Crossword fans know that a newt is a variety of salamander and political junkies know that neither the thrice-married Newt Gingrich nor an electoral district shaped like a newt bodes well for the health of our body politic. Nevertheless the state of Wisconsin has a large number of oddly newt-like electoral areas, more familiarly known as gerrymandered districts. How did we come to call them that?

In the 1812, Elbridge Gerry, then the governor of Massachusetts, wanted to benefit his own political party. So he decided to redistrict the Boston area.  On the map, the new district he drew looked like a salamander.  With tongue-in-cheek, the Boston Gazette combined the governor’s name with part of the word salamander and coined the term gerrymander to describe his actions. We’ve used the term ever since to describe the process of “manipulate[ing] the boundaries of an election or constituency so as to favor one party or class.’

A Washington Post  graphic beautifully shows how gerrymandering works.

Across the country, a number of legal actions in recent years have targeted what are seen as inappropriate, even unconstitutional, reapportionment.  (For a more detailed history of the prior attempt to overturn the clearly partisan WI 2011 redistricting see Blue Cheddar, July 9, 2015.) Lately there has been growing interest in challenging gerrymandering. An Arizona case just decided by the US Supreme Court in June 2015 ruled that "the people of Arizona were on firm legal ground when they took redistricting out of the hands of the legislature in 2000 and placed it in the hands of an independent district." The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign calls the decision "a tremendous victory for democracy. This gerrymandering that is done every ten years makes a joke of representative government and effectively muffles the voices of millions of voters."

A New Federal Court Challenge

In Wisconsin, a new legal effort has begun in hopes of overturning our current electoral map before the 2016 elections. Filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin on July 8, 2015, the suit argues that "the Current Plan is, by any measure, one of the worst partisan gerrymanders in modern American history" and that "because severe gerrymanders are likely to be extremely durable..., it is unlikely that the disadvantaged party’s adherents will be able to protect themselves through the political process“ (Brief filed July 8, 2015).

Chris Ahmuty, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, is giving an online presentation, sponsored by Grassroots North Shore, on Thursday, May 15, at 7:00pm on the topic "Public Education as the Bulwark of Democracy: What Has Gone Wrong in Wisconsin."

You can register for this webinar here: http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=EA53D88283493D

Everyone needs to understand what we stand to lose if we allow our public schools to be increasingly privatized (and run for profit) through voucher and charter school initiatives. According to a recently published report from the Economic Policy Institute,

"it appears that charter privatization proposals are driven more by financial and ideological grounds than by sound pedagogy:

• National research shows that charter schools, on average, perform no better than public schools. There is thus no basis for believing that replacing traditional public schools in Milwaukee with privately run charters will result in improved education.
• To truly improve education in Milwaukee, we must start with the assumption that poor children are no less deserving of a quality education than rich children. As such, the schools that privileged suburban parents demand for their children should be the yardstick we use to measure the adequacy of education in the city. This means subjecting all schools—whether public, charter, or voucher—to the same standards of accountability, including measurements that account for the economic and disability challenges their students face, and that recognize the value of a broad curriculum and experienced teachers who are qualified to develop the full range of each child’s capacities." [Source: http://www.epi.org/publication/school-privatization-milwaukee/, April 24, 2014]

Join your friends at Grassroots North Shore on Thursday evening: you can participate in your robe and slippers after all. Because on the Internet, no one knows what you're wearing!

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation: Factory Farms Harm the Environment

Kim Wright, Executive Director of Midwest Environmental Advocates, Inc., discusses how the increasing industrialization of farming in Wisconsin is damaging the environment, polluting wells and other water resources, and impacting public health. CAFOs, also known as factory farms, are heavily concentrated in a few areas of Wisconsin and are especially dense near Green Bay. The problems they cause include air pollution and contamination of private wells.

You can see Kim's presentation and the question and answer period here:
https://www.anymeeting.com/023-498-913/EF52D885854C

In the question and answer period, some people wanted more information about getting well water tested. Here's a link to resources for that issue: http://www.uwsp.edu/cnr-ap/watershed/Pages/GWWell.aspx

Kathleen Dunn's radio show recently discussed the food stamp program and how the new cuts to the program will affect recipients.  The usual folks called in and perpetuated the myths and stereotypes regarding food stamp recipients.  No matter what facts were presented by those in the trenches, such as the director of the HungerTask Force, people continued to talk about "personal responsibility," "getting a job," and controlling what people are allowed to buy with their food stamps.  This PBS portrayal of actual food stamp recipients tells the real story of people who are hungry in America and why they came to need food stamps.

The problem of hunger is not concentrated solely in our cities. It afflicts large areas of rural Wisconsin even more than it is experienced in Milwaukee County and the areas around Racine and Kenosha, as the map to the left shows. The darkest areas show where the highest concentrations of the hungry live.

On February 6, 2014, Mike Wilder,Community Coalition Organizer for Wisconsin Jobs Now, held a webinar entitled "Why Raising the Minimum Wage Will Help Economic Growth." You can view the slides from his presentation here: 

You can access the entire presentation -- both the slides and the audio, including the question and answer period.

Starting with the similarities in their histories, Lawrence Jacobs, professor of political science at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, writing in the New York Times, analyzes two extremes and demonstrates how the Progressives in Minnesota have brought growth and security while Wisconsin's Republican majority has failed to make any improvements in the business climate and job growth.

The piece points out that these neighboring states both elected new governors in 2010 and also gave each governor's party a strong majority in his respective legislature. Since then their economic fates have diverged. Minnesota pursued a range of progressive policies, including a highly progressive tax increase to fund essential services and infrastructure, while Wisconsin followed the hard-right playbook by cutting taxes for the wealthiest and for businesses.

As professor Jacobs writes, the election of these opposing governors and legislators "began a natural experiment that compares the agendas of modern progressivism and the new right." Here's the gist of his analysis:

Which side of the experiment — the new right or modern progressivism — has been most effective in increasing jobs and improving business opportunities, not to mention living conditions?

Obviously, firm answers will require more time and more data, but the first round of evidence gives the edge to Minnesota’s model of increased services, higher costs (mostly for the affluent) and reduced payments to entrenched interests like the insurers who cover the Medicaid population.

Three years into Mr. Walker’s term, Wisconsin lags behind Minnesota in job creation and economic growth. As a candidate, Mr. Walker promised to produce 250,000 private-sector jobs in his first term, but a year before the next election that number is less than 90,000.

Jacobs' insights have been picked up in a number of national media outlets like MSNBC, Minnpost, DailyKos, and others.

As it happens, this tale is repeated with another set of comparisons: between California and Wisconsin. And the results are similar. Professor Chinn, Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, posted a piece on the Econbrowser blog in September in which he "compared economic outcomes in two states that implemented contrasting fiscal policies: California, which surged ahead while raising taxes and cutting spending, and Wisconsin, which lagged far behind as it slashed spending on education, and cut taxes. Latest estimates of current economic activity, and forecasted economic activity six months out, indicate continued lagging performance for Wisconsin."

No matter how you slice it, progressive economic policies promote growth; regressive ones don't.

These two maps show the 1860 map President Lincoln used to show the reach of slavery and a 2008 map showing most of the US counties where voters trended more Republican when compared to the 2004 voting patterns in those same counties.

Although the deepest red squares on the voting map do not line up exactly with the counties where there was the highest concentration of slaves at the time of the Civil War, the proximity of the counties that became increasingly red in 2008 to the areas where slave-holding was most concentrated is hard to miss. As many analysts of voting patterns in the history of the United States have pointed out, the convergence of these two phenomena during an election in which a Republican candidate opposed an African-American one is not accidental.

Racial attitudes are probably only one factor in the increasing polarization we see in politics today, but it is clearly a potent one.