Tales of Divisiveness - and the drug high of indignation

Anyone who spends ten minutes around me knows that I appreciate good argument. Heck, Contrary Brin is about having fun by sniping "yeah, I agree with some of that... but here's an exception!" even at your own favorite doctrines. The truest sign of sapience -- I believe -- is an eager willingness to at least notice the group-think errors of your own side.

So why am I down on the divisive mania that has swept the world -- and especially America -- in an era that clearly has many reasons for hope?  Because so many of our bickering feuds are not about positive-sum argument, aimed at persuading the other side to budge, possibly even learning from your opponents. In the tales that follow, below, you'll see example after example where sanctimonious intransigence... the drug high of indignant purity... has poisoned the natively American genius at pragmatic negotiation and compromise and attention to the corrective force of evidence.

Let's start with a letter from one of my favorite politicians -- a courteously parsed, yet-devastating single page from California Governor Jerry Brown -- sent to Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson, in response to Carson's snarky dismissal of "scientific evidence for human generated climate change."  The calm maturity of Brown's response is matched by his intelligence, curiosity and hatred of cliched dogmas... yes, including some dogmas of the left. One reason he is so loved in moderate, pragmatic California.

Hence my attempt to stir a groundswell, arm-twisting Brown into the Democratic Party's presidential debates.  To be clear, I don't think Jerry even wants to be president!  But just being in the debates for 6 months would let him shake up all our rigid doctrines, calcified positions and wretched, sourpuss gloom. He -- and we -- would have so much fun!   

== Separating Church and State ==

With his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver is on a hot burn as, week after week, he takes on sacred cows. This time? Televangelist churches, and boy does he turn them a well-deserved inside-out.    

Oliver makes it hilarious! But there is a sober side. For example… how could we reform this outrageous system? Some years ago folks in Colorado got a measure on the ballot to end church tax-exemption.  It started out popular, but the counter-campaign shrieked about how the state could then crush religion, contrary to the Constitution.  Indeed, the first U.S. Chief Justice said “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” 

So in fact, I favor a compromise. Here it is.

Next time a church tax reform measure comes up, include a floor exemption that utterly protects the basics -- a local church of sincere parishioners and the pastor they can barely afford to pay. Here’s how.  Any church gets a property tax exemption allowance of two square meters of floorspace, plus $200 of income per unique parishioner (who is not a member of any other church) up to 200 members. Also, the pastor’s first $20,000 of pay is tax exempt. 

Not high enough? We can dicker over where the lines are drawn, but let’s be generous, so that the state has given religion the benefit of the doubt and so that local, modest places of worship remain (practically) untouched. And richer churches still have that floor, before their far greater incomes start to be taxed, helping to pay for the roads and hospitals and fire and police protection they use, just like the rest of us.  

Further, while funds spent evangelizing are not expensed, actual, charitable good works are. (In fact, I'd make church tithing only a "charitable deduction" for the first $500 or so. Come on!)

That floor-exemption will mean that poor churches are no longer the inherent allies of the televangelist charlatans. Indeed, it drives a wedge between former allies. And it makes the next reform referendum something with a fighting chance.

== And Election politics ==

Ah gerrymandering! Are you proud to be affiliated with cheaters? For example. Business owners try to remove all voters from business district but they forgot one college student! In Columbia, Missouri, the city council created a special 'business' district. This district would be allowed to vote to create a half cent sales tax to pay for local improvements rather than using property tax increases. There is a special rule that says if no registered voters exist in an area, the property owners are allowed to vote BUT one U of M student registered at her CoMO address. And the county clerk has certified that she is the sole voter allowed in the up coming poll. Now the owners are barred from voting. They will have to raise property taxes on themselves (if they want those district improvements) and raise them even more to pay off the debt they incurred to finance this deal. 

This is a familiar thing in California, where most aspects of elective politics have improved markedly, but these legacy “cities” and “districts” have an olden-times grandfathered ability to basically run their own cloistered mafia dens. Did I say we were perfect? But such miscreants are in our crosshairs.

== Back to the Civil War ==

Been doing some reading.  Apparently it is simply untrue to let Robert E. Lee off the hook because he freed his own slaves.  In fact, he owned only a few and as executor of his father-in-law’s will, he delayed freeing that man’s slaves, as required, until 1862, in the middle of the Civil War.  In several writings he did express dislike for slavery on general principles. But he was at best passive and desultory in execution.

Was the Civil War about anything other than slavery?  This video by a West Point colonel-historian examines the issue in devastating detail, with colorful illustrations. He is direct, firm, and clear.  There is no excuse for romantic-nostalgia for treason, when the core and only reason for that treason was so despicable.  Yes, the rebs fought well.  Respect that! But there is no other basis for respect for the Confederate side of any phase – even the current one – of our ongoing Civil War.  

(One critique.  Col. Ty Seidule does not mention the fact that Southerners or their sympathizers actually ran the U.S. Federal Government for most of the thirty years preceding Lincoln’s election in 1860, running roughshod over “states rights” in many matters, such as the Fugitive Slave Act which, in 1852, unleashed swarms of southern irregular cavalry raiding parties across northern states, crashing into homes and dragging neighbors off, into bondage.)

== Did I speak in praise... ==

...Of California?  Well, the Golden State giveth and taketh away.  Sanity, I mean. For example, we know Carly Fiorina very well, here, and rejected her Senate bid by a tsunami. With zero palpable successes to point to, with only failure and collapse ensuing from her time running Hewlett-Packard, what you are left with is slickness ... and sadness for anyone who is fooled. Oh, she seemed so expert when she recited a memorized list of how many Marine battalions and Army brigades we need... and how I wish someone in the press had asked her to define the difference? A delicious gotcha that would have been. An 'oops" of the first order.

Of course the ultimate silliness is for any Republican to claim credibility when it comes to national defense.  At the end of the Clinton Administration, 100% of major US military units were rated 'fully combat ready.' By the time GW Bush left office, not a single major army or marine unit was so rated... half teetered on the edge of frayed and shattered uselessness. Nearly all have now regained that status under Obama... with the irony that Dem presidents treat the military well, yet never brag about that fact. (Since it could miff the lefty-activist wing.) And hence none of you even knew this stark but devastating comparison.

But you will!  Keep dropping by here.  There are plenty of surprises. Just keep this in mind. Some things that are true are also opposite to popular "wisdom."  

It will be an interesting 14 months.

Political Polarization...and Cheating

The Supreme Court has just allowed to stand the independent redistricting commission that the voters in Arizona established, to take rabid partisanship out of the drawing of state and federal districts. Republicans who control the AZ legislature say the Constitution gives them the right to draw congressional districts, and they cannot be cut out of the power.  California is the only other state that has diminished the legislature’s role similar to Arizona, but 11 other states have created commissions that have some sort of say about reapportionment.

I have long railed against gerrymandering, which is only the most blatant of a dozen ways that modern political parties have found to cheat voters. Nothing more spectacularly proved the stunning dogmatic partisanship of justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito more than they way they have blocked (till now) any serious judicial review of these hijackings of sovereign citizen will.

While both parties commit such crimes, the cheating is not balanced or equally distributed.  While yes, there are blue states where gerrymandering creates contorted, illogical and nasty district boundaries – Maryland and Illinois rise almost to the level of creativity of Texas and Georgia – it should be noted that it is in blue states that mostly democratic-leaning populations have rebelled against the practice, rebuking their own favored party's pols. Of the 13 states where voters have pushed back against gerrymandering, twelve are blue. 

(A ratio similar to those states that have been pulling out of the insane Drug War. Powerful examples of the "name an exception" challenge.)

So, why has the Court only taken tepid measures against a supremely blatant crime?

“The Supreme Court has largely stayed out of partisan gerrymandering cases, unable to agree on a test that would allow the court to discern when expected political maneuvering rises to the level of being unconstitutional.”

But it does not have to 'get embroiled'!  Nor is there even a need for impartial redistricting commissions!  All that is called for is one simple rule, that can be expressed in a single sentence. This one rule would not completely end gerrymandering… but it would render it moot and useless as a rampant method for stealing sovereignty and choice from American voters. It leaves a state legislature as the locus of boundary drawing, yet would render them ineffective at robbing citizens of their rights. 

THE RULE: District boundaries shall be drawn in such a way that (1) strives to minimize the ratio of perimeter to area and (2) minimizes OVERLAP between the districts for the state assembly, state senate and U.S. Congress.   

What this means is that a state legislature can gerry their own state assembly districts to benefit the majority party… go ahead! But all this will do is ensure that the boundaries for state senate and Congress are not optimized for partisanship.  Your state senator will have to consider different sets of neighborhoods and needs and alliances than the assemblywoman, making democracy more thoughtful and prone to negotiation.  The upshot? They can only be callously cheating-partisan in one of the three houses.  The others will represent the people in inherently different ways. At least one of which will turn out to be fair.

Above all, this reform does not require a grinding process of establishing one “commission” after another, or “agreeing on a test that would allow the court to discern when expected political maneuvering rises to the level of being unconstitutional.” 

Think about this win-win... only then also take note of this.  NOTICE which party cheats far more than the other.  Ask yourselves why it’s been arranged that all the companies that make voting machines are controlled by rabid GOP partisans.  And why is it that – in red states – there usually is no provision for those voting machines to leave an independent record that can be precinct-audited. Hence, the programmers of that machinery can arrange for any outcome they desire.

 Sure, there are corrupt democrats!  But they have not turned cheating into a passionately-dedicated matter of party principle, policy and disciplined practice.

== Cheaters – cheaters – cheaters ==

What America would look like without gerrymandering? Not just congressional but also the insane system of gerrymandering state boundaries. (We have two Dakotas? Seriously?  Why? Except that Republicans were cheaters in the 1890s, as well as now? And why don't we have Kansaska and New Mexizona?) In fact, this map and the writer’s kind of algorithmic approach is flawed.  It ignores too many human and geographical factors. 

A coming Supreme Court decision might remove nonvoters from consideration in district boundary creation -- gerrymandering on steroids? States currently count the entire population - rather than just eligible voters - to create congressional districts. 

Now here’s an interesting take on the matter: conservatives often demand that we take into account the Framers intent, when interpreting the Constitution. Indeed, the Framers clearly and decisively meant for non-voting persons in a district to be counted in determining representation!  Not only women citizens – who could not vote - but also 3/5ths of any non citizen… which um meant slaves.  

Am I actually citing the heinously cynical “3/5ths Rule” in arguing FOR the enumerating and counting of non-citizens in modern districting?  Yeow! I really don't know where that dog will hunt. But it makes my head hurt with unusual implications.  And I always like that sensation.

Try it, some time.

== Funding Political Campaigns ==

The dilution of fairness and election rules during Republican rule was exacerbated by recent court decisions that opened US politics to the highest bidders. "Citizens United v. FEC, allowing corporations to make unlimited expenditures on behalf of federal candidates. Already, the Associated Press reported, spending on this off-year election has topped $1 billion — and it may exceed $4 billion by the time the votes are in."

See: Campaign contributions should be anonymous. This article from The Washington Post is wrongheaded in many ways but still informative.  

We used to try to reduce the role of raw money by  (1) regulating contributions, (regulating campaign spending, (2) offering free access to some media, rules equalizing access by and, finally (3) - transparency… at least allowing the public to see the money flows and take them into account. The cynical author says: "But has transparency ever been an effective corruption-fighting tool? Many people deeply involved in electoral politics don’t think so."

The piece turns into stunning sophistry when it proposes that donors should be hidden, in order to eliminate their quid pro quo influence on politicians: "What if we made all campaign contributions and independent expenditures anonymous — and made sure they stayed anonymous?"

Does he honestly believe any reader would swallow such titanic malarkey?  That Sheldon Adelson cannot take "credit" for a contribution to a pol, in a myriad ways? This is one more spectacularly bald and shameless hired-rationalization by a court shill, to rationalize our march back to feudalism.

Of all the efforts to deal with the money-taking-over-politics problem, the most cogent and deserving of you support is probably Lawrence Lessig's rational approach.  Have a look.

== thinking less like citizens, more as “sides” in a war ==

The growth of partisan polarization has transformed US politics in recent decades, and the effects are especially visible in this graphic. It’s especially depressing, but also makes clear what we have to do.  To end gerrymandering and all the other cheats that have turned us into a nation of bile-spitting partisan radicals.  

Most partisans treat politics like sports rivalries, instead of focusing on issues. A report showed that 41 percent of partisans agreed that simply winning elections is more important to them than policy or ideological goals, while just 35 percent agreed that policy is a more important motivator for them to participate in politics.”

“When it came to uncivil attitudes, 38 percent of partisans agreed that their parties should use any tactics necessary to "win elections and issue debates." When those who agreed with this view were asked what tactics they had in mind, the most common ones they offered were: voter suppression, stealing or cheating in elections, physical violence and threats against the other party, lying, personal attacks on opponents, not allowing the other party to speak, and using the filibuster to gridlock Congress. Democrats and Republicans were equally likely to express this opinion.”

Really? Things have sunk so low that now BOTH sides think this?

 To which I respond impulsively that this is terrific news!  That democrats and Blue Americans are finally realizing negotiation and persuasion and compromise will not work, during a re-ignited phase of the American Civil War.  That the forces of the Union are at last willing to take off the kid gloves, as they finally decided to do, in 1861, after nine years of violent bullying by the nascent confederacy. 

All right all right… not really. I don't mean that.

In fact, I deplore this trend at all levels and in every way, especially condoning cheating.  But wrath toward the gerrymandering, vote-suppressing, vote-machine warping cheaters who started this dismal phase of American life? Right on. Their “team" cheats. It has elevated cheating to an art. And they have zero regrets.

== Finally…  ==

The fact that Dick Cheney is admired by even a single American is appalling proof of the delusional willpower of schizophrenia. Watch Jon Stewart's hilarious rant - tribute to Cheney laying the lying hypocrisy so bare that even the most-delusional among you Fox apologists will have to admit... this one should long ago have been given the boot. If not a ride on a tumbrel. 

“George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'…” Yeah… well… if by “God” you mean his masters in the Saudi Royal House. Whose orders he and Dick Cheney followed, to the letter, in all matters and top to bottom.  And who own and operate Fox News.  And who own and operate the GOP. And who are the actual “caliphate.”  

Oh, but it is all going according to plan.  We’ve entered the era of the New Pyramid, when society’s top aristocrats have nothing to spend their money on but status.  “A Pablo Picasso masterpiece smashed the world record for a painting sold at auction, fetching a fraction over $179 million (£116m).”  That same month, Christies handled a BILLION dollars in art sales.

 Eep. I blame you, Rupert. A nascent feudal oligarchy that is too stupid to read science fiction or history... and willfully ignores the blatant horizon (of pitchforks and tumbrels and designer viruses) where all of this must lead ... has already proved itself WAY too stupid to qualify for leadership over this century.  In EXISTENCE I show a scene portraying what smart oligarchs might do. Even those who (at an alpine meeting) do want a quasi feudal social order... but who also want to live. And I see no sign of this scenario coming true.

The truly smart bazillionaires -- who earned it with creative-innovative products and services -- know better.  They are willing to negotiate, in order to keep the enlightenment healthy.  They want to be rich all right, but in a vibrant and mostly-fair civilization that lifts all boats.  They are not on Rupert's team.