I wrote yesterday that there is a lot of voter suppression news out there.
The Voting Rights Act is under attack:
Today the state of South Carolina sued the Justice Department for blocking its new law requiring citizens to show government-issued photo identification to vote. This is just the latest broadside in what promises to be a protracted battle over the constitutionality of state voting laws and federal protections against discrimination.
For decades, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act has been a cornerstone of civil rights law. The provision requires certain jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to get federal “preclearance” before enforcing new voting laws. Today, opponents of the law are trying to dismantle this foundation of our democracy, bringing several court challenges in recent months.
South Carolina’s commitment to passing suppressive voting laws shows that Section 5 continues to play a vital role in safeguarding civil rights in the United States. Indeed, the laws recently passed in a number of states constitute the greatest threat to voting rights since the 1960s, threatening to disenfranchise up to 5 million American citizens in 2012, according to a Brennan Center report released in October. Without a check on the ability to abuse voting laws to disenfranchise disfavored groups, bad actors and misguided officials may become even bolder in their suppressive policies. The Voting Rights Act can preserve the rights of the powerless against this threat, but only if it remains in force.
Why do we need the Voting Rights Act?
Because of state officials like this one:
From 2009:
In a decision praised by voting rights advocates, the U.S. Justice Department ruled against Georgia’s voter verification program, calling the citizenship screening system inaccurate, flawed and discriminatory against minorities.The DOJ has rejected Georgia’s system of using Social Security numbers and driver’s license data to check whether prospective voters are citizens, a process that was the subject of a federal lawsuit before the November election.
In a letter sent last week from Civil Rights Division Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King to Georgia state officials, the DOJ said that Georgia’s voter verification program is frequently inaccurate and has a “discriminatory effect” on minority voters, subjecting a “disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote.” The letter went on to say that the system “does not produce accurate and reliable information and that thousands of citizens who are in fact eligible to vote under Georgia law have been flagged.”
Real voters. Real people. Flagged, beginning in 2007.
Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, called DOJ’s decision, “a shocking disregard for the integrity of our elections.” She argued that the ruling means the state could be inundated with non-qualified voters.
Handel and her aides created the verification system in 2007, extending the state’s requirement to verify a voter’s identity at the time of registration to include the verification of citizenship as well. The citizenship verification program matches information a potential voter has submitted with information maintained by the state Department of Driver Services and the federal Social Security Administration. Voters are “flagged” when they have non-matching information.
According to the DOJ analysis, Georgia’s program “flagged a large number of persons who have subsequently demonstrated that they are in fact citizens, Indeed, of the 7,007 individuals who have been flagged…as potential non-citizens, more than half were in fact citizens.”
The DOJ also calculated that although blacks and whites made up equal numbers of the newly registered, blacks were flagged 60 percent more than whites. The DOJ similarly found that “Hispanic and Asian individuals are more than twice as likely to appear on the (flagged) list as are white applicants.” In essence the program puts an undue burden on blacks, Hispanics and Asians to prove their citizenship when trying to vote.
“These burdens are real, are substantial and are retrogressive for minority voters,” said King.
Voting and civil rights advocates applauded the DOJ ruling, calling it a victory for protecting eligible voters. U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement, said Georgia’s system of citizenship checks was “an attempt to take us back to another dark period in our history when people were denied access to the ballot box simply because of their race or nationality.”
This attempt at voter purging came under scrutiny because Georgia is subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. It was stopped because we (now) have leadership in the Justice Department that takes the right to vote seriously, rather than viewing voting as a privilege. People who compare the fundamental act of a democracy to using an ATM probably shouldn’t be in charge of protecting voting rights. Running an election isn’t like running a bank, and voting isn’t a commercial transaction. It’s bigger than that.
“Under Section 5, the Attorney General must determine whether the submitting authority has met its burden of showing that the proposed change will have neither the purpose or the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote based on race, color or membership in a language minority group”
In 2007. Don’t let anyone tell you they aren’t still at it.
H/t to commenter Bella Q
Bulworth
Yes, that’s the problem. Your elections have no integrity.
General Stuck
The south ain’t gonna put up with having their former property run the US of A. Not for very long, especially if liberal to boot. This is how state level rebellions start. Lawsuits and blockading congress to the point of sedition for not allowing the US government to govern. Followed by brazen declaration of 10th amendment rights to not conform to this or that federal law. Similar stuff went on before the GCW.
jeffreyw
Karen “Moe Green” Handel is still trying to make her bones.
MosesZD
So, she’s failed in other ways, too… Amazing.
Well, at least she did one good thing. I now find charaties that are despised by the right-wing and give directly to them. Before it was always easy stuff like the Unitarians, the United Way and SGK…
But I got to thinking… Why give money to organziations that take a cut off the top before they send it to important organzations that do things? Especially when many of them could be very much infested by right-wing d-bags, like SGK and steer my money away from those who need it into their fundraising, their pink bullshit, and their right-wing ideologies…
Legalize
Of course they are still at it. Look at the demographics. The only assholes stupid enough to vote for the national GOP are dying off at a nice clip. Everyone else is growing at a nice clip – and they won’t vote for national GOPers. The solution to the GOP is not to attract these voters, but to disenfranchise them. That way they get to keep the one thing that is most important to them – their smug sense of ideological purity and superiority. If they lose elections here and there, fuck it, clap louder.
jrg
Boy, the rednecks sure do hate us for our freedom. Clearly, it’s time to “spread some democracy” down in GA.
kay
@Bulworth:
I love how conservatives disregard that “their” elections occur within the United States, and of course have ramifications beyond “state lines”. They’re not buying into the basic concept. I don’t know that there’s middle ground on this. One either gets with the Union idea, or not.
Villago Delenda Est
Handel is a vile creature all around.
floridafrog
@MosesZD – Unitarians are not a charity but a religion that focuses on liberal values. Pedant alert – the religion has been called Unitarian Universalism for about 50 years.
Citizen Alan
Too true. I remember years ago when people first started trumpeting “The Coming Democratic Majority” and I thought it was naive bullshit. The Republicans can resist the effects of Latino-Hispanic immigration for a long time if they’re prepared to enact and enforce Juan Crow laws all across the Southwest. They can resist it for a very, very long time if they’re permitted to turn the Southwest into an apartheid region.
Villago Delenda Est
@jrg:
At bayonet point, I might add.
Rick Massimo
So what exactly does someone see in Karen Handel that makes them say “Yeah, let’s hire her”?
I really don’t know what Komen was thinking, and I don’t know what her next high-paying employer will be thinking either. What exactly were/are they thinking she adds to, well, anything?
Maybe she’s finally bottomed out as such a complete failure that the only alternative left is Fox News.
attica
I see that Dannon has replaced Komen on their Pink-Lids fundraisers with NBCF. Is NBCF related to Komen? It doesn’t look like they are with a cursory google, but that pink ribbon is usually litigation bait for Komen, so I don’t know.
If they’re separate, and the use of the ribbon is a finger in the eye of SGK, well, that’s a little bit of awesome. If they’re related, then it’s just spin and misdirection. Again.
Benjamin Franklin
@Citizen Alan:
‘Juan’ Crow….too funny.
Steve
I seriously thought, as did many others, that we were going to lose Section 5 altogether in 2009 when the Supreme Court decided the Northwest Austin case. Even though that decision went the right way in the end, the clock is definitely ticking. The will of Congress be damned, that panel of 9 judges will consult their guts and make the final decision on when we no longer have anything to worry about regarding elections in the South.
kay
@Steve:
Exactly. Although it was enjoyable to shame conservatives into renewing the VRA, it may not matter.
Having lost in Congress, they just moved right to the courts.
Svensker
But doesn’t that mean that a large number were indeed non-citizens? And wouldn’t the “voter fraud” folks say that it is important to stop non-citizens from voting? How do you respond to that?
Cromagnon
Why is requiring showing ID before voting a bad thing? How is that voter suppression? I don’t get it. In Virginia your required to show ID before voting. Seems reasonable to me… I mean who doesn’t have an ID anyway?
stormskies
Lot’s of people do not have photo ID’s. And for lot’s of reasons. The fact is there is almost zero voter frauds and is well documented. And that is exactly why there is no need.
Martin
@Svensker:
By noting that we take no comfort in the knowledge that more than half of the people we execute in this country were in fact guilty.
That’s the point of a right. For the almost half of the 7,007 individuals, their rights were violated by the state. There is no constitutional right to guarantee that non-citizens don’t manage to vote. There is a constitutional right to guarantee that each citizen gets a vote. You have to err on the side of the voter. Always.
The state can address this problem in all manner of better ways, but they choose not to, because it wouldn’t have the desired effect. The state could issue a free ID to all citizens, made easily and widely available. The state could choose to question all registered voters equally. But they don’t do that. We’re always told that it’s too hard, or too expensive, but violating people’s rights as a matter of convenience is no excuse.
The problem with the whole attempt is that the mission of the state should be to make voting easier for citizens. And they can do that simultaneous with making voting more secure. So why aren’t they? Why is the only outcome to make voting harder, even for citizens. That should be a bit of a red flag right there that something is hinkey.
trollhattan
@Rick Massimo:
One of the unique Fox News characteristics is that failed correct-thinking executives and politicians who’ve suffered the cunning sharp blades of the liberal media meanies fall upwards into a Fox slot. At this point the list is huge, and I suspect there’s a chair imprinted with “Handel” awaiting her.
Elizabelle
@Rick Massimo:
Handel’s going to have a harder time slithering into another serious job. If she ends up at Fox News or something like that, she will have joined her kind. She’s credible only to Foxbots.
I would guess that for most organizations, she’s toxic for the forseeable future, and disloyal as well.
FormerSwingVoter
@Cromagnon: If everyone were just mailed an ID automatically and accurately, then sure. Instead, Republicans are going out of their way to disenfranchise legitimate voters. The fact that they’re explicitly telling people that college students shouldn’t be allowed to vote (they have no life experience or something) and that’s the reason to not allow state-issued student ID is a big, big tell here. So is reducing DMV hours in mostly-minority areas.
Svensker
@Cromagnon:
The question is not ID, it’s photo ID which is restricted to certain items. One of the states (Michigan?) passed a law requiring photo ID and then closed all the DMV offices in the poor neighborhoods. Which meant that in order to get an acceptable photo ID poor folks were going to have to take public transport long distances during working hours in order to get the ID. There’s also a fee, IIRC, for the DMV ID, which essentially amounts to a poll tax.
Add to that that requirements for getting a DMV ID or DL have gone up hugely since 9/11 — a lot of folks can’t come up with it all. Since many urban poor folks don’t drive, it wasn’t a problem before, but since they now need that ID to vote, it becomes a problem.
Southern Beale
Wow. You know, let this be a lesson, folks. These heinous fundie nut jobs get run out of office and what happens? They end up in top jobs at a breast cancer organization. Don’t let these nasties crawl out from under their rocks, because you never know WHERE they’ll turn up.
kay
@Svensker:
Not necessarily. I think you’re going from “flagged” to “not citizens”
Georgia put the system up in violation of Sec. 5. They went ahead anyway.
Voters were flagged, and they then had to come in and demonstrate that they were citizens. I don’t think we know if the system turned up non-citizens who were registered. I don’t know that they determined if those flagged voters who did not come in and demonstrate were, in fact, citizens. It reads like they looked at flagged voters (total) and then those flagged voters who came in.
They ran into a huge problem with naturalized citizens, because the driver’s license database was “not current”.
Here’s the DOJ letter I’m looking at (pdf)
Martin
@Cromagnon:
Showing ID before voting isn’t a bad thing – so long as the ID is equally available and free for everyone. The only ID many of these states will really accept is a drivers license. LOTS of people don’t have drivers license. Blind people, for example. Lots of old people. Lots of minorities. Lots of young people. Lots of immigrants. Cars are expensive, and even if you don’t own a car, you have to pay for insurance, and poor people often can’t afford that, so they don’t bother with the drivers license. And the drivers license isn’t free, so now you have a cost to vote.
You have states that are implementing drivers license ID laws for voting and then concurrently closing DMV offices in low-income areas. So the GOP is getting you to accept that the drivers license is reasonable, and then removing access to the drivers license. And how do you get to the DMV when it’s now 20 miles from your house and you don’t have a drivers license? Oh yeah, they’re defunding mass transit as well in the upcoming transportation bill.
You’re focusing on the effects on individuals and accepting that the individual effect is not significant. But when you look at the statistical effects, that’s when you see the suppression. They don’t need to completely block the ability of black people or poor people or latinos to vote – they just need to make it hard enough that some choose not to without creating the same dynamic with white or rich voters. It’s the statistical gerrymandering analysis applied to voting blocks. Remember, elections are winner take all. A 5% decline in Democratic voters doesn’t mean that we still get 47% of the Presidency instead of 52%. It means we get 0% of the Presidency instead of 100%.
Culture of Truth
You can still vote with a gun permit, so we’re good to go.
gene108
Right-wingers want to uphold the Constitution, except for the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments.
The Other Chuck
@kay:
Since it would appear that the most severe penalty for deliberate violation of the VRA is to be told very sternly not to do it again. I don’t get it, federal civil rights violations are a criminal charge and can fuck you up good. Murderers have gone to prison longer for civil rights violations than for the murder. But I guess the political class remains above the law.
The Other Chuck
@gene108:
Is there a single amendment the right wing doesn’t want to gut except for the second? (And even then, brown people with guns would probably frighten them against that one).
Certainly not the tenth either, they love them some federal control when it’s telling California how to write its laws.
They’re fascists. Plain and simple.
Steve
A lot of people think voter ID requirements are perfectly normal and unobjectionable. Some of you may have noticed that the polling isn’t exactly on our side on this issue. I think it helps to address concerns substantively and respectfully rather than assuming that everyone comes from the perspective of wanting to disenfranchise people.
One story that may help open people’s eyes is what happened in Wisconsin, where a state employee actually got FIRED for trying to spread the message that people could get free IDs in order to satisfy the new voter ID law. The official story was:
The problem is that these laws sound fairly inoffensive in theory, but in practice they are invariably used as a means to suppress legal voters. What we need to do is publicize evidence of the voter suppression, because otherwise people just won’t get it.
The Other Chuck
We need people convicted of voter suppression to serve hard time in Federal PMITA Prison. It’s a direct attack on the foundation of democracy. I don’t like to throw the word around lightly, but it’s basically *treason*. We need people to be as afraid of fucking with another’s vote as they would be of making death threats against the POTUS.
Martin
@gene108: Don’t forget about the 9th and 14th. They’re also marxist plots to destroy America.
deep
Where’s Sherman when you need him?
kay
@Cromagnon:
Go to your state and look up how many people have suspended or revoked driver’s licenses. I don’t know about VA, but in OH, people get into this sort of spiral, where they rack up fees for things like driving w/out insurance and they can never pay all the fines, and get their license back. Of course, that’s complicated by the fact that they may no longer drive to work.
Drivers licenses have become sort of a state revenue-generator in Ohio :)
I don’t think licensed driving should be the measure of whether one can vote or not.
Or, let’s stop calling it “voting” and just call it “driving”.
kay
@The Other Chuck:
I just think it’s silly that conservatives in the south talk about how their feelings are hurt by the VRA. That’s honestly part of the argument.
“Stop hurting our feelings!”
Good God, conservatives. Grow up.
Your feelings are not our main concern.
Martin
@kay:
Have become? Shit, when I lived in PA in the 80, Ohio was well known for using passers through as supplemental income, and specific communities within Ohio in particular. There were towns you were better off driving around rather than trying to go through with out of state plates.
calliope jane
Siuth Carolina, again. I look forward to Colbert’s commentary :)
I was never happier than when I learned that AZ is a covered state and that’s why ballots are printed in Spanish, Navajo, and I think other Native American languages. It’s a great response to the ‘conservatives’ — I’m fun at parties– but some of the more convinceable ones get why az is covered, when explained, and I think the comparison to southern states rather clarifies the problem …to some extent, at least. Earnest recitation of facts/figures shifts their focus from escalating rage :)
Mouse Tolliver
@Cromagnon: @Cromagnon: Photo ID was never required in Virginia. I know this because I’ve voted every time without showing it. Until just the other day a voter registration card, which is free, was good enough.
kay
@Martin:
One of the things that was fun during Issue Two was how the voter suppression petition piggybacked on the repeal petition. A lot of Republicans were signing Issue Two petitions, and they were just shocked and outraged that there was an effort to suppress the vote ahead of the repeal vote, so they signed the voter petition too.
This skullduggery had never occurred to them before, probably because they were never the targeted voters.
The Other Chuck
Hell, let’s break down the Right’s record on all the constitutional amendment.
1st: Do I even need to bother enumerating the long train of abuses and usurpations here?
2nd: Holy writ so far. This one’s safe.
3rd: Not exactly a pressing concern in this century.
4th-8th: It’s an article of faith among the right that “criminals gots too many rights” (never mind that these deal with the _accused_, since it means the same thing as “convicted” in the mindset of the right). The mainstream Democratic politicians have largely been cowed into submission on most of these too.
9th: I believe the right would like to amend it to add “unless said rights are also disparaged by a clause in the Old Testament”. See 1st amendment
10th: They love this one, at least the interpretation that reads “No powers are delegated to the United States, but only to the States, for use against the People”.
11th: Hell if any citizen can sue their own state for violating their civil rights, but damn sure they’ll ignore it to bring down any gay marriage law in any other state from the outside if they feel like.
12th: Amended to read “The President shall be whomever God tells Scalia who should be president”.
13th-15th: See my comment on the 1st amendment.
16th: Pretty much just the nutters who think this amendment never really existed, or that the kerning was off rendering the whole thing invalid or whatever. The rest are just content to not exercise their taxing prerogative on the idle rich.
17th: It utterly boggles my mind that there is a movement to repeal this one but there it is.
18th: Moot.
19th: See my comment on amendments 13-15.
20th: I got nothing.
21st: John Boehner may very well stand atop the barricades to defend this one.
22nd: Ronald Reagan being dead now, I suppose there’s no movement to repeal it.
23rd: As long as DC remains not a state, they’re cool with it. The moon, sure. DC, not so much.
24th: See my comments on the 19th amendment.
25th: Got nothin.
26th: See my comments on the 24th amendment. Gotten a lot more overt now that they’re using the dog whistle phrase “life experience”.
27th: I think they’d be fine drawing a paycheck of $0, since lobbyists backfill it all anyway.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Martin: No, what Kay is referring to is the convoluted and expensive (frankly rather onerously so) reinstatement process, at which many people do not quite succeed, thereby triggering a new charge of DUS and another reinstatement fee, ad infinitum. It’s complicated enough that Hamilton County has a License Intervention Program in the courthouse where people are referred for assistance in navigating the reinstatement maze. But the high reinstatement fees must generate a huge amount of revenue,and as a state imposed fee, they cannot be waived by a court for indigency like fines and court costs can.
kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Thanks. I don’t deal with it first-hand, but I hear about it constantly. I was shocked at how complicated and expensive it sounds. These LONG stories, filled with heartbreak and frustration.
I had a Michigan lawyer tell me once that 25% of drivers on the road in Michigan are driving w/out a license or on a suspended license.
I believe that.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
In breaking voter suppression news, Judge Dlott has rule that the provisional ballots must be counted in the 2012 Hamilton County Juvenile Court election. It’s a hard fought victory.
kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Yay! I can’t put it up because I actually have to work now, but good news!
rikryah
I’m so glad you’re on top of this, kay. thank you so much for this.
kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Good God, Bella:
This is our Bush v Gore! Just kidding.
feebog
This has been answered upthread, but I am going to address it anyway. My 91 year old father, who is legally blind, does not drive, and no longer has state photo ID. Why should my father, who served in the United States Marines and Navy in WWII, have to shag his ass to the DMV for a photo ID? He has no doubt been voting long before you were born.
I usually serve as a clerk at one of our local polling sites. We have a blind couple who regularly come into vote, which they are able to do with the assistance of a clerk and a special machine set up for the blind. These folks don’t drive. They should have to go to the DMV for a photo ID?
The entire idea of photo ID is aimed at voter supression of the elederly, students and the disabled; all of whom vote democratic in far larger numbers than Republican.
The Other Chuck
I thought the elderly trended Republican by a large margin.
liberal
@Mouse Tolliver:
I read about VA in the Post “Metro” section, and the question occurred to me whether VA is also governed by the Voting Rights Act.
gene108
@Martin:
I think they have skewed relationship w/ the 9th amendment. They don’t want government to take away their right to have Christian things on public places, but are O.K. with stuff that gets liberals mad.
I’ll give Ron Paul credit, he realizes the 14th Amendment is the real obstacle to the sort of states rights the Founders had envisioned. So far no one else is making a big push to repeal or amend the 14th Amendment, so we can go back to the state of perfection that existed in 1789, when the Constitution was ratified.
JGabriel
Via Kay @ Top:
Good lord, between attacks on poor women who need breast cancer screenings and attacks on the voting rights of minorities in a historically vote-suppressing state, Handel is a truly awful and despicable person.
What’s next, kicking homeless people and setting them on fire?
.
liberal
@gene108:
I assume you mean with the “doctrine of incorporation,” the (widely accepted) doctrine that the 14th means the states have to follow the Bill of Rights.
gene108
@kay:
Having spent many of my formative years in North Carolina, I can tell you that there’s a certain unwillingness to accept responsibility for segregation and slavery.
There’s sort of a “yeah, it happened, but it’s not my fault” or “it’s not going on anymore, so why bring it up” sort of mindset.
This is why a lot of people believe the Great Society welfare programs did more to destroy the black family and keep blacks poor, than segregation, lynchings, and slavery.
I don’t think it’s only peculiar to the South, since many Americans have the same attitude towards things done (or are being done) to Native peoples. I just think it is much more on the minds of Southerners.
Mouse Tolliver
@liberal: Seeing as how Virginia is the cradle of American racism, I would hope so.
gene108
@liberal:
I’m not sure what the anti-14th Amendment folks really are driving after, since outside of Ron Paul, none of them really get much air time about what their goals are and Paul never comes out and states what the ultimate outcome/desire of some of his policies would be (he’s a politician, so it’s not surprising).
But maybe there’s a desire to go back to the days, when Jews and Catholics were forbidden from holding elected office.
I do think some of the grousing about “states rights”, with regards to things like child labor, the minimum wage, environmental laws or whatever it is that right-wingers really want to abolish or bring back is held up because of equal protection part of the 14th Amendment, which nullifies some of the 10th Amendment state’s rights arguments right-wingers want to make.
pseudonymous in nc
@Cromagnon:
There’s also the small matter of large numbers of elderly African-Americans born at home in the south during the Jim Crow era, who simply don’t have birth certificates. There are lots of examples of people who need to gather a lifetime’s worth of documents and affidavits or even a copy of the family Bible containing a birth record in order to get issued a passport: they never needed that kind of formal ID because everybody in their towns knew who they were.
This fundamental gap in vital records — a holdover from the days when they were maintained on a county level — is one reason why the whole voter ID drive is based upon a discriminatory premise.
Jeff Boatright
@The Other Chuck:
No, No. The _really_ old elderly, the ones who remember FDR and what it was like before The New Deal, _they_ vote Democratic.
Maude
In NJ we get a sample ballot in the mail. I don’t show ID when I vote. I sign twice and vote.
Voter ID also diminishes the the right of people who are poor.
catclub
@Mouse Tolliver: South Carolina would like to have a word.
And Mississippi. And Alabama. And Indiana.
Who have I missed.
les
When the fuck is our liberal media going to notice, and report, that there is approximately ZERO FUCKING VOTER FRAUD in the US? There’s no justification for ANY significant burden on registration and voting.
Kansas, home of the most fucked ultraconservative state gov’t and congressional delegation around–I’ll bet ’em against most anywhere, South or otherwise–voted in new registration requirements for 2013, and SoS Kris Kobach–yeah, the asshole who’s drafted most of the serious state anti-immigrant laws–is implementing it for 2012, with zero training or procedures. Kansas can show FUCKING TEN voter fraud cases since 1997–15 fucking years, tens of millions of votes.
Yeah, they’re sincerely concerned about fraud.
Another Halocene Human
@MosesZD: Eh, I never give a dime to the United Way. They are infamous for having the same “overhead” issues as SGK. (And I don’t like their fundraising techniques on the job.) What’s funny is that they were supposed to be the “little guy’s” charity but it’s the managers at work who push it. Huh.
The ‘Wingers at work hate United Way b/c some of their money goes to the local PP, so I donated to the local PP. Problem solved.
I donated to National PP for the first time this year. Thanks, Pink Puke Parade.
Tony J
@catclub:
No, he’s right. The version of America that led to slavery, formed the Confederacy, enforced Jim Crow and enabled the Southern Strategy was born in Virginia at the very start of the American Experiment. It’s the ‘Original South’ in the way that Massachusetts is the ‘Original North’.
MosesZD
@floridafrog:
You know I was a Unitarian for years, right? No you don’t.
And that, being a former Unitarian, I can tell you for a fact that we took in money for other charities when we passed the basket. Everytime that basket went around, 50% went to the secular charity of the month. Week in, week out.
So I stand by what I say. I just give direct. Nobody to take a cut.
Loneoak
Want to vote? Show us your papers that demonstrate you aren’t brown.
Want cancer screenings? Show us your panties for sniffing.