Month: July 2019

Canada’s human rights authorities are currently considering whether the country’s gender equality law requires a Brazilian waxing business that only takes female customers to perform the service on a trans woman who possesses male genitalia.

It’s a bizarre case involving a litigant—Jessica Taniv—with a long history of sordid activities and activism. Notably, the story has yet to pierce the bubble of the U.S. mainstream media. I have seen only conservative and contrarian outlets writing about it. But Taniv certainly deserves scrutiny. Her quixotic campaign to compel unwilling female business owners to provide an intimate service to which they are, for various reasons, resolutely opposed, is a reminder that even benign-sounding laws (equality, non-discrimination, human rights, etc.) are often easily abused by trolls.

According to The Toronto Sun, Yaniv appeared at a British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal hearing last week to press her case against Marcia Da Silva, who had advertised Brazilian waxing services for women on Facebook. Da Silva initially agreed to serve Yaniv, but canceled the appointment after she learned that Yaniv possesses male genitalia. Yaniv calls this discrimination against trans women, and has brought similar complaints against more than a dozen female-only Brazilian waxing businesses.

The business owners have offered a variety of compelling reasons not to accommodate Yaniv. One was a Sikh woman with a religious objection to touching men in an intimate manner. Others, including Da Silva, said they were not trained to perform a Brazilian wax on a person with a scrotum.

This is obviously a dispute that’s ripe for comedy—Ricky Gervais, in sympathy with Da Silva, tweeted sarcastically, “It’s a sad state of affairs when a lady can’t have her hairy balls waxed”—though it’s no laughing matter for the business owners. Their livelihoods are on the line, and they have to shell out money to defend themselves in court. Da Silva actually shuttered her business after the experience with Yaniv.

“This person is the walking, talking, living, breathing embodiment of what people fear when it comes to trans people,” said Blaire White, a trans YouTube star, in a recent video that notes Yaniv has been accused of various predatory actions.

Yaniv got into a nasty Twitter fight with Lindsey Shepherd, a free speech activist known for her informal associations with Jordan Peterson. As a result, Twitter permanently banned Shepherd for mis-gendering Yaniv.

It’s possible that Yaniv very, very sincerely believes she is a woman, and thus has a right to be treated as one in all respects. But it seems more likely that she’s a troll. I’m reminded of Steve Horner, a Minnesota-based activist who routinely sued bars for selling cheaper drinks to female customers as part of “ladies’ night” promotions. Horner charged that this practice violated the state’s Human Rights law, and won more than $6,000 in settlements.

Suffice it to say that Yaniv’s behavior is uncharacteristic of trans people, or even of social justice activists in general. But it’s hard not to draw some parallels to the high-profile dispute surrounding Masterpiece Cake Shop, a bakery in Denver, Colorado, that has faced lawsuits from gay couples who claim the Christian owner’s refusal to cater same-sex weddings violates anti-discrimination law.

“It’s certainly true that most transgender people aren’t trying to force random women to wax their balls, and most of us gay people are content without chasing down Christians and forcing them to bend to our will,” writes The Washington Examiner‘s Brad Polumbo. “So it’s important that we view these cases not as warnings of a pending LGBT apocalypse, but rather as isolated incidents that pose troubling philosophical and moral questions.”

We should also view these sorts of cases as periodic reminders that there are some unreasonably awful people out there, and even well-meaning laws can be dangerous in their hands.

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Trillion-dollar annual deficits are “a national security risk of the highest order,” Donald Trump wrote on Twitter in 2012, long before anyone was taking him seriously as a presidential candidate.

By 2016, when he was a serious presidential candidate, Trump was still worried about overspending. If elected, candidate Trump told The Washington Post, he would try to eliminate the national debt “over a period of eight years.” A noble goal, if likely an impossible one.

In 2018, now-President Trump was presented with a bipartisan budget deal that smashed spending caps and hiked federal outlays by $400 billion. He fumed about the cost and threatened to veto the package. He eventually signed it, but said publicly that he was “disappointed” with the final bill and vowed to “never sign another bill like this again.”

Trump is not known for being highly consistent on matters of public policy or personal behavior. Often, he seems to want one set of rules for himself and another for everyone else. His ability to shamelessly tell one group of people one thing and another group something totally different is a sort of political superpower, according to Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.). [Is there a pithy Amash quote you can use here?]

And Trump is, of course, a self-described “king of debt.“

But as Trump evolved from reality TV star to leader of the free world, a general concern about the nation’s growing mountain of debt was one of his more consistent positions—and, unlike his feelings towards Mexican immigrants, it is one area where his worry is justified. When Trump issued that 2012 tweet, America had $17 trillion in debt. In 2016, when he promised to wipe out the debt in eight years, the country was carrying $19 trillion. Today, in no small part due to the 2018 budget bill Trump signed, the national debt has soared past $22 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that current policies will add another $11 trillion by the end of 2029.

But instead of doing anything about it, Trump seems prepared to make things worse.

On Monday, the president announced a new bipartisan budget deal that would again hike spending and lift budget caps. Congress is set to vote on the $320 billion spending increase—one that will add $1.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade—sometime next week. Here’s how the new spending levels would compare to the Obama-era caps imposed by congressional Republicans.

Based on initial estimates of the new deal, here is the Budget Control Act's legacy – the original pre-BCA discretionary spending baseline (black), the original BCA caps (blue), and the subsequent weakening of those caps (red). pic.twitter.com/ZWof4VgPg5

— Brian Riedl (@Brian_Riedl) July 23, 2019

There is little reason to think the budget deal won’t make its way to the president’s desk. When it does, Trump will have to make a decision that will likely define a portion of his legacy. Will he sign the bill, or keep the promise he made in 2018?

One variable that might prove interesting: the influence of the House Freedom Caucus, which is run by some of Trump’s closest congressional allies.

The splinter group was founded in 2015 to push for institutional reforms in the House and to agitate for reducing the size and cost of the federal government. In the Trump years, the group has largely turned into a sycophantic cheering section for the president’s interests—but the last time it played a significant role in a major policy debate was, yes, during the passage of the 2018 budget deal.

The House Freedom Caucus could now be relevant again. Its membership is not large enough to realistically complicate the passage of the budget deal through Congress, but as Rep. Mark Meadows (R–N.C.), the group’s chairman, told Politico, he will vote against the bill. Rep. Jim Jordan (R–Ohio), another Freedom Caucus member and Trump ally, reportedly will do the same. It remains unclear how strongly they will lobby Trump to oppose the deal, but House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Roy (R–Texas) is circulating a letter among his colleagues that calls for Trump to veto the plan. And as Politico reports, one of the signers is another key Trump ally, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R–Fla.).

Other House Republicans are also expressing outrage over the bipartisan spending deal.

Budget deal. pic.twitter.com/PHa754iGRJ

— Rep. Mark Walker (@RepMarkWalker) July 22, 2019

Conservative policy groups like the Heritage Foundation, Club For Growth, and FreedomWorks have also criticized the budget deal.

The big question is whether Trump will listen. For most presidents, the announcement of a budget deal would be the same as an acknowledgement that he would sign the deal. But Trump has a history of acting erratically even when all the ducks appear to be lined up. He nearly torpedoed the 2018 budget deal at the last minute. In December, he did blow up a smaller budget deal over the lack of spending for his border wall—resulting in a 35-day government shutdown.

It’s really anyone’s guess whether Trump was previously sincere in his desire to reduce America’s deficit and rein in the debt. Perhaps he was merely reading the Tea (Party) leaves and following the GOP’s impulse—an impulse that’s now largely dead—to cut spending.

There are certainly indications that Trump no longer cares. He signed the 2018 budget bill. Reportedly, he’s privately dismissed the debt issue because it won’t get really bad until he’s out of office. On Tuesday, Maggie Haberman of The New York Times reported that Trump was telling aids he would “focus on spending cuts in next term as a way to get [fiscal conservatives] to stop bugging him.”

It’s very likely this awful budget deal will become law. After all, about the only thing everyone in Washington, D.C., seems to agree about is spending more money.

But if the president wishes to make his mark in the all-important battle to restore some fiscal sanity to the federal government, now is the time for him to listen to the Freedom Caucus. He—and they—may never get another, better chance.

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The small and excellent Daisy Airgun Museum tells the story of America’s most iconic manufacturer of air guns, including the famed Red Ryder, the most common first gun for many generations of American children.

The museum is located in the center of Rogers, Arkansas, about a mile south of Daisy’s manufacturing facility in the same city. Admission is only two dollars, and exhibits can be thoroughly examined in about an hour. The gift shop offers Daisy airguns at bargain prices, including remanufactured basic models as low of $15.

While powder arms are powered by burning gunpowder, air guns are propelled by compressed air. As the exhibit shows with airguns as old as 1770, air guns have been around for a very long time. Back in the eighteenth century, some airguns were comparable in caliber and kinetic energy to powder guns.

The Daisy story begins in 1882, with the founding of the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company, in Michigan. Making windmills from iron rather than wood was a good idea, but the windmill market was declining. One of the founders made an air gun in his spare time. When another founder gave it a try, he exclaimed “That’s a daisy!”—a common expression of praise at the time.

By 1895, the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company had changed its name to Daisy Manufacturing Company and had stopped making windmills. In 1958, the company closed its aging facility in Michigan, and opened a new factory in northwest Arkansas—becoming the leading edge of an economic revival in the region.

The Museum tells the Daisy story from the 19th century to the present, using exemplar guns, vintage advertising, newspaper and magazine articles, and excellent narrative text. There’s even a reproduction of the original Daisy.

Daisy made a lot of different items over the years, including toy guns, pop guns, and even powder arms for a short period. During World War II, manufacturers were not allowed to use steel for the domestic market, so Daisy employed its expertise in stamping steel to make artillery canisters, spark plug gaskets for military vehicles, and other war materiel.

But what has made Daisy great has been its air guns. They’re not the precision models for Olympic competitors, but rather an affordable and reliable first or second gun for American youth.

Most famous of the Daisy air guns is the lever action Red Ryder. Gene Shepherd’s memoir, later made into the movie A Christmas Story, captures the popularity of the Red Ryder after its 1938 introduction (and for decades afterward).

Incidentally, as the exhibits explain, the particular model that Ralphie aspired to in A Christmas Story, didn’t exist on the market. Ralphie wanted a Red Ryder an engraved stock containing a compass and sundial. Daisy never made such a gun until 1983, when the company produced a Christmas Story limited edition.

There’s a lot more to learn at the Daisy Museum. Did you know that when astronaut Alan Shepherd became the first man to hit a golf ball on the moon, it was a Daisy logo ball?

Moon shots aside, the Daisy story has been at the wholesome core of America’s gun culture for 137 years. The Daisy Museum tells the story with pride and love.

After you finish the Daisy Museum, you can drop by the showroom and store of A.G. Russell Knives, also located in Rogers, Arkansas.

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A bill introduced today by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) would repeal the federal ban on marijuana, expunge the records of people who have been convicted of violating it, and impose a 5 percent sales tax on cannabis products to fund an Opportunity Trust Fund. Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

“Times have changed,” Harris says. So has Harris, a latecomer to marijuana reform who did not come out in favor of legalization until the beginning of 2018.

But today Harris, perhaps after consulting the latest polls, is confident that “marijuana should not be a crime.” Rather, she says, “We need to start regulating marijuana, and expunge marijuana convictions from the records of millions of Americans so they can get on with their lives. As marijuana becomes legal across the country, we must make sure everyone—especially communities of color that have been disproportionately impacted by the War on Drugs—has a real opportunity to participate in this growing industry.”

The Harris-Nadler bill is superior to other pieces of marijuana reform legislation in two important respects. It completely deschedules marijuana rather than moving it to a lower schedule or making exceptions to the ban for state-legal conduct, and it seeks to lift the burdens that prohibition has imposed on people caught growing, distributing, or possessing cannabis, a vital project that too often has been treated as an afterthought. But the bill also includes a new tax and new spending intended to promote “racial and economic justice.” Those provisions detract from the main purpose of the legislation and will make it harder to attract support from Republicans.

The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act would remove cannabis from the schedules of the Controlled Substances Act and make that change retroactive, applying to “any offense committed, case pending, [or] conviction entered…before, on, or after the date of enactment of this Act.” It instructs federal courts to expunge records related to marijuana arrests and convictions. People currently serving sentences for marijuana offenses could ask courts to lift those sentences and expunge their records, which the courts “shall” do.

An expunged arrest or conviction would be removed from “each official index or public record,” and the beneficiary would be legally authorized to treat the arrest or conviction “as if it never occurred.” He would be “immune from any civil or criminal penalties related to perjury, false swearing, or false statements, for a failure to disclose such arrest, conviction, or adjudication.” The MORE Act also says cannabis should not be treated as a controlled substance under immigration law, meaning people could not be deported based on marijuana offenses, and bars federal agencies from denying benefits or security clearances based on cannabis consumption.

The MORE Act’s expungement provisions are broader than the corresponding language in the bill that one of Harris’ rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), reintroduced in February. While Booker’s Marijuana Justice Act would require expungement of records related to “marijuana use or possession offense[s],” the MORE Act also covers cultivation and distribution. (Booker is a cosponsor of Harris’ bill, and so are several other Democratic presidential contenders.) Both bills seem to raise similar constitutional issues, since they require courts to reach particular decisions in closed cases without new motions from either side.

Leaving that point aside, the goal here is important. It is clearly unjust for people to continue paying the long-lasting ancillary penalties associated with an arrest or conviction after legislators, backed by most Americans, decide their actions should not have been treated as crimes in the first place.

“At a point in time when simultaneously one person could have their life ruined in New York for the exact same action that makes someone in California a millionaire, now more than ever we must end the federal prohibition of marijuana,” said Justin Strekal, political director at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). “The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act embodies the need to legalize cannabis and restore the rights of those who have suffered under the cruel and failed policy of criminalization.”

Unfortunately, the MORE Act does not stop there. It would create a Cannabis Justice Office within the Department of Justice and charge it with overseeing a Community Reinvestment Grant Program funded by the new marijuana tax. Grants would go to providers of “services for individuals most adversely impacted by the War on Drugs,” including job training, reentry services, legal aid, literacy programs, health education programs, “youth recreation or mentoring programs,” and “substance use services.”

There would also be a Cannabis Opportunity Program for loans to small marijuana businesses “owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals,” plus an Equitable Licensing Program for grants to state and local programs that aim to “minimize barriers to cannabis licensing and employment for individuals most adversely impacted by the War on Drugs.” Grantees would have to meet several requirements, including “a cannabis licensing board that is reflective of the racial, ethnic, economic, and gender composition of the State or locality.”

As Harris emphasizes, marijuana prohibition has had a disproportionate impact on minority groups, which means much of this granting and lending will look a lot like race-based affirmative action. If that does not raise the hackles of potential Republican allies who might otherwise be sympathetic on federalist grounds, tying marijuana reform to a new tax and new spending programs probably will. At a congressional hearing earlier this month, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) plausibly worried that “concerns over how far to go on some of the restorative elements in our policy could divide our movement,” with the result that “we don’t get anything done.” While Gaetz himself has nevertheless signed on as a cosponsor of the MORE Act, so far no other Republican in either house has joined him.

Rather than switching from one marijuana boondoggle (prohibition) to a bunch of new marijuana boondoggles while trying to steer the cannabis industry toward “racial and economic justice,” why not just pay reparations directly to individuals who have been hurt by the war on weed? And instead of funding that compensation by taxing cannabis consumers, who are hardly to blame for the injustices inflicted by pot prohibition, why not deduct the money from the existing drug-war budget? That might also provoke Republican opposition, but it least it would make a kind of sense.

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