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From Slate
If we had a fair Supreme Court not driven by partisanship in its most political cases, Thursday’s blockbuster revelation in the census case would lead the court to unanimously rule in Department of Commerce v. New York to exclude the controversial citizenship question from the decennial survey. Those newly revealed documents show that the Trump administration’s purpose in putting the citizenship question on the upcoming census was not its stated one to help Hispanic voters under the Voting Rights Act, but rather to create policy that would be “a disadvantage to the Democrats” and “advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic Whites.” It’s difficult to produce a greater smoking gun than explicitly saying you are hoping to help the GOP by increasing white voting power. But this revelation, coming from the hard drive of a deceased Republican political operative and made available to Common Cause by his estranged daughter, is ironically more likely to lead the Republican-appointed conservative justices on the Supreme Court to allow the administration to include the question that would help states dilute the power of Hispanic voters.
[...]And here is where Thursday’s revelations fit in. The New York Times reported that the hard drive of the late Republican redistricting guru Thomas B. Hofeller contained documents indicating that the real purpose of including the citizenship question was to allow Republicans to draw new congressional, state, and local legislative districts using equal numbers of eligible voters in each district, not equal numbers of persons, a standard that would greatly reduce the power of Hispanics and Democrats in places like Texas. According to the Times, files on Hofeller’s hard drives, subpoenaed in litigation concerning North Carolina redistricting, show that Hofeller “wrote a study in 2015 concluding that adding a citizenship question to the census would allow Republicans to draft even more extreme gerrymandered maps to stymie Democrats. And months after urging President Trump’s transition team to tack the question onto the census, he wrote the key portion of a draft Justice Department letter claiming the question was needed to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act—the rationale the administration later used to justify its decision.”
[...]Thursday’s revelations should be damning. The ACLU is already seeking sanctions in the trial court in the census case for government officials lying about the real reason for including the citizenship question. But instead the revelations may help to prop up a case that should embarrass government lawyers to argue.
Yep.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @11:39PM (20 children)
I wish Aristarchus would save his outrage for real crimes against humanity.
Unfortunately, those mostly take place outside the USA.
Ari, care to send us a story about the Uighurs in China?
Atrocities against the starving people in North Korea?
People complain about this site being too obsessed with the US and lacking international news.
I AGREE.
(Score: 2, Informative) by aristarchus on Thursday May 30 2019, @11:47PM (18 children)
My "outrage", as you term it, is directed at the focus of SN, tech news, mostly. The fact that the tech sector seems sympatico with racism, misogyny, and libertarianism disturbs me, which is why I submit mostly stories exposing the alt-right for the morally and technical bankruptcy it is. But this article is not about that. Unless we end up with technical proposals for gerrymandering. Which it seems we have.
Aristarchus' Submissions [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @12:10AM
Look at red hat/systemd, MS should sue the fuckers for pulling their patented cockup tactic.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @12:29AM (8 children)
I don't know how you combine those. Racism and misogyny is pretty much anti-libertarian, and the alt-right is far too amorphous at this point to be anything other than a sort of broad slur rather than a coherent movement.
As for the original article: even despite the SHOCKING REVELATION that a POLITICIAN likes GERRYMANDERING, it actually fails to make the case that that was official RNC policy, nor even if it was, that counting voters may or may not be useful, relevant information. It is just an opinion piece that seems to be one more crank of the outrage-mill's wheel. Long on suspicions, short on substance (let alone the problems with the credibility of the source of the allegations).
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Friday May 31 2019, @12:45AM (7 children)
I don't know how, either, but the fact is that libertarianism leans right, and in some cases fascist right. There was just a rejected aristarchus submission on precisely this phenomena [soylentnews.org].
Alt-right is not so amorphous, it is after all, a marketing slogan, rather like "It's not your Father's Oldsmobile", just before they quit making Oldsmobiles. Where it was often remarked that libertarians were just Republicans who smoked marijuana, the alt right is just Republicans who are actually racist and misogynist, and authoritarian. Neo-conservatives, crypto-fascists, Straussians. If the slur fits, wear it!
Besides, this has Steven Miller written all over it. And the author is correct in asserting that the SC should not even be considering doing anything but affirm the lower court ruling. [vox.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @01:26AM (6 children)
libertarianism leans right
Well, that's just bullshit! It only reflects your opinion that the privileges of the collective outweigh the rights of the individual.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday May 31 2019, @01:48AM (5 children)
No! Your accusation of bullshit is bullshit! Double bullshit, if you will. And it only reflects your opinion that the privileges of the sovereign individual outweigh the rights of the egalitarian individuals in a society.
And besides, it's true. Ron and Rand Paul are Republicans, are they not? Gary Earl Johnson is a Republican, is he not? Why are they all self-centered radical egoists like TMB? Libertarianism is a poor person's aristocracy.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @02:52AM (4 children)
See? You just piled on more bullshit. I wanna eliminate ALL privilege, disable all weaponry. There shall be no advantage.
And those people are only republicans because the democrats are such authoritarians, in all the wrong ways. It is their repulsive bullshit that makes so easy for republicans to win. Are you yet another fool that believes they seriously oppose each other?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @03:05AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @03:58AM (2 children)
We found yet another frustrated authoritarian calling himself a libertarian.
Man, full of them these days, the confusion level in the populace is growing to explosive levels.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @04:17AM (1 child)
Sphincter says what?
Sorry, you're projecting.
You lost last time. You will lose again.
We know who the real authoritarians are
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @05:06AM
Republicans? Or assholes? But then, a la Mark Twain, I repeat myself.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 31 2019, @01:19AM (1 child)
Well, yes, you are disturbed. That much is clear. It is far less clear that SN sides with racism, misogyny, and WHAT? Libertarianism? You use the term as if it were a synonym for Nazism?
You are most definitely disturbed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @06:42AM
Go back under the bridge!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday May 31 2019, @09:03AM (5 children)
You mean that we managing this site to do exactly what this site was created for? If you want a political discussion site - go and create one! You can have the software, I have offered to train the editors that you will need on how to use the editorial software, but now you want others to run the site on your behalf. It isn't going to happen. Use your journal more.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday May 31 2019, @09:04AM (4 children)
(Score: 2, Disagree) by aristarchus on Friday May 31 2019, @09:21AM (1 child)
And a fine job all the editors and staff are doing! Other than the censoring aristarchus part. But my point is that there is connection between tech and politics, as much as the tech side wants to deny it. Philosophers specialize in this sort of thing, spotting blind spots and presumptions that practitioners are unable to see. Have you ever heard of the Futurist movement? I think there have been a few aristarchus submissions on them. Let me go check. . . ... .. ....... . . .
Ah, yes, from 4/20 [soylentnews.org], appropriately enough. I think calling out the fascist tendencies of people who just want to make trains run on time, or to get rid of Linux Mint, or Jews, because they are "inefficient" is a worthwhile part of any website that considers itself to be about technology. Or are we just going to follow Il Duce, or Marie Le Pen? Wake up, JR. We need free and open source communist programmers! Technology as the fulfillment of the intensification of capital that Marx predicted! None of this fall back into adolescent identity politics. Do you not agree?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday May 31 2019, @01:21PM
The title is correct - your philosophical discussion on how Futurism is linked to facism is not, no matter how you personally perceive it to be, a topic to be included under 'technology'.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday May 31 2019, @09:43AM (1 child)
"You keep repeating that word. I don't think it means what you think it means." (large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday June 02 2019, @12:21AM
Good to have you back and grinning again, c0lo
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @12:27AM
Yup. Evil shit never happens here.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/she-was-trafficked-for-sex-now-shes-sharing-her-story/ [pbs.org]