By Michael Steele, on Thu Jun 27, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
“The Right of Citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States by any State on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude and that the Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
At the dawning of the 21st Century, the words of the 15th Amendment to our Nation’s Constitution remind us of one of the most precious gifts of liberty: to freely exercise your right to vote.
And yet, even the 15th Amendment—on its face—did not guarantee that the “right of citizens of the United States” to vote would not be denied as America emerged from the fog of civil war and into the new reality that those individuals once enslaved under the constitution were now entitled to exercise their rights as citizens under that same constitution.
It would not be long, however, before certain of the states, particularly in the south, responded to the demand of the 15th Amendment by devising a variety of tools to disenfranchise African American voters for reasons of “eligibility”. From literacy tests to pole taxes, from property ownership to oral and written examinations, States began to enact laws that ultimately “denied and abridged” African Americans their right to vote.
Moreover, when intimidation at the ballot box failed to curb the thirst for full access to the rights guaranteed by the Framers of the Constitution, more insidious and violent means such as lynchings, fire bombs and murder were used to “remind the Negro of his place” in American society.
In our society, all rights are ultimately protected by the ballot box, not the sword.
By virtue of the efforts to “legally” circumvent the dictates of the 15th Amendment as well as the escalation in violence against African Americans in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Selma and Montgomery Alabama the promise of the Constitution for African Americans and many other minorities—full and equal political rights—was like a munificent bequest from a pauper’s estate until the passage of the single most important piece of civil rights legislation in American history: the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Both Democrats and Republicans were moved to respond to President Johnson’s voting initiative when he declared in his State of the Union Address “we shall overcome”. With the efforts of individuals like Martin Luther King, Andrew Young, and Congressman John Lewis laying the foundation for what would become an increasingly important political movement, Congress took up an historic challenge to end the “blight of racial discrimination in voting…[which had] infected the electoral process in parts of our county for nearly a century” under the leadership of Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-Il).
The Act’s remedial structure is Section 5 which places a federal “pre-clearance” barrier against the adoption of any new voting practice or procedure by covered states and localities whose purpose or effect is to discriminate against minority voters. For over 40 years thereafter, the federal courts, and the Department of Justice worked hand-in-hand to make this promise of Section 5 a very potent reality.
While the Court did not strike down Section 5, it did strike down its operational core—Section 4—which establishes the coverage formula the federal government uses to determine which states and counties are subject to continued federal oversight. Chief Justice John Roberts in writing for the 5-4 majority noted “Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.” Under the majority’s reasoning, “If Congress had started from scratch in 2006,” the last time the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized, “it plainly could not have enacted the present coverage formula.”
For the Court to say that such coverage formulas are outdated is reasonable in the face of enormous improvements in minority voter registration and participation. Roberts illustrates his point by providing the following chart comparing voter registration numbers from 1965 to 2004.
As the Chief Justice stressed “There is no doubt that these improvements are in large part because of the Voting Rights Act,” noting “[t]he Act has proved immensely successful at redressing racial discrimination and integrating the voting process.” Roberts would conclude “Those extraordinary and unprecedented features were reauthorized — as if nothing had changed.” Likewise it is reasonable for the Court to want the Congress to update them.
Read the rest of… Michael Steele: Supreme Court ‘Gut’ the Voting Rights Act
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jun 26, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
The winning edge?
Some would say it’s preparation . Others would say its knowing your opponent. Still others would tell you it’s who works the hardest. And some would claim its a matter primarily of natural ability
My expertise suggests it’s something. I believe the most significant competitive edge is the love of the game in question.
The individual who has a natural curiosity and enthusiasm for their work, in my view, has the greatest advantage and is a fortunate person. The individual who happily thinks about their work between sandwich bites because they want to and chose to , has an advantage that all the other advantages combined can’t overcome.
And, it seems, the love of one’s work breeds naturally many of the other mentioned advantages that we try to create artificially and distinct from the task at hand
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jun 25, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
If lottery tickets were plane seats and if being seated in the farthest row back (where there is no recline and you are positioned as a “greeter” for passengers needing the lavatory) and your seat is also in the far corner of the farthest back row.
And if you ended up in that exact seat the last three flights in a row you have been on…..
Well….it would be an awfully rare and potentially valuable lottery ticket .
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Travel tips for visiting NYC.
If you are meeting three male friends who are highly educated and they ask you to meet at MOMA at 5:30pm, you may have troubles if you assume too much.
I assumed that since it was 5:30 they wanted to eat dinner, albeit a bit early.
I further assumed, rather excitedly, that my friends had suggested an Italian restaurant. Pronounced MO-MA. Like Italian, I assumed, for MAMA.
I imagined big homemade meatballs from an Italian family recipe.
Then there is the problem of asking cab drivers to take you, please, to “Moma’s restaurant.” The first taxi driver pulled away without letting me in. I assumed he thought it was only a few blocks away and wanted a bigger fare.
Finally, when my exasperated taxi driver gave up on finding a Moma’s restaurant, he dropped me off at The 21 Club. I asked the kind doorman if there was a “Moma’s restaurant” nearby and apologized for not going to 21 Club. He politely told me one block over. Finally!!
And there I saw my three friends…although running a little late and by this time quite hungry. We were outside MOMA’s–which seemed to be more than just a restaurant (in fact it was big and long and seemed to include works of art as well). “Nice!” I thought to myself.
I asked someone working beside the entrance where the restaurant was. He laughed and said, “Restaurant?! This is the Museum of Modern Art! There’s no restaurant!!” And laughed again.
I alerted my friends they had mistakenly chosen an art museum that lacked a restaurant.
The friend who suggested MOMA’s said, “Oh, I’m not hungry.”
And it was about this time that I put two and two—really more like one and one–together.
We weren’t going to an Italian restaurant with homemade meatballs like I told my wife.
We were going to the Museum of Modern Art. Which didn’t even have a concession stand.
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Airlines should have a SkyMiles-like program for members that rewards them with a free round-trip ticket anywhere in the US every time you miss three flights.
And a free round-trip ticket anywhere internationally if you miss the three flights within a 2 month period of time.
I’m not suggesting rewarding irresponsibility but rather persistence.
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Is there a silver lining to getting re-routed from St Louis, MO airport and instead landing in Kansas City, Mo?
For three of the connecting cities for passengers on my flight it actually works out better for them flying from Kansas City, MO. They deplane and are placed on new and better connecting flight home. Pretty cool and a nice silver lining.
For the remaining passengers with connecting flights, we are flying back to St Louis airport and for eight of the connecting cities, passengers on this flight will still make their connections. Pretty cool. And a nice silver lining.
For passengers flying to Louisville and Baltimore, we have no connection that works for us in Kansas City, MO and we will miss our connection tonight by the time we arrive in St. Louis.
But…if you are from Louisville, KY at least you are not from Baltimore. MD. And that’s pretty cool. And a nice silver lining. And remember, after the merger in 2003 Louisville became the 16th largest city in the US (edging out, you guessed it…. The city with airline passengers who have really lousy luck, Baltimore, MD).
As for passengers from Baltimore, MD on this flight, maybe you’ll find a silver lining next time your flight gets re-routed. And take heart. You are still a larger city than Kansas City, MO. And will be leaving here for St Louis shortly.
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Updating metaphors.In a discussion last week with a top manager he kept referring to “carrots” and “sticks” and how he needed both with his employees to achieve the results his company was pursuing.
I wanted to tell him “Carrots are OK but some employees might want something else instead — like a raise, or flex-time, more involvement in the project and better communication. Or maybe celery or edamame.
Things have changed a lot since the “carrot and stick” metaphor was invented and there are more appealing options and attention-getting threats.
Sticks can still be effective but so can shaming, alienating, lateral transfers, and bad progress reports. Or tasers. Caning can get attention much better than just an ordinary stick. Ask anyone in the advanced economy of Singapore.
Maybe we should update the “carrot and sticks” metaphor by changing it to “Edamame and Caning.” It seems to be a more appropriate and modern version of an exhausted and outdated business metaphor.
Just an idea. From 10,000 feet in the air with nothing to do except offer random and silly thoughts while waiting to get through turbulence that makes it hard to concentrate on anything serious and calls for something silly to distract myself from a bumpy plane ride.
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One if the many reasons I love Louisvlle.
Leaving Kansas City this morning to go home to a city that is more secure about itself, Louisville. A city that others already know is a city and doesn’t have to include the word “city” in its name for fear it will be confused with a state.
Some people just can’t catch a break: A man with 140lb testicles is unhappy with removal surgery after the operation leaves him with a 1 inch penis. [New York Post]
In an instructive piece in The Atlantic, “Can Democrats Win Back the Deep South?” RP Loranne Ausley’s work in creating the “Southern Project” was highlighted. Check out this excerpt:
In 2000, a national Democratic consultant named Jill Hanauer moved to Colorado and decided the West was ripe for political change. After helping Democrats take the Colorado legislature in 2004, in 2007 she started a company called Project New West to help other Democrats in a region where demographic changes and the Republican Party’s shift to the right had altered the political equation.
Since the days of Arizonan Barry Goldwater, the Southwest had been solidly Republican. But that changed in the last decade. Western Democrats like Brian Schweitzer and Harry Reid won by emphasizing quality-of-life issues like education and the environment, neutralizing the culture war (often by professing love for the Second Amendment), and mobilizing the growing Hispanic vote. Far-right Republicans like former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo helped Western Democrats make the case to moderate suburbanites that the GOP had gone off the ideological deep end. Now, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado have voted Democratic in two straight presidential elections, and the party has even managed to win statewide elections in Montana and Arizona.
“We moved into the Southwest on the theory that the demographics were changing and Republicans had gone too far to the right,” Hanauer told me. Two years ago, she detected the same thing starting to happen in the South. She changed her firm’s name to Project New America and quietly began to research a new region.
In the coming weeks, Hanauer and Loranne Ausley, a former member of the Florida House of Representatives, plan to launch something they’re calling the Southern Project, which will conduct research and formulate messages that can help Democrats win over Southern voters. A pilot study conducted in North Carolina in February, for example, concluded that under the state’s Republican governor, Pat McCrory, “there is a clear sense that hardworking taxpayers are getting the short end of the stick at the expense of big corporations and the wealthiest.” The set of talking points advises progressives to make arguments “focused around fairness and accountability,” whether the issue is tax reform or charter schools. The Southern Project will equip Southern Democrats with similar examples of messages that have been poll-tested to resonate with voters.
Ausley, who ran unsuccessfully for statewide office in Florida in 2010, said Republicans across the South risk alienating voters with their hard rightward turn. Every Republican-led Southern state has rejected the federally funded expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, she noted; in Florida, Governor Rick Scott tried to accept the funds, but his own Republican-dominated legislature blocked the move. Southern Republicans have recently decried women’s entry into the workforce and advocated teaching schoolchildren about proper gender roles.
“Republicans are doing the same thing over and over again to appeal to their base, and at some point it has to come back to bite them,” Ausley said. Southern voters are generally conservative, but they’re not extremists, as Mississippi showed in 2011 when it overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have declared a fertilized egg to be a “person” with rights. Genteel Southern moderates like Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia find themselves increasingly endangered by Tea Party primary challenges; Chambliss has chosen not to run for reelection next year, setting up a race that will test Democrats’ ability to win in that state.
The Democrats working in the South emphasize the long-term nature of their project. “The South is not where the West was” a decade ago, Hanauer told me. “But there is a lot of infrastructure starting to be built, and Republican legislators are going further than the Southern public wants. There’s going to be a backlash.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jun 24, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Thought for the week
This week I will do something amazing —something that will stun others and impress myself
Ok. I gotta be honest. I wrote the first paragraph two weeks ago and got sidetracked by something.
I found out while getting coffee (which is when I write my posts) that The Summit shopping center go bought and they are trying to thinks of a new name.
No one asked me but I tried to …think up new names but didn’t come up with any really good ones. I figured “Apex” was too close in meaning.
By that time I had already gotten back in my car and then other things happened and, well, I just lost track of time
So back to the doing something amazing thing I was talking about earlier (in this post two weeks).
Hmmm. I am now out of the mood to do something amazing. That thought happened two weeks ago and has run it’s course.
I mean… if I do something amazing this week by accident that stuns others and impresses myself , I am happy to pretend like I planned to do it. I can do that. But I don’t want to try to do something amazing now. I’m not feeling it. Maybe it will come back later today and I’ll amend this post
Maybe my goal this week should be simply to focus better and not get so easily distracted. That’s actually a good idea for me. I’m going to hold that thought for a couple of weeks –like I did the “do something amazing” thought –and come back to it when I have more time.
What about NuLu? That would be a cool new name for the Summit.
Shoot! I just realized I forgot to put Splenda in my coffee and have to go back to the coffee shop now.
I can’t even remember what this post was about ….Oh, yeah, doing something amazing in, like, two weeks. Right? No? Look. I can’t do this now. I have to get my coffee right first
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Jun 21, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Weird habits I have.
Whenever I buy a hardback book I always–always-pull off the book’s glossy jacket. The book dust jacket feels funny like its something to look at only —not read. More for show.
But after ripping it off and throwing in the wastebasket, it now looks like a book ready to be read. For the substantive and thoughtful person….like me.
And for about 3 days the jacket-less hardback book sits on my desk at the ready–for some real reading.
But about the third day I realize I’m not going to really read the book and check my wastebasket to see if the crumpled dust-jacket is still there. I pull it out and un-crumple it and read the book synopsis. There’s always a great synopsis on the book on the book jacket.
I read it carefully until I know enough to have something intelligent to say about the book if ever asked.
And then put it away on my bookshelf…without the jacket. And crumple and throw it away one more time.
And the oddest thing of all is I still feel like I am a little deeper and more serious –in other words, slightly superior–than people who leave on the jacket and just place the book on their bookshelf. Without ever even reading the dust jacket.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jun 20, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Facebook Reality Check.
If you are a middle-aged male and get a friend request from a 20 year old very attractive woman along with a breathless message about how much she likes your profile picture and would like to meet you and sends you her private email address, be careful.
I don’t respond to these annoying friend request/messages because I’m happily married and tell them so. But I know not all of my middle-aged male peers are in a marriage/relationship and might find this generous invitation appealing. I’d like to offer some friendly peer advice that I can give objectively.
Sure, these young women have tracked down our overweight, under-toned profile pictures on Facebook and find us every bit as irresistible as we know they should. That’s a given. And, sure, they are probably going to keep stalking guys like us, because, you know…we got it going on and they can’t help themselves and are essentially powerless to our feeble and imaginary charms.
So…. as realistic as this offer for Facebook friendship and romance probably seems to you, just remember that no one is as great as they sound on Facebook and she probably looks better in their picture than she looks in person. And may be really hard to talk to after you have a torrid romance. And, let’s face it, you’ll probably end up getting bored and have difficulty hanging out with her 20-something friends. And then there are the awkward Facebook status decisions about whether you “are in a relationship” or not to deal with.
All I am saying is: think it through.
Especially before you respond to her faux personal email by sending a digital picture of yourself flexing your flabby, withering physique.
I’m just saying, as a friend, in the long run, if you are going to strip down and get in bed with anyone today, just stand in front of a mirror and take off your dark patent leather dress shoes, white tube socks and short plaid pants——and get in bed and take a nap alone. You’ll need the energy to mow the lawn later today. You just don’t have time for a tryst with a beautiful 20 year old this afternoon. As much as she is wanting to, it’s probably going to be a pain and keep you from going to CVS to pick up your medications after spending that traditional 30 minutes every Saturday browsing your favorite hardware store. She’s just going to have to deal with that.
So it is chilling, to say the least, to witness 48 years later the Supreme Court effectively gut the Voting Rights Act.
