Monthly Archives: April 2015

Damaged Goods

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I came across two articles this morning that linked a topic that had been wandering in my thoughts these last few days. One article was about the possible move of a fast-food company headquarters from a large metropolitan area. The other was about the potential ethical and criminal issues of a politician. The common link of the two was democrat politics.

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Hardees Headquarters in downtown St. Louis. Photo by Dominic Genetti/KMOX

The first instance was from St. Louis. The corporate headquarters for Hardees is in downtown St. Louis. An article appeared in the St. Louis CBS News outlet that hinted Hardees would soon be moving to more…business friendly climes. A state without an income tax and with Right-to-Work.

All Signs Point to Hardee’s St. Louis Departure

Michael Calhoun (@michaelcalhoun) April 29, 2015 9:27 AM

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) — St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay says after his conversations with Hardee’s CEO Andy Puzder, it looks like the fast-food chain is moving headquarters, and Slay says it’s over things the city has no control over.

“I know for sure he’s looking for states that don’t have an income tax,” Slay says, “and he’s looking at Right-to-Work states.”

The fast-food restaurant chain is currently headquartered at 100 N. Broadway, just a few blocks from the Gateway Arch in downtown.

The company announced last week that it was considering moving to Nashville.

Mrs. Crucis and I was in Nashville a couple of weeks ago. The city appears to be booming if all the road construction is any indication. Tennessee does meet the two criteria mentioned in the article above.

We drove through St. Louis on our way to Nashville. As does anyone who is about to leave on a long road-trip, I filled my Tahoe’s tank before I left. I paid $2.169 a gallon at my local gas station. I noted as we drove east that gas prices were about the same, varying a few pennies, west of Columbia. However, the further east we drove, the higher the gas prices. I wondered why. The state and federal gas tax is uniform across Missouri. That couldn’t be it.

We stopped not far from the St. Louis county line for a pit-stop and to check our route. The local gas price was $2.469 per gallon and higher. I discovered one of the reasons for higher gas was more and higher local sales taxes.

Sales taxes are a burden on everyone and sales taxes have a broad negative impact on commerce. Those who can, will buy elsewhere leading to cash flow out of the taxed area. A reason why internet sales are so popular.

The CBS article made Hardees’ motivation clear. They want to move to a location with lower taxes and a place with Right-to-Work. Nashville fits the bill. St. Louis, with its higher taxes and the city’s support and promotion of unions is not the place Hardees wants for its corporate headquarters.

The sense of oppression is not limited to the social ills of Ferguson and St. Louis. It extends to the business climate of the entire section of the state around St. Louis. Decades of democrat policies and democrat leadership of St. Louis have, “come home to roost!” Missouri, especially the eastern side of the state, has become ‘damaged goods’ as far as business is concerned.

The other instance hinted in today’s post title is about…Hillary Clinton. In a FOX report this morning, her political future appears to be imploding. Her cronies in the media are no longer providing cover against the growing revelation of scandal, fraud, and probable criminal activities of herself, her husband and the Clinton Family Foundation.

DAMAGED GOODS NO BARGAIN FOR DEMOCRATS
Another day, another revelation of ethical misconduct in Clintonland. This time it’s the Boston Globe’s discovery that the largest single non-profit group in the Clinton network utterly ignored the disclosure agreement that Hillary Clinton promised would be a bulwark against corruption during her tenure as secretary of state. Foreign donations exploded during Clinton’s tenure as America’s chief diplomat, but her organization said nothing about it. At the same time, we are learning more about the astronomical overhead in the Clinton family’s charitable network. So it is no wonder that Politico reports that the donors who have funded the multi-billion-dollar enterprise – the kind of folks who go on whirlwind Africa tours with Bill Clinton – are getting queasy about the new scrutiny and the serial improprieties. Their world is shrinking down to folks like billionaire Tom Steyer, who openly embrace the Washington cash-for-influence game.

So what’s a conscientious liberal to do? The GOP is out of the question. Republicans are tumbling over themselves to seek the favor of the super PAC donor whales who are preparing to fund potentially hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of red-on-red attack ads in the coming months. This isn’t a big problem for GOP voters, though, since the members of the party widely oppose restrictions on political spending. But for liberal Democrats, these are famine times. The wife of a former president is preparing to claim by regal right their party’s nomination. She is mired in a scandal that involves boatloads of cash from unseemly sources, the violation of basic transparency standards and the destruction of huge troves of documents. To go from “hope and change” back to “no controlling legal authority” is a far fall indeed. — FOXNewsletter, April 30, 2015.

Two democrat institutions, large metropolitan areas and Hillary Clinton; are two in a growing pile of democrat damaged goods. The liberal policies of the democrat party fail everywhere they are found from Detroit to Baltimore to St. Louis and Kansas City.

Kansas City’s Mayor Sly James proposed not long ago to raise Kansas City’s minimum wage to $15/hour. He filed to notice some of the unintended consequences to the city if that happened (or perhaps, like Baltimore Mayor Rawlings-Blake, he just doesn’t care about business and private enterprise or property.)

I looked at the Kansas City School District’s pay scales recently for another post. The district is required to post the pay scales every year by individual from the Superintendent to the freshly hired teacher’s assistant. Over 1,000 district employees make less than $15//hour. If the district had to comply with Mayor James’ proposal, the decision would be who to lay off. The district can not longer depend on the state for funding. Those days are longer over.

Sly James proposal would break the KC school district’s budget. It would be one more woe for a failed district who lost its accreditation and is struggling to remain credible while hoping to control student flight to other accredited school districts.

Six decades of a failed political policies have killed the life of large cities. Wherever democrats are in control, the economies of those areas crumble and add one more city after another and their people to the pile of damaged goods.

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A different topic: Patents

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Everyone is writing about Baltimore. I had my rant on the subject yesterday. My topic today is different—our federal patent system. I have a number of patents, seven if I include the spin-offs (sometimes two patents are received for a single submission.)

A Congressman is trying to upset that patent applecart. He thinks it’s too easy for “patent trolls” to sue patent holders. He’s wrong. An article about this Congressman’s efforts appeared today in the Washington Times.

Feds own thousands of patents that could be affected by legislation

Support for bill from China gives opponents ammunition

By Kellan Howell – The Washington Times – Tuesday, April 28, 2015

The U.S. government’s ownership of tens of thousands of patents has thrown an unexpected wrinkle into a congressional effort to alter the system that governs American inventions.

The Innovation Act, being shepherded through the House by Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, was designed to reorganize the patenting process to address concerns about frivolous lawsuits filed by so-called patent trolls.

Republican leaders hoped the bill would breeze through the chamber like similar legislation in the last Congress. The bill had four hearings in the Judiciary Committee since January and was being fast-tracked for a floor vote by Republican leaders in hopes of getting it to the Senate, where it faces a less-certain future.

But the measure has met larger-than-expected resistance from small inventors, lawyers, universities and some conservative activists, including expected Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. Critics have argued that the bill would create a “big government” solution that could weaken patent protections envisioned by the Founding Fathers in the U.S. Constitution, tipping the system in favor of big corporations and hurting small inventors.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California has been leading an effort within the House Republican ranks to slow down the legislation. He and others have been focusing on a concern they believe the authors of the legislation have not considered: potential financial and liability implications for the U.S. government.

Federal agencies have held tens of thousands of patents over the decades, including the Ebola virus, medical marijuana and space and military equipment. A 2008 study by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office identified at least 47,220 patents owned by federal entities, about 1 percent of all patents issued. Last year, federal agencies sought 1,024 patents.

The legislation attempts to discourage lawsuits by patent trolls by shifting the burden of litigation fees to the losing party in a legal dispute. Mr. Rohrabacher and others want to determine how shifting fees could impact taxpayers because the government holds so many patents.

“The federal government holds a tremendous number of patents and licenses them for use. The hastily crafted ‘Innovation Act’ includes provisions that put licensees and the federal government itself at tremendous financial risk and disadvantages small inventors in the courtroom by putting them up against slick corporate legal teams,” Mr. Rohrabacher told The Washington Times.

He said the proposed law was “the worst case of crony capitalism I’ve witnessed in my 3 decades in Washington.”

Mr. Goodlatte’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the concerns about federally owned patents, though a spokeswoman said he didn’t think it would pose a problem for the legislation.

You can read the entire 3-page column here.

My patents are owned by Sprint-Nextel. I had to assign any patents I created to Sprint as a condition of employment. I have no objection to that condition, it was and is a common practice in industry. There are some limits on the employer. The work on the patent has to be done on company time, using company resources, and related to the job. I met all thise conditions.

I did get paid for those patents. Sprint paid, if I recall correctly, $1500 for each patent that was approved by the US Patent Office. I shared some of the credit on a few of the patents with others. The remainder are all mine.

A university professor filed a patent on the same subject and method as mine. Unfortunately for him, my patent had been filed and approved when he filed for his. Short story, he sued for infringement and lost.

But that small fact didn’t prevent him from trying to sell his product under his ‘patent pending’ claim. In fact he tried to become a direct competitor against Sprint in some endeavors. Sprint could have asked for an injunction against the professor and would have likely received one easily, the facts were not refutable.

However, Sprint did not. I was told by Sprint’s patent attorneys, it would not provide Sprint with good publicity—Big Company picking on a Little Guy. Nor, according to Sprint’s business analysts, was the professor well funded and would soon go out of business. That projection turned out to be accurate. The professor had a monstrous ego but zero business sense.

If Congressman Goodlatte’s bill is passed, the professor would have been cut off completely. frivolous or not, he could not have easily sued Sprint and possibly have suffered large legal expenses. The bill is really a club for foreign governments who steal techniques and technology from American companies and individuals with impunity. As the article above says, it nothing more than an exercise in crony capitalism.

Small companies and individual innovators need a method to protect their intellectual properties. This bill would damage that ability if not completely destroy it.

It’s time to, once again, remind ourselves what is happening in Washington. It is not a two party system. It is the entrenched establishment of both parties acting with a common goal: retaining power while supporting themselves and their sycophants.

Fascism: Fascism (/fæʃɪzəm/) is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism[1][2] that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. Influenced by national syndicalism, fascism originated in Italy during World War I, combining more typically right-wing positions with elements of left-wing politics,[3] in opposition to liberalism, Marxism, and traditional conservatism. Fascism is often placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum, but several academics have said that the description is inadequate.[4][5] — wiki.

For more information on the economy of Fascism, go here. Fascism evolved not by right-wing theories but from national syndicalism. We call that system, crony capitalism, today. It’s not always practiced by a dictator.

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Getting the government they voted for

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The MSM is on a feeding frenzy over Baltimore. As happened in Ferguson, the peaceful protesters were run off by the thugs and imported agitators. The rioters were supported by such con men luminaries as Jesse Jackson and Al “the Slims” Sharpton. If you don’t know what, “the Slims,” mean, ask a black friend.

Baltimore’s Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake appeared on TV and made a total fool of herself. Correction, she revealed the fool that she was. When her foolishness was spread by the MSM, she blamed, like other fools before her, the media. A lib will never admit fault. It’s always someone else’s fault.

The real question, one that is never asked, is why the protests against police when these large cities are controlled by liberals? If the black communities have issues with their police, surely they’ve discussed the problems with their democrat masters representatives in the city government. The police report to the city. If there are problems, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has the authority to fix them. Why hasn’t she?

Yes, there are questions how Freddy Gray was injured. Instead of protesting the police and rioting, why aren’t the people protesting the Mayor? She is the one in charge.

It was the same in Ferguson. A liberal city in a liberal county with a liberal city government elected year after year by the majority of the residents—who are black. Instead of blaming the police, why aren’t people blaming the liberal, democrat city governments who control the police?

Wherever a city is controlled by liberals, the city is in trouble. Detroit, with over sixty years of democrat controlled city government looks like a war-zone. Businesses were forced to leave by an oppressive city government. Large stretches of the city have been abandoned and Detroit is shrinking in population and territory.

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Baltimore rioter after looting a CVS drugstore.

Instead of managing the situation, Baltimore’s Mayor made it worse, “giving them space to destroy,” as she was quoted. Mrs Crucis and I watched the confrontation on TV last night. The police did nothing. Whenever the rioters approached, they retreated. When rioters looted and burned businesses, the police watched and did nothing. According to on-the-scene news reports, only 200 police confronted the rioters. Where were the rest of the police?

Surely a city the size of Baltimore has more than 200 police officers on their force. Sent too few police to confront violent rioters is worse than doing nothing—the Mayor risked the lives of her police while doing nothing to stop the rioting.

The Mayor issued a curfew order from 10PM to 4:30AM—starting today! Why didn’t she issue one for last night? The Maryland governor declared a State of Emergency and has called out the National Guard. Where are they?

There used to be a quaint custom called, “Reading the Riot Act,” to rioters. There were given time to disperse, a short time, and then they were forcibly removed, arrested, or shot if the rioters offered violence. A local Baltimore reporter was rescued from the rioters by a shotgun toting business owner. The police did nothing to protect peaceful citizens nor their property.

Someone with the guts to read the riot act is what Baltimore needed. The city didn’t get it. The Mayor blames the media.

Mayor Rawlings-Blake has personified the other old saying: “People get the government they deserve.” The citizens of Baltimore have a city government of incompetence and ineffectiveness. A government unwilling and unable to act regardless of the consequences.

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Culture of hate

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We, conservatives, Christians, have been under attack for decades, since the sixties if not earlier. Initially, no one really cared, nor took any interest in the attacks. This is America, after all. We all have 1st Amendment rights. Don’t we? We can’t lost that! It can’t happen here.

Well, it can happen here. Our first amendment rights, as well as all the other constitutionally protected rights are under attack. The left has carefully seeded hate against us and those seeds have now sprouted. If you doubt this, just scan the headlines. You needn’t read the articles, the headlines will tell you enough.

Gay-rights advocates torpedo GoFundMe campaign for Christian-owned bakery

For those of you who have been living under a rock, a bakery in Oregon, Sweet Cakes, was targeted by a lesbian couple. They asked the bakery to make a wedding cake. The bakery refused saying it was against their religious beliefs. The lesbian couple sued for discrimination—and won. The bakery’s 1st Amendment right was ignored. The liberal court assessed the bakery a fine large enough to bankrupt them. The headline above tells the rest of the story.

In another instance, the John Hopkins University Student Government has banned Chick-fil-A from their campus. Why? “Johns Hopkins University has banned Chick-fil-A from its campus saying that the restaurant is a “microaggression” against its students.” It mattered not that Chick-fil-A has no presence on the university campus. The act was nothing more than pure spite.

These were attacks against Christians and a Christian-owned business. But these aren’t the only instances of hate and violence. Rabid environmentalists have used violence for decades. Usually those acts were against property. One of the latest attacks was direct violence against a person, an employee of a company.

Will there be a National Conversation after environmentalist shoots energy worker?

posted at 7:21 pm on April 17, 2015 by Noah Rothman

Get ready for a week of introspection from the press, particularly the left-leaning media, as a wave of tortured self-criticism characterizes coverage of what is sure to dominate the news cycle for the foreseeable future… LOL. Just kidding!

A disturbing story out of West Virginia flagged by The Washington Free Beacon’s Lachlan Markay indicates that a man, enraged by the drilling taking place in his state, shot an employee of an energy exploitation company on Monday.

A man dressed in camouflage with his face painted black approached Mark Miller, an employee with HG Energy LLC, on Joe’s Creek near Sod, Napier said.

“At that time he played Mr. Miller a recording that said ‘Stop the drilling’ and then stuck a gun through the window of the passenger side of the truck,” [Lincoln County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy J.J.] Napier said.

A reporter with The Charleston Gazette called a member of the West Virginia Sierra Club for comment and received unequivocal condemnation of this violent incident, but the episode has received little attention in the national press.

For a media culture that is quick to blame conservatives for every episode of violence with a potential political motive, the commentary community’s silence on this incident is deafening.

The column continues listing the instances where the lefties acted with violence. In some cases the liberal media tried, and failed, to blame conservatives for the acts of violent liberals.

The left has purposely sought to divide the country. A country divided is weak and when weakened, that nation is susceptible for a takeover. A coup, in other words.

A coup need not be a violent overthrow, it can be insidious, a chip here, a chip there. The question is not how, but when. When will the people of this nation wake up and resist. That resistance need not be violent, either. The same methods used by the left, can also be used by us to counteract the left.

With Obama, Holder and the new Holder clone as Attorney General, the left is emboldened. The current crop of GOP leadership in Washington are willing enablers of the coup. They fear the left and are abetting them. We have a chance to make corrections. Remember Cruz, Walker, Paul, and Rubio, each a conservative, when the election cycle commences. Remember, too, that Boehner and McConnell must go along with their cronies in Congress.

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Yawn…

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Zzzzz. That’s what I tried to do last night. A storm front came through and thwarted that idea. Weather changes give me head congestion. That equals mouth breathing, dry mouth, tossing and turning and little, if any, sleep.

In addition to an hour or so of sleep overnight, I’ve a sinus headache. Zzzzz. I’m just not my usual perky self today. I’ll see y’all Monday.

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Urrgh!

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Sometimes listening to the radio is just…depressing…and angering. I listened to the half hour news on a local station, KMBZ-980. They made mention that Michael Brown’s parents were suing the city of Ferguson, Missouri. I had heard that news item before, it wasn’t new. What was angering was KMBZ’s presentation, “…Michael Brown who was killed by a Ferguson police officer…” That slant perpetuated the myth that Michael Brown was not a thug who had just committed strong-arm robbery and was not killed attacking an officer. I understand that radio news must use an economy of words, but saying instead, “…Michael Brown who was shot while attacking a police officer…” is just as economical and much more truthful and accurate? No, KMBZ chose otherwise, it’s easier to slant the report, omit a fact, and perpetuate a myth.

So much for truth and accuracy in the local news. Another reason why I no longer subscribe to the KC ‘Red’ Star, nor watch local TV news. Nothing but lies and liberal propaganda

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The Bush campaign continues to falter. Bush, like Clinton, is being his own worse enemy. It was bad enough Bush tried to copy Walker’s presentation style at the NRA Annual Meeting—taking his jacket off to appear to be a “good ol’ boy.” It didn’t work in Nashville. Now Bush is using double-ought to shoot himself in the foot once more.

Jeb Bush: NSA surveillance ‘the best part’ of Obama administration

By Jessica Chasmar – The Washington Times – Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Former Florida Gov. and likely presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Tuesday “the best part” of the Obama administration is its continuance of the National Security Agency’s controversial spying program.

“I would say the best part of the Obama administration would be his continuance of the protections of the homeland using, you know, the big metadata programs, the NSA being enhanced,” Mr. Bush, 62, said on the Michael Medved radio show, CNN reported.

“Even though he never defends it, even though he never openly admits it, there has been a continuation of a very important service, which is the first obligation I think of our national government is to keep us safe,” he said.

Bush’s statement begs the question, “Safe for whom and from whom?” More and more, the government appears to be more concerned about US than THEM!

C’mon, Jeb. Admit it. You’re a radical, liberal, statist masquerading as a ‘Pub. I notice Rubio is climbing the polls. Statements like yours is one reason why the conservatives are rising in the polls while the establishment can no longer fake polls that you lead the ‘Pub candidates.

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It couldn’t happen here, could it?

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I read. By that, I mean I read a lot. If you see me away from home, you may notice I have my tablet with me. I have a couple of thousand books on it. I finished a book last night, Joe Steel by Harry Turtledove. http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1406509652l/22544038.jpgI’m not going to give it a review. I rarely, if ever, review books. I’ve read a lot of Turtledove’s books and his favorite theme is Alternate History. I would suggest you read this one. It has some critical insights within it.

The alternate history in this book is simple…what if Joe Stalin’s parents had emigrated to the US well before Joe Stalin was born? Leon Trotsky, a darling of some current leftists, would have succeeded V. I. Lenin to lead communist Russia. Joe Stalin, who is called Joe Steel in the book, becomes a California congressmen running against FDR in 1932…and FDR and Eleanor mysteriously die in a fire in the New York Governor’s mansion.

I remember my father saying, he was an FDR democrat, that the country came to within a hair’s breadth of a revolution in 1932. Progressive propaganda blamed Wall Street for the nation’s woes. Some of that blame is valid; much was not.

The book uses that concept to show how the US could be changed into a dictatorship by an unprincipled strongman. I don’t know Turtledove’s politics but some of the tactics used by Joe Steel are eerily similar to some being used by Barak Obama.

How could the US be suborned into a dictatorship? The answer is in the book if you look: complacency, ignorance, and bigotry against the fundamental principles of this nation with a well-planned attack by democrats against free enterprise and capitalism. Take a look at our current politics and you’ll see the parallels in the book.

When FDR’s tactics were blocked by the Supreme Court, FDR attempted to pack the court with his cronies. In Joe Steel, Stalin has them charged with trumped up violations and shoots them for treason. The aims of FDR and Joe Steel were the same, only the tactics were different.

The book disturbed me. Not by its theme nor of its plot; it disturbed me because it could easily happen here. We don’t have someone knocking on our door in the middle of the night. They use battering rams instead.

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If you’re a student of military history, you may have noticed something that is no longer allowed in the US military. Not all that long ago, a soldier’s weapons were stored, not in the armory, but with him in his barracks. In the 1990’s, during Clinton’s administration, that changed and those weapons were removed, taken from the troops. If the question was asked, “Why?” no real answer was given. There is one very reasonable motivation—the military leadership feared their troops.

The disarming of the military had consequences. One direct consequence was the massacre at Ft. Hood. There have been other, less well-known incidents as well.

Ted Cruz has an answer. Allow troops to carry personal weapons on base. It won’t alleviate the fears of mutiny by the leadership. It will, however, allow troops to have the means to be able to defend themselves and their families.

Ted Cruz takes on the military, says ‘Second Amendment rights are removed’ from troops on base

Base commanders fear accidents, escalation of personal disputes

By Jacqueline Klimas – The Washington Times – Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Sen. Ted Cruz is asking lawmakers to consider allowing troops to carry personal firearms on base for protection, reviving a fight that has previously been a nonstarter with Congress after military leaders said they didn’t support the change.

While many lawmakers said Tuesday they were open to having a discussion on changing the rules in a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing, most said that they would defer issues of base security to military leaders — who have historically been against allowing concealed carry on their posts.

Mr. Cruz formally sent a letter to Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and chairman of the committee, on Tuesday afternoon asking for a hearing on the subject, saying that current restrictions impede Second Amendment rights and weaken the safety and security of troops.

“The men and women in our military have been at war for over a decade; they understand the responsibilities that go along with carrying a firearm,” Mr. Cruz wrote in the letter. “Yet their Second Amendment rights are removed at the front gate.”

I suggest you read the entire column at the Washington Times website. It’s worth a read.

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