Month: September 2014

As of
last month, to go by the polls, half of Americans consider the
country to still be in recession. Even more expect their kids’
generation to have to scrap harder than their parents to get by.
Little did those poll respondents know that, even as they voiced
their worries, job creation had taken a dip, with only 142,000
nonfarm slots created in August, compared to 212,000 in previous
months. Another poll in September found similar economic gloom.
That’s hardly a shocker when the proportion of the population
working or looking for work is at its lowest level since 1978.

No, it’s not the Great Depression—technically, we’re in the
midst of an economic recovery. But it’s a lousy recovery, and one
that most people find unconvincing as hell. Whatever else the
sort-of recovery, not really recession may be, writes J.D. Tuccille
it’s strong evidence of self-inflicted economic wounds. America may
be limping along, but we did it to ourselves.

View this article.

• Sen. Rand Paul gave a huge
  speech on the Senate floor opposing the
  arming of Syrian rebels, calling it a mistake that will
  destabilize the region even further. His warnings may be falling on
  deaf ears.
• Director of Intelligence
  James Clapper says his now-famous lie to the Senate that the
  National Security Agency was not collecting data about
  millions of Americans wasn’t a lie at all. He just misspoke. This
  is his position now after previously saying he gave the “least
  untruthful” answer he could give. Pretty ballsy.
• The Air Force will change its policy and make the “so
  help me God” part of its oath optional. They had courted
  controversy when an atheist airman attempted to reenlist and got
  into trouble for crossing that part out.
• I know we’re all pretty tired of Pharrell Williams’ song
  “Happy” by now, but Iran took it a step further and
  sentenced a group of citizens to lashes for posting a video of
  themselves online dancing along to the music.
• British journalists investigating the deaths of Russian
  servicemen on the border of Ukraine have been
  attacked by unnamed assailants and their recordings
  erased.
• The Border Patrol is going to
  test wearing body cameras in response to complaints about
  misconduct and lack of transparency.

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School administrators and
police in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, escalated what seems like a minor
disciplinary matter into full-blown criminal charges and likely
expulsion for the unlucky teen involved.

What did he do wrong? He was smoking on school property, and is
also a hunting enthusiast.

Seventeen-year-old student Alexander Chiers was apparently
caught smoking by a Pewaukee High School administrator. That’s bad,
sure—and it is against the rules—but couldn’t the school
easily have dealt with this on its own?

No, no, the school had to summon the police as well, and then
things got much worse for Chiers. A search of his vehicle revealed
that the teen had committed the most extreme of zero tolerance
violations: being an avid hunter. There was a rifle and bayonet in
his car, hunting knives, and 400 rounds of ammunition.

News sources disagree on the timeline.
WISN reports that a school official checked the car, noticed
the knives, and then called police;
TMJ 4 claims that the police were called to the school because
of the smoking incident and then discovered the weapons after
searching the car. The latter account makes the authorities look
worse since it establishes the act of smoking, rather than the
discovery of knives, as the impetus for calling the police.

I contacted both the police and the school to clear up the
confusion and learn more about what happened—neither office
responded immediately.

Regardless of which way it went down, Chiers is now facing two
criminal charges for bringing weapons onto school grounds. He has
also been suspended and will likely be expelled, in keeping with
the school’s zero tolerance policies.

It’s not even a possibility that Chiers was actually a danger to
the school: police and district officials questioned him and all
agreed that this is simply a kid who likes hunting. He said he was
storing the rifle for a friend and was planning a trip to the
shooting range. Nobody disputes that. He shouldn’t have been
smoking, and he shouldn’t have stored his hunting gear in his car,
but that’s all he did wrong.

Does the punishment fit the crime? Not even close.

I’ll add that the two media reports come off as extremely
unsympathetic to Chiers and make all kinds of absurd excuses for
the authorities. In particular, here is
WISN:

Since Columbine, and the dozens of school shootings since,
police have to assume the worst at first.

After recovering the guns, knives and hundreds of rounds of
ammunition, police said they had to do everything they could to try
to find out if the boy meant to do any harm there.

We know that neither Columbine nor any other school shooting
would have been prevented by hysterical overreaction on the part of
authorities to accidental breaches of school weapons policies. Zero
tolerance does not deter purposeful and murderous delinquents; it
always and only punishes harmless and accidental delinquents.

I’ll post an update if or when the authorities respond.

School administrators and
police in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, escalated what seems like a minor
disciplinary matter into full-blown criminal charges and likely
expulsion for the unlucky teen involved.

What did he do wrong? He was smoking on school property, and is
also a hunting enthusiast.

Seventeen-year-old student Alexander Chiers was apparently
caught smoking by a Pewaukee High School administrator. That’s bad,
sure—and it is against the rules—but couldn’t the school
easily have dealt with this on its own?

No, no, the school had to summon the police as well, and then
things got much worse for Chiers. A search of his vehicle revealed
that the teen had committed the most extreme of zero tolerance
violations: being an avid hunter. There was a rifle and bayonet in
his car, hunting knives, and 400 rounds of ammunition.

News sources disagree on the timeline.
WISN reports that a school official checked the car, noticed
the knives, and then called police;
TMJ 4 claims that the police were called to the school because
of the smoking incident and then discovered the weapons after
searching the car. The latter account makes the authorities look
worse since it establishes the act of smoking, rather than the
discovery of knives, as the impetus for calling the police.

I contacted both the police and the school to clear up the
confusion and learn more about what happened—neither office
responded immediately.

Regardless of which way it went down, Chiers is now facing two
criminal charges for bringing weapons onto school grounds. He has
also been suspended and will likely be expelled, in keeping with
the school’s zero tolerance policies.

It’s not even a possibility that Chiers was actually a danger to
the school: police and district officials questioned him and all
agreed that this is simply a kid who likes hunting. He said he was
storing the rifle for a friend and was planning a trip to the
shooting range. Nobody disputes that. He shouldn’t have been
smoking, and he shouldn’t have stored his hunting gear in his car,
but that’s all he did wrong.

Does the punishment fit the crime? Not even close.

I’ll add that the two media reports come off as extremely
unsympathetic to Chiers and make all kinds of absurd excuses for
the authorities. In particular, here is
WISN:

Since Columbine, and the dozens of school shootings since,
police have to assume the worst at first.

After recovering the guns, knives and hundreds of rounds of
ammunition, police said they had to do everything they could to try
to find out if the boy meant to do any harm there.

We know that neither Columbine nor any other school shooting
would have been prevented by hysterical overreaction on the part of
authorities to accidental breaches of school weapons policies. Zero
tolerance does not deter purposeful and murderous delinquents; it
always and only punishes harmless and accidental delinquents.

I’ll post an update if or when the authorities respond.

Last month, the Department of Veterans Affairs
Office of Inspector General insisted, after a close look at
manipulated and secret waiting lists at the Phoenix Veterans Health
Administration facility, “we are unable to conclusively assert that
the absence of timely quality care caused the deaths of these
veterans.” Yesterday, a
hearing before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs got a
bit heated as lawmakers pushed  Inspector General Richard
Griffin and Assistant Inspector General John Daigh to concede that
confining sick veterans in bureaucratic limbo while they wait for
care “contributed” to the untimely deaths of some. Chairman Jeff
Miller (R-Fla.)
says he got the concession, and in Daigh’s case he clearly
did.

Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.): Did the wait lists
contribute to the deaths of veterans?

Daigh: Yes. Yes, no problem with that. The
issue is cause, or a direct relationship.

Griffin probably thinks he hedged his way out of a tight corner,
though he seems none too happy with his subordinate. Decide for
yourself from the exchange
embedded below.

Katherine L. Mitchell, M.D. Medical Director, Iraq and
Afghanistan Post-Deployment Center, Phoenix VA Health Care System,
and retired VA doctor Samuel Foote directly
linked the gamed waiting lists to patient deaths in their
testimony.

Last month, the Department of Veterans Affairs
Office of Inspector General insisted, after a close look at
manipulated and secret waiting lists at the Phoenix Veterans Health
Administration facility, “we are unable to conclusively assert that
the absence of timely quality care caused the deaths of these
veterans.” Yesterday, a
hearing before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs got a
bit heated as lawmakers pushed  Inspector General Richard
Griffin and Assistant Inspector General John Daigh to concede that
confining sick veterans in bureaucratic limbo while they wait for
care “contributed” to the untimely deaths of some. Chairman Jeff
Miller (R-Fla.)
says he got the concession, and in Daigh’s case he clearly
did.

Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.): Did the wait lists
contribute to the deaths of veterans?

Daigh: Yes. Yes, no problem with that. The
issue is cause, or a direct relationship.

Griffin probably thinks he hedged his way out of a tight corner,
though he seems none too happy with his subordinate. Decide for
yourself from the exchange
embedded below.

Katherine L. Mitchell, M.D. Medical Director, Iraq and
Afghanistan Post-Deployment Center, Phoenix VA Health Care System,
and retired VA doctor Samuel Foote directly
linked the gamed waiting lists to patient deaths in their
testimony.

As a once
passionate supporter of the Common Core, Louisiana Gov. Bobby
Jindal surprised many with his 180-degree reversal earlier this
year. Much of the commentary that followed viewed this flip-flop as
politically motivated, and an indication that Gov. Jindal was
planning to run for president.

As Reason’s Robby
Soave noted in June:

Common Core is especially unpopular among the conservative
grassroots, given that the federal government is vigorously pushing
it and has incentivized states to adopt it in exchange for grant
money. The controversy has made Common Core an important political
issue heading into the 2014 and 2016 election cycles, and it’s
going to be very difficult for Core-supportive candidates to
survive in the more competitive Republican primaries.

Given that, Jindal’s shifting perspective on Common Core is
probably an indicator that he is going to run.

However, in a speech given to the
Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, Gov. Jindal provided another
possibility–that his sudden opposition may have been motivated, at
least in part, by his experience as a parent. Gov. Jindal told a
story about his son’s frustration with
the way math is taught under the Common Core. Despite providing
the correct answers, the governor’s son had to deal with explaining
the reasons for why his answers were correct (see Jindal’s speech
in the video below).

It’s impossible to know whether Jindal’s own experience with the
Common Core played a part in his change of position, or whether it
was merely a useful anecdote. But it raises the question of what
America would be like if politicians had to directly experience the
effects of the legislation they vote on.

The
Obama administration said this morning that about 7.3 million
people were paid and enrolled in insurance through Obamacare’s
exchanges as of August 15.

The figure represents a decline of about 700,000 from the 8
million the administration said were signed up for coverage at the
end of April. The decline stems from people signing up but not
paying, or from choosing drop coverage.

This is the first time the administration has provided a paid
enrollment figure. Previous estimates for Obamacare coverage have
relied on the number of people signed up, not the number of people
who finalized their enrollment by paying.  

The 7.3 million figure is not quite current; instead, it
represents a “snapshot” taken on a single day in August, Marilyn
Tavenner, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services, told members of Congress this morning. 

Even still, that figure is likely to decline at least somewhat
going forward. For one thing, it doesn’t account for the 115,000
people who could lose their coverage at the end of September as a
result of
failing to verify their citizenship. Nor does it account for
people who may choose to drop coverage after losing a subsidy
because they failed to verify their income.

The figure is also potentially complicated by the
90-day grace period for premium payment the law requires
insurers to abide by.

Tavenner’s statement this morning
said that, on August 15, “we have 7.3 million Americans
enrolled in Health Insurance Marketplace coverage and these are
individuals who paid their premiums.”

Presumably, then, these are all people who have made at least
one initial premium payment. But we don’t know for sure if they
kept paying; it’s possible that some of them paid once and then
failed to pay. Insurance industry consultant Bob Laszewski has said
that insurers
expect a monthly attrition rate of 2-5 percent even after
initial premiums are paid. 

That would mean that most people who signed up in the final
enrollment surge at the end of March and had coverage begin in May
would be in the window, as would
the 910,000 people who signed up in the special enrollment
period in April, many of whom didn’t have coverage go into effect
until
the beginning of June. 

An August 15 snapshot could be capturing people who paid the
first premium for May or June, and then missed later payments.
Without recurring report on sign-up and payment trends, however,
it’s somewhat difficult to tell. 

As Reason’s J.D. Tuccille noted earlier this
week, the grace period built into the law makes it possible for
someone to sign up for coverage, not pay premiums, and use the
coverage at a doctor’s office—eventually leaving the doctor on the
hook for the bill.

Still, the new figure suggests that the large declines in
enrollment
reported by Aetna, a health insurer which indicated that it
could see as much as a 30 percent drop in its Obamacare plans by
the end of the year, are probably not representative of any larger
trend. And they suggest that overall paid premiums are
at least somewhere in the range of the 7 million (perhaps a little
lower or a little higher) initially projected by the Congressional
Budget Office. 

The New York Times attempts to unravel
the tangled web of surrogacy laws and feels in the United
States: 

While surrogacy is far more accepted in the United States than
in most countries, and increasing rapidly (more than 2,000 babies
will be born through it here this year), it remains, like abortion,
a polarizing and charged issue. There is nothing resembling a
national consensus on how to handle it and no federal law, leaving
the states free to do as they wish.

Seventeen states have laws permitting surrogacy, but they vary
greatly in both breadth and restrictions. In 21 states, there is
neither a law nor a published case regarding surrogacy, according
to Diane Hinson, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who specializes in
assisted reproduction. In five states, surrogacy contracts are void
and unenforceable, and in Washington, D.C., where new legislation
has been proposed, surrogacy carries criminal penalties. Seven
states have at least one court opinion upholding some form of
surrogacy.

California has the most permissive law, allowing anyone to hire
a woman to carry a baby and the birth certificate to carry the
names of the intended parents. As a result, California has a
booming surrogacy industry, attracting clients from around the
world.

Perhaps there’s room for reproductive-freedom advocates to
reform surrogacy laws at the state level, though it seems the bulk
of activism in this realm comes from surrogacy opponents—a gang
that includes social conservatives and Christians, especially
Catholics, who either see surrogacy as unnatural and immoral or a
gateway for gay parents, and some feminist groups, who see
surrogacy as exploitative. In the past few years, Louisiana,
Minnesota, and New Jersey all passed laws allowing surrogacy in
some situations that wound up vetoed by Republican governors,
sometimes with urging from women’s groups. 

Even the ostensibly pro-surrogacy crowd seems to favor making
surrogacy more complicated and less accessible, at least in
political circles. If this becomes a hot legislative issue,
Americans will almost certainly wind up with less freedom in this
area than we currently enjoy.

In the 21 states with no surrogacy laws, people can basically
become and hire surrogates on their own terms, without onerous and
arbitrary regulatory requirements. But Joanna L. Grossman, a family
law professor at Hofstra University, told the Times “the
big picture is that we’re moving toward laws like the one in
Illinois, which accepts that the demand for surrogacy isn’t going
away but recognizes the hazards and adds regulations and
protections.”

The surrogacy law that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal vetoed this
spring would have explicitly allowed surrogacy for some and
explicitly banned it for homosexual couples (by requiring the
embryo to use both sperm and egg from the intended parents). It
would have also banned surrogacy that’s not “altruistic,” meaning
surrogates couldn’t actually get paid beyond basic reimbursement
for pregnancy expenses. (Its ultimate demise was unrelated to
either of these major flaws and more based on objections from the
embryo-rights crowd.)

And the “model” Illinois law? It requires all parties involved
in the surrogacy contract to undergo medical and psychological
testing, says the intended parents must pay for an independent
lawyer for the surrogate, and stipulates that surrogates be at
least 21 years old and have given birth at least once before. It
also bans surrogacy in which the surrogate’s egg is fertilized by
the intended father; only surrogacy in which the embryo is created
in a petri dish using either sperm or egg from an intended parent
and gets implanted in the surrogate’s uterus (known as “gestational
surrogacy”) will be legally permitted.

Something to watch for with regard to emerging surrogacy
law—people pushing solutions as “pro surrogacy” because they don’t
outright forbid or criminalize the practice but which actually
create more categories of people who can’t participate and the
raise financial costs and privacy invasions for those who do.