Conservative Columnist: Registering Poor To Vote 'Like Handing Out Burglary Tools To Criminals'

[kpete]

Columnist: Registering Poor To Vote 'Like Handing Out Burglary Tools To Criminals'

Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum is just going to come right out and say it: registering the poor to vote is un-American and "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," Vadum, the author of a book published by World Net Daily that attacks the now-defunct community organizing group ACORN, writes in a column for the American Thinker.

"Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor," Vadum writes. "It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money. It's about raw so-called social justice. It's about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers."

Most conservative criticism of voter registration drives aimed at poor and minority communities has been under the guise of worries about voter fraud. Vadum's column is notable because he isn't just pretending to be worried about the nearly non-existent threat of in-person voter fraud -- he just doesn't think poor people should be voting.

(H/T Rick Hasen)
http://electionlawblog.org/?p=22531
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/09/columnist_registering_poor_to_vote_like_handing_out_burglary_tools_to_criminals.php?ref=fpa

[Blue_Tires]

1. Alt. headline: Conservative Columnist and Patriot Doesn't Know His Own Country's Constitution

[Democrats_win]

2. Wonder why he doesn't us the term poor PEOPLE?

You know....like "government of the PEOPLE!" All PEOPLE have the right to participate in the government. Especially a government that has done NOTHING for 30 years except make the crooked corporations richer and enslave the actual PEOPLE to the debt industry.

[dana_b]

3. it's "un-American" to get people to vote??!!

what Constitution has he been reading? I don't recall the section that said that only the well off were allowed to vote.

[izquierdista]

6. It's there

The free, male, over 21, property owner part, as it was originally written. As with most conservatives, he would rather forget a few amendments that expanded the number who could join his good ol' boy's club. Maybe he's OK with the 18 to 21 year olds, as long as they are white, male, and have a trust fund.

[dana_b]

8. yeah - you're right. We are including

the Amendments - silly us. Of course I am an unemployed woman so what do I know. :eyes:

[petronius]

4. "...a book published by World Net Daily..." - there's a phrase that inspires confidence!

:rofl:

[ThatPoetGuy]

5. "It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population

to destroy the country," he said.

And he's right.

Most of the wealthiest Americans are in finance. That means they're nonproductive. They create nothing, and are more likely to send jobs abroad than create them in America. They earn 345 million dollars a year and yet they're taxed at the same or lower rate than a dentist. They receive the vast majority of this country's benefits and pay a tiny percentage of its taxes.

He's right, it is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive rich and the inheritors of wealth who never worked a day in their lives. And that is the singular goal of today's right wing.

They are destroying this country -- destroying our air, our water, our land; destroying our job opportunities, our children's educations, our military capabilities and our intelligence system. They are Republicans and Libertarians. If we let them have their way, the US will be a third-world country within a generation.

[Doctor_J]

7. You'd think the president would jump on this

Call out this idiot and paint the entire republican party with his words. holding my breath...

[sinkingfeeling]

9. See my response in previous thread on this..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1861717

[tblue37]

10. He has it backwards. It is the super rich like the Kochs and Murdoch who

use the government as a tool to rob the rest of us blind!

[starroute]

11. And keep an eye on Vadum

He's been after ACORN since 2004. He invented the crazy conspiracy theories about Frances Fox Pliven that were picked up by Glenn Beck -- if you google around, you can find videos of Vadum espousing them on Beck's show and Beck acknowledging that he learned everything he knows from Vadum.

The Capital Research Center, which is Vadum's main base of operations, was founded in the 1980's by people with close ties to the Reagan administration and the Heritage Foundation and had the express purpose of "defunding the left" by digging out dirt on progressive organizations and thereby cutting off their federal funding.

CRC is still part of a cluster of groups associated with the Heritage Foundation that includes the American Legislative Exchange Council, the State Policy Network (an umbrella group for right-wing think-tanks and legal foundations), and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, whose Collegiate Network funded the right-wing college journals established by James O'Keefe and his associates.

Some elements of this group are merely conservative or libertarian, but others are deeply elitist or even overtly racist and give every appearance of longing to return to a neo-feudal system.

These people are nasty and dangerous and the left needs to be aware of the entire picture and not merely of some of its wackier manifestations.