The Failure Club

The concept of Failure Club has clearly struck a chord, and people around the world are reacting positively to the idea of a support group to help pursue your dreams. But many are also recoiling at the name. The most common questions we hear are “why call it Failure Club, how about the ‘success club,’ or ‘dreamers club,’ etc.” The name Failure Club was deliberately chosen to evoke this reaction and the last 7 years have proven that it was the perfect choice. Here are some the reasons why:
1) Success is a pre-requisite for Failure. We believe that success is what people are willing to settle for when they are afraid to fail at something truly life defining. There is absolutely nothing wrong with success, and it is obviously necessary to have a certain amount of success to cover the basic needs (food, shelter, flat screen TV, etc). But rarely is that enough to truly inspire and excite us. So this club is designed to attract the people for whom ‘success’ is not enough, and who want to reach for something audacious and bold – which means that failure is highly probable. The name Failure Club filters out those with lesser ambitions.
2) Failure is Fun. We often reference Edison and his quest to create a viable light bulb. Common legend has it that he tried nearly 10,000 variations before finding the perfect filament for his light bulb. Can you imagine suffering thru 10,000 failures? This would have been impossible without a profound shift in perspective. Rather than look at each one as a negative, he actually reveled in the discovery process. This lab or ‘sandbox’ was his playground, and he was most happy when he was in that mode. In fact, when he finally reached ‘success,’ what do you think he did next? Yep, went right back into the lab to start ‘failing’ at his next invention – electric power plants, fuses, insulated underground wires, movie cameras ….
3) Failure is not just a word. If you deconstruct failure to its’ component letters, you find that there are some incredibly inspiring words embedded in failure, including ‘air,’ ‘fire,’ ‘life,’ ‘flair,’ and ‘fuel,’ in addition to ‘fear’ (click here for full list) Failure Club teaches members to look at failure in new ways, and in so doing, discard the negative associations. Once you learn that the word ‘failure’ can be reshaped into a positive, then it is easy to see how the concept of Failure Club can be a powerful motivator.
4) Failure takes practice. Like everything in life, practice makes perfect. The more you fail, the better you get! The Failure Club propels you forward, starting with small failures and working up. Everyone can point to failures in their life, but rarely are they deliberate. We ask you to directly confront the fears you have around failure and as you get more practiced, then those quickly lose their potency. By the end of the year, the fears you have experienced throughout your life will be gone. Filling that void will be a powerful new tool for pursuing any dream you may have, regardless of how grand or whimsical.
If you would like to start or join a Failure Club in your community, please visit failureclub.org/pods/
Watch weekly episodes of Failure Club on Yahoo Screen

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Map of Failure Club Projects

Published December 21, 2011 Failure ClubLeave a Comment

From the beginning, we dreamed of Failure Club’s popping up around the world to enable people to pursue seemingly unattainable dreams. Since the launch of Failure Club on Yahoo, hundreds of people have signed up with their own Failure Club projects. Click on the map below to find like-minded people in your community, and start up a Failure Club Pod of your own.
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Post 6

High court to look at state immigration laws

By MARK SHERMAN | AP – 40 mins ago

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  Demonstrators yell at police officers during a protest against Arizona's controversial …

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to rule on Arizona's controversial law targeting illegal immigrants.

The justices said they will review a federal appeals court ruling that blocked several tough provisions in the Arizona law. One of those requires that police, while enforcing other laws, question a person's immigration status if officers suspect he is in the country illegally.

The Obama administration challenged the Arizona law by arguing that regulating immigration is the job of the federal government, not states. Similar laws in Alabama, South Carolina and Utah also are facing administration lawsuits. Private groups are suing over immigration measures adopted in Georgia and Indiana.

The court now has three politically charged cases on its election-year calendar. The other two are President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and new electoral maps for Texas' legislature and congressional delegation.

Justice Elena Kagan will not take part in the Arizona case, presumably because of her work on the issue when she served in the Justice Department.

Arguments probably will take place in late April, which would give the court roughly two months to decide the case.

The immigration case stems from the administration's furious legal fight against a patchwork of state laws targeting illegal immigrants.

Arizona wants the justices to allow the state to begin enforcing measures that have been blocked by lower courts at the administration's request.

The state says that the federal government isn't doing enough to address illegal immigration and that border states are suffering disproportionately.

In urging the court to hear the immigration case, Arizona says the administration's contention that states "are powerless to use their own resources to enforce federal immigration standards without the express blessing of the federal executive goes to the heart of our nation's system of dual sovereignty and cooperative federalism."

Many other state and local governments have taken steps aimed at reducing the effects of illegal immigration, the state says.

But the administration argues that the various legal challenges making their way through the system provide a reason to wait and see how other courts rule.

In April, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a federal judge's ruling halting enforcement of several provisions of Arizona's S.B. 1070. Among the blocked provisions: requiring all immigrants to obtain or carry immigration registration papers; making it a state criminal offense for an illegal immigrant to seek work or hold a job; and allowing police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without a warrant.

In October, the federal appeals court in Atlanta blocked parts of the Alabama law that forced public schools to check the immigration status of students and allowed police to file criminal charges against people who are unable to prove their citizenship.

Lawsuits in South Carolina and Utah are not as far along.

The case is Arizona v.U.S., 11-182.

Assignment1

1.  Vocabulary--identify and define words you do not know.
2.  Write a two paragraph summary in your own words of this article
3.  Do you agree that illegal immigration is a problem?  If so, do you agree with the Arizona laws requiring the police to ask for identification for anything, even a parking ticket?

 

 

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Power to the People: Outrage Over Insider Trading Puts STOCK Act on Fast Track

On Tuesday, the House Financial Services Committee is slated to hold a hearing on the STOCK Act - short for Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act.

The bill, which has languished since first being introduced in 2006, now has over 150 sponsors and the Senate held its first-ever hearing on related legislation last week.

"We've had a lot of recent converts now that the public knows what's going on," quips Peter Schweizer, author of Throw Them All Out, a book which -- along with a subsequent 60 Minutes profile -- helped focus the nation's attention on the trading activities of sitting members of Congress.

According to both Schweizer and separate university studies, sitting members of Congress have outperformed the market by 6% to 12% in the 1980s and 1990s. Another study contradicts that claim. Andrew Eggers of Yale University and Jens Hainmueller of MIT examined the stock portfolios of members of Congress between 2004 and 2008 and found the country's representatives "unperformed the market by 2-3% annually" during that period.

But whether elected officials outperform or trail the market is almost beside the point: Americans overwhelmingly believe insider trading by members of Congress needs to stop.

"To me it's a little encouraging," Schweizer says of Congress' sudden interest in the STOCK Act. "It shows if the American people are angry about something...there is an opportunity to effect change in a positive way that's not partisan one way or the other."

While encouraged by support for the STOCK Act, which he believes will pass, Schweizer says other reforms are necessary, just as mandating sitting members of Congress use blind trusts for their portfolios. (See: 'Throw Them All Out' Author Says STOCK Act Won't Stop Pols' Insider Trades)

As a fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institute, editor at the right-leaning Breitbart.com and adviser to Sarah Palin's PAC, Schweizer's political affiliations are pretty obvious. Still, he is bipartisan in criticizing insider trading by politicians.

Among other Republicans, he cites Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Al.) for allegedly shorting the market after privately meeting with Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Rep. Bachus, who claims the book has "several major and serious untruths and outright factual errors about me," will chair Tuesday's House hearing on the STOCK Act, which should make for some very interesting testimony.

For the record, Schweizer did not be testify at last week's Senate hearing nor is he scheduled to appear at Tuesday's House hearing in part, he suspects, because he's 'named names.'
Aaron Task is the host of The Daily Ticker. You can follow him on Twitter

Assignment 4

1.  List words you did not know with definitions
2.  Write a two paragraph summary of what this article is about
3.  What's your opinion?  Should all elected officials have their money in blind trusts, as the author of the book Throw Them All Out believes?  Write a two paragraph argument for or against the STOCK Act..

Assignment 2

Why Won't The Supreme Court Allow TV Cameras?

By ADAM COHEN | Time.com – 2 hrs 16 mins ago

When the Supreme Court hears the constitutional challenge to President Obama's health care program, the American people will be watching. Well, make that: they should be watching, but they won't be able to. We live in a media-saturated age, but the Supreme Court remains a camera-free zone.

C-SPAN wrote to the court last week asking for permission to televise the health care case. C-SPAN would air the arguments itself and make the video available to other media outlets. After many years of saying no to requests like this one, it is time for the Justices to say yes.

Courtrooms have traditionally been open to the public. In small-town America, the courthouse stood in the middle of the town square and citizens dropped in to watch trials — both for entertainment and to keep an eye on how justice was being meted out. The Supreme Court has recognized a first amendment right to attend trials — and it has noted that having the public there actually improves the proceedings. Judges, juries, and witnesses — like most people — generally behave better when they are being watched. The public's right to be in court, however, does not always include the right to bring a camera. Many courts do allow cameras — that was how the O.J. Simpson murder trial ended up on television. But many more do not.

The Supreme Court has a complete ban on cameras — and as calls have grown for a change in the policy, the Justices have dug in their heels. Chief Justice John Roberts has said that "We don't have oral arguments to show people, the public, how we function." Justice David Souter, who retired in 2009, once told Congress that there would be a camera in the court "over my dead body."

There is an obvious argument for allowing television into the Supreme Court. It would let members of the public see firsthand what the issues are and how the Justices approach them. Televised arguments would turn the American people into real participants in what occurs in the marbled halls of justice.

The case against cameras in the Supreme Court is a lot harder to figure out. At the trial level, judges worry that television coverage could intimidate witnesses — or cause them to mug for the cameras. But in the Supreme Court, there are no witnesses. Trial judges are concerned that media coverage could influence juries. But in the Supreme Court, there are no juries. The Justices who oppose cameras have not said much about what their objections are. Some court-watchers say members of the court seem most focused on preserving their anonymity — that is, they do not want to be recognized when they go out in public. But it is hard to take this concern seriously. In a democracy, people who take on positions of great power should expect to sacrifice their anonymity — and to be answerable to the people.

The real reason Supreme Court Justices are queasy about cameras may be a simpler one: they are simply not used to being second-guessed. The Supreme Court is not only at the top of the judicial branch — it has the final say in disputes with the President or Congress. In other words, it is used to getting its way. This carries over into how the court runs its own business. A case in point: conflicts of interest. There is no procedure for forcing a Justice to recuse himself or herself from a case. It is entirely their own choice. When Justice Antonin Scalia declared that he could fairly decide a case involving Vice President Dick Cheney, even though he and the vice president had just gone duck hunting together, that ended the matter.

Television cameras would be a sudden jolt of accountability for a body that is not used to it. Cameras could capture members of the court making troubling statements — like Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's notorious suggestion, at the Bush v. Gore argument, that Florida voters whose ballots were not counted had only themselves to blame. They could remind the public that Justice Clarence Thomas has not asked a question at an argument in years. They could even capture a Justice nodding off.

Cameras would allow the American people to keep a closer watch on what the Supreme Court is up to.

That is why they seem like a bad idea to at least some of the Justices — and a great idea to those of us who must live under the rulings they hand down.

Questions:

1.  Write a two paragraph summary in your own words of this article.

2.  What's your opinion?  Does the Supreme Court have a responsability to make itself open / visible to the public?

3.  A number of comments to this article mentioned term limits for Supreme Court justices.  What do you think?  As well, should Supremem Court justices be elected, instead of appointed?

 

 

 

 

 

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