David Price teams with liberal DNC on bills to thwart GOP voter fraud effort.

Verne Strickland Blogmaster / December 2, 2011

Submitted by cjarvis on 2011-12-01 17:43

Tags: Under the Dome | General Assembly | Rep. David Price | voter identification

 

 

U.S. Rep. David Price is co-sponsoring three new bills aimed at thwarting Republican efforts in North Carolina and elsewhere to crack down on voter fraud -- or to disenfranchise potential voters, depending on your point of view.

The bills would prohibit any requirements that people have photo identification in order to vote, as well as protect same-day registration and absentee balloting.

"Half a million North Carolina residents -- including many minorities, seniors, women and young people -- do not have a photo ID," the North Carolina Democrat said in a news release. "The General Assembly is trying to make it harder for these citizens to vote. It is an attack on voting rights, plain and simple."

GOP lawmakers in the North Carolina legislature this year passed a voter ID bill, but have not been able to muster enough votes to override the governor's veto of it. Republican leaders are considering other manuevers to accomplish their goal.

The Democratic National Committee is promoting the three-bill campaign. Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced them in a conference call with reporters this morning.

Charlotte GOP Mayoral candidate calls for hiring locals, not unions, at DNC bash

Verne Strickland Blogmaster

October 7, 2011

By Jim Morrill And Steve Harrison Staff Writers 

Posted: Thursday, Oct. 06, 2011

• 
  
  Republican Mayoral Candidate Scott Stone

Jobs at next year's Democratic National Convention became an issue in Charlotte's mayoral race this week when Republican Scott Stone called on incumbent Democrat Anthony Foxx to ensure that DNC jobs go to local businesses and not "out-of-state labor unions." 

"They said they want to maximize union labor," Stone said. "How do you maximize union labor while also giving opportunities to local workers?"

While Stone spoke to reporters, Foxx was meeting with students at West Charlotte High School, where he talked about work and youth employment. He highlighted the city's youth employment program, which he said has grown under his watch from 180 participants to 240.

Stone challenged Foxx to sign a pledge to defend the state's standing as a right-to-work state and fight for local businesses over out-of-state unions. Foxx campaign manager Michael Halle declined to comment, referring reporters to the convention host committee.

Some labor unions have threatened to boycott the convention because North Carolina is a right-to-work state and one of the least unionized in the country.

The city's convention contract with the host committee and Democratic National Convention Committee says, "To the extent permitted by law, to the extent, if any, such labor is available in the region ... all services, goods, equipment, supplies and materials to be provided or procured ... shall be performed or supplied by firms covered by current union collective bargaining agreements."

"The DNCC and the host committee have made hiring workers with ties to Charlotte and the region a top priority," said Dan Murrey, executive director of the host committee. "We intend to make sure Charlotte businesses get every dollar possible."

He said a new vendor directory will help match local businesses to convention contracts, or help those businesses partner with outside companies.

Foxx, meanwhile, spoke to a group of JROTC students at West Charlotte High, from where he graduated in 1989. Much of his talk was about how to be successful and urging the students to work hard. He also touted what he described as the success of his youth jobs program.
 
"It's still not close to what I want," he said. "I want us to achieve."

The program, called the Mayor's Youth Employment Program, matches participating firms with high school students who serve as interns. Companies include Bank of America, Duke Energy and Bissell Companies.

Foxx said he lobbied business leaders to hire more high school students.

Schools that feed into West Charlotte High will be helped by project LIFT, an initiative led by the Foundation for the Carolinas to spend $55 million to improve student achievement.

• http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/10/06/2667188/stone-targets-dnc-jobs.html

Is the "job" of the U.S. government wealth redistribution? Howard Dean thinks so.

Verne Strickland Blogmaster

By Dr. Paul Kengor / February 23, 2011

A teachable moment on the purpose of government recently occurred on MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” who has picked up the torch for the departed Keith Olbermann.

It was Monday, February 7, the day after President Obama sat for an interview with Bill O’Reilly of Fox News.It was an exchange in the O’Reilly-Obama interview that inspired the teachable moment with O’Donnell.

O’Reilly asked Obama a valuable question:

O’Reilly: Do you deny that you’re a man that wants to redistribute wealth?

Obama: Absolutely.O’Reilly: You deny that?

Obama: Absolutely.


Putting aside the issue of whether Barack Obama is a redistributionist, the teachable moment for me here today—followed on MSNBC.

Lawrence O’Donnell’s guest was Howard Dean. Bear in mind that Dean is a very influential man of the Left. He chaired the Democratic National Committee, spearheading it when the Democrats took down George W. Bush in his second term, recapturing Congress in a landslide.

Those victories came after Dean challenged Bush for the presidency in 2004 and, in my opinion, did more than any other figure in ratcheting up the toxic vitriol that ultimately destroyed Bush’s presidency.

In short, Howard Dean’s opinion is not irrelevant.And so, Lawrence O’Donnell followed the O’Reilly-Obama “redistribution” exchange with this question to Dean:


O’Donnell: Governor [Dean], this is one of those things you can see he’s[Obama]afraid of discussing—what an increase in top tax rate actually does. This for me is — I feel is why Democrats so frequently lose the tax debate.You can see that they’re afraid of the tax debate.

Dean: That [interview] was an unusual thing. The president doesn’t often get mouse-trapped, especially by the likes of Bill O’Reilly…. He laid out a proposition that is we shouldn’t have redistribution. [But] that’s what governments do—is redistribute.

The argument is not whether they should redistribute or not, the question is how much we should redistribute…. The purpose of government is to make sure that capitalism works for everybody …. It’s government’s job to redistribute.


There are a bunch of objections I could raise to these statements. Primarily, however, the problem with Dean’s comments on the “purpose” and “job” of government is the complete lack of qualification. Dean gives a definition of government that is a leftist definition, provided by a modern liberal/progressive.

Howard Dean cannot, logically, honestly, factually, categorically argue that his definition is anything beyond that.Dean certainly did not offer a definition grounded in sources we would traditionally expect in America: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, specific writings of Jefferson, Madison, even John Locke. No one, and nothing, is cited.

For instance, the Declaration, written by Jefferson, edited by Ben Franklin, John Adams, and the entirety of the first Congress, approved by 56 of our founders, stated that “governments are instituted” for the purpose of securing the “unalienable rights” of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Wealth redistribution is nowhere to be found.What Howard Dean offered was an expansive modern “progressive” definition of government. That’s fine, but his terms need to be identified as just that.

Taking this a step further, note that Dean and O’Donnell both desire a federal income-tax system based on graduated or progressive rates. They believe such a system reflects and enables government’s “job” and “purpose.” They want a progressive federal income tax for the chief intention of wealth redistribution.

Here, too, this is hardly the spirit of America’s founding principles. America’s progressive income tax system did not start until nearly 140 years after the American Revolution, with implementation under President Woodrow Wilson—the progressive’s progressive—in 1913, and only after an intense, nasty debate that still rages a century later.

If Dean and O’Donnell want an early document that argues for a graduated or progressive income tax, they need to look overseas and to 1848, decades before Woodrow Wilson, with the publication of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. If you go to page 75 of the Penguin Signet Classics edition of the Manifesto, or page 26 of the on-line version (click here), you can see Marx’s 10-point program. Point two, which follows

Marx’s unapologetic call for “abolition of property,” explicitly calls for “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax.”No, I’m not calling Lawrence O’Donnell and Howard Dean communists, but I am calling them Leftists and redistributionists. That’s what they are, as is their definition of government. Their definition is, first and foremost, theirs—not America’s.

***********

Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism" and the newly released "Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century."http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=8434635&msgid=338801&act=L8SI&c=617533&destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.VisionAndValues.org http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=8434635&msgid=338801&act=L8SI&c=617533&destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.VisionAndValuesEvents.com