Your Major Dickweed Of The Week

[filkertom]

Some schmuck named Matthew Vadum writes in the American Thinker that registering poor people to vote is anti-American.

Never mind the 24th Amendment; never mind, as one commenter puts it:

The opening words of the constitution are "We the people," not "We the people who have skin in the game," not "We the people with jobs," not "We the moneyed classes," just "We the people," with no qualifiers. Our government is based on the people, people who have the same rights to vote no matter if they made one dollar or one billion dollars last year.

Usually the right wing isn't so blatant about saying they're better than other people because, essentially, they've collected enough coupons. But there it is. (The comments of GeorgiaBoy61 are particularly telling, and given with no trace of irony or self-awareness.)

One of the really cool things about the American system of government is that, when it works, everybody has the same rights. The most important one is the right to vote. This has not been forgotten by a lot of people, and it is constantly threatened by a lot of people. Those two Venn circles overlap, and those are the ones we need to thwart at every turn. They are the ones who are truly anti-American.

Comments

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I am greatly annoyed by the continuing efforts to disenfranchise as many people as possible, in as many ways as possible, while granting more power to things that don't really exist, such as corporations and money.

[lizziecrowe.livejournal.com]

I saw this a couple days ago, and YEAH, asshat. The comments are as baffling as they are frightening. Of all groups of people, the poor are one of the voices who absolutely SHOULD be heard. This is sickening.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

The comments get better, mostly, as you go down the page. But, yeah.

[pandoradeloeste.livejournal.com]

How very special and let-them-eat-cake of them.

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

To be honest I'm not at all surprised by the article or the comments. We're entering into a era of all out class warfare. When republicans claim that you're not poor if you own a refrigerator or a microwave then you know that things are going to get nasty.

I really don't even know what to think anymore. Everytime I think that the republicans can't possiblly say anything more heartless they have to go and prove me wrong.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

And they do it so frequently....

[kengr]

Even if you buy into their main premise (I don't), they don't understand that for many people the microwave came second or third hand, and often for free (I see them all the time on Freecycle).

And *try* finding an apartment other than the "rent by the day" type that *doesn't* have a fridge. (I think that in this state that's required to make it qualify as an apartment, along with a sink and something to cook on).

But yeah, they have so little understanding of what life is like for the poor or even much of the middle class.

I still maintain that nobody should be allowed suggest rules about "the poor" and programs for them until they've spent at least six months living under the rules for food stamps and welfare in their area.

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

I read the article, which seems to have all the basic logic of a religious revival rant, and the comments, some of which tend nicely toward Swift-style satire -- maybe even intentionally. What those point out is something that really makes me scratch my head....

I understand why rich people want rich people in total control. That's obvious self-interest and everybody has some of it. Why, though, are so many poor and not-much-above-poor people on the populist hack-and-slash bandwagon?

I know there's some amount of fear about losing what little they have but the evidence says that there's a lot better chance of being impoverished by the wealthy than by those on welfare.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

Because they believe that they will either A) BECOME rich one day, or B) be rewarded for their loyalty by someone who's rich.

[ratkrycek.livejournal.com]

That's a good question, and I wonder that a lot. I can only think it's because they don't realize the truth, or they are just well off enough to believe the propaganda that the unions/poor people/people on gov't assistance are so greedy and just want to take everything they have and it makes them nervous.

Kind of like that joke about the cookies:

An ill-informed citizen (I've heard version in which it's a tea party member, an "ill-informed citizen, or a non-unionized worker), a corporate CEO, and a union member are sitting at a diner with a plate with 12 cookies on it. The CEO takes 11 cookies and looks at the citizen, saying, "Watch out for that union guy. He wants some of your cookie."

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Part of this is that many do not know what kind of government aid they are getting. And that list isn't including things like municipal water, trash collection, sewage and (in some cases) power.

It does not help that the GOP keeps pushing lots of Big Lie.

[ka-klick.livejournal.com]

There was actually a psychological study done recently that studied re-distrubution patterns, and it showed consistently that people in the 2nd tier up from the bottom would gladly hand their "money" to the next tier up rather than to those below them for fear that the ones at the bottom would pass them up.

http://www.economist.com/node/21525851?frsc=dg

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

One of them wants literacy tests - and he uses a word "sufferage."

I do support taking the right to vote away from Republican bloggers who can't spell "suffrage."

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Hey, perhaps he thinks he's spelled it correctly, based on the concept of making people suffer.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Who would have thought it two hundred years ago- the most dominant political movement being a combination of Alexander Hamilton's political philosophy and Thomas Jefferson's economic policy?

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't know. I rather like the idea that if "the poor" can't vote for the people who "hand them benefits," then we shouldn't allow "the rich" to do so, either.

(Please hear the bitter sarcasm in that.)

I was wondering where all the truly awful people were today, and now I know: they're all over there commenting on that article.

[realinterrobang.livejournal.com]

I'm sure he'd be appalled to find out that up here in Soviet Canuckistan, not only can welfare recipients and other untermenschen vote, but people who are in prison can vote. Never mind this "commit a felony, lose the franchise" thing y'all have got going on in places down there.

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

I saw this earlier today, prior to the joys of seeing the "article" Tom linked to here.



I don't even. I just don't.

[his-spiffyness.livejournal.com]

Of course, the article does not bother to mention that by eliminating all these people from the voter rolls it helps increase the political clout of the Right wing minority. After all Obama won by a clear majority thanks to a large influx of first time voters, especially in poor urban areas.

And while ex-felons don't have the right to vote, current felons in prison help gerrymander traditionally more conservative rural districts by skewing their population numbers far higher than they would be normally as well.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

The article doesn't HAVE to mention that. It's understood by the target audience. This is what we call "dog-whistle language". The coded message is, "Make sure only the right people get elected."

And, as an associate of mine pointed out, "pronounce that like Elmer Fudd, and you'll see the REAL goal here".

[pandoradeloeste.livejournal.com]

Waitwaitwait. Felons can't vote, and yet they can be pawns in a game to stack the deck so that your favorite politician can win?

ARGLEBARGLEWTFBBQ

(I've never quite understood the point of not letting felons vote. Not letting people in prisons vote kind of makes sense - their ability to seek out information on candidates must be limited - but ex-felons? I have several on my caseload right now who are more politically informed than I am. Why should they not get to vote while I can?)

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

After doing some thinking I honestly don't remember republicans or conservatives being this bad when I was growing up. I used to read the National Review and other conservative writings. I remember looking with disdain on liberalism, but I never hated anyone on that side of things. I may have disagreeed but I certainly never wished harm on anyone who though differently than I. (I won't say I wasn't disagreeable because I was a mouthy jerk in those days, I credit my growing up and medication for my much calmer outlook now)

It has reached the point of the right's point of view being like that of a cartoon villain these days. Like I said previously, we don't have to make fun of what people are saying or even push what's being said to teh extreme to make a point, all we have to do is play back what they said. It just seems like the talking heads on the right have forgotten what Jesus said about treatment of the poor.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

They weren't that bad when I was growing up. Goldwater would have to be a Democrat these days, Reagan wouldn't qualify for Republican creds, and anybody older than that would be " a dirty liberal" these days.
It's amazing how much income disparity there is, how obvious it is, and how few people really believe it's as extreme as it really is. This is by far the most blatant attacks on voting rights and all kinds of other social safety net issues. Those rich folks are doing better than nay of their class has ever done, and this is why the argument about "belt-tightening in hard times" is such a huge lie. Extraction of wealth fromt he body politic has finally reached a critical apogee, how much worse do they want to let it get? You're murdering the sheeple, not just shearing them?
As for just how mean the rhetoric and the propaganda has got, with almost nobody calling them on it, that whole nasty machine-media consolidation thing started under Reagan (thank you so fricken much...)

[maiac.livejournal.com]

American Thinker? There's obvious some definition of "think" of which I was previously unaware. That essay doesn't qualify as "thinking" by the commonly accepted meaning.

[james-the-evil1.livejournal.com]

I'm sadly unsurprised by this. About a year ago a few of the right wine pundits put out a call that we restore the system to the founders' idea of only property owners being able to vote.
As they get stronger their blatant hatred for most of the country is becoming more & more obvious.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to wonder when they're going to start calling for all peasants to have mandatory cabbage patches so the gentry can trample them.

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

Boggle. I really don't have the words.