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Hannibal Buress on Bernie Sanders’ National Rent Control Proposal: ‘Wrong’

Comedian and actor Hannibal Buress is not a fan of government price controls on rental properties, judging by some of his recent social media commentary.

On Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) re-upped his call for nationwide rent control, quote-tweeting the remarks of a union construction worker expressing concern that they would eventually find themselves demolishing their own home in order to build new apartments they can’t afford.

“We need a national rent control standard now,” tweeted Sanders.

Sanders, as part of his housing plan, has suggested a national cap on rental price increases of 3 percent or 1.5 times the rate of inflation (whichever is higher).

Sanders’ tweet prompted a quote tweet from Buress, saying, simply, “Wrong.” In a reply, Buress also encouraged folks to donate to the Illinois Rental Property Owners Association, a landlord trade association that opposes rent control.

The replies to Buress’ tweet supporting landlords’ ability to set their own rental prices involved a lot of confused Hannibal Buress gifs, as well as a healthy number of guillotine jokes.

Buress is a comedian, so there’s a chance he’s just trolling. Still, there’s good reason to think his opposition to rent control is genuine.

Buress has said in interviews that he owns a three-unit building in Chicago which he rents out on Airbnb. That obviously gives him an incentive to oppose rent control.

Buress also has talked about how actually owning property gives you a special connection to it that non-owners don’t have.

In a 2017 episode of his podcast Hannibal Buress: Handsome Rambler, Buress describes a scenario where he had to ask a friend to kick raucous partiers out of one of his Airbnb units while he was out of town. The friend was reportedly more reluctant to kick the revelers out than Buress was, something Buress explained by their respective relationships to the property.

“He’s ain’t got it in him. It ain’t his property so he don’t have the passion that I have,” said Buress on the podcast.

Buress has also endorsed Andrew Yang for president, promoting the former entrepreneur’s candidacy on social media after Sanders followed him on Twitter.

In an Instagram post touting the fact that Yang followed him on Twitter, Buress listed his location as Property Owners Association, while suggesting Sanders might make a good Yang campaign aide.

Yang’s housing proposals have included reforming zoning laws and experimenting with innovative, low-cost building methods. So far, the candidate has yet to endorse rent control.

Again, Buress is a comedian so it’s possible his anti-rent control beliefs are less than sincere. Still, any criticism of such a destructive and counterproductive policy is welcome.

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Hannibal Buress on Bernie Sanders’ National Rent Control Proposal: ‘Wrong’

Comedian and actor Hannibal Buress is not a fan of government price controls on rental properties, judging by some of his recent social media commentary.

On Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) re-upped his call for nationwide rent control, quote-tweeting the remarks of a union construction worker expressing concern that they would eventually find themselves demolishing their own home in order to build new apartments they can’t afford.

“We need a national rent control standard now,” tweeted Sanders.

Sanders, as part of his housing plan, has suggested a national cap on rental price increases of 3 percent or 1.5 times the rate of inflation (whichever is higher).

Sanders’ tweet prompted a quote tweet from Buress, saying, simply, “Wrong.” In a reply, Buress also encouraged folks to donate to the Illinois Rental Property Owners Association, a landlord trade association that opposes rent control.

The replies to Buress’ tweet supporting landlords’ ability to set their own rental prices involved a lot of confused Hannibal Buress gifs, as well as a healthy number of guillotine jokes.

Buress is a comedian, so there’s a chance he’s just trolling. Still, there’s good reason to think his opposition to rent control is genuine.

Buress has said in interviews that he owns a three-unit building in Chicago which he rents out on Airbnb. That obviously gives him an incentive to oppose rent control.

Buress also has talked about how actually owning property gives you a special connection to it that non-owners don’t have.

In a 2017 episode of his podcast Hannibal Buress: Handsome Rambler, Buress describes a scenario where he had to ask a friend to kick raucous partiers out of one of his Airbnb units while he was out of town. The friend was reportedly more reluctant to kick the revelers out than Buress was, something Buress explained by their respective relationships to the property.

“He’s ain’t got it in him. It ain’t his property so he don’t have the passion that I have,” said Buress on the podcast.

Buress has also endorsed Andrew Yang for president, promoting the former entrepreneur’s candidacy on social media after Sanders followed him on Twitter.

In an Instagram post touting the fact that Yang followed him on Twitter, Buress listed his location as Property Owners Association, while suggesting Sanders might make a good Yang campaign aide.

Yang’s housing proposals have included reforming zoning laws and experimenting with innovative, low-cost building methods. So far, the candidate has yet to endorse rent control.

Again, Buress is a comedian so it’s possible his anti-rent control beliefs are less than sincere. Still, any criticism of such a destructive and counterproductive policy is welcome.

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Peugeot Board Approves Merger With Fiat Chrysler, Creating European Auto Giant

Peugeot Board Approves Merger With Fiat Chrysler, Creating European Auto Giant

The board of French carmaker and Peugeot parent, PSA Group, approved a plan to merge with Italian-American rival Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV late on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal and others reported. Fiat Chrysler’s board meeting was still in progress while the board of Exor, the Agnelli family holding company that controls the Italian-American car maker, was scheduled to meet later on Wednesday night to give its blessing.

As WSJ notes, Fiat Chrysler Chairman John Elkann would become chairman of the newly-merged company while Peugeot CEO Carlos Tavares would be CEO. Both would have seats on the board of the new company, which would comprise six Peugeot appointees, including Mr. Tavares, and five from Fiat Chrysler.

A merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA, the No. 2 for car sales in Europe, would create a regional powerhouse to rival Volkswagen AG, and have a stock-market value of about $49 billion, comparable to Japan’s Honda Motor, according To Bloomberg calculations. The tie-up would also bring together two auto-making dynasties, the billionaire Agnelli clan in Italy and the Peugeot family of France.

As part of the deal, Peugeot would pay €3 billion to its shareholders from the sale of a stake in auto parts maker Faurecia while Fiat Chrysler will pay its shareholders a dividend of €5 billion and would also distribute the proceeds from the sale of its Comau unit, which is valued at about €250 million.

The U.S. and French governments have been briefed on the deal, with Bloomberg reporting earlier that the French government is monitoring the latest developments “with a lot of openness” and shares the goal of consolidation in auto sector, spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye tells reporters on Wednesday. She added that while the state is shareholder in PSA, it is not up to government to manage company, although she did say that the government is paying attention to “safeguaring jobs.”

Among the issues that need to be clarified for the merger to proceed, include where the joint company would be based.

There’s more.

Even if the deal wins approval from both boards, it faces a lot of obstacles, with challenges including consolidation, clashing corporate cultures and government and regulatory approval, among many other thorny issues.

Talks of a potential tie-up between Fiat Chrysler and Renault ended earlier this year largely due to the French government, which owns a roughly 12.2% stake in Renault. The French government currently owns a 13.7% stake in PSA.

Some have expressed skepticism that this particular tie-up will have a happier ending.

As CNBC reported earlier, Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst John Murphy cited the French government’s ownership as one of a “litany of obstacles” facing such a deal. Murphy said similar to Fiat Chrysler’s potential tie-up with Renault, the “industrial logic” is “unclear unless there is massive headcount reduction”, something which the French government will vocally protest and will likely scuttle the deal again. A combination, Murphy said, also could alienate U.S. buyers, lowering the potential benefit of the two automakers combining.

Even if the merger is approved by shareholders and regulators, “there is a material risk American consumers may shift to Ford and GM products due to FCA possibly no longer being perceived as an ‘American’ identity, not to mention the potential political implications of this potential deal.”

Not everyone is skeptical: Bernstein analyst Max Warburton said a merger between Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot “has more logic” than one with Renault. He specifically cites the potential for Tavares to create “long-term value.”

“We ultimately think a deal could be made to work — this would be as much about raising performance as it would be about synergies,” he wrote in a Tuesday note to investors. However, Warburton noted a deal between the two does little to increase business in China, the world’s largest auto market, and the timing is “sub-optimal” given FCA’s earnings are at all-time high.

Analysts see the merger as a quick way for Peugeot to re-enter the U.S. market after a decades-long hiatus, while continuing to grow its European operations following the company’s acquisition of GM’s European business in 2017.

“This news is not unexpected, given that both companies have been actively exploring tie-ups with others to yield cost savings and other synergistic benefits,” said David Leggett, automotive editor at data analytics firm GlobalData.

* * *

A successful deal for Fiat Chrysler would finally cement former CEO Sergio Marchionne’s vision of creating a global automaker with the resources to successfully compete in the ever-changing auto industry. In 2015, Marchionne, who unexpectedly died in July 2018, called for industry consolidation in a presentation called “Confessions of a Capital Junkie.” Consolidation would save capital that was being wasted by automakers developing redundant technologies, he said.

It would also result in tens of thousands of job cuts for a sector that is already plagued by Europe’s manufacturing recession and the slow-motion collapse in globalization.

“These were not hallucinations of somebody looking to grandstand in the industry,” Marchionne said at the time. “We have spent a lot of time trying to understand what makes this machine tick. And the machine can tick a lot better if certain things happened.”

Marchionne believed only a handful of the world’s largest automakers would survive and have the capital to compete as automakers push for autonomous and all-electric vehicles. Indeed, Marchionne’s combination of Fiat and Chrysler a decade ago is considered one of the more successful tie-ups for the auto industry in the recent years. Then again, one has to consider the cost basis: after all, Fiat “bought” Chrysler out of bankruptcy. Chrysler’s previous “merger of equals” with German automaker Daimler-Benz in 1998 was a culture clash and failure that led to a divorce less than a decade later, followed by Chrysler spiraling into bankruptcy in 2009.

Finally, the deal with PSA would give Fiat Chrysler access to PSA’s newer vehicle platforms in Europe as well as emerging technologies.

 


Tyler Durden

Wed, 10/30/2019 – 15:39

Tags
Business Finance

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2N16PRz Tyler Durden

Can Big Tech Save Us From the Power of Government?

WhatsApp, the encrypted messaging phone app owned by Facebook, is suing Israeli tech companies for selling information on hidden vulnerabilities that allowed malicious actors to infiltrate and access private communications.

The targets of the lawsuit, NSO Group and Q Cyber Technologies, are both private companies. But this lawsuit is very much about government behavior. The companies’ clients include government agencies in places like Mexico, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. According to the suit, the hacking mechanisms sold by NSO and Q Cyber allowed for the targeting of “attorneys, journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, diplomats, and other senior foreign government officials.”

In May, Facebook announced that it had tracked down the source of the vulnerability and shut it down. According to the lawsuit, an NSO employee actually complained to WhatsApp about the fact that they stopped the exploit.

The Washington Post notes that the NSO surveillance tool named “Pegasus” referenced in the WhatsApp lawsuit had previously been used to secretly snoop on Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi before he was murdered by people allegedly connected to Saudi Arabia’s government.

On Tuesday, WhatsApp head Will Cathcart contributed an opinion piece to The Washington Post that should give any U.S. government official pause when trying to demand that tech companies provide ways to bypass encryption:

This should serve as a wake-up call for technology companies, governments and all Internet users. Tools that enable surveillance into our private lives are being abused, and the proliferation of this technology into the hands of irresponsible companies and governments puts us all at risk. …

Democracies depend on strong independent journalism and civil society, and intentionally weakening security puts these institutions at risk. And we all want to protect our personal information and private conversations. That’s why we will continue to oppose calls from governments to weaken end-to-end encryption.

The lawsuit is using the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California’s own Computer Data Access and Fraud Act to target the two Israeli companies in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit charges the company with violating the terms of use for WhatsApp and arranging for unauthorized access to the private data of the app’s users. WhatsApp is asking the court for a permanent injunction stopping NSO Group from accessing WhatsApp and Facebook (and even using the two platforms at all), and compensatory and punitive damages.

So, while we have any number of government officials in the United States in both political parties and at the Department of Justice insisting that they should be calling the shots on how tech companies handle data privacy, it’s also abundantly clear that it is very dangerous to give government officials that sort of control. Attorney General William Barr’s attempt to stop Facebook from implementing better data privacy and encryption on WhatsApp puts people in legitimate personal danger from oppression in some countries. Cathcart’s resistance is praiseworthy.

Read the lawsuit for yourself here.

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Can Big Tech Save Us From the Power of Government?

WhatsApp, the encrypted messaging phone app owned by Facebook, is suing Israeli tech companies for selling information on hidden vulnerabilities that allowed malicious actors to infiltrate and access private communications.

The targets of the lawsuit, NSO Group and Q Cyber Technologies, are both private companies. But this lawsuit is very much about government behavior. The companies’ clients include government agencies in places like Mexico, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. According to the suit, the hacking mechanisms sold by NSO and Q Cyber allowed for the targeting of “attorneys, journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, diplomats, and other senior foreign government officials.”

In May, Facebook announced that it had tracked down the source of the vulnerability and shut it down. According to the lawsuit, an NSO employee actually complained to WhatsApp about the fact that they stopped the exploit.

The Washington Post notes that the NSO surveillance tool named “Pegasus” referenced in the WhatsApp lawsuit had previously been used to secretly snoop on Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi before he was murdered by people allegedly connected to Saudi Arabia’s government.

On Tuesday, WhatsApp head Will Cathcart contributed an opinion piece to The Washington Post that should give any U.S. government official pause when trying to demand that tech companies provide ways to bypass encryption:

This should serve as a wake-up call for technology companies, governments and all Internet users. Tools that enable surveillance into our private lives are being abused, and the proliferation of this technology into the hands of irresponsible companies and governments puts us all at risk. …

Democracies depend on strong independent journalism and civil society, and intentionally weakening security puts these institutions at risk. And we all want to protect our personal information and private conversations. That’s why we will continue to oppose calls from governments to weaken end-to-end encryption.

The lawsuit is using the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California’s own Computer Data Access and Fraud Act to target the two Israeli companies in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit charges the company with violating the terms of use for WhatsApp and arranging for unauthorized access to the private data of the app’s users. WhatsApp is asking the court for a permanent injunction stopping NSO Group from accessing WhatsApp and Facebook (and even using the two platforms at all), and compensatory and punitive damages.

So, while we have any number of government officials in the United States in both political parties and at the Department of Justice insisting that they should be calling the shots on how tech companies handle data privacy, it’s also abundantly clear that it is very dangerous to give government officials that sort of control. Attorney General William Barr’s attempt to stop Facebook from implementing better data privacy and encryption on WhatsApp puts people in legitimate personal danger from oppression in some countries. Cathcart’s resistance is praiseworthy.

Read the lawsuit for yourself here.

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NCAA Okays Paying Student Athletes, Republican Senator Immediately Wants to Tax Their Scholarships

“Americans need a break,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R–N.C.) in 2017, following the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. “Let’s put more money back into the pockets of Americans.”

Contrast that with his most recent stance on this issue, specifically pertaining to the NCAA’s recent decision to allow college athletes to profit off of their name, image, and likeness.

“If college athletes are going to make money off their likenesses while in school, their scholarships should be treated like income,” he tweeted. “I’ll be introducing legislation that subjects scholarships given to athletes who choose to ‘cash in’ to income taxes.”

The cognitive dissonance is baffling. I thought Americans needed a break?

Previous NCAA rules prohibited student-athletes from monetizing their talent and fame, even as the multibillion-dollar industry rested on their shoulders. California sparked the beginning of the end of that policy when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Fair Pay to Play Act last month, which paved the way for athletes in the state to start making money in 2023.

“We must embrace change to provide the best possible experience for college athletes,” Michael Drake, the chairman of the NCAA Board of Governors, said in a statement following the group’s decision to ease the prohibitive rules nationwide. “Additional flexibility in this area can and must continue to support college sports as a part of higher education. This modernization for the future is a natural extension of the numerous steps NCAA members have taken in recent years to improve support for student-athletes, including full cost of attendance and guaranteed scholarships.”

But if Burr has his way, those scholarships would come at a high cost. In practice, this would disenfranchise just about every college athlete that hasn’t reached superstar status by the time he or she graduates high school.

Consider a relatively unknown athlete who accepts a full-ride offer to a university at age 17. On average, the four-year price tag at a private institution amounts to $147,204, while an out-of-state student at a public institution pays $90,308. Who would be able to pay income taxes on that enormous lump sum when he or she has no guaranteed income other than a potential revenue-sharing check split countless ways? Only the few athletes with prodigious talent and promise of future sponsorships might opt in. Everyone else would be wise to take the scholarship and simultaneously sign away the right to profit from their hard work.

That would undoubtedly be a slap in the face to the scrappier athletes who improve tremendously in school. Take Steph Curry, for example, who went to Davidson College—which, at the time, sported a no-name basketball program—after Virginia Tech declined to recruit him. Davidson is no longer off the map, and for that, they can thank Curry, who is now a six-time NBA All-Star.

Indeed, Burr’s proposition sounds more like an effort to dismantle California’s law and the NCAA’s subsequent change rather than an attempt to codify sound tax policy. Under his proposal, if a subsidized athlete chose to pursue sports-related moneymaking opportunities, their scholarship would be taxed as if the student were receiving it as a salary. But anyone who has attended college on scholarship knows this is patently absurd. Since when is free tuition equivalent to earning a living?

While the conversation around the new NCAA policy has been dominated by talk of “image and likeness,” it also opens the gate for athletes to take advantage of smaller opportunities, as well—prospects that most people may not have assumed were off-limits. “For a tennis star, it could lead to giving paid lessons to recreational players,” The Wall Street Journal notes. “For a gymnast with a crowd-pleasing floor exercise, it might mean monetizing a YouTube channel.”

All of those avenues—big and little—reflect student-athletes’ dedication and ability. Puzzlingly, Burr has spent his time in Congress defending people who use free markets in that same context. Why are athletes any different?

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DoJ Nears Deal To Recover $900 Million From Mysterious Fugitive Mastermind Behind 1MDB Fraud

DoJ Nears Deal To Recover $900 Million From Mysterious Fugitive Mastermind Behind 1MDB Fraud

Laying the groundwork for a deal that could net the federal government its largest-ever civil forfeiture stemming from an anti-corruption case, the DoJ is reportedly on the cusp of closing a deal with international fugitive Jho Low, the mysterious financier who allegedly masterminded the theft of more than $4 billion from Malaysia’s 1MDB development fund.

According to Bloomberg, Low would relinquish his claim on some $900 million in assets.

It has been more than a year since the DoJ first unveiled criminal and civil charges against Low for his role in looting billions of dollars in public money from the fund. The ensuing scandal has already toppled the government of former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and resulted in the seizures of a super yacht, millions of dollars in jewelry (some of which was given as gifts to celebrities whom Low had befriended) and some of the proceeds from the Oscar-winning movie “Wolf of Wall Street”.

Jho Low

The WSJ reporter who initially broke the story has already published a book – “Billion Dollar Whale” – about the affair. Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street bank that enabled the 1MDB fraud with a series of shady bond deals that capitalized the fund, has also been ensnared in the investigation. Several of its employees have been arrested, and a former top banker has already pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Since the scandal erupted more than three years ago, it’s believed that Low has been hiding in China, where, rumor has it, the Communist Party have offered him protection.

Bloomberg’s report about the impending deal doesn’t offer any details about how it was reached. Low has poured resources into hiring law firms and PR shops to handle his legal battles and protect his image in absentia. The only thing they tell us is that the deal would help resolve more than a dozen forfeiture cases against Low. As part of the agreement, the government would be able to recover “properties in Los Angeles, New York and London, and [proceeds] from the sale of a Bombardier jet.” Low reportedly won’t be expected to agree to an admission of guilt or wrongdoing, as the settlement isn’t tied to criminal probes.

Low will also be required to surrender his claim on a Superyacht that has already been seized by the Malaysian government, and has been at the center of a legal battle involving Low and his army of lawyers.

In other words, he will likely need to remain in hiding, seeing as he will likely remain a high-level target for criminal prosecutions moving forward on multiple continents.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 10/30/2019 – 15:25

Tags
Politics

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Pyltlc Tyler Durden

NCAA Okays Paying Student Athletes, Republican Senator Immediately Wants to Tax Their Scholarships

“Americans need a break,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R–N.C.) in 2017, following the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. “Let’s put more money back into the pockets of Americans.”

Contrast that with his most recent stance on this issue, specifically pertaining to the NCAA’s recent decision to allow college athletes to profit off of their name, image, and likeness.

“If college athletes are going to make money off their likenesses while in school, their scholarships should be treated like income,” he tweeted. “I’ll be introducing legislation that subjects scholarships given to athletes who choose to ‘cash in’ to income taxes.”

The cognitive dissonance is baffling. I thought Americans needed a break?

Previous NCAA rules prohibited student-athletes from monetizing their talent and fame, even as the multibillion-dollar industry rested on their shoulders. California sparked the beginning of the end of that policy when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Fair Pay to Play Act last month, which paved the way for athletes in the state to start making money in 2023.

“We must embrace change to provide the best possible experience for college athletes,” Michael Drake, the chairman of the NCAA Board of Governors, said in a statement following the group’s decision to ease the prohibitive rules nationwide. “Additional flexibility in this area can and must continue to support college sports as a part of higher education. This modernization for the future is a natural extension of the numerous steps NCAA members have taken in recent years to improve support for student-athletes, including full cost of attendance and guaranteed scholarships.”

But if Burr has his way, those scholarships would come at a high cost. In practice, this would disenfranchise just about every college athlete that hasn’t reached superstar status by the time he or she graduates high school.

Consider a relatively unknown athlete who accepts a full-ride offer to a university at age 17. On average, the four-year price tag at a private institution amounts to $147,204, while an out-of-state student at a public institution pays $90,308. Who would be able to pay income taxes on that enormous lump sum when he or she has no guaranteed income other than a potential revenue-sharing check split countless ways? Only the few athletes with prodigious talent and promise of future sponsorships might opt in. Everyone else would be wise to take the scholarship and simultaneously sign away the right to profit from their hard work.

That would undoubtedly be a slap in the face to the scrappier athletes who improve tremendously in school. Take Steph Curry, for example, who went to Davidson College—which, at the time, sported a no-name basketball program—after Virginia Tech declined to recruit him. Davidson is no longer off the map, and for that, they can thank Curry, who is now a six-time NBA All-Star.

Indeed, Burr’s proposition sounds more like an effort to dismantle California’s law and the NCAA’s subsequent change rather than an attempt to codify sound tax policy. Under his proposal, if a subsidized athlete chose to pursue sports-related moneymaking opportunities, their scholarship would be taxed as if the student were receiving it as a salary. But anyone who has attended college on scholarship knows this is patently absurd. Since when is free tuition equivalent to earning a living?

While the conversation around the new NCAA policy has been dominated by talk of “image and likeness,” it also opens the gate for athletes to take advantage of smaller opportunities, as well—prospects that most people may not have assumed were off-limits. “For a tennis star, it could lead to giving paid lessons to recreational players,” The Wall Street Journal notes. “For a gymnast with a crowd-pleasing floor exercise, it might mean monetizing a YouTube channel.”

All of those avenues—big and little—reflect student-athletes’ dedication and ability. Puzzlingly, Burr has spent his time in Congress defending people who use free markets in that same context. Why are athletes any different?

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Meghan Daum Is Done with ‘Cancel Culture.’ But Is America?

Special Note: Scroll down for important news about this and other Reason podcasts!

“If 2018 was the year that the concept of ‘cancel culture’ went mainstream,” writes Meghan Daum near the beginning of The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars, “then 2019 may be the year that cancel culture cancels itself.”

A journalist who has authored a novel and two well-received essay collections, the 49-year-old Daum has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Vogue, GQ, Harper’s, and is featured columnist at Medium (check out her personal website). In her new book, she contends that “By framing Trumpism as a moral emergency that required an all-hands-on-deck, no-deviation-from-the narrative approach to cultural and political thought…the left has cleared the way for a kind of purity policing—enforced and amplified by social media—that is sure to backfire.” She also celebrates the much-maligned Gen X for its ethos of “toughness.”

The Problem with Everything is her clarion call for all of us to chill out a bit and allow people to be more complicated, contradictory, and human. She is a writer who is both intensely curious and consistently contrarian, two qualities evinced by her recent Medium column: “The Perverse Seductions of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: American women have never been freer. So why are we drawn to depictions of our own repression?”

Audio production by Regan Taylor and Ian Keyser.

Special note: We’ve changed the way we distribute our podcasts and we’re asking all listeners to subscribe to each of our three new podcast streams by going to our podcasts page at Reason.com, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your programs.

The new shows are:

  • The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie, which comes out every Wednesday and features relentlessly interesting interviews with the activists, artists, authors, entrepreneurs, newsmakers, and politicians who are defining the 21st century.
  • The Reason Roundtable, a weekly discussion of news and analysis released every Monday, moderated by Matt Welch, and featuring Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Nick Gillespie.
  • The Soho Forum Debates, a libertarian-themed debate series recorded monthly before a live audience in New York City. Moderated by former Barron’s Economics Editor Gene Epstein, the Soho Forum features Nobel prize winners, radical thinkers, and other public intellectuals facing off over the future of bitcoin, veganism, sex work, illegal drugs, electric vehicles, abortion, robotics, government debt, and other controversial topics.

Go to Reason‘s podcasts page, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your shows, and subscribe now to keep getting the podcasts you want.

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Meghan Daum Is Done with ‘Cancel Culture.’ But Is America?

Special Note: Scroll down for important news about this and other Reason podcasts!

“If 2018 was the year that the concept of ‘cancel culture’ went mainstream,” writes Meghan Daum near the beginning of The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars, “then 2019 may be the year that cancel culture cancels itself.”

A journalist who has authored a novel and two well-received essay collections, the 49-year-old Daum has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Vogue, GQ, Harper’s, and is featured columnist at Medium (check out her personal website). In her new book, she contends that “By framing Trumpism as a moral emergency that required an all-hands-on-deck, no-deviation-from-the narrative approach to cultural and political thought…the left has cleared the way for a kind of purity policing—enforced and amplified by social media—that is sure to backfire.” She also celebrates the much-maligned Gen X for its ethos of “toughness.”

The Problem with Everything is her clarion call for all of us to chill out a bit and allow people to be more complicated, contradictory, and human. She is a writer who is both intensely curious and consistently contrarian, two qualities evinced by her recent Medium column: “The Perverse Seductions of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: American women have never been freer. So why are we drawn to depictions of our own repression?”

Audio production by Regan Taylor and Ian Keyser.

Special note: We’ve changed the way we distribute our podcasts and we’re asking all listeners to subscribe to each of our three new podcast streams by going to our podcasts page at Reason.com, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your programs.

The new shows are:

  • The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie, which comes out every Wednesday and features relentlessly interesting interviews with the activists, artists, authors, entrepreneurs, newsmakers, and politicians who are defining the 21st century.
  • The Reason Roundtable, a weekly discussion of news and analysis released every Monday, moderated by Matt Welch, and featuring Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Nick Gillespie.
  • The Soho Forum Debates, a libertarian-themed debate series recorded monthly before a live audience in New York City. Moderated by former Barron’s Economics Editor Gene Epstein, the Soho Forum features Nobel prize winners, radical thinkers, and other public intellectuals facing off over the future of bitcoin, veganism, sex work, illegal drugs, electric vehicles, abortion, robotics, government debt, and other controversial topics.

Go to Reason‘s podcasts page, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your shows, and subscribe now to keep getting the podcasts you want.

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