Can Mitt Romney Serve Two Masters?

p>Part I (Spiritual Portion of the book)

Excerpt:

Mitt Romney is a long-standing, card-carrying, prominent “temple Mormon.” Mormon temples are not places of worship. The temples are secretively closed to the public. Entrance into the Mormon temple is the utopia to strive for in Mormondom. Anyone who achieves “temple status” is by no means a casual Mormon. The primary mandate for a Mormon to be able to enter the temple is to be a consistent tithe payer of 10 percent of the gross of his income. No Mormon can enter without meeting this requirement.
The Mormon churches are completely different meeting places from the temples. The regular Sunday church weekly services are held in local church buildings known as chapels, meetinghouses, ward houses, or churches. The terms used for these buildings are interchangeable.
The Mormon temples, however, are closed on Sundays but open on weekdays, exclusively to card-carrying, temple-recommended Mormons. Closed to the public, only the most faithful followers of the prophet and the Mormon doctrine are allowed to enter. The rituals in the temples—especially the “endowment”—are considered so sacred that Mormons are forbidden to discuss them outside the temple itself.30
In fact, up until the 1990s, Mormon ritual participants were so sworn by oath to secrecy that if they revealed anything about these temple rituals, this act would be punishable by death. Here is the exact oath taken in the temple ceremony by participants:
“I will now explain the covenant and obligation of secrecy which are associated with this token, its name, sign and penalty, and which you will be required to take upon yourselves. If I were receiving my own Endowment today, and had been given the name of "John" as my New Name, I would repeat in my mind these words, after making the sign, at the same time representing the execution of the penalty: I, John, covenant that I will never reveal the First Token of the Aaronic Priesthood, with its accompanying name, sign, and penalty. Rather than do so, I would suffer my life to be taken.”
Mitt Romney and his wife regularly attended and participated in these temple ceremonies and rituals that consist of secret handshakes, tokens, vows, death oaths, secret names, and scores of additional bizarre proceedings. There are many websites and books which accurately depict these secret temple ceremony rituals.

Part II (Political Portion of the book)

Excerpt:  Romney’s Economic Record

Romney consistently likes to paint himself as a turnaround artist in Massachusetts, claiming he “closed a nearly $3 billion budget deficit without raising taxes” while governor. The facts do not back this up.
According to Reuters, “The $3 billion deficit projected by Romney and state legislators in January 2003 at the start of his Administration never rose that high because a surge in capital gains taxes more than halved the shortfall to $1.3 billion.”271
President of the Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation, Michael Widmer told Reuters in 2008, “There’s never been under his [Romney’s] watch an economic turnaround to speak of … We added a few jobs over the last three years of his tenure, but very few. He also raised corporate taxes and the (deficit) gap turned out to be less than $3 billion.”272
According to the Boston Globe, “Romney’s success in steering the state through the fiscal maelstrom was one of his key achievements, but in the retelling he and his aides often overstate the accomplishments and understate the side-effects: big fee increases and pressure on local property taxes.”273
Romney proposed or raised so many fees, he earned the nickname “Fee-Fee.” Almost no Massachusetts citizen was immune from the fees he imposed. “Romney and Democratic lawmakers ended up approving hundreds of millions in higher fees and fines, making it more expensive to use an ice skating rink, register a boat, take the bar exam, get a duplicate driver’s license, file a court case, install underground storage tanks, sell cigarettes or alcohol, comply with air quality rules and transport hazardous waste,” according to the Associated Press.274
Carla Howell, co-founder and president of the Center for Small Government, and sponsor of a 2002 ballot initiative to end the Massachusetts state income tax, explained on the blog LewRockwell.com in 2007, “Each of the four years Romney served as Governor, he raised taxes—while pretending he didn’t. He claims he only raised mandatory government ‘fees.’ But government mandatory fees are nothing but taxes, and taxes are nothing but mandatory government fees.”275
When questioned in 2008 by the late Tim Russert on Meet the Press, Romney tried to explain himself.