Supreme Court's Aversion to Social Science Is Perverse

Gill v Whitford Gerrymandering—An Easy Case That Would Destroy Republican Rule

Updated: Housing-discrimination litigation in federal court since the 1960s has often relied upon social scientific evidence — the Taueber dissimilarity and progeny measures — to demonstrate residential and urban segregation, a phenomena akin to American apartheid.

Milwaukee, site of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, remains the most segregated metropolitan urban area in the country, the perennial champ, (WISN News). It's apropos the DNC holds its fete in Milwaukee, as Wisconsin is the state on which the Court punted a decision to protect liberties.

Mayor Tom Barrett (D) is a de facto supporter of segregation and racial discrimination including routine violence, especially when committed by the Milwaukee police, who work with the assurance Barrett has their back. At his best, Barrett is inadequate.

Barrett and much of the United States Supreme Court share a disdain towards empirical science as a tool of demonstrating and remedying unyielding features of American society — racism, segregation and police violence.

While the Democratic Party is picking likely the next president in Summer 2020, the Supreme Court will have decided in the Summer 2019 if the constitutional rights of citizens to vote are expansive, and whether social science can be again sanctioned as a means to demonstrate the latest iteration (redistricting) of the American project of denying rights for the purposes of maintaining power over individual liberty.

How the Democratic Party fares in this affair is an open question, about to get more explosive in the next 14 months than at any point in modern American history, as progress on civil rights could be set back 55 years.


Rucho v. Common Cause, Lamone v. Benisek will determine the fate of American democracy.

Milwaukee 2020 will offer a major reaction to these landmark cases determining for one thing the direction of Democratic administrations of major urban areas, and the role of the president against what could be a Supreme Court ripping up rights by rights at the direction of white fascistic Party.
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Earlier this month [October 2017] at oral argument of the likely precedent-setting Wisconsin gerrymandering case, Republican justices displayed an obtuse mind-set revealing an incapacity to consider social scientific findings in determining whether a statute is unconstitutional, (Gill v. Whitford, Cornell, - Gill v. Whitford, MortizLaw, - Gill v. Whitford, U.S. Supreme Court).

Writes Oliver Roeder this morning at Five-thirty-eight.com:

The Supreme Court does not compute. Or at least some of its members would rather not. The justices, the most powerful jurists in the land, seem to have a reluctance — even an allergy — to taking math and statistics seriously.

For decades, the court has struggled with quantitative evidence of all kinds in a wide variety of cases. Sometimes justices ignore this evidence. Sometimes they misinterpret it. And sometimes they cast it aside in order to hold on to more traditional legal arguments. (And, yes, sometimes they also listen to the numbers.) Yet the world itself is becoming more computationally driven, and some of those computations will need to be adjudicated before long. Some major artificial intelligence case will likely come across the court’s desk in the next decade, for example. By voicing an unwillingness to engage with data-driven empiricism, justices — and thus the court — are at risk of making decisions without fully grappling with the evidence.

This problem was on full display earlier this month, when the Supreme Court heard arguments in Gill v. Whitford, a case that will determine the future of partisan gerrymandering — and the contours of American democracy along with it. As my colleague Galen Druke has reported, the case hinges on math: Is there a way to measure a map’s partisan bias and to create a standard for when a gerrymandered map infringes on voters’ rights?

It's not that rightwing justices like Thomas, Gorsuch, Roberts and Alito cannot comprehend empirical investigation. It is that they do not care to when they are presented findings that point to a remedy helping disfavored segments of the population against whom these legal politicians have been appointed to work.

Without a United States Supreme Court ruling protecting Americans from the Republican Party's gerrymandering drawn after computer simulation after simulation to effectively take citizens out of the loop in democratic elections, Republican rule over citizens is all-but-guaranteed in the future.

In response to the early October oral argument of Gill v. Whitofrd, Nicholas Stephanopoulos, professor at the University of Chicago Law School specializing in election law, penned a column in Slate Magazine spelling out the criteria identifying an unconstitutional gerrymanders. (See also Stephanopoulos Explains the Research that Convinced SCOTUS to take the Wisconsin Gerrymandering Case.]

Writes Stephanopoulos:

As one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, I was able to attend Tuesday’s oral argument in Gill v. Whitford. At the argument, the justices probed, among other things, how the plaintiffs’ test for partisan gerrymandering would work, how reliable the social science is that underpins this test, and what the test’s implications would be for judicial involvement. Since the plaintiffs’ theory relies in part on my academic work, I’m in a good position to address these issues.

With respect to the test’s operation, Justice Gorsuch warned that a gerrymandering standard should not be like a 'steak rub.' That is, it should not be imprecise and opaque in its makeup: 'I like some turmeric, I like a few other little ingredients, but I’m not going to tell you how much of each.' In reality, the plaintiffs’ proposed test for adjudicating gerrymandering claims is more akin to a detailed recipe than a mystery stew. The test has four elements, and litigants would be required to go through them one by one, proceeding to the next phase only if they satisfied the previous criterion. These four elements are:

1. Was the district plan enacted with the discriminatory intent of benefiting one party and handicapping another one? Maps drawn by a single party in full control of the state government often (but not always) have this motive.
   
   
2. Has the plan exhibited (or is the plan forecast to exhibit) a historically large partisan asymmetry? A partisan asymmetry means a map does not treat the parties equally in terms of how their votes translate into seats. A map’s asymmetry can easily be calculated and then compared to historical data to determine if it’s unusually big.
   
   
3. Is the plan’s partisan asymmetry durable? To find out, a range of plausible election results should be considered. A map’s asymmetry should be deemed persistent enough only if it would endure across this range of outcomes.
   
   
4. Is the plan’s partisan asymmetry unjustified? At this final step, the gold standard is to use a computer algorithm to simulate many maps that satisfy the state’s legitimate redistricting criteria. The challenged plan’s asymmetry is unjustified only if it exceeds that of most of the simulated maps.

Under this approach, there would be some easy cases, like the Wisconsin State Assembly plan at issue in Whitford. This plan’s authors admitted its pro-Republican intent. Its partisan asymmetry is worse than that of any map nationwide between 1972 and 2010. Its asymmetry would persist even if there was a massive Democratic wave. And its asymmetry is larger than that of any simulated assembly map. Conversely, it’s clear a plan would be upheld if it was designed through a bipartisan or nonpartisan process, if its asymmetry was historically small, if its asymmetry would disappear under slightly different electoral conditions, or if it was no more asymmetric than most simulated maps.

In playing dumb, social dominators like Gorsuch, Alito, Roberts and Thomas continue a sordid tradition in federal litigation of liberty claims the last 65 years. Unequal public schools? Public accommodation of ethnic minorities? Housing discrimination? Equality of law and processes? Voting? What? Do we litigate every public functioning and process if someone makes a liberty claim?

It may not seem like it at the moment, but Republican rule is imperiled as at any point in post-World War II history, and Gill v. Whitford is one of the last chances Republicans have to hang onto to power for 50 years against the will of the population.

One must hate the fact that Anthony Kennedy has become the pivotal vote again in this critical case for Americans when this man is mired in mediocrity.

Gill v. Whitford — Court Opinions to Voters: Here's How You Win

In Wisconsin gerrymandering case, voters
have to wait while Republicans rampage.
Waiting image by Edward Hopper.

The United States Supreme Court did more than provide voters with a roadmap back to the Court in Gill v. Whitford, Wisconsin's gerrymandering case.

The four liberal judges' concurring opinion built a legal yellow-brick road and a fast-track for Wisconsin voters to prevail against the Republican state-election riggers, going so far as to suggest evidence, argument, type of plaintiff and harm claims that would presumably snag at least Justice Anthony Kennedy's vote.

That's a pretty good result from an order to remand to lower court that has Republicans pretending to ballyhoo.

The three-judge, lower-court panel, except for Federalist Society-linked, rightwing and corrupt Judge William Griesbach, will likely not be amused by Republican stalling this time around.

Wisconsin Republicans are lying about the no-decision, passing Roberts' opinion off as an unanimous decision on the merits, which it definitely is not, an indisputable fact that everyone except for Gov. Scott Walker (R) and Attorney General Brad Schimel (R) understands.

Gill v. Whitford is not a "reversal," as Schimel pretends. It's a do-over.

Concludes Chief Judge John Roberts: "The judgment of the District Court is vacated, and the case is  remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion," (p.22).

Further proceedings in this case means litigation at the three-judge panel in the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit jurisdiction, then directly back to United States Supreme Court.

Roberts went out of his way not to dismiss the claims, calling the claims "unsettled," (p.21) and unresolved. Kennedy likely forced this most-significant of concessions by Roberts. The two Soviet-minded justices, Thomas and Gorsuch, write in a concurring opinion they want the case dismissed.

Though Roberts frustrates voting rights by dismissing the argument that engineering one-party control of the legislature through gerrymandering is a mere "generalized" claim not sufficient for the Court to hear and decide, a ridiculous position, the take-away from Gill v. Whitford is obvious.

Roberts wants to decide the case, and wants a nationwide, precedent-setting (and narrow) remedy for voters getting the shaft on gerrymandering by craven state politicians.

Frustrating for sure, because now pro-democracy forces have to wait and Republican-appointed justices' forced a punt on a case they should have decided now.

But from a Supreme Court that is hostile to Due Process claims, perverse on the First Amendment and corrupted for Republican interests on political cases, there is ample reason in the opinions for voters to celebrate: A coming victory in a year or two assuming Anthony Kennedy does not retire.

Wisconsin Legislative Districts Will Likely Stay Same for 2018 after Gerrymandering Case

Molly McGrath (left), a voting rights attorney with the ACLU,
works with Madison residents to get the IDs they
need to vote under Wisconsin’s restrictive voter-ID law.
(Courtesy of Molly McGrath). From In These Times.

The Wisconsin congressional and state voting districts will remain the same for the 2018 elections, no matter the decision of the gerrymandering case before the United States Supreme Court, (Gill v. Whitford, Mal Contends), (Gill v. Whitford, Cornell, - Gill v. Whitford, MortizLaw, - Gill v. Whitford, U.S. Supreme Court).

Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE)

This is because in part the 2018 voting process for the mid-term general elections will begin on June 28 one month from today, in accordance with federal law pertaining to military and overseas voters, (Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE)).

MOVE mandates states transmit ballots for federal elections "to absent uniformed services and overseas voters no later than 45 days before federal elections." The manner of transmission of ballots in Wisconsin is absentee ballots, including for military voters the use of electronic absentee ballots, if requested.
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June 1 is the deadline for congressional and state candidates to submit nomination signatures and other paperwork to qualify for candidacy.

To change the voting rules of the 2018 Wisconsin mid-term elections in the middle of the election process would present Due Process and Equal Protection violations inflicted on voters and candidates.
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In the 2016 presidential general election, 819,316 voters cast absentee ballots, a figure likely to be approached in this year's mid-term elections because of increased voter access in defiance of Republican voter suppression efforts, and in accordance with residents' right to vote under the Wisconsin Constitution.

U.S. Supreme Court Order on Gerrymanding Signals Bad Day for Wisconsin and Democracy

Madison, Wisconsin — The latest move by Justice Anthony Kennedy to consolidate Republican power over the Constitutional rights of voters in a Texas civil rights case bodes ill for the future of the potential precedent-setting Wisconsin gerrymandering case, (Gill v. Whitford, MortizLaw), (Beverly R. Gill, et al., Appellants v. William Whitford, U.S. Supreme Court).

Kennedy is the fifth vote in a mid-September order blocking two federal courts that ruled Republican-created Texas voting districts are racially discriminatory, (Abbott v. Perez, 17A225, and Abbott v. Perez, 17A245, U.S. Supreme Court).

The Texas case is widely seen as a signal that supposed-swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, will ignore Constitutional rights and find for Republican interests in Gill v. Whitford, to be heard in oral argument on Oct. 3.

Kennedy is the author of the infamous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision that propelled Republican interests in a decision that rivaled Bush v. Gore in partisan favoritism and corruption on the United States Supreme Court.

"For those who expect Justice Kennedy to be a savior here—or in the Gill partisan gerrymandering case (where he also voted with the Court to stop an interim remedy in Wisconsin pending Supreme Court resolution)—this is one data point against that hope," notes election law expert, Rick Hasen.

See also Foley at MoritzLaw and the Sept. 5 Amicus brief by the League of Women Voters on "high-tech stealth gerrymander[ing], (p24)" that utilizes "sophisticated technologies" enabling legislatures to "cloak intentional, extreme partisan gerrymander, (p.3)."

Kennedy will likely ignore this cloaked, high-tech element of modern gerrymandering when Kennedy supplies the fifth vote for Republicans in 2018 in the ornate scam that defines modern Constitutional jurisprudence.

Could Kennedy be seized by a spasm of conscience? Ha.

Wisconsin Gerrymandering Case: Kennedy's Questions at Oral Argument Suggest Citizens' Win Against GOP, Experts Say

Wisconsin gerrymandering case, Gill v. Whitford,
at Oct 3 oral argument at U.S. Supreme Court.
 See Gill v. Whitford for transcript from
U.S. Supreme Court.

In Wisconsin's potentially precedent-setting gerrymandering case at the U.S. Supreme Court, several experts focusing on Justice Anthony Kennedy's questioning say a win for citizens' First Amendment rights against Republican incursions here appears likely.

The case is Gill v. Whitford, (U.S. Supreme Court).

Kennedy's questioning excoriated one of the Republicans' attorney, (representing the GOP-led Wisconsin State Senate), Erin E. Murphy.

Reports Mark Joseph Stern at Slate Magazine from the October 3 oral argument:

Erin E. Murphy then takes over for [Wisconsin Solicitor General Misha ] Tseytlin at the lectern. She represents the Wisconsin State Senate, where the Republican majority would very much like to stay in power. Kennedy promptly grills Murphy with a sharp hypothetical: Imagine a law that compels legislators to draw maps that consider 'traditional principles' but must maximally favor one party. Would that be constitutional? And under what principle? Murphy ducks the query for several minutes before an irked Kennedy eventually intones: 'I’d like an answer to the question.'

Murphy admits that such a law might constitute 'a First Amendment violation in the sense that it is viewpoint discrimination.' It’s an odd moment, since she is effectively telling the justices that, yes, her client violated the Constitution, but, no, the court can’t do anything about it. Justice Sonia Sotomayor seizes the moment to ask Murphy 'what the value is to democracy from political gerrymandering.' Murphy provides a gloriously nonsensical answer, asserting that 'it produces values in terms of accountability that are valuable so that the people understand who isn’t and who is in power.'

'I really don’t understand what that means,' Sotomayor deadpans. The liberal justices have eaten Murphy’s lunch, and she slinks off.

Stern's analysis is seconded by Adam Liptak and Michael D. Shear in the NYT:

After spirited Supreme Court arguments on Tuesday, there was reason to think Justice Kennedy may be ready to join the court’s more liberal members in a groundbreaking decision that could reshape American democracy by letting courts determine when lawmakers have gone too far.

Justice Kennedy asked skeptical questions of lawyers defending a Wisconsin legislative map that gave Republicans many more seats in the State Assembly than their statewide vote tallies would have predicted. He asked no questions of the lawyer representing the Democratic voters challenging the map.

See also Edward B. Foley - Moritz College of Law and Rick Hasen's Election Law. and Steven Mazie at The Economist.

Rightwing Justices Voice Hostility Against Social Science and Liberty in Wisconsin Gerrymandering Case

Equal Justice is not here. What, are you grilling a steak?

Identity of the perpetrator should not diminish the victims' liberty claims

Analyses of oral argument at the Wisconsin gerrymandering case, Gill v. Whitford, (U.S. Supreme Court), reveal persisting features of modern Republican social domination in federal litigation—anti-intellectualism and pale regard for citizen liberties, especially voting rights.

Put another way, the four rightest justices' posture of dumb, anti-Constitutional and hostile points to a four-Justice dissent next year in Gill at which only results-committed ideologues like Roberts, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch could arrive.

In Wisconsin in 2011, Republicans and only Republicans secretly engineered the gerrymandered state and congressional districting maps that all commenting parties in the political culture recognize as a means ensuring Republican power in the state legislature against political sentiment of the populace, except for the Republicans' State Senate's attorney Erin E. Murphy who said at orals, "you know, I would certainly dispute the premise that the decks are stacked here" in gerrymanders. (p. 29).

The Republican-drawn maps were found unconstitutional in 2016 by a three-judge federal panel.

This gerrymandered rigging of state democracy is an empirical fact, yet Neil M. Gorsuch for example, also played it deep-and-dumb at oral argument. [Gorsuch is performing the job for which he was appointed: Protect Republican interests against Americans, forcing one to wonder if this guy really has a clue about empirical investigation and raising the same credibility questions about the Supreme Court of the Untied States that Bush v. Gore and Citizens United present.]

Said Gorsuch at Oct. 3 orals addressing one set of proposed standards identifying an unconstitutional gerrymander: This standard is not a "real set of criteria," (p. 22). Wow, that's quick.

Erin Muphy's Law

Gorsuch later pretends to mystify straight-forward social science findings by comparing conclusions to seasoning a steak. "What is it that you want us to constitutionalize?" asks an incredulous or pretending-to be-incredulous Gorsuch. (pp 50-51). Nothing we can see, nothing we can do, nor anything should we do; that's for the political system, ignoring the clear First Amendment claims of the plaintiffs. [In the words of one of the Republicans' attorneys, Erin Murphy, extreme gerrymanders have an inherent competing social value anyway, by virtue that their extraordinary unfairness demonstrates the identity of the party in charge when the maps are secretly created. Said Murphy, asked about any social values a gerrymander may possess:  '[I]t produces values in terms of accountability that are valuable so that the people understand who isn’t and who is in power.' ... Replied Sonia Sotomayor, 'I really don't understand how any of that -- what that means. I mean, it -- it's okay to stack the decks so that for 10 years or an indefinite period of time one party, even though it gets a minority of votes, can't get a minor -- gets a minority of votes, can get the majority of seats?'  (pp 28-29)]. This new Murphy's-law reasoning can perhaps be applied to other liberty claims that compete against laws and processes with the intent to benefit discrete party coalitions. Hurt by laws legislated by party-line votes? Now, you know who did this to you. In other words, the identity of the perpetrator diminishes the victim's liberty claim.

Gerrymandering Is Real

Today in Slate Magazine, Nicholas Stephanopoulos, professor at the University of Chicago Law School specializing in election law, spells out the criteria identifying an unconstitutional gerrymander, in simple elements so easy a caveman can get it, for the benefit of Gorsuch, Alito and Roberts, [and Clearance Thomas, though Thomas doesn't speak or ask questions; he silently grunts disapproval at liberty claims]. (See also Stephanopoulos Explains the Research that Convinced SCOTUS to take the Wisconsin Gerrymandering Case.]

Writes Stephanopoulos this morning:

As one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, I was able to attend Tuesday’s oral argument in Gill v. Whitford. At the argument, the justices probed, among other things, how the plaintiffs’ test for partisan gerrymandering would work, how reliable the social science is that underpins this test, and what the test’s implications would be for judicial involvement. Since the plaintiffs’ theory relies in part on my academic work, I’m in a good position to address these issues.

With respect to the test’s operation, Justice Gorsuch warned that a gerrymandering standard should not be like a 'steak rub.' That is, it should not be imprecise and opaque in its makeup: 'I like some turmeric, I like a few other little ingredients, but I’m not going to tell you how much of each.'

In reality, the plaintiffs’ proposed test for adjudicating gerrymandering claims is more akin to a detailed recipe than a mystery stew. The test has four elements, and litigants would be required to go through them one by one, proceeding to the next phase only if they satisfied the previous criterion. These four elements are:

1. Was the district plan enacted with the discriminatory intent of benefiting one party and handicapping another one? Maps drawn by a single party in full control of the state government often (but not always) have this motive.
   
   
2. Has the plan exhibited (or is the plan forecast to exhibit) a historically large partisan asymmetry? A partisan asymmetry means a map does not treat the parties equally in terms of how their votes translate into seats. A map’s asymmetry can easily be calculated and then compared to historical data to determine if it’s unusually big.
   
   
3. Is the plan’s partisan asymmetry durable? To find out, a range of plausible election results should be considered. A map’s asymmetry should be deemed persistent enough only if it would endure across this range of outcomes.
   
   
4. Is the plan’s partisan asymmetry unjustified? At this final step, the gold standard is to use a computer algorithm to simulate many maps that satisfy the state’s legitimate redistricting criteria. The challenged plan’s asymmetry is unjustified only if it exceeds that of most of the simulated maps.

Under this approach, there would be some easy cases, like the Wisconsin State Assembly plan at issue in Whitford. This plan’s authors admitted its pro-Republican intent. Its partisan asymmetry is worse than that of any map nationwide between 1972 and 2010. Its asymmetry would persist even if there was a massive Democratic wave. And its asymmetry is larger than that of any simulated assembly map. Conversely, it’s clear a plan would be upheld if it was designed through a bipartisan or nonpartisan process, if its asymmetry was historically small, if its asymmetry would disappear under slightly different electoral conditions, or if it was no more asymmetric than most simulated maps.

In playing dumb, social dominators like Gorsuch, Alito Roberts and Thomas continue a long, sordid tradition in federal litigation of liberty claims the last 65 years. Unequal public schools? Public accommodation of ethnic minorities? Housing discrimination? Equality of law and processes? Voting? What? Do we litigate every public functioning and process if someone makes a liberty claim?

Yes we do, it's a civil liberties thing. In this case, a First and Fourteenth Amendment thing.

U.S. Fed Court Strikes GOP NC Gerrymandering; Opinion Bolds Well for Wisconsin Case at SCOTUS

A three-judge U.S. District Court panel struck down today the Republican-drawn gerrymandering map in North Carolina as unconstitutional.

Pro-voting rights advocates applauded the decision.

Anti-democracy forces of the Republican Party working for a One Party county say in reaction to the decision that because federal courts had not ruled previously to stop partisan gerrymandering, they should not rule so now, (The News and Observer).

Republicans reject social scientific evidence and constitutional reasoning in gerrymandering cases including this North Carolina case, Common Cause, et al v. Robert A. Rucho, and League of Women Voters, et al. v. Robert A. Rucho.

Wisconsin advocates of constitutional rights have cause to applaud the decision as they await the ruling of Gill v. Whitford at the United States Supreme Court.

The Republican gerrymandering effort is part of its larger anti-democratic project pursued against American citizens.
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From Nicholas Stephanopoulos in the Election Law Blog:

[T]he [North Carolina] court properly distinguished between the legal standard itself (the above three-part test) and quantitative evidence that is used to prove violations of the standard. This distinction eluded the defendants both here and in Whitford, who persistently conflated social science metrics with the underlying constitutional command. The court, though, observed that "plaintiffs do not seek to constitutionalize any of the empirical analyses they have put forward," adding that "these analyses provide evidence that the 2016 Plan violates a number of well-established constitutional standards." The court further criticized the defendants for their "cynical" view that analysis should be discarded if it has "its genesis in academic research." "It makes no practical or legal sense for courts to close their eyes to new scientific or statistical methods." "The Constitution does not require the federal courts to act like Galileo’s Inquisition and enjoin consideration of new academic theories."

[T]he court clearly understood the core harm of partisan gerrymandering: that it entrenches the gerrymandering party in office, awarding it more legislative power than it deserves given its actual appeal to the electorate. The court repeatedly defined gerrymandering as "the drawing of legislative district lines to subordinate adherents of one political party and entrench a rival party in power." The court also observed that gerrymandering "constitutes a structural [constitutional] violation because it insulates Representatives from having to respond to the popular will." And warming the heart of constitutional law professors everywhere, the court twice cited John Hart Ely, the progenitor of the argument that judicial intervention is most necessary (and most appropriate in a democracy) when there has been a malfunction of the political process. Gerrymandering, of course, is the quintessential political malfunction.
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Wisconsin Edges Towards Medieval Times in Wastewater Management

Political corruption and public lethargy embolden corporate agriculture's plundering of public waters

Madison, Wisconsin — Gov. Scott Walker cares too much about people to see them become dependent on government for safe water and sewage systems.

So Republican thinking goes.

If people believe government is some kind of wishing well, then the next thing you know is you get Jewish socialists advocating everything from municipal sewers to safe drinking water to healthcare to vibrant public universities where then there's a whole bunch of Jews, socialists, identifying lesbians, sociologists, and Art History types infecting young minds with the democratic virus—constantly mutating, changing form and killing Jesus, (Slate Magazine), (Dreier, Huffington Post), [(Seymour Martin Lipset Ph.D., Gary Wolfe Marks Ph.D; It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States, (W.W. Norton and Company)].

For the world casting eyes upon the Badger state's political culture and asking, 'what's the matter with Wisconsin?' know it's nothing that a competent Democratic Party of Wisconsin, (we don't have one of those), and the tiniest bit of increase in civic involvement among a slice of the population cannot cure.

It's that easy, though a favorable decision in the potentially landmark gerrymandering case challenging the constitutionality of Wisconsin's Republican-drawn state legislative and congressional maps that are intended to elect as many Republicans as possible would help too, [Whitford v. Gill, (Nichol), (District Court (Case 3:15-cv-00421)) (2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 155022 (W.D. Wis., Nov. 17, 2015)), (Redistricting legal reporting, Election Law blog), (Supreme Court of the United States, No. 16-1161, Beverly R. Gill, et al. v. William Whitford, et al.)] See Parsons for analysis on the landmark nature of this November 2016 decision, now before the Supreme Court of the United States, (No. 16-1161, Beverly R. Gill, et al. v. William Whitford, et al.).

Here's a problem with the One-Party-Republican rule for those Wisconsinites enamored of drinking safe water. Wisconsin Republicans do not care if your kids die or are hospitalized by drinking or bathing in water poisoned by huge agricultural interests that vectors manure into aquifers. Until white, rural Wisconsin voters realize this fact, rural voters will keep reelecting Republicans, (Mal Contends). [See also Ikerd, Dr. John. "The Inevitable Economic, Ecological, and Social Consequences of CAFOs." University of Missouri-Columbia.]

We should really consider the wisdom of Milwaukee's sewer socialists and how their politics matter today. That is, disposing of untreated manure and waste safely matters to human beings. In Medieval times, this focus on sanitation was not a public concern.

The latest from Wisconsin safe water warriors sees journalism and citizen action soaring:

We note again the reporting of Steven Verburg of the Wisconsin State Journal.

By David Gorski

You won't believe this one.

Verburg reports on the introduction of a new legislative bill, (Assembly Bill 226, (AB 226).

After Republicans have facilitated the contamination and depletion of your drinking water with CAFOs and other Big Ag corporate operations, AB 226 would increase the monies available to you so you can actually drink your water, and safely bathe infants, (which in Door and Kewaunee counties, for example, has resulted in the hospitalization of infants, children and adults who thought bathing in and drinking water were safe pursuits).

Here's an idea. How about we ensure that any corporate operation that pollutes and contaminates our water is not allowed to operate without the consent of the community whose families' health and lives are endangered? Guess who is sponsoring AB 226? State Rep. Scott Krug, (R-Nekoosa, Wisconsin) and State Rep. Joel Kitchens, (R-Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin), the polluters' top go-to lackeys.

On another matter, In February, Verburg reported on the only privatized of Wisconsin's 80 drinking-water public systems.

The system serves the city of Superior and charges more than twice the average of what folks pay for water now in the rest of the state.

Folks, corporate control, corporate pollution, corporate befouling and depletion are coming our way. The first step is stopping the proposed Wysocki CAFO. Then we get rid of the people in the capitol who do the work of polluters. For now, Republicans like Krug and Kitchens are working against us to encourage the polluting and depleting of our water, followed by corporate out-of-state control of our water.

Well, who ever said you have a right to water?

By Don Ystad of Adams County Wisconsin

Concerned friends and neighbors,

Why is this article about an Iowa editor winning a Pulitzer important to us?  It's about perseverance in pointing out the pollution of a watershed in Iowa by upstream agricultural , and uncovering the dark money fueled by big agricultural interests to hide the truth and undermine efforts to stop the pollution.  Think about it in terms of the dark money flowing in to the last local campaign here to unseat our environment friendly Senator, this past fall's attempt by the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers, (WPVGA), to sell a junk science groundwater 'fact book', and the quarter million dollars big ag interests contributed to our representatives to further ag friendly groundwater bills. Then, remember the misleading ads by the WPVGA trying to convince us that drawing down the aquifer won't affect lakes levels, and misleading photos presented by growers at a public meeting suggesting that lakes have recovered from the effects of high cap well pumping. These people are not our friends, [The Guardian, The Independent].

This article is an important reminder about the self serving nature of the big ag lobbies as they try to hide behind the family-farmer label while destroying that very ethic.  And, it's a reminder of how our legislators pander to that lobby. But, it's also a confirmation that we may not have the support of our lawmakers or the DNR, and certainly not the big ag community, but we have two things going for us; our vote and our collective voice. We have the ultimate power if we choose to use it.

As a property owner concerned with the future of your well, your lake or your stream, you need to be an active citizen. There are local grass roots groups, and the new statewide citizens lobby available to you, among others. Get involved and protect what's important to you.

It's the only way.

Wisconsin citizens are leading the way.

Journalists are leading the way.

Know that Big Ag and its defenders care about one thing, and it isn't life. Ask Iowa's Alex Kuhn, driven to suicide by factory farm trolls and agribusiness lackeys for Kuhn's standing up for his community, families and safe water.

Consider as well the words of Gordon Stevenson, runoff chief for the Wisconsin DNR (2001-2011):

"Manure management is essentially the same as it has been since the Middle Ages; untreated manure is disposed on untreated on the landscape. We have already seen severe public health consequences from these practices and I am certain that we will see more. Much of Wisconsin’s environmental protection efforts with agriculture center on nutrient management planning. Many of my former colleagues have labored long and hard to persuade farmers to adopt the NRCS 590 Nutrient Management Standard. The problem is that 590 is not a water quality standards, it as an agronomic standard that seeks to optimize crop production. Plus evaluation of a farmer’s compliance with that standard is somewhere between difficult and impossible."

Consider the Parable of Smithfield Foods. In 1936, a family built a small hog slaughtering and packing plant in Smithfield, Virginia. Their products were very good, the plant grew and town of Smithfield came to be known as the Ham Capital of the World. During the 1980s, the company vertically integrated. In plain English, that means they not only owned the processing facilities, but they figured out that if they controlled the production of hogs as well as processing they could be more profitable. By the end of 1998, Smithfield owned not only multiple packaging plants but 460 large hog farms and had contracts with 2,100 other pork producers 12 states. Smithfield Foods had become the number one pork producer in the United States and was growing internationally. They continued to grow, aggregating the assets of American pork production into larger and fewer blocks. Next time you go shopping, checkout the pork products. You will see labels like Morrell, Farmland, Armour and others. Smithfield owns all of those companies and multiple others. On September 26, 2013, Smithfield Foods and all of its holdings were sold to another company for $7.1 billion. [Bittman, NYT] The name of the company is Shuanghui International Holdings Limited.[Shuanghui changed its name to the: WH Group (BusinessWeek)]

"Yes, a company from the People’s Republic of China now owns 26 percent of all of the assets of the American pork industry. This is the largest single Chinese purchase to date of American assets. China has successfully established an offshore economic colony on American soil. Let’s leave Virginia and Beijing and return to Wisconsin. We have dairy CAFOs in Wisconsin that are in the process of aggregating the assets of Wisconsin’s dairy industry into larger and fewer blocks. Any of those blocks can be bought and sold. I don’t believe I need to spell out why I told you the Parable of Smithfield Foods."

Wisconsin in Waiting Mode for Democracy Protection and Restoration

Madison, Wisconsin—Citizens here are waiting for a ruling from the United States Supreme Court to find out if democracy will survive in Wisconsin.

Republicans have transformed election law to obstruct voters, empowered white poll workers to suppress voters, gerrymandered state and congressional districts to elect as many Republicans as possible, infused dark money, among other anti-democracy efforts.

The objective is to enact Republican public policy in opposition to the public will.

One example is the legislative and administrative law attack on clean and safe water creating a crisis that has sent children to the Emergency Room, imperiled the health of communities and polluted rivers, streams, lakes and aquifers

Gov. Scott Walker threw in a new voter obstruction technique this year: Refusing to hold elections to fill vacant legislative seats.

In state senate district one in northeastern Wisconsin, State Sen. Frank Lasee, (R-De Pere), resigned in Dec, 2017. Gov. Scott Walker has publicly refused to call a special election that most observers believe the GOP would lose though the district is gerrymandered Republican.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin to this point has not launched a public case calling for a special election. One Door County resident in senate district one told me, "nobody is doing anything, the Democrats?" He laughed.

Can you imagine if the roles were reversed? Republican outrage would blanket news coverage across the state.

Progressive writers are making the legal and political case for special elections, and it's writers filling the void where one would reasonably expect the Democratic Party to be.

Meanwhile, voters wait for the Supreme Court to rule on the Gill v. Whitford gerrymandering case from Wisconsin, in light of positive legal developments for voters and democracy against North Carolina Republicans.

From the Raleigh News Observer:

Rick Hasen, a professor at California-Irvine, is often said to be the nation’s leading election law expert. Hasen wrote that the decision could hardly be seen as a surprise, given what our legislature did. 'If there is any case that could be invalidated as a partisan gerrymander, it is this one,' he indicated. It is 'the most brazen and egregious' political electoral distortion yet seen in the United States. North Carolina leaders 'admitted the practice, but argued it should be seen as perfectly legal.'

The Supreme Court stayed the federal court ruling pending appeal. And it is unlikely the review will be squeezed into the current term, given the late scheduling adjustments that would be demanded. The court presently has two political gerrymandering cases on the docket. But Hasen thinks the impact of the North Carolina decision will be felt immediately. The court now knows 'what the future of gerrymandering will look like if it is doesn’t act in the Wisconsin or Maryland cases,' Hasen wrote.

The future would look even better with an energetic, activist and effective Democratic Party of Wisconsin safeguarding democracy.

Now, we look mostly to the courts for that kind of thing.