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BREAKING: King Co. GOP paying canvassers to collect unmailed ballots

By Geov Parrish • on November 2, 2012 at 7:06 pm

The home page of King County Elections now has posted a warning about an effort by the King County Republican Party to use paid canvassers to “help people vote” and then collect their ballots and turn them in on behalf of voters.

An intrepid ETS! reader called the party office this afternoon (call them yourself! 425-990-0404 h/t RL) and was told that “We’re going door-to-door to help people fill out their ballots, then you bring the ballots to GOP headquarters, and we take them to the ballot box.” (This sounds exactly like something the Grinch, dressed as Santa, told little Cindy Lou Who, who was no more than two.)

Canvassers who show up each day, beginning tomorrow (Saturday Nov. 3) through the 6th, can be paid $20 an hour from 10-6 PM each day for this outstanding public service. The King County Republican Party office is at 845 106th Ave. N. Bellevue WA 98004.

There’s nothing illegal about “helping” someone fill out a ballot at home – “oh, wait, no, no, dear, you don’t want her, you want HIM” – or with a voter willingly handing her or his ballot to a third party for “delivery” – assuming, of course, that the ballots are not, for example, collected in heavily Democratic precincts and then thrown away.

It also turns out a similar scheme, allegedly on behalf of a state legislative campaign, has surfaced in Boulder, Colorado. Literally scores of different Republican ratfucking schemes for obstructing the right to vote of people not likely to vote Republican have been bubbling up around the country for months; it’s not much of a stretch – at all – to think this could be another. With far more jurisdictions using mail-in and absentee balloting than in the past – including all of Oregon and Washington state – this sort of “service” is likely to pop up more often in the future, unless it’s stopped now.

It sounds like some folks need to show up in Bellevue tomorrow. And Sunday. And Monday and Tuesday. Make some cash. And since you’re going to be making some money at it, be sure to buy a roll or two of stamps ahead of time. Then, when you collect ballots, mail the damn things. We just want to save those poor, hard-working souls at the King County GOP from all that extra work of taking thousands of ballots to the shredder election office, right?

To track whether your ballot has been received and counted, go here. And for the love of all that is noodly, if someone comes to your door and offers to take your ballot from you, slam the door on them and call 911.

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Rorschach Romney

By Lansing Scott • on November 2, 2012 at 5:05 am

As anyone paying attention has noticed, the Romney campaign has taken positions both for and against anything they’ve determined that voters might be either for or against. They’re betting that more voters will be fooled by this Rorschach-on-an-Etch-a-Sketch strategy than will be turned off by the fact that he has not taken any consistent position on anything that matters to the future of the country.

Note that Romney has become extremely rich by making other high-stakes bets — especially when he has great “leverage” (read: gazillions of dollars) behind him. Given all the ways that the GOP and it’s ginormous money machine has been working to tip the scales on this election, it’s entirely too plausible that they could win this one.

It’s distressing to think that the future of the country may depend on the low-information voters who can be easily duped by seeing whatever they want to see in this Rorschach Romney. We’ll find out soon.

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Season of the Witch Hunt

By Geov Parrish • on October 18, 2012 at 8:46 pm

It hasn’t been just government and military whistleblowers (most notoriously, Bradley Manning) who have been targetted with unprecedented repression by the Obama administration. Radical activists, including some in Seattle, are also facing harassment.

Three local anarchists–Matt Duran, Katherine “KteeO” Olejnik, and most recently Leah Plante–have been jailed in the last two months for refusing to testify before a secret federal grand jury supposedly convened in the aftermath of some ludicrously trivial misdemeanor vandalism during this year’s May Day protests. Thing is, results from a FOIA request by Plante’s attorneys suggest that the grand jury was convened two months before the May Day protests it is a supposed response to.

In service of the same investigation, on July 25 multiple houses were raided by SWAT teams of FBI and local law enforcement in Seattle, Olympia, and Portland. Three homes were raided in Portland by approximately 60-80 police, including cops from the FBI and the local Joint Terrorism Task Force. Police used flash grenades during the raid.

The Seattle raid was particularly absurd, focusing on a house shared by members of Occupy Seattle belonging to the Kasama Project, a Maoist offshoot of the Revolutionary Communist Party, with a search warrant looking for “anarchist materials.” Setting aside the fact that it’s impossible to legally define what such materials are (Bakunin’s autobiography?), and the fact that there’s nothing incriminating, let alone illegal, about having such materials, anyone with an even passing knowledge of radical politics knows that a nest of Maoists is about the worst conceivable place to look for them. The odds would be substantially higher at any Tea Party meeting.

The same week as the Northwest raids, ANSWER’s Los Angeles office was broken into. Los Angeles is also where socialist activist Carlos Montes is hurtling toward trial after his arrest last year on transparently bogus federal charges.

Occupy activists, including black bloc anarchists, have frequently worked together throughout the West Coast, particularly in Oakland, San Francisco, and the three northwest cities targeted by July’s raids. It was probably only a matter of time before law enforcement harassment began to exploit those links. Such legal harassment is not a reason for any activist to lie low or be paranoid, but activists should use common sense. Don’t share information unnecessarily which would create a problem in the wrong hands, and whatever you do, never, ever say anything to cops of any stripe.

The national ACLU office has some excellent resources on your rights if you come into contact with law enforcement personnel. Study up.

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Know Your Fascism

By Lansing Scott • on October 18, 2012 at 5:54 pm

[These next two blog entries are companion notes to the story "Not Your Grandfather's GOP"]

Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt studied the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), Salazar (Portugal), Papadopoulos (Greece), and Pinochet (Chile), Dr. Britt found they all had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The list below is adapted from his original article published in Free Inquiry magazine, Spring 2003, and is reprinted for fair use only. These characteristics seem to offer a disturbing similarity to the current Republican agenda and playbook.

The 14 characteristics of fascism are:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism: Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights: Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause: The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military: Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism: The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

6. Controlled Mass Media: Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security: Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined: Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected: The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed: Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts: Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment: Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption: Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections: Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

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“The Delusional Is No Longer Marginal”

By Lansing Scott • on October 18, 2012 at 5:51 pm

Kevin Phillips has observed the long arc of the GOP’s rightward movement as closely as anyone. In 1968 he wrote The Emerging Republican Majority, which both forecast and offered strategy for the GOP to dominate national politics by using race and religion to retake southern states long allied with Democrats. In later years he became a leading critic of what this new Republican majority had created.

In his 2006 book, American Theocracy, Phillips describes three major pillars of the Republican Party of the 21st century: oil interests, radical religion, and Wall Street. He writes: “Over three decades … the Republican party has slowly become the vehicle of all three interests-—a fusion of petroleum-defined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless credit-feeding financial complex. The three are increasingly allied in commitment to Republican politics, if not all in full agreement with one another.”

The religious element has led to the growth of faith-based politics on the right: Not just inserting religion into politics, but a politics where belief trumps empirical evidence. Phillips notes, “In a late-2004 speech, the retiring television journalist Bill Moyers, himself an ordained Baptist minister, broke with polite convention. He told an audience at the Harvard medical school that ‘one of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.’”

Phillips continues, “These developments have warped the Republican party and its electoral coalition, muted Democratic voices, and become a gathering threat to America’s future. No leading power in modern memory has become captive, even a partial captive, of the sort of biblical inerrancy-—backwater, not mainstream-—that dismisses modern knowledge and science.”

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Best. Campaign web page. Ever.

By Geov Parrish • on October 17, 2012 at 8:29 am

www.romneytaxplan.com/

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Print issue coming up!

By Geov Parrish • on September 30, 2012 at 9:30 pm

Even though ETS! – bowing to the inevitabilities of cost and changing reader habits – discontinued regular publication of our print edition a couple of years ago, we’ve continued to print election editions. And we’re doing it again this year.

If you’d like to contribute (or advertise!), our editorial deadline is Friday afternoon, Oct. 12 – the end of next week. Contact geovparrish(at)gmail.com if you’d like to write something or share comics, artwork, or other material. We could also really use distributors for when the paper comes out the following Wednesday, Oct. 17, through the end of that week. Contact Lance at lanscot(at)drizzle.com for that one.

Ballots for the Nov. 6 general election will be mailed about when our print issue comes out; the deadline in Washington state for receiving mail or online new voter registration or address changes is Monday, Oct. 8. Information and forms for doing that locally are here. Deadline for in-person registration is Monday, October 29.

With this being a presidential election year, chances are really good that we’ll have to say something about that race. But we’ll have plenty to say on the rest of them, too, as well as news and views on other progressive and radical issues and movements. And, of course, we’ll also feature our election picks on Eat the Airwaves! on KEXP 90.3 FM Seattle, 8:30 AM on the Saturday mornings of Oct. 20 and 27.

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Faster, Pussy Riot! Foment! Foment!

By Jeff Stevens • on August 21, 2012 at 10:08 am

August 2012. In Russia, a band of anarchist woman pranksters has provoked a global conversation about the true meaning of the word “feminism.” In the United States, a political party led by rape apologists is conspiring to steal yet another national election. Which former global superpower is winning?

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L.A. ANSWER office ramsacked, robbed

By Geov Parrish • on July 25, 2012 at 10:26 pm

Well, this has been an interesting day for people who don’t much like the government.

ANSWER is linking the break-in to its local support of protests against cop violence in Anaheim. But remember also that Los Angeles is where socialist activist Carlos Montes is hurtling toward trial after his arrest last year on transparently bogus federal charges.

Along with the FBI actions in the Northwest today, and previous harassment by both local and federal law enforcement agencies against Occupy activists in a number of cities, it does seem like the amount of legal (and extralegal) harassment against left or anarchist activists around the country is trending up. Not a reason to lie low or be paranoid, but activists should use common sense. Don’t share information unnecessarily which would create a problem in the wrong hands, and whatever you do, never, ever say anything to cops of any stripe.

The national ACLU office has some excellent resources on your rights if you come into contact with law enforcement personnel. Study up.

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FBI raids Occupy homes in Seattle, Oly, Portland

By Geov Parrish • on July 25, 2012 at 5:20 pm

From the invaluable web site Green is the New Red:

[Wednesday morning] there have been multiple homes raided and grand jury subpoenas issued in Portland, Olympia, and Seattle.

Three homes were raided in Portland, by approximately 60-80 police including FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force. Individuals at the homes say police used flash grenades during the raid.

Grand jury subpoenas have been served to individuals in all three cities: 2 in Olympia, 1 in Seattle, and 2 in Portland. The grand jury is scheduled to convene on August 2nd at the federal courthouse in Seattle.

No arrests have been made. Electronics were confiscated along with additional personal items.

All legal documents related to the searches and grand jury are sealed, and the FBI will only say it is related to an “ongoing violent crime” investigation. But based on interviews with residents, and what police told them at the scene, this is clearly related to the ongoing demonization of anarchists and the Occupy movement.

Occupy activists, including black bloc anarchists, have frequently worked together throughout the West Coast, particularly Oakland, SF, and the three northwest cities targeted today. It was probably only a matter of time before law enforcement harassment began to exploit those links. More information continues to come out; follow the link above for regular updates.

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