The Deal with ACORN

Gawker does a good job today of explaining the issues with ACORN and the so-called voter registration fraud. Most important sentence of this post: "Quite honestly the very heart of the utter bullshitness of this anti-ACORN campaign can be found in one incredibly telling quote from a spokesman for the RNC: "Cairncross accused ACORN of engaging in a 'systematic effort to undermine the election process' through its voter-registration drives." Do you see the problem with that statement?"

My question is this: Voter turnout in this, the "best" democracy in the world, is hovering around 50% during major election years. And they're worried about voter fraud? Maybe they should concentrate on actually getting the other 50% out to vote.

Update: I should clarify. This story is about voter registration fraud. Not people actually casting votes that, you know, actually count. This is about people signing up to vote. The actually voting part is a whole different story. So what if some jerk wrote Mickey Mouse on a registration card? Do you really think the Mouse is going to show up on Nov 4th, be escorted to a booth, and be allowed to pull a lever? The point is, and TPM makes an excellent connection between the ACORN story and the US Attorney firing scandal, that Republicans are trying to preemptively sow the seeds of a compromised election because they are losing.

Soap Box Moment Inspired by Bob Herbert

Bob Herbert's post for the NYT today is a little apocolyptic for my taste, but, especially towards the beginning of the piece, he taps into the main reason I voted Democratic.

He quotes Sarah Rimer of the NYT: “The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels, a new study asserts, and girls who do succeed in the field are almost all immigrants or the daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued," continuing that our culture does not value math and science, that "the math thing is seen as something for Asians and nerds."

I really believe that an intense skepticism of science and a general disregard for factual information of the conservative movement in the last decade--whether it be teaching creationism in schools or refuting global warming--has seriously harmed our country's ability to deal with the challenges of the next several decades. If we are teaching our children that academia is for the uppity elite, that it doesn't matter if you're smart as long as you're popular, that you don't need facts to back up your claims as long as you appeal to Joe Sixpack--then we are doing a serious disservice to future generations. In every child I believe is the potential to do great things--creatively, scientifically, technologically, socially, politically. If we don't ensure that all children--mine, yours, your neighbor's, the kid in the inner city, and the kid on the farm--get a fair shot at a decent education, then we are leaving potential great minds behind. If we don't try to make sure all of those kids remain healthy with affordable healthcare, we are diminishing that pool of thinkers even further. If we continue to turn a blind eye to the awful poverty and the enormous disparity between rich and the poor in our country and remain convinced of the impossible notion that everyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, then we are simply selling ourselves short. Because our kids will be the ones developing cures for our diseases, inventing clean and efficient energy technologies, negotiating with other nations for our safety, and generally taking care of our planet. Kids in places like India and China are already way ahead of us. And if people think that American individualism will last in this global community, then they deserve their new place in the world: left behind.