Also on today’s menu:
AG Declines To Pursue Data Harvesting By Auto Companies
New Conspiracy Theory Takes On ALA
Vermont To Offer Free Rooms For The Unhoused
Citing privacy and cost concerns, a state study committee looking into the adoption of a federal program that would allow school districts to automatically accept students from families enrolled in Medicaid into the free or reduced-price lunch program voted to not recommend the move.
The US Department of Agriculture program known as Medicaid Direct Certification is an option open to states which New Hampshire advocates say would benefit nearly 8,000 students in kindergarten through Grade 12 who are eligible for free or reduced-price meals but do not take advantage of the option, which requires parents to sign them up for the benefit. Automatic enrollment could benefit their health and their family’s finances, they say.
In a November 1 letter citing the committee’s decision, it wrote, “The majority believes changing the law and moving to MDC … would subvert the parent’s current choice not to enroll and share data with [the Department of Education]. That mandate we feel is against the spirit of the constitutional amendment that protects New Hampshire citizens’ personal and private data from intrusion from the state.”
Republicans on the committee also pointed out that the state would have to spend about $95 million more per year to school districts in order to accommodate the increased numbers of students with free and reduced-price lunches. While the USDA reimburses the costs of providing the lunches, the change would indirectly increase the state’s obligations under the school funding formula, which takes into account the number of free and reduced-price lunch students in each school district.
AG Declines To Pursue Data Harvesting By Auto Companies
A paralegal in the New Hampshire Attorney-General’s Office has twice denied an Alton resident’s request to take consumer protection action against automobile manufacturers who harvest personal data and sell it to third parties for profit.
A Mozilla research project found that every one of the 25 automobile manufacturers investigated was harvesting far more information than how you interact with your car, the connected services you use in your car, and the car’s app. “[C]ar companies have so many more data-collecting opportunities than other products and apps we use — more than even smart devices in our homes or the cell phones we take wherever we go,” Mozilla reported. “The ways that car companies collect and share your data are so vast and complicated that we wrote an entire piece on how that works. The gist is: they can collect super intimate information about you — from your medical information, your genetic information, to your ‘sex life’ (seriously), to how fast you drive, where you drive, and what songs you play in your car — in huge quantities. They then use it to invent more data about you through ‘inferences’ about things like your intelligence, abilities, and interests.”
After Darlene Thorn of the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Bureau initially turned down Gerry Kennedy’s September 7 complaint that his Volkswagen was harvesting personal information without his permission, as required of other devices and services, he sent a followup email in which he cited a number of New Hampshire laws that are being violated. Thorn’s response:
The information you sent has been reviewed. As stated in the letter of September 19, 2023, the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Bureau (“Bureau”) has determined that it is unable to pursue your complaint; however, you may wish to explore all available private remedies with your own attorney.
Attorney-General John Formella has successfully pursued other consumer protection violations, recently announcing a settlement with Inmediata, a health care clearinghouse that exposed the protected health information of about 1.5 million consumers for almost three years; and with Blackbaud, which experienced a data breach that affected thousands of nonprofit organization and millions of consumers. A Federal Highway Administration census found that there are 275,913,237 personal and commercial vehicles on America’s roads. Yet Thorn, Formella’s paralegal, says the bureau is “unable to pursue” automakers’ intentional harvesting of consumer data and instead suggested that Kennedy should pursue it privately.
New Conspiracy Theory Takes On ALA
Arlene Quaratiello, in her Substack post “Why Can’t They Just Let Kids Be Kids?” raises an interesting question: Why does the American Library Association define a patron between the ages of 12 and 18 as a “young adult”? “This category does not only apply to public library patrons but also includes middle and high school students who use their school libraries,” Quaratiello writes. “Legally, however, adulthood is not attained until a person turns eighteen, so the youngest adult cannot possibly be younger than eighteen years old. The age at which an individual becomes an adult, also called the ‘age of majority,’ is set at eighteen years in forty-seven states (in Alabama, Nebraska, and Mississippi, you have to be even older). Medically, adulthood is similarly defined. The American Medical Association and the National Institutes of Health only consider those who are eighteen and older to be adults; 13- to 17-year-olds are categorized as ‘adolescents.’ Considering these standards, ‘young adult’ emerges as an illogical term. ‘Pre-adults,’ odd as it sounds, would make more sense, being similar to the term ‘preteen’ which is used, according to Merriam-Webster, to designate a child younger than thirteen. (The trendy word ‘tween’ is also frequently used in libraries to specify children between young childhood and adolescence, generally ages 8-12.)”
She then speculates on the reason for the use of the inappropriate term “young adult” and concludes that it is part of a conspiracy to indoctrinate youths in the pursuit of a Marxist goal: abolition of the nuclear family. She quotes Chris Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, who said, “The goal of Marxist political leaders since the beginning was always to abolish the nuclear family,” an institution which they consider one of the “impediments to the revolution,” and to have kids reject “notions of ‘heteropatriarchy’” to “advance the revolution” and “to dissolve the moral notions of children and their families.”
Quaratiello says the ALA’s “obvious agenda” is to get “woke literature into the hands of older children” and cites the library association’s “efforts to allow this age group to access these books without parental knowledge. The ALA believes that children should be allowed to read books like Gender Queer and Lawn Boy without any parental consent.... Article VII of the ALA’s ‘Library Bill of Rights’ … states that all people, no matter how old, ‘possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use.’ … ALA also ‘opposes all attempts to restrict access to library services, materials, and facilities based on the age of library users.’”
The American Library Association, she says, “can’t just let kids be kids. To weaken the family, kids must become adults (or ‘young adults’) as soon as possible!”
Vermont To Offer Free Rooms For The Unhoused
The Vermont Department for Children and Families has announced that it will provide free motel rooms for unhoused Vermonters this winter. Starting on November 15, housing will be provided when forecasts call for temperatures below 20 degrees, or below 32 degrees when there is a 50 percent or greater chance of precipitation. As of December 15, all income-eligible individuals and households will be allowed to stay full-time in state-subsidized motels until the middle of March.
Shelter providers across the state have reported significant increases in the number of unhoused Vermonters, and say those with children and individuals who qualify for Social Security disability insurance are eligible for up to 28 days of motel housing, regardless of weather conditions.
Brenda Siegel, executive director of End Homelessness Vermont, says many of them are about to exhaust their 28-day allotment, meaning that, under the new state policy, a single mother with children would have to figure out a way to keep them warm on a 25-degree day in late November or early December. “So there will be babies and children on the street, as well as people with disabilities and medical vulnerabilities, and it’s just way too cold to be outside,” Siegel said.
Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner at DCF, said that limiting eligibility between November 15 and December 15 allows the state to reserve motel rooms for those who are entering the system for the first time. “If we start housing people right now, then there won’t be room for somebody that might come in later on that maybe is more vulnerable,” Gray said.
National Gratitude Month
The News Café is among the publications that are “Reader Supported” — a revolutionary approach to publishing in response to the struggle of traditional news and magazine publishers, as well as unreliable social media. Many writers were at a loss as to how to reach their readers as their jobs and publications were eliminated. With the exception of the period of the pandemic, people read less and purchase fewer books.
Substack is a platform that aims to put readers and writers into a direct relationship that is not dependent on algorithms, advertisements, and profits. In traditional publishing, the money you pay a publisher is divided between executives and shareholders, distribution outlets like Amazon and other booksellers, editors, designers, agents, marketing and sales staff, and the cost of production. When you put down $25 for a hardcover book, the author receives between $2.50 and $4. If a successful book sells about 10,000 copies, the author may receive $25,000 for something he or she has spent years writing. Most of the authors you love are not rich. If they are lucky, they are a middle-class bunch, like artists, teachers, and preachers.
With Substack publications, instead of paying a corporation, you directly support the writers you like, who receive about 85 percent of the subscription revenue. For your $50 annual fee, the author gets about $42.50.
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