By Tom Turnipseed
Columbia, SC

Tea Party oriented Republicans who will control the US House of Representatives want to repeal “Obama Care”. Southern Republicans like Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and US Rep. Zack Wamp of Tennessee have threatened Secession from the Union because of federal mandates in “Obama Care”.

In South Carolina, Republican Sen. Glenn McConnell is President Pro-Tem of the South Carolina Senate and one of our most powerful politicians. He also opposes Medicaid mandates. Recently, officials of South Carolina Health and Human Services asked McConnell to help continue funding health care for poor people. He replied, “ When the money provided by the state for Medicaid is gone, the insurance program for the poor must simply stop providing services.” “Your obligation under the constitution … is to the taxpayer of this state and not to bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.” South Carolinians pay both state and federal taxes that fund Medicaid, but by refusing to allocate $1 billion of our state tax revenue for this program over the next decade, South Carolina will lose $ 4 billion from the federal government for health care for 656,000 poor people, who are disproportionately black and children.

Tea Party states’ rights activists say their struggle against health care continues the struggle of Jefferson Davis and the secessionists in 1860. Rev. Cecil Fayard, chaplain in chief for the national Sons of Confederate Veterans, said “The War Between the States was fought for the same reasons that the tea party movement today is voicing their opinion.”

Sen. McConnell opposed removing the Confederate flag from atop the South Carolina State House in 2000 and finally brokered a compromise that placed the rebel flag in front of the state capitol at the Confederate soldier’s memorial monument. McConnell is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Secession Camp #4, and a Civil War re-enactor who owned a Confederate memorabilia store in Charleston. He founded and Chairs the Hunley Commission that raised a Confederate submarine from Charleston harbor. The Commission is restoring the sub for the Hunley Museum in Charleston with $22 million that is coming from state and federal funds according to their fund-raising organization. McConnell was recently photographed in Civil War military regalia with two African- Americans dressed as slaves at a meeting of the National Federation of Republican Women in Charleston. The Sons of Confederate Veterans work closely with the Confederate Heritage Trust.

The Confederate Heritage Trust is putting on a play and grand ball in Charleston on December 20th, celebrating the Secession of South Carolina from the United States in 1860. Neo-Confederates claim that secession was an issue of states’ rights rather than slavery but William Preston, a secessionist leader in South Carolina, said, “Slavery is our King; slavery is our Truth; slavery is our Divine Right.” South Carolina’s Declaration of Secession refers to Northern States; “Those States…have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery…They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes.” Several thousands of those slaves from South Carolina served in the Union army in the Civil War that was started in Charleston by South Carolinians when they bombarded Fort Sumter in April, 1861. At least 618,000 Americans died in the Civil War.

I was also a champion of the lost cause of Dixie. In 1964-65, I became the first Executive Director of the South Carolina Independent Schools Association. Now emphasizing academic and athletic excellence, originally the private schools were created to allow white children to avoid racial desegregation in public schools in counties with large populations of blacks. Several were named for Confederate figures like Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Wade Hampton.

I was an aide to George Wallace and then his National Campaign Director (1967-1971). Confederate flags were waved and racial slurs shouted at Wallace rallies throughout the country. My great-grandfather was a Confederate soldier and my grandfather was a Klan member. I named my only son Jefferson Davis Turnipseed. I was a racist who used my Confederate heritage to deny my racism.

I returned to South Carolina in 1972 and helped organize a coalition to reform electrical utility regulation that included African Americans. Electric rates for low volume residential users were 5 ½ times higher than for industrial users and a disproportionate number of the mostly poor low volume users were black. The rate hike hearings offered an opportunity to bridge the divide between poor blacks and whites. Our successful coalition helped me realize how prejudiced I had been against black people. I became an anti-racist activist and was elected to the SC Senate by an interracial coalition of everyday people. I am a life member of the NAACP, and was a leader in the effort to remove the rebel flag from our State House. Our law firm was co-counsel in a successful suit against the Klan for burning a black Baptist Church in South Carolina in 1998. These terrorist Klansmen waved the Confederate flag as they destroyed the church.

If a prejudiced devotee of Dixie like me could change, maybe there is hope for Secessionist Tea Partiers to change and allow poor black and white folks to have adequate health care.

Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and peace activist in Columbia, SC. Read his blog here.

The priciest midterm election in U.S. history saw a Republican tide sweep numerous Democrats out of office, as voters anxious about the state of the economy ousted more House incumbents from office than any time since 1948. While several money-in-politics axioms held true, money was not a panacea for embattled politicians.

In only about 85 percent of House races did the candidate who spent the most experience victory on Election Day, a relative low in recent years, according to a preliminary analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. Candidates’ spending correlated to success in 29 out of 35 Senate races – or 83 percent – that had been called as of Thursday morning.

By comparison, in 2008, the biggest spender was victorious in 93 percent of House races and in 86 percent of Senate races. In 2006, top spenders won 94 percent of House races and 73 percent of Senate races. And in 2004, 98 percent of House seats went to candidates who spent the most, as did 88 percent of Senate seats.

Moreover, most self-financing candidates again faltered this cycle. And significant investments from outside groups helped elect more than 200 federal candidates. In two-thirds of races where outside groups spent at least some money on advertisements and other political communications, the dollars spent supporting the winner, coupled with amounts spent opposing the loser, exceeded dollars spent supporting the loser or attacking the winner, according to the Center’s research.

“Those that went to the polls Tuesday showed enormous dissatisfaction with the status quo and voted, once again, for change,” said Sheila Krumholz, the Center’s executive director. “The money changed too, surging as much as 40 percent over 2006 levels to our predicted $4 billion by cycle’s end. Despite the competitive political climate and the lowest House reelection rate in 60 years, however, the vast majority of incumbents and candidates who spent the most were still reelected.”

Read OpenSecrets.org’s comprehensive post-election report here.

The Center for Responsive Politics is the nation’s premier research group tracking money in federal politics and its effect on elections and public policy. The nonpartisan, nonprofit Center aims to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more responsive government. CRP’s award-winning website, OpenSecrets.org, is the most comprehensive resource for federal campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis available anywhere. CRP relies on support from a combination of foundation grants, individual contributions and income earned from custom research and licensing data for commercial use. The Center accepts no contributions from businesses, labor unions or trade associations.

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.

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.”

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.