Politics Democratic Socialism

[dviss1]

And yes mags I do believe that Republicans are Homophobes. Lots of them are racist. So the fuck what? And I do think that Bush didn't give a shit about Black people.

 

[magnifier661]

7 papers, 4 government inquiries, 2 news investigations and 1 court ruling proving voter fraud is mostly a myth:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-ruling-proving-voter-fraud-is-mostly-a-myth/


Voter ID laws are back in the news this week after a group of college studentsjoined a lawsuit challenging North Carolina's new restrictive rules. And as Catherine Rampell pointed out earlier this week, it's not just ID laws - Republican state legislatures have been busy devising all manner of creative ways to make voting more difficult for traditionally Democratic-leaning groups.

All of these restrictive measures take their justification from a perceived need to prevent "voter fraud." But there is overwhelming scholarly and legal consensus that voter fraud is vanishingly rare, and in fact non-existent at the levels imagined by voter ID proponents. That hasn't stopped many Republican lawmakers from crying "fraud" every time they're faced with an unfavorable election outcome (see also: McDaniel, Chris).

For reference, a round-up of the latest research is below. Let me know in the comments if I missed anything.

Academic research
The Truth About Voter Fraud, by Justin Levitt of Loyola Law School. Levitt performed a wide-ranging analysis of alleged incidents of voter fraud across the U.S. "Usually, only a tiny portion of the claimed illegality is substantiated — and most of the remainder is either nothing more than speculation or has been conclusively debunked."

The Politics of Voter Fraud, by Lorraine Minnite of Columbia University. Minnite concludes that voter fraud is exceedingly rare, and that the few allegations in the record usually turn out to be something other than voter fraud: "a review of news stories over a recent two year period found that reports of voter fraud were most often limited to local races and individual acts and fell into three categories: unsubstantiated or false claims by the loser of a close race, mischief and administrative or voter error."

Fraudulent Votes, Voter Identification and the 2012 US General Election, by John Ahlquist and Kenneth R. Mayer of the University of Wisconsin, and Simon Jackman of Stanford. The authors conducted a survey experiment "to measure the prevalence of two specific types of voter fraud: repeat/fraudulent ballot casting and vote buying." Their conclusion: "The notion that voter impersonation is a widespread behavior is totally contradicted by these data."

Voter Identifications Laws, by Minnite again. "In 95 percent of so-called 'cemetery voting' alleged in the 2010 midterm election in South Carolina, human error accounts for nearly all of what the state's highest law enforcement official had informed the U.S. Department of Justice was fraud."

Caught in the Act: Recent Federal Election Fraud Cases, by Delia Bailey of the Washington University in St. Louis. Bailey unearthed only nine federal election fraud cases occurring between 2000 and 2005.

They Just Do Not Vote Like They Used To: A Methodology to Empirically Assess Election Fraud, by M.V. Hood III of the University of Georgia and William Gillespie of Kennesaw State University. "After examining approximately 2.1 million votes cast during the 2006 general election in Georgia, we find no evidence that election fraud was committed under the auspices of deceased registrants."

Identifying Election Fraud Using Orphan and Low Propensity Voters, by Ray Christensen and Thomas Schulz of Brigham Young University. The authors devise a new test for identifying instances of voter fraud; turn up no new instances of voter fraud.

Government investigations
A two-year investigation by Iowa's Republican secretary of state found evidence of 117 possible fraudulent votes and led to just six - six! - criminal convictions.

In 2011 a Wisconsin task force found sufficient evidence to charge 20 people with fraudulent voting in the 2008 elections. Most of these were felons who were ineligible to vote.

Kansas' secretary of state examined 84 million votes cast in 22 states to look for duplicate registrants. In the end 14 cases were referred for prosecution, representing 0.00000017 percent of the votes cast.

A 10-year 'death audit' in North Carolina turned up a grand total of 50 instances in which a vote may have been attributed to a deceased person, most likely due to errors made by precinct workers.

News investigations
The New York Times examined five years of Justice Department recordsand turned up only 26 convictions of fraud by individual voters. "Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules." And many of the cases were "linked to small vote-buying schemes in which candidates generally in sheriff’s or judge’s races paid voters for their support." Overall, the Times concluded that "the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections."

News 21, a student journalism project based at Arizona State University,analyzed 2,068 alleged fraud cases from 2000 to 2012 and found a total of 10 cases of alleged voter impersonation. They found that "while fraud has occurred, the rate is infinitesimal, and in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tough voter ID laws, is virtually non-existent."

Court rulings
In striking down Wisconsin's voter ID law this spring, district judge Lynn Adelman wrote "The evidence at trial established that virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin. The defendants could not point to a single instance of known voter impersonation occurring in Wisconsin at any time in the recent past."

Oh, so you are saying illegals haven't voted? Did you even review the multiple links of actual studies of "non-citizen votes"? You must have skimmed past the study in Colorado, where there was a confirmed 4,700 non-citizen votes and 14k registered voters that are non-citizens...

That must have slipped your mind

 

[magnifier661]

And yes mags I do believe that Republicans are Homophobes. Lots of them are racist. So the fuck what? And I do think that Bush didn't give a shit about Black people.

LMAO, and you got pissed about the #BlackLivesMatter shit for generalization of a few in the group! HAHAHAHAHA

 

[bodyman5000 and 1]

And yes mags I do believe that Republicans are Homophobes. Lots of them are racist. So the fuck what? And I do think that Bush didn't give a shit about Black people.

I don't have time to look for it but Chris Cornell wrote a song I believe it was about Bush and Katrina. It was called Wide Awake....I think. It is one of my favorite songs ever. You should find the lyrics. It was when he was in Audioslave.

 

[dviss1]

Paul Weyrich, "father" of the right-wing movement and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation (FUCK THEM), Moral Majority and various other groups tells his flock that he doesn't want people to vote. This plan has been in action for decades.



And yes. FUCK REPUBLICANS FOR THAT SHIT....

 

[dviss1]

^^^^^ Watch the video Mags.

 

[dviss1]

And to bring it all full circle:

Bernie wants Election Day to be a NATIONAL HOLIDAY.

Thoughts?

 

[dviss1]

I don't have time to look for it but Chris Cornell wrote a song I believe it was about Bush and Katrina. It was called Wide Awake....I think. It is one of my favorite songs ever. You should find the lyrics. It was when he was in Audioslave.

I wrote a song about it too. No cussing. It was awesome.

 

[GriLtCheeZ]

And to bring it all full circle:

Bernie wants Election Day to be a NATIONAL HOLIDAY.

Thoughts?

It'd be great, but Republicans would fight it tooth and nail because it goes against their strategy of suppressing the vote. It would be fun to see how they spin their opposition to it.

 

[julius]

Except mags does an excellent job of explaining and defending his views without insulting anyone.

Good point, Mags is a lot of things, but an insulting blowhard he ain't. He might disagree with someone on here but he doesn't drag it into other parts of the forum like PapaG did.

So for that, I apologize for the poor characterization.

 

[dviss1]

@magnifier661 and I differ politically. Regardless of that, I wholly respect his fire and the fact that he researches topics and is an informed voter. I wish 100% of voting age citizens would do HALF of Mags' research.

Best of all, after Trump and Carson go down in flames we have his commitment to vote for Bernie!

 

[donkiez]

This has been an interesting thread to read lol. Somewhere sometime someone in this thread was interested in how policies will get paid for. Here is one idea.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/bernie-sanders-takes-it-t_b_7438808.html

Last week, Bernie Sanders, the Senator from Vermont and only announced challenger to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, took a strong stand for everyday people. He proposed a financial transactions tax (FTT), effectively a Wall Street sales tax, and to use the revenue to make public colleges tuition free.

While making college affordable to low and middle income families is important, the proposal for an FTT is a real game changer. There is no single policy that would have anywhere near as much impact in reforming the financial sector. A FTT would effectively impose a sales tax on stocks and other financial assets, so that speculators have to pay a tax on their trades, just like people who buy shoes or clothes.

There are three points people should understand about a FTT. The first is that it can raise an enormous amount of money. A FTT could be imposed at different rates. Sanders proposed following the rate structure in a bill put forward by Minneapolis Congressman Keith Ellison. Eleven countries in the European Union are working to implement a set of FTTs that would tax stock trades at a rate of 0.1 percent and trades of most derivative instruments at the rate of 0.01 percent.

Extrapolating from a recent analysis of the European proposal, a comparable tax in the United States would raise more than $130 billion a year or more than $1.5 trillion over the next decade. This is real money; it dwarfs the sums that have dominated most budget debates in recent years. For example, the Republicans had been trying to push through cuts to the food stamp program of $40 billion over the course of a decade. The sum that can be raised by this FTT proposal is more than thirty times as large. The revenue from a FTT could go far toward rebuilding the infrastructure, improving the health care system, or paying for college tuition, as suggested by Senator Sanders.

The second point is that Wall Street will bear almost the entire cost of the tax. The financial industry is surely already paying for studies showing the tax will wipe out the 401(k)s held by middle income families. This is nonsense. Not only is the size of the tax small for anyone not flipping stock on a daily basis, research indicates that most investors will largely offset the cost of the tax by trading less.

Most research shows that trading volume falls roughly in proportion to the increase in transaction costs. This means that if a FTT doubles the cost of trading then the volume of trading will fall by roughly 50 percent, leaving total trading costs unchanged. Investors will pay twice as much on each trade, but have half as many trades. Since investors don't on average make money on trades (one side might win, but the other loses), this is a wash for the investor.

While most middle income people don't directly trade the money in their retirement accounts, they do have people who manage these funds. The research means that the fund managers will reduce their trading, so that the total costs of transactions that are passed on to the investor remain roughly constant. This means that the financial industry will bear almost the entire cost of the tax in the form of reduced trading volume.

This gets to the last point: a smaller financial industry is a more efficient financial industry. The purpose of the financial industry is to allocate money from savers to companies that want to finance new investment. As the industry has exploded in size over the last four decades there is no reason to believe that it has gotten better in serving this basic function. In fact, the stock bubble at the end of the 1990s and the housing bubble in the last decade might suggest that it has gotten worse.

A study from the Bank of International Settlements and more recent research from the International Monetary Fund find that a bloated financial sector slows growth. An oversized financial sector pulls resources away from more productive sectors of the economy. People who could be engaged in biological research or developing clean technologies are instead employed on Wall Street designing computer programs to beat other traders by a microsecond to garner profits at their expense. A FTT will make much of this activity unprofitable, encouraging people to turn to more productive work.

In short, a FTT is a great way to raise large amounts of money to meet important public needs. It will come almost entirely at the expense of the financial industry and should strengthen the economy. We now have one presidential candidate who is prepared to support a strong FTT. Are there others?

 

[dviss1]

That was in response of @dviss1 saying that Democrats don't have dead people voting. If you read the article, the lady was a Democrat pollster.

See your rhetoric? Just because they vote Dem doesn't mean "Democrats have them voting"....

Republicans are out and proud of saying they don't want everyone to vote.

 

[oldfisherman]

The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting, according to a new study by a Harvard researcher.

.”

Dviss 1 brought up a valid much overlooked point in a prior post. I would like to take a moment to expand on his comment about the high cost of medical care for our wounded veterans.

I have a long time good friend that was wounded during the Vietnam War. He lives on the coast, but stays at my home when he has a doctor appointment at the nearby VA hospital. He has an appointment almost every month. I have received monthly reports over many years about his ongoing treatments.

His wounds were serious enough to result in receiving 100% permanent and total disability benefits for the remainder of his life. He does not work and contribute to the system. He receives a monthly check to live on, which is about $3,000 (only my guess from comments he has made, I never asked how much).

Just within the last year, in addition to his monthly doctor visits for tests, he spent two weeks in the hospital recovering from a serious operation. He had a second minor operation and hospital stay of 4 days last month, which was related to the first operation. Not sure how much 18 days in a hospital cost, with a major operation and medicine? But my guess is well over $100,000.

I would guess the cost of his war wound in the past year to be at least $150,000, but probably closer to a ¼ $million.

Now multiply that by 40+, the number of years he has been on 100% disability.

Now visit your local VA hospital and multiply that number by the many hundreds of wounded veterans the hospital takes care of.

Now multiply that number by the 153 VA hospitals, 773 outpatient centers, and 260 Vet Centers (counseling) in the US.


I am not saying the high cost to care for them is not justified; our wounded veterans deserve the best treatment available. My point is, the reason many of them were wounded was not justified. Too many of them were wounded due to the bad decisions made by misguided politicians with faulty agendas.

 

[donkiez]

More news in the how do we pay for it area. The USA currently (2013 data) pays more per ca pita on health care than countries with socialized health care.


http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0006_health-care-oecd

 

[magnifier661]

This has been an interesting thread to read lol. Somewhere sometime someone in this thread was interested in how policies will get paid for. Here is one idea.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/bernie-sanders-takes-it-t_b_7438808.html

I actually like that idea. Even a $0.20 tax on every trade transaction could net millions per day.

 

[donkiez]

I actually like that idea. Even a $0.20 tax on every trade transaction could net millions per day.

me to, gotta read more before I fully support it though. One thing I dont like is that it doesn't do much to address the current price gouging and out of control financial aid system which contributes, but there are some other ideas also that could work in parallel with this one to help that.

 

[magnifier661]

Dviss 1 brought up a valid much overlooked point in a prior post. I would like to take a moment to expand on his comment about the high cost of medical care for our wounded veterans.

I have a long time good friend that was wounded during the Vietnam War. He lives on the coast, but stays at my home when he has a doctor appointment at the nearby VA hospital. He has an appointment almost every month. I have received monthly reports over many years about his ongoing treatments.

His wounds were serious enough to result in receiving 100% permanent and total disability benefits for the remainder of his life. He does not work and contribute to the system. He receives a monthly check to live on, which is about $3,000 (only my guess from comments he has made, I never asked how much).

Just within the last year, in addition to his monthly doctor visits for tests, he spent two weeks in the hospital recovering from a serious operation. He had a second minor operation and hospital stay of 4 days last month, which was related to the first operation. Not sure how much 18 days in a hospital cost, with a major operation and medicine? But my guess is well over $100,000.

I would guess the cost of his war wound in the past year to be at least $150,000, but probably closer to a ¼ $million.

Now multiply that by 40+, the number of years he has been on 100% disability.

Now visit your local VA hospital and multiply that number by the many hundreds of wounded veterans the hospital takes care of.

Now multiply that number by the 153 VA hospitals, 773 outpatient centers, and 260 Vet Centers (counseling) in the US.


I am not saying the high cost to care for them is not justified; our wounded veterans deserve the best treatment available. My point is, the reason many of them were wounded was not justified. Too many of them were wounded due to the bad decisions made by misguided politicians with faulty agendas.

Yes, but there are others, like my dad, that was wounded in Vietnam and his injuries made him 100% disabled (100% vision loss in his right eye, Loss of right leg, Loss of most his teeth, shrapnel wounds throughout his body). He received the monthly "aid" you mentioned, but choose to still work and build new businesses. He paid his taxes and earned a lot of money, which paid back into the system.

 

[magnifier661]

me to, gotta read more before I fully support it though. One thing I dont like is that it doesn't do much to address the current price gouging and out of control financial aid system which contributes, but there are some other ideas to that could work in parallel with this one to help that.

I definitely agree that the hedge fund guys shouldn't get benefit of capital gains without keeping it for 18 months. I think that is totally unfair hedge fund managers can defer taxation for their daily trades to qualify in the 20% capital gains tax. That's some serious bullshit because they are making daily fees, but they don't accept them until the capital gain limit.

 

[Denny Crane]

And yes mags I do believe that Republicans are Homophobes. Lots of them are racist. So the fuck what? And I do think that Bush didn't give a shit about Black people.

Two of his Secretary of States were black.

 

[oldfisherman]

Yes, but there are others, like my dad, that was wounded in Vietnam and his injuries made him 100% disabled (100% vision loss in his right eye, Loss of right leg, Loss of most his teeth, shrapnel wounds throughout his body). He received the monthly "aid" you mentioned, but choose to still work and build new businesses. He paid his taxes and earned a lot of money, which paid back into the system.

You are making a valid point that has several sticky issues involved. I would rather not discuss those issues because they are unrelated to the topic. However, I do have a related question that links into other parts of this discussion.

Has there ever been a study by the VA or anyone else on the number of veterans that are eligible for 100% disability benefits, but have had productive working careers?

My reason to ask is, to see if the number of 100% disability veterans with careers has changed over the years due to the increase or decrease in tax rates? A change in numbers maybe a way to prove that the higher the tax rate, the less incentive there is to work and just live off of social programs.

(Actually, my friend did work full time for two decades after war, but has not worked the last two decades because his quality of life was better if he did not work)

 

[VanillaGorilla]

Did you just google "George Bush with black people"?

 

[magnifier661]

You are making a valid point that has several sticky issues involved. I would rather not discuss those issues because they are unrelated to the topic. However, I do have a related question that links into other parts of this discussion.

Has there ever been a study by the VA or anyone else on the number of veterans that are eligible for 100% disability benefits, but have had productive working careers?

My reason to ask is, to see if the number of 100% disability veterans with careers has changed over the years due to the increase or decrease in tax rates? A change in numbers maybe a way to prove that the higher the tax rate, the less incentive there is to work and just live off of social programs.

(Actually, my friend did work full time for two decades after war, but has not worked the last two decades because his quality of life was better if he did not work)

I believe the income from the government is "non-taxed," so what ever extra he makes would put him to that specific qualifying tax bracket.

I wish my dad did the same as your friend because the last 20 years of his life was cancer, diabetes, open heart surgery and high levels of stress.

 

[Denny Crane]

Did you just google "George Bush with black people"?

Shocking the pictures exist, eh?

I watch a lot of c-span and saw W around black people and he seems to like them and they seem to like him.

 

[BlazerDuckSeahawkFan94]

For as much hate W gets, I genuinely think he is a good man at heart. Now, was he a good president? Ehhhhhh, no not so much.

 

[dviss1]

I actually like that idea. Even a $0.20 tax on every trade transaction could net millions per day.

What's been proposed before has only been a .25 of 1%. Yes a fourth of a percent.

http://p2pfoundation.net/Securities_Turnover_Excise_Tax

For us, this Securities Turnover Excise Tax (STET) was a revenue source. For example, if we were to instate a .25 percent STET (tax) on everystock, swap, derivative, or other trade today, it would produce – in its firstyear – around $150 billion in revenue. Wall Street would be generatingthe money to fund its own bailout. (For comparison, as best I candetermine, the UK’s STET is .25 percent, and Taiwan just dropped theirs from.60 to .30 percent.)

 

[oldfisherman]

For as much hate W gets, I genuinely think he is a good man at heart. Now, was he a good president? Ehhhhhh, no not so much.

Agree, the same can be said for Carter. Carter is a very good man, but was a lousy president.

 

[dviss1]

Shocking the pictures exist, eh?

I watch a lot of c-span and saw W around black people and he seems to like them and they seem to like him.

WTF does that mean? That he was good a pandering? GTFO. We don't and haven't liked him. Trust. Are you gonna take a selfie with the President? Hell yeah. Bush or not.

 

[dviss1]

Two of his Secretary of States were black.

"Condaleeza Rice?? Sounds like a Mexican dish. We should send her to Mexico and maybe the Mexicans will eat her. White Power!" - Dave Chappelle

 

[dviss1]

I'll be the people of New Orleans think differently. You know when he took 5 days to get there? When he did his flyby and landed in Mobile, AL. You know, the land of the oil fields?