The 1790 Census showed 95 percent of the population living in rural America. By 1920, the number of people living in urban areas surpassed those living in rural areas and urban America has continued to grow proportionally larger ever since. Our governmental structures, however, were set up by the founding fathers to purposely give an advantage to agrarian voters over those living in city centers. The greater the disparity in the distribution of our population, the more bias our system is becoming in favor of Americans living in less populous areas. Emily Badger writes:

The Electoral College is just one example of how an increasingly urban country has inherited the political structures of a rural past. Today, states containing just 17 percent of the American population, a historic low, can theoretically elect a Senate majority, Dr. Lee said. The bias also shapes the House of Representatives. [...]

Republican voters are more efficiently distributed across the country than Democrats, who are concentrated in cities. That means that even when Democrats win 50 percent of voters nationwide, they invariably hold fewer than 50 percent of House seats, regardless of partisan gerrymandering.

The Electoral College then allocates votes according to a state’s congressional delegation: Wyoming (with one House representative and two senators) gets three votes; California (53 representatives and two senators) gets 55. Those two senators effectively give Wyoming three times more power in the Electoral College than its population would suggest. Apply the same math to California and it would have 159 Electoral College votes. And the entire state of Wyoming already has fewer residents than the average California congressional district.

But the bias doesn't just play out in representation, it also affects policy and funding structures.

Just in time for Donald Trump’s America comes the Professor Watchlist, launched this week by Turning Point USA. 

It’s no secret that some of America’s college professors are totally out of line.

Everyday I hear stories about professors who attack and target conservatives, promote liberal propaganda, and use their position of power to advance liberal agendas in their classroom.

Turning Point USA is saying enough is enough.  It’s time we expose these professors.

Today, Turning Point USA is proud to announce the launch ofProfessorWatchList.org, a website dedicated to documenting and exposing professors who discriminate against conservative students and promote anti-American, left wing propaganda in the classroom.

Thus saith Charlie Kirk, founder and executive director of the org, who is all of 21 years old. Kirk is hailed as a wunderkind of the conservative movement who racks up accolades and cash from the movement wherever he goes.

 "Standing behind free markets and limited government," Kirk, now 21, told National Journal, [Turning Point USA] is a conservative activist organization bent on drumming up excitement for conservative principles through community-organizing. Since launching Turning Point, Kirk has written op-eds for The Washington Times and Breitbart, appeared frequently on Fox News and CNBC, built a network of thousands of student activists around the country, and been entrusted with, he says, at least $1 million by donors enthralled by his conservative promise. His backers swear he's the future of conservative politics—and he's only just old enough to drink.

Turning Point USA’s Professor Watchlist is by no means a new idea. As Professor David Perry writes over at The Establishment/Alternet,

Certainly racism, sexism, and overall voter dissatisfaction coursed through this election, but it's hard to look at the graph below without thinking of the sexism it represents. Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton got great marks from voters for how they conducted themselves during the campaign, but Trump was rated 13 points lower than Clinton, with just 30 percent of voters giving him an A or B grade to Clinton's 43 percent. Trump also had the lowest rating of any winning candidate dating back to 1988 by a total of 19 points.

Pew writes:

But voters’ “grades” for the way Trump conducted himself during the campaign are the lowest for any victorious candidate in 28 years. Just 30% of voters give Trump an A or B, 19% grade him at C, 15% D, while about a third (35%) give Trump a failing grade. Four years ago, most voters (57%) gave Obama an A or B, and after his 2008 election, 75% gave him an A or B.

For the first time in Pew Research Center post-election surveys, voters give the losing candidate higher grades than the winner. About four-in-ten (43%) give Clinton an A or B, which is comparable to the share giving Mitt Romney top letter grades in 2012 (44%) and 13 percentage points higher than Trump’s (30%).

And yet, President Trump, because it didn’t matter how well Clinton acquitted herself or how qualified she was. 

While Kris Kobach makes his plan to reinstate a registry of Muslims and "add extreme vetting questions for high-risk aliens" and further attack voting rights, another prominent Donald Trump supporter is claiming the precedent for all this in the World War II-era Japanese-American internment camps. It's pure serendipity that against this backdrop, Idahoans are reflecting on that very dark chapter and an internment camp here in southern Idaho with an exhibit at the Boise Art Museum. 

A paper sculpture installation titled "The Tag Project," by artist Wendy Maruyama, forces visitors to confront the scale of the mass internment. Ten paper pillars, each made up of masses of paper identification tags corresponding to individuals confined in the camps, hang ghostlike from the ceiling. There are 120,000 tags in all.[…]

Three other artists featured in the show are painters who lived through the incarceration experience. Roger Shimomura, a professor emeritus at the School of Fine Arts at the University of Kansas, was a toddler in the camp. His acrylic paintings and prints are bold and bright, focused on people and accompanied by a personal memory or snippet of relevant history. One of Shimomura's paintings, Furlough No. 2, recounts the history of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team—a unit of Japanese-American soldiers who joined the military while family and friends were interned. The group became the most decorated for its size and duration of service. In the painting, Shimomura presents a man in uniform staring from behind barbed wire—a soldier imprisoned on his home soil.

Artwork from inside the camps is more muted. The paintings of Takuichi Fujii and Kenjiro Nomura are rendered in subtle blue, green and brown hues, drawing on the high desert where the Minidoka camp once stood along Clover Creek.

Nomura's paintings of the camps and barracks frequent clouds that cast heavy shadows on the scene. One of Fujii's paintings, titled Minidoka Montage with Fence and Landmarks, contrasts the camp landscape with inner turmoil: barracks, guard towers, barbed wire and trees tumble into one another as if dislodged by an earthquake.

Nearly 9,400 Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated to this camp, one of 10. Americans. In prison camps as national security risks while many of their sons and brothers were fighting totalitarianism for our country. That's what the Trump team thinks is great precedent for a new bout of institutionalized racism and oppression.

BAM Executive Director Melanie Fales: "We decided that this story needed to be told. … It's so important on a local level—but also on a national level—when we're talking about the domination of one group of people over another. We've all heard that so many times you want to make sure history doesn't repeat itself, and you can only do that if you know what the history was." That's precisely what visitors to the exhibit take out of it, one writing in the log book that it "worries me that it could possibly occur again for other groups. Groups who are surrounded by hatred, just like the Japanese once were."

We know what this history was and we see it happening again. We have no other option but to fight it.

Donald Trump Jr. was reportedly already scheming with Russian sympathizers last month about ways to end the war in Syria. Jay Solomon writes:

Donald Trump ’s eldest son, emerging as a potential envoy for the president-elect, held private discussions with diplomats, businessmen and politicians in Paris last month that focused in part on finding a way to cooperate with Russia to end the war in Syria, according to people who took part in the meetings.

Thirty people, including Donald Trump Jr., attended the Oct. 11 event at the Ritz Paris, which was hosted by a French think tank. The founder of the think tank, Fabien Baussart, and his wife, Randa Kassis, have worked closely with Russia to try to end the conflict.

Ms. Kassis, who was born in Syria, is a leader of a Syrian group endorsed by the Kremlin. The group wants a political transition in Syria—but in cooperation with President Bashar al-Assad, Moscow’s close ally. 

So it appears the Trump-Putin alliance had already begun, pre-election. In some ways, this is just confirmation of what seemed plainly obvious during the campaign. What's perhaps most frightening about this is the fact that Donald Trump will be like putty in Putin's hands. God only knows what our nation will be tricked into by Trump's feebleminded admiration of Putin. 

When the story came out a few days ago that Donald Trump may or may not have mentioned a little set of issues he had with his building interests in Buenos Aires while on the phone with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, everyone was quick to push back on the weak sources and deny anything untoward had taken place. The strange term used by the TV Journalist who originally reported the claim was that he was “half joking, half serious.” Well, in what is probably only an amazing coincidence, possibly a hilarious one, it’s now being reported that some of these Trump-connected building projects are moving right along after being stalled for years. 

Three days after the phone call between Trump and Macri on Nov.14, Trump’s associates at Buenos Aires firm YY Development Group announced that the construction project would go ahead, in an interview with La Nación (link in Spanish). The tower’s construction had reportedly been held up for years, for various reasons, with YY Development actively restarting construction permit requests when pro-business Macri took over from statist former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Jan. 2016.

There’s nothing substantive to confirm that the phone call and construction announcement are linked, but local news media have reported that the call itself was arranged in very unusual fashion. Macri, who is son of one of Latin America’s richest men and has reportedly known Trump since beating him at golf in the 1980s, had backed the wrong horse at the election, openly supporting Hillary Clinton. Accordingly, a crisis meeting was called to work out how to put relations on the right track (Spanish language) with Trump’s administration.

It must be a Thanksgiving miracle.

A new study in Oregon highlights the problems with the state's death penalty statute, which has been in a state of limbo for five years now. Former Governor John Kitzhaber implemented a moratorium on the death penalty in 2011, stating that he would not permit the state to execute anyone during his tenure. At the time, many hoped it was the beginning of the end for Oregon's death penalty. “The decision immediately halted the impending execution of death-row inmate Gary Haugen, who had waived his legal appeals to protest the justice system,” stated an editorial this week in The Oregonian. “But it was also meant to kick-start a statewide conversation about the legitimacy of the death penalty in Oregon.”

Such a conversation never happened, though, and the death penalty has remained technically legal, though on pause. In October, after much consideration, Governor Kate Brown promised to continue the moratorium if she were re-elected to office. From last month’s piece in The Oregonian:

Reasons for her decision include the "uncertainty of Oregon's ability to acquire the necessary execution drugs required by statute," [her spokesman] Bryan Hockaday said by email. "Looking nationally, America is on the verge of a sea change both by legislation and, more profoundly, through court decisions. The past few years have already seen a major shift in the landscape on capital punishment law, and Gov. Brown expects more changes are on the horizon."

Oregon voters approved the death penalty in 1984, and the state and U.S. Supreme Courts have repeatedly upheld its legality.

Oregon's death row has 34 prisoners, all of whom stay in their cells 23 hours a day. 

Brown won her re-election earlier this month, and the execution moratorium continues.

But meanwhile, prosecutors continue to seek death penalty convictions. "[T]he death-penalty machinery continues to run, with prosecutors seeking death sentences, juries granting them and the state spending millions in legal challenges," The Oregonian reports, "fighting for the right to execute someone who most likely will never be executed."

Donald Trump and Steve Bannon have more in common than just denying their connection to white supremacists: they both broke charity laws for their own benefit.

Donald Trump’s chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon accepted $376,000 in pay over four years for working 30 hours a week at a tiny tax-exempt charity in Tallahassee while also serving as the hands-on executive chairman of Breitbart News Network. 

The charity, called the Government Accountability Institute, lists itself with the IRS as an independent, nonpartisan operation. But not only were they delivering a full-time salary to Bannon, they were also paying out to at least two other Breitbart reporters—while drawing their funds from the same people who installed Bannon in Trump’s campaign.

During the same four-year period, the charity paid about $1.3 million in salaries to two other journalists who said they put in 40 hours a week there while also working for the politically conservative news outlet, according to publicly available documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

It’s what Trump did in using money from the Trump Foundation for personal gain—except even worse.

With the holiday, and many Americans visiting friends and family, there are fewer events this week. However, fewer isn’t “none” and even if you’re just sitting and digesting turkey, this is an excellent week to plan, to connect, to seek out the local Democratic Party and progressive groups. And remember, marching is an excellent way to work off some pecan pie.

If you’re planning to attend the Women’s March on Washington or one of its local affiliates in January, check in to see that your city is represented (and get me the info if it’s not).

And don’t forget ...

• If you have additional events, please let me know.
• If you are staging an event, and want help getting out the word, let me know.
• If you’re thinking about having an event, but aren’t sure. Let me know.
• If you’re thinking of attending an event, post a comment, write a diary, let everyone know.
• When you attend an event, write a diary so you can tell everyone about it.
• Spread the word, spread ideas, help us turn this energy into progress.
• Bring back pictures!

Please post additional events in the comments where everyone can see them right away. If you need to contact me directly, use messaging or email mark at dailykos.com.  

If you’re going to trial, being able to name the judge and prosecutor would be darn handy. If you’re under audit from the IRS, then it’s peachy keen if you can name your own auditor,

President-elect Donald Trump will soon be able to appoint a new director of the agency auditing his taxes, a potential political minefield after his writeoffs and his refusal to release his returns were repeatedly questioned in the campaign.

The president is barred from directing how the IRS treats specific taxpayers, but lawyers say there’s nothing to stop Trump from appointing an IRS chief who will go easy on him while scrutinizing his political enemies.

And if there’s nothing to stop Trump, then he won't stop himself.

Trump: I was always doing bad things, using Chinese steel, like you said, but you never even stopped me. Why didn’t you stop me? Someone should have, I feel. I look at myself and I think, “Why didn’t anyone stop this sooner?”

Reminder: That’s an actual quote. From an actual presidential debate. Seen by actual voters.

Anyway ...

“For him to say, ‘I’m going to audit the Clinton Foundation,’ that theoretically could violate” the statute, Herzig said. “But if he said ‘I’m only going to hire an IRS commissioner that’s going to follow my rules of not auditing presidents and auditing certain foundations with donations from foreign donors,’ I’m not sure that does.”

There you go, Mr. Trump. Why it looks like the nation has to pay you! But then, we knew that already.

President Obama's rule expanding overtime pay to workers making less than $47,476 a year was blocked nationwide Tuesday by a federal judge in Texas, the fourth such nationwide injunction from lower courts in the state in less than two years. Davie Jamieson writes:

The president’s new rule would vastly expand overtime rights for people who work on salary, bringing new protections to an estimated 4 million workers. Businesses were expected to be compliant with the new rule by Dec. 1, but the ruling by a federal court in Texas grants them a reprieve.

To be clear, nationwide injunctions from federal judges are rather extraordinary measures but they have recently become commonplace in the 5th Circuit, where conservative federal judges have routinely used them to block Obama's policies on issues ranging from immigration to transgender bathroom access to federal contracting rules and now overtime pay.

How is it possible that federal judges holding unelected seats are dictating national policy from their benches in Texas? The answer, as I reported here, is that a dearth of federal judges in the circuit has allowed people with a political bone to pick to practically pinpoint conservative judges who will rule in their favor. Naturally, their rulings will be appealed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguably the most conservative appellate court in the nation and almost certain to uphold rulings that counter progressive policy no matter how extreme the power grab. And because Senate Republicans have denied President Obama a Supreme Court appointment, if those rulings reach the high court, the justices are likely to deadlock in a 4-4 split, which leaves the lower court rulings and thus the injunction in place. That's exactly what happened with the nationwide hold Judge Andrew Hanen placed on Obama's immigration policy providing deportation relief for up to five million undocumented immigrants.

President-elect Donald Trump has appointed as the new secretary of education a woman whose track record and qualifications are tied to the privatization of public schools. Betsy DeVos, from Michigan, is a major fundraiser for the GOP and the chair of the American Federation for Children, a Washington, D.C.-based single-issue organization devoted to “expanding school of choice options across the country,” according to the Detroit News. She and her husband, Dick, have championed these issues for more than a decade.

In 2000, Betsy and Dick DeVos funded an unsuccessful statewide ballot initiative to amend the state Constitution to allow tax dollars to be used for private school tuition through education vouchers. They have since advocated for school vouchers in other states.

In addition:

The DeVoses founded their own charter high school, the West Michigan Aviation Academy, located on the grounds of the Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids.

In his announcement, Trump praised DeVos and said he expected her to reform the education system.

“(Betsy) DeVos is a brilliant and passionate education advocate,” Trump said Wednesday in a statement. “Under her leadership, we will reform the U.S. education system and break the bureaucracy that is holding our children back so that we can deliver world-class education and school choice to all families.”

Others, however, see disaster in the making.

In a statement after the announcement,

DeVos said she was honored to help Trump “make American education great again.” 

 Where have you heard that before?