They're doing it -- we can't let them

For those of you who are not paying attention, the Pennsylvania Republican-controlled legislature and governor are pursuing a new, perfectly constitutional, but profoundly undemocratic way  to suppress the vote and steal all future presidential elections from majority voters in the state.

It’s very simple really:  In 2010 the Legislature gerrymandered  the state’s congressional districts to make sure there were more Republican-controlled/safe districts that Democratic districts.  Here’s what the current districts look like:

                                             2010 Pa. Congressional Districts

So now there are five districts – all geographically tiny, urban and densely populated --where the voters are predominately Democratic and 13 where they are predominately Republican.   The Democratic districts are the 1st, 2nd and 13th (Brady, Fattah and Schwartz) in and around Philadelphia, the 14th (Pittsburgh) and the 17th (Harrisburg).  
Why did they do that?  because if they had left the districts alone after the 2000 redistricting, several -- like the 7th in Delaware County -- would have been highly competitive for Democratic candidates.  Indeed, the old 7th was represented for two terms by a very liberal Democrat, Joe Sestak.  The Republicans couldn't have that, so they added the most Democratic areas of the 7th District to Bob Brady's 1st District and shoved the borders of the 7th out into counties where the voter rolls are rural, conservative and Republican.

Then they tried unsuccessfully to suppress the urban, suburban and minority vote by making it harder for people to vote -- which backfired on them spectacularly in the 12012 election. 

Now, however, having carefully drawn and shrunk the number of districts so that widely scattered Republicans -- so thin on the ground they are spread over 15 counties in District 5 and 13 counties in District 10, for example -- can command the largest number of congressional districts, regardless of actual human population (cows, trees and deer not counted),  the Republicans are moving on to step two.

Voter Suppression Step Two

Step two is to enact legislation to change the way Pennsylvania allocates its 20 electoral votes from winner take all -- which reflects the overall popular vote in the state -- to the majority vote within each  congressional district -- plus two electoral votes for the top vote getter.   

In this configuration, President Obama, who got all 20 electoral votes in 2012, would have received 7 electoral votes and Mitt Romney would have gotten 13 in the last election.   If the other large swing states that are contemplating this move-- Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida -- had also changed their laws to apply to the 2012 election, Obama would have still won the popular vote by 4 percent and yet lost the election to Romney in electoral votes by a wide margin. 

Thus, the votes of white voters  in rural areas would count for far more than the votes of urban, minority, largely Democratic voters.  In fact, several pundits have calculated that the vote of an urban black or Latino voter would be worth about 3/5ths of that a rural white voter.  Hmm.  Where have we seen that figure before?

The Destruction of Democracy

 Since the rise of the extreme rightwing over the past four years, we have been witnessing the death of the Republican Party.  Unfortunately, it appears ready to pull down the whole nation as it goes. After a couple of election cycles where the presidential candidate chosen by a majority of the popular vote is rejected by the electoral college under the Republicans' plan that several things may happen: 

1. The disaffection of voters for the entire political process will become complete.   
2. The  electoral college may be abolished and the country may switch to a straight popular vote like other modern democracies (which would be a good thing).  
3. Voters will revile and reject the Republic Party utterly and it will go the way of the Federalists and Whigs.
4. The people will have to resort to violence and perhaps the kind of armed insurrection the right-wing  gun huggers have been pining for. 
5. The Republican Party could take over the government by fiat, much like the Nazis did in the 1930s with the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act.

Whether any or all of these things happen, it will be crystal clear to all Americans that the Republican Party is profoundly undemocratic, unpatriotic and hostile to the American people.
Lawrence Lewis at Daily Kos has the best explanation of this whole process I’ve seen so far.  Give it a read.

 They're Doing It

In the meantime, seven  Pennsylvania Assembly Republicans have introduced House bill 94 to enact the the electoral college vote allocation change, with the deceptively banal title “An Act Concerning Elections.”  It has been referred to the House Committee on State Government where it is to be hoped it dies a quiet death.

But those of us who believe in democracy and representative government cannot depend on our hopes alone.   Find your state legislators here.  Let them know how you feel about the hijacking of your presidential vote. 

Contact Gov. Tom Corbett’s Office.  Let him know that while his chnaces of winning re-election don’t look so hot right now, he will surely be committing political suicide if he signs this bill. 

Contact your local ACLU and League of Women Voters.  Ask your Democratic representatives what the hell they're doing to prevent this from happening.  Fight back now, before the damage is done.   

Where are the pitchforks?

As the old saying goes, if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
I think it's hard to pay attention today when there are so many things being done to us, and by "us", I mean the poor, the elderly, the chronically ill, the  mentally ill, children, unions, voters,college students,  immigrants,the Middle Class, workers and small business owners.
Being done to us 24/7.
Being done to us so fast that the news media cannot keep up with the latest assaults, and we cannot digest them or react to them before the next one comes along.
All we can do is try to focus.
So let us focus now on our Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, the creation and puppet of big money donors, of corporations, the wealthy, the privatize-everything industry and especially of the natural gas industry.
Here are the highlights of what Corbett and his Republican legislature have done to us in the last year or so:
*Kicked 89,000 children off of the state's medical care program for the poor.
*Cut 68,000 adults off of the state's general assistance program that provides a miniscule $205 a month to the homeless, the chronically ill, mentally ill and addicted adults who have virtually no other source of income to help them survive other than begging on the streets and taking sandwiches from soup kitchens.
*Cut state funding by 20 percent for all state medical, mental health, addiction and child welfare programs.
*Reduced eligibility for unemployment benefits by 13 weeks, affecting 30,000 Pennsylvanians or one-tenth of those receiving unemployment.
*Savagely cut state funding to poor public schools two years in a row leaving the Philadelphia, Chester, York, Coatsville and many other school districts on the brink of complete bankruptcy.
*Instituted means testing for food stamps that will deprive poor people who have a couple thousand dollars in savings from being able to use the program.  Food stamps is about the only real welfare system left in this country since the 1996 federal law "changed welfare as we know it" by limiting cash assistance to families with children to five years.
*Slashed funding to the state's public universities and colleges at a time when students are drowning in debt and facing a doubling of the interest payments on their student loans, thanks to the Republicans in Congress who were willing to keep student loan rates down only at the expense of women's health programs.
*Absolutely refuses to raise taxes on the wealthy or to tax the natural gas industry more than a token amount even though it made $3.5 billion last year and continues to happily rape our state of one of its most valuable natural resources. Members of the natural gas industry contributed $2.5 million to Corbett's election campaign and the industry spends more than $1 million a year in lobbying Corbett and the legislature.

It's hard to choose which one of these assaults on the poor and helpless is the most egregious, I have to think it's the cuts to public schools because those cuts affect so many children whose futures are literally being snatched away from them, sending them into the same cycle of poverty, joblessness, crime and addiction that is already overwhelming us.
Last night I went out to dinner and my waitress was a special education teacher in the Chester Upland School District.
It was bad enough that she has to work two jobs to make ends meet, but she told me she had to buy her own printer, toner and paper in order to print out the Individual Education Plan for each of her students students that the state mandates be completed each a year.
"There is no paper," she said. "We have no paper."
And yet Corbett says, the school haven't raised property taxes enough.  They haven't used their "reserves."  what reserves?  Does he think we are fools?  
A lot of Pennsylvanians are suffering in silence and out of sight, and they will continue to suffer this year and next year and the next, while the rest of us seethe in an outrage we cannot find a way to express.
How long are we going to allow ourselves to be enslaved by those beholden to Grover Norquist and his insane idea that government can never raise taxes, ever, for any reason?
As Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "Taxes are good, they buy us civilization."  Our civilization is slipping away, one state, one child, one future at a time.
Where are the pitchforks?