Born in the USA

By Hank Silverberg

No, this week’s blog is NOT a tribute to Bruce Springsteen, though I like his work.

Our liar-in-chief, Donald Trump, has done it again. He has made an outrageous statement that is totally inaccurate and racist and yet his supporters, and many others, don’t seem to know it or don’t care. 

You can read the article I have linked to below to get the play-by -play, so to speak, but basically he told four Progressive Democrats  to “go back” to the countries they came from. All four Congresswomen, Ayanna Pressley, (D-Mass), Rashida Tlaib  (D-Mich), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn),  have been highly critical of Trump and his policies and all have called for his impeachment.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-calls-on-minority-congresswomen-to-apologize-after-he-said-they-should-go-back-to-their-countries/ar-AAElZ9N?ocid=spartandhp

The attacks were clearly racist in nature. Some people have disputed that.  Read for yourself.  

Now some facts: 

All four are women of color. Three of the four were born in the United States so they are already “back” where they came from. The fourth, Congressman Omar, came here as a ten-year-old from Somalia and became an  American citizen at 17. She was elected by American voters in her district in America’s heartland--Minnesota. Omar and Talib are Muslim. Pressley is black. Ocasio- Cortez is Hispanic, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, and a thorn in Trump’s side since the day she took office.  

There was disgust expressed by many Democrats in Congress who called the attack racist and xenophobic. But Republicans were slow to respond, if they responded at all. 

Before 2015, if a candidate for President had told four members of Congress with ethnic backgrounds to go back where they came from, that candidate would have immediately been rejected by both political parties and quickly rejected by the voters. Despite all that has happened in the last four years, I confess, it is beyond my comprehension why that has changed. It is clear to me and perhaps millions of other people, that Donald Trump, the grandson of an immigrant, does not understand America, or what it is to be American. His continued lies and racist rants alone should disqualify him for re-election without even going into the other things he has messed up in the last two years. 

Yes, we have some trouble with immigration policy right now and we have had similar trouble throughout our history. But the United States has ALWAYS been, and will ALWAYS be, a nation of immigrants. That IS what it IS. Ask your parents or your grandparents about where your family came from. 

As I had reported last year in a previous blog, "A recent poll conducted by the Gallop organization found that 56% of the 331 million people living in the USA can trace their family’s presence in the USA back no more than three generations. If you go back four generations, that number rises to two thirds of all the people who live in America. These are compelling statistics." 

Mr. Trump continues to show his general disdain for the average American while at the same time egging on right wing extremists determined to change America into something it was not meant to be.

News Notes:

Virginia-mandering

Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry (pronounced “gear-ee) probably had no idea how much he would screw up the concept of one-man-one vote when he created a new way to draw voting  district maps in 1812.  He wanted a congressional map which would help his party stay in power. (Ironically, his party was called the Democratic- Republican party.) The district he came up with looked very much like a salamander, and the Boston press quickly dubbed his effort as a “gerry-mander”.

The U.S. Constitution gives states the power to draw up congressional districts within each state as well as their own legislative districts.  Each district is supposed to have approximately the same number of PEOPLE in them so each congress member represents approximately the same number of constituents. This is why the U.S. Census is so important and why we have seen all that debate over the citizenship question over the last few months.   

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Virginia's current last redistricting plan, meaning that some voters have gone to the polls several times in this decade in districts that were later deemed unconstitutional. The court had to do what the General Assembly couldn't do. For example: create districts that didn't jam too many African-Americans inside them, which effectively diluted their voter power in adjacent areas.    

Such gerrymandered districts have helped Republicans keep a majority in Virginia's General Assembly for two decades. 

Then there's Congressional Districts.  Virginia’s 7^th District, where I live, is a good example, though it looks more like a hand puppet than a salamander. Despite a district gerrymandered to elect a Republican, which it did for decades, a moderate Democrat, Abigail Spanberger, managed to get elected in 2018, mainly because the former Republican Congressman, Dave Brat, was absolutely terrible at basic congressional functions like constituent services.  It was a big upset in a district that is still shaped to favor Republicans and make it hard for a Democrat to stay in office.  

The 11th Congressional District where I used to live, was gerrymandered to favor Democrats as a concession from Republicans who had gerrymandered 8 other districts in the state.  The 11th has gone Democrat for over a decade. You can see the shape. Does that look like a condor or a crab? 

      

Gerrymandering has been the subject of many court cases across the country, but it looks like Virginia has finally come up with a viable way to eliminate them.

The state is going to set up a 16 member independent commission made up of eight private citizens who can not run for office. They  have to be approved by a panel of retired circuit court judges. The other eight members will be state legislators. To prevent party control, a super-majority of the commission has to approve all final maps.The General Assembly may then approve or reject the maps, but can not amend them. The Governor is not involved at all. All the meetings of the commission will be open to the public to promote transparency. 

  

The commission’s mandate will be to use municipal and county boundaries whenever possible when drawing up Congressional and Legislative districts.Virginia’s voters will get their chance to approve the change in the redistricting process in a referendum next year. If approved, it would become part of the Virginia State Constitution, making it hard to revoke.  

This plan will not totally eliminate gerrymandering, but it looks good and could serve as a model for other states.  If it's approved, some Virginia Congress members and a lot of state legislators will have to work a bit harder to get re-elected in 2022. One of the things they will have to explain is why they spent over 4 million taxpayer dollars in court to keep the districts unbalanced.  That is a good thing.    

                              (Your comments and suggestions are welcome) 


         (My book can be purchased at Amazon.com or BN.com or you can email me at             hsilverberg@gmail.com to find out how to get a signed copy at a reducted price)