Tag Archives: Suffrage

December 5, 2012 · 12:05 AM

Nugent: Budget deal should suspend welfare recipients’ voting rights

Ted Nugent yells at CBS News

The crazy ain’t going nowhere in the GOP any time soon.  Actually it looks like they are there to stay…

The Raw Story

Conservative rocker Ted Nugent is urging the Republican Party to “stop the insanity” and insist that voting rights be suspended for welfare recipients as a part of a larger budget deal.

In his Monday Washington Times column, Nugent ranted that talk about raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans proved that Washington was a “financial insane asylum.”

“What we need is a wholesale, top-to-bottom assessment of the federal government, and then we need to slash and burn all Fedzilla departments, agencies and offices that are not constitutionally required or deemed vital,” he wrote. “This should be fundamental before any deals are cut regarding new taxes.”

“The three sacred entitlement cows in the room that no politician wants to poke are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  A blinding statement of the obvious is that we are never going to get our financial house in order until these sacred entitlement cows are not only poked, but slaughtered.”

According to Nugent, a budget deal should “spread the pain around” and raise taxes on Americans who currently don’t make enough income to pay a federal income tax.

“Let’s also stop the insanity by suspending the right to vote of any American who is on welfare,” he added. “Once they get off welfare and are self-sustaining, they get their right to vote restored. No American on welfare should have the right to vote for tax increases on those Americans who are working and paying taxes to support them. That’s insane.”

And, of course, any good budget deal would have to mandate that photo identification was required to vote nationwide, Nugent said.

“It shouldn’t take a Motown guitar slayer to come up with these common-sense bargaining chips before taxes are raised on the producers, which will further choke the economy,” the rocker concluded. “How about it, GOP?”

Following President Barack Obama’s re-election last month, Nugent opined that welfare recipients were “gluttonous, soulless pigs who feast on whatever Fedzilla provides.”

“And you thought ‘Planet of the Apes’ was a movie,” he wrote. “Too many Americans have become entitlement chumps who have been convinced by Democrats and other liberal scammers that they are entitled to the sweat and hard work of other Americans. Free cellphones aren’t free. Food stamps have become vote-getting extortion vouchers.”

In 2009, FactCheck.org debunked the myth that the Obama administration started a program which provides free cell phones to low-income Americans.

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September 30, 2012 · 10:25 AM

Check Out Your Voter Registration Status

Once again, Mario Piperni’s website proves why it’s a must read site.

Mario Piperni

I have heard so much stuff about voter suppression and some of the difficulties being reported in regard to all the new Voter ID Laws being passed in a lot of states that I thought it might be helpful to share an article I found on the Internet about Voting Rights.

The article I found is reportedly published by The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and reportedly shows voting rights from state to state.

I tried the site out and I discovered a map where all the states are listed and I discovered that when I click on my particular state, the voter information comes up where I can read it and kind of interact with it.  I found out by clicking on the appropriate thing that my own voter registration shows as being fine and I should be good to go.

There is a note on the page that says checking registrations is important this year because there have been so many reported changes in the rules in various states.

From what I have been reading and hearing lately, I decided early on that it is probably not all that cool to just go ahead and assume that everything is alright with my personal registration because if the rules have changed, there might be something that I have to do to get current – – – so I did what I thought was the right thing to do to make sure I can vote without any hassle – – – I checked it out.

I didn’t want to encounter any unpleasant surprises when it comes time for me to cast my vote this year.

It seems, from all that I have been seeing and hearing during this election cycle, that there is a lot of concern all around the country about issues surrounding the possibilities of one kind of voter fraud or another and about the new Voted ID laws – – – it seems to have gotten pretty hot out there about voters, voting and voting rights this time around.

So, having a desire to be a good little political blogger, I thought it would be nice to share this article for anyone who might be interested. Voting rights for your specific state can be found at Let Me Vote and your voter registration status can be determined at:  Can I Vote.

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July 10, 2012 · 8:56 AM

Limbaugh Wants to Extend Vote Suppression to Women

Is it me or is our country rapidly going to hell in a hand-basket at the hands of Republicans?

The Nation

It did not generate the outrage that his offensive statements often do, probably just because it happened the day before July 4, but last Tuesday Rush Limbaugh made an inadvertently revealing statement. “When women got the right to vote is when it all went downhill because that’s when votes started being cast with emotion and maternal instincts that government ought to reflect,” said Limbaugh.

Limbaugh was not summarizing some serious new political science research. He was merely making assertions based on his own sexist stereotypes and the fact that women vote more Democratic than men.

The notion that women are less capable of controlling their biological weaknesses for the good of their country is often heard from right-wing men. Newt Gingrich, who never served in the military, once said that women could not serve in combat because they would “get infections,” from living in ditches.

Limbaugh’s comment is also a reflection of Republican attitudes toward voting, and why they are so eager to trample voting rights. For another example, recall that Ann Coulter told the New York Observer in 2007, “If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine.”

Limbaugh’s defense is that he was joking. But you never hear liberals joke that the world would be better if men or white people were not allowed to vote.

Republicans like Coulter and Limbaugh believe that groups who vote Democratic shouldn’t have the right to vote. The available mechanisms they are using, such as voter ID laws, target Democratic-leaning groups such as African-Americans, young people, city dwellers and poor people. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, “More than 758,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania do not have photo identification cards from the state Transportation Department, putting their voting rights at risk in the November election.” That’s 9.2 percent of Pennsylvania’s 8.2 million voters.

If there were a mechanism for disenfranchising women, the GOP would be pushing it.

Watch here…

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July 9, 2012 · 12:07 AM

Romney Donor Says ‘Lower Income’ People ‘Don’t Understand What’s Going On’

The “rich” seem to be thoroughly uninformed about “the rest of us” and that includes Mitt Romney…

Think Progress

Today, Mitt Romney is holding a series of fundraisers in the Hamptons, culminating with a huge event at the home of billionaire David Koch. The LA Times in on the scene and reporter Maeve Reston caught up with a donor on her way into one of the events.

The woman, who wouldn’t reveal her name, said the following:

I don’t think the common person is getting it…my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies —everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.

The recommended contribution for the event she was attending was $25,000.

Earlier in the campaign Romney recieved criticism for saying, “I’m not concerned with the very poor.” He later said he misspoke.

Romney’s tax plan would give the richest 0.1% of Americans an average tax cut of $264,000.

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December 3, 2010 · 3:01 AM

Tea Party Nation President Doesn’t Deny He Thinks Restricting Voting To Property Owners Is A ‘Wise Idea’

Sigh…

Think Progress

On Tuesday, ThinkProgress reported that Tea Party Nation president Judson Phillips said on the official Tea Party Nation radio show two weeks ago that he thinks that “it makes a lot of sense” to restrict voting rights only to property owners.

Yesterday, Phillips sent out an e-mail responding to ThinkProgress’ reporting. While insulting progressives who found his idea offensive — saying the “left went nuts,” the left went “spastic” and “into hysteria,” and accusing us of lying about his comments — Phillips reiterated his belief that limiting voting rights to property owners is a “wise idea”:

A couple of weeks ago, on the Tea Party Nation radio show, I was talking with David DeGerolamo of NC Freedom about the Founding Fathers and the original Constitution. During the course of our discussion, I mentioned that the founding fathers limited voting rights to property owners. I commented this was a wise idea.

Apparently, two weeks after the show, some liberal stumbled across it and today, that comment has turned into liberal headlines such as, “Tea Party Nation President says It Makes A Lot of Sense to Restrict Voting to Property Owners” and “Tea Party Leaders Attack Constitution.” Suddenly, this has morphed from a discussion between two tea partiers into articles claiming that I want to change the Constitution to restrict voting to property owners. [...]

Watching the left go into hysteria over this has been nothing short of amusing. Of course, when the left goes spastic over something like this, they either get it wrong, or nine times out of ten, they lie about what was said.

ThinkProgress did not lie about what Phillips said (you can listen to the audio of his comments here). Clearly, he is not backing down from his comments, and this e-mail only further reiterates his belief that it is a “wise idea” to limit voting only to property owners.

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October 29, 2010 · 12:03 AM

Tea Party Stoke Fears About Bogus Voter Fraud

Every year Republicans cry “voter fraud” with not one instance of such fraud being tried and convicted.   The whole idea is to create a straw man while THEY in fact steal the election by “black box” voting machine tampering, pulling minorities off the voting rolls by questioning their eligibility, intimidating minorities by taking pictures of them outside the polling areas and many more tactics.

As Slate Magazine puts it:

No one denies that ginning up fear about systematic voter fraud is an effective political tactic. It appeals to an electorate suspicious of government and helps delegitimize any victories that can be attributed to the overenfranchisement of minorities, i.e. Democratic voters. But no one should believe that voter fraud is a widespread problem.In 2002, the Bush administration made cracking down on voter fraud a top priority. Five years later, the effort had yielded 86 convictions. About 30 convictions were linked to vote-buying schemes in races for small offices like sheriff or judge. Only 26 were attributable to individual voters, and most of those were misunderstandings about voter eligibility, such as felons who voted without knowing it was illegal. The prosecutions provided little evidence of organized fraud.

The Brennan Center for Justice:

Allegations of widespread fraud by malevolent voters are easy to make, but often prove to be inflated or inaccurate. Crying “wolf” when the claims are unsubstantiated distracts attention from real problems that need real solutions. Moreover, these claims are frequently used to justify policies – including restrictive photo identification rules – that could not solve the alleged wrongs, but that could well disenfranchise legitimate voters.

The Brennan Center carefully examines allegations of fraud to get at the truth behind the claims.

 MSNBC discusses the issue: 

 

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