Don’t Let it Happen Again…

Beyond this, there could be November 4th surprise: the Republicans may try to steal the election. Again. They loudly claim to be concerned about voter fraud, even though a New York University study recently found that it “is more likely an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.” But in the name of this paltry risk, they are effectively stripping millions of people – overwhelmingly black and Democrats – of their vote.

Their first vote-stripping tactic is to require elaborate voter I.D. that black people disproportionately lack. For example, in Indiana – a crucial swing state – Republicans have passed a law requiring voters to bring an official government document bearing their photograph to the polling station. But a study by the University of Wisconsin found that 53 percent of black adults didn’t have a passport or driving license, compared to 15 percent of white people. So they can’t vote unless they travel for hours (often without a car) to a sparse government registry and queue for half a day to get the correct the correct documentation. The former political director of the Texas Republican Party, Royal Masset, explains: “Requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a drop-off in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 percent to the Republican vote.”

Their second tactic is to strip the electoral rolls of black names. In almost all US states, criminals lose their vote for life. This is shocking in itself – it disenfranchises a quarter of all black men in Kentucky, for one. But many states have a sloppy process where they simply scrub anyone with the same name as a criminal off the list. So if there is a criminal called ‘Chris Wayne’ in a county, every black man called ‘Chris Wayne’ loses their vote. That’s a lot of Democrats. In Florida in 2000, black voters made up 13 percent of the electorate yet they were 26 percent of the people wrongly disenfranchised.

When a judge ordered the release of the paper-work, he found out why. The team under Florida governor Jeb Bush had ordered that black criminal names had to go – but Hispanic names were not to be touched. Black Floridians overwhelmingly vote Democrat, while Hispanics lean towards the Republicans. The Bush team said this was “absolutely unintentional” and “a coincidence.”

This time, the Republicans have added another group to strip from the rolls. James Carabelli, a Republican Party chairman in Michigan, says: “We have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses.” These voters are supposed to register from their new addresses – but many are out of time, or too stressed to do it. So the Republicans have launched a national “voter challenge campaign” against honest people who have lost their homes. They know that 60 percent of sub-prime mortgages went to black voters, and virtually everyone who lost their home is angry with the Republicans.

October Surprises

Be Kind, for Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Hard Battle

There’s a woman named Penny who lives next door to my in-laws on a good-sized piece of land in Bath, Michigan. She has horses, dogs, and a baby deer. She has kids: girls in, or just out of, high school I believe.

She has thirty days to move out of the house. She can’t pay her mortgage.

Penny is temporarily leaving the animals on an acreage that belongs to her boyfriends parents.

Penny is going to be living in a horse trailer with no water or electricity.

———-

There’s a guy who plays guitar everyday on the corner of Mt. Hope and Pennsylvania in Lansing, Michigan. He has a bucket at his feet and a sign around his neck that says “Food”. He’s out there everyday.

———-

I’m tired and I have a lot of reading and grading to do…

…I have to swing by Kroger in the morning and pick up some peanut butter crackers, or tuna, or beef jerkey.

Something that will keep in a guitar case for a few hours.

If you can make any time, and you live in the area, go listen to some street music. The cover charge is a bottle of water, but a bunch of bananas would get you into the show.

Sweet Lou

It's Playoff Time!

Bottom of the 9th at Shea, the Cubs and Mets are tied at six. Bob Howry is pitching for the Cubs after Smard-zilla walked in the tying run in the 8th. Daniel Murphy leads off the inning with a triple to deep right. Howry then strikes out David Wright. So then Lou intentionally walks Carlos Delgado… and Carlos Beltran to load the bases. Ryan Church then hits a grounder to second where Ronnie Cedeno scoops it up and guns down Murphy at the plate. Ramon Castro steps into the box and quickly goes down swinging.

1 tripple, 2 walks, 0 runs.

Top of the 10th. Koyie Hill grounds out to first. Alfonso Soriano comes up next and promptly pops out to second. The Chicago Cubs…snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory. But then Ryan Theriot, who has been mired in a slump for weeks now, singles to center and steals second while Lee’s at the plate. Derek Lee, who has been getting pounded by the media and fantasy baseball players for his total absence of power this season, smokes a double to right bringing in Theriot! 7-6 Cubs. Then Aramis Ramirez slams a homer to left, putting the Cubs up three! 9-6. Kosuke Fukudome ends the inning on a grounder to second. He’s been brutal since the break.

Kerry Wood

Kerry Wood takes the mound in the bottom of the 10th looking to close it out. Luis Castillo leads off the inning for the Mets and hits a grounder to Cedeno at second for the first out. Ramon Martinez, who was at the plate in the 8th when Smard-zilla blew the lead, flies out to left this time. Two down. But Jose Reyes is stepping into the box, and he’s dangerous. Reyes fouls the first pitch off and takes the second for a ball outside. 1-1. He fouls the next two pitches off. Woody brings it down in low and inside for ball two. 2 balls, 2 strikes. Reyes strikes out on a the high heat! Cubs win 9-6! Cubs win! It feels like the playoffs.

Sweet Lou.

And all that was just on ESPN Gamecast… I couldn’t even watch the game.

Don’t Let Them Block Your Vote

I received this in an email today. I’m typically skeptical of mass email campaigns, but this one looks fairly legit, and in an election as important as this one, I’d prefer not to take any chances. (Note: I find the tag at the end of the email pretty interesting… Remember, thanks to the Patriot Act, you are under constant watch from the people who brought you war and recession.)

FYI…it’s really for both candidates

Please read and send this to everyone u know

Please, please, please advise everyone you know that they absolutely can

not go to the polls wearing any Obama shirts, pins or hats, it is

against the law and will be grounds to have the polling officials to

turn you away.

That is considered campaigning  and no one can campaign within x amount

of feet to the polls. They are banking on us being excited and not being

aware of this long standing law that you can bet will be enforced this

year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They are banking that if are turned away you will not go home and change

your clothes.. Please just don’t wear obama gear of any sorts to the

polls!!  Please share this information, oh and for those of you who were

already aware this was not meant to insult your intelligence. Just

trying to cover all grounds.

---

“E-mail correspondence to and from this address may be subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties by an authorized City or Law Enforcement official.”

Science and the Politics of Economics

The following is taken from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed (1996 [1962]), by Thomas Kuhn:

“Few people who are not actually practitioners of a mature science realize how much mop-up work this sort of a paradigm (an accepted model or pattern for scientific research/methods) leaves to be done or quite how fascinating such work can prove in the execution. And these points need to be understood. Mopping-up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers. They constitute what I am here calling normal science. Closely examined, whether historically or in the contemporary laboratory, that enterprise seems and attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others. Instead, normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies.” (24)

It seems to me, in light of my recent thinking and writing on economics and the political impact on them, that we have a fairly concise analogy for the current state of American economic policy located Kuhn’s argument above. Are we not currently “mopping-up” the messes of the American free market capitalism economic paradigm? When the politicians talk of revitalizing the economy, aren’t they merely suggesting conducting further experiments that adhere to, and more importantly, hope to legitimize that economic theory? Are we stuck in a box that refuses to recognize or tolerate new theories? It has been argued that democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s economic and health care policies are partially influenced by socialist theories. So within the framework of Kuhn’s understanding of paradigms, one could argue that Obama’s policies should be dismissed (or perhaps even charged as theoretical heresy) as flights of fancy that fall outside of the box of how economics work. Is what we need now as a nation simply a matter of reinforcing the box with packing tape? Or do we presently need (as I have regularly argued) to consider the possibility that the box’s integrity has been compromised, and there is a very real possibility that the bottom could fall out. Is this a time for cosmetic cover-ups and blind faith in a paradigm in which the rich are routinely rewarded for causing the financial struggles of the rest of us? Or can we at least begin to entertain the notion that the trickling down of promised economic prosperity might not be able to penetrate the top of the closed box? But I am no scientist, nor am I an economist. So who am I to question the present paradigm? It’s not like we’re still dealing with the inequalities of feudalism, when access to the lands great resources were reserved only for the elite nobility who grew fat off the labor of the working class… wait a minute.