First reported Jan 7, ’12 In Texas, student IDs
aren’t proof of identity to allow you to vote, but a handgun license is. In Florida, there are now onerous restrictions to inhibit voter-registration drives. In South Carolina, you need a photo ID such as a driver’s license or a passport else your right to vote is denied.
A nationwide campaign has been underway to enact barriers to voting. A mix of arbitrary encumbrances have been pushed through state legislatures to block American citizens from entering the voting booth in the 2012 elections.
Five million Americans are already affected, a number exceeding the margin of victory in the last two presidential elections. Thirty-four states have introduced laws to require photo IDs, with seven such statutes already on the books. Laws requiring proof of citizenship have been wending their way through the legislatures of twelve states. Florida now bans registering voters on the Sunday before Election Day, when black churches have traditionally conducted drives after services. A dozen states beside Florida are making it difficult to impossible to conduct voter registration drives or are eliminating voter registration on election day. Nine states seek to shrink early voting periods, which are popular among voters because they thin out lines.
One in ten Americans are thought not to have a qualifying document. Not everyone drives, states do not typically issue other forms of ID, and a decided minority has a passport. In the usual case, obtaining a state issued photo ID means standing in lines — just think motor vehicle bureau — and legislatures know that those lower on the economic scale cannot afford to take time off from work. States enacting new requirements then typically take no steps to handle the volume of applicants, such as opening more driver license offices, increasing staffing or extending hours.
And if a citizen must pay to get an ID or a copy of a birth certificate in order to vote, this amounts to the return of the poll tax, which was banned by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Texas charges $22 for a copy of a birth certificate.
An organization of civil rights lawyers called Advancement Project says this is “the largest legislative effort to scale back voting rights in a century”.
On its face, it may seem perfectly reasonable that we should be required to prove we are who we say we are and that we are entitled to vote. Did not the Supreme Court in 2008 upheld Indiana’s ID statute, deciding that the requirement to prove identity with a photograph is not unconstitutional? The injustice is that the many restrictions are most likely to ensnare African Americans, Latinos and the young. That’s no accident. These groups tend to vote Democratic and were key to Barack Obama’s election in 2008. Changes in election laws are mostly sought in the 29 states with Republican governors. So it is not a coincidence that four states — all with Republican governors — disallow student IDs as proof of identity for voting even though the IDs are issued by state institutions. Republicans gained six governorships in 2010 and are making a concerted effort to solidify their party’s gains by squeezing out groups that traditionally vote Democratic.
An ironic twist is that non-citizen immigrants could mistakenly be allowed to vote because of their photo-ID driver licenses. Utah has put a on-citizen indicator on their licenses as a prevention.
the fraudulent claim of fraud
That, of course, is not the admitted reason. The rationale universally cited is to prevent voter fraud. States were helped along with draft legislation provided by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council under the rubric of “Preventing Election Fraud”. Republicans believe that fraud is standard practice by Democrats for winning elections, citing Acorn as an example. To whatever extent such accusations are true, these were improper attempts to register voters, not fraud by voters themselves. But nonexistent fraud by voters is what the state governors and legislatures claim as their justification for restrictive voting laws.
So Kansas, for example, now requires proof of citizenship to “ensure the sanctity of the vote”, says governor Sam Brownback. By making voting problematic for an estimated 620,000 in the state, Kansas will ensure itself from recurrence of the single case of election fraud over the last six years.
But this lengthy study by the Brennan Center for Justice shows that the claims of voter fraud are more often attributable to the media’s penchant for “agitated headlines” such as “Hundreds Might Have Double Voted” or political programs such as Sean Hannity on Fox News saying, “Allegations of voter fraud continue to pop up all across the country”. But the many cases examined by Brennan have proved false. Clerical errors, similar names, matching names crossed with one another, address changes — these proved to be the most common reasons for mix ups, not fraud.
Claims that dead people had cast ballots are popular, only for it to be discovered on audit that the unfortunate individuals had died after the election. In a huge disproof of fraud, one of many examples that Brennan probes, claims of irregularities in Ohio resulted in a statewide survey of votes cast in 2002 and 2004. Out of 9,078,728 votes, “four instances of ineligible persons voting” were found — a factor of 0.00000044%. Ridiculing the threat to our elections, Stephen Colbert warned, “Folks, our democracy is under siege by an enemy so small it could be hiding anywhere”.
“By throwing all sorts of election anomalies under the ‘voter fraud’ umbrella…advocates for such laws [as requiring photo IDs] artificially inflate the apparent need for these restrictions” is the Center’s view in its report that runs down one after another claim of voting abuse. “The voter fraud phantom drives policy that disenfranchises actual legitimate voters”.
Bluntly stated, portraying voter fraud as justification for laws that disenfranchise citizens is the real fraud. It makes no sense. An attempt by an ineligible individual to vote — the sort of fraud called “impersonation” — is a decidedly ineffective way to influence an election as the percentage example above makes clear, and singularly foolish in the bargain, carrying as it does a five year prison term and a $10,000 fine — even deportation, if that applies.
The campaign to make voting difficult for targeted groups has been underway for many months, yet the Justice Department only began to move in late December by suing to halt South Carolina’s photo ID requirement under the Voting Rights Act. Its Section 5 prohibits nine states, most of them across the South, from changing voting laws without “preclearance” by Justice, owing to a history of discriminatory practices of similar intent as those being turned into law today. Sourth Carolina’s rule has since been blocked, and Texas also has since been declined preclearance.
The Act also provides for Justice to intercede in any state that adopts discriminatory measures, but has not acted on that Section of the law to curb other states.
Attorney General Eric Holder says a thorough review is underway and promises that it will be thorough but the clock is ticking and discrimination is difficult to prove. Wisconsin didn’t have to wait for the Justice Department; a judge has just struck down its new voter restrictions.
Mar 28 2012 | Posted in
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Seven months ago we wrote of the U.S. Postal Service’s dilemma in this article. Although not funded by the government, neither is it a standalone business free to manage itself. Faced with collapse and living on borrowed money, it must nevertheless seek Congressional approval to make key changes.
With first class volume down a quarter in just the last three years, as everyone switches to the Internet to pay bills and e-mail friends, Postmaster General Patrick Donahue needs that approval to end Saturday delivery, raise the base 1st class rate to 50 cents over five years, and end the draining requirement to pay in advance $5.5 billion a year for future retirees’ health care.
Donahue is free to close post offices and mail sorting hubs — he has targeted 3,653 of the nation’s 32,000 offices that have less than $27,500 in annual revenue, and half of the 487 hubs, which would add a day to delivery time — but those Congressional approvals are held hostage in this election year by Congress members concerned only for votes. Folks in their home districts want no change in convenience or services, and of course do not want to pay anything.
So, months on, Congress continues to do nothing while the Postal Service loses over $1 billion a month.
Mar 28 2012 | Posted in
Policy |
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President Obama’s approval ratings have taken a dive and two new polls say rising gas and fuel prices are a significant reason. Apparently American voters, in their perpetually arrested development, think the American president controls world oil markets. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll, 65% either “somewhat” or “strongly” disapprove of the President’s failure to hold gas prices down. A New York Times/CBS News poll found that, of those that answered the question, 60% thought the President “can do a lot about” the price of gas.
Seeing an opening and unconcerned for truth, Republican candidates are willfully lying. Newt Gingrich says Obama wants gasoline prices to reach the European level of $9 or $10 a gallon but that “he just wants it to be gradual”. What the President in fact said during the 2008 campaign was that he “would have preferred a gradual” increase to that summer’s $4 a gallon because “the fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing.”
Obama in 2008 said energy prices would “skyrocket” under his energy plan according to Mitt Romney, who hopes that voters would confuse this with gasoline, but Obama in 2008 was talking about electricity prices under cap and trade, and cap and trade is nowhere in sight under this Administration.
They could make a better case aiming their invective at the Senate. In the beginning of December, the Senate voted 100-to-0 — you read that right — to require the President, starting July 1, to penalize any entity — corporations, central banks, etc. — that does business with the Central Bank of Iran, which they must to purchase Iranian oil. And in a still more severe move, the Senate Banking Committee has voted to expel Iranian banks from the Belgium-based SWIFT telecommunications system that handles all interbank transfers worldwide, the effect being to bring all Iranian financial activity to a standstill. So the President will be hamstrung by one or more laws passed with little aforethought that leave a mess for others to clean up
If we paralyze Iran’s economy, they will assuredly make good on their threat to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which passage moves 20% of the world’s oil supply every day. Inaction would show weakness, and elections are coming in Iran as well. We have already written here, beginning at “Strait Talk”, how much more dangerous it will be to clear the Strait than the Navy’s bluster would have you believe. If Iran does no more than mine the Strait, every tanker will instantly drop anchor.
Speculators have, of course, picked up on the threat and know the shortages and sky-high price for oil that would result, and it’s their worldwide bidding for oil that drives the price of gasoline. There’s also talk of hoarding by oil companies and refiners, who would rather wait for zooming prices before they sell their products. That’s otherwise known as the free market.
But if you want to assign blame, the Senate’s move to strangle Iran is more the cause of rising gas prices. Instead, Americans blame the President.
Mar 25 2012 | Posted in
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It was quite a spectacle, that first week of March: the president of the United States, three of the four Republicans hopeful of taking his place, even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — all trooping to the annual conference at AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, “a hawkish, pro-Israel lobbying group” as The New York Times describes it, to pledge their undying support for Israel, each trying to outbid the other with prostrated pandering.
“We have now reached the point where the current Administration’s policies, however well- intentioned, are simply not enough”, Kentucky Republican McConnell said. Meaning, we should attack? Rick Santorum accused President Obama of yielding to Iran with “another appeasement, another delay, another opportunity for them to go forward while we talk.” Instead, we should attack? Newt Gingrich said, “In a Gingrich administration, we would not keep talking while the Iranians keep building. The red line is now”. Meaning, the planes just left the carrier deck?
“Already, there is too much loose talk of war,” said Mr. Obama in his own obligatory pilgrimage to AIPAC. “For the sake of Israel’s security, America’s security and the peace and security of the world, now is not the time for bluster”. Whereupon he did his own saber rattling, assuring the gathering that, “When the chips are down, I have Israel’s back” and “that includes all elements of American power…a political effort, a diplomatic effort, an economic effort, and yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency”.
What to make of the ritualistic AIPAC kowtow? The “Daily Show”’s Jon Stewart pretended to explain it to Iran:
“You’ve probably been hearing a lot of talk about America and bombs …Are you familiar with Florida? It’s a region in the South that we have filled with old Jews…and whoever wins it wins the presidency, and in Florida, they would like to bomb you … so the talk of war is not actually meant for you”.
In a news conference on super-Tuesday, Obama took the Republican candidates to task:
“Those folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities,” he said. “They’re not commander in chief. When I see the casualness with which some of these folks talk about war, I’m reminded of the costs involved in war… And, typically, it’s not the folks who are popping off who pay the price.”
Unheard in the thunder of war drums was the announcement by the United States and five other nations to accept a January offer by Iran to resume talks, with Iran willing to discuss its uranium enrichment program for the first time. Mr. Netanyahu argues that Iran should suspend uranium enrichment as a precondition to any talks; the White House says that would end the talks before they begin. Netanyahu believes that talks are only a delaying tactic while work on a bomb continues — just “running the clock”, as he put it. If diplomacy and negotiations forced by sanctions are deemed useless by the Israeli prime minister, what else is there? Are we hearing that Israel’s decision to bomb has already been taken?
The sanctions, though, are taking a toll. Mehdi Khalaji, an Iranian journalist currently at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said on the PBS Newshour that the sanctions are quite unprecedented for targeting
“not only Revolutionary Guard and some factories and individuals associated with, but the whole economy; namely, the banking system and also oil trade. It really bites the regime. And one of the main concerns of the Islamic Republic is … that the political crisis becomes one of the side effects of the sanctions. That would be very hard for the regime to manage it, because they had a difficult time in 2009 in dealing wth post-election crisis.
You know that last month the country’s currency was decreased to about half. So people are panicked. So, the country is really in trouble. And the number of factories that are shut down is just increasing more and more”.
He says, though, that supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei ”has a long record of uncompromising attitude”, and views the nuclear program as bound up with the
“destiny of Islamic Republic and any compromise on nuclear program would lead to a chain of compromises which ultimately target the existence of Islamic Republic. He believes that the West and Israel would never recognize the Islamic Republic, and if we give up now, we have to give up the whole regime.”
“Amazingly, some people refuse to acknowledge that Iran’s goal is to develop nuclear weapons”, Mr. Netanyahu said in his speech at AIPAC. By insisting that it has the right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, but then refusing to allow open inspection access, Iran deserves all the pressure and suspicion that has been brought to bear, all the more so for recently announcing another impregnable facility carved out of a mountain near Qom for enriching uranium to 20%. What could that be for other than a military purpose?
But still, might that be the power threshold Iran is after: only the capability as a threat to hold over the region? And is that enough to justify a preemptive act of war with no proof that Iran intends to take the final step of building a bomb?
How naïve. It ignores Israel’s and the media’s constant reminder of what Ahmadinijad said in 2005, that he wanted to “wipe Israel off the map”?
Except he never said that. The idiom does not exist in Farsi, as Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan has tried repeatedly to point out. What Ahmadinijad said translates as “remove the regime from the pages of time”, citing the example of the Soviet regime’s collapse. In other words, regime change. Cole adds,
“He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse”.
That same fiction just showed up again in a Washington Post op-ed piece by Mitt Romney. He writes, “What’s more, Iran’s leaders openly call for the annihilation of the state of Israel”.
Still, even if Iran professed that it had gone no further than weapons capability, how could it be known what further might be taking place in those mountain caves?
The Obama Administration is convinced it would detect any attempt to produce a bomb. In this interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, the President said Tehran “is not yet in a position to obtain a nuclear weapon without us having a pretty long lead time in which we know that they are making that attempt.” Satellites would detect use of the conventional explosives used to detonate the bomb, international inspectors would be sent home, and we have some degree of intelligence about Iran’s scientific community’s activities.
Mr. Netanyahu points out the U.S.’s dismal record in spotting weapons breakthroughs, most recently how little is known whether North Korea has a working bomb after two nuclear tests.
In their meeting, Mr. Obama did not advance beyond his long-held position that “all options are at the table.” Natnyanuhu reportedly would try to demand that the American President define the red lines that, once crossed, would trigger a U.S strike on Iran, but apparently did not cross that red line.
“A Single Roll of the Dice”, a new book by Trita Parsi, president of the Iranian-American Council, tells us it didn’t have to come to this. After the 2003 invasion that saw the U.S. overrun Iraq, the Iranians send the U.S. a letter offering negotiations on almost all issues of contention between the two countries. Iran admits its proxy dealings, agrees to stop support of Islamic jihad and Hamas, and offers full transparency of its nuclear program. But the Bush Administration, in its triumphalist mood, doesn’t even consider the offer. It believes it can get more if it pursues regime change in Iran. It worked in Iraq, didn’t it?
And it happened again. President Obama asked Brazil to see if it could resurrect a deal with Iran that had been offered by the U.S. in 2008 and 2009. We had offered to take Iran’s lower enriched uranium and transfer it to Russia, which would produce fuel pads for creating Iran’s medical isotopes. Teaming up with Turkey, in May of 2010, at the same time that the U.N. Security Council was considering sanctions, Brazil succeeded. But literally two days before, Russia and China had agreed to the sanctions. The Obama Administration opted for sanctions instead of the deal.
And he we are.
Mar 14 2012 | Posted in
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In the last week of ths month all but the comatose will be riveted to an unprecedented three days of arguments before the Supreme Court during which it will consider the thorniest and most far-reaching issue since Brown v. Board of Education: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. More frequently spoken of as Obamacare, the question is whether it should be struck down in whole or part as being unconstitutional.
The Act mandates that everyone buy health insurance, or be fined. In return, it stipulates that insurers must accept all comers irrespective of prior conditions and that insurers cannot cancel the coverage of anyone taken ill. To prevent insurance companies from being overwhelmed by the cost of those with health problems, driving up premiums astronomically, the requirement that everyone, including the young and healthy, pay into the system to spread those costs is essential to the Act’s solvency.
The linchpin is the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. All it says, under Section 8 of Article I, is that Congress shall have the power:
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes
The key word is “among”, which has always been interpreted to mean “between” states, and that says Congress does not have the power to regulate commerce that does not cross a state line.
Which is the case with insurance. Insurance is a state matter. We buy health insurance from state-licensed companies. The transaction is therefore intrastate, not interstate. So in requiring us to buy insurance, the health care act famously reaches into states to require us to make a transaction that is within a state and not “among” states and therefore, according to 26 states that have sued to overturn the law, out of the bounds of the Commerce Clause.
Lawyers for the government therefore have a problem. As arguments for the legality of the Act, they have searched for precedents whereby the government has in the past found ways to circumvent this restriction, but what they have come up with is slim indeed. The ruling most often mentioned is 1942’s Wickard v. Filburn, which held that a farmer’s wheat crop could be regulated even though grown solely for his family, because even a crop grown for personal consumption affects demand in the national marketplace. Good luck basing the one-sixth of the national economy that health care represents on that one.
We’ll return to this after a sidestep to an entirely unrelated subject:
The minimum wage was first mandated in 1938 to prevent worker exploitation during the Great Depression. As set by Congress, it has done a poor job of staying apace with either poverty levels or the dollar, and has always been less than the government-defined poverty level, but it nevertheless has been continually in force for all these years.
Another excursion into the unrelated:
In Federal Election Commission v. Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that corporations have an unlimited right to contribute to entities that deal in political speech because corporations are considered to be “persons” in the eyes of the law, and therefore have the 1st amendment right of free speech. The Court didn’t just suddenly declare corporations to be persons. They did that long ago in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886). In Citizens United, the Court only expanded corporations’ rights as persons.
To pull these disparate threads together:
What government lawyers have is a continuous and elephantine precedent that has gone entirely unnoticed: three-quarters of a century of the federal government compelling corporate “persons” to pay — interstate and intrastate — no less than the minimum wage to their employees. Put another way, to “buy” their employees’ services and pay more than they might have preferred. Lawyers arguing for the Affordable Care Act should turn the precepts laid down in Citizens United back against the Supreme Court and insist that the minimum wage precedent applies. The Court cannot very well deem corporations persons in one case but not in another. The individual mandate should go forward.
Mar 14 2012 | Posted in
Law |
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In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Mitt Romney compared the President to “feckless” Jimmy Carter who “fretted in the White House” for 444 days while the Iranians held U.S. diplomats hostage. But then, fearing the wrath of Ronald Reagan once he was elected, the Iranians set them free. Are we are to infer that Iran would halt its nuclear development the moment Romney replaces Obama.
Funny story, though. If you remember those days and found it a bit suspicious that the hostage release was announced literally on the day of Reagan’s inauguration, even before any contact with the new administration, or so the new administration would insist, you are not alone. The belief is that Reagan and running-mate George H. W. Bush were aware that Carter had negotiated the release and would announce it in what came to be called the “October Surprise” — which would give Carter a big boost in the polls just before the 1980 election. The accusation is that Iran was persuaded to wait — on the promise by Reagan-Bush of covert weapons shipments. Sound far-fetched? You can read further about it here.
Romney went on to say “I will station multiple aircraft carriers and warships at Iran’s door”. The 5th Fleet already patrols the Gulf. Romney would “press for ever-tightening sanctions, acting with other countries if we can but alone if we must” and days earlier he had said, “This is a president who has failed to put into place crippling sanctions against Iran”. Successive levels of sanctions are exactly what Obama has imposed — sanctions so tight that Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz if they are put in effect on schedule July 1. “The United States cannot afford to let Iran acquire nuclear weapons. Yet under Barack Obama, that is the course we are on”. The President at the same time was saying, “My policy is prevention of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons”.
Romney either hopes that voters are clueless (Washington Post readers?) about actions the Obama Administration has taken and hopes deliberately to mislead voters, or is clueless himself. There doesn’t seem to be a third option.
John Kerry, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, followed with his own op-ed, a blistering smackdown, criticizing Romney for inserting himself into U.S. foreign policy once again (he had attempted to disrupt ratification of New START, the arms reduction treaty with Russia), and calling his attack on Obama’s Iran policy “inaccurate as it is aggressive”. He slams Romney for “creating false differences with President Obama”, presumably referring to those we just pointed out, and faults him for not treating the nuclear problem with Iran as “deadly serious business” that “should invite sobriety and thoughtfulness, not sloganeering and sound bites” and “just another applause line on the stump”.
Mar 9 2012 | Posted in
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Finding herself in Oz, Dorothy may not have been in Kansas any more, but we are. We return there every four years.
We’re referring to Thomas Frank’s still often-cited 2005 book, “What’s the Matter With Kansas”. Marvelling at how his once populist home state had shifted to its polar opposite, Frank came upon the realization that in presidential election years Republicans regularly switch to social themes — drumming up opposition to abortion, gay marriage, gays in the military, and so on — to appeal to the conservative side of all voters in order to distract from matters of greater concern.
Election over, Republicans then do nothing about these issues and return to their traditional support of business interests, the military, and to cutting back safety net programs, says Frank. By using social issues to stir anger and capture their votes, Republicans cause conservatives “to vote against their own interests”, a phrase of his that has become a standard of political vocabulary.
Which is what we are seeing now. Republicans have rushed to change the conversation from the income inequality of the 1% and a public baying for higher taxes on the wealthy to — most recently — outrage against the calumny of Obama’s requiring Catholic Church-run organizations to offer insurance plans that pay for contraceptives. Obama plans to “wage war” on the Catholic Church if re-elected, said Newt Gingrich at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Romney will “reverse every single Obama regulation that attacks our religious liberty”. Never mind that 98% of Catholic women reportedly use those contraceptives. Playing to his conservative base who want more religion in politics, Rick Santorum said on ABC’s “This Week”, “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute”.
Mar 8 2012 | Posted in
Politics |
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