1007 Trickle Down Fascism

1007 Trickle Down Fascism

(Note to readers:  I bollixed up the numbering sequence some days ago, so while this is numerically out of sequence,  the overall post count is accurate at 1010.)

(NEW ROSES PA) -- Trickle down economics doesn’t work.  Even Reagan would admit that today.  But trickle down fascism does.

On Tuesday, 4/17/12 two events took place in Pennsylvania each a milestone in proof of identity.  A leading discounter told customers over 55 they no longer had to show their Tuesday Senior Discount Club cards to get their 10% off.  And the State started requiring voters to show government issued photo identification cards in order to vote in the primary.

Apparently there is more voter fraud here than there is old-age-discount fraud.

The funny thing about the photo ID thing is that it is the lovechild of the people who want smaller government and less “government intrusion” in their freedom-loving lives.

Supporters say this is no big deal.  They’ve forgotten about people who don’t drive and up until now haven’t needed photo ID cards from the motor vehicle bureau and who had to schlep off to these badly located, short-houred little places where the cards are issued.  In what?  Well, they either had to find a driver or take a bus or cab.

You vote in a place a time or two and the volunteers who staff it get to know you.  Plus you tell them your address, they check it out in their books, you sign, you vote.

In fact, voter photo IDs are no big deal.  But what’s next?  Yellow armbands?  Tattoos?  Cops stopping random people on the streets to ask “you have papers?”

In a test drive of these thoughts, one critic says likening the “insignificant” voter ID law with a genocidal maniac’s regime is “making a huge issue out of nothing.”

He had to be reminded that Hitler also started small.  And so did D.F. Malan, South Africa’s first Apartheid prime minister.

“You haff paperrrs?” worked only for a short time in Germany.  But it would have lasted longer if they’d moved slower and didn’t wage war against  the US and most of the rest of Europe at the same time.  It lasted almost 40 years in South Africa.

Shrapnel:

--Are we at last free of Gingrich, major domo of the smart sounding dummies and Confederate con men?  Even this Great Historian can see his candidacy hit the wall and spilled his jolly venom all over us.  Unlike his days in congress, this time we can wash it off.

--Since we’re rid of this guy and his domestic partner Little Ricky Sanatorium, we now have to deal with The Young Fossil, Willard Romney.  Dog stories aside, doesn’t this guy remind you of the self repairing robots in the Schwarzenegger movies or zombies who rise from the dead in low budget horror movies or a prehistoric Ken doll unearthed by a team of archeologists at a dig in Detroit?

--Free form rock radio pioneer Pete Fornatale has passed away, and fairly suddenly.  Three good places to find out more.  This New York Times story, a recently created, a fan page on Facebook and an outpouring on the New York Radio Message Board, the NYRMB.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012