Gerrymandering

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It’s time to ride this horse again, this time due to a Wall Street Journal op-ed on racial gerrymandering, Texas, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which sought to balance minority access to electing government representatives with majority access (itself an unconstitutional unequal treatment law IMNSHO).

The op-ed centered on Texas’ move to redraw its current Federal House of Representative districts and “liberal” beefs that Texas’ current districts already disadvantage Hispanics is, here, irrelevant; it’s that unequal treatment that matters.

The second clause of the first Article of the 14th Amendment of our Constitution makes the matter crystalline.

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

Gerrymandering on the basis of race is clearly unconstitutional, and that VRA should have been struck down long since—the latest opportunity having come when the Supreme Court released the Southern States from government oversight regarding their voting laws. Beyond that, one of the central privileges of a citizen of the United States is the ability to vote in an election (in this post, a national election) and have his vote count as much—neither more nor less—than the vote of any other citizen of the United States.

The concept—equal protection of the laws—extends easily to political parties: gerrymandering on the basis of political party also plainly denies us average Americans our equal treatment by limiting the value of our votes in some districts and artificially increasing the value of our votes in other districts solely on the basis of political stance.

The clear, constitutional, equal treatment solution to this is to draw our Congressional districts without regard to political belief, race, or any other criterion other than our status as American citizens (and citizens of the State in which we reside, as the first clause of that Article specifies), but strictly within (or as practice has overcome the explicitly stated requirement) within the spirit of equal population requirement stated in Article I, Section 2 of our Constitution:

The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand….

Thus: beginning with the geographic center of the State, draw the districts as squares, with the only deviation from a straight line being at a State’s boundary with an adjacent State. Otherwise, the number of districts must equal the apportionment of Representatives the State’s total population allows, and each of the districts must be geographically sized so that each of the districts has substantially equal populations of citizens.

We’re all Americans, and so we’re all equal under law. Race, political position—religion, etc—are wholly irrelevant to this.

My Sympathy Meter…

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…is flashing Empty. On a note related to another post of mine, there’s this out of Tucson, AZ:

Tucson Unified School District (TUSD), based in Tucson, Arizona, is reportedly facing financial and enrollment struggles after universal school choice passed in the state in 2022.
A TUSD official told KGUN that approximately 4,000 students used vouchers to either go to private schools or homeschool.
The trend of parents overlooking TUSD cost the school district about $20 million. TUSD’s Chief Financial Officer, Ricky Hernandez, told the local outlet that TUSD is “preparing for continued declines in enrollment as a result” of vouchers.

This, after TUSD as a whole had these test score outcomes, as of the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years:

In Tucson Unified District, 28% of elementary students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 23% tested at or above that level for math. Also, 27% of middle school students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 19% tested at or above that level for math. And 48% of high school students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 42% tested at or above that level for math.

Here’s a thought—bear with me on this; it’s a strange concept for many—maybe the TUSD managers and teachers should do a better job of teaching the children in their educational charge the basics and advanced principles of reading, writing, and arithmetic, with budgeting, finance, and economics added in for the district’s grade schools, junior highs, and high schools, respectively. Room in the school day for that last, especially, could be made by eliminating the claptrap of DEI, “flexible” gender, pornographic books in grade school libraries, and other Woke ideologies.

A Clear Choice

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The recently passed OBBBA has Federal funding for private school tuition in the form of tax credits—private schools being, primarily, charter and voucher schools. States must opt into the program, though; the tax credits won’t be available automatically.

As The Wall Street Journal headline put it, Blue States Face Big Decision. And then,

Now comes a protracted debate at the state level. Progressives and public-school groups object to funding private schools and say the new program will hurt public education. Supporters say the money will give families options outside of their neighborhood school.

The thing is, though, public schools are already beyond increases in hurting, especially in blue States—pupil test scores are bad and falling (rising recently only against the prior Wuhan Virus Situation school lockout steep drop), and public school’s pupil test scores especially lag those private schools’ student outcomes, as well as the test scores of homeschooled students.

A clear choice, indeed, and over the coming months we’ll see very clearly just how opposed to school choice and children’s education are Progressive-Democrat politician-run States and municipalities, and just how far in thrall are those politicians to teachers unions.

Fault and Blame

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This example is all too typical. An elderly couple was scammed out of their life savings–$5 million—by a “pig butcherer” who conned the husband into wiring the couple’s savings, in a number of tranches, to the scammer under the guise, among others, of investing the money in a sure-fire investment.

What happened:

A year or so earlier, Craig had responded to an online ad about investments and later received a text message from someone calling themself Tiffany, according to his hazy account. The person struck up a flirtatious exchange and was soon telling him about a lucrative opportunity. All he needed to do was wire money from his bank account.

And

The adviser [at an earlier bank where the husband had begun his “investing” with Tiffany] had repeatedly tried to convince Craig that “Tiffany” was scamming him, to no avail.

The husband after that had pulled his—their—money from that bank and placed it with another bank, from which the husband continued “investing” with Tiffany.

And

Shortly after discovering the scam, Anamarie learned something else about Craig that helped explain what had happened. His doctor told her that Craig had vascular dementia, likely due to a brain injury from a fall he took in 2015 while walking his brother-in-law’s dog.

The first the wife knew anything was amiss was when her credit cards were declined at a Walmart.

In the end, the couple is blaming bank for their having been scammed, claiming that the bank hadn’t acted nanny-ish enough [my term] to protect the couple from themselves.

I have questions, and I’m not entirely sympathetic with the couple or with their blame-shifting.

Why didn’t the wife know more about the couple’s financial situation? True enough, they’re of an age where money matters usually was the husband’s job, but that doesn’t excuse her ignorance; it only illustrates how widespread such ignorance is.

What was the husband doing getting flirty with an online person about whom he knew nothing about, including whether the person even was female? See below for this before readers get up in morality arms.

Why didn’t the wife know anything about her husband’s medical condition? Certainly, this is related to a couple’s internal dynamics, but there’s little reason for one member of the couple to be so ignorant of the other member’s medical state. This is another aspect of couples of an age, but again, this doesn’t excuse the ignorance; it only illustrates the widespread nature of it.