Supremes overturn gerrymandering on the basis of race. “The most pro-drug administration in our history”? And mixed messages from the AI tycoons.
Supremes Overturn Gerrymandering on the Basis of Race
Last week in this space we blogged about gerrymandering on the basis of political party. There is also another kind of gerrymandering, drawing up voting districts on the basis of race. The Supreme Court has just ruled that tactic unconstitutional.
In the case Louisiana v. Callais, a group of white voters sued the state for purposefully crafting a “majority-minority” district to ensure that a black candidate would be elected. That, the plaintiff claimed, was racially discriminatory. The state argued that drawing such districts is necessary to comply with the Voters Rights Act of 1965, designed to ensure that black citizens could exercise their right to vote, as they often were not in the Jim Crow era.
The court ruled, in the words of Samuel Alito who wrote the ruling, that “the Constitution almost never permits the Federal Government or a State to discriminate on the basis of race.” And the Louisiana districting map discriminates on the basis of race. Also, that prohibiting racial gerrymandering does not, in fact, violate the Voters Rights Act. (See this for the reasoning behind the decision.)
Democrats responded with outrage, since eliminating racial gerrymandering nationwide could give Republicans as many as 19 more congressional representatives. A broader concern is that this decision will prevent black Americans from being elected to office.
I understand that concern. But, as some liberals analysts have pointed out, concentrating black voters into single districts actually dilutes their votes by giving them less clout in racially-mixed districts. Says Kim Soffen of the Washington Post:
Imagine the minority-favored candidate can win an election in a district if at least 30 percent of voters are minorities. What harm is done by the legislators packing the district up to 50 percent minority voters? Much like political gerrymandering, it limits black influence in surrounding districts. It would require the creation of, for instance, a 50 percent and a 10 percent black district, rather than two 30 percent black districts. In other words, the requirement would give black voters one representative of their choice rather than two.
Furthermore, getting rid of majority-minority districts could actually elect more Democrats. This is what has actually happened, as Steven Hill ,writing in the Atlantic, has pointed out:
The drawing of majority-minority districts not only elected more minorities, it also had the effect of bleeding minority voters out of all the surrounding districts. Given that minority voters were the most reliably Democratic voters, that made all of the neighboring districts more Republican. The black, Latino, and Asian representatives mostly were replacing white Democrats, and the increase in minority representation was coming at the expense of electing fewer Democrats.
So Republican glee at the prospect of picking up 19 more seats will likely be disappointed. Currently, of the 62 black representatives in Congress, 30 come from minority-majority districts, but slightly more than half come from racially-mixed districts, which Axios reports has been a growing trend.
The racial problems in this country are not only discrimination but segregation. Concentrating black Americans in particular districts with their own separate representation is segregation. We should work for a time when African-Americans are as fully integrated with the rest of the country as Italians, Germans, and even other racial minorities such as Asians.
Without racial gerrymandering, black citizens will still be a powerful voting bloc, whose influence is likely to increase, as politicians in all districts have to compete for–and earn– their votes.
“The Most Pro-Drug Administration in Our History”?
President Trump presides over “the most pro-drug administration in our history.”
Some Americans would consider that a compliment. Others, such as anti-drug activist Kevin Sabet who said these words, as a criticism. Either way, it’s true.
At President Trump’s orders, marijuana has been changed from a Schedule I drug (one “with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”) to a Schedule III drug (one “with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.”)
This doesn’t legalize cannabis on a federal level, but it is a big boost for the marijuana industry. According to the Associated Press, the change legitimizes medical marijuana, allows researchers to conduct experiments with the drug without fear of legal repercussions, and allows medical cannabis dealers to take tax deductions for their business expenses.
And this is only the beginning. The AP story goes on to say, “The Trump administration also said it was jump-starting the process for reclassifying marijuana more broadly, setting a hearing to begin in late June.”
The White House framed this move as expanding research access and improving patient care. What it actually delivers is a tax windfall for licensed cannabis, a federal blessing for a public health experiment gone wrong, and a break with the voters Donald Trump claims to represent.
Appel points out that while research is needed, Congress already passed a bill in 2022 allowing for research into medical marijuana. So far, contrary to the hype, that research has shown few therapeutic benefits and some harm. “Claiming that rescheduling will unlock proof of benefit is a recycled, zombie argument from the Obama era.”
What rescheduling will do is free cannabis companies from Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code, which currently bars businesses trafficking in Schedule I substances from claiming standard tax deductions. Reclassification means that the cannabis industry — worth at least $32 billion — will suddenly enjoy the same write-offs as any other business.
Appel goes further:
The deeper problem is that Trump’s decision treats a holdover from years of Democratic administrations as if it were a success story deserving of federal endorsement. The progressive legalization push rested on two foundational claims: that marijuana is essentially harmless, and that criminalization had produced mass incarceration of innocent smokers. Both were wrong.
Legalized marijuana has a much higher level of the mind-altering substance THC compared to the pot available in the Sixties. Appel cites data from the Center for Disease Control on how cannabis has a detrimental effect on attention, memory, decision-making, learning, and reaction time. The CDC also says that long-time use of the drug is linked to psychosis and schizophrenia. Also, nearly a third of marijuana users (three in 10) have some sort of “use disorder.”
Legalizing the drug has caused its use to explode. Currently, 18 million Americans use it daily, up from less than 1 million in 1992. More people use marijuana daily than drink alcohol daily. And the number of drunk drivers is now matched by the number of high drivers.
As for the incarceration myth, this was always a misreading of the data. The US Sentencing Commission found that as of January 2022, almost no federal prisoners were serving time solely for simple marijuana possession. The slim number of people behind bars on marijuana charges was overwhelmingly traffickers — often with firearms violations alongside — not the caricature of the college student caught with a joint.
As of now, 24 states have legal recreational marijuana, and 40 states have legal medical marijuana. “A public health experiment gone wrong.”
Mixed Messages from the AI Tycoons
The so-called doomers say that AI might bring on economic collapse, civilizational chaos, or even the end of humanity. The techno-optimists, on the other hand, say that AI will improve our economy, and our civilization, and our lives. So will AI bring about our doom, or will it bring on utopia? No one knows for sure.
What’s confusing is that the developers of AI were the original doomers. But now that the technology is blossoming, opposition to the technology is intensifying. Now the very same AI tycoons who alarmed the public about the potential dangers of the technology they were developing are trying to sell the public on its potential benefits.
Writing in the tech site Gizmodo, Matt Novak has written an article entitled The AI Doomers Who Are Playing with Fire. He writes,
Back in 2015, [OpenAI CEO Sam] Altman said, “I think that AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning.”
How do you hear something like that from a powerful person and just accept it? You have two options: You can dismiss Altman as unserious and assume humanity should do nothing. Or you can take the tech CEOs at their word that the tech they’re building could end the world. Which leaves you with the question of what you can do about that. . . .
Someone says that they’ve built a weapon that could go rogue and literally end life on planet Earth. Does the federal government just act like the only fix is light regulations that tinker around the edges? Or do the executives at that company get rounded up and tossed in jail for making terrorist threats? . . .
Why would anyone try to sell the public a product on the idea that it’s going to take their job?
Whatever happens, it feels like the AI executives have painted themselves into a corner. They’ve told everyone their product has the potential to destroy everything. They were the doomers, if we want to call it that, at least when it was convenient. And now we seem to be entering a different era where the same people who told us about the dangers of AI try to get us to look exclusively at what they claim are enormous benefits for society; so far, with little to show.
It’s unclear how you put that doomer genie back in the bottle.
Novak said that the initial presentations that hyped this revolutionary, all powerful, all disruptive technology were aimed at investors, corporations, and government. The strategy was to present this new product as inevitable and irresistible. I think of the Borg collective in Star Trek, who informed those they sought to assimilate: “Resistance is futile.”
The questions remain for the AI tycoons: If you think this technology has a “non-zero” chance of being harmful, why did you continue to develop it? And if you think this technology will be a boon for humanity, why do you seem to have such a guilty conscience about it?
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