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Random Thoughts
By lindamuralidharan on 2019-03-22 06:35:04
Not really random. I am writing disparate comments on many issues being discussed in public these days. For example,
there is the issue of gerrymandering. My main point is that it is not simple as a phenomenon or as something that can be
easily fixed. One of the cable pundit shows interviewed some highly sophisticated black women voters in Ohio. They were
asserting that the interviewer may want to view Ohio as a purple state or as a swing state, but on the ground it functions like
ared state. They pointed to many examples of voter suppression and gerrymandering of districts in the state to benefit
largely Republicans. Beyond the issue of how some people are going to try to overcome that disadvantage and get more
Democrats elected there, is the role of gerrymandering in American politics across the board. Even though Republicans
have been more successful than Democrats in gerrymandering districts in many states to their advantage, it is something
both parties indulge in. And sometimes it has positive effects on bringing marginalized groups into the election process. It
needs to be looked at in all its complexities as reform is pursued. I personally believe that we would benefit from more
states with neutral bodies doing the redistricting rather than, as is the usual case where legislatures do it, state by state.
Democratic officials and Republican officials often collude to benefit each while leaving out the best interests of the public.
Acommittee or commission that would be seen as nonpartisan could look at all the angles and try to have the most rational
and democratic plan possible. Another topic involves the dreadful effort by the Trump administration in the person Of
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to add a question about citizenship to the upcoming census. [caption
id="attachment_12288" align="aligncenter" width="600"]
Wilbur Ross in
Congress[/caption] Not only is it a naked grab to control the outcome of the census.....the lower the numbers of immigrants
who fill out the form the lower the numbers of humans that will be attributed to census tracts. That will affect all kinds of
things: voting districts, Federal grant moneys and the like. If the question about citizenship is on the form, there will be both
exaggerated fears as well as to some extent well founded fears that an undocumented person will be visited by ICE if their
name and address are on record. Consequently many will not fill out the form at all and will not be counted. The
Constitution requires that"persons" be counted, not status. The worst of it however is that Commerce Secretary Wilbur
Ross lied about it when questioned. He claimed the Department of Justice asked for it. That is patently untrue. This is a
political strategy being imposed for the benefit of one party by a supposedly neutral branch of government. The
Republicans like those areas with greater numbers of the poor to be undercounted because poor citizens likely vote
Democratic and because the smaller the population the less in Federal aid will be provided to that district. I comment
particularly on the repugnant image of that man openly lying on TV. Ask yourself, even before Ross showed his true colors
for all the country to see, what made you think a very rich man such as he would govern for the benefit of the poor, or even
for the benefit of us ordinary hard working folk? True there is the rare rich person who pays some attention to real
governing of all the people: the Kennedys, John Kerry, FDR, Nelson Rockefeller, come to mind. Not that any were perfect
or that I would agree with them on all their policies, but they gave relatively frequent attention to the population as a whole.
I make the point about Ross because so many of the appointees in this administration have had little to offer other than some
kind of success in the private sectors, inheritance of money (See Donald Trump Junior, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner,
among others), or the ability to be a particular kind of "yes" man or woman to President Trump. Well, I get pretty tired of my
one particular friend and many in the right wing movement who bash government without any balance or nuance. Let me
try. As they say, quoting their hero Ronald Reagan, "government is the problem". In a very bad series of events here in
Hawaii it is true, one area of government has failed the people and violated the rights of an untold number of people. It
seems that for some time a surprising number of people (not known exactly; 9, 14, 54?) have been kept in jail past their
release time. The inmates were not sophisticated enough to calculate their exact time...nowadays we have made sentencing
unnecessarily complex. Nobody in the system informed the inmates of the snafu, and then one day each of the inmates were
told they could leave. [caption id="attachment_12289" align="alignleft" width="410"]
CTY Prison Overcrowding - Iron bars imprison two inmates
in each cell in the maximum control holding unit at the Oahu Community Correctional Center. This is one of the oldest
sections of OCCC. Star-Bulletin photo by Dean Sensui. 26 September 2003.[/caption] Some served an extra few days, others
were there months too long - even up to a year. The source of the problem is not fully known. Did the state of Hawaii have
across the board bad record keeping? Did it have incompetent people designing and keeping track of sentencing? How
much of the sloppiness and then failure to inform inmates comes from bias? We don't have big time overt racial issues here
but some in one group do resent persons in another group. Quite a lot of Polynesians from Hawaii, Caucasians, members of
Asian groups, etc., are prejudiced against the Polynesian subgroups know as Micronesians. And Polynesians as a whole
make up a disproportionate group within the inmate population. Also we cannot discount the corrections officers having a
known tendency to look down on and disrespect people in their charge. People convicted of crimes. Also, the famous
Stanford University project showed that you and I, ordinary, presumably mentally healthy persons would become oppressors
if given the role of guards while others among us were given the roles of prisoners in a mock prison setting. Clearly that
human tendency carries over into real life. [caption id="attachment_12290" align="alignleft" width="600"]
= Hawaii State Prison at
Halawa[/caption] The public has a right to expect the CO"s and prison officials in general to accurately and humanely
supervise not only day to day operations of the facility but to provide accurate records for each and every inmate.
Government is failing in this regard, and only because of the free press and some help from certain nonprofits charged with
investigating and exposing human rights abuses is this issue now being addressed to some extent. The same issue was
involved in the local and national scandal of thousands of unexamined rape kits. With exposure and public outcry, a dent
has been made in this backlog and some convictions have been obtained.. [caption id="attachment_12291" align="alignleft"
width="600" Ja Oahu
Community Correctional Center[/caption] Now let's look a minute at private enterprise failure. We are all familiar with the
case of the tobacco industry. Now we have the current apparent callousness and failure to protect the public in a timely
fashion on the part of Boeing and the new model planes that have had two horrible crashes and any number of near misses.
The fault in these cases was similar and known to have an available technical fix which has been delayed while Boeing
officials pretended their planes were not a crash risk. Profit was the issue....grounding planes for fixes costs money. And, of
course, people are looking at the close relationship between the President and the head of Boeing and fact that the President
only this week filled the vacancy of the office of the head of the FAA. Since we don't get to elect CEO's and other corporate
executives holding the likes of a Boeing president or a high tech owner/executive to task for abusing employees or
customers or both, the process is even more complicated. We can vote legislators and governors out of office if they don't
correct problems. However recent court filings and media exposure have pressured businesses like Facebook to make some
changes. Public pressure has some effect. In more extreme cases, of course, boycotts of the firms goods or services force
certain kinds of change. Here in Hawaii we have also had new exposure of a case that is a mix of government and private
enterprise wrong doing. Some decades ago a man founded an engineering firm that grew very big with contracts with many
Hawaiian state offices and with governments in other countries including in Micronesia. The son of the founder of Lyon
Engineering is going to jail now for 5 years for having bribed government officials to get many of the contracts. Some are
currently being cancelled, but we do not yet have the names of any officials here or in Micronesia who collaborated.
Investigations by the US federal government continue. This is a recent correction: we do know that Master Halbert, a
highly placed government official in the Federated States of Micronesia is entering a plea deal for accepting soliciting and
accepting bribes involving Lyon Engineering. See additional data in the comment section. [caption id="attachment_12293"
=
align="alignright" width="300"] state agency just cancelled contract with
Lion Engineering in wake of current scandal[/caption] Despite the claims of the doctrinaire conservatives, it is often possible
with exposure and public outcry to hold government employees accountable. After our false missile alert last year in
Hawaii, a handful of government employees either lost their jobs or were demoted. It usually takes publicity and then public
pressure to get culprits exposed and held accountable. The criminal justice system can be useful if actual crimes have been
committed but there are many ways businesses function unethically at times, and their bad practices are not necessarily
violating any law. I will add that free enterprise has totally failed to provide sufficient housing for Americans, but
government is way too slow in using tax dollars and various forms of creative financing to build or renovate affordable
housing stock. Government does need to be a significant part of the solution. There are many places where homelessness is
an acute problem, and gentrification of various kinds has a lot to do with this. [caption id="attachment_12292"
Ease 3 —|
align="alignleft" width="600"}
low income, affordable housing[/caption] Shortly after my recent post discussing some meaningful definitions of
"socialism", George Will published a column with a disrespectful definition of his own. Much as I like George Will as one
of the more eloquent and even ethical ultraconservative pundits, I thought this was beneath him. He vaguely described
socialism as some kind of fantasy concept wherein everyone would "feel good". And otherwise smart TV hosts were
demanding a litmus tests about free enterprise from certain Democratic presidential hopefuls. It still is a terribly hard thing
for the public dialogue in America to acknowledge that we have a socialist approach to funding our military, our schools,
and our highways. And yet we benefit greatly....at the same time and in the same country....from capitalists who start local
beauty salons, fast food restaurants, solar energy companies, airlines, and so on. I think it's about time we forgot about
purist definitions and just debated the merits of any given project or policy without labels and name calling. [caption
id="attachment_12287" align="alignright" width="1024"]
Kerala tea plantations[/caption] Meanwhile, I have learned since my post talking about different governmental and
economic systems that again, right now, the state of Kerala in India has an elected Communist government running that
state.
