” approach, TPJ executive director Craig McDonald told Salon, one must also look at contributions to the Republican Governors Association, which he chaired from 2008 through August 2011. An offensively low price.