golden_valley, on 31 May 2019 - 09:55 AM, said:


Citizenship Question to be Added to the Census
#21
Posted 31 May 2019 - 10:12 AM
(About fame) Living for likes, shares and follows is a form of validation. The question is whether it is also the source of our self esteem. If it is, we’re screwed. And, culturally, it seems as if it’s become more and more our shared value. ... Meringue is no longer a sweet and pretty topping but the body itself. ~Charles Perez
The trouble is that editors and their journalists are simply employees of large profit-seeking corporations whose executives have no idea of what "truth" is; only "ratings" or "clicks" or share price. ~Rich T Bikkies, 10/1/2020
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#22
Posted 31 May 2019 - 10:55 AM
golden_valley, on 31 May 2019 - 09:55 AM, said:
Cui bono?
"The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology." - EO Wilson.
"Hell is truth seen too late" - T Hobbes
#23
Posted 31 May 2019 - 01:42 PM
Quote
“These eleventh-hour allegations by the plaintiffs, including an accusation of dishonesty against a senior Department of Justice official, are false,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in the statement, which was issued more than 12 hours after the allegations were made public in court filings.
The challengers in the case have accused John Gore — a DOJ official who played a crucial role in the administration’s effort to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census — of false testimony for failing to disclose that he received a draft of a request to add the question from an outside advisor. Newly obtained documents revealed that the draft — allegedly passed along to Gore by the advisor, Mark Newman — was ghostwritten by a now-deceased Republican gerrymandering expert. The expert had conducted a study in 2015 that said a census citizenship question was needed to conduct a redistricting overhaul that would boost the GOP’s electoral advantages. The challengers claim that key points from the study made it into the formal request that Gore wrote.
“Before today, Mr. Gore had never heard of the unpublished study apparently obtained from the personal effects of a deceased political consultant,” the DOJ spokesperson said Thursday. “That study played no role in the Department’s December 2017 request to reinstate a citizenship question to the 2020 decennial census. These unfounded allegations are an unfortunate last-ditch effort to derail the Supreme Court’s consideration of this case. The Department looks forward to responding in greater detail to these baseless accusations in its filing on Monday.”
Gore did not disclose that he had received the draft from Neuman until well after a trial court had already decided the case. He admitted it in a closed door interview with Congress. However, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross quickly cast doubt on the claim, telling lawmakers in public testimony that Gore only “thought” it “might” have happened and that Neuman had denied passing the draft in his trial deposition.
The Justice Department did not respond to a follow-up inquiry by TPM seeking to clarify whether it was disputing that Gore received the draft from Neuman.
"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."
"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer
""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer
#24
Posted 31 May 2019 - 04:07 PM
Quote
The letter, whose signatories include Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), requests that the inspectors general investigate efforts by the administration to conceal the role played by a now-deceased GOP gerrymandering guru in getting the question added to the 2020 census.
"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."
"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer
""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer
#25
Posted 31 May 2019 - 05:13 PM
#26
Posted 03 June 2019 - 03:31 PM
Quote
Chairman Elijah Cummings sent Barr and Ross letters Monday informing them the committee was scheduling the contempt vote.
The letters give the two officials one last chance to, by June 6, produce the documents the committee demanded.
The committee in April issued subpoenas for 11 key documents related to the decision to add the question. It also sought the testimony from Justice Department official John Gore, who was involved in writing a Justice Department request that the question be added. Gore sat down for a voluntary interview with the committee earlier this year but declined to answer certain questions on the instruction of the DOJ lawyer. The committee subpoenaed him for the full testimony, but he did not show up for the deposition on the instructions of the Department, which objected to the committee’s refusal to let a DOJ attorney sit in on the deposition.
"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."
"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer
""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer
#27
Posted 03 June 2019 - 03:42 PM
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices" Voltaire
#28
Posted 03 June 2019 - 04:42 PM
Only Satan can rebuke sin. The righteous don't know enough. Rudyard Kipling
God is not dead. He was merely voted out of office.
You can do anything with anybody if you just save them the trouble of thinking. Rudyard Kipling
People don’t believe in ideas: they believe in people who believe in ideas. Ze’ev Mankowitz
#29
Posted 04 June 2019 - 10:19 AM
Quote
The Justice Department called the ACLU’s allegations “meritless” and “inflammatory,” while comparing the ACLU’s arguments to the “conjuring ” of a “conspiracy theory involving a deceased political operative that essentially hinges on wordplay.”
“The [ACLU’s] motion borders on frivolous, and appears to be an attempt to reopen the evidence in this already-closed case and to drag this Court into Plaintiffs’ eleventh-hour campaign to improperly derail the Supreme Court’s resolution of the government’s appeal,” the Department said. “The Court should not countenance Plaintiffs’ tactics.”
The Justice Department denied that its December 2017 formal request that a citizenship question be added to the census was at all connected to a 2015 study by a Republican consultant who said such a question could facilitate a redistricting overhaul that would boost the GOP’s electoral advantages.
The Justice Department said any insinuation of similarities between the 2017 request, written by DOJ official John Gore, and the consultant’s study were false.
"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."
"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer
""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer
#30
Posted 05 June 2019 - 10:52 AM
Quote
The ACLU asked the judge, who will hold a hearing on the dispute Wednesday afternoon, to order additional discovery in light of the recent revelation that a GOP political consultant was involved in the administration’s push to add the question.
The ACLU has accused a top DOJ official, as well as an outside adviser to the administration, of lying in their deposition testimonies — claims the Department has vehemently denied.
“In any event, the Justice Department’s hands are not clean,” the ACLU said of the Department’s denials. “Defendants’ misconduct is apparent.”
The extraordinary dispute comes as the case over whether the question stays on the 2020 census has already been heard by the Supreme Court, which is expected to decide it in the coming weeks. A major question in the case is whether the official rationale the administration provided for adding the question — allegedly to enhance DOJ Voting Rights Act enforcement — was a fake one meant to cover up the administration’s real reasons for including it.
The ACLU said Tuesday that the newly obtained evidence would have been a “central part” of its “case in chief,” had the group been aware, at the trial court phase, of the involvement of the GOP consultant, who is now deceased.
The group learned of his involvement — and the politically motivated reasons he was pushing for the question to be added — by a chance series of events. The consultant, Thomas Hofellor, a redistricting guru for the GOP, died last year and his back-up hard drives were discovered in January by his estranged daughter, who provided them for an unrelated gerrymandering case in North Carolina. The census-related files on Hofeller’s driver were eventually shared with the challengers in the citizenship question case.
The ACLU said it received the files less than a week before it turned to the court with its accusations that the evidence had been withheld.
Among the files were a secret study Hofellor wrote in 2015 concluding that a census citizenship question would be necessary for Republicans to overhaul redistricting in a way that would boost the GOP and non-Hispanic whites. There was also a file indicating he had ghostwritten a paragraph of a draft justification for a census citizenship question — a draft that was given to a top DOJ official as he was working on writing the administration’s formal request. The official, John Gore is accused of lying about receiving the draft from an outside advisor, Mark Neuman; Neuman is accused of lying about handing the draft over and about Hofeller’s involvement in writing it.
The ACLU is now seeking that the administration turn over documents, including 18 drafts of the request by Gore, it had previously withheld as privileged in litigation. The group also wants previously withheld documents from 10 others in the administration who were involved the drafting of the formal request.
“The Court can get to the bottom of this,” the ACLU said. “Since Defendants have now squarely put Gore’s process of drafting the letter in issue, they have waived deliberative-process privilege over any documents related to Gore’s drafting process.”
The ACLU wants to depose Gore and Neuman again, and also depose a Commerce official who connected Neuman to Gore. The group additionally is seeking any communications with defense counsel that could shed light on the “extent” the department “knew the falsity of Neuman’s testimony.”
"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."
"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer
""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer
#31
Posted 13 June 2019 - 09:57 AM
Quote
A collective of community leaders and activist groups mobilized, organizing 80,000 pounds of supplies to be distributed to every impacted county, scheduling airdrops and truck deliveries, and dispatching volunteers. I worked alongside them, helping to coordinate water rescues and evacuating people into temporary shelters. Once the storm finally passed, I helped renovate homes destroyed by water damage.
This moment of crisis may have seemed like an unlikely time to educate people about the 2020 U.S. Census and voting rights.
But the two can’t be disentangled.
In the wake of natural disasters, disaster funding is distributed based on the population. The census is also used in drawing redistricting maps for every state. In other words, as we told the Florence survivors we met on the ground, to fight for the census is to fight for every community’s political voice.
The census has historically undercounted vulnerable and economically disadvantaged communities. For the 2020 census, this problem has only grown. Filling this gap requires an investment in community engagement and a commitment to working alongside vulnerable communities to ensure every person is counted.
The prospective success of the upcoming census looks grim. The 2020 census is scheduled to be offered mainly online, even though 60 million Americans lack access to the Internet.
Those Americans without internet come from the same vulnerable communities who have struggled with underfunding and under-representation in the past: Black and POC communities, rural and vulnerable urban communities. If we do not count these communities, they will be robbed of the helpful resources they are entitled to.
Time and time again, new ways to steal political representation away from these communities are invented by those who want to keep power away from people of color, from the poor and from those who they want to silence. The Republican Party’s success at gerrymandering states like North Carolina has emboldened their efforts to tip the census, as we saw in the recently released files of deceased GOP redistricting mastermind Thomas Hofeller.
As we now know, Hofeller and the dark minds of the GOP not only worked together to craft some of the most egregious partisan gerrymanders in our nation’s history, but to try to get a citizenship question added to the census.
As the ideologically-Republican Supreme Court weighs a citizenship question which could drive millions away from participating in the census, other changes will rob additional citizens of their voice as we count those who live in our country.
"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."
"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer
""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer
#32
Posted 24 June 2019 - 04:32 PM
Quote
The Census Bureau had previously assessed that the question would prompt 5.8 percent of households with at least one noncitizen to not respond to the survey. At the time, the estimate was described as “conservative.”
Sure enough, theCensus Bureau has now found that at least 8 percent of households with at least one noncitizen will not respond to survey.
Overall, the study found, that the question would prompt a “2.2 percentage point drop in self-response in the 2020 census, increasing costs and reducing the quality of the population count.”
The judge who was hearing the case concerning the administration's lies requested the appeals court allows him to take another look at the new evidence and how it fits in with a pattern of discrimination.
Quote
U.S. District Judge George Hazel moved last week to have an appeals court send the case back to him, after new evidence put forward by the challengers suggested a discriminatory intent in adding the citizenship question to the census.
“As more puzzle pieces are placed on the mat, a disturbing picture of the decisionmakers’ motives takes shape,” Hazel said in his opinion Monday.
The challengers in the case asked that he take another look at the issue after they found relevant evidence in the files of a now-deceased GOP redistricting consultant, Thomas Hofeller.
"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."
"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer
""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer
#33
Posted 25 June 2019 - 03:19 PM
LFC, on 24 June 2019 - 04:32 PM, said:
Access Granted!
Quote
After the challengers put forward new evidence from the files of a deceased GOP consultant apparently involved in the administration’s move, Hazel sought to have the case sent back to him from the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case had been appealed.
The appeals court granted that request in an order Tuesday.
The Justice Department opposed the move to send the case back to Hazel and made a last minute push to ask the Supreme Court to address the equal protection claim in the ruling it hands down, likely by the end of the week. In a letter to the Supreme Court filed Tuesday just before the appeals court order, the Justice Department said the new allegations from the challengers were “based on a speculative conspiracy theory that is unsupported by the evidence and legally irrelevant to demonstrating that Secretary Ross acted with a discriminatory intent.”
The new evidence was found on the back-up hard drives of Thomas Hofeller, the GOP’s go-to gerrymandering consultant who died last year. Hofeller analyzed the effect of excluding noncitizens from redistricting — a move that would boost Republicans and non-Hispanic whites, Hofelloer concluded — in an unpublished 2015 study that said a census citizenship question was needed for the change. Hofeller was the first person to recommend that the incoming Trump administration look into the census citizenship issue and he secretly co-wrote a draft justification for the question that was given to the Justice Department, which officially claimed it would help Voting Rights Act enforcement.
Altogether, the evidence suggests that Hofeller had partisan, discriminatory reasons for advocating for the question and then helped craft the bogus rationale use to cover up those reasons, the legal challengers to the question say.
Hazel said in an order last week that the evidence raised a “substantial issue” that warranted him reconsidering his ruling on the equal protection claim.
Two appeals court judges, both Democratic appointees, of a three-judge panel agreed on Tuesday. (The third judge was an appointee of George W. Bush). Judge James Wynn, an Obama appointee, wrote a concurrence that provided Hazel a road map for considering whether the Trump administration had a discriminatory intent. Wynn, quoting the relevant case law, said that “invidious discriminatory purpose may often be inferred from the totality of the relevant facts, including the fact, if it is true, that the law bears more heavily on one race than another.”
“To that end, even in the absence of direct evidence of invidious discriminatory intent, this Court and other courts have found such intent when, for example, a governmental decisionmaker was aware that an action was likely to disproportionately impact a minority group, the decisionmaker declined to impose ameliorative measures to minimize the likely disproportionate impact, the decisionmaker’s process for deciding to take the action deviated from standard practice, and the decisionmaker provided pretextual reasons for taking the action.”
"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."
"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer
""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer
#34
Posted 25 June 2019 - 03:25 PM
If population counts in a district goes down, doesn’t that put the district in jeopardy ?
Rev Martin Luther King Jr.
Obamacare took my guns away and put me in a FEMA reeducation camp
Anonymous
If you've got public schools paid for by taxpayers, you're in a socialist nation. If you have public roads paid for by taxpayers, socialist nation. If you've got public defense (police, fire, military, coast guard) paid for by tax dollars, socialist nation. If you're in a nation that has nationalized or localized delivery of services that are not paid for by users alone, you're in a socialist nation- the only question is how socialist. As I see it, we pay the military pay to protect the shipping lanes for our fuel needs which makes us very socialist. In a capitalist nation, the people supplying the oil would pay for their own defense force.
DC Coronata
“I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”
Margaret Thatcher
(Select anyone who gets blind loyalty from followers/voters) "...is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."(Manchurian candidate)
"I can't go out because of the virus" sounds whiny and boring. I'm going with: "I've sworn an oath of solitude until the pestilence is purged from the lands." because it sounds more valiant and heroic. As a bonus, people might think you're carrying a sword.
FB posting
Its theorized if you put enough monkeys together with typewriters, eventually they'll write Shakespeare. But first, they write Trump speeches.
FB Posting
Calumny is only the noise of madmen. — Diogenes
When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff. Marcus Tullius Cicero
What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.
Donald Trump"... I will tell you that the future of this country has never been better."
Pres Donald J Trump, Joint Base Andrews 1/20/21
I get it. They had a guy ratf**k the post office. They filled the courts with hacks. They spent a ton of money. They filed so many lawsuits. They even started a riot ! It’s so unfair that they went to all that trouble and still lost. Anonymous
#35
Posted 25 June 2019 - 05:00 PM
#36
Posted 25 June 2019 - 06:36 PM
JackD, on 25 June 2019 - 05:00 PM, said:
It would be interesting to see if GOP or Dem districts are liable for elimination in this scenario. I’m betting it will be mostly Dem districts.
Rev Martin Luther King Jr.
Obamacare took my guns away and put me in a FEMA reeducation camp
Anonymous
If you've got public schools paid for by taxpayers, you're in a socialist nation. If you have public roads paid for by taxpayers, socialist nation. If you've got public defense (police, fire, military, coast guard) paid for by tax dollars, socialist nation. If you're in a nation that has nationalized or localized delivery of services that are not paid for by users alone, you're in a socialist nation- the only question is how socialist. As I see it, we pay the military pay to protect the shipping lanes for our fuel needs which makes us very socialist. In a capitalist nation, the people supplying the oil would pay for their own defense force.
DC Coronata
“I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”
Margaret Thatcher
(Select anyone who gets blind loyalty from followers/voters) "...is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."(Manchurian candidate)
"I can't go out because of the virus" sounds whiny and boring. I'm going with: "I've sworn an oath of solitude until the pestilence is purged from the lands." because it sounds more valiant and heroic. As a bonus, people might think you're carrying a sword.
FB posting
Its theorized if you put enough monkeys together with typewriters, eventually they'll write Shakespeare. But first, they write Trump speeches.
FB Posting
Calumny is only the noise of madmen. — Diogenes
When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff. Marcus Tullius Cicero
What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.
Donald Trump"... I will tell you that the future of this country has never been better."
Pres Donald J Trump, Joint Base Andrews 1/20/21
I get it. They had a guy ratf**k the post office. They filled the courts with hacks. They spent a ton of money. They filed so many lawsuits. They even started a riot ! It’s so unfair that they went to all that trouble and still lost. Anonymous
#37
Posted 25 June 2019 - 06:59 PM
andydp, on 25 June 2019 - 06:36 PM, said:
Do you really think that they would go to all this trouble to reduce their own power?
— Nate Silver
"Robots aren't the problem. Capitalism is." -- Last words of Stephen Hawking.
These days, "libertarian" is just a euphemism for a Nazi who's afraid to commit.
"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." -- Heather Heyer
"I'd rather have my child, but by golly, if I gotta give her up, we're gonna make it count." -- Her mother
"Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events." -- some RINO
#38
Posted 26 June 2019 - 06:31 AM
andydp, on 25 June 2019 - 06:36 PM, said:
North Carolina Republicans attempted to gerrymander with incredible racial precision. If they can do that level of analysis at the state level you know they can do it at the national level. Every moved they make that involves voting is ALWAYS for political gain and has nothing to do with supporting the right to vote.
"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."
"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer
""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer
#39
Posted 26 June 2019 - 06:42 AM
Quote
The request, which the Justice Department has made in a more subtle fashion in previous court filings, is extraordinary and reflects the highly unusual legal battle the Trump administration has engaged in to change the 2020 census.
The Justice Department request came in the form of a letter to the court submitted just a few hours after an appeals court said new evidence warranted the reexamination of a case challenging the citizenship question brought in Maryland.
"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."
"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer
""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer
#40
Posted 27 June 2019 - 02:47 PM
Quote
"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."
"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer
""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer
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