Rocketdyne's advanced coal slurry pumping program

The Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International Corporation is conducting a program for the engineering, fabrication, and testing of an experimental/prototype high-capacity, high-pressure centrifugal slurry feed pump for coal liquefaction purposes. The abrasion problems in a centrifugal slurry pump are primarily due to the manner in which the hard, solid particles contained in the slurry are transported through the hydraulic flow passages within the pump. The abrasive particles can create scraping, grinding, cutting, and sandblasting effects on the various exposed parts of the pump. These critical areas involving abrasion and impact erosion wear problems in a centrifugal pump are being addressed by Rocketdyne. The mechanisms of abrasion and erosion are being studied through hydrodynamic analysis, materials evaluation, and advanced design concepts

Seabird Bycatch in Pelagic Longline Fisheries Is Grossly Underestimated when Using Only Haul Data

Hundreds of thousands of seabirds are killed each year as bycatch in longline fisheries. Seabirds are predominantly caught during line setting but bycatch is generally recorded during line hauling, many hours after birds are caught. Bird loss during this interval may lead to inaccurate bycatch information. In this 15 year study, seabird bycatch was recorded during both line setting and line hauling from four fishing regions: Indian Ocean, Southern Ocean, Coral Sea and central Pacific Ocean. Over 43,000 albatrosses, petrels and skuas representing over 25 species were counted during line setting of which almost 6,000 seabirds attempted to take the bait. Bait-taking interactions were placed into one of four categories. (i) The majority (57%) of bait-taking attempts were “unsuccessful” involving seabirds that did not take the bait nor get caught or hooked. (ii) One-third of attempts were “successful” with seabirds removing the bait while not getting caught. (iii) One-hundred and seventy-six seabirds (3% of attempts) were observed being “caught” during line setting, with three albatross species – Laysan (Phoebastria immutabilis), black-footed (P. nigripes) and black-browed (Thalassarche melanophrys)– dominating this category. However, of these, only 85 (48%) seabird carcasses were retrieved during line hauling. Most caught seabirds were hooked through the bill. (iv) The remainder of seabird-bait interactions (7%) was not clearly observed, but likely involved more “caught” seabirds. Bait taking attempts and percentage outcome (e.g. successful, caught) varied between seabird species and was not always related to species abundance around fishing vessels. Using only haul data to calculate seabird bycatch grossly underestimates actual bycatch levels, with the level of seabird bycatch from pelagic longline fishing possibly double what was previously thought

POVERTY LAWGORITHMS A Poverty Lawyer’s Guide to Fighting Automated Decision-Making Harms on Low-Income Communities

Automated decision-making systems make decisions about our lives, and those with low-socioeconomic status often bear the brunt of the harms these systems cause. Poverty Lawgorithms: A Poverty Lawyers Guide to Fighting Automated Decision-Making Harms on Low-Income Communities is a guide by Data & Society Faculty Fellow Michele Gilman to familiarize fellow poverty and civil legal services lawyers with the ins and outs of data-centric and automated-decision making systems, so that they can clearly understand the sources of the problems their clients are facing and effectively advocate on their behalf

The Return of the Welfare Queen

After welfare reform was passed in 1996, there was every reason to hope that the welfare queen was dead. The “welfare queen” was shorthand for a lazy woman of color, with numerous children she cannot support, who is cheating taxpayers by abusing the system to collect government assistance. For years, this long-standing racist and gendered stereotype was used to attack the poor and the cash assistance programs that support them. In 1996, TANF capped welfare receipt to five years and required work as a condition of eligibility, thus stripping the welfare queen of her throne of dependency. Nevertheless, during the 2012 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Mitt Romney resurrected the welfare queen. In a barrage of television campaign ads, Romney inaccurately accused President Obama of gutting TANF work requirements, while President Obama responded by touting his own tough-on-welfare credentials. In the subsequent battle over which candidate was toughest on the poor, there was no mention that TANF is largely a failure. While TANF enrollment has plunged since 1996, it has not reduced poverty. Instead, it pushed many poor mothers into the low-wage workforce, where they struggle to survive on meager wages. In addition, many families have slipped out of the safety net altogether, sanctioned by TANF caseworkers or discouraged by TANF\u27s onerous application requirements, privacy-stripping processes, and stingy grants. As a result, only 4.5 million people receive cash assistance through TANF, amounting to 0.47% of the federal 2012 budget. In other words, the political salience of the welfare queen far outstrips her numbers. The good news is that Romney\u27s dependency rhetoric did not work and may have backfired. The bad news is that the welfare queen still lurks behind repeated calls to cut government benefits and to criminalize poverty. This article explores the legacy of the welfare queen, her return in the 2012 presidential campaign, and the current inadequacies of TANF. The article concludes with suggestions to reform TANF in the hopes of burying the welfare queen once and for all

The Future of Clinical Legal Scholarship

The legal academy is questioning the future of legal scholarship given its costs and perceived disconnect from law practice. However, the future of clinical legal scholarship is typically left out of these debates, although it offers a powerful rejoinder to these recurring critiques – it is deeply engaged with real-world problems, and it has demonstrable impacts. In addition, clinical scholars are an overlooked conduit for disseminating scholarship outside the ivory tower. Doctrinal faculty are unaware how much clinical faculty can ensure their work has an impact beyond SSRN citation counts. As law schools consider how to implement the new accreditation requirement that students take at least six credits of experiential education, scholarship should be part of the calculus. This Essay argues that at this inflection point for legal education, choosing to promote, rather than to further degrade, structures to support clinical scholarship allows the academy to not only ensure quality legal education that graduates practice ready lawyers, but also to support engaged scholarship and enhance the scholarly mission of law schools. In short, the future of legal scholarship and the goals of experiential education are intertwined and hinge on a robust commitment to clinical faculty with security of position who write pursuant to an expansive definition of scholarship

Charitable Choice and the Accountability Challenge: Reconciling the Need for Regulation with the First Amendment Religion Clauses

Since 1996, Congress has included charitable choice provisions in several social welfare statutes to encourage the participation of religious organizations in administering government-funded social service programs. In this Article, Professor Michele Gilman discusses the lack of accountability to beneficiaries that occurs when public funds are given to religious organizations for secular programs, and she proposes solutions to this problem. As Professor Gilman explains, doctrines that constrain abuses of governmental discretion, such as administrative procedure acts and constitutional restrictions, generally do not apply when public programs are privatized. Moreover, religious organizations are often insulated from public scrutiny because of First Amendment concerns about entangling government in religion, as well as special immunities from tort liability and limited fiduciary duties for directors. The mechanisms of privatization, such as contracts and vouchers, also fail to ensure that beneficiaries receive quality services. As a result, Professor Gilman proposes a set of measures to improve accountability, all of which hinge on including beneficiaries in setting clear standards, evaluating outcomes, and enforcing rights to quality services. Finally, Professor Gilman analyzes current Supreme Court caselaw on public funding to religious entities and explains why imposing accountability measures on charitable choice programs does not violate the First Amendment religion clauses

Charitable Choice and the Accountability Challenge: Reconciling the Need for Regulation with the First Amendment Religion Clauses

Charitable choice, or the use of federal money to fund social services provided by religious organizations, has engendered controversy and confusion since its inception in the 1996 welfare reform legislation. Under the welfare reform statute, entitled the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act ( PRA ), states may contract out administration of their welfare programs to private entities, including houses of worship. President Bush is promoting the expansion of charitable choice into other federal social service programs as a major policy initiative of his administration. Federal funding of faith-based organizations has supporters and opponents on both the left and the right. Supporters argue that charitable choice ends discrimination against religious organizations in competing for federal funds, and that religious organizations provide more effective social services than governments because of the spiritual and moral guidance the religious organizations provide. Opponents on the right counter that charitable choice will destroy the unique nature of religious organizations, make churches overly reliant on federal funds, and result in federal funding of objectionable groups. Opponents on the left charge that charitable choice violates the separation of church and state and federally subsidizes discrimination, because religious organizations are exempt from some antidiscrimination employment laws. Yet these arguments miss an equally vexing problem arising under charitable choice: How can government ensure accountability from its sectarian contracting partners? This has profound ramifications for all of the constituents involved, including government funding agencies, the tax-paying public, social service providers, program beneficiaries, elected officials, advocacy groups, foundations, agency administrators, and others affected by, or interested in, a particular human services program. The PRA aims to move welfare recipients into the workforce. Rather than handing out welfare checks, welfare administrators- whether public or private-are charged with putting people to work. As a result, under the PRA\u27s charitable choice provision, faith-based organizations are providing a variety of social services designed to move welfare recipients towards self-sufficiency, including child care, substance abuse treatment, homeless services, English courses, parenting classes, mentoring, job training, mental health counseling, life skills training, affordable housing, domestic violence shelters, transportation to job sites, and fatherhood pro- grams. With President Bush\u27s proposed expansion of charitable choice into other federally funded programs, churches can be expected to provide an even greater array of social services. Despite this proposed expansion, there is scant empirical evidence as to the effectiveness of the faith-based approach. The existing anecdotal evidence points in both directions. For every claimed success story, such as the eighty-five percent drug rehabilitation success rate of a Christian treatment program called Teen Challenge, there is a horror story, such as the alleged child abuse that occurred at Roloff Homes in Texas, a church-run home for troubled youths. Given the lack of empirical evidence, ensuring accountability should be a paramount concern. Currently, it is not. To the contrary, several charitable choice proponents, including President Bush, advocate removing regulatory burdens from faith-based providers altogether to encourage their participation in federally funded programs. When government provides social services, a mix of laws and legal doctrines operate to constrain official discretion and to provide openness and participation in the administrative process

Expanding Civil Rights to Combat Digital Discrimination on the Basis of Poverty

Low-income people suffer from digital discrimination on the basis of their socio-economic status. Automated decision-making systems, often powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence, shape the opportunities of those experiencing poverty because they serve as gatekeepers to the necessities of modern life. Yet in the existing legal regime, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against people because they are poor. Poverty is not a protected characteristic, unlike race, gender, disability, religion or certain other identities. This lack of legal protection has accelerated digital discrimination against the poor, fueled by the scope, speed, and scale of big data networks. This Article highlights four areas where data-centric technologies adversely impact low-income people by excluding them from opportunities or targeting them for exploitation: tenant screening, credit scoring, higher education, and targeted advertising. Currently, there are numerous proposals to combat algorithmic bias by updating analog-era civil rights laws for our datafied society, as well as to bolster civil rights within comprehensive data privacy protections and algorithmic accountability standards. On this precipice for legislative reform, it is time to include socio-economic status as a protected characteristic in antidiscrimination laws for the digital age. This Article explains how protecting low-income people within emerging legal frameworks would provide a valuable counterweight against opaque and unaccountable digital discrimination, which undermines any vision of economic justice

The Class Differential in Privacy Law

This article analyzes how privacy law fails the poor. Due to advanced technologies, all Americans are facing corporate and governmental surveillance. However, privacy law is focused on middle-class concerns about limiting the disclosure of personal data so that it is not misused. By contrast, along the welfare-to-work continuum, poor people face privacy intrusions at the time that the state or their employers gather data. This data collection tends to be stigmatizing and humiliating, and it thus not only compounds the harmful effects of living in poverty, but also dampens democratic participation by the poor. The poor interact with the government and low-wage employers in ways that are on-going and interpersonal, and as a result, the right to be left alone embodied in current privacy law does not protect their interests in dignity and autonomy. This article argues that poor Americans experience privacy differently than persons with greater economic resources and that the law, in its constitutional, statutory and common law dimensions, reinforces this differential. This class differential in privacy law has costs not only for the poor, but for all citizens