While believing it must wipe our butts and tuck us into bed every night, Congress expects a tremendous amount of trust from the American people. The same institution that dictates what we can put into our bodies, whom we can marry, how we can conduct business, and how schools are run expects citizens to believe they won’t abuse power. The irony would be humorous if Congress didn’t try to run our daily lives. In an ideal situation, Congress would affect the day-to-day aspects of Americans about as much as the winner of a football game.

Rather than cutting aid to the poor or raising taxes, Congress should continue stockpiling regulations over their public offices; spending cuts would be an added bonus. Legislators don’t need pensions, should receive smaller salaries, can cut back on their staff, and should be term-limited. Members of the Tea Party and Occupy movements would both rejoice.

These are not ideas that would dramatically reduce the debt or solve major problems such as healthcare, foreign policy or the economy; they would merely signal that Congress is getting out of the way and allowing Americans to choose their own paths in life. In an election year, controversial legislation will be minimal as both sides attempt to gain momentum heading into November. Finding common ground in reducing the power of an overreaching federal government would be the bipartisanship Americans crave.

Romer’s address highlighted the importance of reducing unemployment in the U.S. She argued that the government needs to do more to boost economic recovery at a faster rate. The speech was followed by a panel discussion with four Washington University professors.

Romer spent much of 2009 and 2010 working on economic policy in Washington, advising President Obama and leading efforts in health care reform and financial recovery.

Her most recently published works concern the effects of tax structures on long-run economic growth, and she holds a research and teaching appointment at the University of California, Berkeley.

Student Life sat down with Romer to talk about tax structures, government spending and the economic policy issues that will face our generation.

Q&A With former Obama economic adviser Christina Romer

In light of this past weekend’s threat of government shutdown, can Congress pass a budget that will allow the U.S. to move forward and strengthen the economy?

The fact that last year’s budget was so hard to settle makes me nervous, because the questions that are looming are much bigger—they’re about the long-run deficit, about what we’re going to do about revenues and about what’s going to happen to entitlement spending on things like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. What makes me optimistic is that we are finally talking about the long-run budget problem.

It seems like bargaining between political parties isn’t the most efficient way of arriving at a good outcome. Having worked in Washington, what is your level of faith in our political process? Should we leave policy decisions up to Congress?

Democracy is messy—isn’t that what we often say? It’s not always pretty and the debates are not always at the highest level. I do still think it’s the best way we have to make decisions.

My generation’s coming of age has been characterized culturally and politically by a rapid growth in income inequality since the 1980s. What needs to be done or should be done to reverse that process, and what is plausible for us to see in our lifetimes in terms of that inequality being repaired?

The most fundamental [change] is to make people more equal in terms of their opportunities and their starting point when they enter the labor force. Dealing with educational disparities across communities and making sure that every child has the option of a good education and going to college.

And then I think something we haven’t talked about enough as a country is the role of progressive taxation—that part of the way that you deal with inequality is to tax people more at the top of the income distribution. That was reversed during the Bush administration. That’s something that I certainly don’t agree with, and I know the President thinks that letting taxes go up at the top of the distribution makes sense not only from a macroeconomic standpoint, but also I’m sure from an equality standpoint.

What would you say needs to be in place culturally for that kind of progressive taxation to be supported by a majority of Americans?

What I think is interesting is if you looked at the studies, the majority of Americans were supportive of letting taxes for high-income earners go up. So I think most Americans do see that as sensible policy, especially as our budget deficits become more severe over time. But I think policymakers definitely have a role to play. You referred to culture—we need people out there saying that this is sensible policy. Part of making the case is saying that we’re not talking about going up to very high numbers or what you might see in European countries. We’re talking about going back to what we had during the Reagan years or the Clinton years—times when the economy was doing very well.

What is the most important economic issue for students to be aware of and how should they deal with it after graduating?

Let me start with a short-run issue, which is how important it is to get the unemployment rate down. That’s not just important for students finding jobs—it’s important for everything from our social cohesion to our level of growth to our budget deficit.

But the broader picture that everyone needs to be thinking about is how do we as a country, at least on the economic level, continue to grow and get stronger so that our best days are in front of us and not behind us. The main thing that you’ll hear economists say there is that it’s all about investments—from firms’ investments to investments in education to the government’s investments in basic scientific research. It’s all of those things that matter for our long run health as an economy. I’d love it if a whole new generation of voters took that long-run approach—instead of cutting everything, to preserve the government spending that will make us richer and stronger in the future.

We feel that this justification is flawed. These programs are comparatively cheap in the face of the country’s real fiscal challenges, and the country stands too much to gain from public broadcast programming for cuts to be worthwhile.

Cutting the deficit at a time of immense economic difficulty is a task that is both necessary and enormously tricky. As Americans who will be taxpayers for years to come, we should be deeply concerned about the amount of money we may have to pay in the future to settle our country’s accumulating debt. It’s important that we urge our lawmakers to establish a more balanced budget, but at the same time, we need the federal government to continue investing in programs and initiatives that are crucial to sustaining our country’s fragile economic growth. As much as we need to cut federal spending, we simply cannot afford cuts to education, research, infrastructure growth and clean energy development at this time. And as federal policymakers debate what to cut, it is important that they not sacrifice our long-term growth.

But perhaps most importantly, we know that the federal deficit crisis is too large to be solved with superficial cuts alone. The real sources of our budget problems are entitlement spending, especially with regard to Medicare, defense spending and tax cuts, particularly the early-2000s tax breaks for the country’s top 1 percent earners.

We are concerned that Congress is cutting valuable, comparatively cheap programs merely for the sake of appearances. These cuts will hardly make a dent in our debt while simultaneously having real, negative consequences for millions of Americans. Beyond nostalgia about Big Bird, there is no avoiding the real and substantial educational gains that NPR and PBS provide for our country.

Tackling our fiscal crisis at this moment requires the finesse of a scalpel, not the indiscriminate violence of a hatchet. We know there will be tough cuts ahead, but we are worried that too many of the proposed Congressional cuts do more harm than good. We should be encouraging our members of Congress to be as far-sighted as possible in balancing our budget. Cut where it is truly necessary.

During last week’s State of the Union address, members of Congress broke with tradition of sitting by party and sat with people across the aisle. Most members picked their “dates” by similar home states or committee assignments; others just picked based on friendships. One group of members went together because they played in the congressional softball game together. Even if only for this one night, congressmen came together with peers because of something beyond party affiliations, a meaningful connection beyond ideology.

Bringing together people from different backgrounds: what Congress managed to do for one night, and what Wash. U. does on every freshman floor. The Office of Residential Life puts together a mix of individuals from all over the world with different backgrounds. They pick roommates by important traits: room temperature and bed time, not religion or political party. And for the most part, we learn from our roommates and get a bigger perspective of the world.

During the rest of college, we pick who we live with based on friendship and not necessarily those with similar backgrounds. I lived with my teammates on the football team by sophomore year, and I roomed with one of my good friends, though he is not necessarily someone I have a lot in common with: I’m a MSNBC-watching Jewish Democrat from the coast; my sophomore roommate was a Catholic from a small town in Missouri who hunted on the weekend and had no interest in politics. We were brought together because of our differences, eating challah while listening to Kenny Chesney. While he rarely brought up politics, I have a broader sense of the world and understand other political perspectives because I lived with someone from another background.

My knowledge has grown further this past year because of my roommates. One is the president of Young Americans for Liberty, a group he describes as college students “advocating for limited government ideals.” I would characterize them as College tea partiers. He treasures his free-market principles so much that he refuses any market interaction that requires him to do dishes. We fundamentally disagree on many issues but never become disagreeable; we have the ability to meaningfully discuss issues important to both of us while remaining friends, something members of Congress struggle to do.

Congress could learn a lot from Wash. U. Members live in a myopic world, full of single-caucus lunches and partisan rhetoric with little opportunity to get to know their peers. They spend less time now in Washington, and when they are there, they spend less time mingling with their fellow members and more time fundraising from partisan political action committees. I’m not advocating that senators share apartments, but members of Congress would benefit from getting to know each other rather than just their party.

Daniel is a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at drfishma@go.wustl.edu or twitter.com/doctorfishma

A recent NBC/WSJ poll showed that 59 percent of Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track. Only a third of Americans expect the economy to improve in the next year, and only a fifth of the country approves of the job of Congress. The national debt is over $13 trillion, unemployment is conservatively estimated at more than 9 percent and taxes are scheduled to rise at every income level after the new year. The only thing constant among Americans is uncertainty.

Uncertainty exists because Americans don’t know how their taxes will change year to year, or even month to month.

Uncertainty exists because Congress passes legislation that contains thousands of pages, with legislators failing to read and comprehend every line until after passage. The Financial Reform Bill exempted the SEC from the Freedom of Information Act, a fact not realized until after its passage.

Uncertainty exists in our foreign policy. Americans don’t know when our troops will come home or what country we will invade next. Troops remain in Afghanistan and Iraq, non-military contractors have increased their presence in the region and the CIA has escalated drone attacks in Pakistan.

Americans don’t know when jobs will come back, when government will get off their backs or if the future will be brighter for their children.

Change is still needed in our country and desired by a strong majority of Americans. Change is more than just a campaign slogan, more than just a new face and more than fresh rhetoric. The anti-incumbent wave sweeping across the land, aimed at both Democrats and Republicans, is an attempt to change the political landscape.

The change we want will come when politicians understand the pessimism and uncertainty running rampant around this nation. They can end the pessimism by putting America on a track to future success, by reducing the debt, by reducing spending and by reducing the size and scope of government. They can fix uncertainty by being open and transparent with all of their constituents.

Actions speak louder than words, and Americans see through the propaganda. They want politicians to say what we all believe to be true. That only the market can create jobs, not the government. That the American empire is unsustainable; that troops and money spreading around the globe should be brought home immediately. That more regulations and more laws only hamper economic growth and do not facilitate it.

What Americans seek is not a one-party strategy but something that both parties can act upon to bring about successful change in the 112th Congress. Democrats and Republicans will both swear to uphold the Constitution, now they just need to meet those words with their actions.

Audrey Westcott | Student Life

What will this mean for us, as Americans? Well, obviously an era of prosperity! Look at the recent Fox News Op-Ed by John Lott, in which he proved, beyond a shadow of a statistical doubt, that Republican election gains naturally correlate with upward moving stock prices, or rather that Obama’s improvement in the polls correlates with downward moving stock prices.

Either way, yesterday’s results mean that we have officially gotten out of our economic slump! So now, how do we go about accomplishing the change that Republicans promised with their Pledge to America? It’s fairly simple, considering the fact that nobody is going to negotiate about anything because that is what the Republican candidates promised their constituents.

First, our goal is to cut taxes. Not just extend the Bush tax cuts but also literally cut all taxes out from the United States. Why should we even pretend that isn’t the direction we are going as a country? The left likes tax cuts almost as much as we do, so why not skip so many years of partisan bickering when we can just abolish taxation as it is and let things go which way they will?

And if any of them try to stop us, we can just call them socialists and gain even more seats in the next election because that is what taxation does really, redistributes the wealth…which is socialism.

This might sound like a bad idea, considering the fact that we still have to spend money on things like the military and Social Security. But nobody notices that Social Security does more than stop the retired from being poor or help children missing a parent get some extra money; it clearly stops people from working where they could be. Wouldn’t it be preferable (for the economy) to have people over the age of 65 working again? Let’s just cut it!

As for the military, we know that private corporations do things better than government in all cases, so why not have them just keep us safe and protected? Their own self-interest will obviously be to protect everyone effectively, so why even bother having a military? We already have private military companies in both Iraq and Afghanistan; let’s just go the whole nine yards!

Without taxation, we will have no place for the federal government, and smaller government is better. The key to getting to this goal is to use the new divided government to our advantage. It is time to start calling our representatives and telling them not to negotiate on anything. While this may seem counterintuitive, it will all become clear when it comes time for a new budget to be drawn up. President Obama will definitely not sign a budget that severely reduces the size of government, so it will shut down, just like in the Clinton years.

And here is when we start doing things differently, so pay attention. President Clinton and Newt Gingrich came to an agreement, and the federal government wasn’t shut down for a huge amount of time. If our representatives don’t want to negotiate, the government will be deadlocked and shut down for as long as we want it to be. And how long do we want it to be? Well, forever of course. Smaller government is always better, and without things like unemployment insurance, people will be forced to get themselves up and start working again, giving a huge jolt to the economy!

So when the federal government shuts down a year from now, make sure you understand that it wasn’t because our representatives are stupid and don’t want to listen to us. The federal government will have shut down because we asked our representatives not to negotiate. Negotiation is not beneficial for the country. Why do things like that when it is in your ideological camp not to negotiate in the slightest? We asked for ideological purity, we made sure we got it, and the goals of that purity will be the shape of things to come.

Olivier Douliery | Abaca Press | MCT

President Barack Obama signs the health insurance reform bill in the East Room in Washington, D.C., March 23, 2010.

After almost a year of negotiations, argumentation and lobbying, the House of Representatives approved a drastic overhaul of the nation’s health care system, with President Obama signing it into law Tuesday. In a 219-to-212 vote, the House passed the legislation that the Senate passed in December. In addition, the House passed a package of changes as part of a budget reconciliation bill by a vote of 220 to 211.

All Republicans voted against the bill. Thirty-four Democrats also voted against it.

Throughout the day Sunday, while the House held a lengthy debate over the bill, protesters gathered outside of the Capitol Building and chanted “Kill the bill” and “Don’t tread on me.”

The House Democratic leadership gained the necessary votes for the legislation only hours prior to the scheduled vote. Obtaining the votes required leadership to broker a deal with Democratic opponents of abortion by promising that Obama would issue an executive order declaring that federal funds provided by the bill would not be used for abortions.

The reconciliation bill is set to go to the Senate. The bill is aimed at altering the Senate bill that passed the House on Sunday and was signed into law by President Obama on Tuesday.

“The Democrats finally figured out a way to use reconciliation to resolve their differences to avoid filibuster, and now the challenge is to use reconciliation to get it passed through the Senate,” said Steven Smith, a professor of political science. “It’s not clear that they’ll be able to do it, because there are vulnerabilities in the bill.”

The process by which the Democratic leadership in the House went about passing the bill has drawn criticism from opponents of the bill.

“People are complaining, but it seems to me the Democrats are doing it [using special reconciliation procedure] now, but the Republicans were doing it when they had control,” law professor Cheryl Block said. “I think it’s a procedure that they tended to use at the budget stage, but now its gotten overused. But you can’t point fingers, because both sides have done it.”

The overhaul will require most citizens of the United States to have health insurance. It is expected to extend coverage to 32 million people who currently have none. But analysts currently suggest that 23 million people will remain uninsured.

The health care bill is also going to add 16 million people to Medicaid. Additionally, private coverage is going to be subsidized for people who have low and moderate incomes.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bill will cost the government $938 billion over 10 years.

Under the terms of the legislation, many employers would be required to present employees with health coverage under penalty of a fine. Additionally, each state would set up a market-based exchange in which citizens without coverage could shop around for insurance.

According to the CBO, the costs of the program will be alleviated by Medicare savings and newly created taxes, including one on investment income. Despite the reform’s costs, it is expected to reduce the deficit by $143 billion in the next 10 years.

One of the most controversial parts of the bill was one that prevented health insurers from denying coverage to children with medical issues or ceasing coverage for people who become ill.

The bill also has benefits for students. Under the health care bill, insurers are required to allow children to remain beneficiaries on their guardians’ health insurance policies until the age of 26.

“The most immediate and obvious [way the bill affects students] is that students will be able to remain on their parents’ health care policies through age 26, which allows them to get into and maybe through grad school and into a job with a small business that lacks a health care plan or simply ride through a transition period where it’s difficult to get employee-based health care by remaining on a parent’s plan,” Smith said.

Smith noted that the bill would lead to increased costs in the future for students, while leading to increased access to adequate care.

“Eventually the students will face the requirement that they purchase health care insurance,” he said. “That’s something that some people currently just out of college avoid. They just don’t have health care insurance, and they get by because they’re lucky to be healthy for a while, but they won’t have that choice anymore, they will have to get health care insurance or pay a penalty. And I think for most students and graduates, that will mean they will have additional expenses, but they will also have more complete access to health care.”

The reconciliation bill that the House passed also contains provisions to revamp the federal student loan program and get rid of the fee paid to banks that serve the role of intermediaries. The federal government instead will enlarge a direct lending program that would save $61 billion over 10 years. The money would then be used to increase Pell Grants.

The maximum Pell Grant is scheduled to rise to $5,975 within seven years from the current $5,350. The initiative also provides $13.5 billion to cover deficits resulting from the rise in the number of Americans attending college.

The bill will allocate $36 billion more to Pell Grants over the next two years.

With additional reporting by Lauren Olens

Already, we are seeing an attempted shift in strategy, though it is unclear how well it will work. In case you haven’t heard, next week the White House is getting together with congressional leaders to try to resurrect the health care reform effort. Senator Bayh cited the partisanship and obstruction in Congress as his primary reasons for quitting; it is doubtful that there will be a change in that atmosphere at the summit, and some Republicans are suggesting that the summit is not even worth it in the first place. I tend to agree with them, for now, anyway; we do need health care reform, but it is time that we address the rest of the agenda.

Except, we’ve already started to. Congressional Democrats tried to take a shot at the jobs picture, and the effort was even bipartisan, yet Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada canned it and replaced it with a scaled-back version. More than one Republican senator has already stated something to the effect that Reid is the real problem in the Senate, not the GOP. Certainly, Reid’s leadership style is an interesting contrast to that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. We have seen over this past year how much trouble Senator Reid has had holding the Democratic caucus together in the Senate, while Pelosi has just about turned the House into a well-oiled machine. Part of this is due to the more stringent rules in the House than in the Senate, but the personal characteristics of the leaders in each body also play a large role.

But enough abstract talk of leadership styles; it is clear that something needs to change in Washington. If the election of Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was not enough of a wake-up call, consider this: The Republicans only have to defend one more seat than the Democrats because of a resignation. Given the advantage incumbents typically enjoy, this is huge; both parties have used circumstances like these to swing the balance of power in their favor. First, Senator Reid needs to reinstate the Grassley-Baucus jobs bill. Concerns over adding to the Federal deficit are certainly legitimate these days, but seriously, is missing a chance to restore some sense of bipartisanship really worth saving about $70 billion over 10 years, the difference between the estimated costs of the bills? Second, the GOP needs to meet the Democrats halfway on health care—stop talking about this nonsense of starting over as a prerequisite to negotiations. Oh, and of course, get rid of those elected officials who fail to live up to their duties of governing rather than campaigning in November. This may sound like idealism, and it certainly is more difficult than it sounds, but it could really work if it is done right. At the very least, the last item will definitely be effective.

Charles is a freshman in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at charles.herrera@wustl.edu.

Called “A Fresh Look at Government Jobs: Civil Service in the 21st Century,” the event featured George Selim, a Department of Homeland Security employee who spoke with students at the Danforth University Center and attended a luncheon with them. A number of other government employees attended the event, including representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Employees from the FDIC and the Department of Commerce held programs at the Olin Business School.

The event stemmed from a grant that created a partnership between the Gephardt Institute and the Career Center to promote government careers.

“With the economy being what it is now, students I think are more open to the idea of looking at different alternatives, including the public sector,” said Robin Hattori, program director for the Gephardt Institute.

Hattori also noted the need for young talent in government agencies to replace retiring government employees.

While the event was relevant to seniors who are considering pursuing government jobs after graduation, it also catered to graduate students, sophomores and juniors.

“People might not be ready to start looking for a job yet, but maybe a summer internship would be another option to look at,” Hattori said.

For Washington University law student Michael Wu, his internship created job opportunities on Capitol Hill. After working as an intern, Wu became a staff assistant and subsequently a scheduler for three different members of Congress. Wu is now enrolled in law school with the hopes of becoming a national security lawyer.

“Lawyers represent clients generally, and I feel like that’s not as exciting to me as the idea of trying to do good,” Wu said.

Senior Laura Lane-Steele is considering joining AmeriCorps during her gap years between graduating from the University and enrolling in graduate school for anthropology.

“I’m interested in working with people and trying to get on that community-based level,” Lane-Steele said. “I’m more of a public interest kind of person, and corporate America doesn’t really appeal to me in terms of social justice.”

Lane-Steele also finds the health insurance, benefits and non-discrimination policies that government jobs provide to be appealing.

In addition to providing opportunities to work for the public good, government jobs allow new employees to take on significant responsibilities.

“Most of the agencies have a lot of money for professional development and for training,” Hattori said. “The pay is not what you would find in the corporate sector, but to make up for it you really do get some great responsibility at the get-go.”

Hattori added that government jobs also provide mobility.

“Once you get in the government you can look at other agencies, and you can look at other departments within your agency,” Hattori said.

Undergraduates at the University are preparing for government jobs by selecting specific coursework.

Senior David Weisshaar, who has an interest in international policy and development, double majors in Latin American studies and political science with a concentration in international relations. He also minors in business.

“Having a little bit of quantitative skill I think is always useful in any government career,” Weisshaar said.

In addition to preparing for a government career through his majors, Weisshaar learns from the experiences of his fellow students.

“Just hearing their experiences, how they’ve gone about getting internships, the kind of perspectives they have on this field have certainly informed my own opinion and perspective on how I can best go about procuring a job in this field,” he said. Weisshaar also plans to pursue a master’s degree in public policy.

“I’m personally encountering a kind of skepticism among people in our general age range, 18-22, and a cynicism about government that I think is rather unhealthy,” Weisshaar said. “My personal viewpoint is that government is the quickest and most effective way to have an impact on public policy.”

“Government is a place where good can happen and inspiration can happen,” Wu said.

This legal discrimination did not end because of some benevolent act of Congress. Blacks fought for their civil rights with protests, marches and boycotts all over America, many of which resulted in imprisonment, injury and, in some cases, death. They did not struggle for their rights alone: Many whites fought in the civil rights movement. Prominent white leaders fought the injustice side by side with blacks. In the march on Selma in 1965, John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr. and others joined arms with white leaders like Abraham Joshua Heschel and Maurice Davis to protest the injustices faced in the area at the time. White college students fueled the Freedom Summer of 1964, which aimed to register as many blacks as possible in Mississippi, a state that had only 6.7 percent of eligible blacks registered in 1964. This white dedication to civil rights went beyond marching and organizing.

During the Freedom Summer, the Klu Klux Klan murdered three people working to register blacks: James Chaney, a 21-year-old black civil rights worker; Michael Schwerner, a 24-year-old white social worker; and Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old white college student.

Even with the threat of violence, whites continued to fight for civil rights. These whites would not directly benefit from the successes of the civil rights movement. They had the right to vote and access to public facilities, yet they chose to protest, boycott and suffer with blacks because they believed what was occurring was wrong. They believed people should not be discriminated against because of who they are. They believed, as King wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

King’s declaration rings true today just as much as when he wrote it in a Birmingham jail cell in 1963. Many of the same injustices the black civil rights movement fought still are applied to members of the gay community. In 32 states, landlords can legally evict tenants because of their sexual orientation, just as landlords could deny housing to blacks based on their race. In 29 states, it is legal for a company to fire an employee based on sexual orientation. This legal right to fire based on sexual orientation is exercised constantly by many employers, including the U.S. military, which has discharged more than 13,000 service members because of their sexual orientation. These brave and loyal American men and women want to defend their country. They were deemed fit to serve and did so, many in occupations the military defined as “critical,” until their sexual preference became known.

This injustice towards gay Americans affects more than just housing and employment. By forbidding committed homosexual couples the same rights as committed heterosexual couples, the government refuses homosexual couples more than 1,100 statutory provisions it grants to heterosexual couples. This includes denying partners the right to visit their loved one in the hospital, refusing American citizens in binational relationships the right to petition for their same-sex partner’s immigration, and forcing estate taxes on property inherited from a deceased partner. It is just to amend the definition of marriage to include homosexual couples just as it was just to amend the definition of marriage in 16 states in 1967, when anti-miscegenation laws forbidding interracial marriage were ruled unconstitutional.

Heterosexuals must stand up with our homosexual peers to demand the righting of the wrongs the government allows, endorses and participates in. We must demand gay equality under the law by signing petitions like the one being circulated by the Right Side of History at therightsideofhistory.org. We must walk arm in arm with the gay community as we fight for the rights these individuals want, need and deserve. Heterosexuals must fight for homosexual rights because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.