South Carolina Senators Vote To Help Spying By Telephone Companies

Today, South Carolina Democrats are going to the polls in their presidential primary, voting to award delegates to the Democratic presidential convention in Denver at the end of the summer.

Something else happened a couple of days ago, however, that ought to draw at least as much attention from South Carolina voters: South Carolina’s two United States Senators failed to stand against a law that would give telecommunications corporations legal immunity for violating their privacy agreements with their customers and engaging in massive electronic spying operations against the American people.

In just the second roll call vote of the year in the U.S. Senate, a motion to remove the proposed immunity for telecommunications corporations who secretly set up spy against Americans was defeated.

Senator Jim DeMint voted to defeat the motion. Senator DeMint voted to keep the provision to give special immunity to corporate spying on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Senator Lindsey Graham didn’t even bother to show up to vote.

I can’t decide which is worse.

Primary Voters Should Remember Right Wing Link To South Carolina Poverty

South Carolina has one of the earliest presidential primaries in the 2008 election: January 29 for Democrats and February 2 for Republicans.

Typically, South Carolina has tilted to the right very heavily when it comes to politics. However, recently revealed information about the poverty rate in red state South Carolina may cause some voters to reconsider their allegiance to right wing politicians.

For blue states – those states that voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, the average poverty rate is only 11.06 percent. The overall poverty rate in South Carolina is higher, at 15.6 percent. In particular, Democratic blue states strongly outperform South Carolina when it comes to child poverty. Blue states have an average child poverty rate of 15.02 percent. South Carolina’s child poverty rate is much high, at 22.7 percent.

More than one in five children in South Carolina are living in poverty. That’s dramatic evidence that the right wing economic policies of South Carolina’s politicians are a destructive force for children, and for citizens there in general. In 2008, for the sake of their own well-being, South Carolina needs to reject the presidential candidates who continue to promote the outlandish economic theories of the Republicans and their right wing allies.

(Source: Food Research and Action Center, State of the States Report, 2007)