Politics Plus

Title humor aside, this nation desperately needs help to restore the value of government of by and for the people.  This article clearly shows just how broken the system has become, and why change is so necessary.  Neither party should have the power to draw a dishonest election map, but Republicans have reached an unprecedented high in subversion of the peoples’ will.

In the original conception of our Constitution, the House of Representatives was to be the branch of government that best reflected the will of the people. House members cannot serve without being elected — vacancies are not filled by appointees — and they must face the voters every two years. Notably, the House holds pride of place as the first branch of government to be described in the Constitution. The framers move directly from “We the People” to the House, underlining the notion that, for our Constitution (and our government) to function, representatives must be accountable to the people.

Unfortunately, as we near the 2014 midterm elections, the reality of House races today clashes with that goal.

Let’s start with the connection between votes and seats. In 2012, we faced a major choice between the major parties and a mandate on President Obama’s first term. In the presidential race, Obama defeated Mitt Romney in the national popular vote by almost three percentage points, and Republicans suffered the worst performance in Senate elections by any major party in a half-century.

In House races, Democratic nominees overcame incumbent advantages for Republicans and won the national popular vote by more than 1.1 million votes. By those numbers, Americans painted the Capitol royal blue. Shockingly, though, Republicans won 54 percent of the House seats, establishing for themselves a 33-seat majority. And looking ahead, analysts estimate that Democrats may need as much as 55 percent of the popular vote in November to secure a majority.

Such a disconnect between voters and those who are installed as their congressional leaders goes far beyond any distortion we’ve seen in the Electoral College in presidential elections. It’s absolutely unacceptable in House elections, and it deserves far more debate than it has received… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Washington Post>

Photo Credit: Hands Off Redistricting

Now the bottom map in the above graphic is hypothetical, but the top map how Republicans are actually stolen 72% of the Representatives in a state where the majority of the voters voted for Democrats.  Part of the problem is that the scheme favors incumbents from both parties. The five Democratic candidates in PA have so many Democrats packed into their districts that they don’t have to work to keep their jobs, making them less likely to fight to change the system.  As a rule, progressives and even most corporate Democrats favor reform.  A few Corporate Democrats and Blue Dogs do not.  Republicans favor reform, but only in those states where Democrats control redistricting.  They consider any attempt to return their states to representing the people a Kenyan, Socialist conspiracy.  That’s why reform must be national

There are no easy answers here, but the next time America does major redistricting will be after the 2020 Elections.  How can we be ready?

I ran across the problem of private probation companies on Upworthy, and decided to research it further, because of my prison volunteer work.  The video there led to a second video, but they did not list all the locations where this perverse injustice takes place, and that led to ever more digging.

Every year, US courts sentence several hundred thousand misdemeanor offenders to probation overseen by private companies that charge their fees directly to the probationers. Often, the poorest people wind up paying the most in fees over time, in what amounts to a discriminatory penalty. And when they can’t pay, companies can and do secure their arrest.

The 72-page report, “Profiting from Probation: America’s ‘Offender-Funded’ Probation Industry,” describes how more than 1,000 courts in several US states delegate tremendous coercive power to companies that are often subject to little meaningful oversight or regulation. In many cases, the only reason people are put on probation is because they need time to pay off fines and court costs linked to minor crimes. In some of these cases, probation companies act more like abusive debt collectors than probation officers, charging the debtors for their services.

“Many of the people supervised by these companies wouldn’t be on probation to begin with if they had more money,” said Chris Albin-Lackey, senior researcher on business and human rights at Human Rights Watch. “Often, the poorer people are, the more they ultimately pay in company fees and the more likely it is that they will wind up behind bars.”

Companies refuse to disclose how much money they collect in fees from offenders under their supervision. Remarkably, the courts that hire them generally do not demand this information either. Human Rights Watch estimates that, in Georgia alone, the industry collects a minimum of US$40 million in fees every year from probationers. In other states, disclosure requirements are so minimal that is not possible even to hazard a guess how much probation companies are harvesting from probationers in fees…

Inserted from <Human Rights Watch>

Here is the HRW video.

And here are the two videos from Brave New Films. (petition there)

Most of the states were the ones I expected, but there were a couple surprises. They are Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Colorado, Utah, Washington, Missouri, Michigan, Montana and Idaho.  I strongly suspect that in the Blue State and two purple states, it is red counties that use the services.  Perhaps we can get some feedback from residents.  Wherever they are, the companies miszt be outlawed.

Here is the fifty-ninth article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today’s honoree is Republican nominee for for the US Senate from Iowa Joni "Pig Nuts" Ernst. She is so honored for extreme TEAbuggery.

It’s well past time that Democrats stop playing around and start tearing Joni Ernst apart for all the truly crazy shit she’s been spewing, like the recently revealed fact that she’s been running with the black helicopter crowd:

"The United Nations has imposed this upon us, and as a U.S. senator, I would say, ‘No more. No more Agenda 21.’ Community planning—to the effect that it is implementing eminent domain and taking away property rights away from individuals—I don’t agree with that. And especially in a place such as Iowa, where we rely heavily upon our agricultural community, our rural communities. We don’t want to see things like eminent domain come into play," Ernst said in response to a question about Agenda 21 at the forum.

"We don’t want to see a further push with Agenda 21, where the Agenda 21 and the government telling us that these are the urban centers that you will live in; these are the ways that you will travel to other urban centers," Ernst continued. "Agenda 21 encompasses so many different aspects of our lives that it’s taking away our individual liberties, our freedoms as United States citizens. So I would adamantly oppose Agenda 21. I don’t believe it is responsible, not for United States citizens."

Agenda 21, if you’ve never heard of it, is an innocuous U.N. document that has, over the years, become a lodestone of the wingnut fever swamps. This is Michele Bachman-esque, out-of-your-freaking-gourd territory… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

Click through for more.  If that isn’t enough to prove that Pig Nuts deserves her parade, she also had endorsements from both Glen “Gold Digger” Beck and Sarah “Bloody Bullseye Barbie” Palin, BEFORE she won the Republican primary.