Republican Enacted Voting Laws…

    …to fight their massive fantasy of non-existent  “ voter fraud “ is going to wreck havoc on the poor, disabled, and the younger voters.

   Just how bad is it…..thus far?

Five million could be disenfranchised under new voting laws

by  Joan McCarter     Mon Oct 03, 2011     Original

New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice released a new study Monday detailing how widespread voter suppression has become as Republicans took over statehouses across the nation.

(Brennan Center)

Here's the breakdown of those five million potentially disenfranchised citizens (from the report overview [PDF]).

1. 3.2 million voters affected by new photo ID laws. New photo ID laws for voting will be in effect for the 2012 election in five states (Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin), which have a combined citizen voting age population of just under 29 million. 3.2 million (11 percent) of those potential voters do not have state-issued photo ID. Rhode Island voters are excluded from this count, because Rhode Island’s new law’s requirements are significantly less onerous than those in the other states.
2. 240,000 additional citizens and potential voters affected by new proof of citizenship laws. New proof of citizenship laws will be in effect in three states (Alabama, Kansas, Tennessee), two of which will also have new photo ID laws. Assuming conservatively that those without proof of citizenship overlap substantially with those without state-issued photo ID, we excluded those two states. The citizen voting age population in the remaining state (Alabama) is 3.43 million; 240,000 (7 percent) of those potential voters do not have documentary proof of citizenship.
3. 202,000 voters registered in 2008 through voter registration drives that have now been made extremely difficult or impossible under new laws. Two states (Florida and Texas) passed laws restricting voter registration drives, causing all or most of those drives to stop. In 2008, 2.13 million voters registered in Florida and, very conservatively, at least 8.24 percent or 176,000 of them did so through drives. At least 501,000 voters registered in Texas, and at least 5.13 percent or 26,000 of them did so via drives.
4. 60,000 voters registered in 2008 through Election Day voter registration where it has now been repealed. Maine abolished Election Day registration. In 2008, 60,000 Maine citizens registered and voted on Election Day.
5. One to two million voters who voted in 2008 on days eliminated under new laws rolling back early voting. The early voting period was cut by half or more in three states (Florida, Georgia and Ohio). In 2008, nearly 8 million Americans voted early in these states. An estimated 1 to 2 million voted on days eliminated by these new laws.
6. At least 100,000 disenfranchised citizens who might have regained voting rights by 2012. Two states (Florida and Iowa) made it substantially more difficult or impossible for people with past felony convictions to get their voting rights restored. Up to one million people in Florida could have benefited from the prior practice; based on the rates of restoration in Florida under the prior policy, 100,000 citizens likely would have gotten their rights restored by 2012. Other voting restrictions passed this year that are not included in this estimate.

These are just the laws passed so far. As many as 34 states have introduced legislation in the last 2 years to require government-issued photo identification to vote. At least 12 have introduced legislation requiring proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, to register to vote. As many as 13 states have introduced legislation ending same-day registration and limiting voter registration drives like those traditionally done by the League of Women Voters. At least nine states have introduced legislation to shorten early voting periods and four have tried to limit absentee voting.

The potential outcome of taking five million votes out of the mix in 2012? It could be the presidency, according to the Brennan Center.

• The states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
• Of the 12 likely battleground states, as assessed by an August Los Angeles Times analysis of Gallup polling, five have already cut back on voting rights (and may pass additional restrictive legislation), and two more are currently considering new restrictions.

And you know, of course, who is being disenfranchised: "young, minority, and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities." In other words, people who generally vote Democratic. Which means it's a no-brainer that much of the legislation introduced and passed around the country is the work of ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, the Koch brother's toy for taking over the country.

Originally posted to Joan McCarter on Mon Oct 03, 2011

Also republished by Exposing ALEC and Daily Kos.

Technorati Tags: ALEC,Brennan Center For Justice,Charles Koch,David Koch,Koch Brothers,Voter Suppression,Jim Crow,Republicans,Current Events,Politics

America. A Christian Nation?

   A few weeks ago, I had started collecting biblical material based on things which Jesus said or had done. I was in the midst of  comparing Jesus’s teachings and mode of living to what the so-called conservative – Christians,  Tea Baggers Party, and Republicans in general preached and actually practiced. As I have stated in the past, you cannot be a conservative and a Christian. The two do not mix.

    Anyway, in between my trip to the hospital and other issues over the past few weeks, one Tom Ehrich of the Religion News Service came up with an article published in the Sunday newspapers which runs basically along the lines of what I was researching. the only difference is that his article looks at America as a whole, not just one segment.

So You Want America To Be A Christian Nation? Really?

By TOM EHRICH

GateHouse News Service

Posted Sep 30, 2011 @ 10:30 PM

What if America truly were a Christian nation? Not a Southern Baptist nation, or an Episcopal nation, or a Roman Catholic
nation. Not grounded in the doctrinal and ecclesiastical isms that have grown up over the centuries. But a Christian nation, doing what Jesus did.

Well, we wouldn't be arguing about sex, that's for sure. Jesus devoted no time to matters of sexuality.

We wouldn't be leading cheers for any particular economic system, capitalist or socialist, for in his many teachings about wealth and power, Jesus saw both as snares and delusions.

We wouldn't be taking votes on who gets medical care, or who gets to live, or who gets to learn, or whose rights matter more, or whose race or religion can't be allowed to breathe freely. For Jesus gave healing to all who asked, defended the lives of sinners, taught all who were eager to learn, welcomed all to his circle - even outcasts, lepers and children. He had no regard for his own tradition's finely tuned boundaries.

We wouldn't be loading great wealth onto the already wealthy, but rather would be asking them to follow the lead of biblical tax collector Zacchaeus and to give away half of what they have.

We wouldn't need as many lawyers, because generosity would trump
tax-reduction strategies, parables would trump rules, property would be shared as needed and people would be forgiving - not suing - each other.

If we were a genuinely Christian nation, we would be gathering the harvest of this abundant land and sharing it with the hungry of our own land and of many lands. We would forgive our enemies, speak truth to power and go forth to serve and to sacrifice, not to rule.

We would stand with the poor when predators circled around them. We would stand with sinners when the self-righteous picked up stones. We would join hands with nonconformists and strangers.

We would become God's beacon to the nations. And when the tired and poor followed that light to our borders, we would greet them with open arms and make room for them in our communities.

That's what Jesus did, and that is what it would mean to be a Christian nation.

So to those who insist that America be a Christian nation, I ask: Is this truly what you want? Do you want the I-was-hungry-and-you-gave-me-something-to-eat of Matthew 25? Do you want the
Sermon on the Mount? Do you want to shine God's light in the darkness?

Your behavior says no.

Your shouts against generosity say no.

Your penchant for oppressive culture says no.

Your willingness to shower wealth on the few while the many suffer says no.

Your hostility to freedom says no.

So stop pretending. At least be as honest as the hedge fund manager who paid himself $8 billion last year. It's "all about the Benjamins," not the Gospel. It's about stifling any freedom but your own. It's about imposing your cultural preferences on others. It's about turning your fears and appetites into law. It's about you, not about Jesus Christ.

That's the nature of politics, of course: one "you" versus another "you."
That's fine, and it's why we formed a democracy, so that our various interests could compete fairly. Just spare us the religious posturing.

If America became a Christian nation, doing what Jesus did, you would be aghast.

Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest, author and former Wall Street Journal reporter living in Winston-Salem, N.C

Technorati Tags: Tom Ehrich,America,Christians,Jesus,Republicans,Politics,Current Events

Friday Funnies: WTF? Late Edition

   People, the past few weeks have been a nightmare for me, this week especially. Today has been the worst! Just when one thinks that it cannot get any worse, it does. At 5 pm, the time I usually post these funnies, my fridge died of a massive stroke. Always on a Friday, isn’t it?  Just stocked the darn thing an hour before!

    On top of all of that,  I’ve missed all of the weeks political happenings because I was stuck in a hospital since last Sunday, not to mention that my blogging software needed medical attention of its own.

   You can probably use a laugh or 2 just as much as I can, so here it goes.

David Letterman's "Top Ten Ways The Country Would Be Different If Chris Christie Were President"

10. Al-Qaida taunts America with 'Your president's so fat' jokes
9. Goodbye White House vegetable garden
8. Cabinet will now have a Secretary of Cake
7. New state: Fatbuttachusetts
6. Congress does whatever he wants, because fat guys are, like, super-strong when they freak out
5. Presidential retreat moved from Camp David to Hershey Park
4. Taxpayers would have to pay for the president's second seat on Air Force One
3. New national anthem: the 'Chili's baby back ribs' song
2. Instead of Iraq, we'd invade IHOP
1. Scandal when president is caught in Oval Office with Betty Crocker and Sara Lee

David Letterman: "Republicans are having trouble luring Gov. Chris Christie into the presidential race. They should try pie."

"The two American hikers have been released from Iran and they're trying to reintroduce them to American culture. Right now, they're in a screening room outside of Washington, going through Jennifer Aniston comedies."

"Rick Perry did so badly at the last debate, that President Obama turned to Michelle and said, 'Honey, you can stop packing.'

on Stewart to the GOP base: You want to add another candidate? It's like the Republican primary is a season of 'American Idol' in reverse, where every week you just add some new idiot… Have you ever considered the possibility that your candidates aren’t the problem — it's you?

Bill Maher: "Did you see the Republican debate last night? It was brought to you by FOX and Google. I think that makes sense that they were working together because Google is what people go to, to fact check the bullshit that comes out of FOX."

"If you're keeping score at home, they have now applauded executions at the Republican debate, they have cheered letting an uninsured man die, and they booed an active duty U.S. serviceman for being gay. I don’t know how you get to the right with this crowd but Ron Paul’s new campaign ad is just the Rodney King beating to the sound of children laughing."

"You gotta love Sarah Palin. She is now on her website asking her idiot fan base for donations for her to help make a decision about whether or not to run. She wants money now for just thinking? What a grifter."

Daily Show Senior Black Correspondent Larry Wilmore: "I voted for Obama because he was black, not because I agreed with him. I barely agreed with him that he was black."

Jay Leno: "President Obama is criticizing Rick Perry for denying global warming. Can understand why Rick Perry doesn't take global warming seriously. As governor of Texas, he's probably fried more people than global warming all put together."

The last Republican debate was sponsored by Google. I think Google can really help. We should run a Google search for some better candidates."

"President Obama claims his new jobs bill will be better than his old jobs bill, which only created one job that went to a guy named Bill."

"Herman Cain won the Republican straw poll in Florida. Cain has had more wins in Florida this year than the Miami Dolphins."

Conan O'Brien: "Obama was heckled by someone who said, 'Don't forget about medical marijuana.' The Secret Service has narrowed the suspects down to everyone in L.A.

"Hallmark has launched a line of recession-themed cards that say, 'Sorry you lost your job.' The good news is, the cards come pre-addressed to your congressman."

Technorati Tags: Politics,Political Humor,Jokes,Jay Leno,David Letterman,Late-Night Talk,Current Events,Sarah Palin,Rick Perry,Republicans,Fox News,Google

Con Game On the Middle-Class…

    ….and the sad thing is that many middle-class and poorer Americans will still vote for the  “ keepers of the wealthy “ no matter how many facts you toss their way. Americans have become ignorant, and the wealthy know this. But, it would appear that many of those same Americans are beginning to see the light?

   Meanwhile, GOP Texas con-artist wannabe president Rick Perry has decided that he will try his con-game on the middle-class, and Obama finally is waking up and seeing the writing on the wall, I hope.

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Perry picks up pitchfork, joins class warfare fight

Georgia Logothetis for Daily Kos         Tue Sep 27, 2011

With more and more pundits asking whether Rick Perry has fizzled out, and with so many in the establishment defending the notion that a class war has already been taking place, it's not surprising that Perry's trying to jump onboard the middle class bandwagon:

JEFFERSON, Iowa — Call it a personal class war: Texas Gov. Rick Perry is trying to draw sharp class lines with his chief GOP presidential rival, the well-heeled former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

“As the son of tenant farmers, I can promise you I wasn’t born with four aces in my hand,” Perry recently told about 200 central Iowa GOP activists. He grinned and then paused to allow chuckles to roll through the audience as the message became clear: Perry was a product of humble beginnings — ordinary folk like them — while Romney came from privilege. [...]

In Iowa and elsewhere, Perry has started linking himself to the middle class, if not to low-income Americans, and tying Romney to the nation’s upper echelon. His larger strategy is to paint Romney as a pre-packaged politician out of step with everyday Americans, plant suggestions with Republicans feeling the pinch of tough economic times that Romney doesn’t understand their plight, and undermine Romney’s attempts to connect with middle-class voters.

Meanwhile, Herman Cain calls President Obama's "it's not class warfare, it's math" argument "bull----":

“Can I be blunt? That’s a lie,” Cain said, before the sound of his voice began to rise noticeably higher. “You’re not supposed to call the president a liar. Well if you’re not supposed to call the president a liar, he shouldn’t tell a lie. If it’s not class warfare, it’s highway robbery. He wants us to believe it’s not class warfare, oh okay, it’s not class warfare. Pick my pockets, because that’s what he’s doing!”

Cain paused, took a breath and looked at me.

“I’m not mad at you, I just get passionate about this stuff,” he said. “I have to tell people because I get so worked up. . . . I’m listening to all this bull__ that he’s talking about, ‘fairness’ and ‘balanced approach’ to get this economy going.”

From the reaction from voters and pundits alike, it looks like President Obama's populist strategy is less "bull----" and more "brilliant." Greg Sargeant looks at the political upside:

All this aside, the arguments from Warren and Obama — and the conservative responses to them — suggest that it’s a good thing that we’re having this argument. It’s one that’s all about priorities and basic fairness. It may be, as Kevin Drum has argued, that taxes aren’t necessarily the political winner for Dems that polls suggest. But even so, this isn’t a bad place for Democrats to be. In contrast to months of fighting it out on austerity/spending cut turf favorable to the GOP, Dems are now arguing for fairer taxation, in order to reduce the deficit, on the grounds that we’re all in this together. Meanwhile, Republicans are fighting to defend low taxes on the rich even as they decry “class warfare,” which gives Dems an opening to ask who, exactly, Republicans are fighting for.

Whatever the political benefits of this argument for Dems, it’s a good one for the country to hear.

Bob Franken also chimes in on the issue:

There is a growing realization that the real class warfare in this country is that being waged by the wealthiest against everyone else.

Study after study reveals the ugly growing chasm between haves and have nots. It's reflected in the Census Bureau report that shows one in six Americans, 15 percent, in 2010, lived below the poverty line at the bottom of the ladder, while the top 5 percent control 60 percent of America's wealth. Up until now, Obama has been frittering away these arguments as he clung to the naivete of compromise and give-and-take with an opposition that was only about take.

The President's new found populism echoes Warren Buffett. [...] Following in his footsteps could mean Obama is marching on solid ground. A USA Today-Gallup poll released just after the jobs speech found a 2-to-1 majority favoring increasing taxes on the rich. So the "class warfare" chant might be finally recognized as the empty demagoguery it is. Besides, this is a political war where until now the tea party hordes have been romping around Washington. Now Obama has decided to engage the crusaders, replacing accommodation with confrontation.

Speaking of class warfare, James Werrell explains what its effects look like:

America now has more poor people than at any time in the 52 years records have been kept, according to an article in Time magazine by economist Rana Foroohar. The number of people living below the poverty line - a family of four living on $22,000 a year - has been rising for the past four years and now stands at 15 percent of the population.

Foroohar asserts that the American Dream, the notion that anyone with grit and determination can improve his or her status, has become a sad joke. Americans now are less upwardly mobile than many European nations, including even stratified countries such as England, France and Germany.

If you're born poor in America, you're likely to stay poor. [...]

The fact is, trickle-down is a cruel hoax.

It's the failure of trickle-down economics that prompted a wealthy ex-Google exec to plead with President Obama to raise taxes on the rich during a town hall yesterday:

At the “Putting America Back to Work” LinkedIn town hall in Mountain View, Calif., Obama came face-to-face with his deficit-reduction proposal. “Would you please raise my taxes?” asked Doug Edwards a former director of consumer marketing and branding at Google, who described himself as “unemployed by choice.”

“I would like very much to have the country to continue to invest in things like Pell grants and infrastructure and job training programs that made it possible for me to get to where I am,” Edwards said. “And it kills me to see Congress not supporting the expiration of the tax cuts that have been benefitting so many of us for so long.  I think that needs to change, and I hope that you’ll stay strong in doing that.”

The question set up the president to explain why he thinks it’s necessary to reform the tax code so that “everybody is doing their fair share.”

Even comedians like Will Durst are putting their $.02 in:

When taxes are raised on the rich, oh sure – that’s class warfare. But when libraries are closed and national parks left to rot so rich people can have more money, that’s trickle-down economics. What Barack should do is rename his efforts to balance the playing field with trickle-up economics. That would at least confuse them (not that they need more confusion) – “You know what, you’re right! It is a class war you started it and your side winning.”

The Republicans are especially upset about a proposal called the Warren Buffet rule, which calls for billionaires to pay taxes at the same rate as their secretaries. The GOP puts more faith in the Jimmy Buffet rule which holds that anybody who worries about coming up with next month’s rent money next should start drinking margaritas until they pass out.

What is it with the rich? How much money do they need? How many cars can you drive? How many imported Beluga caviar cream cheese canapés can you consume at a single cocktail party?

President Obama's new fighting tone and tactics don't stop with shifting the narrative away from 24/7 deficit talk to debating the effects of income inequality. The "warrior" mentality extends to his campaign too as it prepares to aggressively challenge Republican attempts to suppress voter turnout:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is helping activists in the battleground state of Ohio challenge an election law that would shorten the time for early voting, which helped Obama in his first run for the White House.

Opponents must gather roughly 231,000 valid signatures before the law’s effective date Friday in order to block it from being in place until after the presidential election next year. That election would be the earliest chance voters would have to weigh in on whether the overhaul should be tossed out.

Technorati Tags: Rick Perry,GOP,Republicans,Class-Warfare,2012 Elections,Middle-Class,Current Events,Politics,Barack Obama