More money off a criminal than a scholar

The Supreme Court has accepted three cases on LGBT discrimination. They are all based on whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination on the basis of sex, also bans discrimination on sexual orientation or gender identity. Lower courts have said that it does. The combined cases won’t be heard until sometime after the Court reconvenes in October. And this court isn’t as liberal as it used to be.



Twitter user Indigenous shared a quote from Henry Rollins:

The Prison Industrial Complex is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he’s a criminal instead of a scholar.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has an observation about what is playing out in the big field of Democrat candidates:

It will never cease to fascinate me how it's the marginalized people who fight for inclusion every day, and our allies, who are called "divisive" by the people trying to keep us out, under the auspices of "unity."

Just get behind this wealthy straight white able-bodied cis man this time, and we promise we'll get to you someday.

Yeah. So I've heard.

And when I stop buying that line of shit, it's me who's "divisive" because I refuse to "unify."

Sure.

To which FloraFlora commented:

How about we unify behind a queer disabled black woman? What, you think that's not someone who can represent your "normal" needs? uh .....huh. *biggest side-eye in the world*

Another gerrymandering win! Even though citizens of Michigan approved an amendment to end gerrymandering in Michigan it doesn’t have any effect until the 2022 election. Similar to recent lawsuits in other states, the League of Women Voters in Michigan filed suit saying the current maps – to be used one more time in 2020 – are unconstitutionally gerrymandered. A panel of three federal judges, from the 6th Circuit, and eastern and western districts of Michigan (no idea what prompted this combination), agreed. The ruling affects 15 (out of 110) state House districts, 10 (out of 38) state Senate districts, and 9 (out of 14) Congressional districts. Probably several districts around these will also have to be redrawn. The judges said new maps will have to be submitted by August 1. They also said the state senators in those redrawn districts will have to run again in 2020, even though their term isn’t up until 2022.

Republicans said they will appeal to the Supremes. If they take the case it doesn’t look so good – the Court has never ruled against partisan gerrymandering. We’ll get a better sense soon. Two such cases are already before the Court with rulings expected by the end of June.

Even if the Supremes overturn this decision, it only affects the 2020 election.

Tyranny of the minority

In March of last year I wrote a post that discussed the problems with the Electoral College and how the rural states had more influence on the outcome than highly urban states. Wyoming gets three Electoral College votes and California gets 55. But that gives a Wyoming voter more influence over the outcome than a California voter.

Along with that post I linked to a map (with explanation) created by Neil Freeman at Mental Floss. This map redrew state boundaries so that each state has 6.1 million voters rather than the current state boundaries where Wyoming has a half-million and California has 40 million.

My friend and debate partner responded to that earlier post quite simply: “Gerrymandered!”

After doing presentations on gerrymandering I disagree with my friend. Even highly gerrymandered states follow the national law about districts having equal population.

Ian Millhiser of Think Progress says the same imbalance that affects the Electoral College also affects the Senate. And this imbalance is likely to create a legitimacy crisis for our upper chamber. Millhiser pulls out some statistics to make his point.

Because two-thirds of Latinos live in the five largest states, one white voter is equal to 1.7 Latinos. David Birdsell of Baruch College says by 2040 “About 70% of American are expected to live in 15 states.” Flip it around and 30% of the population lives in 35 states or, as Millhiser puts it, “That means that 30 percent of the population will elect 70 percent of the senators.” But we don’t have to wait until 2040 for the problem to appear.

The Senate imbalance will affect the approval of Brett Kavanaugh, the next Supreme Court nominee.

Currently, Republicans hold 51 votes in the Senate, while the Democratic caucus is only 49 senators. Yet the Democratic “minority” represents nearly 40 million more people than the Republican “majority.”

Indeed, this Republican advantage may already be a permanent feature of the Senate. In 2016, when Senate Republicans blocked Chief Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court, the 46 Senate Democrats represented 20 million more people than the 54 Republicans. In 2017, when Neil Gorsuch was confirmed to occupy the same Supreme Court seat, the 45 senators who opposed Gorsuch represented more than 25 million more people than the senators who supported him.
...
A president who [didn't get a majority of votes] is poised to fill a second seat on the Supreme Court, despite the fact that his party represents only a minority of the country in the Senate. One of those seats, moreover, was only available for him to fill because the party that represents only a minority of the nation stole it from a president who was elected twice.

And if Kavanaugh gets to the Supreme Court, he is likely to put an even bigger thumb on America’s electoral scales, making it even harder for a majority of voters to remove the GOP from power.

Stories untold

We’ve heard a lot from the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. A slight revision: we’ve heard a lot from the white students. I appreciate what these students have been doing to stir the national consciousness with their Never Again campaign. But they’re not the whole story. Out of more than 3,000 students 11% are of color. And they say it is time to hear their stories.

So they’ve started posting Stories Untold and saying why their voices matter.

Many of these students are from neighborhoods that have a lot of violence. They want the movement to be about more than guns in schools. They want to include minority communities.

The number of police on campus has increased. The students of color feel less safe. They recognize the intersection between gun violence, police violence, and immigration enforcement. Mass violence is not the only gun problem.

Voices should not be silenced.



Another way our media is failing us. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville posted a headline from the Washington Post: “Should you worry about trade? Some Americans will feel pain from China more than others.” McEwan and her army of commenters tell us all the ways this headline is wrong.

* We’re all going to feel pain.

* But even if it were only “some” Americans, it is disgusting to imply that if you don’t feel the pain, no need to worry about anyone else.

* We’ve been told that the economic insecurity of rural white America (a garbage narrative) was a big reason why they voted for the nasty guy. This article says I don’t need to care that the trade war might make things worse in rural white America.

* This headline implies the trade spat began in China and not with the nasty guy. The spat doesn’t have to happen.



Oklahoma teachers are on strike. The legislature offered a pay raise. The teachers said not good enough. We need new textbooks and our schools need lots of repairs. They’ve started tweeting pictures of the state of their textbooks. One shows a history book without a cover. The book says the current president is George W. Bush.