Don't Fall for the GOP (and Obama) Lie

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We at Tikkun have been saying for the past 3 years what former Sec. of Labor and economist Robert Reich says below and what Paul Krugman has been saying for the past 2 years: there is no serious budget crisis. Instead, we have an employment and housing crisis. It is true, as Robert Reich says below, that the Republicans have been running with this lie for the past several years in order to prevent the Democrats, when they had the majority in both houses of Congress, and the presidency, 2009-2010, from doing what the country needed: a massive Work Progress Administration (WPA) employment program coupled with a freeze on mortgage foreclosures and a law requiring the banks to renegotiate mortgage interests to what it was when the mortgage was first offered to the buyers. But Reich plays down the huge culpability of Obama and his economic advisors (who could have been Reich and Krugman, and no Republican forced Obama to go with the pro-corporate advisors he actually chose form the start). Obama accepted the framing of the problems that the right-wing had developed, and has for 3 years been mis-educating people about the nature of the problem we face. No wonder, then, that he boxed himself in to the current situation in which he may now have few options left. Had he spent the past years educating people to the true situation, he would have had much greater flexibility to stand up to the Republicans in Congress. Even now, he continues to waffle. He has offered, and pushed Senate Democrats to offer, a "deal" that is 3/4 of what the Republicans want and zero what working people and poor people need, just so he could get a lifting of the national debt ceiling, something he has the power to do in other ways (the 14th amendment provides such a route, though it has never been used before). Instead of being such a wimp, Obama could even now simply announce the following plan for what will happen if the debt limit isn't reached: he will pay the social security, medicare and other benefits to those Congressional districts whose representatives voted to raise the debt limit and not to those which did not. And similarly all other federal services. Military installations in the Congressional districts whose representatives did not vote for the raising of the limit will be immediately shut, and all military personnel outside the U.S., starting with Iraq and Afghanistan, will be ordered to return to the U.S. They play hardball, so could a progressive Democrat, if we happened to have one in office, which we don't. If the Supreme Court ordered him to not follow this path, he could tell them to enforce it on their own, because he has the Constitutional responsibility to defend the U.S., and this is the best way to do so. So lets understand, that all of this comes down to Obama's capitulations to the Right, on almost every level (except for glbt rights, important and to be commended, but not enough to build a presidency on).

Robert Reich

Don’t Fall for the GOP Lie: There is No Budget Crisis. There’s a Job and Growth Crisis.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

A friend who’s been watching the absurd machinations in Congress asked me “what happens if we don’t solve the budget crisis and we run out of money to pay the nation’s bills?”

It was only then I realized how effective Republicans lies have been. That we’re calling it a “budget crisis” and worrying that if we don’t “solve” it we can’t pay our nation’s bills is testament to how successful Republicans have been distorting the truth.

The federal budget deficit has no economic relationship to the debt limit. Republicans have linked the two, and the Administration has played along, but they are entirely separate. Republicans are using what would otherwise be a routine, legally technical vote to raise the debt limit as a means of holding the nation hostage to their own political goal of shrinking the size of the federal government.

In economic terms, we will not “run out of money” next week. We’re still the richest nation in the world, and the Federal Reserve has unlimited capacity to print money.

Nor is there any economic imperative to reach an agreement on how to fix the budget deficit by Tuesday. It’s not even clear the federal budget needs that much fixing anyway.

Yes, the ratio of the national debt to the total economy is high relative to what it’s been. But it’s not nearly as high as it was after World War II – when it reached 120 percent of the economy’s total output.

If and when the economy begins to grow faster – if more Americans get jobs, and we move toward a full recovery – the debt/GDP ratio will fall, as it did in the 1950s, and as it does in every solid recovery. Revenues will pour into the Treasury, and much of the current “budget crisis” will be evaporate.

Get it? We’re really in a “jobs and growth” crisis – not a budget crisis.

And the best way to get jobs and growth back is for the federal government to spend more right now, not less – for example, by exempting the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes this year and next, recreating a WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps, creating an infrastructure bank, providing tax incentives for small businesses to hire, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, and so on.

But what happens next week if Congress can’t or won’t deliver the President a bill to raise the debt ceiling? Remember: This is all politics, mixed in with legal technicalities. Economics has nothing to do with it.

One possibility, therefore, is for the Treasury to keep paying the nation’s bills regardless. It would continue to issue Treasury bills, which are our nation’s IOUs. When those IOUs are cashed at the Federal Reserve Board, the Fed would do what it has always done: Honor them.

How long could this go on without the debt ceiling being lifted? That’s a legal question. Republicans in Congress could mount a legal challenge, but no court in its right mind would stop the Fed from honoring the full faith and credit of the United States.

The wild card is what the three big credit-rating agencies will do. As long as the Fed keeps honoring the nation’s IOUs, America’s credit should be deemed sound. We’re not Greece or Portugal, after all. We’ll still be the richest nation in the world, whose currency is the basis for most business transactions in the world.

Standard & Poor’s has warned it will downgrade the nation’s debt from a triple-A to a double-A rating if we don’t tend to the long-term deficit. But, as I’ve noted, S&P has no business meddling in American politics – especially since its own non-feasance was partly responsible for the current size of the federal debt (had it done its job the debt and housing bubbles wouldn’t have precipitated the terrible recession, and the federal outlays it required).

As long as we pay our debts on time, our global creditors should be satisfied. And if they’re satisfied, S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch should be, too.

Repeat after me: The federal deficit is not the nation’s biggest problem. The anemic recovery, huge unemployment, falling wages, and declining home prices are bigger problems. We don’t have a budget crisis. We have a jobs and growth crisis.

The GOP has manufactured a budget crisis out of the Republicans’ extortionate demands over raising the debt limit. They have succeeded in hoodwinking the public, including my friend.

Behind the Kabuki Drama and the Hype, The Bi-partisan Sell Out

July 31, 2011 at 12:40:12

Behind the Drama and the Hype, The Bi-partisan Sell Out

The Kabuki Play On Capitol Hill Came Right Before The Deal

By Danny Schechter

And now, as the final deal is being discussed at the White House and in the Senate, as the Republican blackmail and bullying tactics appear to pay off in what will be sold to us as a responsible compromise, let's look back the buildup to this scandalous and shameful outcome, and at the way this was presented to us as a big debate even though it was always an orchestrated TV drama......

Oh, the gnashing of the teeth, Oh, the flamboyant tactics. Oh, all the breaking news excitement on cable news as the debt ceiling countdown saga went down to the wire with an intense political confrontation of a kind we haven't seen before ...

Or maybe we had---in the TARP debate and so-called Obamacare vote, to cite but two moments of high political drama. Once again, all the key players knew the outcome but wanted to keep us guessing because it served everyone's interests.

For Boehner and the boys on the GOP side it was the great leadership test subplot. He would prove how tough he was, demonstrate his leadership mettle, get equal time with the president, and even look presidential. The orange tan was gone. His moment had in the sunlight had come as he roped the Tea party kids into the politically correct corral. The Congressman from Ohio was now a national force to be reckoned with,

Lets not forget that he had become Wall Street's butt boy, had been put on their financial slush fund, had many of the big money lobbyists on his side even as the financiers whined and complained about exaggerated threats to the world economy.

They made some noise but not too much. They well remember the wit and wisdom of ex White House wide and now Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel about a crisis being a terrible opportunity to waste,

The Wall Street powercrats are high stakes poker players and this was one game they knew they would win in a political arena dependent on their beneficence.

'

At the same time, as the media compared the charade to the uncertainty of who would be chosen as this week's Bachelorette reality TV Show. The Tea Party even got Charles Schumer and Jon Stewart going by reaching into the home video collections for sound bite from Ben Affleck's flick, The Town, a bank robbery shoot em' up set in Charlestown MA. '

'Only the pols on the hill they had their eyes set on slightly bigger banks as they served bigger banksters.

Some analysts put their tactics down to "lunacy." Others to irrationality but this gambit was far more rational than most commentators realized. It reminded me of Richard Nixon's well-concocted madman strategy to make the Vietnamese think he was crazy enough to blow up their dykes or even drop the big one. It was a well-calculated fear tactic, a shrewd maneuver in a game of psychological warfare.

Paul Krugman understood what was going on, seconding my own analysis of the kamikaze tactics the right was using He wrote what most of the media obfuscated about:

"The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren't complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats - who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether - have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands."

And, oh yes, the President had some big skin in the game. It gave him the posturing moment he needed to show how "balanced" he was, and how centrist he could become.

Fairness and Accuracy argued that Obama talked left to move right, as the Washington Post explained:

"Forget about "winning the future"--Barack Obama wants to win the center. That's what the Washington Post is telling readers (7/25/11):

Obama 'Big Deal' on Debt a Gamble to Win the Center?

Advisers think securing his plan would ensure general-election victory.

The Post's Zachary A. Goldfarb (who can't be held responsible for the headline) explained that Obama was making Republicans an offer they couldn't refuse....

He added:

"Obama's political advisers have long believed that securing such an agreement would provide an enormous boost to his 2012 campaign, according to people familiar with White House thinking. In particular, they want to preserve and improve the president's standing among independents."

FAIR dipped into their own archive to reminds of us of an article from September 2009 which showed the President was under pressure even then to drop a focus on jobs to concentrate on the deficit.

In other words, this whole strategy is not new but years in the making:

"Parroting the Republican Party, corporate media have recently devoted much energy to deploring the federal deficit and chastising President Barack Obama for not focusing enough on balancing the budget. Very soon, media warn, either spending must be cut or taxes will need to be raised across the board--an argument that rests on the assumption that deficit reduction is, indeed, the top economic priority"

And, so, White House priorities shifted subtly to please the plutocrats and try to neutralize the Tea Party fanatics by co-opting their program the way Bill Clinton did in 1996, It was called "triangulation" then. Obama's own supporters call it "betrayal" now; Obama's pro-Wall Street economic team assured they wouldn't give the men on The Street too much to worry about.

And so what happens now? The Republicans get their bill, unify their ranks even though it's just more show and tell. As Reuters explains, its all a prelude to coming back to the bargaining table at the 11th hour to make a deal that both sides can use to political advantage.

Read this and as you do, read between the lines;

"The House of Representatives approved a Republican deficit plan on Friday that has no chance of becoming law but could pave the way for a last-ditch bid for bipartisan compromise to avert a crippling national default."

This was the scenario--more akin to a Kabuki play than a real political fight. It's more like professional wrestling of the kind they perform at the Capitol Arena not far from Capitol Hill.

The audience is hyped. The wrestlers pretend to hate each other, and arouse the crowd with acts of physical aggression. The match looks fierce, but, as everyone knows, it is fixed and scripted.

They musclemen throw each other around the ring, sometimes even gushing blood. The big bruisers denounce each other until it's over to the count of 1-2-3; the bad guy always goes down.

The match ends, imagine that, just in time for a commercial break. Here it will end at the debt ceiling deadline. Each side will claim victory.

There is no ceiling on these political shenanigans. It's just part of fast-paced game designed to keep the public on the sidelines and on the edge of uncertainly while the media keeps the politicians in the spotlight and excites the base in both parties,

In the end, the media will salute both sides for putting country above party. The only deficit here is one of political morality and honesty.

You tell me: am I too cynical, or is this the way what some call politricks has become?

News Dissector Danny Schechter writes a blog at newsdissector.com

AlterNet.org

AlterNet / By Sarah Jaffe

$230,000 For a Guard Dog: Why the Wealthy Are Afraid Of Violence From Below

As inequality in the US grows, the ultra-rich are pouring their spare cash not just into private jets, but into private security. Think there's a connection?

July 29, 2011 |

Photo Credit: Fubar843 via Flickr

“Violence in the streets, aimed at the wealthy. That’s what I worry about.”

That was what an unidentified billionaire told Robert Frank of the Wall Street Journal a while back. Rich people are scared of global unrest, Frank reported, citing a survey by Insite Security and IBOPE Zogby International of people with liquid assets of $1 million or more (translation: folks who have or can get their hands on $1 million in cash fairly easily) that says 94 percent of the wealthy are concerned about “global unrest” around the world.

He noted:

Of course, Insite has an interest in getting the paranoid rich to beef up their security. Still, the numbers are backed up by other trends seen throughout the world of wealth today: the rich keeping a lower profile, hiring $230,000 guard dogs, and arming their yachts, planes and cars with military-style security features.

John Johnson, the owner of the $230,000 dog featured in the New York Times, is a former debt collector. (You can't make this stuff up.) He sold his debt collection company three years ago, but still has not just one, but six highly—and expensively—trained “executive protection dogs.” Harrison K-9 services, the trainers behind Johnson's pricey protection dogs, used to train dogs for elite military units like the Navy Seal team that raided Osama bin Laden's compound. The article doesn't say exactly how many dogs Harrison K-9 has provided for the world's rich and famous, but it does feature a quote from their head trainer saying she's trained “a thousand” dogs.

In addition to security systems, dogs and armed yachts, the security-conscious oligarch can hire a private spy company—Jellyfish, a spinoff of the notorious private security company Blackwater. Or what about their own personal drone? “Smaller, private versions of the infamous Predator” may be coming to well-heeled private citizens near you, according to the UK's Daily Mail. So far the private drones appear to only be for spying, but former Navy fighter pilot Missy Cummings told the Daily Mail, “It doesn't take a rocket scientist from MIT to tell you if we can do it for a soldier in the field, we can do it for anybody.”

So why are the rich getting paranoid? After all, here in the U.S. it looks like they don't even have to worry about their taxes returning to Clinton-era levels, let alone cope with a truly significant change to their lifestyles. Still, as the rich get richer, it seems, they get more and more worried about the rest of us coming for their wealth—and they're out to protect it by any means necessary.

David Sirota has noted that “we're fast becoming a 'let them eat cake' economy,” where ostentatious displays of wealth and arrogance seem to be an everyday occurrence as the rest of the country suffers. A private jet traffic jam was big news in the New York Times last week, because the children of the uber-rich have to get to a Maine summer camp, and driving just won't do. Maine's Tea Party governor, Paul LePage, took some time off from limiting access to the vote and picking fights with organized labor to gloat over the jet traffic:

“Love it, love it, love it,” Mr. LePage said of the private-plane traffic generated by summer camps. “I wish they’d stay a week while they’re here. This is a big business.”

While the private jet crowd is “big business,” the rest of Maine—and the country—is still suffering. And maybe that's where the fear comes in.

We've seen revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, attempts in Libya, Syria, Yemen, unrest in Greece and Spain, student protests in England, and here at home the occupation of the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. While nothing yet in the U.S. has approached the level of organized attacks on the wealthy by the have-nots, since the financial crash even the hint that perhaps private jet owners could pay a few more dollars in taxes has been decried as class war. A few protests that actually dare approach the doorsteps of the bankers appear to be all it takes to stoke paranoia among the super-rich.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Warren Buffett, the world's third-richest man, said in 2006, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Buffett had done the math and realized that he paid far less, as a fraction of his income, than the secretaries in his office.

While the Democrats have compromised again and again on economic issues that might have brought real relief to the unemployed, the Tea Party continued to direct all of its anger, its threats, its waving of guns in the direction of the man in the White House and his allies. The billionaires who poured cash into the Tea Party got their money's worth by deflecting outrage onto the president.

And we have seen violence, though not violence aimed at the rich. We saw a man fly a plane into a Texas office building in anger at the IRS and a foiled attempt to shoot up the liberal Tides Foundation and the California ACLU.

The Tea Party also helped sweep in politicians who've made the situation steadily worse. With no one left to protect the working class, inequality continues to grow. The New York Times noted that many of the “new economy”'s low-wage jobs are not sufficient to provide for a person, let alone a family, and yet those jobs are 73 percent of those added in recent months.

Matthew Stoller pointed out that the austerity measures being championed by the new right-wing governors like Florida's Rick Scott (but embraced by Democrats as well) are going to make it worse here at home before it gets better:

...these economic theories aren’t about efficiency, they are about a value system. Scott is arguing for a low trust low cost world, with no education, no regulatory standards, and low quality output. This is the dominant strain of thinking among American elites. It’s not just Rhode Island, where the teachers are literally all under threat of being fired (and where in 2010 Obama apparently sought to win the future by applauding this firing of teachers). In New York, Democratic Governor and prospective 2016 presidential candidate Andrew Cuomo is gleefullyslashing huge chunks of education and health care rather than retain a mild tax on the wealthy. This is a great way to increase crime, disease rates, and social disorder resulting from inequality.

The simple fact is that inequality is a recipe for insecurity, especially when coupled with desperation. Somewhere, the rich know this. It's no accident that the rise in incomes at the top and the drop in income at the bottom has been accompanied by a boom in private security. Not everyone, like Warren Buffett, asks “How can this be right?” but a $230,000 guard dog suggests a deep awareness of the unfair system from which the rich have profited.

And yet as our society transforms from a welfare state into a laissez-faire paradise (and especially as budget cuts come down on fire and police), we are likely to only see more of this kind of thing. Mike Konczal pointed out:

From a series of legal codes favoring creditors, a two-tier justice system that ignore abuses in foreclosures and property law, a system of surveillance dedicated to maximum observation on spending, behavior and ultimate collection of those with debt and beyond, there’s been a wide refocusing of the mechanisms of our society towards the crucial obsession of oligarchs: wealth and income defense.

It's not enough for the super-rich, apparently, to have a legal system biased in their favor, a justice system that locks up the poor and people of color while letting the wealthy off the hook, and government bailouts for the banks that created the economic crisis. That doesn't lessen the cries of “Class warfare!” or decrease the demand for private security.

Research shows (PDF) that it's not just poverty that contributes to violent crime. It's inequality. Brazil, particularly in urban areas, suffers from a sky-high homicide rate (it's reached 57 per 100,000 people a year in Rio de Janeiro) and its cities are marked by extremes of wealth—absolute poverty in the favelas, and wealth locked away behind walls and gates. Private security has become the norm for those who can afford it as few trust the police.

And yet Brazil's left-leaning government has embraced policies to lessen inequality not only for the sake of the people who suffer in poverty, but also to make their country safer for all. Inequality is dropping, and while poverty is still a problem, the government recognizes it as such. Meanwhile, we in the US seems to have learned all the wrong lessons from Brazil. Are we headed for cities where the wealthy segregate themselves behind walls and security guards, on private planes, and the poor are concentrated in miserable conditions?

We are 93rd in the world as far as equality is concerned, and if the debt ceiling deal (or as is looking increasingly more likely, the lack of one) includes a cut to Social Security benefits or an end to the unemployment extension, inequality will only get worse as the poor get, rapidly, poorer. Meanwhile the rich, as has been noted many times, are just concentrating their wealth.

Here in the U.S. in the 1930s, to stave off widespread revolt, we got the New Deal. Elites in this country realized it was worth giving in to prevent the communist revolution that was spreading in other places. In the 1960s, riots as well as mass nonviolent protests pushed LBJ and others to enact social reforms.

Conservatives, backed by an ascendant business class, have been systematically dismantling those bargains, cutting taxes, eliminating regulations, and privatizing public programs and properties ever since. There is no force like communism to give a name to the fears of the capitalists, but the rich nevertheless may look at global revolts with a shudder. As the unemployed, the working poor, and a middle class increasingly pushed downward into near-poverty struggle and new protest movements and strategies spring up, it's not just individual theft, burglary and kidnapping the rich fear—it's an organized movement targeting their wealth.

The question is now whether spreading fear among the elites of the US will be connected to the economic policies that are leaving more and more of us with no solutions—and a whole lot of rage.

Sarah Jaffe is an associate editor at AlterNet, a rabblerouser and frequent Twitterer. You can follow her at @seasonothebitch.

Debt Madness Was Always About Killing Social Security

Published on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 by TruthDig.com

Debt Madness Was Always About Killing Social Security

by Robert Scheer

This phony debt crisis has now passed through the looking glass into the realm where madness reigns. What should have been an uneventful moment in which lawmakers make good on the nation’s contractual obligations has instead been seized upon by Republican hypocrites as a moment to settle ideological scores that have nothing to do with the debt.

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio looks on during a news conference at The Republican National Committee. (AP / Carolyn Kaster)

Hypocrites, because their radical free market ideology, and the resulting total deregulation of the financial markets, is what caused the debt to spiral out of control this last decade. That and the wars George W. Bush launched but didn’t have the integrity to responsibly finance. The consequence was a banking bubble and crash leading to a 50 percent run-up of the debt that has nothing to do with the “entitlements” that those same Republicans have always wanted to destroy.

Even Barack Obama has put cuts in those programs into play, warning ominously that a failure to lift the debt ceiling could cause the government to stop sending out Social Security checks. Why, when the Social Security trust fund is fully funded for the next quarter-century and is owed money by the U.S. Treasury rather than the other way around? Why would we pay foreign creditors before American seniors? The answer, offered as conventional wisdom by leaders of both parties, is that we cannot endanger our credit by failing to back our bonds, even though the Republicans have aroused the alarm of the main U.S. credit rating agencies by their brinkmanship on the debt.

What a topsy-turvy world when the same credit rating agencies that gave the thumbs up to the bankers’ toxic mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps now threaten the AAA rating of U.S. Treasury bonds. According to them, it will not be enough to merely lift the debt ceiling—what had been assumed by both Republican and Democratic presidents to be a routine act. In addition to that, as the credit agency Standard & Poor’s has insisted, more than $4 trillion has to be cut from programs that mostly benefit the victims of the banking meltdown. Otherwise the agencies will downgrade the U.S. credit rating, leading to higher interest rates that will destroy what remains of the U.S. housing market, dim the prospect for any improvement in employment and further enrich the Chinese government and other holders of U.S. debt.

President Obama and the Senate Democratic leadership are clearly poised to cave in to those demands in the spirit of “compromise,” Obama’s favorite word, but the Republicans keep upping the ante. The GOP is shameless: Speaker John Boehner has sanctimoniously responded to Obama’s plea for a bargain that gives up almost everything to the right wing by rebuffing the president on the grounds that the Republican Party is the last line of defense against big government.

Boehner dared blame Obama for “the largest spending binge in American history,” which he attributed to the health care reform, most of which has yet to be enacted, and a stimulus program that was an underfunded effort to save American jobs. Not a word from Boehner or the other Republicans about the banking collapse that resulted from their deregulatory policies, the real cause of the inflated debt.

Boehner’s slogan, “I’ve always believed, the bigger government, the smaller the people,” is downright bizarre coming from someone who supported the Bush tax cuts for the rich, the banking bailout and the highest war spending since World War II, all of which is what caused government to get this big. Was it job stimulus spending that kept GM jobs in this country that made people smaller, or the loss of their homes and jobs as a result of the policies that are at the core of the Republican program?

What is at stake is a radical Republican agenda to totally reverse the progress in economic justice that began with the great reforms of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal. Consider the direct consequence of the economic crisis that unfettered Wall Street greed has wrought, particularly in reversing the gains made by the most underprivileged sectors of the population. As The Wall Street Journal reported, based on a Pew Research Center study from 2005 to 2009, “The wealth gap between whites and each of the nation’s two largest minorities—Hispanics and blacks—has widened to unprecedented levels amid the housing crisis and the recession. … The disparities are the greatest since the government began tracking such data a quarter-century ago. …”

But there is plenty of suffering to go around as a result of the deep recession. The wealth of whites in that period declined by 16 percent, not to mention the ever-greater chasm between the top 2 percent and everyone else. That’s the same 2 percent whose tax cuts the Republicans are determined to preserve.

© 2011 TruthDig.com

Robert Scheer is editor of Truthdig.com and a regular columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle.

New Study: Mountaintop Removal Means Killing Residents

Published on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Breaking: New Study Links Mountaintop Removal to 60,000 Additional Cancer Cases

by Jeff Biggers

Among the 1.2 million American citizens living in mountaintop removal mining counties in central Appalachia, an additional 60,000 cases of cancer are directly linked to the federally sanctioned strip-mining practice.

That is the damning conclusion in a breakthrough study, released last night in the peer-reviewed Journal of Community Health: The Publication for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Led by West Virginia University researcher Dr. Michael Hendryx, among others, the study entitled “Self-Reported Cancer Rates in Two Rural Areas of West Virginia with and Without Mountaintop Coal Mining” drew from a groundbreaking community-based participatory research survey conducted in Boone County, West Virginia in the spring of 2011, which gathered person-level health data from communities directly impacted by mountaintop mining, and compared to communities without mining.

“A door to door survey of 769 adults found that the cancer rate was twice as high in a community exposed to mountaintop removal mining compared to a non-mining control community,” said Hendryx, Associate Professor at the Department of Community Medicine and Director of West Virginia Rural Health Research Center at West Virginia University. “This significantly higher risk was found after control for age, sex, smoking, occupational exposure and family cancer history. The study adds to the growing evidence that mountaintop mining environments are harmful to human health.”

Bottom line: Far from simply being an environmental issue, mountaintop removal is killing American residents.

“This research in the Coal River Valley, along with the recent birth defects research in Appalachia and other peer reviewed science, is providing evidence of the long term effects of human exposure to mountaintop removal,” said Coal River Valley resident and coalfield leader Bo Webb, who participated in the study. “Again, I urgently call upon the United States government to intervene and address this health crisis, place an immediate moratorium on mountaintop removal and stop this needless killing of our citizens.”

As a tree-sit protest in the Coal River Valley enters a new week to stop the strip mining operations at a former Massey Energy and current Alpha Natural Resources site, the New York Times is reporting today that West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a key supporter of absentee coal companies and lobbies, reported “operating income of $1,363,916″ from a coal brokerage firm.

Last month, delivering a new study on the link between birth defects and mountaintop removal mining, Appalachian leaders went to Washington, DC to call on President Obama, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, Department of Health and Human Services chief Kathleen Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder to enact an immediate moratorium on all mountaintop removal mining operations in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia until the Center for Disease Control and/or other federal regulatory agencies make a complete assessment of the spiraling health and human rights crisis related to mountaintop removal mining.

According to the new study: “The odds for reporting cancer were twice as high in the mountaintop mining environment compared to the non mining environment in ways not explained by age, sex,smoking, occupational exposure, or family cancer history.” The study found:

Surface water and ground water around MTM activity are characterized by elevated sulfates, iron, manganese, arsenic, selenium, hydrogen sulfide, lead, magnesium, calcium and aluminum; contaminates severely damage local aquatic stream life and can persist for decades after mining at a particular site ceases [18, 20]. In addition, elevated levels of airborne particulate matter around surface mining operations include ammonium nitrate, silica, sulfur compounds, metals, benzene, carbon monoxide, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and nitrogen dioxide [21, 22].

Citing extremely high levels of uterine and ovarian, skin, urinary, bone, brain, and others forms of cancers, the study additionally noted:

Arsenic, for example, is an impurity present in coal that is implicated in many forms of cancer including that of skin, bladder and kidney [31, 36]. Cadmium is linked to renal cancer [34]. Diesel engines are widely used at mining sites, and diesel fuel is used for surface mining explosives, coal transportation and coal processing; diesel exhaust has been identified as a major environmental contributor to cancer risk.

Despite the deadly consequences, mountaintop removal mining in central Appalachian only provides 5-8 percent of national coal production.

More information on the Appalachian leaders call for a MTR Moratorium Now can be found here.

US Lawmakers Determined to Make the Jobs Crisis Worse

AlterNet.org


ECONOMY

RobertReich.org / By Robert Reich

Why Are US Lawmakers Determined to Make the Jobs Crisis Worse?

Our vicious political cycle is making the vicious economic cycle worse.

July 26, 2011 |

We now live in parallel universes.

One universe is the one in which most Americans live. In it, almost 15 million people are unemployed, wages are declining (adjusted for inflation), and home values are still falling. The unsurprising result is consumers aren’t buying — which is causing employers to slow down their hiring and in many cases lay off more of their workers. In this universe, we’re locked in a vicious economic cycle that’s getting worse.

The other universe is the one in which Washington politicians live. They are now engaged in a bitter partisan battle over how, and by how much, to reduce the federal budget deficit in order to buy enough votes to lift the debt ceiling.

The two universes have nothing whatever to do with one another — except for one thing. If consumers can’t and won’t buy, and employers won’t hire without customers, the spender of last resort must be government. We’ve understood this since government spending on World War II catapulted America out of the Great Depression — reversing the most vicious of vicious cycles. We’ve understood it in every economic downturn since then.

Until now.

The only way out of the vicious economic cycle is for government to adopt an expansionary fiscal policy — spending more in the short term in order to make up for the shortfall in consumer demand. This would create jobs, which will put money in peoples’ pockets, which they’d then spend, thereby persuading employers to do more hiring. The consequential job growth will also help reduce the long-term ratio of debt to GDP. It’s a win-win.

This is not rocket science. And it’s not difficult for government to do this — through a new WPA or Civilian Conservation Corps, an infrastructure bank, tax incentives for employers to hire, a two-year payroll tax holiday on the first $20K of income, and partial unemployment benefits for those who have lost part-time jobs.

Yet the parallel universe called Washington is moving in exactly the opposite direction. Republicans are proposing to cut the budget deficit this year and next, which will result in more job losses. And Democrats, from the President on down, seem unable or unwilling to present a bold jobs plan to reverse the vicious cycle of unemployment. Instead, they’re busily playing “I can cut the deficit more than you” — trying to hold their Democratic base by calling for $1 of tax increases (mostly on the wealthy) for every $3 of spending cuts.

All of this is making the vicious economic cycle worse — and creating a vicious political cycle to accompany it.

As more and more Americans lose faith that their government can do anything to bring back jobs and wages, they are becoming more susceptible to the Republican’s oft-repeated lie that the problem is government — that if we shrink government, jobs will return, wages will rise, and it will be morning in America again. And as Democrats, from the President on down, refuse to talk about jobs and wages, but instead play the deficit-reduction game, they give even more legitimacy to this lie and more momentum to this vicious political cycle.

The parallel universes are about to crash, and average Americans will be all the worse for it.

Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He also served on President Obama's transition advisory board. His latest book is Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future. His homepage is www.robertreich.org.

A New Strategy for Raiding the Commons: None Dare Call It Privatization

None Dare Call It Privatization

Tom Tresser reports from a high-powered conference spelling out a new strategy for raiding the commons

By Tom Tresser

Tom Tresser, a commons advocate from Chicago, which has become an epicenter of new privatization schemes.

Because people have been burned badly by privatization deals, we will not be hearing that term used. Instead, we will hear the term “public-private partnerships.”

At the Hyatt Lodge Hotel on the McDonald’s corporate campus in Oak Brook, Illinois, June 24, the other wingtip dropped.

It happened at a conference called “It’s Not Privatization: Implementing Partnerships in Illinois”, organized by The National Council for Public-Private Partnerships and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce with assistance from the Metropolitan Planning Council .

The conference revealed the corporate sector’s designs on the commons in Illinois, and how they intended to duck the increasingly unpopular label of privatization.

In recent years Chicago has become an epicenter of privatization.

In 2005 Mayor Daley assigned the Skyway Bridge connecting the city to Indiana to a consortium owned by Spanish and Australian companies. That deal got the city $1.83 billion for a 99 year lease. One analysis of the deal shows that the new owners stand to reap between $5 to $15 billion, depending on the traffic volume and how high they jack up the tolls.

In 2009 Mayor Daly gave our parking meters to a group of investors led by MorganStanley, which included the oil-rich sheikdom of Abu Dhabi. Chicago got $1.15 billion for a 75 year lease. The investors will earn in the vicinity of $11.6 billion over the life of the deal. Parking rates have skyrocketed, meters appeared in places that never been been metered before and the hours for paid parking were extended.

In each case, all the major planning bodies, civic watchdog groups and various park and public watchdogs were silent. Many supported these privatization schemes.

In addition to these schemes, Mayor Daley was also a master of tax increment finance districts (TIFs). Chicago has 160 of them and in 2009 they siphoned $519 million in property taxes away from the units of government that rely on them for operation. TIFs are supposed to be used to jump start development in “blighted” communities. But in Chicago they constitute a giant slush fund controlled by the Mayor and a few powerful aldermen. Public dollars from the TIF program have gone to such corporate giants as United Airlines, MillerCoors, Quaker Oats, Willis Insurance and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. In addition, hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed to private developers with no oversight, accountability or citizen input.

Mayor Daley also hatched Renaissance 2010 plan in 2004 to create 100 new schools outside of the public school system. Two of the creators of the Chicago Small Schools Workshop critique the plan as having “more in common with the erosion of public space, with the ‘ownership society,’ than it does with democratic education.”Read their analysis here

The Skyway, the parking meters, the TIFs, Renaissance 2010– they all constitute the first wingtipped shoe of privatizing our commons in Chicago.

The Other Wingtip Drops

I was among a small group of activists attending the “It’s Not Privatization” conference on the McDonald’s campus, and as the presentations unfolded, I began to see how business, labor and legislators were lining up to assault the commons with the complicity of civic planning groups that are loaded with staff and board members with deep connections to Mayor Daley and the Chicago business community. You can see the presentations for yourself here

The conference was underwritten by 14 major corporations. The Gold Sponsors included Veolia Water. In their own words, “With a workforce of 96,260 in 67 countries and revenue of €12.128 billion in 2010, Veolia Water is the leading global operator of water servicet.” The other Gold Sponsors were Lochner MMM Group (“dedicated to bringing its worldwide public-private venture experience to the U.S. infrastructure market”); Weston Solutions (“integrated environmental, sustainability, property redevelopment, energy, and construction solutions”); and Wight (“one of only a few firms that possess comprehensive design and construction capabilities in-house”).

The conference started with a summary of Illinois House Bill 1091, “The Public Partnership for Transportation Act,” by one of its chief sponsors, Rep. Elaine Nekritz (D-Des Plaines). Basically, this bill allows—for the first time—the building and operation of roads and tollways by private companies in Illinois. You can listen to Nikritz’s explanation of the bill here

In the presentations I detected three dominant themes that will frame how these policies will be pitched to the public.

*First – government at all levels of operation is broke, and there is no possibility of raising taxes. The implication is that there is no way for government to build a new Hoover Dam or other long-lasting, large scale or even small-scale project for the public good.

*Second – government is stupid and incapable of innovation and delivering needed services and facilities efficiently and effectively. Big business is offered as the only source of innovation, efficiency and smart operation. (Of course, no mention was made of the global financial melt-down brought on by these same companies and that the public sector – the taxpayers – had to bail them out to the tune of trillions of dollars)

*Third – Because the people of Chicago and Illinois have been burned badly by privatization deals, we will not be hearing that term used in these debates. Instead, we will hear the term “public-private partnerships” applied to these deals involving public assets.

You can hear these arguments unwind in the presentation by the President of the National Council for Public-Private Partnerships, Richard Norment, “The Framework for Public-Private Partnerships vs. Privatization.” Listen to his remarks here

Despite the high-minded rhetoric being unleashed at this conference, privatization is what happens when we transfer control of public assets, infrastructure and services into the private sector, which then operates them for a profit. The public sector is responsible for the creation and care of assets and services that benefit all. Somehow we have arrived a place where the very nature of what is “public” is under attack.

Privatization or public-private partnerships—the bottom line is always the bottom line. Who controls what asset or service and who profits from it? At this conference one could see all the players coming into alignment, testing their talking points and sharing strategies for selling these newly named schemes to the public.

What was also very troubling was the statement from a number of speakers that the privatization of roads in Illinois is only the beginning. One speaker presented a slide listing public water, public hospitals and public schools as candidates for privatization.

It seems that the same legislators, law firms, banks, construction companies and policy minds that brought us the parking meter deal (which many speakers praised from the podium) are now behind privatization on a new and massive scale. Labor unions are backing this trend because they need work for their members in the construction trades, and so long as union labor is used in these projects or a prevailing wage is paid workers, they don’t care what happens after the projects are completed.

The Powers That Be have the money and means to frame these scams to their advantage. They are already re-writing history and calling the parking meter fiasco an unappreciated master stroke that is simply the victim of bad publicity.

No one at this conference revealed the profit margins on these deals. No one talked about the stories of privatization gone sour across America and the world elsewhere. No one asked where the line should be drawn in parceling out public assets, public services and public infrastructure to private investors.

We are going to have get organized to stop the pawning of our public assets to private interests for a song. Defenders of the commons – unite!

Tom Tresser is an educator, organizer and nonprofit consultant based in Chicago. He has been fighting for the commons there since 1990. In 2010 he was the Green Party candidate for Cook County Board President. He is working on establishing a new citizen’s organization to stop privatization and to defend the commons. His website. Contact him at: tom@tresser.com.

Posted July 26, 2011

More than anyone, Grover Norquist instigated today's budget crisis

One Man Vs. the Common Good

More than anyone, Grover Norquist instigated today's budget crisis

By Jay Walljasper

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. (Photo by Gage Skidmore under a Creative Commons license from flickr.com)

In one study, 91% of respondents, including 77% of Republicans and 66% of self-identified tea partyers, chose to raise taxes by an average of $292 billion.

“I don’t think there’s any conceivable way, under current circumstances, that any Republican would vote for any kind of tax increase whatsoever.”
—Bruce Bartlett, former economic adviser to President Reagan

This interesting sentence appears in the April 2011 issue of the Christian Science Monitor, in an excellent article called Budget Stalemate: Why America Won’t Raise Taxes by Liz Marlantes.

The source of the word “any” in this context is an unelected powerhouse named Grover Norquist who runs an organization with the moderate sending name, “Americans for Tax Reform.” Since 1986, Norquist has asked every incumbent and every candidate for office to sign a document called “The Taxpayer Protection Pledge.” The pledge says, “I promise to the people of my state that I will oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes.” Again, we see the emphasis “oppose and vote against” or “any and all” because to do one and not the other is not sufficient.

In 1986, Norquist was able to get 100 members of the House and 20 Senators to sign it. Today 40 out of 47 Republicans in the Senate have signed it, along with one Democrat and one Independent, and 235 out of 242 Republicans in the House have signed it, along with two Democrats. (Here’s the full list of Congressional signers and the actual pledge.)

People sign this because it comes with money and help with campaigning, and not signing – or signing and then not following through – is met with swift punishment. The goal of having bi-partisan dialogue on how to create fair and just tax policy that pulls our country out of this recession and helps everyone have a better quality of life is stopped at the starting gate when so many people have basically said, “Let’s talk, but I have already decided what I am going to do.”

Norquist, who has never run for and so obviously never held public office, is not on the staff of the Republican National Committee nor has he been appointed to any public position. Yet he has amassed the power and money to control how most Republicans vote on tax policy. The only thing he cannot really amass is all the votes of the American people, and this is the good news in the tax debate. The Center on Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland presented voters with a simplified but realistic version of what the budget might be in 2015 and let them make their own tax and spending choices. They weren’t told they had to balance the budget or to bring down the deficit. Those decisions were up to them. The study showed that on average, voters reduced the deficit by about $400 billion, with Democrats cutting more in spending than Republicans. 91% of respondents, including 77% of Republicans and 66% of self-identified tea partyers, chose to raise taxes by an average of $292 billion.

Our Congress is far more opposed to taxes than the people they are supposed to represent. We, who are those people, must make it clear that we believe that taxes are a fundamental tool to creating a working democracy. We call for accountability in spending, a tax structure that calls on everyone (including the corporations who are now people) to pay their share, vigorous and informed debate on what constitutes ‘fairness’. We pledge to vote for people who will return “whatsoever” to the front of our sentences, for example, “Whatsoever is best for the common good should drive any and all public policy.”

Reprinted from the blog Kim Klein and the Commons Kim Klein works with mission-driven organizations with Klein & Roth Consulting and help non-profit organizations become more effective in promoting social change through the Building Movement Project

Posted July 7, 2011

AlterNet.org

AlterNet / By Sarah Jaffe

11 States Trying Really Hard to Keep Poor, Black, and Student Voters From Voting

The 2012 election is closer than you think--and just in time, states are passing a host of new bills aimed at making it harder to vote.

July 18, 2011 |

Across the country, new Republican governors have found the policies that they're enacting are less popular than the promises on which they campaigned.

Voters are experiencing extensive buyer's remorse in state after state, but while Republicans maintain control, they're doing everything in their power to consolidate their power. And one of the best ways to ensure future victories is to make sure voters who oppose you don't make it to the polls in the first place.

So under the pretense that "voter fraud" (which is basically nonexistent) is a serious problem, conservative governors and state legislatures are pushing through laws that severely limit access to the vote. from the elimination of same-day voter registration to unduly strict voter ID requirements. These may not sound like that big of a deal. But when it comes to on-the-ground voting patterns, they can substantially impact turnout.

It just so happens that these laws overwhelmingly target groups that tend to vote for Democrats: students, people of color, lower-income folks, and urban residents.

Elimination of early voting periods means longer lines at the polls--and more people turning away because they simply don't have the time to wait. And imagine a mailing telling thousands of confused new voters that their ID requirements have changed, then imagine being challenged over your documents -- that's straight-up voter intimidation. Many people will stay home rather than risk embarrassment, or simply forget until the last minute that they haven't updated their driver's license.

Over the course of history we've fought to increase the number of people eligible to vote, extending the ballot to previously disenfranchised constituencies. Now, as former President Bill Clinton notes, we've forgotten that history. The new class of GOP governors are accelerating attacks on voter rights in time for pivotal elections, and they know what they're doing. Clinton told the Campus Progress National Conference, “There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the other Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today.”

Sixteen senators submitted a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, asking him to investigate whether the Voting Rights Act, one of the crown jewels of Civil Rights-era legislation, invalidates these state provisions.

Twenty states saw new proposed voter ID laws this year; 14 states saw attempts to strengthen existing voter ID requirements. We break down the 11 worst, but these are far from the only ones—the National Conference of State Legislatures notes that only three states don't have a voter ID law and didn't consider one this year.

1. Kansas

“With the stroke of a pen, the great state of Kansas became the gold standard in making it almost impossible to register to vote,” Rachel Maddow said when she reported on Kansas's new voter ID law, which requires voters to submit a birth certificate or passport when they register to vote, to prove their citizenship.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, formerly of the radical anti-immigrant group FAIR, was the force behind this bill, and before his stint as secretary of state he helped write Arizona's infamous “Papers, Please” immigration bill, SB 1070. He also originally sought for his office the ability to prosecute election fraud, to impose harsher penalties on those convicted of committing election fraud, and to require proof of citizenship in 2012 instead of 2013. Legislators decided that giving him those powers wasn't a good idea—but he still wants them.

The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that Kobach has a long history of facing complaints of racial profiling, anti-immigrant bias, and even accusations of ties to white supremacists. In 2004, in a campaign for Congress, he accused his opponent of associating with a group that supports “homosexual pedophilia.” That group was the gay rights organization Human Rights Campaign.

And his birth certificate obsession extends to the president—or at least, to making birther jokes on the campaign trail.

Maddow pointed out that many people register to vote when they run across a voter registration drive out in public, or in other grassroots registration drives, which will become nearly impossible. State Rep. Ann Mah told Maddow that the law will be challenged and that it has “holes in it big enough to drive a truck through.”

2. Wisconsin

Scott Walker's credited with kicking off the backlash to the 2010 crop of Republican governors. Six of his Republican state senators are facing recall votes, and it's practically certain that he'll face recall himself. So naturally, targeting voters is his next move.

Meredith Clark called Walker's voter suppression bill his “evil genius masterpiece,” and it's easy to see why. The bill changes the residency requirement from 10 days to 28 days before the election (effective immediately), shortens early voting (also effective immediately), enacts a strict photo ID requirement as of 2012 that will require state overhaul of student ID as well as requiring extra proof of residency from students, and just to make things more confusing, requires poll workers to start asking for ID right away, even though it's not required until 2012.

Clark noted:

According to a University of Milwaukee study, non-white Wisconsin voters are far less likely to have a valid driver’s license than white voters, and nearly a quarter of voters older than 65 lack one. This means thousands of elderly and men and women of color will be required to pay for new identification cards before they will be allowed to exercise their right to vote. There are four times as many people of color living in poverty as there are white people. Democratic State Senator Lena Taylor called it a poll tax, and she’s right.

Along with the six Republicans who ran as Democrats in the recall elections last week (all defeated), Walker's attacks on voting rights will ensure that the upcoming election seasons in Wisconsin will be full of dirty tricks.

3. Florida

Oh, Florida. The ground zero of voter suppression—and if Governor Rick Scott and the state's Republicans have their way, it'll stay that way.

Former President Bill Clinton turned his wrath Rick Scott's way over one provision, that imposes a five-year waiting period for ex-prisoners to get their voting rights back. "Why should we disenfranchise people forever once they've paid their price? Because most of them in Florida were African Americans and Hispanics who would tend to vote for Democrats, that's why," he said.

Scott's bill requires outside groups who register voters to register their volunteers with the state and face fines if they don't turn in ballots within 48 hours—the League of Women Voters says it'll shut down voter registration activity.

It cuts down early voting from 15 days to eight—this after the 2008 election saw more than half of all votes in Florida cast early or by absentee ballot.

Cristina Francisco-McGuire of the Progressive States Network noted of 2008:

Then-Governor Crist actually extended the early voting hours after millions of people lined up to vote early, some waiting hours to cast their ballots. Though many wanted to avoid the long lines and other debacles that notoriously characterized the 2004 elections, Obama's ground operation in the state encouraged early voting by bringing movie stars like Matt Damon into Tampa for early-voter rallies and holding drum-line marches in Miami's predominantly black communities. Overall, 1.1 million African American voters cast ballots in the state, and 96% of those votes went to Obama. Obama won the state by a margin of less than 240,000 votes, thanks in part to the 54% of African American voters who cast a ballot at early voting sites.

And if all that isn't enough, the law also revokes a four-decades-old policy of allowing voters to change their address when they vote and still cast a regular ballot. Instead, voters who have moved and haven't managed to update their address by Election Day are stuck with provisional ballots, which are rarely counted.

The Florida ACLU and Project Vote have challenged the law under the Voting Rights Act of 1965—and in five counties, the law cannot go into effect without pre-clearance by the Justice Department because of the long history of black voter suppression there.

Historian Karl Shepard, incensed by attacks on voters in Florida and around the country, noted the long history of Southern voter disenfranchisement, and warns, “Welcome to the new face of Jim Crow – in 2011 – black people and college students.”

Not coincidentally, perhaps, these are very voters credited with giving Barack Obama the edge in 2008, and President Obama and other Democrats will be depending on them again in 2012.

4. Ohio

Ohio State Rep. Robert Mecklenborg was one of the key sponsors of Ohio's bill that would require a driver's license or one of five other forms of ID to vote.

It's been called possibly the nation's most restrictive voter identification law because of the narrow range of acceptable documents.

Mecklenborg himself doesn't have a valid driver's license. We know this because he was arrested just before sponsoring the bill on drunk driving charges—without his ID. What he did have with him was a young woman and detectable amounts of Viagra in his system. No word if those will become requirements for Ohio voters.

Mecklenborg may be stepping down, but the voter ID bill already passed the House and awaits a Senate vote. The ACLU is already prepared to challenge the bill, which it says will “disenfranchise thousands of Ohioans to solve a problem that does not exist.”

Meanwhile, not content with pushing for stricter requirements for voters, Ohio Republicans passed a bill that will shorten the period of time in which people can vote, and to eliminate the “Golden Week” in which voters can both register to vote and cast an in-person absentee ballot. Early voting allows people without flexible schedules more time to vote and cuts down on long election-day poll lines, and same-day voter registration has been shown to significantly increase voter turnout.

Ohio, which is expected to be crucial for 2012 presidential candidates as well as the center of its own firestorm over anti-union bills, has had success with its early voting since 2005 (after 2004's controversial election). These combined attacks on voters' rights could undo all those advances and then some—they could not only swing a referendum, but another presidential election. But progressive groups are already preparing to challenge the new election law--the group Fair Elections Ohio submitted the first 1000 signatures on a petition to hold the bill until voters can weigh in on it, as a ballot measure in 2012.

5. Missouri

“This [photo ID] mandate would disproportionately impact senior citizens and persons with disabilities, among others, who are qualified to vote and have been lawfully voting since becoming eligible to do so, but are less likely to have a driver’s license or government-issued photo ID,” Nixon said in a letter explaining his veto. “Disenfranchising certain classes of persons is not acceptable.”

That was Missouri's Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, as he vetoed a law in June that would have required a government-issued photo ID for voters. But the veto isn't the final step for the law. The state legislature passed the bill as an amendment to the state Constitution, meaning that despite the governor's veto, Missouri voters will still get to have the final say on the bill in the November 2012 election.

The state's Supreme Court has already struck down one voter ID law, back in 2006, ruling it a "heavy and substantial burden on Missourians' free exercise of the right of suffrage."

With the governor's veto, the voters who get to decide on the ID requirement in 2012 will not face a photo ID requirement—but they also miss out on what would have been a nine-day early voting period, also enacted by the same law. The inclusion of early voting in the same bill with the ID requirement is a particularly interesting trick, coupling a move that makes voting easier with one that makes it harder. And Republicans are threatening not to allow early voting to come up again unless matched with the ID requirements.

A 2009 study estimated that 230,000 Missourians were registered to voted but lacked a government-issued ID. The study found that black voters, young voters and low-income voters--voters who tend to lean Democratic, obviously--were more likely to be disenfranchised by the new law.

6. Alabama

Alabama was the seat of many of the Civil Rights era's biggest fights. Its voter ID law will have to be approved by the Justice Department before it can be enacted, to be sure that it doesn't violate 1965's Voting Rights Act by disproportionately targeting voters of color.

On the final day of the legislative session, Alabama lawmakers pushed through a bunch of measures, including yet another voter ID bill that requires a government-issued photo ID.

Like other states, Alabama would provide IDs to voters who do not otherwise have them at cost to the state. The law does not take effect until 2014, according to bill sponsor Rep. Kerry Rich, so voters won't have to show ID yet, but confusion over the meaning of the new law could drive down turnout well before 2014.

Blogger mooncat at LeftinAlabama.com notes:

They know it will cost already cash-strapped local governments more, but there is not even a fig leaf toward helping them pay for it. And the costs are not trivial -- to include providing a new state photo ID for everyone without one, increased election costs, costs for voter education, and of course, litigation.

And litigation will be coming—State Rep. James Buskey said the bill will be challenged.

7. Tennessee

State Representative G.A. Hardaway, from Memphis, told the Commercial Appeal that a Tennessee measure requiring photo identification at the polls is "not about government," he said. "It's about beating Obama by any means necessary. And what we've found is that they're not afraid to use the power that they have in order to increase their power ... and by 'they,' I mean the Republicans."

Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper said the measure "unduly burdens the right to vote" and is the equivalent of a poll tax.

The legislature passed the bill anyway.

It goes into effect on January 1, and requires a government-issued photo ID to vote. People over 65 are excluded from the bill, but it is still expected to impact students, minorities and low-income voters.

Among the 30 new voting provisions (PDF) enacted by Tennessee's legislature, you also find early voting periods decreased by two days, additional crimes added to the list of felonies that make people ineligible to vote, and the removal of the limit on campaign contributions by an individual or corporation. The state is also required to provide free photo ID to voters—a provision that may cost up to a half million dollars.

8. South Carolina

South Carolina is estimated to have 178,000 voters who don't have the state-issued ID now required for them to vote. It's a good thing they have a very generous governor, determined to make up for the state's long history of discrimination, intimidation, and abuse of people of color at the polls.

“Find me those people that think that this is invading their rights,” Governor Nikki Haley told a local news station, “And I will go take them to the DMV myself and help them get that picture ID.”

Think Progress did the math on how much work Governor Haley has just signed herself up for:

That DMV branch is open five days a week for 8.5 hours a day. Assuming Haley wants to save some time and gas, we’ll assume that her car can fit four passengers. That means that if every single one of these 178,000 voters were to present themselves to the governor’s mansion and request the free ride Haley just offered them, it would take just over 7 years, 4 months, 3 weeks and 5 days if she spends every single minute that the DMV is open doing nothing but playing taxi driver. That’s nearly two full terms — assuming there’s no traffic.

Like most of the states facing a new voter ID law, South Carolina has no recent reported cases of voter fraud, though a Myrtle Beach Tea Party leader insists that it happens. South Carolina's bill is so severe--and its voting rights history so bad--that it requires Justice Department approval before it goes forward—the S.C. Progressive Network calls the bill worse than similar measures in other states.

9. Texas

Texas Democrats say that Governor Rick Perry's priority voter ID bill intentionally targets black and Latino voters, and offered dozens of amendments to the bill to temper its impact on their constituents.

"I think it's about disenfranchising groups of people who do not historically vote for the Republican Party," said State Rep. Dawnna Dukes.

And in 2007, former Texas Republican Party political director Royal Masset told the Houston Chronicle that a voter-ID bill that failed that year in the legislature "could cause enough of a drop-off in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 percent to the Republican vote."

But Democrats were unable to stop Perry's bill this time, and now the three-term Texas governor has another success to trumpet as he oozes closer to a presidential bid.

"This is what democracy really is all about," Perry said when he signed the bill into law. "It's the integrity of every vote; that every vote counts. Today we take a major step in protecting the most cherished right of Americans."

“Illegal voting,” however, is now a felony.

10. Maine

Maine's State Senate rejected a photo ID bill in June, as Democrat after Democrat made strong arguments against it.

State Senator Stan Gerzovsky said:

"I'm going to have to take an 88-year-old mother, Mr. President, down to Motor Vehicles sometime before the next election, even though everybody in my community knows her well, and get a photo ID of her, because she stopped driving many years ago," he said. "She doesn't have a driver's license any longer, she doesn't have a clue where it is. We talked about it this weekend. And that's going to be a major inconvenience, not only to my mother but to a lot of other mothers and grandmothers."

The Democrats' arguments were able to sway enough Republicans to defeat the voter ID bill, though. So why is Maine still on this list?

Maine was a leader in the country with its nearly 40-year-old same-day voter registration law. Sixty-thousand Mainers (in a state with a population of 1.3 million, that's a not-insignificant number) took advantage of same-day registration in 2008, and it's credited with being the force behind the state's high voter turnout numbers.

And now that same-day voter registration is gone. But Mainers want it back, and are gathering signatures on petitions to get the issue on the ballot in November. With the defeat of voter ID in the state, maybe Maine will retain its high turnout numbers.

11. Rhode Island

Not only is Rhode Island not a Southern state with a long history of disenfranchising voters of color, but its voter ID bill was pushed by Democrats and signed into law by moderate independent governor Lincoln Chafee. What gives?

John Gramlich at Stateline wrote:

It is unclear, however, just how pleased Chafee actually is with the legislation he signed. As the Journal reports, he signed the voter ID bill over the long holiday weekend, but did not announce the signing on his website or by speaking with interested parties. Word of the signing leaked out only after the Rhode Island Tea Party — typically not the biggest ally of Democrats in the legislature — praised lawmakers and Chafee for enacting the new law.

Chafee signed the bills at the same time as he legalized civil unions for same-sex couples, and State Senator Harold M. Metts said his black and Latino constituents asked him to sponsor the bill out of their own concern for voter fraud.

Starting in 2012, the law will require poll workers to ask for a photo ID—though if they don't have one, they can present a Social Security or Medicare card. By 2014, voters need a government-issued photo ID, which will be issued for free by the state government.

Rhode Island is hardly a battleground on the federal level, so it's unlikely that the voter ID law there will have an impact on national elections, but its bipartisan support could be used as leverage by those supporting voter ID bills elsewhere that could have much more substantial effects. If Democrats and relatively moderate independents like Chafee are buying into the conservative frame that "voter fraud"--voters lying about their identity in order to vote--is a bigger problem than voter suppression, we could see a lot more bills like these in the coming years.

Sarah Jaffe is an associate editor at AlterNet, a rabblerouser and frequent Twitterer. You can follow her at @seasonothebitch.