Easy AA →

n 2008, Abigail Fisher, who is white, sued the University of Texas–Austin for race discrimination. The school rejected her, and she blamed its affirmative action program, which considers race and ethnicity in a “holistic review” of certain candidates. “There were people in my class with lower grades who weren’t in all the activities I was in, who were being accepted into UT, and the only other difference between us was the color of our skin,” she explained.

...

To call this discrimination is to say that Fisher was entitled to a space at the University of Texas, despite grades that didn’t make the cut. It’s worth pointing out that the university gave her the choice of transferring from a satellite school, which she rejected.

Fortunately for Fisher, this latest trip to the high court might be the try that sticks. At least four Supreme Court justices believe affirmative action is unconstitutional....

Given all this, most liberals aren’t optimistic. With that said, there’s an argument—from Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation—that an end to race-based affirmative action will spur the country toward class-based affirmative action, which would assist poor and working-class students of all backgrounds, who are underrepresented at selective colleges. Because of disparities of wealth and income, minorities are as likely as whites to benefit under a class-based arrangement.

The TPP, Drug Patents, and President Clinton →

There are many serious issues raised by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but the one that may have the greatest long-term impact is its provisions on drug patents. The explicit purpose is to make patent protection stronger and longer. While these provisions are likely to lead to higher drug prices in the United States, they will have their greatest impact in the developing world.

In most developing countries, drugs are far cheaper than in the United States. This is especially the case in India. The country has a world-class generic industry that produces high-quality drugs that typically sell for a small fraction of the price in the United States. For example, the generic version of the Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi can be purchased in India for less than $1,000 a treatment. The patent protected version sells in the United States for $84,000.

The U.S. drug industry desperately wants to eliminate this sort of price gap, which can exceed a ratio of one hundred to one. While India is not in the TPP, the goal of TPP proponents is to expand the pact over time so that India would eventually be included and therefore be subject to its strong patent rules

Supreme Court Allows Texas Abortion Clinics to Remain Open →

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed nine Texas abortionclinics to remain open while the justices consider whether to hear an appeal from a decision effectively ordering them to close.

The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. voting to deny the stay.

The case concerns two parts of a state law that imposes strict requirements on abortion providers. One requires all abortion clinics in the state to meet the standards for “ambulatory surgical centers,” including regulations concerning buildings, equipment and staffing. The other requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

Other parts of the law took effect in 2013, causing about half of the state’s 41 abortion clinics to close. If the contested provisions take effect, abortion rights advocates said, the number of clinics will again be halved.

The remaining clinics, lawyers for abortion providers said, would be clustered in four metropolitan areas: Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio. “There would be no licensed abortion facilities west of San Antonio,” the providers’ brief said, “and the only abortion clinic south of San Antonio would have a highly restricted capacity.”

Greece’s Debt Crisis Explained →

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece surprised the rest of Europe over the weekend by calling for a referendum that will ask voters whether to accept terms put forth last week by eurozone creditors — terms he says are unacceptable.

So far, the creditors have refused to grant an extension of the current bailout program beyond Tuesday. Without that extension, Greece has no chance to receive the €7.2 billion remaining in the current program. (The conditions under which Greece might get that money are what the months of fighting have been about.)

Any arrangement with Greece after the referendum would, as a legal matter, require new negotiations and a new program.

Inside the Dark Realities of the International Surrogacy Industry →

In the latest Vice for HBO documentary, Outsourcing Embryos,correspondent Gianna Toboni traveled to India to report on the booming gestational-surrogacy industry. Commissioning couples from the U.S. and Europe use Indian surrogacy agencies because they’re as much as six times cheaper than Western alternatives. Surrogacy companies claim to offer opportunities for women to escape poverty, promoting international surrogacy as a win-win for everyone involved.

But, Toboni and her team quickly expose the dark underside of an unregulated and dangerous industry. Women are routinely recruited from slums, made to sign contracts they can’t read, before spending a year living in a facility. Once the baby is born — via cesarean section so that doctors can maximize births per day — the surrogate is sent home, often without the full compensation she was promised. We spoke to Toboni about the lives of surrogate women, how the industry can improve, and the emerging black market for “extra” babies.

Some stuff you should know about Greece before you lose your s*** →

Greece just closed its banks, ATMs, etc. Things were awful, and they've been on the seeming brink of financial collapse for *years*. Some very fascinating history, which ends with this:

8. The truth is, Greece never belonged in the European’s single-currency experiment to begin with but they were too small and inconsequential to say no to. The statistics they submitted were largely fudged and Northern Europe willfully overlooked the country’s well-known culture of black market economics and rampant tax evasion. It was the late 1990’s – optimism was the pervasive sentiment around the globe, ushered in by the hedonist-in-chief in the White House. The Euro Zone even looked the other way when Goldman Sachs enabled the interest-rate swaps and so forth that cooked Greece’s books to the point where they were qualified for inclusion. “F*** it, let ’em in,” said a cigarette-smoking Parisian bureaucrat sometime between his first and second lunch break that day.

9. There are no countries in the modern world that have defaulted on their loans more often than Greece, save for Honduras and Ecuador. Look it up. The fact that history is repeating for the umpteenth time should not cause you to lose your s***. Not that this is going to be a good thing. It’s going to hurt some people. But probably not hurt the world. Greece’s creditors played for time since the latest crisis began five years ago and used that time to minimize the impact of what they all probably expected from day one. When Mario Draghi gave his famous “whatever it takes” speech, he meant whatever it takes to protect the European Union – not whatever it takes to keep Greece in it. Mark Dow makes this case – that a Grexit will be the best thing for both Greece and for the EU in his new post, Greece: It’s Time and It’s Going to Be Okay. Maybe he’s right. Read it and cool off.

Bottom line – Greece has given the world many beautiful and important things and its cultural heritage is among high points in the history of humanity. But finance just isn’t its strong suit. Fortunately for the world, we’ve had time to prepare and the Greek economy is about the size of the economy of Atlanta, Georgia. Contagion is a real risk, but probably not the risk it was when this all began. More to the point, contagion is always a risk, not just when the newspapers begin talking about it.

And besides, it’s not like nobody saw this coming, given the history.

How Crisis Text Line Founder Nancy Lublin Is Saving Lives, Text by Text →

Launched in 2013, CTL is the first around-the-clock hotline in America to provide its services solely over text messaging, and it's changing the game for helping young people in distress. Through word of mouth alone, as many as 350 teens and adults now tap out messages to trained volunteer counselors on 741741 every day, and the data from those conversations is providing tantalizing possibilities for how to reach people before a crisis even starts.

Hooray for Obamacare →

What about costs? In 2013 there were dire warnings about a looming “rate shock”; instead, premiums came in well below expectations. In 2014 the usual suspects declared that huge premium increases were looming for 2015; the actual rise was just 2 percent. There was another flurry of scare stories about rate hikes earlier this year, but as more information comes in it looks as if premium increases for 2016 will be bigger than for this year but still modest by historical standards — which means that premiums remain much lower than expected.

And there has also been a sharp slowdown in the growth of overall health spending, which is probably due in part to the cost-control measures, largely aimed at Medicare, that were also an important part of health reform.

What about economic side effects? One of the many, many Republican votes against Obamacare involved passing something called the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act, and opponents have consistently warned that helping Americans afford health care would lead to economic doom. But there’s no job-killing in the data: The U.S. economy has added more than 240,000 jobs a month on average since Obamacare went into effect, its biggest gains since the 1990s.

Finally, what about claims that health reform would cause the budget deficit to explode? In reality, the deficit has continued to decline, and the Congressional Budget Office recently reaffirmed its conclusion that repealing Obamacare would increase, not reduce, the deficit.

Put all these things together, and what you have is a portrait of policy triumph — a law that, despite everything its opponents have done to undermine it, is achieving its goals, costing less than expected, and making the lives of millions of Americans better and more secure.