text:
NEWS NFL
New Orleans Saints: Saints Signs Brandon Marshall for the remainder of the season
By Coty Davis November 12, 2018
Leave a Comment on New Orleans Saints: Saints Signs Brandon Marshall for the remainder of the season
After losing Dez Bryant due to a torn Achilles, the New Orleans Saints signs Brandon Marshall for the remainder of the season.
Coming off a 51-14 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals, the New Orleans Saints have added another weapon to their historic offense. According to Adam Schefter of ESPN, the Saints have signed free agent Brandon Marshall for the remainder of the season. Marshall's signing comes just three days after the Saints loss Dez Bryant to a torn Achilles injury on Friday.
Veteran WR Brandon Marshall is signing a one-year deal with the New Orleans Saints, per source. In his 13-year NFL career, Marshall never has played in a playoff game; his chance now awaits.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) November 12, 2018
Much like the signing of Bryant, the addition of Marshall will give the Saints a reliable second option behind Michael Thomas, New Orleans best pass catchers. With Thomas and Marshall lining up on both sides, Drew Brees will have two deadly receivers on the field.
Although he is not the same player that made him one of the NFL's best, the 34-year-old showed flashes of what made him a six-time pro bowler during his short time with the Seattle Seahawks. In his first six games of the 2018 season, Marshall recorded 11 receptions for 136 yards and a touchdown, before he was released by the organization in October.
Over the course of his 13-year NFL career, Marshall recorded a total of 970 receptions for 12,351 yards, to go along with 83 touchdown catches. As a member of the Denver Broncos, Miami Dolphins, and New York Jets, Marshall recorded six seasons of 100-plus receptions, which is the most in NFL history.
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Columbus has won six straight games over Dallas, its longest active winning streak against any single opponent. The Blue Jackets have held the Stars to one goal in each of their last three matchups including a 4-1 win on November 6 in Columbus.
The Blue Jackets lost in a shootout against the Rangers on Saturday, 5-4. It was the ninth time they have allowed at least four goals in a game this season, tied for third most in the NHL.
The Stars were defeated at home against Nashville on Saturday, 5-4, in overtime. Despite the loss, they are 6-2-2 (.700) in their last 10 games after starting the season 3-4-0 (.429).
Dallas has allowed just nine goals in the first period this season, tied with Arizona for fewest in the NHL. The Blue Jackets have scored 15 goals in the first period, their fewest of any period this season.
Pierre-Luc Dubois had a goal and an assist in the loss to New York, his 59th and 60th career points. He is the fourth Blue Jackets skater to reach 60 career points before turning 21 and first since teammate Zach Werenski did it last season.
Tyler Seguin lit the lamp for the second consecutive game against Nashville. After recording 10 points in the first four games of the season, he has only logged seven points in 13 games since.
DALLAS -- Last Tuesday, the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Dallas Stars met at Nationwide Arena with Columbus ending the Stars' six-game Eastern Conference road trip with a 4-1 defeat.
Dallas (9-6-2), which lost 5-4 in overtime to Nashville on Saturday at home, finished that road trip 3-2-1, taking seven of a possible 12 points.
However, the Stars, who are 6-2-1 at home, would like to exact a bit of payback on the Blue Jackets on Monday night when they match up again, this time at American Airlines Center.
And with the certain return of forward Alexander Radulov, who has played just once in the past 10 games, Stars rookie coach Jim Montgomery expects his team to have ample energy, something Radulov brings Dallas in big quantities.
"It's missed a lot and also just his intensity and the pace that he plays with," Montgomery said after practice Sunday. "He brings people into the fight with him and it's clearly something we miss when he's not there."
Radulov has been a great complement to captain Jamie Benn and perennial All-Star Tyler Seguin, who has goals in back-to-back games, when he plays on the Stars' top line.
The Stars should also get fellow forward Brett Ritchie, out the past four games with an illness, back on Monday.
Dallas will still be without veteran defenseman Marc Methot (lower body injury), but Montgomery takes solace in knowing that young defensemen Ben Gleason, impressive in his Saturday NHL debut, and Joel Hanley, who made his Stars debut against the Predators, are more than up to the challenge.
"He (Gleason) did everything with his head up. He made really good decisions," Montgomery said of Gleason. "They (Gleason and Hanley) both showed well."
Stars veteran center Jason Spezza could register his 900th career point against Columbus, which would make him the seventh active player to reach that milestone.
Columbus (9-6-2) lost 5-4 to the New York Rangers in a shootout on Saturday at home.
Despite leaving a point on the table, Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella couldn't fault much about his team's play against the Rangers.
"Certainly, the odd-man rushes early on in the game hurt us and some turnovers, but other than that we played a really good game," Tortorella said.
The Blue Jackets got three assists from defenseman Seth Jones, who grew up in the Dallas area.
Columbus has a six-game unbeaten streak (4-0-2) against Dallas and the Blue Jackets haven't lost to the Stars in Dallas since a 5-1 defeat on December 15, 2015.
The Blue Jackets are 5-2-1 on the road but Tortorella knows that if his team is to continue their run of good form against Dallas, they will need to limit the Stars' offensive chances.
"We have created a number of chances, but we've given up too much," Tortorella said after the loss to the Rangers. "The biggest thing we have to cut down on is the ones that we give for free. We've got to be a smarter hockey team."


If you've used a relational database, you understand basic INSERT statements. Even if you come from a NoSQL background, you likely grok inserts. Within the Postgres world, there is a utility that is useful for fast bulk ingestion: \copy. Postgres \copy is a mechanism for you to bulk load data in or out of Postgres.
First, lets pause. Do you even need to bulk load data and what's it have to do with Citus? We see customers leverage Citus for a number of different uses. When looking at Citus for a transactional workload, say as the system of record for some kind of multi-tenant SaaS app, your app is mostly performing standard insert/updates/deletes.
But when you're leveraging Citus for real-time analytics, you may already have a separate ingest pipeline. In this case you might be looking at event data, which can be higher in volume than a standard web app workload. If you already have an ingest pipeline that reads off Apache Kafka or Kinesis, you could be a great candidate for bulk ingest.
Back to our feature presentation: Postgres \copy. Copy is interesting because you can achieve much higher throughput than with single row inserts.
Let's take a look at both how Postgres copy performs over single row inserts, then we'll move onto how you can leverage \copy. There are essentially 3 primary ways to scale out your writes in single-node Postgres. And if you need to scale out ingest even further beyond a single node you can look to Citus as each node in a Citus database cluster is able to help you at scaling writes.
First let's see how we perform on a standard insert.
To perform this test, I created a set of 1,000,000 inserts from the GitHub event dataset. I then connected to Postgres with psql and ran \i single_row_inserts.sql. This command executed all the insert queries.
The result: it took 15 minutes 30 seconds to load up 1 million events records. Or right at 1,075 inserts per second on a small-size Postgres instance. Yes, I could have had a few more writers going at once and further tuned my test, but this gives us a starting baseline to compare against.
This took my inserts down from 15 minutes 30 seconds to 5 minutes and 4 seconds. We've suddenly boosted our throughput by 3x to about 3k inserts per second.
Running this \copy completes in 82 seconds! We're now processing over 10k writes per second on some fairly modest hardware.
Of course anything Ruby can do, Python (can do better ;) ). In Python, leverage a similar process as we did in ruby. With this code example we're going to generate a CSV live though as opposed to reading one from disk. In production in both Ruby and Python you could parse the CSV out from disk, or generate it live from some other part of your pipeline like Kafka/Kinesis.
Bulk ingestion with \copy is great for a lot of workloads anddoesn't require you to load up millions of record CSVs either. You can start with micro-batches of 100, 1000, or 10000 records and still see significant performance gains.
Even better, if you're running into limits on a single-node Postgres instance, \copy is supported out of the box with Citus and gets parallelized so you can see even higher throughputs. Need help ingesting large amounts of data? Contact my team here at Citus and we'd be happy to chat.


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text:
Falmouth Marina Ends The Year With An Award
This month the team at Falmouth Marina was delighted to be awarded "Marina of the Year" at the British Yachting Awards 2020. An accolade based upon votes and feedback from customers, making it an extra special achievement to round off the year.
Marina Manager, Mark Evans said: "We are incredibly delighted and proud to receive this title. We love what we do here and that is reflected in the service we provide to our tenants, customers and visitors. The feedback we get is that our customers appreciate the friendly, personal service we provide, along with our first-rate facilities and the amazing waters of the Fal and surrounding areas. We were up against some worthy competitors and it was a delight to just be nominated".
The digital ceremony on 3rd December was presented by Sailing Today and Yachts and Yachting magazines and feted the year's best cruising and racing yachts and dinghies, the best marinas and the greatest innovations in clothing and equipment; as well as the recipients of Outstanding Achievement of the Year, Event of the Year, Lifetime Achievement and Youth Sailor and Sailor of the year awards. Each winner was decided by a public vote – and more than 31,000 votes came in from around the world.
The team would like to extend their gratitude to all the lovely customers who took the time to vote for them – they look forward to displaying the award in reception very soon.


text:
Arbnež (cyr. Арбнеж) – wieś w Czarnogórze, w gminie Bar. W 2011 roku liczyła 338 mieszkańców.

Przypisy

Miejscowości w gminie Bar

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"Light Sculpture by Ellen Rixford"
Lady of the Inner Light: The mechanics on this sculpture slowly open the "doors" of the lady's body, to reveal an ever-changing cylindrical light sculpture, which is reflected, triptych-like, by the mirrored doors of her body. She stands approximately 40" tall, and is a multimedia piece.
Snow Queen: Top, with face closed, bottom, with mask open. This mechanical light sculpture display, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's story, adds a feature he did not dream of. The Aurora Borealis is playing inside the head of the Queen, and is revealed when she removes her mask. Inside her theater-like gown, Gerda has at last found her lost playmate, little Kay, kidnapped by the Snow Queen and carried off to the North Pole. Gerda's friends, The Little Robber Girl and the Reindeer, look on. Figures multimedia and life size.
Left, Snow Queen close-up, showing the light sculpture inside her head.
Right, compare with the life size Burnraku style puppet, the Queen of Heaven who has a similar kind of light sculpture, in this case worked by the puppeteer moving hand controls.
Fairy Queen: 7' tall lady who opens (and closes) her gown to reveal an ever changing light sculpture inside her body. Picture at right shows this sculpture as part of a Holiday Window display for Fortunoff; the lady is being offered gifts by 5 fairies fluttering around her. Mechanic for this piece was based on the idea for the Lady of the Inner Light, above.


And it has a message you need to hear.
Can't get enough of Katy Perry's "Chained to the Rhythm"? No worries, because apparently more new music from the pop star is on the immediate horizon.
Katy recently revealed audio of isolated vocals on her Instagram stories on March 1 — which was, thankfully, captured by a fan and posted to Twitter. The lyrics heard in the snippet capture a similar vibe to her most recent single, "Chained to the Rhythm" (which debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 4): "I won't, no, I won't apologize/I will not, will not subscribe/Don't ask me, ask me to normalize," the singer can be heard singing in the clip.
The 11 seconds of vocals appears to confirm that Katy's fifth studio album — and first since 2013's Prism — is finally and officially in the works. It ushers in what she refers to as her era of "purposeful pop,". "It's just...songs that start conversations, and I think that's what we need more than ever," Katy explained to Ryan Seacrest before the 2017 Grammy Awards. Both "Chained to the Rhythm" and the new song, with its strong vocals, fall in line with this pop-with-a-purpose mission.
Katy has been promising her fans new music since the days following the 2016 presidential election, which she has said left her "depressed" but motivated to sing. "Sometimes people who disagree with me just say, 'Shut up and sing,'" she wrote on Instagram just says after the election. "Boy, will I do so in a whole new way...next year. Hell hath no fury like a woman REBORN."


text:
\section{Introduction}
The adoption of methods and ideas from Statistical Physics in the
analysis of  threshold phenomena in Computational Complexity
Theory \cite{Papadimitriou-94} is a very interesting research
field \cite{Hartmann-Weigt-2005}, \cite{Percus-Istrate-Moore-06}.

Unfortunately some of these methods and ideas has not reached yet
the level of mathematical rigor of Mathematical Physics and
Theoretical Computer Science.

This applies in particular as to the \emph{replica formalism} and
as to the concept of \emph{replica symmetry breaking}.

As prototype  of this situation let us consider the
\emph{satisfability threshold conjecture} for the problem
\emph{random k-SAT}:

given a uniformly-distributed random  boolean formula in
\emph{conjunctive normal form} involving n boolean variables $
x_{1}, \cdots , x_{n}$ and m clauses each of length k (i.e.
containing k literals) such a conjecture states the existence of a
critical value $ \alpha_{c} $ for the \emph{clause density} $
\alpha := \frac{m}{n} = \lim_{n,m \rightarrow \infty} \frac{m}{n}$
such that for every $ \epsilon > 0$  in the limit $ n \rightarrow
\infty $ the probability that a formula is satisfiable tends to 1
if $ \alpha < ( 1- \epsilon) \alpha_{c} $ while tends to 0 if $
\alpha
> ( 1 + \epsilon) \alpha_{c} $.

Introduced the spin variables $ s_{i} := 2 x_{i} -1 $ and
introduced the clause matrix J such that:
\begin{equation}
    J_{ji} \; := \; \left\{%
\begin{array}{ll}
    +1 , & \hbox{if clause j includes the literal $ x_{i}$;} \\
    -1, & \hbox{if clause j includes the literal $ \bar{x_{i}}$;} \\
    0, & \hbox{otherwise.} \\
\end{array}%
\right.
\end{equation}
it follows that that the number of violated clauses may be
expressed as:
\begin{equation}
    H(s_{1}, \cdots , s_{n} ) \; := \; \frac{1}{2^{k}}
    \sum_{j=1}^{\alpha n} \prod_{i=1}^{n} ( 1 - J_{j i} s_{i} )
\end{equation}
The Statistical Physics' approach to the  \emph{random k-SAT}
problem consists in considering H as the hamiltonian of a spins'
system Sys at thermodynamical equilibrium at temperature T whose
canonical partition function (we adopt units in with $
k_{Boltzmann} = 1 $)
 is hence:
\begin{equation}
    Z \; := \; \sum_{s_{1}, \cdots , s_{n}} \exp( - \frac{ H(s_{1}, \cdots , s_{n})}{T}
    )
\end{equation}
Denoting the thermodynamic average over the spins with brackets $
< \cdot > $ and the average over the random instances with a bar $
\bar{\cdot} $ one has then that the averaged number of violated
clauses can be expressed as:
\begin{equation}
    \bar{E} \; :=\overline{ < H > } \; = \lim_{T \rightarrow 0}  \lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} T \overline{\log Z}
\end{equation}
Using the formula:
\begin{equation}
    \log Z \; = \; \lim_{r \rightarrow 0} \frac{Z^{r}-1}{r}
\end{equation}
one can then express $  \bar{E} $ as:
\begin{equation} \label{eq:average number of violated clauses}
     \bar{E} \; = \; \lim_{T \rightarrow 0}
     T  \lim_{n \rightarrow \infty}  \lim_{r \rightarrow 0} \frac{\overline{Z^{r}}-1}{r}
\end{equation}
The first step of the replica formalism consists in expressing $
Z^{r} $, for $ r \in \mathbb{N}_{+}$, as the partition function of
r non-interacting replicas $Sys_{1} , \cdots , Sys_{r} $ of the
system Sys:
\begin{equation}
    Z^{r} \; = \; \sum_{s^{1}_{1} , \cdots s^{1}_{n} } \cdots \sum_{s^{r}_{1} , \cdots s^{r}_{n}
    }  \exp( -  \sum_{a=1}^{r} \frac{ H(s^{a}_{1}, \cdots ,
    s^{a}_{n})}{T} )
\end{equation}
The next step in the replica  formalism consists in "prolonging
analytically" such an expression of $ Z^{r} $ to $ r \in
\mathbb{R}$ and to substitute it into equation\ref{eq:average
number of violated clauses} obtaining:
\begin{equation} \label{eq:nonsense formula number one}
     \bar{E} \; = \; \lim_{T \rightarrow 0}
     T  \lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} \lim_{r \rightarrow 0} \frac{\overline{\sum_{s^{1}_{1} , \cdots s^{1}_{n} } \cdots \sum_{s^{r}_{1} , \cdots s^{r}_{n}
    }  \exp( -  \sum_{a=1}^{r} \frac{ H(s^{a}_{1}, \cdots , s^{a}_{n})}{T})}-1}{r}
\end{equation}

As correctly stated in \cite{Percus-Istrate-Moore-06} as well as
in the section 5.4.3 "The replica approach" of
\cite{Hartmann-Weigt-2005}, anyway, from a mathematical point of
view such a formalism is absolutely nonsense:
\begin{enumerate}
    \item the existence of the thermodynamical limit $ n \rightarrow
    \infty $ is not obvious and has to be proved
    \item assumed the existence of the thermodynamical limit, the fact that for finite n the probability distribution
    of Z is determined by its moments $ \{ \overline{Z^{r}} \, , \, r \in \mathbb{N} \} $  ceases to hold when $ n
    \rightarrow  \infty $
    \item an analytic function is not determined by the values
assumed on a countable set \cite{Hassani-99}.
\end{enumerate}

Hence equation \ref{eq:nonsense formula number one} has no
mathematical meaning.

Actually what one obtains in such a formalism is an expression of
the form:
\begin{equation}
   \overline{ Z^{r} }\; = \; \int \prod_{\sigma} d u_{\sigma} \delta ( \sum_{\vec{\sigma}} u_{\vec{\sigma}} - 1)
    \exp ( n F ( \vec{u} ))
\end{equation}
where $ \vec{\sigma} \in \{ -1 , 1 \}^{r}$ , $ u_{\vec{\sigma}}
\in \mathbb{R}^{2^{r}} $ while $ F :  \mathbb{R}^{2^{r}} \mapsto
\mathbb{R} $ is a suitable function
\cite{Percus-Istrate-Moore-06}.

One then uses a saddle-point approximation of such an integral:
\begin{equation}
     \overline{Z^{r}} \; = \; \exp ( n  \exp F_{max} + o_{n \rightarrow \infty}(n) )
\end{equation}
where with $ o_{n \rightarrow \infty}(n)  $ we denote a quantity
tending to infinity (for $ n \rightarrow \infty $) more slowly
than n.

 The function F is symmetric under permutations of the replicas;
 hence as long as a certain vector $ \vec{u}^{\star} $ maximizes
 F, so too does any vector $ \vec{u} $ such that $ u_{\sigma_{1} , \cdots ,
 \sigma_{r}} \; = \; u^{\star}_{\sigma_{\pi(1)}, \cdots , \sigma_{\pi(r)}
 } \; \pi \in S_{r} $.

The assumption that F has a unique maximum that is itself
invariant under replicas' permutation:
\begin{equation}
    u_{\sigma_{1} , \cdots , \sigma_{r}}^{\star} \; = \; u_{\sigma_{\pi(1)} , \cdots ,
    \sigma_{\pi(r)}}^{\star} \; \; \forall \pi \in S_{r}
\end{equation}
is known as the \emph{assumption of replica symmetry} while its
negation is called \emph{replica symmetry breaking}  since from a
group theoretical viewpoint, it   consists in a breakage of the
permutational symmetry $S_{r}$ (under which the hamiltonian $
\sum_{a=1}^{r} H( s^{a}_{1} , \cdots , s^{a}_{n})$ is of course
invariant) reducing the symmetry of the system to a suitable
subgroup $ G_{r} \subset S_{r} $.

Under the assumption of replica symmetry the computation of $
\overline{Z^{r}} $  would seem to support the \emph{satisfiability
threshold conjecture} since one finds a threshold value $
\alpha_{c} $ such that:
\begin{equation}
  \bar{E} \; = \; 0 \; \; \ for \;  \alpha < \alpha_{c}
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
    \bar{E} \; > \; 0 \; \; for \; \alpha > \alpha_{c}
\end{equation}

For the exposed reasons, anyway, such an argument has no
mathematical consistence.

The situation is even worse as to the investigations of the phase
structure of \emph{ random k-SAT }involving \emph{replica symmetry
breaking}, a concept of which no consistent mathematical
formalization exists.

The original explanation of such a concept given by Parisi and
coworkers  in the section3.5 " Replica Symmetry Breaking: the
Final Formulation" of \cite{Mezard-Parisi-Virasoro-87} reminds
Ionesco's Absurd's Theater\footnote{so reaching a "dramatic
tension" strongly higher than the Shakespeare's one cited in the
introduction of \cite{Mezard-Parisi-Virasoro-87}.} : indeed the
breakage of the permutational symmetry $ S_{r} \rightarrow G_{r}
\subset S_{r} $ is therein augmented with a nonsense "analytic
continuation" to $ r \in \mathbb{R} $ that in the limit $ r
\rightarrow 0 $ is claimed to imply that the group of permutations
of zero objects $ S_{0} $ would contain itself as a subgroup.

Of course nothing of such an explanation is mathematical
meaningful:

if Tom has zero apples the number of ways in which he can order
them is of course zero.

Indeed, despite the many efforts to recast Parisi's theory
concerning the mean field approximation of the
Sherrington-Kirkpatrick's model into a mathematically meaningful
form \cite{Talagrand-03} (not to speak about the more critical
viewpoints concerning such a theory such as those exposed in
\cite{Newman-97}, \cite{Bolthausen-02}) the whole replica
formalism still lacks of any mathematical rigor.

In this brief notes we will present some elementary but rigorous
argument that could be useful to recast some feature of such a
formalism in a mathematically consistent framework.
\newpage
\section{Permutation group of a set}
Given a set X let us introduce the following:

\begin{definition}
\end{definition}
\emph{permutation on X:}

a bijective map $ p : X \mapsto X $

\smallskip

\begin{definition}
\end{definition}
\emph{permutation group of X:}
\begin{equation*}
   ( Perm(X) , \cdot )
\end{equation*}
where:
\begin{itemize}
    \item
\begin{equation*}
    Perm(X) \; := \; \{ p \, : \, \text{ permutation on X} \}
\end{equation*}
    \item
    $ \cdot$ is the map composition
\end{itemize}

Let us recall the following basic \cite{Isham-89}:

\begin{theorem} \label{th:Cayley theorem}
\end{theorem}
CAYLEY THEOREM:

\begin{hypothesis}
\end{hypothesis}

\begin{center}
  $G_{1}$  group
\end{center}

\begin{thesis}
\end{thesis}
\begin{equation*}
    \exists X \; set , \exists G_{2} \text{ subgroup of Perm(X)}  \; : \;
    G_{1} \sim_{is} G_{2}
\end{equation*}
where $ \sim_{is} $ denotes the isomorphism equivalence relation.

\smallskip

\begin{example}
\end{example}
Let us suppose that $ | X | = n \in \mathbb{N}_{+} $. Then $
Perm(X) = S_{n} $ is the $ n^{th}$ symmetric group. One has
clearly that $ | Perm(X) | = n ! $. Theorem \ref{th:Cayley
theorem} implies that any finite group of order n is isomorphic to
a subgroup of $ S_{n} $.

\smallskip

Let us now consider the set $ S_{0} \; := Perm(\emptyset ) $ .

One has clearly that:
\begin{equation}
    | S_{0} | \; = 0
\end{equation}
and hence:
\begin{equation}
    S_{0} \; = \; \emptyset
\end{equation}

Let us now suppose to have a set X such that $Perm(X)$ possesses
the property that Parisi and coworkers erroneously ascribe to $
S_{0} $: the property of being isomorphic to a subgroup G of
its\footnote{Actually we don't know if such a set X exists; here
we assume the existence of such a set to derive some property
that, if it exists, X must possess.}:
\begin{equation}
    Perm(X) \; \sim_{is} \; G \subset Perm(X)
\end{equation}
Since G is in particular a subset of Perm(X), Perm(X)  is
bijective to a proper subset of its and hence
\cite{Kolmogorov-Fomin-70} it is an infinite set:
\begin{equation}
  | Perm(X) | \; \geq \; \aleph_{0}
\end{equation}
from which it follows that:
\begin{equation}
    | X | \; \geq \; \aleph_{0}
\end{equation}

In particular $ X \neq S_{0} $.
\newpage
\section{One parameter families of permutation groups}

Let us consider a one-parameter family of sets $ \{ X_{\alpha} ,
\alpha \in \mathbb{R} \} $ such that:
\begin{equation}
    | X_{n} | \; = \; n \; \; \forall n \in \mathbb{N}
\end{equation}
So in particular:
\begin{equation}
    | X_{0} | \; = \; 0
\end{equation}
and hence:
\begin{equation}
  X_{0} \; = \; \emptyset
\end{equation}
Let us now observe that:
\begin{equation} \label{eq:cardinality of the permutation group for n integer}
    | Perm ( X_{n} ) | \; = \; n ! \;= \; \Gamma (n+1) \; \; \forall n \in \mathbb{N}_{+}
\end{equation}
 where:
\begin{equation}
    \Gamma (z) \; := \; \int_{0}^{\infty} t^{z-1} \exp(-t) dt \;
    \; for \; Re(z) > 0
\end{equation}
is the Euler Gamma function \cite{Hassani-99}.

Let us remark that:
\begin{equation}
   | Perm ( X_{0} ) | \; \neq \; 0 ! \;= \; \Gamma(1) \; = \; 1
\end{equation}

Clearly the right-hand side of equation\ref{eq:cardinality of the
permutation group for n integer} is well defined on the whole
interval $ ( -1 , + \infty ) $ and in particular:
\begin{equation}
   \lim_{n \rightarrow 0} \Gamma (n+1) \; = \; \Gamma (1) \; = \;
   0! \; = \; 1
\end{equation}

Let us observe anyway that:
\begin{equation}
   | Perm ( X_{\alpha} ) | \; \neq \; \Gamma (\alpha+1) \; \;
   \forall \alpha \in \mathbb{R} - \mathbb{N}
\end{equation}
since for every set S:
\begin{equation}
    | S | \; \in \; \mathbb{N} \cup \{ \aleph_{n} , n \in
    \mathbb{N} \}
\end{equation}
\newpage
\section{Consecutive replica symmetry breakings}

 Let us consider a system $ S := \{ s_{1} , \cdots ,  s_{n} \} $
consisting
 of $ n \in \mathbb{N} $  sub-systems.

 Let us suppose that initially the n sub-systems are identical.
This means that for every property P one has that:
\begin{equation}
    P( \{ s_{1} , \cdots , s_{n} \}) \; = \; P ( \{ s_{\pi(1)} , \cdots ,
    s_{\pi(n) } \} )
 \; \; \forall \pi \in S_{n}
\end{equation}
In physical terms this means that $ S_{n} $ is a symmetry of the
system.

 Given a number $ m_{1} \in \mathbb{N} \; : \; \frac{n}{m_{1}}
\in \mathbb{N} $ let us divide the system S in $ \frac{n}{ m_{1}}
$ groups $ g^{1}_{1} := \{ s_{1} , \cdots , s_{m_{1}} \} , \cdots
, g^{1}_{\frac{n}{m_{1}}} := \{ s_{n-m_{1}} , \cdots , s_{n} \} $
each consisting of $ m_{1} $ elements.

Let us now suppose to differentiate the systems belonging to a
group $ g^{1}_{i} $ from those belonging to a  different group $
g^{1}_{j} \, i \neq j $; this means that for every property P:
\begin{equation}
    P ( x ) = P( y ) \; \; \forall x , y \in
    g^{1}_{i} , \forall i= 1, \cdots , \frac{n}{m_{1}}
\end{equation}
but that exists a property P such that:
\begin{equation}
   P ( x ) \neq P( y ) \; \; \forall x \in g^{1}_{i}
   , y \in  g^{1}_{j} \; : \; i \neq j
\end{equation}

 In physical terms this means to perform the symmetry breaking $
S_{n} \mapsto  G_{n;m_{1}}  $ where:
\begin{equation}
   G_{n;m_{1}} \; := \; ( S_{m_{1}})^{\frac{n}{m_{1}}
}
\end{equation}

In fact the system is now symmetric only under the  $ m_{1} !$
permutations of the elements inside each group.

Clearly:
\begin{equation}
    | G_{n;m_{1}} | \; = \; ( m_{1}!)^{\frac{n}{m_{1}}}
\end{equation}

Let us observe that, contrary to what is claimed in the section
3.5 "Replica Symmetry Breaking: the Final Formulation" of
\cite{Mezard-Parisi-Virasoro-87}, the system now is not invariant
under the $ (\frac{n}{m_{1}})!$ permutations of the groups $
g^{1}_{1}, \cdots , g^{1}_{\frac{n}{m_{1}}} $  since now there
exists a property distinguishing these groups.

\smallskip

Given a number $ m_{2} \in \mathbb{N} $ such that $
\frac{m_{1}}{m_{2}} \in \mathbb{N} $  let us divide each group $
g^{1}_{i} $ in $ \frac{m_{1}}{m_{2}}$ sub-groups each consisting
of $ m_{2} $ elements; so the group $ g^{1}_{1} $ is divided in
the subgroups $ g^{2}_{1} , \cdots , g^{2}_{\frac{m_{1}}{m_{2}}} $
and so on.

Let us now suppose to differentiate the systems belonging to a
group $ g^{2}_{i} $ from those belonging to a  different group $
g^{2}_{j} \, i \neq j $; this means that for every property P:
\begin{equation}
    P ( x ) = P( y ) \; \; \forall x , y \in
    g^{2}_{i} , \forall i= 1, \cdots , \frac{n}{ m_{2}}
\end{equation}
but that exists a property P such that:
\begin{equation}
   P ( x ) \neq P( y ) \; \; \forall s_{1} \in g^{2}_{i}
   , s_{2} \in  g^{2}_{j} \; : \; i \neq j
\end{equation}

In physical terms this means to perform the symmetry breaking $
G_{n;m_{1}} \mapsto   G_{n;m_{2}} $ where of course:
\begin{equation}
    G_{n;m_{2}} \; := \; (
    S_{m_{2}})^{\frac{n}{m_{2}}}
\end{equation}

Such a procedure can be iterated a certain number of times;
supposed that there exist  $ k+1 \in \mathbb{N} $ natural numbers
$ m_{1} , \cdots , m_{k} $ such that:
\begin{equation}
    \frac{n}{m_{1}} \in \mathbb{N} \; and \; \frac{m_{i}}{m_{i+1}} \in \mathbb{N} \; \; i=1, \cdots , k
\end{equation}
at the $ k^{th}$ step one performs the symmetry breaking:
\begin{equation}
    G_{n;m_{k}} \rightarrow G_{n;m_{k+1}}
\end{equation}
where of course:
\begin{equation}
  G_{n;m_{k}} \; := \; (
    S_{m_{k}})^{\frac{n}{m_{k}}}
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
  G_{n;m_{k+1}} \; := \; (
    S_{m_{k+1}})^{\frac{n}{m_{k+1}}}
\end{equation}

Let us observe, anyway, that exists a maximum number $ k_{max} \in
\mathbb{N} $ of possible consecutive replica symmetry breakings.

If one was interested in performing the limit $ n \rightarrow
\infty $ one could argue that the maximum number of possible
consecutive replica symmetry breaking "tends to infinity" in the
following sense: for every $ k \in \mathbb{N} $ there exists an $
n \in \mathbb{N} $ and k+1 numbers $ m_{1}, \cdots , m_{k+1} \in
\mathbb{N} $ such that:
\begin{equation}
    \frac{n}{m_{1}} \in \mathbb{N} \; and \; (  \frac{m_{i}}{m_{i+1}} \in \mathbb{N} \; \; i=1, \cdots ,
    k)
\end{equation}

Unfortunately Parisi's theory involves instead a mathematically
inconsistent limit of the iteration's procedure for $ n
\rightarrow 0$.
\newpage

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
Magna International est une entreprise canadienne spécialisée dans l'équipement automobile dans les motopropulseurs et sous-traitant pour de nombreux constructeurs. Son siège est situé à Aurora, dans la banlieue nord de Toronto, en Ontario. En 2019, elle compte 165 000 employés, et est présente dans 26 pays.

Histoire
Le , l'État allemand autorisait la cession d'Opel au constructeur canadien Magna, alors que Fiat était pressenti pour le rachat. Après quelques mois d'incertitudes et de remous politiques, General Motors avait donné des signes, le , d'une cession de sa filiale allemande Opel à Magna et à un groupe d'investisseurs russes. Magna s'était engagé à investir 500 millions d'euros dans les opérations, alors que le gouvernement allemand s'est engagé à financer le plan de redressement en offrant des prêts pouvant atteindre 4,5 milliards d'euros . Finalement, le rachat ne se fera pas, GM se rétractant à la dernière minute.

En , Magna vend ses activités d'aménagement intérieur de véhicules, dans le but de se spécialiser, à l'espagnol  pour 425 millions de dollars. Ses activités regroupent  dans .

En , Magna acquiert l'équipementier allemand Getrag, spécialisé dans les systèmes de transmissions et qui possède , pour 1,75 milliard d'euros.

En , Magna acquiert Olsa, un fabricant italien de phare pour voiture, pour 230 millions d'euros.

En juillet 2021, Magna annonce l'acquisition de Veoneer, une entreprise spécialisée dans l'électronique d'aide à la conduite, pour 3,8 milliards de dollars.

Activités

Magna est l'un des leaders de la sous-traitance mondiale automobile de . Il fournit ainsi ses clients en composants et pièces détachées, et suit les constructeurs dans leurs projets industriels :

Magna International a ainsi ouvert une usine à Kalouga à côté de celle construite par son client Volkswagen AG. Kalouga (au sud de Moscou) une usine de fabrication de pièces pour les plates-formes russes de Volkswagen, Skoda, Renault et PSA Peugeot Citroën. Selon le service de presse de Magna, l'usine de Kalouga produira des pare-chocs, enjoliveurs et grilles de radiateur.

Principaux actionnaires
Au 18 mars 2020:

Notes et références

Voir aussi

Liens externes
  Site officiel

Marque canadienne
Constructeur automobile ayant son siège au Canada
Magna International
Entreprise fondée en 1957
Entreprise ayant son siège en Ontario
Entreprise du S&P/TSX 60
Usine de sous-traitance automobile


text:
package examples

import java.nio.ByteBuffer
import org.scalajs.dom
import org.scalajs.dom.{Blob, FormData}
import scala.concurrent.{Future, Promise}
import scala.language.implicitConversions
import scala.scalajs.js
import scala.scalajs.js.typedarray.ArrayBufferView
import scala.scalajs.js.typedarray.TypedArrayBufferOps._

// Copy pasted from [1]. If someone is interested in replacing uses of this object with the `dom.fetch` API, PR welcome!
// [1]: https://github.com/scala-js/scala-js-dom/blob/d800c69cd811f8c599bff0f09ebe5571f6764c7b/dom/src/main/scala/org/scalajs/dom/ext/Ajax.scala

/** Wraps an XMLHttpRequest to provide an easy one-line way of making an Ajax call, returning a Future. */
object Ajax {

  /** Supported data formats for Ajax are implicitly converted to InputData */
  @js.native
  sealed trait InputData extends js.Any

  object InputData {
    implicit def str2ajax(s: String): InputData = s.asInstanceOf[InputData]

    implicit def arrayBufferView2ajax(b: ArrayBufferView): InputData =
      b.asInstanceOf[InputData]

    implicit def blob2ajax(b: Blob): InputData = b.asInstanceOf[InputData]

    implicit def formdata2ajax(b: FormData): InputData =
      b.asInstanceOf[InputData]

    implicit def byteBuffer2ajax(data: ByteBuffer): InputData = {
      if (data.hasTypedArray()) {
        // get relevant part of the underlying typed array
        data.typedArray().subarray(data.position, data.limit)
      } else {
        // fall back to copying the data
        val tempBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(data.remaining)
        val origPosition = data.position()
        tempBuffer.put(data)
        data.position(origPosition)
        tempBuffer.typedArray()
      }
    }
  }

  def get(url: String, data: InputData = null, timeout: Int = 0, headers: Map[String, String] = Map.empty,
      withCredentials: Boolean = false, responseType: String = ""): Future[dom.XMLHttpRequest] = {
    apply("GET", url, data, timeout, headers, withCredentials, responseType)
  }

  def post(url: String, data: InputData = null, timeout: Int = 0, headers: Map[String, String] = Map.empty,
      withCredentials: Boolean = false, responseType: String = ""): Future[dom.XMLHttpRequest] = {
    apply("POST", url, data, timeout, headers, withCredentials, responseType)
  }

  def put(url: String, data: InputData = null, timeout: Int = 0, headers: Map[String, String] = Map.empty,
      withCredentials: Boolean = false, responseType: String = ""): Future[dom.XMLHttpRequest] = {
    apply("PUT", url, data, timeout, headers, withCredentials, responseType)
  }

  def patch(url: String, data: InputData = null, timeout: Int = 0, headers: Map[String, String] = Map.empty,
      withCredentials: Boolean = false, responseType: String = ""): Future[dom.XMLHttpRequest] = {
    apply("PATCH", url, data, timeout, headers, withCredentials, responseType)
  }

  def delete(url: String, data: InputData = null, timeout: Int = 0, headers: Map[String, String] = Map.empty,
      withCredentials: Boolean = false, responseType: String = ""): Future[dom.XMLHttpRequest] = {
    apply("DELETE", url, data, timeout, headers, withCredentials, responseType)
  }

  def apply(method: String, url: String, data: InputData, timeout: Int, headers: Map[String, String],
      withCredentials: Boolean, responseType: String): Future[dom.XMLHttpRequest] = {
    val req = new dom.XMLHttpRequest()
    val promise = Promise[dom.XMLHttpRequest]()

    req.onreadystatechange = { (e: dom.Event) =>
      if (req.readyState == 4) {
        if ((req.status >= 200 && req.status < 300) || req.status == 304)
          promise.success(req)
        else
          promise.failure(AjaxException(req))
      }
    }
    req.open(method, url)
    req.responseType = responseType
    req.timeout = timeout
    req.withCredentials = withCredentials
    headers.foreach(x => req.setRequestHeader(x._1, x._2))
    if (data == null)
      req.send()
    else
      req.send(data)
    promise.future
  }
}

case class AjaxException(xhr: dom.XMLHttpRequest) extends Exception {
  def isTimeout: Boolean = xhr.status == 0 && xhr.readyState == 4
}

object AjaxException extends (dom.XMLHttpRequest => AjaxException)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Ugandan Government Commits to Civil Society Participation in the Latest Budget
Mar 24, 2016 | Budget Transparency, Citizen participation, Civil Society Organizations | 0 comments
By Carol Namagembe, the Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group (CSBAG)
The Government of Uganda has promised to incorporate proposals from Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) into the 2016/17 National Budget. This was revealed by the State Minister for Finance, Fred Omach, during a pre-budget dialogue with CSOs in Kampala on March 18, 2016. "We shall pick the highlights and the best you have," Omach said after acknowledging the critical role CSOs play in influencing government policies.
Minister Omach also signed the commitment card aimed at funding the gap of 36 billion Uganda shillings (almost USD $100,000) needed to recruit 3,542 health workers for general hospitals in the next financial year. He told the audience of teachers, farmers, university students, and representatives from civil society and the private sector that the budget has been presented to parliament and, starting next week, legislators will start debating and scrutinizing it. He urged CSOs and others to present their budget proposals to the parliament.
Julius Mukunda, the Coordinator of Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group (CSBAG), appealed to Minister Omach to rein in government officials who don't want to work with civil society. "Some Government officials don't want to work with civil society yet we bring alternative policy options," Mukunda said. He also pointed out that the government should be held accountable for the 52 trillion Uganda shillings spent in the last five years, since there is not much to show for the money.
Mukunda was supported by Patrick Katabazi of CSBAG, who asked the minister what measures have been put in place to ensure that there is value for money. Katabazi raised issue of social protection, which has a deficit of 8.7 billion Uganda shillings despite the government promising to inject more money into it.
In his remarks on government economic performance over the last five years, Minister Omach told the audience that the country has witnessed high economic growth in the last two decades. "Government has exercised prudent macroeconomic management and the economic growth has been more inclusive," Omach said. He also pointed out that the budget in the coming financial year will be 21 trillion Uganda shillings, a figure slightly lower than this financial year's budget. Most importantly, the minister stressed the fact that 70 percent of this budget will be funded from revenues raised by the Ugandan government, which wasn't the position back in 2000 when the budget was largely funded by donors.
A Ugandan citizen holds a card in support of the #ValueOurHealth Campaign that CSBAG and the Africa Health Budget Network (ABHN) launched at the CSO Pre-Budget Dialogue. Credit: CSBAG
In his remarks, the Director of Budget at the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Mr. Kenneth Mugambe, emphasized the relationship between civil and the finance ministry. "We have strong relationships with CSOs because they complement government's work and have brought to us evidence which we have used to make some public finance reforms," Mugambe said. He appealed for CSOs to work with the government to ensure Accounting Officers are held accountable. He also mentioned that, starting next financial year, the finance ministry will be more stringent on monitoring performance contracts for the Accounting Officers and will enforce penalties against those that underperform.
Mugambe discussed the crosscutting issues that affect the implementation of government programs. This includes inadequate human resource, poor planning in procurement leading to poor absorption levels, irregularities in the bidding process, as well as weak contract management, among other things.
CSOs in Uganda are now set to engage parliament on the sector specific budget proposals before it approves the budget by 28 April 2016.
This pre-budget dialogue was organized in partnership with the following CSBAG members: DSW, ACTADE, Food Rights Alliance, SEATINI, PELUM-Uganda, Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER), and the Uganda Debt Network (UDN).
This post originally appeared in CBAG Breaking News.
COVID-19 & Accountability in The Gambia


text:
Carroll's Wall
I've been wondering about why the "hate wall" at Carroll college - castigated by Charlie Sykes and celebrated by Laurel Walker - seems a little off putting.
Charlie's problem seems to be that the messages on the wall will not be seen by others in the way they are intended to be seen. That may be true, but it's not what bothers me.
I think the problem is that the whole project is just a tad too precious and self indulgent. It is supposed to be a blow against oppression but it's really a rather jejune expression of common and conventional wisdom. It is, more than anything else, boring. It does little more than celebrate the virtue of those participating in it.
It's not that the particular forms of racism or sexism or prejudices that the hate wallers want to condemn don't exist. Few forms of human evil are ever completely eradicated. It's that their condemnation is already one of our strongest social conventions.
There are, I suppose, worse things that you can do to your professional and social standing that utter one of the words on the wall in polite company (say rape or murder) but not many.
If that's so, then having a conversation about them cannot simply amount to rejecting or "tearing down" bad attitudes by condemning them. That message - and its corresponding call - is already ubiquitous. If you are in college and haven't learned that lesson, you probably never will.
This where the Sykes criticism comes in. The wall was initially visible to school children who may nopt yet have learned this lesson and are unlikely to appreciate the message of a wall intended for college students.
Putting that aside (they moved the wall), I'm not saying that it was necessarily a bad thing to do. There is nothing wrong with public affirmations of commonly held attitudes. Demonstrations of patriotism are an example.
But I guess it's the affectation of "speaking truth to power" - conveyed by the image of a wall being smashed - that is a little grating. In fact, these students have decided to go after an evil that it is safe and common to condemn. It may be the idea that, of all the evils facing this generation of college students, this one is among the worst. It once was. It now isn't. Tearing down a Wall of the ways in which our culture undermines personal (as opposed to "social") responsibility may have been a bit more daring.
A related, but different, problem may be that the "Wall" is just another example of the phony call by folks on the left to have an "uncomfortable conversation" on race. An "uncomfortable" conversation is the last thing that they want to have.
Free John Edwards
John Edwards amassed a fortune selling junk science to juries. By the grace of God, he did not succeed in selling junk economics to the country - although he's got some some more successful allies in that effort.
He is also, by all accounts, not a very good guy. Vain, dishonest and utterly self regarding.
So shouldn't we root for him to go down in for violating campaign finance laws as alleged in his current trial?
No. He's not guilty.
To be sure, there may have been any number of criminal laws violated by donors providing hush money to Rielle Hunter. There may have been taxes that should have been - but were not - paid.
But was it an improper "campaign contribution?" The government's theory seems to be that any amount paid that would help a candidate's campaign - at least if it was intended to help the campaign - is a contribution.
That's not right. Here is a great post by Rick Pildes at the Election Law Blog explaining why. The problem is that there was neither a contribution or payment of a campaign expense. We know that people can spend money in a way that helps a candidate without it being a contribution. Indeed, it is a long standing staple of campaign finance law that some one can independently spend money for communications that might help a candidate's campaign and that this expenditure cannot be regulated as a contribution.*
I could go on. Suppose that a wealthy supporter of Tom Barrett decides to donate $ 5 million dollars to the City of Milwaukee to put a glitzy new boardwalk adjacent to the Summerfest ground. He announces the gift in a joint conference with the Mayor right before the recall election and praises the Mayor for his leadership. Whether or not this is intended by the Mayor or the donor to help the Barrett campaign, it is not a contribution.
Or assume that a conservative foundation announces that it will give a cash prize to Sen. Mitch McConnell shortly before the election. McConnell intends to use the money for personal expenses and investments. It's not a contribution.
FEC regulations want to treat third party payments as contributions if they would not have been made but for the campaign. But that seems almost impossible to prove or disprove. There are all sorts of payments (I've mentioned two examples) that one might reasonably suspect would not have been made but for the campaign. But the same factors that might cause a donor to support a candidate for public office might also cause her to provide personal support.
Let's assume that Edwards was not running for President. Might Bunnie Mellon have nevertheless paid to keep Rielle Hunter so that Edwards' stature as a leader that Ms. Mellon respected would not be diminished and he could continue in public life. Might she not have done it to save the Edwards marriage?
But it's even worse than that. To get a conviction, isn't it necessary to show that Edwards knew - or at least believed - that the payments would not have been made, as the FEC puts it,
"irrespective of the candidacy."
To make this turn on an after the fact examination of subjective - and potentially murky objectives - seems fraught with vagueness problems. Even if they don't raise to constitutional stature, how could a jury find Edwards guilty beyond a reasonable doubt save for explicit admissions from the principals.
This isn't to say that paying off Edwards' mistress wasn't wrong or that it didn't, as one witness testified, "smell wrong." It was and it did. As I mentioned at the outset, it may have even violated some other laws. But not the ones that have been charged.
That matters. I have written here in the past about the misuse of vaguely worded criminal statutes for political ends. This article by Rick Hasen reviews the issue nicely and this quotation from the Editors at the National Review, in an article criticizing the Edwards prosecution, puts the problem well:
Campaign-finance laws are a tricky business, because they put political incumbents in charge of setting the rules under which their positions and their power may be challenged. Such laws should be as transparent and straightforward as possible, and prosecutions under them should be undertaken with proper care.
Posted by Rick Esenberg at 9:03 AM 1 comment: Links to this post
I don't often comment on letters to the editor in the Journal Sentinel but this one caught my eye. A guy named Peter Flannery who says that he is a business owner doesn't think taxes have any thing to do - absolutely nothing he says - with whether his taxes go up. It's all about supply and demand he says. He learned it in Economics 101.
If that's what he learned, he was a poor student. To be sure, lower taxes can't overcome a complete lack of demand - although lower costs can lead to lower prices that can lead to higher demand. but taxes affect both supply and demand. If, for example, I have to pay higher property taxes, my cost of providing goods or services will go up and that may reduce the demand for my product. Fewer people will pay what I must charge. If I cut my prices to a level that they will pay, I may eliminate or lower my profit to the point where I become unwilling or unable to continue or expand my business.
If I must pay payroll taxes on each new hire, the cost of adding an employee will increase. The marginal increase may make hiring that employee unprofitable given the demand for my product or service.
If I must pay additional taxes on my earnings, it may reduce my rate of return to a point where, again, I am unwilling or unable to expand my business regardless of the existing demand.
Similarly, taxes on my customers may reduce demand for my product. Sales taxes are a simple example but income taxes imposed on my customers may also reduce their demand for goods and services generally including those that I provide. While it is possible that the taxes they pay will fund valuable public goods that increase productivity, it is also possible - and given levels of public spending in today's economy I would say likely - that taxes will reduce aggregate wealth and demand.
Whether and the extent to which these things happen will, of course, depend on the circumstances. If tax increases are modest, tied to income and where adding employees does not require significant sunk costs or long term commitments, the effect on the supply side may be less than in other circumstances. (The demand side is another matter.)
People on my side of the aisle may overestimate the impact of tax increases, but taxes certainly affect both demand and supply.
But, wait, didn't Warren Buffett say that he's never seen anyone scared off a "good investment" by capital gains tax rates. That's a much narrower point than the one Mr. Flannery made, but might it be a worthy amendment of the point?
No. I have not had the investment or business experience of Warren Buffett but in the time that I spent as a member of the senior management team of an international manufacturing business, I observed people expressing great concern - and even being "scared off" - by the way in which taxes would affect the expected rate of return on an investment.
You don't even need to be in business to understand this. We put money in our 401(k) accounts (as opposed to some other vehicle) and probably put in more than we otherwise might because it is tax advantaged.
As Richard Epstein recently wrote, the problem with Buffett's statement (even if one takes it as face value) is that it is the product of sampling error. Anyone who had been "scared off" by capital gains rates would not be coming to him looking for money.
What's going on in the Prosser case
It's a bit of legal inside baseball but the current maneuvering going on in the proceedings on the complaint filed by the Judicial Commission against Justice David Prosser reflects the inherent flaw in the Commission's decision to file the complaint. It is unclear - I would say highly unlikely - that the Supreme Court will ever be able to act on it.
Justice Prosser's lawyers have filed a series of requests for individual Justices to recuse themselves. I am not sure that this is what I would do if I were in their position. I might ask the Court to dismiss the complaint because it is clear - under both state statute and applicable provisions of the Judicial Code - that there will not be a constitutional quorum.
The problem with my approach (and, I suspect, the reason that is has not been tried) is that the Court has made clear that it believes recusal decisions are committed to individual justices without review by the rest of the Court. I still think I can argue for my approach but let's put that aside.
The Chief Justice is reported to have said that a decision on recusal is premature because the matter is not "before" the Court and, presumably, is "in" the Court of Appeals.
Is that right? Technically, it would seem that the case is clearly "before" the Court. Under Chapter 757, a judicial discipline case is never "before" any other court. It is filed in the Supreme Court and never leaves that Court.
Just as with attorney disciplinary proceedings, the case is not tried by the Justices. Initial proceedings are to be may be conducted before a panel of three Court of Appeals judges or before a jury presided over by a Court of Appeals judge. But either proceeding is before the Supreme Court in that it can result only in a recommendation - as opposed to the panel issuing its own decision which is then subject to further appellate review.
This is reflected in the fact that pleadings in an attorney or judicial discipline case are generally captioned as pending in the Supreme Court throughout the matter.
Of course that doesn't mean that the Justices must act on a recusal request now or that they might not regard it as "premature." In that less formal sense, one might say that the matter is not yet "before" the Justices. The Chief Justice, or any Justice who has been requested to recuse may decide to defer a decision until after this three judge panel acts.
But I would hope that they do not do that. Here's why.
The proceeding before the three judge panel is pointless if the Supreme Court cannot act on the case. This is not like a normal criminal or civil proceeding in which the decision of the lower court stands even if it cannot be - or is not - reviewed by the Supreme Court. The three judge panel only makes a recommendation that must be adopted or modified by the Supreme Court.
In other words, if the Court can't hear the case, there will be no outcome. It would, in my view, better for the Court and in the public interest to decide now - rather than later - if the case can proceed to resolution.
It would be a different matter if there was reason to believe that proceeding before the panel would clarify the recusal decision, but that seems unlikely. The problem here is that six of the seven justices are either participants in or witnesses to the underlying conduct. All have publicly committed to a version of those events. Nothing in the proceedings before the panel will change or elaborate on that.
Nor does it seem that the outcome of the panel proceeding could make the need to decide on recusal unnecessary. As I have written before, the attorney for the Judicial Commission seems to think that the Court can simply accept whatever version of the facts that the three judge panel has decided to adopt.
That is, with respect, pure fantasy. First, the findings of fact, while subject to deferential review, are nevertheless subject to review. How a judicial officer is supposed to defer to a finding on whether he or she has accurately described what happened in his or her capacity as a witness is beyond me. This is one of the reasons that I think the doctrine of necessity has no role here.
Second, deciding on discipline is inextricably bound up with one's view of precisely what happened. Even if one could put aside one's lying eyes on the question of a violation, it can't be done - and legally need not be done - on the question of discipline.*
Now, you may think that this is no problem. That the five or six or seven justices should decide the case based on what they saw as witnesses. That doesn't look much like a judicial proceeding to me, but maybe you think that the doctrine of necessity compels such a curiosity. My point is that the merit - or lack of merit - in proceeding in this way is as clear now as it ever will be and, I would argue, ought to be addressed now.
This problem is further reflected in the skirmishing over whether or not a three judge panel can be empaneled without an order from the Court. That is apparently the way that is has always been done.
But here, the Judicial Commission wants to argue that it is not necessary. It claims that statutory language empowering the Chief Judge to appoint a judge in a disciplinary case filed with the Supreme Court empowers him to do so without being directed to do so by the Court.
Two things.
First, the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals apparently doesn't read the statute in this way. He is refusing to act without an order. If he won't do form a panel, it's hard to see how he's going to be made to do it. Can a circuit court (or ultimately his colleagues on the Court of Appeals) order him to do it? Would they? We may found out - and, if they do issue such an order, we may find out whether there is a quorum on the Court when that order results in a petition for review.
I can't help but think that the effort of the Judicial Commission to go forward without the normal order from the Court is ill advised. I understand why a lawyer, as advocate for the Commission, would want to avoid asking the Court for an order to create a panel. It is possible - maybe likely - that he won't get one because there is not a quorum of participating Justices. If so, his case implodes.
Perhaps it is possible to make that implosion less likely if one can proceed before the panel and, hopefully, get a recommendation of discipline. That would increase political pressure on the Court to proceed and, while judges can be pretty good at ignoring political pressure, no one is completely immune.
That's good legal strategy but is it something that the Judicial Commission ought to be doing?
I understand the desire to have what was a very unjudicial episode reviewed in some way. But considerations of procedural fairness often prevent cases from going forward and that seems likely here.
In that regard, some of the comments by law professors in the Journal Sentinel miss an important point. For example, James Sample of Hofstra is quoted as saying that Prosser is asking to be immune from "basic judicial process." That's wrong. He's asking that "basic judicial process" be respected. I know James. I have debated him twice and I think he's a good and smart guy. But he is as far to the left as I am to the right and I can't imagine that he would be so ready to endorse trial by a intrinsically compromised panel for a garden variety criminal defendant.
Another prof, Keith Swisher of Phoenix, thinks that "the people of Wisconsin deserve a remedy." But that begs the question of what fairness requires and prejudges the matter. There was - and maybe could still be - a better way to proceed. But that's a subject for another post.
* Maybe a different result would be appropriate for the second claim advanced by the Judicial Commission regarding Justice Prosser calling the Chief Justice a bad name. If there are no factual disputes, maybe 5 of the 7 can sit. Whether or not we need to have a disciplinary proceeding for that is, of course, another question. Justice Prosser has already acknowledged and apologized for this remark. His colleagues could condemn it (which is all such a case would ever lead to) but, whether they do or not, is not what this controversy is about.
Redistricting Update
I want to comment a bit on the Attorney General's decision to appeal from part of the final order in the redistricting case. *
Peter Earle, attorney for Voces de La Frontera, denounced the decision to appeal as a "laughable, partisan stunt ...."
Whatever one thinks of Van Hollen's decision to appeal, it is not partisan. In fact, most Republicans that I have spoken to thought he should not appeal. As far as they are concerned, the redistricting case was a complete win. The Republican plan was upheld on 97 of 99 Assembly districts (including everyone that the GOP would ever have a chance to win) and all 33 Senate districts. All eight Congressional districts still stand. Why bother?
Earle and his group wanted to use a claim under the Voting Rights Act to tear apart the legislative redistricting plan. They were unsuccessful in doing do and all of their other claims were rejected.
But they were able to convince the panel that the VRA required packing even more Latino voters into the 8th Assembly District than the legislature had done. While they wanted the Court to use this finding to affect more than the 8th and 9th Assembly Districts, it refused. It ordered only that the boundary between 8 and 9 be redrawn while leaving the outer boundaries of the two districts is intact.
The result is an even safer district for JoCasta Zamarippa. Good for her and her allies at Voces. It may also make it harder for Latino voters to form a coalition with non-Latino voters to elect a candidate of their choice in the 9th. Bad for people who care about that.
But the one group that had no political stake in the outcome was the Republican party. They were never going to win either the 8th or 9th Assembly District and have no partisan interest in how the lines between them were drawn.
The reason that I think Van Hollen has decided to "bother" with an appeal - in fact I can think of no other reason - is that he thinks the panel is wrong on the law and he wants to ask the Court to clarify just what the Voting Rights Act requires. Maybe he'll turn out to be wrong (although I don't think so) but it strikes me as a perfectly appropriate thing for the state's chief legal officer to do.
I understand a lawyer not wanting the other side to appeal when he's won something but it happens. Indeed, it's quite normal and we usually don't castigate our brothers and sisters at the bar for doing their job. In any event, accusing the Attorney General of partisanship for doing something in which he and his party have no partisan interest is should we say, strained.
* Full disclosure: I represented Jesus Rodriguez and Hispanics Leadership as an amicus supporting the Government Accountability Board's proposed redrawing of Districts 8 and 9.
Posted by Rick Esenberg at 4:58 PM 1 comment: Links to this post
Meet the New Boss
There were people - and I think there still are people - who think Barack Obama is a cut above other politicians. He's an exceptionally intelligent person who promised to free us, as he repeatedly says, from "false choices" and to usher in a new era of progress. Hope and change. Yes we can.
He is a smart man but it turns out he that he is given to heap demagoguery.The Buffet rule is an example.
We all know the facts. It is simply not the case that rich people, as a class, pay a lower effective tax rate than the middle class. In fact, they pay a higher rate. .
Now, it is true that, depending largely on how one earns one's income, a wealthy person can wind up with a lower effective tax rate than people who earn much less. But that is not so much a function of tax shelters and loopholes as it is a product of a deliberate policy choice - one that has a long pedigree and that is common in the developed world. We tax capital gains and dividends at a lower rate than ordinary income.
There are many reasons for this. There is a sense in which taxes on capital gains and dividends can be seen as "double taxation" since corporations typically pay tax on their income before paying dividends to shareholders. Capital gains often arise from the sale of corporate stock in which the price represents earnings that have often been taxed. Capital gains are, moreover, earned over time such that the gain can have a significant inflationary element. (This can, however, be the case for certain types of ordinary income as well.)
There is also a fair amount of evidence that raising capital gains rates reduces revenue because it triggers tax avoidance and deferral strategies.
Having said all that, I actually would be open to taxing ordinary income and capital gains at the same rate as long as we indexed the basis for capital assets. Maybe one can even make a case that the current capital gains rate (15%) could be raised a bit without causing disproportionate economic harm.
That's a debate that we could have but it is not the debate that the President has called for. Instead he wants a new form of Alternative Minimum Tax which is almost always a mess. It results in marginal rates that are opaque and often steep. Even if you want to raise taxes on the rich, it's the wrong way to do it. Economists of differing views think it's bad policy.
And it will bring in very little money.
But it polls well.
Posted by Rick Esenberg at 5:44 PM 8 comments: Links to this post
Primary Update
In 30 comments to last week's post on "fake" candidates, no offered any refutation of the points that I made and I have yet to read one any where else. No one has been able to dispute that the use of recalls is an attempt to accelerate the election cycle and put a variety of partisan offies on the ballot. No one can deny that, when we normally have multiple partisan elections, primary and general elections are held on different days. It is indisputable that holding a down ballot general election on the same day as a primary for only one party at the top of the ballot will give one party an advantage that it would not normally enjoy. There is no question that running canddates in the Democratic Senate primary is an attempt by the Republicans to level the playing field.
No one has been able to offer an argument that this is illegal. Sec. 8.20(2)(a) provides that a declaration of candidacy include a statement that the filer wishes to be "placed on the ballot at the (general or special) election to be held on (date of election) as a candidate [(representing the (name of party)) ...."
In other words, the candidate declares his or her intent to be placed on the ballot in a party's primary.
There is nothing in this statement that requires a candidate to affirm that he or she is a member of the party or believes in any of the various positions that the party (or most people in the party) hold. The law has never been used to enforce an ideological litmus or loyalty test on candidates and never could be.
No one has been able to point to anything that is intrinsically wrong with this attempt to level the playing field. It might be a different case if the candidates in question were misrepresenting their actual positions and running hard to take votes away from Democrats.But that's not the case.
One commenter did say that it's a waste of money and there is, to be sure, a small cost involved. An additional office has to be added to some primary ballots and someone has to count the votes. But, given the distortion that would accompany holding a down ballot general on the same day as a top of the ballot primary in only one party, it's not a waste of money.
More False Outrage About Fake Candidates
One Wisconsin Now and some bloggers seem to think it is illegal for the Republicans to run "fake" or "placeholder" candidates in the Democratic primaries. One blogger, Chris Liebenthal, cites Democratic election lawyer Jeremy Levinson in support of that position.
I know and like Jeremy Levinson. I respect him and, in fact, he was gracious enough to accept my invitation to speak to my Election Law class last week. But he's wrong about this. Very wrong - as the GAB seems to recognize.
The argument is that filing nomination papers to appear on the ballot to force a primary violates Wis. Stat. sec. 12.13 (3) (a) which provides that no person may "falsify any information in respect to ... [a] declaration of candidacy", and sec. 12.13 (3)(am) stating that no person may "... file a false declaration of candidacy or amended declaration of candidacy." Filing for a Democratic Party primary when one is not a Democrat and doesn't intend to campaign is, on this view. "falsification."
But it's not. The declaration of candidacy to be filed by these candidates is not due until tomorrow. But, based on press reports, there is no reason to believe that anything on those statements will be false. In other words, the filing candidates will be who they say they are, live where they say they live, be qualifed to run, etc. On the GAB form, one simply avers that he or she is a candidate for an office representing a particular political party, i.e., that one is a candidate for that parties' nomination. These documents do not include any representation that the candidate supports the party, its principles or even that he or she does not belong to or support another party. Indeed, the statute requires nothing more in this regard than an affirmation of candidacy.
Isn't the fact that someone is a "real Democrat" implied?
No - at least not as the law is concerned. Criminal statutes are to be strictly construed. There is no chance that prosecuting these candidates would be successful. There are ways in which Wisconsin could try to protect parties from "outsiders" - and there are some states who employ such devices, e.g., closed primaries. But Wisconsin does not.
So, even if it is "legal," isn't it "wrong?"
No. I fail to see what is intrinsically wrong with the Republicans' strategy. Running candidates in the Senate primaries can be seen as a response to the extraordinary - and arguably unanticipated - use of recall elections as a devise to accelerate the election cycle and flip partisan control of the legislature.
We usually hold primaries and general elections on different days - even if there are not contested primaries for a particular office. One of the reasons this makes sense is to prevent a primary in one party from distorting the result in down ballot races. Assume, for example, that there is a heated race for the Republican Senate nomination this fall and no contested contested primaries of any significance on the Democratic side. If we accelerated the general election for, say, Secretary of State because neither party has a primary, we would distort the outcome of that race. People are far less likely to turn out for that office than for a contested primary at the top of the ballot. The electorate will be more heavily Republican than it will be on the day of the general.
The recall statute doesn't do that because it is predicated on the assumption that recalls will be directed at a particular office holder for something that he or she has done or failed to do and not as a generalized effort to accelerate the partisan election cycle based on policy disagreements.
But even if that is not the assumption, the fact remains that, if there are no primaries in the Senate recalls, then there will be "general" elections for the Senate at the same time that there is a a primary in only one party in much higher profile race in which it is far easier to turn out voters.
This gives the Democrats an advantage that a party would normally not enjoy. We generally do not hold primaries on the same day as general elections. I understand why the Democrats want to hold on to that advantage. I understand why the Republicans don't want to let them have it.
The law permits the Republicans to take that advantage away and I fail to see what is unfair or mischievous about it. The upshot is that we will have a primary day and a general election day. That is how we normally conduct elections in this state. Acting to make that so does not unfairly "disadvantage" Democratic candidates.
Running candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor seems superfluous given that there is going to be a Democratic primary. One reason to do that would be to ensure there is a primary if, for some reason, you want more time before the general election. That may serve some strategic advantage for the Republicans but hardly seems to disadvantage Democrats in an intrinsically unfair way.
It will also present the type of gamesmanship that we have saw last summer when the Democrats had candidates register and file nomination petitions and declaration of candidacies, but then (after nominations are closed) fail to file statements of economic interest so that they could not be certified on the ballot. That would have the effect of unexpectedly accelerating the recall election.
If that suggests to you a bit of inconsistency in the complaints about fake candidates from the Democratic Party, it should.
The President, Judicial Review and Judge Smith
So, of course, the President's statement that it would be unprecedented for the Supreme Court to invalidate a law that was passed by a "strong" majority in Congress is wrong and, for a law professor, seems breathtakingly stupid. There are legal academics on the left who have come to be opposed to judicial review but no one would say it is unprecedented. Law students learn in about the first week of Constitutional Law that it is very precedented - that it is, in fact, one of the cornerstones of our constitutional jurisprudence. Ask any lawyer to tell you about Marbury v. Madison. It's one of the few first year cases, he or she will remember by name.
But President Obama is not breathtakingly stupid and we are reminded - constantly - that he taught constitutional law as an adjunct professor of law at Chicago. He knows that what he said is wrong.
The current White House spin is that he meant to say - in fact did say - something different than the meaning of the words he chose. I don't believe that. Indeed, he could have said that it would be rare (it wouldn't be unprecedented) for the Court to invalidate a Congressional enactment predicated on the Commerce power.
But a nuanced statement like that would not have served his purpose. It would have invited an argument about legal technicalities and not about the legitimacy of the Court. It would have been dismissed by most people as an argument between experts and that would not do.
Obama may be trying to influence the Court. It would be a big thing to strike down Obamacare - not because it would be unprecedented or even unpopular, but because it place the Court and President in conflict on a major national issue. That happens but it is always uncomfortable.
In making his statement, the President signalled that he intended to exacerbate such a conflict. He intends to go after the Court and make it an issue in his reelection campaign. While some liberal commentators, while forced to admit that the statement itself was nonsense, have said that it is not much of an attack, it is also the case that the Court has not yet ruled. This is a signal of what is to come and was intended to be read as a signal of what it to come.
So I have some sympathy for Judge Jerry Smith who, in the course of proceedings on a different challenge to the health care law, asked the DOJ to clarify its position on judicial review. I understand why he felt compelled to do it.
But, in the end, I think he ought not to have done it. The President of the United States was engaged in silly political posturing for which he has been, and richly deserves to be, slapped down.
I think it would be better for federal judges to stick to knitting and ignore the antics of politicians - even the President of the United States. What he said was wrong. We all know it's wrong. Let's attend to the law as it is.
Republicans' Secret Weapon?
If I didn't know better, I'd suspect that Graeme Zelinski was a Republican Party plant - dirty trick. I would find it hard to believe that a political party would want its spokeperson to act in the way that he does.
If I didn't know better.
Compulsory Compassion and Freedom
In his classic book, The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek wrote about the ways in which the movement away from classical liberalism toward socialism threatens the advances that classical liberalism has brought, including individual freedom. When one seeks to order society from above, the refusal of those below to act as they must constitutes interference with the grand plan and must be, if not eliminated, strongly discouraged.
Becoming our brother's keeper - particularly when we are compelled to do so - implies that he truly be "kept" - not only assisted but directed to act in a way that facilitates our assistance.
Isn't the individual mandate a perfect example of this? The justification for this infringement upon the liberty of those who do not wish to purchase insurance is said to be the legally mandated compassion that will provide the care that they cannot afford.
The notion that people not be permitted to act in a way that makes it more difficult to help them has no obvious stopping point. For the left, compassion most often dictates restrictions on economic freedom. But might not social conservatives argue that compassion requires limits on self destructive personal behavior? If I am to be my brother's keeper, then I need to fight an aggressive war on drugs because they will frustrate - and raise the cost - of my efforts to help those who might take them. My brother should not have children out of wedlock. He ought not freely divorce his wife when there are children at home.
People will answer these questions in different ways but movement toward greater degrees of collectivism increases the frequency with which they must be asked. Obamacare is an extraordinarily ambitious effort to manage a large area of human interaction - to achieve better outcomes than its advocates think will be obtained through the voluntary interactions of individuals. It's not surprising that it requires extraordinary limitations on personal freedom.
Even if we avoid the temptation to micromanage personal conduct, we will inevitably be tempted to choose between deserving and undeserving objects of our compassion. While choices in life are inevitable and compassion can never be unlimited, collectivism centralizes these decisions. It tends to make them uniform.
It takes an extraordinarily sanguine view of human nature and of the capacity of elites to properly order society not to be troubled by this.
Obamacare and Coercion
We moved our offices last week so I have not had much time to look at what happened in last week's Supreme Court arguments on Obamacare. Day three was probably the best one for the government but let's not get carried away. The government's "good day" involved asking whether it had acted with the tender mercies of La Cosa Nostra. Had it made the states an offer they can't refuse?
Up for consideration was that feature of the Affordable Care Act that requires the states to substantially expand eligibility for Medicaid. The Constitution quite clearly forbids the federal government from requiring the states to adopt - or to dictate the nature of - social programs, so the Act uses an old tried and true trick. If the states refuse to do federal bidding, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is empowered to eliminate all Medicaid funding for the state. (The cost of the expansion is also to be paid for completely by the federal government at first and then at 90% after that, although there is - and can be - no guarantee that this will continue.)
This trick - justified under Congress' implicit authority to spend to advance the "General Welfare." Courts have long justified that money spent by sending it to the states can come with all sorts of strings attached extending the federal writ where it might not otherwise have run.
There is a substantial criticism of these cases. In a forthcoming book, The Upside-Down Constitution, Michael Greve argues that the use of the spending power in this way constitutes an uhholy alliance between the states and the federal government in which both substantially evade accountability for policy decisions.
But the permissibility of this approach is well established and the Obamacare case is about its limits. The Supreme Court has suggested the possibility that federal money with strings attached might be coercive of the states and, if so, impermissible. The Court has never found this to be the case. Might this be the first time?
How can giving someone money be coercive? There are two ways. The weaker arguments are that a deal can be too sweet to say "no" to or that states have become dependent on federal money that they have effectively ceded their sovereignty,
A stronger version is that the states are faced with an offer that they can't refuse. These programs are not truly "opt-in" or "opt-out." The citizens of any particular state have to pay for the federal program whether or not their state participates. Seen in this way, Wisconsin can only "opt-out" of the benefits and not the costs.
Seen in this way, the larger the program - particularly the larger the loss of benefits - the more it is likely for participation to be no choice at all.
Is the Affordable Care Act such a case? Here we saw a bit of reversal from the argument on the individual mandate. With respect to the individual mandate, certain of the Justices were looking for a limiting principle on the power of Congress. With respect to the Medicaid expansion, they were looking for a triggering principle on coercion. Just when does an offer become one that a state can't refuse?
The core of Act 10 survives
On Friday, the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin upheld the core of Act 10's reform of collective bargaining, i.e., it upheld the Act's prohibition of collective bargaining on terms and conditions of employment other than total base wages. It upheld the limitation on increases in collectively bargained base wages. It upheld the right of public employees to decline to support the union.
The only aspects of Act 10 that it found unconstitutional were the requirement of annual recertification elections and the prohibition of payroll deductions to collect dues from those employees who choose to pay them. The state could adopt either of these provisions, the Court recognized, but held that it could not adopt them for only those public employees who are not public safety workers (essentially police and fire.)
This is, largely, a victory for the defendants and you can be sure that the plaintiffs will appeal. Because of that, I am not going to write much about it. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty represented a group of public employees who moved to intervene in the case as defendants and to file an amicus brief. Friday's decision denied the former motion (there are currently, in any event, no further proceedings in the district court into which to intervene) and granted the latter motion. Because the case may continue at the appellate level, there is only so much that I feel free to say in a blog.
There is, however, one fact that ought to be kept in mind when reading press reports of the case. It is not quite right to say that Act 10 exempted only public employees whose unions supported Governor Walker. The only public employee unions that supported Walker were the police and fire unions in West Allis and Milwaukee. The union representing all other police and fire employees - over 70% of the total - endorsed Barrett.


In looking at the problems of rampant suburban growth in Australia, Fiona Andrews and Louise Johnson say we are missing a key question: how people who move to fringe areas make meaningful, satisfying and successful lives there?
Dr Fiona Andrews is a lecturer at the School of Health & Social Development at Deakin University. Louise Johnson is Professor of Australian Studies at Deakin University.


text:
Israel Warns Hamas Over Gaza Rocketing
Israel Warns That More Rocketing From Gaza May Trigger Major IDF Counter-Attack
IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz: 'After Fall of Gadaffi Regime, Libyan Weapons May Have Been Smuggled Into Gaza'
IsraCast Assessment: Israel Has Given Hamas Notice That She Will Not Tolerate More Missiles From Gaza That Paralyzes Life In Southern Israel
Hamas Terrorists in the Gaza Strip
Israel's patience is wearing thin after repeated rocket attacks from Gaza have paralyzed much of southern Israel and forced over one million Israeli civilians into their bomb shelters for days on end. This was the message from IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz in a closed door briefing to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Later the IDF spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, told reporters that only 'an intiated and planned IDF operation' could put a stop to the Palestinian rocketing of Israeli civilians. David Essing has this assessment of the current calm that may prove to be the quiet before the storm, if the Palestinian decide to launch more missiles into Israel.
ISRAEL AND THE GULF CRISIS
TRUMP'S "MARSHALL PLAN" FOR MIDDLE EAST
We don't need another failure
CALCULUS OF CURRENT ISRAELI ELECTION CAMPAIGN
Israel's patience has worn very thin with the sporadic Palestinian rocketing from Gaza. Since taking office over two years ago, the Netanyahu government has adopted a 'zero tolerance' policy to the rocketing by launching, within twenty- four hours, pin-point air strikes at terrorist targets. Although this at times sparked flareups, it has not stemmed the Palestinian provocations. On the contrary, it has become apparent the Palestinians are ready to live with this tit-for-tat state of affairs, in order to harass the Jewish state. Israel is no longer prepared to accept such a situation that enables the Palestinians, whenever they see sit, to terrorize most of the Israeli population in the south.
'Repeated rounds of Palestinian rocketing from Gaza point to need for significant IDF operation'
After IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz briefed the Knesset committee, his spokesman Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordedchai, elaborated to reporters that Israel was close to launching an operation to halt the rocketing. He said: 'The recent rounds of Palestinian escalation and the damage inflicted on Israeli lives and the daily life of our civilians in the south, point to the need for the IDF to a significant offensive operation'. This military appraisal emanates for cabinet deliberations after the latest rocketing salvoes in October. IsraCast quotes Vice Premier Silvan Shalom as saying the Israeli government was 'very close' to giving the green light for such an operation. Shalom also left no doubt that Israel was no longer ready to tolerate the sporadic rocketing of her civilians and would, if necessary, launch a major counter- strike against Gaza.
Now the Chief of Staff's comments have put the Hamas regime in Gaza on notice; Israel will not respond with retaliatory surgical air strikes, but far more. Moreover, Gen. Gantz inserted another factor into the terrorist buildup. After the fall of the Gadaffi regime the assessment was that Libyan army weapons have been smuggled into Gaza. Not only Hamas, but all the terror organizations were continuing their buildup, so much so that Hamas was concerned about the growing strength of its rival, Islamic Jihad. On the other hand, there there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. A senior IDF intelligence office reported that in recent months some ten-thousand trucks have transported supplies from Israel into Gaza.
'On West Bank, IDF still enjoys good security cooperation with Palestinian Security Forces'
West Bank: Despite the ongoing vendetta with Gaza, the IDF enjoyed 'good security cooperation' with Palestinian security forces in Judea & Samaria. However Gen. Gantz said the recent tension in September, over President Mahmoud Abbas's diplomatic move at the UN, may leave its imprint. Abbas realized his gambit for Palestinian recognition in the Security Council had ended in failure and he would now seek the lower level recognition by the General Assembly. But 'September was not a date but a process' and Palestinian disappointment could eventually lead to violence on the West Bank. On the other hand, if the High Court rules against Israeli outposts, the IDF is preparing to dismantle them.
Gilad Shalit: After the prisoner exchange to retrieve Sgt.Gilad Shalit, the possibility of another kidnapping still existed. However Gen. Gantz clarified that the IDF would not cut back on its operational ojectives for fear of abductions. Due to the absence of intelligence that would have made possible a rescue operation, there had been no alternative but to accept the swap. Was Gilad Shalit a hero? Not in the ethos of the IDF's fighting spirit said Gen.Gantz but he added that he was a hero for enduring the conditions of his more than five years of captivity (in total violation of all his human rights).


to display all the colors in 6 different modes (3xRGB, 3xHSB), times 2 for half size plus 2 modes in smallest size.
To make this possible I'm using 3 PNGs that are in sum only 3.64kB.
For some patches I'm using 2 or 3 (HSV H) layers.