Tag: posts

• A top Homeland Security
  Department official testifying before Congress stated that
  HealthCare.gov has been subject to approximately
  16 cyberattacks and one unsuccessful “denial of service”
  attack. This was the first time an administration official publicly
  acknowledged that there have been any cyberattacks on the Obamacare
  website. So, it’s not just the feds who want to steal your medical
  records.
• Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) said approval for the U.S.
  Congress is so low
  even his 101-year-old mother no longer supports the legislative
  branch.
• A law banning undetectable firearms
  is set to expire, which has thrown federal law enforcement
  officials into hysterics about the potential security threats posed
  by 3D printed plastic guns.
• Mobile messaging startup Snapchat
  rejected an acquisition offer from Facebook that would
  have valued the company at $3 billion or more.
• A US aircraft carrier and two cruisers have arrived in the
  Philippines to help communities
  devastated by Typhoon Haiyan, one of the deadliest typhoons on
  record.
• The number of people who applied for unemployment benefits fell
  by by 2,000 to
  339,000 last week. 
• Former German President Christian Wulff is
  going on trial accused of receiving and granting favors in
  office. 

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Writing in the
Wall Street Journal, Ramesh Ponnuru (AEI, National Review) and
Yuval Levin (National Affairs, Ethics and Public Policy Center)
argue that the Republicans should propose a concrete alternative to
Obamacare. I think they are correct that if the GOP actually wants
to improve health-care policy – as opposed to simply enjoy immense
political gain in the near-term – it needs to do more than
slow-clap as the good ship ACA goes down.

Their basic idea is replacing Obamacare with 

a flat and universal tax benefit for coverage. Today’s tax
exclusion for employer-provided health coverage should be capped so
that people would not get a bigger tax break by buying more
extensive and expensive insurance. The result would be to make
employees more cost-conscious; and competition for their favor
would make insurance cheaper….

Medicaid, the country’s health insurance program for the poor,
“could be converted into a means-based addition to that credit” and
people with pre-existing conditions would have access to “coverage
through subsidized, high-risk pools.”

None of this is particularly radical or out of step with most
people’s experience in every other aspect of our lives, where we
figure out what we want from many alternatives. At its core, it
simply suggests injecting more and clearer market mechanisms into
an area in which vagueness rules. Quick: Do you know how much your
last blood test cost you or your insurer? The answer is almost
certainly no. But you probably know how much your car’s last oil
change cost.

Ponnuru and Levin note that “conservative policy experts have
long proposed such approaches” but were rebuffed by House
Republicans in 2009, who chose instead to offer “an alternative to
ObamaCare that did nothing about today’s market-distorting tax
policy and thus did not do much to help the people whom that
policy—by inflating premiums—has locked out of the insurance
market.”

There’s a strong case to be made that their plan doesn’t go far
enough in addressing cost issues (Medicare!) and there’s a reason
to be queasy any time “tax benefits” float into conversation (our
tax code is already complicated enough). But their basic idea is
worth exploring and discussing not just on the nation’s op-ed pages
and blogs, but in Congress.

At the top of the
required-reading list for Congress and other policy analysts should
be Ronald Bailey’s 2009 Reason story, “In
Health Care, Nobody Knows Anything.” Bailey starts by
paraphrasing the screenwriter William Goldman’s famous maxim about
Hollywood and noting that premiums had doubled over the past 10
years. He then proceeds to lay out a clear and concise case for
increasing basic market competition by dismantling 

the McCarran-Ferguson
Act of 1945 that allows state governments to regulate the
business of insurance without federal government interference. The
Act is, in part, responsible for the evolution toward state
insurance markets dominated by just a few large insurers. Consumers
cannot purchase insurance policies that are not licensed by their
state insurance commissions and which do not incorporate all the
mandates imposed by those commissions. Congress and the states
should open up competition between insurance companies by enabling
“regulatory federalism” that would allow individuals and employers
to purchase health insurance from other states.

At the same time he calls for changes that would allow more
competition among insurance providers (and a move toward actual
risk-based coverage, rather than pre-payment plans that obscure and
drive up prices), Bailey also argues for deregulation among health
care providers.

For example, many states have certificate of need programs that
forbid the construction of new health care facilities without prior
regulatory approval. Passed by Congress in 1974 as a cost-cutting
measure, the ostensible purpose of the programs is to keep health
care costs low by requiring advance approval by state agencies for
most hospital expansions and major equipment purchases. But
regulations don’t really work that way. “Market incumbents can too
easily use [certificate of need] procedures to forestall
competitors from entering an incumbent’s market,” according to a
2004 Federal Trade Commissionreport.
In fact, “programs can actually increase prices by fostering
anti-competitive barriers to entry.” State enforced monopolies
increase prices? Who knew?

Read the whole thing. And then read Reason’s
ongoing coverage of
Obamacare.

The disastrous rollout of Obamacare has given the country
another chance to address problems with the health care industry,
all of which stem from a massive lack of exactly the same basic
market mechanisms that have allowed so much progress in virtually
every other area of our daily lives, from coffee shops to the
online world to airline ticket prices.

Yes, health care is
a specific market that requires certain specific rules and
regulations. But that doesn’t mean it requires fewer market and
pricing signals (the muffling of which always helps powerful
interests in a given industry).

Now is the perfect time to propose real alternatives that even
if not perfect actually increase the ability of individuals to make
meaningful choices that will affect their lives. Here’s hoping that
congressional Republicans and Democrats rise above themselves to
actually do something that might help us all rather than simply
position their partys for 2014 or 2016.

Andrew Napolitano’s Fox News colleague Jana
Winter was ordered by a state judge in Colorado to reveal her
sources on a story and threatened with incarceration. Winter lives
in New York and filed an application to her state’s courts asking
to block Colorado’s request. This should have been a no-brainer
demonstration of federalism, but the New York courts denied her
application. Napolitano points out the dangers of ignoring states’
rights like this.

View this article.

Andrew Napolitano’s Fox News colleague Jana
Winter was ordered by a state judge in Colorado to reveal her
sources on a story and threatened with incarceration. Winter lives
in New York and filed an application to her state’s courts asking
to block Colorado’s request. This should have been a no-brainer
demonstration of federalism, but the New York courts denied her
application. Napolitano points out the dangers of ignoring states’
rights like this.

View this article.

Saudi police have arrested a
Kuwaiti woman, who wasn’t named by media, for driving
her father across the border to a hospital. Women can
legally drive in Kuwait, but not in Saudi Arabia.

The
Government pursued a drug kingpin charge against former Dallas
Cowboys and Chicago Bears wide receiver Sam Hurd after he was
allegedly caught in December 2011 purchasing a kilo of cocaine from
undercover agents and agreeing to purchase up to ten kilos of coke
and 1,000 pounds of marijuana week from them. He pled guilty in
April and faced up to life in prison because of the amounts of
narcotics allegedly involved, and was sentenced to 15 years

today.

The charge was part of two years of federal investigations into
Hurd, as explained in a great Sports
Illustrated piece on the saga by Michael McKnight. Hurd
had been getting marijuana sent to him from California while
playing for the Cowboys and later the Bears, but the feds found no
evidence he ever made a profit off the marijuana he shared with
friends.

Hurd appears to have first showed up on the radar of federal
authorities when an informant tipped off an ICE agent based in
Dallas that someone (Hurd) was looking to buy a large amount of
cocaine. ICE’s purview is border security, but drug trafficking
appeared close enough. Based on the tip, they were able to seize
$88,000 from Hurd’s Escalade, which was being driven by his
mechanic, who was either the brains behind the attempted drug deal
or a go-for for Hurd, depending which you ask. Hurd actually went
to the ICE office, showing them a bank statement that listed his
withdrawal of the money and explaining it was being used to buy a
house for his mother (Hurd says now this was what the money was
allegedly for). He was unable to get the money back the federal
agents, and it appears his mechanics’ attempt to earn the money
back for Hurd was what led nearly two dozen law enforcement agents
to participate in the sting that caught Hurd and the mechanic
trying to purchase cocaine from undercover agents.

Read the whole
Sports Illustrated piece, it’s worth the read, and
marvel at the waste of life, money, and time that the war on drugs
leaves in its wake.

Hurd, notably, would not qualify under any program the Obama
Administration might embark on to lower drug sentencing because the
government still treats larger-scale drug crimes much as if they
were capital offenses, and hasn’t even made an attempt to show more
leniency to people whose lives were ruined
over far smaller consensual narcotics transactions.

Last month a Tennessee judge overseeing a burglary case
rejected a pretrial motion in which the prosecution requested
that it not be referred to as “the Government” because that term is
“derogatory.” In the May 22 motion,
Assistant District Attorney General Tammy J. Rettig noted with
alarm that “it has become commonplace during trials for attorneys
for defendants, and especially Mr. [Drew] Justice [the defendant’s
lawyer], to refer to State’s attorneys as ‘the Government’
repeatedly during trial.” Rettig worried that “such a reference is
used in a derogatory way and is meant to make the State’s attorneys
seem oppressive and to inflame the jury.” She added that “attempts
to make the jury dislike the State’s attorney have no place in the
courtroom.” She therefore urged Williamson County Circuit Court
Judge Michael Binkley to bar Justice from using the
g-word during the trial and instead refer to her as
“General Rettig, the Assit District Attorney General, Mrs. Rettig,
or simply the State of Tennessee.”

In his response,
Justice argued that such an order would violate the First
Amendment. Should Judge Binkley nevertheless see fit to comply with
Rettig’s request, Justice said, he also should consider a few other
speech limits in the interest of neutral terminology:

First, the Defendant no longer wants to be called “the
Defendant.” This rather archaic term of art, obviously has a fairly
negative connotation. It unfairly demeans, and dehumanizes Mr.
Donald Powell. The word “defendant” should be banned. At trial, Mr.
Powell hereby demands be addressed only by his full name, preceded
by the title “Mister.” Alternatively, he may be called simply “the
Citizen Accused.” This latter title sounds more respectable than
the criminal “Defendant.” The designation “That innocent man” would
also be acceptable.

Moreover, defense counsel does not wish to be referred to as a
“lawyer,” or a “defense attorney.” Those terms are substantially
more prejudicial than probative….Rather, counsel for the Citizen
Accused should be referred to primarily as the “Defender of the
Innocent.” This title seems particularly appropriate, because every
Citizen Accused is presumed innocent. Alternatively, counsel would
also accept the designation “Guardian of the Realm.” Further, the
Citizen Accused humbly requests an appropriate military title for
his own representative, to match that of the opposing counsel.
Whenever addressed by name, the name “Captain Justice” will be
appropriate. While less impressive than “General,” still, the more
humble term seems suitable. After all, the Captain represents only
a Citizen Accused, whereas the General represents an entire
State.

Along these same lines, even the term “defense” does not sound
very likeable. The whole idea of being defensive, comes across to
most people as suspicious. So to prevent the jury from being
unfairly misled by this ancient English terminology, the opposition
to the Plaintiff hereby names itself “the Resistance.” Obviously,
this terminology need only extend throughout the duration of the
trial—not to any pre-trial motions. During its heroic struggle
against the State, the Resistance goes on the attack, not just the
defense.

The good news is not only that Justice triumphed but that even
the Government concedes that “the Government” has a negative
connotation.

[Thanks to Allen St. Pierre for the tip.]

Last month a Tennessee judge overseeing a burglary case
rejected a pretrial motion in which the prosecution requested
that it not be referred to as “the Government” because that term is
“derogatory.” In the May 22 motion,
Assistant District Attorney General Tammy J. Rettig noted with
alarm that “it has become commonplace during trials for attorneys
for defendants, and especially Mr. [Drew] Justice [the defendant’s
lawyer], to refer to State’s attorneys as ‘the Government’
repeatedly during trial.” Rettig worried that “such a reference is
used in a derogatory way and is meant to make the State’s attorneys
seem oppressive and to inflame the jury.” She added that “attempts
to make the jury dislike the State’s attorney have no place in the
courtroom.” She therefore urged Williamson County Circuit Court
Judge Michael Binkley to bar Justice from using the
g-word during the trial and instead refer to her as
“General Rettig, the Assit District Attorney General, Mrs. Rettig,
or simply the State of Tennessee.”

In his response,
Justice argued that such an order would violate the First
Amendment. Should Judge Binkley nevertheless see fit to comply with
Rettig’s request, Justice said, he also should consider a few other
speech limits in the interest of neutral terminology:

First, the Defendant no longer wants to be called “the
Defendant.” This rather archaic term of art, obviously has a fairly
negative connotation. It unfairly demeans, and dehumanizes Mr.
Donald Powell. The word “defendant” should be banned. At trial, Mr.
Powell hereby demands be addressed only by his full name, preceded
by the title “Mister.” Alternatively, he may be called simply “the
Citizen Accused.” This latter title sounds more respectable than
the criminal “Defendant.” The designation “That innocent man” would
also be acceptable.

Moreover, defense counsel does not wish to be referred to as a
“lawyer,” or a “defense attorney.” Those terms are substantially
more prejudicial than probative….Rather, counsel for the Citizen
Accused should be referred to primarily as the “Defender of the
Innocent.” This title seems particularly appropriate, because every
Citizen Accused is presumed innocent. Alternatively, counsel would
also accept the designation “Guardian of the Realm.” Further, the
Citizen Accused humbly requests an appropriate military title for
his own representative, to match that of the opposing counsel.
Whenever addressed by name, the name “Captain Justice” will be
appropriate. While less impressive than “General,” still, the more
humble term seems suitable. After all, the Captain represents only
a Citizen Accused, whereas the General represents an entire
State.

Along these same lines, even the term “defense” does not sound
very likeable. The whole idea of being defensive, comes across to
most people as suspicious. So to prevent the jury from being
unfairly misled by this ancient English terminology, the opposition
to the Plaintiff hereby names itself “the Resistance.” Obviously,
this terminology need only extend throughout the duration of the
trial—not to any pre-trial motions. During its heroic struggle
against the State, the Resistance goes on the attack, not just the
defense.

The good news is not only that Justice triumphed but that even
the Government concedes that “the Government” has a negative
connotation.

[Thanks to Allen St. Pierre for the tip.]

The ACLU released a new
report this week examining the growing trend of judges
sentencing nonviolent offenders to life in prison without parole.
The ACLU found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the War on Drugs,
mandatory minimums, and “tough-on-crime” policies are to blame.

The report,
A Living Death: A Life Without Parole for Nonviolent Offenders,
profiles 110 of the 3,278 inmates currently serving their life
sentences for nonviolent crimes. Most of the offenders were
charged with crimes like possession of small amounts of drugs or
petty theft.

For instance, one inmate, Timothy Jackson, stole a $159 jacket,
which, combined with three other minor shoplifting charges, met the
threshold for Louisiana’s Four-Strikes law. Jackson received a
mandatory sentence of life without parole. Inmate Fate Vincent
Winslow is serving his life sentence for selling $10 worth of
marijuana to an undercover cop. Like Jackson, Winslow’s crime was
his fourth offense in Louisiana.

Another inmate’s story, that of Dicky Joe Jackson, is
reminiscent of the plight of Breaking
Bad protagonist Walter White. To pay for his
son’s $250,000 life-saving bone marrow transplant, Jackson started
transporting methamphetamine. Before long, however, he was caught
selling to an undercover officer. SWAT teams raided his family’s
home, and Jackson was thrown in federal prison. He is nearly twenty
years into his lifelong sentence.

In addition to the inmate profiles—which are a horribly
depressing, but worthwhile read—the report discovered several
interesting facts about life without parole (LWOP) in the US.

The Number of LWOP Sentences Has Been Growing For
Decades

Offenders serving life without parole, whether violent or not,
has been one of the most rapidly growing populations in the prison
system. According to the report: “The number of people sentenced to
LWOP quadrupled nationwide between 1992 and 2012, from 12,453 to
49,081.”

LWOP Is Due to the War on Drugs, Mandatory Minimums, and
Other “Tough on Crime” Policies

Nearly 80 percent of non-violent LWOP offenses are for drug
crimes. Among the cases the ACLU surveyed, 83 percent of offenders
were placed there because of mandatory minimums or three-strike
laws—in other words, the judges had no choice. As the ACLU
said:

The prevalence of LWOP sentences for nonviolent offenses is a
symptom of the relentless onslaught of more than four decades of
the War on Drugs and “tough-on crime” policies, which drove the
passage of unnecessarily harsh sentencing laws, including
three-strikes provisions…and mandatory minimum sentences.

There Are Racial Disparities

Like most aspects of the criminal justice system, there are
stark racial disparities in life without parole sentences.
Sixty-five percent of LWOP inmates are black, while in some states
the disparity is even higher. In Louisiana, 91 percent are black.
In the federal system, blacks are 20 times more likely to be
sentenced to LWOP than whites.

This Is A Uniquely American Problem

The US is part of the mere 20 percent of countries that even
offer LWOP sentences. And of those countries, the vast majority
“place stringent restrictions on where they can be issued and limit
their use to crimes of murder.” As a result, the US’s LWOP prison
population dwarfs that of other countries’. According to the
University of San Francisco’s report
on U.S. Sentencing Practices in a Global Context, the US’s LWOP
population is 51 times greater than Australia’s and 173 times
greater than England’s. 

The District Attorney’s office in Middlesex
County, Massachusetts ruled that no criminal charges should be
filed in the death of Alyssa Brame, who was arrested on January 12
for allegedly offering to perform a sex act of some kind for $40
and died of alcohol poisoning in a jail cell. The five (5!)
officers who were on the scene at her arrest claimed she did not
appear visibly overly
intoxicated, but by the time she was taken to the police station
she couldn’t walk on her own, and cops there debated whether she
was too drunk to be accused of offering sex for money.
Via the Lowell Sun:

As that debate continued, only detention attendant
Kevin Lombard asked whether someone should call an ambulance.

“Civilian Attendant Lombard did not feel that he was permitted to
contact 911 for medical assistance himself,” District Attorney
Marian Ryan wrote in the report.

The report says a sergeant told Lombard no. Another commander told
Lombard to simply “let her lay down.”

According to Ryan’s investigation, “police personnel determined
that this was another one of those occasions where Ms. Brame was
intoxicated and needed to sleep it off.”

The DA report found that putting an unconscious person in a
cell, as had been done to Brame, was against department policy, as
was not checking on her every thirty minutes. It had been nearly an
hour since police last checked on her when she was found dead. The
third policy violation had to do with the personnel dealing with
Brame not being CPR-certified.

The medical examiner ruled the death an accident, but noted it
may have been possible to save Brame’s life if there had been a
medical intervention earlier. The DA report says Brane, 31, had
been in police custody ten times before, nine of those while
intoxicated. It also mentioned police were aware the city hospital
believed they were sending too many intoxicated prisoners over.
It’s impossible to know whether Brane would have survived alcohol
poisoning absent her encounter with police, but being thrown in a
cage for making a harmless offer, in an environment where a
concerned person would feel they weren’t permitted to call 911 for
assistance, certainly didn’t help.

A police board of inquiry is now investigating the case.