Must-Read: A promos of Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains http://amzn.to/2tGUUeN: My view is that Brown v. Board of Education was not the major cause of James Buchanan’s decision to try and U VA President Colgate Darden’s decision to fund the “Virginia School of Political Economy”—Public Choice as a discipline that had only one wing, a right one, and that would, as the late Mancur Olson liked to say, “never be healthy until its left wing was as strong as its right, and it was no longer an ideological movement masquerading as an academic sub discipline”. But it was certainly a trigger, and support was always very welcome from those whose concerns about appropriate governmental decentralization, limited powers, and checks and balances started and ended with preserving white supremacy.

Noah Smith was on the case back in 2011:

Noah Smith (2011): Noahpinion: The liberty of local bullies: “I have not been surprised by any of the quotes that have recently come to light from Ron Paul’s racist newsletters. I grew up in Texas, remember… http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.jp/2011/12/liberty-of-local-bullies.html

…If you talk to a hardcore Paul supporter for a reasonable length of time, these sorts of ideas are more likely than not to come up. So does this mean that Ron Paul’s libertarianism is merely a thin veneer covering a bedrock of tribalist white-supremacist paleoconservatism? Well, no, I don’t think so. Sure, the tribalist white-supremacist paleoconservatism is there. I just don’t think it’s incompatible with libertarianism….

Libertarianism… [in] its modern American manifestation… is not really about increasing liberty…. An ideal libertarian society would leave the vast majority of people feeling profoundly constrained in many ways…. Freedom… can be curtailed… by a large variety of intermediate powers like work bosses, neighborhood associations, self-organized ethnic movements, organized religions, tough violent men, or social conventions…. There is plenty of room for people to be oppressed by… “local bullies”. The modern American libertarian ideology does not deal with the issue…. [To] Nozick, Hayek, Rand, and other foundational thinkers… if your freedom is not being taken away by the biggest bully that exists, your freedom is not being taken away at all….

Not surprisingly, this gigantic loophole has made modern American libertarianism the favorite philosophy of a vast array of local bullies…. The curtailment of government legitimacy, in the name of “liberty,” allows abusive bosses to abuse workers, racists to curtail opportunities for minorities, polluters to pollute without cost, religious groups to make religious minorities feel excluded, etc…. I see no real conflict between Ron Paul’s libertarianism and his support for the agenda of racists. It’s just part and parcel of the whole movement… as it in fact exists.

Should-Read: Ann Marie Marciarille: Those Pesky Pre-Dispute Arbitration Agreements for Skilled Nursing Facilities: “Assisting a parent or loved one in seeking skilled nursing facility admission is no joke… http://www.marciarille.com/2017/05/those-pesky-pre-dispute-arbitration-agreements-for-skilled-nursing-facilities.html

…which is part of the reason it may be so liberating to laugh about what the snf admissions process may ask of adult sons and daughters of potential patients. Oh, the machinations for admission in an industry where admittance is not guaranteed and where trying to put your best foot forward (easy family to deal with; uncomplicated patient; commercially insured and so on) can bear some resemblance to a fraternity or sorority rush-with all the frantic pleas to “please like me!”  I have never seen this depicted more accurately and more achingly than in the 2007 movie “The Savages.” Laugh-out-loud funny scenes where the adult brother and sister, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, try to work the system to get their Dad admitted….

In light of all of this… why be taken back that many if not most snfs include a clause in their nursing home admission agreements requiring the signing party (capacitant older individual or responsible family member) to waive the right to a jury trial on many possible future claims against the snf and to agree to be bound, instead, by binding (often secret) arbitration?  These are  pre-dispute arbitration agreements and their scope extends to bar jury trial on claims of substandard care, as in the Kindred Nursing Centers opinion issued today by the Supreme Court. Enforcement of contractual waiver of pre-dispute arbitration agreements is strongly favored under the Federal Arbitration Act….

We can sleep well tonight knowing that snfs may enforce pre-dispute arbitration agreements signed by adult children of snf applicants under general power of attorney authority without any specific language authorizing jury trial waiver provisions. It would after all, make it “trivially easy” for a state like Kentucky to require under state law  a clear statement of such authority as a way to undermine the FAA. And there you have it.  All contracts, including those often  made in extremis in the face of overwhelming health care need, are just contracts after all. Strike the language you say? Refuse to sign off on that pre-dispute arbitration clause for Mom or Dad’s snf? Ah, but the clause is essential for admission, as is the POA itself for many facilities. You, as adult child of an individual needing speedy admission to a snf, are the supplicant here. And don’t forget it.

Nicholas Bagley: Nursing homes and mandatory arbitration: “Emboldened by a string of aggressive Supreme Court decisions, businesses are increasingly turning to arbitration to shield themselves from civil litigation… http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/nursing-homes-and-mandatory-arbitration/

…Arbitration does have its advantages. It’s cheaper and faster than civil litigation, and arbitrators can be selected who have some relevant expertise. In a competitive market, the benefits of arbitration should accrue to consumers in the form of lower prices. But the extraordinary growth of mandatory arbitration over the past couple of decades is one of the more unnerving developments in modern American law. Genuine consent to arbitration is often fictional. Arbitrators tend to favor the repeat players who hire them—companies, not consumers. Arbitration agreements can forestall class action lawsuits, making it difficult or impossible to hold companies to account for small-in-size but widespread injuries. And where civil litigation can shine a light on shoddy business practices, arbitration is shrouded in secrecy.

In October 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) decided to push back on mandatory arbitration. By rule, CMS adopted a novel “condition of participation” for Medicare and Medicaid. Nursing homes that participate in the programs—which is to say, all nursing homes—could no longer ask their residents to sign away their right to sue upon entering the nursing home…. Predictably, the nursing home industry sued, arguing that the rule exceeded CMS’s authority…. It’s a big deal, for reasons I’ll explore over the next few weeks in a series of posts. What does the research say about civil litigation and nursing home safety? Can nursing home residents really make informed decisions about surrendering their constitutional right to a jury trial? And is it true that CMS lacks authority to regulate arbitration agreements?

Should-Read: Nancy Folbre: Why current definitions of family income are misleading, and why this matters for measures of inequality: “Researchers studying income distribution in the United States seem reluctant to acknowledge the family as an important unit of production and distribution… https://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/why-current-definitions-of-family-income-are-misleading-and-why-this-matters-for-measures-of-inequality/

…Incomplete definitions of both family and income either obscure or render invisible transfers between and within households, including the value of housework and family care. Evidence from specialized surveys—such as the Health and Retirement Survey, the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and the American Time Use Survey—clearly demonstrate the quantitative relevance of these omissions….

Overall, such transfers may have an equalizing effect because they generally flow from those with more market income to those with less. But young white adults are more likely to receive transfers from relatively affluent parents, while young black adults are more likely to transfer income to those closer to the bottom of distribution….

Changes in the family economy of the United States have probably had only small effects on the relative income of the top 1 percent or the top 5 percent. They have larger implications for both the reality and the perception of relative income among households with divergent patterns of female labor-force participation and family responsibility…

Should-Read: John Maynard Keynes (1924): Obituary for Alfred Marshall: “The study of economics does not seem to require any specialised gifts of an unusually high order… https://todayinsci.com/K/Keynes_John/KeynesJohn-Quotations.htm

…Is it not, intellectually regarded, a very easy subject compared with the higher branches of philosophy and pure science? Yet good, or even competent, economists are the rarest of birds. An easy subject, at which very few excel! The paradox finds its explanation, perhaps, in that the master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man’s nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician…