A Bit Far Out…But…

Anyone who follows politics in today’s U.S. of A. is aware that gerrymandering is at the root of much of what ails us. There’s a reason Democrats have a chance to retain Senate control in the upcoming midterms: Senate races cannot be gerrymandered. (Okay, the fact that several GOP candidates are wacko has helped.) If voting majorities decided the composition of the House of Representatives, Democrats would easily hold that chamber–but political scientists tell us that barely a handful of House districts are currently competitive. They’ve been gerrymandered by both parties, but mostly by the GOP.

I’ve written (a lot) about the issues raised by gerrymandering, and I won’t repeat the litany here (although I encourage you to read my academic paper analyzing those issues–and weep…).

Thus far, our highly politicized U.S. Supreme Court has declined to get involved, piously declaring gerrymandering to be “a political question.” So a recent ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court wasn’t just a breath of fresh air–it was a light at the end of a dark tunnel. (Okay, I’ll quit the hokey metaphors, but I really, really loved this court’s conclusion!) Here’s the lede:

In a remarkable decision, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled on Friday that because the state legislature was unconstitutionally gerrymandered, Republican lawmakers may have lacked the power to approve amendments to the state constitution and put them before voters.

The decision, which the court’s 4-3 Democratic majority issued along party lines, stopped short of granting the plaintiffs’ requests to strike down two amendments passed by Republicans in 2018—one to require photo voter ID and another to cap any state income tax at 7%. The justices instead returned the case to the trial court for further findings, though its framing of the dispute indicates that there’s a strong likelihood the state courts will ultimately invalidate the amendments.

The court’s conclusion was buttressed by the fact that a large number of the state’s legislative districts had been struck down in 2017; the federal courts found they had been racially drawn to discriminate against Black voters.

However, Republicans who had been elected under the unconstitutional maps used their supermajorities to place their amendments on the ballot the following year, when they were ultimately approved by voters.

The heart of the argument was the legitimacy of actions taken by illegitimate lawmakers:

The plaintiffs, who are backed by the NAACP, made the unusual—but not unprecedented—argument that the GOP’s widespread illegal gerrymandering rendered the legislature a “usurper” that legally lacked the power to amend North Carolina’s foundational governing document because it had “lost its claim to popular sovereignty.” A lower court agreed in 2019 by striking down the two amendments, but a 2-1 Republican majority on the state Court of Appeals reversed that ruling along party lines in 2020, leading the plaintiffs to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The decision sending the case back to the trial court instructed that court to consider three questions: whether the amendments that were subject to the protest  would “immunize legislators … from democratic accountability,” whether they would “further the exclusion of a particular class of voters from the democratic process,” or whether those amendments were  intended to discriminate against the same type of voters who had been discriminated against by the illegal gerrymandering. If the trial court found the answer to any one of these three questions be “yes,” s/he would be “require[d]” to strike down the amendments.

I was particularly struck by the first question, addressing “democratic accountability.” 

In Indiana, it is a given that our statehouse is occupied by lawmakers lacking that “democratic accountability.” A number of academic studies have ranked the state among the five most gerrymandered in the country. It’s been a long time since I studied Indiana’s Constitution, but I do recall that Part Two, Section 1 declares that  “All elections shall be free and equal.” I also remember the (very strained) decision in Bush v. Gore to the effect that voting must pass an “equal protection” standard.

How equal are the votes of gerrymandered Hoosiers? How “democratically accountable” are the lawmakers who hold their positions thanks to the very denial of that equal protection?

In gerrymandered Indiana, we have plenty of evidence that rural ballots count more than urban ones. The citizens who reside in “blue” cities have less voice in state government than the citizens who live in the “red” exurbs and rural precincts of the state. How is this situation “free and equal”?

Calling on the Hoosier state’s creative lawyers…

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Choosing To Believe

In the mid-1990s, after publication of my first book (What’s a Nice Republican Girl Like Me Doing at the ACLU?), I was a guest on a call-in radio show in South Carolina. My publisher had asked for my travel schedule, and booked me on the show–while failing to tell me that it followed three hours of Rush Limbaugh…

It was rough.

One caller shared a “quote” by James Madison to the effect that the Founders gave the Bill of Rights to people who lived by the Ten Commandments. I responded by saying that, not only had that “quote” been debunked by Madison scholars, it was contrary to everything we know Madison did say. The caller yelled, “Well, I choose to believe it!” and hung up.

Today, echoes of that conversation are everywhere. The phenomenon even has a name: belief polarization.

Belief polarization has been the subject of substantial scholarly research, as Thomas Edsall recently reported in an essay for the New York Times.

In a paper that came out in June, “Explanations for Inequality and Partisan Polarization in the U.S., 1980 — 2020,” Elizabeth Suhay and Mark Tenenbaum, political scientists at American University, and Austin Bartola, of Quadrant Strategies, provide insight into why so much discord permeates American politics:

Scholars who research polarization have almost exclusively focused on the relationship between Americans’ policy opinions and their partisanship. In this article, we discuss a different type of partisan polarization underappreciated by scholars: “belief polarization,” or disagreements over what people perceive to be true.

In a finding that is especially disheartening to naive people who (like yours truly) harp on the importance of credible evidence, scholars have found that two people with opposing prior beliefs often “both strengthen their beliefs after observing the same data.”

In a 2021 paper, researchers found

“ample evidence that people sustain different beliefs even when faced with the same information, and they interpret that information differently.” They also note that “stark differences in beliefs can arise and endure due to human limitations in interpreting complex information.”

Edsall quotes an explanation of belief polarization authored by professors of philosophy at Vanderbilt.

Part of what makes belief polarization so disconcerting is its ubiquity. It has been extensively studied for more than 50 years and found to be operative within groups of all kinds, formal and informal. Furthermore, belief polarization does not discriminate between different kinds of belief. Like-minded groups polarize regardless of whether they are discussing banal matters of fact, matters of personal taste, or questions about value. What’s more, the phenomenon operates regardless of the explicit point of the group’s discussion. Like-minded groups polarize when they are trying to decide an action that the group will take, and they polarize also when there is no specific decision to be reached. Finally, the phenomenon is prevalent regardless of group members’ nationality, race, gender, religion, economic status, and level of education.

Short version: humans of all kinds are irrational.

The most recent examples of belief polarization, of course, involve Trump: in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, MAGA supporters remain convinced by the “Big Lie” that the election was stolen; Democrats and independents are equally certain it wasn’t. And more recently, Right-wingers (and of course, Fox News) are calling the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago a corrupt politicization of federal investigative authority. The rest of us counter that the raid is consistent with the rule of law, a reassuring demonstration that no one, no matter how powerful, is above the law.

Edsall explores Americans’ polarized beliefs about the economy, poverty,  climate change, and gender identity. Then he delivers a profoundly depressing statement: “There is further evidence that even people who are knowledgeable about complex issues are sharply polarized along partisan lines.”

He quotes from a paper titled “More Accurate, but No Less Polarized: Comparing the Factual Beliefs of Government Officials and the Public,” demonstrating that even though “political elites are consistently more accurately informed than the public,” that increased accuracy doesn’t translate into reduced belief polarization”. The study challenged the assumption that we will disagree less about the facts if we know more.

And most depressing, albeit unsurprising: it turns out that racism plays a central part in America’s polarization Researchers have found that–while political campaigns don’t change levels of prejudice–” they can prime these attitudes, or make them more or less salient and therefore more or less politically relevant.”

As one set of researchers found,

Trump not only attracted whites with more conservative views on race; he also made his white supporters more likely to espouse increasingly extreme views on issues related to immigration and on issues like the Black Lives Matter movement and police killings of African Americans.

In other words, political rhetoric can sharpen racial attitudes–and (like my long-ago caller) reinforce and legitimize what we choose to believe.

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We’re Number Two!

And it’s nothing to brag about.

Indianapolis is second only to New York City in the number of tenant evictions. That’s not the rate of evictions–that’s the actual number. We’re ahead of Houston and Philadelphia, among others.

I have long been aware of Indiana’s deficiencies in landlord-tenant law. Among the many, many failures of the World’s Worst Legislature has been the  years-long refusal of the General Assembly to pass any laws that might upset landlords by offering even the slightest protection to renters.

The legislature’s obeisance  to property owners and utter disregard of renters has always been egregious, but the recent surge of purchases in “emerging” neighborhoods by out-of-state companies has made the situation much worse. Corporate and investor purchases of homes increased by 145 percent between 2019 and 2021–and these purchases are driving down homeownership and driving up evictions.

State Senator Fady Qaddoura is one of the (distressingly few) shining lights in Indiana’s General Assembly. (Full disclosure: Fady was a student of mine and I can attest to his intellect, his integrity and his values.) Last session, he authored  SB230, which would have given tenants in Indiana the right to withhold rent if their landlord failed to make necessary housing repairs; the bill would also have given tenants the right to make the repairs themselves and deduct the cost from the next rental payment if the landlord failed or refused to do so.

Indiana is one of only five states without these habitability enforcement rights.

Of course, the bill didn’t pass; it is currently in study committee (where good ideas go to die–I served on the gerrymandering study committee and watched as members ignored evidence and made certain that redistricting reform went exactly nowhere.)

SAVI recently reported on SB230.

Speaking with The Polis Center’s analysts, Senator Qaddoura highlighted the necessity for providing recourse for tenants when landlords fail to repair critical systems, such as heat, water, gas, or electricity. Qaddoura emphasized that most landlords in Indiana take care of their tenants and comply with providing necessary repairs. However, he stressed the increase in out-of-state, corporate landlords that have allowed properties to deteriorate. Negligent corporate landlords such as those responsible for the Lakeside Pointe at Nora complex failed to provide heat, which led to the use of space heaters and resulted in at least seven fires in 2021 alone. Situations like Lakeside Pointe at Nora are further complicated when landlord corporations operate as non-profits entities, which makes enforcing legal penalties and oversight more difficult.

Senator Qaddoura also shared the frustrating reality of tenants attempting to communicate with landlords who are out of state and unresponsive. Unlike with local landlords, tenants have little recourse for tracking down owners or property managers when multiple LLCs are created to purchase investment properties. As essential services such as water, electricity, plumbing, etc. become unusable or unavailable, tenants are required to contact the landlord or property owner and wait for them to remedy the situation. However, in multiple cases, these repair requests remain unaddressed, and tenants are not allowed to make the repairs themselves.

According to Senator Qaddoura, families with language barriers are often prime targets for such abuses.

The small-claims courts overseeing petitions for eviction are inundated, and far too often  mechanically approve a dozen or more eviction cases in a morning, without allowing the tenants to complain or explain. (In all fairness, given the lack of laws protecting those tenants or giving them grounds for those complaints, it’s hard to criticize those judges.)

That said, The Greater Indianapolis Multi-Faith Alliance (GIMA) has made the eviction crisis  a focus of its efforts.The Alliance is starting an Evictions Court Watch–an effort to get more people into the courtrooms to keep judges accountable. (As one advocate noted, “there’s nothing scarier than little old church ladies with clipboards!”)

I certainly applaud GIMA’s announcement, but their efforts would be better directed at those making the rules, rather than the Judges who lack the authority to enforce rules that don’t exist. Perhaps substantial attendance at meetings of the SB230 Study Committee, coupled with other advocacy efforts, would have an effect.

But don’t hold your breath.

After all, hundreds of people from all over Indiana showed up at meetings of the redistricting study committee, armed with data showing that large majorities of Hoosier wanted reform, but continued gerrymandering easily won the day.

And that brings me back to my recurring observation about the “quality” of Indiana’s legislature.We need lots more lawmakers like Senator Qaddoura and his co-sponsors– Sen. Greg Walker, R-Columbus, and Sen. Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington.

Of course, gerrymandering makes that legislative improvement unlikely.

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About That Loan Forgiveness…

President Biden has announced his college loan forgiveness program. Let the carping begin!

Critics scream that forgiveness takes money from the broader tax base, mostly made up of workers who did not go to college, to subsidize the debt of people with valuable degrees. Technically, I suppose that’s true–but it’s also true for the massive corporate subsidies and tax credits that the GOP loves.

What about Trump’s 2017 tax cut for millionaires? Or those oil company subsidies and multiple other subsidies for big companies that can afford to hire good lobbyists?  How about those lower tax rates for hedge fund managers (“carried interest deduction”)?What about tax provisions benefitting only the rich–for example, allowing 100% deductibility for yachts purchased for “business purposes,” and  100% of the future depreciation for private jets in their first year of service?

Where are the GOP howls of “unfairness” about those examples of “socialism?” (I forgot–in the good old U.S. of A., we have socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us…)

Republican lawmakers screaming the loudest about “unfairness” are the most hypocritical: Marjorie Taylor Greene  had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven; Vern Buchanan (Florida) had more than $2.3 million forgiven;  Markwayne Mullin (Oklahoma) had more than $1.4 million forgiven; Matt Gaetz (Pedophile) had $482,321 forgiven. The list goes on. And on.

It also turns out that not all beneficiaries of loan forgiveness have those valuable degrees. A lot of them just have the debt. Researchers tell us that the people who struggle the most to repay their loans “are less likely to be baristas with six figures in debt and a graduate degree than blue-collar workers who have a smaller amount of unpaid loans but never graduated college.”

As Biden said, that worker has the “worst of both worlds — debt and no degree.”

The loan forgiveness program is specifically targeted to borrowers making less than $125,000 annually–those Yale graduates pulling down big bucks on Wall Street won’t qualify.  The relief will go to middle and low-income borrowers struggling to pay off their loans–and that targeted debt forgiveness is likely to have a significant positive economic impact. (As numerous studies have confirmed–when you give lower-income people more money, they spend it.)

A couple of things worth noting:  women ( Black women in particular) represent a disproportionate number of the borrowers who struggle with repayment; and school teachers are among those most likely to benefit.

A July 2021 report from the National Education Association showed that 45% of educators were student loan borrowers and over half of those still have a balance, averaging almost $59,000. Teaching typically isn’t a high-paying career, so paying off loans can be particularly burdensome. Experts say loan forgiveness would especially benefit early education (pre-K) teachers, who make even less than those in the K-12 system.

The loudest criticisms of loan forgiveness seem to come from people who paid off their own student debts. Alexandra Petri had a great –albeit snarky–response to those complaints in a Washington Post column.A couple of those paragraphs:

DISGUSTING! AWFUL! I have just received word that life is getting marginally better for some people, and I am white-hot with fury! This is the worst thing that could possibly happen! I did not suffer and strive and work my fingers to the bone so that anybody else could have a life that does not involve suffering and striving and the working of fingers to the bone. I demand to see only bones and no fingers!…

Every time anyone’s life improves at all, I personally am insulted. Any time anyone devises a labor-saving device, or passes some kind of weak, soft-hearted law that forecloses the opportunity for a new generation of children to lose fingers in dangerous machinery, I gnash my teeth. This is an affront to everyone who struggled so mightily. To avoid affronting them, we must keep everything just as bad as ever. Put those fingers back into the machines, or our suffering will have been in vain…

I fought uphill battles and squinted into the night and toiled and burdened myself in the hope that my children, one day, would also get to work exactly that hard, if not harder, and suffer at least as much as I did, and have, if the Lord allows, lives worse than mine. God, please make their lives worse!

These reactions do make me wonder why the owner of the corner hardware store isn’t howling about the unfairness of subsidies that pad the bottom lines of bigger businesses, or the tax cuts that saved him $10, but put lots more money in the pockets of the already-wealthy.

For my part, I really prefer having my tax dollars support the education of a kid from a low or middle-income family, rather than subsidizing the purchase of a yacht “for business purposes.”

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It’s Never That Simple

I recently dipped back into Howard Zinn’s “People’s History,” mostly to remind myself that the past was just as messy and unpredictable–and unfair and inequitable–as the multiple things that drive me bonkers today, and also to remind myself that frequently, “good guys” won and made life better for lots of the previously downtrodden.

During his description of the chaotic time leading up to the American Revolution, Zinn shared a quote from Thomas Paine that I didn’t remember seeing previously:

There is an extent of riches, as well as an extreme of poverty, which, by harrowing the circles of a man’s acquaintance, lessens his opportunities of general knowledge.

Paine was pointing to the phenomenon that today’s commentators call “living in a bubble”–something most of us do. It is very difficult to genuinely interact with people outside our circles: city folks rarely mingle with rural ones, or professionals with people in the trades or those performing more menial tasks. We may encounter people outside our bubbles, but encounters are not relationships; they aren’t “circles.”

I thought about that quotation, and the undeniable reality it reflects, when I read “The Myth that Everyone has an ID,” published at a site called “Civic Nebraska.”

The lede was essentially a restatement of Paine’s admonition:

The reality is, we don’t all live the same life. We don’t all have the same experiences. And we have to take that into account. We should make sure all voices are heard, and that the laws we put in place don’t cut people out, or make them second-class citizens. It’s our job to encourage them and protect them.”

That comes from our video Gavin’s Story: The Hidden Harm of Voter ID, and at the end of the day, it really is the central reason to not force Nebraskans into strict photo identification requirements at the ballot box. Despite the conventional wisdom and the assumption that everyone has a “proper ID,” the fact is that many Nebraskans don’t. This is true for any number of reasons; regardless, it’s never as simple as proponents of such strict identification measures make it out to be.

The article proceeded to look at the numbers and draw some unsettling conclusions. Given the state’s most recent population figures, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated 1,472,769 Nebraskans are of voting age.

How many of these Nebraskans already have IDs? According to the Department of Motor Vehicles, Nebraska had 1,418,301 licensed drivers who were 18 or older in 2021. That comes out to about 96 percent of voting-age Nebraskans. This sounds like “almost everyone,” until you consider what that represents in terms of individual people left behind by an unnecessary law. By our estimate, that could be as many as 54,500 potential Nebraska voters.

As the writer says, that’s not nothing.

It represents a lot of Nebraska voters – especially college students, low-income voters, disabled voters, rural voters, or any eligible voter who for whatever reason is without government-issued photo identification. These are our neighbors, friends, family, co-workers.

By the way, that’s a conservative number. It assumes people over 18 with learner’s permits, which allow a person to legally practice driving before applying for their driver’s license, are valid ID-holders. Throw those out for any reason, and the number of Nebraskans potentially without valid ID to vote is nearly 70,000. And, of course, this doesn’t include the untold number of Nebraskans who have state-issued IDs but who may have changed their name, address, or other feature in their life, likely rendering their currently held licenses invalid to vote.

The simple answer, of course, is to give everyone a free ID. As the article points out, “It’s a fine idea that will cost millions. Every year. Forever.” Given the overwhelming amount of research showing that in-person vote fraud is somewhere between minuscule and non-existent, that’s money that could be better spent elsewhere.( I’d suggest diverting it to accurate–i.e., non-Florida–civics education.)

These voter ID laws are widely approved by people whose “circles” all have IDs–people who find it difficult to understand why anyone wouldn’t have such documentation, and thus don’t consider the requirement to be a genuine impediment to voting.

Of course, those voter ID requirements are also strongly endorsed by Republicans, who are quite aware that the bulk of the people they are disenfranchising–college students, low-income voters, disabled voters–are disproportionately likely to cast a Democratic vote.

Thomas Paine was onto something….

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