Florida: Where a decorated vet is told he can't vote

DO YOU KNOW  the fellow in the picture?

No? If not, you have a lot of company .  The election officials in Florida don't know him either.  That explains why, at the urging of the state's kookish Republican governor,  they have included Bill Internicola in the massive purge of people who want to vote this year in the never-ending GOP quest to smash fraud wherever it exists - or doesn't exist.

Let me tell you about  this designated victim of Gov. Rick Scott's hit list.  He's 91, a decorated WWII veteran (Bronze Star for bravery in the Battle of the Bulge) and  for the past 14 years has voted in Florida.

Not good enough for the state's flawed election bureaucracy - the same one that wiped a lot of voters in the 2000 presidential election  in which George Bush defeated Al Gore in the state by 537 votes  with help from the U.S.Supreme Court.

So here we go again.  While GOP officials scoff at references to their efforts as "voter cleansing", there is no reason to believe them for the Republican-led assaults on voter lists across the country that largely deny blacks and Latinos a visit to the voter booth. There was a time when the party prayed for bad weather  to keep certain voters from the polls;  that, plus poll taxes down south.

Internicola is the second case in this messy plot to reach the Net , largely exposed by ThinkProgress. By the way, it also noted that in the first five months of 2012,  three major newspapers - the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today - failed to mention a word about the scandalous behavior  in the  Sunshine State.  See how easy it is for me to be cynical.

 We mentioned in an earlier blog Maureen Russo, who has yet to be reinstated to the eligibility list  despite her valid profile.  So if your local Republican officials  tell you that there is no plot to deny selected voters their rights with the shopworn guise of good government,  let them scoff and sputter.  But don't believe them.  They are lying - which is one of the few things that they do well.

The winnowing is under way in Florida again

 

THERE'S AN unpopular fellow down in Florida named Rick Scott who happens to be the  governor.  How he was elected to that job is one of  the great mysteries of our time. I only know that he is the former CEO of HCA Healthcare, which has since paid the Federal government $1.7  billion in fines for Medicare fraud.  That could  be a record in a day when  records are usually  broken every day.  From those closer to the scene, I learned that during the investigation of HCA's scalpel-less handiwork,  Scott took the Fifth Amendment 75 times in a deposition.

Anyway, Scott is the  bell cow for the voter purge in
Florida that heightens  the Republican-controlled scandal that separates the wheat from the chaff, and then gets rid of the wheat.  It's all in the name of good government with savage GOP attempts to reduce voter fraud that they have yet to prove exists. In the 2000  election, the state dumped 7000 voters,  most of whom were believed to be eligible.  The Republicans use it as a an election tool, which I have read is how they do it in some foreign countries run by dictators..

By now, you are probably wondering about the woman in the photo holding a poodle (?). Her name is Maureen Russo, born in Akron, and now in  the dog boarding and grooming business in Ft. Lauderdale with her husband. According to ThinkProgress, she's been declared ineligible because she "wasn't born in this country".   I've lived in the Akron area for many years, and this is a new one on me.  

Actually Mrs. Russo has been a registered voter for 40 years.  But before she can  challenge the state, she has to ask for an administration hearing  that will grind her through the bureaucracy. It's never pleasant.   If were her, I would show up with one of those Goodyear tire ashtrays  as Exhibit No. 1.

In Florida, it will be easier for a Republican voter with a coconut for a head to enter the voting booth than  folks like Mrs. Russo.   It's a shameful way to do business, governor, even if it has nothing to do with Medicare fraud.    But shame is never something they think about when an election is at stake.