Warren’s Minority Report – Tempest in a Tea Pot

Posted on April 30, 2012 by rben13

I’m having a hard time figuring out what it is that Scott Brown is trying to accomplish by claiming that Elizabeth Warren has been claiming she’s a member of a minority group. As far as I can tell, by reading the various reports on the matter, she filled out some forms and indicated she was part American Indian, which is, in fact, a minority. It appears that the only entity that did anything questionable was Harvard Law School, when it tried to hold up Warren as an example of how diverse their faculty was. Warren herself, as far as I know, has never made any claims about being the victim of any discrimination. She didn’t refer to her heritage at all in the stump speech she made at the event I attended.

I think Scott Brown is desperate to find some way to divert attention from his voting record. He continues to be a team player for the Republicans, always voting the way he is told. He consistently votes the way Wall Street wants and he continues to support huge subsidies for oil companies at a time when we are all feeling the pinch at the pump. He continues to believe that, as long as he takes care of his rich buddies, the money they give him will be enough to ensure that he is re-elected. I hope we prove him wrong.

I expect we’ll see more such attacks by Brown and his allies. You’d think, though, that since he’s been in office for a while now, that he’d be able to run on his voting record instead of taking sad little pot shots at Warren. I guess even he’s ashamed of it if he’s trying to stir up controversy.

If you get a chance, go see Elizabeth Warren talk at one of her events. They ask for donations, but I don’t think you’ll be turned away if you tell them you just want to hear what she has to say. Perhaps afterword, you’ll be inclined to support her.

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The Plutocracy Stands United!

Posted on April 17, 2012 by rben13

Yesterday, April 16, our fearless representatives in Congress voted down the Buffet Rule, which would have required people making a million dollars or more, to pay taxes at a rate equal to the rate paid by the middle class.

You’d think it would be a no-brainer. Seventy percent of Americans supported this simple bit of legislation that would restore a little bit of fairness to the tax system. Why would politicians vote against such a popular bill? Shouldn’t they be afraid that they’d be voted out of office?

Nope, they aren’t afraid. In fact, they are working hard on taking away the voting rights of the groups they’re sure will vote against them, like the working poor, young men and women voting for the first time, anyone ever convicted of a crime, and anyone working for a living. All across the country, state legislatures, controlled by Republicans, have been making it harder for people to register to vote. They know that their party almost always does better when fewer people go to the polls. So it is in their interest to make it as hard as possible for people to vote. And, of course, they aren’t stupid, so they’ll concentrate on those likely to vote Democratic.

Republicans also know another important fact, that money gets votes. Advertising and marketing sell crappy products to people all the time, and selling bad politicians is a business that’s been booming since our democracy began. So, the last thing they’ll do is vote for a bill that would increase the taxes on the biggest donors to the Republican party, the wealthy.

If you think this is wrong, do something about it. Get involved. Make sure you vote, no matter what.

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Presumption of Guilt

Posted on April 4, 2012 by rben13

In the best example of how dangerously conservative the Supreme Court has become, they just ruled that you can be strip searched if you are arrested for ANY reason. This includes traffic tickets, jay walking, anything. If you are taken in and booked into jail, they are allowed to strip search you. The rationalization given by the justices is that because someone MIGHT be trying to smuggle things into jails, everyone should be strip searched. This is about as far from the presumption of innocence as you can get. It’s also a license for abuse, since the police no longer have to worry that a case might get thrown out because they decide to repeatedly strip search a suspect.

It is kind of frightening how far to the right the Court has moved. Apparently, many of these justices stopped reading the Constitution after the 2nd Amendment. Over the past 30 years police have been granted powers that could easily be abused. While we haven’t heard of widespread abuse of these powers, history has shown, repeatedly, how quickly that can change. You may now be arrested simply for refusing to identify yourself. After arrest, you can be strip searched, no matter how insignificant the crime. When you talk to the District Attorney, he or she can threaten you with life in prison if you refuse to make a deal. This little trick has put hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people in jail. Then, once you’ve served your time, you can be denied employment, housing, and the right to vote. Even worse, if you are declared a terrorist by the Executive branch of our government, you can be imprisoned indefinitely. (The law says you can only be imprisoned until the end of hostilities, but how do you figure out when a ‘War on Terror’ is over?)

These kinds of changes to our system are dangerous, not just because of the powers they grant to the police, but because they call into question the social contract that is the basis for our system of justice. As a nation, we have always believed that it is better to let a guilty man go free than it is to imprison a free man unjustly. This was written into our constitution because we fought for our independence from exactly such oppression: searches, arrests, and imprisonment without due process.

Much of what has been done makes no sense. The Justices act as if the country is under siege and we are being attacked at every turn. While there are people who are trying to hurt America, and while every life lost fighting our enemies is a tragedy, in terms of actual numbers, more people die because of drunk driving than because of terrorist attacks. You are more likely to come into contact with the police than a terrorist. You should not be treated like an enemy of the state when you are pulled over for speeding.

What worries me the most is that it no longer seems like the justices on the Supreme Court are acting in the best interest of the country. I used to understand the decisions they made, even when I disagreed with them. That changed when Chief Justice Rehnquist chose to appoint George W. Bush the winner of the 2000 election, despite the fact that the vote showed that Al Gore actually won. I now believe that at least four of the justices are more concerned with having their team win than what effect their decisions have on our country.

It’s my hope that Barak Obama is re-elected and gets the opportunity to appoint more judges. If so, I hope he chooses wisely and selects jurists based on ability and not a political litmus test. If any branch of government needs to be non-partisan, it’s the Supreme Court.

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Elizabeth Warren’s Grass Roots Fund Raising Reception

Posted on March 25, 2012 by rben13

While I’ve commented on politics quite a bit, I’ve never before actually gone to a political event for a particular candidate. So, going to Elizabeth Warren’s fund raiser this evening was a first for me.

I’ve liked what Elizabeth Warren has been saying for a long time, and I hoped I’d get a chance to look her in the eye and see if I still believed her. I didn’t exactly get a chance to sit down and chat with her, but she did greet me and shake my hand. She struck me as someone very committed to her goals.

If you’ve read much about her, you know that Elizabeth Warren is all about fighting for the Middle Class. She grew up in a middle class family and knows how hard it can be, especially if someone gets sick. She knows what it’s like to hold on to your home by the skin of your teeth.

In her speech, she points out that, as a response to the Great Depression, America made some very courageous and forward thinking decisions. We passed some very good banking laws that stopped the boom and bust cycle. Laws that would have prevented the fiasco that led to our current financial straights. We also decided to make serious commitments to our infrastructure, public education, and to basic research. She also points out that over the last 30 years, we’ve changed direction. We’ve become a nation of people who say “I’ve got mine, you’re on your own.”

The reception was held at the Boston Teachers Union in Dorcester, where Warren was warmly welcomed. Warren told us that she’s a teacher at heart. She taught special needs kids and after getting a law degree and running her own practice for a while, she went back to teaching, this time at college.

I’m still happy with what she’s saying. I hope she wins the Senate seat. I think she’ll be a breath of fresh air in Washington, and I believe her when she says she’ll work just as hard to change things in Washington as she will to get elected.

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It’s a Cold Cold … Solder Joint

Posted on March 25, 2012 by rben13

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been leisurely debugging the puzzle box printed circuit board that I’ve designed. First I discovered that I’d used the wrong pins to communicate with the GPS chip, which required cutting a couple of traces and running jumpers, and then I discovered that I’d improperly put a 10k resister between the contrast trimmer and ground, when it should have been between Vcc and the trimmer.

For the LCD display I’m using, the GDM1602K from Xiamen Ocular, you need provide a Contrast Adjustment voltage on pin 3. In the data sheet, they show a trimmer with a range from 10k to 20k with the wiper going to V0, pin 3. Of course, manufacturers don’t make 10k – 20k trimmers, what you do is use a 10k resister and a 10k trimmer to produce the desired effect. Essentially, the 10k resistor and the trimmer create a voltage divider that limits the V0 voltage to values from zero to 2.5V.

When I designed the board, I erroneously put the resistor on the ground side, which meant that V0 was between 2.5 and 5V, not exactly what I had in mind.

I eventually spotted the problem, but before I was going to make more mods to my board, I wanted to test my ideas to be sure. (I’m still new at this stuff, but it strikes me that you should always test your fixes before implementing them, if possible.)

I stuck the LCD display on a breadboard, then wired it up to the PCB using all the lines except for the contrast adjustment. First, I rigged it up as it was on the board, to confirm the problem. Then I rigged up the proposed fix, moving the resistor to the correct location. That worked!

Next I had to figure out how to modify the board. The resistor that I’d misplaced was in an inconvenient location. A more experienced hacker might have removed it, but I decided my best bet was to just jumper over it. I used some pre-tinned bus wire which is great for this kind of thing. I worked one end under the lead on one side of the resistor, and the other end under the other lead, looped them a couple of times and tightened, then soldered. Next, I cut the trace that led from the positive power supply to the trimmer and made sure the gap was wide enough it wouldn’t easily bridge. Then I scraped the green masking off the powered end of the break to provide a place where I could solder the new 10k resistor. I soldered the new resistor to the makeshift pad and to the leg of the 10k trimmer.

After the solder cooled, it was time for a test. I plugged everything back together and tried it and … it didn’t work. I still couldn’t see text on the display. I was not happy.

Today I took it up again and checked everything I could check, resistances and such, with the device off. Then I checked voltages with the board powered. That gave me some bizarre results. I found that there was still 10k worth of resistance between the bottom leg of the trimmer and ground. Something had to be wrong somewhere.

I went back to my test fixture and verified all the voltages and resistances with the LCD working correctly. No sign of the mysterious 10k.

Most of you with any experience have already deduced that I had a bad solder joint somewhere. They can be very difficult to track down. I wouldn’t have done it nearly as quickly without the help of my friend Marco who coached me over the phone.

It turned out that I never really soldered one end of the jumper that bypassed the 10k resistor that was in the wrong place, between the trimmer and ground. It only took a couple of minutes to fix once I’d found it.

Now I’m about half-way through debugging my board. Next step is the GPS chip.

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