Month: October 2013

(Update) The GOP war on voting – women are the next bloc of voters targeted

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I flagged this story yesterday, but now we have a real-life example of a woman being disenfranchised of her vote by Texas' voter I.D. law solely because of how her name appears on photo I.D. And she is a judge.

Steve Benen reports When the war on voting meets the war on women:

Rick Hasen flagged a remarkable story
out of Corpus Christi, Texas, where the state’s new voter-ID law –
imposed after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act – is
causing problems for women who use maiden names or hyphenated names. A
local district court judge experienced the problem first hand.

“What I have used for voter registration and for
identification for the last 52 years was not sufficient yesterday when I
went to vote,” 117th District Court Judge Sandra Watts said.

Watts has voted in every election for the last 49 years. The
name on her driver’s license has remained the same for 52 years, and the
address on her voter registration card or driver’s license hasn’t
changed in more than two decades. So imagine her surprise when she was
told by voting officials that she would have to sign a “voters
affidavit” affirming she was who she said she was.

“Someone looked at that and said, ‘Well, they’re not the same,’” Watts said.

Jan Brewer has a kindred spirit in John Kasich

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Earlier this week, former FAUX News host anf Governor of Ohio, John Kasich, used a quirk in Ohio law to enact Medicaid expansion in his state, and to divide his party. Ohio will expand Medicaid after months-long battle between governor and legislature:

Ohio agreed Monday to offer Medicaid to about 300,000 more low-income
people, a major victory for Gov. John Kasich over fellow Republicans
who control the state legislature and oppose the expansion.
After nine months of battling with the state GOP’s conservative
wing, Kasich resorted to an uncommon maneuver in which he turned to a
relatively obscure state board with power over certain budget decisions.
The board voted to accept $2.55 billion in federal money to cover the
cost of expanding Medicaid in Ohio through July 2015.

The 5 to 2 vote by the Controlling Board, composed mainly of a small
group of lawmakers, is only a temporary answer to a question that has
been roiling politics in Ohio — and other states — for more than a year.
It does not spell out whether Ohio will provide money to keep Medicaid
more generous in future years, when the state would need to chip in a
small portion of the expense. And even before the board acted, some
conservative Republican lawmakers were threatening to go to court,
alleging the governor illegally bypassed the legislature.

TUSD allows 7 banned books back in the classroom (and other TUSD news)

by

by David Safier Big news from last night's TUSD Board meeting. Those 7 books that were banned from classrooms when the Mexican American Studies program was disbanded have been approved as supplementary materials. Hicks and Stegeman voted against the approval, natch, but the other 3 board members hold the majority. A note: Three Sonorans' David … Read more

A Taft Republican on the Tea Party

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan aka "Our Lady Of The Magic Dolphins" as Charles Pierce at Esquire mocks her, wrote a column recently in which she imagines herself interviewing the late Robert Taft, often referred to as "Mr. Republican," about his advice to the modern-day GOP. The Wisdom of 'Mr. Republican'. I would call this creepy, but a number of pundits over the years have used this interview of dead people shtick, so it must be an acceptable form of literary device.

But if you want the the straight dope from a Taft Republican and not the hallucinatory tripping of Our Lady of The Magic Dolphins, the New York Times today has a guest opinion from John G. Taft. The Cry of the True Republican:

Five generations of Tafts have served our nation as unwaveringly stalwart Republicans, from Alphonso Taft, who served as attorney general in the late 19th century, through William Howard Taft,
who not only was the only person to be both president of the United
States and chief justice of the United States but also served as the
chief civil administrator of the Philippines and secretary of war, to my
cousin, Robert Taft, a two-term governor of Ohio.

As I write, a photograph of my grandfather, Senator Robert Alphonso
Taft, looks across at me from the wall of my office. He led the
Republican Party in the United States Senate in the 1940s and early
1950s, ran for the Republican nomination for president three times and
was known as “Mr. Republican.” If he were alive today, I can assure you
he wouldn’t even recognize the modern Republican Party, which has
repeatedly brought the United States of America to the edge of a fiscal
cliff — seemingly with every intention of pushing us off the edge.

Community Forum Tonight on Tucson Ballot Propositions

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: City staff will be on hand tonight at a community forum to discuss the two propositions appearing on this year's City ballot: Prop. 401, a permanent $50M adjustment to the City's base expenditure limitation; and Prop. 402, the City's new General Plan. Both measures were referred to November's ballot by Mayor and … Read more