Getting Even

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Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers report that

Only weeks before last year’s pivotal midterm elections, the White House urged the Justice Department to pursue voter-fraud allegations against Democrats in three battleground states, a high-ranking Justice official has told congressional investigators.

In two instances in October 2006, President Bush’s political adviser, Karl Rove, or his deputies passed the allegations on to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson.

Sampson tapped Gonzales aide Matthew Friedrich, who’d just left his post as chief of staff of the criminal division. In the first case, Friedrich agreed to find out whether Justice officials knew of “rampant” voter fraud or “lax” enforcement in parts of New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and report back.

But Friedrich declined to pursue a related matter from Wisconsin, he told congressional investigators, because an inquiry so close to an election could inappropriately sway voting results. Friedrich decided not to pass the matter on to the criminal division for investigation, even though Sampson gave him a 30-page report prepared by Republican activists that made claims of voting fraud.

Friedrich testified in a closed-door session, but a “senior congressional aide familiar with the testimony” described it to McClatchy Newspapers.

After Murray Waas reported yesterday …

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove’s, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

… I’d say it would be hard for the White House to claim that Karl or somebody was not trying to use the Justice Department to gain advantage in midterm elections. The White House, of course, claims this anyway.

At Salon, Garrett Epps writes that “the assault on voter fraud was a solution looking for a problem.”

Republicans do cherish their little practical jokes — the leaflets in African-American neighborhoods warning that voters must pay outstanding traffic tickets before voting; the calls in Virginia in 2006 from the mythical “Virginia Election Commission” warning voters they would be arrested if they showed up at the polls. The best way to steal an election is the old-fashioned way: control who shows up. It’s widely known that Republicans do better when the turnout is lighter, whiter, older and richer; minorities, young people and the poor are easy game for hoaxes and intimidation.

The latest and most elaborate of these jokes is the urban legend that American elections are rife with voter fraud, particularly in the kinds of poor and minority neighborhoods inhabited by Democrats. In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that fraudulent voting would be a major target of the Department of Justice. As the New York Times reported last month, the main result of this massive effort was such coups as the deportation of a legal immigrant who mistakenly filled out a voter-registration card while waiting in line at the department of motor vehicles.

But the administration has remained ferociously committed to suppressing voter fraud — as soon as it can find some.

I like this bit:

As part of the Help America Vote Act, Republicans insisted on creating the Election Assistance Commission, which commissioned studies of the asserted problem. When the studies failed to turn up evidence of fraud nationwide, appointed Republican officials on the EAC insisted that the language say only that “there is a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud in elections” — the same approach to inconvenient evidence that’s made the Bush global-warming policy the envy of the world.

IMO the legend that Democrats only get elected because they cheat has been brewing among Republicans for decades. You might remember that the old big city bosses, from William Tweed of New York to Richard Daley (the Elder) of Chicago, were famous for delivering votes for Democrats using less than honest means. But though he’s been dead for more than thirty years, the ghost of Richard Daley, the last of the bosses, still haunts the GOP.

For decades after the 1960 presidential elections Republicans complained that John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon only because Daley stuffed ballot boxes to deliver Chicago (and thereby Illinois) for Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson likewise fixed the vote in Texas. The legend is that Richard Nixon shrugged it off and let Kennedy get away with stealing the election. The truth is that local and national GOP officials investigated allegations of fraud vigorously and challenged results in many precincts in court. As David Greenburg wrote in Slate awhile back, the only tangible result of the several recounts was that Hawaii’s three electoral votes were taken away from Nixon and given to Kennedy. Otherwise, whatever fraud probably occurred wasn’t significant enough to have changed the outcome.

Nevertheless, I noticed through the years that many rank-and-file Republicans nursed a massive grudge about being cheated at the polls. As a result, IMO, they see fraud every time a Democrat wins an election. And they’ve developed a sense of entitlement that it’s OK for them to cheat back.

An article by Phyllis Schlafly written in December 2000 justifies George Bush’s “win” by dredging up the ghost of the 1960 election (“The stuffing of the ballot boxes in Cook County, Illinois and in Texas has been so well substantiated that it is no longer disputed today.”) and implying that William Daley, Gore’s campaign manager, was a vote-stealer like this old man.

See also this “analysis” of the 2000 Florida recount that presents most of the rumors and allegations flying around at the time —

As this is written, we do not know who will be the next president,” the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal declared on Nov. 9, 1960, as the nation awaited results in the presidential contest between Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Vice President Richard M. Nixon. The closeness of that 1960 race and the undeniable fraud were followed by the manly response of Nixon. What a far cry that was from the lachrymose Chinese opera now surrounding Al Gore and George W. Bush as history no longer is being repeated but reshaped.

Despite allegations of Democratic election fraud, particularly in Texas and Chicago, where former senator Lyndon Johnson and the family of former mayor Richard J. Daley were past masters at political pilfering, the Nixon campaign surmised that legal challenges would, in the end, be fruitless. The Gore campaign saw the landscape differently. In fact, it produced a “Chad”-aquiddick drama that has cast a cloud over the Sunshine State’s 25 electoral votes — something which may have been foreseen by Gore when he chose Richard J. Daley’s son, William Daley, to be his campaign manager.

The pattern was there. From the hyperactive get-out-the-vote effort launched by the Democratic National Committee and such sympathetic interest groups as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and organized labor, the ward-healing Democrats were well ahead of their more inhibited GOP rivals. With Gore unable to gin up enough energy with his policy lectures and high-spirited, pulpit-pounding pronouncements, the party stepped up its effort to scour every county, district and precinct in search of Gore voters who might be bused, wheeled or carried drooling to the polls. Churches, schools, homeless shelters, mental asylums, nursing homes and even prisons were seen as housing potential voters to do their bit for the veep.

I remember at the time encountering a Bush supporter who was absolutely certain the Gore campaigned had bussed thousands of illegal immigrants across the border to vote for Gore. There were also rumors about thousands of convicted felons who had voted for Gore.

I have no idea if Karl Rove himself believes the legends, but I do know that Karl is brilliant at manipulating right-wing resentment and paranoia about “liberals” and Democrats. That’s where the sense of entitlement comes in; the Right long has believed it is literally at war with us, and all’s fair in war. Take, for example, the so-called “Brooks Brothers riot” of paid GOP operatives who terrorized the Miami-Dade canvassing board into stopping their vote recount. To us, that was bare-knuckle thuggery. But to righties it was a righteous strike for justice against an evil, powerful oppressor.

At this point I don’t think any amount of hard evidence would dissuade these loons that voter fraud is not the massive problem they think it is and that they are not entitled to cheat back. They see themselves as the peasants storming the Bastille. And yes, they’re nuts. What else is new?

The Short Leash

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The “short leash” bill just passed in the House. Details to come.

Update: The vote was 221-205, which means the Dems picked up three votes from the last Iraq supplemental bill.

Here’s Jack Murtha’s closing speech:

McGovern Bill

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I was out for a time and missed the vote, but here’s the role call — this was not the “emergency” supplemental vote, note, but a vote on a bill from the Out of Iraq Caucus that would have mandated for withdrawal. It failed, 255 no, 171 aye, 7 not voting.

These Democrats who voted no are henceforth to be known as the WTF? caucus.

Berkley
Giffords
Berman
Hoyer
Holden
Rodriguez
Ruppersberger
Skelton
Snyder
Space
Spratt
McNerney
Udall

Right now the House is debating the Iraq “supplemental” bill.

Winston Churchill Called Iraq “Ungrateful Volcano”

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I believe this is the letter from Winston Churchill to David Lloyd George that Rep. Obey read on the floor of the Congress today. Churchill wrote this in 1922 advising Lloyd George to get Britain out of Iraq. I like these last three paragraphs:

I think we should now put definitely, not only to Feisal but to the Constituent Assembly, the position that unless they beg us to stay and to stay on our own terms in regard to efficient control, we shall actually evacuate before the close of the financial year. I would put this issue in the most brutal way, and if they are not prepared to urge us to stay and to co-operate in every manner I would actually clear out. That at any rate would be a solution. Whether we should clear out of the country altogether or hold on to a portion of the Basra vilayet is a minor issue requiring a special study.

It is quite possible, however, that face to face with this ultimatum the King, and still more the Constituent Assembly, will implore us to remain. If they do, shall we not be obliged to remain? If we remain, shall we not be answerable for defending their frontier? How are we to do this if the Turk comes in? We have no force whatever that can resist any serious inroad. The War Office, of course, have played for safety throughout and are ready to say ‘I told you so’ at the first misfortune.

Surveying all the above, I think I must ask you for definite guidance at this stage as to what you wish and what you are prepared to do. The victories of the Turks will increase our difficulties throughout the Mohammedan world. At present we are paying eight millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.

This is especially delicious considering Sir Winston has become the patron saint of hawks.

Crumbs on His Face

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Murray Waas reports at National Journal:

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove’s, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin’s appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove’s role in supporting Griffin.

In one of the letters that Sampson drafted, dated February 23, 2007, the Justice Department told four Senate Democrats it was not aware of any role played by senior White House adviser Rove in attempting to name Griffin to the U.S. attorney post. A month later, the Justice Department apologized in writing to the Senate Democrats for the earlier letter, saying it had been inaccurate in denying that Rove had played a role.

The White House denies everything.

Meanwhile, the House has been debating all day, a process that mostly involves yielding minutes to each other. It’s a ceremonial thing, I guess. Now they are about to start three hours of debate on three bills, meaning the vote on the biggie, the Iraq War spending bill, probably won’t take place until early evening eastern time. They’re also going to debate and then vote on the McGovern bill, which would mandate that troop withdrawal from Iraq must begin in three months and be completed in six months. It’s not expected to pass, but it would be nice to see a close vote.

Bush’s Folly Updates

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Greg Sargent says the House will vote on the newest version of the Iraq Accountability Act later today. I’ll monitor C-SPAN and post updates.

Tony Blair will resign as British Prime Minister in June. This is no surprise if you follow British news media. Blair had made noises last fall that he would resign within a year. Plus, it’s seemed to me that the entire United Kingdom, its people and governments, have been pretty much ignoring the Poodle for some time.

Alberto Gonzales is testifying before the House today. He’s expected to not remember anything.

Update: See David Sirota on “Blank Check Democrats.”

Bushies Are Trying to Kill You

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What else can one conclude from this, except that the Bushies have a dastardly plan to kill us, especially the poorer among us? Arian Campo-Flores writes at Newsweek.com that the Bush Administration is “reforming” Medicaid in a way that will cause emergency rooms and even hospitals themselves to close.

The rule, scheduled to take effect on Sept. 1, deals with the arcane world of Medicaid financing. Two provisions in particular dismay many in the health-care field. One limits states’ ability to tap certain funding sources to meet their Medicaid obligations. The other stipulates that Medicaid reimbursements cannot exceed the cost of treating the Medicaid patient. While that provision may sound reasonable, says Larry Gage of the National Association of Public Hospitals, it doesn’t account for the harsh reality confronting medical facilities that treat large numbers of the uninsured. Since these facilities don’t get reimbursed for that treatment, they rely in part on higher-than-cost Medicaid reimbursements. As a result of the new administration rule, many hospitals may need to make drastic cuts in personnel, beds and more.

Nearly a year ago the Institute of Medicine issued three reports (key findings here) saying the nation’s emergency rooms are inadequate and getting worse. Among other things, it found:

  • Demand for emergency care has been growing fast—emergency department (ED) visits grew by 26 percent between 1993 and 2003.
  • But over the same period, the number of EDs declined by 425, and the number of hospital beds declined by 198,000.
  • ED crowding is a hospital-wide problem—patients back up in the ED because they can not get admitted to inpatient beds.
  • As a result, patients are often “boarded”—held in the ED until an inpatient bed becomes available—for 48 hours or more.
  • Also, ambulances are frequently diverted from overcrowded EDs to other hospitals that may be farther away and may not have the optimal services.
  • In 2003, ambulances were diverted 501,000 times—an average of once every minute.

    • After these reports came out, David Brown wrote in the Washington Post:

    The number of deaths caused by a delay in treatment or lack of expertise is especially uncertain, though it may not be small. San Diego established a trauma system in 1984 after autopsies of accident victims who died after reaching the ER suggested that 22 percent of the deaths were preventable, said Eastman, one of the Institute of Medicine committee members.

    This is related to the ongoing controversy over disaster response (quoting the key findings from the National Institute of Medicine linked above):

    The emergency care system is ill-prepared to handle a major disaster. [Drawn from all three reports]

  • With many EDs at or over capacity, there is little surge capacity for a major event, whether it takes the form of a natural disaster, disease outbreak, or terrorist attack.
  • EMS received only 4 percent of Department of Homeland Security first responder funding in 2002 and 2003.
  • Emergency Medical Technicians in non-fire based services have received an average of less than one hour of training in disaster response.
  • Both hospital and EMS personnel lack personal protective equipment needed to effectively respond to chemical, biological, or nuclear threats.

    • That going on six years after 9/11 there has been no coherent effort to prepare the nation for biochemical or nuclear attacks goes way beyond the parameters of incompetence, IMO. The ridiculous Department of Homeland Security tosses money at pork projects and “contractors” (with ties to Republicans in Washington, one suspects) who don’t deliver. Yet to fund tax cuts for the rich and Bush’s pointless Iraq War — which is supposed to be about keeping America safer somehow — Bush’s government lets our ability to respond to disasters go to rot.

    On 9/11 New York City actually had surplus medical emergency response. That day the city’s wealth of world-class medical personnel and state-of-the-art facilities mustered a triage army around the Financial District. (I understand this was done on the initiative of New York City’s medical community; Rudy Giuliani didn’t have to ask.) But the nature of the disaster was such that people either got out, or they didn’t. The crack medical teams had little else to do but wipe bloody noses and wash dust out of eyes.

    But poor New Orleans after Katrina was a different story. Kerry Sanders reported for NBC News on September 2, 2005, that the sick, injured and dead alike were being stacked up at the New Orleans airport:

    The stench of death reeks inside portions of the airport here. Other parts of the airport just smell as any hospital would if there was no way to clean up. It is human misery as people are lying in pain, ailing and wailing.

    The pained screams from patients is like fingers on a chalkboard because there is nothing you can do to reach out and help these people. They have limited medical supplies. They do have aircraft coming in. The C-17s, Storm-30s are moving people out of here as fast as they can. …

    … A reporter is supposed to remain detached and just report what’s going on. But, when there is a man lying on the ground, and he’s yelling out to anyone walking by, “Help me! I need some water! Help me!” and there is no one to help this man.

    The moral is, if you’re ever a victim of a natural disaster or terrorist attack, be sure you’re someplace with really expensive real estate. Increasingly, America’s alleged “best health care in the world” is reserved for the well-to-do. Last year Jane Bryant Quinn wrote,

    America’s health-care “system” looks more like a lottery every year. The winners: the healthy and well insured, with good corporate coverage or Medicare. When they’re ill, they get—as the cliche goes—”the best health care in the world.” The losers: those who rely on shrinking public insurance, such as Medicaid (nearly 45 million of us), or go uninsured (46 million and rising).

    To slip from the winners’ circle into the losers’ ranks is a cultural, emotional and financial shock. You discover a world of patchy, minimal health care that feels almost Third World. The uninsured get less primary or preventive care, find it hard to see cardiologists, surgeons and other specialists (waiting times can run up to a year), receive treatment in emergencies, but are more apt to die from chronic or other illnesses than people who pay. That’s your lot if you lose your corporate job and can’t afford a health policy of your own.

    But now, in true Bush style, the Bush Administration is going to take a grim situation and make it worse. Let’s go back to Arian Campo-Flores at Newsweek.com:

    The administration calculates that the rule change will reduce federal Medicaid expenditures by about $3.8 billion over five years. But Gage and others estimate the impact on hospitals will be much larger. At Grady, where 42 percent of revenue comes from Medicaid, Kellerman estimates that the hit could total $200 million over five years. “Grady is already struggling,” he says. “This would put it out of business.” Were Grady to close, the consequences would be far-reaching: the hospital is the only Level I trauma center (the highest designation) in a 120-mile radius of Atlanta, and one quarter of Georgia’s physicians are trained there.

    Let’s see; the Bushies have run the National Guard into the ground and now they’re fixin’ to close hospitals. This at the very time that disaster and terrorist attack response is supposed to be a critical priority. Does it get dumber, or what?

    See also: The Mahablog, “Je m’amuse” (June 15, 2006).

    Closing In; Cracking Up

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    As Nico Pitney says, the crackup is in full display.

    In a sign of the growing fissure between the White House and its congressional allies over the war, NBC News reports tonight that 11 Republican members of Congress pleaded yesterday with President Bush and his senior aides to change course in Iraq.

    The group of Republicans was led by Reps. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Charlie Dent (R-PA), and the meeting included Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, and Tony Snow. One member of Congress called the discussion the “most unvarnished conversation they’ve ever had with the president,” and NBC’s Tim Russert said it “may have been a defining pivotal moment” in the Iraq debate.

    According to Tim Russert of NBC, one of the congressmen flat out told Bush he has no credibility.

    Also, check out this video from VoteVets.org.

    Update: Details of the new Iraq Accountability Act that may be voted on in the House this week.

    “David Broder is the voice of the people.”

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    This is from an article by Jebediah Reed about wild card Dem presidential candidate Mike Gravel.

    Beaming after the Columbia event, Gravel walks with Alter to a nearby Cuban restaurant for a late lunch. On the way they encounter a gray-haired gentleman in owlish glasses. Alter greets him very respectfully. “This is Tom Edsall,” he says. Edsall was a senior political writer for the Washington Post for 25 years. He retired from the paper in 2006 and now writes for the New Republic and teaches at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

    Gravel smiles broadly and says, “Hey, can you straighten out David Broder?” Broder, an influential columnist at the Post and the unofficial godfather of the D.C. press corps, has been a target of much criticism from liberal blogs for seeming to provide political cover for Bush on Iraq, even with a majority of Americans now opposing the war. “He doesn’t believe in the power of the people!” Gravel says. Edsall blinks and looks perplexed. “David Broder is the voice of the people,” he replies matter-of-factly. Gravel starts to smile, assuming Edsall is making an absurdist joke. But Edsall is not joking. The two men look at each other in awkward silence over a great gulf of unshared beliefs, then Gravel chuckles and walks ahead into the restaurant.

    Of course David Broder is the voice of the people.

    … these people.

    Unreal.

    About Time

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    A “short leash” Iraq funding bill could come to a vote in the House as early as tomorrow. Karen DeYoung and Jonathan Weisman report for the Washington Post:

    A House Democratic proposal introduced yesterday that would give President Bush half of the money he has requested for the war effort, with a vote in July on whether to approve the rest, hinges on progress in meeting political benchmarks that Iraq has thus far found difficult to achieve. …

    …The plan would make about $43 billion of the administration’s requested $95.5 billion immediately available to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, train troops from both nations and pay for other military needs. Congress’s approval of the rest, intended to last through September, would await Iraqi passage of restructuring laws, or Bush’s ability to prove that significant progress had been made. The July vote would mark the first time a mandatory funding cutoff would come before Congress.

    The article doesn’t hold out much hope that Senate Dems will go along with this, but the Post has been wrong before.

    Today the President let it be known that he would veto the new House bill, too even though it makes considerable money immediately available to him with no strings attached. From the Washington Post:

    President Bush would veto the new Iraq spending bill being developed by House Democrats because it includes unacceptable language restricting funding, White House press secretary Tony Snow said Wednesday morning.

    Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Snow said of the bill: “There are restrictions on funding and there are also some of the spending items that were mentioned in the first veto message that are still in the bill.”

    Those “spending items” include provision for equipping state National Guard at pre-Iraq War levels. Note that the House bill does not include a timetable or any restrictions on the U.S. military; the demands it makes are specific and apply to the Iraqi government.

    The BooMan says,

    I don’t think he can hold his caucus together on this veto. I’m not saying the GOP would override his veto, but there will be a lot more defections.

    And that’s the point. Over the past several days I’ve argued several times (most recently here) that a bill-by-bill, vote-by-vote process that peels congressional Republicans away from Bush is the only chance we’ve got to end the war before 2009. The point is to render him so isolated and unsupported he’ll have to either comply or leave office. I think this “short leash” approach has a shot of picking up substantial Republican support, because I think Republicans who face re-election next year are becoming increasingly frantic that the war will cost them their seats. Even if this bill doesn’t draw a veto-proof majority, the next one might, or the one after that. There are a number of Iraq War votes to come before Congress before the end of the year.

    Note that the public overwhelmingly disapproved of Bush’s veto of the last bill.

    Meanwhile, Jonathan E. Kaplan and Elana Schor write at The Hill:

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is threatening to take President Bush to court if he issues a signing statement as a way of sidestepping a carefully crafted compromise Iraq war spending bill.

    Pelosi recently told a group of liberal bloggers, “We can take the president to court” if he issues a signing statement, according to Kid Oakland, a blogger who covered Pelosi’s remarks for the liberal website dailykos.com.

    “The president has made excessive use of signing statements and Congress is considering ways to respond to this executive-branch overreaching,” a spokesman for Pelosi, Nadeam Elshami, said. “Whether through the oversight or appropriations process or by enacting new legislation, the Democratic Congress will challenge the president’s non-enforcement of the laws.”

    I say again that Bush will accept no constraints whatsoever, no matter how mild and reasonable, no matter what public opinion says. The question is, can he keep this game up for 20 more months?