Category Archives: Republicans

US 2012: Tougher laws to curb voter fraud (VIDEO)

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Millions of Americans may not be able to vote in the 2012 elections because some states are introducing tough new laws which they say are necessary to curb voter fraud.

These sweeping new laws could disenfranchise millions of voters in 2012 – and it is students, minorities, immigrants and ex-convicts who are disproportionately affected.

A total of 14 states, the majority of which are Republican-controlled, have passed such legislation. The most controversial measure is the new requirement for voters to have a government-issued photo identity document (ID). Others include restrictions to early voting and imposing barriers to registration.

According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 25 per cent of African Americans and 16 per cent of Latinos do not have a photo ID.

Hundreds of thousands of students may also be denied the right to vote. In the state of Wisonsin, student IDs are accepted if they include current address, birth date, a signature and have a two-year expiration date. But no college in the state currently meets those requirements.

Former convicts are denied the right to vote in some states. In Florida alone, nearly a 100,000 of those who have served time are disenfranchised.

So, what is behind the effort to change voting requirements? Are voting restrictions justified, or are they undemocratic?

Inside Story US 2012, discusses with guests: Hilary Shelton, the director of the Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the oldest civil rights organisation in the US; Simon Rosenberg, the president of New Democrat Network, a progressive think tank based in Washington DC; and Cherylyn Harley LeBon, a former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee who had also worked in the Bush administration.

Watch video here . . . 

Robert Reich: The Great Republican Crackup: How Angry, White, Southern Men Took Over the GOP and Made Our Government Into a War Zone

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. . . today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority – predominantly Southern, and mainly rural – that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in order to get its way.

. . . This isn’t to say all Tea Partiers are white, Southern or rural Republicans – only that these characteristics define the epicenter of Tea Party Land.

America has had a long history of white Southern radicals who will stop at nothing to get their way – seceding from the Union in 1861, refusing to obey Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, shutting the government in 1995, and risking the full faith and credit of the United States in 2010.

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The decline of labour unions in the US (VIDEO)

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Labour unions are under fire across the US, but do they have enough vitality to fight back?

For decades, labour unions in the US have been on the decline. While they are widely credited with boosting safety standards and worker pay, many have received blame for wanting too much in times of a struggling economy.

Unemployment is at nine per cent and people are clamouring for jobs, unionised or not. And their greatest political ally, the Democratic party, has taken its support for granted, weakening its pull on the strings of power in Washington, DC.

A new battle has emerged in 2011 as Republican governors have taken on public sector unions, in some cases stripping them of rights that have been in place for 50 years. It is part of a trend that is happening in key swing states and may weaken democratic voting strength in next year’s presidential election.

But organised labour has fought back hard. In Wisconsin, unions occupied the state capitol as 100,000 protesters took to the streets. In Ohio, voters overturned a law that was intended to greatly reduce the right that unions have in that state to bargain collectively.

Now as Occupy Wall Street galvanises Americans to take action against financial institutions and big corporations, labour unions have a new ally. But can organised labour harness the anger that everyday Americans are emitting or will this opportunity pass it by? Do labour unions still have the strength to organise or has their power waned to the point that they will no longer be a major player in American politics?

Watch video here . . .

Paul Krugman: Politifact, R.I.P.

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[T]he people at Politifact are terrified of being considered partisan if they acknowledge the clear fact that there’s a lot more lying on one side of the political divide than on the other. So they’ve bent over backwards to appear “balanced” — and in the process made themselves useless and irrelevant.

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New Statesman Preview: “The tyranny of the discontinuous mind” by Richard Dawkins

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In “The tyranny of the discontinuous mind”, Dawkins wonders why we cling to absolutes of yes and no, black and white, rich and poor; pretending not to see the millions of grey areas in life. These absolutes, he argues, distort reality:

Dawkins goes on to consider a variety of these absolutes — where a blindness to intermediates may constrict or condemn us — beginning with the arguments proposed by anti-abortionists:

There are those who cannot distinguish a 16-cell embryo from a baby. They call abortion murder and feel righteously justified in committing real murder against a doctor – a thinking, feeling, sentient adult, with a loving family to mourn him . . .

It is amusing to tease such absolutists by confronting them with a pair of identical twins (they split after fertilisation, of course) and asking which twin got the soul, which twin is the non-person, the zombie. A puerile taunt? Maybe. But it hits home because the belief that it destroys is puerile, and ignorant.

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Posted by New Statesman – 19 December 2011 17:47

Killing Us Sweetly: Conservatives’ role in the growing burden of American obesity

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America’s anti-obesity plan: Just say no

Meanwhile, in the United States, obesity has become like global warming: Actual evidence has little relevance in political debates, because what’s at stake is ideology. The anti-tax and anti-regulation fervor of America’s conservative movement makes taxing and regulating unhealthy food all but impossible here. But the issue goes deeper than that.

It turns out that the obesity problem is a profound challenge to the fundamental tenet of American conservatism. If progressivism’s most basic belief is that we are in this together–that our fates are interconnected–conservatism cherishes “rugged individualism” above all else. This is why evangelical Christianity and political conservatism are so compatible: Both focus on individual human will.

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