I don’t think there is any doubt in a highly politically consequential decision like this, Kavanaugh would vote like the partisan hack he is. The only reason for his recent less consequential non-partisans decisions is to lay the groundwork for when he votes in a completely partisan way (I believe Roberts has done the same thing).
“See, we can’t possibly be considered partisan! I know we just voted to kill voting rights and abortion, but look how we voted on these far less consequential issues!”
Clear violation of 14th Amendment, Section 2:
“Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”
What we should be pushing for as progressives is sprawl (and the environmentalists can go fuck themselves on this one) and laws that prevent, for example, Town A from creating land use regulations that force Town B to shoulder the population burden. We need infrastructure to get people out of the cities and slow their growth while spreading it, but still making it possible to work there and live in a more suburban setting. We need zoning and land use changes to prevent NIMBY bullshit where rural white towns create minimum lot sizes of 2 acres to prevent development, etc. A major cause of the entire schism we’re experiencing societally and culturally is literally the physical location of our populations and the growing demographic disparity between them. We may be a melting pot, but it’s more like what happens when you get water in your melted chocolate…seizing and clumps.
It also contributes to so many of the other problems we face that you could probably just have someone lob problems at you and play a game of seeing how many ways in which you can connect that problem to the conventional wisdom that “urban sprawl” is bad and must be avoided at all costs. It simply can’t NOT be allowed to happen. In fact, is MUST be encouraged or we’re going to watch the schism widen and oh so many other problems just get worse and worse and worse. Big cities/urban centers can’t just become the holding pens/concentration camps for the vast majority of the country to be ruled over by the rural white minority.
Part of the problem lies in the double-edge alot of the issues have. Nothing is worse than when GOPers and Dems want the same thing for different reasons. Take high-speed rail for example. That shit could allow people to live what would otherwise be a hour or more drive to their job in the city BUT GOPers don’t want you know who in their precious white conservative neighborhood (neither Dems or minorities) and city liberals counting on land owners in the city can’t afford them to get pissed off at their real estate values falling, or at least failing to rise as quickly, as a result of insane demand finding an outlet. A good example of the same kind of dynamic was when we deinstitutionalized the mentally ill…the Reaganites just wanted the money for tax cuts and the liberals were on board with the psychology professions somewhat bleeding-heart views about making them more independent and avoiding “stigma” and those kinds of things. The result is never good when the two parties come together for their own selfish reasons.
The problem is that the Constitution doesn’t say anything about how state districts are to be drawn (a major flaw IMO), only how seats are to be apportioned among states. One of the ways blacks were disenfranchised in case they managed to vote was to create one district with 800,000 people in the mostly black areas and multiple districts with only 100,000 people in the mostly white areas. It took the Voting Rights Act to fix that.
“…they are also enabling the drawing of districts based on the whole number of citizens rather than the whole number of people.”
But I thought districting was always supposed to be based on the number of people in a specific area, and not the number of citizens. People have jobs, people use resources, people are impacted by all aspects of public policy – not just citizens. What’s the legal justification for considering this when redistricting?
I don’t know enough about gerrymandered the state is, but to avoid a gerrymander in 2020 either (a) the D’s would need to take one of the two houses, and given they are behind in the senate (19 to 12) that is probably impossible, the House (now 83 to 67) is probably too big of a hill to climb in one election cycle without some major Texas issue, or (b) a few “reasonable” Republicans would have to be incentivized to draw more reasonable maps by the business community to limit the power of the TexasTaliban now running most of the republican party.
Unfortunately Texans are screwed since Texas does not allow initiatives or referendums, which is the easiest way to fix gerrymandering at this point.
Cute, but I’m right and you’ve offered not a single shred of coherent, rational analysis to argue otherwise. The population isn’t shrinking and cities and infrastructure can’t just continue to expand and be built “up” (or “down” as the case may be). “Out” HAS to also be an option. Go ahead, try to argue otherwise instead of simply engaging in your baseless ad hominem bullshit. Also, go fuck yourself if you don’t have the balls to step up.
Except that we keep turning the state bluer in every fucking election since '06, despite how gerrymandered we are. So we aren’t as screwed as you seem to think.
I’m sure paving over more farmland and wildlands to build at a density of 1000/sq mi, while dramatically increasing use of cars, will be a great outcome and it’s just those radical environmentalists getting their panties in a wad who are against it.
In case you need more specifics - high speed rail isn’t for commuters, it’s for intercity travel. You can’t accelerate to 200 mph when the next stop is a mile away. And local rail isn’t much use if you can’t either walk to it or have a short drive with parking available. In both cases you need a high density of people around each stop - i.e. a city, not sprawl.
Everyone with business or pleasure in a city should want the city to be as nice as possible. Not the money deprived, power starved hell holes, where nobody even knows how many people live there, like what Republicans would turn cities into with this citizenship gerrymander.
Big cities/urban centers can’t just become the holding pens/concentration camps for the vast majority of the country to be ruled over by the rural white minority.
Brooklyn, New York here. I understand the “what” and the “why” of your ideas. The “how” is so poorly worded as to be horrifying. It happens to be those holding pens/concentration camps that are driving the majority of the innovation and forward movement for this country tech, finance, artistic, etc. The fact that a rural White minority can’t seem to accept the decline of their lifestyles should not be the concern of those in the urban areas.
ETA: Responding to sniffit NOT midnight rambler. Pardon.
I 100% understand the heard work that is going into the democratic revitalization in Texas, and that has turned both Dallas and Houston Blue. However, and not to be a debbie downer here, the risk is that the republicans will be able to draw up new maps after 2020, which will give them yet more seats (Gerrymanders break down over time and Texas’s has as the suburbs have gotten more liberal) and set back the chance of a take over further.
