Tag Archives: GOP

May 8 primary results hold interest for Democrats

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May 8th primary more interesting for Dems

The series-of-oddities parade of GOP presidential contests since summer 2011 seems to be over for now, and the May 8 primary results hold some potential for improvement in government at the federal and state level. Quick spot-check below.

Sen. Lugar

Indiana:

  • Most famously, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) will leave the Senate at the end of 2012, after thirty-five years in Washington. Represented as a statesman, Lugar did not question either the Iraq war or trillion-dollar tax breaks for the wealthy under GWBush. Some Pale-Blue-Dog media commentators are spinning this as a political loss for Democrats–oddly, since the GOP senate nominee in Indiana will be State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who filed a losing lawsuit against the Obama administration’s bailout of the auto industry. Auto parts and supplies are a significant industry in Indiana. Mourdock, a former coal and oil geologist running as an outsider, tried for Congress unsuccessfully three times in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
  • Lugar’s loss to Mourdock has been represented in media almost entirely as a story of Tea-Party-wins-one. Dick Armey of FreedomWorks sent around the same line by mass email. A version of the same narrative has Lugar the statesman driven out by extreme partisanship, faulted for his votes to confirm the president’s Supreme Court nominees, for example. Lugar’s own statement takes this line. No one points out that Lugar’s Senate votes since 2006 may have made sense as political calculation also, given that Obama won Indiana in 2008. Indeed, given not only that Obama carried the state but also that Democratic party affiliation in Indiana exceeded the GOP by nine percentage points, it looks less than wizardly that Dems didn’t bother putting up a senate opponent for Lugar in 2006. Lugar ran unopposed in 2006, but can’t even win his own primary in 2012? –Q whether that’s a major sea change, or another polite major-party bargain to ignore the popular voice.
  • That Lugar’s giving a false home address for decades went unremarked does not speak well either for political participation in Indiana or for national political reporting. If memory serves, Indiana was represented exclusively as a ‘red state’ in the 2008 elections, with no media reportage of the Dem party advantage in the state. Typically, that kind of thing gets reported only after Dems have lost the advantage; no media outlets reported that Dems outnumbered Repubs in Texas, either—until Gallup argued that Obama should have won even more states than he did, in the link above. The bright spot here is that the large media outlets have lost so much credibility in political reporting that most people know to get their information elsewhere.
  • Democrats have shown the sense to field solid candidates in all Indiana congressional districts, contesting some held by the GOP and leaving no current GOP Reps to coast to reelection unopposed. The GOP nominees all defeated Tea Party challenges except for incumbent Marlin Stutzman in the 3rd District, a Tea Partyer himself; he is challenged by Pastor Kevin Boyd (D). Two women House nominees are Democrats, Shelli Yoder in the 9th District and Tara Nelson in Indiana’s 4th District.
  • Indiana’s 5th District has State Rep. Scott Reske (D) facing GOP former U.S. Attorney Susan Brooks. The seat opened up through the retirement of Rep. Dan Burton (R). If Brooks won, she would be the first woman elected to the House by Indiana Republicans in more than fifty years. Brooks is a self-declared ‘anti-choice’ candidate linked to funding Planned Parenthood. One of the GWBush U.S. Attorneys (Southern District of Indiana) not fired, she like Mourdock is receiving heavy anti-labor support.
  • Indiana’s 6th District also has a good House contest, GOP Rep. Mike Pence leaving to run for governor. Bradley T. Bookout is the Dem nominee, a strong contestant in a Republican district against a far-right ‘young gun’ GOPer, Luke Messer. Messer like Brooks has received funding from the anti-labor ‘Citizens for a Working America’, based in Virginia.
  • In the governor’s race, the dubious Pence faces Dem attorney and former state house speaker John R. Gregg. Gregg also hosts an Indiana radio call-in talk show.
  • Unfortunately, the Indiana state legislature is so horrendously gerrymandered that only devoted legwork from the ground up will retrieve anything. State Democrats stupidly engaged in same when they were in office, leaving a field depleted of grassroots credibility for the GOP to move in on and take over in 2010.

 

Renee Ellmers

North Carolina:

  • Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton won the Democratic primary outright to run against GOPer Pat McCrory for governor. The North Carolina governorship has been Democratic for twenty years, although the GOP has money advantage. Top of the ticket is a boost in NC, which Barack Obama carried in 2008. Dems will have to work to keep the Pale-Blue-Dog media from torpedo-ing this one.
  • The Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor is former Director of State Personnel Linda Coleman.
  • More notoriously, of course, an anti-same-sex marriage amendment was added to the NC state constitution. Setting aside larger issues for the narrowly political assessment, this move in other states has yet to augment GOP successes in fall elections following. Nut-right victories are usually followed by general-electorate pullback, a point that has yet to be noticed in most ‘insider’ political commentary. These are not inspirational moves, and they offer nothing for most young voters.
  • Weird-right GOP nominees and incumbents Virginia Foxx in North Carolina’s 5th District and Renee Ellmers in the 2nd face solid Dem challengers—Elisabeth Motsinger and retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Steve Wilkins. Foxx is on recent record criticizing people who take out student loans. Foxx, on G. Gordon Liddy’s radio show, proclaimed that she worked her way through college without borrowing—although her husband did take out some loans. No record of whether Foxx knows about the gap between 2012 college tuition and entry-level pay, or about the difference between 2012 and 1961, when she started college. While Foxx’s early self-support and commitment to her own education are laudable, it might be noted that Foxx has had what Repubs call ‘government jobs’ since 1987. That’s 25 straight years of ‘government jobs’.
  • The Democratic challenger in the 10th District is NC Rep. Patricia Keever. The incumbent is another GWBush appointee, Patrick McHenry. McHenry was among other things one of Karl Rove’s men in the 2000 political campaign. He is another long-time labor-hater, having worked for Bush’s Sec. of Labor, Elaine Chao, as a Special Assistant.

 

Mountaintop removal in WV revisited

West Virginia:

  • Obama did not carry West Virginia before, in either the primary or the general in 2008, and has little chance of doing so this time—even if the mind rejects an image of West Virginians turning out enthusiastically to vote for Mitt Romney. Sadly for it, West Virginia is not a makeweight in presidential politics, and its unimportance this primary season was highlighted by the relative success of a Texas inmate named Keith Judd as the mickey-mouse candidate who got votes. Sadly, the declining population of the state is preyed upon by vested interests. West Virginia is one of the states that most benefited from the New Deal and the Rural Electrification Administration, but any populace that sees the president as a ‘muslim’ gets little chance at a better life now.
  • That said, Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and Sen. Joe Manchin are both incumbents, and neither faces a strong challenger. Tomblin’s is conservative Republican Bill Maloney, who has no experience in public office but ran a drilling company and was involved in planning the successful rescue of the trapped Chilean miners. Manchin’s is businessman John R. Raese, who lost to him before in the campaign with the infamous ‘hick’ ad. Raese also lost elections in 1984, 1988, and 2006.
  • Dems nominated two women, Robin Jean Davis and Kanawha County attorney Letitia Chafin, for seats on the West Virginia Supreme Court. Davis is also an incumbent. Reportedly the races will be expensive. The combination of low education levels and a dearth of viable newspapers means that WV, like Tennessee and Kentucky, is targeted by lobbyists against legislation and regulation in the public interest. Fertile fields.

 

Wisconsin:

 

More later

The American Economy, part 2

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The American Economy, part 2

Following up on last week’s post–

We are all inheritors of the labor movement

Another fundamental of the U.S. economy is one that we have had for more than fifty years: We are all living on a gigantic store of assets, workplace conditions and industries produced by the American labor movement from the 1930s through the 1970s. This fundamental fact remains even in the historic economic slump from the mortgage-derivatives debacle. Despite the decline of labor unions and despite even the unthinkable wealth disparity between top and bottom in our economy, our middle class is still living on residuals of wealth and productivity from the earlier labor movement. The ‘boomerang’ phenomenon—young adults moving back in with their parents, because their parents have houses with space for them to live in—is only the most obvious example. This fundamental is not just a matter of inheritance in the limited literal sense of inheriting the parental house, a car or two and whatever is left in the family’s checking and savings accounts, etc., after end-of-life medical bills. It is a matter of being able to go to work with a reasonable expectation of a paycheck, a defined workday and a defined workweek with a weekend or other days off. It includes extensive nationwide use of ports, highways, public schools and public services that we tend to take for granted. And it is a matter of successful social programs brought about by the New Deal and the fight of the labor movement on behalf of the middle class—Social Security and Medicaid, which moved America’s elderly population out of the poverty column from the middle of the twentieth century onward. And it includes an incalculable amount of intellectual capital, much being donated or at best going for under market value in the nation’s universities, mass media and publishing.

Post-war housing

The amount of wealth that the majority of ordinary people have inherited from past labor becomes clearer when one thinks about inheritance in the more limited sense, as in housing and the giant second-hand market in the U.S. The overwhelming majority of individuals post-World War II in this country did not grow up thinking of themselves as heirs and heiresses. The exceptions who did grow up thinking of themselves that way—figuring out how much they stood to inherit in due course—did not necessarily benefit from the perception. It can be a disincentive to good work. Nonetheless, the amount of wealth being quietly passed along by inheritance, one way or another, to people not yet senior-citizen age in this country is staggering. It isn’t written about much—most people don’t want to talk about it, for reasons ranging from grief and mourning to simple self-protection—but it is one of the reasons why so much of the American middle class can make ends meet even in a time when this country’s wealth inequality approaches that of Sri Lanka.

 

Two-carat diamond engagement ring

Some specific examples of inheritance in the limited sense, in order of generally ascending value:

  • House contents. Admittedly, a stack of empty plastic margarine containers for left-over food—hoarded by thrifty post-war parents to keep from having to buy that expensive Tupperware—may not look like a treasure trove. But the total cost of all the tools, kitchen and garden supplies, clothing, furniture and ‘miscellaneous household’ would mount up fast if purchased simultaneously, even in big-box discount chain stores. People who inherit a household of items keep them, give them to younger relatives, sell them–on eBay, at yard sales, or at auction–or donate them to charity. The thrift stores in metro areas burgeon with aids to social mobility for legal immigrants and others less likely to have inherited the equivalent supplies. As with yard sales, auctions and sometimes eBay, marginalized buyers are getting the most price-elastic goods at a discount. And an additional benefit of Keep using, Re-use, Recycle is, of course, that it keeps the stuff out of landfills. As in the household Tip O’Neill grew up in, described by Jimmy Breslin in How the Good Guys Finally Won, nothing goes to waste.
  • With some exceptions such as unsafe baby beds, house contents are the innocuous, Mamsie-Pepper side of inheritance. Diamonds are pretty much the obverse side of inheritance. Let’s note first that most diamonds are not very valuable. Any diamond less than a quarter of a carat should not cost much, and the price of a piece of jewelry set with many tiny diamonds—under 0.25 carat each—should reflect only a multiple of that individual price, skilled labor and the gold aside. Even with larger diamonds, the wholesale price is going to reflect the quality of the stone, meaning clarity and color (colorlessness), and the overwhelming majority of diamonds are not D-E VVS-IF; nowhere near. That said, someone with a solitaire diamond purchased more than five years ago—let alone thirty or more years ago–might have an asset, if s/he can get it graded accurately–not ‘appraised’, but graded for color, clarity, cut and weight. Two- or three-carat diamonds of top color and clarity are going for astronomical prices, bigger ones for even more. Regardless of whether diamonds are ‘the new gold’, as the New York Times recently suggested, good solitaires have near-immediate cash value. I am intrigued that seemingly few banks and other mortgage lenders have taken them in exchange for a mortgage balance. A six-figure diamond has got to be worth more than a risky outstanding loan (lender), and switching the genuine article with a good simulant or a white sapphire seems like a small price to pay for getting out of debt (borrower). Maybe it’s happening and they’re not talking about it.
  • Houses and land are among the most obvious inheritable assets, and tend to be written about the most comprehensively. Many articles are published in the business press, in consumer blogs, and elsewhere about the pitfalls in inheriting a house, the possible tax liability—not large, for most people—or about options for what to do with an inherited house. A modest house in a post-war tract development is not the immense treasure that many people may have imagined during the housing boom. But if the house is sellable at all, given condition and neighborhood, obviously it can generate cash to offset a car purchase, college tuition, etc., or to build a rainy-day fund. A bigger windfall could pay down or pay off descendants’ mortgages—nothing to sneeze at, if you value your health and would benefit from reducing stress in your life. Multiply that by a few million, and you’ve got something with real impact.
  • Life insurance policies are among the last few reasonably good deals in the private insurance market. It’s interesting how vague and moderated the ads for life insurance policies tend to be; looks as though the rest of insurance—health, disability, malpractice—has frowned down anything that would highlight contrasts. Back to inheritance—any parents who purchased life insurance policies at a reasonably young and healthy time of life managed a boon to their offspring, pretty much uncomplicated by tax or other liabilities.
  • Et cetera.

The collective amount of just the above-mentioned specific assets is virtually incalculable. On a macro scale, these assets are what enable so many in our population to survive while underemployed. Just the collective assets involved in home gardening for food production, and for home improvement, contribute significantly to the national economy. However, as mentioned, our national inherited wealth far exceeds the limited, literal kind of inheritance sketched here.

University of Michigan

We have inherited industries, farmland and natural resources including (for now) potable water. We have inherited universities, museums and a vast communications system, an immense intellectual infrastructure. We have inherited a national physical infrastructure with the potential for improvement that would also ‘put people back to work’, as candidates for office keep saying while refusing to do so.

Current mouthings of GOP politicians and their television shills about ‘jobs’ and ‘unemployment’, fed into media outlets for the election, do not acknowledge our immense inherited wealth. To do so would acknowledge the importance of American labor, and would acknowledge the necessity of regulation (law) to safeguard natural resources and human lives. No one on their side of the line points out that a country of our resources and assets has the capability, for example, to educate all its youth. Quite the contrary: When President Obama suggested that everyone who wants to go to college should be able to, Rick Santorum called him a “snob.”

This wasn’t mere campaign rhetoric, stupidity and mean-mindedness. Santorum and his ilk jumped on Obama’s case because, from the perspective of GOP candidates for office, the reminder that we have immense assets for education is dangerous. Once it is recognized that we can educate our population, after all, the inevitable question becomes why don’t we? We have more than enough resources and assets to provide for our health needs, too, and look what happens when someone tries to do so. Aside from what notable newspapers like the Washington Post did to health care reform, the supermarket tabloids are vile, even beyond their usual hysteria, in attacks on first lady Michelle Obama in the context of health–beauty or nutrition, exercise or fashion.

There is danger in the reminder that the U.S. has immense assets–for health, for nutrition, for music and the arts; for national parkland, our coasts, mountains in West Virginia, clean water in any river, lake or aquifer. You name it; if someone brings up or indirectly reminds the public how genuinely wealthy this country is, the rightwing noise machine gets hot to trot.*

 

More later

 

*An individual heartening exception: David Koch, to do him justice, recently donated $35 million to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. My view remains that the wingers funded by the Koch brothers mostly take from, rather than give to, the public. But this is going in the right direction.

Birth control is an economy issue

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Since when is birth control not an economy issue?

 

Rick Santorum

‘The economy’ ‘versus’ ‘contraception’, contraception as a ‘social issue’, ‘social issues’ ‘versus’ ‘jobs’

—Why is the 2012 political campaign being represented this way?

On a planet inhabited by more than seven billion people, birth control is pro-life.

In a nation like the United States, where population decline does not number among pressing social problems, birth control is the economically viable way forward.

Prosperity and income distribution, after World War II

This is not new. The post-war generation knew it. The overwhelming majority of American families in the postwar baby boom—the families, the parents, who produced my generation—had two or three children. More than four was an exception. The ‘only child’ was an exception. The majority of GIs returning after the war, who married, bought houses, built the suburbs, went to college on the GI bill—or not—and spent decades on their jobs, the overwhelming majority of them—they produced an heir and a spare, as the Brits say of their royals. Or maybe two spares. Having gotten more than a glimpse of the carnage and destruction of World War II, they came home and reproduced themselves with maybe a little something left over. The average number of persons per household in the U.S. in 1964, according to the 1985 World Almanac and Book of Facts, was 3.3. This was before household size declined with rising separation and divorce, before a rise in one-parent households, etc. Where are Ozzie and Harriet when we really need them?

 

Ozzie and Harriet family

And that was during the BABY BOOM, famous for regenerating the U.S. economy partly by injecting into it—the goat entering the python—large new numbers of potential consumers as well as citizens. Baby boomers’ parents were able to accomplish what they did largely because they had birth control.

The generation of veterans of the Great Depression and World War II wanted and expected to live better than its parents and grandparents. They limited their childbearing, and they did it deliberately, with the social approval of their peers/population cohort. Betty Friedan notwithstanding, gone, after World War II, were the days when it was routine for a married couple to have a child every year to help on the farm, knowing that the number might be held down by infant and child mortality anyway. Gone were the days when it was routine for kids to quit school in second or third grade, or in sixth or seventh grade, to work on the farm. Gone were the days when the number of children in a family was limited only by the mother’s health, and when one wife died after numerous births, another took her place to produce more offspring with the grieving widower. The postwar generation that produced the Baby Boomers? The generation that gave birth to ours? –We may not be hearing much about it on the campaign trail right now, ladies and gentlemen, but they used BIRTH CONTROL.

 

1950s family in a 1950s ad

Proud of it, too. Birth control may not have been blazoned on billboards across the nation, but you can look at a raft of 1950s advertisements featuring what is represented as the typical family–and the overwhelming majority will picture either two or three children.

If there is a downside to this picture, it is NOT that using birth control roused intense social antipathies, at least not in any neighborhood I knew of. The downside included pharmaceutical companies’ reluctance to adhere to safety and health standards—‘regulation’–and familiar prejudices. People too dumb or too ignorant or too foreign were the ones who didn’t use birth control, was the perception, less often voiced than sensed. People who held human life cheap, as we used to hear. People who lived in such teeming hordes that it was not feasible for them to value human life as we do—this was sometimes the message—they were the ones who didn’t use birth control. In fact, not using it was part of their problem. They did not have access to the advances of Western medicine.

Including birth control (along with television, advertising, and new cars).

The parents I knew employed birth control willingly. It wasn’t talked about much–because it didn’t need to be talked about, let alone defended. I may have grown up in a politically polarized neighborhood, but never in my life did I hear anyone arguing about the use of birth control, ever. Never did I hear anyone in my parents’ generation have to defend using birth control. For one thing, it was nobody else’s business. It was your own business. For another, it was a good idea, and everyone knew it. Even before the days when reproductive treatment was the extent of most women’s health care, birth control was not by any means a left-right or conservative-liberal issue. Every father on my block, when I was growing up, was a proud father. Every one of them was home from World War II, and glad of it. (One dad got deathly ill after going into the Army, spent months convalescing from grave illness in a military hospital, and was sent home honorably discharged.) Not one of these dads went all-out to have as many kids as possible. Not one. It is remarkable that the anti-contraception rhetoric of Rick Santorum and of gag-a-goat Rush Limbaugh is being presented exclusively as a woman’s issue.–To a man, the fathers that I remember from my growing up years wanted the number of kids they could support—and by the way, supporting and bringing up children included at least hoping to send them to college some day. Sending your kids to college, like the freedom to use birth control if you chose, the freedom to move where you chose, the right to be paid for your work, and the ability to buy a house if you saved, was a sign of advancement. They might have given up college for themselves, entering World War II, and without much discussion of the sacrifice, but they did not necessarily intend for their offspring to forgo college.

The Baby Boom generation, be it noted, is the generation of Rush Limbaugh* and Rick Santorum. The unparalleled prosperity produced by Baby Boomers’ parents, using birth control among other sensible material practices, also spawned the mega-millions in media, lobbying and acquisitions that have so richly rewarded Limbaugh, Santorum, and Mitt Romney.

This entire population trend—widespread use of birth control, smaller families, skyrocketing prosperity in peacetime, and an unparalleled expansion of the U.S. economy from 1943 to 1973—was also part of the large over-all transition of America from an agrarian nation to a fully industrialized one. The grandparents of Baby Boomers had more children than did the parents of Baby Boomers. The parents of Baby Boomers often had more children than did their offspring. Each of my four grandparents came from a family of from nine to twelve offspring. My two parents came from families of four and five. My parents had two. I do not recall one instance, not one, of either older generation urging the younger generation to have more children. Not one. Having fewer mouths to feed was an economic advantage. Not only was this common sense such a commonplace as not to need expression, the topic arose, if it arose in discussion at all, mainly in connection with people who did not use family planning. Nobody wanted to live like the Joads.

Where does the GOP get these lunatics?

 

The anti-birth-control party

But don’t take my word, or recollection, for the above.

Use reason. Friends on the right, ask yourselves the following questions: Did my parents have two or three children? If so, THEY USED BIRTH CONTROL. Did my parents have fewer than five or six children? If so, THEY USED BIRTH CONTROL. Did my aunts and uncles have fewer than five or six children? If so, in all likelihood, THEY USED BIRTH CONTROL. Did other parents in the neighborhood have two or three children? If so, in all likelihood, THEY USED BIRTH CONTROL. As Keith Olbermann pointed out last night, the (newest) ugliness of Rush Limbaugh on this matter attacks the women in his own family. Rick Santorum may have come from a different family structure than Limbaugh’s, but even so, for Santorum to look out over an audience of supporters, most of whom have fewer children than his seven, and criticize the use of contraception as libertinism, is incomprehensible. And no, Santorum is not attacking immorality; he’s attacking birth control. If he wanted to inveigh against premarital sex, he could do so. Instead, he goes after contraception.

Use conscience. In a world periodically wracked by famine, epidemic and wars, playing one’s part in holding down population growth is considered socially responsible. It was considered socially responsible even in the post-war years, when global population was much less than now, when the population of the United States was around 180 million, and when veterans were inclined to replace a population depleted by world war.

Use evidence. Baby Boomers, like their parents, have historically believed in birth control. An interesting datum from my yellowing Information Please Almanac, 1980, appears under the heading “Family Planning”:

“A recent survey conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute found that about 4 in 10 married couples have sterilizations within five years after the birth of their last wanted child. Sterilization prevents about 270,000 unwanted births per year.” (806)

This statistic presumably does not include families for whom the family doctor tactfully or accidentally circumscribed future pregnancies. Where is Marcus Welby when we really need him? Enough said.

 

Marcus Welby, T.V. family doctor

For the same year, the same source indicates that the overwhelming majority of U.S. families were two-person, three-person, or four-person—38 percent of all families were two-person families, 22 percent were three-person, and 20 percent were four-person. In other words, 80 percent of all U.S. families in 1980 had four persons or fewer. Only three-tenths of one percent of U.S. families included more than seven persons.

 

*Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) is encouraging a boycott of Rush Limbaugh’s sponsors. Second the motion.

Limbaugh sponsors listed on Facebook include Quicken Loan, Century 21, and Legal Zoom.

Also–Clear Channel, which brings us Limbaugh’s voice, is mostly owned by Bain Capital. No wonder Mitt Romney backed down from his initial responsible, respectful, sensible comment on birth control and the losing Blunt amendment.

How are they going to avoid making in-kind political contributions, when the general election approaches?

The scandal of parasitical management–disgraces continue

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Disgraces continue

The scandal of parasitical management

W. Edwards Deming, the wise man of American industry, said decades ago that industrial problems were overwhelmingly the failures of management rather than of labor. No flame thrower, Dr. Deming attributed U.S. manufacturing problems 90 percent to management, 10 percent to work force.

Deming

That kind of clarity now is 100 percent obstructed by most Republicans running for office. Call it the not-Gov. Walker, or –Gov. Kasich, or –Gov. Daniels principle. Instead, we have ongoing disgraces. The treatment of the work force by so-called managers at the beginning of the 21st century would often shame the 19th century, and the problem is politically exacerbated. Outright shameful conduct is at least passively condoned and is at worst actively supported by GOP leadership, who almost to a man always heed their corporate donors and future K Street employers. Call it the Gov. Walker, or Gov. Kasich, or Gov. Daniels principle. Three examples, out of many possible, follow below.

Cooper Tires lockout

  • Cooper Tires, of Findlay, Ohio: Unionized workers at Cooper Tires gave up millions in concessions in pay and benefits in 2008, to help save the company. Reviews of Cooper’s pay and benefits remain mixed among people who work there. Sales for the company have grown significantly, even in the sorely stressed economy that is the state of Ohio under Kasich, largely because the Obama administration bailed out the automobile industry (over GOP opposition). How did management at Cooper Tires return the favor? By locking out workers in November 2011—that would be right after Thanksgiving—and the workers remain locked out to this day. Lockouts always cost the company money, by the way; they entail hiring and training new help, with all the cost and risk entailed in higher turnover and lack of experience. That these are production workers doesn’t help. Meanwhile, compensation for five top executives at Cooper totaled $9,531,521 in 2010—up from the previous five years, and an all-time high, though listed as lower in percentage terms by Morningstar. The percentage ‘decline’ is owing to a decline in Cooper’s stock price, making options less valuable. Cooper CEO Roy V. Barnes took home $4.7M that year. The kicker is that the company, now pressuring employees to accept a worse contract, has ample funds on hand to purchase a plant in Serbia. Cooper Tire & Rubber still has problems with profitability in terms of its stock price, partly because the company is losing goodwill and suffering in public esteem over the way it is treating its employees. But cost-cutting measures have yet to extend to executive compensation for top management; the Human Resources officer responsible for pushing around employees in ways including the lockout also took home six figures in 2010. The excuse for raising executive salaries, of course, is the declining value of company stock options.
  • Apple, Inc.: Software giant Apple is less susceptible to accusations of lack of innovation or of failing to move with the times. Nor is its profitability suffering. However, its executive compensation is suffering even less, so to speak. Business Week and the Wall Street Journal are among business publications reporting that Apple CEO Tim Cook will receive 2011 compensation valued at $378 million. This, as they point out, stands in some contrast to the $1M annually drawn by late Apple CEO Steve Jobs. It stands in more dramatic contrast to conditions at Foxconn, a Chinese sweatshop used by Apple, where workers committed suicide in waves in 2010. The Apple-Chinese sweatshop connection was highlighted again by Rachel Maddow last night and was reported again by the New York Times recently. It was reported earlier by the Guardian. The story will continue to surface until the conditions are addressed—meaning corrected, once and for all. Whatever the problems of our struggling heavy industry, Apple, Inc., cannot convincingly claim that its pockets are too full of nothing but lint to pay its cheapest employees. N.b. There is also that niggling question of whether Apple couldn’t make more of its products here in the U.S., of course. Another question we’re not hearing raised on the campaign trail. Could it be that Apple is avoiding OSHA and EPA oversight?

Apple employee overseas

  • American Airlines, Inc./AMR: Any passenger who has had to endure AA’s baggage policy, fees for changing tickets, multi-stop routes, and teeny-weeny aging prop planes understands intuitively why American Airlines might need to apply for bankruptcy protection. Like almost every U.S. airline except Southwest, AA socks it to you at every possible juncture, including a baggage fee for checking just one suitcase. At least the company does not charge a baggage fee when it has to check your small carry-on bag, for passengers shunted onto a plane with overhead bins too tiny to accommodate even a carry-on–a frequent occurrence. Since AA is also using an aging fleet and, as mentioned, a large number of smaller and less-safe planes, operating expenses do not look to go down any time soon. Be it noted that decisions not to upgrade the fleet, not to purchase new planes rather than maintaining clunkers, and not to purchase larger rather than smaller planes are all managerial decisions. They violate Deming’s core principles for management; see the link above. They have not made AA profitable. But needless to say, AA top management is not seeking to lay itself off in the bankruptcy. The bankruptcy move is being used to break airline unions. Haven’t we seen this before?

How the company treats passengers is also a managerial decision, or series of decisions, determined by managerial policy—although the corporation does not hesitate to blame ‘government’ at every opportunity. While it is risky to use individual first-person experience as data, I have a first-hand anecdote to fill in the broader picture. For common-sense reasons, I do not usually fly at Thanksgiving. Last Thanksgiving, however, I had to fly to another state to tour Alzheimer’s-certified facilities for my mother, who needed to be relocated. That project is accomplished; all to the good. The trip home to DC on the Sunday after Thanksgiving entailed my getting on four planes. Naturally, there was a mechanical failure on the first of these, a small prop plane, and the two-hour delay meant that I missed the next three connections. Incidentally, the announcement we got about this did not explain the mechanical issue but blamed ‘paperwork’ for the delay, also stating that many mechanical staff were off for the holiday.

I did not know that I was booked on AA in the first place; I had bought tickets on Delta and on a local airline. But Delta was borrowing American planes, or AA was borrowing Delta’s brand. Either way, when I phoned the company about the problem, I was shuttled via phone from one company to the other, each disclaiming responsibility. Both companies had overbooked virtually all flights for the day; “They all overbook,” as one airport employee remarked matter-of-factly. Perhaps company management thought that few people would be traveling over Thanksgiving. That said, the story for me at least had a happy ending: eventually I asked the right question of the right person, who pointed me to the right in-house phone, which got me to someone with an Indian accent who was able to put me on a direct flight to DC at no extra cost. In fact, for the first time in my life I came home with more travel money than I left with—a combination of refunds and vouchers for being bumped. The next day, American’s bankruptcy was announced. Click.

Treatment of customers, including a deliberate policy of overbooking flights, is again a managerial decision.

More later.

To call for an end to the lockout in Findlay, Ohio, go here.

Florida primary, 2012

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Florida primary 2012, yesterday and today

In other news, Florida held its 2012 Republican primary Tuesday. Newt Romney defeated Mitt Gingrich, 46 percent to 32 percent.

For perspective on the hullabaloo over the GOP primary, Republicans constitute 36 percent of registered voters in Florida. Total Florida voters: 11,053,664. Democrats: 4,604,373. Republicans: 3,962,406.

 

Florida law suppresses vote

The former fact was mentioned on MSNBC, not live-voice but in a banner on screen. John King on CNN soon afterward said that the primary was open to “more than four million Republican voters” in Florida.

 

Turnout was 1,663,698 as of recent numbers linked above, or 42 percent of registered GOPers. Down from the 2008 primary, as noted elsewhere, including at TPM, but better than the gubernatorial primary of 2010.

 

Probably commentators will rush en masse to blame the lower (than 2008) turnout on Romney’s “carpet bombing” ad campaign.

History shows primary turnout low for Florida, of course, as in other states generally, so it would be a mistake to read too much into it. Nonetheless, two sizable factors each reduce turnout in a GOP primary in Florida. Only one has been much discussed on air.

  • So many of the in-the-minority-and-they-know-it Obama haters are so content to have any GOP candidate, any at all, that they are content to stay on the sidelines in the primary. Generally they’d rather just know as little about their nominee as possible. They don’t want to be informed of any good reason they have to vote against him.
  • With a foreclosure rate among the highest in the nation, the economy dwarfs every other concern. Even the large media outlets cited exit polls showing economic concerns outweighing social issues, religion, hate-Obama-ism (dignified as ‘electability’), etc., in the Florida primary.

 

And it’s on to the Nevada caucuses.

 

The unfolding primary season is providing a useful punch list of reforms and small election improvements needed, state by state.

 

  • Iowa needed more oversight for careful counting of the vote at its highly respected caucuses. In 2012, some watchful Ron Paul supporters happened to provide the assistance that would better be built into the process. Even though some of them raised the alarm at the time, Romney was still mistakenly declared (more or less) the winner in Iowa.
  • Florida began reporting early returns—broadcast on national television—before all of the state’s polls had closed. This is what the Baptists used to call backsliding.

 

Cable channels, after all, are careful to reassure viewers repeatedly that they will not announce exit polls results on how people voted until the polls have closed. That cable hosts and pundits MSNBC and CNN drop heavy hints of the outcome beforehand, and that the channels jump to announce projected results a few seconds after the much-built-up top of the hour, is beside the point. Clearly the networks understand that it is anti-democratic-process to start announcing results before all citizens have had a chance to vote. Florida earliest returns showed Romney running ahead almost 2-to-1, too. That could not have been heartening for other people voting after work, in the Panhandle.

 

Gingrich

Obviously the smaller corrections are dwarfed by larger problems. Since the moment of Obama’s election, the GOP nationwide has engaged in a campaign of vote suppression on a scale unprecedented since the era of legal segregation. But that issue needs fuller detail.

The 2004 election revisited, part 11–Florida

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Revisiting the 2004 election in Florida

Following up previous posts—

The affidavit by computer programmer Clinton Curtis, written about previously, refers to the unexpected death of Raymond C. Lemme. After Curtis left Yang Enterprises (YEI), he went to work for the Florida Department of Transportation. There he found instances of over-billing by Yang Enterprises, a state contractor.

Curtis

Curtis discussed Yang several times with Lemme, an IG investigator for the DOT. Soon afterward, Mr. Lemme was found dead in a motel room in Valdosta, Ga., death reported initially as a suicide. He died July 1, 2003. Lemme was 56, in good health, and had no known ties in Valdosta. Lemme’s supervisor at the Florida DOT, Robert (Bob) Clift, said in telephone interviews that “So far as I know, only Ray Lemme knows what he was doing in Valdosta, Georgia.”

The question remains, what was Lemme doing in Valdosta? July 1 was the Tuesday before the Fourth; was he on vacation? Was he on a work assignment? Calling in response to questions by voice mail, Clift said, “Neither.” Clift added, “As you know from the police reports, his wife and children are in Tallahassee, so he wasn’t on vacation or anything.  And he certainly wasn’t on a work assignment.”  In answer to a further question, he says also, “No, he wasn’t on leave.”

At the time of the interviews, Clift himself supported the hypothesis that Lemme’s death was suicide. He declined to speculate on motives, saying the family had been through enough. Clift said emphatically, however, that the death was not related to Lemme’s job performance, which he called “stellar.”

This assessment is borne out by a house organ of the transportation department. The Aug. 2003, Perspectives on Excellence, a Florida DOT newsletter, features an award won by the Inspector General’s Contract Fraud Investigation Team. Lemme was on the team.

A team photograph is followed by paragraphs of praise:

“The Inspector General’s office executed Florida government’s most successful attack on vendor contract fraud, producing 15 criminal convictions and recovering $1.5 million. This team is responsible for placing 83% of individual and company names on the Department of Management Services’ list of convicted vendors who are no longer eligible to compete for state business.

Governor Bush’s Inspector General recently presented this accomplishment as a best practice, at a national conference of Inspectors General.”

One of the vendors “no longer eligible to compete for state business” was Curtis’s former employer and Rep. Tom Feeney’s former client, Yang Enterprises. Curtis alleges in his affidavit that the vote-tampering software developed at Yang was a project initiated by Feeney. Feeney, who also served in the Florida state house and had been Jeb Bush’s running mate for lieutenant governor in 1994, went on to Congress in 2002.

Feeney

Lemme’s supervisor confirmed that Lemme was part of an award-winning team and reiterates that his work was excellent. “I worked with him probably for about 18 months to two years,” Clift said, and Lemme was “an outstanding performer, one of the most thorough investigators that I’ve ever worked with.”

“Everyone here who worked with him would say the same thing; we would all say that.”

Clift also emphasized that “All of us who worked with him support the conclusions of the Valdosta, Georgia, police,” that the death was a suicide. Calling suspicions about the surprising death “unfortunate,” Clift also repeated emphatically that Lemme’s “assignment had absolutely nothing to do with voting machines.” “It was not anything secret.” The IG unit investigates “employee misconduct and contract frauds as they impact  DOT,” Clift explained, giving as examples employees claiming more time than actually put in, or travel claimed that is not supported, etc. “On the contractor perspective, [we investigate] contractors who billed us for work they did not do.”

Clift clarified emphatically that Lemme’s job was not in jeopardy. Asked whether Lemme had been fired or going to be fired, Clift said, “Absolutely not. I was his supervisor. His job performance was stellar; other people under him and around him looked up to Ray and modeled their performance on his.” It was Clift who nominated the contract fraud investigation team for a job award. Whatever the cause of death, it was not related to Lemme’s job performance.

But in Clift’s opinion, “this voting machine stuff doesn’t square with the cause of death either.” He reiterated that the cloud of suspicion was “unfortunate.” Responding to further questions, Clift said he had read Clinton Curtis’s affidavit. He confirmed that Curtis reported Yang’s over-billing to the Florida DOT. Without going into specifics, he also confirmed what Curtis said. “Every investigation has varying degrees” of accuracy in its leads, Clift said in general terms, with some facts or details more solid than others.  Referring to public record, he also confirmed that Yang Enterprises “doesn’t hold the contract any more.”

 

Clift filed an affidavit with Florida police about Lemme June 30, 2003. Clift told police, in part,

“I arrived at my office this morning at about 6:30 a.m. My message light was blinking. I had a message from Ray which was left at 6:20 a.m. He said “Something’s come up. I’ll be in late. I’ll call you later I knew Ray had a appointment at the FDOT General Counsel’s office at 1:30. I was called about 2:00 by the attorney he was to meet—he didn’t show up. This is very out of character for Ray . . .”

 

Strange timing

The unexpectedness of Lemme’s death, Lemme’s unexplained presence in Valdosta, Ga., and the timing of the death in the context of Florida’s nefarious electoral politics raised questions that were never answered. As written previously, Clinton Curtis’s sworn statement alleges that software company Yang Enterprises had developed a prototype for vote fraud. The project was developed, the affidavit states, at the specific request of Rep. Tom Feeney (R- Fla.).  Before running for Congress Feeney was lobbyist and counsel for Yang. The strangeness of Mr. Lemme’s death, like Curtis’s affidavit, was not considered a news topic by larger corporate media outlets—intensifying suspicions that the death might be foul play, and might be connected to events at Yang. A more normal reaction in the press would at least have reported allegations in the affidavit.

One lengthy account of the matter is given here, with graphic photographs included. Setting aside any hypothetical China connection, from the perspective of several years afterward it still looks as though the crime should have received greater, sober attention than it got.

Ad wars in Florida not just money, ads

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Ad wars in Florida not just money, ads

 They couldn’t work without an element of verite.

Talking Points Memo runs this piece on Florida today, reporting that Romney forces are outspending Gingrich forces there five-to-one.

“The Dems think these figures suggest something else: that it’s not Romney who’s winning votes in Florida, but the size of his wallet. ”

Point taken. However, these trend lines should not be over-simplified.

Certainly money has a devastatingly corrosive effect in politics. So do infamous ad campaigns–Willie Horton, the Osama bin Laden attacks on Max Cleland in Georgia, etc. This writer opposes on constitutional grounds any notion that a) money is speech, or b) corporations are persons.  The effect of the unanswered ads against Gingrich in Iowa is now part of the history of election 2012.

But the success of that ad campaign went beyond money. The ads were devastating because they showed Gingrich in live and still footage doing things he actually did, because they revived press accounts of Gingrich’s actual deeds.

Romney ads are not the only ones playing in Florida. As another local source points out, pro-Gingrich ads are running every ten minutes in Miami, in rush hour–in Spanish. The line is always the same. The ads attack not Romney but Obama.

“Same ad.  The ad attacked only Obama–the theme was broken promises–jobs, housing. ”

At a guess, it is aimed at Hispanics facing either foreclosure or pink slips, or who know someone who does face either one, betting the farm that the voters will blame the president and will see Gingrich as the GOPer best poised to oppose the White House.

Gingrich

It is hard to imagine Gingrich flying high in the Latino demographic. This has less to do with Cuba than with how he comes across–as disrespectful and presumptuous. Aiming over Romney’s head at the Rose Garden is liable to look much the same way, as far as I can tell.

‘Broken promises’ looks to be the line against Obama in the general election, at this point. They must be hoping for an awful lot of amnesia, even more than usual, given the state of the economy at the end of the GWBush administration and the GOP opposition to every improvement since.

One big question about election 2012 right now is whether the amnesia will be facilitated, or how much, by news media predisposed to a ‘close election’.

The 2004 election revisited part 10, Florida

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Revisiting the 2004 election, part 10–Florida

Today there are still gaps in federal regulatory authority and oversight of the voting technology industry. Not surprising, when you look at the standard GOP talking point about ‘regulation’ as a ‘job killer’, but it is a bit jarring that even the Federal Election Commission (FEC) had a complete list of all the voting machine manufacturers responsible for counting votes in 2004. The GOP in Congress has sustained an ongoing tactic of refusing to confirm nominees for the FEC (as for other agencies and commissions), leaving it consistently short-handed under the Obama administration.

Not that the election commissioners were exactly unleashed under the GWBush administration.

Cartoon

 

Something to remember, when GOP presidential candidates rail against ‘regulation’:

Diebold, now Premier Election Solutions, and Election Systems and Software (ES&S) made most of the electronic voting machines. The two companies, competitors, were also similar and entertwined. A former president of the company that became ES&S is Bob Urosevich. Bob Urosevich went on to become president of what became Diebold. A former vice president of ES&S, meanwhile, is his brother Todd Urosevich. Predictably, both brothers were significant GOP donors. The political ties between Diebold in particular and George W. Bush, in both 2000 and 2004, have been widely reported.

Imagine what GOPers and the Tea Party would say, if a voting machine manufacturer today had equally close ties to the Obama White House?

 

This is not to imply that problems stemmed only from the largest companies. Far from it.

The most startling and dramatic testimony on Florida’s election problems in 2004 has come from computer programmer Clinton Curtis. Curtis was an employee of Florida company Yang Enterprises, Inc. He left YEI in good standing.

 

Curtis

While at Yang, Curtis had an experience since brought to light in sworn testimony and in a startling affidavit.

In fall 2000, Curtis witnessed Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), at that time YEI’s company counsel and lobbyist, visit the company with an unusual request. In a meeting with at least half a dozen people participating, “Mr. Feeney said that he wanted to know if YEI could develop a prototype of a voting program that could alter the vote tabulation in an election and be undetectable.”

The request was not a joke. In the conversation, which involved company personnel including Curtis, Feeney “was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program,” Curtis testified. Curtis was directed to create the vote fraud software prototype and did so.

 

Feeney

Feeney, also a Florida state legislator who had run as Gov. Jeb Bush’s running mate for lieutenant governor, ran for Congress in 2002 and won. His 24th district was one of the new Florida House districts drawn after the 2000 census, while Feeney was in the Florida state house.

 

Note: When I was working on this issue after the election in 2004, I called Feeney’s congressional office. Through spokespersons, Feeney declined to comment on the affidavit, saying “We’re not making any statements on the Clinton Curtis affidavit. We haven’t made any statements about it, and we have no plans to make any statement.”

I published an article on the issue–including this flat statement that there would be no comment on the allegations, whatsoever, in future. The column ran in a small local community paper, The Prince George’s Journal. Curtis’s affidavit was not reported at the time in the Washington Post (picking a random example here). For a time, Feeney’s office attempted to pass off the allegations as a joke, Feeney laughing heartily in the occasional interview. However, the “we’re not making any statements” phase soon passed. Subsequently Feeney denied the allegations in response to questions placed by Florida newspapers. Feeney lost his race for reelection to Congress in 2008.

 

What Feeney did not comment on

Given the content of the affidavit, this was one of the more remarkable “no comments” in legislative affairs.

Curtis made his notarized statement on Dec. 6. A registered Republican, he began working for Yang Enterprises (YEI) in 1998. He became lead programmer and had daily meetings with the company CEO. In fall 2000, Curtis sat in on “at least a dozen” meetings about computer projects with Feeney, with Curtis as technology advisor.

 

Yang Enterprises

The affidavit details a chilling sequence in which the vote-altering project was developed, was handed to one of the company managers, and was then delivered elsewhere after an open statement that it was intended to control the vote in South Florida by manipulating margins and percentages in some precincts.

Feeney, the affidavit continues,

“was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program. He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be touch-screen capable, (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment, (c) the programming to accomplish this remain hidden even if the source code was inspected.”

After discussion, the company CEO agreed to try to develop the prototype. The affidavit goes on to describe the vote fraud software prototype developed.

“Hidden on the screen were invisible buttons. A person with knowledge of the locations of those invisible buttons could then use them to alter the votes of any candidate listed.”

Fairly simple, the software was also fairly easy to conceal.

“In an actual application, the user would receive no visible clues to the fraud that had just occurred. Since the vote is applied by race, any single race or multiple races can be altered. The supervisors or any voter would never notice this fraud. Additionally, the procedure could be repeated as many times as was necessary to achieve the desired results. No amount of testing or simulations would expose the fraud as its activation and process is completely invisible to everyone except the person programming the vote fraud routine.”

Vote fraud could be detected by someone looking at the source code.  But the source code would have to be provided.

Curtis’s affidavit goes on to describe other conversations in which Feeney “bragged that he had already implemented ‘exclusion lists’ to reduce the ‘black vote.’

[Update

Speaking of vote suppression tactics, today Florida seniors and others gathered in Tampa to protest legislation designed to reduce the vote. The new law reduces opportunity for early voting, creating an additional burden for seniors and Americans with disabilities who cannot stand in long lines.]

On a separate tactic for influencing the election, Curtis alleges that Feeney “further mentioned that ‘the proper placement of police patrols could further reduce the black vote by as much as 25%’.”

Curtis left YEI soon afterward and took a job in the Florida Department of Transportation. YEI threw a farewell party for him. His farewell card is posted on Brad Blog, which has done a solid job reporting this story. At the Transportation department, he found that YEI, a state contractor, was over-billing. He and another whistleblower were fired, as the affidavit narrates.

Yang Enterprises subsequently lost the contract with the state of Florida, according to Bob Clift, a supervisor in the fraud investigation unit.

 

Meanwhile, in Congress

Rep. Feeney, Jeb Bush’s running mate in the unsuccessful race for governor against Lawton Chiles in 1994, served on the House Judiciary Committee, which held hearings on the 2004 election. Curtis’s testimony was presented fairly early in local hearings convened by Conyers. (In the Judiciary hearings on Capitol Hill that I observed, Feeney did not speak much. He tended mostly to sit, red-faced.) The election hearings went nowhere under the GWBush administration. Massive counter-attacks and a DOJ investigation involving Conyers’ wife, Monica Conyers, continued to take their toll even after the 2008 election.

Feeney also served on the Committee on Science. One of its subcommittees, Environment, Technology, and Standards, shared oversight with the full committee on issues regarding voting standards. Their press person stated that the subcommittee and full committee have both been “very active” on vote issues.

Feeney was also a member of Judiciary subcommittees on Commercial and Administrative Law; the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security; and the Subcommittee on the Constitution.

Florida now, and 2004 election revisited, part 9

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Florida–Revisiting the 2004 election, and now

Two debaters in Jacksonville

In Thursday night’s GOP debate in Jacksonville, Newt Gingrich made a point of sounding more decent on stage for CNN than in his stump speeches around Florida (and South Carolina). The “food stamp” prevarication, while repeated, was somewhat softened. He even mentioned his grandchildren. Gov. Marco Rubio’s advice aside, the rhetorical tack of sounding nice temporarily is routinely adopted by the GOP in a national election, to blur the line with Democrats as much as possible in order to pick up votes or to cause enough confusion to get voters to stay home. That ‘voter apathy’ we used to hear so much about, in the national political press.

Also, being in Florida with its large Latino population, Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum all made a point of sounding humane on illegal immigration. Gingrich attacked the notion of deporting grandmothers. Santorum mentioned his immigrant grandfather. Romney mentioned his father’s having come to this country from Mexico and his wife’s father’s having come from Wales.

Immigration as a hot-button issue is a staple of Republican Party campaigns and events, of course. The way to help would be to help Mexico.

Sign

Considering the human suffering and injustice involved, what they do not say is galling:

  • The majority of people entering the U.S. illegally come through Mexico.
  • Conditions in Mexico are deplorable. It is hard to make a living there.
  • Ergo, one could infer that many undocumented immigrants are seeking not only freedom but survival.

Where GOPers don’t go:

  • Therefore, to forestall illegal immigration from Mexico, it would make sense to help Mexico.
  • We could stop buying drugs from Mexico, a commerce that bloats the cartels at the expense of everyone else. Sticking it to the man is much more like buying it from the man, where kingpins come into the picture.
  • We could stop shipping assault weapons to Mexico. The cartels use them to impose a reign of terror on the populace.

The only candidate on stage capable of recommending sane and reasoned policy in regard to Mexico and the border, as usual, was Ron Paul. In a nutshell: “You can’t deal with immigration without dealing with the economy.” Paul also noted that we have expended vast resources on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Border-security fanatics might be well advised to fantasize less about building a fence between the U.S. and Mexico and to focus on bringing those resources home.

Or such was the suggestion. Most of Paul’s statements received friendly rounds of applause from the audience—as did converse statements from the other candidates.

Back to Florida—

Nothing I saw or heard in the debate last night dispelled my standing contention that the GOP nominee, whoever he is, will need all the help he can get in a general election. Hence the history reminders–

For background:

Predictably, voting technology tends not to arise as a topic in these debates either. As previously written, Florida was one of the four states in 2004 where the biggest swing from exit poll to published vote tally also swung the state from to Bush. (The other three were Ohio, New Mexico, and Iowa.)

Remember, the big voting legislation called the Help America Vote Act was passed in 2002 by a GOP-controlled Congress under the GWBush administration, at a time when Team Bush was flying high in opinion polls because of 9/11. One of the bill’s key features was what it did not include—a paper trail. Following the ‘hanging chad’ debacle in Florida, the act (HAVA) authorized the use of electronic voting machines in presidential elections. (N.b. Chads were not the real problem in Florida.) Regrettably, HAVA did not require a paper receipt for voting. Thus there was effectively no provision for ironclad verification, for independent and objective assessment of whether data produced by the voting machines accurately reflected the votes cast. Democrats largely tried to require the paper trail in the bill, but the provisions were successfully fought off by Republican congressional leaders including Tom DeLay. Without the paper trail, it is impossible to have a separate recount.

Problems with Diebold

Among voting machines used in Florida, questions have swirled around Diebold voting machines in particular for years. A reader reminded me earlier of this paper on Diebold machines published back in 2004 by Dr. Avi Rubin, professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins. Rubin and his students studied Diebold’s source code—theoretically protected lines of code making up the software that runs the e-voting machines.

Diebold scanner atop its garbage can, also from manufacturer

The software program was supposed to be encrypted. To its surprise, however, Rubin’s team found that Diebold machines were encrypted by a method called Digital Encryption Standard (DES)–a code that was broken in 1997.

Furthermore, the key to the encryption was in the source code. Thus all Diebold machines would respond to the same key; breaking into one was breaking into all.

Rubin’s paper was published in February 2004. In April 2004, California’s Voting Systems and Procedures Panel said that the Diebold machines had malfunctioned in the state’s March 2 primary. The panel recommended unanimously that the state not use Diebold machines. In September 2004, Bev Harris of Black Box Voting successfully taught Baxter the chimp how to hack Diebold. The film is available on YouTube here.

Voting technology scrutinized by Black Box Voting

And all this is relevant to Florida how?

Florida was one of the close states in 2004 showing exit-poll anomalies, written about previously. The differences between op-scan counties and touch-screen counties in 2004 in Florida look like part of the same picture.

Florida counties, op-scan and touch-screen

It is a pattern of great-to-greater variation between party registration and party presidential voting in 2004, in all 52 Florida counties using op-scan. (Florida has 67 counties.)

The 15 Florida counties using touch-screen machines showed much less variation between their party registration and party presidential voting.

Simplifying here, there are three main areas to focus on—counties where the 2004 outcome was the reverse of the 2000 outcome; counties where the 2004 outcome was the reverse of party registration in the county; and counties where the 2004 outcome was extraordinarily close.

Op-scan technology predominated in all three categories—but this may reflect the fact that op-scan technology predominated across the state.

Starting with the slightest example, in only three op-scan counties was the 2004 outcome the reverse of the 2000 outcome:

  • Flagler
  • Hernando
  • Osceola

All three switched from Democratic (Gore) in 2000 to Republican (Bush) in 2004. Two touch-screen counties switched from Dem in 2000 to GOP in 2004—Pasco and Pinellas.

But in 28 op-scan counties, the 2004 outcome was the reverse of majority party registration:

  • Baker—switched from punch card
  • Bradford
  • Calhoun
  • Columbia–from punch card
  • DeSoto–from punch card
  • Dixie–from punch card
  • Duval–from punch card
  • Franklin
  • Gilchrist–from punch card
  • Glades–from punch card
  • Gulf
  • Hamilton
  • Hardee–from punch card
  • Hendry
  • Holmes
  • Jackson
  • Lafayette
  • Levy
  • Liberty
  • Madison (close)–from punch card
  • Okeechobee (close)
  • Osceola–from punch card
  • Polk
  • Putnam
  • Suwanee
  • Taylor
  • Wakulla–from punch card
  • Washington

Again, there were 28 Florida op-scan counties where the vote went for Bush in 2004 although more registered voters in each county were Democratic. Eleven of these had also switched to op-scan from paper balloting (the much-maligned punch card).

In six op-scan counties, the outcome was very close:

  • Flagler—switched from Gore to Bush
  • Madison—Bush won, more Dems registered
  • Monroe
  • Orange
  • Saint Lucie
  • Volusia

Bush won all these nail-biters, including one county where the outcome switched from Gore to Bush and one that had more Democrats registered than Republicans.

These op-scan counties are interesting. Many of them are small, and some of the excellent statistical analyses of the 2004 election in Florida exclude small populations. But in toto they were significant, because they showed a heavy preponderance of Democratic Party registration. Of 15 touch-screen counties, only one had the Dems with more than 50 percent of registered voters–Broward, with 50.5 percent.

But of the 52 op-scan counties, 30 counties had the Dems with more than 50 percent of registered voters. In most of these (21 counties) the Democrats constituted more than 60 percent of registered voters. In thirteen of them the Dems had more than 70 percent of registered voters, and in four the Dems had more than 80 percent of the registered voters.

Incidentally, Baker County, with a whopping reversal and 77 percent turnout in 2004, was the only county using Sequoia op-scan machines. Diebold is not the only problem.

Outcomes in op-scan versus touch-screen counties, Florida 2004, have been presented in simple contrasts here, but this is not to say that the 2004 outcome was a clean sweep. For the 52 op-scan counties, of the 43 counties where Bush votes went up over 100 percent more than Republican registration, Bush still lost seven.

For the 15 touch-screen counties, in the three counties where Bush votes went up over 100 percent more than did Republican registration, Bush still won. In the three touch-screen counties where Kerry votes went up over 100 percent compared to Democratic registration, Kerry still lost. There are, as we know, problems with DREs (touch-screens).

There are problems with Florida.

Reiterating: For Florida counties, the biggest difference in the 2004 election was not between ‘red’ and ‘blue’ but between touch-screen and op-scan.  Fifteen Florida counties used touch-screen voting machines, produced by ES & S or Sequoia. The other 52 counties used paper ballots processed by optical-scanning equipment manufactured by ES&S, Diebold and Sequoia.

The difference is a simple and clear pattern. Touch-screen counties’ vote for president almost always went with their party majority. Op-scan counties’ vote for president mostly went against the county’s majority party. Of the 52 counties using op-scanned ballots, only 21 voted in the direction predicted by their voter registration, fewer than half. The other 31 counties went opposite their own voter registration, all but one going to Bush. The exception was Monroe County, with an exceptionally close outcome.

Even where the op-scan vote ran with party registration, the margin was different, suggesting again that at the last minute John Kerry lost Democrats, independents, and unaffiliated voters–in an election where independents and new voters were trending toward Kerry.

A manual recount of two counties and part of another by two Miami Herald reporters netted Kerry 11 additional votes in one small county, 24 in another. They discontinued the count in a larger county where his projected pick-up would be about 1,300 votes.

Much of the voting public was well aware of these issues after 2004. They were submerged in the Obama landslide of 2008. But they could surface again in 2012—especially if a drumbeat of “close election” predictions is sustained.

In my opinion, resentment at the cavalier treatment of the vote itself fueled public anger and distrust of the GOP before the elections of 2006 and 2008. That neither the FEC, Justice, nor anyone else was able to address these problems after the 2008 election contributed to the outcome in 2010. The right to vote is fundamental. Congressional Republicans, for obvious reasons, have done everything in their power to prevent meaningful safeguards for election integrity.

 

Revisiting the 2004 election, part 7: Florida

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2004 election revisited, part 7: Florida further

Following up previous posts

Obama at SOTU

President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night demonstrated again the greater quality of this president over the loon rhetoric coming from our current GOP debates. The quality gap is huge, and growing larger.

Mitt Romney

As written before, the guys coming out of the GOP field are going to need all the help they can get at election time, and previous elections involve some warning signs. Forewarned is forearmed.

In the 2000 election, 25 Florida counties used the maligned punch-card ballots, 41 used op-scan, and one county used paper ballots counted manually. Seventeen counties switched to optical scanners for the 2004 election.

Florida

Counties that switched from punch-card to op-scan did not necessarily show the biggest swings to Bush, but there was a distinct difference—in Bush’s favor–between op-scan counties and other counties. The picture over-all:

  • Total registered voters in the 15 counties using touch-screens:  5,576,264
  • Total registered voters in the 52 counties using op-scan ballots:  4,725,026
  • Outcome in the touch-screen counties:  Kerry 1,983,210 to Bush 1,845,876
  • Outcome in the op-scan counties:  Bush 2,110,414 to Kerry 1,591,790

Statistics come from election results and from election researcher Kathy Dopp’s analysis of touch-screen machines versus optical-scan paper voting in 2004.

There were further differences between op-scan voting results and touch-screen results, Florida 2004:

  • 15 Florida counties used touch-screen voting machines. Only 3 of these counties showed a 100+ percent jump in Republican votes, and 3 others showed a 100+ percent jump in Democratic votes. Neither party jumped more than 120 percent.
  • 52 counties used op-scan ballots. Of these, 43 showed a triple-digit jump for Republicans, two for Democrats. One had a whopping 602 percent jump in votes for Repubs, one over 400 percent, and two over 300 percent. Another ten op-scan counties had an over 200 percent jump in votes for Repubs. Nothing equivalent for Dems.

Leaving the eye-blearing numbers aside, think about the larger context of the 2004 election. Was John Kerry two or three times less popular in Florida in 2004 than Al Gore in 2000? Was GWBush—after the escape of Osama bin Laden, the invasion of Iraq, the war profiteering, the tax cuts for the rich—two or three times more appealing?

Back to those voting machines

Only three counties using op-scan machines had larger jumps for Democrats than for Republicans. The percentages below are vote gains, 2000 to 2004:

 (Dem Senate candidate Betty Kastor won Flagler County over Mel Martinez.)

Only four counties using op-scan had balanced percentage jumps in party voting:

Note that where the jump in voting by party was balanced, the outcomes were also reasonably divided. No one party or candidate (Bush) won all the time.

Turnout always matters.

Ten Florida counties with biggest turnout by number, in 2004:

  • Miami-Dade:  772,743
  • Broward:  707,202
  • Palm Beach:  547,340
  • Hillsborough:  464,253
  • Pinellas:  457,426
  • Orange:  388,095
  • Duval:  379,257
  • Brevard:  265,764
  • Lee:  242,434
  • Volusia:  229,098

Of these, Brevard, Duval, Orange, and Volusia used op-scan voting.

Ten Florida counties with highest turnout by percentage of registered voters, in 2004:

  • Flagler:  81.9% –jump gap only 102 to 103, Bush won, but close
  • Sarasota:  81.6%
  • Jefferson:  80.7% –jump gap 171 to 61, Kerry won
  • Leon:  79.8% –jump gap 105 to 81, Kerry won
  • Lee:  79.5%
  • Nassau:  79.2%
  • St Johns:  79% –jump gap 100 to 84, Bush won
  • Sumter:  79%
  • Brevard:  78.6% –jump gap 101 to 89, Bush won
  • Gadsden:  78.5% –jump gap 207 to 66, Kerry won

Of these, Brevard, Flagler, Gadsden, Jefferson, Leon and St Johns used op-scan voting. Nobody flipped the elections in Gadsden or Jefferson and Leon counties.

Ten Florida counties with lowest turnout by percentage of registered voters:

  • Hendry 57.2%
  • Osceola 63.3%
  • DeSoto 64% –jump gap 146 to 44, Bush won
  • Okeechobee 65.7% –jump gap 126 to 47, Bush won
  • Union 66.7% –jump gap 263 to 23, Bush won
  • Broward 66.8%
  • Dixie 66.9% –jump gap 305 to 26, Bush won
  • Hamilton 67.1% –jump gap 244 to 37, Bush won
  • Putnam 68.5% –jump gap 144 to 47, Bush won
  • Highlands 69.6% –jump gap 77 to 44, Bush won

Of these, DeSoto, Dixie, Hamilton, Highlands, Okeechobee, Putnam and Union all used op-scan voting. Low turnout, discouraged voters, unappealing voting technology—Bush swept.

The pattern held in the ten counties with lowest voter turnout by number, in 2004. Numbers are local turnout as reported:

  • Liberty 3,051 –Bush won
  • Lafayette 3,352 –Bush won
  • Glades 4,204 –Bush won
  • Union 4,714 –Bush won
  • Hamilton 5,131 –Bush won
  • Franklin 5,973 –Bush won
  • Calhoun 6,006 –Bush won
  • Dixie 6,472 –Bush won
  • Gilchrist 7,047 –Bush won
  • Hardee 7,281 –Bush won

Of these, all used op-scanned paper ballots, and all went for Bush. We have a winner.  Were they Florida’s ten smallest counties? Not quite: A list of the state’s ten smallest counties would bump Hardee, Gilchrist, Dixie, and Union. Baker, Bradford, Gulf, Holmes, Jefferson, Madison, Taylor, Wakulla and Washington all had populations in the twenty-something thousand range. The smallest counties also all used op-scan ballots, so we have another winner: Of these, only Jefferson went for Kerry, and Madison was close.

On a brighter note, in all these counties but Hardee, about half the total population (2000 census) turned out to vote–not too shabby for the lowest numerical turnout in the state. It was a high-interest election.

The middle

Continuing the test of brain-strain, let’s look at some middling turnout. Since the highest turnout ran 82% and the lowest percentage about 57%, midpoint would be about 70%.

Ten Florida counties with mid-range turnout, 2004:

  • Charlotte:  70.4%
  • Glades:  70.5% –jump gap 134 to 37, Bush won
  • Hardee:  70% –jump gap 182 to 32, Bush won
  • Okaloosa:  70.5% –jump gap 95 to 61, Bush crushed
  • Calhoun:  71.9% –jump gap 381 to 30, Bush won
  • Highlands:  69.6% –jump gap 77 to 54, Bush won
  • Pasco:  72.1%
  • Santa Rosa:  69.9% –jump gap 97 to 54, Bush won
  • Putnam:  68.5% –jump gap 144 to 47, Bush won
  • Polk:  71.5% –jump gap 107 to 68, Bush won

Of these, all but Charlotte and Pasco counties used op-scan. Charlotte and Pasco had predictable results, in line with voter registration and with voter turnout, with some crossover (Dem for Charlotte, Repub for Pasco).

I wrote on this material at the time.

A similar analysis can be found here. The author further pursues similar anomalies in the rural areas of other southern states. The author sums up:

“I started this page when I first saw the breakdown by voting machine of the results in Florida. Since the way people vote shouldn’t depend on the machines they use, it seemed to signal cheating. A careful examination of the voting patterns in Florida in 2000 and in Louisiana in 2000, however, has led me to conclude that the difference was due to the lopsided use of the opscan machines in rural northern Florida counties where there is a preponderance of “Dixiecrats”. A statistical analysis of the data from the 1996 election also supports this conclusion. The remainder of this page contains my analysis and reasoning in detail.”