Republicans and Elections: Alleged Fraud & Irregularities in WI, and Political Hypocrisy

It is an unshakable belief, a tenet of faith in conservative ideology that democrats (and other 'evil' liberals) have been stealing elections.  It was the pretext for attacking ACORN.  It is the pretext for the Republican promotion of voter ID.

So I cannot help but be by turns outraged and entertained as the evidence of fraud in connection with upcoming recall elections unravels in neighboring Wisconsin.

We have the allegation of voter fraud against one of the GOP staffers of the author of the WI Voter ID legislation, which you can read about here.

And we have all the irregularities that turned up in the State Supreme Court election, including the absentee ballot problems by nuns which you can read about here and the irregularities outlined here.

And now we have such strong allegations of fraud and misconduct in the state senator recall elections by the Republicans that they may not allow those three Democrats to be recalled.  You can read why here.

So, while the conservatives fervently believe without proof to support it that Democrats and liberals are committing all kinds of fraud to alter the outcome of elections........it seems the opposite.  The people to be afraid of committing fraud in connection with elections, from this pattern, appears to be the Republicans and other conservatives.

How hypocritical is that?

Possible WI Voter Fraud by GOP Aide to VOTER ID Author; No Outbreak of Conspiracy Theories?

Is it possible that Republicans are so convinced of voter fraud conspiracies because they're the ones doing it, so they think everyone else is too? 

Is their voter fraud paranoia simply a problem of projection?

The only case that turned up of voter fraud in the highly contested Coleman / Franken senate race in the 2008 recount was a Republican.  Now one may have turned up in Wisconsin in both the 2008 AND the 2010 election, where recall elections and recounts are a problem.  Of course, it is another case where voter ID wouldn't have helped much to prevent this (alleged) serial voter fraud.  What the news story doesn't cover, but I'd like to know, is did this woman who (allegedly) voted this way in both 2008 and 2010 also vote this way in the more recent State Supreme Court election?

My thanks to my friend and former colleague Sarah Jones, over at PoliticusUSA for catching this one from the Wisconsin State Journal:

GOP legislative aide under investigation for voter fraud

A Republican legislative aide is under investigation for possible vote fraud after she cast her ballot in the November election in Onalaska although she lives in Madison.

La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke said he has forwarded the report from the Onalaska Police Department to Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne to see if criminal charges are warranted against Marcie Malszycki, 30, an aide to state Rep. Warren Petryk, R-Eleva.

Records from the Government Accountability Board show Malszycki voted in Onalaska on Nov. 2, 2010, and Nov. 4, 2008, at the same time she had a home in Madison and worked at the state Capitol. Messages left with Malszycki by email, phone and Facebook weren't returned.

ARE the Unions Really the "Budget Bad Guys"? Multiple Economic Analyses and Comparisons Says NO!

It is a well-circulated, oft-quoted false fact on the political right that somehow the public sector employees, particularly those who are unionized, are overpaid, or paid distinctly more than their counterparts or equivalent employees in the private sector.  This is the justification the Right likes to use, to go after the unions (both public and private) as somehow being greedy, and as the cause for their outsourcing jobs.  What they really want to do is to damage the Unions as the largest competing donors to Democratic causes.  And to give cover to their making unfunded tax benefits to corporations.  The Washington Post notes that such a claim was advanced this past Saturday by Rupert Murdoch's newspaper, the Wall Street Journal:

The Wall Street Journal has a chart showing that "state and local government workers" clearly do better that "private-industry workers." According to the Journal, state and local government workers make $26.25 cents an hour, compared to the $19.68 an hour that workers in private industry average. This chart clearly feeds the narrative that public-sector workers are - depending on you point of view - "better-paid" or "overpaid."

It is not true.  Such a shame; the WSJ used to be a reliable source for honest journalism; not so much any more. From the New York Times - the venerable 'gray lady' presents a more accurate picture:

For the real story, an analysis and comparison was made by the New York Times on Saturday, February 19th, 2011, which makes a much more accurate - and frankly a much more HONEST apples to apples look at the employees in Wisconsin that are at the center of the current national controversy.

Congress Limiting Rape to Forceable Rape ONLY for Abortion: the Republican Culture Wars against Sex and Women

Under Sweden's stringent rape laws, Julian Assange is facing rape accusations, in part for having initiated sex with a woman who was sleeping in the same bed, on the premise that a sleeping woman (or depending on the account you read, half-sleeping or dozing after having gone out to buy orange juice and other groceries for breakfast and then returning to bed) was unable by virtue of her somnolence to give consent to sex.  I find it ludicrous that being half-asleep or even fully asleep in bed, where a man or woman can wake up, and can consent at such an early stage of coitus to equate to a woman (or potentially a man) being incapacitated by either a date-rape drug, or some other pharmaceutical, or alcohol.  I am not a supporter of Assange, but I believe he should be faulted for what he has done wrong, not for a stupid trumped up charge that equates wake-up sex with rape.  That dilutes and  diminishes the seriousness of real rape by making such a charge a joke.

And as the second item of business in Congress, instead of working on legislation relating to jobs or other economic issues, Republicans are addressing rape and abortion in their continuing culture wars, inserting provisions to make rape laws less stringent in the context of abortion funding.

Rape is only really rape if it involves force. So says the new House Republican majority as it now moves to change abortion law.

2010 Republican Lies We Can Look Forward to Seeing Repeated, and Repeated Some More, in 2011

"Since January 2008 the private sector has lost nearly 8 million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000."
Tim Pawlenty, then Governor of Minnesota
The Wall Street Journal, OpEd, Dec. 13, 2010

For some reason, Republicans love to try to make unions, especially public employee unions, out to be the villain of their alternate reality narrative.  Politifact gave T-Paw a pants-on-fire rating, the most severe category, reserved for calling the perpetrator of the false statement an outright liar.

Politifact.com wrote:

'Pawlenty wrote that government employees, especially those who are unionized, have become unfairly advantaged compared to private-sector workers, through a "silent coup, an inside job engineered by self-interested politicians and fueled by campaign contributions.

"Across the country, at every level of government, the pattern is the same: Unionized public employees are making more money, receiving more generous benefits, and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt," Pawlenty wrote. He even repeated what has become a major Republican talking point -- that "federal employees receive an average of $123,049 annually in pay and benefits, twice the average of the private sector."

"The majority of union members today no longer work in construction, manufacturing or 'strong back' jobs," Pawlenty wrote. "They work for government, which, thanks to President Obama, has become the only booming 'industry' left in our economy. Since January 2008, the private sector has lost nearly 8 million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000."

Remember, these are 'pants-on-fire' lies, not honest factually inaccurate statements.  Let me remind our readers that the current crop of Republicans don't have any of those 'new ideas' they kept promising they were going to unveil.....eventually.  All they have are the failed policies of George W. Bush, and in a few cases, the failed trickle-down policies of Ronald Reagan, vehemently being discredited by their designer, David Stockman.  These lies are the set up for the ill-informed to be sold another pack of the same lies by the incoming members of Congress, much like the nonsense spouted by that other inaccurate Republican from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann.  It's not a coincidence that TPaw is the writer; this is part of his set up for his presidential bid.  TPaw is not popular in Minnesota as a presidential candidate; his only hope is to go outside of Minnesota - travel which has characterized his last term as governor.

Back to the politifact.com analysis of Pawlenty's claims.

In January 2008, total private-sector employment in the United States stood at 115,562,000. By November 2010, the most current month available, that number had sunk to 108,278,000 -- a drop of roughly 7.3 million jobs. That pretty close to the "nearly 8 million" figure that Pawlenty cited. (Almost two-thirds of those job losses, incidentally, happened while George W. Bush was president.)

But Pawlenty's public-sector figures were problematic. The BLS has a category called government employment -- which encapsulates local, state and federal employment, just as Pawlenty had defined it. Over the same period, the number of government jobs went from 22,379,000 to 22,261,000 -- a decrease of 118,000, rather than an increase of 590,000, as Pawlenty had written.

At first we were flummoxed about how Pawlenty got the numbers so wrong. We called BLS to make sure we weren't overlooking another data set that measured the same subject, and spokesman Gary Steinberg confirmed that we were using exactly the same numbers he would use.

We also looked at federal employment trends over the same period, on the guess that Pawlenty might have meant to refer to federal jobs, rather than all government jobs. By this calculation, the number of jobs did increase, rather than decrease, but the amount was only one-sixth of what Pawlenty had indicated. Over that period, federal employment rose from 2,739,000 to 2,837,000 -- 98,000 jobs in all.

Holding BP Accountable for the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill; or, Deputy Dawg, er, Joe Barton compared to Senator Al Franken

From Senator Al Franken, in response to an inquiry from me, DG -
(also, a link to the text of the bill is provided by me, because I believe we should all read legislation, not have others predigest it for us):

Thank you for contacting me about the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act. I appreciate learning of your support for this legislation.

Under current law, the criminal penalties for Clean Water Act violations are not as severe as the penalties for other white-collar crimes. Restitution for environmental crimes -- even those that take human life -- is discretionary, and only available under limited circumstances. As a result, corporations sometimes treat fines and monetary penalties as merely a cost of doing business to be weighed against profits.

The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill has made it clear that environmental crimes can cause serious and widespread harm to people's lives and livelihoods, as well as to the environment. By all accounts, BP had no viable plan in place to deal with an accident of this magnitude, and I've been deeply disappointed by BP's neglect of safety and slow response to stopping the leak in the Gulf. BP must be held responsible for all costs incurred as a result of the oil spill.

That's why I cosponsored S. 3466, the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act. This bill would direct the U.S. Sentencing Commission to increase sentences for criminal Clean Water Act violations and would make restitution mandatory for criminal violations of the Act. Should BP or others be found criminally liable in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, this legislation would allow the families of those killed to be compensated for wrongdoing and would help the people of the Gulf Coast rebuild their coastline, wetlands, fisheries, and livelihoods.

S. 3466 was introduced in the Senate on June 9, 2010, and was referred to the Judiciary Committee, which reported the bill favorably on June 24, 2010. I will continue to push for the passage of the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act to ensure that polluters are held responsible and victims receive the compensation they deserve.

Thank you again for contacting me, and I look forward to hearing from you in the future on this or any other matter of concern to you.

Going Viral, Just Like the Common Cold........and Harder to Cure

When I did some volunteer work making phone calls for a couple of candidates for the 2010 elections, my favorite question of the people I called was what was their most important issue in their choice of candidate for whom they would vote.

In looking at the list of false emails, the viral cyber disinformation campaign, I encountered a frightening number of people who believed these claims, although I could not always trace them to email.  I have one friend, Lynda, who makes a habit of routinely forwarding me her 'junk' viral emails on political and sometimes historical topics, just because she gets a kick out of my somewhat sarcastic debunking of them back to her.Well, the humor factor is part of it; the other part she gets out of doing so I hope carries over here  to Penigma readers -- having specific sources provided; Lynda says when she comes back to her other friends, family and work colleagues, she "looks smarter to them" for knowing the debunked accurate information,  (with sources, in case someone challenges her on this stuff).

This Explains the 2010 Elections / Political Auctions Results

“The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage."
- Carl Bernstein
author, All the President's Men

If you watch Fox News, listen to Rush Limbaugh, or most other right-wing propaganda media and blogs,  you're DISinformed, by a deliberate and calculated pattern of inaccurate information and deliberate attempts to create moral panics.
- Dog Gone

disinformation (ˌdɪsɪnfəˈmeɪʃən) — n
false information intended to deceive or mislead
- World English Dictionary

Now one study has made official what I have been saying here for some time, particularly about Fox News as a source of information.  Here is the Maryland Study, "Misinformation and the 2010 Election, A Study of the U.S. Electorate", so you can read it for yourself.
 
There has been extensive coverage of the study elsewhere, including the New York Times.  There has been the de rigeur counter-attack from the right, particularly from Fox News - a rather limp and impotent attempt, for them, compared to their usual standards of snark:
 
So, in addition to providing the actual study, I am making the obvious link between inaccurate information and the 2010 election results.  The only explanation that makes any sense for the results of that election cycle is to understand the significant segment of a mis-motivated, disinformed electorate segment (see moral panic), and the calculated results of the right wing election-cum-auction purchase by the right with the efforts  of Fox News and the big media buys of the groups profiled by the factcheck.org conference, "Cash Attack 2010". The link of the Right Wing false messages to the outcome of the 2010 elections is also reflected in the Politifact.com 2010 Lie of the Year, the false claim that the Obama Health Care Reform passed last spring constituted a 'government take over'.

There is a clear link between the deliberate disinformation of the right, by the right, established by this study which charts the inaccurate beliefs relating to politics and economics that have resulted from that deliberate disinformation campaign.   We can see more local versions in the voter fraud hoaxes perpetrated by groups like Minnesota Majority, statewide, and Monty Jensen, more locally, in Crow Wing County, Minnesota.  In other states we have hysteria over voter frauds like that which was circulated by the fake Fox News segment about the Cincinnati High School Ice Cream Bribes for votes.  (Can anyone else find an update, or better, a correction by Fake News for this story?  I couldn't.)

Update - the Very Funny Cincinnati High School Voter Fraud Hoax

That would be the one where a Tea Party candidate claimed that high school students were bribed with free ice cream afterwards, to vote for Democratic candidates, for those of you who don't remember.  I wrote about it in late October.

In summation, a disgruntled and unsuccessful tea party candidate for some local office has sued the school district because three students - not three busloads of students, as reported by Fake News - who were eligible to vote did so during school hours, as part of their civics class curriculum.  The tea party wacko, in the best tradition of conservative conspiracy theorists, asserted in his law suit that the school was practicing partisan politics, that it used school resources (the buses that didn't in fact transport anyone anywhere) to cause students to be taken to a polling place to vote, and shown democratic candidate only sample ballots (they weren't shown anything of the kind).

I don't know what it is about a segment of the right - let me hasten to be clear, this isn't all of you, just a wack-a-doodle lunatic subset - that asserts these stories, promotes these stories, and sadly, can't wait to believe these stories of voter fraud, despite a total lack of any proof whatsoever.  Despite, repeatedly, the proof to the contrary, the obvious demonstration that these claims are false, hoaxes, bad jokes, which make you look really, really stupid for believing them.  If I were one of you right wingers who engage in these stories, who believe these stories, I might actually assert that this kind of gullibility should render you ineligible for voting yourselves, because you obviously lack the judgement necessary to exercise your right to vote.

Fortunately for you all, I'm not going to claim that......however tempting that idea might be.  Because, seriously? A gullibility test, rather than an IQ test has some merits here in the area of the franchise.  See the 2009 and 2010 politifact lie of the year awards; I rest my case.

So here is the update.  Three students, not three busloads of students, went to vote on school time.  They rode along to the polling place in three 15 passenger vans in which they were provided donated seating space, along with the other people the church was transporting to vote, as a good civic minded sort of public service.  The vans were stopping for ice cream on the way back, as part of the outing, and generously invited the students to join them.  There was no bribe offered, no fraud, no democratic candidate ballots; all of that was something a friend of the tea party candidate made up, based on 'maybe' the teacher possibly wearing a sticker for a democratic candidate - which she did not do.

There was a scheduling hearing on the law suit full of misinformation (always with the misinformation, sheesh) and presumably because minors might be involved, or maybe because the tea party nut job is afraid of looking silly, the files on the law suit were sealed.

The school is still insisting - and can prove it - that the suit is full of false statements.  But the school DID suspend both the principal and the teacher involved, briefly.

Oh, NOT for having done anything wrong in letting the three students out of class to vote. No.  For having let them travel on the church vans, which had not complied with some of the formal criteria for transporting students.  The school still supports that otherwise the teacher and principle were acting appropriately.  And it is not clear at this point if the church vehicles met the criteria for safe transport of students, but just hadn't done the paperwork or not.

While neither the teacher or the principle have fought their disciplinary action, I would think they could have done so, given that any student old enough to vote is no longer a minor, and can therefore make their own decision about who and how they are transported, unlike the usual minor students.

In any case, there are depositions being called, and the case is set out for next summer for further action.

I'm hoping the damnably lying tea party candidate who filed this suit gets hit with all the costs, and that the school proceeds as it was suggested earlier it might do, in filing a counter suit.  Because this is just one more case of voter fraud that is purely a hoax for the gullible on the right.

These are getting easier and easier to spot, and like shooting fish in a barrel to disprove, because inevitably the details have egregious flaws in them, that are not plausible on the surface, that should raise red flags of alarm in every person who encounters them.  And they are always always always claiming some Eeeeeevil deed by democrats or liberals, accusations which inevitably turn out to be false on closer examination.

And every time - EVERY TIME - the accuser, when faced with these details, or someone supporting that accuser, asserts that their false accusation was justified because it COULD have been true.
No. It couldn't be true, and none of the rest of us other than those few fools on the right who consume this stuff like heroin addicts consume heroin, believe these voter fraud hoaxes any more.  But in the meantime, debunking voter fraud claims is to me like cat nip to a cat.  It makes me laugh, so you can expect more of them.  Bad me for laughing AT people instead of with them, but heck, it is still fun and funny.

My thanks to my esteemed colleague ToE for helping me with some of the legal research.

It's Official! the 2010 Politifact Lie of the Year: "A Government Takeover of Health Care"

It was a claim that was professed by dozens of right winger politicos, at all levels.  And it was wrong every time they said it, every time they wrote it, every time they justified their votes with it.

Politifact selected it because it was wrong, and because it was believed by a significant number of people.  People who, sadly, apparently don't know how to fact check.  People who, sadly, voted for Republican or Tea Party candidates.  People who, in fear, made threats last spring against Democratic Senators and Representatives to Congress.  It is widely believed by the fawning followers of Rush Limbaugh and the talking heads of Fake News.

It is no secret to regular readers of Penigma that I just adore the fact checkers, particularly politifact.com and factcheck.org..  This lie earned more than a few right wing politicos the pants on fire rating for the most egregious deliberate sorts of lies, as contrasted with simple factual inaccuracies, like a good faith use of outdated statistics.  I deeply believe that promotion of these lies, as a concerted effort, is in fact unpatriotic, a dangerous threat that does real harm to our citizens, our country, and to our system of government. 

No surprise, perennial fact check failure Michele Bachmann was runner up, again, for the award, as she was last year.  The 2009 Politifact. Lie of the Year award went to Sarah Palin, for her health care reform lie about death panels - although, again to be fair, it was not unique to Palin either.  Numerous other right wing voices spouted the same or similar lies.

So, here without further ado (imagine the drum roll) from Politifact.com, specifically Bill Adair, and Angie Drobnic Holan, is the heart of their expose on the right wing health care claim:


I hope this is a pleasant interlude from the Minnesota Voter Fraud hoaxes series, especially for those of you who live outside of Minnesota.  I use the term interlude, because there are more.

In the spring of 2009, a Republican strategist settled on a brilliant and powerful attack line for President Barack Obama's ambitious plan to overhaul America's health insurance system. Frank Luntz, a consultant famous for his phraseology, urged GOP leaders to call it a "government takeover."


"Takeovers are like coups," Luntz wrote in a 28-page memo. "They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom."


The line stuck. By the time the health care bill was headed toward passage in early 2010, Obama and congressional Democrats had sanded down their program, dropping the "public option" concept that was derided as too much government intrusion. The law passed in March, with new regulations, but no government-run plan.


But as Republicans smelled serious opportunity in the midterm elections, they didn't let facts get in the way of a great punchline. And few in the press challenged their frequent assertion that under Obama, the government was going to take over the health care industry.


PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen "government takeover of health care" as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats' shellacking in the November elections.


Readers of PolitiFact, the St. Petersburg Times' independent fact-checking website, also chose it as the year's most significant falsehood by an overwhelming margin. (Their second-place choice was Rep. Michele Bachmann's claim that Obama was going to spend $200 million a day on a trip to India, a falsity that still sprouts.)


By selecting "government takeover' as Lie of the Year, PolitiFact is not making a judgment on whether the health care law is good policy.


The phrase is simply not true.


Said Jonathan Oberlander, a professor of health policy at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill: "The label 'government takeover" has no basis in reality, but instead reflects a political dynamic where conservatives label any increase in government authority in health care as a 'takeover.' "

Announcing FactCheck.Org's Post-Election Conference : Cash Attack 2010

The following is offered as a Penigma Public Service Announcement

Political Advertising In a Post-Citizens United World

C-SPAN has informed us they will be covering our event live tomorrow morning, on C-SPAN 3. Check local cable listings for the channel number. We get underway at 9am EST Monday, Dec. 13.

At our conference strategists from three of the top five outside spending groups from the 2010 House and Senate campaigns will discuss the thinking behind their attack ads – and the results. And among others, we will also hear from the head of the California Labor Federation, which ran a successful outside campaign for state governor.

2010 Outside Spending by Groups

1. American Crossroads / Crossroads GPS     $38,675, 723
2. U.S. Chamber of Commerce                     $32, 851, 997
3. American Action Network                          $26,088,031
     this produces a total for conservatives from just these three groups 
          of $97,615,751 (DG)
4. Service Employees International Union      $15,769,546
5. American Federation of State, County        $12,416,770
      and Municipal Emplyees (AFSCME)
   this produces a total for progressives from these two groups,
         for comparison, of $28,186,316 (DG)
The event will be held at the Holeman Lounge of the National Press Club at 14th and F Streets NW, Washington DC. It is sponsored by FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The event is open to press and to the public. Should you be unable to watch or attend (or should C-CSPAN's plans change) we plan to post our own video of the event as soon afterward as possible.

Dear Mr. Obama: An Open Letter to the President

Dear President Obama:

I write this open letter with the greatest respect for you, and for the office of the President; please regard my comments in that context.

Sir, you made a bad deal with the Republican leadership. 

Minnesota Governor's Race Recount Update 2

UPDATE 12/2: There are five counties still in the recount process; 82 counties have finished in the Minnesota governor's race. According to one local news source:

The Dayton campaign says that as of 8 p.m. Wednesday night (12/1), the net gain was 228, making Dayton’s total margin 9,031 votes compared to the 8,770 after the canvass.

There is a minor discrepancy in how counts are being tabulated. Some counties are including frivolously challenged ballots in the respective totals, where there is overwhelmingly clear evidence of how the ballot should be accepted. In those counties, the frivolously challenged ballots, which are nearly all from the Emmer side of the controversy and would therefore benefit candidate Mark Dayton even further, are counted in with the other totals, but separated out for a final review by the canvassing board. In other counties, all ballot challenges, the legitimate, and the stupid, are counted separately from the candidate totals. This appears to be the explanation for differing total gains for Dayton, and gains/losses for Emmer.

Minnesota Governor's Race Recount - Update 1

UPDATE 11/31: the Republicans have tried to make an issue of reconciliation - the challenge that they believe the number of voters and votes do not match up. This appears to be explained, here.

Last week’s kerfuffle de jour was “reconciliation,” that is, whether there were more votes than voters in certain precincts. Amid that issue was whether election officials in many counties were counting the number of voters correctly; did they count signatures on voter rolls or did they count the voter receipts obtained when ballots were handed out at polling places? The latter, said many election experts, is more accurate.

[Joe]Mansky said today that of the more 192,000 votes in his county, there remains one — count ‘em one — vote more than there were voters. All other votes have matched up.

So, in the state’s second busiest voting county [Ramsey], a single vote is in some doubt out of 192,000 with Emmer’s deficit growing each day. In many other counties, there have been no reconciliation disparities."

Monty Jensen is a Liar; Crow Wing County Investigation Concludes NO Evidence of Wrong Doing, Part 1

The results were conclusive; there was no evidence which supported Montgomery 'Monty' Jensen's accusation of wrong doing. 

I will take apart Jensen's accusations, pointing out the drive-a-semi-through holes in separate posts.

What is perhaps the more interesting aspect of this story, that suggests this was intended to be an attack on disabled voters from the very beginning, possibly specifically against this group home for having DFL political signs on their premises (which they are entitled to do, it's private property). In the comments section outraged right wing nuts who don't need evidence to justify foaming at the mouth, are publishing the address and phone numbers of the Clark Lake Group Home, and their staff.  This is a frightening parallel to the publishing by right wing bloggers of the incorrect address and phone number of Virginia Representative Perriello, actually his brother's, which led to vandalism of a propane line, vandalism which could have resulted in a fatal fire had it not accidentally been discovered by the home owner coming home unexpectedly during the day, contrary to his usual routine.

I have suggested that the operator of the group home that is being targeted ask the paper to remove these phone numbers and addresses, and that he consider legal action against the parties involved with continuing smears, and against Jensen.  I've also offered to assist him in finding the best possible qualified legal representation to do so.
-DG

from the Brainerd Dispatch
Ryan: No evidence found to back voter fraud claim
By JODIE TWEED, Staff Writer

Crow Wing County Attorney Don Ryan said Friday afternoon that his office did not find evidence to substantiate a Crow Wing Township resident's claim of voter fraud that was said to have taken place on Oct. 29 at the Historic Crow Wing County Courthouse.

Now one of the interesting features of the accusation by Monty Jensen is that he is quite specific about the timing of what he witnessed.  He is quite specific about arriving at the courthouse around 4:30 - 4:45 p.m., ostensibly he was only there to vote, which appears not to be the case.  Either he was there earlier than he admits, possibly to observe voters in search of voter fraud to gain the $500 reward offered; or he did not see the disabled voters who exercised their franchise that afternoon.  Certainly there were significant discrepancies in his description of those voters, and the staff assisting them - the only disabled voters that afternoon.

The problem with his account of what he claims to have witnessed begins in the first minute, the first 30 seconds, of his video.  The Clark Lake Group home residents and staff voted an hour earlier; they were back home AT the Clark Lake Group home when Monty Jensen claims to have witnessed the misconduct which resulted in an expensive investigation.  If you compare the account by Jensen, which no one else other than perhaps his girlfriend supports, and the account of the Clark Lake residents and staff, the timing alone that Jensen claims makes this accusation impossible.  But his description also doesn't match up.

No one else who was there that afternoon supports Monty Jensen's claims.  Not the auditor and other employees, not the other people who were there voting or on other business, not the disabled individuals themselves; they don't agree with Monty Jensen's bogus accusations.  Now the right, is making excuses,  is claiming that Jensen is the victim here, in the outcome of the investigation - at least, some of them are.  The right, as with the James O'Keefe bogus videos, where parts were faked, didn't learn a very important lesson. 

A lesson I learned at my father's knee. The lesson that when something is too good to be true, it pretty much isn't true.  And the obverse, the other side of the coin, is also true; that something that is too bad to be true likely is not true either.

This is even more true when the person telling the 'story' comes out the hero: in this case the only person who comes out a hero is Monty Jensen, and then only in his version of events.  His version would have us believe that he is the only person in Crow Wing County who will stand up for these poor exploited disabled persons.  Persons he very wrongly describes over and over and over and over in the most derogatory and inaccurate terms as being too intellectually helpless to pick a candidate.  Monty Jensen would have us believe that only he, right wing superhero Monty, would speak up, would object to the very public exploitation of these people.  A version of events which has gotten him a great deal of public attention, including at least one right wing radio interview, and attention from Flummoxed Fox Cable News (which I would bet is NOT covering the investigation outcome), a version which no one else will support.  Stories like the one told by Monty Jensen, or the ones told by James O'Keefe lend themselves to the exploitation of the credulous, the unquestioning thinker, the gullible goons who are too willing to be exploited, and the lend themselves to the public attention paid to the teller.

And let me assure you - it was very public where they voted.  The courthouse does not provide voting booths for people voting absentee at the Auditor's office.  EVERYONE coming and going can see and hear everything.  Neither the disabled voters, or their assitants, or Monty Jensen was inside any little cloth-sided cubicle when this happened.  If Monty Jensen HAD approached these people during voting, they would have been well aware of it.

What would be funny if it were not so serious is that this total lack of evidence is not considered conclusive by the right.  They still believe that Monty Jensen MUST have seen something bad. This is evident by the comments on the story at the online Brainerd Dispatch site, and this has been evident in my exchanges with my right wing friends who promote and believe these stories.  If the roles had been reversed, if it were a Republican or Tea Partier or some other conservative who had been so vilely accused, and if there was a fairly exhaustive investigation which did not support the accusation, they would be outraged that anyone could consider this other than conclusive against the Jensen accusation.  They would - rightly (pun intended) - ridicule anyone ELSE who so blithely ignored the facts.

But all too often the right, specifically a significant segment of the right is no longer about facts.  The right is about the narrative; they have a "tell me a story I want to hear" mentality, never mind if it is fiction, never mind if it is a lie, never mind the accuracy of facts. 

This is not acting in good faith.  This is not acting with integrity.  This is not acting with intelligence. 

Whether it be Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who has never passed a single fact check at politifact.com with a truthful or even nearly or partially truthful rating. Or the commenters like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and especially weepy Glenn Beck at  Fox News who promote all kinds of lunacy as fact, and nearly never comes back with a correction later when everyone else presents them.  Rush Limbaugh builds every one of his radio shows around a few pieces of information that have some tangential connection to fact, but then skews into unreality, unquestioned by his audience.  UNQUESTIONED, because they want the conspiracy theories, the hysteria that lacks fact to support the claims to be true. THEY WANT IT, they want it badly, so facts be damned.

Monty Jensen, 29, of Crow Wing Township, filed a complaint Nov. 1 with Ryan's office, the day before the election, requesting an investigation into a situation he said he saw Oct. 29 while filling out his absentee ballot.

No, he didn't see what he put in his complaint.  He didn't see anything of the kind.

In his affidavit, Jensen said he witnessed what appeared to be staff members from a group home filling out a client's ballot and verbally instructing a client who to vote for during absentee balloting.

The right wants to believe that Jensen must have seen this, no matter how many other people, including the quite competent group of disabled people he insults in his video, over and over and over by describing them as 'mentally incompetent'.  These were not incapacitated people mentally.  These were people who have strong ideas and feelings about issues and candidates who are quite capable of speaking up for themselves, of selecting who they want to vote for; they just needed help with the physical process of completing the ballot.  Jensen's entire premise hinges on the notion he promotes that these people couldn't or wouldn't choose a candidate for themselves. 

This foundational premise is inaccurate, and insulting; it is profoundly untrue.  These individuals need assistance; that is why they live in a group home.  Some, but not all, of them have been assigned guardians by going through the legal process to determine their competence, and their voting rights were specifically NOT restricted by the court.  That means qualified people had to present evidence and testimony to a judge for that to happen - qualified people, not casual people with an agenda, with an axe to grind, like Monty Jensen.  Monty Jensen wants his audience - because he has from the very beginning sought an audience, not simply filed his complaint - to believe that you don't need to know anything about people's capacity, you don't need to have any testing of them, or to have special training to understand this.  Monty Jensen wants you to believe that someone who is bone ignorant about brain injuries or determining functional levels can 'just tell' by casual uninformed observation, that everyone can.  It is comforting to believe you don't need to know anything, or that the world is less complex than it really is.

Wow, how well this plays into the dumbing down of the right, the same right which believes any idiot can do any job in government without training or education, if they are simply willing to voice the political agenda that the right wants to hear and believe. This plays into the narrative of the right that insists 'common sense' solutions will work; we don't need facts on which to base policy, we don't need any complex or detailed analysis to make good government decisions.  Be like Bush, go with your gut, with what you want to believe might be true, and the hell with facts, the hell with complex problems solving reality based thinking.  THAT kind of government, thoughtful government is much harder to carry out, and doesn't favor their side.

Jensen said Friday that he hadn't yet spoken to Ryan about the outcome to his complaint so he didn't want to comment on that. Jensen said he needs to review the case and if he feels it was done improperly - he has some concerns about it already, he said. Then he said he will take it to the secretary of state's office or FBI. He said if it's a legislative issue over voter assistance at the polls, he'll take it to area lawmakers.

I will make a bet right here, right now with Penigma readers.  Jensen won't go to the Secretary of State, because the right has so wrongly vilified Mark Ritchie, and there is no story supporting Jenesn for Ritchie to find.  Jensen won't go to the FBI either, because he already knows they would find that he wasn't honest, that he wasn't factual, that there was no basis for his accusation - that he made it up to serve a purpose.  And the FBI doesn't like people lying to them; they take it seriously.

Jensen will go to a sympathetic Republican law maker with his 'issue'.  He will seek out someone who will also not give a damn if his accusations are true.  Because it will play into the larger pattern of efforts by the right to disenfranchise people, to take away their right to vote; in this case it will be disabled people. I predict that the right is going to try to disenfranchise this segment of disabled voters, in the mistaken belief they vote far more for Democrats than for Republicans.  This idea is not unique to me, it is an observation that has been made to me by advocates for the disabled about this incident.  They don't - but Republicans think they do, and as long as they believe it, they don't bother checking the facts.

Voter fraud claims are a staple of the right wing, and they are pretty much consistently never true.  The right wing promotes the craziest possible stories.......stories that don't turn out to be true.  They always, always have a left wing cartoon villain for the right wing audience to boo and hiss.  James O'Keefe played it out as a badly costumed, totally false melodrama targeting ACORN for voter fraud - except there was no voter fraud, and only minimal voter registration problems.  ACORN was a target for having registered large numbers of poor voters, black and other minority voters, more of whom voted Democrat than Republican.  The right just doesn't want these people, these legal and qualified American citizens, participating in our elective, representative form of government.  They repeatedly attempt to disenfranchise anyone who is likely to vote for someone other than the right.  The right intends to use this claim by Jensen, even though it is false, to make voting more difficult for every voter in every election in the hope that it will benefit their minority.

The current stories that have circulated in the last couple of months illustrate this claim perfectly.  I will use my favorite source for them, my friend Mitch's blog Shot in the Dark, because he collects and promotes all these stories eagerly without fact checking, often holding back the identity of the source, which of course limits any accountability for the factless feckless claims.  He has promoted the widely circulated but bogus story of the Cincinnati School students being bribed to vote - NO they weren't, but that will be a separate post; I have an update.  He has promoted an anonymous email that those terrible SEIU union goons took advantage of someone's aged Alzheimer's afflicted mother to vote for Al Franken in the last election.  You will note that the Jensen story had the same attack lodged against the unions; they are a regular target, it is part of that agenda I mentioned earlier, it is part of why this is an accusation tailored to serve a specific agenda, and not an honest accusation.  When I challenged Mitch to check the voter rolls, in the alleged Alzheimer's voter fraud accusation, he wouldn't - but he claimed it could have maybe, possibly, happened even if it didn't! So he didn't need to check, in fact refused repeatedly to check. NO. It couldn't happen.  It couldn't happen,  precisely BECAUSE you can check. You can check voter records, you can check care facility records, you can investigate such allegations effectively.  Then he circulated THIS story, and interviewed Jensen on his radio show. I can't wait to see the spin he puts on no one anywhere supporting Jensen's story. 

After that he went with the false 103 ballot story.  That is the one where some right wing nut claimed that 103 fraudulent ballots were found in Hennepin County, ballots which were consecutive, and unmarked except for Dayton votes, and unsigned by election judges.  It was even reported in the news! NO. The news mentioned the total from Dinkytown in connection with stupidly large numbers of frivolous votes being made.  If there were 103 consecutive, otherwise blank ballots, they would be legitimate ballot challenges.  There is no indication in any news media, or from anyone who was THERE at the recount that any such ballots exist.  The frivolous ballot challenges are an embarassment to the GOP, a failed tactic that was never anything other than an attempt to slow down the final results of a lost election being decided.

The fuss about the 103 frivolous ballots from the Dinkytown precinct? That just means that they were absentee ballots that were not opened at an polling site by an election judge; they were handled at the court house.  Anyone who believes otherwise is simply ignorant about election law and vote processing.  (See the separate Penigma post on that hoax.)

But it is to this audience on the right which trusts their sources without critical thinking, regardless of how often they are not told the real story that these narratives are intended to appeal. Shame, shame on them, for not demanding facts, for not asking themselves after so many lies, "is this true" before believing these stories.

Thumbs Down, Tom Emmer

I don't believe that Norm Coleman endeared himself to any but the most die-hard belligerents on the right with the extent to which he dragged out the contested decisions that unanimously over and over came out in favor of Senator Al Franken.

Effectively, Coleman made it clear that his own pursuit of the power of the office of Senator for Minnesota was more important than Minnesota's preference in voting - albeit a narrow one - AND more important than the importance of Minnesota having any second senatorial representation.  It is the same obstructive mind set that would rather shut down government than engage in genuine political compromise.

Then as now, Coleman claimed errors; his supporters continue to claim fraud, despite it being made as painfully clear as clear can be that there was no evidence of fraud, that you need to demonstrate fact, not simply a fictional narrative wishing it were so.  This despite the Supreme Court of Minnesota specifically stating that there was no evidence of fraud.  Coleman had nothing - NOTHING - to sustain such a claim.

And that is because there is no fraud to claim, there is no evidence because fraud is not a systemic problem; fraud has not 'stolen' any elections from a lawfully elected voter.  The real issue is that the republicans are consistently simply incredibly poor, and not very honorable losers.

False Claims of Voter Fraud II

Hard on the publishing of the gutless anonymous email came another claim, a claim of widespread voter fraud in Crow Wing county.  This is another one of those right wing claims that doesn't come out too well upon close scrutiny.  Not that they care.  There are always justifications, rationalizations, and excuses.

But let me provide some context to my anger, anger at what I see as a witch hunt. A witch hunt is where people are agitated to start looking under their beds for commies.  A witch hunt is where people are seeing voter fraud because they have been told to see voter fraud, not because it is really there.  A witch hunt is where it is more important to score a possible 'hit' on the dread much-ballyhooed (mostly hooey) target than it is to look critically or to consider what harm might come from your actions.  In this case, the harm is the embarrassment and added difficulty to people who face tremendous challenges, added difficulty that comes from an apparently (so far) groundless accusation made in the most public way possible. 

Follow with me.

False Claims of Voter Fraud by the GOP, the Tea Party, and other Conservatives, Part I

I sit at the computer writing this post, so angry I have tears in my eyes. 

I have been reading about the claims of voter fraud this election.  They are the same as the unsubstantiated claims of the last election alleging theft of the elections in various races by widespread voter fraud.  These false claims are based on not legitimate, they are not true, they are not accurate, they are not valid.

But they ARE repeated, over and over and over, so as to appear to have substance, so as to persuade they are true.

Last week, I was very angry with a friend of mine, a conservative blogger for writing this. 

Factoids and Fact-turds

Back in the day, my high school debate coach was unhappy with our practice efforts and our debate research.  We were sitting around after school, and he decided we needed to be given a speech.

In that off-the-cuff speech, accentuated with banging on the desk-top podium with his fist, he pointed out that we would never willingly put a turd in our mouths and swallow it, or shove one up our nose and inhale it.  So, why the hell would we insert one into our eyes or ears accessing our brains, in the form of poorly researched information?  He wasn't going to accept shit research from us, and we shouldn't accept it from anyone else.

Dear Keith Olbermann, What Part of the Recent Juan Williams Incident Did You NOT Understand?

Update - Keith Olbermann has returned to broadcasting on MSNBC.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.”
Wendell Phillips
American Abolitionist and Orator
1811-1884

“I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.”
(and)
"All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome."
Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell
English Journalist, and Author of 1984 and Animal Farm (among other works)
1903 -1950

“Burke said that there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate, more important far than they all.”
Thomas Carlyle quotes
Scottish Historian and Essayist,
1795-1881

Keith Olbermann has been suspended, indefinitely, without pay from his broadcasting duties on cable news network MSNBC.  Olbermann made political donations to three democratic candidates in the recent election: Senate contender Jack Conway in Kentucky (who lost to Rand Paul), and Congressional candidates from Arizona Raul Grijalva (who won in a narrow election still contested, by some 6,300 votes) and Gabrielle Gifford (who as of this morning, 11/6, announced she won by a similarly contested election by some 3,000 votes).

Olbermann released this statement to Politico regarding his conduct:

"One week ago, on the night of Thursday October 28 2010, after a discussion with a friend about the state of politics in Arizona, I donated $2,400 each to the re-election campaigns of Democratic Representatives Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords. I also donated the same amount to the campaign of Democratic Senatorial candidate Jack Conway in Kentucky.  I did not privately or publicly encourage anyone else to donate to these campaigns nor to any others in this election or any previous ones, nor have I previously donated to any political campaign at any level."

MSNBC has a policy for its employees that permit donations to political candidates with prior approval.  Mr. Olbermann did not seek or receive that approval before making those three legal donations.  In contrast, morning news host Joe Scarborough donated to a Republican candidate in the 2006 election WITH prior approval; MSNBC was at the time under different management, but the policy has remained the same.