Rita's Spur to Action

Words from Joyce Vance on the recent Louisiana v Callais Case

“Here’s the perspective part: Sometimes you need to step back, because when you focus only on the trees, you miss the forest. We are seeing a radical, racist transformation of voting maps in many Republican-led states. The larger question we should be asking is: why?

The answer is self-evident, but it’s important that we say it directly. Republicans are afraid they can’t win elections on the merits of their governance and policies. So now, they’ve turned to moving the goalposts, changing the rules for winning elections so they can try to hold onto power nonetheless.

Earlier this week, CNN reported that 77% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, say Trump’s policies have increased their cost of living. His approval rating on the economy stands at just 30%. There’s a reason he keeps overwhelming the public with incompetently conducted wars, belligerent displays of dominance, and aggressive gerrymandering: it’s because the emperor truly has no clothes. And American voters have figured that out.

Georgia’s minority leader, Harold Jones II, put it like this: 

If Republicans ever used their power to help Georgians, they wouldn’t have to waste time and money redrawing the maps every few years to keep their majorities. 

June will be our third redistricting since 2021. Republicans need to undo their last gerrymander because it wasn’t good enough to keep their waffling political party in power. Most parties would try out some new ideas. Republicans choose to strip political power from Black people and undo the progress the South made in the last 60 years.

Let’s sum it up for everybody. The biggest bloc of middle and working class voters are Black people. When Republicans strip Black people’s political power away, it doesn’t just strip one community of power. It strips political power from every single middle and working class person and hands it over to billionaires and big corporations. That’s what redistricting means for you.

That is real wisdom. Republicans have to gerrymander because they can’t win the hearts and minds of enough voters outright. This is the point we should be reinforcing when we talk with friends and family about this race to the bottom. None of this would be necessary if Republicans believed they could win the midterm elections on the merits. But they don’t, and they know it. That’s why we’re seeing all the gamesmanship. That’s why they’re diluting Black voting power. Because they know what the House could look like after November if Americans are allowed to vote in a fair election. That makes our mission pretty clear. We all know what we need to do: vote in record numbers. Vote to hold onto our democracy in the face of people who are only interested in holding onto power.”

Notes:

https://joycevance.substack.com/p/the-redistricting-race-to-the-bottom?utm_source=substack&publication_id=607357&post_id=197597801&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&action=share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo1MDA0NDAzMSwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTk3NTk3ODAxLCJpYXQiOjE3Nzg3MjI3OTMsImV4cCI6MTc4MTMxNDc5MywiaXNzIjoicHViLTYwNzM1NyIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.u6h1dTsmIzpb11FEUC0AgsgUG8p9Q-g9_hJV0NWgAPk&r=tsm7z&triedRedirect=true

It is very evident that America and the world are on the brink of disaster.

It’s hard to know exactly what form this will take.

Probably a third World War, but certainly the breakdown of society as we have known it through the 21st century.

It’s hard to imagine how it would be possible to make character investigation an essential part of a person’s right to run for the congress or the senate.

Our society has gotten so far from where we were.

So far from the hundreds of years of trying to improve our social system.

We have allowed money to take over our society and to create more social divisions than we’ve ever had before.

We have more division between rich and poor, between race, between nationality, between communities.

We are losing our individual rights to speak out in public, to criticize our leaders, and to use tax money that is beneficial to the general weal.

We are even losing our rights to health, education, and welfare.

The American public has got to come to recognize that our government is dumbing down our society all in the interest of the present administration.

A dumbed down society is easier to govern than a well educated one.

Three attempts on Trump’s life have failed. What a pity.

He can’t even hire a good assassin.

After all, John F. Kennedy was cleanly assassinated sitting in a car with a number of other people and he was picked out of the crowd and assassinated.

Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. An attempt was made on Reagan’s life.

Does Trump really believe that the American public is so stupid that they can’t figure out that he is his own assassin?

It is obvious that the latest attempt was a scheme by Trump and his cronies to do away with the congressional roadblocks stopping him from getting his $400 million dollar white house ballroom.

He destroyed the White House without consultation, without support of congress or senate and now should be forced to use the money he has gleaned while president to pay for the reconstruction of the ballroom if he wants it so badly.

No assassination attempt on Trump’s life is going to make Americans like him or his policies any better.

This is a repost, because nothing has changed on the New York streets:

The noise in New York City has become deafening.

There is no reason in this world for people to be allowed to put their hand on the horn of their car and keep it there – beeping away at immovable traffic.

There is no reason in this world for an ambulance to screech down a street when a simple bell sound would let everyone know that an ambulance is on its way to the hospital and that they, in the cars, should move to the sides to let the ambulance pass by.

This is how it is done in Paris, France and other cities in the world.

Recently, an ambulance screeched up 57th street, turned left on Lexington Avenue and came to a screeching halt in front of the pizza parlor.

Between hands on the horns and sirens blaring, this noise has officially become deafening.

It seems as though A.I. could take over the job market creating huge numbers of unemployed men and women in the US, possibly in the rest of the world as well.

This means that vast numbers of human beings will be unemployed.

Maybe this is saying that we need fewer people in the world; starting with America.

So, what do we do to employ these people or do we reduce the population by discouraging the next generation from having children?

In America, the president has already taken away all of the benefits that society had created to support individuals and family in times of need.

He’s demolished them all and at the same time he is encouraging women to stay home and have babies.

Trump is aiming to starve the people of America.

So let A.I. take over. Reduce the population thereby reducing unemployment.

Should we mandate a generation not to have more than one child per family? Perhaps not even one.

The once iconic street of Manhattan has become the victim of locked wooden fencing masking huge empty spaces.

Some of these spaces were beautiful apartment buildings. It may have been 217 Park Avenue where many theater people lived. It was a beautiful building that is now torn down and empty.

However, why not turn the empty spaces into portable parks?

When a building is torn down, it should be the obligation of the builder, until he rebuilds in that space to immediately install a portable park.

All it would require is a certain number of yards of fake grass, a few tables and chairs and umbrellas, some potted trees and maybe some heating lamps in the winter.

As different spaces open up due to construction or demolition the parks would move, which is why they should be called ‘portable parks’.

This letter from Robert Reich says it all. No one could say it better.

“Friends.

I don’t know how better to put this than to say Trump’s threat this morning to “wipe out a whole civilization” of Iran puts America into a new immoral universe. 

He is directly threatening a war crime. And every one of us is complicit in it, in the sense that this threat comes from the President of the United States, threatening to utilize our nation’s military power to exterminate an entire people. 

Regardless of whether Trump follows through on this threat, it needs to be repudiated immediately. No civilized nation threatens to wipe out another civilization. No people, through their head of state, threatens to exterminate another people. No human being vested with official power by human beings threatens to wipe out another part of humanity. 

Those of us who are silent right now — whether we call ourselves Democrats or Republicans, whether we are in the military or are civilians, whether or not we hold public office, whether we like Donald Trump or detest him — must not remain silent. 

It is our responsibility as citizens of this nation to say unambiguously that what Trump is now threatening is truly evil. It’s our responsibility as human beings to demand that Trump repudiate this threat to other human beings. It is our responsibility to call on all other Americans, in whatever capacity, to stand up against this despotic act of pure immorality. 

Write. Phone. Shout. March. Trump has moved beyond indecency into the realm of insanity. This must be stopped.”

Notes:

https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/trump-threatens-a-whole-civilization?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

A city of empty stores looks isolated.

Our New York City is filled with empty storefronts.

Part of the problem is that unless they are specialty stores, they are not particularly viable in this day and age of online shopping.

The other problem is the structure of commercial real estate laws and regulations. We need to change property valuation methods so that landlords cannot inflate their estimated rent, enabling them to receive larger loans from the banks.

This is why you see so many landlords willing to let spaces sit vacant for years rather than lowering rents — it protects their ability to borrow and keeps the property’s book value high.

The fact of the matter is that stores, per se, will never truly come back.

It is up to us, all of us, to rethink the usage of store space.

Can it be related to the affordability of living in the city? On one end of the spectrum, you have all these spaces empty and on the other, the cost of living in the city has made it unaffordable for young people and most working people.

Maybe stores can be turned into affordable living spaces? Or creative spaces for artists?

Let us use our imagination to reincarnate these store spaces and thus to help revive our city.

Source: https://medium.com/@olliecross/why-nyc-storefronts-sit-empty-for-decades-and-its-more-than-a-greedy-landlords-d25749d36eeb

Recently, Trump reported that “ending”wrapping” the war was all in his mind. Well, he better start wrapping. His war has cost Americans billions – add it to the cost of groceries. American children will soon go hungry because of Trump’s failure to end his own pointless war. 

Isn’t there some way a president can be controlled by the Congress and the Senate?

The Supreme Court has exonerated the President from any responsibility for what he does while in office. The people of America have elected a “do-nothing” Congress and Senate. The American public does not recognize that they are paying the salary of the members of the Congress and Senate while they serve in office and for the rest of their lives, as well. Now, rather than being beholden to the American Public who elected them, they are, instead, serving this President who has no regard for the people he is elected to serve. America is destroying itself by creating its own dictatorship, under which we the people have to live.

Notes:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/31/trump-words-iran-war-churchill

“Judge Richard Leon wrote that Trump can’t build the [White House] ballroom without authorization from Congress.” Trump should be forced to use his own funds that he and his family have made while in office to rebuild the portion of the White House that was destroyed by him. If the ballroom needed rebuilding or wasn’t an adequate size, he still should have gone through the Congress and Senate, received authorization and a stipulated sum of money to be spent on the project.

He must, immediately, be ordered to rebuild the White House using his own funds to do so – since he used public funds to demolish it.

Notes:

https://abcnews.com/Politics/federal-judge-orders-halt-white-house-ballroom-construction/story?id=131587116