(cc photo: Michael Fleshman)
This week on CounterSpin: In a new wrinkle, Iowa Republicans, pushing a strict voter ID law that the ACLU says could disenfranchise 11 percent of the state’s eligible voters, admit that the claim that such laws are needed to prevent voter fraud is bogus. “It is true that there isn’t widespread voter fraud,” state Rep. Ken Rizer told the New York Times. “But there is a perception that the system can be cheated. That’s one of the reasons for doing this.” That perception, of course, having been cooked up by Republicans themselves.
One would hope that such transparent, cynical maneuvers would suffice to wake media up to their own role in the deception, of course—but more broadly, to shift coverage from seeing fights over voting rights as partisan bickering to recognizing an attack on democracy for what it is. Most if not all journalists would tell you elections are a big story, one of the biggest. But that rings painfully hollow if they aren’t interested in who gets to take part.
Ari Berman reports on voting rights as a senior contributing writer at The Nation and a fellow at the Nation Institute. He’s also author of, most recently, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.
Transcript: It Had Everything to Do With Trying to Decrease Black Voter Turnout
And we take a look back at recent press, including assaults on journalists, looking on the bright side of loss of health insurance, and overdue Honduras admissions.
The reason elections are not secure in this country is because both sides of the duopoly benefit from insecure elections. It is as simple as that.
Let’s see if you post this one.
No, politics is not the root cause of a selfish society,
for democracy is the organized will of a selfish society.
In short, democracy is an intelligence dictatorship.
Democracy is the 51% most intelligent and wealthy always voting to enslave by poverty the uneducated lower-half of society. Which causes the lower-half to refuse to vote for their next set of dictators. Which causes the 26% most wealth to be the voting majority and force the 74% of society to endure slavery.
So, the effect of voter suppression is to slightly increase the wealth of the 26% most wealthy.
And so, is FAIR.org silent on this issue because of ignorance? But then, ignorance about what is moral and just by the educated upper-half of society, is this not in direct proportion to just how selfish you are?
As the 51% most wealthy control both industry and government, as they own all the land, wealth and political power, what would happen if only the uneducated lower-half of society was allowed to vote or hold public office?
So, let us try it for 4 years and see what happens.
If society is not greed driven and selfish, then why does it allow the 51% most wealthy to own all the land, wealth and political power?
Contrary to what the otherwise extremely well-informed Mr. Berman said, redistricting in California is performed not by the majority Democrats, but by a nonpartisan commission established by the voters in 2008. It seems to be working pretty well, and the districts have lost their serpentine shapes, for the most part.
In the richest Empire the world has ever known, 23% of children are deliberately kept hungry, for with all that wealth how could it be anything but deliberate hunger?
Likewise, the laboring-class is deliberately kept impoverished, the lower-half of society deliberately kept so poor that it has not the wealth to hire the politicians needed to gain liberty.
So, in your wonderful California where the lower-half has suffered such systemic poverty since 1776, that they have refused to vote for their next set of dictators since 1776, your wonderful California has deliberately allowed the 26% most wealthy to be the voting majority, deliberately allowed the 74% least wealthy to be enslaved by the 26% most greedy and filthy rich wealthy.