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The Houston Chronicle editorializes about the recent Ashby trial verdict.

Houston has zoning, if you have the cash. That’s the lesson from the fight over the Ashby high-rise.

Last week, after years of petitions, protests and legal wrangling to stop developers from building the 21-story residential tower, a Harris County jury awarded to 20 nearby residents nearly $1.7 million in damages anticipated from the building’s construction. State District Judge Randy Wilson will soon hold a hearing to determine if the whole project should be shut down.

This is no way to regulate development in Houston. These sorts of decisions belong in a planning commission, not a courtroom. Proper development requires predictability, and this court case sets a dangerous precedent for construction at the whim of those who can afford high-priced attorneys. Arbitrary enforcement of tenuous nuisance claims is no way to plan a city.

…

Houston needs responsible development to help shape our city into a place where people not only come to work, but want to live. Incentives for dense development along transit corridors can help guide construction without the burdens of full-fledged zoning. But this trial does little to help us get there.

I agree with this editorial entirely. This case represents backdoor zoning for the wealthy.

I made similar comments to the Chronicle earlier this week.

“This represents back-door zoning for wealthy people to stop developments in neighborhoods,” Blackman said. “This gives a powerful veto to the residents.”

As I’ve commented before, with cases like this, Hosannah-Tabor is not going to cut it.

A movement that began with the fight for a vice principal who lost his job over gay marriage is now gaining national attention as Eastside Catholic High School students spread their message through social media and on the streets.

“I think the students are giving a very important message that love wins and discrimination has no place in our society,” said Karen Fredriksen-Goldsen, who attended a rally in Seattle on Friday that took place outside of the Archdiocese of Seattle.

At the rally, students were calling on the Catholic church to change its stance on same-sex marriage.

Eastside Catholic vice principal Mark Zmuda resigned this week after the Archdiocese learned Zmuda married his same-sex partner during the summer – a violation of his contract with the school and Catholic teachings.

More than 100 people attended Friday’s rally, including Mayor-elect Ed Murray who was invited by the organizers.

“I would hope that our church would recognize a person based on their ability to hold a job, their personal character, and not based on the person that they love,” Murray told the crowd.

Pope Francis could not be reached for comment here.

Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, offers a dire prediction for the fate of Obamacare:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Sunday that Obamacare could be headed for a “complete meltdown” if costs rise too fast and people are unhappy with their coverage.

“If it’s so much more expensive than what we anticipated, and if the coverage is not as good as what we’ve had, you’ve got a complete meltdown at that time,” Manchin said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The senator said such a situation would result in the law collapsing under “its own weight.”

Manchin is still proposing a one-year delay, which as Randy Barnett and I have argued elsewhere, would have to acknowledge that the mandate is in fact a tax.

Update: CNN excerpts more quotations from the interview:

“(Obamacare) falls of its own weight if basically the cost becomes more than we can absorb,” Manchin said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” …

“This whole 2014 will be a transitional year to find out where our glitches are, and our little nuances that we have to work for, and find out if the market can produce the products that we need to keep this us healthy.”

Manchin continued: “This transitional year gives you a chance to adjust the products to the market and to see if the market will absorb and buy the product.”

Hello everyone. I apologize for interrupting your break with this note. I have submitted grades for Property II.  I am very proud of all of you. On the whole, you nailed it. I put together really difficult fact patterns that were quite open-ended, with the intent that there would be many, many, many correct answers. I thought I had considered all the possible answers, but several of you came up with things I didn’t even think of. Well done.

Additionally, many of you incorporated various concepts we talked about in class that were not in the textbook (such as the Coase Theorem, various constitutional concepts, etc.).

Finally, despite all of your concerns, almost every single one of you managed to completely answer the question within the word limit. In other words, the differences between the A, B, and C was not due to an inability to write within the word limits.

You can download the exam here.

You can download the A+ paper here. If this is your paper, please drop me a line.

The Grades

First year classes are subject to the school’s mandatory grading curve (see p. 84 of the handbook):

grades assigned in classes of 40 or more students shall conform to a mandatory grading distribution. That distribution provides for a required 9-16 percent for A+/A, a required 16-30 percent for A+/A/A-; a required 16-30 percent for C+/C/C-/D+/D/F; and a required 9-16 percent for C/C-/D+/D/F. The class average shall be 2.85-3.15.

I think you will find that I maximized the grades here. I approached the upper limits of the grades allowed above an A-, and approached the lower limits of grades below C+. In addition, the class average was very close to the upper limit of 3.15 (3.134). In other words, there were more As than Cs, and the class averages were quite high.

Here is the full breakdown.

• Average: 3.134
• A and above – 14.0%
• A- and above – 29.8%
• C+ and below: 17.5%
• C and below: 10.5%

 

Thank you all for a great semester.

The Times has an important piece discussing the group that is left behind by the Affordable Care Act: the upper middle class who do not qualify for subsidies, but are not wealthy enough to afford the increased premiums because of Obamacare.

The cheapest insurance plan they can find through the new federal marketplace in New Hampshire will cost their family of four about $1,000 a month, 12 percent of their annual income of around $100,000 and more than they have ever paid before.

Even more striking, for the Chapmans, is this fact: If they made just a few thousand dollars less a year — below $94,200 — their costs would be cut in half, because a family like theirs could qualify for federal subsidies.

The Chapmans acknowledge that they are better off than many people, but they represent a little-understood reality of the Affordable Care Act. While the act clearly benefits those at the low end of the income scale — and rich people can continue to afford even the most generous plans — people like the Chapmans are caught in the uncomfortable middle: not poor enough for help, but not rich enough to be indifferent to cost.

Oh, and their old policy, which they could afford, was cancelled because of Obamacare.

Because their plan is being canceled, she is looking for new coverage for her family, which includes Mr. Chapman, 55, a retired fireman who works on a friend’s farm, and her two sons. “That’s an insane amount of money,” she said of their new premium. “How are you supposed to pay that?”

Despite its name, the Affordable Care Act has made insurance unaffordable for many.

David Oscar, an insurance broker in New Jersey, another high-cost state, said many of his clients had been disappointed to learn that the premiums were much more expensive than they had expected.

“They’re frustrated,” he said. “Everybody was thinking that Obamacare was going to come in with more affordable rates. Well, they’re not more affordable.”

 …

An analysis by The New York Times shows the cost of premiums for people who just miss qualifying for subsidies varies widely across the country and rises rapidly for people in their 50s and 60s. In some places, prices can quickly approach 20 percent of a person’s income.

Experts consider health insurance unaffordable once it exceeds 10 percent of annual income. By that measure, a 50-year-old making $50,000 a year, or just above the qualifying limit for assistance, would find the cheapest available plan to be unaffordable in more than 170 counties around the country, ranging from Anchorage to Jackson, Miss.

A 60-year-old living in Polk County, in northwestern Wisconsin, and earning $50,000 a year, for example, would have to spend more than 19 percent of his income, or $9,801 annually, to buy one of the cheapest plans available there. A person earning $45,000 would qualify for subsidies and would pay about 5 percent of his income, or $2,228, for an inexpensive plan.

In Oklahoma City, a 60-year-old earning $50,000 could buy one of the cheapest plans for about 6.6 percent of his income, or about $3,279 a year with no subsidy. If he earned $45,000, with the benefit of a subsidy, he would spend about $2,425.

And HHS’s decision to exempt those who had their plans cancelled from the mandate, and allow them to buy (not that much) cheaper catastrophic plans is not working.

In an effort to address that frustration, the Obama administration announced on Thursday that it would permit people whose plans had been canceled to buy bare-bones catastrophic plans, which are less expensive but offer minimal coverage. Those plans have always been available to people under 30 and to those who can prove that the least expensive plan in their area is not affordable. But the announcement does not address the concerns of those who would like to buy better coverage, yet find premiums in their area too expensive.

And for some, this law may urged them to go uninsured.

Mr. Johnsen, who is 47, said he would like to buy insurance for his family. They have gone without it for the last two years, paying out of pocket on rare visits to the doctor. But he said it is hard to justify those prices to prevent an unforeseen catastrophe when so many real-world expenses demand his attention first.

“I know absolutely that I’m going to need a new car in two years, but I don’t know that I’m going to have a catastrophic accident,” he said. “That’s the kind of debate that happens in our house.”

Don’t forget, with guaranteed issue, they can buy a policy at any time, without being priced out.