Winning the Zombie Vote

How states are rigging the 2012 election

By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: June 19

An attack on the right to vote is underway across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot.

Are they making the slot in the ballotbox narrower? Those dastardly rogues!

If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging.

We wouldn’t, but you might. Then again, requiring a state-issued ID in the United States, where we have watermarks and magnetic strips, is somewhat different from requiring a state-issued ID in Afghanistan, where the most advanced piece of technology not belonging to the US military is a rock.

But it’s happening here, so there’s barely a whimper.

And yet, I keep hearing about how requiring a state-issued ID to vote is tantamount to lynching black people.

The laws are being passed in the name of preventing “voter fraud.” But study after study has shown that fraud by voters is not a major problem

Considering the scale of the fraud of the ACORN registration scandal (and that’s just the one we know about) and the decades-old Chicago tradition of winning the cemetery vote, voter fraud is a major problem.

Worse, though, is that by implying that voter fraud is unimportant, Dionne allows an insidious misconception to fester. The very notion of the one person one vote principle that is foundational to our Republic. Certainly fraud is likely to occur in major elections with a lot at stake That doesn’t mean that the integrity of the election should be sacrificed to convenience for those too lazy or shortsighted to get to the correct poll on the correct day.

 — and is less of a problem than how hard many states make it for people to vote in the first place.

I don’t have an issue with voting being a process that requires more foresight than a whim. Do you?

Some of the new laws, notably those limiting the number of days for early voting, have little plausible connection to battling fraud.

Funny, I missed how big of an issue early voting was in those “emerging democracies.” After all, Iraq can’t possibly have democratic institutions if Kurds and Shiites don’t have the opportunity to vote for two months leading up to the election?

These statutes are not neutral. Their greatest impact will be to reduce turnout among African Americans, Latinos and the young.

All of these constituencies have access to the ballot box. All of these constituencies have access to identification cards. It’s sad that the left decides to deride these constituencies by implying that they’re too inept or apathetic to bring a valid ID card to the right polling place on the right day. It’s more sad that, statistically, these constituencies prove them right.

It is no accident that these groups were key to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 — or that the laws in question are being enacted in states where Republicans control state governments.

Democrats were reluctant to take on voter fraud that favored Democrats? Impossible!

Again, think of what this would look like to a dispassionate observer.

It would look like a sane government is moving to protect the sanctity of their elections.

A party wins an election, as the GOP did in 2010. Then it changes the election laws in ways that benefit itself.

Um…should the party that lost the election change the election laws? Would that soothe your conscience? If so, we’ll make those laws retroactive to 2008.

In a democracy, the electorate is supposed to pick the politicians.

Civics 101: in a democracy, the electorate is supposed to vote on laws. In a Republic, the electorate picks the politicians to make and enforce the laws.

With these laws, politicians are shaping their electorates.

So it’s kind of like congressional redistricting?

Paradoxically, the rank partisanship of these measures is discouraging the media from reporting plainly on what’s going on.

A member of a left-wing biased media is chiding that very same biased media in the belief that its fictitious impartiality is in fact, a right-wing bias. And to top it all off, he calls it a paradox. Brilliant.  

Voter suppression so clearly benefits the Republicans that the media typically report this through a partisan lens, knowing that accounts making clear whom these laws disenfranchise would be labeled as biased by the right.

This is some of the worst writing I’ve seen out of EJ Dionne in quite a while. It’s also some staggeringly scatterbrained reasoning. The advantage of “voter suppression” is so manifestly obvious that the media refuses to report on that advantage for fear of a right-wing base that already trumpets the media’s [manifestly obvious] anticonservative bias? Isn’t it more likely that the early voting requirements in Florida just don’t make an interesting story?

But the media should not fear telling the truth

Right, because conservatives have a history of bullying the media. Feel free to tell that to Sarah Palin in between the barbed jabs coming from MSNBC.

or standing up for the rights of the poor or the young.

The god-given right to vote five weeks before election day from the wrong polling place without an ID, damn it, because I’ve got some serious Madden to play on election day. After all, that’s why we fought the Civil War!!!

The laws in question include requiring voter identification cards at the polls,

In other words, voting requirements will be only slightly more stringent than those to enter a Costco.

limiting the time of early voting,

To put this in perspective, early voting still lasts longer than the never-ending Weiner sexting scandal.

ending same-day registration

Now what would liberals say if conservatives pushed same-day registration for gun ownership?

and making it difficult for groups to register new voters.

Groups like the thoroughly disgraced ACORN, and new voters like dead people and foreign citizens. (It’s the Chicago Way. Actually as Sean Connery says, pulling a gun when they pull a knife is the Chicago Way, but this is the second Chicago Way.)

It’s worth noting that Dionne has presented a five paragraph jeremiad plying the fear of racism, election tampering, and conservative media bias (I know, it’s a laugher, but try to stay with me) before even mentioning what these proposed laws entail.

Sometimes the partisan motivation is so clear that if Stephen Colbert reported on what’s transpiring, his audience would assume he was making it up.

Oh you and your pop culture references from 2007! Adorable! Oh wait. He’s still on the air? Shit.

In Texas, for example, the law allows concealed handgun licenses as identification but not student IDs.

Let’s see:

Conceal handgun license recipients are subject to an extensive background check and put through onerous state regulations. Student IDs—the ones that aren’t being given to illegal immigrants and other non-citizens—are regularly doctored by sure-handed punks with Exacto knives hoping to score a six pack at the local Circle K. (Good times from my youth…*Sigh* I really thought I could turn 1986 into 1981. Live and learn, I guess.)

And guess what? Nationwide exit polls show that John McCain carried households in which someone owned a gun by 25 percentage points but lost voters in households without a gun by 32 points.

Republicans would win a militia-off. Doesn’t change the fact that a concealed carry license is a very good form of identification, whereas a student ID is not.

Besides Texas, states that enacted voter ID laws this year include Kansas, Wisconsin, South Carolina and Tennessee. Indiana and Georgia already had such requirements. The Maine Legislature voted to end same-day voter registration.

So 5 reliablly red states and two reliably blue states changed their election laws? This isn’t exactly blowing my skirt up, fellas.

Florida seems determined to go back to the chaos of the 2000 election.

You mean it’s going back to the butterfly ballot?

It shortened the early voting period, effectively ended the ability of registered voters to correct their address at the polls and imposed onerous restrictions on organized voter-registration drives.

All of which had precisely nothing to do with the chaos of the 2000 election, which was primarily an issue because Democrats are too dumb to vote properly.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court, by 6 to 3, upheld Indiana’s voter ID statute. So seeking judicial relief may be difficult. Nonetheless, the Justice Department should vigorously challenge these laws, particularly in states covered by the Voting Rights Act.

I’m not a legal expert, but I’m pretty sure once something is upheld or struck down by the Supreme Court, it’s considered “settled law.”—“precedent” even! Calling for the Justice Department to continue raising nonsensical suits on something that is settled from a legal standpoint is not only foolish and petty, but it clogs up the courts with nuisance suits. And if the argument is that voting requirements—whether they be showing identification or shortening the time the polls are open—deter the democratic process by placing roadblocks in the way of a vital governmental process, shouldn’t frivolous suits from the justice department against the states be equally scorned? After all, these suits impugn the ability of the state legal team to do the people’s work, undermine the self-determination of the states and cost a hell of a lot of money.

And the court should be asked to review the issue again in light of new evidence that these laws have a real impact in restricting the rights of particular voter groups.

Sure. Let’s all pay a hell of a lot more lawyers to file more stupid suits.

“This requirement is just a poll tax by another name,” state Sen. Wendy Davis declared when Texas was debating its ID law early this year.

We name things to impart meaning. Poll taxes were detrimental because they necessarily excluded a certain segment of society. ID requirements don’t fit that bill at all. I have to provide more identification to watch an R-rated movie than these bills are requiring to vote.

In the bad old days, poll taxes, now outlawed by the 24th Amendment, were used to keep African Americans from voting.

Thanks for the history lesson, doc.

Even if the Supreme Court didn’t see things her way, Davis is right. This is the civil rights issue of our moment.

I thought that was gay marriage.

No wait, it was electing the first black president.

No wait, the civil rights issue of our moment is global warming.

Or some nonsense about circumcision that always reminds me of Arrested Development.

The civil rights cause has some pretty terrible heirs.

In part because of a surge of voters who had not cast ballots before, the United States elected its first African American president in 2008.

Read: uninformed dolts.

Are we now going to witness a subtle return of Jim Crow voting laws?

Subtle bigotry. The kind that’s so subtle you can’t even see! Boy those conservatives are nefarious.

Whether or not these laws can be rolled back,

They can, but not through the courts.

their existence should unleash a great civic campaign akin to the voter-registration drives of the civil rights years.

You can’t relive the glory days just because you think it would be groovy. The two are not related in any way, shape, matter, or form.

The poor, the young and people of color should get their IDs, flock to the polls and insist on their right to vote in 2012.

Wait wait wait. People should flock to the polls…which open in 2012…to insist on their right to vote…which, by virtue of them being at the polls has been granted…

Can you really vote yourself the right to vote?

If voter suppression is to occur, let it happen for all to see. The whole world, which watched us with admiration and respect in 2008,

And then quickly shifted their attention to developing nuclear programs.

will be watching again.

Christ. He didn’t just nationalize a state issue. He internationalized it. Simply breathtaking.

We are Officially in Lockdown. ZOMBIES!

When Zombies Win

Get your shotgun and your NRA card. Brush up on your basic military strategies and prepare to funnel the walking dead into a semicircular killzone, folks. We’re in it for the species!

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: December 19, 2010

When historians look back at 2008-10,

This is boring. Where are the zombies?

 what will puzzle them most, I believe, is the strange triumph of failed ideas.

And the resurgence of reason beginning on November 2, 2010.

Free-market fundamentalists have been wrong about everything

Let’s make a list of what the free market is right about:

—    America prospers for two and a half Centuries under free markets

—    The Soviet Union languishes for 70 years after eschewing free markets before completely imploding

—    Argentina, in tinkering with currencies and destabilizing government, falls from an American contemporary to a minor regional power

—    China rediscovers free markets after going socialist, and enjoys spectacular growth. Also see Vietnam.

—    Europe continues the drift from free market ideas to socialism. Everything stagnates.

And big government Keynesians have...theories and small sample sizes, I suppose.

 — yet they now dominate the political scene more thoroughly than ever.

Screaming teenager to parents: “YOU NEVER LET ME DO ANYTHING!!!1! I HATE YOU!” Also, still no zombies.

How did that happen?

Maybe you need to AltaVista search for all those newfangled newsies on the interblogs.

How, after runaway banks brought the economy to its knees,

Tell anyone who works at a bank that they were unregulated prior to 2008. I dare you. They will knee you in the gut. That might be me projecting.

did we end up with Ron Paul, who says “I don’t think we need regulators,” about to take over a key House panel overseeing the Fed?

How did we get to the point where the Fed—which has failed (miserably) in every purpose it was originally intended to function—is the sacrosanct Bureau of Bureaucracy in Charge of Economic Growth?

How, after the experiences of the Clinton and Bush administrations — the first raised taxes

The economy didn’t begin to take off until 1994, when Republicans swept into congress.

 and presided over spectacular job growth; the second cut taxes and presided over anemic growth

And Krugman claims Wall Street takes a short-term view to the detriment of the long term…The vast majority of the economy is not a response to government. That’s how we know that we’re still free. The bacchanalian of growth in the dot com bubble was the result of the exuberance of a brand new technology and a geopolitical landscape free from conflict. The 2000s were the opposite: a business climate that had confronted the limitations of the new technology and a far less secure world following 9/11.  

even before the crisis

Which happened a mere year and a half after the Democrats retook the congress in 2006.

--did we end up with bipartisan agreement on even more tax cuts?

First, there are essentially no new income tax cuts. The tax cuts I assume Krugman is referring to is the estate tax cuts. A confiscatory estate tax has always been a primary goal of socialists since Karl Marx—it is listed in the Communist Manifesto as a necessary precondition for socialism. The American people, as a whole, disdain that idea.

Trying to sell people on paying more taxes so that more of their money can be funneled through the massive inefficiency of the government bureaucracy is inherently a losing argument. Even if you assume no fraud, waste, or corruption in the federal mechanism (a tremendously generous concession on my part, because any apparatus that large attracts terrible people to do terrible things under the banner of virtue), you are expecting people to believe that the central command of the federal government can allocate resources more efficiently than 300 million informed—or even uninformed—consumers. No matter how smart the cabal is, they’re still dumber than the combined masses.

The answer from the right is that the economic failures of the Obama administration show that big-government policies don’t work.

True. What happened to unemployment not going over 8%? Oh, and I’ve officially given up on zombies showing up.

But the response should be, what big-government policies?

Cash for clunkers, the stimulus, the second stimulus, the takeover of GM, the takeover of the student loans industry, Obamacare, FinReg, brinksmanship with increasing taxes, threats against opposition, airport pat-downs, Pigford, the latest [thankfully defeated] budget monstrosity, government funded propaganda, and colossal cronyism. Even if some of these programs haven’t gone into effect yet, they have gone into effect on the American economy. Business owners aren’t stupid. They can see what’s coming down the pike, especially with Obamacare (at least, those not well connected enough to get waivers). The market has priced that uncertainty, and it has forced people to sit on their money.

For the fact is that the Obama stimulus — which itself was almost 40 percent tax cuts —

Since tax cuts can’t actually cost the government anything, I’m going to assume that this number, like all the other numbers about the cost of tax cuts, are figments of some progressive’s imagination.

was far too cautious to turn the economy around.

So you keep saying. Yet the people who drive the economy, the people who invest in new facilities, hire new employees, start new businesses, are intrinsically connected to the popular uprising that took place this year that staunchly said no to more stimulus. Indeed the waste of the Stimulus was the rallying cry for the conservative movement to turn out the Tea Party, which, if the New York Times is to be believed (and it isn’t) is prominently affluent. Even Krugman wouldn’t discount that the affluent are the people who make the decisions regarding more hiring.

And that’s not 20-20 hindsight:

It’s not 20-20 at all. And this is a place for a semicolon, not a colon.

many economists, myself included, warned from the beginning that the plan was grossly inadequate.

No, Paul, "grossly inadequate" was just the recurring theme from your latest attempt at couples' counseling. What’s that old joke about the one-handed economist?

Put it this way:

Your license to use colons has been revoked under penalty of zombie attack.

A policy under which government employment actually fell,

This literally took me all of 17 seconds to google.

http://www.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/TotalGovernmentSince1962.asp

Year	Executive branch civilians (thousands)	Uniformed military personnel (thousands)	Legislative and judicial branch personnel (thousands)	Total Federal personnel (thousands)
2000 4	2,639	1,426	63	4,129
2001 4	2,640	1,428	64	4,132
2002	2,630	1,456	66	4,152
2003	2,666	1,478	65	4,210
2004	2,650	1,473	64	4,187
2005	2,636	1,436	65	4,138
2006	2,637	1,432	63	4,133
2007	2,636	1,427	63	4,127
2008	2,692	1,450	64	4,206
2009	2,774	1,591	66	4,430

under which government spending on goods and services grew more slowly than during the Bush years,

Google can neither confirm nor deny. OECD data not available after 2008. Damn you, Google. That said, total spending isn’t a pretty picture.

hardly constitutes a test of Keynesian economics.

Now, maybe it wasn’t possible for President Obama to get more in the face of Congressional skepticism about government.

Does this guy even pay attention to politics? In 2008 Obama had 70% approval ratings and massive majorities in both houses of congress. He could have had whatever he wanted.

But even if that’s true, it only demonstrates the continuing hold of a failed doctrine over our politics.

Except that it’s not true, which must mean that it demonstrates the continuing fear of putting the largest economy the world has ever known in a lab with pointy-heads like Krugman who will use our debt capacity like it’s Christmas morning.

It’s also worth pointing out that everything the right said about why Obamanomics would fail was wrong.

I’m starting to imagine Paul Krugman as that Britney Spears defender sobbing uncontrollably and the unfairness of the harsh attacks on Keynesian economics. “Leave Keynesianism alone! LEAVE IT ALONE!!!”

For two years we’ve been warned that government borrowing would send interest rates sky-high;

You’ve been warned that will happen well after you’ve broken the economy. Interest rate spikes in Greece, Iceland, and Ireland didn’t happen until after the point of no return. Why? In a highly liquid market like government securities, there’s very little marginal of being the first person out of the market versus the 8^th, 10^th, or hundred thousandth person out of the market, so once people start leaving the market, it snowballs almost instantaneously. This is even expedited by automatic trading systems and pre-set triggers for trades. The only question is who gets stuck holding the bag. (Hint: it’s us.)

in fact, rates have fluctuated with optimism or pessimism about recovery, but stayed consistently low by historical standards.

This is asinine. Rates are low because of Federal Reserve open market activities. Krugman knows this. I know this. You know this. The dim-witted social worker down the street knows this. Your elementary school child knows this. It remains unclear whether a wood beam knows about the open market activities, but even with the massive injection of money into government securities that came with FOMC and quantitative easing, the government’s still having problems keeping interest rates low.

For two years we’ve been warned that inflation, even hyperinflation, was just around the corner;

Still is, if the economy ever starts growing again.

instead, disinflation has continued, with core inflation — which excludes volatile food and energy prices — now at a half-century low.

But still above zero (in fact, .9% above zero as of Nov. 24), which is the definition of “not deflation.”

The free-market fundamentalists have been as wrong about events abroad as they have about events in America —

This is about the three hundredth dash in this article. Am I going to have to revoke a permit for those too?

and suffered equally few consequences. “Ireland,” declared George Osborne in 2006, “stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking.”

Ireland was always a marginal economy. It grew to moderate success under free market ideas, and failed because its rapid growth did not address structural problems with the economy, notably that it was being used as a tax shelter by companies like Google, whose marginal investment in facilities dwarfed the colossal gains of American taxes avoided.

Whoops. But Mr. Osborne is now Britain’s top economic official.

And in his new position, he’s setting out to emulate the austerity policies Ireland implemented after its bubble burst.

Irish austerity measures were like telling a patient in the middle of a coronary to eat a salad. Of course the austerity measures didn’t work for a country in the grips of crisis. That  doesn’t mean that eating a salad is bad for you.

After all, conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic spent much of the past year hailing Irish austerity as a resounding success. “The Irish approach worked in 1987-89 — and it’s working now,” declared Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute last June. Whoops, again

Amazingly, Ireland is the only place in Europe I don’t recall seeing riots over austerity measures.

But such failures don’t seem to matter. To borrow the title of a recent book by the Australian economist John Quiggin on doctrines that the crisis should have killed but didn’t,

Keynesian economics?

we’re still — perhaps more than ever — ruled by “zombie economics.”

Holy crap! Zombies! Call Bruce Campbell! I knew it. Never let down your guard against zombies.

 Why?

Don’t blame me. I’ve got my chainsaw and shotgun handy and an escape route to a defensible position with plenty of food and water all mapped out. That defensible position? Australia.

Part of the answer, surely, is that people who should have been trying to slay zombie ideas have tried to compromise with them instead.

They can approach the zombies as non-threatening co-inhabitants, because zombies are only interested in eating people with brains.

And this is especially, though not only, true of the president.

So true.

People tend to forget that Ronald Reagan often gave ground on policy substance — most notably, he ended up enacting multiple tax increases.

$275M of tax cuts vs. $132.7M of tax increases. Plus he negotiated the tax increases for cuts to domestic discretionary spending. Big win. Huge. I’m a fan. Call me, Ronald. We’ll do lunch. Wait…is he a zombie?

But he never wavered on ideas, never backed down from the position that his ideology was right and his opponents were wrong.

Of course, he had the added benefit of being the standard-bearer for an ideology that was right, and had the notable bonus of opponents who were wrong.

President Obama, by contrast, has consistently tried to reach across the aisle

Pre-election 2010: [data not found].

by lending cover to right-wing myths. He has praised Reagan for restoring American dynamism (when was the last time you heard a Republican praising F.D.R.?),

Have you ever read David Brooks’ column?

adopted G.O.P. rhetoric about the need for the government to tighten its belt even in the face of recession,

Because that’s the stuff that leaders are made of: rhetoric!

offered symbolic freezes on spending and federal wages.

Reduce spending and wages to 1988 levels and we’re talking.

None of this stopped the right from denouncing him as a socialist.

He is.

But it helped empower bad ideas,

His own.

in ways that can do quite immediate harm.

No argument here.

Right now Mr. Obama is hailing the tax-cut deal as a boost to the economy — but Republicans are already talking about spending cuts that would offset any positive effects from the deal.

Unless, of course, you’re a reasonable person who knows that economic growth comes from production and innovation, not from hollow spending.

And how effectively can he oppose these demands, when he himself has embraced the rhetoric of belt-tightening?

Excellent point. I think he should capitulate to the Republicans or face being branded a hypocrite.

Yes, politics is the art of the possible. We all understand the need to deal with one’s political enemies.

No snark necessary here. Can’t you just feel the disdain dripping from his pen?

But it’s one thing to make deals to advance your goals; it’s another to open the door to zombie ideas.

Unless you have the proverbial “Shotgun of Truth.” No, you can’t have it. It’s private property. You can nationalize it when you pry it from my cold dead brain matter.

When you do that, the zombies end up eating your brain — and quite possibly your economy too.

That’s the best zombie reference you’ve got? I’ve made three references to shotguns and one to Bruce Campbell. Stop embarrassing yourself, Paul Krugman.