the new poll tax

Republicans resurrect failed ideas, intellectually and morally dead arguments. It is part of 'their thing'. They do not do this for the joy of the process, but to achieve a goal, any means to an end. They campaign against government and will do anything to achieve control of government.

A constitutional amendment* ended the poll tax. The poll tax was a voter suppression tactic. At the time it was used to decrease the number of negro voters. In school, when the Constitution was taught, it was presumed and presented that the former practice was unjust and now is obsolete and defunct. But no bad idea ever dies amongst Republicans.

November 2010 the United States and its citizenry suffered a defeat at the polls. Republicans won state after state, sometimes by minority plurality. How tight and thin the 'mandates' were do not matter.

The Republicans have had the press repeat their mantra that the country is 'center-right'. That may be true, but only because the Republicans are fascists and peg the one pole, skewing the results. The electorate is in thirds. The Democrats do not have a comparable extreme, and it certainly is not their definition. Bernie Sanders is a Socialist, and a fine senator. He sits with the Democrats. There are practically no candidates that can succeed as socialists. Communism has died since 1989-1993 in the western world, and in the US it was a false bogeyman; yet the wacko 'right' still yelps about their influence. The Democrats have a democratic wing, and a moderate wing. The moderate wing could have run as Republicans in an earlier generation. Obama, as he is now, is one of them.

The new poll tax is voter identification laws. In 2008 Indiana and its Secretary of State (now freshman congressman) Todd Rokita enforced and promoted its law. Rokita made a public statement, that he regretted, complaining of black people voting 9 to 1 for Democrats. This is why the law was created—to reduce the number of black (and other groups of probable Democratic voters) voters. The Supreme Court upheld Indiana's Republican government. Justice John Paul Stevens, in his opinion, acknowledged there never was a documented case in Indiana of the problem that the law was meant to correct. John Boehner praised the decision.

Republicans bathe in hypocrisy. They 'say' they are against taxes and regulations. They are damn for taxes and regulations that screw people who vote Democratic. A new, unjust and unnecessary bureaucracy is to be created, state by state to reduce voting. Some of these laws will enlarge state driving bureaus, which are proverbial in the dislike of people. Does one need to be able to drive in order to vote? One will have to pay for these cards/papers. Voting had been free.

___________________

*Amendment XXIV (1964), and also U.S. Supreme Court in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) which pointed out poll taxes violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Postscriptum: 23 April 2011. Further evidence of this Republican plank is the statement of the Minnesota Speaker of the House, Kurt Zellers. He is not the first state Republican [fascist] to make such statements, and he won't be the last. He apparently ignores the federal Constitution that maintains that voting is a right, for Republicans it is a privilege not to be bestowed to all.