Toontime: Larger Principles

[credit: Rick McKee, Augusta Chronicle]

The Current Occupant's grant of temporary amnesty to a limited number of illegal immigrants who have managed to survive five years in this darwinesque country without committing serious crime, and who are willing to pay taxes, is a perfect example of just how skewed towards nativist conservatism the nation's politics has become. In former decades his actions would have been applauded by liberal elements in both parties as a rational response to a festering problem; now it is considered a treasonous or even worse a socialist usurping of Congress' constitutional powers. As he made clear in his televised address all recent Presidents have implemented deportation amnesties of various sorts. Legal scholars agree the President has the constitutional authority to do so. In reality what the "emperor" has done is belatedly act to satisfy a increasingly powerful segment of the Democratic coalition. By 2050 Anglo-americans will be a minority.

Repugnants are no dummies, they know that statistic is staring them in the face. Their strategists are resorting to some fairly clever tactics to offset the Democratic numerical advantage among current minorities. One of these tactics is the program called "Interstate Crosscheck". In the twenty-three Republican controlled states the computer system is used to prevent double voting across state lines, a legitimate device to prevent rarely committed voting fraud. Despite identifying thousands of suspects, there has not been a single conviction for double voting.  In the hands of partisan state officials the program is used to purge voting roles of tens of thousands of names. For example in North Carolina an incumbent Democratic senator was upset by a Repugnant by just 48,511 votes. Crosscheck eliminated 589,393 potential NC voters from the rolls! With numbers like that who needs policy differences? In Colorado where Senator Mark Udall (D) lost by 49,729 votes, Crosscheck deleted 300,842 names as potential double voters. No due process there, folks. Crosscheck purges swamped the margins of victory in Alaska and Georgia too. According to research by Greg Palast for Al Jazeera America these purge lists amount to nothing more than common names, many of them obviously not Anglo-amercan. An estimated 1 in 7 African-americans, 1 in 8 Asian-americans and 1 in 8 Hispanic-americans are affected.

This interstate purging of voter roles is the pet project of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), a conservative, Oxford-educated white man. Ever since Katherine Harris, a Repugnant Secretary of State for Florida, played a pivotale role in awarding the presidency to George W. Bush, the Republican Party has focused on ways of reducing the Democratic Party's numerical superiority. A cynical obsession with restrictive voter registration laws in the name of crime-fighting is the result. The Government Accountability Office estimates voter turnout in Kansas has declined 1.9% primarily among minorities and young voters because of difficult voter ID laws. The supression tactic is working as the latest midterm results show. Interstate Crosscheck has been embraced in Ohio, again considered to be decisive in the presidential election of 2016.