Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Because the best way to empower women is to rob blacks of their vote.

From this entry by insomnia.

Recently, there were numerous reports in North Carolina of anonymous, caller-ID blocked robocalls in North Carolina from a black man claiming to be a "Lamont Williams", urging voters in predominantly black communities to return their voter registration form to the State Board of Elections... without voting.

Well, it turns out that these anonymous calls from a ficticious black male were made by Women's Voices Women Vote, a D.C.-based PAC which aims to boost voting among "unmarried women voters."

Unfortunately for WVWV, the State of North Carolina was able to track them down and the media attention was significant, so they put out a statement saying that it was a mistake...

Nevermind the fact that the calls are clearly illegal, as calls that use a blocked phone number and provide no contact information are a clear violation of North Carolina rules regulating "robo-calls" (N.C. General Statute 163-104(b)(1)c). It is also a Class I felony in North Carolina "to misrepresent the law to the public through mass mailing or any other means of communication where the intent and the effect is to intimidate or discourage potential voters from exercising their lawful right to vote."

... or that they're not targeting women voters with these calls, and apparently too ashamed to even identify themselves and promote their efforts to register women voters.

... or that they made the same "oops!" mistakes in Arizona, Wisconsin, and numerous other states, which led to the State of Wisconsin singling WVWV out as having "ignored or disregarded state deadlines" . . . causing "hundreds of Wisconsin voters who think they registered in advance" to not be. Jan Brewer, Arizona' Secretary of State, was even more blunt in her criticism, calling the organization's tactics "misleading and deceptive".

Of course, the unbiased nature of WVWV would be a lot easier to believe if Maggie Williams, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, wasn't one of their boardmembers.

But please, don't be swayed by the fact that the organization is run by a major Clinton donor who donated $4200 to Hillary, another $2500 to H
ILLPAC, and a whopping $5000 to Emily's List, donating to them after they publically endorsed and started campaigning for Hillary Clinton.

You could perhaps overlook the fact that despite WVWV's supposedly neutral stance on the candidates, the organization's founder practically gave an endorsement speech for Hillary Clinton at the 2007 WAND/WILL conference.

... and did I mention that the organization's Executive Director worked for Bill Clinton,"assisting in the development and implementation of all polling and focus groups done for the presidential primary and general election campaigns"?

Now, ordinarily I would say this could potentially be a mistake... but when you repeat the same mistakes over and over again, are repeatedly called on it, and not only fail to change the content of your robocall campaign, much less the timing... well, that sounds an awful lot more like a carefully-thought out voter supression tactic to me...

... with legal advice provided by Holly Schadler, "an operator for the Clinton White House", who "along with Robert Bauer and Judith Corley--two of her partners at Perkins Coie--incorporated the Back to Business Committee, set up in 1994 . . . to defend Bill and Hillary." This committee later became part of James Carville's "Education and Information Project", which performed the same function: protecting the Clintons by attacking their critics. Once again, Schadler was one of the founders of James Carville's project, willing to dedicate her time and energy to discredit and potentially run ads against an independent federal prosecutor appointed to investigate the President.

Really, this org's repeatedly "accidental" slimy acts of voter supression, combined with numerous hardcore ties to Hillary Clinton's campaign makes "Swiftboat Veterans For The Truth" look like a bunch of kids making mudpies.

For such a professionally advised organization, how could they possibly overlook the fact that they have a responsibility to the public and to the states whose laws they repeatedly violated? In what way *don't* their repeated criminal acts justify that *someone* gets thrown in jail for at *least* a few months?!

I'm including this because obviously not everyone watches my LJ friends page. Seriously, though. This guy's a great blogger, and you should all go comment on this entry over there.

2 comments:

Dana Hunter said...

Seeing as how I don't have a LiveJournal login and hate to post as Anonymous "But it's really me, Dana, hi-ee!*waves madly*" - well, you get the picture.

Here's another picture: me jumping up and down, cackling with wicked glee while reading this post. Somehow, deep down in my heart of hearts, I knew it would trace back to Hillary "Ooo, Great Page from the Republicon Playbook!" Clinton.

Awesome takedown! I lurve it lurve it lurve it! Thank you, Insomnia!

Cobalt said...

I think you can use your blogger ID as an OpenID the same way that LJ users can use theirs to comment here.

I'm glad that you liked it, though! I read it and knew that this had to be reposted.