In the Mail: Jerry Oppenheimer, RFK Jr.

I'm still working on a few other books, and I'm hoping to write some reviews.

But, the publishers keep sending out these tomes, heh.

At Amazon, RFK Jr.: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Dark Side of the Dream.

What Makes Conservatism Right?

Here's Greg Gutfeld for Prager University.

And pre-order his new book, How to Be Right: The Art of Being Persuasively Correct.

Los Angeles Declares 'State of Emergency' in Homeless Crisis, Will Commit $100 Million

Following-up from Tuesday, "L.A.'s Homelessness Emergency."

See the Los Angeles Times, "L.A. to declare 'state of emergency' on homelessness, commit $100 million."

Mission San Juan Capistrano Visitors React to Canonization of Junípero Serra (VIDEO)

Following-up from yesterday, "Pope Francis Canonizes Father Junípero Serra."

Watch, at ABC News 7 Los Angeles, "SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. (KABC) -- Sitting in the very church Father Junipero Serra founded more than 200 years ago, visitors to Mission San Juan Capistrano watched as Pope Francis canonized the Franciscan priest Wednesday."

The Truth About the European Migrant Crisis

From Michael Teitelbaum, at Foreign Affairs, "The Truth About the Migrant Crisis: Tragic Choices, Moral Hazards, and Potential Solutions":

The actual numbers of people crossing the Mediterranean into European Union territory, insofar as the limited available evidence is credible, are daunting. During the first eight months of 2015, well over 400,000 people successfully made the fraught journey. In the first part of this year, about 80 percent were departing from the now failed state of Libya and landing on Italian soil  More recently, migrant smuggling activities from Turkey to nearby Greek islands have increased.

In increasingly raucous political and press debates in Europe and elsewhere, recent movements are being described as new “disasters,” “policy failures,” and even “invasions” that the EU and its member states have proven incapable of addressing effectively. In fact, such “irregular” migration across the Mediterranean is hardly new, but the volumes are indeed far larger than in prior years. So, too, are the numbers dying in the attempt. The International Organization for Migration in Geneva estimates that during the first eight months of 2015, more than 2,700 would-be Mediterranean migrants perished at sea.

The stark and widely disseminated images of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children transiting the Mediterranean in crumbling boats, and of the resulting humanitarian disasters at sea, are impossible to ignore. The heart-rending photos of a drowned three-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach were highlighted in print and online media worldwide. Such deeply disturbing images create daunting daily challenges for an EU already struggling with deep recessions, sustained high unemployment, terrorist attacks, economic and political instability in Greece, and challenges to the euro currency system. They provide useful political fodder for the strengthening populist and anti-EU parties and movements that have appeared in most of the 28 member countries. And they have stimulated a rising tide of violent attacks on facilities housing migrants—more than 200 such attacks in Germany this year, described by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as “unworthy of our country.”

TRAGIC CHOICES, MORAL HAZARDS

As they consider responses to these challenges, European government, advocacy, and media leaders need to keep in mind two important concepts: tragic choices and moral hazards.

The recent mass migrations pose deep moral dilemmas for European societies, of a kind that moral philosophers and theologians call “tragic choices.” These are decisions that bring into conflict the ultimate values by which societies define themselves, such as how to allocate scarce resources among very large numbers of desperate people.

The numbers of potential migrants now are exceptionally large. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that by the end of 2014, nearly 60 million had been forcibly displaced owing to persecution, conflict, and human rights violations—the highest level on record—and of these, it classified nearly 20 million as “refugees.” To these huge numbers may plausibly be added tens or even hundreds of millions more who would likely be attracted by any available option to migrate away from conditions of deep poverty, starvation, or environmental disaster.

In a world of widespread tragedy, what choices should humanitarian societies make to allocate assistance among these potential migrants? Are they obliged by international law and their own values to admit all who wish to come, whatever the effects? Must they give priority to resettling refugees, as defined by international law, over other migrants? And if so, are they obliged to admit all the 20 million counted as “refugees” by the UNHCR? If not, how should they deal with mass casualties among others who risk their lives to gain access to European countries?

In fraught debates about such moral dilemmas, the legal definitions and everyday usage of “refugees,” “asylum seekers,” and “migrants” have become profoundly confused. There is a vast literature on these definitions; suffice it to say that the 1951 UN Refugee Convention defines a “refugee” as a person outside of his or her country of nationality who is unable or unwilling “to avail himself of the protection of that country . . . owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” An “asylum-seeker” differs from a “refugee” only by geography, having already entered the country in which asylum or refugee status is being sought; those who are approved are called both “refugees” and “asylees,” injecting yet another source of confusion. Contrary to common usage, under the Refugee Convention, people who flee failed states, conflicts, or desperate economic conditions do not qualify as refugees or asylees unless they have a legitimate fear of persecution based on one of the five grounds listed above. But such desperate migrants certainly still deserve humanitarian concern.

On top of tragic choices, European officials must contend with moral hazards. In finance and economics, these arise when incentives or guarantees provided by governments or insurers have the perverse effect of encouraging banks, corporations, and individuals to take dangerous risks such as high “leverage” through heavy borrowing, risks that most would otherwise prudently avoid.

International migration itself should now be understood as a highly leveraged phenomenon. Many millions migrate and settle lawfully each year, but they are dwarfed by the dramatically larger numbers of potential migrants created by immense global economic inequalities and the proliferation of failed states and civil wars. These realities, coupled with nearly global access to modern media and transportation, mean that the option of migrating to more peaceful and prosperous countries is increasingly both known and attractive to potentially massive numbers of people—as but one incomplete measure, more than 1 billion of the 7.3 billion human population currently live on less than $1.25 per day.

With such a large pool of migrants waiting in the wings, even small policy shifts on the part of countries seen as desirable destinations—admirable statements of humanitarian welcome for migrants or policy changes intended to provide migration benefits to smaller groups—can cause great swings in the movement of people. To this may be added the perverse incentives facing people who are able to meet the UN refugee definition but unable to obtain visas to be resettled as refugees in a European country. At risk of their lives, they can force the issue by paying smugglers to transport them to that same country in order to claim asylum. Indeed, several EU governments have formally stated that even the humanitarian sea rescue missions are encouraging greater numbers to pursue such high-risk journeys...

Bestselling History Books

At Amazon, Best Sellers in History.

What You Should and Shouldn't Do When Meeting Pope Francis (VIDEO)

Well, dress modestly, for one thing.

At the Telegraph UK:

An Ahmed Mohamed Comments Section Goes Horribly Wrong

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "A COMMENT SECTION GOES HORRIBLY WRONG: In order to pretend they didn’t completely jump the gun on the Ahmed the clockmaker story, the DIY-oriented Hackaday Website runs – just out of the blue, totally for kicks and grins, no reason, just seems so pleasin’ – a story titled “Clocks for Social Good.” Things begin to go awry in the comments, starting here..."

RELATED: At Weasel Zippers, "Clock Kid’s Older Sister Claims She Was Suspended After Being Accused of Making a Bomb Threat in Middle School."

Education Gap Between Rich and Poor Is Growing Wider

But what about all that hopey-changey stuff?

At the New York Times:

The wounds of segregation were still raw in the 1970s. With only rare exceptions, African-American children had nowhere near the same educational opportunities as whites.

The civil rights movement, school desegregation and the War on Poverty helped bring a measure of equity to the playing field. Today, despite some setbacks along the way, racial disparities in education have narrowed significantly. By 2012, the test-score deficit of black 9-, 13- and 17-year-olds in reading and math had been reduced as much as 50 percent compared with what it was 30 to 40 years before.

Achievements like these breathe hope into our belief in the Land of Opportunity. They build trust in education as a leveling force powering economic mobility. “We do have a track record of reducing these inequalities,” said Jane Waldfogel, a professor of social work at Columbia University.

But the question remains: Why did we stop there?

For all the progress in improving educational outcomes among African-American children, the achievement gaps between more affluent and less privileged children is wider than ever, notes Sean Reardon of the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford. Racial disparities are still a stain on American society, but they are no longer the main divider. Today the biggest threat to the American dream is class.

Education is today more critical than ever. College has become virtually a precondition for upward mobility. Men with only a high school diploma earn about a fifth less than they did 35 years ago. The gap between the earnings of students with a college degree and those without one is bigger than ever.

And yet American higher education is increasingly the preserve of the elite. The sons and daughters of college-educated parents are more than twice as likely to go to college as the children of high school graduates and seven times as likely as those of high school dropouts.

Only 5 percent of Americans ages 25 to 34 whose parents didn’t finish high school have a college degree. By comparison, the average across 20 rich countries in an analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is almost 20 percent.

The problem, of course, doesn’t start in college.

Earlier this week, Professor Waldfogel and colleagues from Australia, Canada and Britain published a new book titled “Too Many Children Left Behind” (Russell Sage). It traces the story of America’s educational disparities across the life cycle of its children, from the day they enter kindergarten to eighth grade.

Their story goes sour very early, and it gets worse as it goes along. On the day they start kindergarten, children from families of low socioeconomic status are already more than a year behind the children of college graduates in their grasp of both reading and math.

And despite the efforts deployed by the American public education system, nine years later the achievement gap, on average, will have widened by somewhere from one-half to two-thirds.

Even the best performers from disadvantaged backgrounds, who enter kindergarten reading as well as the smartest rich kids, fall behind over the course of their schooling.

The challenges such children face compared to their more fortunate peers are enormous. Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds are seven times more likely to have been born to a teenage mother. Only half live with both parents, compared with 83 percent of the children of college graduates.

The children of less educated parents suffer higher obesity rates, have more social and emotional problems and are more likely to report poor or fair health. And because they are much poorer, they are less likely to afford private preschool or the many enrichment opportunities — extra lessons, tutors, music and art, elite sports teams — that richer, better-educated parents lavish on their children.

When they enter the public education system, they are shortchanged again...

Keep reading.

More funding and additional education reforms will have only a marginal impact on improving student achievement, and hence reducing inequality. The most significant gains are likely to come from changes in the culture, especially the strengthening of the family in minority communities. It would help, too, if public schools were freed from the tyrannical and debilitating control of the Democrat-left and the corrupt teachers unions, which will do nothing to improve educational performance if such reforms weaken their power.

Frankly, if the Obama administration would just start a minority education voucher program so that poor families could afford to send their kids to schools like Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., then we'd be a lot better off.

American University Faculty Resolution Rejects 'Trigger Warnings'

An island of sanity in a sea of pure leftist madness.

At Truth Revolt, "Faculty at American University Firmly Reject ‘Trigger Warnings’."

And at Volokh, "American University faculty resolution on freedom of expression (and, in particular, trigger warnings)."

Waking Up with Abigail Ratchford

Yes, wouldn't that be lovely?

At Zoo Today:

Anne Hathaway Talks About Working Alongside Robert De Niro (VIDEO)

At ABC News, "Anne Hathaway on Her New Film 'Intern'."

RELATED: At the Hollywood Reporter, "Robert De Niro Reportedly Storms Out of 'Negative' U.K. Magazine Interview," and at the Guardian UK, "Robert De Niro walks out of Radio Times interview."

Shop - 20% Off Fall Fashion

At Amazon, Shop Fashion - 20% Off Fall Fashion.

CEO Martin Winterkorn Resigns as Volkswagen Rushes to Stem Growing Scandal (VIDEO)

At WSJ, "Volkswagen Races to Stem Growing Scandal":

BERLIN— Volkswagen AG raced Wednesday to contain the widening scandal threatening Germany’s most important company, ousting its chief executive and pledging to prosecute those involved in a scheme to cheat U.S. auto-pollution tests.

CEO Martin Winterkorn’s resignation follows a calamitous few days after Friday’s disclosure by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that Europe’s biggest auto maker employed software on some VW and Audi diesel-powered cars to manipulate the results of routine emissions tests.

The crisis threatens to spill beyond the auto maker to the broader German economy. Wolfsburg-based Volkswagen is as much institution as corporation at home, with nearly 300,000 employees, 29 plants across the country and deep ties to the government—Lower Saxony owns 20% of VW.

The company’s next CEO faces a daunting task of cleaning up the scandal—the scope of which remains unclear—and keeping its sales expansion on track. Volkswagen hasn’t yet said it knows who was responsible or how many employees were involved.

On Tuesday, Volkswagen disclosed that as many as 11 million cars contained software alleged to have duped emissions tests and were possibly subject to a global recall. The company issued a profit warning and disclosed a €6.5 billion ($7.27 billion) charge to earnings to cover the costs of addressing the matter.

In a statement following Wednesday’s meeting of the company’s top shareholders and labor representatives, Mr. Winterkorn said he would “accept responsibility” for the “irregularities that have been found in diesel engines” and tendered his resignation to the supervisory board.

“I am shocked by the events of the past few days,” he said. “Above all, I am stunned that misconduct on such a scale was possible in the Volkswagen Group.”

The executive committee of the supervisory board thanked Mr. Winterkorn for his contributions to the company and said the CEO had “no knowledge of manipulation of the emissions data.”

The committee said it would seek prosecution of any Volkswagen employees involved in the affair, and it would establish a special investigative committee to uncover what had happened and who was responsible.

The board subcommittee said it would present by Friday’s scheduled supervisory board meeting names of candidates to succeed Mr. Winterkorn, but didn’t disclose any...

Continue reading.

PETA Sues on Behalf of Monkey for Copyright Ownership

From David Post, at Volokh, "I’d be smiling, too, if I owned the copyright to this photograph."

More, "Monkey wants copyright and cash from ‘monkey selfies,’ PETA lawsuit says."

And see, "This Selfie May Set a Legal Precedent."

Well, it's a great picture. But do animals have property rights?

Monkey in monkey selfie deserves rights to photo, PETA says http://t.co/eeNPymST4r pic.twitter.com/Z2h5D5unKN

— TIME.com (@TIME) September 23, 2015

Order Canon's New EOS M3 Mirrorless Camera

Out today, at Amazon, Save Up to $120 Off the New Canon EOS M3 Mirrorless Camera.

Jackie Johnson's First Day of Fall Forecast

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Pope Francis Canonizes Father Junípero Serra

The background's at the Washington Post, "Pope Francis is about to make Junipero Serra a saint during a historic canonization today." (At Memeorandum.)

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Pope Francis canonizes Father Junipero Serra, saying he defended Native Americans."



PHOTO: Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, c/o Wikimedia Commons.

'Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me'

It's Elton John, at the Rock in Rio festival in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.

Conservative Catholics Fear Pope Francis Has Abandoned Core Teachings of the Church (VIDEO)

He's a freakin' leftist, way outside the mainstream of American politics, to say nothing of the conservative laity.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Conservative Catholics in U.S. Greet Pope Francis With Unease":

ARLINGTON, Va.— Jacquelyn Dupuy attends Mass every Sunday, as well as several days during the week. She gives daily lessons on the catechism to her two young children. And on the first date with her now-husband, she quizzed him about his views on abortion.

But she won’t be among the throngs crossing the Potomac River to see the pope during his time in Washington, D.C., this week. Because of her deep faith, she says, Ms. Dupuy is troubled by Pope Francis’ relaxed disposition when it comes to controversial topics such as homosexuality, contraception and divorce.

“I’m not exactly sure where he stands on issues that are really important to me,” says Ms. Dupuy, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mother. “I feel there is a disconnect. He seems to be saying things that contradict church teaching.”

Ms. Dupuy’s apprehension illustrates some of the broader anxieties about the pope among a key cohort of American Catholics: the conservative faithful who have provided a strong and energetic base for the church over the last three decades.

For them, some of the major issues behind Pope Francis’ world-wide acclaim—his conciliatory approach to gay people, for instance—have instead been a cause for dismay. Like Ms. Dupuy, many fear the pope is blurring the lines around seminal teachings and creating confusion about what it means to be Catholic.

“Conservatives worry about the way he seems to have turned from the culture war over issues like abortion and homosexual marriage,” says Robert Royal, president of the conservative Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. “The image that gets transmitted is that these are not ‘Francis issues’—that he’s more interested in income inequality, the gap between rich and poor, the environment,” adds Mr. Royal, who belongs to the Catholic diocese here.

“It’s high time that he said, ‘here’s the church’s teaching and we will not change on these issues,’ ” says Patrick O’Neill, a father of three who attends another church in the diocese, Holy Trinity in Gainesville, and says he “humbly disagree(s)” with the pope on his decision to discuss allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion.

Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, wouldn’t comment on specific criticisms about the pope. “It can be hard for some people to understand the pope’s positions,” he said. “But we trust that, if people listen and watch carefully what the pope says and does, everybody is going to be reassured that the pope is leading the church the right way. He’s applying the Gospel to today’s world.”

Keep reading.