California map rigging is the only answer to the GOP’s gerrymandering | Opinion
Blue state map rigging is necessary
“Newsom’s Prop 50 campaign heats up with new ads targeting California voters,” (sacbee.com, Sept. 3)
In a deceptive mailer, right-wing billionaire Charles T. Munger, Jr. accurately described the 2010 ballot measure that delegated the task of Congressional redistricting in California to an Independent Redistricting Commission as a “landmark” election reform that provides “a national model for independent redistricting.”
Munger failed to mention that, while Deep Blue California produced fair maps, over the past 15-years, Republicans elsewhere have utilized extreme partisan gerrymandering to rig Congressional maps. And, in 2022, every Congressional Republican opposed the “For the People Act” which would have mandated that all 50 states utilize California’s “national model for independent redistricting.”
In 2019, the right-wing-dominated U.S. Supreme Court ruled the constitutionality of extreme partisan gerrymandering cannot be challenged in federal court, so “temporary” Blue State map rigging provides the only currently available means to counter GOP map rigging elsewhere — at least until fair Congressional maps are mandated on a national scale.
Ernest Canning
Thousand Oaks
ICE is institutionalizing racial profiling
ICE continues to show their colors — or rather dislike of colors — everywhere they visit, empowered by Trump’s chaotic regime despite resistance from the UFW and ACLU. ICE’s respect for common law, which could once be described as an escalator, has escalated to a tumble down an elevator shaft.
We’ve come to a point so low that armed white men in masks, rather than a court of law, determine who stays and who goes: who’s American and who’s not wanted. In our own state capital, an entire demographic is being ripped out with the help of a rogue executive.
Can a judge’s gavel really bring the nine missing people back, or protect those yet to be targeted? I’m scared to say I don’t know anymore.
One thing, however, remains certain: that if it’s racial profiling that makes America great, then we should thank ICE, for we’re second to none.
Mykola Klymenko
Roseville
Media must call out intolerant language
McClatchy California editorial boards wondered today “What – if anything – Sacramento can do to keep our schools safer from intolerance.”
Your newspapers could make a big contribution by pointing out intolerant language as hate speech and unacceptable, regardless of who is speaking and what group is targeted.
Trump calling immigrants “animals” and “savages” and saying they are “poisoning the blood of America” is hate speech and unacceptable. GOP representatives calling their colleagues “Muslim terrorists” is hate speech and unacceptable. Calling trans people “predators” and “pedophiles” is hate speech and unacceptable.
If you normalize hate speech and abuse against one group, especially by figures of authority like the President, you are giving license to such behavior by anyone, against any group they happen to dislike, including antisemitism in schools.
You have the voice to call out intolerance — it’s way past time to do so.
Laurel Beckett
Davis
Wishy-Washy Kevin Kiley
“Kevin Kiley declines to vote on Epstein probe. Here’s his explanation,” (sacbee.com, Sept. 4)
I just wrote to my congressman, Kevin Kiley and called him a coward.
After listening to the testimony of the women who were abused by Jeffrey Epstein and others when they were mere girls, Kiley voted “Present” when voting to release the Epstein files. He failed to join other Republicans who voted “yes.”
Why? Does he agree with the president, who said the Epstein issue is a hoax?
I want a congressman who is decisive and not wishy-washy. Voting “present” is tantamount to being indecisive and trying to appease both sides.
Rosalie Wohllfromm
Auburn
Supreme Court made poor judgment
Consider what this administration really intends. It is focused at present on anyone who looks Latino, works in a place that might employ Latinos or speaks Spanish, a decision akin to the anti-Jewish edicts of 1930s Nazi Germany affecting anyone even ‘looking’ Jewish. Are arrests of other non-white groups next?
The Supreme Court has made this possible. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark, all Jews were to wear a yellow star on their clothing to mark them as Jewish. Revolted by this, Danish citizens protected their fellow Danes, ultimately evacuating the great majority of Danish Jews to Sweden.
Those of us who are able should consider speaking Spanish in public, especially near law enforcement personnel, to better frame this issue as the outright racist decision by President Trump that it is.
Steven Tracy
Davis