John Conyers Is Not an Icon, He Was a Congressman

John Conyers left Congress in disgrace in Dec. 2017, utterly
self-absorbed and convinced of his moral superiority

What is it that possesses some people after assuming an office?

Rep. John Conyers, Jr., (D-Michigan), resigned this week, facing multiple sexual harassment complaints coming out of his office fiefdom built over decades.

Icon, legend? Conyers is accused of the same offenses leading Clarence Thomas to be branded a monster.

No, Conyers is not an icon. He's a civil rights worker along with 10,000,000s of Americans whose names will not grace the history books. Any grounded, reflective man would know this.

Not Conyers.

Listening to Conyers' statement on the Mildred Gaddis Show, (WPZR-FM, Detroit), (via cable news), is to listen to a self-absorbed, pathetically deluded man so convinced of his own righteousness that it's not surprising any empathy with his victims is absent.

Said Conyers on the Gaddis show:

My legacy can’t be compromised or diminished in any way by what we’re going through now. This too shall pass. ... My legacy will continue through my children. I am retiring today and I want everyone to know how much I appreciate the ... incredible, undiminished support I've received across the years from my supporters not only from my district but across the country as well.

My, my, I, I, I.

Conyers is not an icon, a mythic, supernatural figure or a legend.

He's just a selfish guy who has been in Congress too long, creating a fiefdom that dehumanized and betrayed the very movement that he so fervently claims as his own.

Progressives Lose to Scared White Supremacists

Bernie Sanders and Adam Dahl in Janesville, Wisconsin in
Spring 2016, fighting the fights that need fighting

Updated - Campaign 2016 is white people being afraid and hateful, and it's an old American story.

On the up side, never have progressives forces been so well-organized and close to an electoral victory.

We're one step away from a smashing victory, if as a whole we get a little more organized, a little more open to appeals of liberty, a little more involved in politics; we're this close.

Fight for inches, prepare for victory.

Organize. Listen to those who warn grassroots organization is lacking.

Notes Alex Emmons: "Donald Trump shocked everyone but his own supporters Tuesday as his racist, xenophobic, authoritarian, climate-science-denying, misogynistic, 'grab-them-by-the-pussy' candidacy somehow carried him to victory," (The Intercept).

This is what happens when you turn away from injustice.

Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Nevada to Decide

Long night. Scratch Iowa.

We win with Michigan and New Hampshire.

See http://www.270towin.com/maps/bW03R

Voting Is Your Right, No Matter What Racists and Republicans Say

If you see voter obstruction, help your fellow voters

Wisconsin Republicans creating a hostile and obstructive voting regime at Wisconsin's 3,500 polling places is a scheme the GOP hopes bears fruit on Election Day. It's not just poll observes who want to obstruct your vote, it's poll workers.

After-all, Republicans seek to turn every lever of state and municipal government into de facto sub-units of Republican government. So, screening poll workers for hostility to voting rights and in the process taking over the voting place are naturals for voting-averse Republicans.

Antagonistic-to-voters polling workers are pervasive, but compiling reports of their misconduct is difficult for non-profits. (It takes a major social-scientific investigation to quantify the phenomenon of voter obstruction.)

Instead we see warnings about election observers and voter obstruction laws omitting the misconduct of municipal and contract election officials stationed at the point of voting and working, (unlawfully), to suppress the vote.

All of this is carried out under the rubric of voter fraud, a lie, and hostility to civil liberties, a disgrace.

Concludes a New York Times editorial in September: "The scary thing is how many Americans have bought into this charade [about voter fraud]. It shouldn’t be surprising that the Republican Party’s standard-bearer, Donald Trump, has elevated the lie about voting fraud and 'rigged elections' to a centerpiece of his campaign."

It shouldn't be surprising. Alex Wagner has a compelling report out about the dangers Donald Trump poses to voting.

The rotten fruit of the now Trumped-up danger of voter fraud is right at your local polling place, abetted by observers, polling workers and municipal bureaucrats.

Stay vigilant, especially if you are brown or black.

Hillary Is Sealing off Trump's Paths to 270

Hillary Clinton will win, but do not relax

Update: North Carolina's population has been assaulted like no other by the Repulbican Party. The people are fighting back and propelling Hillary Clinton to a likely victory over Trump. See Cohn, NYT.
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Hillary Clinton has taken out ad buys in Wisconsin and other blue states, hence this must mean Clinton is losing ground fast, goes the wisdom of the moment.

It's not wisdom, and such meaning as this line possesses is false or misleading.

Buying ads in northern blue states is common sense because Hillary's goal is to reach 270 electoral votes and block Donald Trump's paths to 270.

Assume a melt-down unprecedented in modern American presidential politics that sees Trump winning Ohio, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Florida on Election Night.

In this scenario Trump's path forward to 270 goes through Wisconsin and Michigan. Trump's path is blocked in Illinois and Minnesota. By the way, Scott Walker is not going to propel Trump to victory in Wisconsin.

Failing to win Wisconsin and Michigan, then Trump must seek another path and win Nevada and New Mexico, or Colorado, if Trump is to reach 270 electoral votes. The west coast and Hawaii are no-go for Trump.

So increased Democratic Party attention in Nevada, New Mexico or Colorado is also not a sign of impending Clinton collapse. It's another obstruction blocking Trump's path to 270.

As is flipping a red state like Arizona.

Nate Silver's 538.com still shows Clinton blocking Trump in the blue firewall states.

This electoral situation does not suggest complacency; anything but.

It means Clinton will win; or if most put forth a tiny bit of effort then Clinton will win in a landslide.

Writes David Leonhardt today in the NYT: "... through all of the campaign’s ups and downs, Clinton has never trailed, whether you look at state polling or national polling averages. Most of the poll fluctuations stem from people’s waxing and waning enthusiasm about responding to polls, based on the news surrounding their preferred candidate."

So breathe deeply. And do what you can do between now and Tuesday."

Breathe deeply and add to Clinton's immense advantage in the state ground games by doing something.

Then on Election Night, open a bottle of your favorite beverage and know you helped defeat this cretin. For your emotional health, check out VoteCastr on Election Day and watch the live, slow-motion defeat of this fascist lunatic.

In the meantime, go to Hillary's site and do or give something. For an anxiety-blocking bit of news, know the early voting in Florida looks great for Hillary's defeat of Trump. Without Florida, Trump has no path forward to 270.

And if you note the dearth of news assuring a Clinton victory, know this is simply because no one wants to add to people becoming complacent.

Stop Playing Dumb on Voter Obstruction

Update: Steve Schmidt, McCain-Palin top strategist: "It’s part of the mythology now in the Republican Party that there’s widespread voter fraud all across the country. In fact, there’s not."

One of the first public reactions to the Romney-Ryan ticket getting trounced at the 2012 polls was Paul Ryan's complaint about the urban vote.

"The surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race," Ryan told WISC-TV. (Shear, Steinhauer. NYT)

Ryan knows what that mysterious "urban vote" means.  It means black votes, and they must be stopped. Voter fraud.

In the Wisconsin voter ID trial next Monday, November 4, as predictable as cold in a Wisconsin winter, we'll be treated to uncritical false equivalence press reports of "voter fraud" v. "voter rights".

That there is no in-person voter fraud is irrelevant, the media feels an obligation to play it dumb and present Ryan and the GOP fabrications as fact.

No matter the idiocy of the GOP lie, no matter the empirical truth of 100,000s being disenfranchised by the GOP-crafted photo voter ID law, the GOP objective of disenfranchising voters will not be reported.

I work as an elections inspector (poll worker). Most of the people voting are known by one or more of the poll workers, and the registered voter has to state her address and name, verified by two poll workers just to vote.

Election protection is not the objective of voter ID, GOP protection is.

The problem for the GOP is the Wisconsin Constitution is broad in the protection of voters against temporary partisan majorities, and the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, though not as sweeping is a powerful weapon used against those imposing voting obstruction.

The GOP has been working for years to add an additional qualification to vote, a photo voter ID, in violation of the Wisconsin Constitution.

This is a nationwide project, which is why there was a flurry of state voter ID laws right after five GOP justices declared section 4 the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.

Voting rights remain under GOP attack.

Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge David T. Flanagan issued a permanent injunction on July 17, 2012 that remains in effect, writing:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has often used the term "constitutionally qualified elector" to describe one eligible to vote in our state. That is because the Constitution, not the legislature or any law enacted by the legislature, is the source of the right to vote and unlike the United States Constitution, the Wisconsin Constitution sets forth explicitly the requirement for eligibility to vote, Art III, Sec 2 (4). The court must begin any consideration of voter eligibility legislation with the recognition of this bedrock constitutional foundation of Wisconsin voter eligibility.

The GOP is still passing legislative burdens to make voting more difficult or impossible for as many non-GOP voting citizens as the GOP can get away with.

That's the truth.

Wisconsin Voter ID Trial to Feature Mountain of Social Scientific Evidence

Update: See also Nicholas Stephanopoulos' piece on the Voting Rights Act and Section 2. "[E]ach [challenge under Section 2] failed because the plaintiffs couldn’t show that minorities were less likely than whites to possess valid IDs—proof that is now becoming more available. This means that Section 2 should be an increasingly useful weapon against the voting restrictions popping up around the country." Stephanopoulos points to a collaboration between Cal Tech and MIT by Charles Stewart III, entitled Racial Differences in Election Administration. The League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin et al v. Deininger case is the first trial post- Holder v. Shelby County claiming a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

GOP War on Voting, Spotlight Moving to Wisconsin

Those with even a passing interest in voting rights will be watching Wisconsin on November 4 when a highly politicized photo voter ID trial begins.

The entire, years-long Republican Party lie, or if one prefers falsehood, of purported massive in-person voter fraud will be put to trial and is in jeopardy, as will the GOP objective of disenfranchising non-GOP voters.

The trial follows the highly publicized recantation of Judge Richard Posner, the author of a federal appellate opinion that upheld Indiana’s voter ID law, whose theory of photo voter ID was used by the US Supreme Court in the case of Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, that has been touted as justification for voter obstruction laws in states across the country.

Once in power, GOP legislatures and governors across the nation raced to enact restrictive photo voter ID law since 2011.

"Defendants (Scott Walker et al) have not put forward any compelling government interest that their stringent photo ID law actually addresses—such as a single prosecution for in-person voter impersonation fraud in all of Wisconsin history—that would justify these oppressive burdens. For all these reasons, the law as applied to these classes violates the Fourteenth and Twenty-Fourth Amendments [poll tax] to the United States Constitution," reads the PLAINTIFFS’ CIVIL L. R. 16(c) PRETRIAL REPORT in Frank v. Walker.

The witness list includes academic experts, veterans, students and civil rights workers who will establish the undue burden imposed on 100,000s of Wisconsin citizens by Wisconsin Act 23, passed in 2011 with sole GOP support and unanimous opposition from civil rights groups.

For witness list, see PLAINTIFFS’ CIVIL L. R. 16(c) PRETRIAL REPORT in Frank v. Walker, and PLAINTIFFS’ CIVIL L. R. 16(c) PRETRIAL REPORT in League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin et al v. Deininger et al.


The trial is expected to last some two weeks.

League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin et al v. Deininger is the first trial post- Holder v. Shelby County claiming a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Judge Lynn Adelman (1997-present) will preside in Milwaukee.

Obama Denounces New GOP Voting Laws, Says DoJ Is Investigating

Big government is pretty big when it halts your right to even vote.

By Ari Berman

In an interview with Philadelphia radio host Michael Smerconish last week, President Obama for the first time denounced the wave of new laws passed by Republicans designed to restrict the right to vote for millions of Americans.

Said the president:

I will say that my big priority is making sure that as many people are participating in our democracy as possible. Some of these moves in some of the other states that we’ve seen try to make it tougher to vote, restricting ballot access, making it hard on seniors, making it hard on young people.

I think that’s a big mistake, and I have made sure that our Justice Department is taking a look at what’s being done across the country to ensure that people aren’t being denied access to the franchise.

The fact that Obama invoked the Justice Department is very important, since the department has the authority under the Voting Rights Act to approve, deny or modify these laws. “The Justice Department should be much more aggressive in areas covered by the Voting Rights Act,” Congressman John Lewis told me recently.

There are signs that is starting to happen. The Justice Department recently sent pointed letters to Texas and South Carolina, two states that have strict new photo ID requirements, asking for more information on what kind of impact the laws will have on minority voters. And last month, the department found that Texas’s new redistricting maps for the state house and US House of Representatives violated the Voting Rights Act by shortchanging Hispanic residents. (A three-panel federal district court in Washington, which also has authority under the VRA, is now reviewing the Texas maps.)

Career lawyers in the civil rights division of the Justice Department, who were frequently sidelined and overruled during the Bush Administration, are reasserting their authority and independence under Obama. They may be the only ones who can halt the GOP’s war on voting.