Ditto!

@ russ h, post # 5:

With all due respect, it is simply **WRONG** to make a false equivalency case, or to assume that it is merely "apolitical" because rich people are just trying to get richer.

Of course! The rich always try to get richer, because there is no end to greed. But how is that not wildly partisan, especially now in the dark days of our expanding kakistocracy/plutocracy? The last time anyone and their dog checked, the Koch heads and their copycat billionaire bastards have been spending millions and billions on anti-Obama, anti-Hillary, anti-Democratic, anti-liberal smear campaigns forEVER, which are invariably 100 percent in favor of Republican, libertarian, Tea Bagger, or otherwise fringe-swamp wing-nuttery. To the obscenely wealthy "takers," fascists, and plutocrats money is politics!

Inasmuch as your claim that "Both parties have benefited from voter suppression tactics..." , yes, you are correct, but only to a minor degree on the part of the Democrats compared to the Republicans.

Sadly, there have always been, election shenanigans and vote-stealing throughout the history of the so-called "United" States by every party imaginable that has ever been caught up in the machinery of our highly competitive, winner-take-all, contentious local, state, and national weird and strange election processes.

Certainly, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Brazile, and any other backroom, backstabbing operatives should be shamed and expunged from the party, either by more ethical party officials or by the rank and file in the next election.

Hillary and the Democratic establishment sure paid the heavy price for that little wink and nod, now didn't they? I'm sure every liberal/progressive/whatever dearly hopes and expects that every Democratic politician left standing will take this huuuge miscalculation to heart and will never forget the hard lesson.

However, to insinuate that the Republican voter suppression ID laws, that the "Interstate Crosscheck" con job, that deliberately dumping off faulty voting machines in heavily Democratic precincts in key states, that cutting polling stations, cutting poll workers, cutting early voting days and hours, and that carefully crafting similar election fraud schemes over decades -- conducted on such a massive scale, to the tune of millions upon millions disenfranchised Democratic voters, that it makes the more mundane, almost amateurish Democratic antics look like kids fighting in a sandbox -- is somehow not a "purely a Republican problem" is simply **WRONG** !

By all means, though, investigate both parties, and let the world see what shakes out.

I happen to have read all of Greg's Palast's books over the years and have watched all of his documentaries and most of his interviews, as well as the large volume of evidence that Brad Friedman and others have painstakingly brought to light. So, I'm not sure exactly what snippet from "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" was taken out of context to draw the conclusion that institutionalized Republican election fraud is anywhere close to being equal to the random high jinks of disparate Democratic operatives, or that it is somehow "apolitical" enough to discount the primary culpability of a formalized Republican initiative to commit extensive election fraud on an unimaginable scale.

Obviously, a much wider examination of the immensity of the problem is called for that should cause many grave concerns about the sorry state of our heavily battered democratic election process.

Didn't Bush2 try this already, and found something like 27 cases of minor "fraud"?

Everyone needs to see the Palast film, so that you'll know what they are doing when they are "cross checking" different state's voter lists. You just have to see it.

I prefer to call him our "slight-of-hand president." I also like "Don The Con."

Quote deepspace:(I suffered through "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" so that you don't have to. They were terrible reads by a horrible author!)

Thank you for taking that bullet for the rest of us, but, please, seek therapy, before it's too late. You do know that Ayn Rand was posthumously diagnosed as a psychopath, right?

Normally, I'm against book-burning, but I would gladly heat my home on her works!

I have heard from Progressives that object to making the voter registration accurate, and I cannot figure out why that position is taken. I personally don't care how many blacks or whites, or rich or poor are registered - I just want the accuracy. What is wrong with that position? If there are more of one type of person that is not registered, then so be it. I certainly don't want people taking on the identity of dead people and I wouldn't want people to vote twice. Is there anything wrong with making the whole process accurate, no matter what the mix might turn out to be?

Yes LEGEND - I agree - we need a new election. This one was definitely flawed.

What will become of Rove getting WI, MI and PA flipped from the polls? Russia means nothing. Comey's big mouth and Rove's influence to go into the program and switch the numbers is EVERYTHING. Why do we have our eyes off the ball?

If there is as much voter fraud as Trump says, I want an investigation and another election. We cannot continue with a POTUS that was elected in a self proclaimed fraudulent election. Re-instate Obama and have a second election after a full investigation.

Uncle Ralph and Bob Smith certainly have their feet on the ground.

Gary Reber's thoughtful and knowledgeable posting deserves to be mulled over seriously. I am so very much impressed by it--especially his recognition of the need for those capable of doing so to grow capital for investment--, but I am nonplussed by his advocating a flat income tax. We prospered most when labor was strong, wages were higher, and the highest income-tax rate varied from a ridiculously low 70% under JFK to 93% under FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower. Furthermore, Gary does not touch on the need to grow demand by increasing purchasing power. Why invest in an enterprise if one's prospective clients lack the buying power to purchase one's goods or services?

Also, Gary states correctly the need to grow the GDP. Brazil has successfully grown its GDP to the point that it is ranked as high as fifth among the largest national economies in the world. However, 50% of Brazil's population lives in dire poverty and its people fear venturing into the streets because of violence. We must therefore use ancillary measurements like the GINI index ("And yet, with the overall growth of wealth, inequality remains a persistent issue, especially in the United States. For the first time in this report series, Allianz calculated each country's wealth Gini coefficient -- a measure of inequality in which 0 is perfect equality and 100 would mean perfect inequality, or one person owning all the wealth. It found that the U.S. had the most wealth inequality, with a score of 80.56, showing the most concentration of overall wealth in the hands of the proportionately fewest people."--http://fortune.com/2015/09/30/america-wealth-inequality/) and the happiness index (yep, it's real--the US ranks 13th among nations and promises to sink further if public policy continues in the direction of depriving more and more of our people of the resources we require to live in dignity).

If people really increased entrepreneurial investment in proportion to the growth of their wealth, one could make a convincing case against the graduated income tax. In fact, however, society needs the revenue for repairing and modernizing ALL its infrastructures, for high-quality public education for ALL its citizens and residents, for housing for the homeless, for feeding the hungry, for caring for and capacitating its disabled, for ensuring one lives in dignity in one's old age, etc.

Wealth concentrated in the hands of a few private citizens seldom pays for such desperately needed investments, services, and assistance. And if the wealthiest few are allowed to "donate" to political candidates, the benefactors tend to be more beholden to those "donors" than to their true constituents. We are foolish not to establish a rebuttable presumption that those "donations" are illegal bribes prosecutable under criminal law.

Thanks to 20th-century government investment in electrification, highways, health care, Social Security, etc., the US was at one time the envy of the world. Now we lag behind most--sometimes all--other OECD countries in many categories as a consequence of our concentrating national wealth in the hands of the few. The power of wealth is also allowing the privileged few to transform our republican democracy into a kleptocratic oligarchy (called aristocracy by the writers of the Constitution).

There is no societal need for billionaires. Such wealth far surpasses an owner's ability, the owner's children's abilities, the owner's grandchildren's abilities to spend and invest his fortune in our economy; for this reason, he hoards vast amounts--untaxed and uninvested--often in illegal "offshore" accounts. The policy of concentrating wealth in the hands of the weatlhiest few always results in failure to serve well every citizen--a fact recognized and excoriated by Teddy Roosevelt--please see http://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2011/12/teddy-roosevelts-attack-e....

The site www.nobillionaires.com makes a convincing case for outlawing billionaires in society: all income and wealth over $1B should be taxed at 100%.

We will be a more vital society, a sounder society--both economically and morally--if we base public policy on an admonishment by a prophet who seemed to have today's GOP in mind, i.e., Isaiah; see Isa. 10:1-2 ("Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed.") and on Matthew 25:31ff, which teaches that the highest priority of society must be lifting up those of us most in need--not further enriching billionaires.

Whether they admit it or not, most of the dirty-dealing fascists, like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, their Wall Street toadies, the Rand Paul fringe of Libertarians, the revolting Tea Baggers in the House, and the whole sycophantic crowd of phony "conservatives" standing behind Herr Drumpf -- including the corporate Dem sellouts like Joe Manchin -- have a secret love affair with Ayn Rand and her hideously selfish philosophy of Objectivism, laissez-faire capitalism, "rational" (Yeah, right!) self-interest, egoism, and dishonestly romanticized rugged individualism.

Perhaps all of these modern-day "illustrious dunderheads" (The Illustrious Dunderheads -- 1942 by Frank Sullivan and Rex Stout) should take a cue from Ayn Rand's dopey fictional hero, John Galt, withdraw from our economy, and build their exclusive, rich-man's paradise somewhere far away from everyone else. Please!

Or, after the revolution, instead of facing firing squads, nooses, and guillotines, God's chosen few could be rounded up and enticed to "self-deport" beyond "The Great Southern Wall" and those poor little "brown people" all the way down to Antarctica with some, shall we say, poking and prodding. Then there wouldn't be any blue blood to sop up off the cobblestones in the town square. The butt of the planet should be far enough away to suit them and to leave the rest of us alone.

It's warming up really fast too, thanks to their oily enterprising ways. Maybe they'll even strike some black gold under the ice and snow to keep themselves happy for awhile. When it greens up a little, these towering geniuses should manage just fine, taking turns cooking, doing housework, tending the flock, and working the fields, without all of us disgusting common folks sucking on their teats.

(I suffered through "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" so that you don't have to. They were terrible reads by a horrible author!)