#redmap

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Fighting the privacy wars, state by state

In 2021, Apple updated its mobile OS so that users could opt out of app tracking with one click. More than 96% opted out, costing Facebook $10b in one year. The kicker? Even if you opted out, Apple continued to spy on you, just as invasively as Facebook had, as part of its competing targeted ad product:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/23/state-of-play/#patchwork

The fact that Apple — a company that has blanketed the world with anti-surveillance billboards — engaged in deceptive, pervasive surveillance reveals the bankruptcy of “letting the market decide” what privacy protections you should have.

When you walk into a grocery store, you know that the FDA is on the job, making sure that the food you buy doesn’t kill you — but no one stops the grocery store from tracking literally every step you take, every eye movement you make (no, really!) and selling that to all comers:

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/02/16/forget-milk-and-eggs-supermarkets-are-having-a-fire-sale-on-data-about-you

America’s decision to let the private sector self-regulate commercial surveillance is a grotesque failure of duty on the part of Congress, which has consistently failed to pass comprehensive privacy legislation. There are lots of reasons for this, but the most important is that American cops and spies are totally reliant on commercial surveillance brokers, and they fight like hell against any privacy legislation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#axciom

The private sector’s unregulated privacy free-for-all means that cops don’t need to get warrants to spy on you — they can just buy the data on the open market for pennies:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/18/fifth-pig/#ppp

The last Congressional session almost passed a halfway decent (but still deeply flawed) federal privacy law, but then they didn’t. Basically, Congress only passes laws that can be sandwiched into 1,000-page must-pass bills and most of the good stuff that gets through only does so because some bought-and-paid-for Congressjerks are too busy complaining about “woke librarians” to read the bills before they come up for a vote.

The catastrophic failure to protect Americans’ privacy has sent human rights groups hunting for other means to accomplish the same end. On the federal level, there’s the newly reinvigorated FTC, under the visionary, muscular leadership of Lina Khan, the best Commission chair in a generation. She’s hard at work on rules to limit commercial surveillance:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

But FTC regs take time to pass, and it can be hard for ordinary individuals to trigger their enforcement, which might leave you at the mercy of your local officials when your privacy is invaded. What we really need is a privacy law with a “private right of action” — the right to go to court on your own:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-sue-companies-violate-your-privacy

The business lobby hates private right of action, and they trick low-information voters into opposing them with lies about “ambulance chasers” who sue innocent fast-food outlets for millions because they serve coffee that’s too hot:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot-coffee/#mcgeico

With Congress deadlocked and privacy harms spiraling, pro-privacy groups have turned to the states, as Alfred Ng writes for Politico:

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/22/statehouses-privacy-law-cybersecurity-00083775

The best provisions of the failed federal privacy law have been introduced as state legislation in Massachusetts and Illinois, and there are amendments to Indiana’s existing state privacy law — 16 states in all are working on or have some kind of privacy law. This means businesses must live with the dread “patchwork of laws,” which serves the business lobby right: they must do business in potentially radically different ways in different states, and small missteps could cost them millions, in true fuck-around-and-find-out fashion.

As Ng writes, these laws don’t have to pass in every state. America’s historically contingent, lopsided state lines mean that some states are so populous that whatever rules they pass end up going nationwide (the ACLU’s Kade Crockford uses the example of California Prop 65 warnings showing up on canned goods in NY).

As Congress descends further into self-parody, the temptation to treat the federal government as damage and route around it only mounts. It’s a powerful, but imperfect strategy. On the negative side, it takes a lot of resources to introduce legislation into multiple states, and to win legislative fights in each.

Think of the incredible fuckery that the coalition of Apple, John Deere, Wahl, and other monopolists got up to defeat dozens of state Right to Repair laws, even snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in New York state, neutering the incredible state electronics repair law before it reached the governor’s desk:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/17/more-details-on-how-tech-lobbyists-lobotomized-nys-right-to-repair-law-with-governor-kathy-hochuls-help/

Indeed, the business lobby loves lobbying statehouses, treating them as the Feds’ farm-leagues, filled with naive, easily hoodwinked rubes. Organizations like ALEC use their endless corporate funding to get state legislation that piles farce upon tragedy, like the laws banning municipal fiber networks:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/15/useful-idiotsuseful-idiots/#unrequited-love

The right has always had hooks in state legislatures, but they really opened up the sluice gates in the runup to the 2010 census, when a GOP strategist called Thomas Hofeller started pitching Republican operatives on a plan called REDMAP, to capture state legislatures in time for a post-2010 census mass-redistricting that would neutralize the votes of Black and brown people and deliver permanent rule by an openly white nationalist Republican party that could lose every popular vote and still hold power.

Of course, that’s not how they talked about it in public. Though the racial dimension of GOP gerrymandering were visible to anyone on the ground, Hofeller maintained a veneer of plausible deniability on the new REDMAP districts, leaving the racist intent of GOP redistricting as a he-said/she-said matter of conjecture:

https://www.klfy.com/national/late-gop-redistricting-gurus-files-hint-at-partisan-motives/

That is, until 2018, when Satan summoned Hofeller back to hell, leaving his personal effects in the hands of his estranged anarchist daughter, Stephanie, who dumped all her old man’s files online, including the powerpoint slides he delivered to his GOP colleagues where he basically said, “Hey kids, let’s do an illegal racism!”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pked4v/the-anarchist-daughter-of-the-gops-gerrymandering-mastermind-just-dumped-all-his-maps-and-files-on-google-drive

Sometimes, laws that turn on intent are difficult to enforce because they require knowledge of the accused’s state of mind. But there are so many would-be supervillains who just can’t stop themselves from monologing, and worse, putting it in writing.

As bad as state politics can be, they’re still winnable battlefields. Last year saw a profound win on Right to Repair in Colorado, where a wheelchair repair bill, HB22–1031, made history:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/when-drm-comes-your-wheelchair

That win helped inspire Rebecca Giblin and I when we were writing Chokepoint Capitalism, our book about how Big Tech and Big Content rip off creative workers, and what to do about it.

https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Many readers have noted that the first half of the book — where were unpack the scams of streaming, news advertising, ebooks and audiobooks, and other creative fields — is incredibly enraging.

But if you find yourself struggling to concentrate on the book because of a persistent, high-pitched whining noise that you suspect might be a rage-induced incipient aneurysm, keep reading! The second half of the book is full of detailed, shovel-ready policy proposals to get artists paid, including a state legislative proposal that works from the same playbook as these state privacy laws.

If your creative work entitles you to receive royalties, your contract will typically include the right to audit your royalty statements. If you do audit your royalties, you will often find “discrepancies.” We cite one LA firm that has performed tens of thousands of record contract audits over decades, and in every instance except one, the errors they discovered were in the labels’ favor.

This is a hell of a head-scratcher. I can only assume that some kind of extremely vexing, highly localized probability storm has taken up permanent residence over the Big Three labels’ accounting departments, making life hell for their CPAs, and my heart goes out to them.

Anyway: if you find one of these errors and you tell your label or publisher or studio, “Hey, you stole my money, cough up!” they will pat you on the head and say, “Oh, you artists are adorable but you can’t do math. You’re mistaken, we don’t owe you anything. But because we’re good natured slobs, we’ll offer you, say, half of what you think we owe you, which is good, because you can’t afford to sue us. And all you need to do to get that money is to sign this non-disclosure agreement, meaning you can’t tell anyone else about the money we’re stealing from them.

“Oh, and one more thing: your accountant has to promise never to audit us again.” As Caldwell-Kelly said when we talked about this on Trashfuture, this is like the accused murderer telling the forensics team, “Dig anywhere you’d like in my garden, just not in that corner, I’m very sentimental about it.”

https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/amazon-billing-amazon-for-amazon-feat-cory-doctorow-and-rebecca-giblin/

Now, contracts are a matter of state law, and nearly every entertainment industry contract is signed in one of four jurisdictions: NY, CA, TN (Nashville), and WA (games companies and Amazon). If we amended the state laws in one or more of these to say, “NDAs can’t be enforced when they pertain to wage theft arising from omissions or misstatements on royalties,” we could pour money into the pockets of creative workers all over the world.

Yes, the entertainment giants will fight like hell against this, and yes, they have a lot of juice in their state legislatures. But they’re also incredibly greedy and reckless, and prone to such breathtaking and brazen acts of wage theft that they lurch from crisis to crisis, and at each of these crises, there is a space to pass a law to address these very public failings.

For example, in 2022, the Writers Guild of America — one of the best, most principled, most solidaristic and unified unions in Hollywood — wrested $42 million from Netflix, which the company had stolen from its writers:

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/wga-wins-42-million-arbitration-netflix-1235333822/

Netflix isn’t alone in these massive acts of wage theft, and this is certainly not the only way Netflix is stealing from creative workers. There’s never just one ant: if Netflix cooked the books for writers, they’re definitely cooking it for other workers. That means there will be more scandals, and when they break, we can demand more than a bandaid fix for one crime — we can demand modest-but-critical legislative action to fix contracts and prevent this kind of wage-theft in the future.

The state legislatures aren’t an intrinsically better battlefield for just fights, but they are an alternative to Congress, and there is space to make things happen in just some of the 50 state houses that can ripple out over the whole country — for good and bad.

[Image ID: Blind justice, holding aloft a set of unbalanced scales; in the lower scale is a map of the USA showing the state lines; in the higher scale rests the capitol building.]

#pluralistic #states rights #laboratories of democracy #privacy #gdpr #federalism #contract law #chokepoint capitalism #wage theft #redmap

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 25, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Pundits struggle to decide whether Trump’s rise represents something new in the United States or whether it is a continuation of the growing anti-democratic politics of the Republican Party. As a card-carrying Libra, I’m going to suggest it was both.

If yesterday’s letter was about how Trump’s turn to authoritarianism is unprecedented among major party political leaders, tonight’s is about how the Republican Party prepared the way for this moment in part by rigging the system through gerrymandering so that their politicians no longer need to appeal to voters. Those extreme gerrymanders threaten to skew the 2024 election and are contributing to the Republican Party’s inability to perform the most basic functions of government.

Gerrymandering is the process of drawing legislative districts to favor a political party. The practice was named for Elbridge Gerry, an early governor of Massachusetts who signed off on such a scheme (even though he didn’t like it). Political parties can gain an advantage in elections by either “packing” or “cracking” their opponents’ voters. Packing means stuffing the opposition party’s voters into districts so their votes are not distributed more widely; cracking means dividing opponents’ voters among multiple districts so there are too few of them in any district to have a chance of winning. 

The Constitution requires the government to take a census every ten years to see where people have moved, enabling the government to draw districts that should allow us to elect politicians that represent us. Political operatives have always carved up maps to serve themselves when they could, but today’s computers allow them to draw maps with surgical precision. 

That created a big change in 2010. Before that midterm election, hoping to hamstring President Barack Obama’s ability to accomplish anything by making sure he had a hostile Congress, Republican operatives raised money from corporate donors to swamp state elections with ads and campaign literature to elect Republicans to state legislatures. This Operation REDMAP, which stood for Redistricting Majority Project, was a plan to take control of state houses across the country so that Republicans would control the redistricting maps put in place after the 2010 census. 

It worked. After the 2010 election, Republicans controlled the legislatures in the key states of Florida, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Michigan, as well as other, smaller states, and they redrew congressional maps using precise computer models. In the 2012 election, Democrats won the White House decisively, the Senate easily, and a majority of 1.4 million votes for House candidates. And yet Republicans came away with a thirty-three-seat majority in the House of Representatives.

The results of that effort are playing out today.

In Wisconsin the electoral districts are so gerrymandered that although the state’s population is nearly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, Republicans control nearly two thirds of the seats in the legislature and it is virtually impossible for Democrats ever to win control of the state legislature. In April, voters elected Janet Protasiewicz to the state supreme court by an astonishing margin of 11 points, in part thanks to her promise to reject the extreme gerrymandered maps. 

Protasiewicz’s election shifted the court majority away from the Republicans. Even before she was elected, one Republican senator suggested impeaching her, and now, because she has called the district maps “rigged” and said, “I don’t think you could sell to any reasonable person that the maps are fair,” Republicans are calling for her impeachment before she has even heard a case. (After saying the maps were rigged, she added: “I can't ever tell you what I’m going to do on a particular case, but I can tell you my values, and common sense tells you that it’s wrong.”)

Voters are also evenly split in North Carolina—illustrated by the fact that a statewide race elected Democrat Roy Cooper as governor—but there, too, gerrymandering has rigged the maps for the Republicans. After a Democrat switched sides to give the Republicans a veto-proof majority in both houses of the legislature, the House of Representatives last week passed laws taking away the governor’s power to make appointments to state and local election boards and removing the tiebreaker seat the governor appointed to the state board. 

Instead, the legislature has taken over the right to make those appointments itself, meaning that election rules could become entirely partisan. At the same time, the legislature exempted its legislators from complying with the state open-records law that requires redistricting documents be public.

In Ohio, almost 75% of voters agreed to amend the state constitution in 2018 to prohibit political gerrymanders. Nonetheless, when the Republican-dominated legislature drew district maps in 2021, they gave a strong advantage to Republicans. The state supreme court struck the maps down as unconstitutional, but the U.S. Supreme Court permitted them to stay in place for the 2022 election. The court will now revisit the question, but it has moved further to the right since 2022.

In Alabama, in June, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision that the maps in place in 2022 were likely unconstitutional and must be redrawn to include a second majority-Black district. But when the state legislature drew a new map the next month, it defied the court. The court was shocked at the refusal to comply, and appointed a special master, who today offered three options. Any of them would offer the Democrats a chance to pick up another seat, and the state is challenging the new maps.

Tennessee shows what gerrymandering does at the state level. There, Republicans tend to get about 60% of the votes but control 76% of the seats in the House and 82% of the seats in the Senate. This supermajority means that the Republicans can legislate as they wish. 

Gerrymandered seats mean that politicians do not have to answer to constituents; their purpose is to raise money and fire up true believers. Although more than 70% of Tennessee residents want gun safety legislation, for example, Republican legislators, who are certain to win in their gerrymandered districts, can safely ignore them. 

Tennessee shows the effects of gerrymandering at the national level as well. Although Republican congressional candidates in Tennessee get about 65% of the vote, they control 89% of Tennessee’s congressional delegation. In the elections of 2022, Florida, Alabama, and Ohio all used maps that courts have thrown out for having rigged the system to favor Republicans. The use of those unfair maps highlights that the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives by only the slimmest of margins and explains why Republicans are determined to keep their gerrymanders.

Because their seats are safe, Republicans do not have to send particularly skilled politicians to Congress; they can send those whose roles are to raise money and push Republican ideology. That likely explains at least a part of why House Republicans are no closer to agreeing on a deal to fund the government than they have been for the past several months, even as the deadline is racing toward us, and why they are instead going to hold an impeachment hearing concerning President Joe Biden on Thursday. 

Michigan was one of the Operation REDMAP states, redistricted after the 2010 election into an extreme gerrymander designed by Republicans who bragged about stuffing “Dem garbage” into four districts so that Republicans would, as one said, stay in power for years. In 2016 a Michigan woman, Katie Fahey, started a movement to get rid of the partisan maps. In 2018, despite a Republican lawsuit to stop them, they successfully placed an initiative to create an independent redistricting commission on the ballot. It passed overwhelmingly. 

After the 2020 census the commission’s new maps still slightly favored Republicans because of the state’s demographic distribution—Democrats are concentrated in cities—but the parties were competitive. In 2022, Democrats took control of the state government, winning the House for the first time since 2008.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #gerrymandering #history #REDMAP #state legislatures

[calicojack1718]

Election 2024: The Undermining of our Democratic Culture by the Republican Party and Conservative Media

The way you undermine an established democracy is by attacking its democratic culture. You've got to get people who once believed in democratic solutions to their problems to accept autocratic ones. Pollings hows their progress in eroding our democracy.

SUMMARY: This blog post discusses the current state of democratic culture in the United States and the potential damage caused by Trump and the Republicans. It highlights the importance of democratic values and the struggle for a more perfect union. The post explores deep and surface democratic culture, as well as the deep culture of authoritarianism in the US. It also presents polling data that…

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#A More Perfect Union #Authoritarianism #Conservative Media #Culture #Deep Culture #Democratic Culture #Election 2024 #Newt Gingrich #Permanent Majority #Polling #Prequel #Rachel Maddow #REDMAP #Republican Party #Surface Culture #The Public Religion Research Institute

[redmaps]

Abundance and a feast for the eyes at the SUPER market of all things Italian, #Eataly. #foodhall #nycfoodhallcrawl #redmapnyc #redmaps #newyorkcity (at Eataly NYC Flatiron) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpx8-FGusbk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#eataly #foodhall #nycfoodhallcrawl #redmapnyc #redmaps #newyorkcity

[striving-artist]

so. in your opinion. what are the knockon effects of mccarthy's speakership being so weak? in what ways will that strengthen altrightism or weaken the base gop?

At the highest level, looking at this as how it will effect the citizenry: This will change very little. Unfortunately, that's because almost nothing was going to be passed into law in the 118th Congress. So there wasn't much to reduce. And the critical stuff will get passed with the same amount of pain as it has in previous years. It will be painful, but the government will get funded, and the debt ceiling will raise as needed. The price to do it will make us all sick, but, that's not really new is it?

Drop down from 30,000 feet though...

McCarthy gave away the store. I can't say that enough. The one vote threshold to call for a vote of no confidence is insane. However, I don't think many no confidence votes will occur. What I DO think will happen is that it will be a constant threat. Kevin didn't like your tweet? time for a vote. < that's a joke, but... the minute he caves to a first stupid demand, it's over, and based on the last four days, he has the moral temerity of jello.

The already glacial pace of Congressional action will slow further. If a Democrat makes a statement that Boebert hates, and she demands that McCarthy punish the dem, and he doesn't? She can threaten to call for a No Confidence Vote. Now, obvs, Kevin doesn't want that to actually go down and embarrass him further, so he will placate her. Maybe that means caving to the direct demand, or maybe it means she gets an extra 50k in funding from his PAC. (he did this to get the 14 votes that moved. He gave them money. literally. cash in exchange for the vote. i am not joking. it is that broken in here)

This is going to give the AltRight side of the GoP a lot of potential power. Like. A crap ton of power. But there is a plus side to that. It's power, but in the same sense that receiving a big bucket of gunpowder is a lot of potential power. Sometimes, they'll use it and do things that delight their base and get them interviewed on all the shows, and terrify everyone left of them. And sometimes, they're going to blow their own hands off. Kevin will be forced to let them do what they want, and they have made clear that they want chaos. They do not want a functioning federal government, and when they manage to break something, everyone will know who to blame.

Now this part is me speculating. I know it sounds weird, but: I think that this is going to empower the AltRight in congress, and that will weaken the GoP base.

Not the zealots, they aren't going anywhere. But this is not going to be two years of bragging. It's going to be two years of republican in-fighting, which has gotten very personal, very fast. It is going to be two years of airing grievances on the news and the internet. It is going to be two years of coverage of them fighting and fighting to pass a bill by a margin of one, only for it to be DoA when it hits the Senate. It's going to be two years of the AltRight fucking around, and then rapidly finding out.

There will be people who are on the edge of Strong Support who will drift away from the party out of shame to be associated with it. There will also be folk who double down and love the GoP harder for blowing shit up. The thing is though, Most of America prefers a veneer of centrist civility, and the shenanigans that Kevin's Speakership will encourage are not going to be civil. Most Independents absolutely want that civility. The GoP does not have room to lose support. Texas was a 6pt race in 2020. Texas. The GoP is alive now because of REDMAP. which was hella effective and evil

2022's midterms should have been a bloodbath. The party in power always gets destroyed. That's how it goes. Instead, Kevin has a four seat majority. There was no red wave. There was barely a ripple. All of the things that dems ran on in 22 are going to happen again, but louder in the 118th congress. This congress is going to alienate part of their base in order to keep the others. It is going to be embarrassing for moderates and centrists, and it is going to be a joke every time Kevin has to kneel and beg for permission to do his job.

None of this is a guarantee that the GoP won't gain power or do terrible things, but within Congress, the last four days shot every republican reelection campaign in the foot. Thousands of campaign ads will be made against them using this. They looked like fools, and their opponents will make sure everyone remembers that in 2024

My biggest concern is this: Congressional Republicans have a figurehead now, not a leader, and when there is no one leading a mob, it becomes a riot.

#us politics #kevin mccarthy #wish I could say that this will be a significant drop in action #compared to if this hadn't happened #but lets not lie #the 118th was never gonna get anything done #which means we get to watch them throw tantrums

[garudabluffs]

A redistricting crisis is now upon us. The new book, One Person, One Vote: A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in America, tells the history of how we got to this moment - from the Founding Fathers to today’s high-tech manipulation of election districts - and shows how to protect our most sacred, hard-fought principle of one person, one vote. Author and Professor Nick Seabrook joins us.

LISTEN 22:33  https://www.wamc.org/podcast/the-roundtable/2022-08-08/one-person-one-vote-by-nick-seabrook

Nick Seabrook,an authority on constitutional and election law and an expert on gerrymandering (pronounced with a hard ‘G’!), begins before our nation’s founding, with the rigging of American elections for partisan and political gain and the election meddling of George Burrington, the colonial governor of North Carolina, in retaliation against his critics. The author writes of Patrick Henry, who used redistricting to settle an old score with political foe and fellow Founding Father James Madison (almost preventing the Bill of Rights from happening), and of Elbridge Gerry, the Massachusetts governor from whose name “gerrymander” derives. One Person, One Vote explores the rise of the most partisan gerry­manders in American history, put in place by the Republican Party after the 2010 census. We see how the battle has shifted to the states via REDMAP—the GOP’s successful strategy to control state governments and rig the results of state legislative and congressional elections over the past decade. Seabrook makes clear that a vast new redistricting is already here, and that to safeguard our republic, action is needed before it is too late.

#book review author interview One Person One Vote Nick Seabrook

[redmap1]

Pronto ERP System - Redmap

The Pronto ERP system offers business owners the ability to integrate all important processes in one place, including the automation platforms that can help you save time and money in your daily operations. As Pronto Xi’s first major software partner, Redmap’s accounts payable invoice automation is second to none. Visit redmap.com to learn more.

#pronto ERP system

[furryalligator]

Source: http://twitter.com/planetmoney/status/1002716559041794051

As Republicans and Democrats gear up for the midterm elections this fall, we meet the man who figured how to make elections a lot less competitive by spending locally. https://t.co/G1bhlEQ1QL pic.twitter.com/z2Hi49HQxT

— NPR’s Planet Money (@planetmoney)

June 2, 2018

Local elections used to be a low-key affair in Blue Hill, Maine. So residents of the small town were shocked, in 2010, when a candidate for the Maine State Senate was targeted by a flood of negative ads.

The ads claimed he had canceled the town Fourth of July fireworks show and nobody in town knew who was paying for them.

We trace the money back to a Republican strategist named Chris Jankowski who hatched a brilliant scheme to reshape national politics for a bargain. The strategy was called the Redistricting Majority Project, or "REDMAP."

Today on the show: how Jankowski took a new approach to political campaign spending that reshaped campaigns across the country and helped earn Republicans advantages for years, maybe even decades to come including the midterms this fall.

For more on REDMAP, check out Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count by David Daley

#planetmoney #IFTTT #@planetmoney #election #local elections #economics #Redistricting Majority Project #REDMAP #Chris Jankowski #national politics #political campaign spending #campaign spending #campaign finance #Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count #David Daley #book

[tezlivenews]

बीजेपी वर्किंग कमेटी 7 जुलाई को प्रस्तावित, तय होगा यूपी मिशन 2022 का रोडमैप

बीजेपी वर्किंग कमेटी 7 जुलाई को प्रस्तावित, तय होगा यूपी मिशन 2022 का रोडमैप

UP Mission 2022 Agenda: बीजेपी प्रदेश कार्यसमिति की बैठक 7 जुलाई को प्रस्तावित है. जिसका एलान जल्द ही होगा. मार्च मे पिछली कार्यसमिति की बैठक लखनऊ मे हुई थी. इसमें यूपी मिशन 2022 का एजेंडा तय किया जाना है. Source link

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#BJP UP #BL Santosh #JP Nadda #Redmap #UP Assembly Election 2022 #UP Mission 2022 #UP News Updatesबीजेपी यूपी #WORKING COMMITTEE #Yogi Adityanath #जेपी नड्डा #बीएल संतोष #यूपी न्यूज अपडेट #यूपी मिशन 2022 #यूपी विधानसभा चुनाव 2022 #योगी आदित्यनाथ #राेडमैप #वर्किंग कमेटी

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 13, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 14, 2024

There are really two major Republican political stories dominating the news these days. The more obvious of the two is the attempt by former president Donald Trump and his followers to destroy American democracy. The other story is older, the one that led to Trump but that stands at least a bit apart from him. It is the story of a national shift away from the supply-side ideology of Reagan Republicans toward an embrace of the idea that the government should hold the playing field among all Americans level.

While these two stories are related, they are not the same.

For forty years, between 1981, when Republican Ronald Reagan took office, and 2021, when Democrat Joe Biden did, the Republicans operated under the theory that the best way to run the country was for the government to stay out of the way of market forces. The idea was that if individuals could accumulate as much money as possible, they would invest more efficiently in the economy than they could if the government regulated business or levied taxes to invest in public infrastructure and public education. The growing economy would result in higher tax revenues, enabling Americans to have both low taxes and government services, and prosperity would spread to everyone. 

But the system never worked as promised. Instead, during that 40-year period, Republicans passed massive tax cuts under Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump, and slashed regulations. A new interpretation of antitrust laws articulated by Robert Bork in the 1980s permitted dramatic consolidation of corporations, while membership in labor unions declined. The result was that as much as $50 trillion moved upward from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. 

To keep voters on board the program that was hollowing out the middle class, Republicans emphasized culture wars, hitting hard on racism and sexism by claiming that taxes were designed by Democrats to give undeserving minorities and women government handouts and promising their evangelical voters they would overturn the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion. Those looking for tax cuts and business deregulation depended on culture warriors and white evangelicals to provide the votes to keep them in power.

But the election of Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 proved that Republican arguments were no longer effective enough to elect Republican presidents. So in 2010, with the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission decision, the Supreme Court freed corporations to pour unlimited money into U.S. elections. That year, under Operation REDMAP, Republicans worked to dominate state legislatures so they could control redistricting under the 2010 census, yielding extreme partisan gerrymanders that gave Republicans disproportionate control. In 2013 the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision greenlighted the voter suppression Republicans had been working on since 1986.  

Even so, by 2016 it was not at all clear that the cultural threats, gerrymandering, and voter suppression would be enough to elect a Republican president. People forget it now because of all that has come since, but in 2016, Trump offered not only the racism and sexism Republicans had served up for decades, but also a more moderate economic program than any other Republican running that year. He called for closing the loopholes that permitted wealthy Americans to evade taxes, cheaper and better healthcare than the Democrats had provided with the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., and addressing the long backlog of necessary repairs to our roads and bridges through an infrastructure bill. 

But once in office, Trump threw economic populism overboard and resurrected the Republican emphasis on tax cuts and deregulation. His signature law was the 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy at a cost of at least $1.9 trillion over ten years. At the same time, Trump continued to feed his base with racism and sexism, and after the Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, he increasingly turned to his white nationalist base to shore up his power. On January 6, 2021, he used that base to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. 

Republican senators then declined to convict Trump of that attempt in his second impeachment trial, apparently hoping he would go away. Instead, their acquiescence in his behavior has enabled him to continue to push the Big Lie that he won the 2020 election. But to return to power, Trump has increasingly turned away from establishment Republicans and has instead turned the party over to its culture war and Christian nationalist foot soldiers. Now Trump has taken over the Republican National Committee itself, and his supporters threaten to turn the nation over to the culture warriors who care far more about their ideology than they do about tax cuts or deregulation.

The extremism of Trump’s base is hugely unpopular among general voters. Most significantly, Trump catered to his white evangelical base by appointing Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and in 2022, when the court did so, the dog caught the car. Americans overwhelmingly support reproductive freedoms, and Republicans are getting hammered over the extreme abortion bans now operative in Republican-dominated states. Now Trump and a number of Republicans have tried to back away from their antiabortion positions, infuriating antiabortion activists. 

It is hard to see how the Republican Party can appeal to both Trump’s base and general voters at the same time. 

That split dramatically weakens Trump politically while he is in an increasingly precarious position personally. He will, of course, go on trial on Monday, April 15, for alleged crimes committed as he interfered in the 2016 election. At the same time, the $175 million appeals bond he posted to cover the judgment in his business fraud trial has been questioned and must be justified by April 14. The court has scheduled a hearing on the bond for April 22. And his performance at rallies and private events has been unstable. 

He seems a shaky reed on which to hang a political party, especially as his MAGA Republicans have proven unable to manage the House of Representatives and are increasingly being called out as Russian puppets for their attacks on Ukraine aid.  

Regardless of Trump’s future, though, the Reagan Era is over. 

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have quite deliberately rejected the economic ideology that concentrated wealth among the 1%. On their watch, the federal government has worked to put money into the hands of ordinary Americans rather than the very wealthy. With Democrats and on occasion a few Republicans, they have passed legislation to support families, dedicate resources to making sure people with student debt are receiving the correct terms of their loans (thus relieving significant numbers of Americans), and invested in manufacturing, infrastructure, and addressing climate change. They have also supported unions and returned to an older definition of antitrust law, suing Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple and allowing the federal government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices.

Their system has worked. Under Biden and Harris the U.S. has had unemployment rates under 4% for 26 months, the longest streak since the 1960s. Wages for the bottom 80% of Americans have risen faster than inflation, chipping away at the huge disparity between the rich and the poor that the policies of the past 40 years have produced. 

Today, in an interview with Jamie Kitman of The Guardian, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain, who negotiated landmark new union contracts with the country’s Big Three automakers, explained that the world has changed: “Workers have realized they’ve been getting screwed for decades, and they’re fed up.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#GOP #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #UAW #the economy #history #income inequality #culture wars #trickle down #supply side #deregulation #white nationalism #tax cuts

[spaceasianmillennial]

If you’re a young person from California, I insist you apply for this so you can train yourself to protect democracy from future Trumps. The redistricting year is coming up and it is crucial that district lines are drawn without partisan favor. If you know your gerrymandering history, the GOP conducted Project Redmapping to draw partisan lines that would snag them local and state elections and eventually the presidency of Donald Trump.

Every ten years, after the federal census, California must re-establish the boundaries of its Congressional, State Senate, State Assembly, and State Board of Equalization districts to reflect new population data and shifting populations. The Voters FIRST Act gave this power to California citizens ensuring that new and fair political boundaries are drawn without special interests, politics and political influence.

California citizens who are eligible may submit an online application to the California State Auditor’s Office during the initial application period from June 10, 2019, to August 19, 2019 by 5:00 p.m.

This is your chance to become a part of creating fair and transparent district boundaries that serve the best interests of the people of California. If you believe politics are better when all sides work together and you have a passion for civic engagement, apply to become one of 14 new 2020 commissioners.

On another note, if you’re not from California and in another state, you still have to be mindful of redistricting attempts in your own state.

 Join the Grassroots Redistricting Project

SIGNAL BOOST

#gerrymandering #democracy #donald trump #california #project redmapping #project redmap #gop #republican #democrats #census 2020

[redmaps]

Eat Well Here! @joseandresgroup Little Spain Market and Food Hall in Hudson Yards. All varieties of Spanish cuisine when you visit the #Highlinepark #foodhall #spanishfood #nycdining #redmapchelsea #newYork #redmaps (at Mercado Little Spain) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpkoPE2Ofgi/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#highlinepark #foodhall #spanishfood #nycdining #redmapchelsea #newyork #redmaps

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The estranged anarchist daughter of the Republican gerrymandering mastermind inherited and dumped all his files

Thomas Hofeller was the mastermind behind REDMAP, the took used by Republican dirty-tricksters to redraw state electoral maps after the 2010 census in order to deliver state and federal legislative seats to Republicans even when the majority of people voted Democrats.

Hofeller was a secretive sociopath and had long been estranged from his daughter, Stephanie, a self-described anarchist who only discovered her father had died in 2018 when she read the obit pages of the New York Times. When Stephanie recovered her father's possessions from his home, she came into possession of files detailing the REDMAP plans, files of the sort that he had long exhorted his co-conspirators not to create or retain.

Stephanie turned some of her father's files over to the government watchdog Common Cause for use in a lawsuit over North Carolina's redistricting; thanks to the frank admission of racially motivated voter suppression in Thomas's files, the court found that NC's redistricting was illegal.

Now, Stephanie has licensed all her father's files under an unspecified Creative Commons license and dumped them on Google Drive for anyone to use, exhorting others to "download and distribute this material, at will. It’s yours (be nice)."

https://boingboing.net/2020/01/06/gops-worst-nightmare.html

[isaacsapphire]

The election was already rigged by gerrymandering and voter suppression and repealing parts of the voting right act and REDMAP and even union busting. Even if the Democrats were ballot stuffing, they’d only be leveling the playing field.

Why is it I only get truly spicy asks off anon?

#2020 election #election 2020 #gerrymandering #democracy and it's discontents

[gsilverveilb]

. 🖋📱🖋 ° "In man the shedding of blood is always associated with injury, disease or death. Only the female half of humanity was seen to have the magical ability to bleed profusely and still rise phoenix-like each month of the gore." - Estelle R. Ramey . 🖋📱🖋 ° For the ladies it's that time of the month when you have an excuse to eat a gallon of icecream or drink bottles of beer just to cool things out with your monthly nemesis. #women #strength #monthlyvisit #period #pads #tampons #bloodybusiness #hormones #moodswings #pms #aykoglabda #bodilyfluids #stain #redmaps #dysmenorrhea #flankpain #painkillers #beermug #bearhug

#pms #dysmenorrhea #monthlyvisit #hormones #strength #bodilyfluids #period #painkillers #bearhug #bloodybusiness #redmaps #moodswings #beermug #flankpain #women #tampons #stain #pads #aykoglabda

[allmyleftistsliveintexas]

Gerrymandering in Austin, Texas and What We Can Do to Fix It

Below is a deep dive into Austin’s gerrymandering problem. It includes defining gerrymandering, a look into how Austin’s congressional districts are drawn, some actions we can take to make this drawing more fair, and more. 

Note: while gerrymandering can occur in any electoral district, this post focuses on US congressional districts in Austin, Texas. 

The Redistricting Process

To best understand gerrymandering, it's important to understand the redistricting process. 

Every part of the country is divided into different congressional districts. Each district is represented by one congressperson. Redistricting is the process of drawing these districts so that each congressperson represents a relatively equal amount of people.

In every year ending with a zero, the US Census Bureau aims to count every person in the country or every American citizen, depending on the party in power. (Trump did not want to count undocumented folks. Biden will.)

This data is then used in reapportion, where it is decided how many congressional seats/districts each state receives based on population. Typically, the reapportion report is delivered by the US Census Bureau on the last day of the year. This year it is expected by April 30th. This year, Texas is expected to gain three seats. California is expected to lose one.

Next, the US Census Bureau releases redistricting data to the states. Typically this happens for April of the next year, but this year it will happen before September 30th. States then utilize different methods to redraw district lines.

Who redraws the lines depends on the state. While 21 states currently utilize some sort of nonpartisan redistricting committee, in Texas, the state legislature is in charge of redrawing the lines. The current Texas redistricting committee includes 10 republicans and 7 democrats.

"Redistricting is like an election in reverse. It's a great event. Usually the voters get to pick the politicians. In redistricting, the politicians get to pick the voters." - Thomas Hofeller, Redistricting Chair of the Republican National Committee

What is gerrymandering?

"The practice of dividing or arranging a territorial unit into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections" - Merriam-Webster Definition

Gerrymandering refers to when electoral districts are drawn to favor one group of people over another. This often means that districts are drawn counterintuitively and in strange shapes so that like-minded voters are separated into one district instead of spread out over multiple districts. Because these voters end up in the same district, they are only able to win that one district instead of the multiple districts they could win if the districts were drawn fairly. 

The word "gerrymandering" is named after Elbridge Gerry. (pronounced Gary.) While he was governor of Massachusetts in 1812, he helped create a partisan district of Boston that resembled a salamander. This led to the district electing three Democratic Republicans into historically Federalist seats that same year. While this wasn't the first time the US experienced gerrymandering, this was the first time a name stuck to the practice.

salamander district, via vox/boston centinel 1812

Today, gerrymandered districts play a massive role in keeping political parties in power. While both democrats and republicans are guilty of gerrymandering, the majority of gerrymandered districts are drawn by republicans. In 2010, Republicans launched "REDMAP" which utilized software to strategically redistrict in favor of republicans. This led them to retain control of the US house by 33 seats, even though democrats had a one million voter majority. Additionally, AP found almost four times as many republican skewed states than democrat in 2016. An AP analysis indicated that Republicans won 16 more congressional seats in 2018 because of gerrymandering than they would have with fairly drawn districts.

"When the representatives are drawing their constituencies in a way that allows them to choose their constituents, you've reversed the dynamic quite fundamentally." - John Akred

Gerrymandering Strategies

There are many tactics used in gerrymandering districts, but the two main ones are cracking and packing. Note: there are even *more* methods of gerrymandering than those included on this list. 

Cracking - Cracking is when voters of the opposing party are "cracked" or split into many different districts so their voting power is diluted across many districts.

Packing - Packing is when all voters of the opposing party are "packed" into one district to reduce their voting power in other districts.

Kidnapping - Kidnapping is when an incumbent's home address is moved to a different district making reelection more difficult.

Incumbent Protection - Incumbent Protection is when redistricters use any of the above strategies or others to create districts that favor the incumbent over the opponent.

Additionally, there are two main kinds of gerrymandering: racial and partisan.

Racial - Racial gerrymandering seeks to disempower voters of a race or races of people. Racial gerrymandering is illegal but still frequent throughout the country.

Partisan - Partisan gerrymandering seeks to disempower voters of one political party. In many cases, partisan gerrymandering is racial gerrymandering.

What does it look like?

While gerrymandering can occur in any electoral districts, this post is focused on US congressional districts in Austin, Texas. 

Here’s what the six congressional districts in Austin look like: 

via The Austin Chronicle

A Closer Look at Austin’s Districts 

Despite Austin being a heavily blue-voting city, five of the six congressional districts are represented by Republicans. This is one reason why Austin has been identified as one of the worst cases of gerrymandering in the country.

Austin is mostly gerrymandered using the "cracking" method. Austin's blue voters have been spread out among multiple districts, all of which include large swaths of country towns. For example, district 25 travels from Austin all the way to Fort Worth, district 17 travels beyond Waco, and district 10 touches Houston. By including hundreds of small Texas towns into Austin's congressional districts, the firmly red voters in the country outweigh the blue city voters. This design is intentional, and is slated to get much worse this year unless we receive federal protection.

district 10 (michael mccaul-r)

57% caucasian

26% hispanic

10% black

5% asian

.6% indigenous

district 17 (pete sessions-r)

57% caucasian

26% hispanic

13% black

5% asian

.5% indigenous

district 21 (chip roy-r)

62% caucasian

30% hispanic

4% black

4% asian

.5% indigenous

district 25 (roger williams-r)

70% caucasian

19% hispanic

8% black

3% asian

.5% indigenous

district 31 (john carter-r)

59% caucasian

24% hispanic

11% black

5% asian

.4% indigenous

district 35 (lloyd dogget-d)

26% caucasian

61% hispanic

10% black

2% asian

.5% indigenous

Additionally, district 35 is packed. Hispanic voters are grouped together from East Austin to San Antonio so that their voting power is isolated to only one district instead of many districts.

You can view an interactive district drawing map here.

Why this is Bad

Gerrymandering is a racist tool that politicians use to strip minority voters of their political power. If we do not stop gerrymandering in it's tracks right now, districts will be redrawn to be even more oppressive than they are now.

Though racial gerrymandering is illegal, Texas districts still get away with it. In 2018, a seven year legal battle regarding Texas's racially gerrymandered districts (like district 35) ended because the Supreme Court rejected nearly all claims.

Districts in Texas are drawn strategically so Republicans retain power. We need a fair districting map to ever have a realistic chance of unseating republicans.

A Possible Solution

Independent Commissions - 21 states are currently using some sort of nonpartisan commission to redraw their maps. Utilizing independent commissions means districts are drawn sensibly and without favoritism for one group or another.

HR1 is an act that recently passed congress seeking to implement independent redistricting commissions for every state. Should it pass the senate, we would no longer have to trust Republican legislators to draw our district maps.

There are other possible solutions including proportional representation, using artificial intelligence, and ranked choice voting. However, independent commissions seem to be the most realistic future for Texan gerrymandering prevention at this time.

What We Can Do

1. Register ASAP to speak at the Texas Senate's public hearing on Thursday, March 11th at 9am!

The Texas Senate is having a public hearing about Austin's congressional districts on Thursday, March 11th at 9am on Zoom. This is an opportunity for the public to "share details about their local communities and information that they believe is relevant to the upcoming redistricting process." Sign up and tell Texan representatives why your community should be kept together in the redistricting process. Request and independent commission be used if possible. The Texas government canNOT be trusted to draw districts fairly.

Sign up to testify at bit.ly/2OdIgE0

Testimony Guide at fairmapstexas.org/testimony-guides

Leave a written comment at senate.texas.gov/redistrictingcomment

2. Call your senators and tell them to vote YES on HR1, the For the People Act!

The For the People Act would incorporate 800 pages of voting rights legislation. Among other things, it would guarantee mail in voting and at least 15 days of early voting for federal elections, would require states to automatically register citizens to vote, would restore voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences, and would require all states to use an independent citizen commission to draw congressional districts.

HR1 passed the US House on March 3rd. To pass the senate, all 48 democrats and the two independents would need to be joined by 10 republicans to overcome a filibuster.

Will Ted Cruz & John Cornyn vote yes on this bill? Very unlikely.

Should we let them know how we feel by blowing up their inboxes anyways? Yes.

Ted Cruz: [phone] - email him here.

John Cornyn: [phone] - email him here.

"Historically, gerrymandering has been used both as a racist weapon to undermine the political power of minority communities and a political weapon to ensure partisan advantage... Gerrymandering fundamentally undermines a fair and representative democracy." 

****act now. sign up to testify. call your senators. ensure a fair redistricting process.****

Additional Reading:

https://www.keranews.org/2019-04-14/texas-matters-gerrymandering-in-texas

https://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/

https://www.caller.com/story/news/local/2019/11/01/why-redistricting-important-and-why-should-you-participate-texas-democrats-republicans/4103303002/

Sources: 

The Redistricting Process Sources: 

https://indivisible.org/resource/fighting-gerrymandering-states

https://ballotpedia.org/Redistricting_in_Texas_after_the_2020_census

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/30/940116088/supreme-court-weighs-trump-plan-to-cut-undocumented-immigrants-from-census

https://www.npr.org/sections/inauguration-day-live-updates/2021/01/20/958376223/biden-to-end-trump-census-policy-ensuring-all-persons-living-in-u-s-are-counted

https://www.ltgov.state.tx.us/2019/06/28/lt-gov-patrick-announces-2021-redistricting-committee/

https://www.c-span.org/video/?165594-3/2000-redistricting-review

What is Gerrymandering? Sources:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gerrymandering

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-is-the-best-explanation-of-gerrymandering-you-will-ever-see/

https://www.vox.com/2014/8/5/17991968/gerrymandering-name-elbridge-gerry

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/REDMAP

https://www.businessinsider.com/partisan-gerrymandering-has-benefited-republicans-more-than-democrats-2017-6

https://apnews.com/article/9fd72a4c1c5742aead977ee27815d776

https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-07-28/big-data-and-the-gerrymandering-of-america

Gerrymandering Strategies Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#:~:text=Two%20principal%20tactics%20are%20used,voting%20power%20in%20other%20districts). 

https://www.policymap.com/2017/08/a-deeper-look-at-gerrymandering/

https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/7/24/16012440/racial-partisan-gerrymandering-redistricting-supreme-court-video

What Does it Look Like? Source:

https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2018-02-09/u-s-congress/

A Closer Look at Austin’s Districts Sources:

https://thefulcrum.us/worst-gerrymandering-districts-example/7-austin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_10th_congressional_district

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_17th_congressional_district

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_21st_congressional_district

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_25th_congressional_district

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_31st_congressional_district

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_35th_congressional_district

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-maps/texas/

Why this is Bad Sources:

https://indivisible.org/resource/fighting-gerrymandering-states

https://newrepublic.com/article/149357/texas-republicans-got-away-racially-discriminatory-electoral-map

https://www.caller.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/02/27/texas-republicans-democrats-gerrymandering-legislative-districts-voter-suppression/4545917002/

A Possible Solution Sources:

https://apnews.com/article/4d2e2aea7e224549af61699e51c955dd

https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1072&context=vlr

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1/text

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/05/hr1-bill-what-is-it/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/11/16453512/gerrymandering-proportional-representation

https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/04/ai-drawn-voting-districts-could-help-stamp-out-gerrymandering/

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/473788-replacing-winner-takes-all-system-would-end-gerrymandering

What We Can Do Sources:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJItde6gpjMvH9Mn_8FA26GFQaVkPVxEzQNL

fairmapstexas.org/testimony-guides

senate.texas.gov/redistrictingcomment

https://www.vox.com/2021/3/3/22309123/house-democrats-pass-voting-rights-bill-hr1

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/five-ways-hr-1-would-transform-redistricting

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-house/u-s-house-passes-sweeping-election-bill-senate-prospects-unclear-idUSKCN2AV2JM

https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=form&id=16

https://www.cornyn.senate.gov/node/5853

#austin #austintexas #texas #politics #texaspolitics #leftist #leftists #leftistpolitics #gerrymandering #hr1 #forthepeople #forthepeopleact