【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障5系列】【5-02】文史哲

Threesu

速度
Booted upstairs
India needs fresh faces at the top of government if it is to run its economy better
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CHEER this weekend if Pranab Mukherjee (pictured above with headgear) is anointed as India’s new president. As finance minister until recently, the veteran leader of the Congress party presided over a wretched deterioration in the country’s economic prospects. Now there is a chance that those left behind may redirect a government that has badly lost its way.
Poll victories have become rare indeed for the increasingly unpopular ruling party. Yet an electoral college of nearly 5,000 national and state legislators was all but certain, on July 19th, to give Mr Mukherjee a five-year presidency that is largely ceremonial. That was thanks, in part, to mercenary motives: leaders of two crucial, populous, swing states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, fell behind Mr Mukherjee as the central government promised aid worth some $12 billion.
Congress has been beset by scandal, is led by oldies and has grown generally clumsy of late. But for this election at least, it showed a flash of its once-deft self. Days before the poll the only other candidate, Purno Sangma, in effect conceded he needed “miracles” to win. Promoted by the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, he stood no chance once Mr Mukherjee got backing even from a Hindu nationalist party, Shiv Sena, and from Congress’s most troublesome ally, West Bengal’s chief minister, Mamata Banerjee.
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The result matters in at least two ways. The outgoing president, Pratibha Patil, was a bland nonentity. By contrast, twinkly-eyed and power-hungry Mr Mukherjee, who has spent four decades at the summit of Indian politics, has influence that extends, tentacle-like, across Delhi and beyond. On rare occasions, the presidency has moments of great power. A hung parliament is almost certain after the next general election in 2014, when the president may pick which party tries first to form a coalition. Those tentacles could prove handy for a diminished Congress.
More important, with Mr Mukherjee booted upstairs Congress could try getting government to function again. The 76-year-old’s three-year spell as finance minister was ignominious. (“He has an economic mind from the 1970s,” grumbles an observer.) He oversaw GDP growth that fell to 5.3% in the first three months of this year, from over 8% just over a year before; high inflation; a collapsing rupee; surging deficits and a fiscal mess. Plans for vague and retrospective taxes dismayed investors, foreign and local. Worse, he bungled urgent reforms, notably over opening foreign investment in the retailing industry, and failing to push through a goods and services tax and to cut costly subsidies.
It was not all his fault, however. A cabinet minister, Salman Kurshid, bravely admitted the obvious this month, calling the government directionless. He did not need to spell out that Manmohan Singh, the elderly prime minister, cannot impose his will, nor that populists like West Bengal’s Ms Banerjee block reform. Meanwhile there is administrative paralysis in the face of corruption scandals.
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With Mr Mukherjee’s ascent, a reshuffle will follow. Mr Singh, as a stand-in finance minister, has made welcome noises about getting the economy’s “animal spirit” moving again. He could next bring back Palaniappan Chidambaram, the 66-year-old home minister, who presided over finance for most of Congress’s first term (2004-09), when the economy roared. Or he could call on Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the brainy head of planning.
Either would be an improvement. Less likely, but more daring, would be to skip a generation and let younger leaders take bigger jobs—elevating Jairam Ramesh who languishes at rural affairs, Anand Sharma at trade, or possibly a real youngster, such as Sachin Pilot, a technology minister. A dream political change would signal that new leaders, less tainted by graft, would try to restore public finances, push through reform and promote growth.
India’s mood is waiting to be lifted. Local firms wallow in cash, hungry for a chance to invest, but they need predictability about policy and decision-making. The 100 biggest by market share are hesitating, having doubled their cash holdings since 2009 to some 104 billion rupees (around $1.8 billion). Foreign firms, even in infrastructure and consumer goods, also hold back, unsure of the politics.
Yet expecting decisive change from Congress’s behemoth is probably a fantasy. The instincts of Sonia Gandhi, the party’s president, are to seek votes from villagers (who still make up two-thirds of the population), with promises of welfare, make-work schemes and food rations. It would take skilful manoeuvring to do that and also promote bold, liberalising reforms, such as cutting fuel subsidies.
More troubling, sycophancy to the Gandhi dynasty dictates that no young figure can outshine the bashful 42-year-old heir apparent, Rahul Gandhi, who had largely been absent from high-profile politics since a thumping defeat in important state polls in Uttar Pradesh in March.
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Some in Congress say he will be back to take a big political role. On July 19th, after casting his vote in the presidential election, he confirmed this, saying he is ready to play a “more active role in party and government.” That is striking, given an earlier refusal to join Mr Singh’s administration. It will immediately raise expectations that he is preparing to lead Congress for the vote in 2014. His elevation alone may not be enough to end what Pratap Bhanu Mehta, of the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi, calls the “crisis of credibility” for Congress, but it marks a long-awaited arrival in national politics.
Words and Their Stories: Chickenfeed
I'm Susan Clark with WORDS AND THEIR STORIES, a program in Special English on the Voice of America.


Almost every language in the world has a saying that a person can never be too rich.


Americans, like people in other countries, always want more money. One way they express this is by protesting that their jobs do not pay enough. A common expression is, "I am working for chickenfeed." It means working for very little money. The expression probably began because seeds fed to chickens made people think of small change. Small change means metal coins of not much value, like nickels which are worth five cents.


An early use of the word chickenfeed appeared in an American publication in nineteen thirty. It told about a rich man and his so?n. Word expert Mitford Mathews says it read, "I'll bet neither the kid nor his father ever saw a nickel or a dime. They would not have been interested in such chickenfeed."
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Chickenfeed also has another interesting meaning known to history experts and World War Two spies and soldiers.


Spy expert Henry S. A. Becket writes that some German spies working in London during the war also worked for the British. The British government had to make the Germans believe their spies were working. So, British officials gave them mostly false information. It was called chickenfeed.


The same person who protests that he is working for chickenfeed may also say, "I am working for peanuts." She means she is working for a small amount of money.


It is a very different meaning from the main one in the dictionary. That meaning is small nuts that grow on a plant.


No one knows for sure how a word for something to eat also came to mean something very small. But, a peanut is a very small food.


The expression is an old one. Word expert Mitford Mathews says that as early as eighteen fifty-four, an American publication used the words peanut agitators. That meant political troublemakers who did not have a lot of support.


Another reason for the saying about working for peanuts may be linked to elephants. Think of how elephants are paid for their work in the circus. They receive food, not money. One of the foods they like best is peanuts.


When you add the word gallery to the word peanut you have the name of an area in an American theater. A gallery is a high seating area or balcony above the main floor.


The peanut gallery got its name because it is the part of the theater most distant from where the show takes place. So, peanut gallery tickets usually cost less than other tickets. People pay a small amount of money for them.
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越障
Demosprudence Through Dissent
FOREWORD BY LANI GUINIER
It is morning, June 28, 2007, in the august amphitheater of the United States Supreme Court. Three prominent black civil rights lawyers wait expectantly. They, along with members of the press and public, are here to bear witness to the Court’s decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. The case involved two cities separated by thousands of miles: Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky. Local communities in these far-flung locales had voluntarily attempted to integrate their public schools.
On this, the last day of his first full Term, Chief Justice John Roberts gavels the room to order. He then strikes down the plans in a matter of sentences. On behalf of himself and four colleagues, he declares Seattle’s and Louisville’s voluntary school integration plans unlawful because they consider race as a factor in student assignment. With a simple maxim, Chief Justice Roberts and his colleagues destroy what had taken the cities years to build: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race,” his argument goes, “is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Moments after Chief Justice Roberts finishes speaking, a voice both incredulous and distressed pierces the High Court’s etiquette. Bristling with barely concealed anger but tempered by the circumspection of the law professor he once was, Justice Stephen Breyer informs those assembled that he takes strong objection to Chief Justice Roberts’s pronouncements of the law. Justice Breyer, too, offers a simple statement: “The majority is wrong.”
On a nine-person bench where the give and take between judges and lawyers usually involves rapid-fire exchanges, Justice Breyer proceeds to “hold court” alone for the next twenty-one minutes. No lawyers stand before him; no one is poised to answer questions or to persuade him of one side or the other. Indeed, joined in his dissent by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, Justice Breyer is not asking questions. Instead, he forcefully challenges Chief Justice Roberts’s view of “the law” of the land. “The majority is wrong” to conclude that consideration of race is per se unlawful. To the contrary, when used to include rather than exclude, taking race into account is constitutional. The plans in question, adopted democratically to overcome racial isolation by creating racially diverse schools, are “partly remedial, partly educational, partly civic.” “These plans are not affirmative action plans,” he explains. “School placement here has nothing to do with any students’ merits. . . . Until today the law has allowed school districts to implement these kinds of plans.” The Supreme Court has routinely given “significant practical leeway” to democratically elected school boards to make educational policy that “tries to bring people together.” The five Republican appointees, he suggests, are dictating their own policy preferences in the name of the law. Justice Breyer denounces Chief Justice Roberts’s temerity with sixteen memorable words: “It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much.”
In this Foreword, the author argues that oral dissents, like the orality of spoken word poetry or the rhetoric of feminism, have a distinctive potential to root disagreement about the meaning and interpretation of constitutional law in a more democratically accountable soil. Ultimately, they may spark a deliberative process that enhances public confidence in the legitimacy of the judicial process. Oral dissents can become a crucial tool in the ongoing dialogue between constitutional law and constitutional culture.
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cleotina

wahaha  沙发  辛苦主人了

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今天再读感觉还是没有抓住大意。前期是一个情景的描述，一拨法律人员凑一块谈教育方面的民族隔离问题。 然后两个主要代表各抒己见，最终大多数人倒戈。 结论是这种口头的反对很有用。
这个过程始终感觉不合逻辑啊~~

铁板神猴

Threesu辛苦了~ 越障最好能接近1000字~ ^^

暮已央

来了~占···
计时：
1:16；
1:30；
1:50；
1:22；
1:35；
越障：
3：23；
第二次读，感觉比第一次要好一些~~
另外亲爱的沙发，我开始也觉得这篇还蛮艰涩的文章没啥逻辑···
但今天再次看就觉得它的脉络还是很清晰的呢
就是大法官对民族和教育的一个问题下了判断
一个JSB律师很愤怒很想发火但是忍住脾气后反驳了大法官的观点
HOLD住全场21分钟，这之间没有人帮他，没有人站在他一边，当然也没人提问
他阐述自己的观点，最后16字总结了一下；
然后，好吧，大家认了，于是皆大欢喜
因为这是一本书的“前言”
这是作者在序言里阐述的：
“口头异议”成了对法律的理解进行反对的有特色的行为~~
然后说了它的好处，它现在的重要性
其实还挺清晰的吧，就是：举例→结论的一个过程

草莓葡萄

占座~

clover928

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~~~7:52  it takes time to understand this article...
A case:
2 distant cities ovluntarily integrated their public school

Chief Justice ??:
They consider race as a factor of assighment-->
S&L voluntary school’s integation plan is unlawful.
“Stop discrimination of the basis of race=stop discriminating the basis of race”

Statement:
The majority is wrong

*No judges and lawyers stood for Chief Justice.
They thought this case was nothing with racial discrimination
and integrating might be good??(sth like that ...)

The function of oral dissent...

teddybearj4

上周真的是被各种病痛折磨，先是胃痛，后来又重感冒彻底倒下了。童鞋们好好保重身体呀，身体是革命的本钱，小分队又落下好多。~~~
——————————
速度：
1'09      1'42      1'38      1'21      1'18
(原来老外跟我们一样，说“我们就赚鸡食点钱”哈哈~^^)

越障：3'52
Main idea:
This is the foreword of the book Demosprudence Through Dissent. LG illustrates the idea that oral dissents has a potential disagreement about the interpretation of constitutional law with the case of discrimination of the integration of two schools.
Situation:
A case of integration between 2 schools involving 2 cities far away opens a court session. Justice B has a totally contrasting view with that of Chief Justice R.
Conclusion:
LG presents the case by indicating the main discuss of the entire book.

(有没有人看英剧皇家律师(silk)的呀？我表示还是很迷恋里面这种法政剧的，就是里面的法律的专业术语实在很少特别清楚的~)

cleotina

来了~占···
计时：
1:16；
1:30；
1:50；
1:22；
1:35；
越障：
3：23；
第二次读，感觉比第一次要好一些~~
另外亲爱的沙发，我开始也觉得这篇还蛮艰涩的文章没啥逻辑···
但今天再次看就觉得它的脉络还是很清晰的呢
就是大法官对民族和教育的一个问题下了判断
一个JSB律师很愤怒很想发火但是忍住脾气后反驳了大法官的观点
HOLD住全场21分钟，这之间没有人帮他，没有人站在他一边，当然也没人提问
他阐述自己的观点，最后16字总结了一下；
然后，好吧，大家认了，于是皆大欢喜
因为这是一本书的“前言”
这是作者在序言里阐述的：
“口头异议”成了对法律的理解进行反对的有特色的行为~~
然后说了它的好处，它现在的重要性
其实还挺清晰的吧，就是：举例→结论的一个过程

-- by 会员 暮已央 (2012/7/23 8:46:45)

谢谢央啊，天天阅读天天见   话说你快要考试了 加油！！
感觉这种论述 非常虎头蛇尾 大费周折呢。
另外我木有发现这个是个序言啊~~

暮已央

To Cleotina：
嗯嗯~~~谢谢亲~~我八月中旬呢~~现在是最后冲击的阶段了！
那个foreword应该是序言前言的意思吧~~~
就是大标题，呵呵，所以有可能这本书就是将这个口头异议的
所以前言里先用一个例子引出来~~
你也要加油哦亲~~

ladyMcc

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