It turns out that the organized attack against proposed legislation that would allow you to have wine shipped to your house (handy for those rare visits to Napa Valley) is actually funded by Tennessee wine and liquor wholesalers. [Gasp! Holy profit motive, Batman! You mean this blatant manipulation of the voting public is really just about money?]
That's right, gentle reader, the liquor industry is shamelessly sending out brazen, barefaced, unmitigated lies to constituents in a desperate attempt to shut down any possibility of competition from out-of-state retailers.
OK, "desperate" may be inaccurate, because their smear campaign is actually working.
Rep. Curry Todd (R - Collierville), whom I have met and respected, is apparently backing off of the very legislation that he sponsored!
Todd said he now intends to abandon efforts to pass the Internet wine sales bill. . . .
All four sponsors said they have been bombarded with critical comments on the pending legislation from constituents who had received information from Tennesseans Against Teen Drinking. Shepard said several "preacher friends" got faxes.
All four also said that, once they had talked with complaining constituents and explained the legislation, most people dropped their complaints.
A bill that will pour $10 million per year into the state's treasury is being killed because of a special interest and they are getting away with it.
Why am I not surprised.
HT to Mick Wright, who has previously expressed his disappointment with Todd.
An organization calling itself StopTeenDrinkingTN.org sent me a rather inflammatory letter asking me to contact Senator Paul Stanley, author of a bill that is designed to allow adult citizens of Tennessee to have wine delivered to their home from out of state wineries. One section claims (emphasis in original):
Senate Bill 1977, sponsored by your local state legislator, Sen. Paul Stanley, will make it legal to ship wine across state lines and directly into the hands of whoever opens the door of a home, no matter what their age. No ID check required.
Yet a simple search of current Tennessee legislation shows that article five of Senate Bill 1977 clearly states:
The containers must contain a label identifying the contents as containing alcohol and stating that a signature of a person age 21 or older is required.
Further, the status summary page shows that there have been no amendments to this legislation, meaning that the requirement of an adult signature has been in the text of the bill since the beginning. StopTeenDrinkingTN.org is lying, pure and simple. A check of their web site shows that the lie is repeated there as well.
This leads me to believe that StopTeenDrinkingTN.org is a fascist organization that will stop at nothing in their quest to extinguish freedom. The end, after all, justifies the means.
Using information available to the public (including the Election Commission), the CA found:
Using the same public records available to county officials, the newspaper identified at least 500 deceased residents still on the rolls -- many shown as active voters.One of these registered voters died in 1954!.
Moreover, John Harvey has found 575 people on the rolls over 100 years of age — including three people that are 177 years old! (I'd love to know how many of these people voted recently.)
Much of the research done by the CA was accomplished by matching the names of the county's 603,000 registered voters against National Change of Address data maintained by the Postal Service, a practice that is growing among election commissions across the country. Shelby County, of course, does not.
Republican Representative Paul Stanley sponsored a bill that would require an annual statewide NCOA search, but pulled it "because of Democrat opposition to any tinkering with voter rolls." Imagine that.
Yet by law, Tennessee's 95 county election commissions must have an address verification program in place to help keep voting rolls clean. What has Shelby County done?
Last July, the commission passed an address verification program to be done once every two years, but it wouldn't contact all voters, just those who didn't vote or update registration. Those voters are then to be mailed a card that can't be forwarded. If a card returns as undeliverable, the voter is to be deemed inactive -- the first step toward purging.That's right — Shelby County has initiated a program to purge the voting rolls of all names that haven't been fraudently used. Way to "clean up"!
Note that the CA didn't even begin to address the whole "are you a citizen" issue. I suspect there are hundreds more violations under that rock.
One final thought: Tennessee is increasingly voting Republican (and proudly gave 11 electoral votes to W instead of native son Gore in 2000). Yet because the Tennessee House has a Democrat majority, all 95 county election commissions across the state have a Democrat majority, no matter what the makeup of the county's electorate.
Here in Shelby County, Election Commission Chair Greg Duckett served as state counsel to Senator Gore and worked on the Clinton-Gore transition team. And member Maura Black Sullivan worked for US Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., was President of the Shelby County Democratic Women, and served as Vice Chair and Assistant Treasurer of the local Democratic Party.
Not exactly non-partisan supervisors of our democratic processes.
Ah, well. Life goes on and today is election day in Shelby County as the first primary of the year is being held. As the Commercial Appeal says:
It's Election Day. Get out and vote: If exercising your right isn't reason enough to vote, consider this:You might just bump into a dearly departed friend or relative casting a ballot.
Technorati Tags: Voting Reform, Crooked Politics, Dead Man Voting, Elections, Memphis+Politics, Shelby County Tennessee, Tennessee Politics.