– The Supreme Court strikes down part of the Voting Rights Act.
– This is a bit old, but a hearty cheer to the people who got the Alpine Lakes Wilderness & Rivers Bill out of the Senate.
– Speaker of the House under the GOP is the worst job ever.
– The publicly financed election bill is now in the Seattle voters’ hands.
– Super Fast Internet is coming to some neighborhoods.
– Still riveted by SB5 in Texas.
– Still no budget. Maybe by the time we get off work?
In the true spirit of Title 9 and affirmative action women have now joined with men in saying stupid and untrue things about rape and biology.
The emasculation of the Voting Rights Act has left me in a deep depression. Growing up in the South, I saw the numerous attempts to retain white superiority at every level, controlled only by a liberal Congress (until 1968) and courageous federal judges (thereafter). In more recent history we see the GOP, frustrated at their inability to control more than a tiny fraction of the black vote, engage in various forms of voter suppression to keep them away from the polls – even in states without a history of legal segregation.
The U.S. Supreme Court majority which argues that times have changed simply are completely out of touch with what is really going on.
I was checking the website for one of the groups that promotes ranked choice voting, to see what they had to say about the decision today. Nothing yet, but they might be supportive. They opposed majority minority districts, on the grounds that it gave those doing the gerrymandering something to hide behind while accomplishing their mission of rigging the districts. In Missouri, it created strange bedfellows, Democratic Governor Nixon vetoed the Republican legislature redistricting plan, but was overridden with the help of the legislature’s Black Caucus, as they boosted two majority African American voting districts, in the major cities of St Louis and Kansas City.
http://www.fairvote.org/assets.....portMO.pdf
Just to get me out of the depression, I might go to Boeing Field (Museum of Flight) this weekend for a tour of a B-17, B-24, and P-51. Nothing like a classic warbird display to get my engines running. Now, if I can just talk them into starting up those Pratt & Whitney radial engines….
I was getting sleepy so I turned on the AM conservative stations to get me mad. It was interesting how the first tier talk show hosts were talking about anything BUT immigration reform. ( Rachel Maddow had an interesting piece, reiterating how Hannity had flipped from railing against immigration reform for years, to suddenly being for it. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5227.....y-june-th/ ) Yet the lower tier talking heads and their callers were still vehemently against it. It was as hated as gay marriage. I see immigration reform dying in the house or a bunch of republicans will be primary-ed out of a cushy job.
@1 the video of that republican woman babbling on about the kits cleaning the woman out was spectacular. I have never seen a woman, out side of comedy shows, come across as so clueless and uncomfortable. The very concept was ikky to her.
Although last year, all the attempts to restrict voting backfired, turnout increased, that is because the rule changes were blocked.
Another interesting opinion piece from ScotusBlog.
http://www.scotusblog.com/2013.....ore-165879
The Seattle City Council takes another step forward on regressive taxation. Public campaign finance might be a worthy idea but funding it through another property tax, however minor, is another poke at the middle and working class in a city which has already priced out many from home ownership.
I’ve always been conflicted over district voting for city council but am coming to think the good would outweigh the bad. The council, apart from being generally mediocre and reactive, doesn’t seem to represent citizens so much as special interests (Conlin’s watering down green building incentives comes to mind as well as the time wasted on sports stadiums). With at-large elections members aren’t beholden to anyone in particular.
President Obama today explained his policy on climate change denial: “We don’t have time for a meeting of the flat earth society.”
@7 Let’s keep things in perspective. SCOTUS tossed 50-year-old discrimination maps, not the idea that Congress can impose federal supervision of state voting procedures. That door is still open. Sure, it may be impossible to get Congress to adopt new maps right now, but it’s not hard to see how this could backfire on the GOP, given their lack of judgment and insensitivity to public opinion.
10)I have been for years looking at how other countries do elections. Australia has compulsory voting, but the Liberal/National coalition(Sorry trolls, these two parties are like our Republicans) have gamed the system, the preferential voting was adopted by them in response to their vote-splitting leading to a Labor win, and they tried to limit new enrollees prior to the election.
In Germany, they use a mixed member proportional system that has been adopted in a few countries, including New Zealand. In New Zealand, the Maori get special district seats, based not on the census, but how many opt to be on a special voting list. In 2011, when the National Party was trying to change the electoral system, the Maori Party supported the atatus quo, even though they do not benefit as a party from the proportional representation side of the ballot, because the other parties are under pressure to have more inclusive lists, it benefits the Maori as a people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.....ew_Zealand
No!!!
Republican’s are hard enough to take when there is gin around. How else, other than gin, would I deal with Republicans?
@11
I’ve enjoyed your election updates on here.
Hilarious,
I’m getting emails from environmental groups claiming that Obama just signed Keystone XL’s death certificate and the business press is saying this:
Well, which is it?
Roger,
Have you been able to find the constitutional underpinning to the SCOTUS’ striking down Section IV of the VRA?
I can’t.
13) Thanks, I just like to show some of the alternatives. Some have there drawbacks, although in Germany, except for maybe Die Lienke(which is the former East German Communists), all parties with representation in the Bundestag have some routing in the center, with the Christian Democrats leaning right and the Social Democrats leaning left.
http://m.spiegel.de/internatio.....referrrer=
@ EvergreenRailfan,
I travel quite a bit, and it pains me to say that what I have realized in the past 8 years or so is that the governments produced by other processes deliver far more to far more folks than ours.
14) I think if he was not going to approve Keystone he would have just come out and said so, instead he gave himself a way to approve it while still appearing to appease the environmentalists.
Hmmmm
I think I need to unload a chunk of long held Apple and write a check to the NAACP.
Reading through the majority opinion is one of the most depressing civic tasks I’ve had in a long, long time.
17)The tough part, is the events that led to the changes, I don’t want to go there first. San Francisco, a couple cities in Alameda County, and Minneapolis/St. Paul are trying to effect change at the ballot box, but I see conservatives, and a few entrenched liberals, fighting it. There was an attempt to return to a two round system in San Francisco by the Board of Supervisors last year, but it did not pass.(That’s why I said entrenched Liberals) Although opponents of Ranked Choice Voting say it does not affect turnout, San Francisco did not get to 50% in the last Mayoral election, it was still higher than Los Angeles, which does not use RCV. An Independent running for Governor of Maine, would like to use a delayed runoff or RCV next year for Governor. They got experience using it in Maine, sort of. Portland uses it for Mayor, and so far only once, but that is just one City in Maine. I could see RCV getting statewide adoption in Minnesota before Maine, but both states have a history of governors being elected with less than a majority.
http://www.sunjournal.com/news.....aw/1381846
19) I was surprised that they did not have this decision at the same time as Prop 8 and DOMA. Those two are still waiting.
FBI yanking the terrorist ads since unfortunaltely they happen to have skin pigmentation (aka s. asian largely). Sure hope one of the guys on that former ad don’t blow up/kill americans…..blood will be on Mcdermot/lib hands
zzzzzZZzzzzzzz…
Always Wrongon is back.. Irrelevant then.. (back in the day)..
Irrelevant now…
@22
Good.
WTF you fucking moron.
I feel like I did today when an otherwise nice patient asked me for a referral to a urologist who wasn’t a Jew – he just didn’t like ’em – “I don’t agree with sending them to concentration camps, but…” What an ass, just like you, bigot. Go crawl back under the rock you came from.
@13: a bit of juniper fungus might be good – could make it harder for tea partiers to gin up more craziness!
@ 25
Maybe they should go back to using wormwood and green anise.