Category: The Dish

Behold her explanation for why she refused for such an endless time to concede she had been wrong on Iraq:

I knew some of the young people who were there and I was very close to one Marine lieutenant who lead a mixed platoon of Americans and Iraqis in the first battle for Fallujah. So I felt like I couldn’t break faith with them. Maybe that doesn’t make sense to anybody else but me, but that’s how I felt about it. So I kept temporizing and I kept avoiding saying it because I didn’t want there to be any feeling that I was backing off or undercutting my support for this very difficult mission in Iraq.

She was supporting the troops by backing an impossible mission – and then refusing to reconsider! If that sounds like a neocon, you’re not wrong. She’s also going out on a limb naming her favorite book: the Bible. If that sounds like George W Bush, you’re not wrong. I’m with Damon:

Despite sharing her husband’s poll-driven risk aversion, Hillary Clinton has never played the game on his level, and her vulnerability to backlash against gratuitous displays of patent insincerity is already becoming glaringly apparent. Twice within the last week, she’s made a fool of herself by presenting a carefully crafted, overly fastidious, and utterly unconvincing version of her opinions. This kind of thing is going to get old very fast if it continues over the (God help us) nearly 29 months between now and November 2016.

Her political skills are legendarily poor. And yet our only hope for keeping the lunatic party out of the White House is a charm-challenged political amateur.

(Photo: Sean Gardner/Getty.)

Many outlets have identified gang activity in Latin America as the main cause of the increasing number of child migrants crossing the border. But Byron York thinks the Fox News right, which instead blames Obama’s immigration policies, has a solid case:

Border Patrol agents in the most heavily-trafficked area of the surge, the Rio Grande Valley sector of Texas, recently questioned 230 illegal immigrants about why they came. The results showed overwhelmingly that the immigrants, including those classified as UACs, or unaccompanied children, were motivated by the belief that they would be allowed to stay in the United States — and not by conditions in their homelands. From a report written by the agents, quoting from the interviews:

The main reason the subjects chose this particular time to migrate to the United States was to take advantage of the “new” U.S. “law” that grants a “free pass” or permit (referred to as “permisos”) being issued by the U.S. government to female adult OTMs traveling with minors and to UACs. (Comments: The “permisos” are the Notice to Appear documents issued to undocumented aliens, when they are released on their own recognizance pending a hearing before an immigration judge.) The information is apparently common knowledge in Central America and is spread by word of mouth, and international and local media. A high percentage of the subjects interviewed stated their family members in the U.S. urged them to travel immediately, because the United States government was only issuing immigration “permisos” until the end of June 2014…The issue of “permisos” was the main reason provided by 95% of the interviewed subjects.

But Dara Lind lists “13 things you need to know to get a handle on what is actually going on along the border right now.” Among them:

[Homeland Security Secretary Jeh] Johnson has said that immigrant children coming in now aren’t eligible for “an earned path to citizenship” — which could be interpreted to mean that they aren’t eligible for any legal status whatsoever. But under existing immigration law, if they meet standards for humanitarian status because they were persecuted in their home countries, they are eligible to receive it. And experts say that immigration judges aren’t supposed to take comments like Sec. Johnson’s into consideration when considering a child’s case.

A recent report from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says that about 60 percent of children coming over from Central America might be eligible for some kind of humanitarian protection. And a Vera Institute of Justice report from 2012 identified 40 percent of immigrant children as eligible for some sort of legal protection under US immigration law.

I’d say it’s obviously a combination of the two: brutal insecurity in their lands of origin, plus the knowledge that overwhelmed humanitarian resources on the border have no choice but to let immigrant children find temporary (but practically permanent) refuge in the U.S.

(Photo: A child on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border fence looks into Arizona during a special ‘Mass on the Border’ on April 1, 2014 in Nogales, Arizona. By John Moore/Getty Images.)

Charles Kenny adds soccer to the list of reasons to support a more open immigration policy, pointing to the aftereffects of a 1995 European Court of Justice ruling that made it easier for players from outside the EU to play for European clubs:

Unsurprisingly, leagues that saw a higher influx of talented players improved: Clubs in the league won more Europewide competitions. Meanwhile, talented players migrated to teams in strong leagues based in countries that were richer, closer to their home country, and shared colonial ties. That meant the better leagues, like the English Premier League or Spain’s Primera Division, extended their lead over other European leagues in countries such as Denmark and Romania. In this case, talented migration into Europe created greater productivity but also increased inequality. Everyone was better off, but it is true the best leagues benefited the most.

There was unvarnished good news for the countries that the talented migrants left behind. First, national teams in origin countries did better in international matchups the more their emigrants played in the top leagues in Europe. [Researcher Chrysovalantis] Vasiliakis estimates that the impact of greater global mobility of players lifted Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile 25 places or more in the 2010 FIFA rankings of national teams.

But those effects only seem to extend so far. Mallé Fofana asks why West African countries don’t field World Cup-winning teams even though they produce lots of great players for European clubs:

Talent alone cannot win games. Talent must be molded and refined in a system that can nurture and sustain it.  European and South American football teams have perfected this system — a well-oiled and well-financed system of coaches, trainers, nutritionists, and sports psychologists that not only have helped to develop the system but also sustain it today.  This system offers part of the access that a country like Cameroon lacks, in soccer as in the rest of its economy.

The other part comes from the lucrative financial incentives for performance. When the potential for income is taken away, so is the incentive to perform.  This in turn impacts morale, motivation, and results, and once again the matter circles back to the issue of access.

Brandon Valeriano notices that the US national team is short on Latino players:

Club soccer dominates in the U.S., and this is an expensive and almost impossible barrier for Latinos due to the costs and suburban nature of the programs.  Moving up a level, participation in high school or college teams assumes the participant has the freedom to actually play sports after school, an option not many of us had as working became a priority once we were of legal age.  College soccer is an even tougher prospect, since the costs or barrier of an inadequate school system make this path a huge obstacle for the Latino population.  The pipeline of talent to the World Cup team is broken for Latinos, but it’s also broken in the higher education system and in the political system.  The lack of development of Latino players is a symptom of the deeper problems in American society.

(Photo: Local children from the ‘Seven Stars’ Football Team practice and play football on their field next to the N2 Highway that runs past Gugulethu Township near Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa on May 20, 2010. By Mark Wessels / Barcroft Media / Getty Images)

Last week, Dan Diamond spotlighted one:

Insurers sat out of the exchanges for different reasons in year one. Some were wary of the start-up risks. Others were openly taking a wait-and-see approach. Still more, it seems, didn’t want any part in the first year’s batch of customers, who were expected to be older and sicker.

And while the technical problems associated with the exchanges have been legion, plans that participated have reported predictably higher revenue, if unclear profits. One million more consumers signed up than expected…and while they weren’t as young and healthy as the insurance companies had hoped for, they were more customers.

Now, more plans want their chance to chase those dollars.

Kliff comments:

It’s not just new entrants into the exchanges that’s increasing competition.

In Washington, for example, there are two plans that only sold in small parts of the state that now want to sell everywhere. Both United Health Care and Moda, a local plan, are increasing the geographic area of where they plan to sell coverage.

The only state that hasn’t reported an increase in carriers for 2015 is Oregon. There, all 12 carriers who sold in 2014 plan to sell again in 2015, but no new insurers have proposed rates. It’s possible that this has to do with Oregon’s incredibly challenged Obamacare rollout — or it could reflect the fact that Oregon had one of the most competitive Obamacare markets to begin with.

More nationally though, the trend seems to be clear: More insurers are getting into the Obamacare game in year two.

Jason Millman adds:

The development is important for a few reasons. For one, recent research suggests that more competition in the exchanges could help temper premium increases. Other new analysis shows that exchange plans, on average, are cheaper than individual plans offered outside the insurance marketplaces. And given the narrow networks in exchange plans, more insurers could mean better access to providers.

In New Hampshire, the exchange’s only insurer last year had excluded 10 of 26 hospitals in the state from its network, meaning the exchange’s customers were limited in their choice of care providers. In 2015, though, New Hampshire will have five insurers selling individual and family health plans on the exchange, state officials announced [last] week. That also includes the expansion of two non-profit, co-op plans that received start-up funding from the Affordable Care Act.

Neil Padukone connects the high incidence of rape in India to its urban design choices:

Most of New Delhi is built according to what urban planners sometimes call “single-use” design: sections of the city are devoted almost exclusively to one use (industrial, institutional, retail, or residential) and separated from each other by open space, roads or other barriers. … This is in contrast to “mixed-use” planning, which carefully integrates residential, retail, institutional, and cultural spaces into the same area—areas that are easily accessible by walking, bicycle, or mass transit.

There are many reasons planners favor mixed-use design, including smaller carbon footprints and increased access to economic opportunity. Easy and efficient access to work, leisure, home, and childcare makes juggling responsibilities much easier, particularly for women. But one of the most important benefits of mixed-use planning is what the urbanist Jane Jacobs famously called “eyes on the street.” If an area is used for multiple purposes, there will always be somebody—a homemaker, shopkeeper, pedestrian, peddler, or office worker—keeping a passive watch, inadvertently but effectively policing it 24 hours a day. Street vendors, for example, may be the most perennial pairs of eyes that monitor any streets, and even police have tapped this human resource.

Two girls who were gang-raped and murdered in Uttar Pradesh last week were attacked while going to relieve themselves in a field at night. Hayes Brown discusses how the absence of private toilets poses a serious safety problem for women in the poorest parts of the world:

Some critics have said that the focus on sanitation as an issue ignores the larger issue of rape and deterring men from assaulting women in the first place. As an article from First Point India explains, however, nobody is arguing that “the sole reason for sexual violence is the lack of a loo. It is an undeniable fact, however, that the absence of a safe toilet adds to the vulnerability of women. And there are numbers to show it.” The First Point article cites a BBC report in which “a senior police official in Bihar said some 400 women would have ‘escaped’ rape last year if they had toilets in their homes.”

Diksha Madhok pushes back on that alleged link with the above chart:

[I]f a toilet shortage is fueling rape in India, then their presence should lead to lesser crimes against women. But data analyzed from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) show that there is no inverse relation between rape and toilets. Quartz India compared the states with the highest and lowest toilet density against their rates of rape, defined as those reported per 100,000 women.

The state of Mizoram has one of the lowest number of households without toilets. Yet, the rape rate against women remains a stubborn 21, much higher than the national average of 4.26. Meanwhile, only 20% of households in Jharkhand have a toilet, but its rape rate is one-fourth of Mizoram’s.

Update from a reader:

As an Indian living in India, I strongly favour mixed-use urban spaces. That said, if this was the reason for rape, it would be a reason for all sorts of other crimes. But violent crime against men is relatively rare in India. As a man, I feel perfectly safe walking in quite seedy-looking neighbourhoods – far more than I would in New York or Paris. With women, two sorts of crime occur: (1) molestation (rape is merely the extreme end of a spectrum) and (2) “chain-snatching”, ie grabbing their gold chains and running. The solution to (2) is presumably not to wear gold chains, but social customs die hard. As for (1), I remain convinced that this is a societal problem exacerbated by inadequate policing by poorly-trained and often prejudiced personnel.

Back to mixed-use spaces: in 2006, the Chief Justice of the Indian Supreme Court, Y K Sabharwal, ordered the sealing of commercial establishments in many residential areas. Thousands of such establishments were sealed, many of which had been functioning for decades. It turned out that Sabharwal’s sons, both of whom were in the real estate business, stood to benefit immensely from this order. Journalists from the Mid-Day newspaper who reported this were held in contempt of court and jailed. A good overview of all this is here.

The bottom line is, India’s separate-use urban practices encourage not only criminal activity, but corruption. And when it’s the Supreme Court, there is little recourse for citizens.