Corporate aka moderate Democrat Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) finally explained why he opposed Joe Biden’s key transformational bill. Since President Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics, the GOP has been squeezing the working- and middle-class dry. At their core, wealthy politicians are caught on a spiked, unconscious belief that the rich are entitled to their wealth, and everyone else is entitled to their lack of wealth. That same belief may underlie the GOP ripping through our states and stealing our freedom through gerrymandering and other devious means. But Dems are fighting back.
President Biden’s Build Back Better bill provides childcare, greater access to education, climate change, eldercare, and a hundred other vital issues. The corporate Democrats and the Republicans feel entitled to take what they want. Manchin is angry, outraged that those without wealth feel as if they deserve “handouts” as much as the wealthy. Along that parallel, the Republicans feel justified stealing the control of America from the “less-deserving” and will play hardball to make it so. Fortunately, there are the courts
The Democracy Docket just announced that those challenging Ohio’s General Assembly’s gerrymandering have filed yet another lawsuit, the third challenge against state Republicans. This latest lawsuit claimed that these new maps “violate the state’s partisan gerrymandering ban.” The new maps have been drawn to disenfranchise “Black and Muslim communities in Ohio:
‘ALERT: Third lawsuit filed challenging Ohio’s General Assembly maps by @OHorganizing, @CAIROhio & @OhioEnviro. The groups claim that the maps violate the state’s partisan gerrymandering ban & weaken the voting power of Black & Muslim communities in OH.‘
Some gerrymandering in other states attempted to entirely eliminate some Democratically-held House seats. The second lawsuit was filed in the Supreme Court of Ohio challenging the state’s newly-drawn state Senate and House maps. A number of Ohio voters argued they violated Article XI of the Ohio Constitution. That article was an amendment passed by a majority of voters in 2015 pushing back on “extreme partisan gerrymandering,” according to Democracy Docket.
These were the points that the lawsuit sought to right:
- The bipartisan Ohio Redistricting Commission did not meet the state’s constitutionally mandated deadlines.
- It did not actively engage with public input.
- The new maps did not accurately reflect the will of Ohio voters.
- They sought to entrench Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature.
- Ohioans favored Republicans 54 percent to 46.
- New maps favored Republicans 64.4 percent of the time, which was a “substantial and consequential deviation from the statewide voter preferences of Ohioans.”
- The maps did not accurately reflect the will of voters of color.
- The new plan “packs and cracks those communities, inhibiting their ability to organize to elect candidates of their choice, and diluting the strength of their votes.”
- The suit asked the court to declare the new maps invalid and order the creation of fair maps.
The second lawsuit filed in the Ohio Supreme Court challenged the new General Assembly maps after the 2020 census data was released. The suit argued that the new maps have been drawn to “lock in Republican veto-proof supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature.” This violated Ohio’s Constitution.
Three White Lions podcast, Gloria Christie reads her week’s most important news/ commentary stories in the liberal online newspaper The Bipartisan Report. Gloria Christie Report her newsletter for people on the go. Written in her own unique style with a twist of humor in a briefer version of Bipartisan Report. Christie’s Mueller Report Adventures In Bite-Sizes a real-life compelling spy mystery. Find her here on Facebook.
