The GOP is determined to suppress voters because their policies simply do not appeal to large segments of the U.S. population. The reason the conservatives are doing this is not only to suppress voters but they are doing this for other reasons based on fear. The old, cranky, surly, miserable, bigoted, white voters are actually living in fear of losing their own culture. The number of babies born in America this year to minority mothers exceeded those babies born to white mothers. White middle class people are not having enough children to replace themselves because America is such an extremely expensive place to raise children. Young white women with college debt meet other young men with lots of college debt. These couples are not getting married, and those that do marry are putting off having families ever later in life because of the debt. Health insurance costs are another killer for families. Lack of job opportunities and declining paychecks are another problem for America's young people. Its very interesting that once Hispanic women stay in the U.S. for a generation they too have small families at the same rates as white people who have lived here all their lives. These xenophobic attacks by the radical right wing are made out of fear of America losing its place in the world.

Much of this conversation is misplaced and dangerously delusional. Its what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. The bottom line that no one wants to talk about very much is that the American system has been in a national malaise since 1973 Yom Kippur war and the ensuing Arab oil embargo. For the middle class in America life has been nothing but one continuous downhill slide ever since. We have had brief spikes in job creation in the 1990's but real wages and salaries for most Americans have been stagnant for 40 years. The rise of supply side economics has only exacerbated wealth inequality at an already faster rate. We now have wealth inequality rates comparable to the 1929 recession with the wealthiest one percent owning 34.6% of the total net worth and 42.7% of the financial wealth in 2007 (Domhoff 2010).

We need to connect the dots of right winged xenophobic anxiety, voter suppression tactics and America's declining living standards with our continued precarious dependence on imported oil. Our loss of job opportunities are linked to the automation of jobs, the global economy with outsourcing but mostly to our dependence on imported OPEC oil. President Carter had it right back in 1979 when he gave his "Great Malaise" speech. The American people, especially the conservatives, do not have the courage to hear the truth about our oil addiction. President Carter had a sound and very forward thinking energy plan that if completely adopted would have transformed America's imported oil addiction problem. The conservatives voted in Ronald Reagan who said "you can waste all the oil you want because your American and deserve it" and 100 million SUV's were built and solar panels tore off of the White House. Most of those solar companies went to Germany and are now employing over 250,000 German workers in a robust solar industry.

Imported oil is killing the middle class in America. Our oil problem in the 1970's caused implacable stagflation. In the 21st century it is retarding our recovery from the 2008 Great Recession. In fact, some pundits rightly point to the 2008 price spike of $147 per barrel as the start of the Great Recession. No doubt the real estate market crash was the primary reason but fuel spiking to nearly $5 per gallon certainly helped tipped the scales towards deep recession. Conservatives don't like hearing about the real costs of our oil addiction. At $70 per barrel we spend about $400 billion just for the cost of the oil itself. But this is only the beginning of the real costs of oil. The military costs are huge because aircraft carrier task force groups cost many tens of billions of dollars each to operate.

We subsidize a barrel of oil to the tune of $11 per gallon to $15 per gallon once the military, health, and environmental costs of oil importation are all added up. We hemorrhage at least one trillion dollars annually out of our economy overseas because of our imported oil problem. The problem will only get more acute with the rise of demand for oil in the BRIC countries, and peak world oil production. Analysts are quietly predicting oil will spike upwards of $150 per barrel again once the recession ends in the coming years.

So we go back to the conservatives in Florida wanting to suppress the vote. This absurd xenophobic response to a non-existent problem will not reverse the declining living standards of Americans. Governor Scott, and the rest of the GOP, is the equivalent of someone rearranging deck furniture on the Titanic. The real problems we face in America are not being discussed nor any real solutions proposed to them. The response of the conservatives is pathetic, if it were not so tragic. We have suffered 50,000 casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan at a cost of $4 trillion long term. Most of this is because our economy is still dependent on imported OPEC oil.

If we keep importing OPEC oil we will continue to have more terrorism, more trillion dollar wars along with another 50,000 casualties for a $200 barrel of oil. I wonder if this will make the conservatives any smarter? Governor Scott can purge all the voter lists he wants but all of these distractions from our looming energy crisis just means that we can all go down together if we don't start working together as a country on green energy. President Carter had this one right. President Obama has pushed hard for green energy but the forces of the fossil fuel status quo are trying to buy this election, hence the voter suppression in Florida. If we don't get off of imported OPEC oil soon, it will be an Asian 21st century not an American one.