Tag: Disenfranchisement

Jan 18 2010

Boston Globe reports: “Nearly half polled say Obama not delivering on promises.”

According to the Boston Globe, nearly half of Americans polled believe that U.S. dictator Barack Obama is not living up to his campaign promises.

Nearly half of the Americans surveyed said Obama is not delivering on his major campaign promises, and a narrow majority had some or no confidence that he will make the right decisions for the country’s future.

More than a third saw the president as falling short of their expectations, about double the proportion saying so at the 100-day mark of Obama’s presidency in April. At the time, 63 percent said the new president had accomplished a “great deal” or a “good amount.” The percentage saying so in the recent poll dropped to 47 percent.

Although the article does not mention the loss of left-wing support as reason for the drop-off, choosing instead to focus on right-wing discontent, the overall attitude indicated by surveys is that he is either incapable or unwilling to make good on public expectations of change away from the institutionalized horrors of the Bush-Cheney regime.

The signs are everywhere that at least one chamber of Congress will revert back to Republican rule, though the public is unlikely to notice the difference.  Obama really shot himself in the foot by raising people’s expectations without having any intention of meeting them.  No one thought he would be able to work miracles, and no one has claimed that he would end eight years of devastation overnight.  But with a year now behind his dictatorship, Obama has not made even token efforts to undo the policies of the Bush-Cheney regime – and in some cases, such as government secrecy and illegal spying on Americans, he has exceeded them.  The public is not stupid.  We do not enjoy being lied to, used, taken for granted.  And we will punish those who do so.

Sep 12 2008

Country first? It’s party, party, party above all in Wisconsin

West Pointers talk about Duty, Honor, Country.

John McCain's slogan is "Country First," whatever that means.

And Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's motto is "Party, Party, Party."

As in political party, not wild in the streets.

Van Hollen, putting on his vigilant attorney general hat, filed a lawsuit against his own state's Government Accountability Board — the board created to take partisanship out of elections — in a move that could disenfranchise — or at least seriously hassle — one million Wisconsin voters.

Van Hollen acted after complaints from the state Republican Party that the accountability board wasn't making it hard enough for people to vote. More of the same attempts to frighten people by yelling "fraud" while perpetrating the fraud themselves by denying people what we call the RIGHT to vote. (When we say that, we don't mean right wing.)

The GOP wanted to require every person whose information on the voter rolls doesn't exactly match their driver's license to have to prove themselves at the polls.

The board wasn't impressed by the GOP arguments, perhaps because the six member board — all retired judges — found that four of its members had info that didn't match when voter files and motor vehicle records were compared.

But then it was JB to the rescue, wearing his AG hat.

Van Hollen, by the way, is the top Republican elected official in the state and the co-chair of John McCain's Wisconsin campaign. But he wasn't wearing his McCain hat, Van Hollen says. It was his good government hat. Honest.

Agree? Great. Wanna buy a bridge to nowhere?  

May 07 2008

Court-sanctioned voter suppression in Indiana

Thanks to Sarah Lane at EENR for supplying the links in this entry.

When the Supreme (Kangaroo) Court upheld an unconstitutional poll tax last week that was passed in the form of a voter suppression law in Indiana, some people (like Injustice Antonin Scalia) were quick to dismiss the horrendous effects. But as that state held its primary yesterday, reports about voters being turned away because they did not have the poll tax began coming out.

Twelve elderly nuns-NUNS, for crying out loud-were told they could not vote because they didn’t have the required state or federal ID card. They are all in their eighties and nineties. Vietnam and Gulf War I veteran Russell Baughman was denied his right to vote, because his identification wasn’t considered good enough.

People unable to obtain the draconian Indiana poll tax ID-nuns, veterans, the disabled, students, and poor folk-are being denied their right to vote. Denied because they cannot meet the requirements to obtain state-issued identification. Bradblog reports that in order to obtain the necessary items to get a state-issued identification card (a state-issued copy of one’s birth certificate), a state-issued identification card is needed. It’s a vicious and ultimately dangerous catch-22, making it impossible for the disenfranchised to meet the poll tax requirement. Bradblog also reports that at least 43,00 Indiana residents have been prevented from exercising their right to vote in this fashion.

This is what the Supremes upheld, ladies and gentlemen. Twenty states, including Ohio, have mandatory ID laws designed to suppress the votes of minorities, the elderly, students, veterans, and the poor (an economic situation that affects all the other categories of disenfranchised to one degree or another). Although the Buckeye State was able to counter this in part by allowing fewer restrictions on absentee voting, others-including Indiana-enjoy no such protections. This is what America has come to: another banana republic, another dictatorship, that suppresses the rights of its citizens and engages in sham elections.