Minority Rule | September 12, 2018 Act 1 | Full Frontal on TBS
In 2010, Republicans picked up their art supplies to redraw maps that have allowed them to win elections despite being in the minority. How can we keep them from getting crafty again in the future?
Basically, despite HUGE support for certain policies, the GOP is basically passing bad policies (that even kill people) and getting away with it using various labels to hide their actions (such as "this is what my base wants" or "this is the will of the American people", all the while referring the the huge media con the Republicans are playing with a great deal of media support). [Note: Media people such as Chuck Todd may point to a couple of cases where Republican style Democrats have gerrymandered their districts (if there are any left) but its that way with ALL Republican districts. Deceiving the left in favor of Republican lies appears to be Chuck Todd's job];
Republicans have rigged their districts to give them more seats for less votes and thus power, off the few, while subjugating the general will of the people not addicted to one media channel like a State TV audience, such as Sinclair;
Here is an example of the GOP using its power - gotten from fewer votes than is fair - to subvert power in an undemocratic fashion (as is their style of politics, i.e. treasonous);
Democracy: A Retrospective | December 12, 2018 Act 2 | Full Frontal on TBS
Transmission incoming from 2068 to 2018, the last known year of American democracy: no amount of blue wave can wash away the moral depravity of the GOP as they perform their last-ditch power grabs.
Screenshots: Republicans got more seats from fewer votes and are out subverting the will of the people through undemocratic power grabs;
This American Trash: Voter Suppression in Georgia | December 12, 2018 Act 3 | Full Frontal on TBS
Why did Stacey Abrams lose? Why did Brian Kemp win? Why do white people like mayonnaise so much? Ashley Nicole Black takes to the airwaves to find out (with a little help from Serial's Sarah Koenig). Produced by Razan Ghalayini with Adam Howard. Edited by Andrew Mendelson.Democracy: A Retrospective | December 12, 2018 Act 2 | Full Frontal on TBS
Transmission incoming from 2068 to 2018, the last known year of American democracy: no amount of blue wave can wash away the moral depravity of the GOP as they perform their last-ditch power grabs.
Screenshots: Republicans got more seats from fewer votes and are out subverting the will of the people through undemocratic power grabs;
An example where voter suppression by Republicans was wildly successful:
More examples;
Full Frontal: Gerrymandering in Michigan is directly responsible for the Flint water crisis and a surge of white rappers, but the young people of Voters Not Politicians are combatting the former with the latter. Michiganders, flip over your ballot to unfuck your state! Produced by Kaitlin Fontana with Ishan Thakore. Edited by Anthony Mascorro.
Republicans have rigged election so that few votes get them a greater number of seats, thus they are able to control legislatures with approval of a minority of the population (such as a dictatorship might have).
In other words, not only do Republicans not represent the people the people they do represent are fooled by their propaganda arm Fox News making their entire election system a farce and deception akin to treason (in fact, given that money rather than population/people dictate their policies to the disadvantage of the people, this can be defined as treason as per article 3 section 3 of the Constitution)
In Michigan a new measure came on the ballot that changed the system of making - money beholden, lying - politicians designing a political system to suit their needs
... to one designed by independent, inclusive committees (one source of the Republicans voter fraud/suppression tactics has been reversed)!
A simple choice at the ballot...
And the result is that years of Republican treason against the people has been reversed....
Michigan voters approve anti-gerrymandering Proposal 2
Michigan voters on Tuesday night gave a big "yes" to a ballot proposal that would significantly change the way Michigan's political lines are drawn for congressional and state legislative districts. The Associated Press called the race before midnight Tuesday, and with 89 percent of precincts reporting, the "yes" side had 61.1 percent of the vote, compared with 38.9 percent for the "no" side. Proposal 2, a constitutional amendment borne out of widespread concerns about the effects of political gerrymandering in Michigan, will take the power to draw those lines out of the hands of partisan state lawmakers and give the job to an independent redistricting commission. It would create a 13-member citizens redistricting commission made up of four Republicans, four Democrats, and five people who identify with neither party. The proposal would bar partisan officeholders, their employees, lobbyists, and others with ties to the current system from becoming commissioners.
In any democratic system, there’s usually quite a bit of overlap between what the public wants and the priorities politicians tend to pursue. There’s no great mystery here: unless elected officials intend to have short careers in politics, they have an incentive to satisfy the electorate’s demands.
And yet, in contemporary politics, there’s a disconnect. The public urged Republicans not to take away health care coverage from millions of Americans, and yet, GOP policymakers fought tooth and nail to do exactly that. The public then urged Republicans not to cut taxes for the wealthy and big corporations, only to have GOP policymakers again do the opposite.
The same is true when it comes to policies the American mainstream actually likes. The public wants new measures, such as expanded background checks, to prevent gun violence. The public also wants protections for Dreamers. Republicans who control the levers of power don’t want either of these things, and so these goals are likely to go unmet.
The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell makes the case today that it’s important to identify the nature of the problem with specificity.
Dysfunctional Washington refuses to work out its differences to solve problems that matter to Americans. So say pundits and policy activists, perhaps hoping that diffuse criticism, rather than finger-pointing, will yield a government willing to govern.
But the problem isn’t “Washington.” It isn’t “Congress,” either. The problem is elected officials from a single political party: the GOP.
That seems more than fair. The next question is why Republican politicians, who ostensibly have to worry about the will of the electorate, are going in one direction while the American mainstream goes in another.
As regular readers know, there are multiple schools of thought. Some have argued that this is all about money – GOP officials feel the need to listen to donors, not voters – but I’m skeptical. Many of the Republicans ignoring public attitudes are likely to win re-election easily and already have full campaign coffers. Much of the time, their political agenda is driven by a sincere far-right ideology, not the demands of contributors.
Others have made the case that Republicans no longer care what voters think because they believe they’ve successfully shielded themselves from public attitudes through gerrymandering and voter-suppression techniques. By this reasoning, GOP officials work from the assumption that they’ll win elections, en masse, whether voters approve of their records or not. They can do as they please because, in their minds, the consent of the governed is now little more than an annoying, irrelevant detail.
But The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein went a step further yesterday, explaining that Republicans’ beliefs may be at odds with most voters, but they’re very much in line with their voters.
Republicans represent what I’ve called a “coalition of restoration” centered on the older, blue-collar, evangelical, and non-urban whites most uneasy about the tectonic cultural and economic forces reshaping American life. That means that compared with the nation overall, most Republicans are representing areas with more guns and fewer immigrants.
Forty-two of the 51 Republican senators, for instance, were elected from one of the 30 states where immigrants represent the smallest share of the population, according to Census data. Republicans hold just nine of the 40 Senate seats in the 20 states with the highest immigrant-population share. Likewise, 26 of the states Trump carried in 2016 were among the 30 lowest in immigration-population share; he won just four of the top 20.
Continuing the pattern, over four-fifths of House Republicans represent districts where the immigrant share of the population lags the national average. But, conversely, gun ownership is much more common among Republican-leaning constituencies and communities than in the nation overall.
It’s effectively an awkward numbers game: the nation’s urban centers tend to have growing populations, and those Americans’ attitudes help reflect the nation’s political mainstream, but this doesn’t change the right’s structural advantage in Congress, tilting the playing field toward interests that are more rural, whiter, and older.
I'd like to point out that the GOP is centered around ONE channel, that is number one in America, that lies to the population (the entire right) to create a hallucinated world where alternative facts reign before it was even coined in the Trump Administration... making every political move the GOP makes is an act of treason against the people as per article 3 section 3, i.e. they lie to the people for a small number of people who don't have the countries or peoples best interests at heart and then implement those policies citing the views of the people they convinced with fox news and their network of right wing liars.
NOTE: How Fox News - GOP's Propaganda arm - hides its parties voter fraud/rigging/anti-democratic tactics;
Fox News's hypocrisy is not a hidden thing from anyone EXCEPT the people who only watch Fox News, i.e. their base/Republicans/Conservative-Nazi-Cult-Of-America
Despite an obsession with “voter fraud,” Fox News has virtually ignored possible election fraud in North Carolina
In North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District -- where Republican Mark Harris seemingly defeated Democrat Dan McCready by less than 1,000 votes -- allegations of election fraud have been deemed serious enough that a bipartisan election board has refused to certify the results. Instead, the bipartisan State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement voted to hear evidence about “claims of irregularities and fraudulent activities” in the election. Fox News has almost completely ignored the allegations, despite the network’s usual interest in baseless fearmongering about “voter fraud.”
...
Despite the extremely serious nature of these allegations, and the wealth of evidence backing them up, Fox News has almost entirely ignored the story.
Fox has mentioned the allegations only once on air since the state election board announced it was investigating the results on November 27. Host Bret Baier spent less than 30 seconds discussing the story on Fox’s Special Report, but he did note that the state election board voted “to hear evidence on alleged absentee ballot irregularities.” Fox also posted one article about the story and one associated video on FoxNews.com.
Fox’s close-lipped stance is particularly noteworthy given the network’s major focus on right-wing allegations of voter fraud. Fox is more than happy to push dubious or baseless allegations of fraud and then quietly move on once they fall apart. For years, Fox guests and hosts have spewed voter fraud conspiracy theories, some of which are rooted in obvious racism, and many of which are used to argue for voter suppression tactics. The vast majority of Fox’s accusations fall flat, largely because in-person voter impersonation fraud -- the type that right-wing pundits most commonly fearmonger about -- is virtually nonexistent, and other types of fraud are exceedingly rare.
Fox’s interest in election integrity seems to cover only instances of alleged voter fraud by Democrats and not cases of apparent election fraud by partisan operatives who may have stolen, trashed, or illegally cast voters’ ballots. The network’s indifference is noteworthy, but it’s unsurprising given the close relationship between Fox News and the Republican Party.
The various ways Fox News deceives the people for Republican traitors;
Three ways Fox News reacted -- or didn’t -- to news of election fraud in North Carolina
Over a month after the 2018 midterm election, the North Carolina Board of Elections has still refused to certify Republican Mark Harris' initial apparent victory in the 9th Congressional District after questions were raised over alleged election fraud by members of his campaign. The allegations “suggest some kind of scheme” by “people supporting the GOP campaign” to influence the results of a close race. Sworn statementsfrom voters in Bladen and Robeson counties “described people coming to their doors and urging them to hand over their absentee ballots, sometimes without filling them out.” Two women have come forward reporting that they were paid by Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr., a contractor who worked for Harris’ campaign specifically on absentee work, to collect ballots in their district. Both women claim that they didn’t know that what they were doing was illegal, but election law in North Carolina “allows only a family member or legal guardian to drop off absentee ballots for a voter.” Investigators are also looking into “unusually high numbers of absentee ballots cast in Bladen County” and other voters’ statements claim that they received absentee ballots without requesting them.
As these allegations surfaced, the election board announced that it will “hold a public evidentiary hearing into claims of irregularities and fraudulent activities” in the 9th Congressional District race. Media figures at Fox News, who have spent years fearmongering about the nonexistent threat of “voter fraud,” have largely remained silent or deflected when faced with these actual allegations of election fraud backed-up by substantial evidence. Here are three ways that Fox has chosen to cover election fraud in North Carolina:
Drawing false parallels
Fox News’ Shannon Bream covered the apparent plot to steal a North Carolina congressional seat by comparing it to legitimate collection of ballots in California elections. Bream claimed that the North Carolina news is “sparking questions about how Democrats swept areas like Orange County, CA,” even though California elections results have not been called into question by any credible source. (While it is legal for California voters who are unable to return their mail-in ballot to designate another person to deliver it for them, it is obviously illegal to collect and then fill out or destroy another person’s ballot.)
Ignoring that the alleged election fraud possibly benefited the Republican candidate
Fox has also failed to tell its viewers that the benefactor of the alleged election fraud is a Republican candidate, even though at least six sworn affidavits make clear that “the Republican nominee was the one who stood to gain from it.” Fox & Friends First reported on the story for less than 30 seconds, claiming that “ballots may have been illegally collected” without making it clear which party’s candidate is facing allegations. The hosts then pivoted to yet another story on incoming freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In another late night segment lasting less than 30 seconds, Shannon Bream focused on the “Democratic candidate trailing in the race … withdrawing his concession,” before quickly moving on to a segment about scandals surrounding potential Democratic candidates for 2020 presidential election.
Dana Perino, host of The Daily Briefing, hosted a segment which explained the allegations, but again did not say which party likely benefited from the alleged election fraud. Additionally, the segment pointed out that Harris was still technically in the lead by 905 votes, but did not specifically mention that the alleged election fraud very well could have impacted this outcome.
Ignoring the story altogether
But for the most part, many shows on Fox News did not report on the story at all, which is unsurprising given the network’s close relationship with the GOP. None of Fox’s prime-time or morning shows this week covered the serious allegations, but they found time to cover stories that could hardly be called newsworthy. Any shows that did cover the story had segments that lasted around 30 seconds or less with little discussion or analysis. It appears Fox sees fraud as an issue only when there are made-up allegations of voter fraud against Democrats with no evidence to back them up.
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