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I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

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T R E 4 5 O N

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You are here: Home / Organizing & Resistance / Don't Mourn, Organize / Expanding the electorate

Expanding the electorate

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Two pieces of good news today.

First in Florida:

And then in Michigan:

Open thread

Reader Interactions

179Comments

  2. 2.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    This is good news.
    More good news on the front for Pennsylvania:

    From the FTFNYT, Penn Supreme Court orders a new congressional map drawn by Feb 15.

    WASHINGTON — Pennsylvania’s congressional district map is a partisan gerrymander that “clearly, plainly and palpably” violates the state’s Constitution, the State Supreme Court said on Monday, adding to a string of court decisions striking down political maps that unduly favor one political party.

    The court banned the current map of the state’s 18 House districts from being used in this year’s primary and general elections, and ordered that a new map be submitted to the court by Feb. 15. But the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature, which approved the current map in 2011, has already said it would try to overturn such a decision in federal court. That would set up another legal battle over gerrymanders in a year already filled with them.

    But an appeal to the federal courts would very likely fail, election experts said, because decisions based solely on interpretations of state law — as this one appears to be — are generally beyond the reach of federal judges.

    For the same reason, the state court’s decision has no direct bearing on a string of challenges to partisan gerrymanders that are already moving through the federal court system. Earlier this month, in fact, a divided panel of three federal judges left intact the same Pennsylvania House map that the state court threw out on Monday.

    If the state court ruling stands and the map is redrawn, the consequences could be serious for Republicans, who are already battling national political headwinds in their effort to maintain control of the House in the midterm elections this fall.

    Pennsylvania is a swing state that has backed governors, senators and presidential candidates from both political parties in the last two election cycles. But as the state’s map is now drawn, Republicans control 13 of the state’s 18 House seats. Outside experts say that a nonpartisan district map could move as many as three of those seats over to the Democratic column.

    The Pennsylvania ruling could also add some momentum to a clear movement in lower federal courts toward reining in the most severe partisan gerrymanders. Three-judge federal panels have already invalidated the district maps for the Wisconsin State Assembly and North Carolina’s congressional map, saying they are unconstitutionally tilted toward one party — in both cases, the Republicans. Each panel’s ruling broke new ground.

    The United States Supreme Court has stayed those decisions while it considers the Wisconsin case, and one from Maryland challenging a congressional map drawn by Democrats that eliminated a longtime Republican district.

  4. 4.

    David Rickard

    Expand the electorate? That’s sheer lunacy! Next you’ll be suggesting that tax rates could go up!

  6. 6.

    germy

    I blame Obama:

    Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Representative Patrick Meehan, a Republican from Pennsylvania, used taxpayer money to settle a sexual-misconduct case with a former aide last year. But in a Tuesday interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Meehan denied the harassment allegations — though he did say that he saw the (much-younger) former aide as a “soul mate.”

    According to the Times, Meehan, who is married, professed romantic interest in an aide who was decades younger than him. When she didn’t reciprocate and started dating someone else, the congressman allegedly became hostile, prompting her to file an official complaint, begin working from home, and eventually leave her job. She later reportedly reached a confidential settlement with Meehan’s office, which used thousands of dollars from his congressional office fund.

    Speaking with the Inquirer, Meehan explained that he had “developed an affection” for the aide “in a way in which I was struggling to make sure that I would never put that into our professional relationship.” Meehan also said he felt “bad” about lashing out in his office when he found out about the woman’s relationship — and blamed it on feeling pressure to get enough votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

  10. 10.

    debbie

    A citizens’ group is working to get an issue on the November ballot in Ohio to force correction of the disgraceful gerrymandering. The State Legislature has decided to take them seriously and is rushing an amendment onto the spring ballot (citizens’ proposals can only be on fall ballots). I hope there are enough smart people in this state who will see through the Legislature’s pathetic move.

  13. 13.

    WaterGirl

    It’s wrong that you can run for senate and the house (or stay in office if already elected) if you have been convicted of a crime but you cannot vote in an election. That makes no sense.

  16. 16.

    Mary G

    I’m still impressed with Voters, Not Politicians, who used volunteers only to gather hundreds of thousands of signatures to amend the Michigan state constitution to allow an independent board to set districts, rather than allowing the legislature to gerrymander them. I just checked the MI secretary of state’s website, and it’s on there, despite Republican efforts to disqualify it.

  19. 19.

    Annie

    Re expanding the electorate: someone around here has mentioned an organization that helps people comply with voter registration requirements (helping with IDs, etc). Anyone remember the name of this outfit? It’s hugely important to challenge disenfranchisement, but while we’re doing that I think we should also help people comply with whatever the regs are.

  25. 25.

    Kay

    Ballot initiatives are very satisfying for volunteers. Everyone should work on one in their lifetime. There’s so much clarity, because it’s just The Issue. None of that messy, “imperfect human being” candidate stuff. There’s stages too- there’s the first “victory” when you get it on the ballot and then the next, when you win.

  29. 29.

    lamh36

    Evening BJ…I”m taking a breather from LA trip planning…to catch up on the interwebs, too busy a day at work to be able to check the net like I usually do on break.

    I did check it a bit this morning though, and I’m still as geeked out about the news I heard this morning as I was when I read it in this…morning. In fact, I was so shocked, I actually out loud said “well I’ll be damned” in the line at the coffee shop, and got a weird look or too…lol.

    The news that geeked me out: I’ll be damned!!! Wolverine got nominated for an Oscar!!!!

    Logan…was really good and both Jackman, but especially Patrick Stewart gave EXCELLENT performances…that deserve more recognition that they got (ya konw cause it’s a comicbook movie, after all…eyeroll).

    So yep…I geeked out…lol

    The other big news was the number of nominees this year from people of color, including Jordan Peele for all the Get Out noms, and for Mary J Blige…Hip Hop R&B Royalty!!!

    Now back to checking the interwebs…see ya on the flip side

  30. 30.

    Major Major Major Major

    Have we talked about this article?

    Take the Win, Democrats
    The left has gotten so used to being sold out and betrayed that it can’t tell when it’s winning.

    Democrats are feckless. When it counts, they always fold. After all, they’re more beholden to donors and lobbyists than they are to their base.

    This narrative is so old, so straightforward, and so pleasingly infuriating that it just rolls off the tongue. So when Democrats in Congress struck a compromise with Republicans to reopen the government late on Monday, the despairing headlines immediately took over every left-of-center publication in the country.

    […]It is tempting to think that passionate partisans are obsessed with winning at any price. But often, the truth is a little more complicated: Though they think of themselves as wanting to win, they actually crave the righteous anger that comes with losing. Convinced that they have been betrayed too many times to count, they start to take as much pleasure in finding an excuse to hate on their traitorous leaders as they do in actually accomplishing their stated goals.

    This tendency has long been a dominant feature of the conservative movement[…] The left should be very careful not to fall in the same trap.

  33. 33.

    tobie

    Kudos to all the people who organized the campaign and collected signatures for these ballot measures. Well done.

    @Annie: League of Women Voters has been registering voters across the country for a long time. They’ve got field offices in all 50 states.

  36. 36.

    Marcopolo

    Hey fellow jackals, since this is a thread on expanding the vote let me challenge everyone here (who lives in the US) to go out and register five (5) folks to vote this year ahead of the midterms. The stated goal of Sat/Sun’s March to the Polls was to register 1M new voters in 2018. The more folks pitching in the faster we get there.

    And, yes, I am a politinerd but my goal this year is 100 registrations.

    Lots of excellent signs & news out there—let’s add to it!

  37. 37.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Baud: We won the round, though, on policy (although the polling shows the Dems taking a large portion of the blame). People are acting like it’s the whole game. Charitably, perhaps many don’t know better, but the professional commentators riling them up sure do.

    @dmsilev: Oh noes!

  39. 39.

    Mary G

    I know it’s the FTFNYT, but there is a fantastic piece by Tina Rosenberg there today about all the organizations in different states working on this, headlined “Putting the Voters in Charge of Fair Voting.” It mainly focuses on Voters Not Politicians, which sprang from one woman’s Facebook post having 70 people show up to the local library, into a giant operation. Here’s an example:

    Rebecca Lenk, a financial analyst who lives outside Detroit, had volunteered before — but only at her church and PTA.

    “I was terrified to talk to people,” she said. “My husband said: ‘What do you think they’re going to do? Yell at you?’”

    “Yes,” she said. “I’ll be crying on the street.”

    But people were kind and receptive, she said. It helped to wear her “Hi, I’m a volunteer” button. She started carrying a petition with her all the time, just in case. She signed up her morning aerobics group.

    I am so proud that so many women are taking things into their own hands. Men, too, but I think the media is really missing how pissed off and determined to fight so many of us are.

  40. 40.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Baud: Just give them all a participation trophy, a slice of pizza, a cupcake, three game tokens, and call it a day.

  42. 42.

    Mary G

    @Mary G: I forgot the link. but here is another story in a different state from the piece in my comment at 69:

    Rose Reeder’s story is proof. She is 70, a retired teacher. She has long been active in liberal causes, but she lives in rural Clinton County in central Pennsylvania, which voted 65 percent for President Trump.

    After hearing a speaker on gerrymandering at the library, Reeder called the board of county commissioners and asked to give a presentation at the commissioners’ monthly meeting.

    She hadn’t known much about the issue, but she read and prepared herself. She bought foam board at the dollar store and made eight posters. “I prepared visuals — just as if I was back in the classroom,” she said.

    On March 20, the commissioners — two Republicans and a Democrat — listened carefully to Reeder. At the next meeting, they voted unanimously to oppose gerrymandering and endorse an independent commission to draw district lines.

    That energized her. Clinton County has 29 municipalities. She decided to try to persuade all of them to take a similar position.

    The meetings were always at night, some of them two hours away, over gravel roads. “The hardest part was finding some of these places,” she said. She went with her husband, Dan, and often with a friend, Joan Heller, who ended up doing seven presentations herself. “I’d go in, and they were looking tired and thinking ‘I hope she hurries up,’ ” she said. “As I presented, I could see them sitting a little straighter, more attentive. I could see that they changed their attitude.”

    She had to visit three of the municipalities twice to convince them. But on Dec. 7, Reeder and the county commissioners presented 30 resolutions on the courthouse steps. All 30 governing bodies in a very red county were asking Pennsylvania’s Legislature to pass a fair redistricting law.

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    @dmsilev:

    Sad news: R.I.P. Ursula LeGuin.

    Also, RIP Hugh Masekela

    JOHANNESBURG – Jazz legend Hugh Masekela is being remembered for his immense contribution to the arts and his activism against the apartheid regime.

    Apart from a music career that lasted over five decades, he was also exiled after speaking out against the apartheid government and only returned to South Africa in 1990.

    His family confirmed his passing on Tuesday at age 78.

    Parliament has on Tuesday afternoon hailed Masekela as a national treasure.

  45. 45.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    How many of these voting rights cases will go to the Supreme Court ?

    Sen. Lamar Alexander‏Verified account @ SenAlexander
    I enjoyed having dinner tonight at the home of Senator John Cornyn and his wife Sandy with our newest Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, Transportation Secretary Chao and a few of my other Senate colleagues to talk about important issues facing our country.

    Neil Gorsuch, Mrs McTurtle and… a few other Senate colleagues.

    Three branches, one party and no problem at all!

  47. 47.

    ruemara

    @Mary G: YES!! Git ’em, Rose! Love it! Thanks for bringing that story to our attention, Mary.

    I’ve spent all day on a much needed news break, enjoying some back to back live Beck concerts. I like some of his songs, but I have to admit, I enjoy his live sounds way more. Also, I’m thinking of buying tickets to Buddy Guy’s performance in Sac. He’s the housemate’s fave bluesman (that’s alive) and I want to surprise him.

  48. 48.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mary G:

    I am so proud that so many women are taking things into their own hands. Men, too, but I think the media is really missing how pissed off and determined to fight so many of us are.

    Exactly. You’d get a dozen old white idiots on hover rounds and homemade Revolutionary War cosplay, almost all of them guys, and the news media were tripping over themselves to declare a revolutionary wave remaking America was loose upon the land.

    5 million plus women show up to march a year after 3 million plus did, as well as having women organize and register people to vote and run for office up and down ballots all across the country and it’s “look at the women showing up to demonstrate”. I may be wrong, but my professional assessment of this as a non violent revolutionary movement is that it is going to take a lot of people by surprise come November. There are a lot of headwinds, some of them are woven into the system at all levels, but we’re watching something we’ve not seen before. Not even in the fights for suffrage or temperance (Ladies: you all did great work on the former, not sure what you were really thinking on the latter) were like this.

  49. 49.

    Marcopolo

    @Adam L Silverman: Agoraphobics can set up a table inside somewhere. Anti-socials—I think if you participate at BJ you could still be misanthropic but probably not anti-social.

  52. 52.

    Roger Moore

    @Kay:
    I understand why people like ballot initiatives, but I think they’re a terrible way to legislate. They tend to be written by a handful of people, often people with gigantic axes to grind, so there’s none of the normal give and take of legislating. The take-it-or-leave-it nature of the initiatives means the authors think they can get away with including unpopular things they want together with something good they think the public will want, and there’s no way of writing the bad parts out.

    Don’t get me wrong. There are some wonderful things that can be achieved by going around the legislature. I don’t think California ever could have gotten an independent commission for our redistricting without it. But going around the legislature is something that should be limited to special circumstances rather than an ordinary way of doing things.

  53. 53.

    Marcopolo

    @dmsilev: That is sad news. I have my weekly old friends get together tonight. I’ll make a toast & drink a beer to all the joy & thought her fiction & non-fiction has inspired in me since I first discovered her reading The Dispossessed so so long ago.

  56. 56.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Roger Moore:

    Don’t get me wrong. There are some wonderful things that can be achieved by going around the legislature. I don’t think California ever could have gotten an independent commission for our redistricting without it. But going around the legislature is something that should be limited to special circumstances rather than an ordinary way of doing things.

    Yeahhhh, California’s not the best example of the good that can be done by ballot initiatives (as I know you know ;)

  57. 57.

    Brachiator

    @Roger Moore:

    I don’t think California ever could have gotten an independent commission for our redistricting without it. But going around the legislature is something that should be limited to special circumstances rather than an ordinary way of doing things.

    Yeah, I agree. And the ballot initiative process has been abused here. I love it when two similar measures are put on the ballot and set up so that voting for one automatically kills the other. Or ballot initiatives so confusing that a No means Yes, etc.

    But the ballot initiative process was created as an ultimate citizen solution to a corrupt or “do nothing” legislature.

  59. 59.

    Baud

    I also can’t get used to MSNBC hosts interviewing other MSNBC hosts about the news on each other’s shows.

  60. 60.

    Mary G

    @Adam L Silverman: Yes, I just wrote a comment on Douthat and Frum’s discussion of whether Twitler is an authoritarian or a clown (I know, I don’t usually read that dreck, what the hell was I thinking?) The same comparision came to me: ho hum, women waving signs in pink hats again, now let’s talk about something else, versus endless pictures of that idiot in the tricorn and breathless coverage of tea party events that drew many fewer people, is infuriating.

    Douthat issued this parting shot:

    Well, then let’s discuss again under the spiritual-but-not-religious theocracy of Her Most Holy Oprahness.

    I hope Tom Levenson has the time to take him back of the woodshed, but I defended Oprah. (For Mnem: He refused to apologize, he disparaged her legacy.) What a dick. Oprah has affected people’s lives for the better a trillion times more than Douthat has.

  61. 61.

    BlueDWarrior

    @Adam L Silverman: While I do think the shut-down fight could have gone better messaging wise so far, I think it would be a mistake for too many organizers to just immediately fall back to the old saw about “DC Democrats selling activists out”. There is precious little you can do to change the fact Dems are a Congressional minority and can’t set the legislative table, except what they are doing right this moment.

    So while I don’t blame anyone for being angry, let that further fuel the movement rather than cause it to derail into the same old “activist vs. insider” fight we’ve had in the party since the party was a party.

  62. 62.

    Adam L Silverman

    @zhena gogolia: I may be wrong, but there is something happening that is being under reported. We talk about it here. It is covered on social media some. Some women journalists like Joy Ann Reid and Rebecca Traister and Michelle Goldberg and others are covering it, but because this is a movement led by women primarily of women (amazingly, most revolutions also involve a lot of leading by women, even if they’re not doing the fighting). And a lot of the women are women of color. The US news media, the political media, and most politicians are socialized to not pay attention to this type of thing.

  65. 65.

    joel hanes

    @dmsilev:

    Ursula K. LeGuin

    The wisest and most humane writer of SF, ever.

    It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end

    Her body of work will endure.
    If you haven’t read The Dispossessed or The Telling, do so now; then read The Left Hand Of Darkness

  66. 66.

    patrick II

    @Mary G:

    I would love to see those posterboards. Thirty for thirty is serious business., I wonder if she could do a youtube presentation?

  67. 67.

    chris

    We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Ursula LeGuin RIP

    Hopes and dreams…

  68. 68.

    Patricia Kayden

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:

    But an appeal to the federal courts would very likely fail, election experts said, because decisions based solely on interpretations of state law — as this one appears to be — are generally beyond the reach of federal judges.

    Good. Then SCOTUS can’t stay this decision like it’s doing in other states.

  69. 69.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mary G: I’m just concerned about Surgeon General Oz, Secretary of HHS McGraw, and Secretary of the Treasury Orman.

  70. 70.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The US news media, the political media, and most politicians are socialized to not pay attention to this type of thing.

    Yep. And that’s why they will not see what’s coming until it happens.

  73. 73.

    divF

    @dmsilev: I just saw that. Her writing has been a companion for me for nearly half a century, reading and re-reading.

    ETA: She has also been a neighbor, in a sense. I drive past her childhood home regularly, and (I think) my office overlooks her old grade school.

  74. 74.

    dmsilev

    @Marcopolo: I came to her work first through A Wizard of Earthsea. I was, I dunno, 13 or so. I tried The Dispossessed soon after and bounced off it; probably too young to appreciate it. Later in life, I read a bunch of her other works and was better able to appreciate them.

  77. 77.

    Mary G

    @dmsilev: This quote of hers is life in a nutshell:

    “There’s a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.”

    ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

  81. 81.

    Lapassionara

    @Baud: that’s a money saving feature of their programming. Be happy, at least they are not talking to Kellyanne Conway

  82. 82.

    BlueDWarrior

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Because a lot of people are conditioned to never blame Congressional Republicans when bad things happens legislatively. Everything is either the fault of the President [regardless of party] or the Democrats in Congress.

    Now how this has happened is anyone’s guess, but ever since Gingrich took the House in ’94, it’s been one of those screwed up dynamics that seem to take hold every electoral cycle.

  84. 84.

    dmsilev

    @Mary G:

    At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

    (Link, if by chance you’ve never read it)

  85. 85.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mary G:

    They turned me on to neti pots.

    The first 8 ball is always free. Once you’re hooked and come back, then they start charging.

  87. 87.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Marcopolo: Great suggestion along with donating to organizations who work to address voter suppression tactics such as the ACLU. Can’t stand when we wait until close to the election to bring those up and am glad to see so many organizations fighting that issue now.

  91. 91.

    Kelly

    It seems that prisons are often located where the non-voting prisoners can bump up the population of red districts. It’d be kinda sweet if we passed an inalienable right to vote that upset that. I think it’s a good idea if prisoners voted. It would help keep them part of the community. The only felon I know personally is a nephew. When he was convicted my sister committed to having someone there at every visiting day. Her husband and her went about 90% of the time. I went three times. One person said they’d go and didn’t show up and is dead to us all. He’s been a good citizen ever since he got out. Having people serve their time in big, rough places far from home is a recipe for recidivism.

  92. 92.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Baud:

    while the game is still being played.

    The crucial point, to me. We won that round precisely because the game is still being played, so we got CHIP essentially for nothing. February 8th is not far away, and McConnell is entering this round with a black eye and a bloody lip.

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The US news media, the political media, and most politicians are socialized to not pay attention to this type of thing.

    I think ‘socialized’ is a key word, here. While some no doubt have ulterior motives, I think we’ve seen proof lately that the national news is a misogynistic culture where women are considered inferior. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them think the marches this year were tiny, because that’s the way they assume the world works.

  95. 95.

    Kathleen

    @debbie: That is good news. Voters passed Issue 1 which changed process for how state legislative districts are drawn. I believe the new process for that will be effective by 2020. LIke many other states, voters in Ohio cast more votes for Democrats than Republicans but still Dems captured very few seats. Now the state is looking at redrawing Congressional districts. Oh to be rid of Congressman Combover (Steve Chabot). Here’s a little more background on both initiatives (published prior to the signature campaign):

    http://www.cantonrep.com/news/20170530/proponents-of-redistricting-in-ohio-get-green-light-to-circulate-petitions

  96. 96.

    Roger Moore

    @Brachiator:
    What I find particularly bad about the ballot initiative system is the way that it constantly erodes the authority of the legislature. For what I accept as good an necessary reasons, passing a ballot initiative prevents the legislature from changing whatever a ballot initiative touched on. But that has the effect of putting more an more of the law off limits to the legislature, at least without requiring a rubber stamp from the electorate even for minor technical fixes. The net effect is to make ordinary legislating harder and harder each time a ballot initiative is passed and thus to make ballot measures more and more necessary.

    It reminds me of something Fred Brooks said about fixing bugs in software. He said that bug fixes are pro-entropic, in that they tend to make the code they’re fixing more and more disorderly. The longer you stick with a codebase, the more and more chaotic it gets, and the more likely each bug fix is to introduce a new bug, until finally each patch averages introducing more bugs than it fixes, at which point you need to throw the whole thing away and start over*. Ballot initiatives do something like that. They’re constantly breaking down the coherence of the constitution and legal code. At some point, the whole edifice is going to be so heavily patched that the legislature won’t be allowed to do anything, and we’ll have to throw the whole thing out and start over with a new constitution.

    *I understand that this was written before refactoring was a thing, but that isn’t really relevant to the analogy, since ballot initiatives also prevent the equivalent of refactoring.

  97. 97.

    frosty

    @geg6:

    So psyched about this. This is about the PA Constitution, so SCOTUS has nothing to say about interpreting it. It’s up to the PASC. Which just so happens to be majority Dem

    I’m psyched too. It was unanimous Dem until the last election when 1 Repub won. We have to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

  100. 100.

    frosty

    @Baud: Hmm. How does Baud! feel about driven men and lamenting women? That could be a factor to swing the decision.

  104. 104.

    frosty

    @Mary G:

    All 30 governing bodies in a very red county were asking Pennsylvania’s Legislature to pass a fair redistricting law.

    Wow!

  108. 108.

    Mary G

    @dmsilev: : I like her refusal to blurb an anthology with all male writers:

    in 1987, Ursula K. Le Guin was asked to write a blurb for a science fiction anthology showcasing established & up-and-coming writers alike — yet there were no stories by women. this was Le Guin's response (sourced from Shaun Usher's Letters of Note) pic.twitter.com/swIBFJKJup— priscilla page (@BBW_BFF) January 23, 2018

  109. 109.

    debbie

    @Kathleen:

    I love how Rosenberger “needs more information.” Suddenly, the expert legislator is suddenly unaware of the legislative process. Bullshit.

  113. 113.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Justin Trudeau @ JustinTrudeau
    I’ve spoken with Kentucky’s GovMattBevin to offer condolences on behalf of Canadians for today’s shooting in Benton. Our hearts go out to Kentuckians, and to all those affected by this tragedy.

    Shannon Watts @ shannonrwatts
    Zero school shootings in Canada so far this year. Ten in America.
    Meanwhile, our own President hasn’t mentioned the shooting that killed two and injured 17 Americans at a Kentucky high school.

    as of twelve minutes ago

  116. 116.

    Kelly

    @Roger Moore: Living in Oregon, second state to adopt the ballot initiative my discomfort is with how they are often too simple minded to work well in the real world. The property tax limits that were so popular in my youth come to mind. This Florida initiative however seems like a good end run around a fierce gerrymander

  123. 123.

    Ken

    @Baud: Is Genghis Baud! the one that plants his throne in the middle of the Mall on a pyramid of the heads of his Congressional opponents while the Reflecting Pond runs red with blood? If so, please send me your newsletter.

  124. 124.

    marcopolo

    @dmsilev: Back from eating dinner. I started with the Dispossessed, the the Left Hand of Darkness, then the Earthsea Trilogy (now quartet IIRC). Earthsea was fun and a great change of pace from Narnia & Middle Earth but it was those first two books that really gave me shit to think about. I will definitely miss her voice.

  127. 127.

    Kathleen

    @Adam L Silverman: I know Jerry Springer bashing is popular, but when he was an anchor at WLWT in Cincinnati he delivered nightly commentary , one of which I’ve never forgotten. The topic was the surprising passage of the Cincinnati School Levy in the early 90’s, which had failed many times and which conventional wisdom deemed DOA in the latest election. Springer said that the untold story was how the African American community, rallied by the churches, engaged the community, got voters to the polls and succeeded in passing the levy. He went on to say that that story was never reported in the local media and that was because media did not report on African American neighborhoods. I cannot imagine hearing anything like that in today’s media.

  129. 129.

    marcopolo

    @Adam L Silverman: Three women are the leadership of my Indivisible St Louis group. Two of them were fairly non-politically involved prior to this. One just divorced her husband because “he didn’t get it” (which I think meant he was not supportive of the time, effort and money she is putting into the effort). They are knocking it out of the park. Just sayin’.

  130. 130.

    Sab

    @dmsilev: OMG! I was just thinking lsst night about who my favorite writers ate, and she has always come nearthe top of my list,up thete with Faulkner and Shakespeare.I first came to her writing through “Wizard of Earthsea”, whichzzI very much love, but is still mostly but after I read “Left Hand of Darkness” I decided that if I was a writer and I wrote that, zI would just stop. Could not be better.

  133. 133.

    B.B.A.

    In the sort of pathetic half-step I’ve come to expect from my esteemed governor, Andrew Cuomo has proposed “automatic voter registration” for this year’s New York State budget. Only digging into the details do I find that “automatic” means switching from having the DMV form say “check this box to register” to having it say “check this box if you don’t want to register.” In a state with a sizeable population of non-drivers, I don’t expect this to make much of a dent in registration rates. How about we register everyone who files a state tax return, or signs up for welfare? If it’s good enough for jury duty it should be good enough for voting.

    Not to mention this will probably make a lot of non-citizens accidentally commit deportable felonies when they get their drivers’ licenses.

    Okay, end of rage at local DINO.

  134. 134.

    Robert Sneddon

    @chris: Betty Windsor is the ultimate authority in Canada but she has no power, that’s what makes it work. It’s the same in the UK too, of course. She’s a pivot, the nation’s government and institutions change around her as a fixed point but fixed she must remain.

  135. 135.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @dmsilev:

    Oh, that really saddens me. On Sunday, while I was waiting in line at the local upscale cinema to see the Bolshoi Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet, I found myself behind a mother and young daughter who were both totally grooving on the poster for the upcoming Wrinkle in Time film. Although I was well into adulthood by the time the book came out, I loved it and will probably go see the movie.

    It is so nice to know that Ursula LeGuin’s great imagination transcends the generations. Rest peacefully among the stars, Ms LeG!

  140. 140.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Shortly after President Trump fired his FBI director in May, he summoned to the Oval Office the bureau’s acting director for a get-to-know-you meeting.
    The two men exchanged pleasantries, but before long, Trump, according to several current and former U.S. officials, asked Andrew McCabe a pointed question: Whom did he vote for in the 2016 election?
    McCabe said he didn’t vote, according to the officials, who like others interviewed for this article requested anonymity to speak candidly about a sensitive matter.

    easy for me to say, I acknowledge, but isn’t “I’d rather not answer a question I consider inappropriate” the better answer?

    ETA: Time for Dems to start making noise about the interview being recorded. Clinton’s was, IIRC, and released almost in real time, no? Anybody remember better than I?

  144. 144.

    Fair Economist

    I shall miss LeGuin. I loved her writing, and loved her quotes too, as exemplified by the one Mary G cited. A few years ago I heard a radio interview with her on her (I guess) last book and on the issues of aging. She was just beautifully well-spoken and insightful, even at 85. She must have been a delight to those who knew her.

  146. 146.

    Yarrow

    @Baud: I guess he could have voted for candidates or initiatives down the ballot and not for President and that wouldn’t be obvious.

    In either case, it’s inappropriate for Trump to ask him that question. Smacks of a loyalty test.

  147. 147.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    I wrote this about Le Guin for another forum; may as well repost here. (Lightly edited to remove a response to another poster, which isn’t particularly relevant out of context.)

    Ah, for fuck’s sake. She’d been my favourite living author. If I were in a more coherent frame of mind, I’d write a much longer tribute, but… well, I’ll try to collect some observations about a few selected works. I don’t know how comprehensible or well organised this will end up being, but hopefully it’ll explain at least some of what made her so unique.

    First of all, her novels are almost unique among science-fiction and fantasy novels in that violence rarely ever appears, and when it does, it rarely if ever solves anything. Her novels also rarely have outright villains. There are occasionally political forces that are depicted as malign influences – neither of Urras’ dominant political entities is depicted particularly favourably, but the people living on Urras are mostly just trying to get by as best they can. Similarly, there are a few characters who act as antagonists in The Left Hand of Darkness, but in most cases, it’s not out of malice; it’s merely out of a genuine difference of opinion.

    That seems almost quaint these days, but at the same time, I’d say it’s an entirely necessary counterbalance to the cynicism of the modern age. An awful lot of modern science fiction is largely about why humanity sucks. Le Guin instead writes in the venerable tradition of Star Trek and other utopian science fiction: it’s about how humanity can do better.

    The Dispossessed is, quite honestly, the single greatest work of utopian science fiction I’ve ever read. The expected literary qualities are major contributing factors – characterisation, plotting, world-building, prose – but what puts it above all the others is, simply, its realism. It’s a vision of how humanity can do much better, but it doesn’t pretend that we can ever be perfect. Anarres is, overall, a vast improvement on modern human society, but the novel doesn’t pretend that any society will ever be perfect. Violence, sexism, and various other social ills are, for all practical purposes, absent, but while the society purports to be anarchist, offering perfect freedom and equality for all who live there, as the novel progresses it becomes apparent that Anarres has nonetheless developed a de facto government that restricts dissenters’ freedom in meaningful ways. And yet, when contrasted with the dominant political entities of Urras (which are not at all subtly veiled analogues of the United States and the Soviet Union) – and, of course, with our own world – it still is unquestionably a utopia.

    Her other indispensable novel-length contribution to the genre, to my mind, is The Left Hand of Darkness, which, in addition to being a superb artistic creation on every conceivable level, also serves as a book-length attack on preconceived notions of gender. Society still hasn’t caught up. Popular culture still has at best minimal awareness of the existence of non-binary gender identities. The society depicted in Left Hand consists entirely of non-binary gender identities. It’s a superb conceit for a novel: the adults of the otherwise humanoid species in the novel’s setting are androgynous for three weeks out of the month, and for the fourth (referred to as kemmer, which also gives them an extreme urge to copulate), they’re either male or female – and each individual can be either one in any given month. Much of the novel is an examination of how radically different this (alongside the extreme austerity of its climate) makes their culture from any existing human culture, and as a result, it’s one of the few novels I’ve read where the aliens actually do come across as genuinely alien. The novel also depicts substantial influence from Taoism (Le Guin was one of the most notable Western Taoists, and even produced her own edition of the Tao te Ching, though she didn’t consider it a translation).

    She has probably dozens of other noteworthy works, and I must confess to having read to far too few of them. Earthsea is also justifiably considered a classic (though I’ll cop to not having read this series in its entirety yet, either), but the other work I want to discuss is her short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, which is one of three science fiction stories I can think of off the top of my head that is absolutely perfect (the other two are “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury and “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut).

    I’m going to provide a spoiler warning here, but if you haven’t read it, it’s on the Internet here (though unfortunately, with occasional typos), and you should really just go read it now. It won’t take long; probably five minutes. Moreover, the twist of the story is by now so well known that it probably doesn’t qualify as a spoiler any more than Rosebud in Citizen Kane does.

    Anyhow, the idea behind the story is that the titular setting, Omelas, is seemingly perfect; everyone is happy, no one wants for anything, and there is essentially no conflict. But it carries with it a terrible secret: in order to maintain this state of affairs, it requires a child to be kept in horrifying misery. The title refers to the people who discover this and just… walk away.

    The story doesn’t examine what happens to them, or where they go. And the narrator directly admonishes the reader for believing it’s impossible for a seemingly perfect society not to have a dark secret. Some of the most profound lines I’ve ever read in literature are found in this story to this effect:

    The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.

    The story continues in this vein for some time before coming to the city’s dark secret. I’d held off describing one of the finest features of Le Guin’s work thus far, which is her prose. She is one of the finest writers of prose of the twentieth century, alongside Pynchon, Joyce, and perhaps De Lillo. Besides those three, I can’t think of anyone else I’ve read whom I’d place in her calibre. There are certainly plenty of others, with Orwell the standout example, who were extremely skilled with prose, but Le Guin was one of the few authors who genuinely made prose sing – who, essentially, turned it into poetry. We see this above and throughout all her greatest works.

    “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” doesn’t answer all the questions it raises – arguably, it leaves most unanswered. Beyond the obvious ones – where are the people of the title going? What happens to them? – there are more philosophical ones: Are they admirable, or are they cowards? Does their act of departing the city relieve them of complicity in child abuse, or are they simply turning their eyes in a different fashion? It’s possible that they are physically unable to help the child in some fashion, but the narration doesn’t specify either way. The story has applicability to phenomena like the bystander effect and labour abuses, and this, of course, is one of its many beauties. And the story is also a direct attack on our cynicism, and this, too, is one of its many beauties. But I cannot hope to speak to them all.

    While Earthsea is justifiably also considered a classic, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed are probably her most revolutionary book-length works, and are likely to be the cornerstone of her legacy. I must also confess that it’s long been one of my dreams to see both adapted to the screen. I haven’t abandoned that dream, but it’s rather disappointing to know now that she won’t live to see them.

    There was probably no one else like her in literature. Her works were ground-breaking in far more ways than I could have hoped to capture in the above text; while other authors now follow in her footsteps, there are, frankly, far too few of them, and I doubt any of them will ever replicate her strengths exactly. An irreplaceable loss.

    It might also be worth providing a link to give her the final words – this interview with her from just last month proves she maintained as sharp a mind as ever right up to the end.

  149. 149.

    Adria McDowell

    I don’t know if it’s been posted here at BJ, but the folks at LGM had a post about this, and this kinda shit just pisses me off.

    https://www.freep.com/story/sports/college/michigan-state/spartans/2018/01/23/larry-nassar-scandal-joe-ferguson/1057931001/

    Remember, kids, D1 football and basketball are faaaaaar more important than caring about some gymnastics chicks being sexually assaulted. Gymnastics isn’t a real sport- just like women aren’t real humans.

  150. 150.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Kathleen: You won’t. Same reason that Lacy Peterson’s murder got a lot of coverage, yet the pregnant Hispanic woman of Afro-Caribbean descent who was snatched off the street in San Francisco proper, not the burbs, reportedly by someone in a light colored van (what was initially reported as being seen lingering in the neighborhood of Peterson’s house), and whose headless body washed up on the shore of San Francisco bay and was determined by tidal patterns to have gone into the water near where Peterson’s body is supposed to have been dumped got no coverage. Until the Peterson murder. And until the woman’s mother annoyed the local media enough to cover her daughter’s disappearance and murder.

    This murder has never been solved. The most likely explanation is that a serial killer did both and has gotten away. Either to murder in other jurisdictions. Or was caught for something else and is now prevented from committing further offenses because he’s incarcerated. Or because he is dead.

    Why Peterson’s husband’s attorney’s didn’t hammer this I have no idea. But as a criminologist I can tell you that my theory of both crimes – the work of a serial killer – is plausible and troubling.

  151. 151.

    Adam L Silverman

    @marcopolo: Excellent!

    As I’ve indicated to others here several times, if they need any consulting/advising on issues pertaining to national-security, homeland security, and/or foreign policy for the candidates they’re backing, please have them contact me. It would be an honor and privilege to help out.

  152. 152.

    different-church-lady

    Open vent: we apparently now live in a world where all information passes through Facebook, people only get their news from Twitter, and nobody shops anywhere but Amazon.

    Kurt Vonnegut would find something to say about this.

  153. 153.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Marcopolo: I’m honestly amazed more of these haven’t been challenged by Jewish-American women. Judaism requires an abortion if the life/health of a mother is in jeopardy. Some of the Ultra-orthodox sects have tried to side step this and argue abortions can no longer be permitted given the Holocaust, but that’s not theology, that’s BS to suck up to politicians like the VP.

  156. 156.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Emma: I go into this in greater detail above, but I really don’t think we’re supposed to see the people who walk away as actually being significantly more admirable than the people who remain. Amongst other things, the story reads to me as a commentary on the bystander effect. On the other hand, telling us that they’re not admirable isn’t really Le Guin’s style. While she does upbraid us for our cynicism, on the whole, on the whole she seems far more inclined to depict a setting, characters, and events, and then let readers draw their own conclusions – not just in this story, but indeed in most of her work. Show, don’t tell, as it were.

    To be honest, I don’t know if I’d find the story to be as powerful as it is if its narrator began opining on what the correct way to deal with the society’s intrinsic injustice would be. That does mean that a lot of its condemnation of injustice is implicit, but at the same time, if the narrator turned it into a rant on ethics, it would ultimately read to me as a rant on ethics and not as a short story. And while the ethical dilemma it paints is significantly more complicated than the narration superficially makes it seem, most real-world ethical dilemmas are far more complicated still.

    No, telling people what to think isn’t usually Le Guin’s style, and it’s not mine either. I should note, though, that several of my other favourite works are also commonly misinterpreted because readers didn’t pick up on their authors’ subtle condemnations of various trends they depict (for instance, Slaughterhouse-Five is commonly read as endorsing fatalism, even though the novel contains many signs that Vonnegut’s stance is actually the exact opposite, while Dick’s subtle condemnation of dehumanisation in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which he explicitly wrote with the intention of examining the mindset that led to the Holocaust, is missed by almost everyone who hasn’t read any of Dick’s other novels before – which, since the popularity of Blade Runner means it’s the first of his works many people read, is probably at least half of them), so my aesthetic preferences in literature may not be particularly practical when it comes to expressing one’s intended meaning.

  157. 157.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Major Major Major Major: That may honestly be my favourite ending to any novel ever written. Which, again, might tell you something about my aesthetic preferences, since its exact meaning isn’t explicitly spelled out (though in this case, it’s about as obvious as it could be without being made explicit).

  158. 158.

    Steve in the ATL

    SanFran peeps: I will be free of work responsibilities around 6 pm local time. If anyone wants to connect, let me know!

  160. 160.

    Roger Moore

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Showing my lack of age here, but huh?

    The idea of refactoring code is quite a bit newer than the idea of programming. Particularly back in the days before GOTO Statement Considered Harmful, the idea of restructuring code just to make it more maintainable hadn’t really been invented yet. It still wasn’t being taught when I took programming classes in the early 1990s. As an example of how recently it’s taken over, consider that back in the late 1990s, Netscape decided to throw away their whole codebase and rewrite the whole web browser from scratch because their code was so ugly. So yes, refactoring didn’t used to be a thing.

  161. 161.

    eemom

    @different-church-lady:

    we apparently now live in a world where all information passes through Facebook, people only get their news from Twitter, and nobody shops anywhere but Amazon.

    To what “now” do we owe this particular lamentation?

  163. 163.

    Kathleen

    @Adam L Silverman: Ignoring murders of women of color has always been always media modus operandi. I’m also not convinced that police have felt great sense of urgency to resolve those crimes either.

  164. 164.

    Immanentize

    @Adam L Silverman:

    FBI interviews are generally not recorded.

    Very true. But FBI protocols encourage (nearly require) that such interviews are conducted with two Agents present. Then, after the interview is over, at the first safe opportunity, the two go over the whole interview and reduce their collective memory to one memo. That is then the official record of the interview from which neither Agent thereafter strays. It is a very powerful and impressive interview technique.

  165. 165.

    SgrAstar

    @Annie: Hi Annie: vote.org, brennancenter.org, voteriders.org are among the groups preparing voters for the mighty battles ahead.

  166. 166.

    joel hanes

    Florida’s Jim Crow era felon disenfranchisement law blocks 1.5 million people from voting

    I’m always late to the thread, but I want to point out that this was the very law that enabled former FL Secretary of State Kathleen Harris to “cage” tens of thousands of eligible voters in the year 2000 Presidential election, and prevent them from casting a ballot. (The eligible voters’ names were deemed “similar enough” to the names of felons to be stricken from the rolls, and they had names like Clay and Washington and Rodrigues that were considered to make them likely Dem voters.) That made the FL vote close enough that the Rs could send the issue to a partisan SCOTUS, who selected W to be President despite the fact that Gore won the popular vote.

    In short: without this law, Al Gore would have been clearly elected President in 2000,
    and the world would be a much better place today.

    If there’s any way that the rest of us can support the campaign to overturn this law, we should jump on it with everything we’ve got.

  168. 168.

    Emma

    @(((CassandraLeo))): I don’t have many ethical quibbles when it comes to severe, ongoing child abuse. The story enrages me. Mind you, I admire it. It is poetry in prose, perfectly written. Just cannot emotionally stomach those adults walking away.

  169. 169.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    I have a very good brain.

    Oh, please. Whence the false modesty? Baud has a great brain, the best brain, a brain like you’ve never seen. Baud will be such a brain you will get tired of all the braining. You’ll say, “Please, Baud, no more brain!” That I will tell you.

  171. 171.

    Sab

    @Sab: I was going to edit my comment but my sister called with family crisis, so it went out with typos and all. I type better on a keyboard than I do with myfat fingers on a tiny android touchscreen.

  173. 173.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @clay:

    OFFS. Of course you are right, and I apparently had a massive — one might almost say, debilitating — brain fart. My shamed apologies.

  174. 174.

    Sab

    @Emma: Isn’t that the whole point of her story? We all make tradeoffs, and invariably some child (not ours) suffers. Isn’t that what this whole week in American political idiocy was about?

  175. 175.

    Miss Bianca

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Not even in the fights for suffrage or temperance (Ladies: you all did great work on the former, not sure what you were really thinking on the latter) were like this.

    To be fair to the temperance-ists…which is hardly my inclination, seeing that I’m looking to brew for a living…I do believe that they were responding to a real problem. They were, perhaps, attacking the symptom rather than the cause, but stories of the ubiquity of alcohol, and how its abuse was justified, with horrific results for women and children (of course!), make the Prohibition movement look like a real response to a real problem. The fact that we hairless apes appear to be addicted to the stuff to the point where the solution became worse than the problem, well…who knew?

  176. 176.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Emma: I was probably too measured in my previous response (decades of dealing with dumb Internet drama have led me to err on the side of avoiding strong statements, which is probably a good thing most of the time, but with certain issues, and abuse is one, it’s probably a failing).

    I honestly suspect that’s actually the exact reaction Le Guin intended the story to provoke – outright fury at everyone who enables the abuse, including the ones who leave. But again, actually saying “This should infuriate you” isn’t her style. If anything, the fact that “Omelas” doesn’t more commonly infuriate its readers reads to me more as an indictment of society than it does of her story.

    The LGM story @Adria McDowell linked above reads to me as further evidence of this, as it’s emblematic of an all-too-common reaction to abuse – which, in fact, one of the commenters explicitly compared to “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”. Which, naturally, spurred a discussion of Le Guin’s work overall. It’s a particularly bitter irony that the LGM story came out on the exact day of her death, but such are the times we live in.

  177. 177.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @(((CassandraLeo))):

    I was probably too measured in my previous response (decades of dealing with dumb Internet drama have led me to err on the side of avoiding strong statements, which is probably a good thing most of the time, but with certain issues, and abuse is one, it’s probably a failing).

    …too late to edit, but the fact that I tempered each opinion in that excerpt with “probably” seems demonstrative of the exact point I was making about how I express myself. If I’d had more time to revise, I’m sure each of my comments here (except the first, which had already undergone fairly heavy revision because it came from elsewhere) would’ve ultimately read somewhat differently. (I’m not really used to the five-minute edit window; the other communities I’m on allow at least a day to edit posts, and some, including anything with Disqus, allow editing indefinitely. I tend to find it difficult to revise something until I properly see it on the screen – the input field isn’t good enough for this purpose – and AFAIK, BJ doesn’t currently have a preview function.)

  178. 178.

    laura

    @germy: That lame-ass bs, dog ate my homework, king of the junior high quad, did not have sex with that underage staffer, the Lord has forgiven me, and my spouse joined me in confessing my sins, we are asking for privacy because family tired old save my career/grift dog and Pony show has worked my last nerve.
    Hurrumph.

  179. 179.

    Don K

    @Mary G:

    Sounds like we’ll have three good proposals this year in MI:

    No-excuse absentee voting (already legal for seniors … hmmm … wonder why that is)
    Redistricting reform
    Weed legalization

    I can think of so much more that needs to be done via initiative in this state, but this will do for the time being I suppose

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