August 29, 2013

Civil Rights Group Seeks Changes in Indiana Election Law

GOP rejects Democrat's accusation of effort to suppress minority votes
By Eric Berman
8/29/2013

... Representative Cherrish Pryor (D-Indianapolis) complains some Marion County precincts changed polling place locations last year with no notice or explanation, often in minority neighborhoods. She charges there's no explanation other than a deliberate effort to hold down minority turnout. Pryor wants legislators to lock in polling places two months before Election Day, and require local governments to specify the reason for making a change ...

The Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law says it fielded 800 election complaints from Hoosiers last year. The civil rights group classifies about 100 of the complaints as intimidation, though its examples involve disinformation rather than strongarm tactics -- for instance, a robocall falsely telling people they could vote by phone ...

And Pryor, a Democrat, questions Republicans' motives in limiting the availability of early voting in Marion County. State law requires unanimous approval from bipartisan county election boards to offer early voting anywhere other than the county clerk's office. Pryor says Republicans embraced early voting until President Obama successfully mobilized thousands of early voters en route to carrying Indiana in the 2008 election ...

http://www.wibc.com/news/story.aspx?ID=2032993

August 29, 2013

Austin Could Sue Texas Over Voter ID Law

Updated: Wednesday, August 28 2013, 08:51 PM CDT

Austin leaders are close to getting into a fight with the State of Texas over the Voter Identification Law.

Councilman Bill Spelman is sponsoring a resolution to direct the City Manager to pursue joining a lawsuit or filing separate legal action.

Early elections begin October 21 and the fear is the voter ID law could cause suppression at the polls.

"Voter ID laws are going to make it much more difficult for poor folks, for black folks and brown folks," said Spelman ...

http://www.keyetv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/austin-could-sue-texas-over-voter-id-law-12067.shtml

August 29, 2013

Hagan Asks US Attorney General To Examine NC's Voter ID Law

5:15 pm
Wed August 28, 2013
By Frank Stasio, Laura Lee and Gurnal Scott

U.S. Senator Kay Hagan says she's asked the nation's Attorney General to look into the state's new Voter ID law. The North Carolina Democrat says she wanted Eric Holder to examine the legislation signed this month by Republican Governor Pat McCrory. Hagan says the law enacts restrictions that could suppress voter turnout among minorities, as well as younger and older voters. Supporters say it's intended to prevent fraud at the polls. Hagan told WUNC's Frank Stasio those instances barely exist.

"The North Carolina Board of Elections has found that voter impersonation that would be prevented by the photo ID has occurred two times in the last ten years," Hagan says. "Two times in the last ten years. And I really think that voter fraud in that perspective is just a red herring" ...

http://wunc.org/post/hagan-asks-us-attorney-general-examine-ncs-voter-id-law

August 29, 2013

(Texas) Voter ID law a headache for officials

By Gloria Padilla : August 28, 2013

... A preliminary comparison of the 13.8 million names on the state's voter registration rolls against Texas Department of Public Safety records resulted in a match of only 7 million of those names ...

If a voting official deems the names “substantially similar” a voter is off the hook, sort of. He or she will still be required to sign an affidavit stating he/she is the person named in the two documents. However, if the voting official cannot readily make a connection between names, the voter will have to cast a provisional ballot, which takes longer to fill out and process.

The state had recommended local election administrators send out letters to voters advising them their voter cards and IDs need to match, but the postage cost has made that prohibitive. With about 890,000 registered voters in Bexar County, that mailout would have cost more than $400,000 ...

http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/columnists/gloria_padilla/article/Voter-ID-law-a-headache-for-officials-4768996.php

August 24, 2013

Well, let's look it over carefully. Assange's Wikileaks party was founded with

a reasonably democratic structure involving a governing council, but when the views of Assange and his father Shipton did not prevail regarding preferences, Assange sent an email to the governing council indicating he thought he should have veto power over the council's preference decisions. Assange's father meanwhile contacted several of the council members to propose going around the council. At about the same time, some Greens were informed that, contrary to the council's decision, Wikileaks preferences would not go to the Greens, though the council seems not to have been informed. The council only learned of the results when the preferences were posted -- and differed from those the council had chosen. Efforts to convene an emergency meeting of the council were unsuccesful. At this point there was a ruckus: a number of party members resigned, including Cannold, who would have filled Assange's seat if he had been elected and unable to serve: she cited lack of transparency and problems with democratic process in the party. The official party explanation was that the wrong preferences had somehow been submitted through administrative error, but Cannold doubted this, and at least one non-resigning candidate meanwhile announced that the actual preferences had been chosen to punish the Greens. When the "administrative error" explanation failed, the party tried promising to review the matter after the election, it being too late now to change the preferences with the election commission

The unhappiness results in part from the fact that some parties preferenced above the Greens are marginal parties of rightwing extremists: Australia First, for example, is led by a neo-Nazi who at the height of the anti-apartheid movement attempted to kill an ANC representative in Australia. The Greens feel betrayed because one of the Green candidates give low preference was one of Wikileaks main Australian supporters, in response to which the Wikileaks party has retorted that it is not "a front for the Greens" and that is has both leftwing and rightwing goals

August 23, 2013

shtiler shtiler

August 23, 2013

Zog Nit Keyn Mol

Zog nit keyn mol az du geyst dem letsten veg
Khotsh himlen blayene farsthtelen bloye teg
Kumen vet nokh undzer oysgebenkte sha'ah
S'vet a poyk ton undzer trot mir zaynen do! ...

Never say that you are walking the final road
Though leaden skies obscure blue days
The hour we have been longing for will still come
Our steps will drum – we are here! ...

August 22, 2013

Wikileaks Party Lurches .. Right: Preferences Fascists, Mens-righters and Gun-lovers above .. Greens

August 18, 2013 · by davidjackmanson

Just two days after Wikileaks Party Senate candidate for Victoria, Julian Assange, raised eyebrows by praising US anti-abortion politicians Ron Paul and Senator Rand Paul, the Wikileaks Party revealed a new attempt to appeal to the far Right. In official election tickets lodged with the Australian Electoral Commission, they have said they want the fascist Australia First Party, the pro-shooting-in-National-Parks Shooters and Fishers Party , and the “mens rights activist” Non-Custodial Parents Party to win a seat instead of the Australian Greens. In New South Wales, if you take the easy option and just tick the Wikileaks Party box in the Senate, and if they don’t win, your vote will go to those three right-wing parties before it goes to the Greens ...

The Wikileaks Party has given no more details about this supposed error. However rumours about this preferencing arrangement have been circulating since at least Sunday August 11, when Greens activist and councillor Max Phillips says he was told by a Wikileaks Party member at the Marrickville Markets that the Right-wing preferences were going to happen “because the Greens are our competition” ...

This seems certain to prevent the Wikileaks Party from winning a seat. While their preferences in Victoria aren’t offensive to potential left-wing supporters, that detail is likely to not matter to people angry about the NSW decision, and it’s Victoria where Assange is running ...

Assange was never likely to win a seat anyway, even if the Wikileaks Party hadn’t angered people today with their preferences. But now their chance of getting anyone who thinks of themselves as Left to co-operate with their organisation long term is zero. (If Assange is serious about seeing the libertarian right-wing as the wave of the future, perhaps they don’t care). But where are they going to get volunteers to come to long, boring meetings on winter nights? ...

http://ausvotes2013.com/2013/08/18/the-wikileaks-party-lurches-to-the-right-preferences-fascists-mens-righters-and-gun-lovers-above-the-greens/

August 19, 2013

Meet the Journalist Spreading Michael Hastings Conspiracy Theories

"Whether it turns out to be true or not, that's a whole other issue," says Kim Dvorak.
—By Gavin Aronsen
Fri Aug. 16, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

... freelance blogger Kimberly Dvorak ... is a "National Homeland Security Correspondent" for Examiner.com, a blog network owned by Republican billionaire Philip Anschutz that has minimal editorial oversight ...

Last month, for example, the Independent, a major British newspaper, picked up Dvorak's report claiming that Hastings' body "was cremated and it wasn't the request of the family…in fact, the family wanted Michael's body to go home." But on Tuesday, veteran journalist Russ Baker dispelled the myth on his news site WhoWhatWhy by talking to a family member who confirmed that the cremation was done at the family's request. Dvorak .. still hints at a cover-up, calling the cremation a "macabre twist."

Dvorak's other theories are just as questionable. She claimed on air that the engine of Hastings' Mercedes C250 coupe had been found behind the crash site, which would have been impossible with the forward velocity of an ordinary accident. The engine was found in front of the crash site. Her suggestion that a grainy video of the crash showed evidence of a "pre-explosion" sabotage has been dismissed by car experts ... She's written credulously about the theory that President Barack Obama may not have been born in the United States ...

Dvorak ... says she's enlisted the help of Judicial Watch, a conservative legal watchdog group funded by billionaire media mogul Richard Mellon Scaife ...

... She ... says she remains suspicious that Hastings may have "faked his death" or been assassinated. "Whether it turns out to be true or not, that's a whole other issue," she adds ...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/michael-hastings-conspiracy-theories-kim-dvorak

August 16, 2013

Paint her red

come with us you workingmen and join the rebel band
come you discontented ones and give a helping hand
we march against the parasite to drive him from the land
with one big industrial union ...

in factory and field and mine we gather in our might
we're on the job
we know the way to win the hardest fight
and the beacon that shall guide us out of darkness into light
shall be one big industrial union ...

we hate this rotten system more than any mortals do
our aim is not to patch it up but to build it all anew
and whatever type of government we'll have when we are through
there'll be one big industrial union ...