Month: January 2022

Dragging Out Protesters Disrupting City Council Meeting Isn’t Excessive Force

From Judge Danielle Forrest’s opinion in Williamson v. City of National City, joined by Judges Susan Graber and Consuelo Callahan, which strikes me as correct:

This excessive force case concerns how police officers responded to a protest that Plaintiff Tasha Williamson and others participated in during a National City, California, city council meeting. The protest prevented the city council meeting from continuing, and police officers warned the protesters that they had to leave the meeting room or they would be arrested. The protesters refused to leave and passively resisted being removed by going limp. Officers handcuffed the protesters and carried or pulled them by their arms from the meeting room.

Williamson sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that she suffered wrist and shoulder injuries when she was forcibly removed. We conclude that the officers did not use excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment ….

“In evaluating a Fourth Amendment claim of excessive force, we ask ‘whether the officers’ actions [wer]e “objectively reasonable” in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them.'” To determine whether an officer’s actions were objectively reasonable, we consider: “(1) the severity of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment rights by evaluating the type and amount of force inflicted, (2) the government’s interest in the use of force, and (3) the balance between the gravity of the intrusion on the individual and the government’s need for that intrusion.” …

Even viewing the evidence in Williamson’s favor, the type and amount of force used by the Officers in this case was minimal. The Officers did not strike Williamson, throw her to the ground, or use any compliance techniques or weapons for the purpose of inflicting pain on her. Rather, they held her by her arms and lifted her so they could pull her out of the meeting room after she went limp and refused to leave on her own or cooperate in being removed.

Moreover, the inherent risk of two officers pulling someone who has gone limp and refuses to move by her own power is not significant. It cannot reasonably be disputed that the force the Officers used in this case was less significant than “yanking, pulling, jerking, and twisting” a person whose legs are pinned underneath a car seat—which we have deemed a minimal intrusion….

Finally, Williamson’s injuries—a sprained wrist, mild swelling, and a torn rotator cuff—though not trivial, are roughly equivalent to those in Forrester (bruises, pinched nerve, broken wrist) and much less severe than those in Johnson (rendered a paraplegic). And in both of those cases, we concluded that the intrusion at issue was minimal despite the injuries that occurred. We conclude the same here….

Next, we “evaluate the state’s interests at stake by considering ‘(1) how severe the crime at issue was, (2) whether the suspect posed an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and (3) whether the suspect was actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.'” “Among these considerations, the ‘most important’ is the second factor—whether the suspect posed an immediate threat to others.” …

It is undisputed that Williamson’s crime was minor, that she posed no threat to anyone, and that she was not actively resisting arrest. Nonetheless, the Officers argue that they had a legitimate interest in removing and arresting her, particularly where proper warnings were given before they used any physical force. They also argue that we should consider Williamson’s “relative culpability” in refusing to get up. Williamson counters that the governmental interest was “about as low as it gets,” even considering her relative culpability.

We conclude that National City’s interest in forcibly removing Williamson from the city council meeting was low, but it was not nonexistent. Williamson’s nonviolent disruption of the city council meeting was a minor offense. And where Williamson’s actions did not pose any physical danger to others, we do not consider her relative culpability.

But even if the city’s interest was low given the lack of exigency posed by threat of harm or other factors, this does not mean that the city was “required to permit the ‘organized lawlessness’ conducted by the protestors.” “Even passive resistance may support the use of some degree of governmental force if necessary to attain compliance … depend[ing] on the factual circumstances underlying that resistance.”

Moreover, the risk posed by the protesters was not zero. While the six who laid down near the podium were docile and merely refused to leave the area when directed, other protesters (or people sympathetic to the protesters’ demonstration) who remained in the audience area were yelling at the officers and at times trying to push into the podium area. This is not the same strain of risk posed by the crowds in Forrester and Felarca, but it is nonetheless relevant in assessing the totality of circumstances that the officers faced when they decided to remove the protesters participating in the demonstration rather than allow the demonstration to continue.

It goes without saying that citizens have a right to express their disagreement and dissatisfaction with government at all levels. But they do not have a right to prevent duly installed government from performing its lawful functions. To conclude otherwise would undermine the very idea of ordered society.

Officers repeatedly warned the protesters that they had to leave the front of the meeting room or they would be arrested, and they refused to comply. Their demonstration disrupted the city council meeting, which was adjourned “for order to be restored.” National City’s choice was to allow the protesters to remain in the city council’s meeting room until they chose to leave on their own—which the constitution does not require—or to forcibly remove them.

Williamson has not identified any less intrusive means available to the Officers for restoring order in the city council room so that the city’s legitimate business could proceed. Other means of physically removing her when she refused to leave or cooperate with being moved, such as using more officers to carry her or pulling her by her legs instead of her arms, would not have involved an appreciably smaller risk of causing pain or injury. In sum, we conclude that, as in Forrester, National City had a legitimate interest in “dispersing and removing lawbreakers,” but the extent of its interest was low because it was not facing a voluminous crowd acting with a “concerted effort to invade private property, obstruct business, and hinder law enforcement,” as was the case in Forrester.…

Williamson testified that she and the other protesters had decided in advance that they would not willingly leave the meeting room. The very purpose of their protest was to disrupt the city council meeting and interfere with the city conducting its business. Thus, they created a situation in which the city had to either succumb to the disruption or use some amount of force to remove the protesters from the meeting room. The city chose the latter, and the “undisputed evidence shows that the officers used only the force reasonably necessary to remove [Williamson] from the meeting.”

Williamson could have avoided or reduced the pain and injury she alleges she suffered from the Officers’ conduct by cooperating with them and leaving the room under her own power. She did not. But her choice does not render the Officers’ conduct unreasonable. To conclude otherwise would be to discount entirely the City’s legitimate interests in maintaining order and ensuring that the public’s business is not circumvented by people engaging in disruptive, albeit nonviolent, conduct….

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The Pandemic Set Off a Homeshooling Boom. Don’t Be So Sure That a Bust Is Coming.


jessica-lewis-gCWabF9Z9pI-unsplash (1)

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted schools and turned kitchens into classrooms. It also appears to have put a decisive end to a decade of stagnation in the growth of American homeschooling.

Homeschooling, which is legal in all 50 states though the specific regulations vary widely from place to place, experienced a small boom during the late 1990s and early 2000s. By 2012, more than 3 percent of American school-aged children were being primarily educated at home. Those numbers plateaued, then boomed again during the first full year of pandemic-era schooling: at the start of the 2020-21 school year, a whopping 11 percent of U.S. households with school-aged children were homeschooling, according to Census Bureau data. The biggest increase in homeschooling was reported by black families, who had historically been less likely to homeschool before the pandemic.

Much of the sudden increase was no doubt due to necessity—schools being closed or operating virtually—or due to parents’ worries about the pandemic. And, unsurprisingly, those figures fell off a bit by Christmas 2020, though they remained well above pre-pandemic levels.

We won’t have new census data about the number of families who homeschooled during the 2021-22 academic year for a few more months, but there are already indications that disruptions triggered by the pandemic might turn into a permanent shift. A poll released last month, for example, found that parents of school-aged children have favorable views of homeschooling by a margin of about 3-to-1, and that favorable views of homeschooling continue to grow as the pandemic drags on.

The poll, conducted by Morning Consult at the request of Ed Choice, a pro-school-choice nonprofit, surveyed 2,200 parents about various aspects of the K-12 education experience. The section asking about homeschooling found that 68 percent of parents have “favorable” views on the subject, with a recent uptick in those with strongly favorable opinions.

“December 2021 was one of the highest homeschooling favorability rates since we began asking this question,” writes John Kristof, a research analyst at Ed Choice. “Those identifying themselves as ‘much more favorable’ toward homeschooling was at its highest point since October of 2020.”

Homeschooling rates are on the rise in part because of the pandemic-era popularity of so-called “learning pods,” small groups of children gathering together under adult supervision for homeschooling or virtual schooling. Organized on an ad hoc basis during the early phases of the pandemic, pods have quickly become a more mainstream part of American K-12 education.

The Morning Consult/Ed Choice poll found that 89 percent of families currently participating in learning pods use them to supplement regular schooling, while 11 percent of current podders are using them as a substitute for traditional school. But the ranks of the learning-pod homeschoolers might continue to grow, as 31 percent of parents who said they were interested in joining a learning pod were considering it as a substitution for school.

December marked the third consecutive month in which Ed Choice found an increase in the number of parents who said they were interested in learning pods—perhaps due to the rise of the omicron variant and the renewed threat of school closures. On average, parents said they were willing to pay $469 per month to have their children participate in a pod. That suggests a robust market of entrepreneurial opportunities for pod-learning environments that is unlikely to vanish as the pandemic ends.

For some parents who started homeschooling during the pandemic, there’s no going back to the old days, reports Laura Newberry, author of The Los Angeles Times‘ education-focused newsletter. After talking to 10 families that began homeschooling during the pandemic and plan to continue doing it, Newberry writes that “their rationales are diverse and the families span the socioeconomic and political spectrums: schools requiring too many COVID-19 safety protocols, or too few; the polarizing conversation around critical race theory; neurodivergent kids struggling with virtual instruction; and an overall waning faith in the public school system.”

And, as the census data from last school year suggests, the rise in homeschooling is not merely a consequence of white, Christian families—the dominant demographic in homeschooling during recent times—exercising greater control over their children’s educational path (or becoming disenchanted with the politicization of public schools). It’s now black and Hispanic families who are exercising that choice.

“I can say that most of the parents I spoke with are thinking deeply about how to give their kids the most well-rounded education possible, as well as a variety of social opportunities. They see this choice as a reprioritization of values, an opportunity to really get to know their kids and nourish their natural curiosities,” writes Newberry (though she repeats the inaccurate claim that “homeschooling is also largely unregulated in many states.”)

Those ideas about how to best educate your own child might be flourishing now because of a pandemic and the ill-conceived public policy response to it. But the census data, polling, and reporting all indicate that parents choosing to homeschool during COVID are motivated by reasons that might transcend the current chaos.

The post The Pandemic Set Off a Homeshooling Boom. Don't Be So Sure That a Bust Is Coming. appeared first on Reason.com.

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Dragging Out Protesters Disrupting City Council Meeting Isn’t Excessive Force

From Judge Danielle Forrest’s opinion in Williamson v. City of National City, joined by Judges Susan Graber and Consuelo Callahan, which strikes me as correct:

This excessive force case concerns how police officers responded to a protest that Plaintiff Tasha Williamson and others participated in during a National City, California, city council meeting. The protest prevented the city council meeting from continuing, and police officers warned the protesters that they had to leave the meeting room or they would be arrested. The protesters refused to leave and passively resisted being removed by going limp. Officers handcuffed the protesters and carried or pulled them by their arms from the meeting room.

Williamson sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that she suffered wrist and shoulder injuries when she was forcibly removed. We conclude that the officers did not use excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment ….

“In evaluating a Fourth Amendment claim of excessive force, we ask ‘whether the officers’ actions [wer]e “objectively reasonable” in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them.'” To determine whether an officer’s actions were objectively reasonable, we consider: “(1) the severity of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment rights by evaluating the type and amount of force inflicted, (2) the government’s interest in the use of force, and (3) the balance between the gravity of the intrusion on the individual and the government’s need for that intrusion.” …

Even viewing the evidence in Williamson’s favor, the type and amount of force used by the Officers in this case was minimal. The Officers did not strike Williamson, throw her to the ground, or use any compliance techniques or weapons for the purpose of inflicting pain on her. Rather, they held her by her arms and lifted her so they could pull her out of the meeting room after she went limp and refused to leave on her own or cooperate in being removed.

Moreover, the inherent risk of two officers pulling someone who has gone limp and refuses to move by her own power is not significant. It cannot reasonably be disputed that the force the Officers used in this case was less significant than “yanking, pulling, jerking, and twisting” a person whose legs are pinned underneath a car seat—which we have deemed a minimal intrusion….

Finally, Williamson’s injuries—a sprained wrist, mild swelling, and a torn rotator cuff—though not trivial, are roughly equivalent to those in Forrester (bruises, pinched nerve, broken wrist) and much less severe than those in Johnson (rendered a paraplegic). And in both of those cases, we concluded that the intrusion at issue was minimal despite the injuries that occurred. We conclude the same here….

Next, we “evaluate the state’s interests at stake by considering ‘(1) how severe the crime at issue was, (2) whether the suspect posed an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and (3) whether the suspect was actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.'” “Among these considerations, the ‘most important’ is the second factor—whether the suspect posed an immediate threat to others.” …

It is undisputed that Williamson’s crime was minor, that she posed no threat to anyone, and that she was not actively resisting arrest. Nonetheless, the Officers argue that they had a legitimate interest in removing and arresting her, particularly where proper warnings were given before they used any physical force. They also argue that we should consider Williamson’s “relative culpability” in refusing to get up. Williamson counters that the governmental interest was “about as low as it gets,” even considering her relative culpability.

We conclude that National City’s interest in forcibly removing Williamson from the city council meeting was low, but it was not nonexistent. Williamson’s nonviolent disruption of the city council meeting was a minor offense. And where Williamson’s actions did not pose any physical danger to others, we do not consider her relative culpability.

But even if the city’s interest was low given the lack of exigency posed by threat of harm or other factors, this does not mean that the city was “required to permit the ‘organized lawlessness’ conducted by the protestors.” “Even passive resistance may support the use of some degree of governmental force if necessary to attain compliance … depend[ing] on the factual circumstances underlying that resistance.”

Moreover, the risk posed by the protesters was not zero. While the six who laid down near the podium were docile and merely refused to leave the area when directed, other protesters (or people sympathetic to the protesters’ demonstration) who remained in the audience area were yelling at the officers and at times trying to push into the podium area. This is not the same strain of risk posed by the crowds in Forrester and Felarca, but it is nonetheless relevant in assessing the totality of circumstances that the officers faced when they decided to remove the protesters participating in the demonstration rather than allow the demonstration to continue.

It goes without saying that citizens have a right to express their disagreement and dissatisfaction with government at all levels. But they do not have a right to prevent duly installed government from performing its lawful functions. To conclude otherwise would undermine the very idea of ordered society.

Officers repeatedly warned the protesters that they had to leave the front of the meeting room or they would be arrested, and they refused to comply. Their demonstration disrupted the city council meeting, which was adjourned “for order to be restored.” National City’s choice was to allow the protesters to remain in the city council’s meeting room until they chose to leave on their own—which the constitution does not require—or to forcibly remove them.

Williamson has not identified any less intrusive means available to the Officers for restoring order in the city council room so that the city’s legitimate business could proceed. Other means of physically removing her when she refused to leave or cooperate with being moved, such as using more officers to carry her or pulling her by her legs instead of her arms, would not have involved an appreciably smaller risk of causing pain or injury. In sum, we conclude that, as in Forrester, National City had a legitimate interest in “dispersing and removing lawbreakers,” but the extent of its interest was low because it was not facing a voluminous crowd acting with a “concerted effort to invade private property, obstruct business, and hinder law enforcement,” as was the case in Forrester.…

Williamson testified that she and the other protesters had decided in advance that they would not willingly leave the meeting room. The very purpose of their protest was to disrupt the city council meeting and interfere with the city conducting its business. Thus, they created a situation in which the city had to either succumb to the disruption or use some amount of force to remove the protesters from the meeting room. The city chose the latter, and the “undisputed evidence shows that the officers used only the force reasonably necessary to remove [Williamson] from the meeting.”

Williamson could have avoided or reduced the pain and injury she alleges she suffered from the Officers’ conduct by cooperating with them and leaving the room under her own power. She did not. But her choice does not render the Officers’ conduct unreasonable. To conclude otherwise would be to discount entirely the City’s legitimate interests in maintaining order and ensuring that the public’s business is not circumvented by people engaging in disruptive, albeit nonviolent, conduct….

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The Pandemic Set Off a Homeshooling Boom. Don’t Be So Sure That a Bust Is Coming.


jessica-lewis-gCWabF9Z9pI-unsplash (1)

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted schools and turned kitchens into classrooms. It also appears to have put a decisive end to a decade of stagnation in the growth of American homeschooling.

Homeschooling, which is legal in all 50 states though the specific regulations vary widely from place to place, experienced a small boom during the late 1990s and early 2000s. By 2012, more than 3 percent of American school-aged children were being primarily educated at home. Those numbers plateaued, then boomed again during the first full year of pandemic-era schooling: at the start of the 2020-21 school year, a whopping 11 percent of U.S. households with school-aged children were homeschooling, according to Census Bureau data. The biggest increase in homeschooling was reported by black families, who had historically been less likely to homeschool before the pandemic.

Much of the sudden increase was no doubt due to necessity—schools being closed or operating virtually—or due to parents’ worries about the pandemic. And, unsurprisingly, those figures fell off a bit by Christmas 2020, though they remained well above pre-pandemic levels.

We won’t have new census data about the number of families who homeschooled during the 2021-22 academic year for a few more months, but there are already indications that disruptions triggered by the pandemic might turn into a permanent shift. A poll released last month, for example, found that parents of school-aged children have favorable views of homeschooling by a margin of about 3-to-1, and that favorable views of homeschooling continue to grow as the pandemic drags on.

The poll, conducted by Morning Consult at the request of Ed Choice, a pro-school-choice nonprofit, surveyed 2,200 parents about various aspects of the K-12 education experience. The section asking about homeschooling found that 68 percent of parents have “favorable” views on the subject, with a recent uptick in those with strongly favorable opinions.

“December 2021 was one of the highest homeschooling favorability rates since we began asking this question,” writes John Kristof, a research analyst at Ed Choice. “Those identifying themselves as ‘much more favorable’ toward homeschooling was at its highest point since October of 2020.”

Homeschooling rates are on the rise in part because of the pandemic-era popularity of so-called “learning pods,” small groups of children gathering together under adult supervision for homeschooling or virtual schooling. Organized on an ad hoc basis during the early phases of the pandemic, pods have quickly become a more mainstream part of American K-12 education.

The Morning Consult/Ed Choice poll found that 89 percent of families currently participating in learning pods use them to supplement regular schooling, while 11 percent of current podders are using them as a substitute for traditional school. But the ranks of the learning-pod homeschoolers might continue to grow, as 31 percent of parents who said they were interested in joining a learning pod were considering it as a substitution for school.

December marked the third consecutive month in which Ed Choice found an increase in the number of parents who said they were interested in learning pods—perhaps due to the rise of the omicron variant and the renewed threat of school closures. On average, parents said they were willing to pay $469 per month to have their children participate in a pod. That suggests a robust market of entrepreneurial opportunities for pod-learning environments that is unlikely to vanish as the pandemic ends.

For some parents who started homeschooling during the pandemic, there’s no going back to the old days, reports Laura Newberry, author of The Los Angeles Times‘ education-focused newsletter. After talking to 10 families that began homeschooling during the pandemic and plan to continue doing it, Newberry writes that “their rationales are diverse and the families span the socioeconomic and political spectrums: schools requiring too many COVID-19 safety protocols, or too few; the polarizing conversation around critical race theory; neurodivergent kids struggling with virtual instruction; and an overall waning faith in the public school system.”

And, as the census data from last school year suggests, the rise in homeschooling is not merely a consequence of white, Christian families—the dominant demographic in homeschooling during recent times—exercising greater control over their children’s educational path (or becoming disenchanted with the politicization of public schools). It’s now black and Hispanic families who are exercising that choice.

“I can say that most of the parents I spoke with are thinking deeply about how to give their kids the most well-rounded education possible, as well as a variety of social opportunities. They see this choice as a reprioritization of values, an opportunity to really get to know their kids and nourish their natural curiosities,” writes Newberry (though she repeats the inaccurate claim that “homeschooling is also largely unregulated in many states.”)

Those ideas about how to best educate your own child might be flourishing now because of a pandemic and the ill-conceived public policy response to it. But the census data, polling, and reporting all indicate that parents choosing to homeschool during COVID are motivated by reasons that might transcend the current chaos.

The post The Pandemic Set Off a Homeshooling Boom. Don't Be So Sure That a Bust Is Coming. appeared first on Reason.com.

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Peter Schiff: “We’re Screwed & The Fed Knows It”

Peter Schiff: “We’re Screwed & The Fed Knows It”

Authored by Michael Maharrey via SchiffGold.com,

The Federal Reserve wrapped up its first Federal Open Market Committee meeting of the year this week without any real surprises. Despite everybody screaming about an inflation problem, the Fed will keep its loose, inflationary monetary policy in play for at least two more months.

Interest rates remain locked at zero. But the FOMC said it will likely raise rates “soon.”

With inflation well above 2 percent and a strong labor market, the Committee expects it will soon be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate.”

Most analysts expect “soon” to be at the March meeting.

But Jerome Powell left some wiggle-room in the trajectory of the Fed’s monetary policy, saying, “At this time, we haven’t made any decisions about the path of policy. I stress again that we’ll be humble and nimble.”

Powell also indicated that the Fed would be “data-dependent.” As Peter Schiff said in his podcast, “If the Federal Reserve was depending on the data, they would have raised interest rates a long time ago, and they would now be much higher than zero.”

It’s important to reiterate that despite the inflation freight train, the Fed left interest rates at zero. If the central bank was really ready to go to war with inflation, why wait until March? Why is it still pouring gasoline on the inflation fire?

The FOMC also offered some more details on “significantly reducing” the Fed’s massive balance sheet. The central bankers said the plan was to reduce the balance sheet primarily by limiting how much principal it rolls over from maturing bonds. But the FOMC did not set a specific date for the beginning of quantitative tightening, nor did it offer any hint on how much it would ultimately pair down its nearly $9 trillion balance sheet.

But the FOMC said it was not only going to reduce the size of the balance sheet. It also plans to change the makeup, shifting away from mortgage-backed securities and weighing its holdings more toward US Treasuries. This comes as no surprise given that the federal government needs to Fed to keep its thumb on the Treasury market in order to finance its massive deficits.

During his press conference, Powell said balance sheet reduction would begin at the “appropriate time.” But he then said he didn’t have a specific timeline and that the FOMC hadn’t discussed it.

“Really?” Peter asked in a tweet.

What exactly do they talk about when they meet, sports? We’re screwed and they know it.”

The last time the Fed attempted “double-tightening” – balance sheet reduction and interest rate hikes – was in 2018. The central bank was forced to abandon both when the stock market tanked. By the end of 2019, the Fed had cut rates and had pivoted back to quantitative easing. It seems highly unlikely that the Fed will be able to pull off double-tightening today with an even bigger stock market bubble and an economy even more levered up with debt. Even the mainstream has realized raising rates will exacerbate a global debt crisis.

But Powell claims the economy is much stronger now than it was the last time the Fed tightened. In another tweet, Peter said the economy is not stronger.

It’s just a much bigger bubble. Even a smaller pin would produce a larger financial crisis.”

Quill Intelligence CEO Danielle DiMartino Booth told Kitco News that she thinks this tightening cycle could quickly plunge the economy into a recession.

I think that [a recession] could happen in a very compressed way because we have seen, as opposed to an economic recovery that stretches out over ten or 11 years, we’ve seen a very compressed economic cycle this time and the Fed has shifted from a loosening stance to a tightening stance in what feels like record time, so there’s absolutely no reason to think that the market will not start to anticipate the inversion of the yield curve and even move up expectations for when the economy slides into recession.”

In an interview on the Wharton Business Daily podcast, Peter said he thinks we’re on the path to stagflation.

I think inflation is ultimately going to push the economy into a recession as consumers are forced to spend more and more of what they have on food and energy and insurance and just the basics. They’re not going to have discretionary spending. And when they have to cut back, that means a lot of other people lose their incomes, lose their jobs. This is going to be stagflation.”

Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/28/2022 – 10:40

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3r6wxs4 Tyler Durden

Virginia AG Says State Universities Can’t Mandate Vaccine For Students

Virginia AG Says State Universities Can’t Mandate Vaccine For Students

Virginia’s new Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) has come out of the gate swinging since being sworn in just weeks ago.

First, he cleaned house – firing dozens of lawyers, including those in the Civil Rights division, while at the same time announcing investigations into Loudon County Public Schools and the Virginia Parole Board.

Then, he fired Democrat attorneys from the University of Virginia and George Mason University, saying he “wants the university counsel to return to giving legal advice based on law, and not the philosophy of a university,” adding: “We plan to look internally first for the next lead counsel.” 

Now, Miyares has issued a legal opinion that public universities in Virginia cannot mandate the Covid-19 vaccine for students.

“There is no question that the General Assembly could enact a statute requiring the COVID-19 vaccine for in-person school attendance,” he wrote in Friday press release, adding “As of this writing, they have not done so.”

“Although the General Assembly specifically authorized public institutions of higher education to assist the Department of Health and local health departments in the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine, the legislation did not grant such institutions power to impose vaccine requirements.“

Virginia follows Tennessee, Alabma, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Montana, Arizona, Utah and Florida, all of which have banned universities from requiring vaccinations.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/28/2022 – 10:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3GddlNs Tyler Durden

UMich Sentiment Drops Further In Jan, Weakest In A Decade

UMich Sentiment Drops Further In Jan, Weakest In A Decade

After preliminary January data showed a further weakening in University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment survey, the final print weakened even further with the headline dropping from 70.6 in December to 68.8 flash to 67.2 final. Both current conditions and future expectations also deteriorated during the month

Source: Bloomberg

This is the lowest headline and current conditions print since 2011.

Democrats’ confidence dropped to its lowest since the election and Independents confidence are at their weakest since 2012 (as Repuboican sentiment ticked up modestlY)

Source: Bloomberg

However all parties expectations worsened as overall confidence in government economic policies is at its lowest level since 2014, and the major geopolitical risks may add to the pandemic active confrontations with other countries.

Source: Bloomberg

Buying attitudes worsened to new record lows for large household durables and vehicles and housing buying attitudes limped back lower after a modest rebound….

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, and perhaps most importantly in the current environment, inflation expectations rose to 4.9% (for the next year) and 3.1% for the next 5-10 years – the highest since 2008 and 2011 respectively…

Source: Bloomberg

It looks like two years of “transitory” preaching has un-anchored the religious belief that The Fed has everything under control.

Get back to work Mr.Powell.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/28/2022 – 10:11

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3ri7x1f Tyler Durden

This L.A. School Called the Cops on Unvaccinated Teens Who Showed Up for Class


newest

When 15-year-old Ellah Nahum and a few other unvaccinated students showed up at Los Angeles’ New West Charter School on Tuesday, January 18, after winter break, they brought lunches, backpacks, and negative COVID-19 tests, hoping to be allowed in. They’d been negotiating with school administrators since early October, when the school had announced that a vaccine mandate would go into effect in January. Prior to returning to school from winter break, they’d requested a hearing, attempting to find alternative options to getting vaccinated.

When they showed up at school around 7:30 a.m., they sailed through the first checkpoint, run by two newly hired security guards who were satisfied with the girls’ proof of negative test conducted in the last 24 hours. It was the second checkpoint, run by school administrators demanding proof of vaccination, that created trouble for the teens. Several hours later, after tense negotiations between administrators, teens, and their parents, the school called Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to the scene, and cordoned the teens off, denying them chairs and bathroom breaks, according to the girls.

Nahum tells Reason she’s unvaccinated for several reasons. Given her Jewish faith, she has reservations about putting foreign substances in her body, like vaccines or birth control pills (though she’s received all childhood vaccines required to enter school). She has concerns about the fact that most other vaccines go through many years of testing, whereas the COVID-19 vaccine has not. Some of her friends have had their menstrual cycles stop around the same time they got vaccinated or encountered other bizarre side effects. And, all that aside, she already contracted the virus back in December 2020.

“The big thing that’s been going around is that I’m an anti-vaxxer, and that’s not the case,” she says. The school claims its student body is 96 percent vaccinated, but Nahum mentions that she’s heard through the grapevine that some students have falsified their vaccination information, so that may be a slight overcount.

Regardless, the school has taken a hard-line stance. On the day the mandate controversy transpired, parents anticipated that their kids might have some trouble and accompanied them to school, expecting to reason with the administration. The school called the LAPD around 10 or 10:30 a.m. An officer came and told the girls they weren’t supposed to be on campus then, to which Nahum responded that they have a lawyer and a hearing with the school.

“If anything, us not attending school is the illegal part of the matter,” Nahum says she told one of the cops (who was himself unvaccinated). For several hours, Nahum and her schoolmates were kept confined to an outdoor area with a hard concrete floor, where they were sitting on a thin pipe that was lining a wall. She likens it to doing a wall sit, but some of the girls, who ranged in age from 14 to 16, started asking for chairs. Nahum asked the police officer, who asked the administrators, who denied the request, along with another one from a girl who wanted to use the bathroom. (New West denies this account.)

“At that point it almost became comedic,” she says. “They are adults doing something to 15-year-old girls…if anything this just looks worse on them.”

Line dividers—the types you see at concerts—were brought over to cage the girls in, confining them to that area. (“Broski, I can just go underneath,” Nahum says jokingly to me.) It felt like being in a zoo, she says. Then the bell rang and students filed out of class and began asking why the girls were cordoned off. “Because they’re unvaccinated,” responded an administrator, according to Nahum, which made her “furious” because the school wasn’t supposed to give out her medical information like that.

Around noon, the girls received an ultimatum: If they didn’t leave, they would face suspension. Nahum and the group decided to leave and haven’t attended school since.

Students are already required to take a COVID-19 test weekly, and when Reason pressed school administrators on whether proof of natural immunity would be sufficient to allow them to return to school, or why their current weekly testing regime is insufficient, they didn’t respond.

A lawsuit was filed January 18 on behalf of unnamed students by Let Them Breathe, an organization that has fought against mask and vaccine mandates and won a similar lawsuit against San Diego Unified School District. The suit alleges that such vaccine mandates are in violation of California law. San Diego County Superior Court Judge John S. Meyer noted that such vaccine mandates can only be legally imposed by the state legislature, not by specific school districts.

“Students weren’t showing up to stage a sit-in, they were showing up to go to school,” says Sharon McKeeman of Let Them Breathe. “New West is putting out statements saying these students showed up to protest and disrupt, but they didn’t!”

COVID-19 poses minimal threat to young people and can be transmitted by vaccinated people as well as the unvaccinated. The school even delayed its return from winter break due to so many people in the community coming down with COVID-19. The hospitalization rate, per recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, stands at 5.4 per million for unvaccinated teens, which is roughly the same as the current hospitalization rate for vaccinated adults.

“If it’s really about keeping the campus safe, you would’ve taken us up on the offer to test every day,” says Nahum, noting that the way she was publicly cordoned off was humiliating. “I’m not expecting to have many friends when I come back.”

The post This L.A. School Called the Cops on Unvaccinated Teens Who Showed Up for Class appeared first on Reason.com.

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Democrats Still Have a Way To Pass Their Voting Rights Legislation


Voting Rights

Senate Democrats keep trying to change the filibuster rules so they can pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. They also keep failing, and last week they failed again. So it still takes 60 votes to curtail a filibuster by ending debate on a bill. The Democrats don’t have 60 votes in the Senate, so many people declared both bills dead.

But there is still a conceivable way the Democrats could pass their legislation with a simple majority vote. It would take a marathon “talking filibuster” in true Mr. Smith Goes to Washington fashion.

Under the Senate’s rules, Republicans can delay a vote as long as they keep the debate alive on the Senate floor. And as Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) and others have demonstrated, it is possible to hold the floor for a long time. But Senate Rule XIX limits the number of speeches a senator can make, stating that “no Senator shall speak more than twice upon any one question in debate on the same legislative day.” The Senate’s presiding officer must call a vote on a bill when no senators left on floor can speak within the limitations of the rule. After this, a simple majority can pass a bill.

Could the Republicans simply take turns talking until the day is over, then start over again? No, because the Democrats control when the Senate adjourns. A legislative “day” does not end at 5 p.m. Senators have to vote to adjourn the Senate, and this does not have to happen at the end of the calendar day. Democrats can make a legislative day last for multiple calendar days by keeping the Senate in continuous debate on the bill, or by voting for a temporary recess rather than adjourning.

The Democrats have tried to narrow Rule XIX to create a carveout for this specific legislation. In effect, they wanted to strip away Republicans’ ability to offer amendments, make motions, and raise points of order during the debate. But Sen. Joe Manchin (D–W.Va.) wasn’t on board with this—not because he opposes the “talking filibuster,” but because the proposed rule change would substantially limit Republican participation in the legislative process.

Yet Democrats don’t need to change the rules to block GOP amendments. They can defeat amendments from Republicans with no debate on a simple majority vote. While Republicans may offer different motions to prolong their filibuster once they have exhausted their two speeches, historical precedent suggests that the effort to do so will be futile. When given the opportunity, senators have never offered amendments—or other motions—indefinitely to postpone a vote.

Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D–Ariz.), who have joined the chamber’s Republicans in opposing changes to the filibuster, are more likely to support this strategy, since it keeps the Senate’s current rule in place. Sinema has stated that she supports the two bills and is opposed only to “eliminating the 60-vote threshold.” Manchin has not ruled out supporting the legislation, and he says he supports efforts to increase the pressure on filibustering senators. Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press last year, Manchin commented, “If you want to make it a little bit more painful, make him stand there and talk.” It seems that Manchin draws the line at “breaking the rules to change the rules,” not at passing voting rights legislation on a simple majority vote.

If Democrats want to pass their voting rights bills, they should listen to Manchin and Sinema and force Republicans to embark on a “talking filibuster”. No matter what happens next, Democrats should remember that the filibuster is not a simple roadblock—it’s a tool in legislators’ arsenal.

The post Democrats Still Have a Way To Pass Their Voting Rights Legislation appeared first on Reason.com.

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This L.A. School Called the Cops on Unvaccinated Teens Who Showed Up for Class


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When 15-year-old Ellah Nahum and a few other unvaccinated students showed up at Los Angeles’ New West Charter School on Tuesday, January 18, after winter break, they brought lunches, backpacks, and negative COVID-19 tests, hoping to be allowed in. They’d been negotiating with school administrators since early October, when the school had announced that a vaccine mandate would go into effect in January. Prior to returning to school from winter break, they’d requested a hearing, attempting to find alternative options to getting vaccinated.

When they showed up at school around 7:30 a.m., they sailed through the first checkpoint, run by two newly hired security guards who were satisfied with the girls’ proof of negative test conducted in the last 24 hours. It was the second checkpoint, run by school administrators demanding proof of vaccination, that created trouble for the teens. Several hours later, after tense negotiations between administrators, teens, and their parents, the school called Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to the scene, and cordoned the teens off, denying them chairs and bathroom breaks, according to the girls.

Nahum tells Reason she’s unvaccinated for several reasons. Given her Jewish faith, she has reservations about putting foreign substances in her body, like vaccines or birth control pills (though she’s received all childhood vaccines required to enter school). She has concerns about the fact that most other vaccines go through many years of testing, whereas the COVID-19 vaccine has not. Some of her friends have had their menstrual cycles stop around the same time they got vaccinated or encountered other bizarre side effects. And, all that aside, she already contracted the virus back in December 2020.

“The big thing that’s been going around is that I’m an anti-vaxxer, and that’s not the case,” she says. The school claims its student body is 96 percent vaccinated, but Nahum mentions that she’s heard through the grapevine that some students have falsified their vaccination information, so that may be a slight overcount.

Regardless, the school has taken a hard-line stance. On the day the mandate controversy transpired, parents anticipated that their kids might have some trouble and accompanied them to school, expecting to reason with the administration. The school called the LAPD around 10 or 10:30 a.m. An officer came and told the girls they weren’t supposed to be on campus then, to which Nahum responded that they have a lawyer and a hearing with the school.

“If anything, us not attending school is the illegal part of the matter,” Nahum says she told one of the cops (who was himself unvaccinated). For several hours, Nahum and her schoolmates were kept confined to an outdoor area with a hard concrete floor, where they were sitting on a thin pipe that was lining a wall. She likens it to doing a wall sit, but some of the girls, who ranged in age from 14 to 16, started asking for chairs. Nahum asked the police officer, who asked the administrators, who denied the request, along with another one from a girl who wanted to use the bathroom. (New West denies this account.)

“At that point it almost became comedic,” she says. “They are adults doing something to 15-year-old girls…if anything this just looks worse on them.”

Line dividers—the types you see at concerts—were brought over to cage the girls in, confining them to that area. (“Broski, I can just go underneath,” Nahum says jokingly to me.) It felt like being in a zoo, she says. Then the bell rang and students filed out of class and began asking why the girls were cordoned off. “Because they’re unvaccinated,” responded an administrator, according to Nahum, which made her “furious” because the school wasn’t supposed to give out her medical information like that.

Around noon, the girls received an ultimatum: If they didn’t leave, they would face suspension. Nahum and the group decided to leave and haven’t attended school since.

Students are already required to take a COVID-19 test weekly, and when Reason pressed school administrators on whether proof of natural immunity would be sufficient to allow them to return to school, or why their current weekly testing regime is insufficient, they didn’t respond.

A lawsuit was filed January 18 on behalf of unnamed students by Let Them Breathe, an organization that has fought against mask and vaccine mandates and won a similar lawsuit against San Diego Unified School District. The suit alleges that such vaccine mandates are in violation of California law. San Diego County Superior Court Judge John S. Meyer noted that such vaccine mandates can only be legally imposed by the state legislature, not by specific school districts.

“Students weren’t showing up to stage a sit-in, they were showing up to go to school,” says Sharon McKeeman of Let Them Breathe. “New West is putting out statements saying these students showed up to protest and disrupt, but they didn’t!”

COVID-19 poses minimal threat to young people and can be transmitted by vaccinated people as well as the unvaccinated. The school even delayed its return from winter break due to so many people in the community coming down with COVID-19. The hospitalization rate, per recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, stands at 5.4 per million for unvaccinated teens, which is roughly the same as the current hospitalization rate for vaccinated adults.

“If it’s really about keeping the campus safe, you would’ve taken us up on the offer to test every day,” says Nahum, noting that the way she was publicly cordoned off was humiliating. “I’m not expecting to have many friends when I come back.”

The post This L.A. School Called the Cops on Unvaccinated Teens Who Showed Up for Class appeared first on Reason.com.

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