Sunday, May 11, 2008
Voter ID Moves Ahead: Missouri A state that would matter in November
The battle over voting rights will expand this week as lawmakers in Missouri are expected to support a proposed constitutional amendment to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.
The measure would allow far more rigorous demands than the voter ID requirement recently upheld by the Supreme Court, in which voters had to prove their identity with a government-issued card.
Sponsors of the amendment — which requires the approval of voters to go into effect, possibly in an August referendum — say it is part of an effort to prevent illegal immigrants from affecting the political process. Critics say the measure could lead to the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of legal residents who would find it difficult to prove their citizenship.
Voting experts say the Missouri amendment represents the next logical step for those who have supported stronger voter ID requirements and the next battleground in how elections are conducted. Similar measures requiring proof of citizenship are being considered in at least 19 states. Bills in Florida, Kansas, Oklahoma and South Carolina have strong support. But only in Missouri does the requirement have a chance of taking effect before the presidential election.
In Arizona, the only state that requires proof of citizenship to register to vote, more than 38,000 voter registration applications have been thrown out since the state adopted its measure in 2004. That number was included in election data obtained through a lawsuit filed by voting rights advocates and provided to The New York Times. More than 70 percent of those registrations came from people who stated under oath that they were born in the United States, the data showed. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/us/politics/12vote.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
Shoddy Medical Care in ‘Immigrant Prisons’: WaPost 4 part series:
Some 33,000 people are crammed into these overcrowded compounds on a given day, waiting to be deported or for a judge to let them stay here.
The medical neglect they endure is part of the hidden human cost of increasingly strict policies in the post-Sept. 11 United States and a lack of preparation for the impact of those policies. The detainees have less access to lawyers than convicted murderers in maximum-security prisons and some have fewer comforts than al-Qaeda terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But they are not terrorists. Most are working-class men and women or indigent laborers who made mistakes that seem to pose no threat to national security: a Salvadoran who bought drugs in his 20th year of poverty in Los Angeles; a U.S. legal U.S. resident from Mexico who took $50 for driving two undocumented day laborers into a border city. Or they are waiting for political asylum from danger in their own countries: a Somali without a valid visa trying to prove she would be killed had she remained in her village; a journalist who fled Congo out of fear for his life, worked as a limousine driver and fathered six American children, but never was able to get the asylum he sought. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/immigration/cwc_d1p1.html
Lebanon: Hezbollah Triumphant Observers can’t decide if they’ve “taken over, a coup” or whether they’ve made their point and will withdraw from the ‘conquered’ sections of Beirut:
In one swoop, the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah took over a large section of Lebanon's capital Friday, altering the country's political balance and demonstrating a level of military discipline and efficiency that left the pro-Western government struggling to exert its authority.
Within 12 hours, the Iranian-backed group dispatched hundreds of heavily armed Shiite fighters into the western half of Beirut, routing Sunni Muslim militiamen, destroying opponents' political offices and shutting down media outlets loyal to the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and to Sunni leader Saad Hariri's Future movement.
At least 10 people were killed in the fighting, security officials said. Hezbollah used a lot of gunfire but inflicted minimal damage to public infrastructure, they said.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese army largely stood aside, underscoring its reluctance to take sides in a political stalemate that has left the country without a president since November.
The clashes were troubling far beyond Lebanon's borders. The country, long an arena for competing regional interests, has become one of a number of political and military battlefields where allies of the United States compete against Iranian-backed interests. The U.S. sees the moderate, Western-leaning government as a model for the region; Iran, which nurtured Hezbollah from its birth, considers the Lebanese militia a major strategic asset. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-lebanon10-2008may10,0,1323502.story
Mortgage Crisis Deepens: Prime Mortgage Foreclosures They’re up as well.
The first concrete evidence that delinquencies on mortgage bills have spread well beyond those with subpar credit shows that even prime borrowers have increasingly fallen behind on their house payments.
The figures remain relatively small so far. But if they rise further, delinquencies on prime loans — given only to those with good credit — could prolong the housing crisis.
About 2.3% of prime loans were 60 days past due in February, the highest level in at least a decade, according to data from First American CoreLogic LoanPerformance. That's up from 1.4% a year ago.
Some economists, such as Brian Bethune of Global Insight and Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, say they think delinquencies on prime loans have likely risen further since then.
"We're seeing the prime area coming under pressure, with delinquencies moving up," Bethune says. "We're in uncharted territory, and it's definitely been affecting the prime market, although it's still not anywhere as severe as in the subprime market." http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080509/1a_lede09_dom.art.htm?loc=interstitialskip
The Right, the Pulpit, & Tax Law: Stretching the Bounds…
A conservative legal-advocacy group is enlisting ministers to use their pulpits to preach about election candidates this September, defying a tax law that bars churches from engaging in politics.
Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Ariz., nonprofit, is hoping at least one sermon will prompt the Internal Revenue Service to investigate, sparking a court battle that could get the tax provision declared unconstitutional. Alliance lawyers represent churches in disputes with the IRS over alleged partisan activity.
The action marks the latest attempt by a conservative organization to help clergy harness their congregations to sway elections. The protest is scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 28, a little more than a month before the general election, in a year when religious concerns and preachers have been a regular part of the political debate.
It also comes as the IRS has increased its investigations of churches accused of engaging in politics. Sen. Barack Obama's denomination, the United Church of Christ, has said it was under investigation after it allowed the Democratic presidential candidate to address 10,000 church members last year. Last summer, the tax agency said it was reviewing complaints against 44 churches for activities in the 2006 election cycle. Churches found to be in violation can be fined or lose their tax exemptions. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121029464937179517.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Public Pension Crisis: Many a local government has been playing fast and loose with public employee funds resulting in "a massive breach of faith with a generation of public employees.”
The funds that pay pension and health benefits to police officers, teachers and millions of other public employees across the country are facing a shortfall that could soon run into trillions of dollars.
But the accounting techniques used by state and local governments to balance their pension books disguise the extent of the crisis facing these retirees and the taxpayers who may ultimately be called on to pay the freight, according to a growing number of leading financial analysts.
State governments alone have reported they are already confronting a deficit of at least $750 billion to cover the cost of the retirement benefits they have promised. But that figure likely underestimates the actual shortfall because of the range of methods they use to make their calculations, including practices that have been barred in the private sector for decades.
Local governments use these same techniques for their pension funds and face deficits that further contribute to what some investors and analysts say may be shaping up to be a massive breach of faith with a generation of public employees.
This gap is growing more yawning with the years. It has already presented taxpayers with a whopping bill that is eating up a vast portion of government budgets at the cost of other services. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/10/AR2008051002883_pf.html
CAMPAIGN:
Evangelicals: Not so tight with the Right. Reports aplenty as to their making alliances with non-conservatives, being active in environmental causes. Thus, it’s unclear as to where their support will go:
Michael Dudley is the son of a preacher man.
He's a born-again Christian with two family members in the military. He grew up in the Bible Belt, where almost everyone he knew was Republican. But this fall, he's breaking a handful of stereotypes: He plans to vote for Democrat Barack Obama.
"I think a lot of Christians are having trouble getting behind everything the Republicans stand for," said Dudley, 20, a sophomore at Seattle Pacific University.
Dudley's disenchantment with the GOP isn't unique among young, devoutly Christian voters. According to a September 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 15 percent of white evangelicals between 18 and 29, a group traditionally a shoo-in for the GOP, say they no longer identify with the Republican Party. Older evangelicals are also questioning their traditional allegiance, but not at the same rate.
But, Howard Dean, don't count your chickens quite yet. College-age and 20-something Christians may be leaving the GOP, but only 5 percent of young evangelicals have joined the Democrats, according to the Pew survey. The other 10 percent are wandering the political wilderness, somewhere between "independent" and "unaffiliated."
Shane Claiborne, a Philadelphia Christian activist and author of "Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals," has a different name for these folks: "political misfits."
Claiborne has traveled around the country the past several years, speaking and preaching mostly to college-age Christians who are "both socially conservative and globally aware." That makes them disenchanted with both major parties, he said.
"It's not about liberal or conservative, or Democrats or Republicans," he said. "I don't think it's a new evangelical left. ... There's a new evangelical stuck-in-the-middle." http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2004406277&zsection_id=2003956730&slug=evangvote11m&date=20080511
McCain:
(1) Not such clean hands: Helping his fundraisers: A not uncommon action by the purportedly righteous senator:
Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers].
Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.
When McCain's legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Ariz., run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/08/AR2008050803494_pf.html
(2)Trouble for McCain?: Bob Barr weights run: The idiosyncratic conservative is considering a run as a libertarian.
More than a month after Barr, 59, set up an "exploratory committee" to gauge how many Americans would vote for him as a Libertarian presidential candidate, he is still considering whether to enter the race.
The world inside the Beltway, it seems, is indifferent.
"Unless he commits a felony between now and November, no one will ever remember he ran for president," said Charlie Cook, political analyst and editor of the Cook Political Report.
Yet there are rumblings among Republicans that Barr could steal crucial votes from John McCain in a tight November election. Sean Hannity, the conservative talk show host, has branded Barr a "spoiler," and a Newsweek contributing editor, George F. Will, has warned that Barr could be "ruinous" to McCain in the same way that Ralph Nader was to Al Gore in 2000.
With less than two weeks before the Libertarian Party selects its presidential nominee, Barr will discuss his plans at a news conference Monday in Washington. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-barr10-2008may10,0,7640220.story
(3) Lobbyist staffers quit; tied to Burma regime: Again, not so clean:
Doug Davenport, the regional campaign manager for the mid-Atlantic states, founded the DCI Group's lobbying practice and oversaw the contract with Myanmar in 2002.
"Doug has tendered his resignation and we have accepted it," Jill Hazelbaker, McCain's communications director, wrote in a e-mail.
He joins former DCI Group CEO Doug Goodyear, who resigned yesterday from the post of convention CEO after Newsweek reported that DCI was paid more than $300,000 to represent Myanmar's ruling junta.
Goodyear and Davenport were recruited by McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, who has been accused by some current and former McCain advisers of take insufficient care of McCain's reformer brand by appointing lobbyists to key positions. Ironically, as Newsweek reported, Goodyear was asked to become convention CEO after Davis's lobbying firm partner, Paul Manafort, was nixed because of his own close ties to foreign governments and controversial companies. http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/a_second_mccain_aide_resigns.php
Toles http://www.hoffmania.com/blog/2008/05/from-the-pen-14.html
-R
