Eric, I have actually watched all of the videos posted here from previous articles. Their beef is actually with the local election boards and county commissioners. It is up to those people to provide enough voting machines and places for people to vote. Like I said before, the long lines and problems are in Democratic controlled counties, where the people in charge refuse to spend tax money on what they are supposed to run.

The 2000 election is an example. The problems that came up in the state of Florida were in Democratic controlled counties, using voting machines that were completely outdated, and caused an error rate over nearly 20%. Compare that to other counties of same size run by Republicans, who took the responsibility seriously, and updated all of their voting machines, which reduced the error rate to less than 1%. You also didn’t have the long lines since the new machines were easier to follow on the ballots and easier to process.

I know all this because I worked at both the county level and state level here in my state. The only counties that refused to update to the new systems were heavily Democratic controlled counties with large populations. Our system of registration is computerized with each county tied to all the others. When someone moves and registers at a new county, they are automatically taken off the roles in the old county. This keeps the voter rolls clean of duplicates. The state had to sue the two counties that refused to join with the others, to get them hooked up and be able to clean their voter rolls of duplicates. We knew why they had refused, in that they were known for a lot of voter fraud. They would have much higher voter participation percentage than the rest of the state, during most of the elections.

I have talked to some of the low end employees in these counties, and they acknowledged or had heard of voter fraud, mostly through absentee ballots, but were afraid to come out publicly.

Your claim of the poor having to jump through hoops to prove their citizenship is no more valid than the requirements needed for a driver’s license. I also don’t think early voting is a good thing. There is too much that happens in those last days that might change someone’s mind about a candidate. If people have a valid reason why they can’t make it to the polls on the normal day, they they have the option to apply for an absentee ballot. At the county level, I was part of making sure that rest homes and other senior citizen locations knew that if anyone there that couldn’t get out, that all they had to do is set up a call from the senior to us and we’d mail out the application and then the ballot later after the app was returned by mail.

As far as college students, I’ll have to explain not only voter registration, but other laws that apply. College students that are still dependents on their parents, by law, usually need to have their primary residence at their parents home. This is in tax law. There is also residency law, where county and state law dictate that you must declare one residency as primary for tax purposes. It also applies for voter registration. I can’t say for all states, but for most like mine, you can only register at your primary or permanent home location. To try and register at one county and claim another county as your permanent home, would call into question all of the above that I just went through. College ID’s also do not include an address because of the temp nature of the students housing nature. Thus why the reason why Student ID’s are not valid for voter registration.

Of all the points you made, I can see those who are very elderly having problems with the birth certificate issue. That is one point I would recommend all law makers to put in some alternatives for proof that are valid. People who have become citizens legally, would not having this problem, as they already went through the harsh process with paperwork requirements.

I do have to take exception with George Gilbert. Someone who complains about the laws making it harder for minorities to vote, when he himself has prevented those in the military from voting, and complaining about the cost of processing military requests. Oh you didn’t know that he disenfranchised the military? Then read here:http://www.civitasreview.com/elections-campaigns/did-you-hear-the-one-about/

Perhaps a few interviews of County Clerks from Republican districts would shed some light on this issue. I’m getting tired of the putdowns on the minorities and poor on this issue. It really is insulting.

PS: For Annabel. Why is it OK to have the right to vote for people that will by force of law steal your earnings to give to others, while pushing to deny or abridge the right of self defense of our 2nd amendment right?

Many of the questions are strait forward, although any posted comments to the questions show some bias of different levels. Having listened to the radio show, I see that much of Lee’s opinions aren’t based on facts or even theories.

For example, it’s been found out that oil and other carbon liquids (natural gas) deep in the ground is not from fossils, but from a combination of natural molecules and mantel movement. This was found out when some old wells had refilled. So more research went into why that happened and that is how a new theory came up that replaced the fossil fuel theory.

That is just one of many that Lee needs to update himself on. I would also recommend Lee remove the link to the “5 biggest lies in Paul Ryan’s RNC speech” which claims one thing is said, the quote says something else, and the response says either something else or says the original claim. It’s a rather blatant political piece that belies Lee trying to act as factual.

Eric, I wish you would get someone who was an actual county clerk who runs elections and knows the laws inside and out, and why there are certain laws for voting. I’ve worked as a deputy county clerk, running elections for all levels in my county. There are reasons why you need certain laws on voting, such as a cut off for registration before an election. There is also a reason for the student law change, which has to do with residency laws.

You can see why I’m tired of listening to folks who really don’t understand the reasoning behind certain voting laws. I do wish there was a national standard of voting laws that states should follow instead of leaving it up to all the states. Here in Missouri, we have a rather simple registration and voting system that was set up by the SoS, but is run by all the counties. As people move to another county and register, the new clerk will add the person there, and the system automatically deletes them from the old county. This keeps the voter rolls much cleaner. I am hoping that they integrate coroners with a reporting system as well, so those that died will be removed from the rolls.

That is a major problem in North Carolina. I heard there were several hundred people over the age of 100 in NC. So I decided to check more into it, calling up and having them do an age report and sending it to me for a small fee. I did this for the larger population areas, and found not hundreds, but many thousands who were over 100. My guess is that most had already passed on, but never taken off the rolls. From there I’m betting that through absentee voting, others use these names to vote.

If you like to know more on other laws, especially the ones proposed in NC, let me know and I can explain why certain laws are needed.

Denise: The problem with the current climate models being used at the UN’s IPCC, do not include reactions of the oceans, or variations of sun output, cloud cover, cosmic rays (found to be seeds for cloud formation), and many other variations such as plant feedback when CO2 increases, plant growth also increases taking in more CO2.

The theory is that CO2 has a much higher driver of temps than many other types of green house gases. Now the IPCC is having to rethink this theory and models, since the temps are not changing like the models say it should be.

As far as the polar ice caps, they actually have been remarkably stable as the charts on this page show: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/

And yes I do know that this AGW theory is based on long periods of time, but even their own predictive charts are not lining up with actual data. It’s why I included a link to a comprehensive review of what all has been going on, and the fraud that is going on in the IPCC.

I know many have complained that the anti-AGW folks are being funding by large amounts of money from oil and other fossil fuel corporations. The few million that is funded, pails in comparison to the 100’s of billions spent to get favorable AGW reports. I don’t care who you are in that, if you are being funding by a large amount of money and expected to get a certain result, you will do what you have to, to get it, so your funding continues.

It is why so many of the scientists who write for the IPCC are a small circular group funded by the same governments pushing AGW, so they have an excuse to tax and regulate. The other half of all this are people’s fears that the world will burn up. Well when the earth had over 2000 PPM CO2, the earth did have a warm climate, and even warm polar caps with vegetation. Would that be so bad? Or does everyone here rather stay frosty as it is, as we are actually still coming out of the last little ice age?

I really do encourage everyone to real the link I originally posted.

I’m still waiting for some folks here who actually know what they are talking about when it comes to taxation to pipe up.

For example, when you tax a business on it’s profits, do you think the business will just say ok, and not add that expense to the product or service they sell to us? Every time someone suggests raising taxes on businesses, that they really are just taxing themselves, only it’s stealthy.

When you pay a local sales tax to a business, who’s actually paying that tax to the local government? See what I mean?

Any kind of tax is open to so called loopholes, once politicians are looking for “fairness” which is really just code for progressive pandering. The tax code back in the 50’s and 60’s high tax rates on earned income, but there were so many “loopholes” that few actually paid those rates. Those loopholes though caused a lot of malinvestment, where much of the money the rich successful people had didn’t make it to the rest.

I have found that a single retail sales tax replacing all the rest is the best kind that has the least amount of damage to all income levels. It is currently known as the Fair Tax. This would mean everyone would get their full income. All of the taxes we have through all the means of productions would no longer be there, making things much cheaper, to which then retail items would have the sales tax. Used items do not.

One last thing. Currently businesses pay quite a bit of taxes, and resources they do use they pay for, contrary to what Cameron said. Also the $3.2 billion refund that GE got was actually an adjustment to taxes paid for the previous 3 years, which happens with such a big company. So many of the claims made here I looked up and found to not be right or out of context which explains them.

Thanks for the response Jeanene. I’m still confused though. Are you saying there is a group that is trying to restrict women on spending their own money on medical science and technology? I’m guessing you are referring to abortion and birth control? I’m not sure why I as a tax payer would need to pay for some woman to get birth control. I’d rather do that personally for someone I’m at least dating if I were still a young person.

As far as abortion, I would rather government stay out of it all together. No funding, no for or against restrictions. Is that something we can agree on? Doesn’t that simplify things on the issue?

As far as this “standard of sovereignty”. Each person is sovereign in their own rights, but still those rights do not extend to demanding someone else’s labor or money without first establishing a free trade between them. Why does there have to be a different standard? Isn’t there supposed to be equal protection under the law? Equal opportunity is not the same as equal outcome.

As far as taxes, the burden has actually shifted towards the rich much more than it used to be. Up until the 90’s, lower income percentiles have paid more of a percentage of total revenues to the federal government than they do now. Once EIC and other tax credits were introduced, from the late 90’s to the GWB years, the bottom 50% of those making any income dropped off of paying any tax, including payroll. The top 25% is now basically supporting the rest.

Back when tax rates were up around the 90% rate, extremely few paid even close to that if at all. They didn’t reinvest that money back into business, they just had the company convert their personal income into stocks and bonds before they got paid. The only thing those high tax rates did was to distort what people did to get paid and what they went into.

Just ask yourself, would you be willing to pay yourself earned income from a wealthy business you owned if the tax rate was 25%? What about 90%? Why would the answer be different between the two if 90% is “just”? Why is it different when it’s your own hard earned money, compared to someone else you don’t know? That is where I see the greed and envy come in.

I find it fascinating to see the reactions on here to someone who talks about freedom and liberty for all. What is so difficult about understand what that means, and entails?

@darrell Ross: Please reread the second paragraph of my first post. Then search on Switzerland budget amendment. You will see the solution to our budget problems in your search. That is what is good for America. Of course I could write a novel on many solutions that would actually work to fix the problems we face in America, but many here don’t want to hear the rather simple answers.

@duge Butler: I have previously been corrected in the terms of Democrat and democratic and which to use when referring to policies of. The correct term to use is “Democrat”, as in possessive in describing the policies of such party. You say that the programs of Democrats such as Social Security, Medicare, TANF, etc have been good for America. Really? The tax for both SS and Medicare are regressive. Both programs, especially Medicare and including Medicaid are bankrupting the federal and state governments. In order to keep them from going under, according to the CBO, we will have to raise tax rates on everyone, raise the eligibility age, and lower the yearly increases.

We had to “fix” such programs back in 1983 because SS and Medicare were going broke back then as well. There were huge regressive tax increases back then, only to be spent by drunken Democrat sailors, at least until Republicans took over in 1994. Democrats then forget this part and say it was tax increases by Clinton that provided the surplus, when those surpluses didn’t hit until both tax cuts and spending restraint, along with a tech boom showed a balanced budget for a short time.

Clinton dropped off a recession and then 9/11 on top of that. Yet Bush had a better recovery from those two events than Obama has. The recovery under Obama was even worse than what FDR had during the Great Depression. Part of what the economy is suffering from is from policies enacted and pushed during the early Clinton years.

“New Study by the respected National Bureau of Economic Research Finds Democrats Fully to Blame for Subprime Mortgage Crisis that Caused 2008 Financial Disaster” Source: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/12/new-study-finds-democrats-fully-to-blame-for-subprime-mortgage-crisis-that-caused-financial-collapse/

Lastly you claim that TEA party Republicans don’t want to compromise to get things done. Strange that Republicans have passed a budget ever since they got back into control in 2011. Yet the Democrat control US Senate hasn’t passed a corresponding budget since the middle of 2009, in order to start a negotiation as the budget control act passed by Democrats into law demands. Even Obama’s own proposed budget to the House did not receive one vote, from either side of the isle. Now the Senate’s budget has nothing but tax and spending increases that never balances.

I would suggest Duge, that you work to inform yourself with diligent research, as even I have found that even I have missed facts before which change what I thought to be true into what is reality. It is why I am even more a classic liberal, or better known as a libertarian than I used to be. Challenge yourself and what you think is true, and if you are honest in research and challenge, you’ll see what I have seen, a reality beyond politics.

I’m sorry Eric but this is a crock. You should read the House Bill, and see that it is to match the Federal Help America Vote Act requirements with Virginia law. This is not voter suppression, in fact it’s just the opposite. It is to make sure that fraud, which was caught in Virginia on film, does not disenfranchise minority votes.

Virginia did have election fraud, mostly through the absentee system. The following story is just such an example. http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2012/11/06/former_gop_official_alleges_fraud_i_was_told_id_already_voted_but_i_hadnt

Even Jim Moran’s son was caught on film explaining how to do voter fraud. I am very frustrated that Democrats want to keep the laws as lax as possible in order to keep rigging the system of voting. I would personally have people register with a thumb fingerprint, and set up a bio-login to the voting machine that would date and stamp a paper ballot to be used by the voter.

The problem of the long lines people saw in 2012 elections was mostly in the minority city districts. These are controlled by the county government, which in those areas are usually solidly democrat. To blame the voting machine problems on Republicans in that situation is completely wrong. The county government determines how many voting machines they will have and how many each district gets. From there they work with the SOS office of bureaucrats to see what contracted vendors are available to provide the voting equipment. That’s as far as it goes. So you see it’s Democrats in these places that are the problem, not Republicans.

I have worked at the county level as a deputy county clerk who handles the elections when they came up, so you see I have very thorough knowledge of the system. To say that Republicans are trying to disenfranchise (by conforming to federal standards no less) is a sad falsehood. Please read up and research before posting something like this again.

One note that Michael left out of his article on much of what Rush does say, and that is Rush is actually quoting liberal news outlets and their headlines. From there Rush gives his own opinion, in which most conservatives already agree with.

Rush gives more air time and audience to liberals than they have in their normal audience. It is to show how liberals think, or don’t think. I have tried to debate and discuss topics with liberals, but once they get past their talking points, they revert to name calling, dismissing of facts, slurs, and finally getting angry, demanding a shutdown of conversation.

A few facts that Michael seems to dismiss above. It’s true that the more capitalism and free markets there are, the less food shortages you have. Do liberals have morals, ethics and honesty? That is debatable, as sometimes liberals are honest in saying what they want to do. But leftists cannot be moral, honest or ethical since they only care about the ends, no matter what means it takes to get there. This means lying, committing criminal acts, and blaming others for the problems they have caused.

Also since when have liberals not wanted to take more and more from rich successful people in order to give to those who didn’t earn it? To move money from one person who earned it to someone who didn’t earn it, is theft in the simplest form.

In the end Rush IS right about the left, and complaints about it like this only serves to confirm such.

It’s nice to see someone here sit back, and engage their brain instead of their emotions on subjects like this. The key to any argument is that usually for most people, they are all trying to get to the same point, it’s just how do we get there that people differ on.

That is where I usually will look at history in detail and see how people tried different solutions to problems similar to today. It’s my way of living up to the old saying, if you don’t learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it.

Having looked at this issue of gun control, throughout history and around the world, shows that if people are determined to kill, they will do so by any means. The largest mass killings weren’t done by “assault rifles”, but by other means. The largest in recent US history, was enabled by …. box cutters, resulting in nearly 3000 murdered. Another was the Oklahoma federal bombing, with fertilizer and other house hold chemicals.

What many people don’t know is that on average, nearly two and a half million people each year use guns in a positive way to prevent violent crime from either happening to themselves or to others.

Even in the countryside where I live, a neighbor of mine saved his life when he defended himself in his house from meth heads who broke in. I say with certainty, because later on I found out from a deputy who is a friend of mine that the same meth heads had killed a woman in her house earlier. The deputy said she had called 911, but that the 911 operator had to listen in horror as the meth heads stabbed her to death. The deputies were about 30 minutes away, and arrived to find the woman dead and no real idea of who did it or which way they ran off to. Our neighbor was able to stop their killing spree by defending himself with a gun.

The people in the UK don’t have this ability to defend themselves, and are now suffering more violent crime, repeatedly, than in the US. Read the following for more detail: http://www.examiner.com/article/defenseless-british-citizens-are-attacked-their-own-homes-by-violent-burglars-every-30-minutes

One last point about the CT school shooting. CT has an assault weapon ban in place, along with many other restrictions proposed by folks here at CP. Many of the laws were broken by the shooter in this case, but that didn’t stop him from doing what he did. For those that then say we need even more restrictions and bans, just look at Chicago and Washington D.C. to see how that works out.

Do a contrast to the restrictions and the bans to see what kind of results you get: http://politicaloutcast.com/2012/07/the-most-pro-gun-low-crime-city-in-the-united-states/

History as you can see is replete with examples of what works and doesn’t work. It just takes courage to accept the facts when they conflict with what you believe.