Tuesday, March 10, 2009

The Voting Rights Act and the Paradox of Representation



Yesterday, the Supreme Court considered a provision of the Voting Rights Act that requires a federal remedy if a members of a minority group has "less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice." This provision has created a very complex body of law through a series of often badly split decisions. In the 1986 case Thornburgh v. Gingles, the Court held that the provision required the creation of "majority-minority" districts where a geographically compact minority had its preferences diluted through redistrcting. In yesterday's case, however, the Court held that the VRA does not require the creation of "crossover" districts; that is, districts where a geographically compact group does not form a majority but constitutes a large enough portion of a district's population to form a coaliton with white voters to elect their preferred candidate. Kennedy's pluarilty opinion (joined by Roberts and Alito) argued that Gingles doesn't require crossover districts, Thomas (joined) by Scalia concurred in the judgment but urged that Gingles be overruled, while the Court's four more liberal members dissented.

This is a difficult case, and all of the constructions of the statute advanced by the various opinions are plausible. One thing to add is that the problem of representation is especially complex because redistricting regulations that enhance the possibility of minority candidates being elected also tend to hurt the electoral interests of the party that most minority voters prefer (concentrating minority voters is particular districts helps the Republican Party on balance.) This isn't a question with a right answer; both the election of more minority representatives and ensuring that the partisan preferences of minority voters aren't excessively diluted are valid considerations of representation. Given the difficulty of the problem and the inherently arbitrary nature of determining what percentage of minority voters triggers a crossover district requirement, there may be a certain wisdom in Kennedy's opinion. This is particularly true since, as Justice Ginsburg noted in her short dissent, Congress is free to establish a requirement for crossover districts if it chooses.


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Neoliberalism is ruining academia



Running with a standard, academic-eye definition of neoliberalism, Stanley Fish makes a great argument that, especially at state universities,

It’s great until near the end, where Fish pretty much tells the increasing number of contract instructors to “lump it.”

After that, he jumps off the rails and becomes Stanley Fish.

But the first three-quarters is very good. Give it a read.
There is no god and I am his prophet.


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One Way, or Round Trip?



David Axe is headed back to Africa, and needs funds. This time, he'll be covering USS Nashville's "soft power" deployment. I've broadcast several of his appeals, as well as appeals from several other journalists, for a reason; with the collapse of funding from so many institutional sources of support, we run the risk of reporters not having the resources to cover important stories. This deployment is one of those important stories, and may well be worth some of your hard earned nickels and dimes.

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This Takes ' Driving While Black' to a Whole Other Level



From The Chicago Tribune's Howard Witt:

Highway robbery? Texas police seize black motorists' cash, cars
Suit says cops force motorists, largely black, to forfeit cash and cars—or be charged with trumped-up crimes
By Howard Witt Tribune correspondent
March 10, 2009

TENAHA, Texas— You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana border if you're African-American, but you might not be able to drive out of it—at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables.

That's because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Instead they offer out-of-towners a grim choice: voluntarily sign over your belongings to the town, or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes.

More than 140 people reluctantly accepted that deal from June 2006 to June 2008, according to court records. Among them were a black grandmother from Akron, who surrendered $4,000 in cash after Tenaha police pulled her over, and an interracial couple from Houston, who gave up more than $6,000 after police threatened to seize their children and put them into foster care, the court documents show. Neither the grandmother nor the couple were charged with any crime.

Officials in Tenaha, situated along a heavily traveled highway connecting Houston with popular gambling destinations in Louisiana, say they are engaged in a battle against drug trafficking and call the search-and-seizure practice a legitimate use of the state's asset-forfeiture law. That law permits local police agencies to keep drug money and other property used in the commission of a crime and add the proceeds to their budgets.

"We try to enforce the law here," said George Bowers, mayor of the town of 1,046 residents, where boarded-up businesses outnumber open ones and City Hall sports a broken window. "We're not doing this to raise money. That's all I'm going to say at this point."

But civil rights lawyers call Tenaha's practice something else: highway robbery. The attorneys have filed a federal class-action lawsuit to stop what they contend is an unconstitutional perversion of the law's intent, aimed primarily at blacks who have done nothing wrong.

Tenaha officials "have developed an illegal 'stop and seize' practice of targeting, stopping, detaining, searching and often seizing property from apparently non-white citizens and those traveling with non-white citizens," asserts the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.

The property seizures are not just happening in Tenaha. In southern parts of Texas near the Mexican border, for example, Hispanics allege that they are being singled out.

According to a prominent state legislator, police agencies across Texas are wielding the asset-forfeiture law more aggressively to supplement their shrinking operating budgets.

"If used properly, it's a good law-enforcement tool to see that crime doesn't pay," said state Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate's Criminal Justice Committee. "But in this instance, where people are being pulled over and their property is taken with no charges filed and no convictions, I think that's theft."

David Guillory, an attorney in Nacogdoches who filed the federal lawsuit, said he combed through Shelby County court records from 2006 to 2008 and discovered nearly 200 cases in which Tenaha police seized cash and property from motorists. In about 50 of the cases, suspects were charged with drug possession.

But in 147 others, Guillory said the court records showed, police seized cash, jewelry, cell phones and sometimes even automobiles from motorists but never found any contraband or charged them with any crime. Of those, Guillory said he managed to contact 40 of the motorists directly—and discovered all but one of them were black.

"The whole thing is disproportionately targeted toward minorities, particularly African-Americans," Guillory said. "None of these people have been charged with a crime, none were engaged in anything that looked criminal. The sole factor is that they had something that looked valuable."


Rest of Article at link above.

Will the Obama Justice Department investigate this?

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Jon Stewart is at it again - BWA HA H AH AH HA HAHA





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It's Only A "Culture War" When They Lose



Steve, with respect to a bunch of social reactionaries being shocked, shocked that Obama would follow through on his explicit campaign promises regarding the abortion gag rule and stem cell research, asks:

Obama has weighed in on some culture-war issues, lifting the global gag-rule, beginning the process to scrap "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and yesterday ending Bush-era restrictions on stem-cell research. All of these steps, to my mind, were encouraging.

But they were also entirely predictable. Candidate Obama said he would take these steps, and sure enough, President Obama is doing just that. It makes sense for conservatives to voice their disapproval, but why are they shocked?

The answer, of course, is that Tony Perkins et al. aren't surprised at all. Rather, they understand that the Politico is a sucker for stories about how liberals are "inflaming the culture wars." Apparently, there was no culture war inflammation when George Bush enacted his silly (and ludicrously incoherent) stem cell policy, but for Obama to reverse this policy certainly does. It doesn't make any sense, but that's not the point; these cultural reactionaries understand their media audience.

And this is yet another reminder about why talk about ending the culture wars doesn't make much sense. People disagree about issues; that's what politics as about, and glossing over this fact has the distinct tendency to perpetuate existing injustices.

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Blacks Fare Worse During Recessions



Over at The Loop, I have a column up on how blacks do during recessions and how some cities are better for black employment than others.

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