By Jim Brown
Jim Brown USA.com

It’s redistricting time for legislators, both in Louisiana and throughout the country. Criticism that decisions are being shaped behind closed doors is raining down on this politically sensitive process. Lawmakers in my home state have scheduled a number of meetings to discuss the process of divvying up the various political boundaries including congressional, public service commission, and their own legislative districts. Many of the sessions are not open to the public. “Wrong!” cry the press and the good government groups. But the question should be, why are legislators meeting at all?

By federal law, all election districts must be reapportioned every 10 years to reflect the latest census figures. This puts Louisiana elections officials in a bind because census figures have just become available that reflect changes over the past ten years, and the state is just months away from a gubernatorial election. But should legislators, who have a vested interest in how the redistricting lines are drawn, actually be the ones to do the drawing, anyway?

The problem is one of gerrymandering, where district lines are not drawn to reflect geographical or political balance, but to favor the incumbent or some other partisan choice. When legislators do the redistricting, the norm seems to be that the state ends up with meandering footprints meticulously designed, it would seem, to ensure that no incumbent will face serious opposition, regardless of how the political winds are blowing. As one local political observer said, “Think about it this way. In elections, people choose their legislators. In reapportionment, legislators choose their people.”

Gerrymandering, by the way, means to manipulate the electoral boundaries for political gain so as to give undue influence to an incumbent or other favored candidate. The name comes from Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, who in 1812 created winding districts that looked like salamanders to favor incumbents. Thus the convoluted word – “gerrymandering.”

What most voters want to avoid is the self-dealing by legislators where voting districts slash across communities of interest and geography. A blatant example of winding, disjointed gerrymandering is the Louisiana third congressional district. It winds from the Mississippi border south of New Orleans though the southern part of Jefferson Parish and all the way through south Louisiana up to Lafayette, some 300 miles in length.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger led an effort in his home state to get legislators out of the redistricting business. “The politicians have divided a neighborhood”, he says. “They have divided cities, towns and people, and this is what we what to eliminate. And this is why we need redistricting, because the district lines were drawn to favor incumbents rather than to favor the voters.”

So the question for Louisiana voters is this: Are they that concerned that the legislature is, for all practical purposes, creating their own voters? Is this healthy in the Bayou State — or in any other state? Many think it’s not.

“The self-dealing quality of legislators drawing districts for themselves or for their partisans has basically collapsed the enterprise,” says Samuel Issacharoff, a law professor who is an expert on redistricting. “There’s an increasing sense of revulsion among voters at this self-dealing. It is somewhat scandalous that there are few competitive elections anymore.”

So what are the alternatives? What are other progressive states doing to transfer the power of redistricting to a system less driven by self-interest? Fourteen states have assigned the task to officials or panels outside the state legislature. And independent redistricting wears the cloak of good-government reform, as long as a consensus can be built on just who will serve on such panels. How do you pick the members? How can such a system be put in place that assures voters the final result will be fair, non-partisan, and keep local interests balanced?

Louisiana and every other state in the country have a number of bright people with solid business and educational backgrounds that are capable of taking on this controversial task. There are several respected demographers in the Bayou state, and a number of well-qualified professors at Louisiana universities. Retired judges fit the category as well as representatives of some of the state’s good government groups.

When I was first elected to the Louisiana legislature back in 1971, legislative redistricting had taken place just months before. But the reapportionment plan did not pass federal court muster, and was thrown out just weeks before the primary election date. Ed Steimel was head of the Public Affairs Research Council at the time, and was appointed by federal judge Frank Polozola to serve as a “special master” to redraw the district lines. Based on Steimel’s rework, the old plan was thrown out and the new court ordered plan put in place. There was general agreement that the Steimel Plan was fair and kept the district more cohesive and less spread out. (It must have been good as I won my senate seat easily in the first primary.)

One idea would be to create a Louisiana Fair Reapportionment Practices Commission made up from a cross section of various recommendations. Let nominations come from the legislature, the Supreme Court, the good government groups like PAR and CABL, the various college boards, and perhaps a key business group or two. Then put all the submissions in a hat, and draw out eleven names to serve as members to begin their work right after the new census data is made available.

The goal for such a commission is simple – put the important issue of redistricting into the hands of those with non-partisan interests, instead of those who in the past have been allowed to define the terms of their own cartel. Simply put, it’s just wrong for legislators to draw these districts and then run in them. There needs to be a better way.

Peace and Justice,

Jim Brown

*****

“If you’re hanging around with nothing to do and the zoo is closed, come over to the legislature. You’ll get the same kind of feeling and you won’t have to pay.” Sen. Dudley LeBlanc

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers and websites throughout the South. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show Jim Brown’s Common Sense each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

A water-cooler show style that is energetic, enthusiastic, in a light, humorous and informative format. Hosted by Tim Mihalsky featuring Ashleigh who delivers Hot-air or Headlines. Stand-up comedians, actors, activists, political figures, reality stars and basically anyone who has some what of a name all stop by to talk with Tim.

Tune in every Wednesday to hear Tina Dupuy, Syndicated columnist and host of her own show on The Young Turks network. Thursday, Lawyer and The Apprentice contestant Nicole Chiu calls in for Nicole Chiu Out. To end the week, Friday comedian Edson Valenzuela offers his Thug of the Week.

The Block airs Monday-Friday from 9:00pm-11:00pm Central Time.
For more information about this program click here

In 2007, Tim Mihalsky started interning for On-Air With Ryan Seacrest. After being the first intern in history to get fired (for not filling out proper paper work) Tim got the radio bug. Starting at a small internet “pay-as-you-go” station, ARN, where Tim created The Block. In passing, Tim met a fellow personality who was launching 92.5 KYHY. July 1 2008 The Block made it’s radio debut. In early 2009, The Block added 1050AM KCAA in Riverside/San Bernardino. After blowing the ratings and call volume of advertisers out of the water, in spring of 2010 Tim moved The Block to it’s current home and flagship, 540AM KRXA Monterey/Santa Cruz.

Some of Tim’s most memorable interviews are Jimmy Fallon, Kourtney Kardashian, Jesse Ventura and Terrell Owens.

In addition to the two-hour daily radio show, you can catch Tim doing stand-up comedy and training at the famous Second City in Los Angeles. Tim has also hosted multiple concerts for artists like “packin’ heat” T.I., The Roots and Damian Marley.

You can find out more about Tim on his website: theblockradio.com/

By W.W. Wallace
Editorial exclusive to GCN Live.com

“The only thing in American culture that is considered to be both good and have rare is a steak.” – Dr. Alan Keyes, presidential candidate in 1996.

For years you have heard it said, “Abortion needs to be kept safe, legal and rare,” however with the recent news of murder indictments of a Philadelphia physician and his staff (multiple charges) gives more evidence to the fact that everything about this statement is false. Legalized abortion, as most lawmakers already know, was manufactured by judicial activism. “The Reproductive Healthcare Movement” created false data and false testimonies to achieve a new unconstitutional legal precedent.

One of the central legal arguments surrounding this act of social re-engineering has been medical safety for elective surgical abortion – both legal and illegal. Once again, history has proven this to be completely false. After 1967-73, most abortionists simply moved out from the back alley onto “main street”, and little has changed to help make surgical abortion any more safe than it was before Roe vs. Wade.

But aside from the medical risks from surgical abortion and the lack of regulation of its providers is the brazen hypocrisy from the reproductive health care movement for women’s safety.

In 1978, the Chicago Sun-Times launched an undercover investigation known as “The Abortion Profiteers” series. By 1983, state legislators had passed laws in Illinois to regulate abortion providers and require them to comply with the same safety regulations that every other out-patient surgical center had to provide for their patients.

After these safety regulations were passed into law, the American Civil Liberties Union (and other activist groups) challenged these regulations all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case known as Turnock vs. Ragsdale (1989).

Unfortunately, this case was never ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court. Within just days before the court was to hear this case, a backroom court settlement (Consent Decree) was struck between the Illinois Attorney General and the ACLU. So after nearly 12 years of effort by the people of the state of Illinois and lawmakers to secure the safety of women’s lives, most of these regulations were simply thrown out, rewritten or placed under the supervision of a self-governing medical board that seldom acts on violations made by physicians.

The reproductive health care movement’s argument was that some of the businesses that provide elective abortion services for their clients could not afford additional costs, so some of these businesses would fail and there might be fewer businesses to provide these services for the poor. Remember, Turnock vs. Ragsdale dealt strictly with businesses that provided surgical abortions; it never brought a legal challenge to abortion itself.

The Ragsdale case never presented a challenge to legal abortion or to overturning Roe vs. Wade.

A central legal premise of Roe vs. Wade/Doe vs. Bolton (companion decision) is medical safety for women. This is the very thing that many in the reproductive health care movement have worked against for years, so that the dark realities of abortion could remain hidden from the general public and go unchecked. In reading from a legal challenge brought against the Illinois Attorney General’s settlement agreement in Ragsdale vs. Turnock, 7th. Dist. U.S. Appellate Court Judge Posner wrote “…a woman who suffers a medical injury as a result of the failure of an abortion clinic to comply with the statute should be able to use the violation to establish medical malpractice…” Sec. 47.

Was this a probable admission by this court, that it was abandoning the law, abandoning the state constitution and abandoning their obligation to protect woman’s safety?

The results of the 7th District Appellate Court ruling and settlement agreement were special exemptions for the abortion profiteers making medical malpractice and medical fraud more difficult to prosecute. We ought to ask radical feminists “how many more women must die from legal abortions in the U.S. before you act to save them? Since 1989 how many women have died or have been physically damaged at the hands of the abortion profiteers?”

One of the greatest media hoaxes of the 20th century is the reproductive health care movement’s concern for social justice & women’s safety.

I’ve been thinking about where this Philadelphia case could be going. Months from now there might be a call put forth to have some type of committee to sit down and work out a solution together. Well, that already happened 32 years ago with the Ragsdale case between Illinois state legislators and the abortion industry – long before any regulations were submitted to lawmakers. The result was that 12 years of the legislative process ended up at the bottom of a dumpster.

As for the exchange process of dialogue to resolution goes, the abortion industrial complex has no vested interest, no quarterly earnings, to suggest that self-imposed regulations would somehow increase their stock shareholders portfolio.

In other words, for anyone to seriously suggest that a corporation would intentionally put forth a plan to decrease their annual profit margin by one-third is anathema in America’s current political and economic climate. The groups that have profited from advocating abortion in the reproductive health care movement have no credibility left to address the safety of women anymore. End of story.

Let’s be clear about this one single issue: since 1989 all of your leaders put themselves on record. Had the Ragsdale case been heard in 1989, women’s lives would have been spared from the many criminal acts of medical malpractice that have plagued the abortion industry for years.

Abortion is not a right. It’s an industry, and non-profit organizations in reproductive health care that profit from government subsidies do so at the expense of women’s health and the many lives that are terminated from elective abortion.

As we consider the issues of women’s reproductive safety, medical malpractice, Medicaid fraud, health care fraud, entitlement fraud, and the hundreds of millions of tax dollars handed over to the reproductive health care movement each year, perhaps we need to be reminding our representatives in Congress to stop giving our money to these criminal enterprises that have such little regard for the law or women’s lives – but are passionate about their Title 10 and Title X funding or the next STD crisis they need to exploit for planet, for profit and oh yes…for the poor.

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W.W. Wallace is a student/writer and commentator on sociological trends, ethics, health and current events affecting our culture.