Stopping voter suppression was the main agenda for KanVote, this last Saturday

From Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner;

Stopping voter suppression was the main agenda for KanVote, this last Saturday.
“About 13,000 voters have been knocked off the voting roles because of Kobach’s New Law.” said Louis Goseland, of Sunflower Community Action, who chaired the event. He was referring to Secretary of State of Kansas Kris Kobach’s voter picture ID laws which he got passed in the Kansas legislature.
“He could site less than 100 cases of voter fraud when he passed the bill,” Goseland added.
Goseland also said that voter fraud was never the key reason for that. He pointed out this was a bill that has been promoted by the conservative activist PAC the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). They want voter restriction laws that go state by state. He played a clip from Youtube where Paul Weyrich, an ALEC member said "I don't want everybody to vote." Weyrich admitted that ALEC and the conservatives leverage goes up as the voting numbers go down.
Groseland said that people are getting notes telling them they need to come in and prove they are citizens and they have to show a birth certificate. Many of the 13,000 who could not cast their votes in the last election are in a type of voter limbo.
Another fact that was brought up was the US Supreme Court has struck down a voter ID in Arizona that is similar to the one here in Kansas. People at that meeting were wondering if there is a possibility of doing that here.
There were two sessions on what can be done to fight against the voter suppression laws here in Kansas. There was a session on what kind of pressure can be brought to our elected leaders to change our laws, and the other session was to look at changes in the laws to add to the voter rolls rather than cut down on them.

As for putting pressure on elected officials, some of the ideas included writing letters to the editor, filing lawsuits against Kobach and other similar Kansas politicians, protesting at the Kansas State House offices and flooding their offices with phone calls and faxes. Also suggested was asking the opinion of Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
A group of people came up with some Ideas for changing the laws, such as letting felons vote, letting children of emigrants vote, and using social media to promote the write to vote.

Economic Freedom—lies and distortions from Charles Koch

As usual with Charles Koch, this add running on TV in the Kansas area and elsewhere, is very misleading. It starts off telling you that if you earn $34,000 a year you are in the top 1 % of the world’s earners. What he is not telling us is that about 1/3 of the world has people who earn $2.50 an hour or less. No one living in the US could afford to live on a salary that low. But some countries are poor, their people live in huts or shanties and about all they have to buy with that money is a small amount of food. Many people in such countries have no electricity, running water, flush toilets or few if any health services.

Notice the graph on world earnings below:

Notice that North America and Europe together make up about 2/3rd’s of the world’s wealth. The US makes up most of North America.

The reality is that most of the countries in this graph have a relatively similar economic system. “Economic freedom” as Koch tells us, is really not that different from country to country.

For example India makes up only 2%. But how much economic freedom does that country have?

According to Wikipedia:

“Until 1991, all Indian governments followed protectionist policies that were influenced by socialist economics. Widespread state intervention and regulation largely walled the economy off from the outside world. An acute balance of payments crisis in 1991forced the nation to liberalise its economy; since then it has slowly moved towards a free-market system by emphasising both foreign trade and direct investment inflows. India's recent economic model is largely capitalist. India has been a member of WTO since 1 January 1995.”

But does all the economic freedom result in well paid happy workers? Again Wikipedia:

 “However, the country ranks 140th in the world in nominal GDP per capita and 129th in GDP per capita at PPP

……. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption,malnutrition, inadequate public healthcare, and terrorism[1].

So people in the US are economically better off than the people in India. According to Wikipedia here are some differences between India and the US including population, India has 1.27 billion people, the US has 315 million people, The US has more land and more resources, so that has a great deal to do with the differences in their place in the world economy.

The United States is a developed country and has the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2012 GDP of $15.6 trillion – 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity, as of 2011.

Then there is Europe that has 32% of the world’s share of wealth. About 30% of Europe’s workers belong to unions, compared to12% of workers in The US. That means that Europeans get better wages and benefits than their US counterparts.

One country that is very poor, vet has many economic freedoms and lacks government regulations is Bangladesh. The Rana Plaza Garment fire disaster in Bangladesh, caused the deaths of at least 1,127 workers, due to ignoring safety regulations. The minimum wage for Bangladesh's garment workers is $37 a month.. That’s one country where economic freedom and lack of government over-reach has not benefited workers.

So don’t be fooled by the phony statistics of any ad put out by Charles Koch. His ad is mostly just lies and that is what he and his brother do best.

White racists in Wichita attempt to incite a riot at a peaceful protest

There was a march supporting Trayvon Martin, this morning at 11am. As this video shows we still have our share of racist provocateurs in our community.