The Threat

Well, its time I took a look around and posted again on
this old blog. It's been a crazy year...a year of Facebook and Twitter
and the Republican circus on TV, a year of kidney stones, false
medical alarms, pirates and wasted afternoons. I finally have got
something to say, something you'll like...

Here it is.....Democracy costs something. A system of government
where everybody votes is expensive....you've got to live with Franklin
Pierce, George W. Bush, your worst neighbors, five dollar gas, rock 'n
roll, Fox, no sugar-free cake, and like I said, Facebook,Twitter and the
Republicans.

It's worth it, believe me...I've been places where their aint no democracy
and you don't want any part of those places....crowded with pain and hunger
and arbitrary bosses. So the point here is that you're better off here than
most anyplace else.

SO WHATAM I COMPLAINING ABOUT?

The one thing I CAN"T live with is somebody screwing around with the
franchise, the
free and open right to vote. The whole thing tumbles (and I'll give you
some terrifying examples) if we even chip away at the integrity of the vote.
As some of you know, I spent a whole lot of my life trying to restore the
franchise for black voters in the south and we won a miraculous victory
that was set in stone with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. After we won
that, I went home to my martini (eventually I even got rid of that),
put my feet up and waved. Nothing, I thought, could get me out of my
leather lounger. Then it happened. These sonsabitches on the right
started enacting "voter ID" laws that are obviously designed to cull out
poor folks, minority folks....people who might not have proper identification
with pictures etc. Obviously this whole thing is designed to wipeout
significant portions of the vote. Look....like I said.....you want Rick
Santorum, (God help us) vote for him....you might even win. But you can't
disenfranchise regular folks...not in this country, not in MY country.

I said earlier, that I'd give you a scary example of places that got
zapped because somebody messed with the franchise. The Weimar
Republic (in Germany in the 20s) was a pretty wonderful democracy with
a solid consitution and a future. But they made a mistake....there was
a provision in their constitution
that allowed the Chancellor to take over and rule by decree in the
case of emergecies.....which is what Adolph Hitler did in 1933! Just a
single sentence....and the world fell apart.

So no matter what else we're doing this election season..... lets get to work,
state by state, to end these obvious vote killing state laws.

Ol Val