It had to happen. It's the iron law of conservatism: whatever conservatives accuse liberals of doing, it's always something they're guilty of themselves:
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Last night Kieth Olbermann did what he does best--a remarkably tight, focused debunking of the voter fraud myth and its use to intimidate and suppress minority voters--which I've written about repeatedly over the years. It's less than four minutes, and hits all the high points:
The fact that the Democratic Party has utterly failed to push back against this, and make the GOP pay a heavy price for lies, deceit and hostility to democracy is perhaps one of the strongest indictments of them as a party just now. But it's their voter base--as opposed to the party hacks--whose welfare I'm most concerned with. And with that in mind, it's worthwhile to expand our horizons a bit, to build on what Olbermann put out there last night, and call attention to yet another enormous anti-democratic outrage: The routine disenfranchisement of millions of voters due to simple bureacratic "denial of service" as it were. Information on this comes from the Harvard/MIT study, "2008 Survey of the Performance of American Elections" [Executive Summary], which found a staggering number of people kept from voting for administrative reasons:
Lost votes due to administrative problems
Results from the survey can be used to estimate roughly how many votes were "lost" in 2008 due to administrative problems, such as registration problems and long lines. Approximately 3 million registered voters appear to have been excluded from voting because of registration problems, 2 million could not find where to vote, 2 million did not have proper identification, and between 2 and 3 million encountered lines that were too long. Perhaps 3 million potential absentee votes were lost because requested ballots never arrived. While these are ballpark figures, and there may be some double counting due to people reporting multiple problems, they suggest that a significant fraction of non-voters might be brought into the electorate through administrative improvements to elections.
Segments on Countown and The Rachel Maddow Show last night--guest hosts on both--highlighted significant self-inflicted wounds by the Obama Administration that serve to undermine the narrative of a "deeply progressive" president who only delivers so little because of intransigent GOP opposition in the Senate. On Countdown there was the revelation that EPA staffers had been politically over-ruled in their objections to letting BP use oil dispersents that actually do more harm than good. And The Rachel Maddow Show highlighted news from the Washington Post about a sharp increase in deportation rates under the Obama Administration.
First, the Countdown segment, with Larry O'Donnell interviewing EPA senior staffer Hugh Kaufman:
O`DONNELL: Today is day 100 of the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, and a whistle-blower has come forth from the Environmental Protection Agency, charging the EPA with helping BP to downplay the environmental impact of its supposed cleanup efforts.... EPA senior policy analyst, Hugh Kaufman, is a veteran and legend of the agency, having had a hand in Love Canal and the creation of the Superfund and helped expose the EPA cover-up of air quality at ground zero. Mr. Kaufman, what should we know about the dispersants used in the Gulf that the EPA isn`t telling us?
KAUFMAN: Well, first of all, the dispersants mixed with the oil and the water is extremely toxic. Sweden has done studies on this. Israel has done studies on this. And the only real purpose of using so many dispersants with the oil was to cover up the volume of oil that was released from that well. So, that and lying about how much is coming out was a mechanism to help BP save billions of dollars in fines.
O`DONNELL: Should they have not used dispersants at all?
KAUFMAN: That`s correct. If they did not use dispersants, they would have been able to get most of that oil off of the surface and would not have endangered all of the fish and ecosystem underneath the water that now will be affected for decades on down the line. I was listening to some of the, quote, "experts" who are being paid by BP at universities who are saying that the oil has disappeared. It hasn`t disappeared. It`s throughout thousands of square miles in the Gulf, mixed with dispersants, and because the temperatures down there are so cold, they`re going to be around for decades.
This is not really surprising, since it was reported at the time that the dispersents were banned in Europe because of their toxicity. Put that together with the information we've reported from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) about how staffers at a number of agencies continue fighting political battles similar to those during the Bush years, and this hardly comes as a surprise. But it's surely a disappointment. No matter what type of spin they try to put on it, the Obama Administration's closeness and deference to BP has clearly visible, and clearly damaging to the President politically--for absolutely no good reason. Now we're getting an even clearer picture of how much it has cost--and that cost will only grow larger and clearer in the years ahead.
The interview continued, on the subject of what went on within the EPA & the administration:
Many already have written about the extremely sickening attacks on a 12yr. old young man, Graeme Frost, and his family.
You can find a reading of others thoughts Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, and Here. And if you just search his name you'll come up with 41 other hits under Diary's.
Many may have caught 'Count Down', last night, and the interview with the parents of Graeme and his little sister.
