MAGA Christian Nationalist House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to hold up the federal budget by demanding an amendment requiring that only US citizens can vote in elections.
Really, Mike? Straight out of the Department of Needless Duplication and Inherent Redundancy. Johnson’s political stunt ignores the fact that such legislation is already on the books. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act of 1996 clearly prohibits noncitizens from casting ballots in federal elections. In addition, no state allows noncitizens to vote.
There is very limited noncitizen voting in local elections. The District of Columbia allows it in non-federal elections. San Francisco permits parents and guardians to cast ballots in school board elections. Maryland and Vermont give a few towns municipal elections privileges. That’s all, folks.
Illegal noncitizen voting in federal elections carries fines and up to one year in prison with possible deportation. In Florida, any voter fraud is a third degree felony punishable by a $5,000 fine and up to five years in prison. These regulations are printed at the sign-in desk and in the voter instructions for mail-in ballots.
The ultra-right wing Heritage Foundation, author of the Trump-inspired Project 2025, conducted its own investigation of noncitizen voting between 2003-23 in an attempt to uncover massive noncitizen voting. All they came up with were 24 cases nationwide, a paltry number compared to the millions of votes cast, hardly a reason for further crackdown on voter fraud that is itself a fraud.
Threats of fines, incarceration, and deportation are ample deterrence to insure compliance with current federal and state noncitizen voting laws. Johnson’s combination photo-ops and sound bites are nothing more than MAGA grandstanding to sow further seeds of discord with their Unwashed Masses about the fantasy deep state conspiracy propaganda claiming Trump won in 2020. His 63 court cases then resulted in 62 defeats, with the one win overturned on appeal. Even the 2024 Chicago White Sox beat that.
Mr. Johnson, your chicanery makes you as big a loser as Trump. Do your homework and act like you represent the GOP of “Honest Abe,” Teddy Roosevelt, and “Ike” instead of their polar opposite. Our country deserves better leadership than your “fake news.”
Main source—Bipartisan Policy Center (2024)
ED ENGLER, Sebring, Fla.
I was curious to see what was in the book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” after J.D. Vance won his election. Watching the 2022 election returns, I was pleased to see the Democrats winning seats. I was disappointed to see Marjorie T. Greene and Lauren Boebert win their campaigns. But what on Earth was in that book that got J.D. Vance elected? I ordered it from Powell’s City of Books (Portland, Ore.).
Mostly, it impressed me as just White privilege pity pot. He complains again and again about his poverty as a child. But at one point he states that his mother’s and his step-father’s combined income was $100,000 a year. He also relates that one or both of his uncles, his mother’s brothers, are business owners. Now get this: One uncle, Uncle Pet, I think (not going back to look but the rest I remember pretty well), Uncle Pet is a business owner. One day a delivery truck arrives at Uncle Pet’s place of business with a delivery. Uncle Pet accepts the delivery and then tells the driver to unload the delivery.
Here, the delivery man says, “Unload it yourself, son of a b*tch.”
Now we say “son of a b*tch” every day, all the time, here in modern day America.
But Uncle Pet takes offense, tells the driver again to unload the truck, and the driver replies again, “Unload it yourself, son of a b*tch.”
Now Uncle Pet does “what any rational businessman would do …” He yanks the driver from the delivery truck, beats him unconscious, then runs an electric saw up and down his body. The driver was hospitalized (ya think?) but didn’t die.
J.D. Vance excused his uncle’s ill-bred behavior by saying, “You just don’t disrespect a man’s mother” in the hills.
And this is the book that won J.D. Vance his election in Ohio, I think.
XAVIER SMALL, Linn County, Ore.
Now that Trump has chosen “hillbilly” JD Vance as his running mate, I can’t help thinking of a quote from Roseanne Barr when she and then-husband Tom Arnold were popular in the 1990s: “We’re your worst nightmare. White trash with money.”
WILLIAM AMEEN, Greensboro, N.C.
We have to pray for Kamala Harris to save us and our country (a true “Joan of Arc’). She has picked a worthy V.P.
Trump voters are voting for an idiot. What does it say about them? He is planning a despotic totalitarian regime, not our democracy!
If it wasn’t for Joe Biden, Trump would have taken over our government, but he was reduced to lying about losing and annoying the judiciary, filing over 50 claims. They did not appeal, but who knows with his puppet SCOTUS.
Talk about older, he fits that category, also. If his voters put hIm in the White House, they will pay the price.
RICHARD B. HYMAN, Stillwater, N.J.
Re: Ralph Nader’s review of Public Citizen’s 10-Point Reform Plan [“Public Citizen’s Robert Weissman Calls for Ten Crucial Public Congressional Hearings,” 9/15/24 TPP], the first point, getting the big money out of American elections, only requires a Democratic Congress and settling the Supreme Court’s hash. A tall order, but it can be done.
The other nine points will be trickier, because they they all involve doing things that big companies and billionaires do not want to do. So what will they do? They will up stakes and go to some other countries that will let them get away with what they are doing. Therefore, reformers must think strategically and get ahead of this problem. First, you have to close off the boltholes.
As for the problem of companies who “move production” to other countries, you will have to revise all trade treaties (they are treaties, not “deals”) so as to make it more difficult, not easier, to do this., You do this by shifting the focus to the condition of manufacturing bench workers and garment workers in those other countries. You have to demand that this scandalous abuse be regulated and cleaned up, and you revise revise trade treaties to reflect these new requirements.
Americans constantly complain about jobs going to other countries, but Americans show a marked lack of any concern or awareness about the workers in those other countries. If you are going to be ignorant and selfish, then you are going to get what you get.
MARIA ROSE, Indianapolis, Ind.
You know, my wife, myself and our dog, Petey, recently took a trip to Springfield, Ohio, to visit some of our friends. Unfortunately, on our second day there, our dog went missing. We tried for the next several days to find him but were unsuccessful and had to leave without him.
On our way out of town, we stopped at a local Haitian restaurant to get some hamburgers for the trip home. Then, a couple miles down the road, I bit into my hamburger and felt a sharp pain on one of my back molars. I then spit out my food and found my dog’s metal rabies vaccination tag sitting amongst the pieces of burger, lettuce and tomato and bun that I had spit out onto my hand.
Shocked by what had happened, we drove back to the restaurant but found it had been closed by the city health department.
Perplexed, I went to the office of the City Health Department and talked to a gentleman named Ray Bees, who said he could not comment until the investigation of the restaurant was completed.
Then, sadly, we drove back home and the next morning I had surgery to repair my tooth, which cost me $2,187.66.
One last thought. If you believed this letter, vote for Trump. He’s your guy and you’re going to hear another constant stream of his B.S. for the next four years of his presidency, as you did for the four years of his last presidency.
Good luck!
MIKE EKLUND, LaPorte, Ind.
[Editor’s Note: As far as we can tell, no pets were injured in the production of this letter.]
From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2024
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