Discriminations

Golly, big cities?
Out of demographic/stereotype curiosity,
what percent of suspected ACORN "activists", and "newly registered" voters are negative net-tax assessed Negroes?
How about-
What percent are allegedly female?
Illegal immigrants?

.................CaptDMO, American Angry White Male (tm)

I live in Ohio, I believe I also live in the most populated county in Ohio. Every election there seems to be more and more lax security over voter fraud- not to mention the whole fact that we have had many different voting machines, faulty counting, people stepping down from the county board of elections due to problems.
Our home has repeatedly, year after year been getting phone info for someone who does not live here- we have repeatedly sent it back to the board and this year even called them. They are now investigating the possibility of fraud using our address.
I am sick and tired of the state of Ohio *not* being able to get a hold of this and seemingly not showing much concern about doing so. With Ohio being such an "important state" in the elections, I am getting so disgusted with the whole thing and wish they would get it right.

It's funny how things change over the course of four years.

Remember this post about Ohio, John?

http://www.discriminations.us/2004/11/moot_court.html

So when the polls favor the REPUBLICAN candidate in a state, alleged voter suppression is "fine", but when the polls favor a DEMOCRATIC candidate we have to stop and check Grandma's pulse because there's something "wrong".

Ooooh boy this is going to be a fun election, and you can SURE count on me to dredge up EVERY attempt at voter disenfrachisement and dirty trick the GOP has used primarily against minority voters the past two election to counter this ACORN/Voter Fraud Nonsense.

--Cobra

Cobra, I don't care for either candidate, but I do have a question for you:

If Obama wins, will you stop the Mau-Mauing and whining? Or will you just demand more?

Will you dump the thug nickname? Or will you continue to disgrace yourself with that nonsense?

Will you ever consider a white candidate for office on merit alone?

Will you get off the "racism is everything" bandwagon, or will you keep riding it in the hope of getting more swag?

In other words, is there any limit to your lust for money and power or do you just plan to up the ante?

Cobra, people who are not eligible to vote need to have their votes suppressed. This means people who already voted in their own name and now are going to cast a second or third vote in someone else's. Heck yes, we need to suppress those. It's not nonsense, not at all.

When John Ford of Memphis had to step down from his spot in the state senate, his sister Ophelia won the special election to replace him by a gnat's whisker. The Republican challenger asked for a recount, focusing on a particular precinct where the R. party in Shelby County smelled a rat. The election commission swore that there were no irregularities, absolutely would not have it that there could have been any, but when they were forced to go in and investigate they found dead people's votes, with their signatures in the election officials' handwriting, people's votes who didn't live in the district and shouldn't have voted in that race, and the whole thing signed off by an official who wasn't in Memphis that day - she was in New York and her sister forged her name so she could get the money. (Imagine her surprise when the charges came down. "What'd I do?") When the senate didn't want to seat Ophelia because of the election's invalidity, it was the mean ol' nasty Republican party's fault for wanting to keep Ophelia down.

We just have to decide what we want. Do we want the rule of law, or do we want to put all that aside and just let the Democrats get their way all the time?

Dredged up, rehashed content? Yep, it must be Cobra!

Cobra?? Huh? I don't get this. Voter fraud from any side of the aisle is unacceptable, period. And it is really, really damaging to a civil rights organization such as Acorn, because they will only attract fringe elements to their cause if they engage in or endorse unprincipled activity. Civil rights organizations have a higher calling to be principled - and refrain from endorsing fraud and stick the their knitting in promote equal opportunities for all. And indeed ACORN has not engaged in alleged criminal activities - they have actually have done so - ACORN volunteers have plead guilty (so much for alleged to voter fraud in St Louis in 2004), and there will be prosecutions now given the flood of claims. And it is not a FOX news issue, or an issue borne from some ism - ACORN is acting in an unprincipled and frankly in some cases illegal way. CNN - an organization that tilts fairly to the left - blew this scandal open and has plenty of material. No one should support this activity - Republican or Democrat. Period. And no one should support any similar activities by Republicans either. Period.

Willowglen writes:

>>>"CNN - an organization that tilts fairly to the left - blew this scandal open and has plenty of material."

Any organization that features Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck in prominent host spots can't be as "left-tilting" as you claim it to be.

Willowglen writes:

>>>"And no one should support any similar activities by Republicans either. Period."

Again, where have you been, my brother? We've been down this road before on Discriminations:

First, way back Here:
http://www.discriminations.us/2004/08/more_than_1_million_blacks_dis.html#comments

Then here:
http://www.discriminations.us/2004/10/dems_make_knowingly_false_char.html

And I've also brought up all kinds of subjects like Tim Griffin and Karl Rove using "vote caging" to disenfranchise primarily black voters.

And keeping with my word, the GOP is at it again in 2008:

>>>"In Michigan, the original story by Eartha Melzer of the Michigan Messenger contained this passage:

“The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

‘We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,’ party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week...”

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

http://www.clcblog.org/blog_item-258.html

>>>"As for Ohio, the initial story there suggested that an Ohio GOP official would not rule out the possibility that the party would challenge voters at the polls stating. Quoting the Franklin County GOP chairman, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Priesse “didn't rule out challenges before Nov. 4.”

The latest story this week on possible efforts to challenge foreclosed voters came from the NY Times, and contained this passage: “Asked whether his party planned to use foreclosure information to compile challenge lists, Robert Bennett, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, said the party did not discuss its election strategies in public.”"

http://www.clcblog.org/blog_item-258.html

Now where's Lou Dobbs on this one? Where's the Fox News Alert?

I will give credit to CBS News for this report on Voter Purging:

>>>"The numbers of purges that occurred are hard to uncover and often are not known until after an election. But, the report cites several controversial purges this year so far.

For example, in Muscogee County in Georgia, the report says, a county official purged 700 people from voter lists for criminal convictions. Many of the people who received letters informing them of the purge, however, had never even received a parking ticket. In Mississippi, a local election official recently discovered that another official had wrongly purged 10,000 voters “from her home computer.”

The reasons for wrongly purging eligible voters ranges from clerical errors to mistakes in matching names, addresses and criminal histories. Waldman says there’s a “huge potential for partisan mischief" and manipulation.

Another study, by the group U.S. PIRG, released last week, also looked at the issue of voter purging and discovered that 19 states are ignoring a federal law banning systematic purges within 90 days of a federal election. The 19 states include battleground states of Colorado, Ohio and Nevada."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/30/eveningnews/main4490682.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_4490682

Do you see my point, Willowglen?

--Cobra

So on one hand we have the left engaging in actual voter registration fraud. And on the other hand we have the left using accusations of voter intimidation to motivate their base. Only those living in fantasy land believe this is hypcritical to anyone other than leftists.

Cobra - I see your point.

But there is such a cultural gap between your beliefs - where partisan sentiments rule - and those of my generation and background.

The idea is be principled no matter what side of the aisle you are on - and what ACORN is doing is very, very troubling. And their efforts won't help black disenfranchisement, but ultimately harm it, because the verification techniques that will invariably be used in response will in fact exclude voters. You of course understand that point, right? Those votes in Ohio right now - 100,000 of them or so - many of which have an odor and stank to them - will be challenged and many disqualified - the 6th Circuit's opinion will hold because liberal or not Justice Stevens is not touching this one with a 10 foot pole. And some legitimate voters will be swept up in that - again, my point.

I can't imagine Dr. Martin Luther King (who likely would viewed by most of the left as not sufficiently radical or devoted to the cause today)countenancing ACORN's conduct - and most of us who grew up admiring men like Dr. King - whatever his flaws - believed in his dedication to acting in a principled way. I just don't see it in today's civil rights organizations - whether it be ACORN, BAMN, or the intolerant legions in our universities.

And to the point, phony voter enrollment isn't black enfranchisement - its a fraud and undercuts the dignity of those who fought so hard and for so long for blacks to be able to vote and more significantly - an element that makes this country great - to be able truly be citizens.

And as to the cultural point. You continually really hit upon the paradox of race relations. And so, to his credit, does Obama, although like you he is afraid to close the deal. One would think that after the civil rights laws, after numerous race preference programs, numerous anti-poverty programs, and the billions spent (reparations already, one might say), the dysfunctions is the lower and lower middle black communities would have significantly decreased. But they have not - in many ways - incarceration, education, out of wedlock births - they have grown to monstrous proportions - it is a national tragedy. And as Obama adroitly notes in his first book, these are all occurring in communities completely dominated by blacks - where they have all of the political power, run all of the institutions, and where no "cigar chomping crackers" (his words) are within miles of any of these places. The left has convinced us that we can't talk about these things because it makes minority folks feel worse about themselves (Obama again relates this point in an honest way) - and that is a bad thing - apparently - and instead the much needed national discourse on changing the culture is left to a few voices like Bill Cosby and Juan Williams, who leftists privately seethe at because they can only Uncle Tom these kind of public figures so much and even then they are too respected for frontal assaults. And that same fear produces lots of discussions among the left "demonizing" the right, and capitalists, and the system and wealth disparity, well, because, it deflects the painful discussions that always needs to be had. This doesn't mean that the right isn't deserving of criticism - lots of their programs and ideas surely are susceptible to criticism - but when doing so puts a hard shellacked veneer over discussing and dealing with a cultural problem that is an enormous national tragedy.

Willowglen, you're addressing two different subjects, so let's keep on the voting issue first.

Willowglen writes:

>>>"But there is such a cultural gap between your beliefs - where partisan sentiments rule - and those of my generation and background.

The idea is be principled no matter what side of the aisle you are on - and what ACORN is doing is very, very troubling. And their efforts won't help black disenfranchisement, but ultimately harm it, because the verification techniques that will invariably be used in response will in fact exclude voters. You of course understand that point, right? Those votes in Ohio right now - 100,000 of them or so - many of which have an odor and stank to them - will be challenged and many disqualified - the 6th Circuit's opinion will hold because liberal or not Justice Stevens is not touching this one with a 10 foot pole. And some legitimate voters will be swept up in that - again, my point."

Except, that's not what the Supreme Court did today:

>>>"The Supreme Court today threw out a lawsuit brought by the Ohio Republican Party that could have made it easier to challenge tens of thousands of newly registered voters.

The high court, in a brief opinion, said the federal law that called for computer checks of new voters did not authorize private lawsuits to enforce it.

The ruling is a victory for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat. She said she feared "chaos" on election day if the GOP were permitted last-minute challenges to new voters based on data on file with the state Department of Motor Vehicles."

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-scotus18-2008oct18,0,3579254.story

Why is this decision important? Well, let's look back in time to 2004, and why I'm so indefatigable on this issue:

>>>"On Saturday, November 13, the Ohio Election Protection Coalition’s public hearings in Columbus solicited extensive sworn first-person testimony from 32 of Ohio voters, precinct judges, poll workers, legal observers, party challengers. An additional 66 people provided written affidavits of election irregularities. The unavoidable conclusion is that this year's election in Ohio was deeply flawed, that thousands of Ohioans were denied their right to vote, and that the ultimate vote count is very much in doubt.

Most importantly, the testimony has revealed a widespread and concerted effort on the part of Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to deny primarily African-American and young voters the right to cast their ballots within a reasonable time. By depriving precincts of adequate numbers of functioning voting machines, Blackwell created waits of three to eleven hours, driving tens of thousands of likely Democratic voters away from the polls and very likely affecting the outcome of the Ohio vote count, which in turn decided the national election."

http://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/886

Now, you write that Dr. Martin Luther King wouldn't have liked ACORN's voter registration efforts. My question to you is, what on EARTH would Dr. King have said about Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell--who doubled as Ohio Co-Chair of the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign--and his conduct?

Willowglen, we might be of different age, generation or cultural background, but this is America, and in the 21st Century, nobody...and I do mean NOBODY should have to stand in line for ELEVEN HOURS to cast a vote.

I'll quote you on this--"its a fraud and undercuts the dignity of those who fought so hard and for so long for blacks to be able to vote and more significantly - an element that makes this country great - to be able truly be citizens."

You know this ACORN hype is exactly that, hype. Why ELSE would the GOP "only" seem to care about ACORN activities in swing states? As a matter of fact, as more proof that Senator Obama is NOT Vice President Gore, or Senator Kerry...

Obama's fighting BACK against these false ACORN schemes/charges:

>>>"Seeking to portray law enforcement investigations into reports of fraudulent voter registrations in several states as an extension of the controversial firings of United States attorneys, the Obama campaign on Friday called for a review by a special prosecutor.

Bob Bauer, general counsel for the Obama campaign, sent a letter to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and Special Prosecutor Nora R. Dannehy, who is investigating the attorney firings, requesting that Ms. Dannehy also look into the whether F.B.I. investigations of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, were politically motivated."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/17/obama-camp-seeks-special_n_135750.html

That's right. Remember in my earlier post I referenced voter caging by Karl Rove and Tim Griffin? Well, this is related to the U.S. Attorney firing gate. That's what having a Constitutional Law Professor running for President this time will do for you. Obama's LEGALLY challenging this "ACORN-October-surprise-if-Dems-win-it's-because-of-the-poor-black-fake-voters-we-see-on-the-Fox-News-B-roll-loop" GOP strategy.

Obama is calling the GOP's bluff in a court of law, BEFORE election day.

...

God bless America!

Now, onto this cultural stuff, Willow--this post is long enough as is. But I can perhaps make a brief point:

Willowglen writes:

>>>"One would think that after the civil rights laws, after numerous race preference programs, numerous anti-poverty programs, and the billions spent (reparations already, one might say), the dysfunctions is the lower and lower middle black communities would have significantly decreased. But they have not - in many ways - incarceration, education, out of wedlock births - they have grown to monstrous proportions - it is a national tragedy."

IMHO, it's at least in part BECAUSE of these programs that commedian Bill Cosby, Panamanian-American Juan Williams and Senator Barack Obama are possible today.

You talk of dysfunctions in the "lower and lower middle black communities", and I can't argue with you about those challenges. I would put to you a similiar challenge, that there would be no WHITE AMERICAN middle class without the industrial revolution and government intervention and programs following the Great Depression.

I would also argue that since America's going through, IMHO, an "industrial devolution" (we don't make anything in America anymore), and guess what? The American government, in 2008, had to create a MASSIVE social program costing HUNDREDS of billions of dollars to bail out Wall Street and Investment Bankers--the majority of which, are run by Whites--in an effort to save the American economy as we know it and prevent a second Great Depression.

That, my friend, Willowglen, is indeed a "national tragedy."

--Cobra

Cobra - ok - the recent crisis is a tragedy. And it is costing taxpayers a lot. But if done right (and whether the architect is Paulson or another bright investment type Obama would appoint, it can be done right) the Government can do fairly well on the equity that it is taking and will continue to take. Of course the jury is still out but it is difficult to shed tears for existing equity holders (that is why it is equity or risk capital), who are being diluted by the Government's actions in being a necessary pawn broker of last resort. Put another way, the shareholders are supposed to be able to thrown the manager bums out - if they didn't well...my sympathy is limited. I am not sure mentioning that the finance system is run by "whites" is probative of anything - first, it is no longer true - the halls of Wall Street are incredibly diverse today - there likely are not as many African Americans as you would like but there are some - and that is more or less a function of the fact that the financial service markets have grossly overpaid its participants for the last 20 years and the best and the brightest - being rational beings - have gravitated towards that market. Second, guys like Franklin Raines - who last time I checked was black - is at ground zero of this problem - pushing easy credit on borrowers that had no business entering into the transactions they did. It isn't the race of the people that matters, it is the destructive policies they adopted in forgetting the risks of abandoning moral hazards.

The real tragedies are the effects of the well intended but incredibly misguided social policies (pushed by Congress, and the GSE's) that lowered lending standards - resulting loans that never should have been issued and wreaking havoc on people's lives. And the foreclosures are hugely disproportional to race - and they will cause misery for these people for years to come. And note that even loan forgiveness programs can't help many of them - those only work for people that already have life skills and a capacity to pay a 30 year commitment - a 20 percent haircut in principal helps them little - so the alternative for so many is that they will be out of a home, broke, with credit at the bottom of the sea, and all because Congress and others thought that granting of race preferences in ignoring or vastly lowering underwriting standards made sense. Unlike Sander's work on law schools, where his conclusion is debatable as to whether race preferences harm the intended recipients - there is little doubt as to what has happened in the subprime loan market - blacks and hispanics have absolutely been harmed - and in a much more lasting way. This should be the civil rights issue of our decade - except that it won't be because the architects of the practice were the left, albeit conveniently aided and abetted by all too willing financial intermediaries.

Don't get me wrong - Wall Street and their regulators here deserve their share of blame - principally they permitted far too much leverage into the system - way too much. And since that leverage was built on a complete house of cards known as subprime lending - comprised by and large of borrowers with insufficient life skills, education and the like to take on any kind of long term financial commitment - a disaster has struck. You can bet that financial institutions will find a way to recover - although they will be stung by the amount of government control to which they must submit over the next three to five years. I am not so certain about the lives of the borrowers - who are where they are in large part due to disastrous race preference policies.

The only way forward is to fix the culture. And the only way to do that is for the African American community to begin to exert peer pressure. Perhaps that indeed is the silver lining to an Obama candidacy.

Willowglen writes:

>>>"It isn't the race of the people that matters, it is the destructive policies they adopted in forgetting the risks of abandoning moral hazards."

I wish that was the case, Willowglen. You KNOW that it is. You may fairly or not, accuse we on the left of being hyper-critical of corporate greed, excess and the conservative mantra of mega-deregulation. But if you are intellectually honest, you must acknowlege that the right has tried to paint this disaster as purely the fault of poor minorities and Democratic legislators, most of whom weren't even in charge of commitee when key decisions were made.

To your credit, you do somewhat spread the blame around, but I can't put too fine a point on the fact that the vast majority of these sub-prime loans were purchased by Whites, mostly in refinancing efforts.

So when you write:

>>>"The only way forward is to fix the culture."

You have to expand that vision to mean the AMERICAN culture of "borrow and spend", which flows from the top down.

President George W. Bush (R) not only passed out "economic stimulus checks" on borrowed money (China, Japan, Saudi Arabia), and an $800 million dollar bail-out of Wall Street with borrowed money, and nationalized a large portion of the American banking system with borrowed money, but started and continues the Iraq War, at a cost of $3 billion per month, while cutting taxes (unprecedented in American History during wartime). Two deficit-spending wars on...you guessed it--

BORROWED MONEY.

So as tempted as we may be to cast aspersions at those less fortunate trying to get ahead, we must always see the example set from the bully pulpit of the highest office in the land, which is why I find hope and conciliation with you in your last sentence:

>>>"Perhaps that indeed is the silver lining to an Obama candidacy."

--Cobra

excuse me...$800 BILLION dollar bailout for Wall Street.

Cobra - you are being intellectually evasive and thus harming the cause that you deign to support.

It IS NOT who purchased the loans - it is the DEFAULT rate that matters. And you and I both know that the foreclosure statistics are a disaster - an absolute disaster - with a grossly, and I mean grossly, disproporational percentage of foreclosures in black and hispanic communities. Moreover, loan forgiveness programs (as McCain has suggested) will not help many of them - because even slicing off 25% of the principal does them no good because many folks cannot, and frankly never could of, afforded even a mere fraction of the principal amounts at issue. These loans were pushed on them on the false and harmful premise, championed by Congress and all too easily sucked up the finance community given Government guarantees and the slimy availability of off balance sheet risk machinations, that credit scores don't matter and were somehow a racist invention to keep people from buying homes. Well it turns out credit scores do matter and this race preference program has ended up hurting its recipients tremendously. And worse yet, it has driven up the overall price of real estate, so the availability of affordable housing stock has been diminished at just the time that people being foreclosed on their homes need it. This is not about blame right now. We need to do what we reasonably can do - but even then, many will be in misery. This is an expensive lesson is wrongheaded social engineering and ignoring the terrific downside risk of excess leverage. Everyone involved should have known better. And there's no other answer for principled people.