When I was in the army, I had a Sergeant Major, who when displeased, would bellow “unass my AO (area of operations).” That’s basically what the Supreme Court did today:
The Supreme Court handed conservative challengers a loss Monday in a key voting rights case.
In a unanimous result, the court said a state can draw legislative districts based on total population. At issue in the case was the “one person, one vote” principle dating back to the 1960s, when the court held that state legislative districts must be drawn so they are equal in population.
Here’s a good background on what the shitters wanted to do:
But on December 8, the Supreme Court will hear a new challenge to “One person, one vote” in Evenwel v. Abbott, brought by the same conservative organization, the Project on Fair Representation, responsible for the gutting of the VRA in the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder. The obscure Evenwel case, which challenges the drawing of State Senate districts in Texas, will have major ramifications for political representation in the United States.
The plaintiffs want legislative lines to be drawn based on eligible or registered voters instead of total population as measured by the US Census Bureau, thus not counting children, immigrants (documented and undocumented), prisoners, and other nonvoters. They claim the current system, by including nonvoters, denies “eligible voters their fundamental right to an equal vote.” Edward Blum, founder of the Project on Fair Representation, calls it “the principle of ‘electoral equality.’”
Long story short, this was nothing more than a transparent attempt to dilute the vote of minorities in urban areas by not counting people, but counting registered voters. Combined with conservative purges of voter roles, this would shift power to more rural areas. In other words, while the population of a city might have 1 million people, if only 200k were voters, the district would be apportioned to the voter rolls. This would shift power to more rural districts, and thus give conservatives an advantage, much like how the Senate inflates power in the hands low population states.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the opinion, and it read a little bit like this:
So that was some good news today.
SFAW
Unanimous? Did Sock Puppet not vote? Or did he abstain, and CNN mis-“spoke”?
With Fat Nino dead, from whom will Sock Puppet take direction now? Count me confused.
dedc79
I can’t wait to hear Bond villain Hans Van Spakovsky’s explanation for why this is a horrible day for
white powerdemocracyFelanius Kootea
Yass! A unanimous decision, no less.
SFAW
Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, Fat Nino – along with Andy Breitbart — is still dead.
Gin & Tonic
Um, “roles” =/= “rolls.”
Joel
Greg Abbott?
Tim C.
This… is the best RBG picture ever.
We also, to be completely fair, now know that even Thomas and Alito have a line they wont go past. I never expected that to be honest. My best hope was 6-2, (6-3 before His awfulness took leave of this Earth) I would be really curious to know what that conversation was like in chambers. I’m in the “Roberts is the most dangerous one” because he’s far smarter in terms of not doing horrible things to people in the short-term obvious way, so I wonder what he said/did to get everyone on the same(ish) page.
I’m also curious to see what right-wing lunatics will make of losing so badly on this.
Luthe
Excellent news! Now can we talk about letting prisoners be counted in the Census as residents of their hometowns and not of the locations of their prisons? Because that would help with the urban/rural power unfuckening…
craigie
unanimous you say?
Is God waking up after a long, terrible nap?
Mustang Bobby
The suit was brought by the same group that is trying to undo affirmative action in Texas and is now before the Court. I wonder if they will deal with it with the same dispatch as this one. Based on the cursory reading of the opinion here, they don’t sound like they were ready for prime time, or, at the least, were counting on Scalia and Thomas to side with them because conservative.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
Maybe Cole is going gluten-free?
Paul in KY
@Tim C.: At least Justice Roberts didn’t give the opinion to Thomas/Alito to write. He could have.
Roger Moore
Unfortunately, this is a narrow ruling. The Court ruled only that it’s constitutional to apportion districts based on total population; they explicitly did not rule on the constitutionality of the proposed alternative of apportioning by registered voters. IOW, the whole thing is likely to be revisited after the 2020 census when some red state legislature tries to apportion by registered voters rather than total population. Of course it’s entirely possible that we’ll have a solid liberal majority on the Court by then, provided we can win in November.
SFAW
@Tim C.:
Lunatics gonna loon. Or something.
Downpuppy
They said that states could draw districts on total population, not that they had to.
Thomas concurrence was particularly weird. He wanted to do away with the requirement of equal sized districts completely. Why should Chicago have more representatives than Carbondale?
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
Except for the fact that RBG, being selfish, etc., etc., by not retiring two minutes before Norm Coleman finally conceded in 2010, has prevented Obama, Hill/Bern, and any future Dem Presidents, for like the next 47 years, from doing that.
ETA: Or was it two minutes after Coleman conceded? I can never remember which exact moment it was when the chances for a non-Reich-wing SCOTUS collapsed completely.
Bobby Thomson
I, for one, salute our new notorious overlords.
Roger Moore
@Tim C.:
All the Court ruled in this case was that the current system is permissible; they didn’t say it’s mandatory. Because of that, the wingnuts will see this as an invitation to try redistricting by registered voters after the 2020 census (“You didn’t say we couldn’t!”) and see what the Court says about that.
Bobby Thomson
@SFAW: not a sock puppet, intellectually more rigorous than Scalia (though still just as wrong), and frankly, that meme is more than a little racist.
Bobby Thomson
@Tim C.: this.
scav
From a quick read of one of the second tier docs,it did seem like the usual suspects were trying to clear a little space for something similar to sail through later. Plus, work a deal where states would get representation badpsed on total population, but would internally switch to the principle of repesenting only eligible voters, thus getting the best of both systems for their agenda,
sherparick
@SFAW: I do have to wonder if this would have gone at best 6-3 if Nino was still there. He would have rallied the now rudderless Alito and Thomas to position sustaining the plaintiffs and Federalist society’s chosen plaintiffs. He would have argued that it was after all the “original intent” of the Founders that only White property owners could vote.
patroclus
This doesn’t strike me as all that significant of a decision. Saying that states “can” apportion by population is not the same thing as saying states “must” apportion by population. This decision should have been unanimous and it probably never should have made it to the Supreme Court.
chopper
@Tim C.:
i am wondering how the roll call would have been if nino were still on the court. he probably would have convinced thomas and alito to say ‘fuck it, why not’ and go against the majority.
Bitter Scribe
@Roger Moore: Yes, unfortunately, you’re right. These assholes will try to game the system any way they can.
SFAW
@Bobby Thomson:
Oh, bullshit. “Sock puppet” has been used far more about whites. In fact, outside of Thomas, I can’t recall any blacks to whom that epithet has been applied.
And saying he’s intellectually more rigorous than Fat Nino is like saying Bill O’Reilly is more intellectually rigorous than Sean Hannity. Scalia hadn’t been intellectually rigorous for 15 or 20 years. I don’t consider “deciding what outcome you want, then twisting legal interpretations and your own prior pronouncements to support that desired result” to be intellectually rigorous. But that’s just me.
Splitting Image
If Ginsburg had five reliable votes to work with, the U.S. would have a lot of decisions like this coming down from the Supreme Court. I’m particularly eager to read Ginsburg’s majority opinion on the subject of all of those anti-abortion laws that the G.O.P. has passed over the last few years.
Make it happen, folks.
Obdurodon
@Bobby Thomson: Which meme? Sock puppet? I’d love to hear the rationale on that one.
p.a.
@Tim C.: they issued their own opinions which might open the door at some time in the future for shenanigans. it’s how the ConFederalist Society rolls.
Mary
@SFAW: Even if she retires or dies before 2020, her replacement would still be selected by a Dem (assuming a win in November).
Sasha
“In a unanimous result”
It truly is the end of days.
schrodinger's cat
@Mustang Bobby: What group is that? ALEC?
dedc79
@SFAW: I, for one, will never forgive Ginsburg for this. Even if it ends up working out, her selfishness created a lot of unnecessary risk for this country and for progressivism.
She’s been a great justice but there’s nothing she’s done (including today’s opinion) that her replacement couldn’t have done, while also locking up a progressive spot on the bench for another 3-4 decades.
smith
@srv: Huh? Isn’t this exactly what people keep exhorting the Bernie Bros to do, get involved in downticket races? I’m also not thrilled about Obama’s intervention in this race, but the response to it is exactly right: Primary the Dems who are too corporate and push the party to the left. This is what the right wing loons have been doing for years and how we got a totally insane House. A little bit of this in the other direction would be appreciated.
Marmot
Not that it would have mattered in this case, but I’m increasingly convinced that Scalia was murdered by a time-traveler from the future.
WarMunchkin
Aren’t these the clowns who are waving flags that say “no taxation without representation”? What, are we only going to tax eligible voters now?
bystander
If the earliest this can be revisited is 2020, I’ll spend the time contemplating all of them with their backs broken, writhing in the street and focusing only on where to get their next fix of hillbilly heroin.
WarMunchkin
@smith: The interesting thing about the whole Clinton v Sanders ‘corporate’ ‘pragmatism’ versus ‘ideological’ (or whatever the acceptable terms should be) is that there’s no reason not to extend it down to the Congressional races, too. If you believe that Clinton’s ‘corporate’ dealmaking advances progressive goals, it’s entirely consistent to believe that of DWS as well. So primary-ing someone who can use monied alliances to defend progressive goals of marriage equality, civil rights and abortion rights in favor of an ideologue who won’t be able to forge coalitions with elites is detrimental to progressive interests.
Not saying this is my opinion necessarily, but I do think there’s an element of inconsistency in thought here that should be looked at by someone with a far better understanding of nuance than I have.
NonyNony
@smith:
I mean, he chose her to be the head of the DNC and there hasn’t been any word that they have publicly parted ways so it should be a surprise to exactly zero people that he’s going to endorse her over a primary opponent.
(Do people not know that the sitting president generally picks the chair of the DNC and that the confirmation by the DNC of their new chair it pretty pro forma – and if it wasn’t it would speak to some deep divisions between the leadership of the party and the White House? I see a whole lot of people dumping on DWS who may not realize that she’s only got that job because Obama wanted her to do it. Not that I think that’s a defense – I think criticizing Obama when he makes a poor decision is what we need to do – but the idea that she’s somehow in there illegitimately kind of baffles me and makes me wonder sometimes if she’s getting more shit that her predecessor – Tim Kaine – because she’s a woman.)
SFAW
@dedc79:
You (and others) seem to be assuming that her replacement would be anything close to her, political-spectrum-wise. I’d be interested to see how that would have happened. Obama might have been able to thread the needle during the 49 days (and that’s assuming Ted Kennedy could actually have made it to the Senate chamber until the moment he died) that he had 60 non-Rethugs in the Senate, but it seems highly unlikely.
ruemara
I’m liking this news. Let’s build on it.
Watching the repair guy tear into my wall now, so I’ve started stress cleaning.
LAO
The end result was unanimous but the reasoning of the justice’s wasn’t — for example Thomas based he decision on his understanding of state rights — not the basis offered by RBG. I think Scalia would have agreed with Thomas.
Thoughtful David
@Roger Moore:
Why do they have to wait until 2020? The SC already ruled that they can redistrict whenever they want.
amk
See? Fat tony did the patriotic right thing by dying.
rikyrah
LMAO at the RBG gif.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA
smith
@NonyNony: The surprise is because he’s generally stayed out of primaries, not that he supports her. Of course, that may be a clear signal that she’s ripe to be primaried. His support for DWS is among a number of decisions he’s made that I disagree with, but I have no illusions that any president will always do what I prefer.
? Martin
Very interesting piece at The Atlantic regarding our ‘religious freedom’ laws and the role (still dead) Scalia played in them.
WarMunchkin
@WarMunchkin: or, to develop this idea further, when people say “get involved in Congressional races”, it means flipping R to D, not primarying Democrats. Because while moreandbetter democrats are important, the bottleneck is still ‘more’, not ‘better’, though that argument is still defeated by the clown show that was getting 60 votes in the Senate. The House showed no such problems.
So the question is refined to something like: why aren’t Sanders people showing as much energy when trying to flip seats from R to D as they do trying to challenge reliably D Democrats? And: does it even matter? It seems impossible to convince Rs to change to D.
Again, not my opinion, just trying to get a handle on it all.
dogwood
@NonyNony:
If he didn’t endorce the head of the DNC he’d be handing the Village a month’s worth of bullshit stories about Dems in disarray. He’d never tee it up for them like that, thank God. And I could be wrong, but I suspect Obama wouldn’t lose a moment of sleep if DWS lost in the primary.
low-tech cyclist
@Luthe:
That’s harder than it looks, unfortunately. The Census Bureau is the agency that does the counting that apportionment and redistricting are based on. And the Census is set up to count people where they live most or all of the time.
While the decennial Census does have a ‘URE’ (usual residence elsewhere) mechanism where persons found at one location at Census time who spend most of the year somewhere else can check a box and include their usual address, my dim recollection (I’m not 100% sure of this) is that since prisons would be so hard to enumerate in the traditional way, so standard Census procedure is to obtain the Census info from the prison’s administrative records. So either the prison’s records would have to include the prisoner’s previous address, or the prison would have to give Census forms to the prisoners to fill out.
Either way, this would cost extra money, and my guess is that that part would be a tough sell.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I wonder if this would have been 8:1 if Scalia was alive. 7:2?
dedc79
@SFAW: He would’ve nominated a progressive replacement and they’d have had a senate majority so the nominating process would’ve gotten out of committee to a senate wide vote. If they voted her down, RBG stays on and we would’ve at worst been no worse off than we are now.
Brachiator
Even though this Supreme Court decision was a good one, it still chaps my hide that the Republican fools are sitting on the president”s nomination of a replacement for Scalia.
JBF
@smith: She probably called in a favor that he owed her. The statement was pretty boilerplate.
smith
@WarMunchkin: I can only speak for myself, but if I had an ardent Sanders supporter in front of me who sincerely wanted to reform the Democratic party, I would not advise him/her to concentrate on flipping R to D, I’d advise him/her to primary Dems who they find objectionable. This in contrast to expecting that the election of Sanders would somehow magically effect such a transformation in and of itself.
As long as the would-be reformers don’t sit out the general election, I don’t see how that necessarily hurts chances of flipping R to D as long as you get good candidates and build enthusiasm. And it does put sitting Ds on notice that if they wander too far right or get complacent they could end up fighting for their seats. Once again, this is how the far right pushed the Republicans right. If you really want to push the Dems left, that’s what you have to do.
On the other hand, I certainly wouldn’t advise Naderism and flouncing off if your guy doesn’t win the primary. Putting a good scare into the incumbent can be almost as useful as beating him/her.
gluon1
@Bobby Thomson: You are completely correct and @SFAW is mistaken to underplay the danger posed by Justice Thomas’s often brilliantly written opinions that insidiously and invidiously attack the legal protections and underpinnings of our democracy. (Thomas also writes some straight-up crackpottery, particularly about race, but those are far less dangerous.)
aimai
@WarMunchkin: I don’t agree at all. The lower down the scale you go the more pure and progressive your candidate can afford to be–if they can get the votes locally. They will still have to be pragmatic and consensus focused if they get the job otherwise you end up with Tea Party Crazies like the ones who simply refuse to do their jobs at all in the Republican Congress. Local choices are closer to the voters and, theoretically, can win votes without needing to cater to local capitalist interests. However, they will be competing for those votes with people who will take that money and be able to influence people so purity has to be balanced against pragmatism. If you can get the votes–get them–if you can’t you might have to make some compromises to get into power. This isn’t rocket science.
gwangung
@WarMunchkin:
Yes, key point.
And the key to that is not converting Rs to Ds, but getting the vote out (and in particular, poor and minorities; Bernie fans voting were never the problem. The problem is getting them and other Ds to help low income voters to vote in off year elections).
aimai
@WarMunchkin: The Sanders people have made an enormous enemy of DWS–she’s like everything they think they hate rolled into one person. Its not really all that logical or correct. She’s not great but she’s not the worst a person could be. They want a scalp more than anything–something to prove that they have power. In that way she’s like Scott Brown in MA. And if Bernie loses and DWS was in a post election run of I’d expect her opponent to be swamped with cash, jus tlike Scott Brown was. Basically people need an outlet for their rage and DWS is it.
Anya
@Luthe: wouldn’t this ruling mean they’ll be counted?
JustRuss
I’d sort of like to see this law applied at the national level. You want to disenfranchise a crapload of voters in your state? Fine, that’s going to cost a couple seats in the House.
dogwood
@WarMunchkin:
There’s no excitement or entertainment value in supporting congressional races. It’s drudgery. No big rallies, no celebrities, no rock concerts. This cycle I’m spending money and doing grunt work on behalf of Joe Pakootas who is running against CathyMcMorris Rodgers. As a complete unknown with no money he got 47% of the vote in 2014. He is as impressive a candidate as I’ve seen at the congressional level in decades. This time he has some name recognition and money. I expect he will still lose, but he is in it for the long-haul.
? Martin
Having grown up in NY and living in CA, seeing both states approve $15/hr minimum wages makes me happy. But the two states may see somewhat different results.
One unique aspect of California is that almost nobody in the state lives within 100 miles of another state. We’re a state with a large wilderness border. The exception being San Diego’s proximity to Mexico which both does and does not apply.
That means that wage arbitrage here must happen on a very large scale. If your company doesn’t want to pay these wages, leaving CA means leaving your customers – there is no nearby border to hop across. That’s less true in NY where a NYC business could theoretically relocate to NJ and retain at least a contingent of their local customers. There’s a bit of evidence to suggest that such arbitrage does happen, but probably not to a degree that undermines the whole thing. Social science experiments are always fun.
Matt McIrvin
@WarMunchkin: Flipping seats from R to D means supporting relatively conservative Democrats who will probably flake out on the party in a serious pinch. It can be tough to do with enthusiasm, even though it’s needed.
burnspbesq
@patroclus:
Decisions by three-judge panels of the District Court are required to go directly to the Supreme Court.
Mary
@patroclus: It would be pretty darn significant if they had ruled the other way, so this is still a big deal in the sense that it’s a major bullet dodged.
liberal
@SFAW:
Hah hah hah, dumbfuck. You still don’t understand the basic idea of risk-adjusted return, do you?
You really think the marginal benefit of having RBG on the Court from 2009 until whenever she retires outweighs the risk of a Republican having won the Presidency in 2012 or winning in 2016?
I don’t agree much with Jon Chait these days, but he hit the nail on the head here:
[Emphasis added.] For good measure, he even alludes to her outsized ego.
Put it another way: would the decision have gone any differently had RGB been replaced in, say, 2010?
ETA: it’s not even clear that intellectual firepower is the most important attribute (besides ideology). It’s entirely plausible that ability to build a consensus is more important.
WarMunchkin
@smith: I guess I’m calling into question the idea that pushing Dems leftward is a worthwhile use of time (currently). Well, I mean it’s better than pushing Dems to the right to get “moderate” votes. But at some point we deal with the hard fact that the average House district is R+4 and that we allowed 60 votes to become the normal in the Senate (partially as a fire line against eroding progressive achievements).
If you can get more progressive candidates in D+31 districts, then by all means, go for it. But at some point we’re left with the fact that we don’t have the votes to do anything via legislation in the foreseeable future, no matter who becomes POTUS. I don’t really see a way around convincing more Rs to go D. That doesn’t mean going for more moderate candidates, that just means literally convincing people that conservatism is stupid.
I mean, team D’s crazies are riled up about getting people health care and increasing investment into alternative energy; team R’s crazies are trying to put women in jail for miscarriages. Is this that hard?
Adam L Silverman
@dedc79: He’s not a Bond villain, he’s the creepy NAZI apparatchik from Raiders of the Lost Ark that was looking for the medallion that fit atop Moses’s staff.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Gw5AbXK2ooA/U_FzUui1ZSI/AAAAAAAAD_4/mbZmcimDkmA/s1600/RaidersLostArk9_001Pyxurz.jpg
Mike J
@aimai: This is why yesterday I said the next head of the DNC will be somebody actually named “Shibboleth”.
liberal
@? Martin: The problem with most economic arguments about the minimum wage is that they don’t take into account the fact that, in the long run at least, an increase in minimum wage will possibly not come out of the business’ or consumers’ pockets at all, but rather out of the pockets of the owner of the land the business sits on. Since those are all ill-gotten gains anyway (since the landowner in his role as landowner makes no contribution to production whatsoever), it doesn’t matter.
jl
I’m very glad to see this BS case go down in flames, and unanimously. I suppose it puts some limits on the nonsense reactionaries can try to get in front of the court with a reasonable expectation of success.
In some stories, I read that Thomas and Alito put in some hedges that would give slightly less insane but equally toxic cases a glimmer of hope. So, very important to get a Democratic president and Senate next year to put a sane person on the court.
Garland is too conservative on some issues for my taste, but I have no doubt he would have voted correctly on this case.
liberal
@aimai: OK; what is “the worst”?. The fact that she’s whoring herself out to payday lenders is OK, as long as she’s not as bad as Hitler, Mao, and Stalin all rolled into one? LOL.
LAO
@Anya: Prisoners are counted towards the district where they are incarcerated. It is not fair, but it is well ingrained at the moment.
jl
@? Martin:
” Social science experiments are always fun. ”
They are also necessary. There is a lot of evidence that the simple Econ 101 theory of labor markets is not very realistic. The trade-offs involved in minimum wage legislation are more complex and subtle than previously believed. Simplistic economic slogans die hard, especially with economists. i heard one of those shouting outdated slogans in a news report this morning.
There surely is a theoretical argument that adequate social insurance policies would be better than increasing minimum wage. Scandinavia, Denmark especially, has been experimenting with a policy of reducing regulatory and statutory controls on labor markets, and ensuring equity and minimum living standard with a robust social safety net like very generous unemployment and what amounts to guaranteed social income, and heavily subsidized adult retraining and education. That is not in the cards for the US for political reasons, so we need information on how well this type of second-best policy works.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Such a transparent move to disenfranchise citizens that even Alito had to sign off on saying no to it.
If that guy isn’t willing to bless it, you’re doing it really wrong.
rikyrah
The thought..
the mere THOUGHT…
that they’d nominate someone who didn’t even run?
I’m still sitting here, trying to wrap my head around it.
……………..
Top Republicans talking up Paul Ryan as nominee
One of the nation’s best-wired Republicans sees a 54 percent chance that Ryan will end up as the nominee.
By Mike Allen
04/04/16 08:20 AM EDT
On the eve of the Wisconsin primaries, top Republicans are becoming increasingly vocal about their long-held belief that Speaker Paul Ryan will wind up as the nominee, perhaps on the fourth ballot at a chaotic Cleveland convention.
One of the nation’s best-wired Republicans, with an enviable prediction record for this cycle, sees a 60 percent chance of a convention deadlock and a 90 percent chance that delegates turn to Ryan — ergo, a 54 percent chance that Ryan, who’ll start the third week of July as chairman of the Republican National Convention, will end it as the nominee.
“He’s the most conservative, least establishment member of the establishment,” the Republican source said. “That’s what you need to be.”
Ryan, who’s more calculating and ambitious than he lets on, is running the same playbook he did to become speaker: saying he doesn’t want it, that it won’t happen. In both cases, the maximum leverage is to not want it — and to be begged to do it. He and his staff are trying to be as Shermanesque as it gets. Ryan repeated his lack of interest Monday morning in an interview from Israel with radio host Hugh Hewitt.
dedc79
@Adam L Silverman: good call
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
I think the idea is that since he was on the ticket with Romney, that counts as having been selected by Republican voters.
smith
@WarMunchkin:
Actually, yes. A believe a lot of those R voters we’d like to flip do prefer the latter to the former. I don’t disagree with you, however, that it’s highly desirable to put resources into purple districts, although I agree with another commenter above that GOTV is likely to be more effective in doing that than direct appeals to current R voters. My original argument was simply that if reforming the D party is high on your list of priorities, then primarying DWS is a rational way to go.
I would like to add, however, that just because someone is a D doesn’t mean he/she is a reliable vote on anything whatsoever. Take the case of the Odious Dan Lipinski of Illinois. He’s in a solid blue, politically moderate district with an increasing Hispanic population. He’s one of the few Dems to vote against ACA and he’s ruthlessly anti-choice. On your issues listed above, he looks like an R, but he doesn’t need to worry about his seat because he has the backing of the Cook County machine. He always has primary challengers, but not yet one with the resources to counter those of the machine. If some Bernistas wanted to make an example of him, I’d be with them all the way.
dogwood
@jl:
I’ve read analysis that puts Garland to the left of Elena Kagan. I remember the disappointment with the Kagan nomination from the Left of the party. So far, she’s been a great Justice. I suspect Garland would have become a great Justice for our side as well.
jl
CEPR has a page with reports summarizing recent research and evidence on effects of minimum wages
Minimum Wage
http://cepr.net/index.php?option=com_cattags&view=tagcatssummary&id=39&cat_ids%5B0%5D=80&cat_ids%5B1%5D=65&cat_ids%5B2%5D=45&cat_ids%5B3%5D=52&cat_ids%5B4%5D=82&cat_ids%5B5%5D=83&Itemid=374
patroclus
@Mary: Well, I get your point, but Baker v. Sims and Reynolds v. Carr are pretty straightforward and the fact that the courts even allowed a challenge to them get this far is an indication that they’re willing to entertain some pretty outlandish challenges. The State Senate districts in question should have been subjected to the pre-clearance provisions of the (now-defunct) VRA (and in fact they originally were) and rejected right then and there by the DOJ – this case represents what has happened since then. Because the VRA is now toothless, the Courts are going to have to consider challenges like this more often. Under the VRA, challenges like this would have been deep-sixed far sooner than by the USSC. It’s a good result, but it’s narrow and won’t have a lot of precedential value. Expect more challenges.
SFAW
@liberal:
Oh, isn’t that precious. It’s the “We fucking hates RBG with a passion” moron, calling anyone else a dumbfuck.
“Risk-adjusted return”? Right. Maybe you and Dean Chambers can get together and talk stats, NPV, RAR, and BFD. He’s at least your intellectual equal. Maybe he can help you unskew your head out of your ass.
patroclus
@jl: Yeah, the opinion by Ginsburg wasn’t unanimous – only 6 Justices joined it. Alito and Thomas merely concurred in the result. So the reasoning was really 6-2.
catclub
@Roger Moore: I wonder who will argue that the 3/5ths compromise means the founders were more interested in representation in terms of persons than in terms of voters?
Maybe that is not the best argument in favor of this ruling.
I do appreciate that the ruling is more technical than a decision on the side of voting rights.
Villago Delenda Est
My hatred of filth like Edward Blum knows no bounds.
There are no truer enemies of the Constitution than the scum of the Project on Fair Representation.
Wipe them out. All of them.
smith
@rikyrah:
Well, now, there ya go again, Karl…
SFAW
@dedc79:
You’re making a lot of assumptions not necessarily borne out by history. I mean, I get your point, but I question the logic string that brought you there.
Brachiator
@liberal:
How would an increase in minimum wage come out of the pockets of the “landowner?”
@Martin:
And how effective has this been?
Didn’t these countries also eject foreign workers when their economies contracted?
This sounds like Republican economic policy, or am I thinking of something else?
Frank Wilhoit
@SFAW (also @patroclus): Thomas’s “concurrence” was actually a dissent, in which he explicitly rejects the concept of 1P1V. Watch that space.
catclub
@rikyrah: I nearly made a 100-1 bet on that possibility on one of the
election marketplace websites. I ended up not doing it. So that may affect my opinion, but I think the people who think someone who did not even run will take the nom away from those who did, are deceiving themselves.
(OTOH: “None of these bozos could get a majority in the primaries, they must all be duds. Get a new guy.”)
The rules will be written by Cruz and Trump delegates. The delegates at the convention will have weight by their presence in one place. Trump or Cruz will get the nom. I wonder why the estimates of how many favorable state election results Trump
needs to clinch, are not as prominent as they used to be. Last I heard he was still likely to clinch. Has that changed yet?
Peale
@Brachiator: @rikyrah:
Like last month he was sporting a beard! A beard, I tell you. He’s the so far out of the establishment, that he’s got a beard like he’s a liberal urban hipster. Next up, he’ll show you a tattoo! I swear!
MCA1
@dedc79: I don’t get this. I see in a vacuum how it would have been nice for liberals to have had the opportunity to replace Ginsburg with another liberal before November, 2010, sure. But she’s a jurist, not an elected Democratic politician. It’s not her responsibility to think of what’s best for the party and weigh it above her own desires. Frankly, I don’t want a system in which we expect Supreme Court justices to do that. Philosophical shifts happen on the SC from time to time, and that’s fine. Just as we’re currently criticizing the GOP for making replacing a justice into a blood sport, I don’t want Democrats to think of the 9 justices as aligned with or “of” one of the two parties, either. Maybe that’s naïve and idealistic, but I’d prefer for partisan concerns to not reach my Judicial Branch to that degree. And expecting (and imposing that expectation on justices) that Supreme Court justices should and will only retire when there’s a President of their own party in the White House and no intransigent, traitorous opposition in Congress, submits the entire Supreme Court to purely partisan political calculation going forward.
Dmbeaster
@Roger Moore: They could only make a “narrow” ruling as the constitutionality of districts based on voters rather than population was not as issue. The RGB opinion has language pertine t to tne roader qjestion, and Alito concurred in the result but not the opinion for this reason. The only issue raised by the case was the alleged unconstitutionality of population based districts.
How did this case even get accepted?
SFAW
@Frank Wilhoit:
Thanks. I think.
dedc79
@MCA1:
I’m not saying she should have retired because it’s what’s best for the Democratic Party. I’m saying she should have retired because her retirement would do more to protect her own prior rulings and the progressivism of the court than her staying on the court.
She doesn’t have to be partisan, but it strikes me as incredibly naive to ignore the role that partisan politics play in appointments to the court and her own legacy.
dogwood
@patroclus:
I think Warren opined that Reynolds v Simms might be the most important decision of his tenure. And as I watch this election and observe what’s happened over the last 7 years, I tend to see things the way Warren did:
” A society in the process of moving forward often appears to be tearing itself apart.”
dedc79
@SFAW: Put it this way. If obama couldn’t have appointed a progressive replacement for ginsburg with 60 democrats, then what makes you think Clinton will be able to with 51 or 52 democrats in January? The obstacles, however great in 2010, are not as bad as they’re likely to be in 2017.
El Caganer
@Brachiator: The landowner stuff is (I think) referring to Henry George’s ‘single tax’ (land value tax). An interesting idea that currently doesn’t exist much of anywhere outside of Arden, Delaware; even there, it’s not the sole tax – they still have to pay state and federal taxes.
Amaranthine RBG
Before there is too much celebration about this “unanimous” opinion, people should read the Alito and Thomas concurrences which lay out a good roadmap about how state legislators can justify apportionment schemes based on principles OTHER THAN “one person, one vote.”
Today’s opinions did NOT hold that districts must be apportioned on one-person, one vote basis only that they MAY be apportioned that way.
jl
@Brachiator: I think you meant to reply to me.
Works pretty well. You can look at OECD poverty and economic inequality measures below.
https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm#indicator-chart
It is certainly not a GOP type policy because Scandinavian labor regulations remain stronger in many ways than those in the US. The fact that in Denmark you will get generous unemployment benefits, or subsidy to get education or retraining puts some discipline on how employers pay, and treat, employees, since the employees have relative good outside options.
There is a lot of empirical evidence that minimum wage laws have less effect on low wage workers than Econ 101 theory would predict. There are three main theories why. One is that substitution between labor and capital and different production techniques is much more flexible than Econ 101 implicitly assumes (Krugman seems to support this). Cost of turnover and training create multiple labor market equlibria is another. A third is that increasing monopsony in labor markets (a local big box store or Amazon depot dominates labor market) drive wages below marginal productivity of labor is another. And there are few more less likely ideas. One of the reports at CEPR Minimum Wage link summarizes the theories and evidence.
There is micro-macroeconomic interaction that is not much discussed. Right now minimum wage jobs have a lot more higher educated and older workers than in the past. Probably due to weak labor market, and loss of retirement assets during Great Recession.
bemused
Trump is on a local channel just about to talk in Superior WI. His aide just got done saying, “Trump cares about you!!!”
SFAW
@rikyrah:
The fun part will come when he refuses the nom thrice, before finally (reluctantly) agreeing to accept the crown. Just as he did (more-or-less) with the Speakership.
Peale
@Amaranthine RBG: Yep. Its coming. There’s going to be more road blocks to keep republicans in control, some of which we can barely think of.
MCA1
@Brachiator: I’m assuming that liberal is saying that since minimum wage primarily is paid by businesses with large brick and mortar components, the businesses impacted by this will be less able to afford current rents, meaning commercial rental rates will decrease, which passes the costs onto landlords. Some dubious assumptions in there, I think. Though that’s pure conjecture on my part – perhaps there’s another theory underlying the poster’s assertion. I don’t necessarily disagree with what I see as his/her conclusion, though, at least normatively: it’s not necessarily a bad thing if the cost of a small uptick in the value we put on labor is effectively paid by the rent taking class. Although I don’t necessarily believe there is such a thing as pure rent taking these days, anyway – American real estate in the 21st century is not England in the Industrial Age.
jl
@Brachiator: WP eating my comments. Maybe it won’t take links right now.
Search for OECD poverty statistics. The Scandinavian approach produces good results compared to the US.
And laws protecting exploitation of labor in Scandinavia, even Denmark which has taken the experiment the furthers, are weak by European standards, but stronger than in US, and far stronger than anything the GOP would like to inflict on the country.
Edit: the basic idea of the Scandinavian flexible labor markets policy is that if the social safety net provides a good enough outside option, it will force employers to treat and pay employees relatively fairly and well. The employee has a cushion that allows a reasonable job search, or can go back to school or more vocational training.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I’m waiting for them to announce Alan Keyes. You know it’s coming.
SFAW
@dedc79:
I don’t disagree re: Clinton’s opportunity would likely be tougher. [Of course, the “60 dems” (as a nit: you mean 60 non-Rethugs) was only a thing for less than two months.]
But in July and August, 2009 — the only period when Obama had 60 “dems” — there wasn’t much of an omen that the Rs would take over the House so stunningly, nor that the Rs would go from 40/60 to 54/whatever in such a short period.
jl
@MCA1: AFAIK, there are three main ideas about why in US today, minimum wage laws have far less impact than simple Econ 101 model predicts.
One, that Krugman seems to favor, is that the substitution between labor of given quality, capital, and intangible production techniques that cannot be easily measured in terms of quantity of labor or capital, is far greater than Econ 101 implicitly assumes. Krugman has a few posts on this idea, a couple with some interesting graphs that try to explain.
Another is that there are costs of employee training and turnover that produce multiple equilibria in the labor market, particularly in the low skill / law wage sector.
Another is that increasing monopsony in local labor markets (a few big box stores, or Amazon warehouse dominate labor market for an area) force wages below marginal product of labor.
The CEPR Minimum Wage page I linked to above has a run down of the theories and evidence.
Calouste
@catclub: Yep, I can’t see how they can convert all the Trump and Cruz fanatics that are delegates at the convention to line up for a grey establishment candidate like Ryan. There are some shenanigans going on with delegate selection, but I think in most cases the delegates will still be selected by the campaigns.
And I think Trump is still likely to clinch the nomination. He’s got some favorable states coming up, although he looks likely to lose Wisconsin. I think the main reason you haven’t heard as much is that there is just not much happening at the moment. Wisconsin is the only GOP primary that actually pledges its delegates in a 4 week period (North Dakota and Colorado also have events, but their delegates are mostly unpledged).
Mnemosyne
JOHN, the banhammer is needed in Tom’s thread (two below this one). The nutty troll is back, and I don’t mean mclaren.
Peale
@Amaranthine RBG: Yep. Since no legislature has enacted an alternative, it would be surprising to have the Supremes just throw out every state’s districts across the country in one swoop. but I’m not going to be surprised if, say, North Carolina decdes to go with one-entity, one vote if Art Pope thinks that’s how he’s going to maintain control on the state forever.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
I think monopsony is a much bigger problem on multiple levels than a lot of people realize. I think it’s a huge factor in killing our newspapers, and it’s bad for labor markets, too. When you go from 4 local department store chains to 1 national chain, that national chain has no incentive to raise wages, because where else are you going to work, McDonalds?
Calouste
@MCA1:
You’ve not been paying attention for the last 35 years or so, have you?
Just One More Canuck
@Mnemosyne: the one right at the end? Yes, he seems nice
SFAW
@Calouste:
Well, in fairness, there wasn’t an intransigent, traitorous opposition before 2009. At least, not at these levels. Even Clinton hatred paled by comparison, i think.
dollared
@WarMunchkin: Depends on whether you think alliances with the Fortune 500 to ensure civil rights for gays and women of all social classes and races are the only progressive goals.
Because alliances with the Fortune 500 is exactly how exacerbating income inequality became official Democratic Party policy under the first Clinton president. And the results have been somewhere between lousy and disastrous for 150 million Americans.
But maybe that’s what you’re asking…
Mnemosyne
@Just One More Canuck:
Yes. Ignore it and alert the authorities. It’s been banned multiple times.
Feathers
@aimai: I am in no way a fan of DWS, in fact am in the dislike column. But I totally agree with the hatred being irrational. Getting some lady-hate vibes off of it. Besides, attacking any elected official for supporting the industries located in their districts is just letting everyone know that you are hopelessly naive. It’s like the “But Biden supports the evil credit card companies!” Only proper answer: “No Shit! He’s from fucking Delaware! The. Worst. State.” Seriously, Delaware is the worst state. Texas, Alabama, et al, merely treat their own residents abysmally. Delaware is screwing with us all. But the Biden frothing was never this bad.
SFAW
@Feathers:
Yeah, that must be it.
dedc79
@Feathers:
Same with Corey Booker. The guy was mayor of Newark one of the poorest and most crime-ridden cities in the country. The city was (and remains) desperate for big finance companies to build and/or occupy office space downtown. That dynamic has not changed now that he’s a senator (Jersey City, for example, is a cheaper alternative for office space than manhattan). Yet people are stunned, absolutely stunned, that he’s not going after Wall Street the same way Elizabeth Warren does. Not every senator is going to be reliable on every issue. You won’t see michigan senators tearing into the auto industry either, nor should anyone expect them to.
Immanentize
Almost dead thread — sorry!
Two point son the case today —
1) The only issue presented in the case was whether representation based on voter registrants rather than population was constitutionally mandated. Hence, the decision. Anything more (like the constitution requires representation-based on population was not on the table and a decision like that would, as we pretentious pricks say, arbiter dictum
2) re; the vote count and opinions minus Scalia: Considering the case was argued in December when Scalia was very much alive, the Court held an initial conference after the case was submitted that week with Scalia present, so everyone on the Court knows what his planned vote would have been. I find it really hard to believe that Scalia would disagree with the decision given the long history of population-based proportionality and the express constitutional command of population-based proportionality for Congressional seats, Hence, why the issue was narrow and why the two concurrences would probably have been three) are suggesting that there needed to be a better vehicle for the issue raised than the one presented (see 1 above)
Chris T.
I’m surprised the “conservative challengers” didn’t aim straight for “one dollar, one vote”…
burnspbesq
@patroclus:
Sorry, but this is nonsense. The District Court dismissed the case for failure to state a claim. That’s the biggest “fuck off, plaintiff” that exists under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. How is that “allowing” a challenge? The Supreme Court, which had to take the case, unequivocally affirmed the District Court. What else would you have had them do?
dollared
@Feathers: Can we please, amongst ourselves, not attribute to sexism that which can be easily explained by the fact that payday lenders are the very worst scum on earth, and no Democrat (“Demo”= “people” and payday lenders are horrible for people) should support them?
I live near Boeing and Microsoft, and Suzan del Bene (for whom I host fundraisers) frustrates me on trade issues, but at least this is a mixed issue and huge positives for the local economy.
Payday lenders have no reason to live.
And we should give each other the benefit of the doubt. We are all on this site for a reason.
dogwood
@SFAW:
The rank and file hate Obama, because they’ve been well-trained. But the Establishment feared him from the beginning. They can bitch about Obamacare all they want, but they know they won’t be able to scrap the system. Gay rights are here to stay. They can pass reactionary laws in the red states, but in the long run they know they’re gonna lose. Cuba, Iran, etc. They’ve lost. The Supreme Court has been their safety valve for decades, so I wouldn’t be surprized if we go 5 years with a panel of eight. Where democrats have failed over the last several years is in taking the fight to the state level when it comes to voter suppression and criminal justice reform. The Feds can influence and investigate, but if we want change we have to focus on state houses and governorships.
Steve in the ATL
Damn straight.
dogwood
@dollared:
I agree about payday lenders being scum. The gun industry at all levels is just as scummy. Yet we know there are democrats who support it. There’s just something about this DWS fettish that seems contrived to me.
Brachiator
@MCA1:
This mythical decrease in commercial rental rates does not occur in Southern California. I doubt that it happens in most other areas.
A business owner with a building lease is in a weak position with respect to being able to negociate a lower rent. And because his or her labor costs increase?
This is an absurd proposition.
The governor of California just signed the $15 minimum wage bill into law. It is well intentioned, but I think it will lead to some increase in unemployment in the short term.
dollared
@dogwood: I hear you. But she is a leader of her party. That is a special role. And IMHO, party leaders should not have to pander to counterproductive scum. If she really needs to do that to keep her seat, then she should drop down from leadership.
Fellatio Alger
@Bobby Thomson: Utter nonsense.
Fellatio Alger
@srv: You’re stupid.
RSA
@rikyrah:
Journalists and math–God help us. Those aren’t independent events.
Brachiator
@dollared:
I don’t know if it is still the case, but not too long ago a chunk of payday lenders were associated with Native American tribes. From an old WaPo story:
gwangung
@dollared: What you’re saying is that there’s a conflict between representing her local area and representing her national party in at least this particular case. And it would better if there was someone who didn’t have potential conflicts like that.
dollared
@RSA: And then those same journalists will judge Ryan’s Miracle Plan to Balance the Budget With Tax Cuts…..sigh. He scares me, precisely because the free pass he gets from ignorant journalists.
Miss Bianca
@dollared:
Can we please, among ourselves, not out-of-hand *dismiss* sexism as a factor in any criticism of any female politician/prominent figure when it is pointed out that, all *other* factors being relatively equal, said criticism strikes one as being unusually virulent? In the interests of giving each other that “benefit of the doubt” you cite, if for no other reason?
dollared
@gwangung: Yup. And Biden didn’t handle this well, either. That’s why Nancy Smash’s safe SFO seat was ideal.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Interesting idea, but I don’t see how it applies to the newspaper industry in California, which was largely doomed by economic contraction, Craigslist, and the Internet.
patroclus
@burnspbesq: Sorry, but this is nonsense. As I explained, this was originally covered by the VRA and would have been rejected by the DOJ in its pre-clearance role. If you had read my comments, you would have realized this. But you didn’t. Try it next time.
Mnemosyne
@dogwood:
Yep. Bernie’s support of the NRA is fine, but DWS’s support of payday lenders is beyond the pale and must be coupled with thinly veiled sexist slurs. And, yeah, it’s hard to pick through and find the one or two rational critiques when you first have to wade through a dozen posts filled with sexist scree-ing.
dogwood
@dollared:
No argument from me on that account. I’m just not sure that the DNC or the RNC are all that powerful anymore. Nonetheless, I believe we can all agree that DWS ain’t a lazy grifter. She’s a wife, a mother, a congresswoman and chairman of the DNC.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Really? You don’t see why having daily and Sunday full-color ads from 4 competing department stores getting reduced to ads from a single department store would have an effect on ad revenue? I didn’t realize that classified ads were that much more profitable than half-page, full color ads and Sunday circular inserts that Bullocks, The Broadway, Robinson’s and The May Company used to buy.
ETA: Keep in mind that none of the above chains went bankrupt. They were all purchased by Macy’s (though two of them merged into Robinsons-May a few years before Macy’s acquired them).
dollared
@Miss Bianca: Sorry, nope. I’m in a room full of people who deserve the benefit of the doubt. And your shit is how substantive issues get ignored. And there is no excuse for supporting payday lenders. Her seat is not at risk.
I admire her as a politician. I question her leadership, with good cause. And if you think my questioning her leadership is sexism, then you refuse to engage on substance.
SFAW
@Miss Bianca:
Or maybe it’s anti-Semitism?
DWS gets hammered because she has been (in the opinion of some) hopelessly incompetent as DNC chair. Add to that, her apparent thumb-on-the-scale-when-it-probably-wasn’t-necessary behaviors (as chair) against Bernie (or rather, in support of Hillary). If DWS stood for “David Wilson Smith,” he’d get hammered just as hard as Debbie Wasserman Schultz does.
gwangung
Actually, I don’t think she’s doing that. She might be suggesting that her questionable leadership may be providing cover for Gamer-gate style sexism…but she’d have to clarify that herself.
(Though I think we all would prefer it get rendered moot if we get someone more competent in that chair, with no potential conflicts)
dollared
@Mnemosyne: This. and hundreds fewer middle class jobs in management, credit management, marketing, accounting, etc.
And real estate contraction. it’s a real loss
dollared
@dogwood: I agree completely that she is an admirable person. Completely. I just question her judgment in the DNC role.
dollared
@SFAW: This.
Mnemosyne
@SFAW:
Yeah, no. We certainly wouldn’t be hearing constant shit about David Wilson Smith’s bad plastic surgery, for one. Or his hair. Or his “screechy” voice.
@dollared:
Other way around — you refuse to recognize that assholes poisoned the well long before word one was said about payday lenders, so your complaint is getting lost among the 5 previous years of screeching. Like it or not, you’re feeling the effects of other people crying wolf about DWS for so long that it’s just become background noise.
jl
@Brachiator:
Doesn’t really make any difference how a local economy arrived at ologipolistic market structure for large employers. and monopsonistic labor markets. The end result is the same.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
In California, there were contractions across entire industries because companies moved out of state, went out of business, many other factors.
The Times had separate departments for Display and Classified Ads. Supermarkets, Department stores, consumer electronic stores, video rental stores, sporting good stores, a host of others ran ads. But it wasn’t just that the department stores consolidated. Also, tv became more competitive.
At a certain point in the mid 1970s, the Display Ad Department lost favor. Part of this was because they did not see the trend coming and thought that the slump in Display ads was temporary. The head of marketing traditionally came from Display sales. A numbers whiz in Classified recognized what was happening and soon there were big changes in the marketing department leadership. Classified became the main revenue source (and special supplements, like the scandalous Staples Center deal).
Unfortunately, they couldn’t see the Internet and Craigslist coming, which killed the existing ad revenue model.
The Internet also disrupted the ad model in other ways. I don’t need a Target or Best Buy or JC Penneys ad or circular delivered by the Times on Thursday. I just go online and look for the latest sales, or get an email if I am on their list. I have a Vons card and load coupons electronically. I still get Vons ads in my mailbox, but have not even looked at them for years.
The newspaper as an ad delivery system is largely obsolete.
Miss Bianca
@dollared:
Ooh, you’re gonna take that personally? Let me counter then that “shit like yours” – where you refuse even to aknowledge the possibility that there might be something more to a critique than what appears at face value – is how you run the risk of your “substantive issues” getting dismissed as BS by others. Others who have already pointed out to you that there’s this little thing called “nuance” when it comes to analyzing why particular people might take stands you don’t like, on things you find offensive, and why particular people might get criticized more harshly for some offenses than some others do. Sexism, anti-Semitism, lots of “isms” – including Socialism, for all love! – play their parts in people’s reactions to things. How hard do you *really* have to work, mentally, to say, “wow, point taken” rather than doubling down?
@SFAW: oh, great, another one.
dollared
@Miss Bianca: Right. Carry on with your righteous, non substantive rage against your fellow Democrats.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne:
You can hear what you want to hear, I guess. Plastic surgery? WTF are you talking about? Granted, I don’t pore over the Intertoobz looking for DWS stories, but I haven’t seen anything like that discussed here. Maybe I should get out more? And most of the slams here have been on her (lack of) competence, not her hair, not her voice.
I’m sure there are plenty of sites where misogyny rules, also (veiled) anti-Semitism, racism, and so forth. And Hillary has to deal with a ten-fold share of that shit. But, sometimes, calling someone incompetent does not mean it’s a misogynistic comment.
SFAW
@Miss Bianca:
“Another one” of what? Because I think DWS is incompetent as DNC chair? As you kids used to say: get real.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
You’re compressing the timeline in a way that isn’t very informative, and you’re kind of missing the point if you think my department store example is the only example of the monopsony problem in retail that drastically affected newspaper ad revenues. It’s an example of a trend that cut across all of retail, not something that was reserved to department stores.
Miss Bianca
@dollared: Say, do you spend a lot of time telling POC how wrong-headed and spoil-sport-ery it is of them to see racist attitudes somewhere that you don’t, and tell them that they must be wrong cuz *you* don’t see it or think it’s important? If so, you must be a lot of fun at parties.
@SFAW:
Another one who, when faced with the awful spectre of someone pointing out that maybe, just *maybe*, there’s a whiff of sexism in the way a woman gets criticized, goes, “oh, hor hor” and says something dismissive like “get real”.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, I am compressing things, but I clearly pointed out that it was much more than department stores.
But the bald summary is correct. Classified Ad revenues displaced all of Display sales as the moneymaker for the LA Times and other newspapers, and this began in the 70s.
I can say this for a fact because I was there. I know all the people involved, the decisions that were made and the reactions to what was happening.
The monopsony problem is insufficient and largely incorrect in explaining what happened to the newspaper industry.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Again, the fact that you keep reducing it to “department stores” as opposed to “retail advertising” says to me that you’re missing the overall point about the effects of monopsony. But since you’ve become focused on that one tiny tree instead of the forest I’m trying to point out to you, I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead. Good day.
Robert Sneddon
@SFAW: DWS is in charge of the Democratic Party election drive which is on course to deliver a landslide Presidential win, an almost-certain turnover of the Senate back into Democratic control and maybe, just maybe flip the House in November. That makes her “incompetent”? Mercy me.
She’s not a progressive Independent-turned-Democrat-for-convenience-sake, sure, she’s been an active member of the Democratic Party for decades, working to improve the party’s vote and representation in Congress. I don’t know who you might put in her place to do better but I’m sure you have an opinion. A Democrat of long standing would be a good start so not Jill Stein or Ralph Nader. So who?
chopper
@Feathers:
what, the people calling her a “whore” are giving off a sexism vibe? the hell you say.
catclub
@Robert Sneddon: After 2010, the GOP threw out the black guy,
Steele.
John S.
@Robert Sneddon:
So ignore her past failures in getting Democrats elected and focus only on future events that haven’t happened yet? That’s an interesting litmus test you’ve got there.
She also has stood for odious legislation like protecting payday vampires, but I suppose we should give her credit for something that hasn’t happened yet instead.
J R in WV
My family business was newspapers until the mid-1970s. The lady who made the most money in the whole operation was the lady who sold the most classified ads on commission… probably because she was senior and got into the auto dealers, who bought in pages back then.
Classified was a money machine. Display was good too, especially the double-truck (both facing pages) ads for grocery stores. All gone now. All gone now!
Newspapers are a dying breed. Those who make a point of covering local things, like boys scouts getting a promotion to Order of the Arrow, families coming home from Disney World, they may get through it OK. Rags that think they will make it big on foreign affairs, multi-national business and politics are doomed.
New Topic:
Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Isn’t she well know for supporting Republican office seekers, personal friends, in her home state? How can this be the case for the Democratic National Committee? The head of the DNC MUST be above local friendships in their politics. Is there no way to convince these “friends” to run as Democrats? How good a friend are they if they won’t work with their friend to gain office as a Democratic candidate.
Surely support from the DNC head works better for Democratic candidates? If I was running as a Republican (oh DOG I can’t believe I wrote that horror in MY comment !!! ) I wouldn’t particularly think an endorsement from a big-name Democrat would help much. Or at all…
So that’s one reason I oppose DWS as DNC chair. Plus we’ve been losing seats in every election since she’s been a big cheese. I think she looks good, no idea about plastic surgery, not familiar with her personally at all. But if she can’t help swing legislative bodies from Republican to Democratic in Florida and the rest of the US, she isn’t doing the job right.
SFAW
@Miss Bianca:
Right. And “sock puppet” is racist, or so I’ve been told.
Shorter you: *crickets*
aimai
@liberal: Yes. She is not hitler, mao, etc…Would I like to see Nancy Pelosi take her aside and tell her to cut it the fuck out? Yes I would. Would I like to see Obama tell her to knock it off? Yes I would. But going after her is not the best bang you can get for your buck in the congressional election. And that is what we are talking about.
SFAW
@Robert Sneddon:
No, DWS who presided over the last two Congressional election cycles.
Landslide? I can only hope, but it’s a long time between now and November, and Hillary hasn’t won yet. (Nor Bernie, for that matter.)
And DWS has about zero to do with Kirk, Johnson, Ayotte, and the other ones being “at risk.” (Yeah, I’m sure she pleaded with Maggie Hassan and Russ Feingold to run.) I’m also old enough that I remember what a tremendous price the Rethugs paid (in the 2014 mid-terms) for shutting down the government (so to speak) in the year before.
Mercy indeed.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
And since you deliberately misread what I said (display sales is not just department stores), I will leave it here as well.
But I have to admit that I find it fabulously humorous that you attempt to explain to me what I actually witnessed and dealt with at the Times and other newspapers. The Internets are amazing sometimes.
Oh, well. I’ll be listening to a Hamilton podcast on the way home. No disagreements with you on this.
J R in WV
Oh, yeah, that portrait of Supreme Court Justice R B Ginsburg flying the double-F-U like that is wonderful!
Is that by a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer? Or a Master of Photoshop Arts Web-Master? No matter, it’s great!
SFAW
@Robert Sneddon:
Howard Dean
Jim Messina (maybe – he might only be good at running campaigns)
Lou Gerstner (although I doubt he’s a Dem)
and that’s without putting much thought into it. (Obviously.)
Someone more in touch — Kay, for instance — with the political-organizing scene could probably come up with 10 names in short order.
terry chay
I’ve been lurking on this blog since Cole was a RWNJ.
Re: whining about Obama not endorsing DWS being primaried or RBG not stepping down earlier.
Sure, if DWS gets primaried, I won’t shed a tear and when Fat Tony keeled over, I felt a little Catholic guilt that that news made my day. But, DWS doesn't represent my district, and I don't care about the DNC whose sole job it is to be a political operation for the democrats, not a governing operation for crap I do care about. And if the Notorious RBG wants to stay as supreme court justice, well last I checked the Constitution that's her damn prerogative until the moment her heart stops beating. It does not follow that because a person pulls a D lever every 2-4 years it means she should do a political calculation with her life calling. Just because the R’s do it, doesn’t mean the D’s should model themselves after it.
What’s with all these johnny-come-lately-democrat Bernie Bros political bomb throwers? You didn’t catch the hint when Markos booted you off of GOS? Fuck you guys. You’ll not be happy until the Democratic party becomes the mirror image of the Republican party—whatever a right wingers doesn’t want, updated daily. And when that happens you’ll whine that it still isn’t pure enough just like every Trump and Cruz voter.
Look at what a cesspool that sort of hard-line stance got the Republican Party and realize that that failed strategy comes hand-in-hand with this shift-the-overton-window, reality-denying, end-justifies-means, scorched-earth tactics. Sure their 50+1, anti-tax oaths, and 24/7 electioneering calculus won elections without the support of the majority in nearly every issue, but other than getting companies to boycott entire states over their anti-gay policies, what has that accomplished?
Grow the fuck up or throw your pollution on the open comment systems on mainstream articles like all the right wingers do. You seem to love their tactics, why don’t you emulate that crap. You make me miss the days when DougJ was a right wing commenter trolling us. Tunch certainly does not approve.
Pseudonymous Bosch
@SFAW: I believe it was not the phrase “sock puppet” specifically, but the idea that Clarence Thomas was a follower of Scalia that gets thrown around so casually on our side of the aisle. As if he couldn’t be an asshole all on his own, he has to be following a white asshole. It is an infantilizing idea, and it’s not true.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2016/02/16/stupid-liberal-memes-clarence-thomas-edition/
eemom
@terry chay:
Nice. More comment, less lurk plz.
SFAW
@Pseudonymous Bosch:
Thanks for the (possible) explanation.
I could give a shit whether he’s black and Fat Nino was white: For a number of years, he voted with Scalia on just about everything — but Scalia was there first. Had Reagan nominated Thomas, and he were as forceful (so to speak) as Fat Nino, and were Scalia a GHWB-nominated Sphinx, it would have been Scalia who was the sock puppet. Thomas’s lack of questioning (during orals or whatever they’re called at SCOTUS) betrayed/betrays either a fundamentally incurious nature (shades of W), or an overarching sense of one’s own infallibility; neither trait is (for me, at least) one that speaks well of an Associate Justice who wants to be taken seriously.
And all this is without getting into his various conflicts of interest, questionable financial issues, and so forth — which, although they make him more like Scalia, in an intellectual dishonesty sense, are not germane to the whole sock puppet thing.
Or maybe just following an asshole, whoever that other asshole may be.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
RaflW
RBG: “As the Framers of the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment comprehended, representatives serve all residents, not just those eligible or registered to vote.”
And as you Republican morans don’t comprehend, Ms. BG didn’t need to say in this delightful smackdown.
planetjanet
@dedc79: Ginsburg is not selfish. Her seniority is why she wrote the majority opinion. Her seniority drives a lot of the machinery in the background. She has earned her spot and continues to earn it Every. Single. Day. Sit back and watch how it is supposed to be done.
Doug R
So it’s Ruth Beyonce Ginsburg in the black dress telling the right wingers where they can get in Formation.
mclaren
@terry chay:
Once again, not a lot of Bernie Bro political bomb throwers on this blog, nor in the Democratic party. The overrepresentation of this species on Facebook seems to have bent a lot of folks’ perspective out of shape.
mclaren
@dogwood:
Correctamundo. This is DWS’ great failing.
mclaren
@SFAW:
Possible replacements for DWS who aren’t DINO far-right trolls in disguise:
Alan Grayson
Howard Dean
Barney Frank
Elizabeth Warren
Al Gore
Bill Clinton
George Soros
Russ Feingold
Barbara Lee
Naomi Klein
Max Cleland
Bill Foster
Jerry McNerney (the latter are the only two scientists with hard-science PhDs in congress)
SFAW
@mclaren:
Interesting list, but I want someone who knows how to direct a massive organization [sic] toward a multifaceted goal (or set of goals, perhaps). Which is one of the reasons why I put in Gerstner’s name. It would be nice if that organization were a political one (thus Messina, although I don’t know if he’d be any good at focusing on more than one campaign at a time).
Doug R
@mclaren: Not that impressed with some of Grayson’s shenanigans. Barney Frank’s got a good head on his shoulders.