Bad Deeds for 12-30-2011

93-Year-Old Tennessee Woman Who Cleaned State Capitol for 30 Years Denied Voter ID – A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor’s office, says she won’t be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that her old state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations. Thelma Mitchell was even ac­cused of being an un­doc­u­mented im­mi­grant be­cause she couldn’t pro­duce a birth cer­tifi­cate.

ALEC-Linked Group Revealed as Major Secret Donor in Referendum on Maine Voting Rights – Ear­lier this year, Maine leg­is­la­tors passed a bill re­peal­ing the state’s 38 year-old law al­low­ing cit­i­zens to reg­is­ter at the polls on elec­tion day. Tens of thou­sands of Main­ers re­sponded by pe­ti­tion­ing for the mat­ter come to a ref­er­en­dum. Issue 1 was one of the most-an­tic­i­pated votes on elec­tion day this year, with pun­dits watch­ing closely to see how cit­i­zens would react to the Re­pub­li­can-led war on vot­ing, which ramped up in states across the coun­try this year.

Rec­og­niz­ing the ref­er­en­dum’s im­por­tance, vot­ing rights op­po­nents poured money into the cam­paign to re­peal elec­tion day reg­is­tra­tion. In fact, just two days after the state’s cam­paign fi­nance re­port­ing dead­line, a se­cret con­ser­v­a­tive donor fun­neled $250,000 into the race, al­low­ing the No On 1 cam­paign to make sig­nif­i­cant TV ad buys in an in­ex­pen­sive media mar­ket.

Per state law, how­ever, the iden­tity of donors must be re­vealed within 45 days after the elec­tion. In fact, the en­tire $250,000 worth of late money came from a sin­gle source: the Amer­i­can Jus­tice Part­ner­ship. Though the AJP doesn’t dis­close where its fund­ing comes from, the Ban­gor Daily News notes that it has part­nered with the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Ex­change Coun­cil (ALEC) in the past, a group that has been in­stru­men­tal in the pro­lif­er­a­tion of voter ID laws across the coun­try. The AJP’s se­cret $250,000 con­tri­bu­tion ul­ti­mately ac­counted for over 78 per­cent of all the money raised by the No On 1 cam­paign. In other words, over three-quar­ters of the fund­ing for op­po­nents of elec­tion day reg­is­tra­tion in Maine came from Michi­gan. (This money was then used to run ads de­cry­ing “out­siders from other states” who were in­flu­enc­ing the Maine elec­tion.)

Though AJP’s web­site cor­rectly warns that “Your right to vote is at stake”, it’s groups like AJB and ALEC that are threat­en­ing that right in the first place.

Wall Street Tells Boehner What to Do, and He Listens – In No­vem­ber Pres­i­dent Obama said, “enough is enough” to China’s cur­rency ma­nip­u­la­tions. China ma­nip­u­lates its cur­rency to keep it “un­der­val­ued.” This means that things made there cost less in world mar­kets than things made in other coun­tries. The re­sult is that man­u­fac­tur­ing moves there, bring­ing them en­tire in­dus­tries, sup­ply chains, and the “in­dus­trial com­mons” of ex­per­tise, sup­pli­ers and cul­ture that brings with it new busi­nesses and in­dus­tries. Many econ­o­mists say that China’s cur­rency is un­der­val­ued by 25 to 40% mean­ing prod­ucts made there have a 25-40% pric­ing ad­van­tage be­fore any other ad­van­tages, sub­si­dies, ma­nip­u­la­tions, etc. are con­sid­ered.

In Oc­to­ber the Sen­ate passed a bi­par­ti­san bill — on a vote of 65 to 35 — a bill re­quir­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion to label China a cur­rency ma­nip­u­la­tor and begin the nec­es­sary steps to rem­edy the prob­lem. The House Re­pub­li­can lead­er­ship has re­fused to allow this to come up for a vote – be­cause it will pass. House Speaker John Boehner has made it clear he wants noth­ing to do with the leg­is­la­tion that has al­ready raised heck­les in Bei­jing., And for now he seems to be in con­trol de­spite loud protests in­clud­ing from within his own party.

Even though many Re­pub­li­can mem­bers of the House say they sup­port the bill, none of them will sign a dis­charge pe­ti­tion to force Speaker Boehner to allow a vote. Wall Street op­poses ad­dress­ing the cur­rency im­bal­ances, and has made it clear through their front-group Club For Growth that Wall Street will op­pose House mem­bers who help bring this up for a vote. And right now Wall Street has more in­flu­ence in DC’s on­go­ing in­flu­ence scheme than those who want to man­u­fac­ture in the US, thereby bring­ing jobs, fac­to­ries, in­dus­tries, in­no­va­tion and money back to the US.

Rick Perry Thinks Canada is Part of the U.S. – “Every barrel of oil that comes out of those sands in Canada is a barrel of oil that we don’t have to buy from a foreign source,” — Rick Perry (12/28/2011) [All Canadian oil will go on the world market to the hightest bidder – regardless of which seaport it is piped to. It will not necessarily help the U.S. market.]

Republican Presidential Candidates Year in Review on YouTube –

Merry Christmas …

and Happy New Year!

Regards,

Jim