Chester County Democratic Committee

by Ken Knickerbocker, Parkesburg Today, May 11, 2012

But don’t take the Obama campaign’s word for Romney’s flip-flop of being first against the bailout, then for it.

Here’s what the Bob Lutz, Chairman of General Motors, said about the Bailout this evening on All Things Considered, NPR’s evening drive-time news magazine:

Lutz, by his own admission a conservative Republican and no Obama fan said the following:

“Frankly, what we told ourselves at General Motors was we’re sure he’s a good governor, but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about in this instance,” Lutz says.

Lutz says he and other executives wrote off Romney’s idea of a private-sector restructuring for one simple reason.

“What he conveniently forgets is that there was zero liquidity in the country,” Lutz says. “There was no way to fund a private Chapter 11 — even though, believe me, General Motors really tried to get private debt financing or organize a private Chapter 11. But there was no money to do it.”…

keep reading and view video at Parkesburg Today

email, 5/9/12

Today, I was asked a direct question and gave a direct answer:

I believe that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

I hope you’ll take a moment to watch the conversation, consider it, and weigh in yourself on behalf of marriage equality.

I’ve always believed that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally. I was reluctant to use the term marriage because of the very powerful traditions it evokes. And I thought civil union laws that conferred legal rights upon gay and lesbian couples were a solution.

But over the course of several years I’ve talked to friends and family about this. I’ve thought about members of my staff in long-term, committed, same-sex relationships who are raising kids together. Through our efforts to end the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, I’ve gotten to know some of the gay and lesbian troops who are serving our country with honor and distinction.

What I’ve come to realize is that for loving, same-sex couples, the denial of marriage equality means that, in their eyes and the eyes of their children, they are still considered less than full citizens.

Even at my own dinner table, when I look at Sasha and Malia, who have friends whose parents are same-sex couples, I know it wouldn’t dawn on them that their friends’ parents should be treated differently.

So I decided it was time to affirm my personal belief that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

I respect the beliefs of others, and the right of religious institutions to act in accordance with their own doctrines. But I believe that in the eyes of the law, all Americans should be treated equally. And where states enact same-sex marriage, no federal act should invalidate them.

If you agree, you can stand up with me here.

Thank you,

Barack

[See also "President Obama Supports Same Sex Marriage" at WhiteHouse.gov]

press release, ACLU, 5/1/12

Thousands of Pennsylvanians at risk of losing the right to vote

HARRISBURG, PA – The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, the Advancement Project, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia (PILCOP), and the Washington, DC law firm of Arnold & Porter LLP filed a lawsuit today on behalf of ten Pennsylvania voters and three prominent advocacy organizations, alleging that the state’s voter photo ID law violates the Pennsylvania Constitution by depriving citizens of their most fundamental constitutional right – the right to vote. The plaintiffs are asking the Commonwealth Court to issue an injunction blocking enforcement of the law before November’s election. If the law is not overturned, most of the plaintiffs will be unable to cast ballots in the fall, despite the fact that many of them have voted regularly for decades.

The lead petitioner in the lawsuit is Viviette Applewhite, a 93-year-old African-American great-great grandmother and resident of Philadelphia who marched for civil rights with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but cannot get an ID needed to vote under the law. Other petitioners include Philadelphia residents Wilola Shinholster Lee, Gloria Cuttino, and Dorothy Barksdale, all African-American women born in the Jim Crow South who, like so many of their generation, were never issued a birth certificate they now need to get an ID in order to vote under the law; Nadine Marsh, a Beaver County grandmother; and Grover Freeland, a Philadelphia-area retired veteran, whose veteran’s ID card will not be acceptable to allow him to cast a ballot. If the voter photo ID law is not struck down, none of them will be able to vote in November – despite the fact that many of them have been voting for decades.

“The commonwealth’s phantom claims of in-person-voter fraud cannot be allowed to trump the very real disenfranchisement of long-time Pennsylvania voters,” said Witold Walczak, the ACLU of Pennsylvania’s legal director and one of the lawyers bringing the lawsuit. “People need to wake up to the reality that not every voter has or can get photo ID, so making it a requirement will prevent many people from exercising one of our most precious rights.”

Under the state’s voter ID law, signed by Gov. Thomas Corbett on March 14, 2012, voters casting ballots in person will be required to present ID from a limited list of photo IDs, including PennDOT-issued driver’s license or non-driver ID or government-issued employee ID. Even many otherwise acceptable photo IDs, such as those issued by Pennsylvania colleges and universities and the Dept. of Veterans’ Affairs, will not be accepted because they lack the required expiration dates.

“The commonwealth is wrong to suggest that photo identification is necessary to protect the integrity of elections. It is not. What threatens the integrity of elections is the commonwealth purposefully disenfranchising citizens who are qualified to vote under the Pennsylvania Constitution, are registered to vote and who as in the case of many of the plaintiffs in this lawsuit, have in fact voted regularly for decades,” said David Gersch of Arnold & Porter LLP of Washington D.C., one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

The organizations that have joined as plaintiffs are the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Pennsylvania State Conference, and the Homeless Assistance Project. …

keep reading at ACLU

by Amy Worden, Philadelphia Inquirer, 5/1/12

A group of individuals is suing the state to overturn Pennsylvania’s new voter identification law, saying it will deny them their constitutional right to cast ballots in elections.

The ACLU and the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights group, filed the long-awaited suit Tuesday in Commonwealth Court on behalf of ten plaintiffs, among them three elderly women who say they cannot obtain necessary documents because they were born in the Jim Crow South where states have no records of their births.

“What we’re not talking about here is not just any right we’re talking about the right to vote,” said Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “Two hundred years ago we actually fought a war for this right. This is an extremely important right.”

Gov. Corbett signed the voter ID legislation in March, after it won overwhelming , albeit partisan, passage in the General Assembly, saying it would protect the integrity of the voting process. Under the law those without driver’s licenses will be able to get a non-driver’s ID at no cost, but in order to do so must possess both a Social Security card and a birth certificate, which is a problem for many people.

The lawsuit says the law “severely burdens the rights of qualified voters” who have to got to great lengths and expense to obtain the identification needed to get the non-driver’s ID.

The new requirements had a “soft rollout” during the Apr. 24 primary during which voters were asked for photo ID but did not have to produce it. Voters will have to produce only acceptable forms of ID in order to vote in the Nov. 6 general election.

Among those the suit says will be barred from voting is Vivian Applewhite, 92, who was born in Philadelphia and has been casting ballots since John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960. She also marched alongside Rev. Martin Luther King and other civil rights activists in Georgia.

Applewhite never drove and had her purse stolen years ago. Despite paying a fee to obtain a birth certificate she has never received one from the Commonwealth, she said.

“I think it stinks,” she said on a video aired at the news conference Tuesday. “They are taking our rights away.”…

keep reading at Philadelphia Inquirer

By ERIC S. SMITH, Daily Local News, 5/7/12

DOWNINGTOWN — The state Senate education committee held a hearing Friday on a bill that would make school board elections in Pennsylvania nonpartisan and eliminate primary elections for those offices.

State Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19th of West Whiteland, minority chairman of the committee, proposed the bill and hosted the hearing at the STEM Academy.

Committee Chairman Jeffrey Piccola, R-15th of Dauphin County, cosponsored the bill and was the only other committee member besides Dinniman at the hearing.

Dinniman said he introduced the bill after two incidents in Chester County made him aware of the unnecessary politics involved school board elections. He said the first incident occurred in the Owen J. Roberts School District, where a lame duck board after losing a primary election decided to continue its unpopular policies and fired the superintendent.

The second incident occurred in 2011 when six candidates for seats on the West Chester Area School Board ran a write-in campaign and received more than 40,000 votes among them. He said that election proved to him that voters were tired of the political parties nominating candidates for the primary and determining the outcome of the election prior to any casting of ballots. The write-in candidates ran as a protest to the six candidates endorsed by the local Republican committee.

Sue Tiernan, the only successful write-in candidate to win a seat on the West Chester board, testified Friday about the nature of the West Chester School Board. She said that for about 50 years the Republican Party endorsed candidates for the school board and they were elected. She said no Democrat was ever elected to the board. She said the process worked well until 2009 when there was a Tea Party movement in the district.

Tiernan said that was when she and other members of the community realized the board should not be run by one party with a political agenda. She said the students should be the central focus for board members.

“A school board run by county politics is not in the best interest of the school district,” Tiernan said.

Antonia Keg, who also ran as a write-in candidate and is a member of the Chester County Coalition for Public Education, said she ran as write-in because she was deterred by the partisan politics involved in getting onto the ballot and eventually elected to office. She said that by allowing school board elections to be partisan, the local political parties ultimately choose the candidates and do not ensure that the best candidates are actually chosen. …

keep reading at Daily Local News

Editorial, Philadelphia Inquirer, 5/6/12

The longtime Pennsylvania voters who have joined a rights group’s lawsuit against Gov. Corbett’s new voter-ID mandate put a face on the fight against a law whose only apparent purpose is to serve as a weapon in a Republican-inspired assault on open and fair elections.

In presenting their cases last week, these citizens clearly demonstrated that they will have a difficult time on Nov. 6 meeting the requirement that voters produce government-issued photo identification at the polls.

Among them was one-time civil-rights marcher and wartime welder Viviette Applewhite, 93, who uses a wheelchair, lives in Philadelphia, has no driver’s license, and has been unable to obtain the birth certificate required to get a state-issued ID.

Similarly, retired city schools employee Wilola Lee, 59, has been unable to get her birth certificate from Georgia, where she was born. That’s the plight faced by many African Americans born in the formerly segregated South.

In Bucks County, non-driver Joyce Block, 89, has only been able to get a temporary ID from PennDot — and that took two trips to state offices, where she has been told that she’ll also have to pay a fee to renew her credentials after a few years.

The three women are among 10 state residents who are plaintiffs in the challenge before Commonwealth Court with the American Civil Liberties Union, joined by the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, the NAACP Pennsylvania State Conference, and the Homeless Advocacy Project.

Looking at the plight of these voters, and thousands like them who face huge hurdles meeting the unprecedented photo-ID requirement, Commonwealth Court judges should have an easy time ruling that the voter ID law is unconstitutional and an affront to any sense of fair play….

keep reading at Philadelphia Inquirer