Work in Progress
At this time, the blog's highly paid team of consultants is hard at work trying to upgrade certain blog features, include the advertisements appearing on the blog. (We just wrote a check for $102 to the Lymphoma-Leukemia Society representing the ad revenue over the past seventeen months, so keep clicking on those ads). You will note the temporary absence of these ads and other shortcomings over on the right side of your screen. (These don't show up on smartphones anyway, just on desktop and laptop devices.) This ought to be cleared up in a few weeks. Bear with us.
JL
Diluted
Democracy – Do We Like it that Way?
If
you look at the total number of votes just cast across the nation in filling
the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, the Democrats outpolled the
Republicans by about eight million votes.
And if you look at the total number of votes cast for all the electors
from the states who chose our President in 2016, you will again find the
Democrats outpolling the Republicans by over two and three-quarter million
votes. The way our government is set up
by the Constitution, the odds are stacked against the popular choice. That’s because the Founding Fathers did not
trust the common man. They looked across
the sea and saw the bloody disaster that popular democracy was about to bring
to France. They wanted to make sure that
would never happen here.
The
first safeguard they established was the United States Senate, a very
undemocratic body. Each State sends two
Senators to Washington, elected by popular vote within that state regardless of
its population. (Originaly, until the 17th Amendment took effect in
1913, Senators were picked by State legislators, making it even less democratic.) A third of the Senate is elected every two
years. But despite the Democrats polling
about ten million more than the Republicans in all of the Senatorial votes
nationwide in 2018, the Republicans won more races. In New York, Kirsten Gillibrand won
re-election, receiving almost 3.7 million votes to return her to her seat while
in Wyoming, John Barrasso only needed 136,000 votes to accomplish the same
thing. That’s the undemocratic way the
Senate is elected and little can be done about it other than trying to develop
a majority in each individual State.
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| East Face of the Capitol Building. Senate meets in North wing to right, House in South wing to left. |
The
House is a little bit better. States are
apportioned seats in Congress based on their population. That’s good.
But regardless of the statewide totals for voting for Representatives in
Congress, it takes a majority in each Congressional District to elect a Representative. This is where “gerrymandering” comes in, carving
up the districts geographically to include enough voters of one party to create
majorities in as many districts as possible, even though statewide, that party
may be a minority. The key to
“gerrymandering” is found in State Legislatures which draw up these districts. That’s why the key to control of the House of
Representatives in Washington rests with the folks elected to those more local
legislatures in Atlanta, Augusta, Albany, Austin, Annapolis and such State
capitals. It’s not so bad as it is in
the Senate, but “gerrymandering” has the same effect: it dilutes democracy.
A
quick glance at the Electoral College, which chooses the President reflects the
same thing. Each State has a number of
electoral votes equal to the number of Senators and Representatives it has. That continues the undemocratic role of the
Senate, giving less power to more populous States. It’s ‘winner take all’ in all States except
Maine and Nebraska where only the electors chosen based on the number of House
Represenatives are “winner take all” while the other two electors, based on
their having two Senators, are voted on separately. But this rarely makes a difference in the
outcome.
So,
it is safe to conclude that democracy in these United States is very, very
diluted. That’s the way the writers of
the Constitution wanted it. They didn’t
trust the people. Many in government
today do not either. If we were to
change it, how would you suggest we do it?
Possible
Remedies: Changing the Senate would be
hopeless. We are not going to discard
the Constitution. But some have seen
proportional representation in the House as a partial solution, whereby the
number of seats each Party would win would be determined by the percentage of
votes, statewide, that party received in that State’s Congressional races. For example, in a State with ten
Congressional seats, and in which the Democrats received 60% of the votes, they
would get six Representatives in Congress, possibly the six who received the
most votes in their respective races.
The way it works today, if most of that 60% were centered in a few
carefully “gerrymandered” districts, the Democrats might only get two or three
Representatives in Washington.
As
for the Electoral College, proportional division of the Electoral vote, rather
than “winner take all” is a possible solution, but that would still not fully
negate the undemocratic role that the 100 Electoral votes representing each State’s
two Senators, regardless of that State’s population, contribute to the College.
Jack Lippman
Where Turneth the Worm
An original Short Story retreived from our archives
Anna
Lida lived at the end of the tunnel. She
wasn’t very sure whether she was a boy or a girl but it really didn’t matter,
since all of the others down there were about the same, including her friend,
Eartha. The important thing was to get
enough to eat. Periodically, Anna and
the others would work their way through the tunnel and come out amidst grass
and soil, which contained all kinds of good things, animal, vegetable and
otherwise upon which they could nibble.
Early
on, Anna wondered why she couldn’t move around more easily as the other
creatures she saw who had legs could.
Easy to please though, she was content to accept the explanation that
she and her relatives should be thankful that they had been given the ability
to simply crawl about, and she was more or less satisfied to do just that,
actually enjoying going for a nice wiggle around the yard occasionally.
 |
| Anna? |
One
day a little boy with a small shovel came into the yard and started to dig a
hole very close to the tunnel. Suddenly,
a lot of dirt came tumbling around Anna and the next thing she knew, the boy
had her in his fingers and was putting her in a can with a little water at the
bottom and some other wiggling friends of hers. A few minutes later the boy
pulled Anna out of the can and stuck something sharp through her. Before she knew it, she was at the end of a
length of string being thrown into more water than she could ever imagine
existed. She wiggled, and wiggled and
wiggled but could not get free from the sharp thing. All of a sudden, a little fish swam up and
tried to take a bite of her. It missed
the first time, but had pulled enough on her to pull her loose from the sharp
thing. Anna, feeling much better, and
none the worse for being punctured by the sharp thing, swam away. But her freedom was short-lived. The fish swam after her and caught her
between its teeth and ate her up for dinner.
But
that was only the beginning of Anna’s adventure. The next afternoon, another fish, much, much
bigger than the first one, swam up to the fish which had eaten her up, and in
one gulp, swallowed it whole. Now a
funny thing happened to Anna. Even
though her body had been all chewed up and digested by the little fish which
was now being digested by the big fish, making that fish very happy, she was
well aware of what was happening. Anna
Lida was a smart creature and figured this was going on in the part of her that
was separate from her body.
After
a few days, something strange happened.
A big bird, like the ones she had hidden from when she saw them flying
over the yard, came swooping down over the big water where the big fish lived. Diving straight down, it grasped the fish
into his beak and flew straight up into the air. In a few minutes, it landed on
the branch of a tree where, between two nearby branches, there was a nest of
twigs, grass and dry weeds. In it were
three baby birds. Quickly, the big bird
chewed up the fish and spit out its pieces into the open mouths of the little
baby birds. Even though it had been
several days since Anna had possessed a physical body of her own, she knew what
was happening because the part of her which was separate from her body was
still working.
A
few weeks later, the baby birds, now strong enough to try to fly, left their
mother’s nest. One of them flew over a
field where some men wearing funny clothes, with spots on them to make them
look like bushes, sat with long sticks. When they pointed them, they made a “bang” noise and smoke came out of
one end. One of the men pointed his
stick at the bird, made smoke come out of it, and before the bird even heard
the “bang” sound, it was dead and fell to the ground. Then it started raining very hard and the men went away and left the bird on the ground, where it lay for weeks, slowly rotting away. Anna felt terrible about this, because she had become part of that bird, from the first day its mother had brought the big fish which had swallowed the little fish which had swallowed her back to the nest.
But
a few days later, lo and behold, a bunch of familiar crawling creatures,
relatives of Anna Lida, found what was left of the bird. She recognized Eartha among them. They
nibbled at it until it was all gone.
Anna knew exactly what was happening because she had enjoyed feasts like
that many times before and was very happy that some of the remains of the bird
were now within the tummy of her friend, Eartha. The only problem was that she had no way of
letting her know, once they were back in the tunnel, that their souls were now
merged. But she would figure out how to
do this, some way, some day.
JL
“Widows” Letter
My
letter regarding the movie “Widows,” included in the preceding blog, appeared
in the Palm Beach Post on November 26 for its 80,000 daily readers to see.
JL
My Tenuous G.O.P Connection
Billionaire
and major Republican donor Sheldon Adelson’s mother’s name was Sarah and her
maiden name was Tonkin. She resided in the Boston area and
married Arthur Adelson, a taxi driver, and ran a knitting shop. Although not a terribly common name, there
are Tonkin families in New England, some of which are in the Hartford,
Connecticut area. Sarah Adelson had
three brothers (Morris, Benjamin and Max), whose family names were spelled
either Tonkin or Tonken, and their children would be Sheldon Adelson’s first
cousins.
I
was born a year earlier than Sheldon Adelson in New Jersey. My mother’s maiden name was Saslow, and she
was of the same generation as Sheldon Adelson’s mother. I recall that her mother, my grandmother,
Mollie Saslow, had a sister in Hartford whom we visited on occasion whose name
was Bessie Tonkin, making her my mother’s aunt and my grand aunt. I do not know Bessie’s and Molly’s maiden
name. I can attest by memory or
documentation as to the accuracy of the information provided thus far. From here on in, it gets somewhat hairy,
including the fact that I vaguely recall reading somewhere a while back that
Sheldon Adelson’s parents met in Hartford.
Bessie
Tonkin, my grand aunt, acquired the Tonkin last name by marriage to a Tonkin and
had to have been of the same generation as the parents of Sheldon Adelson’s
mother, Sarah Tonkin Adelson. How many "Tonkins" could there have been in Hartford at the time? Perhaps she
was a sister-in-law or a cousin by marriage to Sheldon Adelson’s grandmother or
grandfather. If she were a sister-in-law to Sheldon Adelson’s grandparents, that
would also mean that my grand aunt Bessie was Sheldon Adelson’s grand aunt by
marriage, making me, two generations later, his second cousin twice removed. A few years ago, I managed to reach Sheldon
Adelson’s secretary in Las Vegas who reported back to me that Sheldon did not
remember having an Aunt Bessie. That is understandable since she actually might
have been his mother’s aunt.
Not
wanting to get involved in the never-ending complexities of genealogical
research, I realize that if Bessie Tonkin were only a cousin of Sarah Tonkin
Adelson’s parents, and not their sister-in-law, it would make the connection
even more remote, relegating me to possible third cousinhood to Sheldon and not
worth investigating further. Too much
time has passed for me to have anyone to contact in Hartford about this, and of
course, please do not ask me to lend you anything. Speak to Sheldon, who might or might not be
my second or third cousin by marriage, twice removed, about that, especially if
you are a Republican contemplating running for political office.
JL
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