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Drinking Liberally — Seattle

by Darryl — Tuesday, 9/22/09, 5:58 pm

DLBottle

Please join us tonight for some politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmE7tuR0364[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 337 other chapters of Drinking Liberally for you to shoot for.

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The Defund ACORN Boeing Act

by Jon DeVore — Tuesday, 9/22/09, 12:39 pm

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. From HuffPo:

The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to “any organization” that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.

In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.

And HuffPo goes on to report that Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Florida, is soliciting suggestions from the public about helping him find fraud. Feel free to offer your suggestions.

If the righties want to talk about fraud, let’s talk about fraud, and not any puny $3.1 million a year, folks. We’re talking billions.

It would be delicious irony if this legislation either has to be vetoed or is found unconstitutional for singling out a specific corporation, which after all is actually a person.

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How do you solve a problem like Maria?

by Goldy — Tuesday, 9/22/09, 10:15 am

Reading Slog’s account of Sen. Maria Cantwell’s supposed conversion on healthcare reform, it’s like deja vu all over again regarding perhaps the most enigmatic member of Washington state’s congressional delegation. First Cantwell was under attack for not taking a forceful position on the public option and other reforms, and now she’s being praised for her sudden burst of leadership.

And the conclusion?

And the bottom line for those, like Moon, who were raising a ruckus over Cantwell’s apparent wavering on the public option: the pressure worked.

Yeah, well, maybe. But this sort of scenario has played out so many times over the past few years, you’ve gotta wonder if what frequent critics consider to be her “apparent wavering,” really isn’t just an artifact of Cantwell’s methodical, deliberate and relatively effective legislative style? I mean, keeping up the political pressure doesn’t hurt, but the raft of amendments Cantwell has offered to the Baucus bill suggest that she’s been neck deep in the details for quite some time, and an active participant in the thorny, behind-closed-doors negotiations within the Senate Finance Committee.

So could it be that the type of public podium-rattling many of us progressives demand, just isn’t a good fit to Cantwell’s wonkish personality, or to the brand of quiet, insider leadership she seems to prefer? And do we make a mistake by assuming she’s less progressive than she really is?

In fact, Cantwell’s reputation as a bit of a pro-business centrist seems to be distorted by a genuine streak of pro-business centrism that fails to extend itself to nearly any other issue. Indeed when examining her voting record, you may be surprised to learn that Cantwell proves just as progressive as her more high-profile colleague, Sen. Patty Murray, and the presumably progressive stalwart Rep. Jay Inslee.  And on healthcare issues? Cantwell ranks the most progressive of the three, scoring an impressive 98.54% over her lifetime in office.

So did Cantwell cave to constituent pressure by coming out strong for the public option in the end, or did she hold steady in the face of mounting criticism from the left, by refusing to publicly say anything that might jeopardize her private negotiations?

I don’t know. But knowing how stubborn Cantwell can be, and her lack of passion for retail politics, I don’t think it’s safe to assume the former.

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A net win on net neutrality

by Goldy — Tuesday, 9/22/09, 9:08 am

Just to be clear, there are some things on which the Seattle Times editorial board and I agree, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. (Okay, maybe a little ashamed, but I’ve learned to cope.)

For those who reflexively argue that government regulation is always a bad thing, the FCC’s decision to codify the principle of net neutrality must be a bit disturbing. But those who primarily rely on the Internet to make these arguments should be quietly relieved.

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Tweet Van Dyk

by Goldy — Monday, 9/21/09, 2:37 pm

First that new-fangled blogging thing, and now Twitter? Apparently, Crosscut contributor Ted Van Dyk is a lot more hip than he seems… check out his new Twitter feed in the sidebar.

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Coulter: “All political violence is committed by the left in this country”

by Goldy — Monday, 9/21/09, 10:10 am

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n7PKBvLmr8[/youtube]

If you’ve ever wondered why paranoid-delusional righties like the Orb get so angry and/or pants-wetting-frightened at the words of people like me, it might be because they actually believe the hateful demagoguery spewing from the likes of Ann Coulter, who may or may not have been joking when she recently absurdly claimed that “all political violence is committed by the left in this country.”

That’s right, the abortion doctor killer? A lefty. The Holocaust Museum shooter? A lefty. Timothy McVeigh? A lefty. The assassins of President Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King Jr., apparently, lefties all, at least, according to Coulter, who astutely points out that Harvey Milk’s killer was a Democrat. Case closed.

That’s why the same righties who passionately celebrate gun-toting teabaggers as patriotic defenders of the 2nd Amendment, soil their undies at the mere thought of self-avowed liberals publicly displaying firearms. They actually believe we’re dangerous. That’s why they’re arming themselves. To protect themselves against us.

Cowards.

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Editorial suggestion…

by Goldy — Monday, 9/21/09, 9:02 am

Perhaps, instead of incessantly railing against building light rail here in Seattle, Crosscut contributor Ted Van Dyk might want to take some time to explore the extraordinary success of light rail in his native Phoenix. I’m just sayin’.

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Open thread

by Darryl — Sunday, 9/20/09, 11:42 pm

Let’s make some connections:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmDqA0sbKaE[/youtube]

Update This video is relevant to the discussion:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8u4fZTPUQ[/youtube]

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Shorter Ryan Blethen

by Goldy — Sunday, 9/20/09, 1:32 pm

Who’s to blame for the news industry’s crappy report card?  The Internet:

My quick take is the Internet and cable news have become places where people can easily seek out journalism that reinforces their political and world views.

Yup, because without the Internet and cable news, public trust in newspapers would be at an all time high.

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Bird’s Eye View Contest

by Lee — Sunday, 9/20/09, 12:00 pm

Last week’s contest was won by Dave in Seattle. It was the Warner Brothers Studio in Burbank, California.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

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40/40/20 demonstrates the pitfalls of regional transportation planning

by Goldy — Saturday, 9/19/09, 1:01 pm

I’ve had a couple arguments in recent weeks over the merits of regional transportation governance reform, first with State Sen. Ed Murray, and more recently with Seattle Port Commission candidate Tom Albro. I’ve no reason to doubt either’s intentions, but I just can’t help but be cynical about a John Stanton/Discover Institute backed proposal that would inevitably dilute Seattle voters’ control over their own transportation planning dollars… a legitimate concern that’s perhaps best illustrated by Metro’s ass-backwards 40/40/20 rule, which dictates that 40% of new service goes into Metro’s East area, 40% into Metro’s South area, and only 20% into the Seattle-centric West area that comprises 36% of the county’s population.

The Regional Transportation Commission—chaired by Seattle Democratic King County Council member Dow Constantine but dominated by representatives of suburban cities—seems poised to formally oppose a proposal by King County Executive Kurt Triplett that would designate Metro bus service cuts as “suspensions,” rather than permanent cuts. At a meeting of the RTC on Wednesday, representatives of the suburban cities expressed support for designating the cuts as permanent.

The difference sounds semantic, but it’s actually substantive—once there’s enough money to add service again in a few years, “suspensions” would be restored at the same levels they were cut (i.e., if 10 percent of service was cut in Seattle, 10 percent of the restored hours would be in Seattle); in contrast, “cuts” would be restored according to the “40/40/20″ rule, in which suburban areas receive 80 percent of new service to Seattle’s 20 percent.

Now, I don’t question the need for regional transportation planning and cooperation; buses, trains, cars and trucks cross city and county lines, so it would be stupid for our roads and transit not to interoperate. And I don’t question either the need for suburban buses, or the fact that service to these less dense areas necessarily requires a larger subsidy per passenger mile than more crowded, and thus more cost-efficient, city routes. (The fare to expense ratio in Metro’s Seattle-centric West area was roughly 26% in 2007, compared to 14% for the East area.) But when the political compromises necessary to facilitate “regional governance” result in rigid, sub-area allocations like Metro’s 40/40/20 rule, or Sound Transit’s subarea equity provisions, it can’t help but hamper the ability of Seattle taxpayers to provide themselves the level of service they want and need.

It also can’t help but lead to the sort of petty, manipulative, subarea politicization of transportation planning decisions, such as the row above over whether the current round of bus service cuts should be labeled as “permanent” or “suspensions.” I’m all for expanding suburban service, but when you cut more cost-effective urban routes to address the current budget crisis, only to eventually replace them with less efficient suburban routes, it can only make the next budget crisis even worse. Regional governance reform advocates argue that it would make delivery of services more efficient, but that assertion simply isn’t supported by the limited regional planning we have now.

Take Sound Transit for example. From the original ballot measures in the 1990’s to 2007’s failed roads and transit measure to last year’s successful transit-only Phase 2, ST’s proposal’s have been distorted and hamstrung by its incorporation as a regional agency that encompasses tax-hike-hostile parts of Pierce and Snohomish counties which see little local benefit from building light rail in Seattle and the Eastside. But ironically, even as the suburban and exurban areas of ST’s taxing district held virtual veto power over Seattle’s ability to build light rail within its own borders, the equity provisions assured that tax dollars would only be spent in the subarea in which they were raised.

Yeah, I know, ST is much more than just the Central Link light rail, but what was the purpose of requiring Seattle to ask Pierce and Snohomish county voters for permission to tax itself to build a line from the airport to Northgate? If the fate of the Central Link had been left to voters from SeaTac to Seattle alone, would it really take over two decades to complete?

For me, that’s part of the visceral appeal of Mike McGinn’s light rail expansion proposal; it empowers Seattle voters to seize control of our own transportation planning, based on our own priorities, and without the need to politically accommodate the more road-enamored suburbs. On the other hand, if, as governance reform advocates have proposed, all planning, construction and operations were under the strict auspices of a four-county regional transportation authority, this sort of local self-determination would be nigh impossible. Voters in Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap counties might let Seattle expand light rail into the neighborhoods, if we give them something in return. Or, they might not. Hell, it’s always politically popular to fuck Seattle.

In the end, it would be harder to argue with the inherent logic of regional transportation planning if I believed that was all that was at stake, but what we’re really talking about here — both in the microcosm of Metro’s bus cuts, and in the macrocosm of a proposed four-county, roads-and-transit RTA — is the ever more dire, and increasingly politicized competition over scarce and dwindling resources. There was a time when major transportation infrastructure projects were mostly paid for with state and federal dollars, but as this burden has been steadily shifted onto the shoulders of local taxpayers, and as local taxing capacity has gradually been eaten up by transit and other demands, the roads versus transit debate has increasingly become seen as an either/or proposition in the eyes of those who advocate for the former… especially where Seattle-area voters are part of the electoral equation.

Hamstrung by a narrow and regressive tax structure that can’t possibly keep pace with economic growth, everybody understands that there is a limit beyond which even Seattle voters won’t raise our already stratospheric sales tax, thus every tenth of a percent that goes to rail is reasonably perceived as a tenth of a percent that won’t go to roads. That’s why the pro-roads camp opposed Prop 1, and that’s why they’ll oppose any effort to give Seattle the MVET authority necessary to expand light rail into the neighborhoods: it’s tax capacity they covet for other purposes.

So when the same pro-roads/anti-rail advocates make up some of regional governance reform’s most vocal proponents, is it any wonder that I question their motives?

There should be more regional transportation planning and cooperation, and in the end a multi-county RTA does make sense if your goal is to efficiently plan, deliver and operate an integrated, multimodal transportation system.  But only if there are sufficient revenue resources to meet the task at hand. Otherwise we just end up exacerbating the same sort of roads vs transit, suburbs vs city, subarea vs subarea political infighting that already hobbles our transportation planning efforts today.

And we’ll never get the level of regional cooperation we truly need, until we change the way we finance transportation construction, maintenance and operations in Washington state, and ultimately restructure our unfair and inadequate tax system as a whole.

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Racism in the Obama Age

by Lee — Saturday, 9/19/09, 11:30 am

In an article in New York magazine, a man operating a small business in New York City made this startlingly honest confession:

I hate to say it, but there’s no way I’m hiring a black guy to work for me.

Is this a good indication of how racism still significantly affects our society and continues to create artificial barriers to success for minorities? Absolutely, but not in the way you think. The business owner who made that statement isn’t a racist at all. He runs one of New York’s marijuana delivery services, and he knows that if he hires a black man to be a delivery person, that person is significantly more likely to get arrested on his route. He then tells reporter Mark Jacobson:

Fact is, pot is legal for white people but not for black people, which is total bullshit.

Recent arrest statistics compiled by Queens College Professor Harry Levine back up this observation:

In this way, the NYPD has arrested tens of thousands of New Yorkers every year for possessing small amounts of marijuana. These arrests are expensive, costing nearly $90 million a year. And there are other costs: an arrest record can result in severe collateral consequences, like loss of employment, or the chance at a college scholarship. Spending the night in one of the City’s overcrowded holding pens or in Riker’s can itself be traumatic.

The most alarming component of these arrests, however, are the racial disparities. Nearly 90% of all those arrested for possession of marijuana are Black and Latino. Whites comprise 35% of the City population, but make up less than 10% of all those arrested for possession of marijuana. These disparities are not indicators of who uses marijuana–over 1/3 of all adults U.S. have tried marijuana, and anyone on a casual weekend stroll through the Upper West Side or Prospect Park will find a number of white people puffing away.

As Gabriel Sayegh also points out in that same post, the number of arrests for low-level marijuana possession have risen from 900 in 1993 to 40,000 in 2008. With nearly 90% of those arrests being of minorities (and most of them young), those arrests tend to erase the kinds of opportunities that would otherwise be available. This trend hasn’t just been with marijuana either. All forms of drug enforcement – especially the long disparity between crack and cocaine sentencing guidelines – have created a gigantic divide between how the drug war affects white communities and how it affects minority communities.

It’s become fashionable to claim that racism in America is largely over and that the folks who claim it isn’t are attempting to exploit the gullible. The numbers from America’s drug war emphasize how false that belief is. Wherever one goes in America, the racial disparity in drug arrests is only becoming more extreme. In California, blacks are only 7% of the population, but make up 33% of marijuana felony arrests. There are six times as many whites and blacks in the state, but more black men are picked up for marijuana felony offenses than whites, even though whites and blacks use marijuana in equal percentages and there are six times as many whites in the state. From coast to coast this occurs, giving us a massive disparity in our prison population and creating a huge wealth gap between white and minority communities.

What’s interesting to note about this phenomenon is that throughout the criminal justice system, from prosecutors to police officers to judges, the individuals within the system will be adamant that they’re not racists themselves. And I think most of them are telling the truth. The system itself really isn’t the root of the racism. The racism tends to come from what the community expects of this system and pushes politicians to do with it. When it’s understood that way, as the manifestation of lingering American eliminationism, the results we have start to make more sense.

A perfect illustration of this phenomenon occurred a few years back in an exchange I had with a blog commenter from the Bay Area. She first left a comment agreeing with me that marijuana prohibition is stupid and that people shouldn’t be arrested for using it. Then, when I mentioned the racial disparity, her attitude changed. She became defensive of law enforcement and falsely claimed that blacks get arrested because they commit more drug crimes (they don’t). Finally, I posted a video of an old episode of COPS, where several black men where being tackled and arrested after buying small bags of weed from an informant. She quickly went from being against marijuana prohibition to expressing gratitude to the police for getting these dangerous people off the streets. To this day, I guarantee you that she doesn’t think of herself as a racist, and if you ever accused her of it, she’d flip out just as she did in the comments of that post.

This is the difficulty in understanding the real level of racism that infects our political debates today, and more specifically, the extent to which racism drives the “teabagger” movement. I sympathize with genuine small government conservatives who have been consistent in their opposition to both Republicans and Democrats. But I also get the sense that they don’t recognize how miniscule they are within the ranks of those who are waving tea bags and calling Obama a Communist.

On the other hand, I think Jimmy Carter is wrong when he says that the reason for such heated opposition is because Obama is black. It’s not simply because Obama is black (one could easily see the same protests if Hillary Clinton was President), it’s because Obama is a Democrat, and the Democrats are seen as the party that represents the interests of black America. The reason we’re seeing such an intense backlash to government spending all of a sudden is not because government is being more irresponsible with its spending than it was during the Bush era, it’s because the perception is that the money is being spent on the undesirables within our society, the same people who always seem to bear the brunt of our nation’s drug war.

As Glenn Greenwald points out in this post, it makes absolutely no sense to be more concerned about the tiny sums of money that we dish out to ACORN for the relatively minor scandal that they’ve been caught up in after years of being disinterested in the vast sums of money that we’ve given to war profiteers like Blackwater, or various war-crime-committing nations, or to the financial services companies that drove our economy into the ground. The only explanation is that ACORN is representative of black America, and therefore is seen as a threat disproportionate to their actual influence. But don’t dare call that phenomenon racist.

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Open thread

by Darryl — Saturday, 9/19/09, 12:01 am

Rachel Maddow continues her investigation of the state of health and politics in South Carolina:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIihBgxa6GQ[/youtube]

(There are some 70 other media clips from the past week in politics posted at Hominid Views.)

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Ted Van Dik

by Goldy — Friday, 9/18/09, 3:02 pm

Let’s see how many facts Crosscut’s Ted Van Dyk can get wrong in a single sentence:

Whoa! The present light rail plan, narrowly passed in 2008, calls for $23 billion, and probably more, in tax increases for a three-county light rail system — the largest local-level tax increase in U.S. history.

Um, the package actually cost $17.9 billion by the same accounting standards used to calculate the cost of similar projects; the “largest local tax increase ever” meme is totally unsupported rhetorical bullshit originally fabricated for the previous year’s “roads and transit” measure; and “narrowly passed”…? Really Ted? Narrowly passed? Yeah, I guess, if by “narrow” you mean 57% within the Sound Transit taxing district as a whole, 61% in King County, and a whopping 68% within Seattle.

That’s right, Seattle voters went for Prop 1 by an overwhelming two to one margin, and Van Dyk attempts to dismiss Mike McGinn’s ambitious rail expansion proposal by claiming that the previous one only “narrowly passed.” My ass!

Is Van Dyk an idiot, or does he just think everybody else is?

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A man, a plan, a conundrum

by Goldy — Friday, 9/18/09, 9:40 am

Successful leadership requires both vision and execution, and judging from the bold, light rail expansion proposal he announced Wednesday, mayoral wannabe Mike McGinn appears to be getting the first part down pat. As for the second part… well, that’s the question, isn’t it?

You can read the instant analysis from the transit geeks at Publicola, Seattle Transit Blog and elsewhere, though to be honest, there isn’t all that much in the way of detailed analysis because the announcement itself is pretty thin on details.  But that’s okay, because rather than etching a light rail plan in stone, McGinn appears to really just be saying, “hey… we’ve been studying these neighborhood extensions since 1920… now let’s get our shit together and build it!” Though, not exactly in those words.

McGinn’s proposal calls for developing a plan within his first two years as mayor to connect high density neighborhoods — Wallingford, Fremont, Ballard, Queen Anne, Belltown and West Seattle — to our existing regional light rail system using compatible technology. The plan and all taxes to fund it would be put before Seattle voters, and construction and operations would likely be handled by Sound Transit.

And as we all know from previous transit debates and controversies, there’s nothing new about the idea of these neighborhood extensions. Indeed, much of it has already been extensively studied by Sound Transit as part of its long range planning process.

Sound Transit Long Range Plan

Sound Transit Long Range Plan

You’ll notice the West Seattle to Ballard route is not included in this 2005 map, because ST had basically backed off the Monorail’s bailiwick, but they’ve studied that route too. Somewhere in the archives you’ll find plenty of estimates, however preliminary, of both ridership and cost, along a number of possible routes. In fact, the only truly novel idea in McGinn’s proposal is the suggestion that we might actually build it, and sometime in the first half of this century.

So can we?

Given the political will and the money, of course we can. And that’s where part two of the leadership equation comes in.

McGinn suggests that we “use existing city and/or Transportation Benefit District taxing authority” to finance the project (voters permitting, of course), but as Ben at STB points out, that doesn’t raise very much money. Or perhaps McGinn is thinking of the MVET authority previously granted the Monorail? Maybe, but the problem is, we don’t appear to have the authority to use that authority in the way that McGinn proposes, so Seattle would first have to receive permission from the legislature to tax itself to build the neighborhood extensions it wants. That’s a little political reality McGinn should keep in mind should he butt heads with Olympia over the deep bore tunnel he so feverishly opposes… a political reality complicated by the fact that the powers that be covet what little unused taxing capacity remains within Seattle as a means of funding highway improvements throughout the rest of the region. That’s largely why they opposed putting ST Phase II on the ballot.

Even then, it’s not clear that the MVET alone would provide enough revenue to build out the full neighborhood system in any sort of a  timely fashion — say, fifteen years versus fifty — especially if multiple costly water crossings are included. Annual revenues determine how much you can bond, and the amount you can bond determines how fast you can build… and that, after all, was the final nail in the Monorail’s coffin: a 30-percent shortfall between the revenues needed to properly bond the project and the revenues actually being collected. So how does McGinn get from here to there?

As Ben points out, one approach would be to build a lower cost system more along the lines of Portland’s MAX and ST’s Rainier Valley alignment, mostly at grade, with little in the way of fancy stations. Such a system would be cheaper and faster to build, much of it running along existing city right-of-way, but it would also be slower and provide less maximum capacity than the grade-separated route along much of the Central Link. Topography won’t allow this approach in some places, but one can certainly imagine an at-grade alignment down Elliot AVE and and 15th AVE W, for example.

But another comparison to Portland also needs to be made, in that, unlike the doomed Monorail, MAX’s various lines have been built with as much as 83% federal funding, along with a steady stream of dollars from the state, whereas the Seattle Monorail was budgeted to receive virtually zilch in state and federal money. You can pretty much rule out state funding from a legislature that has determined that fucking Seattle is always an effective election-year strategy, but it’s hard to imagine such an ambitious build-out being achieved without a substantial infusion of federal funds.

In reality, it’s hard to see McGinn realizing his vision without some combination of all of the above. He’s going to have to cajole the legislature into giving Seattle additional authority, convince Seattle voters to tax themselves while tamping down expectations in terms of the type of system and/or time of delivery, and effectively work the state’s congressional delegation into doing their all to squeeze a substantial contribution out of the federal budget. Meanwhile, he’ll have to do all that in the face of a Seattle Times editorial board hostile to both rail and taxation, and a city council that may actually attempt to finally reassert itself against a novice mayor. And all that’s assuming that Sound Transit is willing and able to take on the project. That makes for a lot of ifs.

And, oh yeah… he first has to defeat Joe Mallahan in November.

Is McGinn up to the leadership challenge? I dunno. That’s the conundrum voters are going to have figure out for themselves.

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