Quote of the Day
Life is not the way it's supposed to be.It's the way it is.
The way you cope with it is
what makes the difference.
Virginia Satir
NOTE: Pre-scheduled posts may be published Sunday and/or Monday.
The Voting Rights Amendment Act: Thumbs DOWN!
The Fifteenth Amendment was intended to ensure equitable access for voting for all US citizens and to regulate government-based election discrimination policies. The Old South, which resented federal micromanagement over its affairs led by the GOP after the Civil War, was a vital part of the Democrat coalition and basically blocked putting teeth into voting regulation. SCOTUS had basically interpreted the amendment narrowly but had started to chip away at some of the onerous abuses when LBJ finally muscled through the Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960's. The Voting Rights Act included some heavy-handed oversight with certain states that had engaged in a series of gimmicks intended to discourage minority voting. In particular, certain states, with historic low minority voting patterns, had to pre-clear (in Section 5) even modest changes in elections (e.g., changing a voting place) through the feds; this did not mean that the other sections didn't apply to any or all localities, but this was an additional burden, extra scrutiny, presumably to head off at the pass any mischief to rollback electoral reforms. And in fact, the Voting Rights Act worked as intended; within a generation we not only had record minority turnouts, but significant numbers of local elected officials of color.
The problem is that long after discriminatory policies had been abolished, the Congress has re-upped what was supposed to have been a temporary extraordinary measure in the form of Section 5. This is not like being put on probation for 5 years and at the end of probation, they add another 25 years to your probation simply as tyranny of the majority. It didn't matter than the old practices are a thing of the fading past, what you did or didn't do under probation; unlike most other states, you are still under the scrutiny of the Justice Department.
This is a manifest violation of equal protection on the state level, which is why Section 5 was struck down by SCOTUS last year. You had an extraordinary remedy which was now becoming standard operating procedure. What SCOTUS said in effect is you can have a pre-clearance process, but it has to be based on a current substantive record of abuse and it has to be impartially administered. So the Voting Rights Amendment Act is all about trying to reintroduce pre-clearance under those guidelines. Cato has a good analysis of the problems with the act. I definitely don't like the idea, say, just because a particular group of voters doesn't participate as much as others, it implies discrimination. Take, for example, the super-turnouts among blacks for the Presidential elections of Obama. It would not be surprising to see some drop in black voting, say reverting to an historical average, in a subsequent election between non-black candidates. It does not mean the states have enacted restrictive policies against voting. We must not confuse correlation with causation. For example, I have drastically reduced my watching of televised sports. It's not that the games are less entertaining; I just have other priorities on my time.
What may be just as bad as arbitrary policies against voting is wasting one's vote on bad or corrupt politicians, particularly "progressives" whom enact counterproductive economic regulations and morally hazardous policies promoting undue dependence on the government.
Facebook Corner
(Libertarian Republic). Kill the New Deal?
And the Great Society and the Fed's second mandate... We have to stop this megalomaniac delusion that government solves problems, vs. exacerbates them. Trickle-down government exists for the benefit of the parasitic class. The idea that government can make rules for others when they can't even govern themselves is astounding.
[The New Deal created the Welfare State.] And also the middle class. Doh!
Progressive trolls think the middle class was invented by government intervention. Bad economics, bad history and bad politics.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of the original artist via Illinois Policy Institute |
Lionel Richie (with Alabama), "Deep River Woman".
