Category Archives: Governance

The Art of Gerrymandering – Part III

1. The State of Gerrymandering in these United States

In our last post, we wrote about how to compute the Gerrymander Index of shapes, including Congressional districts. Since then we’ve fetched the U. S. Census Bureau tl_2014_us_cd114 Esri shapefile data set of the 435 Congressional Districts for the current 114th Congress, which includes the nine non-voting districts that send delegates to Congress. If you are terminally curious, download the comma-separated value text file of our results, based on Census Bureau dataset. We’re not going to discuss all 444 maps; restricting our attention to the best and the worst, the state of gerrymandering in these United States, and how the States of California and Texas are gerrymandering these days.

Of the four hundred forty four records in tl_2014_us_cd114, the most gerrymandered district is North Carolina Congressional District 12, with a Gerrymander Index of 0.0291, this based on its cartographic boundary as defined in the Census Bureau shape file.

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The Art of Gerrymandering – Part I

The Original Gerry Mander

The Constitution tasks the House of Representatives with setting the number of U. S. citizens that its members may represent. The Apportionment Act of 1792 fixed the House of Representatives for the Third Congress at 105 members, one Representative for 33,000 constituents. The Census of 1790, first of its kind, found the young nation numbering around 3,900,000 individuals. For purposes of computing the ratio of representatives to those represented, slaves constituted three-fifths of a free person.

112 years on, 1901, roughly midway between the Constitution’s ratification and the present day, each Representative of the 57^th Congress fielded the concerns of 213,000 people and carried a six-fold increase in “representational load” over his 1792 counterpart. The House then had 357 members representing around 76 million. Had the House stayed with its 1792 ratio of one Representative to 33,000 constituents, it would have had 2,303 members in 1901, far more than what the seating in the south wing of the Capitol building could accommodate.

114 years on, the 114^th Congress finds a House of 435 voting members, a number which has been fixed since the Apportionment Act of 1911. These worthies now represent about 309 million, or roughly 710,000 citizens per Representative, a four-fold increase over the 1901 representational load and a twenty-four fold increase over that of 1792. At the original ratio, the House would have almost 9,364 members, a number making for a mad house – though some think it is anyway.

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Roller Coasters, Solar Power, Wind Power or Terrorist Tunnels

Qatari Emir Hamad al-Thani with Ismail Haniya, Oct. 2012, Photo NY Times.

In October, 2012, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, as reported in the NY Times, here, “pledged $400 million to build two housing complexes, rehabilitate three main roads and create a prosthetic center, among other projects” in Gaza.

The $400 Million could have built 133 MW of offshore wind or 100 MW of PV Solar electricity generation capacity.

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Real Shutdown Increases Real Unemployment by 800,000 Real Americans. Unofficially: Unemployment Rate Now 7.82%. Actually: 1.8 Million Unemployed by Shutdown; Rate of 8.48%

Old Picture of President Obama & Speaker Boehner

The NY Times Editorial Board describes the shutdown, here, as “John Boehner’s Leadership Failure.” USA Today wrote, here,

“This shutdown, the first in 17 years, isn’t the result of two parties acting equally irresponsibly. It is the product of an increasingly radicalized Republican Party, controlled by a disaffected base that demands legislative hostage-taking in an effort to get what it has not been able to attain by the usual means: winning elections.”

On Saturday Night Live, Saturday, 10/5/13, Miley Cyrus and the cast mock-umented the GOP celebration over the shutdown with “We Can Stop (The Government).”

But Art and Politics aside, what are the effects of the Shutdown on the Economy?

The Government Shutdown increased Unemployment by 1.8 million, the Unemployment Rate increased 16.2%, from 7.31% on August 31, 2013 to 8.48% on October 2, 2013. At the same time, GDP growth dropped 20%, from 2.5% to 2.0%.

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Politics, Policy, & Jersey

Popular Logistics is a Policy Blog, not a Politics Blog. However, as Deborah Stone wrote in “The Policy Paradox,” ISBN 0393-976-254,

In order to make policy you need to win at politics.

Chris Christie, left, who is good at politics, seems to have made several serious policy blunders during his first term as Governor of New Jersey. I have questions about his capabilities in areas including Law & Order Fiscal Responsibility, Leadership, Mass Transit and Infrastructure and the Environment, and the intersection of these domains – the ‘Bio-Humano-Sphere’.

Law & Order: I am concerned about the concept of privatizing prisons and law enforcement agencies. Gov. Christie’s ties to his former boss and former partner Bill Palatucci, left, formerly of Community Education Centers, the company that operates most of the half-way houses in New Jersey’s privatized prison system, from which, as Mitt Romney might say, convicted felons “Self-Pardon”.
Fiscal Responsibility: there are Gov. Christie’s management of the “Race to the Top”, his supports of tax cuts for millionaires, and tax hikes on the middle class. He refuses to raise the minimum wage. He claims to not have raised taxes, yet he cut $7.4 million from woman’s health care, he is misusing Clean Energy funds to meet other obligations, and deferring funding on pensions.
Infrastructure & Mass Transit: we need more investment in infrastructure and mass transit. Gov. Christie killed the proposed new tunnel between NY and NJ.
The Biosphere / Environment / Bio-Humano-Sphere: while Gov. Christie may understand that global warming is a real problem, and while he vetoed the “Purgen” coal with sequestration plant; he pulled NJ out of the Regional Greenhouse Gases Initiative, RGGI and has not articulated a plan to modernize our electricity and energy infrastructure, or develop a renewable sustainable energy infrastructure.
Leadership: Rather than taking responsibility for the Race to the Top debacle, Gov. Christie blamed one-time rival Bret Schundler, who he appointed to head the team. He is, simply put, a bully. This is leadership at its worst.

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