A West Indian friend writes to ask,
This country is becoming more like a 3rd world country. Why aren’t people demanding jobs instead of talking about racism. Sick and tired of hearing about racism. Everything is racism. Find some other excuse rather than racism. If anything is done wrong it’s blame it on racism. People need to stop blaming and stop looking for hand me out. It seems as though some people like to keep stoking the word racism and using the blame game too much. What about Solyndra all the billions that cost tax payers money. That money could have been used to help students pay for their school loans. The unnecessary spending while unemployment is still above 8%.
What’s wrong with a photo ID. With all the corruption that took place in other elections – this is to make sure that nobody cheats. There are many cheaters in this society and they will do anything to cheat. Photo ID is a good thing. Just like a driver’s license. Too much cheating went on in the previous election eg the use of fake ID’s and fake names.
These are valid questions. Here are my answers:
My dear friend, here are a few data points you might like to mull over: news and facts which are suppressed from reaching the mainstream media channels until public knowledge forces some of those channels to speak the truth. The Big Money interests which pay mainstream media’s bills want to keep certain facts from entering the public’s awareness.
The economics of exploitation
To understand why race is spoken about so much in America these days you should probably take a look at Michelle West, Esq’s book The New Jim Crow and my blog post on mortgage redlining. These will give you a sense of how widespread and intentional are the social and economic inequalities that play out in this country along the convenient dividing lines of race. You may be blaming the victims for a practice that was developed by wealthy White Americans. It ensures their continued access to an easily exploitable labor force, as well as the multiple sources of revenue they derive through supplying the schools, prisons and nursing homes that service those same population segments through government contracts. Wealth Whites deliberately chose Latino and Black American people as the most easily exploitable, and they are the people bringing the “race card” into play.
Cheney-Halliburton war profiteering bigger problem than Solyndra
Surely, it’s a pity that Solyndra didn’t work out. Not all fixes are successful. But the $500 million dollars invested in Solyndra is negligible when compared with the $3.7 trillion cost of the two pre-emptive wars Bush tricked the United States into engaging in. Cheney’s war profiteering through Halliburton is now also confirmed fact. The fact that tens of thousands of American lives were sacrificed in order for our country’s top executives from 2000 through 2008 to profit financially, is also established truth. Bush and Cheney swore oaths to protect the lives of the American people, and betrayed our young men instead.
House Democrats say this about Solyndra:
Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento) said although Solyndra did not achieve its goals, other projects funded by the program did. “Not every investment works out, as the private sector well knows” and “one failure is not a valid reason to condemn the entire DOE loan guarantee program,” she said.
Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) called the measure nothing but an attempt by Republicans to “keep the word Solyndra in the news.”
Democrats also pointed out that the bill as drafted would let $76.5 billion in nuclear projects favored by the Republicans go forward. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) called it “one of the greatest political frauds of all time.” LA Times
Republican Congress wants banks to keep milking interest from student loans
It bears mentioning that there was never any chance that our Republican dominated Congress would have voted to allow any government funds to be allocated to help college grads pay off student loan bills. Republicans are political conservatives. Political conservatives wish to conserve the way things are. That means, exploit the many for the benefit of the few (the 99% v. the 1% – which by the way, does not reflect a racial position of any type). One of the mechanisms for carrying out exploitation is the banking system, which is owned and controlled by political conservatives. The banking system essentially gives it owners free money for handling financial transactions for the 99%, which is why Republicans have gone on a rampage against Obama for blocking banks from being able to profit when financially needy students borrow for their educations. It’s also the reason Conservatives have been continuously trying to repeal the student loan reform law since it was enacted.
What’s wrong with the new voter ID law?
Plenty. For example:
… the Voting Rights Act expressly protects people of color from having to incur burdens that white Americans vote freely without. And yet now organizations like NAACP, whose members fought and died for that law, have acquired the new burden of spending time, money, shoe leather, gas and other resources to align people with the new voting rules. indypendent.org
this
Voting experts say that beyond the legal attacks from outside groups, the biggest enemy of struck-down voter laws may be the laws themselves.
“These courts smelled a rat,” says Dan Tokaji, a professor of election law at Ohio State University’s Moritz School of Law. “State legislatures overplayed their hand and got greedy. It was transparent that the real reason for these changes was to make it difficult for some people to vote.”
Civil-rights groups like the Advancement Project have claimed that restrictive laws on voting disproportionately affect minority and low-income voters who don’t have access to photo IDs or typically vote via church drives that take place during early voting periods.
Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UC Irvine and the author of The Voting Wars says “some of these laws are an overreach without good reasons for their enactment—and sometimes run afoul of federal, constitutional or statutory law.” dailybeast.com
this
An analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school found that 11 percent of Americans lack a government-issued photo ID such as a passport, driver’s license, state ID card or military ID. Nine percent of whites don’t have such ID, compared with 25 percent of blacks and 16 percent of Hispanics, the Brennan study said.
“This is not about having ID. This is about having a specific type of ID. You can’t show up with your Sam’s Club card and vote,” said National Urban League President Marc Morial. CBS News
and this
Video showing Mark Turzai bragging, “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania: Done.”
I look forward to learning your thoughts on what I’ve shared, and the thoughts of other friends too . .