Barack Obama has a coal problem. Responding to yesterday’s revelation that Barack Obama intends to bankrupt all plants that operate on energy generated from coal, Chris Hamilton, the Senior Vice President of the West Virginia Coal Association, called Obama’s comments in San Francisco “unbelievable.” I quote the West Virginia Record:

The senior vice president of the West Virginia Coal Association called Obama’s comments “unbelievable.”

“His comments are unfortunate,” Chris Hamilton said Sunday, “and really reflect a very uninformed voice and perspective to coal specifically and energy generally.”

Hamilton noted other times Obama and vice presidential candidate Joe Biden have made seemingly anti-coal statements.

“In Ohio recently, when Joe Biden said ‘not here’ about building coal-fired power plants — this is exactly what will happen,” Hamilton said. “Financing won’t be directed here. It will all go aboard for plants elsewhere in the world. The United Sates is importing more coal today from Indonesia, South Africa and Colombia than we ever have.

“If we’re going to create a situation where coal-fired power plants are at that much of a disadvantage, there will be new ones built. But as Biden said, just not here.”

In other words, the workers of West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, Montana and all the other states in which coal is mined, processed and converted to electricity should be prepared to have their jobs outsourced under an Obama Presidency. That is not the change the economically battered Ohio River Valley needs. It is also not the change those of us who consume electricity need. Just imagine the cost of our energy bills if coal plants, which generates 49% of our electricity, are bankrupted and eliminated.

American Girl in Italy asks No Quarter readers to disseminate the following recording of Barack Obama’s statement on bankrupting coal plants far and wide.

And I offer more information on who will be affected by Obama’s reckless energy policy in an essay I published yesterday.

Clearly Obama’s statements will have electoral effects in West Virginia, where he has already garnered opposition from leaders of the industry that is that state’s main economic engine. But we must ensure voters in Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania are armed with these facts before they cast votes tomorrow.

Sarah Palin is doing everything within her power to ensure voters in the Ohio River Valley understand the implications and ramifications of Obama’s desire to bankrupt plants relying on energy produced from coal. I quote CBS News:

(MARIETTA, OHIO) – Seizing on a newly released audio tape picked up by the Drudge Report, Sarah Palin took the opportunity here in coal country to accuse Barack Obama of “talking about bankrupting the coal industry.”

“He said that, sure, if the industry wants to build coal-fired power plants, then they can go ahead and try, he says, but they can do it only in a way that will bankrupt the coal industry, and he’s comfortable letting that happen,” Palin said. “And you got to listen to the tape.”

The audiotape Palin was referring to was recorded by the San Francisco Chronicle in a Jan. 17 interview.

“Why is the audiotape just now surfacing?” Palin asked, leading someone in the crowd to shout, “Liberal media!”

“This interview was given to San Francisco folks many, many months ago,” Palin said. “You should have known about this, so that you would have better decision-making information as you go into the voting booth.”

Marietta, Ohio, is located on the Ohio River on the border between Ohio and West Virginia. This is the perfect place to discuss Obama’s desire to bankrupt the coal industry, for many of the workers in that city and its environs earn their wages in mines and in factories reliant on coal.

And Sarah and the audience in Marietta, Ohio, are correct: we only learned about this now as a result of the venal and obsequious media’s suppression of any and all information that is unfavorable to Barack Obama. Just witness CNN’s attempt to minimize the importance of this story:

Contrary to her attempts to portray a media cover-up, audio and video recordings of Obama’s January 17 sit-down with the Chronicle editorial board have been freely available online for more than nine months.

In the interview, Obama said that his “aggressive” cap-and-trade plan would charge polluters for every unit of carbon or greenhouse gas they emit, a plan that would render polluting coal plants financially unviable.

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” he said. “It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

In the interview, Obama also made the case for alternative energy sources, adding that he does not believe coal production will be eliminated, and that he supports carbon capture and sequestration technologies.

John McCain also supports a market-based cap-and-trade proposal to reduce carbon emissions.

Regardless, Palin sought to use Obama’s words against him in a part of the country where coal has long been king.

“He said that, sure, if the industry wants to build coal-fired power plants, then they can go ahead and try, he says, but they can do it only in a way that will bankrupt the coal industry, and he’s comfortable letting that happen.”

The media, it seems, will not inform working class voters of Obama’s attempts to eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs and raise our electricity bills. But Sarah Palin and those who care about the economy of West Virginia and other states in the Ohio River Valley will. And so will we, for we understand that the elimination of jobs in a region of a country Obama already insulted with his comments in San Francisco about those bitter small town voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio who cling to guns and religion will not solve America’s economic woes. Indeed, it will only exacerbate the current recession.

Let us stand with West Virginia and the Ohio River Valley and defend those who rely on coal for their economic livelihood. This is certainly what Hillary would do. I quote the Sun-Times article I cite above:

After the quotes [about "bitter clingers"] surfaced on a political blog Friday, Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and GOP hopeful John McCain immediately decried them as evidence that Obama is “elitist” or “out of touch.”

“My opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter. Well, that’s not my experience,” Clinton told a crowd in Philadelphia. “As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves … Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them, they need a president who stands up for them.”

And yes, Barack Obama is an elitist politician who “looks down on” voters in the Ohio River Valley and in other areas of the country that rely on coal. Hillary Clinton does not, and neither does John McCain. Here is John McCain yesterday campaigning in Pennsylvania:

SCRANTON, Pa. — Campaigning in coal-rich Pennsylvania, GOP presidential nominee John McCain pledged this afternoon that if elected president, he would ensure that the U.S. exports coal overseas — something that U.S. policy already permits.

At the same time, the McCain campaign and Republican National Committee reportedly launched robocalls in Ohio, Pennsylvania and other coal states attacking Sen. Barack Obama’s position on coal.

Mocking Obama for a comment he made in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in January — “The only thing I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster,” Obama had said — McCain promised the audience at the University of Scranton that he’s been a proud coal cheerleader in the past, and plans to be one in the future.

“My friends, you know what Senator Obama said about a year ago, he said he had not been a, quote, coal booster,” he said, as the crowd booed. “My friends, I’ve been a coal booster and it’s going to create jobs, and we’re going to export coal to other countries and we are going to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. That’s going to help restore the economy of the great state of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

The robocalls have been placed, but we must ensure the voters understand that Obama desires to bankrupt the coal industry and increase the prices of our energy bills. We have one day, and this must be done. Circulate the video I cite above.

———————————————-

[UPDATE]: Ohio Coal Association issues a scathing statement on Barack Obama’s statement. I quote:

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov 03, 2008 /PRNewswire–USNewswire via COMTEX/ — Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association (OCA), today issued the following statement in response to just-released remarks from Senator Barack Obama about the nation’s coal industry.

“Regardless of the timing or method of the release of these remarks, the message from the Democratic candidate for President could not be clearer: the Obama-Biden ticket spells disaster for America’s coal industry and the tens of thousands of Americans who work in it.

“These undisputed, audio-taped remarks, which include comments from Senator Obama like ‘I haven’t been some coal booster’ and ‘if they want to build [coal plants], they can, but it will bankrupt them’ are extraordinarily misguided.
“It’s evident that this campaign has been pandering in states like Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania to attempt to generate votes from coal supporters, while keeping his true agenda hidden from the state’s voters.

“Senator Obama has revealed himself to be nothing more than a short- sighted, inexperienced politician willing to say anything to get a vote. But today, the nation’s coal industry and those who support it have a better understanding of his true mission, to ‘bankrupt’ our industry, put tens of thousands out of work and cause unprecedented increases in electricity prices.

“In addition to providing an affordable, reliable source of low-cost electricity, domestic coal holds the key to our nation’s long-term energy security – a goal that cannot be overlooked during this time of international instability and economic uncertainty.

“Few policy areas are more important to our economic future than energy issues. As voters head to the polls tomorrow, it is essential they remember that access to reliable, affordable, domestic energy supplies is essential to economic growth and stability.”

The Ohio Coal Association (OCA) is a non-profit trade association representing the interests of Ohio’s underground and surface coal mining producers. The OCA represents nearly 40 coal producing companies and more than 50 Associate Members, which include suppliers and consultants to the mining industry, coal sales agents and brokers and allied industries. The Ohio Coal Association is committed to advancing the development and utilization of Ohio coal as an abundant, economic and environmentally sound energy source.

Representing 40 coal producing companies and more than 50 associate members in related industries, the OCA will deliver many Ohio votes to John McCain.

Words do matter, I guess.

As you probably also know, Mr. Fund has written a book, “Stealing Elections, Revised and Updated: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy.”

In 20 minutes following publication of this story — at 3:00 a.m. ET (Monday, Nov. 3, 2008) — BookTV.org (C-Span2) is airing a one-hour speech and Q&A with John Fund.

You may also watch the video at any time here at BookTV.org.

What else is going on so early in the morning? Have you caught the latest on the breaking news about Obama’s intentions to bankrupt coal-reliant businesses and industries? NOTE the states listed above in the categories; workers and businesses in all of those states, and more, could be devastated by Obama’s schemes.

Here’s what we know so far:

Among the LATEST NEWS: Sarah Palin is speaking out about Barack Obama and coal, according to Memeorandum.com.

If you missed our reporting on this breaking story, please check out:

• Truthteller’s Sunday afternoon story, “MEMO to Voters in States Producing and Relying On Coal: Obama Intends to Bankrupt Your Businesses and Your Industries,” and
• American Girl in Italy’s call to action, “ACTION ALERT – Obama has promised to bankrupt coal plants.”

We hope to publish more on this “hot” story later today.

Wyoming, West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Texas, Montana, Illinois, Virginia, North Dakota, Colorado, Indiana, New Mexico, Utah, Ohio, Alabama and Arizona: these coal producing states will be adversely affected by Barack Obama’s energy policy.

Imagine mines closing, factories closing, jobs lost, towns abandoned, small businesses failing, pensions lost, wages dropping and widespread economic depression in states that rely on coal mining and processing. This is what Obama’s cap and trade system will engender in states such as WV, PA, MT, VA, ND, CO, IN, NM, OH and AZ. Just listen to this audio of Obama discussing how he will bankrupt factories and businesses that rely on power generated from coal when he was interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2008:

[[[TAKE ACTION!! RIGHT NOW!
Start posting this video on sites in the coal based states: Virginia, Montana, Illinois, Indiana, West Virginia, North Dakota, New Mexico, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado.]]]

Here is the transcript:

Let me sort of describe my overall policy.

What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there.

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

The only thing I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.

It’s just that it will bankrupt them.“

Does Obama realize the number of jobs lost when he arrogantly states that plants will be bankrupted under his energy policy? Does he not understand the number of lives affected?

The Ohio River Basin is one area of the country that will be decimated as a result of Obama’s desire to bankrupt plants relying on coal.

And while the economy of the Ohio River Valley is decimated, the following regions of the country will witness no job growth, as the following proposed plants will never be built:

Permits for these proposed plants have already been cancelled:

The West will also be adversely affected by Obama’s reckless energy policy:

Bankrupting an entire industry will destroy the lives of Americans across the country. Both coal produces and consumers will have to fire employees, and this will create widespread job loss and increased economic recession.

More discussion on Obama’s desire to bankrupt coal producers and consumers is available at Memeorandum.

216 for McCain-Palin, 217 for Obama-Biden, 105 Toss Ups: Obama’s lead in the electoral college has officially eroded. Here is Survey USA’s report about the state of electoral affairs in Washington state:

Democrat Barack Obama’s once double-digit lead in Washington state is no more, according to this latest SurveyUSA poll conducted exclusively for KING-TV Seattle and KATU-TV Portland Oregon. In an election today, eight weeks till votes are counted, it’s Obama 49%, McCain 45%. Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll 4 weeks ago (before both candidates had named their running mates), Obama is down 2 points; McCain is up 1. Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll 8 weeks ago, Obama is down 6; McCain is up 6. Obama led by 17 points in June, led by 16 points in July, led 8 points in August, leads 4 points today.

Among voters with no college education, there is continuing movement to McCain. Obama led by 15 points in July, now trails by 8, a 23-point erosion. Among voters who earn less than $50K a year, there is continuing movement to McCain. Obama’s once 26-point lead among the lower-income group is now 5 points, a 21-point erosion. Among voters older than McCain, Obama had led by 24 points in July, now trails by 1, a 25-point erosion. McCain always has run well among Conservatives, but his advantage among Conservatives has grown from 4:1 in May to 11:1 today. In Eastern Washington state, Obama led 5:4 in June, but McCain leads 2:1 today.

The erosion of Obama’s once staggering lead is not limited to Washington state; it has also altered the landscape of Montana. I quote Rasmussen Reports:

John McCain has opened a double digit lead over Barack Obama in Montana. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the Treasure State finds McCain leading by eleven, 53% to 42%.

That’s quite a change from late July when the race was a toss-up. Montana has voted for a Republican candidate in nine of the last ten presidential elections but Obama had made clear his intention to compete for the state’s three Electoral College votes. The candidate himself spent the Fourth of July in Butte, Montana and his campaign ran significant television advertising in the state. However, just before the Democratic National Convention, Obama stopped advertising in Montana and several other traditionally Republican states.

The erosion is also occuring in North Dakota. I quote Rasmussen Reports again:

Like neighboring Montana, North Dakota has become a lot friendlier to John McCain in the first polling conducted since Sarah Palin was nominated to be the Republican Vice Presidential nominee.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of North Dakota voters shows McCain with a 14-percentage point lead over Barack Obama, 55% to 41%. In early July, the candidates were tied in the state and Obama was looking to the Dakotas and Montana as a way to expand the electoral map for Democrats. Now, the Democratic nominee appears to be more focused on traditional battleground states.

But North Carolina really bore the brunt of this displacement of geological proportions. I quote ABC 11 News in Raleigh-Durham:

In 3 previous SurveyUSA NC tracking polls, McCain had led by 8, 5, and 4 points. Today: 20. McCain has gained ground in every demographic group. Among men, McCain led by 9 last month, 27 today. Among women, Obama led by 2 last month, trails by 12 today. McCain holds 9 of 10 Republican voters; Obama holds 3 of 4 Democratic voters; independents, who were split last month, break today crisply for McCain, where, in the blink of an eye, he is up by 25.

In a blink of an eye, a veritable avalanche followed in the wake of Sarah Palin’s emergence. States once competitive were swept into McCain’s columns, while others, particularly those “traditional battleground states,” are quickly sliding toward the precipice. McCain is hovering above the fifty percent threshold in Missouri; he leads Obama by 1 point in Nevada; he is inching ahead of Obama in Michigan; McCain-Palin trounces the Democratic ticket in Florida by a seemingly insurmountable 8 points; the gap separating Obama and McCain in New Jersey is closing; and Ohio is teetering on the brink: unless Obama can move mountains, the prospect of a Democratic victory will be nothing more than a pebble plummeting into a Republican abyss.

No wonder why Democrats on Capitol Hill are panicking. And no wonder why Obama is resorting to some of the most deplorable tactics imaginable. But Obama is desperate, and desperate candidates will do and say anything in a vain attempt to reverse a course that can only be described as inexorable.

Approximately a year ago thousands of committed volunteers attended “Camp Obama,” a four-day indoctrination program, geared at teaching pre-screened Obama volunteers grass roots organizational strategies.  

The training, which specifically focused on the caucus states, taught volunteers to be “ruthless,” “take risks,” and win at all costs. Obama’s campaign and Camp Obama’s strategy which focused on the vulnerable caucuses and the early primaries worked. 

Obama only lost 1 out of 14 caucuses, a staggering achievement, especially when he lost 21 out of 38 primaries and scored a statistical tie in popular vote.   How did he accomplish such an astonishing string of victories that would eventually define the Democratic Primary? 

At www.caucusanalysis.org, a new website devoted exclusively to the 2008 Democratic caucuses, you can read Tales from the Front, stories told to sites founder, Dr. Lynette Long, by participants in all 14 caucus states.  Here are excerpts from  the website. For complete statements and a mathematical analysis of each state, go to www.caucusanalysis.org.

FROM IOWA

I live in Davenport, Iowa – Precinct 23.  I arrived at our precinct caucus at 6:30.  At 6:50 pm, over 75 people of African American descent came walking in, past the tables and sat in the Obama section.  I knew one of them from my canvassing.  I knew another one who did not live in this precinct!  And aside from the 4 or 5 families that live on Hillandale Road, there are no other black people in this unusually white precinct and one of those black couples were in my Hillary section.  The results were Obama 3, Clinton, 2, Edwards 1!  It was impossible for me to argue since the precinct chair was an Obama supporter from another precinct.  A very large bus was seen in the parking lot afterwards carrying these folks back.

FROM IOWA

You probably have heard about the busloads coming in from over the IL border, but you may not have known about the busloads coming in from the NE border. North Omaha and Omaha itself are two of the three places in NE — Lincoln being the third — where there’s over 5% African-American population. Obama’s campaign offered people things like I-pods and free stuff– t-shirts, clothes, shoes, and at least two free meals on the Nebraska side.

FROM KANSAS

There were a lot of young people there and a lot of black people.  We do not have that many blacks in this county.  El Dorado is a small town of about 12,000 and it is the largest town in the county.  There are probably only a handful of blacks that live in El Dorado.  I work with the school district and travel to the high school, middle school and elementary schools and believe me, there are very, very, few  black students.

FROM MINNESOTA

There was NO voter registration for the MN caucus… no identification was checked so Obots were going from room to room voting over and over again giggling all the while doing it. 

FROM NEVADA

Throughout this mess of a process, hostility built to a degree I found truly alarming.  Some overenthusiastic BHO supporters formed a gauntlet in the hallway outside the registration area, on the way to the ballroom, within the zone in which campaigning was prohibited.  Any HRC supporter was subject to verbal abuse, ridicule and, eventually, physical assault.

FROM NEBRASKA

Nebraska was totally chaotic and each precinct location had a different way to do the caucus. In Nebraska, 18 precincts where crammed into one high school in Sarpy county. When I got there, it felt like I stepped into a Third World voting situation. They were trying to determine whether people could actually participate in the caucuses or not, and then it seemed like they just gave up on that and just let anyone participate. There was a gym at the high school where about 5 precincts met. A person was supposed to fill out their preference on a slip of paper and then turn it in. They tried to run it like a primary instead of a true caucus, just take out any semblance of order and guards against voter disenfranchisement that a normal primary would have. I found a pile of these preferences slips just sitting on a table where anyone could pick them up and fill them out.

FROM TEXAS

I was at the Texas Caucus and the Obama supporter’s took the Packets as early as 6:30 AM which they were told not to do, They never let go and then when time came to vote they took over the precinct by some of them pushing the people that were supposed to run it across the room to chairs. They called in incorrect totals for Obama instead of correct ones. He actually had 4 delegates and they called in 19 delegates.

When my 88 year old Mother showed up, who can hardly walk on her walker, and they took her walker away from her when she said she was there to vote for Hillary. They said you are in the wrong place old woman; this is an Obama precinct, and you need to go across town. When I saw what was happening I called the police.  Blog post no quarter evelyn

FROM TEXAS

As an eye witness at the Precinct and Senate District Conventions, this is how Obama won many caucuses. First of all, vast numbers of Obama supporters were bused in to the conventions. They were loud and intimidating. Texas Democratic rules state that each person who participates in the Precinct Convention should have voted in this precinct and sign-in personally on a formal sign-in sheet. So many Obama people showed up, that there were not enough sign-in sheets available, so when the conventions ended, there were many sign-in sheets for Obama filled out in the same handwriting, not signed-in as specified. As Hillary supporters, we obtained copies of these sign-in sheets from all over south Texas, Harris County in particular. We laboriously compared the names on the sheets to see if the person who attended the precinct convention had voted in the primary election. Many listed Obama people had not. We then cross-checked the names of the Obama people to see if they lived in the correct precinct. Many times the Obama people did not come to the correct precinct and often appeared on sign-in sheets, as being present in several precinct conventions at the same time (a violation of the space-time continuum).

FROM THE TEXAS CONVENTION

I walked into the Nueses,Texas County Convention only to discover that I was already there as an Obama delegate.

FROM THE TEXAS CONVENTION

They shoved Obama signs in Clinton delegates’ faces, three inches from the nose, called them racists, and told my friend that she had to move from her third-row seat in one meeting and go sit in the back.  She also said that the proceedings were heavily laced with black power speeches by preachers as well as public officials.

FROM WASHINGTON STATE

What I saw was at least 3 trained group agitators — Since my MA is in group dynamics and group facilitation I recognized when someone is using techniques that I have been trained in. If such individuals were planted in ALL precincts, along with bringing in ringers — then ALL caucus results are bogus. For this sort of intensive origination to take place in a rural area — this means that a vast amount of money was spent to manipulate the results of the caucus. The Obama supporters kept changing the number of delegates — subtracting Clinton delegates and increasing Obama delegates, each time they claimed someone had changed and they had to do "complicated" math and that’s why Clinton kept losing delegates. There were NO Clinton supporters checking the Obama "math".

Read full accounts at www.caucusanalysis.org.

Contact DrLynetteLong@aol.com

Irrefutable evidence indicates that Obama’s campaign has been doing business with CSI, which appears to have been operating fraudulently in the State of Maryland and Ohio, and ACORN, which has been associated with a laundry list of fraudulent business practices. The full nature of the relationship between ACORN and Citizens Services Inc is not known but this much is clear: both share the same address in
New Orleans and officials with CSI refer folks to ACORN for questions about “political consulting” and “Get-Out-The-Vote” activities. These are questions that mainstream media should examine.

According to Wikipedia, ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, was founded in 1970 as “a community organization of low- and moderate-income families that addresses housing, schools, neighborhood safety, health care, job conditions, and other social issues that affect its members.” Voter registration has been a major activity for the organization and ACORN has been working actively to register voters on behalf of the Obama campaign. According to the Milwaukee Journal Online,

The ACORN effort is part of a massive voter registration drive aimed at the fall presidential election, which is expected to pit Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois against Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Although voter registration and Get Out the Vote drives seem like noble activities, in fact, not all of ACORNs dealings have been legal, and once again ACORN is facing investigation for illegal voter registration:

Criminal investigations could be launched against at least six voter registration workers who tried to add dead, imprisoned or imaginary people to the voter rolls, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organization that employed them.

This is not the first time that ACORN has been under criminal investigation. I have already looked at Obama’s connections to ACORN and put into context ACORN’s fraudulent activities during the primary election season here, and here. In fact, the same Wiki entry list five earlier indictments:

False registrations by employees

In some locations, ACORN employees have submitted false registration forms rather than obtaining registrations from actual eligible voters.

• In Ohio in 2004, four ACORN employees were indicted by a federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms.
• In January 2005 two Colorado ACORN workers were sentenced to community service for submitting false voter registrations. ACORN’s regional director said, “we find it abhorrent and do everything we can to prevent it from happening.”
• On November 1, 2006, four part time ACORN employees were indicted in Kansas City, Missouri for voter registration fraud, after being caught, fired, and turned in by ACORN. Prosecutors said the
  indictments are part of a national investigation.ACORN said in a press release that it is in large part responsible in these individuals being caught, and has cooperated and publicly supported efforts to look into the validity of the allegations.
• ACORN was investigated in 2006 for submitting false voter registrations in St. Louis, Missouri. 1,492 fraudulent voter registrations were identified.
• In 2007, five Washington state ACORN workers were sentenced to jail time. ACORN agreed to pay King County $25 000 for its investigative costs and acknowledged that the national organization could be subject to criminal prosecution if fraud occurs again. According to King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg, the misconduct was done “as an easy way to get paid [by ACORN], not as an attempt to influence the outcome of elections.”

Indeed Obama has a long history of working with ACORN in his community organizing days in Chicago. A subsidiary of ACORN, Citizens Services Inc (CSI), is part of what John Fund of the Wall Street Journal calls “Obama’s Liberal Shock Troops”.

For example, a search for ACORN at the 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue address in New Orleans uncovers at least 70 different organizations operating out of that front. One of these, Citizens Services Inc, has received almost $1 million dollars from Barack Obama’s campaign in the last five months.

Citizens Services Inc seems to run under the radar and they do not advertise their services. In response to one of their board members, someone named Sunday Alibi, we were told that this work is done by ACORN, not Citizens Services. Citizens Services has worked on the Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) efforts for campaigns in at least two states, Maryland and Ohio.

First, they were involved in the Maryland Congressional race of 2006, which brought about an FCC complaint this year involving Representatives Al Wynn and challenger Donna Edwards, Wynn vs. Edwards. At the center of the complaint is Citizens’ Services Inc and several other ACORN entities. According to the Louisiana Secretary of State all three of these businesses work out of 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans, ACORN’s business address.

According Lori Sherwood, Wynn’s campaign manager, Edwards made three payments of $76,866.80 to Citizens Services Inc, for a door-to-door get-out-the-vote effort. It seems CSI listed as their business address, 11 Chase Street, Baltimore. When Ms. Sherwood checked the address she found no CSI/ACORN. Upon further examination by Ms. Sherwood, CSI was listed as a foreign company, which was false. Finally Ms. Wynn discovered that the company had forfeited their license to do business in Maryland two months after the 2006 primary race.

Secondly, I looked for CSI/ACORN “campaign consulting” fees in Ohio. I called the Secretary of State of Ohio to find out if they were listed as an active business and they were not. I did find the following businesses operating in Ohio, ACORN LLC, ZACORN (active fictitious name) and acorn.net. As there was no permit for CSI to do business in Ohio, clearly any GOTV activities were operating illegally in that state as well.After placing my call to the Secretary of State in Ohio, I found the following advertisement seeking workers for the Obama campaign, dated February 21, 2008. These are positions paid for by the Obama for America campaign. The full body of the help wanted ad can be found here: Obama Seeks Canvassers

GOTV for Obama! Ohio ACORN is doing a Get Out The Vote project with the OBAMA Campaign. Ohio ACORN is hiring canvassers to go door to door encouraging voters to vote for Barak Obama.

ACORN is hiring in Cleveland (216)431-3905 , Columbus (614)425-9491, Cincinnati (513)221-1737, for Dayton (call Cincinnati), and for Toledo call Cleveland. Or email polnatoh@acorn.org and your inquiry will be routed to the appropriate person in each of these cities. Intake and training will be held daily at local ACORN offices.

Canvass begins on Wednesday Feb. 27th and will work through election day. Please, only persons wishing to work all or most of these days (Saturday and Sunday included) should inquire.Please do not contact the Obama campaign directly regarding this post as they are not the organization doing the hiring and it will only distract their staff and volunteers from the other important work they are doing on behalf of Senator Obama. Good luck.

According to Ohio Citizen Action, payments of $590,526.10 were made to Citizens Services Inc (ACORN) for “campaign consulting”. I reviewed all the FEC filings from February until June for Obama for America (Obama’s campaign
title) and found payments to CSI/ACORN. In all Obama for America made payments
totaling, $832,598.29 .

The FEC filings can be found here: Federal Election Commission.

Look for more breaking news in the coming weeks!

In order to “save” the Democratic Party, Brazile resolved back in 2003 that she might have to destroy it first. And who better to help her in this lofty pursuit than her new best friend, the man neoconservatives call “The Architect”.

…………………………..

BY ROSEMARY REGELLO

It’s not every activist politico who gets to write a post in the Washington Times that begins like this: "As I sat by my window and staring out at the wonderful Washington, D.C., landscape, my office announced a phone call from Air Force One."

Evidently, Donna Brazile was reminding all the little people on Capitol Hill that she had friends in high places. In summer of 2007, Bush senior advisor Karl Rove wasn’t answering any subpoenas from Congress, but he didn’t mind talking to Brazile. From his perch at 20,000 feet, he informed her that this was probably a good time for him to get out of Dodge.

“Mr. Rove’s resignation is not a retirement,” Brazile reassured readers of the right of center newspaper. “It’s just another opportunity for him to create that lasting Republican majority he envisioned years ago and to spend his waking days doing what he so enjoys — beating Democrats in the alleys and gutters. Just ask Sen. Hillary Clinton, Mr. Rove’s target when he called in to speak to Rush Limbaugh. He couldn’t help it. Mr. Rove just had to take one last shot before riding out of town. More to come, Team Clinton.”

Brazile’s breezy account confirms what many have long since suspected. Rove’s claim to be sitting out the 2008 race is hogwash. The mastermind of today’s unraveling U.S. constitution is in no position to kick back, down gin fizzes and watch the country collapse under an Administration he put into office twice. The list of crimes that Bush’s top henchman could potentially be charged with – everything from fraud to war crimes – should be enough to keep him and his fellow Sopranos in hair-trigger mode until the next president gets sworn in. And the notion that he’d leave the choice of commander-in-chief in less capable dirty hands than his own requires more than the willing suspension of disbelief. It requires medication.

That’s why the Rove-Brazile tryst merits further exploration. They first hooked up some time in 2002, according to a New York Times article. The connection might have been a means for Brazile to expand her clientele, but she dismissed that angle in an interview, implying she had bigger fish to fry. It was the Democrats’ lackluster relations with African Americans and poor track record in elections, she said, that led her to start trailblazing new frontiers. To put it in a Brazile nutshell, the Republicans had a better machine.

”The idea is to re-energize the African-American electorate and revive the Democratic Party at the same time,” she told Times reporter Katharine Seelye, ”I want to revitalize the party from the grass roots up. We’re losing voters.”

With that noble cause in mind, she and Rove began to "chirpily exchange e-mail, chat on the phone and write letters, indulging in their shared zeal for the inner workings of politics," Seelye wrote.

Rove said he’d sometimes call Brazile before a press appearance to get feedback on various Bush policy angles he planned to discuss. In exchange, he furnished Brazile’s clients with access to White House social events.

"People think I’m crazy talking to Karl Rove," the strategist confessed to the Washington Post a month after the Times story appeared, "but there’s something about this guy."

Yes, there certainly is something about Karl Rove. In consultation with Vice-President Cheney’s office, it was Rove who outed Valerie Plame’s C.I.A. identity over a flap about uranium in Niger. Three years later, those subpoenas were overflowing his in-box because he’d told Alberto Gonzalez to fire nine U.S. Attorneys who refused to do his bidding. Rove is also under investigation for an entrapment scheme that put Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman in prison for two years.

Those Republicans sure do know how to close the deal in politics. In addition to basking in The Architect’s dapper charm and irresistible company, Brazile opened diplomatic ties across town with archconservative Grover Norquist. Norquist heads one of Jack Abramoff’s favorite charities, Americans for Tax Reform, and is famous for his remark that he’d like to see federal government crippled to the point where he can take it home and drown it in his bathtub. For a brief window of opportunity, he set aside that morbid fantasy to help one of Brazile’s closest friends, D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes, push some legislation to increase revenues in her district.

According to the same Times article, “Mr. Norquist said he and Ms. Brazile, both Washington residents, were devising a plan to urge Congress to allow the city to raise the height limit on buildings as a way to broaden the tax base and improve schools.”

Brazile served as Holmes’ chief of staff and press secretary during the nineties. In that same action-packed year, her old boss teamed up with other D.C. officials to schedule an unauthorized, nonbinding earlybird presidential primary for 2004. DNC chair Terry McAuliffe sent sent out calls to the candidates to boycott the affair, but Howard Dean didn’t heed the directive. The former Vermont governor swept into D.C. and gobbled up almost as many endorsements as another candidate, Rev. Al Sharpton. Who needed those arcane DNC rules, anyway?

The Brazile Factor

At the time of these contentious political developments, Brazile chaired the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute, a program set up after the Florida recount debacle in 2000. During that earlier episode, she’d experienced firsthand Karl Rove’s unscrupulous knack for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Now she was tasked with brainstorming new strategies to prevent any future gaming of the electoral system.

In 2004, Dean ended his presidential bid after the Wisconsin primary and Kerry lost the general election. This time, Rove generated thousands of extra Bush votes in key Ohio precincts where only a few hundred Republicans lived. Not surprisingly, Brazile remained unimpressed with her party. That winter, she submitted an essay for the left-leaning website Slate.com, which was running a series called “Why Americans Hate Democrats – A Dialog”.

Hard as it must have been to top that inspirational title, the political strategist managed with her piece “Tapping the Obama Factor”. The Chicago politician had just been elevated to the U.S. Senate, but instead of offering an introduction to him, she mostly dwelled on her own life story – rising up from poverty in Louisiana, listening to her grandmother read scripture, etc. etc. Eventually, the essay worked its way back to the stated topic.

"This is a new moment to identify and recruit better messengers," she wrote. "Perhaps it’s time to tap into the ‘Obama’ factor: Scour statehouses for young, energetic, inspiring, and emerging leaders with the ability to connect the head and heart. Too many of the old Democratic guard have stayed in Washington, D.C., too long to fully recognize how most Americans live their lives."

It was a novel way to spin the Illinois election. Obama did score a landslide victory that year, but it had little to do with his age, energy level or the obsolete nature of the Democratic Party establishment. His campaign manager David Axelrod ran the classic Rovian smear campaign, first accusing Obama’s top primary contender of sexual impropriety. After disgracing Blair Hull out of contention, Axelrod used the same device against the G.O.P. primary winner, Jack Ryan.

Of course, this is where things get interesting. House Speaker Dennis Hastert decided he must stick his oar into the battle, calling on Ryan to end his senate bid. The candidate dutifully bowed out, and in his stead, the Illinois Republican Party fielded an unknown, African American bible-thumper from Maryland named Alan Keyes. Clearly, the G.O.P. wanted Obama to win that election. No other explanation can account for the party sacrificing a senate seat to a (supposedly) liberal Democrat who’d (supposedly) spoken out against the Iraq War in 2002.

A Hollywood script writer couldn’t have come up with this storyline. Within a year of arriving in Washington, Brazile’s rising star – the product of a globe-trotting Kansas woman and a philandering tribal leader in Kenya – had launched his presidential exploratory committee. The Internet fundraising team of Howard Dean signed on for the ride. So, too, did some of Wall Street’s biggest investment banks, corporate law firms, and energy giants. By the end of 2007, Obama would post a record-breaking haul of $100 million in campaign contributions. And all while he was still "introducing himself", as Brazile and other analysts put it, to the American public.

Who exactly brought the banks and oil companies to the table still remains to be ferreted out, but it wasn’t Dean or Brazile, or even the man who placed Obama on the speaker’s list at the 2004 Democratic Convention, John Kerry. It’s more likely that Karl Rove huddled with top Bush fundraisers to set that gravy train in motion. Among the candidate’s money bundlers were George Kaiser and Robert Cavnar, both oil industry executives. Other Bush campaign pioneers joined the bandwagon soon afterward.

Now Brazile was impressed. Judging from another My Day installment penned in 2005, following Hurricane Katrina, she sounded like a woman who had been born again:

“While my family was hurting, when they were on the edge feeling left to fend for themselves, the last thing I wanted to do was whine. I got into the groove quickly and contacted Ken Melhman, Chairman of the Republican National Committee and an old friend, Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff for the White House.”

Then she started tossing out the cupcakes: “President Bush, who promised to rebuild the Gulf coast in a speech at Jackson Square, invited some African American leaders over to the White House on December 7th to discuss a broad range of issues…To my great surprise, the meeting with President Bush was cordial and candid. The President listened intently and reassured us that his Administration would not drop the ball.”

Funny how such innocuous fluff takes on a new and sinister meaning when read in hindsight. Yet even from the perspective of a contemporary audience, those claims were a stetch. For people living in New Orleans, the Katrina ball had already been dropped. When the levees broke, Sec. of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff was attending a conference on bird flu, the President relaxing on his Crawford ranch. Back in Brazile’s home state, over a thousand people drowned during three days of waiting for rescuers to reach their homes. Several million homeless residents survived, homeless, only to a second disaster called FEMA.

But Brazile didn’t let facts on the ground spoil her picnic. Continuing her upbeat dispatch, “Since then, I have met once more with President Bush and other leaders who are committed to working together to restore the lives and the communities devastated by these two hurricanes…I can tell from the meetings that the rebuilding of Louisiana remains high on his list of priorities.”

Preparing for Battle

One can only speculate on Brazile’s motives in streaming out that hallucination. As she would mention in the Washington Times article two years later, her “old friend” Rove had hit the ground running with the start of the 2008 election cycle, appearing on talk shows to bash frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Behind the scenes, G.O.P. rank and file activists were organizing crossover voting drives to knock Clinton out of the race before November. In the red states, they could easily outnumber Democrats at the caucuses, enriching Obama’s delegate count and allowing him to boast later “I’ve won more states.”

To recruit additional foot troops for this effort, New Hampshire G.O.P. leader Stephen DaMaura started the Facebook website “Stop Hillary Clinton (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary).”

On the Democratic side, it became Brazile’s job to smooth over Obama’s path to the nomination. That required manipulating the primary calendar. Picking up on the diversity argument of Eleanor Holmes and the D.C. coalition, she pressed for an earlybird South Carolina primary and a Nevada caucus to augment the Iowa and New Hampshire dates.

While the advantages of South Carolina were obvious, by necessity the second contest required a less obvious, more covert action plan to avoid any accusations of stacking the deck. Although the Clinton camp didn’t realize it at the time, a caucus in Nevada (like a caucus anywhere) would naturally benefit Obama, since her base of blue-collar, older and non-English-speaking supporters would not be driving across town to attend some meeting run by disorganized volunteers. On the other hand, motivated Republicans could be counted on to show up, especially if the G.O.P. candidates could be persuaded not to campaign in the state. (They didn’t.)

Nevertheless, the reason for adding more earlybird contests in the first place centered on ethic diversity, so selling the DNC (and the public) on Nevada required some tweaking of those caucus parameters. That’s why arrangements were made to allow the state’s casino workforce of some 60,000 predominantly Latino workers to attend specially set up caucus sites just for them.

But wouldn’t this huge Hispanic voting block put Clinton over the top in Nevada? Not necessarily. It turns out that the union representing casino employees, S.E.I.U., would be backing Obama, just as they had supported Dean in his presidential bid. So those voters could now be added to the Obama column.

Thus, with caucuses scheduled in Iowa and Nevada, a primary in South Carolina with its near majority African American demographic, and the New Hampshire Republican brass on the job in that state, the chance of Clinton heading into Super Tuesday at cruising altitude had spectacularly diminished.

“Including two more states will not only be good for our country, it will be good for our party and good for our nominee," Brazile told the Los Angeles Times in August 2006.

Sounding an early portent of doom, the South Carolina delegate on the rules committee said in the same article, “If you campaign in a state that is outside the rules, then you’re not entitled to delegates from that state."

A year later, that scenario unfolded like a bad dream for the DNC. Over the objections of Florida’s state Democratic Party, a Republican-controlled legislature moved its primary to January 29, 2008, one week before the official February 5^th cusp adopted by both the Republican National Committee and the DNC.

On August 25, 2007. the DNC rules and bylaws committee met to adjudicate this unspeakable crime. State party chair Karen Thurman testified at the meeting, walking the committee through the chronology of her long and fruitless battle to overturn the date switch. The Republicans had attached it as a rider to another bill, one authorizing the replacement of electronic paperless voting equipment with more traditional optical scanners. Unable to defeat the rider on a partyline vote, the Democrats begrudgingly approved the larger measure.

Anyone who has watched the re-broadcast of those DNC proceedings on CSPAN can’t help but be dumbfounded by the discussion that followed Thurman’s presentation. A slam-dunk case for a rule waiver turned into a shameless bout of piling on, as committee member Brazile and several others accused the state party of not trying hard enough to change the date. (One also noticed from the broadcast the unusually high number of African Americans on the 30-member committee, as opposed to near zero representation for other minorities.)

When asked by Brazile why she hadn’t made any plans to hold a caucus in place of the primary, Thurman balked. The logistics and $8 million price tag, she said, were beyond comprehension, given that Florida boasts 4 million eligible Democrats.

"I understand how states crave to be first,” Brazile blustered in a Washington Post interview the next day, as if none of what Thurman told her had registered. “I understand that they’re envious of the role that Iowa and New Hampshire have traditionally played, The truth is, we had a process . . . We’re going to back these rules."

Later, the head of the DNC Voting Rights Institute published an op-ed in the same newspaper, this time under the combative heading, “Why We Stood Up to Florida”. With the cockiness that was fast becoming her trademark, Brazile griped, “It was hardly an extraordinary act, although you wouldn’t know it from the furious reaction that ensued in some quarters…Why the uproar? It’s simple: state envy.”

She went on to list all the economic benefits coveted by states vying to hold early primaries, again diverting from the core issue of Republican meddling in Democratic affairs. Inexplicably, the press coverage of the showdown also overlooked the G.O.P.’s role in moving up the primary date.

The same week the rules committee stripped Florida of all its convention delegates, Michigan’s state legislature voted to move up its primary to January 15th. Both states could have easily been pegged as Clinton strongholds, making their exclusion from the election cycle suspect. Michigan is an industrial blue-collar enclave with few of the upper-middle-class voters and college students that represent Obama’s base. Florida’s Hispanic population is huge, and combined with an abundant supply of New York retirees, would likely also resist the Obama "surge".

Moreover, using Republican crossover voting to shave points off Clinton’s victories posed problems in both states. In Michigan, native son Mitt Romney had a significant campaign apparatus in place, while Rudi Giuliani was expecting to draw his line in the sand in Florida. Where these battleground territories were in play, neither gentleman would appreciate Rove siphoning away their voters. Better just to invalidate the primaries on the Democratic side. That way, Clinton’s delegate lead could be held in check on Super Tuesday.

"Seeds of Doubt"

With the votes of the country’s fourth and eighth largest states thus consigned to the junk heap, Brazile turned to other pursuits. Hired as a paid election analyst for CNN, she carried on a double life – one as an official DNC spokesperson, the other as a partisan campaigner for Barack Obama. In February, when best-guess estimates gave Clinton the support of two-thirds of the superdelegates, she declared, "If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit the Democratic Party."

If party leaders were as worried about negative fallout and damage control then as they claimed to be a month later, they might have reeled in their contract employee at this point for a heart-to-heart chat. That didn’t happen. Brazile just reloaded her pistol and repeated her empty threat to all who would listen. On another occasion, she accused former President Bill Clinton of being a racist. It was inexcusable, she said, that during a speech Clinton referred to Obama as a "kid" and suggested his presidential bid amounted to little more than a "fairy tale".

"And I will tell you," Brazile bristled with emotion, "as an African American I find his words and his tone to be very depressing."

To be sure, Clinton said Obama’s evolving position on the Iraq War was a fairy tale, not his candidacy. As for alluding to his youth, Brazile and other cheerleaders for the Illinois senator had been doing it themselves for the past four years. It was a classic example of the Mark Twain quip that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth has put its shoes on. Only CNN’s presence in the equation gave the adage literal meaning. Surely, the DNC would intervene now that Brazile had insulted a former Democratic president on national television. But nothing.

Notwithstanding the character smears and 24/7 swiftboating by the American media, Sen. Clinton persevered, scoring big wins in the Texas, Rhode Island and Ohio on March 4^th. On March 5th, she was accused of engaging in a “negative” campaign designed to "destroy" her adversary.

“Despite Obama’s impressive victories in February, Clinton’s comeback is based on sowing political seeds of doubt,” Brazile informed the Associated Press that day, “If these attacks are contrasts based on policy differences, there is no need to stop the race or halt the debate. But, if this is more division, more diversion from the issues and more of the same politics of personal destruction, chairman Dean and other should be on standby."

(ABC’s Jake Tapper went Brazile one better, claiming Clinton was exercising the "Tanya Harding option".)

In response to the call to arms, Dean promptly petitioned Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to intervene in the protracted race, while Senators Dodd, Richardson and Leahy demanded that Clinton end her candidacy for the good of the party.

Now this sounded familiar. Jack Ryan must have been chuckling to himself from his perch inside a bar, drinking rot-gut whiskey. In Washington, meanwhile, Reid promised that “things will be done” to determine a nominee before the convention. Pelosi told George Stephanopolis on his Sunday talk show that the superdelegates should not overturn “the will of the people”, but denied rumors that she was telling members of Congress that Clinton, if nominated, would be a "drag" on their own campaigns. As the Democratic Party version of the Adams Family was thus occupied in their hand-wringing, chest-beating and sharing of apocalyptic visions, Clinton pressed ahead, picking up 9 out of the final 13 primaries. Three of them she won by more than 30 points.

But no sooner had the daylight begun to shine at the end of the tunnel when another Rove-Brazile shoe dropped. For some reason, her triumph in the popular vote was not matched proportionally by delegates earned, and it had something to do with Obama’s phenomenal gains in the caucus states of Idaho, Nebraska, Kansas, etc. One would not have expected an African American liberal to clobber his opponent by a two-to-one margin as he did in many cases. More importantly, her delegate gains in the primaries involving millions of voters seemed to pale in comparison. This made no sense.

In late May, a disability activist named P. Cronin appeared on scene to sort out the Twilight Zone phenomenon. Cronin, who like most disabled people is not a big fan of caucuses, spent some time in late May analyzing the tallies from the 2008 Democratic contest, comparing the impact of the two different voting methods on the race.

According to Cronin’s study, nearly all of Obama’s 138-delegate lead over Clinton could be traced to 12 red state caucuses. In most of these contests he routinely won by 2-1 margins, even though polls in those states showed the candidates much closer. In Idaho, for instance, with its scant African American population, few colleges and relatively few Starbucks outlets, he captured 15 of the state’s 18 delegates.

Something fishy was going on here. Did Dean’s so-called 50-state strategy include the recruitment of pro-Obama activists to organize on the candidate’s behalf in caucus states? Did the number of DaMaura’s G.O.P. crossover voters wildly exceed expectations? Or was there just downright lying in the computation of the vote tallies?

The case of Washington state underscores the mystery of this Bermuda Triangle for Clinton delegates. On February 9^th, Obama earned a whopping 52 of the Washington’s 78 delegates after a 36-point victory in the party-run caucus. Over 240,000 allegedly eligible voters cast ballots in that contest. But a week later, just ahead of a state-run certified primary, the polling data showed that Clinton might actually win the election. On February 19th, after 650,000 ballots were counted Obama eked out a 5-point victory, hardly the 2-1 margin responsible for his 26-delegate net gain in the state. Unfortunately, the primary was non-binding.

Cronin notes in the study that those states that furnished the newcomer’s vast delegate booty contribute a grand total of 69 electoral votes in the general election. Few of these territories have voted Democratic since 1964.

It also appears that the votes of those lucky caucus-goers counted for 5-10 times more than the traditional Democrats who attended primaries. Obama netted more delegates in his Idaho win, for instance, than Clinton in her entire Ohio-Texas-Rhode Island romp on March 4th. The following table illustrates the questionable validity of these dispersements. Notice that the last column shows the delegate gain for the winner:

2008 Democratic Presidential Preference Election © 2008 P. Cronin
—————————-

Even in the Navada caucus that Clinton won, Obama was awarded more delegates. The New York senator couldn’t seem to win for winning. There, the S.E.I.U. endorsement dissolved into wishful thinking when the casino workers broke for Clinton two to one, giving her a 6-point victory. A few months later, Obama left the state convention with 3 more delegates.

While there’s no evidence implicating Dean in Obama’s caucus routs, the DNC had maintained staff on the ground in all 50 states since 2005, when he first became the chair. In August 2007, a few weeks before his rules and bylaws committee stripped Florida of its delegates, he announced in a press release that his 50-State Strategy project, the Voting Rights Institute and another DNC division known as the National Lawyers Council were collaborating on a nationwide survey of voter databases, registration procedures and other "election mechanics". According to the release, DNC staff would work with local election boards in gathering information in advance of the 2008 presidential election. "Protecting the right of every eligible American to vote is a top priority for our party," Dean and Brazile said in a joint statement. "Every eligible American deserves the confidence that when they go to the polls to cast their ballot they can do so without fear of intimidation or harassment, and that their vote will be counted fairly and accurately."

Throwing Mama Under the Bus

On May 31, 2008, the rules committee reconvened to discuss those "eligible Americans" living in Florida and Michigan. A week before the meeting, the Democratic Party tried to attach an air of legitimacy to the proceedings by having legal counsel weigh in on the dispute. Although by Brazile’s own account, the Supreme Court gives political parties wide latitude for determining how they pick their nominees, the lawyers claimed it would be unlawful to fully honor the certified votes of January 15^th and 29^th . The committee could do no more than restore half the nearly 350 convention delegates up for grabs.

Always amenable to compromise, the Clinton campaign accepted that limitation but rejected a proposal for Obama to receive some of her Michigan delegates, plus those of all the other candidates in the Michigan primary. After all, the Illinois senator voluntarily withdrew his name from the ballot, then vetoed a re-do primary which Clinton donors raised $10 million to fund. In a sane world, one could argue that he forfeited the state and therefore deserved no delegates.

Former Governor of Michigan Jim Blanchard didn’t present that line of attack, however. The Clinton spokesman stuck to the modest request that the candidate receive delegates in proportion to the votes cast for her. A few minutes later, it was Brazile’s turn to speak, and the CNN analyst first took the opportunity to congratulate herself for displaying restraint in the meeting up until that point. Then she repudiated Blanchard as if he were a child.

"My mama taught me to play by the rules and respect the rules…When you decide to change the rules, especially, in the middle of the game, it’s called cheating."

Dispatching the governor to go stand and in a corner and contemplate the error of his ways, Brazile’s committee allocated the Michigan delegates according to a fruitcake-like recipe involving exit polls, alleged write-in votes for Obama, the palm-reading of a psychic (just kidding) and the actual tally. In the end, Clinton gained a mere 4.5 delegates from the contest.

Any masochist following the 2008 election knew by then that Brazile had disregarded her own mother’s counsel long ago. Neither she nor her co-horts have lost any sleep over the thousands of complaints filed about the conduct of the caucuses, including some 2,000 submitted in Texas alone. Voter intimidation, stacks of fabricated sign-in sheets slipped in with the legitimate records, phony declarations from Republicans about their intention to switch parties, votes delayed until deep into the night, inaccurate tallies called in by phone, and other dirty tricks have yet to warrant even a cursory investigation by those who preach that playing by the rules represents a core value of the Democratic Party.

Even in the aftermath of her power grab, Brazile continues to denigrate those who challenge the authority of the party’s new African American leadership. In a July 22nd post on Daryl Cagle’s website, she groaned, "How many ways do these Hillary delegates, voters and supporters need to hear it before they get it? Sen. Barack Obama is the party’s nominee. He won. He will get to choose his running mate. Obama sets the agenda for the convention, and, while I understand their passion in wanting Hillary to be on the ticket and to have a prominent role at the convention, it’s not her decision… As much as we all would have loved to see a woman in the Oval Office, it wasn’t Hillary’s time. Period."

It’s ironic when you think about it. The DNC’s Voting Rights Institute was created to stop exclusionary practices and increase participation at the polling booth. Now its chairwoman is presiding over one of the most hostile and fraudulent campaigns since those newspaper delivery trucks ran over the boy scouts in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

"Mr. Rove proved you can win elections with rumors, fear, division and manipulation." Brazile wrote back in 2007, after that friendly exchange with Air Force One. "But you can’t win hearts that way."

No, you can’t. But then, this influential political fixer no longer appears to have use for that particular organ. Which may be why she finds men like Karl Rove and Grover Norquist so appealing.

- Rosemary Regello editor@thecityedition.com

(For more on the G.O.P. manipulation of the Democratic Primaries, see our in-depth report Bamboozling the American Electorate Again)

Copyright 2008 TheCityEdition.com

A new ad by the Washington State GOP attacking Michelle Obama’s patriotism.

From my blog, By The Fault.

According to CNN, 2,867,454 votes were cast in the primary – 51% (1,458,814) for Senator Hillary Clinton and 47% (1,358,785) for Senator Barack Obama, and a smattering of votes (49,855) for John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd combined.  In the Texas caucus 42,538 votes were reported.  Obama got 56% (23,918) and Clinton got 44% (18,620) of these votes.  Caucus voters were required to have voted in their precinct.  Consequently, caucus voters were a statistical subset of primary voters, but they did not vote the same way.

 Comparing the Texas primary to the Texas caucus has some unique challenges.  During the primary other candidates besides Clinton and Obama were on the ballot.  To equalize the percentages, the ballots cast for Edwards, Richardson, Biden, and Dodd were eliminated and Clinton’s and Obama’s percentages recomputed assuming the eliminated voters would split their votes in the same proportion as the rest of the electorate.  The recomputed percentages are Clinton 52% and Obama 48%.

 Clinton’s adjusted percentage of 52% of the primary vote is 8% points higher than her 44% in the caucus vote. Clinton moved from a four point win to a twelve point loss, a sixteen point shift.  Obama gained these eight percentage points moving from 48% in the primary to 56% in the caucuses.  

This statistically significant sixteen point difference is “the caucus factor,” a major factor in the Democratic presidential primary.  The existence of a caucus factor poses three important questions.  What accounts for the dramatic difference between the two results?  Was the “caucus factor” present in the other caucus states?  What do these results imply regarding the validity of other caucus results?
 
 No one doubts the accuracy of the almost three million Texas voters who selected Hillary Clinton as their choice for the Democratic nominee — but then why wouldn’t the caucus voters, a sample of the primary voters, make the same selection.  

The simplest explanation is that caucus voters are a sample of primary voters but not a random sample of primary voters.  Caucuses are held in the evening and take several hours.  Senator Clinton’s core voting groups, (senior citizens, shift workers, women, and women with children) are less likely to attend caucuses.  Senior citizens are less likely to go out at night, have difficulty driving in the dark, and go to bed earlier.  Mothers with young children are too busy in the evenings to spend several hours at a caucus.  And some people don’t go to caucuses because of the public nature of the declaration.  Voting is a private event, only you and God know who you voted for.  At a caucus a voter must publically declare for their candidate and resist influencing by the opponents supporters.  
 

Another factor that contributed to the Texas caucus factor was the less regulated nature of the caucuses.  Participants in the Texas caucus complained about the lack of validation of identity, undo influencing, and individuals signing several names on the caucus sheets.   How much these violations occurred and how much these violations impacted the results and in which direction is impossible to determine.

 Finally, Democratic insiders will say that success at a caucus depends on organization.  Did the Obama Campaign just out organize the Clinton campaign which contributed to their success in the Texas Caucus?

 On February 9, Washington State caucused to determine the distribution of the pledged delegates.   Obama won 21,629 to 9,992 votes or 68% to 31% and received 53 of the 78 pledged delegates.  Ten days later Washington State had a primary election in which no delegates were awarded yet 669,856 people chose to vote in this beauty contest.  Obama won this contest by 51% (354,112 votes) to 46% (315,744 votes).  How could Obama win by 37 points in a caucus and only 5 points in the primary, a 32-point difference?  The caucus factor is at work again.  Which result accurately reflects the will of the voters? Over twenty times the number of people participated in primary, should we trust the masses or the sanctioned election?  

 Further proof of the caucus factor can be shown by contrasting the difference between the results of the caucuses and the primaries collectively.  Fourteen states had caucuses — Senator Obama won thirteen of these caucuses.  The probability of that occurring in hotly contested race where popular vote is a statistical tie, is a statistical impossibility if the caucuses were a true representation of the voters.  In the states where primary elections were held, Senator Clinton has won 19 primaries and Senator Obama has won 17 primaries, reflecting the close nature of the Democratic Primary race.
 
 The difference between the margin of victory during caucuses and primaries again illustrates the inaccurate nature of the caucuses.  The average point spread in the 13 caucuses Obama won is 32 points.  The average of the point spread in the 17 primaries Obama won, is 21 points.  This eleven point difference is the caucus factor.

 The results in Texas, Washington, the number of caucuses won by Obama, and difference between the average margin of victory in the caucuses and primaries, all point to the existence of the caucus factor.  The variability of the results of the caucus returns also points to the unreliability of the caucus results.  Senator Clinton won two primaries in demographically similar states, Ohio and Pennsylvania, by the same ten point margin.   Yet when caucus results in similar states are compared, the disparity of the results is profound.  Obama won Idaho by 62 points and the demographically similar Wyoming by 23 points.  If the caucus results were reliable, the results of these two similar states would not be so disparate.

 Voters who participated in the caucuses had more influence in the election than voters in primaries.   In California, 4,677,788 votes were cast and 363 delegates were awarded.  In New York, 232 delegates were pledged in a primary that had 1,748,833 votes cast.  In Alaska a total of 405 persons “caucused” for 13 pledged delegates.  A person who participated in the Alaska Caucus had 242 times more influence in the Democratic Primary than a voter in the New York primary and 415 times more influence than a voter in the California primary.  With so few voters accounting for delegate selection in caucus states, results and delegate totals can be easily influenced and manipulated.

 The caucus factor is a real statistical event which inflated Obama’s lead over Clinton and misrepresented the will of the people. If all the caucus states had primaries, Obama’s margin of victory in those caucus states would have been smaller and most likely Clinton would have won some of the caucus states.  The Democratic Primary was extremely close and questions should be raised regarding the validity and reliability of the caucus results.  

Unfortunately, a win in a caucus state was given the same weight as a win in a state with a primary election, allowing Obama supporters to claim, “He’s won more states,” even though Clinton won more primaries.  

Even more disturbing is the fact that of the 14 Caucus States, eight are Dark Red states.  The Democrats have allowed the Red States like Wyoming, Nebraska, Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, North Dakota, Colorado and Nevada select their Democratic Nominee.  

This will result in certain disaster in the fall.

– Lynette Long
 
BIO: Dr. Lynette Long is a licensed psychologist practicing in Bethesda, Maryland.  She is the author of twenty books including fourteen math books.  Dr. Long has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs and was the host of One on One with Dr. Lynette Long.  She recently published Op-Ed’s in both USA Today and the Baltimore Sun about the current election cycle. Her blog is LynetteLong.com.

Conin suffers from a disability resulting from a car accident 40 years ago, which left her wheelchair bound at  a time when there were no curb cuts or ramps and many places were inaccessible.  That is what fueled her passion about caucus information.

Among the information available in the report:

* The 37 primary states account for more than 97% of the vote — yet only 85.2% of the delegates

* The 13 caucus states account for less than 3% of the vote — yet for 14.8% of the delegates.

* The 13 caucus states have roughly 3.2 million voting age people with disabilities.  Unlike official state primaries, neither the ADA nor HAVA cover caucus-related disability issues and there is limited legal recourse to force the parties to comply with accessibility standards.

* The average turnout in primary states has been 18.7%.  This is more than four-fold the average turnout in caucus states, which has been 4.5%

* In the 37 primaries, Hillary Clinton is up 500,000 votes (counting Florida and Michigan; She is up by 350,000 votes if Obama is given 75% of the uncommitted vote in Michigan).  In the 13 caucus states, Obama is up 300,000 votes

* Clinton has won 20 of the 37 primaries, but only 1 of the 17 caucuses

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I have some comments on the primary-caucus system myself, but I prefer to leave those out for now and leave this as an announcement and summary of a very interesting report.

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SusanUnPC’s NOTE & Personal Story: In January, I received and mailed in an absentee ballot for the Washington state presidential primary. I voted for Hillary Clinton.

On February 5, 2008, I underwent emergency surgery and was in the hospital for a full week thereafter. I will never forget that date because the Super Tuesday primaries were that day, and I missed watching all the returns because I was on an operating table.

My caucus was held on Saturday, February 9, 2008. I was unable to attend, obviously, because I was still in the hospital on IVs with very strong antibiotics to fight a massive, life-threatening infection.

My nurses, physicians, attendants, and the hospital’s other employees — from janitors to the cafeteria workers who prepared my all-liquid diet — were also unable to attend.

They ALL expressed to me how VERY unhappy they were that they, like I, were disenfranchised.

So, besides disabled people, the people I know of who were disenfranchised that day:

• anyone who must work on a Saturday
• anyone who is in a hospital as a patient
• anyone who is ill from the flu or a bad cold
• anyone who cannot traverse the LONG hallways of big school buildings, and sit in extremely uncomfortable chairs for hours
• anyone too poor to hire a babysitter to care for children
• anyone who has worked all week and who dedicates weekends to spending PRECIOUS TIME with their children
• anyone who works all week and must devote Saturdays to necessary errands, chores, repairs — including oil changes on one’s car, trips to the grocery store and pharmacy, and on and on

IN OTHER WORDS, anyone but the MOST affluent, the MOST young, the MOST physically able is DISENFRANCHISED BY THIS ABSURD SYSTEM.

Oh yes, Barack Obama did very well in Washington state’s caucuses — he won by over 60%. I forget the exact percentage now.

And what happened to that absentee ballot I cast in January? Oh, a few weeks later, it was counted along with all the ballots mailed in by voters across the state of Washington.

Barack Obama barely reached 50% in those ballots.

But guess what.

MY VOTE — and the votes of all who cast absentee ballots — did not count for a single delegate in the Democratic party.

The Republican party did a much fairer thing — they allotted a percentage of delegates to the candidate who did best in the absentee ballot count, as well as at the caucuses.

If this isn’t utterly stupid, I don’t know what is.

If this isn’t utterly CRUEL and unfair to people who have a hard time taking HOURS off on a Saturday to exercise one of their most important DUTIES as an American citizen, I do not know what is.

So the latte liberals and young students got ALL the say on who the delegates are from Washington state.

It is completely unfair and undemocratic.

I am still furious.

Moments after Sen. Barack Obama concluded his victory speech in Houston, Texas, his campaign received a call from Sen. Hillary Clinton congratulating him on his victory.

I don’t recall that he has EVER called her on a single of her state victories. I recall several reports that he did NOT call her after her victories. I hope I am wrong that he has NEVER called her, as is courteous practice following individual victories. Below, about Washington state’s primary results yesterday:

ALSO: While it was embarrassing to me personally that Washington state caucuses voted so strongly for Obama — and while it was immensely frustrating that the state Democratic party disenfranchised me since I couldn’t go to the caucus (nor could all the people who have to work on Saturdays, or are in hospitals or nursing homes or otherwise unable to get out) — it was heartening to open my local newspaper this morning, and see this A.P. report:

Obama, who had hammered Hillary Rodham Clinton in the state’s Feb. 9 caucuses, had a tougher battle among the broader electorate in the nonbinding, no-delegates primary.

Although he won the caucuses with 68 percent, he was struggling to break 50 percent against Clinton in the primary.

Thankfully, I mailed in my ballot well in advance. Even though I knew the state party had decided that my vote wouldn’t count for anything. At least the state Republicans allot a percentage of delegates to the results of the statewide popular vote.

(There’s no link to that A.P. report. I typed it from the newspaper story. But it’s probably up on the Web at GNews, and elsewhere.)