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Congressional Republicans



Mitch McConnell is elated(?) or does he now have the foil he needs to continue his divisive and self serving ways. As an aside : would you trust this person with your children’s future? MAERICA WERNER
Associated Press November 9, 2016

More Elated congressional Republicans pledged swift action Wednesday on President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda as they heralded an extraordinary new era of unified GOP control in Washington.
“He just earned a mandate,” House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin declared of Trump. “We are going to hit the ground running.”
Said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky: “We would like to see the country go in a different direction and intend to work with him to change the course for America.”
Republicans saw their majorities in the House and Senate reduced, but not by much, as Democrats’ hopes of retaking Senate control vanished. And though Ryan and McConnell both had well-publicized reservations about Trump, both were quick to declare that the newly elected president deserved the credit.
“Donald Trump pulled off an amazing political feat. He deserves tremendous credit for that,” said Ryan, who initially refused to endorse Trump and only last month declared he’d no longer defend him. “It helped us keep our majorities, but it also showed the country that people don’t like the direction we were going.”
First up would be repealing President Barack Obama’s health care law, something Republicans have already shown they can get through Congress with just a narrow Senate majority. What they haven’t done is unite around a plan for ensuring that the 20 million who achieved health care coverage under the landmark law don’t lose it.
Republicans also celebrated the opportunity to fill the existing Supreme Court vacancy, and potentially more to come, with “constitutional conservatives.” McConnell was being widely praised for his strategy, once seen as risky, of refusing to act on Obama’s nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last February.
And Republicans pledged to try to unwind any number of executive moves by Obama, including tougher clean air rules on power plants, looser restrictions on travel to Cuba, and tougher rules on sleep for long-haul truckers, among others — “Every single one that’s sucking the very life out of our economy,” GOP Sen. David Perdue of Georgia said in an interview.
That threatened to wipe away key areas of progress highlighted by Democrats under the Obama administration.
Some of Trump’s goals could be harder to achieve. A wall on the southern border is estimated to cost $10 billion to $20 billion, money that Congress may be unlikely to provide given that cooperation from Democrats would be necessary.
Indeed the Senate Democratic minority stood as the only legislative barrier to Trump’s goals, since 60 votes are required for most consequential moves in the Senate.
Republicans were poised to end up with 52 Senate seats after Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., conceded to Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan in their close race. That assumes the GOP wins a December runoff in Louisiana, as expected. Democrats managed to pick up only one other GOP-held Senate seat, in Illinois, a devastating outcome for a party that went into Election Day with high hopes of holding the White House and winning back Senate control.
In the House, Republicans were on track to lose a maximum of nine seats, an unexpectedly modest reduction to a wide GOP majority that now stands at 247-188, including three vacant seats.
“We kicked their tails last night,” said GOP Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, head of the Republicans’ House campaign committee.
Trump’s extraordinary win appeared to be going far to heal divisions within the GOP, as even Republicans who’d long harbored doubts about him offered warm pledges of support.
Here and there, notes of caution were sounded, as a few Republicans made clear that Congress would be asserting its constitutional prerogatives as a check and balance on the executive, following what Republicans viewed as overly expansive use of executive power by Obama.
“It’s just our constitutional duty to keep the executive branch in check,” GOP Rep. Todd Young, the newly elected Republican senator in Indiana, told reporters in Indianapolis.
Yet McConnell appeared to invite executive action by Trump, suggesting he should be exploring what kinds of “unilateral action” he could take — to undo unilateral actions by Obama.
___
Associated Press writers Brian Slodysko in Indianapolis and Matthew Daly and Andrew Taylor in Washington contributed to this report.

Gear Up For Change


The beginning of a change has begun. The recent elections have brought protests across the country but more important is the reality of a Trump Presidency. There are many things the President can change unilaterally but as many or more that cannot be altered without Congress. The real issues (so to speak) are the statements made during the election, the alt-right and Racist groups emboldened by Trump along with the potential conflicts of interests with Trump’s business interests. It must be made clear that Donald Trump has dealings with  many of the countries that he has listed as the cause of lost jobs in America. The campaign rhetoric is out there and cannot be retracted or altered to suit. The issue now is preparing  or perhaps pushing for change in the Congress. The Congress is the real cause we all need to sign on to. The long serving Congress has the sense that their positions are a calling and not a service position (no difference than hotel worker). It is unfortunate that we cannot fire the Congress without an election where the lies sound good but hide what is really happening.  Look at some of the things our Congress has done to persuade (?) us that they are open and above board: C-Span-there is nothing happening on C-span that is of consequence, the real work ids done in the halls and back offices. You may or may not remember when the issue of cameras in the Senate and House of Representatives, there was much resistance to it by Congressional leaders but eventually the cameras were put in place. With the country satisfied on that issue the Congress went underground to continue doing THEIR business, not OURS. If we as ordinary people cannot see the fallacy of this past election and the gleeful hand wringing   of  a Congress that feels they have a shill to do what they want, then we are already lost. I am stating here and now that my goal is to vote against any politician who cannot definitively tell me what they have done good or bad. Sound bites and politispeak  will not work for me and they should not work for you. Congress should!

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Election Results-Down The Road


With Donald Trump’s victory our high expectations have been lowered. We as voters have been mixed on our love or hate for the Government. That being said where we go from here is based in questions like: Can the stated goals of the President elect be accomplished?, will the neer do well Congress continue to obstruct? and who will really run the country? It is well to remember that a majority of voters who supported Trump are disenfranchised due to the actions of their elected representatives who they elected time and time again as opposed to the White House resident. These are the powers behind the “Throne” and if the President is not as strong as he purports to be then we will have at least 4 years of crap to trudge through and another 4 to 8 years of correction. It is the American way to disagree with Government but it is also the American way to be swayed by rhetoric that belies the facts of the economy and the state of the Union. We have just barely removed ourselves from the covert racism that dominated the past 100 years. It is not too soon to think about and read what is going on behind the headlines. Do not allow the media to color your opinions, the job of the media is to report (if they are doing it right) the news not dictate it. If you believe everything printed or said then you are being mislead and misinformed. My Fear is his advisors are not as wise as they should be and not as culturally in tune with America.

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The Labels


Politically speaking many people assume  labels of Conservative, progressive or liberal with several iterations in between. Too often the selection of a label to describe your views cannot be defined with a single description. Too many of us allow the talking heads to define us. If your view is more complicated than a single issue or view then you basic view is not definable with a single label. Would it not make more sense to use no label and vote using the issues that closely parallel your own? It is unfortunate that too many of us pick the most polarizing idea to follow while abdicating their conscience as a person. Being unlabeled is a freer way to look at the issues of voting. Each candidate has a theme but each theme has often underlying influences. If you are undecided as to your label, then you are possibly a better educated voter whether you realize it or not. This indecision pushes you to investigate perhaps or consider a different or altered view. The reality of politics and voting is akin to advertising: every one is working to get you to buy something! With that in mind “Caveat Emptor” applies. Move beyond your single issue and look at the down the road effects of your vote since you will not be able change your Congressional Representative or C.I.C for 2 to four years.

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Art as Lessons


There are several comic strips (cartoons) that have animals as characters and these characters act in many ways as humans do while  maintaining animal ways. The premise of animals (our pets) speaking in terms like humans is hilarious in itself. The outcomes in some situations are predictably human while maintaining the air of animal thought. However the stream of consciousness indicated in this current political climate is not as hilarious in calmer times but very telling in how difficult voting  in this election will be. There are so many outlets covering this election pro and con for each candidate as to be headache producing. Fist examine why people are following Trump: 1. “He speaks his mind”: this is the act of a bully and a child, 2.” he tells it like it is”: He doesn’t know how it is!, he is a consummate showman and egotist,3. “He will make America Great Again”: America is already great but not for the poorer people who have suffered under the long serving Congress who spin more webs than any spider while Kow Towing to their moneyed interest.  The non existent policies of Mr. trump should be a red flag, his policies are more responses to news reports on “Obamacare”, the economy and foreign affairs, all of which he knows little to nothing about. If it should happen that Trump (gag) wins, we will actually have a Pence Presidency. To be clear many of Trump’s supporters are underserved , in need of jobs and government support. The real anger is with Government  and by extension President Obama but the real government is the Congress who controls what is enacted and where funding is appropriated. The anger needs to be localized by not electing the same people to under represent them time after time. My prime example : Mitch McConnell has lied to his constituents about coal, aside from the side effects of coal production and use, the fact that large users have switched to natural gas which has grown abundant due to new (fracking) techniques of oil production . If the Turtle really was in office to help his constituents he would be pushing education and training for solar, wind and other modern potential energy sources. Our biggest issue in this election ( an issue that has always been here) is the radical fringe who have been able to come out under the banner of supporting Donald Trump while spreading their own message of hate(unfortunately Mr. Trump’s ego does not allow him to separate himself from their ideology). Many of them have not taken the time  to actually READ the U.S. Constitution. and understand what it actually means rather than interpreting sections to suit their needs (the Islamic radicals have done the same to the religion of Islam). Perhaps we should listen and talk to the animals.

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Waking up to President Trump


The possible outcome  of a Trump win is explained below. MA

Henry Blodget, Business Insider Fri, Nov 4 6:41 AM PDT

In a few days, Americans may wake up to learn that they’ve elected President Trump.
The reality of this would likely come as a shock — just as the reality of Brexit came as a shock in the UK, where some people were apparently startled to realize what they had voted for. (Recent polls also suggest that, now that they’ve realized it, they regret it).
What would the consequences of electing Donald Trump president actually be? What would happen? What would President Trump actually do?
Given that a Trump presidency is now a very real possibility, it’s worth thinking through.
Based on what we’ve heard from Trump and his campaign over the past 18 months, as well as a close reading of experts like Evan Osnos of The New Yorker — who wrote a great article on the topic — here are some of my assumptions about a theoretical Trump presidency.
The smaller stuff:
President Trump will sign executive orders “erasing” as much of Obama’s presidency as possible and tossing other bones to his supporters. These will likely include withdrawing the US from the Paris emissions accord, loosening background checks on people buying guns, restarting the Keystone Pipeline process, ordering investigations of trade practices, halting the flow of Syrian refugees, and more. (See Evan Osnos for more.)
President Trump will reinstate methods considered torture under international laws as intelligence-gathering tools. He will not call it “torture.” He will describe it as the US finally getting tough (“an eye for an eye”). Trump will likely get pushback on this from senior intelligence and military officials. If the officials refuse to follow his order, Trump will fire them and replace them with generals and officials whose primary value is loyalty to Trump. President Trump will also appoint loyalists to as many of the 4,000 appointed positions he controls as possible.
President Trump will immediately “bomb the hell out of ISIS” — somewhere. This bombing may be no different than the bombing the US has been doing for years. President Trump will tout it as a major new offensive and extol its effectiveness and toughness. He will boast about this show of strength compared with the weakness and stupidity of the Obama administration. He will come to enjoy having the power to command the world’s most powerful military.
President Trump will quickly work with Congress to “repeal Obamacare.” If Congress blocks him on this, he will attack, shame, and bully key members publicly, while cutting deals behind the scenes. If President Trump is smart, he and his GOP allies will not actually repeal Obamacare because Americans like many features of it and because they have nothing to replace it with. They will just make changes to it that begin to fix some of its problems.
President Trump will continue to use the same rhetorical style he has used throughout the campaign. Namely, he will lie, bully, shame, exaggerate, insult, and otherwise throw prior concepts of acting presidential into the dumpster. After a few months of disgust and alarm, Americans and other citizens of the world will get used to this, just as they have his campaign rhetoric.
President Trump will also maintain the relationship to the truth that he has had throughout his campaign. Namely, he will cite actual facts and truth only when they help him. When the truth is inconvenient, President Trump will lie, deny, attack and threaten truth-tellers, speak in platitudes, and change the subject. The Trump administration will likely be one of the most secretive, most dishonest, and least transparent in modern history.
President Trump will reward “terrific” people and punish “terrible” people. The common attribute of “terrific” people will be that they support President Trump. The common attribute of the “terrible” people will be that they oppose President Trump. After a bruising election, President Trump will have lots of rewards to provide and scores to settle.
President Trump will announce that he is renegotiating NAFTA and other key US trade agreements and suspend potential participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He will make minor changes to these trade deals and announce that he has replaced them with “great deals.” He will tout any job growth that follows these changes as a direct result of these deals. President Trump will also likely slap high tariffs on Chinese imports to show that he is serious about “winning” and bringing jobs back. China will retaliate. The resulting limited trade war will likely be disruptive and bad for business in both countries. President Trump will say it is working great.
President Trump will personally unveil plans for his southern border wall. He will deliver the press conference announcing it and show scale models of it. Some sections of this wall may eventually be built. American taxpayers will pay for them. Trump will boast about how the wall is responsible for job creation and reduced crime. He will also increase the size of America’s deportation force and tout the number of people it deports.
President Trump will propose $1 trillion of new spending on US infrastructure. Congress will support at least some of this. These projects will be unambiguously good for the country, even as they increase US federal debt. President Trump will also maintain Social Security and Medicare. He will pass a tax cut, of which most of the benefits will go to the wealthy. He will close the “carried interest tax loophole,” which is one of the most egregious tax loopholes in the whole tax code. With the exception of the tax cut and deficit increase, all of these moves will be good for America.
President Trump will never release his tax returns.

The bigger stuff:
President Trump will mishandle a tricky geopolitical or military situation — with grave and potentially catastrophic consequences. Three obvious candidates involve the Middle East, North Korea, and China. The most likely candidate, meanwhile, is Russia. Trump will consider his personal relationship with Putin a higher priority than stopping Russia’s territorial advances or supporting US allies. Putin already knows this and will take advantage of it. At some point, Putin will likely make a move into the rest of Ukraine or the Baltics. President Trump will either not respond, thus undermining NATO, or respond slowly or unwisely. He might also be so enraged by this personal betrayal by Putin that he might do something crazy, like nuclear saber rattling.
President Trump will try to modify the First Amendment and restrict freedom of the press. He will initially do this by rewarding supportive news organizations and reporters and savaging critical ones. If this does not stifle criticism of him or his administration, Trump will increase his harassment of critics by ordering investigations and encouraging supporters to boycott them. President Trump will call on his attorney general to threaten news organizations with criminal indictments and force them to turn over their sources. He will also do this on behalf of allies in Congress and organizations and people who support him, thus increasing support for actual changes in law.
President Trump will respond to terror attacks by barring Muslims from entering the country and increasing surveillance and profiling of Muslims in the US. If the attacks continue, President Trump will take another step, creating Muslim registration and/or camps in the US. President Trump will also respond to attacks by obliterating cities in Syria, Iraq, and other countries to punish “radical Islamic terrorists” and their families (and hundreds of thousands of other people). More broadly, President Trump’s bigoted rhetoric will likely inflame racial and religious tensions in the US, leading to more violence and protests. For many Trump supporters, making America “great” again means making America “white and Christian” again, and even if President Trump does not actively support this, he’ll do little to discourage it. (If the attack is just the usual generic US gun massacre, meanwhile, President Trump will extol the need for more guns for self-defense and tougher policing.)
President Trump will get impatient with the “checks and balances” on presidential power and try to expand the power of the presidency. If the economy stays solid and there are no major terrorist attacks or geopolitical crises, this will be difficult to do. If the economy deteriorates or there is a crisis, however, it will be easier. It is important to remember that, if elected, Trump will already have far more power and public support than famous dictators had when they came to power. (For example, see: “How Hitler went from a fringe politician to a dictator.”)
Other consequences:
The stock market will drop 10-20% (for starters). A Trump presidency will significantly increase risk and uncertainty. That unnerves investors and business decision-makers. US companies will temporarily “freeze” plans while they try to figure out what President Trump is likely to do. This will likely temporarily slow economic growth. President Trump will blame the Obama administration for this and use it to demand emergency action from Congress. Trump’s explicit attacks on many American companies — Ford, Amazon, Macy’s, Nabisco, Apple — and promises to force some of these companies to move some manufacturing back to America will also unnerve decision-makers. Almost no major CEOs have supported Trump, and many have spoken out against him. These CEOs know that Trump will take this personally.
The fiscal deficit and debt will balloon. Trump’s proposed tax cuts for the rich will not stimulate growth, just as the Bush tax cuts did not stimulate growth (because taxes on the wealthy are not actually stifling growth — what is stifling growth is the lack of middle-class spending power). The tax cut will, however, increase the deficit and accelerate the growth of federal debt. President Trump will blame this on Congress and the Obama administration.
At some point in President Trump’s first term, there will be a major recession, and the stock market will drop 30-50% from the peak. President Trump’s policies may well trigger this recession. Trade wars, for example, generally hurt economies and lead to job losses. Whatever happens, President Trump will blame it on his opponents and use it to try to expand his own power (see above). Widespread economic misery will make this easier.
Personally, I hope most of this doesn’t happen. I hope that President Trump would be the president that some of his smarter supporters expect him to be — not the mean, petty, reckless, and uninformed proto-tyrant he sounds like, but a reasonable, effective pragmatist who just enjoys entertaining crowds by saying outrageous and offensive things and otherwise acting like a boor.
But given how consistent Trump has been in his actions and pronouncements over the past 18 months, I think it’s more likely that what we’ve seen is what we would get.

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When It Comes to Baskets, We’re All Deplorable


A well stated look into the poorest folks in America who support Trump in singular ways. MA
The Opinion Pages | Contributing Opinion Writer
By J. D. VANCESEPT. 22, 2016
Credit Angie Wang
It was the awkward comment heard round the world. At a fund-raiser earlier this month, the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, divided the supporters of her Republican opponent Donald J. Trump into two even groups. One consisted of good, if alienated and dispossessed, people. But the other half goes into a “basket of deplorables,” she said. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.”
The ensuing reaction to her comments is a case study in everything wrong with our political discourse. Mr. Trump — who still hasn’t apologized for suggesting that a disproportionate share of Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals — demanded an apology. Meanwhile, many on the left came to her defense: The remark might have been politically inept, many said, but it was true.
These commentators often base their arguments on polls that paint many Republicans in an unflattering light: About one-third of conservatives believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and more than half doubt whether he was born in the United States. According to one Reuters poll, about half of Mr. Trump’s supporters say that blacks are “more violent” than whites, while approximately 40 percent see blacks as “lazier” than other races.
These views are undoubtedly deplorable, and we all have a responsibility to confront them. But if Mrs. Clinton had said that half of Mr. Trump’s supporters hold some prejudicial views and left it there, we probably wouldn’t be talking about the comment today. Her sin was to collapse millions of people — from former Klansmen like David Duke to a struggling coal miner with some unacceptable opinions — into the same group of social outcasts.
It’s difficult in the abstract to appreciate that those with morally objectionable viewpoints can still be good people. This perhaps explains why Mrs. Clinton showed considerably less charity than did Mr. Obama as a candidate in a widely praised 2008 speech on race. In one particularly personal passage, he spoke about his white grandmother — an imperfect, but fundamentally good, woman, “a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
If a pollster had called Mr. Obama’s grandmother and asked her questions about race, religion and sexuality, she almost certainly would have proffered at least one prejudicial view. The data tells us that she wouldn’t be alone. In a recent poll, about 40 percent of Democratic voters supported temporarily barring Muslims from entering the country. Large shares of black voters express some uneasiness with homosexual behavior, an opinion common among religious people of all races but undoubtedly unwelcome in cosmopolitan elite circles of the Democratic Party. The same poll that found that 40 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters viewed blacks as lazier revealed that 25 percent of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters believed the same thing. Perhaps these people should also join Mrs. Clinton’s deplorable basket.
There’s no reason to limit basket-worthiness to those with explicit prejudices. For decades, scholars have studied the ways in which implicit biases affect how we perceive other people in this multiethnic society of ours. The data consistently shows that about 90 percent of us possess some implicit prejudices — and, unsurprisingly, people typically favor their own group. Layer on top of that the many people unwilling to speak about their prejudices with a pollster, and a picture emerges of a nation where a significant majority of the country harbors some type of bias.
There are many ways to confront the people of that nation in all its complexity. We can ignore that these biases exist, and pretend that our uniquely diverse society need never address the difficult questions posed by that diversity. This is the path chosen by far too many of my fellow conservatives.
We can deem a significant chunk of our populace unrepentant bigots, which appears to be the strategy of Mrs. Clinton and much of the left.
Or we can recognize that most of us fall into another basket altogether: One where prejudice — even implicit — coexists with incredible compassion and decency. In that basket is the black preacher who may view homosexuality as a little icky even as he lovingly ministers to struggling gay members of his church. The adoptive parent of a child born in Asia, who pours her heart and soul into her child’s well-being even as she tells a pollster that she doesn’t much care about America’s experience with Japanese internment. And in that basket is a white grandmother who speaks ill of black people even as she gives her beloved African-American grandson the emotional support and love that enable him to become the president of all Americans.
We can and should recognize the bad in that basket even as we celebrate the good. We must have the courage to confront dreadful views even in the people we love the most. But that’s difficult to do when we cast large segments of our fellow citizens into a basket to be condemned and disparaged, judging them even as we ignore that many of their deplorable traits exist in us, too.
J. D. Vance is the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” and a contributing opinion writer

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The Election is Rigged After All — Against African Americans


Unfortunately the Dupublicans are in the camp of old time segregationists and racists. They have supported and Implemented voting restrictions to suppress the Non white vote . What if they spent as much time doing their jobs instead? MA

Eliza Newlin Carney

October 27, 2016

Voting rights advocates have won a string of court battles, but state election officials have found ways to restrict early voting anyway—often at the behest of GOP leaders

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

People stand outside the Supreme Court before the start of a rally during arguments in the Shelby County, Alabama, v. Holder case on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, in Washington.

 

In the face of Donald Trump’s declarations that this election is “rigged” and his requests to his backers to watch the polls in “certain areas,” voting rights advocates have labored to set the record straight that voter fraud is a myth and that “ballot security” often adds up to intimidation.

But as early voting gets under way in states around the country, the election is starting to look rigged after all—against voters of color. From Georgia to Texas and Wisconsin, election officials are asking voters for IDs where none are required, failing to process thousands of voter registrations, and limiting early voting so drastically that voters are standing in line for hours. Invariably, the voters affected are African Americans or Latinos, who tend to be more likely to cast their ballots in favor of Democrats.

It’s exactly what voting and civil rights advocates predicted three years ago, when more than a half-dozen states mostly controlled by Republicans enacted a slew of sweeping new voter ID and other limits on voting. GOP legislatures around the country sprang into action within days of the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder to toss out key Voting Rights Act protections.

At the time, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented that weakening the Voting Rights Act was “like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” Now it’s raining all over African American voters, despite a string of recent voting rights court victories.

Having convinced several lower courts to nullify strict state voting curbs as discriminatory, voting rights advocates have discovered that winning lawsuits is not enough. In many states, election officials have either directly flouted orders handed down by the court, or have found other ways to sabotage access to the polls—often at the direction of Republican Party leaders.

In Texas, a federal appeals court in July explicitly blocked the state from enforcing its voter ID requirement, one of the most stringent in the nation. (The state had approved only a driver’s license or a gun license for voting.) A federal court agreement specified that voters without IDs may still cast ballots if they sign a declaration and show an alternate ID, such as a utility bill.

But this week, civil rights advocates reported hundreds of complaints from voters turned away from the polls for lack of an ID, and provided documentation of polling places that display signs and flyers incorrectly stating that voters must have IDs. Part of the problem is the nation’s notoriously ill-trained army of mostly volunteer poll workers. But it probably doesn’t help that some Texas GOP officials exhorted election workers in at least one email “to make sure OUR VOTER ID LAW IS FOLLOWED.”

“Across Texas we are seeing local election officials undermine the weight of the Fifth Circuit’s ruling striking down the state’s photo ID law as discriminatory,” said Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, in a statement. “Instead of changing the rules, some counties across Texas continue to impose the strict photo ID law and are posting signs that suggest to voters that the photo ID law remains in effect. This is simply unacceptable.”

In North Carolina, another July federal appeals court ruling struck key provisions of a far-reaching state law that had restricted early voting, limited registration, and imposed new ID rules. But the North Carolina GOP’s executive director nonetheless encouraged Republican election officials to reduce early voting hours, limit polling sites and close the polls on Sunday.

Now that early voting has begun in North Carolina, the impact on voters is measurable.

Now that early voting has begun in North Carolina, the impact on voters is measurable. A half-dozen counties have cut early voting, prompting a 50 percent decline in early balloting compared to the 2012 election, according to Liz Kennedy, director of democracy and government reform at the Center for American Progress, which has put out a series of state-by-state issue briefs on preventing problems at the polls.

In Guilford, a county of 517,600 people where 42 percent of the residents are nonwhite, election officials cut early voting sites from 16 in 2012 to one this year, according to Michael P. McDonald, a voting expert at the University of Florida. The upshot is an 85 percent decrease in the number of in-person Guilford County voters on the first Thursday and Friday of early voting this year, compared with the same window in 2012.

In Georgia, a recent Washington Post report pointed to several particularly egregious voter suppression efforts. Election officials in Georgia have failed to process as many as 100,000 voter registration applications. As in North Carolina, one of the state’s largest counties made early voting available only at a single polling place, forcing voters to wait up to three hours to cast ballots. And in Macon-Bibb County, local officials moved a polling place in a largely African American region from a gymnasium that was under renovation to the sheriff’s office.

“When we complained, we were told if people weren’t criminals, they shouldn’t have a problem voting inside of a police station,” Nse Ufot, executive director of the New Georgia Project, a progressive group, told the Post. After activists objected, the polling site was moved to a church.

Led by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, voting rights advocates have set up an election protection hotline and deployed volunteers to monitor voting irregularities around the country, as they do every year. But many new voting laws are still being fought out in court, potentially confusing election officials and voters alike. And the number of polling place watchdogs deployed by the Justice Department will be much smaller this year. That’s because the Shelby ruling concluded that states with a history of discrimination no longer need special federal oversight. As this year’s early voting demonstrates, that finding was woefully premature

Lost Con-troll


Running Wild in the streets with wild abandon are the Trump supporters who have the likes of Former Mayor Giuliani , Gov. Christie and the unflapped Benny Carson as point men. Aside from the obvious lies this campaign has all of the makings of a bad reality show. The establishment has spawned a genii from the bottle and can not put him back in. Now in the graceless form that they have used so many times before, they have disavowed him. The reality is that he does not care and the Dupes will get the worst of it. Voters are angry and now they should focus on the real problems their long time elected officials whose lies they believed for so long. Da Turnip has given them a voice through him and they love it. It is of no importance that they are being duped but he just speaks gutter to them with no substance to back it up and they love it. These are not conservatives, liberals or any of the other “mainstream labels” , they are just angry voters who fail to (it appears) to get a full grip on the workings of government and the effects of those workings on everyday life. The things they want are expensive and  no one wants to pay for them. There is no free ride anywhere on anything. Everything has a cost of some sort. The cost of a Trump Presidency is possibly war with the world, anarchy in some states and a breakdown of the political process. Reality is not a political platform but it is the theme of a number of TV shows. It is unfortunate  that too many of us fail to remember  the lessons of previous wars since they were not fought here (exception: the War between the States). This election has shown the worst of us and the best of us yet we have a task to handle and that is to vote. The choice is simple: vote or  don’t vote, the best choice is to vote no matter what. There are 3 parties: Scamocrats, Dupublican and Independent (Green)- Vote for one. Lastly the 2 party system  many of us have known (forever it seems) is not working anymore, our focus should be independence from party rhetoric and remember the real party  tenets (whatever they happen to at the present time). The primary goal of all voters is to elect someone they like and trust however we have not seen those two attributes  together in a long time. What we have had is a Black President who a lot of these same Trump supporters did not vote for and hate because he’s Black. It’s remarkable that this manifestation of hatred has surfaced with such vehemence and it is spread over the Congress, the military and in some foreign countries. Folks fail to realize that the tone of the country sends a message to other countries that Americans and their government are in disarray. Mr. Trump doesn’t care at all about perception unless it is about him. It is time all Americans become woke as to the real issues facing all of us collectively. If you are tired of being lied to during and after elections then you need to read more about what is really going on in this country and the Governments-local, state and federal. Consider this, because a “Plotician ” (new word) looks like you does not mean that he is going to be honest  and truthful with you. It has been said that a “con artist will slap you on the back with one hand and pick your pocket with the other”. So with that statement , wouldn’t it be smart to pay attention or better read up on the folks who are seeking office for yourself and not rely on news reports which could be erroneous or incomplete. Think about this, would you trust this candidate with your wallet? Remember there is no one (1) single issue in any election and if you allow yourself to be stuck on one issue you will miss the issues that will cause us the most harm sooner rather than later.

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Trump didn’t create the “rigged election” rhetoric. Republicans did.


Being smart in voting begins with reading and understanding what the respective parties do to get your vote, including legislating against you for their purposes. MA

Trump is only amplifying what Republicans have been saying for years.

Updated by German Lopez @germanrlopez german.lopez@vox.com Oct 17, 2016, 4:30p

 

Donald Trump is very publicly freaking out about election fraud. He has tweeted multiple times about it, complaining that the election will be rigged against him — conveniently, as Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls continues to grow.

It’s really no mystery where all this bluster — with no evidence of actual voter fraud to back it up — came from: the Republican Party.

Over the past few years, Republicans in many states took an opportunity — enabled by a 2013 Supreme Court ruling — to pass a series of new restrictions on voting. Critics said the restrictions disproportionately hurt minority voters. But Republican backers, at least in public, have pointed to a single issue to defend the measures: voter fraud.

A previous report by the US Department of Justice captured the sentiment among many Republicans: Rep. Sue Burmeister, a lead sponsor of Georgia’s voter restriction law, told the Justice Department that “if there are fewer black voters because of this bill, it will only be because there is less opportunity for fraud. [Burmeister] said that when black voters in her black precincts are not paid to vote, they do not go to the polls.” Other Republicans, such as North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory and Iowa Rep. Steve King, have similarly warned about the dangers of voter fraud.

Trump isn’t even the first Republican presidential candidate to raise concerns about voter fraud. Back in 2008, many Republicans, with the support of conservative media outlets like Fox News, pushed concerns that ACORN — a community organization that focused in part on registering African-American voters — was engaging in mass-scale election fraud. At the time, Republican nominee John McCain warned that ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”

Touting these concerns, 14 states have passed new voting restrictions — from strict photo ID requirements to limits on early voting — in time for the 2016 election: Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Other states passed restrictions, but they’re currently tied up in court battles.

Trump himself has referenced voter ID laws when pushing his claims that the election is rigged. He told Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly, “I’m looking at all of these [court] decisions coming on down from the standpoint of identification, voter ID. And I’m saying, ‘What do you mean, you don’t have to have voter ID to now go in and vote?’ And it’s a little bit scary. … People are going to walk in, they are going to vote 10 times maybe.”

So there is a long history here. As unusual as Trump is in many ways, the idea of large-scale voter fraud is something that Republicans were perpetuating before Trump was their nominee for president.

There’s just one problem: As much as Republicans and now Trump have freaked out about voter fraud, the evidence suggests it’s extremely rare — and it’s never swung a presidential election.

Voter fraud is nearly nonexistent

Republicans’ voting restrictions tend to require a photo ID to vote — and what kind of photo ID is eligible can be strictly defined to not allow, for example, a school ID. Some laws also eliminate some or all early voting days. And they might limit when someone can register to vote, particularly so they can’t register and vote on the same day.

These restrictions can significantly hinder some people’s ability to vote. Fewer early voting days and narrower windows to register to vote limit when a voter, especially someone with a busy work or family schedule, can sign up to vote and cast a ballot. And for some, an eligible photo ID may be too costly, or they might not have the time or means to make a trip to a DMV to get the only form of ID that’s allowed.

The justification for all of this, supposedly, is to limit voter fraud.

But the type of voter fraud these initiatives target is nonexistent to extremely rare. Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt has tracked credible allegations of in-person voter fraud for years. He found 35 total credible allegations between 2000 and 2014, when more than 800 million ballots were cast in national general elections and hundreds of millions more were cast in primary, municipal, special, and other elections.

There are other kinds of voter fraud, such as vote buying, insider ballot box stuffing, double voting, and voting by people who turn out to be ineligible. All of these are also extremely rare, and there’s no evidence they have swung national elections, according to experts (and even Breitbart, a pro-Trump outlet).

But the focus is mainly on in-person voter fraud. By requiring a photo ID and limiting voting times, Republican lawmakers claim they want to stop fraudulent voters before they can even cast their ballots.

Trump has taken it a step further, arguing that beyond new laws, he wants his supporters to monitor elections for suspicious activity. His website, for example, provides a form to sign up to become an “election observer” to help “Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election!”

This is all part of the same message: If Republicans and their supporters really believe that a lot of people who aren’t eligible to vote are nonetheless voting on Election Day, why wouldn’t they try to check out polling booths to make sure nothing bad is going on?

The voter fraud myth is dangerous — especially for minority voters

Republicans have long been playing with fire with this rhetoric. Claims of widespread voter fraud challenge the legitimacy of American democracy. Healthy democracies rely on people trusting the results of an election. But if people don’t feel that their voices are being heard or that they’re being treated fairly, they’re much more likely to try to take matters into their own hands — by intimidating other voters, inciting violence, or worse.

But there’s another potential consequences: New voting restrictions — and so-called “election monitors” — may target minority voters.

One widely cited 2006 study by the Brennan Center found voter ID laws, for instance, disproportionately impacted eligible black voters: 25 percent of black voting-age citizens did not have a government-issued photo ID, compared with 8 percent of white voting-age citizens. And a study for the Black Youth Project, which analyzed 2012 voting data for people ages 18 to 29, found 72.9 percent of young black voters and 60.8 percent of young Hispanic voters were asked for IDs to vote, compared with 50.8 percent of young white voters.

For civil rights groups, the restrictions hark back to the days of poll taxes, literacy tests, and other rules that were imposed to block minorities from voting until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 effectively banned such laws. Like modern voting restrictions, the old laws didn’t appear to racially discriminate at face value — but due to selective enforcement and socioeconomic disparities, they disproportionately kept out black voters.

Trump’s call for “election observers” may produce the same kind of disparities. For example, here is how one Trump supporter explained his Election Day plans to the Boston Globe:

“I’ll look for … well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,” he said. “I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”

In other words, Trump voters expect that the fraudulent voters will be nonwhite. So they’ll target nonwhite voters to make sure they don’t break the law.

Just like voting restrictions, then, selective enforcement and “monitoring” could put extra hurdles mostly on minority voters.

This essentially puts the lie to voter restrictions and Trump’s claims. The real concern does not seem to be voter fraud, but rather that minority voters may swing elections in Democrats’ favor.

Some Republicans have admitted to this. In 2012, ousted Florida Republican Party Chair Jim Greer told MSNBC that concerns about voter fraud are just a “marketing tool” to justify the suppression of minority voters. “Never one time did we have any discussions where voter fraud was a real issue,” Greer claimed. “It’s simply been created as a marketing tool here in Florida for the right wing that is running state government now to convince voters that what they’re doing here is right.”

For Trump, though, there may be another reason for fostering fears about voter fraud: It gives him an easy explanation for justifying his loss in November. Trump has never taken defeat well, based on everything we know about his public persona. Claiming that the election is rigged gives him an easy out: “I didn’t really lose. The whole thing was just skewed!”

Whatever the reason, Trump’s claims of a “rigged election” are merely latching onto the myth that Republicans have built up to pass new voting restrictions — a natural extension of the rhetoric Republicans have fanned for years. So if that rhetoric leads to trouble, it can’t be pinned solely on Trump.

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