Democrats Seek Federal Law Against Election Fraud

The Wash­ing­ton Post

Mary­land Sen. Ben­jamin L. Cardin (D) on Wednes­day said tricks designed to sup­press voter turnout, espe­cially those of his­tor­i­cally dis­en­fran­chised minori­ties, require Con­gress to pass an update to the nation’s 50-year-old voting-rights legislation.

Cardin said he would file a bill Wednes­day to make it a fed­eral offense to pro­duce or use fraud­u­lent elec­tion mate­r­ial to try to mis­lead or dis­cour­age vot­ing within 90 days of an election. For one, Cardin said the bill would allow pros­e­cu­tors nation­wide to guard against the kind of robo­calls that a Mary­land jury this month decided were intended to sup­press black voter turnout in the state’s 2010 guber­na­to­r­ial race.

For­mer Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich’s ® cam­paign man­ager, Paul E. Schurick, was found guilty of four counts of elec­tion law vio­la­tions stem­ming from order­ing the calls, which told vot­ers in Prince George’s County and in Bal­ti­more to “relax” and to not bother going to the polls. The auto­mated call said Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date Gov. Mar­tin O’Malley and Pres­i­dent Obama had already been suc­cess­ful. Schurick is sched­uled to be sen­tenced Feb. 16, and faces poten­tial jail time.

Cardin noted that the Office of the Mary­land State Pros­e­cu­tor could only pur­sue the case because of a 2006 change to state law. He and co-sponsor New York Sen. Charles Schumer (D), said a sim­i­lar tool is needed in the hands of pros­e­cu­tors nation­wide. Their “Decep­tive Prac­tices and Voter Intim­i­da­tion Pre­ven­tion Act of 2011” would cre­ate a process for civil com­plaints as well as crim­i­nal penal­ties of up to five years in prison.

At a Capi­tol Hill news con­fer­ence, Cardin and Schumer were flanked by plac­ards show­ing exam­ples of what they said were increas­ingly sophis­ti­cated attempts to sup­press and intim­i­date voters. One showed a fab­ri­cated “sam­ple Demo­c­ra­tic bal­lot” from Maryland’s pre­vi­ous guber­na­to­r­ial elec­tion, when paid cam­paign work­ers for Ehrlich and then Lt. Gov. Michael Steele cir­cu­lated a flyer before the 2006 elec­tion that sug­gested the Repub­li­can can­di­dates were the pre­ferred choices of Democrats.

One from Mil­wau­kee sug­gested erro­neously that any­one who had been found guilty of even a traf­fic vio­la­tion was not allowed to vote in an upcom­ing elec­tion. And another showed a flyer seem­ingly pro­duced by a local elec­tion board ask­ing Repub­li­cans to vote on Tues­day, and Democ­rats to vote on Wednesday.

“This should make anyone’s blood boil,” Schumer said, adding that “Democracy’s days are num­bered” if the prac­tices are not curbed. Cardin added that in an age of so many fledg­ling democ­ra­cies seek­ing to take root around the world, the United States must “lead by exam­ple” in pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens’ right to vote.

Read the full story @ The Wash­ing­ton Post.

San Antonio Court Signs Order On New Election Filing Deadlines

Michael Li's Texas Redistricting Blog:

The San Antonio panel has signed the proposed order on election deadlines reflecting the deal announced on the record yesterday by lawyers for the Democratic and Republican parties.

More changes will be forthcoming as the parties continue to negotiate over a primary date, but, for now, here’s what’s changed:

• The filing deadline for all federal, state, county, and local offices is extended until Monday, December 19, at 6 p.m. (local time). The order provides that the filing period will be reopened at a later date after legislative and congressional maps are done to let additional candidates file or let existing candidates amend or withdraw their applications.

• Any currently filed candidate may withdraw his or her application and obtain a full refund of the filing fee.

• Candidates may continue to file for state house, state senate, and congressional seats. To file, candidates need only to list their lawful residence as of the date of the application and the district they want to run in. Candidates may chose either the state’s map or the court-drawn interim map. Candidates will have an opportunity to amend their applications at a later date.

• The court will determine residency requirements at a later date,

• The court will set a date in the future by which commissioners courts must redraw precinct boundaries if required by the ultimate congressional and legislative district lines.

• The requirement in the Texas Election Code that party rule changes be filed with the Texas Secretary of State on or before the 30th day before precinct conventions is suspended for the 2012 cycle.

Here’s the signed order:

http://tinyurl.com/cfqjgvp

Video: Attorney General Holder Speaks On Voting Rights At The LBJ Library

Attorney General Eric Holder speaking on voting rights at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas - Dec. 13, 2011 - Part 1
Video by David Barrow


Attorney General Eric Holder speaking on voting rights at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas - Dec. 13, 2011 - Part 2
Video by David Barrow

On March 15, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson calls on Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. Pres. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, establishing federal Department of Justice oversight of election laws passed by certain southern states with a history of discrimination.

The LBJ Library Archive

Texas Tribune: The warning from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was polite but firm: The U.S. Department of Justice will not stand idly by if it feels Texas intends to halt or reverse gains for minority voting rights.

That was the message Holder delivered on the University of Texas campus at the library of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Holder spoke just as Texas is squaring off with federal government over two major political voting issues: redistricting and voter ID.

Holder said that the redistricting maps legislators drew this year show that gains made under the Voting Rights Act are being challenged by a Legislature intent on protecting incumbents rather than on having candidates compete for votes.

Maps the Republican-dominated Legislature drew, he said, fail to reflect the burgeoning Hispanic growth in Texas, as indicated by the 2010 U.S. Census.

“We intend to argue vigorously at trial that this was the kind of discrimination that Section Five [of the Act] was intended to block,” Holder said, referring to the current federal litigation over the redistricting maps.

A panel of federal judges in San Antonio redrew maps for legislative and congressional districts in Texas, but the U.S. Supreme Court blocked those, at least temporarily, last week. The maps that will be used in next year’s elections are still uncertain, and it is unclear whether the issue will be decided before the scheduled primary elections in March.

Texas’ voter ID law, which requires that voters furnish a state-issued photo ID before casting a ballot, is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. That date could be in jeopardy, though, because the Justice Department has the authority to review election laws passed in states with a history of racial segregation and discrimination. In Texas, Democrats argue the voter ID law will disenfranchise minorities, the elderly and students, while Republicans and other proponents say it will stamp out voter fraud.

Read the full story @ The Texas Tribune

Attorney General Holder Speaks On Voting Rights At The LBJ Library

It's no coincidence that Attorney General Eric Holder chose the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, as the site of a forceful speech on voting rights. President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) into law on August 6, 1965, establishing federal Department of Justice oversight of election laws passed by certain southern states with a history of discrimination.

States that must request pre-clearance from the federal DOJ for any change to election laws or districts. More about the Voting Rights Act:

• Voting Rights Act text
• Voting Rights Act history
• Frequently Asked Questions

In the wake of violence and civil rights protests, the Johnson Administration drafted the VRA to enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, aiming to eliminate various Jim Crow election law strategies to prevent blacks and other minorities from voting. On July 27, 2006, President George W. Bush signed a bill extending the Voting Rights Act for another 25 years.

Before the VRA, many states had poll taxes, literacy tests and a whole array of so called "Jim Crow" schemes and gimmicks encoded in legal statutes to make sure that whites of a certain status were the only ones "qualified" to vote.

The VRA not only forbids state laws that are intended to specifically target minority voters -- it also forbids state laws that have a greater impact on minority voters than on others.

Declaring that protecting ballot access for all eligible voters “must be viewed not only as a legal issue but as a moral imperative,” Attorney General Holder tonight urged Americans to “call on our political parties to resist the temptation to suppress certain votes in the hope of attaining electoral success and, instead, achieve success by appealing to more voters.”

The speech by Mr. Holder comes as the Justice Department’s civil rights division is scrutinizing a series of new state voting laws that were enacted — largely by Republican officials — in the name of fighting fraud. This year, more than a dozen states enacted new voting restrictions. For example, eight — Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin — imposed new laws requiring voters to present one of a very limited selection of dated and non-expired government issued photo ID cards that millions of American citizens do not possess.

In major metropolitan areas it is the norm for the working poor to use public transportation. Hence, it is very common for that group of citizens to not have a car and not need a driver's license. A state issued picture ID has never been something that most of these people felt a need to have. For these people Getting a State Issued Photo ID is not as easy. Some of the obstacles are: taking time off work to go to Department of Motor Vehicles office and transportation costs to get to the DMV can be hard on a poor person's budget. They must obtain their state certified birth certificate and other identity documents before traveling to the nearest DMV, which typically have long waiting lines. Many older citizens have no birth certificate on record because they were born at home before issuance of birth certificates was required. Court costs to obtain a birth certificate are generally around $200. This cost to vote imposed on millions of American citizens who do not own or drive a car is a new variation on an old evil: the poll tax. Previously voters were able to use other forms of identification, like bank statements, utility bills, military veteran cards, student ID and Social Security cards.

ACLU Files Lawsuit Challenging Wisconsin’s Voter Photo ID Law As Unconstitutional

Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch finally got their way in 2011. After their decades of funding the American Legislative Exchange Council the collaboration between multinational corporations and conservative state legislators, the project began finally to yield the intended result.

ALEC has been organizing, promoting, and encouraging its legislative associates in every state of the Union to enact its rigid voter photo ID legislation. This year, ALEC's model voter photo ID legislation was signed into law by Kansas, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Texas and South Carolina. ALEC's model voter photo ID legislation was initially enacted Georgia and Indiana.

The voter photo ID legislation specifies voters must present one of a very limited selection of dated and non-expired government issued photo ID cards that millions of American citizens do not possess. Citizens, who do not drive and never board a plane, and therefore lack identification required to vote, must obtain their certified birth certificate and other identity documents and travel to a state Driver's License Office to obtain a voter identification card. Acquiring the identity documents needed to obtain a voting identity document and taking time off work to travel to the nearest Driver's License Office, which typically have long waiting lines, can cost tens to hundreds of dollars. This cost to vote imposed on millions of American citizens who do not own or drive a car is a new variation on an old evil: the poll tax.

“For nearly a century, there were Jim Crow laws in place that discouraged people of color from voting, says Wade Henderson, the president and CEO of the Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights. “Today, there are different laws, but the objective is the same—to prevent millions from exercising their right to vote."

ACLU Press Release:

MILWAUKEE, Wis. – The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Wisconsin and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty today filed a federal lawsuit charging that Wisconsin’s voter ID law is unconstitutional and will deprive citizens of their basic right to vote. The lawsuit is the only active federal challenge against a voter ID law, the most common type of legislation that is part of a nationwide attack on the right to vote.

Fact Check Your News

Annenberg Political Fact Check
A project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, it is a nonpartisan, nonprofit "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. It monitors “the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases.”

Annenberg Flack Check
This new Annenberg site fights fact-mangling site through humor and quick turnarounds without further propagating the underlying deception.

Columbia Journalism Review
The campaign desk site mission: “to encourage and stimulate excellence in journalism in the service of a free society. It is both a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms, from newspapers to magazines to radio, television, and the Web…CJR examines day-to-day press performance as well as the forces that affect that performance.”

Open Secrets
The site of The Center for Responsive Politics calls itself: "Your Guide to the Money in U.S. elections" – the “guide to money’s influence on U.S. elections and public policy.”

PolitiFact
PolitiFact is “A scorecard separating fact from fiction. A project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, it helps find the truth in the presidential campaign. “Every day, reporters and researchers from the Times and CQ will analyze the candidates' speeches, TV ads and interviews and determine whether the claims are accurate.”

Real Clear Politics
“An independent political site that culls and publishes the best commentary, news, polling data, and links to important resources.” Updated daily.

Snopes
A website for validating or debunking urban legends, Internet rumor, email hoaxes, and other such stories of uncertain or questionable origin.

Washington Post Fact Checker A permanent Post feature, it uses the one to four “Pinocchio” system to evaluate statements and claims.

Hat tip to Beverly Bandler for this fact check list

Pew: Newspapers Continue To Decline

After two dreadful years, most sectors of the industry saw revenue begin to recover in some, but not all sectors of the industry, according to a new Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism report. With some notable exceptions, cutbacks in newsrooms eased. And while still more talk than action, some experiments with new revenue models began to show signs of blossoming.

Among the major sectors, only newspapers suffered continued revenue declines last year—an unmistakable sign that the structural economic problems facing newspapers are more severe than those of other media. When the final tallies are in, we estimate 1,000 to 1,500 more newsroom jobs will have been lost—meaning newspaper newsrooms are 30% smaller than in 2000.

Driving People To Vote Against There Own Self-Interest And Moral Standards

In a startling admission from a major Tea Party champion, former Fox News host Glenn Beck said Friday that race may be a motivating factor in the Tea Party’s opposition to President Obama.

BECK: And I issued a challenge to Tea Party members. … [Gingrich] is a progressive. … If you have a big government progressive, or a big government progressive in Obama, one in Newt Gingrich, one in Obama, ask yourself this, Tea Party: is it about Obama’s race? Because that’s what it appears to be to me. If you’re against him but you’re for this guy, it must be about race.

The comment is striking coming from Beck, who organized major Tea Party events and strongly defended the movement against charges of racism.

While racism may be part of the motivating factor in the Tea Party’s opposition to President Obama, the other more significant factor may be the anti-Obama, anti-Democrat, and other fear-mongering against "the they" who plot to destroy America. Fear-mongering waged by Glenn Beck, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, all of Conservative talk radio, and other conservative propaganda mills supported by conservative billionaires.

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda is often biased, with facts selectively presented (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political, or other type of agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare.

The next article down in this news blog is about conservative columnist David Frum, who was speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, blasting Fox News for delivering an “alternative knowledge system,” otherwise know as propaganda.

Related:

• When Did The GOP Lose Touch With Reality?

David Frum: Fox News Creates Alternative (False) News

Raw Story By David Edwards

Conservative columnist David Frum, who was speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, blasted Fox News on Sunday for creating an “alternative knowledge system.”

In an article published by New York Magazine in late November, Frum had argued that conservative media like Fox News and talk radio “immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information.”

Watch this video from CNN’s Reliable Sources,
broadcast Dec. 11, 2011.

In an appearance on CNN Sunday, Frum cited claims made on Fox News that President Barack Obama was proposing a “new Christmas tree tax,” something that was found by both The Florida Times-Union and PolitiFact Oregon to be not true.

“It fed into a story about this Muslim-y kind of president trying to destroy a Christian holiday,” Frum explained to CNN’s Howard Kurtz. “To make this a ground for a cultural conflict, to create a sense in large numbers of people they are being persecuted and attacked at a time when the country is in so much trouble, that’s how this thing is fed.”

“The question is what is the impact on the viewer?” he continued. “And we know, for example, that people that watch a lot of Fox come away knowing a lot less about important world events. That’s a correlation that we know.”

Recent polling appears to back up Frum’s assertion.

Fairleigh Dickinson University found last month that “some outlets, especially Fox News, lead people to be even less informed than those who say they don’t watch any news at all.”

“For example, people who watch Fox News, the most popular of the 24-hour cable news networks, are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government than those who watch no news at all (after controlling for other news sources, partisanship, education and other demographic factors),” they wrote. “Fox News watchers are also 6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government than those who watch no news.”

New GOP Data Shows No Need For Strict Voter Photo ID

The Repub­li­can National Lawyers Asso­ci­a­tion (RNLA) in an attempt to dis­credit a NAACP report this week on the lack of voter fraud evi­dence has bol­stered the view that there is no need for voter ID laws, imposed by many states. The RNLA pro­duced data show­ing 46 states and var­i­ous con­vic­tions for voter fraud. Pre­sum­ably by their absence, 4 states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia had no convictions.

View­ing the data for the period 2000–2010, the report by its own account shows there is no link between voter fraud in states and the need for stricter voter ID laws. The data shows that dur­ing the entire 10 year period, 21 states had only 1 or 2 con­vic­tions for some form of voter irreg­u­lar­ity. And some of these 21 states have the strictest form of voter ID laws based on a find­ing of 2 or less con­vic­tions in ten years. Five states had a total of three con­vic­tions over a ten year period. Rhode Island had 4 con­vic­tions for the same 10 years. Tak­ing a close look at the RNLA data shows 30 states, includ­ing the Dis­trict of Colum­bia had 3 or less voter fraud con­vic­tions for a 10 year period.

Voter ID laws enacted now in over half the states, require vot­ers to present some form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as a require­ment to vote. Four­teen states require a gov­ern­ment issued photo ID when vot­ing in per­son. At the time of reg­is­ter­ing to vote, other states like Kansas and Alabama fur­ther demand proof of cit­i­zen­ship beyond the fed­eral legal require­ment that cit­i­zens swear they are cit­i­zens. Kansas had one con­vic­tion for voter fraud in ten years; Alabama had three con­vic­tions in the same time period. Dur­ing the 2011 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, five states — Wis­con­sin, Texas, Ten­nessee, Alabama and South Car­olina — joined Geor­gia and Indi­ana by enact­ing the strictest form of photo ID require­ment for vot­ers, and most of these newest changes will first come into effect for the 2012 elections.

The RNLA says the voter ID laws are needed to pre­vent against dou­ble vot­ing, non-citizen vot­ing, fic­ti­tious voter reg­is­tra­tion and voter imper­son­ation. To hear Repub­li­cans tell the tale, one would think there has been mas­sive voter/election fraud neces­si­tat­ing the need for stricter voter ID laws across the coun­try. Now the Repub­li­cans’ own data dis­pels their ram­pant voter fraud myth. A closer scrutiny of the RNLA data shows voter fraud has no cor­re­la­tion to need­ing strict voter ID laws.

Full Arti­cle: OpE­d­News – Arti­cle: New GOP Data Shows No Need For Voter ID.

Twitter and the Campaign

The political conversation on Twitter is markedly different than that on blogs -- and both are decidedly different than the political narrative presented by the mainstream press, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism that analyzed more than 20 million tweets, the online conversation and traditional news coverage about the campaign from May 2 through November 27.

The study finds that campaign discourse on Twitter tended to be more opinionated and often more negative about candidates than on blogs and in the news. The Twitter conversation about a candidate was also more likely to change from week to week than on blogs.

The study also updates the tone and amount of attention to each candidate in news coverage overall, in an elite sub-sample of national news outlets, and in the political blogosphere. The work is part of a new ongoing analysis of the race for president conducted by PEJ that will continue through the election, tracking the amount of attention paid to the candidates in different media platforms and the tone of that attention.

Read the full report for more details on these subjects:

• The Campaign Conversation: Twitter vs. Blogs
• The Candidates on Twitter
• Update: The News Coverage Narrative
• An update on overall coverage of the candidates by news outlets and blogs
• Update: Candidate Blog Conversation
  

See also Pew's report on The Media Primary: How News Media and Blogs Have Eyed the Presidential Contenders during the First Phase of the 2012 Race

SCOTUS Grants Stay On Lower Courts' Redrawn Redistricting Maps

Developing Story...

The Supreme Court of the United States late today threw a wrench into Texas' Democratic and Republican Primary Election and County Convention schedule.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's applications for stay of the lower courts' redrawn redistricting maps presented to Justice Scalia and by him referred to the Court are granted until the court hears oral arguments:

It is ordered that the orders issued by the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas on November 23, 2011, in case Nos. 5:11-CV-360, and 5:11-CV-788, and the order of November 26, 2011, in case No. 5:11-CV-360, are hereby stayed pending further order of the Court.

The stay blocks the court-drawn maps for legislative and congressional districts in Texas, telling the lawyers involved to be ready for oral arguments on Monday, January 9, 2012.

The state asked the court for a stay on maps for congressional, Texas House and Texas Senate maps. The court's order asks for briefs from the lawyers by December 21, replies by January 3.

Candidates are already filing for office, working against a Thursday, December 15 deadline. Since the stay leaves no defined districts for which to file, that deadline is probably now meaningless, at least for the congressional and state legislative candidates. The current district maps could be replaced with different district maps, if they are redrawn after the Supreme Court rules.

In its request for a stay, the state suggested the congressional and legislative primaries could be delayed from March 6 to May 22. The other primaries — for President, U.S. Senate, and so on — will remain in March. Texas could decide to have split primary elections, or possibly to move the entire election to May 22. The Democratic and Republican county and senate district conventions, originally scheduled for late March, as follow up to the election on March 6, will also have to be rescheduled to possibly early to mid May 2012. Moving the county and senate district conventions to mid May would in turn impact the Democratic Party's state convention scheduled to start on July 8, 2012.

More analysis @ SCOTUSblog

Order of the court:

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2011
APPEALS – JURISDICTION NOTED
PERRY, GOV. OF TX, ET AL. V. PEREZ, SHANNON, ET AL.
PERRY, GOV. OF TX, ET AL. V. DAVIS, WENDY, ET AL.
PERRY, GOV. OF TX, ET AL. V. PEREZ, SHANNON, ET AL.

The applications for stay presented to Justice Scalia and by him referred to the Court are granted, and it is ordered that the orders issued by the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas on November 23, 2011, in case Nos. 5:11-CV-360, and 5:11-CV-788, and the order of November 26, 2011, in case No. 5:11-CV-360, are hereby stayed pending further order of the Court. In addition, the applications for stay are treated as jurisdictional statements, and in each case probable jurisdiction is noted. The cases are consolidated and a total of one hour is allotted for oral argument. The briefs of appellants and appellees, not to exceed 15,000 words, are to be filed simultaneously with the Clerk and served upon opposing counsel on or before 2 p.m., Wednesday, December 21, 2011. Reply briefs, not to exceed 15,000 words, are to be filed simultaneously with the Clerk and served upon opposing counsel on or before 2 p.m., Tuesday, January 3, 2012. The cases are set for oral argument on Monday, January 9, 2012, at 1 p.m.

Words That Don't Work

by George Lakoff, Nation of Change

Progressives had some fun last week with Frank Luntz, who told the Republican Governors’ Association that he was scared to death of the Occupy movement and recommended language to combat what the movement had achieved. But the progressive critics mostly just laughed, said his language wouldn’t work, and assumed that if Luntz was scared, everything was hunky-dory. Just keep on saying the words Luntz doesn’t like: capitalism, tax the rich, etc.

It’s a trap.

Think Rick Perry's Collapsing Campaign is Funny? The Joke's On You, Texas

by Forrest Wilder, The Texas Observer

Rick Perry's presidential campaign is collapsing faster than a $10 tent in a hurricane. ... Perry’s unexpectedly rapid demise should prompt, if nothing else, some self-reflection. What’s the matter with Texas? I’ll take a stab at it.

First, there’s no real opposition. Texas is now a one-party state, which is admittedly not news. (Some wags call it a two-party state: the Republican Party and the tea party). The Democrats are disorganized, dispirited, and seemingly incapable or unwilling to capitalize on the untapped potential of Latino voters in parts of the state like Houston and the Rio Grande Valley. They don’t put much effort into encouraging many young Latinos to vote.

Also, there are few authentically independent institutions in Texas—partisan or not—to push back against the free-market and religious fundamentalism of the state GOP. Vibrant grassroots coalitions could energize a moribund system and keep politicians on their toes. Plus, they’re just good for morale. In the absence of opposition, Perry and his allies in right-wing groups like Empower Texans can toe a hard line without consequence. Witness how they rammed through a brutal state budget that gouged $4 billion out of public schools. Where was the mass mobilization against those cuts? In California, Ohio and Wisconsin right-wing governors have faced the wrath of people in the streets and in the voting booth. There was too little of that in Texas.

But then it’s easy to suffer from hangdog-ness here. Hard to get jazzed about participating in the democratic process when you sense that the game is rigged. Perry is the product of a political system controlled by a small group of special interests and billionaires. He’s their man. Entrenched business interests appreciate the Texas Enterprise Fund grants, the rubber-stamped permits to pollute, the cheer-leading for dream schemes like the Trans-Texas Corridor and mandatory HPV vaccinations. If Perry’s a joke, then the joke’s on us.

Read the full article @ The Texas Observer

Between 2008 And 2010, 30 Big Corporations Spent More Lobbying Washington Than They Paid In Income Taxes

A report released this month by Public Campaign demonstrates just how important it is for Americans to battle corporate special interests and reclaim our democracy.

The group’s research finds that thirty big corporations actually spent more money lobbying the federal government between 2008 and 2010 than they spent in taxes. For example, General Electric — one of the top 10 most profitable companies in the world — got a net tax rebate of $4.7 billion during this period.

Meanwhile, it spent $84 million lobbying the federal government.

Think Progress: Between 2008 And 2010, 30 Big Corporations Spent More Lobbying Washington Than They Paid In Income Taxes

Postal Service Cuts Could !nterfere With Elections, Delay Vote By Mail Ballots

With Con­gress debat­ing plans to shut down post offices and pos­si­bly elim­i­nate Sat­ur­day mail deliv­ery, some elec­tion offi­cials are wor­ried that bring­ing the U.S. Postal Ser­vice out of the red could harm elec­tion pro­ce­dures — per­haps even in time for the Novem­ber 2012 pres­i­den­tial election.

In Novem­ber the Postal Ser­vice announced it lost $5.1 bil­lion in fis­cal 2011, not includ­ing the man­dated $5.5 bil­lion owed to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to pre­fund retiree health ben­e­fit payments. For the ser­vice to return to prof­itabil­ity, it must cut $20 bil­lion by 2015.

Sen­ate leg­is­la­tion would pro­tect Sat­ur­day ser­vice for the next two years, but a House bill would per­mit a reduc­tion to five-day-per-week mail deliv­ery six months after enact­ment. The Postal Ser­vice has said it intends to cut Sat­ur­day ser­vice unless Con­gress requires it to continue.

Steve Mon­teith, the Postal Service’s man­ager of trans­ac­tion cor­re­spon­dence, said tak­ing away Sat­ur­day deliv­ery or shut­ting post office doors could force elec­tion offi­cials to send bal­lots out a day ear­lier to make sure they arrive on time.

Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can Rep. Dar­rell Issa, who chairs the House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform Com­mit­tee, co-sponsored the House bill. The service’s finan­cial losses, he said, put elec­tions at risk.

“Fun­da­men­tal reforms are needed to pro­tect the finan­cial via­bil­ity of the United States Postal Ser­vice, includ­ing its ser­vices that are inte­gral to vot­ing,” Issa said.

Full Arti­cle: The Daily Caller.

Who Killed the Postal Service?

The Postal Service just announced roughly $3 billion in service cuts that will slow down the delivery of first-class mail for the first time in 40 years. Starting in April, it plans to shutter more than half of its 461 mail processing centers, stretching out the time it will take to ship everything from Netflix DVDs to magazines. One-day delivery of stamped envelopes will all but certainly become a thing of the past.

The announcement is just the latest sign of a sad and increasingly dire fact: the Postal Service is in shambles. This past fiscal year, it lost a mere $5.1 billion. In 2012, it's facing a record $14.1 billion shortfall and possible bankruptcy. In order to turn a profit, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe says the agency needs to cut $20 billion from its annual budget by 2015. That's almost a third of its yearly costs.

How did it come to this?

The culprits include the Internet, labor expenses, and, as with pretty much every problem our country faces now, Congress.

Obama's Kansas Speech a Game-Changer

The Democratic Strategist

WaPo columnist Greg Sargent takes a look at President Obama's speech in Osawatomie Kansas, and finds it to be a critical point of departure, "a moral and philosophical framework within which literally all of the political and policy battles of the next year will unfold, including the biggest one of all: The presidential campaign itself." Citing Obama's emphasis on "inequality itself as a moral scourge and as a threat to the country's future," Sargent continues:

Obama's speech in Kansas, which just concluded, was the most direct condemnation of wealth and income inequality, and the most expansive moral defense of the need for government activism to combat it, that Obama has delivered in his career...

The clash of visions Obama tried to set the stage for today -- a philosophical and moral argument over government's proper role in regulating the economy and restoring our future -- is seen by Dems as more favorable to them than the GOP's preferred frame for Campaign 2012, i.e., a referendum on the current state of the economy and on Obama's efforts to fix it. Hence his constant references to the morality of "fairness."

"We simply cannot return to this brand of you're-on-your-own economics if we're serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country," Obama said, in what will probably be the most enduring line of the speech. A number of people on Twitter immediately suggested a new shorthand: "YoYo Economics."

That line is key in another way. Dems believe inequality will be central in 2012 because they think there's been a fundamental shift in how Americans view the economy, one rooted in the plight of the middle class and in the trauma created by the financial crisis.

A New York Times editorial affirms Sargent's evaluation of the President's speech: