Every pundit, wonk, and thick-headed pig-headed dick-headed talking head in the entire nation has been postulating, extrapolating, and bloviating about who will win the presidential election this November. They don’t know the answer. They’ll tell you that they do, and then the following day, they’ll tell you they have a new answer. But I do know. Check out the video to find out. If the guy I talk about in this video doesn’t win, then I will dance naked onstage at the Apollo. And unlike the Suicide Girls, very few people want to see me dance naked.
Also, if you’re within 1000 miles of NYC this weekend, come to the big Occupy pre-#S17 concert that will feature me, Tom Morello, Jello Biafra, Rebel Diaz and others. It’s at Foley Square on Sunday Sept 16th, starting at 1 PM.
An alarming crusade that threatens not only the democratic ideal but our very democracy itself is currently sweeping the country. Falsely posing as stern protectors of electoral integrity, the GOP has started yet another costly and totally unnecessary war – The War on Voter Fraud.
It might be a just war…if it were true. But like so many GOP grand proclamations, it’s a sham, merely another false charge Republicans are criminally deploying to their advantage.
A new study released this past August 12th and financed by the non-partisan Carnegie and Knight Foundations examined thousands of court documents, official reports, and media reports involving voter fraud since 2000 and found conclusively that voter fraud is “virtually non-existent.” Of roughly 600 million votes cast since 2000, there were only 10 cases of alleged in-person voter fraud. 10…and those were just alleged. There were no convictions of in-person voter fraud during that time frame. Not anywhere in the US. Not one. In fact, you are sixty times more likely to get hit by lightning in any given year than the US is going to suffer from voter fraud.
But what the hell, there weren’t any WMDs in Iraq either…and they got away with that one (at a cost of more than a trillion dollars and thousands of American lives). And this is clearly in the same realm, a Machiavellian twist of a tactic Naomi Klein labeled “The Shock Doctrine,” manipulating real or made-up disasters (or threats to your “freedoms”) to urgently push an extreme political or economic agenda that no one in their right mind would otherwise consider – in this case, limiting the number of votes cast in elections.
For the GOP controlling votes is, indeed, an urgent matter. As US demographics tilt rapidly toward fuller minority share – a long-standing goal of true democracies – the party of “old white guys” is losing its dominance. They could, of course, try to appeal to minorities, but Republicans really don’t want to include in their party millions of people who were probably born in Kenya. So the only other option is to prevent them from voting.
How do they do it? The two most effective methods are to pass laws in GOP-held state legislatures requiring obstructive Voter ID standards or to restrict voting hours and days to an absolute minimum. Usually it’s one or the other and sometimes both. In addition to the financial implications associated with existing IDs laws, the potential cost estimate for ID requirements advanced by the GOP in 2011 in 35 states runs as high as $838 million for the first four years alone – certainly an unreasonable burden to taxpayers at a time when state treasuries are suffering severe budget crises.
But even more destructive is how these requirements negatively affect individual voters. Almost all of the proposed or enacted photo ID laws involve some monetary cost – passport books cost $140 and a driver’s license additionally requires both a written and a road test. Not only does that place an “unreasonable burden” on potential voters, it flies in the face of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
What voting blocs are most affected by these restrictions? Roughly 25% of African-Americans, 20% Asian-Americans, 19% Hispanics, 18% of those between the ages of 18-24, and 15% of Americans making less than $35,000 per year. And, of course, seniors of all stripes who no longer drive or travel out of the country but who still want to vote to keep Medicare.
Not coincidentally, those are the very groups who generally vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. It should also be noted that every single state undergoing a “voter purge” has Republican election officials. It’s also no fluke that that the GOP claims that voting fraud in these demographics is most flagrant in precisely the same states that polls indicate are still undecided, the so-called “swing states” that will end up deciding the election.
In Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen petitioned the state Supreme Court just a few weeks ago to reinstate before the November elections a Voter ID law passed by the Republican-controlled legislature, hopefully at a date so late as to make any legal appeal impossible.
In Florida (29 electoral votes), GOP Governor Rick Scott fired one Secretary of State who refused to implement his plan to suppress votes and appointed one who will.
Jon Husted, GOP Secretary of State of Ohio (18 electoral votes), singled out two large Democratic districts for fewer voting days and no evening or weekend voting hours, privileges all Republican precincts retained. A Federal Court intervened, ordering Husted to cease and desist all efforts to limit voting access. Instead, Husted defied the order, continuing his path of suppression. Husted is due in court this week to ask for a stay of the order until the appeal process has been exhausted, which would occur only after the election. Husted is also running a 3-card monte ruse with polling places, switching them to one suburb after another. At this late date, voters in Toledo don’t even know where to vote!
And that’s just the tip of the figurative iceberg – confusion and suppression reign in nearly every state controlled at some level by GOP leaders masquerading as crusaders for honesty and transparency in the election process when just the opposite is true. Ohio Republicans on the Board of Elections even admitted that the ID requirements specifically targeted black voters. Despite the hue and cry, Republicans will not be moved – they know suppressing up to 5 million votes nationwide is the only way they can win the election. Of course, all of this is criminal…but if the GOP has its way, it’ll be too late to stop them and if they win the election, their Republican brethren will hardly seek prosecution.
But there are some prescriptive actions that could minimize the negative effect of these illegal purges, both now and in the future.
First, no fair-minded citizen in a participatory democracy wants anyone’s vote to be stolen or unduly suppressed. Whatever one’s party affiliation, everyone in a democracy must strive for transparency in, and the legitimacy of, the election process. More than anything else, free elections are what keep us free. Otherwise we’re just another, albeit bigger, banana republic, where those on top steal whatever they can – money, votes, and your country. So whether you’re liberal or conservative, if someone – Republican or Democrat – tries to deny citizens their right to vote, you must vote against them. The reason goes to the heart of American values – stealing votes is the grossest betrayal of the democratic ideals our nation was founded upon and for which millions of Americans have died over the last 240 years.
Secondly, federal judges and prosecutors need to adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward those who would suppress the most fundamental of American rights. If election officials ignore court directives to restore order, our courts are honor bound to issue bench warrants and throw them into the hardest and most unforgiving lock-ups imaginable – Alcatraz factored by ten – until they fully comply with the law. Just because they have a government title in front of their name does not mean they are above the law, especially as they have sworn to uphold it.
Lastly, it would be sweet irony – and a GOP nightmare – to use Citizens United to help get out the vote. With the influx of undisclosed money flowing into the coffers of SuperPACs on both sides of the aisle, the price tag of this November’s election is in the vicinity of $5.8 billion (including approximately $2.5 billion for the Presidential election alone).
Now, one or more SuperPACs needs to put aside one-half of 1% of that total – $29 million – and spend it on getting minorities and seniors state IDs acceptable for voter verification. And, like the GOP, it needs to focus on large swing states. For instance, the basic cost of an Ohio-issued photo ID is $8.50, or $5.1 million to purchase IDs for 600,000 voters. Florida’s photo ID can be had for $25.00, or $15 million to secure voting rights for another 600,000 citizens. Allow $8.9 million for administration costs and voter outreach and 1,200,000 otherwise disenfranchised voters can pass any challenge at their polling places. Those two states alone are enough to make a real difference.
Alternatively, federally-issued passport cards cost only $30. And they’re good for ten years, or five elections – 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 – six bucks per cycle. So 700,000 passport cards would cost $21 Million, plus $8 million for admin and outreach, equals $29 million. Implemented every two years, this expense would sign up three and a half million minority and senior voters over ten years. In emergencies, the Passport Office promises to have your document ready in 3 working days – and if an important business meeting in London meets that criteria, your right to vote should be given equal weight.
When you figure that over $4 billion will be spent on media advertising alone this year, spending $29 million to actually insure the voting rights of 1.2 million minority and senior voters is comparably little money well spent – and money certainly spent in the cause of true democratic principles.
Besides, the SuperPAC(s) should get all of their money back. If states demand payment for an ID that is required to vote, that is a “poll tax,” and against the law. So if the SuperPAC(s) putting up the money sues both the state and the individuals involved for full reimbursement, and then recycles that money every two years until Republicans no longer think stealing your vote is a good investment, it’s a net gain for everyone involved (except those rigging the vote). If Jon Husted was personally on the hook for, say, $10 million, he might change his mind about letting you cast your ballot.
These are options to correct just the false In-Person Voter Fraud touted by Republicans. In an upcoming column, I’ll be talking with Greg Palast – arguably our country’s leading expert on this issue – about everything you need to know about real voter fraud.
It may well be the most important issue facing America’s survival. If the illegal GOP purges succeed in suppressing large demographics from voting, our nation relinquishes both the moral high ground and democratic principle to every other country capable of running clean elections.
And, too, we don’t want to awaken on November 7th only to discover that yet another election has been stolen.
“I think that it is very rare to find this kind of absolute love.”
– Audrey Tautou
Audrey Tautou is a sweet petite thing. She is a so beautiful and charming. It is easy to see why Jean-Pierre Jeunet first cast her in the sweet and tender Amelie and again in A Very Long Engagement as Mathilde.
A Very Long Engagement is set in France near the end of World War I in the deadly trenches of the Somme, in the gilded Parisian halls of power, and in the modest home of an indomitable provincial girl. It tells the story of a young woman’s relentless, moving, and sometimes comic search for her fiancée, who has disappeared. What follows is an investigation into the arbitrary nature of secrecy, the absurdity of war, and the enduring passion, intuition and tenacity of the human heart.
INTO: Purity, constellations, the tide, the medicinal values of herbs, divinations, tea readings, wild flowers, nutritional superiority, multiple orgasms, and YOU!
NOT INTO: Vanity, arrogance, lies, apathy, junk food.
MAKES ME HAPPY: The smell of new books, the change of the seasons, sunrises when most of the city is asleep, hot chai tea on cold days, cold chai tea on hot days, arthropods, cephalopods, epiphanies, feeling a connection with other human creatures, tender moments that make my eyes swell with water, quiet mornings, noisy nights, interpretive dance with the boyfriend when no one is looking, silliness, inside jokes, self reflection, self esteem, self worth, cosmic design, morning sex, electrodes, diodes, and potentiometers, paper mache, fruit trees, semantics, tenderness, truthfulness, connectedness, understanding, flora and fauna.
MAKES ME SAD: Slaughter houses, dairy farms, veal boxes, battery cages, and cattle prods.
HOBBIES: Cooking, crafting, creating.
VICES: I keep my nails short so I can dig into life.
I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: In the produce section of your local grocery store.
CHICAGO. In a school with some of the poorest kids in Chicago, one English teacher–I won’t use her name–who’d been cemented into the school system for over a decade, wouldn’t do a damn thing to lift test scores, yet had an annual salary level of close to $70,000 a year. Under Chicago’s new rules holding teachers accountable and allowing charter schools to compete, this seniority-bloated teacher was finally fired by the principal.
In a nearby neighborhood, a charter school, part of the city system, had complete freedom to hire. No teachers’ union interference. The charter school was able to bring in an innovative English teacher with advanced degrees and a national reputation in her field – for $29,000 a year less than was paid to the fired teacher.
You’ve guessed it by now: It’s the same teacher.
It’s Back to School Time! Time for the editorialists and the Tea Party, the GOP and Barack Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan to rip into the people who dare teach in public schools.
And in Arne’s old stomping grounds, Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is stomping on the teachers, pushing them into the street.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves. This is what Mitt Romney and Obama and Arne Duncan and Paul Ryan have in mind when they promote charter schools and the right to fire teachers with tenure: slash teachers salaries and bust their unions.
They’ve almost stopped pretending, too. Both the Right Wing-nuts and the Obama Administration laud the “progress” of New Orleans’ schools–a deeply sick joke. The poorest students, that struggle most with standardized tests, were drowned or washed away.
One thing Democrat Emanuel and Republican Romney both demand of Chicago teachers is that their pay, their jobs, depend on “standardized tests.” Yes, but whose standard?
Here are an actual questions from the standardized test that were given third graders here in NYC by the nation’s biggest test-for-profit company:
“…Most young tennis stars learn the game from coaches at private clubs. In this sentence a private club is….” Then you have some choices in which the right answer is “Country Club – place where people meet.”
Now not many of the “people [who] meet” at country clubs are from the South Side of Chicago–unless their parents are caddies. A teacher on the South Side whose students are puzzled by the question will lose their pay or job. Students on the lakefront Gold Coast all know that mommy plays tennis at the Country Club with Raul on Wednesdays. So their teacher gets a raise and their school has high marks.
And while Mayor Rahm promises kids in “bad” schools new teachers (the same ones at lower pay) at high-score schools, in fact, they are never actually allowed in.
But Rahm, after all, is just imposing Bush education law which should be called, No Child’s Behind Left.
You want to know what’s wrong with our schools? Benno Schmidt, CEO of the big Edison Schools teach-for-profit business is a creepy, greedy privateer. But he told me straight: that before Hurricane Katrina, his company would never go into New Orleans because Louisiana spent peanuts per child on education. He made it clear: You get what you pay for. Not what you test for.
So the charter carpetbaggers slither in, cherry-pick the easy students, declare success. The tough cases and special ed kids are left in the public system so they can claim the public system fails.
Here’s what the teacher who was terrible at $70,000 but brilliant at $41,000 told me:
“They’re not doing this in white neighborhoods. And they want to get rid of the older, experienced teachers with seniority who cost more. Get rid of the teachers and, ultimately get rid of the kids. And the charter school gets to pick the kids who get in.”
It’s simple. When you look at the drop-out rates in New York (41%) and Chicago (44%), the solution offered is to pay teachers less. They punish those who dare to work in poor schools where kids struggle and you can bet that “washing away” half the kids in our schools is, in fact, exactly what they’ve planned.
It’s notable that, when he lived in Chicago, Barack Obama played basketball with city school chief Arne Duncan, but Obama sure as hell didn’t send his kids to Arne’s crap public schools. Those are for po’ folk.
His kids went to the tony “Lab” School in Hyde Park. Obama knows what Duncan knows and what Romney knows: there’s no money and no need for universal education. Yes, they like to say that “children are our future.” But they mean the children of China are our future, the Chinese kids who will make the stuff we want and the children of India who will program it all for us.
After all, how much education does some obese kid from Texas need to stack boxes from China in a Wal-Mart warehouse?
Education is no longer about information and learning skills. It’s now about “triage.” A few selected by standardized tests or privileged birth will be anointed and permitted into better and “gifted” schools.
The chosen elite are still very much needed: to invest in India and Vietnam, to design new derivatives to circumvent the laughable new banking laws, and to maintain order among the restless hundred-million drop-outs squeezed out of the colon of our educational system.
The Obama/Duncan/Emanuel plan is to create Bantustans of un-chartered, cheaply-run dumpster schools within a government system. But Romney and the GOP would give every child a “choice” even outside government schools with “vouchers.”
Of course, the “vouchers” don’t vouch for much. Romney’s old alma mater, Cranbrook Academy, runs at $34,025 a year, not counting the polo sticks and horse. The most generous voucher program is Washington DC’s, beloved of the GOP, which pays about $7,500, or if the student’s “choice” is Cranbrook, about 2 months of school. Hyde Park Day School Chicago is $35,900. To give each kid a real choice, not just a coupon, means a massive increase in spending per pupil. I didn’t see that in the Republican platform, did you?
The experienced teacher in Chicago who took the pay cut was offered one consolation. She was told she could make up some of the pay loss by quitting the union and saving on union dues.
So that’s the program. An educational Katrina: squeeze the teachers until they strike, demolish their unions and drown the students.
Chicago’s classroom war is class war by another name.
Greg Palast is the author of the recently published, acclaimed book Vultures’ Picnic and the New York Times Bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. For two decades, Palast was an investigator for Chicago-area unions, including the Chicago Teachers Union.
You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author’s proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.
In which we analyze exactly how many blowjobs Bill Clinton deserves to be given, the death and resurrection of the post-convention poll bounce, and the alternative universes of the GOP.
A. Consider moving out from underneath that rock you’re living under.
AND
B. Pucker up your best blowjob lips, ’cause after watching that speech, you’re gonna wanna properly congratulate the man what gave it.
And — goddamn — he deserves it! Bill Clinton didn’t just make a persuasive statement for Barack Obama’s reelection, he made a powerful argument for liberalism as the solution to our current economic malaise, as well as the pathway to future prosperity in a technocratic global economy. And, in doing so, he slid a rhetorical ice pick straight into the lungs of every Republican attack raised this election cycle.
“In Tampa, the Republican argument against the President’s re-election was pretty simple: we left him a total mess, he hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.”
Close your eyes. Repeat that line while doing your best Clinton imitation. Punctuate the pauses with a subtle point of your thumbnail. Turn out the lights. Take it slow. Point that thumb. And then, you try and tell me you aren’t hot in the bathing-suit area. I defy you to.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s yet another symptom of my degeneracy into Werewolf Disease. The doctors tell me it’s the most severe case they’ve seen since Glenn Beck was fired from Fox News for finding new sides of his mouth to lie out of. And, worse, they tell me that there’s no cure – but for the reelection of Barack Hussein Obama.
But there’s good news on that front. Friends, countrymen, election junkies — I give you the death and resurrection of the post-convention bounce:
“The death of the convention bounce?
“The convention bounce may not be extinct. But it’s definitely on vacation…”
That is what a post-convention bounce ought to look like. The Real Clear Politics’ average of polls that I typical cite shows a disappointing average of +1.6 for the President. But when you start to tease out the numbers, you see why that’s misleading – namely that the majority of the polls being averaged are from the middle of last week. The two best indicators — Rasmussen and Gallup’s daily tracking polls — both show a much greater amount of heat for the President, weighing in as of today (9 Sept, 2012) at +4 for the President from Rasmussen and +5 from Gallup, despite the variations of voter models and house effects for each.
Meanwhile, Silver’s indicators show a 6.7% increase in the odds of the President winning reelection, a 0.6% increase in the popular vote to his favor, and an increase of 11.4 votes in the Electoral College (for a total of 316.9). Intrade — my other handy predictor — shows a 3.5% increase in the odds of Obama winning compared to the post-RNC numbers, that settled into a +2.5% increase for a current 58.3% chance of reelection for Obama.
Now, as much fun as I’m having seeing how many times I can work the words “Bill Clinton” and “blowjob” into the same sentence, obviously, the former President wasn’t solely responsible for the success of the convention. Other highlights included:
And the President, who was, well, the President, and there.
Okay, so the President either underperformed or purposefully decided to leave his A-game at home. And we could dissect, at length, the myriad reasons why this may be true.
But, really, there’s no need to. Because it’s irrelevant.
If Romney had gotten a meager +1.5 bounce out of his convention and Obama performed roughly the same, examining why his speech was so muted in comparison to previous examples of his rhetorical abilities would be a worthwhile exercise. But it simply does not matter. The Democrats clearly had a more successful convention than the Republicans, even by completely meaningless measures.
Except in the alternative universe that so many Republicans seem to enjoy residing in.
One of the advantages to being an occasional blogger for a well-known alt-pinup site as opposed to being, say, Dick Morris, is that I don’t have to make sudden, off-the-cuff predictions that can easily be refuted within days. Also, it means I don’t have to wake up every day being Dick Morris.
“Overall, tonight left America with the impression that Obama saved GM, killed Bin Laden, and passed ObamaCare (which most of us don’t like). What a thin, thin record on which to base a plea for reelection.
“The result of these two conventions is a decided advantage for Romney.”
“The president can say a lot of things and he will…
“But he can’t tell you that you’re better off. Simply put, the Jimmy Carter years look like the good old days compared to where we are right now.”
_ Paul Ryan, East Carolina University, 3rd Sept, 2012
[Source: Washington Post]
For those under the didn’t-hear-about-Clinton’s-speech rock who revel in being ignorant of all salient facts, two things to be aware of:
1. While overall unemployment was less under Carter (about 7% compared to 8% under Obama), other economic indicators, such as inflation and interest rates were much, much, much higher. So high, in fact, the Misery Index became a popular reference point to better understand the pain caused by economic conditions of life during the Carter administration. Obama’s highest score on the Misery Index is still below Carter’s lowest.
2. Another relevant detail to keep in mind when considering this argument is that we’re not losing nearly one million jobs a month, like we were in early 2009.
See that giant fucking dip in the middle of January, 2009? Yeah, over that shit.
But the Republican alternate universe isn’t simply home to bizarre economic statistics or surreal interpretations of events. It’s also home to a completely different definition of “facts” than here in the regular ol’ universe:
There seems to be a sense among many Republicans that the lack of lies told at the DNC — as compared to the RNC — reflected by the lack of the media’s debunking and citing said lies, proves media bias. James Fallows (who, I believe, first used the phrase “post-truth” that so frighteningly describes our current discourse) sums it up nicely:
“How ‘false equivalence’ works. My mailbox is swamped with messages from Republicans asking when ‘the media’ will get on Joe Biden’s speech tonight with the same list of factual errors they/we produced after Paul Ryan’s ‘post-truth’ convention speech last week. Also, when Biden will be attacked the way Ryan has been about his marathon claims.
(…)
“The answer to the first question is: If someone comes up with illustrations of Biden mis-stating facts as grossly as Ryan did in his speech, then he will deserve and get comparable grief for them. But the expectation in most of these notes, interestingly, is that it shouldn’t matter whether there is any objective difference in who is bending the truth at any given time. If you point out problems ‘on one side,’ then you’d better find some equal and offsetting problem on the other, or else the game is rigged. Whether or not the problem is there.”
Oh, Republicans. Please, never change. Never cease to be so amazingly, mind-blowingly insane.
