A Tale of Two States

I. The Divergent Paths of Wisconsin and Minnesota
Under a Republican governor in Wisconsin and a Democratic one in Minnesota, the two states have followed very divergent paths. Minnesota raised taxes on the wealthy, invested in public education, expanded health care and boosted unions, while Wisconsin did the opposite. Now Minnesota is winning the border war, with faster growth, higher wages and lower unemployment. After misleading the voters of Wisconsin by hiding the fact that he wanted to make Wisconsin a right-to-work state, through three elections -- one being a recall election -- Governor Scott Walker made Wisconsin a right-to-work state but put the blame on the GOP-dominated state legislature.

The divide between the two states illustrates  how the United States is fast becoming a two-tiered democracy, a country where it's harder to vote in Republican-controlled states and easier to vote in Democratic ones. Of the 22 states that have passed new voter restrictions, more than 80 percent were under Republican control, while the states, such as Oregon and California, that have recently passed ambitious reforms like automatic voter registration are overwhelmingly Democratic.

Wisconsin's GOP-controlled legislature cut early-voting from 30 days to 12, eliminated night and weekend voting, banned straight-ticket voting, made it more difficult both to register to vote and to cast an absentee ballot, and tightened residency requirements. Although a judge has invalidated several of the voting restrictions, it is unclear whether they will not be in effect in the November 2016 election.

As of early July, Wisconsin's Department of Motor Vehicles had rejected nearly a fifth of all applicants for a voter ID. 85 percent of those rejected were African American, Latinos or Native Americans.

It is also of note that Wisconsin is so heavily gerrymandered that even though Barack Obama carried Wisconsin by seven percentage points in the last election, Republicans carried more than half of the state Senate and state Assembly districts. Just 10 percent of legislative seats are now considered to be competitive, giving the GOP a seemingly airtight majority. [1]

II. Sports Gambling
Legal sports gambling's handle in Nevada swelled in 2015 to $4.2 billion. That number pales in comparison to the $144.8 billion the American Gaming Association estimates Americans wagered illegally on sports in the same 12-month period. Although the Federal Wire Act of 1961 bans interstate commerce in the form of bets or wagers, entity wagering's proponents point out that there is no law against sending money across state lines to invest in a business. [2]

III. U.S. Bombing Libya Again
The U.S. bombing Libya again is "yet another episode of the War on Terror Circle of Life where the US bombs a country and then funnels weapons into the region, which leads to chaos and the opportunity for terrorist organizations, which then leads [to] more US bombing."  [3] Bombing, of course, invariably causes civilian casualties.

A Reuters investigation in April found that al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula has "become stronger than at any time since it first emerged almost 20 years ago."

ADDENDUM:
*Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, New Mexico are neighboring cities, yet high school graduation rates vary greatly. For 2015, Albuquerque Public Schools had a graduation rate of 61.7%, while graduation rates in two of Rio Rancho's high schools were 82.9% in Rio Rancho High and 86.2% in Sue Cleveland High. Bernalillo County,in which Albuquerque is located, had an overall high  school graduation rate of 68.1%. [4]

Footnotes
[1] Ari Berman, "A Tale of Two Cities," The Nation, July 18/25, 2016.

[2] Albert Chen and Will Green, "Mutual Attraction," Sports Illustrated," June 27, 2016.

[3] Trevor Timm, "The US is bombing Libya again," The Guardian, August 2, 2016.

[4] "Rio Rancho graduation rate dips a bit," Rio West, April 16, 2016.