Voter Fraud My Ass!

Growing up I remember public service announcements on television urging viewers to register and vote. The one I remember most vividly declaimed “Vote and the choice is yours. Don't vote and the choice is theirs.” A strong bold statement, to be sure but one that even before I became aware of the systematic racism of the segregated South, sounded ominously divisive. As I grew older and became aware of who “they” were I came to appreciate the protections afforded to fellow Americans who had been systematically denied the right to vote by a web of Jim Crow laws.

That's why the wave of “anti-fraud” legislation enacted by Republican states pisses me off. Not only has anyone demonstrated voting fraud that even remotely approaches a level that would warrant restricting the exercise of a fundamental right, but legislators specifically crafted provisions to target minority and working-class voters.

The most egregious example is North Carolina where the legislature took advantage of the Supreme Court's decision to gut the most effective provision of the Voting Rights Act. HB 589 enacted a raft of changes that significantly increased the barriers to African-American and other minority voting. We know that legislators specifically targeted minority voters because lawsuits against the changes have disclosed legislative requests for information about minority voting patterns before they eliminated practices that encouraged minority voting and established identification requirements that reduced minority voting. Given the absence of any real voter fraud anywhere in the US, I can't imagine that other states' motivations for enacting ant-fraud legislation are any less suspect.

Much of the restrictive voting legislation is promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which describes itself as “America's largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism.” I would call them and agenda-driven clearing house that produces templates for business-friendly legislation. I first heard of ALEC when I worked for the Arizona State Legislature in the 80's. Several of the more conservative legislators joined the newly-formed ALEC because they thought the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) formed in 1975 was too liberal. Given the legislation that has come out of Arizona in the past few decades I can understand why they thought so.

So in the end, anti-voting fraud legislation is an unwarranted restriction of a fundamental right fostered in the interest of a wealthy business class by a well-funded front group.

Ya gotta admire their success.

Fortunately, America still has a somewhat independent judiciary.

Another Week. Another Convention

Last week I paid some attention to the Republican convention, mostly in print and on radio.  My attention was limited by the fact that I cannot hear ugly, bilious rhetoric for long periods of time, especially when interspersed with the perverse simplicity of current Republican ideology.  Still I made an effort to keep up with the convention.  For better or worse (and these days it's only worse), the Republican Party is one of the only two parties capable of nominating and electing a president.  As citizen I believe I have a responsibility to stay informed, even when the task is distasteful.  I got a few chuckles at the various gaffes and Donald outperforming Rudy Guliani in delivering an apocalyptic, spittle-filled speech.  The chuckles were fleeting when I rememberd that I was hearing a possible President of the United States.

This week has been more pleasant.  For all of its shortcomings the Democratic Party is the one of the two major parties in this country that speaks to my values and beliefs.  Much of what the Democrats say is rhetoric but, unlike last week, the rhetoric is not hateful and aspires to an America where all share in our national prosperity.  What I have not heard is anything to suggest that America will be less militaristic and seek diplomatic solutions to conflict among nations.  Hillary Clinton's history does not suggest that she would be any different from her immediate predecessor or even the hapless George W. 

That said, Clinton has full-throated support from Bernie Sanders and she has been pushed to run on a very progressive platform.  Donald Trump is a guaratee of strong-man, idiosyncratic, reactionay policy, both foreign and domestic.  In all, the Democratic convention and Hillary Clinton address America's challenges in a way that leaves me more confidence than anything that Trump can do.  I hope very much that Clinton will prevail in November.

That said, I am most likely to vote for Jill Stein for president.  I can do that with confidence since Washington is a reliably Democratic state.  The last time Washington went Republican in a presidential election was 1984.  If I still lived in Virginia or any other swing state, I would vote for Clinton but I don't and will use the opportunity to cast a vote for an even more progressive platform.  I did that four years ago and barring any change from recent history will do so again.

Donald Trump must not be elected.  Period.

Bottom Line

David Cole in the Washington Post,

If a government of the people and under law means anything, it must mean that the government cannot kill its people in secret and then avoid legal scrutiny by disavowing responsibility.

Health Care Clusterfuck

Even American doctors think the system is dysfunctional.

Best Election 2012 Moment

Russia questioning US elections:

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov explained. “The human rights situation in the US is far from being ideal, and sometimes from another epoch at all,” he said. For instance, the Russian high-ranking diplomatic official named the electoral system in the US archaic, “The US approves the legislative acts, which toughen the rules of the access to the polling stations, the election system through the electoral college polls result in the votes of the residents of some states to have a larger weight than the votes of the residents in other states.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry had serious questions to the issues of the access of international observers to the monitoring for voting, as well as “the absolute monopoly of the two parties in the US.” Ryabkov was supported by first deputy head of the State Duma Committee for International Affairs Vyacheslav Nikonov, who noted that “the opportunities of small parties are very restricted in the US, as for running in the elections a party should pass registration in each state, meanwhile, this procedure is quite more complicated than the condemned filters at the gubernatorial elections in our country.”

Keep in mind that Russia has its own electoral shortcomings--those condemned filters noted in the statement--but the assessment is accurate.  Any number of Americans, myself included, would say the same. But I do enjoy the irony of hearing it from the Russians.

We're No. 1!

...in weapons sales.  Just like our military budget, no one can touch come even close to America when it comes to flooding the world with implements of death and destruction.

Yew-Ess-Fucking-Ay!

(h/t Bad Attitudes)

Undecided Voter

After a week of seeing Romney and his party's roll-out of the 2012 Republican campaign for president and congress, I know my preference.  I want neither Romney nor a Republican Congress.  Pure and simple, no way.  In the past 30 years Republican presidents and congresses have given this nation more debt, more inequality and greater economic insecurity for a growing number of Americans.  Oh sure, the one Democratic president and cowed Democratic congresses have been complicit but Republican orthodoxy set the agenda and circumscribed the alternatives to favor wealth over the larger community.  That is why I do not want Romney or his party to succeed this year.

That said, I remain undecided.  Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson speak to my heart and values.  So does Barack Obama but he has not governed with those values.  Still, he is the only one of the three who stand a chance (a very good one) of being elected and if I thought for a minute that Romney might carry Washington, I would vote for Obama in a heartbeat.  I don't want Romney that bad.

A President Romney and Republican Congress would indeed "turn the page" as the nominee declared in his acceptance speech.  But the page will not be turned on what he calls a "failed" presidency, the page will turned on the idea of a society where all prosper.  Electing Romney and further empowering the radical conservatives will return America to the Gilded Age, a time of fabulous wealth and widespread misery.

Barack Obama will at least moderate the plutocratic feeding frenzy even if he cannot control it.  I don't buy that he will have much more flexibility in a second term; he'll still be shackled to congressional Democrats who are always facing another immediate election.  They will exist in an uneasy dance and Obama, being a good corporate Democrat will not want to tarnish the party's image by behaving too radically.

What I would very much like to see are candidates committed to creating social and economic justice, who would dismantle the National Security State, downsize the military and end the Empire of Bases.  Public resources now squandered on bloated military and "homeland security" boondoggles would create real and lasting economic growth in place of  the dead-end military investment that creates nothing productive.  Instead of weapons, war and domestic surveillance, America could invest in essential public goods--health care, education, infrastructure.

Living in Olympia, I will have some opportunity vote for candidates whom I believe share these values.  On top of that I will also vote in favor of Washington's same sex marriage law and most likely for the (kinda, sorta) legalization of marijuana under state law.  And since I do not have a television or listen to commercial radio, I won't experience much of the campaign advertising blitz.  Except for the outside chance that Romney could actually win the election, the remainder of may be tolerable after all.

More Public Employees

Unlike Nick Hall, these public employees did not lose their lives in the line of duty.  They lost their jobs.  I refer to 900 Washington State Liquor Control Board employees who ran the state's liquor monopoly until June 1st.  On that day, Washington's exclusive state monopoly was completely privatized, the result of an initiative run by Costco in November 2011.   Costco spent a shitload of money on its second attempt to crack the state monopoly in 2011 and it worked.  In little over seven months the State Liquor Control Board figured out how and accomplished the complete privatization of a system that had been in place for 70 years.  Much of the responsibility fell on workers whose jobs would disappear in the process with little likelihood of finding comparable replacements. 

Even so, they pulled it off. 

Keep that in mind next time some blowhard complains about lazy, overpaid government workers.

The Money Quote

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics, on America's economic divergence, 

The seriousness of America’s growing problem of inequality was highlighted by Federal Reserve data released this month showing the recession’s devastating effect on the wealth and income of those at the bottom and in the middle. The decline in median wealth, down almost 40 percent in just three years, wiped out two decades of wealth accumulation for most Americans. If the average American had actually shared in the country’s seeming prosperity the past two decades, his wealth, instead of stagnating, would have increased by some three-fourths. (my emphasis)

I know I certainly saw two decades' worth of savings and investment disappear.  I know, too, that I am one of the lucky ones who didn't lose everything and, more importantly, I've been employed steadily for the past four years and able rebuild my savings somewhat.  All this tells me that I and most people in my life are more fortunate than the majority of Americans.  Drastically so compared to most human beings on this planet.

At one time in America the economic security I seem to have attained was a reasonable expectation for many.  No more.  Uncertainty is the new norm, with more and more Americans sliding from middle class to poverty and the rest of us hoping we can hang on.

As the rich get richer.

Verdict

Washington is broken.  Not a surprise to most anyone who pays attention to public policy in the United States but worth two extended opinion pieces in the Washington Post in the past few weeks.  Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, establishment scholars who span the range of acceptable thought, first wrote  a four page article on April 27.  That article clearly laid blame:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

Today they comment on the popular bromides--term limits, balanced budget amendments, third parties--offered as solutions for America's gridlock and dysfunction.  Mann and Ornstein dismiss these "fixes" as unworkable, unwise or fantasy (my word).  They offer what they call  a "more sensible and promising reform agenda...focused on fixing the party system and addressing the roots and the weapons of political partisanship."

All four of their proposals make sense to me.  I especially favor instant runoff voting and like the delicious irony of a compulsory voting requirement combined with a lottery funded with fines paid by non-voters.

None of the proposals are likely to fly in Washington.  Mann and Ornstein may be pillars of the Washington Establishment but in today's political climate their ideas are as welcome as Marx and Engels.

Rational Choices

Survey results show Americans favor reducing defense spending* by 18 percent.  What is especially interesting for me is the methodology. This is not some simple yes or no survey.  Participants are asked to learn, understand and think.

Smith and his co-authors stress that they designed the study to make participants—who they said were a representative sample—as well informed as possible: they provided context, information and detailed, opposing viewpoints for each part of the budget, replicating budget deliberations as they actually happen in Congress and the White House. Participants considered type of spending—for each divisions of the armed forces, weapons programs, military health care, etc.—and decided whether it was worth, say, spending more money on special ops (yes!) or a new $1 trillion fighter jet (no way). 

[...]

survey participants were given more background: for example, they were shown how defense spending compared to all other kinds of government spending, and how current spending compares historically. Then, they had the ability to specify exactly how they’d treat different types of spending.

Imagine.  Informed people making informed decisions.  Compare the results of that process with the stay-the-course military spending of our national officeholders. 

____________
(*)  The sanitized term for war and militarism

Words for Our Time

From The Essays of E.B. White,

..[D]istortion is inherent in partisan journalism, the same as it is in political rallies. I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or nonpolitical, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way the writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many are born upright. The beauty of the American free press is that the slants and the twists and the distortions come from so many directions, and the special intereste are so numerous, the reader must sift and sort and check an counter-check in order to find out what the score is. This he does. It is only when a press gets its twist from a single source, as in the case of government-controlled press systems, that the reader is licked.

--Bedfellows, 1956

"No man is born perpendicular" caught my eye when I first read this essay. It seemed a particularly clever statement of an immutable fact. A more contemporary writer would likely omit the "born upright" phrase that follows. Writing in 1956, White could plausibly acknowledge integrity in many partisans regardless of their slant. That is a more difficult task in 2012.

Integrity is in short supply these days but slant is plentiful. That's where the rest of the paragraph offers a cautionary tale. White extols the free flow of information--slanted and straight, dubious and dead on--from many sources and the diligent reader who sorts through it all to know the score. White also warns about a single-source press that deprives the diligent reader of the information needed to know the score.

The warning anticipates 21st century America. Rather than government control of media, we have corporate corporate control of media. And that media is primarily electronic. White's diligent reader has been replaced by a mostly passive consumer of a very limited diet.

Alternative information is available. The diligent reader (or listener, some electronic media are credible and informative) can still look beyond the limited corporate fare to find the information that will tell the score but generations accustomed to having news served to them are unlikely to look beyond the handouts.

Are we licked yet?

Logical Progression

Steven Pearlstein's Modest Proposal.

[W]ith Citizens United, the Supreme Court...didn’t just remove the limits to what wealthy individuals or corporations could contribute to independent (wink-wink) front groups. The five-member majority also invited constitutional challenges to limits on direct contributions to campaigns or political parties and to those silly requirements that the source of every contribution be disclosed in a timely manner.

This is a great victory for those of us who believe in free markets and support the sacred constitutional principle that corporations are people and that money is speech. With the legal and political momentum now working in our favor, we must take this campaign to the next level.

After all, no matter how many billions of dollars we might invest in campaigns or independent (wink-wink) front groups, all we can really do is influence the outcome of campaigns. Given the risks associated with the performance of the candidates, however, we can never truly be certain of the electoral outcomes. And as you all know, what the markets and businesses hate most is uncertainty.

So, I propose that we finally give up the charade that we are not “buying” elections and, in fact, do exactly that — mount an all-out political and legal challenge to laws preventing us from buying votes directly.

Odious, Vile and Smarmy

Those words sum up my view of Newt Gingrich, a man who is truly odious, vile, and smarmy. That he is a candidate for president at all, much less a major one speaks volumes about American politics. Gingrich has little to offer beyond bluster and bombast yet he is what passes for a serious candidate in 2012. But even by the low standards presidential politics Gingich is a particularly unpleasant manifestation. Here's a quick tour.

• Odious: highly offensive; repugnant; disgusting. Gingrich's speech and judgments are highly offensive. He speaks sweepingly of ghettos and dismisses entire classes as unworthy, all ideas other than his own as dubious. He promises much but delivers only to the few, including himself.

• Vile: highly offensive, unpleasant, or objectionable. Serial infidelities show the value of Gingrich's word and attest to a lack of any true moral compass. His only guide is What's Best for Newt.

• Smarmy: excessively or unctuously flattering, ingratiating, servile, etc. Gingrich flatters himself excessively. He claims vast knowledge. He makes promises. He deludes himself that he is a public servant when he largely serves himself.

This rant was sparked by a Washington Post article about Newt's latest hypocrisy: working your way through college. I am particularly incensed by accounts of Gingrich's first wife and others putting him through grad school so he could avoid taking a job, something he now recommends for students.

Work was not the only thing Newt avoided during his college and graduate school years. He also famously avoided military service in a war he supported. "Given everything I believe in, a large part of me thinks I should have gone over," he told Vanity Fair in 1989. That's easy to say now. These days he continues to support a militarized America and more foreign wars.

As a rule, I don't question anyone's decisions about military service in Vietnam. We made those decisions long ago under difficult circumstances. My one exception is public officials who advocate war and were eligible for military service then. Newt fails that test. I find it hard to imagine anyone with less moral character in public life. I can imagine no one less fit to be president of the United States.

Odious. Vile. Smarmy. Hypocritical. Newt Gingrich. A complete package.

Better After the Fact

HorsesAss has a great live blog of last night's GOP talkathon. Darryl watched it so I didn't have to.

6:18: CNN continues the fluff, “Coming up…why would your wife make the best first lady.” I want to hear Newt: “Which one?” Ron Paul: “I think Rick Santorum’s wife would be the best first lady.” Santorum: “My wife did not live in sin with an abortion doctor!!!!” Mitt: “Mine is certainly the richest…can’t beat that.”

6:24: Newt: “All three of the wives of these gentleman would make terrific first ladies” or future wives for me!

[...]

6:29: It’s the Reagan cuddle session part of the debate. Newt: I am vastly more cuddly with Reagan then my opponents.

6:31: Santorum on Cuba: “despots and their reign of terror in Cuba…like a cancer that keeps growing. Reward those who bring in Jihadists, and setting up terror camps…” What the fuck has he been snorting tonight?

[...]

6:48: Santorum has some pretty fucked up ideas about where rights come from–from God Apparently, Americans are the ONLY people whose rights are endowed by God. He is one fucked up puppy!

A Southern Tale

Newt Gingrich's victory in the South Carolina Republican primary is in the finest tactical tradition of General Robert E. Lee. Lee earned his reputation for brilliance largely because he was often forced into dire circumstances where his only hope was to try something unconventional. It worked for a while. Until the he met Grant. And then he lost.

Newt went into South Carolina in dire circumstances, out of contention if he didn't pull off a good showing. So he cut loose with the Full Newt. Like Lee, Newt had little to lose. And it worked. He strutted through the debates in full bombast, giving South Carolina Republicans what they wanted. They could appreciate a fighting gamecock. Meanwhile, Romney who, like those Union generals, had much to lose, played it cautious.

So Gingrich is Lee early on in the war. We know how that one turned out.

Unlike Lee, Gingrich has a $5 million super PAC. Romney is no Grant but he has a shitload of money, including his own super PAC, and the party establishment is terrified at the prospect of Newt Gingrich as nominee.

The campaign will become more evil now.

Also evil is the prospect that one of these two men will be the party candidate in the general election. But that's another story.

Update: Juan Cole has an even better framework for his analysis of the SC results.