Congressional District Apportionment SCOTUS Decision Helps Restore Democracy

[From article]
In Evenwel v Abbott, the recent Texas legislative apportionment case, the plaintiffs argued that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that the boundaries of legislative districts be drawn so as to equalize numbers of CVAPs (“Citizens of Voting Age Population”), not total population.
A unanimous Supreme Court rejected the argument and upheld Texas’ use of total population. The Court refused to go further, and left open the question whether Texas could, consistent with the Constitution, use CVAP if it so chose.
[. . .]
In a series of cases starting in 1962, the Supreme Court has laid down as constitutional mandate the principle of “one person, one vote”, which means that state legislative districts must be equally apportioned. There can be no more rotten boroughs, with legislative districts remaining frozen despite massive shifts on population.
A similar rule applies to U.S. congressional districts, which are also drawn by state legislatures. (For arcane legal reasons, the standards applicable to congressional districts are not quite the same as those for states, but to date the practical consequences of this have been minor.)
However, the metric for judging equality has never been entirely clear. Some cases refer to equality of populations, some to equality of voters. As the Court noted in Evenwel, every quotation mined out of the law books referring to equal numbers of voters can be balanced by one referring to equal populations.
The last time the Court addressed the matter directly was in 1966, when it said that the states have considerable choice in the matter, as long as racial discrimination is not involved. “[No] decision [of] this Court suggested that the States are required to include aliens, transients, short-term or temporary residents, or persons denied the vote for conviction of crime, in the apportionment base” -- Burns (but use of registered voters as the base would be suspect because it is subject to political manipulation).
Since Burns, lower courts have split, with the Fourth and Fifth Circuits ruling that the selection of the appropriate population base is up to the state, and the Ninth saying that it must be done by total population. The district court decision in Evenwel said: “[This is] a choice that the Supreme Court has unambiguously left to the states...”
The uncertainty about the appropriate population base could remain unresolved for half a century because it did not matter much. The differences in result from using total population as compared with the alternative of CVAP was not large enough to justify serious wrangling.
In consequence, according to the brief filed by the U.S. Solicitor General, all states currently treat total population as the proper metric – equality means equal numbers of human bodies in each legislative district.
Over the past couple of decades, two factors have made the question worth wrangling over.
The first, and most obvious, factor is immigration, especially illegal immigration. Aliens tend to concentrate, so counting them in the population base for purposes of legislative apportionment has the effect of diluting the votes of people in other districts.
The growing imbalances were described in an amicus brief in Evenwel by the city of Yakima, WA. The city has 91,000 people. Latinos constitute 41% of the total population but only 22.74% of the CVAP. In addition, only 54.51% of adult Latinos are eligible to vote, whereas 99.63% of non-Latino Whites and 97.65% of African American adults are eligible.
Consequences for California were described 25 years ago, in Garza, in which equalizing populations meant that “District 1 has 707,651 eligible voters while District 3 has 1,098,663.”
Clearly, the choice between total population and CVAP is important, and becoming more so.
The immigration issue interacts with factor number two, which is enforcement of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Enforcement is the hands of Social Justice Warriors, plucked from various lefty non-profits, so both the choice of targets and the remedies are selected with a heavy racialist thumb on the scale. In the Yakima situation, the remedies for alleged violations of the voting right of Latinos require the city to create serious imbalances in CVAP numbers, and these are treated as irrelevant because, to DOJ, only total population counts, whatever the Supreme Court may have said in the past.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has twice punted on the question of total population vs CVAP. In 2001, it turned down Chen despite Justice Thomas’ dissenting comment that “as long as we sustain the one-person, one-vote principle, we have an obligation to explain to States and localities what it actually means”. In 2012, the Court declined to hear another case raising the issue (Lepak), without a peep from any justice, and there the matter rested until Evenwel.
Speculating on the Court’s motivations is always chancy, but the justices may well have regarded it as a dormant issue. While the precedents contained many statements that a state could use CVAP, no state is actually doing so. The Court may have decided not to bother with the question unless some state actually picked up on it, or it became unavoidable in the context of the VRA,
Such passiveness is readily understandable as a legal matter, but it had important political consequences.
Although a state’s right to choose CVAP was protected (probably) as a matter of formal legal doctrine, it seems safe to say that in the public mind the debate had ceased. “One person, one vote” was assumed to mean that populations must be equal, and not “one CVAP, one vote.”
To use a formulation currently in vogue, the “Overton Window”, the range of options considered acceptable for public discussion, was closing, even as the interaction of immigration and the VRA was adding urgency to the question, and even as, as in the Yakima situation, lower courts were not giving serious consideration to the claims of CVAP.
The Evenfel litigation was a response to this legal/political situation.
The case was sponsored by the Project on Fair Representation, which is involved in a number of apportionment and VRA cases. The Project was also involved in Lepak, which failed to make it to the Supreme Court, and Evenwel was filed by the same lawyers. Only this time they used a provision of the U.S. Code that a constitutional challenge to an apportionment scheme goes to a three judge court, and, from there, it is appealed to the Supreme Court, which must hear it unless the issue raised can be classified as “insubstantial”. Plaintiffs lost in district court, and the case went up.
Three positions were presented in the Supreme Court.
Plaintiffs argued that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to use CVAP. This position had zero chance of winning, because the Progressive justices were certain to oppose it, and even the conservatives were most unlikely to go beyond the position that a state had a choice.
The second position was presented by Texas: that its choice of population was constitutional, but so would be a choice of CVAP. This is the language of Burns, and is the view of courts of appeal, except the Ninth Circuit. However, it is not the standard that is being applied in VRA cases.
Almost certainly, the plaintiffs knew they had no shot at their maximum position, and the real goal was to get a Supreme Court re-affirmation of the Burns endorsement of the states’ right to choose so as to restore it as a live option in political discussion. This was a realistic hope before the death of Justice Scalia, but after that the chance of five votes was small, though not impossible.
The U.S. Solicitor General endorsed Texas’ argument that the use of population is constitutional, and urged the Court to rest its decision on this ground.
But he also presented a third option -- that states are required to use population and must ignore CVAP. However, this was not pushed because its resolution was not necessary to the case. The SG also argued that the VRA can over-ride a state choice to use CVAP, another issue that did not have to be decided.
The argument that population is the constitutionally-demanded metric is a clear foreshadowing of what is about to become Progressive dogma. The theory is that all inhabitants (and the Fourteenth Amendment protects all persons, not just citizen) are entitled to representation, so the “one person, one vote” standard demands protection even of non-voting populations. (This is the Ninth Circuit view.) This argument quickly morphs into a demand that illegal aliens have “one person, one vote” rights, but the dedicated Progressive is unlikely to be phased by this.
So what did the case gain, or lose, for the cause of constitutional government?
On the negative side, the four Progressives could well be ready and eager to say that CVAP has no place in apportionment decisions and the states must use total population. One must put a question mark on this, though, because it is easy to create reductio ad absurdum hypotheticals in which a few voters and many aliens get to dominate local elections, and even the Progressives might quail at this.
On the positive side, the Overton Window has been widened by the publicity given the case and by the clear SCOTUS statement that a state is not at present forbidden to use CVAP. It has also been widened by the two fine concurrences in Evenwel, by Alito and Thomas, addressing the constitutional issues and policy choices involved. (One should add to the reading list Judge Kozinski’s dissent in Garza and Judge Garwood’s opinion in Chen.)
Given the current prominence of immigration concerns, the widened window means that state legislators might well be persuaded to take a second look at current laws that require the use of total population, and the concurrences provide a solid foundation for political discussion.
Also on the positive side, it will be difficult for the Department of Justice and the courts to ignore CVAP in fashioning VRA remedies. If the states have the right to choose a population base, and if that right is protected as an attribute of state sovereignty, then DOJ cannot automatically reject the use of CVAP. And if it does so, then its VRA cases will be delayed for years while the matter is appealed once again.
The issues are complex, not only legally but morally and practically, and serious arguments can be made for either standard. As the concurrences note, they involve fundamental questions about the nature of democracy, the meaning of representation, the relationship of state and federal governments, and the interpretation of the Fourteenth and Tenth Amendments.
It may well be that the best solutions involve a blend of total population and CVAP, and the great benefit of Evenwel is that it leaves it open for states to experiment to fund the right mix.
But the big thing is that the Overton Window is open again, so on balance it was a good day for democracy.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/04/emevenwel_v_abbottem_a_good_day_for_democracy.html

April 10, 2016
Evenwel v Abbott: A Good Day for Democracy
By James V. DeLong

Cambridge, MA Millionaires For Kasich, Not Trump

Michael "I'm a billionaire too" Bloomberg

Not that the Boston Globe is unreliable, ah, but the official results are available from the Cambridge election commission. Do Globe reporters get more accurate results? The explanation for Kasich's win is the great number of tech millionaire Republicans (or are they millionaire Democrats voting in the open primary) in Cambridge who oppose Trump. They are meeting to try to stop the New York developer.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/3/8/cambridge-2016-primary-results/

Cambridge Votes for Kasich Over Trump
By HANNAH NATANSON

Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
March 8, 2016

Updated(2): Harvard University Alumni Slate For Board of Overseers, Unz Visits Harvard Campus

Posted January 25, 2016 6:07 PM ET; Last updated February 13, 2016 5:10 PM ET



Anti establishment candidates are popular even at universities.

[From article]
After Ron K. Unz ’83 flew cross country to turn in almost 300 signatures to Harvard’s doorstep, he and four other alumni—including five-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader—can now call themselves candidates for the Board of Overseers, the University’s second highest governing body.
[. . .]
The unorthodox group launched a bid for the Overseers in January on a two-pronged platform: eliminate tuition and reconsider admissions practices at Harvard College, two proposals that University President Drew G. Faust has staunchly opposed.
[. . .]
Along with Unz and Nader, physicist Stephen D. Hsu, conservative writer Stuart S. Taylor, Jr., and attorney Lee C. Cheng ’93 will appear on the ballot distributed to alumni in advance of the May election. While most Overseer candidates are nominated by the Harvard Alumni Association—it nominated eight this year—anyone with a Harvard degree can run for the Overseers.
[. . .]
Unz and his colleagues argue that the enormous size of Harvard’s endowment, which reached $37.6 billion last fiscal year, would provide more than enough money to cover the cost of tuition for every undergraduate student. They also suspect that the College’s admissions practices could be discriminatory against Asian American applicants, and they are calling for more detailed public data about Harvard’s admissions practices.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/2/11/outside-overseers-slate-qualify/

Unconventional Overseers Candidates Qualify for Ballot
By ANDREW M. DUEHREN and DAPHNE C. THOMPSON, 

Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
February 10, 2016

* * *

[updated February 1, 2016 9:11 PM ET]

[From article]

Clad in a Harvard beanie, worn jeans, and sneakers, Ron K. Unz ’83 did not look like someone seeking to become one of the University’s most esteemed alumni and powerbrokers.
On Sunday morning, Unz, equipped with a series of charts and graphs detailing the annals of Harvard budgeting and admissions data, stood for hours outside the Harvard Coop and the Science Center. He had arrived in Cambridge early that morning by way of Palo Alto with a singular purpose: to formally launch a campaign for Harvard’s Board of Overseers.
Campaign organizer and spokesperson Ron K. Unz ‘83 displays university income statistics at the Science Center Plaza on Sunday afternoon. The “Free Harvard, Fair Harvard” campaign seeks to eliminate undergraduate tuition and make public how Harvard considers race in its admissions practices.
Per Unz’s estimate, he had collected almost 300 signatures over a series of weeks—shipping petitions to alumni across the country—to earn a spot on the ballot for Harvard’s second highest governing body. He arrived in the Square to collect a few more signatures; each member of his ticket needs 201 of them by Monday to enter the race.
His tactics are unconventional, but Unz—who took a red-eye flight from Palo Alto—is an unusual candidate. An outspoken conservative, Unz, along with four other Harvard alumni including five-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader, launched a campaign earlier this month on a dual-pronged ticket. They want to abolish undergraduate tuition and make public more detailed data about Harvard’s admissions process.
[. . .]
In their campaign materials, the prospective candidates argue that Harvard tuition should be free given the size of the University’s endowment—valued at $37.6 billion, the largest of any educational institution in the world. They say such a move would precipitate widespread publicity for Harvard and inspire students from lower income families to apply.
“If Harvard abolished tuition, I think you would have a much more regionally and socioeconomically diverse student body,” Unz said, standing at his post near the Coop.
The slate—which also includes physicist Stephen D. Hsu, conservative writer Stuart S. Taylor, Jr., and NewEgg’s Chief Legal Officer Lee C. Cheng ’93—also calls for greater transparency in undergraduate admissions. Together, they want more information about how the College chooses its students. They say they are suspicious that Harvard’s race-based affirmative action policies could, in effect, discriminate against Asian American students.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/2/1/Unz-arrives-cambridge-overseer/

Outside Overseers Candidate Arrives in Square, Petitions in Hand
Traveling to Boston, Ron K. Unz ’83 hopes to begin his candidacy for the Board of Overseers
By ANDREW M. DUEHREN and DAPHNE C. THOMPSON,

Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
February 1, 2016
* * *

[From article]
Ron Unz, an alumnus, decided to use the university’s own system of alumni voting (there are currently 320,00 living holders of Harvard degrees eligible to vote) for the Board of Overseers to propose a slate of candidates pledged to end all preferences – racial, alumni, athletic – in the admissions process and go to pure meritocracy. The candidates would also pledge to end tuition entirely at Harvard, using its vast endowment instead, so as to make payment – and especially debt -- not a consideration.
[. . .]
With the East Coast blizzard slowing the mails and express services, the deadline is even tighter. I am awaiting delivery of my own copy of the petition to sign and return via Fedex.
If you happen to own a Harvard sheepskin:
…email us at petitions@FreeHarvard.org, and include your mailing address to obtain a petition for signing. If you can commit to quickly gathering an additional signature or two and also include your phone number, we will fedex you a petition.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/harvards_challenge_from_within_to_affirmative_action_.html

January 24, 2016
Harvard’s challenge from within to affirmative action
By Thomas Lifson
American Thinker

* * *

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/us/a-push-to-make-harvard-free-also-questions-the-role-of-race-in-admissions.html?_r=0

How Some Would Level the Playing Field: Free Harvard Degrees
The New York Times
By STEPHANIE SAULJAN. 14, 2016

* * *

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/1/15/outsider-overseers-tuition-admissions/

Outsider Slate for Board of Overseers Calls for Free Tuition, Questions Affirmative Action
A group of five bidding for nomination to Harvard's second-highest governing body argues the University should not charge for tuition and should offer more information on admissions
By ANDREW M. DUEHREN and DAPHNE C. THOMPSON

Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

January 15, 2016

* * *

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/12100959/Harvard-should-be-free-for-all-students-says-businessman-campaigning-for-board.html

Harvard should be free for all students, says businessman campaigning for board
Ron Unz, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, is leading an unusual campaign for a leadership role at Harvard - claiming that the tuition fees of up to $44,000 a year should be scrapped
Telegraph (UK)
By Harriet Alexander, New York
1:04AM GMT 15 Jan 2016

What US Conservatives Can Learn From Canadians

[From article]
The CBC is a cultural Marxist production that never met a Conservative policy it liked. It sees its mandate as constantly attacking every Conservative idea or piece of legislation while propagandizing on behalf of multiculturalism; Islam as a religion of peace; anti-Zionism; and radical movements such as Occupy Wall Street, Idle No More, and #BlackLivesMatter.
[. . .]
Afraid of giving its foes something to be offended by, the Conservative government funded its own demise.
No less catastrophic, the Conservatives failed to pass legislation to radically protect free speech across the country – legislation that would outrank our provincial kangaroo courts, known as Human Rights Commissions, whose mandate has been to prosecute individual citizens and groups on the flimsy grounds of "hate speech."
[. . .]
this signal failure guarantees that open discussions essential to Canada's future as a robust democracy – especially conversations about mass immigration, Islamic terrorism, and the relation between the two – will continue to be curtailed by the left-leaning proponents of censorship in the name of social "harmony."
[. . .]
Perhaps most damagingly, the Conservatives attempted to fight the election chiefly on the basis of fact and logical argument rather than engaging the passions and patriotic sentiments of the electorate. They were unable to rebut progressivist attacks portraying them as hateful, bigoted, backward, divisive, and exclusionary. They had no vision of Canada to offer that was not simply a less enthusiastic version of the feminist, multicultural, and "diverse" image championed by the other parties.
[. . .]
Canada's Conservatives lost the election in part because they shrank from being truly conservative. Similarly, should the Republicans lose in November 2016, it will be because they failed to be truly republican.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/a_lesson_to_republicans_in_canadas_conservative_party_defeat.html

February 7, 2016
A Lesson to Republicans in Canada's Conservative Party Defeat
By David Solway and Janice Fiamengo

Concerned Citizen, Taxpayer, Voter Objects To Limited Candidate Names of City Plan Name Election

An Open Letter to the Cambridge Citywide Planners

Please rethink your undemocratic procedure for renaming the Cambridge Master Plan process and extend the voting deadline. The four tepid options you have offered do not reflect the unbounded creativity of the Cambridge citizenry and do disservice to the award-winning talents and renown accomplishments of our city's hardworking professional planning department.



As we have recently seen, Cambridge's unique Proportional Representation voting system allows the electorate to pick the excellent leaders we deserve in a much fairer manner than conventional winner-take-all methods.

Since you received 200 suggested names for the upcoming citywide planning process, why not provide a final ballot that lists all of these candidates, allows voters to rank-order their preferences, and lets them write-in other possibilities that you may have overlooked?

This approach would help to dispel rumors that the election has been rigged to ensure that "Envision Cambridge," a stale sobriquet that evokes the "Envision Porter Square" planning debacle of decades ago, is the predetermined selection of self-interested city planning officials who will enjoy a free junket visit to the upcoming "Envision America" event in Charlotte. North Carolina.



I have given this matter much thought, and I realize that the local PC police have properly demanded that the earlier "Cambridge Master Plan" designation be changed because of its sexist, racist, and fascist overtones. The term Master immediately evokes thoughts of our paternalistic society's ongoing subjugation of women. Surely a name such as the "The Cambridge Mistress Plan" or "Ms. and Mister Rossi's Neighborhood" is more appropriate for an inclusive community like Cambridge.

Instead of uttering "Master" and evoking the inequities of the medieval guild system, painful memories of slavery and brutality in American history, and degrading sadomasochistic sexual practices and forms of self-abuse that survive around the world to this day, how about substituting less inflammatory names, as, say, "The Cambridge Livin'-Wage-Is-Easy PLAN-tation," or "Cambridge Miracle Whip," or "Happy Ending Cambridge"?

And we certainly should not offend others by triggering thoughts of Hitler's "Master Race" policies when more appropriate names for our citywide comprehensive plan are readily available. How about "Triumph of the Willpower," "CamBridj Uber Call Lyft," or, my favorite, "Cambridge: The Final Solution"?



It's hard to accept that not one of the hundreds of suggested names I previously submitted made your final cut. I hope you will reconsider your decision, alter the online ballot to allow for multiple-preference selection, and open the naming process to individual write-in candidates such as those below.

Very truly yours,

A Concerned Citizen Voter of Cambridge

* * *

[Unapproved Candidates]

THE CONCERNED CITIZENS WRITE-IN SLATE

PlanIt Cambridge

Make Cambridge Great Again

Cambridge, More or Less

Toward a Sustainable Future, Part 2

Rx Cambridge

Cambridge Rising

Participatory Boondoggling

Growth Management for Dummies

Plan E from Outer Space

The Big Fix

There Goes the Neighborhood

Son of C2/K2 

Cambridge Blah-Blah​: ​The Vibrant, Resili​a​nt, Sustainable, ​Affordable, Accessible, Liv​able, ​Walkable, ​​​Bikeable, Innovative,​ ​Anti-Sprawl, Transit-Oriented, ​Multimodal, ​Green,​ ​Divers​e,​ ​​​M​ulticultural​, Politically Correct, Transparent, Inclusive, Participatory, Comprehensive, Citywide, Sanctuary, LEED-Designed, S​mart-​G​rowth​, World-Class, Fully ​Envisioned Buzzword Scheme​ for the Twenty-First Century, Infinity, and Beyond

Creating North Boston

Cambridge 2020 Vision

Picture This Cambridge

What's the Big Idea, Cambridge?

Metromind Cambridge

The Gospel According to CDD

America's Sexiest City Plan

Start Us Up, Cambridge

Dithering Heights: Boomtown Cambridge Goes All In

Adventures in Blunderland: Cambridge at the Gridlocked Crossroads

The Cambridge Benign Growth Plan

Boston Strong, Cambridge Stronger

Traffic Calming Gone Wild

NIMBYfest Cambridge: 2016 and Beyond

War of the Words: A Cambridge Public Plan

It's Futile, Utile

The Charles River Left Bank Blueprint Blues

Cambridge Goes to Rehab

Make My Cambridge

The Cantab Lunge

SOS Cambridge

Cambridge Fiddles (While Sanders Burns Hillary)

Cambridge 3000 or Bust!

Heads Up, Cambridge!

The Great Leap Forward

Cambridge Go Brag (Somerville Sucks)

Our Fair City: Cambridge Looks Ahead

Task Farce Cambridge: Grand Delusions and Foregone Conclusions

Next Stop Nirvana

Future Schlock!

Mission: Impossible -- Cambridge 

The Cambridge STEAMroller: Paving the Way to the Future

Remediate Cambridge

Cambridge LEEDs the Way

Hurricane Cambridge

Presto Chango Cambridge

The Concord-Alewife Study, Revised and Expanded Edition

Be Prepared Cambridge

Fantastic Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: A Cambridge Plan for Stopping Ocean Creep 

Tickle Me, Cambridge

Who's On First, Cambridge?

More Cambridge Conversations?

Cambridge Groupthink Rocks!

Cambridge Upside Down: Planning Our Civic Urinals

Cambridge Community Auditions

Mission Control Cambridge

Ground Zero Cambridge

Plan Ahead Cambridge: Blank Lives Don't Matter

CAD/CAM Cambridge

Cambridge from Here to Eternity

Granfalloon 2016: Bowling Alone Together in Cambridge

Going Gotham: The Road to Little Manhattan

Search for Tomorrow Cambridge: Paradise Lost or Prelude to Posterity?

The Royal Nonesuch: A CDD Touring Production

Cambridge Focus: Peeing into the Prevailing Winds of Change

Survivor Cambridge: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast CDD

Call Me Cambridge

Gentrify Cambridge Now: Staying the Course While Stumbling Forward

The Cambridge Planning Workshop: Stand Up, Speak Up, Sit Down, Shut Up

Springtime for Sansone: Tweaking the E Pluribus Unity Slate's Platform

Defining Cambridge: Urban Plannerspeak, Consultantese, and Zoning Gobbledegook for Laypersons

You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, Cambridge

The Cambridge Stink Tank 

Iram's Magical Mystery Tour

Micromanaging MIT: Microtechnology, Microsoft, and Micro-Unit Apartments

The Funky Cambridge Visioning Party: City Hall's Def Jam Hip-Hop Breakout Group Break-Dance Street Celebration

The Cambridge Charrette: Think Locally, Act Vocally

The Cambridge One-Way Freeway to Anywhere

Je suis Cambridge: An Action Plan for Overreacting, Canceling Classes, and Evacuating the City through Rush-Hour Bottlenecks in an Age of Homegrown Bomb Hoaxes

Cambridge 2040: The Brave New World-Class City

Floating on Airheads Cambridge

The Town-Gown Frolics: Why Public Planning in Harvard's & MIT's Backyard Is Completely Academic 

Up with Cambridge: A PR Scheme to Make the City Slicker

Cambridge Follies of 2017: Remembering Ziegfeld, Fulton, Seward, and La Trémouille

Spiffing Up, Cambridge: The Porcine Lipstick Project

Urban Renewal Today: Tip's Legacy Lives

Your Voice, Their City: A Periodic Citizens Meet-and-Greet with CDD's Planners and Consultants

PlanCamGenY: Preventing Gen Z Frenzy

Beating the Bubble's Burst: A Better Cambridge Citywide Upzoning Plan

SimCambridge 3000: Advise and Dissent

Cambridge Urban Planning 101: Using PowerPoint to Promote Propensity for Density

Cambridge Stew: Ingredients for Course Correction in Midstream

Our Way or the Highway: Planning CDD's Next Big Mistake

Let's Get Engaged, Cambridge!

Helter Skelter: A Citywide Strategy for Co-opting the Cambridge Residents Alliance

The Mother of All Cambridge Plans

Cambridge on the Brink

Where's the Beef, Cambridge?

Making Sausage in the Public Square

The Cambridge Manifesto: Go Forth and Multiply

The Cambridge Homemade Applesauce Recipe

Growing for Broke Cambridge

Cambridge Status Quo Vadis?

Heaven Can't Wait for Cambridge

The "It Takes a Village Idiot" Plan for Cambridge

Tinkertoy Cambridge

Bob Winters' Wonderland

An Oaktree on Every Porch

Twist & Shout, Cambridge

A Cambridge Planning Lottery: The City That Never Sweepstakes

Here We Go Again, Cambridge

Cambridge Green Machine

Cambridge SpeakOut!

Preparation H Cambridge

Reaching Critical Mass Ave Cambridge

Flight of the Stumblebums

CDD's Next Top Model

Gimme Affordable Shelter (Side A)

Sympathy for the Developer (Side B)

(from the bootleg album You Can't Always Get What You Want, Twining/Normandy)

OMG LGBTQ LSMFT OICURAQT, Cambridge

Sharing Cambridge Fantasies

Trickle-Down Development

Dare to Dream Cambridge

The Cambridge Quietus Project

Cambridge Reborn

Treading H2O: Cambridge--Will It Float?

CDD Mails It In

Reinventing the Wheel with Harvard, MIT, and Lesley

The Cambridge Confederacy of  Dunces

Recycling Cambridge

Only in Cambridge

Rediscovering Newtown

Nobody's Home: Inclusionary Grousing in Cambridge

Ready or Not, Here We Come, Cambridge!

Reforming Cambridge

The Rossi Factor Spin Zone

WTF, Cambridge?

Marching to Oblivion: The Good Intentions and Best-Laid Plans of CDD

Nolen's Cambridge Nightmare: Burying Olmsted's Vision Forever

Healyville, Healyville--Here at Last!

Multimillion-Dollar Baby Steps: Timmy Toomey Told You So

Revolutionary Ways to Stop Revolting Developments in the People's Republic of Cambridge

Group-groping Toward Utopia

The Abominable Snowjob

Navigating the Cambridge Floods with Your Smart Phone App

The Ivory Towering Inferno: Preparations for Global Warming on Cambridge Campuses

Comprehensive Planning as Occupational Therapy in Cambridge

Cambridge 2525: Parking Lot or Camelot? 

Hah Hah Hah Hahvahd

Cambridge: City of Blights and Delights

Cloud 9 Cambridge

The Cambridge Wonk Parade: Treating a Cancer on the Residency

Cambridge Reimagined: What's the Frequency, Kenneth Reeves?

Taming the Beast: The Cambridge Emergency Brake Job

Averting but Flirting with Disaster: The Cambridge Balanced Approach to Growth

The Jolly Green Giant Ecoplan

Growing Up in Cambridge: Extrapolating Mass+Main Methodology

Bio-techno-tele-Cambridge.com

The Cambridge Idea Exchange & Swap Meet

Ecstacy = MassAve x Central Square

(E = mc2)

Code Blue Cambridge

A CamBridge Too Far

The Cambridge Mistress Plan

Ms. and Mister Rossi's Neighborhood

The Cambridge Livin'-Wage-Is-Easy PLANtation

Cambridge Miracle Whip

Happy Ending Cambridge

Triumph of the Willpower

CamBridj Uber Call Lyft

Cambridge: The Final Solution

### END OF PART ONE ###

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015​,  Melissa ​Peters ​
mpeters (at) cambridgema.gov wrote:

Hello Community Leaders –

Please help spread the word about an opportunity to help name the Citywide Plan!

We received 200 suggestions for names, and now we need your vote! To participate, simply complete this survey to select your top choice by December 21, 2015 from the names below:

• Envision Cambridge
• Cambridge Forward
• Cambridge: A Community Plan
• Cambridge: Our Plan

Thanks!

Melissa Peters, AICP, LEED AP ND

Land Use Planner

Cambridge Community Development Department

344 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139

617/349-4605

mpeters (at) cambridgema.gov

www.cambridgema.gov/cdd

Harvard University JFK School of Government Researcher Finds United States Has Worst Electoral Process of All Democracies

"In this index, the United States ranks the worst of all established democracies, and below several other countries with shorter histories of electoral processes," That explains the high quality of elected officials and candidates in this nation. Does Prof. "On Leave" Lessig know about this study? Is he running to fix the US system, or to exploit it?



http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/10/28/lecturer-discusses-election-failure/

Kennedy School Lecturer Discusses Election Failure
By MIA C. KARR,
Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
October 27, 2015

Illegal Immigrants Owe Thanks To U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy

[From article]
Sen. Ted Kennedy’s 1965 immigration act allowed the Democrats to start winning elections the same way they win recounts: by enlarging the pool of voters.
Liberals couldn’t convince Americans to agree with them, but they happened to notice that the people of most other countries in the world already agreed with them. So Sen. Ted Kennedy’s immigration act brought in millions of poverty-stricken foreigners to live off the American taxpayer and bloc-vote for the Democrats.
[. . .]
At the precise moment in history when the United States abandoned any attempt to transmit American values to its own citizens, never mind immigrants, the 1965 immigration act began dumping the poorest of the poor from around the world on our country.
[. . .]
We don’t have an obligation to bring in people who need government assistance intended for our own people. You only have to do something you don’t want to do if you’re obliged morally, legally or with a gun to your head.
[. . .]
Kennedy’s 1965 immigration bill, combined with white self-loathing and, in some quarters, WASP-loathing, has made it impossible for America to assert any sensible traditions, even abandoning the requirement that immigrants learn English, our “common medium of speech,” as Justice Louis Brandeis put it.

http://humanevents.com/2015/06/17/first-mary-jo-kopechne-then-america/?utm_source=coulterdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

First Mary Jo Kopechne, Then America

Ann Coulter
Wednesday Jun 17, 2015 2:29 PM

Nothing To See Here. Look Over There! How Media Works In America

[From article]

I’m impressed by the coolness and steadiness of our media in suppressing any news about immigration. It’s as if they’ve built a triple-layer fence with border guards around immigration topics. And guess what? Their fence is working!
How many thousands of news stories have there been on Ferguson, ISIS, Chris Christie’s “Bridgegate” or men becoming women?



But the media will never tell you about Mexicans gang-raping a lesbian in Richmond, California, an Indian immigrant in San Francisco importing 12-year-old girls he bought from their parents for sex, or three children being beheaded by Mexicans in Baltimore.
Don’t Americans have a right to know about the cultures flooding into our country?
This isn’t a natural transformation. It is purely the result of government policy. But our media don’t care to discuss the issue. In fact, they get mad whenever Americans find out what they’re doing with immigration.
When Americans do think about immigration, they’re against it. In polls earlier this year, more Americans had a favorable opinion of North Korea than wanted to increase immigration. That’s why the media’s approach to immigration is to never talk about it.
[. . .]



What will happen if Matt Drudge ever goes on vacation? (Answer: You’ll be living in Mexico.)
[. . .]
But the media’s position is: If we don’t talk about immigration, it doesn’t exist.
Unfortunately, they’re right. Most people think about only what the media want them to think about. Everyone has developed a position on Ferguson, ISIS and gay marriage. This week, everyone has a position on a policeman’s confrontation with a black girl in a bikini at a pool party in Texas.
But no one is supposed to have an opinion about who gets to live, collect government benefits and vote in this country.
[. . .]



(Always look for “Man” in the headline to find the most appalling stories about immigrants.)
[. . .]
Democrats only need to keep it going until they have California-style majorities in every state, and then they’ll say, “Screw you, America. We did this deliberately, and now there’s nothing you can do about it.”
That’s exactly what the Labour government of Tony Blair did — as we found out in 2009. In public, Blair’s government claimed that the mass immigration of the Third World to Britain was absolutely crucial to the economy!
Once they were out of office, Blair adviser Andrew Neather admitted that their real objective had been “to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date,” as the London Telegraph reported in 2009.
[. . .]



If necessary, political and media elites will call you a “racist” for opposing their mass immigration policies. But they’d really rather that you just not find out what they’re doing to the country.
http://humanevents.com/2015/06/10/immigration-hey-look-a-cop-yelling-at-a-black-girl-in-a-bikini/?utm_source=coulterdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Immigration — Hey, Look! A Cop Yelling at a Black Girl in a Bikini!

Ann Coulter

Wednesday Jun 10, 2015 3:48 PM

In Order To Pass The Bill Congressmen Cannot Read It, If They Read It They'll Vote Against

[From article]
Mr. Magaziner was the brains behind the Clintons' failed attempt to take over one sixth of the U.S. economy in 1994.  As has been noted, HillaryCare did not pass with a Democratic majority in 1994 because those elected members of Congress actually read the bill Mr. Magaziner helped to write.  The reason why a Democratic Congress passed ObamaCare in 2010 is because Democrats didn't read it!  "We have to pass the bill," Speaker Pelosi assured them, "so that you can find out what is in it."  Right.  Take this medicine now – only then look at the WARNING label.
Mr. Magaziner has maintained a rather low public profile since.  But The New York Times found him ensconced at the Clinton Foundation.
[. . .]
[Bill Clinton] confiding in aides that despite Mr. Magaziner's managerial weaknesses, he was a visionary with good intentions. The former president, according to one person who knows them both, "thinks Ira is brilliant — and brilliant people get away with a lot in Clinton world."
Actually, brilliant people – like Ira Magaziner, like Jon Gruber, like Bill and Hillary, like Barack Obama himself – get away with a lot in Liberal Land.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/11/if_you_like_jon_gruber_just_remember_ira_magaziner.html

November 21, 2014
If you like Jon Gruber, just remember Ira Magaziner!
By Ken Blackwell

Fraud of No Voter Fraud

[From article]
One of the biggest voter frauds may be the idea promoted by Attorney General Eric Holder and others that there is no voter fraud, that laws requiring voters to have a photo identification are just attempts to suppress black voting.
Reporter John Fund has written three books on voter fraud and a recent survey by Old Dominion University indicates that there are more than a million registered voters who are not citizens, and who therefore are not legally entitled to vote.
[. . .]
One of these frauds involved sending out absentee ballots to people who had never asked for them. Then a political operator would show up -- uninvited -- the day the ballots arrived and "help" the voter to fill them out. Sometimes the intruders simply took the ballots, filled them out and forged the signatures of the voters.
These were illegal votes for Democrats, which may well be why Eric Holder sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil.
[. . .]
Veteran Democrat Congressman Charlie Rangel from Harlem declared that Republicans "don't disagree -- they hate!" According to Rangel, "Some of them believe that slavery isn't over and that they won the Civil War!"
Republicans did win the Civil War. That's why there is no more slavery. It was a Republican president who issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a Republican-controlled Congress that voted for the 13th Amendment, outlawing slavery.

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2014/11/04/voter-fraud-and-voter-id-n1913619

Voter Fraud and Voter I.D.
Thomas Sowell
Nov 04, 2014

Black DC Official Promotes Racist Voting

Eleanor Holmes Norton, Doesn't Like White People

[From article]
“Here you have the mostly white police force in a mostly black community. But I'm perplexed about why most of the elected officials are white as well. Is there something about the way elections are done in Missouri or in the county? That's troublesome,” Washington, D.C.’s non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives, told host Jose Diaz Balart.
“Usually when you get a minority community or a community that becomes mostly minority, you get some diversity of representation,” Holmes Norton So you may have an elected leadership, as well as a police force, that does not feel that they are truly representative of the community and that's poison,” she added.
According to Holmes Norton, the black community needs to get involved and make sure they elect people who represent them.
“Hey, black community! You see what happens when you don't have your own elected officials out there, people who have had experiences similar to your own. I don't understand that. Again, there may be something about the way the elections are conducted in that county. But if I were in that community, the first thing I would be doing is organize voters to go to the polls in November.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/08/19/Holmes-Norton-Is-There-Something-About-the-Way-Elections-Are-Done-in-Missouri?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=breitbarttv

HOLMES NORTON: 'IS THERE SOMETHING ABOUT THE WAY ELECTIONS ARE DONE IN MISSOURI?'
on BREITBART TV 19 Aug 2014

NC Finds Substantial Vote Fraud in 2012

[From article]

The review found that 35,570 North Carolina voters from 2012 shared the same first names, last names, and dates of birth with individuals who voted in other states. Another 765 Tar Heel State residents who voted in 2012 had the the same names, birthdays, and final four digits of a Social Security number as voters elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the election board’s executive director, Kim Westbrook, told lawmakers that 81 deceased North Carolinians apparently voted in 2012 as well. While some appear to have submitted absentee ballots prior to their death, she said “there are between 40 and 50 who had died at a time that that’s not possible.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/374882/nc-state-board-finds-more-35k-incidents-double-voting-2012-andrew-johnson

N.C. State Board Finds More than 35K Incidents of ‘Double Voting’ in 2012
By Andrew Johnson
April 2, 2014 5:59 PM
National Review

Increasing Voter Turnout In Cambridge

Increasing Voter Turnout In Cambridge

Former Mayor of Cambridge laments low voter participation. (Denise Simmons, "COLUMN: The importance of civic engagement on local level," Cambridge Chronicle, Mar 19, 2013) She recommends lowering the legal voting age to 16. Why not  allow 5-year-olds to vote? Would toddlers be less informed than other Cambridge voters? Banning white heterosexual men would increase voting. This would make it easier to elect women, homosexuals and persons of color who are victims of white male voter suppression.

Eliminate residency requirements for voting. The City Council supports unions in California. Union members in California will help elect them. City Council opposes white racism in South Africa. Allow South Africans to vote in city elections too. 

City Council supports The People of El Salvador. Allow disenfranchised peasants of El Salvador, to vote in city elections too. Guatemalans have little effect on their leaders. If they vote in Cambridge elections they may be able to effect some change in their country.

City Council has 11 sister cities. All of their residents should be eligible to vote in  City elections. The people of former State Rep. Jarrett Barrios' sister's hometown, Cien Fuegos could vote to secede from Cuba and become neighborhood ten of Cambridge. 

An easier way to increase voter turnout is to allow anyone to vote who wants to vote. No requirements. Make voting mandatory. If people do not vote take their driver's licenses away. Not having a driver's license in Massachusetts does not  prevent anyone from driving. Why should living in Cambridge be a requirement for voting?  

Too many laws were written by dead white males, probably Republicans. Oh? Did I explain the importance of banning Republicans? Not a problem. There are few of them now, not being allowed to rent or purchase property in the city. Make voting for Democrats mandatory too. 

Cambridge City government is intensely interested in what voters think. Evidence includes when the City Council approved a major zoning change without any public hearings. The City Council hired a new City Manager with no public hearings. See!

One secret why few people vote in City Council elections is that Councilors are prohibited by state law from interacting directly with any City Manager appointed employee. The penalty for violation of that law is removal from office. So how much power do City Councilors have? Not very much.

Can voters vote for City Manager? The City Manager does not listen to the City Council. Why should the Council listen to the voters? It sounds like a great situation comedy.

http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/x1959359535/COLUMN-The-importance-of-civic-engagement-on-local-level#axzz2O2BiKMFn

COLUMN: The importance of civic engagement on local level
By Denise Simmons/GUEST COMMENTARY
Wicked Local Cambridge
Posted Mar 19, 2013 @ 02:04 PM