The States: corruption in state politics is going to get worse

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There are times when I understand why people voted for essential anarchy in the form of Donald Trump. The answers aren’t easy or simple but they have been present for a long time — and one of the big ones is that they play by different rules than us. To be clear, this has a bi-partisan flair — see President Obama’s record on the financial crisis, whether it be holding institutions or people who fleeced the rest of us accountable.
Let’s take the latest example of the us vs them. Late last week, Sheldon Silver, the former heavyweight in the New York state assembly, was successful in his appeal of his 2015 bribery conviction, relying on a new U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned the corruption conviction of former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell.
First, here’s what prosecutors presented at Silver’s trial, per the New York Times:
In one, he arranged to have the State Health Department award two grants totaling $500,000 to a Columbia University cancer researcher, Dr. Robert N. Taub. In turn, Dr. Taub sent patients with legal claims to Weitz & Luxenberg, a law firm that gave Mr. Silver a portion of the fees it received.
In the other scheme, Mr. Silver arranged to have two real estate developers, Glenwood Management and the Witkoff Group, send certain tax business to a law firm, Goldberg & Iryani, which also gave him a portion of its fees. Mr. Silver, prosecution evidence showed, supported real estate legislation, for example, that benefited the developers.
Seems like that should be illegal, right? He used his government position to put money in his pocket by passing legislation for people who were in a position to bribe him. Nice gig if you can get it.
Just to be clear, things aren’t over: Silver will be re-tried and the former prosecutor who handled the case tweeted he believed he would be re-convicted.
But the reason Silver’s appeal was successful was because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell. McDonnell’s corruption, on its face, wasn’t as extreme as Silver’s, if that’s the new low we’ve come to in comparing levels of corruption. But it wasn’t something that should have been seemingly tossed aside from the Supreme Court. From the Washington Post’s 2016 story on the Supreme Court ruling:
The McDonnell case stemmed from more than $175,000 in loans and gifts — a Rolex watch, vacations, partial payments for a daughter’s wedding reception among them — that the governor and his family received from Richmond businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. Williams, then the chief executive of Star Scientific, wanted state universities to perform important clinical tests on a dietary supplement the company had developed.
The gifts were not barred by Virginia law, and the tests were not conducted. But federal prosecutors said Williams’s generosity was part of an illegal quid pro quo arrangement. McDonnell’s part of the deal, they said, came in the form of meetings arranged to connect Williams with state officials, a luncheon Williams was allowed to throw at the governor’s mansion to help launch the product and a guest list he was allowed to shape at a mansion reception meant for health-care leaders.
The Supreme Court ruled that while McDonnell’s friend might have showered him with gifts and money, it was all legal because prosecutors didn’t show that he did anything as governor that benefited the guy’s company, so-called “official acts.” Just as important is what the experts told the Post about the ruling: As one put it, the ruling, “makes it even more difficult to protect our democracy from attempts by officeholders to peddle political access and influence to the highest bidder.”
And so it did for Silver. A win for the crooked politicians, and, believe me, prosecutors and those abusing their power certainly are taking notice.
I promise The States won’t be this gloomy every week! By the way, welcome to The States, where we attempt each week to get at the issues affecting folks in the key states of Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Illinois (because that’s where I lay my head these days). Subscribe if you haven’t, forward this email and tell your friends through whatever electronic communication necessary. And let me know what you think…
Ohio is at the center of all things healthcare debate …
That’s because it involves two of the biggest players, Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Rob Portman. As Seth A. Richardson of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer reports, “Kasich [is] the intra-party opposition force and Portman [is] one of the key votes in moving the legislation forward.” As you probably know, healthcare is dead in the Senate…for now.

Jimmy Carter loves solar panels. Now, the former president has put up 324 solar panels on his Georgia farm, Futurism reports. It’s enough to power half the small town. It doesn’t sound like much but the picture of a field of solar in Georgia is incredible, check it out…
The Sunday reads from The States that you missed…
This is why I try to put this thing out by Wednesday. I obviously failed this week. Keep me honest.
The Port Huron, Michigan, Times-Herald reported on a city call for a tax increase that seems increasingly desperate. It’s not the only small city struggling to do the basics:
A city with one less fire station, less fire staffing, less police staffing, no city pools, no funding for parks and recreation programs and no funding for McMorran Place is not a city residents want to think about.
But it is the fate that Port Huron could face if taxpayers vote down two proposed taxes during the special election Aug. 8.
In the past three years, the city has reduced government spending by $3 million by reducing staff and privatizing some services, among other actions. But as the city reduces its operations costs, the looming cost of unfunded pension and health care coverage for former employees continues to grow.
In Minnesota, the Brainerd Dispatch (Brainerd, Minn.) has the scoop on a little town called Pequot Lakes water tower, which is painted to look like a fishing bobber, turning 30 years old. Just a fun local story.
In Ohio, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer writes about the fears of many that nursery homes will cease to exist under proposals to cut Medicaid across the country.
Appleton, Wisconsin, is home to a disturbing statewide trend, as the Post-Crescent found: more and more kids are being separated from their parents because of their addiction problems.
The opioid crisis has hit Wilmington, North Carolina, (the worst in the U.S.) and Hickory particularly hard. North Carolina legislators are starting to crack down.
The Roanoke-Times (Roanoke, Virginia) is hosting a series of forums focused on poverty. One big takeaway, and a quote I’ve been thinking about all week:
“I got a college degree in web programming, but I’m a forklift operator. Because I can’t get a job in my field. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” he said. “I know it’s not white against black. It’s really poor against rich.”
A few speakers shared a weariness of talking about the problems of poverty and bemoaned a lack of solutions. A theme emerged that if poor black families were going to be lifted up, the community must do it itself.
The AJC in Atlanta, Georgia, chronicles how the city failed to deliver on promised affordable housing downtown. It seems much of the problems had to do with government ineptitude.
Beltline Inc. kept units that it funded affordable for only a short time; decreased spending on affordable housing as the city entered its current housing crisis; and even passed up on millions of dollars of potential funds. The untapped funds were enough to more than double the project’s affordable housing budget, the investigation found.
Marwa Eltagouri from the Tribune chronicled the decline of the Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, where African American residents are fleeing. It’s part of a pattern of black flight from historic Chicago neighborhoods; among the hardest hit has been Englewood.
An analysis of a changing Virginia
Virginia’s changing politics has to do with the state’s dramatic demographic changes, as the UVA Center for Politics explored. “It’s become more racially and ethnically varied since the 1970 census. Race and education are now the two strongest indicators of voting preference, so the fact that Virginia’s population has moved from being 19% nonwhite in 1970 to about 37% nonwhite today is surely a part of the story as well.”
Yes, taxes are going up in Illinois. But at least we have a budget, I guess! It seems Wisconsin lawmakers are telling Illinois businesses and taxpayers to move across the border. Wisconsin
If you’re gonna wonk out on anything this fall
Take something called the “efficiency gap” out for a spin. The Minnesota Star-Tribune’s Judy Keen sets the stage for the U.S. Supreme Court case out of Wisconsin that could, and I don’t think I’m being too dramatic here, determine the future of our democracy in ensuring fairer, less automatically partisan elections. It has to do with gerrymandering — the practice of partisan state legislators drawing legislative and congressional boundaries to favor one party over another. In the past, drawing lines to favor your party may seem unseemly and undemocratic but it has not been illegal unless courts deemed there was racial bias involved. A University of Chicago professor may have helped figure out how to change that by coming out with a formula for how many votes in a given district go “wasted,” We’ll see if the SUPCO agrees. From the MST story:
To buttress their argument during the trial, the plaintiffs cited a complex test called the “efficiency gap,” which was devised by University of Chicago law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos and Eric McGhee of the Public Policy Institute of California.
It measures what they call “wasted” votes — those cast for a losing candidate or for a winning candidate in excess of what they needed to win. A gap of 7 percent is considered acceptable under the formula. The gap in Wisconsin was 13.3 percent in 2012 and 9.6 in 2014.
It’s important to understand the efficiency gap because it could give the U.S. Supreme Court a way to define what is — and is not — a constitutional level of political advantage after redistricting. The high court has struck down race-based gerrymandering — most recently in a North Carolina case in May — but it has never ruled against a redistricting map because it was unfairly partisan.
Just to continue the depressing theme of politics — and, yes, we’re trying to stay focused on The States — I leav you on a note of why Trump may never be impeached. A bit of tweeted analysis from writer Jared Yates Sexton:
Trump supporters have put so much personal identity into this man that they’re isolated and that identity is constantly fragile. 4/
— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 13, 2017

