After Court Rejects Discriminatory Redistricting Plan, New Texas Map Creates Four Additional Minority-Friendly Districts

By Scott Keyes posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Nov 23, 2011 at 9:44 pm

After a federal court threw out Texas Republicans’ redistricting map this month because it discriminated against minorities, a three-judge panel today released a new map that will significantly boost minority representation in Congress.

Though the Republican-controlled Texas legislature was originally tasked with drawing the state’s new congressional districts, the map they produced was not only highly-partisan, but discriminated against the state’s burgeoning minority population. Texas, which is one of a handful of states that must get federal approval under the Voting Rights Act for new redistricting maps, saw its proposal nixed by the District Court of DC two weeks ago. As a result, three federal judges in San Antonio were charged with creating a new map for next year’s elections.

Their proposal today is far more equitable for Texas’ growing minority population, particularly Latinos. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund praised the new plan, calling it an “important victory for Latinos in Texas.” It creates a new “Latino opportunity district” in South Texas (TX-35) where Latino voters won’t be disenfranchised or split up, but rather enabled to elect a candidate of their choosing. In total, four new districts will boost minority representation.

Given the Texas’ Latino surge, it’s no surprise that the original map was thrown out in favor one that was fairer to minorities. Over the past decade, two-thirds of Texas’ population growth has been Latinos, while blacks accounted for another 22 percent. Whites increased by just four percent since 2000.

This population boom earned Texas four new congressional seats, the largest gain of any state. Currently, Republicans enjoy a 23-9 advantage among Texas’ 32 seats, but redistricting analyst Charles Kuffner did a thorough examination of the new districts and predicted that after the dust settles next year, Democrats would gain four seats. The Houston Chronicle, meanwhile, predicted a possible three-seat pickup for Democrats.

Interested parties have until Friday to comment on the court’s proposed map. Kuffner predicts the map “will be finalized by Monday the 28th, which is the opening of filing season, though I hear that could possibly get pushed back a day.”

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Economy

This Thanksgiving, Many Who Once Donated To Food Banks Are Asking For Help Themselves

By Marie Diamond posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Nov 23, 2011 at 6:30 pm

While some eager shoppers are preparing to wait in long lines when their favorite stores open on Black Friday, many Americans are already lining up at food banks, simply hoping to put food on the table this Thanksgiving.

In a heartbreaking report, CBS chronicles the plight of “America’s new poor” — many of whom used to be the very people who donated to food banks. But with millions out of work, foreclosure rates still high, and the country’s economic outlook as bleak as ever, yesterday’s givers have become today’s takers.

Take Forsyth County, near Atlanta. Despite having the highest average household income in Georgia, hundreds of these “newly-needy” file into local food banks:

“People lost their jobs and went from great incomes to no incomes,” said Sandy Beaver [who] leads The Place, Forsyth County’s biggest non-profit center for social services. She calls those who visit The Place “the new poor.” The Place’s main mission: Feed the hungry. [...]

“Many of our people who have come for assistance used to be our donors. And they’ll say, ‘I never thought I’d have to do this, never in my wildest dreams.’” [...]

People like these married retirees in their 70s, too embarrassed to appear on camera…They retired comfortably in their early 50s. But now, after bad investments, a ruined portfolio, and costly medical issues, they qualify for food stamps – and could lose the house.

“Taking the food was really tough,” the woman said. “The hard part was, we used to give it, and now I’m taking it back, you know?” she said, crying.

At one Forsyth high school, 8 percent of kids now get free lunch, double the number three years ago. And unfortunately, the situation Forsyth is not unusual. One in six Americans — 49 million people — isn’t sure where their next meal will come from. A record 15 percent of Americans are now receiving food stamps — a jump of about two-thirds since 2007.

Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, who are returning from combat to face higher unemployment rates than nearly any other group, are also struggling to get by. Raymond Price, an Afghanistan vet, says “All I want is a job. I don’t really want anybody’s handouts.” But with a family to feed, he came by a food bank last week for a box of non-perishables.

This holiday season, please consider donating to a local food bank. You can find one nearby or donate online through the Feeding America website. You can also give to Operation Homefront, a group that provides assistance to military families.

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Health

Gingrich-Endorsed Health Care Expert Don Berwick Forced To Resign As A Result Of GOP Filibuster

By Igor Volsky posted from ThinkProgress Health on Nov 23, 2011 at 5:08 pm

This afternoon, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) chief Don Berwick announced that he would resign next week, following strong Republican opposition to his recess appointment and slim chances of winning Senate confirmation for a full term. The former pediatrician and Harvard professor — who has spent his career developing ways to improve care quality — came under intense criticism from Republicans for praising the British health care system and suggesting that the government should play a larger role in controlling health care spending.

Berwick’s resignation is not a reflection on his performance. He has overseen crucial initial reforms and established a vision that will help the agency — and his replacement Marilyn Tavenner — move forward in implementing the reform. But Republicans lined up against him in order to rally their base and shift the conversation from job creation to tearing down Obama’s signature accomplishment during an election year. Their criticism had less to do with concerns about “rationing” of care and more with preventing the Affordable Care Act from succeeding in lowering health care spending.

After all, it was the current Republican presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich who in 2000 and then again in his 2006 book “Saving Lives & Saving Money” praised Berwick for his passionate belief that quality-care focused systems improve health outcomes and reduce health care spending — and many other conservatives (including former Bush health officials) shared and espoused this vision. From Gingrich’s 2000 editorial:

The Veterans Administration’s Palo Alto Health Care System is creating a computerized patient medical record system. The new Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago was designed from its conception to be a safer, more accurate and more electronic facility. Don Berwick at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement has worked for years to spread the word that the same systematic approach to quality control that has worked so well in manufacturing could create a dramatically safer, less expensive and more effective system of health and health care.

Berwick fell to the right’s hyper politicization of health care reform and his decision to step down serves as another example of Republicans turning their backs on their own ideas in order to attack the president and his health care law.

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Justice

Asked 7 Times To Explain Romney’s Immigration Plan, Adviser Concedes It’s To Make Immigrant Lives Unbearable

By Amanda Peterson Beadle posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Nov 23, 2011 at 3:40 pm

During last night’s national security debate, emerging GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich explained that he would support giving undocumented immigrants legal status without offering citizenship. “If you’ve been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grandkids, you’ve been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don’t think we’re going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out,” he said.

Former frontrunner Mitt Romney’s campaign immediately saw a chance to present their candidate as the anti-immigrant candidate to an increasingly nativist GOP electorate. After the debate, Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom said Gingrich was setting up a plan to offer amnesty to undocumented immigrants like the 1986 amnesty act. But while attacking Gingrich for supposedly supporting amnesty, Fehrnstrom couldn’t explain what Romney’s plan would be — beyond creating a hostile environment, that is:

I followed up by asking Fehrnstrom whether Romney believed in deporting those immigrants who are already here illegally.

“He doesn’t believe in granting them amnesty,” Fehrnstrom responded. [...]

Finally, after I asked the question for a seventh time, Fehrnstrom responded by emphasizing employer enforcement as a way to get illegal immigrants to leave through attrition.

“Well, if you cut off their employment, if they can’t get work, if they can’t get benefits like in state tuition, they will leave,” he said. [...]

Just to be clear, I wanted to know about those that still could remain under such a scenario.

“I just answered your question Phil, and you keep hectoring me about it,” he snapped. “You turn off the magnets, no in state tuition, no benefits of any kind, no employment. You put in place an employment verification system with penalties for employers that hire illegals, that will shut off access to the job market, and they will self retreat.They will go to their native countries.”

Surprisingly, this is actually a significant move to the left for Romney. In 2008, Romney actually suggested that he could support mass deportations so long as undocumented immigrants with deep roots in this United States are given “enough time to organize their affairs and go home.” Nevertheless, Romney’s newest position still aligns him very closely with the far right. At the end of the day, Romney’s immigration plan boils down to the Alabama plan under HB 56: create conditions so terrible that they’d have to leave.

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NEWS FLASH

Romney Tells Iowa Audience: ‘I’m Not Trying To Put Money In People’s Pockets’ | Part of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R) plan to boost economic growth, he says, is a tax cut that comes in the form of repealing certain taxes on investments for the middle class. As ThinkProgress has noted, however, those cuts won’t actually benefit most middle-class individuals. Romney may now be aware of that fact, as he told one local resident in Des Moines, Iowa today that he isn’t “trying to put money in people’s pockets. That’s the other party.” Watch it:

Despite what he says, Romney is indeed trying “to reduce the tax burden…that’s paid by the top one percent.” His tax plan, in fact, gives a $6.6 billion tax cut to corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

Economy

The Average Bush Tax Cut For The 1 Percent This Year Will Be Greater Than The Average Income Of The Other 99 Percent

By Pat Garofalo posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Nov 23, 2011 at 2:26 pm

As Occupy Wall Street protestors continue to demonstrate across the country, congress’ fiscal super committee failed to craft a deficit reduction package due to Republican refusal to consider tax increases on the super wealthy. In fact, the only package that the GOP officially submitted to the committee included lowering the top tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, even as new research shows that the optimal top tax rate is closer to 70 percent.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who co-chaired the super committee, explained that the major sticking point during negotiations with the GOP was what to do with the Bush tax cuts. With that in mind, the National Priorities Project points out that those tax cuts this year will give the richest 1 percent of Americans a bigger tax cut than the other 99 percent will receive in average income:

The average Bush tax cut in 2011 for a taxpayer in the richest one percent is greater than the average income of the other 99 percent ($66,384 compared to $58,506).

“The super committee failed to grapple with the extraordinarily costly Bush tax cuts for the richest—tax policies that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, cost more in added federal debt than they add in additional economic activity,” explained Jo Comerford, NPP’s Executive Director. Frank Knapp, vice chairman of the American Sustainable Business Council, added in a statement yesterday, “the high-end Bush tax cuts are a big part of the problem – not the solution…It’s obscene to keep slashing infrastructure and services for everybody on Main Street to keep up tax giveaways for millionaires and multinational corporations.”

The Bush tax cuts have done nothing but blow up the federal debt and hand billions in tax breaks to the Americans who needed them least. As a reminder, past grand bargains when it came to the budget included substantial new revenues, to balance the pain of getting the country’s budget in order. Instead of adopting that approach, the GOP wants to continue lavishing tax breaks onto the 1 percent, while asking everyone else to sacrifice.

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NEWS FLASH

Thanksgiving Will Cost 13 Percent More This Year Than Last | According to the latest data from the American Farm Bureau Federation, a Thanksgiving meal complete with turkey will cost 13 percent more in 2011 than it did in 2010. The organization estimates that “a classic meal for 10 will cost $49.20 on average. That is $5.73 more than last year’s $43.47 average.” The meal still costs less than $5 per person, but the 13 percent increase was the largest increase in 20 years.

Media

News Corp. Under Investigation For Attempting To Bribe An Australian Senator With Favorable Coverage

By Scott Keyes on Nov 23, 2011 at 1:23 pm

For months, News Corp. has been embroiled in controversy after it was revealed that the worldwide media conglomerate hacked the phones of more than 5,800 people. The scandal widened earlier this month when a reporter for the Sun newspaper, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., was arrested on charges of bribing a police officer.

Murdoch’s company sustained another major blow today as police revealed they are investigating News Corp. for attempting to bribe a former Australian senator into voting for favorable legislation. The charge stems back to 1998, when Senator Bill O’Chee was approached by an “unnamed executive of News Ltd” and promised favorable treatment by the media conglomerate’s numerous outlets if the conservative lawmaker voted against proposed digital TV legislation. The AP has more:

The newspapers reported that an unnamed executive of News Ltd asked O’Chee during a lunch on 13 June 1998 to vote against his conservative government’s legislation on the creation of digital TV in Australia. The news group stood to profit from the legislation failing. [...]

O’Chee, a former senator for the state of Queensland with a track record of voting against his National party’s wishes, alleged the executive told him that while voting against the digital TV legislation would be criticised, “we will take care of you”.

The executive “also told me we would have a ‘special relationship’, where I would have editorial support from News Corp’s newspapers, not only with respect to the … legislation but for ‘any other issues’ too,” O’Chee reportedly told police in his statement.

Murdoch, who was born in Australia, “has a near monopolistic control of the media in many major cities,” notes Joe Romm. His media empire includes the largest Australian newspaper – The Australian – as well as “the sole dailies in Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart and Darwin and the most popular metropolitan dailies in Sydney and Melbourne.”

Today’s bribery charges, which are punishable by up to six months in prison, underscore how pervasive the culture of corruption has been at News Corp. for years. From Australia to the United Kingdom to the United States, major ethical breaches appear to have been the norm, rather than the exception, at Murdoch’s media conglomerate.

Despite the seemingly-endless parade of scandals, Murdoch and his sons were reelected to News Corp.’s board last month.

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Special Topic

Wall Street’s Recession Cost 1.5 Million Times More Than The Cost Of Securing Occupy Protests

By Zaid Jilani and Brad Johnson posted from ThinkProgress Special Topic on Nov 23, 2011 at 12:25 pm

Wall Street cost America much more than protesting Wall Street has.

Today, the Associated Press (AP) has a story where it estimates the costs of police securing for the various ongoing protest occupations across the country. The AP roughly estimates that these occupations over two months in eighteen major cities cost taxpayers $13 million. Right-wing media outlets are already using this number to claim that the protests are too costly to maintain.

But the AP piece does not provide the neccessary context to put this number into perspective. $13 million for policing of ongoing protests all over the country for two months is not a particularly large sum. For example, the 2004 Republican National Committee protests, which lasted for a single week and took place in a single location, cost $50 million to secure. A small tea party rally in November 2010 that attracted only a few dozen people cost $14,000, paid for by official congressional money.

The cost of securing these protests against economic inequality and political corruption also pales in comparison to one large figure: the wealth destroyed by Wall Street’s recession. The recession caused by Wall Street’s misdeeds destroyed $50 trillion of wealth globally by 2009, $20 trillion of that wealth in the United States alone. ThinkProgress has assembled the following chart to visualize these comparative costs:

Additionally, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost $13 million every 40 minutes this year, and the multibillionaire magnate Koch Brothers increase their wealth by $13 million every eleven hours.

None of this invalidates a discussion about the costs of securing the protests, but it does put it in context. Additionally, if the Associated Press wants to probe the costs of the demonstrations, it might also ask why police are using such expensive and heavy-handed tactics against demonstrators.

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LGBT

Social Conservatives Hold Covert Meeting To Stop Romney

By Alex Seitz-Wald posted from ThinkProgress LGBT on Nov 23, 2011 at 11:30 am

It’s no secret that social conservatives are not thrilled about the prospect of Mitt Romney winning the Republican presidential nomination, but what is a secret is the meeting key leaders of the movement in Iowa held this week to prevent that prospect from becoming a reality. Representatives for leading social conservative groups met covertly in Iowa Monday with the hope of choosing an alternative candidate that social conservatives could unite behind, CNN reports:

The meeting, the group’s first, took place in a private office building in Des Moines on Monday. In attendance were representatives from the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, The Family Leader, the group Iowa Right to Life, and a representative for the Iowa chapter of Concerned Women for America. Some pastors from prominent Iowa churches also attended the meeting. [...]

Sources say there were about 20 to 25 people present at the meeting and that another meeting is planned for Monday of next week.

The problems for Romney here are obvious. Romney used to be staunchly pro-choice, saying, for example, when he ran for governor of Massachusetts, “I sustain and support [Roe v. Wade], and the right of a woman to make that choice.” And while Romney now vows to restrict a woman’s right to choose if elected, the specifics of his anti-choice positions are unclear, as he has refused to take a position on key issues. He’s also been relatively progressive on gay rights, saying just this week, “I favor gay rights.” And Romney’s Mormon faith could pose problems as well, as a recent Pew survey noted that a majority of white evangelical protestants do not view the religion as Christian.

In their search for an alternative, attendees at the Iowa meeting disqualified Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) because of his libertarian leanings on social issues, and also dimissed Herman Cain because of a “lack of consistency on issues of sanctity of life and marriage” and “some concern he’s maybe not quite experienced enough in civics.”

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Romney: ‘I'm Not Trying To Put Money In People's Pockets'

Avg Bush Tax Cut For Top 1% > Avg Salary For 99%

Wall Street Cost America Way More Than Protesting Wall Street Has