Voter-ID laws are a good ole fashioned poll tax

Rank-and-filed Republicans can never be convinced that there has never been an incidence of group voter fraud, much less an incidence that swayed an election. (Republican leaders know it's a sham to give them an excuse to suppress voting.)

So my conservative friends, just read this parallel in Hong Kong that Beinart found. It blew me away, because this Leung guy is speaking aloud what Republican leaders are saying behind closed doors:

If Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters succeed in booting C.Y. Leung from power, the city’s unelected chief executive should consider coming to the United States. He might fit in well in the Republican Party.

In an interview Monday with The New York Times and other foreign newspapers, Leung explained that Beijing cannot permit the direct election of Hong Kong’s leaders because doing so would empower “the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month.” Leung instead defended the current plan to have a committee of roughly 1,200 eminent citizens vet potential contenders because doing so, in the Times’ words, “would insulate candidates from popular pressure to create a welfare state, and would allow the city government to follow more business-friendly policies.”

And for those who say getting a new photo-ID just to vote (not for any other use by the voter) isn't a poll tax, consider this:

Acquiring that free ID requires showing another form of identification—and those cost money. In the states with voter-ID laws, notes a report by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, “Birth certificates can cost between $8 and $25. Marriage licenses, required for married women whose birth certificates include a maiden name, can cost between $8 and $20. By comparison, the notorious poll tax—outlawed during the civil rights era—cost $10.64 in current dollars.”

It's not like poll taxes are OK if they are "affordable" by somebody else's standards. No. Poll taxes are forbidden, period. 

Should the Poor Be Allowed to Vote?

By Peter Beinart

October 22, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/the-new-poll-tax/381791/?single_page=true

Beinart: Obama has made America MORE popular abroad

Apropos, this week I heard Sen. Ted Cruz on Hannity's show after a senatorial junket; Cruz was talking about anonymous "whispers" from foreigners asking, "What has happened to America?" On Fox and talk radio it's practically gospel that America's global popularity is in decline thanks to Obama.

So Beinart reminds us of the facts:

For more than a decade, the Pew Research Center has been asking people around the world about their opinion of the United States. The upshot: In every region of the globe except the Middle East (where the United States was wildly unpopular under George W. Bush and remains so), America’s favorability is way up since Obama took office. In Spain, approval of the United States is 29 percentage points higher than when Bush left office. In Italy, it’s up 23 points. In Germany and France, it’s 22. With the exception of China, where the numbers have remained flat, the trend is the same in Asia. The U.S. is 19 points more popular in Japan, 24 points more popular in Indonesia, and 28 points more popular in Malaysia. Likewise among the biggest powers in Latin America and Africa: Approval of the United States has risen 19 points in Argentina and 12 points in South Africa.

Indeed, "the guy in the White House retains a personal brand that outshines America’s as a whole:"

Again, the numbers come from Pew, which has been asking people in key countries every year whether they have “confidence” in America’s president to “do the right thing in world affairs.” Obama’s popularity is down since 2009. Still, in Mexico and Argentina, the president’s 2013 numbers (the most recent we have) are 33 percentage points higher than Bush’s in 2008. In South Korea, the margin is 47 points. In Japan, it’s 45 points. In Brazil, it’s 52 points. In Britain, it’s 56 points. In France, it’s 70 points. In Germany, it’s 74 points.

In case you’re reading quickly, 74 points isn’t Obama’s approval rating in Germany. It’s the gap between his approval rating and Bush’s. In George W.’s final year in office, 14 percent of Germans had faith that the president of the United States would do the right thing internationally. Last year, 88 percent did.

The conservative comeback to this overwhelming evidence is that world leaders are turning against Obama and America, even if foreigners aren't. Well, that's almost impossible to measure or substantiate; as are Cruz's alleged "whispers."

But this gets back to my point made long ago that the U.S. should be more concerned what the people in other countries think of us. If indeed these countries are democratic, then that's what ultimately matters. And even in the countries that aren't democratic -- there tends to be a disturbing overlap of anti-American terrorism with autocracy, especially in the Mideast and North Africa.

Not to say that the job of commander-in-chief is to be popular, but... it's certainly not to be unpopular abroad. That only hurts us among our allies and adversaries alike.

And then there's the last line of anti-Obama defense: "But Obama doesn't deserve to be so popular; he hasn't done anything!"  That may be true, it's debatable. But maybe it's more about what he hasn't done or said, and what he has said. Future U.S. presidents, take note!  

Regardless, if this is the international bonus that we get by having Obama in office, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth!  Let's be happy and accept it!  To feel otherwise is just bitter partisanship.

Is the World Losing Faith in Obama?

By Peter Beinart

May 30, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/05/is-the-world-really-losing-faith-in-barack-obama/371884/

Beinart: Russia's invasion of Ukraine ended the 'War on Terror'

Interesting thesis.

For what it's worth, I've been saying all along the GWOT was a distraction for the U.S.  For the past 12 years we've been swatting mosquitoes and calling them dragons.

And, call me racist or whatever, but Europe is different. It just is. War in Europe will always get America's attention.

Finally, I want to give belated props not to Sarah Palin, but Mitt Romney, who declared during the 2012 campaign that Russia was America's "No. 1 geopolitical foe."  FOX is having a high time resurrecting that sound bite. Keep in mind though: Obama never disagreed with Romney. There are just certain obvious things that a presidential candidate can afford to say that a sitting U.S. President cannot. 

Ukraine: Is This How the War on Terror Ends?

By Peter Beinart

March 4, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/ukraine-is-this-how-the-war-on-terror-ends/284214/