Free speech is flunking out on college campuses

By Catherine Rampell  |  The Washington Post  |  October 22, 2015

Women, sexual assault victims, people of color, transgender students. College campuses have created “safe spaces” for all sorts of marginalized groups. But in the process, one member of the campus community has lost precious real estate.

Free speech.

There have of course been complaints about censorship and political correctness on the nation’s campuses for a while now. High-profile speakers — Christine Lagarde, Condoleezza Rice — have been disinvited from or otherwise pushed out of commencement addresses, thanks to students who didn’t want to hear what they had to say. Comedians have sworn off performing at colleges because they say students can’t take a joke.

Even President Obama has decried illiberal tendencies in liberal arts settings, fretting that college students are “coddled and protected from different points of view.”

These threats to free speech peaked this week at Wesleyan University, a top-flight school in Middletown, Conn., where the student government voted to cut funding for the 150-year-old campus newspaper after it published a conservative op-ed.

In September, sophomore Bryan Stascavage — a 30-year-old Iraq veteran and self-described “moderate conservative” — wrote an opinion column for the Wesleyan Argus, the student newspaper. In it, he criticized the Black Lives Matter movement — not the movement’s mission or motivations, but its tactics and messaging, particularly those of its more anti-cop fringe elements.

The essay was provocative, but it contained neither name-calling nor racial stereotypes (the usual hallmarks of collegiate column calumny). It was no more radical than the conservative commentary you might see on mainstream op-ed pages such as this one.

That didn’t stop all hell from breaking loose.

'Bureaucracy run amok': School dumps federal lunch program, is deemed 'processing plant'

By FoxNews.com  |  October 21, 2015

Nathan Greenberg believes he runs a school district, but government bureaucrats look at his Londonderry, N.H., operation and see …. a food processing plant?

That’s the strange dilemma the 5,000-student district finds itself in after deciding at the end of the last school year to pull the high school out of the unpopular National School Lunch Program. While the district’s elementary and middle schools remain in the program, which sets portion and nutrition guidelines for students, provides low cost staples and subsidizes meals of low-income pupils, it proved immensely unpopular at the high school.

“We saw the [federally-mandated] food going right into the garbage,” said Greenberg. “We had some of the healthiest trash cans in the state of New Hampshire.”

“We saw the [federally-mandated] food going right into the garbage. We had some of the healthiest trash cans in the state of New Hampshire.”
- Nathan Greenberg, superintendent of schools

Before the current school year began in the town of 24,000 neighboring Manchester, the district decided to pull the older students out of the program. Doing so gave officials flexibility in what meals they offered and how they were prepared. The high school now has a new snack room, a coffee bar and a frozen-yogurt machine, and a salad bar is set to open next month. Participation in the school lunch program rose from 29 percent to 33 percent, according to officials.

Greenberg’s goal was not to provide a less healthy menu, but to provide more choices and ensure the food was actually consumed.

“We knew full well that in doing so, we would have to pick up the tab for the [high school] kids who got free and reduced-price lunches,” Greenberg said. “We were okay with that.

“We were able to offer nutritious lunches with greater variety,” he continued. “We have seen greater participation and enthusiasm, as well as significantly less waste.”

But the problem arose when U.S. Department of Agriculture officials, and the state agency that shares oversight of the program, realized that nearly all of the district’s food is taken in, stored and prepared at the facility at the high school. That means food destined for the one middle and four elementary schools, which is subsidized by taxpayers, could be co-mingled with food that is not. It also means the high school – but not the other schools in the district – would forgo foods the USDA provides at low prices, including cheese, diced chicken and peaches.

Obama’s effort to ‘nudge’ America

By Danny Vinik  |  Politico  |  

The government tried using behavioral science to shape people’s behavior. Here’s what happened.

For the past year, the Obama administration has been running an experiment: Is it possible to make policy more effective by using psychology on citizens?

The nickname is “nudging”—the idea that policymakers can change people’s behavior just by presenting choices or information differently. The classic example is requiring people to opt out of being an organ donor, instead of opting in, when they sign up for a driver’s license. Without any change in rules, the small tweak has boosted the number of registered organ donors in many states.

Nudging has gained a lot of high-profile advocates, including behavioral-law guru Cass Sunstein and former budget czar Peter Orszag. Not everyone likes the idea—“the behaviorists are saying that you, consumer, are stupid,” said Bill Shughart, a professor of public choice at Utah State University—but President Obama was intrigued enough that he actually hired Sunstein, a law professor at Harvard who co-wrote the best-known book about the topic, “Nudge.”

The president officially adopted the idea last year when he launched the White House’s Social and Behavioral Science Team (SBST), a cross-agency effort to bring behavioral science research into the policymaking process. Now the team has published its first annual report on this experiment.

How did it go? Mostly, the efforts appear to have worked, though it’s hard to know how much impact they’ll have. In part this is because the SBST’s efforts are small—just 15 proof-of-concept projects in its first year—and limited by agencies and laws in how bold they could be. Nevertheless, the findings produce a few key insights:

1. Young people clearly respond to texts

One problem the team tried to address is an education issue called “summer melt”—the fact that each year, 20 to 30 percent of high school graduates who’ve been accepted to college just don’t matriculate for their freshman year. Most of them are poor, the kind of students who would really benefit from a college degree. The Department of Education and the SBST partnered with a nonprofit organization to send text messages to selected students, reminding them to complete certain required tasks before showing up on campus, like filling out forms. The results: about 9 percent more poor students matriculated.

2. You can make federal vendors more honest with a simple reminder

On certain transactions, federal vendors are required to pay a fee on quarterly sales, which they self-report through an online form. To improve honest reporting, the General Services Administration—the agency that manages the function of different agencies—added a small prompt to the top of the form asking vendors to promise they were submitting accurate information. Lying on the prompt has no legal repercussions, but it still led to a $1.59 million increase in fees in one quarter, suggesting that the respondents were more fully reporting their sales.

Good News: Obama's Global Warming Campaign To Cost $45 Billion A Year In Regulatory Costs

By Matt Vespa | Townhall.com | October 30, 2015

When the United Nation’s conference on global warming begins in Paris come December, American Action Forum has a friendly reminder: we already regulate greenhouse gases and the Obama administration’s regulatory cost in fighting so-called climate change could cost us $45 billion annually:

…[R]egulators have already imposed $26 billion in annual costs to limit GHGs and 

have proposed an additional $1.7 billion. However, to meet President Obama’s 

climate goals the nation will have to spend up to $45 billion more each year by 2025.

What are the benefits of these investments? According to the Environmental 

Protection Agency (EPA) estimates, previous actions will avert a combined 

0.0573 degrees Celsius of warming. Meeting the president’s 2025 goals 

could add reductions up to 0.125 degree Celsius. In other words, full 

achievement of the president’s climate goals will cost more than $73 billion in 

annual burdens to alleviate less than two-tenths of one degree of warming.

Of course, the president’s Clean Power Plan is factored into all of this, which aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Already we have studies showing that it will disproportionately impact fixed-income seniors, and most of rural America. Moreover, everyone knows it will increase energy costs. Secretary of State John Kerry is working to make sure the U.S. leaves Paris with something that isn’t a treaty since there’s a slim chance of getting it through a Republican Congress. The administration’s Clean Power Plan already has over half the states opposing it. Both Democratic and Republican attorneys general have joined a lawsuit against the president’s agenda. As of now, states have until September 6, 2016 to submit their blueprints that balances their energy needs with CPP’s goals. Those who fail to submit one will have a federal plan imposed until a state-centered strategy is drafted. Like Obamacare, we have another serious policy fight ahead, one that isn’t being discussed much on the 2016 campaign trail.

The Slow-Motion Implosion of ObamaCare

By Andy Puzder | The Wall Street Journal | November 1, 2015

I see firsthand in my company why not enough people are signing up and premiums are rising.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced recently that she expects 10 million people to be enrolled in health-care coverage through ObamaCare’s exchanges by the end of next year. What she didn’t mention was that in March of last year the Congressional Budget Office predicted that 21 million people would be enrolled in 2016—more than double the new estimate.

The administration says the difference can be explained away: For instance, fewer companies dropped coverage than expected, thus fewer employees are migrating from employer-sponsored plans to the exchanges. “We haven’t seen much of a shift at all,”Richard Frank, a health and human services assistant secretary, told USA Today.

But the question isn’t where Americans are getting health insurance. It is whether ObamaCare will provide more Americans with affordable insurance for decades to come.

Supporters credit ObamaCare with helping nine million uninsured Americans find coverage in 2014. But a new paper from the Heritage Foundation, however, suggests that nearly all of the increase came from adding nearly nine million people to the Medicaid rolls.

In other words, ObamaCare expanded coverage in 2014 to the extent that it gave people free or nearly free insurance. That goal could have been accomplished without the Affordable Care Act. To justify its existence, ObamaCare must make affordable private insurance available to a broad cross-section of uninsured Americans who are ineligible for Medicaid.

But with fewer people buying insurance through the exchanges, the economics aren’t holding up. Ten of the 23 innovative health-insurance plans known as co-ops—established with $2.4 billion in ObamaCare loans—will be out of business by the end of 2015 because of weak balance sheets.

Dear teenage boy at the skate park...

Jeanean Thomas  |  Twitter  |  October 10, 2015

Dear teenage boy at the skate park...

ISIS is attacking the U.S. energy grid (and failing)

By Jose Pagliery | CNN Money | October 16, 2015

The Islamic State is trying to hack American electrical power companies -- but they are terrible at it.
U.S. law enforcement officials revealed the hack attempts on Wednesday at a conference of American energy firms who were meeting about national security concerns.

Investigators would not reveal any details to CNNMoney -- or cite evidence of specific incidents."ISIL is beginning to perpetrate cyberattacks," Caitlin Durkovich, assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the Department of Homeland Security, told company executives.

But they did say the attacks by the Islamic State have been unsuccessful. Terrorists are not currently using the most sophisticated hacking tools to break into computer systems and turn off or blow up machines.

"Strong intent. Thankfully, low capability," said John Riggi, a section chief at the FBI's cyber division. "But the concern is that they'll buy that capability."

Indeed, hacking software is up for sale in black markets online. That's often how mafias acquire the cyberweapons they use to break into companies and steal giant databases of information they later sell to fraudsters.

The FBI now worries that the Islamic State or its supporters will buy malicious software that can sneak into computers and destroy electronics. An attack on power companies could disrupt the flow of energy to U.S. homes and businesses.

And it's not just Islamic extremists. There's an equal threat from domestic terrorists and hate groups, according to Mark Lemery. He's the "critical infrastructure protection coordinator" who helps coordinate defenses against attacks in Utah. But again, the worries are tempered.

"They'd love to do damage, but they just don't have the capability," Lemery said. "Terrorists have not gotten to the point where they're causing physical damage."

Officials made clear that the greater concern is attacks from other countries. Riggi said malware found last year on industrial control systems at energy companies -- including pumps and engines -- were traced to the Russian government.

Besides, the likelihood of a hack taking out the entire U.S. energy grid -- or even a section of it -- is extremely low. The grid isn't as uniform and connected as people might believe. Currently, it's a chaotic patchwork of "grids," each with different types of machines and software that don't smoothly coordinate or communicate.

That jumble actually works to the nation's advantage, energy company executives said. It would take a large, expensive team of highly technical spies to understand the layout of computers and machines at an energy company. Then it takes stellar hackers to sneak in. And even if they do manage to flip a switch -- which companies maintain has never happened here in the United States -- the attack might only take out electricity fed to a tiny portion of land, maybe a section of a city. An entirely different type of attack would be needed to carry that over to the next power plant.

Experts attending GridSecCon, held by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, seemed cautious but hopeful.

When energy industry representatives asked Riggi how the FBI knows who's hacking -- whether it's a government or independent hacking group -- he said American spies that are monitoring computer networks are quick to share information with law enforcement.

"We've had pretty good success actually," Riggi said. "Since the FBI is an intelligence agency, we rely on the help of CIA and NSA. We compare information with the NSA."

Principal holds up student election results because winners not diverse enough

By Todd Starnes  |  FoxNews.com  |  October 20, 2015

There’s a big election controversy at a California middle school after the principal discovered that not enough black or Latino students were elected to office.

Principal Lena Van Haren’s decision to withhold the results of the student government elections angered parents and students at Everett Middle School in San Francisco.

“It’s not okay for a school that is really, really diverse to have the student representatives majority white,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle. “The easy thing would have been to announce the results and move on. I intentionally did not choose the easy way because this is so important.”

According to the newspaper, there were no “English learners” among the winners. I’m assuming that’s what they’re calling kids who don’t speak a lick of English these days.

Black and Latino students were underrepresented as well.

There were no allegations of voter intimidation or voter fraud. There were no reports of hanging chads. And there were no incidents involving ballot boxes that malfunctioned. So what was the problem?

The problem, it appears, is that the principal didn’t like who got the most votes. In other words – too many white kids got elected.

Cancer patients died waiting for care at troubled veterans’ hospital, probe finds

By Lisa Rein | The Washington Post | October 20, 2015

Some patients with bladder and prostate cancer died waiting for care, and medical treatment for almost 1,500 others was delayed because of short-staffing and mismanagement of urology care at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix, a new investigation has found.

Senior officials at the medical center, the center of a national scandal last year over fudged wait times, did little to respond to a severe staffing shortage as recently as April 2015, investigators for the Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general found.

Their solution? They canceled appointments for 3,200 urology patients, some of them for crucial follow-up tests, and never rescheduled them. And many veterans had no idea they couldn’t see a doctor until they showed up for their appointment.

“The Urology Service was not able to manage the volume of patients in need of either diagnostic evaluation, treatment, or routine follow-up related to multiple urological conditions,” the report by John Daigh, Jr., assistant inspector general for health-care inspections, said. The delays placed patients at “unnecessary risk for adverse outcomes.”

Seven patients died after delayed treatment and lapses in the quality of medical care they received in Phoenix, investigators wrote.

Seven problems that deserve investors’ attention

By Henry K. Hebeler  |  MarketWatch  |  August 4, 2015

Charles Krauthammer has written an excellent book titled "Things that matter." I agree with most of his points except the one on the “F word.” That said, perhaps he or someone should follow up with an equally popular book called "Things that shouldmatter." Here are suggestions for the table of contents:

The national debt. It's well over $18 trillion, and that's only the current value and growing exponentially. The Congressional Budget Office has calculated the present value of our unfunded obligations — such as commitments to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, CHIP, government pensions, etc. — total somewhere between $47 trillion and $205 trillion. These are patiently waiting their turn to show up in the national debt.

State debts. States, like the Federal Government, have built in their own laws and commitments for the future which they cannot fund. Never mind that this will be a problem for future elected officials. State and local commitments for pensions are way out of line. It takes an eternal optimist to buy the bonds of Illinois or Chicago. States, unlike the federal government can't print money to make the payments.

Funding the interest on debt. Debt interest is now about one-seventh of the total U.S. budget and will grow as the national debt and/or interest rate grows. Federal Reserve funds are far too little if Russia or China would elect to cash in their U.S. debt holdings. The Federal Reserve and banks have reserves to cope with a modest run on the banks, but a wholesale call for cash on the national debt would be a serious security issue.

Personal debt. The average household has over $15,000 in credit card debt and a $150,000 mortgage. Graduating college kids have accumulated over $1 trillion student debts, and even bankruptcy won't erase these. Borrowing on employer savings bonds has increased to the point where more money is being withdrawn than deposited. Over a quarter of 401(k)s have loans against them. And the government is encouraging even more debt by maintaining virtually zero interest rates on its bonds, making it easier to get reverse mortgages, and encouraging people to spend more, not save. Meanwhile, industry and commerce cheers for even more spending.