Fifty years after brave college students got on buses to participate in "Freedom Summer" and help disenfranchised blacks in Mississippi obtain their constitutional right to vote, southern states have passed new laws making voting for minorities problematic. Last year in the case of
Shelby County v. Holder the conservative Supreme Court majority ruled that a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was no longer needed since voter restrictions based on race were only a historical feature of southern culture. The Section Five provision struck down required the approval of any new voter laws by the United States Justice Department in nine states prior to the legislation in question being enforced by state authorities; surely this requirement rankled conservative states rights advocates as well as white supremacists. The federal review requirement was seen by them as a legacy of Reconstruction. Forty-eight hours after Section Five clearance was struck down,
six of the nine affected states (all in the south) took steps to restrict voting rights. Poll taxes and literacy tests intended to discourage minority voting may be passe, but discriminatory intent is not. Modern discrimination is more subtle and takes the form of superficially neutral regulations like voter ID. Conservative congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va) (banana-fana-fo-fanny) who is the chair of the House Judiciary Committee is in no hurry to replace Section Five with something similar but constitutional. He views the suit provision left intact by the Supreme Court sufficient to guarantee minority citizens the right to vote. Thus the Senate's bill to amend the Voting Rights Act remains stalled in the lower house. Want to vote? Get a lawyer.
Voter suppression is just one tool in the box of conservative plutocrats that would totally control public policy in the USA. Money is the other major
monkey wrench. The
fighting Koch curs of Wichita, Kansas have plenty of cash and they want to spend it on influencing the 2014 mid-term election.
At a retreat in posh Laguna Beach, California last week the Kochs and their right-wing allies announced a plan to raise $290m to buy mid-term political campaigns. As owners of a vast oil and gas conglomerate ($70bn), the Kochs also have a vested interest in opposing any legislation or regulation curbing carbon pollution. They fund groups like the American Energy Alliance that targets politicians supporting a carbon tax. A new initiative under another arm of their interlocking network of political action groups will spend money to repeal state renewable energy standards and block implementation of EPA's proposed regulation to cut carbon emissions from power plants. Of course all their covert machinations have been made possible by a conservative Supreme Court that handed down from their life tenured seats the democracy killing
Citizens United decision. A government of the people? Think again, or you too may soon be living in a cardboard box with a plastic sheet for a roof.
