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We begin today with new scrutiny Republican candidate Mitt Romney is facing about his record at the private equity firm Bain Capital. The latest controversy surrounding Bain concerns how Romney helped found the company with investments from Central American elites linked to death squads in El Salvador. After initially struggling to find investors, Romney traveled to Miami in 1983 to win pledges of $9 million, 40% of Bain's start up money. Some investors had extensive ties to the death squads responsible for the vast majority of the tens of thousands of deaths in El Salvador beginning during the 1980's. The investors include the Salaverria family, whose former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, has previously accused of directly funding the Salvadorian paramilitaries. In his memoir, former Bain executive Harry Strachan writes, "Romney pushed aside his own misgivings about the investors to accept their backing." Strachan writes, "These Latin American friends have loyally rolled over investments in succeeding funds, actively participated in Bain Capital's May investor meetings and are still today one of the largest investor groups in Bain Capital." For more, we're joined by Ryan Grim, Bureau Chief for The Huffington Post . He's connecting the dots in the latest story headlined, "Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads". Ryan, welcome to Democracy Now! If you could carefully laid out the story, and set the stage in El Salvador in the early 1980's, what was happening there, the carnage.

The distinction is valuable, for the IRS treats passive and active income and losses differently. If a passive investment loses money, the taxpayer can only write off that loss if passive gains have also been made and only at a 15 percent rate. But active losses can be written off at a 35 percent rate and deducted from the taxpayer's ordinary income. In other words, a taxpayer wants active losses, not passive losses. So by describing many of his investments as active, Romney saves himself millions of dollars in taxes. With those active investments, he is also securing a tax break few Americans enjoy: When he wins, he's paying a 15 percent rate on the gain. When he loses, he's writing it off at 35 percent, meaning that tax policy is subsidizing Romney's risk in his Bain investments.

Here was Romney sharing his view that Americans who don't make enough money to pay income taxes and his fellow citizens who rely on Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, or other government programs are lesser people than he and the millionaires before him. These people, Romney was saying, are not adults; they do not, and will not, fend for themselves or do what they must to feed, clothe, shelter, educate, and care for themselves and their family members. It was an arrogant insult spoken with true detachment. This was 100-percent 1-percent. Mitt Romney built that.

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point of the post, which is that to withhold the sacraments from someone who does not pay for them,

It does illuminate at least one thing about the institutional church that is still applicable in the US. At any point when the church has half a chance to use to coercive power of government to enforce its own rules - it will in fact do so

LOBBYING TRACKER TOOLS

Every day, lobbyists and executives from Wall Street firms, big banks, insurance companies and others are meeting with financial regulators. They are pressing their case on how the federal financial agencies implement the massive Dodd-Frank financial law, which required more than 240 rulemakings. In the spirit of transparency, the major agencies have been posting records of their meetings with these outside representatives. However, until now it was necessary to visit each agency's website to obtain this information, which is reported at different time intervals and in varying formats. With the Dodd-Frank meeting log tracker, now it is possible to find all the meetings in one place.

It is also becoming apparent that Willard Romney is having issues related to his arrogance and inability to tell the truth that prompted Mrs. Willard to say "I think my biggest worry would be for his mental well-being." Romney's well-being is predicated on never being questioned or challenged, and as some in the media are finally asking questions he cannot or will not answer, he looks clueless. It must be trying for a man used to being the smartest guy in the board room to have to dodge simple questions about his alleged economic prowess, or how his tax plan does not favor the wealthy or punish the poor and middle class

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  ECONOMY   AlterNet / By Bruce Wilson  25 COMMENTS Where Did Paul Ryan Find Inspiration for 'Reforming' Social Security? A Brutal Military Dictatorship, Naturally The basis for Ryan's big plan was hatched under the radical right-wing Chilean torture regime of 1973 military coup leader Augusto Pinochet.