Saturday, February 20, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
One Hundred Days to House One Thousand People Boston Activists and MIT Architect Respond to the Haiti Tragedy
“The emphases should be placed on building small communities to help with the overflow of people from Port-au-Prince, to act as a center for providing housing as well as a new sustainable model for the future,” said Prof. Wampler in a recent email. “This is a sad opportunity to try to help in a new way.”
"Jan wants to provide the underserved with the level of quality that only the rich can usually afford," said Lahens. "It touches my heart."
"The poor have only one house," said Wampler. "They should have the best architecture, not makeshift architecture." Boston Globe
"Lahens, 56, a former MIT research fellow and mother of an alumna, has a six-year history of partnering with professors and students at the institute for the betterment of her homeland. Past projects include purifying water, building a school, aiding fishing villages, and providing computer training. The scope of this project, though, would seem quixotic without Wampler's record of accomplishment: homes in earthquake-ravaged Turkey; schools in China and Sierra Leone; an orphanage in Ecuador; and community centers in Mexico and Thailand." Boston Globe
US Court of Appeals "Sidesteps" the issue of Mal-apportionment
MAP Appellate Court JUDMENT "Lack of Standing"
United States Court of Appeals
DC Circuit
February 1st, 2010
JUDGMENTORDERED and ADJUDGED that the judgment of the district court be affirmed.
... The plaintiff is not injured by the operation of the five states’ winner-take-all systems because he does not vote in those states ... Accordingly, we affirm the decision of the district court dismissing the plaintiff’s complaint for lack of standing.
... The plaintiff is not injured by the operation of the five states’ winner-take-all systems because he does not vote in those states ... Accordingly, we affirm the decision of the district court dismissing the plaintiff’s complaint for lack of standing.
Note: In March I will file a petition for a panel rehearing and rehearing en banc. The panel's Judgment is in Conflict with a Plethora of Supreme Court Decisions on Standing in Minority Vote Dilution Civil Actions, and presents a question of exceptional importance by leaving the congressional representatives of the unbounded states in Constitutional limbo. The decision in point of fact is not even a ruling on the actual case of controversy that formed the basis for my original complaint (mal-apportionment in the counting of votes cast not a mal-apportionment in the casting of votes) . Furthermore, the Panel decision without a declaratory order for proportional apportionment of the 2008 presidential electors for the unbounded southern states now places the pending reapportionment in the house of representatives based on the 2010 census in Constitutional jeopardy. Accordingly this is a petition that will far exceed the standards for a rehearing en banc pursuant to F. R. App. Pr. 35(b)(1)(A)&(B).
The Green's Civil Action to "Democratize the Electoral College" has exposed the constitutional vulnerability of the "winner take all" electoral college and has provided the legal blueprint on the basis of this Appellate Court Judgment that any voter of the states in question now have standing to file a constitutional claim to challenge the congressional apportionment of their respective states.
Asa'
Exe. Dir. DIG
Chair DCSGP-ECTF