The US regime will never fully abandon its slave-keeping ways until it has been 1) disarmed, 2) dismantled, 3) reconstructed with a constitutional government that respects its own rules and does not vote-suppress, red-line, commit crimes against humanity, or slavery.
That may seem like an extreme statement, but the US, in the 1960s, had military troops firing live ammunition at protestors, police storming and beating masses of protestors, internal deportations, and glibly and openly talks about vote suppression and the influence of money in politics as if those are normal things in a democracy. They are not normal things.
Yet, the US fought its famous civil war and, practically before the bodies had cooled, it was establishing “Jim Crow” – an organized, government-supported, racist program designed to maintain an agrarian under-class of laborers that had been politically disempowered to the point where working nearly for free was their only option. Sure, working for wages that are immediately “owed” to your share-cropper, or being a prison laborer, or subsisting on tips and public assistance – those aren’t chattel slavery – but they’re a set-up for a captive under-class. And, the US regime didn’t hesitate to bring in labor (to keep labor costs down during WWII) from Mexico; the “Bracero” program which rotated 5 million ‘migrant’ workers who were then expelled when the war ended. (The American Thank You) And then there were the Japanese-Americans who were interned in prison camps, but that casual description, no matter how horrible it is, hides a deeper wrong: they were economically pillaged, as well; they were forced to sell farms and businesses for basically nothing, or had their assets otherwise seized. Stories of the Braceros are stories of how the US Government itself acted to create a temporary economic underclass, to fill in for the long-established underclass that it had decided to send to fight for the superclass’ freedoms in Europe and the Pacific.
Right now there are prisoner’s strikes ongoing in the government’s privatized, for-profit prisons. Because prisoners are getting paid $4/hr (or less) in prison-run sweatshops, making cabinets for free people’s homes. [ipi]
This is a perversion. The capitalists spew propaganda about market fairness, but notice how they immediately glom onto the market advantage of having a captive labor pool? In a rational world, prison laborers would be paid more because they didn’t need housing, or to commute – they are cheaper even if they are fairly paid. But they are not fairly paid. Capitalism does not result in more efficient or fair markets – it results in more efficient corruption and unfairness; the disproportionality of profits requires that. Capitalism’s ideology, “never give a sucker an even break” means not having to negotiate fairly with prison labor.
It is the American Way. When America’s ruling elites fall into the same pattern over, and over, and over again, it can no longer be viewed as an unfortunate – or temporary – aberration of southern politics. When we gaze in horror at what the Republicans are enacting right now, it is, literally “Making America America Again” – it’s continuing what has been a centuries-long policy. Please let’s stop pretending this is anything new; we can’t be surprised.
Here are some lovely photos from 196771-75, by Bruce Jackson, who photographed life in Ramsey Prison Farm. The difference between today’s for-profit prisons and the prisons of the 60s? Well, the photos are in black and white. [Mother Jones]
Can you tell what year it is?
Another of America’s great lies is that its justice system’s purpose is to reform people. That’s nonsense: its purpose is to create a permanent underclass that has no power to negotiate for their labor because their “criminal past” will be used to deny them opportunity, or a chance to vote, or (oddly, because I thought that The Establishment was strongly in favor of lip-servicing gun rights) own a gun.
On one of the podcasts I listen to, someone said “the history of American slavery is the history of American Labor.” Let’s shorten that to: “The history of America is the history of Slavery.” Same as it ever was.
I’ve long thought that at the core of what was perverted into the Christian religion was the realization by the slaves and laborers of that time that freely breeding their own next generation of replacements was pretty dumb.
Why else do all the Abrahamic religions insist of breeding even when adherents can’t afford to raise large families while the priests all suck up to the rich and powerful? Cheap labor, of course! There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Here are some lovely photos from 1967…
1971-75, per the dated pics at Mother Jones.
Pierce R. Butler@#2:
1971-75, per the dated pics at Mother Jones.
Good catch; that was a brain fart on my part.
markr1957@#1:
Why else do all the Abrahamic religions insist of breeding even when adherents can’t afford to raise large families while the priests all suck up to the rich and powerful? Cheap labor, of course!
I’d say there’s certainly some of that; but I see religion as a technique of political/social control rather than a byproduct of other control systems. All that “render unto Caesar” and “divine right of kings” seems more about generalized control than specific control of labor.
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.” Colossians 3:22 circa.
Some things never change.
Not that I’ve seen. They do talk about “free” markets, by which they usually mean the ability for participants to do certain things within the market that usually make it both less fair (often by letting producers transfer some of the cost of their production on to others, such as pollution that the taxpayers later pay to clean up) and less efficient in the strict economic use of the word.
What the “free market” folks have managed to do is promulgate a myth that there is some sort of platonic ideal of a market that’s completely unregulated and real-world markets work better the closer the come to that ideal. This is not correct; markets are always sets of rules and often work best, and promote competition best, with fairly strict rules and sometimes even “socialistic” schemes that put smaller players on the same level as the larger ones. (One clear example is that when you nationalise health insurance rather than have it provided by employers, small businesses now are not at as much of a disadvantage against large businesses when hiring and the job market becomes more liquid. [But the last thing most “free market” folks want is a more liquid job market.]) The “free market” folks only object to government interference when they can’t gain an advantage from it; they seem perfectly happy with expanding intellectual property laws despite these being by far the largest government “interference” in markets the world has ever seen (not to mention being declared to have an explicitly socialistic purpose in the U.S. constitution).
Holy fucking crap!!! I had no clue that something like this even happens somewhere in the world. In my country, prisoners are allowed to vote from inside the prisons. The law says that each prisoner who is a citizen, is over 18 years old, and not mentally insane must be provided with a possibility to vote. Prison staff is also obliged to provide prisoners with information about all the political candidates and party programs. Thus I just assumed that this is how it must be happening also everywhere else in the world.
I think that I have already said this somewhere in this blog’s comment section, but I’ll repeat myself—in my opinion, USA isn’t a civilized country. The things that are happening there are not normal.
markr1957 @#1
Abrahamic religions are older than contraceptives. In past, people didn’t exactly have a choice about making a ton of babies even when they couldn’t afford to feed them. And there are other non-religious reasons why celibacy or infanticide weren’t particularly popular. Besides, poor and malnourished people tend to have many babies even nowadays, when contraceptives are available, and this is the case also for societies where nobody practices any of the Abrahamic religions. Just look up statistics about the birth rate by household income. I don’t think that the “be fruitful and multiply” line from the Bible influenced the birth rate among poor workers that much.
One way how to look at religions is to analyze them like organisms that are subject to various environmental pressures and undergo evolution. If some religion succeeds at enforcing celibacy or widespread infanticide among the adherents, the religion is bound to die out quickly. The believers don’t leave descendants, the religion dies out. In order to survive for a prolonged period of time, a religion needs to have adherents who are making lots of babies. Encouraging believers to be fruitful works. Not talking about baby making at all works too—historically, people tended to make lots of babies even when not explicitly told to do so by their religion, because they had no contraceptives anyway. Discouraging believers from making babies wouldn’t work for a religion—such a religion would die out quickly.
Curt Sampson @#6
I perceive patents and copyrights as a very capitalistic thing. Whatever U.S. constitution might say about their supposed purpose, in reality, intellectual property rights exist so that individuals could increase their private profits. Monetary profits are also the sole reason why lobbyists advocate expanding intellectual property rights.
Anyway, you seem to make the capitalist vs. socialist divide based upon government regulations/interference. If there are no regulations, it’s capitalistic. If there are regulations, then it’s socialistic. I disagree with the way how you define it. I see no significant difference between, for example, government regulations about real estate ownership and government regulations about patent ownership. If you want to be known as the owner of a house, you have to register your property with some government agency that keeps records about who owns which house. Similarly, if you want to own a patent, you have to file certain paperwork specified by the government. There are also laws about what real estate somebody is allowed to own (for example, where I live people are not allowed to own lakes or beaches). Similarly, there are also laws specifying what you are allowed to patent (can you, for example, patent genes or software?) and laws specifying the duration of patent protection. In my opinion, regulations surrounding intellectual property are akin to regulations surrounding every other type of property.
Choosing “absence of regulations” as the defining trait of capitalism is weird. There are a ton of regulations in every capitalistic system. There are laws regulating private prisons, laws regulating private hospitals, animal welfare laws that tell farmers how they must treat their cows and pigs and chickens, laws that tell restaurant owners about what hygiene requirements they must comply with. . . It’s not like you can just open your own hospital or prison and do whatever the hell you want in there. Hell, you cannot even own a farm and raise animals without running into a huge amount of government restrictions about what you can or cannot do in your farm. What about growing and selling plants then, those aren’t sentient, thus there are no welfare requirements for plants? Sorry, there will be laws telling you that your plants must be free from a whole list of various plant diseases. And also laws regulating what herbicides and pesticides you are allowed to use when growing them. And so on. In fact, it’s outright impossible to have a society where private property exists yet there are no regulations about how it functions. Without regulations, it would be simply a situation where people would have to occupy houses with guns and fight against whoever wanted to come and take their house away with brute force.
It’s not like people who are promoting capitalism are asking for an absence of regulations. Instead, they are asking for an absence of regulations that might decrease the private profits of the wealthiest 1%.
The way I make the capitalist vs. socialist (collectivist, communist) divide is centered on private property. Under capitalism, as many things as possible must be owned privately—privately owned houses, land, forests, mines, factories, banks, hospitals, schools, universities, prisons, even critical infrastructure like railroads, residential water supply, and electrical grids. And also patents and copyrights. Whatever lip service might be going on, it’s pretty damn obvious that the real reason behind expanding the list of what an individual can own is to maximize corporate profits, and to make sure that the wealthiest 1% gets even wealthier.
The opposite of capitalism would be collective ownership. A single person isn’t allowed to own a house, a patch of land, a factory, etc. Same goes for intellectual property, namely, there are no patents or copyrights, instead intellectual property is collectively owned, and society finds some different way how to compensate artists and inventors (for example, by directly paying them a salary instead of granting them intellectual property rights and afterwards leaving them on their own to somehow squeeze money out of their patents/intellectual property).
Another potential way how to differentiate between “capitalistic” and “socialistic” would be to say that something is capitalistic if it aims to appease private pecuniary interests. Something is socialistic if it aims to increase the wellbeing of the working class. I’m skeptical about this differentiation, though. Communists did a ridiculous amount of lip service to the interests and wellbeing of the working class, but, in reality, under communism workers lived in poverty and their working/living conditions were outright miserable. Simultaneously, the ruling class (high ranking Communist party members) enjoyed a life of luxury—they ate gourmet food, spent summer vacations in opulent dachas, etc. Never mind that the homes where they lived differed from those of the common (and impoverished) workers. The fact that the party leaders and the ruling class couldn’t own luxury stuff didn’t prevent them from using state owned luxury stuff. Ultimately, regardless of what economic system you have, those with political power will always live in luxury while workers will be suffering in poverty.
By the way, my personal preference is for homes, apartments, some businesses to be privately owned. As for natural resources (like forests, mines, oil fields), schools, universities, hospitals, banks, prisons, infrastructure (power grids, power plants, railroads, companies providing public transportation, etc.), I prefer all of those to be state owned.
When it comes to patents and copyrights, I perceive the current system as deeply flawed. It fails to ensure that artists and inventors can earn a living (except for the few superstars). The only things the current system is good at are financing patent trolls, lawyers, and large publishing houses. In some cases medical/gene patents have even resulted in preventable human deaths due to patients being unable to afford medical treatment. Never mind that copyright laws cannot even fulfill their stated purpose, namely protecting artists from others using their work without permission. I work as an artist, and each time I find somebody selling T-shirts with my art on them without my permission and without me getting a single cent, I can only file a DMCA takedown notice, and if the recipient chooses to simply ignore it, then that’s that, I cannot do anything (it’s not like I can afford to sue somebody). I don’t know what kind of system I want instead. I’m not happy with what the Pirate Party has proposed either. I just know that I don’t like what we now have.
Ieva Skrebele@#7:
Holy fucking crap!!! I had no clue that something like this even happens somewhere in the world. In my country, prisoners are allowed to vote from inside the prisons.
There are something like 6 million US citizens that are being denied their right to vote. In Florida 1 in 5 voters is denied the vote.
… and it just so happens that the majority of the disenfranchised are black. Pure coincidence.
I do believe that some people should be denied the vote. For example, if Donald Trump is convicted of a felony, he’d be unable to vote. But – actually – the felony-no-vote system is arranged so that if you have a lawyer who can bulldog the necessary state agencies, you can get your voting rights back after you serve your time. Of course a poor person would be unwilling to spend the time doing all the paperwork, but a rich person’s lawyer would swan right through it. That’s also coincidence I am sure. I don’t think serial killers should be able to vote; which would also take the vote from a lot of CIA employees. It’s complicated. I would prefer a Badgeria-style expulsion from the country, for those that are too big of a pimple on the body politic, but that would require a working non-criminal international system, and we haven’t got one of those.
Did you notice that 6 million votes could swing the elections pretty hard? Or that 1/5 more votes in Florida could make a critical difference? Of course you did. It’s also just coincidence. It’s not that the Republicans are up to their usual jim crow vote suppressing night riding election rigging shit, nossirree!
Things that stay the same: white asshole dudes in uniform.
And the only ones with hats in what I assume is mid-day summer.
[Loop to line 1]
Voter supression: Thanks to John Oliver. I was deeply concerned about the Bush-Vote thing before (voting machines…), now I see it even more crooked.
Wow, that was unexpected, because most of the time I can agree with your opinions. Usually you don’t support policies, which are, in my opinion, barbaric and contrary to human rights. My opinion is that everybody should have a right to vote (also from inside the prisons and even if they are bound to sit behind bars for the rest of their lives).
I perceive voting as a human right, not as a privilege. Whether criminals should be allowed to vote ties together with the wider matter of how a society treats its criminals. Are they treated in a humane fashion or are they being tortured for the sole reason of getting revenge and gaining sadistic pleasure by torturing somebody you dislike? Personally, I prefer criminals and prisoners being treated as humanely as possible. When some of their rights are taken away, I ask whether there is some practical and valid reason for doing so. If somebody has already killed several people, incarcerating them has a practical purpose (letting this person freely roam the streets risks more people getting killed).
But stripping away prisoner’s voting rights? What practical purpose does that serve? The number of serial murderers is so tiny that they aren’t going to sway the election. In a normal country, even letting the whole prison population vote does not sway the election. Unless you strip prisoner’s voting rights, the prison staff is going to have a bit of extra work during the election day? Frankly, I don’t perceive it as something important—plenty of countries have already demonstrated that prison staff is perfectly capable of handling a bit of extra workload for a single day. Stripping away a criminal’s voting rights doesn’t influence anything except for one single thing. And that’s emotional torture. By not letting somebody vote, the society is sending them a message: “You are sub-human, we want you to suffer, we want to dehumanize you, we see you as somebody who shouldn’t have any rights, we see you as somebody who is not a part of the society.” And that’s a bit of additional emotional torture added on top of what criminals already have to suffer inside prisons. Allowing criminals to vote costs nothing for the society. This is why I think that denying somebody the right to vote accomplishes nothing except for inflicting pointless pain for the sake of sadistic pleasure.
By the way, the voter turnout in my country’s prisons is actually lower than that of the general population. It’s not like every prisoner even wants to vote. I can relate to that. Personally, I don’t vote on every election. Often all the options are equally bad and I don’t have any preferences. Voting is also sort of pointless because, regardless of who gets elected, the oligarchs will decide what laws they want. When oligarchs are already sponsoring every single candidate in every single political party, it’s irrelevant whom the voters choose to elect. I don’t really care much about utilizing my right to vote. Yet I do value having it. Having a voting right is a matter of being recognized as a human being.
I could also argue about the practicalities—creating a system under which some people are denied a right to vote is bound to get ugly:
1) Some innocent people are wrongly convicted; other guilty people are never caught. Thus some percentage of people will be sorted into the wrong bucket.
2) Not every convicted person who actually committed a crime is truly a bad person who deserves getting hurt. They might be victims of poor childhood experiences and a lack of other opportunities, they might have done bad things accidentally, they might regret their crime and have become a better person.
3) Denying a right on a case-by-case basis and handling each appeal individually means that rich white people will get different treatment compared to poor black people.
Thus it is impossible to create a fair system for taking away the voting right. The moment you get to the practicalities, it turns out that whatever bureaucratic system you propose, it will treat some people unfairly. I believe that nobody (regardless of what crime they committed) deserves to lose the right to vote. You said that some people do deserve that. Well, the problem is that the sorting system isn’t going to always get it right: some of those people, who, according to you, ought to lose the voting right, are going to keep it; simultaneously, some of those people, who, according to you, ought to keep the voting right, are going to lose it. Thus, it is simpler not to strip anybody of their voting rights.
Exporting the criminals to some other country wouldn’t work in most cases even in the fictional world of Badgeria. I already explained my reasons for believing so, so I won’t repeat myself. Whatever you choose to do with the big pimples, it has to be done at home.
By the way, I do think that banning some people from participating in elections as political candidates is reasonable. Same goes for severely limiting lobbying and monetary donations to political parties. If allowing somebody participate in politics can cause actual harm (in contrast to casting a single vote out of millions that isn’t going to harm, let alone influence anything), then I do support limiting this person’s rights.
Yes, I noticed; I did an online search and some fact-checking after finding out that, once again, USA has managed to do something outrageous that I didn’t even imagine as being possible.
I also noticed that American voting system is a ridiculous mess under which a couple of swing voters in a couple of swing states decide the whole election. This is how to do it correctly: ditch the existing system, replace it with a system where each citizen has one vote and it’s irrelevant where they live. The winner of the election is whoever gets more total votes.
By the way, this is also why nobody cares about denying criminals the right to vote in my country—their number is so small that they cannot sway the election. Thus letting them vote stops being a political issue and instead it is seen as a matter of human rights.
Regarding prisoner labor, I actually support prisoners working inside prisons. Having prisoners spend months or even years sleeping in their cells and staring at the ceiling isn’t the best option. But prison labor should happen differently from what’s going on in the USA:
1) Give them various options to choose from. If each prisoner gets to choose a job they like, the work experience can be useful later in life after leaving the prison. And don’t just offer them to choose between several shitty jobs where they cannot learn any valuable skills. Making furniture, sewing clothes, or cooking might be examples for normal jobs where they can gain useful work experience. Working as slaves in the cotton fields isn’t what I have in mind, though.
2) Pay them a fair salary.
3) Prisoners should be able to save the money they earn. This way, after they leave the prison, they already have some money reserves to help start a new life.
4) Make it voluntary. If some prisoner decides not to work, don’t deprive them of adequate nutrition, personal hygiene items or clothes or anything else necessary for their survival.
I think prisons should also offer education opportunities for the inmates. With modern technology, it would even be possible to let them get university degrees (an inmate watches video lectures and sends their homework and exam papers via e-mail to their professors).
I believe that criminals are human beings who ought to be treated decently. However, even those who don’t give a fuck about human rights ought to realize that crime costs a lot of money for the society. Educating prisoners and helping them find new jobs upon leaving the prison would be financially beneficial. After all, many criminals commit crimes only because they have no job and no education. And a significant portion of them actually want to change their lives. A state should help with that instead of hindering former criminals who are desperately trying to live differently.
(Of course, none of what I just proposed could ever happen in a country like USA, where private prisons are profitable, and those in charge of running them want their inmates to reoffend and return back. Then there are also the private profits that can be gained by treating prisoners like slaves and not paying them a fair wage.)
@Marcus: I second Ieva, everyone should vote. US prison system is … just as fucked up als der rest.
They have a “non-law court” to give rehabilited citizens their voteright back … if they “feel like it” and dare to use the word mercy? How more fuckedupassholerish can you be?!
leva @#7
To our shame the UK does not let prisoners vote, despite judgements against this policy by the ECHR, it’s the kind of judgement that was used to whip up anti-European sentiment in the years leading up to Brexit. We do restore the vote as soon as an offender leaves prison and registers on the electoral roll*. I very much agree that voting is an esssential right and part of keeping prisoners as involved as they can be with the society to which they will return.
* Of great concern to me is a move to try and tighten up who can vote by insisting on voters showing ID at the polling station. The ID has to be official photo ID, and if this proceeds (there have been small trials) that is going exclude people who don’t have a driving license, passport or similar which is a surprisingly large number of people.
jazzlet @#13
“The EU is evil, because they keep telling us, ‘Prison inmates are human beings, they ought to be given human rights,’” is a pretty bad argument for disliking the EU. I’d say it’s an argument for liking the EU. If the EU manages to force its member states to observe human rights, that’s an amazing thing.
Incidentally, we have the exact same problem where I live. Here we have a problem with homophobia. Plenty of people have been whining that, “The EU is evil, because they keep telling us, ‘Gays are human beings, they ought to be given human rights.’”
Well, that’s another good argument in favor of letting prison inmates vote. By the way, even if somebody is locked up behind bars for life, this person is still alive. They are living and fully sentient and understand what’s going on around them, they are also capable of suffering. Thus it’s better to let them have some contact with and be involved in their society. Sure, somebody who did something bad enough to get a life sentence probably acquired plenty of people who dislike or hate them, but that’s not a good reason for abusing and emotionally torturing this person. After all, a person or a society should be judged not by looking at how they treat those they like, but by how they treat those they dislike (a humane treatment being preferable).
What the fuck is wrong with all those countries that are unable to ensure that every citizen has some valid document that allows them to vote? It’s not that hard. In my country, every citizen is required by law to have either a passport or a photo ID card. It’s also possible for a single citizen to have both documents simultaneously if they want to, but having at least one of those is obligatory. In regional elections, you can show up at the polling station and show either a passport or the ID card. Each voter is required to vote in one specific polling station (they cannot go to any polling station), and each polling station has a list of voters who are supposed to show up there. Thus an ID card is sufficient (workers in the polling station have voters put their signatures on the voter list, thus ensuring that one person cannot vote twice).
Parliamentary elections are organized differently. There voters are free to go to any polling station. In order to ensure that one person cannot vote twice, people get a stamp in their passport after voting. This made voting impossible for people who have an ID card and no passport (you can put a stamp in a passport but not on an ID card). The solution—people who are organizing the election issue single use paper voter cards to each citizen who has no passport. Obtaining this card is very simple, I once used one. I just had to walk to the closest office of the responsible government agency, where I picked up the piece of paper. That wasn’t a problem at all.
Where I live everybody seems to believe that it’s government’s responsibility to ensure that every eligible citizen has the means to cast a vote if they choose to do so. If some part of citizens have no passports, that’s government’s problem, that’s not a citizen’s problem. Government is expected to solve the problem and find some way how to ensure that every eligible voter has a chance to vote. This also goes for accommodating the needs of people with disabilities, people who cannot leave their homes or hospitals due to medical conditions, people who live abroad. If some person wants to vote but cannot do so because of whatever reason, the government has to fix the problem. And the moment government employees are forced to solve some problem, it turns out they are actually pretty capable of doing that.
This is why I believe that some countries simply do not care about a part of their citizens being unable to cast a vote. If they cared, they could have figured out some solution.
Ieva,
One of the problems with democracy.
More directly, those countries cared enough to vote in politicians who made/sustained the laws to disenfranchise that portion of their citizens.
Ieva Skrebele@#10:
Wow, that was unexpected, because most of the time I can agree with your opinions. Usually you don’t support policies, which are, in my opinion, barbaric and contrary to human rights. My opinion is that everybody should have a right to vote (also from inside the prisons and even if they are bound to sit behind bars for the rest of their lives).
As I see it, there is a class of crimes that are anti-social – literally: against society. At that point, can’t we say that the criminal has rejected society and society is justified in deciding to ignore their input going forward?
Let’s take a practical example: a terrorist like Dylan Roof has decided to bypass the political system of the US and try to start a war. That’s not just a mere crime, it’s a repudiation of the political system itself. Once they have repudiated the political system entirely, I don’t think their further opinions matter. Roof’s action was explicitly political and was implicitly an acceptance of powerlessness in the normal political process – if Roof had been participating in the body politic, he’d have been able to do a variety of actions under protection of the law (kind of) but he deliberately and specifically rejected operating within the latitude afforded to him by the law – he attempted to cheat the entire political system. I don’t see why the body politic owes him additional consideration just because he’s a living, breathing, being.
Then, there are unfortunates – a serial killer might have mental problems (I would say that is almost a given) and then it’s not an unreasonable question whether they ought to have any influence on society. I doubt the serial killer voting bloc would be able to get any pro-serial-killing legislation passed, but I don’t see why society has to embrace those that explicitly threaten it.
What I am arguing is that there is a class of crimes that are anti-social and, when one commits them, one has resigned from society. In another way, we could say that some crimes amount to a threat to the society, itself, and those should also disempower the criminal permanently. One of those crimes would be election-rigging, voter suppression, or other ways of attempting to disempower other citizens – after all, a vote-rigger’s vote should be assumed to be cast dishonestly, based on their history.
As you expect, I see politicians as more deserving of losing the vote for crimes than I do serial killers.
So, I would say there are multiple classes of crimes: victimless crimes, violent crimes, petty crimes, and crimes against society/crimes against humanity. Only the latter two would I say merit disenfranchisement.
avalus@#12:
US prison system is … just as fucked up als der rest.
They have a “non-law court” to give rehabilited citizens their voteright back … if they “feel like it” and dare to use the word mercy? How more fuckedupassholerish can you be?!
I do not support anything remotely resembling what the US does, now. That’s why I call for “regime change.” Most Americans are living under a brutal occupying power, a political system that has no legitimacy. Anyone who mistakes the US regime for a legitimate government, is probably one of its servitors or beneficiaries.
John Morales@#15:
More directly, those countries cared enough to vote in politicians who made/sustained the laws to disenfranchise that portion of their citizens.
Yes. For example, one of the reasons Puerto Rico is not a state, and remains a colony, is because of good old American racism and vote manipulation. They can vote if they come off the island and live on the mainland, but the majority of them are disenfranchised. The reasons for this were explicitly racist at the time (1917) but it wasn’t just the post-reconstruction south’s idea – Congress specifically created a new class of state (“territory”) for the purpose of being able to disenfranchise a million potential voters – can’t have brown people accessing political power! There’s know telling what they might do! Then everyone would want to vote and there’d go the neighborhood!
The US – the entire system not just the two parties – has been careful to rig its elections all along, so that there is very little chance that actual democracy might happen.
Heck, look at what the Democrat establishment is trying to do. In one context it’s just their usual incompetence and desire to run some has-been establishment figureheads who “deserve” the office, but in another context it is the Democratic party using gerrymandering and parliamentary tricks in order to moot the vote. Gosh, darn, where have I heard that before?
When has any US President tried to right the situation?
leva @#14
In the case of the UK there is a strong aversion to the idea of citizens being obliged to have an ID card. It has been propsed at various times, a vigorous campaign against compulsory ID’s occurs and the idea is dropped. Indeed one of the arguments against compulsory photo ID for voting has been that it will result in the introduction of photo ID’s by the back door.
What happens at the moment is you register as an elector at the address at which you habitually reside, it is each individuals responsibility to do this, although the local council will send a form saying who is registered at that address each year asking if there are any changes. You can return the form, confirm online or by text. You can register at any time of the year, but the officil register of voters is only formally updated once a year unless there is an election prior to that date. A month before an election each voter will be sent a polling card telling them which polling station to use, they may take this with them when they go to vote, but don’t have to, you can just turn up and tell the polling staff your name and address. The polling staff cross you off the list, give you your ballot/s and you vote by making a cross next to your favoured candidate, except in European elections when you put in numerical order as many of the candidates as you want as European elections are single transferable voting.
I don’t really understand the aversion to photo ID in the UK, and I find it weird.
If you drive, you have photo ID, want it or not. You also need photo ID for a number of other things, including to open a bank account. If you don’t have a driver’s licence or a passport, you’re usually out of luck (there’s no equivalent to a US non-driving “state ID”). If you never had a passport, it’s not easy to get one: you need to go to an interview at a passport office (there are about ten of them around the country) to prove your identity, and pay £75.50 (about $98) online (more if you apply by post, which you would if you could not pay online). And you need the application countersigned by a “person of good standing in the community” or with a “recognized profession” who has known you personally for two years. (In the case of a passport for a child, they need to have known the parent who makes the application for two years, and they have to see the child to confirm the photo is theirs. Imagine what a pain in the ass it is to have to get or renew a child passport within two years of having moved across the country.)
An additional complication is that banks and other entities will often ask for proof of address, in the form of a recent bank statement, utility bill, letter from a doctor, rental agreement, or a varying set of other documents and correspondence. This can be hard for poor and homeless people, or for dependents (mostly women) who do not have any utilities or accounts in their name. It also makes it unnecessarily difficult for people who live with friends or relatives (there would be no contract and no utilities in their name), and for recent immigrants.
My ID card, from before I moved to the UK, had my photo, my name, date of birth, and my address. It was the only ID I needed, and there was no concept of a separate “proof of address”. Everyone had an ID card — it was compulsory from age 14 (and much, much cheaper than a passport).
The way I see it, the lack of universal ID is discriminatory, largely against people already pretty badly off. It makes their lives more complicated, costs them more, and limits their access to some services, including government services. The current system works for typical people, but it’s quite bad in edge cases.
@Marcus #17:
I did not think you would be in favor, sorry for being unclear!
jazzlet @#19
That’s weird. I couldn’t survive even for a couple of weeks without having to show my passport to somebody. When I go to visit my doctor, I have to show my passport to the person at the cash register. When I shop online, the post worker won’t give me the package without looking at my passport and making sure that my name matches that on the package. Never mind things like opening a bank account or buying alcohol (ok, the last one applies only for people aged 18 to 25).
Where I live, people would be pissed off about this one. The prevailing opinion is that voting must be as convenient as possible. There must be many polling stations to ensure that there’s one right next to each voter’s home, there must never be long lines in polling stations, voters shouldn’t be asked to register before the election, etc. Casting a vote must be as convenient as possible. Making the process time-consuming or annoying or requiring people to do things in advance (that they might forget to do on time) are all unacceptable. If some would be voter decides not to vote due to inconvenience, that reduces the voter turnout, and that’s an awful thing. A low voter turnout or some groups of citizens being unable to vote due to any form of inconvenience tends to result in a public discussion about the legitimacy of the election results. That’s an uncomfortable discussion for elected politicians to deal with, hence everybody tries to avoid getting there.
How do they check that you really are who you claim to be? Don’t you have to show some document in order to confirm your identity? People cannot just trust you to tell your true name without lying about who you are.
cvoinescu @#20
What you described is just ridiculous. Here’s how it happens where I live: There are 33 passport offices in the country, they are located in all larger cities (the total number of people living here is approximately two million). Getting a passport costs 28.46 euro. An ID card costs 14.23 euro. A passport is valid for 10 years, an ID card is valid for 5 years. You go to the office, show them your old passport/old ID card. People who have never had a passport or an ID card have to show their birth certificate instead (this is mostly the case for children’s first passports). Anyway, you go to this office, there you fill out a form, they take your photo, and then you go home. The whole process takes less than 10 minutes. Two weeks later you come back and pick up your new passport or ID card. If you cannot afford to wait for two weeks to get your passport, there’s also the option to get it after two working days, however, then the fee you must pay gets doubled.
The government is keeping an electronic database with data about all the citizens. They keep basic information like the full name, data and place of birth, each person’s national identification number, marital status, relatives, home address, what real estate they own. The government is even keeping data about how many dogs each citizen owns, and they also have detailed data about every single dog.
When getting a passport, people have to show some document just so that the employee they are talking to could make sure that the person really is who they claim to be. Government employees never ask citizens to provide data about themselves, because they already have all the data on every person.
As for home addresses, nobody asks proofs for those. Each person can tell whatever the hell they want. The home address is necessary solely for contact information, hence nobody cares to validate it. If some person chooses to give a fake address, a fake phone number and a fake e-mail address, the only consequence will be them missing some of the correspondence from various government agencies.
This one smells fishy. More precisely, it smells like discrimination. No government should be allowed to separate its citizens into “those of good standing in the community” versus “those who cannot be trusted.” And WTF is a “recognized profession”? How can some professions be recognized while others are not recognized? You didn’t describe how this system works, but let me guess. We are talking about white people with above average income, who are Anglicans, who speak with the correct English accent, and whose ancestors have been British for at least a few generations. Did I guess it correctly?
Besides, the system has security flaws. Plenty of “people of good standing in the community” can be bribed. Or they can be tricked into trusting somebody who spends two years lying to them and pretending to be a nice person.
Again, there’s a security flaw. All of these papers can be easily forged.
cvoinescu@#20
The aversion to ID is to do with the notion that we are free English men (I use men with deliberation) and don’t want the state keeping track of us, with the contrast made between the British system and the showing of ID cards in the Eastern block back in the day and what that was seen as representing in terms of state control of ciizens, and so much more. It isn’t a function of left or right, it’s partly to do with the ability to do things like protest without having your name known, seen as a necessary part of workers rights – see outrage at police photoraphing demonstrators etc. Really it’s one of those historical things that, like so many others (lack of a written constitution anyone?), doesn’t make sense but is British and so is defended, rational or not. See also “Jerusalem”, “Land of Hope and Glory”, the Last Night of the Proms, etc
leva@#22
They don’t check who you are, they do trust that you are who you say you are. Hence the saying ‘vote early and vote often’ deriving from the times when having canvassed an area the local branch of a party would know who was too sick or too old to get out to vote and would do it for them! That comes from the days before it was easy to get postal votes, there was a significant relaxing of the criteria for postal voting some time back, so when we were living in Oldham (week days) and Sheffield (weekends) we got postal votes because we were registered to vote in Sheffiled and wouldn’t be there on election day, always Thursdays in the UK.
As for the “person of good standing” this is becoming more of a problem, it includes people like doctors, dentists, vicars, accountants, bank managers etc. These days those people are certainly not all white, my dentist isn’t and neither are two of the doctors at my GP’s practice, no idea about the vicar or my bank manager, but they are definitely middle class. It is a problem for several reasons, not the least being finding someone you know that fits the criteria, many people are registered with a doctor but never see them, few people know their bank manager these days, few go to church so they don’t know the local vicar. Plus many professionals will charge for the service which can obviously be a problem.
I’m not saying any of this makes sense, just that this is how it is in the UK.
jazzlet@#23:
It isn’t a function of left or right, it’s partly to do with the ability to do things like protest without having your name known, seen as a necessary part of workers rights – see outrage at police photoraphing demonstrators etc.
Like in the US, your government has simply stepped around the intent of the protections, by deploying more surveillance cameras and facial recognition than any other country in the world (though China is catching up by volume) “Oh you don’t want us being able to demand your papers? We’ll automate it so we have all that information all the time anyway.”
I don’t know whether I despise the British government more or less than the US government. Probably I despise the US more, but that’s just because I am a) an involuntary participant in the US and b) I know it better.
Ieva Skrebele@#22:
This one smells fishy. More precisely, it smells like discrimination. No government should be allowed to separate its citizens into “those of good standing in the community” versus “those who cannot be trusted.”
But, but but butbutbut! That’s pretty much government’s purpose!
jazzlet@#23
This is dumb. If some Briton truly believes that the government isn’t tracking them already, they are both naïve and uninformed. CCTV cameras on every corner, facial recognition software, surveillance of mobile and online communications, tracking people’s location and movements, etc. are all not important. The one thing that matters is to make sure that the government cannot compile a simple database with basic data about each citizen (name, date of birth, contact information, marital status, you know, the kind of information that’s already public knowledge and posted on everybody’s Facebook profile).
I do value privacy very highly. I’m strictly against governments spying on their citizens and gathering sensitive and confidential information about their private lives. But I do prefer governments having a simple database with basic information about each citizen. The alternative to that is widespread election fraud as well as people giving bribes to dentists and forging utility bills. Which is plain dumb.
By the way, I get that you aren’t defending the system, you just explained how it works. I’m not arguing against you, I just indulged in mocking silly British customs.
OK, the right to protest is something that I perceive as extremely important. But I just don’t see how having an ID card undermines people’s ability to freely protest. There are various methods how governments stifle protests. None of these methods has anything to do with citizens either having or not having ID cards.
Has anybody tried obtaining statistics about how widespread election fraud is? Enough to sway an election?
Here it is Saturday. I don’t get why other countries don’t choose weekends. Picking a day when people don’t have to go to work makes more sense.
Hmm, should I start mocking this list or should I refrain? It looks so tempting. . . May I? Just for a little.
Vicars—yep, perfectly honest people. When has any vicar ever told a lie? (Aside from every single word they utter at work, that is.) Nor do they ever take bribes. Oh, wait, how exactly all those gold-adorned luxuries were financed? According to vicars, even God Almighty can be bribed—just donate some money to the church and then God will let you into the paradise after you die. And a vicar would never hide anything (unless it’s a pedophile among the clergy, of course).
Bank managers—yep, also completely honest people. They never lie, never steal, never take bribes. No economic crisis has ever been caused by bank managers who lied and stole more than the economy could support. Bank managers definitely are the most trustworthy people one can imagine.
OK, I guess I should stop. I was going to talk about accountants next and how they never utilize tax loopholes thus being model citizens, but probably me mocking what I perceive as a silly custom isn’t really adding anything useful to the discussion.
Hmm, since the list included vicars, I’m assuming that also Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Pagan, Satanist, etc. religious authorities are on the list? Or am I being too optimistic and it’s only Christian vicars?
Marcus @#16
Personally, I hate the country I was born in. I hate its misogyny and transphobia. I believe that when my country decided to discriminate me only because I happened to be born with the wrong body, my country forfeited any right to demand loyalty from me. On top of that, I also repudiate its political system. It’s broken, it’s corrupt, it’s controlled by oligarchs. Both I and Dylan Roof are very dissatisfied with how things are happening in the countries where we happened to be born. Of course, there are also differences:
1. He wanted more racism and segregation; I want the exact opposite, namely, more equality.
2. I have no intentions of killing anybody or causing any property damage, I even mostly obey the existing laws.
3. He actually did something in an attempt to change what he believed was a bad political system; I don’t do a thing, all I do is writing blog comments about how my country sucks. My repudiation of the existing political system remains solely intellectual.
4. He was an idiot. Hoping that murdering several people could cause a civil war was incredibly stupid. I’d like to think that I’m not as dumb as that guy.
The point is: plenty of my political beliefs go against the society I happen to live in, I reject a significant portion of what this society wanted me to accept.
Incidentally, bypassing the political system is a good way (and often also the only way) how bad regimes can be changed. You aren’t going to change anything by becoming a member of the Democratic Party and asking for campaign donations so that you could get elected. You aren’t going to change anything by casting a vote in an election.
Repudiating or trying to bypass a political system isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that on their quest to change the society they live in, some people choose extremely bad methods (like murder, for example).
My opinion is that mentally insane people shouldn’t have a right to vote regardless of whether they have committed any crimes or no.
Getting rid of people you dislike is perfectly fine on an individual lever. If your ex-boyfriend annoys you, you throw them out of your life. However, this kind of approach doesn’t work for countries and for societies. Capital punishment is sort of barbaric, therefore you are stuck with the criminal staying alive for decades and remaining a part of the society. An isolated and disliked part, but nonetheless a part of the society. Thus, the society is forced to give the criminal additional consideration. The fact that the criminal is a living, breathing thing means that they can feel suffering, and unnecessarily hurting sentient beings is plain nasty.
Embrace them—no. Treat them in a humane fashion and respect their human rights—yes. If some person endangers the society, then the society is justified to limit this person’s freedom so as to eliminate the danger this person poses. For example, if some person has already murdered several people, the society is justified to put this person in prison for life so as to ensure that this person cannot kill anybody else in the future. I can also agree about the fact that some of the things politicians do threaten the society, and thus, in self-defense and so as to avoid the dangerous politician causing any further harm, the society is justified to limit this politician’s freedom to participate in and influence politics. By the way, this one is actually already happening in plenty of countries, which ban specific people (who have been deemed as dangerous) from running for political offices. For example, in various European countries communist and Nazi parties are banned from running for elected offices. Let’s assume that in your country there is some hate group who advocates committing various atrocities. Banning the members of this group from running for political offices is justified; after all, if they got elected or even if they only got some publicity, they would pose an immense danger for the society. Banning these people from casting a single vote out of millions during the election day—OK fine, if you insist, but, frankly, I see this as sort of pointless, because a single vote isn’t going to influence anything, these is no danger for the society, so who cares.