Thom Hartmann vs Matthew Vadum - Is Registering the Poor to Vote Un-American?

[alp227]

Run time: 07:01 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhki00XjyD0   Posted on YouTube: September 08, 2011 By YouTube Member: thomhartmann Views on YouTube: 293   Posted on DU: September 10, 2011 By DU Member: alp227 Views on DU: 1334

 
Thom Hartmann and Matthew Vadum, Investigative Journalist-Capital Research / Author, "Subversion, Inc.", debate whether registering the poor to vote is un-American. (Vadum wrote in The American Thinker, "", where among other things he said: "Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.")

[provis99]

1. looks exactly like what I think a Teabagger looks like.

A fat, pasty, middle-aged, white male republican pig.

[Kalidurga]

2. I would like to reply...

but that leaves me speechless. Seriously when unemployment goes up that would mean in the asshat's world that those newly "poor" people would be unable to vote because now they are no longer upstanding citizens they are are a drain on society ruining the country.... grrrrrrrrr I don't think he has thought this all the way through. Or he has and he is just as evil as he sounds.

[Mimosa]

3. I hope Current TV will pick up Hartmann

There's a conservative board I used to visit until I got sick of the hateful attacks on liberals. There was a members photos topic of 70+ pages. MANY Republicans do indeed resemble that Vadum guy.

[RickFromMN]

4. The Republicans would like to go back to the time when only male, landed gentry could vote.

[Che Billy]

5. Has the right really sunk that low?

If I understand Vadum correctly, people who are on public assistance shouldn't vote because they will be selfishly biased in favor of the candidates that would continue or even augment the assistance.

Logically, as Vadur would likely put it, every other American will disregard their own self-interest and altruistically vote for candidates that represent the good of the public at large.

I have to wonder why it is that people with such asinine thought processes are given any credence, much less a forum, by anyone with at least 2 synapses to rub together. Have right wingers really sunk to this level, or am I really just dreaming?

[jonthebru]

6. The right knows

that given a large turnout in an election their candidates will lose. There are more "other that right" voters out there to really put this country on a progressive path if citizens showed up and cast a ballot every chance they are given.
The rights long game is to discourage turnout, registration and the wrong election result in their mind. While in power they fully intend to disenfranchise as many "other than right" voters as possible. Another tactic is to simply give the political process and media coverage of it a dirty, bad, confused image thereby turning people off from exercising their civic duty and casting a ballot.

Long story short, don't get sucked into the rhetoric and make sure as many people who can vote do vote at election time.
And quit micromanaging the President.

[vanbean]

7. Not only is he profoundly wrong, he is an intellectual coward.

He couldn't even admit to what he wrote when looking down the gun barrel Thom had pointed at him.

[Althaia]

8. He's never done productive work, ever.

He's a pig in the trough of conservative think tanks. His biography, from one con think tank, Capital Research Center: http://www.capitalresearch.org/about/bios.html

Matthew Vadum, Senior Editor
Veteran journalist Matthew Vadum edits Organization Trends and Foundation Watch. He previously worked in the Washington bureau of The Bond Buyer newspaper. While a reporter for the Central Penn Business Journal in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he won an award for outstanding legal journalism from the Pennsylvania Bar Association for an article that focused on employment law. He holds an M.A. in American Studies from Georgetown University. An expert on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Vadum's book, "Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers," was published by WND Books in May 2011. His research was cited by Michelle Malkin in her New York Times bestseller, "Culture of Corruption." Malkin credits Vadum with being one of two people in the nation with the "foresight and insight in reporting on the story when no one else would."