Are we safer yet?

I have worried about another terrorist attack happening here in the U.S. or overseas. What will the terrorists do next? They have gotten more and more sophisticated while the authorities have not seemed to keep up – as in Mumbai. It has been reported that the police there were vastly out gunned by the terrorists. Also 9/11 was not the first time that terrorist activity has graced our shores, domestic terrorist attacked on April 19, 1995 with the bombing of the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City. Details came out after that, the perpetrators had visited several federal buildings in different cities in deciding which one to bomb. At the time I was living in Des Moines, IA which was one on the list and I worked near it. Then we have all the work place, shopping and school shootings all perpetrated by people carrying out their own little forms of ‘jihad’ not to mention drunk drivers on the road that could run you over. So are we ever really safe getting out of bed in the morning? (I won’t mention planes falling out of the sky onto your house now…)

In a post 9/11 U.S. it does seem that we have let our civil rights slip away some, just so that we will feel safer. The Patriot Act gives the government sweeping powers to fight terrorism but many of the provisions run counter to the Constitution. Things like innocence until proven guilty, limits on government’s power of search and seizer of property and separation of powers ect. Back in August 2003 the Bush administration released a report that detailed civil rights abuses committed in the implementation of the Patriot Act which got a lot of press coverage but at the time got very little public discussion. Although now I do hear more of a discussion and it seems that we as a nation are waking up and seeing that our fear might have been used against us in order to distract us from other things going on.

I agree with Lawrence in the hope that we do not give up our rights because of fear. We need to be vigilant because I can see that before 9/11 we had let our guard down but I think in some ways the pendulum has swept back to far the other way. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

Author John Mueller explains how the terrorism industry thrives on exaggeration

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John Mueller

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Lewis Black on why we are so safe....

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Back in Black - No Fly List

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The New Poll Tax?

This presidential election saw some of the same long lines in early voting that plagued some parts of the country the last presidential elections. Reports from Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Oklahoma and other states said that people where waiting up to 8-12 HOURS to vote EARLY. To me, and many others as I have been reading, that smacks of a type of poll tax.

Even though the poll tax was formally done away with in the 24th amendment to the constitution, a wait of that long is a type of poll tax. You have to consider the cost to you to wait for that long in lost wages or even if you have a job that would allow you to miss that much time at work. Then consider if you are in college (classes), elderly or disable (physical stamina) or have small children to take care of. The lost wages and time are enough to deter you from voting if the wait is that long, even though you are not paying cash at the door to vote you are paying via those things.

Also are the lines just a bureaucratic snafu or another way to disenfranchise certain groups of voters? I saw a very interesting graph of news reports of long lines vs. the state population of African-Americans based on the Election Day news articles referring to long lines at polling places.


Long lines are a deterrent themselves because for every person in line who waits the 5, 6, 8 hours it takes to cast their ballot there are how many that cannot for the above mentioned reasons or simply are discouraged from doing so.

To help fix this problem a Florida Congressman Alcee L. Hastings, authored the Critical Election Infrastructure Act of 2008 that would spend $1 billion dollars over the next four year to eliminating long lines by supplying more workers and voting machines. Also he authored the Voter Outreach and Turnout Expansion (VOTE) Act, which would make Election Day a national holiday and allow for no excuse early voting as well as same day voter registration nationwide. I believe this would go a long way in helping to increase voter turnout over all and decreasing the wait time in lines.

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Midwest Midterm Midtacular - Ohio Voting

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Ohio 2006

Yes Americans should vote

After reading iGov editorial on why we should vote, I thought about the same responses that I received from my friends as to why some of them would not vote. They ran down some of the same excuses that she stated. My personal favorite that she did not list was “I will go vote if that will shut you up.” My response was “Thank you.”

I agree that we should vote. Even if you live in a state that has gone one way or the other for years, if enough people decided that this is the time to change, then your vote will be important.

In this historic election several states did in fact change color. The electorial college only applys for the presidential contest, the other offices that you are voting on are on a straight popular vote count. The Minnesota Senate race is looking like it is coming down to a few hundred votes. So is Alaska, at the moment, the Democratic candidate is ahead by a FEW votes but “Alaska, determined to continue in its role as the vortex of all things politically strange, still hasn’t counted tens of thousands of ballots” (1) The state of Georgia is having a run off on its Senate set on December 2 this year as well.

There are other countries that face incredible hardships just to cast a ballot. For example, in the Southern African nation of Zimbabwe, there were reports of armed militias attacking sometimes killing political opponents. Also this type of political harassment included assaults, abductions and forced attendance at President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party rallies of the Zimbabwean citizens.

Americans tend not to turn out if the weather is bad, or if it inconveniences them in any way. If the lines are too long, i.e. would have to wait more than 10 minutes. My favorite excuse this year was that they did not know enough about the candidates. Pardon? How could you NOT know SOMETHING about the candidates? With the wealth of information out there on most all of the people running for office, I find that hard to believe.

Our democracy depends on an informed electorate that is our citizens being informed about public affairs. It does not take much to at least scan the paper, or go to a news web site or turn on the television to a news channel while getting dressed. This will at least keep you in the loop to what is going on. Go check out the League of Women Voters voter guide the morning of the election and read up on the candidates if nothing else. Just go and vote and thank your lucky stars, God, Allah, Buddha, Odin, Gluskab, Ehecatl, Bhagavan , Radha or that rock in your garden that you are able to vote freely.

1. The Election Lives!

Photo caption and credits:

Opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters from the rural south of the country show their broken limbs from an assault in the capital Harare May 3, 2008.

(Howard Burditt / Reuters)

Voter Suppression in the 21st century

Hearing about the uproar over the voter registration efforts by the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now, i.e. ACORN, made me just a little more ‘fearful for the republic’ as they say. Republicans allege that ACORN is engaged in voter fraud. There has been no proof of any systematic effort of this by ACORN. In some states there have been registration cards turned in with Mickey Mouse or the starting line for the Dallas Cowboys as new voter names, and since most every state they are required to turn in all computed applications, ACORN workers flag such cards.

The Constitution, along with the other supporting amendments, says that if you are 18, a U.S. citizen, and not declared mentally incompetent (as I might be soon if this election season does not end) you are eligible to vote. Early in our country's history it was not this way, the vote was limited to adult white males who owned property, in other words people who where well off financially. But even now the low income and minorities face disenfranchisement.

Congress did pass the National Voter Registration Act in 1993 that requires states to register voters at the state welfare offices. Many locations it seems are not complying with this law as shown by the numbers of people registering. When the law was first enacted 1995-96, the program registers 2.6 million people. The numbers for 2005-06, last year which data was available, showed only 500,000. Some locations do not have registration forms or trained staff onsite to assist with filling those forms out. You are able to register online or at motor vehicle offices but for lower income people, many do not have cars and or computers, so the welfare offices are often the only opportunity to register.

ACORN holds voter registration drives by going out into the community, either door to door in low and moderate income neighborhoods or at shopping centers, libraries and talking to high school seniors who are of age to vote. ACORN in the Houston area has had no big issues with registrations and the Harris County voter registrar says they have a healthy relationship with ACORN. Any problems that have come up have been minor or have been addressed - sometimes even before the registrar’s office has contacted the group.

Last Friday the U.S. Supreme Court overruled an attempt by Republicans to challenge the validity of 200,000 voter registrations in Ohio. They wanted to force the Ohio Secretary of State to provide county election officials with lists of registrants whose personal information did not exactly match Social Security or driver’s license data. This would leave those voters open to challenges if for example their address had street rather than drive or if a middle initial was on one and not the other yet the rest of the information matched. They might have to vote on a provisional ballot and those ballots are notorious for not being counted.

However now even with the Supreme Court ruling, President Bush forwarded a letter from House Minority Leader John Boehner requesting that the Department of Justice look into if the Ohio state voter rolls comply with the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002 after the 2000 presidential election debacle. Also today five former high ranking DOJ lawyers urged that the DOJ continue to look into ACORN activities. Yet there has been another letter to the DOJ a week ago from SIX former DOJ lawyers to make sure that the investigation does not keep eligible minority voters from the polls because the investigations would have a “chilling effect” (1) on voters.

This all comes down to in my opinion voter suppression on the part of the Republicans as traditionally low – moderate income people, young people and minorities tend to vote for the Democratic party.

(1)Former Justice Officials Press ACORN Investigation

Go VOTE " with your stupid... stupid heart" or "Die"

I read ‘How an IED got me to Vote’ and thought about how many friends that I know, that still are not voting because neither party speaks to them or they do not have the time to read up on the candidate and issues. Even with this year’s election, the one that one would think would spur everyone to get out and vote, I have close friends who still don’t know who they will vote for. It amazes me that anyone has this attitude in the U.S. after all that is going on in our country today with any one of the critical issues there are at this point in time. How could you not have some opinion and want to find candidates to vote for.

The Vanishing Voter Project was based at the Shorenstein Center at the JFK School of Government at Harvard. Through research it explored an understanding of the factors that influenced public involvement in the Presidential election process in 2000 and 2004. The study released a book in 2002 of their findings that concluded current campaign techniques had turned some citizens off that would have potentially otherwise held an interest in public affairs. Attack journalism had eroded trust and soft news had reduced levels of election coverage which in turn reduced the frequency that Americans thought about the election and the front loading of the nominating system. Electoral college strategies also tend to depress turnout in both primaries and the general election in non battleground states. These were the findings of the 2000 election in which they did 99 surveys at least once a week and collected data of 97,797 respondents from November of 1999 to January of 2001.

When I was in junior high (middle school for you young whipper snappers) and high school, the courses I really enjoyed and excelled in where history and government. While my girl friends were busy in "Home Ec." (oh barf), I took world history and honors government. As I moved along in life, busy trying to make rent and meeting Mr. Connell, my interest in closely following public affairs and government fell off. I still voted, but really did not know much about the candidate except some brief reading through a voter’s guide. Around the 2004 elections an extremely issues involved friend of mine got my interest renewed in finding out more about what was going on with our government.

The Vanishing Voter Project showed in 2004 as with the Broken Skull, author of the blog, that a large majority of both first time voters (92 percent) and repeat voters (86 percent) said that election issues was the important factor in the decision to vote. The first time voters cited not a ‘civic duty’ in the reason to vote but a personal contact of friends or family that encouraged them to vote.

NSFW or R-rated South Park: