Here's your chance to help end this racist assault on voting rights!

Martin Luther King, Jr. shaking hands with President Lyndon Johnson at the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. (Wikipedia)

Hey, Katalusis readers, how about this for racism in 2015? Alabama first required voters to present an ID in order to vote; then it closed 31 driver's license offices throughout the state. Now get this: "Every single county where African Americans constitute 75% or more of registered voters had its office closed. EVERY.SINGLE.ONE."

We don't have to put up with this outrageous example of racism and voter suppression. Here's your chance to act - check out this email from the DCCC and sign your name:

***Since we alerted you to Alabama’s outrageous voter suppression effort, you and 25,133 others have taken action! Thanks so much.

Please help us keep the pressure on by forwarding this email to 3 friends and asking them to sign: action.dccc.org/restore-the-voting-rights-act With your help, we’ll reach 100,000 signatures by midnight***

Since the Supreme Court eliminated critical voting rights protections two years ago, state legislatures have passed a torrent of laws designed to make it harder to vote.

But none of them have been quite as insidious as what is happening in Alabama.

Like many states, Alabama recently made voting harder by requiring voters to present an ID at the polls. But then, they went a step further, by closing 31 driver’s license offices throughout the state.

Every single county where African Americans constitute 75% or more of registered voters had its office closed. EVERY.SINGLE.ONE.

This overt voter suppression cannot be allowed to continue. Demand that Congress act now to restore the Voting Rights Act >>

Democrats in Congress have offered a new bill to restore the Voting Rights Act and prevent this kind of attack on our democracy from ever occurring.

In fact, states that repeatedly violate voting rights (Alabama included) would be required to submit any change to voting procedure to the federal government for approval.

Right now the bill has only one Republican co-sponsor. That’s unacceptable.

Tell Republicans in Congress to join Democrats and end the assault on voting rights >>
 

Thanks, DCCC

Losing the war on poverty?

Public domain photo.

It's not exactly breaking news: America, the richest nation in the world, has 46 million people living at a subsistence level income or less. Annie Lowery at the NY Times updates us 50 years after Lyndon Johnson launched the war on poverty:

WASHINGTON — To many Americans, the war on poverty declared 50 years ago by President Lyndon B. Johnson has largely failed. The poverty rate has fallen only to 15 percent from 19 percent in two generations, and 46 million Americans live in households where the government considers their income scarcely adequate. 

But looked at a different way, the federal government has succeeded in preventing the poverty rate from climbing far higher. There is broad consensus that the social welfare programs created since the New Deal have hugely improved living conditions for low-income Americans. At the same time, in recent decades, most of the gains from the private economy have gone to those at the top of the income ladder. 

Half a century after Mr. Johnson’s now-famed State of the Union address, the debate over the government’s role in creating opportunity and ending deprivation has flared anew, with inequality as acute as it was in the Roaring Twenties and the ranks of the poor and near-poor at record highs. Programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps are keeping millions of families afloat. Republicans have sought to cut both programs, an illustration of the intense disagreement between the two political parties over the best solutions for bringing down the poverty rate as quickly as possible, or eliminating it.

For poverty to decrease, “the low-wage labor market needs to improve,” James P. Ziliak of the University of Kentucky said. “We need strong economic growth with gains widely distributed. If the private labor market won’t step up to the plate, we’re going to have to strengthen programs to help these people get by and survive.”

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