The Union Mission

05/09/2022

Happy Birthday to John Brown.

The abolitionist's bloody raid on a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry 150 years ago set the stage for the Civil War

01/25/2022

Relevant news!

06/21/2021

COVID shut down public schools for almost a year, here’s a “this day in history” of something else that created a “Lost Year” for students.

On this day 1958, District Court Judge Harr Lemley granted a two- and half-year delay for school integration in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The previous year was marked with violence, protests, and the deployment of the National Guard to block the Little Rock Nine from entering Central High. Leading President Eisenhower to deploy federal troops to es**rt them into the school and allow them to attend class.

This was all three years after Brown v. Board of Education had been decided, ruling that school segregation was unconstitutional.

Three months after the ruling for delayed integration by Judge Lemley, the Supreme Court announced that the Little Rock School Board must proceed with the desegregation plan and that there was no excuse for the delay. The Court declared that mob rule would not dictate the enforcement of federal laws.

The same week, in a special session of the Arkansas General Assembly, six bills were passed giving the governor unmitigated power to uphold segregation. One went so far as to allow the governor to close any school that had been ordered to desegregate.

Governor Faubus proceeded with exactly plan. Closing any school with desegregation orders then began the plans to lease Little Rock Public Schools to the Little Rock Private School Corp (LRPSC). An injunction filed by the NAACP was able to halt this, but the LRPSC proceeded to purchase private buildings with public funds and operate whites-only private schools. Public schools were closed for a year. The school district continued to pay teachers to preside over empty classrooms in abandoned schools.

This closing affected a generation of school children, losing a full year of education, and witnessing a swift breakdown within their community. Teachers left the state, the local economy suffered, and new industry refused to locate in Little Rock.

After changes to school board members, and a federal district court declaring the school closure unconstitutional, schools reopened on August 12, 1959.

The myth of separate but equal persists in Little Rock, and elsewhere, with lower income and minority schools suffering from underfunding, lack of resources, quality teachers, and special education. With most states using property taxes as a method of funding, schools are segregated now by income level. As property values vary heavily from neighborhood to neighborhood and district to district, so do tax revenues. This has been the base model for school funding since…well…1647. The idea being that education is a public obligation and therefore should be funded by the public.

While some states have stepped in to alleviate the massive discrepancies in funding, not all have. And it is evident in the spending per student from district to district.

It is important realize that just because laws change, there are underlying systemic issues that must be recognized and resolved.



See comments for links and more info.

01/28/2021

Stock market is a popular topic this week....

“In the House and Senate ethics rules, there is no prohibition on members holding any stock, regardless of the industries or issues a lawmaker can affect through committee assignments.”

In 2012, President Obama signed the STOCK Act. A piece of legislation designed to limit the ability of congress members to participate in stock trading based on non-public information. It also made trades made by those members available to the public and to be data searchable. This was passed with the hope that it would limit the amount of insider trading occurring within the legislative and executive branches. A year later, an amendment to that legislation basically reversed the entire act. It was given 14 seconds of debate in the Senate and passed unanimously. It removed the data requirements of the original STOCK Act, making them non searchable and limiting their accessibility. They’re all in a basement. Two items did stay in the bill...insider trading is apparently illegal and disclosures of large stock trades are to be reported within 45 days...to the basement.

Links in the comments!

01/07/2021

Not since 1814 have the walls of the United States Capitol building been breached.
And on that day it was by a foreign nation from whom we had already secured our freedom.

Links in comments.

12/08/2020

Today is the Safe Harbor Deadline.
The poorly written Electoral Count Act of 1887 cements the “first Monday after the second Wednesday of December” as the deadline for finalizing election results for Congress. Submitting those results six days before the very specific deadline, qualifies those electoral votes for safe harbor status. So even if a state legislature sends in different results after that, the safe harbor reporting stands.
Makes sense right?
Read our post about Electoral Votes below and check the comments for more information on poorly written legislation.

11/25/2020

In a year of record voter turnout, let’s talk about why people don’t vote...
Is it apathy? Ability? Lack of representation? Does one cause or affect the other?

Get ready for a post about each, and let’s hear your opinions on what causes low voter turnout.

Almost 67% of eligible voters, voted in the 2020 presidential election. That highest percentage in 100 years.

11/11/2020

The General Services Administration was established in 1949 as a byproduct of the Hoover Commission.

The GSA was created to consolidate several different offices into one. Those offices included the National Archives Establishment, the functions of the Federal Works Agency, and the War Assests Administration. Once very four (or eight) years, it’s main job is to ensure the peaceful transition of power from one presidential administration to the next.

In 1963, The Presidential Transition Act gave the Administration the tools and abilities to more easily navigate and execute peaceful transitions of power. It was amended in 2019 to require incumbent presidents to have transition resources in place by June of an election year to facilitate the possible handover of power after one term.

The GSA works with the teams of the current president and president-elect to provide office space, equipment, training, orientation, and funding to ensure the smoothest transition possible.
The GSA also provides the “Plum book” or The United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions. It includes over 9000 federal civil service leadership and support postions that have to be filled by the new administration before and when they take over the White House. The sooner those positions are filled, the sooner the incumbent employees can being to orientate the new ones.

Presidential transitions can start any time post-election day. But it’s true beginning isn’t really possible until the GSA ascertains who the new president is and releases the funds appropriated by Congress for the specific task of transitioning.

The GSA ran into issues with fund appropriation during the presidential election of 2000. The speech given to the House of Representatives by then Administrator David J. Barram is in the comments.

The position of administrator of the GSA is a presidential appointment that requires Senate approval.

More info in the comments! Sources and links and room for questions!

11/06/2020

Hot topic of the week....
Mail-in ballots.

Mail in ballots have been around in the United States since its founding.

They used to be blank pieces of paper, eventually progressing to pre-printed ballots in the mid-1800s.

The Civil War led to massive amounts of absentee votes. Lincoln refused to allow the war to halt or postpone the elections, saying “we cannot have free government without elections”.
In 1864, 19 states changed their laws to allow soldiers to vote absentee, while others allowed proxy votes to be sent back to soldiers homes.

Similarly, during the COVID-19 pandemic states have made no-excuse absentee voting available. Currently, 34 states offer no-excuse absentee voting.

Incidents rates of voter fraud in the United States are between .0003 percent and .0025 percent.
Multiple studies over the last decade have found only negligible rates of impersonation fraud, with double voting rates being less than .02%.

Below is a briefing by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. It outlines studies, lawsuits, and investigations into voter fraud rates in the United States.

11/06/2020

We are reposting our previous information on Ranked Choice Voting. In the comments are links to a detailed explanation and information on its effects on the Maine election this year.

What did the ballot look like in your state?
Probably different than the state next to you.

The Constitution lays out different state and federal roles in elections, with Congress holding authority to override state regulations when or if necessary.
States are responsible for the administration of their own and federal elections, which is why your ballot may (and probably) looks different.

This election, two states voted on whether to enact Ranked-Choice Voting. Like the name implies, it allows voters to rank candidates in their preferred order. Massachusetts rejected the proposal to stay with traditional forms of voting. Alaska’s outcome has not been announced yet.

Below is an article detailing this method and it’s perceived pros and cons.

Proponents say it can ease the division between parties, drawing candidates to the middle, and requiring them to have legislative views that apply to a wider audience.
Those against say it negates the idea of “one person one vote” among other things.

11/04/2020

This page and place is not and will not ever be a place for campaigning or partisan platforms.

We don’t view campaigning as an educational pursuit.

We will talk about issues, history, the constitution, the law, political parties, legislation. But we won’t choose a side. The minute we do that, we alienate people who may need the tools and civic education we are intent on providing.

Everyone thought today they’d wake up to the world on fire, no matter who they voted for.
That is not the case.

11/03/2020

Do you want to know who your Electoral College Electors are and how they were chosen?

You didn’t technically vote for them. They are former governors, hedge fund managers, chairs of political parties, lawyers, lobbyists.

In most states, Electors are chosen at their political party convention and then in the second week of December, they pick the president. And the Constitution doesn’t say they have to vote according to the popular vote in their state.

In the comments is the link to the list of 2016 Electors.