Adolf Hitler: “In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.
Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.
For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
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Joseph Goebbels (Hitler’s propaganda chief ): “The cleverest trick used in propaganda against Germany during the war was to accuse Germany of what our enemies themselves were doing.“
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Donald Trump: “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.
So our goal now is to ensure the integrity for the good of this nation. This is a very big moment. This is a major fraud on our nation. We want law to be used in a proper manner.
So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning. It’s a very sad moment. To me, it’s a very sad moment. We will win this. As far as I’m concerned, we already have won.”
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While Donald Trump focuses the nation, especially his followers, on the big lie that he won the election because the Democrats cheated, he manages to obscure the fact that for many, many years, the Republicans have been engaged in a massive plot to cheat and disenfranchise voters, particularly black and brown voters, who vote Democrat.
That plot has been far more pervasive and effective than any so-called, unproven “fraud” claimed by Trump.
And, of course, that is the whole point of Trump’s claims: Not only to disenfranchise voters but also to steal the votes of those who survive the gauntlet of voter suppression — a double whammy on Democrats.
From an article written by Dahleen Glanton, and published on 11/16/2020 in the Chicago Tribune:
There is a big difference between voter fraud and voter suppression. Voter fraud is fake. Voter suppression is real.
The people who poured into the streets of Washington, D.C., Saturday to protest the election they say was stolen from Donald Trump are reacting to a fantasy based on lies. Voter fraud is a myth created by Republicans who refuse to accept defeat.
The reason no one can come up with legitimate cases of widespread voter fraud is because they do not exist.
Such theories have been debunked in studies by several academic institutions, including the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and Arizona State University.
Purging names from the rolls, denying people access to ballots and forcing voters to wait in line for hours, however — that’s real. It is designed to dilute the vote of Black and brown people. It is deliberate and systemic.
Overall, the November election was one of the smoothest ever across the country, according the Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan agency charged with ensuring secure and accurate elections.
It’s laughable to hear Republicans complain about being disenfranchised. They’ve been disenfranchising Black voters for decades, either by directly setting up barriers or refusing to address voting issues that have long been known.
The push to throw out mail-in ballots they deem as “illegal” is the GOP’s latest attempt at voter suppression. If Trump were to prevail, millions of Black voters in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Detroit would be disenfranchised.
Let’s talk about what real disenfranchisement looks like.
In 2020, During three days of hearings across Florida, the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights collected more than 30 hours of testimony from more than 100 witnesses under oath and reviewed more than 118,000 pages of documents. These accounts are from those documents.
Black people were turned away at the polls for various reasons in 2000. One poll worker said his precinct workers turned away 30 to 50 potential voters because they could not get through to the supervisor of elections on the phoneto confirm their eligibility.
Haitian Americans, who spoke limited English, said they were not given proper voting instructions. Others said their names were wrongly removed from the voting rolls.
Voters who requested absentee ballots never received them. Some were denied ballots at their polling places because the election records incorrectly indicated that they had been sent absentee ballots.
Some said they arrived at their designated polling place only to discover their precincts were no longer being used or had moved to another location without notice.
In other instances, voters who had been standing in line to vote at their precincts prior to closing were told that they could not vote because the poll was closed.
In addition, thousands of voters who had registered at motor vehicle licensing offices were not on the rolls when they came to vote.
The commission also heard from several voters who saw Florida Highway Patrol troopers in and around polling places, while other troopers conducted an unauthorized vehicle checkpoint within a few miles of a polling place in a predominantly African American neighborhood.
Cathy Jackson registered to vote in Broward County (but) poll workers told her to go back to her old precinct in Miami-Dade. She went there, and they told her to go back to Broward. When she returned to Broward, she was told again that she could not vote. However, she noticed that an elderly white man whose name also wasn’t on the rolls was allowed to fill out an affidavit and vote. She asked if she could do the same, and they told her no. She was never allowed to cast her ballot.
When Lavonna Lewis, a first-time voter, arrived at her polling place, a white poll worker standing outside told her that the poll was closed. As she turned to leave, the poll worker allowed a white man to walk in and get in line to vote.
The commission concluded that there were problems in nine of the 10 counties with the highest percentages of African Americans. These problems, the commission said, were “serious and not isolated.”
“In many cases, they were foreseeable and should have been prevented,” the commission said. “The failure to do so resulted in an extraordinarily high and inexcusable level of disenfranchisement, with a significantly disproportionate impact on African American voters.”
The NAACP filed a lawsuit against the Florida secretary of state’s office, alleging violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Across the country, the GOP took it to heart — not to make sure such travesties never happened again anywhere in America. Its goal was to figure out what worked best and implement those suppression tools all over the country.
To this day, Republicans are still trying to perfect it.
And:
Five Acts of Voter Suppression That Will Sway the Next Election
Conservatives will continue to deploy these techniques as electoral demographics become more liberal.The Economist recently explored how the electoral system is historically rigged in favor of Republicans.
The Constitution structured the electoral process to prevent geographically large states from dominating small ones. This has led to sparsely populated areas, which tend to be rural and Republican, having a greater electoral weight than densely populated urban areas, which tend to vote for Democrats.
The Economist estimates that in the midterms, “Democrats need to win 53.5% of all votes cast for the two major parties just to have a 50/50 chance of winning a majority in the House.”
In fact, Republicans consistently win a greater share of each arm of the legislature than the equivalent share of actual votes cast.
“As of the census of 2010, the five most rural states wielded about 50% more electoral votes, and three times as many senators, per resident as the five most urban ones did.”
This gives the Republicans a systemic upper hand, despite having a numerical disadvantage, and means some people’s votes are worth more than others in terms of influence.
U.S. elections are also increasingly affected by forms of voter suppression, which is a distinctly Republican tactic.
1. Gerrymandering — While both parties gerrymander, Republicans do it more. “In the 2012 redistricting cycle, the boundaries of 48% of House districts were drawn entirely by Republican officials, compared with just 10% by Democratic ones.”
Consequently, Republicans consistently have a “seat bonus” in Congress, whereby they have a greater proportion of seats than is represented by their proportion of votes.
2. Making It Difficult for People to Vote — North Carolina reduced the number of early voting stations in 2016, which the legislature itself stated resulted in an 8.5 percent reduction in early voting by Black voters, leading to a 6 percent drop in their share of the early vote.
Early voting allows people who are poor, work long hours, or have inflexible hours to vote before they go to work. The state also cut back on early voting on Sundays — which was popular with Black churches — foolishly admitting in court that this was because early Sunday voters tend to be disproportionately Black and Democratic.
3. Preventing Felons from Voting — The U.S. criminal justice system has a bias against the Black population, so restricting people convicted of a felony from voting creates a bias against Black voters, who are also more likely to be Democrats. The laws vary by state, from permanently preventing anyone with a felony conviction from voting to preventing only those currently incarcerated.
4. Voter ID Laws — Republican states have worked hard to implement stricter ID laws for votersThis law tends to affect poor, elderly, and Black voters, because they are less likely to have a government-issued ID, such as a driver’s license.
5. Purges of the Voting Register — Ohio passed a law removing people from the voting register if they had not voted for two years and did not return a voter card mailed to their registered address.
The argument for the law was, again, to reduce voter fraud, though there is no evidence at all for such voter fraud. The law discriminates against poor people, who may move more frequently due to a lack of rent security, and particularly poor Hispanic voters, who may speak English as a second language and therefore not realize the relevance of the cards.
Both groups are more likely to be Democratic voters. The laws were passed by Republican state legislatures and upheld by conservative-leaning judges.
And:
Voter suppression targets minority voters in the United States and infringes on their right to participate in a fair election.
By Hannah Rachel Abraham And Ebony Purks, November 6, 2020Since the American Civil War, statewide efforts have been made to discourage entire communities from having a voice in the democratic election process.
Jim Crow laws imposed poll taxes and forced Black Americans to pass literacy tests to be considered eligible to vote.
More modern examples include making voting more inconvenient by shutting down polling stations, therefore forcing people to travel long distances in order to exercise their voting rights.
And:
“Tidal wave of voter suppression” washes over states
In Texas, officials in mostly white Waller County, citing cost concerns, announced that they would not make an early voting site available on the campus of a historically black university.
Then the state passed a law effectively requiring other communities to take similar action.
A Tennessee law threatens third-party groups that register citizens to vote with criminal penalties if they make mistakes on forms or the forms arrive incomplete. The state’s governor, a Republican, said the law will make elections fairer.
And in Florida, state lawmakers overrode the results of a ballot initiative restoring voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences. Lawmakers who opposed the initiative insisted it was up to them to define what constitutes a completed sentence.
States across the country have, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision striking down part of the Voting Rights Act, moved swiftly and repeatedly to reshape almost every element of voting. Lawmakers are using a variety of race and age-neutral measures with explanations as pragmatic as cost and as prudent as election security.
In 2018, South Carolina voting officials estimated that the state was home to about 950,000 eligible but unregistered voters, a figure almost as large as the 1.2 million people who voted in South Carolina’s gubernatorial election that year. Among the reasons, according to Democrats: a state requirement that those registering to vote list their entire Social Security number on registration forms.
In November, the state’s Democratic Party and the Democratic Congressional and Senate Campaign committees filed suit challenging the Social Security requirement. South Carolina settled the case this month, agreeing to require just a portion of Social Security numbers.
The list goes on and on. Wherever state legislatures are controlled by Republicans, suppression of Democrat voters is paramount on the “to-do” list.
So when Trump and his sycophants whine about non-existent voter “fraud,” remember that rampant voter suppression by Republicans is the real problem.
Trump lost. He lost the popular vote and he lost the electoral college vote. And he would have lost even more “bigly” (his word) had the elections been fair.
(He probably would have lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016, in which case we wouldn’t have faced four years of presidential incompetence, and the nightmare of mishandled COVID.)
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
THE SOLE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT IS TO IMPROVE AND PROTECT THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE.
The most important problems in economics involve:
Ten Steps To Prosperity:
- Eliminate FICA
- Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D, plus long-term care — for everyone
- Social Security for all or a reverse income tax
- Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
- Salary for attending school
- Eliminate federal taxes on business
- Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually.
- Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.
- Federal ownership of all banks
- Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9%
The Ten Steps will grow the economy and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 