Muda69

http://reason.com/blog/2019/01/24/new-poll-shows-medicare-for-all-is-popul

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A new poll shows that a clear majority of Americans support Medicare for All—until they are told what it is and how it would work.

The survey was conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which regularly asks Americans about health policy issues as part of its Health Tracking Poll series. It finds that 56 percent of the country supports a "national health plan, sometimes called Medicare for All" and an even larger percentage—71 percent—supports the idea when told that it would "guarantee health insurance as a right for all Americans." When told that such a plan would eliminate health insurance premiums, 67 percent say they're in favor.

One way to look at these numbers is as strong public approval for the broad outlines of a single-payer health care system, which would create a single national health insurance plan run by the federal government and financed through taxes. That public is support is why so many 2020 Democratic presidential contenders have been warming up to the idea.

But the more revealing part of the survey, I think, comes from the questions focused on the costs of single payer, all of which caused support for Medicare for All to drop below 40 percent. Told that it would eliminate private health insurance and require people to pay more in taxes, for example, support fell to 37 percent. Told that it would cause some medical treatments and tests to be delayed, support dropped even further, to 26 percent.

Medicare for All supporters might complain that these are loaded descriptions that don't accurately capture the reality of single payer, which they say is about freeing people from premiums while offering a guarantee of access. But these are, at a very basic level, just descriptions of what an American single-payer system would do. The most prominent such plan is the one put forth by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), which would eliminate all existing private health insurance plans in a four-year period. Although it allows for some secondary private coverage once the system is in place, it requires most everyone in the U.S. to enroll in a new, government-run plan. Arguably the whole point of the most ambitious single-payer schemes is to move everyone off private insurance and onto a single federally managed plan; that's not possible unless people who currently have private insurance get new coverage. Some single-payer proposal would make the transition more slowly, but coverage disruption is not incidental; it's the point.

Financing that plan would require a massive increase in federal spending—about $32 trillion over a decade, according to estimates from think tanks across the political spectrum. Even with the most carefree attitude toward debt and deficits, it is nearly unthinkable that an increase in government spending of that size would not come with higher taxes, probably much higher taxes, which would likely affect the middle class.

The contention that waiting times for health care services would be longer is the most debatable of the bunch, but given the experience of other countries and the probable design of a full-scale single-payer plan, it's a more than plausible outcome. Government-run health care systems like the ones in the United Kingdom (which is fully socialized) and Canada (a territorial single-payer system) are notorious for having long wait times for services such as cancer treatment.

Furthermore, the Sanders plan calls for significant reductions to reimbursements for health care providers, which, if implemented, would almost certainly put some health care centers out of business, reducing the number of doctors and other medical professionals. And although it's possible, in theory, to imagine a system that doesn't cut provider rates, that would be far, far more expensive, and would require even higher taxes while robbing supporters of one of their favorite talking points—that Medicare for All is much cheaper, overall, than the current system.

Medicare for All proponents might be pleased with the show of support found in the survey, but what those questions mostly revealed was that people say yes when you ask them if they favor a health care system that is essentially cost-free. Clear public support, in other words, only materializes when you ignore the practical reality of making a transition from a mixed public/private system to single payer—higher taxes, longer waits, and the loss of existing private insurance arrangements.

So it's not surprising that Medicare for All backers are remaining relatively vague about the particulars of their plans—especially when it comes to financing—and that the phrase's popularity has coincided with its transformation into a non-specific catchall for additional government intervention in the provision of health care, whether or not that intervention amounts to a single-payer system. Vagueness serves the cause here. The imaginary version of Medicare for All that entails no disruption or tradeoffs is popular; the reality is not.

As usual, "the devil is in the details".  And socialist programs like "Medicare For All" reveals itself as being bad for Americans who value small government and individual liberty.

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2019/01/24/elwood-indiana-superintendent-casey-smitherman-insurance-fraud-sick-student/2665670002/

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A superintendent of an Indiana school district faces fraud charges for using her insurance to obtain $233 in medical care for a sick student.

Elwood Community Schools Superintendent Casey Smitherman was charged with three felonies and a misdemeanor in an insurance fraud case after she allegedly used her son's insurance to get treatment for a sick student.

"I am committed to this community and our students and I regret if this action has undermined your trust in me," Smitherman said in a statement to Fox 59. "From the beginning, my ultimate goal has been to provide the best environment for Elwood students’ growth physically, mentally and academically and I remain focused on that purpose."

According to a probable cause affidavit, Smitherman was worried about the 15-year-old boy when he did not come to school on Jan. 9. She contacted him and he told her he was sick and had a sore throat.

Smitherman, documents said, picked the boy up and took him to St. Vincent Immediate Care in Elwood. She admitted to using her son's insurance card's to pay for the care, documents said.

The boy, using the name of Smitherman's son, was prescribed the antibiotic Amoxicillin. Smitherman, documents said, filled that prescription at a CVS in Elwood.

The total bill was $233, documents said.

"Mrs Smitherman stated she realized (the boy) did not go to school and was worried about him," Elwood Police Officer Ben Gosnell wrote in the document. "Mrs. Smitherman (has) helped him by purchasing clothes and trying to give (the boy) a decent way of living by also helping clean his house."

Smitherman told police she didn't call the Department of Child Services for fear the boy might be placed in foster care. DCS has since opened an investigation, documents said.

Smitherman was booked Wednesday into the Madison County Jail on felony charges of insurance fraud, identity deception and official misconduct and another misdemeanor count of insurance fraud.

She was later freed on $5,000 bond, records show.

No court date has been scheduled.

Hmm.  Something seems to be missing regarding Ms. Smitherman's motives and actions here.  The Elwood Community School Corporation has over 1,500 students.  Exactly why was this teenage boy singled out by her?

7 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Why is there not a greater focus on the Black Hebrew Israelites who were mocking Mr. Phillips and the Catholic kid?

Because they can't be effectively criticized for their part in the confrontation without the "that's racist!" label being thrown about.  Kind of like any criticism of an individuals of Jewish ancestry runs of the risk of "anti-Semite!" being applied.

Also other comments I have read concerning the BLI's is that they are kind of like the "neighborhood kooks" that have been wandering around Washington D.C. and proselytizing for years, and therefore are basically just "part of the fabric' of the city.

Don't go DT!  This forum desperately needs individuals like yourself who are not afraid to express non-popular opinions and ideas.

It’s becoming clear that nothing could even partially excuse the Covington kids in the eyes of some, because wearing that hat and smirking are now crimes.: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/covington-catholic-maga-hatcrime-facecrime/

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Orwell in 1984:

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself — anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (incredulity when a victory was announced, for instance) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.

Mulling over what Orwell got right and wrong will be the work of decades to come. The video screens he envisioned are indeed ubiquitous, but they’re in our pockets, not run by a central authority. Orwell got one purpose of incessant video monitoring right, though: to identify and punish those whose facial expressions don’t conform to the cultural orthodoxy.

The Covington Catholic High School boys, it is now obvious, were initially charged with facecrime. Regardless of everything else we know now about the Lincoln Memorial incident, they remain guilty of that. And also hatcrime, the newest hate crime. I initially thought the bizarre reluctance to let go of the original, false narrative was due to people’s stubbornness about admitting their first impression was incorrect. Now it’s becoming clearer that in the eyes of some, nothing could even partially excuse the Covington kids.

Ruth Graham of Slate, on the boy we now know to be Nick Sandmann, was one of many who rushed to put down thoughts like these:

But I think the real reason the clip has spread is simpler: It’s the kid’s face. The face of self-satisfaction and certitude, of edginess expressed as cruelty. The face remains almost completely still as his peers hoot in awed delight at his bravado. The face is both punchable and untouchable. The face is in this photo of a clutch of white young men crowding around a single black man at a lunch counter sit-in in Virginia in the 1960s, and in many other images of jeering white men from that era. . . .Anyone who knew the popular white boys in high school recognized it: the confident gaze, the eyes twinkling with menace, the smirk. The face of a boy who is not as smart as he thinks he is, but is exactly as powerful. The face that sneers, “What? I’m just standing here,” if you flinch or cry or lash out. The face knows that no matter how you react, it wins. [Emphasis mine.]

On Twitter, Jessica Valenti wrote, “I’m willing to bet that fifty years from now, a defining image of this political era will be that smug white MAGA teen disrespecting a Native elder and veteran. It just captures so much.” It’s 49 years and 361 days short of 50 years, Jessica, how do you feel about that bet now? Valenti also wrote, “I think so many of us have been on the receiving end of the face he was making: a smug, untouchable, entitled f*** you.” A Saturday Night Live writer offered via Twitter oral sex to anyone “who manages to punch that maga kid in the face.” Former CNN contributor Reza Aslan wrote on the same platform, “Honest question. Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?”

A day after the initial story of what happened with the Covington kids fell apart, and after Nathan Phillips was exposed as having told a number of lies about it, TMZ was still offering headlines like, “MAGA hat smirking teen offers no apology to Nathan Phillips.” Why a teen must offer an apology to a purposefully annoying adult who walks into his group banging a drum inches from his face is unclear — unless you understand that wearing that hat and smirking are the crimes here.

Until the day before yesterday, I don’t think I would have had to say something this obvious, but: Let’s not leap to condemn people based on their facial expressions. Let’s not be an army of facecops making cultural arrests for facecrime.

When you hear Sandmann’s account of what happened — he was confused by Phillips’ act of aggression but thought the best way to defuse the situation was simply to smile and look non-threatening — it makes a lot more sense than Phillips’ blend of lies and distortions. At worst, a child was responding to a supposedly wise adult’s bizarre act of aggression with the visual equivalent of saying, “Bless your heart.”

On Monday, Molly Roberts of the Washington Post offered the following take: “Everyone is still wrong about the Covington kids.” Roberts re-introduces the idea that the teens shouted “Build the wall,” although her own paper has reported that there seems to be no video evidence of this. She castigates the many centrist and left-of-center commentators who have backed down from their initial take on the story because they’re just playing into the hands of a “fancy PR firm with Republican links.” (Do Washington Post editorial writers receive elementary instruction in the ad hominem fallacy?) She blasts the Covington kid who “ripped his shirt off in a gesture of self-assured dominance” (shirtcrime!) when in fact this “gesture of self-assured dominance” is better understood as a high-school sports cheer. We must re-condemn the Covington kids, Roberts scolds us, because “a smirk is a smirk” and because “Anyone who wears a Make America Great Again hat knows what it stands for, and who it stands against.”

Also on Monday, Laura Wagner of Deadspin made essentially the same argument. “Don’t Doubt What You Saw With Your Own Eyes,” runs her headline. Well, quite. She reminded us all not to cede any ground to “Right-wing trolls,” “gibbering masturbators” or “random MAGA chuds and Pepes” (ad hominem again) and charges the kids with being “draped in the symbols of white nationalism and misogyny,” by which she means the hats. Can you drape yourself in a hat? I don’t think so. Anyway, just to make sure we get the point, in the very next paragraph she informs us that the boys were “draped in racist, misogynist paraphernalia.” By which she again means the hats. Wagner mentions “MAGA” eight times in her piece. She just can’t let go of the fact that some people like the hats. She can’t believe anyone would side with “some s***head MAGA teens.” That’s question-begging unless you understand that to her it’s just a pair of synonymous terms.

I don’t doubt that people like Molly Roberts and Laura Wagner hate Donald Trump so much that they think the 63 million Americans who voted for him, and the many more who didn’t vote then but support him, are by definition racist, misogynist, and white nationalist. I feel bad for those who think nearly half of their own countrymen are evil. But the Covington kids simply got caught in the middle of all the fire progressives are raining on Trump. The Left started out incensed that the Covington kids were wearing hats and smiles, and now that we know those kids didn’t “mob” or “surround” a Native American but simply jeered a bit in response to an obnoxious activist who entered their group and pounded a drum in their faces, we’re back to the original charges: hatcrime and facecrime.

As I stated near the beginning of this thread, it's about the hats.

http://reason.com/archives/2019/01/23/what-we-dont-know-about-us-airstrikes-in

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Last weekend, the U.S. military killed what they reported as 52 militants from Somalia's al-Shabab. Taking its current form in 2006, the group started crossing borders for their violence in 2012 after allying themselves with al-Qaida. Their most recent attack took place on January 15 in Kenya––gun- and explosives-wielding men killed 22 people at a hotel. Their most successful was a bomb that killed a staggering 500 people in Mogadishu in October 2017.

The U.S. has been in Somalia since 2003, and currently has about 500 troops on the ground. A drone strike killed al-Shabab's leader in 2014, hower Trump has increased airstrikes against the group along with his attacks in Afghanistan and Syria.

Somalia might bring up strong associations with Black Hawk Down and the mess of Mogadishu in 1993, but it's a conflict generally lost among more prominent debates about the legality of U.S. presence in Syria, or whether 18 years in Afghanistan might just be long enough.

 

President Donald Trump's regime has loosened restrictions on airstrikes, and Trump has subsequently been looser with his use of bombs. That meant a supposed removal of an alleged rule of "near-certainty" that no civilians would be killed in an attack before the US proceeded (most likely barring ones on proper battlefields like Afghanistan and Iraq), and letting military leaders especially in Afghanistan, make decisions on the ground without White House oversight. However, with the constant domestic distractions sucking up even more attention, and his abrupt threats to end wars, Trump's reputation as an actual warmonger––or at least someone happy to keep the war on terror running as briskly as ever––is underrated. Not since Obama's first years in office (who, if you can recall, was big on continuing to fight in Afghanistan) has the U.S. dropped so many bombs on Afghanistan––10,000 in the last two years, including the most powerful non-nuclear bomb.

There's nothing ambiguous about the terribleness of al-Shabab. However, experts at the Council of Foreign Relations and the Center for Strategic and International Studies attribute their more aggressive rebirth to Ethiopia's 2006 invasion of the country, which raised the terrorist group's numbers from hundreds to what is now reportedly nearing 7,000. The Somali government and the UN Security Council-backed African Union Mission in Africa have been fighting al-Shabab since 2007. Fighting them is an understandable goal, but these recent acts of violence smell like blowback and could be a teachable moment if anyone wanted to learn.

Trump's desire to kill the families of terrorists, which, if done deliberately, would likely be a violation of the Geneva Convention, was memorable, but still doesn't have the reputation of a bomb-dropping kind of guy. In part because he likes to keep enemies guessing, but also because of policy in-fighting and indecision.

Realistically, however, Barack Obama's inclination toward tying his own hands in his final years in office came after he became notorious for pioneering a drone assassination program that he refused to admit existed for years. By the time he was a lame duck, and therefore suddenly aware that someone else was going to take the reins of death soon, he decided to take control over drone strikes away from the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon. He also issued a 2016 executive order to try and catalog civilian death from drones.

Not only were Obama's lame duck attacks to clean up his own mess generally infuriating––since he set the world's precedent for drone warfare and all––but the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies under Obama were not exactly trustworthy in their civilian casualty counting skills either.

Officially, any male of military age killed in a strike counted as a terrorist until proven otherwise. Males who survive an attack are assumed to be terrorist sympathizers. Fundamentally, there has never been a reason to trust that the U.S. will tell––or even knows, or wants to know––how many civilians it kills. Yes, terrorists and locals have an incentive to claim excessive death tolls, but equally, estimates offered by the U.S. government, such as nearly 1,000 innocent people killed in three years of fighting the Islamic State (IS), will be extremely low. The nonprofit Airwars, which tracks deaths in Libya, Syria, and Iraq, frequently estimates five to six times greater numbers of civilian deaths than official U.S. accounts suggest.

Perhaps all 52 militants killed in Somalia were as bad as could be, and nobody innocent suffered. Maybe that's true, but there's hardly enough evidence to prove that the U.S. will treat gatherings of people, or cars moving towards an area deemed suspicious, or even people's homes as legitimate targets.

But again, why is the U.S. involved at all? Our military is in 170 countries around the world including 20 African countriessuch as Uganda, Niger, and Djibouti. Blame Trump, blame Obama, blame Bush, but that kind of presence appears to be a permanent effect of the war on terror. (Call Bill Clinton's dabbling a prequel.)

Ending wars require hard decisions and will always involve imperfect timing––it's apparently easier to continue a war than to end one. Besides, Lockheed Martin has half a billion dollars to make. We're stuck, and it's costing people's lives––sometimes soldiers, sometimes terrorists, and sometimes just terrorized civilians.

Endless "war".  Endless death. Endless suffering.  All at the hands of a U.S. Military whose Congress has never expressly declared war.  Unconstitutional.

15 hours ago, foxbat said:

Are you implying that Mr. Phillips isn't a Vietnam vet?

That's because he isn't, according to the Marine Corp.  And Mr. Phillips has never expressly claimed to have served in Vietnam: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-news-nathan-phillips-veteran-vietnam-marines-covington-20190123-story.html

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Native American activist Nathan Phillips has never said he served in combat in Vietnam, though he has often referred to his service in the U.S. Marine Corps as the “Vietnam times.”

On Wednesday the Marines clarified this, telling The Washington Post and other media outlets that Phillips had served from June 1972 to May 1976 in the Marine Corps Reserve, serving first as an infantryman and then a refrigerator technician.

.....

11 hours ago, foxbat said:

A specific look at TSA employees, among others impacted by the shutdown:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/23/politics/the-shutdown-is-hurting-some-federal-workers/index.html

 

 

 

Just goes to highlight how much of the federal government could be effectively privatized.

Pay for Federal Government Workers: https://www.cato.org/blog/pay-federal-government-workers

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With the backdrop of the shutdown and federal workers going unpaid, the New York Times published a backgrounder last week on federal compensation. It was a fair and balanced piece and highlighted themes discussed in this study on government workers.

The NYT charts government and private sector wage growth. Average federal wages soared during the 1990s and 2000s but have grown more slowly this decade. However, overall federal compensation including benefits has grown briskly in recent years, as I chart below.

Here are highlights from the NYT story:

Verla Bloomfield has the kind of workplace that seems plucked from a different era. She has a pension, a union, several weeks of vacation and a paycheck that has nearly doubled in 14 years. Her employer? The United States government.

… Since 2000, average pay has grown twice as fast for federal employees as it has in the private sector. That’s partly because the federal work force has become more educated and specialized. It is also built into the job. Even without the salaries that top performers can command in the corporate world, government workers who do well are entitled by law to regular pay increases, an increasingly rare guarantee elsewhere.

… As globalization has shuttered factories and decimated entire industries, federal employment has been a bastion of stability.

… But the reality is that people who have held onto their government jobs for many years have not languished in the same role at the same pay grade. They have progressed up the ladder and benefited from regular raises at least every few years. They all have pensions and almost all have health insurance, perks that are harder to come by as an employee in corporate America.

… [Federal worker] Ms. Bloomfield would take stability over a six-figure salary in the private sector any day. Her brother earns much more than she does in technical support in Austin, Tex. But he’s had to switch employers multiple times in the last 20 years because of corporate restructuring and layoffs. “Even though he makes a high wage, he has to live with this uncertainty,” she said. “We don’t have that stress.”

Steve Fosse, a revenue agent with the I.R.S., isn’t sure whether that trade-off is worth it anymore. The first person in his family to graduate from college, Mr. Fosse, 39, took a job with the government because it offered reliability. “I wanted the benefits and the guaranteed paychecks,” he said. For the most part, that dream panned out. Mr. Fosse earns $90,000 a year…

The NYT uses data from the Bureau of Economic (BEA) for its pay comparisons. Federal worker wages averaged $90,794 in 2017, which was 48 percent higher than the private sector average of $61,311. But as the NYT article indicates, gold-plated benefits are a key advantage that federal workers enjoy over private-sector workers.

The chart below shows BEA data on total compensation, wages plus benefits. Compensation averaged $130,429 for federal workers in 2017, which was 79 percent higher than the private-sector average of $72,992.

The comments by Bloomfield and Fosse in the article illustrate another point. As I discuss here, high job security is an additional government benefit that should be considered when comparing federal to private compensation levels.  

The shutdown has disrupted the lives of federal workers, but generally they have a good thing going with pay, benefits, and job security. If Congress ever gets around to tackling bloat in the federal budget, excessive federal benefits would be a good place to find savings.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/terabyte-using-cable-customers-double-increasing-risk-of-data-cap-fees/

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US cable Internet customers are using an average of 268.7GB per month, and 4.1 percent of households use at least 1TB, according to new research by the vendor OpenVault.

Households that use at least 1TB a month are at risk of paying overage fees because of the 1TB data caps imposed by Comcast and other ISPs. Terabyte users nearly doubled year over year, as just 2.1 percent of households hit the 1TB mark last year, according to OpenVault.

Cable Internet providers use OpenVault products to track "broadband data usage consumption levels for millions of subscribers," the company says. This gives OpenVault visibility into how much data broadband customers use each month.

OpenVault found that households that face data caps use 8.5-percent less data than un-capped users, suggesting that cable customers limit their Internet usage when they face the prospect of overage fees. According to OpenVault, the caps can help cable companies avoid major network upgrades.

For cable Internet users, the need to limit usage to avoid overage fees isn't a selling point. But for OpenVault's cable industry customers, the ability to impose caps is a plus because it helps cable companies delay network upgrades.

"Our analysis makes it clear that usage-based billing is among the most effective tools the industry has in managing consumption and reducing the need for massive capital expenditures," OpenVault Executive VP Josh Barstow said in the OpenVault announcement.

...

OpenVault's new report is based on household usage in December 2018. The data comes entirely from cable networks, so it does not include any fiber, DSL, or wireless Internet services, an OpenVault spokesperson told Ars. OpenVault declined to say how many households were included in the data, and it's not clear which cable provider networks were studied.

The 268.7GB average household data used in December 2018 was "up from 226.4GB/HH [household] at the end of June 2018 and a 33.3 percent increase over the YE 2017 average of 201.6GB/HH," OpenVault said.

Median usage was 145.2GB in December 2018, "up from 116.4GB/HH in June 2018 and a 40 percent increase over the YE 2017 median of 103.6GB/HH," the company also said.

These numbers are in the general ballpark of what Comcast reports. Comcast says that "[a]s of June 2018, Xfinity Internet customers' median monthly data usage was 151GB per month during the past six months."

But while Comcast says that "more than 99 percent of our customers do not use 1 terabyte of data," OpenVault's research found a much higher percentage of customers exceeding 1TB. (Again, we don't know which cable networks were included in OpenVault's measurements.)

"The percentage of power users—defined as those households using 1TB or more—almost doubled in 2018, rising to 4.12 percent of all households from 2.11 percent in 2017, while the percentage of households exceeding 250GB rose to 36.4 percent from 28.4 percent during the same time span," OpenVault said.

....

We began regularly exceeding the 1TB in data usage a month almost a year ago.  And haven't looked back.

News to me on 1/23/2019, Fox:

6 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

I don't think sitting on the couch playing games helps solve that dilemma.  

 

https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/could-video-gamers-make-better-drone-pilots-180964653/

https://theaviationgeekclub.com/study-finds-video-gamers-better-ga-pilots-uav-operators/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/09/royal-air-force-recruit-video-game-players-operate-reaper-drones

Look for Beto O'Rourke and HRC to enter the race.

http://reason.com/archives/2019/01/23/why-wilbur-rosss-census-lies-matter

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In an age when the president prevaricates promiscuously or his opponents will say almost anything to make him look bad (take your pick), it is tempting to conclude that public officials can lie with impunity. But that is not always the case, as Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross discovered when he tried to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 U.S. Census.

Last week a federal judge in New York ruled that Ross, whose department includes the U.S. Census Bureau, "violated the law" and "violated the public trust" in "multiple independent ways" when he decided to change the census form—most egregiously, by offering a phony rationale he invented after he had made the decision. As U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman's 277-page decision shows in head-shaking detail, that kind of dishonesty poses a clear threat to the rule of law.

The Constitution requires an "actual enumeration" of each state's population, without regard to citizenship or immigration status, every 10 years so that representatives can be apportioned correctly. Asking about citizenship, which the main census form has not done since 1950, undermines that goal, since people may worry that the information they provide will be used against them or their relatives—a fear for which there is historical precedent, notwithstanding the government's promise of confidentiality.

 

Since 1960 the Census Bureau and the commerce secretary have warned that a citizenship question would aggravate the undercounting of "hard-to-count" groups, including not just unauthorized residents but people who live with them. Last January bureau staff conservatively estimated that adding the question would cause a 5 percent drop in form completion by noncitizen households.

Two months later, Ross nevertheless reversed his department's longstanding position, directing the Census Bureau to reinstate the citizenship question. He said he was acting at the request of the Justice Department, which had asked for the change to facilitate enforcement of the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

Ross gave the same explanation to members of Congress. He told the House Appropriations Committee he was "responding solely to Department of Justice's request" and told the House Ways and Means Committee the DOJ "initiated the request for inclusion of the citizenship question."

The explanation was fishy. The Justice Department had managed to enforce the VRA for more than half a century, notwithstanding the absence of a citizenship question. Furthermore, the Census Bureau had told Ross the information the DOJ supposedly wanted could be obtained more accurately and less expensively, without impairing the census, by mining other federal records.

The evidence Judge Furman considered, including internal email and testimony by Ross's deputy chief of staff, solved the puzzle by showing that Ross said he wanted a citizenship question shortly after he took office in February 2017, more than nine months before the DOJ letter that purportedly prompted the decision. Furman found that Ross—who, contrary to his congressional testimony, discussed the issue with presidential adviser Steve Bannon—instructed his underlings to find "a rationale for a decision their boss had already made."

They ultimately came up with the VRA excuse, which DOJ officials were not willing to mouth until Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered them to do so at Ross's behest. Sessions told his staff not to discuss the trumped-up data request with the Census Bureau.

Ross's mendacity matters legally because the states and organizations that challenged his decision claimed he had violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires an agency to explain the "basis" for a decision so the courts can decide whether it is "arbitrary and capricious." As Furman explained, "a court cannot sustain agency action founded on a pretextual or sham justification that conceals the true 'basis' for the decision."

Since undercounting the population of cities where unauthorized immigrants are concentrated works to the disadvantage of the Democratic Party, it's not hard to imagine what Ross's real motivation might have been. But his sloppy coverup has done a public service by showing that lies still have consequences.

Good to see this struck down, but the entire census form needs to be overall.  It should basically contain one question and one question only: "How many people are residing in this household?"

3 hours ago, TrojanDad said:

Reading these comments reinforce to me why the military is struggling with qualified recruits.....raising pansies.....

https://news.usni.org/2017/10/12/panel-pentagon-facing-future-recruiting-challenge-due-lack-candidates

The next thread will focus on playing more video games.  Why play sports for real, when we can use our imaginations and thumbs while lying on the couch eating ice cream and chips?

So most if not all qualified military recruits should have played tackle football?

This story is missing one thing:

3 minutes ago, foxbat said:

Probably the smart one. 🙂

My theory on multiple boys in the a family ... three or more.

• The first one is usually naturally fast or big.
• The second one is usually the opposite ... if the oldest is the biggest, the second oldest is usually fast to get away from him.
• The third one is the smartest one ... usually to get away from the oldest one who's bigger and the second oldest who's faster gotta use a little brainpower.  May also be the comedian to figure out distractions to avoid brotherly beatings.
• The fourth one is usually just a pure survivor and a freak of nature to survive the older three growing up.

None of those are true in our family, containing four brothers.

52 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

words from a chaperone for the school.......

 

Of course that is what the chaperone is going to say, helps to abdicate them from any responsibility in the matter.

12 minutes ago, foxbat said:

I think homeschoolers, like the rest of the population, have their +/- 1std as well as their fair share of +/- 3std folks too. 

I believe that.  I once shared the story in the old OOB of a single parent I knew who pulled her 10-12 year son out the government school, primarily so he could help her in the mornings at the diner she owned.    Any homeschooling was then done in the afternoon or evening.    Wouldn't this help to teach the young man the value of physical labor?

http://reason.com/archives/2019/01/22/homeschooling-produces-better-students/

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There's no better sign of success than an escalation in attacks by your enemies. Based on such evidence, homeschooling is enjoying a boom, as growing numbers of families with diverse backgrounds, philosophies, and approaches abandon government-controlled schools in favor of taking responsibility for their own children's education. As they do so, they're coming under assault from officials panicking over the number of people slipping from their grasp.

There's little doubt that homeschooling is an increasingly popular option. "From 1999 to 2012, the percentage of students who were homeschooled doubled, from an estimated 1.7 percent to 3.4 percent," reports the National Center for Education Statistics. While the government agency suggests that growth has leveled off since then, other researchers say data is hard to come by, since many states simply don't count people who homeschool.

"While the overall school-age population in the United States grew by about 2.0 percent from spring 2012 to spring 2016, data from 16 states from all four major regions of the nation showed that homeschooling grew by an average of about 25 percent in those states," counters the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), in response to NCES figures. "If the data from these states are representative of what happened in the other states during those four years, then homeschooling is continuing to grow in both absolute numbers and as a portion of the overall school-age population."

 

Just shy of eight percent of North Carolina students are homeschooled for example, in a state in which traditional public schools are bleeding students year after year to charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling.

Unsurprisingly, as the numbers of homeschooled kids grow, their ranks expand beyond the niche populations—religious families, in particular—that originally rejected public schools. Only 16 percent of survey respondents now say they started homeschooling to provide religious instruction, says the NCES, while 34 percent report "concern about the school environment, such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure," and others cited "dissatisfaction with academic instruction."

In North Carolina, one of very few states to ask homeschoolers to identify as religious or secular, secular homeschooling is outgrowing religious homeschooling, and now constitutes over 40 percent of the homeschooled population.

"Today's homeschool advocates aren't the Christian Right, trying to dismantle public education. Rather, they're parents who don't believe that the current school model is best, or enough, for their children," reports the Pacific Standard.

"Today's homeschoolers are more demographically, geographically, and ideologically diverse," agrees the City Journal.

From the responses to NCES's survey, families take on educational responsibilities for their children for a variety of reasons, including safety, educational approach and achievement, and philosophy. All are good reasons for stepping away from a one-size-fits-some government institution.

Let's look at traditional measures of academic achievement.

In 2014, SAT "test scores of college-bound homeschool students were higher than the national average of all college-bound seniors that same year," according to NHERI.

"Mean ACT Composite scores for homeschooled students were consistently higher than those for public school students" from 2001 through 2014, according (PDF) to that testing organization, although private school students scored higher still.

By contrast public school kids "bombed the SAT" reports Bloomberg. Mixed, but generally disappointing results since then have education experts worry that many public school graduates are unprepared for either higher education or the workforce.

No wonder colleges not only welcome, but actively recruit, homeschooled applicants.

...

"Students with greater exposure to homeschooling tend to be more politically tolerant—a finding contrary to the claims of many political theorists," reports research published in the Journal of School Choice. Defined as "the willingness to extend civil liberties to people who hold views with which one disagrees," this finding of greater political tolerance among the homeschooled has important ramifications in this factionalized and illiberal era.

"In other words," writes author Albert Cheng of the University of Arkansas's Department of Education Reform, "members of the very group for which public schooling is believed to be most essential for inculcating political tolerance (i.e., those who are more strongly committed to a particular worldview and value system) actually exhibit at least as much or more tolerance when they are exposed to less public schooling."

All of that is very promising if you're a parent trying to do the best by your kids. But government officials see threat where parents and children find promise.

In states including Iowa, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Virginia, lawmakers and opponents of DIY education are calling for tighter restrictions and more-intrusive regulation of homeschooling families by government. In each instance, officials point to instances of abuse by adults who fail to educate the children under they charge or who, more horrifically, claim to be "homeschooling" children they're actually subjecting to abuse. The crimes are real, but isolated.

...

By contrast, the institutions that Rep. Staed and his colleagues want to set over parents are awash in victims whose names are lost in the overwhelming numbers.

 

"In 2016, students ages 12-18 experienced 749,400 victimizations (theft and nonfatal violent victimization) at school and 601,300 victimizations away from school," notes the Bureau of Justice Statistics in its latest report. "The total victimization rates were 29 victimizations per 1,000 students at school and 24 per 1,000 students away from school."

"Nearly 9.6 percent of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career," cautionsa 2004 report prepared for the U.S. Department of Education.

"A yearlong investigation by The Associated Press uncovered roughly 17,000 official reports of sex assaults by students over a four-year period, from fall 2011 to spring 2015," we learned in 2017. "Ranging from rape and sodomy to forced oral sex and fondling, the sexual violence that AP tracked often was mischaracterized as bullying, hazing or consensual behavior."

So government-run schools are academically inferior to homeschooling, riddled with crime and abuse, and producing graduates less tolerant than their counterparts who were educated at home. But rather than fix their pet institutions, politicians prefer to grab for power over people fleeing from their grasp.

Ummm… no. Not that homeschoolers have the time or inclination, but they have more standing to claim the right to oversee the floundering public schools. Instead of seeking to crush the competition, public officials should learn from it.

The government school teachers unions also hate homeschooling.

https://news.avclub.com/here-are-the-nominees-for-the-2019-academy-awards-1831946888

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...

Best Picture

Black Panther

BlackKklansman

Bohemian Rhapsody

The Favourite

Green Book

Roma

A Star Is Born

Vice

Best Actress

Yalitza Aparicio, Roma

Glenn Close, The Wife

Olivia Colman, The Favourite

Lady Gaga, A Star Is Born

Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Best Actor

Christian Bale, Vice

Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born

Willem Dafoe, At Eternity’s Gate

Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody

Viggo Mortensen, Green Book

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, Vice

Marina de Tavira, Roma

Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk

Emma Stone, The Favourite

Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

Best Supporting Actor

Mahershala Ali, Green Book

Adam Driver, BlackKklansman

Sam Elliott, A Star Is Born

Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Sam Rockwell, Vice

Best Director

Spike Lee, BlackKklansman

Paweł Pawlikowski, Cold War

Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite

Alfonso Cuarón, Roma

Adam McKay, Vice

Best Adapted Screenplay

Joel and Ethan Coen, The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs

Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, and Spike Lee, BlackKklansman

Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk

A Star Is Born

Best Original Screenplay

Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, The Favourite

Paul Schrader, First Reformed

Nick Vallelonga, Brian Currie, and Peter Farrelly, Green Book

Alfonso Cuarón, Roma

Adam McKay, Vice

Best Foreign Language Film

Capernaum (Lebanon)

Cold War (Poland)

Never Look Away (Germany)

Roma (Mexico)

Shoplifters (Japan)

Best Production Design

Black Panther

The Favourite

First Man

Mary Poppins Returns

Roma

Best Visual Effects

Avengers: Infinity War

Christopher Robin

First Man

Ready Player One

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Best Editing

BlackKklansman

Bohemian Rhapsody

The Favourite

Green Book

Vice

Best Cinematography

Cold War

The Favourite

Never Look Away

Roma

A Star Is Born

Best Animated Feature

Incredibles 2

Isle Of Dogs

Mirai

Ralph Breaks The Internet

Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse

Best Documentary Feature

Free Solo

Hale County, This Morning This Evening

Minding The Gap

Of Fathers And Sons

RBG

Best Costume Design

The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs

Black Panther

The Favourite

Mary Poppins Returns

Mary Queen Of Scots

Best Makeup And Hairstyling

Border

Mary Queen Of Scots

Vice

Best Original Score

Black Panther

BlackKklansman

If Beale Street Could Talk

Isle of Dogs

Mary Poppins Returns

Best Original Song

“All The Stars,” Black Panther

“I Will Fight,” RBG

“The Place Where Lost Things Go,” Mary Poppins Returns

“Shallow,” A Star Is Born

“When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings,” The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs

Best Sound Editing

Black Panther

Bohemian Rhapsody

First Man

A Quiet Place

Roma

Best Sound Mixing

Black Panther

Bohemian Rhapsody

First Man

Roma

A Star Is Born

Best Animated Short Film

Animal Behavior

Bao

Late Afternoon

One Small Step

Weekends

Best Documentary Short Subject

Black Sheep

End Game

Lifeboat

A Night At The Garden

Period. End Of Sentence

Best Live Action Short Film

Detainment

Fauve

Marguerite

Mother

Skin

Anybody got picks for the winners?