Category Archives: politics

Gore Both Oxes

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In Matthew Mimnaugh’s (ex-Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chief Counsel, among other such positions) Wall Street Journal op-ed, he decried the Republican Party’s lack of success, apparently due to lack of effort, in gerrymandering Red States compared to the Progressive-Democratic Party’s success at gerrymandering Blue States to gain Federal House of Representatives seats. After all, he noted,

In 2000, the House GOP earned its thin majority of 221 while outpolling Dick Gephardt’s Democrats nationwide by less than 0.05 percentage point. In 2024, despite a nearly 4-point popular-vote advantage, Speaker Mike Johnson has a majority of only 220.

Mimnaugh’s solution is for Republicans to become better gerrymanderers. Gerrymandering, he noted, is a tradition almost as old as our republic. It’s also, it seems to this average American denizen of flyover country, unconstitutional, for all its long-standing nature. Here’s Art I, Sect 2, of our Constitution on the matter of Congressional representation:

The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative….

There’s nothing in there about divvying up that sectioning in order to favor this or that party—or this or that race, come to that. It’s certainly the case that standing on ceremony and insisting on a maximum constituency of 30,000 per Representative, which with a national population of 340 million would result in a House of some 11,333 Representatives, would be politically and practically…impractical.

The gerrymandering bit, however, is easily corrected, and the correction better done than by competing gerrymander schemes every 10 years. The obvious solution is to divide each State by the number of Representatives to which it is apportioned every 10 years, thereby arriving at the number of Congressional districts into which the State would be divided. This is the current procedure. However, instead of drawing district boundaries explicitly to favor this or that party and this or that race, divide each State into substantially equally populated districts, and starting at the State’s geographic center, draw the districts as squares with the first four districts having one corner each anchored on that center. Then work in concentric “circles” around those four until the requisite numbers of districts are drawn.

For States with three Representatives, divide them into three substantially equally populated triangles anchored on that center with straight lines marking their mutual boundaries. For States with two representatives, divide each into two substantially equally populated districts with a straight line marking their mutual boundary. The reductionist case of one Representative is obvious.

In all cases, the only deviation from straight line district boundaries allowed would be at a State’s boundary with a neighboring State or neighboring nation, or in Hawaii’s case, the ocean shore line.

We are, after all, all Americans, all equal under law, and all voters, each with an equally valid and valued vote, without regard to party or race. Americans under law and as voters are as well party-blind and color-blind.

Pardons and Culpability

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Then-still President Joe Biden (D), if only barely at the time, issued pardons to the rest of his immediate family, to the J6 Congressmen and staffers (more on this in a separate post), overwrought bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci, and to wokesters like General Mark Milley (Army, Ret) just in case they might have committed criminal offenses and be haled into criminal court to answer charges. Among the resulting hues and cries is the angst that this puts those folks beyond retribution. While the last minute and preemptive nature of the pardons has the potential of setting an ugly precedent, they are not at all beyond retribution.

All of those pardoned folks, every single one of them, is still legally open to Federal subpoena to testify before Congress concerning the things they did, are accused of doing, and are reputed to have done. Their pardoned status, which does inure them against Federal criminal charges, actually greatly weakens their ability to resist requirements to testify with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth on the witness stand. The only criminal consequences they could suffer would stem from that post-pardon testimony, should they choose to lie at that time.

Beyond the inability to resist providing testimony, Presidential pardons extend only to Federal crimes and Federal charges of Federal crimes. They do not provide any protection from State or local criminal charges (which would be their only shield against Federal subpoenas to testify). Especially, Presidential pardons provide no protection against civil suits over those very same behaviors, accused behaviors, and reputed behaviors.

All that’s lacking for any of this to happen is the public’s and Congressmen’s will to bring the suits.

A Good Move in the Offing

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President Donald Trump (R) and some of his new appointees are looking at downsizing the Federal government’s office holdings and at downsizing the General Services Administration, the agency specifically tasked with being the landlord of those office facilities.

The Trump administration is considering selling two-thirds of the federal government’s office stock to the private sector, according to people familiar with the transition operations.
About three-quarters of the 70 million square feet of office space the GSA leases from private landlords in DC is also likely to be canceled, according to Don Peebles, a longtime Washington, DC-based developer.

The Federal government doesn’t need all that office space and uses very little of what it has.

GSA-owned buildings in Washington, DC, average about a 12% occupancy rate. The government owns more than 7,500 vacant buildings across the country, and more than 2,200 that are partially empty.

Reducing GSA holdings of government office space will become even more important to the extent Trump’s plan proceeds to move many Executive Branch Departments and Agencies out into Left- and Progressive-Democratic Party-disdained flyover country. On top of that, the upcoming reduction in civil service employment will further reduce the need for government office space wherever located.

Nor is there any reason why two or more Departments can’t occupy the same building, two or more Agencies can’t occupy the same building, or Departments and Agencies can’t occupy the same building. That’s teamwork and collaboration facilitated by colocation—work in the office rather than remotely—extended to entire government functions. What a concept.

Citizenship and Birth

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President Donald Trump (R) has issued his Executive Order (see below a few posts to see a related one) that seeks to apply an alternative interpretation to the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause that eliminates birthright citizenship. His EO can be read here, and the currently implementing law he references in his EO can be read here. His argument centers on the subject to the jurisdiction thereof phrase in the clause.

This is the first clause of the 14th Amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The order strongly implies, IAW “plain language” that folks are citizens of the nation first and citizens of the State in which they reside second. Further, that citizen of the State aspect follows them from State to State as they declare (and take some steps to demonstrate) their residency in the subsequent State(s). That, in turn, strongly suggests that a person’s State citizenship exists only as derivative of their national citizenship.

The law may give this EO some legs, even though the “subject to jurisdiction” part has been tried before.

Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

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Somebody said that a while ago; it’s still true today.

The milieu this time, though, concerns drones and the People’s Republic of China, and the headline lays out the matter:

Drone Makers Looking to Steer Clear of China Fear Beijing’s Wrath

And this, to put the gooseflesh on the skin:

For US companies, dependence on China has become untenable, particularly as Beijing shows it is willing to cut off their access to essential supplies.
In Taiwan, that spells opportunity. ….
However, recent examples of Beijing punishing companies for their ties to Taiwan have made US businesses cautious in their efforts to avoid China in the production of drones, an industry where commercial ambitions and national security intersect.

“Cautious” is it? This is just one more shameful example of the cowardice of American business managers.

The way to avoid PRC wrath and repercussions over no longer sourcing essential supplies from the PRC and sourcing them from the Republic of China is to stop sourcing from the PRC and source them from the RoC. And from anywhere else.

When the goodies no longer come from the PRC, the PRC can no longer threaten their cutoff. When all the goodies, for everything else besides drones, no longer come from the PRC, the PRC can no longer use any cutoff for leverage or retaliation, or any other purpose. Don’t overthink things. Don’t artificially complexify things. Just do it.

Even managers of American companies can understand that.

Certainly, the transition will be short-term expensive, but in the mid- and long-term things get so much cheaper, so much more stable, and so much less threatening that the time to incur that expense is today.

Lose the fear.