Bush Vote Thief Caught in Senate Spotlight

Aware that Republicans have little chance of hanging onto the White House without yet another massive minority voter suppression campaign, the Bush men are busily deploying their criminal cadre in key election-stealing positions. Arch vote-thief Hans von Spakovsky, who helped turn the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division into a Dixie-style klavern of hostility to Blacks and browns, was set to sail through Senate confirmation to a seat on the Federal Election Commission, where he could protect GOP ballot-snatchers in 2008. As if in the grip of a death wish, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid OK'd the deal to allow Spakovsky to set up shop in the FEC - only to be defied by Senators Russ Feingold and Barack Obama.

No matter what the polls say, the GOP will win or lose the 2008 election based on, not its popularity, but its criminal skills. Indeed, with corporate America placing its bets - and that means campaign money - on Democrats this time around, the Republicans will need to work every gangster trick in the book to pull off a repeat of the 2000 and 2004 election heists. Stealing a national election is a massive crime, but the Bush men are more ruthless than Al Capone and better organized than Hollywood's Ocean's Eleven. The key to the caper is having one's goons in place, before Election Day, to knock off the opposition. And, as always, the main opposition to perpetual Republican rule is Black folks. For the GOP to win, literally millions of Black and Latino votes and potential votes must be suppressed.

Central to the scandals at the U.S. Justice Department is that agency's role as the GOP's Murder Incorporated., the liquidator of Black voting rights. Since stealing office in 2000, George Bush has placed his hit men in pivotal positions, in a largely successful effort to turn the Justice Department into a Confederacy of hostility to Black voting rights. A Florida political gangster named Hans von Spakovsky, who went to the mattresses for Bush in the two previous Great Election Robberies has served as "the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division's mandate to protect voting rights," according to former employees. Now Bush wants to put Spakovsky even closer to the action, in preparation for the 2008 election robbery, through an appointment to the Federal Election Commission. The appointment must be approved by the Senate, which is supposedly controlled by Democrats. But you'd never know it from the way Senate Democratic honcho Harry Reid has been playing games with Republican vote thieves.

Reid cut a deal that would have allowed the career criminal, Spakovsky, to sail through the confirmation process as part of a "package" arrangement. The record shows Democrats seldom get anything of value in these deals with George Bush; certainly, Black folks never do.

Individual senators, however, have much greater powers to gum up the works than do members of the U.S. House. It only takes a few determined senators to hold up a nomination or legislation - if they have the guts. Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, who often shows more guts than his Democratic colleagues, has been joined by the disappointingly shaky and flaky presidential candidate Barack Obama in vowing to stop Spakovsky's confirmation. It's a shame that doing the right thing appears heroic, these days, for Democrats, but something is better than nothing.

Our most heartfelt praise goes to the Black organization ColorOfChange, which through its website has launched a petition drive to force other Democrats to act like they have spines, and oppose Spakovsky. ColorOfChange.org used the same strategy to spoil the Congressional Black Caucus's plans to co-sponsor presidential debates under the auspices of the vicious Fox News Network. Sign their petition. As Frederick Douglass said, "Power relinquishes nothing without a demand."

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.

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