Today's Stories

October 24 / 26, 2008

Mike Whitney
Down for the Count

October 23, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
What Voter Fraud?

Todd Chretien
Why I'm Not Voting for Obama

John Ross
No Child Left Behind, Mexican-Style

Peter Morici
Strategies to End the Crisis

Mats Svensson
Short Film Clips at a Checkpoint

Marlene Martin
Don't Let Them Execute an Innocent Man

Robert Jensen /
Pat Youngblood
Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

Margaret Kimberley
Rightwing Obama Love

Deepak Tripathi
Post-Bush Scenarios

David Morris
Why Joe the Plumber is a Socialist (And You Are, Too)

Website of the Day
Voting While Black in North Carolina

October 22, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Kid Killers are Barbarians

Heather Gray
Raising Hell in the South: the Legacy of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

Ralph Nader
The Song Remains the Same: Convergence and Avoidance in the Presidential Election

DC Larson
The Growing of a Heartland Nader Raider

David Swanson
Colin Powell, Not Qualified for Government Service

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth

Larry Everest
9/11 and the Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan

Robert Fantina
Anything to Win

Martha Rosenberg
The Financier's Playbook

Stephen Martin
Giving It Up to the Combine

Website of the Day
Brokers with Hands on Their Faces

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bombers

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

October 16, 2008

Mike Whitney
The End of Friedmanite Economics: an Interview with Robert Pollin

Jonathan Cook
The Acre Riots

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Is Obama Playing to the Gallery? Or Has He Lost the Plot in South Asia?

Alan Maass
A Supreme Injustice: the Death Penalty Case of Troy Davis

Chuck O'Connell
Our Needs Do Not Fit on Their Ballots

Mary Lynn Cramer
Krugman's Prize: Iconoclast, Apologist or Propagandist?

P. Sainath
The Race May be Over, But Race Isn't

Andy Worthington
The Shrinking Case Against Binyam Mohamed: Justice Department Drops "Dirty Bomb Plot" Allegation

Peter Gelderloos
Enric Duran, the Good Thief?

Stephen Martin
The Nourishment of Idleness: Where Has All the Money Gone?

Douglas Valentine
Why I'm Voting for Obama

Website of the Day
The Mormon Worker

October 15, 2008

Steve Conn
The Real Story of Troopergate

William P. O'Connor
The Legend of John McCain

Robert Weissman
The Partial Nationalization of US Banks: Public Ownership, But No Public Control

Jonathan M. Feldman
Before the Second Wave of Crisis: an Alternative to the Triple Failure

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Race in America: Is a Vote For Obama a Vote Against Racism?

Conn Hallinan
Targeting Unions in Colombia

Justin Podur
The Financial Economy and Real Economy

Karl Grossman
The New Nuclear Navy

Dave Lindorff
Is the Government Really Turning Socialist?

Eric Walberg
The Quiet Russian

Martha Rosenberg
Of Blood and Eggs

Uri Avnery
A Fairy Tale

Monica Benderman
No More

Website of the Day
Contractor Misconduct Database

Weekend Edition
October 24 / 26, 2008

Consider Florida

The Great Vote Fraud Hoax

By LINN WASHINGTON, Jr.

Phew…good thing some unscrupulous voter registration worker in the Philadelphia area didn’t use the names Octavius V. Catto and George H. White when padding voter applications with bogus names to get paid for work they didn’t do.

If an errant worker did such a misdeed, this certainly would trigger another conniption from GOP presidential candidate John McCain.

This increasingly desperate candidate certainly would see these two names as further evidence of Obama allies edging towards committing “one of the greatest frauds in voter history.”

McCain would shamelessly embrace this evidence despite the fact that any reasonably competent county election bureau worker would quickly see these two names a bogus.

Why?

Because the address listed for this duo by that unscrupulous worker is a well known cemetery located a few miles from Philadelphia in Delaware County – currently a hotly contested battleground for McCain attempts to flip Pennsylvania from blue to red.

The likelihood of two dead men showing up to vote is as low as a polling place appearance by cartoon character Mickey Mouse, one of the names reportedly listed on a bogusly submitted application triggering McCain’s ire towards the community group ACORN.

Contrary to McCainian claims of major registration fraud, the greatest voter fraud in recent history occurred during the 2000 presidential election where a massive Bush/GOP conspiracy robbed over 50,000 folks in Florida of their right to vote by falsely listing them as felons ineligible to cast ballots.

Remembering that George W. Bush won Florida by a mere 534 vote margin in 2000, simple math exposes that GOP disenfranchisement fraud as demonstratively more devastating than some (alleged) fudging on registration forms.

McCainian claims of ACORN actions possibly “destroying the fabric of democracy” are inaccurate, insulting and hypocritical compared to the legacy of GOP voter suppression assaults – directed mostly at minorities – destruction of democracy that McCain doesn’t complain about.

McCain’s professed evidence of ACORN dirty-dealing ironically comes from ACORN itself alerting election authorities to registration applications suspected by ACORN of being bogus – notification required by election law that ACORN follows.

The fact of ACORN alerting election authorities – not eluding them – is a fact conveniently missing from McCainian crafted charges against this organization McCain himself publicly praised in 2006 as “part of what makes America special.”

The registration of over one million people nationwide through non-partisan efforts by ACORN during the past year nourishes democracy by reversing years of voter roll declines.

In contrast to the garbage pail quality of McCain-Palin charges about fraudulent voter registrations, real problems persist in the basic mechanics of America polling place procedures.

Problems of inadequate resources nationwide like limited numbers of voting machines in heavily populated areas are detailed in the recent report from the DC based Advancement Project “End of the Line? Preparing for a Surge in Voter Turnout in November 2008 Election.”

One key finding in this report is that in “some jurisdictions, the allocation of polling place resources is likely to have disproportionate impact on communities of color.”

“During the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, it is estimated that 104,000 votes were lost simply due to people leaving long lines at polling places that did not have an adequate number of machines,” Browne-Dainis said during a recent teleconference with journalists.

A “perfect storm” is how Advancement Project Co-Director Judith Browne-Dainis describes the confluence of unprecedented citizen interest in voting in the ’08 presidential election, massive increases in voter registration and resistance among too many election officials nationwide to address serious problems in election infrastructure.

The refusal of Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State to order the use of paper ballots in precincts experiencing voter machine breakdowns lead to the filing of a federal lawsuit against this (Democratic) official recently by the Election Reform Network and the NAACP.
“Pennsylvania is notorious for broken machines,” Browne-Dianis noted during that teleconference. “The Secretary of State’s office told us they are not concerned about long lines and they won’t extend voting hours.”

Voter suppression assaults and inadequate Election Day resources are recurring American realities understood well by Octavius V. Catto and George H. White – two men who battled blatant bigotry blocking blacks from voting in the late 19th Century.

White holds the historical distinction of being the last African-American to serve in the 19th Century US Congress. The rise of legalized segregation across America in the late 1800s paralleled a violent pogrom that purged blacks from legislative bodies – a racist insurrection the federal government refused to fight.

Philadelphia activist/educator Catto helped secure voting rights for blacks in Pennsylvania. During Philadelphia’s 1871 Election Day Riot to block black voting, a racist fatally shot Catto on a street corner several blocks from Independence Hall, the hallowed site of the US Constitution signing.

The racism Catto and White battled literally followed them to their graves.

The resting place for both men is the Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Pa, considered the oldest black public cemetery in America…a site officially listed on America’s National Register of Historic Places. Since its founding in 1902, Eden has endured race-based desecrations, the latest being in July 2008 when vandals toppled over 200 headstones.

Eden is now raising $100,000 to erect a security fence to block vandals, beer drinkers and nearby residents who walk dogs that defecate on graves – an act these residents do not commit on the grounds of a nearby Catholic church and the white cemetery adjacent to Eden.

The latent racism driving persistent desecration at Eden – some critics contend – is the same force now inflamed by the McCain campaign, particularly through speeches of his VP-candidate, Sarah Palin.

The late Congressman George White, during his January 1901 congressional Farewell Address, requested that America “cease to mold prejudicial and unjust public sentiments against” African-Americans.

Had America heeded White and others this nation’s perennial ‘race problem’ would not be a roiling issue in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Linn Washington Jr. is a columnist for The Philadelphia Tribune.

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