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Blogging on the radio
Two pig related songs this morning, both in the first hour. Call in during either one and I’ll send you something special: 813-239-WOOD
Lots of ranting this morning, mostly after 5:00. I’ll talk about the unwarranted attacks on Betty Castor and also feature Pig Tales - I think you’ll be able to figure it out.
I am going to completely ignore the Democratic Convention, but I am playing lots of cuts from protestrecords.com this morning. Go download yourself something nice.
Playlists
Each week, I bring my planned songs in on CD. I usually end up playing most or all of them in the planned order. But sometimes things go askew. Sorry - no guarantees or refunds.
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Piggies perplex slow-witted slumlord
Uh, Ms. Lynch: the cost is actually $200 BILLION, and your child is gonna be paying this bill for a long time. Unless, of course, she is conscripted and killed first. Maybe you should make an effort to “get it.”
She grabbed up apartment buildings and boardinghouses, the ones the banks wouldn't even consider financing. The more burned out, the better. She would buy low, fix them up, rent them and move on to the next. When she ran out of money to buy, she turned backward, pulling the equity out of her earlier properties and plowing it into the next one.
......She doesn't read about designing; she looks at the pictures.
She has never voted, doesn't plan to, and keeps her mouth shut when the discussion turns to politics.
One day a vehicle fashioned like a piggy bank trailing two piglets drove by. Lynch jumped in her Dodge Ram pickup truck and chased the pig down to Central Avenue and some Iraq war protesters.
"So, I roll down my window and I'm like, "I don't get the pig,' " Lynch recalls. "So she says, "We're wasting $20-million on the Iraq war and it should be spent on our children's education.' And then the guy chirps up and he's like, "You really don't get it?'
"So then the lady goes, "We're against people like you with your big gas-guzzler trucks,' and I said to her, "Well I bet your pig uses way more gas than my truck.' I don't know who these pig people were but she was really mean."
Lynch said people have told her that she has attention deficit disorder, but she has never been diagnosed with it.
I remember her - she’s the one who could not decide if she liked the pigs or not unless we told her whether we were “for” or “against” W. See, she was using this black or white litmus test to determine if she should be amused or offended. She got very confused when we told her we were neutral, that we just didn’t like the war, and apparently she doesn’t understand that driving oneself around in a 12 MPG behemoth of a truck for the sole purpose of moving ones own lazy ass is exactly the kind of shortsighted, wasteful and arrogant behavior that has caused much of the world to turn against us.
Well, since she refuses to be diagnosed, I guess it’s fair game to openly mock her obviously underdeveloped ability to formulate and process an independent thought as well as her complete lack of anything resembling common sense. Or I could just skip the mocking and come right out and say it...
E-voting reality
The Village Voice: Features: The Rise Of The Machines by Kareem Fahim
"Anything in a computer can be changed," said Hommel, who has worked with computers for over 30 years. She's devoted the past year solely to the voting issue. She talks about voter-verified paper audits of the new machines—a primary demand of many advocates—with an enthusiasm that borders on zeal. "The [electronic machines] are being sold as a panacea, on the basis that you can trust them," she said. "The people selling them are lying."
There are a number of reasons why the new machines, Direct Recording Electronic Voting Systems (known as DREs), are viewed so suspiciously, by so many. There is the legacy of the contested Florida results during the 2000 presidential election, and the comments of Wally O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold Inc., a manufacturer of DREs. In a fundraising letter he sent to Ohio Republicans last August, O'Dell wrote that he was committed "to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
But as concern with the security of the upcoming election grows, the window in which changes can be made is slamming shut. Aides to several members of Congress admitted that legislation that would require the electronic machines to produce a paper audit trail will probably go nowhere during the current session. This means that a security regimen will be a voluntary, unfunded project, undertaken by state election officials rather than mandated by the federal government.
Three weeks ago, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, working with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, released a set of recommendations they hope federal election watchdogs will implement before November. The measures include the use of independent security experts, training programs for election officials, and public monitoring of the voting process. But the recommendations do not call for a paper audit trail.
"You have to remember what the recommendations were intended for," said Aviel Rubin, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and a co-author of a now famous study that is critical of some of the DRE technology. "They're for those precincts that ignore the advice [to require paper audits] and use the machines anyway." Rubin has endorsed the Brennan Center's recommendations, but remains skeptical of the DREs, saying, "The Diebold system is not like any commercial system I've ever seen. It's much worse."
......After her presentation downtown, Teresa Hommel sat for tea at a nearby bakery, and said that she holds the election machines to the standard of banking systems or computers involved in stock trades. In those applications, she said, multiple audits are the rule.
Troxler tanks
Howard Troxler is completely, absolutely, one hundred percent wrong about e-voting problems. Which is a shame, because I often agree with Howard and usually enjoy his columns.
What should a reasonable person conclude about touch screen voting machines? Sure, there are some safeguards it would be nice to add. But most of the worry out there is loony tunes stuff.
The big picture:
(1) No touch screen machine has been shown to have been rigged or to have delivered an inaccurate vote total. They work fine.
Uh, Howard, there’s, like, nothing to recount, you know, like nothing to check the accuracy of these machines, so how, exactly, is one supposed to show that they’re inaccurate? You could have just as truthfully said “No touch screen machine has been shown not to have been rigged or to have delivered an accurate vote total.” See, there is no way to independently verify the totals that are being produced. We don’t know how the machine tabulates the votes. We don’t know from independent studies how accurate these tallies are.
(2) Claims of "flaws" or "errors" in various incidents around the country almost always involve human elements, such as poll workers not getting the things turned on.
”Almost” always involve human error?!?
(3) A conspiracy to rig the machines in a national election is ridiculously unlikely if not impossible. A plot to rig the machines in a state or local election is even less plausible.
How ‘bout a conspiracy of one or two people who can throw 500 or 1,000 votes one way or another? Let’s see, how many votes made the difference in Florida last time?
Critics cry out: "There ought to be a paper trail, so voters can check their ballot!"
Remember, the voter already must confirm a summary of his/her ballot on the screen. But let's say we did create a running print out, displayed under glass, and kept it for posterity. This has been a paper-jam disaster in the few places that have tried it.
So, why is it that manufacturers can produce reliable ATMs and gas pumps and slot machines that produce a paper receipt without paper jams or break downs, but they can’t figure out how to put a printer on a voting machine? Why weren’t these things designed with printers in the first place? A paper receipt solves virtually every problem with these machines. Countable, verifiable receipts that voters deposit in an old-fashioned ballot box before leaving the polls provide a backup system. They provide something physical to recount, and they provide a way to test and verify the accuracy of these machines.
On top of that, an election has to be close to trigger a recount. We think that hackers are smart enough to rig the machines, but too dumb to rig them enough?
Actually, with the accuracy polls these days, rigging them enough might be way too obvious. And with these machines, there is nothing to recount, whether the election is close or not.
Skeptics insist: "There ought to be a physical copy of my individual vote somewhere." Yet millions of Americans have done without it for decades, satisfied to pull a little mechanical lever in a voting booth.
Gee, this sounds like the right wing argument that goes something like “no matter how bad Americans treat Iraquis, they are not as doomed as they were under Saddam...” Howard, these new machines are supposed to be much better than anything ever used before. Now you’re saying that they’re not quite as bad as machines that were popular decades ago. Wow, that’s reassuring.
Next comes the claim that touch screens are unreliable in a Star Trek, amok-computer fashion - "The computer ate my vote!" The routine "undervote," when voters cast an empty ballot, is being recast in a sinister light.
The most-cited example of a suspicious undervote comes from a Florida House special election earlier this year, in which more than 100 blank votes were recorded. It was the only race on the ballot.
Entirely ignored was that it was an unusual "open" primary, in which everyone could vote, even though only Republicans were on the ballot. Some Democrats no doubt saw only Republicans listed and just punched "finished."
So, they showed up to vote not knowing what the election was for or who the candidates were? And then they didn’t bother to vote for anyone? Uh, okay.
Touch screen machines eliminate a much bigger problem than undervotes - "overvotes," in which ballots are thrown out because the voter marked two different candidates in the same race. Now it can't happen. Democrats should be delighted - without overvotes in 2000, President Al Gore would be seeking re-election today.
Most of those overvotes came from optical scan machines. These machines are still in use. Funny thing, but in predominantly black counties with this technology, they took the overvoted ballots from voters and later discarded them. In white counties, they told the voters to fix their overvoted ballots before they accepted them, so very few of the white votes were thrown out.
Now, for the machine-rigging stuff.
To have a national conspiracy, here is what you have to believe: That not one, but several, multimillion-dollar corporations whose existence depends entirely on customer trust have decided to risk criminal indictment, prison sentences, civil lawsuits, bankruptcy and disgrace - and have somehow gotten their key hired help to agree.
Either that, or a single, evildoing programmer has sneaked past everybody. The companies have left it all in this one guy's hands, you see: "Excuse me, Mr. Luthor, would you please write this code that nobody will ever double-check, okay?"
Here lies the problem: no one is allowed to double check anything. All of the code used in these machines is super secret proprietary stuff. Just like the extremely buggy and hacker prone Microsoft Windows, only the manufacturer knows how these machines work. We don’t need a conspiracy. All we need is some buggy software (and most or all of these machines run Microsoft programs, which, as we all know, are extremely reliable and never ever crash) and votes could be lost or misappropriated. This could be in either candidate’s favor. This is not a partisan issue.
How about local evildoers? Maybe our hacker is an evil local elections worker, with inside knowledge. He has even less ability to rig the machine than the manufacturer. And the scheme would have to elude an army of official observers.
Listen: The machines start out at zero on Election Day. They are locked at the end of voting. The total is matched against the number of physical signatures in that precinct's register. Each machine has a unique electronic code used to report its total. You can't leave any machines out of the total. You can't add new ones. You can't jiggle the totals. It's all printed and auditable.
The only things that are auditable are the printouts. They are produced based on electronic tallies that cannot be double checked. Of course they are going to match up - if you hit File and Print, an exact copy of this page will print out, but that does not prove anything about how the page came to be produced.
There's plenty of real stuff to worry about. There's this clumsy felon list by the Bush administration. There are important new rules concerning absentee ballots this year that may prove huge in November. I agree with the critics that source code and audit methods about touch screens should be public record.
?!? You just totally discounted this problem a coupla paragraphs back.
But the crazy tone of most of this stuff represents everything wrong with our know-nothing, Internet society. Worse, it represents a deliberate attempt to delegitimize our democracy for partisan gain. To those churning so hard to undermine faith in the election: Don't you care that you're hurting your own guy in case he wins?
This is not a partisan issue. Many of us have already lost faith in the election if it is to be conducted with voting machines which lack a simple paper trail. All we have to do to restore faith is to provide that simple paper trail. Like an ATM. Simple.
You mention the “clumsy felon list by the Bush administration,” which Jeb! tried hard to keep secret. As soon as the list became public, it was found to be riddled with errors. A week later, the state was forced to drop it.
Why all the secrecy with evoting? Why no paper trail? Why no public source software? Why is opaque better than transparent? What are they trying to hide? Incompetence scares me more than a conspiracy. These things may simply be junk.
This column of yours represents everything wrong with modern know-nothing journalism: for whatever reason, you have simply bought the spin of the manufacturers and the governments that make up their customer base. See, the partisanship here is coming from the companies that are making billions of dollars by selling these machines. They have everything to lose if too many people realize that the machines they are voting on are not any more reliable than the computers that they struggle to use on a daily basis.
Pretty Pink Piggies Parallel Park, Possibly Posing Porcine Problem?
Pretty Pink Piggies Parallel Park, Possibly Posing Porcine Problem?
Contact Information:
Norwood Orrick
813-226-2550
norwood@blogwood.com
www.BlogWood.com (local updates)
www.TrueMajority.org (general info)
Event Information:
What: TrueMajority Pig Mobile on Gandy Beach
Where: Pinellas Gandy bridge approach, South side
Date: July 22, 7am - 9am
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 21, 2004
TrueMajority Pig Mobile Makes Gandy Bridge Appearance
Tampa, FL - The TrueMajority Pig Mobile will be parked on Gandy Beach during morning rush hour on Friday, July 22, 2004.
The striking pink Pig Mobile may well cause traffic to snarl as drivers slow down to get a better look at the unique vehicle. Commuters are encouraged to stop by and take a gander, listen to the Piggies grunt, and learn about the fact that the U.S. is prepared to spend over $200 billion in Iraq while pressing needs in our own country such as education remain vastly underfunded.
The "Pig Mobile," conceived of by Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry's, consists of three different-sized piggy banks strung together to illustrate just how big a financial disaster the Iraq war has turned out to be.
The largest pig (by far) shows the financial cost ($200 billion) of America's attack on Iraq, including the projected minimum cost of reconstruction. The smaller pig illustrates how much the federal government spends on K-12 education ($34 billion) . And the third pig, which is a wee little pig, shows America's dedication to lessening world hunger and poverty ($10 billion).
These piggies, all built out with striking pink fiberglass and featuring an oinking soundtrack, are pulled by a full-sized Chevy van towing a trailer.
The Pig Mobile is sponsored by TrueMajority.org, a grassroots lobbying organization founded by Ben Cohen. Local TrueMajority volunteers will drive the Piggies while they are in Tampa.
Piggie pictures and news can be found at BlogWood.com.
###
Pigs will be pigs
So, at lunch time today I was driving the Pig Mobile through Ybor City when a police car jumped on my curly, slow moving tail. I didn’t think much of it - just kept rolling down 7th Avenue, Piggies a gruntin’, pedestrians smiling and laughing. Then the cop hit his siren. He was pulling the Pig Mobile over!
Actually, I kinda figured he just wanted a closer look, but what he wanted was a closer listen. See, the Piggies emit their grunts through 4 marine grade speakers mounted under the van. They’re not earth shattering, but they do the job. And today, 2 speakers were out of commission, so the grunts were not all that loud at all.
Anyway, after considering and rejecting the absolutely massive free publicity that would result from a police chase followed by a fiery crash and impressive explosion, I pulled into a nearby parking lot and jumped out of the Pigs to see what the TPD wanted with me.
I smiled and approached the officer with a hearty “How ya doin’,” or some other equally innocuous greeting. He was out of his car and talking before I could catch a breath.
“You’re gonna have to turn those noises off,” sez officer friendly.
“Huh?!?”
“There’s a state ordinance that makes it illegal to emit a loud noise from a car.”
“Hmmmm. Is this statute based on a certain decibel level? Do you have a noise meter? Have you measured the decibel level coming from my vehicle?”
“85 decibels is considered excessive, and you are way over that. If I can hear you from a car length away, you’re too loud.”
“So, you’re gonna write me a ticket?”
“I’ll let you off with a warning. This time.”
“!?!”
“You have a right to express yourself and all, but...”
“Thank you officer. Have a nice day.”
Now, most cars, idling, can be heard form a car’s length away. This seems like a rather arbitrary enforcement of an ordinance that is probably aimed at teenage boys and their boom box automobiles - earth shaking bass that can rattle houses from blocks away.
I returned to the Pig Mobile and watched the cop turn around and exit the parking lot and leave the area. I thought about the situation, and my right of free speech, and the fact that the cop obviously had no way to scientifically measure the sound output of the piggies.
I decided that he was a typical fascist bully who decided to silence a message he didn’t agree with. I mean, he was like the first person all day who hadn’t smiled at the his first glimpse of the Pig Mobile. He’d probably seen us around town earlier this week, knew exactly what our message was, and, like most unimaginative people in a position of power, he decided that the best way to deal with a threatening truth was to squash it through intimidation and violence.
I turned the Pig’s grunts up as loud as they would go, and cruised Ybor for another 2 hours, hoping to run into the cop with the hatred of free speech. He never came back out of the hole he must’ve crawled into, because I had no other problems.
I passed cops on foot, on horseback, and in cruisers, with windows down and up, in Ybor and other parts of Tampa. None of them so much as batted an eye, and plenty of them had ample opportunity to approach me about my volume. Instead, most of them laughed. The rest just ignored me.
Officer K. A. Howell of the Tampa Police Department apparently doesn’t like our message. That’s his right, but he shouldn’t use his badge to suppress our right fo free expression.
I’m gonna go and get those broken speakers fixed tomorrow :~)
Welfare daddy takes the money and runs
Well, it looks like our little $4 million welfare experiment, our pansy-ass coddling of “needy” people companies is turning into a huge failure. We give these shiftless irresponsible louts our tax dollars, we pay these unrefined yahoos to make babies jobs, which they happily do as long as the free money is coming in, and they just sit around all day sucking from the welfare teat and getting fat off the public dole as we hard working tax payers put in extra hours to support their dysfunctional lifestyle shareholders.
We do all this hoping to give them a leg up, a little push down the road to success, but all we end up doing is making them weak and lazy. And then, when these wily welfare daddies sense a better deal elsewhere, they up and leave us in the lurch. They abandon their children employees, shirking all responsibility, leaving the state to provide for their former charges, and shack up with the first sugar daddy they can find.
Capital One is shutting down its sprawling credit card call center in Tampa, eliminating 1,100 jobs and delivering a serious blow to a decadelong effort to upgrade the area's economic base.
The Tampa job cuts, which were announced along with smaller staff reductions in Dallas and Richmond, Va., are part of Capital One's ongoing push to outsource much of its customer relations work.
Salaries at the Tampa center range from $35,000, with bonuses, to $100,000 for some managers, employees said. They said they were told their jobs would be sent overseas, but the company would not say where the work will be done. About 350 jobs will remain in Tampa.
......The McClean, Va., company plans to sell its five-building complex in Tampa. The 71-acre site includes a jogging trail, gym, laundry service and cybercafe. It intends to lease back an undetermined amount of space to house the 350 workers who will remain to handle auto finance collections.
In a statement, Capital One said most of the jobs will be outsourced to "U.S.-based companies." Spokeswoman Tatiana Stead would not directly address whether those U.S. companies, in turn, would send the work offshore, a practice that has emerged as a major political issue.
......"They told us that our work is being outsourced to another country, and that is the main thing everybody is upset about," said Patricia Correa, 59, who worked as an account supervisor.
"Everybody in Tampa helped build that company. ... It was a financial decision, they told us, because they can pay people in India way less."
Several employees said Capital One established a precedent of using foreign workers within the past year when jobs in the Spanish-speaking department in Tampa were shipped to Costa Rica.
"It's unfortunate that they feel like outsourcing is the answer," said Daniela Demorais, 23, a Capital One account supervisor who lives in St. Petersburg. "I don't think they'll get the quality ... that they want."
One of the largest providers of Visa and MasterCard credit cards in the world, Capital One swept into Tampa in 1995, starting with about 150 employees. It rapidly added buildings and employees to its Town 'N Country campus near Waters Avenue and the Veterans Expressway.
Prospective employees were courted through advertising on billboards and the Yellow Pages.
Capitol One had been courted, too, at taxpayer expense. In 1996, the company was approved for a $4-million tax refund - about $1-million to come from local governments - to be paid out over time through the Qualified Target Industry Program. QTI, as it is sometimes called, is a state incentive plan that uses public money to attract companies with high-paying jobs. Capitol One had to agree to bring 1,000 jobs.
......Hillsborough County Commissioner Jan Platt, who consistently votes against incentive programs for industry, said Wednesday's announcement is the reason why.
"There's no guarantee that the companies will stay," Platt said. "Do the taxpayers get refunded? I seriously doubt it."
.........Capital One beat analysts' earnings expectations for the second quarter. The company said it earned $1.65 per share, up from $1.23 the prior year and above forecasts of $1.50 per share.
Paperless problems
Look - lotto machines give receipts, in the form of a ticket. ATMs give receipts. So do gas pumps and all other computerized automated transaction machines. Why is it so hard to create a countable, verifiable paper trail in the form of a receipt that can be deposited into a ballot box?
If you live in a paperless county and you want your vote to count this year, vote absentee.
Florida elections officials knew before they bought the first touch screen voting machine that the devices had a history of problems.
The machines recorded cases in which no vote was cast, known as undervotes, at a higher rate than some other machines.
But election officials bought them anyway, partly because they didn't think undervotes would become a major problem.
Now, undervotes are at the center of the latest controversy surrounding Florida's troubled elections process.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson on Monday called for an independent audit of touch screen machines because of the high rate of undervotes in the March presidential primary.
A task force appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush to recommend changes in Florida elections reported in March 2001 that touch screen machines had a higher rate of undervotes than optical scan machines.
Touch screen machines are similar to ATMs, except they don't produce a receipt. Optical scan systems are similar to standardized tests, in which voters use a pencil to fill in ovals on a ballot that is fed into a scanner that records the votes.
Note - In Hillsborough and many other counties, absentee ballots are handled with an optical scan system.
......
Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, says Florida moved too quickly to embrace touch screen technology "before they were adequately tested."
But a leading expert on voting machines says undervotes are nothing to worry about.
"A small but significant number of voters in every election intentionally undervote," said Dan Tokaji, an Ohio State College law professor and the author of a recent report to the Election Assistance Commission on touch screen machines. "Why would somebody do that? I'm not sure if anyone has a clear answer to that question."
Still, undervoting seems peculiar in elections with only one issue on a ballot. Why would anyone take the time to go to a polling place, get a ballot and not vote? Yet that's exactly what happened in March. In Pinellas, for example, 211 voters cast blank ballots in the March primary in precincts that had just one race.
Links above are for Hillsborough County, Florida residents.
Here’s a link to all of the Florida county elections supervisors. You need to contact your local county elections supervisor in order to request an absentee ballot.
Voting Absentee in Florida
The following list of frequently asked questions is from the Hillsborough County supervisor’s web iste, and is therefore somewhat specific to county residents, but the rules are the same no matter where you reside in Florida - any registered voter can request and vote an absentee ballot. You do not need to actually be absent on election day. So follow this link and contact your own county supervisor and request an absentee ballot today.
ABSENTEE VOTING
Who is eligible for an absentee ballot?
If you are a qualified registered Hillsborough County voter, you are entitled to vote by absentee ballot.How do I obtain an absentee ballot?
An absentee ballot may be requested for a specific election or for all elections in the current calendar year. The request can be made in person, by mail, fax, E-mail or by telephone. You can also fill out a request on-line by clicking here. The absentee request must include the voter's name, address, birthdate and signature if a written request. Only the voter or a designated member of his or her immediate family or legal guardian can request an absentee ballot for the voter. If the voter has designated an immediate family member or legal guardian to request an absentee ballot for him or herself, the designee must provide the required request information for the voter and the designee's name, address and relationship to the voter.When are absentee ballots available?
Absentee ballots are mailed approximately 30 days prior to each election to those voters who have requested an absentee ballot. A qualified voter may vote in person at either of the two offices of the Supervisor of Elections during the two weeks prior to an election.
WARNING - In Hillsborough County, this form of early voting involves using paperless touch screen machines.
For other available early voting sites, please call our office at 813-272-5850 for additional information. Within four days of an election, a designated person may carry out up to two ballots for anyone as long as the required request information is provided and the voter specifically authorizes the person to pick up the ballot in writing. There is no limitation on number of carryouts for immediate family members.
How do I return my absentee ballot?
Absentee ballots must be returned in the envelope provided. The envelope must include the voter's signature, the witness information and signature. Voted absentee ballots must be received by 5:00 p.m. on Election Day at the County Center office of the Supervisor of Elections or not later than 7 p.m. at the Robert L. Gilder Elections Service Center. A VOTED BALLOT CANNOT BE ACCEPTED AT A POLLING PLACE. If you request and receive an absentee ballot and later decide to vote at the polls, take your absentee ballot with you to be cancelled at your polling place.
Florida: Juan person, wan vote
So, it turns out the both the state and the private vendor who worked on the 2000 Florida voter disenfranchisement list were aware that using race as a factor in compiling the list would result in errors based on problems matching Hispanic names.
See, the state seems to have known exactly what it was doing when it compiled a $2 million list with almost no (traditionally Republican voting) Hispanics on it, but it turns out that this was just another one of those innocent mistakes, brought about by administrative incompetence, that coincidentally happened to favor the governor's party. Really.
In May 2002, just days before the voter database was unveiled, Roberts ordered a rewrite of the matching procedures.
He insisted that a registered voter's race match exactly with someone in the FDLE database. Because the FDLE classifies Hispanics as white, Roberts' decision meant voters who registered as Hispanics would be excluded from the felons list.
Roberts, who now works in the state attorney general's office, said Monday that he did not remember being at a meeting where the issue was addressed, but that he "vaguely" remembers there being some concerns about how race was kept in voter registration records.
Oh, well there you have it, then. This was all just a horrible mixup. Florida is dedicated to making sure that everyone who is eligible a registered Republican is allowed to vote.
Jeb! could put an end to this whole controversy with a stroke of his pen. He could do the right thing and join the 43 other states that restore voting rights to prisoners who paid their debts and are attempting to reintegrate themselves into our democratic society, but that would involve being fair minded and compassionate, traits that sound good in slogans, but which are rarely displayed in the actions of our governor.
''The governor could have an impact on this tomorrow, because he has the authority under the state Constitution to grant clemency in a much broader and quicker way than he has chosen to do so,'' Marshall said. ``He could restore their voting rights automatically with an executive order without requiring them to go through clemency.''
Jeb! could streamline the process. Easily and unilaterally. Right now there is a huge backlog of folks who have applied to have their rights restored, but the Republican controlled legislature refused to make money available this year for staff and other resources that could have cleared the jam and allowed thousands to register in time for the 2004 elections. And Jeb! is in no hurry to rectify this situation on his own.
There is also a backlog of thousands of ex-felons from other states who had their civil rights restored before moving to Florida. The state is not allowed to bar them from voting, but it has repeatedly ignored court orders and done exactly that, and it included these names in the 2000 version of the voter purge list.
The NAACP managed to get the state to agree to restore these folks' voting rights, but the state is dragging its feet, and only about half of the people on this list have been returned to the rolls. But we should really cut Jeb! some slack here. He's very busy. He'll probably get around to this by, say, the middle of November or thereabouts.
Gee, it's almost as if Jeb! and the Republican Party and the State of Florida are using a 140 year old racist law to ensure that in 2004 thousands of black people will once again be taught that their opinion means nothing in our democracy.
Get Up with MorningWood!
Get Up with MorningWood, on 70,000 Watt Community Radio WMNF 88.5 fm, Tampa, and streaming at wmnf.org. 4 to 6 am (eastern) every Tuesday!
Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD
MorningWood Needs Your Vote!
The WMNF listener survey is out, and somehow MorningWood got left off of the list for favorite shows. This sucks.
You can help to rectify this tragic error by filling out the survey online and writing in your vote for MorningWood wherever it may be even remotely appropriate.
Apparently, the survey is no longer online, or perhaps the station took down the link so people would concentrate on marathon. Whatever - right this second, doing the online thing is impossible. So we’ll do the next best: Call the studio (813-239-WOOD) or email norwood@wmnf.org and I will send you a printed version of our Program Guide which contains the listener survey. You can fill one out the old-fashioned way and mail it back to the station.
Survey hints: The answer “MorningWood” would work nicely for the following questions:
Page 18, “Listening Preferences” section “One show I would listen to more...”
Page 19, “Weekly Shows” section: This is the one where MorningWood was inexplicably left off of the ballot. Please “Write In” MorningWood in this section. Don’t worry - I’ve received firm suggestions from people very low in the station hierarchy that your ballot wont be rejected as an “overvote” just because you write in your vote.
Page 20, “News” section: How ‘bout a plug for BlogWood.com under web sites!
Okay - that’s it for the cheat sheet. Please call and get a Program Guide, or, if you already have one, please remember MorningWood when you fill out your Listener Survey. If the online survey ever comes back, you should be able to access it via the WMNF 88.5FM home page. The sections should be organized and titled just as described above, except for the page numbers.
THANKS!
Thanks to all the loyal WMNF and MorningWood listeners who called in during last week’s marathon fundraiser for our new building. MorningWood continued a streak of making goal. In fact, MorningWood has never fallen short in any marathon. This time, the goal was shattered, and MorningWood was one of the best performing overnight shows. MorningWood listeners rock.
Blogging on the radio
I’ve got this whole show planned around pig songs, in honor of the TrueMajority Pig Mobile’s visit to Tampa. So, I’ll probably mention the Presidential visit to Tampa on Friday as well as other pig related news.
This just in: an alert reader noticed some news about Linda Ronstadt. It seems that she praised and then dedicated a song to Michael Moore during a Las Vegas performance on Saturday and caused quite a stink. I was too busy being self-absorbed and planning for this morning’s show to notice the news, so thanks to BlogWood reader Linda for the tip.
AP Wire | 07/19/2004 | Las Vegas casino boots singer Linda Ronstadt after performance
Singer Linda Ronstadt not only got booed, she got the boot after lauding filmmaker Michael Moore and his new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11 during a performance at the Aladdin hotel-casino.
Before singing "Desperado" for an encore Saturday night, the 58-year-old rocker called Moore a "great American patriot" and "someone who is spreading the truth." She also encouraged everybody to see the documentary about President Bush.
Ronstadt's comments drew loud boos and some of the 4,500 people in attendance stormed out of the theater. People also tore down concert posters and tossed cocktails into the air.
It’s after 2am, and I’ve just finished burning my playlists to CD, and a change this late would be just way too painful for my sleep deprived caffeine fueled brain to handle at the moment, so we’ll just have to send Ms. Ronstadt our best without actually playing one of her tunes or even a song about her. Oh well - maybe next week?
Playlists
Each week, I bring my planned songs in on CD. I usually end up playing most or all of them in the planned order. But sometimes things go askew. Sorry - no guarantees or refunds.
WMNF Community Radio
WMNF is a non-commercial community radio station that celebrates local cultural diversity and is committed to equality, peace and social and economic justice. WMNF provides broadcasts and creates other forums to serve the community by the exposure and sharing of these values.