Showing posts sorted by date for query texas voter fraud cases. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query texas voter fraud cases. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Monday, April 20, 2020

The Weekly "It's Safe to Go Back in the Water" Wrangle

With the best of the left from around and about Deep-In-The-Hearta from the past week, the Texas Progressive Alliance isn't so sure that Mayor Vaughn is correct about there being no more sharks at Amity Beach.


Meanwhile, in Reality:


Nevertheless, the capitalists persist.



The displays are tapping into Trump’s main message on the coronavirus pandemic: governors are to blame for the crisis, not him. As the president ratchets up his re-election efforts, his argument is an effort to simultaneously put the brunt of responsibility for the coronavirus catastrophe on the shoulders of his political opponents while also maintaining that he holds “total authority” over the pandemic and the states facing it.

It’s an argument that resonates best in rural, redder parts of the country, which have not been hit as hard by the pandemic as blue, urban areas. Trump himself has said, “We’ll be opening some states much sooner than others,” despite pushback from legislators and business leaders alike about the current lack of mass testing.

And it’s a message of division, designed to pit Republican-voting areas of states against their Democratic-voting neighbors, even rural Republicans against urban Republicans. All this to activate white rural voters who supported Trump in 2016 and whom he’ll need again in 2020.

That's how it plays out here.  Greg Abbott's juggling act, with safety and science battling Dan Patrick and the pastors, has him spinning.  RG Ratcliffe at Texas Monthly was also unimpressed with Abbott's press conference about restarting the state's economy.


In times of personal crisis, Abbott always turns to Gawd his donors.


And demonstrates his inner Trump.


Shutting down government transparency has become a coronavirus symptom.



With the latest on voting-by-mail ...


Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, vowed to appeal the ruling, arguing that mail voting could lead to fraud. Many states rely heavily on mail-in ballots and have had no significant issues with voter fraud. Five states already plan to run all-mail elections this year, and 28 other states allow voters to request a mail ballot for any reason. The Brennan Center for Justice found that the threat of voter fraud is “infinitesimally small.”


Kuff also looked at the initial ruling in the TDP's lawsuit to expand vote-by-mail access.  And via Rick Hasen at Election Law Blog, Chad Flanders and Kristen Spina write in Slate that the Texas courts should use the “democracy canon” to interpret excuse restrictions in absentee ballot laws.

As the ACLU stated it in its motion in the case, though, it’s arguable that everyone now has a “physical condition” that increases the “likelihood” that going to the polls might “injure[] the voter’s health.” (New Hampshire has interpreted its analogous “physical disability” provision in precisely this way) Paxton’s construction of the statute, meanwhile, also might mean that someone who actually tests positive for COVID-19 but is asymptomatic may not qualify for an absentee ballot, which seems absurd. As Vox’s Ian Millhiser wrote: “Either one of these interpretations of the Texas law is plausible, and a judge could reach either conclusion using methods of statutory interpretation that are widely accepted as legitimate.”

This is where Texas’ judges should turn to the so-called “democracy canon,” a method of interpreting statutes that is tailor-made for cases like this one. In his 2009 Stanford Law Review article about the method, University of California, Irvine law professor Richard Hasen offered a case citation that perfectly captures the heart of the democracy canon: “[a]ll statutes tending to limit the citizen in his exercise of [the right of suffrage] should be liberally construed in his favor.” In other words, when there is a “tie” in how to interpret the statute, the tie goes to the voter.

The case Hasen cited -- Owens v. State ex rel. Jennett -- was, in fact, a Texas Supreme Court case. Indeed, Texas historically adopted a fairly strong version of what Hasen called the democracy canon. In one appeals court case from the 1950s on the very subject of absentee ballots, Sanchez v. Bravo, a Texas court established a “clear statement” rule regarding restrictions on the right to vote. If a state is going to prevent someone from voting, the court ruled, they have to say so in “clear and unmistakable terms.” Otherwise, courts must read the law in a way that promotes “the right of the citizen to cast his ballot and thus participate in the selection of those who control his government.”

The Texas Green Party held their state convention over the weekend, and Howie Hawkins won the majority of presidential delegates.

The convention affirmed statewide candidates kat gruene for Railroad Commission, Charles Waterbury for Supreme Court Position 1, and (David B. Collins) for US Senate. None of us three paid the new filing fees to run, so under current law we will not appear on the general election ballot. As we have noted previously, a pending lawsuit may yet overturn the filing fee provision of HB 2504.

[...]

Based on the polling at countywide precinct conventions, GPTX will have 20 delegates for Howie Hawkins, 3 for Dario Hunter, 2 for Kent Mesplay, and 1 for Susan Buchser-Lochocki.


Some environmental developments include ...


The next Census -- whenever it takes place -- could well determine a future for Port Arthur as maintaining semblance of a city ... or not.


Trump's EPA rollbacks are punishing Port Arthur's residents as well.

Danielle Nelson’s best monitor for the emissions billowing out of the oil refineries and chemical plants surrounding her home: The heaving chest of her 9-year-old asthmatic son.

On some nights, the boy’s chest shudders as he fights for breath in his sleep. Nelson suspects the towering plants and refineries are to blame, rising like a lit-up city at night around her squat brick apartment building in the rugged Texas Gulf Coast city of Port Arthur.

Ask Nelson what protection the federal government and plant operators provide her African American community, and her answer is blunt. “They’re basically killing us,” says the 37-year-old, who herself has been diagnosed with respiratory problems since moving to the community after 2017′s Hurricane Harvey.

“We don’t even know what we’re breathing,” she says.


And like air pollution from fossil fuel producers, gun nuts aren't taking any time off, either.


Food concerns are moving to the forefront; Texas Standard reports that a statehouse committee chairman thinks that the meat packers are manipulating the price of beef.

State Rep. Drew Springer, chair of the House Agriculture and Livestock committee, has called for an investigation into the pricing practices of meat packers. Just four companies control 85% of the U.S beef market.

SocraticGadfly looked at restaurants by type and class, and wonders which will do better, which worse on surviving coronavirus.  The Lunch Tray noted a somewhat favorable ruling in a lawsuit over USDA school nutrition rollbacks.




And an Austin landmark loses its life to the coronavirus.


With all of this grim news, finding a bright spot somewhere can be difficult.  The Bloggess shares how she is coping.

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Monday, April 13, 2020

The Weekly 'Flatten the Curve' Wrangle *updates

The Texas Progressive Alliance remains committed to flattening the curve as it brings you the best of the left of, about, and from around the Great State over the past week.


Gerald Parker, who served in the Bush administration and is now at Texas A&M, says that we are just at stage two of this five-stage pandemic.


Phase Three would be (a second stage of) containment before we have a vaccine to deploy. I’m optimistic that in three to six months we’ll have (a better treatment for coronavirus symptoms), a therapeutic in our toolkit that can rescue those who become severely ill.

But it's going to be at least 18 months, I believe, before there's a vaccine available to deploy in any meaningful way.

While we wait for a vaccine, we’ll enter a second stage of containment. During this time, we need to restart our economy -- and we need to do it safely.

What's essential to go the next phase is greatly expanded lab testing -- both the antigen and the antibody lab testing -- so we can have a much better view of what's happening in our community. Despite the rapid advancement that's occurred in lab testing over the last month, we're still catching up. And without the lab testing, we're still almost blind to what's really happening in our community.

I think everybody is now familiar with the epidemiology curve -- the curve from “flattening the curve” -- and its peak. Once we’re on the other side of the peak, once we're seeing a decreasing number of cases, we'll be back in a position where we can attempt to contain the virus in our communities with surgically applied social distancing measures -- not community-wide social distancing measures.

We’re going to have to target new infections more aggressively. We’re going to have to isolate those and do contact tracing. It takes a lot of resources to do that.

Our public health authorities don't have the manpower to do this. We need a lot more public-health soldiers.




It's not just the statistics that are lacking ...


Some of our so-called leaders are short on empathy.


Perhaps we should send him a copy of the newspaper.


COVID-19 is not an equal opportunity infection.




And the discrimination goes far beyond the numbers.


In a second Wrangle coming tomorrow, we'll have the latest on the legal developments regarding Ken Paxton's outlawing of women's reproductive freedoms.

Ross Ramsey of the TexTrib via Progrexas asks the right question: is in-person voting during a contagion really the best we can do?

It’s plainly ignorant to tell people to stay away from one another and then to require them to gather in their precincts to cast votes.

Jim Malewitz, a former Texas Tribune reporter who now works for Wisconsin Watch, was on hand this month when that state required many of its voters to line up or shut up. He tweeted a Kenosha News photo of a voter outfitted for the occasion. You should go look.

Voting by mail is well established in other states, but you don’t have to look far to find politicians -- Republicans in particular -- who think it’s a bad idea. Start right at the top, with President Donald Trump, who voted by mail in the last election: “Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to statewide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it,” he tweeted Wednesday. “Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”

[...]

There are arguments, debunked by election experts, that voting by mail is more vulnerable to fraud. And some argue, with some evidence, that it could be difficult to handle a vote-by-mail election without big investments in voting processes.

That last one is just a good reason to start early instead of waiting until September to make some decisions.

[...]

Maybe it’s not the IQ of voters we’re testing here.


Scott Henson of Grits for Breakfast, feeling better and back on a regular blogging schedule, has the latest on Abbott's court battle to stop prisoners from being released due to the pandemic.

UPDATE: The Supreme Court of Texas on Saturday issued a temporary stay on Judge Livingston's temporary restraining order, meaning Abbott's order for now is back in effect. The court has requested briefings on the subject, with responses from the litigants due on Monday. See coverage from the Texas Tribune.


SocraticGadfly notes that the Freedom from Religion Foundation had a court win over Greg Abbott upheld on appeal, and as with the original filing, it's a case he wishes both could have lost.

The Texas Signal worries about the rise of anti-Asian racism.


And the TO announces their new EIC.


One of Ahtone's last pieces of work at High Country News -- along with several others -- detailed the appropriation of indigenous peoples' lands for public colleges.


And closing out this Wrangle with the lighter side ...

The Lunch Tray deconstructs stress eating and "anxiety baking".  It's Not Hou It's Me shows you where to pick up beer to go in Houston.
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Monday, October 29, 2018

Still Early Voting Wrangle

In breaking developments late last evening in the Texas House Speaker's contest, Rep. John Zerwas of Richmond -- probably the most moderate Republican in the unofficial race for the post -- announced his withdrawal.  Forty House Republicans declared their support for Angleton Republican Dennis Bonnen, who had previously told the Texas Tribune he wasn't running for the job.  There will be more news in the days ahead as Democrats are huddling today to determine their course.

And with that as an opener, the Texas Progressive Alliance wants you to be sure to encourage your like-minded friends to get to the polls this week since we know you've already voted yourself.


Ahead of the midterms, NPR notices that our indicted felon/state attorney general Ken Paxton gets busy chasing ghosts ramping up efforts to "combat voter fraud" (sic).

Voting experts say actual instances of fraudulent ballots knowingly cast are extremely rare, leading to accusations that the effort is intended to intimidate voters.

"I think it's all politically motivated," said Greg Westfall, a Texas lawyer currently representing a Hispanic woman who was charged this month with voter fraud. "If you look at the timing, that's what's breathtaking."

[...]

"The fact that there is this concerted effort in Texas to prosecute these cases to the full extent – particularly against people of color – is supremely troublesome," (Beth Stevens of the Texas Civil Rights Project) said. "And then we know what happens in Texas goes to the rest of the country as a model."

Zenén Jaimes Pérez, the communications director for the TxCRP, said the attorney general's own numbers show that his office was tackling an issue that wasn't a growing problem, as shown by the small number of cases in the many years before the crackdown.

"They have prosecuted an average of around 30 election violations since 2004," PĂ©rez said in an email. "To be sure, the AG started the Election Integrity Initiative in without evidence of increasing elections violations," PĂ©rez said.

Beto O'Rourke's plan to maximize the African American vote in H-Town hit high gear over the weekend, with Say Something appearances by musical artists at EV locations around town, the Souls to the Polls rallies, and other efforts accounted by Justin Miller at the Texas Observer.


Even as another 'Beto as Superman' mural was unveiled in Houston ...


... the first, in East Austin and mentioned in this 'scattershot' post from Brains and Eggs, was defaced by MAGA vandals shortly after it debuted.

Rogers’s mural has been defaced phrases like "El Paso gentrifier supports Israel" and "No hero” spray-painted onto the artwork in red and white.

Socratic Gadfly does some number-crunching on the early voting surge and offers a quick hot take on what it might mean for the Cruz-O'Rourke Senate race.

Progrexas carries the piece from the TexTrib about how the statewide judicial candidates will win or lose solely on the basis of their party affiliation.


If anyone is poised to spoil (yet another GOP) sweep, it’s R.K. Sandill, a long-serving Democratic district judge in Harris County who’s consistently outraised his opponent, Justice John Devine. In addition to an impressive cash-on-hand tally, an endorsement from the Houston Chronicle and victories in the Houston Bar Association and Texas Bar Association polls, Sandill faces perhaps the most controversial incumbent on the high court. Before being elected to the high court in 2012, Devine was sued for displaying the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. Devine has also boasted publicly that he was arrested 37 times protesting outside abortion clinics.

See also this post at Brains and Eggs for the 'vulnerable, least discussed' Republican -- Presiding Judge Sharon "Killer" Keller of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals -- if the blue wave crests high enough on November 6.

Rewire writes about how a federal court in Texas -- Judge Reed O'Connor's in the Northern District -- will shape the legal fight under way over transgender rights.

Brandon Formby at the Texas Tribune describes the collision of rural and urban values as the high speed rail line between Houston and Dallas continues to move ahead.

Think Progress has details on far-right activists and militia groups headed to the southern border to stop the caravan of Honduran migrants (that are still a thousand miles away).

Earlier (last) week, the U.S. Border Patrol warned landowners in Texas that they could expect “possible armed civilians” on their property because of the news about the caravan. The exact details of when and where the militia would deploy are unclear, but one militia leader told the Associated Press that they would have upwards of 100 members guarding the Mexico-Texas border.

David Collins added some thoughts to Nick Cooper's (he's the drummer for local band Free Radicals) about the border wall.

Stace at Dos Centavos reflected on his weekend of politics y cultura.

The TSTA Blog resorts to begging teachers to support public education at the ballot box.

Texas Standard updates the story of the city of Houston's legal tussle with Southwest Key, the operators of a proposed child detention facility on the northeast side, in reporting that the city has rejected a settlement offer from the company.

A political sign opposing Prop 2 -- the Houston firefighters' pay parity proposal -- was tastelessly posted at the vacant site where five died and thirteen were injured fighting a terrible motel fire just a few years ago.  Fox26's Greg Groogan captured the reactions of HFD union head Marty Lancton and Mayor Sylvester Turner.

"I don't know how you walk up here and see five flags flying, the thin red line and the 13 that were injured and not understand that this is not the place to show your disdain and your vindictiveness toward Houston Firefighters," said Lancton.

[...]

At City Hall, Mayor Sylvester Turner, who is bankrolling the PAC and leading the fight against pay parity, stopped short of an apology.

"I don't know who put it there. I'm just saying whoever put it there, it's important to be respectful and not just of places, but family members as well," said Turner.

Stephen Willeford, the Sutherland Springs "good guy with a gun", is profiled by Michael J. Mooney in Texas Monthly.

Dallas City Hall has stonewalled a pair of open records requests by Downwinders at Risk regarding a mysterious clean air fund and a Joppa polluter.

Jim Schutze at the Dallas Observer thinks it's great that a rec center was renamed for Santos Rodriguez, the boy who was killed by a Dallas policeman in 1973 (updated by the Militant in this Wrangle from August).

Sanford Nowlin at the San Antonio Current reminds us that some Christians do support progressive liberal ideas and politics.

CultureMap Houston describes how 'Old Spanish Trail', aka old Highway 90 connecting El Paso, San Antonio, and Houston and built over hundred years ago missed its intended history ... but created a new one that's now old enough for us to celebrate all its own, particularly in the Alamo City.

Grits came to Houston and took in a Contemporary Arts Museum collaboration by artists about the justice system (highly recommended).

Both CNBC and The Verge covered the news about the Sam's Club in Dallas which will be a cashier-less operation, similar to the five (so far) Amazon Go stores in Seattle and Chicago.

And Harry Hamid went out for a bottle of wine at midnight, took in the 'Trose scene, and got ready to tell another story.
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Monday, April 11, 2016

SEC charges Paxton with stock fraud

Civil charges (which means a fine), not criminal, as with the state jail felonies he's been facing.  In fact there's only a few new details to add to this embarrassment.

U.S. regulators charged Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday for his alleged role in a stock scam that defrauded investors in a Texas-based technology company called Servergy Inc.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused the company and former Chief Executive Officer William Mapp of selling private stock while misleading investors about the energy efficiency of its sole product, and accused Paxton of working to raise investor funds for the company without disclosing his commissions.

The SEC's civil case followed a related criminal case against Paxton for securities fraud. Last year, a Texas state grand jury indicted Paxton for his alleged role in a scheme to mislead investors.

Let's skip over to the Chron for this:

The complaint alleges that Paxton told the SEC that he intended to pay for the shares and even offered to pay $100,000 to Mapp during a meeting at a Dairy Queen in McKinney, Texas.
According to Paxton, Mapp then said, "I can't take your money. God doesn't want me to take your money." So Paxton took the shares as a gift.

The Lord's name invoked over BeltBusters, fries, and shakes at DQ as the dirty deal went down.  That's what I like about Texas.  More from the Houston Press:

Paxton's connection to Servergy has been one of the most intriguing details about the AG's current legal woes. Before his indictment on state securities fraud charges last summer, the SEC had already accused Servergy of lying to investors by falsely claiming its data servers had already been sold to huge companies, like Amazon and Freescale. The SEC claims Servergy even lied to investors about the very servers the company was selling, falsely claiming the machines required 80 percent less cooling, energy and space than others on the market.

According to a press release announcing federal charges against Paxton and others, the SEC claims former Servergy CEO William Mapp sold millions of dollars in company stock by exaggerating his product's merits. As for Amazon's supposed interest in the company's servers, the press release states: "In reality, an Amazon employee had merely contacted Servergy because he wanted to test the product in his free time for personal use."

And last, this.

Bill Miller, a longtime Austin consultant who has represented politicians under investigation and facing criminal charges, said he expects Monday's federal charges will only make Paxton "lock down for the long haul. He will not step down."
"The feds are straight-up business in cases like this," Miller said. "They don't care whether he's attorney general or not, and they're going to press ahead with their case – and you can expect him to fight it," he said. "In a case like this, once you're there – like he is now – he's going to tough it out to the end."

Paxton is relying on the same Lone Star justice that saw Rick Perry skate on his indictments, which is that the courts in Texas are overwhelmingly Republican-elected and thus deliver their own unique interpretations of the law.  Republican voters picked Paxton in the runoff two springs ago over Dan Branch -- who was endorsed by W Bush -- despite his having already confessed to his crimes, mostly because (and here I have to make an educated guess about the rationale formed in the mind of the typical Republican primary runoff voter) of Paxton's personal relationship with Ted Cruz Jesus Christ.

After all, if you're only accountable for your sins on the day you stand before your god, who is the GOP base to judge you?
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Tuesday, October 28, 2014

True the Vote loses another lawsuit

0 for 2 in court over the past month.

True the Vote, the Republican voter suppression movement, lost a round in its battle against the IRS yesterday when U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton dismissed its lawsuit against the IRS. True the Vote had claimed it had been targeted for greater IRS scrutiny due to its conservative point of view.
Judge Walton also dismissed a similar lawsuit brought by Linchpins of Liberty and 40 other groups. According to Forbes:
It’s important to understand that Judge Walton, a Presidential Bush nominee to the court, did not rule on the merits of the case. He didn’t decide that the IRS conduct was okay or that no harm was done. He ruled, rather, that procedurally, the case had nowhere to go. Since the plaintiffs in both instances could not prove ongoing harm – nor could they prove that there were not other remedies available – Judge Walton dismissed these cases.
A copy of the ruling is here.

However, True the Vote is continuing its vigilante tactics at voter suppression, emailing its supporters a call to arms, claiming "Elections will be stolen" on November 4.


James O'Keefe has beaten this dead horse over and over again.  The latest Republican talking point is that "photo IDs are free".  This is deliberately misleading.  Here's the evidence.

To get an EIC, (Eric) Kennie needs to be able to show the Texas department of public safety (DPS) other forms of documentation that satisfy them as to his identity. He presented them with his old personal ID card – issued by the DPS itself and with his photo on it – but because it is more than 60 days expired (it ran out in 2000) they didn’t accept it. Next he showed them an electricity bill, and after that a cable TV bill, but on each occasion they said it didn’t cut muster and turned him away.

Each trip to the DPS office involved taking three buses, a journey that can stretch to a couple of hours. Then he had to stand in line, waiting for up to a further three hours to be seen, before finally making another two-hour schlep home.

In one of his trips to the DPS last year they told him he needed to get hold of a copy of his birth certificate as the only remaining way he could meet the requirements and get his EIC. That meant going on yet another three-bus trek to the official records office in a different part of town.

The cost of acquiring a birth certificate in Texas is $23, which may not sound much but it is to Kennie. He is poor, like many of the up to 600,000 Texans caught in the current voter ID trap.

There's also a 93-year-old veteran in Houston who begs to differ with the state's definition of 'free'.

Now if you want to read a cogent argument in favor of voter photo ID, Mona Charon manages a few (through the fog of thinly disguised partisan ad hominem).  But the point remains that photo IDs required for voting should actually be free and unrestricted, unlike what the Texas law stipulates.  Which is why the Supreme Court will eventually strike it down, as even Republican election law attorneys understand.

For this election, whether or not the law is working as intended seems to be the $64,000 question.  Update: FWIW, Greg Wythe's numbers show some reasons to be pessimistic.
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Tuesday, May 13, 2014

The last gasps of conservative extremism

They're dying hard, but they're still dying.

-- Keep in mind that Donald Sterling isn't a racist.  He told Anderson Cooper so.

"He's got AIDS!" Sterling said loudly at one point, cutting off Cooper as the interviewer attempted to cite (Magic) Johnson's accomplishments after Sterling asked, "What has he done, big Magic Johnson, what has he done?"

Sterling changed course briefly during the interview to call Johnson "a good person," but resumed his criticism.

"He acts so holy," Sterling said. "He made love to every girl in every city in America, and he had AIDS, and when he had those AIDS, I went to my synagogue and I prayed for him, I hope he could live and be well. I didn't criticize him. I could have. Is he an example for children?"

He's not a homophobe, either.

-- Lindsey Graham has decided he'll try to outlaw women's reproductive choice again. He's being primaried from the right, naturally.

The South Carolina Republican is organizing a group of his colleagues to speak in support of a bill that would federally ban abortions after more than 20 weeks of pregnancy, legislation that has the support of 41 Senate Republicans and has already passed the House. Graham is centering this legislative push on the May 13 anniversary of Kermit Gosnell’s conviction for killing infants that were born alive.

[...]

Graham introduced his abortion legislation in November and after a recent lull, the South Carolina Republican is ramping up activity alongside the Gosnell anniversary and — perhaps coincidentally — his own Senate primary in June, where he is trying to avoid a run-off by accruing 50 percent of the vote.

Because it's not whether you win or lose, it's how TeaBaggeringly thuggish can you act.

-- Ann Coulter got served, over and over again, on Twitter.  What she has also made a mockery of is the Republican urban legend of voter "fraud" (sic), the elaborate, well-established nationwide effort to intimidate minority voters from the polls.  Ann Coulter, you should be reminded, got away with actual voter fraud.

For more info and the complete documentation of Ann Coulter's well-documented voter fraud in Florida, and most likely in Connecticut as well, see BradBlog.com/CoulterFraud. (Here's a version of the full story, in one article, as it stood as of mid-2008.)

If you'd like more information on actual and apparent voter fraud by other very high-profile Republicans (none of which would have been prevented by the purposely disenfranchising polling place Photo ID schemes the GOP has been pretending are needed to stop "voter fraud"), please see the list included at the bottom of this article from just before the 2012 Presidential election.

Finally, for the record, please note that while a recent, non-partisan study of election fraud related offenses documented in all 50 states from 2000 to 2012 found just ten (10) cases of the type of voter fraud that could have possibly been deterred by polling place Photo ID restrictions, there have been zero (0) calls by high-profile Republicans for the prosecution of Ann Coulter for the crime of actual, very well documented felony voter fraud that she absolutely committed.

-- It's not just Coulter, of course, that is completely immune to hypocrisy.  An ability to grasp even the most rudimentary irony is required if you're going to be a Republican these days.

For example, you have to be terribly concerned (to the point of, you know, outrage at your income tax rate) about your grandchildren's future because of the federal debt... but not about global warming, because that's a hoax.  Which is why it costs so much to combat it.

The largest, most-consistent money fueling the climate denial movement are a number of well-funded conservative foundations built with so-called "dark money," or concealed donations, according to an analysis released (in December of 2013).

The study, by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle, is the first academic effort to probe the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the climate denial movement.

It found that the amount of money flowing through third-party, pass-through foundations like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital, whose funding cannot be traced, has risen dramatically over the past five years. In all, 140 foundations funneled $558 million to almost 100 climate denial organizations from 2003 to 2010.
Meanwhile the traceable cash flow from more traditional sources, such as Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, has disappeared.

The study was published  in the journal Climatic Change.

Liberals like Al Gore invented global warming, you see, in order to make money off of it.  They make much more money off the climate change "fraud" (sic) than Charles and David Koch make from polluting our air and water.  After all, the Kochs have only spent $67 million fighting global warming since 1997.  That's chump change.  Literally.



I mean, if it was a bigger deal, they would have spent more on it, right?  Created more jobs.


This sort of alternate reality delusional behavior is, as you know, everywhere you look.  Benghazi, Obama's birth certificate, death panels... on and on and on.  Climate change just happens to be the place where there is the most at risk and the most money involved.  The battle fronts in the Republican War on Earth include fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline, among others.


 It would be nice if we could just laugh it off.

After claiming on Sunday that human activity does not cause climate change, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) suddenly found his ignorance credentials under attack by potential rivals for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination.

“Now that Marco’s thinking of running for President, he doesn’t believe in climate change,” said Texas Governor Rick Perry. “To those of us with long track records of ignorance on this issue, he seems a little late to the rodeo.” 

Yeah, Texas Republicans.  Ignorant, arrogant, and built to stay that way.

And there's no place like my adopted hometown of Houston that better illustrates Upton Sinclair's words: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

That said, Ted Cruz's grandson and Pat Robertson's great-grandson will someday blame this on teh gayz or something. Or else they'll claim it's a sign of the Apocalypse. But, sorry, there will be no god magically rapturing you out of your flooded home, either.

It's times like these when I'm even more glad that I never had any children.  Because if I had, I would definitely be concerned for their future... having to live with so many stupid people.
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Wednesday, November 20, 2013

One in three Houston-area gas pumps is a ripoff

This is what happens after twenty years of Republican rule at the statewide level.

(Houston CBS affiliate KHOU's investigative reporters) analyzed state inspection records and discovered that in the last two years nearly one in three gas station inspections in our region ended in a failing grade.

In all, that represented 1,667 different gas stations ....

State inspectors found problems with (one station's) pumps three different times since the beginning of November, 2011.  According to the Texas Department of Agriculture, in one case a pump charged $1.28 before delivering any gas.

I've blogged about this since 2010, when Hank Gilbert challenged Todd Staples for ag commissioner.  Seven years later, the problem has only gotten worse.  Now Staples wants a promotion to lieutenant governor in 2014.

I'm sure this institutionalized incompetence is only because the agriculture commission is just understaffed due to cutbacks passed in Austin.  After all, since we can't afford any state parks, and the only roads being built are toll roads, everybody's got to tighten their belt.  Right?

If an operator is determined to be intentionally ripping off customers, TDA will turn its findings over the Texas Attorney General’s Office.

How many of these has Greg Abbott's office prosecuted?  Fewer than the number of statistically insignificant voter "fraud" cases, I would guess.  This is the hallmark of Coathanger Ken's legacy: ignore actual fraud, pursue the monster-under-your-bed fears of the right-wing primary voter.

This is the kind of bad government conservatives should be complaining about.  Instead their response is to run ever more conservative candidates against their previous darlings.  That's not going to fix anything.

Instead of waiting for the TXGOP to figure out that they're part of the problem, let's vote for some solutions instead.  And let's encourage those who aren't voting in off-presidential year elections that it is vital that they start doing so.
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Monday, November 05, 2012

Day-before developments

-- Townhall.com and Drudge riled up the local True the Vote pasty thugs with this.

Friday afternoon at an early polling place located at 6719 W. Montgomery Road in Houston, NAACP members were seen advocating for President Barack Obama according to volunteer poll watchers on location at the time.

According to Eve Rockford, a poll watcher trained by voter integrity group True the Vote, three NAACP members showed up to the 139 precinct location with 50 cases of bottled water and began handing bottles out to people standing in line. While wearing NAACP labeled clothing, members were "stirring the crowd" and talking to voters about flying to Ohio to promote President Barack Obama.

The Houston Chronicle reported the following on Sunday.

A disturbance at the busy Acres Homes early voting location Friday night was related to representatives of the NAACP protesting long wait times for disabled voters, county officials said Sunday.

An article on the website Townhall.com, linked on the widely read Drudge Report, stated that people wearing NAACP shirts "took over" the Acres Homes polling place, electioneering and voicing support for President Barack Obama while poll workers "did nothing."

Assistant County Attorney Doug Ray disputed that account.

 "It wasn't like they were taking control of the place. It wasn't like we did nothing about it. That's just not true at all," Ray said. 

You can read more about the he said/she said bullshit at the link (and don't miss the comments). Here's Rep. Sylvester Turner's account, via Carl Whitmarsh's e-list.

On Friday, the last day of early polling, I received several calls from people at the Acres Homes Multi-Service Center that seniors and disabled persons who were not physically able to walk and stand in the voting line and who requested a portable voting machine be brought to their cars were told to go to another voting location or come inside because the clerks were too busy. I had my chief of staff call the Secretary of State's office for them to advise those persons at the Acres Home Multii-service Center that the law required them to offer curb-side service to those persons unable to come inside to vote. Once I got there, I was also told that poll watchers with True the Vote raised complaints about persons wearing NAACP shirts being inside the polls giving people water and assisting those elderly persons who did come inside. The True the Vote poll watchers argued that the NAACP was a political organization that endorsed candidates and demanded that they remove or cover up their shirts.

Those of you familiar with the NAACP know that it has never endorsed political candidates and neither were the persons at the center advocating for any candidate or party. These so-called poll watchers also had problems with me being outside talking to voters. True the Vote is a political entity with a political agenda who has trained individuals to come into areas like Acres Homes, in my district, to attempt to intimidate and harass voters be they young or old.

Tuesday is the final day to vote. I am asking voters in Acres Homes and across Harris County to exercise your democratic right to vote and not allow anyone to intimidate or prevent you from voting. 

And so it goes...

Update: Isiah Carey reports that the HCGOP has filed suit. This should be as much fun as Gerry Birnberg's attempt to get Lloyd Oliver off the Harris County ballot.

-- Mailed ballots are likely to be 2012's hanging chads.

Sloppy signatures on mail-in ballots might prove to be the hanging chads of the 2012 election.
As Republicans and Democrats raise alarms about potential voter fraud and voter suppression, mail-in ballots have boomed as an uncontroversial form of convenient, inexpensive voting.

In the critical swing states of Ohio and Florida, more than a fifth of voters chose the mail-in option 2010. In Colorado, another battleground, the number was nearly two-thirds.
But there may be controversy to come. For a variety of reasons, mail-in ballots are much more likely to be rejected than conventional, in-person votes.

With the razor-close presidential election Tuesday between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney potentially riding on a few tens of thousands of votes in a handful of states, the election could be decided by election officials' judgments about mail-in ballot signatures.

"You would worry that in Florida, in particular, the new hanging chad becomes whether you count this absentee ballot or not based on whether the signature is right," said Charles Stewart III, co-director of the Voting Technology Project and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.

I have a personal account about this to share.

I was appointed by the Harris County Green Party to serve on the Early Voting Ballot Board last month, but the presiding judge (a Democrat) had me (and other Greens) removed in a parliamentary procedure. He called a vote on our fitness to serve based on the fact that we voted in the Democratic primary. When the County Clerk informed him that the Texas Election Code deemed that procedure illegal, the presiding judge resorted to having us dismissed because there "wasn't enough work for us to be needed".

You may recall that I mentioned Charles Kuffner's (and the County Clerk's) numbers here for Harris County mailed ballots: a total in excess of 66,000, almost 14,000 more than in 2008. That's as of last Friday; more are arriving in the mail over the weekend, today, and tomorrow. The ballot board's charge is to have these all counted by Election Day. Some ballots arrive afterwards and are added in the final canvass, but all votes arriving before ED must be counted by ED.

Normally an EVBB judge like myself would be bound by oath not to reveal deliberations of the board like this. The reason I am writing about it is because the presiding judge neglected to have me sworn in.

I'll have more to say about this in the future, but it's going to have to wind its way through a handful of lawyers first.

-- On a last and lighter note, here's a slideshow of some of the memes of the 2012 campaign. They left several out IMHO so it's hard to pick a favorite among these, but I'll go with this...


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Friday, August 17, 2012

Cockblock the Vote

Considering our recent discussions on the topic, The Daily Show's take last night is cogent and wicked.

[...] Jon Stewart tore into Republican-backed voter identification laws in Pennsylvania and Ohio, which he branded as two different attempts at “suppressing Democratic turnout.”

“Voter fraud is an enormous issue with more than exactly 10 documented cases of it in the entire country alone,” Stewart deadpanned, “just since the beginning of the millennium. That’s .000000284% of all votes. So you can see why Pennsylvania would want to enact a voter ID law that one study claims could potentially disenfranchise around 9% of the entire Pennsylvanian electorate. But that’s the price you pay to prevent something that doesn’t happen.”

“Pennsylvania has voted Democratic in the last five presidential elections,” Stewart pointed out, “leaning toward Obama in this election. It’s not like voter ID law is blatantly designed to skew that result. Right, State House Republican majority leader that designed it?”

He then played tape of that Pennsylvania legislator, Mike Turzai, saying, “Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania. Done.”

Stewart then went after Ohio Republicans’ attempt to restrict early voting hours on Democratic counties but extending early voting hours in Republican ones. “Are you kidding me?” he exclaimed. “All Americans who want equal access to the vote take two steps forward. Not so fast, people who live on Martin Luther King Boulevard South.”

Stewart then played a clip of an Ohio Republican legislator defending the rules by saying, “We try to make it easy but we can’t, you know. I say we’re not 7-11. We can’t stay open 24/7 and let anybody vote by any rule that they want to.”

“Surely we can’t expect our constitutionally guaranteed voting rights to meet the same high standards as a combination gas station/convenience store,” Stewart mocked.

“Two states, two completely different means of suppressing Democratic turnout,” he concluded. “Here is the one thing they have in common: the mechanism of the vote are in the hands of partisan elected officials.”

There's video of the whole thing at Mediaite.

What I never understand is why nobody even mentions Texas. Like the ultrasound bill and trans-vaginal wands, which was enough to ruin Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's chances to be Mitt Romney's running mate, Texas is like a whole other (fascist) country in the national discussion.

Unlike Pennsylvania and Ohio, Texas' own Photo ID law is so egregious that it is stymied by both the courts and the DOJ, while in Houston we suffer from the Teabagger takeover of our bifurcated election system (registration and elections).  The landslide of Democrats elected via voter fraud in Harris County is, of course, the reason for the birth of the King Street Patriots, now a national organization comprised of Caucasian Christian warriors on a mission to prevent anyone who doesn't look like them -- or think like me -- from voting.

And neither the Republicans in charge of the mess, nor most Democrats, want to change that.

Do you still think voting for either a Democrat or a Republican without considering the other options is going to effect change? It seems to me that would be the textbook definition of insanity.

And they call ME crazy for wishing this was the reality.


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Sunday, July 22, 2012

Let's keep talking about voter "fraud"

Until some people finally get it. This report was filed back on July 12 by the CBS affiliate in D-FW, though it is Jeremy Desel, a Houston reporter for KHOU, that filed it.


Here also is PolitiFact.

We also asked how many election fraud cases had been referred to the attorney general’s office since 2002. Abbott’s list shows 311 accusations of election fraud spanning 2002-12. The 57 investigations we’re checking represent only those cases that were both prosecuted and resolved.

Six of the prosecutions ended in dismissal or acquittal, Strickland told us by telephone, leaving 51 prosecutions that resulted in convictions.

By our analysis, three-quarters of the cases involved election code violations classified as "illegal voting" -- which includes acts such as voting more than once, impersonating a voter or voting despite ineligibility -- and "method of returning marked ballot," often meaning the defendant was accused of having someone else’s ballot.

Only two cases are described as "voter impersonation" on the list. Whether voter impersonation is a standing problem has been a hot button in the state’s legislative debates over proposed voter ID laws in 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2011; Austin American-Statesman news stories say legislators mostly split along party lines, with Democrats claiming impersonation is rare and Republicans claiming the problem is significant. Abbott drew criticism in 2006 for creating a special unit to target voter fraud that by mid-2008 had yielded, according to a May 19, 2008, Associated Press news story, only 26 prosecutions.

Looking at all 57 election fraud prosecutions from 2002 to 2012, we tallied up the resolutions (some had multiple outcomes, when charges were pursued as separate cases):
  • Specified as convictions: 26
  • Guilty plea resulting in conviction: 2
  • Deferred adjudication: 19
  • Pre-trial diversion: 10
  • Acquitted: 2

Out of more than 39 million votes cast in Texas over the past decade across the state in all elections, the number of convictions for voter impersonation fraud -- between 20 and 60, give or take 2 or 3 according to both links I embedded above and depending on how the term is defined -- represents, according to Desel and the most generous rounding (62/39,000,000), all of .0001%. That's one ten-thousandth of one percent. My calculator drives out .0000015, however.

Chances of winning the MegaMillions lottery: about one in slightly under 176 million. That's much poorer, by the way.
Chances of being struck by lightning: much better; 1 in 576,000
Chances of being killed by lightning (this happened in Houston to two men just last week): one in 2,320,000
Chances of being mauled by a polar bear and a regular bear at the same time: I don't know, ask the e-Trade Baby.

There are many more sightings of Bigfoot in the Lone Star State, and almost exactly as many reported captures of a live one... or a dead one, for that matter. There is a much greater likelihood of your becoming an astronaut, and significanty better odds that you can draw a royal flush on the first hand dealt than find a voter fraud conviction in the state of Texas.

When you say there is no voter fraud -- so small an amount that it is infinitesimal; essentially and statistically 'none' -- taking place in Texas, and your friendly conservative moron says "one is too many", or "we jes' ain't catchin' all the damn Ill Eagles", or "Mickey Mouse and the Dallas Cowboys are registered in Harris County", or "ACORN", be prepared. Keep a few facts to slap their dumb shit down with.

And don't forget to make fun of them for being so stupid.
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