Vote Early And Vote Often

An article in Monday's San Antonio Express-News noted that "Sixteen small counties across Texas appear to have more registered voters on their rolls as of 2010 than qualified citizens of voting age." The article carefully skirts the issue of voter fraud, much less the controversy over Texas' voter ID law that is currently being tortured to death in the courts. However, other commentators have noted the long and colorful history of the somewhat informal approach to voting in South Texas.

... elections in South Texas have not always been left to chance. In May, Texas Watchdog, an independent investigative website, provided a startlingly detailed look at political corruption in Jim Wells County, due south of San Antonio and named after a nineteenth-century Democratic boss. Reporter Steve Miller showed how the grunt work of vote harvesting is performed by politiqueros, tactfully translated as “canvassers” (“fixers” if you’re politically incorrect).

One of the politiqueras, Zaida Bueno, not only went on the record but, with cameras rolling, also showed Miller how the process of vote-coaching and absentee ballots actually works. At the going rate of three dollars for every successfully returned ballot, personal contacts generate volume — and volume counts. Meant to aid the aged, the infirm and the illiterate as well as genuine absentees, Ms. Bueno was forthright about why manipulation of the less fortunate is modest but steady work. “I have to push [the candidates]…to push their name.” While the voter may ask for suggestions, “…I vote for the one I want, the one I am helping.” And finally, “They say ‘yes,’ I put [the ballot] in the envelope, and nobody knows but me, you.”

Jim Wells County keeps popping up in South Texas voting fraud lore.

The complaints filed by Jim Wells County residents have a familiar ring ... residents said they went to the voter polls on Election Day 2008, only to discover that they had already voted ... This is a scenario that has been seen before.

In 2006, Duval County officials said that nearly half of the ballots cast in that year’s primary — 2,800 out of 5,445 primary votes — were by mail-in ballot. A woman said that her deceased father’s name was among those that showed up on a mail-in ballot.

Of course, the most famous - or infamous - South Texas ballot fraud of all time took place in 1948 when Lyndon Johnson first ran for the U.S. Senate. It appeared that he had lost the primary, until all of a sudden Box 13 from Jim Wells County appeared out of nowhere. It contained 203 ballots, 202 of which were for LBJ ... in the same ink ... and the same handwriting ... and in alphabetical order. That resulted in a new nickname for him: Landslide Lyndon.

South Texas aside, the democrats have been carrying on similar shenanigans across the nation.

...four Democratic officials in Indiana were hit with felony charges related to petition fraud in the state's 2008 primary ... Without the phony signatures, there's a significant chance that Obama would not have qualified for the primary ballot -- throwing the validity of the entire election into question.

... a New York judge set new trial dates for Democratic officials and political operatives accused of another ballot fraud conspiracy...

... in Wisconsin, the state's Medical Examining Board decided last month to investigate 11 additional doctors for writing fake sick notes for public union teachers who ditched their classrooms to protest GOP Gov. Scott Walker. Nine other medical professionals have already received slaps on the wrist.

There's more, of course. One of the most notorious locations for old-style machine politics is Chicago, obama's home town. And one of the most notorious examples took plaice in 1982, resulting in "one of the largest voter fraud prosecutions ever conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice ... the U.S. Attorney in Chicago at the time, Daniel Webb, estimated that at least 100,000 fraudulent votes (10 percent of all votes in the city) had been cast. Sixty-five individuals were indicted for federal election crimes, and all but two (one found incompetent to stand trial and another who died) were convicted"

So the next time some head-in-the-sand liberal says there's no need for voter ID laws because there's no evidence of fraudulent voting, just refer him to South Texas ... and Indiana ... and New York ... and Chicago ... and the list goes on ... and on ... and on...

Then The Democrat Wins

I recently posted about voter fraud and the democrats opposition to any form of a voter ID law.

One alternative might be some sort of current events or civics test that a prospective voter would have to pass before being issued a ballot. You know, sort of a “Don’t let ignorant people vote” proposal.

Is it constitutional? In a word, yes.

The Constitution specifies several factors that cannot be used to deny someone the right to vote—most notably, race (15th Amendment), gender (19th Amendment) and age (26th Amendment). No amendment forbids putting citizens to the test before they can register to vote, so the idea is fair game.

Is it a good idea? IMHO, not only yes, but "Hell Yes!" 

Will it ever happen? Regretfully, probably not.

Why not? The answer is below.

The Big Lie - Big Oil Version

It is often said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it. Obama and his flunkies in the media have mastered this technique. Case in point: the myth that energy companies are reaping billions of dollars in government subsidies.

Listen to any liberal or democrat. Read any paper. Watch any news broadcast or talking heads opinion show. The story is remarkably similar. Big Oil is raping the American taxpayer, enjoying record profits while receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, all resulting from a massive lobbying campaign.

The only problem with this narrative is that none of it is true.

First, start with the definition of "subsidy." In economic terms it is "A payment from government to individuals or businesses without any expectations of production."

That definitely describes the solar, wind, electric car, and ethanol industries. But it's a far cry from oil and natural gas production. There, we are talking about the tax code, not government handouts. Here are the tax treatments targeted by democrats.

Domestic manufacturing tax deduction -- $1.7 B.  This is a tax deduction given to every manufacturer in the US.  Per CNN, it was "designed to keep factories in the United States."  If that deduction were eliminated for oil companies only, it would mean singling out oil companies from all other manufacturers.

Percentage depletion allowance -- $1 B.  Any industry can write down a portion of the cost of its capital equipment as part of the cost of doing business.  Right now, oil in the ground is treated as capital equipment.  Again, this "subsidy" amounts to how the cost of doing business is defined.  All companies get it, not just oil companies.

Foreign tax credit -- $850 million.  Companies get credit for taxes they pay to other countries.  All companies get this "subsidy," not just oil companies.  Should a company pay tax on tax?  Should only oil companies pay tax on tax?

Intangible drilling costs -- $780 million.  According to CNN, "[a]ll industries get to write off the costs of doing business, but they must take it over the life of an investment. The oil industry gets to take the drilling credit in the first year."  Among these four tax "breaks," this smallest one was the only one that treated oil companies differently.

The above address taxes that are not collected from the oil companies. What about actual tax payments?

Exxon recently released its first quarter results for 2011.  The number grabbing the headlines was Exxon's profit: $10.65 billion in a single quarter.  The number not given quite as much exposure was the taxes it paid in that same quarter:  $8 billion, or 42% of income before taxes.

And what does Exxon do with all that money it has left after paying $8 B in taxes?  It put $7.8 billion into capital and exploration, as part of its plans "to invest between $33 billion and $37 billion per year over the next five years to develop new energy supplies."

In any other industry, that would be called "research and development."  Exxon is plowing 73% of its after-tax profits back into R&D.  Who would be better at spending $4 billion of energy companies' earnings in an attempt to provide our energy in the future: the energy companies or Obama's energy czar?

But there is at least one member of the Big Oil club that gets subsidies from the U.S. government. Any idea which one?

It's Petrobras, the state-owned Brazilian oil company.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met ... with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

A few more tidbits:

• The amount of earnings not collected in taxes is about $4.3 billion per year -- about 0.2% of this year's deficit and enough to fund about 10 hours of current US government spending.
• A full $3.55 billion of that amount (82%) is due to the way taxes are treated for all industries or manufacturers.  To change these tax laws only for oil companies would require singling them out among all industries for special mistreatment.
• The only tax in which the oil industry seems to get special treatment compared to other industrids is intangible drilling costs.  The amount of that subsidy?  That would be $0.78 billion per year -- enough to fund less than two hours of federal spending in 2011, and not even half the amount we are lending a foreign-owned and state-owned oil company for drilling offshore Brazil.
• Oil companies already pay tax rates of 40-50% of income.

As for the notion that Big Oil gets special treatment because of its massive army of lobbyists, consider this.

... the Oil & Gas industry ranked only 19th in the amount of money contributed to politicians in the 2008 election cycle: $17.7 million.  Who was number one?  Lawyers, who contributed $126.9 million, or over seven times as much as the Oil & Gas industry.  The Education lobby gave $37.4 million, more than twice as much as Oil & Gas.

Of course, lawyers and teachers unions are obama allies, so the lapdog media would never report that fact.

One final point, again unreported - nay, buried - by obama's lackeys in the MSM:

According to the DOE's Energy Information Administration, every time you fill up your gas tank, more of your money goes to taxes than goes to refining costs and profits combined.

Facts are such inconvenient things when you're trying to spin a story...

And Then There Were Three

Yesterday Rick Santorum dropped out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination.

Rick Santorum, who pitched himself as the true conservative in the race and used a platform focused on social issues to come from well back in the pack to be the main challenger to Mitt Romney, announced (Monday) afternoon that he is suspending his effort for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, told a gathering of reporters in Gettysburg that his three-year-old daughter's battle with a genetic disease, and her hospitalization over the weekend, "did cause us to think ... about the role we have as parents." And he concluded it was time to step aside from the campaign trail, where his campaign no longer appeared to have time left to stop Romney from being the nominee.

I can't really blame him. Family should come first. Regardless of your political leanings, I hope you will take a moment to say a prayer for Santorum's daughter.

Shortly after Santorum's announcement, Gingrich made a play for Santorum's supporters. Ron Paul's people likewise argued that their man deserved the allegiance of Santorum backers.

Vultures...

But that's beside the point. Of the three remaining candidates, Romney is the odds-on favorite to win the nomination. Ron Paul has been relegated to the role of after-thought. He's a novelty act that appeals only to a small number of fanatics. That's a shame, because I share his libertarian views to a certain extent. However, I think he goes too far on a number of them.

Newt is an interesting case. In my opinion he is the smartest and most articulate of anyone still running -- including obama. I like his approach to many of the issues: big problems call for big ideas, not just tinkering with existing policies. I also think he'd flat-out destroy barry in a head-to-head debate.

But Newt also has baggage - lots of it. There are ethics questions regarding his use of campaign funds. And of course, there is his history of infidelity. The press paints him as a cross between Bill Clinton and John Edwards, and there is some basis for that characterization.

Some people say a politician's private life is irrelevant. That was the liberals' position during Monicagate. Conservatives, on the other hand, argued during the entire blue dress kerfluffle that "character counts." Today everyone has switched sides. Newt's detractors argue that he's shown he can't be trusted to keep his word, while his supporters say his marital history doesn't matter.

I side with the "character counts" folks. I said it with Clinton, and with Edwards, and I hold that position with Newt. As much as I like his ideas, I can't get past the fact that he broke his oath "to forsake all others." Why should I believe that he'll keep an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America"?

That leaves us with Romney. By all accounts he is a good family man, a man whose personal life is above reproach. But he's also an incremental thinker, not a radical one. By that I mean he has small ideas to improve the status quo, at a time when big ideas are needed to address big problems. To borrow an overused phrase, he can't think outside the box.

He also doesn't have the most scintillating personality. He's not exactly Mr. Electricity. Women don't swoon when he walks in a room. He comes across as privileged and out of touch with most people. He's Mormon, which shouldn't matter, but will to some people. And there's that whole Romneycare thing hanging around his neck.

Still, Romney has one great big thing going for him.

He's not obama...

More Late Night Thoughts

My wife and I were watching TV tonight. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, we get somewhere around 200 channels, all of which seem incapable of broadcasting anything worth watching. But we got lucky and stumbled across a showing of the classic movie Wizard of Oz.

During a commercial break I couldn't help but think about modernizing it, based on current events.

Dick Cheney has already received a heart. Now we can only hope that Joe Biden gets a brain, obama gets some courage, and that a House falls on Pelosi.

Wait Just A Friggin' Minute

A whole passel of states have passed some form of voter ID laws requiring potential voters to provide some type of government approved picture identification such as a driver's license or passport in order to vote. Conservatives argue this is necessary to prevent voter fraud. Liberals claim voter ID laws disenfranchise minorities, older voters, and young people.

College campuses across the nation are teeming with students ready to exercise their right to vote, one of the few perks that comes with turning 18. Yet, instead of encouraging students to take part in this rite of passage, some states are imposing voter ID requirements that make it much harder for them to vote.

The fact that some Republicans see these new voter restrictions as a good thing shows their complete disregard for the democratic process.

I'm not going to address the minorities or senior citizen issue, but I would like to comment on the liberal's concern that young folks might be adversely affected.

Sweeping new security measures to prevent cheating on the SAT and ACT college entrance exams were announced Tuesday.

Beginning with exams taken in September, students will have to submit a photo of themselves when they apply for a test. That photo will be printed on the student's test admission ticket and the roster provided to proctors at testing sites. Testing staff will compare the submitted photo to a photo ID and to the student in person at the testing site.

Photo checks will take place when the student arrives at the testing site, during breaks and when tests are handed in.

Student photos will also remain in the testing databases and be checked again by high school counselors and college admission officials once scores are calculated and submitted.

(More here.)

Let me get this straight. It's okay to implement a restrictive system of checking photo IDs for prospective college students, but not for potential voters? Liberals howl in outrage over voter ID laws, but are strangely silent over stricter requirements for SAT and ACT tests? Double standard, anyone?

We're concerned about kids spoofing the system to get into college, where they'll either pass or fail mostly on their own merits. But we could care less about verifying the eligibility of people voting for the leader of the free world?

Priorities, people, priorities...

Don't Confuse Revenge With Justice

I was going to stay out of the whole Trayvon Martin controversy. After all, there’s been so much written and said about that sad incident. What do I have to add that hasn’t already been said by others? But the uproar not only continued, but intensified. The cries for George Zimmerman’s head on a pike got louder, while at the same time more details leaked out that indicated perhaps we haven’t heard the whole story.

So I thought maybe I’d just toss out a little reminder to withhold judgment until all the facts are in. Didn’t we see the folly of leaping to conclusions in the Richard Jewell affair (he was the security guard at the Atlanta Olympics who was first hailed as a hero for finding a bomb in the Olympic Park, then accused and convicted by the media as the bomber, only to be later exonerated)?

Or the rape accusations against the Duke lacrosse team? (A black woman claimed to have been raped by three white Duke students. The media took the story and ran with it, proclaiming it a hate crime. Later, of course, it turned out that the woman falsely accused the students, and the prosecutor ended up being disbarred for legal and ethical violations in his zeal to convict the students.)

Or, more recently, the Jared Loughner case? (Loughner shot former U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and several others at a rally in Arizona. The media immediately linked the shooting to ‘uncivil’ conservative rhetoric. Once again, after further investigation, the facts indicated otherwise. Loughner was a mentally troubled person who, if anything, had liberal leanings.)

So I figured I could be a voice of reason, suggesting that we sit back and let cooler heads prevail. Politicians and special interest groups would stand back and let the investigation proceed. The truth will come out and justice will prevail.

Yeah, right … and unicorns will jump over the rainbow.

Just as in the Duke and Loughner cases, the leftists and their allies in the media have no interest in justice. All they care about is politicizing this whole tragic affair for their own gain.

Don’t believe that last statement? Check out the following.

An obama stooge masquerading as an alleged MSNBC journalist blamed the shooting on the Koch brothers, the NRA, and other assorted conservative groups.

And speaking of MSNBC, we all know they are to obama as Monica was to Bill Clinton. But this time, they’ve outdone themselves. MSNBC altered the 911 call George Zimmerman made. Here’s MSNBC’s version:

"This guy looks like he’s up to no good … He looks black."

Here’s the actual full quote.

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

911 DISPATCHER: Okay, is this guy, is he white, black, or Hispanic?

ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.

Makes a big difference, doesn't it. It goes from making it sound like Zimmerman is biased or profiling blacks to showing that he was simply responding to a question from the police dispatcher. That goes way beyond journalistic license and ventures into deliberately twisting a quote to misrepresent the truth.

Finally, we have the obama campaign peddling official “obama 2012” hoodies. They hit the market on March 26, just days after the shooting.

Despicable? Certainly. Coincidence? I think not.

So if I did have something to add to this whole mess, it would be this one simple statement: Revenge and Justice are not the same thing.

Everyone wants (or should want) justice in this case. But so many people are out for revenge that it is frightening – especially when they don’t even know all the facts.

That sounds an awful lot like a lynching. Given the racial circumstances of this case, the irony is obvious.

It's been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Here's a few pictures that speak volumes, along with links to sites that have commentary worthy of your attention.

(H/T Day by Day)

(H/T Peter)

(H/T Hope-N-Change)