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DATELINE: THE SOUTH - News and trends
SPECIAL REPORT - Should the poor be allowed to vote?
INSTITUTE INDEX - The continuing toll of 9/11
DATELINE: THE SOUTH - News and trends
KOCH JR.: ART POPE AND THE RIGHT'S MILLION DOLLAR CLUB: After audio from the Koch brothers' VIP meeting of wealthy conservatives is made public, a North Carolina retail magnate is downplaying his support for their right-wing causes. But the record shows he's been a key junior partner in funding the Kochs' crusade for years. (9/8/2011)
CLIMATE-SCIENCE CONTRARIAN ROY SPENCER'S OIL-INDUSTRY TIES: A controversy over a paper published recently in an obscure scientific journal has drawn attention to one of its authors, an Alabama university researcher who's an outspoken skeptic of mainstream climate science. While Spencer is eager to point out that his research isn't funded by oil companies, he's not so forthcoming about his other oil-industry connections. (9/7/2011)
THE TROY DAVIS CASE: WILL AMERICA EXECUTE ANOTHER INNOCENT? He is convicted of killing a cop in Georgia but many people believe Troy Davis will be next on a list of innocent Americans who were wrongly executed. (9/9/2011)
EXAMINING RICK PERRY'S ENVIRONMENTAL RECORD: Texas Gov. Rick Perry's environmental policies are best understood as an extension of his anti-fed bent and coziness with wealthy individuals and corporations. (9/7/2011)
MISSISSIPPI POULTRY WORKERS VOTE TO UNIONIZE: Workers at Water Valley Poultry recently voted overwhelmingly to join the United Food and Commercial Workers, but they expect contract negotiations with plant owner Global Foods to be a battle. (9/6/2011)
WHO ARE AMERICA'S TOP 10 GAS DRILLERS? Though the industry sometimes touts natural gas drilling as dominated by small businesses, the 10 largest drillers account for one-third of all domestic production. (9/2/2011)
SPECIAL REPORT - Should the poor be allowed to vote?
By Chris Kromm
 Last week, right-wing pundit Matthew Vadum created a stir when he argued that -- as his piece at American Thinker is titled -- "Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American." Here's how the piece starts:
Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?
Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.
Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.
Equating "the poor" with criminals? Suggesting the wealthy aren't "open to bribery?" 45 years after the Supreme Court ruled in the poll tax case Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that voter qualifications can't be based on wealth, implying that maybe they should?
Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA-Irvine, summed up the reaction of many: "Back after I puke."
But not everyone was turned off by Vadum's missive. Indeed, the next day, Vadum was invited to appear on Eric Bolling's Fox Business show to rail against President Obama's voter outreach plan.
Vadum isn't exactly a fringe figure on the right. Author of a 2011 book "exposing" ACORN -- praised by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) -- and writer for popular conservative websites like BigGovernment, Vadum works at the Capital Research Foundation, which has received millions of dollars from foundations run by the Koch brothers and other top conservative benefactors.
Indeed, the idea that citizens of lesser means -- even during a lingering economic downturn -- is a theme that appears to be gaining currency among some leading conservatives.
Last year, Judson Phillips, president of Nashville-based Tea Party Nation, declared on a radio show that it "makes a lot of sense" to go back to a system in the U.S. where voting is restricted to citizens who own property -- a troubling prospect for the one-third of U.S. residents who rent their homes, and would presumably be denied the franchise.
Rush Limbaugh seems to agree with Vadum as well. In December 2010, commenting on a news report about people lining up for housing assistance, Limbaugh asked:
"If people can't even feed and clothe themselves should they be allowed to vote? Should they be voting?"
As Ari Berman points out in a recent Rolling Stone piece, this isn't the first time leading conservatives have called for taking the franchise from those at the lower end of the economic ladder -- and less likely to vote Republican.
As influential conservative activist Paul Weyrich told a gathering of evangelicals in 1980:
I don't want everybody to vote. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.
While not as shocking as outright calls to keep poor people from voting, Berman argues that Republicans have pushed a bevy of laws over the last year that could have the same result, including requirements for voters to show a photo ID at the polls, restrictions on voter registration drives and moves to limit early voting.
The aim of peeling off Democratic votes with a big election year coming up seems clear enough. But historian Alex Keyssar, author of the seminal book The Right to Vote, argues that attempts to limit voting may have as much to do with economics as politics.
In U.S. history, for example, elites have pushed to restrict voting among the lower classes during times of economic upheaval, in part to stave off the possibility of political revolt:
The most common source of contractions of the franchise [in U.S. history has been] class apprehension--particularly when coupled with racial or ethnic divisions. The most well-known instance, of course, was the disfranchisement of African Americans in the South at the end of the nineteenth century; this was prompted not only by racism but by the desire of many white Southerners to maintain a disciplined and powerless agricultural labor force. Similar impulses figured in the passage of literacy tests aimed at Irish immigrants in Massachusetts in the 1850s, or Italians and Jews in New York in the early 1920s.
Which, says Judith Browne-Dianis of the civil rights group The Advancement Project, eerily resembles what is happening today:
Our democracy is supposed to be a government by, of and for the people. It doesn't matter how much money you have, what race you are or where you live in the country -- we all get to have the same amount of power by going into the voting booth on Election Day. But those who passed these laws believe that only some people should participate. The restrictions undermine democracy by cutting off the voices of the people."
(To comment on this story, click here.)
INSTITUTE INDEX - The continuing toll of 9/11
 Number of people killed in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda operatives hijacked jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field: 2,996
Date on which then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered aides to look for evidence of Iraqi involvement in the attacks: 9/11/2001
Of the 19 identified hijackers, number who were Iraqis: 0
Date on which the U.S. and its allies launched strikes in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and its ally, the Islamist militia Taliban: 10/7/2001
Date on which the U.S. and U.K. launched war against Iraq after claiming it was hiding weapons of mass destruction: 3/20/2003
Number of those alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that were ultimately found: 0
Estimated number of civilian casualties in Iraq since the 2003 invasion: 102,416-111,937
Estimated number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan through 2010: 8,832
Number of coalition forces killed to date in Afghanistan: 2,705
Number of those forces killed that were U.S. troops: 1,760
Number of coalition forces killed to date in Iraq: 4,792
Number of those forces killed that were U.S. troops: 4,474
Of the over 6,200 U.S. troops killed to date in Afghanistan and Iraq, percent that were from the South: 34
Number of U.S. troops still in Afghanistan: about 100,000
Number of U.S. troops still occupying Iraq: almost 50,000
Total number of U.S. veterans who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq over the past decade: 1.6 million
Estimated cost of future disability payments and health care for those veterans: $600 billion to $900 billion
Number of U.S. veterans thought to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression: 300,000
Number of U.S. veterans who commit suicide each year: 6,500
Percent by which the Army suicide rate has increased over the past decade: almost 200
Date on which a federal appeals court ruled that the Department of Veterans Affairs was failing to properly care for vets with combat-related mental illnesses: 5/10/2011
Total direct U.S. government spending on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars so far: $2,000,000,000,000
Amount that represents per U.S. household: $17,000
Percent by which bills yet to be received are expected to increase this amount: more than 50
Amount the U.S. is expected to spend this year on the war in Iraq: $48 billion
On the war in Afghanistan: $122 billion
Number of children who could be provided with health care for two years with the money being spent on those two wars in 2011 alone: 43 million
(Click on figure to go to source. To comment on this index, click here. Photo of Afghan civilian victims of a military strike is from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan via Wikipedia.)
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