Cuomo Clamps Down on New York Churches and Schools (Again)

sipaphotoseleven105184

There comes a moment as you’re listening to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo rant when you realize it all seems so familiar. Oh, yeah, you thinkthis guy sounds like the dictator in the movie Bananas who ordered everybody to speak Swedish and wear their underwear over their clothes. Only Cuomo isn’t intentionally a joke, and his commands have serious consequences.

This week, Cuomo announced another closure of New York schools that have already left families floundering through the pandemic and threatened to shutter synagogues and churches if their congregations don’t bend to his will.

“I am not going to recommend or allow any New York City family to send their child to a school that I wouldn’t send my child to. We’re going to close the schools in those areas tomorrow,” Cuomo announced on October 5, in a command that applied to private schools as well as public ones.

Since places of worship have been resistant to restrictions on gatherings, the governor got specific about penalties. “I have to say to the Orthodox community tomorrow, if you’re not willing to live with these rules, then I’m going to close the synagogues,” he threatened.

The targets of Cuomo’s ire fired back.

“A picture that [Cuomo] said showed an unlawfully large gathering of Hasidic Jews from recent weeks turned out to be a picture of a major rabbi’s funeral in 2006,” pointed out Ari Feldman at The Forward.

“In the three Catholic Academies and one Parish School located in the affected areas, enrollment totals 1,070 students, and there has only been one confirmed COVID case,” pointed out the Diocese of Brooklyn. “These statistics prove that the Diocesan COVID-19 safety policies are effectively protecting our students and teachers.”

The diocese might also have emphasized the fact that its schools have been doing something else better than the competition: educating. New York City completed reopening its public schools only last week after two delays caused by disputes with the teachers’ union. Many families have fled to private education options precisely because they’ve proven themselves more responsive to a range of preferences, and less susceptible to arbitrary policy decisions. Cuomo might not choose those schools, but the parents of the children attending them very clearly did.

Then again, raising fact-based objections to official mandates from on-high is probably beside the point. There is a sense in which the students, congregants, and other victims of Cuomo’s latest brainstorm are collateral damage in a turf war that has little to do with them.

“Local governments have not done an effective job of enforcement in these hotspot ZIP codes,” Cuomo tweeted October 4. The state “will be doing aggressive enforcement starting tomorrow. As we saw with bars and restaurants, when the state initiated enforcement actions compliance greatly increased.”

Observers of New York politics all understand that “local governments” mean New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city officials. The governor and the mayor hate each other and are engaged in a running feud, in which the lives and livelihoods of actual human beings seem to be nothing more than weapons to be used against one another. Are the latest closure orders just skirmishes in never-ending warfare between elected officials? That’s as good a bet as any given the personalities involved.

In fact, to listen to one of Cuomo’s regular and extended monologuesas he openly savors the sound of his own voice and directs verbal jabs at his political enemiesis to be reminded of yet another political figure, this one a little less fictional. The governor seems an awful lot like President Trump, who also takes pleasure in his time in the spotlight, and in petty sparring with political rivalsincluding Cuomo himself.

Then again, some nutty autocrats are more popular than others. While Trump’s Bananas impression has few fans in the media, Cuomo’s version enjoys the support of many journalistic fans, even after he ordered nursing homes in the state to accept patients who had been infected with COVID-19.

“Multiple states are considering adopting an order similar to what was issued in New York that requires every nursing home to admit hospital patients who have not been tested for COVID-19 and to admit patients who have tested positive,” the American Health Care Association, a nursing home trade group, warned in March. “This approach will introduce the highly contagious virus into more nursing homes. There will be more hospitalizations for nursing home residents who need ventilator care and ultimately, a higher number of deaths.”

Sure enough, months later, that dictate had resulted in a body count in the thousands, with researchers still counting the toll.

That fiasco by itself should give New Yorkers pause when their governor issues commands supposedly intended to curb viral outbreaks and keep them healthy during the pandemic. Maybe his judgment should be taken with a good-sized grain of salt.

And maybe parents who are desperate to see their kids resume their interrupted educations, and worshippers eager to find some solace during tough times, should place more weight on their own decision-making skills than on those of politicians. They, after all, are struggling to do their imperfect best by themselves and their families. They’ll make mistakes, of course, but those mistakes will be on a small scale, and made in the course of attempting to do the right thing.

By contrast, Cuomo seems best-skilled at consuming camera time while inflicting widespread pain and engaging in political combat. His track record necessarily casts a shadow over every word he utters and each new mandate he gives.

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Cuomo Clamps Down on New York Churches and Schools (Again)

sipaphotoseleven105184

There comes a moment as you’re listening to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo rant when you realize it all seems so familiar. Oh, yeah, you thinkthis guy sounds like the dictator in the movie Bananas who ordered everybody to speak Swedish and wear their underwear over their clothes. Only Cuomo isn’t intentionally a joke, and his commands have serious consequences.

This week, Cuomo announced another closure of New York schools that have already left families floundering through the pandemic and threatened to shutter synagogues and churches if their congregations don’t bend to his will.

“I am not going to recommend or allow any New York City family to send their child to a school that I wouldn’t send my child to. We’re going to close the schools in those areas tomorrow,” Cuomo announced on October 5, in a command that applied to private schools as well as public ones.

Since places of worship have been resistant to restrictions on gatherings, the governor got specific about penalties. “I have to say to the Orthodox community tomorrow, if you’re not willing to live with these rules, then I’m going to close the synagogues,” he threatened.

The targets of Cuomo’s ire fired back.

“A picture that [Cuomo] said showed an unlawfully large gathering of Hasidic Jews from recent weeks turned out to be a picture of a major rabbi’s funeral in 2006,” pointed out Ari Feldman at The Forward.

“In the three Catholic Academies and one Parish School located in the affected areas, enrollment totals 1,070 students, and there has only been one confirmed COVID case,” pointed out the Diocese of Brooklyn. “These statistics prove that the Diocesan COVID-19 safety policies are effectively protecting our students and teachers.”

The diocese might also have emphasized the fact that its schools have been doing something else better than the competition: educating. New York City completed reopening its public schools only last week after two delays caused by disputes with the teachers’ union. Many families have fled to private education options precisely because they’ve proven themselves more responsive to a range of preferences, and less susceptible to arbitrary policy decisions. Cuomo might not choose those schools, but the parents of the children attending them very clearly did.

Then again, raising fact-based objections to official mandates from on-high is probably beside the point. There is a sense in which the students, congregants, and other victims of Cuomo’s latest brainstorm are collateral damage in a turf war that has little to do with them.

“Local governments have not done an effective job of enforcement in these hotspot ZIP codes,” Cuomo tweeted October 4. The state “will be doing aggressive enforcement starting tomorrow. As we saw with bars and restaurants, when the state initiated enforcement actions compliance greatly increased.”

Observers of New York politics all understand that “local governments” mean New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city officials. The governor and the mayor hate each other and are engaged in a running feud, in which the lives and livelihoods of actual human beings seem to be nothing more than weapons to be used against one another. Are the latest closure orders just skirmishes in never-ending warfare between elected officials? That’s as good a bet as any given the personalities involved.

In fact, to listen to one of Cuomo’s regular and extended monologuesas he openly savors the sound of his own voice and directs verbal jabs at his political enemiesis to be reminded of yet another political figure, this one a little less fictional. The governor seems an awful lot like President Trump, who also takes pleasure in his time in the spotlight, and in petty sparring with political rivalsincluding Cuomo himself.

Then again, some nutty autocrats are more popular than others. While Trump’s Bananas impression has few fans in the media, Cuomo’s version enjoys the support of many journalistic fans, even after he ordered nursing homes in the state to accept patients who had been infected with COVID-19.

“Multiple states are considering adopting an order similar to what was issued in New York that requires every nursing home to admit hospital patients who have not been tested for COVID-19 and to admit patients who have tested positive,” the American Health Care Association, a nursing home trade group, warned in March. “This approach will introduce the highly contagious virus into more nursing homes. There will be more hospitalizations for nursing home residents who need ventilator care and ultimately, a higher number of deaths.”

Sure enough, months later, that dictate had resulted in a body count in the thousands, with researchers still counting the toll.

That fiasco by itself should give New Yorkers pause when their governor issues commands supposedly intended to curb viral outbreaks and keep them healthy during the pandemic. Maybe his judgment should be taken with a good-sized grain of salt.

And maybe parents who are desperate to see their kids resume their interrupted educations, and worshippers eager to find some solace during tough times, should place more weight on their own decision-making skills than on those of politicians. They, after all, are struggling to do their imperfect best by themselves and their families. They’ll make mistakes, of course, but those mistakes will be on a small scale, and made in the course of attempting to do the right thing.

By contrast, Cuomo seems best-skilled at consuming camera time while inflicting widespread pain and engaging in political combat. His track record necessarily casts a shadow over every word he utters and each new mandate he gives.

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Nearly 2 Years After Houston Drug Warriors Killed Rhogena Nicholas, Her Family May Get a Chance To Find Out What Happened

Tuttle-and-Nicholas-HPD-big

Nearly two years after Houston narcotics officers invaded the home of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas based on a fraudulent search warrant and shot them both dead, we still don’t have a clear picture of what happened that day. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, despite his pose as an avatar of transparency and accountability, has not told us, and the city has been vigorously resisting Nicholas’ relatives as they try to find out why she died.

This week, Harris County Probate Court Judge Jerry Simoneaux dealt a blow to the city’s stonewalling by scheduling a hearing at which he will consider a request by Nicholas’ mother and brother to depose the supervisors who were in charge of the Houston Police Department’s Narcotics Division at the time of the January 2019 raid. The city unsuccessfully urged a state appeals court to intervene, then unsuccessfully asked the Texas Supreme Court to overturn that decision.

“They basically claimed that the court which handles wrongful death cases didn’t have jurisdiction to consider a wrongful death investigation case,” Michael Doyle, an attorney representing the Nicholas family, told the Houston Press. “That’s why the Court of Appeals kicked it out very quickly, because that’s kind of silly.”

Here is what we do know about the deadly raid at 7815 Harding Street, based on public statements and court documents:

• The investigation of Tuttle and Nicholas began with a false tip from a neighbor who described them as dangerous drug dealers.

• Veteran Houston narcotics officer Gerald Goines conducted an investigation so cursory that he did not even know the names of his targets. In the affidavit supporting his application for a no-knock search warrant, he described Tuttle as “a white male, whose name is unknown.”

• Goines, who has been charged with murder, document tampering, and federal civil rights violations, lied in his warrant application, describing an imaginary heroin purchase by a nonexistent confidential informant.

• Tuttle and Nicholas had no criminal records, and the search discovered no evidence of drug dealing.

• Fellow narcotics officer Steven Bryant, who also faces state and federal charges, backed up Goines’ phony story.

• Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg—whose office has charged Goines, Bryant, and four other officers, including two supervisors, with a litany of felonies—says the fraud that killed Tuttle and Nicholas reflects “a pattern and practice of lying and deceit” within the Narcotics Division, where cops commonly built cases on fabrications that were either overlooked or abetted by supervisors. “Goines and others could never have preyed on our community the way they did without the participation of their supervisors,” Ogg said in July. “Every check and balance in place to stop this type of behavior was circumvented.”

• Acevedo, who was featured at this summer’s Democratic National Convention as a reform-minded police chief, does not think his department has a “systemic” problem.

After investigating the circumstances that led to the Harding Street raid, Ogg’s office is looking into the way the warrant was served. Nicholas’ family also wants answers. Here are some of the unresolved questions:

Why was the raid approved?

Supervisors apparently did not notice or did not care that Goines, who had a history of questionable testimony and affidavits, was unable to name the people he supposedly had been investigating for two weeks, who had lived in the house for decades. Nor did supervisors make even a rudimentary effort to verify that the confidential informant who supposedly had bought heroin from Tuttle actually existed. Instead, investigators scrambled after the raid to identify the informant as Goines named one person after another before finally confessing that he had made the whole thing up.

“The identity of CI’s providing specific information about criminal activities…is required to be documented and readily accessible to police managers,” says a petition that Doyle filed in July 2019. “HPD’s managers knew from the beginning that there was no documented CI significant meeting record in its files supporting the assault on the Harding Street Home.” Oversight practices that “allow officers such as Gerald Goines to simply make up CI’s, or fabricate criminal activity used to justify warrants, would violate the Fourth Amendment,” the petition adds.

Did Tuttle and Nicholas realize that the armed men breaking into their home were police officers?

There is no body camera video of the raid. But according to Acevedo, the cops announced themselves at the same moment they broke in the door, then immediately used a shotgun to kill the couple’s dog. He said Tuttle responded by shooting at the officers with a .357 Magnum revolver. The cops returned fire, killing Tuttle, who was struck at least eight times, and Nicholas, who was hit twice.

The raid began around 5 p.m. According to Doyle, Tuttle and Nicholas were taking “an afternoon nap” at the time. While narcotics officers executing search warrants “don’t show up in uniform,” Acevedo said, “they do show up with plenty of gear that identifies them as police officers, including patrol officers that are out in front of the house.” But patrol officers outside the house do not give people inside the house notice that the men breaching their door and killing their dog are cops, and it’s not clear what other “gear” Acevedo had in mind.

Furthermore, Houston had recently seen a series of home invasions by robbers masquerading as cops. In these circumstances, it is plausible that Tuttle thought he was defending his home against dangerous criminals. Reckless drug war tactics invite that sort of confusion, which has had deadly consequences in cities across the country.

Why was Nicholas killed?

The cops claimed they shot Nicholas because she was moving toward an injured officer, who had collapsed on a couch, and they thought she was about to grab his shotgun. But an independent forensic examination of the house commissioned by Nicholas’ family and overseen by former Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent Michael Maloney concluded that Nicholas had been fatally shot by someone standing outside the house who would not have been able to see her.

Based on that investigation, the Nicholas family’s lawyers also questioned whether Tuttle had actually fired at the officers as they entered the house. “We see no evidence that anybody inside the house was firing toward the door,” attorney Chuck Bourque told the Houston Chronicle four months after the raid.

Were officers injured by friendly fire?

Four officers, including Goines, were struck by bullets during the raid. Whose bullets? While Acevedo indignantly rejected the suggestion that the cops were injured by anyone other than Tuttle, he presented no evidence to back up that position, and the Houston Police Department has refused to comment on the question. It has not even said how many rounds the cops fired or what ammunition they were using.

The Nicholas family thinks Narcotics Division supervisors could shed light on issues like these. For more than a year, the family’s attorneys have been trying to depose Capt. Paul Follis, who was in charge of the Narcotics Division at the time of the raid, and Lt. Marsha Todd, another supervisor, along with a designated representative of the city, in preparation for a potential wrongful death lawsuit.

The city has insisted that the case does not belong in Probate Court, an argument that the 14th District Court of Appeals rejected on March 26. Last Friday, the Texas Supreme Court declined to review that decision. On Monday, Judge Simoneaux said he would hold a hearing on November 13 to finally consider the Nicholas family’s deposition request.

“Our family’s search for the truth of what happened to Rhogena will continue—no matter what,” her brother John Nicholas said in a statement. “She did not deserve to be executed in her own home by the Houston Police Department. The mayor and chief of police still owe our family an explanation. We’re not going away.”

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Nearly 2 Years After Houston Drug Warriors Killed Rhogena Nicholas, Her Family May Get a Chance To Find Out What Happened

Tuttle-and-Nicholas-HPD-big

Nearly two years after Houston narcotics officers invaded the home of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas based on a fraudulent search warrant and shot them both dead, we still don’t have a clear picture of what happened that day. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, despite his pose as an avatar of transparency and accountability, has not told us, and the city has been vigorously resisting Nicholas’ relatives as they try to find out why she died.

This week, Harris County Probate Court Judge Jerry Simoneaux dealt a blow to the city’s stonewalling by scheduling a hearing at which he will consider a request by Nicholas’ mother and brother to depose the supervisors who were in charge of the Houston Police Department’s Narcotics Division at the time of the January 2019 raid. The city unsuccessfully urged a state appeals court to intervene, then unsuccessfully asked the Texas Supreme Court to overturn that decision.

“They basically claimed that the court which handles wrongful death cases didn’t have jurisdiction to consider a wrongful death investigation case,” Michael Doyle, an attorney representing the Nicholas family, told the Houston Press. “That’s why the Court of Appeals kicked it out very quickly, because that’s kind of silly.”

Here is what we do know about the deadly raid at 7815 Harding Street, based on public statements and court documents:

• The investigation of Tuttle and Nicholas began with a false tip from a neighbor who described them as dangerous drug dealers.

• Veteran Houston narcotics officer Gerald Goines conducted an investigation so cursory that he did not even know the names of his targets. In the affidavit supporting his application for a no-knock search warrant, he described Tuttle as “a white male, whose name is unknown.”

• Goines, who has been charged with murder, document tampering, and federal civil rights violations, lied in his warrant application, describing an imaginary heroin purchase by a nonexistent confidential informant.

• Tuttle and Nicholas had no criminal records, and the search discovered no evidence of drug dealing.

• Fellow narcotics officer Steven Bryant, who also faces state and federal charges, backed up Goines’ phony story.

• Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg—whose office has charged Goines, Bryant, and four other officers, including two supervisors, with a litany of felonies—says the fraud that killed Tuttle and Nicholas reflects “a pattern and practice of lying and deceit” within the Narcotics Division, where cops commonly built cases on fabrications that were either overlooked or abetted by supervisors. “Goines and others could never have preyed on our community the way they did without the participation of their supervisors,” Ogg said in July. “Every check and balance in place to stop this type of behavior was circumvented.”

• Acevedo, who was featured at this summer’s Democratic National Convention as a reform-minded police chief, does not think his department has a “systemic” problem.

After investigating the circumstances that led to the Harding Street raid, Ogg’s office is looking into the way the warrant was served. Nicholas’ family also wants answers. Here are some of the unresolved questions:

Why was the raid approved?

Supervisors apparently did not notice or care that Goines, who had a history of questionable testimony and affidavits, was unable to name the people he supposedly had been investigating for two weeks, who had lived in the house for decades. Nor did supervisors make even a rudimentary effort to verify that the confidential informant who supposedly had bought heroin from Tuttle actually existed. Instead, investigators scrambled after the raid to identify the informant as Goines named one person after another before finally confessing that he had made the whole thing up.

“The identity of CI’s providing specific information about criminal activities…is required to be documented and readily accessible to police managers,” says a petition that Doyle filed in July 2019. “HPD’s managers knew from the beginning that there was no documented CI significant meeting record in its files supporting the assault on the Harding Street Home.” Oversight practices that “allow officers such as Gerald Goines to simply make up CI’s, or fabricate criminal activity used to justify warrants, would violate the Fourth Amendment,” the petition adds.

Did Tuttle and Nicholas realize that the armed men breaking into their home were police officers?

There is no body camera video of the raid. But according to Acevedo, the cops announced themselves at the same moment they broke in the door, then immediately used a shotgun to kill the couple’s dog. He said Tuttle responded by shooting at the officers with a .357 Magnum revolver. The cops returned fire, killing Tuttle, who was struck at least eight times, and Nicholas, who was hit twice.

The raid began around 5 p.m. According to Doyle, Tuttle and Nicholas were taking “an afternoon nap” at the time. While narcotics officers executing search warrants “don’t show up in uniform,” Acevedo said, “they do show up with plenty of gear that identifies them as police officers, including patrol officers that are out in front of the house.” But patrol officers outside the house do not give people inside the house notice that the men breaching their door and killing their dog are cops, and it’s not clear what other “gear” Acevedo had in mind.

Furthermore, Houston had recently seen a series of home invasions by robbers masquerading as cops. In these circumstances, it is plausible that Tuttle thought he was defending his home against dangerous criminals. Reckless drug war tactics invite that sort of confusion, which has had deadly consequences in cities across the country.

Why was Nicholas killed?

The cops claimed they shot Nicholas because she was moving toward an injured officer, who had collapsed on a couch, and they thought she was about to grab his shotgun. But an independent forensic examination of the house commissioned by Nicholas’ family and overseen by former Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent Michael Maloney concluded that Nicholas had been fatally shot by someone standing outside the house who would not have been able to see her.

Based on that investigation, the Nicholas family’s lawyers also questioned whether Tuttle had actually fired at the officers as they entered the house. “We see no evidence that anybody inside the house was firing toward the door,” attorney Chuck Bourque told the Houston Chronicle four months after the raid.

Were officers injured by friendly fire?

Four officers, including Goines, were struck by bullets during the raid. Whose bullets? While Acevedo indignantly rejected the suggestion that the cops were injured by anyone other than Tuttle, he presented no evidence to back up that position, and the Houston Police Department has refused to comment on the question. It has not even said how many rounds the cops fired or what ammunition they were using.

The Nicholas family thinks Narcotics Division supervisors could shed light on issues like these. For more than a year, the family’s attorneys have been trying to depose Capt. Paul Follis, who was in charge of the Narcotics Division at the time of the raid, and Lt. Marsha Todd, another supervisor, along with a designated representative of the city, in preparation for a potential wrongful death lawsuit.

The city has insisted that the case does not belong in Probate Court, an argument that the 14th District Court of Appeals rejected on March 26. Last Friday, the Texas Supreme Court declined to review that decision. On Monday, Judge Simoneaux said he would hold a hearing on November 13 to finally consider the Nicholas family’s deposition request.

“Our family’s search for the truth of what happened to Rhogena will continue—no matter what,” her brother John Nicholas said in a statement. “She did not deserve to be executed in her own home by the Houston Police Department. The mayor and chief of police still owe our family an explanation. We’re not going away.”

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Corey DeAngelis: COVID-19 Is Super-Spreading School Choice

Student_Masked_Elena_Bessonova

The lockdowns in response to COVID-19 have upended no part of our lives more than education, where virtually no K-12 schools are open for business with full-time, in-person instruction. The result is something approaching pandemonium for students, parents, and educators alike, all of whom are scrambling to make sense of a system that no longer seems capable of doing what it’s supposed to do. 

The one constant? Critiques of school choice—especially by wealthy, well-connected liberals such as Samantha Bee, the host of the popular commentary show Full Frontal on TBS. In a recent segment called “How The School Choice Debate Is Failing Our Public Schools,” Bee took a dark view of alternatives to traditional public schools, warning that “private and charter schools can be especially problematic because some states have virtually no oversight over them.”

As a matter of fact, Bee is wrong, especially about charter schools, which are always overseen by either local or state education officials. But her anxiety—and that of other defenders of the status quo—is understandable: The lockdowns and forced shift to mostly virtual learning are driving massive interest in alternatives to the residential-assignment public schools most Americans have attended for decades. Angry pushback from teachers unions about going back into classrooms and the desultory quality of learning via Zoom is activating parents in a way that white papers on school reform never did.

For today’s podcast, Nick Gillespie speaks with Corey DeAngelis, the director of school choice for Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website and podcast. They talk about why COVID-19 will almost certainly spur long-lasting interest in school choice and the success of the new collection DeAngelis co-edited with Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute, School Choice Myths: Setting the Record Straight on Education Reform. In a wide-ranging conversation, they also discuss presidential contender and former Vice President Joe Biden’s open antagonism toward school choice, especially charter schools, and whether President Donald Trump’s warm embrace of choice is actually a mixed blessing for reformers.

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Corey DeAngelis: COVID-19 Is Super-Spreading School Choice

Student_Masked_Elena_Bessonova

The lockdowns in response to COVID-19 have upended no part of our lives more than education, where virtually no K-12 schools are open for business with full-time, in-person instruction. The result is something approaching pandemonium for students, parents, and educators alike, all of whom are scrambling to make sense of a system that no longer seems capable of doing what it’s supposed to do. 

The one constant? Critiques of school choice—especially by wealthy, well-connected liberals such as Samantha Bee, the host of the popular commentary show Full Frontal on TBS. In a recent segment called “How The School Choice Debate Is Failing Our Public Schools,” Bee took a dark view of alternatives to traditional public schools, warning that “private and charter schools can be especially problematic because some states have virtually no oversight over them.”

As a matter of fact, Bee is wrong, especially about charter schools, which are always overseen by either local or state education officials. But her anxiety—and that of other defenders of the status quo—is understandable: The lockdowns and forced shift to mostly virtual learning are driving massive interest in alternatives to the residential-assignment public schools most Americans have attended for decades. Angry pushback from teachers unions about going back into classrooms and the desultory quality of learning via Zoom is activating parents in a way that white papers on school reform never did.

For today’s podcast, Nick Gillespie speaks with Corey DeAngelis, the director of school choice for Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website and podcast. They talk about why COVID-19 will almost certainly spur long-lasting interest in school choice and the success of the new collection DeAngelis co-edited with Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute, School Choice Myths: Setting the Record Straight on Education Reform. In a wide-ranging conversation, they also discuss presidential contender and former Vice President Joe Biden’s open antagonism toward school choice, especially charter schools, and whether President Donald Trump’s warm embrace of choice is actually a mixed blessing for reformers.

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Massachusetts Voters Will Decide (Again) Who Is Allowed To Fix Their Cars

carrepairs_1161x653

Millions of dollars are being spent to woo Massachusetts voters over a ballot proposition not about taxes, drug policy, or labor laws, but about how your car gets repaired and who is allowed to access your car’s data.

This November, Massachusetts voters will vote on a “right to repair” initiative, Question 1, that would establish that car manufacturers have to permit vehicle owners and independent repair facilities to access a car’s diagnostic data.

Supporting Question 1 is a coalition of auto parts stores and independent repairers who say they’re being left behind as auto manufacturers choose who can be authorized to access the increasingly complex computerized data. Supporters have contributed more than $21 million to get Question 1 passed.

Opposing Question 1 is a group of auto manufacturers (including General Motors, Ford, Honda, Toyota, and Nissan) under the umbrella of the Coalition for Safe and Secure Data. They have contributed more than $25 million to defeat the effort.

Massachusetts voters already weighed in on this in 2012 and voted to allow consumers and auto repair shops to have open access to vehicle diagnostic data. But over the past few years, auto manufacturers have increasingly implemented systems that transmit a car’s diagnostic information wirelessly to remote locations—known as telematics, technology also used for GPS tracking.

Now auto manufacturers are controlling who can access or receive this wirelessly collected data, which gives them the power to pick and choose who can repair cars, regardless of what consumers might want. So, this new ballot initiative will require that automakers, starting in 2022, have an open access data platform for third parties and owners to also see the data.

This fight has turned into a massive fear-driven campaign. Question 1 supporters say that carmakers are trying to force consumers to go to car dealerships for repairs and pay their higher costs. Auto manufacturers insist this is not true and that there will still be plenty of choices for car repairs.

Opponents of Question 1 are bluntly and sensationally warning that if the initiative passes, your car’s data may be accessed by hackers who can use the information to stalk you and break into your home. They’ve even gone so far as to claim that it will allow domestic abusers to access geolocation data from vehicles to track their victims. This isn’t true: According to the Boston Globe, these claims are in reference to a failed “license to repair” bill from California from 2014 that required that geolocation data be made available. Question 1 does not include such demands.

Beyond the fearmongering, there are genuine concerns that increasing access to a car’s data could set the platform up for cybersecurity vulnerabilities. But that’s an argument about being careful with technological development, not an excuse for depriving consumers of access to the data produced by the vehicles that they own. Jennifer King, who works at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, told the Boston Globe in September that these complaints are an example of “security fearmongering.”

“In theory, the fears that are being articulated could come true—if you build this platform with no security. But that would be really stupid,” King said. A group of cybersecurity experts signed onto a letter to the editor published in the Boston Herald declaring that “this small expansion to the state’s right to repair law in no way increases the risk of identity theft, cyber stalking or vehicle hacking.”

Polling currently shows broad support for passing Question 1. But if you’re confused as to why $50 million is being spent in this fight, after Massachusetts passed its previous “right to repair” law, auto manufacturers signed a memo saying they would make their laws compliant with the 2012 proposition across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., in an attempt to stop a patchwork of different ballot initiatives and laws passing elsewhere. So though Massachusetts is the sole state to adopt such “right to repair” laws, everybody will benefit.

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Massachusetts Voters Will Decide (Again) Who Is Allowed To Fix Their Cars

carrepairs_1161x653

Millions of dollars are being spent to woo Massachusetts voters over a ballot proposition not about taxes, drug policy, or labor laws, but about how your car gets repaired and who is allowed to access your car’s data.

This November, Massachusetts voters will vote on a “right to repair” initiative, Question 1, that would establish that car manufacturers have to permit vehicle owners and independent repair facilities to access a car’s diagnostic data.

Supporting Question 1 is a coalition of auto parts stores and independent repairers who say they’re being left behind as auto manufacturers choose who can be authorized to access the increasingly complex computerized data. Supporters have contributed more than $21 million to get Question 1 passed.

Opposing Question 1 is a group of auto manufacturers (including General Motors, Ford, Honda, Toyota, and Nissan) under the umbrella of the Coalition for Safe and Secure Data. They have contributed more than $25 million to defeat the effort.

Massachusetts voters already weighed in on this in 2012 and voted to allow consumers and auto repair shops to have open access to vehicle diagnostic data. But over the past few years, auto manufacturers have increasingly implemented systems that transmit a car’s diagnostic information wirelessly to remote locations—known as telematics, technology also used for GPS tracking.

Now auto manufacturers are controlling who can access or receive this wirelessly collected data, which gives them the power to pick and choose who can repair cars, regardless of what consumers might want. So, this new ballot initiative will require that automakers, starting in 2022, have an open access data platform for third parties and owners to also see the data.

This fight has turned into a massive fear-driven campaign. Question 1 supporters say that carmakers are trying to force consumers to go to car dealerships for repairs and pay their higher costs. Auto manufacturers insist this is not true and that there will still be plenty of choices for car repairs.

Opponents of Question 1 are bluntly and sensationally warning that if the initiative passes, your car’s data may be accessed by hackers who can use the information to stalk you and break into your home. They’ve even gone so far as to claim that it will allow domestic abusers to access geolocation data from vehicles to track their victims. This isn’t true: According to the Boston Globe, these claims are in reference to a failed “license to repair” bill from California from 2014 that required that geolocation data be made available. Question 1 does not include such demands.

Beyond the fearmongering, there are genuine concerns that increasing access to a car’s data could set the platform up for cybersecurity vulnerabilities. But that’s an argument about being careful with technological development, not an excuse for depriving consumers of access to the data produced by the vehicles that they own. Jennifer King, who works at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, told the Boston Globe in September that these complaints are an example of “security fearmongering.”

“In theory, the fears that are being articulated could come true—if you build this platform with no security. But that would be really stupid,” King said. A group of cybersecurity experts signed onto a letter to the editor published in the Boston Herald declaring that “this small expansion to the state’s right to repair law in no way increases the risk of identity theft, cyber stalking or vehicle hacking.”

Polling currently shows broad support for passing Question 1. But if you’re confused as to why $50 million is being spent in this fight, after Massachusetts passed its previous “right to repair” law, auto manufacturers signed a memo saying they would make their laws compliant with the 2012 proposition across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., in an attempt to stop a patchwork of different ballot initiatives and laws passing elsewhere. So though Massachusetts is the sole state to adopt such “right to repair” laws, everybody will benefit.

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Trump Takes Credit for Food Aid in Letter to Needy Families. Sound Familiar?

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The news, as it tends to be, has been dominated by President Donald Trump over the last several days, perhaps even more so with his recent COVID-19 diagnosis, which means one recent Trump tidbit largely flew under the radar: his requirement that billions of dollars in food aid packages for the needy arrive in tandem with a letter signed by him.

“As President, safeguarding the health and well-being of our citizens is one of my highest priorities,” the letter reads, referencing the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s $4 billion Farmers to Families Food Box Program. The initiative has purchased food typically bought by restaurants and rerouted it toward poor families, with over 100 million boxes sent since May. “As part of our response to the coronavirus, I prioritized sending nutritious food from our farmers to families in need throughout America.”

Reactions have not been uniformly positive, with some characterizing the letter as an overtly politicized election stunt. “In my 30 years of doing this work, I’ve never seen something this egregious,” Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Food Banks, told Politico. “These are federally purchased boxes.”

Some food banks have begun removing the letters. Meanwhile, several people appear to be receiving the aid and corresponding letter even though they aren’t underserved. “Why would someone receiving this really need to know this?” said Matthew Killen of Miami Beach, who is not in need but received a package of food on his doorstep, according to The Miami Herald. He lives in a majority Hispanic neighborhood, which he feels the administration “targeted” so Trump could “win [the] area.”

Readers might remember a string of similar criticisms leveled at former President Barack Obama during the 2012 election after the “Obamaphone” video went viral. “Everybody in Cleveland—low, minority—got Obamaphones,” says a woman who had shown up to protest at a Mitt Romney rally. “Keep Obama in president [sic]. He gave us a phone. He’s gonna do more.”

In reality, that controversy was a farce. Under the spotlight was the Lifeline program, which provides subsidies for communications to eligible low-income recipients. The catch: It was implemented in 1985 during the Reagan administration, and the Obama administration had sought to reform what was seen as a program plagued by massive fraud. The changes reportedly saved $213 million.

That didn’t get in the way of a semi-popular claim, however, that Obama was passing out phones for votes. “She may not know who George Washington is or Abraham Lincoln,” opined radio host Rush Limbaugh, “but she knows how to get an Obamaphone.” Former Rep. Adam Putnam (R–Fla.) had more pointed words: “Early vote now so that you can wave signs on election day next Tuesday,” he said. “We’ve got to drag people to the polls. That’s what they’re doing. You don’t have to offer them cell phones like they’re doing.”

The Trump administration denies that his food aid work was at all politically-motivated. “Politics has played zero role in the Farmers to Families food box program,” the Department of Agriculture said in a statement. “It is purely about helping farmers and distributors get food to Americans in need during this unprecedented time.”

Trump similarly attached a letter to the stimulus checks doled out as part of the government’s coronavirus relief program, though that was a bipartisan measure negotiated through Congress. The two programs have something else in common, though: They are the very types of “socialist” policies that many right-wingers usually condemn, a la “Obamaphones.”

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Jo Jorgensen Beating the Polling Spread in 4 States; Each Voted for Trump in 2016

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Four weeks before Election Day, third-party presidential candidates continue to lag in the polls compared to the spike year of 2016, when 5.7 percent of the electorate went nontraditional for POTUS. In the RealClearPolitics average of the last five national polls, Libertarian Jo Jorgensen sits at just 2 percent, while the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins is at a temporarily high 1.4 percent that will revert closer to 1 once the next poll rolls over. (Also, if Hawkins, in the face of near-fanatical Democratic voter motivation this year, tops 2016 nominee Jill Stein’s 1.1 percent, I will eat a Dodgers hat on live television.)

Still, there remains potential yet for Libertarians and even Greens to be labeled “spoilers” depending on how this high-intensity election plays out. Jorgensen is polling higher than the gap between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden in four key states, each of which Trump won in 2016: Ohio and North Carolina, where Biden currently leads, and Iowa and Georgia, where the incumbent retains a tiny advantage.

Here are those state races, ranked by the percentage-point distance between the third-party candidate and the margin between the top two.

1) Ohio, +2.3

Polling percentages: Biden 45.5, Trump 44.5, Jorgensen 3.3, Hawkins 0.8, other/not voting/undecided 6.5 (four polls)

Forecast: Rated a toss-up by 12 out of 14 prognosticators, with the other two leaning Trump. “Ohio looked like a red state a year ago,” noted Cleveland.com last week. “Heading into the presidential debate, it’s clearly a toss-up.”

2016 results: Trump 51.7, Hillary Clinton 43.6, Gary Johnson 3.2, Jill Stein 0.8, Richard Duncan 0.4

2) North Carolina, +1.0 

Polling percentages: Biden 45.8, Trump 44.6, Jorgensen 2.0, Hawkins 0.6, Constitution Party nominee Don Blankenship 0.4 (in eight polls), other/not voting/undecided 6.2 (17 polls)

Forecast: 13/14 toss-up, with one leaning Biden. “Most every political veteran in North Carolina, Democrat or Republican, is expecting a close race,” reported The New York Times on September 26. “Each of the last three presidential races in the state has been decided by less than four percentage points….[And] a number of people in the state have already voted: Absentee ballots began going out to the state’s voters three weeks ago.”

2016 results: Trump 49.8, Clinton 46.2, Johnson 2.7, Stein 0.3

3) Iowa, +1.0

Polling percentages: Trump 45.8, Biden 44.8, Jorgensen 2.0, Hawkins 0.7 (in 3 polls), other/not voting/undecided 6.8 (five polls)

Forecast: 9/14 rate it a toss-up, with five leaning Trump. Reports CNN this week: “Trump’s campaign canceled its planned television advertising in Iowa and Ohio this week, focusing its spending on states where Trump is behind even as polls show he is neck-and-neck with Democratic challenger Joe Biden in the two Midwestern states.”

2016 results: Trump 51.2, Clinton 41.7, Johnson 3.8, Evan McMullin 0.8, Stein 0.7, Darrell Castle (Constitution Party) 0.3, Lynn Kahn (New Independent) 0.1, Dan Vacek (Legal Marijuana Now) 0.1

4) Georgia, +0.6

Polling percentages: Trump 46.6, Biden 45.1, Jorgensen 2.1, Hawkins 1.0, other/not voting/undecided 5.6 (11 polls, four with Hawkins)

Forecast: 12/14 toss-up, with two leaning Trump. “In a wild 2020 election shaped by pandemic, protests and polarizing politics,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote last week, “suburban women could well determine the fate of Georgia’s presidential race, two U.S. Senate elections and down-ballot contests. And both parties have sharpened their pitches to win over the once-reliably Republican bloc.”

2016 results: Trump 50.4, Clinton 45.4, Johnson 3.0, Evan McMullin 0.3

Bonus state: Alaska, +/- ?

That’s a question mark because for some foolish reason POLLSTERS AREN’T INCLUDING THIRD-PARTY CANDIDATES IN ALASKA, NOT EVEN ONCE. This is a particularly unwise tactic in the Last Frontier since voters there are as likely as any in the union to vote against the grain—a combined 12.2 percent for non-Dems/Repubs in 2016. Ralph Nader got 10.1 percent of the vote there in 2000; Ross Perot got 28.4 percent of the vote in 1992.

Forecast: 13/14 prognosticators peg this race as likely or leaning Republican, and fair enough—Alaska has voted for the last 13 consecutive GOP presidential nominees, and by at least 14 percentage points for the past six. “Alaska’s values are the values of the Libertarian Party,” Jorgensen told the Juneau Empire last month. “We believe in the individual, we believe that people have the right to make their own decisions and we shouldn’t be bossed around by the people in Washington. The federal government is too big, too nosy, too, bossy and the worst part is, they usually end up hurting the very people they’re trying to help.”

2016 results: Trump 51.3, Clinton 36.6, Johnson 5.9, Stein 1.8, Castle 1.2, Reform Party nominee Rocky De La Fuente 0.4

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