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Reading
Liberally – Discussing Liberally
What Are We?
Founded in the Fall of 2005, Reading/Discussing Liberally is a monthly politically-oriented Discussion Group that focuses in depth on a particular issue selected by group members attending the previous month’s meeting.
There is usually a book as a suggested reading, but we do not limit ourselves to worthwhile subjects for which there does not appear to be a worthwhile book available.
We currently have 150 members who receive our weekly e-mail and our monthly attendance averages 10-11 with a typical high of 15-16 (our policy is to cancel if we have fewer than 6 prospective attendees, which has happened only once since the Fall of 2005).
Regular attendees come from all walks of life but, as might be expected, scientists and attorneys seem to be represented in abundance. Regular scientist attendees include two retired U/Utah Biology Professors and a current U/Utah Biophysics expert (our recent discussion of the Japanese nuclear disaster attracted a season skier from California who spent his career in nuclear physics (PhD = U/Tenn + Oak Ridge). Regular attorney attendees include the retired head of the Parisian Office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and two Assistant Utah Attorneys General (one heads the Environmental-Law Department and the other heads the Civil-Appeals Department).
When/Where Do We Meet?
We meet the second Wednesday evening of each month at the Salt Lake Public Library (210 East 400 South) from 6:30 pm > closing (formal discussion 7:00 pm > 8:45 pm).
We send out a weekly e-mail with information up-dates and one of our most popular features – a monthly quiz related to the topic we are examining followed, a week later, by suggested answers.
To sign up for our weekly e-mail, simply e-mail ReadingLiberallyEmailList@johnkarls.com with the subject “Email List Addition” and the mail box you used will be added to our list.
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Our Bulletin Board
Our Bulletin Board was inaugurated in August 2007. Following an introductory section and a section containing suggestions for possible topics for future meetings, it comprises 4-5 sections for each month stretching backward to inception. The 4-5 monthly sections =
(1) Reference Materials – any published articles or other materials that our members encounter and deem worthy of attention; if there is a suggested book for the month, we include in this section the book’s reviews from the NY Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
(2) Participant Comments – anything our members want to say for others to ponder before the monthly meeting; this section also contains the Short Quiz featured in the second e-mail of each monthly cycle and the Suggested Answers featured in the third e-mail.
(3) Original Proposal – whatever was posted in the section “Possible Topics For Future Meetings” before the proposal’s selection for the current month.
(4) Suggested Discussion Outline.
(5) On occasion, a Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-Mail Campaign (please see the next section).
Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-Mail Campaigns
We take pride in the fact that there are NO MORE
THAN SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION between us and 100% of the American
electorate. And that, on important
occasions, our 150 members can send with a dozen computer key strokes an
already-prepared e-mail urging a particular position (1) to the President
and/or other key decision makers and (2) to all of their friends and
acquaintances in an unending chain to contact the President and/or other
decision makers.
However, we only do so if we have reached
unanimity or consensus (at most one dissent, in which case we disclose that we
only reached a consensus). Examples
including the date of the meeting =
1. 5/13/2011 – Calling on President Obama to honor his campaign promises and announce that he will veto any legislation incorporating the recommendation of his Deficit-Reduction Commission to exempt the profits from out-sourcing American jobs (NB: most readers would not notice that the Commission’s Official Report recommends taxing corporations on a “territorial basis”).
2. 3/10/2010 – Ameliorating the Supreme Court’s decision permitting unlimited corporate campaign contributions by promulgating new IRS regulations employing the traditional corporate-income-tax rules regarding whether an expense is “ordinary and necessary” – the new IRS regulations to provide that unless a campaign contribution is related to a specific and narrow issue directly affecting the corporation’s business, then the deduction will be disallowed and the contribution will be treated as a non-cash taxable dividend to the shareholders.
3. 1/13/2010 – 5/13/2009 – 1/14/2009 – Transforming the SINGLE-DIGIT inner-city high school graduation rates to 90% with the only method that works = “I Have A Dream”® or IHAD-style programs that feature tutors and mentors that become de facto parents (studies routinely show that nothing else works on a broad scale, e.g., early intervention, teacher incentive pay, etc. – and vouchers/charter schools only remove from the Holocaust those few inner-city children who are lucky enough to have a motivated parent).
4. 12/9/2009 – Eliminating unemployment with an FDR-style “national security work force” that puts insofar as possible all of the unemployed to work building solar panels for what would have been the amount of unemployment compensation which will now never expire – with unlimited time off for job interviews to rejoin the regular work force.
5. 11/18/2009 – Eliminating EPA and Chevrolet Volt fraudulent claims regarding gasoline mileage designed to mislead the American public into ignoring the environmental disaster posed by 100%-electric cars so long as there remain any coal-fired electrical-generation plants on the nation’s grid – NB: (1) this comment does not relate to hybrid cars which generate their own electricity from the waste heat of their gasoline engines, and (2) until the last coal-fired electrical-generation plant is retired from the grid, the overall impact of a 100%-electric vehicle = carbon emissions (think global warming) ARE INCREASED although other pollution (think “acid rain”), though also increased, can be exported to electrical-generation plants downwind.
6.
10/14/2009 – American Policy Toward Palestinians (the key
to Middle Eastern Peace) should be reformulated by providing $3 billion/year
(the level of aid to Israel and Egypt) for education/training of Palestinians
in order to provide them with a real future.
7.
4/8/2009 – Instead of surging U.S. troops in Afghanistan
from 47,000 to 70,000 in his first month in office, President Obama should rely
on human intelligence. (President Obama
later decided on a SECOND surge from 70,000 to 101,000.)
8. 11/12/2008 – The nation should embrace Al Gore’s 10-year challenge to America to re-power the nation’s electrical grid.
Do-It-Yourself Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-Mail
Campaigns
There have been occasions when there were two dissents but
the feelings of the majority were very strong.
In such situations, we have occasionally reported to our membership what
happened together with the observations that in a land of “free speech” every
one of our members is still free to launch their own do-it-yourself
six-degrees-of-separation e-mail campaigns.
However, in such circumstances, we do not provide a
pre-packaged e-mail that, with only a dozen key strokes, can be sent to key
decision makers and to the initiator’s friends/acquaintances to do the same in
an unending chain. “Do It Yourself”
means that, in order to exercise their “free speech,” they literally have to do
it themselves.
Examples =