Today, the U.S. Department of Justice blocked a Texas law requiring voters to present photo IDs, saying it would disproportionately affect Latinos. A letter from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to Texas election officials said data from the state show:

...a Hispanic registered voter is at least 46.5 percent, and potentially 120.0 percent, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack this identification. Even using the data most favorable to the state, Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver’s license or a personal identification card issued by DPS, and that disparity is statistically significant.

Donald Cohen, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, a national resource center on privatization and responsible contracting, sends us this.

It seems there’s no public service or piece of property that private companies are not eyeing as potential revenue streams.  While funding anti-government think tanks like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), companies like Corrections Corporation of America, Waste Management, Maximus, Intuit, Laidlaw, Northrup Grumman, Koch Companies, Macquarie Capital Advisers, Pinnacle West, and UnitedHealthcare are hoping to use government as their candy store.

This is a cross-post by Karen Hickey, communications director at  the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO.

Earlier today, more than 125 Texans greeted Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on his fundraising trip to Austin. Walker was the keynote speaker at the right-wing Texas Public Policy Foundation’s annual policy orientation for Texas legislators.

TPM reports that a preliminary Justice Department investigation finds that the redistricting plan approved by presidential candidate and Texas governor Rick Perry (R) appears to have been “adopted, at least in part, for the purpose of diminishing the ability of [minorities] to elect their preferred candidates of choice to Congress.”

After a hotly contested online summertime election, with tens of thousands of votes streaming in from across the country, Gov. Rick Scott of Florida has been elected Worst Governor Ever by the American people. Scott’s rejection of high-speed rail funding, attacks on teachers’ unions and billions of dollars in cuts to the middle class, while creating tax breaks for the rich, proved to be a very successful campaign strategy in the race for Worst Governor Ever. Gov. Scott beat out many close competitors, including Texas Gov. and now presidential candidate Rick Perry, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and the man some say started it all, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.