Author Archives: eehines

Supreme Court Has the Louisiana Redistricting Case

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After the 2020 census, Louisiana’s Republican-controlled legislature

only drew one majority-Black congressional district when it redrew the boundaries for the state’s six seats in Congress. A group of Black voters, who make up about a third of the state’s population, sued the state in 2022, arguing that section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race, required lawmakers to add a second majority-Black congressional district.

Here’s the entirety of what that Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act actually says:

SEC. 2. No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.

Drawing voting districts explicitly to favor one group of Americans over other groups in that same district is precisely what the CRA prohibits. However the Supreme Court rules in this case, it’s imperative that the Court finally recognize the truth of our Declaration of Independence and the foundational American law that’s before them in the form of the 14th Amendment of our Constitution, which says in pertinent part,

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

One of the most basic privileges accruing to us American citizens is our right to vote, and all of us voters are equal under law—regardless of skin color, or religion, or….

In fine, as citizens, as voters, we’re all exactly alike. Gerrymandering to create districts that favor one group over any others necessarily disadvantages those others—and it denies all groups, and more importantly, every individual regardless of group equal protection of the laws, and so it is unconstitutional.

As an aside, and one of the more favorable aspects of earlier times, the entire CRA fits within seven Word® pages, and contains less than 5500 words, at least as it is presented at the link.

Misplaced Understanding

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A woman wrote to a financial advisor with the following problem. She had just linked up with an old high school woman chum and the two were having lunch together; the writer, at least, having a good time catching up on things with her apparently reconnected-with friend. When the check for the lunch came, this happened:

Since this was not a “date” it should have been assumed we would split the bill, right? I never carried cash (still don’t) and pulled out my Amex card to pay my half. To my complete surprise, she stood up and declared (I will NEVER forget this), “Oh, thank you so much for paying! It was great to see you!” and out the door she went.

What to do, she asked the financial advisor, especially now that the incident is in her past but she’s having trouble putting it behind her.

The advisor led off with this:

Your friend could have genuinely believed that you were picking up the tab. It may have been presumptuous, but it could have been a misunderstanding; her mistake was to jump to conclusions prematurely in good faith.

He had this, too:

Your friend sounds like a good egg. [She’s a teacher, and that’s hard.] For all our analysis and reflecting on past matters of financial etiquette, I have a feeling that if we met our respective friends again [the advisor had a similar experience], neither of them would even remember.

No, and no. The first is just rationalization for the subsequent advice. The advisor ignored the fact that the “friend” exited the conversation, the table, and the restaurant as soon as she made her “thanks.” Had the other woman truly misunderstood the treat vice dutch nature of the get together, she would have remained, engaging in further conversation while the credit card was taken away then returned a short time later with the receipt to be signed. Then the two would have left the restaurant together.

Too, of course neither of the two “friends” would remember; they’re the ones who skated.

Here, the woman’s “friend” knew exactly what she was doing; that’s why she didn’t tarry after her words of thanks.

My own advice: forgive the boorishness, but don’t forget it. Evaluate the potentially rebudding relationship, and make a conscious assessment of whether continuing the relationship is worth the other woman’s boorishness. If there’s to be another shared lunch, decide in advance whether the woman will pay; it will be a dutch treat; or the other woman will pay that time, it being, in a way, her turn.

“Pinned”

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Pinned? Really? As universities start to pay lip service to acting concretely against the bigotries and ideological indoctrination rampant on their campuses, there’s this comment by a news writer that lies at the core of the universities’ problem.

University leaders, pinned between liberal faculty and the Trump administration, are quietly trying to make friends in Washington amid widespread concerns about research budgets, student aid, and the White House’s quest to push academia to the right.

How is it possible that university leaders can be pinned between faculty—liberal or otherwise—and the Trump—or any other—administration?

The long and short of it is that it isn’t possible for such pinning to occur. Unfortunately, the “pinning” does exist, but it’s university managers who feel pinned; there are no to almost none actual leaders in today’s university administrations.

Faculty has no business being involved in the administration of a college or university; they’re employees of the institution, nothing more—and nothing less—than that. University managers who choose not to act as if they’re in charge, which they should be enforcing, are self-selecting for termination. That includes members of the institution’s “governing” board. Faculty members who won’t act like the employees that they are also are self-selecting for termination.

Only when incumbents act within their roles can colleges and universities go back to being institutions of learning, teaching, and research instead of the institutions of limited speech, limited academic “freedom,” indoctrination, and bigotry that they are currently.

A Real Progressive-Democratic Party Problem

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It’s not Party’s only problem, but it is a Critical Item problem, and it’s illustrated by an exchange between a constituent and Senator Michael Bennet (D, CO) at his recent town hall and by a Wall Street Journal newswriter’s assessment of the exchange. The constituent’s call:

A man who identified himself as Colin from Denver asked Bennet to consider the “dire times” facing the nation. “Schumer had no plan in the Democrats’ only moment of leverage against Trump,” he said. “When will you be calling for him to be replaced as minority leader?”

Bennett essentially responded with words to the effect that Schumer needed to go.

The writer’s assessment:

House and Senate members have publicly criticized Schumer’s handling of the matter in a remarkable public show of disunity at a time when they hoped to be unified against Trump.

Leverage against Trump. Unified against Trump. No plan for what Party thinks is good for our nation. No plan for how to achieve those Good Things. Not even any nascent ideas.

It’s No to Trump/Never Trump turtles all the way down.

That’s not good for our nation. Not good at all. All Party has, all Party seems interested in, is its toddler temper tantrum over not getting its own way.

University Dependence on Federal Funds

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And one other matter. Against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s withholding/canceling of $400 million worth of grants and contracts for Columbia University, there are a couple of things that stand out.

One is this:

[S]ome board members deeply concerned the university is trading away its moral authority and academic independence for federal funds.

Columbia has already shed any pretense of moral authority—see below. Columbia’s dependence on Federal funding is Columbia’s conscious, deliberately done choice. The school has a $14.8 billion dollar endowment. Even if that were to be frozen—no further donations into it, the endowment’s investments would only break even—that’s enough to fund 37 years of grants and contracts at the rate of those $400 million per year Federal largesse. A lot can happen in those 37 years.

Then there’s this, from Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia:

It is really a red line for the independence of universities, for academic freedom, for shared governance.”

No it isn’t. Requiring a university to shed—to divest itself of—its antisemitic bigotry and (not or) its support for terrorists is not a threat to university independence or of academic freedom. Indeed, as Columbia’s support for that bigotry and that support demonstrates, removing them would produce a sharp increase in academic freedom, especially for the students—an aspect of academic freedom the Precious Ones of Columbia’s faculty carefully ignore.

Beyond that, there should be no “shared governance” at universities. Administrators should govern; professors should teach. Full stop.