Guaranteed Income

The other day, I cam across this article on guaranteed income.  It’s an idea that has been around for awhile and it’s starting to gain traction.  The article is a look at near-poverty in America and one possible way to address the issue.  It raises some interesting questions around the role of government, work, human dignity, and caring for each other.  Some of these questions I’ve hit upon in previous entries, some I have not.

One of the things that I find so interesting about guaranteed income programs is the strong opposition coming from Republicans.  Republican objection stems from the notion that people will automatically quit their jobs if the government is going to pay them instead.  There is this idea that $500 or $1000 a month would cause large swaths of the American workforce to simply quit and then sit around all day being unproductive.  And so Republicans insist on stringent work requirements in areas where they can’t kill the program outright.  The fact that Republicans think their fellow human beings are lazy as a default setting is offensive and patently absurd.

It is true that there are some who would do exactly as Republicans fear.  They would take the free government money and do nothing.  But, that number would be a fairly small portion of the employable population.  The irony here is that removing those individuals from the workforce might actually boost overall productivity within the workforce.  There are any number of studies out there that show the bottom performing workers drag down the performance of the entire team.  Might it be worth it to pay them to stay at home doing nothing?

The reality is most Americans use the funds to improve themselves and become even more productive members of the American economy.   As the article notes, a review of the Cambridge, MA program saw markedly better entry into full-time work for people in the program vs those who weren’t (40% vs 28%).  St Paul, MN saw its pilot program raise employment from 49% to over 60% in just 18 months.  There’s also the story of Taniquewa Brewster in Austin who used her 12 months on the guaranteed income program to become a notary and real-estate leasing agent – jobs that allowed the contract laborer to no longer need the $1000/month stipend.

I love the quote from Tarren Bragdon, CEO of a conservative think tank, critiquing guaranteed income.  “Policymakers should look for ways to expand opportunities for people to find meaningful work, not create more reliance on government budgets.”  That quote, for me, just underlines how far conservative groups have buried their head in the sand when it comes to the realities of work in America.

Too many Americans live in circumstances that do not allow them to live life to its fullest.  Many of them fall into the ALICE gap.  ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) covers a large portion of the population.  As the acronym suggests, these are folks actively engaged in the workforce who still find it difficult to afford the cost of living in their community.  According to UnitedforALICE, 42% of American households live below the ALICE threshold.  In other words, 42% of American households do not earn enough to afford the basics of daily living.  Their data shows 13% of American households earning below the Federal Poverty Level and another 29% in the ALICE gap (above the FPL, but still not enough to afford the basics).  I find it somewhat staggering that our leaders tout how great this country is and how great our economy is and ignore the reality that 4/10 American families don’t have enough money to afford basic necessities.

This is where programs like guaranteed income come into play.  They aren’t necessarily meant to be a permanent thing, although in some cases that will be the result.  People on a guaranteed income program often improve their circumstances to the point where the assistance is no longer needed.  As I mentioned above, there will be those who take the money and sit at home, but maybe forcing them into the workforce would actually weaken production.  Might it be better just to pay them to stay home?

Imagine if more cities and states introduced guaranteed income programs aimed at the ALICE population.  Given the wide disparity in the minimum income necessary to survive, these programs would be best administered at state or even county levels, but there could be federal support in the form of block grants.  Imagine what our economy would look like if we went from 58% of households able to afford daily living expenses to 68% or even 78%.  How many more families would be taking vacations or buying non-essential items?  Sounds a lot like healthy economic growth to me. 

Gun Culture

This past week, the New Mexico Justice Department decided not to file charges against police officers after they went to the wrong house and killed the homeowner.  Once again, officers killed an innocent civilian and there are no consequences for their actions.  The reality is this story highlights, for me, the real problem with the 2^nd Amendment, the current interpretation being pushed by conservatives, and the culture that it creates.

Gun rights advocates would have you believe that carrying a gun is the best way to protect yourself.  They want every American carrying a weapon so that we are all prepared to stop (read: kill) the next mass shooter before anyone dies.  If we just make sure everyone has access to quality gun safety education, then we’ll all be fine.

A brief recap of the scenario that happened.  It’s 11:30 at night and multiple unidentified individuals approach the house with high-powered flashlights.  Gun rights advocates would say this is exactly why you should carry a weapon.  They say you have a right to stand your ground and defend your castle.  That’s exactly what Robert Dotson did.  He grabbed his handgun to confront the unknown individuals approaching his house – and was shot and killed by the police.

Now this is where the gun rights people lose the argument.  They are also the first to argue that the police were entirely within their means to shoot first and ask questions later.  They saw a gun raised in a potential firing manner and shot to kill.  I watched the video and the reaction is instantaneous.  The gun is not yet fully in a position to threaten the officers, but they see the gun and immediately start shooting.  No warning, no announcement of police presence, nothing except gunfire.

The video shows officers questioning whether they are even at the right house.  It looks like an officer knocks on the door and then backs away.  No one is at the door to announce themselves when Mr. Dotson opens the storm door.  No one is standing on the porch, they’re all hiding behind their high-powered flashlights.

And the gun rights people want us to believe this is nothing more than a tragedy.  That their arguments, their positions have nothing to do with this.  It’s an unfortunate, but isolated event.  There are no broader societal implications.  Sorry for your loss, now let’s move on.

That is what I find so unbelievable.  Everyone did exactly what the gun advocates say they should do.  And yet an innocent person died.  How is that even remotely justifiable?  How can such a belief system that results in innocent deaths be good?  You cannot look at this situation and claim that everyone did the right thing.  When everyone does the right thing, innocent people do not get shot and killed.  When everyone does the right thing, we all live.

If gun advocates are going to insist on a society in which everyone is armed, then it is of the HIGHEST importance that law enforcement is trained to not immediately respond to the presence of a gun.  You cannot have it both ways.  You cannot have a society in which everyone is allowed to carry AND officers are allowed to shoot to kill at the first sign of a weapon.  It’s immoral, unjust, and a greater violation of the 2^nd Amendment than any rational, reasonable gun control legislation would try to impose.

Primary Election season has a scheduling problem... Let's fix it.

 The 2024 New Hampshire Primary provides a great opportunity to address another idea for fixing American Politics – the electoral calendar.  In case you missed the news, President Biden was not on the ballot for the New Hampshire primary and only won thanks to a massive, independent, write-in campaign.  The basics facts of the matter point to a couple of little kids whining about not getting their way.

Here’s the brief summary of the Democratic in-fighting over the electoral schedule.  New Hampshire has a state law that declares they have to be the first primary on the calendar.  The national DNC made changes to the calendar with the first primary being South Carolina and New Hampshire was moved to share the primary data with Nevada (effectively second).  New Hampshire got their pride hurt and stuck to their guns by scheduling their primary first anyways and the DNC has basically ignored the state and declared the primary “meaningless.”  To be fair, the DNC isn’t wrong.  New Hampshire’s delegates make up less than 1% of the total delegates that will meet later this year at the Democratic National Convention.  And that’s assuming the DNC doesn’t penalize New Hampshire for bucking the party.

This is the quintessential “making a mountain out of a molehill.”  New Hampshire feels overlooked and being first is their only way to be relevant (so they think).  So they’ll cling to that even if it incurs penalties from the party and makes their delegation even more irrelevant than they already are.  The DNC’s move to start in South Carolina, a state with a much more diverse population, makes a lot of sense if you want to claim to be the party that best represents people of color.  One could also claim that the DNC is behaving the same way as New Hampshire and argue that we all know NH isn’t all that important so just let them have their day in the spotlight and move on.  Overall, it’s two sides being rather petty and we all know it.

The other issue is that more states have started to realize the importance of not being last (Indiana not among them) and they are starting to clamor for earlier primaries so that they have more impact on the presidential nominees.  They aren’t wrong.  By the time Indiana gets around to voting on May 7^th, there won’t be anything left to decide in practical terms.  Even in a year like 2016, where no incumbent is running, the nominee is practically wrapped up before we Hoosiers go to the polls.  Other states know this and don’t want their voters left behind.

So how do we solve this?  Legislate a fundamental change to the primary calendar and establish a single Primary Election Day with the same respect as the General Election in November.  Now I know people are going to argue that there isn’t enough time to campaign in all 50 states at once, that the staggered primaries allow candidates to focus on smaller groups of states.  I don’t think that argument holds much water.  Conventions are held in late summer and then it’s only a few short months until the general election.  Setting a national primary election in May should give candidates plenty of time to campaign in each state and use surrogates to help shore up support as primary election day draws near.

The nation could easily hold Primary Election Day on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in May (let’s keep the same arcane scheduling logic because, why not).  Every state would get an equal opportunity to voice their opinion on the nominee.  Parties could then schedule their conventions for late July or early August as usual.  Frankly, this is much more democratic.  Too often, we see multiple candidates drop out after failing to win in just a handful of primaries.  Practically all of Trump’s opponents have dropped out and only two states has voted so far.  We would still see some winnowing of the candidates before May as support/polling/fundraising help clarify the picture, but we’d likely get to May with 3-4 candidates still running.  Combine a single primary with ranked choice voting and we would definitely get a much better sense of who the entire country feels should be the nominee for each party.

Creating a Better Congress, Part 2

 And now for the “not going to happen any time soon, but wouldn’t it be great” solutions.  Let’s start with an explosive realignment of the American political structure.  Blow apart the current parties and come back with more than two parties capable of representing the American people.  We can put Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, Ron DeSantis and their like into a far-right party.  People like Mike Lawler and Justin Amash can form the core of a moderate, center-right party.  Joe Manchin could be the leader of a center-left party.  And we’ll leave the far-left party in the hands of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  The Libertarians might very well find a home in the new center-right party while the Green Party may well see their voice amplified as well.  With 4 distinct parties, it becomes impossible for any one party to hold a majority in either house of Congress.  This is especially key in the House where partisan rancor rules the day and compromise is the dirtiest word ever. 

Take a minute and imagine a House that has to select a speaker from among 4 different parties.  The voting couldn’t be any worse than what we recently witnessed with Kevin McCarthy’s election and there would definitely be deals made.  Would the two centrist parties coalesce around one moderate leader?  Would the two left/right parties band together to put a solid, if not extreme, partisan in charge?  Imagine the conversations going on this week if McCarthy wasn’t trying to bring the MAGA wing to heel.  With 4 distinct parties, it’s entirely likely that the center right would look over to the center left and say, “Let’s make a deal”.  Then the center right candidates can go back home and tell their constituents how they got a deal done to keep America running.  Compromise might actually come back into favor in the halls of Congress.  There would still be disputes and negotiations and points where the centrist parties band together with the polar parties to pass or block some legislation.  But hopefully this would reduce the partisan fighting that is tearing America apart.

As for the impact on skewed delegations, I can’t really say.  How many voters end up choosing the extreme candidate because that’s who won the closed primary?  With more moderate candidates in play, would voters move away from the polar ends?  Would the impact of current 3^rd party candidates be weakened?  We would probably see a move back toward mostly centrist candidates winning, but would the delegation align with the voting totals.  Maybe.  Depends on the quality of the candidates. 

If we want to go in a different, if equally improbably, direction.  Let’s change the size of Congress.  It’s been fixed at 435 since the 1930 census – before Alaska and Hawaii joined the union.  To help illustrate where we actually are and also where we could be, I’ve got two new vizzes for you to explore:
Idealized Congressional Representation – explores the size of Congress based on the 2020 census.  You can adjust the Target Pop per Seat to see how different levels of representation would impact Congress.
Congressional Representation by Population – explores the average population per seat for each state based on actual apportionment data from the US Census Bureau.  You can view each census from 1910-2020.  This viz also has the Top 10 and Bottom 10 Best Represented states.

As a point of fact for all the Constitutional purists out there, Article 1 Section 2 Paragraph 3 contains this line – “The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative.”  Needless to say, abiding by that 1:30,000 ratio isn’t realistic.  While it would certainly solve the 2-party problem, the partisan fighting among 11,000+ Representatives would be insane.  The Census Bureau appears to be aiming for a target of 750,000 people/seat while also remaining constrained by the 435 member limit.  Taking the limit off only adds 8 members to Congress.  The problem with the current arrangement is the wide disparity in how well represented a state is.  Montana, at 1:542,704, is the best represented.  Delaware is the worst represented at 1:990,837.  The gap between those two ends is nearly 450,000.  We can do better than that.  If we set the target at 500,000 the gap between best and worst represented shrinks to about 267,000.  Admittedly, the size on Congress increases to 662 members, but maybe that’s not a bad thing.

If we increased the size of Congress, it would result in smaller districts that might have a better chance of electing a more representative individual.  In my home district (IN-3), the urban (Democrat) core of Fort Wayne doesn’t stand a chance against all the rural (Republican) farmers.  The result is that we end up being represented by the fairly extreme right-wing Jim Banks.  Combining smaller districts with independently drawn districts may result in a more diverse group in Congress that may have a greater ability to find common cause and pass meaningful legislation that works for everyone.

At this point, both ideas are rather theoretical and not likely to happen any time soon.  While there are some 3^rd parties, Libertarian and Green, that can influence the conversation, they don’t have enough to momentum to change the shape of Congress.  Maybe we might see the break up of the two major parties, but we’re more likely to see shifting ideologies that maintain the two-party system.  Changing the size of Congress is really a pipedream since no one in power has even offered a whiff of thinking about such a drastic shakeup of American politics. But we can always hope for a better, bipartisan, functional Congress.

Creating a better Congress, part 1

 In my last post, I ended with the question of how to reduce the number of states that have skewed delegation.  Neither of the solutions here will fully solve the issue of skewed delegates, but they could both help reduce the skew.  And, in cases where there is still skewed data, should result in more moderate candidates than the current crop of extreme partisans we see in Congress.

One of the simplest answers is to establish non-partisan or bipartisan commissions to draw congressional districts.  Prior to 2020, 7 states had independent commissions responsible for the creation of congressional maps – Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Jersey and Washington.  Iowa could also be included here, although their process is still subject to a straight yes/no vote by the legislature.  After the 2020 census, 5 more states are set to have maps drawn by independent commissions – Colorado, Michigan, Virginia, Ohio, and Utah. 

Obviously, California’s +11 Democrat tilt in 2018 highlights one of the issues with drawing districts regardless of who draws them – they generally only get redrawn once every 10 years barring legal challenges (see North Carolina, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and a few others).  However, the results point to better outcomes overall, even if the exact numbers don’t quite show it.  People move or the winds blow in a different direction.  Parties shift their priorities causing voters to shift their allegiences.  Events like the 2008 Obama wave or the 2010 Obama backlash could not have been anticipated when congressional districts were drawn after the 2000 census.  Could anyone have predicted President Trump in 2011?

The rest of the states behave fairly well.  Arizona is never more than +1 either direction and had 3 consecutive elections that resulted in the actual results matching the ideal.  Hawaii and Idaho only have 2 reps and Montana only has 1 so the ability to gerrymander districts is slim to none.  New Jersey did pretty good until Trump.  From 2000-2016, they had 5 ideal years and the other 4 were only +1 tilt.  After Trump, the tide shifted dramatically in favor of Democrats.  We’ll see what the 2022 results bring.  Washington doesn’t do so well, almost continuously maintaining a +1 Democratic tilt.

Over the next decade, it will be interesting to see how the newest states perform.  Even before new maps go into effect, Michigan was already coming back to matching their ideal representation.  Colorado has been good the last several cycles.  Virginia was very pro-Republican, but flipped to pro-Democrat after 2016.  Ohio has been pretty staunchly pro-Republican.  Utah only has 4 delegates, so not a lot of room for gerrymandering, but enough to occasionally give Republicans a slight boost.

The other option that opens up the possibility of better balance is ranked choice balloting.  Ranked choice balloting allows voters to select candidates in their preferred order.  If no one candidate earns 50%, then the last place candidate is eliminated and those votes go to the second choice.  FairVote is a non-partisan organization with a lot of good resources and videos explaining RCV.  I mention RCV because there are several races that might have had different outcomes if RCV was in play.  But before we get to those specific examples, let me run a theoretical scenario first. 

Assume a state with closed primaries and a general election.  The primaries feature 2 candidates in each party – one moderate and one staunch partisan.  Often these primaries result in the partisan winning which results in voters picking from the hard-line Republican or the hard-line Democrat.  Turnout in primaries is also noticeably lower than the general election.  Now, what if we just had all four candidates run in an open race decided during the general election with RCV.  There are essentially 6 ways a voter could rank the four candidates.  Voters 1 and 2 are the partisans.  They start at the extreme and rank accordingly.  Voters 3 and 4 are the moderates.  They prefer either centrist over their party extremist.  Voters 5 and 6 have a strong party affinity while recognizing the bipartisanship that the moderate candidate is likely to take to Congress.  Here’s the table:

 

	Voter 1	Voter 2	Voter 3	Voter 4	Voter 5	Voter 6
Far Right	1	4	3	4	2	4
Center Right	2	3	1	2	1	3
Center Left	3	2	2	1	3	1
Far Left	4	1	4	3	4	2

Take a look and where the 1’s and 4’s land.  The partisan candidate is only 1^st in one of the six scenarios, but they are last in half of them.  Meanwhile, the moderates are the top choice in 2 different scenarios and never finish last.  Combine RCV with non-partisan redistricting commissions and it’s easy to see how more districts would turn into competitive races that would send fewer partisans and more moderates to Washington D.C.  I think that is a result we could all get behind.

Now for some concrete examples.  Louisiana has used a variation on the theme for several years where everyone runs in the general election.  If no candidate gains 50%, the top two move to a runoff.  The problem with this process is voter turnout.  Take the 2020 race in Louisiana’s 5^th district for example.  In the general election, turnout was 309,566.  The runoff only had 79,307 voters.  RCV would have more fully captured the will of all 309,566 voters and could have easily resulted in a different winner.  The 2006 race in Louisiana’s 2^nd district had a similar issue with the runoff turnout dropping by roughly 30,000 voters.  In 2020, the race in New York’s 22^nd district saw the top two separated by a mere 109 votes.  The 6700+ voters who selected the Libertarian candidate could have easily changed the outcome if their second choice had been factored in.  Other races that could have changed if RCV was used include the 2000 races in Michican’s 8^th and Minnesota’s 2^nd, the 2002 race in Colorado’s 7^th, Illinois’s 8^th in 2006, and Virginia’s 11^th in 2010.  All of these races featured winners who captured less than 50% of the vote with a combination of several small 3^rd party candidates or a single strong 3^rd party candidate.

How about the 2000 Presidential race?  Anyone want to venture a guess as to how things would have turned out if RCV had been in play?  It was less than 600 votes that separated Bush and Gore in Florida.  I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the 97,488 votes cast for Ralph Nader might have swung the state the other way if RCV had been used. 

Any other proposed solution to the skewed states requires more nuance than the data allows.  Both Joe Manchin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are listed as Democrats.  Yet, most of us can agree that they don’t exactly share the same underlying philosophy.  AOC leans much further left than Manchin.  There are ways to address this, but those changes require more courage and political will than we currently have.  

Not So Representative Congress

For a long time, I’ve been working on a project analyzing the make up of the U.S House of Representatives.  I started with a basic assumption that most states use gerrymandering to skew the delegation that goes to D.C.  For example, the 2016 election in Indiana saw Republicans earn 54.28% of the votes and Democrats had 39.61% with various 3^rd party candidates making up the remaining 6.11%.  However, the delegation that went to D.C. was 7 Republicans (77.78%) and 2 Democrats (22.22%).  Clearly Indiana drew districts to maximize Republican voters while limiting Democratic voters.

If Indiana is skewed, what other states are and how badly?  What’s the net impact on the entire Congress?  Would it change the majority party?  How many states are skewed?  Is it just a handful or do the majority of states draw lines to favor one particular party?

If you want to jumps straight to the visualizations, visit my Tableau Public viz.

Before I get into the results, a few notes on methodology and other concerns.  The general rule was to find the correct mix of delegates that most closely matched the election results.  The basic formula: (Majority actual – Majority Ideal) + (Minority Ideal – Majority Actual) = Net gap.  In some cases the 3^rd party gap was also included.  The goal was to make the Net gap as small as possible.  I did make an exception for states with only 2 delegates since 25% seemed too low a threshold to meet.  For those states the bar was set at 37.50% (In years where a 2 rep state managed to split the vote, roughly 40% voted for the minority party)  

There were also some issues obtaining accurate voting results.  Most of the data is taken from officials results as reported by the FEC.  However, four states (Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma) do not require totals to be reported when a candidate is running unopposed.  Where possible I dug into precinct level results to determine precincts that made up the congressional district and then used the total votes of either the Presidential or Gubernatorial race as the figure for that race.  In some cases, precinct results were unavailable or required more time/money than I had available.

The final issue is my treatment of 3^rd party candidates.  Since the focus was on the two major parties, I made the decision to lump all the other candidates into one pool.  Obviously, that misses the nuances of various third parties being generally conservative or liberal.  It also introduces the idea that enough 3^rd party candidates could get votes to impact the ideal mix without accounting for ideological differences.

On to the results.  One of the biggest things that came out of the data was the impact of Barack Obama.  In 2008, Democrats held 14 more seats than ideal, while Republicans were 10 seats short of ideal (3^rd party candidates made up the other 4 ideal seats).  Two year later, 3^rd party candidates should have held 8 seats, Republicans were +12, and Democrats were -4.  To be fair, the President’s party typically loses seats at the mid-term, but the flip is significant.  That was also the same year as the decennial census.  Republicans took major advantage of the census and reapportionment to lock in their gains. 

Prior to 2010, the number of states with delegations matching their ideal mix waffled between 22-24 states depending on the year.  In fact, only 10 states had a Republican tilt in 2008.  Two years later that number more than doubled to 21 states with a Republican tilt and it’s never dropped below 20 since then.  States that are neutral dropped to 14-16 each year.  The jump in states that are skewed Republican was so great that it effectively offset the single greatest skew from the data (California 2018 +11 Democrats).

Here in Indiana, the evidence is similarly clear.  In 2008, we sent 5 Dem and 4 Rep to Congress, matching the ideal mix.  In 2010 Republicans were +1 and then +2 in every election since.  The 2020 election saw the race in Indiana’s 5^th district become a little tighter for Republicans than they really liked.  So what did the legislature do after the census?  They redrew the districts, shoving Democratic leaning precincts into the same district as the urban core of Indianapolis and adding a few more Republican rural precincts to the 5^th district.  That way, Republicans didn’t have to worry about losing a seat in 2022 and beyond.

A few other interesting results from the data.  In both 2014 and 2016, more people voted for Democratic candidates in Michigan but the actual Congressional delegation had 9 Republicans and 5 Democrats.  California had the largest single skew as Democrats were +11 in 2018.  Texas had the largest Republican skew at +5 in 2018.  Republicans in 2016 own the largest gain from gerrymandering as they were +23 during the first two years of the Trump Administration.  Republicans also own the 2^nd largest gain of +20 in 2012.  Democrats had their biggest gain in 2008 at +14.

I also have to respect the home of gerrymandering, Massachusetts, for failing to elect a single Republican to Congress in more than 2 decades, despite roughly 15% of the state voting Republican each year.  I’m no fan of gerrymandering and would like to see it removed from practice, but Massachusetts has been at this game for a very long time.

I hope to have another post up soon looking at changing the balance in Congress.  The data on hand suggests that we do not have a good representative democracy.  So, how do we get better balance?  How can we get more states to move back to the neutral column and reduce the number of states that are skewed towards a particular party.

Take a look at the visualizations at the link above and let me know what you think.  Have a question you want answered or a visualization you want to see, let me know in the comments.

No on Amanda Tokos

 

By now, I’m sure most of my Fort Wayne area friends have heard of Amanda Tokos, one of the five candidates for two seats on SACS School Board.  As a parent of students in SACS, I feel I have a responsibility to discuss the dangerous and problematic positions she espouses.  For starters, Amanda Tokos has been a very loud proponent of banning books from libraries that she finds offensive.  By and large the books are not offensive and have long been considered acceptable for students to read.  Their only “problem” is that they do not align with her extreme conservative views. 

In this article from earlier this year, her group, Advisory Book Club of Allen County, is quoted as stating their goal to “create evidence in an effort to have them removed from the schools and restricted from minors in public libraries.”  Now, I’m going to believe she is not actually fabricating evidence.  The group is simply compiling evidence to support their agenda.  We all do that to some extent, so the question is more about the broader implication of their goal.  There we find a problem.  I don’t have an issue with any of the members of ABC policing which books their children are allowed to read.  I do have a problem with them decided that their values should be enforced across the entire community.  Since we know Tokos’s credentials, I’ll use those as an example.  She had no background in education or library science.  Sure, her campaign site claims she’s studied educational issues for the past year and a half, but that’s not the same as a designed academic course of study into education or library science.  She is entitled to her opinion, but, perhaps, we should leave the final decision over the books on our library shelves to the trained professionals.  The books that ABC would seek to ban are the same books that another parent would love their children to read and the library, public or school, may be the only way that parent can introduce their child to that book.  Our libraries, including the ones in schools, should be a rich and diverse collection of materials and viewpoints.

There are also several problems with the “issues” she has listed on her campaign site.  There are two, specifically, that I will address.  First, she wants parents to have access to daily lesson plans from teachers on demand.  That is a wholly unreasonable expectation to place upon our teachers.  Teachers may have broad outlines of the plan for the week, but they require flexibility to adapt those plans on the fly to meet the needs of the students.  I can remember, when I was in school, teachers changing the lesson plan for the day because we didn’t get yesterday’s lesson and needed to spend more time on yesterday’s topic before moving on.  The current teachers I’ve interacted with have all done a wonderful job communicating what is being taught in class and what is coming up for my children.  If parents do have concerns about what is being taught, the state standards are available here.  The specifics of how a teacher meets those standards should be left in the hands of the trained professionals and not subject to on-demand review by parents.  I fully support a parent’s right to communicate with teachers regarding their child’s education.  That’s not what Amanda Tokos is aiming at.  She wants to empower parents to tell the teachers how to do their job.  Look no further than her Op-Ed in the Journal Gazette.  “Over time, parents became conditioned to trust that school boards, administrators and teachers had their children’s best interests in mind when teaching, managing and maintaining their school district.” Apparently, she believes we shouldn’t trust the school board, administrators or teachers to have the best interests of my children in mind.  In today’s day and age, where both parents often work, we have to trust our school boards, administrators and teachers to have our children’s best interests in mind.  Our school board should be in the business of hiring quality teachers and then giving them all the resources and tools they need to teach successful students, not coming up with new ways for parents to judge and harass teachers.

The other major issue I have a problem with is her approach to school discipline.  On her issues page she has a section on “Restore Classroom Discipline” where she notes that she would “give teachers the authority to remove disruptive students.”  Here’s the relevant portion of the elementary student handbook available on SACS website:

“Teachers or other school staff members shall, when pupils are under their charge, have the right to take any action, which is reasonably necessary to carry out or to prevent an interference with an educational activity that they supervise.  They may remove a student to another classroom with prior permission from that classroom teacher or to the school office.”

The handbook literally states the exact right that Amanda Tokos wants to give to teachers.  There is similar wording in the high school handbook as well.  It’s pretty difficult to give people something they already have.  She also wants to “set discipline standards and consequences that are clear to students and parents.”  Again, this is something that’s laid out pretty clearly in the school handbooks.  When I see a candidate trying to make an issue out of something that clearly isn’t, I start to seriously question how well suited that candidate is for office. 

Lastly, Amanda Tokos wants to “end disruptive behavior and distracting behavior.”  If you’ve ever worked with kids, you know that’s a ridiculous expectation, especially for younger grades.  There can be consequences for distracting and disruptive behavior.  Children need to learn that actions have consequences.  However, I seriously question her goal to end such behavior.  Kids are going to goof off and if Amanda Tokos intends to eliminate such behavior from our schools, she would have to resort to draconian measures that would do more harm than good.

For the sake of our teachers and students, do not vote for Amanda Tokos for SACS School Board.  There are other candidates more worthy of your support.  Stephanie Veit and Kim Moppert are both better suited to serve the needs of our teachers and students.  Veit has the background in construction and commercial lending that will be vital to helping SACS navigate the building needs of the district as the student population continues to grow.  Moppert spent 20 years as a teacher, including within SACS, and knows what our teachers need to help our students achieve their full potential.

January 6th, 2021

What happened on January 6, 2021 is not okay; it will never be okay.  And it was entirely preventable.  Donald Trump has long signaled that he was willing to use violence to achieve his ends.  His supporters have telegraphed their willingness to use violence to achieve their ends.  Who stormed the Michigan State Legislature to protest wearing masks?  Who plotted to kidnap Governor Whitmar? Answer – white, right-wing radicals.  It wasn’t hard to figure out that a gathering of Trump supporters had as much likelihood to turn violent as any other protest we’ve witnessed in the past 24 months.  Earlier that week, the leader of the Proud Boys was arrested for vandalism in DC.  We saw police violently eject peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square because Donald Trump wanted them out.  The violent assault upon the very core of our democracy should not be a surprise to anyone.  It is the natural outflow of a president and party that has continually pedaled false narratives about the election.  It is the natural result of allowing a president to continually stoke flames of discord and animosity.  It is the inevitable outcome of allowing a sitting president to openly signal his most ardent supporters to be ready to come defend him.  It is what happens when leaders are allowed to spread lies and conspiracies and falsehoods.  We should not be surprised that Trump’s supporters came to defend him.  And every Republican who played a role in supporting the lies and falsehoods should be held accountable for the violence that ensued that afternoon.

There are some who say that the Capitol Riots were led by people who feel unheard.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  We’ve heard them loud and clear for the last four years.  We’ve heard their racist taunts, their chauvinist misogyny, and their hate.  And we’ve said we can do better.  We’ve said “NO” to the America they want.  Sadly, Donald Trump and many Republicans in Congress have given them support and approval.  Sadly, they have encouraged their vision for society.  They have encouraged racism, fear, and hate.  And when America said “NO MORE” they filed lawsuits challenging the vote (I will allow that Trump was entirely within his rights to sue the states).  When the courts ruled them fair and lawful, the party of “law and order” cried “FOUL” even louder.  They concocted conspiracy theories, some even originating with Trump, to explain why they were cheated and why the courts were wrong.  When the Electoral College voted and upheld the results of our election, Trump urged his supporters to simply “fight harder.”  He called and pleaded with officials to violate the law so that he could win.  He threatened members of his own party if they didn’t deliver the results he wanted.  Even as Congress met to certify the results of the Electoral College, Donald Trump actively encouraged his supporters to keep fighting and fight harder to prevent the election from being stolen.  These people have been heard and America decided we do not support their agenda or their views.  These riots were not the result of people feeling unheard; they were the result of grown adults acting like little children who just got told “NO.”

There are those who would say that I am missing the forest for the trees in the preceding paragraph, that I am oversimplifying the situation, that I am merely hearing their words and not what they are saying.  To an extent, they might not be wrong.  Because the underlying issue is one of self-worth.  JD Vance hits on this in his book “Hillbilly Elegy.”  As someone who was raised in the rural, poor, white hollers of Kentucky and Ohio, he’s familiar with the base of Trump supporters.  For many of them, they are fully aware of their poor status, but they are white and, in their minds, that makes then better than any black person anywhere.  They derive their sense of self-worth from their race.  When we take that away, when we state that all people are equal regardless of race, we are taking away their sense of self-worth.  Obviously, it is a misplaced and misguided sense of self-worth.  It’s also one that cannot be easily changed, especially by individuals and institutions from outside the community.  So, I don’t know what to do with it, but I’m also not willing to say anything other than the firmest of “NO’s” to their version of America.

We cannot talk about the events of January 6, 2021 without discussing the members of Congress involved in this debacle and their behavior before and after the Capitol Riots, specifically Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.  The problem with the vast majority of their objections has to do with the timing and the obvious hypocrisy of the entire thing.  None of the Republicans in Congress voiced objections to the changes in electoral procedures until after Trump lost.  Many of the changes they objected to were enacted prior to the primaries.  The specific objections raised by Senator Hawley were enacted by the Pennsylvania legislature in 2019.  We’ve heard numerous Republicans rant about how changes were made by other elected officials – governors, secretaries of state, election officials – and not the legislatures as the Constitution requires.  If that were their actual objection, then they should have been voiced well before the party conventions began because many states enacted voting changes at the direction of said officials as a response to the pandemic.  Instead, they at least tacitly supported those changes as they recognized the need to make changes in the wake of a global pandemic.  They only became concerned after Donald Trump lost.  Their objections are not based in a defense of the Constitution or standing up for democracy; they are the desperate cries of a party that lost.  And they know it.  Mitt Romney said it best after the Senate resumed that night

The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth.  That is the burden, and the duty, of leadership.  The truth is that President-elect Biden won this election.  President Trump lost.  Scores of courts, the President’s own Attorney General and state election officials both Republican and Democrat have reached this unequivocal decision.

All of this brings us back to Hawley.  If Republicans are all for only allowing state legislatures to change electoral procedures, why was the biggest objection of the day aimed at a state where the legislature made appropriate changes?  The only answer one can come up with is that they are simply mad that their guy lost and they don’t want to admit it to themselves or their voters.

So now what do we do with them?  What do we do with the 100+ Republicans who sought objections in the House?  What do we do with Senator Hawley and Senator Cruz, who sustained those objections in the Senate?  Do we lump them in with Donald Trump and consider charges of sedition?  Do we demand their immediate resignation from office for shamefully disgracing the Constitution?  I would argue that it would be pretty hard to pursue either option without opening up an even uglier can of worms.  Democratic members of the House have raised objections to several recent elections (2000, 2004, 2016) and they have mostly been supported by a small handful of back-benchers.  Those objections have largely gone nowhere because they were not widely supported by the party leadership and they had no support in the Senate.  If we were to demand that those who objected to this election should be removed from office on those grounds alone, it would essentially eliminate that constitutionally protected right.  And yet, the objections this time led to a riot and the breaching of the US Capitol.  Words have meaning and we have to hold people accountable for the words they say.  Donald Trump spread lies and misinformation regarding the validity of the 2020 General Election.  Many Republicans in Congress supported those lies and helped to spread the misinformation.  While many of them did not call for violence to prevent the election from being stolen, their failure to tell the truth allowed their supporters to believe the lies and simply “stand back, and stand by.”  And when all other options were finally exhausted and they gathered in the Capitol to rally for Donald Trump, they allowed the sitting president to incite an attempted overthrow of the government.  Those in Congress who did not defend the truth, who failed to oppose the lies coming from Donald Trump, helped to provide fertile soil in which to grow a rebellion.  They may not have planted the seeds or even watered them, but they did nothing to stop the rebellion from growing.  And the Capitol Riots represent the harvest of that crop.

How do we hold them accountable?  We never let them forget what happened on January 6, 2021.  We never let them forget all the times they remained silent when confronted with Trump’s lies.  We never let them forget all the times they spread the very same lies.  And in 2022 we vote every single Representative who supported those objections out of office.  We convict them of sedition in the only court where such a decision will hold water – the court of public opinion.  We hold them accountable for their abject failure to defend our democracy by never allowing them to hold office again.  We hold them accountable by stating, unequivocally that We The People demand loyalty to the Constitution of the United States, not any one person.  Loyalty to Donald Trump, or any other elected leader, should NEVER be greater than loyalty to our nation.

The Electoral College

The Electoral College has been a part of American politics since George Washington.  For many, it is a bedrock institution.  However, the time has come for the college to be dissolved.  The underlying issues that the EC attempted to address no longer exist and so its usefulness to American politics no longer exists.

In order to understand this better, let’s take a trip back to the late 1700’s and understand why Congress created the Electoral College.  Congress wanted to ensure that the President was properly vetted by well-educated individuals who knew something of the person running and would ensure that the voters didn’t elect someone who would be an embarrassment to the new nation.  There was also the need to ensure that the winner had national support.  Back then, it was difficult for voters in, say, Georgia to get reliable information on candidates who lived in, say, Massachusetts and vice versa.  News just didn’t travel that fast and small incidents that would be viral sensations today never made it out of the little town or village where they occurred.  It also made it very easy for disinformation campaigns to spread quickly without an adequate fact-checking system in place.  That’s the historically cleaned up version anyway.  It’s also accurate to say that Congress wanted to ensure that a bunch of rich white men had the final say in the election so that a bunch of poor country bumpkins couldn’t screw it up.

Congress also wanted to ensure that the electors did not simply choose the hometown hero and so they mandated that the electors had to vote for two men and one had to be from outside the elector’s home state.  It was expected the people in Massachusetts would vote for the hometown candidate.  If the electors only voted for the candidate selected by the people of their state, it would get real messy, real quick.  By forcing electors to also choose a second candidate, it ensured that the final winner had some broad national appeal.  This second vote required electors to have good judgment and well-rounded critical thinking skills so that they could best determine who should get their second vote.

After a few bad elections (1796 and 1800), they changed the Electoral College.  Instead of electors voting for two candidates, parties would run a ticket consisting of a candidate for President and a candidate for Vice-President.  Electors would then vote for one ticket.  It was still designed to ensure that rich, white men had the final say.  Over the ensuing years things have changes a little.  Electors aren’t always rich, white men these days.  State laws have bound electors to the results of the statewide vote, thus forcing electors to vote for the dupe if that’s who the people pick.  Electors are no longer allowed to use their good judgment when they vote. 

So, if electors are forced to vote for the winner of the popular vote in their state, why not just remove the electors from the process.  Frankly, it’s much more fair and representative of the nation.  If you are a Democrat living in the Dakotas, your vote doesn’t really count.  Since WWII, Lyndon Johnson is the only Democrat to win in either North or South Dakota.  A similar argument could be made for Republican voters living in New England.  The only Republicans to win Massachusetts since WWII are Eisenhower and Reagan.  If we scrapped the Electoral College then the Republican living in Boston is just as important as the Democrat living in Bismarck and they are both just as important as the voters living in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or any of the other “swing states.”

In addition to making every vote carry the same weight, it makes the outcome much fairer and easier to understand.  Imagine how different 2000 would have been if we didn’t have the Electoral College.  Al Gore won the popular vote by roughly 500,000 votes or 0.50%.  Overall, it was a really close race.  Only two states, Florida and Wisconsin, had margins less than 1.00% and enough voters to possibly impact the final outcome.  However, it’s reasonable to expect that everyone would have agreed that the contentious number of ballots in those two states would not have been enough to change the final result.  I will allow the possibility that a massive recount effort would have been demanded by George Bush on the hopes that a recount in every state would be enough to shift the final national count.  But, it likely would not have resulted in the long, drawn-out process we witnessed with the Supreme Court being forced to play the role of final arbiter in the election.

The 2000 election isn’t the only time the popular vote didn’t match the electoral vote.  We all know about 2016, when Donald Trump won the election despite losing the popular vote by over 3 million votes.  The elections of 1876 and 1888 also featured differing results between the popular vote and the electoral vote.  In 1876, Samuel Tilden actually won a majority, not just a plurality, of the popular vote and still managed to lose the electoral vote.  The interesting side note to all four of those elections is that the Democratic candidate won the popular vote and the Republican candidate became President.  Rutherford Hayes lost the popular vote in 1876 by a full 3%.  To put that in perspective, Trump’s 3 million plus defeat was just over 2% of voters.  The Electoral College skews results and paints a picture that does not reflect the nation.  And it’s not just the four previously mentioned elections that are the issue.  When you look at the popular vote totals, Reagan’s supposed landslide victory in 1984 doesn’t really play out.  Sure, he won the popular vote by an 18.2% margin, but that’s certainly not the largest in history.  Harding, Coolidge, both Roosevelt’s, Lyndon Johnson, and Nixon all had bigger wins in the popular vote.  And yet Reagan won 97.58% of the Electoral College, second only to FDR’s 98.49% in 1936.  How can we really call that a landslide victory?

The Electoral College must be removed so that the free will of the entire American electorate can be exercised.  It is the only race that the entire country has a say in.  Senators and Representatives are selected by states and districts.  Congressional leadership is chosen by the members of Congress.  People in Texas or California or any other state don’t have a say in who gets to be Speaker of the House – that is strictly an internal vote by the 435 members of the House.  Only the presidential race is run across the entire country.  No president should get to behave like there’s some sort of national mandate to govern because they convinced the right 58.8% of the nation to vote for him (or, someday, her).  Our American Democracy places great importance upon the will of the people, as such the race for president should be solely determined by the will of the people without any intermediaries. 

Removing Monuments

There’s been a lot of news going around lately on the tearing down of various monuments to the Confederacy and statues of famous Americans.  It’s generated a tremendous amount of debate regarding our nation’s history and how we tell the story of America.  As a history major, this is something I spent a fair amount of time discussing in various classes.  One of the things we often discussed was the problem of who writes history.  So often, it is the winners that write history.  Rarely do we hear viewpoints that challenge the narrative written by the winners.

Of course, since it is the winners who are writing the history, they tend to gloss over the not so nice parts of their stories.  We also tend to make villains of the losers so that it is clear who the bad guys are in the story.  Think about what gets taught in American schools, what you learned about our story.  Think about what you were taught about these characters:
Christopher Columbus – sailed in search of a sea route to India, discovered the Americas and opened up a whole new continent for European exploration. 
The Pilgrims – good Christian believers who fled persecution in Britain for a new home in America.
George Washington – founding father, led a rag-tag bunch of farmers in a war against tyranny and freed us from British oppression.  Rejected calls to become our king and was elected our first president.
Thomas Jefferson – founding father, wrote the Declaration of Independence, instrumental in drafting the Bill of Rights, third president of the United States

Now let’s take a second and flush out those histories a little more:
Christopher Columbus – the Americas already existed and were well populated in 1492, Columbus simply became the first European to be aware of their existence.  He deliberately and intentionally brought blankets infected with smallpox in a genocidal effort to eliminate native populations.  Enslaved thousands of natives in an ultimately futile quest for gold.
The Pilgrims – also known as the Puritans.  Before leaving England they spent considerable time and effort persecuting other Christians whom they deemed not “pure” enough in their faith; hence the name “Puritans.”  Their “persecution” resulted from the simple fact that many other Christians chose not to fall in line with Puritan practices and beliefs.  Puritans weren’t the persecuted party, they were the persecutors.
George Washington – slave owner who used teeth from his own slaves to replace his own.  While he acknowledged the evil of slavery by freeing his slaves at his death, he refused to address the broader issue and do anything to free all slaves.
Thomas Jefferson – slave owner.  Sexually assaulted at least one of his slaves.  Did not free the vast majority of the slaves he owned.  As vice president, he spent the majority of his term deliberately thwarting the efforts of President John Adams and ensuring a disastrous four years of governing.

Now please do not get me wrong.  I’m not trying to say they are all bad people.  Certainly Washington and Jefferson are vital characters to the American story and one could say they same about the Puritans.  You could even go so far as to say that the United States doesn’t happen without Columbus introducing Europe to the existence of the American continent.  However, it is absolutely critical that we take the good AND the bad.  We have to take time to understand the totality of the individuals we study.  No one is 100% good or 100% bad.  So where does that leave us in deciding which monuments need to come down?

I think we have to look at the totality of their life’s work and decide if that is something we want our children emulating.  In the case of Washington and Jefferson and the other founding father’s I think it can reasonably be argued that the answer is “Yes.”  They stood up to tyranny and helped usher in the representative democracy style of governing.  Monuments to US Presidents should be left untouched, even while we take the time to acknowledge the horrible atrocities some of them committed while in office.  We cannot whitewash history under some phony guise of patriotism.  We have to talk about the darker parts of our history.

When it comes to figures like Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and other leaders of the Confederacy it’s a firm “No” from me.  It’s important to remember that these men led others in open rebellion against the United States.  They were traitors to their nation.  These men decided loyalty to country was not as important as loyalty to a racist, immoral, and unjust system of slavery.  Most history books used in American classrooms teach some version of the Civil War that pushes slavery to the side and focuses on the war as a fight over states’ rights.  Seeing as how slavery was mentioned more than 80 times in the articles of secession, it’s rather specious to argue that it wasn’t about slavery.  Those who push the states’ rights narrative conveniently forget that the specific right they were arguing about was the right to continue the institution of slavery.  It is long past time we stopped celebrating men who are known for taking up arms against their nation in support of the horrible institution of slavery.

For me, the monument question is fairly simple.  Monuments to the Confederacy need to come down; the rest should be left alone.