Yes, we do count in census, elections -- April 29, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Dozens of New Yorkers are probably kicking themselves for not filling out their census forms last year.

The Empire State is losing a congressional seat by 89 people. That’s not a typo.

If the census had counted just 89 more New Yorkers, the state would have retained its 27 seats in Congress, the Census Bureau reported this week.

The once-a-decade census may seem an administrative chore, but it’s in people’s self-interest to participate, even during a pandemic.

The census determines congressional seats for each state by population. It also allocates each state’s share of more than $800 billion in federal funds – your tax money – each year for food stamps, healthcare, housing assistance, job training and other services.

Census numbers are also used to create districts for the U.S. House and state legislatures, which often draw redistricting maps for future elections. The bureau will release detailed numbers this summer to guide redistricting efforts.

So, don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t matter if you fill out your census form – or if you vote. Elections also are often won – and lost -- on the margins.

A handful of states could have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Joe Biden won the White House because he flipped several states Donald Trump won in 2016 – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In Arizona, Biden won by just under 10,500 votes out of nearly 3.4 million votes cast. Another audit, or recount of votes by hand, began April 23 in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, and is expected to last until May 14.

No widespread election fraud has been found in Arizona or anywhere else, and the audit will not change the outcome of the election there, state officials say. Claims on the Internet that the audit has found 250,000 fraudulent votes are false, according to USA Today factcheckers.

In Georgia, Biden won with about 11,780 more votes than Trump out of 5 million votes cast. Several recounts there confirmed Biden’s win.

We’ll never know for sure how many New Yorkers, or Californians, for that matter, failed to fill out their census forms. California is losing a congressional seat for the first time. Also losing one seat each are Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The big census winner is Texas, which is gaining two House seats. Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon each gain one seat.

Virginia, where growth slowed over the last decade, held onto its 11 congressional seats.

Since Republicans need a net gain of only five seats to take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives from Democrats in 2022, the census is particularly significant this year.

New York gained population in the last decade, but other states grew at a faster rate, which means the New York delegation will shrink to 26 House seats.

“It’s obviously not desirable, and the last thing we want to do is to lose representation in Washington,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. “So it’s not good news for the state.”

Cuomo is weighing a lawsuit to contest the count, although it’s an uphill fight. New York has sued unsuccessfully in the past over lost congressional seats.

Cuomo’s critics blame him for not doing more to gin up participation in the census during the pandemic. He blames the federal government for a chilling effect on participation.

Hispanic groups believe Hispanics were undercounted in key states like Arizona, Texas and Florida. They contend then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to put a question about respondents’ citizenship on the census discouraged immigrants from participating.

After two dozen states and many cities sued the Census Bureau and Commerce Department, the administration withdrew the question.

The Census Bureau indicated it was confident apportionment numbers were correct. Most states’ official population tallies were within 1 percentage point of independent projections.

It’s too late for the 2020 census, but voters in Virginia will pick a new governor, members of the House of Delegates, mayors and other local officials this November. An independent commission is redrawing state district maps for future elections.

Not only is it in our civic interest to participate in the census and to vote, it’s in our personal interest. Let your voice be heard.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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A lesson from Tricky Dick on taxes -- Aug. 1, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

“Make sure you pay your taxes,” former President Richard Nixon told David Frost in a television interview in 1977. “Otherwise, you can get in a lot of trouble.”

If Nixon were advising presidential candidates today, he might add: “And release your tax returns.”

Since President Donald Trump took office, dozens of states, including Virginia, have considered – and rejected -- requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to appear on state ballots.

But California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, Tuesday signed the Presidential Tax Transparency and Accountability Act, which passed on party line votes in the legislature.

To appear on the Democratic or Republican primary ballot, presidential and gubernatorial candidates now must release five years of tax returns, which will be posted online.

“These are extraordinary times and states have a legal and moral duty to do everything in their power to ensure leaders seeking the highest offices meet minimal standards, and to restore public confidence,” Newsom said in a signing statement.

“The disclosure required by this bill will shed light on conflicts of interest, self-dealing or influence from domestic and foreign business interest,” he added.

See you in court, replied the Trump campaign, which contends the new law is unconstitutional.

Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, vetoed a very similar bill in 2017, warning of a slippery slope. Next time, it could be a red state demanding a birth certificate or health records, Brown warned.

If the law withstands judicial scrutiny, Trump must release his returns by November for the March 3 primary. The law does not affect the general election in November 2020.

Trump says voters elected him even though he refused to release his returns. He has a point. If voters cared, they could have flocked to rival Jeb Bush, who set a record by releasing 33 years of tax returns in 2016.

The Constitution lists only three qualifications for president: at least 35 years old, a citizen born in the United States and a resident in the United States for at least 14 years. So how did we get here?

The Constitution also gives states authority to decide how their electors are chosen. Each state writes its own laws setting the rules for candidates to appear on state ballots, such as petitions with signatures of a certain number of registered voters.

Federal courts have struck down several state laws involving congressional elections, including term limits. The California law raises questions about what restrictions states can place on presidential candidates.

We see the tax returns of presidential candidates and presidents because of a tradition that began after a scandal involving Nixon, according to Joseph J. Thorndike, director of the tax history project of Tax Analysts and author of several books on taxation, who appeared before a congressional panel in February. 

Newspapers published stories based on leaks of details of Nixon’s tax returns, showing he had paid just $792 in federal income taxes in 1970 and $873 in 1971.

“People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook,” Nixon said at a newspaper editors’ convention in November 1973. “Well, I am not a crook.”

Three weeks later, he voluntarily released four years of tax returns to reporters and asked the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’ nonpartisan tax experts, to examine them.

The committee’s audit identified an improper deduction for his gift of his vice presidential papers to the National Archives as well as incorrect capital gains treatment on the sales of his apartment in New York and part of his property in San Clemente, Calif. The president owed $476,451 in back taxes and interest.

To this day, no one knows if Nixon paid up. No check was publicly shown, Nixon resigned because of Watergate and President Gerald Ford granted him a full pardon.

But since 1977, IRS policy has required an audit of every tax return filed by a sitting president and vice president, Thorndike said, and every president from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama has released his tax returns during audits.

California’s new law is partisan and punitive to the Trump fans, and it could backfire on Democrats.

But Nixon was right: Americans do need to know whether their president is a crook. Like his predecessors, Trump should have released his tax returns, and he should do so now.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Coffee's not as scary as . . . -- April 5, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Donald Trump provokes a trade war with China and shakes the stock market and our retirement accounts like snowglobes.

He asks governors to send the National Guard to a purported “crisis” on the Mexican border while he rolls back the environmental rules that protect our air and water.

Scary times, indeed.

Sit back, relax, watch cute kitten videos on Facebook and savor a hot mug of coffee. Uh-oh.

Facebook isn’t a safe place, if it ever was. With the personal data of 87 million of us shared, we’re ripe for the picking on the dark web, if we weren’t already.

And that comforting cup of joe soon will come with a cancer warning label in California. What starts on the Left Coast often wafts east.

Wait a minute. Deep breaths. Should we be scared of our coffee, too?

Decades of medical research say no. A review in the British Medical Journal last November examined more than 200 studies and found that coffee consumption was more often associated with benefit than harm.

Drinking three cups of coffee a day was associated with the greatest benefit in terms of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease and stroke, compared with not drinking coffee, researchers found.

Two studies reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine last year followed people of various ethnicities around the world for years and found “people who reported drinking more coffee tended to live longer than those who reported drinking less.”

The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer removed coffee from its list of substances “possibly carcinogenic to humans” in 2016, after it reviewed 1,000 studies and found “inadequate evidence” of a link to cancer.

So why the warning label? A chemical called acrylamide, produced during coffee roasting, may cause cancer. Emphasis on “may.”

A California judge wrote a preliminary ruling March 30 requiring Starbucks and dozens of other coffee purveyors in the state to warn customers about acrylamide. The chemical occurs naturally when some foods are cooked at high heat. It’s in french fries, potato chips, crackers, bread, cereal, prune juice and canned black olives.

Acrylamide is on California’s list of about 800 natural and man-made substances that are linked to cancer, birth defects or reproductive harm. Under the state’s Prop. 65, which aims to alert consumers to health hazards so they can make smart decisions, businesses must notify customers if their products contain the chemicals. It’s why you see warnings on flashlights, Christmas tree lights and pesticides, among other items.

Lab studies have found acrylamide in high doses in drinking water increases the risk of cancer in rats and mice. But the doses have been “as much as 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the levels people might be exposed to in foods,” says the American Cancer Society, adding, “Based on the studies done so far, it is not clear if acrylamide affects cancer risk in people.”

A public interest law firm sued the coffee shops in a California court in 2010, saying they have a duty to warn consumers. A similar lawsuit led potato chip makers to reduce the amount of acrylamide in their products to avoid warning labels.  

But the National Coffee Association says acrylamide is in coffee at “miniscule” levels, occurs naturally and is not an additive. It’s weighing its legal actions.

“Coffee has been shown, over and over again, to be a healthy beverage,” said William “Bill” Murray, president and CEO of the coffee association. “This lawsuit has made a mockery of Prop. 65, has confused consumers and does nothing to improve public health.”

But the lawsuit and the warning labels do serve a purpose. They help us gain perspective. We don’t have to give up coffee.

As with most things, health officials advise moderation and they suggest watching what you put in your coffee. Sugar has replaced fat as a nutritional pariah.

The WHO’s cancer panel did advise caution on a related topic. 

“Drinking very hot beverages probably causes cancer of the esophagus in humans,” it said.

There you go. It wouldn’t hurt to let your coffee cool.

Sometimes we can control what scares us.   

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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