Tag: hit&run

Politico
notes that Democrats have reoriented their Obamacare PR efforts
toward defending against attacks that focus on higher health
insurance premiums. The news, though, is not so much that Democrats
are preparing to defend the law as that they are openly worried
about the political effects of higher health insurance
premiums.

“Most state health insurance rates for 2015 are scheduled to be
approved by early fall, and most are likely to rise,” the piece
says, “timing that couldn’t be worse for Democrats already on
defense in the midterms.”

The party behind the health law probably should be
concerned. The conservative Heritage Foundation has projected
double digit rate increases in states such as Arkanas, Alaska, and
Louisiana. And, as the report indicates, “although no state has
finalized its rate, 21 have posted bids for 2015. Average
preliminary premiums went up in all 21, though only a few by double
digits.” These are unsubsidized rates, and some will likely be
negotiated down. 

It’s not clear how big the hikes will be, in other words, but so
far it looks very much like the trend is toward somewhat higher
rates in most places and significantly higher rates in a few areas,
despite repeated administration promises that the law would lower
the cost of health care. (“We end up saving $2 trillion…a lot of
those savings can go back into the pockets of American consumers in
the form of lower premiums,” Obama
said in 2009.)

How will Democrats respond? House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s
communications director provides a hint, telling Politico
that there’s a lot of “misinformation” and that “you have to make
sure that members have the historical trends, they have the new
information in a straightforward way….It’s setting the proper
context that’s so crucial here.” The context and the historical
trends all seem fairly straightforward here: President Obama
promised that the law would reduce premiums. Now, with the law’s
coverage expansion taking effect, unsubsidized premiums for plans
purchased on the exchanges look likely to rise. 

To the extent that there is a bigger picture here, it’s that
Democrats, having unilaterally passed Obamacare, now in some sense
have taken ownership of the nation’s health care system. Its
problems are their problems, and that’s not a particularly enviable
position to be in going into an election. 

The National Education
Association has called for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s
head on a platter. It appears as though the Obama administration is
declining to oblige.
From Politico:

The NEA adopted the resolution last week at its representative
assembly in Denver, where the air was charged with anger and
members buzzed with frustration at Duncan and other education
reformers — especially their emphasis on high-stakes testing.

The resolution blamed Duncan for a “failed education agenda”
consisting of policies that “undermine public schools and colleges,
the teaching education professionals, and education unions.”

Beyond the typical teacher union efforts to try to block
performance evaluations that are tied to testing scores,
Politico notes that the origins for the call to Duncan to
resign originated from the California Teachers Association and
Duncan’s response to the recent Vergara v. California
ruling. Reason’s Brian Doherty
noted this decision back in June. A California Superior Court
ruled that the state’s absurd tenure system—where teachers become
pretty much impossible to get rid of after less than two years on
the job—damages students’ state constitutional right to an
education.

Duncan supported the decision as a chance for education
reform:

Duncan said the Vergara v. California ruling
in June presents an opportunity to set a meaningful bar for teacher
tenure. CTA said his stance shows “disrespect for the hard-working
educators in our schools” and a “lack of understanding of education
law and policy.”

“Since the beginning, Duncan’s department has been led by
graduates of the Broad Academy, Education Trust-West and other
organizations determined to scapegoat teachers and their unions,”
the California group wrote. “Most recently, some of these former
Obama administration staffers announced a national campaign
attacking educators’ rights.”

There does seem to be a growing fracture between leading
Democrats and teachers unions, which Politico also
took note of in June. I interviewed former California
legislator
Gloria Romero about it in 2013, and the cracks are visible in
large urban environments where poorer communities are discovering
that entrenched unions are more concerned about protecting their
own interests and getting a bigger piece of the budget pie for
themselves, while actual students languish in classrooms full of
indifferent teachers that can’t be removed.

Will this eventually result in a Tea Party-style split on the
left between the establishment and Democratic politicians who see
where the populist winds are blowing in the actual grassroots? Is
it already happening?

Students for Concealed Carry, a
gun rights group,
is suing Ohio State University for maintaining an illegally
broad anti-gun policy that prevents students from carrying guns
even when they aren’t on campus property—a violation of state law,
according to the group.

State law prohibits students from carrying guns on college
campuses. SFCC isn’t fighting that. But the law specifically
permits students to bring their guns onto campus as long as they
leave them locked in their cars. OSU’s student handbook, however,
forbids students from bringing guns onto campus at all, even if the
weapons are left behind in locked cars, and even “if otherwise
permitted by state law.”

Lawyers representing the two groups, SFCC and Ohioans for
Concealed Carry, say public universities can’t trump state law and
establish even stricter anti-gun policies.

“The Ohio Revised Code is clear that the legislature retains
sole authority to regulate the possession of firearms,” said Derek
DeBrosse, one of the two lawyers representing the groups, in a
statement. “Ohio State’s policies are in direct violation of the
law.”

The discrepancies between state law and OSU’s gun policies are
not trivial. Under state law, students who drive to campus through
dangerous neighborhoods have the right to bring firearms with them
for protection, as long as they leave their guns in their cars.
OSU’s handbook makes this impossible, however.

Students are also forbidden under OSU policy from possessing
guns while engaged in official university activities, even if those
activities take place off campus.

In implementing such a strict anti-gun policy, OSU
administrators—utilizing the bad logic of “gun free zones,” i.e.,
zones where potential victims are guaranteed to be unarmed—believed
they were somehow keeping their students safer. But Zachary
Zalneraitis, director of public relations at SFCC, said that
stripping students of even the most basic ability to defend
themselves doesn’t make anyone safer.

“Universities typically did not allow concealed carry in the
past, but in the places where it has been implemented, we haven’t
seen the doom and gloom that [administrators] predicted,” he told
Reason.

The court date is set for July of 2015.

After
her 7-year-old daughter, Liza, was diagnosed with an aggressive and
generally fatal kind of brain tumor in 2011, Jennifer Scherr
decided to treat the cancer with cannabis oil. At the time
marijuana was not legal for medical use in Illinois, although a law
authorizing a pilot
program took effect this year. Scherr’s father-in-law, Curtis
Scherr, a Chicago police officer, nevertheless agreed to help her
grow marijuana in the hope of prolonging his granddaughter’s life.
He obtained the high-intensity light bulbs Jennifer needed and
stopped by the house periodically to check on the grow operation.
But about a week after Liza died in July 2012, Curtis ratted out
her grieving mother, filing a search warrant application in which
he reported having seen 50 marijuana plants in Jennifer’s basement.
A state judge issued a warrant, which a dozen or so DEA agents used
to search Jennifer’s house on July 19. They did not find any
contraband, since Jennifer had discarded the plants after Liza’s
death.

Between Curtis’s marijuana cultivation assistance and his
appalling betrayal of his daughter-in-law there was considerable
acrimony over funeral plans, which seems to have been the officer’s
motive in seeking the search warrant. But according to a
ruling issued last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the 7th Circuit, the search did not violate Jennifer’s Fourth
Amendment rights. Regardless of his motive, the court said, Curtis
had probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime would be
discovered in a search of Jennifer’s home, since marijuana was at
the time illegal for all uses under both state and federal law.

Judge Richard Posner conceded that “Curtis’s behavior,
which culminated in the DEA’s search of his daughter-in-law’s
house, was, if it was as the complaint describes it, atrocious.”
Furthermore, the officer’s failure to disclose his relationship to
the suspect made his warrant application “misleadingly incomplete.”
Had Curtis been more forthcoming, Posner suggested, the search
probably never would have happened:

Curtis was concealing from the judge asked to issue the search
warrant information that if disclosed in the affidavit might well
have doomed the application. Had the affidavit stated that the
suspected possessor of the 50 marijuana plants was the affiant’s
own daughter-in-law, the judge would almost certainly have asked
Curtis what was going on that would induce him to accuse his own
daughter-in-law of criminal behavior, and upon learning the details
the judge probably would have told Curtis to “work things
out” privately—that this wasn’t a proper matter for a criminal
proceeding.

Still, Posner wrote, “the law is settled…that a police
officer’s motive in applying for a warrant does not invalidate the
warrant.” He called that “a sensible rule, though distasteful when
applied in a case like this.” He added that Jennifer probably would
have more success in pressing a state claim against Curtis for
intentional infliction of emotional distress, since “there is
little doubt (always assuming the truth of the allegations in the
complaint) that Curtis Scherr intended to inflict severe emotional
distress on his daughter-in-law and succeeded in doing so.”

There’s another big Obamacare
legal decision on the way—and this one could be the most
consequential yet.

Sometime soon, perhaps as early as this week, the DC Circuit
Court will rule on the case of Halbig vs. Burwell, which
challenges the legality of the insurance subsidies that are the
foundation of the health law’s private coverage expansion.

The potential impact is huge: If the court rules against the
law, the subsidies of the vast majority of individuals who signed
up for health coverage in the federally facilitated exchanges
operating in 36 states would be put at risk. A decision against the
administration would not destroy the law—but it would completely
upend the current implementation of Obamacare.

The challengers in this case have the virtues of clarity and
simplicity on their side: The text of the law clearly and
unequivocally states that subsidies are only available through
exchanges “established by the State.” This is not some one-off
drafting mistake, as many initially believed. The language is
repeated throughout the law, and “State” is even explicitly defined
to mean state government.

And yet the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued a rule
allowing for the disbursement of subsidies, in the form of tax
credits, to individuals who sign up for coverage in exchanges run
by the federal government. That’s exactly what the administration
has done. During Obamacare’s first open enrollment period, which
ran from October 2013 thru March 2014, the federal government ran
exchanges for 36 states,
signing up about 5.4 million people for coverage, 86 percent of
whom were subsidized. The tax credits are substantial. On average,
they
cover about 76 percent of the monthly premium payment for
people who get subsidized coverage within the federal
exchange. 

Yet by the plain language of the law, those subsidies are
illegal. The spending is not authorized by law. As Michael Cannon
of the Cato Institute and Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve
University Law School have argued in a
paper laying out the legal case against the IRS rule, the
“largest effect” of the IRS rule allowing subsidies in the federal
exchanges is to “increase federal spending.” Essentially, they
write, the rule “appropriates federal dollars without statutory
authority.”

Because they do not have the plain language of the law on their
side, Obamacare’s defenders have taken a decidedly more
impressionistic approach. Their argument is that the “structure”
and “purpose” of the law make it clear overall that the health
law’s insurance subsidies were meant to be available in all
exchanges, regardless of whether the exchange was set up by the
feds or by a state. “Congress is clearly indicating that it wants a
system of exchanges, nationwide, to provide affordable health care
for all Americans,”
argued Justice Department lawyer Stuart Delery in March.

If that’s what Congress meant to clearly indicate, then perhaps
that’s what Congress should have written. The administration’s
argument, then, boils down to the idea that Congress could not have
meant what it actually wrote when it said that subsidies are
available in exchanges established by states, and that what
Congress is supposed to have “indicated” in the law’s larger
structure and statement of purpose should rule rather than the
plain text itself. Squint your eyes and look at the general shape
of the law, but ignore the contradictory specifics.

One lower-court judge has already been convinced by this
approach, but the challengers may have more luck with the
three-judge panel in the Circuit court, which heard oral arguments
in March. As National Journal’s Sam Baker
reports, “Two judges appeared to split along partisan lines,
leaving Judge Thomas Griffith, a George W. Bush appointee, as the
likely swing vote. Griffith seemed during oral arguments to at
least be open to the challengers’ arguments, and perhaps leaning in
their direction.”

The Circuit court’s decisions are typically released on Tuesday
and Friday mornings, which means a decision could arrive as soon as
tomorrow.

“The New Yorker’s Dana
Goodyear on the Coming Clash Between Foodies & Food Regulators”
is the latest video from Reason TV. Watch above or click on the
link below for video, full text, supporting links, downloadable
versions, and more Reason TV clips.

View this article.

How do you feel about all COPS on the street?
That’s the Criminal Observation and Protection System, which is a
network of cameras the Syracuse, New York Police Department has
been setting up throughout the city.

In case you want a closer look at COPS, Syracuse.com just

published a map of all the officers’ watchful eyes on ground.
The site reports that “the Syracuse Police Department has deployed
more than 40 surveillance cameras” under this system “since
installing the first in 2011.”

The police department has brushed aside privacy concerns,
instead focusing on how much safer the city will be. The glaring
problem is that cameras don’t really stop that much crime. Various
studies
throughout the years and around the world have concluded as
much. The constant presence of government cameras do negatively
affect people, though. Police throughout America have abused their
access to cameras,
among many other ways, by blackmailing patrons of gay bars and
stalking women.  

Some Syracuse residents who are under the impression that
cameras are an effective crime deterrent are up in arms that the
COPS rollout hasn’t been quicker and bigger, though, so they’re

setting up their own. Of course, individuals have every right
to patrol their own property. But, how long will it be until law
enforcement pushes for a volunteer network of private cameras
accessible by police for real-time monitoring? Cities elsewhere in
the U.S. are increasingly playing with the idea. Grand Rapids,
Michigan just initiated such a partnership
last month. San Jose, California has
also been mulling such a system this year.

Unfortunately, the above map will have to be updated in a few
months, because the department is planning a roughly 50 percent
increase, which “includes 10 in the downtown business district;
nine on the East Side, mostly along East Fayette Street between
Columbus Avenue and Croly Street; and two near Beauchamp Library at
South Salina and Colvin streets.”

Early this morning the Washington State Liquor
Control Board (LCB) notified
about 20 license applicants that they have been approved to begin
selling marijuana as early as tomorrow. At least a few pot shops
plan to open their doors this week, including Cannabis City in
Seattle, Kouchlock Productions in Spokane, Rainier on Pine in
Tacoma, New Vansterdam in Vancouver, 2020 Solutions and Top Shelf
Cannabis in Bellingham, Altitude in Prosser, and the Freedom Market
in Kelso. But
they won’t have much to sell, since the LCB began licensing
growers just a few months ago and has issued only 80 or so
cultivation licenses so far, with more than 2,500 applications
pending. As a result of the meager supply, the stores are
expected to impose purchase limits below the one ounce that is
legally allowed and charge around $25 per gram,
more than twice the prices charged by medical marijuana
dispensaries and black-market dealers in Washington.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Jake Ellison

argues that “legal marijuana stores won’t matter much in
Seattle,” the state’s biggest and most cannabis-friendly city,
which eventually is supposed to have 21 licensed pot shops but at
first will have just one:

Except for tourists and the pot curious, who will each buy a few
grams at most, the appeal of state-licensed recreational marijuana
won’t go much farther than novelty in Seattle. Especially under the
current tax and regulatory structure pushing prices up…but not just
because of that.

The strongest reason is cultural: Regular users already have a
cornucopia of choices and law enforcement around here has spent
years getting used to marijuana as a low-priority, creating in the
Emerald City something akin to an open market for cannabis.

Consequently, it’s easy to get.

“Oh, you mean the scary dude skulking in the alleyway?”

Not exactly.

Just Google “deliver marijuana Seattle” or pick up a copy of The
Stranger and look at the back page… and you’re on your way. Or,
take the afternoon off and get a medical card. Then your options
for delivery or in-store shopping are nearly limitless, with
hundreds of MMJ storefronts throughout Seattle.

Those dispensaries, which operate as “collective gardens” with
rotating memberships, will be
officially noncompliant with Seattle zoning law as of January
1. But given the LCB’s slow pace in setting up the new distribution
system, it seems some sort of accommodation will be necessary.
“Realistically,” says Alison Holcomb, who ran the campaign to
legalize marijuana in Washington, “we are going to be looking at a
transition period. Seattle certainly isn’t going to shut down 200
dispensaries before the end of 2014.” This year the state
legislature considered several bills that would have shut down the
dispensaries, and it is expected to take up the issue again next
year. But the assumption that state-licensed retailers will be up
to the task of serving patients anytime soon is looking
increasingly shaky.

Published at LiveLeak by Buck
O’Fama (just possibly a pseudonym) is this video
demonstration of a 3D-printed pistol version of a Ruger 10/22—a
popular semiautomatic .22 rifle. The receiver is 3D printed and
glued together, with metal parts added, including what appears to
be the bolt.

The text reads:

The pistol version of the popular Ruger 10/22 rifle, the Ruger
Charger comes standard with 10-round flush magazines and can accept
high-capacity mags holding 30 rounds or more. As demonstrated,
making one with a cheap small-format 3D printer and some parts
purchased on the internet (with no paperwork) is trivially
easy.

We don’t see the printing process, so we’ll have to take Buck
O’Fama’s word that the Ruger Charger was “printed in two sections
on an inexpensive, small-format 3D printer, and those sections were
crazy-glued together,” and joined with mail order parts. But this
seems a logical development of the 3D-printed firearms technology
that we’ve seen evolve over the last year-plus.

Solid Concepts, an engineering firm,
has fully 3D printed metal 1911-style pistols on high-end
printers, but this is the closest we’ve come so far—and damned
close it is, if this pans out—to a 3D-printed semiautomatice
firearm being produced on an inexpensive machine.

O’Fama closes closes the video by pointing out, “If you take my
gun, I will simply print another one.”

Rick Santorum and President Barack Obama don’t
agree on much, observes A. Barton Hinkle. But on one particular
point they are in total accord: Whatever they want, it will do
wonders for the economy. In other words, Hinkle explains, Santorum
and Obama are equally illiterate when it comes to understanding
basic economics.

View this article.