Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

Minnesota has some of the most progressive voter registration laws in the country, laws like same day registration and vouching, that are designed to maximize turnout and get as many voices as possible heard on Election Day. Some newly elected members of the Minnesota state legislature, however, have recently announced that they intend to repeal those laws as soon as they take office. These laws, they claim, leave the state vulnerable to voter fraud, so vulnerable they apparently must be repealed immediately, despite their obvious benefits.

Like Don Quixote charging at windmills, believing them to be monsters, these state legislators are gearing up to fight imaginary threats. Voter fraud, contrary to the media perception, is incredibly rare. According to a study by the nonpartisan group Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota, only twenty-six people were convicted of voter fraud in Minnesota in 2008, all of them convicted felons who are restricted from voting. In other words, less than nine-ten thousandths of one percent of Minnesota voters (.0009 percent), were convicted of voter fraud in 2008. At the national level, a report by Dr. Lorraine Minnite, director of research at Project Vote and former assistant professor of American and urban politics at Barnard College, found that only 24 people were convicted of voter fraud between 2002 and 2005.

So, these state legislatures are trying to repeal laws that make it easier for all Minnesotans to vote, on the off-chance that repealing those laws might discourage some twenty-odd convicted felons from showing up on Election Day. Certainly, what little voter fraud there is should be prevented, but not at the cost of repealing laws that provide tremendous benefits to legitimate voters. In 2004, the six states with same day registration had turnout rates almost 12 percent above the national average, but the newly elected Minnesota legislators are more worried about the two dozen felons who might be voting illegally, than the thousands of legitimate voters who may be prevented from voting at all if these laws are repealed.

If the state legislatures want to fix elections in this country, if they want to protect the sanctity of the democratic process, they should not be focused on the .00009 percent of ineligible citizens who vote illegally--oftentimes unknowingly--due to criminal convictions. Instead, they should focus on reforming current law to allow non-incarcerated felons to automatically regain their right to vote and the 50-plus percent of eligible voters who did not even cast a ballot on Election Day, finding ways to increase turnout, not lower it.

Anthony Balady is a legal intern at Project Vote and second-year   student at William & Mary Law School. Mr. Balady also serves as vice   president of William & Mary’s Election Law Society and   editor-in-chief of its election law blog, State of Elections.

I think that this is a long and winding process. But I think at the end of the day, members are not going to want to be in their districts, senators are not going to want to be in their districts when their constituents find out on the 1st of January that their taxes have gone up by several thousand dollars. - Robert Gibbs/Press Secretary

Can someone help me out here; why is it that every time the wealthy in this country are facing any type of loss of income through taxes or corporate malfeasance the situation becomes the onset of Armageddon for the rest of us? Remember the beginning of this “recession” at the end of the Bush Administration that was brought on by the investment community and bankers gambling with our economy? We were on the brink of Armageddon and had to pony up 800 billion dollars to rescue our economy which was being held hostage by the same people who were handing out multi-million dollar bonuses right up until the day of the bail-out.

Now two years later we are faced with another Armageddon this time over tax-cuts for the wealthy. If we don’t extend all the tax-cuts we will have another “great recession”, the stock market will tank, and we will suffer double-digit unemployment. Really. That’s funny when Bill Clinton enacted them not only did our economy not go into free fall, but it actually laid the foundation for one our biggest economic expansions. I agree with Mr. Tom Buffenbarger, President of the Machinist Union when he said that when the Bush tax-cuts were enacted his members who make a decent living barely felt any change and so having them expire will have little effect. He went on to state that for his members it is about sacrifice for the good of the country and if paying a few hundred dollars a year to insure the long-term health of America they would consider it an honor. It would be an honor because they still have jobs.

There's more...

Battle lines are being drawn. Finally. The Obama tax cut deal was a betrayal too far. And now Dump Obama has become part of the national dialogue big time. First there were a few squeaks. Then columns by Michael Lerner Save Obama’s presidency by challenging him on the left, and Clarence Jones Time to Think the Unthinkable: A Democratic Primary Challenge To Obama’s Reelection, among others. On the New York Times front page, Matt Bai of the Times wrote a skeptical piece Murmurs of Primary Challenge to Obama (demoted from its original title Talk on the Left of a Primary Challenge), in which he tellingly concludes:

"Should the president’s progressive critics warm to the idea, it might not take a particularly credible primary challenge to weaken Mr. Obama’s chances for re-election. It might only take a challenge designed to do exactly that."

This was followed by the inevitable counter-attack, from the likes of Ed Kilgore and David Broder, plus any number of lesser lights, touting three points:

(1) The tax cut deal was a masterful stroke — stimulating the economy and ensuring Obama’s re-election in 2012; and

(2) No “serious” challenger would dare risk their credibility and prestige by entering the primaries, the ultimate proof being that they haven’t done so yet.

(3) A primary challenge would only serve to harm the very Democratic Party that we all hold so dear.

There's more...

The final: 57-40.

Sen. Susan Collins was the only Republican to vote for cloture, casting her aye well after failure was certain.  She wanted more time.  West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin carried on the long standing tradition of intolerance his seat requires as the only Democrat to vote with the Republicans.  Brown, Murkowski and Snowe are out reminding everyone they really really really wanted to not be homophobic about this, but just couldn't for "procedural reasons."  You'll understand, right?

Why did Harry Reid push this one if he didn't have the votes? His statement via Crooks and Liars:

"Over the last twenty years, we’ve had roll call votes on an average of 12 amendments during consideration of the Defense Authorization bill.

“So, in an effort to be as fair as possible, I made clear to my colleagues that I am willing to vote on 15 relevant amendments of their choosing, with 10 from the Republican side, and 5 from the Democratic side, with ample time for debate on each amendment.

“Now my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are demanding even more time. The time that they know isn’t available. There are not enough days in this calendar year to do what the minority is asking, and they know this.

So Republicans wanted to either run out the clock on other legislation, play politics with their "block everything" pledge, or ignore the basic civil rights of men and women who voluntarily serve their country.  Take your pick.

Even with her final yes, you could choke on this post-vote nugget from Collins:

David Waldman with the most succinct summary of making deals with Mitch McConnell:

Piss, meet wind.

"The Deal" is putting all of your eggs in the 2012 basket, hoping you come out on top of the messaging in an election year, against a Republican Party that will still be willing to say anything, embrace any position to win.

From an electoral perspective alone, that's placing a lot of faith in Obama's ability to learn from getting rolled -- again -- by Republicans negotiating in bad faith.  74% of Obama's 2008 donors oppose the deal, and if this focus group is any indicator, independent support or opposition to "The Deal" is all over the place on a "compromise" that hands the Republicans every talking point they need for the next two years and legitimizes about half of their insanity (when did not extending unemployment benefits with unemployment this high become a discussion to have and not just bat-shit crazy?).  Think independents will be any more defined on this one when Republicans bring it up again in 2012?  Think Republicans don't have their next hostage taking opp lined up?

From a policy perspective, "The Deal" on the tax cuts may, in fact, be all that is politically possible as the President told us yesterday, but the idea that Democrats should suck this one up -- again -- in the name of bipartisan compromise and moving things forward on the terms of the GOP is absurd. There's a fair amount of stimulus in "The Deal," maybe more than Democrats could get otherwise.  At best a little more of the deficit spending the economy needs. That's a good thing.  But there's no other option to get all of this without handing away the store?

I'm with James Fallows, channeling John Kerry.  This is the argument Democrats should have and should be making, without apology:

"You care about unemployment? We're committed to extending benefits that can help families stay above water, hold onto their houses if possible, and have at least some spending power as they keep looking for work. You need a tax break in a recession? We agree -- we want to cut taxes for every household in the country. And that's why we're in a fight with the Republican minority that is determined to stop tax relief for you, and deny help to families who've lost jobs, unless we give huge extra tax cuts for the people who've already enjoyed the greatest tax-cut benefits and are least likely to spend that money to keep the economy strong. We're saying: tax cuts for everybody on income up to $250,000 -- and for money above that, to control the deficit, let's go back to the rates of the 1990s, when the economy boomed. They're saying: no tax cuts for anybody, unless there's a special bonus for people at the very top.

We're all for compromise -- but not with bad, destructive, budget-busting ideas. That's why we're drawing the line here."

Draw a line, and stand by it.  Put your name here in support of a few Democrats still willing to fight for a better deal.

UPDATE: The Hill is reporting the Senate is a go on "The Deal" so the real fight will take place in the house.

Do you have a Verizon Wireless Phone?

Then you know the reason why we need network neutrality. You couldn't surf the web today. Because we don't actually have network neutrality - on the wireless internet. Unlike Japan, we're crippled here in the states with all kinds of non interoperable applications and standards. And the cellphone companies would tell you otherwise - except when your service crashes for no reason. It crashed today because Verizon Wireless crashed their central tether. If your phone were untethered, it would have worked just fine.

Tethering network applicances is bad karma. It's just not the way the internet is designed to operate.

Network neutrality is a huge, and extremely important issue that now affects every aspect of our lives. And today, we've found a vivid and tangible example of the reason why we have to keep pressing the issue until we have cellphones that use standardized browsers - and we can use the mobile internet in the same way, as the public internet.

When you noticed  you couldn't surf the net with cellphone  today perhaps you didn't realize that  crash is a direct result of them tethering their cellphone application to their own internal infrastructure. The actual network connection was fine. That's what you pay for - and that's what you should get, because you as a taxpayer - licensed the spectrum to them through the FCC.  But instead, you get some kind of lame network appliance action on your integrated browser ( you know, the one that seems to always be pulling up Verizon Wireless' website "and partners" ). Are you paying service fees, to be a member of the Verizon Wireless Corporate Intranet?

As background, it's fun to read how Steve Wozniak is tuned into the concept that we need a stable , open and reliable internet - and laments the byproducts of a culture of tethered network appliances.

"(..) .. The biggest obstacle with the growing prevalence of technology is that our personal devices are unreliable. .. Little things that work one day; they don't work the next day," he said enthusiastically, waving his hands. "I think it's much harder today than ever before to basically know that something you have ... is going to work tomorrow."

Verizon, like many other cellphone service providers - are trying to follow an essentially monopolistic approach  that AT+T successfully ran for years before MCI forced them to release their stranglehold on endpoint hardware. It's illuminating to look back through magazines in the sixties - the phone equipment you purchased came exclusively from Ma Bell. They argued in the Supreme Court that since they own the network, they have the right to decide what hardware connects to it. It is telling to go back into old magazines and look at AT+T ads. They speak of how "ATT Telephone Technology helps guide Missiles through the Air" ... all brought to you by superior ATT Phone Technology.   But in the end, the supreme court ruled in favor of network neutrality and allowed MCI to sell long distance. In the same ruling, it stated that any vendor had a right to manufacture equipment that would connect to ATT's network.  And the modern internet was born - it had been around in DARPA form, but with this boost - many companies leapt at the chance to make network equipment that could be connected anywhere. Cisco was one of them. The others are probably connecting you right now as we speak.

But the FCC regulated wireless spectrum, being such a prize to so many cellphone service competitors - is marketed as "sparse" and "we don't have the bandwidth to be able to offer such services without limiting them".  In a nod to the ATT model cellphone providers offer you a phone for "free", their way of controlling the hardware that connects to it. As long as you agree to the fine print of a service agreement.

And in that fine print, therein lies the rub. Want to access content? Guess how hard it really is, even when it's working right.  Most "applications" or "apps" are in fact centrally hosted products that crash in one place and affect millions.  A classic case in point: "directionfinder". Many map and GPS utilities do not allow you to use the integrated GPS in your phone, with maps that you can load. They require you to hit a map off the public internet. So much for geocaching.

Another good example is the centrally hosted and gated internet services that many cellphone providers push. Opera is a good one - does your cell phone company let you install it on your phone? I bet it does. How do you install it? Does flash work on your phone? Crippled web browsers are a way to set up an access gate. It's crashed before. It will crash again. But you paid for your phone, and you paid for the service.  You shouldn't have to pay for them to gate your service. Think of how stupid it would be to have all traffic going through one place, just so you could charge someone to come through.

It's pretty easy to see why they're doing it. In fact, its blatant. They want to take a fee for anyone who is a content provider.  Want to read MyDD? Pay the cellphone provider ten cents to have a myDD "app".   Want to surf somewhere else? Hmm...

I remember once, I tried to hit craigslist off a phone -the crippleware browser that was in the phone could not hit the site because its "root certificate wasn't in the local store". How much memory does a certificate require? About 10k out of my 4G flash memory.  This was deliberate, on behalf of the provider (metro PCS).

The internet is broad and redundant. It is a many to many communications medium: open, scaleable, and becoming more and more useful.

To support network neutrality requires a bit of sophistication on your part. You have to know the truth from the lies, and realize how the network both does and doesn't play into the life of a healthy and strong country.

 But what you should remember is that when every single phone in America crashes their browser - and you can send and receive email (an open protocol), but not surf the web - it's because they're screwing with the browser.

Imagine how absurd it would be if you went home, and because someone centrally manages your web browser on your computer - you couldn't surf the web because they screwed up one site off the three hundred thousand out there you surf.

Elizabeth Edwards, who as the wife of former Senator John Edwards gave America an intimate look at a candidate’s marriage by sharing his quest for the 2008 presidential nomination as she struggled with incurable cancer and, secretly, with his infidelity, died Tuesday morning at her home in Chapel Hill, N.C. She was 61.

As of this morning it seems that Obama is ready to deal with the Right... extend the Bush tax cuts for a couple of years in exchange for one year's extension of Unemployment funding. The tax cut deal is tentative. It hasn't gone through Congress yet (although McConnell is probably dribbling with laughter in his office), but it probably will.

When even Conservatives like Joe Scarborough sees and comments on the fact that Obama is moving directly to the Right... and will not increase job creation much, but will add at least a trillion new bucks to the deficit. And who is going to lend it to us? The Chinese? Are we going to listen to Obama's financial team that extending tax cuts are going to get us out of recession?

There's more...

By Lindsay Beyerstein,  Media Consortium Blogger

Congressional Republicans and the White House  struck an agreement in principle on Monday night to extend all the Bush tax cuts for 2 more years in exchange for extending unemployment benefits. The GOP agreed to the so-called “Lincoln-Kyl compromise” a partial 2-year extension of the Bush estate tax cuts on estates worth over $5 million. If the deal had not been struck, estate taxes on estates over $5 million would have gone back up from 0% to the pre-cut rate of 55%. Instead, the rate will be 35% for the next 2 years.

The GOP also agreed to a short-term “stimulative” 2 percentage-point cut off the 6.2% payroll tax we all pay on income up to $106,800. The good news is that a payroll tax holiday will provide the most noticeable tax relief to low- and middle-income Americans. The bad news is that payroll taxes fund Social Security, so cutting the tax means starving a program that most directly benefits average people. Social Security is not in crisis yet, but steps like these could push the program into worse financial straights where significant benefit cuts become inevitable. It’s almost as if the GOP, having failed to spark panic about an as-yet non-existent Social Security crisis, is determined to engineer one.

All these gimmes for the rich were the price of a partial extension of unemployment benefits. The stakes couldn’t have been higher. If Congress had failed to act, 2 million people stood to lose their benefits this month and another 7 million would have run out before the end of next year, reports Andy Kroll of Mother Jones.

Meanwhile, unemployment continues to rise. The economy only added 39,000 jobs in November when analysts were expecting about 150,000. “At the beginning, some people just thought it was a printing error,” said reporter Motoko Rich on the New York Times‘ weekly business podcast. The overall unemployment rate climbed to 9.8%.

At ColorLines, Kai Wright argues that the time has come for President Obama to seize the opportunity to debunk conservatives’ bad faith arguments for tax cuts above all else:

At the same time, the anti-government crowd’s political hand—if forced—has never been weaker. A depressingly large number of middle-class and working-class Americans now know all too well what economists have long understood: You get a great deal more economic bang out of keeping lots of people from becoming destitute than you do by helping a few people horde wealth. People remain enraged about the no-strings-attached bank bailout, for instance, because they intuitively understand its ramifications. Wall Street is now enjoying a narrow, taxpayer-financed recovery while unemployment, hunger and poverty all continue climbing through the former middle class.

Extending UI makes sense

Tim Fernholtz of TAPPED tackles some of the bad arguments against extending unemployment insurance. Economist Greg Mankiw claims that extending unemployment insurance is just a surreptitious ploy to redistribute income to the poor from the wealthy. Actually, as Fernholtz points out, the point of a UI safety net is to prevent people, 3 million of them in 2009, from becoming poor in the first place. Poverty is very expensive for society at large. If we can keep the unemployed in their homes, spending their benefits in their communities, we can keep the socially corrosive effects of poverty at bay until the economy improves. The social costs of child poverty alone have been estimated at $500 billion a year, Fernholtz notes. The deeper we allow people to sink into poverty, the more difficult it will be for the economy to rebound. On this view, UI is a shared investment in a well-ordered society, not just a lifeline for jobless families.

Why corporate tax cuts won’t create jobs

Jack Rasmus of Working In These Times explains why tax cuts will not create jobs. Simply put, banks and big companies are sitting on over a trillion dollars. Among the nation’s biggest banks, lending to small and medium size businesses, the engines of job creation, has dwindled over 2009 and 2010. America’s biggest companies are sitting on a hoard of $1.84 trillion dollars, which they are not investing in job-creating projects. The Deficit Commission recommended slashing corporate taxes, ostensibly to spur investment and job creation, which would ultimately generate taxable income to help balance the budget. As Rasmus points out, this wishful thinking is predicated upon the assumption that if only corporations had more money, they would invest it to create jobs. The fact that companies are already sitting on huge piles of cash suggests that shoveling more moolah on the pile won’t change the basic dynamic. Perhaps companies are waiting to invest because they know that consumers aren’t keen to buy goods and services when they are unemployed or fearing job loss.

Economic disobedience

At In These Times, Andrew Oxford interviews sociologist Lisa Dodson about her new book on getting by in the low-wage economy. Her research shows that as economic instability mounts, many Americans are quietly taking matters into their own hands:

To understand how fair-minded people survive in an unfair economy, Dodson interviewed hundreds of low-wage workers and their employers across the country, examining what she terms the “economic disobedience” now pervasive in the low-wage sector. From a supervisor padding paychecks to a grocer sending food home with his employees, these acts of disobedience form the subject of her latest book, The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy.

Winner-take all economy

In an interview with Democracy Now!, Yale political science profesor and  Jacob Hacker explains why the Deficit Commission has it all wrong when it comes to tax cuts vs. unemployment benefits.

Hacker studies inequality. He has written a book on how the richest Americans cornered an unprecedented share of the country’s wealth for themselves over the past three decades. The richest Americans have never been in a better position to help the country grapple with the deficit. Yet, as Hacker points out, the Deficit Commission wants to balance the budget on the backs of middle- and lower-income Americans by cutting spending on programs that disproportionately benefit working people and readjusting the tax code to make it even more favorable to the rich.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Some highlights from the world of numbers crunching.

Nate Silver: Scott Brown's early 2010 victory may have been an early bell-weather for Democratic losses, but it was an outlier and Brown may be vulnerable:

The tsunami that hit Democrats last month — as large as it was — was remarkably precise and orderly, all things considered: given that the Democrats lost more than 60 seats, they lost almost exactly the 60 seats that you might have expected them to lose based on the overall partisanship of the districts. That did not include seats similar to Massachusetts, where Democrats in fact held on to all 10 congressional districts, even though several of the seats had been considered vulnerable.

Pollster: Americans have been ready for DADT repeal for over a decade.

Some outlets use a favor/oppose construction, others use yes/no or agree/disagree. Some outlets use the word "homosexuals," others use "gays and lesbians." ...

Regardless of the question wording, the basic result is the same. For sixteen years Americans have been supportive of allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military.

PPP: Montana Republicans want former Governor, former insurance lobbyist, and former Bush adviser Marc Racicot as their 2012 Senate candidate challenging Jon Tester:

Most would like to see either Marc Racicot (40%) or Denny Rehberg (37%) end up with the nod. Rehberg has near universal popularity with the Republican base (75/14) and although he gets a lot of 'not sures' 10 years removed from the Governor's office pretty much all Republicans with an opinion about Racicot like him (58/12 favorability). It's hard to imagine anyone else winning the nomination if either of them end up running

Also, they loves themselves some Palin/Huckabee.

Thomas Schaller takes a look at CO, NH, OH, VA in 2010, areas of biggest gain for Democrats in the previous three midterms, and concludes:

...just two years after Obama’s precedent-setting victory, America remains entrenched in a period of partisan dealignment and gridlock, and divided government nationally. Despite steady Republican gains since Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election, followed by a stinging Republican rebuke by a revitalized Democratic Party during the late stages of George W. Bush’s presidency, the shifting fortunes of the two major parties in these four states suggest that this saga of partisan affairs may well continue for some time.

Maybe this is because voters are having difficult time distiguishing between the two parties these days?

Finally, you're losing the messaging war, Mr. President.

The president's overall job approval rating in the poll, conducted separately from Gallup Daily tracking, is 42%. His ratings on three of the issues tested -- foreign affairs, Afghanistan, and taxes -- are within two to four points of that rating. Obama's ratings on the economy and the federal budget deficit, however, are significantly lower than his overall approval -- by 7 and 10 points, respectively.