Limiting Diversity, Ownership Stifles 1st Amendment

As I have at times had to remind a few of The Mercury's Facebook commenters when they cite the "First Amendment" as reason to leave an offensive post on our page -- "Freedom of speech belongs to you. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press. Want to say something in a newspaper? Start one yourself."

There is reason to be worried about both freedom of the press and freedom of speech and expression, however, as the headlines stack up with evidence that both are threatened with curtailment.

The first and most obvious to anyone paying attention is the recent decision by the Federal Communications Commission to remove "net neutrality," the rule that ensures all web sites, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and a zillion other social media accounts be treated equally.

It seems hard to imagine a more American idea than one that ensures all voices are given equal opportunity to say what's on their minds -- and have an equal opportunity to be heard -- no matter how offensive.

But that's never been entirely true.

As noted above, those of us who work in the media have a much better chance of being heard and have since the start of the nation.

With that advantage, our responsibility in the media, and particularly the press -- upheld better by some than others in an exercise inevitably fraught with bias -- is to try to give a broad variety of views equal opportunity to be aired.

The counter-balance to this built-in limitation in the press since the nation's founding has been free speech; that anyone can stand in the middle of the town square and state their piece with people given the choice to ignore it or to listen, or even to argue -- which is of course closely related to the right to assemble for this purpose.

In the last 15 years, that function has been carried forward onto the Internet with spectacular and sometimes incendiary results.

Want information on Basque separatists? They have a web site.

Curious about Islam? No shortage there.

Climate change? Ocean dumping? Hillary's emails?

Yup, yup and yup.

At a time when the President takes to Twitter to "get around the filter" of the media and speak directly to the people, his administration will preside over the greatest potential restriction of that opportunity since the Internet was invented.

While something tells me Donald Trump's Twitter feed is unlikely to be restricted, how long before Twitter decides to create "Twitter Prime," which gives faster speeds and greater visibility to those willing to pay for it?

Facebook already allows you to "sponsor" posts, to pay to have them put in front of more people, and the absence of net neutrality may make such schemes an everyday occurrence.

And beyond the operators of the platforms, consider the ISPs, or Internet Service Providers. Once a broad variety of tech start-ups, it has since narrowed down to be essentially the same utilities which built the infrastructure, Comcast, AT & T and the like.

All promises to the contrary, those providers will now perform the function they are designed to perform -- make money.

So unlike the gas company, or the water company or PECO, these corporate giants (which are about to get a huge tax cut by the way) will in many communities -- like here in Pottstown -- enjoy a monopoly on a utility that allows those willing to pay more, to get better service.

Imagine the outcry (if there was anyone left to report it) if the water company provided cleaner water to those who paid higher rates.

Yes, you pay more to your cable company to get more channels, but is that the model we want for the Internet? Does anyone really like the way cable TV operates?

"The FCC is doing away with rules barring internet providers from blocking or slowing down access to online content. The FCC would also eliminate a rule barring providers from prioritizing their own content," CNN reported.

If only those who can pay for a podium and loudspeaker can have access to the town square, the number of views or information the public will be exposed to will be limited to those who can afford the price of presenting it.

Net neutrality's demise will mean -- as with so many other things in America --

that those with more money will have an advantage -- to make even more money.

As Michael Cheah, general counsel at video site Vimeo,  told CNNMoney: the point of the net neutrality rules is "allowing consumers to pick the winners and losers and not [having] the cable companies make those decisions for them."

There was a time when a quote like that would have been spoken by a Republican, back when the GOP championed the "free market" as a solution to many problems. Their suggestions was usually calling for the removal of government regulations to unleash the power of the market.

This is one of those rare instances when removing a regulation stands to restrict the market to a few monied players -- something else which Republicans increasingly seem to favor ever since Citizens United unleashed the lobbyists to funnel obscene amounts of money into campaign coffers.

Which brings us to the second, somewhat less reported threat to the First Amendment -- media consolidation.

It was rightly seen as big news last week when it was announced that the omnivorous Walt Disney Company is consuming the larger part of 21st Century Fox for $52.4 billion.

"Disney has already announced an ambitious plan to introduce two streaming services by 2019. With this deal and the wealth of movies, TV shows and sports programming it provides, the company will now have the muscle to challenge Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook in the fast-growing realm of online video," the New York Times reported.

Consider that in addition to its own treacly empire of theme parks, princesses and dancing candlesticks, Disney owns both Marvel and the Star Wars movie empires (pun intended), as well as the ABC network and ESPN. 

Now it will introduce its own streaming services and everyone who thinks Disney will have enough money to pay to ensure its content gets priority online raise their hand.

This comes hand-in-hand with last month's decision, again by our freedom-loving friends at the FCC, to remove restrictions on ownership of broadcast television and other media companies, "potentially leading to more newspapers, radio stations and television broadcasters being owned by a handful of companies," as the Washington Post reported.

Initiated in the 1970s "to ensure that a diversity of voices and opinions could be heard on the air or in print," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said "small outlets are struggling to survive in a vastly different media world" and the rule is no longer needed, the Post wrote.

According to Pai, the rise of blogs, websites and podcasts mean "traditional media outlets now face more competition than ever — and rules that once enforced a diversity of viewpoints are no longer needed," wrote the Post which, in case you didn't know, itself now has the same owner as Amazon, Jeff Bezos.

“As a result of this decision, wherever you live, the FCC is giving the green light for a single company to own the newspaper and multiple television and radio stations in your community. I am hard pressed to see any commitment to diversity, localism, or competition in that result,” said FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat who voted against lifting the rule.

("A major beneficiary of the deregulatory moves, analysts say, is Sinclair, a conservative broadcasting company that is seeking to buy up Tribune Media for $3.9 billion," according to the Post. I'm sure that is complete coincidence.)

So, to sum up, blogs, websites and podcasts are competing with traditional media (true), so the FCC is letting single (well-monied) entities buy up all the traditional media in a given market so they survive, but at the cost of limited diversity of views and content.

And at the same time, it is allowing media consolidation, the FCC is throwing net neutrality out the window so that "competition" against traditional media will now be limited among those with enough money to pay to be in the ring to compete and to get an unfair advantage over the guy blogging from his mother's basement. 

In other words, big media can now consolidate and prioritize what it wants you to see on the Internet.

Frankly, let's call it what it is -- it's un-American and it is a direct threat to the First Amendment.

Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican who recognized the danger of the consolidation

of economic power and the value of "a square deal," would have railed against this as fervently as he did over the railroad, coal and timber trusts of his era.

"Yet more and more it is evident that the state, and if necessary the nation, has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations which are its creatures; particularly as regards the great business combinations which derive a portion of their importance from the existence of some monopolistic tendency," Roosevelt wrote and it is as true now as it was then.

With fewer companies making content, and Internet providers willing to take payments to ensure well-heeled content is seen first, while content from those with shallower pockets remains unseen, it creates yet another uneven field on which smaller competitors are at a disadvantage.

Consider the change that means.

How many times has a video shot by someone you've never heard of before gone viral on the Internet? And I don't mean cat videos.

Consider how that has given birth to everything from the exposure of police violence against African-Americans, to James O'Keefe's "Project Veritas" and the video that took down ACORN. 

Well, if you can attract investment (maybe even tax-free political donations?) from big money, your content might get seen on the Internet. If not ... well, looks like you're out of the competition. Truthfully, without money, you could never even be in it.

That is not supposed to be how a democracy works, or how America works.

None of which even considers the enhanced (and terrifying) opportunities fewer hands with more and more control over content and discourse provides for censorship, an invisible injury to freedom of thought because you don't miss what you never knew existed.

After all, if a corporate giant can prioritize what you see, what prevents them from ensuring you don't see it at all?

I mean, consider that I just called for more regulation of Comcast. Under the new system, you might never even have ....... 

Let's Get the Bull(winkle) Out of PA Re-Districting

When I think of Pennsylvania and its notably gerrymandered Congressional districts, I usually think of the 7th.

And when I think of the 7th Congressional District, I think of Bullwinkle.

Not because Republican Patrick Meehan, who holds the seat, reminds me of Bullwinkle.

Rather, because, well, I think you can see for yourself.

When the Washington Post named the nation's most gerrymandered districts back in 2014, Pennsylvania's 7th was right up there near the top.

And it is one of the primary examples for why we have gridlock in Washington.

As writer Christopher Ingraham explained:  "Contrary to one popular misconception about the practice, the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw yourself a collection of overwhelmingly safe seats. Rather, it's to give your opponents a small number of safe seats, while drawing yourself a larger number of seats that are not quite as safe, but that you can expect to win comfortably."

A gerrymandered district does two things: it neutralizes a portion of the opposite party's voting population, which is its intended purpose, and it makes compromise increasingly impossible because House members need not appeal to a broad range of voters, but can win just by appealing to their base.

Congressional districts used to be fairly evenly shaped, back when politicians were adults and they recognized they had to represent the district's population as it exists in the real world.

Now, rather than win a race to represent a community, you change the community so you can win the race.

Consider; this is the evolution of the seventh district over the last 60 years:

One might accurately call it de-evolution.

There is no good reason for the changes you see above other than electoral advantage.

Does anyone really believe that Pennsylvanians along the Delaware/Maryland border should be represented by the same person who represents the people in rural Pike Township in Berks County?

It's certainly not done for the benefit of the constituents. It's done for the benefit of, in this case, the Republican candidate.

Do not be so naive as to believe that when Democrats are in the majority, they don't do the same thing.

They do.

But since Republicans now dominate the state house, they are the primary perpetrators of this crime against democracy and they have become devastatingly craven about it.

And while it helps them get elected, it has helped drag Pennsylania's electoral integrity down to the level of countries like Cuba, Bulgaria or Hungary. This according to a recent analysis by The Electoral Integrity Project, which is affiliated with Harvard University and the University of Sydney in Australia.

The project evaluated states' electoral systems based on interviews with more than 700 political scientists. Researchers scored states on the perceived integrity of 11 aspects of the electoral process, from how congressional and legislative districts are drawn to how votes are cast and counted.

Even Alabama, Florida and West Virginia have a better electoral integrity score than Pennsylvania. We're tied with Mississippi.

Pennsylvania overall scored 56 on the scale of 100, but particularly dismal was its score for gerrymandered districts.

“What jumps out (with Pennsylvania's results) is gerrymandering,” Harvard political scientist Pippa Norris told The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in December.

She was referring to the state's score of 11 out of 100 for the way it draws legislative and congressional district boundaries. Only Wisconsin and North Carolina scored worse.

"Congressional redistricting proposals must be approved by the full Senate and House and signed by the governor. In Pennsylvania's past two redistricting processes, Republicans controlled the Senate, House and governor's mansion — effectively giving the GOP control over the drawing of congressional districts," Tribune-Review writer Tom Fontaine wrote in December.

Norris told him many districts are gerrymandered to favor one party or another in such a way that incumbents become virtually unbeatable, often resulting in less competition. That makes elected officials less accountable and less responsive to constituents and contributes to gridlock in Washington, she said.

The next redistricting will occur after the 2020 Census.

Safe races also mean incumbents are actually dis-incentivized from reaching across the aisle or taking positions out of step with their base.

They are more likely to be ousted in a primary by a base that feels betrayed than by a candidate from the other party in the general election. This means no compromising in Washington, lest they have to face the music back home.

This endless reelection of incumbents also dis-incentivizes voters from going to the polls because barring a sex scandal of the most repellent nature, nothing ever changes.

President Trump says he wants to investigate election fraud. But with gerrymandering, the fraud occurs before the votes are even cast.

Not that I hold out any hope he'll take me up on my suggestion, but if he really wants to improve the integrity of U.S. elections, he might start here.

He should contact a non-profit coalition called "Fair Districts PA," which includes Common Cause PA and the League of Women Voters and has undertaken the uphill fight to try to convince those in power that politicians should not "choose their own voters."

In the last legislative session, the coalition endorsed companion bills Senate Bill 484, introduced by Sen. Lisa Boscola (D-Lehigh County), and House Bill 1835, introduced by Rep. David Parker (R-Monroe County). Both bills sought to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution to establish an independent citizens redistricting commission with clear standards to ensure public input and a fair, non-partisan outcome.

Let's take back control of our government.

Otherwise, we get this:

Are PSSA's Pie in Your Face, or Pie in the Sky?

Teacher Allen Ferster smiles through the whipped cream

Blogger's Note: This was put together with the help of another submission from our prolific friend, John Armato: 

Rupert Elementary students’ recent efforts during the state standardized testing program (PSSA) earned them a “pie reward.”

They were very enthusiastic about the whipped cream pies that they were permitted to throw at their Principal, Matt Moyer and volunteer teachers.

The pie throwing was a reward to the students who had perfect attendance during all six days of the math and reading PSSA testing program and demonstrated outstanding effort.

A pie in the face is in Jamie Fazekas' future

Teachers volunteering to be “pied” were Max Donnelly, Debbie Wilson, Allen Ferster, Sherry Shank, Jamie Fazekas, and Britney Oxenford.

Another way students were motivated this year was through assemblies held before hand, such as the one at Lincoln and Rupert with football stand-out Rian Wallace and Pottstown alum David Charles from High Street Music Co. 

"The kids seem to really enjoy the message.  I've had many requests from faculty and students for a song I wrote and performed at both pep rallies titled  'Get Into The Zone," Charles wrote in an e-mail.  

Franklin Elementary teacher Lindi Vollmuth played that song and accompanying video for the school board at Thursday's school board meeting.

Sherry Shank says 'no more pie please. I've had enough.'

Click here to hear the song.

Assistant Superintendent Jeff Sparagana told the school board recently that the PSSA testing time is a high-pressure period for both the students and teachers in Pottstown.

In March, I reported about how security measures surrounding the test have become draconian, in the opinion of many Pottstown educators.

“We all know these tests are already over-emphasized, but now the process of giving the test is becoming more important than the test itself,” Vollmuth told the board during the March 15 board meeting.

As far as Superintendent Reed Lindley was concerned, Vollmuth was preaching to the choir.

“It’s unbelievable all the things we’re dealing with to make sure there is no cheating,” Lindley said. “At this point, we are up in the ozone layer in terms of compliance,” he said.

Teachers Terry Shank and Max Donnelly took their lumps
along with Principal Matt Moyer, right.

At Thursday's meeting, Sparagana told the board "the difficulty for teachers also comes after the testing period is done when there is a "let down and the teachers have to try and pick the students up and keep them enthusiastic about getting through to the end of the year."

Meanwhile, according to this article in the Washington Post, "in Texas, New York, Illinois and other states, protests by parents and educators are getting louder against school reform that insists on using standardized test scores as the basis for evaluating students, educators and schools."

As Valerie Straus reports, part of the irony of this growing movement is that it is strongest in Texas where  some 345 school districts — out of about 1,030 districts — "have adopted a resolution that says that standardized tests are 'strangling' public schools and asking the state board of education to rethink the testing regime. Those school districts represent more than 1.6 million students."

The irony part comes in that that "it was in Texas where the era of high-stakes testing was born. George W. Bush started a test-based accountability program when he was governor and then blew it out into a national education initiative known as No Child Left Behind during his presidency."

And in New York, the latest flap about standardized tests has to do with whether or not a pineapple wears sleeves. Confused? So were the children. Read about it here.

Undermining Public Education, Hobbles Our Hope for the Future

Undermining education undermines jobs

As the presidential campaign gears up and every candidate is sure to use the word "jobs" in every sentence they speak, I am sometimes struck by the acknowledgement gap that exists between the words "jobs" and "education."

Education, particularly public education, is a dirty word these days.

Depending on who you listen to, education is either the primary cause of Pennsylvania's budget deficit, a financial black hole into which the public's money is recklessly and unthinkingly flung, the refuge of lazy teachers who get every summer off; or, in some extreme cases, "factories" where "weird socialization" occurs.

To which I say, even if all of that were true, and I doubt it is, that does not do away with the need for the function.

Why can't we agree to fix public education, instead of "throwing the baby out with the bath water," or trying to starve public education into some kind of stasis, so we then can blame it for not adequately educating our kids.

The educator bubble?

I will be the first person to say that sometimes it seems that educators live in a bubble, separated from the real world where the rest of us have been paying a heavy share of their own health benefits for more than a decade and go years without a raise.

At the same time, not many of us can say we've spent any time in their world, struggling to deliver a mandated curriculum to a room packed with 20 to 30 6-year-olds, several of whom have severe learning disabilities but are nevertheless judged by the same standardized tests which have become the only measure for the value we place on education.

What got me started on all this was, first, this article in The Atlantic about how complicated manufacturing jobs have become in America and the need for an educated work force to man the factory jobs for which a high school education is no longer adequate.

Then I saw this article in Sunday's Washington Post and I really got riled.

Today's manufacturing machines are complex

We keep talking about how manufacturing jobs have left the U.S. for Asia, Mexico and elsewhere, and it's true they have.

The U.S. has lost nearly 4 million manufacturing jobs in the past 10 years.

(And how is China preparing to receive those jobs? A massive public education effort.Would that we had that much foresight.)

But significantly, the Post also revealed that a recent report for the Manufacturing Institute found that as many as 600,000 manufacturing jobs in this country are going unfilled.

Why?

A shortage of skilled workers.

Factory floors these days look more like laboratory clean rooms than grease and metal-filing filled machine shops, with high-tech computers doing the work once done by 10 un-skilled laborers.

Lament it if you will, but we won't be going back -- ever. Time to adjust to the present and plan for the future.

Here's the thing, those machines need at least one skilled workers to run, program and maintain them. Add to that the fact that many of the workers who remain and run these machines are aging and we may soon find even more jobs leaving for overseas, not because it's cheaper, but because the workers there are better educated.


So what's our plan?

Apparently, cut public funding for public education.

Have we not learned yet that it's cheaper to educate our citizens, then to imprison them or support them indefinitely on Welfare?

The Post article quotes 27-year-old Greg Rowles who got a job paying between $18 to $28 per hour because he "took some classes at the local community college."

Pottstown's Western Campus of Montgomery County Community College is among the 50-fastest growing in the country, but when it comes time to prepare for a future of high-tech manufacturing jobs, what is our plan?

Cut community college funding.

In a Feb. 7 article I wrote for The Mercury, MCCC President Karen Stout lamented this short-sighted approach as is proposed on Gov. Tom Corbett's budget.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett

In his budget address, Gov. Corbett said: “Maintaining our commitment to the technical professions and practical trades keeps a bargain with today and builds for tomorrow. As our energy sector expands and manufacturing revives, Pennsylvania needs a trained work force ready to meet the demand for workers."

This will apparently be achieved with a  4 percent cut to MCCC's budget, on top of last year's cut of 10 percent.

“On a per-student basis, we’re looking at the same level of state funding that we received in 1994,” Stout told me.

Like the Post story, Stout said that manufacturers here in Montgomery County need qualified workers.

A Feb. 17 lasagna dinner raised $1,187 for West Campus scholarships

" I was meeting with CEOs of manufacturing firms in the Upper Perk area and they were explaining how important the work we’re doing is to those companies, and the jobs it will create, but we can’t keep offering new programs that adapt to the needs of the job market with these constant cuts to our funding,” said Stout.

The cuts will, in all likelihood, lead to an increase in tuition costs and a need for more lasagna dinners like the one shown here to raise more money for more scholarships.

Which brings me to another aspect of how we're sabotaging our best chances of growing our way out of this recession.

Rich kids are doing better than poor kids in testing

The third spoke in this tirade of mine was this Reuters article, which also ran in The Atlantic, which looks at new research showing that "the difference in test scores between affluent and underprivileged students has grown 40 percent since the 1960s."

The achievement gap between rich and poor students is now twice the gap between white and black students.

More worrisome is information that indicates when it comes to college-completion rates, the rich-poor gulf has grown by 50 percent since the 1980s, according to the Reuters report, which was based on this more detailed report in The New York Times.

Poor kids are now 50% less likely to finish college than rich ones

So what are we doing to level the playing field for poor families? Why making it even more tilted in favor of affluent families of course.

As The Mercury reported last year, Pennsylvania's lopsided method for public education funding discriminates against the Commonwealth's children based solely on their zip code.

Poor communities like Pottstown are getting the scraps. Under Corbett's proposals, state funding was to be cut by $600 per student last year in Pottstown, leading to the painful contemplation of cuts to music and art.

But in places like affluent Lower Merion -- where two new high schools, one complete with an indoor pool, had just been completed -- Corbett wanted to cut funding by a mere $83 per student.

This year's spread, shown below in a chart I made for this story in Sunday's edition of The Mercury, is less extreme, but the pattern remains the same.

So let's put all this together.

Children, the workers of tomorrow, from low-income families have less chance of doing well in school and even less of a chance of completing college; so we cut the funding to their primary and secondary schools; this while the increasingly well-paying manufacturing jobs left in the U.S., will require even greater education; this while we cut funding to community colleges, the cheapest and most applicable college education to allow those poor children to access those jobs; and therefore make it even less likely those children can afford the education they need to get those jobs, and perhaps improve the odds for success of their children, the next generation of American workers after them.


Someone please explain to me how this is a sustainable plan for long-term success.


Maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't see it.

Tell me how the above ensures the future success of all Americans and the continued success of our nation.

And don't tell me what you don't want to pay for.

I didn't want to pay trillions for the Iraq war, but that's the price we pay for living in a Democracy.

I agree, no one wants to pay for failing schools. But why can't we figure out how to make them successful schools?  Is it really that hard?

Shouldn't every politician prefer to pay for schools over prisons? Shouldn't we the taxpayers?


So enough fulminating, the real question is, what to do about it?

The answer, I believe, is to fix what's wrong with public education, not torpedo it and hope "the market" will get the job done. That's the easy way out.

(The market works for some things. I believe that now. I've seen it. But it is not a panacea for everything that ails us.)

Admittedly, fixing what's wrong with public schools  -- and I take a moment here to point out that there is a lot that is right with public schools -- is hard, complicated and politically explosive work.

But we don't elect our public officials to make easy choices do we? If that were the case, we could leave it all in the hands of Pottstown Borough Council.


It will require sacrificing some sacred cows.

In all likelihood, it will mean lower pensions for educators, more contributions toward their health benefits and consolidation of school districts, perhaps to the county level as is done in Maryland.

It will also require a state funding formula closer to the one implemented by the prior administration which is based on the "costing out study," which looks at a district's actual costs in determining how much aid it should receive and uses that to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students.

It could be funded by (shudder) a tax hike or a revenue source from, say, a natural resource we have in abundance and now being harvested at bargain basement prices.

But we have to do something other than let public education die on the vine. The founders realized this and saw the need for an educated population to make this republic work.

Until the founding of the United States, society had two models to choose from: either elites ran everything and enjoyed all the benefits, or, as was the case before that, there was chaos and all that mattered was who was strongest.

The founders tried to walk the line between those two, envisioning "the best" of the nation naturally assuming leadership (which, admittedly, to them, meant white, land-holding males); but they also pictured "the best" leading an educated populace, one that could understand the issues facing the nation and come to logical well-reasoned decisions (and votes) about how to face them.

To accomplish this, they favored a radical plan of raising public discourse and decision, by educating the public, at the cost of the public.

Thomas Jefferson proposed an extensive system of free public education in Virginia, and, as president, submitted to Congress in 1806 a proposed amendment to the Constitution to legalize federal support for education.

"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right," Jefferson said.

John Adams

His fellow signatory on the Declaration of Independence, John Adams, put it, as he had a tendency sometimes to do, more bluntly: “The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.”


Even Pennsylvania's founders enshrined it in our own Constitution.


Article III, Section 14 of the Pennsylvania Constitution requires it: "The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth."

Raise your hand if you think there is anything "thorough" or "efficient" about their efforts to provide for public education these days.

Seriously, raise your hand. I realize this is a volatile subject, post your thoughts on what should happen to public education. Maybe you think I'm totally off base on this. I invite you to say so civilly here.

Must Represent Moose and Squirrel!

While there may be some dispute among politicos (or Rorschach enthusiasts) about what the proposed new 7th Congressional District looks like, state Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19th Dist. has taken it an extra step and taken the question to the voters.

Dinniman launched the satirical contest after howls of protest went up over how convoluted the new district's lines are, as drawn by the Republican majority during the Census-driven re-districting process.

The district, now represented by Republican Patrick Meehan, runs across five counties, Delaware, Montgomery, Chester, Berks and Lancaster and, "at times, stretches as narrow as a few hundred feet and, at others, practically encircles whole regions," according to a release from Dinniman's office.

The green image is the proposed new 7th Congressional District.

This surpasses the former record for convolution, the former 6th District drawn up in 2000 for the benefit of Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach who, despite the effort, has consistently won reelection by the narrowest margins of any House member in the entire U.S.

But look closely at the green image above.

Does it remind you of anything?

Bullwinkle and his sidekick, Rocky, the flying squirrel.

According to Dinniman's office, "blob without borders," "emaciated hammerhead shark" and "scrapple" were among the dozens of suggestions his office received.

But the clear winner, and it's hard to argue with his choice, is "Bullwinkle J. Moose" of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" fame.

Have a look at the image above, helpfully provided by Dinniman's office for easy verification, and you will have a hard time looking at this district, and ever seeing it as anything else.

The contest winner, his office reports, is Jim Callahan of Berwyn.

(I should note here that newsroom compatriot Mike Spohn and myself reached the same conclusion, but, in an unusual fit of appropriateness, decided against competing in Dinniman's contest).

"There is no doubt that the Republicans concocted this ridiculous-looking district to dissuade Democratic challengers and ensure the reelection of their members in Congress," said Dinniman in Jan. 9 release.

"The misshapen 7th district is nothing more than the Republican legislature again trying to pull one over on the voters of Pennsylvania," he said.

In a mildly disturbing display of familiarity with the once popular children's cartoon, Dinniman finished his release with a flourish, saying "in the words of Bullwinkle J. Moose, 'nothing up my sleeve ... and presto!' -- a district where Republicans can't lose."

It seems clear who Dinniman -- a state senator who, the Daily Local News recently reported, may be challenged in a primary for being too Republican in his votes -- believes to be playing the role of Boris Badanov and his cronies.

It also would seem that Dinniman is not the only person to come up with a naming contest for this bit of twisted congressional confetti. Chris Cillizza's Washington Post blog, The Fix, recognized the potential, and ran a similar contest for the mighty Seventh.

Entries there ranged from, "Goofy dancing with one of the Transformers," to "Gerrymanders in Coitus," to "Joe Sestak can run here and lose no matter what."

Other suggestions I cannot, in good conscience, ignore include: "Ben Franklin kicking New Jersey westward," "a grown-up rhinoceros and a baby rhinoceros being forcibly thrown off in different directions from the back of a horse," and "The Sitting Deer Kicks the Howling Dog."

Clearly, the readers of The Washington Post are not watching enough cartoons.

(Follow me on Twitter @PottstownNews)