Friday, October 10, 2008
Economic Mess / Panic Deepens; Electoral “Fraud”
You've seen the allegations, the multiple registrations under the same name, the more registered voters than the population, these are serious allegations, my friends, and they must be investigated, and they must be investigated immediately and they must be stopped before November the fourth, so Americans will not -- will not -- be deprived of a fair process in this election. -John McCain
Voter Fraud, Voter Suppression: The former is the smokescreen, hoping to distract us from the latter, which is all about driving down the vote. The goal is to make us distrust the system and our candidates and then The Select will get their candidate. Rush Limbaugh is on this, articles are appearing, and one gets the sense that an Obama victory will be greeted by a conservative chorus of “Fraud!” But, first McCain has to join the chorus claiming “fraud!” in an effort to arrest his decline in the polls.
Thursday’s NY Times front-paged the issue, noting that in some states more people have been eliminated from the rolls than have been registered.
Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.
The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run.
Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately. The screening or trimming of voter registration lists in the six states — Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina — could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers…
Although much attention this year has been focused on the millions of new voters being added to the rolls by the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama, there has been far less notice given to the number of voters being dropped from those same rolls.
States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and remove the names of voters who should no longer be listed; but for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.
The six swing states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Michigan and Colorado are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote…
In three states — Colorado, Louisiana and Michigan — the number of people purged from the election rolls since Aug. 1 far exceeds the number who may have died or relocated during that period.
States may be improperly removing voters who have moved within the state, election experts said, or who are considered inactive because they have failed to vote in two consecutive federal elections. For example, major voter registration drives have been held this year in Colorado, which has also had a significant population increase since the last presidential election, but the state has recorded a net loss of nearly 100,000 voters from its rolls since 2004. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=us&pagewanted=print
Acorn: This is the potential scapegoat. The long-standing activist organization has done much voter registration and is being portrayed by the Right as an Obama organization. A few Hillary Clinton supporters (Hillaryclintonforum.net) are freshly trying to claim that Obama stole the election from her. The following is a typical, not-factually-based report that’s circulating.
Federal authorities are investigating the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, otherwise known as ACORN, in at least ten states including Missouri.
Thousands of fraudulent voter registrations have surfaced after having been submitted by ACORN. In some parts of Ohio, over half of the registrations submitted by ACORN are at least questionable. ACORN even admits that it is unable to insure there is no fraud. In the Kansas City area, one name, Monica Ray, registered 20 times.
It is time to put a stop to ACORN and restore some integrity to the election process.
So now we know what a “community organizer” is. ACORN is a left wing organization that Barack Obama used to work with. They pay people to solicit voter registrations and quotas must be met. This is a formula for fraud. The only thing that matters is how many registrations are submitted, not how authentic they are.
In Indianapolis, it was announced today that they have a total of 677,401 voter registrations. The problem is that Indianapolis only has 644,197 voter population. That means they have a registration of 105%. http://voices.kansascity.com/node/2375
Fraud Charges: The Goal: Eric Alterman:
Fox News now is repeating voter fraud charges out of Ohio, saying, “The … complaint puts new focus on the issue of voter fraud, which took on new meaning following the contested presidential election in 2000.”
Local news outlets regularly repeat charges of fraud as well. CBS2 in Chicago reports “[t]ensions are rising in northwest Indiana as the race for president there tightens. As voter registration came to a close Monday, John McCain supporters alleged fraud.”
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, too, is running a story that begins, “An official with the Republican National Committee said Thursday that a group involved with voter registration drives in Milwaukee is ‘engaged in systematic fraud and attempts to undermine our electoral system.’”
Yet these accounts lack the crucial context that should be included in every journalistic account of such charges—that voter fraud allegations are frequently based on shaky evidence with partisan goals in mind.
Project Vote recently released a detailed study of how accusations of voter fraud are often efforts to stop minorities and young people from voting. Called “The Politics of Voter Fraud,” the report details “how charges of voter fraud are used to discredit voter participation efforts and prime the pump for voter suppression efforts, such as the passage of voter ID bills, pushing for proof of citizenship, engaging in draconian voter purge efforts, and imposing severe restrictions on voter registration drives.”
Basically, partisan operatives make loud charges of “fraud” to discourage further enrollment of new voters—even though the evidence behind the charges is frequently paper-thin. This, in fact, was official government policy under the Bush administration. In the wake of the U.S. Attorneys scandal, Jeanne Cummings of the Associated Press reported that “operatives tucked thick folders of newspaper clippings and other fraud tips under their arms and pitched to reporters their claims that the Democrats’ registration program would lead to rampant voter fraud. Their passion was clear, but their evidence was slim, consisting mostly of isolated incidents of voter registration irregularities that were handled by local police or election officials.”
These thin charges are easy to disprove should journalists choose to do so. Sadly, Erin Ferns and Nathan Henderson-James of Project Vote write that, “the history of this issue shows that it has been bereft of this kind of basic journalism, even through the 2006 mid-term elections. This is important because haphazard reporting of partisan claims of voter fraud without checking the facts is how the media helps these voter suppression efforts. These stories not only deter potential voters from getting on the rolls, but… inspire bad election reforms aimed at disenfranchising voters, particularly those that are currently underrepresented in the electorate.” http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/10/voter_fraud.html
Economy: Free Fall at the Stock Market, Action Needed! The stock market is having the worst year since 1931, the second full year of the Depression. Concern deepens as to our international, economic meltdown.
The need is for some concerted international action. The meeting this weekend amongst principal finance ministers is viewed by many as key.
Paul Krugman favors the British action of direct assistance to banks, and he posits that the meeting’s success is necessary to prevent another Depression:
Why do we need international cooperation? Because we have a globalized financial system in which a crisis that began with a bubble in Florida condos and California McMansions has caused monetary catastrophe in Iceland. We’re all in this together, and need a shared solution.
Why this weekend? Because there happen to be two big meetings taking place in Washington: a meeting of top financial officials from the major advanced nations on Friday, then the annual International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting Saturday and Sunday. If these meetings end without at least an agreement in principle on a global rescue plan — if everyone goes home with nothing more than vague assertions that they intend to stay on top of the situation — a golden opportunity will have been missed, and the downward spiral could easily get even worse.
What should be done? The United States and Europe should just say “Yes, prime minister.” The British plan isn’t perfect, but there’s widespread agreement among economists that it offers by far the best available template for a broader rescue effort.
And the time to act is now. You may think that things can’t get any worse — but they can, and if nothing is done in the next few days, they will. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/10krugman.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
Catch-up: From earlier in the week:
Deficit: …though this may need updating as the economy plummets and its rescue gets more expensive…
Because of [the Troubled Assert Relief Plan], my estimate is that the budget deficit could easily reach or exceed $1 trillion this year. This includes my estimate of a $600 billion deficit before TARP and an additional $400 billion afterwards. A deficit of that size would be between and 6 percent and 7 percent of gross domestic product, a level that hasn't been reached since fiscal 1942-1946 when the United States was fighting and paying for the direct costs of World War II.
But the bigger cost of TARP may well be less in dollar terms than in making progress in other areas. A $1 trillion, 7-percent-of-GDP deficit likely will chill most of the spending and taxing plans of whoever is elected as hoped-for tax cuts and spending increases have to be delayed. http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/stan-collender/566/weeks-fiscal-fitness
Miers, Bolton: Safe The Administration has successfully resisted efforts to force them to testify:
A federal appeals court on Monday rejected House Democrats' demands to force two of President Bush's top aides to cooperate with an investigation about the firings of nine federal prosecutors in 2006. . . .
Monday's ruling blocks a July order by U.S. District Judge John Bates to force former White House counsel Harriet Miers to testify before the House Judiciary Committee and current presidential chief of staff Josh Bolten to turn over documents about the controversial firings.
Democrats say the firings, which led to the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last year, were politically motivated. That charge was backed up by an internal Justice Department investigation, which last week found “substantial evidence that partisan political considerations played a part in the removal of several of the U.S. attorneys." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/06/AR2008100601441.html
Campaign: All Ayers, all the time: McCain promises his increasingly mob-like audiences that he’ll bring up all of Obama’s “associations” in the next debate; McCain is losing control of his increasingly hostile audiences, as the Wall Street Journal notes, the campaign “has found itself at the center of an outpouring of raw emotion rare in a presidential race.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjxzmaXAg9E
Palin explains that she did poorly in interviews because she was so frustrated that the media were not asking the questions, demanding answers…of Obama (about Bill Ayers). It’s all they have left. But, if poll numbers don’t lift, they’ll try something else no later than next week.
Non-Debates, Press Conferences: It should be a big deal that Palin, a total unknown as of six weeks ago, has not held a press conference. Yet, the press does not demand such, and the Obama campaign stays ‘positive,’ limiting how much they target the opposition. [A news conference should occur today when the Troopergate report is released, but it’s hard to imagine that report being definitive in view of the minimalist cooperation by Palin and associates.]
Obama, Unions, Race: Amidst reports that Rust Belt union organizers have confronted voters “who won’t vote for a Black Man,” the following directly addresses “how race is used to divide working people”: http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/this_exactly_what_i_have_been_waiting_for.php
The Real McCain: Portrait that captures the consistency of the guy- that he’s always been an “undisciplined, spoiled brat.”
At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.
McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.
There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."
On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.
"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."
"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.
"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.
"Why? Where are you going to, John?"
"Oh, I'm going to Rio."
"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"
McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.
"I got a better chance of getting laid."
Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in." http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23316912/makebelieve_maverick/print
-R
