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Justice

Suppress The Vote: GOPer Sets Up Illegal ‘Show ID To Vote’ Sign At Massachusetts Polling Station

By Tanya Somanader on Oct 21, 2011 at 7:00 pm

Tom Weaver's sign at polling station

Failed Massachusetts GOP candidate and anti-vote operative Tom Weaver recently set up a camera at a polling station in New Bedford, Massachusetts in hopes of catching a plethora of poll violations. He caught nothing, except himself and his colleague Ralph Zazula sitting behind the desk at the polling place with a sign, “Show I.D. To Vote.” On the sign, Weaver had “Rules”: including, “be polite,” “have valid government issued ID,” and “voluntary compliance.” Telling Elections Commission Chairman Maria Tomasia that they had permission to be there (they didn’t), Weaver proceeded to tape himself suppressing the vote.

Though the “rules” said “voluntary compliance,” New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang (D) said Weaver’s act was tantamount to “voter suppression” and he demanded an investigation. The Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin took a look, and informed Tomasia the sign was indeed “illegal”:

Tomasia said she will go back to requiring a letter from the Secretary of State for all election observers. She said she didn’t know about the “Show ID to Vote” signs until she arrived at the Parker Street precinct at 4 p.m., but acknowledged that she herself didn’t ask the dynamic duo to take it down.

She said Secretary of State William Galvin’s office has now informed her that the “Show ID to Vote” sign was illegal. The secretary’s office says it is taking “remedial” steps to make sure the group never displays a similar sign inside a precinct.

Watch MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s coverage of the dynamic anti-vote duo:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Weaver and Zazula insist they “merely intended to hold their helpful sign outside the New Bedford polls” and that that their group “Show ID to Vote” is “not advocating that Massachusetts voters obtain an ID in order to vote — it’s simply encouraging people to voluntarily show their ID when they vote.” Illegally.

Galvin’s office told Maddow that “they’ll be taking steps to keep this from happening again,” including “reminding the local elections commission about statutes that prohibit electioneering at the polls, specifically be election observers” like Weaver and Zazula.

Special Topic

VIDEO: Students At Elite Wharton Business School Mock 99 Percent Movement: ‘Get A Job! Get A Job!’

By Zaid Jilani on Oct 21, 2011 at 6:45 pm

Today, numerous Philadelphia protesters from groups including Occupy Philly, Americans United for Change, Philadelphia AFL-CIO, Fight for Philly, SEIU PA State Council, Protect Your Care, Keystone Progress, Moveon.org, NCPSSM, Progress Now, and AFSCME demonstrated at the Wharton School for Business at the University of Pennsylvania after Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) canceled his speech there, apparently afraid of dissident audiences.

As the hundreds of protesters entered the Wharton School and chanted about economic justice, a number of students appeared on the balcony above. These students began chanting in unison, “Get a job! Get a job!” Watch video shot ThinkProgress’ Josh Dorner:

 

While the students who jeered the protesters certainly do not necessarily represent all Wharton students, it’s important to understand the context of the elite status they likely either come from or graduate into. Wharton graduates much of the nation’s corporate elite, with the median starting salary for an MBA graduate being $145,000 — six times the poverty level for a family of four.

The school’s Board of Overseers is staffed with with multiple Goldman Sachs executives and high-ranking employees of a wide variety of financial firms. Meanwhile, it’s Graduate Executive Board is staffed with senior employees of Bank of America, Blackstone Financial Management, and PMC Bank. Wharton’s endowment is $888 million, greater than that of many large public universities. Essentially, the students jeering the protesters represented the future financial elite.

Update

Later in the protest, another Wharton student taunted the protesters with a sign that read “Get in our bracket.”  The protesters responded with chants of “We are the 99 Percent! So are you!” and “Join us!”  The Daily Pennsylvanian grabbed a photo of the sign:

Economy

Constituent Asks Paul Ryan To Raise The Tax Cap On Social Security: Why Do I Pay As Much As Alex Rodriguez?

By Travis Waldron on Oct 21, 2011 at 6:40 pm

ThinkProgress filed this report from a townhall in Racine, Wisconsin

Alex Rodriguez may not be in the World Series, but he's paying low payroll taxes.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R) faced questions on numerous issues from townhall attendees in Racine today, but his most ardent challenges came from constituents urging him to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

One of the tax issues involved Social Security, which is paid for by a payroll tax that is levied on yearly wages up to $106,800. One constituent stood and asked why he pays the payroll tax on everything that he earns, but New York Yankees third basemen Alex Rodriguez — who made $32 million in 2011 — is only taxed on his first $106,000. “Why can’t you take the cap off” the payroll tax, the man asked.

Ryan responded by saying that he is “not unsympathetic to that idea,” but then proceeded to mislead the crowd, telling it that raising the Social Security payroll tax cap wouldn’t dramatically extend the program’s lifespan:

ATTENDEE: Last year i worked 52 weeks out of the year trying to support my family. They took Social Security and Medicare out of every one of my paychecks. What I don’t understand is why a baseball player for the New York Yankees can make $22 million a year and they only take a little bit out of his first paycheck. Why can’t you take the cap off of Social Security?

RYAN: I am not unsympathetic at all to that idea. Here’s the one issue that raises concern in my mind. If it’s just the guy who’s making that kind of a salary, that’s one thing. But the problem is it’s a self-employed tax as well. […] When you run the numbers…it gets you about six years of solvency in a 75-year problem. The problem is it doesn’t get you that much savings. I think the better way to go to get savings in Social Security is to stop subsidizing the rich. … If you could just do the salaried person and not get the self-employed person, that’d be one thing, but it wouldn’t be that much money at the end of the day.

Watch it:

Ryan’s numbers, while popular among Republicans, are wrong. According to the Congressional Research Service, eliminating the tax cap would create a surplus for the program while ensuring its solvency for another 75 years, not six, as Ryan claimed.

Unfortunately, Republican intransigence when it comes to any tax increase prevents lawmakers from shoring up the program’s future, even while multimillionaires like Rodriguez continue to have an extremely low percentage of their income covered by the payroll tax.

Alyssa

Sexy Disney Meets Sin City

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Oct 21, 2011 at 6:38 pm

Well, it’s Friday and this is pretty much the best thing ever:

One thing I’ve always found fascinating is how sexy Disney movies can get when the characters are animals rather than people. The can-can dancers in The Great Mouse Detective would be considered way over the line for children if they were human rather than anthropomorphized mice. And “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” from The Lion King is probably as close as the company’s animated children’s movies will ever get to an actual sex scene.

NEWS FLASH

Philadelphia Protestors Take Over Wharton School, Chant: ‘Eric Cantor We’re Inside, Eric Cantor You Can’t Hide!’ | This afternoon, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) abruptly canceled his speech on income inequality scheduled for this afternoon at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Although there is dispute over why Cantor canceled his speech, it’s likely that he was afraid of facing a dissident audience at a public event. A variety of local community groups including Occupy Philly, Americans United for Change, Philadelphia AFL-CIO, Fight for Philly, SEIU PA State Council, Protect Your Care, Keystone Progress, Moveon.org, NCPSSM, Progress Now, and AFSCME that were set to protest Cantor decided to rally without his presence. Hundreds of protesters marched into the Wharton School and chanted, “Eric Cantor You Can’t Hid, Eric Cantor We’re Inside!” Watch it:

By Zaid Jilani on Oct 21, 2011 at 6:05 pm

Security

GOP’s Remaining Attack On Obama’s Libya Strategy: ‘It Could Have Been Over Quicker’

By Eli Clifton on Oct 21, 2011 at 6:00 pm

The death of Muammar Qaddafi offers a milestone in the Libyan revolution as the Libyan Transitional National Council must move on to the difficult task of holding national elections and NATO forces begin to wind down operations. But the Libyan and NATO victory doesn’t seem to be enough for congressional hawks who have long mocked the White House’s so-called “leading from behind” Libya strategy.

While U.S. participation in a successful NATO and regional coalition operation in Libya without putting American lives in danger would seem like an overall victory, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) all took to the airwaves to grudgingly admit that while the White House’s strategy appears to have worked, their untested plans for more U.S. airpower and a unilateral strategy in which U.S. commanders would control the air campaign, would have resulted in fewer Libyan deaths.

Mccain told the Today Show:

The fact is that we could have ended this conflict a lot earlier if we had used the full weight of U.S. air power instead of leading from behind and we wouldn’t have the 30,000 who are wounded and hundreds, if not thousands, who are killed.

Rubio told Fox News:

We have a lot of people dead and a lot of young men who, instead of entering the workforce and helping rebuild Libya, have to go into rehab and recovery for their war wounds. A lot of this could have been avoided had we gotten involved early and decisively.

And Graham told Fox News:

If we could have kept American air power in the fight it would have been over quicker. Sixty-thousand Libyans have been wounded, 3,000 maimed, 25,000 killed.

Watch a compilation of their comments:

Of course, a large-scale bombing campaign, as they seem to be suggesting, would have taken a massive humanitarian toll as well. Perhaps more importantly, a U.S. driven campaign, as opposed to the role the U.S. and its allies played in offering air support for Libyan rebel forces, would have made Qaddafi’s defeat yet another U.S. led overthrow of an Arab leader instead of a popular revolt driven by Libyan rebel forces. While Rubio, McCain and Graham might have wanted to apply an Iraq-style strategy of unilateral U.S. military action, their assertions that lives would have been saved appears to be nothing more than politically motivated speculation.

Justice

Herman Cain: If A Woman Decides To Have An ‘Illegal’ Abortion, ‘That’s That Family’s Decision’

By Ian Millhiser on Oct 21, 2011 at 5:50 pm

GOP presidential frontrunner Herman Cain has struggled all week to explain his position on abortion in a way that won’t antagonize his the Republican base. On Tuesday, he flip-flopped twice in the same interview on whether rape victims should be able to seek abortions — before ultimately concluding that, no, they should not. On Wednesday, however, he told CNN’s Piers Morgan that “the government shouldn’t be trying to tell people everything to do” with issues like abortion. On Thursday, he had an entirely new position: “I am 100% pro-life. End of story.”

Nevertheless, in an interview with Fox News today, Cain wrote yet another chapter to this story:

CAIN: I do not believe that abortion should be legal in this country, if that’s the question.

QUESTION: So then you’re saying that if those circumstances come up and the family does make that decision — that they decide [abortion] is the best thing for that young person or she decides it on her own — that if that’s what they decided then it would be an illegal abortion that they would need to seek?

CAIN: It would be an illegal abortion if the law — look, abortion should not be legal. That is clear. But if the family made a decision to break the law, that’s that family’s decision. That’s all I’m trying to say.

Watch it:

So now it’s Friday, and Cain’s position is that abortion should be illegal. In all cases. And if someone gets an abortion they are personally breaking the law. But if someone gets one anyway, that’s their family’s decision.

NEWS FLASH

Franken Predicts Anti-Bullying Measure Will Pass With Bipartisan Support If Put To A Vote | Yesterday, the Senate HELP Committee’s mark-up of the No Child Left Behind bill failed to consider Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) Student Non-Discrimination Act, which would establish “comprehensive federal prohibition against discrimination and bullying in public schools based on sexual orientation or gender identity.” In a brief statement, Franken said some senators on the committee feared the act would jeopardize bipartisan support for the entire education bill, but pledged to offer the measure on the floor of the Senate and predicted that it would pass if put to a vote. Franken went on to link his anti-bullying legislation to the civil rights laws of the 1960s and Title IX legislation, before noting that “we are faced with a group of students that is facing pervasive, systemic, discrimination” and “there is no law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in schools.” Watch it:

The committee passed the education bill in a bipartisan vote of 15-7. Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), the sponsor of a similar Safe Schools Improvement Act, also offered his measure as an amendment but withdrew it before the final vote. Neither act has attracted the 60 co-sponsors necessary to withstand a filibuster in the Senate.

Yglesias

Who Cares If Eric Cantor’s Grandmother Was Poor?

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 21, 2011 at 5:30 pm

“Son of a millworker / son of a tenant farmer” stuff about your hardscrabble upbringing is a staple of modern campaign rhetoric. But suppose you’re Eric Cantor, son of a real estate developer and proud alumnus of a fancy prep school. Well, apparently you say you’re going to give a speech on income inequality, then you cancel the speech, then you release the text of the speech to a student newspaper and talk about your grandmother:

My grandmother eventually made her home in a working class section of my hometown of Richmond. As you can imagine, in the early 20th century, the South wasn’t often the most accepting place for a young Jewish woman. Widowed by age 30, she raised my father and uncle in a tight apartment above a tiny grocery store that she and my grandfather had opened. She worked day and night and sacrificed tremendously to secure a better future for her sons. And sure enough, this young woman – who had the courage to journey to a distant land with hope as her only possession – lifted herself into the ranks of the middle class. Through hard work, her faith and thrift, she was even able to send her two sons to college. All she wanted was a chance – a fair shot at making a better life for her two sons. And if she were still alive today, I know she would be blown away to know that her grandson is not only a Member of the U.S. Congress, but now the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Who cares? I mean, good for his grandmother but what does this have to do with anything? Is a modern-day working mother hoping to put her kids through college supposed to hope that the relative price of tuition suddenly falls to 1950s levels? What insights has this second-hand experience of poverty given Cantor that others lack? It’s easy to understand why first-hand experience might give you a different perspective. But what Cantor seems to have learned from his grandmothers’ efforts is that high end marginal income tax rates need to be made much lower than they were at the time she was pulling herself up by her bootstraps.

Economy

Gov. Malloy Supports Occupy Wall Street: ‘There’s A Gigantic Frustration’ That ‘The Poor Continued To Get Poorer’

By Pat Garofalo on Oct 21, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Gov. Dan Malloy (D-CT)

The Occupy Wall Street protests have been going on for more than a month now, and support from elected officials for the protesters has slowly trickled in. “I support the message to the establishment,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). “Change has to happen. We cannot continue in a way that does not — that is not relevant to their lives.” “The protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works,” President Obama added.

And some state leaders have offered support to the movement as well. Gov. Peter Shumlin (D-VT) said, “while I don’t agree with all of the positions taken by the protesters, I applaud their courage, commitment, and focus on the gulf between the wealthiest and the rest of us. The issues they are raising are critically important to our national dialogue about economic priorities.” ThinkProgress today spoke with Gov. Dan Malloy (D-CT), who also supported the protesters:

Listen, there’s a gigantic frustration and Occupy Wall Street or occupy anything is bunch of people who are feeling frustrated and in some cases feeling frustrated about different things. So this is not a unified movement with the exception of it being based on frustration, and that frustration is brought about for lots of reasons, not the least of which is the most prolonged recession in recent American history, during which time, somehow and someway the rich continued to get richer and the poor continued to get poorer.

Watch it:

Malloy said he has visited one of the protests in Connecticut. Earlier this month, he said at an economic summit that “we live in a country where infrastructure is failing us on a daily basis and other states are vastly exceeding our level of investment. There are many reasons for people to be frustrated in our economy.”

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