Will Democrats Pay a Price for Obama’s Deportation Raids? →

...In other words, there are lots of things the Obama administration is doing to make life miserable for survivors of extreme violence, going way beyond merely enforcing the law. And that brings us back to politics, because it cannot help but have an indelible impact on how those communities feel about Democrats over the long term.

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But considering Clinton spent the entire primary positioning herself as the natural heir to the Obama coalition, separating herself could prove difficult. At the most basic level, the raids will hinder her campaign’s efforts to contact Latino voters, as even naturalized immigrants in mixed-status families don’t want to give out their information. A fresh round of headlines about families ripped apart and even killed could dampen Latino voter enthusiasm even more.

Latinos certainly don’t consider Trump a better option. But the horror stories might discourage many in the Latino community from believing that there’s any hope of receiving respect and dignity from either party. They may tune out of politics, considering both sides equally belligerent. And that matters way beyond one election.

All of which begs the question of why the White House is embarking on this—and why now?...

The Truth About China’s Missing Daughters →

Fascinating, occasionally horrifying, account of the effects of the one child policy on families, how it wasn't as simple as we've often heard here, and how that interacted with the adoption industry.

...The Dying Rooms brought attention to the warehouse-like conditions in some of these orphanages. But it did something else too: It popularized the image of deeply patriarchal Chinese families who blithely discarded their daughters in pursuit of a son, and of a Chinese culture so hostile to taking in other parents’ children that Chinese girls faced no other option than being adopted abroad.
What Johnson and her research associates found, however, as they interviewed thousands of Chinese families, was that this picture was far from complete. Talking to rural Chinese parents who relinquished daughters, other rural families who took those daughters in, and a third, almost entirely unrecognized category of parents—those who hid over-quota, unregistered children from population control officials—Johnson learned that few families in the region used the expression “more sons, more happiness” that was supposedly typical of Chinese son preference.
By contrast, many of those two thousand families spoke extensively of their desire for both a daughter and a son, since having both, they said, would “make a family complete.” This idealized family was so important that, for years before and even during the one-child policy, many parents who only had sons adopted daughters in order to thus “complete” their families. And where daughters were given up, among the families Johnson met, it was never casual, but almost always an agonized decision that, in the context of government repression, could hardly be called a choice. It wasn’t the people, in other words, so much as the policy.

The Whigs and The Republicans →

The last time a major Political Party broke apart was in the early 1850s when the Whig Party collapsed because of the Compromise of 1850. The Compromise was an effort by Party leaders to settle the various controversies between North and South with a classic set of tradeoffs. The Compromise was made possible by the death of President Zachary Taylor on 9 July 1850.
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As we argued in our last post the Republican Party in the House seems very likely to split into two factions as the result of the 2016 elections. Many Republican voters (enough to make Donald Trump the nominee) are angry at the Republican “Establishment” for not stopping President Obama on a variety of issues...

The “Free Speech” Charade →

Thus, when a campus is embroiled in protests (speech) over bigotry or disinvited speakers, the real censorship happens by ripping the debate away from the substance of marginalized students’ concerns and focusing instead on “free speech”—that is, on the sensitivities of those who would rather not have to think about their capacity to hurt or offend. But an intellectually honest free-speech advocate wouldn’t cry censorship; they’d instead address the substance of the speech being censored or marginalized, and argue for why that speech deserves to be heard on a college campus in the first place.

New E.P.A. Rules Could Lead to Big Cuts in Methane Leaks from Oil and Gas Operations →

In a move that environmental campaigners had sought for years (as had I), the Environmental Protection Agency has issued final rules that could substantially cut emissions of heat-trapping methane, smog-forming volatile organic compounds and toxic air pollutants such as benzene from new, rebuilt or modified oil and gas wells and other infrastructure and operations.
The agency also took an overdue step to clarify how to curb emissions of methane from the hundreds of thousands of wells, compressors and other leaky parts of the nation’s sprawling oil and gas industry, issuing an “Information Collection Request” requiring companies, among other things, to describe the types of technologies that could be used to reduce emissions. Existing systems are the source of 90 percent of emissions, so getting moving on this front is essential; it’s also often profitable, as we wrote in 2009.*

The case of the $629 Band-Aid — and what it reveals about American health care →

First, he points out that the Band-Aid didn't cost $629; it was actually just $7. The other $622 was the cost of seeing the doctor and using the emergency department itself.
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"The remainder of the charge," he writes, "was associated with the use of the facility and staff. We staff the emergency department 24-hours a day, every day of the year, and stand ready to treat whoever walks through our door, be it a gunshot victim or a patient with a stroke."
Murphy is explaining something called a "facility fee," the base price of setting foot inside an emergency room. It's something akin to the cover charge you'd pay for going out to a nightclub.
"It's the fixed price, and that's just what you're going to have to pay," says Renee Hsia, a professor at University of California San Francisco who studies emergency billing.
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Hsia says the thing that infuriates her is how common bills like this are; she sees them all the time. The amount is almost impossible to predict, because facility fees vary widely and hospitals rarely make the numbers public. One of her studies on ER bills for common procedures showed that prices can vary from as little to $15 to as much as $17,797. And a lot of that depends on the given hospital's facility fees.
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"Facility fees are very arbitrary," she says. "There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, which can be really frustrating. There are some places where the basic facility fee can be over $1,000."
I asked the communications department at Western Connecticut Health Network to explain to me how facility fees are set at Danbury Hospital, where Colette was seen. Do they count up the number of new purchases they'd need plus the cost of physician salaries, and come up with a number? Did they look at historical trends about how many patients they might see?
Western Connecticut Health Network never answered my question. Instead, four days after my inquiry, they reversed Bird's bill entirely...

Most People in the World Have No Idea How to Manage Their Money →

As financial products become more diverse, complex, and widespread, and more people join the middle class, fighting the world’s financial illiteracy will become even more of a priority. Practical and accessible education programs should be offered to the millions of people whose economic well-being would improve if they only knew more about managing their incomes and savings, however meager they may be.

If people, now, can't answer basic questions, how much can we reasonably expect in a world where finance is increasingly complex? Assuming it's richer, at least, we should be able to afford those extra training classes. But should we bother? (And will it matter? How much longer will money, as currently practiced, still exist? 200 or 300 years?)