Category: Government

Tax Overhaul “Armageddon”

(p. A19) To travel the liberal byways of social media over recent weeks was to learn that Donald Trump was on the precipice of axing Robert Mueller and was likely to use the days just before Christmas, when we were distracted by eggnog and mistletoe, to lower the blade.
Christmas has come. Christmas has gone. Mueller has not.
To listen to Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders, the tax overhaul that Trump just signed into law is no mere plutocratic folly. It’s “Armageddon” (Pelosi’s actual word). Their opposition is righteous, but how will millions of voters who notice smaller withholdings from their paychecks and more money in their pockets square that seemingly good fortune with such prophecies of doom on a biblical scale?
Some of these Americans may decide that the prophets aren’t to be trusted — and that the president isn’t quite the pestilence they make him out to be.

For the full commentary, see:
Bruni, Frank. “The Dangers Of Trump Delirium.” The New York Times (Weds., December 27, 2017): A19.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date DEC. 26, 2017, and has the title “The End of Trump and the End of Days.”)

Supersonic Technology Constrained by Regulators

(p. B5) Japan Airlines Co. 9201 -0.09% has become the first carrier to invest in Boom Technology Inc., a U.S. startup seeking to build a faster-than-sound airliner capable of flying more than four dozen premium passengers to Tokyo from the West Coast in roughly five hours.
. . .
With a one-third scale version now scheduled to start flight tests in late 2018–nearly a year later than initially planned–JAL’s involvement is expected to influence cabin design and various operational issues. Blake Scholl, Boom’s founder and chief executive, said such cooperation is intended “to determine whether airlines will really be happy to have this airliner in their fleets,” including from a maintenance perspective.
. . .
Boom’s project has initial support from several venture funds and is taking an unusual approach by adopting various technologies already certified by regulators.

For the full story, see:
Andy Pasztor. “Supersonic Jet Gets Boost.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Dec. 6, 2017): B5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 5, 2017, and has the title “Japan Airlines Invests in Fledgling Supersonic Aircraft Company.” The online version differs significantly in wording from the print version. Where different, the passages quoted above, follow the online wording.)

Hundreds of Thousands of Californians Moving to Texas, Arizona and Nevada

(p. A18) For more than three decades, California has seen a net outflow of residents to other states, as less expensive southern cities like Phoenix, Houston and Raleigh supplant those of the Golden State as beacons of opportunity.
. . .
. . . , for many Californians, the question is always sitting there: Is this worth it? Natural disasters are a moment to take stock and rethink the dream. But in the end, the calculation almost always comes down to cost.
. . .
California was once a migration magnet, but since 2010 the state has lost more than two million residents 25 and older, including 220,000 who moved to Texas, according to census data. Arizona and Nevada have each welcomed about 180,000 California expatriates since the start of the decade.

For the full story, see:
CONOR DOUGHERTY. “Californians Brave Fires, but Flee Cost of Living.” The New York Times (Weds., DEC. 13, 2017): A1 & A18.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 12, 2017, and has the title “Quakes and Fires? It’s the Cost of Living That Californians Can’t Stomach.”)

Enforcing New Blood Pressure Guidelines May Lead to Serious Falls

(p. A23) “Under New Guidelines, Millions More Americans Will Need to Lower Blood Pressure.” This is the type of headline that raises my blood pressure to dangerously high levels.
. . .
The new recommendation is principally in response to the results of a large, federally funded study called Sprint that was published in 2015 in The New England Journal of Medicine.
. . .
A blood pressure of 130 in the Sprint study may be equivalent to a blood pressure of 140, even 150, in a busy clinic. A national goal of 130 as measured in actual practice may lead many to be overmedicated — making their blood pressures too low.
. . .
Serious falls are common among older adults. In the real world, will a nationwide target of 130, and the side effects of medication lowering blood pressure, lead to more hip fractures? Ask your doctors. See what they think.
. . .
I suspect many primary-care practitioners will want to ignore this new target. They understand the downsides of the relentless expansion of medical care into the lives of more people. At the same time, I fear many will be coerced into compliance as the health care industry’s middle management translates the 130 target into a measure of physician performance. That will push doctors to meet the target using whatever means necessary — and that usually means more medications.
So focusing on the number 130 not only will involve millions of people but also will involve millions of new prescriptions and millions of dollars. And it will further distract doctors and their patients from activities that aren’t easily measured by numbers, yet are more important to health — real food, regular movement and finding meaning in life. These matter whatever your blood pressure is.

For the full commentary, see:
H. GILBERT WELCH. “Rethinking Blood Pressure Advice.” The New York Times (Thurs., NOV. 16, 2017): A23.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date NOV. 15, 2017, and has the title “Don’t Let New Blood Pressure Guidelines Raise Yours.”)

Welch has a book that makes a similar point, though more broadly, to that made in the passages quoted above:
Welch, H. Gilbert. Less Medicine, More Health: 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical Care. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2015.

Union Blocks Firing of Teachers Who Do Not Teach

(p. A1) Francis Blake has not held a permanent position in a New York City public school in at least five years. At his last job, in a Bronx elementary school, records show he was disciplined for incompetence, insubordination and neglect of duties — he had been caught sleeping in a classroom when he was supposed to be helping with dismissal.
Felicia Alterescu, a special-education teacher, has been without a permanent post since 2010, despite high demand for special education teachers. According to records, in addition to getting a string of unsatisfactory ratings, she was disciplined for calling in sick when she actually went to a family reunion. She also did not tell the Education Department that she had been arrested on harassment charges.
This month, Mr. Blake, Ms. Alterescu and hundreds of other teachers who are part of a pool known as the Absent Teacher Reserve could be permanently back in classrooms, as the city’s Education Department places them in jobs at city schools.
The reserve is essentially a parking lot for staff members who have lost their positions, some because of school closings and budget cuts, others because of disciplinary problems, but cannot be fired. It grew significantly as a result of a 2005 deal between the Bloomberg administration, which wanted to give principals control over hiring, and the teachers’ un-(p. A17)ion. Since then, the union has fiercely protected the jobs of teachers in the reserve, resisting attempts to put a time limit on how long a teacher can remain there.

For the full story, see:
KATE TAYLOR. “Caught Sleeping or Worse, Idled Teachers Head Back to Class.” The New York Times (Sat., OCT. 23, 2017): A1 & A17.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 22, 2017, and has the title “Caught Sleeping or Worse, Troubled Teachers Will Return to New York Classrooms.”)

NIH and FDA Should Allow Gene Editors to Cure Diseases

(p. A15) Should Americans be allowed to edit their DNA to prevent genetic diseases in their children? That question, which once might have sounded like science fiction, is stirring debate as breakthroughs bring the idea closer to reality. Bioethicists and activists, worried about falling down the slippery slope to genetically modified Olympic athletes, are calling for more regulation.
The bigger concern is exactly the opposite–that this kind of excessive introspection will cause patients to suffer and even die needlessly. Anachronistic restrictions at the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health effectively ban gene-editing research in human embryos that would lead to implantation and births. These prohibitions are inhibiting critical clinical research and should be lifted immediately.
. . .
What’s holding researchers back, at least in America, is outmoded regulations. The FDA is blocked by law from accepting applications for research involving gene editing of the human germ line–meaning eggs, sperm and embryos. The NIH, whose approval also would be needed, is similarly barred from even considering applications to conduct such experiments in humans. These rules date as far back as the 1970s, when the technology was in its infancy. It’s easy to invoke hypothetical fears when actual lifesaving interventions are decades away.
Today they aren’t–and desperate patients deserve access to whatever cures this technology may be able to provide. The public thinks so, too. A survey this summer found that nearly two-thirds of Americans support therapeutic gene editing–in somatic and germ-line cells alike. Popular opinion is in tune with scientific reality. Legislators and regulators need to catch up.

For the full commentary, see:
Henry I. Miller. “Gene Editing Is Here, and Desperate Patients Want It; Two-thirds of Americans support therapeutic use, but regulators are still stuck in the 1970s.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., OCT. 13, 2017): A15.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date OCT. 12, 2017.)

Federal and State Mandates Constrain “Creativity in the Classroom”

(p. A11) Mrs. DeVos sees choice as a means to the end of promoting educational innovation–including within traditional public schools. “Instead of focusing on systems and buildings, we should be focused on individual students,” she says. That means encouraging young people “to pursue their curiosity and their interests, and being OK with wherever that takes them–not trying to conform them into a path that everybody has to take.”
What stands in the way? “I think a real robust defense of the status quo is the biggest impediment,” Mrs. DeVos says. She doesn’t mention teachers unions until I raise the subject, whereupon she observes: “I think that they have done a good job in continuing to advocate for their members, but I think it’s a focus more around the needs of adults” rather than students.
Many of the adults are frustrated, too. Recently I met a veteran middle-school teacher who said his creativity in the classroom has been increasingly constrained by federal and state mandates on curriculum and testing. Another teacher I know, who wants to start a charter, complains that “it is getting harder and harder to work for the idiots in traditional schools.”
That sounds familiar to Mrs. DeVos. “I do hear sentiments from many teachers like that,” she says, “and particularly from many teachers that are really effective and creative themselves. I’ve also heard from many teachers who have stopped teaching because they feel like they can’t really be free to do their best, because they’re either subtly or not subtly criticized by peers who might not be as effective as they are–or by administrators who don’t want to see them sort of excelling and upsetting the apple cart within whatever system they’re in.”
She continues: “I talked to a bunch of teachers that had left teaching that had been Teachers of the Year in their states or their counties or whatever. I recall one of the teachers said he just felt so beaten down after being told repeatedly to have his class keep it down–that they were having too much fun, and the kids were too engaged. Well, what kind of a message is that?”

For the full interview, see:
James Taranto, interviewer. “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW with Betsey DeVos; The Teachers Union’s Public Enemy No. 1.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 2, 2017): A11.
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date Sept. 1, 2017, and has the title “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW; The Teachers Union’s Public Enemy No. 1.”)

German Energy Consumers Pay Double Due to Ineffective Solar Subsidies

(p. B1) BETZIGAU, Germany — Katharina Zinnecker’s farm in the foothills of the German Alps has been in the family since 1699. But to squeeze a living from it today, she and her husband need to do more than sell the milk from their herd of cows.
So they carpeted the roofs of their farm buildings with solar panels. And thanks to hefty government guarantees, what they earn from selling electricity is “safe money, not like cows,” Ms. Zinnecker said. “Milk prices go up and down.”
The farm has been a beneficiary of “Energiewende,” the German word for energy transition. Over the past two decades, Germany has focused its political will and treasure on a world-leading effort to wean its powerful economy off the traditional energy sources blamed for climate change.
The benefits of the program have not been universally felt, however. A de facto class system has emerged, saddling a group of have-nots with higher electricity bills that help subsidize the installation of solar panels and wind turbines elsewhere.
. . .
(p. B2) . . . renewable energy subsidies are financed through electric bills, meaning that Energiewende is a big part of the reason prices for consumers have doubled since 2000.
These big increases “are absolutely not O.K.,” said Thomas Engelke, team leader for construction and energy at the Federation of German Consumer Organizations, an umbrella organization of consumer groups.
The higher prices have had political consequences.
The far-right party Alternative for Germany, which won enough support in the recent elections to enter Parliament, has called for an “immediate exit” from Energiewende. The party, known by its German initials AfD, sees the program as a “burden” on German households, and many supporters have come into its fold in part because of the program’s mounting costs.
Julian Hermneuwöhner is one such voter. Mr. Hermneuwöhner, a 27-year-old computer science student, said his family paid an additional €800 a year because of Energiewende.
“But it hasn’t brought lower CO2 emissions,” he said. “It’s frustrating that we’re paying so much more, because the country hasn’t gotten anything for it.”
As a clean energy pioneer, Germany has not always seen the results it desired from its heavy spending.
. . .
. . . progress has been undone somewhat by the government’s decision to accelerate its phase out of nuclear power after the 2011 disaster in Fukushima, Japan. That has made the country more reliant on its sizable fleet of coal-fired power stations, which account for the bulk of emissions from electricity generation.
The country has yet to address the transport industry, where emissions have increased as the economy boomed and more cars and trucks hit the road.

For the full story, see:
STANLEY REED. “$222 Billion Shift Hits a Snag.” The New York Times (Thurs., OCT. 7, 2017): B1-B2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “Germany’s Shift to Green Power Stalls, Despite Huge Investments.”)

“There Comes a Time When You Get Tired of Being a Slave”

(p. A1) RIO DE JANEIRO — In a rare act of collective defiance, scores of Cuban doctors working overseas to make money for their families and their country are suing to break ranks with the Cuban government, demanding to be released from what one judge called a “form of slave labor.”
Thousands of Cuban doctors work abroad under contracts with the Cuban authorities. Countries like Brazil pay the island’s Communist government millions of dollars every month to provide the medical services, effectively making the doctors Cuba’s most valuable export.
But the doctors get a small cut of that money, and a growing number of them in Brazil have begun to rebel. In the last year, at least 150 Cuban doctors have filed lawsuits in Brazilian courts to challenge the arrangement, demanding to be treated as independent contractors who earn full salaries, not agents of the Cuban state.
“When you leave Cuba for the first time, you discover many things that you had been blind to,” said Yaili Jiménez Gutierrez, one of the doctors who filed suit. “There comes a time when you get tired of being a slave.”
. . .
(p. A10) . . . , Dr. Jiménez, 34, found the work rewarding, but also began to harbor feelings of resentment.
“You are trained in Cuba and our education is free, health care is free, but at what price?” she said. “You wind up paying for it your whole life.”
. . .
“We keep one another strong,” said Dr. Jiménez, who says she has been unemployed since being fired in June and is now barred from re-entering Cuba for eight years.
Dr. Álvarez and her husband were among the lucky ones to keep their jobs and get what amounted to a huge pay raise. They also managed to bring their children to Brazil.
“It’s sad to leave your family and friends and your homeland,” she said. “But here we’re in a country where you’re free, where no one asks you where you’re going, or tells you what you have to do. In Cuba, your life is dictated by the government.”

For the full story, see:
ERNESTO LONDOÑO. “‘Slave Labor'”: Cuban Doctors Rebel in Brazil.” The New York Times (Fri., SEPT. 29, 2017): A1 & A10.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’.”)

Washington, D.C. Regulators Protect Citizens from Goat Yoga

GoatYogaInGlendaleCalifornia2017-10-09.jpg“Goat yoga has spread nationwide since last year. Practitioners in Glendale, Calif., in May.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) WASHINGTON–Young goats have on occasion grazed in the Historic Congressional Cemetery, deployed to keep down brush. A yoga instructor has been holding weekly classes in the chapel.

Goats and yoga go together, as any modern yogi knows. So, cemetery staff proposed this spring, why not combine them and bring inner peace to all on the grounds?
“I asked the farmer if there’s any harm to the goats doing yoga,” says Kelly Carnes, who teaches the discipline on the cemetery grounds. “She said quite the opposite–the baby goats just love to interact with humans.”
Gruff was the response from District of Columbia officials. District policy, they decreed, prohibited the human-animal contact goat yoga presented: “At this time the request for the event with the inclusion of baby goats has been denied.”
. . .
(p. A12) This spring at the Congressional Cemetery, Ms. Carnes read about goat yoga and raised the idea with participants in her “yoga mortis” classes at the cemetery. They were “crazy to try it,” she says.
She spoke with Paul Williams, president of the nonprofit that manages the cemetery, about trying it with the goats they had twice hired over the past several years to eat down unwanted plants.
The cemetery planned to hold goat classes in a pen in a grassy area. In June, Mr. Williams sought permission from the health department.
The “no” came that month. The capital’s health code, says Dr. Vito DelVento, manager of the District of Columbia Department of Health’s animal-services program, bans animals beyond common household pets from within district limits.
. . .
Then there’s Washington’s “no touch” policy barring direct contact between humans and animals beyond household pets.
“Baby goats are probably one of the most fun animal species–they are a blast,” says Dr. DelVento, who has farm animals outside the District and has raised goats. “But the fact that we have baby goats jumping on people and interacting with people obviously violates our ‘no touch’ policy.”
Mr. Williams says he will try again next year when Mrs. Bowen has a fresh herd of kids. He will seek a no-touch-policy exemption.
“We’re really trying to offer a service,” says Mrs. Bowen, “that is good for people’s mental health and physical health.”

For the full story, see:
Daniel Nasaw. “The Kids Are Not Alright: Bureaucrats Buck Goat Yoga.” The Wall Street Jounal (Sat., OCT. 2, 2017): A1 & A12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 1, 2017, and has the title “Goat Yoga, Meet the Zoning Board.”)