Month: May 2012

You all remember this, right?

Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

In Miami, an assistant United States attorney said many cases there involved what were apparently mistakes by immigrants, not fraud.

In Wisconsin, where prosecutors have lost almost twice as many cases as they won, charges were brought against voters who filled out more than one registration form and felons seemingly unaware that they were barred from voting.

One ex-convict was so unfamiliar with the rules that he provided his prison-issued identification card, stamped “Offender,” when he registered just before voting.

A handful of convictions involved people who voted twice. More than 30 were linked to small vote-buying schemes in which candidates generally in sheriff’s or judge’s races paid voters for their support.

That didn’t stop the “voter fraud” fraudsters. Indeed, they have doubled their efforts and are now in the process of defrauding the voter rolls themselves:

Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) has ordered the state to purge all “non-citizens” from the voting rolls prior to November’s election. But that list compiled by the Scott administration is so riddled with errors that, in Miami-Dade County alone, hundreds of U.S. citizens are being told they are ineligible to vote, ThinkProgress has learned exlusively.

According to data from the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections obtained by ThinkProgress:

– 1638 people in Miami-Dade County were flagged by the state as “non-citizens” and sent letters informing them that they were ineligible to vote.
– Of that group, 359 people have subsquently provided the county with proof of citizenship.
– Another 26 people were identified as U.S. citizens directly by the county.
– The bulk of the remaining 1200 people have simply not responded yet to a letter sent to them by the Supervisor of Elections.

So, as Think Progress points out, at least 20% of the voters flagged in this purge are actually eligible.

Now keep in mind that the rest may have just not responded with proof yet. There is zero evidence that even if those people are all ineligible that they planned to vote. Certainly, there is no indication that this represents a conspiracy to steal the election — at least not by these people. What is clear is that the state of Florida is kicking eligible voters off its rolls on orders of its Republican Governor who is clearly targeting Democratic voters.

And keep in mind that this is one of the oldest tricks in the books. Here’s Rick Perlstein on the vote suppression effort in 1964, called “Operation Eagle Eye” in which Chief justice John Roberts’ predecessor, William Rehnquist, participated as a young man:

The “vote fraud” fantasies are tinged by deeply right-wing racial and anti-urban panics. I’ve talked to many conservative who seem to consider the idea of mass non-white participation in the duties of citizenship is inherently suspicious. It’s an idea all decent Americans should consider abhorrent. It is also, however, a very old conservative obsession–one that goes back to the beginnings of the right-wing takeover of the Republican Party itself.

Let me show you. Read this report from 1964, running down all the ways how Barry Goldwater’s Republican Party was working overtime to keep minorities from voting. The document can be found in the LBJ Library, where I researched my book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

John M Baley, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, charged today that “under the guise of setting up an apparatus to protect the sanctity of the ballot, the Republicans are actually creating the machinery for a carefully organized campaign to intimidate voters and to frighten members of minority groups from casing their ballots on November 3rd.”‘Let’s get this straight,’ Bailey added, ‘the Democratic Party is just as much opposed to vote frauds as is the Republican party. We will settle for giving all legally registered voters an opportunity to make their choice on November 3rd. We have enough faith in our Party to be confident that the outcome will be a vote of confience in President Johnson and a mandate for the President and his running mate, Hubert Humphrey, to continue the programs of the Johnson-Kennedy Administration.”‘But we have evidence that the Republican program is not really what it purports to be. It is an organized effort to prevent the foreign born, to prevent Negroes, to prevent members of ethnic minorities from casting their votes by frightening and intimidating them at the polling place.”‘We intend to see to it that the rights of these people are protected. We will have our people at the polling places–not to frighten or threaten anyone–but to protect the right of any eligible voter to cast a secret ballot without threats or intimidation.’

.

QOTD: the candidates are proxies

by digby

“This is the unfortunate reality of Citizens United,” said California Common Cause policy advocate Phillip Ung. “It’s opened up this new era of spending where we have interest groups going after each other and the candidates are being used as proxies.”

Read the story of a California race in which two special business interests are fighting to own a congressional seat.

This could be the wave of the future. At some point we’ll just cut out the middle-man and elect the industry. They’ll assign one of their employees to congress and even pick up the tab, which we’ll call fiscal responsibility. Win-win!

.

Committed Canadians, eh?

by digby

Greg Mitchell shares this inspirational vid today:

I’ve been covering the wild nightly Saucepan Revolution protests in Montreal all week, and last night they topped themselves, taking to the streets in vast numbers despite rain and wind—and tornado warnings. Here’s a cool video from last night featuring local band named Arcade Fire on the soundtrack.

And here’s the earlier one that’s been going viral:

No room for error

by digby

Harsh punishment for a 21 year old’s drunken mistake:

21-year-old woman who was shot after she wandered drunk into a Colorado couple’s home in the middle of the night will face charges of felony trespassing, her lawyer said on Saturday.

Zoey Ripple walked through an unlocked screen door leading into the bedroom of the couple, who said they shouted for her to leave before the husband fired a single gunshot in the dark when she kept coming into the room.

Ripple, who was unarmed, was shot in the hip during the incident on Wednesday in Boulder, Colorado. In a 911 call, the couple said she appeared to be “kind of stoned or something.”

Police said Ripple’s blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit. She is recovering in a hospital, her lawyer, Colette Cribari, said.

An arrest warrant for Ripple is expected to be issued in the coming days and she plans to turn herself in, Cribari said, citing conversations with prosecutors.

The couple is not expected to face any charges because of Colorado’s “Make My Day” law, which allows people to use deadly force against home intruders, Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett has said.

Cribari called the felony charge too severe for Ripple, who is a recent graduate of the University of Colorado in Boulder.

“She wasn’t trying to commit a crime. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Cribari said. “You would hope getting shot would be enough punishment.”

Yeah, you would.

I guess there’s nothing you can do about this sort of thing since we’ve decided that freedom means having the ability to shoot anyone who looks at you sideways. But it seems that we are taking it to the next level and outright blaming the victims for “making” them do it.

Warning to those of you who live in other countries: if you come to our country and make the mistake of getting shot, you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We call this “freedom.”

.

Wanker of the decade strikes again

by digby

Somebody forgot to tell the Moustache of Understanding that Americans Elect is over because nobody liked it:

Former Obama budget director Peter Orszag notes, to get the economy moving again, what we’ve needed for the past two years is a plan of “combined boldness” — another stimulus focused on infrastructure that would grow jobs and enhance productivity combined with a credible, bipartisan plan for trimming future growth in Medicare and Social Security and reforming taxes to get our long-term fiscal house in order, as the economy improves.

In short, we needed more stimulus paired with some version of the Simpson-Bowles deficit plan. It is highly unlikely that you could “get one passed without the other, and you shouldn’t want to anyway,” said Orszag. Together they would launch the U.S. economy.

Obama, in fairness, tried a version of this with his “grand bargain” talks with the House speaker, John Boehner, but when those talks failed, Obama made a huge mistake. He should have gone straight to the country and repeated over and over: “I have a plan that will create millions of jobs and send the stock market soaring — near-term stimulus plus Simpson-Bowles — and the Republicans are blocking it.”

Obama could have adapted Simpson-Bowles, but symbolically it was vital to embrace it in some form as his headline deficit plan, because it already enjoyed some G.O.P. support and strong backing from independents, who liked the way it forced both parties to compromise. Had Obama gone to the country with more near-term stimulus married to Simpson-Bowles, he would have owned the left, independents and center-right. It would have split the Republicans and provided a real alternative to the radical Paul Ryan-Romney plan.

Instead, Obama retreated to his left base, offered a stimulus without Simpson-Bowles and started talking about “fairness.” The result has been a muddled message that has alienated independent/center-right voters who put him over the top in 2008. Don’t get me wrong: I want fairness, but fairness that comes from a growing economy and comprehensive tax reform not from redividing a shrinking pie.

In sum, Obama’s campaign right now feels as though it were made in a test tube by political consultants. It’s not the Obama we admire. Rather than pounding the country with “I have a plan” — a rebuilding stimulus plus Simpson-Bowles — which would be an Obama-like message of hope, leadership and unity that would put him on higher ground that Romney can’t reach because of the radical G.O.P. base, Obama is selling poll-tested wedge issues. I don’t think it’s a winner for him or America.

I guess Friedman hasn’t been paying attention. Nobody but Villagers and rich people (many of whom are the same people) want this Grand Bargain bullshit. And that’s because on some level everyone else knows it’s a con of epic proportions. We don’t “need combined boldness.” We just need boldness. It’s the combined part that’s going to screw everything up.

You either believe in stimulus or you don’t. If you do, borrow the money at very cheap rates and hire a bunch of people to do something. When the economy gets going again and people are working and paying taxes, then raise taxes to pay down the cheap loans, if that’s even necessary.

This endless haranguing about deficit projections long into the future, even if it is “combined” with another inadequate stimulus, is in service of one thing and one thing only — dismantling the sad remnants of the American welfare state once and for all. We know this because the whole argument is riddled with lies and misconceptions — and fabulously wealthy celebrities like Tom Friedman are either too uninformed to understand this or are in on the con. Either way, they are accomplices to a great crime that’s being perpetrated by the American people.

So far, Americans of both the left and right, for very different reasons, have come to the common sense conclusion that none of the elites can be trusted and it’s better if these people do nothing at all than enact this plan. More power to them.

.

“Serious” Linda Parks versus “Hippie” Paul Krugman

by David Atkins

Ballyhooed “independent” (former Republican) candidate for Congress in CA26 Linda Parks, endosed by the L.A. Times and beloved of the chattering class, on unemployment and the economy:

Congress needs to stop the brinkmanship politics and work together to balance our nation’s budget and restore our bond rating. This will give businesses the certainty they need to invest in capital projects and expand their workforce. This in turn will create demand for goods and services that will buoy our economy. If Congress can’t pass a budget on time, they shouldn’t be paid.

Efforts should be made towards restoring our nation’s bond rating which will reduce costs for needed infrastructure such as roads, bridges, levies and water conveyance. These projects will also create jobs and stimulate the economy.

Meanwhile, noted dirty hippie and and non-serious partisan Paul Krugman, responding to the notion that the nation’s bond rating affects employment:

Gosh, if you believe the people saying that you would have lost a lot of money. I know people have lost a lot of money doing that. The bond markets are willing to lend America — the US government — long-term money at about 1.7 percent as of right now. That’s ridiculously low. The index bonds that are protected from inflation actually have a negative interest rate. The bond markets are saying they’re worried about economic stagnation. They’re worried there aren’t going to be investment opportunities because the demand is so weak. So they’re going to park their money in US government debt, which is considered safe. The last thing you should be worrying about, at least according to the bond market, is those deficits. Those are not the problem right now.

One of these people is ignorant about economics and should be ridiculed by journalists as a dangerous amateur without a clue. The other is a Nobel Prize Winner in economics.

I’ll leave it to you to determine which one would receive the most newspaper editorial endorsements in a race for Congress, and what that says about the state of the American press.

.

Saturday Night at the Movies

Fat Kid Rules the World marks the directorial debut for Matthew Lillard (who surprised reviewers, including this one, by revealing previously untapped depth as an actor in The Descendants last year). Lillard’s film, a sort of Gen Y take on Boudu Saved from Drowning (with a touch of Times Square) centers on the travails of an obese, socially awkward high-school student named Troy (Jacob Wysocki) who lives in a cramped Seattle apartment with his ex-jarhead dad (Billy Campbell) and snotty younger brother. One day, our glum hero is seized by a suicidal impulse and throws himself in front of a bus. He is saved by guitarist/street kid/Oxy junkie Marcus (Matt O’Leary), who immediately demands $20 for the “service”. It’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship, with Marcus playing a punk rock Henry Higgins to the arrhythmic Troy’s Eliza Doolittle, encouraging him to locate his inner Cobain and learn to play the drums so they can storm the Seattle music scene. Marcus falls in love with a cute alternachick at school. He discovers rhythm. Life lessons are learned. Director and cast have their hearts in the right place, but the film becomes a tiresomely predictable parade of afterschool special clichés.

I predict that standup comic turned writer-director “Bobcat” Goldthwait will one day be mentioned in the same breath as Godard and Bunuel as one of cinema’s great agent provocateurs. OK, maybe not. But it does take a filmmaker with a unique talent for pushing buttons to kick off a “comedy” by skeet-shooting a baby. Now, before I get walkouts, let me say that in context of what follows in God Bless America, it fits. In this surprisingly sharp satire, a mashup of Idiocracy, Falling Down, Heathers and Network, Goldthwait takes (literal) aim at The United States of Stupid. His disenfranchised antihero Frank (Joel Murray) is like Ignatius J. Reilly, railing against all who offend his sense of taste and decency (but armed with an AK-47). Already stewing over his ex-wife’s impending marriage, his little daughter’s detachment, his inconsiderate neighbors and his observation that most of his co-workers are obsessed with reality TV, Frank is pushed over the edge when he loses his job and is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Frank’s first target is an obnoxious reality TV star, but his hit list expands to include wing nut pundits, Teabaggers, Westboro Baptist Church-types…and the worst of the worst: people who yak on their cell phones in movie theaters and smug Yuppies who deliberately take up two parking spaces. Along the way, he is aided and abetted by a 16-year old girl (Tara Lynne Barr, in a scene-stealing performance) who “loves” what he’s doing. One more prediction: Decades from now, the American zeitgeist of the early 21st century will be neatly encapsulated by this money quote: “I don’t want my Daddy…I want an iPhone!!!”

Remember the “No Nukes” movement that gained momentum in the mid to late 70s and then fizzed after Chernobyl proved that those DFHs may have been on to something after all? Good times. Lots of (irradiated) water passed under the bridge. Everyone got distracted by their iPhones. Fast-forward to the announcement in 2010 that the U.S. was going forward with construction of the first nuclear power plant in three decades; corporate America swooned over the “Nuclear Renaissance” (short memories). Then, as if on cue, Fukushima happened in 2011. The Atomic States of America is a timely eco-doc that could serve as a perfect wake-up call for anyone who may have failed to connect those dots (i.e., the jury is still out on the “safety” of this energy source). Co-directors Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce build their case with a sense of “doesn’t this piss you off?” urgency (a la Gasland, reviewing the industry’s past sins and spotlighting present day travails suffered by communities adjacent to nuclear plants (like “cancer clusters”). Most importantly, the filmmakers boldly tackle the $64,000 question: How in the fuck did we get to this Bizzarro World scenario wherein the Atomic Energy Commission finds itself kowtowing to the nuclear power industry…instead of vice versa? Essential viewing.

I was very sad to see that The Right Brothers are no longer making music.

The President gets a letter from a citizen

by digby

Dear Mr. President,

I think there is nothing that terrifies you political types so much as someone just blurting out the truth. Seriously, in this town that prizes “staying on message,” and “talking points,” it is hilarious to watch how upset everyone gets when someone unexpectedly lays out the facts.

Such is the case with Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who created a gasoline fire on the D.C. barbeque this weekend just because he told the truth. To recap: He took issue with your attacks on Mitt Romney over his actions while he was at Bain Capital, and he suggested Republicans are just as wrong to go after your distant past.

“This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides…enough is enough,” the mayor said. He followed it up with some other comments along the lines of saying our elections ought to be about who can lead, who has the best ideas, etc…not about cheap character assassination.

So what precisely is wrong with that?

As best I can make out, he didn’t say anything untrue; most voters would agree with him; and he did not even pick sides. He just departed from the written script and I think it scared the heck out of your guys. What puzzles me is why you find his words so disturbing. After all, you’ve argued many times that we need a new age of politics that focuses less on attacks and more on solutions; less on the past and more on the future. Frankly, just a few years ago I can easily imagine you saying what Mayor Booker said.

Obviously you can run your campaign anyway you wish, and your guys must have made a pretty stern call to Mayor Booker, judging from the way he was backing and filling later on.

But I can’t help but wonder if you should have thanked him instead; for reminding you of your own belief in such things. Sure, it is hard to campaign in a positive way by building up your record and ideas, instead of tearing down the other guy’s, but is the office really worth having if you must become what you deplore to win? That’s a question not just for you, but one that every candidate ought to ask him or herself. If they did, I think we might get cleaner elections, better leaders, and a lot more of that hope you once talked about so much.

Regards,

Tom

Who is “Tom” you ask? Recognize this guy?

That’s right. It’s Tom Foreman, a member of the best political team on television.

If Americans-Elect were still in existence, I’d nominate him for president.

Sure, comparing a criticism of Romney’s main claim to expertise isn’t the same in any way to the wingnut fantasy about Obama’s citizenship, but that doesn’t matter. Obama promised the great healer and these Villagers united in ecstasy. Since he couldn’t deliver on their Tipnronnie wet dream (not for lack of trying) they hold it against him.

.