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that the Bush Junta has done, aside from torturing prisoners, slaughtering over a half a million innocent people to get their oil, and leaving poor blacks to die in New Orleans.
Disenfranchising black voters, after their 200 year struggle to overcome slavery and achieve full citizenship, with so much pain, suffering and death along the way, and so much courage and beauty beyond measure, stands out as the signature meanness and ugliness of the Bush Junta. It is also the most stupendous insult they could inflict on the great progressive American majority, which rose to the occasion of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Righting a wrong. Attempting to reverse centuries of injustice. That was one of the finest moments in our history. The Bush goons have spat upon it, have tried to grind it into dust. What worms they are!
I've gone back and forth about the events in Ohio in 2004, in an effort to understand what really happened in that election. Why did the Bushites commit such blatant, open, actionable violations of the Voting Rights Act, when, throughout the nation they had installed new electronic voting systems, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls? With these extremely insecure and insider hackable voting systems, they had created the capability of stealing the election INVISIBLY--with almost no way to detect it--so, why did they need to stomp black voters into the ground? Was it gratuitous evil? They did it because they could? (--a possibility, considering the SOBs we are talking about.) Did they have no fear at all of a potential John Kerry-appointed AG coming after them, post-election? Were the dirty Bushite players in Ohio considered expendable? Or, did Rove not trust the Diebold techies' promises? The technology was too new, hadn't yet been tested out on a nationwide basis*, and so the smashing of black voters in Ohio (and some other places, like Florida) was EXTRA insurance? Or, were both methods needed--the electronic coup AND the suppression of black votes--to overcome a Kerry landslide?
I still don't know for sure. I'm favoring the latter theory--they needed both methods to overcome a grass roots-driven, Kerry landslide. But I do know this, for sure: If we focus too exclusively on a matter that is remedied by EXISTING law--the Voting Rights Act , if only it were enforced--we are in peril of missing the big picture: the laws that were passed permitting 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code in our election system. The foundation laid by these laws--that resulted from the passage of the "Help America Vote for Bush Act" of 2002--giving private corporations (and Bushites, no less!) PROPRIETARY "rights" over the vote counting and the results of our elections, is so corrosive of democracy as to be the END of democracy. It's over. There is no more democracy here, with private, secret vote counting. We are in Stalinist Russia.
That's how serious this is. It far more serious than violations of the Voting Rights Act. And I say this, having been a volunteer in Alabama in 1965, in SCOPE, the voting rights campaign of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, headed by Dr. Martin Luther King. I was one of the white northern students who traveled south during that period to put our bodies on the line for democracy. Three civil rights workers had been murdered in Mississippi the summer before. We wanted to widen the target, and demonstrate that the American promise of justice and equal rights had broad support nationwide. I personally fought for, and risked my life for, the Voting Rights Act. I do not put violations of that law in a secondary position of seriousness lightly.
I think that the Democratic Party leadership has been in collusion with the Bush Junta to privatize our elections and put them under corporate control. I don't say that lightly either. But I think it is the naked truth. I've been struggling with this one as well. How could our party have betrayed us in such a fundamental way? What can account for their mind-boggling silence, as BUSHITE corporations took over the counting of our votes? Venal corruption? The $3.9 electronic voting boondoggle--all that money trickling through their fingers to the states? I also worry about demoralization. If our own party leaders are such traitors to us, and to the American people, who can we look to, to help us restore our democracy? So I have hesitated to place blame where I think it belongs. I have named a few names--Christopher Dodd, Terry McAuliffe. But the truth is that our entire party leadership is responsible for this. No exceptions. Everyone in office. Everyone in a position of leadership. Not one of them has spoken out against it. Not one! And of course they are doing NOTHING about it. Diebold and ES&S will be counting all our votes in 2008 under a veil of corporate secrecy--and it won't matter if there is a "paper trail" or a lousy stinking 2% audit (the Democratic proposal in Congress). The PRINCIPLE of transparent elections--vote counting that everyone can see and understand, vote counting in the PUBLIC VENUE--is grossly violated by these machines, 98% of the votes will remain unseen and uncounted, and a "paper trail" is useless if you don't have lots of money to hire lawyers to overcome all the restrictions on getting a recount.
'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY vote counting is not a Bushite coup. It is a CORPORATE coup. And the Democratic Party is in on it.
It is EASY for our party leaders--and for much of the left as well--to glomm onto violations of black voting rights, and curse the Bushites for their racist behavior and their crimes, and maybe even investigate them for it, and maybe even prosecute them. So what? So they enforce the Voting Rights Act? That puts us back at square one. Everybody can vote. Hoorah! Meanwhile, in Florida, where 18,000 Democratic votes for Congress were 'disappeared' in ES&S voting machines, in the FL-13 election ('06), and where the lawyers for the Democrat who lost (ahem...who else would be losing in a Diebold/ES&s election, hm-m?) asked to review the programming code in the ES&S machines, to try to figure out what happened to all those votes, ES&S refused, and maintained that disclosure of their secret vote counting code would violate their "right" to profit from our election system! And the court agreed! Because, guess why? That's the way the law was written! No matter that it violates the deepest premise of democracy. No matter that it is wrong. It is now written into every state law code in the country that, EVEN in the case of 18,000 'disappeared' Democratic votes, the public has NO RIGHT TO REVIEW THAT CODE.
And the Democratic leaders in Congress and throughout the country endorsed that view, and continue to endorse it. Not one peep out of them. Not one word of objection to the DESTRUCTION OF OUR DEMOCRACY.
In '06, the people outvoted the machines, in their anger at this war. And yet, with 75% of the American people opposing the Iraq War, we could only achieve a 50/50 Congress. THAT is the cost of having Diebold and ES&S "counting" all our votes with "trade secret" code. My guestimate--and that of statisticians and other experts--is that Diebold/ES&S are putting a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" for Bushites, warmongers and corporatists. That is the handicap that the American people have, going into any Diebold/ES&S-run election. And it could be 15% or 20% in 2008, for all we will be able to tell. "Trade secret" code means that, UNLESS THERE IS A SIGNIFICANT AUDIT (50% to 100% handcount), nobody knows. Nobody can tell. The electrons zing through the central tabulators--subject to lines of code we know not of--and send their Rovianized "results" to a single AP computer, which "reports" them to the networks. The networks declare who "won." And that's that. Try getting it reversed--with the entire Democratic Party leadership endorsing this rotten-to-the-core system!
So, it doesn't matter if blacks get to vote. Or poor folks get to vote. Or brown people get to vote. Electronic voting with secret code is the perfect system for 'disappearing' their votes. And, by the time anyone is able to catch up with the deception, it's all over. Fini! Faux News says so.
There is another purpose to Rove's US Attorney purge, and its obvious intent of suppressing black and other progressive votes. It is a hedge against the American people finding out about Diebold and ES&S and throwing these election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor" forthwith. Without this election stealing capability, fascists and warmongers and corporatists stand naked before the voters. They will all be voted out, Republican and Democrat alike. All who have fomented and funded unjust war. All who have cunningly colluded with the corporate rulers in the theft of our country. The voters outvoting the machines in '06 scared Karl Rove, I think. And he then hastily implemented the US Attorney purge, to have toadies in place in the justice system, to, among other things, prevent honest, objective investigation of real election fraud, and to try to block recount challenges, in '08. (Also, to stop prosecution of Republican corruption.) The Bushites have much to cover up , in the most criminal regime in our history. But there is more to the story than this, much more. The powers of the "unitary executive" cannot fall into true progressive hands. A true peoples' candidate cannot be permitted to be elected as president. This goes beyond Rove and the Bush Junta. This goes to the military budget and corporate rule itself--the fundamentally wrong turn that our country has taken--so wrong that it could end in corporations gaining direct control over the counting of our votes with "trade secret" code.
Think about how wrong that is. And think about how you are being manipulated--even by some leftists (perhaps inadvertently)--to look the other way.
If Martin Luther King were alive today, he would not only be protesting violations of the Voting Rights Act. He would be protesting Diebold and ES&S. Believe me. By the end of his life, he understood the economics of war. He knew who the culprits were. That's probably why they killed him. He had gone beyond civil rights, to war and money. That's what Diebold and ES&S are all about--how to get your money to perpetrate unjust war. Poor peoples' money. Not the rich. They are exempt. How to pick the pockets of the poor, and how to recruit cannon fodder from poor communities, to go kill disregarded people on the other side of the world, to get their oil. Diebold and ES&S are the perfection of this rotten scheme. How to deny true representation of the great progressive American majority forevermore. How to turn the United States of America into fascist state, run by global corporate predators. That is the program, and, very unfortunately and very sadly, the once great Democratic Party, champion of the people, has fallen prey, at the leadership level, to the fear or to the corruption that the Bush Junta, and their cronies at Diebold and ES&S, have inflicted on our democracy.
Until our Democratic leaders stand up and object to "trade secret" vote counting, it is fair to judge everything else they have to say--including their lamentations about the suppression of black votes--as hypocrisy. The evil of the Bush Junta--including its ugly bigotry--is the visible ghoulish mask of corporate rule. But the OTHER mask--the one our leaders wear when they talk about a 2% audit of rightwing Bushite-controlled voting machines--may be more damaging, in the end. It means that the remedies that are truly needed--such as the cutoff of funds for aggressive war (drastic cut of the military budget), dismantling of corporate monopolies (including news monopolies), and curtailment of the power of global corporate predators (such as Halliburton and Exxon-Mobile), cannot even be discussed, let alone implemented. It means that no serious reform can occur, and this downward spiral that we are on--with the thorough looting of our country, and its status as a "Banana Republic" for the corporate rulers--cannot be stopped. We're back at 1929. And there is nothing we can do about it, as long as vote counting remains in the hands of people who despise us and hate our democracy. And they are...
DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer," right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004"; and
ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things). Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship; until recently, they were run by two brothers, Bob and Tod Urosevich.
These are the people who "counted" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy. And they are still "counting" our votes with SECRET CODE. Do you wonder why we are still at war?
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*(In Venezuela, they vote electronically, but it is an open source code system--anyone may review the code by which votes are tabulated--and they handcount FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT of the ballots, as a check against machine fraud. 55%! Here, many states have a ZERO audit--no handcount, no ability to handcount; no ballots. The best states--the best!--do a 1% audit (completely inadequate). Our system was put in place not only with "trade secret" code, but also with NO REQUIREMENT whatsoever for ANY audit of the vote. Our electronic voting systems are questionable in themselves--unreliable, insecure, extremely hackable, and very expensive to purchase and maintain--not to mention the ownership and control of the "secret code" by BUSHITE corporations. How could this system have been put in place without a 100% audit being required, at least for the first few national elections? And how can our party leaders now be saying: just add a "paper trail" and a 2% audit, and everything is fine. Past sins forgiven. And now we hear that the corrupt bastards in our election system--the local/state election officials who took the lavish lobbying junkets and the offers of future jobs in the industry, and who love the heady power of secret vote counting--are lobbying Congress to prevent even a "paper trail"! It's unbelievable how much corruption we are facing. Election officials opposed to a "paper trail"! So, I repeat: We need a 50% to 100% audit. We need a significant check against machine fraud, now. And I don't care if it takes them a week, or a month, and cuts into their lobbying junket time with Diebold and ES&S, to count the goddamned votes! COUNT THE VOTES!)
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