#Turzai

[mysharona1987]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

GOP lawmaker hid his diagnosis from Democrats

Pennsylvania State Rep Andrew Lewis showed up for work at the state house with coronavirus. Speaker Mike Turzai warned his Republican caucus that they might have been exposed. He did NOT tell Democrats in the legislature.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/brian-sims-profanity-laced-tirade-gop-colleague-hid-positive-covid-19-test-1006431/

The whole PA GOP caucus appear to be fully paid-up members of the Flu Klux Klan. After Rep Russ Diamond was exposed, he self-isolated...but didn't bother to get a test.

Fun fact. The motto on Diamond's Twitter bio is "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Ironic that when he found out he might be infectious, he didn't get tested?

The incident provoked an epic rant from Democratic Rep Brian Sims, who blasted the state GOP for failing to wear masks in the legislative chamber and blithely assuring voters that it was safe to go back to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzUHrGx8IT4

[quakerjoe]

President Trump on Monday morning became the latest in a procession of Republicans to say making it easier for more people to vote would hurt his party politically.

In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Trump referenced proposals from Democrats in the coronavirus stimulus negotiations that would have vastly increased funding for absentee and vote-by-mail options. The final package included $400 million for the effort, which was far less than what Democrats had sought.

“The things they had in there were crazy,” Trump said. “They had things — levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

Trump didn’t expand on the thought. But he clearly linked high turnout to Republicans losing elections. The most generous reading of his comment is that he was referring to large-scale voter fraud resulting from the easier vote-by-mail options; Trump has in the past baselessly speculated about millions of fraudulent votes helping Democrats in the 2016 election. The more nefarious reading would be that allowing more people to participate in the process legally would hurt his party because there are more Democratic-leaning voters in the country.

That’s apparently true, but you typically don’t see Republicans expressing the sentiment so directly. Generally, they’ll connect tighter voting rules such as Voter ID to protecting the integrity of the process.

On several occasions in recent years, though, Republicans have arguably gone further than that, as Trump just did.

In 2012, then-Pennsylvania state House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R) hailed the passage of Voter ID in his state and suggested it would be a boon to the GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.

“Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania: Done,” Turzai said while recounting his state party’s accomplishments.

After Romney lost the state, the state’s Republican Party chairman still said Voter ID helped.

“We probably had a better election,” the chairman, Robert Gleason, said. “Think about this: We cut [Barack] Obama by 5 percent, which was big. A lot of people lost sight of that. He beat [John] McCain by 10 percent; he only beat Romney by 5 percent. And I think that probably photo ID helped a bit in that.”

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) offered similar comments during the 2016 presidential election.

“I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever put up,” Grothman said, adding: “And now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well.”

Grothman elaborated that he was referring to combating voter fraud rather than suggesting requiring ID would suppress Democratic votes in the state. “I think we believe that, insofar as there are inappropriate things, people who vote inappropriately are more likely to vote Democrat,” he said.

This is an idea Trump has referred to frequently, but there is scant evidence of actual large-scale voter fraud in this country, including in vote-by-mail options.

But Trump isn’t even the only high-ranking national Republican during the 2020 election to reference the idea that higher turnout would hamper the party’s chances. Last year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) dismissed Democrats’ proposal to make Election Day a federal holiday, suggesting it was intended to help them win elections — apparently by increasing turnout.

“This is the Democrat plan to restore democracy?” McConnell said with a laugh. “A power grab that’s smelling more and more like exactly what it is.”

McConnell at the time referred to the underlying bill as the “Democrat Politician Protection Act.”

Surveys have indeed shown higher turnout probably would benefit Democrats, given many more nonvoters lean toward that party than they do the GOP. A 2014 study by the Pew Research Center showed that among people who weren’t registered to vote or didn’t plan to vote in that year’s midterm election, 51 percent favored the Democratic Party, while just 30 percent favored the Republican Party. Young people, in particular, tend to be liberal but vote at much lower rates than more conservative, older voters.

Democrats for years sought to make it easier to vote, including by expanding early voting and vote-by-mail options, and have accused Republicans of suppressing votes by pushing Voter ID and purging voter rolls. Polls have shown people generally favor the concept of Voter ID and believe fraud is relatively prevalent, but this belief has not been proved in any real measure.

Trump tasked then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach with leading a voter fraud commission in 2017, but the effort turned up only a handful of alleged cases before it was disbanded in January 2018. A Democrat who served on the panel called it “the most bizarre thing I’ve ever been a part of.”

[reading-writing-revolution]

Heather Cox Richardson:

May 28, 2020 (Thursday)

The coronavirus pandemic has ripped the remaining tatters of cover off this country’s racial inequality as black Americans are dying in much higher numbers than white Americans. Racial inequality is not new, but racial brutality has become more and more obvious in the past several years as cell phones have recorded the deaths of black Americans at the hands of authorities or white Americans who took it upon themselves to police their black neighbors.

On Monday night, a Minneapolis police officer killed a handcuffed man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck for ten minutes as other officers either held him down or looked away. It took only five minutes for Floyd, who had initially begged “Please, please. I can’t breathe,” to stop moving. A passerby captured the murder on video, and it has been widely shared on social media.

Last night, in Minneapolis, and then Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, and Manhattan, protesters took to the streets. In Minnesota, the protests turned into riots and looting after police greeted the protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets. This morning, after two nights of violent protests, the U.S. Department of Justice said it would make a federal investigation into the killing a “top priority.” Tonight, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) called in the state’s National Guard to keep the peace.

It didn’t work: as I write, it appears the Minneapolis precinct police department whose officers were involved in the murder is on fire. Police are reporting that 170 businesses in St. Paul have been damaged and dozens of fires have been set. Protests have spread to Phoenix, Arizona, and to Louisville, Kentucky, too, where 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was killed in her home on March 13 by plainclothes police executing a warrant for a man who lived in a different part of Louisville and had already been arrested.

Historically, political rioting in America is an attempt to call attention to a perceived injustice. In its aftermath, ordinary citizens decide whether or not the rioting was justified. Usually, they support social justice movements and shut down reactionary mobs.

When associated with a political riot, looting takes on a political meaning as well. If a population feels that the law is oppressing them—as it did for African Americans during slavery times, for example—they often break the law deliberately to illustrate their opposition to it (as African American abolitionists did in the years before the Civil War). There are always bad eggs in any mob scene, but in this case the larger story of the looting, after an event where an officer of the law murdered an unresisting man in full view of an audience, demonstrating his sense of untouchability, falls into a pretty well established historical pattern.

Crucially, white Americans are finally paying attention to the violence against the black community. I suspect the reason for this attention is that the current leadership of the Republican Party has gone so far toward consolidating power in favor of an oligarchy that ordinary white Americans are identifying with marginalized people. This is precisely what happened in the 1850s, when even desperately racist white Americans pushed back against the elite slave owners taking control of the American government because they recognized that they, too, could be sacrificed if leaders thought they stood in the way of the economic system that enriched a few.

Another story from last night illustrates exactly this point, showing the lengths to which Republican leaders are willing to go to achieve their legislative goals. In Pennsylvania, a member of the state legislature tested positive for Covid-19. He told his Republican colleagues, who engaged in appropriate quarantining and distancing, but neither they nor the Republican House Speaker, Mike Turzai, told the Democrats, who learned much later that one of their colleagues had tested positive for coronavirus from a reporter.

People outside the legislature learned of the situation last night, when Democratic Representative Brian Sims posted a passionate video on Twitter, angrily calling out his Republican colleagues for putting lives at risk. Sims revealed that he had recently donated a kidney to a patient dying of kidney failure, putting him at particularly high risk of contracting the coronavirus. His outrage that his Republican colleagues would keep such vital information from him and his Democratic colleagues, in order to make sure their goal of reopening the state did not falter, resonated. The idea that Republicans who, theoretically, were supposed to be working with Democrats for the good of Pennsylvanians, would deliberately endanger the life of a man who had secretly donated a kidney seemed the epitome of partisanship gone toxic.

More stories today illustrated that the Republicans are determined to cement their ideology into law no matter what voters want. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told judges over 65 that they should consider retiring to make sure Trump could fill their seats. "This is an historic opportunity. We’ve put over 200 federal judges on the bench. I think 1 in 5 federal judges are Trump appointees. ... So if you’re a circuit judge in your mid-60s, late 60s, you can take senior status; now would be a good time to do that if you want to make sure the judiciary is right of center. This is a good time to do it," Graham added.

Yesterday, Senate Democrats released a report examining how Republican leaders, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have packed the courts. Funded by millions of dollars of “dark money” contributions, they are “rolling back the clock on civil rights, consumer protections, and the rights of ordinary Americans, reliably putting a thumb on the scale in favor of corporate and Republican political interests.” The report notes that the House has passed more than 350 bills this session, nearly 90% of which are bi-partisan and popular, but that McConnell has refused to take them up, focusing instead on judicial confirmations. This “judicial capture” is designed to rewrite federal law “to favor the rich and powerful.”

Their point had another illustration today, when we learned that Marc Short, Vice President Pence’s chief of staff, owns between $500,000 and $1.5 million worth of stocks in companies linked to the administration’s pandemic response, in apparent disregard for the law.

But it appears that ordinary Americans have had enough. CNN reported today that GOP operatives are afraid that Trump will both lose the White House and tank the Republican Senate majority in 2020, something borne out by Graham’s call for older judges to retire and be replaced by partisan Republicans while they know they can be.

Knowing that the economic crisis is hurting the president’s chances of reelection, the White House announced today that it will not release the usual economic forecast this summer. Those projections would show the skyrocketing unemployment and ballooning deficit shortly before the election.

Symbolically, it also appears that the anti-maskers are losing ground to those advocating mask wearing. While Trump still refuses to wear one, McConnell, and FNC personality Sean Hannity, among others, have called for wearing masks to help contain the coronavirus.

And finally, Trump’s executive order today attempting to clamp down on social media so that it will not fact-check his inaccurate tweets about the election seem designed not to change policy—legal analysts say it will not withstand legal challenges—but to continue to push the idea that there is a grand conspiracy against him and his supporters. A Washington D.C. District Judge appointed by Trump threw out a lawsuit against Twitter and Facebook today, that claimed they were biased against right-wing users.

Trump’s executive order will shore up his supporters’ sense of grievance, and add more fuel to the argument he seems to be preparing: that any election he loses must be “rigged.”

[ragingchicken]

Out d'Coup podcast for March 20, 2020

Out d’Coup podcast for March 20, 2020

  

Out d’Coup | Dems Means Test Fail; PA Shutdown; CA Stay at Home; GOP Senate Profiteers; Trump Approval; Turzai Off the Rails; PA Stands Up; Eight Oaks; Free Will; Stay Safe, Everyone!

Means testing will not get us where we need to be and it will help Trump win the election. 

Italy’s coronavirus deaths pass China.

California Governor Gavin Newsomissues statewide order to stay at home,…

[knowpgh]

Turzai, Readshaw team up on proposal to put PWSA under state commission's control via Google Alert - "pittsburgh water and sewer authority"

[pokeheros-drama]

exactly, domo's grogarden being 1OS just because no one else wanted to keep their turzai at the middle evo is why I think its extra audacious. anyway how is the number OS determined? by time hatched or obtained? cause the former is a bit harder to track, i think there was a PH book of records a long time ago but i don't remember where it went

.

[dendroica]

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied an attempt by top Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers to delay drawing a new congressional map after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had found the current one unconstitutional. Days after the state high court threw out the state’s congressional district map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, drawn to favor Republicans and discriminate against Democrats, State Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson) and State House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. In their request for a stay of the state court order, Scarnati and Turzai said that the justices were essentially legislating from the bench, taking power that the U.S. Constitution gives to state legislatures. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. denied the stay request without referring it to the rest of the court. “Failure to refer usually means the Justice has calculated that the other Justices would not be likely to grant a stay,” wrote Richard L. Hasen, a law and political science professor at University of California, Irvine. “It is very unusual for these measures not to be referred, but I’m guessing Justice Alito knows that if he was not convinced, the chances of getting to five were very small.”

SCOTUS denies Pa. GOP lawmakers' attempt to delay drawing new congressional map - Philly

[antoine-roquentin]

It can be hard to keep quiet when those around you reinforce the notion that you ought to be proud of your work, even as you are expected to cloak it in doublespeak. Take voter ID laws: since the 2012 presidential campaign, it’s almost as if every Republican official has been itching to take credit for their effort to prevent minorities and the poor from voting, starting with Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Mike Turzai who bragged: “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania: done!”

Despite the backlash, this wasn’t even a one-off. A number of other GOP officials came out with similar, bizarrely honest remarks — including the GOP consultant Scott Tranter, who mused about his party’s “toolkit”: voter ID and long lines at polling stations — eventually prompting a Washington Post article titled Republicans keep admitting that voter ID helps them win, for some reason. As the cherry on top, a GOP precinct chair named Don Yelton, a minor party activist interviewed by The Daily Show in 2013, said of voter ID: “If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it!”

Donald Trump, too, periodically utters truths that are not supposed to be uttered, as happened again just a couple weeks ago with regard to the shipping industry’s interests in Puerto Rico. But anything at all can come out of his mouth, and does: from drivel, to conspiracy theories, to the left-wing critique of American foreign policy, to more drivel. (And anyway, let’s not talk about Trump.)

He’s quite different from another gaffe-prone leader under whose government I’ve lived. I’m currently based in Hong Kong, and arrived here three years back at a historic moment, just days before the pro-democracy Umbrella Revolution kicked off. Throughout the most tumultuous phase, Hong Kong’s then-leader kept his feet firmly planted in his mouth. CY Leung, the widely-despised chief executive (up until last June), turned into a veritable gaffe machine, high on truth serum. My favorite moment was at the onset of the Year of the Sheep when, in his prepared message for the Lunar New Year’s celebration, he advised Hongkongers to “be more like sheep”.

This was an even more ill-advised choice of words than you might think, as Leung was called “the wolf” by his detractors, one of many puns on his name. As tonal languages, both Cantonese and Mandarin are great for wordplay which often figures into political sloganeering and mockery. (For the same reason, the mainland banned puns a few years back, citing “cultural and linguistic chaos”.)

Thanks to Leung’s nickname, a toy animal sold by Ikea became a mascot of the Umbrella Movement after someone hurled “Lufsig” the wolf at him during a town hall meeting in 2013. The adorable critter — fond of “mischief” according to Ikea’s website — became a sensation and soon sold out. As it turns out, Lufsig’s name was innocent enough in Mandarin, but the same Chinese characters read in Cantonese can be made to sound quite crude. The Swedes were no doubt horrified to find that the local name of their “lumbering one” (as the original roughly translates) could mean “your mother’s pussy” in Cantonese. Worse still, “throw a Lufsig at you” can be translated as “fuck your mother’s pussy”.

Another unforgettable Leung moment was when the chief executive explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times how the problem with democracy is that poor people would influence policy. “If it’s entirely a numbers game,” he elaborated, “then obviously you’d be talking to the half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than US$1,800 a month.” It’s almost refreshing when a leader is so clueless that they just come out and say it — imagine how many in the political class think this.

One that jumps to mind is a man whose great-great-grandmother (also his wife’s great-great-grandmother, as it happens) once ruled Hong Kong: the gaffe-prone Prince Philip. Visiting General Alfredo Stroessner — the Nazi-admiring dictator of Paraguay who wiped out entire indigenous populations through ethnic cleansing and slavery — he remarked: “It’s a pleasant change to be in a country that isn’t ruled by its people.” (In another moment of honesty, he told a 13-year-old schoolboy dreaming of space travel: “You’re too fat to be an astronaut.”)

Hillary Clinton, too, has been quite upset at how the electorate inserted itself between her and her coronation. In her new book, Clinton sets out to thoroughly explain how what happened in the presidential election was not her fault, and thus, she cannot forgive those who didn’t vote for her.

It’s hardly surprising that someone this out of touch — unaware she should be asking for forgiveness rather than withholding it — would also be as blithe about modern-day slavery as Sheriff Prator of Louisiana. If there were some way to measure the degree of earnest monstrosity — a “Kinsley scale” of sorts — Hillary Clinton’s infamous admission of employing slaves at the governor’s mansion in Arkansas would be its Planck temperature. As many have noted, this is not rhetorical hyperbole, either: the black prisoners serving her Flavor-Blasted Goldfish Crackers were slaves by any technical or legal definition, fully in accordance with the Thirteenth Amendment.

The Clintons bare a lion’s share of responsibility for turning the USA into the for-profit incarceration nation it is. Hillary Clinton recounted these fond memories of her unpaid servants in the book It Takes a Village, which came out just days before her infamous “superpredator” speech — a term attributed to the bigoted rightwing nutcase John J. DiIulio — about black youths who must be “[brought] to heel”. In her own house, she was strict about enforcing rules, and anyone who “broke a rule” was sent to prison.

Clinton makes no bones about her mud-sill-theory notions of forced labor, either, and sees a happy alignment between the civilizing influence and financial benefits of the arrangement. These people aren’t criminals as a “result of inferior IQs or an inability to apply moral reasoning”, she tells us, but due to an inability to “control their emotions”. Luckily, though,

“…difficult as it may be, it is never too late to teach the elements of emotional intelligence. The structure imposed by the responsibilities of work and the enlightened assistance of concerned people in the prison system and at the governor’s mansion helped those onetime murderers I knew in Arkansas to achieve a greater understanding and control over their feelings and behavior.”

None of the many people involved in writing, editing and publishing the book seem to have seen anything problematic about any of this. That’s pretty much as honest, and terrifyingly so, as it gets.

[kidneystories2013]

Scenes from our broadcast tonight: Candie, Bobbie with former PA Speaker of the House & State Senator Mike Turzai https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=819410132216972&id=355829404988958 (at Hammond, Indiana) https://www.instagram.com/p/CF35juwpmpb/?igshid=689f5zc8ywg8

[texasprelawland-blog]

How Restrictive Voter ID Laws Suppress The Vote, Not Protect It

By Laura Fagbemi, Rice University Class of 2022

July 17, 2020

Voter ID policies in the U.S. are laws that require potential voters to provide some type of official identification before they are allowed to register to vote or to cast a ballot in an election. Much recent political discourse about the efficacy and consequences of voter ID laws was sparked by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, a 2013 landmark decision that struck down Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Section 4(b) contained the coverage formula that defined which districts had to gain federal preclearance before changing their election laws based on their respective histories of voting discrimination. [1] After Shelby County, many states were freed to change their election laws without any advance federal approval. This led to a surge in legislation curtailing early voting and requiring voters to present government-issued photo identification when they vote, which, because of Shelby County,is harder to challenge. [2] As of 2020, 36 states have voter identification laws at the polls. Seven states enforce strict laws which require that voters supply one of a limited set of types of government-issued photo ID to cast their ballot. [3]

Voter ID laws are often pushed by legislators and politicians as “common sense measures” said to prevent voter fraud. In a 2018 rally, President Trump endorsed voter ID laws, stating to his audience that “Only American citizens should vote in American elections. Which is why the time has come for voter ID, like everything else.” [4]The Trump administration claims that voter fraud, specifically voter fraud committed by non-citizen undocumented immigrants, is taking place at rates high enough to sway the direction of American elections. President Trump claimed that he won the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally” and that voting outcomes in “California and numerous other states” are “rigged” because “those illegals get out and vote, because they vote anyway.” [5] [6] White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller stated in 2017 that “you have massive numbers of non-citizens registered to vote in this country. Nobody disputes that,” when in reality, multiple academic studies and government investigations do. [7]Comprehensive studies, state investigations, and nationwide surveys have found that non-citizen voting is practically nonexistent. [8] For instance, in 2012, Florida’s Secretary of State launched an initiative to investigate the issue of non-citizen voting in the state at the request of the governor. Out of 12 million registered voters, state officials believed to have identified 180,000 non-citizens, but upon further investigation, only 85 names were removed from the list as alleged non-citizens, and only one person was actually convicted of fraud. [8] According to state prosecution records, votes cast by non-citizens make up between 0.0003 and 0.001 percent of all votes cast. [9] The National Association of Secretaries of State, a Republican-majority professional organization for public officials that includes the chief elections officers of 40 states, stated that they “are not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by President Trump.” [9]

The imposition of voter ID policies ostensibly also prevents instances of voter impersonation committed by documented citizens. However,voter impersonation is extremely rare overall, even when compared to other types of voter fraud: according to the Brennan Center for Justice, the incidence of voter impersonation is “virtually nonexistent” and is even rarer than being struck by lightning. [10] This is likely because the task of committing voter impersonation fraud is incredibly difficult. In order to impersonate another voter, a person would need to know the full name of someone who is registered at a specific polling location, know the address of that person, and know that the person hasn’t voted yet. [11] A comprehensive investigation of voter impersonation uncovered only 31 incidents, some of which are uninvestigated accusations, over the course of 14 years among over a billion ballots cast in general, primary, special, and municipal elections between 2000 and 2014. [12] Moreover, while voter ID laws are frequently presented as a catch-all solution to electoral fraud, requiring a government-issued picture ID at the polls does not protect against vote tampering, vote buying, campaign worker fraud, absentee ballot fraud, or ballot box stuffing.

Not only do voter ID laws fail to solve any real issue of electoral fraud, they actively create problems by functioning as a tool of voter suppression. Eleven percent of adult U.S. citizens – about 21 million people – do not have a government-issued photo ID. [13] While legal precedent mandates that states which require their residents to present an ID to vote provide free photo ID to eligible voters who do not have it, voters often must incur multiple costs to apply for one. Obtaining a government-issued ID often requires multiple personal documents, such as marriage licenses and birth certificates.The combined cost of document fees, waiting time, and travel expenses can range from $75 to $175, which is a significant financial burden for many low-income individuals. [13] Furthermore, traveling to a government office that issues IDs can be impossible for citizens with disabilities, the elderly, or those who lack personal transportation. In some rural areas, people may have to travel nearly 200 miles to reach the closest ID office. [13] Nearly half a million eligible voters have no access to a vehicle and live more than 10 miles from the nearest state ID-issuing office that is open for more than two days a week. Beyond this, many ID-issuing offices have extremely limited hours. In three states, less than half of all ID-issuing offices in the state are open five days a week. In Sauk City, Washington, the ID office is only open on the fifth Wednesday of every month, but most months do not even have five Wednesdays. [14] A 10-mile trip during business hours on a weekday is infeasible for many low-income individuals, who often work minimum-wage or hourly jobs that have strict restrictions on when or how employees can take time off. When there are multiple roadblocks to obtaining voter IDs, there are multiple obstacles to voting for many Americans.

Furthermore,the consequences of voter ID laws operate on a racial divide. Black and Latinx people are more likely to lack one of the qualifying IDs required by strict voter ID laws. Nationally, about 25% of Black citizens of voting age lack a government-issued photo ID, compared to just 8% of White citizens. [13] Research from the Government Accountability Office indicates that turnout dropped among Black voters in Kansas and Tennessee after new ID requirements took effect in both states. [15]Also, Black votership has been shown to sway the likelihood that restrictive voter ID policies will be pushed, along partisan lines. Research has shown that the “size of the black district population negatively influences the likelihood that a Democratic legislator votes in favor of a restrictive voter ID bill, but positively affects the probability that a Republican lawmaker votes yes.” [16] In 2013, during an interview with “The Daily Show,” North Carolina GOP precinct chairman Don Yelton commented on the suppressive nature of voter ID laws, saying “If [a voter ID law] hurts the whites so be it. If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.” [17]

Often passed by Republican legislatures, voter ID laws change the distribution of votes along a partisan divide by suppressing the vote of poor people and Black and Latinx individuals, who are more likely to vote Democrat. [18] Many Republican politicians have even gone on record exposing a partisan drive behind many voter ID policies. In 2012, Pennsylvania state House Republican leader Mike Turzai stated that the state’s restrictive voter ID law was “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” In 2016, Representative Glenn Grothman (R-Wis) said that he believed “photo ID [was] going to make a little bit of a difference” in whether Hillary Clinton would be elected president. [19] During a discussion about a highly contested voter ID law in Texas in 2007, Royal Masset, the former political director for Texas’s Republican party, said that “requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a dropoff in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 percent to the Republican vote,” a percentage that could swing an election. [20]

The call for in-person photo identification requirements brought on by incorrect and inflated claims of voter fraud claims to solve a problem that has never existed in any significant way. Ultimately, these laws create new ways to sustain longstanding issues of political suppression of poor and minority populations. Voter ID laws are supposedly designed to combat claims of voter fraud.But in reality,these laws work to curb the political clout of communities that have already been historically underserved and underrepresented in the political arena. The false threat of voter impersonation fraud encourages legislation that suppresses the vote of many legitimate voters, without yielding any positive consequences.

________________________________________________________________

Laura Fagbemi is a rising junior at Rice University majoring in Social Policy Analysis and English. She works as a research assistant in the Rice University Sociology Department and is involved with several student-run initiatives centered around advocacy and policy building. She plans on attending law school after her graduation in 2022.

________________________________________________________________

1.     Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013). Retrieved July 8, 2020 from https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/570/529/.

2.     Lopez, Tomas. (June 24, 2014). “’Shelby County:’ One Year Later.” Brennan Center for Justice. Retrieved July 8, 2020 from https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/shelby-county-one-year-later.

3.     Underhill, Wendy. (February 24, 2020). “Voter Identification Requirements: Voter ID Laws.” National Conference of State Legislatures. Retrieved July 8, 2020 from https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-id.aspx.

4.     Chamberlain, Samuel. (July 31, 2018). “Trump calls for voter ID, teases Iran talks at Florida rally boosting DeSantis, Scott.” Fox News. Retrieved July 8, 2020 from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-calls-for-voter-id-teases-iran-talks-at-florida-rally-boosting-desantis-scott.

5.     @realDonaldTrump. (November 27th, 2016). “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” Twitter. Retrieved July 8, 2020 from https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802972944532209664.

6.     (July 23, 2019). “Trump says ‘illegals’ vote ‘many times’ in California.” The Washington Post. Retrieved July 8, 2020 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/trump-says-illegals-vote-many-times-in-california/2019/07/23/d82ff72a-a42a-4323-abdc-9316eb0fe88d_video.html.

7.     (February 12, 2017). “’This Week’ transcript 2-12-17: Stephen Miller, Bob Ferguson, and Rep. Elijah Cummings.” ABC News. Retrieved July 8, 2020 from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-12-17-stephen-miller-bob-ferguson/story?id=45426805.

8.     (January 25, 2017). “Expert Brief: Analysis: Noncitizen Voting is Vanishingly Rare.” Brennan Center for Justice. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/analysis-noncitizen-voting-vanishingly-rare.

9.     Weiser, Wendy and Douglas Keith. (February 13, 2017). “The Actually True and Provable Facts About Non-Citizen Voting.” Time. Retrieved July 8, 2020 from https://time.com/4669899/illegal-citizens-voting-trump/.

10.  (June 26, 2017). “Resources on Voter Fraud Claims.” Brennan Center for Justice. Retrieved July 9, 2020 from https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/resources-voter-fraud-claims.

11.  Quinnell, Kenneth. (May 9, 2014). “25 Reasons Why Voter Identification Laws Are Unconstitutional (Courtesy of Wisconsin).” AFL-CIO: America’s Unions. Retrieved July 9, 2020 from https://aflcio.org/2014/5/9/25-reasons-why-voter-identification-laws-are-unconstitutional-courtesy-wisconsin.

12.  Levitt, Justin. (August 6, 2014). “A comprehensive investigation of voter impersonation finds 31 credible incidents out of one billion ballots cast.” The Washington Post. Retrieved July 8, 2020 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/.

13.  (May 2017). “Fact Sheet on Voter ID Laws.” ACLU. Retrieved July 8, 2020 from https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet.

14.  Gaskins, Keesha and Sundeep Iyer. (July 18, 2012). “The Challenge of Obtaining Voter Identification.” Brennan Center for Justice. Retrieved July 9, 2020 from https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/challenge-obtaining-voter-identification.

15.  Childress, Sarah. (October 20, 2014). “Why Voter ID Laws Aren’t Really about Fraud.” PBS Frontline. Retrieved July 10, 2020 from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/why-voter-id-laws-arent-really-about-fraud/.

16.  McKee, Seth C. (July 3, 2015). “Politics is local: State legislator voting on restrictive voter identification legislation.” Research and Politics. Retrieved July 10, 2020 from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053168015589804.

17.  Gabbatt, Adam. (October 25, 2013). “Republican activist resigns after ‘lazy blacks’ remark in Daily Show Interview.” The Guardian. Retrieved July 10, 2020 from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/25/republican-lazy-blacks-voter-id-daily-show.

18.  Hopkins, Dan. (August 21, 2018). “What We Know About Voter ID Laws.” FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved July 10, 2020 from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-we-know-about-voter-id-laws/.

19.  Blake, Aaron. (April 7, 2016). “Republicans keep admitting that voter ID helps them win, for some reason.” The Washington Post. Retrieved July 9, 2020 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/07/republicans-should-really-stop-admitting-that-voter-id-helps-them-win/.

20.  Mack, Kristen. (May 18, 2007). “In trying to win, has Dewhurst lost a friend?” Houston Chronicle. Retrieved July 10, 2020 from https://www.chron.com/news/article/In-trying-to-win-has-Dewhurst-lost-a-friend-1815569.php.

Photo Credit: Douglas W. Jones

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Democrats criticize Paul Mango for 'homophobic and extremist' interview with Hyung Jin Moon

WES VENTEICHER  | Friday, Jan. 26, 2018

Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Paul Mango appeared this month in a video interview with Hyung Jin Moon, the "second king" of an assault rifle-wielding Christian sect headquartered in Eastern Pennsylvania, to talk about his campaign for the Republican nomination.

About two-thirds of the way through the 37-minute interview , Moon, seated behind an AK-style rifle and wearing a camouflage jacket and a crown, said parents are afraid to send their kids to public schools for fear of liberal indoctrination.

"They're getting indoctrinated into the homosexual political agenda, they're getting indoctrinated in the transgender agenda," said Moon, the leader of the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary in Newfoundland, Pa. "Saying that their emotion — that they can choose how they feel, based on how they feel, their gender, which is totally against the Bible, it's totally against biology."

Mango, 58, an Army veteran and retired Pittsburgh health care consultant from Pine Township, nods along in the video before steering the conversation to the burden of property taxes that fund education in the state.

Moon later calls Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger "one of the most racist, racist, eugenicists in the history of American politics," saying she "wanted to go into the black neighborhoods, take over the preachers, and use them against their own, the black communities. She literally said she wants to exterminate black people."

Mango responds by saying Moon is pointing out "the inherent contradiction of liberal progressivism," before winding down the conversation.

https://youtu.be/VXVVRyyZ9zQ

The video was posted to YouTube on Jan. 10 in an instalment of Moon's show, "The King's Report."

A Pennsylvania Democratic Party spokeswoman called Mango's appearance on the show an attempt "to gain the support of the most right-wing, extremist sectors of the Republican Party to get through the primary.

"This is the most recent evidence that Paul Mango is moving as far to the right as possible," communications director Beth Melena said in a statement. "Paul Mango's homophobic and extremist interview is proof that he is not fit for public office."

Mango, a wealthy political outsider who said his campaign had $5.5 million in the bank at the end of 2017, is running against Pittsburgh attorney Laura Ellsworth, state House speaker Mike Turzai, R-Marshall, and state Sen. Scott Wagner, R-York, in the May 15 primary.

Mango didn't respond to interview requests made through spokesman Matt Beynon.

"Paul does not agree that schools are indoctrinating our kids," Beynon said in an email. "However, Paul does believe that our culture has eroded and has become more and more intolerant of traditional family values. It is a huge problem when people of faith are attacked for holding to their religious principles."

Beynon didn't address the Planned Parenthood comments. Some conservatives, including former presidential candidates Ben Carson and Herman Cain, have leveled claims of racism and eugenicism against Sanger, who died in 1966.

People accusing Sanger of being racist often point to a 1939 letter in which she wrote, "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

The fact-checking website PolitiFact said that while Sanger supported the eugenics movement, "substantial evidence shows that she was not racist and in fact worked closely with black leaders and health care professionals," including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois and Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women.

Moon is the son of Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han Moon, founders of the international Unification Church in the 1950s. The church, with followers often called "Moonies," is known for its mass wedding ceremonies.

Hyung Jin Moon started his own branch of the church in Newfoundland after disagreements with his mother, according to a blog of the New York-based Unification Theological Seminary. Church leaders are often pictured with assault-style rifles, and they are required at some ceremonies, according to the church's website.

Wes Venteicher is a Tribune-Review staff writer.

http://triblive.com/politics/politicalheadlines/13224915-74/democrats-criticize-paul-mango-for-homophobic-and-extremist-interview

Pa. Dems Target Mango Over “Homophobic and Racist” Interview

by Paul Engelkemier, Managing Editor

GOP candidate for PA governor nods along with nutty anti-gay comments in bizarre interview

by Stephen Silver  January 31, 2018

Sean Hyung Jin Moon and his wife, wearing crowns, with his congregation

[plusorminuscongress]

New story in Politics from Time: Pennsylvania Lawmaker Under Fire for Waiting a Week to Reveal COVID-19 Diagnosis

(HARRISBURG, Pa.) — A bitter partisan fight over a Pennsylvania lawmaker’s decision to wait a week before disclosing his COVID-19 diagnosis spread to the House floor Thursday, and the state attorney general declined to investigate.

A day after Republican Rep. Andrew Lewis’ announcement through a news release that he had self-isolated and recovered from the illness that has killed at least 100,000 people in the U.S., Democrats expressed anger and demanded changes that would require masks on the floor and in committee meetings.

The Legislature has continued to meet during the pandemic under rules that permit lawmakers to vote from home or from their Capitol offices, or to vote in person. Lewis, from a Harrisburg-area district, said he was tested two weeks ago, learned the results last week and stayed quiet out of respect for others in his circle.

Rep. Brian Sims, a Philadelphia Democrat who put an emotional video on social media after Lewis made his announcement, said in floor remarks Thursday that the decision to keep the positive test a secret put others at risk.

Sims discounted House Republicans’ response, which has led at least two members to self-isolate because they sit near Lewis in the chamber. “To pretend that a member here coming to session only interacts with one, two, three people, that’s ridiculous, we all know better,” Sims said.

RESIGN: Today we learned that House Speaker @MikeTurzai has known that Republican Members have either tested positive, or been quarantined, and withheld this information from Democrats including those of us who serve on the committees with those members!

— Brian Sims (@BrianSimsPA) May 27, 2020

Sims said House Speaker Mike Turzai, a Republican from north of Pittsburgh, should resign.

Turzai said that he had been unaware of Lewis’ diagnosis and that as for himself, he would disclose if he became infected.

“We are not using this facility to make those kind of statements,” Turzai said, scolding Sims for calling him by his first and last names only. “My title is Speaker.”

Rep. Rob Matzie, a Democrat also from north of Pittsburgh, said lawmakers are held to higher standards than the general public and should all disclose if they test positive for the COVID-19 virus.

“I have to believe that if Ben Franklin had COVID-19, he’d tell everyone,” Matzie said, invoking the name of a Pennsylvania hero.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms that clear up in two to three weeks. For older adults, people with existing health problems and some others, it can cause severe illness and death.

Read more: The Coronavirus Crisis in the U.S. Is a Failure of Democracy

Lewis said he had a fever for a day and a brief cough but has fully recovered.

The majority-holding Republicans defeated a Democratic proposal to adjourn for more than a week to make time to change the policy on illness disclosures.

House Minority Leader Frank Dermody, a Pittsburgh-area Democrat, proposed requiring face masks on the floor and during committee meetings, and to require disclosure of a positive test to leaders of both parties. It was not immediately acted upon as Dermody had requested.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro declined requests by fellow Democrats to criminally investigate how Lewis’ diagnosis was handled. Shapiro released a statement urging lawmakers to “demonstrate common decency.”

“While I understand their frustration and concern, a criminal investigation is not warranted based on our initial review,” Shapiro said. “Capitol staff and state House members with concerns about COVID-19 contact tracing and exposure should contact the independent chief clerk of the state House and continue to follow the guidance of the secretary of health.”

Lewis’ news release said that other members and staff had also isolated. He has not responded to messages seeking comment.

Leaders and GOP administrators followed state and federal guidelines and respected individuals’ health privacy rights, said Mike Straub, spokesperson for the Republican caucus.

After Lewis tested positive, there was an effort to determine whom he had been in close contact with on May 14, his most recent day in the Capitol. House Republican human resources officials notified people who had been within 6 feet of him for about 10 minutes, and all of them subsequently isolated themselves, Straub said.

“Today’s 14 days, and the folks that we’re aware of that have been self-quarantined have not shown any symptoms,” Straub said.

House Democrats are doing their own contact tracing, trying to determine who might have been near Lewis and others who have self-isolated, spokesperson Bill Patton said.

Aides and other staff members have been told to wear masks in the Capitol’s public spaces, but that requirement does not apply to elected representatives.

Two Republicans from Lebanon County, Reps. Russ Diamond and Frank Ryan, have said they were told of Lewis’ positive test result.

“From the moment I was notified I self-quarantined and was given a list of the symptoms to look for, and procedures to follow in event of illness,” Ryan wrote on Facebook. He has not experienced symptoms, he said.

Diamond, who sits near Lewis and Ryan, said he has experienced no symptoms and has not been tested.

By Mark Scolforo / AP on May 29, 2020 at 05:33PM

[diariodigitalcristiano]

Pensilvania: Oración de Jesús estalló como islamófoba, la oración del Corán fue aplaudida

Una oración cristiana dada por un representante del estado esta semana al comienzo de una ceremonia de juramento para el primer representante musulmán de Pensilvania ha provocado reacciones violentas de algunos de sus colegas.

La representante estatal Stephanie Borowicz dirigió la cámara de la casa del estado en oración el martes antes de la juramentación de la representante demócrata Movita Johnson-Harrell de Filadelfia. El legislador de primer año, que también es cristiano y esposa de un pastor asociado, mencionó a Jesucristo 13 veces en su oración.  

También agradeció al presidente Donald Trump por estar detrás de Israel durante su oración.

El demócrata estatal Jordan Harris dijo que sus muchas menciones de Jesús antes de la ceremonia de jurar a la primera mujer musulmana de Pennsylvania, Movita Johnson-Harrell, de Filadelfia, eran inapropiadas.

"Soy cristiano y creo en Jesucristo, pero más que nada creo en sus enseñanzas de amor, compasión y sobre todo de unidad", dijo Harris a ABC News.

Johnson-Harrell ganó una elección especial a principios de este mes para ocupar un puesto vacante por la renuncia de la representante demócrata Vanessa Lowery Brown, quien había sido reelegida en noviembre después de ser condenada por soborno.

Vídeo: Los liberales dicen: “No está bien que las mujeres tengan bebés…” 

Johnson-Harrell estuvo de acuerdo con que Harris llamara a la oración de Borowicz una declaración política.

"Pensé que era descaradamente islamofóbica, xenófoba y discriminatoria", dijo.

El gobernador demócrata Tom Wolf, también metodista, dijo que estaba "horrorizado" por la invocación de Borowicz y se disculpó con Johnson-Harrell en nombre de todos los residentes de Pennsylvania.

Pero Borowicz también tiene admiradores entre sus compañeros representantes también.

"Creo que ella estaba siguiendo los pasos de nuestros antepasados ​​que habrían rezado una oración muy similar", dijo el representante republicano Daryl Metcalf.

Metcalf dice que lo que es realmente ofensivo es que algunos afirman islamofobia.

"Que el miembro más nuevo, que es musulmán, la atacara y dijera que ese era un ejemplo de islamofobia, debería ser ofensivo para todos los residentes de Pensilvania", dijo a ABC News.

Otro legislador musulmán, el representante Jason Dawkins (D-Filadelfia), abrió la sesión el martes leyendo el Corán. Su invocación fue seguida de un aplauso.

El presidente de la Cámara de Representantes, Mike Turzai (R-Allegheny), quien controla el proceso diario de invocación, perdió una decisión de la corte federal el verano pasado que detuvo su política de evitar que los no creyentes realicen las invocaciones. Turzai está apelando ese fallo y actualmente tiene las invocaciones realizadas por los representantes del estado.  

2 grupos islámicos atacan a cristianos nigerianos 

Después de la oración de Borowicz, les recordó a los miembros de la Cámara las reglas previamente proporcionadas a los profesionales religiosos acerca de mantener los comentarios respetuosos de todas las creencias religiosas y abstenerse de comentar sobre asuntos extraños.

En una declaración, Borowicz dijo en parte: "Si un legislador que es cristiano ya no puede presentarse en una Asamblea General en Estados Unidos... y orar a Jesús sin ridiculizarlo, entonces ya no somos libres".