Cultural Values and Government

Mr. Dellinger Mr. Dellinger originally delivered these remarks for the panel entitled The Role of Government in Defining Our Culture, at the Federalist Society’s 2006 National Lawyers Convention, on Saturday, November 18, 2006, in Washington, D.C. commenting on the Ninth Circuit decision Finley v. National Endowment for the Arts. The case involved the constitutionality of the Helms Amendment which required that the National Endowment for the Arts take decency into account in choosing who should be awarded artistic grants

The Constitutionality of a National Wealth Tax

Economic inequality threatens America’s constitutional democracy. Beyond obvious harms to our nation’s social fabric and people’s lives, soaring economic inequality translates into political inequality and corrodes democratic institutions and values. The coincident, relentless rise of money in politics exacerbates the problem. As elected officials and candidates meet skyrocketing campaign costs by devoting more and more time to political fundraising—and independent expenditures mushroom—Americans lose faith and withdraw from a system widely perceived as beholden to wealthy individuals and corporate interests. The United States needs innovative approaches to help rebuild foundational, shared understandings of American democracy, the American Dream, and opportunity and fairness. Tax policy provides one central context in which collective judgments about fundamental values help form national identity. We believe that a national wealth tax (that is, a tax on individuals’ net worth) should be among the policy options under consideration to support vital infrastructure, social service, and other governmental functions. Although not a new concept, a wealth tax may be an idea whose time has come, as inequality soars toward record highs. Our aim in this Essay is to help ensure that a wealth tax is among the policy options available to Congress by challenging a common assumption that has unduly harmed its prospects: the belief that the U.S. Constitution effectively makes a national wealth tax impossible. We believe this conventional wisdom is wrong and its casual repetition has been harmful. Devising a progressive tax system that effectively taxes the wealthy is notoriously difficult, but whether a wealth tax is part of that system should depend upon the policy choices of democratically elected representatives, not faulty constitutional understandings

Foreword

Uppdragsgivaren har för avsikt att lansera en iPhone-app, som går under utvecklingsnamnet StoryPic. I appen ska användare kunna skapa bildbaserade filmer,s.k. stories, som man ska kunna dela till andra användare. Dessa stories som folk har delat ska då kunna ses på en s.k. feed i appen. Min uppgift med detta examensarbete var att utvärdera olika lösningar för hur man kan designa och utveckla denna feed. Jag har dels testat en vanlig vertikalt scrollande feed men även en ny typ av scrollning där användaren kan scrolla åt valfritt håll.The employer wants to release an iPhone app, which currently goes under the development name StoryPic. In this app the user is supposed to make image based videos, called stories, which they can share with other users. These stories should bevisible on a feed in the app and my task was to evaluate different solutions for how to design and develop this feed. I have, for example, tested a normal vertically scrolling feed versus a new kind of feed where the user can scroll in any direction. The rest of this report will be in Swedish

Constitutional Politics: A Rejoinder

BACKGROUND: The principal function of the lung is gas exchange requiring adequate ventilation and perfusion at the level of the alveoli. The efficiency of gas exchange is depending on the distributions of regional ventilation (V) and pulmonary blood flow (Q) and their correlation. AIMS: To validate a high-resolution method to quantify regional V and to investigate the combined effect of positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) and body position on distributions of regional V and Q in the normal lung with mechanical ventilation. To assess the matching of V and Q by calculating ventilation-perfusion ratio (V/Q) heterogeneity, determining the spatial distribution of V/Q and to investigate the role of nitric oxide (NO) in regional V/Q matching. METHODS: Anesthetized mechanically ventilated sheep were studied in prone or supine position with different levels of PEEP (0, 10 and 20 cmH2O). Measurements of regional V were done by determining the deposition of a wet aerosol of fluorescent microspheres (FMS) with a median mass aerodynamic diameter of 1.1 μm, and validated against Technegas. Radioactive microspheres, 15 μm in diameter, were used for determining regional Q. Nitric oxide synthase (NOS) was inhibited with Nω-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME) to evaluate the role of NO on regional V/Q matching. The right lung was dried at total lung capacity and diced in approx. 1000 regions tracking the spatial location of each region. RESULTS: The deposition of FMS mirrored regional deposition of Technegas and thus regional ventilation well. In prone, with PEEP, only a small dorsal redistribution of V but not of Q was observed. The vertical Q gradient was abolished with PEEP in prone position in conflict with the classical zonal model. In supine position both V and Q were distributed with a unimodal gradient and PEEP displaced the mode further dorsally. V/Q heterogeneity was greater in supine than in prone position with and without PEEP. Furthermore, PEEP generated regions with high V/Q in supine but not in prone position. Inhibition of NOS did not change the V/Q distribution in prone position. CONCLUSION: There were marked differences in redistribution of regional ventilation and regional pulmonary blood flow between prone and supine position when PEEP was applied. NO was not an active mechanism for V/Q matching in normal sheep lungs