Tag: hit&run

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Fox News personality and author Juan Williams laments the sorry state of the nation’s K-12 education system. He’s right to do so. Every year, we spend more public money and more resources per student and, overall, we see no increase in test scores or outcomes.

“Millions of black and Hispanic students in U.S. schools simply aren’t taught to read well enough to flourish academically. For them, the end of the school year marks another lost opportunity, another step toward a life of blunted potential,” writes Williams. “According to a March report by Child Trends, based on 2015 data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 21% of Hispanic fourth-grade students were deemed ‘proficient’ in reading. This is bad news. A fourth-grader’s reading level is a key indicator of whether he or she will graduate from high school.”

The news isn’t good for white students, either. ‘Only 46% of white fourth-graders—and 35% of fourth-graders of all races—were judged ‘proficient’ in reading in 2015,” Williams notes. Despite spending more money on education and more time in the classroom, U.S. kids rate average compared to students from other industrialized nations.

So, what to do? The first thing to do is not to spend more money. We’ve been doing that for decades and it hasn’t helped to bump scores (and, one assumes, knowledge or skills) upwards. Check out the chart by the late Andrew Coulson of Cato. In the 40 years between 1970 and 2010, the total cost of educating a kid from kindergarten to senior year of high school more than doubled, while scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) stayed flat. You can’t fill an busted bucket.

One answer that has been road-tested for going on 25 years now is the charter school, which are publicly funded schools that get a fraction of the typical per-pupil money given to traditional schools in exchange for the freedom to experiment with different sorts of programs and curricula. Charters are not in any way guaranteed revenue—they must draw students based on reputation and interest. Opponents of charters, which include teachers unions and a wide assortment of liberal groups such as People For The American Way (PFAW), point to studies which show that charters on average don’t outperform residential-assignment public schools. And just for fun, PFAW tries to throw in a scare about state-financed religion, accusing charters of “robbing our public education system of urgently needed funds, and sending taxpayer money to unaccountable private and religious schools.”

That’s a dodge, however. Charters aren’t private and they certainly aren’t unaccountable (they need to keep students coming back and all have internal and external oversight boards). But more importantly, they do produce better outcome for students. As University of Arkansas education professor Jay P. Greene argues, when you actually look at specific students via “randomized control trials” (RCTs), charters clearly help disadvantaged students do much better. RCTs allow researchers to isolate the effect of going to one school over another. In urban areas such as Chicago, Boston, and New York, RCTs found that charters decreased achievement gaps between minority and white students by as much as 86 percent. Go here for more specifics on the major RCTs that have been done, but here’s Greene’s conclusion:

When you have four RCTs – studies meeting the gold standard of research design – and all four of them agree that charters are of enormous benefit to urban students, you would think everyone would agree that charters should be expanded and supported, at least in urban areas.  If we found the equivalent of halving the black-white test score gap from RCTs from a new cancer drug, everyone would be jumping for joy – even if the benefits were found only for certain types of cancer.

If we want less tragedy in our lives—or, more specifically, in the lives of minority kids—charters represent a proven way to make things better.

Delivering on a campaign promise, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau plans to introduce legislation next spring that will legalize the production, distribution, and possession of marijuana for recreational purposes. In the meantime, a government-appointed Task Force on Marijuana Legalization and Regulation is supposed to hammer out the details, addressing the questions posed by a discussion paper it published last week. Although the paper gives no firm answers, it suggests that Canada’s regulatory regime could be stricter in some ways than the rules adopted by the four U.S. states that allow recreational use of marijuana but looser in others. Here are some of the major issues the paper covers:

Production. Based on Canada’s experience with licensed home cultivation and government-controlled production of medical marijuana, the task force concludes that “neither approach would be in the public interest in the context of the larger numbers of users expected in a legalized market.” In other words, “some form of private sector production with appropriate government licensing and oversight” will be necessary to supply recreational consumers.

Distribution. The task force suggests that recreational marijuana, like medical marijuana, might initially be distributed exclusively through the mail (an option that is not allowed in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, or Alaska) but concedes that “allowing for some ability for the sale of marijuana to occur in a legal, regulated retail environment may be required in order to provide an alternative to the current illegal sellers that exist in certain Canadian cities.”

Minimum purchase age. The paper says “the science indicates that risks from marijuana usage are elevated until the brain fully matures (i.e., when someone reaches about age 25).” But it also notes that Colorado et al. all picked a minimum purchase age of 21 (as did the backers of legalization initiatives that are expected to be on the ballot in five other states this year), which corresponds to the alcohol purchase age that prevails throughout the U.S. In Canada, by contrast, the drinking age ranges rom 18 to 19.   

Marketing. The task force says “the early experiences of Colorado and Washington State suggest very strongly that the Government should take steps to avoid the commercialization of legalized marijuana, including the active promoting and marketing of marijuana, leading to widespread use.” Those steps include “advertising and marketing restrictions to minimize the profile and attractiveness of products.” It’s not clear that the limits would go further than the rules adopted by Colorado et al., although Canadian regulators have more legal leeway to restrict speech in the name of child protection and public health.

Taxes. The task force warns that “the use of taxation and pricing measures to discourage consumption must be properly balanced against the need to minimize the attractiveness of the black market and dissuade illegal production and trafficking.”

Edibles. “It is understood that individuals may choose to create marijuana products, such as baked goods, for personal consumption,” the paper says. “However, consideration should be given to how edibles are treated in the new regime in light of the significant health risks, particularly to children and to youth.” No U.S. state where marijuana is legal has banned edibles, although Colorado recently imposed limits on the shapes of THC-infused treats, a symbolic measure that soothes the sensibilities of legislators without reducing the likelihood of accidental consumption.

Potency limits. “Higher concentration products have added risks and unknown long term impacts, and those risks are exacerbated for young people, including children,” the task force says. “Given the significant health risks, maximum THC limits could be set and high-potency products strictly prohibited.” No U.S. state has imposed such a limit so far.

Consumption locations. The task force says “consumption of marijuana could be restricted to private residences.” Then again, “the system may need to be pragmatic to respond to the demand for venues to consume marijuana outside the home in order to avoid proliferation of consumption in all public spaces.” To address that concern, “consideration could be given to identifying—and strictly limiting and controlling—allowable sites for use by adults.” No U.S. state explicitly allows marijuana consumption outside the home, although some Colorado jurisdictions tolerate it and regulators in Alaska have left the door open to cannabis clubs.

Marijuana-impaired driving. The paper says “the government could establish an offence of driving while having a specified concentration of THC in the blood, similar to the offence of driving with a blood alcohol level.” It does not mention that the science supporting such a standard, which Colorado and Washington have adopted, is much weaker than the science linking blood alcohol concentration to impairment.

Summing up the discussion paper, which carries the cautious title “Toward the Legalization, Regulation and Restriction of Access to Marijuana,” National Post columnist Kelly McParland writes:

If anyone thought the breezy support for recreational pot offered by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the campaign trail would translate into neighbourhood “dispensaries” peddling a rich and varied assortment of products to passing clients, they will be deeply disappointed. The plan looks much more likely to be about control, policing and regulation. Fun has nothing to do with it. 

The nine-member task force, which is chaired by a former health minister and includes five doctors, takes a “public health” approach, which in theory should consider the pleasure that people get from consuming intoxicants but in practice almost never does. Still, regulation aimed at minimizing morbidity and mortality is an improvement on uniform criminalization (which remains in place, even for possession of small amounts, until the new legislation is enacted), and it may ultimately prove more friendly to consumers than McParland expects—not because public health busybodies care about fun per se but because consumers do, and their demands must be taken into account by anyone hoping to replace the black market with something better.

Rumor has it that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) plans to legalize marijuana any day now. Rumor also has it that Barack Obama is secretly a foreign-born Muslim and that the CIA had a hand in the attack that brought down the World Trade Center. Unfortunately, that first claim is about as likely to be true as the other two, Jacob Sullum explains. 

It is true that the DEA has not responded yet to a pair of petitions asking it to reclassify marijuana, which since 1970 has sat in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the law’s most restrictive category. Schedule I supposedly is reserved for drugs with “a high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted medical use,” drugs that cannot be used safely even under a doctor’s supervision. It is doubtful that marijuana meets any of those criteria, let alone all three. But the DEA, which has wide discretion to interpret and apply the CSA criteria, has always insisted that marijuana must stay in Schedule I until its medical utility is proven by the sort of large, expensive, randomized clinical trials the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) demands before approving a new pharmaceutical.

View this article.

• New poll: Hillary Clinton 39 percent, Donald Trump 35 percent, Gary Johnson 8 percent.
• Gary Johnson on Donald Trump: “”The stuff he’s saying is just incendiary. It’s racist.”
• Donald Trump has reportedly drawn up a vice presidential short list.
• Saudi Arabia was hit by three separate suicide attacks in a 24-hour period, including one attack in the Islamic holy site of Medina.
• The NASA space probe Juno is now orbiting Jupiter.
• Brexit advocate Nigel Farage is resigning from his role as leader of the UK Independence Party.

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New York City has a long history of making life difficult for those looking to make themselves upwardly mobile.

J.D. Tuccille writes:

“This is not supposed to look like a souk,” then-Mayor Ed Koch complained in 1988 about the lines of carts and customers on midtown streets. He ordered a strict crackdown on pushcart vendors that inconvenienced hungry customers but economically crippled struggling entrepreneurs, some of whose carts were confiscated. “Souk” is just a word for marketplace, which is where people buy and sell goods and create prosperity. If a city isn’t supposed to look like a souk, it’s hard to visualize how it should look.

The limits Koch put in place are still in effect. But he was hardly the first offender—or the first person to express contempt for the sight of largely immigrant vendors working hard to feed their families.

“[T]he practical disadvantages from the undue congestion of peddlers in certain localities are so great as to lead to a demand in many quarters for the entire abolition of this industry, if it may be dignified by the term,” sniffed the Report of the Mayor’s Push-Cart Commission in 1906.

View this article.

Less than a fortnight after the Brexit vote, things are looking up.

Marian Tupy writes:

To start with, everyone is keeping an eye on the markets, which rose rather than collapsed. In fact, the London stock exchange ended last week higher than at any point over the last 13 months. The Pound has dropped by 8 percent, which is bad news for the British travelers, but great news for British exporters who have been revising their future earnings predictions upwards. Far from shunning Britain, countries throughout the world have been lining up to conclude bi-lateral trade deals with the world’s fifth largest economy. The United States has walked back Barack Obama’s counterproductive threat to put Great Britain in the “back of the queue.” Eleven countries, including Iceland, India, New Zealand, Australia, Ghana, Canada, Mexico, Switzerland and South Korea, are already knocking on Britain’s door. Such is the interest in trade deals with Britain that London worries about not having enough trade negotiators. That problem too shall be overcome, as New Zealand and Australia have offered to lend Britain their own trade negotiators.

To make matters even more promising, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has announced that he is considering cutting Britain’s corporate tax from 20 percent to 15 percent. That would make British corporate tax rate the second lowest in OECD countries and close to Ireland’s 12.5 percent rate. A consensus seems to be emerging that Britain will be, at least initially, a low-tax and free-trade haven on the E.U.’s doorstep, a nightmare for Eurocrats if there ever were one. 

View this article.

The FBI has directed local law enforcement agencies in Orlando not to release records regarding the Pulse night club shooting. Twenty-five media outlets have sued to gain access to the records.

It was blind faith in her single source—a faith bordering on zealotry—that doomed Rolling Stone contributing editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely to write a false story about gang rape at the University of Virginia.

New documents submitted in court Friday as part of UVA Dean Nicole Eramo’s lawsuit against the magazine make clear that Erdely was given plenty of reason to distrust Jackie. Instead, Erdely rationalized Jackie’s repeated failure to produce corroborating witnesses by surmising that these were the actions of a true victim and survivor of sexual assault.

The documents released Friday contain hundreds of pages of Erdely’s notes, and transcriptions of her interviews with more than a dozen key players, including Jackie, friend Alex Pinkleton, and UVA anti-rape activist (and White House advisor) Emily Renda. Here are five of the most interesting things they reveal about the debacle.

1) Jackie Really Did Seem Traumatized

To be absolutely clear, Jackie’s retelling of her subsequent trauma was convincing (even if the story itself was hard to believe). Jackie painted a compelling portrait of a student who had suffered harrowing, ongoing emotional abuse. She described being unable to get out of bed for weeks, failing classes, suffering panic attacks whenever she encountered members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, having suicidal thoughts, and eventually seeking support and counselling.

Anecdotal evidence suggested that this trauma was genuine. After interviewing Jackie, her then boyfriend, and Pinkleton, Erdely accompanied them to the Phi Kappa Psi house to inspect the scene of the crime. As they drew near the house, Jackie suffered a breakdown, burst into tears, and ran away. Erdely witnessed this episode herself, and took it as one of many indications of Jackie’s credibility.

Jackie wasn’t always consistent, but the inconsistencies didn’t seem compelling enough to dent Erdely’s faith. In fact, these inconsistencies largely confirmed to Erdely that Jackie was telling the truth, since Erdely believed that such behavior was typical of survivors of sexual assault. It’s no mystery why Erdely had come to hold this view: she consistently relied on the testimony of biased sexual assault experts, including Wendy Murphy and David Lisak.

2) Failing to Interview Jackie’s Mom and Friends Was the Mistake

Erdely made a significant misstep when it came to second-hand sourcing, and it’s one that is well-documented in her notes. Indeed, if this error had been addressed properly before publication, the entire story would likely have unraveled. Instead of seeking comment from the most relevant witnesses—Jackie’s mother, her friend Ryan Duffin, and alleged perpetrator Haven Monahan—Erdely accepted Jackie’s contention that her mother and Ryan wouldn’t consent to be interviewed. And she didn’t obtain the name “Haven Monahan” until the story had already gone to print.

Erdely interviewed many friends of Jackie’s who could testify to her emotional state in the weeks following the attack. But Duffin—along with two other friends, Kathryn Hendley and Alex Stock—encountered Jackie immediately after the rape, and could have given key evidence about her physical state. Her mother could have confirmed the existence of Jackie’s bloodied dress. To her credit, Erdely repeatedly asked to speak with these people, but Jackie stonewalled her. She also refused to give Erdely the last names of Duffin, Hendley, and Stock, which prevented the reporter from interviewing them herself.

Erdely also insisted that Jackie provide the name of her attacker so that she could reach him for comment. Jackie adamantly refused, and after consulting with her editors, Erdely decided that comment wasn’t necessary. But here’s the thing—even if she wasn’t going to contact him, Erdely should still have pressed Jackie for the name, if only to confirm his existence. A Google search would have revealed that no such person existed: indeed, this is exactly what happened, once Jackie gave up the name after publication of the article.

3) Jackie’s Obsession with Law and Order: SVU Played a Role

Did Jackie base her story on an episode of Law and Order: SVU? It seems plausible.

According to the documents, Jackie told Erdely she was obsessed with the show—she recalled, off the top of her head, that main character Elliot Stabler departed the show after its 12th season.

Jackie told Erdely that her assault called to mind a specific episode in which a female college student is gang raped by fraternity members. No one believes the girl, and she eventually commits suicide.

Jackie also said that some time after her assault, she re-watched the episode with her father. This prompted her to tell him, for the first time, that what happened to the girl on the show had also happened to her.

4) Jackie’s Scars Were a Tricky Issue

Jackie described being knocked into a table and pressed against broken glass as part of her ordeal. But it’s not clear whether there was any evidence of scarring on her body, even though Erdely looked for marks.

The reporter wrote in her notes that she couldn’t see any scars on Jackie’s arms, and Jackie’s boyfriend said that he had never noticed any on her back. Jackie said that her mother believed they had faded over time.

One former friend of Jackie’s told Erdely that she had noticed scratches, but attributed those to Jackie’s cat, and possibly, to self-harm.

5) ‘Our Worst Nightmare’: Erdely’s Dramatic Realization that Jackie Was Lying Happened All at Once

Journalist Richard Bradley was the first to express skepticism of Erdely’s reporting. He did so on November 24. I followed with my own article on December 1, which quoted Bradley.

For several days, our misgivings didn’t phase Erdely, even though many other news outlets had repeated them. Erdely stood by her story until the night of December 4. Up until that point, she was planning to publish a follow-up article expressing complete confidence in Jackie.

What changed? Very late that evening, Erdely had a conversation with Jackie in which she asked for assistance in identifying Haven Monahan. Jackie was evasive, and eventually hung up the phone. Erdely then called Pinkleton, who had been trying to track down Haven Monahan herself. They agreed that the story no longer added up. “Hardly anything she said to me or said to you over the past year is working out at all,” said Pinkleton.

Erdely then sent an email to her editors with the subject line, “Our Worst Nightmare.” In the email, she wrote, “We have to issue a retraction.”

In a statement to the court, Erdely apologized for her missteps.

“I cannot stress enough that at the time the Article was published, and until the early morning of December 5, I firmly believed that everything in it was true. It was never my intention to cause harm, and I feel nothing but sorrow and regret over the entire experience. If I had had any doubts prior to publication about the integrity of this story, or about Jackie’s credibility as a source, I would not have published it.”

(Thanks to KC Johnson for providing the documents. Read his comments here.)

In an era of endless military conflict, anti-war sentiment abides among Democrats. In 2004, their presidential nomination went to John Kerry, who was strongly critical of George W. Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq. In 2008, they chose Barack Obama, largely because he had opposed that war. This year, 12 million people cast ballots for Bernie Sanders, who voted against it. 

According to Gallup, 68 percent of Democrats think the Iraq War was a mistake—compared with just 31 percent of Republicans. Two in three reject the use of ground combat troops against Islamic State. 

Then there is Hillary Clinton, who will be this year’s nominee. As Steve Chapman explains, few Democrats have more consistently favored the use of military force. She voted for the Iraq War. As secretary of state, she urged President Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan. 

View this article.

• The United States celebrates Independence Day.
• The FBI interviewed Hillary Clinton as part of its probe into her use of a personal e-mail server. Donald Trump says sources tell him Clinton won’t face charges.
• A suicide truck bomber killed at least 125 in Baghdad in an attack for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility. A suicide bomber near a U.S. diplomatic site in Saudi Arabia injured two security guards while killing himself.
• One person is dead and two are injured after a brawl in a North Carolina country club.
• A second alligator was involved in the attack at a Disney resort in Florida that killed a toddler, said the boy’s father.
• The Marlins beat the Braves 5 to 2 at Fort Bragg, in the first major league game ever played on an active U.S. military base.