A Few Links to Dispel Conservative Myths Part Sixteen: Election Integrity and Vote by Mail

The Washington Post reported last month that President Trump made 18,000 false or misleading claims through his first 39 months in office. About one-fifth of those were made on Twitter, his favorite social media platform. And those 18,000 don't even include lies he told during his 2016 campaign, meaning that list is missing such gems as, Mexico is forcing its criminal population over the border into the US, and climate change is a hoax created by China.

But today, May 26, was a day for an amazing precedent. From the Washington Post, "Twitter on Tuesday slapped a fact-check label on President Trump’s tweets for the first time, a response to long-standing criticism that the company is too hands-off when it comes to policing misinformation and falsehoods from world leaders."

And the substance of that too-false-for-Twitter tweet? Myths about mail-in election ballots: "There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone.........living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!"

In a number of ways, Donald Trump can be characterized as a reactionary Republican. One definition of a reactionary is, "a politician or political philosopher who wants to reverse political changes and seeks to restore society to a state believed to have existed before." That one fits Trump to a "T". His "Make America Great Again" slogan roughly translates to, "Make America like the 1950s, when brown people were few and seldom seen, and coal plants and cars spewed pollution as much as they pleased."

Another definition of reactionary: One who is opposed to change. And boy oh boy is Trump opposed to anything that would make it easier for citizens to vote. Two reasons for this. First, it's become a tenet of Republican orthodoxy that they should make it as difficult as possible for everyone to vote, given that restrictions such as requiring a photo ID at polling places usually place a heavier burden on Democrats than it does Republicans. Second, Trump would like the public to believe that he didn't really lose the popular vote in 2016 to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes. No no, the election was stolen by illegal ballots. So let's get going with,

Part Sixteen. Election Integrity and Vote by Mail
Myth: "In addition to winning the electoral college in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." - Donald Trump, November, 2016
Fact: Fact-checking organizations have found zero evidence to back Trump's claim. Even conservative sources that have sometimes suggested voter fraud among Democrats have quietly let this claim molder without attempting to support it. Trump tried to gin up the claim himself through the creation of a disastrous "Commission on Election Integrity" headed by former Kansas Secretary of State Chris Kobach. Mr. Kobach failed miserably in his attempts to identify any voter fraud at all before limping home to Kansas, where, (from Mark Joseph Stern of slate.com) "a federal judge fined Kobach $1,000 in June (2017) for making "patently misleading representations to the court" about a document he’d taken to his initial meeting with Trump, one that proposed eviscerating a federal voting rights law."

Myth: A shift to making voting easier would mean "you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again." - Donald Trump, appearing on Fox News
Fact: From Michael Sozan of The Center for American Progress, "Trump has caved to fears that expanding vote-by-mail options would hurt Republicans’ election chances. Not only is it dangerous for Trump to continue making life-or-death decisions based on politics, but his fears are also misplaced. Researchers have found that voting by mail does not meaningfully benefit either major political party. Recent history bears this out, as Republicans have regularly won elections in states that have moved almost completely to voting by mail."
Also, from John Whitesides and Julia Harte of Reuters, "Trevor Potter, a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission who founded the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center, said Trump’s reaction was puzzling since Republicans often do well in mail-in balloting. "Polls show older Americans, those thought to be most vulnerable to the virus, are more likely to support President Trump than other voters," Potter said, adding conservative Utah is one of five states that has gone to all-mail voting with little sign of fraud."

Myth: "Democrats continue to use this pandemic as a ploy to implement their partisan election agenda, and Governor Newsom's executive order is the latest direct assault on the integrity of our elections."  - RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, in a recent reaction to California Governor Gavin Newsom's announcement that the state would be mailing absentee ballots to all voters ahead of the 2020 general election, a move that was made in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
-And- "The United States cannot have all Mail In Ballots," "It will be the greatest Rigged Election in history. "People grab them from mailboxes, print thousands of forgeries and 'force' people to sign. Also, forge names. Some absentee OK, when necessary. Trying to use Covid for this Scam!"  - Donald Trump on Twitter, on the push for mail-in ballots as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. 
Fact: From Abby Phillip of CNN: "There is no evidence to support the President's claim that "thousands" of forgeries are linked to vote-by-mail or that there is widespread evidence of people being coerced to sign absentee ballots." "Studies have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud as a result of in-person or mail-in voting."
The Brennan Center for Justice notes that none of the five states that conduct their elections primarily by mail have had any voter fraud scandals since making that change. 
The Center for American Progress also notes, "Since 2000, approximately 250 million votes have been cast via mailed ballots in all 50 states combined. In 2018, more than 31 million Americans, nearly 26 percent of election participants, voted by mail. In the 2016 presidential election, 23 percent of Americans voted by mail. Moreover, military personnel serving overseas rely on vote-by-mail options, with hundreds of thousands casting their ballots by mail in recent elections." The President's statements, "are particularly ironic given that Trump himself requested a mail-in ballot for Florida’s Republican primary in March 2020 and has voted absentee by mail in previous elections. Similarly, Vice President Mike Pence and several Cabinet secretaries, as well as Trump’s family members, have voted by mail."

Myth: "And you do have cases of fraudulent ballots where they actually print them and they give them to people to sign, maybe the same person signs them with different writing, different pens. I don’t know. It’s a lot of things can happen." - Donald Trump, in a recent interview after he threatened "hold up" federal funding to Michigan and Nevada in response to those states’ plans to increase voting by mail to reduce the public’s exposure to the coronavirus.
Fact: From voteathome.org: "every return ballot envelope is signed by the voter, and each signature is validated based on official signatures already on file–e.g. the voter’s registration document, prior election ballot envelopes, motor vehicle transactions, etc."

Myth: Former President Jimmy Carter believes that mail-in voting is a source of potential voter fraud.
Fact: Carter was part of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, which expressed this concern in 2005. President Carter now says that today's safeguards mean potential voter fraud is no longer a concern, and he supports making mail-in voting a nationwide option this year.

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In conclusion, a recent Fox News poll found that 63 percent of respondents - including a majority of independents and Democrats as well as 42 percent of Republicans - favor allowing all Americans to vote by mail ahead of the November election. Let's hope that nationwide vote by mail becomes a reality.

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Evangelical Christians Love Trump Because He's Going to Bring About the Rapture

Yes, you read that right. Many evangelical Christians believe that President Trump is just the man to trigger Armageddon and bring about Jesus Christ's return to Earth. Here's how it's supposed to work:

From Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones, the whole idea is,

"based on the war of Gog and Magog, a biblical conflict prophesied in the Book of Ezekiel. In the Bible, Gog is the leader of Magog, a "place in the far north” that many evangelicals believe is Russia. According to Ezekiel’s prophecy, Gog will join with Persia—now Iran—and other Arab nations to attack a peaceful Israel "like a cloud that covers the land.""

These folks believe that, "this battle would bring on the Rapture, the End Times event when God spirits away the good Christians to heaven before unleashing plagues, sickness, and other horrors on the unbelievers remaining on Earth. Meanwhile, the Antichrist reigns supreme."

Furthermore, in recent years, these believers, "have seen any number of Middle East conflagrations as fulfilling Ezekiel’s prophecy, notably the US invasion of Iraq and the war in Syria. Gog and Magog took on fresh relevance earlier this month, when the Trump administration assassinated Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force. On many levels, President Donald Trump’s self-created crisis in Iran seems to have no relationship to any sort of coherent foreign policy or geopolitical plan for the future. The assassination has yielded few if any tangible rewards for the US. But there is an eager constituency for Trump’s improvised policy toward the Middle East and Iran in particular: the evangelical Christians who see it as a means of ushering in the return of Christ."

So to summarize:
1. The Bible describes events that will trigger Christ's return to Earth.
2. These folks believe in being proactive: let's make those trigger events happen!
3. That means they've got to get Israel and Iran to go to war.
4. So one way or the other, they've got to get somebody, perhaps the United States, to so antagonize Iran that war becomes unavoidable, and,
5. At the same time, provide ardent support for the most belligerent, hard-line leaders of Israel. (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will do very nicely, thank you.)

A little history. The biggest proponent of the program described above is televangelist John Hagee. In 2006, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone "joined" Hagee's Cornerstone Church to find out what they were up to:

"I chose Hagee because of his belief in the end of the world, and for the remarkable political influence he enjoys as a wealthy televangelist whose ministries are beamed into millions of homes each week. The drawling Texan with the kindly smile is one of America's chief pitchmen for "Christian Zionism," which in simple terms means he is a Christian who believes that the U.S. government should support the state of Israel.

In Hagee's view, supporting Israel will bring about the final battle at Armageddon, with satanic armies descending from the north (Gog and Magog in Revelations, Russia and Iran to Hagee) and God's army fighting under the banner of a resurrected Israeli state. Of course, Hagee's vision of this battle involves an Israel that has converted to Christianity, which one would think would be problematic for the Jews currently living in that country. But no: The Israelis love John Hagee. Benjamin Netanyahu once spoke at his church, and Hagee was even a keynote speaker at a conference for AIPAC, the chief Israeli lobby in Washington."

Fast forward to 2019: Big surprise, the Trump administration loves Hagee and his organization. From Jack Jenkins of National Catholic Reporter:

"Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo both addressed a Christian pro-Israel group July 8, lifting up the U.S. ally as a bastion of inclusivity and railing against Iran.

Pence and Pompeo delivered their remarks at the annual summit of Christians United for Israel, a conservative Christian organization led by the Rev. John Hagee, which claims more than 6 million members."

Because of course the Trump team would show no hesitation to completely embrace a pastor who has stated his disbelief in climate change, and who has attacked Catholics, Muslims and (strangely enough) Jews, saying Jews are to blame for the Nazi Holocaust because they were disobedient to God.

And don't forget, according to "Christian Zionism", the Jewish people must convert to Christianity or they're all going to Hell! G'night folks!

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A Few Links to Dispel Conservative Myths Part Fifteen: Homelessness

Bad news for the homeless. From a December 9 article in Mother Jones by Will Peischel:

"(I)n November, Matthew Doherty, the Obama appointee who’d been in charge at the US Interagency Council on Homelessness since 2015, was forced to resign. This week the administration announced its pick for his successor was Robert Marbut, a former community college civics professor and San Antonio City Council member with a longtime side gig as a policy consultant on homelessness."

Peischel notes that Marbut considers the root causes of homelessness to be behavioral and quotes Marbut as saying, "Too often there are no consequences for negative behavior of [homeless] individuals,"  "which encourages them to continue a lifestyle of vagrancy without incentive to leave it."

"Homelessness is a choice." We've been hearing that said for a long time. Let's jump back to Reagan era, a time that pioneered much of the cruelty toward the impoverished that we see today. A few weeks before he end of his presidency, Ronald Reagan offered the press some remarks on homelessness characteristic of his callousness and cluelessness regarding the problems many Americans face.  From Steven V. Roberts of the New York Times, December 23, 1988:

"In an interview broadcast tonight, President Reagan dismissed the idea that his Administration bears any responsibility for the problem of homelessness and he said ''there are always going to be people'' who live in the streets by choice.

''They make it their own choice for staying out there,'' Mr. Reagan said in a farewell interview with David Brinkley of ABC News. ''There are shelters in virtually every city, and shelters here, and those people still prefer out there on the grates or the lawn to going into one of those shelters.''

As he has in the past, the President said that ''a large proportion'' of the homeless population is ''mentally impaired,'' and consists of people dismissed from institutions as a result of lawsuits brought by such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union. The President added that these former mental patients, once released, ''walked away from those institutions - they wanted freedom, but they walked out to where there was nothing for them.''

Mr. Reagan, who frequently insists that his policies have caused few economic hardships, repeated a suggestion he has made before that jobless workers are unemployed by their own choice. As evidence for his argument, he said there were ''hundreds of ads'' in every Sunday issue of The Washington Post, offering employment. ''That means there are employers looking for people to go to work,'' he said."

The above is a good representation of some of the older rhetorical nonsense in circulation regarding homelessness in America. For a more recent but equally distorted look at homelessness, here's an article on the pacific northwest's growing homelessness problem written by David Ross on Medium.com. For someone who describes himself as, "a former psychiatric social worker, homeless outreach case manager" Mr. Ross has some surprising views on the subject of homelessness.

"If I had a magic wand, I could make it cold, wet, and dark year round. That might help reduce the street population, sending them elsewhere, just like Mother Nature does," says Ross. (I must say, that is the strangest thing I've ever heard a social worker and advocate for the homeless say.) Mr. Ross claims we could, "immediately cut our street population by 50%".  His solution? Law enforcement.

"Wouldn’t community-imposed and severely unpleasant consequences also help deter squatters, trespassers, or "campers" who often commit property crime, vandalism, and theft to fund addictions?"

"The most common protest against increased enforcement is typically that street people with addictions or mental illness don’t belong in a cage. I agree. However, they don’t belong under a bridge, on the street, or in an alcove either. That only perpetrates more problems, including becoming victims themselves. When I was a psychiatric social worker, chronically homeless people were sometimes saved by getting prosecuted for a crime."

"They typically got diverted into treatment programs, but usually with conditions of release that had some teeth. It also dramatically increased compliance by "treatment resistant" people who did not want to end up going to jail. We desperately need more of that, as the current policies simply are not working."

OK, before I sift the myths out of what David Ross says above, let's assume that everything he says is true. Suppose every homeless person completed a "treatment program." Does this mean that this same person then becomes not homeless? Even assuming such a person can then find a job, they're likely to find housing in Washington state far out of reach.

German Lopez of Vox.com summarized some of the myths about the homeless in 2015 including those documented above. From that article:

Myth #1: Homeless people are lazy and don't want to work. About 44 percent of homeless people around the country did some paid work during the previous month, according to a comprehensive 1996 Urban Institute survey. A 2013 US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) study found 17 percent of homeless adults in families, who share different characteristics than homeless individuals, had paying jobs, and 55 percent had worked during the previous year.

Myth #2: Getting a job will keep someone out of homelessness. The National Low Income Housing Coalition found a full-time minimum wage worker would have to work between 69 and 174 hours a week, depending on the state, to pay for an "affordable" two-bedroom rental unit (the federal government defines affordable as 30 percent of a person's income). A full-time minimum wage worker couldn't afford a one- or two-bedroom apartment at Fair Market Rent, a standard set by the federal government, in any state.

Myth #3: Homelessness is long-term problem. The most common duration of homelessness is one or two days, according to University of Pennsylvania researcher Dennis Culhane. Nearly one in six homeless people were classified as chronically homeless — people with disabilities who have been homeless for a year or more, or experienced at least four episodes of homelessness in three years — by HUD's 2014 survey.

Myth #4: Homelessness is always related to mental illness. Serious mental illnesses are more prevalent among the homeless: About one in four sheltered homeless people suffered from a severe mental illness in 2010, compared to 5 percent of US adults, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). But city officials cited lack of affordable housing, unemployment, and poverty as the top three causes of homelessness in a 2014 survey from the US Conference of Mayors.

Myth #5: Most homeless people are addicted to drugs and alcohol. Roughly one-third of sheltered homeless adults had chronic substance use issues in 2010, according to the SAMHSA.

For similar observations on the subject, I recommend this FAQ & Myths from the Coalition for the Homeless and Myths and Questions About Homelessness from homelesshub.ca.

Let me close by addressing one other big myth about homelessness: The idea that shelters are always a viable alternative to living on the street. There are dozens of reasons why the homeless sometimes cannot go to shelters even when bed space is available. From Chris Walker of Westworld.com, people who can or will not go to shelters include:

All those who love their husband or wife and feel safer together than separated as shelters do to couples…
All those who work late nights and can’t get into a shelter…
All those who work nights and have no option to sleep in a shelter in the day...
All those who work early morning day labor and can’t get out of the shelter in time to work…
All those women who are traumatized by male staff in the bunk areas waking women to kick them out…
All those with pets or service animals who are rejected from shelters…
All those who can’t conform to regimented rules…
All those who can’t handle being ordered around and degraded by staff…
All those with insomnia who can’t watch TV or read but must be in bed with no cell phones...
All those who have stayed in a shelter program for ninety days with a promise of housing to no avail and given up on service providers…
All those who have been kicked out at 3 a.m. for no fault of their own because staff failed to sign them in or enter their chores in the records…
All those who need food in the night and fear being kicked out for keeping food with them in bed against the rules…
All those who don’t want to sleep with bedbugs...
All those suffering a drug addiction that can’t pass a urine analysis to stay in the shelters…
All those don’t make it in the lottery to get a bed…
All those who can’t get down on the floor to sleep on a mat…
All those with more than two bags of belongings who either go into the shelter and lose their property, or stay outside to keep their property...
All those trans-gender folks who have been abused in a shelter or forced to strip to prove their sex…
All those who want their time back from waiting in lines for early admission hours to get into a shelter…
All those who don’t want to be preached to by shelter providers…
All those with mental health struggles who can’t handle being around hundreds of people in a tight space…
All those released from the hospital at 1 a.m. onto the streets…
All those physically unable to move about when police ask them...
All those who feel safer staying outside with friends than in a building with strangers…
All those who feel safer or happier staying by themselves on the streets than with hundreds of people in a shelter…
All those who prefer the dignity of a tent to the warehousing and dehumanizing treatment of a shelter…
All those who want control of their own life and choices…

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