Thread: Lines Drawn Over Census Results

Lines drawn over census results

By Kristi Keck, CNN
February 26, 2010 10:50 a.m. EST

Census employees encourage particiaption in the 2010 census.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
2010 census determines number of congressional districts per state
If the number of districts a state has changes, lines must be redrawn
Lawmakers have been accused of drawing districts in order to create political gains
Top concern should be counting everyone, former Census Bureau director says

(CNN) -- President Obama recently encouraged Americans to "take about 10 minutes to answer 10 questions" and fill out their 2010 census form.

This year's questionnaire is one of the shortest in history, but the results of the survey have long-term effects.

The census, taken every 10 years, is used to determine how to allocate more than $400 billion in federal funds and seats House of Representatives and determine the boundaries of representatives' districts.

"There is no representative democracy without it. It's the scientific, nonpartisan, apolitical starting point of what eventually becomes a quite partisan, political process," said Kenneth Prewitt, a professor at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs and the former director of the United States Census Bureau.

The House is made up of 435 congressional seats that represent relatively equal slices of the population. When data from the census show a shift in population, seats in the House get reassigned. Some states might pick up a seat or two, while others are forced to combine two districts into one.

The process of apportioning seats is straightforward, but redistricting is much more complicated. Districts are supposed to be redrawn to reflect population changes and to make sure there is equal representation in the House.

Video: Why redraw districts?
Video: Redrawing the lines
Video: Florida Gerrymandering

State legislators and governors typically draw the districts, but some states rely on restricting committees. Districts can affect the balance of power in the House and representation in the state legislature.

"People try to do things that are to their political advantage if they happen to be in power because maybe the next time the census comes out, the other party will be in power," said William Frey, a demographer and senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.

Lawmakers have been accused of carving district lines around the constituents that will give their party an advantage and secure political gains.

The process is known as gerrymandering, a term coined after Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry. Elected in 1810, he signed an obscure redistricting bill that enabled greater and perhaps disproportionate Republican representation in the Massachusetts legislature.

Related: Who was Elbridge Gerry?

Critics say gerrymandering gives those in power an unfair advantage and can dilute the power of minority groups.

The Supreme Court in 2006 took up a case looking at a redistricting plan promoted by then-U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

After the 2000 census, a state court redrew the Texas map with input from state lawmakers. But after Republicans gained control of the legislature in 2002, DeLay promoted a second redistricting proposal for congressional boundaries.

The Texas legislature adopted the plan in 2003 after three contentious special sessions called by Republican Gov. Rick Perry. The legislative plan led to the 2004 ouster of four Democratic incumbents from Congress and sparked a bitter partisan battle.

The court ruled that the redistricting plan unfairly weakened the voting strength of Latinos in two congressional districts and tossed out a portion of the congressional map, but found the overall redistricting plan engineered by state Republicans acceptable.

Prewitt said the redrawing of lines to the benefit of one party or the neglect of other is just a part of the political process.

"The production of the statistics has got to be nonpolitical ... but the use of the statistics can be as political as the country wants it to be," he said.

"I expect people to try to take advantage of situations to advance their political goals, interests, values -- so it's healthy. Now, do I think overtime creating districts so incumbents are always re-elected is the healthiest way to have a democracy? No," Prewitt said, adding that it's up to the voters to decide whether they want to throw someone out of office.

The more pressing issue for Prewitt is making sure everyone is counted because he said those who aren't counted will be treated unfairly in the political process and in the allocation of economic benefits.

With more than 300 million people in the United States, it can be difficult to make sure than everyone is counted. Frey said calculating the homeless population and the population of those who do not speak English can be particularly challenging.

Illegal immigrants, for example, sometimes opt not to turn in census forms for fear of legal ramifications. Those fears, however, are unwarranted because the information is confidential.

"The challenge that they have is a cost challenge," said Frey. The Census Bureau has to follow up with those who don't send in their forms with additional forms, telephone calls and even in-person visits -- and that adds up, he said.

This year's census is projected to cost more than $14 billion. Prewitt said it's comparatively easy to count the first 75 to 85 percent, but the last 2 to 3 percent is "really, really tough going."

As the census gets underway, Prewitt said trying to count everyone, as mandated by the Constitution, should be the top concern.

"I'm much more concerned about trying to have a fair census than I am about some drawing of odd lines after the census is over," he said.

CNN's David Ariosto and Bill Mears contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/26/ ... l?hpt=Sbin

Links within the original are available by clicking on the source link above.

Funny, isn't it, how this administration picks and chooses which parts of the Constitution to honor and enforce?

Critics say gerrymandering gives those in power an unfair advantage and can dilute the power of minority groups.

Except for Luis Gutierrez' district, which is the very definition of gerrymandering.

Yeah, they (the inside the beltway crowd) have been berry pickin' the Constitution for decades. If they benefit from it, they use it. If they don't, they just flatly ignore it, or attack it as unworkable.

But one must also look to a little published, little spoken of, Senate Report. Senate Report 93-549 states:

"A majority of the people of the United States have lived all of their lives under emergency rule. For 40 years [now 66 years], freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency. The problem of how a constitutional democracy reacts to great crises, however, far antedates the Great Depression. As a philosophical issue, its origins reach back to the Greek city-states and the Roman Republic. And, in the United States, actions taken by the Government in times of great crises have - from, at least, the Civil War - in important ways, shaped the present phenomenon of a permanent state of national emergency."

http://www.barefootsworld.net/war_ep.html

"Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency. In fact, there are now in effect four presidentially proclaimed states of national emergency: In addition to the national emergency declared by President Roosevelt in 1933, there are also the national emergency proclaimed by President Truman on December 16, 1950, during the Korean conflict, and the states of national emergency declared by President Nixon on March 23, 1970, and August 15, 1971.

These proclamations give force to 470 provisions of Federal law [hundreds more since 1973, particularly in the Clinton administration since Jan 21, 1993]. These hundreds of statutes delegate to the President extraordinary powers, ordinarily exercised by the Congress, which affect the lives of American citizens in a host of all-encompassing manners. This vast range of powers, taken together, confer enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal Constitutional processes.

Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize property; organize and control the means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communication; regulate the operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens."

When the Southern states walked out of Congress on March 27, 1861, the quorum to conduct business under the Constitution was lost. The only votes that Congress could lawfully take, under Parliamentary Law, were those to set the time to reconvene, take a vote to get a quorum, and vote to adjourn and set a date, time, and place to reconvene at a later time, but instead, Congress abandoned the House and Senate without setting a date to reconvene. Under the parliamentary law of Congress, when this happened, Congress became sine die (pronounced see-na dee-a; literally "without day") and thus when Congress adjourned sine die, it ceased to exist as a lawful deliberative body, and the only lawful, constitutional power that could declare war was no longer lawful, or in session.

The Southern states, by virtue of their secession from the Union, also ceased to exist sine die, and some state legislatures in the Northern bloc also adjourned sine die, and thus, all the states which were parties to creating the Constitution ceased to exist. President Lincoln executed the first executive order written by any President on April 15, 1861, Executive Order 1, and the nation has been ruled by the President under executive order ever since. When Congress eventually did reconvene, it was reconvened under the military authority of the Commander-in-Chief and not by Rules of Order for Parliamentary bodies or by Constitutional Law; placing the American people under martial rule ever since that national emergency declared by President Lincoln. The Constitution for the United States of America temporarily ceased to be the law of the land, and the President, Congress, and the Courts unlawfully presumed that they were free to remake the nation in their own image, whereas, lawfully, no constitutional provisions were in place which afforded power to any of the actions which were taken which presumed to place the nation under the new form of control.

President Lincoln knew that he had no authority to issue any executive order, and thus he commissioned General Orders No. 100 (April 24, 1863) as a special field code to govern his actions under martial law and which justified the seizure of power, which extended the laws of the District of Columbia, and which fictionally implemented the provisions of Article I, Section 8, Clauses 17-18 of the Constitution beyond the boundaries of Washington, D.C. and into the several states. General Orders No. 100, also called the Lieber Instructions and the Lieber Code, extended The Laws of War and International Law onto American soil, and the United States government became the presumed conqueror of the people and the land.

Martial rule was kept secret and has never ended, the nation has been ruled under Military Law by the Commander of Chief of that military; the President, under his assumed executive powers and according to his executive orders. Constitutional law under the original Constitution is enforced only as a matter of keeping the public peace under the provisions of General Orders No. 100 under martial rule. Under Martial Law, title is a mere fiction, since all property belongs to the military except for that property which the Commander-in-Chief may, in his benevolence, exempt from taxation and seizure and upon which he allows the enemy to reside.

President Lincoln was assassinated before he could complete plans for reestablishing constitutional government in the Southern States and end the martial rule by executive order, and the 14th Article in Amendment to the Constitution created a new citizenship status for the new expanded jurisdiction. New laws for the District of Columbia were established and passed by Congress in 1871, supplanting those established Feb. 27, 1801 and May 3, 1802. The District of Columbia was re-incorporated in 1872, and all states in the Union were reformed as Franchisees of the Federal Corporation so that a new Union of the United States could be created. The key to when the states became Federal Franchisees is related to the date when such states enacted the Field Code in law. The Field Code was a codification of the common law that was adopted first by New York and then by California in 1872, and shortly afterwards the Lieber Code was used to bring the United States into the 1874 Brussels Conference and into the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.

In 1917, the Trading with the Enemy Act (Public Law 65-91, 65th Congress, Session I, Chapters 105, 106, October 6, 1917) was passed and which defined, regulated and punished trading with enemies, who were then required by that act to be licensed by the government to do business. The National Banking System Act (Public Law 73-1, 73rd Congress, Session I, Chapter 1, March 9, 1933), Executive Proclamation 2038 (March 6, 1933), Executive Proclamation 2039 (March 9, 1933), and Executive Orders 6073, 6102, 6111 and 6260 prove that in 1933, the United States Government formed under the executive privilege of the original martial rule went bankrupt, and a new state of national emergency was declared under which United States citizens were named as the enemy to the government and the banking system as per the provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act. The legal system provided for in the Constitution was formally changed in 1938 through the Supreme Court decision in the case of Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 304 US 64, 82 L.Ed. 1188.

On April 25, 1938, the Supreme Court overturned the standing precedents of the prior 150 years concerning "COMMON LAW" in the federal government.


THERE IS NO FEDERAL COMMON LAW, AND CONGRESS HAS NO POWER TO DECLARE SUBSTANTIVE RULES OF COMMON LAW applicable IN A STATE, WHETHER they be LOCAL or GENERAL in their nature, be they COMMERCIAL LAW or a part of LAW OF TORTS." (See: ERIE RAILROAD CO. vs. THOMPKINS, 304 U.S. 64, 82 L. Ed. 118
The significance is that since the Erie Decision, no cases are allowed to be cited that are prior to 1938. There can be no mixing of the old law with the new law. The Common Law is the fountain source of Substantive and Remedial Rights, if not our very Liberties. (See also: Who is Running America?)

In 1945 the United States gave up any remaining national sovereignty when it signed the United Nations Treaty, making all American citizens subject to United Nations jurisdiction. The "constitution" of the United Nations may be compared to that of the old Soviet Union.

Documentation -

Executive Order 1 - http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/proc-1.htm;

General Orders No. 100 (April 24, 1863) "Lieber Code" -
http://www.tufts.edu/departments/fletch ... -CODE.txt;

Senate Report 93-549 (93rd Congress, 1st Session, 1973) -
http://www.barefootsworld.net/war_ep1.html;

The Trading with the Enemy Act (Public Law 65-91, 65th Congress, Session I, Chapters 105, 106, October 6, 1917);

National Banking System Act (Public Law 73-1, 73rd Congress, Session I, Chapter 1, March 9, 1933);

Executive Proclamation 2038 (March 6, 1933); Executive Proclamation 2039 (March 9, 1933);

Executive Orders 6073, 6102, 6111 and 6260;

Title 12 USC, Section 95a - http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/12/95.html;

Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 304 US 64, 82 L.Ed. 1188;

and the United Nations Treaty.

All documentation is available through your local government document repository library branch or at the Library of Congress.

Observations - Arguments which suggest that the Treaty of Paris of 1783 was not a lawful or legal treaty of peace between warring nations and that the American Colonies never really attained or obtained lawful or legal sovereignty, must also presume, by their own argument, that the Constitution for the united States of America and the Bill of Rights were never organic documents of true lawful or legal standing.

Conclusion - The Constitution for the united States of America and the Bill of Rights are no longer in effect in their original form or where they conflict with the United Nations Treaty and other international agreements. Citizens of the several States of the Union who were formerly sovereigns protected by the common law are now United States citizens and are thus subjects to International Admiralty jurisdiction.

http://www.barefootsworld.net/war_ep.html

So behind closed doors in the dark of night, in the little dark corners, fungus has grown. The busy little eager beavers have worked behind the backs or through deceptive measures to empower themselves, and enslave the people. We are all now in effect slaves to the DC Plantation, reguardless of race, creed , or color.

But as long as the people wish to sleep, or remain fearful of getting involved, they will win.