By Carter Bundy
A form of taxpayer abuse is being exposed at the national level even as
The GOP, but also some Dems in
The D.C. politicians do it with lower tax rates when American companies send jobs overseas. They do it when they trap us into trade agreements that encourage companies to move overseas so they can pollute the planet, endanger workers and poison our animals with impunity.
Most obviously, they use our money to bail out publicly traded companies when their business model fails. Now, most financial gurus in both parties are saying that if we didn’t loan AIG $85 billion right now, it would precipitate something approaching a full-blown depression. Given who would suffer and how much, I’m not willing to say we shouldn’t do it to avert massive suffering.
But it sticks in my craw that we — and especially this administration — always seem to have money to bail out big corporations or to wage war on countries that haven’t attacked us but don’t have any money to rectify the fact that about a third of America has either no or minimal health care each year.
Even as we’re watching taxpayer outrage at our federal politicians using our money to bail out big business, there’s a bizarre trend in
Just this week, the state Board of Finance is adopting rules for the governance of tax increment development district (TIDD) bonds. The details almost don’t matter. The big picture is we’re taking tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money over the next 25 years and simply handing it over to multi-billion dollar developers from
Even worse, we may not get anything for it. The quasi-public TIDDs (technically I believe they are subdivisions of the State of
Well, those bonds have to be paid off even if SunCal and Forest City Covington (Mesa del Sol) go bankrupt and/or there’s not enough new revenue to cover the bond payments.
Legal liability aside, there’s no way cities, counties or the state will allow default on the bonds, because it would kill our bond ratings and ability to borrow. Who do you think is going to get stuck with the bill?
At a moment when the first rule of government should be to reduce taxpayer exposure to business failures and to limit taxpayer liability,
Cold-blooded political animals
Both Democrats and Republicans have tried to show their concern for families facing foreclosure. But the Republican Party in
Sure, people should vote where they live. But many foreclosed homes end up with the same residents, either as renters or because a deal is worked out. Further, the process often takes a long time and many people live in their houses for at least a while even after they’re foreclosed.
Additionally, many will move in with relatives or friends in the same neighborhood but won’t have any way to prove that the place they’re temporarily staying is their residence for voting purposes. Or may be so busy picking up the pieces of their lives that they don’t think to go down to the county clerk’s office to re-register for that temporary situation.
Right to vote vs. legalisms
Even assuming that there may be some technical violations by voters whose houses have been foreclosed, there is a basic principle in American law that citizens have the right to vote in elections. Even homeless people who didn’t have a home when they registered can vote. And the GOP is going to punish hard-working Americans who lost their homes in a national financial crisis they had nothing to do with?
I have many Republican acquaintances, and even some good friends, but tactics like McCain’s and the Michigan GOP’s are why the stereotype of Republicans being cruel, vicious, cold-blooded political animals stay strong.
The flip side
Cue standard GOP allegations of voter fraud here, with the Bernalillo County clerk (a Dem, by the way) announcing that she has identified about 1,100 phony voter registrations this year out of 72,000 new registrations or so.
In fairness, that issue deserves to be addressed regardless of party. ACORN or any other third-party registrant who submitted false forms must absolutely support prosecution of individuals who forged the forms. ACORN actually earns credit for catching many of the incorrect forms themselves and giving the county clerk notice, but they also seem to have paid for at least some of the guilty parties.
Having said all that, the forgers’ crime is far different from what the GOP is doing. First, there is no coordinated effort by the Democratic Party or any liberal organization to deny people the right to vote.
Second, there are only a few isolated instances where anyone has failed to have their vote counted because of a phony voter registration form, as opposed to the tens of thousands denied the right to vote by Republican voter suppression.
Third, there’s no evidence that the phony voter registrations are being used for people to double vote. In fact, the opposite appears true — that the forgeries occur simply to meet a quota or to get paid, not to influence election outcomes.
Neither bad registration forms nor voter suppression should be tolerated, but only one is being pushed by a political party. That party should be embarrassed to boast of “Country First” when it undermines a signature right that makes
Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in