More Republican Election Fraud
Conservatives are busily trying to enact laws that will work to rob Americans of their right to vote solely because those Americans tend to vote Democratic, dishonestly claiming it is to stem “voter fraud.” However, conservatives themselves are the ones most often guilty of actual election fraud. From caging college students and victims of foreclosure, to felons lists, other types of purges, and worse, right-wingers’ attempts–all too often successful–to steal votes result in the theft or invalidation of hundreds and even thousands of votes at a time. Their targets: the poor, the elderly, the young, minorities, women–any group more likely to vote Democratic. Because if you vote for Democrats, then obviously there’s something wrong with you, and you don’t deserve to vote. This trend is only strengthening, with Republicans committed to embedding their election fraud into state and federal laws.
The latest revelation: in last year’s gubernatorial election in Maryland, former Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich Jr. was challenging Democratic incumbent Martin O’Malley, and was losing. On election night, more than a hundred thousand voters in heavily black Democratic districts in Maryland received recorded “robocalls” telling them to stay home. Voters heard a woman’s voice tell them, “I’m calling to let everyone know that Governor O’Malley and President Obama have been successful. Our goals have been met. The only thing left is to watch it on TV tonight. Congratulations and thank you.”
Republicans love this kind of deception, because they believe in social Darwinism: if you can be fooled, then you deserve to be fooled. Whenever Democratic voters are confused by ballots or deceived by robocalls, right-wingers cackle at how stupid they are, and feel this justifies the deception.
Indeed, the calls in Maryland last year came from operatives working for Ehrlich, the Republican. Now, two Ehrlich operatives have been indicted on charges that they attempted to illegally suppress votes.
Worse, a document has been discovered, referred to as the “Schurick Doctrine,” which lays out a plan to suppress the votes of African-Americans:
The plan, according to the indictments, “centered on what was termed ‘The Schurick Doctrine,’ which was designed to promote confusion, emotionalism, and frustration among African American Democrats. . . . The plan stated that [t]he first and most desired outcome [of the Schurick Doctrine strategy] is voter suppression.”
The defendants are claiming that the Schurick Doctrine was rejected as “too expensive” and was not carried out–but this does not explain why the robocalls seemed designed exactly along the plans the doctrine dictated, or why Paul Schurick, the Republican behind the doctrine, was in constant telephone contact with the man behind the robocalls throughout election night.
A defense being forwarded for the election fraud: free speech. Really. They are actually trying to use constitutionally protected free speech as a defense for attempting to deceive more than a hundred thousand voters, robbing them of their right to vote.
To these people, “free speech” is a punch line. The party line is that they cherish and protect individual freedoms, but they do more to violate them than anyone else–and want these rights to be effective only when they can be used to protect themselves from prosecution when they are found out.
This is the modern conservative movement: fraud, deception, perversion of civil rights, among many other things just as repellent and obscene. If you vote Republican, that’s a big part of what you are voting for.
I think it’s just about time to take stock of where we are in America’s descent into madness. Because I think were are on the precipice of an enormous plunge.
We see on the left almost an eroding abandonment of leftward politics. Meanwhile the right is becoming more and more brazen.
Central to this discussion will have to be the figure of Obama. Once thought of as the deliverer of change and deliverance from the Great Recession, he has instead been the deliverer of the left to movement conservatives on the far right and has shifted the center of politics so far to the right that the Democratic party has become what the Republican party was round about 1970 (at best).
Rightist operatives take down ACORN, going after planned parenthood, Citizens United, it’s not morning in America, it’s not midnight, its twilight. Extra legal assaults on the left by the Governor of Wisconsin. Yesterday AARP came out for taking the first steps to dismantle social security.
(Short history, as I understand it, in 1983 Social Security underwent a big change to prepare for the retirement of the baby boom. FICA contributions were increased. At the same time, Reagan started cutting taxes on the Rich. To make up for the short fall, the government started borrowing the increased FICA funds. The IOUs left in Social Security trust fund created massive deficits on paper. Almost immediately movement conservatives started spreading the rumor that Social Security would not be around by the time we retired, despite it being reinforced in 1983, [I was hearing this in 1992 from coworkers, which of course shocked me.] The rich want to keep their tax breaks. The only way they can do that is for the government to default on Social Security or back away from it’s promises. If this occurs it means in essence that FICA tax increase was simply a gimmick used to pay for tax cuts for the rich).
Seems to me someone with deep pockets got to the leadership of AARP.
There is decreasing organized resistance on the left even as the population seems to be starting to shift further to the left in reaction to things like the Wisconsin Coup.
If this trend continues, and how can it not as it seems to be gaining momentum in a geometric velocity, is going to end up a disaster of epic proportions. At the far end of ALL ideologies lies the same thing: Nihilism. There is no avoiding this fate. It’s just the farther down the road that nihilism occurs, the bigger the nihilism will be.
I like watching movies about Germany during the run up to and after the Nazis took over. That dynamic, that is what the United States is experiencing. And the country as a whole is being lead by men who are either craven or cowardly or both, because they are the ones allowing this to happen.
Tim, yes, your understanding of SS is identical with mine.
I’ve delved into it pretty deeply and the recent AARP jazz really pissed me off. They’re in the tank along with the rest of the conservative establishment in wanting to screw FICA payers like me who’ve been over-contributing since 1984.
Here:
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/oact/ProgData/taxRates.html
you can see how FICA was boosted from 8% to 11%. This reversed the annual shortfall in outgo and by 1989 the SSTF had its statutory one year of expenses banked up again.
And, as you say, from 1989 through 2009 FICA payers were overtaxed by $1.5T or so, with this money not being invested in equities (like what the Norwegian pension fund has done) but in government securities.
Now that it’s time to raise taxes to pay on the securities, the conservatives are playing poor and trying to BS people into thinking the SSTF does not exist or is just government owing itself money.
I too detect that this has been a long-running conditioning exercise from the right to get people to buy into the big lie that the SSTF can’t be repaid.
The rich simply don’t want to pay any more taxes than they are now, and they think they can continue to manipulate public opinion to keep this happy status quo.
Obama hasn’t done much to take them on mano a mano, but there’s little he can do by himself. He’s got to have wingmen on this.
What I find disturbing is that I don’t know which nation is screwed more, Japan or the US.
Japan has a trade surplus still, so I think we in the US are screwed more.
A trade surplus means you can pay your own way in the world.
Japan has a massive government debt problem, but that’s just money owed to other Japanese. You could zero that out and nothing would really change, just people who thought they had savings would find they did not.
Part of the problem of running deficits is that the economy conforms to this fake reality of people thinking they have more money than they really do.
This most dramatically shows up in people bidding up the cost of land. If taxes were double in Japan — like they should be — land values would be a lot more “affordable”.
Really and truly, this has been twisted into a response against ACORN which was really Project Vote. ACORN was never interested in throwing an elections every one in ACORN knew that ACORN did much better under Republicans. In 2008 ACORN DC, endorsed John McCain and Barrack Obama fact not fiction.