Highbrow Magazine - 2012 elections https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/2012-elections en How to Fix the American Political System https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1983-how-fix-american-political-system <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Fri, 01/25/2013 - 10:36</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumFoundingFathersPainting.jpg?itok=Umlp1rwy"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumFoundingFathersPainting.jpg?itok=Umlp1rwy" width="480" height="244" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> Apparently, no one listens to George Washington. The first President of the United States declared the following about political parties, on September 19, 1796:</p> <p>  </p> <p> “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages &amp; countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders &amp; miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security &amp; repose in the absolute power of an Individual: and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty." </p> <p>  </p> <p> Fast-forward 200 plus years and it is safe to say the most famous American with wooden teeth nailed it.</p> <p>  </p> <p> In 2012, the choices for the president of the United States were lackluster. The Republican Party nominated Mitt Romney, a businessman who denounced his accomplishments as Governor of Massachusetts to appeal to the base of the Republican Party who, in turn, offered lackluster support at best for the candidate they chose in the primary system. The Democrats supported the incumbent President, Barrack Obama, who presided over mixed economic results, even when inheriting a faltering economic situation with no previous executive experience. No other individuals could present themselves as serious contenders, nor could any ideas be presented outside of the spectrum of the rigid Republican and Democratic parties’ platforms.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The United States’ system of government was created for a more representative government across all spectrums of society and flexibility to adjust to the changing norms of societal and economic realities with the passage of time. Political parties are not included in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. They didn’t even make it into the Article of Confederation.</p> <p>  </p> <p> In the present, when the Founding Fathers, perhaps George Washington most of all, are revered to the point of demi-god status, two political parties have flourished and seeped into most mechanisms of government at the federal and state level. The practical applications of democracy in the United States need to be changed. The most insightful, empathetic and innovative individuals must be encouraged to seek higher office and find a balance in representing the political entity from which they were elected and the greater good of the United States as a whole.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>The elephants and donkeys have a lot of bling</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> The local, state and aspects of regional interests have been usurped by the overarching goals and principles of two national parties, the Democratic (Donkey) and Republican (Pachyderm) Parties. The United States’ population has grown exponentially from 7.2 million in 1810, 76 million in 1900, to 281 million in 2000 and 307 million people by the last U.S. census in 2010. Despite the increase in the sheer number of people and the expanding geographic area in which Americans live, the two-party system is entrenched and inversely has grown inflexible to meet the complex needs of a democratic society with diverse backgrounds and economic standings.</p> <p>  </p> <p> According to 2011 Gallup polls, 27 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans and 31 percent identify themselves as Democrats. Forty percent of Americans identify themselves as Independents. The greatest political identifier in the United States is neither Democrat nor Republican. Why hasn’t a viable political party been organized to represent 40 percent of the U.S. population, greater than 120 million people? The answer, drumroll by using million dollar bills as drumsticks, is money.</p> <p>  </p> <p> In the 2012 election cycle, according to Open Secrets, $ 1.1 billion was spent by both major parties for House races and $680 million for Senate races. The Democrats and President Obama collected $732 million while the Republican Party raised $620 million not to win the presidency. To put that in perspective Virgil Goode, the Constitution Party Presidential candidate and a former Democratic Congressman from Virginia raised $110,000 and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson raised $2.5 million as the Libertarian Party candidate. Obama and Romney were sipping Cristal and eating caviar while Goode and Johnson had to Indian leg wrestle for the last chicken nugget at a kid’s birthday party.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Length is not everything</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> The quickest way to take money out of the system is to condense the time of an election cycle. The British election for the Parliament lasts on average about a month from when the election is called to the actual election. The Parliamentary election in 2010 was announced on April 6, 2010 and the polls were opened on May 6, 2010. The competing parties spent an estimated $33 million, far short of the billions spent during a modern U.S. election.</p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumobamaandromney%20%28NAM%29_4.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 335px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> As stated before, there is a lot of money invested for the determination of U.S. elections. Super Political Action Committees (PACs) are essentially PACs that are allowed to accept and spend unlimited amounts of money for campaign purposes without disclosure of who the contributors are, whether individuals, unions or corporations. The only real stipulation for a Super PAC is they must not actively collaborate with a candidate seeking office. For the most recent election, Super PACs spent more than $645 million to advocate whether a Democrat or Republican should win public office. Former George W. Bush advisrr Karl Rove and his Super PAC, American Crossroads, raised and spent nearly $175 million for the Republican Party to lose seats in the U.S. Senate and have President Obama enjoy a second term in office. Comedian and “The Colbert Report” host Stephen Colbert spent almost $80,000 from his Super PAC, Americans for Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, as a lark.</p> <p>  </p> <p> A shorter election cycle could make not only make the PACs and Super PACs less influential if not inconsequential, as there would only be a finite amount of time to spend money, which would lessen the impetus to raise copious amounts of funding. It would either condense or eliminate the primary election process. The end result would be less money for the entry of either Independent or other party candidates.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Electoral College, not BCS worthy</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> This is easy. Get rid of the Electoral College. The popular vote is good enough to elect Senators. It is not like a candidate gets points based on winning a certain state county. Make every vote count in a presidential election. As of now, a Democrat in Oklahoma or a Republican in Massachusetts vote does not matter. All voters should be appealed to and believe that their election decision matters. If anything, it could possibly get more people involved in voting. According to CNN, the 2012 election had a lower turnout, 57.5 percent of eligible voters voting, than the 2008 and 2004 elections (that has to hurt 2012, the 2004 election had charisma machines John Kerry and George W. Bush).  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumrepublicansdemocrats%20%28donkey%20hote%29.jpg" style="width: 640px; height: 366px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Gerrymandering</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> Sure, gerrymandering or the construction or deconstruction of congressional districts by the political party in control of the state’s legislative body after the results of the U.S. census every 10 years has to be done. People have to vote. Populations change in all states; they lose and gain seats.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Like the Electoral College, it can go the way of the dinosaurs, the dodo bird and 7Up Gold. Make the election proportional with many top candidates becoming representatives. For example, Maine has two House Congressional districts, perhaps there are four candidates, all citizens of Maine get two votes, and the two candidates statewide with the most votes are the representatives.</p> <p>  </p> <p> In bigger states, such as Texas and California, divide the states into 15 or 20 large districts with top two or three candidates with the most votes representing that district. California has gone to lengths to make gerrymandering bipartisan through a statewide-approved referendum, with an independent commission appointed to draw congressional districts. It is a start.</p> <p>  </p> <p> In the 113<sup>th</sup> Congress, the Republican Party will hold a 33 member advantage despite Democratic candidates for the House receiving over 500,000 more individual votes nationally in 2012 Congressional elections. Gerrymandering manipulates the political process and reflects the preferences of voters from the previous decade, not the present political desires.   </p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>An America fixed?</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> George Washington is correct that political parties, when bloated with power and entrenched ideologically, are unwanted checks against individual political expression. It would be foolish not to expect like-minded people to gather and strengthen their resolve on issues that impact their livelihood or community. A voter should have options and multiple outlets if they change their stance on issues.  Times change, technically the U.S. Constitution still allows for letters of marque and reprisal, i.e., state-sanctioned piracy, Article 1 Section 8. However, President Obama has yet to give anyone with an ocean kayak permission to board and secure Canadian shipping vessels.</p> <p> While political entities such as the Tea Party and No Labels have challenged the norms of the two-party system, they still work within the paradigm of the Democrats and Republicans as the only two significant political parties in the United States. As less people take part in the politics, the country’s apathy will only increase. The Founding Fathers left avenues to evolve to face unseen future challenges. The United States is no longer 13 newly-formed entities searching for commonality; it is a trillion-dollar economy and the hub of business for the world.</p> <p>  </p> <p> For better or worse, elected officials are stewards over the colossal economic and military strength of the United States. These representatives should be amongst the best individuals and represent the interests of those who elected them considering all solutions for problem-solving before the ideological writ of a political manifesto. </p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em>Kurt Thurber is a contributing writer at</em> Highbrow Magazine.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <em><strong>Photos: New America Media; Donkey Hote (Creative Commons).</strong></em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/american-political-system" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">american political system</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/american-politics" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">american politics</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/2012-elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">2012 elections</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/mitt-romney" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mitt Romney</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Obama</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/gerrymandering" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">gerrymandering</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/electoral-college" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">electoral college</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/third-party" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">third party</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/independents" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Independents</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/republicans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Republicans</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/democrats" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Democrats</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tea-party" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Tea Party</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/george-washington" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">George Washington</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/american-presidency" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">american presidency</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Kurt Thurber</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:36:49 +0000 tara 2255 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1983-how-fix-american-political-system#comments The Tea Party Is Now a Huge Liability to Republicans https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1870-tea-party-now-huge-liability-republicans <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Thu, 12/20/2012 - 13:18</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumteaparty%20%28Jackie%20M%20Barr%29.jpg?itok=SP2IoiXZ"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumteaparty%20%28Jackie%20M%20Barr%29.jpg?itok=SP2IoiXZ" width="323" height="480" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> From <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/12/tea-party-now-a-huge-gop-liability.php">New America Media</a>:</p> <p>  </p> <p> The resignation of South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint from the Senate followed close on the heels of the desertion from the Tea Party of Freedom Works head Dick Armey took some by surprise. DeMint and Armey were the two biggest and most identifiable fish in the Tea Party affiliated pond.</p> <p>  </p> <p> DeMint could be relied on to broker his name ID and prodigious fund raising prowess to every Tea Party backed Senatorial candidate—and loser. Armey was a tireless advocate at big, stagey Tea Party rallies and confabs for the Tea Party’s anti-big government hard line message.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Now both are out. If that wasn’t bad news enough for the Tea Party, GOP conservative House leaders turned on it and ousted Representatives Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Justin Amash of Michigan, two of the loudest Tea Party position advocates from the House Budget Committee. They were kicked to the curb almost certainly because GOP House leaders know they have to make a deal with President Obama on the budget or risk being further dragged through the public and media mud as being the cause for shoving the nation over the fiscal cliff.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The Tea Party’s brand of patented loose cannon obstructionism is too threatening to a GOP still reeling from the election flop. The ouster of the Tea Party hardliners and desertions by GOP bigwigs from the movement was hardly the first rumbling that the lights are dimming for the Tea Party.</p> <p>  </p> <p> A year earlier, polls showed that far more Americans had an unfavorable view of the Tea Party than when it roared on the scene a couple of years earlier. The disaffection cut across all lines and that included many conservatives. The reason for the plunge in Tea Party backing in Red State districts support wasn’t hard to find. When Tea Party affiliated candidates scored big victories and even upsets of GOP incumbents in some races in 2010, they had one mantra and that was to shrink government, and shrink it fast. Millions of Americans cheered their war call, and voted for the candidates that yelped it the loudest. But it’s one thing to scream about big government, bloated federal spending, and whopping federal debts, and it’s quite another to actually hold Congress, and by extension, the nation hostage in an uncompromising, shrill battle to chop down government.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2mediumteaparty%20%28wikipedia%20commons%29.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 405px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> The Tea Party, in effect, wildly overreached and many conservatives didn’t like it. Congressional members backed by the Tea Party stalled every piece of legislation that might have put people back to work, demanded draconian slashes in Medicare and Social Security, gummed up the works on debt reduction talks between Obama and GOP House leaders, and wasted congressional time and energy passing bills and amendments to kill health care reform as well as education, health, social service and law enforcement programs locally and nationally. The result was that Congress was at a virtual stall for two years and public approval of Congress dropped to lows that made used car salespersons look like public champions.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The open backlash against the Tea Party wasn’t lost on GOP mainstream leaders, who even in the best of Tea Party days were anxious, if not downright terrified, that their shock battalions might get to unruly, and go too far overboard, and alienate the moderate and conservative independents that they got back in the GOP fold in 2010. They desperately needed them to have any chance of beating Obama in 2012.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Obviously, that didn’t happen. Now with the 2014 mid-term elections shaping up to be a titanic battle for the GOP to hold onto the House and not lose any more ground in the Senate, open advocacy of Tea Party positions becomes even more of a risk. The GOP with the Tea Party drag on it would have absolutely no chance to make any headway on immigration reform. That would kill the slender chance it had to soften opposition from Hispanic voters to the GOP. It would also turn off thousands more conservative voters who want to see government get back on track and get results.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The Tea Party is far from dead. There are many Americans that still think the idea of smaller government, caps on spending, and debt reduction are noble and necessary goals worth fighting for. Millions of them voted for failed GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney solely because they bought into his promise to shrink government. Though a majority of Americans now back Obamacare, a significant minority still don’t. And they will continue to make noise.</p> <p>  </p> <p> But having the Tea Party label attached to the GOP is a huge liability that GOP leaders can no longer afford.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em>Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a frequent political commentator on MSNBC and a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network.</em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/12/tea-party-now-a-huge-gop-liability.php">New America Media</a></p> <p>  </p> <p> <em><strong>Photos: Jackie M Barr, Wikipedia Commons (Creative Commons).</strong></em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tea-party" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Tea Party</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/gop" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">GOP</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/republicans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Republicans</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/2012-elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">2012 elections</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/conservatives" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">conservatives</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/right-wing" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">right wing</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/social-security" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Social Security</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/medicare" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">medicare</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Earl Ofari Hutchinson </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Jackie M Barr (Creative Commons)</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Thu, 20 Dec 2012 18:18:46 +0000 tara 2078 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1870-tea-party-now-huge-liability-republicans#comments Combating Voter Suppression, One Voter at a Time https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1790-combating-voter-suppression-one-voter-time <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Wed, 11/14/2012 - 10:00</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumvotersupression%20%28NAM%29.jpg?itok=wdFjQ8a5"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumvotersupression%20%28NAM%29.jpg?itok=wdFjQ8a5" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> From <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/11/tackling-voter-suppression-one-voter-at-a-time.php">New America Media</a>:</p> <p>  </p> <p> If no one else is rejoicing about the systemic inconveniences imposed on Florida voters on Election Day, where waits as long as eight hours to cast a ballot were endured and witnessed by thousands of voters, the state’s former senators Mike Bennett and Ellyn Bogdanoff should be elated.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “I want people in Florida to want to vote as bad as that person in Africa who walks 200 miles across the desert,” Bennett said in 2011 when sponsoring legislation to impose stricter voting requirements. His colleague concurred with his view that voting should be made more difficult. “Democracy should not be a convenience,” Bogdanoff said.</p> <p>  </p> <p> With the cutback of early voting in Florida, the result of lengthy lines was predictable. Lee Rowland, counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice, noted that each state that succeeded in limiting early voting, particularly Florida and Ohio, led in the number of waiting hours for the public to vote, according to preliminary reports.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Katherine Culliton-Gonzalez, director of the Advancement Project’s Voter Protection Program, said that had her mother been voting in Florida, she would have been unable to endure the wait as she uses a walker.</p> <p>  </p> <p> But when Culliton-Gonzalez described the voting experience in Florida on November 6 as “bad all day,” she wasn’t only referring to long lines. Misinformation about polling places, denial of language assistance to voters with limited English proficiency and repeated efforts at intimidation at some precincts by self-appointed poll watchers, contributed to a debacle now enshrined as an expected rite of passage for Floridians during presidential elections.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Yet, it wasn’t only the voters’ endurance that prevailed on Election Day. There were also selfless acts by individuals committed to the concept of ballot access.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Culliton-Gonzalez, who traveled to Florida as part of the Election Protection Network Coalition, a nonpartisan initiative that dispatches attorneys and monitors versed in election law to monitor procedures and assist voters, said she was inspired by Roosevelt Lanier.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Lanier, an African-American, now retired, voted in the morning at the high school that served as the precinct site. He then went to get some exercise at a different school’s facilities. While there, he quickly realized that those arriving to vote had been misinformed about the site which had been moved to the school he had just left 12 blocks away.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “The polling place had been changed,” said Culliton-Gonzalez. “I called the county [Miami-Dade] three times to tell them, but the election officials said, ‘Well, they should have got a letter and they should have read it.’” Some of the arrivals, particularly the newly registered voters, did indeed have letters that clearly directed them to the facility not in use.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Culliton-Gonzalez said the mix-up was probably just the result of a clerical error, but over the course of the hour that she was there with Lanier, at least 20 cars pulled up, “all African Americans, maybe one Latino.” Culliton-Gonalez and her partner from the coalition went to a nearby CVS and purchased posterboard and markers to make the signs to redirect the voters.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Mr. Lanier said he wanted to stay there and help the rest of the people and that he could stay until 1:00 pm,” she said. She left him to visit other sites but stopped back to check on him later and to bring him lunch.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumvotebuttons_0.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 336px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> “He called me at 7:00 p.m. to say, ‘Okay, the cars have stopped coming.’” Culliton-Gonzalez said through his spontaneous volunteerism, she estimated Lanier had steered 200 voters to the correct location who otherwise may not have known where to cast a ballot.</p> <p>  </p> <p> And while lack of signage at one precinct location in Florida was the problem, in certain polling sites in Pennsylvania, the signs themselves were at issue.</p> <p>  </p> <p> In the months ahead of the election, the state’s residents had awaited the outcome of a series of legal challenges to its enacted photo voter ID law. With the state’s inability to guarantee that it could produce the number of new IDs necessary in time for the election, a Pennsylvania judge, under pressure from the state’s Supreme Court, conceded the law could have a discriminatory impact.</p> <p>  </p> <p> While his injunction meant Pennsylvanians were legally able to vote without a state-issued photo voter ID, in some precincts, signs stating it was required were still posted on Election Day.</p> <p>  </p> <p> That was the case in Milmont Park, south of Philadelphia and close to the Delaware line, where the roiling turmoil over voter photo ID proceeded at lower decibels than in Pennsylvania’s most populous city, but confusion over the law reigned nevertheless.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Jacqueline Jrolf said she and her husband got to their voting precinct before the polls officially opened so they could vote and get on with their day. She said they each brought their voter photo ID but decided on principle, “we’re not going to show it.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> But when she arrived at the precinct, Jrolf said she saw a sign stating voters had to show ID. While the injunction did not require a voter to have the state-issued voter photo ID, it did not prohibit poll workers from asking prospective voters to show it.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Still, Jrolf said she was positive the language on the wall sign was dated and approached one of the poll workers with her complaint. That worker promptly got a supervisor.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “‘Oh, that must have been printed before the law was overturned’,” Jrolf recalled being told. “‘Okay, can you cross out what it says?’” Jrolf said she was “kind of surprised, but happy,” adding that she and the supervisor went through the text making corrections. “I felt satisfied, at least something was done.” Her contentment was short-lived.</p> <p>  </p> <p> On the way home, Jrolf said she stopped at another precinct to see whether the same sign was displayed, which turned out to be the case. When she brought it up with workers there, the reception she received was less than cordial. She eventually left the precinct, with the sign still in place.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “It felt like voter suppression to me,” she said.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/11/tackling-voter-suppression-one-voter-at-a-time.php">New America Media</a></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/voter-suppression" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">voter suppression</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/voter-intimidation" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">voter intimidation</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/2012-elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">2012 elections</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/votes" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">votes</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/election-day" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Election Day</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Khalil Abdullah</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:00:34 +0000 tara 1919 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1790-combating-voter-suppression-one-voter-time#comments Elections 2012: A Lollapalooza of Lies https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1788-elections-2012-lollapalooza-lies <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Wed, 11/14/2012 - 09:44</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumobamaandromney%20%28NAM%29_2.jpg?itok=dlv9tW1-"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumobamaandromney%20%28NAM%29_2.jpg?itok=dlv9tW1-" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> Lies have been with us Homo Sapiens since back when Jesus wore sandals, as my Grandpa Ben used to say. They are as ancient as sand and rocks and caves. I can imagine Neanderthals of the Pleistocene era lying about exactly who among the hairy-backed knuckle-scrapers first figured out that roots dug up from the earth ought to be cooked prior to consumption.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Since there is no science in the matter, I would offer my subjective view that politics, money, and sex constitutes the holy trinity of untruth. And since the long and deceitful presidential election campaign is still ringing in our minds—like an especially annoying car alarm—let us consider the political arena.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Not for the first time in the history of American presidential contests, crass calumniation was at center-stage in this year’s production of the quadrennial spectacle.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Throughout the summer and autumn months, “liar” was the once seldom heard pejorative mustered by manned-up Democrats in describing Willard Mitt Romney, now twice-failed as a Republican hopeful, along with his awkward running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan. A few examples:</p> <p>  </p> <p> • “Plenty of people have pointed out what a liar Mitt Romney is,” said Brad Woodhouse, communications director of the Democratic National Committee, in an interview with <em>The Week</em> magazine.</p> <p>  </p> <p> • At a press conference aboard Air Force One, David Plouffe, senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said Mr. Romney “lie[d] to fifty million Americans,” according to the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>.</p> <p>  </p> <p> • In a September 2 appearance on CBS-Television’s “Face the Nation,” Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Mr. Obama’s successful re-election effort, said Republicans in general “think lying is a virtue.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> • Remarkably, a Fox News contributor was permitted to indict Mr. Ryan for falsity of historic proportion when he accepted the vice-presidential nomination at last August’s Republican National Convention in Florida. “Ryan’s speech,” wrote Sally Kohn for the Fox blog, “was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Ever decorous—and mindful of the comity expected of an incumbent White House tenant—Barack Obama did not himself utter the L-word, though he came daringly close. Republicans, meanwhile, went about lying with their customary abandon. They slandered the president as, variously and sometimes all at once, Kenyan-born (Donald Trump’s meme); an apologist for Islamic terrorism (Mr. Romney himself, in accusing the president of sympathizing with Benghazi murderers); a secret homosexual (Jerome Corsi, a popular conspiracy theorist and member of the Romney campaign press corps); and a heretic of possibly Christian persuasion who, in supporting same-sex marriage, has “shaken his fist at God” (the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of Billy), thereby expediting the American apocalypse.   </p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumromneyandryan%20%28NAM%29_0.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 335px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> Daniel Henninger, the <em>Wall Street Journal’s</em> deputy editorial page director and Fox News commentator, confined his shock—shock!—to use of the word “liar” by Democrats. “’Liar,’” he complained in a Journal essay, “is a potent and ugly word with a sleazy political pedigree.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Mr. Henninger added, “Explicitly calling someone a ‘liar’ is—or used to be—a serious and rare charge, in or out of politics. It is a loaded word. It crosses a line. ‘Liar’ suggests bad faith and conscious duplicity—a total, cynical falsity.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Lying, a universal truth</strong></p> <p> Lest anyone believe that untruths are more plentiful in the United States than anywhere else, or peculiar to political stratagems, New York psychiatrist Gail Saltz makes the case for global lying as a natural element of human physiology—for better and for worse. </p> <p>  </p> <p> “Everybody lies,” wrote Dr. Saltz in a disquisition on the subject for NBCNews.com. “We start lying at around the age four to five, when children gain an awareness of the use and power of language. This first lying is not malicious, but rather to find out, or test, what can be manipulated in a child’s environment.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Pathological liars—those “compelled to lie about the small and large stuff,” according to the Saltz calculation—represent the dark side of mendacity’s moon. They are the worst of lying’s lot, for they vandalize an “unspoken agreement to treat others as we would like to be treated,” wrote Dr. Saltz.</p> <p>  </p> <p> She added, “Serious deception often makes it impossible for us to trust another person again. …If the truth only comes out once it is forced, repair of trust is far less likely.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Todd Gitlin, a professor of sociology at Columbia University and chairman of its Ph.D. program in communications, likewise takes the universalist view of lying. But his deepest appreciation is for the American variety.</p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediummadmen.jpg" style="width: 502px; height: 104px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> “I don’t know if lying is any more prevalent in the U.S. than elsewhere,” he told me, “but there is certainly a hoary tradition of it here. Think of ‘tall tales,’ and ‘confidence men,’ and African American ‘toasts’ [the origin of hip-hop “boasts”).</p> <p>  </p> <p> “If we do this sort of thing more than others do, it would probably be because rugged individualism encourages Americans to think that each of [us] invents our own reality,” he said further in our conversation. “The hunger to smoke out lies comes from a Puritan tradition. The hunger to tell them comes from overconfidence that we are little gods.”  </p> <p>  </p> <p> Neither Professor Gitlin nor any other sociologist or historian or psychologist I consulted was aware of any published scholarship that compares American lies to those of other nation-states, or cultures. None. People will have their suspicions, however, about their countrymen versus The Other. I have mine; you have yours. Which constitutes prejudice, which is a whopper.  </p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Lying = Money (&amp; Pretty Delusions)</strong></p> <p> What would Madison Avenue do without lies?</p> <p>  </p> <p> Lies encourage necessary commerce. Here now, we enter the art of lying for money. In support of lying for money, via advertising, the advertising industry creates lovely lies at the intersection of fiction and fact—providing us inspiration of all sorts and strength in harmless delusion. Prettier lies yet affirm our appearance, our behavior, our exquisite taste, and our guilty pleasures—all monetized in the form of consumer products, many of which are unnecessary. </p> <p>  </p> <p> The most artful lies of Mad Men are nuanced. Others are sold softly, others bluntly.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumwoodyallen%20%28georgesBiardWiki%29.jpg" style="width: 477px; height: 600px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> A 17<sup>th</sup> century French dramatist by the name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, aka Molière, is perhaps the father of the soft sell. “People can be induced to swallow anything,” he famously said, “provided it is sufficiently seasoned with praise.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> The hard sell is the territory of my friend and one-time employer Jack Avrett, the late president of the New York ad agency Avrett, Free &amp; Ginsberg.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Tommy,” he asked me one day, “would you like to know how come I’m so damn rich?”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Indeed, said I.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Do you have any idea how easy it is to sell Americans <em>anything</em>?”</p> <p>  </p> <p> To this, I responded, learnedly, “Well, sir, working in Mad Avenue has provided me with a fairly good education in that area.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Now, Tommy, there are two kinds of people in the advertising dodge: smart people, and geniuses. The smart ones know what smart people want. Geniuses know what stupid people want.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “I’m a genius,” Jack declared. “And I get an override on a whole lot of things that stupid people buy.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Chronicles of grift</strong></p> <p> Human stupidity—naïveté, if you prefer, with a dash of avarice: such qualities clothe us all, in sizes ranging from petite to plus—is fertile ground for liars. Always was, and forever shall be, this match of mark and con. Never mind the nationality of either player. Again, we are in money territory here.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  The Scotsman Gregor MacGregor (1786-1845) was a liar of the first rank. Togged out in a military tunic of black twill with an oval-shaped scarlet breastplate, accompanied by stiff collar and epaulets of gold satin roping, he introduced himself to the royalty and lesser élite of Europe as the “Cacique of Poyais.” The tribal chief of Poyais, he explained, that being a region west of Argentina chockfull of gold nuggets sparkling in mountain streams and minerals in the plains aching to be mined. Mr. MacGregor convinced the lords and ladies to invest in lucrative developments far across the seas in Poyais. Alas, no one on the South American continent had ever heard of such a place.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumclareboothluce%20%28wiki%29.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 726px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> Victor Lustig (1890-1947) was a multilingual cosmopolite born in what was once known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He began his career in lying as inventor of the so-called money-box scheme. He would demonstrate the amazing capability of a small photographic crank box of his making, stuffed with stacks of currency-sized paper. An exterior top mount of thick glass snugged an American $100 note. A hand crank operated on the side. As Herr Lustig turned the crank, a duplicate greenback was ever so slowly copied. (A genuine greenback, of course, that lay upon the stack of blanks.) All the while, Herr Lustig lamented the key shortcoming of his magical device: It took several hours to produce a bill. But, sensing huge profits in exchange for a relatively small investment of time, buyers snatched up money-boxes as fast as Herr Lustig could assemble the flimsy things—minus the genuine currency, of course. The price for a money-box was often as high as $30,000.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi (1882-1949)—aka Charles Ponzi, aka Charles Ponei, aka Charles P. Bianchi—fled poverty in Italy as a teenager, arriving in Boston in 1903 with the equivalent of two dollars in his pocket. His get-rich-quick impulse was excited by newspaper accounts of a small-time Brooklyn swindler named William F. Miller. Mr. Ponzi perfected Mr. Miller’s scheme, thus introducing an early incarnation of arbitrage, one that is not so different than today’s Wall Street contrivance. He raised loads of cash from naïve, stupid, greedy investors in New England during the 1920s, on the basis of a most attractive lie: a 50 percent profit within 90 days. The funds raised bought discounted postal reply coupons in Europe for redemption at face value in the U.S. and Canada. For a time, the formula worked: One mark realized a fast-shuffle profit by way of “investment” money ponied up by a successor mark, and so on and so forth until the unsustainable arrangement collapsed, by which time Mr. Ponzi would become either Mr. Ponei or Mr. Bianchi.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Bernard Lawrence “Bernie” Madoff was born in New York City in 1938, the son of a housewife and plumber. He will die in a federal penitentiary, situated in a desolate stretch of rural Minnesota, well before the end of his century-and-a-half prison sentence, imposed in 2009 when he was found guilty committing the largest financial fraud in world history. A student of Mr. Ponzi’s slick lies, Mr. Madoff made off with an estimated $65 billion—much of it bilked from endowment funds that provided operating principal for Jewish charities and educational institutions, on whose boards he sat.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>The loving pretense</strong></p> <p> Sex! In the lying context, there is something known the “rule of three,” as applied to the sexually coy and the sexually boastful, in accordance with respective gender. It works like this: attach a multiple of three to the number of sexual partners claimed by women; divide by three the number of conquests alleged by men.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Everybody lies about sex,” asserted comedian Janeane Garofalo. This truism earned sustained laughter from studio audience members during a June 2011 taping of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” The remark was made in defense of former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner, whose email account earlier in that year posted self-made photos of his aroused gonads bursting beneath his tightie-whities.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The science fiction writer Robert Heinlein (1907-1988) said precisely the same, in his book “Time Enough for Love.” In fact, says filmmaker/comedian Woody Allen, “Without lies, there would be no sex.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> The late Jim Morrison (1943-1971), lead singer of The Doors, was known among his women friends and brief acquaintances by the none-too-subtle nicknames “Mr. Mojo Risin’” and “Lizard King.” Mr. Morrison was also an aphorist. His studied conclusion, the result of numerous trysts: “Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending—performing.”</p> <p> Mr. Morrison added, “You get to love your pretense. It’s true. We’re locked in an image, an act.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumjohnquincyadams%20%28wiki%29.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 545px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Lies, aka Civility, aka Art, aka Truth</strong></p> <p> “Of course I lie to people,” once said the colorful and charitable Denis Charles Pratt, aka Quentin Crisp (1908-1999), the British author, actor, nude model, and raconteur of proudly effeminate tendency. “But I lie altruistically—for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist—but then, what isn’t?”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Mr. Crisp lived out his latter years in a tiny apartment with giant insects on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, at the time a dicey residential option—especially so for a man who paraded daily through its streets with hair pinned up in a bun and dyed in violet to complement his mascara, long painted fingernails, and a peacock feather bouncing atop a jauntily-placed fedora.</p> <p>  </p> <p> His contemporary was Clare Booth Luce (1903-1987), playwright turned political light—a Franklin Roosevelt liberal who converted to conservatism, first the mild brand of Dwight Eisenhower, who appointed her ambassador to Italy in 1952, and finally the more strident stuff of Ronald Reagan. Ms. Luce was something of a journalist, but far better remembered for her magazine fiction and stage plays, the latter of which earned a place in the pantheon of Broadway.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Lying increases the creative faculties,” she once told a reporter for the <em>New York Herald-Tribune</em>. “Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, and lessens the friction of social contacts.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Ms. Luce was on to one of the ironies of philosophical realization: lying and truthing could not exist, one without the other.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The movie version of Ernest Hemingway’s “Islands in the Stream,” as in the novel, ends with a deathbed scene in which George C. Scott in the role of hero Thomas Hudson says in last breath, “I know now, there’s no one thing that’s true. It’s all true.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> I blush as I quote a line of dialogue from “Drown All the Dogs,” a novel of mine published here and abroad in 1994: “Every lie is a truth somewhere in time.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Back in the day</strong></p> <p> Should lies of the blessedly ended presidential campaign of 2011-12 linger shockingly in mind, consider the pungency of yore:</p> <p>  </p> <p> • John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were opposing candidates in the campaigns of 1796 and 1800. In the first square-off, the victorious Mr. Adams claimed that Mr. Jefferson was a “coward” for his failure to take up arms during the revolutionary war, and Adams-friendly newspapers insisted that Mr. Jefferson was a champion of open marriage and prostitution. In the second race, a victorious Mr. Jefferson’s aides said President Adams had secretly sent a ship to England to retrieve a pair of mistresses, that Mr. Adams was plotting to abolish the newly minted Constitution to become “king of America.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> • During the election campaign of 1828, challenger Andrew Jackson’s partisans referred to President John Quincy Adams (son of the aforementioned Adams) as a “pimp,” in service to the czar of Russia during Mr. Adams’ earlier post as ambassador to the imperial court at St. Petersburg, and his wife as “born to bastardy.” Loyalists to President Adams, meanwhile, said Mr. Jackson, hero of the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812, engaged in cannibalism when his troops were stranded in swamplands.</p> <p>  </p> <p> • John C. Frémont (1813-1890) was the first presidential candidate of the new anti-slavery Republican Party and also tarred as a cannibal. Prior to a political career, Mr. Frémont was a highly decorated military officer and adventurer in the western states. His presidential bid in 1856 was scuttled when Democrat stalwarts allied with Franklin Pierce claimed that in 1848 Mr. Frémont consumed human flesh in the windswept San Juan mountains of Colorado.</p> <p>  </p> <p> • The Republican Party’s second presidential candidate, in the election of 1860, was Abraham Lincoln, an unhandsome man with unusually long arms. Newspaper cartoonists called him “the ape man.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> • In 1876, the Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden was called a “syphilis-plagued drunkard” by those rallied to the Republican candidacy of Rutherford B. Hayes. The Tilden side said Mr. Hayes had shot his mother with a pistol and stolen money from dead soldiers on Civil War battlefields.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em>Thomas Adcock, a </em>Highbrow Magazine <em>contributor, is a journalist and author based in New York City.</em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/lying" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">lying</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/politicians-are-liars" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">politicians are liars</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/lying-america" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">lying in america</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/clare-booth-luce" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">clare booth luce</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/woody-allen" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Woody Allen</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/jim-morrison" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">jim morrison</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/mitt-romney" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mitt Romney</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/paul-ryan" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Paul Ryan</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Obama</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/bernie-madoff" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bernie Madoff</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/john-quincy-adams" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">john quincy adams</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/2012-elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">2012 elections</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Thomas Adcock</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 14:44:44 +0000 tara 1913 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1788-elections-2012-lollapalooza-lies#comments The Post-Colonial Presidency: Our Man Obama https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1780-post-colonial-presidency-our-man-obama <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Mon, 11/12/2012 - 08:39</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumObamaStateofUnion_1.jpg?itok=TQnIZD2A"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumObamaStateofUnion_1.jpg?itok=TQnIZD2A" width="480" height="320" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> From <a href="http://ethnoblog.newamericamedia.org/2012/11/the-post-colonial-presidency-our-man-obama.php">New America Media</a>:</p> <p>  </p> <p> As a refugee from Vietnam, a country colonized by the French and then fought over by the Americans and the Soviet Union, I see the Obama presidency as spelling the end of a 500-year-old colonial curse.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Decades ago, English still unruly on my tongue, I read a spin off of Daniel Defoe's <em>The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe</em>, but I read it not as most of my American peers did. I saw myself, on one level or another, as Friday, his servant.</p> <p>  </p> <p> A British sailor participating in the slave trade, Crusoe was shipwrecked off the coast of Venezuela. He was alone for some years but managed with his guns to rescue a native prisoner who was about to be eaten by his captors. He named him Man Friday, taught him English and converted him to Christianity. He taught Friday to call him "master."</p> <p>  </p> <p> James Joyce once noted that Defoe's sailor is the symbol of the imperial conquest, that "he is the true prototype of the British colonist. ... The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity."</p> <p>  </p> <p> Likewise, all of those who have been colonized and oppressed in the age of European expansionism are embodied in Friday. Indentured and "saved" by Crusoe, Friday becomes, over the centuries, a political symbol of racial injustice, of victims of colonization and imperialist expansion, of slavery. Friday was African, Native American, Asian, Latin American. And Friday was all the children born from miscegenation.</p> <p>  </p> <p> After all, when he was christened, when he called Crusoe "master," Friday essentially lost his autonomy and his past. When he was taught a new language, Friday lost his bearings and the articulation and the enchantment of his old tongue.</p> <p>  </p> <p> In the aftermath of the age of European conquest many went in search of identity - cultural, national, personal - but the legacy remained largely that of an inferiority complex, a kind of grievance trap nearly impossible for those previously subordinated by the west to escape.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The power structure is often stacked against them. Having been conquered and divided, in the aftermath, the previously colonized people are often ruled by distrust and disorganization. English is the global language of choice. From western style clothing to commerce to political dominance, history seems largely defined by the west. Species long known to natives are constantly "discovered" and given Latin and Greek names. Ancient settlements which had been inhabited for centuries have been destroyed, the ancient temples razed, and renamed with the names of Spaniard saints. Even the cosmos is crowded with Greek and Roman gods.</p> <p>  </p> <p> For a while, as a Vietnamese refugee to America, I grieved. Then I resigned myself to the idea that I was fated to live at the empire's outer edge, living in a world in which Friday's children were destined to play subservient roles and sidekicks. I knew this because I saw it on TV nightly. Friday became Tonto, Mammy, Pocahontas, Kato, and (play it again) Sam. I saw too, the complexity of my own Vietnamese past ignored or, worse yet, simplified and reduced to faceless figures in black pajamas and conical hats, to serve as props or to be gunned down by American GIs, the wielders of history.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumobamacampaigntrail%20%28StefRich%29_1.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 400px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> Indeed, Defoe's narrative has become institutionalized and, in many ways, it continues to serve as the core premise of western culture. Growing up in it as an outsider, the story I internalized was that the supremacy of Crusoe's children was unquestioned. It wasn't a conscious narrative, but it nevertheless became in time a cynicism, and a given -- that no matter how well you perform and how smart you are, you are not to be in the center, in the place of real power.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Five hundred years after European conquest began, the glory of Crusoe continues to play out. <em>The Swiss Robinson Family</em>, and <em>Robinson Crusoe on Mars</em> and dozens more movies were direct spin offs but its mythos provides the backbone for tv shows like Star Trek, where the captain is white and his crew are ethnic and aliens, and contemporary films like <em>Men in Black</em>, <em>Jerry McGuire</em>, <em>Pulp Fiction</em>, and Lethal <em>Weapon</em>, just to name very few. In them the ethnic sidekicks help make the main character who he is, reinforcing his centrality.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The white man leads, the minority character follows - For such is the shape of the culture and the unwritten rule taught subliminally not so long ago, a fiction that practically everyone believed in as fact.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Who knows then when the story began to shift?</p> <p>  </p> <p> Perhaps the resistant narratives were always there all along, hidden in the blues sung by slaves toiling in the fields, existing in pockets in the various regions and with various peoples waiting to form a chorus, waiting for a right conductor to come along, for the right moment to form a new symphony.</p> <p>  </p> <p> It may very well have begun with Frederick Douglass. Lewis Hyde, in his seminal work, "Trickster Makes This World," regards Douglass as a kind of trickster - like Hermes or Loki or Eshu- who learned to reallocate power, a "cunning go-between ... thief of reapportionment who quit the periphery and moved to the center." Born a slave in Maryland in 1818 to white father and black mother, he learned the alphabet from his master's wife. He stole books. He learned how to read and write. He taught others. He became an abolitionist, editor, a suffragist, author, and the first African American nominated vice president in 1872 on the Equal Rights Party ticket with Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President of the United States.</p> <p>  </p> <p> But what did Douglass actually steal? The language of the masters. Eloquence. He mastered it. He spoke up. He thereby crossed the color lines, the demarcations which he was not supposed to cross. He wrote autobiographies - <em>Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,</em> <em>My Bondage and My Freedom</em> and <em>Life and Times of Frederick Douglass</em> - and, according to Hyde, his stories challenged and broke "the rule of silence and contest the white world' fiction about slavery," and his articulation in turn liberated him and others.</p> <p>  </p> <p> For this is the way the new power lies: Those who once dwelled at the margins of the Commonwealth have appropriated the language of their colonial masters and used it with great degree of articulation as they inch toward the center, crossing all kinds of demarcations, dispelling the old myth. If Crusoe contends that he still is the lead actor, Friday is far from being content to playing subservient and sidekick any longer.</p> <p>  </p> <p> That old superior-inferior fiction is further supplanted and eroded by the way history flows. Major cities have become highly diverse, and demographer point to the inevitable: by the year of 2050 whites will become a minority, just like the rest.</p> <p>  </p> <p> It was Defoe's conceit in his novel - published in 1719 and considered by many as the first novel written in English- that the 'savage' can only be redeemed by assimilation into Crusoe's culture and religion. It was beyond his power of imagination, however, to see how much Friday, in time, could radically change Crusoe, and that the world of Crusoe's is forever altered for having absorbed Friday.</p> <p>  </p> <p> But on November 4, 2008, Friday spoke up loud and clear and eloquently, and declared himself an equal. And his voice is reaffirmed on November 6, 2012. He tells us to dare to dream big, for change has already come and the world forever changed. He tells us to dare to dream big, even this once considered impossible dream: Son of Africa becomes the new patriarch of America.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The old curse ends. Some internalized threshold for previously subjugated people is breached. A child of any race in America now has a fighting chance. Those dwelling at the margins can see a path toward the center, crossing all kinds of demarcations. He knows now it's within his powers to articulate and reshape his new world, regardless the color of his skin, and to have the audacity to play central character of the script of his own making.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em>New America Media editor, Andrew Lam is the author of </em>"Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora" <em>(Heyday Books, 2005), which recently won a Pen American "Beyond the Margins" award and</em> "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres,” <em>from which  the above essay was excepted and revised. His next book, </em>"Birds of Paradise Lost" <em>is due out in 2013. He has lectured widely at many institutions and universities.</em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/president-obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">President Obama</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/2012-elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">2012 elections</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/2008-elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">2008 elections</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/african-american-president" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">african american president</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/colonialism" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">colonialism</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/barack-obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Barack Obama</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Andrew Lam</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Mon, 12 Nov 2012 13:39:05 +0000 tara 1900 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1780-post-colonial-presidency-our-man-obama#comments President Obama Wins a Second Term https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1770-president-obama-wins-second-term <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Wed, 11/07/2012 - 07:29</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumobamavictory%20%28NAM%29.jpg?itok=eAPBPKmJ"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumobamavictory%20%28NAM%29.jpg?itok=eAPBPKmJ" width="480" height="238" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> From <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/11/obamas-win-a-tipping-point-in-history.php">New America Media</a> and <a href="http://www.theroot.com/views/obama-wins-inflection-point?wpisrc=root_lightbox">The Root</a>:</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Commentary</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> For a year I have been telling people that the 2012 presidential contest is far more important than the 2008 election. Yes, in 2008 America elected its first African-American president in Barack Obama. This was a profoundly historic achievement no matter how you figure it. But that outcome, to borrow some apt social science jargon, was over-determined.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Say what? Here's why: George W. Bush was a lame duck incumbent in 2008. No matter what, he was out. The sense was endemic that Bush's was a failed presidency, involving a deeply polarized nation, two misguided wars, the massive incompetence and indifference seen in Katrina and an imploding economy. In such a context, a Democrat, any Democrat, was expected to win.</p> <p>  </p> <p> And, indeed, virtually all of the arid econometric models that forecast elections predicted a Democratic victory, with roughly 53 percent of the popular vote. This is exactly what Obama got -- even as an African American claiming a major party nomination for the first time in the history of the nation.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Why does 2012 matter more? This election is about who controls the terms of an unfolding future. Bush and Republicans were out of power with certainty in 2008. Republicans committed themselves to making Obama a one-term president, partly on the premise that his success was merely a reaction against Bush's particular failures, not a repudiation of the Republican agenda or, at a deeper level, of the ideas and people who would drive the direction of American politics. The outcome of the 2012 election is about telling them they're wrong.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>A New Direction</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> The future of America is not simply about the agenda of fundamentalist Christians, or antigovernment zealots or affluent, older white men. This election was about an America that is increasingly diverse. It was about an America that is increasingly made up of people of color, especially Latinos. It was about an America that is tired of taxes and economic policies that favor bankers and the very wealthy, as opposed to the middle and working classes and Main Street America. It was about an America that respects the rights of homosexuals and the bodies of women, as well as the right of women to control their own bodies.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Let's be honest, Republicans ran a campaign of retrenchment. The party, despite an effort by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to claim more moderate positions in the final days of the campaign, ran on the most backward-looking party platform in some time. The party of Romney chose to favor the powerful and privileged, inequality and intolerance, whether the issue was the undocumented among us and how to deal with immigration; abortion and women's rights; the rights of homosexuals; or whether our tax code should continue to privilege the rich and powerful or call for them to carry a greater share of the tax burden.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumobamademocrat%20%28NAM%29.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 335px; " /></p> <p>  </p> <p> This election, therefore, is an inflection point. It is the consolidation, first and foremost, of a multiracial progressive Obama coalition that is now the dominant electoral force in American national politics. Republicans will never again, so long as their policy agenda remains as it is, command a winning national coalition. Too many fundamental social trends run against it. A mix of more progressive white voters, especially white women, African Americans, Latinos, Asians and other people of color, now sets the national agenda.</p> <p>  </p> <p> This is why the Karl Roves, the Grover Norquists and the lunatic Donald Trumps of American politics are apoplectic in rage and disbelief. They do not want to accept that the basic makeup of the electorate does not and will not again sustain their agenda and their claims to power. People who have different outlooks and who look different from them are now going to set America's policy agenda. And that is a good thing.</p> <p>  </p> <p> It is an inflection point because the demographic trends that disadvantaged the Republicans are clear and not changing, and because of the broad dimensions of the Obama victory. Obama carried most of the coveted and hotly contested "swing" states. He did far better in states like Florida and North Carolina than anyone expected. Meanwhile, in Congress, Republican Scott Brown went down in defeat against Elizabeth Warren, one of the most unambiguously liberal voices to seek a U.S. Senate seat in years.</p> <p>  </p> <p> It is inflection point in the arc of history because an African-American president was re-elected even though unemployment was at nearly 8 percent, and Republicans threw absolutely everything at him it was possible to throw, from "You lie!" to their vow to make him "a one-term president," to driving the nation to the brink of financial insolvency rather than negotiating in good faith over the national debt. Most importantly, in terms of the economy, it is difficult to imagine a set of economic circumstances more favorable for a Republican challenger. And yet they lost, and lost convincingly. Obama and the Democrats are now firmly in charge, despite Republicans' edge in the U.S. House of Representatives.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Changing Values</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> This election was not about Hurricane Sandy. It was not about birth certificates. It was not about who believed most in America.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The 2012 presidential election was about the direction of social policy across a whole host of critical issues: the economy, taxes, education, health care, the rights of women, the standing of immigrants, etc. It was a choice between trying to hold desperately on to a past that is clearly gone or moving confidently into an uncertain future that we all know, in our hearts of hearts, is the destiny of a great, but changing, nation. It was a vote in favor of Barack Obama and what he has been trying to do for four years. It was a vote, as President Obama put it, that gives new meaning to "the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on Earth."</p> <p>  </p> <p> Give Mitt Romney credit. In the end, his concession speech was gracious and high-minded. As he said, no doubt to the chagrin of many ideologues in his own party, "This election is over." And he rightly called for an effort to "reach across the aisle to do the people's work."</p> <p>  </p> <p> This moment will also be an inflection point in terms of race relations, quite frankly. I say this not because Obama will suddenly pursue an agenda more openly advancing the concerns of black Americans in particular. No. Obama has proven that a black man can rise to the most extraordinary challenges our political process can put before a president and convince a clear majority of the American people to continue to stand with him. This success at being re-elected means far more for deep, transformative change in race in American culture than his 2008 victory, though, of course, 2012 would not be possible without 2008.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Many of us -- everyone I know -- have been anxious and worried for weeks on end. I stopped watching the news and listening to the radio two weeks ago. That's how nervous I've been. Thankfully, as President Obama put it in his victory speech: "A long campaign is now over." History just took a decisive turn, I believe. The full meaning and breadth of that turn will depend on continuing the work this electoral outcome symbolizes.</p> <p>  </p> <p> America is, decisively, headed forward, not back. And that is a very good thing indeed.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em>Lawrence D. Bobo is the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University.</em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/president-obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">President Obama</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/obama-wins-second-term" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Obama wins second term</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/mitt-romney" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mitt Romney</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/democrats" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Democrats</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/us-economy" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">u.s. economy</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/obama-victory" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Obama victory</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">elections</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/2012-elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">2012 elections</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Lawrence D. Bobo</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Wed, 07 Nov 2012 12:29:06 +0000 tara 1878 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1770-president-obama-wins-second-term#comments College Students Expected to Vote in Record Numbers https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1768-college-students-expected-vote-record-numbers <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Tue, 11/06/2012 - 14:40</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumvotebuttons_0.jpg?itok=EHd5TD0n"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumvotebuttons_0.jpg?itok=EHd5TD0n" width="480" height="269" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> From <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/11/voter-turnout-expected-to-rise-among-students.php">New America Media</a> and <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/11/voter-turnout-expected-to-rise-among-students.php">Asian Journal</a>:</p> <p>  </p> <p> LOS ANGELES – It is predicted that voter turnout among young people, especially college students, will be higher than before.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Political activism has been gradually rising among students, since the 2004 election between Bush and Kerry. The most recent election in 2008 resulted in a 2.1 percent increase of student voters (51.1 percent of Americans between ages 18 and 29).</p> <p>  </p> <p> Although the exact figures are still unknown, it is expected that more and more students will get involved this year; at least, at a level which is higher than average.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Likely voters</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> Overall, college attendance is highly correlated with voter participation. Since 1984, it has been confirmed that college graduates and enrolled students, and even those who have attended some college, are more likely to vote than young people who have never attended college.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Several reports conducted by the Center for Information &amp; Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) have concluded that among these students, roughly 32 percent of 18 to 25-year-olds are members of a political party.</p> <p>  </p> <p> 25 percent of these are women, and 14 percent are men. It is also recently estimated that young women are more politically active these days, than their male counterparts.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Forms of electoral participation for young people include voting in elections, volunteering for political campaigns or candidates, lobbying and persuading, displaying public campaign buttons or signs, and working/donating to candidates, political parties, or candidate-supported organizations—all of which students are encouraged to take part in, to help make a difference in our nation.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Reasons for doubt</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> On the other hand, there are still many reasons to doubt voter turnout among the youth.</p> <p>  </p> <p> A report done by Professor Richard Niemi of the University of Rochester and Professor Michael J. Hanmer of the University of Maryland at College Park looked at demographic research from four-year undergraduate students all over the country.</p> <p>  </p> <p> They concluded that demographics by race, class, gender, or even political involvement weren’t actually relevant.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Instead, college-specific reasons (like voter registration laws) and the same motivational factors that affect older voters are what make political participation the way it is.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumobamaandromney%20%28NAM%29_3.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 335px; " /></p> <p>  </p> <p> A general interest in politics and in the presidential election can also be psychological. For students, being a part of a college community grants them free access to all kinds of information about politics, whether in student-run organizations, political science classes, or even extra-curricular activities. Hundreds of colleges and universities nationwide provide plenty of opportunities to get students more involved, no matter what their beliefs.</p> <p>  </p> <p> At Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, for instance, programs like Rock the Vote and multiple proposition debates are offered to educate students and give them the opportunity to choose what they think would be best for them. However, overall feelings about parties and candidates are likely to vary largely across students, which contribute to student turnout rates. If students are confused or unsure, they are less likely to vote—because they are “too wrapped up” to even care.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “College students are in the process of forming their identities, doing so in a unique social and political environment, are a growing share of the population, and are expected to become the core of the voting public,” Hanmer and Niemi wrote in Voter Turnout Among College Students: New Data and a Rethinking of Traditional Theories.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Reaching out to the youth via social media</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> To make students more politically aware and secure their votes, recent presidential campaigns have tried reaching out to young people through social networking. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have all become crucial platforms for public outreach.</p> <p>  </p> <p> President Barack Obama’s Twitter, for instance, has been geared toward the youth. He frequently tweets motivational quotes and updates related to lowering student debt, college costs, and the post-grad job market.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Gov. Mitt Romney has also used social networks to try and appeal to young voters. However, it is recently estimated that the media has been “sinking” his campaign.</p> <p>  </p> <p> According to DigitalTrends.com, the Romney campaign has been using social media for more “negative” comments, rather than focusing on the election itself. “The act of using social media to connect is what eludes Romney: He doesn’t exactly seem like a personable guy, and his attempts at humanizing himself using the social web sound just as measured and calculated, and occasionally awkward as everything else he does,” said writer Molly McHugh.</p> <p>  </p> <p> She does admit to Romney’s aptitude in terms of campaign speech and promises. “Students should get as much education as they can afford,” said Romney on the topic of schooling.</p> <p>  </p> <p> While social networking sites are important channels for youth outreach, they also tend to turn the election into a “popularity contest” rather than an important day for our nation.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Therefore, although the turnout rates are rising, the overall motivation seems to be lacking. Young people need to realize that their votes can affect their future. For college students specifically, the choice for who will occupy the Oval Office in the next four years could have a huge impact on student loan policy and lowering the debt.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <em>(Allyson Escobar, with reports from CIRCLE, Twin Cities Media Alliance and USA Today)</em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/11/voter-turnout-expected-to-rise-among-students.php">New America Media</a></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">elections</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/president-obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">President Obama</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/mitt-romney" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mitt Romney</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/college-students" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">college students</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/students-voting" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">students voting</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/voters" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">voters</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/2012-elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">2012 elections</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/democrats" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Democrats</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/republicans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Republicans</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Allyson Escobar</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:40:59 +0000 tara 1874 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1768-college-students-expected-vote-record-numbers#comments Issues Drive Media Endorsements for Obama https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1764-issues-drive-media-endorsements-obama <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Mon, 11/05/2012 - 16:04</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumobamademocrat%20%28NAM%29.jpg?itok=z7uQlllA"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumobamademocrat%20%28NAM%29.jpg?itok=z7uQlllA" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> From <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/11/issues-not-race-drive-ethnic-media-endorsements-for-obama.php">New America Media</a>:</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>EDITOR’S NOTE</strong>: <em>New America Media surveyed some of the nation’s leading ethnic media outlets and editors to see who, if anyone, they are endorsing in the 2012 presidential election. What NAM discovered is continued strong support for the incumbent. Much more interesting, however, are the reasons the media gave for their endorsement. </em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <em>Following are excerpts of endorsements taken from a variety of Latino, Black and Asian media, with links to the complete articles and programs, where possible.</em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Vida en el Valle: “Obama deserves 4 more years” </strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> The President has shown real political backbone when it came to dealing with this nation's worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; to hunting down and killing Osama bin Laden; to ending the war in Iraq and starting to bring back our troops from Afghanistan; and to passing healthcare reform, among other achievements. That he accomplished all of these despite the Republican obstructionists is a big credit to his role as a leader.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Job creation is on the increase, the mortgage mess is stabilizing, and the stock market has rebounded to pre-2008 meltdown levels.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Gov. Mitt Romney’s… stances on various issues have been all over the map, in his quest to paint himself as a "moderate." It is too risky to wait until he is in the White House to know what the Republican presidential candidate would do with immigration reform, relations in the Middle East, or economic stability.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Obama will need to lobby the American people to get a stubborn Republican Party to contribute to solving issues like immigration reform, continued economic recovery, and the implementation of healthcare reform.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Eastern Group Publications: “Obama for President”</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> Medicare we believe is safe, as is Social Security, with a Democrat as president.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Probably one of the most important tasks the president will have to decide on will be the appointment of two and perhaps even three new Supreme Court Justices. We feel that there needs to be more balance on a Court that in recent years has moved far to the right on matters of corporate responsibility and rights for workers and women. We believe Obama’s appointments (to the Supreme Court) will be more centrist.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>La Opinion: "There is no clearer choice for Hispanic voters than to re-elect President Barack Obama" </strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> In the face of fierce opposition, the President managed to pass a healthcare bill that will extend benefits to many in our community. The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, adds 9 million Latinos currently without coverage to the health care rolls – a life-saving boost for a community that suffers the highest uninsured rates in the country. The very idea of repealing this law, which Romney proposed, is nonsense.</p> <p>  </p> <p> On health care, there is also a big difference between both candidates when it comes to women's reproductive health. With Romney, women are at risk of losing access to important services in employer-provided health insurance, like the option to make decisions about their bodies and health.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The President recognizes the needs of our community and the brilliance of our sons and daughters. His historic appointment of Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is the brightest example of this. Left up to Romney, Justice Sotomayor would not be sitting on the Supreme Court. The Republican candidate has said that given the chance, he would have voted against her nomination.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The blunt reality is that Romney has not worked to gain the trust of Latinos.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>La Voz del Pueblo: “Being Republican is synonymous with being anti-Hispanic.”</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> <em>Ed. Note: Fernando Sergio, host of Denver's La Voz del Pueblo radio program on Que Bueno 1280 AM, has endorsed President Obama. The excerpt below was taken from a column he wrote for Viva Colorado:</em></p> <p>  </p> <p> Romney simply can't connect with the average voter, and even less with the Hispanic voter. Eight years ago George W. Bush conquered 44 percent of the Latino vote and Republicans spoke of a new national majority, but their optimism was a myth. Hard to believe, but a few years later the GOP and its stubbornness has led to a profound disappointment in our community. Now being Republican is synonymous with being anti-Hispanic.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Everything points to a comfortable victory for President Obama in the Hispanic community; almost 70 percent of Latino voters support him. Let it be clear that no one here is talking about idolizing Obama; the failure of many of his promises have caused a lot of disappointment. But Romney, followed by [Arizona Republican Gov. Jan] Brewer, [Arizona immigration law SB 1070 author Kris] Kobach and [Maricopa County Sheriff Joe] Arpaio, represents an unthinkable nightmare.</p> <p>  </p> <p> There is one guilty party, and his name is Mitt Romney, who, in seeking to win at</p> <p> all costs has reached extremes that have caused a sharp rejection by Latino voters.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Beirut</strong><strong> Times: “Obama’s economic plan will get 1.5 million more people working”</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> <em>Ed. Note: In an emailed response, Beirut Times Editor Mona Smith told NAM that her paper will be endorsing President Obama for his economic plan.</em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <em>Beirut Times</em> will endorse President Barack Obama because according to the Economic Policy Institute, the Romney-Ryan economic plan would cost Americans a net 4.1 million jobs. On the other hand, Obama’s plan to continue the stimulus will get 1.5 million more people working.</p> <p>  </p> <p> All those people who are going back to work will have more cash to spend, which means they’ll further boost the economy. Obama will reduce taxes on the middle class, while increasing them on the wealthiest Americans, who use the infrastructure disproportionately and can well afford to pay for it.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Last but not the least, he chose his main opponent, Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State -- she has been a strong voice in support of women, children and democracy throughout the world.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumobamaclinton.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 335px; " /></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Sing Tao: “President Obama‘s plan could grow the economy in the next four years.”</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> <em>Ed. Note: In a phone interview, Sing Tao Editor-in-Chief Joseph Leung told NAM that the daily newspaper’s editorial board is endorsing President Obama</em>.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Many voters…blame [Obama] for the weak economy, but our editorial board thinks the problem is not only [the fault of] the Obama administration, but also the Bush administration.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Our team wants to endorse a candidate who offers a clear vision for solving the country’s problems. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has changed his agenda on tax plans to please voters in order to get more votes. During a GOP debate in Arizona in February, Romney said, “We're going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent.” However, during the first presidential debate, Romney said that he would “absolutely not” support a plan that cuts taxes on the wealthy.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Romney said he would label China a currency manipulator on his first day in office. He also said that a cheap Chinese Yuan matters, because it gives China a competitive advantage, making it easier for Chinese manufacturers to sell their exports inexpensively. However, Romney himself has long invested in China and put millions into Chinese firms.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>New Pittsburgh Courier: “Obama is fighting for the middle-class…where the vast majority of Black people are”</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> There’s a clear difference between President Obama and Mitt Romney. Obama is fighting for the middle-class, and low-income citizens, where the vast majority of Black people are, whereas Romney believes in the top down theory.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Boosting the economy for the middle-class, which will lead to more jobs is Obama’s top priority. As proven in the Clinton administration, when the middle-class grows so do the minority communities. There were more Blacks and other minorities and women who moved into the middle-class than in any other time in history.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Obama is working on getting more innovative  and creative new manufacturing jobs instead of the Romney method of buying up companies for profits then outsourcing the jobs.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Romney …will increase military spending which will take funds from the social programs Blacks so desperately need and you don’t spend more on something unless you plan to use it.</p> <p>  </p> <p> One of those cuts most likely will be education, which would be devastating to the Black community. Obama understands the importance of education to the growth of this country and how every child should have access to it, K-12, college and trade schools, regardless of income, whereas Romney lives in a different world. He says students should borrow from their parents. That’s great if your parents are rich, but most middle-class parents simply don’t have it.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Cleveland</strong><strong>’s Call &amp; Post: “We believe this president [Obama] is cut from an entirely different cloth”</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> In the wake of a severe storm that paralyzed many of our eastern states in the blink of an eye, President Barack Obama is on the case with all the federal resources that he can muster and at the same damn time, he’s working hand-in-hand with governors of the affected states. While we can’t help but to recall the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and the ineptness that President George W. Bush displayed – costing lives and affecting the displacement of a myriad of Gulf Coast residents (many of whom are still disenfranchised) – on the other hand, we believe this president is cut from an entirely different cloth.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Time and again, President Obama has faced down circumstances both critical in national magnitude and world-changing in tone and timbre. Need we add that President Obama has been able to redirect our nation from the brink of collapse despite a GOP-led U.S. Senate of obstructionists? Too late, we already did. But, we must also say shame on a political party who has collectively decided to go against whatever the president is for, even if some of the things he’s for are things they too had been for – and all of this for a one-term agenda to defeat an Obama re-election. In a world of swindlers it’s what they call among grifters, a “long con.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <em>Read more at: <a href="http://www.callandpost.com/index.php/news/politics/2983-the-call-a-post-endorses-president-barack-obama-for-re-election">http://www.callandpost.com/index.php/news/politics/2983-the-call-a-post-...</a></em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>The Washington Afro American: “His healthcare reform was the signature accomplishment of his administration” </strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> President Barack Obama is running for a second term on the strength of his health care reform, his foreign policy initiatives, job creation, the auto industry bailout, banking industry reform and passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Among many African Americans, his healthcare reform was the signature accomplishment of his administration—providing care at a lower cost; allowing children to remain covered on their parents’ insurance plans up to the age of 26, and covering people with preexisting conditions.</p> <p>  </p> <p> We are not surprised that Obama hasn’t fulfilled a number of his 2008 promises. The mountain of uncooperative, disrespectful—at times insulting-- tactics, schemes etc., he has been subjected to, almost since the inception of his term, exceeds anything any other President in recent memory has had to endure.</p> <p>  </p> <p> We recognize that once re-elected, this environment will not likely change—at least immediately. However, we believe that a second term itself will be a mandate that it is his vision and actions the American people support as opposed to those championed by the intractable conservative Republican blockade currently in Congress.</p> <p>  </p> <p> While Obama has been criticized by some African Americans for not moving faster to address our concerns—the staggering 14 percent Black unemployment rate, to name one—we believe him to be more sensitive to these issues. We realize that in spite of his hands being congressionally tied in addressing our community’s specific issues, Obama nevertheless represents a far better chance for these concerns to be addressed then would be the case were Britt Romney our President.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/11/issues-not-race-drive-ethnic-media-endorsements-for-obama.php">New America Media</a></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/president-obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">President Obama</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/endorsing-obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">endorsing obama</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/ethnic-media" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ethnic media</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/media-endorsements-obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">media endorsements of obama</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">elections</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/2012-elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">2012 elections</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">NAM Staff</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:04:27 +0000 tara 1866 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1764-issues-drive-media-endorsements-obama#comments Disturbing Rise in Hate Group Activities as Elections Near https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1750-disturbing-rise-hate-group-activities-elections-near <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Wed, 10/31/2012 - 16:30</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumhategoupsarticle%20%28RobertThivierge%20Wiki%29.jpg?itok=zU3AudTs"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumhategoupsarticle%20%28RobertThivierge%20Wiki%29.jpg?itok=zU3AudTs" width="480" height="326" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> From <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/10/hate-groups-preparing-for-an-obama-win.php">New America Media</a> and <a href="http://www.theroot.com/print/67316">The Root</a>:</p> <p>  </p> <p>  </p> <p> When retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson denounced the Republican Party as "full of racists" in a recent interview, he ignited a firestorm. Though the comments were not the first time the Republican Party had been accused of being the chosen party for those harboring racist tendencies, it did mark one of the first times a high-profile Republican made such a stinging accusation.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Wilkerson made the remarks while defending his former boss and fellow Republican, former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell's endorsement of Democratic President Barack Obama led some Republicans, among them Romney campaign surrogate John Sununu, to speculate that Powell's presidential choice was motivated by race. While these developments led to fresh allegations that the Republican Party is the party of racists, there has been little coverage of the activity of actual, self-identified racists this election cycle, specifically those within the white supremacist movement.</p> <p>  </p> <p> In an interview with The Root, Mark Potok, one of the country's leading experts on hate groups, said that the day after President Obama was elected there were so many new people expressing interest in white supremacist groups that websites for some of those groups actually crashed. Among the groups mentioned by Potok, who serves as director of publications at the Southern Poverty Law Center, were Stormfront, a popular online message board for the white supremacist movement, and the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), which has been called "the white-collar Klan."</p> <p>  </p> <p> A <strong>White Supremacist Weighs In</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> Founded by Gordon Baum in 1985, the CCC is considered by many to be the ideological heir apparent to the White Citizens Council, a group that became notorious at the height of the civil rights movement for being the upper-class alternative to the Ku Klux Klan. Instead of burning crosses on lawns, the White Citizens Council employed tactics such as printing the names of NAACP members in newspapers, as well as paying the legal bills for Byron De La Beckwith, who assassinated NAACP worker Medgar Evers.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Baum, a former organizer for the White Citizens Council, launched the CCC by relying on old White Citizens Council membership lists. Among the Council's core principles as of 2012: opposition to illegal immigration, homosexuality and opposing "all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote nonwhite races over the European-American people through so-called 'affirmative action' and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races."</p> <p>  </p> <p> Speaking to The Root, Baum said that the Council of Conservative Citizens does not consider itself a political group. "Normally we just try to get our people out to vote. We don't try to dictate to them who to vote for." The Council has a highly publicized and controversial political history. In 1998 the Washington Post revealed that Republican Sen. Trent Lott and other conservative Southern politicians had spoken at CCC events. One of Lott's relatives claimed Lott had even been a member. Current Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker is alleged to have attended a group event in 2000. After public scrutiny most politicians renounced the organization's openly racist ideology. But according to Baum, while publicly politicians no longer embrace the group, privately plenty maintain ties to it.</p> <p>  </p> <p> "We have political speakers all the time at the local level and national," including federal officials, he claimed. When asked for specific names, he declined, saying that after the unflattering coverage Lott and others received for ties to the group he will never divulge the name of political supporters without explicit approval from them.</p> <p>  </p> <p> When asked if there is a particular political affiliation common among the group's political supporters Baum replied, "Most of them are probably Republicans. Not all, but most, because they tend to be more conservative." Though Baum declined to discuss current membership numbers, he did say that the group, which once had a roster of 15,000 members, currently has members "in every state of the union and 12 foreign countries."</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumObamaNAM_3.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 335px; " /></p> <p>  </p> <p> Baum stressed that while the group doesn't endorse candidates, it does strive to keep members politically informed and engaged through its newsletter and conducting polls. Its most recent poll on the presidential election was conducted this summer, although he said the results would not be made public until after the election. He did, however, say the winner "was overwhelmingly Romney." The results of the organization's poll may not have been particularly surprising, but Baum's election prediction was. After decrying President Obama as "the worst president of my lifetime," Baum said, "I hope you got a good job because we got Obama four more years."</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>The Specter of a Meltdown</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> According to Potok, Baum is not alone in this sense of resignation within the white supremacist movement. Potok said that "there is surprising little activity from Klan, etc." The number of white supremacist groups ballooned from 600 in 2000 to more than 1,000 last year, but his sense is that "What we're seeing is a kind of meltdown as they contemplate four more years under the hated black president." Potok recalled that as soon as President Obama first received the Democratic Party nomination, there was a skinhead plot to murder him, and other white separatists have been arrested for similar plots since his election. But while the activity of some hate groups may appear to have mellowed in this election cycle, their rhetoric has not.</p> <p>  </p> <p> In a recent TV segment for Nightline, Steven Howard, a grand wizard for the Ku Klux Klan, attempted to rev up his fellow Klansmen by chanting, "Barack Obama does not care about us, he does not care about America." He later said, matter-of-factly, that if President Obama is re-elected there will be a race war, and white Americans will be in danger of being placed in concentration camps.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Stormfront, the online community for white supremacists, which netted 2,000 new members the day after President Obama's election, makes the president and the presidential election a staple of its discussions. After news emerged that Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan once dn, the Stormfront message boards were filled with comments like this:</p> <p>  </p> <p> “We do well to be disgusted and outraged that he would do that at one time, but at some point, we have to get real: He has a beautiful White family now, but that's not even the real point. The biggest issue is Obama and the supreme court and other things Obama's done/will do if given half a chance; and then there's the disgrace of having a black man in the White house … As I've said before regarding Romney/Ryan camp: they may be useless to us, but Obama is a positive and determined threat … Obama will stack the Supreme Court with his anti-White cronies. Look what he has already done: A hispanic who hates Whites, and a jew who is a raving liberal.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> and this:</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Once again, the right-wing is totally unprepared to field a viable pro-White or even mainstream right-wing candidate to oppose the two-party candidates. Are we supposed to allow the mulatto Obama to stay in the White House and thereby encourage millions of White women to think that 'Black men are OK and race-mixing is OK'? I'd at least like to win the consolation prize and vote the Black monkey out of the White House so that he's branded a one-term-president and quota-hire failure. Hopefully, race-mixing will drop in popularity as a result.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumromneyandryan%20%28NAM%29.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 335px; " /></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Fear of an African-American President, 2.0</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> It is easy to dismiss inflammatory language as disconcerting but essentially harmless, but the connection between racist rhetoric and actual violence cannot be dismissed entirely. After hailing Steven Bowers, the late Klansman credited with masterminding the murders of three civil rights workers as "the greatest Klansmen that ever lived," Klansman Steven Howard told Nightline's Cynthia McFadden he "doesn't endorse murder." But when pressed, he declined to disavow violence altogether.</p> <p>  </p> <p> He and his fellow Klansmen refer to a looming race war that will be expedited by President Obama's re-election as "the storm." According to Howard, the only way to avoid such conflict is to divide up the United States of America by race. For anyone unwilling to cooperate, particularly Jews and blacks unwilling to relocate from the South, Howard says, "If they will not peacefully then the only way is through violence."</p> <p>  </p> <p> This may be just heated rhetoric, but new data indicates that an increasing appetite for race-based violence is on the rise. A report just released by the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations (LACCHR) found that hate crimes in that county "reflecting white supremacist ideology rose from being 18 to 21 percent of all hate crimes," between 2010 and 2011 (although noting that hates crimes overall there were at their lowest rate in 22 years).</p> <p>  </p> <p> The Southern Poverty Law Center has also observed that violent rhetoric spurred by Obama's potential re-election has become more common among what are referred to as "Patriot" hate groups. These groups hate the black president, fear his re-election but also have strong antigovernment feelings. "They're looking at four more years under a very hated black president -- hated by them. So, we're seeing signs of real anger over that. People saying we're at war already, saying go out and buy AK-47s and hollow-point bullets, get tools to derail trains," Mark Potok told the Raw Story earlier this year.</p> <p> These developments raise the disturbing possibility that while hate groups appear to be doing less this election cycle, they could actually be preparing to do more should the president be re-elected.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Immigration Issues</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> It is easy to assume that white supremacists fear the Obama presidency mainly because of the president's race, but Baum noted that according to their polling data, immigration remains a signature issue for CCC members, one that has increasingly turned them against Democrats. On Stormfront message boards, fear that the president is pro-Latino, and particularly pro-immigrant, is rampant. Potok noted that Obama really represents not just a black or "mulatto" man to many of these groups, but a symbol of a new "multicultural America." (Months ago census data confirmed that for the first year ever, white babies were not the majority of those born.)</p> <p>  </p> <p> If what Potok observed is true, then it's possible that whatever anger these groups feel toward President Obama is small compared to the rage they may feel toward candidates in both parties four years from now. Republicans such as Jeb Bush have predicted that Latinos will soon decide presidential elections, which means both major party nominees are likely to temper language on issues like immigration to woo Latino voters. When this happens, white supremacists may find themselves without any viable mainstream political options.</p> <p>  </p> <p> But for now, they are hoping for their best-case scenario and preparing for what they view as the worst: four more years of Barack Obama in the White House.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em><strong>Keli Goff is a political correspondent for The Root.</strong></em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/10/hate-groups-preparing-for-an-obama-win.php">New America Media</a></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/2012-elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">2012 elections</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/presidential-elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">presidential elections</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Obama</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/mitt-romney" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mitt Romney</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/white-supremacists" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">white supremacists</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/racists" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">racists</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/hate-groups" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">hate groups</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/hate-crimes" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">hate crimes</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/right-wing" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">right wing</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/republicans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Republicans</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/democrats" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Democrats</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/immigration" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">immigration</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Keli Goff</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Robert Thivierge, Wikipedia Commons</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Wed, 31 Oct 2012 20:30:57 +0000 tara 1837 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1750-disturbing-rise-hate-group-activities-elections-near#comments Team Romney is Struggling to Connect with Latinos https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1724-team-romney-struggling-connect-latinos <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Wed, 10/24/2012 - 19:16</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumromneynorfolk%20%28PBSNewshour%29_1.jpg?itok=jNiel8eR"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumromneynorfolk%20%28PBSNewshour%29_1.jpg?itok=jNiel8eR" width="480" height="320" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> From <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/10/team-romney-struggling-to-connect-with-nevadas-latinos.php">New America Media</a> and <a href="http://www.theworld.org/2012/10/team-romney-struggling-to-connect-with-nevadas-latinos/">PRI’s the World</a>:</p> <p>  </p> <p> LAS VEGAS--Drive a few miles northeast from the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, and you’ll reach the Latino parts of Sin City. This is an area of Vegas most visitors don’t see – grocery stores, dry cleaners and playgrounds. And now, sandwiched between stores at a strip mall: A Team Romney campaign office.</p> <p>  </p> <p> I stopped by to see the operation. A few people were milling about. The staffers were welcoming, but they needed clearance to speak with me; standard procedure for a political campaign. They suggested I come back the next day.</p> <p>  </p> <p> I left and spent some time in the neighborhood. I didn’t meet many people who knew about the new Romney campaign office.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “I’m surprised they’re opening it right now,” said Blanca Gamez. “The campaign is about to finish in less than a month, and now you’re in such desperate need to open an office, it’s ridiculous to me.”</p> <p> A poll released earlier this month reflects this attitude: 78 percent of Nevada’s Latinos favor Obama, while 17 percent prefer Romney. Overall, the state is 27 percent Latino according to the U.S. Census Bureau.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Latinos make up 17 percent of Nevada’s eligible voters. Fernando Romero, a board member with the local group Hispanics in Politics, the state’s oldest Latino political organization, said Latinos heavily favor Obama, in large part, because of all of the anti-immigrant rhetoric from Republican candidates during the primary debates.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Every single one of them mentioned and brought up the subject of immigration, and it was harsh, it was cruel,” he said. “How can that not energize a community?”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Romero said it’s commendable that the Romney campaign is now opening an office in the heart of what he calls the barrio. But he says Romney won’t connect with Latinos until he and his surrogates actually come talk to them on their turf.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “He’s 100 percent right,” said Dan Burdish, past executive director of the Nevada Republican Party. “If you’re going to work for the Latino vote, you need to go to the Latinos.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Bringing in the Big (Latino) Guns</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> Team Romney in Nevada brought in perhaps the biggest Latino name in Republican politics, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Oct. 2.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Rubio spoke for 30 minutes, mostly talking about the economy and the need for more free enterprise and less government regulation. Several hundred people came to hear Rubio speak at a casino ballroom in the city of Henderson, about a 30-minute drive from Las Vegas.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Imagine for a moment, if in the next couple of years Mitt Romney is elected president and the following things happen, Obamacare is repealed and replaced,” Rubio told the crowd to raucous applause. Rubio went on to list other things that he says would happen under a Romney presidency, including a simpler tax code and an energy policy that relies on more domestic sources.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The crowd in Henderson was overwhelmingly older and white. Besides 30 seconds of Spanish geared toward the Spanish-language news cameras, there was no nod to Latinos in Nevada.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Blanca Robles was one of the few Latinos at the event. She said she wasn’t disappointed that Rubio didn’t address Hispanic voters more directly.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “He was speaking to all Americans, we’re all Americans, and that’s the thing that I like also about Republicans, we don’t try and segregate and divide. We are all Americans.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/romneylatinosposter%20%28JasonMargolis%29.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 335px; " /></p> <p>  </p> <p> She said she likes Mitt Romney because he favors a smaller government.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “I think unfortunately a lot of the minority groups, especially the Latinos, have kind of been – I hate to say it – have been almost brainwashed into the Democratic Party as their party. Whereas if they really analyzed their views and their morals and their work habits it really is more conservative toward the Republican party.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> So why not have Senator Rubio come speak directly to Latinos?</p> <p>  </p> <p> I posed that question to Elsa Barnhill, the director of Hispanic outreach for the Romney campaign in Nevada. She’s the woman I tried to speak with the day before at the campaign office in the Latino neighborhood.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Barnhill said, “We inquired about using a couple of facilities on the east side of town, but it wasn’t able to happen, they were pre-booked. As you can imagine with campaigns, things are at the very last minute, they don’t give us a whole lot of notice, and we just kind of have to move quickly.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Barnhill added that the last time Marco Rubio was in town, he did speak at a grade school in a Latino neighborhood. Problem was, many Latinos also showed up to protest his visit. There weren’t any protesters on this day in Henderson.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>The Message Is the Economy, But Is It Working?</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p> Barnhill went on to say that the Romney campaign has been going door-to-door delivering a pro-Romney, or anti-Obama, message to voters in Latino neighborhoods. Their focus: jobs and the economy.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Hispanic voters, they know, as much as President Obama goes on TV and tells them how great things have become since he’s been a president, nobody takes that seriously,” said Barnhill. “I mean, not the person that doesn’t have a job, not the person who is wondering if they’re going to lose their job, certainly not the person who has lost their home in a foreclosure like has been the crisis here in Nevada.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> But David Damore, a political scientist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), who conducted the recent poll about Latino voters in the state, said talking points that play well with white suburban voters aren’t working with Latinos.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Tax cuts, for instance, don’t really resonate in the Latino community. The social issues don’t really resonate as a political issue in the Latino community. So there really isn’t much of a message there besides: The economy has been bad here. And no clear path to what we’re going to do about it.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Damore’s poll shows that more than three-quarters of Nevada’s Latinos approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. Perhaps that’s why the president feels comfortable talking directly to Latinos on their turf.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Only three weeks ago, the president spoke at a high school in the heart of the Latino part of town. The hugely popular Mexican rock band Maná also played. More than 11,000 people showed up, some waiting five hours in the near 100-degree heat to get in.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “This is why I like coming to Vegas. Good weather and good people,” said the president to much applause.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Mitt Romney won’t be able to match that enthusiasm among Nevada’s Latinos. But David Damore at UNLV says if Romney can peel away just 10 percent of Hispanic voters, that could make the difference in who wins Nevada.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  </p> <p> <em>Reported by PRI’s The World, a co-production of WGBH/Boston, Public Radio International, and the BBC World Service. </em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong><em>Photos: New America Media; Jason Margolis.</em></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/mitt-romney" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mitt Romney</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/president-obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">President Obama</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/minority-voters" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">minority voters</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/latinos" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">latinos</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/hispanics" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hispanics</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/hispanic-voters" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hispanic voters</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/2012-elections" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">2012 elections</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/polls-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">polls</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/democrats" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Democrats</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/republicans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Republicans</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Jason Margolis</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Wed, 24 Oct 2012 23:16:13 +0000 tara 1790 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1724-team-romney-struggling-connect-latinos#comments