nothing in particular, im just very anti-DSA/"socialist twitter" and the freshest meme i came across happened to come at their expense
Qualifying is next week for all state and local candidates in GA. Keep hearing that a surprise Dem is going to run for a statewide office. I imagine this happens much like "mysterious recruit that is a silent" and never materializes. Still, this is the internet and I'm a big fan of guessing games. There are only a handful of Dems that have the profile and fundraising ability to enter a race this late. I suppose the top of that list would be Yates for AD or MIchelle Nunn for Lt Governor.
With Tuesday's election results in NH and CT, there have been 92 special elections to fill vacated State legislative seats since the 2016 general election. There have been 39 flips from red to blue. There have been 4 flip blue to red, one of which was a seat for which no D ran.
March 13 is a key barometer for 2018 in the Pennsylvania 18th Congressional District special election. These are the south Pittsburgh suburbs into SW PA coal country. This is Rick Santorum's old district in the early 90's and has been red since 2002 re-districting. It went to Trump by 20% in 2016 and Romney 17% in 2012. Former GOP Rep Tim Murphy ran unopposed in 2014 and 2016. It's polling at 3% for Republican Rick Saccone right now over 33 year old Conor Lamb.
New Survey Shows Young People Are Staying Liberal and Conservatives Are Dying Off Spoiler By Jonathan Chait@jonathanchait Sofia Hidalgo, 15, of Albert Einstein High School in Kensington, Maryland, and other students calling for Congress to act on gun control, demonstrate at the Capitol on February 21, 2018. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call,Inc. For obvious reasons, the broadly liberal demographic trends in American politics have received much less attention since the 2016 election. Yet the fact remains that America is politically sorted by generations in a way it never has before. The oldest voters are the most conservative, white, and Republican, and the youngest voters the most liberal, racially diverse, and Democratic. There is absolutely no sign the dynamic is abating during the Trump years. If anything, it is accelerating. The most recent Pew Research Survey has more detail about the generational divide. It shows that the old saw that young people would naturally grow more conservative as they age, or that their Democratic loyalties were an idiosyncratic response to Barack Obama’s unique personal appeal, has not held. Younger voters have distinctly more liberal views than older voters: One could probably quibble with the overall definitions of which voters have liberal views and which have conservative views. What’s telling here is the comparison between generations. By Pew’s given definition, younger voters are wildly more liberal than older ones. The youngest voters have nearly five times as many voters with liberal views than with conservative views. The oldest voters have one and a half times more conservative than liberal voters. Correspondingly, the Democratic lean of millennial voters is as strong as ever: In the upcoming midterm elections, millennials are providing a huge share of the Democrats’ edge, with older generations splitting their vote relatively close: In previous elections, especially those without a president on the ballots, millennials showed up in far lower numbers than older voters. So far they indicate a much stronger interest in voting: Democrats are benefiting from what political scientists call “thermostatic public opinion,” in which preferences about the size of government tend to swing in the opposite direction of which party controls the presidency. Some of the liberal trends in public opinion are a simple reaction to Trump. But there are also longer-standing trends on some social issues. Within generations, opinion on the role of immigrants is moving left and has been since early in President Obama’s first term: Likewise, opinions about race — and the degree to which racism plays an important role in holding back African-Americans — are also moving left. This is a triumph of activism by Black Lives Matter and other groups calling attention to racism: It is hard to focus on this trend at a moment when Republicans have full control of government, and are heading into an election where gerrymandering gives them a large advantage in maintaining Congress. But this fact runs headlong against a much longer deterioration of the conservative position within the electorate. Many conservatives supported Trump precisely because they were panicked about this trend. So far, Trump is merely accelerating the demise they feared. In the long run, as John Maynard Keynes quipped, “We are all dead.” But over the long run, the Republicans are especially dead.
I'm sure like 99% of of y'all listen to this, but I've had a bit more free time since the wife and kid are out of town lately and discovered The Majority Report on youtube. Very entertaining and informative especially with things like cases that are in the Supreme Court now.
Mic Dicta is a good new podcast on legal shit from a legal view. They had a whole episode to shit on Scalia on his death anniversary
March 1, 2018 11:47 am How One Texas Candidate Is Using Memes and Facebook to Push the State Leftward By Brian Feldman@bafeldman Share Share Spoiler Illustration: Richard Wolf Richard Wolf knows that he’s not your average political candidate. The 23-year-old from Flower Mound, Texas, is currently campaigning to become the Democratic nominee for House District 63, despite his admitted inexperience when it comes to state politics. “I mostly just post things online and spend a lot of time reading articles in [socialist magazine] Jacobin,” he told Select All over the phone. But we can say this for him: He has one of the best Facebook pages of any candidate we’ve seen this cycle. His politics and his campaign style are in the vein of the “dirtbag left” movement — incubated online on message boards like Something Awful and spread on podcasts like Chapo Trap House, with intense web fandoms — that emerged following the 2016 election. It’s a combination of staunchly leftist politics and a refusal to adhere to the rules of respectful decorum and debate that traditional political operatives hold dear. ADVERTISEMENT It’s not particularly tough to write off Wolf’s candidacy. The Dallas Morning News offered no recommendation in the Democratic primary that he’s on the ballot for, writing: “We suspect residents in this district would prefer somebody with a bit of life experience who can complete a questionnaire without resorting to profanities or boasts that he ‘will be the best legislator of all time.’” (His primary opponent declined to answer the paper’s questions, the Republican incumbent is running unopposed.) But that same questionnaire is also filled with earnest, serious policy positions, all stemming from the leftist politics Wolf picked up online. That same sensibility is applied to his campaign — serious policy positions presented via internet memes and online discourse. The primary is next week, and Wolf took a few minutes out of his schedule to explain his campaign strategy, and his plan to reform the Lone Star state. When did you decide to run? I actually filed to run on December 11, which was the last day to file — I think I made the decision at 2 a.m. the night before. At the time it was still when Roy Moore was campaigning in Alabama, right? So I was really mad about that and thinking about how a literal pedophile shouldn’t be able to succeed to the level that he did in any election, ever. Then I was listening to an episode of Chapo Trap House, the podcast, and I was like, “Fuck it, I’ll run.” So you like Chapo? How did you start listening to that? A long time ago, I used to read Something Awful’s old comedy politics forum, Laissez’s Faire, and so the combination of leftist politics with crude internet humor has always appealed to me; it’s been the foundation of a lot of how I think about politics. So I gave [Chapo] a shot. What are some of your policy positions? Right now, my campaign is largely focused on three issues. The first issue is basically making Texas the country’s second sanctuary state: Basically, I don’t think that taking people from their homes and sending them to camps or other countries is ethical or moral. I think it’s a crime against humanity. I need that to stop as quickly as possible. In addition to that, I also want to do things that can help make life easier for undocumented immigrants in our state. Just having a policy of sanctuary cities and ignoring our undocumented-immigrant population isn’t a very good fix, and there are still a lot of abuses they could face from ICE or the federal government, so I support a bunch of policies involving things like offering driver’s licenses or the ability to get insurance. The second one is legalizing weed, medically, for everybody, as well as clearing the record of anybody who has weed-related crimes on the books, and letting people who are currently in jail or prison for weed charges out. Basically just retconning the whole set. It’d be cool if we could get Texas, the state, to be the actual organization that grows and sells marijuana. In the places where it’s currently legal, [weed farming] is run by private businesses and then the state adds a lot of taxes on top of it, which raises the price a lot. It’d be more effective if the actual state of Texas operated that business, so we wouldn’t have to raise taxes. It’d be great for Texas to be the country’s No. 1 producer of weed. The third one is raising taxes. There’s three taxes that I think need to be raised quickly. The first is the state franchise tax. Right now, it’s relatively low because of our state’s tax revenue. The second would be our oil and gas production tax. Oil and gas production makes up almost 15 percent of our state’s GDP, but only makes up like 2 percent of our state’s tax revenue, which seems kind of weird to me. And then, with the new Trump tax plan, the limit for when people start paying the estate tax is doubled, I would institute a state-level estate tax that would apply to all of the estates that would have been taxable under the old plan. It would just cover the things that had been left out of our new tax plan. Now I get to ask you about the meme stuff. What is your online marketing, or campaign, strategy? Online marketing is really fun and surprisingly cheap. I still enjoy making things and sharing them and posting them. I haven’t done a whole lot of new stuff lately, but I think it’s really the way to go if you don’t have a lot of money. I don’t have a big campaign fund; I can’t make weird brochures and big signs to put in everybody’s yard in my neighborhood. Going digital has been pretty cost-effective. Are you buying Facebook ads? Yeah, I’m targeting people based off of shared interests. There’s also access to the Voter Activation Network, which is a database of people who have voted in Democratic primaries in the past. I can plug that into Facebook and it’ll just send my ads to those people, who would likely be voters in the Democratic primary that’s coming up. Do you find Facebook’s ad system easy to use? Remarkably easy. I don’t understand why anybody would have to pay anyone else to do it for them. It’s literally you just press two buttons. How big is your campaign staff? I am my only campaign staffer. I can’t afford to pay anyone else, and I won’t take volunteers because I can’t afford to pay them, and I don’t want unpaid labor. I remember in 2016 that some Gary Johnson Super-PAC claimed to have spent $30,000 on internet memes. Do you think that’s a lot or a little? Since they’re all homegrown, it’s basically free. I’ve put maybe $100 to $200 into advertising online, but that’s not been too much. And I don’t have to pay anyone to make them for me. That’s stupid. Are you worried that people won’t get them, or people who aren’t well-versed in online stuff might just find it weird? I mean, my grandma gets it, my parents get it. Everybody I’ve ever met has gotten it, even people who I normally wouldn’t expect to. It definitely turns a couple of people off — that’s for sure — but I’ve found that the overwhelming majority of people respond really positively to it. They think that it’s funny, they think that it’s interesting, it’s something that they’ve not seen from a politician before, and so it’s a little bit of a breath of fresh air for them. I’ve been trying to think of a way to do the “he protec, he attac,” but I just can’t think of anything related to me that would end with “ec.” That’s probably just gonna go in the dumpster eventually. How confident are you feeling about the primary? I don’t have any polling, so I don’t have any data to base a prediction off of, so I’m not even going to. I’m going into it confident. I have to be confident, otherwise there’s basically not a point. I’ll lose my mind. I wouldn’t guess the outcome. Before I started posting these kinds of things, I talked to a couple people about it who said it would make me look too ridiculous, or it’s too far out there. And my response has sort of been that the kinds of policies that I’m advocating for, at least for the state of Texas, are pretty far out there to the left. They are not quite … normal things. No matter what I do, I am going to be considered some kind of crazy communist or some kind of total freak, or an insane idiot child who can’t do anything. You don’t have to be a private investigator to find out that I don’t have a college degree, I don’t have a career, I don’t have a lot of the background stuff. All of those things are attack ads that basically write themselves. Leaning into them has been my strategy for handling that once I get to the general election. Right now, since it’s the primary, the potential for funny jokes is a little bit weak because I don’t want to attack my primary opponent. She’s very nice. But if I make it through this primary, that’s when the real heat can come out. I’m excited to run against him [Republican Tan Parker]; I’m excited to see if this strategy can be effective in a general election. And honestly, it’s made running a lot of fun, I’ve enjoyed myself. I love talking to people; I seriously do care about politics. It’s not like a stupid joke only. You sound sincere! But I’m also looking at your ActBlue campaign, which says, “donating money to my campaign is a BAD IDEA and i honestly DO NOT RECOMMEND IT,” and trying to raise $69,000. Yeah, I made that ActBlue page specifically for people on the Something Awful forums because they kept asking to donate. Are you worried that people might think this is all a joke or a put-on? No, every time I’ve talked to somebody, and if anybody actually visits my Facebook page, it becomes obvious really quickly that there’s a lot of policy issues that are important to me. And that I have an actual specific plan. I understand the trepidation that somebody might have, just looking at maybe a picture that was shared on Twitter, but once I get a chance to communicate with them, I put those worries to rest pretty easily. I’m not going around trolling. If you eventually get this seat, how many people would you represent? The estimate from the state of Texas is 176,777. Does that number make you nervous at all? I don’t see why it would. It’s a lot of people, I think, by any stretch. Logan Paul got a million subscribers and he wasn’t even posting videos for a month. That’s like one-fifth of that. I do want to be clear: Fuck Logan Paul, though, that dude’s a real piece of shit. I’ve just watched a lot of videos of him lately, so he’s on my mind. Are there any YouTubers you like? Oh, there’s a lot of great YouTubers I like! If you want to know specifically political ones, there’s stuff like ContraPoints, Shaun and Jen (I think he just goes by Shaun now), and H.Bomberguy — [they] are all great people creating political content from the left, and trying to fight the sort of very strong, ultra-right-wing, super-racist Nazis that have been festering on YouTube for a long time. Those are all three great channels. Is there anything I didn’t ask you about that you wanted to plug or mention? These are organizations that I’m completely not associated with, but North Texas Dream Team and Equality Texas are two solid political organizations in our state that are really active and do a lot of political work, so I have a lot of respect for them. I recently got a shout-out from Matt Bruenig; I like his thing, the People’s Policy Project. And shout-out to my dad. This interview has been condensed and edited. © 2018, New York Media LLC. View all trademarks
This makes me happy. He's such a bitch Furious backlash forces Huckabee to resign from country music foundation after only 1 day incoming DK report. cited for a couple of bitches Spoiler Friday Mar 02, 2018 · 9:27 AM CST 2018/03/02 · 09:27 Mike Huckabee, champion of hate and bigotry. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is genuinely a terrible person, frequently using his religion to bully and shame. He regularly espouses racist views, hateful language toward LGBTQ citizens and fought tooth and nail against equal marriage, warmly embracing and championing the bigoted Kentucky clerk who refused to grant marriage licenses to gay couples. In a surprise announcement, the Country Music Association Foundation named him as the newest member of their board, but that didn’t last long. The backlash was swift and furious. Here’s a taste, from the Tennessean: Jason Owen, co-president of Monument Records and owner at Sandbox Entertainment, called the appointment a "grossly offensive decision" in an email to the association's CEO Sarah Trahern and CMA Foundation executive Tiffany Kerns. Owen wrote that due to Huckabee’s election to the CMA Foundation’s board, neither his companies nor anyone they represent would continue to support the foundation. Owen and his husband, Sam, are fathers to a young son and are expecting twins. Owen said that Huckabee’s stance on the LGBT community “made it clear my family is not welcome in his America.” Manager Whitney Pastorek, who represents Sugarland’s Kristian Bush, also complained: “What a terrible disappointment to see (the CMA Foundation’s) mission clouded by the decision to align with someone who so frequently engages in the language of racism, sexism, and bigotry,” Pastorek wrote. “While Gov. Huckabee's tenure in Arkansas may have resulted in valuable education reform over a decade ago, I find his choice to spend the past ten years profiting off messages of exclusion and hatred (not to mention the gun lobby) to be disqualifying.” Only one day later, Huckabee penned a resignation letter painting himself as the victim. The man who is regularly booked on Fox News precisely because he’s a bully is now a poor little victim. It appears that I will make history as having the shortest tenure in the history of the CMA Foundation Board. I genuinely regret that some in the industry were so outraged by my appointment that they bullied the CMA and the Foundation with economic threats and vowed to withhold support for the programs for students if I remained. I had NO idea I was that influential! I’m somewhat flattered to be of such consequence when all I thought I was doing was voluntarily serving on a non-profit board without pay in order to continue my decades of advocacy for the arts and especially music. The message here is “Hate Wins.” Bullies succeeded in making it untenable to have “someone like me” involved. I would imagine however that many of the people who buy tickets and music are not that “unlike me.” During his days as governor, he was embroiled in a scandal when his son was accused of torturing and hanging a stray dog on a Boy Scout camping trip and he reportedly tried to pressure the director of the Arkansas State Police to exonerate his son. When the director refused, Huckabee fired him seven months later. There was also his stint as a snake oil salesman: Huckabee, who shed about 100 pounds after being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, filmed TV and radio infomercials advertising a program to "reverse" diabetes in February and March. Huckabee also lent his email list to carry ads about a looming food shortage and a cancer cure found in the Bible. The diabetes “cure” turned out to be a booklet on exercise and snake oil supplements: However, the video discusses at length the "Double C Diabetes Remedy" of cinnamon and chromium picolinate, which is described as a "weird, spice, kitchen cabinet cure" that "will allow you to live life just like when you didn’t have diabetes at all." Lon the narrator calls this precise combination of cinnamon and chromium picolinate a "cornerstone" of the system. Finally, the evangelical Huckabee is a huge fan of Donald Trump, regularly defending him on Fox News and elsewhere. Frankly, the pair of con men are a match made in heaven. a bully is now a poor little victim. It appears that I will make history as having the shortest tenure in the history of the CMA Foundation Board. I genuinely regret that some in the industry were so outraged by my appointment that they bullied the CMA and the Foundation with economic threats and vowed to withhold support for the programs for students if I remained. I had NO idea I was that influential! I’m somewhat flattered to be of such consequence when all I thought I was doing was voluntarily serving on a non-profit board without pay in order to continue my decades of advocacy for the arts and especially music. The message here is “Hate Wins.” Bullies succeeded in making it untenable to have “someone like me” involved. I would imagine however that many of the people who buy tickets and music are not that “unlike me.”
Maybe if he didn't get replaced by a much healthier, arguably worse version of himself ... Some Canadian doctors are upset they got raises In Canada, more than 500 doctors and residents, as well as over 150 medical students, have signed a public letter protesting their own pay raises. "We, Quebec doctors who believe in a strong public system, oppose the recent salary increases negotiated by our medical federations,"the letter says. The group say they are offended that they would receive raises when nurses and patients are struggling. "These increases are all the more shocking because our nurses, clerks and other professionals face very difficult working conditions, while our patients live with the lack of access to required services because of the drastic cuts in recent years and the centralization of power in the Ministry of Health," reads the letter, which was published February 25. "The only thing that seems to be immune to the cuts is our remuneration," the letter says. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/06/canadian-doctor-protest-their-own-pay-raises.html
Top NIH official says medical pot research will continue despite HHS chief’s view Spoiler by Wesley Brown A top official with the federal agency that investigates and researches alternative medicine in the U.S. told Talk Business & Politics the agency will continue studying the health value of cannabis despite recent comments by the newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services director there was “no such thing” as medical marijuana. Dr. David Shurtleff, acting director of the National Center for Complementary and integrative Health, said research on the effectiveness and efficacy of natural products such as cannabis will remain a big part of the NCCIH’s area of research on natural productions and alternative medicine. “A good portion our portfolio is natural products. And we are pretty much looking at cannabinoids as a treatment for pain,” Shurtleff said in an interview with TB&P. “So, we are interested in looking at research in this area for sure.” Shurtleff’s agency is part of the National Institute of Health (NIH), one of the nearly a dozen under agencies within the HHS’s mammoth federal bureaucracy. He added although the FDA has not approved marijuana for medical purposes, the NIH has approved two different medications in pill form that contain cannabinoids, the chemical compound found in marijuana. ‘NO FDA APPROVED USE OF MARIJUANA’ Newly confirmed HHS Director and former drug industry executive Alex Azar stated at a press conference in Ohio on opioid dependence that medical marijuana was imaginary. “I would want to emphasize first that there really is no such thing as medical marijuana,” Azar said his first official public appearances since he was confirmed by the Senate in early January to replace former HHS Director Tom Price. “We have treatments that are approved by the FDA that are safe, that are proven to be safe and effective for pain, safe and effective for other conditions. There is no FDA approved use of marijuana, a botanical plant.” Azar traveled over the weekend to Dayton, Ohio to visit Brigid’s Paths, a facility for mothers and infants struggling with opioid dependence. He then participated in a roundtable with several patients and policymakers to discuss the challenges facing the nation’s opioid crisis has presented for the healthcare system, including foster care and child service delivery programs. Azar’s comments about medical marijuana came in response to a reporter’s question about how medical marijuana had reduced opioid deaths in Colorado and other states. Like legislation approved by Arkansas lawmakers in 2017 in response to a voter referendum, the Ohio Legislature legalized medical marijuana in 2016 and awarded 12 large-scale cultivation licenses in the state last year. The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission selected five Arkansas-based companies to grow and supply the state’s first legalized cannabis products to medical patients across the state. As of Feb. 23, the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) had approved 4,116 applications for medical marijuana registry ID cards allowing citizens to eventually obtain Arkansas-grown, doctor-prescribed marijuana and other cannabis-related medical products. There are more than a dozen qualifying conditions approved for treatment under the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act of 2017. The conditions include muscle spasms related to multiple sclerosis, cancer, Lou Gehrig’s disease, HIV/AIDS, glaucoma, hepatitis C, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, PTSD, severe arthritis, Alzheimer’s, and other conditions that produce chronic pain. FEDERAL MARIJUANA RESEARCH Research reported by the NIH also noted that the cannabinoid THC, which has the same “high” as recreational use marijuana, is useful in increasing appetite and decreasing nausea. Another cannabinoid of interest to medical researchers is cannabidiol (CBD), which does not contain intoxicating properties. Shurtleff said the cannabis plant has about 80 different compounds, but THC and CBD are the most commonly studied. “And what we are really trying to do here is look at these different constituencies in the plant to really think about how we keep them apart and look at them systematically in the context of understanding its biology and how we can apply it to treating diseases,” said the NCCIH director. For example, Shurtleff said, the United Kingdom and Canada have already approved a cannabinoid spray that is SHC-CBD derivative shown to be useful in the treatment of spasms in multiple sclerosis patients. London-based GW Pharmaceuticals primarily markets the product under the name “Sativex,” and is undergoing approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration now in the U.S. “Here’s a case where you’ve taken a compound from the cannabis plant, done some systematic work and combined into a medicine where we know how to dose and deliver the drug is that is effective for patients with MS. So that’s the kind of strategy that we are using here at NCCIH,” said Shurtleff. Still, the NIH researcher said studying the entire marijuana plant is a problem because there are different kinds of strains that have not been properly research. “It is sort of like when you go to your doctor and you are given a high blood pressure medicine or a drug that lowers cholesterol. There are lots of test to know exactly what dose, how frequently to use it and what the outcome will be. There is similar approach to studying cannabis and we can really extract the compound from the marijuana plant to actually medications that can be proven safe and effective,” he said.
Really been enjoying The Majority Report, they took a call from me yesterday where I just wanted to vent about our insecure voting systems. Becoming a member now.
Wife told me about this last night: Supposedly dermatology used to be not as competitive and attractive as it is now. They, for lack of a better term, decided to reduce the number of positions across the US to make it more competitive and drive up their pay. Have you heard anything about that? I know derm is like one of the most desirable fields to get into now.
It's done by every "desirable" field. Creating artificial scarcity to keep salaries sky high by limiting residency spots any way they can. your everyday prescribe Billy acne meds and freeze off some warts derm shouldn't sniff 400-500k like they do, its absolutely absurd the reasoning behind disparities in physician pay in this country that basically comes back to "procedures are billed higher than office visits because reasons" if your specialty has lots of quick procedures you can do in a day, you get paid a fortune!
I believe Medical Schools have intentionally tried to keep enrollments low as well for reasons like this.
What specialty to specialty comparison does the Canadian come out ahead? Never looked at the micro level
warning dk incoming many words The Second Amendment was created and ratified to protect and preserve slavery and white power Spoiler By Frank Vyan Walton Sunday Mar 04, 2018 · 4:00 PM CST 2018/03/04 · 16:00 300 Comments (300 New Sculpture at Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument depicts escaping and avoiding the "well regulated Militia" of slave patrols Many people who support the Second Amendment feel that it is a necessary right for personal protection and/or to protect and preserve the nation from invasion or corruption. That’s a view that is generally easy to agree with—but that view is in fact a revision of the amendment’s original purpose. NRA spokeshill Dana Loesch argues that implementing gun control will punish millions of families for the actions of one lone person at Parkland’s Stoneman Douglas High School. NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch accused people calling for gun safety laws of punishing “millions of American families” after the recent mass shooting at a school in Parkland, Florida. ... “It doesn’t make for great policy for keeping our kids safe,” the NRA spokesperson opined. “There’s a way that you can respect and protect due process and protect the rights of millions of Americans while also hardening our schools and keeping kids safe.” Of course we must protect our families from the dangerous deranged hordes who threaten them every day. They must be allowed the power to prevent the unthinkable, no matter the cost or collateral damage, and they have certainly been granted that right under the Supreme Court’s Heller decision of 2008. Provisions of the District of Columbia Code made it illegal to carry an unregistered firearm and prohibited the registration of handguns, though the chief of police could issue one-year licenses for handguns. The Code also contained provisions that required owners of lawfully registered firearms to keep them unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or other similar device unless the firearms were located in a place of business or being used for legal recreational activities. ... The ban on registering handguns and the requirement to keep guns in the home disassembled or nonfunctional with a trigger lock mechanism violate the Second Amendment. Justice Antonin Scalia delivered the opinion for the 5-4 majority. The Court held that the first clause of the Second Amendment that references a “militia” is a prefatory clause that does not limit the operative clause of the Amendment. Additionally, the term “militia” should not be confined to those serving in the military, because at the time the term referred to all able-bodied men who were capable of being called to such service. To read the Amendment as limiting the right to bear arms only to those in a governed military force would be to create exactly the type of state-sponsored force against which the Amendment was meant to protect people. Because the text of the Amendment should be read in the manner that gives greatest effect to the plain meaning it would have had at the time it was written, the operative clause should be read to “guarantee an individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.” This reading is also in line with legal writing of the time and subsequent scholarship. Therefore, banning handguns, an entire class of arms that is commonly used for protection purposes, and prohibiting firearms from being kept functional in the home, the area traditionally in need of protection, violates the Second Amendment. [emphasis added] This established the right to possess a firearm in one’s home, ready for immediate use as self-protection, and as a personal and individual right in keeping with the idea of the “militia” as being a volunteer force of “able-bodied men” who would rise up to such service. While it’s the job of the military or the police to protect us, the Supreme Court’s decision argues that we are empowered and in fact responsible for doing that ourselves. But the simple fact is that the original iteration of such a “force of able-bodied men” was assembled for one primary purpose: preserving and protecting the institution of slavery. The truth is quite different from what Loesch would have us believe, as noted by Tom Hartman for Alternet. The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says “State” instead of “Country” (the Framers knew the difference – see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia’s vote. Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that . . . and we all should be too. In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South, they were also called the “slave patrols,” and they were regulated by the states. In Georgia, for example, a generation before the American Revolution, laws were passed in 1755 and 1757 that required all plantation owners or their male white employees to be members of the Georgia Militia, and for those armed militia members to make monthly inspections of the quarters of all slaves in the state. The law defined which counties had which armed militias and even required armed militia members to keep a keen eye out for slaves who may be planning uprisings. ... It’s the answer to the question raised by the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained when he asks, “Why don’t they just rise up and kill the whites?” If the movie were real, it would have been a purely rhetorical question, because every southerner of the era knew the simple answer: Well regulated militias kept the slaves in chains. As we all know, the militias proved critical during the American Revolution, being a body of persons who were called on to fight against the British for our nation’s ultimate independence. But that wasn’t their original function during the century prior to that confrontation. They were also used by President George Washington to put down the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791, which arose after Congress voted to raise taxes to pay for the cost of the Revolutionary Army. But prior to those achievements in their origin, these vaunted “militias” that are referenced in the Second Amendment (and which are so revered by Scalia and Loesch) were in fact the method used to “protect the people” from the potential uprising of humans which they held in bondage for financial gain. The Second Amendment was written to appease the slave-holding states during the initial formation of the nation after its rebellion against England. It allowed those states to maintain the framework that preserved their oppression and financial rewards. By the time the Constitution was ratified, hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down slave uprisings. As Dr. Bogus points out, slavery can only exist in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias. Again, Second Amendment advocates ignore this ugly past and argue that it’s instead primarily a method to protect the nation from the failure of its leaders to preserve the rights of the people. They argue that the Second Amendment is the ultimate defense against “Tyranny” as outlined by James Madison in the essay Federalist No. 46. On the other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrant ≈able measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter. ... Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Ultimately, this was not mere speculation on his part. This concept here became exactly the rationalization and justification for the Civil War—and it was inspired directly by the fear and perception of the federal government “encroachment” upon the “right” of slavery. This was stated quite explicitly in the articles of secession submitted by several states upon the electoral victory of the first Republican President Abraham Lincoln, whose platform included planks for the abolition of slavery. Mississipi Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove. This fact is no mere remnant of the past. Many modern police forces which formed during the revolutionary period are also structured in their own origin from the same perspective and in the same mode as these slave patrols. Examples include the Baltimore and Ferguson police departments. “The Africans did not take kindly to being enslaved, and so they rebelled against the slave holding republic,” he explained. “And that helped to create a culture that has yet to be interrogated or even questioned, even by historians, that basically set forth that people of color, Africans in the first place, African men not least, were the enemies of the republic.” “That’s one of the reasons why oftentimes in cafeterias in school rooms you’ll see unease by school administrators if black youth are sitting together in the same place, as if they’re planning to overthrow the school system. So until we begin to investigate and interrogate that particular conundrum that I’ve just laid out, we’re always going to have more Freddie Grays.” According to Horne, “the origins of urban police department lies precisely in the era of slavery.” “That is to say, slave patrols, which were designated to interrogate, to investigate the enslaved Africans who were out and about without any kind of investigation,” he noted. “If you fast-forward to 2015, you still see more than remnants of that particular system. It’s still rather questionable to some if they see a black person, particularly a black male walking in a certain neighborhood, and therefore they will be asked to produce identification.” Loesch and her ilk would like to portray the Second Amendment as “race neutral” in the manner that it is written, but that view ignores the real-life context of the time in which it was written. It was a time when the concept of an armed black man or woman would be immediately seen as a clear and present danger to the larger populace, whether they themselves were slave owners or not. Through the implementation of the slave patrols, nearly all southern white men and people were periodically drafted in to the implementation and protection of the slave trade. The means of maintaining economic dominance and oppression did not die with the end of the Civil War. Instead, it continued on through a century of lynching and terrorism by the Ku Klux Klan as well as Jim Crow and segregation, which were entrenched in both federal and state law and implemented both by local police and private armed citizens. And it continued through the implementation of the prison industrial complex due to the loophole in the 13th Amendment, which continues to allow for slavery and indentured servitude “for the duly convicted,” as expertly pointed out by Ava Duvernay’s brilliant Netflix documentary 13th. Even for those who were not incarcerated and dragged back into the slave system that was supposed to have been abolished, there was also the system of red-lining. Red-lining corralled black and immigrant Americans in impoverished neighborhoods where schools and public services were starved of resources and attention, and the possibility of escape into the larger “white world” was limited. Yet that was challenged by returning World War II soldiers of color who had access to the GI Bill. Still, through lending and housing policies as well as building strategic walls, the white populace was able to maintain their “safety” by keeping the slave descendant Africans out and apart. x Gradually, these returning GIs (which included the Tuskegee Airmen) organized and battled back by forming and joining groups such as the NAACP, which was originally a Republican organization. They helped usher in the civil rights movement of the late ‘50s and ‘60s, which were marked by police brutality, murder, and riots. The latter-day slave patrols existed to put down the rebellion of uppity blacks who dared to wander outside their designated areas and request “freedom.” It should be little surprise that decades of these discriminatory practices (which are worse today in our schools and in housing than they were during the pre-civil rights era) have contributed to a massive wealth and poverty gap among black and white Americans. It’s a gap that has been maintained thanks to discriminatory laws, greed, indifference, and firepower. The oppressive forces answered these uprisings and rebellions with the muzzle of a water cannon, butt of a club, bite of a dog, and barrel of a gun, killing the Freedom Riders, Medgar Evers, and Dr. Martin Luther King. This eventually led to a more militant response by some in the black community. They also answered back with the stroke of a pen when the Black Panther Party for Self Protection attempted to exercise their Second Amendment rights, which were supposed to be theirs all along. But we saw clearly how well that was tolerated. x In retaliation for their marching into the state Capitol with shotguns on their shoulders, then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford Act, which banned the display of weapons in open spaces. At the time, this law was supported by the NRA. On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. He shot the president with an Italian military surplus rifle purchased from a NRA mail-order advertisement. NRA Executive Vice-President Franklin Orth agreed at a congressional hearing that mail-order sales should be banned stating, “We do think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States.” The NRA also supported California’s Mulford Act of 1967, which had banned carrying loaded weapons in public in response to the Black Panther Party’s impromptu march on the State Capitol to protest gun control legislation on May 2, 1967. The summer riots of 1967 and assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 prompted Congress to reenact a version of the FDR-era gun control laws as the Gun Control Act of 1968. The act updated the law to include minimum age and serial number requirements, and extended the gun ban to include the mentally ill and drug addicts. In addition, it restricted the shipping of guns across state lines to collectors and federally licensed dealers and certain types of bullets could only be purchased with a show of ID. The NRA, however, blocked the most stringent part of the legislation, which mandated a national registry of all guns and a license for all gun carriers. In an interview in American Rifleman, Franklin Orth stated that despite portions of the law appearing “unduly restrictive, the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.” A shift in the NRA’s platform occurred when in 1971 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, during a house raid, shot and paralyzed longtime NRA member Kenyon Ballew suspected of stockpiling illegal weapons. The NRA swiftly condemned the federal government. As Winkler points out, following the incident NRA board member and editor of New Hampshire’s Manchester Union Leader William Loeb referred to the federal agents as “Treasury Gestapo”; the association soon appropriated the language of the Panthers insisting that the Second Amendment protected individual gun rights. The efforts of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and local police under the COINTELPRO project using illegal surveillance, secret informants, and false flag operators eventually killed or imprisoned many of the Panther leadership, even though some of them were completely innocent. Apparently an armed militia of black men whose primary aim was their own self-protection from gangs, drugs, and racist police simply could not be tolerated. And it still isn’t tolerated. The argument this is all just a remnant of the past, that bringing all it all up now is just racial grievance politics, is unfortunately belied by the fact that gun-toting mobs of white people fairly went out fairly recently and happily gunned down black people. It happened in 2006 during Hurricane Katrina, as one neighborhood of white people tried to “protect” themselves from what they thought were looters. But those looters were in fact their black neighbors. Just try and imagine a neighborhood of black people anywhere doing the same thing to protect themselves using guns, and indiscriminately firing at anyone they don’t recognize without violent reprisal from police, FBI, ATF, and Homeland Security. The idea of a black man (or even a boy) being inherently dangerous, a threat to the public order constantly on the edge of violent rebellion, or a looter, or a gangster, or a thug is still deeply ingrained in this nation—and we know why: slavery, followed by a century and counting of Jim Crow, segregation, and discrimination leading to the dreaded fear of black retaliation. In truth, most black people would be perfectly happy if all that would finally just stop, without being worried about “getting back” at anyone. We saw this with Trayvon Martin, who was chased down in the rain by an armed man after he ran away, then grabbed and ultimately shot and killed when he fought back and finally managed to break away. We saw this when 12 year-old Tamir Rice was shot down by Cleveland Police while he held a toy pistol within two seconds after officers arrived, even when the 911 caller said that it was probably a toy. We saw it with Jonathon Crawford when police responded to a bogus call about an “active shooter” at a Walmart and shot him down because he was holding an unloaded toy gun, which he had picked up from a store shelf. We saw it when Florida A&M football player Jonathan Ferrel attempted to ask for help after a car crash only to have the home owner call the police claiming an attempted burglary. When the police arrived they shot and killed Ferrel on the spot as he tried to escape while crawling. He had no weapon, and he was no threat. x In neither of these cases was the person who made the false reports to police charged. We also saw it in Shitty AMC Show of Renisha McBride, who was also looking for help after a car accident—only to be shot in the face. And did we see the NRA loudly complain when concealed carry licensee Philando Castile was killed by police, just like they previously complained when longtime NRA member Kenyon Bellew was killed in a house raid by the ATF in 1971? Nope. Not so much. Valerie Castile, the mother of Philando Castile, slammed National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre for staying silent over the death of her son after he told a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday, “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” “If he really cared about the good guys out here, he would have stood up for my son,” Valerie Castile told the New York Daily News. “It’s about money. This country is run off money. Everybody wants a piece.” “My son was one of the good guys, but him being black, obviously they didn’t see him as a good guy,” she said. “They’ve yet to say anything about my son.” Analysis by John Roman of various shooting cases indicates that white shooters are deemed “justified” when the victim is black by a margin of over 200 percent, and that increases to over 350 percent in states that have “stand your ground” laws in place. There are racial disparities throughout the criminal justice system. From stop and frisk, to motor vehicle searches at traffic stops, to sentencing and the application of the death penalty, African Americans disproportionately are contacted by the criminal justice system in myriad ways. Notably,finding a racial disparity is not synonymous with finding racial animus. African Americans are more likely to live in dense, impoverished places, and poverty and segregation are clearly linked to criminal incidence and prevalence. Distinguishing racial animus within racial disparities is exceedingly difficult with existing datasets that do not include such key measures as setting and context. However, it is possible to compare the rates of racial disparity across points of criminal justice system contact.Such an effort could help highlight comparatively disproportionate laws and procedures. Racial Disparity in “Justified” Shootings This paper finds substantial evidence of racial disparities in justifiable homicide determinations. Regardless of how the data are analyzed, substantial racial disparities exist in the outcomes of cross-race homicides. These findings hold throughout the analysis, from differences in average rates, to bivariate tests of association, to regression analysis. In addition, the recent expansion of Stand Your Ground laws in two dozen states appears to worsen the disparity. I used to consider this cartoon from Bowling for Columbine to be a bit over the top. Not anymore. There may be some quibble with some of the timing of the claims made in this cartoon, but the basic point remains valid. For centuries now the Second Amendment has been the spine and backbone on which white supremacy has been supported. Whether it’s by police or by private citizens, it’s hard to deny that the practical implementation was originally and continues to serve the cause of racial oppression and violence. It’s not exactly a coincidence that spree gun killers like Dylan Roof, James Van Brunn, Wade Michael Page, Nikolas Cruz, or others like James Alex Fields Jr., Jeremy Christian, and Sean Urbanski were all neo-Nazi white supremacists, or that murders by those of that ilk doubled in 2017. Still, most gun deaths (60 percent) are in fact suicides, while there are many more cases of domestic violence that lead to gun murder than threat from a stranger, burglar, thief, rapist, gang-banger, or “madman.” Guns can kill you in three ways: homicide, suicide, and by accident. Owning a gun or having one readily accessible makes all three more likely. One meta-analysis"found strong evidence for increased odds of suicide among persons with access to firearms compared with those without access and moderate evidence for an attenuated increased odds of homicide victimization when persons with and without access to firearms were compared." The latter finding is stronger for women, a reminder that guns are also a risk factor for domestic violence. The same thing is true for accidents. States with more guns see more accidental deaths from firearms, and children ages 5 to 14 are 11 times more likely to be killed with a gun in the US compared to other developed countries, where gun ownership is much less common. About half of gun accident fatalities happen to people under 25, and some recent analyses suggest that the official count of gun accident deaths among children is understated. … While everyone is at a greater risk of dying by homicide if they have access to a gun, the connection is stronger for women. In a survey of battered women, 71.4 percent of respondents reported that guns had been used against them, usually to threaten to kill them. A study comparing abused women who survived with those killed by their abuser found that 51 percent of women who were killed had a gun in the house. By contrast, only 16 percent of women who survived lived in homes with guns. Any overhaul of the Second Amendment or additional restrictions, even with the limitations introduced by Heller, must be effective at reducing gun deaths across the board. But any changes should be more than just race-neutral in theory: they need to be racially neutral in practice and implementation, as well. Sunday, Mar 4, 2018 · 5:49:07 PM CST · Frank Vyan Walton I’ve seen several comments that this is an “unhistoric” view and that slaves were never discussed during the Continental Congress. First off, they didn't have to be, the militias of the states were already in place, and had already been used by those states put down various slave rebellions so that is a part of the puzzle regardless of whether that was specifically discuss during the congress or not. However it just so happens that it ws specifically discussed by several of conventioneers including Patrick Henry. “If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress . . . . Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia.” And why was that such a concern for Patrick Henry? “In this state,” he said, “there are two hundred and thirty-six thousand blacks, and there are many in several other states. But there are few or none in the Northern States. . . . May Congress not say, that every black man must fight? Did we not see a little of this last war? We were not so hard pushed as to make emancipation general; but acts of Assembly passed that every slave who would go to the army should be free.” Patrick Henry was also convinced that the power over the various state militias given the federal government in the new Constitution could be used to strip the slave states of their slave-patrol militias. He knew the majority attitude in the North opposed slavery, and he worried they’d use the Constitution to free the South’s slaves (a process then called “Manumission”). “Slave Patrol Militias” — That’s what they were, that’s what they are now. That’s exactly what Henry sought to protect. Yes, as I’ve stated above “invasion”, “insurrection” and “corruption of the federal government” were other reasons listed. And I do believe some of them are valid and continue to believe in the need for the 2nd for those purposes — but Slave Patrol Militias was the first reason, I never said, or even intended that it was the only reason. It’s not unhistorical to say it was a influence of the final adoption of the 2nd, it’s unhistorical to pretend it wasn’t. There is a counter argument to Hartmann’s piece posted on The Root. They essentially argued that Hartmann is incorrect in the order of things. That the 2nd Amendment wasn’t ratified until sometime after the original constitution — which is true — and that it wasn’t a key portion in getting Virginia to sign on to the new document as the ninth state, New Hampshire had ratified reaching the necessary number of states to complete ratification. That’s not part of my argument. They also make the case that the “slave patrols” did not always equal the “state militia” as in some states these existed as two separate entities, and they did. But in some states they were one and the same more than a century prior to 1776. (And this isn’t coming from Hartman) The slave control militias authorized by the revised Second Amendment were not small affairs. Far from it. They were huge, compulsory networks. George Mason, a Virginia delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Congress who has been called the "Father of the Bill of Rights," confirmed that the southern militias were comprised of all white male citizens with only a few exceptions: "Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers." (Mason apparently didn't consider women, children or people with darker skin to be "people.") These extensive militias had become part and parcel of southern society. Two decades before the Revolutionary War, Georgia passed laws that required all plantation owners or their white male employees to enlist. The Georgia militias were required to make monthly inspections of all the state's slave quarters. According to Professor Bogus, "The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every plantation each month and authorized them to search 'all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition' and to apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds." By the time the founding fathers got together to hammer out a Constitution and Bill of Rights, there had been hundreds of slave uprisings across the South. One researcher, Herbert Aptheker, identified around 250 rebellions or conspiracies involving ten or more slaves. The fear of uprisings by African Americans was very real. Many white intellectuals who opposed slavery—including Jefferson, Mason and later Abraham Lincoln—considered it impossible for whites and blacks to live together in peace. Jefferson compared slavery to having “a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.” He predicted a race war if the slaves were freed, and a civil war if they weren't. Such was the fear that both Jefferson and Lincoln had plans to deport freed slaves. Even though Militias had existed in England going back to the 10th century, the point is that in the Southern States of America they were used for a very specific purpose. Yes, there was “protect” from external invasion, but also protection from a slave insurrection. Looking forward after the Civil War we had another type of Militia — The KKK — who were mainly implementing the same plan, “protecting” the nation from the ex-slaves. This has been engrained in America for a long time, it began before the revolution, the original Constitution didn’t fix it, the Civil War didn’t fix it and the frankly the Civil Right Act didn’t fix it either because at that time we hadn’t even admitted these linkages. We’re barely able to admit them now. This is still something we need to work on and continue to repair. For the record these is also a bug that causes updates to initially be posted above the fold on FP diaries. I have to usually go back to into edit to cut and paste them into their proper positions at the end. Sunday, Mar 4, 2018 · 5:58:29 PM CST · Frank Vyan Walton It also should be noted that the use of advanced firearms were not only used to protect the America from slave rebellions, they were also used to decimate the native 1st nations of America, as well as colonize just about every nation of Africa, Central America and India. The gun reshaped the world and the map. Part of what has made the vision of Afro-Futurist fictional nation Wakanda in the Black Panther so compelling is that it is a country that has not be colonized, and instead of has developed own it’s own in isolation. What would Africa have become without the trauma of colonization and the slave trade? What would America be if it’s natives were allowed to trade and develop on their own instead of being conquered through genocide? Would the lands of America today resemble a future-native version of Wakanda? How might the map be different now if gun and rifle technology had instead originated out of China where gun powder was original invented instead of Europe? Or perhaps out of India? Or South America? Just a thought. Sunday, Mar 4, 2018 · 6:35:52 PM CST · Frank Vyan Walton My writing here — like that of so many others — is voluntary. If you appreciate this article any and all support you can offer to make more and better diaries in the future would be deeply and sincerely appreciated. Thanks very seriously for all your support, you guys have helped so much already.
browsing reddit shewantsthadit[+1] 1301 points 2 hours ago* 1 million dollars is 20 years of the average household income in the U.S, give or take a few for inflation. 20 years ago was 1998, about the time when the Monica Lewinsky scandal was going on. 1 billion dollars is 20,000 years of the average household income in the U.S. 20,000 years ago, humans had not even discovered civilizations or agricultures. 1 trillion dollars is about 20,000,000 years of the average household income of the U.S. 20,000,000 years ago, India was smashing into Asia to create the Himalayas.
This seems useless without context. Also average household income is in like the 70's, the dude is mixing median and average.
muckraker voting rights GOP Gearing Up To Gerrymander Again By Allegra Kirkland | March 9, 2018 6:00 am National Republican Redistricting Trust (NRRT) as an umbrella group for its redistricting plans—and an answer to Eric Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which aims to give Democrats a louder voice in the redistricting process this time around. The NRRT bills itself as the hub for a 50-state effort “solely focused on redistricting legal and data matters,” freeing up other GOP entities like the state legislative and congressional campaign committees to “focus on winning races and expanding their Republican majorities.” It says it plans to raise $35 million by 2020. (A spokeswoman didn’t respond when asked how much it had pulled in so far. Holder told the New York Times in February that his group had raised a bit over half of the $30 million it hopes to have by the same date.) The group will work closely with the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), which masterminded REDMAP. In 2015, it launched REDMAP 2020, which aims to repeat the GOP’s success last time at winning statehouses and governorships in key redistricting battlegrounds. REDMAP 2020 initially had a $125 million fundraising goal through the 2022 cycle, but Matt Walter, the RSLC’s president, told TPM in a Thursday phone call that the number would balloon to counter Democratic efforts. “That number was set in advance of this effort that has been robust and well-funded and highly focused by the left, so the commitment to match that by Republicans, conservatives and the right of center world is imperative,” Walter said “We see a variety of areas where the left of center world is focused on redistricting: state level offices beyond the legislative level, the advancement of ballot initiatives, and the courts as well,” Walter added. “The field of engagement and connection points have expanded.” In addition to this centralized effort, there are local groups like #ProjectRedTX, a super PAC run by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s former campaign manager that recently pulled in $500,000 from a single donor. The group did not respond to TPM’s request for comment, but its website features a pledge “to make sure that those that seek to turn Texas into a leftist haven cannot get a foothold by mis-using the redistricting process.” Last time around, in 2010, Republicans poured money into winning control of key redistricting battlegrounds like Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Virginia. Then, they used that control to draw district lines in their favor in those statehouses and in Congress. The result was to skew political outcomes in each of last three elections: In 2012, for instance, Democratic congressional candidates got over 1 million more votes that Republicans, but, thanks to gerrymandering, the GOP came out with 33 more seats. That gerrymander also means Republicans have key advantages baked in for next time, as David Daley, the author of “Ratfucked,” an account of the GOP’s most recent redistricting master plan, told TPM. “Republicans are really sitting pretty,” said Daley, now the communications director for the anti-gerrymandering group Fair Vote. “A blue wave really is going to have to be a blue tsunami in these states. And it’s going to take two of them. It’s not going to be enough for Democrats to have a blue wave in 2018; they’re going to need to replicate it in 2020.” Republicans sound unconcerned by charges that they’re planing to once again enthusiastically rig the system in their favor. For one thing, they note that Democrats have gerrymandered on their own behalf in blue states like Maryland and Illinois. A brief launch memo for the NRRT devotes a page to criticizing Obama for denouncing GOP gerrymandering, after using redistricting to create a more favorable map for himself while serving in the Illinois legislature. Republicans could still be stymied, in part, by the Supreme Court, which is considering three major redistricting cases that could impose limits on how extreme partisan gerrymanders can be. Voting experts agree that the courts are the best hope for Democrats and those who want less partisan maps. But they caution that the lawsuits against the last round of maps wound through the courts for years. In some states, 2018 could be the fourth cycle in which voters cast ballots in districts that courts have deemed unconstitutional. As Holder has said, “success” for Democrats going into the next two cycles is primarily a matter of shattering GOP trifecta control of state legislatures and governorships. For Republicans, it means painting an already-red national map several shades darker.
Widower father thanks colleagues who worked 3,000 hours of overtime so he could look after sick son http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...mia-colleagues-donated-overtime-a8247421.html