John Nichols: Rigging Elections and Wisconsin Today, Justice in Los Angeles

Subject: ALEC Exposed: Rigging Elections, by John Nichols of The Nation

 

Hi.  This is in tribute to and understanding of the recall elections taking place today, in Wisconsin.   It's specific, revelatory, frightening and hopeful, all at the same time.  The hopeful part depends on at least partial success of the

fight-back in this one state triggering similar movements nationally, and with people such as ourselves joining in..

The alternative is what should be terrifying us all.    And, I just read and added the amazing story by Jeff Dietrich,

someone I've known and vastly admired for a long time.  Hope is fulfilled in the most surprising ways, praise be.

 

-Ed

 

 

http://www.thenation.com/article/161969/rigging-elections

 

ALEC Exposed: Rigging Elections

This article is part of a Nation series exposing the American Legislative Exchange Council, in collaboration with the Center For Media and Democracy.  The series and this article appear in the August 1-8 edition of The Nation.
by John Nichols 
In the heat of Wisconsin's brutal battle over Governor Scott Walker's assaults on unions, local democracy, public education and social services, one of his closest allies suddenly shifted direction. State Representative Robin Vos, Republican co-chair of the powerful Legislative Joint Finance Committee, determined that making it harder for college students, seniors and low-income citizens to vote was an immediate legislative priority, and pressed lawmakers to focus on enacting one of the most restrictive voter ID laws in the nation.

As ALEC's chair for Wisconsin, Vos was doing what was expected of him. Enacting burdensome photo ID or proof of citizenship requirements has long been an ALEC priority. ALEC and its sponsors have an enduring mission to pass laws that would make it harder for millions of Americans to vote, impose barriers to direct democracy and let big money flow more freely into campaigns.

Republicans have argued for years that "voter fraud" (rather than unpopular policies) costs the party election victories. A key member of the Corporate Executive Committee for ALEC's Public Safety and Elections Task Force is Sean Parnell, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, which began highlighting voter ID efforts in 2006, shortly after Karl Rove encouraged conservatives to take up voter fraud as an issue. Kansas Republican Kris Kobach, who along with ALEC itself helped draft Arizona's anti-immigration law, has warned of "illegally registered aliens." ALEC's magazine, Inside ALEC, featured a cover story titled "Preventing Election Fraud" following Obama's election. Shortly afterward, in the summer of 2009, the Public Safety and Elections Task Force adopted voter ID model legislation. And when midterm elections put Republicans in charge of both chambers of the legislature in twenty-six states (up from fifteen), GOP legislators began moving bills resembling ALEC's model.

At least thirty-three states have introduced voter ID laws this year. In addition to Wisconsin, Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina and Tennessee have passed similar bills. Only a veto by Democratic Governor John Lynch prevented New Hampshire from enacting a law the Republican House speaker admitted was advanced to make it harder for "liberal" students to cast ballots, and that one state representative described as "directly attributable to ALEC."

ALEC's goal is to influence not just state politics but also the 2012 presidential race, to "give the electoral edge to their preferred candidates," as Cristina Francisco McGuire of the Progressive States Network pointed out in March. "It's no coincidence that they are waging the fiercest of these battles in states that are also the likeliest battleground states in 2012, where suppressing the youth vote could have a dramatic impact," she wrote. The one class of voters that ALEC seeks to protect with resolutions and model legislation—overseas military voters—happens to be likely to vote Republican.

Beyond barriers to voting, ALEC is also committed to building barriers to direct democracy. Horrified by the success of living-wage referendums and other projects that have allowed voters to enact protections for workers and regulations for businesses, ALEC's corporate sponsors have pushed to toughen the rules for voter initiatives. "The legislative process should be the principal policy-making vehicle for developing state law," declares one 2006 resolution, which specifically mentions concerns about state minimum wage laws, taxation and "the funding of other government programs and services." ALEC's Resolution to Reform the Ballot Initiatives Process recommends making it harder to qualify referendum language and suggests that proposals on fiscal issues should require supermajorities to become law.

ALEC is also determined to ensure that citizens do not have the final say on who is elected president, an agenda outlined in such documents as its Resolution in Support of the Electoral College and its ardent opposition to the National Popular Vote project (which it has warned would "nationalize elections and unravel Federalism"). A related resolution encourages state legislatures to formally complain that an interstate compact to defer to the popular will "would allow a candidate with a plurality—however small—to become President." While ALEC worries about the candidate with the most votes winning, it has no problem with policies that increase the likelihood that the candidate with the most money and corporate support will prevail. Its 2009 Resolution Supporting Citizen Involvement in Elections bluntly "opposes all efforts to limit [citizen] involvement by limiting campaign contributions." A resolution approved last year expresses support for the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling. ALEC even opposes moves to give shareholders a say in the expenditure of corporate funds on campaigning. At the same time, ALEC urges legislators to fight the "federal takeover" of state election procedures, objecting in particular to universal standards for voting procedures.

Of course, ALEC is not opposed to uniformity in election procedures as such. It just wants the rules to be set by CEOs, campaign donors and conservative legislators. Restricting voting and direct democracy while ensuring that corporations can spend freely on campaigning makes advancing the conservative agenda a whole lot easier. "Once they set the rules for elections and campaigns," says Wisconsin State Representative Mark Pocan, a longtime ALEC critic, "ALEC will pretty much call the shots."

 John Nichols

 

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-dietrich-justice-20110808,0,265745.story

Home sweet shopping cart

 

Just when you had given up all hope and thought that the authorities had the final word, for a moment at least, 'the universe bends toward justice.'

 

By Jeff Dietrich, The Catholic Worker

LA Times Op-Ed: August 8, 2011

 

It looked like an anti-terrorist takedown: five cop cars, 10 police officers, a yellow skip loader and a 5-ton dump truck. They screeched to a halt and blocked off 6th Street in front of our soup kitchen in downtown Los Angeles. But their target this spring was not a suicide bomber or a hidden nuclear device; it was the four red shopping carts parked in front of our building. Those of us who had worked on skid row for a while were not surprised; we'd seen it all before.

It has been standard city policy since the mid-1980s to have the aforementioned convoy of skip loader, dump truck and police escort patrol the streets of skid row to confiscate the unattended possessions of homeless people — belongings deemed superfluous, excessive or simply trash. Often these sweeps would take medication, identification papers and family photos, the last vestiges of past lives.

Between 1989 and 2005, three lawsuits, two by civil rights attorney Carol Sobel, were filed and won in state and federal courts against the city of Los Angeles regarding the rights of the homeless. As a result, the police are required to give sufficient notice before removing property of the homeless, and the city must pay damages to homeless people for possessions that had been taken and dumped rather than stored for a certain length of time.

Despite these court victories and the periodic interdiction of homeless activists, the city and police have continued their policy of what amounts to theft from the homeless.

Like a battle-weary soldier who has seen too much, you can get a hard heart. But on this particular occasion, one of our volunteers from the suburbs observed the entire episode and was shocked. "Can't we do something about this?" Richard asked. "They just took everybody's stuff. They were just eating lunch and when they rushed out to grab their shopping carts, the police said, 'No, this is abandoned property.' "

It's always unsettling for our volunteers from the suburbs. They think the rules that apply there should apply on skid row. But that's not how it works. Despite those court cases, if you are gone for five minutes to wash, eat or relieve yourself, you can lose all of your possessions. If you leave a friend in charge of your shopping cart and the police suspect that your friend is not the actual owner — boom — gone to the city dump. I felt like the cop in that old Jack Nicholson movie. I imagined myself saying to our volunteer, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

So inured had I become to the way things are that I did not even bother to contact Carol Sobel about the incident. Fortunately, others did. She came, took depositions, collected photos and went back to federal court.

I was heartened but did not have high expectations for the hearing. The way city officials and police tell their story of skid row, everyone on the streets is either a drug addict or a dealer, and those people do not have a constitutional right to security in their person or property. So in June, when we gathered in the august federal courtroom, I was expecting an affirmation of police impunity.

But I was as unprepared as the deputy city attorney was for the announcement that Judge Philip Gutierrez made: Before we begin today, I need to inform the court that in 1980 I was a summer intern at the Catholic Worker soup kitchen. I chopped onions, I served food and I cleaned toilets. But I have had no contact with them since. Therefore I see no reason to recuse myself from this case.

Whoa! Our jaws dropped. At the end of the court day we got the federal injunction halting the seizure and destruction of the personal property of the homeless. The judge ruled that homeless individuals have an expectation of privacy in their property, even if left on the sidewalk for short periods. Richard was elated. For him, it confirmed that the system works. I was in a state of shock. Where did this come from?

We are all formed by our individual life experiences. We are raised Republican or Democrat; Protestant, Jewish or Catholic. But Gutierrez, however improbably, appears to have been formed in some measure by his experience of chopping onions, cleaning toilets and serving food to the homeless at the Catholic Worker soup kitchen.

I'm not saying that's the only reason he ruled the way he did, but from the perspective of those of us who work with the homeless, and the perspective of the homeless folks who push shopping carts containing the last of their earthly treasures, it is like one of those unlikely biblical stories.

Just when you give up all hope, just when you think that the authorities have the final word, just when you think that the rules of the suburbs cannot possibly apply on skid row, for a moment at least, to paraphrase the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., "the universe bends toward justice."

Jeff Dietrich is the director of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and has worked on skid row for 40 years. His most recent book, "Broken and Shared: Food, Dignity, and the Poor on Los Angeles' Skid Row," will be published this fall.

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times