pelespirit

The risks of universal vouchers are quickly coming to light. An initiative that was promoted for years as a civil ­rights cause — helping poor kids in troubled schools — is threatening to become a nationwide money grab. Many private schools are raising tuition rates to take advantage of the new funding, and new schools are being founded to capitalize on it. With private schools urging all their students’ families to apply, the money is flowing mostly to parents who are already able to afford tuition and to kids who are already enrolled in private schools. When vouchers do draw students away from public districts, they threaten to exacerbate declining enrollment, forcing underpopulated schools to close. More immediately, the cost of the programs is soaring, putting pressure on public school finances even as private schools prosper. In Arizona, voucher expenditures are hundreds of millions of dollars more than predicted, leaving an enormous shortfall in the state budget. States that provide funds to families for homeschooling or education-related expenses are contending with reports that the money is being used to cover such unusual purchases as kayaks, video game consoles and horseback-­riding lessons.

The voucher movement has been aided by a handful of billionaire advocates; it was also enabled, during the pandemic, by the backlash to extended school closures. (Private schools often reopened considerably faster than public schools.) Yet much of the public, even in conservative states, remains ambivalent about vouchers: Voters in Nebraska and Kentucky just rejected them in ballot referendums.

Under federal district court orders announced today, the co-founders of the Stem Cell Institute of America and several related companies are banned from marketing stem cell therapy in the future. The order resolves a complaint filed jointly by the Federal Trade Commission and Georgia Attorney General’s Office. A separate order requires the defendants to pay $5,155,146 in both civil penalties and refunds to defrauded consumers on Georgia’s state law claims.

“The founders of the Stem Cell Institute of America and their network of companies tricked people who needed real medical help into buying expensive, unproven stem cell therapy,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The court’s orders hold them accountable, refund consumers, and permanently ban the defendants from offering stem cell therapy and other regenerative medicine treatment in the future.”

• President-elect Donald Trump floated the possibility of a meeting with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin to bring an end to the devastating conflict in Ukraine.
• “President Putin wants to meet. He’s said that even publicly. And we have to get that war over with, that’s a bloody mess,” Trump said Thursday.
• On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced a $500 million aid tranche for Ukraine, a mere 10 days before President Joe Biden’s scheduled exit from the White House.

• The Securities and Exchange Commission charged former WWE boss Vince McMahon with failing to inform his pro wrestling company’s board of settlement agreements totaling $10.5 million with two women on behalf of himself and the WWE.
• McMahon has agreed to settle the administrative charges and agreed to pay a $400,000 civil penalty and reimburse the WWE $1.33 million, the SEC said.
• His wife Linda McMahon has been tapped to become Education secretary by President-elect Donald Trump.

Many critics were quick to lampoon Thiel for pushing conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination that have been the subject of multiple investigations and have come up with no concrete proof of a widespread plot to murder America's 35th president.

"Peter Thiel, if he ever had it, has certainly lost it now," commented Brookings Institute fellow Quinta Jurecic.

"A former grad school colleague of mine was on Thiel's gravy train for years," commented Elliott Lusztig. "Sweet gig until Thiel pulled the plug. He keeps people around to help him with stuff like this, and my word, this is a doozy.

Link to Editorial: https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105

On the same day Nicolás Maduro was sworn in to serve a six-year term as the president of Venezuela, the U.S. announced a $25 million reward for his arrest.

The reward is part of a program aimed at "disrupting and dismantling transnational drug trafficking organizations."

"Maduro helped manage and ultimately lead the Cartel of the Suns, a Venezuelan drug-trafficking organization comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials," the U.S. government alleges. "As he gained power in Venezuela, Maduro participated in a corrupt and violent narco-terrorism conspiracy with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

If approved, Measure 1 would replace the City Council-approved minimum compensation ordinance that took effect this month. The measure would raise the minimum wage for workers at large employers to $21.10 an hour, matching Tukwila’s rate and ending exemptions in the city’s ordinance that advocates say have resulted in few people seeing a pay increase.

Supporters of the ballot initiative say the city’s actions in recent months — writing ballot descriptors that organizers called biased and sending out printed mailers and buying digital ads about the city ordinance that supporters say lack clarity — are all aimed at confusing voters and persuading them that its existing law is sufficient.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration canceled a transgender activist’s driver’s license after the popular TikToker publicly posted about changing the stated gender on their ID.

James Rose, a non-binary content creator who uses they and she pronouns, posted a video in December about changing the gender on their license from male to female. Rose talked about using a “loophole” in the process to replace lost licenses.

“My God, Ron DeSantis would be screaming right now if he knew about this,” Rose said in the video, which appears to be now removed from their social media pages. “This was not easy, we’re not even supposed to be able to do this in this state.”

The reason comes down to Houston’s guidelines, which are among the most stringent of Texas’ metropolitan areas, according to a review by the Houston Chronicle.

Houston opens its warming centers when the weather hits 24 degrees for two hours or more, or when there's 15-degree windchill for two hours or more, a spokesperson for the city’s Office of Emergency Management said.

Meanwhile, most of the state’s major cities open their shelters at a threshold that's several degrees warmer, when temperatures drop to around freezing.

Exactly 15 days later, as Anderson realized she didn’t have the money to pay the mounting bill, MyHoopty took advantage of a little-known state law available to towing companies: It submitted a form to the Connecticut DMV to sell Anderson’s car.

On the form, MyHoopty typed that the Dodge was worth $600, half of what Anderson had paid for it less than three months earlier. And, DMV records show, the agency quickly approved MyHoopty’s application to sell the car.

The Department of Justice on Tuesday sued six of the nation’s largest landlords, accusing them of using a pricing algorithm to improperly work together to raise rents across the country.

The lawsuit expands an antitrust complaint the department filed in August that accused property management software-maker RealPage of engaging in illegal price-fixing to reduce competition among landlords so prices — and profits — would soar. Officials conducted a two-year investigation into the scheme following a 2022 ProPublica story that showed how RealPage was helping landlords set rents across the country in a way that legal experts said could result in cartel-like behavior.

Together, the six landlords manage more than 1.3 million apartments in 43 states and the District of Columbia. Prosecutors have already negotiated a settlement with one of them.

A breast cancer surgeon had to "scrub out mid-surgery" to call a UnitedHealthcare representative because the insurance giant questioned whether the procedure she was in the middle of performing was really necessary.

Dr. Elisabeth Potter posted her story to Instagram this week, and the post has gotten more than 221,000 likes.

Still wearing her scrub cap, Dr. Potter began her video saying, "It’s 2025, and navigating insurance has somehow just gotten worse."