Voter purge ignored many Hispanic felons

[Cocoa]

Off by a factor of 170.

http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040708/NEWS/407080418/1004

<snip>

Only 61 of the 47,763 names on the potential purge list are classified as Hispanic. Hispanics make up 17 percent of the state population, but a little more than one-tenth of 1 percent of the names on the list.

The missing Hispanics could feed into the Democratic Party's contention that the purge is Jeb Bush's plan to help his brother win Florida in the November presidential election.

All but one of the state's Hispanic legislators are Republicans. And Cubans, who make up the largest single segment of the state's Hispanic population, have traditionally supported the GOP.

"It's sloppy work to say the least," said Allie Merzer, spokeswoman for the Florida Democratic Party. "Is it intent? I don't know. But something doesn't smell right."

more..."

[rooboy]

1. Uh oh... this is getting very suspicious, Jebbie... n/t

[NewYorkerfromMass]

7. to say the least. eom

[Octafish]

2. Jebthro es un pendejo!

Gee. Jebthro's helped a lot of felons get off in Florida -- Republican felons. Here are a few Facts from 2000:


THE CUBAN STRATEGY

by WILLIAM FINNEGAN

Can Jeb Bush deliver the Florida vote in November?

The New Yorker, Issue of 2004-03-15
Posted 2004-03-08

EXCERPT...

Indeed, Jeb Bush is largely responsible for the fact that most Miami Cubans are Republicans. Though perennially described as “right-wing Cuban exiles,” most of them started out as Democrats. They were (and are) liberal on the social issues that tend to divide Americans, and they share a historic belief in the welfare state—a belief that the Cuban Refugee Program, the most generous immigrant-assistance effort in the history of the United States, only encouraged. President Kennedy, who was initially adored, was blamed by many exiles for the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, in 1961. And yet their bitterness did not drive them into the Republican Party, which in Miami was weak and uninterested, in any case, in Latino immigrants. Ronald Reagan stirred Cuban-Americans with his messianic anti-Communism. But even he was mistrusted by the exiles, who had been forced to learn, repeatedly, that the interests of any American President only periodically coincided with their own.

Jeb Bush, however, they trusted. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Republican congressman from South Florida, described Jeb to me as “a soul mate.” Diaz-Balart, who comes from a prominent political family—his aunt was Fidel Castro’s first wife—recalls that his grandparents were admirers of Franklin Roosevelt. Diaz-Balart himself was a Democrat until the nineteen-eighties, although the local party didn’t take much notice. Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen—another scion of a prominent family, who is also now a Republican representative in Washington—couldn’t get through the Democratic primaries in Miami.

Both Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen credit Jeb Bush with persuading them to switch parties. When Jeb became chairman of the Dade County Republican Party, in 1984, he simply looked at South Florida’s demographics, saw the opportunity, and went to work making the Republican Party the natural home for Cuban exiles. In 1979, registered Democrats still outnumbered Republicans among Cuban-Americans by forty-nine per cent to thirty-nine per cent. By 1988, only twenty-four per cent were Democrats, and sixty-eight per cent were Republicans.

Meanwhile—and this is a typical incongruity—Diaz-Balart runs for reëlection every two years with the support of the union locals in his district and voted against nafta. He and Ros-Lehtinen were among the tiny handful of Republicans in Congress who would not sign Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, and voted against the welfare and immigration reform acts in 1996. Jeb Bush, for his part, in his re-inaugural address last year, stood on the steps of the old state capitol in Tallahassee and said, “There would be no greater tribute to our maturity as a society than if we can make these buildings around us empty of workers—silent monuments to the time when government played a larger role than it deserved or could adequately fill.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040315fa_fact

[apnu]

3. It boggles my mind that there isn't seething outrage over the FLA purges

Then NAACP had a big thing right after 2000 and after Gore let the issue die in the Senate barely a peep has been heard nationally about the purging.

Jeb used the exact same list in 2002, and he's at it again here in 2004. And hardly a blip on the national level.

The only sliver lining is that I've heard (from here a few months ago) that many elections committees are ignoring the list for this election outright.

[Malva Zebrina]

5. the strongest outrage expressed after the black caucus

made their statement on the floor of the Senate came from the Civil Rights Commission, with Mary Francis Berry as presiding chair. Shocking as it was as the facts emerged about the felon list, it proved to have little power or punch also.

We as the people of this country were put into a terrible place by decisions that were made to not object to Bush's coup by those who may have had some clout. The lack of outrage at this horrendous , bullying that put this stupid warmonger in the Oval office, was a great diservice to the people of this country.

Stopgaps should be put in place, once the Democrats oust the idiot, to make sure that this never ever happens again to our voting process. Never. Bush has proven how dangerous it is to not have measures in place to stop a fascist like man from tyranny over us and the world, and how dangerous it is to NOT stand up and fight for the people of the country, because he perceives it as a weakness and he showed how much contempt he has for wimps when he just continued to do what he wanted, legally or illegally, run the country by decreee and without any significant resistance.

It says something about the Republicans--liars all because they are complicit in the bullying and the lies--and the hero of course is Jim Jeffords.

[apnu]

6. The simian believes that its his "right" to be president

For some odd reason that I can only chalk up to binge drinking and finding God in the worst possible way.

I had a girlfriend like that. Only without the God stuff -- she was into Thelema (Crowley's drivel) She felt that she "deserved" something better than having to work. The Chimp reminds me of her often. Tantrums, true WTF statements and questionable sanity.

[indepat]

4. It's more than just not smelling right: it is flagrant up-in-your-face mal

feasance of office and Jeb is in effect telling everyone to go Cheney off.