*In defense of Luddites...* was a good one.

In rural areas, there are few choices because there aren't many kids. My hometown district was consolidating while I was a student. After college, I taught on the Pine Ridge Reservation and there was one HS in my community. Adding an 'option' in either place would have jeopardized what was there.

The total amount of funding for the police isn't all that matters; the source of funding does as well. Cuts in federal funding may well be offset by increases in local funding (in many/most jx). But -- at least from an accountability standpoint -- that could still be a meaningful positive change.

Wait, wait, wait…how is that?

The colors in the 1896 Appalachia map read to me--as someone who grew up there--as the difference between Appalachia as a cultural region (dark green) and as a geographic region (light green), and they mostly track my current impressions. But I'm not seeing a key; what do they actually represent?

I guess it depends on what you think most upset people about the Pinto case. Was it the # of deaths, or Ford's apparent willingness to tolerate some horrible customer deaths if it could save ~$10/car?

"The punitive damage award [is] more difficult to justify. ...It rested on the premise that Ford had behaved reprehensibly when it balanced safety against cost.... Such trade-off[s] seem[] not only to be anticipated but endorsed by the prevailing risk-benefit standard for design liability." --GS

"[A]s for safety, the Pinto was a car that was neither admirable nor despicable. [I]ts design features apparently gave it a worse-than-average record [for rear-end fire]. Hence, there was nothing clearly wrong in subjecting Ford to liability for harms resulting from that latter category of fires."

Not to defend Tesla's safety record, but I'm not sure that we should benchmark things to the Pinto case. Check out Gary T. Schwartz, The Myth of the Ford Pinto, 43 Rutgers L. Rev. 1013 (1991).

Federal Indian Law follow-up: would Noem's move to the federal executive allow her to visit these reservations? I can't imagine she'd try, but that'd put the tribes' sovereign power to exclude in direct tension with the federal government's authority over tribal nations.

It's an area the size of Connecticut!