Daily Archives: December 21, 2020

Our nation is not doing well at limiting infections and deaths from COVID-19. Perhaps we can say, Well, we did better than Belgium, Italy or Spain. However, we not only are doing badly compared with other high-income nations, weve also fallen behind some countries with much lower incomes that took more coherent measures early on.

We are also failing in how we are sharing the economic costs of the pandemic across our society. Some groups are paying a high price in terms of unemployment, lost incomes, medical bills for treatment, evictions and small-business bankruptcies. At the same time, others, especially those with white-collar jobs who can work remotely, see little economic harm. And a small minority have seen sharp increases in their income or wealth.

Given the degree to which long-established infection-limitation measures have become politicized, it is not clear that there will be marked improvements on the public health side until the benefits of widespread vaccination become established. Given the disproportionate mortality levels among older people, particularly those in nursing homes, a well-administered program of vaccinating the most vulnerable may reduce deaths well before community spread in the overall population is ended. Hope for the best.

What we can do, however, is drastically reduce the economic unfairness stemming from the pandemic and the needed responses to limit it.

Understand that for some, the question of whether people in financial need deserve help or not has become a fetish. Our collective values are such that we think it fine for some people to routinely get Medicare or Social Security benefits worth 10 or 50 times the actuarial value of what they paid in to these systems. Yet when people get unemployment compensation or SNAP benefits for extended periods, many condemn them as lazy bums.

However, the pandemic against which we struggle is an act of God, or nature, of a magnitude we have not faced for a century. No unemployed cook, Uber driver, bartender, cosmetologist or travel agent did anything wrong to put them on the street. Nor did the owners of cafes, bars, fitness centers or personal care salons who face bankruptcy of businesses into which they have poured wealth, years of labor, hopes and dreams. These people are not miscreants in any way.

All the while, engineers, programmer analysts, accountants and therapists can work remotely. They see no reduction of income or wealth. Ditto for column writers, contract editors, attorneys and the like. They have no particular moral superiority to those seeing their unemployment compensation run out while getting eviction warnings.

And considering the now-ailing service economy makes up the majority of U.S. workers, a permanent game-changing adjustment in the way people work and play, via the internet and fostered by the pandemic, also carriers with it the dangers of enlarging a permanent underclass at least until the service industry adjusts.

Meanwhile, there is a small cadre of very wealthy people, including those who have started up internet-age businesses over the last 20 years, who have seen the value of their stock soar in recent months. This is not due to any special effort or brilliance on their part, but because the Federal Reserve is flooding the economy with additional cash. Some of that inevitably boosts share prices in key subsets of corporations. Add to that the increased demand, and dependence, of the not-doing-so-badly professional class, distant-learning students and the like, on many of these companies digital products and services, and you further understand Wall Streets thinking.

But we can do more as a society to share the financial burden fairly. This can include federal and state governments picking up the tab for pandemic-related outlays and extension of unemployment benefits to 39 or 52 weeks as we regularly have done in the past.

Most importantly, we need to add a program of substantial payments to the restaurants, bars, health centers, salons and other small businesses being crushed by necessary public health measures, including complete closings.

Public health officials are correct that if these establishments operate, rates of transmission of COVID-19 increase. People get sick and die. Closing them produces a public benefit. But the public as a whole is not compensating the owners and employees of such businesses for their financial losses necessitated for the public good..

Government taking property or arbitrarily making citizens provide services in kind has been a concern from the beginning of the republic. For example, the constitution bans the forced quartering of soldiers in private homes as was done by the British while we were colonies. More importantly, the Fifth Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights, bans the taking of private property for public use without fair compensation.

The government can exercise eminent domain and take ones land to widen a street. Better streets and roads may benefit the public. But the public collectively must pay for the property taken.

In contrast, if government forces a steakhouse or tavern to close weeks on end for the public benefit of limiting the spread of disease, few elected officials see a need to compensate for a financially crushing limit on the use of property. This is wrong in terms of simple fairness even if no court rules that forced closings constitute a Fifth Amendment taking.

More importantly, from a practical political point of view, making a subset of small-business owners bear a huge cost for the benefit of the rest of us engenders vocal resistance to needed measures. I dislike the recent coordinated mass defiance of the law by such businesses. But we should be treating them better.

Yes, in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz and the Legislature have passed measures to funnel some compensation to such companies. But more is needed. Congress should include this in the assistance package being hammered out right now.

Who should pay for it? We have a strong bipartisan aversion to making anyone pay taxes. Yet we are in an unprecedented emergency. At times in the past, we have had temporary tax increases to raise revenues to face specific challenges. The last was in 1968 when the Johnson administration asked for and got a two-year surtax added to personal income taxes. European countries have had temporary taxes on high net worth during wartime. The United Kingdoms current Conservative Party government headed buy Boris Johnson is considering one right now.

Initiating a new tax on net worth of this type is complicated. But a two-year 5 percentage point surtax on personal income from all sources above some threshold like $500,000 would raise a lot of money that could very justly be given to small-business owners forced to close to limit COVID spread.

St. Paul economist and writer Edward Lotterman can be reached at stpaul@edlotterman.com.

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Real World Economics: Businesses closing for good? Lets recognize that - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press

A judge has denied a request by former West Linn Dr. David Farley to put a two-year hold on a civil case filed against him by 29 patients who allege he sexually abused them.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Melvin Oden-Orr noted in his ruling Monday that for some plaintiffs, 17 years have already passed. This consideration weighs heavily against granting the stay.

Four women initially filed a lawsuit against Farley and then another 25 women joined it last week. Together, the 29 women seek a total of $290 million in damages, alleging Farley performed unnecessary pelvic exams and engaged in sexual battery while they were in his care.

The Oregon Medical Board stripped Farley of his state medical license on Oct. 2 for dishonorable and unprofessional conduct and gross or repeated negligence. He remains under criminal investigation by West Linn police. A majority of the plaintiffs have made statements to police, according to their lawyers.

Karen OKasey, Farleys lawyer, argued that postponing the civil suit would protect Farleys Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the police investigation.

My client is facing a criminal investigation based on the same conduct, if not more, alleged by these same defendants, she told the court.

OKasey also argued that a delay wouldnt prejudice the women suing, noting the alleged conduct occurred five to 17 years ago.

But the judge found the arguments werent sufficient to grant a hold on the civil suit.

Citing case law, Oden-Orr wrote, Defendant has no absolute right not to be forced to choose between testifying in a civil matter and asserting his Fifth Amendment privilege.

Further, Oden-Orr said Farleys request isnt to simply delay a civil trail but also to delay gathering evidence in the case.

Farley can still protect himself by asserting his Fifth Amendment right when necessary, the judge wrote.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs told the court that theyve heard from dozens of other women who have come forward since the initial lawsuit was filed.

Allowing a stay in a civil matter whenever there is a pending criminal proceeding would render these civil cause of actions worthless and would deny victims of sexual assault the right to seek and obtain compensation for their pain and suffering, the plaintiffs lawyers wrote to the court.

The judge said he agreed, allowing the civil case to proceed.

Tom DAmore and John Manly, lawyers for the plaintiffs, said they have been contacted by more than 70 women who have reported alleged abuse by Farley.

Obtaining documents and testimony from Dr. Farley and those who worked with him at West Linn Medical Center, Legacy Meridian Park Hospital and Providence Health Services is crucial to hold those responsible for the pain and suffering of the young women we represent, DAmore and Manly said in a statement.

No criminal charges have been filed against Farley.

Farley moved to Idaho after leaving the West Linn Family Health Center and sending a retirement letter to his patients Aug. 12. He failed to mention he was under board investigation at the time.

As the civil case proceeds, Farley also is fighting to keep confidential the investigative records from the Oregon State Medical Board.

The plaintiffs lawyers had petitioned the Oregon attorney general to order the medical board to release its investigative records involving Farley. The attorney general ordered some released but not all. Farleys lawyers have argued in court papers that the records should remain confidential and are exempt under state law from public disclosure. Theyre seeking a temporary restraining order that would block the records release.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212

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Lawsuit filed by 29 women can proceed against former West Linn doctor while criminal investigation continues, - OregonLive

CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- McHenry County prosecutors are having a tough time getting an internal state report on the handling of a child abuse case that eventually ended in the death of a Crystal Lake boy.

Five-year old AJ Freund was found dead last year - the result of abuse by his mother and father who are now in prison. But, two former employees of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Service are being tried by McHenry County prosecutors for their roles in investigating a large bruise on the boy a few months before he died.

The McHenry County States Attorneys office is seeking the report, generated as part of an investigation by the departments Office of Inspector General, which looked into Freunds former DCFS caseworker Carlos Acosta, 54, and his supervisor Andrew Polovin, 48.

But, according to the Northwest Herald, an attorney for DCFS office of Inspector General is trying to keep the report under wraps and away from prosecutors.

Attorney Michelle Camp told McHenry County Judge Robert Wilbrandt her office would be filing a motion based on the Garrity Law in response to the states subpoena filed in November.

The Garrity Law protects public employees from being compelled to incriminate themselves during investigatory interviews conducted by their employers.This is a protection which stems from the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution that declares the government cannot compel a person to be a witness against him or herself, according togarrityrights.org.

At the conclusion of the Inspector Generals investigation both Acosta and Polovin were fired from their jobs, and each has been subsequently charged criminally in Freunds death. Both have pleaded not guilty.

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Prosecutors have hard time obtaining report in Freund case - RADIO.COM

The Biden administration will face a major challenge from a New York judges ruling that the government must provide immigration hearings for detainees within 10 days of their arrestwhich federal authorities fail to do in 80 percent of deportation cases nationally.

Judge Alison J. Nathans Nov. 30 order at U.S. District Court in Manhattan was the first to draw a constitutional line on the long waits detainees often undergo in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody before they get to see a judge. The case was sparked by delays that typically reached two to three months at New Yorks Varick Street immigration court in the summer and fall of 2018.

Nathans order applies to detainees the ICE New York Field Office arrests. But it creates pressure for ICE and the Executive Office for Immigration Review to apply this standard across the country if they wish to avoid further lawsuits charging them with routinely violating the due process rights of thousands of immigration detainees. Resisting the standard set in New York would also undercut President-elect Joe Bidens campaign commitment to a fair and humane immigration system.

The way that we see this is that this should be a wake-up call, said Mauricio Noroa, an attorney in the immigration clinic at Cardozo School of Law, which brought the case with the New York Civil Liberties Union, Bronx Defenders and Make the Road New York. They should obviously apply the logic elsewhere because its not just in New York that people have a constitutional right to due process. He added: We certainly hope and expect that the incoming Biden administration will take this as a cue and act affirmatively.

As for the Trump administration: its not commenting. An ICE spokeswoman said the agency is still reviewing the judges order. Spokespersons for EOIR and the U.S. attorneys office would not comment.

Also Read: How ICE Controls Journalists Access to the Immigration Courts

Before the lawsuit was filed on November 15, 2018, ICE detainees arrested in the New York area typically waited weeks and sometimes months in criminal jails under harsh conditions and with inadequate access to medical care, as Judge Nathan put it. She added that as civil detainees they are entitled to more considerate treatment and conditions than criminals whose conditions of confinement are designed to punish.

The government argued that there were already adequate safeguards for people ICE arrests: ICE is required to make an individual bond determination for each person it takes into custody within 48 hours, and provide an expedited bond hearing before an immigration judge if the detainee asks for it.

These safeguards are, in fact, illusory, the judge found, noting that ICE routinely denies bond in every case.

The lead plaintiff, Uriel Vazquez Perez, a White Plains resident who had lived in the United States for 20 years after migrating from Mexico, described in court documents what it was like to be held without an immigration hearing in the Orange County Jail in Goshen after his arrest on October 30, 2018. While I was detained, I used to call the EOIR hotline every two to three days to find out if I had been assigned a court date, but it always said there was no record of my A number in the system and my case had not yet been registered, he said.

Meanwhile, without the income from his job as a landscaper, his wife fell behind on their rent payments; they feared they would lose their home. At the jail, We only got a little bit of food each day, and it was cold in the cell. There was no heat, only air conditioning, and we received only two blankets. Also, some of the guards mistreated people. They treated us as if we were worthless.

After the federal lawsuit was filed, he received an immigration hearing in court; the judge released him on bondas immigration judges did for 30 to 40 percent of the detainees whom ICE had refused to release, according to Nathans ruling.

Also Read: Disorder in the Immigration Courts

Documents the government filed in the lawsuit give a revealing look at the bureaucratic chaos in both ICE and EOIR that contributed to unconstitutionally long periods of incarceration. At ICE, the assistant field director of the New York office acknowledged that after an arrest, the process for issuing a Notice to Appear, the charging document for a deportation, became entangled in delays with the agencys lawyers at the Office of Principal Legal Advisor, which reviewed each filing. At EOIR, staffing shortages, clerical errors and a near doubling of new cases in two years meant that cases piled up before being filed, or simply slipped through the cracks.

Under the pressure of the lawsuit, ICE made monthly reports to the court on the waiting times from arrest to filing of a case. EOIR reported similarly on the period from filing to the initial master calendar immigration hearings for the Varick Street detainee docket. The government pledged to get all cases into a courtroom within 20 days no more than three days for ICE to file a Notice to Appear, and 17 more days for EOIR to schedule a hearing.

In the early months, the bureaucratic malfunction continued. EOIR brought in a new court administrator for the Varick Street court in May 2019, David Norkin (who became an immigration judge in January). That month, it took EOIR longer than 17 days to hold a first hearing for nearly half the cases, 45 out of 98.

In doing a mid-year review of the courts operation, Norkin found that the legal assistant in charge of scheduling immigration hearings had misunderstood the courts calendar and thought that the judges had been assigned more cases than they actually had, he wrote to the federal court.

Judge Nathan issued an interim order on September 30, 2019 that required the government to provide her with a prompt explanation for why any individual case took longer than three days for ICE to file or 17 days for EOIR to hold a first hearing.

After a sharp rise in wait times during the springtime Covid-19 peak, wait times dropped in recent months to within the 10 days that the judge ultimately ordered.

That certainly speaks well for the governments ability to get this done not just in New York but elsewhere in the U.S., Noroa said. Theres nothing that I think is special about New York that the government was able to get things done correctly, at least in the last few filings.

Also Read: A Family Trip Turned Into an Immigration Nightmare

Nonetheless, no more than 10 days in jail from arrest to first hearing is a standard the government is far from achieving in the system at large.

Documented analyzed EOIR data for cases filed in the 111 largest detainee courts from October 2019 through the end of October this year. Of the 51,300 cases in that group, ICE and EOIR took longer than 10 days to provide a scheduled first hearing in 80.1 percent of the cases. For a quarter of the detainees, it took longer than a month in jail to see a judge. If Judge Nathans earlier order to provide a first hearing within 20 days had been in effect nationally, the government would have violated it in 45 percent of the cases.

The hearing location at Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, which is under the jurisdiction of the New York court but not covered by Judge Nathans order, exceeded the 10-day mark in 93 percent of the cases. The cases are heard by video at Varick Street Immigration Court in Lower Manhattan.) The Ulster Correctional Facility in Napanoch, N.Y., which contains a separate court but shares some administrative functions with the Varick Street court, missed the mark in 99 percent of its cases. The same goes for the court located in Fishkill, N.Y.; none of its cases was handled in 10 days or less.

Around the country, many of the busiest courts arent even close to moving cases within 10 days. For those handling more than 400 detainee cases in fiscal year 2020, which ended Sept. 30, it took ICE longer than a median of three days just to get the typical case filed in 22 hearing locations. These sites handled a combined 19,989 cases. The slowest: ICEs handling of a cases located at Jackson Parish Correctional Center in Jonesboro, Louisiana a median of 18 days to filing from either arrest or issuance of a Notice to Appear, using whichever time period was shorter.

Then there were eight courts in which it took EOIR longer than a median of 17 days to provide either a master calendar hearing or bond determination. The slowest: the court at La Palma Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona, where it took a median of 38 days from when it received the case.

And the order in New York is not to achieve a 10-day median, meaning the midpoint of all the cases; its 10 days from arrest to first hearing for all cases. These numbers show that EOIR and ICE have a long way to go to achieve what a federal court determined to be a marker for the Fifth Amendment right to due process.

Samuel Cole, a Chicago immigration judge speaking in his role as director of communications for the National Association of Immigration Judges, said its important that cases be brought to court in a timely way. Delay is a real problem for due process, he said, adding, there are so many sources of delay.

In addition to delays in filing cases after an arrest is made, and then in scheduling hearings, there can be lengthy waits for paperwork to be moved for cases that are transferred from one court to another. Ive seen that take months, Cole said. There are so manymay opportunities for people to sit in custody for too long. Its especially a problem for detainees who dont have a lawyer, he said.

A lot of immigration courts across the country are woefully understaffed, Cole said. Theres been just a horrific mismanagement of the courts and the staffing of the courts for years.

Sui Chung, the chairperson of the American Immigration Lawyers Associations EOIR/ICE Liaison Committee, said she didnt know of any standard the two government agencies have set for moving cases toward a first hearing without delay. I think thats where we should be going, she said. Im really excited about the case in New York. She added: We should have a presumption of non-detention instead of detention.

Also Read: Immigrants Left Out of COVID-19 Emergency Rent Relief

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Only 20% of ICE Detainees Get a Hearing Within 10 Days - Documented NY

Tom McClintock

Every American needs to seeAngela Marsdens tearful video as she pours out her frustrations as a small restaurant owner in Los Angeles. Forced to drastically curtail her business during Californias brutal shutdowns, she took out an $80,000 loan to meet all the expensive requirements to move her dining outside and salvage what was left of her lifes work. Instead, authorities arbitrarily changed the rules and shut her down again a death sentence for her 10-year-old restaurant. Yet the same authorities permitted a film production company to offer the very same outdoor dining across the very same parking lot the day she had to close her business.

Im losing everything, she said through her tears. Everything I own is being taken away from me.

InStaten Islandpolice hauled a restaurant owner away in handcuffs for desperately trying to re-open his establishment just across the tracks fromother restaurantswhere dining was allowed under precisely the same conditions.

When asked to explain these capricious standards, CaliforniaGov. Gavin Newsomsmarmed,Im deeply empathetic. That must be a load off their minds.

The Fifth Amendment in our Bill of Rights specifically protects Americans from being deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Where are those rights today?

Congress is now discussing how to provide relief for the thousands of small business owners, their employees and the families that depend on them who have been crushed by these reckless edicts. As usual, politicians measure their empathy by how much theyre willing to spend of other peoples money. But the fine point of the matter is this: government cannot support the economy for any significant time because government does not finance the economy. The economy finances the government and when you shut down the economy, you shut down the revenues that go to government.

The only genuine relief from the COVID-19 lockdowns is to end the lockdowns. Why is that so hard for some people to understand?

By now, it should be obvious that the lockdowns have failed to contain this virus. After nine months of this unprecedented experiment in social engineering, the virus continues to spread. Common sense should tell us that the more infectious a virus and the deeper it has already penetrated into a population, the less effective mass isolation will be.

The plight of Angela Marsden and countless victims of these policies tell us clearly what we are very effectively accomplishing: we are destroying our society. We have set in motion countless, avoidable deaths by suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, deferred health treatments and health screenings and poverty that will stalk us for many years to come. We have cost our youth a year of their educations. Nearly half of American retailers say they are now in imminent danger of permanently closing. Forbes magazine reports, The No. 1 worry on most small business owners minds now is the threat of more government mandated business closures.

Eleven millionAmericans who had jobs in February dont have them today.

Modern science and its many breakthroughs in immunology, epidemiology and virology has given us advanced treatments and vaccines unparalleled in human history. But science is grotesquely incompetent to reorder human societies or to change the laws of human nature. Nor does it give officials the omniscience to know what is best for every person in every circumstance. Nor does it give them the right to wantonly destroy peoples lives and livelihoods. After all, medicines most ancient command is First, do no harm.

We have arbitrarily and indiscriminately destroyed the lifes work and lifes dreams of millions of Americans like Angela Marsden. We have made the most sacred right of Americans to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness into a hollow and bitter mockery.

The American people dont need the governors empathy and they dont need politicians handouts. They need a government that protects their right to make a living and to lead their own lives according to their own best judgment. They need their Bill of Rights back. And above all, they need their freedom back.

Congressman McClintock represents Californias 4thCongressional District.

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Guest column: The only relief from lockdowns is to end them - Mountain Democrat