Mathematicians study gerrymandering

Stephen Ormes wrote an article for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science titled Science and Culture: Math tools send legislators back to the drawing board. In it he talks about the various ways to mathematically detect gerrymandering.

The work in his area intensified in 2004 when Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in a ruling decried gerrymandering yet said there is no “workable standard” for judges to consistently and fairly determine if gerrymandering exists. Mathematicians and social scientists got to work and now have some answers.

The first test was developed in 1987. Political scientist Gary King of Harvard proposed the idea that the proportion of seats for each party should have the same ratio as the votes across the state. If each party gets 50% of the statewide vote, then each party gets 50% of the seats.

Another is the “Polsby-Popper test” which compares the perimeter of a district to the circumference of a circle of the same area. Alas, this doesn’t work well when the state boundary follows a river, such as the district in the western sliver of Maryland.

I’ve already discussed the efficiency gap, which counts the “wasted” votes of each party.

A recently devised test is from Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh. Make small random tweaks to district boundaries and reapply the election results. If the tweaks consistently make the district less partisan, the district is gerrymandered.

The same team proposed a solution that doesn’t involve mathematical formulas. Party A draws districts. Party B gets to say “I’ll keep that one.” Party B redraws the rest of the map and Party A keeps one. Neither party gets an advantage. Both get a chance to protect their interests. This plan doesn’t work if both parties make an anti-democracy deal ahead of time.

Randomly create a suite of maps (10,000 to 24,000 should work). Apply the election data to those maps and compare the results to the official maps. If the official results are an outlier when compared to the random maps it is a “signature of gerrymandering.”

Mathematicians are, naturally, exploring other ideas to test for gerrymandering.

Now to get the courts to use these methods of measurement. Last fall Chief Justice John Roberts called such tools “sociological gobbledygook.” But mathematician Eric Lander, head of MIT’s Broad Institute says the courts don’t need mathematical details, only know that the tools provide a workable standard. So there needs to be work done to demonstrate the various measures hold up in a wide variety of circumstances, then work to teach judges about similar ways mathematics is used – such as distributions used to predict the path of a hurricane.

Alas, at least on the national level, this work of convincing justices will be on hold. Stephen Wolf of Daily Kos lists five ways a more conservative replacement for retiring Justice Kennedy is a catastrophe democracy.

1. Gut the rest of the Voting Rights Act and allow voter suppression.

2. Permit racial gerrymandering.

3. Permit partisan gerrymandering. With Kennedy gone the court could overturn that 2004 ruling by saying the Supremes (and any federal court) simply can’t get involved.

4. Invalidate redistricting commissions. These already exist in Arizona and California and I’m involved in trying to get one passed in Michigan. The Constitution’s “Elections Clause” says “the legislature” does the redistricting. In 2015 Kennedy was the key vote in saying a state constitution can designate who can make the laws, in this case a citizens commission. But Roberts strongly dissented, saying when the Constitution says “the legislature” it means the actual elected legislators.

5. Remove the last remaining caps on campaign spending by corporations.

There are ways to fight against this, at least at the state level. A state redistricting commission could still be used to draw districts for the state legislature.

Issues he championed

Finally saw Solo, a Star Wars Story. Overall, it was enjoyable, but the violence and constant danger was wearying rather quickly. It also wasn’t as much fun as the first trilogy. I think this is the first Star Wars movie in which the Force is not mentioned or used. It is also the first not to have any of Luke Skywalker’s extended family.



Anthony Kennedy is retiring from the Supreme Court. Somehow the rule that there should be no vote for a justice in an election year doesn’t seem to apply. We’re angry, but not surprised, by the hypocrisy.

Nina Totenberg of NPR notes that many of the issues Kennedy championed – lesbian and gay rights (I don’t think he got to transgender rights), abortion rights, affirmative action in higher education, a moderate approach to gun rights, limits on presidential powers in the war on terror – are now in doubt.



The nasty guy and his minions are saying that the only way for parents seeking asylum can be quickly reunited with their children is to drop the asylum claim and agree to be deported. But if the parent pursues asylum she will remain in custody and separated from her children. That’s a process that can take months to years.

A judge has ordered all children to be reunited within 30 days, sooner for younger children. But the nasty guy has a habit of ignoring judges and the law – which he did to get us into this mess.

Besides, the nasty guy doesn’t want judges. At least not on the border. He actually said that. He wondered, “What other country has judges?” How about all of them not led by a dictator.



Since I don’t watch much TV I don’t see many political ads. When there’s a good one someone has to point it out to me. And Daily Kos did just that. This ad is for MJ Hegar, a woman running for Congress as a Democrat in Texas. You’ll need to buckle up to watch it.



The House Budget Committee has passed a budget for 2019 that calls for huge cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. We knew this was coming since that huge tax theft bill was passed six months ago (the nasty guy held an event today to celebrate how awesome it is).

Passing out of committee doesn’t mean the House will pass it. However, the bill is constructed with “reconciliation instructions” that allow the Senate to pass it without facing a filibuster – which means even if the GOP loses in November the Senate could pass it in the lame-duck session.

Not the job of the oppressed to prove their humanity

Recently the Red Hen restaurant somewhere in the Washington, DC area refused to serve Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the person who stands in the White House news room and lies for the nasty guy. That has caused the discussion about civility to boil over again.

The Democratic leadership in Congress called for civility, saying being uncivil doesn’t get us anywhere. Bernie Sanders did too – prompting lots of responses about how his whole shtick is about being uncivil, followed by those who are amazed at how uncivil he was to Hillary Clinton and how civil he wants us to be to the nasty guy.

In Between the Lines, Michigan’s LGBT newspaper, D’Anne Witkowski, awarded her Creep of the Week column to Sarah Sanders. A couple of her ideas:

Being nice doesn’t save lives. It doesn’t change harts and minds. And it sure as hell isn’t going to save our democracy.
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It is not the job of the oppressed to prove their humanity to the oppressors.

Racists aren’t racist just because they haven’t encountered enough nice black and brown people. Homophobes don’t hate gays because they just haven’t had the right one wait on the in a restaurant. Misogynists don’t hate women just because they haven’t met the right one yet.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has had enough with the false equivalences between progressives and conservatives. She says there are “vast and irreconcilable differences between the ‘both sides’ that we are meant to understand are similarly problematic.” She elaborates on those differences and wonders how they can coexist. Speaking of progressives:

These folks support universal healthcare access, jobs with liveable wages, legal and accessible abortion, racial justice, gender justice, full LGBTQ equality, disability rights, voting rights, equal pay for all, restrictions on guns, regulations on capitalism, fair housing, public education, desegregation, criminal justice reforms, asylum, a fully funded social safety net, and other policies that broadly recognize the humanity of their fellow countrypersons.

It's the policy of empathy, struck through a rational self-interest driven by the understanding that we are all in the same leaky, creaky, unreliable boat.

And of conservatives:

These folks support whatever personally benefits them, or, failing that, what will provide maximum harm to the people they've erroneously decided are responsible for their not having the life they want. Restrict healthcare to those who can afford it, good jobs are for white men, criminalize abortion, white is right, women are trash except their moms and wives, no gay marriage, trans people aren't real, more guns, fewer regulations, privatize schools, militarize the police, shut down the borders, no entitlements, fuck you.

It's the policy of selfishness, of privilege, of insularity, insecurity, ignorance, bigotry, hatred.
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The difference, however, despite the pundits' and politicians' insistence on concealing this rather significant reality, is that I want to enact laws that let us both live our lives as closely as possible to the way we'd like and *they want me fucking dead*.

At least some of them. Many of them. Large numbers. I've got 14 years of missives from their ranks to prove it.
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I don't know how we can coexist as a nation when we can't agree on the most fundamental issue of basic empathy. I'm not sure that we can. But what I do know is that I won't abet some sickening false harmony with authoritarian sadists by offering them my capitulation under the auspices of "civility."

All this talk of incivility added to the news of the retirement of Anthony Kennedy from the Supreme Court (and knowing who will choose the replacement) prompted McEwan to write that it’s okay to not feel everything will be okay.

She does not want people to tell her it will be okay. It isn’t okay now and will likely get worse. She doesn’t want people to tell her we just need to work harder. We progressives have been working hard for decades to create a just society and it is being dismantled with glee, malice, and haste. She doesn’t want people to tell her she just needs to vote. We did in 2016. And having a majority didn’t protect us from what is happening now and the reasons why the majority lost haven’t been fixed.

What I need is the respect that I'm despairing for a reason. That reason is because I understand how difficult it was to achieve the things we're losing, because I was one of the people who dedicated my life to trying to achieve them.

What I need is to not be accused of "giving up" because I insist on being honest about where we stand. If I had given up, trust that I wouldn't be writing these words.

What I need is understanding that not all of us are motivated in every instance by optimism, and that, in this moment, exhorting me to display an optimism I'm not experiencing feels oppressively smothering.

What I need is to not be fucking gaslighted.

Not a response to any actual problem

Paul Krugman wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times about the nasty guy’s brutal policies on immigrants and their children. He then looks at the wider issue:

What’s almost equally remarkable about this plunge into barbarism is that it’s not a response to any actual problem. The mass influx of murderers and rapists that Trump talks about, the wave of crime committed by immigrants here (and, in his mind, refugees in Germany), are things that simply aren’t happening. They’re just sick fantasies being used to justify real atrocities.

Krugman notes that crime in general is at historic lows since 2014. There is also a negative correlation between violent crime and the prevalence of undocumented immigrants – the more immigrants there are in an area the lower the crime rate. Criminal conviction data shows immigrants, legal and not, are significantly less likely to commit crimes than the native-born.

So the Trump administration has been terrorizing families and children, abandoning all norms of human decency, in response to a crisis that doesn’t even exist.
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I don’t know what drives such people — but we’ve seen this movie before, in the history of anti-Semitism.

The thing about anti-Semitism is that it was never about anything Jews actually did. It was always about lurid myths, often based on deliberate fabrications, that were systematically spread to engender hatred.
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In any case, the important thing to understand is that the atrocities our nation is now committing at the border don’t represent an overreaction or poorly implemented response to some actual problem that needs solving. There is no immigration crisis; there is no crisis of immigrant crime.

No, the real crisis is an upsurge in hatred — unreasoning hatred that bears no relationship to anything the victims have done. And anyone making excuses for that hatred — who tries, for example, to turn it into a “both sides” story — is, in effect, an apologist for crimes against humanity.

Though Krugman doesn’t know what drives people like the nasty guy, I do. I’ve mentioned it many times on this blog. They are highly obsessed with ranking and maintaining their place in it by cruelly oppressing those who they declare should be lower in rank.

Cakeshop ruling summarized

Back to the Masterpiece Cakeshop case for a moment. John Corvino is a philosophy professor at Wayne State University. I first knew about him close to two decades ago when he earned the title of The Gay Moralist. Here’s his summary in the Detroit Free Press of the Supreme Court ruling in the case of a cakeshop owner refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.

The court, including everyone except Ginsburg and Sotomayor: Because the commission was hostile to Phillips’s religious beliefs, it violated his free exercise rights and its judgment should be overturned.

Kagan, concurring, joined by Breyer: I agree with the court, because the commission was indeed hostile (and also used some inconsistent reasoning), but if the commission hadn’t screwed up, Phillips probably would have lost.

Gorsuch, concurring, joined by Alito: I agree with the court, because the commission was indeed hostile, but even if it hadn’t been hostile, Phillips still should have won.

Thomas, concurring, joined in part by Gorsuch: I agree with Gorsuch, but can we please talk about free speech for a moment?

Ginsburg, dissenting, joined by Sotomayor: I agree with a lot of the court’s opinion, but just because a few commissioners made intemperate remarks, that doesn’t mean Phillips didn’t get a fair hearing. Phillips should have lost.

Notably silent on the hypothetical "some future controversy involving facts similar to these": Chief Justice John Roberts, and Kennedy himself.

Meanwhile, one part of the decision deserves far more attention than it will likely get: the point about "difficult questions" concerning how to combat discrimination while protecting fundamental freedoms.

Distinguish strength from cruelty

A couple days ago Melissa McEwan of Shakesville warned against using the protest phrase “Keep Families Together.” She gives three reasons:

* Some of the people approaching the border are fleeing abuse from husbands/fathers.

* Adults without children are being abused in detention too.

* Though keeping children with parents is a step above what is happening now what we’re likely to get is detention camps for families. They’re still in indefinite detention.

A day later the nasty guy signed an executive order reversing a policy he put in place. Everyone not in his base saw it as a show put on for the base and for media.

Col. Morris Davis is a former prosecutor at Guantanamo who resigned when ordered to use evidence obtained through torture. He is currently a commentator for various media outlets. He explains that executive order this way:

Trump lauds Trump for a Trump-brokered solution with Trump to resolve the child hostage crisis Trump created to extort the vanity wall Trump wants to protect America from the grave threat Trump manufactured to manipulate gullible people who believe Trump. USA!!

Mark Sumner of the Daily Kos staff discusses how empty the executive order is. Yes, it is a defeat for the nasty guy. But it is not a win for immigrants. He maintains his zero-tolerance policy. He keeps the idea that families can be separated over “concerns.” The order doesn’t suggest there is any limit to his power. Sumner has a good observation:

The biggest problem—the central problem—with Donald Trump, is that he cannot distinguish strength from cruelty. He believes that causing harm is the “strong” thing to do, even when it’s easy. He believes that showing compassion or working for justice is “weak,” even if it’s hard.

And of course, Donald Trump deeply, deeply believes in both racism and in judging people by the content of their wallets.
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Donald Trump signed a piece of paper because the pressure grew great enough that those around him felt he had to make a gesture. So he gestured. And gave a middle finger to America.

McEwan notes that the nasty guy comes out as the hero of the evil situation he created. She then quotes a statement from Montanans for Immigrant Justice and Missoula Rises.

While this is a movement in the right direction, DO NOT BE FOOLED by what the Order does. Here are the facts thus far:

1. Families will not be immediately separated, but they will be held in detention together.
2. Crossing the border “illegally” will no longer be deemed a civil violation, it will be deemed a criminal violation.
3. Because it is a criminal violation the parents will be charged criminally. At that point, their children will be forcibly taken.
4. The Executive Oder will provide a provision that families will be expedited through the criminal process. This means that the removal of their children will be expedited.

There is still a need for the Tent Cities. There will still be Tender Age Facilities. This serves as optics for Trump to claim he is not ripping families apart. He is. The GOP are. They’re just hiding the fine print.

Understand this is the result of the pressure we and others have exerted. WE made this change. But this is not the solution. He anticipates this will temper our moral outrage. Do not let it. This is not close enough. This is not a victory for those families crossing the border.

In a Twitter thread Anil Kalhan goes through the executive order, detailing the many ways it doesn’t do what the nasty guy is crowing about. One of those contradictions: The EO says any entry other than at a designated Port of Entry is illegal. But when people go to a Port of Entry the border patrol turns migrants away to prevent them from applying for asylum. Another: Even if the entry is illegal the US has an obligation not to deport them back to where they face persecution – they still have a right to apply for asylum. See the Refugee Convention the US ratified. The nasty guy’s order says “The policy of this Administration is to rigorously enforce our immigration laws.” The Refugee Convention is a part of those immigration laws and he is violating it. One thing the order leaves out is how they plan to reunite the more than 2,300 kids already abducted. It is left out because they have no plan – and they’re asking Congress for money for “residential centers.”

Kalhan includes a tweet from People Migrate:

A crazy thing about this EO is the brazen challenge to the other 2 branches of government, almost taunting them to defy the administration.

Sarah Kendzior adds in a tweet:

Do not cheer that instead of threatening war with North Korea, Trump boosts its brutal dictator.

Do not applaud Trump's claim that they'll stop snatching children and will instead jail whole families.

Do not surrender your values to a despot. His "solutions" are atrocities too.

I saw a tweet earlier today, which I can’t find now. It said something like this: Those seeking asylum have spent a grueling month (or was it three?) to escape persecution. They show fortitude. I’d be delighted to have them as a neighbor.

Jen Heyden of the Daily Kos staff adds another horrific dimension to the story. There is now a lawsuit over the children detained in the Shiloh Treatment Center just south of Houston. The lawsuit says the children are regularly being injected with powerful drugs that were disguised as vitamins. The drugs are to control behavior – something the Soviets used to do.

The New York Times talks about the contagion of incivility that has come in response to the nasty guy saying immigrants want to “infest” America. Mikel Jollett responds in a tweet:

On the one hand, the most powerful man in the world using the language of genocide.

On the other, some people on the internet calling him a dick because of it.

That is not being uncivil.

That got me thinking. A few weeks ago, before this immigration mess hit the news, Nancy Kaffer, an opinion columnist for the Detroit Free Press, discussed the current demand for civility.

I want Americans to be able to discuss hard subjects and find common ground without calling each other mean names. Civility is required for that.

But I'm skeptical: too often, a claim of incivility is a means of control, a new kind of respectability politics that allows the listener to disregard some arguments, not on the merits, but because of how the argument is made.
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Civility, says Anika Goss-Foster of Detroit Future City, often seems to mean "I'm expected to be tolerant of things I am not able to be tolerant of."

And sometimes, she said, "Me being civil is me being quiet when I'm being talked over.”
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The plea for a return to civility, for a lot of folks, is tied to President Donald Trump, for whom incivility is a personal calling card and who swept into office on a wave of white anger.

But anger isn't inherently destructive. A person who is angry is telling you something important about her life. And some things — the poisoning of a city's water, for instance, or decades of disinvestment in the state's largest school district — are still worth getting angry about.

It is also worth getting angry about what the nasty guy is doing to immigrants.

My district is gerrymandered

We’ve been anticipating the Supreme Court rulings on two gerrymandering cases. In Maryland the Democrats drew highly partisan maps and in Wisconsin the GOP did the deed. The Supremes have finally announced a decision! And … they punted.

In the Maryland case the GOP had challenged a particular district. The Supremes had accepted the case (which takes 4 votes) before it had gone through lower courts because it was the mirror of the Wisconsin case. But it takes five votes to rule in a case. So the Supremes said we’ll step out of the way and the case can proceed in the federal district court.

In the Wisconsin case a lower court had already ruled in favor of Dems. The Supremes didn’t say anything about gerrymandering, instead they said the Dems lacked standing – they hadn’t demonstrated their rights had been injured state-wide. A plaintiff can only assert my district is gerrymandered, depriving me of due representation. Perhaps the case needs to be split up in a series of district cases.

The reaction was: Huh? The Democrats lost seats and they weren’t injured? We have to file a case in each district?

Since the last time the Supremes heard a gerrymandering case several people have developed ways to measure gerrymandering. The easiest to explain, though maybe not the best, is the efficiency gap. But these measures indicate whether the whole state is gerrymandered and is not much use to the individual voter, the one who the Supremes said has standing.

Justice Kagan suggested that when the case comes back to the Supremes it should include a First Amendment right of association. But that wasn’t included this time, so the Supremes can’t rule on it.

The Maryland case is to proceed through federal district court and circuit court. After that it may return before the Supremes. The Wisconsin case could also be reconfigured for a return trip after the issues of standing are addressed.

But will either return to make a difference before the 2021 redistricting?

Gerrymander the court

I’ve written about the highly gerrymandered election maps in Pennsylvania were ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court, and redrawn. The GOP led legislature threatened to impeach the justices who were a part of that ruling, but that threat didn’t get very far. The next tactic was to turn a proposal for a citizens redistricting commission on its head so that it gave the legislature more control of who drew the maps.

The GOP is trying to take the whole thing another step. Currently justices are elected state-wide. The latest proposal is to give each justice a district – that can be gerrymandered. The GOP claims the 31 justices for both the supreme and appellate courts come from only 15 counties. But justices don’t “represent” voters or counties. They’re to interpret the law. This is another GOP assault on the independence of the judiciary.



CNN looks at a report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC). Here’s the opening paragraph from the article.

There's not a single state, county or metropolitan area in the entire United States where a full-time worker earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour can afford a modest 2-bedroom apartment.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. The minimum wage one must earn to afford the rent on a modest 2-bedroom apartment is $22.10, about three times the federal minimum wage. Perhaps a one-bedroom place would do? That requires a minimum wage of only $17.90. A person would need to work 2.5 full time jobs. Just to pay for a place to live. Food is extra.

This means housing assistance is essential. Yet Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson wants to triple the rent for those receiving housing assistance and bump the amount of pay to go to housing from 30% to 35%.



Looking at what the nasty guy administration is doing to children along the southern border Leah McElrath reminds us in a tweet that legal is not the same as not evil, illegal is not the same as evil.

Clothes of the other gender

I saw a play yesterday evening, Casa Valentina by Harvey Fierstein, the gay actor and playwright. The production was by the Jewish Ensemble Theatre. It isn’t a Jewish play (though at least one character is Jewish). It is a play about minorities and their struggles with the wider world.

The play is about men who like to dress as women. The play is set in 1962 and then such men were described as transvestite. I don’t hear that word much anymore. Now the usual term is transgender. That word means a person who is physically one gender and mentally another. Most of the time the person feels the need to align the body to the mind, though the way that is accomplished depends on the individual (and sometimes their financial situation). Sometimes it is enough to wear clothes of the other gender.

The play is based on a real setting of a resort in the Catskills. It was a place where heterosexual men could leave wives and families for a weekend or longer and dress as women, complete with feminine names.

In the play the resort is owned by George and his wife Rita. They met when George came into Rita’s wig shop looking for a feminine wig. So George doesn’t have to hide from Rita. She sometimes helps him dress to become Valentina. At least during the weekend of this story she also runs the resort’s kitchen and welcomes the guests.

But the resort isn’t making enough money. Not enough men are coming for these transgender days and those days are scaring away the rest of the guests. George is looking for ideas for ways to keep it open.

At the start of the play Jonathon arrives. He’s never indulged in such a weekend and terrified about going through with it. This isn’t like wearing women’s clothes when he knows nobody is around. When he first appears in feminine attire as Miranda the other guests – Valentina, Bessie, Terry, Gloria, and Charlotte – declare she needs a makeover and promptly set to work.

One more guest arrives, a judge close to retirement who becomes Amy within the safety of the group. He doesn’t want a scandal that would jeopardize his pension.

Charlotte proposes a solution to George’s problem. She’s started the process to align this group with a national transvestite organization that Charlotte leads. That would bring in guests from across the country, a big boost to attendance and income. But there are two troublesome parts to her proposal.

First, it means coming out. This is a well-known debate within the LGBTQ community. The more out we are the more we will be accepted by others. This has great long-term benefits. But coming out can also carry great risks for an individual by causing separation from loved ones, the loss of friends, the loss of a job and career, the loss of social respect, and sometimes even the loss of safety. Several in the group are not willing to accept that cost.

Second, it means denouncing homosexuals. Charlotte is sure homosexual men will always be depraved people and associating with them will only hurt their own efforts of social acceptance.

Since the time of this play many times acceptance of gays and lesbians came at the expense of transgender people. And many gays and lesbians argued that it had to be that way – they didn’t want their acceptance slowed down by this other group.

Gloria wants nothing of this second part of the proposal. Gay men were pivotal in her own self-acceptance. She will not turn against them.

Over time we learn why others don’t support this part – they are gay. Within this play it means they are men who both like to dress as women (gender identity) and are attracted to other men (sexual orientation).

Towards the end Rita frets that every time George becomes Valentina she wonders if George will return.

The acting was excellent with these seven men playing well rounded feminine characters. The costumes were fabulous! And the stage was well laid out to show various rooms of the resort. In all, an enjoyable and thoughtful evening.

Don’t cross him!

South Carolina held a primary a couple days ago. Mark Sanford was up for re-election to Congress. He created a scandal several years ago by claiming to be hiking the Appalachian Trail while actually in Argentina with a mistress. He sometimes opposed the nasty guy.

Four hours before the polls closed the nasty guy tweeted his followers should dump Sanford and vote for challenger Katie Arrington. Sanford lost.

The press, far and wide, jumped on the narrative: Don’t cross the nasty guy! Arrington’s win has national implications!

But others are saying that’s a claim without evidence. Arrington won by 4%. They all voted in the last four hours? There’s also no evidence that a tweet late in the game is a guaranteed career-ender. And those who disapprove of the nasty guy are more motivated to vote.

Which makes Melissa McEwan of Shakesville wonder what is really going on? What is being hidden?

To answer that McEwan notes the results of the 2016 election, even though there have been lots of stories of Russian meddling, has not been audited. Might the local election be an attempt to fudge and that late date tweet a way of providing concealment? Why does the Department of Homeland Security have a big challenge to convince voters their ballots are secure? But bringing up the question implies the vote isn’t secure. If you don’t trust your vote will be counted, why vote? And that is exactly what an authoritarian wants.

Headline news

I’ll start with a bit of good news:

Several Democratic members of Congress, including the marvelous John Lewis, staged a sit-in at the offices of the Customs and Border Patrol demanding the release of asylum seekers and the return of children taken from parents. And next week Nancy Pelosi will lead a delegation to the border to witness the conditions.



I rarely quote Fox News, but there was this little incident… Host Bret Baier, in talking to the nasty guy, said, “Kim Jong Un is ‘clearly executing people.” ’ In response the nasty guy heaped praise on his new bestie.

Yup, mention a leader who executed people and the response is praise.

That makes Melissa McEwan of Shakesville wonder why isn’t this the headline news of the day?



I’ve commented about the Department of Health and Human Services looking for places to house the kids that have been separated from their parents at the border. There are so many such kids DHHS has run out of room and they’re looking for more places. They’re considering an area in Fort Bliss where they can put up a tent city for maybe up to 5000 children. That’s next to El Paso. In the summer. Where temperatures in July average 95F.

As I quoted a while back, cruelty is the point.



The Citizenship and Immigration Service is launching a new office to review whether immigrants cheated on their way to becoming citizens. If such fraud is found their newly won citizenship would be revoked. Gosh, what could possibly go wrong? Just think how likely it is that they’ll investigate immigration fraud the same way they’ve gone after voter fraud. Yes, citizens are the next target.

What is at stake is conduct

I had written a couple times about the recent Supreme Court ruling in favor of that discriminatory Masterpiece Cakeshop. Here’s a wonderful addendum to that ruling that came from an Arizona Court of Appeals just a few days after the Supremes ruled.

Brush & Nib is a calligraphy studio in Phoenix that does wedding invitations. That city has nondiscrimination protections. The company hadn’t violated those laws, but wanted to, citing their religious faith. So they joined up with Alliance Defending Freedom (the same organization that represented the cakeshop owner) and sued the city.

The court gave a firm no and used the cakeshop ruling in their reasoning. While some may have religious objections to same-sex weddings,

it is a general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law.

And.

Allowing a vendor who provides goods and services for marriages and weddings to refuse similar services for gay persons would result in a community-wide stigma inconsistent with the history and dynamics of civil rights laws that ensure equal access to goods, services, and public accommodations.

They also said that though invitations have words on them, this is not a form of speech. What is at stake is conduct, the refusal to serve the LGBTQ community.

The ADF lawyer whined as he referred to the Supreme Court ruling:

In Monday’s Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that “religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression.” Phoenix’s position contradicts this principle and violates our clients’ artistic and religious freedom.

So, dude, you’re saying in the balance between discrimination against religious belief and discrimination against LGBTQ lives, religious belief should win. I’m pleased the Arizona Court didn’t buy that comparison.

Seasons of love

I watched the Tony Awards Sunday evening. It was very gay friendly, starting from the first award given to Andrew Garfield from Angels in America (a very gay play). Garfield’s acceptance speech was wonderful. And it was good to see Nathan Lane get an award for what looks like serious (rather than comic) acting. Wish I could see the performance.

Several other winners took their time on stage to say something pointed about inclusion and diversity. And one winner even asked the audience to sing Happy Birthday to his boyfriend!

I watch the Tony Awards to see what interesting plays are out there in hopes they will come to Detroit soon. The Band’s Visit looks really interesting. Once on This Island looks like fun. Some have intriguing titles, though no details were offered – Meteor Shower, Farinelli and the King, and Latin History for Morons.

There was a highlight to the ceremony the brought me to tears. Melody Herzfeld is a drama teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of the Valentine’s Day massacre earlier this year. She sheltered students during the lockdown, then helped them deal with the aftermath using theater. She helped turn hurt into art. Those watching from home didn’t see her acceptance speech, though we were introduced to her after a commercial break.

Matthew Morrison took up the story from the stage. A couple months ago he had gone to Parkland and performed with some of Herzfeld’s students for a benefit concert. One of the students, Tanzil Philip, contacted the Tonys and asked to appear to say thank you. The Tonys flipped it around and invited 16 students to perform during the awards. They sang “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent. Follow the link to see their performance.

Wonderful!

Compromised

Way back in May of last year I wrote:

This morning Melissa McEwan of Shakesville made an important point. We know Clinton’s emails were hacked and Russians were using what they found to discredit her and influence the election. It is likely that the nasty guy was hacked too, though harmful details weren’t divulged.

But looking at the GOP obfuscation when Sally Yates went before a Senate hearing makes McEwan wonder. How many senators have been hacked? How many of them are compromised? A couple of those senators, Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz, were candidates for president. Were they hacked as Clinton was and are they now compromised?

Which means the leaders of the Senate investigation, the ones trying to find out if the nasty guy is compromised, may also be compromised.

At the end of last year into this year McEwan discussed the ties between Russia and the NRA (I didn’t share her ideas). Today, Peter Stone and Greg Gordon of McClatchy are reporting that a great deal of Russian money was given to the NRA. And a great deal of NRA money was spent to elect the nasty guy and GOP members of Congress. We begin to see how members of Congress were compromised. McEwan asks:

There has been a lot of public musing about how owned by Russia average GOP congress members are. Well, we know that they're owned by the NRA. The question we need to be asking at this point is: Are they, in fact, owned by Russia via the NRA?

Stone and Gordon say it also looks like a great deal of money also flowed from the Russian Orthodox Church to American Evangelicals, who firmly supported the nasty guy and the GOP. And it looks like the vice nasty guy got the job because of this Orthodox influence.

Can you say “conflict of interest?”

The Voters Not Politicians Campaign, the one to put an Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission to end gerrymandering, completed the signature gathering process last November (and did so two months early with an extra 110,000 signatures). I’ve been volunteering with this campaign. The process is now before the Board of State Canvassers.

This Board is made up two GOP and two Dems with a GOP holding the chair. Their task is to say yes, there were enough legal signatures and the proposal should be put on the ballot. That’s it. But for months the chair has not put this proposal on the agenda for the weekly meeting. The Board isn’t challenging the signatures. It simply isn’t acting.

The Campaign took the Board to the Michigan Court of Appeals. While before the court the board chair kept saying we have to wait for the court to rule. So the court ruled on Thursday, telling the board to get their collective butts in gear. Do your job.

This morning Zoe Clark and Rick Pluta and their It’s Just Politics program on Michigan Radio took up the story.

The GOP and Michigan Chamber of Commerce has formed a campaign committee to oppose the proposal (of course they have, an end to gerrymandering would take their toys away). I think the committee is named Citizens to Protect the Constitution or some such misdirecting nonsense. On Friday this committee declared they will take the case to the Michigan Supremes. In the meantime the Board is again saying well, we have to wait until the court challenge is over.

The Michigan Supremes are elected by citizens. There are seven members of the court, currently five nominated by the GOP (even though they appeared on the ballot as “non-partisan”) and two Dems. Two of the GOP justices are up for re-election.

The same Michigan Chamber of Commerce that is funding the challenge to our proposal is also funding the campaigns of the two GOP justices, who won’t officially be nominated until August. To get that nomination they have to please conservative delegates to the nominating convention, which means not approving the proposal.

Can you say “conflict of interest?” How about “partisan court?”

The Chamber of Commerce has already come up with a reason for the court to not approve the proposal: “It’s too complicated!” Well, it has to be to guarantee that politicians and justices can’t overturn the proposal once approved.

Followers

Egberto Willies of the Daily Kos community shares a few insights from Dr. Roy Eidelson, a psychologist and author of Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible. Eidelson also wrote an article “Authoritarians, Plutocrats, and the Fight for Racial Justice.”

Willies also interviewed Eidelson. Some thoughts from the interview.

An authoritarian leader gets nowhere without followers. Psychologist Bob Altemeyer identified three markers of an authoritarian follower.

The first is authoritarian submission, which involves strict obedience toward the designated leaders of a group. The second is authoritarian aggression, which takes the form of deep hostility toward those who appear to fall short of the group’s rigid standards. The third marker is conventionalism, which revolves around dutifully honoring and observing the group’s traditions and norms.

I’ll translate this into my usual system of ranking. These followers are obsessed with ranking and their place in the hierarchy. They don’t aspire to the top of the system and are submissive to those who are at the top. They dutifully honor the traditions of the hierarchy. However, they are hostile to those who don’t uphold the hierarchy or try to disrupt it.

Altemeyer reminds us the wealthy have built their privilege on the status quo – on the hierarchy as it exists – and are doing all they can to maintain that status quo. Those that try to upset the hierarchy, such as professional athletes taking a knee, are seen as threatening. These plutocrats share common ground with authoritarians. Neither group likes democracy.

Dr. Eidelson says most of us have five core concerns:

Vulnerability: Are we safe?
Injustice: Are we being treated fairly?
Trust: Who can we trust?
Superioritry: Are we good enough?
Helplessness: Can we control what happens to us?

The Plutocracy manipulate the authoritarian followers by manipulating perceptions of those core concerns.

Progressives can focus our message around these same core concerns. Addressing safety, fairness, trust, confidence, and control is a good message even if it doesn’t attract the authoritarian followers.

This is not acceptable

This should not be OK. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville shares a tweet form Georgy Cohen that includes a photo taken in a kindergarten classroom of a poster with the words of a lockdown song. We teach the littlest students the ABCs through song. It looks like we now teach them what to do in a lockdown using song.

McEwan also shares tweets from Sarah Wine-Thyre about her 6th grade daughter’s scary experience in a lockdown.

McEwan summarizes

This is the life that a significant portion of the population and virtually the entire governing party, including the sitting president and vice-president, have decided is acceptable for children in this nation.

I cannot begin to fathom the heart and mind of a person who finds any of that okay.

McEwan comments on news that various welfare programs are going to be consolidate into the Department of Health and Human Service. And the DHHS will likely be renamed Department of Welfare. McEwann explains:

"Welfare" is a word designed to invite contempt. "Welfare" is a perfectly fine word that aptly describes one of the primary functions of a compassionate government that genuinely believes in supporting life, liberty, and happiness. But it has been stigmatized in this country. And trust that Team Trump know that. They will use the contempt it invites as one piece of a broader justification of austerity programs that will hasten the divide of the Two Americas. This is very worrying.

I’ve mentioned how the press has been enabling the nasty guy. Here’s an example. The headline from a New York Times article:

Trump and His Lawyers Embrace a Vision of Vast Executive Power.

Avi Ahvee tweets that news outlets should stop making it look like we are having “quaint political discussions” and offers a more accurate headline:

Trump, Ignoring Rule of Law and Precedent, Argues He Alone Is Above the Law.

Homosexuality and family

Last summer while in a Grand Rapids bookstore I found the book Radical Relations, Lesbian Mothers, Gay Fathers, & Their Children in the United States since World War II by Daniel Winunwe Rivers. I thought stories of same-sex couples raising families before Gay Liberation would be interesting, so I bought the book.

That’s not what I got. Those stories are only mentioned, not presented. The book is scholarly, complete with extensive footnotes. It is about social attitudes, how gays and lesbians coped, and the support groups they organized to help them. The book was rather dry and wordy. Even so I learned a few things.

In the 1950s there was extreme pressure to conform to heterosexual norms. Employers expected the men to be married and have kids. The women were expected to run the house. Homosexuality and children or family was seen as completely incompatible. Gays and lesbians felt that pressure, so many married the opposite sex and produced kids. Then they had a strong fear that if their orientation became known they would lose access to their kids.

In the 1970s that fear was shown to be justified. Gay Liberation had begun and gays and lesbians were coming out of the closet – and losing access to their kids. Being homosexual was seen as an obvious reason to award custody to the other parent and to block visitation. Justification for that was sodomy laws that weren’t repealed until 2003. As these same-sex families with kids became more open, they also began to be studied. LGB organizations began keeping lists of lawyers would take on such custody cases and of expert witnesses would could educate a judge.

Also in the 1970s gay fathers tried communal living. It didn’t last long. Lesbian women also tried it and their efforts were more lasting. These women wanted to raise their daughters outside of patriarchy. There was a problem – what to do with male children? Some of these women wanted to keep to a women only society, or at least maintain some spaces as for only women. Are the boys to be raised by the fathers? If the women raise them what happens when the boys venture into the world (go to school) and are taught about patriarchy?

During the 1980s the use of alternative insemination (they detested the word “artificial”) allowed lesbians to create families without men. Frequently, donors were gay men. But things could get difficult if the gays wanted more contact with their children or the lesbians wanted to sever relations with the donors. Things didn’t go well in the courtroom without a written agreement between the parties. At times things seemed to go worse if there was one.

Of course, there were support groups for gay fathers. However, during the AIDS crisis during much of the 1980s most gay men, fathers or not, needed support just to stay alive as their friends died around them. Their support groups adjusted accordingly.

We’re more familiar with recent history – custody awarded without considering orientation, adoption by same-sex parents, and eventually same-sex marriage.

Civil rights cases

I got to one movie in the Cinetopia Film Festival. I seriously considered a second, but decided my schedule was too full. There were a couple other films that looked interesting but conflicted with more important events in my schedule.

The film I saw was Of Love and Law. It is a documentary about a gay couple in Japan, both of whom are lawyers. We see a bit of their life and love. The mother of one of them was originally reluctant and now embraces their relationship and works at their law firm.

Most of the film is about some of their legal cases. We don’t see gay rights cases, instead we see some civil rights cases. There is the teacher who refused to stand during the national anthem. At the end of the movie her case is not resolved and she has moved to Ireland with a new husband. There is the woman who makes plush toys, not of dogs or bears but of vaginas. She was charged with public obscenity. Her position is a part of her body should not be declared obscene. The final ruling was that her toys differed sufficiently from the real thing that they were not obscene. Alas, a part of her body still is.

There were also two cases of unregistered people. In Japan, an infant isn’t registered (isn’t given a birth certificate) if the parents don’t apply as a couple. This mostly affects children whose parents divorce during the pregnancy. As in the US, unregistered people have a much harder time going to college and getting a job. By the end of the film one of the cases is resolved – the father was tracked down and, faced with a bit of pressure, decided it was wise to admit paternity.

In the US, 80% of the children without parents are in foster families. In Japan, 80% of these children are in orphanages. When an orphanage closed these two young lawyers invite a young man (probably 17 years old) to live with them until he can be on his own. Towards the end of the film this young man tells of a time with a girlfriend. He said he had been staying with a gay couple. The girl was surprised, and perhaps a bit shocked. He responded by saying it’s no big deal, you shouldn’t be shocked.

The two lawyers decide they should go through the process of being foster parents. At the end of the film we are told they were the first gay couple in Osaka to be licensed as foster parents.

Can still be charged

At the start of this week I commented about the ruling by the Supremes that favored the Masterpiece Cakeshop that had discriminated against a gay couple. Between the Lines, Michigan’s LGBTQ newspaper, has an article, reprinted from the Washington Blade, with a lot more detail and a couple important and clarifying points.

The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act is still in place. Someone who discriminates can still be charged under the act by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

If Jack Phillips, the owner of the cakeshop, were to discriminate again he could be charged again. And with that second charge the CO-CRC likely won’t use the anti-religious phrasing that got them in trouble the first time.

Not worth comment

I’ve regularly written about the nasty guy and the vice nasty guy over the last 500 days (yes, we’ve crossed that milestone) and my meaning has been clear. Now Rudy Giuliani, the nasty guy’s lawyer, is also being continually despicable and horrible. So perhaps it is time for a tag for him too. Many progressives have been calling him the ghoul. Maybe that will do.

The ghoul has now said that a president can not be subpoenaed or indicted while in office. That includes if he commits murder. He has to be impeached first (surely the ghoul knows how likely the GOP will do that no matter what the nasty guys does).

Should we start referring to him as King Nasty the First? Kings don’t get indicted either.

The nasty guy added to the claims by tweeting that he can pardon himself. More kingly behavior.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville points out that this kind of talk, especially since the nasty guy repeats such claims so often, gets the public used to an idea and begins to accept it as appropriate or true. If the ghoul is floating the idea the prez. can’t be indicted for murder, is he getting the idea out there because the nasty guy may soon commit murder? Others point out that his wife Melania hasn’t been seen in public for about 3 weeks and are wondering why.

McEwan has written about the press failures, which I mentioned yesterday. Now that the nasty guy has been there for 500 days his office has released a list of his “successes” which sound like markers on the way to authoritarianism, McEwan is sure the press will not understand or take it all out of context or certainly not explain how important and critical it is. And fail us again. Which prompted:

Here's what I find increasingly concerning about this press failure: It's not just that the collapse of democracy itself precipitously accelerating and somehow isn't front page news, but the fact that THE ENTIRE POLITICAL PRESS has somehow decided simultaneously and unanimously that it isn't worth comment? WHAT THE FUCK.

Seriously, how did that happen? The collective silence is devastating. And terrifying.

Straddling the fence

The Supremes issued a ruling today in the case of the Masterpiece Cakeshop, the Colorado place that makes wedding cakes that refused to make one for a gay couple. Alas, it wasn’t a victory for us. But some are saying it isn’t really a defeat either.

The case was brought by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The Supremes’ ruling in favor of the cakeshop was mostly on a technicality. The Commission had failed to demonstrate religious neutrality when bringing the suit.

I’m puzzled. If the case is because Mr. Phillips, the cakeshop owner, is refusing to make a cake for religious reasons, how can the Commission maintain religious neutrality? The case is whether someone can discriminate because of religion.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion and seems to be trying to straddle the fence. In one paragraph he writes about the “dignity and worth” of gay people, that we can’t be treated as social outcasts, then also writes that religious objections to gay marriage are protected views and forms of expression. Such fence straddling has got to poke some sensitive places! It is clearly saying a gay person’s right to dignity is not as important as a religious person’s right to discriminate.

The disappointment is that Justices Elena Kagan and Sephen Breyer joined the majority, though they wrote a separate decision. Which leaves only RBG and Justice Sotomayor in our corner. As RBG is adept at doing she flayed the majority’s reasoning, not that it did us any good.

Some people are saying that this isn’t really an approval of a license to discriminate. The ruling was narrow and there is that technicality thing. The Supremes even say we can’t generalize from this ruling.

But Kennedy, usually the swing voter, clearly put the dignity of gay people below the religious right to discriminate. It’s out there, in the record. This ruling guarantees there will be more cases. And it is a race whether RBG or Breyer leave their post before the nasty guy does.

Trolling graduation

The valedictorian trolled his graduation ceremony! Bell County is in southeast Kentucky, an area that voted 80% for the nasty guy. From USA Today:

"This is the part of my speech where I share some inspirational quotes I found on Google," said Bell County High School valedictorian Ben Bowling in his speech. " 'Don't just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.' — Donald J. Trump."

The crowd burst into applause.

"Just kidding," Bowling said. "That was Barack Obama."

The 18-year-old valedictorian said the crowd quickly went silent.

"The crowd erupted in applause and before they could even finish clapping I said I was kidding and the applause quickly died," Bowling said.

There is some speculation that young Mr. Bowling will be leaving town promptly, will knock the dust from his shoes, and will never return.

The press to served the governed

I really wanted to see the movie The Post when it was in theaters, especially when it got to the second-run houses. But, for a variety of reasons, I missed it.

A week ago I was in my local library. It had been so long since I had used it I had to get my library card renewed. While there I saw the poster for the upcoming free Friday films. And the one for last Friday was The Post. So I went. The film was shown on a standard home-style video system. The room was a simple community meeting room. The chairs were what one would expect in such a room, meaning not all that comfortable.

But it was indeed free and it was a chance to see the movie. I think about 30 people attended, most looked to be my age or older.

This is a story based on real life events. I apologize if my telling of these details are not historically accurate. The movie wasn’t always clear, but they seem an important part of explaining the movie.

Back in the late 1960s Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst at the RAND Corporation, contributed to a report of what the federal government said about the events before and during the war in Vietnam contrasted with what the analysts told the government and what it actually did. This report included presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Since the government was clearly lying to the public (like saying perhaps around 1967 that the war was unwinnable, yet continuing to send troops to die because America doesn’t lose wars) Ellsberg became annoyed that this extensive classified report was being hidden. So in 1971 he “borrowed” the may volumes of the report, photocopied them, and gave them to the New York Times. Nixon, of course, filed a lawsuit against the Times saying releasing the report threatened national security. So the Washington Post sought out Ellsberg to publish more of the papers.

The movie centers on the staff at the Post. It was a family owned paper that Katherine Graham’s father had willed to her husband Phil. But a few years after that Phil died, leaving Katherine (played by Meryl Streep) in charge. At the time she was the only female head of a major paper and she wasn’t sure she was up to the task (at least as portrayed in this movie). Ben Bradlee (played by Tom Hanks), the head of the news department, was as bullish as Katherine was timid.

The question becomes do they publish these papers? Nixon’s lawyers threaten a lawsuit and through cascading actions Katherine could be forced to close the paper. Lots of people would lose jobs.

It probably isn’t too much of a spoiler to say the Post did publish what became known as the Pentagon Papers. The government added the Post to their suit against the Times and the Supremes expedited the case. From the majority opinion:

In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.

Nixon was so annoyed with the outcome of the case that he told his staff to try to discredit Ellsberg, which is what started the Watergate Scandal and ended his presidency.

From the International Movie Database trivia page for this movie, director…

Steven Spielberg wanted to have his film released as quickly as possible given the parallels between its theme and the burgeoning political 'fake news' climate in the U.S. According to Meryl Streep, filming started in May (2017) and finished at the end of July (2017) and Spielberg had it cut two weeks later, an unprecedented feat. The gestation from script to final cut lasted a modest 9 months.

I’m sure Spielberg also wanted us to see the nature of the reporting in 1971 compared to now. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has an opinion on what the press is doing these day. Too many news organizations are enabling and protecting his consolidation of power. A few organizations may be good at documenting what the nasty guy and the GOP are doing. But that is far from explaining why he is doing it and what the consequences are for the country. And they’re not doing that.

The passion to served the governed that Ben Bradlee and Daniel Ellsberg demonstrated are missing from modern news reporting.