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The 2004 election revisited, part 3

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Election Integrity

Revisiting the 2004 election. Part 3.

Still working in the holiday season—a useful change of work from hearing about Gingrich/Santorum/et al. is to remember the problems in 2004. Whoever wins the GOP nomination this year will have to do some fancy stepping to win the White House. Re past tactics, forewarned is forearmed.

Title says it all

On March 31, 2005, a group of solidly credentialed faculty scholars and researchers released a comprehensive study of the discrepancy between exit polls, in the 2004 election, and the published vote results.

The researchers found no “statistically-plausible explanation for the discrepancy between Edison/Mitofsky’s exit poll data and the official presidential vote tally.” The irregularities in the presidential election thus posed “an unanswered question of vital national importance that demands a thorough and unblinking investigation.”

Election Integrity

The comprehensive investigation failed to take place, although some members of Congress including Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) pursued inquiries. Where did the information go? Not into print in major newspapers. Not onto the airwaves. Like the U.S. Constitution, it is accessible on the Internet.

The 27-page “Analysis of the 2004 Exit Poll Discrepancies” reinforces earlier studies along the same lines, with further detail on election 2004. Authors and endorsers include professors in statistics, numerical analysis, computer studies, finance and mathematics from the U. of Utah, U. Wisconsin, Cornell, U. Pennsylvania, U. Illinois, Southern Methodist University and Notre Dame among others.

The introduction notes numerous election problems, including

  • “voting machine shortages;
  • ballots counted and recounted in secret;
  • lost, discarded, and improperly rejected registration forms and absentee ballots;
  • touch-screen machines that registered ‘Bush’ when voters pressed ‘Kerry’;
  • precincts in which there were more votes recorded than registered voters;
  • precincts in which the reported participation rate was less than 10%;
  • high rates of ‘spoiled’ ballots and under-votes in which no choice for president was recorded;
  • a sworn affidavit by a Florida computer programmer who claims he was hired to develop a voting program with a ‘back door’ mechanism to undetectably alter vote tallies.”

Campaigning Florida-Feeney style, 2004

These authors are not political hacks, whatever that term means. They are not hired guns paid to spin election results. They are genuine experts with earned credentials in the fields of inquiry, not backgrounds in public relations. They show a scholarly and patriotic passion for the truth.

“Under such circumstances” as the problems in this election, the authors wrote,

“we must rely on indirect evidence–such as exit polls, or analysis of election result data–as a check of the overall integrity of the official election results. Without auditability or transparency in our election systems, the role of exit polls as a trigger for further scrutiny is of paramount importance.”

They conclude,

“If the discrepancies between exit poll and election results cannot be explained by random sampling error; the “Reluctant Bush Responder” hypothesis is inconsistent with the data; and other exit polling errors are insufficient to explain the large exit polling discrepancies, then the only remaining explanation – that the official vote count was corrupted – must be seriously considered.”

Regrettably, the polling company, Edison/Mitofsky, did not release all the raw data from the exit polling. Having published the exit polls–referred to in previous posts–the company went back later and changed the published exit polls to make them conform retroactively to published vote tallies. It also attempted to repudiate its own original exit polls.

The exit polls were dismissed with argument, not fact.  A typical argument was that Bush voters were more reluctant to be interviewed by pollsters than were Kerry voters.

The faculty scholars make short work of this claim. As they point out,

“The Senate and presidential races were both questions on a single exit poll survey. If Bush supporters were refusing to fill out this survey as hypothesized, the accuracy of the exit poll should have been just as poor in the Senate races as it was in the presidential race. The presidential and Senate poll results derive from exactly the same responders.”

However,

“In 32 states, Senate elections took place on the same ballot with the presidential race. The exit polls were more accurate for Senate races than for the presidential race, including states where a Republican senator eventually won (pages 19-24).”

[emphasis added]

As the researchers point out, even while exit polls across the nation were being debunked as unreliable by the White House and its partisans, the accuracy of those same exit polls for Senate races was not questioned. The conclusion: “There is no logic to account for non-responders or missed voters when discussing the difference in the accuracy of results for the Senate versus the presidential races in the same exit poll.”

Nationally,

“The many anecdotal reports of voting irregularities create a context in which the possibility that the overall vote count was substantially corrupted must be taken seriously. The hypothesis that the discrepancy between the exit polls and election results is due to errors in the official election tally remains a coherent theory.”

“In fact, the burden of proof should be to show that the election process is accurate and fair. The integrity of the American electoral system can and should be beyond reproach. Citizens in the world’s oldest and greatest democracy should be provided every assurance that the mechanisms they have put in place to count our votes are fair and accurate. The legitimacy of our elected leaders depends upon it.”

Then and now, the points are unassailable:

  • “Well-documented security vulnerabilities and accuracy issues have affected voting equipment” back to the 1960s.
  • “The recent and ongoing proliferation of sophisticated computerized vote recording and tallying equipment” has drastically enhanced capabilities for vote-tampering.
  • “That the lion’s share of this equipment is developed, provided, and serviced by partisan private corporations only amplifies these serious concerns.”
  • “The fact that, in the 2004 election, all voting equipment technologies except paper ballots were associated with large unexplained exit poll discrepancies all favoring the same party certainly warrants further inquiry.”

As previously written, close-outcome states needing attention after the 2004 election included Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, and Iowa. Some of the work on these problem areas will be posted.

One example: researcher Richard Hayes Phillips did magnificent work on election problems in Toledo, Ohio.

What we need meanwhile, among other things, is for our so-called ‘backwaters’ not to be left to the tender mercies of the GOP, corporate-funded influence groups, anti-human quasi-religious organizations, and the DC political press. It is wrong to neglect small towns and rural areas.

Returning to that interesting analysis from a reader in North Carolina who compared the NC 2004 early turnout to 2000 early turnout–

In 2004, the SBOE recorded 705,462 early voters. In 2000, there had been 393,152 early voters–an increase of 312,310.

Furthermore, in 2000, early voters were 46% Democrat and 38% Republican. In 2004, early voters were 50.4% Democrat and 36% Republican. That’s a 6-point net gain in Democratic turnout.

The reader points out that one would expect John Kerry to gain “at least several percentage points over Al Gore’s showing four years ago. But when the votes were tallied, Kerry registered virtually no improvement on Gore’s vote in North Carolina (Kerry 43.6%, Gore 43.2%).”

The reader anticipates possible objections:

  • Crossover voting might be a factor. But nothing indicates that crossover voting was bigger in 2004 than in 2000.
  • Southerners might have voted more for Gore than for Kerry. But that does not explain why Democratic turnout increased significantly, while GOP turnout decreased.

All in all, it was reasonable to expect Kerry to perform better in North Carolina in 2004 than Gore did in 2000, even aside from the fact that John Edwards was on the ticket. Although Kerry could not have won the state, there’s still an issue.

Again–as he points out–if Kerry got 47% in North Carolina, he would have another 130,000 votes in his column. “It’s not enough to win the state’s 15 electoral votes, but a 4-point upward shift across the country is in line with the exit poll projection of a 51-48% popular vote lead for Kerry.”

Four points or less would have moved close states to Kerry, costing George W. Bush the election.

The 2004 election revisited, part 2

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Revisiting the 2004 election. Part 2.

Still in the spirit of the holidays, following up on the 2004 presidential election

Electoral College, 2004

Not merely was the Electoral College manipulated. What happened in November 2004 to the popular vote? The question is raised by, among others, Jonathan D. Simon, J.D., of the non-profit Verified Vote 2004, and Ron P. Baiman, Ph.D., Institute of Government and Public Affairs, U. of Illinois-Chicago.

Baiman and Simon’s paper, “The 2004 Presidential Election: Who Won the Popular Vote? An Examination of the Comparative Validity of Exit Poll and Vote Count Data,” focuses on disparities discussed by U. Penn research professor Steven Freeman, quoted previously.

Key question from 2004

Substantive and solidly researched, the paper bears out the fact that vote tallies diverged significantly from the reasonably expectations based on exit polling. Here quoted for convenience are Baiman and Simon’s main points:

“Executive Summary

  • There is a substantial discrepancy–well outside the margin of error and outcome determinative–between the national exit poll and the popular vote count.
  • The possible causes of the discrepancy would be random error, a skewed exit poll, or breakdown in the fairness of the voting process and accuracy of the vote count.
  • Analysis shows that the discrepancy cannot reasonably be accounted for by chance or random error.
  • Evidence does not support hypotheses that the discrepancy was produced by problems with the exit poll.  [emphasis added]
  • Widespread breakdown in the fairness of the voting process and accuracy of the vote count are the most likely explanations for the discrepancy.
  • In an accurate count of a free and fair election, the strong likelihood is that Kerry would have been the winner of the popular vote.”

Many of us couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Regrettably, Baiman and Simon’s paper never cracked through the surface in large media outlets. A quick search of the Lexis-Nexis database shows zero mention of the paper in U.S. newspapers. The print press collectively did not quote, or mention, the public statement released through U.S. Newswire Jan. 4, 2005, announcing a press conference at the National Press Club by the authors, other election experts, and activist groups including the NAACP. No magazines ran articles on election fraud as an issue.

The authors echoed questions raised by my North Carolina reader quoted in the previous entry. As they pointed out,

“Although it is the Electoral College and not the popular vote that legally elects the president, winning the popular vote does have considerable psychological and practical significance. It is fair to say, to take a recent example, that had Al Gore not enjoyed a popular vote margin in 2000, he would not have had standing in the court of public opinion to maintain his post-election challenge for more than a month up until its ultimate foreclosure by the Supreme Court. [emphasis in original]

In the 2004 election now under scrutiny, the popular vote again has played a critical role. George Bush’s apparent margin of 3.3 million votes clearly influenced the timing of John Kerry’s concession. Although the election was once again close enough that yet-to-be-counted votes offered at least the mathematical possibility of a Kerry electoral college victory–and although, once again, concerns about vote counting were beginning to emerge from early post-election reports and analyses–Kerry apparently believed that, unlike popular vote-winner Gore, he did not have effective standing to prolong the race.”

Baiman and Simon were well aware of the sensitive situation in Ohio,

“Yet to overturn the Ohio result, giving Kerry an electoral college victory (or even to disqualify the Ohio electors via challenge in Congress, which would deprive Bush of an electoral college majority and throw the election to the House of Representatives), would likely be regarded as unjust and insupportable by a populace convinced that Bush was, by some 3.3 million votes, the people’s choice.

Thus, although the popular vote does not legally determine the presidency, its significance is such that we must give due consideration to any evidence which puts the popular vote count itself at issue.”

[emphasis in original]

Hence the analysis of the anomalies. Citing the historical track record of exit polling and the 2004 results reported by exit polling authority Warren Mitofsky, Baiman and Simon argue convincingly for the credibility of the exit polls.

The crux:

“On election night 2004, the exit polls and the vote counting equipment generated results that differed significantly.”

As the authors remind readers,

“In the early morning of November 3, 2004, a CNN.com website screenshot entitled “U.S. PRESIDENT/NATIONAL/EXIT POLL” posted national exit poll results updated to 12:23 A.M., broken down by gender as well as a variety of other categories.[note] The time of the update indicates that these results comprised substantially the full set of respondents polled on election day, but were free from the effects of a subsequent input of tabulated data used to bring about ultimate congruence between the exit poll and vote count results.”

The outcome of this national exit poll was 48.2% Bush, 50.8% Kerry.

There has perhaps never been a less reported headline in the history of U.S. politics. In a world, or in a political realm, now bating its breath over the possibility that Iowa Christian conservatives may wander from Newt Gingrich to Rick Santorum or vice versa–in an election neither can hope to win–the fact that historically reliable exit polling showed John Kerry on top in the presidential election in 2004 went unremarked.

Baiman and Simon quoted Freeman’s discussion of the close battleground states, cited earlier:

“In particular, the odds against the discrepancies in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania occurring together are computed at 662,000-to-one, or a virtual statistical impossibility that they could have been due to chance or random error.”

The same pattern held on a broader scale:

“Receiving somewhat less emphasis is the overall pattern of discrepancy in the state polls—again with the vote counts turning in Bush’s favor, though less dramatically in the nonbattleground states, as will be discussed below. The national popular vote is not addressed in that paper, but the same statistical principles are applicable, and will be
employed in this analysis.”

The authors emphasize the large size of the national exit poll,  even more accurate than other exit polls:

“While the individual state samples totaled 73,678 reported respondents,[note] a national sub-sampling was undertaken by Edison/Mitofsky, which comprised 13,047 reported respondents, chosen as a representative random sample of the nation as a whole. This sample was drawn from 250 targeted polling places and from 500 individual telephone interviews with absentee and early voters.”

Baiman and Simon concluded with 95% certainty “that Kerry’s popular vote percentage would fall in the range 49.7% to 51.9%; that is, it would fall outside that range only once in 20 times.”

As they summarize, dryly, “Kerry’s reported vote count of 48.1% falls dramatically outside this range.”

That is, the vote reported for Kerry fell well outside the realm of probability.

The reaction to this solid analysis? In the immortal words of Sinclair Lewis, it made as much noise as a bladder hurled into the ocean. It had as much effect as a tract left in a speakeasy (paraphrase from Ann Vickers, 1933).

Despite the disregard in the national political press, other researchers have pursued the issues raised by the 2004 election. In a lengthy footnote, Baiman and Simon cite the work of MIT grad student William Kaminsky:

“Kaminsky finds that in 22 of the 23 states which break down their voter registrations by party ID the ratio of registered Republicans to registered Democrats in the final, adjusted exit poll was larger than the ratio of registered Republicans to registered Democrats on the official registration rolls. In other words, the adjustments performed on the exit polls in order to get them to agree with the official tallies would, if valid, require Republicans to have won the get-out-the-vote battle in essentially every state. We find this requirement implausible, and indeed observational evidence pointed to just the opposite: massive new voter turnout, which virtually always cuts in favor of the challenger; huge lines in Democratic precincts; unadjusted exit poll data showing apparently greater Democratic turnout; etc. Exit polls appropriately stratified to official party ID percentages, which would effectively neutralize any suspected “reluctant Bush responder” phenomenon by including the expected proportions of Republican and Democratic voters, would on the basis of Kaminsky’s analysis have yielded results at least as favorable to Kerry as those upon which we have relied in our calculations.”

Again the Amen Corner.

The public out in front, again

As written previously, it wasn’t only eggheads who perceived the issue of lost votes. Taking a leaf from Ronald Reagan’s book, here it seems only fitting to quote an email from one of my gracious readers:

“Margie,

Thank you for your recent piece on the above that I read today at buzzflash.com.  Bush is the worst president of my fifty-three year lifetime and I lived through Johnson and Nixon back-to-back.

Bush has managed to combine the guns and butter policies of the Johnson administration with the excessive secrecy and lies of Nixon.  This is almost as big an accomplishment as his uniting of Sunni and Shiite factions against us in Iraq.

I was a precinct captain for the Kerry campaign for the three months prior to the 2004 Iowa caucuses.  I would often ask the Democrats I called upon what they were hearing about Bush from their Republican acquaintances.  They usually replied in the following way, “You know, it is funny that you should ask that question.  I cannot believe the number of Republicans that I know who have VOLUNTEERED the information to me that they will never, ever vote for Bush again.”  And this was well before things in Iraq turned really, really bad.

What is your sense about the mood among Republicans these days?  Thanks, again, for your efforts on behalf of truth, justice and peace.  The best, [name]”

The 2004 election revisited, part 1

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Revisiting election 2004. Part 1

Ohio results as published 2004

As the U.S.A. heads into a new election year, a string of GOP presidential candidates has demonstrated conclusively that each will need all the help s/he can get, to get into the White House. Thus it is timely, in this holiday season, to review the 2004 election.

Short story: Election Day 2004 involved more signs of election fraud, in more states, than any other election including that of 2000, when our not counting votes in Florida gave George W. Bush the White House without compelling him to win it.

Exit polling in Venezuela

The 2004 anomalies were revealed when polling consultants Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International released final exit polls conducted in all states. A troubling pattern emerged, which has not to this day been explained away. Although the data were analyzed in an excellent paper by Prof. Steven F. Freeman, “The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy,” there was no significant follow-up by the national political press. Undoubtedly this cavalier disregard for the fundamental right to vote contributed to fuel the big changes of 2008, including the rise of Barack Obama and the further decline of the news media in public esteem.

Media rep 2004

Quick run-down, 2004:

  • In 2004, contrary to results in every other election for the previous twenty years, there was a variance between exit polls and the published vote tally of more than two points in 33 of 51 jurisdictions.
  • This variance amounted to a swing in each state of 4% or 5% or more to Bush.
  • That is, regardless of which candidate won in those states, a significant variance allegedly occurred in every exit poll in all of them, and always in the same direction.
  • This crucial swing occurred in all the close states: Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Iowa all had the same alleged ‘red shift.’
  • Most of the close states seemingly shifted more than two points, a swing of 4% or 5% favorable to Bush, regardless of the size or region of the state, and regardless of whether the state ultimately went for Bush or Kerry.
  • Exit polls from nine other states, less close, were also contradicted by a smaller swing toward Bush in the published vote tally. The same seeming swings to Bush occurred in the District of Columbia and Maryland.
  • Thus four out of five states are alleged to have swung to Bush, in an election where previous polling had consistently indicated new voters, independent voters, and younger voters trending toward Kerry and/or away from Bush.
  • This four-out-of-five swing is alleged for an election in which turnout increased, although increased voter turnout is generally held to favor the challenger against the incumbent.
  • In four states, the swing from exit poll to published vote tally was enough to swing the state from Kerry to Bush–Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, and Iowa.
  • These four states added up to 59 electoral votes, more than enough to change the outcome of the national election.
  • Numerous election problems were reported on the ground from counties and precincts in Ohio, Florida, New Mexico and Iowa.

According to Professor Freeman, whose PhD in organizational studies came from MIT and who holds professorships at the University of Pennsylvania and at an international MBA program founded by Harvard, the swing between exit poll and vote tally is an anomaly even in just three battleground states. Take Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida alone, and as Freeman calculated, “The likelihood of any two of these statistical anomalies occurring together is on the order of one-in-a-million. The odds against all three occurring together are 250 million to one.”

“As much as we can say in social science that something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error.”

Even for a non-scientist, the statistical problem above seems fairly obvious: If the exit polls were simple mistakes, then they should have diverged from the vote tallies randomly. Honest mistakes should vary at different locations. Honest mistakes should vary in favor of different candidates, benefiting different parties. You don’t have a nationwide set of honest mistakes all magically benefiting one candidate. This is not random, it is a pattern.

Freeman

It would also be near miraculous for a nationwide set of honest mistakes all to fall within a fairly short percentage range, just significant enough to affect the outcome of the election but not dramatic enough to trigger federal and state investigation under the law.

Disclaimer:  It is only reasonable to read opinion polls and other polling with skepticism.  Incessant polling can weaken the individual’s reliance on his/her own judgment, can plant suggestions, can intimidate reporters, and can manipulate public acceptance of the unacceptable. Following the 2004 election, an opinion poll was quickly published suggesting that most people were relieved—ironically–that the outcome was clear.

All well and good, if it was clear. But the integrity of vote counting is essential to our nation’s survival as a democracy. The horse-race obsession about who is ahead before the election often makes news media look silly. The question of who won the election, after the election, is fundamental.

Exit polls hit closer to the mark than do opinion polls. Exit polls are taken on the ground with people who show up to vote, are taken just after the voting, and are weighted to take into account a preponderance of one group. As Dr. Freeman points out, exit polls have been used globally to check and verify the validity of elections in countries including Germany and Mexico. When exit polls contradicted Eduard Shevardnadze’s claim that he had won election in the former Soviet country of Georgia, Shevardnadze was forced to resign under pressure from the U.S. among other nations.

Pundits’ disdain for the issue of what happened to the 2004 election not shared by the public

Writing about these issues soon after the 2004 election, this author focused initially on the small tilts that added up to a big tilt in the U.S. Electoral College. However, even then I pointed out that questions had also arisen affecting the popular vote count in ‘safe’ states. The responses below, from readers who vote, include this interesting anecdotal account:

“Margie,

A friend pointed me to your article “Did Bush lose the election?” which I found very interesting. I was also interested in your final comment about irregularities “even in safe states.”

I live in the “safe state” of North Carolina where something I observed may be worth passing along.

During the early voting period, the state Board of Elections was releasing daily turnout reports. The early voters were identified by their party registration. It occurred to me that comparing this year’s turnout with early voting in the 2000 election might reveal a trend.

At the close of early voting on Oct. 31, SBOE recorded 705,462 early voters. In 2000, 393,152 early voters were recorded. Four years ago, early voters were 46% Democrat and 38% Republican. This year, early voters were 50.4% Democrat and 36% Republican.

Given a 6-point net gain in Democratic turnout, it seemed reasonable to expect that John Kerry would gain at least several percentage points over Al Gore’s showing four years ago. But when the votes were tallied, Kerry registered virtually no improvement on Gore’s vote in North Carolina (Kerry 43.6%, Gore 43.2%).

Knowing who is voting doesn’t reveal how they are voting, and crossover voting has long been a feature of North Carolina elections. But there’s nothing to suggest that crossover voting was any different this year from four years ago. [emphasis added]

When a similar pattern was observed in parts of Florida, the response was that “Southern Democrats may have been more willing to vote for a moderate Southerner (Gore) than a Massachusetts liberal.” But that doesn’t explain why Democratic turnout increased while Republican turnout seemed to decrease.

This year’s early vote in North Carolina was 20% of the total vote. Four years ago it was 13.5% of the total. So, there’s a statistically significant sample to use as a basis for comparison. If a correlation exists between early voting patterns this year and four years ago, it seems pretty improbable that a significant jump in Democratic turnout would not have translated to some improvement for Kerry over Gore.

If Kerry were getting, say, 47% in North Carolina, that would have put another 130,000 votes in his column. It’s not enough to win the state’s 15 electoral votes, but a 4-point upward shift across the country is in line with the exit poll projection of a 51-48% popular vote lead for Kerry. And it would have moved Ohio and a couple other close states into his column.

It would be interesting to do these comparisons in states where the relevant data is available to see if Democratic turnout increased from 2000 to 2004, and if so, whether it translated to gains for Kerry over Gore.

I’m not ready to conclude there was vote manipulation. But there are a lot of questions about the results that need to be examined and answers provided.

Thank you for your efforts.”

“Dear Ms. Burns,
Thank you for your interesting, informative, and truthful article, “Did Bush
Lose the Election?”
The evidence of what you say has existed for quite some time now

  • patent evidence of election fraud presaged by Avi Rubin at Johns Hopkins University
    and echoed in the recent UC Berkeley study, by Zogby International as reported in IPS News, and
  • as Bill Simpich observes in the SF Bay View
  • by former MIT mathematics professor David Anick, among others. Notwithstanding, the mainstream media continue to exclude from its purvue this most heinous and glaringly evident act of deception
  • the defrauding of the American people of its vote and therefore of its sovereignty. By failing to lend their attention to this issue, the mainstream media act as aiders and abettors of a blatant attack against the security of the United States of America.

It is therefore extremely refreshing to hear someone valiantly speak out for the American people in our time of crisis. I thank you most profoundly for being one of the seminal figures to tell the truth about the Third Millenium scandal that is now gaining a reputation worldwide as “Votergate” or, as I also like to call it: “the NeoCons” [Election] Piracy 2004.”

[name redacted]

There Was Never Going to Be ‘Bipartisanship’

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There Was Never Going to Be ‘Bipartisanship’

 

President Obama delivers the State of the Union address

President Obama is receiving credit, rightly, for being considerably more polite and decent to his strident opponents—neocon media personalities, the GOP in Congress, former Republican candidates for office—than George W. Bush and his cohorts ever were to Democrats. He didn’t even wear garlic, going to dine with George Will, Bill Kristol and a host of other neocons in a house presumably free of mirrors. But it’s a good thing the news cycle moves so quickly nowadays. Otherwise, that quick set-up by the GOP in DC, to make ‘lack of bipartisanship’ the putative hallmark of presidential failure, might not have been so quickly seen through–and shot down.

The simple truth, to coin a phrase, is that there was never going to be bipartisanship from Republicans in Congress and/or angling for office. That’s not what they’re there for. They’re there to protect the interests they have always protected, at least at the highest party echelons.

Hence the rapidity and the blind rigidity with which the GOP already attempts to represent every fiscal move by the new administration in the old tax-and-spend light, ‘positioning’ Republicans in Congress as in favor of ‘cuts’ and Democrats as the reverse. Disregarding budget-busting amendments to the stimulus offered by the GOP, some media outlets have gone along with this line.

Predictably, one of the biggest differences between the House version of the stimulus package and the Senate version, the latter more affected by GOP demands, was that the Senate version included more, and more regressive, ‘tax cuts’. Thus the ‘cut spending’ line—actually, a rise in deficits—melds neatly with the ‘cut taxes’ line.

 

It’s a neat formulation but an Orwellian distortion.

 

When the GOP, which recently brought about the biggest wave of government spending in U.S. history and capped it off with a Wall Street bailout for some of the biggest beneficiaries of that spending, talks about ‘cutting taxes,’ in practice the ‘cuts’ boil down to two policies:

1)      Shifting the tax burden from the wealthy and corporations to the middle class; and

2)      Shifting the burden of raising taxes from the federal government to states and localities.

Both of these shifts are in practice regressive, bearing down hardest on those least able to bear any further financial strain. Over-all, what happens to ordinary taxpayers—especially hardworking, non-indigent individuals who have to watch every dime—when the Grover Norquist types go to work drowning the government in the bathtub?

We are seeing the answer right now, most prominently in Schwarzenegger’s California. In general, taxes imposed by state and local governments tend to burden ordinary individuals more than they do the affluent or corporations (which often operate above the aegis of state law). As today’s Washington Post sums it up, the new cuts being passed in California fit the typical pattern:

 “The budget measure would trim spending by $15 billion, including $8.6 billion from funding for public schools. It would raise $14 billion in taxes by increasing the sales tax by 1 percent and the gasoline tax by 12 cents a gallon, by doubling vehicle registration fees and by levying a 2.5 percent surcharge on income taxes. The rest would come from new borrowing.”

It’s like reward-the-billionaire pinball. Of all forms of broad taxation, the most regressive is the sales tax. Such sales taxes as gasoline tax and fuel tax hit individuals and businesses dependent in transportation and housing particularly hard. Vehicle registration fees and other so-called ‘user’s fees’ are generally just a form of sales tax under another name, and btw not doing much to enhance the health of our automobile industry or our transportation sector generally. After all, the only way to avoid paying more in these sectors is to do without a car or to keep your old one. (And if you do without, you are still paying more, lately, for mass transit. See below.)

Ditto for all the ‘recordation fees’ and other fees so beloved of states and localities, imposed on you—“They’re gonna nick you every way they can,” an older guy around here commented—when you go to record your will or the deed to your house, or get a driver’s license or become a notary public, or buy a boat or hunt or fish, etc. For all the talk about a ‘death tax’—actually a very lenient estate tax—tax policy proposed by every Republican administration in memory is much like a tax on everyday living.

Property taxes are only somewhat less regressive—and they are pinned to a ‘market’ that may be nonexistent and is skewed to start with. Full discussion of the way the term ‘markets’ is used is far beyond the scope of this article, but just try to imagine what would happen to housing prices in your neighborhood if—here’s the paradox—your neighborhood became the most ideally stable in the country, with everybody paying off the mortgage and nobody moving. The effect: Since the most recent house sales, on a totally-paid-up block, would be years in the past, house prices as set by the ‘market,’ without correcting for lack of indebtedness, would be destructively low.

Be it noted that ‘small business,’ which we sometimes hear about a lot from GOP lawmakers, who have recently emphasized the talking point about reducing the tax burden on small business, is also hit hard by the most regressive taxes. As with individuals of modest means, genuine small businesses struggle the most with higher fuel prices, more recording and other user’s fees. They also have the hardest time maintaining adequate paperwork for ever-increasing sales taxes, which can also eat into their sales.

Then there’s the steadily rising cost of getting to the store or other place of business. Unsurprisingly, customers are numerous for delivery businesses–UPS, FedEx—and for online shopping centers—eBay, Amazon. That rise, good news in a commercial sense for some buyers and sellers, is directly related to transportation costs (as well as to the desire to save time and effort).

As I have noticed before, the subway and train station near my home illustrate the effects of federal ‘tax cuts’ connected to reduced federal transportation subsidies. Parking at the nearest Metro station, while limited, used to cost $1.75 per day, and you could get out for free if you left before 3:00 p.m.  Now, the price has more than doubled and stays the same regardless of what time you leave.

A small item, by itself. But multiply $1.75 by 5, and you get a weekly increase of $8.75; multiply that by 4, and you get a monthly increase of $35.00; multiply that by 12, and you get a yearly increase of $420.00, give or take a little for either vacations or overtime.  Meanwhile, both train fares and subway fares have also gone up, partly because of the pressure of fuel costs and maintenance costs.

Obviously, increases in the cost of transportation hit those people hardest who can least afford to pay. They hit the middle class, the going-to-work-class, much harder than the wealthy. But the nation’s counties, cities, towns and states have to levy such increases to pay for services. We have a growing population that requires transportation, and a shrinking proportion of the over-all percentage of taxes paid by the wealthy and by corporations.

NOTE

Below is a partial list, which used to be passed around by email, of taxes-by-any-other-name. None of these taxes have gone down in any state or locale:

Accounts Receivable Tax                  Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax                                Cigarette Tax
Court Fines (indirect taxes)               Dog License 
Fishing License                                  Food License 
Fuel permit tax                                   Gasoline Tax (42 cents per gallon [dated])
Hunting License Tax                                     Liquor Tax
Local Income Tax                              Luxury Taxes
Marriage License                              Medicare Tax
Property Tax                                      Real Estate Tax

Septic Permit                                      Service Charge Taxes
Road Usage Taxes (Truckers)                      Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax                  Road Toll Booths
School Tax                                          State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)    Telephone federal excise tax
Telephone federal universal service fee tax
Telephone federal, state and local surcharge taxes
Telephone minimum usage surcharge tax
Telephone recurring and non-recurring charges tax
Telephone state and local tax                       Telephone usage charge tax
Toll Bridges                                        Toll Tunnels
Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)        Trailer registration tax
Utility Taxes                                       Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax                              Watercraft registration Tax

Well Permit Tax

This partial list does not include every ‘recordation fee,’ mentioned above, for everyday official documents like deeds and wills, or the raft of ‘license fees’ levied on entrance to most occupations or professions, or the extra sales taxes levied on airport parking and airplane tickets. Again, all these measures become more essential to small governments when they can count on neither federal support nor general economic prosperity.

Soaking the middle class, of course, goes much farther even than fees and indirect taxes, as everyone knows who has faced rising college tuition and rising health care costs. If people are now hoping fervently that President Obama will be a new FDR, it is in large part because President Bush implemented the unstated platform of reversing everything positive accomplished by FDR’s New Deal.

What is the ‘centrist’ number of Americans and Iraqis killed in Iraq?

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In 1971, decorated Vietnam War veteran turned antiwar activist John Kerry asked a Senate committee, “How do you ask a man to be the last man killed in Vietnam?”

Today we need to ask an updated question: what is the centrist number of people killed in Iraq?

[Example headline: “Democrats Push Toward Middle On Iraq Policy,” WashPost Sept. 13, 2007]

Twentieth-century physics upended previous ideas about time,
space and mass. Mass converts into energy; energy changes rather than being
gained or lost; time and space are relative to each other. Albert Einstein, he
of the adorable face, space-physics hair, and loving eyes, combined some
premier principles into one simple formula.

Einstein

Heading into the 21stcentury–and stuck in Iraq, unless we the people do something about it–we need to apply some equally lucid conversion principles to the Iraq war.

Here is the simple formulation: the more time we spend in Iraq, the more lives lost.

Time translates to death. More time translates to more death and injury. Less time translates to less death and injury.

This is the formulation that the White House, the GOP in Congress, and most Republican candidates for the White House, with the honorable exception of Ron Paul, do not want mentioned. They keep trying to change the real formulation – more time means more fatalities – into the bogus alchemy of self-serving rhetoric – less time means ‘failure,’ while for unspecific reasons more time in Iraq means ‘success.’ Pulling out – that is, reducing our losses of life, limb and treasure suffered–means ‘losing,’ and staying means–again, for unspecified reasons– ‘victory.’

The real loss was going in. The real failure was the immoral, illegal and unconstitutional invasion of another country.

 

Meanwhile, top-crust administration figures and their allies in the large media outlets keep using a similar head-banging Orwellian lexicon to characterize the big argument about the war. People who want us out of Iraq, in this War-Is-Peace twist, are “left”–never mind public survey polls showing that a solid majority of Americans want us out of there. People who insist on our staying in Iraq, on whatever omigod pretext, are characterized as “conservative”–never mind that Congressman Paul (R-Texas) and many of his supporters are conservative, as are publications such as Chronicles Magazine that have consistently opposed the war.

Most grating of all, officeholders and candidates for office who keep us stuck in Iraq by waffling publicly, temporizing instead of taking a stand, are characterized as “centrists,” or “moderates” as in a series of Washington Post items about Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, designated “the anguished moderate.”

Virtually all the big media outlets have adopted this terminology, even though this kind of language desecrates the very notion of language– English–as communication.

More time in Iraq means more casualties. Less time in Iraq means fewer casualties. It’s that simple. So what is the ‘moderate’ number of young American servicemen and servicewomen to be injured or worse? Even aside from the fact that we are currently nearing the 4,000 mark, what was the ‘moderate’ position on the acceptable amount of death, injury, psychological trauma, sexual assaults and domestic violence, and all the other ills connected with war, going into Iraq? Now that we are nearing the 4,000 mark for deaths, what is the ‘moderate’ quota for American death in Iraq and Afghanistan? What, for that matter, is the moderate quota for killed and wounded Iraqis?

What is the ‘centrist’ number of deaths in Iraq?