Later On

Paul Krugman in his blog:

Will the destructive center kill health care reform? It looks all too possible.

What’s especially galling is the hypocrisy of their claimed reason for delaying progress — concern about the fiscal burden. After all, in the past most of them have shown no concern at all for the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook.

Case in point: the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which denied Medicare the right to bargain for lower drug prices, locked in overpayments to private insurance companies, and did nothing, nothing at all, to pay for its proposed outlays. How many of these six self-proclaimed defenders of solvency voted no on the crucial procedural vote? One. (Joe Lieberman, to my surprise.)

And let’s not forget that Ben Nelson, who appears to be the ringleader, has fought tooth and nail against competition from a public option — which would almost certainly save a significant amount of money, as well as providing much-needed competition.

If the Gang of Six really does kill reform, remember their names; they will bear the responsibility for vast, unnecessary suffering over the years to come.

Very good note by Steve Coll in the New Yorker:

Compared with their position in the period from 2002 to 2004, Al Qaeda and its affiliates, such as Jemaah Islamiya in Indonesia (which has been involved in hotel bombings similar to the attack today on the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton in Jakarta), have become politically marginalized. Opinion polling, election results, and theological discourse all describe an Al Qaeda network that has been rejected by the great majority of Muslims. Al Qaeda has largely brought this outcome upon itself. Unlike Hezbollah and Hamas, it has never developed a political strategy that appealed successfully to the craving among many Muslims for justice and better governance. Al Qaeda runs no schools or hospitals and it competes in no trade-union elections. It operates no semi-legitimate political front, as Hezbollah and Hamas do.

Why has Al Qaeda isolated itself in this way, particularly when there are alternative models, such as Hezbollah, lying in plain sight? There is a strong millenarian streak in the belief systems of Osama bin Laden and some of his colleagues; they believe that God ordained the war they are fighting and that its outcome is in many ways predetermined. Also, bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, simply lack political skills. They are modern men, but, unlike the leaders of Hezbollah, they lack a vision of modern politics. They have randomly murdered far too many of their own potential followers. Their idea of justice is abstract and distant—it involves the punishment of unbelievers, some of them living far away, and not the righting of wrongs close at hand, whether those wrongs are unemployment, or routine local problems such as grazing, or boundary disputes. Al Qaeda has been up and running formally for twenty-one years now. By this point in the history of the Soviet Communist movement, Lenin had seized control of a great state. By this point in the history of Cuban Communism, Castro was in Havana. And Osama? He’s hunkered down along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, a fugitive “guest” with a price on his head, waiting for death, embedded in a political economy that is a cross between Gaza and the New Jersey of “The Sopranos.” By the lights of its own announced ambitions in 2001, then, at least in political terms, Al Qaeda has failed.

And yet …

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A generation trusted Walter Cronkite to deliver the news — and to explain it. Glenn Greenwald has a great column today on Cronkite and what he meant:

"The Vietcong did not win by a knockout [in the Tet Offensive], but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw. . . . We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. . . .

"For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. . . . To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past" — Walter Cronkite, CBS Evening News, February 27, 1968.

"I think there are a lot of critics who think that [in the run-up to the Iraq War] . . . . if we did not stand up and say this is bogus, and you’re a liar, and why are you doing this, that we didn’t do our job. I respectfully disagree. It’s not our role" – David Gregory, MSNBC, May 28, 2008.

When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam died, media stars everywhere commemorated his death as though he were one of them — as though they do what he did — even though he had nothing but bottomless, intense disdain for everything they do.  As he put it in a 2005 speech to students at the Columbia School of Journalism:  "the better you do your job, often going against conventional mores, the less popular you are likely to be . . . . By and large, the more famous you are, the less of a journalist you are."

In that same speech, Halberstam cited as the "proudest moment" of his career a bitter argument he had in 1963 with U.S. Generals in Vietnam, by which point, as a young reporter, he was already considered an "enemy" of the Kennedy White House for routinely contradicting the White House’s claims about the war (the President himself asked his editor to pull Halberstam from reporting on Vietnam).  During that conflict, he stood up to a General in a Press Conference in Saigon who was attempting to intimidate him for having actively doubted and aggressively investigated military claims, rather than taking and repeating them at face value:

Picture if you will rather small room, about the size of a classroom, with about 10 or 12 reporters there in the center of the room. And in the back, and outside, some 40 military officers, all of them big time brass. It was clearly an attempt to intimidate us.

General Stilwell tried to take the intimidation a step further. He began by saying that Neil and I had bothered General Harkins and Ambassador Lodge and other VIPs, and we were not to do it again. Period.

And I stood up, my heart beating wildly — and told him that we were not his corporals or privates, that we worked for The New York Times and UP and AP and Newsweek, not for the Department of Defense.

I said that we knew that 30 American helicopters and perhaps 150 American soldiers had gone into battle, and the American people had a right to know what happened. I went on to say that we would continue to press to go on missions and call Ambassador Lodge and General Harkins, but he could, if he chose, write to our editors telling them that we were being too aggressive, and were pushing much too hard to go into battle. That was certainly his right.

Can anyone imagine any big media stars — who swoon in reverence both to political power and especially military authority — defying military instructions that way, let alone being proud of it?  Halberstam certainly couldn’t imagine any of them doing it, which is why, in 1999, he wrote: …

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I referred to this post, but you really should read it. It begins:

Equity underwriting boomed during the period as dozens of banks raised money to strengthen capital and repay Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. The business reported record revenue of $736 million.via Article – WSJ.com.

So what’s wrong with Goldman posting $3.44 billion in second-quarter profits, what’s wrong with the company so far earmarking $11.4 billion in compensation for its employees? What’s wrong is that this is not free-market earnings but an almost pure state subsidy.

Last year, when Hank Paulson told us all that the planet would explode if we didn’t fork over a gazillion dollars to Wall Street immediately, the entire rationale not only for TARP but for the whole galaxy of lesser-known state crutches and safety nets quietly ushered in later on was that Wall Street, once rescued, would pump money back into the economy, create jobs, and initiate a widespread recovery. This, we were told, was the reason we needed to pilfer massive amounts of middle-class tax revenue and hand it over to the same guys who had just blown up the financial world. We’d save their asses, they’d save ours. That was the deal.

It turned out not to happen that way. We constructed this massive bailout infrastructure, and instead of pumping that free money back into the economy, the banks instead simply hoarded it and ate it on the spot, converting it into bonuses. So what does this Goldman profit number mean? This is the final evidence that the bailouts were a political decision to use the power of the state to redirect society’s resources upward, on a grand scale. It was a selective rescue of a small group of chortling jerks who must be laughing all the way to the Hamptons every weekend about how they fleeced all of us at the very moment the game should have been up for all of them.

Now, the counter to this charge is, well, hey, they made that money fair and square, legally, how can you blame them? They’re just really smart!

Bullshit. One of the most hilarious lies that has been spread about Goldman of late is that, since it repaid its TARP money, it’s now free and clear of any obligation to the government – as if that was the only handout Goldman got in the last year. Goldman last year made your average AFDC mom on food stamps look like an entrepreneur. Here’s a brief list of all the state aid that is hiding behind that $3.44 billion number they announced the other day. In no particular order: …

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Interesting that conservatives are selling their support. I posted this story and now Dougj at Balloon Juice has an intriguing follow-up that shows how the UPS money has influenced certain members of Congress.

Via Balloon Juice, which got it from Matt Taibbi (and be sure to read this post by Taibbi:

I just recently watched The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), a good romance. It takes place around 1900, and to show how different a time it was, they have a beach scene with Mrs. Muir going in for a bathe using one of the Victorian bathing houses on wheels—she walks into the surf holding a rope attached within the bathing house, and of course when exiting the bathing house on the land side, dons a robe.

But an even stronger indication of what a different time it was, at least to modern eyes, was that Mrs. Muir’s daughter, Anna, was being entertained by an old seaman carving her name in a post, and when Mrs. Muir says that it’s time to go, Anna begs to stay. The old salt puts his hand on Anna’s shoulder and says, “I’ll see that she gets home, ma’am,” and Mrs. Muir says, without hesitating, “That’s fine,” and walks away home without a backward glance. It seems clear that they met the man at the beach and were new acquaintances.

Not to be missed on the DVD is the documentary biography of Rex Harrison, who stars in the movie along with Gene Tierney and George Sanders.

I’ve been having sautéed veg with a little meat lately. For example:

1 Tbs homemade habanero oil
1 Tbs olive oil

Heat oils in sauté pan, add:

1 chopped onion
some chopped meat

I’ve used chopped hot dogs, chopped chicken, and yesterday chopped smoked pork chops. Not a lot of meat is needed: 1 hot dog, for example, or 1 pork shop, or 1 chicken breast or thigh.

Sauté until onion is transparent. Add:

1 large zucchini, sliced in large julienne strips (the Swissmar V-Slicer is ideal)
1-2 yellow crookneck squash, large julienne
kernels from one ear of fresh corn (I used my Rösle corn-stripper)
1-2 baby bok choy, chopped
1 pint cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
several grindings of black pepper

Sauté the above for a while, then cover and turn heat to low until cooked as desired. Obviously, you can use any combination of vegetables that appeal to you. Today I think I’ll use cabbage, apple, and onion.

I eat some for lunch, and then for dinner I reheat, top with cheese, and have that. Very tasty. The habanero oil gives a nice long burn without any real ferocity.

I decided to try my new puck of Cyril R. Salter shaving soap since I’m a big fan of the Salter shaving creams. The puck comes with minimal packaging, a plus, and I had a wooden bowl into which I was able to squeeze it.

It made a fine, lightly fragranced lather with the Rooney Style 2. It’s almost a generic fine English shaving soap with a light lavender fragrance. In fact, I want to try it alongside Vintage Blades’ own shaving soap and Truefit & Hill shaving soap. A good lather, and the Gillette NEW with a relatively new Swedish Gillette blade did a fine job. And I return again to June Clover, one of my favorite summertime aftershaves.

More boar brushes are on the way, and the great boar experiment will launch next week.

Gordon Lubold of the Christian Science Monitor:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says it’s time for Congress, the defense industry, and even parts of his own Pentagon to end the way they’ve done business for decades – and start by completing the controversial F-22 Raptor stealth fighter program.

"Every defense dollar diverted to fund excess or unneeded capacity – ­whether for more F-22s or anything else – is a dollar that will be unavailable to take care of our people, to win the wars we are in, to deter potential adversaries, and to improve capabilities in areas where America is underinvested and potentially vulnerable," he said in a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago Thursday.

Mr. Gates – with President Obama at his back – has taken a hard line on the F-22 program as a symbol of reckless defense spending. He has also hatcheted other programs, such as a presidential helicopter with a galley for cooking during nuclear attack, in his bid to reform a Pentagon and defense industrial complex intent on the status quo.

The stealth fighter has been billed as the crown jewel of American air superiority in an air-to-air fight with a "near peer" enemy such as China.

But to Gates, the plane fills a highly specialized niche the Pentagon cannot afford to buy more of, and he wants to cap the program at 187 planes.

Congress has other ideas, and both the House and Senate are attempting to amend the $534 billion budget to include $1.7 billion in funding to build seven more planes. The Senate is debating the issue this week, but on Wednesday senators set aside a vote on the amendment adding the additional funding.

Mr. Obama says he will veto the bill, crossing swords with members of his own party in whose states components of the plane are assembled, including Sens. John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, both Democrats from Massachusetts.

Most experts believe that the issue is not over seven planes – which can cost as much as $350 million a piece – but keeping the production lines open in more than 40 states to allow the program to continue indefinitely. One estimate suggests that ending the program will cost 95,000 jobs nationwide and leave the Pentagon with too few planes… [This couldn't be the GOP talking: they firmly believe that government spending never creates jobs, so cutting government spending should not cost any jobs. Or maybe they were just lying. It's always hard to know whether they're ignorant, stupid, or lying (or all three). – LG]

Continue reading. And check out this nice slideshow of American fighter planes since WWII.

From Simply Recipes, which has a dynamite photo.

Mom’s Macaroni Salad Recipe

This recipe can easily be doubled or tripled.

• 2 cups (about 1/2 lb) dry macaroni pasta (use rice pasta for gluten-free version)
• Salt
• 1 hard boiled egg, chopped
• 1 roasted red bell pepper*, chopped
• 1 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley
• 1/4 cup chopped spring onion or green onion
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice or vinegar
• A generous amount of mayonnaise (1/3 to 1/2 cup)
• Several pinches of paprika
• Freshly ground black pepper to taste

* Trader Joes carries a good product, jarred roasted red bell peppers packed in oil and vinegar. We usually use these in recipes calling for roasted bell peppers. Alternatively, you can roast a fresh bell pepper by blackening it over an open flame on a gas range or broiling until the skin blisters on all sides. Remove from heat source, place in paper bag, after a few minutes remove from bag and scrape off the blackened bits. Discard seeds and stem.

For the method, see the recipe at the link.

Because their tax rates have been declining steadily—too much, in fact. Here are the tax rates for the top 1% of households in terms of wealth:

You can read more about this in Kevin Drum’s post, whence I took the chart.

Note that the chart is somewhat misleading: the x-axis is placed at 28% instead of at 0%.

You can read more about The Family in Jeff Sharlet’s book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. And Rachel Maddow has a good introduction:

Interesting story by Lee Fang at ThinkProgress:

Last night on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow reported the story that former Rep. Chip Pickering’s (R-MS) wife has filed a lawsuit against Pickering’s mistress Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd, exposing a long-running affair. Pickering, now a lobbyist for Capitol Resources LLC, campaigned on a platform of promising to bring family values to Washington. Pickering tried to force his own views on marriage upon the country by pushing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and using marriage as a cudgel to demand that President Bill Clinton resign:

– While engaged in the affair with Creekmore Byrd, Pickering said of President Bill Clinton: “I think for the good of the country and the good of his own family it would be better for him to resign. When someone puts himself forward for public office, then his personal conduct does become relevant.” [Washington Times, 8/20/98]

– Pickering explained his support of a constitutional gay marriage ban, stating: “Marriage as an institution between one man and one woman promotes the best interest of the husband and wife, and the best interests of children.” [Mississippi Link, 7/20/06]

The suit filed by Pickering’s wife also alleges that Pickering pursued the affair while living in the “C Street Complex,” the boarding house for the secretive right-wing Christian group known as “the Fellowship.” Pickering’s former colleagues embroiled in similar scandals, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) and Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC), were also members of the Fellowship.

Doug Coe, the group’s spiritual leader, once preached that the willingness to behead one’s own mother was a “covenant” tantamount to what “Jesus said.” The organization “Youth with a Mission” owns the C Street boarding house, which is registered tax-exempt as a church, advocates seizing the “mountain of government” as part of an evangelical crusade to advance the “kingdom of God.” Coe, who holds misogynist beliefs, once counseled a lawmaker that his wife — who complained of not being sexually satisfied — might be possessed by demons.

Speaking with Maddow about the influence of the Fellowship, author Jeff Sharlet noted that the complex operates as a “fundamentalist frat house” where “if you’re part of God’s chosen…morality, ethics, these things don’t apply to them.” He also noted Steve Largent, a former Oklahoma congressman and former resident of the C Street house, now president of a telecom trade group, arranged lobbyist-funded trips for other members in the group, including both Pickering and Ensign. Sharlet questioned the lawmaker-to-lobbyist “revolving door” that “seems to be facilitated by the family.” Watch it:

And Josh Marshall notes the same oddity in this post.

Sounds intriguing:

The Annotated Wind in the Willows

by Kenneth Grahame

A review by Michael Sims

Kenneth Grahame‘s revered children’s book The Wind in the Willows is celebrating two anniversaries. Last year was the centennial of its publication, and 2009 is the sesquicentennial of its author’s birth. As a consequence, we find ourselves with two annotated editions — both oversize, both beautifully designed and illustrated.

Seth Lerer is a renowned scholar, author most recently of a magisterial history of children’s literature. Annie Gauger’s Willows is her first book. She says it occupied 10 years of research, which raises the question: How much annotation does a text require? It’s a nerdy sport, this collecting of footnotes, and not for everyone. But I’ll cite my own childhood as evidence that annotated volumes do have worth beyond academia. William S. Baring-Gould’s Annotated Sherlock Holmes, which I received for Christmas when I was 14, showed me how a cosmos of history and biography lies fossilized in every work of literature. Victorian England unfolded out of those pages like a pop-up book and later blossomed into my love for Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens and Thomas Macaulay.

Gauger’s and Lerer’s books perform the same magic. They demonstrate how much of a writer’s life can wind up distilled in a stack of paper — in this case, how Kenneth Grahame’s daydreams, fears, heartbreak, upbringing, era and locale all sneaked into a fanciful children’s book about talking animals. In what other book can you find slapstick auto theft, a dirge for lost arcadia and a numinous encounter with that pagan refugee and mascot of the Edwardian neo-romantics, the great god Pan?

Apparently Grahame turned to animals, after writing largely about children, because he feared and barely understood much of the adult world. He found safety and romance in animal characters — not real creatures, but hybrid beasts cavorting in a mythic habitat where they are neither Us nor Them. "I love these little people," Grahame confessed to illustrator Ernest Shepard; "be kind to them."

Each of these editions has its advantages and defects. The introduction to Gauger’s volume, by Brian Jacques, author of the popular children’s fantasy series, Redwall, wastes eight pages on nostalgic twaddle recalling his youth and nominating various pieces of music as soundtrack for scenes in Willows. Lerer’s preface, in contrast, is a thoughtful and elegant survey of the biographical and literary context for this beloved book.

But when it comes to the main text — unpacking the allusive, lushly textured story of poetical Rat and proletarian Mole, of manic Toad and Mr. Badger, that solemn lord of the manor whose burrow twines among Roman ruins — Gauger has unpacked more, dug further, worked longer and harder.

For example, …

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Ezra Klein in the Washington Post:

I don’t want to overstate my case. I am not suggesting that Sen. Ron Wyden’s Free Choice Act is the difference between a health-care reform bill passing the Senate and dying in committee. But I am arguing that it might be the difference between a bill that delivers on its promise of reforming the health-care system and a bill that merely expands health insurance coverage.

There are two major problems with the proposals being considered in Congress. The first is that they do not do enough to cut costs, because they do not do enough to change the fundamental nature of the employer-based health-care system. Earlier this morning, Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf told the Senate Finance Committee that health-care reform will not save us money. If the problem is that our health-care system is too expensive, and reform does not change the structure of our health-care system, then it is unlikely to mitigate the expense. The flip side of trying to avoid changing what people have is that you don’t change what’s not working.

The second is that the bill does not offer obvious benefits to an insured worker. You can argue that it changes the system around them: There are subsidies if they lose their job and regulations to protect them from the excesses of private insurers. But though the health-care system might be different, it will not, for most people, feel different. And that has made it hard to explain to people why this is something they should pay for. You can tell the insured worker what he gets if his circumstances change. You cannot tell him what he gets if his circumstances do not change.

Enter Wyden. The Free Choice Act is not a health-care-reform bill. It is best understood as a reform of the health-care-reform bill. In particular, it reforms the nature of the Health Insurance Exchange. Under the bills being considered right now, the exchange will be limited to the uninsured, the self-employed and small businesses. Maybe it will be expanded over time. Maybe not. In addition, it is barricaded by what’s called a "firewall." The firewall essentially bars individuals from entering the exchange so long as their employers offer them a basic level of health-care coverage.

The Free Choice Act starts by setting the rules for the exchange: Within five years the exchange is open to all employers. More importantly, it’s open to all people. The firewall is extinguished. But as the late, great, Billy Mays would say, that’s not all!

The key component of the Free Choice Act is …

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From the Center for American Progress:

In a major speech Wednesday at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington DC, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described her vision of American diplomacy and how it fits into the Obama administration’s approach to the use and maintenance of American power abroad. Clinton described the international agenda as "unforgiving," but said that "the same forces that compound our problems — economic interdependence, open borders, and the speedy movement of information, capital, goods, services and people — are also part of the solution." Reviewing the speech, The New Republic’s Peter Scoblic wrote that "the difference between this approach and the previous administration’s is stark. … The secretary seemed to be saying that, despite the grave dangers we face — indeed, because of the very character of those threats — the emphasis in U.S. foreign policy today must be on cooperation rather than conflict."

Read the rest of this entry »

The way we prepare our troops for war, or the way we fight our wars, are ruining the lives of many of those who fight. We need to find a better approach—ideally, avoiding combat in favor of diplomacy, but if we must fight, we should find ways to fight that do not harm our own troops. Note this, from the Center for American Progress:

The New York Times reports that a new study by researchers at the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), "found that more than one-third of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who enrolled in the veterans health system after 2001 were diagnosed with a mental health problem, the most common being post-traumatic stress disorder and depression." The study also found that that these mental health problems became more likely the longer they were out of the service. The study’s lead author, Dr. Karen Seal, cautioned that the results can’t be "extrapolated to the roughly 1.6 million veterans who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan because about 60 percent of them were not receiving health care through the veterans system."

As the Center for American Progress noted this past Memorial Day, only 53 percent of those suffering from PTSD or major depression have seen a physician. Active-duty soldiers are also facing difficulties. Earlier this year, the Army reported the highest number of suicides among its soldiers since it began tracking the rate 28 years ago. In fact, this past May, more soldiers killed themselves than died in combat and twice as many active-duty soldiers committed suicide in May than in April.

The new VA/UCSF study comes out two months after President Obama acknowledged in a weekly address that "we, as a nation, have failed to live up" to "the responsibility" of serving America’s veterans "as well as they serve all of us." During his Senate confirmation hearings, Secretary of Veteran Affairs Gen. Eric Shinseki (ret.) promised to make the VA a "21st-century organization" that meets the needs of a growing population of wounded veterans. Obama’s 2010 budget for the VA emphasizes a Veteran-centric commitment by expanding services by 15.5 percent over 2009, the largest percentage increase for the VA requested by a president in more than 30 years.

This seems very cheesy and low-rent to me. Reported by Mike Allen in Politico:

The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.

For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”

The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.

The letter exposes the practice by some political interest groups of taking stands not for reasons of pure principle, as their members and supporters might assume, but also in part because a sponsor is paying big money.

In the three-page letter asking for money on June 30, the conservative group backed FedEx. After FedEx says it rejected the offer, Keene signed onto a two-page July 15 letter backing UPS. Keene did not return a message left on his cell phone.

Maury Lane, FedEx’s director of corporate communications, said: “Clearly, the ACU shopped their beliefs and UPS bought.”

ACU’s executive vice president, Dennis Whitfield, said that neither the group nor David Keene, the chairman, took any money from UPS. Whitfield said the group has never received a response to its original proposal to FedEx. He said Keene endorsed the second letter as an individual, even though the letter bore the logo of ACU…

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1. James Inhofe (I could name others, but he’s certainly a candidate for bottom of the barrel)

2. The filibuster

3. Being able to place holds indefinitely on anything for any reason (or no reason). Recent example: Sen. McCain trying to extort mining permissions from the Obama Administration in return for his releasing a hold on an appointment.

4. This one is difficult, but the vastly disproportionate representation in the Senate, so that 24% of the US elects 60 Senators, a filibuster-proof majority, should be fixed. It’s is a terrible flaw to fair representation.