The US Department of Labor fined Western Wats of Salt Lake City $550,000 for violating Federal child labor laws after finding that children as young as 13 were working in call-centers in Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming. It seems Western Wats “hired” these children, without regards to their human or civil rights, to conduct market research and political surveys. Ironically, if Western Wats were based in a 3^rd world country rather than in Utah, the Hollywood stars would have already come out to decry the situation and this would be world news.

Lee Ann Dunbar, spokesperson for the Department of Labor, said Western Wats hired approximately 1,500 children that were used as slave labor in the Western Wats sweatshop. She went on to say it seemed rather unusual that a company would employ children that young to make cold-calls to adults, and also said, “The Company will have to explain that”. Meanwhile, Stacey Jenkins who is Western Wats corporate counsel is quoted as saying, “We do disagree with the DOL's finding and have appealed [the fine] on several grounds”.

Meanwhile, during Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful campaign for President in 2008, some nefarious entity was making calls to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, which cast Mitt Romney in a bad light. Among questions callers were asked was whether or not the resident was aware of the fact that Romney was a Mormon, that he received military deferments while serving as a Mormon missionary in France, that his five sons had not served in the military, that Romney's faith didn’t accept blacks until the 1970s and that Mormons believed the Book of Mormon was superior to the Bible.

Ann Baker, an independent voter from Hollis, NH who received such a call said, “It started out like all the other calls...then all of the sudden it got very unsettling and very negative". She went on to say, ‘Whatever campaign is engaging in this type of awful religious bigotry as a line of political attack, it is repulsive and, to put it bluntly, un-American," And, at the same time, Romney spokesman Matt Rhoades decried, "There is no excuse for these attacks. Governor Romney is campaigning as an optimist who wants to lead the nation. These attacks are just the opposite. It's ugly and divisive."

Oddly enough, it turns that out all of these calls were made by the very same company, Western Wats. Further, it turns out that Western Wats is a Mormon Company founded by Ron Lindorf who graduated from BYU, and Mitt Romney is friends with Lindorf and runs in the same circles with him. In fact, here’s a picture of Mitt Romney shaking hands with Teena Lindorf, Ron’s Sister-in-Law. FYI, the blog where the photo was originally posted states the photo was taken by her Husband, Paul Lindorf who is Ron’s brother.

Mitt Romney shaking hands with Teena Lindorf (Sister-in-Law of Western Wats founder Ron Lindorf)



So, with all of the controversy surrounding Mitt’s Mormon religion during the 2008 Presidential campaign, how odd is it that this very issue Mitt’s Mormonism was exacerbated by a Mormon-owned Salt Lake City based call center run by friends of Mitt Romney that uses child slave labor. Could it be that perhaps that all of this was merely a ploy to create sympathy for Romney by making it appear that all of the negativity surrounding Romney’s campaign was motivated by “anti-Mormon religious persecution”? Who could come up with such an elaborate plan as that? I guess the simple answer is the same kind of people who would enslave children just order to make a lousy buck.

I guess the only question that remains is whether or not the callers sounded like 5^th graders.

Read Article 1 - Western Wats fined by Department of Labor

Read Article 2 - Mitt's ties to Western Wats

Read Article 3 - Dubious calls made by Western Wats