Voter ID is the New Poll Tax

By John Ballard

I'm too busy to teach history. Anybody reading here should already know the basics. Readers who don't know the history of poll taxes, go look it up.
I just shared an article on my Facebook page along with the following comments.

File under "You can't make this stuff up". 

I'm beginning to wonder if the GOP intent is more than simply defeating the president. Are they reaching for civil unrest to go along with it? If this were an isolated case it would be different, but it's not. The same kind of voter suppression has been reported in Florida, Pennsylvania and other places. And the target groups include other minorities or low-income groups who can be expected to vote for the president. Of course the right-wing radio set along with the Fox machine will be indignant about the "liberal mainstream media" which has the nerve to report cases like this.  

But this is a set-up for the kind of rage that erupted during the Sixties prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Bills. When riots broke out in California, Detroit, Jacksonville and other places the white Southerners I knew reacted with a mixture of puzzlement and indignation. They had no clue that black communities could be that angry. In fact, the reaction of many was to encourage the authorities to crack down hard and force it to stop, rather than yield to the demands that they be treated with the same rights that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 finally put into law. Even then there was so much discrimination at the polls -- just like today -- that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had to be enacted by Congress to make that illegal as well. 

Here we are fifty years later and the same struggles are being fought by immigrants, the LBGT community and a swollen population of ordinary people whose net worth has been decimated over the last thirty years, mainly by tax policies having the effect of REDISTRIBUTING THE WEALTH (that phrase really pisses off a lot of so-called "Conservatives") UPWARD. Ever heard of the One Percent? 

Though there were many attempts on the part of opponents to provoke violence, Occupy Wall Street was a peaceful sequence of events that swept the whole country. And even now, on the surface, I'm hearing no reports of violent protests. But that controlled civility should not be taken as an indication that there is not rage and frustration alive and well, waiting to become unpleasantly real. 

Here is the link and the article from Tennessee.

Dorothy Cooper is 96 but she can remember only one election when she's been eligible to vote but hasn't.
The retired domestic worker was born in a small North Georgia town before women had the right to vote. She began casting ballots in her 20s after moving to Chattanooga for work. She missed voting for John F. Kennedy in 1960 because a move to Nashville prevented her from registering in time.
So when she learned last month at a community meeting that under a new state law she'd need a photo ID to vote next year, she talked with a volunteer about how to get to a state Driver Service Center to get her free ID. But when she got there Monday with an envelope full of documents, a clerk denied her request.
That morning, Cooper slipped a rent receipt, a copy of her lease, her voter registration card and her birth certificate into a Manila envelope. Typewritten on the birth certificate was her maiden name, Dorothy Alexander.
"But I didn't have my marriage certificate," Cooper said Tuesday afternoon, and that was the reason the clerk said she was denied a free voter ID at the Cherokee Boulevard Driver Service Center.
"I don't know what difference it makes," Cooper said.
Cooper visited the state driver service center with Charline Kilpatrick, who has been working with residents to get free photo IDs. After the clerk denied Cooper's request, Kilpatrick called a state worker, explained what happened and asked if Cooper needed to return with a copy of the marriage certificate.
"The lady laughed," Kilpatrick said. "She said she's never heard of all that."
Tennessee Department of Safety spokeswoman Dalya Qualls said in a Tuesday email that Cooper's situation, though unique, could have been handled differently.
"It is department policy that in order to get a photo ID, a citizen must provide documentation that links their name to the documentation that links their name to the document they are using as primary proof of identity," Qualls said. "In this case, since Ms. Cooper's birth certificate (her primary proof of identity) and voter registration card were two different names, the examiner was unable to provide the free ID."
Despite that, Qualls said, "the examiner should have taken extra steps to determine alternative forms of documentation for Ms. Cooper."
Kilpatrick has had to call the state at least twice after taking someone to get a photo ID or have a photo added to the driver's license. State law allows anyone 60 or older to have their picture removed from their license.
The state has been working diligently to make the process easy for residents, Qualls said.

There is more at the link, including this.

Cooper's younger sister, now 91, lives in a nursing home across town. Nursing home residents and assisted living residents are exempt from the new photo ID requirement.
But Cooper, who barely needs a walker, is not.
Though she's still able to walk around her apartment without assistance and "takes daily exercise" at a community center next door, Cooper never had any children -- although she has outlived two husbands -- and relies on others for transportation.
The law "is a problem if you don't have a way of getting around," she said. "I've been voting all these years."

US and Others -- Unemployment During the Recession

By John

This comment at The Health Care Blog appeared among many appended to a post about healthcare reform, but the general nature of the comment makes it worth passing on to anyone interested in the condition of "social safety nets" -- you know, the kind that Mr. Romney is not too worried about.

Pat S says:August 18, 2012 at 1:15 pm“Unemployment rates are persistently higher than ours in most of the other developed countries because their labor markets are much more rigid and their tax burdens are significantly higher. Economists will tell you that Europeans make a conscious tradeoff of more economic security (broad safety net) and less inequality at the cost of lower long term economic growth and less opportunity. The U.S. makes the opposite tradeoff which reflects, I think, our different history and culture.” 

Back in the 80′s that was pretty much true, but recently the trend has reversed.
Of the established developed countries — including the old EU and Northern Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan — unemployment is now lower than the US in all except France (and perhaps Britain, as their current economic program crushes the economy,) and actually has been for the best part of a decade. Economic growth has equalled or exceeded ours in all but Japan — in a permanent recession for two decades now. 

Even in the past, while our rate of growth exceeded theirs in the second half of the 20th century, unemployment is more difficult to compare since unemployment in the US is far different from unemployment in those countries with far better safety nets of all sorts, including unemployment pay. Many economists suggest that the U6 measure of unemployment in the US, which includes discouraged workers who have withdrawn from the labor market, people working part time who desire full time work, and significantly underemployed people — i.e. IT people working as WalMart greeters. Unemployment benefits in those countries require reporting as “ready to work” for much longer periods of time — indefinitely in some cases — and discourage people from seeking part time or low wage work that does not provide income above the level of unemployment and associated benefits. U6 right now is near 15% in the US, nearly twice U3, the official rate, and has been in double digits or very near double digits since the fourth quarter of 2001. 

It is especially interesting to note that countries like Canada, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, etc. have been able to weather the current recession much better than us, with higher or much higher rates of growth despite their high rates of safety net spending. It is also interesting to note that Greece, the usual example for the nightmare of overspending on social support, actually spends and has spent a lower portion of their GDP on social support than any of the major old EU countries except Britain — the problem with Greece has been a combination of wholesale corruption leading to much lower tax receipts and very high government employment in what are essentially make work — or no work — jobs, and government borrowing to support those habits. These two things have been features of the Greek economy since the dictatorship period of the second half of the 20th century, and actually may date back to the Ottoman era, when the combination of making being a tax official an entrepreneurial venture and rulers using government employment as a tool to suppress unrest became a way of life. 

Unfortunately, the steady drumbeat of propaganda from some sources has given most Americans as poor an image of how the economies of other countries work as of how their health care systems work. The fog surrounding both is a significant impediment to arriving at health care and economic decisions that really work.

FB and Twitter are the New Blogging

By John Ballard

I just had this exchange at Facebook...

John Ballard -- Every big website, from print and broadcast media to manufacturing and service outfits, seems to have what they call "blogs." The meaning and application of blogging, once the domain of amateurs and wannabes of various stripes, have been co-opted by professionals, many of which probably have editors or "policies" governing content. Blogs like that are to what blogging set out to be -- what frozen or freeze-dried foods are to the original products. I want to say with Groucho, I don't want to be a member of any club that would have me for a member. 

I found over the last several months, as Newshoggers was obviously drying up (everybody but Ron and I drifted away, traffic was clearly in a funk and the place never really got any comments/feedback to speak of...) I have found myself at Facebook and Twitter, both of which are real-time places, often with others online and available all the time. I've "met" more people I will never actually see or even speak with on a telephone that I ever imagined.
Facebook and Twitter are the new blogging for me 

Ruchira Paul -- I know. Bloggers were the town cryers and leafletters of the mid 2000s. It was free for all (in more senses than one). Blogging is just not that much fun any more. I use FB a lot (I haven't yet joined Twitter). But I don't feel like commenting as seriously and substantively here as I did and still do occasionally, as on blogs. Every forum has its own special character.

I'm posting here at the new site to practice playing in the wysiwyg sandbox. 

I can't help remembering my old blog Hootsbuddy's Place which I lost when I fell victim to a phishing scam. The blog was linked with a g-mail account, Google owned both blog and email, and when the Google-bots flagged the site as a spam source that was the end of my contact. 

As the reader can see, the blog is still out there on the Internet, with two hit counters still operating, getting sixty-five or seventy hits a day, and showing up in Google searches. I figure it has about three thousand posts. 

It's ironic that I can no longer go there, but it seems Google is not run by living people. I tried in vain for almost a year to correct the problem but to no avail. All the good wishes, helpful (but ineffective) suggestions from people in the support groups and all my personal messages to anybody I could think of were to no avail. Google, it seems, is run by robots, not people. Just like my old blog!

When our Direct TV was having a standoff with Comcast over content they took off the kid shows that my grandchildren watched. We already pay too much for Direct TV and my wife was ready to fire them and find a new provider. I fired off a Twitter message to Direct TV and received a reply within fifteen minutes, assuring me that they were working on the problem, and my grandchildren would soon be able to watch their shows again. (Which they did, incidentally.)

My point is that some of the biggest companies in the country have learned the power of the Internet and how rapidly a public relations failure going viral can totally ruin their day. Consequently they have living people on duty 24/7 whose only mission in life is to soothe people like me when they come across potentially  radioactive Twitter messages. 

I recommend this tactic for any problem with big companies that are overlooking customers or consumers. 

In fact, it's time that Google set up a Twitter monitoring section and assign people with actual authority to resolve problems like I had when my old blog got hijacked. Now that would be impressive!

HCR -- Service robots in nursing homes (Germany)

By John

Weekend Book Review - Ayn Rand and the World She Made

Commentary By Ron Beasley

With the Ayn Rand cultist Paul Ryan becoming the Republican Vice Presidential Candidate today I thought this might be a good opportunity to republish my reveiw of the Ayn Rand Biography by  Anne C. Heller from 2010.

--------------------------------------------------------

The picture on the left may represent the beginning of the deregulation frenzy that resulted in the current world wide economic disaster. It was taken in 1974 by David Hume Kennerly and pictured are President Gerald Ford, Alan Greenspan, Ayn Rand, Rand's husband Frank Conner and Greenspan's mother Rose Goldsmith. The occasion was Alan Greenspan being sworn in as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. The significance of the picture is that Ayn Rand is there next to her disciple Alan Greenspan but to understand the significance you must understand Rand herself and her philosophy. Anne C. Heller helps us do that with her excellent biography of Rand, Ayn Rand and the World She Made.

I recommend this book not because I agree with anything Ayn Rand stands for but because it's a really good read and it's necessary to understand Rand and undererstand how we arrived where we are today. Heller makes it clear that Rand and her life are much more interesting than any of the creations in her fiction and there are times you forget that you are not reading fiction. I am going to concentrate on Rand's early life in this review � it's important because narcissists and sociopaths like Rand are either created early if not born that way.

Alyssa Zinovievna Rosenbaum was born in St Petersburg, Russia in 1905 of Jewish parents. While it's often said that it was the Bolshevik revolution that was responsible for Rand's philosophy and world view according to Heller the foundation for Rand's philosophy predates the revolution.

When Rand was five or so, she recalled, her mother came into the children's playroom and found the floor littered with toys. She announced to Rand and Rand's two-and-a-half-year-old sister, Natasha, that they would have to choose some of their toys to put away and some to keep and play with now; in a year, she told them, they could trade the toys they had kept for those they had put away. Natasha held on to the toys she liked best, but Rand, imagining the pleasure she would get from having her favorite toys returned to her later, handed over her best-loved playthings, including a painted mechanical wind-up chicken she could describe vividly fifty years later. When the time came to make the swap and Rand asked for her toys back, her mother looked amused, Rand recalled. Anna explained that she had given everything to an orphanage, on the premise that if her daughters had really wanted their toys they wouldn't have relinquished them in the first place. This may have been Rand's first encounter with injustice masquerading as what she would later acidly call "altruism." Her understanding of how power can be acquired by a pretense of loving kindness would grow only more acute with time.
Perhaps it's little wonder, then, that from the age of four or five onward, Rand developed a keen sense that anything she liked had to be hers, not her mothers, the family's, or society's, an attitude that readers of her 1943 novel The Fountainhead will recognize in the perverse and complicated character of Dominique Francon. As a corollary, she claimed not to care about being approved of or accepted by her family and peers. Since she generally wasn't accepted, the proud, intelligent child appears to have learned early to make a virtue of necessity. In her twenties and thirties, she would construct a universe of moral principles built largely on the scaffolding of some of these defensive childhood virtues.

The second influence in Rand's life came when she read a serial in a French Boys magazine, The Mysterious Valley. It was there that Rand met Cyrus Vance, a handsome and heroic figure and in Rand's eyes a hero in every way. Rand would spend the rest of her life looking for a Cyrus Vance and creating him in her fiction.

Rand herself was an elitist who lived on cigarettes, amphetamines and chocolate. Elitism was also what she was marketing in her novels. Her characters like Galt and Roark were unbelievable because they were little more than abstract principles personified. Her vision of capitalism was simple and had a grade school like quality to it.

But Rand has impacted us all and still does. The principal architect of our current economic crisis, Alan Greenspan was a disciple for most of his life but after looking at the havoc he had created had to recant. (Via Digby)

"I have found a flaw" in free market theory, Greenspan said under intense questioning by Representative Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the Government Oversight Committee of the House of Representatives. "I don't know how significant or permanent it is," Greenspan added. "But I have been very distressed by that fact."

Pressed by Waxman, Greenspan conceded a more serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root of a superior economy.

"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," Greenspan said.

Waxman pushed the former Fed chief, who left office in 2006, to clarify his explanation.

"In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working," Waxman said.

"Absolutely, precisely," Greenspan replied. "You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."

But she still has her followers in important places today like the Republican's wonder boy, Congressman Paul Ryan.

It's important to know what motivates the enemy and the Rand cultists are still with us.  As Digby notes Rand's followers are passing out free books.  For that reason this is an important read for anyone concerned about how Ayn Rand is still an influence.

Note:

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for this review.

A Paul Ryan Post

By John Ballard

This is my Paul Ryan post. Rather than a string of entries about Paul Ryan, I have decided to just have one and add to it as the days pass.

? 8/11  This list from the Milwaukee paper looks like a good place to start. (Links at the source.) 
As they say, you can't make this stuff up! 

Interest group rankings

• American Conservative Union: 92% lifetime score (2011) 


• American Civil Liberties Union: 0% (2011) 


• The John Birch Society: 70% (2011) 


• Citizens Against Governmental Waste: 95% (2010) 


• League of Conservation Voters: 20% lifetime score (2011) 


• National Journal: Conservative Foreign Policy score: 57% (2011) 


• National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund, guns rights positions: A (2010) 


• AFL-CIO, labor positions: 28% (2011) 


• Alliance for Retired Americans: 6% lifetime score (2011) 


• NETWORK, a National Catholic Social Justice Lobby: 25% (2012) 


• Family Research Council, social issues: 90% (2011) 


• Vietnam Veterans of America: 100% (2011) 


• National Organization for Women: 13% (2008) 


• National Federation of Independent Business: 90% (2011) 

Source: Project Vote Smart

?  "One of US Republican VP pick Paul Ryan's favourite pastimes involves shoving his fist down the throats of giant catfish."

Rep. Paul Ryan loves noodling catfish  (June 9)

Ryan said he planned to head to Oklahoma on Sunday and take his children fishing on Lake Texoma, then indulge in another favorite activity in the afternoon: "I'm going to go out with some of my Okie friends, and I'm going to do something that I've been doing for a number of years, and that's called noodling catfish.

"And I want to say something to you Texans - because you understand freedom, you now legally recognize a man's right to catch a catfish with his own bare hands."

How Stuff Works...

If you're lucky, a catfish will swim out and, in an attempt to defend its nest or escape, will bite you. Some catfish may just nip at your fingers, but others will clamp onto your entire hand. Although catfish don't have super-sharp teeth, those teeth are plentiful. They curve inward, and noodlers say they feel like coarse sandpaper. The sandpaper feeling alone might not be so bad. But after a catfish clamps down on something, it tends to spin, which can rub your skin raw.

If the fish doesn't clench your hand, you'll need to pull open its mouth to get a good grip. Then, wiggle your fingers to work them into the fish's gill cover, the respiratory area on the sides of the fish's head. Grabbing it by the gills makes it more difficult for the fish to bite you during a struggle. It also helps you hold on a bit tighter. Once you get a firm hold on the fish, pull that prize to the surface. A flathead catfish could weigh anywhere from 20 to 50 pounds (9 to 22.7 kilograms) or more, so this is no small task.

More gory details at the link. Get ready, Mr. Biden. 

?  Widow's peak -- Wikipedia 

A number of fictional people have a widow's peak. In stories and on film this trait is often associated with a villain; Count Dracula is an example. Eddie Munster - from the television program "The Munsters" - also had this distinctive hairline. Another villain depicted as having widow's peak hair is The Joker from "Batman" comic books and films.Hannibal Lecter is described as having one in the novels that feature his story. Villainous Natasha Fatale from "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show" has a widow's peak.

? Social Security Personal Savings Guarantee and Prosperity Act of 2005
Read. Blink. Read again. Is he serious? #HeadDesk

Roubini: "Gutting Social Security with privatization rather than reforming it sensibly is demented as equity returns have been 0% for the last decade."

 

 

? Climate Denier, Conspiracy Theorist, Koch Acolyte

A favorite of the Koch brothers, Ryan has accused scientists of engaging in conspiracy to "intentionally mislead the public on the issue of climate change." He has implied that snow invalidates global warming.

? Meet Janna Little Ryan, Who Wants To Be America's Second Lady
She's a former Washington, D.C. lawyer and lobbyist with deep roots in Oklahoma Democratic politics. Her husband, Rep. Paul Ryan, just became Mitt Romney's running mate.

==> This is not a hit piece. It's an excellent survey of Mrs. Ryan's backstory -- respectable educational and professional (if politidcal) roots. 

? 8/12 Paul Ryan: Randian poseur
Salon -- Mitt Romney couldn't have chosen a better example of the fakery at the heart of today's GOP By Joan Walsh

...Paul Ryan represents the fakery at the heart of the Republican project today. It starts with the contradiction that Mr. Free Enterprise has spent his life in the bosom of government, enjoying the added protection of wingnut welfare benefactors like the Koch brothers. If Herman Cain is Charles and David Koch's "brother from another mother," as he famously joked, Ryan is the fourth Koch, swaddled in support from Americans for Prosperity and other Koch fronts. The man who wants to make the world safe for swashbuckling, risk-taking capitalists hasn't spent a day at economic risk in his entire life.

? Less than twenty-four hours after the announcement of the Ryan pick I am thinking about another presidential election offering a famous "Choice, Not an Echo" in 1964. A Google search turned up a delightful link featuring part of Barry Goldwater's website announcing in his own words his decision to run for president against LBJ. As in this year's election the famous book by that title describes "how the liberal 'Rockefeller Republican' wing of the Republican Party had manipulated the Republican Party's choice of nominees in several elections to nominate people like Wendell Willkie and Dwight Eisenhower, and called on conservatives to rally against the liberal wing and offer a true conservative for the nomination."

Does this ring any bells?

I've always stood for government that is limited and balanced and against the ever increasing concentrations of authority in Washington. I've always stood for individual responsibility and against regimentation. I believe we must now make a choice in this land and not continue drifting endlessly down and down for a time when all of us, our lives, our property, our hopes, and even our prayers will become just cogs in a vast government machine.

I was once asked what kind of Republican I was. I replied that I was not a "me-too" Republican. That still holds. I will not change my beliefs to win votes. I will offer a choice, not an echo. This will not be an engagement of personalities. It will be in engagement of principles.

I believe that we can win victory for freedom both at home and abroad. I believe that we can be strong enough and determined enough to win those victories without war. I believe that appeasement and weakness can only bring war. I've asked and will continue to ask: Why Not Victory-why not victory for sound, constitutional principles and government-why not victory over the evils of communism?

I'm convinced that in this year 1964 we must face up to our conscience and make a definite choice. We must decide what sort of people we are and what sort of world we want-now and for our children.

My candidacy is pledged to a victory for principle and to presenting an opportunity for the American people to choose. Let there be a choice-right now and in clear, understandable terms. And I ask all of those who feel and believe as I do to join with me in assuring both the choice and the victory.

And choose we did. That year the electorate buried Mr. Conservative in a historic landslide. 

And wouldn't you know, there at the bottom of the screen, was an advertisement for the Romney-Ryan campaign. 

You can't make this stuff up. 

Romney: Stop Hitting Me

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Romney is tired of the Obama campaign being mean to him. He wants his business record and taxes to be off the table during the campaign even though it's his business record he's running on.  

Talking about candidates' personal finances is hardly novel, nor is it irrelevant - how candidates make their money, however much or how little they've earned over the years, is not only fair game but a legitimate line of inquiry. The question of tax returns is also not new (to that end, Romney has said he would also release his 2011 taxes, but has yet to do so, with less than three months to go in the race). 

What is surprising is hearing a candidate say, essentially, "stop hitting me." As the folks at First Read note, this would seem to be something of a concession that the negatives are bothering the candidate, whom a round of new national polls shows running at a deficit that exceeds the margin of error.

In addition to being a rediculous request it is really bad politics. It makes him look weak and voters don't want a weak President and Comander In Chief.