Tag Archives: Republicans

Score 1 for United Government

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Something I wrote a few days ago has piqued the interest of a supporter of “divided” government (see We Should Expect Divided Government for a Long Time and associated comments below).

Coincidentally, I just read about President Lincoln addressing Congress after the attack on Fort Sumter. Lincoln had raised a volunteer army to defend the Union, but without Congressional approval, since Congress was out of session and not due back for months. He summoned Congress back for a summer session and made his case (I’m quoting from The Man Who Saved the Union by H. W. Brands):

“These measures, whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon under what appeared to be a popular demand and a public necessity, trusting then as now that Congress would readily ratify them” He requested authority to expand the army to 400,000 men at a cost of 400 million dollars. “A right result, at this time, will be worth more to the world than ten times the men and ten times the money…”

“This issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy – a government of the people, by the same people – can, or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its domestic foes… Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?… It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry any election can also suppress a rebellion.”

Since the Democratic Party’s Southern wing had disappeared (i.e. joined the Confederacy) and its Northern wing had lost its leader (Stephen Douglas had recently died of typhoid fever), the Republicans now had a large majority in both houses. Congress immediately ratified Lincoln’s previous actions and approved his request for more men and money. In fact, they voted for 500,000 men and 500 million dollars, more than Lincoln asked for.

We Should Expect Divided Government For a Long Time

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Back in July, I wrote about the unrepresentative nature of the House of Representatives:

The House doesn’t represent the will of the people, because small states are over-represented (some congressional districts are nearly twice as large as others) and recent gerrymandering results in more Republicans being elected than Democrats, even though Democrats get more votes.

What I should have said is that some small states are over-represented and others are under-represented. For example, Rhode Island’s two members of Congress each represent only 525,000 people. Wyoming’s single member represents about 580,000. Yet Delaware‘s one member of Congress represents 925,000 and Montana‘s represents more than one million.

That might be a wash in political terms, because some small states lean left and some lean right. Unfortunately, of the 12 states that have no more than two representatives in Congress, eight lean right and only 4 lean left.

In addition, we shouldn’t forget the District of Columbia, which has more people than Vermont and Wyoming, definitely leans left and isn’t properly represented in Congress at all (they don’t have a senator and their representative gets to talk but not vote). This all adds up to an advantage for the Republicans.

In that post, I also said that gerrymandering resulted in more Republicans being elected to the House in 2012 than Democrats, even though Democrats got more votes. I was right about the numbers: the Republicans received only 47.6% of the total House vote, but ended up with 51.7% of the seats, which resulted in the Republicans having almost total control of the House of Representatives, since the House is run more efficiently (i.e. less democratically) than the Senate.

It might be the case, however, that gerrymandering doesn’t explain the Republicans’ success. That’s not to say the Republicans haven’t done their best to draw Congressional district boundaries to their advantage. They clearly did so the last time they got the chance and did it with more dedication than the Democrats.

Nevertheless, a recent study suggests that the Republicans have a natural advantage in House races. The reason could be that Democrats have gerrymandered themselves by tending to live in big cities, college towns and old manufacturing centers. That’s how gerrymandering works. You try to clump together people who vote for your opponents in as few districts as possible. This creates a few extremely safe seats for your opponents (ideally, they’d get 100% of the vote in a few districts), and a bunch of relatively safe seats for your side. It’s basically voter segregation or ghettoization. By living close together in places like Atlanta, Ann Arbor and Toledo, Democratic voters appear to have put themselves at a natural geographical disadvantage in House races.

The people who did the study claim to have tried out thousands of different district boundaries in 49 states (no Alaska? no Rhode Island?). The results were not encouraging for Democrats or opponents of gerrymandering:

In the vast majority of states, our nonpartisan simulations produced Republican seat shares that were not much different from the actual numbers in the last election. This was true even in some states, like Indiana and Missouri, with heavy Republican influence over redistricting.

It might be possible to counteract this Republican advantage by creating lots of districts that radiate out from the centers of towns and cities and would include a nice mix of urban, suburban and rural voters. The authors of the study seem to discount this possibility. At any rate, their point is that by living in relatively close quarters, Democrats are at a natural disadvantage when it comes to electing members of the House of Representatives.

A reasonable conclusion to draw from all of this is that Congress is even less representative than it seems to be. The Senate was explicitly designed to favor the interests of lightly-populated states, which now tend to vote Republican, while the House exhibits some favoritism toward small states, but more importantly is gerrymandered, whether on purpose or by simple geography, to favor Republicans as well.

The good news is that Democratic presidential candidates may continue to do relatively well, since most people pay at least some attention to politics during presidential elections and most people agree with Democratic policies (progressive taxation, more social spending, less military spending). Democrats who run for President will do well, that is, until they actually have to govern. Then they’ll have to deal with too many Republicans in Congress.

Money: a Better Explanation for the NJ Bridge Scandal

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The biggest mystery about the Fort Lee, New Jersey, bridge scandal isn’t whether our governor, who is well-known as a loudmouthed, hotheaded bully, was behind the whole thing. The biggest mystery is why Christie or his inner circle would bother messing with Fort Lee at all. Why was it “time for some traffic in Fort Lee”? Because the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee (population 35,000, the 23rd largest city in the state) didn’t endorse Christie’s reelection? It doesn’t make any sense.

No, a much better explanation is offered by Steve Kornacki, a journalist who knows New Jersey politics. He suggests that the reason for creating that massive days-long traffic jam may have been to interfere with a billion-dollar real estate development that just happens to sit at the Fort Lee entrance to the George Washington Bridge.

As Kornacki explains, the development is premised on excellent access to the bridge and New York City. With one access lane instead of three, the location would be significantly less valuable. If the closure lasted any length of time, the deal might have collapsed. If the deal collapsed, the lanes could then be reopened, allowing some other real estate developer to jump in.

Or maybe it was merely a way to extort some campaign contributions from the kind of people politicians love – in this case, rich people who develop real estate.

One way or another, those traffic lanes involve serious money!

On top of that, it’s clear from Kornacki’s report that Christie and his minions knew about the development and access to the bridge. They’re on record suggesting the access should be limited. That’s why they keep bringing up the “traffic study” nobody else knows anything about. 

But it wasn’t a traffic study at all. It looks more like a traffic demonstration: this is what will happen to your major real estate development if we cut access to the bridge by 67%. This would explain why they kept the traffic jam going for days. They had to show they meant business!

Of course, it isn’t clear yet why Christie or his pals would want to use their power this way. But it shouldn’t be surprising if it’s eventually revealed that the fate of a billion dollar real estate deal – and who will profit from that deal – had much more to do with it than some stupid revenge against a Democratic mayor who didn’t endorse the reelection of our Republican governor (even though our governor is known to be a especially vindictive).

Chalk one up for the freedom of the press, even if money had nothing to do with it.

The video with Steve Kornacki’s quite interesting report is here at the aptly-named Crooks and Liars site.

Update:  The New York Times reports that the Christie administration became very cooperative with Jersey City’s Democratic mayor, even setting up a whole day of meetings with top state officials, after Christie asked the mayor for his endorsement. When the mayor announced he wasn’t going to endorse Christie’s reelection, the state officials immediately canceled their day of meetings. So maybe Christie and his inner circle were just playing politics in Fort Lee (although playing it very badly).

Meanwhile, the Federal government is looking into Christie’s use of hurricane Sandy relief funds, some of which were used to run TV advertising encouraging tourists to return to the Jersey Shore. Two ad agencies bid on the project. Christie picked the campaign in which he himself would appear, even though it cost a couple million dollars more than the other bid. Christie was running for reelection at the time, so he must have figured it was federal money well-spent. 

It’s the Austerity and Lack of Trust

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The chart below shows government spending after our last four recessions (that’s total federal, state and local spending, corrected for inflation, with the numbers at the bottom representing yearly quarters after the recessions).

After three recessions, government spending went up. After the most recent recession, it’s gone down:

blog_austerity_state_local_federal_spending_0

It makes sense for families to cut spending if they run into economic difficulty, but it makes no sense for the government to do the same. In situations like we’re in now, the government has to counteract the natural tendency of families and businesses to cut back when economic times are hard. Common sense and economic theory tell us the government should spend more after a recession in order to help the economy recover, even if that means increasing government debt until things get better. Yet we’ve been following the opposite policy the past few years. The result has been a relatively weak recovery that has left too many Americans unemployed and underemployed.

Why have we acted so stupidly? The obvious answer is that there were Republicans in the White House after those earlier recessions. Now there’s a Democrat. That’s why Republicans in Congress supported government spending after the earlier recessions, but have vigorously opposed it this time. (After all, Republicans love certain kinds of government spending, despite what they claim.) Hypocrisy, foolishness, the desire to recapture the White House, combined with the failure of Democrats to make the case for more stimulus. It’s all those things and more. 

The chart is from “How Austerity Wrecked the American Economy” at Mother Jones. The author updates the story here.

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman sees a connection between the declining acceptance of evolution among Republicans and their rejection of stimulus spending: in order to be a good Republican these days, you have to deny climate change, evolution and modern economics.

Another economist who has repeatedly pointed out the stupidity of what we’ve been doing is Joseph Stiglitz. In a New York Times article called “In No One We Trust”, he explains how we’re losing trust in each other and our institutions as inequality increases. The article is especially interesting when he shows how a lack of trust and an excess of bad behavior got us into the economic mess we’re still trying to get out of:

Trust is becoming yet another casualty of our country’s staggering inequality: As the gap between Americans widens, the bonds that hold society together weaken. So, too, as more and more people lose faith in a system that seems inexorably stacked against them, and the 1 percent ascend to ever more distant heights, this vital element of our institutions and our way of life is eroding….

The banking industry is only one example of what amounts to a broad agenda, promoted by some politicians and theoreticians on the right, to undermine the role of trust in our economy. This movement promotes policies based on the view that trust should never be relied on as motivation, for any kind of behavior, in any context. Incentives, in this scheme, are all that matter.

Stupid Remarks Continue to Offend and Entertain

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We who make, report, attack or defend stupid remarks have helped make the Internet what it is today, whatever that is. As my 160 (!) followers would attest, I’ve made my own tiny contribution to this ongoing effort. That is, they would attest if any of them actually read the stuff I painstakingly write here at WOCS. (Unfortunately, Internet statistics don’t lie.)

Furthermore, I promise to keep contributing as long as Republicans keep talking.

Keeping with this practice, although in a relatively non-political vein, I’m now going to discuss a few stupid remarks that have recently been reported, criticized and even defended.

First, it’s hardly worth noting that someone on FOX TV said that Santa Claus is white and Jesus was too. As a friend recently pointed out, saying things like that is what people on FOX do for a living. What was more remarkable was the story about a New Mexico high school teacher who criticized a black student’s decision to dress up as Santa Claus, implying that it would have been better if he had dressed up as an elf, reindeer or candy cane. 

According to the school district, the teacher apologized and was placed on “administrative leave”, so there is some truth to this story. Even though the student was deeply embarrassed, I hope the teacher was making a joke (the kind of jocular remark colloquially known in some quarters as “breaking balls”, as in “Hey, Ralph, don’t you know Santa Claus was white!” “No, I thought he was Italian.” “Boom!”). If the teacher wasn’t trying to be funny, we’d have to conclude that yet another education professional has lost his or her mind.

Another recent controversy involves a person with a very long beard who is part of a TV show called “Duck Dynasty”. He got into trouble when he said that it’s more logical for a man to want to put his penis in a vagina than in another man’s butt, suggesting that vaginal intercourse should be more pleasurable for a man than gay anal intercourse. He added, in an apparent attempt at explanation, that sin (in this case, gay sex) isn’t logical. It seems clear from the context that he wasn’t joking.

Now, it isn’t surprising that this person believes gay sex is sinful. Lots of misguided people believe that and say it all the time, even people who aren’t on FOX or in Congress. Nor is it interesting that he thinks sin is illogical. After all, if there are such things as sins, you could wind up in Hell by committing one (that, as Randy Newman once sang, would put you in a terrible position).

What I thought was interesting about this particular stupid remark was that the speaker may misunderstand evolution (even though he apparently spends a lot of time outdoors). It does make sense that vaginal intercourse is pleasurable for both men and women, because men and women who enjoy it tend to have children who will enjoy it too (and so on, and so on, until the nth generation). But that’s no reason to think that a person with a penis might not get a lot of pleasure, and even more pleasure, from putting it somewhere else or doing something else with it. Behavior evolves because it contributes to the survival of one’s offspring, not because it’s more pleasurable than other behavior. People on TV should grasp standard biological principles like this.

A third stupid remark hasn’t received much attention, so far as I know. But it’s also interesting in a way. A woman who works for a “leading internet and media company” sent this out on Twitter yesterday: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” In this case, the speaker claimed to be making a joke.

When I read about this, I had the impression I’d heard the joke before. Then I remembered watching a video of Sarah Silverman telling a similar joke at a benefit concert:  “Last month I did two benefits. One was for AIDS… It was great, but tonight’s benefit is going to be better. I won’t have to worry about who I hook up with. (pause) That’s terrible! (pause) WHOM I hook up with!”. She got a very big laugh.

What would the reaction have been if it was funny Sarah Silverman who tweeted the Africa AIDS remark? People on Twitter might have thought it wasn’t up to her usual comedic standards instead of calling her a stupid racist. I wonder if Justine Sacco’s co-workers in the London office of IAC thought her tweet was yet another example of Justine being her wild and crazy self (as when, earlier this year, she tweeted “I can’t be fired for things I say while intoxicated right?”).

It’s doubtful, but perhaps Justine Sacco goes to Africa on her vacation every year to work with AIDS patients. But, so far as most of us are concerned, she might as well be a talking, albeit insensitive, dog (ok, I’ve finished writing this post, will someone take me for a walk now?).

Breaking news update!!! Steve Martin has apologized for tweeting a lame joke about the African-American spelling of “lasagna” yesterday. Communication continues to be a dangerous thing, even for talented communicators. (The TMZ site, by the way, actually labeled this story BREAKING NEWS.)

Woof, woof!

nYdog