A Kleinheider Joint

An editorial in the City Paper by that smarty-boots A.C. Kleinheider says that Godwin’s Law, and not Senator Andy Berke’s religion, was what made Senator Dewayne Bunch’s “nutritional Nazi police” comment on the floor of the Senate so insulting.

His point is well taken, but Godwin’s Law – which states that “the person who first makes an unwarranted reference to Nazi Germany or Hitler in an argument loses that argument automatically” – and sensitivity to someone’s feelings are not necessarily mutually exclusive. And there are exceptions.

Case in point, Senator Bunch’s bill passed AND he immediately – before any of us “progressive activists” called him out – felt the need to apologize to Senator Berke.

In other words, Senator Bunch hyperbolic comment created discomfort for many reasons.

Here’s the video again. Why? Just because Senator Burchett’s reaction (top left) is fun to watch.

But there are two more reasons why the good Senator from Cleveland should consider his words a more carefully in the future – Wacker Chemie AG and Volkswagen, two German-based companies bringing jobs to the state.

Last month, Governor Bredesen announced that Munich-based Wacker Chemie AG is investing in a new $1 billion plant what will bring at least 500 new jobs to Bunch’s district.

And Volkswagen selected Chattanooga – one district over from Senator Bunch’s – as the site for its new $1 billion assembly plant and the promise of 2,000 jobs.

But it’s not just Senator Bunch. It’s time for everyone to put a complete moratorium on the flippant use of all Nazi references. Please, just stop.

Senator Berke: I know we had some discussion about this in Senate Education Committee. We talked about the fact that the nutrition guidelines for a state and federal purposes were not being supplanted by this, do we know whether those are total by particular product or whether those are by ounce …because that could make a difference in how thi particular bill has effect.

Senator Bunch: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In a currently…if you’re trying to be the nutritional Nazi police on school campuses, then we need to have someone there to keep them from buying more than one product if it’s 8 ounces. If there’s an issue of nutrition with buying two – they can simply buy two and circumvent that. So, it’s my understanding this does nothing to change the nutritional – the guidelines at all – they still must meet state and federal guidelines. So there is nothing changed nutritionally at all, it just permits a larger product and basically that’s the way they come. Most vendors produce those in 12 ounce packages and not 8 ounce so this simply allows a greater selection of vendors to be able to get on campus.

Watching the video, you can see clearly that Senator Bunch is nonplussed by his gaffe. Senator Burchett (R, the Fightin’ 7th!), in the background to the left, reacts immediately with wailing and gnashing of the teeth (or as close to that as a state senator who realizes his colleague just said something really offensive can get).

Later, a clearly verklempt Senator offers his apology:

You know who might, just might, be offended by your “comedy” reference, Senator Bunch?

Senator Berke.

Just sayin’….

Excuse me, sir, did you show your photo ID before you got that purple finger?

These eight bills were all introduced by Republicans – the Party of preventing the vote – in an effort to fulfill Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey’s post-election day promise to give “new life” to certain issues including “‘pro-business issues’, 2nd Amendment issues, abortion issues, and illegal immigration issues… voter ID specifically and SJR 127.”

SB0150 and SB1681 by Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro), as well as SB0587 by Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet) and SB0191 by Dewayne Bunch (R-Cleveland) would make showing”qualified photographic identification” at the polls before voting mandatory. SB0173 and SB0886 by Senator Ketron, and SB0194 by Senator Bunch “requires citizenship status to be proven prior to registration to vote and requires certain procedures to ensure identity and citizenship status prior to voting.”

While on the surface these bills may seem like a good idea, they are really a solution in search of a problem and will actually do more to disenfranchise voters than maintain the integrity of our elections.

The Brennan Center of Justice has studied the issue of voter fraud extensively and have concluded that someone is more likely to be hit by lightning than commit voter fraud. They also analyzed the more than 250 claims of fraud in the Supreme Court’s photo ID case and found that there was “not one proven case of a fraudulent vote that the challenged law could prevent.”

In 2007, the Election Assistance Commission, the federal panel responsible for conducting election research, altered their findings so they could report that “the pervasiveness of fraud was open to debate.”

From October 2002 to September 2005, the Justice Department indicted only 40 voters for registration fraud or illegal voting, 21 of whom were noncitizens and during the same time period, only 95 defendants were charged with federal election-fraud-related crimes in the whole country.

Remember the U.S. Attorney General scandal? All because the justice department tried to force State AG’s into ferreting out non-existent cases of voter fraud.

And take Texas’ Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott who “declared war on what he claimed was rampant vote fraud in Texas” and “set up a special vote fraud unit and got a $1.4 million grant from the feds for the work.” That was in 2006. In 2008, the Dallas Morning News reported on the results of his efforts – 26 cases, all involving Democrats, and almost all involving minorities.

Even the federal court of appeals judge who wrote the majority decision upholding an Indiana voter identification law enacted in 2005 said, “As far as anyone knows…no one in Indiana, and not many people elsewhere, are known to have been prosecuted for impersonating a registered voter.”

Between 13 and 22 million people in the United States do not have a photo id. A disproportionately large number of them are elderly and in poverty. These bills have the potential of disenfranchising thousands of people in this state alone.

It’s already happened to the poor, the elderly, and the poor, elderly nuns in other states.

Members of the Senate State and Local Government Committee:

Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro, the fightin’ 13th), Chair, Lowe Finney (D-Jackson), Vice Chair, Joe Haynes (D-Goodlettsville), Secretary, Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville), Mike Faulk (R-Church Hill), Thelma Harper (D-Nashville), Mark Norris (R-Collierville), Jim Tracy (R-Shelbyville), Ken Yager (R-Harriman)

Please call and email to tell them to just say no to these bills.

UPDATE: Goldni asks a great question over at a Kleinheider joint. Will the act of obtaining a photo create even more barriers:

Here’s an honest question–I would guess that most people do not register to vote at a central office, at an election commission or DMV. In election years, voter registration is often done by campaign volunteers, who distribute the forms and then mail them to the election commission. It’s convenient for voters to be able to register on the spot. Does this mean that voter registration will now have to be done in only a few locations so that pictures can be made?

That’s where I’m worried about the suppression, not so much the monetary cost. It makes it more difficult to register to vote, if there are only a few places to do so.