There’s always risk out there. It’s never not a fight here. But the momentum is ours and it has been for awhile now and it grows, it doesn’t diminish.
I’m sticking with that. I’ve spent enough years here spinning in place, not able to see any kind of progress. We’ve made such incredible movement toward sanity that I’m just going to go with that until it becomes impossible to do and I don’t think it will go back there.
More evidence of these dirty traitors’ guilt. They want to steal our elections. And they should pay the price for it. Anyone who participates in this right wing scheme is a criminal piece of shit and deserves the very worst to happen to them. Target the leaders of this movement on the right and bankrupt their entire dirty families. They need to spend the rest of their lives running from this treason.
Agree with your perspective…
Across different societies should be the issue.
For example, other countries have cities. Does country ________________ have a system in which both urban and rural cooperate more than what happens in the United States?
Take into account topography, rivers, other environmental issues as well as population densities.
The fact of the matter is…if we do not do something about racism in the United States, most of our governmental issues should have an asterisk.
I am of the belief that there is practically nothing that Americans can’t do. They simply have to respect their fellow denizens to do it. Maybe if we had actually HAD a real invasion foisted upon us by a foreign power (no don’t give me Georgie Washington’s War), complete with tanks, troops and an occupying force, we would appreciate the degree to which we piss of chance after chance to prosper together instead of hating (which can be fun watching Roller Derby or WWF Wrestling but is usually grown out of by adults)
Boy, you sure did take your own ideas of what I meant and graft them onto what I said. Kudos.
There a re plenty of ways to be building green and smart. Perhaps you should do some reading.
“1000/sq mi” does not describe a density because it fails to state 1000 of WHAT.
Alternative forms of transportation were a specific example I chose for a reason.
I in no way stated that its solely because of environmentalists getting their panties in a wad. However, your immediate jump to “paving over more farmland and wildlands” as a go to characterization suggests maybe I should have added some reference to wadded panties.
I in no way indicated that the purpose would be to have stops a mile away from each other. In fact, since the point I was stressing was solely to enable commuting, I think it was pretty implicit that stops wouldn’t function like a subway system and be a mile or so apart on average. When you have clogged highway because everyone is commuting in the same direction, enticing some to drive in the other direction to a high speed option makes sense. It’s certainly viable at the 30-60 miles distance and doesn’t necessarily have to be interpreted as something akin to Japanese bullet trains going 300 mph. There are more middling options.
Lastly, this isn’t something I’m arguing would just take place overnight or wouldn’t require alot of planning and likely a lot of court time fighting with the suburban areas bordering the “city” who would be the first to get forced into higher density situations, providing infrastructure to accommodate it, etc., as things progress appropriately. But we’ve seen first hand in MA how failure to plan for necessary sprawl turns into massive shitshows as it happens anyway and creates the need for expanded infrastructure that was never properly anticipated and planned…we’re making a mint off it as eminent domain takings occur for expansion of the Green Line subway system, which has taken 20+ years to even get off the ground as a result of some of the factors I described above where both the GOPers and Dems wanted the same thing…expansion not to take place…for different selfish reason. Failures in that kind of planning for futurity are why we have things like food deserts, minority neighborhoods under smokestacks, 40+ minute drives from Cambridge to Boston in the morning, rental rates gentrifying neighborhoods and leaving people homeless and jobless because of the catch-22 of not being able to find work if they leave the city where all the jobs are concentrated and yet not being able to afford staying, rush hour traffic that lasts 2.5 hours instead of one, discouraged subway use due to lack of parking (yes, if you think it’s better for a car to run for an hour driving from a close suburb to a job in the city, rather than drive 10 minutes to park and take the subway, you’re not a very good environmentalist…it’s about time operating, not distance driven).
Traditional notions of urban and suburban planning have failed in excruciatingly obvious and gloriously spectacular ways and if you’re a progressive, your attitude should be that we need to start addressing that in some major ways very quickly, putting knowledge, science, creativity, innovation and our priorities (like protecting the environment to the extent reasonably possible) to work.
It is in my area. My town is the progressive oasis in a red state. The rurals have been dragging us around with their stupid shit for years holding us and even them back. So it is a concern to towns like mine, and I’d venture to guess their are many of them. Waiting them out to die off and fuck off is taking too long. Way too long.
As I understand it, the argument (such as it is) ignores the question of justification and asks instead whether the constitution prohibits doing districts based on citizenship. So states rights.
The constitution says:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
the 14th amendment changed this to say:
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. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
The clauses (as modified by the 14th A) textually do three things. (1) it counts “persons” (many of which could not vote), (2) it excludes “Indians not taxed” (no representation w/o taxation), and (3) it then in the 14th amendment adds an additional concept of “citizenship” but not to the apportionment, but in saying that if male “citizens of the United States” right to vote was taken away (other than for a “crime”) then they would not be counted for apportionment.
The argument is that “persons” can’t and does not mean the same thing as “citizens”, and that the structure of the constitution as to apportionment is one of representative voting/political power. While women could not vote (nor kids) nor non-citizens, their interests were represented by those who could vote. The problem with drawing district lines along citizenship lines, when the seats are given based upon “persons” is that it creates different values of the vote, which runs afoul of the “one person one vote” standard, and breaking the representative link upon which the apportionment is made.
Since redrawing voting districts (for the purpose of voting), it seems we should have always used citizenship populations (since only citizens can vote). Having citizenship question in the census makes sense, and if it discourages participation by illegal aliens, that would seem to be what we would want.
Other countries have the same problems. Brexit divided Britain hard. Italy has threatened to come apart into separate north and south countries since it finally joined up in 1861. Spain has both the Basques and Catalonia who are pushing for independence. I’m sure other people can come up with other examples.
I 110% second that enthusiasm. Major tectonic shifts occur (see e.g. the 2017 state elections in VA) and nothing is every gained by giving up the fight. 
One must always be optimistic, its what gets us through the day (or the last two years…).
Excuse me? For redistricting?
What the hell does that have to do with drawing districts containing equal numbers of people? Race, ethnicity, gender, religion, having good records with the Immigration Service… none of these are any political party’s business when it comes to creating districts.
It sounds like Republicans have given up on strong borders. Now they want to take it out on property owners. You picked the wrong neighbors. The Republican Party would screw over their own grandmothers for a buck, I swear.
So if you think we should always have drawn districts on the basis of citizens, perhaps you might want to consider the 200-plus year history of not doing things that way, and some of the reasons why, and reconsider your position.
A hint might come from the places that allow non-citizen permanent residents to vote in local elections.
When we can, we should include gun questions to suppress responses from red areas. We can play this game too.
Poland is fundamentally divided between urban/liberal/pro-EU Warsaw and the rurual place where people have *** with farm animals. You see the same divisions in France, where the urban voters are mostly either socialist or “centrist” and the gaulists and now the national front are supported by those in the Provence. Hell you see the same issues in “semi-democratic” countries like Russia, Serbia, Hungary, Turkey, where the right wing/religious party does well in rural areas and the “liberal” or often socialist/social-democratic party does well in urban areas.
Exactly. The doomsday mentality has got to go…and constructive engagement while recognizing national bugaboos would go a long way. We got snookered with Judicial Activism on the Right some years back and we are still paying for it, along with FOX, ALEC and the rest.
Drumpf is one of the results.
NB Beto O’Rourke (AKA “Threat-o”) made a number of visits to both rural and urban areas with an uplifting message addressed to both sectors. One of the things that the U.S. habitually makes too little of is the youth (in terms of its founding) of the country. Civic “Religion” is badly needed here
I volunteered for a local voter PAC in '04. The Democratic party here was moribund during W’s two terms. It was on life support.
My god what a change. We picked ourselves up after the disaster of '04 and roared back and turned this county blue in the midterms of '06. I’ve never seen anything like it - I thought we were deader than a doornail. Joke was on me - and boy have I enjoyed the fuck out of that joke!
Yes, but that’s unrelated to the creation of districts within a system defined by the Founding Fathers as government second, people first. Even if they aren’t citizens, they are to be treated as well as one would treat any government clerk or man on the street. Because government is subservient to the people.
To all people. It’s core to the liberal foundation of the American experiment.
This isn’t news to any conservative. Most places I know require membership, but there’s ways to get temporary… you know ; - ) Member or visitor, I can assure you you’re treated just as well.
The “deep secret” here is that the government’s actions are motivated by racism.
Not sure the math will always work for the alt-right. If you take foreign born non-citizen persons out of the equation for determining districting, you’ve reduced the number of districts in the state. Texas is about 15% foreign born. What this change might mean is that you probably couldn’t cage the Dem vote into a few districts because you’d have fewer districts to use, and each requires about the same number of people. The people live in the cities/suburbs not in red counties. So that might mean that red counties would be pushed into districts where the majority of voters are blue leaning. It might lead to more purple districts, but I doubt it would mean more red districts. In Texas, it could be even more stark as latinos will soon be the largest single ethnic group in the state and their population is spread out everywhere.
We are heading for an Hispanic-Latino majority. It’s already a plurality.
But we have a state full of immigrants from all over the world - the diversity is insane here these days. Lots of southeast Asians, lots of Indians and Koreans and Middle Easterners. This state has changed beyond recognition in the last 20, 30 years.
The evangelical white core is losing its grip on the state and they will not get it back ever once they lose altogether.
Roberts did two highly criticized “political” things early in his “majority” he (a) killed off campaign finance rules (citizens united 2010), (b) gutted the voting rights act (Shelby county, 2013). Both decisions were highly criticized at the time, and have become less and less accepted as the court’s assertions about how the world worked (money was not corrupting, racism was dead) has turned out to be false.
The result is more and more (with Trump making the problem far worse) the Court is perceived as being “political” and as such its decisions more open to criticism. Roberts is concerned about his historical legacy, and there are some signs that he has somewhat pulled back on hot button “political” issues. For example, he recently refused to stay an Order Striking down Trump’s new rules on asylum seekers. He also was unwilling to strike down Obamacare.
I can’t predict the outcome, but he very may decide the he can’t approve an undemocratic power grab that fundamentally changes how power is allocated (based upon persons) for over 200 years. The result is not likely to be that much more power to the republicans, which if it was swamped by revulsion at what hte republicans are doing, would simply put the court in the Democrats cross hairs. The last thing that Roberts wants is a new judicial act which undermines what Trump has done to the Courts, and allows a number of new democratic judges. Or worse yet, the democrats to decide to impeach Kav for lying under oath. Roberts is playing the long game, and knows he is vulnerable.