“Just So We’re Clear”: Our Failure to Stop You from Voting Means We Weren’t Trying to Stop You from Voting
North Carolina recently passed what can only be described as an omnibus voter suppression law, including a whole range of provisions from demanding photo IDs to cutting back early voting to restricting registration drives, every single one of which is likely to make it harder for minorities, poor people, and/or young people to register and vote. It’s not just the Tar Heel state—across the South, states that have been freed by the Supreme Court from their prior obligation under the Voting Rights Act to get permission from the Justice Department before changing their voting laws are moving with all deliberate speed to make voting as difficult as possible. Since these are Republican states, these laws are going to pass (some have already), and I think it’s worth addressing what is fast becoming the main argument Republicans use to defend them.
They’ve always said that their only intent was to ensure the “integrity” of elections and protect against voter impersonation, a virtually nonexistent problem. But they recently realized that they’ve got a new, and seemingly compelling, piece of evidence they can muster against charges of voter suppression. Many voter-ID laws were passed over the last few years (the Supreme Court upheld voter ID in 2008), and as Republicans will tell you (see for example here or here), turnout among blacks hasn’t declined, and in some cases has gone up. Blacks even turned out at a slightly higher rate than whites overall in the 2012 election. As Rand Paul recently said, “I don’t think there is objective evidence that we’re precluding African-Americans from voting any longer.”
So what’s wrong with this argument? The voter suppression efforts have been largely unsuccessful because civil rights groups and Democrats have responded to them by redoubling their efforts to get people to the polls. The backlash has essentially brought turnout among African Americans back up to what it would have been without the voter-ID laws, even though in practice, it meant that some people who would have otherwise voted were prevented from doing so, while other people who might have stayed home managed to get to the polls.
So what Republicans are essentially saying is, we’re trying to suppress the votes of black people, but we aren’t succeeding, so how can you criticize us? It’s like me slashing your tires on Saturday, then when you go out and buy four new ones and get them installed in time for Monday morning, I say, “You got to work on time, didn’t you? So that just shows I wasn’t trying to do you any harm.”
The “voter fraud” rationale has been incredibly disingenuous from the beginning, but for me the real tell is the limitations on early voting that often end up being part of these laws. You can argue that everyone should have to prove who they are before casting a ballot. But restricting early voting can have only one purpose, and that’s making it more difficult for people to vote, especially those who happen to take advantage of early voting. And who might that be? You’ll never guess. The Republicans pushing these laws always make sure to eliminate early voting on the Sunday before election day, because that’s when many black churches have historically done “souls to the polls” drives, where people head to the voting locations after church.
So the next time you hear someone say that high turnout among African Americans proves that voter ID isn’t about suppressing votes, remember that they’re trying to use their failure to successfully keep black, poor, and young people from voting to explain away their obvious intent to keep black, poor, and young people from voting. If you put obstacles in my path to screw me, and then I manage with an extraordinary effort to evade them, it doesn’t mean you weren’t trying to screw me in the first place.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 15, 2013
“By Any Other Name, It’s Still A Name”: Why Veto Messiah But Not Moon Unit Or Moses?
It’s not exactly in the Constitution, but it is a parent’s inalienable right to have questionable taste and embarrass their children. And that is why it’s disturbing that a judge in Tennessee would tell a parent what she can and cannot name her son.
OK, so the mother wanted to name the kid “Messiah.” It’s sort of an elegant name, actually, if it didn’t mean anything to a lot of people. And that’s what troubled Tennessee Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew, who did not bear the child or agree to raise the child, but who has nonetheless decided it’s her place to veto the name. To which one can only respond, “oh, for God’s sake.”
The judge told WBIR TV:
The word Messiah is a title and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person. And that one person is Jesus Christ.
So it’s about titles, is it? Then how did singer Michael Jackson get away with naming his kid “Prince Michael?” You could make a stronger argument that the actual name “Jesus Christ” is pushing the envelope. But even then, “Jesus” is a popular name among Spanish-speaking people, many of whom are devoted Catholics.
So what’s the problem, again? Ballew went on, saying, “It could put him at odds with a lot of people. And at this point, he has had no choice in what his name is.”
Well, that’s another question. Silly names that feed the juvenile humor or self-aggrandizement of the parents? Yes, let’s then get rid of Moon Unit Zappa, Gwyneth Paltrow’s kid, Apple, and all those names by parents who think it’s just adorable to name their kids things like “Candy Bar” and “Claire Voyant.”
It’s simply not up to a judge to rename a child, especially when the alleged offense is against a select group of people with a particular view towards religion. The name “Messiah” might mean a lot to some people, but it means basically nothing to a whole group of other people. It’s not as though the name is, on its face, obscene. Though it might be humorous to go on TV and have one’s own name bleeped out when you’re introduced.
The judge pledges to protect and respect religion, but she’s really just imposing her own beliefs on everyone else, and in a way that is intensely personal. And if it’s really religious names that get her into a lather, she ought to have a long chat with Paltrow. The actress’s second child is named “Moses,” after all.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, August 14, 2013
“Adolescent Nihilism”: The GOP’s True Believers Risk Nothing By Threatening Economic Catastrophe
So what’s it going to be for GOP hotheads in Congress this fall?
A soul-satisfying episode of adolescent nihilism culminating in a government shutdown and yet another debt/default scare? Or an abject capitulation to political (and fiscal) reality and an acceptance of the Republican Party’s role as the loyal opposition?
As I write, there’s just no telling. It’s partly a contest between the GOP’s electronic infotainment/Tea Party wing and the party establishment. Talk-radio shouters and cable TV entrepreneurs thrive on melodrama, and a substantial proportion of the Tea Party base follows excitedly along. Defund Obamacare! Shut it down! To those of us of a certain age, this has a ring of nostalgia, like Abbie Hoffman’s 1967 vow to levitate the Pentagon. I don’t know what they’re smoking down at RNC headquarters, but on CNN’s State of the Union, party chairman Reince Priebus made a lame attempt to blame President Obama.
“I think all Republicans are unified on one thing and that is defunding, delaying, getting rid of, eliminating Obamacare,” Priebus said. “So we have total unanimity on that issue and the question is what are the tactics?…So Mr. President, if you want to shut the government down because you want to continue to fund this monstrosity…then go ahead.”
Nice try. No cigar.
Having wasted countless hours on 40 — count ’em, 40 — votes to defund Obamacare, you’d think House Republicans might be getting the message. Their scheme’s DOA in the Senate, and even if it weren’t, the White House holds veto power. The GOP’s last constitutional chance to prevent 30 million Americans from buying affordable health insurance coverage expired with Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy. End of story.
True, rising Republican celebrities like Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rand Paul (R-KY), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Mike Lee (R-UT), and rising star Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR) are breathing smoke and fire. However, it’s also true that none of these worthies hold leadership positions. Until very recently nobody knew who they were. They risk nothing by enrolling in a purely symbolic resistance.
Quite the opposite: True Believers in utopian right-wing crusades evaluate politicians according to their fervor, not their coherence. Did Ronald Reagan ever pay a political price for describing Medicare as the death knell of freedom? He did not.
Indeed, the best possible outcome for Senatorial rabble-rousers would be what now appears likely: A minority of GOP House moderates voting with Democrats to pass a continuing resolution, avoiding a party-line government shutdown that could doom the Republican Party’s national electoral chances. Speaker Boehner won’t have much choice but to allow it.
See, there’s nothing the Southern wing of the GOP loves more than a heroic defense of a lost cause. Save your Confederate dollars, boys, because…
Well, you know the rest.
Lately the party’s adult leadership has also taken to signaling the need for restraint regarding the National Debt. According to the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, congressional Democrats scrutinize Wall Street Journal columnist Stephen Moore for signs of Republican establishment thinking.
Recently, Moore informed readers that “[t]he biggest underreported story out of Washington this year is that the federal budget is shrinking and much more than anyone in either party expected.”
Overall federal spending that peaked at $3.598 trillion in FY2011 due largely to recession-related costs will drop to $3.45 trillion by the end of FY2013. “The $150 billion budget decline of 4 percent,” Moore writes “is the first time federal expenditures have fallen for two consecutive years since the end of the Korean War.”
Also dropping is the annual federal budget deficit. Projections by the Congressional Budget Office show a $642 billion shortfall this year—less than half of the $1.3 trillion shortfall the Obama White House inherited from George W. Bush. It’s forecast to drop to $560 billion next year, and $378 billion in 2015.
Moore: “Already the deficit has fallen from its Mount Everest peak of 10.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, to about 4 percent this year. That’s a bullish six percentage points less of the GDP of new federal debt each year.”
In short, informed conservatives understand that there is no need whatsoever for a melodramatic standoff over raising the federal debt limit. No need to risk “the full faith and credit of the United States” by threatening default. Hostages need not be taken.
As in the Obamacare charade, Republican posturing on the debt would only risk catastrophe for the sake of certain defeat.
Alas, but herein lies the rub: The great majority of GOP voters out in the wilderness beyond the Hudson and the Potomac not only don’t know these facts, they’re constitutionally incapable of accepting them.
To followers of politicians like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, fears of fiscal collapse, runaway inflation and social chaos aren’t political ideas, but fixed beliefs scarcely amenable to arithmetic or reason.
And their Antichrist is Barack Obama.
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, August 14, 2013
“Ending Stop-And-Frisk But Keeping The Racism”: Systematic “Post-Racial Colorblind Racism” In All Its Glory
On Monday, US district court judge Shira Scheindlin dealt a serious, but non-lethal blow to the New York City police policy known as “stop-and-frisk.” After weeks of testimony and evidence presented in the case of Floyd v. City of New York, Scheindlin ruled that stop-and-frisk violated individuals’ Fourth Amendment right to privacy and Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law. She did not, however, call for an end to the policy altogether, instead opting to appoint an independent federal monitor to oversee the program and the implementation of reforms that would bring it in line with the Constitution.
Undoubtedly, this is a huge victory for the activists who have been doing work around the issue of stop-and-frisk for years, and perhaps an even bigger victory for the black and Latino young men whose lives have been disproportionately disrupted by repeated violations of their rights. In her ruling, Scheindlin wrote that “the policy encourages the targeting of young black and Hispanic men based on their prevalence in local crime complaints. This is a form of racial profiling.” The ruling may not put an end to stop-and-frisk in its entirety, but at the very least there was a recognition from the court that for years the city’s police force has engaged in a racist practice that has infringed upon the rights of millions.
The same can’t be said of NYC’s current political leadership. In a press conference yesterday afternoon, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and police commissioner Ray Kelly were visibly dismayed with the ruling. Stop-and-frisk has been a signature crime-fighting tool during the Bloomberg years, one that defines his legacy. Kelly has received praise from high places, in large part because of the work he has done in executing the stop-and-frisk policy. For a judge to rule their “success” unconstitutional surely grates. But their defense of “stop-and-frisk,” despite weak attempts to deny as much, went on to show just how racist it is.
To start, Bloomberg noted the racial diversity of the NYPD, presumably to protect against charges of racism by pointing to the fact that people of color are active parts of the police force. But having your rights violated by someone who looks like you doesn’t somehow make that violation less racist. The fact is that out of roughly 5 million stops conducted over a decade, an alarming majority of them involved black or Latino men, and almost 90 percent of those stops turned up no evidence of wrongdoing. You can add some color to the faces conducting the stops, but that’s an institutionalized form of racism that doesn’t rely on white skin to operate.
He didn’t stop there. Bloomberg then deployed some lazy racist rhetoric about how the greatest perpetrators of crime happen to be young black and Latino men, so it only makes sense that the stops would disproportionately affect them. It’s the close relative to his argument that the NYPD has been, given crime statistics, stopping too many white people. Bloomberg and Kelly added the paternalistic line of reasoning that it was young black and Latino men who would also disproportionately be the victims of crimes stop-and-frisk has prevented, so the policy is really for their own benefit. Aside from erasing the opinions of those whom the policy is supposedly meant to protect, that reasoning also perpetuates the racist idea that black and Latino men are inherently violent and criminal, and therefore ignoring their rights is a necessary measure of protection. It also flies in the face of the evidence—stops of white people turn up higher rates of criminal activity. Based on the results of their own policy, it would have been prudent to shift the tactic to include more stops of white people, something that never happened and would likely have caused actual riots in the street.
But none of that is what Bloomberg and Kelly wanted us to focus on. Their most compelling argument: stop-and-frisk works. The city’s homicide rates are down and the police have recovered more than 8,000 guns that may have been used in potential crimes. For the sake of argument, let’s say that stop-and-frisk actually did reduce crime (a claim for which there is no actual evidence, only Bloomberg’s anecdotal belief that it instills fear in would-be criminals to the point they decide a life of crime isn’t worth the police harassment they’re going to receive). Even if that were the case, it still does not justify the use of a racist tactic that violates basic rights guaranteed to every citizen of this country. It’s disingenuous to suggest that the only way to reduce crime is to decide that the rights of certain segments of the population can and should be violated. Not only does this ignore the true drivers of crime (and not call into question whether some of these infractions should even be crimes, e.g., marijuana possession), it’s a frustratingly insidious justification for racism.
To recap: Bloomberg and Kelly denied that stop-and-frisk is racist, but then claimed it wasn’t racist enough, and now want everyone to believe that even if it is racist it doesn’t matter because it works. This is post-racial colorblind racism in all its glory.
Going forward, it will be interesting to see what type of reforms to stop-and-frisk are implemented in order to make it constitutional, though I doubt it can be any less racist. We are a society that starts with the presumption the greatest purveyors of crime are young black and Latino men. Any policy based around the idea of reasonable suspicion that then leaves that up to the discretion of people reared with that pervasive racist ideology will be disproportionately suspicious of men of color. Declaring stop-and-frisk unconstitutional is an important first step, but undoing the racism that creates the justification for the policy will be a much longer process.
By: Mychal Denzel Smith, The Nation, August 13, 2013
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