September 19 roundup

  • Educator: please don’t bring lawyers to parent-teacher meetings [Ron Clark, CNN] Steve Brill: what I found when I investigated NYC teacher “rubber rooms” [Reuters] “The Six Dumbest Things Schools Are Doing in the Name of Safety” [Cracked] School waterfall liability [Lincoln, Neb. Journal-Star]
  • As predicted: “Dodd-Frank Paperwork a Bonanza for Consultants and Lawyers” [NYT]
  • “Running out of common drugs” [Josh Bloom, NY Post] Pharmaceutical shortages: the role of Medicare price controls [Richard Epstein, Hoover; earlier here, here, etc.]
  • DoT insists on exposing private flight plans online. Yoo-hoo, privacy advocates? [Steve Chapman]
  • New class action law in Mexico includes loser-pays provision [WSJ]
  • Newt Gingrich candidacy revives memories of his 1995 call for death penalty (with “mass executions”) for drug smuggling [NYT archive via Josh Barro; see also @timothy_watson “Sounds kinda like Shariah Law to me.”)
  • “Cy pres slush fund in Georgia under ethics investigation” [PoL]

3 Comments

  • Re: “DoT insists on exposing private flight plans online”.

    The only reason I can think of why the DoT would do this is that it’s part of the administrations hostility to corporate jets. If your company uses a corporate jet to fly someone to an important meeting, you probably don’t want your competitors to know about it. With this change in place, you’re less likely to use the corporate jet for the trip since your competitors will figure out pretty quickly that they can keep tabs on your movements through the DoT’s website.

  • The House is trying to pass a fix for this, following Rick Perry’s corporate jet travel arrangements making the front page of the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. I guess they figured out that the disclosures apply to politicians as well, and they care about that.

  • Here in Florida, a somewhat new high school was told their baseball team would be cut due to school funding issues. The parents of the players got together and agreed they would fund the team, paying all costs including equipment, uniforms, managers, transportation and insurance.

    The parents were denied because the school board lawyer said the parents promoting and contributing to one specific male sport was a violation of Title IX.