Linky Friday #168: The Soviet Roc
Cities:
Image by feesta 
[Ci2] Lyman Stone says it’s time to let Atlantic City die.
[Ci3] Arthur Books wants to get America moving again! To places where there are jobs and opportunity available.
[Ci4] Eric Fischer looked at 30 years for for-rent ads in San Francisco, and it’s really quite illuminating. Whatever we might say about San Francisco, at least it’s not Stockholm. (Yet.)
[Ci5] Totalitarian architecture is the best architecture. Like Boston!
Health:
Image by idea-saras
[H2] Huh. Racially distinct names correlate with life longevity.
[H3] Some are becoming concerned that residency hour caps have gone too far.
[H4] EMR is the future, but physicians aren’t happy with it, don’t think it’s saving money or time, don’t think anyone cares about the time it’s not saving, and have security concerns that apparently can’t be voiced.
[H5] Take a gander at work and retirement in the Soviet Union. Also, healthcare.
Education:
Image by paukrus
[E2] I give this article mega-points for its title, and it’s interesting to boot!
[E3] Chris Beck writes of the “law school prices [for] blue collar skills” in culinary schools.
[E4] Leon Neyfakh looks into the business of Russian academic fraud.
Science:
Image by Clemens Vasters
[S2] The Siberian Unicorn is a thing, and may have lived alongside humans. While we’re there, take a look at these Siberian bus stops
[S3] LSD turns you into a baby.
[S4] Ever wonder what abandoned Soviet space shuttles look like? Here ya go.
[S5] Jupiter’s ice moon Europa moves up the colonization list as its oceans may be somewhat like our own.
Crime:
Image by liketearsintherain
[Cr2] Noah Feldman talks about how the Soviets stole a Van Gogh.
[Cr3] This was an episode of Numb3rs! Minus the whole Ukrainian bit, anyway.
[Cr4] With this is a cheery thought, from Elijah Wood. Corey Feldman wants to name names.
[Cr5] Well this kind of smells.
[Cr6] Dumbasses.
[Cr7] Yabba-dabba-doo…
Film:
Image by davidwilson1949
[F2] BitTorrent legend YIFY speaks out on the rise of torrents and what can be done to fight it.
[F3] Dick Tracy wasn’t a particularly good movie, but it was visually marvelous.
[F4] As bad as things may seem now, the state of affairs of film in 1989 was that Roger Ebert wrote a review of a movie about a kid who was really good at video games. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union…
Ci2: I recognize that beaches in warmer climes are going to be more popular tourist destinations but I’m kind of surprised that many of the Atlantic beach towns in the North East haven’t used their geography to reinvent themselves as residential cities that are a great place to raise your family. Lots of people like living near the beach and the Atlantic beach towns provide the most affordable opportunity in the United States.
Ci4: Stockholm should be prima facie evidence that hard rent control has some rather serious problems.
H3: Yes, having all the doctors were caps during residency to encourage team spirit has been less than a success.
E4: The world’s nerdiest black market.
Cr1: The world’s most absurd theft.
Cr5: The police are going to put up a fight when it comes to police reform.Report
It’s expensive to maintain property right next to water. A continuous 15 to 20 knot breeze at 45 degrees Farenheit is kinda miserable to endure.
(Btw it generally won’t be sunny either, because of marine layers and temperature inversions)Report
You know what I meant.Report
I don’t actually, then. There are a few towns in New England, and Southern Jersey, (and Hampton Roads where the coastal conditions are marginal but start to take a turn for the better), that are seeing a few more permanent year round residents as Boomers retire and they don’t need to go to a paying job every day. Greater Boston and NYC also have some hyper commuters from the resort towns.
But the reasons why the reinvention is difficult and hasn’t been done already are both economic and physio geographic – and each feeds on the other.
Make Atlantic City Great Again is more or less impossible, as it has really has never been all that great. Most of those coastal towns in New Jersey started as religious retreats, then converted to resort towns as first the railroad, then especially the automobile made more frequent than once a year round trip travel practical.
They are all built on the edge of what is a good idea, environmentally, and many are beyond that edge. The oldest, poorest (and blackest) communities have actually washed away years ago, as the efforts to preserve some towns from the acute and chronic intrusions of the ocean diverted the ocean to wipe out what was unprotected.Report
That last paragraph is a very good point. These are towns built on glorified sandbars. It is the nature of sandbars that they are transitory. These are large enough to be relatively stable, but left to nature they would gradually move southward, with the northern end eroding and the southern end building up. Much expense has been made to stop the natural processes, at least in the areas white people care about. The northern end of Long Beach Island has an impressive sea wall structure. Parts of the beach have stone dikes built extending into the water to prevent, or at least slow, sand drift. And they still have to replace the sand more or less annually.
This is all going to get worse with climate change. Except, of course, for those whose religion forbids climate change. In that case I invite those people to regard this as an exciting market opportunity and invest heavily in beachfront real estate.Report
Thank you. We went to Cape May a few weekends ago, right before the season started, and it was cribbed from the various signs around the lighthouse state park.Report
Lighthouses often have excellent contextual signage. There’s a nice one at the north end of Long Beach Island, too, if this is your bucket list.Report
By the way, remember our conversation about sexual abuse in Japan’s idol imagery and whether something like this exists in the United States, well it might.Report
We can chalk that up as about as true as the idea that Bristol’s first husband had impregnated a bunch of other girls (I think that was printed in the Enquirer, but they were the ones doing the research on the whole bit).
… seriously, do you believe someone that much more because they’re a celebrity?Report
Yeah, that immediately came to mind. I think Will was planning this followup the whole time (well played, chap)Report
C12: first off, the linked article is pretty good. My main point of disagreement is with the counterfactual suggestion of how things would have gone differently had the mob not taken over. The mob was there from the start. Nucky Johnson didn’t mob up the town. He took over the existing mob structure from Louis Kuehnle, aka ‘the Commodore,’ who had been running it since the 1880s. When we think of the mob, we think of the Sicilian Mafia. This is an older version: more Tammany Hall than the Godfather. As the Mafia spread, the Atlantic City machine fitted itself into the national organized crime structure, with Johnson being recognized as a top-level boss in the same way Al Capone was. (By way of comparison, consider the likes of Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lanskly. For a real fun time, take a look at the relationship between the Jewish American mob and the early funding for the state of Israel.) So to talk of a non-mob Atlantic City counterfactual you have to go back to the beginning.
Regarding beach towns in the Mid-Atlantic and New England, there are a couple of things to consider. First, the climate is miserable in the winter. It’s not just the typical stuff you expect at those latitudes. It is all that stuff, coming directly off the ocean. The qualities that make these places so desirable in the summer make them undesirable in the winter. But wait! It gets worse. When we talk about beach towns, we usually mean towns on barrier islands. That is to say, glorified sand bars. A good storm can cut right across the island. When my family takes its annual week on Long Beach Island (about an hour north of Atlantic City) it is always interesting to see what sections have a swath of new construction. This is just normal storms. One well-aimed hurricane could take the entire place out. The houses also have a peculiar construction: two or three stories high, with the expensive stuff on an upper level. This is due to the high risk of the bottom level being flooded.
Then there is the issue of jobs. There are lots of tourism jobs in the summer. I have seen lots of help-wanted signs. But these are all seasonal. The year-round prospects are far more limited. This works for some situations, but not for your general “good place to raise a family” crowd.
My response to my annual vacation there is that one week is terrific. Everyone has a great time, and my kids complain bitterly when it is time to go back home. But I am also pretty sure that if we had two weeks, we would be pretty eager to get home at the end. One week is better: leaves ’em wanting more.Report
F4: Soviet arcade games, very interesting. Communists used to be involve with many internal debates on what a communist society should actually be like. Some saw communism as just a way to produce a modern Western society in a more equitable manner, this was the way that Western communists eventually interpreted Communism after Stalin died. There were some deviations because most Communists were prudes but they wanted to give their citizens the same sort of life that other Europeans had. East Asian communists tended to think that this came too close to bourgeois capitalism. After Stalin died, Mao scared the Soviet Union by saying we should kill one-third of the world’s population to establish communism. North Korea took the ideas of communism and decided that allowing people to pick their own jobs is too capitalist.Report
Those Siberian, Soviet-era bus stops are incredible.Report
Though only one of the bus stops was actually in Siberia.Report
Right, all around the former Soviet states. I hadn’t actually looked at the link (until now) since it made the rounds a couple months ago.Report
The shed with a pony reminds me… My father traveled all over outstate Nebraska on business. He described occasionally passing rural school bus stops that consisted of a small closed tack shed, a corral with an open-sided shelter where the horses could get out of the rain/snow, a water tank with a windmill to drive the well pump, a feed trough, and bales of hay stacked outside.Report
That’s pretty awesome.Report
They sure do like their murals and mosaics.Report
I’m thinking the art and color were a post-Soviet embellishment. If I’m reading the photographer’s site correctly, he took these pics a couple of years ago, and I don’t think that much vibrancy would still be visible after 20 years of continuous sun and rain exposure.Report
Who knew he was such a cat lover?
Bearded Chechen Strongman Who Misses His Cat Claps Back at John Oliver: “I’m Tired of Jokes. I Want to Care for Cats in Chechnya”
http://gawker.com/bearded-chechen-strongman-who-misses-his-cat-claps-back-1778411377Report
The liberal nanny state is on a roll in NYC.
NYC gets OK to issue salt fines during appeal
http://www.fox5ny.com/news/local-news/145569935-storyReport
You are really incredible.
First you criticize NYC for shifting certain crimes for imprisonable offenses to fines. Now you criticize that same city issuing salt fines.
Which is it, @notme : Do you want more big government or less? It seems pretty incongruous to argue that the government should strictly regulate where and what people imbibe but should not regulate at all what people ingest.
For what it is worth, I do not support the salt fines.Report
Neither I want a right sized gov’t that isn’t a nanny. I criticized NYC for shifting the quality of life crimes to fines b/c I think making them imprisonable offenses is appropriate. I criticize NYC for salt fines b/c I don’t think the gov’t should be fining restaurants for not telling you how much salt is in their food or serving sodas that are “too” big. Each criticism is made for it’s own separate and unique reasons. I’m sorry you have trouble understanding that.Report
To be fair, it’s not really inconsistent. If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, the offenses NYC decriminalized were public nuisance offenses. They’re illegal because they create a negative externality for other people. The salt regulation doesn’t correct any negative externalities. It doesn’t really even correct information asymmetries, since chain restaurants already publish nutritional information on their web sites. And the scientific rationale for salt restriction is looking shakier and shakier.
Decriminalizing minor public nuisance offenses seems reasonable to me, but it’s not inconsistent to think both that public nuisance offenses should be treated more harshly and that the government shouldn’t be micromanaging menu design like this.Report
Given that many of the quality-of-life issues related to drugs and alcohol, I struggle to see a difference with salt.
Issues like public urination and being in the park after dark (which is largely about policing the homeless population and sex workers) are different. And while the sight of someone peeing on the side of a building might be bothersome, let’s not pretend that this is about public health: dogs coat the streets of NY city with so much piss and shit that a few more humans peeing outside doesn’t make an ounce of difference. So the question on that particular front comes down to: Do people have a right to not have to watch people pee in public?Report
No. Peeing is a reaction to a number of things, and is involuntary in a large portion of cases. Not peeing can result in an exploded bladder.
We do have the right to charge people with public indecency though. It’s just that we’re ridiculously stupid about enforcing it.Report
So this guy gets an 82 game suspension but the Rangers’ Odor was only suspended eight games?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/05/26/mlb-player-gets-82-game-ban-for-domestic-violence.html
Sure it makes a lot of sense. IReport
I doubt Olivera’s wife/girlfriend did a hard slide into second base to spark the fight.Report
One gets criminal charges and the other does not. Also, even if there were criminal charges, domestic violence has more severe penalties than clocking a guy.Report
Mo, you are wrong. Odor could be changed with assault and battery. Criminal charges from fights between during sporting events don’t usually happen but could be legally appropriate.Report
Baseball Lives Matter.Report
Only when they don’t moon the police.
Did you know mooning a police dog is a felony?Report
Ci2: Atlantic City was in decline since 1970! At this point the only way to kill the city is to forcibly remove everyone. Watch The Kings of Marvin Gardens for a great movie about Atlantic City and an uncharesteristic performance from Jack Nicholson.
Ci3: Will moving just increase unemployment in low employment states? The free-floating oddballs at SSC were discussing whether the U.S. should reintroduce substenance farming to deal with inequality.
E1: Here is a dark thought I have. What if we currently have too many middle class and upper-middle class kids and not enough jobs that require education? Suppose all these kids have parents with college or advanced degrees? Can you imagine how brutal it would be if we told half the college-educated parents that their kids would never be more than a service worker or a home health aide? LGM folks talk about how we have to make all work dignified and there might be truth to that but I still think you would see a real revolution if you told the current middle classes that their kids will see serious economic decline and no need for fancy school districts.Report
Ci3 – It’s possible, but not an obvious (early) concern. When an unemployment rate is as low as 4%, the likelihood is that there are jobs that are not being filled. If someone moves from someplace with an unemployment of 10% to an unemployment rate of 3%, chances are it’s a net gain. When people migrate from ruralia to the city for jobs, I don’t think it increases unemployment in the city, typically. Some economies simply have more room to hire people than others.Report
Some observations from a state where the unemployment rate increased to 3.1% last month (some data, some merely anecdata)… The cost of housing has skyrocketed. Various parts of the Front Range keep showing up as “largest year-over-year rental rate percentage increase in the country”. The typical two-month deposit can be frightening. Locals are obviously moving up the food chain — all of the low-wage retail outlets (fast food, big box retailers, etc) have “Help Wanted” posters up by their front doors. Some of the fast food outlets in my suburb are offering $12/hr for early or late shifts.
It’s not clear to me that someone in a high unemployment state (say, West Virginia at 6.4% last month) can (a) afford to move to Colorado and (b) would want to do so to join the ranks of the working poor.Report
E1: Yeah, telling parents with college or advanced degrees that one particular kid of theirs shouldn’t go to college is hard enough. Telling them that a good chunk shouldn’t go for the general good would start a riot. Saying that too many kids are going to college is one thing. Determining who gets to go or not go in a fair and just matter is another, especially if employers do not or will not change their hiring standards.Report
This. As long as employers feel the need to use post secondary education as a filter, this will be an issue. We should look into either A) altering high school curriculum so HS grads are attractive to employers for jobs where a degree isn’t really necessary, or B) change the public message about what kind of education makes for a valuable employee, so that simple post secondary AA/AS or certificate programs are attractive to employers.Report
Even when they don’t need to.
One of the guys from the same wave of layoffs as me who still hasn’t found work only has an associate’s. He didn’t need a university degree to do his job, because he did his job for fifteen years. And well enough that they kept him around to be the one to turn out the lights in the office when the company left for the last time – in his case that’s not even a metaphor, he literally did that. But still everyone asks whether he has a golden ticket.
I can’t imagine what it would be like for someone without an extensive work history to point at.Report
@el-muneco @oscar-gordon, this is one area where conservatives might have something of a point about anti-discrimination laws. A lot of the more stringent requirements from HR in new hires comes from a fear of getting sued. I think that companies aren’t going to get sued as much as they think for not hiring somebody but that is driving part of it. One advantage to being a professional is that many times your going to be at firms too small to have an HR department so you get to avoid a lot of the pain that comes with them.
Another part is that companies are just requiring college educations because they can since there are more college graduates than ever. Its the same reason why the top employers can keep going for a limited number of elite schools for new employees. Reducing the number of people going to college should theoretically cause employers to stop requiring college degrees but that seems unlikely.Report
I know a big part of it is pure filtering. If a given job gets 1000 applications, you need a very quick way to winnow that down, and scanning for a degree often does the trick, but that is honestly just HR being kinda lazy, if they aren’t also scanning for people claiming to have over X many years of experience.
Perhaps the goal should be to get HR to think about different ways to approach applicants. Ideally, networking should get a person past that lack of education, but got the experience hurdle, but a lot of companies don’t allow for hiring to bypass HR like that.Report
The best essay on Atlatic City:
(PDF, John McPhee, so you know it is the best.)Report
Yeah, he’s amazing. People here who have not yet tried McPhee’s Annals of the Former World series are missing out on a real treat.Report
I can tell you why people don’t move. It’s possible (not likely, but possible) that late next year my job might move from one city in Texas to another. I have no objections to the new city, I’d like it as much (if not more) than the one I live in now.
However, in order to move with my job the following must happen:
1) My wife must locate a new job there as WELL. Thankfully it’s in Texas still, so she doesn’t have to entirely recertify. She has to start when the school year does, however my job wouldn’t move until the late fall. That’s a problem.
2) My kid must, of course, transfer colleges. (he lives at home). Again, he has to do this when the school year starts, he can’t do it in the middle.
3) I have to both purchase and sell a house. (or rent and sell a house, either way I’m looking at — best case — a few months of double housing/rent payments, and the fun of trying to get a house ready to sell on whatever notice I actually get if the trigger is pulled. Call it two months, probably).
4) And of course, I am moving several hours away from my family, friends, and life.
My mobility is, bare minimum, tied up in the property I own AND — most importantly — the my wife’s employment as well as my own. If we were a single-income household, moving would be a problem an order of magnitude smaller.Report
If only someone would propose a plan to help reduce the friction of relocation through financial assistance. We could name it after a place with comparatively low unemployment that would be a beneficiary of human capital. Like, say, Kansas City!
(Actually, KC’s unemployment is presently middling. Ah, well, it started off as the Nashville Plan and became the Kansas City Plan. Sioux Falls Plan doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. Maybe, just for @chris we will call it the Austin Plan.)Report
DO NOT MOVE HERE! 🙂Report
Still doesn’t solve the “my spouse needs a job” and “my family’s over there” conundrum.
IIRC, it turns out that most people end up living rather close to their parents in the end.
I’d suspect the prime time to move any real distance for a job is….right out of college. Once you’re married or have a kid? Difficulties abound, and I don’t see any plan offering me enough money to relocate.
You’d be talking not just physical expenses (moving costs directly) but things like the equivalent of at least 6 months of my spouse’s salary to cover her job gap.Report
A lot of people aren’t going to move, which is fine. We don’t need everyone – or everyone who needs a job – to. Lots of people already move. We could just maybe benefit from more people doing so, as could some of the people for whom upfront cost is a key issue.Report
By “a lot” you mean “the vast majority”. I’m not kidding. I know the census figures are something like 12%, but I’m pretty sure that 12% includes people like my sister-in-law and her husband. They moved…ten miles.
Or two of my friends, who have both moved in the last 7 years — neither one of them more than 20 miles. Same jobs, different suburb.
The number of people even willing to move 200 miles for a job has got to be much, much less.
Heck, one of my friends is currently interviewing with a company –it’d be a HUGE step up (like serious, major, hitting his most ambitious career goals a decade early) and because they just bought a house (and yes, moved ten miles), he mentioned that the only reason he was interviewing for that job was because they thought he could work out of their Houston office instead of working out of corporate HQ (in another state).
Moving out-of-state is a non-starter. His wife would have to re-credential (she works in education) and it would be a solid hit to her career. The relocation package would have to be, well, close to board-member level to get them to consider that.Report
We do not need most people to move. I don’t think it extends from that where everyone who hasn’t moved can’t move, or that upfront costs of relocation aren’t the primary barrier for some, or that encouraging relocation for those who can do so is not a good thing.Report
Or reduce barriers caused by needing recertification or relicensing in a new stateReport
I’m certainly on board with this, though if the beneficiary state wants to undermine themselves…Report
Indeed state barriers to recert kind of stuff is a major problem with the general idea of federalism. Some things are much easier and smoother when done on a national level. Each state wants to have their own unique rules for various reasons, good and bad, which just leads to more barriers between states.Report
The trade-off, of course, if the Federal government fishes it up, no state can do better. With dual Federal and state regulations, we have the worst of both worlds. If the Federal government regulates something too strictly, states can make things worse, but they can’t make things better. Which is why the Federal government should always err on the side of permissiveness.
Or, even better, obey the law and just stick to the powers delegated to it in the Constitution.Report
If we are talking about licenses and certifications, which can be a huge barrier, then that is more about a basic level of training or experience to perform a set of tasks. It is rare that their are state or regional differences in how to jobs that require licenses. State level licenses give 50 mid level orgs ways to set up barriers. It also sets up strong incentives for each state to require a few extra steps just for them. One big license org is much simpler.Report
This strikes me as a problem with an existing solution. When I moved to WA, I was not prevented from driving until I got my WA drivers license. Once I had a WA address, I had 30 days to get a WA license.
We don’t need a federal licensing system, just a federal law saying, if a person from state A has a license to do X (or, if A doesn’t require a license to do X, they can show a work history of doing X), then state B is obligated to honor that license until the person has had a reasonable amount of time to meet the requirements for state B.Report
So, anti-State’s Rights? Or race to the bottom, depending on how long that time frame stretches.
My wife’s an educator. Her credentials are for Texas schools — she’d have to re-cert in any other state. Lawyers, IIRC, have to pass the bar for any state they wish to practice in. (So moving for them is probably real fun).
While I happen to think that should be darn portable, it turns out her education is and her experience, but the teacher cert is one part “Seriously, do you know what you’re doing” and one part “And here’s the law in Texas, the standards in Texas, the tests in Texas — all this Texas specific stuff you need to know”.Report
@morat20
How would it be Anti-State’s Rights? Or race to the bottom?
I’m not saying people don’t meet the requirements of the state they move to, only that there be some measure of reciprocity during a transition.Report
How do you plan to make one state accept another’s credentials if not through the Federal Government?
It’s not like there’s a Federal law preventing it now. They’re not doing it because they don’t want to do it.Report
Why do states accept each other’s driver’s licenses?
But in all seriousness, I think this actually is the kind of thing the Commerce Clause is supposed to be about, so I’m not sure how Anti-States Rights it is, given that my proposal doesn’t eliminate the need for a person to get certified, but rather requires that some manner of provisional license be granted on an objective basis for people moving to the state.
Given how desperate some states are to attract talent, I’m surprised this is something states aren’t looking at.Report
So you are wanting the Federal government to override the states and force them to accept other state’s credentials, at least for a temporary time?
States don’t look doing it themselves (which they could do at any time) because by and large they don’t want to. Why they don’t want to is not something I know, but they certainly could anytime they wanted.
I’m not saying doing so is good or bad. I’m saying it’s clearly a conscious choice to accept ONLY their own credentialing system, and rarely — if ever — accept another state’s even for a short time.
Maybe there’s simply no lobby for it. Except for guns, of course. God knows that even the tiniest inconvenience is unacceptable then. (Hooray for Trump’s bold stance against gun-free zones. Not even private property can prevent you from carrying around your gun!)Report
Yes, your reading comprehension is spot on. Ideally I’d like the federal government to start by encouraging states to do this, in furtherance of improving the overall economy, since I’m always going to prefer we start with the carrot long before the stick is even discussed. But if needs be, I think this is something that would be within the scope of federal authority.Report
Many state bars offer reciprocity with other bars, so many times you just need to prove that you are a lawyer in good standing for a certain number of years to get licensed in an other state. California is one of the few or maybe the only state that says you need to pass our bar exam if you want to pass it. Its the toughest in the nation. They fail around sixty percent of all people who take it while the next toughest, New York, passes two-thirds of the people that take it.Report
I can actually see state bar stuff, because isn’t that only required if you want to practice state law?
And god knows, state law differs a bit. I’d prefer my lawyer to be thinking of the law of the state that’s charging me, rather than working off a slightly wrong assumption based on another state’s laws.Report
State bar exams teach a lot but not anything close to nearly everything in state law.Report
Bar exams have virtually nothing to do with the actual practice of law in any state and especially California. You do not need to know a single section of code.
You do need to know basic principles of: Federal Con law, Contracts,Torts, Real Property, Community Property, Business Associations, Civil Procedure, Evidence, Remedies, Crim Law and Procedure, Wills & Trusts, and Professional Responsibility.
You have to keep enough of that material in your head to survive 3 days of testing, 3 hours in the am, 3 hours in the pm. Day 2 is all multiple choice. Days 1 and 3 are all essays. In the morning you get 3 essay questions. In the afternoon, you get just 1. (Note, in preparing this answer I discovered that in 2017 the Bar is being reduced to 2 days! Outrageous. Kids these days have it soft.)
The principal themes of Con law and the big three common law topics — contracts, torts and property — really should stay with you forever. That’s what being a lawyer is about. But the topics are taught and tested at a generic level that is applicable in any state. (My textbooks were not California specific.) Everything else you’ll need to look up anyway when a client comes in the door.
As to reciprocity, the California bar is of the position that everyone’s bar exam is too easy, and too many people want to come to California to practice law. So suck it up and pass our bar.
And no, there is no provision of the federal Constitution that would empower the federal government to impose a mandate of reciprocity. Even under the broadest interpretations of the Commerce Clause power, a mandate from the Federal Government to override state licensure law, such as the bar exam, would raise a lot of eyebrows at the Supreme Court. (A single federal license, however, might work.)
Also, a direct attack on state regulations denying reciprocity of bar licenses, pursuant to the dormant Commerce Clause, could be interesting.Report
So the feds could impose a federal license requirement, but can not force states to honor even a provisional state license?Report
That is a good question and one that probably needs its own post. The short answer is that the fed govt has traditionally stayed out of this area. (For the moment I can’t think of a single federal license that displaces tradtional state license. Power generation, maybe?)
But as a matter of constitutional law, I think that the fed govt would be on much stronger ground by creating a fed license and invoking the Supremacy clause than invoking the Commerce clause to mandate that one State recognize the license of another. The latter seems to me to be a straight up violation of State sovereignty.
(But, query as to state regulation of banks and relationship to federal banking laws. Do the national banks get separate state charters or is New York required by federal law to recognize California’s charter issued to Wells Fargo?)Report
I dunno. I do know that Wells Fargo doesn’t operate in some states quite conspicuously, though I’ve been able to do banking by mail when Iived in one. Or drive across state lines where there would be one right there.Report
Yes, I know this. I’m a member of the New York Bar and took the California Bar twice. My solution is one national bar exam. There is no logical reason to hold that a lawyer could be fit to oractice in one state but not another.Report
I’m a professional engineer. We have to get a license in each state in which we practice. Because the state I am registered in is strict, I can easily and quickly get reciprocity in any other state, particularly if I “pre-register” with the national board. Additionally, I can practice under another engineer and have them seal my plans (oversimplified, there are ethical issues with simply stamping another’s plans), so it’s different from a teacher who has to be certified before teaching anything. Structural engineers have a harder time and have to take state-specific tests.Report
Oh i think that would be a reasonable solution. Also this isn’t as much about Fed Gov regs. For most jobs certs are done by private orgs if not by states. So it is essentially Professional Guilds, at a national or state level, that institute cert rules. States use them as they wish so we have a mish mash that makes it harder for people move. I don’t think we need Fed lisencising for many things ( pilots are good example of wise Fed level lisc) but state level lisc creates many problems.Report
There are valid reasons for state level credentials (different legal/social/environmental environments, etc.), but there is no good reason why a teacher from TX can’t teach in WA from the word go, as long as they are moving forward on meeting the WA requirements, because the majority of those requirements deal with items on the margins of the professional duties, not the core.Report
but there is no good reason why a teacher from TX can’t teach in WA from the word go
Assuming WA wants to teach creationism, Jefferson having been a devout Baptist, and that the wrong side won the War Between the States.Report
“…but there is no good reason why a teacher from TX can’t teach in WA from the word go, as long as they are moving forward on meeting the WA requirements, because the majority of those requirements deal with items on the margins of the professional duties, not the core.”
@oscar-gordon
This is exactly how it works between most states. Most will give you some form of temp license and a grace period to complete state specific requirements.Report
A perfectly acceptable solution that does not involve the federal government and some complex constitutional issues is to press states to be more generous in reciprocity on licensing.Report
@will-truman
Morat is right about the children/spouse/own a house thing. I could be looking for jobs in a broader range than the Bay Area but it would entail being a long-distance relationship with my girlfriend for an unknown period of time. Her job/team is here. She just got a coveted promotion.
I’m cynical about long-term relationships from personal experience.
Yes the world makes sucky decisions but how does the Kansas City/Sioux City plan address the family, romantic partner, friends, emotional support issue. People who talk about “just move” are being rather cavalier about those issues because they can’t address them.
Also what kind of jobs are in NH or Sioux City. Are they permanent or connected to a boom and bust industry and likely to disappear?Report
But you don’t need everyone to move, what you need is to try and remove the barriers for the low hanging fruit. In any population of unemployed, you’ll have people who would be willing to move, but for one or two things. If you can address those things, you get a move.
This is why companies offer relocation packages, some of which can be very generous. When I started at Boeing, they paid to move me from WI to WA, including a per diem for the road trip my wife & I took to get there. I know for upper level managers and executives, the relocation package can include Boeing buying the old house if it fails to sell in a few months (Boeing can afford to sit on a property until it sells).Report
Cr1: Sand theft seems to me to be pretty straightforward. On a tourist beach, sand is a major asset. Local governments in the US in tourist beach locations spend a lot of money on sand: preserving it as much as possible, and shipping it in when necessary. Sand also has other uses: construction, in the Crimea story. So a construction company might well find the local beach the cheapest source of sand, and the local government would have good reason to care.Report
Fracking oil and gas wells consumes fairly large amounts of sand with very specific characteristics. Among the problems in the US reported in this article is the theft of $100M worth of sand from San Francisco Bay.
That sounds so strange to say: “$100M worth of sand…”Report
H4: The doctors I know are pretty thrilled with EMR in general, and their own systems in particular, though sometimes specific products have specific problems. Of course, I live in Silicon Valley, and that matters.
For instance, a friend of mine who is a psychiatrist has a father who is a software developer, and as a second business, they developed a psychiatry-focused EMR system. She loves it, she had a very early laptop/tablet that she ran it on, and could write a prescription and transmit it to your pharmacy instantly.
Also, from the article:
So this is less ‘I hate EMR’ and more ‘I hate change’. Also, ‘I want my system to do better’.Report
My ex works in EMR. There is a steep learning curve and it isn’t without complications. Some systems were developed without input from clinicians, leading to many that were ignorant to the needs and routines of doctors and nurses. That is how Zazzy got her ‘in’… she was a clinical nurse with some background in tech who was eager to learn. She now does implementation. As you say, change is hard. Things typically get worse/harder before they get better. But the benefits of the system(s), once fully realized, will be immense. Not without drawbacks (I think privacy is a very real concern as it doesn’t seem there is an opportunity to opt-out of all the information sharing between providers) but this will save lives, improve efficiency, and save money… eventually.Report
I agree with this. Ear as a concept is necessary and great. EMR as it currently exists leaves a lot to be desired, and it’s not just tech-resistent docs. A lot of it is the problems that arise when the user is not the buyer. User experience becomes se on day and the user has to comform to the system rather than the other way around.Report
Will,
the user is the buyer at MY hospital system. That’s why we have 200+ systems running around. Chaos is my game, these days.Report
One of my oldest friends worked for a company that does EMR. She was an implementation specialist, so her job was to go to the hospital that just bought their product and not only train the IT & medical staff on how to administer & use it, but also how to customize it to their needs, as it was extremely customizable (kinda like Salesforce, if you’ve ever played with that). So it makes sense that as time wears on, the hospital IT gets better at implementing desired changes and customizations from the medical staff, and the system becomes more appealing to the staff.Report
Cerner? epic?Report
EpicReport
*chuckle* We don’t use EPIC for inpatients around here. Cerner won that fight, clinician by clinician. (outpatient and offices are epic, of course)Report
From what I understand, there are I believe 3 big firms are the primary players. One is really good. The others not so much. Her hospital went with one of the other (cheaper) options. This is at least part of the source of the problem.
Her hospital is also experiencing difficulties in terms of structuring the EMR department. Are the IT? Are they on the medical side? They’re sort of a hybrid and chains of command are less than clear. That may be specific to her location but it wouldn’t shock me to learn that other places are experiencing it as well. Her hospital is also particularly mismanaged. For instance, they had to hit ‘meaningful use’ by certain dates and assumed that was the date they had to roll out… ignoring that they had to have a certain amount of testing time in place so the deadline for roll out was really much easier. But thats bad management and not a function of EMR itself.Report
Are the doctors you know on the younger side? My observation is that there’s a big age divide on thoughts about EMR.Report
E2: I’m glad the first commenter brought up letterman’s jackets. That was my exact thought when I started reading the article. My high school had academic/band letterman’s jacket, but the social norms were such that getting one was a waste of money because it would lead to a fast pass to wedgie town.Report
I don’t know why the NY board thinks we have a supply problem of college grads, when right there in their own words they note that wages for college grads stayed flat while non grads declined.
The problem is a declining demand for labor, of all kinds.
I know I have been harping on this lately, but it just seems like there is a general reluctance in politics to grapple with something so structural as to demand we rethink our attitudes to work.Report
Politics or humans in general might not be able to handle this problem because it is so novel in the human experience and contrary to many expectations in many different cultures.Report
On the Soviet Bloc bus stops, my mother and her husband are planning a drive, in the next year or so, from Vladivostok to Archangel, to see such things and to meet such people.Report
I’m glad to see that Dems are helping to restore civility to our federal gov’t.
Dem. Rep. Calls Law Prof. ‘Ignorant Bigot’ over Transgender Views
http://www.breitbart.com/california/2016/05/27/transgender-ignorant-bigot-lofgren/Report
As it turns out, Trump will *NOT* end up debating Bernie.
Which reflects poorly on Trump.Report
Likelihood of no debates at 30%.Report
It doesn’t make sense to me. Imagine being able to say “Hey, Bernie debated me. Why won’t Crooked Hillary?”
Declining to debate Bernie takes that option off the table and opens the door for “why should I debate him? He’s just going to cancel anyway.”Report
What do you think the odds are that we have a Vice Presidential Debate and no Presidential Debate?
(bonus: what are the odds we have only a VP debate and it’s a three way VP debate that includes the Libertarian Party VP candidate)Report
Why the hell would Trump debate Sanders unless Sanders wins the Democratic nomination? This makes no sense to me. I cannot recall a presidential nominee debating someone from the other side who wasn’t a nominee. The vp candidates debate on an undercard. “You’re no Jack Kennedy.”, if I recall Bentsen? correctly.Report
1. Pumps up Hillary’s current adversary.
2. Can make a play for some of the less ideological Bernie supporters for the general.
3. Draws attention to Hillary’s refusal to have another debate.
4. Gets practice on a 1-on-1 debate.
5. If there are no debates this fall, makes it easier to blame Hillary because hey he was willing to debate Bernie after all.
6. Commisuration on “rigged” primary systemReport
Trizz posted the following in our “no politics” zone. (Look forward to seeing this link again in the Monday linkage thread!)
Report
It’s right there in Mensch’s opening, twice:
And in numerous other places throughout, she indicates implicitly or explicitly that she thinks racism is bad. There’s no deep philosophical exploration of the true nature of racism, but that’s true of the vast majority of debates that ever happen anywhere, so its absence isn’t really notable.Report