Our voting rights are on the auction block … or rather, the chopping block. Why? Because billionaires like Charles Koch, funding organizations like the Heritage Foundation, are using Republicans in Congress as their puppets to impose their will on the people of this country. Right now, their will is to take as many off the voting rolls as possible, by hook or by crook. Blogging friend Brosephus has written this post to show us the lengths to which these people are willing to go to curtail our Constitutional rights. Thanks, Bro.
I’m guessing that you’ve seen this video by now. If not, take a few minutes to listen or you can read the article about it that was posted on Mother Jones. Here’s a snippet to digest.
The leaked video reveals the extent to which Heritage is leading a massive campaign to draft and pass model legislation restricting voting access, which has been swiftly adopted this year in the battleground states of Georgia, Florida, Arizona, and Iowa. It’s no coincidence that so many GOP-controlled states are rushing to pass similar pieces of legislation in such a short period of time.
Republican legislators claim they’re tightening up election procedures to address (unfounded) concerns about fraud in the 2020 election. But what’s really behind this effort is a group of conservative Washington insiders who have been pushing these same kinds of voting restrictions for decades, with the explicit aim of helping Republicans…
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I viewed the video clip on YouTube itself — 65k views and a paltry 583 thumbs-up. If messages like this one don’t go viral to combat the misinformation that the ‘dark money’ is pushing, the US is toast.
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Just waiting for the toast to pop up any second now. Sigh.
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Jill, we need to emphasize this voter suppression is not a new thing. It has been going on in earnest since the 2010 midterms, when gerrymandering became more surgical with the funded entity ALEC providing cookie cutter voter suppression language to Republican led state legislatures. Democrats have also done their share of this, but my former (Republcan) party has made it an art form*. The key difference now is way too many people the former president’s BS about the election fraud, which he planned to use as a reason for losing for months before the election. Keith
* It has been so blatant in North Carolina, a judge who ruled the Voter ID law unconstitutional cited a county GOP official who said in an interview “The Voter ID law was designed to kick Democrats’ butts.” And another GOP state senator said we gerrymandered the congressional districts to win 11 out of 14 seats because we could not figure out how to win a 12th one.
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In truth, voter suppression has been going on since this country’s founding in one form or another, and that is the most disturbing part, for me. We take one step forward, then two steps backward. But yes, gerrymandering is among the worst of it, which is one reason I would love to see the electoral college gone, for then districting wouldn’t affect the outcome of presidential elections … one vote per person and tally them at the end of the day. No muss, no fuss. The voter suppression laws being passed in nearly every state are abominable and our only hope is that the courts will rule them unconstitutional. But will they? And will it be in time?
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Before Trump, even Republicans realized they went to far with gerrymandering as it allowed extremely zealous folks to get elected in a primary, while defeating a more rationale person Republican. And, now we have conspiracy folks in the US Congress.
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Agreed. But until the past 5 years, the worst of the worst now look like professionals compared to the likes of Greene, Boebert, Gaetz, Cruz, Hawley, et al.
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The former president gave extremists an endorsements, so they feel they have a megaphone.
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True, so the question becomes … how do we silence their megaphones? I know and understand freedom of speech, but this is akin to shouting ‘FIRE’ in a crowded theater!
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Alternative scenario to the one I suggested in ‘Then They Came For Me’…… Warning this is a ‘Scare The Horses’ one.
What happens when the disenfranchised take to the streets in an nation where access to firearms is easy and the social divide grows wider by the day?
These folk are playing with the same type of matches and fuel that was around in the mid 19th century, only the divides are not so geographical.
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A frightening, but altogether too possible scenario. You’re right … the divides today are not at all along geographical lines, for right on my own street we have people of both types. The fight would become neighbor against neighbor and … would the victor be the one who owns the guns? A scary scenario.
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Long View- The victor is often not the one who starts it.
Hope for that tough, hard-headed republican who is set on uniting the USA and is willing to drag their party back to talking with the Democrats, never mind whose careers or lives their damage (It’s that Realpolitik here. I would rather read that Ted Cruz is a broken and ruined man that that one child is crying)
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I hope there is such a person! If so, he or she is in hiding, perhaps waiting for just the right moment. Yeah, I wouldn’t mind seeing ol’ Ted go down in flames, either!
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They are there. You just don’t see them. They are probably right of centre; they would be as stated before committed to the idea of a USA and like Bill Clinton or George Bush jnr something of a smooth talker.
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‘Smooth talker’ eliminates about half of the Republican Party who seem to have trouble stringing together a complete sentence … you know, with a noun and a verb and some other words? I shall be on the lookout for such a person!
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Give the rest some ointment for their knuckles, those pavements can be brutal on the dragging.
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Oooohhh … good one, Roger!!!
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Yes, the right refined the approach with ALEC. Remember when it surfaced, and they wrote local and state laws, where they went into books almost untouched? Like ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws. ‘Tough on crime’ initiatives that privatized prisons and sent incarceration in the U.S. soaring to record levels. Let us not forget how they’ve fought climate change and the ACA, too. Sickening.
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Yes, how well I remember. You’re right … it’s sickening and disgusting. I’m thinking that maybe it’s time for the people of this country to stage a major, nationwide tax revolution … right now, we essentially have ‘taxation without representation’, so why should we keep paying these fools’ salaries?
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I said on Claytoonz t’other day, everyone should boycott fast-food chains for a month. And then spread it to other corporations. Money talks. They got it right now, but if people stop giving their money to them the corporations will be begging the government for handouts. “We can’t live without our customers!” So start treating your customers with some respect, instead of just treating them like work-slaves!
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Heck, we’ve boycotted fast food chains for decades now! I don’t do fast food at all. But, we are only 3 people and I’m sure we don’t make a dent in their profit margin. I also boycott companies that mistreat their employees (Wal-Mart) or that have discriminatory policies (Hobby Lobby, Chick-Fil-A). And a few others simply because they financially donate to DJT (Home Depot). My purchasing power is small, but I try to make it count.
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I wasn’t talking about just your family, obviously, but nation-wide and world-wide boycotts. But that will never happen. Trump alone will keep Mickey Ds and KFC profitable.
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Well, it seems the average Joe will boycott for a cause … AS LONG AS it doesn’t cause him any inconvenience.
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And that is the problem. People are okay with inconvenience for others, but not for themselves. They want what they want, and they want it NOW!
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Yep, exactly so. Sigh.
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It’s the right wing playbook, isn’t it. Our government has announced that they will legislate to make photo ID compulsory for voting, to prevent fraud. This will take many out of the polls, removing their right to vote if they don’t have the right ID. But to be fair, this will resolve a yuuuge problem: following the 2019 general election there has so far been…. one proven case of voter fraud. We can all sleep easy in our beds knowing the government is tackling the major issues.
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Wow … sounds like your government is using our playbook! A very few cases of voter fraud, so let’s disenfranchise half the nation! Here, a number of states require a photo ID, which does keep many from the polls. Many poor people do not have a driver’s license, have no need for one since they use public transit to get to work and wherever they need to go. Among those, many just happen … surely a coincidence … to be Black. Also, many elderly people who no longer drive have let their driver’s license lapse and have no other photo ID. So, the elderly, Black, and poor are at a huge disadvantage. And at least one state that I’m aware of has now passed a law requiring TWO photo IDs, which even I don’t have! And, college students cannot use their student ID as one. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
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The driving licence is our most common form of photo ID too. I still have a valid one, even though I don’t drive any more, but millions don’t and may not have an alternative.
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