Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Texas voter ID law meant to keep women from voting for Wendy Davis, almost prevents Wendy Davis from voting as well.
Texas voter ID law meant to keep women from voting for Wendy Davis, almost prevents Wendy Davis from voting as well.
Courtesy of Kera News: Add gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis to the growing list of women who are having problems voting because of Texas' new photo ID law.
Davis, a Democratic state senator, was voting early in Fort Worth on Monday when poll workers made her sign an affidavit to verify her identity.
Why?
Her photo ID -- a driver's license -- included her maiden name, Wendy Russell Davis. But voter registration records listed her as Wendy Davis. Davis used the incident as an opportunity to tell the media who had gathered that women who have had name changes may be discouraged about voting. Election Day is Nov. 5.
A new law being enforced for the first time requires a voter show a valid photo ID that includes the voter’s name exactly as it appears on the elections department’s registration list. A 2011 state legislative decision requires Texans to show valid photo IDs at the polls for the first time. KERA reported on the matter last week.
Davis was only asked to initial a box on an official election document at the polling place.
“My voter registration card did not exactly match the driver’s license,” Davis said Monday after casting her ballot. “My driver’s license has my maiden name on it. My voter registration certificate does not. I was required to sign an affidavit demonstrating I am the person who is on the voter registration card.”
But Davis is concerned that women who’ve married or divorced and have changed their last names will have to go home and bring back additional documentation, such as marriage or divorce certificates.
Davis said: "That’s my greatest concern -- that women will show up to vote [and] they’ll be turned away because they don’t have that documentation and that women will be disenfranchised as a consequence of the interpretation of the voter ID law as it’s been applied.”
I think that it is awesome Wendy Davis is speaking out against the voter ID law implemented solely in fear of her campaign for governor.
This had GOT to be helping Davis. I mean after all when was the last time that a political party changed election law simply to stop a challenger that they fear they could not defeat in a fair fight?
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Jon Stewart does not seem to have confidence in Congress's ability to help with the Obamacare website problems. Gee, I wonder why?
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| Click image to start video. |
I would not let either of these idiots use pointy scissors much less help craft legislation in Washington.
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The author of "Bush's Brain" explains Sarah Palin to the ignorant masses. He essentially does my job for me, and does it quite well.
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| Sarah Palin with her "Notice me, listen to me, give me money" fake breastesess. |
Sarah is selling Sarah. The former vice presidential candidate and half-term governor of Alaska is a commodity of one and a marketing machine. She has created a new politics of profit.
Palin's reanimation on the tea party stage probably means no more than the other intentions she has floated but never executed. She spent almost a year of the last presidential election cycle teasing the far right that she was going to run for president. She never did, but lots of network TV interviews and speculative articles drove up her name recognition and brand identification.
And she's not running again.
Palin is re-running the same show in her home state of Alaska by hinting that she is going to be a candidate for the U.S. Senate. She will not run though. There is too much risk of failure. She's not the near-unknown who was elected governor of Alaska and then quit 2½ years into the job. She has a profile, and she intends to use it to make money, which is one commitment she knows how to keep. Running and losing is always bad for business.
Palin is a product. Not a candidate.
Politically, Sarah Palin is an opposite gender version of Donald Trump. She makes grandiloquent statements about candidacies and a future that she knows will never transpire. Trump and Palin lack the courage to run for president but have profitably monetized the speculation about a candidacy. Trump cannot abide the notion of losing, which he knows is inevitable, and he fears what that might do to his image and revenue stream. Palin is self-aware enough to realize that she has neither the intellect nor popular support outside the increasingly unpopular tea party.
So why not make a buck?
Precisely!
Okay well this will in no way comes as new information to any of you who have spent even a minimum amount of time on this blog. However to others it may come as a revelation. And to certain Palin supporters (I think there a half dozen or so left.) it will be tantamount to blasphemy.
P.S. There is more Palin bashing goodness in the article over at the CNN link.
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Joe Miller, the "Barely Bearded One," is asking the FEC for permission use campaign funds to pay legal costs that he owes to the Alaska Dispatch.
Federal elections regulators are set to decide whether to adopt a draft advisory opinion that would allow Joe Miller to use campaign funds to pay a legal judgment in a case stemming from his unsuccessful 2010 U.S. Senate run in Alaska.
During Thursday's meeting the Federal Election Commission could also opt to make changes to the opinion. Public comment is being accepted in the lead-up to the meeting.
State court Judge Stephanie Joannides in May ordered Miller to pay more than $85,000 in legal costs to the Alaska Dispatch, which was among the media organizations that sued during the 2010 campaign to obtain records from Miller's personnel file from his time with the Fairbanks North Star Borough.
Joannides found Miller's conduct in the case caused unnecessary delays and costs for the Dispatch and Fairbanks North Star Borough. She also found there were significant matters at stake in the case, with the records emerging near the end of the 2010 campaign. Miller lost the race to incumbent Lisa Murkowski, who mounted a write-in campaign after losing the GOP primary to Miller.
Miller was a part-time borough attorney for seven years. He was disciplined in 2008 for using work computers for political purposes, information revealed in his personnel file.
He is appealing Joannides' ruling and through an attorney, asked the FEC whether campaign funds could be used as a cash deposit that would be held while Miller appeals the judgment against him. Miller also asked if he could use campaign funds to pay the judgment if his appeal fails, a request the opinion suggests should be granted.
Can you believe this guy?
Miller did everything he could to stop the Alaska Dispatch from revealing to the Alaska citizens what was in Miller's employee file from his days working at the North Star Bureau. And his actions were indefensible in the eyes of Judge Joannides:
“Miller’s conduct, which included taking inconsistent positions, failing to disclose information during discovery, and his procedural filing, which the record did not support, all caused unnecessary delay and costs for both Alaska Dispatch” and the Fairbanks North Star Borough, the judge wrote in her ruling.
The court costs for the Alaska Dispatch were $112,375. Miller was ordered to pay 75% of that, $85,000. (At the time of the ruling Miller had almost half a million dollars in his campaign war chest.)
Of course in the end Miller failed in his bid to block access to those records and we all got to learn that he broke into the computers of his fellow employees and used them to vote in his own straw poll in an attempt, along with then Governor Sarah Palin, to oust party chairman Randy Reuderich.
Ultimately that damaged his character enough to allow Lisa Murkowski to beat him in the general with a write in campaign.
And remember, this guy is STILL trying to run for office in Alaska, and is currently mounting a campaign for the GOP nomination to run against Mark Begich for his Senate seat.
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Nevada State Assemblyman says he would bring back slavery if his constituents wanted him to. There's some leadership for you.
KTVN Channel 2 - Reno Tahoe News Weather, Video - Courtesy of Raw Story:
A Republican Nevada state assemblyman said that he would vote for legislation in favor of slavery if his constituents wanted him to. According to the Las Vegas Sun, Jim Wheeler of Gardnerville, NV was speaking to the Storey County Republican Party when he made the remarks last August, although they are only now coming to light.
“If that’s what they wanted, I’d have to hold my nose, I’d have to bite my tongue and they’d probably have to hold a gun to my head, but yeah, if that’s what the citizens of the, if that’s what the constituency wants that elected me, that’s what they elected me for,” he said. “That’s what a republic is about.”
Now, Wheeler said to the Sun, “liberal operatives” are spreading the video in an effort to smear him.
Well I do believe I am one of those "liberal operatives" so you know what that means. (It means I play the video of him saying the words so that all of you can make an informed decision on whether he is being portrayed honestly or not. Though I don't think that is what HE thinks we do.)
You know I believe I understand what Assemblyman Wheeler was trying to say (Scary, right?), however I think he misses an important part of his job.
It is not the job of politicians to simply jump through whatever flaming hoop their constructions are holding up at any given time, it is also to help the people who voted them into office in understanding that flaming hoops are dangerous and should not be misused.
In other words people do not always know what is in their best interests because they are living their lives and may not have had to time to educate themselves on every single issue up before the Assembly.
And it is not as if his constituents are completely homogenous, therefore it would be impossible to vote in a way to satisfy every single one of them (Especially, let's say, if any of them were African American. For instance.) so his argument is fairly ridiculous.
Besides that, slavery it bad, and if Assemblyman Wheeler cannot adequately explain THAT perhaps he does not belong in politics.
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Robert Reich points out that the health care plan that Republicans are so vehemently against today, was once proposed by one of their own, Richard Nixon.
In February 1974, Republican President Richard Nixon proposed, in essence, today's Affordable Care Act. Under Nixon's plan all but the smallest employers would provide insurance to their workers or pay a penalty, an expanded Medicaid-type program would insure the poor, and subsidies would be provided to low-income individuals and small employers. Sound familiar?
Private insurers were delighted with the Nixon plan but Democrats preferred a system based on Social Security and Medicare, and the two sides failed to agree.
Thirty years later a Republican governor, Mitt Romney, made Nixon's plan the law in Massachusetts. Private insurers couldn't have been happier although many Democrats in the state had hoped for a public system.
When today's Republicans rage against the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, it's useful to recall this was their idea as well.
In 1989, Stuart M. Butler of the conservative Heritage Foundation came up with a plan that would "mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance."
Insurance companies loved Butler's plan so much it found its way into several bills introduced by Republican lawmakers in 1993. Among the supporters were senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa (who now oppose the mandate under the Affordable Care Act). Newt Gingrich, who became Speaker of the House in 1995, was also a big proponent.
Romney's heathcare plan in Massachusetts included the same mandate to purchase private insurance. "We got the idea of an individual mandate from [Newt Gingrich], and [Newt] got it from the Heritage Foundation," said Romney, who thought the mandate "essential for bringing the health care costs down for everyone and getting everyone the health insurance they need."
So why are today's Republicans so upset with an Act they designed and their patrons adore? Because it's the signature achievement of the Obama administration.
There's a deep irony to all this. Had Democrats stuck to the original Democratic vision and built comprehensive health insurance on Social Security and Medicare, it would have been cheaper, simpler, and more widely accepted by the public. And Republicans would be hollering anyway.
I think that this is the point where a lot of liberals are yelling at their computer screens and asking why didn't we just go with single payer in the first place if the Republicans were going to freak out anyway?
However, considering how aggressively the Right Wing is working to stop Obamacare now, just imagine how much worse it would have been if the Dems had tried to shove universal health care down their throats. And yes, it COULD be worse.
I think the interesting thing is that the President attempted to offer the Republicans numerous reasons why they should embrace this health care law, essentially including almost all of the compromises that they had demanded in the past, and yet they STILL could not bring themselves to support it.
Sort of deflates that whole, "If only the President had been willing to compromise with us" argument doesn't it?
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