“Discriminatory Election Laws”: The GOP Assault On The Voting Rights Act
Last week the Department of Justice denied preclearance to Texas’s law requiring voters to present photo identification under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 requires states and jurisdictions with a demonstrated history of passing discriminatory election laws to get approval from the DOJ for any change to laws governing the time, place or manner in which an election is conducted.
Within days Texas filed a challenge in federal court arguing that Section 5 is unconstitutional. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott maintains that the federal government exceeded its authority and violated the Tenth Amendment when it passed the measure.
Conservative opponents of civil rights are eager to see that challenge succeed. Writing in National Review—which opposed the civil rights movement—vice chairman of the US Commission on Civil Rights and conservative scholar Abigail Thernstrom argues that Section 5 is outdated. National Review’s evolution on the subject is the standard conservative slither on civil rights. First you oppose it. Then, when society has evolved and you look like a bigot, you accept it. Then, as soon as humanly possible, you argue it was necessary at the time but no longer is.
“The Voting Rights Act was absolutely essential in ending the brutal regime of racial subjugation in the South, but it has become a period piece—anti-discrimination legislation passed at a time when southern blacks were kept from the polls by violence, intimidation, and fraudulent literacy tests,” writes Thernstrom. “Those disfranchising devices are as unlikely to return as segregated water fountains.” Thernstrom focuses most of her argument on the question of redistricting, and she argues that increasing residential integration and ethnic and socioeconomic diversity within minority communities makes the creation of majority-minority districts either unnecessary or impossible. “The notion of a ‘black community’ as the foundation of a black legislative district is also becoming an anachronism.”
There are two separate arguments being advanced by civil rights opponents: that Section 5 is unconstitutional because it falls outside the federal government’s enumerated powers, and that it is bad policy. Both are bogus. Section 5 is clearly constitutional, and we very much need it to protect the right to vote.
When Texas votes for seats in the House and Senate or the presidency, the results affect every American. Thus it is in the national interest to insure that elections are conducted fairly. “Not having discrimination in the electoral process is important to all of us,” says Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington Bureau.
Congress has the authority to regulate national elections, and it has the power under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution to protect the rights of African-Americans from state governments. “Congress has broad authority to regulate procedures for federal elections under Article I, Section IV of the Constitution,” notes Daniel Tokaji, an election law expert at Ohio State University. “Because Texas ID requirement would apply to federal elections, we don’t even need to get into the question of whether Section 5 falls within Congress’s Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment power.” While Tokaji agrees that imposing federal power over redistricting may raise some constitutional questions, the Texas complaint maintains that the federal government has no business telling states not to disenfranchise their citizens.
Moreover, contra Thernstrom, southern blacks are indeed being kept from the polls today. Case in point: the Texas voter ID law itself. Blacks and Latinos in Texas are disproportionately likely not to have driver’s licenses other forms of state-issued photo identification, as are poor people and the disabled. As the DOJ noted in making its decision, “According to [Texas’s] own data, a Hispanic registered voter is at least 46.5 percent, and potentially 120.0 percent, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack this identification.” Texas did not collect data for African-Americans. But national studies have shown they too are less likely than whites to have the requisite ID. The DOJ has also recently denied preclearance to a similar law in South Carolina for the same reason. (South Carolina is also suing the DOJ, but they are not claiming that the law is unconstitutional, only that it is being incorrectly applied.)
This is not an isolated incident. Every time the VRA is renewed, Congress documents that it is still needed by examining allegations of vote suppression. “[Section 5] has stopped laws from going into effect that would restrict minority participation,” says Nancy Abudu, senior staff counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. The most recent renewal was in 2006, when Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress and the White House, so it can hardly be characterized as a Democratic power grab. “[In 2006] Congress did a very good job of collecting the evidence of why Section 5 remains necessary,” says Abudu.
“The only places covered by Section 5 have a history of discrimination,” explains Shelton. “Every state under Section 5 was reviewed carefully for its record and complaints. [Opponents] are right: it is an extraordinary measure to take that is inconsistent with states’ rights. But these are states that have proven bad behavior. The law is protecting the participation of all eligible Americans.”
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, March 21, 2012
“Roiling The Political Waters”: Supreme Court Has Made Ugly U.S. Politics Even Uglier
The Supreme Court has done the impossible by making American politics even worse than it already was. The bomb that the court dropped on campaigns was the infamous Citizens United decision.
This year the court will decide two cases that will have an immediate effect on federal and state elections. Monday, the court will begin to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Next stop for the nine justices is a ruling on the constitutionality of the Arizona law that restricts immigration. Both cases could roil the political waters.
But the court’s 2010 Citizens United decision has already changed the complexion of this year’s campaigns. The basis of the court’s decision to allow unlimited corporate political spending was that a corporation is a person and therefore is entitled to freedom of speech under the First Amendment. If a corporation is a person why hasn’t Gov. Rick Perry executed BP for the death and destruction it caused in the Gulf Coast? God knows, real people in Texas have been fried for less.
The court’s Citizens United decision made a bad system even worse.
After the 2008 presidential campaign Americans were already horrified at the negativity of political campaigns. They ain’t seen nothing yet. The extra money that Citizens United has pumped into the political system has exponentially increased the number of negative ads on the air. Voters in the early primary and caucus states are completely shell shocked and the super PACs for congressional campaigns are still waiting in the wings. Former Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign and super PAC that supports it, Restore Our Future, have a great good cop, bad cop combo. The Romney campaign took the high road while the Romney Death Star completely obliterated former House Speaker Next Gingrich’s candidacy. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
The avalanche of negative ads has predictably driven turnout down. During the 2008 Democratic slugfest between then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, voter participation increased. But because there are a lot more negative ads on the air now in the GOP contest, turnout has been down. Because of the scale of the electronic mud wrestling match, the images of all the GOP candidates are soiled. Maybe Mitt Romney’s Etch A Sketch can scrub his image but it won’t be easy to do in the two short months between the GOP convention and November 6.
The rise of the super PACs has also been a godsend for single issue politics. The Gingrich presidential committee ran out of money a couple of months ago and the only thing keeping the former speaker on life support is the more than $20 million that casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his family has given to the Gingrich-supporting super PAC Winning Our Future. Adelson’s cause is blind American support for anything Israel wants to do, even if those actions threaten our national security. Wall Street bankers and billionaires who have shunned the president because of his efforts to tame corporate abuses have donated millions of dollars to the Romney-supporting super PAC.
Citizens United has also allowed individual millionaires to have a lot of influence on the candidates. Sheldon Adelson is an obvious example the ability of one wealthy person to get a hook on a candidate but there are others. Bob Perry is millionaire Houston homebuilder who funded the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth PAC, which badly wounded John Kerry in 2004. The U.S. Navy should have rewarded the Massachusetts senator another Purple Heart for the beating he took from Swift Boat Veterans. Perry has donated $3 million to the Romney super PAC. Energy investor and noted birth control expert Foster Friess has been a generous donor to the super PAC that supports former Sen. Rick Santorum, The Red, White and Blue Fund. Friess frequently appears standing next to the candidate on the podium at campaign events. So much for Santorum and Friess obeying the law that forbids coordinated strategy between the two of them.
There was a time when the Supreme Court did everything it could to avoid the “political thickets.” That approach has gone the way of of moderate Republicans and clean campaigns.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, March 22, 2012
“Hooked On Oil”: No Magic Bullet For The Price Of Gas
As they ruminate at the pump, Americans may have finally figured out the new global deal on gasoline: there’s no magic bullet to bring prices down as long as the United States remains hooked on oil.
No matter how many billions of dollars oil companies rake in, the world market, not individual oil producers, sets the price of oil. Likewise, there is little, if anything, U.S. presidents—or their political opponents—can do to ward off $4 per gallon gasoline.
The reality is that oil supply concerns in Iran, Nigeria, and other trouble spots married with heightened oil demand in China, India, and other burgeoning nations will largely determine what Americans pay for gasoline. We can drill doggedly in our own backyards, but the price of gasoline will remain more a matter of speculation over externally-driven factors than tapping new sources of oil at home.
America is at an oil crossroads, emotionally and financially. We can continue griping about gasoline and maintain false hopes of controlling crude oil prices. Or we can face the truth, stop subsidizing oil with hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and abandon extreme efforts in search of new oil supplies. Surviving $4 gasoline depends on sipping oil and providing fuel substitutes, not subsidizing and promoting petroleum production.
As the world’s largest oil consumer, home to a transportation system that is a whopping 94 percent dependent on oil, the United States is precariously positioned. Conventional thinking—the more we drill at home, the better off we’ll be—is dangerously misguided. No matter where in the world oil is found, the price is tied to the global market.
Moreover, much of the heavier new oil supplies found in the western hemisphere yield diesel and fuel oil that is destined primarily for export markets. New heavier oils are not well suited for consumption by American cars and jets. So drilling closer to home will do much more to pad the oil industry’s deep pockets than bring down prices at the pump.
Since business-as-usual isn’t likely the answer, and may make matters worse, it’s time for unconventional thinking.
America is desperately in need of an oil policy that reduces dependence on petroleum, regardless of the source. The more fuel efficient our cars become and the faster we diversify into new transportation fuels, the brighter our energy and economic future will be.
President Obama already set in motion the first part of the solution. Tomorrow’s cars and trucks will consume less fuel than those they replace. And despite rising gas prices—or perhaps because of it—automakers’ new vehicle line-ups contain some of the most fuel-efficient vehicles in industry history.
In the next five years, new cars and trucks will use 20 percent less fuel per mile driven. And by 2025, new cars will average about 50 miles per gallon, nearly double levels initially mandated for 1985. Sticking to the president’s plan, or even accelerating it, will be key.
But there is much more to be done. America can no longer rely on oil alone to fuel mobility. We need to step up the transition to oil alternatives by moving to hybrid-electric and electric vehicles, and using advanced biofuels.
Electricity can be generated by a diverse array of clean energy sources, leaving oil out of the power mix. And biofuels can be made from many different nonoil sources, including algae, grasses, woody crops, wastes, and various other nonfood feed stocks.
High gasoline prices help motivate the shift away from oil. But a market transformation will take direct policy action, for example, through a price stabilizing oil security fee or other fiscal measures. Oil is entrenched in America. Moving away from perpetual oil dependence to a robust, diversified fuel system will take clear, enduring policy action.
Americans are justifiably anxious about what the future holds when it comes to gasoline prices. But many motorists are beginning to appreciate that anger over pump prices will not relieve pain at the pump. Nor will political promises.
Oil markets have globalized to the point where prices are beyond our control. Given oil’s dangerous monopoly power over our mobility, it’s time to entirely reinvent our habits, innovate technologically, and adopt bold new policies aimed at reducing the use of oil and substituting instead of subsidizing and searching for oil. This is how America will ultimately survive $4 gasoline.
By: Deborah Gordon, U. S. News and World Report, March 22, 2012
“Attack Of The Right”: Ryan Budget A Disappointment To Conservatives
The conservative group Club for Growth said Wednesday that a Republican House budget plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) is a “disappointment” to fiscal conservatives that falls short of making necessary cuts to balance the nation’s budget.
The group’s president said in a statement that Ryan’s plan does not put the country on a path to chop deficits quickly enough.
Chris Chocola also complained that that the budget largely waives massive cuts that are set to go into effect in January as a consequence for the failure of Congress’s special deficit reduction “supercommittee.”
According to the Budget Control Act — the hard-fought law that raised the nation’s debt ceiling over the summer — failure of the supercommittee was to trigger about $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next decade, split between military and domestic spending.
In Ryan’s budget, the so-called sequester–deeply unpopular to Republicans because of its powerful hit to defense–would be replaced. Tackling only the first year of the cuts—about $110 billion—his budget calls for instructing Congressional committees to come up with $18 billion in trims the first year and $116 billion over five years.
“It is hard to have confidence that our long-term fiscal challenges will be met responsibly when the same Congress that passed the Budget Control Act wants to ignore it less than one year later. On balance, the Ryan Budget is a disappointment for fiscal conservatives,” Chocola said in a statement.
Ryan’s budget also seeks to eliminate deficits by 2040. The Club for Growth has called for a budget that balances within the decade. Chocola said the budget contains “several important reforms and pro-growth policies” but is not enough.
“The Club for Growth urges Republicans to support a budget that balances in the near future and complies with the Budget Control Act,” he said.
The attack from the right comes as Ryan is facing a far more vigorous outcry from Democrats—who believe this plan slashes programs for the poor and elderly even while cutting taxes for the wealthy.
They have also complained that the Ryan plan slices agency budgets by $18 billion more than a year-long cap agreed to in the debt deal—a key concession made to conservatives whom Ryan will need to get his budget plan through the House.
With Democrats unified against Ryan’s plan, the Club for Growth statement could pose problems for its passage in the House if it persuades the GOP’s restive caucus to waver in its support.
Some centrist Republicans are also anxious about Ryan’s plan—fearful it will set the House on a path to another nasty clash with the Senate just weeks before the November election.
By: Rosalind S. Helderman, The Washington Post, March 21, 2012
“Unprincipled Fraud”: Mitt Romney And GOP Wiping The Slate Clean
By sheer coincidence, my nine-year-old begged me just the other day to buy him one of those iconic toys from my own childhood, the Etch-A-Sketch, which is manufactured by that equally quirky and iconic toymaker, Ohio Art.
And so, thanks to my son, I am now equipped to pile on like everyone else onto Mitt Romney’s PR wingman, Eric Fehrnstrom.
Fehrnstrom, as by now everyone with access to YouTube surely knows, famously replied when asked by CNN’s John Fugelsang how Romney intended to pivot from the Republican primary to the general election: “Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”
It was a stunning, perhaps catastrophic mistake. Rachel Maddow called it the gaffe of what has been a gaffe-laden campaign. Not only was Fehrnstrom’s answer supercilious and snarky. It also fed into one of the central narratives against Romney in this campaign, namely that he is an unprincipled fraud who will do or say anything to be president. And now Romney’s top aide has said he agrees. On the record!
Eric Fehrnstrom is living every press secretary’s and publicity agent’s worst nightmare. He’s not only given his guy’s enemies a talking point they can use against him. He’s given them a talking point with props!
I never much cared for the Etch-A-Sketch myself. I quickly tired of the toy once I discovered the best I could do by twisting its two white knobs was to produce a tedious succession of boxes and big city skylines. But somehow I am guessing that between now and next November Ohio Art’s signature product will be the toy the political world just can’t put down.
As Timothy Noah of New Republic says, Fehrnstrom may have just committed “America’s first multi-platform gaffe.”
What makes it so new and different, says Noah, “is its extreme ripeness for visual exploitation at the virtual dawn of a new era of social networking on proliferating varieties of gadgets.”
Normally when a candidate or top aide commits a gaffe, says Noah, it enters some vast “echo chamber” either of words or images and is quickly forgotten as other words and images overwhelm and take its place.
But Noah says the Etch-A-Sketch gaffe is different. It provides endless possibilities for parody and visual mockery using an image familiar to most Americans to say something about Mitt Romney that has the virtue of being fundamentally true: that he’s a fake, a fraud, untrue, what you see today is not what you get tomorrow. And that, says Noah, is a “fatally candid” combination.
As it turns out, I know Eric Fehrnstrom pretty well from our days in the Massachusetts State House Press Gallery when Eric covered politics for the right-leaning Boston Herald when Mike Dukakis was Governor.
Our paths crossed again when Eric was State Treasurer Joe Malone’s press guy in the early 1990s and again when Fehrnstrom ran the communications shop for then-Governor Romney.
I’m also guessing that despite the sort of grim sympathy a herd of wildebeest has for one of its own being devoured by a pride of lions, Massachusetts own political herd is no doubt watching the hard-ball playing Fehrnstrom being devoured today and is thinking to itself: This couldn’t be happening to a nicer wise-guy.
But Fehrnstrom is simply too experienced a media pro for me to believe his epic gaffe occurred just because he’d let down his guard while savoring the satisfaction of another primary win. Something this big and stupid has to be cultural.
And in reaching for the Etch-a-Sketch metaphor, Fehrnstrom was only doing instinctively what the Republican Party has been doing deliberately ever since George W. Bush ended his disastrous eight-year reign, which is to wipe the historical slate clean and forget all about it so that everything that’s gone wrong before or since can be blamed on Barack Obama.
Fehrnstrom’s cynical response on CNN is nothing more than of a piece with a Republican presidential campaign and a Republican Party that is steeped in cynicism and betrays a contempt for facts, a contempt for truth, a contempt for principled consistency, a contempt for American traditions and institutions and a P.T. Barnum-like contempt for the average American voter that you’d expect from a party that thinks it’s found the secret to creating its own reality.
By: Ted Frier, Open Salon, Salon, March 22, 2012
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