HOUSE BILL TAKES AIM AT VOTERS OF COLOR

[Judi Lynn]

HOUSE BILL TAKES AIM AT VOTERS OF COLOR
By Cynthia Tucker
Sat Oct 29, 8:12 PM ET

Last week, an ugly bit of business transpired in the GOP-dominated House of Representatives, where Republican hard-liners succeeded in passing a measure that would limit the ability of nonprofit groups to conduct voter registration drives. It was one of those moments when you don't have to wonder what the jihadist faction of the GOP is up to: They want to restrict the franchise to people who think as they do.

Rep. John Lewis (news, bio, voting record), D-Ga., a veteran of the civil rights movement, said the measure would "take us back to 1964 or 1965. I just think they (Republicans) want to be in a position to stifle the participation of poor people and minorities in the political process. They want to take us back to another period."
(snip)

In South Dakota, Republican legislators were more successful with their onerous voter ID requirement, passed in 2003 and apparently aimed at Native Americans, who also tend to support Democrats. Last year, though, two Republican senators, Kit Bond of Missouri and Richard Shelby of Alabama, failed in their attempt to sneak a provision into law that would have prohibited public housing sites from hosting voter registration initiatives and get-out-the-vote drives.
(snip)

Republicans seem to think that residents of low-cost housing, especially black and brown residents, have a tendency -- one they find troubling -- to vote Democratic. You'd think the GOP would find a way to appeal to those voters. But that would require the party to forsake its allegiance to big business and the wealthy. So, instead, it has decided to try to suppress the vote among citizens of color.
(snip/...)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucas/20051030/cm_ucas/housebilltakesaimatvotersofcolor;_ylt=A86.I1iSEGRDBDYAny79wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--

[texpatriot2004]

1. The NERVE! Kick and Rec. Voted story up too. nm

[nofurylike]

2. thank you for posting this, Judi Lynn. nom. eom

[NVMojo]

3. what a hateful bunch of asshats ...

[fearnobush]

4. More Proof: Republicans HATE Democracy.

It's pitch fork time.

[indepat]

40. Repukes must hate our Constitution for they are sure making shambles of it

[pinto]

5. I'd hoped this would die a quiet death in the House. The intrusion into

Constitutional voting rights is "freaking insane", as a friend of mine in the non-profit sector said. It deserves to be soundly ridiculed, and squashed, for what it is.

[Solly Mack]

6. I see. So Rosa Parks is lying in state so republicans can spit on her

because they are for damn sure not honoring her with this

Civil Rights included the vote and voter registration

[Carolab]

7. Sickening. Rated it up.

Worried that it will not be possible for them to simply steal the elections, the Republicans have now decided to suppress more voters.

[bluestateguy]

8. "votin's for the white folks"*

*Actual quote I heard from a man in Louisiana in 1989.

[liveoaktx]

9. VIDEOS-some from the House Floor last week

Hinojosa

McGovern-1

McGovern - 2

Barney Frank

Maxine Waters

Kanjorski

Cleaver

[Erika]

10. Yeah, only the lily white GOP should have a voice

after all they were smart enough to enslave another race for profit. The bushbots have proclaimed them as having the true entrepreneurial spirit.

[ninkasi]

11. What a narrow minded, bigoted bunch the conservatives are...

Their lives must be sheer hell. They only want to interact with others who look, think, and talk like themselves. They are denying themselves the joy of being part of the whole glorious human experience...learning from people of other races, other cultures; sharing different foods, religions, languages, ideas.

Their existence must be barren beyond what I could endure. I will never forget, a friend of mine, after we had attended a charity function where Clifton Chenier and his Zydeco band played, telling me of visiting Louisiana, a young white man, going to festivals at black Catholic churches, hearing Zydeco for the first time, and embraced by the wonderful people he met.

I learned Spanish because my older brother married a woman who was Latina. I am comfortable among groups of blacks, latinos, any other group, because I have always been eager to learn about their cultures, their languages, their beliefs, and all the rest of it.

Republicans would love nothing more than to erect a wall around this country, to have all of us as pallid, robot-like drones who spew conservative talking points, and keep the darker skinned people from participating in politics or daily life. They are not interested in making voting accessible to all, because if the majority of us vote, they would never hold office again.

We can, and MUST defeat them, on all levels, from local to national. We still have the capacity to be a truly great country. They have hijacked that potential for now, but we can take it back if we stay united, and stand up for each other. I am an elderly white woman, married, with children, grandchildren, and one great grandchild. If I can see the beauty in liberals and progressives uniting, and turning these people out of office, surely it can be done.

We are supposed to become more conservative as we age. With every year that passes, I become more and more liberal, and proud of being liberal. Their time is up. The sun must set on the neoconservative movement, and dawn will break on a new, more enlightened, more in line with what our Founding Fathers envisioned, more world friendly America.

When the vast majority of us were born, even though our mothers were the ones who suffered the pain, our births were assisted by others...doctors, nurses, worried husbands, anxious parents. So it is now...the progressive era is trying to be born, and while there will be some pain, the rest of us need to act as midwives to this birth of progressive ideals. No more wars for corporate profits, no more taking from the middle class and poor and giving to the wealthy, no more using any race, or sex, or faith or lack of it, to divide us.

We can, we will, we MUST take America back. This might very well be our last chance.

[Erika]

13. Excellent post

Thank you for your eloquency.

[evolved Anarchopunk]

17. i agree, absolutely beautiful post. The kind that makes my day.

[DoyBoy]

46. BRAVO!!

:yourock:

[KeepItReal]

12. "The same party that brought you David Duke"...

From a political ad in Baton Rouge, LA...still rings true today.

Damn.

[goclark]

21. KKK in suits are Repubs

[mopinko]

25. .

[annabanana]

14. they fear the American people

and will do everything they can to keep our voices from being heard

[Mnemosyne]

15. .

:kick:

[54anickel]

16. Thank for posting Judi Lynn. This answers a bunch of questions I had

last week regarding the amendment to the Fannie/Freddie legislation. The business articles covered some of the discussion on this bill, but failed to explain the amendment. I was confused as to why non-profits were getting money meant for affordable housing. :crazy:

The articles last week were poorly written (I went through several trying to get a better explanation). That or my reading comprehension ain't what it used to be. :shrug:

[davsand]

18. Doesn't this take aim on the fundies too?

As I went further down in the article, it became evident that the same bill also limits the fundy groups too--and remember they usually lean GOP.

I'm not saying it it right, I am not agreeing with it at all. I am just saying it is a real double edged sword that they just set in motion. I doubt this will be terribly popular on the other side of the aisle either.

The intent on this little piece of work was incredibly ugly, but consider this, the neocons have already demonstrated time after time that they have utter contempt for anyone who is not like them. This is a continuation/extension of policies set locally that limit voting booths in minority precincts or purge voters from the rolls from minority areas.

These are the same people that left the population of New Orleans to die. Why is anyone surprised they are attempting to limit ability to vote?

Something that Dr. Dean has been very good at, is looking at the grassroots level in politics. I think in some ways his message will become even more important with stuff like this coming into play. The Dem party has GOT to get off its collective backside and get out there organizing on the streets. If nothing else this bill hammers home WHY.

Dems have GOT to get out in the places they have avoided for far too long--the housing projects and the low income areas. The Dem party has all but abandoned the minority voters in recent history yet we "expect" them to vote Dem. How about we actually try and INCLUDE them in our party for a change?

Like I said before--this bit of legislation is an abomination. It also might be the one thing that can help energize the Dem party.



Laura

[PurityOfEssence]

19. Brought to you by James Crow, Esq.

Okay, so they've tried poll taxes (voter I.D. cards that cost money) but when are the literacy tests going to come back?

[gizmo1979]

20. Voter ID has failed to pass

so they are going with plan B.I'm sure Delay is behind this mess.They know they are in big trouble in 06.They need to disenfranchise a ton of people to hold on to their majority.Hopefully they are just digging the hole deeper.

[Spiffarino]

26. Exactly. n/t

[alfredo]

22. I fixed the link

Hope this works for you. Somehow there was a space in the URl, making it unreadable by the browsers.

http://tinyurl.com/9nwqn

[roseBudd]

23. voted it up and here is a picture of Blackwell expressing his opinion

Visit http://bushcheated04.com for more GOP election malfeasance

[mzmolly]

24. There are so many threads where I'd love to just say:

"No difference???" :grr:

[newswolf56]

31. The "no difference (except the Republicans will let us keep our guns)"...

was -- past tense -- an absolutely valid judgment: the truly savage betrayals of the working class and the poor in NAFTA, CAFTA, and the genocide called "welfare reform." But far worse than anything else the Democrats have ever done, the biggest-gift-ever to the Prescription Drug Lords, the Insurance Barons and the whole Medical Money Machine -- the betrayal of everyone in America (save the very rich) -- was how the Clinton Administration killed all hope of achieving universal healthcare for probably another 50 years: its obviously deliberate self-sabotage of (A) inflaming public paranoia, skepticism and anger by defiantly conducting the healthcare hearings in secret and (B) linking single-payer insurance to imposition of (more) draconian gun controls -- two ploys that because of the Clintons' unquestionable political brilliance cannot possibly be dismissed as "errors" or "accidents."

What turned so many Americans away from the Democratic Party (and why Bush is even now in the White House) is the fact that from the time of the ascendance of the Democratic Leadership Council until just this year, there was not a nickel's worth of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans on all-important paycheck issues (how many Democrats voted for NAFTA, CAFTA, the re-imposition of indentured servitude via bankruptcy "reform" and against increases in the minimum wage?), and not even a penny's worth of difference in terms of absolute (genocidal) hostility to the social safety net: the most vicious betrayal of the poor, the disabled and low-income elderly in the history of America was Bill Clinton's so-called "welfare reform."

But "welfare reform" was before global capitalism achieved its ultimate success of putting Bush in the White House and began its final campaign to impose its "New World Order": downsizing, outsourcing, forcible reduction of paychecks, pension-looting, union-busting, further destruction of the social safety net, skyrocketing prices -- maximum concentration of wealth, maximum empowerment of the wealthy, maximum disempowerment of all the rest of us, methodical reduction of the American worker to Third World levels of degradation, exploitation, desperation and fear. In short what is happening is that capitalism is not only once again unleashing its Inner Tyrannosaur but is also (precisely as it did 70 and 80 years ago in Italy, Germany and Spain) taking off the velvet slipper of "compassionate conservatism" to show the murderous Nazi jackboot beneath.

Hence the desperation-motivated return of many to the Democratic Party: not because the Party has suddenly decided to once again be faithful to its former progressive values (it has most assuredly not; the DLC is still in total and absolute control -- witness CAFTA and the post-Katrina silence), but rather because -- in horror-stricken realization of the truth of class-warfare and the now-ever-more-undeniable fact that capitalism is genuinely evil, and in utter despair that there is no viable third-party socialist alternative -- the only rational option is to recapture the Democratic Party and force upon it again not only the principles of the New Deal but their most militant restoration: full acknowledgment that the wealthy are inherently predatory -- that in their malevolent greed they are by far the worst and most permanent threat to human liberty on this planet -- and that the primary role of a genuinely democratic government is to protect the people from the plutocrats: "all enemies foreign and domestic."

Where there truly is a difference between the parties -- and here in fact is the ONLY difference -- is in the (faint) possibility that progressives might recapture the Democratic Party. But until that happens (and as long as the DLC remains solidly in control), everything else is just a charade -- as the people in public and/or subsidized housing know all too well: we were disenfranchised by the Democrats via "welfare reform" long before the Republicans started trying to take away our right to vote.

[Spiffarino]

27. Mods - please consider front-paging this post

Unbelievably evil, corrupt, hateful, and racist. I truly, deeply hate these bastards.

[fortyfeetunder]

28. Will there be outrage in the Nations Capital?

And no, this is not quid pro quo for letting the remains of Rosa Parks lie in state in the Capitol.

This is time for a new March on Washington. Voter Rights.

This is shameful.... :grr:

[wildeyed]

29. I read a statistic that said there was a direct correlation

between voter participation and standard of living in a community.

Now maybe that is a chicken or the egg kind of situation; does the community have high standard of living because people vote or do people vote because they enjoy a high standard of living. I choose to believe the former, that a large number of citizens voting in a particular community will improve the standard of living in that community. Therefor, voting is helping yourself. An up-by-the-bootstraps kind of action. That is why this kind of legislation makes me sick. Putting the boot squarely on the back of people who are trying to do better for themselves and their communities. :grr:

[newswolf56]

32. There is also a direct correlation between voter participation and...

the extent to which the parties represent the voters' economic interests. Since the assent of the Democratic Leadership Council and its DINO-economics (outsourcing and downsizing via NAFTA and CAFTA, genocide via welfare "reform" etc. ad nauseum) -- and actually since the Carter Administration (which imposed the first really savage welfare cutbacks), the Democratic Party has increasingly abandoned its representation of blue-collar workers, and it has unabashedly joined the Republican Party in spitting in the faces of the poor, the disabled and the fixed-income elderly: the Medicare Prescription Drug Lord Benefit, perhaps the biggest government-sanctioned corporate rip-off in U.S. history, is merely the most recent example. When people recognize they have no representation, they don't bother to vote: why bother to vote when -- whomever you vote for (especially since there is no viable socialist alternative) -- you know you're going to get screwed.

Under those circumstances, it's astonishing to me even half the eligible voters bother to vote. Perhaps they're like me: growing up as I did when the Democratic Party was the party of the New Deal and thus truly represented my own economic interests, I got in the habit of voting -- and now find it is a habit I cannot break, even if I know my vote (because of the lack of real alternatives) is absolutely meaningless beyond the most local elections.

(Please see also my Post #31 above.)

[wildeyed]

42. But if we don't vote, we are truly lost.

I have this crazy vision that if I can organize enough votes, I can make them listen.

I am with you on the corporatization of politics. I believe that big business has pretty much taken over the government. The democrats are certainly not immune to that. But they are not in the same league as the repubs. I also think that we dems took a wrong turn somewhere and we lost track of our core economic values. The party also seems to be dysfunctional on some basic level that I don't fully understand. But I do believe that we can pull back from the abyss. And face it, under the current election system, the dems are our only hope.

Know what I would really like to see? Instant Run Off voting. Then third parties could finally break the death grip the two party system has on our country.

[Rainscents]

30. People need to wake up and see, what is going on in this country!

I hate these Republican basters!!!

[IronLionZion]

33. because they can't always count on hurricanes to drown us

(us meaning Democrats of color), and death camps didn't work out so well for the Nazis, so they try to keep us down by any means necessary.

It's always been like this: Democrats win when people vote, Republicans win when people don't. The "Greedy Old Party" is the only modern political party I know of that actively tries to stop people from voting.

[AlamoDemoc]

34. I am Speechless!

Here we are in the 21st century in America, and our elected officials are still using Jim Crow tactics of legislative ploy in order to discourage fair elections!

[VegasWolf]

35. Now HOW would people of color EVER get the idea that the Republicans

are not concerned about them?

[Faygo Kid]

36. Last year it was anti-gay marriage initiatives. Next year voter ID.

Rove is at it again, it is happening throughout the nation. With no evidence of voter fraud, the argument is going forth: You have to show ID for so many things, why not voting? If they prevail, it's a neocon majority from here on out. And a Bush Supreme Court won't uphold poor or older people's voting rights.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

37. Why don't they just come out and say it.

If we feel you're inclined to vote for your better interest, rather than ours, we can and will do all in our power to suppress that vote from taking place. Since you can do nothing to further pad our pockets or feed our campaign coffers you are dead to us.

[Alcibiades]

38. Democracy in Iraq

and Afghanistan, but not at home.

If they were to ban canvassing in public housing, or anything really horrible such as that, there would be a shitstorm that makes all the rioting in the nation's history look tame.

[Vektor]

39. They want to stop people from having vote drives?!?!?!

Disgusting! That's really taking a shit in the face of democracy - trying to stop voter reg. drives.

:grr:

I think they are doing this because they KNOW damn well Kerry really won the last election, and they don't want to risk letting the oppressed have a voice ever again.

[ismnotwasm]

41. I just forwarded that to everyone on my email list

And I don't usually do that. Some folks I know just don't want to hear some of the things I feel are important, so I'm usually selective. I asked them to forward it to as many people as possible. This is total and complete bullshit, and I am beyond pissed off.

[mopinko]

43. so, ok for churches to endorse candidates, but

not ok for affordable housing groups to register voters. mmmmkay

[Initech]

44. Yikes! Talk about a step backwards...

What a bunch of assholes. :nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

[fshrink]

45. Marx was right.

Class war is on its way.