The Huffington Post: Here’s What Happens When Public Transit Is Free

The communities testing or considering free transit are diverse, ranging from major metropolises to small towns and from blue-collar to affluent. Just an hour’s drive from Worcester is Lawrence, Massachusetts, a post-industrial city with a large immigrant population. It used a municipal budget surplus to make some bus service free on a trial basis last fall, and the city has seen ridership go up 20%. [...]

The equity impact of a free ride is obvious: Beyond a few big cities, it’s the most marginalized people who are least likely to own cars and thus rely most on transit. And for those who count on it, transit is at least as vital as other services that cities are expected to fund entirely through tax revenue, from parks and libraries to schools and police forces. [...]

Climate change, however, may finally tip that political calculation. In the United States, according to federal government data, transportation is responsible for 29% of greenhouse gas emissions, with passenger cars and light trucks emitting 59% of that. Putting a dent in those figures will require public transit to become more attractive than driving, and given the cost of fueling, parking and maintaining an automobile, the word “free” could have a certain appeal. [...]

Fares sometimes amount to only a small fraction of a system’s funding — 14%, or about $3 million, in Worcester — which means lost revenues can often be made up for with federal and state grants, budget reallocations or special taxes. France uses a payroll tax on businesses to support urban and regional transit systems, allowing some of them to offer free rides. In the U.S., free transit in some college towns is made possible by a subsidy from the local university.

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Vox: The gun solution we're not talking about

It seems like after every mass shooting, politicians talk about expanding background checks for gun buyers. But background checks don't actually do a great job of keeping dangerous people from getting guns. What does? A licensing system, where before you can buy a gun, you need a license from the state.

BBC: Abortion in US: What surprise Supreme Court ruling means

A majority of the justices sided with Indiana, holding that the burial provision didn't place an "undue burden" on a woman's right to an abortion and it advanced a legitimate interest of the state, even if the law wasn't "perfectly tailored" to address foetal remains in all circumstances. [...]

With nearly a dozen states enacting new abortion regulations and outright prohibitions in 2019, this won't be the only opportunity for the Supreme Court to reconsider whether there is a constitutional right to abortion.

Anti-abortion activists, and state legislatures with anti-abortion majorities, may believe that with the addition of Mr Trump's appointments, there is a majority on the court willing to finally put a stake through the heart of Roe.

Tuesday's decisions, however - made with little fanfare and no advanced notice - could be an indication that a majority of the justices on the court are in no hurry to reverse 46 years of precedent.[...]

Also on Tuesday an abortion clinic in St Louis announced that it may be forced to stop performing the procedure on Friday because the state had yet to renew its licence. If that happens, Missouri would become the first state since Roe was decided to have no abortion clinics within its borders. Five other states have only one.

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The Guardian: Mormon polygamists who believe Missouri is the 'promised land'

The Laubs live in a polygamous community of perhaps 400 people in rural Missouri between the towns of Humansville and Stockton. The residents call it “the Ranch”, though the agriculture is limited to a hay field and a few cows and chickens. People in the neighboring towns refer to the community as “the Compound”, but you won’t see any high walls or armed guards — just brown dirt roads winding through clusters of trees and homes. [...]

Today, some fundamentalist Mormon polygamists believe plural marriage is necessary to reach the highest level of heaven. Others practice polygamy simply to follow Smith’s teachings. These polygamists tend to believe in big families: women often give birth to 10 or more children. While some of the polygamist leaders have been known to have 20 or more wives, most men have two or three. [...]

A review of marriage licenses in south-west Missouri shows most residents of the polygamous community marry in their 20s, though a few brides and grooms have been as young as 17. In Mormon polygamy, the husband usually has one legal wife; subsequent marriages are ordained in a religious service, but there’s no license on file with any county clerk.

In Missouri, you can be convicted of bigamy if a married person “purports”, to quote the statute, to marry another person. The offense is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. That’s a lesser punishment than, say, Utah, where polygamy is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison or 15 years if it’s committed in conjunction with a fraud or violent offense.

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Axios: Marijuana legalization, daylight savings and other notable measures passed in the midterm elections

Marijuana legalization: Michigan became the 10th state to legalize marijuana — including the District of Columbia — and first midwestern state to do so for recreational use. North Dakota rejected a similar measure, but voters in Missouri approved the legalization of medical marijuana.

Abortion: The matter was on the ballot in three states. In Oregon, voters defeated a measure that would have banned the use of public funds to pay for abortion coverage. Alabama and West Virginia approved sweeping anti-abortion language to the states’ constitution, proclaiming that women have no right to perform the procedure.[...]

Daylight saving: Californians decided they no longer want to reset clocks twice a year. A measure they approved would implement a permanent year-round daylight saving time. But, it requires a two-thirds vote from the state legislature and a change in federal law to go into effect.

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99 Percent Invisible: Dollhouses of St. Louis

Back in the 1950s, St. Louis was segregated and The Ville was one of the only African-American neighborhoods in the city. The community was prosperous. Black-owned businesses thrived and the neighborhood was filled with the lovely, ornate brick homes the city has become famous for.

Samuel Moore, who became a local alderman in 2007, grew up in The Ville. Moore’s father worked as bricklayer and helped build some of the stately brick houses in this area. “He was a great bricklayer,” says Moore. “He did quite a few jobs around this town and I still see some of my dad’s work — beautiful homes. Triple brick, three-story buildings that would cost a million dollars to duplicate.”

But driving around The Ville today, where Moore has lived for almost his entire life, the neighborhood looks very different. Some buildings are simply rundown or abandoned, but others are missing large chunks entirely. Walls have disappeared. The bricks are gone. “We call them dollhouses,” says Moore, “because you can look inside of them.”

In the past fifty years, the city of St. Louis has lost more than half its population. Vacancy has skyrocketed in The Ville and other neighborhoods on the north side of the city. Entire blocks in this area have returned to pastureland, punctuated by the occasional dilapidated building slowly surrendering to the landscape around it.

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VICE: The Horrific Catholic Church Sex Abuse Scandal Is About to Get a Lot Worse

So what's different about this, than any of those I just mentioned, is that there was really no effort in any of those evolutions to do anything but prosecute predator priests. For example, law enforcement had Mahony in their sights—they could have indicted him. And Steve Cooley, who was the district attorney in Los Angeles County at the time, didn't do it. And I think he didn't do it because the Church—the hierarchy of the Church—still had a significant amount of influence. What's happened, as time has gone on, is the individuals who hold elected office have had less and less exposure to a Church that's had the sort of political power it did 30 years ago. The Church, now, simply has less political influence now, and can't stop it.

Frankly, if you're the attorney general of Pennsylvania, and you begin getting these calls, and you see the scope of this, why wouldn't you investigate it? It's criminality, really, on a scale that's unheard of. In California, the Church paid $1 billion to settle cases in the mid 2000s. A diocese went bankrupt. And it's not just the number of perpetrators. The real criminal conspiracy, and the real criminality, is the effort to cover it up, and conceal it as a matter of policy and practice. I think a lot of people still want to believe that something like what happened in Pennsylvania is an anomaly. It's not. It's the norm. Every diocese is the same—and the reason for that is the Church is a hierarchal organization, managed from the top-down.  [...]

I think the next step—and I do think it's going to happen—is a federal investigation. Catholic institutions are not only religious, but they're massive receivers of federal, state, and local financial aid through charity and other organizations. And, more than anything else, they're a tax-exempt organization. If Scientology, which is tiny sect, [eventually loses] its tax-empt status because of criminality, then isn't a fair discussion to have that for the Catholic Church [too]? Can you imagine, say, if you found out that 300 United Airlines flight attendants were molesting children, what would happen to United Airlines? And we don't have 300—[we have even more] priests who have been removed for this behavior since the early 2000s. The only reason they haven't been held to the same standard that everyone else has been is the religious works in front of them. [...]

Me too. So the difference between Catholicism and basically any other Protestant sect is that the only way to salvation in the Church is through the sacramental life. And the only way to participate fully in the sacramental life is to go through all seven sacraments, one of them being to become a priest. And the victims that priests typically target are almost always the most devout kids who truly in their heart believe.

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CityLab: Where Hate Groups Are Concentrated in the U.S.

The geography of organized hate in America is at once significantly concentrated and considerably spread out. On the one hand, hate groups are found in slightly more than 10 percent of U.S. counties (340 of 3,142), according to the study. But on the other, hate groups span the entire country, and can be found in every single state. While the heartland—stretching from the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Nebraska to Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas—has among the highest levels of hate groups, the East and West Coasts have a high density of these groups as well, as the map below shows.

The study finds that, not surprisingly, the geography of organized hate is shaped by factors like race and ethnicity, education, poverty, religion, and political conservatism. Organized hate is concentrated in places that are poorer, less educated, less diverse, and whiter, more religious, and more conservative. But the precise extent to which these factors affect hate differs somewhat in different parts of the country. The maps below chart the connection between hate groups and these variables for the 340 counties that are home to hate groups. [...]

The study shows that while organized hate groups are concentrated in U.S. counties, no geographic region is immune to hate. Indeed, hate in America has a long, distressing history that cuts across America’s major geographic regions. The Midwest was a hotbed of white supremacy before the Civil War and is home to the Michigan Militia. The South and Southwest have long been centers for the Ku Klux Klan and other white-supremacist groups. The Northwest saw a striking rise in white-supremacist groups in the 1980s. And the Northeast has had its share of organized hate as well: In the ‘30s and ‘40s, a wave of anti-Semitic and racially motivated violence hit what we now think of progressive states like Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York.

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Vox: We aren’t having an evidence-based debate about guns

“There’s some evidence that certain types of gun laws, like universal background checks, may be useful,” David Hemenway, a Harvard University professor who has written extensively about injury prevention and guns, told me. “There’s no evidence at all about raising the age to 21. There’s certainly no evidence about arming teachers. There’s evidence [that] arming more people is typically good for the gun industry and bad for society.”

What we do know is that fewer guns likely lead to fewer deaths, as Vox’s German Lopez has explained at length. So improved background checks and higher age limits could reasonably be expected to help. But these are largely inferences from other countries with stronger gun laws rather than rigorously researched theories that have been tested in America. (We do have a few non-government studies, from Connecticut and Missouri, that suggest background checks help reduce gun deaths.)  [...]

We don’t know much beyond that. Congress has made it effectively impossible for federally funded researchers to study gun violence. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health are the gold standards for public health research in the United States. But they are effectively barred from studying a problem that kills more than 35,000 people in a year.

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