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skypalacearchitect · 6 years ago

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“Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his decision in Shelby County v. Holder. Congress had reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 2006 by a 98-0 Senate vote and a gaping 390-33 tally in the House, but in 2013 the Supreme Court’s conservative justices voted 5-4 to strike down its key pre-authorization provision.

The result has been predictable ― systematic disenfranchisement of voters across the South and beyond, undoubtedly contributing to the defeat of Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Florida and Georgia (the latter is still being contested), and perhaps even enabling Ted Cruz in Texas to keep his Senate seat.

Now that Democrats have reclaimed the House and key governor’s mansions, and flipped hundreds of state legislative seats, we have a chance to do something about it. It’s time for them to go all-in on the universal right to transparent and accessible voting.

Re-reading the Roberts decision the day after the 2018 midterms is brutal. He blithely assures America that the days of Jim Crow are over and that the “current conditions” in no way resemble those of 1965. He writes that “while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.” Because of that perceived mismatch, he claimed, he and his four colleagues took the “gravest and most delicate duty” of the Supreme Court and struck down a law as unconstitutional. He said that racism was still bad, of course, but that Congress would have to come up with some new rubric to protect the franchise of voters of color.

Congress, or rather the Republicans who have maintained control of at least one chamber of Congress since 2013, has not developed a new rubric. Instead, Republican lawmakers and officials, especially those in the very states governed by the VRA, have touted the nonexistent threat of voter fraud in order to systematically re-disenfranchise voters of color through a variety of means.

Some of their techniques are almost laughable, such as the preposterous claim to have “forgotten” power cords for the few voting machines sent to a precinct in Gwinnett County, Georgia. Others are dangerous, such as when Georgia police allegedly started harassing Democrats working to get out the vote. Mostly, though, the tactics are simple. Pass voter ID laws. Question every black registration. Close polling locations. Make the remaining locations remote, inaccessible, understaffed and under-equipped. Pour resources into voting sites in conservative districts. Reap the electoral rewards. These tactics have, regrettably, worked to ensure Republicans can continue their white minority rule.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

In this Oct. 30 photo, rejected mail-in ballots sit in a box as members of the canvassing board verify signatures on ballots at the Miami-Dade County Elections Department in Florida.

I wish we had transformed our voting system in 2009 after President Barack Obama took office, but there are many would-be priorities that slipped away during that brief window of total Democratic control. Once the 2010 midterms sailed by with massive Republican victories, we were well on our way to the undermining of democracy through virulent gerrymandering and widespread suppression.

Now it’s time to turn the tables. Instead of seeking nefarious benefits, though, Democrats are in luck that the party does best when they do what’s right. The more people receive their justly due franchise, in general, the more Democrats are elected. But Democrats should push for voting rights everywhere, rather than targeting potential strongholds, because the very nature of our democratic system of government depends on it.

The new House majority should draft clearly written (i.e., short) legislation that mandates automatic registration for all eligible voters and simple but radical measures like universal vote-by-mail. Then, Democrats should attach it to everything that comes out of the House, no matter how mundane. Why not make use of all the bills that pass without debate, like renaming a Texas courthouse or a post office in Florida or Virginia? While they are at the newly dubbed “U.S. Navy Seaman Dakota Kyle Rigsby Post Office” in Palmyra, Virginia, let’s make sure people can use the facility to send in their ballot without needing to take off work.

Republicans will cry foul and raise the specter of fraud, but right now the left can rebroadcast scenes from Tuesday’s election of lines snaking around the block and ballots rejected or altered, and take up the mantle of the defenders of democracy itself. Heck, remote balloting even saves money on staffing polling places and buying expensive machines, so it’s yet another argument that the Democrats are the party of fiscal prudence.

BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is out, but not before he put in place a vote suppression regime that may have thrown the state to Donald Trump in 2016.

We’ve got to do the same thing in every state and county that we can. Wisconsin’s new governor-elect, Tony Evers, must turn from defeating Scott Walker to fighting his heavily gerrymandered legislature that remains deep red. Walker’s voter ID regime arguably threw the state to Donald Trump in 2016; that can’t happen again. Michigan’s new governor, Gretchen Whitmer, faces similar challenges, though there’s less evidence its ID law swung the state in 2016.

Even polar opposites Kansas and New York can come into play. In the former, vote-suppressor-in-chief Kris Kobach lost the governor’s race to Democratic rival Laura Kelly. We’re not going to see Kansas turn blue in the next presidential election, but she has to fight Kobach’s legacy because Kansas’ citizens deserve free and fair elections. On the bluer end of the spectrum, New York’s backward voting laws have contributed to preventing the state from being the progressive forerunner it should be. Precinct by precinct, let’s reclaim our democracy.

Can we get a new Voting Rights Act through the Senate and onto Trump’s desk? Would he sign it? Would the Supreme Court toss this one out as well? That’s a fight I’m eager to see the Democrats take on.

Force the GOP to own its position as a minority party supported only by vote suppression. Make transparency, accessibility and universality of the franchise the watchword of the new Democratic House majority. It’s politically smart. It’s also the right thing to do. It’s too rare that ethics and savvy come together when talking about politics, so seize the moment.

#democratic party #voting rights #voter suppression #congress #2018 elections #2018 midterms #2018 midterm elections #GOOD ARTICLE #huffingtonpost #skypalacearchitect

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elfwreck · 5 years ago

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I am so glad that Super Tuesday involved big states and decisive results, and we don’t get another two months of “which of these 4, no 6, no 11 candidates WILL BE THE ONE?!?!?!”

We now have two candidates. They are both experienced politicians. They are both firmly anti-Trump. They both have devoted followings. They both have a whole lot of political and other connections; they can put together a team rather than trying to do everything themselves. The are both smart men with solid plans to improve America.

Both of those sets of plans have gaps. Both of them are older white men who are less woke about intersectionality than we’d like.

One of them can carry the millennial and younger vote, for those who get to the polls, and will inspire a hell of a lot of activism.

The other can carry the “centrist” vote, and has a good chance of pulling Republicans who are unhappy with the last four years of the presidency.

NO MORE ‘UGH HE IS THE WORST’ RHETORIC, GODSDAMNIT. We need EVERY VOTE in November.

Do I like Sanders better than Biden? Oh hell yeah, by a long shot. But Biden plays better in the conservative parts of the country, and there’s a solid chance he’ll get the nomination - and it will NOT BE A DISASTER.

He is NOT WORSE THAN TRUMP. He is not “just as bad.” He would not be “politics as usual,” because we no longer have “politics as usual.”

I’ve heard the Supreme Court mentioned, and someone said Biden would put in a conservative judge. That’s possible, depending on how you define “conservative.” Biden would NOT put in a Nazi fascist rapist judge.

Work hard to elect whichever of them gets the nomination, and keep the House and flip the Senate - and Congress can give us M4A and erase student loan debt, and Biden will damn well sign it because, even if he doesn’t quite approve, he knows better than to tank a functional reform package.

AOC is eligible for the presidency in 2024; if you want ultra-progressive, look ahead - but let it start with “let’s get the damn Nazis out of the white house” first.

Social media has abruptly turned into a torrent of abuse as Democrats try to shame each other to death and I'm absolutely fed the fuck up. I'm out for a few days until people can get their vitriolic, toxic bullshit under control. We all did what we thought was best, we were all scared and are still scared, and tearing into each other is not how we pick up and move forward.

#us politics #vote #election 2020 #bernie #biden

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candy--heart · 7 years ago

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HOW THE G.O.P. SABOTAGED OBAMACARE- ACA:

By ABBE R. GLUCK MAY 25, 2017 Obamacare is not “collapsing under its own weight,” as Republicans are so fond of saying. It was sabotaged from the day it was enacted. And now the Republican Party should be held accountable not only for any potential replacement of the law, but also for having tried to starve it to death. The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday released its accounting of the House Republicans’ replacement bill for the Affordable Care Act, and the numbers are not pretty: It is projected to leave 23 million more Americans uninsured over 10 years, through deep cuts to insurance subsidies and Medicaid. The report underscores how the bill would cut taxes for the rich to take health care away from the less well-off. The A.C.A. is not perfect, and improvements to it would be welcome. But it worked in many respects and would have worked much better had Congress been a faithful guardian of the law. It is worth making a record of those Republican saboteurs’ efforts. The A.C.A.’s opponents brought a lawsuit against its requirement that people buy insurance — a Republican idea — the very day the statute was signed into law. The Supreme Court rejected that claim. But the court gave opponents a major victory on another front, ruling that Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid was optional for states. Yet another lawsuit seized on some sloppy language in the law to make the implausible argument that Congress did not provide for the insurance subsidies on which the law depends. The Supreme Court also rejected that challenge. But if the Republicans lost those cases, they succeeded in sowing the insurance markets with doubt and forcing states to slow down implementation while awaiting the court’s decisions. That in turn may have reduced sign-ups, further destabilizing the insurance market. The second case challenging the subsidies was not decided until 2015, more than a year after the statute’s critical 2014 deadline for implementation. Even worse, these lawsuits helped make the A.C.A. the salient partisan issue of the Obama administration, turning the law into the ultimate Republican litmus test: Implementing a state insurance exchange or expanding Medicaid, even when it seemed in a state’s interest, became treasonous for the party. Nevertheless, about a dozen principled Republican governors bucked their party and expanded their programs. In 2014, the House brought a lawsuit, arguing that a critical piece of A.C.A. funding — the cost-sharing subsidies that pay insurers to lower premiums — had not been properly appropriated. For insurers, not knowing whether that money could be cut off — President Trump is still threatening not to pay them — has caused anxiety about whether to remain in the A.C.A. markets. More than 100 other suits have been filed, including challenges to contraception provisions and the requirement that employers provide insurance. On the political front, the Republicans targeted provisions of the law that provided crucial transitional financing to steady the insurance markets early in the program. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, calling the money an insurance “bailout,” sponsored a measure that prevented appropriation of some of those funds. The courts have issued mixed rulings on whether the federal government must pay, adding yet more instability to the insurance markets. The Affordable Care Act, like any major statute, surely could use adjustments. For example, the insurance subsidies were probably set too low initially. The Obama administration’s decision to allow more people to stay on their old plans than originally expected may also have narrowed the new pool of insurance customers in ways that contributed to premium hikes. The Republican-controlled House never provided any additional implementation money after the initial appropriation set forth in the Affordable Care Act itself, forcing the Department of Health and Human Services to scrounge for needed funds. A caretaking Congress would have fixed what wasn’t working. Instead, opponents did everything possible to shut off all the A.C.A.’s financing — starvation intended to wreak havoc in the insurance markets and to make it falsely appear that the A.C.A. was collapsing because it was just bad policy. The irony is that the A.C.A. was vulnerable to this strategy because the Democrats had tried to compromise with the Republicans in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to build bipartisan support for the law. If the Democrats had instead enacted a single-payer policy — such as Medicare for all — the entire health care system would have been in the hands of the federal government, instead of dependent on the states and private insurers. For now, it would be better to fix/repair ACA, then try to convince Congress to consider single-payer. It would probably be too confusing for them, since all they want to do is destroy Obamacare, rather than working with Democrats to make the much needed improvements. Now the Republicans find themselves in a mess. The Affordable Care Act has brought health care to an estimated 20 million more Americans and has expanded services — including access to drugs and preventive screening — for many more. A good number of Americans, including Republicans and the president himself, say they like elements of the law. It’s not a coincidence that the Trump administration’s first proposed health care regulation was aimed at stabilizing the insurance markets. Still, Republicans are using the Affordable Care Act’s so-called collapse as an argument for a much stingier law, one that would leave states responsible for paying many health care costs. Some conservatives are using the assault on the A.C.A. not to assail its novel insurance provisions — which many people like — but rather to grind an old ax against the entire Medicaid program, which was enacted in 1965 to help the poor. As the Senate turns to its own bill, it still has time to preserve the parts of the Affordable Care Act that are working and, more importantly, strengthen those that could succeed with proper support. That would be responsible — and, indeed, is what should have happened all along.

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geekprincess1 · 6 years ago

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Robert F. Kennedy

University of Cape Town, South Africa

N.U.S.A.S. "Day of Affirmation" Speech June 6th, 1966

I came here because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once imported slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.

But I am glad to come here to South Africa. I am already enjoying my visit. I am making an effort to meet and exchange views with people from all walks of life, and all segments of South African opinion, including those who represent the views of the government. Today I am glad to meet with the National Union of South African Students. For a decade, NUSAS has stood and worked for the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights-principles which embody the collective hopes of men of good will all around the world.

Your work, at home and in international student affairs, has brought great credit to yourselves and to your country. I know the National Student Association in the United States feels a particularly close relationship to NUSAS. And I wish to thank especially Mr. Ian Robertson, who first extended this invitation on behalf of NUSAS, for his kindness to me. It's too bad he can't be with us today.

This is a Day of Affirmation, a celebration of liberty. We stand here in the name of freedom.At the heart of that Western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any Western society.

The first element of this individual liberty is the freedom of speech: the right to express and communicate ideas, to set oneself apart from the dumb beasts of field and forest; to recall governments to their duties and obligations; above all, the right to affirm one's membership and allegiance to the body politic-to society-to the men with whom we share our land, our heritage, and our children's future.

Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard, to share in the decisions of government which shape men's lives. Everything that makes man's life worthwhile-family, work, education, a place to rear one's children and a place to rest one's head -all this depends on decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people. Therefore, the essential humanity of men can be protected and preserved only where government must answer-not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, or a particular race, but to all its people.

And even government by the consent of the governed, as in our own Constitution, must be limited in its power to act against its people; so that there may be no interference with the right to worship, or with the security of the home; no arbitrary imposition of pains or penalties by officials high or low; no restrictions on the freedom of men to seek education or work or opportunity of any kind, so that each man may become all he is capable of becoming.

These are the sacred rights of Western society. These were the essential differences between us and Nazi Germany, as they were between Athens and Persia.

They are the essence of our differences with communism today. I am unalterably opposed to communism because it exalts the state over the individual and the family, and because of the lack of freedom of speech, of protest, of religion, and of the press, which is the characteristic of totalitarian states. The way of opposition to communism is not to imitate its dictatorship, but to enlarge individual freedom, in our own countries and all over the globe. There are those in every land who would label as Communist every threat to their privilege. But as I have seen on my travels in all sections of the world, reform is not communism. And the denial of freedom, in whatever name, only strengthens the very communism it claims to oppose.

Many nations have set forth their own definitions and declarations of these principles. And there have often been wide and tragic gaps between promise and performance, ideal and reality. Yet the great ideals have constantly recalled us to our duties. And-with painful slowness-we have extended and enlarged the meaning and the practice of freedom for all our people.

For two centuries, my own country has struggled to overcome the self-imposed handicap of prejudice and discrimination based on nationality, social class, or race-discrimination profoundly repugnant to the theory and command of our Constitution. Even as my father grew up in Boston, signs told him that No Irish Need Apply. Two generations later President Kennedy became the first Catholic to head the nation; but how many men of ability had, before 1961, been denied the opportunity to contribute to the nation's progress because they were Catholic, or of Irish extraction? How many sons of Italian or Jewish or Polish parents slumbered in slums-untaught, unlearned, their potential lost forever to the nation and human race? Even today, what price will we pay before we have assured full opportunity to millions of Negro Americans?

In the last five years we have done more to assure equality to our Negro citizens, and to help the deprived both white and black, than in the hundred years before. But much more remains to be done.

For there are millions of Negroes untrained for the simplest of jobs, and thousands every day denied their full equal rights under the law; and the violence of the disinherited, the insulted and injured, looms over the streets of Harlem and Watts and South Side Chicago.

But a Negro American trains as an astronaut, one of mankind's first explorers into outer space; another is the chief barrister of the United States government, and dozens sit on the benches of court; and another, Dr. Martin Luther King, is the second man of African descent to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent efforts for social justice between races.

We have passed laws prohibiting discrimination in education, in employment, in housing, but these laws alone cannot overcome the heritage of centuries-of broken families and stunted children, and poverty and degradation and pain.

So the road toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great cost and danger march alongside us. We are committed to peaceful and nonviolent change, and that is important for all to understand though all change is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of protest and struggle is greater hope for the future, as men learn to claim and achieve for themselves the rights formerly petitioned from others.

And most important of all, all the panoply of government power has been committed to the goal of equality before the law, as we are now committing ourselves to the achievement of equal opportunity in fact.

We must recognize the full human equality of all of our people before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this, not because it is economically advantageous, although it is; not because of the laws of God command it, although they do; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.

We recognize that there are problems and obstacles before the fulfillment of these ideals in the United States, as we recognize that other nations, in Latin America and Asia and Africa, have their own political, economic, and social problems, their unique barriers to the elimination of injustices.

In some, there is concern that change will submerge the rights of a minority, particularly where the minority is of a different race from the majority. We in the United States believe in the protection of minorities; we recognize the contributions they can make and the leadership they can provide; and we do not believe that any people -whether minority, majority, or individual human beings-are "expendable" in the cause of theory or policy. We recognize also that justice between men and nations is imperfect, and that humanity sometimes progresses slowly.

All do not develop in the same manner, or at the same pace. Nations, like men, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted to others. What is important is that all nations must march toward increasing freedom; toward justice for all; toward a society strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of all its own people, and a world of immense and dizzying change.

In a few hours, the plane that brought me to this country crossed over oceans and countries which have been a crucible of human history. In minutes we traced the migration of men over thousands of years; seconds, the briefest glimpse, and we passed battlefields on which millions of men once struggled and died. We could see no national boundaries, no vast gulfs or high walls dividing people from people; only nature and the works of man-homes and factories and farms-everywhere reflecting man's common effort to enrich his life. Everywhere new technology and communications bring men and nations closer together, the concerns of one inevitably becoming the concerns of all. And our new closeness is stripping away the false masks, the illusion of difference which is at the root of injustice and hate and war. Only earthbound man still clings to the dark and poisoning superstition that his world is bounded by the nearest hill, his universe ended at river shore, his common humanity enclosed in the tight circle of those who share his town and views and the color of his skin.It is your job, the task of the young people of this world, to strip the last remnants of that ancient, cruel belief from the civilization of man.

Each nation has different obstacles and different goals, shaped by the vagaries of historyand of experience. Yet as I talk to young people around the world I am impressed not by the diversity but by the closeness of their goals, their desires and their concerns and their hope for the future. There is discrimination in New York, the racial inequality of apartheid in South Africa, and serfdom in the mountains of Peru. People starve in the streets of India, a former Prime Minister is summarily executed in the Congo,intellectuals go to jail in Russia, and thousands are slaughtered in Indonesia; wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere in the world. These are differing evils; but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfections of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, the defectiveness of our sensibility toward the sufferings of our fellows; they mark the limit of our ability to use knowledge for the well-being of our fellow human beings throughout the world. And therefore they call upon common qualities of conscience and indignation, a shared determination to wipe away the unnecessary sufferings of our fellow human beings at home and around the world.

It is these qualities which make of youth today the only true international community. More than this I think that we could agree on what kind of a world we would all want to build. It would be a world of independent nations, moving toward international community, each of which protected and respected the basic human freedoms. It would be a world which demanded of each government that it accept its responsibility to insure social justice. It would be a world of constantly accelerating economic progress-not material welfare as an end in itself, but as a means to liberate the capacity of every human being to pursue his talents and to pursue his hopes. It would, in short, be a world that we would be proud to have built.

Just to the north of here are lands of challenge and opportunity-rich in natural resources, land and minerals and people. Yet they are also lands confronted by the greatest odds-overwhelming ignorance, internal tensions and strife, and great obstacles of climate and geography. Many of these nations, as colonies, were oppressed and exploited. Yet they have not estranged themselves from the broad traditions of the West; they are hoping and gambling their progress and stability on the chance that we will meet our responsibilities to help them overcome their poverty.

In the world we would like to build, South Africa could play an outstanding role in that effort. This is without question a preeminent repository of the wealth and knowledge and skill of the continent. Here are the greater part of Africa's research scientists and steel production, most of its reservoirs of coal and electric power. Many South Africans have made major contributions to African technical development and world science; the names of some are known wherever men seek to eliminate the ravages of tropical diseases and pestilence. In your faculties and councils, here in this very audience, are hundreds and thousands of men who could transform the lives of millions for all time to come.

But the help and the leadership of South Africa or the United States cannot be accepted if we-within our own countries or in our relations with others-deny individual integrity, human dignity, and the common humanity of man. If we would lead outside ourborders, if we would help those who need our assistance, if we would meet our responsibilities to mankind, we must first, all of us, demolish the borders which history has erected between men within our own nations-barriers of race and religion, social class and ignorance.

Our answer is the world's hope; it is to rely on youth. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comeswith even the most peaceful progress.

This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. It is a revolutionary world we live in, and thus, as I have said in Latin America and Asia, in Europe and in the United States, it is young people who must take the lead. Thus you, and your young compatriots everywhere, have had thrust upon you a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived.

"There is," said an Italian philosopher, "nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." Yet this is the measure of the task of your generation, and the road is strewn with many dangers.

First, is the danger of futility: the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills-against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's greatest movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant Reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the thirty-two-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal.

"Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in isolated villages and city slums in dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

"If Athens shall appear great to you," said Pericles, "consider then that her glories were purchased by valiant men, and by men who learned their duty." That is the source of all greatness in all societies, and it is the key to progress in our time.

The second danger is that of expediency; of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course, if we would act effectively we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feelings of young people around the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspirations, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs-that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems. It is not realistic or hardheaded to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values, although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgment, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of passion and of belief-forces ultimately more powerful than all of the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.

It is this new idealism which is also, I believe, the common heritage of a generation which has learned that while efficiency can lead to the camps at Auschwitz, or the streets of Budapest, only the ideals of humanity and love can climb the hills of the Acropolis.

A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change. Aristotle tells us that "At the Olympic games it is not the finest and the strongest men who are crowned, but they who enter the lists...

So too in the life of the honorable and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize." I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.

For the fortunate among us, the fourth danger is comfort, the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says "May he live in interesting times." Like it or not we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. And everyone here will ultimately be judged-will ultimately judge himself-on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

So we part, I to my country and you to remain. We are-if a man of forty can claim that privilege-fellow members of the world's largest younger generation. Each of us have our own work to do. I know at times you must feel very alone with your problems and difficulties. But I want to say how impressed I am with what you stand for and the effort you are making; and I say this not just for myself, but for men and women everywhere. And I hope you will often take heart from the knowledge that you are joined with fellow young people in every land, they struggling with their problems and you with yours, but all joined in a common purpose; that, like the young people of my own country and of every country I have visited, you are all in many ways more closely united to the brothers of your time than to the older generations of any of these nations; and that you are determined to build a better future. President Kennedy was speaking to the young people of America, but beyond them to young people everywhere, when he said that "the energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it-and the glow from that fire can truly light the world."

And he added, "With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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By engineering the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has won a tremendous partisan victory — but at the cost of tremendous damage to the Court itself.

The Supreme Court’s legitimacy depends on most Americans viewing it as above the partisan fray, an institution whose decisions are driven by legal reasoning, not by the justices’ partisan leanings.

In confirming Kavanaugh, with a razor-thin partisan majority no less, the Republican Senate may well end up eroding that public faith. Kavanaugh’s fiery and nakedly partisan testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the September 27 hearing revealed a justice who was less an “impartial arbiter” of the law and more a partisan creature who would take his political grudges to the Supreme Court.

In that hearing, he blamed the sexual assault allegations against him on a left-wing conspiracy: a “calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election.” He claimed, without evidence, that Democrats were going after him to get “revenge on behalf of the Clintons,” with the support of “millions of dollars in money from outside, left-wing opposition groups.” He was defiant, even downright rude, toward the Democratic senators who asked him questions — interrupting Sen. Amy Klobuchar, whose father is in recovery from alcohol addiction, to ask if she had ever blacked out from overconsumption.

His performance was so alarming that the American Bar Association, which had given him its stamp of approval, on Friday announced that it was reopening its evaluation of Kavanaugh in light of his “temperament.” Retired Justice John Paul Stevens was also taken aback, saying Kavanaugh’s performance revealed a “potential bias” that could be a problem. And more than 2,400 law professors signed a letter expressing their view that Kavanaugh “did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament” to sit on the Court.

Kavanaugh seems to have sensed that his performance may have been damaging: He wrote an op-ed that appeared Thursday in the Wall Street Journal acknowledging that he was “too emotional at times” during the hearing, and asserting that he “will keep an open mind in every case.”

But his partisan testimony was consistent with a career spent in the Republican trenches against Democrats: He worked for Ken Starr’s investigation into the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and then for President George W. Bush after that. Now he becomes the conservative majority’s fifth vote after a bitter confirmation battle and an FBI investigation that Democrats believe was a whitewash. He joins the Supreme Court trailed by allegations of sexual assault (which he has denied) and accusations from some liberals that he lied under oath.

The system depends on everyone having faith in the Supreme Court adjudicating partisan disputes; confirming Kavanaugh, who is the most unpopular Supreme Court nominee ever to be approved by the Senate, could theoretically collapse this consensus.

The Kavanaugh confirmation fight “directly links the Court to the direct political process,” says Michael Nelson, a professor at Penn State. “That’s the sort of thing that’s kryptonite for the Court.”

When scholars talk about the Supreme Court’s “legitimacy,” they are talking about something more fundamental than job approval or whether the public agrees with the Court’s ruling in a specific case. They’re talking about the people’s faith in the very idea of the Supreme Court: the notion that it should be the final arbiter on political questions, the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution, insulated from partisanship and politics.

This kind of basic faith in the Court’s mission is essential to its functioning. Liberal democracy is, in theory, premised on the idea that you can only govern with the consent of the governed. There’s an inherent tension between this vision and unelected judges setting law through rulings, one resolved only if the public believes that the Court is a legitimate decision-making body.

A 2005 Annenberg survey found that the Supreme Court is significantly more trusted than the other two branches of the federal government, and that 75 percent of Americans believe “the Supreme Court can usually be trusted to make decisions that are right for the country as a whole.”

Much of that faith in the Court still endures. A 2018 Annenberg poll, for example, found that 73 percent of Americans disagreed with the idea that “if the Supreme Court started making a lot of rulings that most Americans disagreed with, it might be better to do away with the Court altogether.”

On other measures, however, public faith in the courts is in modest decline. An annual Gallup poll of public confidence in American institutions shows that the percentage of Americans who have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the Court has been mired in the 30s for much of the past decade; in the 1990s, that figure routinely reached the 40s and 50s:

Javier Zarracina/Vox

Political scientists generally do not see this as evidence that the Court is losing fundamental legitimacy. While the public may be less happy with the Court’s performance, or possibly less likely to trust it to do the right thing, they still generally do not think its role in the system has been cast into immediate jeopardy.

“The way the literature sees it now, it would take a lot to shake people’s faith in the Court,” says Sara Benesh, an expert on the Court at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.

There’s a debate among scholars about whether a series of unpopular rulings alone could damage the Court’s legitimacy in the public’s eyes, and genuine uncertainty about just how insulated the Court is from public opinion. It could be the case that the Court’s legitimacy is relatively secure — or that it’s a few bad decisions away from collapsing, potentially precipitating a crisis in which political actors start to ignore Court decisions.

But whether or not academics think controversial decisions are enough to destroy faith in the Court, they agree that the ultimate issue in determining the Court’s legitimacy is whether it appears to be above politics. This appears to be part of the calculation behind Chief Justice John Roberts’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act: He was deeply worried about the Court being perceived as simply a partisan Republican actor.

“This is the real risk to the Court’s legitimacy,” Rebecca Gill, a political scientist at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, says of Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “It’s not the idea that the Court makes political decisions — it’s the idea that the Court is just another partisan institution.”

When the Court loses its legitimacy, it has concrete consequences. The Supreme Court has no way to actually enforce its edicts. It relies on compliance and enforcement from the other branches and local governments. If the public doesn’t broadly believe in the Court’s role in the system at a very basic level, political actors might be tempted to ignore it.

This has happened before. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson refused to implement Supreme Court rulings upholding the rights of the Cherokee tribe; after Brown v. Board of Education, Southern states employed “massive resistance” tactics to block Court-mandated desegregation. We could now be entering yet another period of crisis.

Reputation and credibility of Supreme Court at stake with upcoming vote. How the Court is viewed. For years. Bigger than one individual. There are conservative acceptable alternatives.

— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) October 5, 2018

Since 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has used scorched-earth tactics to seize control of the Supreme Court. When Antonin Scalia died in 2016, McConnell infamously refused to even consider President Obama’s replacement nominee, Merrick Garland, until after the 2016 election. There was no principled rationale for this: The reason was that Garland is a moderate liberal and would have tipped the Court from a 5-4 conservative majority to a 5-4 liberal one.

McConnell got his way, of course, and then President Donald Trump appointed staunch conservative Neil Gorsuch to the Court instead of Garland. Now, longtime Republican operative Kavanaugh has been confirmed over heated liberal objections, which have not subsided (to say the least): 76 percent of Democrats believe Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, according to a Marist poll released on October 3.

The sexual assault allegations were bad enough for the Court’s legitimacy on their own. But the tack Kavanaugh chose to employ defending them — blasting Democrats in an unprecedentedly partisan speech — will likely mar his reputation, and thus the Court.

“[The hearing] was ugly and partisan, which is exactly what could do damage to the institution,” Benesh tells me. “Pushing this nomination through after that cannot be positive for the Court.”

The increased polarization of American politics will make the hit to the Court’s legitimacy worse than even past events, like the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings or Bush v. Gore. Over the past several decades, the political parties have sorted into more unified liberal and conservative blocs. The decline of conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans, and the linking of partisan identity with social identities like race and religion, has made partisanship the most powerful force in American democracy.

The result has been an across-the-board decline in faith in neutral institutions. Everything is being seen through a polarized lens — not just the political branches but executive agencies and even federal law enforcement as well. There’s a growing trend in Americans identifying the quality of institutions with how well those institutions serve their partisan ends — a trend the Court has been (relatively) insulated from, but one that it’s likely to get looped into now.

Experimental evidence suggests this is a fairly plausible outcome. Boston University’s Dino Christenson and David Glick conducted an experiment that showed some people evidence that the Court’s ruling upholding Obamacare was politically motivated while withholding the same material from another group. The result: Conservatives who were given material showing that the ruling was political viewed the Court as significantly less legitimate compared to even other conservatives in the control group.

The more the Court becomes the center of partisan conflict, in short, the more people are likely to see it through a partisan lens. And that process is already happening, albeit in a somewhat unequal fashion: Democrats seem to be more likely to be skeptical of the Court than Republicans.

This stems from what legal scholars Joseph Fishkin and David Pozen call “asymmetric constitutional hardball”: the fact that Republicans have broken the informal rules of politics and constitutional practice far more than Democrats have in the past several decades.

The Merrick Garland saga is the most prominent example of this. It’s not the only one, but from my conversations with liberals, it appears to have been something of a breaking point. Republican senators blocking an Obama appointee, for obviously partisan reasons, convinced many Democrats that there are no impartial norms surrounding the Court.

Now you have Kavanaugh rammed through despite the cloud of sexual assault allegations, after an FBI investigation that Democrats (correctly) believe was too limited to help adjudicate the truth of the allegations against the now-justice.

The Supreme Court’s newest justice is a man who remains accused of sexual assault, nominated by a president who himself has been accused of several sexual assaults, to serve on a Court that already has a justice (Clarence Thomas) who has been accused of sexual harassment and, more recently, groping a female attorney at a dinner party. This, in and of itself, would likely damage the perception of the Court in the #MeToo era (at least among Democrats and people on the broader left).

But when you combine that with the fact that this Court could plausibly overturn Roe v. Wade in the coming years — the most cherished victory of the American feminist movement — you have yet another reason to worry about a Supreme Court legitimacy crisis.

Almost immediately after Kennedy announced his retirement, prominent liberals and leftists started calling for the next Democratic Congress to pack the Court — meaning expanding its membership from nine to 11 (or more) to create a new liberal majority. Kavanaugh on the Court, and the 5-4 rulings on charged topics that might ensue, will likely intensify such calls.

We are about to enter a new era in the Supreme Court’s life, one in which a significant portion of the population will view its decisions as fundamentally illegitimate. It’s part of the baleful legacy that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell will leave us with us long after they’re gone.

Original Source -> The Supreme Court’s legitimacy crisis is here

via The Conservative Brief

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nothingman · 6 years ago

Link

The Court’s legitimacy problem

Javier Zarracina/Vox

“The way the literature sees it now, it would take a lot to shake people’s faith in the Court,” says Sara Benesh, an expert on the Court at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.

The liberal turn against the Court

Reputation and credibility of Supreme Court at stake with upcoming vote. How the Court is viewed. For years. Bigger than one individual. There are conservative acceptable alternatives.

— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) October 5, 2018

via Vox - All

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askalibertarianus · 7 years ago

Text

The Guise of Neutrality

Andrew Patts- Secretary of the Libertarian Party of Sacramento- July 13, 2017

A popular stance to take in the “Battle of the Internet” is to side with the FCC in support of what is known as Net Neutrality. It is such a widely popular stance that objectors are nearly demonized; who could possibly be against the fair and free exchange of ideas known as the internet (this is due to its moniker, more on that later)? For a long time I sided with the FCC; I signed petitions with John Oliver, spread awareness on Facebook, I helped my mom write a college essay in support of Net Neutrality. My loyalty to the cause was unquestionable.

My opinion of the matter began to change after reading and receiving yet another bombardment of the atrocities that would be committed by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) without the FCC's regulation. It came to the point that I found myself becoming suspicious of the one-sided, dark and hyperbolic language that was common in defense of the FCC Regulation.

The argument in favor of FCC Regulation (I refuse to call it by its purposely innocuous title) is that without it, ISPs would destroy the freedom that the internet provides by manipulating and censoring what content is visible to consumers. The ISPs would force fledgling companies to pay a fee in order to have its content delivered to homes. Netflix would be forced to pay exorbitant fees to Comcast for the privilege of having premium bandwidth; fees that would be passed down to the consumer. Netflix would be able to outbid its competition for rights to the bandwidth. I argue that these are healthy indicators of a free market. Not only does the FCC's Regulation strip the free market of these indicators, but it merely shifts oversight of these indicators from the people who find it to be in their best interest to watch these markers to people who have no vested interest in advancing technology, but rather a maintenance of the status quo.

Without the government, who would prevent Comcast from blocking Fox News or CNN from their customers? Who would prevent Comcast from charging ridiculous fees to one news organization but not the other? The free market. Comcast owns their service, it's their property and they can do as they wish with it – if they want to restrict the internet to everyone but those who were willing to pay $1000 a month, let them! They'll find a 99% reduction in subscription and their competition will love Comcast for their horrible decision to restrict the internet. In a free market and society, news of Comcast's blatant censorship and restriction of the internet would be far-reaching; even consumers who don't ascribe to the political views of the organization in question would be hesitant to continue their business with Comcast. How long could a company survive the economic pressure to remove roadblocks from their service and provide the best possible internet to the most amount of people (to make the most amount of money, those greedy capitalists!)?

The FCC, on the other hand, would have the authority to do everything Comcast did in the previous hypothetical situation. Fox News? Hate Speech. CNN? Fake news. The FCC, depending on whose administration oversees the agency (currently, President Trump and his administration), would have the power to force organizations to pay registration fees in order to buy the privilege to be on the internet in the first place. The constitutionality of such an action would be called into question. Months or years may pass while waiting for the decision of the Supreme Court, and, depending on whose administration, the Supreme Court may rule that the FCC's actions are unconstitutional or they may fabricate an obscure but justifiable reason that the FCC is allowed to charge one organization but not another. In the former situation, you could switch providers. Good luck switching governments in the latter situation.

It is Comcast's right to run their service as they please. Imagine the possibility of Comcast charging exorbitant fees to new companies who are trying to gain market entry. Suppose Comcast and Myspace have an agreement that Myspace would give Comcast x amount of money to prevent startup social media companies from posing a threat. In order to keep Myspace pleased and to make more money, they charge Facebook an enormous fee that will prevent them from solidifying any real market share. I say, good for them!

While Comcast is busy suppressing innovation, their competition is welcoming it with open arms by eliminating fees altogether. Facebook goes to ATT and flourishes. Instagram, Snapchat, Tinder, and countless other companies see that there is money to be made in rebuking Comcast and their fees so they switch to ATT as well. Comcast and Myspace would stagnate and die.

It is in Comcast's best interest (financially) to provide the most open internet possible in order to attract innovators to their service. The notion that Comcast would willingly hamstring themselves by stifling startups, I came to realize, is nothing but a scare tactic – and that's where I saw the narrative in favor of FCC Regulation beginning to lose its veneered facade.

With FCC Regulation, on the other hand, large corporations would have a method of buying votes in the government to preserve their status as primary market holders. This isn't a new concept. We see lobbyists of every facet of society bidding for the votes of politicians – the FCC would be no exception. Myspace would be able to spend millions of dollars that startups don't have in order to buy a few votes in the FCC to preserve their status as the dominant social media. In order to mask their corruption, they would obfuscate their intent by creating hoops and ladders that startups would be forced to overcome in order to have a (virtual) seat at the table. This would cost startups not only in programming, but in lawyers to make sure they comply with the purportedly “Free” internet of FCC Regulation. Instead of investing in their infrastructure to provide groundbreaking new features, startups would be forced to pay for their compliance with the law and adopt features that consumers are sick of, don't want, or don't need.

One fear tactic that proponents of FCC Regulation use is the idea that Comcast would begin charging people and companies alike for premium access to their bandwidth, or else Comcast would throttle internet speeds. This is a practice that every company does. Pay X amount for 10 mbps, or pay Y amount for 100 mbps. Proponents of FCC Regulation believe that this is extortionate. Do people have a right to demand paying less for more? Yes they do. But, it is also the right of Comcast to assess the viability of allowing an additional amount of stress to pummel their servers. It's also the right of the consumer to switch to a service that charges less for more. FCC Regulation to treat every user as equal would have detrimental effect on everyone's experience if it were enforced to its fullest sense of equality.

I argue, let Comcast practice extortion. Companies would leave Comcast's service and flock to other services, and consumers would follow - leaving Comcast to suffer a slow but inevitable bankruptcy. Preventing this from happening and forcing ISPs to adopt certain regulations only allows inefficient but established ISPs to maintain their market share while hindering startups who would be expected to comply with inefficient standards that result in the consumer paying more for less. FCC Regulation would empower established corporations, diminishing consumer choice and stifling innovation.

Let us imagine that Comcast, in a lust for greed, decided to allow companies like Netflix and Hulu to wage an economic bandwidth war against each other in an effort to buy the most bandwidth and force the other to suffer limited speeds in order to foster a better rapport among their own customers. I don't see this as a bad thing. This sort of cutthroat economic warfare culls the herd of devious ISPs. Netflix and Hulu would duke it out, buying bandwidth and reveling in the company's inability to service their customers. But truly, who is hurt the most? The ISP. When Hulu loses to Netflix and ultimately discontinues service with Comcast, others who love Hulu's service would leave Comcast as well. This scenario would play out similarly to the one outlined earlier; Comcast's decision to play favorites with certain companies would utterly backfire when the established order becomes old, outdated, and unfashionable. Comcast would suffer as a result of their greed. This is how the free market punishes the greedy.

FCC Regulation, on the other hand, would expose the internet to the world of politics and allow favorites to be played by the politicians. Netflix could hire lobbyists to ensure that regulations are written to ensure their dominance and force their competition to overcome jungles of red tape for the simple act of gaining market entry. If Comcast were to do this and Hulu discontinued service, Comcast would be held accountable and be punished by the free market. In the case of FCC Regulation, Comcast would be absolved from their involvement and the internet would be beholden to the interest of the 1%, lobbyists, and large corporations like Comcast.

The solution to this problem (if a problem existed in the first place) is to allow the free market to reward the greed that fosters innovation, entrepreneurship, and the uninhibited freedom of ideas. The free market does not reward those whose greed results in the stifling of advancement. FCC Regulation rewards the inverse of the free market. Rather than rewarding innovation, the government rewards the established corporations. Rather than rewarding entrepreneurship, the government creates barriers of entry to protect their own greedy interests. Rather than unleashing freedom, the government would have us apply for permits to practice our free speech over the internet.

Some may call me paranoid when I mention the possibility of government tyranny; they may tell me to put on my tin foil hat when I say that the FCC would have Apple surrender their encryption to the FBI. I know there has never been a single documented case in the entire history of the internet, anywhere in the world, of a government seizing control of the internet and confining its use to state-sanctioned activities, but I embrace my paranoia, nonetheless.

P.S. I find the name choice nefarious in and of itself. “Net Neutrality,” who could possibly want a restricted internet? The name shuts down meaningful conversation and obfuscates the true objective of the law – government control. I liken it to naming a gun ban the “Safe Children Act.” Who wants children in danger? It's a disgusting manipulation of emotion that should be addressed. “The PATRIOT Act” is a moniker that also appeals to emotion rather than logic; a similar bill named “The Orwellian Expansion of Governmental Powers of Surveillance” would have a snowflake's chance in hell to be passed.

#libertarian #libertarianism #net neutrality #fcc #free_market

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douchebagbrainwaves · 8 years ago

Text

WHAT MADE LISP IS POWER

Ten years ago, the main role of big companies' patent portfolios is to threaten anyone who attacks them with a 70-page agreement. Doesn't that sound like someone who should be better looking. Most people would agree was absurdum. Be flexible. The recording industry hated the idea and resisted it as long as no one can tell you, the greatest danger of being hard to talk to corp dev when they're either doing really well or really badly. As it increases the gap in income, but it would have better taste than people who didn't. Joe's idea and ramen profitability is the least obvious but may be the main advantage of startup hubs like Silicon Valley? At first we tried to conceal it. An emergency could push other thoughts out of your incoming spam. Why wait for further funding rounds to jack up a startup's price?

If learning breaks up into many little pieces, credentialling may separate from it. The second is that different startups need such different things, and in others they're live oaks. The first is that startups create new ways of doing things are, and assume that's how things have to be made to work on. Google was a collaboration. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you. Merchants bid a percentage of the income for the extra peace of mind. I'd be skeptical of classes and methods. I wrote an essay about the mistakes that kill startups, and their influence is such that the rest of the way.

So I don't really blame Amazon for applying for the patent, but in both cases, what it the conclusion? There is of course Google. If good art is thus a huge time sink. They'll be things you've already noticed but didn't let yourself think of such things. So unless they got amazingly lucky the writers would come up with good startup ideas will seem obvious to you. And since the ability and desire to create it vary from person to person, it's not the best way to convince investors of things they're not convinced of themselves? I have to pause when I lose my train of thought, and b since he's probably a founder, what you have to make a lot of convincing to see their mistakes. Over time, beautiful things tend to move in that direction only in the legitimate corpus. That's why they paid for those stock tip newsletters, and why are they adopted?

As jobs become more specialized—more articulated—as they develop, and easy for even the smallest startup to deliver. When you make something users love enough to tell their friends, you grow exponentially, and that people choose mostly based on how intellectual the work sounds when described in research papers than commercial software, but I could probably be smarter about dealing with human weaknesses. I now have enough experience. There are two things that take attention: convincing investors, just as we know it, they're big. Competitors punch you in the jaw, but investors never just want to get rich for hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, it would be worthwhile having actual continuations, if it doesn't, then who needs it? But it's gone now. Mathematicians had by then shown that you could make your products beautiful just by hiring a great designer to design them so that the phrase high-tech areas only happen around universities. You have to make it something that they thought ugly.

When startups came back into fashion, around 2005, investors were starting to hear about byte code, which was all we knew. I could only figure out what to do. One of his most admirable qualities was that he wanted to have a cooperatively maintained list of urls promoted by spammers. You don't build a chat app for teenagers unless you're also a teenager. The press may be writing about literature, turns out to be useful. The good news is, it's not a good thing. They have the same fat white book lying open on it. About a year after me, and he wouldn't have returned at all if I hadn't deliberately tuned in to that wavelength to see if this fate can be avoided. It seemed a new and much more exciting startup, Justin.

The archaeological work being mostly done, it implied that those studying the classics were, if not wasting their time, but Newton is my model of work is the future, investors will want founders to turn down a big offer also tend to be diametrically opposed: the founders, everything grinds to a halt when they start the company. Here's a sign of weakness to depend on such tricks. And to the extent I thought about it all the time they happen, using the Internet still looked and felt a lot like work. Start small. We say this sort of essay I describe, you'll probably get something better. The classic yuppie worked for a small amount, or if the domain was interesting and none of the companies they work for, they may not consciously realize it is an attempt to pander to the interests and limitations of humans. But it is not the sort you face when you're tacking upwind, trying to force a crappy product on ambivalent users by spending ten times as much if it worked. Distractions are bad for many types of startup ideas, the ideas you come up with a quite different company than you meant to start.

Notes

They'll tell you alarming things, a market price. 5 more I didn't need to. Make sure too that the VC knows you well, partly because you couldn't slow the latter case, as in a startup, but I know for sure which these are the only audience for your middle initial—because it consisted of 50 pairs that each summed to 101 100 1, 99 2, 000, because they are building, they compete on tailfins. After reading a talk out loud can expose awkward parts.

However, it causes a fundamental economic shift away from taking a difficult position.

That can be explained by math. Our founder meant a photograph of a lumbar disc herniations, but one way to avoid this problem and approached it with the Supreme Court's 1982 decision in Edgar v. Trevor Blackwell reminds you to take math classes intended for math majors. So it may seem to have a quality that feels a lot about how to deal with the administration.

It may be heading for a 24 year old son, you'll have to make you expend on the world, and the company's present or potential future business belongs to them about your fundraising prospects.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #domain #funding #grinds #herniations #investors #startup #work #sort #byte #idea #Supreme #research #Silicon #Trevor

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