Excerpt: "Kris Kobach is spelled like Koch with a BA in the middle. He's the
most influential Republican secretary of state in America - the Katherine
Harris of 2016."
Kris Kobach. (photo: John Hanna/AP)
Greg Palast With Dennis Bernstein: Trump's GOP Hitman Who's Stealing Your
Vote
By Greg Palast With Dennis Bernstein, Greg Palast's Website
08 May 16
Dennis Bernstein: Welcome back to our weekly Election Protection Bulletin
with best-selling author Greg Palast. Let's start in Topeka, Kansas with its
Secretary of State Kris Kobach. He's definitely going head to head with the
ACLU there.
Greg Palast: Kris Kobach is spelled like Koch with a BA in the middle. He's
the most influential republican secretary of state in America - the
Katherine Harris of 2016.
He's one of the very first governmental Republican supporters of Donald
Trump. Anne Coulter has
said Trump should pick him as his running mate. This guy is an important
cat.
What's he up to? He's "saving" America from an invasion of aliens - not from
outer space, but from other nations, wading the Rio Grande to vote in
American elections. He claims there is a mass incursion of illegal aliens
coming to the US to vote for Hillary.
The federal government, despite a massive and costly hunt, has found almost
no non-citizen has voted. (Florida's campaign to stop alien voters netted a
single conviction-an Austrian who registered Republican, while threatening
the votes of 181,000.) Yet, Kobach's envisioning the alien ships are there.
To prevent this crime that doesn't happen, he's required anyone registering
to vote in Kansas to prove their citizenship.
This is not as easy as it sounds. A driver's license doesn't count. A social
security card doesn't count. Only naturalization papers, a passport, or an
original birth certificate count. As a result, the state of Kansas has
suspended the registration of 36,000 young people. [This doesn't affect
Kobach's voters who have an average age of 115.]
This is very effective at keeping out voters of color and young people. Not
many poor Americans or people of color have passports. They have not just
returned from their vacation in the Alps with their
passport in hand. Many people, including those who were born at home, cannot
find their original birth certificate. This is crushing the voter rolls of
the state of Kansas. Now it's in Georgia as well.
DB: This has become a model for many states.
GP: Kris Koback wrote SB 1070 for the state of Arizona, which was mostly
thrown out by the courts as racist and unconstitutional. This guy is no
foolish redneck bigot. He's a graduate of Harvard, Yale and Oxford.
A few years ago, Indiana was the first state to require a photo voter ID to
vote. There was only that one state in 2006, and now 23 states require it.
If Kobach gets away with requiring citizenship proof in Alabama, Kansas and
Georgia, you can bet that coming soon will be North Carolina, Arizona,
Florida and many others. They know what they are doing.
And dig this: It's quite unusual that Kobach, as Secretary of State of
Kansas, is still counsel, a lawyer, for a group IRLI, the Immigration Reform
Law Institute, which is the legal arm of two allied groups called Numbers
USA and FAIR. FAIR is the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which
the Southern Poverty Law Center has called a hate group. It was founded by
John Tanton, who says
the purpose of the group is to maintain a "European American majority."
Kobach - while a lawyer for the hate group and Secretary of State of Kansas
at the same time - has also been the lawyer for Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
(Arpaio was officially charged with racism by the US Justice Department.)
As Secretary of State of Kansas, Kobach is in charge of voting in Kansas-
and the most influential Republican voting official in the US.
Kobach has mounted a frontal assault on the federal voter protection,
starting with the Motor Voter law.
Under Bill Clinton, the US made a huge leap in the voter franchise - the
biggest since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - by enacting the Motor Voter
Law. Now, when you get a driver's license, you fill out the attached form
and you become a voter. Adding voter registration forms to the driver's
license
application has massively increased the reach of voter registration in
America.
The Republicans, especially Kobach, really hate it. They say the federal
motor voter form does not require that you prove your citizenship. You need
to be a citizen, sign a box saying you are a citizen and sign it.
So Kobach said that if you register on the federal form, YOU CAN'T VOTE IN
STATE ELECTIONS unless you register separately with your proof of
citizenship.
The result: There are 36,000 young people in Kansas , especially young
voters of color, whose state voting rights have been suspended. So Kansas
literally has an official apartheid voting system.
DB: The ACLU filed a motion for summary judgment seeking to declare this as
an illegal system based on dual registration. Where is this case going?
GP: There's a terrible new twist.
Kobach asked the federal government to make a special voter form for his
state, and other white Republican-controlled states of Alabama and Georgia.
The federal government and courts turned him down.
But then, one of his acolytes became the chief of the federal Elections
Assistance Commission. Kobach's man Brian Newby is now the Executive
Director of the agency that's supposed to protect our vote!
Newby's first act in office was to allow Kansas, Georgia and Alabama to have
their own special voter
registration form-allowing those states to require proof of citizenship to
vote. This may moot the ACLU's complaint because the federal form now
includes this special extra hurdle for voters in those state to prove
citizenship.
This is a devastatingly effective means to suppress the registration of new,
young, minorities and low-income voters. So, the ACLU has sued the US agency
as well. Weirdly (and thankfully), the US Justice Dept. is backing the ACLU
against the federal government.
Then the League of Women Voters joined the ACLU to sue the federal agency.
Kobach's response was to call the League of Women Voters the "Communist
League of Women Voters." Reporters couldn't believe their ears, so he
repeated, "The Communist League of Women Voters."
Is there really a danger non-citizens will flood the polling stations? The
reason folks who are not citizens never vote is that the Motor Voter Form
asks you to state if you're a citizen - and makes it
perfectly clear that if you lie, you can go to prison for five years. People
aren't going to risk going to prison for five years just to vote for school
board, or even for president. There's been no problem with this. Why would
an alien without documents sign a form with their address? To make it easier
for ICE to snap them up? It's nuts. But Kobach won't accept this. He demands
a passport or original birth certificate or you don't get to register.
Consider the implications of this new voter form for November.
Georgia will be a swing state in 2016 and Alabama has a crucial Senate race
this year. Blocking voters who can't easily prove they are citizens has
killed registrations among young voters in these states.
Guess which way young people vote?
As an investigative reporter I follow the money. Who is behind this latest
suppression tactic, the attack on voters as potential aliens?. Who is paying
for Kobach?
A group called Numbers USA gave $100,000 to a little town called Farmers
Branch, Texas. The town gave that $100,000 to Kobach to defend a racist law
that was immediately thrown out by the courts. Numbers USA is funded by
something called Donors' Trust-which, in turn, is the funnel for the funds
from the Charles and David Koch. So, where does Kris Kobach get his pin
money? He gets it from the brothers Koch, through a chain of front
organizations.
DB: The Koch brothers say publicly they are stepping out of this election
because they don't support Trump, so don't want any part of this. We assume
they are not controlling the structure of the
election. But they are only talking about one candidate. Their hands are all
over everything - who has the control, the power, and who has the right to
vote in the future of this country, which is now a white minority.
GP: Let's not fall for the jive. It's not whether they support Trump or not.
The Koch brothers are putting $900 million - just short of a billion dollars
- into this election. If it's not for the presidency, what is it for? It's
very clear: If the Republicans lose just four senate seats - and they've got
24 seats up for grabs - the control of the Senate flips to the Democrats.
I don't take sides between Republicans and Democrats. I take sides on
allowing people to vote. You see a massive push by the Koch Brothers
promoting these various voter suppression tactics and organizations pushing
for voter suppression.
They provided the money for the attack on the Voting Rights Act. The
structure of the Voting Rights Act was based on the case of Shelby v.
Holder. Shelby County, Alabama, doesn't have a pot to pee in so they can't
afford fancy lawyers to argue before the Supreme Court. The money, the cost
of the entire case, was paid for by an organization funded by the Koch
brothers. Let's not get fooled by whether they love Trump.
DB: What can people do to protect themselves?
GP: First, check your registration. They may accuse you of being a felon, or
coming from another planet. Last week, I found my registration missing in
California. Check online with your secretary of state to be sure you are
registered. Even if you've been voting in the same place for 20 years, it's
not safe.
Please go to GregPalast.com and download the free pamphlet, "7 Ways to Beat
the Ballot Bandits."
DB: Thank you Greg. We'll have our next Voter Protection Bulletin next
Wednesday.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Kris Kobach. (photo: John Hanna/AP)
http://www.gregpalast.com/trumps-gop-hitman-whos-stealing-your-vote-the-best
-democracy-money-can-buy-podcast/ -
more-11783http://www.gregpalast.com/trumps-gop-hitman-whos-stealing-your-vot
e-the-best-democracy-money-can-buy-podcast/ - more-11783
Greg Palast With Dennis Bernstein: Trump's GOP Hitman Who's Stealing Your
Vote
By Greg Palast With Dennis Bernstein, Greg Palast's Website
08 May 16
Dennis Bernstein: Welcome back to our weekly Election Protection Bulletin
with best-selling author Greg Palast. Let's start in Topeka, Kansas with its
Secretary of State Kris Kobach. He's definitely going head to head with the
ACLU there.
Greg Palast: Kris Kobach is spelled like Koch with a BA in the middle. He's
the most influential republican secretary of state in America - the
Katherine Harris of 2016.
He's one of the very first governmental Republican supporters of Donald
Trump. Anne Coulter has
said Trump should pick him as his running mate. This guy is an important
cat.
What's he up to? He's "saving" America from an invasion of aliens - not from
outer space, but from other nations, wading the Rio Grande to vote in
American elections. He claims there is a mass incursion of illegal aliens
coming to the US to vote for Hillary.
The federal government, despite a massive and costly hunt, has found almost
no non-citizen has voted. (Florida's campaign to stop alien voters netted a
single conviction-an Austrian who registered Republican, while threatening
the votes of 181,000.) Yet, Kobach's envisioning the alien ships are there.
To prevent this crime that doesn't happen, he's required anyone registering
to vote in Kansas to prove their citizenship.
This is not as easy as it sounds. A driver's license doesn't count. A social
security card doesn't count. Only naturalization papers, a passport, or an
original birth certificate count. As a result, the state of Kansas has
suspended the registration of 36,000 young people. [This doesn't affect
Kobach's voters who have an average age of 115.]
This is very effective at keeping out voters of color and young people. Not
many poor Americans or people of color have passports. They have not just
returned from their vacation in the Alps with their
passport in hand. Many people, including those who were born at home, cannot
find their original birth certificate. This is crushing the voter rolls of
the state of Kansas. Now it's in Georgia as well.
DB: This has become a model for many states.
GP: Kris Koback wrote SB 1070 for the state of Arizona, which was mostly
thrown out by the courts as racist and unconstitutional. This guy is no
foolish redneck bigot. He's a graduate of Harvard, Yale and Oxford.
A few years ago, Indiana was the first state to require a photo voter ID to
vote. There was only that one state in 2006, and now 23 states require it.
If Kobach gets away with requiring citizenship proof in Alabama, Kansas and
Georgia, you can bet that coming soon will be North Carolina, Arizona,
Florida and many others. They know what they are doing.
And dig this: It's quite unusual that Kobach, as Secretary of State of
Kansas, is still counsel, a lawyer, for a group IRLI, the Immigration Reform
Law Institute, which is the legal arm of two allied groups called Numbers
USA and FAIR. FAIR is the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which
the Southern Poverty Law Center has called a hate group. It was founded by
John Tanton, who says
the purpose of the group is to maintain a "European American majority."
Kobach - while a lawyer for the hate group and Secretary of State of Kansas
at the same time - has also been the lawyer for Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
(Arpaio was officially charged with racism by the US Justice Department.)
As Secretary of State of Kansas, Kobach is in charge of voting in Kansas-
and the most influential Republican voting official in the US.
Kobach has mounted a frontal assault on the federal voter protection,
starting with the Motor Voter law.
Under Bill Clinton, the US made a huge leap in the voter franchise - the
biggest since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - by enacting the Motor Voter
Law. Now, when you get a driver's license, you fill out the attached form
and you become a voter. Adding voter registration forms to the driver's
license
application has massively increased the reach of voter registration in
America.
The Republicans, especially Kobach, really hate it. They say the federal
motor voter form does not require that you prove your citizenship. You need
to be a citizen, sign a box saying you are a citizen and sign it.
So Kobach said that if you register on the federal form, YOU CAN'T VOTE IN
STATE ELECTIONS unless you register separately with your proof of
citizenship.
The result: There are 36,000 young people in Kansas , especially young
voters of color, whose state voting rights have been suspended. So Kansas
literally has an official apartheid voting system.
DB: The ACLU filed a motion for summary judgment seeking to declare this as
an illegal system based on dual registration. Where is this case going?
GP: There's a terrible new twist.
Kobach asked the federal government to make a special voter form for his
state, and other white Republican-controlled states of Alabama and Georgia.
The federal government and courts turned him down.
But then, one of his acolytes became the chief of the federal Elections
Assistance Commission. Kobach's man Brian Newby is now the Executive
Director of the agency that's supposed to protect our vote!
Newby's first act in office was to allow Kansas, Georgia and Alabama to have
their own special voter
registration form-allowing those states to require proof of citizenship to
vote. This may moot the ACLU's complaint because the federal form now
includes this special extra hurdle for voters in those state to prove
citizenship.
This is a devastatingly effective means to suppress the registration of new,
young, minorities and low-income voters. So, the ACLU has sued the US agency
as well. Weirdly (and thankfully), the US Justice Dept. is backing the ACLU
against the federal government.
Then the League of Women Voters joined the ACLU to sue the federal agency.
Kobach's response was to call the League of Women Voters the "Communist
League of Women Voters." Reporters couldn't believe their ears, so he
repeated, "The Communist League of Women Voters."
Is there really a danger non-citizens will flood the polling stations? The
reason folks who are not citizens never vote is that the Motor Voter Form
asks you to state if you're a citizen - and makes it
perfectly clear that if you lie, you can go to prison for five years. People
aren't going to risk going to prison for five years just to vote for school
board, or even for president. There's been no problem with this. Why would
an alien without documents sign a form with their address? To make it easier
for ICE to snap them up? It's nuts. But Kobach won't accept this. He demands
a passport or original birth certificate or you don't get to register.
Consider the implications of this new voter form for November.
Georgia will be a swing state in 2016 and Alabama has a crucial Senate race
this year. Blocking voters who can't easily prove they are citizens has
killed registrations among young voters in these states.
Guess which way young people vote?
As an investigative reporter I follow the money. Who is behind this latest
suppression tactic, the attack on voters as potential aliens?. Who is paying
for Kobach?
A group called Numbers USA gave $100,000 to a little town called Farmers
Branch, Texas. The town gave that $100,000 to Kobach to defend a racist law
that was immediately thrown out by the courts. Numbers USA is funded by
something called Donors' Trust-which, in turn, is the funnel for the funds
from the Charles and David Koch. So, where does Kris Kobach get his pin
money? He gets it from the brothers Koch, through a chain of front
organizations.
DB: The Koch brothers say publicly they are stepping out of this election
because they don't support Trump, so don't want any part of this. We assume
they are not controlling the structure of the
election. But they are only talking about one candidate. Their hands are all
over everything - who has the control, the power, and who has the right to
vote in the future of this country, which is now a white minority.
GP: Let's not fall for the jive. It's not whether they support Trump or not.
The Koch brothers are putting $900 million - just short of a billion dollars
- into this election. If it's not for the presidency, what is it for? It's
very clear: If the Republicans lose just four senate seats - and they've got
24 seats up for grabs - the control of the Senate flips to the Democrats.
I don't take sides between Republicans and Democrats. I take sides on
allowing people to vote. You see a massive push by the Koch Brothers
promoting these various voter suppression tactics and organizations pushing
for voter suppression.
They provided the money for the attack on the Voting Rights Act. The
structure of the Voting Rights Act was based on the case of Shelby v.
Holder. Shelby County, Alabama, doesn't have a pot to pee in so they can't
afford fancy lawyers to argue before the Supreme Court. The money, the cost
of the entire case, was paid for by an organization funded by the Koch
brothers. Let's not get fooled by whether they love Trump.
DB: What can people do to protect themselves?
GP: First, check your registration. They may accuse you of being a felon, or
coming from another planet. Last week, I found my registration missing in
California. Check online with your secretary of state to be sure you are
registered. Even if you've been voting in the same place for 20 years, it's
not safe.
Please go to GregPalast.com and download the free pamphlet, "7 Ways to Beat
the Ballot Bandits."
DB: Thank you Greg. We'll have our next Voter Protection Bulletin next
Wednesday.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize