Ghosts of Joe Slovo

This one has a link to the ACORN Action Center at the end so people can take action to stop the smears and make sure that everyone who is eligible can get to the polls on Election day.



The other one is over 60,000 views and was the 71st most viewed video on all of YouTube on Wednesday October 21 and the 3rd most favorited in the News and Politics section.

Take a minute and change your link to this one instead so people can fight back as well as learn the truth.

Kick ass and take so very many names.

Who is that handsome devil?

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PASS THIS AROUND TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW! HELP SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THE TRUTH.
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Kick ass and take names

Nice to have a big gun on your side...

I didn't know that getting poor people to vote was a Federal case, but apparently I live in something called the 21st century and the Bush Justice Department lives in the 1880's...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/V/VOTER_FRAUD_FBI?SITE=ORROS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT


Officials: FBI investigates ACORN for voter fraud

By LARA JAKES JORDAN




WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI is investigating whether the community
activist group ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud around the
nation before the presidential election.

A senior law enforcement official confirmed the investigation to The
Associated Press on Thursday. A second senior law enforcement official
says the FBI was looking at results of recent raids on ACORN offices
in several states for any evidence of a coordinated national scam.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice
Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations
particularly so close to an election.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, says
it has registered 1.3 million young people, minorities and poor and
working-class voters - most of whom tend to be Democrats.

Republican accusations about the group were raised during Wednesday's
presidential debate between Democrat Barack Obama and GOP candidate
John McCain.

Some ACORN employees have been accused of submitting false voter
registration forms - including some signed `Mickey Mouse' or other
fictitious characters.

Those voter registration cards have become the focus of fraud
investigations in Nevada, Connecticut, Missouri and at least five
other states. Election officials in Ohio and North Carolina also
recently questioned the group's voter forms.

ACORN has said the "vast majority" of its workers are conscientious,
but some might have turned in duplicate applications or provided fake
information to pad their pay. Workers caught submitting false
information have been fired, ACORN officials say.

ACORN says laws in a number of states require it to submit all
registration cards it collects even dubious ones, so its workers
segregate applications with missing, suspicious or false information
and flag them so state election officials can quickly check them
further.

Updates at the bottom of the entry...

I've excerpted parts of a fresh post on the Project Vote blog and is an analysis of recent stories from Michigan and Ohio about Republicans using lists of houses in foreclosure to challenge voters' right to vote in November. People are calling this heartless, which I think is a bit tepid. I think "reprehensible", "unconscionable", "Jim Crow-esque", and "sleezy" might start to do it justice, but I think I'm just lacking creativity. There is a particular irony in the GOP's announcement of these attempts to keep folks away from the polls during the week of September 11, when, supposedly, we all come together to celebrate what unifies us as Americans. But then, that comes as no surprise really, given the right's attempt to trademark Sept. 11 and use it against progressives during policy debates and elections.

Here are some of the key parts of the post.

Partisan political operatives in Michigan are taking voter caging operations to depths that would surprise even the most cynical observers of American elections. If their plans are put into action, thousands of Michigan foreclosure victims may find that they will not only have lost their homes this year, but also their vote.

Operatives in the closely contested state, which is home to thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure, are “gearing up for a comprehensive voter challenge campaign,” according to Eartha Jane Melzer of the Michigan Messenger Wednesday. The state allows parties to send election challengers to polls to challenge the eligibility of voters if they “have good reason to believe” a voter is ineligible. In this case, the GOP of Macomb County—a “key swing county” with a foreclosure rate in the top three percent in the nation—has announced plans to challenge the voting eligibility of foreclosure victims based on residency.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” Macomb County GOP chairman James Carabelli told the Messenger.

And then this.

“The Macomb County party's plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters,” Melzer writes. “More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans – the most likely kind of loan to go into default – were made to African Americans in Michigan...”

Melzer points out that Republican presidential candidate John McCain's regional headquarters is in the office of the state's largest foreclosure law firm, Trott & Trott, whose founder has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the campaign. McCain “stands to benefit from the burgeoning number of foreclosures in the state,” Melzer writes.

Advocates respond.

“At a minimum, what you are seeing is a fairly comprehensive effort by the Republican Party, a systemic broad-based effort to put up obstacles for people to vote,” says [J. Gerald] Herbert [former voting rights litigator for the US Department of Justice]. “When you are comprehensively challenging people to vote, your goals are two-fold: One is you are trying to knock people out from casting ballots; the other is to create a slowdown that will discourage others.” This type of disruption would be expected in areas with high foreclosure rates, particularly the Detroit metropolitan, where one in every 176 households received foreclosure filings during the month of July, according to Melzer.

“You would think [the Macomb GOP] would think, 'This is going to look too heartless,'” says David Lagstein, head organizer for Michigan ACORN, which has registered 200,000 new voters statewide and provides foreclosure-avoidance assistance.

“The Republican-led state Senate has not moved on the anti-predatory lending bill for over a year and yet have time to prey on those who have fallen victim to foreclosure to suppress the vote,” Lagstein says.

If you want to learn more:

“Voter Caging.” Project Vote.

James, Teresa. “Caging Democracy: A 50-Year History of Partisan Challenges to Minority Voters.” Project Vote. September 2007.

Kick ass and protect voting rights.

UPDATE: Also available at DailyKos, MyDD, and OpenLeft.

UPDATE II: In this story in the Michigan Messenger today, the Macomb County GOP is now stating that it has no voter caging plans for the foreclosure list, but that it does expect, "party volunteers to challenge voters in other ways."

When asked whether Michigan Republicans plan to create a challenge list based on returned direct mail, a practice known as “vote caging,” Doster replied, “I think so. I know this has been done in years past … both parties may be doing this.”

Reports of the plan for foreclosure-based challenges have spurredoutrage and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), planned a demonstration today at the Macomb County Republican headquarters.

Allow me to jump back on the US Attorneys scandal for a hot minute.

In previous episodes of our saga I've noted that the Department of Justice was essentially suborned into a piece of partisan machinery for the Republicans, used to ensure GOP victories in recent elections using the full weight of the Federal Government's law-eonforcement powers.

This in and of itself is a major subversion of the US Constitution and should be ground for impeachment of the Attorney General at the very least.

However, this kind of stuff is what we seem to expect from elected and appointed officials. It's just what politicians do, right?

Well not so much really. The US has a remarkably clean democracy and government, especially given our rich history in this area. But the Civil Service Act of the 1880's, many reforms in the early 1900's, and expanding accountability within the electorate by extending the franchise to previously disenfranchised folk has made this system of ours more free and fair than not.

So allow me to excerpt some choice paragraphs from the editorial of a 25-year staff attorney with the Department of Justice, John Koppel, that was published on Thursday July 5 in the Denver Post. The language is retrained but the words are shocking nonetheless.

As a longtime attorney at the U.S.Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been asashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at thistime.

The public record now plainly demonstrates that both theDOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. Theu nconscionable commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act andthe deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse.

In the course of its tenure since the Sept. 11 attacks,the Bush administration has turned the entire government (and the DOJin particular) into a veritable Augean stable on issues such as civilrights, civil liberties, international law and basic human rights, aswell as criminal prosecution and federal employment and contracting practices. It has systematically undermined the rule of law in the name of fighting terrorism, and it has sought to insulate its actions from legislative or judicial scrutiny and accountability by invoking national security at every turn, engaging in persistent fearmongering, routinely impugning the integrity and/or patriotism of its critics, and protecting its own lawbreakers. This is neither normal governmentconduct nor "politics as usual," but a national disgrace of a magnitude unseen since the days of Watergate - which, in fact, I believe it eclipses.

Whoa. Bigger than Watergate. I hate hyperbole so I tend to shy away from it, but from what I know of this stuff from the load of info coming out about the US Attorneys scandal, that feels right.

Koppel concludes with this thought:

I realize that this constitutionallyprotected statement subjects me to a substantial risk of unlawfulreprisal from extremely ruthless people who have repeatedly taken suchaction in the past. But I am confident that I am speaking on behalf ofcountless thousands of honorable public servants, at Justice andelsewhere, who take their responsibilities seriously and share theseviews. And some things must be said, whatever the risk.

It takes courage to speak out.

I hope this leads somewhere besides the end of a career.

Kick ass and <sigh>think about impeachment</sigh>.

Down in Texas, what Molly Ivins called "the lege" has been up to its neck in hijinx. While I'm sure there are many pieces of legislation that could be singled out for either disgust or parody or both, one fight has been remarkable for the actions of one State Senator. I do not use the following word lightly and I do not know if it applies to any other aspects of his life, but State Senator Mario Gallegos from Houston acted herocially to stop a voter disenfranchisement (oh sorry, the conservatives call it "voter id") bill from being passed.

Back in January the Senator had a liver transplant, which is always tricky, but lately he's been showing symptoms of rejecting the organ. Doctors have ordered him home. But it also turns out that conservatives in The Lege have been pushing this voter disenfranchisement bill as a top priority. The GOP-dominated State House passed the bill and a majority of Senators supported it as well, but under Senate rules 11 votes can block a measure from coming up. Gallegos was the 11th vote opposing the bill.

But he was seriously ill, with doctors begging him to go home under medical supervision. Gallegos couldn't do that. Whether it was deep personal conviction, a sense of history regarding the movements that won the right to vote, often paying in blood (pdf) for the right, or the sense that core constituents would be blocked from the next election - or even a bit of all of them - Gallegos made the decision to stay in Austin and had a mini-infirmary set-up off the Senate Chamber floor. All so he could be the 11th vote against the bill. 

Project Vote has a massive amount of information this issue and practically every other voter engagement and voter id issue, which you can find on their website, if you want more info on what I'm talking about.

These kinds of stories are full of arcana and hinge on technical aspects of how rules and regulations are designed and implements, but understanding them has a direct bearing on who can and cannot participate in our democratic system. Indeed, it has an impact upon who's right to vote is facilitated and who's is hindered.

In Texas, Sen. Gallegos is to be commended for placing his own life in jeopardy in an echo of the way that thousands of ordinary citizens did a generation ago during the Civil Rights Movement, in pursuit of the same goal: the right to vote.

Kick ass and secure the right to vote.

I think that moving to Los Angeles and not being as tightly connected to any kind of performance or artitic scene has led me to drop my posting rate here on LJ. That and the fact that life was taken up with wedding stuff and then work got crazy and I started editing a work-related blog (which everyone should visit by the way, because, you know, I edit it - Voting Matters), so all my energy got channeled elsewhere.

But I'm going to think about how I can incorporate more LJ into my life because I really like the community of people who populate my flist and I realize I need to check-in with ya'll on a regular basis.

In the meantime, I leave you with this exchange that came from the listserve for almuni of my college. This is in reference to the US Attorneys scandal, the small peice where Ashcroft, on his hospital bed, refused to authorize illegal wiretapping by Bush, as urged by Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez (who claim they were "just visiting" Ashcroft. At midnight.)

Alum 1: Who knew Ashcroft would come out of this looking like a hero?
Alum 2: I never thought it would come to this, but I can safely say that I prefer Ashcroft over Gonzales.
Yours Truly: I know, I too prefer repeated bouts of malaria and explosive diarrhea to Ebola any time of the day.

Oh my god I'm funny. Now that I'm in LA I'm totally going to start my stand-up career.

Kick ass and expose scandals that are really about the subversion of the Constitution for partisan political gain.

Normally when I'm talking about rights and politics and things I just rant at you good people.

Today I'm linking to a story from the McClatchy Papers Washignton Bureau (they own the Sac Bee, the Fresno Bee, the Raleigh News and Observer, the Charlotte Observer and a host of other mid-sized papers) about the complete and utter politicization of the Department of Justice under Bush and how it has become nothing more than an adjunct of the Republican party in its quest to suppress progressive voting blocs and institutionalize a GOP majority.

Here's a couple of fun quotes:

For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort torestrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

The administration intensified its efforts last year asPresident Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.

Facing nationwide voter registration drives byDemocratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespreadelection fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federalvoter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.

I mean, it doesn't get any clearer than that. It should be noted for the record that Project Vote and ACORN were both thoroughly investigated as part of this effort and the failure of US Attorneys in NM and WA to find any actual systematic violations of the law or conspiracies to illegally subvert the elections led to their dismissal. Rove and Gonzalez felt like their folks were being insufficiently aggressive. But since neither Project Vote nor ACORN commits voter fraud, there wasn't anything to find.

The administration, however, has repeatedly invoked allegations ofwidespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures and othersteps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research suggests that voter fraud is rare.

Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, aformer Republican senator from Missouri, launched a "Ballot Access andVoter Integrity Initiative" in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases,and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights.

On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan,Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins.

Joseph Rich, who left his job as chief of the section in 2005, said these events formed an unmistakable pattern.

"As more information becomes available about theadministration's priority on combating alleged, but not well substantiated, voter fraud, the more apparent it is that its actions concerning voter ID laws are part of a partisan strategy to suppress the votes of poor and minority citizens," he said.

B-I-N-G-O!

The article goes on to actually list all the instances of improper behavior, but you get the picture. Read the article, by Greg Gordon, for whom my team compiled an ass-load of information for him to puruse, and you'll get a sense of what this whole scandal is really about.

Kick ass and take names.

WORK, VOTER FRAUD, VOTER SUPPRESSION AND THE GOP'S ACORN JONES
Man, work has been kicking my ass while I'm there, but luckily I've been able to escape bringing it home for a while.

My group, the Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD) has been doing a lot of support work for ACORN and Project Vote's Elections Adminstration program, chiefly around the information coming out about the firing of the 8 US Attorneys. Turns out that at least two were fired for not pursuing "voter fraud" vigorously enough. In other words, they didn't bring indictments against groups engaged in massive ballot stuffing and voter registration drive irregularities.

You know why? Because it doesn't it exist, that's why. Interestingly enough, though, the Department of Justice had their eyes out for both Project Vote and ACORN and even Karl Rove was pushing the NM Attorney to root out "fraud" at the insistence of the local GOP leadership that wanted the US Attorney there to investigate .... wait for it ... ACORN!

See, in 2004, ACORN submitted over 35,000 voter registration applications in New Mexico, well above the margin of victory in the state. Some of those applications were forged by people trying to defraud the organization and get paid for work they didn't do, so all of a sudden the GOP is all "oh my god they are trying to subvert the system and they must be stopped!", which is really an attempt to intimidate voters from ACORN's constituency of low-income folks and folks of color. But they claim "voter fraud".

Well, back in March, Project Vote released a study by Professor Lorraine Minnite from Barnard who concluded that there simply isn't any organized voter fraud occuring in the US and that the bulk of cases of people voting illegally comes from absentee ballots (which are more likely to be cast by older, whiter, wealthier people - people who are more likely to be Republicans). The number of people who have been convicted in the past 5 years for some kind of voting irregularity? 86. The number of votes cast since 2002 in Federal elections? Over 250 million. So there were 86 cases out of a possible 250 million. Which, I guess if you are the GOP, is a clear indication of rampant voter fraud.

Or maybe you are just using that hysteria to pass a series of laws that suppress the turnout from constituencies that you don't want to show up at the polls. Like, say, voter ID requirements, which the Eagleton Center for Politics at Rutgers has just shown depresses turnout among African-Americans by 6% and Asian-Americans by 9%. But we need to protect the system's integrity! From what? So fucking transparent.

Anyway, we've been helping PV and ACORN to make this case for the past 2 months through a series of press releasese, op-eds, and blog posting on the major liberal blogs.

WEIRD PHONE SURVEYS
Two days ago as I was winding down work, I took a call from a phone suveyer and decided to go with it, not knowing it was going to be a 20 minute call! It was all about sports. Professional sports leagues. What was my favorite (MLS), which did I think was the "most professional", whose athletes did I "most respect"? Who were the most overpaid (MLB)? (As much as possible I tried to pick Major League Soccer, but it just wasn't one of my choices. And neither was Major League Lacrosse or the W-League (womens' soccer) or even the Arena Football League - if I was them I'd be pissed.)

Anyway, at a couple of points the questions got really funny: "What percent of your head hair would you say is gray?" Umm, what? (I said 10%.) And then they started asking me about hair care products and which I was most likely to use. They also asked my how much alcohol I drink in a typical week and what my favorite beer is. Favorite beer? I LOVE beer. I'm supposed to choose? But I did. I picked Newcastle because you just can't go wrong with Newcastle. It is never the wrong choice.

They also asked my how much sports I watch on TV per week, but not which sports they are. They did NOT ask me how much sports I watch on the internet, which is where I actually do most of my sports watching since you have to have cable to watch soccer in America.

I couldn't beleive how long this damn survey took and I was particularly amused by their decision to try to find out which league's players are the most respected (or not). At a certain point I just don't give a shit about millionaire athletes and their petty battles and I don't know how to differentiate between the "respect" I have for a millionaire baskeball player vs a millionaire baseball player. Now, the young kids on the Development Contracts with Major League Soccer, who make $12,000-$18,000 a year and live 5 people to a house, like they do over at DC United, all so they can pursue their dream of making it in Major League Soccer - a league no one in this country actually cares about - THOSE kids have my respect. Hell, even a journeyman D-League player in Bakersfield or Grand Rapids or someplace like that gets some respect from me. But A-Rod? Or Barry Zito? Umm, no.

THE BECKHAM EFFECT
One last thing about sports. I recently acquired season tickets to the LA Galaxy, which plays in the league no one cares about (see above) on the theory that if I have a chance to see one of the best players in the world and the best-know player in the world, and soccer is my favorite sport, and I have the means to make it happen, then I should go ahead and do it. Even though I think the other LA team, Chivas USA, is a lot more fun to watch and has better fans.

Now the thing is about MLS - you have to really like this league and this game to follow it and you have to go way out of your way to do it. You can't just turn on ABC and see the Game of the Week. YOu must dig and scramble and dig some more and then you have to deal with other soccer fans who won't give MLS the time of day because they like only "the best" soccer - so they watch English or Spanish or German futbol exclusively. I call them Eurosnobs. Anyway, that gives you an idea of the typical MLS fan.

Until now, I guess. And you can thank David Beckham for this. World-class talent and celebrity brought to a minor league league. As if Shaquille O'Neal decided to finish his career in Italy or something. Anyway, you get a lot of new MLS fans buying season tickets and attending games, but not having a lot of knowledge.

So the guy next to me at the Galaxy season opener is one of these guys (oh lucky me for an entire season). His favorite team in Chelski (Chelsea in the EPL - owned by a Russian billionaire and the winner of the past two league championships, but sitting second this year) and his soccer intelligence is pretty good. He understands what's going on on the field.

But. But he leans over to me at one point and asks me how many substitutions they have in an MLS game. Umm. That's like asking how many strikes you get in baseball. It's the same everywhere the game is played professionally or in a FIFA-sanctioned league. It's 3. It's one of the 17 rules of the game.

Then later he expresses admiration for this tall powerful forward for FC Dallas who scores a goal against the Gals. "Is he a rookie?"

Umm, no. It's Kenny Cooper and he's been in the league for 2 years and before that he was in the Manchester United youth program AND HE JUST MADE HIS INTERNATIONAL DEBUT FOR THE US MENS NATIONAL TEAM 3 MONTHS AGO, SCORING A GOAL, EVEN! What kind of US soccer fan who knows enough about soccer to follow Chelsea DOESN'T KNOW JACK SHIT ABOUT HIS OWN NATIONAL TEAM?

Aaargh! Fuck you David Beckham for surrounding me with imbeciles while I watch live professional soccer, one of my very favorite things to do.

That is all.

Kick balls and learn about the damn sport in your own country, already!