Do you still support it? Are you willing to say you were wrong, or at least that you cannot support it and are withdrawing it?
Or are we going with the “stop supporting it, stop advancing it, but never acknowledge error, and if Bricker insists, someone will tell him that no one is responsible for commenting on it, and it’s just a little weaseling, so what’s the problem?” approach? So far, in recent memory, it can join elucidator’s The Washington Times made something completely up, because they are owned by right wing owners and I can’t find it elsewhere and Trinopus’ Bricker has a terrible command of the English language and can’t write clearly.
Say it, let people read it, and then just stop addressing it. Nice.
As this PDF shows, discretionary spending for the VA has increased every year for the past ten years. And the mandatory spending is not subject to annual cuts; it’s computed by a statutory formula.
No such thing clearly refers to not offering IDs on the weekends. Now I’m willing to grant, that due to the manifest stupidity that GOP apologia has driven you to, maybe you fumble footed it, and meant what you say above. But you’re such a reflexive disingenuous liar, who’s to say?
I don’t admit I’ve made an error, because it’s your stupid comment. In English, up above.
That said, this is a tangent, and only a minor issue when it comes to the meat of the story, how utterly your parents failed to instill a moral code in you, and others of your ilk.
Did I really need to stipulate spending per capita and relative to private-sector health costs? Or were you smart enough to infer that’s the intended meaning, but still happy to pick any nit you can?
I’ll stipulate that you may be more open-minded and intelligent than most right-wingers. This just makes your stance on some issues, e.g. your confusion about SocSec privatisation, more of a mystery.
But the topic of the thread is deliberate suppression of legitimate votes. Discussion of party differences may be a digression since I suppose you’d gleefully suppress GOP votes were you a Democrat.
… Or are you just going to fall back on “we’re here to debate a hypothetical good-spirited voter ID program, however impossible in today’s climate, to address America’s tiniest little ‘problem.’ That problem is hugely dwarfed by malicious vote suppression but is what I, Bricker, want to talk about.”
Well, yes, you did need to stipulate that. When you say there’s been a cut in funding, and I show that funding has increased, that seems to rebut your plain words and the plain context in which they were given, so yes, that clarification would be necessary.
So now I’d sure like to see a cite that spending has decreased per capita (with of course the ‘capita’ in this case being the VA’s customer population needing treatment). I don’t dispute that the VA provides care at better cost than the private care analogues.
The thread can of course debate whatever aspects of voting arise. But my defense is limited to the issue of Voter ID. You seem to be saying it’s unfair of me not to defend cutting voting hours or an ethnic name-based voter roll purge.
But I don’t support those programs. Why should I defend them?
Are you talking about this one:
“If it were the Democrats proposing nation ID, he’d write 1000 posts in opposition.”?
If so, I think he’s partially wrong, but maybe also partially right. I can certainly imagine that if the whole huge situation were reversed, and there were a huge thread entitled “I Pit the ID-demanding Democratic vote-suppressors”, you would look at a complex situation, find aspects of that situation in which your party and logical loyalties lined up, and argued vociferously about them. So if in the real world you are saying “(sure I opposed the voting hours reduction) BUT THE VOTER ID LAWS ARE LEGAL AND HAVE A RATIONAL BASIS AND WERE PASSED BY A LEGITIMATE ELECTED AUTHORITY”, you might instead be saying “(I have no problem with the voter ID laws) BUT THESE VOTING HOUR REDUCTIONS ARE BAD”. I suppose you might call that a double-standard-of-emphasis as opposed to a double-standard-of-judgment. (And I don’t think it’s in and of itself a particularly bad thing, and certainly not an uncommon thing.)
Fundamentally, I don’t think hypocrisy/double standards are a black-and-white issue, they’re a bell curve. Way over on one side you have some hypothetical person who literally says bribery is fine when his party does it. Way over on the other side you have some kind of emotionless Vulcan. But even if you’re further out on that side of the bell curve than most (and I definitely agree that are times when you criticize the R side and support the D side of an issue), you’re not either superhumanly so, nor uniquely so.
The only thing that might come close is that it’s true I rarely post as often when arguing in favor of a liberal position. But that’s not a lack of conviction or interest in pushing the point: it’s because on the SDMB, there’s usually no shortage of additional posters also weighing in on the same side. My volume of posts on issues supporting the GOP arises from the fact that I’m virtually always in a solo or vastly outnumbered position, arguing simultaneously against many interlocutors.
To illustrate this point, look at the number of posts I typically make in gun control threads. Here’s an issue about which I certainly feel strongly – I’m a textualist and a Lifetime NRA member. Yet you’ll not find that “1,000 post” phenomenon from me, because on the issue of guns, the SDMB is much more close to being balanced and there is seldom a shortage of other people to present and defend argument.
So, no – I still reject that characterization. And if you think it’s true, surely there ought to be some example of it in fourteen years of posting.
Not about you. About the minor heroes of democracy, the poor shmuck who fights for equality one vote a time, who stands for hours simply to exercise his right. Its about that self-same poor shmuck who reads in the paper about how the Republicans are deliberately attempting, and somewhat succeeding, in putting extra hassles and roadblocks in his path. What about his “voter confidence”? Where is your forthright defense of him?
Go tell him about “valid neutral justifications”, tell him about how its only just “some” Republicans who are bent on malign intent. Perhaps he will be impressed, perhaps he will clap you gladly on the shoulder for bringing him this splendid news. Perhaps he will be pleased and thrilled to take on this extra burden for the good of the Republicans…good of the Republic, sorry, another slip of the keyboard.
Examples of what, precisely? A thread in which you made thousands of posts defending the R side of a complex issue in which in other parts of that issue you actually disagree with the R side? That’s this very thread we’re posting in right now.
Your level of defensiveness indicates that you think I’m accusing you of something that needs defending from, which (at least in this case) I’m not. All I’m saying is that I think your claim in post 4733 is overbroad.
Actually, upon rereading 4733, I now see that the capitalized NEVER is specifically referring to " I can point to plenty of examples from people here who have switched positions based on who benefits: filibusters, for example.". And yes, I certainly don’t think that you’re someone who “switches positions” based on who benefits (which is laudatory, although hardly unique). I had initially read the NEVER as referring to the general idea of posting or not posting based on your level of support for a position, which, based on post 4748, is not what you were saying.
But now I’ve totally lost track of what I’m saying.
I’ve got to point out that the very first page of this cite states that only 7 out of 1,531 investigations and 0 out of 38 convictions were for voter impersonation, which would have been prevented by voter ID laws. 77% of reported investigations and all of the 38 cited convictions were for felon voting or registration, which voter ID would not prevent.
Several times prior to this post, in this thread, I have said some variant of the following:
Voter ID does help prevent felon voting. A problem with actually convicting an improper voter is proof. I mentioned the case of Ramon Cue to illustrate this problem. Cue was registered to vote even though he wasnn’t a US citizen. He voted at elast once, in 1996. But without voter ID, it’s difficult to prove he was actually the person that voted. Cue claims he doesn’t remember ever voting, but also says he’s a schizophrenic. How can the prosecution put forward a legally sufficient case for conviction?
Did you read any of the prior posts in which I mention Cue, or the issue of Voter ID making it possible to convict improper voters?
Even if you didn’t, do you now acknowledge what I’ve said?
What? He has one?! Well, that changes everything, doesn’t it? That means that voter id is absitively and posolutely imperative and crucial! The lesser citizens will simply have to learn to suck it up, for the good of the country!
Line forms on the right to offer groveling apologies to Bricker!
Well, Bricker has cited the same newspaper article mentioning Ramon Cue at least three times, I think. There’s no follow-up material I’m aware of that Cue was indicted, let alone convicted, yet now Bricker is assuming Cue did, in fact, vote illegally.
He ridiculed my one-off cite about a woman who was having trouble getting the necessary ID to vote, implied I was a liar for even daring to present it.
And this man is still at large? Clearly, we should refuse to count Florida votes until they can offer us proper voter confidence! Nuke it from orbit, only way to be sure!
OK, that’s a bit extreme, maybe we should just harass, hassle and otherwise impede a whole buttload of people who had nothing to do with it. There, problem solved. You’re welcome.
I’m not sure what voter ID could have done in this case, assuming he actually was (incorrectly) registered to vote. Are you envisioning a vetting process to get the IDs that checks citizenship and felony records? If so, how confident are you that only non-voters will be stopped?
I admit curiosity about the nature and quality of these voting records. It’s not like Florida has a sterling reputation for accuracy.
For what it’s worth, in your cite Cue denies ever voting.
Sure. And that’s all he has to do: deny it. The other guy in the story, Neville M. Walters, is shown on voting records to have voted seven times, and he’s not a citizen either. But with no Voter ID in place, all he has to do is deny it.
Voter ID means he has a more uphill battle. It means that the poll worker checked his picture against a picture on an ID. It means that at a trial, the prosecution is allowed to show the poll worker the ID and ask if that refreshes his or her recollection of the accused being there and voting. And it means that the prosecution has a legally sufficient case for conviction.