Civil & Human Rights

Vulture capitalist Paul Singer, Martha McSally and same-sex marriage, oh my!

by

You are all familiar with the billionaire bastard Koch brothers and their “Kochtopus” web of dark money organizations operating out of the state of Maricopa.  And you are familiar with the corrupt casino magnate Sheldon Adelson who uses the house winnings from his casino in Macao to try to buy elections here in America.

Now its time to get to know a lesser-known cohort of theirs, billionaire vulture capitalist Paul Singer. Paul E. Singer – SourceWatch:

PaulSingerPaul E. Singer, a former corporate lawyer, is “the founding partner of Elliott Associates . . . a hedge fund in business since 1977.

Mr. Singer is a self-described conservative libertarian who has given millions of dollars to Republican organizations that emphasize a strong military and support Israel.”

Singer is a member of the Board of Trustees of the neo-conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research; a “member of the boards of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and of Commentary Magazine, and is on the Board of Advisors of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University”, and a member of the Board of Fellows of Harvard Medical School.

Recipients of Singer’s contributions “include Progress for America ($1.5 million in contributions), a political advocacy group set up to advance the policies of the Bush administration; Swift Vets and P.O.W.’s for Truth; and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which includes Vice President Dick Cheney and Richard N. Perle, an adviser to the former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, among its past and current advisory directors.”

Read more

New York Times: Voter ID is the real fraud

by

What I’ve been explaining to you for years! The New York Times editorializes today, Voter ID Is the Real Fraud:

For the first time since the Supreme Court junked a core provision of the Voting Rights Act in June, a federal court has used the strongest surviving part of the act [Section 2] to strike down a state’s voter-identification law, and, in the process, has set out a detailed road map for upcoming challenges to similar laws around the country.

Voting-RightsSupporters of these laws insist they are necessary to prevent fraud at the polls, though such fraud is basically nonexistent. The real point is to deter from the polls significant numbers of Democratic voters, particularly minorities and the poor.

That was the heart of the reasoning by Judge Lynn Adelman of Federal District Court in Milwaukee, who issued an extraordinarily thorough 90-page ruling on Tuesday invalidating Wisconsin’s voter-ID law as a harmful solution in search of an imaginary problem. The law was passed by a Republican-controlled statehouse in 2011 and required that a prospective voter present a government-issued photo ID, like a driver’s license or passport.

“Virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin, and it is exceedingly unlikely that voter impersonation will become a problem in Wisconsin in the foreseeable future,” the judge wrote.

Read more

Tim Carpenter

PDA National Director Tim Carpenter Dies: Progressives Push ‘Forward’

by
Tim Carpenter
Tim Carpenter speaking at Progressive Central, outside the DNC in Charlotte, 2012.

The New Progressive Era lost a giant with the passing of Tim Carpenter on Monday, following a protracted battle with cancer.

As co-founder and National Director of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), Tim was a force of nature. His energy and determination were contagious. He lit the room with his larger-than-life personality and his jolly smile. Tim was my friend, my mentor, and my comrade in the fight for economic and social justice in the United States and the world. Along with 1000s of PDA members nationwide, I will miss him.

I first met Tim in February 2011. It was a dark time in Arizona. Democrats were downtrodden following the 2010 “shellacking” the Teapublicans gave us in the midterm election. Arizona Republicans had won control of  our entire state government. Tucson was reeling from the recent shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at a north side Safeway. And the Arizona Democratic Party was controlled by the No Labels Republican-Lite faction.

At the inaugural meeting of PDA Tucson,Tim’s fiery speech about progressive values and the way forward gave us hope.

Read more

Voter ID ‘unconstitutional’ in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania

by

Rick Hasen at Electionlawblog breaks down the Voter ID case in Wisconsin, which included a Section 2 Voting Rights Act enforcement claim. Breaking News: Federal District Court Strikes Wisconsin Voter ID in ACLU Case:
gavel

Here are my initial thoughts on Frank v. Walker, in which a federal district court held that Wisconsin’s voter id law both violates the Constitution and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act:

1. This is about the best possible opinion that opponents of voter identification laws could have hoped for. It is heavy on both facts and on law.  It is thoughtful and well written. It finds that a voter id law serves neither an anti-fraud purposes (because “virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin and it is exceedingly unlikely that voter impersonation will become a problem in Wisconsin in the foreseeable future”) nor voter confidence purposes. It finds that it burdens lots of voters (up to 300,000) voters. It finds these burdens fall especially on Black and Latino voters and that the reason is does is poverty, which is itself the result of prior legal discrimination.It enjoins enforcement of the law for everyone, and expresses considerable doubt that the Wisconsin legislature could amend the law to make it constitutional.  It is about as strong a statement as one might imagine as to the problems the voter id law.

Read more

Migtants

Migration Policy Institute Report Clears the Way for Evolution of Deportation Policy

by

MigtantsFrom the National Day Laborer Organizing Network…

Today, the Migration Policy Institute issued a new report, The Deportation Dilemma, that helps shed light on unprecedented deportations and criminal prosecution of immigrants.   In recent weeks, as the President hit the inauspicious milestone of 2 million deportations, there has been considerable confusion about the characteristic of deportations.  Former acting ICE director John Sandweg’s comments that “run of the mill immigrants” aren’t getting deported has been belied by hunger strikers on the White House lawn and called into question given explosive allegations that he doctored an Inspector General report to cover up misrepresentations about deportation policy made to Congress.

The MPI report attempts to shed light on this debate through detailed data analysis, and its findings open the opportunity for executive action to strengthen discretion and reduce the harm of outdated existing laws.

Read more