What the Supreme Court has “gutted” is not the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – but a nakedly racist form of gerrymandering that spotted Democrats at least 21 House seats every cycle.
"Peddle to the metal!" REMOVE all the Democrat "cheat codes" they've been using for decades to prop up an artificial second party at 50/50 MY ARSE!. And they've made it worse! They're so radical Dems are shrinking further and it needs to continue! ROLL BACK their awful, deadly, stupid, ignorant, policies that hurt American citizens. MAGA!
When democrats yell systemic racism, no one asks what “system” are they referring to? I can think of two - this racist gerrymandering system, and the public school system; both “systems” have been shown long term to disfavor one race. Next time the dems used this term, someone should force them to look at themselves in the mirror.
As someone who is socially liberal, I applaud the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callias! Congressional districts should NEVER be drawn based on race! As a social liberal, I believe that Congressional districts should be drawn regardless of race and that voters should be treated as individuals NOT colors. The SCOTUS has done our nation a great service today. This was always just a way for Democrats to unfairly rig things in their favor. That is now at an end! Look, I’m for social and racial justice as much as the next guy, but this isn’t that. This is all about cynically weaponizing race for political gain. In the past, these measures were necessary with Jim Crow having ended not that long ago and racism still very prevalent in American society.
But these days, it just gets abused by the Democrats to give them the edge in elections. This ruling has zip to do with the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act is totally unaffected here. So now that the ability to do racial gerrymandering is gone, the Democrats are in big trouble electorally and have lost a major advantage for them. On another note, racism to some extent is still around and minorities face social challenges, no doubt it. But can we please stop acting like this is the 19th or 20th Century? We may not be at Dr. King’s mountaintop yet but we are close to it. America has elected a black President twice. We’ve had at least one black mayor of every major city in this country. There has been a Congressional Black Caucus now for decades. If black America were a nation, it would the 15th wealthiest nation on Earth. No country on this Earth offers more opportunities to black individuals than America, including all the nations of Africa. There are prominent black people in every level of American society.
Intermarriage they say is the ultimate measure of if a minority group has become integrated into the broader society. In that case, blacks are very well integrated as interracial marriages are happening at record levels. We celebrate MLK Day, Black History Month and Juneteenth. Black characters can be found in every TV show and cartoon. Black actors and actresses have started in movies since the 1960s, some with predominantly black casts. Black voters are courted by both parties with a vengeance. Black candidates have run for both major parties’ nominations for President. Black people can do anything they put their mind to in America! Racial discrimination still exists, yes, but it no longer can hold one back from being all they can be. This isn’t 1865 or 1965 anymore, and we need to stop pretending it is! Hey Democrats! Newsflash! George Wallace, Storm Thurmond, James Eastland, and Herman Talmedge are all dead! Slavery and Jim Crow are things of the past. Poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests, segregated bathrooms and drinking fountains, segregated buses, lynching, red lining, and medical experiments on black Americans are all gone and are ancient history now! They are parts of the past we should remember and study, but they are just that, PAST. Interracial sex and marriage aren’t against the law anymore and haven’t been in most of the U.S. for decades. Alabama was the last holdout to make interracial marriage legal and that was in 2000. That was basically a lifetime ago!
If we want to help the black community in America there are better ways to do it than using race to game the system and treating voters as racial pawns. I would propose instead we help black Americans by substantively improving their lives with things like a higher minimum wage, universal healthcare, criminal justice reform, police reform, ending the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, strong labor unions, affirmative action programs, promoting urban farming, and investing in the inner cities. Those are all substantive ways we can assist the black community in America without resorting to nonsense like this that is contrary to everything that Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement believed in and fought for.
But I have to say I think it’s BS to use the word “segregation” to attack the old race-based districting. Segregation is where you divide an area up into parts where (say) blacks are permitted to go and places where they are not. Districting imposes no such constraints on any actual citizens. That approach to districting was wrong, absolutely, but segregation has nothing to do with why it was wrong.
This rhetoric reminds me of the left’s discovery that “genocide” means whatever helps their current argument, or that “democracy” means whatever gets Democrats elected. We are better than that, or we should be.
I'm sorry you are offended by the history of the Party that instituted everything from this to the Klan and its 4,800 lynchings, and is still funding the Klan through the SPLC. Perhaps I can better please you next time.
In any case, you utterly missed the point. None of that was really about race. All of it is really about power. Segregation thwarted the spread of the Populist movement to the South. Racial gerrymandering spots the Democrats 21 House seats. The tactics change, the targets change, the effect is always the same.
Oh, Jesus. I’m not offended by anything. I am *embarrassed* by people I respect using the rhetorical tricks of the bad guys. It is *absolutely* about power, not race, which is exactly why using the rhetoric of race is bad.
I’m not a paying customer here, so perhaps I should just keep my mouth shut. Sometimes I read stuff here that makes me think I *should* be a paying customer, but just when I am about to pull that trigger, I get stuff like this “segregation” malarkey (and worse, your reply) that makes me think I should unsubscribe altogether.
I’m on your side, honest. That’s why I’m trying to help.
Glad you're here. My point is just what it is. And the line in question is this:
"Catch the irony — separating blacks from other voters, in order to create more majority-black districts, is a kind of segregation."
I don't think that overstates the case, and here's why. By "segregating" blacks into racially gerrymandered district, it dilutes their voting power in all the other districts.
You may not have thought about that. But this is a country where Obama won twice. Wouldn't putting black people in MORE districts HELP black people's interests be represented, by influencing the overall vote in their direction? Elections are routinely very close in America, and concentrating them in ghetto-fashion assures they get black representatives but significantly reduces the number of seats they'd have swayed overall.
This is a point I've made for years. Racially gerrymandering House seats definitely helps the Democrats, and it certainly helps a few black elected officials, but it shifts actual power from the mass of black people to their leftist white leaders.
It is essentially a ghetto, less Harlem, more Warsaw. And yes, that is a kind of segregation. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Sorry, still don’t see it. What you describe is indeed wrong, but it’s not segregation. To equate it with segregation is to dilute the offense of actual segregation. I think you’ve been seduced by a tempting bit of wordsmithing.
But that’s just one man’s opinion; you obviously disagree. Oh well.
In an election that's won by a few hundred, or a few thousand, votes, as elections often are, if you take all the black people out of four districts and concentrate them in five, they go from the potential to be the difference-makers for five House seats to being isolated into one. And moreover, the party is generally going to pick who it wants since it controls the process in that one district from top to bottom, so where the average black voter would have to be courted in the five districts, she barely has to be counted in the one.
I get why it's wrong! Yes, they are jimmying the districts in a way that reduces the value of a black person's vote for Congressman.
But I *don't* get why it's segregation. Who's the Rosa Parks in this analogy? Where are the lunch counters? Where are the white-only drinking fountains? You talk about "taking black people out of districts" like we are forcibly moving them out of their homes.
What you are describing is wrong (though, if I'm honest, the reasons *why* it's wrong sound a lot like what the Democrats say about the Electoral College). But segregation is still *very* much worse, and you have not convinced me that it's appropriate to stretch the term as you are doing.
Democrats only care about power, it has nothing to do with minorities rights and never did. All you have to do is look at how they go out of their way to block black conservatives, they will do anything to destroy them. Their only goal is to seize control forever by any means necessary including trampling the Constitution.
And it gets worse. Their top tax rate is higher than federal, and it kicks in at about $35,000. Imagine how bad it would be if they went out on their own.
Act 60 is a big step forward. But the truth is, they were at the same level economically in 1955 as Singapore and Hong Kong, and the difference between those three is entirely about policy.
Great. But will the weak GOP State Legislatures act swiftly and quickly redraw their districts in time for the midterms?
Well, Ga and SC answered my question.
DOJ has said explicitly that they mean to enforce the ruling nationwide. So my guess is they'll take this to court and force SC to act.
wow. I like that!
"Peddle to the metal!" REMOVE all the Democrat "cheat codes" they've been using for decades to prop up an artificial second party at 50/50 MY ARSE!. And they've made it worse! They're so radical Dems are shrinking further and it needs to continue! ROLL BACK their awful, deadly, stupid, ignorant, policies that hurt American citizens. MAGA!
There appear to be more cheat codes than anything else.
100%!
When democrats yell systemic racism, no one asks what “system” are they referring to? I can think of two - this racist gerrymandering system, and the public school system; both “systems” have been shown long term to disfavor one race. Next time the dems used this term, someone should force them to look at themselves in the mirror.
Absolutely.
As someone who is socially liberal, I applaud the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callias! Congressional districts should NEVER be drawn based on race! As a social liberal, I believe that Congressional districts should be drawn regardless of race and that voters should be treated as individuals NOT colors. The SCOTUS has done our nation a great service today. This was always just a way for Democrats to unfairly rig things in their favor. That is now at an end! Look, I’m for social and racial justice as much as the next guy, but this isn’t that. This is all about cynically weaponizing race for political gain. In the past, these measures were necessary with Jim Crow having ended not that long ago and racism still very prevalent in American society.
But these days, it just gets abused by the Democrats to give them the edge in elections. This ruling has zip to do with the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act is totally unaffected here. So now that the ability to do racial gerrymandering is gone, the Democrats are in big trouble electorally and have lost a major advantage for them. On another note, racism to some extent is still around and minorities face social challenges, no doubt it. But can we please stop acting like this is the 19th or 20th Century? We may not be at Dr. King’s mountaintop yet but we are close to it. America has elected a black President twice. We’ve had at least one black mayor of every major city in this country. There has been a Congressional Black Caucus now for decades. If black America were a nation, it would the 15th wealthiest nation on Earth. No country on this Earth offers more opportunities to black individuals than America, including all the nations of Africa. There are prominent black people in every level of American society.
Intermarriage they say is the ultimate measure of if a minority group has become integrated into the broader society. In that case, blacks are very well integrated as interracial marriages are happening at record levels. We celebrate MLK Day, Black History Month and Juneteenth. Black characters can be found in every TV show and cartoon. Black actors and actresses have started in movies since the 1960s, some with predominantly black casts. Black voters are courted by both parties with a vengeance. Black candidates have run for both major parties’ nominations for President. Black people can do anything they put their mind to in America! Racial discrimination still exists, yes, but it no longer can hold one back from being all they can be. This isn’t 1865 or 1965 anymore, and we need to stop pretending it is! Hey Democrats! Newsflash! George Wallace, Storm Thurmond, James Eastland, and Herman Talmedge are all dead! Slavery and Jim Crow are things of the past. Poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests, segregated bathrooms and drinking fountains, segregated buses, lynching, red lining, and medical experiments on black Americans are all gone and are ancient history now! They are parts of the past we should remember and study, but they are just that, PAST. Interracial sex and marriage aren’t against the law anymore and haven’t been in most of the U.S. for decades. Alabama was the last holdout to make interracial marriage legal and that was in 2000. That was basically a lifetime ago!
If we want to help the black community in America there are better ways to do it than using race to game the system and treating voters as racial pawns. I would propose instead we help black Americans by substantively improving their lives with things like a higher minimum wage, universal healthcare, criminal justice reform, police reform, ending the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, strong labor unions, affirmative action programs, promoting urban farming, and investing in the inner cities. Those are all substantive ways we can assist the black community in America without resorting to nonsense like this that is contrary to everything that Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement believed in and fought for.
Liberals believed in Dr. King's message. These Marxists, marinated in Critical Race Theory, are horrified by it.
May is Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! So here are some titles for everyone in the Rod Martin Report audience to celebrate!
* Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure by Julia Flynn Siler
* Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii by James L. Haley
* The Kingdom and the Republic: Sovereign Hawai'i and the Early United States by Noelani Arista
* John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Racial Law by Beth Lew-Williams
* Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America by Michael Luo
* The Road to Chinese Exclusion: The Denver Riot, 1880 Election, and the Rise of the West by Liping Zhu
* American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship by Carol Nackenoff & Julie Novkov
* Infamy: The Shocking Story of Japanese American Internment in World War II by Richard Reeves
* Going for Broke: Japanese American Soldiers in the War Against Nazi Germany by James M. McCaffrey
* Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II by Bruce Henderson
* Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America by Vivek Bald
* Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad by Gordon H. Chang
I strongly applaud the SCOTUS decision.
But I have to say I think it’s BS to use the word “segregation” to attack the old race-based districting. Segregation is where you divide an area up into parts where (say) blacks are permitted to go and places where they are not. Districting imposes no such constraints on any actual citizens. That approach to districting was wrong, absolutely, but segregation has nothing to do with why it was wrong.
This rhetoric reminds me of the left’s discovery that “genocide” means whatever helps their current argument, or that “democracy” means whatever gets Democrats elected. We are better than that, or we should be.
I'm sorry you are offended by the history of the Party that instituted everything from this to the Klan and its 4,800 lynchings, and is still funding the Klan through the SPLC. Perhaps I can better please you next time.
In any case, you utterly missed the point. None of that was really about race. All of it is really about power. Segregation thwarted the spread of the Populist movement to the South. Racial gerrymandering spots the Democrats 21 House seats. The tactics change, the targets change, the effect is always the same.
Oh, Jesus. I’m not offended by anything. I am *embarrassed* by people I respect using the rhetorical tricks of the bad guys. It is *absolutely* about power, not race, which is exactly why using the rhetoric of race is bad.
I’m not a paying customer here, so perhaps I should just keep my mouth shut. Sometimes I read stuff here that makes me think I *should* be a paying customer, but just when I am about to pull that trigger, I get stuff like this “segregation” malarkey (and worse, your reply) that makes me think I should unsubscribe altogether.
I’m on your side, honest. That’s why I’m trying to help.
Glad you're here. My point is just what it is. And the line in question is this:
"Catch the irony — separating blacks from other voters, in order to create more majority-black districts, is a kind of segregation."
I don't think that overstates the case, and here's why. By "segregating" blacks into racially gerrymandered district, it dilutes their voting power in all the other districts.
You may not have thought about that. But this is a country where Obama won twice. Wouldn't putting black people in MORE districts HELP black people's interests be represented, by influencing the overall vote in their direction? Elections are routinely very close in America, and concentrating them in ghetto-fashion assures they get black representatives but significantly reduces the number of seats they'd have swayed overall.
This is a point I've made for years. Racially gerrymandering House seats definitely helps the Democrats, and it certainly helps a few black elected officials, but it shifts actual power from the mass of black people to their leftist white leaders.
It is essentially a ghetto, less Harlem, more Warsaw. And yes, that is a kind of segregation. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Sorry, still don’t see it. What you describe is indeed wrong, but it’s not segregation. To equate it with segregation is to dilute the offense of actual segregation. I think you’ve been seduced by a tempting bit of wordsmithing.
But that’s just one man’s opinion; you obviously disagree. Oh well.
In an election that's won by a few hundred, or a few thousand, votes, as elections often are, if you take all the black people out of four districts and concentrate them in five, they go from the potential to be the difference-makers for five House seats to being isolated into one. And moreover, the party is generally going to pick who it wants since it controls the process in that one district from top to bottom, so where the average black voter would have to be courted in the five districts, she barely has to be counted in the one.
Does that make it a bit clearer?
I get why it's wrong! Yes, they are jimmying the districts in a way that reduces the value of a black person's vote for Congressman.
But I *don't* get why it's segregation. Who's the Rosa Parks in this analogy? Where are the lunch counters? Where are the white-only drinking fountains? You talk about "taking black people out of districts" like we are forcibly moving them out of their homes.
What you are describing is wrong (though, if I'm honest, the reasons *why* it's wrong sound a lot like what the Democrats say about the Electoral College). But segregation is still *very* much worse, and you have not convinced me that it's appropriate to stretch the term as you are doing.
Democrats only care about power, it has nothing to do with minorities rights and never did. All you have to do is look at how they go out of their way to block black conservatives, they will do anything to destroy them. Their only goal is to seize control forever by any means necessary including trampling the Constitution.
Puerto Rico remains long overdue for independence. The United States government just needs a long term basing lease there.
The people of Puerto Rico deserve the right to develop themselves and their unique culture like the rest of the islands in the Caribbean basin.
That would be fine if they wanted to be independent. But they keep voting on that and keep rejecting it.
Why would they vote to get off the gravy train?
Under IRS §933, "bona fide" residents of Puerto Rico generally do not pay federal income tax on income sourced from the island.
And it gets worse. Their top tax rate is higher than federal, and it kicks in at about $35,000. Imagine how bad it would be if they went out on their own.
Act 60 is a big step forward. But the truth is, they were at the same level economically in 1955 as Singapore and Hong Kong, and the difference between those three is entirely about policy.
If they become a state its quite possible that they will combine with the blue states to bring their version of prosperity to the rest of the USA.