When Roger West first launched the progressive political blog "News From The Other Side" in May 2010, he could hardly have predicted the impact that his venture would have on the media and political debate. As the New Media emerged as a counterbalance to established media sources, Roger wrote his copious blogs about national politics, the tea party movement, mid-term elections, and the failings of the radical right to the vanguard of the New Media movement. Roger West's efforts as a leading blogger have tremendous reach. NFTOS has led the effort to bring accountability to mainstream media sources such as FOX NEWS, Breitbart's "Big Journalism.
Roger's breadth of experience, engaging style, and cultivation of loyal readership - over 92 million visitors - give him unique insight into the past, present, and future of the New Media and political rhetoric that exists in our society today.
What we are against:
Radical Right Wing Agendas
Incompetent Establishment
Donald J. Trump
Corporate Malfeasence
We are for:
Global and Econmoic Security
Social and Economic Justice
Media Accountability
THE RESISTANCE
Ohio Congresswoman Marcia Fudge has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to review two voting measures making their way through the state legislature that she claims could “suppress the voting rights of African Americans and other minorities.”
The proposed bills (S. 238 and H.B. 269) would reduce the number of absentee-voting days by six, prevent newly registered voters from voting the day they register, and require voters to present valid identification — a driver’s license, a state or military ID card, or a passport — when casting a ballot.
In her letter, Fudge charges that the legislation violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which “prohibits any voting qualification or practice applied by the state which results in the denial or abridgment of the right to vote based on race.” “Recent estimates indicate that over 900,000 eligible voters in Ohio” lack the necessary ID, including as many as “one in four eligible African Americans,” the letter says. Same-day registration and voting “have recently been used at a higher rate by African Americans and lower-income voters.”
“With no indication that voter fraud is a widespread problem in Ohio, this proposal is a thinly veiled attempt to reduce the number of people able to exercise their right to vote,” she writes. “They are attempts to suppress the voting rights of African Americans and other minorities.”
Supporters of the effort argue that limiting early voting would free-up over-stressed election boards “during their busiest time of year” and note that the legislation “allows for free photo IDs for people who can’t afford to purchase one and who are at or below the federal poverty level.”
“I think we can have a reasonable debate about policy here,” said State Sen. Frank LaRose (R), the sponsor of the early voting change. “To invoke the specter of a racial matter, I think, takes it too far. It is kind of shameful to do that. What we are talking about is a very modest reduction in the number of early voting days that still leaves Ohio as a leader in the nation, by far, for early voting.”
On Saturday, The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s editorial board came out against the limitation, writing that “absent compelling evidence of election fraud…there is no good, pro-voter reason to end the practice.” It also condemned a separate measure that would change absentee ballot rules.
During the 2012 presidential election, Ohio Secretary of State Jon "we have a problem" Husted attempted to limit early voting to weekdays, and he defied a court order requiring early voting hours to be restored — although he eventually backed down.
Why should Ohio be any different than Pennsylvania, or any other state having been taken over by the American Taliban? When at all costs, when you can't win an election, cheat at all costs!
At the end of the day I don't think anyone is worried about people voting multiple times - teabaggers are just worried about Democrats being allowed to vote once.
Bill Maher's New Rules ended last night by scorching the Supreme Court and the American Taliban for their “naive” thoughts on racism and campaign finance and how America’s way past the point of not being corrupted on those two issues.
Maher first took on the ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act, mocked the idea that “racism had been cured” and that “other than shopping at Barney’s… there was no evidence anymore that black people needed special protections.”
And as for John Roberts‘ astonishment that people think the South is more racist than the North, Maher cited slavery, the KKK, and the fact that “Paula Deen lives there.”
Maher also addressed the Citizens United ruling and the assumption that more money in politics doesn't lead to corruption, “which is true except for always.” He found it troubling how “naive” conservatives appear to be about America.
“That is the problem with today’s conservatives. They are too sentimental about how wonderful America is. Racism? That’s over. Moneyed interests? They couldn't corrupt us if they tried!”
And when the Supreme Court gave more power to the people, they reacted with the line from Animal House: “You fucked up, you shouldn't have trusted us!”
With two months until Virginians decide which of two polar opposites — Terry McAuliffe and Ken Cuccinelli — will be their next governor, tens of thousands of voters could be removed from the rolls in a statewide purge.
Approximately 57,000 Virginians have been flagged as being registered in another state, and counties are removing some from the voter rolls without any notice or opportunity to rebut the claim. Before conservatives lose their marbles that this is clear and irrefutable evidence of voter fraud, it’s worthwhile to consider how voter registration works. Each state maintains its own roll rather than a nationwide system. When Joe America, who had been registered in Richmond, moves to Philadelphia and registers there, he’s not required to cancel his Virginia registration before enrolling in Pennsylvania. The process for removing registrations of people who have moved elsewhere varies from state to state, but generally involves periodic comparisons of lists between states to flag and remove people like Joe America who have moved elsewhere.
Clearly, given the decentralized 50-voter-roll system we currently have, there’s a need for the lists to be periodically cleaned up. But there are a number of issues that make Virginia’s current purge of up to 57,000 voters problematic.
First and foremost, as multiple county registrars explained, voters whose registrations are being cancelled aren't being given any advance notice. Rather than being mailed a warning letter asking if they still live in Virginia, they are being sent notices that their registration has been cancelled effective immediately. If the cancellation is in error, the letter says to contact the registrar and get it worked out. It’s not measure twice, cut once. It’s cut first and be ready with tape for the mistakes.
Second, according to at least one voter’s experience, the list contains some serious errors. One Accomack County voter, writing on the blog Blue Virginia under the pseudonym rodentrancher, detailed her experience having her registration wrongly cancelled. Though she’d lived and registered in South Carolina in 2009, she had moved to Virginia last year and re-registered there. Even so, her file was flagged as a duplicate and she received a letter last week informing her that her registration was cancelled. If she hadn't seen the letter, or had the foresight to call the county registrar who sent her a new registration form, she would have been effectively disenfranchised from the November election.
The list of 57,000 duplicate registrations was given by the state Board of Elections to county registrars in August. “We were told by the state board that this is a legitimate list and we should process them accordingly,” Patricia White, General Registrar of Accomack County, said. Still, as Don Palmer, Secretary of the Virginia Board of Elections, emailed, “the final decision is up to each of the 133 local registrars based on voter history and activity.” Palmer was appointed by Transvaginal Bob McDonnell in 2011.
Some county registrars are going over the list with a fine-tooth comb in an effort to prevent errors. “We’re not taking the list at face value,” Gary Scott, Deputy Registrar of Fairfax County.
Finally, the current purge is being conducted exceedingly close to the upcoming election. The deadline to register in Virginia is October 14, less than six weeks away. That leaves little room for error. A purge in March gives voters, campaigns, and the state eight months to ensure that people who were improperly unregistered are given their Virginia voting rights back. When asked why the Board of Elections didn’t conduct this purge at an earlier time, Palmer wrote that August “was the first opportunity” they had after reviewing “data from other states and insertion of primary election voter history.”
In the 2009 election, approximately two million Virginians cast a ballot. If all 57,000 registrations that were flagged are ultimately cancelled, that would represent approximately three percent of all votes, a potentially decisive factor in a close election.
Voting has consequences, far beyond the eight years of a President. Supreme Court justices can reside for eons - the current sitting Supreme beings have proven that law has little relevance to their decisions made - where political ideology takes the forefront rather than case law. Often the case, historically speaking, the Supreme Court is well behind the times.
If Supreme Courts over time are arranged like boxes of chocolates, the Roberts Court defies the myth that you never know what you’re going to get.
The most basic requirement of any Supreme Court decision involving the application of the Constitution is to explain how the Constitution's text and meaning command the result the Court reaches. By that standard, Shelby County v. Holder is a colossal failure. In the majority opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court struck down a core provision of the Voting Rights Act – a statute that has ensured protection of the right to vote for millions of Americans – without ever explaining what provision of the Constitution rendered this iconic, landmark statute unconstitutional.
In an interview with the New York Times’ Adam Liptak, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg offered a grim assessment of the Court where she so often finds herself leading a four justice dissent — the Roberts Court is “one of the most activist courts in history.”
As an historic matter, this is a pretty staggering claim. The Supreme Court in 1905 handed down a decision called Lochner v. New York that is now widely taught in American law schools as an example of how judges should never, ever behave. Lochner treated any law improving workplace conditions or helping workers to obtain an adequate wage as constitutionally suspect. And Lochner was hardly an anomalous moment in the Court’s history.
Thirteen years after Lochner the Supreme Court struck down federal child labor laws in a decision that is also widely taught as an example of inexcusable judicial activism. In 1895, the Supreme Court rendered the country virtually powerless against monopolies and other powerful combinations of corporate power, and then it held an income tax on the wealthiest Americans unconstitutional just a few months later. The Supreme Court has, with rare exception, been a largely malign force in American history.
There is, however, one important way in which the Roberts Court is distinguishable from the Courts that decided cases such as Lochner. Laws such as the Sherman Antitrust Act and the first federal ban on child labor arose as lawmakers with struggling with many of the negative side effects of the Industrial Revolution. The birth of the railroad and the dawn of mass production massively improved the American standard of living, but they also enabled monopolists to thrive and they resulted in mass exploitation of the working class. The Supreme Court in this era did not so much tear down established rights as it stood for a status quo that favored capital over labor and the rich over the rest of the nation.
The Roberts Court, by contrast, has actively rolled back existing laws protecting workers, women and people of color. The Nineteenth Century Supreme Court blocked America’s first meaningful efforts at racial equality, but the Roberts Court stole from minority voters rights that they had enjoyed for decades. The Lochner Court strangled basic protections for workers in their crib, but the Roberts Court takes fully matured protections for workers and carves them up a piece at a time. And, while Lochner Era courts acted out in the open, undermining human rights in published opinions. the Roberts Court pushes an alternative, corporate-run arbitration system that operates largely in secret.
None of this is to say that the world we live in now is worse than the world our great-grandparents lived in under the Lochner Court — if the Roberts Court’s goal is to bring us back to this era, they are currently shy at least one vote. Nevertheless, the Roberts Court is unusually willing to take from ordinary Americans rights they have enjoyed for a very long time. The Supreme Court has a long history of standing athwart history yelling stop. This Supreme Court, however, wants to shift history into reverse.
Conservatives like to make fun of decisions that abandon the Constitution in favor of penumbras and emanations, but that is all Chief Justice Roberts offers in the majority of his rulings.
With Roberts over seeing the Supreme Beings, with Scalia and the inept pubic hair conspirator Clearance Thomas on the bench, be scared, be very very scared!
Groundswell Group Stoked Scandals with Help From GOP
When David Corn broke the Groundswell story last week, the general reaction among the politerati was a shrug and a giggle. Even influential NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen called it "no big deal."
"WHO ME"
But audio of a May Groundswell meeting obtained by C&L from a source who wishes to remain anonymous reveals Groundswellers met with top Congressional leaders to lobby for a select committee endowed with subpoena power to investigate the White House. Lobbying may be too mild a term, since they really are plotting with those same leaders to invent very real scandals with very real investigations in order to sink the country into a mire of inaction and sabotage the remaining years of President Obama's term.
C&L AUDIO
Catherine Engelbrecht "facilitated" the May 8th Groundswell meeting. Engelbrecht is the president and founder of True the Vote, a Texas group dedicated to challenging voting rights among the poor, students, and minorities. In addition to their regular work attacking sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act via lawsuits, Engelbrecht was the media go-to person for the media on the phony IRS scandal. That story broke on May 9th, after the Benghazi hearings had more or less fizzled out the previous day.
There was wave after wave of headlines about these so-called scandals. Some people wrote about what an awful week the White House had. It wasn't coincidence. It was orchestrated and planned by this group of people, who had the will and the power to secure the participation of people like Darrell Issa, John Boehner and more.
True the Vote led the charge to sue the IRS and serve the highest-profile plaintiff among the "aggrieved" groups. Yet this audio recording shows their president "facilitating" a clearly partisan, right-wing activist group meeting of people who claim to be fighting a "30-front war." No big deal? When is the last time anyone you know could ring up the Speaker of the House and the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee and take a face-to-face meeting in the wee hours of the evening with approval from the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice?
In the first 20 minutes of the meeting, a lot of ground was covered. The audio of the final hour or so is available, but the quality is not clear enough at this time to publish it. However, they helpfully provided handouts at the meeting relating to their voter suppression efforts discussed later on. Here are some highlights from the audio and then parts that came later.
Benghazi "Scandal"
At 3:45, Jerry Boykin advises the group of the meetings he and Frank Gaffney had with Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Darrell Issa concerning Benghazi on the evening of May 7th about how the Benghazi investigation is progressing. This was the night before the last Congressional Oversight Committee hearing was held on Benghazi, where the so-called whistleblowers were to testify.
In the late-night meeting with Gaffney and Boykin, Boehner advised both that they needed to allow the regular order of committee meetings to play out before he would push for a select committee. Issa told him the same thing. Boykin and Gaffney reported this to the group, along with a promise that there "would be answers." Both reiterated that they and former Rep. Allen West were very concerned about the lack of a military response and assured the group that "what we'll find today is that Hillary Clinton made some egregious decisions and the president was basically absent from his post and did not make the decisions that as the Commander-in-Chief he should have been making...because he was focused on some other things."
They further assured the group that they weren't backing away from their demands, but instead they "kind of have a pledge from...Issa and the Speaker."
Future Debt Ceiling Battles
Just past the Benghazi discussion, the group received a report about upcoming debt ceiling negotiations, where they are advised that a survey has gone out to conservative lawmakers to see "what they're looking for in exchange for their votes raising the debt ceiling."
Of course, you'd never know from the press they get that there was any intention of raising the debt ceiling at all. Now we all can see that they will in fact do it reluctantly, as Shonda Weery reports when she advises that it's "not a vote they'll want to give without getting back something in return." Let the horse-trading begin.
Voting Rights
During the meeting, True the Vote made a presentation (document below) about their plan to attack groups who are actively working to protect voting rights around the country, particularly after the Supreme Court gutted most of the protections. Code-named "Hydra", True the Vote argues that the left is undermining voting rights, and must be stopped, by hook or by crook.
Let's review that timeline.
On May 8, 2013, True the Vote is a facilitator and presenter at a meeting where Ginni Thomas and others are key players. TTV presents their plan to attack "the left" for daring to register voters. They're committed to stopping them from challenging any and all efforts to disenfranchise voters. Or as they describe it, securing the vote. Others might call it democracy corrupted.
On May 9, 2013 the IRS "scandal" breaks after Lois Lerner plants a question in a conference Q&A about IRS "targeting."
On May 21, 2013, True the Vote, represented by ActRight Legal Foundation, sues the IRS for not granting their tax-exempt status and targeting them for their beliefs. ActRight Legal Foundation uses Cleta Mitchell as one of their consulting attorneys. Mitchell is a well-known and very high profile litigator on behalf of conservative causes. There are very few conservative nonprofits that don't have Mitchell's fingerprints all over them.
True the Vote goes all over conservative media with their tale of woe. Their message: The IRS was used as a tool by the liberal president to target conservatives and suppress their free speech rights. Until True the Vote was a victim of the terrible IRS, they were under Congressional investigation for voter suppression, by the way.
In fact, the IRS had ample reason to believe they were a partisan, political group who was not simply acting on behalf of voters everywhere. But that did not stop Engelbrecht from pushing forward with her anti-voter initiatives while simultaneously leading the charge against the IRS.
But wait, there's more. True the Vote wrote a letter in opposition to the nomination of Thomas Perez for Secretary of Labor, complaining that "Mr. Perez, through political appointment and action, has made clear his intent to ignore key functions in federal election law – namely Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA)."
In TTV's document entitled "Hydra with Footnotes", the battle lines are drawn with very partisan rulers. After making their case that the "Organized Left is preparing a massive campaign to promote 'Universal Registration' and threatening to block citizen observers from the polls," TTV vows to target those groups however they can and defeat the terrible lefty Hydra by "attack[ing] the source of its strengths", which they view as the usual right-wing targets: unions, the NAACP, Common Cause, Project Vote, Demos, Center for American Progress, The Nation Foundation, and more.
While this flurry of organizing and activism is happening, TTV is front and center in the press with loud, strident claims that the IRS "targeted" them.
Another active member of Groundswell, J. Christian Adams, contributes content to the True the Vote site on issues such as whether any fix to the Voting Rights Act is possible after it was gutted by the Supreme Court in June. Adams serves as counsel to the Election Law Center, yet another right-wing effort to suppress the vote.
The efforts of this group should not be marginalized, given that what they are saying is repeated in the halls of the House and the Senate on a daily basis. It isn't just right-wing crazy people being crazy. These are activists with contacts in high places who are using those contacts to strip people of their rights, to invent scandals to undermine the President at every turn, and to marginalize Hillary Clinton if she should choose to run in 2016. Those are just a few of their goals. They have power and they're not afraid to use it.
Group members are the water-carriers and action arm of the billionaires' tea party. Listen to the full 20 minutes of that audio, or read the transcript here to see just how destructive they intend to be.
This is the first of a two-part series. Tomorrow, I'll look more closely at Ginni Thomas' involvement to see whether Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas engaged in unethical conduct or colluded with his wife and her associates.
True The Vote's Hydra document presented at the meeting:
This story is very revealing about the lengths that the American Taliban will go to - to undermine the president. Make no mistake his is planning for a coup, it is directly organizing activities, not to win an election, but to destabilize a sitting government - and it is being led by Christian deconstructionists, radical teabaggers, and the talibangelicals.
How many different kinds of disgusting do you have to be to conduct this kind of business?
This is war. And you don't win war by challenging the way your enemy fights in court. You win it by fighting the same way. Instead of watching the poll watchers, progressive groups need to be poll watchers and challenge the voting rights of suspect individuals. Like, oh, old white men. What's needed is several weeks' worth of right-wing outrage ginned up by television footage of dark-skinned people challenging the right to vote of traditionally Republican voters -- especially in heavily Republican precincts. Imagine the gloriousness of it all: New Black Panther Party poll watchers demanding old white Teabaggers provide proof of their right to vote -- and all in accordance with the very laws. True The Vote is so desperate to implement.
BREAKING: SCOTUS FINDS DOMA UNCONSTITUTIONAL: We will cover this story tomorrow as there is too much information to read prior to publishing. LBGT community, welcome to being treated as humans today, Congratulations!
Twenty four hours removed, and it's a great day for bigots, courtesy of SCOTUS!
The Supreme beings [Court], they continue to destroy its own legitimacy as it descends further into politically biased decision making. This VRA [voting rights act] decision ranks amongst the shittiest this land has ever experienced- with Dred Scott, Citizens United, and Bush v Gore - these decisions are among the most morally bankrupt and non-constitutionally based political decisions in the courts history! Political posturing of Supreme Beings has to stop!
SCOTUS has decided to throw the ball back to congress, to let them update the laws for voter rights. Seriously? The American Taliban in the House couldn't even figure out how to get together and vote through the traditionally bipartisan farm bill this year. This wasn't the first time either; they couldn't pass it last year as well. The GOP lead House of Representatives are an abysmal failure, [10 % approval rating] and it appears that the Supreme Court isn't much better.
This decision to appraise that Section 4 and 5 of the VRA is unconstitutional - is a horrible one, regardless of whether they left Congress enough slack to fix the section and bring it back in line with the Constitution. It’s a slap in the face to Martin Luther King Jr, Medgar Evers and to every African American in this country.
Anyone who was awake last year and saw the American Taliban in state legislatures all over the country try to enact new laws that would make it harder for people to vote — people who would demographically speaking be more likely to vote Democratic. It’s a slap in the face to anyone living in those districts that were under the scrutiny of the Federal Election Committee under Section 4 and 5.
SCOTUS found a way yesterday to punt on the decision — like they did with affirmative action. It was both cowardly and a horrendous example of how to turn a blind eye - to the overwhelming evidence that the American Taliban is getting desperate to win elections, and are resorting to tactics we know are unconstitutional, this decision is just ludicrous!
The bottom line is simple, whether they knew they were doing it or not - sending Section 4 and 5 back to Congress for additional work - these five radical conservative Supreme Court Justices found the most convenient and politically benign way possible to get a crucial piece of legislation that kept the American Taliban's shenanigans from disenfranchising voters out of the way.
Fifty years of work reversed, and now the government has been stripped of its power to protect their voice from racially-charged discrimination.
Yesterday the Supreme Beings weakened a country.
If you find someone applauding the VRA decision today, more than likely they are a racist!
