Know this number when you go to the polls: 1-866-OUR-VOTE

The SC Progressive Network is again taking part in a national effort to safeguard against problems at the polls. We will be fielding calls and tracking problems through a database that links voters with volunteer lawyers and election experts. And we’ll be putting up flyers with a toll-free hotline number people can call to report irregularities or other problems voting.

Download a copy of the Election Protection flyer to post in your polling place. Poll workers are usually glad to have a resource to help answer questions and solve voter problems, but if they object, please let our office know by calling 803-808-3384.

For more, see 866ourvote.org.

Voting machine lawsuit dismissed

On Oct. 5, Federal District Judge Cameron Currie dismissed Brett Bursey’s complaint against the voting machines used in South Carolina. Bursey had argued that the machines, which do not produce a paper ballot that can be recounted, violate federal statutes.

Bursey is the Director of the South Carolina Progressive Network, a 16-year-old coalition that promotes good government and civic participation.

“The voting machines we use have been decertified in other states, for the very reasons we believe they are unreliable and unverifiable,” Bursey said.

Federal law requires: “The voting system shall produce a permanent paper record with a manual audit capacity for such system (Help America Vote Act 42 USC 15481).” The voting machines in South Carolina do not produce a permanent paper record, nor do they allow a manual audit, or recount.

Federal laws also require the preservation of all records in federal elections for 22 months. Since the machines in use in South Carolina do not produce a paper record, and the original memory cards in the machines were erased two weeks after the June 8 primary, Bursey asserted that they violate federal laws.

“We presented the court with expert testimony that the results of the June 8 primary in the US Senate race were statistically improbable,” Bursey said. The questions surrounding the unusual vote totals and patterns could not be resolved, because the machines don’t produce a paper ballot that can be recounted.

“Voters in South Carolina have lost confidence that their votes are counted accurately,” Bursey said.

Judge Currie dismissed the lawsuit against the Election Commission, ruling that Bursey doesn’t have a “private right of action” to enforce the statutes on voting records; only the US Attorney General does.

“I provided the judge with a time-line of my efforts to get the US Justice Department to take up the case,” Bursey said. “I noted that the US Attorney told me that the case was ‘too politically charged’ for him to intervene.”

In dismissing the case, prior to hearing arguments on the merits of the complaint, Judge Currie wrote, “While this court takes no position on whether South Carolina is in compliance with the statute, the fact that a federal statute may have been violated and some person harmed does not automatically give rise to a private cause of action in favor of that person.”

Bursey said, “We presented expert testimony to the Election Commission in 2003, prior to the purchase of these machines, that they were unreliable. We remain convinced that contracting our elections out to a private company, with proprietary codes and software, is contrary to an open and transparent democracy.

“The good news, is that the malfunction rate of these machines is so far beyond the guidelines set by the US Election Assistance Commission, that they need to be replaced. We will be introducing legislation this year for a voting system that doesn’t depend on secret software, produces a voter verifiable paper ballot and is much cheaper to own and maintain.”

One Nation Working Together, under a groove

By Kerry Taylor
Charleston, SC

For a few hours on Saturday, they were one nation under a groove as thousands of labor and progressive activists rallied for jobs, peace, and affordable education at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall. With little time to spare before the November elections, more than 400 organizations, including the NAACP and dozens of national unions, organized “One Nation Working Together” to boost enthusiasm on the left and counteract the high-profile forces of reaction. According to many pundits, conservatives are poised to make strong gains in the November elections, undermining the possibility of progressive reforms. This past August, on the 47th anniversary of A. Philip Randolph’s historic March on Washington for jobs and civil rights, right-wing populists Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin headlined a massive demonstration on the same spot intended to give focus to the white-hot anger that has emerged since Barack Obama’s November 2008 election.

An hour before the scheduled noon start of Saturday’s program, six burly and animated Cleveland-area autoworkers boarded the Washington Metro and chatted with curious passengers, who were surprised that they had not heard of the demonstration, but expressed support and provided tips on navigating the Metro system. Making their way across the Mall, the autoworkers brushed past canvassers representing various causes and socialist groups before joining their United Autoworkers sisters and brothers, who were easily identified by their Navy blue T-shirts. Other workers joined their respective seas of purple (Service Employees International Union), green (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) and red (Communications Workers of America).

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were among the high-profile speakers at the demonstration. But singer and actor Harry Belafonte, a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr.’s and a participant in the 1963 march, provided the sharpest rebuke of the Tea Party, accusing members of “moving perilously close to achieving villainous ends.” Belafonte dubbed Saturday’s gathering “America’s wake up call” and an indication that “the giant called democracy is at last stirring again.” Gregory Cendana, interim deputy director of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, reminded the crowd of the interconnectedness of struggles for workers’ rights and LGBT equality, immigrant justice and access to quality education.

For the president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, Donna DeWitt, the demonstration could not have come a moment too soon. “We needed this infusion of energy,” said DeWitt, noting that several young union members were ecstatic about having had the experience of marching in Washington. “Something big is going to come of this,” she predicted. “The national labor leaders have seen the potential of this kind of mobilization.” South Carolina activists packed six buses and made special efforts to include students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities, according to DeWitt. Dozens of other union members living near the border traveled with North Carolina delegations. One bus from Charleston became a mobile classroom, as longshore worker Leonard Riley distributed packets of educational material provided by the national organization and led discussions on current workers’ struggles and political issues facing the labor movement.

NAACP activists Mable and Brad Brown flew up from Miami to take part in the demonstration. As a former educator, Mable Brown said she supports all of the demonstration’s stated goals, but is especially concerned about high unemployment, school reform, and police brutality in South Florida. According to the Browns, the Miami Branch NAACP sent a small delegation of young people to Washington, but that many more activists made the trip from northern Florida.

National unions and the NAACP did an impressive job of mobilizing their members who provide the Democratic Party with much of its activist base. Unaffiliated young progressives and white college students, however, were largely absent from Saturday’s event. They will surely be out in greater numbers for the Oct. 30 “Rally to Restore Sanity/March to Keep Fear Alive” organized by Comedy Central stars Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but a demonstration combining forces would more closely mirror the winning coalition forged by the Obama campaign two years ago and would serve as an effective counterpoint to both the Republicans and the timid wing of the Democratic Party.

By 4:30 p.m., when most of the demonstrators were packed away on buses bound for the Bronx, Raleigh, and Rock Hill, funk legend George Clinton and friends assembled on stage at Lincoln’s feet. Smiles broke out across the crowd and Abe’s stone toes appeared to wiggle as Clinton ripped into his 1978 hit, “One Nation Under a Groove.” After nearly 10 minutes of P-Funk, the simulcast screens went black and the engineers cut the sound system. Unfazed, Clinton’s band segued into “Give Up the Funk,” the strains of which could barely be heard just a few hundred feet away. It mattered little to the dancing stragglers — black, white, Asian and Latino, gay and straight, old and young — their insistent demand for “funk!” offering what may be the best response to this mean political season.

A history professor at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., Kerry Taylor co-chairs the board of directors at the Institute for Southern Studies, publisher of Facing South.

War steals from the poor and unemployed

By Tom Turnipseed

Military spending is causing huge deficits and wasting money needed for education, housing, healthcare, infrastructure, and developing clean, renewable energy. Some 14.9 million Americans are unemployed. 50.7 million Americans did not have health insurance and 43.6 million or 14.3% lived beneath the poverty level in 2009, according to the Census Bureau and the numbers are even higher now.  Expenditures for our bloated war complex are about 55% of all discretionary spending.  We have spent more than a trillion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 and much more in bribes to government officials, and tribal chiefs and payments to corrupt private contractors. According to the Democratic Leadership Council, US military spending accounted for 44% of all money spent globally on war, weapons and the military in 2009.  Our military spending is as much as all of the next 15 countries combined. The number of people killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is anywhere from 100,000 to a million or more depending on who does the estimates. Statistics on the number of civilians and military personnel killed are often distorted by military propaganda.

Glorification of the mass terrorism of war by media, politicians, weapons makers and other violence peddling war profiteers is depressing.  Killing people by war and willful violence is the most demented activity of our species. War is intrinsically evil.  Peacemakers like Jesus, Mother Theresa, Gandhi and Martin Luther King are real heroes rather than the war complex hyped “warriors” who “fight for our freedom” by killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan so the US can  control their governments and natural resources. Metaphors like the war on poverty seem inappropriate in describing anti-poverty programs, which are diminished by the diversion of resources to make war.  Lyndon Johnson took on the pervasive poverty of the 1960 by promoting broad anti-poverty social programs like civil rights, education, Medicare and Medicaid as part of his Great Society.

Rather than advocate more social programs that provide jobs, Obama wants to tinker with middle class tax cuts and a roll back on tax breaks for the fat cats, but how much will trickle down to poor and unemployed people?. When a reporter asked Obama to discuss his views on the poverty agendas of  LBJ and Dr. King, he answered, “I think the history of anti-poverty efforts is that the most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy. It’s more important than any program we could set up. It’s more important than any transfer payment we could have.” Economic growth and tax cuts that increase corporate profits will not eliminate poverty. Such praise of Reagan’s supply side economics isn’t new for Obama.

During the presidential campaign in 2008, Obama said, “I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.  He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.  I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.  I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”  Does Obama model his super smooth style after Reagan’s slick salesman act?

Reagan was a mediocre movie actor when he became the host of the General Electric Theater on NBC.  General Electric launched his political career by sponsoring a national speaking tour for their handsome, look-um-in-the-eye, all-American guy, who promoted their conservative philosophy.  He was the ideal political huckster for corporate America’s unbridled greed. Reagan put a nice face on the mean-spirited politics of fear and greed, blaming welfare mothers, social programs, government regulations and the “evil empire of the Soviet Union” as causes for America’s troubles. Scapegoating poor people and criticizing government programs enabled him to deliver a giant tax break for the rich, roll back health and safety regulations, and push through a gigantic military buildup for corporate defense contractors like General Electric. His racially charged attacks on affirmative action hurt racial minorities and women.

Obama’s smooth rhetoric can’t conceal his role in bailing out Wall Street, cutting deals with corporate interests to dilute the healthcare reform bill, and developing financial regulations in closed-door meetings with bankers.

Rather than praising Reagan, Obama should make Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt his role models and work to establish social programs which provide jobs for poor and working class people. LBJ can also teach Obama that endless wars won’t work. We should end tax cuts for the rich and transfer funds from war and Wall Street to social programs that put people to work and reduce poverty.

Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and peace activist in Columbia, SC. Read his blog here: http://tomandjudyonablog.blogspot.com.

Fair elections bill makes historic progress

The Committee on House Administration announced that they will hold a vote on the Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 6116/1826) at a hearing on Thursday, Sept. 23. This is big news.

“Americans want a return to elections of, by, and for the people, not funded by corporate and special interests,” said David Donnelly, campaign manager for the Campaign for Fair Elections. “We urge the Committee to vote out this historic bill, and encourage the House leadership to bring it to the floor where we have the votes to win a landmark victory for all voters.”

Rep. John B. Larson (D-Conn.), the lead sponsor of the Fair Elections Now Act, also released a statement on the hearing. “I didn’t come to Washington to spend my time raising money,” said Congressman Larson. “I came here to work on behalf of my friends and neighbors back home and solve the issues facing this nation. The Fair Elections Now Act would allow candidates like me to get back to the real business our constituents sent us to Washington for and it would help us make sure the voices of everyday Americans are heard more loudly in elections.”

The legislation’s continued momentum is a clear sign that members of Congress realize that the American people are fed up with the status quo in Washington, D.C. Voters want a Congress that is accountable to them, not corporate and special interests. And with Fair Elections advancing, they may finally get it.

To grandparents everywhere: thank you!

By Becci Robbins
SC Alliance for Retired Americans field organizer

When I left home, I was the last of three girls to fly the coop. But my mother needn’t have worried about suffering an empty nest. Before long, my sister was back home — without her husband, but with a baby. My mother helped co-parent until my sister remarried several years later.

The family arrangement was nothing unique. In fact, these days, with so many parents underemployed or jobless, it’s becoming increasingly common.

Fortunately for my family, my sister and mother had good jobs to provide the baby with a safe, stable home. Others, of course, are not so lucky. Without help, their circumstance would risk going from tenuous to tragic.

In South Carolina, Social Security is the most important source of income for the 112,000 children living in homes headed by a grandparent or other relative. Nationwide, 3.4 million children live in households in which at least one relative receives benefits.

When I hear politicians talk about raising the retirement age or cutting Social Security, I think of these families — families just like mine but without access to good jobs. I think about children just like my niece, only more vulnerable. And I worry about political leaders with so little regard for them.

Today is Grandparents Day. While we celebrate our family elders, let’s remember to honor those who are filling the gaps left by absent, abusive or deceased parents. Their sacrifices are heroic, and we all benefit from the stabilizing influence they bring to families and communities.

The myth of the founding fathers

With Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers
By Tom Turnipseed

Led by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, Tea Party worshipers of the Founding Fathers want to return to the “good ol’ days” of 1787, when most African-Americans were slaves, many poor whites were indentured servants, and women couldn’t vote. At the time the Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Native Americans were being slaughtered for their land, and Mexicans who were indigenous to the Southwest and the West coast of what became the United States were included in the genocide.

None of the ancestors of the African American, Native American, or Latino speakers addressing the mostly white Tea Partiers at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech would have been among the Founding Fathers. No women, Jews, Muslims, poor people or non-land owners were numbered amongst the Founders who were rich white men.

Conservatives have trouble seeking sensible solutions to our present-day problems of poverty, violence, and perpetual war that make rich folks richer while poor people suffer and weapons makers and war profiteers make big bucks while killing and injuring innumerable innocent people. The problems are caused by big moneyed interests with the help of simple minded sycophants like Beck, Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers. Their answer is to look backward to the wealthy Founding Fathers for guidance. The Tea Partiers believe the mythologized Founding Fathers are more intelligent and moral than anyone today except maybe radical right-wingers like Beck and Palin.

While hosting the Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show and the Glenn Beck Show on Fox News Channel, Beck has been promoting conspiracy theories and delivering incoherent diatribes against socialists and environmentalists. Beck has called President Obama a Marxist, communist, and socialist who is taking America down the road to fascism. He has accused Obama of being a racist with a “hatred for whites”, and alleged that the Obama Presidency is like evil gorillas, endangering humankind and compared Obama’s America to “the Planet of the Apes”. He said that Al Gore wants to create a new “Hitler youth” because he promotes environmental awareness among young people. Beck doesn’t believe in global warming, but loves guns and militarism.

In Washington Beck did not mention Obama or Gore, but rather, assumed the role of an evangelist, presenting a religious theme of “Faith, Hope and Charity” which was a lame attempt to mask his worship of Mammon, the God of big business. Beck’s big show “just happened” to be at the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King II made his iconic speech 47 years ago to the day. Beck said he was totally unaware it was the anniversary of King’s address when he scheduled his event and he believes the Lord led him to schedule the event at that time and place. He also boasted that the right wing rally had “reclaimed the civil rights movement.” Beck said he heard the voice of God while addressing his flock, a symptom characteristic of schizophrenia. He and his far right friend and probable Republican Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin repeatedly mentioned King’s legacy, as giant screens carried King’s image and brief excerpts of his 1963 address. Earlier this year Beck denounced King as a “radical socialist” and questioned why a national holiday had been named in his honor. Beck was born in a Roman Catholic family, but converted to Mormonism. He says he “found the Lord” who saved him from his alcohol and drug addiction and his channeling the voice of God sounds like the faith required in a 12 steps effort to stay on the wagon.

In his rambling speech Beck gave several quotes from the Declaration of Independence, recited the Gettysburg Address, invoked trite clichés of Americana and read bible verses. Palin said she was the mother of a “combat vet” and led a chant of “USA, USA, USA.”
In the past other extremist populist movements in America also wrapped themselves in the cross and the flag, but espoused some social and economic policies that appealed to the common man. Father Charles Coughlin and Rev. Gerald L.K. Smith were demagogic leaders in the depression days of the 1930s, who at least talked about the dangers of capitalism, with Coughlin advocating a guaranteed annual wage and nationalization of some industries and Smith calling for income limits for the wealthy and old age pensions for everyone.

When he announced the rally, Beck promised to present a plan which would provide “specific policies and action steps” to found “a new national movement to restore our great country.” Instead, in his speech on Saturday, he said he decided to not reveal the plan, because of a conversation he had with God. Rather than explaining his plan “to restore our great country”, Beck said that people should turn to the Lord by praying on their knees and leaving their doors open so their children could see them doing so. Could it be that the billionaires and corporate entities who fund the tea party movement nixed the plan that might help poor and working class people at their expense?

Beck, Palin and their fellow Tea Partiers worship the rich white men and moneyed interests who fund their movement and their politics. Their gods are 21st century manifestations of the rich white men who were the Founding Fathers.

Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and peace activist in Columbia, SC. His blog is at tomandjudyonablog.

South Carolina veteran rips US Sen. Alan Simpson

SC Alliance for Retired Americans member Sheila Jackson, of Greenville, SC, is not amused by US Sen. Alan Simpson, chair of the President’s Deficit Commission, who recently called Social Security a “milk cow with 310 million tits.”

Vile, vulgar and sexist

“We’ve reached a point now where it’s like a milk cow with 310 million tits! Call when you get honest work!”

This quote:
1. comes from an appointee of President Obama
2. was written by a former Republican senator
3. is actually referring to seniors “milking” Social Security
4. is from a sexist, vulgar and insulting letter to a women’s rights leader
5. suggests that advocating for women and seniors is not “honest work”
6. all of the above

Yep, all of the above!

Outrageously, this vulgar former senator holds an important position, and I hope you will join me in urging President Obama to act immediately to remove former Senator Alan K. Simpson as co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (aka the “deficit commission”) before his cynical attitudes influence policy that could be harmful to women, seniors, and social security.

Tell President Obama: “Send Simpson Back to Wyoming”

I’ll admit that I was worried when he was first appointed. I was concerned that he would put Social Security recipients at risk, instead of the real causes of the deficit. I also knew he could be condescending to women. Personally, I’ll never forget a confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court justice when Simpson, then a member of the Senate Judiciary committee, lectured a panel of women’s rights leaders, including myself, as though we were children.

You can hear some of that tone in Simpson’s email message to Ashley Carson, Executive Director of OWL, the Voice of Mid-Life and Older Women. The fact that Ashley has testified on behalf of OWL before the Commission in June did not deter him from disparaging her, the organization, their commitment and hard work. His so-called “smart cracks” reveal his own limited knowledge of women’s organizations. But most importantly, a man with this lack of respect for women and women’s organizations should not be in a powerful position to influence cuts to Social Security – the lifeline for millions of older women who are living below the poverty line even with their social security check – under the guise of deficit reduction.

Yesterday Simpson apologized for insulting Ashley personally – but not for his attack on advocates for women and his underlying conviction that seniors who need social security are milking the system.

Please join me in sending a message to President Obama – ask him to protect the social security safety net, and send the sexist senator back to Wyoming.

For Equality,
Ellie Smeal
NOW President