Before the post indictment celebrations begin, every Kossack should take a minute tomorrow to call their Congressman and demand that the anti-voter registration language be taken out of H.R. 1461, the Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005.
Greatbasin2 provided
an excellent diary summarizing this situation the other day.
The basics are that the most conservative House Republicans were angry that the bill contained a provision which will require that 5% of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's after tax earnings will be put in an Affordable Housing Fund that will be used to provide low income housing. They struck back by using their friends DeLay and Hastert to add a manager's amendment attacking voting registation. How and why did they do that?
The knuckledraggers are intent on using the levers of government to defund activist non-profit organization, so they attached a provision that says that any non-profit organization which has conducted voter registration activities in the past year can not receive any of this Affordable Housing Fund for producing affordable housing. Get this - the provision doesn't apply to for-profit companies and it directly contradicts the Motor Voter Law of 1993 which requires some non-profit groups that receive Federal money to provide voter registration materials and assistance to the unregistered.
This amendment is clearly unconstitutional, but it is very likely to pass the House on Wednesday or Thursday unless there is a groundswell of calls and emails to our Representatives, especially Republican representatives. You can use this web page to send a note to your Congressman.
All you need to say is "Please vote to remove the voter registration restrictions from the GSE Reform bill (H.R. 1461) when it comes to a vote this week. Those provisions are unAmerican and harm our democracy.
Thanks for taking the time.