RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Feb. 23 to Feb. 29, 2020 America's foster care system is silencing foster parents, the people usually the best informed about the lives of hundreds of thousands of potentially endangered children, Naomi Schaefer Riley reports for RealClearInvestigations. She reports: - Kids spend prolonged periods with foster parents, well over legal time limits, because states bend over backwards to give substance-abusing parents time to clean up their acts and keep families whole.
- But these deeply invested foster parents aren't heard from in court. Judges instead base judgments affecting kids' safety on short-term caseworkers.
- Many overtaxed judges are wary of hearing from foster parents because courts don't have the time and resources to assess their credibility and intentions.
- And well-adjusted foster parents might unfairly disadvantage a child's struggling natural parents in court at a time when the chips for them are already down.
- Laws providing for input from foster parents lack teeth and are routinely disregarded.
- Yet it's hard to imagine that some foster parents wouldn't know beforehand of the perils kids face: Foster children commonly suffer violence or trauma when returned to abusive households.
- With as many as 40% of the nation's caseworkers cycling out of their roles each year, foster parents may be the only adults in the system deeply familiar with details of a child's upbringing.
- Among the frustrated are the Boumans of Wisconsin. The foster couple had a negative view of Baby L's state guardian, who almost never visited. But they say that was of no interest to a judge eager to hear instead from the child's caseworkers. Just one problem: There had been six in three years.
The Election Investigations: Top Articles Trump's 'Deep State' Hit List, Axios
Big Sanders Problem: Cold War Visits to Communist Lands, Washington Post
Bernie Staffer Mocked Warren's Looks, Buttigieg's Sexuality, Daily Beast
Ukraine Court: Probe Biden Role in Prosecutor Sack, Washington Post
Flynn-Tied Scholar Suspects Cambridge U., FBI Source Complicit, Daily Caller Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Mississippi Prison Guard, a Perilous Job Few Want
Marshall Project
Violence in Mississippi prisons has become a national scandal. Since Christmas, at least 18 prisoners have died, prompting the U.S. Department of Justice this month to say it will investigate conditions at four of the state's six large prisons. But violence against guards is also a scourge of the Mississippi system. This article reports that prisoners have attacked guards more than 340 times a year, on average, since 2016. The roughly 1,300 guards on the job each year were beaten, stabbed with makeshift knives, sexually assaulted, and often "dashed" - prison slang for being doused with urine, feces or hot water - according to state records and interviews. No wonder that half of all correctional-officer jobs in Mississippi's state-run prisons go unfilled; in fact, the shortage is both result and cause of the violence problem. And Mississippi is not an outlier. Violence has erupted in understaffed prisons in Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and New Mexico in recent years. In North Carolina, five prison workers were killed in 2017. A federal report said understaffing - 1 in 4 positions were unfilled - opens the door to mayhem. ICE Has Run Facial ID on Millions of Maryland Drivers
Washington Post
While raising important questions about privacy and government overreach, this article suffers from pro-illegal immigrant bias. It reports that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have run facial-recognition searches on millions of Maryland driver's license photos without first seeking state or court approval. It also says their target is the 275,000 illegal immigrants who have been issued driver's licenses by the state since 2013. Those numbers sound big. It is only after that alarmist presentation that the article reports that ICE officials had logged fewer than 100 sessions in the state's driver's license database since 2018. And only toward the end does it quote an ICE spokesperson who explains that its facial recognition searches are primarily used by special agents investigating child exploitation or cybercrime. Postal Service vs. Thousands Fired Claiming Job Injury
ProPublica
Here's another article that also appears to suffer from bias. It reports that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found that the U.S. Postal Service forced out about 44,000 employees from 2007-11 through a program that "targeted" those with work-related injuries. The EEOC also found that the Postal Service discriminated against an additional 15,130 injured workers by changing their work duties or accommodations, and unlawfully disclosed private medical information. Fair enough. But then it criticizes the Postal Service because it "is still fighting the class-action complaint. It has refused to settle." The EEOC plans to go case by case through about 28,000 claims, and the Postal Service is contesting each worker's allegations, which could drag out the process for years. Almost not attention - much less credence - is given to the Postal Service's position that the workers haven't provided sufficient proof of actual disability or harm from the program. How Allstate's Auto Algorithm Milks Big Spenders
The Markup
Seven years ago, Allstate told Maryland regulators it was time to update its auto insurance rates. This article reports that instead of devising a fair rate schedule, Allstate came up with a "sucker's list" of customers it believed it could charge through the nose. Customers who were already paying the highest premiums, about $1,900 or more every six months, and were due an increase would have borne price hikes of up to 20 percent. But drivers with cheaper policies, who deserved price jumps that were just as big, would be charged a maximum increase of only 5 percent. Customers in the 20 percent group weren't exactly high-risk; they more likely to be middle-aged. The good news is that Maryland ultimately rejected the plan, calling it discriminatory, and it never went into effect there. The bad news is that the insurer has continued to push similar plans in other states. Some have been approved and are actively being used. Tennessee: First-Grade Readin', Writin', and Opioid OD Reversin'
New York Times
Like scores of communities across America, Carter County, Tennessee, has been struck hard by the opioid crisis. Since 2014, nearly 60 people have died from opioid overdoses in the county, where 56,000 people live in a cluster of small cities and rural towns on the North Carolina border. Desperate to save lives, county health officials have embraced a practical - if radical - strategy for stemming the tide of addiction: Teaching children as young as 6 how to reverse an overdose. In the past three years, the county's drug prevention coalition has given Narcan training to an estimated 600 young children and teenagers in after-school programs, babysitting classes and vaping cessation courses. But in a region where socially conservative attitudes prevail — and addiction is often seen as a sin — health workers have encountered strong opposition from residents, school boards and police officers who consider Narcan to be a waste of resources and the training inappropriate for children. E-Sports Are Rife With Exploitation
The Nation
The e-sports industry is a billion-dollar business that's growing rapidly. Once confined to dimly lit basements, competitive gaming, in which video-game players battle in front of stadium-sized audiences, has made its way into Super Bowl commercials and network television shows. And though e-sports leagues are still figuring out how to turn a profit, they are a marketing bonanza for their video-game-developer owners, such as Activision Blizzard, which reported net revenues of $7.5 billion in 2018. This article reports that corporate executives are getting rich on the backs underpaid freelance workers and independent contractors. The seven- and eight-figure salaries of Activision Blizzard executives are possible, it reports, only because hordes of young freelancers, dazzled by the opportunity to make money working with video games, routinely perform indispensable tasks for minimal pay and nonexistent benefits. What Happened to Privileged Kids in College-Bribe Scandal?
New York Times
Twenty parents, including actress Felicity Huffman, have pleaded guilty in the sweeping college-admission scandal, which encompassed cheating on college admissions exams and bribing coaches to get children admitted to elite schools as athletic recruits using false credentials. But what happened to the kids? No students were criminally charged, but many have faced other penalties: They have been expelled from schools, banned from prom, not allowed to walk at graduation, haunted by nightmares and panic attacks, whispered about by classmates, and mocked online. 2 Royal Couples, 2 Instagram Accounts, 1 Conspiracy Theory
New York Times
In Shakespeare's time - or his plays, at least - palace intrigue typically included murder most foul. Now, this article reports, it involves social media most buzzy. Once upon a time Prince Harry and Meghan Markel shared an Instagram account with Prince William and Kate. That was no longer acceptable when Harry and his actress bride stepped back from their royal duties. They started their own account. The presumption was that their star power would translate into far more Instagram followers than those tallied by his less flashy brother, the future king. Turns out they have almost an identical number of followers! Inquiring minds - and the New York Times - want to know why. Like much modern journalism, this very long piece provides no definitive answer but plenty of conspiracy theories. What's that they say about sound and fury? Line, please! |
