Fly your flag today: Columbus Day 2012

October 8, 2012

Falling down on the job here as arbiter of your flag-flying habits.  How could I forget that some of America celebrates this day as Columbus Day?  (No one in this household gets the day off.)

Fly your U.S. flag today. Fly it to honor Columbus’s discovery of the Americas.  Or, fly your flag to honor exploration and explorers, and to remember the people who suffered so greatly as a result of the collision of European cultures in search of money, and American cultures lacking gunpowder and steel.

The second Monday in October is celebrated as Columbus Day, a federal holiday (though not widely honored in private enterprise).  Columbus made landfall in the Americas for the first time on October 12, 1492, 520 years ago.

John Vanderlyn Oil on canvas, 12 x 18 Commissioned 1836/1837; placed 1847 Rotunda Christopher Columbus is shown landing in the West Indies, on an island that the natives called Guanahani and he named San Salvador, on October 12, 1492. He raises the royal banner, claiming the land for his Spanish patrons, and stands bareheaded, with his hat at his feet, in honor of the sacredness of the event. The captains of the Niña and Pinta follow, carrying the banner of Ferdinand and Isabella. The crew displays a range of emotions, some searching for gold in the sand. Natives watch from behind a tree. John Vanderlyn (1775-1852) had studied with Gilbert Stuart and was the first American painter to be trained in Paris, where he worked on this canvas for ten years with the help of assistants.

John Vanderlyn, Oil on canvas, 12′ x 18′ – Commissioned 1836/1837; placed 1847 in the Rotunda of the Capitol. Christopher Columbus is shown landing in the West Indies, on an island that the natives called Guanahani and he named San Salvador, on October 12, 1492. He raises the royal banner, claiming the land for his Spanish patrons, and stands bareheaded, with his hat at his feet, in honor of the sacredness of the event. The captains of the Niña and Pinta follow, carrying the banner of Ferdinand and Isabella. The crew displays a range of emotions, some searching for gold in the sand. Natives watch from behind a tree. John Vanderlyn (1775-1852) had studied with Gilbert Stuart and was the first American painter to be trained in Paris, where he worked on this canvas for ten years with the help of assistants.

Did you notice?  In the painting in the U.S. Capitol, Columbus isn’t flying the U.S. flag.  Acccuracy over political correctness winds, eh?

Below the fold:  A description of the painting in the Capitol Rotunda, from the Architect of the U.S. Capitol (the “official” version.)

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Leave a Comment » | 1492, Art, Christopher Columbus, Education, Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, History, Patriotism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Why Obama Now?

October 7, 2012

Obama’s own words, with animation provided by Lucas Gray, a veteran animator from The Simpsons and Family Guy.

Andre Tartar wrote about it at the New York Magazine website:

Your average campaign ad involves lots of black and white B-roll, ominous music, and floating newspaper headlines. So this nearly 4-minute illustrated reel by Lucas Gray, a veteran of the Simpsons and Family Guy animation departments, is a welcome bit of color. Using audio from a speech President Obama gave at the Associates Press Luncheon in April, “Why Obama Now” is a jaunty mix of cartoon Americans driving their Model T Fords off the assembly line onto the American Dream, graphs and charts sprouting up as the president rattles off statistics, and little bobblehead meanies providing comic relief: Bush and Cheney with a pile of gold (the Clinton surplus), Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, and the rest of the conservative pundit gang. It also includes the best (though not most convincing) explanation of trickle-down economics we’ve seen yet: “If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the sparrows.”

At the website for WhyObamaNow.org, the sources are listed:

  1. Obama’s speech to the Associated Press luncheon on April 3, 2012, at the Marriott Wardman Park
  2. Other sources for graphs shown throughout the video
  3. Transcript of the entire speech

The entire speech (58 minutes — 36 minutes for the prepared text, plus Q&A):

Leave a Comment » | animation, Barack Obama, Economics, History, Politics, President Obama | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Banned Books Week: Still time to read

October 6, 2012

Liberty reading Banned Book; Banned Books Week 2012

Read for Freedom; it’s the patriotic thing to do.

Click on the image for more information about Banned Books Week.

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4 Comments | History | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Veterans speak out: We’re not just laundry

October 6, 2012

From the Truman National Security Project, a video featuring testimony from veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan especially, questioning whether Mitt Romney has what it takes to be Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. armed forces:

This is rather the opposite of  “swift boating,” isn’t it?  An established organization active on national security issues, with a distinguished staff and board of directors, working on a shoe-string, with identified spokesmen.

The Truman Project’s blog lays out the case for President Obama’s election with respect to his initiatives on behalf of veterans.  As much as I would prefer to see those positive achievements emphasized, campaigns don’t really allow much time for careful, thoughtful explanation.

Will there be any effect from this advertisement?  What do you think?

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1 Comment | History, National Security, veterans, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

One more time, again: Why “supply side” economics doesn’t work without demand

October 4, 2012

I posted a short excerpt from a recent column by economist Paul Krugman, explaining why GOP reliance on magic to fix the economy probably won’t work.  Commenter David Xavier took issue with Krugman’s analysis.  David’s comment brought home to me just how badly many self-described conservatives misunderstand basic economics, especially the keystone free enterprise principles of supply and demand.

My explanation of why supply side economics can’t work came out for the 21st time at least.  Let’s make a post of it, in hope that more people may read it and view it, and understanding may increase.

David Xavier said:

Krugman wants the government to spend as this will drive demand. But “demand is constituted by supply”. To buy something you must first produce and sell something. The selling is what gets you the money, but the production of value adding output is what first allows you to sell. Without value adding activity, there is nothing to sell and therefore there is no basis for demand.

I replied:

Well, there’s the problem. You don’t understand either the law of supply, nor the law of demand. You’re talking “supply side” economics, which we discovered didn’t work way back in 1982 through 1988.

Supply does not stimulate demand, ceteris paribus. It’s the other way around. Henry Ford’s Model A didn’t created demand for transportation; the demand for transportation, coupled with a demand for transportation that didn’t involve horses and their natural effluents, created a demand for a horseless carriage. Ford created a machine that met that demand, and could manufacture it in enough quantity to matter.

Demand is not “constituted from supply.” Demand comes from needs, and wants. If supply can be created to meet that demand, demand can be met from supply.

But demand comes first, as Krugman, a Nobel-winning economist, well understands.

If consumers have no money to buy, the quantity supplied cannot matter in the least. If there were no demand for transportation at all, Henry Ford is sunk.

The law of supply explains how producers go about meeting demands — if prices are higher, they are happier to supply more. Again, if consumers have no money to purchase the good or service offered, the amount of supply is completely irrelevant.

Before Henry Ford’s mass production of automobiles created a demand for gasoline, gasoline was cast off from oil refining as a waste product from the production of kerosene for lanterns. Refineries from Standard Oil dumped millions of gallons of gasoline into rivers — no demand, the massive supply simply did not matter.

And as we can see from that example, demand not only creates the market, it can make a product considered to be waste, into the economic equivalent of gold.

Without demand, supply is simply excess manure, or gasoline by-product from the production of kerosene, to be dumped into a river (and thereby pollute the hell out of the river).

You’re right to say that without value-added activity, there is no economic activity. But tell that to Mitt Romney, who thinks finance is the magic, and not production.

A key problem with all of Republican economics is the ignoring of consumers, and ignoring the reality that consumers need money to stimulate demand. Tax cuts can’t help the hungry, who cannot eat tax cuts, nor the unemployed, who cannot take to the bank tax cuts on non-existent income.

Your odd myopia — maybe blindness — to the reality of how economics works, is shared by a lot of so-called conservatives. It’s a tragedy; it’s a tragedy I hope voters will put an end to, soon.

Did you ever notice that no supply-side economist has ever won a Nobel? Have you noticed that few supply-side economics articles are available in journals? Has your search for the numbers to back up the Laffer curve been as unproductive as they have been for everyone else — including Arthur Laffer? (Laffer promised to publish an article explaining how supply side economics work, as soon as he got the numbers together. That was in 1982. 40 years later, there is still no real intellectual foundation for GOP claims of tax cuts creating wealth. Those studies that have been done suggest tax rates maximize revenue when taxes hit about 70%, more than three times the rates Laffer proposes. History shows a much different story than Laffer claimed: Tax cuts in the Harding and Coolidge administrations led to bubbles that collectively burst in October 1929, leading to the Great Depression; tax cuts in 2001 led to bubbles in housing and the stock market, which burst in 2008, leading to our Great Recession.)

Right now, businesses are sitting on a pool of about $2 trillion, profits they’ve accumulated since 2008. If supply side economics worked, that money would be invested in manufacturing and service creation, and we should have an unemployment rate in negative numbers. The disproof of supply side economics is our current situation. Employers have plenty of supply of money, but they refuse to hire without demonstration of demand from consumers. Unemployed consumers, lacking money, cannot make that demand up from thin air. Magic does not work, in the real world of supply and demand, in economics.

Nota bene:  Videos come from a delightful series on economics created and put up on YouTube by Dr. Mary J. Glasson, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.  Glasson’s series is available at YouTube and covers almost every topic in an entry-level survey undergraduate economics course.  Look for “mjmfoodie” at YouTube.com.

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2 Comments | 1929, 2012 Campaigns, 2012 Elections, Campaigns, Economics, Elections, Great Depression, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Box office slaps Hollywood: ‘Don’t talk jive smack against teachers’

October 3, 2012

Teacher and education blogs were all atwitter — and Twitter was all ablog, I suppose you could say — about the opening this past weekend of the movie “Won’t Back Down.”

“Parent trigger” laws bubble up in discussion a lot recently — laws that allow a group of parents to petition a school district, or the state, and say that they want to take over a local school.  Conservatives and other anti-teacher groups promote these laws as a means of education reform.  Generally, in the few cases in which a school is taken over by parents, teachers and local administrators are fired, and the school operates much like a charter school.

“Won’t Back Down” professes to be “based on a true story.”  I am reminded that both “Psycho” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” also professed to be based on a true story — the same story, in fact.  I’ve written about this before — based on a true story, except not in Texas, no chainsaw, no massacre, nor was there a hotel and a shower.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is more carefully based on a true story — there is a Mississippi River; or The Bald Soprano — there are bald people, and there are sopranos.  But I digress.

The film has a cast of some great star power — Maggie Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis and Holly Hunter.  It was produced by the documentary group that also produced Al Gore‘s “Inconvenient Truth,” and then moved to the popular but wildly polemical “Waiting for Superman,” another hit on teachers.  They should have stopped with that one, instead of raising the ante (raising the “anti?”).

Audiences don’t like films that cast teachers as villains, it would appear.

Stephanie Simon of Reuters wrote:

(Reuters) – Education reform film “Won’t Back Down” opened Friday to terrible reviews – and high hopes from activists who expect the movie to inspire parents everywhere to demand big changes in public schools.

The drama stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as a spirited mother who teams up with a passionate teacher to seize control of their failing neighborhood school, over the opposition of a self-serving teachers union.

Reviewers called it trite and dull, but education reformers on both the left and right have hailed the film as a potential game-changer that could aid their fight to weaken teachers’ unions and inject more competition into public education.

Yahoo!’s Movie Talk got to the point:

Even an Oscar-caliber leading cast couldn’t save this one. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s latest film “Won’t Back Down,” also starring Viola Davis and Holly Hunter, set the record this past weekend for the worst opening of a film that appeared in more than 2,500 theaters, making a mere $2.6 million [via Box Office Mojo].

Yes, all three of these former Oscar nominees — Hunter having won a golden statuette in 1994 for “The Piano” — now have a pretty bad blemish on their resume. But they aren’t to blame, say industry watchers, who are reacting to the film with a resounding face palm. “‘Won’t Back Down’ wore the dunce cap last weekend, mostly because its marketing was almost non-existent,” says Jeff Bock, box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations.

“Record for the worst opening?”  Ouch.

Back to the “based on a true story” issue:  We may understand why the screenwriter and director of the first Texas Chainsaw movie, Tobe Hooper took the liberties he did to add elements to the story.  He knew the original story of a disturbed man in Wisconsin who was jailed for corpse mutilation.  He knew that was the foundation for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”  How to update it, to make the story bankable from the box office?  Move it to Texas, add a chainsaw with all its terrifying whine, and add in the standard teenager murder story elements; maybe put a mask on the villain/evil beast, to make it more terrifying — there is great terror in being pursued by nameless, faceless folk as Orwell showed us.  Both Hitchcock and Hooper fully understood that the real, dull story, wasn’t something people would pay to sit through while eating grossly-overpriced popcorn.

“Won’t Back Down” suffered from sticking too close to the facts.  If you’re going to claim the antagonist is psycho, you have to give them a big butcher’s knife or a chainsaw, and a costume, in order to make really, really scary.

Teachers just are not that scary in real life.  Teachers are not the villains, in real life.

More (from various viewpoints):

8 Comments | Education, Education quality, Education reform, History, Politics, Teachers, Teaching, Video and film | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Annals of global warming: Insurance companies note increasing costs of floods, due to climate change

October 1, 2012

Note today in Al Gore’s Journal:

Flooding Costs October 1, 2012 : 10:32 AM

Time cover from April 28, 2008 - how to win war on global warming

Time Magazine cover for April 28, 2008 – How to Win the War On Global Warming

A new report from Swiss Re finds that the financial impact of flooding has doubled in the past decade – climate is a major driver:

“Flood losses are increasing at an alarming rate while the insurability of floods provides unique challenges for the industry, according Swiss Re’s latest report, “Flood – an underestimated risk: Inspect, inform, insure”.” …

“No other natural catastrophe impacts as many people as flooding with an estimated 500 million people affected every year. Insured flood losses are also increasing significantly; 1970’s annual claims were between USD 1–2 billion, whereas insured flood losses amounted to USD 15 billion in 2011. Recent flood events in Thailand, Australia and the Philippines have shown that floods are now rivalling earthquakes and hurricanes in terms of economic losses.” …

“Population growth, demographic change, a higher concentration of assets in exposed areas, greater vulnerability of insured objects and climate change are all contributing to the increasing costs of flood damage. The rising costs of floods are creating challenges for the insurance industry and the economic viability of flood insurance is currently an issue under scrutiny.”

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20 Comments | Business, Climate change, climate_change, Disasters, Geography - Physical, Global warming, History, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Does anyone have a photo of the first woman Scoutmaster, Catherine Pollard?

September 27, 2012

In the order of an Author’s Query:  Do you, or does anyone you know, have a photograph of the first woman to be a Scoutmaster in the U.S., Catherine Pollard, of Milford, Connecticut?

Best if it’s already on line — otherwise I’m looking for a photo that can be posted, for the sake of history.

Any Scouts from Milford have a photo?

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4 Comments | Boy Scouts of America, Heroes, History, Women in History, Women's rights | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bathtub instant profundity, 1

September 26, 2012

Clearing out a backlog.

  1. Turns out that tax cuts don’t spur jobs development.  An economist at Berkeley finds that any job stimulus from tax cuts comes from tax cuts to the middle class and poor — in other words, the people who instantly stimulate demand by spending on needed goods and services.
  2. On-line version of the Library of Congress’s exhibit, “88 Books that Shaped America.”  In case you can’t make it to D.C. soon.
  3. Kennedy’s speech at Rice University, “We Choose to Go to the Moon,” was on September 12, 1962.  That was also the ninth anniversary of his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier.  She let him go out of town to talk rockets?
  4. Thomas B. Edsall makes the case that Paul Ryan’s budget, or any version of it (like the Romney plan), would be an economic disaster for the nation, in at article titled “The Ryan Sinkhole.” Why don’t the Republicans ever listen to economists?
  5. Those “work requirements” that Ryan insists Obama has illegally stripped from law, to the great detriment of the work ethic in the U.S.?  Not only did Mitt Romney ask for them, when he was governor of Massachusetts, but earlier this year Ryan voted “yes” on a House bill to do exactly what Obama is trying to do.  Can’t Ryan keep his own stories straight?
  6. Graphic shows that summers in the U.S. are getting warmer.  More evidence for warming denialists to deny!
  7. More GOP election fraud, this time in California.
  8. It is said God looks out for drunks and babies; can we make a case that our government works better with more drunks in elective office?  David Frum discusses. (I actually have some thoughts and experience in this area . . . when to find time to discuss?)  There’s a video there, but not in a format I can embed here easily — go see.
  9. Jim Hightower tells a scary story of a coup d’etat within the borders of the United States, in Michigan.  Imaginary?  This is a guy who doesn’t see UFOs, who isn’t afraid of black helicopters . . .
  10. New studies on colony collapse disorder affecting especially commercial beehives suggests insecticides, and substances related to insecticides, may be hammering our bees; worse, EPA has known about it, but kept quiet.  Reported readably in New Yorker, 50 years after that magazine serialized a book named Silent Spring.  Rachel Carson’s Ghost joins Santayana’s Ghost pacing America, nervously, as if to awaken us all . . .

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Leave a Comment » | History, Politics, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Sarah Silverman on vote suppression

September 22, 2012

Absolutely, completely and totally Not Safe For Work.

But spot on.  Sarah Silverman, with humor, eviscerates the GOP’s vote suppression campaign.

Also, take a look at that handsome young man in the mortar board at about 2:06 in the video. You might recognize him as one of our nation’s better young men.

Gee.  I wonder what this will do to the blog’s G rating.

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72 Comments | Civil Rights, History, Voting, Voting Rights Act | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“The War Prayer” of Mark Twain (encore post)

September 21, 2012

(Updating dead links, especially from the late and lamented (here at least) VodPod, I found myself back in 2008, with this post on Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer.”  Fortunately, I found the film migrated to YouTube, though split in two parts.  Some information that should have caught our attention in 2008 deserves noting now, and we can update and add new links.)

It’s largely forgotten now, especially in history texts in high schools.  After the Spanish-American War, when the U.S. wrested several territories from Spain, including Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, the U.S. quickly got mired in one of the original guerrilla wars in the Philippines.  It took 15 years, but the U.S. finally put down the rebellion — 15 brutal, bloody years.  The conduct of that war shocked many people, including Mark Twain.

This piece was written partly in response to that war.

Many Americans, like Twain, who questioned the war, in turn had their patriotism questioned.  Why wouldn’t they get on board with the war, and kill off those Filipino rebels? the critics asked.

Here’s a film in two parts, a stunning production, produced and directed by Markos Kounalakis (who uploaded the thing); go to the film’s website for a copy of the text.

Part I:

Part II:

Why didn’t I notice this in 2008?  The film is narrated by Peter Coyote.  Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti plays the minister.  Erik Bauersfeld plays the Stranger.

Another short film of The War Prayer came out in 2007, from Lyceum Productions.  Neither version appears to be available on DVD or Blu-Ray.  Too bad.

9 Comments | Dissent, History, Literature, Patriotism, Peace, Politics, Spanish American War, War, World history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Romney disavows sex tape . . . the tape, not the sex act

September 17, 2012

Not an apology.  Not an update on information he didn’t have all those weeks ago (8% of Americans do NOT pay income tax, not 47%).  Not a clarification.

“Ooooh, please, look at all the flags!”

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23 Comments | Economics, History, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Republican Party | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Romney sex tape

September 17, 2012

Is there any rational person in the world who really views the world this way?

I had thought this a minor deal, until I saw the denials on the news a few minute ago.  You might explain it.  But deny it?

Transcript of his remarks on September 17, from AmericanBridge:

Mitt Romney at a secret donor meeting:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

“[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

16 Comments | Economics, History, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Republican Party | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

225 years ago today, in this room

September 17, 2012

Independence Hall, Philadelphia; room where the Constitution was created and signed; Dept of Interior photo

Caption from Department of Interior’s Tumblr site: 225 years ago today, the Constitution of the United States was signed in Independence Hall. Today, you can tour the Hall and see where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were both signed, and you can also view the Liberty Bell [close by]. This is a site not to miss while visiting Philadelphia.
Photo: National Park Service

Does this room look a little familiar?  You’ve probably seen Howard Chandler Christy’s painting of the event we celebrate today.

Howard Chandler Christy’s “Signing of the Constitution,” 1940

Howard Chandler Christy’s “Signing of the Constitution,” 1940; Architect of the Capitol image. This massive, 20′ x 30′ painting hangs in the House Wing of the U.S. Capitol, in the east stairway — a location where, alas, most people cannot get to without a guide anymore.

Click to the Architect of the Capitol’s site for the story of the painting, intended by Congress to fill a gap in the story of America told by art in the Rotunda and throughout the halls of the building.

Dr. Gordon Lloyd, Pepperdine University, creator of the interactive

Dr. Gordon Lloyd, Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy, and expert in the Constitution and its history.  I met Lloyd almost a decade ago, in programs for history teachers, sponsored by the Bill of Rights Institute, Liberty Fund, and National Endowment for the Humanities.

My old friend Dr. Gordon Lloyd of Pepperdine University, working with the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs, created a study tool from the Christy painting which should be used a lot more in classrooms.  Click over to the Edsitement site, and see for yourself.

Every year there are a few more tools on the internet to study the Constitution with, for teachers to use in the classroom on Constitution Day and every day.  I wonder what will be the effects in another decade.

How important is it that students learn the Constitution, what it says, and how it affects our daily lives?  How important is it that students learn the history of the creation of the Constitution, and does that history reverberate for those students as they venture out into their roles as citizens in the republic created by the document?

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1 Comment | Art, History, Law, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

GOP trying to shutdown votes of military, veterans, senior citizens in Ohio?

September 17, 2012

I thought the thing in Ohio was settled.

I get e-mail from the Credo Action Network:

Don’t let Republicans steal the election for Mitt Romney

Ohio has emerged as the latest front in the Republican scheme to derail democracy by disenfranchising millions of voters. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, in a blatant partisan move to steal the election for Mitt Romney, is trying to put an end to early weekend voting before Election Day. This change in Ohio election practices specifically impacts minority and low income voters.1

It’s not just Ohio. It’s also Florida and Pennsylvania. Earlier this summer, CREDO Action members signed over 87,000 petitions and made over 1,600 phone calls urging Senator Patrick Leahy, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to hold Congressional hearings on brazen Republican efforts to steal the 2012 presidential election in other key battle ground states like Florida and Pennsylvania. With Republicans showing no sign of slowing down their tenacious efforts to steal the election, we’re escalating our call for Senator Leahy to hold hearings to investigate the GOP effort to suppress the votes of millions of voters in key battleground states across the country.

Tell the Senate Judiciary Committee: Hold emergency hearings on Republicans’ schemes to steal the presidential election in key battleground states.

A prominent Ohio Republican state official has already openly admitted that Husted’s efforts to shut down weekend voting would result in African Americans voters having a more difficult time voting.2 A federal district judge struck down Husted’s effort to restrict early voting during the three days before the election, and after initially resisting that court order Husted backed down for the time being, pending appeal in higher court.3

But the crisis is not over. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that will be reviewing the district court decision to strike down Husted’s efforts to restrict early voting is “a Republican-leaning court with a history of partisan decisions benefiting the Republican Party.”4

The situation in Ohio is crucial given its recent history in Presidential elections. In 2004 hundreds of thousands of predominantly minority and Democratic voters were disenfranchised on Election Day due to massive lines and “widespread electoral dysfunction.”5 As Ari Berman reported in the Nation:

According to one survey, 174,000 Ohioans, 3 percent of the electorate, left their polling place without voting because of the interminable wait. (Bush won the state by only 118,000 votes).6

In response to the mess on Election Day in 2004, Ohio reformed its electoral process by adding early voting before Election Day, leading to a “much smoother experience” in 2008.7 The opportunity to vote early led to record turnout for African American and low income voters.

Now the Republicans in Ohio are working to disenfranchise thousands of those voters in racially diverse urban centers such as Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland. The restriction on weekend voting is specifically aimed at disrupting minority voters – for example, African-American churches historically rally their congregants to the voting booth on the Sunday before the election.8

Tell the Senate Judiciary Committee: Hold emergency hearings on Republicans’ schemes to steal the presidential election in key battleground states.

The Republican elections officials in Ohio, along with their counterparts in Florida and Pennsylvania, should be trying to help more eligible voters participate in the democratic process, not disenfranchise minorities and the poor.

With Congress returning from summer recess this week, Senator Leahy needs to get the message from as many Americans as possible that it’s not okay for Republican elections officials in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio – or any other state — to engage in systematic effort to disenfranchise U.S. citizens for the explicit purpose of swinging the election to Republican Mitt Romney in November.

Let’s keep the pressure on Senator Leahy to hold a public hearing on the GOP war on voting today.

Thank you for standing up for the right to vote.

1. Aviva Shen and Adam Peck, “Ohio Limits Early Voting Hours In Democratic Counties, Expands In Republican Counties,” ThinkProgess.com, August 10, 2012.
2. Aviva Shen, “Ohio GOP Election Board Member: Our Voting Process Shouldn’t Accommodate Black Voters,” ThinkProgress.com, August 19, 2012.
3. Ryan J. Reilly, “Ohio Secretary Of State Backs Down On Early Voting,”TalkingPointsMemo.com, September 7, 2012.
4. Ian Millhiser, “BREAKING: Federal Court Strikes Down Ohio Law Restricting Early Voting,” ThinkProgress.com, August 31, 2012.
5. Ari Berman, Ohio Early Voting Cutbacks Disenfranchise Minority Voters,” The Nation, August 8, 2012.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Gene Demby, “Black Pastors Group Criticizes Ohio For New Rules That Limit Early Voting,” HuffingtonPost.com, August 14, 2012.

What’s your view?

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7 Comments | Citizenship, Civil Rights, History, Politics, Voting, Voting Rights Act | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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