Good job, Senate Repubs! Sometime this week you will approve a law to make it more difficult for poor people, the elderly, and students to vote - and for this you will spend millions of dollars. Meanwhile, you just voted to overturn a DNR regulation requiring communities to disinfect their water because you do not want to create 'hardship' for local budgets. Presumably, the cost of getting sick from water contaminated with bacteria will only be paid by the one who gets sick.
Less access to voting rights; dirtier water. Sounds about right for these guys.
Me, too!
Paper this morning says the new Voter I.D. law will cost more than $7 million, much of that to cover costs of free state I.D.s for those without drivers' licenses. This measure was included because Repubs are trying to avoid a court challenge - making people pay for an I.D. in order to vote would indeed amount to a poll tax and would therefore be unconstitutional.
So they are willing to pay for this measure which will make it harder for some groups of folks to vote, but they are not willing to make communities pay to disinfect drinking water to stave off bacterial illnesses.
The priorities of these Repubs get clearer. From the JS article linked above:
"What you really want to do is suppress the vote of people who don't think like you or look like you," Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) told Republicans.
Yes. They know it; we know it. The underlying racism here is not all that hard to see. Repubs have wanted this law for a long time, but it was blocked by a Democratic governor. But the overwhelming support in this state for Barack Obama back in 2008 filled them with alarm. That support was bouyed by two groups whose access to the polls has just been made more difficult - urban African-Americans, especially the poor and unemployed, and students. The Repub victory of 2010 giving them control of both legislative houses gave them the opportunity at last to fulfill this great longing to suppress the voter turnout of those most likely to vote against them. These guys know exactly what they're doing.
Meanwhile, the fraud these Repubs are so bent on avoiding? Doesn't exist.
The measure could prevent people from voting in another's name, but not the most common form of voter fraud - felons voting while on state supervision.
The state Department of Justice and Milwaukee County district attorney's office have prosecuted 20 cases of voter fraud from the November 2008 election. None involves people voting in someone else's name at the polls.
I await the outcry from this state. I await the boisterous movement that challenges this legislation. I await the pushback, the fervent impassioned defense of the broadest possible voting rights which is the rock bottom core of our democracy.
The Journal Sentinel, Prosser and other Repubs, and lots of their supporters got it all wrong when responding to JoAnne Kloppenburg's request for a statewide recount. The April special election, like several elections before it, have revealed that there are some pretty serious issues with the voting process itself - and I don't mean the bogus voter fraud all the rage in the world of the Walker/Fitzgerald regime, the faux issue they are using for voter suppression in this state.
No, the real issue has to do with the integrity of the process itself, and the possibility that computers, vote counts, and even ballots themselves have fallen under a cloud of uncertainty raises the most fundamental issue of all - are our votes being counted accurately and securely? Are the clerks in charge of the count truly non-partisan and above all suspicion? And since it turns out that this is not the case - Waukesha County being the most glaring example right now, where a partisan former Prosser colleague, Kathleen Nickolaus, keeps the vote tally on a computer at home and allows no one to examine it - Kloppenburg has just done our state a great service by insisting on the full statewide recount.
I have been wanting to hear from her, felt we really needed her voice in this, and today we have. The woeful Journal Sentinel gave her space on their Op-Ed page and you can read her essay here. An excerpt:
This election was close, and there were many who have expressed doubts about whether it was clean. The right to vote is fundamental. It is a right that courageous people fight and die for every day. In America, that right carries with it a promise: that elections are fair and open, that election results are untainted by deceit or fraud and that the electoral process provides every eligible voter with an equal opportunity to privately and independently cast a ballot.
In order to make that promise real, there are appropriate and established steps that help make sure the outcome of elections, when in doubt, can withstand scrutiny. That, no more and no less, is exactly why this recount is so important.
Yes. And then, YES! While JS and Prosser people lament the money spent, the time consumed, I can think of no more important function of government than to defend the vote against all possible assaults on its integrity.
Still, the fact that Nickolaus's computer has still not been ceased and analyzed by competent federal investigators - since the state refuses to do it - means that Waukesha County's vote count will remain under a cloud as long as she is allowed to operate in this fashion. The article in the JS about her the other day only increases reasons for concern.
Yes, Kloppenburg has done our state a great service. The importance of the recount was not about whether or not she wins in the end, it's about whether or not the result is accurate and trustworthy.
Since the advent of computerized voting, problems have arisen all across the country. Some programs have proven to be quite 'hackable,' and the companies making the machines have also been way-too-close to the Repub Party (one example, and here's another, and another). Now let's couple this story of the vulnerability of computerized vote tallies with Nickolaus's refusal to allow her computer to be examined, her practice of keeping it at home, and her old relationship with Prosser and other Repubs - and, sorry Repubs, if there are no problems here then let the Feds at it so that this can be proven and we all can be reassured.
As with the JS editorial board's opposition to the recount, you have to wonder who is really defending democracy here. A minority of eligible voters helped create a rightist regime in this state with what has turned out to be a deeply unpopular agenda. In the face of the mounting opposition, they are trying to ram through this agenda as quickly as possible. They continue to use undemocratic means to do so.
Again, the latest example - Senate Bill 95, which proposes sweeping changes in state mandates on education. You can read the substance here. For the purpose of this post, my concern is this:
Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) noted that details about the bill were released only one business day earlier, on Friday, by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
"I'm pretty sure if there had been more notice on this, this room would have been packed," she said, looking at the meager crowd of about 30 people.
Once again, Assembly and Senate Repubs are trying to pass their agenda by stealth, moving things through so quickly and with the kind of timing that ensures no one can mount a meaningful pushback. This is an old nefarious practice of undemocratic players holding majorities in legislatures - put the stuff out late on a Friday and surprise everyone with hearings and votes on Monday.
The Walker/Fitzgerald regime does not want popular democracy to function, friends. They do not want it to function. The media - the JS and TV stations - are all complicit, virtually ignoring a rally of 10,000 folks on a cold windy Saturday called out in just 2 weeks time. They completely ignored the voices that spoke out there, from Sen. Jon Erpenbach to Mahlon Mitchell of the Professional Firefighters of Wisconsin to Sarah Lloyd of Family Farm Defenders to an undocumented high school student and more, but most of all the constituencies represented by those 10,000 people.
People operate in the shadows when they fear democracy, when they have hidden agendas, when they know they are viscerally unpopular but want to control us for the sake of that agenda. By requesting a recount, JoAnne Kloppenburg has helped put a spotlight on one of the greater dangers to our democracy - the threat to the integrity of the vote. I thank her for that.
The dismantling of Wisconsin's government and broad democracy continued yesterday in the Repub-dominated Assembly Committee on Elections and Campaign Reform. With Sen. Alberta Darling leading the way, the committee approved the new voter ID law intended to suppress voting rights, targeting students, elderly, and the poor, populations most likely to vote for Democrats.
This follows a national pattern in several states intended to bolster the power of Repubs at the cost of their opposing party and democracy itself.
Let's be clear: this is not about voter fraud, the great faux issue the Repubs say they are addressing. Voter fraud in this state is a problem being invented, one that barely registers on the 'dangers-to-democracy' radar. The real threat to democracy is coming from the right, funded by corporations and the groups they support, like Karl Rove's GPS Crossroads, the Koch brothers funded Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party and Club for Growth, and the American Legislative Exchange Council.
For years, these groups have been trying to get a hold on the electoral system itself to manipulate it to their benefit. I need to remind myself over and over again that the Repub Party they are using as their tool, in this state, in Michigan, Maine, and elsewhere, is not the Repub Party of my parents' generation. This is a party that has been taken over by billionaires (Rove's group is funded almost entirely by billionaires' money), rightist corporations like Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil, for the purpose of reshaping our country to something that ressembles the days of the robber barons and Tammany Hall, back to the days when powerful white business groups ran corrupt political machines and controlled political parties and local and state governments without the restrictions of things like human and civil rights, labor unions, environmental laws, or broad-based popular democracy.
Again, as I wrote yesterday, I wish I was using hyperbole and exaggeration to get attention.
So, we were all in the streets over collective bargaining rights for public workers and the assault on the middle class. Will these same people be willing to go into the streets to defend the right to vote for poor people, inner city neighborhoods, African-Americans, students, and the elderly? I am just not feeling the same urgency that came with the assault on collective bargaining - and you can be sure they are counting on that. It has been a long time since the people of this country went into the streets to defend the right to vote - and that came from the disenfranchised by way of the civil rights movement some 50 years ago now.
Recall our history: most expansions of the right to vote - women's suffrage and the civil rights movement as our preeminent examples - came from persistent struggle, came from movements and protests. We had to struggle at every turn to broaden democracy to the point where it became that - democracy, not rule by the elite.
According to the morning paper, Darling and Leibham of Sheboygan were insistent on banning all forms of student IDs. They don't want students - with rights as profound and inalienable as theirs or yours or mine - to be able to exercise their right to vote. What they want, my friends, is the ability to dismantle government and hand the public sector over to the corporate sector without pushback or the inconvenience of organized political opposition.
I can't say this strongly enough - our Wisconsin political system and much of the quality of life in our state is under threat from this regime. And I guess we are about to find out just how much we care about those things.
Okay, but is this true?
None of this stuff has become law - yet. But we are running out of time. While all this anti-Walker regime energy gets focused on the recalls, the vote on Walker's biennium budget will take place before those elections. In fact, the Repubs will use every legal maneuver available to them to keep those elections from happening before the vote on the budget. Sure would be nice to see some of the energy go where it needs to go now. Sure would be good to see folks called back to the Capitol to reclaim our rights and our democracy.
I am waiting for the righteous outcry against the proposed voter I.D./voter suppression legislation that could be before our state legislature this next month. This is the one mentioned in yesterday's post: mandating that voters show a government issued photo ID when they vote, prohibiting the use of student photo IDs, and creating a significant hurdle for those without drivers' licenses (the poor, many elderly, new immigrant citizens, etc. - folks that tend not to vote for rightist authoritarian politicians like we have in our state government right now).
Added now to this bill is language that would sharply restrict absentee balloting and voter registration efforts, move primary elections from September to August when fewer people are around to vote, and end straight-ticket voting.
And you thought the threat to public worker collective bargaining rights was the big thing to worry about? I mean, it's one thing to protest to defend those rights within the framework of a democratic system, but, friends, they are trying to take our democracy away from us, using all sorts of means to try to suppress the vote, decimate funding for the Democratic Party, and control election outcomes. This is scary stuff, and it is not only happening here. The NY Times addressed this in an editorial the other day, The Republican Threat To Voting. Please, please, read it.
A snippet:
...more than 30 other states are joining the bandwagon of disenfranchisement, as Republicans outdo each other to propose bills with new voting barriers. The Wisconsin bill refuses to recognize college photo ID cards, even if they are issued by a state university, thus cutting off many students at the University of Wisconsin and other campuses...
Many of these bills were inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a business-backed conservative group, which has circulated voter ID proposals in scores of state legislatures. The Supreme Court, unfortunately, has already upheld Indiana’s voter ID requirement, in a 2008 decision that helped unleash the stampede of new bills. Most of the bills have yet to pass, and many may not meet the various balancing tests required by the Supreme Court. There is still time for voters who care about democracy in their states to speak out against lawmakers who do not.
Are we fully appreciating what is going on here yet?
So I return to my question. I know that folks feel the threat to their livelihoods, their wages and benefits, the government services that are lifelines for our society (like public schools and universities, like Medicaid and BadgerCare and Social Security, trash collection and recycling, etc.). But have we become too complacent about democracy itself not to recognize when it is under severe threat? After all , most of us don't even bother to vote, so will we notice or even care when that right is gone for millions of us across the country, or severely restricted here in the state where we live - restricted enough that rightist authoritarian corporate sponsored groups can manipulate results and control our governments?
I wish I was not overstating the case. Wisconsinites, make your voices heard about this legislation which is about to come down on us while many of us are looking somewhere else. This is the issue that should bind us together like nothing else. Whatever our differences, we all share this democracy. It is in need of our defense - right now!
Little signs here and there seem to reveal that Republican state legislators are a bit worried about the political fallout from the Walker/Ryan bold plans for America and our state. Folks are getting a little feisty out there, shouting down the great deficit hero, refusing to allow the deceptions and obfuscations to go unchallenged. He came to lecture, and often got lectured.
Seems these bold plans to address the deficit not by returning tax rates to something more sane (like those of the 60s and 70s, or even just before the budget-busting Bush tax cuts), not by cutting defense and getting out of 2-3 wars loathed by the vast majority of the population and taking an enormous toll on soldiers and their families, not by cutting subsidies for ethanol and fossil fuels and industrial agriculture, but by attacking social programs that impact the most vulnerable populations - seems these plans are not exactly popular. Medicare? Yikes, Repubs, you must be reeling at the poll numbers!!!
You know what’s not popular? Reforming Medicare such that beneficiaries “receive a check or voucher from the government each year for a fixed amount they can use to shop for their own private health insurance policy.” According to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll, 65 percent of Americans oppose the idea -- about the same number who dismissed it in 1995. And if they’re told that the cost of private insurance for seniors is projected to outpace the cost of Medicare insurance for seniors -- which is exactly what CBO projects -- more than 80 percent of Americans oppose the plan.
...Cutting Medicare polls poorly even if you leave out the details. Almost 80 percent of Americans oppose Medicare cuts in the abstract, while 70 percent oppose Medicaid cuts.
Paul Ryan just received a lesson in democracy from a lot of older folks and many conservatives whom he forgot still read newspapers, follow politics, and are well-informed. They can spy the intention to destroy Medicare when they see it, even if Ryan and others think they can pull one over on them.
Photo: Swedish
That and the successful recall efforts against 6 Repub State Senators who voted to bust public sector unions have some Repubs looking for a little negotiating room with their governor on some elements of his crash-and-burn biennium budget proposal.
Like mandating recycling but cutting funds to pay for it. Like intentions to turn the UW-Madison campus into an elite private-public institutions that only the rich can afford (and without the annoyance of union representation for the faculty and staff, but that's another issue).
Meanwhile, those outside agitators, the folks from the American Recall Coalition in Utah, have not had much success against the Wisconsin 14. Imagine thinking they could get enough petitions to recall Sen. Lena Taylor or the revered State Sen. Risser!! A little miscalculation there, doncha' think? Should make for a fun summer.
Meanwhile, Repubs continue their assault on the most basic right of any democracy - the right to vote. In their proposed voter ID law, the intent to suppress the vote was already apparent. Now they have new proposals to put in place difficult hurdles for voter registration efforts and to move the primary election from September to August - when folks are on vacation and students have not yet arrived at university campuses.
My favorite line in the article is this one: "A hearing on the bill is slated for 10 a.m. Wednesday, and Republicans who run the Assembly will meet in private later in the day to discuss any changes to the measure." So many private meetings on so many essential things. Transparency is not a characteristic of the current character of our Repub legislators.
Interestingly, the guy pushing these proposals is Repub Rep. Jeff Stone who just lost decisively to Chris Abele in the election for County Executive, one of the local elections considered to be a mandate on the Walker regime. Didn't go well for him, and actually a number of Repubs could face difficult elections next year - so best to get measures in place now to make it harder for poor people, students, and the elderly to vote. Best to get measures in place now to make it more difficult to vote absentee or to carry out voter registration drives.
It's about their future
It's too easy to say it's just about a sore loser. In fact, once again, there are efforts to do similar things in several states, and, once again, you get that feeling that something else is going, like coordinated efforts to create one-party rule wherever possible. At stake are issues as basic as whether or not our democracy will survive these rightist assaults, whether there is intent to co-opt, manipulate, and control state and local elections to attain dominance for one political party.
I try not to get all hyperbolic about these things, but I've been involved in grassroots political work and advocacy all my life and I have never seen anything quite so threatening to our democracy as these recent efforts in Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Maine, and elsewhere to take away the right to vote from more and more people, the populations whose votes Repub governors and legislators cannot count on to keep them in power for their true agenda - to gut government, privatize as much of the public sector as they can, and make off with our future.
For more, I highly recommend you take the time to view this video, if you have not yet seen it. This is stuff we need to know - because it looks more and more possible that it is democracy itself that is at stake here.
That, in a nutshell, is what this recount is all about. That is the main reason JoAnne Kloppenburg gives for requesting it. She is not saying she won; she is not saying she thinks she did and therefore wants a new tally to prove it. She is saying that the integrity of this Wisconsin election (and therefore previous elections that are now under a cloud of doubt) must be verified by a careful ballot-by-ballot recount - preferably by hand, the most foolproof method of establishing an accurate count.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel does not agree. Once again, our local paper proves unable to grasp the magnitude of what is going on in Wisconsin and all around the country where similar aggression against democratic rights is underway on the part of the newly emergent rightist, increasingly anti-democratic, Repub party.
What is it about this election that they don't want to know? Why do they think Waukesha County Clerk Kathleen Nickolaus keeps vote tallies hidden away on her private computer at home, and let's no one else have access to it? Why do they think that the 2006 election result in Waukesha County shows a higher vote count for specific races than the overall total for the entire election (check out this link folks, you won't believe just how funny these funny numbers are!!)? What is she doing, and don't we want to know? Shouldn't she lose her job immediately over this - like air traffic controllers asleep at the job? Aren't our lives and the well-being of our state at stake here?
Let's remind ourselves of the issues around this suspect county clerk. In sum, from the Buzzflash blog:
As the [Madison] Cap Times and other Wisconsin outlets have noted, Nickolaus kept election results on her personal computer, even though she had been formally warned not to do so. She was given immunity from prosecution in 2002 for campaigning for Republicans on taxpayer's time. Furthermore, as the CapTimes notes, Nickolaus is "a former Republican legislative staffer who worked for Prosser when he served as Assembly speaker and with Gov. Scott Walker when he was a GOP rising star." [emphasis added]
I mean, any issues here that we think ought to be investigated?
But Waukesha is not the only place where problems with vote tallies surfaced; it's only apparently the most egregious. We need to find out the extent to which polling problems exist in this state, and which of them are products of human error or incompetence, and which are products of outright fraud.
I hear a lot of complaints from the right about voter fraud, and they are using that old canard in efforts to suppress voting rights - targeting African-Americans, students, elderly, citizen immigrants, and other groups who tend not to vote Repub. Investigations show this to be a false issue, that the problem does not really exist. But far greater threats of fraudulent practices have emerged ever since the arrival of computer tallies, not least of which is the ease with which vote counts can be tainted by a little hacking here, a bit of data manipulation there - which is why we favor a hand recount of every ballot cast in the state.
If Prosser is such a great champion of the state Constitution, such a disinterested Supreme Court Justice, he should tell his campaign to stop the shrill rhetoric aimed at Kloppenburg and embrace fully this effort to weed out any tainted vote counts or procedures. He should call for the impounding of Nickolaus' computer, and a thorough audit of her methods, by outside federal investigators. Otherwise, we must ask ourselves just what it is these people have to hide.
"Walker’s plans give further credence to the notion that the efforts of the GOP governors with Republican majorities in their state legislative bodies are part of a coordinated plan to enforce a right-wing agenda designed to not only destroy state, county and municipal employee unions, but to take control of local governments by replacing elected officials with appointees, both corporate and individual, of the state’s highest executive officer."
Does that paragraph get your attention? If it terrifies you, it should. I think it is time to stop being afraid to state clearly what is going on. This is more than some grassroots insurgency that came out of nowhere, more than a campaign of Tea Party crazies on the right who hate taxes, African-American presidents, immigrants living in our communities, and who managed to accidently get elected in last year's throw-the-bums-out electoral atmosphere.
It becomes more and more obvious that we are in the midst of a swift, pervasive power grab at the state level, a campaign paid for by anti-democratic corporate interests with the intention to gain control over state government and, while they're at it, municipal government as well, to get control of tax policies, the regulatory regimen, state and local budgets, how business operates and under what rules. It is also apparent that these folks mean to diminish or destroy the ability of the Democratic Party to compete against the Republican Party that now represents their interests (it's certainly not the old Repub party of my parents' generation). One party rule. Not a good thing, except for those who control that party.
So the opening paragraph comes from Rick Ungar at Forbes. Here's the whole article, and I urge you to read it. We need to know this stuff. Ungar reports that Gov Walker wants to follow in the steps of rightist Michigan governor, Rick Snyder, by granting himself power to take over municipal governments if they fail to meet certain financial management standards.
What?!?!?! In the United States of America?!!
Rachel Maddow scared me to death tonight as she outlined the full frontal assault on our democracy by way of state government brought to you by Koch brothers money, ALEC, the Heritage Foundation, and that whole family of authoritarians on the right who see their moment to assert power over our lives, our resources, our future. Her show is not up on her website yet, but I urge you to take time to watch the first half hour once it is. It is terrifying TV viewing as she lays out the extent to which an aggressive, deliberate strategy is being implemented at the level of state governments to change fundamentally the social contract, the political culture of democracy, the very way the nation functions.
All of it is connected - the union busting, voter suppression in the guise of voter ID laws, demolition of public services, including public schools, as in, free education by RIGHT for all our children, nullification or overturning of local laws by rightist governors, and more.
Something scary is going on in this country right now, and what I don't know is whether my people are up to this struggle. We are very complacent about our democracy (low voter turnouts being one manifestation of that), but we sure will miss it when it's gone. And this reminder: once it's gone, it's very hard to get it back.
If I said this, many folks would get mad at me, tell me I'm making reckless accusations. But there it was on Fox - Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald telling Fox News that the union busting measures just passed in the Wisconsin legislature and signed by Gov Walker are really about politics, about defeating Obama in 2012. Ain't got nothin' to do with the welfare of our people here, or balancing budgets.
Now let's couple this budget debate facade with one of the other things going on here - an attempt by the Republicans in the two houses to suppress the vote. These guys are prepared to pass legislation that would impose the strictest restrictions on voter rights in the nation. The proposed voter ID law would impact groups like elderly, students, and the urban poor (tend to vote Democrat). It would end same-day voter registration, an initiative that has increased voter participation.
Walker's bill is a shoot-the-wounded assault on the Democratic Party's base, which when combined with a voter ID law that's also being pushed through Wisconsin's Republican-controlled Legislature, could put the Badger State firmly in GOP hands for decades.
The proposed ID law would restrict the right to vote to people with military IDs, driver's licenses and a state-issued ID card. Passports and photo ID cards issued to college students (even those from state universities) would not be acceptable.
College students and public unions are pillars of the Democratic base. Wisconsin's ID law would suppress voter participation among students. A 2005 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute study found that 82% of 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds did not have a driver's license in the ZIP codes for neighborhoods near Marquette University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The study also showed that statewide, the majority of college-age blacks and Hispanics lacked driver's licenses.
What Fitzgerald admits to Fox News ought to wake up anyone still sleeping in this state. The Koch brothers, the Karl Rove-funded gov and Fitzgerald brothers, are using anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional means to suppress voter participation at the same time as they attempt to gut the organized power of workers via their unions. It shouldn't matter whether or not you like public sector unions or what party you belong to; what ought to matter to all of us is this attempt to buy, manipulate, and undermine our democracy, even our elections, which ought to be held sacred, by Republicans in the state house and legislature beholden to the corporate interests that fund them, that make their political careers.
Wisconsin, do not let these people steal our democracy from us!
