Austin-tacious



It was the dispute that caused the Civil War and has never been resolved. It’s probably what is going to rip this country apart sometime in the foreseeable future, accelerated by demands on the federal government from an accelerating series of natural disasters which are no longer containable by a crumbling and inadequately designed infrastructure. It was addressed by Benjamin Franklin in his “New Jersey Compromise” – whereby populous urban-dominated states were accorded the same two U.S. Senators as sparsely-populated agriculturally-driven states.

 But the problem was still a festering wound in America’s side. It also underlies the immigration battle, the gradual rise of non-white minorities to a dominant share of the overall American citizenry. It has given the richest and most powerful tiny, little slice of the highest levels of economic wealth (a few thousand at the top of the pyramid to own more than half our total wealth) the bribing power to buy the votes of enough people to allow them to create the plutocracy the robber-barons of the 1890s could only have dreamed of.

 It is the never-ending struggle between white traditionalists – mostly deeply-committed Christians, and whether or not they live on farms, profoundly guided by rural values – and virtually everybody else, guided by the urban values of the cities that hold most of those new minorities and the bulk of the total population. Just think about the different uses and views of guns in a crowded city versus wide-open isolated farmland, and you can feel the difference. But if minorities and urban populations continue growing, not only are they the new majority, but they will soon be the new plurality, a juggernaut that a rural-values coalition could not counter.

 But if that’s the case, why are the Republicans not only going to continue their hold on the majority of state legislatures, governors, courts where justices face election, the U.S. House of Representatives but probably the U.S. Senate as well? Come on, not the courts?! “More than 90 percent of judicial business in the United States is decided in state courts, and with business interests tangled up in much of the litigation, it's easy to understand why corporations spend big on state judicial campaigns.

 “‘Special interest groups continue to dump money into state supreme court races in an attempt to stack the deck in their favor,’ [Brennan Center Counsel Alicia] Bannon said. ‘Voters should feel like our courts are fair and impartial, not political playgrounds where business interests and lawyers can tilt the scales of justice with their pocketbooks.’

 “Since January, political parties, outside groups and candidates spent more than $12.1 million on TV ads for state judicial races across the country. In the [last week in October], outside groups spent a total of nearly $1 million on ads in Michigan, Montana, Ohio, North Carolina and Illinois in a last-minute surge before the election…

 “The 2012 election cycle was the first full cycle since the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling that struck down caps on outside corporate campaign spending, and special interest groups spent a record $15.4 million on TV ads for state high court races, nearly half the total spent on those races that year, according to a 2013 report by the Brennan Center and other watchdogs… ‘Special interest groups have realized that it doesn’t take much money to reshape an entire state court compared to high-cost elections for statewide political offices,’ Bannon said.” Truth-out.org, October 31st. Conservative business groups buying the judges… legally?

 But we cannot have an urban majority but a minority of rural-values representatives running the majority of these elected offices. Peter, your numbers are just wrong! They just have to be. Aren’t they? Nope! But most of the micro-slice of mega-wealthy has thrown their financial clout behind the ruralists to buy their votes for lower taxes, favourable judicial rulings and minimalist financial/environmental regulation, and with a little sleight-of-hand, found new ways to disenfranchise that urban juggernaut-in-waiting… kicking the can down the road by a decade or more.

 Whether it is the implementation of voter ID laws aimed at tripping up carless elderly, impoverished or residents-of-cities-where-folks-don’t-own-cars (read: they don’t have driver’s licenses; the most common voter ID used where voting requires such a document) or gerrymandering – see my August 13th blog (Democracy vs Gerrymandering) for the nasty details – this rural-value minorities is in no immediate danger of displacement. Thirty-four states consign primary responsibility for setting Congressional districts to the state legislature, some states are so small they only have one representative, and some use special commissions. Unless courts intervene – so far a completely useless exercise (courts just aren’t designed to make districting decisions) – the time for redistricting for most states is years away. The next U.S. Census, which is the basis for determining Congressional representation, is slated for 2020

 I was watching John Stewart’s show in late October, emanating from the only really blue major city in Texas – Austin – where it seemed more like San Francisco than anywhere in Texas. He made an interesting set of observations, and what he saw has been replicated all over the United States. If there were a Democratic Party stronghold anywhere in this Texas – rapidly moving to becoming an Hispanic-majority state – it would have to be Austin. Clearly, if the city were divided up into appropriate Congressional districts relegated to Austin proper, we’d be seeing a pile of Texas Democrats from Austin in the U.S. House of Representatives.

 In fact, there are five Congressional districts that reach into Austin, but by a series of conservative legislative moves, in 2003 and 2011, most of those districts reach way into the hinterlands… stretching far, far away (to Fort Worth on one side, and almost to Houston on another), built to dilute Democratic dominance with distant Republican voters. Of the five districts that reach into Austin, four are solid Republican strongholds. This construct does not remotely represent Austin or its citizens, putting some of the most conservative members of the House Representatives in the entire country to represent one of the most liberal cities anywhere.

 The Texas legislature, which itself reflects a powerbase that clings to power by reason of the gerrymander, is the body that creates the districts and is not even required to re-examine the current misappropriate districting for eight years! Too many states have twisted their assemblies into effectively one-party rule, even though their constituencies represent the duality of two major political parties. Democrats were equally guilty of this crass manipulation for decades up the 1960s, and the Republicans have used a relatively new proclivity to support Bible Belt socially conservative issues to gerrymander their hold in southern, Midwestern and western states.

 But this unsustainable rural-urban divide is exactly what will anger enough Americans, some of them fairly well-armed, into fracturing and going their own way. It wouldn’t be the first Civil War we’ve experienced over this schism. If we love this country, if we really care, let’s embrace true democracy and make being an American, committed to the compromises that made democracy function, trump Tea Party, Republican, Democrat, Liberal or Conservative. Or simply accept that we are breaking our country apart with this bickering.

 I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time for us to become Americans again… or lose what we have built.