John Fund is an evil, unrepentant liar who despises democracy and the very American values that it represents. Other than that, he’s swell.
At left is the Wall Street Journal’s editorialist/propagandist, lying to America on Friday night’s Real Time with Bill Maher. Actor and well-informed progressive Bradley Whitford deserves credit for attempting to call “bullshit” (literally) on Fund’s garbage, but it sure would be nice if Maher had someone on who could really speak to the insidious (and successful) GOP “voter fraud” scam meant for nothing more nor less than to keep legitimate voters from being able to cast a vote, as revealed more clearly than ever by the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal. Fund is one of the original architects, or at least a ponyboy for that despicable scam.
(Hint: I live about 7 minutes from where Real Time tapes each week, and would be happy to counter the previously-debunked horse manure that Fund was allowed to spread, virtually unchecked, last night.)
Important Note: Before you view the video, I should point out that Fund’s reference to the Baker/Carter Commission’s recommendation for Photo ID restrictions at the polls should be taken in context with the fact that that privately-empaneled commission was created by the same fraudsters who created the GOP’s American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) scam as we originally broke here and followed up here, and which RAW STORY subsequently busted wide open here.
As we all reported at the time, that Baker/Carter scam was meant to do little more than give “respectable and official blue-ribbon” credence to the Photo ID scam they were beginning to perpetrate back in its nascent stages. The scam was perpetrated by the same operatives who secretly created and ran the commission in the first place, in order that folks like Fund (who, naturally, was called to give testimony to this phony commission) could later cite some sort of official elder-statesmen blessing of their disenfranchising Photo ID conspiracy which they’ve been using to con an otherwise gullible media/electorate.
Here’s what a fuming John Conyers had to say about Fund’s Baker/Carter commission testimony as we reported it in April of 2005, not long after live-blogging the entire hearing:
The substance of the testimony alleging “voter fraud” was a fraud itself.
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At the outset, Mr. Fund laid bare the nasty, racial underbelly of these proposals. The right-wing has been long engaged in tactics to suppress minority votes, but rarely lets slip about such tactics, as Fund did today. In a discussion about provisional ballots, Mr. Fund said that Congress should allow precinct workers to determine whether a provisional ballot should count because they would know who “looks as if they belong in the neighborhood.” Wonder what he meant by that?
(Thanks to BRAD BLOG’s video ace, Alan Breslauer for the stomach churning video clip!)
Maher has at least one blind spot.
“…it sure would be nice if Maher had someone on who could really speak to the insidious (and successful) GOP “voter fraud” scam …”
I saw Bill Maher, and I was thinking this exact same thing. Whenever Maher has on a GOP propagandist, he has an actor and/or a dispshit Democrat who can’t put a coherant thought together, on the same panel. He also sits the propagandist right next to him, to be able to blurt out everyone else better…instead of having the propagandist all the way on the other side. If he has a loudmouth Republican on, they also always sit right next to him.
Controlling voter fraud with voter id cards.
If you repeat a lie often enough it eventually becomes the God’s honest truth – Rethug style.
The State of Texas has determined it very badly needs voter id cards issued to the states legal voters.
They took a poll and the public shares the same sentiments – a voter id card is needed to stop all the voting fraud.
The KKKarl Rove propaganda/disinformation system is working just as intended. Voter id cards needed to vote will likely give the Texas Rethug Party a 2 to 3 % advantage at the ballot box.
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(May 19, 2007 — 01:31 PM EDT // link)
Rick Hasen alerted me to this Houston Chronicle piece from the other day, about legislation in Texas that would — in the interest of preventing non-existent “voter fraud” — require that registered voters present photo IDs proving their citizenship before voting.
The measure is championed by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) and GOP lawmakers in Austin, who are using the same arguments heard in other states that have considered adding hurdles to participating in elections. Dewhurst has been relying on Mike Baselice, a prominent Republican pollster in Texas, who’s been helping bolster the party’s strategy.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014221.php
At least he didn’t have a washed up comedian embarrassing themselves (ahem…dana carvey) and ruining the show. I was thinking the same exact thing on Friday night…Fund was full of shit, and Maher is on the treadmill at that point. He’s not going to call a right-winger out on their bullshit too often anymore.
I’ll take an unbattered Fund-type every once in a while as long as there’s no more Carvey-types!
In fairness to Maher, I watched it closely after reading this post.
All the guests, as well as Maher, said Lund was not presenting the truth about the subject of voter fraud. Maher even quoted from the EAC draft report that was later bastardized and corrupted by EAC republicans.
If you want a classic case of denial, Lund is it.
Maher made the good point that the suppression of ethnic vote is what the Gonzales scandal is really about. The ironic thing is that he has to make that statement because white liberals in the press, just like on that show, don’t get forceful (or truthful) enough about the issue which has resulted in the successful rebranding of the issue as something else but a scandal about stealing the black and latino vote.
Because this argument is so easy to win and Maher and the other white liberals did so little to set the record straight, as enablers, they are almost as bad as Fund. It must be tough work being so complacent in such and easy to win argument about such an important topic.
One of the major BushCo proponents of voter id cards and (other Rovian ideas of) disenfranchising/suppression of Democratic voters is dragged into the spotlight. Meet another anti-American/anti-voting/anti-democracy – The Fascist Mr. Von Spakovsky.
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McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON – During four years as a Justice Department civil rights lawyer, Hans von Spakovsky went so far in a crusade against voter fraud as to warn of its dangers under a pseudonym in a law journal article.
Writing as “Publius,” von Spakovsky contended that every voter should be required to produce a photo-identification card and that there was “no evidence” that such restrictions burden minority voters disproportionately.
Now, amid a scandal over politicization of the Justice Department, Congress is beginning to examine allegations that von Spakovsky was a key player in a Republican campaign to hang onto power in Washington by suppressing the votes of minority voters.
“Mr. von Spakovsky was central to the administration’s pursuit of strategies that had the effect of suppressing the minority vote,” charged Joseph Rich, a former Justice Department voting rights chief who worked under him.
He and other former career department lawyers say that von Spakovsky steered the agency toward voting rights policies not seen before, pushing to curb minor instances of election fraud by imposing sweeping restrictions that would make it harder, not easier, for Democratic-leaning poor and minority voters to cast ballots.
In interviews, current and former federal officials and civil rights leaders told McClatchy Newspapers that von Spakovsky:
-Sped approval of tougher voter ID laws in Georgia and Arizona in 2005, joining decisions to override career lawyers who believed that Georgia’s law would restrict voting by poor blacks and who felt that more analysis was needed on the Arizona law’s impact on Native Americans and Latinos.
-Tried to influence the federal Election Assistance Commission’s research into the dimensions of voter fraud nationally and the impact of restrictive voter ID laws – research that could undermine a vote-suppression agenda.
-Allegedly engineered the ouster of the commission’s chairman, Paul DiGregorio, whom von Spakovsky considered insufficiently partisan.
Von Spakovsky, who declined to comment on these allegations, is among more than a dozen present and former Justice Department officials drawing congressional scrutiny over the administration’s alleged use of the nation’s chief law enforcement agency for partisan purposes.
More info at,
Click link
Fund is ugly in mind, body and spirit. He is dragging us all down and is ruining my television.