wrath-sedan

wrath-sedan , 9 months ago

I’m the case of impeachment with no trial to permanently suspend Protasiewicz she also has the option to resign, which will allow Gov. Evers to choose a replacement… which can include Protasiewicz. This however would mean instead of serving her current 10 year term she would only serve 1, and while not ideal she clearly won her election by double digits and being unfairly impeached would probably just make her more popular.

wrath-sedan , 9 months ago

If she is impeached and convicted Dem Gov. Evers can select her replacement, which can also include Protasiewicz. If she is impeached without conviction so that she’s permanently suspended, she can resign for the same outcome. If Protasiewicz (or someone else) is appointed they will serve a 1 year rather than 10 year term, but she won 55-44 in her last statewide election.

With a Dem Gov and her 11 point advantage which would only grow if she were unfairly impeached, I think chances are still high that the Republican Legislature can only delay the inevitable, but there’s a lot still up in the air obviously.

wrath-sedan OP , 10 months ago

I haven’t seen the contract itself, but it appears the $2.75 is an all-employee wage hike, in addition to specific changes to different positions. Here’s some more details from NBC:

The new agreement eliminates a widely criticized two-tiered wage system and institutes raises across UPS’ workforce.

Current full- and part-time union workers are guaranteed a $2.75 hourly pay increase this year, the Teamsters said, amounting to a $7.50 hourly increase through the duration of the contract. Pay for existing and starting part-time workers will be raised to at least $21 an hour immediately, advancing to $23 per hour.

(Note: minimum part-time wage before this contract was $15.50)

Current part-timers also won longevity wage increases of up to $1.50 an hour. Wage increases for full-time drivers would bring their average top rate to $49 an hour, the union said.

wrath-sedan OP , 10 months ago

No it’s not just “fair” gerrymandering.

There are 7 House districts in Alabama. Currently 1 out of 7 of them are Black majority, while about 2/7 people in Alabama are Black. It’s illegal racial gerrymandering that keeps it this way. Any reasonable map would have at least 2 Black districts, so this case is explicitly about reversing gerrymandering by requiring another Black majority district.

If they created 4 Black majority districts that would be gerrymandering. As it is, it’s about making a map that represents the population of the state (something the legislature is repeatedly refusing to do).

wrath-sedan OP , 10 months ago

Any reasonable map would ignore the racial make-up of the population and just be based on equal population.

This ignores the reality that Black communities have been and still are explicitly drawn out of maps of political representation. This is why the Voting Rights Act was passed, because without explicit protections for Black and other minority racial communities they are systematically disenfranchised.

The refusal of the Alabama legislature to redraw this map without a court order should be proof enough of that.

wrath-sedan OP , 10 months ago

2/7 people being black does not automatically mean that 2/7 districts should be Black majority. It really depends on how clustered together those 2/7 people are.

Statistically, you are absolutely correct. But the issue here is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act which forbids "the abridgement of the right to vote based on race or color." AL-7 for instance, the current Black majority district, is drawn in such a way that it collects voters from the cities of Birmingham and Montgomery and lumps them in with rural Black voters from the "Black Belt" to form a district that is 60% non-White which you can see in the image from this article. By concentrating Black voters in one district, the legislature dilutes their voting power significantly, which SCOTUS recently ruled to be an illegal racial gerrymander under the VRA.

As an outsider, I assume the racial divide is clear enough that dividing the districts by ethnicity makes some sense(?)

Southern states especially, but not exclusively, have attempted to limit Black voting power for literally hundreds of years. The VRA was written to consider race, because the existing problems resulted from White southern legislatures intentionally limiting the voting power of Black citizens. It was a remedy for a specific form of political oppression which is still ongoing in states like Alabama. You can read more about the Alabama racial gerrymander here.

TIL thanks to your post: Since ~2020 ethnicities are generally capitalised.

Yeah, most US style guides have Black capitalized now, White less so, but I personally prefer it. Just to reflect that we're talking about racial groups specifically. Always good to learn something new!

wrath-sedan OP , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Seems like you would need to cut very carefully to achieve two Black majority districts, which very much sounds like gerrymandering to me. However, this is just based on that one map, so I may very well be mistaken.

Glad the map helped! Yes, they have been ordered by the court to make the map in such a way that Black Alabamians, who make up 40% 27% (correction, thanks @Spiracle) of the voting age population according to this article, have a reasonable shot of electing their preferred representative in at least 2 districts. In Alabama, voting is extremely racially polarized with the vast majority of Republicans being White (~70%) and the vast majority of Democrats being Black (~80%) (see here). Because of this, to elect their preferred representative, the district will almost certainly have to be majority Black.

So yes, if you want to say this is gerrymandering because it is drawing maps with a certain outcome in mind I guess you can say that. But gerrymandering is usually used to describe intentionally limiting voting power based on race or party, while this is designed to equalize it based on racial demographics.

If these two tendrils were removed, it looks like there would still be just one Black majority district (CD-6) with CD-7 and CD-2 both having somewhat big minorities of Black voters.

Here is the new map proposed by the AL legislature. It essentially removes one tendril to increase the Black pop in CD-2. It is likely also to be struck down because it only increase the Black pop to about 40% in that district while the court order asks for specifically a majority "or something quite close to it."

It seems to me, that the basis of the argument that you need a Black majority in order to fully assert your right to vote is the assertion that voters who are Black cannot be represented by officials non-Black people vote for. It seems to assume a strict racial divide in who people vote for, with White people having their White representative and Black people needing their Black representative.

Mentioned this a little above, but can add more detail. The Black-majority districts can elect whomever they choose, but just because of the nature of race and partisanship in Alabama this will almost certainly be a Black Democrat. I should also note that gerrymandering on the basis of party is 100% legal. The problem is a party-based gerrymander in Alabama is essentially indistinguishable from a race-based one. The law is not enforcing a racial divide, it is recognizing one that already exists. A district which is 60% non-Black (like the proposed CD-2 above) is almost guaranteed to not be represented by the candidate that the majority of Black people vote for.

(Sorry these keep getting longer, enjoying the discussion and hope that it helps explain our incredibly confusing politics)

wrath-sedan OP , 10 months ago

Small correction, Black Alabamians make up ~27% of the voting age pop. The 40% number in the article was about district 2. Based on the rest of your post, I assume you mistyped.

You’re totally right my bad.

It doesn’t fix the problem, it seems obviously wrong on the surface of it, works really awkwardly, but it’s the best currently available method towards achieving equally in the spirit of democracy.

Couldn’t have said it better.

wrath-sedan , 10 months ago

I mean this is ridiculous for so many reasons but maybe the saddest/funniest part is that a “no” vote will “end majority rule” or “destroy citizen-led ballot initiatives as we know them” since a “no” vote on Issue one literally just maintains the status quo. It is literally maintaining citizen-led ballot initiatives as you know them.

wrath-sedan OP , 11 months ago

Why is it so hard for some people to admit that some precaution is required when we are dealing with predators like Facebook?

I think this author of this piece is very clearly in favor of precautions and state their preferred integration as "silence" mode not unfettered federation:

"Personally, I would federate with Threads in “silence” mode: my instance’s users would be able to follow Threads users and vice versa, but posts from Threads would not show up in any public timelines on my server."

I agree that there should be precautions in place to prevent a glut of threads content dwarfing all the locally produced content. I think the fear is that if some instances go for the hard defederation route, defederating from threads and threads-federated instances, we will effectively be bisecting the existing fediverse in two, which may be a cure worse than the disease.

wrath-sedan , 11 months ago

Yeah this one is almost scarier than any other for the precedent it sets. While most of the actual decisions this term were bad but par for the course of a conservative majority court (with a few pleasant surprises like rejecting racial gerrymandering, dismissing independent legislature theory, and reaffirming Native adoptions) this case was uniquely dangerous for being just conjured from thin air. The idea that you can take an issue to court over something that was proven to be entirely hypothetical prepares the way for more ready-made cases designed to create a particular legal outcome.

wrath-sedan , 11 months ago

Great list, thanks for sharing!