Tag: news

Earlier this month, the Chinese government

ordered a nationwide investigation into allegations that
kindergarten schools in several provinces were treating their
students with anti-viral medication. Authorities say the dispensing
of medication could be part of an effort to boost attendance, which
is apparently tied to revenue at the schools. The ‘president’ of at
least one kindergarten school that spurred the investigation
admitted to dosing students with over-the-counter anti-fever meds
as well as vitamins. Protests
continued this week amid revelations that kindergartens in yet
another province may have been medicated without parents’ consent.
According to lawyers for the parents involved, there are
no laws prohibiting administering medication to students
without parental consent, something parents and their attorneys say
they want to see as a result of the crisis.

Even while admitting official statistics show 91 percent of
kindergartens in one province as “private,” the state media agency
Xinhua has used the crisis to
attack private schools:

The official statistics show that Guangxi has 7,554
kindergartens, 6,900 of which are private. Of these, 4,000 plus are
operating without licenses. With poor infrastructure, unqualified
teachers and shortcuts on safety, many private kindergartens are
nothing more that sources of profit for their owners and wholly
neglect their fundamental function as educational institutions,
Yuan said.

The number of unlicensed private kindergartens seems to be a direct
result of a lack of alternatives in preschool education. “The
authorities did not expect so many preschool children decades ago.
They failed to make a long-term plan for expansion of
kindergartens,” said Xiong Bingqi, deputy head of the 21st Century
Education Research Institute.

Exactly how private the schools in a nominally communist country
really are is difficult to ascertain, and there is no specific
reporting on the public/private identification of each of the
schools accused of medicating their students. Tying revenue to
attendance isn’t common among private schools in the West, and
doesn’t seem like it would be a smart arrangement in Chinese
private schools either. Schools need the ability to budget on a
year-to-year basis based on expected tuition revenue. It doesn’t
make business sense to tie that revenue to student attendance,
because most of the underlying costs of educating that student
don’t appreciably decrease with lower attendance. Yet what makes
sense in a private school in China could be very different because
of the way the government constricts and distorts whatever private
education market might exist there.

Tying attendance to revenue sounds a lot more like a strategy
that would be deployed in
government-funded schools, where the government could point to
high attendance rates as a success. Nevertheless, the South
China Morning Post comes closest to explaining the phenomenon
by reporting that at nursery schools “absent pupils don’t pay
fees.”

According to the blog Dongbei Daishu, private schools in

China re-emerged in 1992, having been obliterated after the
communists took over in 1949. 

Today President Obama gave a
speech in Brussels addressing America’s relationship with
Europe and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

Early on Obama highlighted the fact that the Enlightenment,
which began in Europe, gave rise to the ideas that inspired the
American revolution. Obama then went on to say that in many ways
the history of 20th century Europe represented the struggle between
Enlightenment ideals and “an older, more traditional view of power”
which “argues that ordinary men and women are too small-minded to
govern their own affairs, that order and progress can only come
when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful
sovereign.”

Obama made sure to point out that this ideological struggle
continues today and that “we are confronted with the belief among
some that bigger nations can bully smaller ones to get their
way.”

Obama also said that the U.S. and its European allies would
expand sanctions on Russia if “Russian leadership stays on its
current course.”

Interestingly, Obama pushed back against accusations of
hypocrisy relating to America’s stance on the Russian invasion of
Crimea:

Moreover, Russia has pointed to America’s decision to go into
Iraq as an example of Western hypocrisy. Now, it is true that the
Iraq war was a subject of vigorous debate, not just around the
world but in the United States, as well. I participated in that
debate, and I opposed our military intervention there.

But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the
international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory.
We did not grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended
our war and left Iraq to its people in a fully sovereign Iraqi
state that can make decisions about its own future.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Obama chose not to mention that he was
opposed to the scheduled withdrawal of American troops from
Iraq in December 2011.

Obama is right that the U.S. sought to “work within the
international system” ahead of the invasion of Iraq, although it
didn’t get the level of international approval it sought. In fact,
former Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan said that
the war was
illegal.

Obama also had something to say to non-interventionists:

There will always be voices who say that what happens in the
wider world is not our concern nor our responsibility. But we must
never forget that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. Our
democracy, our individual opportunity only exist because those who
came before us had the wisdom and the courage to recognize that
ideals will only endure if we see our self-interest in the success
of other peoples and other nations.

Obama went on to say that there isn’t a military option in
Ukraine. Of course, without a military optionf the U.S. is left
with little else except sanctions (which are
unlikely to work) and tools of an overly involved foreign
policy.

What the U.S. could do, and what would improve the lives of
Ukrainians and Russians, is
open
the borders. However, Obama has demonstrated throughout his
presidency that he approves of the U.S. being involved in the
affairs of other countries and is
no fan of open borders. 

Watch Obama’s speech in full below:

In many parts of the world, a person can walk into a drugstore
and—without physician oversight or interference—buy a pack of birth
control pills. Perhaps several packs.  But not so in America,
where the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been considering
making oral contraceptives available over-the-counter (OTC) for
more than twenty years. What’s the hold up? Emergency
contraception, a more potent dose of the same hormones that make up
regular birth control pills, is now available without a
prescription. There’s no good medical justification for the
differentiation, and no reason to tie the pill to yearly doctor’s
visits. Elizabeth Nolan Brown looks at why oral contraception
in America remain stubbornly behind the pharmacy counter and behind
the times. 

View this article.

• President Barack Obama said
  today a new round of
  sanctions against Russia could target Russia’s energy sector as
  he urged the European Union to find new energy sources and to
  become less dependent on Russia. Bring on the fracking!
• A jury in New York has convicted Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a
  
  son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, of terrorism charges. The jury
  took only a day to come to a decision.
• One employee gets killed one time at Los Angeles International
  Airport, and so the Transportation Security Administration is
  begging for
  armed law enforcement personnel at airport security checkpoints
  during “peak hours.”
• The governor of Michigan says the state
  will not recognize same-sex marriages performed over the
  weekend. The weddings took place between a judge’s decision on
  Friday that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage recognition was
  unconstitutional and a stay put in place this week while the courts
  review the ruling.
• The death toll in anti-government protests in
  economically ravaged Venezuela is up to 32. President Nicolas
  Maduro has arrested three air force generals, accusing them of
  conspiring against his government.
• A Turkish court has blocked its prime minister’s efforts to
  block citizens’
  access and use of Twitter, which has been a tool to pass along
  recordings suggesting government corruption.

Follow us on Facebook
and Twitter,
and don’t forget to sign
up for Reason’s daily updates for more
content.

Maybe political embarrassment
comes in threes? Oh who am I kidding? As if politicians feel
embarrassment.

Anyway, a third Democratic state senator in California in recent
months has been charged with crimes. Leland Yee, who represents the
San Francisco area in the state Senate, and is running for
Secretary of State, has been indicted for public corruption as part
of a massive Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) operation in the
city.

Details are still sketchy, as there’s a series of raids going on
in the area today connected this investigation. The San Jose
Mercury News
notes that Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a well-known gangster in
the city, was also caught up in the raids. They provide his
background:

Federal law enforcement officials have been chasing Raymond
“Shrimp Boy” Chow for decades, branding him one of the longtime Bay
Area leaders of a Hong Kong-based criminal syndicate called the Wo
Hop To. Chow’s criminal rap sheet dates back to 1978, and includes
multiple federal racketeering indictments that have included
allegations of attempted murder, murder-for-hire, gun trafficking
and other crimes.

Chow was originally indicted in a federal racketeering probe
that targeted the alleged leader of the Chinatown gang, Peter
Chong. At one point, Chow cooperated with federal law enforcement
officials against Chong, who had fled to Hong Kong after being
indicted on racketeering charges but was later extradited and
eventually convicted in San Francisco federal court in a case
marred by setbacks and delays. Chow’s original 1995 sentence of 24
years was lessened to 11 years as a result of his cooperation, and
he has been out of prison for the past 10 years.

That Yee might possibly be connected to organized crime drew the
eye of tech site ArsTechnica and other gaming sites. Lee, it turns
out, was a major force behind the law to criminalize the sale of
violent video games to children, a law that was ultimately struck
down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 2011. The site
notes
some of Yee’s quotes on protecting children from pretend
gangsters and animated violence:

Through it all, Yee remained a staunch defender of the idea that
the state should aid parents in making violent games harder for
children to access. He has given numerous statements over the years
to that effect. “Plain and simply, the current rating system is
drastically flawed, and here is yet another reason why we need
legislation to assist parents and protect children,” Yee told
GameIndustry.biz in 2006. “This is the same technology the armed
forces use to help soldiers kill the enemy. All we’re saying is,
‘Don’t sell it to kids,'” he told The San Jose
Mercury News in 2008. “When you fight the good fight for a
cause you know is right and just, and it’s about protecting kids,
you don’t ever regret that,” Yee told The Sacramento Bee
in 2012.

Since we don’t know what Yee’s accused of, I don’t want to rush
to directly connect him to Chow. If the FBI does accuse him of
having a direct connection to Chow as part of this corruption
indictment, we can look forward with how a game like Grand
Theft Auto might take advantage of this apparent hypocrisy.
 

For those keeping score, the other two California state senators
(both Democrats) caught up in current crime scandals are Ron
Calderon, accused of taking bribes to pushing certain legislation,
and
Rod Wright, who was convicted of perjury for lying about living
in his district.

Outside of California, Patrick Cannon, the mayor of Charlotte,
N.C., (also a Democrat) was
arrested today for allegedly taking bribes.

The U.S. Supreme Court receives around 10,000 petitions each
year from various parties seeking review of their cases. Among the
current crop of contenders, one case in particular
stands out as worthy of the Court’s attention:
Courtney
v. Danner.

At issue is a Washington state law granting de facto
monopoly privileges to companies providing commercial ferry
service. According to the state, entrepreneurs hoping to break into
that line of work must first obtain a government-issued certificate
of “public convenience and necessity.” Among other requirements,
applicants must show that an existing certificate holder “has not
objected to the issuance of the certificate as prayed for.” In
other words, established ferry businesses get to veto the
applications of their would-be competitors.

The results are just what you would expect. For example, at Lake
Chelan, a 55-mile long stretch of water popular with outdoor
enthusiasts, the Lake Chelan Boat Company has been the sole
certificate holder since 1929, and has repeatedly convinced the
state to keep new competitors at bay. In effect, the company enjoys
a state-sanctioned monopoly that comes at the expense of both other
businesses and the recreation-seeking public.

In 2011, the entrepreneurs James and Clifford Courtney,
represented by the Institute for Justice, challenged the
monopolistic law in federal court, arguing it violated the 14th
Amendment, which reads: “No State shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States.” As support for their argument, the Courtneys cited
the Supreme Court’s 1873 decision in
The Slaughter-House Cases, which recognized the “right
to use the navigable waters of the United States” among the
privileges or immunities of national citizenship. To be clear, the
Courtneys take no issue with any health or safety regulations; they
seek only to invalidate the monopoly law.

Yet the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit
ruled against them, arguing that because the Courtneys sought
to engage in “an activity driven by economic concerns,” they
deserved no judicial protection. In fact, the 9th Circuit ruled,
neither Slaughter-House nor the Privileges or Immunities
Clause should offer any meaningful shield for economic liberty. “A
reasonable interpretation of the right to ‘use the navigable waters
of the United States,’ and the one we adopt,” the 9th Circuit
declared, “is that it is a right to navigate the waters of
the United States.”

That ruling transformed Slaughter-House from one of the
Supreme Court’s most regrettable opinions into something even
worse. Let me explain.

The issue before the Supreme Court back in 1873 was whether a
Louisiana law granting a private corporation an exclusive
slaughter-house monopoly for the city of New Orleans violated the
recently-ratified 14th Amendment. In its five-to-four opinion, the
Court not only upheld the monopoly, it gutted the Privileges or
Immunities Clause in the process, holding that the clause placed no
limit whatsoever on the power of the states to control the lives
and liberties of their residents. To rule otherwise, argued the
majority opinion of Justice Samuel F. Miller, would “fetter and
degrade the State governments.”

That decision turned the text and history of the 14th Amendment
on its head. As Justice Stephen Field remarked in his
Slaughter-House dissent, the Privileges or Immunities
Clause was designed to protect a broad range of fundamental rights
from state infringement, including “the right of free labor.” As
Field stressed, “the fourteenth amendment does afford such
protection, and was so intended by the Congress which framed and
the states which adopted it.”

Field got it right and the majority got it wrong. The 14th
Amendment was drafted in 1866 and ratified in 1868 in direct
response to the widespread injustices occurring throughout the
former Confederacy in the aftermath of the Civil War. Among those
injustices were the Black Codes, a web of regulations and
ordinances designed to rob the recently freed slaves of their
rights to own property, possess guns for self-defense, make
contracts, file lawsuits, earn a living, and move freely in search
of better opportunities. In Opelousas, Louisiana, for example, the
local government declared, “No negro or freedman shall be permitted
to rent or keep a house within the limits of the town under any
circumstance,” nor shall any freedman “sell, barter, or exchange
any articles of merchandise” without written permission from white
officials. Similar laws restricted the rights of the freedmen’s
white unionist allies.

All such laws plainly violated the principles of free labor and
economic liberty, and the Privileges or Immunities Clause was
designed to put a stop to the violations. Indeed, as the clause’s
author, Republican Congressman John Bingham of Ohio, once
explained, among the privileges or immunities protected by the 14th
Amendment from state infringement was “the right to work in an
honest calling and contribute by your toil in some sort to the
support of your fellowmen, and to be secure in the enjoyment of the
fruits of your toil.”

The Slaughter-House majority ignored that historical
evidence, ruling instead that the Privileges or Immunities Clause
protected only a narrow set of rights stemming from national
citizenship, such as the right to “free access to [the nation’s]
seaports, through which all operations of foreign commerce are
conducted,” and the aforementioned “right to use the navigable
waters of the United States.”

That outcome was more than bad enough. But in the Lake Chelan
case now before the Supreme Court, the 9th Circuit sunk even
further by effectively rewriting Slaughter-House to
recognize only a non-economic right to “navigate” U.S.
waters. This deficient interpretation not only runs counter to the
original meaning of the 14th Amendment, it violates the clear
meaning of the (abysmal) Slaughter-House precedent.

That is too much. The Supreme Court should take the case,
overrule the 9th Circuit, and restore a small bit of sanity to
America’s Privileges or Immunities Clause jurisprudence.