Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Thursday May 30 2019, @09:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the Mandering-the-racist-Jerry dept.

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: -1, Troll) by The Shire on Friday May 31 2019, @04:10AM (5 children)

    by The Shire (5824) on Friday May 31 2019, @04:10AM (#849624)

    The opinion piece (this is not a journalists report) is full of the typical bias and intentionally over inflated emotional appeals. For example:

    In nearly 230 years, the census has never asked all respondents whether they are American citizens.

    This is bullshit - the citizenship question has been on the census long form every 10 years up until the most recent one (2010). And it didn't appear in 2010 because they stopped using the long form where it originally appeared. All they're doing now is adding the question back into the mix just as it's always been.

    Everyday it's something new from the left to rage about. That's all they do. And it's going to cost them the election again if they don't get down to the business of running the nation. No one is going to elect someone whose entire platform revolves around "Orange Man Bad".

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   -2  
       Troll=3, Insightful=1, Total=4
    Extra 'Troll' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   -1  
  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Whoever on Friday May 31 2019, @05:07AM (4 children)

    by Whoever (4524) on Friday May 31 2019, @05:07AM (#849648) Journal

    This is bullshit - the citizenship question has been on the census long form every 10 years up until the most recent one (2010). And it didn't appear in 2010

    This website is a cesspit of false information, much of it garnered from alt-right websites.
    https://www.npr.org/2018/03/27/597436512/fact-check-has-citizenship-been-a-standard-census-question [npr.org]

    • (Score: 1, Troll) by The Shire on Friday May 31 2019, @01:44PM (3 children)

      by The Shire (5824) on Friday May 31 2019, @01:44PM (#849783)

      This website is a cesspit of false information

      User then proceeds to link to a "fact check" that actually confirms that the citizenship question has been on the census long form every decade except 2010 when the long form was retired.

      Also links to a fact check quoting Bernie Sanders talking about a 1965 census that never happened.

      Brilliant.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by Whoever on Friday May 31 2019, @03:39PM (2 children)

        by Whoever (4524) on Friday May 31 2019, @03:39PM (#849829) Journal

        Apparently you can't read:

        "This statement is inaccurate, incomplete and misleading. A quick history of the decennial survey makes that clear. "

        Also links to a fact check quoting Bernie Sanders talking about a 1965 census that never happened.

        "White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders "

        Yep, you can't read and should go back to school

        • (Score: 1, Troll) by The Shire on Friday May 31 2019, @05:02PM (1 child)

          by The Shire (5824) on Friday May 31 2019, @05:02PM (#849875)

          Nice non denial denial. Did you even RTFA you yourself linked to? Never mind NPR is has a seriously left wing bias, they actually admit that the citizenship question has been on the long form up until just this last census. This isn't something new. They're simply reinstating something that has been there all along.

          You radical leftists only see what you want to see. The truth is an inconvenience you're happy to ignore.

          • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @06:59PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @06:59PM (#849921)

            Never mind NPR is has a seriously left wing bias,

            Not true, just looks that way when you are stupid enough to be a brainwashed right-wing nut-job. NPR is quite middle of the road. Leans conservative. I know that the "Public" part triggers you, but still.