If You're a Millennial, Black, or Latino, Good Luck Voting Quickly in 2016

—By Dana Liebelson

| Tue Nov. 19, 2013 3:00 AM PST

 

Bunnicula/Flickr

When I voted last year in downtown Washington, DC, I was able to walk down the street, cast my ballot, and get back to the office in less than 30 minutes. But according to a new report by two voting rights groups, the Advancement Project and OurTime.org, plenty of American voters weren't so lucky. According to their research, African Americans, Latinos, and millennials in Virginia and Florida—two key battleground states—faced significantly longer wait times than older white voters in 2012. This was largely because the former groups are more inclined to utilize early voting, which was restricted in both states last year. And according to the report, this new "time tax"—along with other voting obstacles, like strict ID laws—will likely continue to dampen voter turnout among these groups in 2016.
In 2012, Florida cut early voting from 14 days to 8 days, and lines were so long, more than 200,000 Florida voters gave up and went home, according to data collected by the Orlando Sentinel. The Advancement Project and OurTime.org report focused on 5,196 of the 6,100 voting precincts that were used last November in Florida—which faced some of the longest voting lines in the country—and found that young voters spent a disproportionately longer time waiting to vote. For example, in Orange County, which has the highest percentage of voters younger than 30 in the state (22 percent), precincts closed an average of 86 minutes after the 7 p.m. deadline, with one precinct closing five hours late. The report found that in Orange County, the trend indicated that the more voters under 30 there were at a certain precinct, the later the closing time.
"Regarding the number of people willing to wait in line to vote in 2012, there were others who didn't vote, and there is no guarantee that voters will always be able to wait so long to exercise their fundamental rights," says Katherine Culliton-González, director of Advancement Project's Voter Protection Program. The report makes the case that young voters have less flexibility with their work schedules, and when early voting days are cut, as they were in Florida, lines get longer. Millennials (defined in the report as people between the ages of 18 and 29) are also more racially diverse than the rest of the population, meaning that there is often an overlap between young voters and voters of color. This 2013 MIT report found that voters of color are also more likely to wait in line than white voters:

The conservative Heritage Foundation maintains that African Americans face longer voting times than white voters because they "tend to be concentrated in large urban areas" and "the most populous areas had longer wait times than those living in areas with fewer voters." But Culliton-González, from the Advancement Project, tells Mother Jones that her group's study disproves this, since their research found that there wasn't a clear correlation between longer lines and precincts with dense populations. She says that, in Virginia, for example, "unless a voter can prove they are sick, otherwise disabled, or have to travel for work on Election Day, all voters must vote on the first Tuesday in November. These limits are probably what caused the disparities, as due to socioeconomic factors, many young voters of color have less flexibility in their work schedules." Voting rights groups argue that all states should offer flexible early voting—but some states have done the opposite: North Carolina, for example, is restricting early voting from 17 days to 10 days, starting in 2014.
Culliton-González adds, "We are concerned about 2014, but even more concerned about 2016," since Florida and other states will likely not have enough early voting time so that voters can avoid long lines. (The Advancement Project didn't find evidence of the "time tax" in the state elections earlier this month, partly because voter turnout was so low.)
But even if early voting is taken care of, young voters of color are also more likely to be turned away from the polls because of identification requirements. This was true in 2012, even in states that didn't have voter ID requirements on the books (see chart below). In the state elections that occurred earlier this month, numerous voters complained of being unable to vote because of real or perceived voter ID laws.

According to data collected by the Black Youth Project, an activist group that does research on issues that affect African American youth, only 67 percent of Latino youth and 71 percent of black youth possess driver's licenses, compared to 85 percent of white youth. Additionally, three times more young black voters than white voters said that lack of an ID was the reason they didn't vote in 2012. The Advancement Project and OurTime.org have submitted their report to the Presidential Committee on Election Administration, President Obama's group that is tasked with finding ways to improve voting.

Dana Liebelson

Reporter

Dana Liebelson is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. Her work has also appeared in The Week, TIME's Battleland, Truthout, OtherWords and Yahoo! News. RSS | Twitter

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Imagine You Were Raped. Got Pregnant. Then Your Rapist Sought Custody.

It happens—and in many states there are no laws to keep rapists from terrorizing their victims all over again. Read on, Todd Akin.

—By Dana Liebelson and Sydney Brownstone

| Fri Aug. 24, 2012 2:00 AM PDT

 

Shauna Prewitt says her rapist tried 

to seek custody of the child conceived 

during the assault. Shauna Prewitt

 

 

The debate over Rep. Todd Akin's widely condemned comments on "legitimate rape" has largely centered on abortion and Republican efforts to outlaw the procedure, even in cases of rape. But the controversy has also uncovered a little-discussed issue: When some rape victims do choose to give birth to a child conceived through sexual assault, they find that the legal door is left wide open for their victimization to continue. It sounds unfathomable, but in many states the law makes it possible for rapists to assert their parental rights and use custody proceedings as a weapon against their victims.
Shauna Prewitt says it happened to her, in Akin’s home state of Missouri. In 2004, Prewitt was in the midst of her senior year in college when she was allegedly raped. Nine months later, she gave birth to a baby girl, who today is seven and a half. Shortly after her daughter's birth, when Prewitt was pursuing charges against her accused rapist, he suddenly served her with papers requesting custody of their daughter. At first, Prewitt thought it was so ridiculous she laughed it off. Then, the truth sank in:

"I was struck with terror, not only with the idea of letting my child be around him, but also having to spend the next 18 years of my life tied to him," she says. 

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Prewitt, who now works as an attorney in Chicago, thought there was no court on earth that would allow her alleged rapist (he was never convicted) to have custody rights. But her lawyer informed Prewitt that, due to Missouri law, her case wasn't a slam dunk. The state wouldn't allow her to fight the custody request directly—the court would have to file a petition independently.

"I think it's scandalous that we would expose women to the possibility of continued abuse by a sexual aggressor," says Maryland state Sen. Jamin Raskin.

At least Missouri has a law on the books allowing the court to step in and terminate parental rights in a case like Prewitt's—at least 27 states have no statutes to protect the mothers of rape-conceived children. Meanwhile, victims continue to come forward with horror stories of rapists using the threat of custody actions to blackmail and intimidate their victims into not pressing criminal charges.
"I got really lucky because the court terminated [my alleged attacker's] parental rights anyway," Prewitt says, "but I know a lot of women who aren't so lucky."
Rebecca Kiessling, the child of a rape victim, is a pro-life speaker and attorney who works closely with rape victims fighting custody cases. "It's detrimental to both the mother and child to have the rapist involved," she says.
Surely, most people would agree. So why don't more states have protections in place for women who conceive children through rape?
Part of the problem is that many rapes go unprosecuted. According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, only 9 out of every 100 rapes are prosecuted and just 5 lead to a felony conviction. But of the 19 states that have laws addressing the custody of rape-conceived children, 13 require proof of conviction in order to waive the rapist's parental rights. Two more states have provisions on the issue that only apply if the victim is a minor or, in one of those cases, a stepchild or adopted child of the rapist. Another three states don't have laws that deal with custody of a rapist's child specifically, but do restrict the parental rights of a father or mother who sexually abused the other parent.

In Maryland, which has no explicit statute in place, Democratic state Sen. Jamin B. Raskin has repeatedly tried to get a law passed preventing rapists from exercising parental rights under a standard used in civil court: preponderance of evidence, where a jury only has to be at least 51 percent sure the rape occurred. (Legally, this is two steps below the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard used in criminal proceedings.)
"I tried to base my bill on a civil standard because parental rights are a civil matter," Raskin says. "The House took the position that you can't say there was conception by rape unless there was a rape conviction."
Raskin, who is also a law professor at American University, says several women testified before his Senate committee that they were subjected to continued harassment after their rapists asserted their parental rights.
"I think it's scandalous that we would expose women to the possibility of continued abuse by a sexual aggressor," he says.
While Maryland still hasn't managed to pass a law, there has been some movement on this issue in other states in recent years: Oregon passed a conviction-based law in 2011, and Indiana passed a bill through the Senate in January of this year—but it was modified in the House to authorize an advisory committee to study the issue first.
Missouri, where Prewitt ran into trouble almost a decade ago, just passed a law that goes into effect later this month. It places an automatic stay on paternity proceedings when there is a pending criminal case alleging rape by the child's father.
The woman behind the law is Angela Crews, a former Army MP whose teenage daughter conceived a son through alleged rape. The criminal case is pending, so she's unable to go into detail, but Crews says she thought it was "crazy" that there was no law to explicitly stop a woman's attacker from seeking custody during criminal proceedings. So, in 2011, she decided to do something about it: She found a local lawmaker to take up her cause and lobbied for Senate Bill 628.  
Crews says that her ultimate goal is to get a law passed that prevents custody based on "clear and convincing evidence"—a higher standard than what Raskin proposed, but one that doesn't require a criminal conviction.
"What I'm learning in my daughter's case is that even getting a prosecution is so hard," Crews says. "But this law is a start."
Story by Dana Liebelson. Map and additional reporting by Sydney Brownstone.

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George W. Bush to Raise Money for Group That Converts Jews to Bring About Second Coming of Christ

The former president follows in the footsteps of Glenn Beck, who addressed the group last year.

—By Sarah Posner

| Thu Nov. 7, 2013 11:51 AM PST

 

 

Courtesy of Messianic Jewish Bible Institute

Next week, former President George W. Bush is scheduled to keynote a fundraiser in Irving, Texas, for the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute, a group that trains people in the United States, Israel, and around the world to convince Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah. The organization's goal: to "restore" Israel and the Jews and bring about about the second coming of Christ.
Messianic Jews have long been controversial for Jews of all major denominations, who object to their proselytizing efforts and their message that salvation by Jesus is consistent with Jewish theology. Last year, Abraham Foxman, president of the Anti-Defamation League, told Politico that former Sen. Rick Santorum's appearance at an event hosted by another Messianic Jewish organization, the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, was "insensitive and offensive." And Commentary magazine, which bills itself as a "conservative American journal of politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues," noted, "it must be understood that the visceral distaste that the overwhelming majority of Jews have for the Messianics is not to be taken lightly." Many Messianic Jews are Christians who have adopted aspects of Jewish ritual observance; others are Jews who share the Christian belief that Jesus is the Messiah.
Asked about Bush's upcoming appearance at the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute (MJBI) event, Rabbi David Saperstein, the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said, "It's disappointing that he would give his stamp of approval to a group whose program is an express effort to convert Jews and not to accept the validity of the Jewish covenant." Foxman was traveling overseas and unavailable to comment.
[Update: After this story published, Rabbi David Wolpe of Los Angeles' Sinai Temple, whom Newsweek has called the most influential rabbi in the country, tweeted, "this is infuriating."]

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Based in Dallas, the MJBI claims that it acts like the Apostle Paul in helping to "educate Christians in their role to provoke the Jewish people to jealousy and thus save some of them (Romans 11:11-14)." It has Bible schools in 12 countries, an online school of "Messianic theology," and programs to train Messianic rabbis and pastors. Its logos feature a star of David and a menorah, and its website promotes the weekly Torah portion, a "Yiddish Mama's Kitchen," and links to purchase Judaica and books, such as Christ in the Old Testament. The nonprofit organization brought in approximately $1.2 million in revenue in 2011, the last year for which records are available.
At the November 14 event, which will be held at the Irving Convention Center, Bush will discuss his White House experiences, according to promotional materials. Bush, the group says, will "share his passion for setting people free." Last year, Glenn Beck was the star of the group's fundraiser, which was held at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
This year's event is designed to bring in funds for the group's proselytizing operations. And the former president is helping out with more than just speech-making. The most expensive of the ticket packages, which range from $100 to $100,000, includes 20 invitations to a VIP reception and photo opportunity with Bush, 10 signed copies of Bush's book Decision Points, and passes to tour the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
Alisa Stephenson, MJBI director of events and partner relations, would not say whether Bush is receiving a speaking fee for his appearance. "We cannot have any outside advertising or any media whatsoever involved in this, so I most likely cannot answer any of your questions," she tells Mother Jones.
A spokesman for Bush and a spokeswoman for the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum did not respond to requests for comment.
At last year’s MJBI fundraiser, Beck received a "Defender of Israel" award. During Beck's time as host of his Fox News program (which ended in 2011), hundreds of Jewish leaders denounced his on-air rhetoric as anti-Semitic—particularly his repeated invocation of Nazis and the Holocaust to demonize political adversaries and his accusation that George Soros is a "puppet master" who collaborated with the Nazis. "One of the reasons why I love Israel so much is I'm a guy who's for the underdog," Beck told the audience. "I'm a Mormon, which is kind of the Jew of the Christian world."
Robert Morris, pastor of Gateway Church in Dallas, which Beck attends, introduced Beck as a "prophet" at the event. Morris told the crowd that his church has supported MJBI because "when we do this, the Bible tells us, it's going to change the whole world. That it's going to hasten the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's going to bring about worldwide revival."
When asked how the MJBI managed to secure Bush to keynote its fundraiser, Stephenson cited its track record of drawing influential speakers, pointing to the appearance by Beck.
At last year's event, members of the MJBI's board of directors explained the organization's mission of converting Jews to an audience of hundreds who were seated on a professional football field, wearing formal clothes, and eating pork barbecue. Rabbi Jonathan Bernis, a leading Messianic Jew and televangelist who chairs MJBI's board of directors, maintained that "our numbers are growing and growing," because "the Bible predicted that the day would come when the blindness would come off the eyes of the people it all began with." He was referring to Jews. The Bible, Bernis continued, "tells us that the day will come when all of Israel will be saved." The MJBI, Bernis said, "is one of the ministries that God has raised up to bring that to pass." Other featured speakers last year included David Barton, the religious right's discredited "historian," who this week used Beck's radio show to announce that he won't challenge Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in next year's Republican Senate primary.
Another MJBI board member, Rabbi Marty Waldman of Baruch HaShem, a Messianic congregation in Dallas, described his own conversion experience before making a pitch to the audience to donate money to MJBI. Money, he explained, is needed to hasten the return of Jesus. With the funds it collects, Waldman said, MJBI trains "people to preach the good news of the Messiah to the Jewish people." That's important, Waldman noted, because when there are "enough" Jewish people who call Jesus their savior, "some sort of a trigger will go off in heaven, and our father in heaven will say, 'Okay, son, it's time to get your bride.'"
At last year's MJBI event, a group called the Christian Heritage Foundation displayed a collection of Torah scrolls outside the Miller Lite Club at Cowboys Stadium. On the field, a shofar was blown, to applause.
Research for this article was supported by a 2012 Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting on Global Religion. The fellowship is a program of the University of Southern California’s Knight Chair in Media and Religion.

 

 

Sarah Posner

Sarah Posner is an investigative journalist covering the intersection of religion and politics. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Salon, The Nation, The American Prospect, Al Jazeera America, and many other publications. Her website is http://sarahposner.com.

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Does Ted Cruz Believe His Critics Will be Condemned by God?

—By David Corn

| Mon Nov. 4, 2013 12:39 PM PST

This weekend, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) responded to the story Mother Jones published last week that revealed inflammatory remarks made by his father, Rafael Cruz, a Cuban-born, septuagenarian businessman-turned-pastor. Speaking to the North Texas Tea Party last year on behalf of his son, the elder Cruz called President Barack Obama an "outright Marxist" who "seeks to destroy all concept of God." At that event, Rafael Cruz also urged the crowd to send Obama "back to Kenya." Or ship him "back to Indonesia," he said. Asked to comment on his father's remarks, Sen. Cruz's office told us, "These selective quotes, taken out of context, mischaracterize the substance of Pastor Cruz's message." It added, "Pastor Cruz does not speak for the senator." Yet after the story was posted, when a Texas television station questioned the senator directly about his father's statements, Ted Cruz dismissed them as a "joke." He went on to claim the article was the result of "the politics of personal destruction" and en effort by people "trying to smear [Rafael Cruz] and use that to attack me."
There's a lot to unpack here. Does Ted Cruz believe it's a joke to accuse the president of trying to destroy God? Or that his father was kidding when he suggested Obama is "wicked," asserted that the president is attempting to "destroy American exceptionalism," said he wants government to be God, and insisted that "social justice is a cancer"? As for attacking the son with the father's statements, the senator did not explain why it's unfair to hold him accountable for remarks made by a person Cruz's campaign routinely deployed as an official surrogate. According to campaign disclosure records, Cruz's Senate campaign paid Rafael Cruz about $10,000 in traveling expenses in 2012 and 2013. And in August the conservative National Review noted that the father-son duo had forged a "political partnership," reporting: "Cruz has kept his father, a 74-year-old pastor, involved with his political shop, using him not merely as a confidant and stand-in, but as a special envoy. He is Cruz’s preferred introductory speaker, his best messenger with evangelicals, and his favorite on-air sidekick." Put it this way: Rafael Cruz is far closer to Ted Cruz and his political endeavors than Jeremiah Wright was to Obama and his campaigns.
I've asked Ted Cruz's office to explain whether the senator considered all of Rafael Cruz's harsh utterances about Obama to be jokes and whether he'd like to comment on Rafael Cruz's role as an official campaign surrogate. So far, there's been no reply.
There might be a much bigger issue regarding Ted Cruz's response to the article about his father. In July, the senator, with his father by his side, accepted the blessings of fundamentalist pastors in Iowa (see above) who are adherents of Christian Reconstructionism, a view that holds that God anoints individuals to be "kings" who strive to influence or control key institutions of society (say, the government) as a prelude to the second coming of Christ. The blessing of Ted Cruz contained this line: "Father, we believe that no weapon formed against [Cruz] will prosper and every tongue that rises up against him in judgment will be condemned."
This blessing seems to suggest that the pastors believe that those who criticize Ted Cruz will be condemned by God. This certainly seems in sync with Rafael Cruz's remarks and his preaching at religious gatherings of fellow evangelicals. But a serious question is raised: does Ted Cruz himself see his detractors as being on the wrong side of God? Can those who raise inconvenient questions about him or his father expect to receive a mighty smiting from above?
This is no joke. Such a mindset—my detractors are destined for hell—could certainly affect how Cruz would govern, should he reach the pinnacle of power. Given that he willingly accepted this blessing, it would hardly be inappropriate to ask Cruz what he thought of it. Actually, I did. Along with those queries noted above, I asked his office whether Senator Cruz believes that his critics will be condemned by God? No answer yet on that, either. I suppose those who report unflattering facts about the senator may have to wait until Judgment Day to see if those Cruz-courted pastors have it right.
UPDATE: After this story was posted, Sean Rushton, a spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz sent the following response: "Sen. Cruz loves and supports his father, even though their views and perspectives are not always the same. The Constitution protects Mr. Corn's right to embrace whatever faith he chooses—or no faith whatsoever—but, it is unfortunate that his agenda would call for the public condemnation of Christian pastors who pray verbatim from the Bible (namely, Isaiah 54:17)."

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The Real Story Behind the Phony Canceled Health Insurance Scandal

Insurance companies ripped off Americans for years with lousy health plans. Obamacare was designed to fix that.

By Stephanie Mencimer

| Mon Nov. 4, 2013 7:13 AM PST

In 2009, when President Barack Obama first promised that people who liked their insurance coverage would be able to keep it under the Affordable Care Act, he overlooked one critical fact: Many of the health policies that Americans like are terrible insurance plans that were created to scam consumers.
Over the past few weeks, insurers have been sending out hundreds of thousands of notices alerting customers that their current plans won't comply with the ACA as of January 1 and that the owners of these plans need to find alternatives. Republicans and conservatives pointed to the development as evidence that Obama lied. Several prominent right-wingers who were covered under these plans, including Fox New contributor Michelle Malkin, have helped fuel this outcry. When Malkin got her cancelation notice, she went on the Twitter warpath. She later wrote a piece for the National Review slugged, "Obama lied. My health plan died." Malkin had a high-deductible plan from Anthem Blue Cross, which doesn’t meet the minimum coverage requirements created by the ACA. So she has to get a new plan on the state health exchange. Malkin blamed Obamacare for destroying the individual insurance market.
The media have covered these complaints with gusto, as if the cancelations are a genuine crisis and indication of a failure of Obama's health care law. The ACA was designed specifically to prevent insurance companies from peddling lousy insurance plans and to force these firms to replace these subpar products with affordable plans providing better and effective coverage. The plans being canceled are ending because they offered insufficient coverage—and only a few years ago both Rs and Ds were upset about these kinds of plans. But there's been collective amnesia about the shoddy plans that GOPers have happily exploited in recent days. Perhaps Obama should have said, "Those of you who obtain insurance on the individual market can keep your plans unless it’s the sort of rip-off plan the ACA will forbid. Otherwise, you will be offered new options that actually give you decent coverage at a decent price."
Here’s what led to the current situation: In the early aughts, the number of people with employer-based coverage declined dramatically. That left an increasing number of Americans uninsured and about 30 million adults underinsured and at serious financial risk. The Commonwealth Fund estimates that between 2003 and 2010, the number of underinsured Americans nearly doubled.  

The fastest growing group of underinsured was people around the national median income, the $40,000 to $50,000 annual income range—folks who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but who don’t have employer-sponsored plans or who can’t afford the ones they're offered. Insurance companies jumped into the void with a lot of products Consumer Reports dubbed "junk insurance." These were plans that barely qualified as insurance because they had very low caps on coverage or weren’t even really insurance at all. Many were merely medical discount programs that didn’t protect against health-related financial calamity. Insurance companies, including many of the biggest, marketed these products aggressively and often misleadingly—which was made easier by the lack of disclosure requirements in the sale of health insurance. Regulators struggled to protect consumers because so many of the junk plans were perfectly legal.

Take the case of HealthMarkets Inc., a company owned by the Goldman Sachs Group and Blackstone Group, two Wall Street giants. It had run-ins with state regulators repeatedly regarding its sale of junk health insurance on the individual market. The company paid out more than $40 million in settlements with state attorneys general over its deceptive sales practices between 2008 and 2010. In 2009, for example, after a long investigation, the Massachusetts attorney general fined the company $17 million and banned it from doing business in the state for five years.

HealthMarkets was also plagued with individual consumer lawsuits and class actions. Among those who sued the company was Doug Christensen, a cancer survivor who bought a HeathMarkets plan from the National Association for the Self-Employed. A sales rep had knocked on the door of his office and offered him a policy for $434 a month that would cover him and his wife, and include $100,000 worth of chemotherapy coverage. He didn’t realize that the bargain policy had a host of limitations, including a cap on drug expenses at $1,000 per day, which wasn’t close to what the treatment ended up costing when his bone cancer returned. Doug eventually died, and his widow was left with $450,000 in unpaid medical bills because the policy was so bad. She won a $1.7 million settlement with the company in 2005.

Stories like these had been standard fare for years before Obamacare. Even Republicans got outraged. In 2008, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), launched an investigation into AARP’s limited benefit health plans and held a hearing on junk insurance plans. He was inspired by a Wall Street Journal article about a Texas woman, Lisa Kelly, who was diagnosed with leukemia and required cancer treatment. She was referred to the M.D. Anderson Center in Houston. When she called to schedule her first chemo appointment, the hospital told her to bring with her a check for $45,000. Kelly had a limited-benefit policy sold by AARP that required her to pay all of the medical costs up front. Then it would reimburse her $7500 per procedure, which didn’t cover the treatment cost.

Grassley's staff investigated the AARP's plan and discovered that the insurance company was using highly deceptive marketing practices. When he made the results public, Grassley decried the evils of the individual health insurance marketplace saying, "It's not better than nothing to encourage people to buy something described as 'health security' when there's no basic protection against high medical costs."

AARP ended up discontinuing some, but not all, of the plans. Today, the individual market is still plagued by consumer abuses that have left many people at risk of medical bankruptcy or lack of access to care. "A lot of insurance that is sold today is like a Swiss cheese insurance policy. It’s insurance that doesn’t really insure,” says Ron Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a health care advocacy group that supports the ACA.

Many of the plans on the individual market are so bad that people who have them might as well be uninsured. "The only people who like those plans are people who have never needed them," says Nancy Metcalf, a senior editor at Consumer Reports. "They haven't figured out yet how terrible they are. They think they have good coverage but they don't."

A good example might be Dianne Barrette, 56, who appeared on CBS News with Jan Crawford last week for a segment about the wave of cancelations. Barrette, a realtor in Florida, was upset because her $54 a month insurance plan was being canceled. She believed a new one would cost her more than $500 a month due to Obamacare. "What I have right now is what I’m happy with," she said. "I just want to know why I can’t keep what I have. Why do I have to be forced into something else?"

But here’s the rub: Barrette’s $54 plan wasn't even insurance. When I talked to her, she was unsure of what her plan covered. But she said it was what Blue Cross calls a "supplemental" or discount plan, which only pays $50 toward doctor’s office visits and a few other out-patient services, including mammograms. What her plan doesn’t cover: hospitalization. Not at all. So if she gets hit by a car, the people ultimately picking up the tab will be the hospital and everyone else (by way of higher medical costs). If she gets cancer, she’s basically out of luck. "It's all I could afford," she told me.

Blue Cross was selling these plans in malls and other retail insurance "shops" in an effort to target young people who don't have or don't think they need health insurance, luring them in with cheap premiums of between $24 to $54 a month. The plans came with a not-well-disclosed caveat that they were not designed to replace hospital-surgical plans, which Blue Cross encouraged people to buy— provided the purchasers could get past all the exclusions for preexisting conditions.

Blue Cross is now canceling 300,000 plans in Florida, and, no doubt, a lot of them are such "Go Blue" plans. (A spokesman from Blue Cross of Florida wouldn’t answer any specific questions about which plans are getting canceled.) The ACA was designed to replace plans like the one Barrette bought. And every plan sold on the Obamacare exchanges must provide a minimum and meaningful level of coverage, including free preventive care, mental health and maternity coverage, hospitalization, and rehabilitation services that are indispensable for anyone who has a disability, who becomes injured in a bad accident, or who has a degenerative disease such as multiple sclerosis. These plans don't have annual or lifetime coverage limits of any sort. And the insurance companies selling plans on the exchange must disclose coverage terms in such a way that people know what they're getting and can compare similar plans.

Much of the recent media coverage treats the old junk plans as a national treasure, their loss a true scandal. Far from being a victim of Obamacare, Barrette should have been a story about someone who will benefit immensely from the Affordable Care Act. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation premium calculator, Barrette, who makes about $30,000 a year, is eligible for an annual tax credit of up to $3,967 a year, which could get her a silver plan on the exchange for $234 a month (in cost to her), or a bronze plan, with slightly higher out of pocket costs, for $97 a month. True, with the bronze plans, she’d be paying $43 a month more, but in return, she would have true protection and access to health care, not sham coverage. A bronze plan would replace her $50 doctor’s office discount with free preventive care services, including mammograms, cover hospitalization and other services, and cap her out of pocket costs at slightly more than $6,000 a year. Barrette should be cheering the death of her old plan.

The same is true of the other conservatives who’ve groused about losing a plan, including Malkin. As Metcalf points out, "If they’re having to cancel out a plan with a $10,000 deductible and end up with a plan with a $2,500 deductible, that’s a better plan, period." Pollack says, "As people now get real protection, the premiums may be somewhat higher, but it’s a different product and you’re saving money on the back end. The Affordable Care Act eliminates lousy coverage, which ultimately saves cost for people when they receive care."

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MAP: 9 States Besides Texas That Are Making It Harder for Women to Vote

The GOP's campaign for strict voter ID laws is affecting another voting bloc.

 By Dana Liebelson | Tue Oct. 29, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

 

Kheel Center/Flickr

Women have been allowed to vote in the United States since 1920, after the passage of the 19th Amendment. But fast-forward to 2013, and plenty of states' laws have a provision that makes it harder for women who are married or divorced to cast a ballot.
When Americans all over the country head to the polls on November 5 to vote on mayoral candidates, ballot initiatives, gubernatorial races, and even members of Congress, they will be up against a new kind of voter ID law that has mostly cropped up in 2012 and 2013 and disproportionately affects women—as well as transgender voters and anyone else with a name change.
Controversial voter ID laws, which GOP proponents say are intended to prevent the (pretty much nonexistent) crime of voting fraud, are nothing new, and they have been criticized for targeting low-income voters, young people, and minorities. But Texas's newly enforced voter ID law has put a spotlight on another group of voters that will be disproportionately affected by these rules. Not only must Texas voters present government-issue photo IDs to vote, but now poll workers are required under the law to check these IDs against an official voting registry to determine if the two names "substantially" match. That means that a woman who updated her voter registration when she got married, but not her driver's license or passport (and vice versa), could face additional hurdles in getting her ballot counted.
The Texas law may have drawn extra scrutiny because of the state's reputation for being a battleground in the "war on women"—but it's just one of many to adopt this type of provision. At least 9 other states' voting laws, most enacted in 2012 or 2013, use similar language. That doesn't count the 24 additional states with other kinds of voter ID laws, including some with looser photo ID rules that are still potentially problematic for women. In 2006, the Brennan Center found that 34 percent of voting-age women do not possess a proof-of-citizenship document that reflects their legal name, although updated statistics on photo IDs are hard to come by. And Slate points out that the law doesn't just affect Democrats, as Republican women are more likely change their names.
"We need Americans to understand that even though this particular 'war on women' isn't out in the light, women are quietly being disenfranchised in the dark—they just might not know it yet," says Judith Browne Dianis, codirector of the the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization.
Voter ID laws can be sorted into three categories—ones that require non-photo ID, like a bank statement, ones that require a photo ID (usually government-issued); and ones that require photo ID and include language about how the name on that ID must match the name in the voter registration database (like Texas). Here's a map showing all of these categories and whether or not the laws are in place for this upcoming election. (For even more in-depth information on your state, head over to the National Conference of State Legislatures.)

In every single one of these states, minorities, low-income voters, and young people—who tend to vote Democratic and are least likely to have up-to-date identification—are targeted. But married or divorced women who have changed their names are also affected in the states above that require photo identification—since the name on their ID, which women often wait to update until it expires, has to match their voter registration. The Advancement Project's legal team told Mother Jones that the states that require poll workers to check the voter registration list for a match make it the most difficult for women, since poll workers have more explicit legal instructions.
Regardless of what's on the books, interpretation is largely left up to the poll workers, who have a lot of power over whether someone gets a ballot. In less strict states, for example, poll workers can choose to have someone sign a sworn affidavit rather than show ID. In Texas, if the voter registration list reads "Jane Smith" but the woman's ID says "Jane Doe Smith"—then that qualifies as a "substantial match" and the voter only has to sign an affidavit swearing to his or her identity for her vote to be counted. But if Jane's ID still has her maiden name, "Jane Doe," and the poll worker isn't sure, the ballot will only be counted if, within six days, Jane can dig up a $20 marriage or divorce certificate and find time to get a new ID that matches the name she registered with. (In Dallas, poll workers have been bending the rules so that voters can re-register under their married names.) Pennsylvania also gives six days to obtain a new ID, and Mississippi only gives five.
These scenarios aren't merely hypothetical. In 2011, a 96-year-old Georgia woman was denied the right to vote because she didn't have her marriage certificate. And in Pennsylvania, the state's ID law is on hold until a pending lawsuit is resolved. One of the plaintiffs is a woman who couldn't vote because her marriage certificate was in Hebrew, and she couldn't get a new ID that reflected her changed name, thus, her name didn't match the voter registration list. (Women who obtained common law marriages could have similar problems.) Another plaintiff is a transgender man who presented both a driver's license and passport, but was rejected because of his photograph.
"Voter ID laws discriminate against trans communities and many marginalized communities who struggle to obtain access to consistent, accurate and updated identity documents," says Sasha Buchert, staff attorney at the Transgender Law Center. "Often there are huge barriers for updating documents." In Texas, for example, a transgender person needs to bring a court order to the DMV.
For those heading to the polls, Kelly Ceballos, a spokesperson for the League of Women Voters, says the most important thing is for voters to get educated—Texas, for example, is reducing or eliminating the cost of getting a birth certificate copy in some counties—and not get discouraged. "It is important to participate in the democratic process and the way to do that is to go to the polls and cast a ballot," she says.
Judith Browne Dianis hopes that women voters will start realize that "you're being disenfranchised because you weren't paying attention. Maybe you thought this was something that was just affecting people of color, or low-income people, but it's impacting your voice and your ability to participate on the issues that matter to you."
For more data on voter ID laws and who they affect, click here.
Additional reporting by Nina Liss-Schultz. 

Dana Liebelson

Reporter

Dana Liebelson is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. Her work has also appeared in The Week, TIME's Battleland, Truthout, OtherWords and Yahoo! News. RSS | Twitter

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WATCH: Ted Cruz's Dad Calls US a "Christian Nation," Says Obama Should Go "Back to Kenya"

Want to understand where the tea party champion's hardcore views come from? Meet his father, Rafael.

—By David Corn

| Thu Oct. 31, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

In April, Rafael Cruz, the father of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), spoke to the tea party of Hood County, which is southwest of Fort Worth, and made a bold declaration: The United States is a "Christian nation." The septuagenarian businessman turned evangelical pastor did not choose to use the more inclusive formulation "Judeo-Christian nation." Insisting that the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution "were signed on the knees of the framers" and were a "divine revelation from God," he went on to say, "yet our president has the gall to tell us that this is not a Christian nation…The United States of America was formed to honor the word of God." Seven months earlier, Rafael Cruz, speaking to the North Texas Tea Party on behalf of his son, who was then running for Senate, called President Barack Obama an "outright Marxist" who "seeks to destroy all concept of God," and he urged the crowd to send Obama "back to Kenya."

Comments uttered by a politician's parent may have little relevance in assessing an elected official. But it's appropriate to take Rafael Cruz into account when evaluating his son the senator. Ted Cruz, the tea party champion who almost single-handedly spurred the recent government shutdown, has often deployed his father as a political asset. He routinely cites his Cuban-born father, who emigrated from the island nation in 1957, when he discusses immigration and justifies his opposition to the bipartisan reform bill that passed in the Senate. (Ted Cruz hails his father as a symbol of the "American dream" who came to the United States legally—though Rafael Cruz began his career in the oil industry in Canada, where Ted was born.) Moreover, Ted Cruz campaigns with his father; he had him in tow on a recent trip to Iowa (where the evangelical vote is crucial in GOP presidential primaries). Rafael Cruz regularly speaks to tea party and Republican groups in Texas as a surrogate for his son; during Ted Cruz's 2012 Senate campaign, his father was dispatched to events and rallies across the state to whip up support. And thanks to Ted Cruz's political rise, Rafael has become a conservative star in his own right. He has been prominently featured—and praised—at events held by prominent right-wing outfits, such as FreedomWorks and Heritage Action. What Rafael Cruz says—especially when he is speaking for his son—matters.
The elder Cruz is a North Texas-based pastor who directs a small outfit called Purifying Fire Ministries.* Rafael Cruz's inflammatory remarks and fundamentalist views have recently started to attract increased media attention. A few weeks ago, he sparked headlines when he told a gathering of Republicans in Colorado that Obama has vowed to "side with the Muslims," that Obamacare mandates "suicide counseling" for the elderly, and that gay marriage is a plot to make "government your god."
A sermon Rafael Cruz delivered in August 2012 at an Irving, Texas, mega-church has also come under scrutiny. At that event, he asserted that Christian true believers are "anointed" by God to "take dominion" of the world in "every area: society, education, government, and economics." He was preaching a particular form of evangelical Christianity known as Dominionism (a.k.a. Christian Reconstructionism) that holds that these "anointed" Christians are destined to take over the government and create in practice, if not in official terms, a theocracy. Rafael Cruz also endorsed the evangelical belief known as the "end-time transfer of wealth"—that is, as a prelude to the second coming of Christ, God will seize the wealth of the wicked and redistribute it to believers. But, Cruz told the flock, don't expect to benefit from this unless you tithe mightily. Introducing Cruz at this service, Christian Zionist pastor Larry Huch offered this bottom line: In the coming year, he predicted, "God will begin to rule and reign. Not Wall Street, not Washington, God's people and his kingdom will begin to rule and reign. I know that's why God got Rafael's son elected, Ted Cruz, the next senator." (In July, several prominent Dominionist pastors at a ceremony in Iowa blessed and anointed Ted Cruz, rendering him, in their view, a "king" who would help usher in the kingdom of Christ.)


During his sermon at this church, Rafael Cruz preached that men, not women, are the spiritual leaders of their families: "As God commands us men to teach your wife, to teach your children—to be the spiritual leader of your family—you're acting as a priest. Now, unfortunately, unfortunately, in too many Christian homes, the role of the priest is assumed by the wife. Why? Because the man had abdicated his responsibility as priest to his family…So the wife has taken up that banner, but that's not her responsibility. And if I'm stepping on toes, just say, 'Ouch.'"
As Rafael Cruz recounted at the Hood County tea party event, he had a powerful role in shaping his son, introducing Ted, when he was in middle school, to the Free Enterprise Education Center, where the young Cruz was flooded with Austrian School libertarian economics and archly conservative interpretations of US history. Cruz excelled in this setting and went on to become part of a traveling road show of teens called the Constitutional Corroborators. They appeared at Rotary Club luncheons across the state to extol the wonders of the free market and the US Constitution. While the Rotarians ate lunch, the whiz kids transcribed from memory the articles of the Constitution on easels placed at the front of the room.
At the Hood County gathering, Rafael Cruz, in full sync with his son's political stance, attacked RINOs—Republicans In Name Only. He noted that the "wicked" were now ruling the United States. He insisted that "those death panels are in Obamacare," and that the US government wants "to take all of your money" and confiscate "our fortunes." He asserted that the Democratic Party promotes "everything that is contrary to the word of God." He also exclaimed, "Social justice is a cancer. Social justice means you are ruled by whatever the mob does. What social justice does is destroy individual responsibility."


Pastor Cruz is a fiery speaker whose rhetorical red meat is well-received by hardcore Republican and tea party audiences. He regularly has compared Obama to Fidel Castro and routinely echoes the no-surrender calls of his son. At a "freedom rally" at the Alamo in 2012, he vowed, "We've had enough compromise…enough of Establishment Republicans that don't stand for anything." Speaking to Houston Republicans in September, he decried John McCain and Mitt Romney, blasting both of the former presidential candidates for having "played dead" when challenging Obama. He blasted McCain for refusing to slam Obama regarding the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He asserted that the elderly would be harmed by Obamacare, claiming that "everywhere in the world when socialized medicine has been instituted it takes 12 to 18 months to get any kind of medical proceeding." (That is not the case with Medicare, a form of socialized health care.) He also declared, "I haven't heard Obama ask us for our consent when he's trying to ram Obamacare down our throats"—without noting that Congress voted for the Affordable Care Act. At the Hood County event, Rafael Cruz, a fervent foe of gay rights, vowed that he would be speaking "across this country to support constitutional conservatives to retake the Senate."


Whether he's at a prayer breakfast or a tea party rally, Rafael Cruz easily and enthusiastically mixes religion and politics. At an event hosted by the National Federation of Republican Assemblies in September, he contended that after the 2012 election, God told him, "If we could blame one group of people for what happened in the last election, it is the pastors." By that he meant that, for decades, too many Christian leaders have remained on the political sidelines, declining to do combat with liberals and Democrats. Consequently, he explained, prayer has been removed from schools, legalized abortion has continued, and gay marriage has come to pass in several states. He insisted that the advancement of Christianity (his fundamentalist version of it) depends on political battle, noting the need not just for a "spiritual savior" but a "political savior." (The idea of states' rights, he said, was based in the bible.) Obama, Cruz proclaimed, believes "government is your god." When Cruz was a keynote speaker at a tax day rally hosted by Texas tea partiers in April, he told the crowd that conservative Christians need to take over "every school board in this nation." At a Texas tea party rally in September 2012, he claimed that Obama has "a clear agenda…to destroy American exceptionalism"—and "to achieve a "worldwide redistribution of wealth" and "make us subject to the United Nations."
The United States as a "Christian nation"; death panels; social justice a cancer; gay rights a conspiracy; the "wicked" in charge in Washington; women inferior to men as spiritual leaders; Obama a Muslim-favoring, God-hating, Marxist Kenyan; End Times; a UN worldwide dictatorship; states' rights; free markets over all—Rafael Cruz blends the far reaches of extreme conservatism and Christian fundamentalism. He embodies the full synthesis of the tea party and the religious right. In fact, he has noted that the rise of the religious right in Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign "was the precursor of the tea party." Rafael Cruz may well be key to understanding the ideas, desires, and long-term aims that drive Ted Cruz—a politician who is exerting an outsized influence on the GOP.
At the least, Cruz ought to have to explain whether he shares the more extreme views of his No. 1 surrogate. Asked to comment on Rafael Cruz's remarks—particularly his statement that the United States is a "Christian nation" and his call for Obama to be shipped back to Kenya—Sen. Cruz's office requested citations for these quotes. After receiving the citations, Sean Rushton, a spokesperson for Cruz, replied, "These selective quotes, taken out of context, mischaracterize the substance of Pastor Cruz's message. Like many Americans, he feels America is on the wrong track." Rushton added, "Pastor Cruz does not speak for the senator."
"People here are trying to figure out Ted Cruz," a  Democratic senator recently told me. "And a lot of them are saying, 'He went to Princeton, Harvard Law—he doesn't really believe what he says.' But I think he does. All you have to do is look at his father. So much of our life is mirroring. And Ted Cruz is mirroring his father."
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Purifying Fire Ministries as Purifying Fire International Ministry. The office of Sen. Ted Cruz says there is no connection between the two.

David Corn

Washington Bureau Chief

David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter and Facebook. RSS | Twitter

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