Clif Bars are a great way to keep your energy up while out hiking, biking, or rafting. One of the problems with their products (and those produced by other companies) is that the flavors have always been on the sweet side of the scale. Finally they are venturing into the savory and salty side with their new Pizza Margherita Flavor Energy Food. Woo-hoo!
The estate tax is an essential component of tax policy in any meritocratic democracy. In an era of rising income and wealth inequality, a strong estate tax has become all the more critical. Yet Congress has allowed the estate tax to erode, particularly over the last 15 years. And instead of debate in Congress revolving around how to restore it, there is a movement to repeal it altogether.
A strong estate tax is in the DNA of American political culture
The estate tax is a quintessentially American component of tax policy. Most of the founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, viewed inherited wealth as an aristocratic impediment to democracy. Many other leading figures in American history, such as Andrew Carnegie, Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, and as well as contemporary public figures ranging from Jimmy Carter to Warren Buffett, have all supported a more robust estate tax as a means of reducing intergenerational inequality and enhancing social mobility.
From the late 1930s through the 1970s, the top federal estate tax rate in the United States was always 70 percent or above. In 1980, the rate was 70 percent, and the tax exempted an estate’s first $161,563 of assets. By 2000, the estate tax had been substantially weakened: far more assets were exempted ($675,000, or just under $1 million in today’s dollars), with a top marginal rate of 55 percent.
In 2001, following two decades during which the top 1 percent saw both their wealth and income from wealth grow sharply and steadily, Congress thoroughly gutted the estate tax by scheduling a steady increase in the exemption amount and decline in the top marginal tax rate, culminating in the complete elimination of the tax after 10 years — an $850 billion giveaway to a small subset of the wealthiest one percent of Americans. The exemption amount was raised to $5 million in 2011, adjusted for inflation thereafter, and in 2015 is $5,430,000 ($10,860,000 per couple). At such a high exemption amount, fewer than 2 of every 1,000 estates — less than 1/50th of one percent of estates — now owe any estate tax. Moreover, because estate tax is owed only on the amount above the exemption, and only after deductions (e.g. for charitable donations), estates that end up being taxable owe, on average, only 16.3 percent of their value.
It’s time to restore the estate tax to its 2000 level
As the enormous sums of wealth accumulated since 1980 now begin to enter estate taxation, it is critical that policymakers restore the estate tax to a robust rate and sensible exemption level. Given the extreme level of social inequality in America today, which has continued since the Great Recession with no end in sight, America should restore the estate tax to what it was throughout the 1990s and 2000, a period which saw the most sustained period of economic growth in three decades. Specifically, effective 2016, Congress should restore the estate tax to its 2000 level: an exemption of $1,000,000 (the 2000 exemption amount – $675,000 — in projected 2016 dollars), with a top marginal rate of 55 percent on the value of estates in excess of the exemption amount. This rate is at the center of the optimal estate-tax range estimated by Piketty and Saez based on an analysis of micro-data.
Revenue could be used toward Social Security’s start-up costs
The revenue from this restored estate tax should be earmarked for purposes that mitigate the extreme inequality in the distribution of the fruits of growth in today’s economy. A strong case can certainly be made for devoting its revenues to any number of domestic programs. A case can also be made for earmarking these revenues for Social Security, both due to the history of the Social Security program and the particular nature of the estate tax.
In the early decades of Social Security’s history, Congress decided to allow those who had fought in World War I, as well as America’s “Greatest Generation” — which had experienced both the Great Depression and the Second World War — to receive far more in Social Security benefits than their contributions plus interest would have yielded. These generations had sacrificed so much for the good of the country, and old-age poverty rates were so high, that policymakers thought it advisable to use the program to prevent these Americans from enduring deprivation in old age. This policy choice, broadly supported then and now, created a substantial “legacy debt” for the Social Security system.
Essentially, Social Security’s funding challenge today can be divided into two parts: the portion necessary to fund current and future benefits, and the portion necessary to pay off the system’s legacy debt. Given that the system’s start-up costs were not a true social insurance expense, but a national gesture of social solidarity, it is not equitable to ask the bottom 94 percent of earners — exempting earnings above the cap as well as unearned income — to disproportionately bear the burden of servicing it, at a regressive contribution rate. Yet that is precisely what has happened hitherto.
Devoting estate tax revenues to Social Security would be an elegant way of addressing this issue. It would service — and gradually pay down — the legacy debt with revenue stemming to a large extent from families which have benefited most from the sacrifices which the Greatest Generation undertook to make America a global economic superpower. Leading Social Security experts including Robert M. Ball, Peter Diamond and Peter Orszag, and Mark Thoma have argued for devoting estate tax revenues to Social Security legacy costs, and Alicia Munnell has made the broader case for using some progressive source of revenue beyond the payroll tax to fund legacy costs. While there are no cost estimates for what percentage of the legacy debt would be eliminated by restoring the estate tax to its 2000 level, and devoting those revenues to Social Security, Social Security’s actuaries have estimated that restoring the estate tax to its far less robust 2009 level (where it taxed estates in excess of $3.5 million) would eliminate about 18 percent of the program’s projected long-term shortfall. Restoring it to its stronger 2000 level would therefore close a much larger share of the long-term shortfall.
Regardless of whether the revenue flows to Social Security or other programs which reduce inequality, a robust estate tax should be restored. There is a growing body of research showing that “more inequality of incomes in the present leads to family background play[ing] a greater role in the adult outcomes of young people, with their own hard work playing a commensurately weaker role.” Given today’s record levels of income and wealth inequality, this suggests that the American Dream could be slipping away for future generations. Restoring the estate tax is a critical step in restoring that dream.
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This year marks the centennial of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (or PPIE), the 1915 world’s fair that celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal and trumpeted San Francisco’s recovery from the ruinous earthquake and fire of 1906.
The exposition, a grand event that drew nearly 19 million people from all over the world, covered 76 city blocks and featured national and international pavilions showcasing all manner of innovation, industry, and the arts.
It was a fair of firsts, biggests, and bests. Alexander Graham Bell placed the first ever transcontinental telephone call to the PPIE; the fairground boasted the world’s largest wood and steel building; and attendees included notables such as former president Theodore Roosevelt, illusionist Harry Houdini, and inventor Thomas Edison. The ukulele craze of the 1920s can even be traced to the PPIE, where the novel instrument from the Hawaiian Territories was introduced to the mainland.
One-hundred years later, the San Francisco Bay Area is celebrating the PPIE with an on-going series of events including exhibitions, screenings, concerts, lectures, panel discussions, performances, and demonstrations. A website about the centennial celebration can be found at www.ppie100.org. Its events section lists what’s going on.
Courtesy Heyday Books
Another way to learn more about the PPIE is to check out three recent books about the fair. The best among them may well be Laura A. Ackley’s San Francisco’s Jewel City: The Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 (Heyday). One hundred years later, it is the next best thing to having visited the historic event.
San Francisco’s Jewel City takes readers on a richly detailed tour of the PPIE, revealing the drama behind the building of the fair (a massive undertaking not unlike the building of a city), as well as the many displays of industry and culture that awaited visitors within the exposition. The sections on the fair’s inspiration and construction, ticketing, attractions, and merchandise — as well as on Liberty Bell day, Audrey Munson “The Exposition Girl,” and its air shows and automobile races all make for fascinating reading. In so many ways, this lavishly illustrated volume is as much a triumph as the fair itself. No San Franciscan should be without it.
Courtesy Cameron + Company
Another recommended book is Lee Bruno’s Panorama: Tales from San Francisco’s 1915 Pan-Pacific International Exposition (Cameron + Company). This attractive, heavily illustrated coffee table book is all about pictures (some in color), and its many sweeping vistas, perspective shots and crowd scenes are beautifully reproduced and have a “wow” factor. Panorama focuses in part on the fair’s famous participants — including its visionaries and builders, as well as its artists, performers, and visitors. There are spreads on wild west legend Buffalo Bill Cody, industrialist Henry Ford, educator Maria Montessori, composer John Phillips Souza, and comedian Charlie Chaplin, among others. The book as well contains a history of the fair through the eyes of the author’s great-grandfather, Reuben Hale, who played a major role in its creation.
Also be sure and check out Abigail M. Markwyn’s Empress San Francisco: The Pacific Rim, the Great West, and California at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (University of Nebraska Press). The PPIE grew out of the social and political climate of the Progressive Era. By focusing on the influence exerted by women, ethnic minorities, labor unions, and others (these groups gave speeches and staged pageants and parades at the PPIE), Markwyn offers an analysis of the social construction of pre-World War I America. Though scholarly, it’s not as dry as it sounds. The chapter on “Sex and Other Vices at the Fair” is fascinating, and even a bit surprising.
courtesy University of Nebraska Press
Another somewhat recent university press title is Sarah J. Moore’s Empire on Display: San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 (University of Oklahoma Press). Published in 2013, this scholarly work examines the Panama-Pacific International Exposition through the “lenses of art history and cultural studies, focusing on the event’s expansionist and masculinist symbolism.”
The PPIE was a visual extravaganza (complete with a jeweled tower and night-time light shows), and anyone interested would do well to own more than one picture book on the event. An earlier title in the ubiquitous, sepia colored “Images of America” series is William Lipsky’s San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition (Arcadia Publishing), from 2005. It is a worthwhile, affordable look at the fair. Though now out-of-print, also worth tracking down is Donna Ewald and Peter Clute’s San Francisco Invites the World: The Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 (Chronicle Books), published in 1991.
Numerous books — including lavish pictorials, guide books, and specialty works on various topics — were issued at the time of the PPIE. And just about all of them, 100 years later, are somewhat hard to come by. In fact, many are collector’s items.
Open Library, an initiative of the Internet Archive, is an online collection of books where viewers can browse by subject, author or topical list. Notably, Open Library contains more than 1,000,000 ebooks, including many issued at the time of the PPIE. A good number of these titles can be read online, or downloaded for free.
For gorgeous imagery, be sure and click on the “read online” link for The Blue Book: A comprehensive official souvenir view book of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco, 1915 by R. A. Reid, or The art of the exposition: personal impressions of the architecture, sculpture, mural decorations, color scheme & other aesthetic aspects of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition by Eugen Neuhaus. The former was issued by the Official Publisher of View Books, the latter by San Francisco’s own distinguished printer & publisher, Paul Elder and Company.
There are other interesting and amusing titles available through Open Library, such as The Pan-Pacific Cook Book by L. L. McLaren, Condensed facts concerning the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and The Boy Scouts at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, by Howard Payson. A classic work of the time is The Jewel City: Its Planning and Achievement; Its Architecture, Sculpture, Symbolism, and Music; Its Gardens, Palaces, and Exhibits by Ben Macomber. Open Library is a great resource worth exploring. Expect to spend hours in the stacks.
Thomas Gladysz is a San Francisco arts and entertainment writer and local history enthusiast. He is also the founding director of the Louise Brooks Society, an online archive and international fan club devoted to the legendary silent film star. Gladysz has organized exhibits, contributed to books, appeared on television, and introduced the actress’s films around the world.
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WASHINGTON – A decision this week by a major Texas school district to suspend operations at its truancy court was welcomed by juvenile justice advocates, who have long pushed for an end the state’s controversial policy of criminalizing students for having too many unexcused absences.
“It’s terrific to see [a district] take such a proactive stance,” Deborah Fowler, executive director of justice reform advocacy group Texas Appleseed, told The Huffington Post. “We’re impressed by their decision to really investigate the system, and to take seriously the disparate impact that truancy courts have on poor and minority students.”
Charles Dupre, superintendent of the Fort Bend Independent School District, which encompasses suburbs west of Houston and has over 70,000 students enrolled, sent a letter to parents Monday night advising of the change. “After listening to a variety of community voices around this important issue, we have determined we must perform a complete review of the District’s truancy procedures,” Dupre wrote. “Therefore, we are immediately suspending our existing truancy procedures, including referring students to truancy court, while this review is conducted.”
The decision to suspend the truancy court was the result of a confluence of events, including a major report published by Texas Appleseed in March. The report revealed that the state of Texas prosecutes more than twice as many truancy cases annually as all other states combined, and it raised serious questions about whether the children referred to truancy court were being afforded due process.
State Senator Rodney Ellis wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, also in March, urging the Justice Department to investigate racial disparities in how truancy laws were applied in Texas. Ellis, who represents Fort Bend, singled out the school district for criticism, noting that “in Fort Bend ISD, African American students comprise 53.3 percent of truancy cases filed, despite the fact that they only account for 29.1 percent of enrollment.”
Fort Bend ISD is also undergoing a separate review by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, to determine whether the district “discriminates against African-American students by disciplining them more frequently and more harshly than other similarly situated students.”
Earlier this month, the Department of Justice announced that it would launch an investigation into truancy courts in another district, in Dallas County, focusing specifically on issues of due process for juveniles.
Although truancy is considered a crime under state law, it’s up to the school districts how to prosecute students. As a result, many Texas schools end up sending those charged with truancy through the criminal justice system rather than having their own administrations discipline the students.
Given that truancy is considered a misdemeanor under Texas law, the state does not provide access to legal counsel for those charged with the crime. As a result, the overwhelming majority of defendants either plead guilty or no contest in court. Fines for truancy can cost up to $500 per misdemeanor.
Dupre’s letter, which was forwarded to HuffPost, acknowledged the increased scrutiny that Texas truancy policies have come under. “With the recent expressed concerns about the way FBISD handles truancy matters, we believe it will be in the best interest of our students and the community for us to re-examine aspects of the system that might need to be improved,” he wrote.
Among those aspects, Fowler pointed out, is the fact that Fort Bend has a special truancy court system that operates as a criminal court, not a juvenile one. “There’s a mismatch here between the fact that they have created a court where only a child would be charged, by definition, and yet they’ve set it up as an adult criminal court, and not a juvenile court,” she said. “That’s what needs to be corrected.”
The Texas State Legislature is currently considering a number of bills that would decriminalize truancy statewide, forcing school systems to deal with truancy through means other than the state’s criminal courts. Fowler said she’s optimistic.
“There’s still a great deal of support for this across the state,” she said. “And we expect the bill will pass during this session of the legislature.”
The legislative session ends June 1.
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I remember the first time that I saw The Who was in 1965. They played a show at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland, Oregon. There they were — Roger Daltrey, Pete Townsend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon, all looking Edwardian in their frock coats and their ruffle shirts that looked right out of the movie Tom Jones. You could tell at that time these guys were bold, wanted to have a lot of fun and they were dangerous, known especially for destroying their guitars and equipment on stage, especially Pete Townsend and Keith Moon.
The Who really manifested a lot of youthful alienation. They really searched and explored the lexicon of youthful angst.
The next time I saw The Who was at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West in San Francisco. This was during the summer of 1968. The rock opera album Tommy had just been released and The Who were touring and playing the album live in its entirety.
My mother and I drove to San Francisco from Portland, Oregon in our 1962 Blue Volkswagen beetle. I was in the height of my rock and roll journalism career, just like out of the movie Almost Famous. I was writing for a magazine called Datebook and I managed to get to interview Pete Townsend at their hotel after The Who’s show.
Meanwhile back at the Fillmore West, it was quite a scene. My mother waited outside at the base of the stairs talking to the African-American cop who looked up at the marquee sign and saw the name Cold Blood, a then mainstay San Francisco band at that time, and he shuddered. I remember walking up the stairs at the Fillmore West and passed Cass Elliott who was coming down the stairs. I think tickets for that show were four dollars. That night Bill Graham had The Who headlining along with the James Cotton Blues Band and Magic Sam, with a light show by the Holy See.
Upstairs there was a big dance floor, about 3,000 people were sitting on the floor, smoking, in various states of consciousness. The Who were performing on stage and the Holy See light show was blazing in the background. I remember Roger Daltrey swinging his microphone lasso style out over the heads of the people sitting on the floor at the Fillmore West. I thought if one person stands up, they could get decapitated.
Pete Townsend was very cool, very thoughtful. He sat on the couch, strummed his Martin acoustic guitar and was singing “The Pusher” by Steppenwolf. He talked about writers and politics. You could tell that he was an innovative guy.
In 1989, I saw The Who this time at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in Alpine Valley. This was a large outdoor Woodstockesque amphitheater. The Who was touring for the twentieth-fifth anniversary of the release of Tommy. The band this time was minus Keith Moon — who had died in 1978. Kenny Jones now played drums and John Babbitt played keyboards. Pete Townsend, Roger Daltrey, and John Entwistle were out in front as the band blasted on stage to the theme of the television western series Bonanza.
So when The Who Hits 50 tour came to the Frank Erwin Center at the University of Texas in Austin on Monday night, April 27, 2015, I thought this will be interesting to see: Who they are now in 2015.
Needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed. The band now in its post-Keith Moon/John Entwistle — who died in 2002 — phase features now Zak Starkey, son of Ringo Starr on the drums. This has become a nice merge of Beatles and Who culture. The visual light show, for example, was spectacular; it reminded me a lot of the Peter Max-type art form only now put in digital format. The visual swirls of red light highlighting pictures of the band members along with the endless light imagery of flowing blue water merged nicely with the fluidity of the music.
The band has never played better. Pete Townsend’s guitar solos were mesmerizing and there were plenty of windmill whirls that Townsend performed while playing his guitar. Roger Daltrey’s voice is still very strong and he managed to swirl his microphone effectively, this time with a shorter cord that did not revile his antics years ago at the Fillmore West.
The band’s 22-song set ranged from the early “I Can’t Explain” up through more recent tunes like “You Better, You Bet.” The Who served up quite a few songs from Tommy and Quadrophenia including “Pinball Wizard”, “Sparks”, “I’m One” and “Love Reign Over Me”. They also reached back to include gems like “Pictures Of Lily”, “Magic Bus”, “The Kids Are Alright” — even the obscure mini-opera “A Quick One While He’s Away”. They played with great precision and passion as they delivered “Behind Blue Eyes”, ” Bargain”, “Baba O’Reilly”, “Who Are You?” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. Another highlight of the night was an especially jazzy “Eminence Front”.
WHO are you in 2015? They are an incredible group of gifted musicians, storytellers and cultural observers who have generated a lot of great music for the past five decades. They have chronicled alienation from authority, lost love and even rage at Autism — and they have been fun to watch. Roger Daltrey hinted that this will probably be their last tour, but then again The Who said this before in 1989 and they continued to flourish.
I really hope that The Who stays around for a while yet.
Yeah, the kids are alright.
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With the New York Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez set to tie Willie Mays’ 660 home runs for fourth all-time, the Yankees have chosen to ignore it. Would George Steinbrenner treat this differently and should the Yankees honor A-Rod’s remarkable milestone? I was joined by broadcast legend Larry King on HuffPost Live to discuss.
Click below to watch the full segment with King.
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Email me at jordan.schultz@huffingtonpost.com or ask me questions about anything sports-related at @Schultz_Report, and follow me on Instagram @Schultz_Report. Also, be sure to catch my NBC Sports Radio show “Kup and Schultz,” which airs Sunday mornings from 9 to 12 EST, right here.
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Police were called to a McDonald’s in East Lansing, Michigan, at 2 a.m. Thursday after an employee punched a rowdy Michigan State University student in the restaurant, knocking him unconscious.
Another Michigan State student, Kevin Lange, filmed the end of the interaction, including the crucial punch, and uploaded the 10-second video to YouTube.
It’s unclear from the video, which has already been viewed nearly 50,000 times, what led to the punch. It opens with three men, two of them McDonald’s employees, talking near a restaurant door with a fourth man, who is mostly obscured. A few seconds later, this heretofore unseen fourth man starts to run — and one of the two McDonald’s employees slams him with one swift punch. He falls down, and several other people in the restaurant shout in surprise.
Lange said the apparently drunken student was punched after stumbling into the restaurant, spitting on the counter and throwing a “Caution: Wet Floor” sign.
Police said the man who was punched sustained injuries that were not life-threatening. According to student paper, The State News, he is filing a criminal complaint against the restaurant employee who punched him.
“We take this matter very seriously and are fully cooperating with local law enforcement,” McDonald’s said in a statement. “Because the matter is under investigation, any further inquiries are being referred to the East Lansing Police Department.”
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In case you missed it, April was National Financial Capability Month. For those of you who don’t live and breathe the subject on a daily basis, as I do, an explanation may be in order.
According to the White House proclamation, National Financial Capability Month is a time to renew our support for “informed financial decisions that will open doors into the middle class and help ensure economic security for all.”
What does that mean in practice?
In major American cities today, nearly half (45 percent) of households are living in a state of persistent financial insecurity with almost no savings to cover emergencies or plan for the future. At CFED, we believe that given the opportunity, every one of these families can save, build assets and create a more prosperous future for themselves and their children. To reach that goal, low-income families require support to improve their financial capability by helping them increase their financial knowledge, skills, and access to fair and affordable financial products.
Financial capability, unlike financial education, is not learned solely in a classroom. It needs to be developed over time and made available during key decision-making moments throughout a person’s life, such as when they leave home for the first time, buy a house or rent an apartment, get a new job, have a child or pay taxes. And to ensure maximum impact, trusted financial advice and products need to be embedded in trusted institutions, such as schools, workplaces and community centers.
Research shows that the precursors for financial well-being in adulthood — such as good decision-making skills and attitudes about finances — are built during childhood and youth. That means we need to start early, arming young people with financial skills that will help them become financially capable adults.
Many states now require financial education in schools, but knowing how to save, budget and build credit is only the first step. Becoming financially capable also requires practice. One pilot study, for example, found that pairing financial education with the opportunity to “practice” using a real savings account enhanced students’ knowledge of financial information.
Research also shows that helping children save for postsecondary education, such as through a Children’s Savings Account program, fosters a college-bound identity. One study found that low- and moderate-income children with as little as $500 or less in college savings were three times more likely to enroll in college and four times more likely to graduate.
As people enter adulthood, targeted financial capability strategies can have a huge impact on long-term financial security, particularly when it comes to choosing where to live and how to pay for it.
The path towards homeownership offers multiple opportunities to put good financial products and advice in front of people trying to decide which home they can afford, what mortgage to choose and how to cover maintenance costs for their most important asset. Pre-purchase housing counseling, for instance, has been found to significantly reduce foreclosure and delinquency rates.
For those who aren’t currently on a path toward homeownership, affordable housing programs also offer a number of opportunities to work with renters to shape their financial decision-making. For example, Credit Builders Alliance is piloting an initiative with eight affordable housing providers to report rental payments to the major credit reporting agencies, thereby helping tenants build and raise their credit scores. The higher credit scores will allow residents access to safer, lower-cost financing for purchases such as homes and cars. What’s more, those higher scores mean they will have less need to turn to high-cost predatory loans, which can trap families in a cycle of debt and poverty.
Tax time, when people must address their finances head on, is yet another opportune moment to offer financial capability assistance. This is most often provided through Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites, which offer free tax services to low-income working adults, the elderly and persons with disabilities. In addition to helping with tax returns, VITA sites can take advantage of the moment to offer access to affordable bank accounts and financial coaching, including depositing tax refunds directly into a savings account. Last year VITA sites helped over three million people. But the growing demand for these services signals the need to further expand the program so more people can benefit.
The success of each of these diverse approaches depends on one common but often challenging notion — a willingness to talk about money. As Financial Capability Month comes to a close, we need to commit ourselves to a more open and honest discussion about how we should spend, save and invest our money. Only then can we take the steps necessary to ensure that all Americans have the tools and resources to become financially capable.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — AT&T has confirmed that it has fired Aaron Slator, a president who became the subject of a $100 million discrimination lawsuit for using his work phone to send racially offensive images.
AT&T said in a statement that Slator has been terminated, saying that there is no place for demeaning behavior within the company. The company says it regretted not taking the action earlier. On Monday, Knoyme (NOH-mee) King, a 50-year-old black woman who worked for Slator, filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court against Slator, the company and its CEO, Randall Stephenson.
King’s lawyer, Skip Miller, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the suit will continue and alleged that racism permeates the company. He said its board of directors was aware of the offensive images for over a year.
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In Colorado and Iowa, a pilot program shows that IUDs and implants can dramatically reduce teen pregnancies and abortions. But policy results and politics don’t always mix.
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