Month: August 2017

House Math

Winning just 194 seats to 241 for Republicans in the House of Representatives last Nov. 8, Democrats face a daunting task in 2018 to win the 218 seats needed to retake the chamber because, politically, Republicans own the south as Dixiecrats once did.

The crimson flood that drenched Dixie is perhaps currently best demonstrated in the Aug. 15 GOP primary for the U.S. Senate between three arch-reactionary candidates. One is named Strange and the other two named Brooks and Moore could just as well be called Stranger and Strangest for all that they relate to what some of us still like to think is the norm in the United States — a dubious proposition of late.

If Democrats are going to retake the House they have to gain 24 seats outside the south in places like Orange County, Calif. Orange County is shared among seven House districts — four held by Republicans. But the county, once a bastion of Reagan conservatism, has taken on an increasingly blue tinge and Democrats see chances of gains there in 2018.

Among the few seats Democrats gained last year were one in Florida and one in Virginia, leaving Republican southern congressional totals hardly dented.  In the 11 states that fought the United States as the Confederate States of America, Republicans came out of the 2016 election with 99 seats. The 11 states are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Bill Moyers, a key assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson, is said to have said that on the day LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law LBJ, a southerner, said prophetically, “I think we have just delivered the south to the Republican Party for the rest of my life and yours.” LBJ died in 1973. Mr. Moyers, of course, is still very much alive.

LBJ, a southerner, knew and prophesied that after nearly three-and-a-half centuries of slavery, rebellion, Civil War and Jim Crow race did and would trump all else in the south, where Republicans seized their opportunity with a race-based “Southern Strategy” that, 50 years later, is now their Trump-card across the south.

The strategy worked. It propelled Republicans to control of the House the same way “Jim Crow” gave Democrats a near lock on the House from 1932 to 1994.

There is hard evidence for this in the House majorities elected in 1962 and 2016.

Elected in November 1962 and sworn into office in January 1963, the 88th Congress relied on a truly bipartisan majority to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act over near unanimous opposition from southern House members.

The House elected in 1962 had 258 Democrats and 177 Republicans. Republicans had a slim Republican majority of 165 to 162 seat outside the 11 deep-south states. But in those 11 states Democrats won 96 seats to just 12 for Republicans.

In 1964, 136 Republicans joined 154 Democrats to pass the civil rights law. But in the 11 southern delegations the vote was 8 Democrats yes against 87 Democrats and 10 Republicans opposed to civil rights.

That moderated Republican Party no longer exists.

Fast forward to 2016. The House elected Nov. 8 returned 241 Republicans and 194 Democrats — almost a mirror reversal of 1962 in the national totals but also in the 11 southern states.

In the south there were 99 Republicans elected to 39 Democrats (since 1962, population shifts have increased those 11 states total of House seats from 112 to 138):  Most of the Democrats’ southern house seats are in gerrymandered minority-population heavy districts or in rare southern blue territory like the Washington, D.C. Virginia suburbs or around university cities.

This is the resulting House math:

Total seats: 435. Needed to control: 218.

With a head start of 99 seats in the Confederacy, Republican math is 218 minus 99 = 119 seats needed from the remaining 297 seats in the other 39 states — 34%.

For the Democrats, reduced to 39 seats in the former Confederacy, the basic calculation is 218 minus 39 = 179 seats needed from the remaining 297 seats in the other 39 states — 61%.

If you then factor in dozens of other decisively Republican districts in red states like Utah, Arizona, Oklahoma, Kentucky Kansas, Indiana, and West Virginia; if you add in GOP districts in big chunks of overall blue states that locally vote Republican for Congress, like central Pennsylvania and upstate New York, if you recognize that even a blue state like New Jersey, with 12 total seats, elected 5 Republicans — then the Democrats’ number becomes all the more daunting.

They need to win 80% of the 297 seats outside the 11-state GOP confederate base. On Nov. 8, Democrats won 155 – 52% — of those 297 seats to 142 for the GOP. To get to 218 seats they need to win 24 more, probably almost all outside the deep-south unless they can begin to find one or two more in Dixie that they can turn.

Is it possible for Democrats to ride a decisive national election some day, perhaps 2020, to regain House control? Could the present circumstances in which the nation feels like it is unraveling produce a wave election in their favor in 2018? Both outcomes are possible. Neither is in any way knowable now.

It could become more possible after the 2020 Census — providing Democrats win back state legislative chambers and governors’ offices because state legislatures draw the congressional maps following each census and governors sign the maps into law.

The first House election in which new maps will be in effect will be 2022. Coming out of the 2016 election, Republicans have control of two-thirds of governors’ offices and two thirds of state legislatures.

So for now while the Stars and Stripes flies atop the U.S. Capitol, it is the Stars and Bars that guarantees Republican control of the House.

The House delegations elected last Nov. 8 in the 11 southern states broke as follows between the two parties.

Alabama, 6R, 1D

Arkansas, 4R, 0D

Florida, 16R, 11D

Georgia, 10R, 4D

Louisiana, 5R, 1D

Mississippi, 3R, 1D

North Carolina, 10R, 3D

South Carolina, 6R, 1D

Tennessee, 7R, 2D

Texas, 25R, 11D

Virginia, 7R, 4D

The Constitution and Crazy

A threat of war with Venezuela huh? Know where that came from? From cable TV reports today (Aug. 11) about Venezuelan dictator Maduro addressing Trump.

Really, all the commentary, all the media examination, all the politicians parsing answers avoids the obvious doesn’t it?

People with the megaphone of media access have to start saying out loud what they know is by now clear to most sensible people.

The president of the United States is a seriously disturbed man. Will, in the end, this result in his removal from the office? There is of course impeachment for what the Constitution calls “high crimes and misdemeanors”, which would appear for the moment to be in the hands of the special prosecutor. Then, there is the 25th Amendment.

Supposedly on vacation Trump spends his days drawing the world’s attention to himself because he cannot live without it. How is he doing this on his “vacation” out there in Bedminister in one of his agoraphobic castles or on his agoraphobia pathways moving between them? By saying a lot of really stupid things, by demonstrating ignorance of the most fundamental facts of history, foreign affairs and domestic governance, by boasting, bragging, lying as ever and always, and for a clincher implicitly threatening nuclear war.

There’s no duck and cover from crazy.

Fact is, according to a little research the U.S. has 6,800 nuclear warheads of which 1,800 are said to be actively deployed.

A president does not talk like this, does not refer explicitly or implicitly to our nation’s arsenal of destruction except to assure us of its stability and protection and responsibly examine ways with Russia for bilateral reductions (they have 7,000). Never can a president suggest nuclear weapons use. Never, not once — much less three days running.

It’s hardly amusing even from this source, it’s beyond stupid, beyond out of bounds. It is  crazy — and everyone in Washington knows it: All of them, no matter their own politics know this. Even some of his hatted haters must know it.

We are supposed to know, indeed everything we know about the traditions of our military leadership tell us the answer — that if ordered to do so by the president they would carry out a nuclear use order. But can anyone really known what the Joint Chiefs of Staff would say or do if  he actually orders the use of one or more of those 1,800 available nuclear warheads in the present circumstance?

Would they actually carry out such an order? Or would they report the fact of the order to the vice president and the leadership of the House and Senate, triggering  that constitutional crisis so many have warned we may be heading for?

If they so acted, it would become the kind of constitutional crisis for which the 25th Amendment provides an exit presently guarded by Utah Senator and President Pro Tempore of the Senate Orin Hatch and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (see text below).

Still, any remote chance it would trigger much less succeed would require agreement by at least one quarter of the Republicans in Congress. Chances of that? Mainly though it would be in the hands of Senate Majority Leader McConnell.

Well, what does the 25th Amendments say, what are its instructions to remove, temporarily or permanently, a deranged president. The 25th Amendment has four sections of which, as the lawyers say, the pertinent part is Section 4. Here it is — a thick forest of the unknown except that in the present moment at the end of its use, it could put Pence in the presidency.

“Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.”

Remake America

Actually, it’s not time to make America great again. It’s time to remake America.

There are three principal Hudson River crossings connecting New York City to New Jersey and the nation. They are of course the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels. They were all built before 1940. Similarly the rail tunnels that connect New York to New Jersey and the rest of the nation west and south of the city opened nearly 110 years ago. Replacing them has been called the most important U.S. infrastructure need. Continue reading “Remake America”

Sprichst du English

Sprichst du Englisch?

When the Pilgrims made shore at Plymouth Rock, got their bearings and the men among them (women’s suffrage having to wait 300 years more) had signed the Mayflower Compact — in a sense the founding document of American democracy as the Magna Carta is of English democracy (that’s probably a notional stretch for both) —  you know who they found had gotten there first?

The discovered a people who called themselves the Wampanoags. They didn’t speak English. They spoke their own language but, being smart folks, they learned English because it became very clear the English settlers were not going to learn to speak Wampanoag.

So these first immigrants to what today is the State of Massachusetts brought with them the English language, as did those who preceded them by about a dozen years at Jamestown, Va., the first permanent English settlement in the present U.S. (where by the way in 1619, the same year the Pilgrims came ashore, the first African slave set foot in an English colony).

To the south not too many years later the Dutch established themselves at New Amsterdam, which when it changed hands in 1667 became New York (named for the Duke of York). Farther south some Swedes settled in what is now South Jersey — you can still find a place called Swedesboro in Gloucester County, N.J.

Had either of those non-English speaking colonies prevailed and the English ones failed, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., chief sponsor of the president’s favorite immigration bill, might very well be speaking Dutch or Swedish today. But of course that didn’t happen, English colonization prevailed and so we speak English today: And everyone who has come here in the centuries since not speaking English has had to learn it since (including all of my grandparents).

One of those who had to learn English was a young German from Kallstadt in Bavaria. He boarded ship in 1885 at the age of 16 to emigrate to the United States, arriving at the Castle Garden Emigrant Landing Depot in New York City (precursor to Ellis Island).

Various sources say the immigration authorities of the day listed him as Friedr. Trumpf and recorded his occupation as “None”. He moved in with an older sister and her husband, met a man who owned a barber shop, got hired and for the next six years worked as a barber.

If he had little education, no occupation, hardly any money, no offer of employment and no English when he arrived, then to his credit he learned the language, acquired a trade and prospered as millions before him had and as would tens of millions after who began in similar circumstances.

For these purposes we can fast forward to 1898 by when Trumpf had relocated to Washington State, become a citizen, made money in the restaurant business, relocated to Alaska — lured by the Klondike gold rush — and made his stake not by panning for gold but by operating a successful hotel named the Arctic for whose services most customers paid in gold dust.

The hotel’s guests included single women, who rented, besides rooms and beds, scales on which to weigh gold dust.

A contemporary article from the Yukon Sun  said this about the hotel: “For single men the Arctic has the best restaurant. But I would not advise respectable women to go there to sleep as they are liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings and uttered, too, by the depraved of their own sex.”

Well, putting aside that rather arch take on Trumpf’s hotel, one thing is apparent  — he gave the family an early start in the hotel business.

In 1901 at age 31, Trumpf returned to Kallstadt, there married a woman 11 years his junior and in 1902 and moved back to  New York City.  When his wife became homesick they returned to Bavaria. The long and short is German authorities concluded  Trumpf emigrated to America nearly 20 years before to avoid the mandatory army draft and ordered him expelled from Germany.

Last year, soon after his grandson’s election as president, The Washington Post and other news organizations reported a letter sent by Trumpf to Prince Luitipold of Bavaria beseeching reversal of the expulsion order. It did not get him a reversal and by 1905 the Trumpfs were back in New York where, in October that year, they had a son they named Frederick after his father. They called him Fred for short. In 1946 Fred and his wife in turn had a son, his second, who they named Donald.

That man,  now the occupant of the White House, is thus the grandson of a man who came to the U.S. at a young age with little education, no job training, very little money, no prospects, no job offer and no trade or skill.

According to one description of the immigration bill sponsored by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., which the occupant of the White House seized upon this week and elevated to   presidential immigration policy, today’s ideal immigrant “…would  be a 26-to-31-year-old with a US-based doctorate or professional degree, who speaks nearly perfect English and who has a salary offer that’s three times as high as the median income where they are (from).”

Friedr. Trumpf would not have fit that profile or come close to it. The Cotton bill, as we’ve all read, would require high proficiency in English for one to be admitted to the U.S. It would set up a scoring system that awards points for English fluency, advanced education, bringing big money to invest and the like. It even awards points for being an Olympic athlete or for winning a Nobel prize. We will have to give Friedr. Trumpf a pass on those last two because he arrived here before the first modern Olympiad in 1896 and before Alfred Nobel established his prizes.

Of course it is one thing to introduce a bill in the U.S. Senate but quite another to get it passed. In recent sessions of congress between the Senate and House of Representatives the number of bills introduced has ranged from 10,000  to 14,000. Typically 1 to 3 percent of  bills become law.  In the first six months of the current session over 6,000 bills were introduced. Fewer than 50 have passed — all but one or two like the Russia sanctions bill being innocuous.

The only progress made by Sen. Cotton’s bill is that he introduced it. A president can pull any of the thousands of bills introduced each year off the shelf to declare whatever he wants to with little likelihood of such a bill passing. You probably should not expect to hear much more of Sen. Cotton’s bill. It served  for a day as a distraction for a man who has no knowledge whatsoever of the long, complex history of American immigration laws.

Sen. Cotton’s bill may have been seized upon by this White House, but it isn’t going to become a law.  In fact it isn’t going to go anywhere except into the deepening mists of what is already shaping up to be the misshapen history of a misshapen administration.

In all the complicated history of immigration to America and the laws that have made the rules for it — yes, too often beset by the Xenophobia that is Sen. Cotton’s brand and is now peddled by  Friedr.  Trumpf’s grandson — it is safe to say  this:

It is safe to say that in the 240 years we have been a nation tens of millions of people  arrived  from everywhere else in the world with little education or none at all, with  few skills and no money, speaking but a few words of English or none at all, believing this is a fair and welcoming nation.

Mostly, they were right in that belief. Mostly, it still is.

 

 

 

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Back to Basics

Yes, we are back to basics. In fact we are about to get down to the most basic of all basics, paying for what we’ve already bought.

I know, I haven’t been here for a while. But, as I am sitting here recovering/healing from a fractured knee it seemed to me a way to fill some time (thanks for all the well wishes I know you are thinking and some will send): And then  it seemed to me there is a subject that needs to be revisited because if you thought the several failed votes to deform health care were a circus and a nightmare, not to mention a defilement of basic decency, then wait because there is worse to come with one difference.

The difference is this: The worse to come has a deadline, an inescapable deadline.

So, here we are in early August and if you recall back in the Spring I did a couple of pieces about that pesky thing called the debt ceiling coming around again. Well it took a little longer than I thought it would or estimated perhaps though not by much and here it is, just upon us. Continue reading “Back to Basics”