April 7 - Politics and History Chat

What You Need to Know About the Paris Commune of 1871
"The Paris Commune was a popular-led democratic government that ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. Inspired by the Marxist politics and revolutionary goals of the International Workingmen's Organization (also known as the First International), workers of Paris united to overthrow the existing French regime which had failed to protect the city from Prussian siege, and formed the first truly democratic government in the city and in all of France. The elected council of the Commune passed socialist policies and oversaw city functions for just over two months, until the French army retook the city for the French government, slaughtering tens of thousands of working-class Parisians in order to do so."

The impact of the Paris Commune in the United States
QUOTE from source: No political or economic issue in the United States, save governmental corruption, received more headlines in the American press of the 1870's than did the Paris Commune and the International Workingmen's Association. Every big newspaper gave readers the impression that the founda tions of organized society had crumbled. Anarchy, assassination, slaughter, incendiarism, streets covered with human gore?such blood curdling scenes were monotonously reported in the news.

The evolution of American voting rights in 242 years
"In the beginning of the republic, voting was mainly restricted to property-owning white men, which would later be extended to all men. While the right to vote was also eventually granted to women with the 19th Amendment in 1920, white women were the main beneficiaries. Men and women of color would continue to fight to battle discriminatory voting practices for decades even after technically receiving the right to vote, culminating in the historic civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which led to landmark legislation that transformed American voting rights. But even today, activists and civil rights groups are continuing to fight voting laws they argue are discriminatory."

Voting Rights: A Short History
"Challenges to voting rights in this country, like the ones we've seen recently, are hardly a 21st-century invention. Entrenched groups have long tried to keep the vote out of the hands of the less powerful. Indeed, America began its great democratic experiment in the late 1700s by granting the right to vote to a narrow subset of society — white male landowners. Even as barriers to voting began receding in the ensuing decades, many Southern states erected new ones, such as poll taxes and literary tests, aimed at keeping the vote out of the hands of African American men. Over time, voting rights became a bipartisan priority as people worked at all levels to enact constitutional amendments and laws expanding access to the vote based on race and ethnicity, gender, disability, age and other factors. The landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed by Congress took major steps to curtail voter suppression. Thus began a new era of push-and-pull on voting rights, with the voting age reduced to 18 from 21 and the enshrinement of voting protections for language minorities and people with disabilities. Greater voter enfranchisement was met with fresh resistance and in 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in its ruling on Shelby County v. Holder, paving the way for states and jurisdictions with a history of voter suppression to enact restrictive voter identification laws. A whopping 23 states created new obstacles to voting in the decade leading up to the 2018 elections, according to the nonpartisan coalition Election Protection."

Voter Suppression in the 19th Century North: The Other Disfranchisement and What It Tells Us
"While many Americans (and many historians) present a narrative in which voting rights expanded in the early 19th century, then were retracted for African-American men in the 1880s, the history of disfranchisement demonstrates the long history of technical manipulation of voter registration, a practice that continues to shape voting rights in the United States. In the 1840s–1850s, Northern states pioneered modes of registration designed explicitly to limit Irish-American and other immigrant voting. Although this effort was halted by the Civil War’s expansive need for popular participation in the military, the practice resumed in the 1870s North, to confront later waves of immigration. When white Southern Democrats sought to restrict the franchise for freedpeople, they turned to these methods pioneered in New England. While we often tell a story of violence and fraud in the disfranchisement of African-Americans in the Jim Crow South, the reliance on technical tools of registration remind us of the long history of making voting difficult in the United States."

Today’s Voter Suppression Tactics Have A 150 Year History
"The tools that broke American democracy were not just the Ku Klux Klan’s white sheets, vigilantes’ Red Shirts, and lynch mobs’ nooses

Secrecy in Voting in American History: No Secrets There
"For most of America’s history, from colonial days to the 1890s, keeping the content of your vote secret was almost impossible. There was no expectation that the vote should be secret and little understanding of how this could be accomplished even if it were a good idea. Many people – and not just political operatives – thought secrecy was not a good idea. In those days there was no model for structuring elections so they could be private individual matters, conducted quietly inside public buildings, with votes cast while hidden red, white, and blue striped curtains. That is not the way US elections were conducted. The alternative – today’s secret ballot – with which we are now so familiar had yet to be invented, or, as it turned out, imported into American politics."

Literacy as a requirement for voting
"Prior to passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965, Southern (and some Western) states maintained elaborate voter registration procedures whose primary purpose was to deny the vote to non-whites. This process was often referred to as a literacy test. But in fact, it was much more than just a reading test. It was an entire complex system devoted to denying African-Americans (and in some regions, Latinos and Native Americans) the right to vote."

How Shelby County v. Holder Broke America
"The full text of the Voting Rights Act may or may not be in danger depending on the nature of the challenges that arise for the next generation of justices, but the damage has already been done. If the act represented a commitment by the federal government to ensure the true fulfilment of the Fourteenth Amendment’s right to due process and the Fifteenth Amendment’s erasure of race-based disenfranchisement, then Roberts’s Court has all but dismantled that commitment"

The Fight to Vote: Overcoming voter suppression in the South
"Mississippi strips the right to vote from people convicted of certain felonies for the rest of their lives. An ongoing state investigation into voter suppression was launched in Georgia last year after counties with high populations of Black voters reported extraordinary waits in polling sites and restrictive ID requirements. In Florida, although Amendment 4 restored voting rights for millions of people with felony convictions, a legal battle is still being waged against what amounts to a modern-day poll tax: a requirement that legal financial obligations be paid in full before ballots are cast. And Alabama remains one of the most difficult places in the nation to cast a ballot. To make matters worse, the COVID-19 pandemic has made it even more difficult for people who were already struggling against voter suppression to get out and cast a ballot."

COVID-19 Crisis Makes Reformers All In for Vote-by-Mail
"The political reform movement -- large, growing and increasingly successful -- was poised to wage dozens of new state campaigns in 2020 to outlaw gerrymandering, expand use of ranked-choice voting and temper the influence of big money in politics. Then came the COVID-19 crisis, upending such plans along with those of virtually every citizen, business, health facility and government entity. Many movement plans relied on passing voter initiatives, but the virus outbreak made petition-gathering impossible. So a swift change in strategy is underway, elevating one longstanding movement aim — voting by mail (also called “Vote at Home”) — to the top of the agenda."

One Nation After Trump A Guide for the Perplexed the Disillusioned the Desperate & the Not Yet Deported
"American democracy was never supposed to give the nation a president like Donald Trump. We have never had a president who gave rise to such widespread alarm about his lack of commitment to the institutions of self-government, to the norms democracy requires, and to the need for basic knowledge about how government works. We have never had a president who raises profound questions about his basic competence and his psychological capacity to take on the most challenging political office in the world. Yet if Trump is both a threat to our democracy and a product of its weaknesses, the citizen activism he has inspired is the antidote. The reaction to the crisis created by Trump's presidency can provide the foundation for an era of democratic renewal and vindicate our long experiment in self-rule. The award-winning authors of One Nation After Trump explain Trump's rise and the danger his administration poses to our free institutions. They also offer encouragement to the millions of Americans now experiencing a new sense of citizenship and engagement and argue that our nation needs a unifying alternative to Trump's dark and divisive brand of politics--an alternative rooted in a New Economy, a New Patriotism, a New Civil Society, and a New Democracy. One Nation After Trump is the essential book for our era, an unsparing assessment of the perils facing the United States and an inspiring roadmap for how we can reclaim the future."

Origin of Gerrymandering
The word “gerrymander” was coined at a Boston dinner party hosted by a prominent Federalist in March 1812, according to an 1892 article by historian John Ward Dean. As talk turned to the hated redistricting bill, illustrator Elkanah Tisdale drew a picture map of the district as if it were a monster, with claws and a snake-like head on its long neck. It looked like a salamander, another dinner guest noted. No, a “Gerry-mander,” offered poet Richard Alsop, who often collaborated with Tisdale.

The Origin of Red-Mapping
"Republicans certainly maintain the advantage in that game right now. They began the escalation over seven years ago, with the creation of the groundbreaking REDMAP initiative. As David Daley’s Ratf**ked illustrates, the first goal of the Republican State Leadership Committee’s REDMAP project was to seize control of vulnerable statehouses in purple states in the 2010 elections and grab ahold of the redistricting process, which by the Constitution occurs alongside the reapportionment of Congressional seats every 10 years with the results of the Census. With those seats in hand, the resulting end goal was not some shady conspiracy, and REDMAP’s own website proudly sums it best: 'The party controlling that effort controls the drawing of the maps—shaping the political landscape for the next 10 years.'"

How the Efficiency Gap Works
"Developed by Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and Eric McGhee, Research Fellow atthe Public Policy Institute of California, the efficiency gap counts the number of votes each party wastes in an election to determine whether either party enjoyed a systematic advantage in turning votes into seats. Any vote cast for a losing candidate is considered wasted, as are all the votes cast for a winning candidate in excess of the number needed to win."

Kushner comments about stockpile
"White House senior advisor Jared Kushner made a rare appearance during Thursday's coronavirus task force briefing, an appearance that drew backlash when he referred to the national stockpile of medical supplies as "our stockpile" and not one belonging to states."

Trump conversation about stockpile
"Jiang [the reporter who asked Trump about Kushner's comments] posted on Twitter after the exchange, writing, 'Jared Kushner is in charge of the medical supply chain that delivers critical items to the doctors and nurses who are on the frontlines everyday. Yesterday he said it was “OURS”, so I asked what he meant. Trump did not like the question.'"

HHS website changes after Kushner comments about stockpile
"The Department of Health and Human Services changed its website’s wording after President Donald Trump‘s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said on Thursday that the national stockpile of medical supplies belongs to the federal government, not the states."

History of stockpile
QUOTE from source: In April 1998, as a result of having read the Richard Preston novel, The Cobra Event, the president held a meeting with a group of scientists and Cabinet members to discuss the threat of bioterrorism,” the scholar Martha Crenshaw wrote in a 2006 terrorism-studies anthology. “The briefing impressed Clinton so much that he asked the experts to brief senior officials in DOD and HHS.” Crenshaw cites a May 21, 1998, Washington Post article noting that, while the U.S. had stockpiles of antibiotics for military troops, there was no such stash for civilians — and that some Washington officials “expressed surprise at how fast the president and his National Security Council staff had moved” to change that. By Oct. 21, 1998, Clinton signed into law a roughly $51 million budget for “for pharmaceutical and vaccine stockpiling activities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” Its first order of business was to prepare for Y2K, in the event a computer glitch disrupted medical supply chains.

Bidding war between states for critical supplies
QUOTE from source: State and local governments across the United States are vying to purchase the same equipment, creating a competitive market for those materials that drives up prices for everyone.

FEMA and PPE seizures
QUOTE: This afternoon today we noted an earlier version of this article in The Bellingham (Washington) Herald, which described yet another case of interdicted supplies. A major hospital group in the Pacific Northwest had testing supplies rerouted, purportedly to the East Coast. The Los Angeles Times first reported on this seizure on Tuesday and said it was carried out by FEMA. In fact, a FEMA spokesperson explained the actions by saying that FEMA “has developed a system for identifying needed supplies from vendors and distributing them equitably.”

The Fairness Doctrine
QUOTE from source: The Fairness Doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows or editorials. Formally adopted as an FCC rule in 1949 and repealed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan’s pro-broadcaster FCC, the doctrine can be traced back to the early days of broadcast regulation.

DOJ: Hiring Kushner does not violate anti-nepotism law
QUOTE from source: The Justice Department concluded Friday that Jared Kushner serving in his father-in-law's administration would not be a violation of federal anti-nepotism laws. "In choosing his personal staff, the President enjoys an unusual degree of freedom, which Congress found suitable to the demands of his office," wrote Daniel Koffsky, deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel, which serves as interpreter of federal law for the White House.

Kushner's security clearance was denied due to concerns of foreign influence: report
QUOTE from source: President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, was reportedly denied security clearance last year over concerns of foreign influence and private business interests, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. The Post, citing people familiar with the situation, identified Kushner as the "Senior White House Official 1" identified in House Oversight Committee documents released this week. According to the documents, the individual was denied security clearance initially by career officials before being overruled by Carl Kline, who headed the White House’s personnel security office at the time.

Plessy vs. Ferguson
QUOTE from source: In an opinion authored by Justice Henry Billings Brown, the majority upheld state-imposed racial segregation. Justice Brown conceded that the 14th Amendment intended to establish absolute equality for the races before the law, but held that separate treatment did not imply the inferiority of African Americans. The Court noted that there was not a meaningful difference in quality between the white and black railway cars.

THE INSULAR CASES: THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A REGIME OF POLITICAL APARTHEID
QUOTE from source: The "redeeming" difference is that Plessy is no longer the law of the land, while the Supreme Court remains aloof about the repercussions of its actions in deciding the Insular Cases as it did, including the fact that these cases are responsible for the establishment of a regime of de facto political apartheid, which continues in full vigor.

Politics in the Gilded Age, 1870—1900
QUOTE from source: Mark Twain coined the phrase “Gilded Age” in a book he co-authored with Charles Dudley Warner in 1873, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. The book satirized the corruption of post-Civil War society and politics. Indeed, popular excitement over national growth and industrialization only thinly glossed over the stark economic inequalities and various degrees of corruption of the era. Politicians of the time largely catered to business interests in exchange for political support and wealth. Many participated in graft and bribery, often justifying their actions with the excuse that corruption was too widespread for a successful politician to resist. The machine politics of the cities, specifically Tammany Hall in New York, illustrate the kind of corrupt, but effective, local and national politics that dominated the era.

Editorial: Evers' ban on in-person voting was the right call to ensure a safe, fair election during coronavirus pandemic
QUOTE from the source: The governor's action was designed to keep people safe while ensuring a fair election could still be held. His executive order would have moved the election to June 9. Now that election will be happening Tuesday,by court order, with thousands of voters, many of them older and vulnerable, being funneled into a dramatically reduced number of polling places across the state.