On supposed gerrymandering in New England

This gem is making the rounds again.  

So let's go over it state by state.  

For starters, the OP's figures on voter percentage are utter nonsense.  I fact-checked the percentages with the secretaries of state offices for the various states to come up with the real numbers.  Some Trumpublicans claim the numbers are based on the vote share for Trump in the 2024 election, but those numbers are wrong too, and in any event they don't matter when it comes to congressional districts.  

Since the OP didn't bother to list the number of districts in each of these states, I did.  

MA. 9 districts. According to the MA Secretary of State, MA voters are only 8% Republican. Massachusetts is so dominated by Democrats that they would have to gerrymander in order to give Republicans a seat.  Plus, MA has an election system that would make gerrymandering extremely difficult to impossible.  MA has a "semi-closed" primary system with election day affiliation, and over 60% of MA voters are unaffiliated with any political party.  

CT. 5 districts. 21% Republican. The state has been losing population and trending Democratic for decades.  With only a little over 1/5 of the electorate registered Republican, they would have to do some heroic gerrymandering to give them 1 district.  

ME. 2 districts. 29.8% Republican. Maine only has 2 congressional districts, so not a lot of opportunity for gerrymandering.  Keep in mind, this is the state that elected Paul LePage, a Republican, as governor twice, each time with a little over a third of the total vote, because more left leaning candidates split the left, and gave him a plurality.  The end result of this was ME enacting a version of ranked choice voting.  Which Republicans keep challenging in court, because they know they can't get a majority with the candidates they currently choose.  

NM. 3 districts. 31.4% Republican. Not much gerrymandering possible.  Republicans are sufficiently spread out in NM that it would take a heroic feat of gerrymandering to give them even one seat.  

NH. 2 districts. 31.9% Republican. Not much gerrymandering possible.  Giving the Republican Party a seat would require gerrymandering one district with a +20 advantage while keeping the populations equal.  Good luck with that.  

RI. 2 districts. 14.3% Republican. Come on, man.  

HI. 2 districts. 38.5% Republican. There is not much gerrymandering possible with only 2 districts.  Further, HI elects both their Representatives at-large, so no gerrymandering is possible.  Though I'm sure some people will claim that the at-large system is a form of gerrymandering in itself.  

DE. 25.3% Republican. Delaware has only 1 congressional district. Come on, man.  

Infrastructure costs in context

When considering the costs of infrastructure people often balk at the number of zeros between the left side of the decimal and the significant digits.  Older people, particularly, tend to think in "Boomer Bucks", which had more value than today's money.  For this reason, it is better to think about the cost of infrastructure compared to Gross Domestic Product.  

Much ink has been splattered over New York City's East Side Access project costing $11 Billion.  But the GDP of the New York Metropolitan area is $2.299 Trillion.  In that context, the East Side Access project is 0.48% of the areas GDP.  If you want to consider it only in the context of New York City, then the GDP is $1.286 Trillion, which makes it 0.855% of The City's GDP.  

Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA GDP is $243.47 Billion as of 2023.  

Hillsborough County GDP is $152 Billion.  

The cost of the proposed light rail and bus expansion for Hillsborough County is around $2.5 Billion.  

Pinellas County GDP is $78.13 Billion.  

We can afford light rail, or at the very least a proper BRT system.  We simply lack the political will to make it happen.  

Remember that this election season.  

A lecture on the philosophy of freedom, by Robert Arnold

These 2 videos are a lecture on the philosophy of the founding of the United States.  Don't let Arnold's Arkansas accent or low production values fool you, he is actually very well educated and very widely read.  

Part 1

https://youtu.be/B8fw_bptDW8

Part 2

https://youtu.be/sAmI-o7sO18

Where was the Republican outrage?

 With the right wing falling all over itself at the murder of right wing activist and influencer Charlie Kirk, I have to ask where they were at the other political violence in the United States during the Trump era?  

Where was the right wing political outrage over the murder of Melissa Hortman and her husband?  And their dog?  

Or the attempted murder of John Hoffman and his wife?  

Or the kidnap and murder plot against Gretchen Whitmer? 

Or the firebombing of PA governor Josh Shapiro's house while his family was inside?  

Or the attack on district judge Esther Salas, which killed her son?  

Or the attack on the CDC?  

Or the January 6th attack on the US Capitol? 

Or, going back a bit further, the attack on Gabrielle Giffords?   

Chicago, Immigration, and Drunk Driving

 The Trump administration is sending federal agents and national guard troops into Chicago,  and elsewhere in the State of Illinois, for a mass deportation event, and doing it in the name of a young mother who was killed by a drunk driver who happened to be an undocumented immigrant.  

OK.  What is the Trump Administration going to do about the 13,000 other deaths attributed to drunk driving every year?   (MADD)  

What is the Trump Administration going to do about the 39,000 other traffic fatalities every year?  (NHTSA)  

What is the Trump Administration going to do about the 7148 pedestrians struck and killed by vehicles?  (GHSA) 

Take a Florida, for instance.  Florida had 85,089 hit and run crashes in 2024, resulting in 205 deaths, 76% of whom were pedestrians or bicyclists.  (FDOT)  In fact, the Tampa Bay region is the deadliest area in the country for pedestrians and bicyclists.  

The vast, overwhelming majority of traffic fatalities in the United States involve citizens.  It's such a ubiquitous problem that it doesn't even make the headlines.  It's just accepted as a fact of life.  It's a roadside memorial that gets turned into a roadside plaque if someone wants to sponsor one.  

If the Trump administration is going to spend hundreds of millions on Illinois rounding up people who had nothing to do with this one crash, and this one tragic traffic death in the name of one person killed in traffic then the Trump administration should put their money where their collective mouth is and do something about the other 39,000 traffic deaths we have every year, and the 13,000 drunk driving deaths, and the 7100 pedestrians killed in traffic every year.  But they won't, because the whole exercise is nothing but a show to endear Trump to his jingoist base. 

Trump on crime.

The cities with the highest homicide rates in America are Birmingham, AL, St. Louis, MO, and Memphis, TN. When is Trump going to send troops there? Instead he is taking troops from those areas and using them to patrol DC, which is number 10 on the list, and threatening Chicago, which is number 22, and New York City, which is number 127. Trump is literally taking troops from areas with high crime and using them to patrol areas with lower crime. This isn't about crime. This is about control. And making Trump look like a tough guy.

EVs and Taxes.

 

Fuel taxes vs. EV taxes.

This is a comparison between the fuel taxes paid by ICE vehicles and the proposed registration fees for EVs.

I have a Chevy Bolt, so I will use that as my baseline.

The bolt has a 3600 pound curb weight. Looking at ICE vehicles on the market around the same weight, I calculated the average fuel economy is 24.7 city, 32 highway, 26.9 combined.

I have a 44 mile daily commute, 5 days per week, 50 weeks per year. That calculates out to 11,000 miles per year for my commute. Add in miscellaneous other driving, and call it 12,000 per year.

The State legislature of Florida is proposing a $200 annual registration fees, and now the federal government is proposing a $500 annual registration fee, for a total of $700 per year in annual registration fees on EVs.

The State of Florida charges 37.325 cents per gallon in fuel tax. The federal government charges 18.4 cents per gallon.

The overwhelming majority of my driving is highway, so I’ll take the highway mileage figure for simplicity.

12,000 miles divided by 32mpg is 375 gallons of gasoline, which comes out to $140 for the State of Florida, and another $69 for the federal government, for a total fuel tax of $209 for the average 3600 pound vehicle driven by a person who commutes like I do.

To sum that up, that’s $700 in registration fees for EVs “to replace what they don’t pay in fuel taxes”, when an equivalent ICE vehicle would pay just $209 in fuel taxes.

Why are congressional Republicans, and Florida state Republicans, proposing to charge me combined nearly three and a half times what an equivalent ICE vehicle would pay?  Why are Florida Republicans proposing to charge me an additional 30% over what an equivalent ICE vehicle would pay? Why are congressional Republicans proposing to charge me over 7 times what an equivalent ICE vehicle would pay? My speculation is that their owners in the petroleum industry are terrified by electric vehicles, and are trying desperately to tie back the hands of time so they can continue to make profits from their products.

So what to do about this? The transition to electric vehicles is unstoppable. In one thing Republican legislators are correct: EV owners do not pay their fair share of the taxes necessary to support the infrastructure they use. (In fairness, ICE owners don’t either, but that is a different subject.) I don’t object to paying my fair share, but I do object to paying my share and 7 other people’s as well.  The only fair solution I can see is to eliminate fuel taxes altogether, and charge all vehicle owners road use fees based on the weight of the vehicle and the miles driven. That would even the playing field between ICE vehicles and EVs.