Issues

About 15 states debated bills to regulate the short-term rental industry this year. Only one, Indiana’s, was signed into law. Nebraska’s governor vetoed a bill approved by that state’s Legislature. A bill to regulate the industry also died in Hawaii. Home-owners and hotels have different business models, different perspectives and different agendas. These competing constituencies help account for the difficulty states have had in regulating and taxing the short-term rental industry, even as some cities have taken action to regulate short-term rentals. more »

"The American criminal justice system is compromised by racial disparities and unreliability that is influenced by a presumption of guilt and dangerousness that is often assigned to people of color. For more than a decade, EJI has been conducting extensive research into the history of racial injustice and the narratives that have sustained injustice across generations. Our new museum is the physical manifestation of that research." more »

To find out what lies people tell, David Markowitz, who worked in the Stanford Social Media Lab, and Jeffrey Hancock, a professor of communication in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, recruited more than 200 people who use mobile apps for dating. They examined over 3,000 messages users sent during the discovery phase – the conversation period after a profile match but before meeting face-to-face. Markowitz and Hancock then asked participants to rate the level of deceptiveness in messages. more »

"I strongly oppose the proposed rule, Short-Term, Limited-Duration Insurance (proposed Rule), because it further erodes the protections provided under the ACA, poses significant risk to health insurance markets in California and the nation, and offers consumers skimpy health insurance policies that cannot be relied upon to cover necessary health services when they need them most." SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Today Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Med… more »