#510 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Wednesday November 16)
Good morning,
WISE WORDS ON READING AND BOOKS
“The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery…As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! That very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come…” –Frederick Douglass
“Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.” –Carl Sagan
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” –Ray Bradbury
“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” –Fran Lebowitz
“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest…of the past centuries.” –Rene Descartes
“…Education draws out the uniqueness of people to be all that they can be in the light of their irreducible singularity. It is the maturation and cultivation of spiritually intact and morally equipped human beings.” –Cornell West
EXPANDING THE HOUSE WILL MAKE US MORE DEMOCRATIC (SMALL “d”)
As we have seen from the results of the last election, gerrymandering has corrupted our political system. It is bad enough that the Senate is structured to provide disproportionate representation for sparsely populated states. But the House is also a problem. Because states are guaranteed at least one House member, it means that a relatively small number of people in several states have an out-sized voice in our national government. While changing the Senate would be a near impossibility, given that a constitutional amendment is required, fixing the problems in the House are within our grasp.
Laws limiting gerrymandering or requiring proportional representation as determined by independent mapmakers simply are not the answer. For every state like New York, which successfully distributed House seats more fairly, there is an Ohio. In Ohio, what was initially hailed as a breakthrough in cooperation, by having a map go through a commission informed by professional nonpartisan mapmakers turned ugly quickly. The state had a formula for allocation of House (and state legislative) districts to conform roughly to the election results over the prior ten years. In that ten year period, the Republicans garnered some 54% of the vote and Democrats 46%. But through knowing obfuscation of the very constitutional rubric they helped draft and pass, the Republicans maneuvered a severely lopsided map, accounting for a six seat swing (enough to change control of the House this coming term). For an eye-opening account of this violation of their own constitution and flaunting of the court order of their own Supreme Court, check out Ira Glass’s enlightening, “Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map” on This American Life: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/784/mapmaker.
The easiest solution is to make the drawing of partisan maps while at the same time making Congresspeople more responsive to their constituents. Simply raise the arbitrary 435 seat maximum to 1,000 seats. The Republicans no doubt will claim that such a number is unwieldy (as if managing 435 members is easy) and/or that “tradition” dictates the limit. But the tradition was originally to add seats with the addition of new states. That tradition was ended with the arbitrary freeze of seats back in 1911 (with a temporary increase in 1959, when Hawaii and Alaska were admitted). Over the last 100 years, house seats went from a representative for every 212,000 people to 710,000 people. Curiously, the Founders envisioned a larger House and mandated a “floor” of no more representatives than one for each 30,000 people. It is time this problem is fixed…and it doesn’t require a constitutional amendment.
In support of this reasoning is the more personal benefit of having representatives represent smaller numbers of citizens. From Mark DiMaria: “I am way on board with doubling the size of the House... When I was a high school student in Washington for a week, I was able to make an appointment to meet my congressman…for an hour without any muss or fuss, and nothing particular to contribute in the way of ideas, public relations, or political capital -- I was not even old enough to vote! But now the numbers of each member's constituents (especially in a populous state such as ours) are so enormous that my much-better-educated-and-informed adult self, who has been a consistent supporter with votes and donations alike, would not even consider trying to carve out an appointment just for the pleasure of meeting my representative. With greater numbers [of representatives], perhaps that might not be so much the case.”
Have a great day,
Glenn
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