The most recent year for reported year-round earnings data available for full-time workers revealed the gender earnings gap to be 20 percent between men and women or said a different way women earned 20 percent less than men (Hegewisch 2018).

The earnings gap between women and men has been measured (in the past) by taking a snapshot of both genders who have worked fulltime year-round and in a given year. Reviewing a 15-year period from 2001 through 2015, The Institute for Women’s Policy Research examined the different labor force experiences of women and men. The report “The Slowly Narrowing Gender Wage Gap” showed 28 percent of women and 59 percent of men worked consistently full-time, year-round between 2001 and 2015.

In previous reports, it has been stated women earn 80 cents to every dollar a man would make which understates the pay inequality issue for women. Looking only to full time women labor leaves many of them out of the picture when compared to men. Some of the highlights coming out of this study:

• “Women today earn just 49 cents to the typical men’s dollar, much less than the 80 cents usually reported.” Total earnings are measured across a 15-year period for all workers, not just full time workers, and who have worked at least one year. Earnings for women were 49% of the earnings for men in 2015. Over the 15-year period, progress or gains in salary for women versus men has slowed when compared to the previous 30 years.

• “The cost of taking time off from the labor force is high.” Women taking one year off from work resulted in annual earnings 39% less than women who worked the 15-year period. When compared to a 15-year period starting in 1968 the 2001 through 2015 period saw a 12% decrease in pay. Men were also penalized; but, it was not to the same degree as women much of the time.

• “Strengthening women’s labor force attachment is critical to narrowing the gender wage gap.” At nearly twice the rate of men, 43% of women had at least one year off with no earnings over the last 50 years. Polices such as paid family and medical leave and affordable child care can help woman participation rate improve and men to share unpaid time off.

• “Enforcement of equal employment opportunities and Title IX in education is critical to narrowing the wage gap.” Enforcement would assist women in gaining access to those higher paying fields which are now off-limits and has been for decades.

Expanding policies and programs to other parts of the country beyond what a few states have done or adopting national policies could help close the comprehensive, long-term earnings gap in the United States and equalize women’s pay with men’s across the lifetime.

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Persuasive Case of Voter Fraud and Republicans Do Not Care North Carolina: The first public indication things were not right in Bladen County occurred weeks ago. The North Carolina State Board of Elections did not certify the results of the closely watched 9th Congressional District race. Republican Mark Harris appeared to defeat Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes.

Atlantic Staff Writer: David A. Graham “A congressional race in North Carolina suggests that the likeliest threats to the integrity of elections are not the ones GOP lawmakers are addressing.”

Documents released by the NCSBE on Tuesday revealed a political-consulting firm contractor for the Harris campaign had requested almost 600 absentee ballots in Bladen County. According to reporters and in sworn affidavits, Dowless had a team of workers going around collecting absentee ballots from voters, a violation of state law. The affidavits also allege, the Harris campaign workers helped to complete ballots for voters, another violation of the law.

Both Bladen and Robeson Counties had an unusually high number of unreturned absentee ballots indicating they were collected by someone and never turned in. It is unclear to the extent whether these workers were aware they were breaking the law. Harris’s campaign says he was unaware of any illegal activity. The Harris campaign and Red Dome consulting firm, Red Dome received NCSBE subpoenas.

Dowless was hired to get the vote out, and he got results. More absentee votes came in by mail from Bladen County than any other county in the 9th district. Bladen was also the only county in the district where Harris beat McCready in mail-in votes. even though the district’s party registration leans Democratic.

Republicans Stymie Democrats in After the Election Wisconsin: In the early-morning hours Wednesday, Republicans in majority control of the Wisconsin legislature carried out their plan to neuter the Democrats who were elected to office in November.

In party-line votes, Republicans passed legislation to limit the ability of the incoming governor (Tony Evers) and the new attorney general, (Josh Kaul), to deliver on their campaign promises of protecting the ACA, expanding infrastructure spending, and overhauling the state’s economic-development agency. The Republican legislature scaled back early voting in Wisconsin. They shifted power from the state’s executive branch to be administered by Democrats in January back to the Republican legislature.

In Lame Duck session, Republicans did all this over the protests of demonstrators who swarmed Madison and those of Democrats. Republicans did little to dispute what Democrats called a power grab.

In both North Carolina and Wisconsin, let alone Georgia and Florida; the battle over voting and aftermath election practices is still going on today. More on Michigan.

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“On my wall, the colors on the maps are running”

Two years ago in a post entitled “Those who cannot see must feel”, I wrote:

The midterms were less than three weeks ago. Today Russia blocked the Kerch Strait, entrance to the Sea of Azov, effectively cutting off one of Ukraine’s ports. Ukraine says its navy is leaving port.

Between now and the end of 2019 is the most dangerous time, because any potential U.S. Foe will want to have any aggressive move be a fair accompli by the time the 2020 U.S. Elections are underway, let alone by the time a replacement for Trump can be inaugurated.
Good luck to us all.
[UPDATE: In case you’ve never heard it, here’s a link to the song.]

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I have had enough court time to last a life time. While mine was not fun and it was a battle, this I find hilarious. It is a well placed shot across the bow of someone who believes they are impervious to society, the courts, and morality.

The census case arrived in front of Manhattan District Federal Judge Furman requesting that he delay proceedings. Calling it the ‘latest and strangest effort’ in its crusade to delay proceedings in the case. He said what made the request ‘most puzzling, if not sanctionable’ is that the Trump administration had made a similar request before the trial started, and had been rejected by not only the district court judge, but by an appeals court and the Supreme Court.

Furman pointed out, “when the Supreme Court announced last week it was taking up the case, “it knew that this Court had completed trial, and it presumably expected that the Court would enter final judgment before the date that it set for oral argument.”

Bashing the administration for taking its request to an appeals court before he had a chance to rule on it. The appeals court again denied that request as premature.

“If Defendants’ motion in this Court comes close to the sanctionable line, that filing would sure seem to cross it,” Furman wrote in his order.”

Other quotable quotes?

– “Unless burdening Plaintiffs and the federal courts with make-work is a feature of Defendants’ litigation strategy, as opposed to a bug, it is hard to see the point. To borrow from Camus, “[o]ne must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

– “Tellingly, this time, Defendants do not even attempt to argue that they are entitled to the extraordinary relief of a stay of all proceedings under the traditional factors…In fact, the words ‘harm” and ‘injury’ do not appear anywhere in their motion. That is for good reason, as the notion that they — or anyone else — would suffer ‘irreparable harm’ without a stay is laughable.”

– “Defendants’ motion makes so little sense, even on its own terms, that it is hard to understand as anything but an attempt to avoid a timely decision on the merits altogether.

– “Enough is enough.”

State of New York vs US Department of Commerce

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Gerrymandering is not going away any time soon. It will just be used in different manner, a manner in which to achieve congressional districts with a fairer representation of the district’s constituency.

Why won’t gerrymandering go away? The districts are too big at an average of 700,000 people per district. This is the result of Congress freezing the number of Congressional Representatives at 435 in 1929 and reapportioning the districts of each state based upon population every 10 years. The inequality of this methodology can be seen in a comparison between Wyoming with its one Congressional Representative and it population of 586,000 as compared to California and its average size of 700,000 for each Congressional District. If the average was set at 586,000 people per district as Wyoming has, then California would gain 15 more Congressional Representatives.

The Washington Post has an article up on the impact of both unfair gerrymandering and a fairer version of gerrymandering as dictated by the court The later achieves a much fairer split of the districts meant to represent the makeup of the population within the state and their political interests as discovered through national elections.” One state fixed its gerrymandered districts, the other did not.“

The picture depicts the change in numbers of Republicans and Democrats elected to office as determined by the Congressional districts make up. Pennsylvania had its districts redrawn by the court and “a 53 percent majority in the popular vote yielded a hair under half of the contested seats for Democrats — a big difference from 2016, when 48 percent of the vote gave Democrats 27 percent of the seats.”

In North Carolina, the districts were not redrawn. “The old maps were still in place and a electoral result in 2018 was identical to that of 2016. Despite a Democratic wave in which more than half the state’s voters opted for a Democratic House candidate, Democrats won one-quarter of the contested seats.”

Michigan passed Proposal 2 which established a civilian board to redraw the boundaries of the Congressional districts. I suspect it will still have issues as it will be selected by the legislature.

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Senate:

Arizona: “In Arizona’s race for the Senate, two candidates are separated by about 16,000 votes with approximately 75 percent of results in. Republican Rep. Martha McSally was leading her Democratic opponent Rep. Kyrsten Sinema by less than 1 percent in the race to fill outgoing Republican Sen. Jeff Flake’s seat.”

The last I read somewhere, Sinema had over taken McSally and the race was too close to call. This will not throw the Senate into a majority Democrat; but it will narrow the gap just in case a Republican suddenly wants to take the high ground.

Florida: Sen. Bill Nelson is preparing for a recount in a race too close to call against Republican Gov. Rick Scott. Scott held a 0.21 percentage lead over Nelson on Thursday afternoon. Since the results are less than .25 of 1% a recount is mandated under Florida law.

Challenger Rick Scott has filed in court alleging Broward County Supervisors of Election Brenda Snipes on Thursday, asking the court to order Snipes to turn over several records detailing the counting and collection of ballots. Scott’s thin lead over Nelson has narrowed in the vote-counting in the days since he declared victory on Tuesday. Quelle Surprise!

Florida’s phony status as a perennial swing state is reassured again in this election year as it consistently decides important National and State elections with the thinnest of margins and a ton of excuses as to why it happened this way. Since Gore, it still has not brought the voting process under control. As long as it worked for Scott and other Republicans, they were happy. When it starts to slip away from them and their popularity dissipates, they look to the courts to contest alleged violations which were perfectly alright when it favored them.

The irony of Scott and Republican’s anger at Democrats for trying to all the votes counted as Repubs have been suppressing voter turnout in both Florida and Georgia.

Mississippi: Senate candidates in a special election to replace retired Sen. Thad Cochran will go to a runoff at the end of the month because no one candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote. Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith received 41.5 percent of votes and her opponent Democrat Michael Epsy received 40.6 percent. The runoff will take place on Nov. 27.

For Mississippi??? and the race is that close? Unbelievable! Stennis was the last Democrat elected to the Senate for Mississippi. I am not sure I would call him a Democrat. He served from 1949 to 1989.

House

Nearly 20 races for the House remained too close to call, with the outcomes uncertain in states such as California, New York, Georgia, New Jersey and Washington state. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., the chairman of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, said House Democrats were still counting ballots and assessing races too close to call.

California: Some races (6) in California are still up for grabs, including four in the one-time Republican stronghold of Orange County.
Georgia: Republican Reps. Karen Handel and Rob Woodall races remain too close to call as absentee ballots are still being counted. Democrat Lucy McBath, the Democrat challenging Handel, said “this race is far from over.”

Utah: Republican Rep. Mia Love trailed Democratic challenger Ben McAdams. McAdams had a strong showing in his home county of Salt Lake County. Love hoped to flip the deficit by winning a large portion of the votes left to be counted in her stronghold of Utah County. Apparently long polling lines led to slow vote tallies.

Maine: Computer-assisted tabulations under the state’s new voting system will be used to determine the winner of the congressional race between Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin and Democrat Jared Golden. A test of ranked voting methodology, since neither candidate collected a majority of first-place votes under Maine’s ranked-choice voting system (used for the first time Tuesday); the results triggered an additional round of voting. As I understood this from reading the article, other finishers in the four-way race are eliminated and the votes are reallocated.

The allocation process will take place next week. Voter’s second choice will be applied to the candidates and so on till a candidate secures 50+% of the vote.

This should be an interesting test (Fair Vote Org. has been advocating for this).

Governors:

Florida: In the governor’s race, Democrat Andrew Gillum’s campaign said Thursday it is preparing for a recount. Gillum conceded to Republican Ron DeSantis on Tuesday night. The counting has continued and the race has tightened with DeSantis leading Gillum by .47 of 1% percent.

Georgia: Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams’s campaign argued in a press conference today, a recount or runoff is still possible if all the votes in the state are counted. As he did on Wednesday, Republican candidate Brian Kemp can not declare a victory as thousands of votes remain uncounted and unaccepted ballots have been reconciled.

Abrams through her litigation team demanded from Kemp’s office as the office of the secretary of state to release the data on uncounted provisional ballots and military and overseas votes. Kemp’s spokeswoman Candice Broce claimed those votes amount to around 22,000 to 24,000. There also appears to be some discrepancy on early votes being tallied. The belief is and contrary to what Kemp has stated; if all of the remaining votes are counted, there could be enough additional votes for Abrams to trigger an official recount or even a runoff election.

Kemp should have been more careful on eliminating voters. All of the effort, it was not enough, and if he loses; you can bet on a more thorough investigation on voter fraud and civil rights violations by elected officials.

I am sure there are more to be added to this list. Please do so.

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Ian Millhouser correctly denounces not only Trump’s assault on the 14th amendment but also reporters who print absolutely false assertions.

The issue is Trump’s clearly false claim that he can eliminate birthright citizenship by executive order.

In fact “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States … ” – US Constitution Amendment 14.

Millhouser’s post is too good to summarize, click the link.

Importantly he nails The New York Times tweeting the absolutely 100% false assertion that ” It is unclear whether he can do so unilaterally”.

He also catches CNN falsely saying it is “unclear” and NPR falsely claiming it”isn’t settled”.

The FBI has found no clear evidence that they are deliberately undermining the US Constitution and the very idea of Constitutions. In fact (as in the case of the dread New York Times headline) disgracefully printed 2 years + 1 day ago) they consider it safe to assert a negative. The principle that one can’t prove a negative is turned on its head. They assume it is safe to write and say “unclear” and to say “isn’t”.

I absouutely reject the claims that it is unclear whether the reporters who did this shouldn’t be roasted over a slow fire and that it isn’t settled whether the editors who allowed them too shouldn’t be skinned alive.

I just want to add a few comments.

First Millhouser doesn’t waste space noting that Donald Trump has no legislative authority whatsoever. He claims to be able to rewrite the Constitution by executive order. He can’t even rwrite the law. An executive order must be instructions as to how to faithfully execute the law written by Congress.

I think conservatives (if any read angrybearblog) may suspect me of hypocrisy since I never denounced Obama’s executive orders. They would be wrong. Obama (and his hardworking staff) always explained the basis in law and precedent for his orders. Even DAPA and DACA which seemed extreme even to sympathetic observers, were clearly authorized by the Immigrationa and Naturalization Act which grants the executive vast discretion and legally the same as an uncontroversial executive order signed by George H W Bush (not to mention that DACA was uncontroversial when issued). DAPA was blocked by an extremist judge not on the grounds that it went beyond the INA but on the grounds that it wasn’t preceded by a period of public comment as required by some other law (I think it’s called the administrative procedures act).

In contrast Bush’s absurd claim that he could create military commissions by executive order was rejected by a Conservative Supreme Court.

Another minor point — the “subject to the jurisdiction of ” phrase clearly was intended to say that Native Americans who live in territory not claimed by any great power or by the US Government are not US citizens. This is clear from the relevant context in the main body of the Constitution “excluding Indians not taxed” (search for the dread words “three fifths” and scroll left past a comma). The borders of the USA were not clearly defined when the 14th amendment was drafted. There were treaties with Mexico, Russia, and the British Empire which roughly defined approximately the current borders (except for Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa and what’s left of the Norther Marianas Islands after typhoon Yutu). There were also treaties with native American tribes which hadn’t yet been broken which defined a smaller but aggresively expanding country. The 14th amendment said that, for example, people born in Oklahoma are not necessarily US citizens (don’t worry doesn’t apply to the native born president eligible Senator Professor Elisabeth Warren because that treaty was broken sooner than she was born).

By the way, Don Jr, Erik, Ivanka and Barron don’t have to worry that their dad will deprive them of US citizenship. He is, to our everlasting shame, a US citizen who lived in the USA at least 6 years after turning 14, so they are native born US citizens just like Rafael “Ted” Cruz and just as Barack Obama would be even if he had been born in Mombassa.

Finally Millhouser undestated his case again when he wrote

the Fourteenth Amendment’s words are clear, and the Supreme Court settled any lingering doubts over their meaning in its 1898 opinion in Wong Kim Ark.

In fairness, Wong Kim Ark was not a unanimous opinion — it was a 6-2 decision handed down over a dissent from Chief Justice Melville Fuller. In his dissent, Fuller argued that the Fourteenth Amendment secretly contains a missing word. “Born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” he claimed, means that a person was “born or naturalized under such circumstances as to be completely subject to that jurisdiction, that is, as completely as citizens of the United States” (emphasis added). Thus, the child of non-citizens may not be “completely” subject to American jurisdiction because they also may also be “subject” to a “foreign power” — their parents country of origin.

The implications of this dissent are simply breathtaking. Had it become the law — and just in case this point is unclear, a dissenting opinion is, by definition, not the law — Fuller’s dissent would establish that any child of non-citizens, even the child of two lawful permanent residents, would not be a citizen.

In fact, the dissent would imply that Don Jr, Erik, Ivanka, Barron and my daughters are not US citizens because their mothers weren’t at the times of their birth. If any taint of foreigness were poison, than one foreign citizen parent would be enough for exclusion.

But, fortunately, Fuller completely invalid assertion of “completely” was absurd and outvoted 6 to 2.

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A Federal Court cleared the way for students who have been defrauded by for-profit institutions (I hesitate to call them schools).

“This court ruling is a major victory for thousands of students across the country who were defrauded by predatory for-profit colleges taking advantage of our broken student loan system. We commend Attorney General Maura Healey for her leadership fighting for students who were left with thousands of dollars in debt after their for-profit colleges collapsed.

The federal student loan system creates perverse incentives that enable bad actors to prey on students. Without adequate protections for students, these predatory corporations will continue to base their business models on the availability of these loans, with little commitment to providing quality education.”

These Obama-era protections and remedies were being blocked by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss rejected a request by for-profit college representatives to halt the regulations. Even with the win, the answer from the Department of Education is arrogant in response. Student loan servicers do not hesitate a moment to penalize a borrower with penalties and fees if the are late.

“DeVos and conservatives have said the Obama-era policies are unfair to colleges and too costly for taxpayers. She has proposed creating a stricter standard for fraud claims and eliminating the ban on mandatory arbitration agreements.

But DeVos’ push to finalize those revised regulations has hit an unexpected snag that will delay having a replacement policy on the books by another year. The Education Department said it won’t meet a key Nov. 1 regulatory deadline, meaning that the replacement regulations aren’t likely to take effect until July 2020 at the earliest.”

Hopefully the State Attorneys and others can convince the Judge to hold Betsy DeVos in contempt for not activating the court’s requirements in a reasonable amount of time less than 2 years.

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The Susan Collins Excuse

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