Obama voters are more generous.

Dallas Fort Worth giving and voting patterns in 2008
(Right-click & hit "open link" to enlarge and/or print.)



On 9-17-12, on the front page of the Dallas Morning News Business Section, the larger map above of the DFW area was printed.  Inserted into it by zip code were the giving levels according to 2008 tax returns.  The darker green areas are thoses areas giving the highest percentage of their income to charity. This map can be found online at http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20120916-dallas-fort-worth-giving-trends-show-surprises.ece .

The smaller inserted map is of the 2008 presidential election returns for the same DFW area. This copy of those 2008 election returns comes from http://gregsopinion.com/?p=7131.  Notice the correlation between high rates of giving and voting for President Obama.

Generosity was not a quality mentioned by the other presidential candidate as he spoke of what he called "the 47%" who will "always" vote for President Obama.  He described them in his view as people "... dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them."  Generosity was not mentioned. He needs to see the above graphic.

Texas Plan H283, House Redistricting Plan declared discriminatory 8-28-12

Following is a chart made from demographic data on Plan H283, as approved by the 2011 Texas Legislature, that can be found at http://www.tlc.state.tx.us/redist/redist.htm. 


Texas House District Plan H283 Declared Illegal 8-28-12
(Right-click on above image and click "open link" to enlarge and/or print.)

The information about Anglo non-Hispanic population percentages in each of the 150 House districts created was collected as well as the Minority population percentages in each district. A count was then made as to how many Anglo districts, and then how many Minority districts, were in the 0 to 4% range, the 5% to 9% range, the 10% to 14% range, and so on up to 99%. This shows which ethnic group has the most favorable percentages for winning an election without "wasting" too many votes and which group has the worst percentages where their votes are more likely to be unable to elect a candidate of their choice. (This presumes voters are more likely to vote together as either Anglos or Minorities as a group. If that were not true, why does this redistricting plan have a very definite pattern among racial lines? What are these map makers telling us they expect to happen?)





Below is the list used to make the above chart.  It was made using the PlanH283 data linked from the right hand column on the page at http://www.tlc.state.tx.us/redist/redist.htm.

Demographic Data from House PlanH283, used to make above chart
(Right-click and hit "open link" to enlarge and/or print.)



 On 8-28-12 when PlanH283, the above House district map, was declared discriminatory, the other two maps, one for the Senate and one for Congress, were also declared illegal due to discrimination.  Reports on those maps have also been done.  The report on Congressional Map, PlanC185, can be seen at http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/2012/08/texas-congressional-redistricting-plan.html   The report on the Texas Senate Map, PlanS148r, can be seen at http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/2012/09/texas-senate-redistricting-plan-s148r.html



Texas Plan S148r, Senate Redistricting Plan, declared discriminatory 8-28-12

Anatomy of Texas Senate Redistricting Plan S148r
(Right-click on above image and hit "open link" to enlarge and/or print.)

The above anatomy demonstrates the gerrymandering patterns that led to this map and two others from Texas being declared illegal and discriminatory by Federal Courts in Washington on 8-28-12.

Making Dallas Early Voting Work, 10-22-12 to 11-2-12

Dallas Early Voting begins 10-22-12 and ends 11-2-12, before the 11-6-12 election.  This year for the first time there will be 3,500 Dallas County Election Department Early Voting signs with arrows on them to use in helping the public locate early voting locations.   The plan is to place about 10 of them at each major intersection within 2 miles of each early voting location and then have a trail of identical signs leading the way to the election location.  Just follow the arrows!  An experiment on this in 2010 led to an increase of 40% in the number of early votes cast at the location tested.

Here is a link to the Dallas County Elections site with the locations, times, and other details given for early voting.

National Voter Registration Day is 9-25-12.  The last day to register in time for this election is 10-9-12.  You can go to the National Voter Registration Day web site to find details about registration in your area, or to help in voter registration efforts for the future of our nation.

Google & political lies

The volume of lies this political season is overwhelming, especially online. They seem to almost always be made in support of Republican candidates. I wondered if the way I was set up online and in Facebook was simply directing all such anti-Republican postings toward me. Are not lies being associated with the Democrats just as frequently? Research was done to see how often the possessive form of the party name was followed by the word "lie" online. The chart below is the result. Corrections are welcomed! bbetzen@aol.com

Google study of terms related to political lies
(Right-click and hit "open link" to enlarge and/or print.)

It appears that the art of the political lie for political gain may have been perfected during the time of Karl Rove at the turn of the century, developed through examples such as the Swift Boat exercises, and is now used with abandon.  It appears to be dominating political dialogue. Is our democracy in danger if the public cannot be educated as to how to verify facts?  Or will this method of winning votes ultimately be exposed to the general public for what it really is before we endure another decade like the last one?  Lies contributed to the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, and trillions of dollars, dollars that are now part of the debt we are leaving our children.

Trust but verify! This is a brilliant phrase often used by President Reagan.  We all must follow his advice with all political statements being made in this exceptionally dangerous time.  We must not have another decade like the last one.

Texas Plan C185, Congressional Redistricting Plan, declared illegal 8-28-12

Below is an anatomy of the Texas Congressional Redistricting PlanC185 that was declared intentionally discriminatory by the courts on 8-28-12.  

Anatomy of Texas Congressional Map Plan C185 decleared discriminatory
(Right-click and hit "open link" to enlarge and/or print.)



PlanC185 was originally thrown out by local Texas courts soon after it was created and was replaced by those courts with Planc235, which is not much better. The Texas Attorney General appealed that ruling and the 8-28-12 decision was the result. See details and links to a copy of the 154 page ruling in this linked Dallas Morning News article on this decision.

As you study the above chart note that the demographic group percentages are relatively evenly distributed between the high percentage of 86% and the low percentage of 13%, except for a gap of over 12 percentage points!  That gap tells the story of gerrymandering.

It is a gap that for the Anglo percentages is between 31.7% and 44.4%.  No group would want to be in this "Maximum Loss" range. Sadly that is a range of percentages that are occupied by 15 Minority districts, but not a single Anglo district.  That same gap translates to a gap between 55.6% and 68.3% for the Minority districts with not a single Minority district with percentages in this "Maximum Win" gap.  However there are 15 Anglo districts with those percentages.  Do you think this happened by chance? By accident?

Is this really 2012?

Hopefully in the next redistricting in Texas in 2020 citizens will be able to go online and build their own Texas redistricting plans.  As the public becomes more aware of the power in redistricting they will no longer allow maps such as PlanC185 to even be considered.  Yesterday's decision was a strong step forward.  Texas also needs a replacement for PlanC235 which is the current Congressional redistricting plan we are working under.  It is almost as bad as PlanC185.  See a similar anatomy of Plan C235 at http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/2012/03/gerrymandered-texas-congressional-map.html .

Reasons for Hispanic lawsuit against Dallas City Council

It was very good news to read of the lawsuit being filed by voters against the Dallas City Council redistricting plan approved by the Council on October 5, 2011.  The map created by that redistricting plan continues a long Dallas tradition of denying equal representation to minority communities in Dallas.  With this approved map it is very hard, if not impossible, to explain how the Hispanic Community was not the primary target.  The approved map analysis by city staff clearly shows it only has 4 districts in which the voting age population (VAP) is over 50% Hispanic.  

On 9-24-11 the Dallas City Council Redistricting Commission was considering a total of 11 different maps and eight of those maps each had five districts with Hispanic voting age populations above 50%.  See the details for each of these 11 maps on a chart at http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/2011/09/dallas-city-council-redistricting-maps.html .  Please note that in one of those maps, wPlan03c submitted by Rawlings, the weakest of the five Hispanic majority districts was 57.6% voting age Hispanic!  On 10-5-11 the meeting began with 5 maps still in consideration, including the wPlan03c map, and only two of those 5 maps did not have 5 majority Hispanic VAP districts: http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/2011/10/october-5-2011-final-city-council.html .

That same map also had the strongest three Black districts, stronger than any other map considered, with an average Black percentage of 63.07%.  In the Approved City Council Map this percentage was only 56.9%, and there were only 3 Black majority districts, contrary to what at least one TV reporter said this evening.  Also, the Wplan03c map was the only map with two "minority opportunity districts" increasing the potential for a Dallas City Council with 10 minority members!  No other map so strongly increased the potential for 71% (10) of the 14 council members to be minorities, just as the 71% of Dallas are minorities!

The wPlan03c map submitted by Rawlings was also the map with the most compact districts with an average destrict perimeter of only 32.64 miles.  The approved map was significantly gerrymandered leading to an average perimeter of 35.60 miles.  This means there are 41.44 more miles of boundary lines in the gerrymandered, but approved, City Council map.  More details about the wPlanc03 map are linked from the same page linked above: http://www.dallascityhall.com/redistricting/planReview.html   The WPlanc03 Rawlings map is the 8th map listed on that page.

The problems with the finally approved map were summarized in a letter to the editor posted on 10-9-11: http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/2011/10/letter-to-editor.html, and in a second letter just published on 8-5-12 at http://letterstotheeditorblog.dallasnews.com/2012/08/its-time-to-change-dallas-voting-landscape.html/ .

In any redistricting plan every resident must be counted, citizen, adult, child, non-citizen.  Everyone is counted!  That is the law.  People complain that the ability to vote should somehow be used in drawing the lines. While there are many estimates as to how many eligible voters are in each district, they are only estimates.  It is only at the voting booth that the real determination can be made. Until then the total population is the only population factor that should be used in drawing district lines.  The numbers for each district must be within a 10 percentage point range, generally no more than 5 percentage points above or below the target population of 14th the Dallas City Population.

There was a time in history when some claim gerrymandering was used in Dallas to maximize minority representation.  Those days are past, if they ever existed.  Gerrymandering was certainly used to confuse and discourage voter participation, as that is the most consistent effect.  With the approved City Council Redistricting Map it is obvious gerrymandering continues to be used in attempts to fragment the Dallas minority community, now 71% of Dallas population.  It must be stopped. The future of Dallas rests with everyone voting and being counted in compact city council districts.