Democrats Are Considering a $6 Trillion Infrastructure Plan That Has Little to Do With Infrastructure


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In the event that a group of U.S. senators cannot agree on committing enough money to a bipartisan infrastructure plan, Democrats are reportedly considering a $6 trillion plan of their own. It would probably be best described as a package full of progressive items wrapped in magical thinking paper.

Most people would consider $6 trillion a lot of money to drop on infrastructure. That’s because most of us still have an outdated notion of what infrastructure is. In fact, for most people, the word infrastructure conjures up images of roads, bridges, dams, and waterways. However, as we’ve discovered during the last few weeks of discussions, for elected Democrats, infrastructure can be so much more than that.

Not long ago, for instance, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) tweeted: “Paid leave is infrastructure. Child care is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure.” So it’s not surprising to see Politico report that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) hopes to include an expansion of Medicare in the Democrats’ plan. That expansion would include, among other things, a reduction of the Medicare eligibility age to 60 or even 55.

This $6 trillion Democrat-only plan is well above the $2.3 trillion plan proposed by President Joe Biden. But incredibly, both pale in comparison to the $10 trillion wish list floated by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. According to Politico, “Their list includes universal child care, lowering of Medicare eligibility age, a permanent extension of the child tax credit.”

How will all of this be paid for, you ask? The truth is: It will not. The Biden plan would allegedly pay for its spending over a span of 15 years, with taxes levied on corporations and rich folks. Considering that they can’t credibly tie the hands of future congresses for the next 15 years, it’s difficult to believe that will happen. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ alternative plan would only pay for half of its spending with tax increases on the rich. In other words, $3 trillion of that plan would be added onto the already enormous national debt.

If anybody believes that financing that infrastructure bill with debt will create jobs, pay for itself, and grow the economy, prepare to be disappointed. As I’ve reported many times in the past, the economic literature doesn’t support this, especially in the short term and when the spending is done at the federal level.

This is because federal spending on infrastructure is driven by political calculations, leads to ridiculous projects like the infamous “bridge to nowhere,” mandates the creation of green or union jobs, romanticizes high-speed rail, and prioritizes pet political projects. These bills serve as perfect examples. Also, to the extent that there is a role for the federal government in building infrastructure—defined as roads and bridges, not a federal paid-leave plan or “Medicare for All”—that role should be very small, since most infrastructure is privately owned. These plans shouldn’t be paid for with class warfare taxes either since that will reduce the private-sector investment in infrastructure.

Instead, it should be paid for with infrastructure user fees. A 2018 article in Regulation Magazine by the University of Toronto’s Richard M. Bird and Enid Slack explains that user charges (think tolls) are better than taxes for three reasons: First, charges do not distort behavior like taxes do. Second, they’re more transparent, so consumers can better assess the true costs of the services. The last reason, they write, is that user fees “allow political decisionmakers to assess more readily the performance of service managers — and citizens to do the same with respect to the performance of politicians.” Accountability allows for better and more targeted maintenance and many other benefits.

In spite of this, politicians still prefer to use taxes. They argue that market failures and economies of scale require taxes for the efficient provision of infrastructure. However, as Bird and Slack demonstrate, the arguments should be taken with a grain of salt.

These massive spending plans—or the increased taxes to pay for them—won’t go anywhere, since the Democrats have such a slim majority in the Senate. Still, this entire debate is a nice window into their thinking on these issues, should they ever increase their majority.

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Hong Kong’s Free Press Is Dying


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When Hong Kong’s national security law was passed in June 2020, the law’s many critics warned it would have a chilling effect that would lead to the death of free speech, the suppression of a free press, and the censorship of people deemed disloyal by the state. These fears have been sadly vindicated with a newsroom raid last week that ended with the arrest of some of Hong Kong’s top journalists and one of the last bastions of pro-democracy thought shuttering its doors permanently.

Last Thursday, hundreds of cops raided the offices of one of Hong Kong’s most committed and widely read pro-democracy publications, Apple Daily, and arrested the editor in chief and other top executives, as well as those at the publication’s parent company, Next Digital. When arrests continued yesterday and authorities arrested one of the paper’s top opinion writers, the publication announced it would be closing immediately, citing staff safety concerns and the inability to pay salaries due to bank accounts being frozen.

“Apple Daily continued to report on the raid even as police officers declared the newsroom a crime scene,” The New York Times‘ Austin Ramzy and Tiffany May wrote. “When officers prevented the reporters from livestreaming the raid from inside the office and forced them to leave, the paper set up a camera on the building’s roof that watched the operation from a distance. Once they were allowed to return to their seats, reporters whose desktop computers had been seized wrote articles on their mobile phones instead.”

“The Chinese Communist Party and its National Security Law clearly view being Chinese and being frank about the current political system to be mutually incompatible, and are currently aiming to force this foreign dishonesty and unfreedom on the city of Hong Kong in the name of ‘return,'” wrote former Apple Daily columnist Kevin Carrico on his Substack. “The results are, not to mince words, tragic for many who persist in being honest, critical, and free.”

“From the moment the national security law was introduced, we knew this day would come,” said Apple Daily columnist Jack Hazlewood to the BBC. “It’s close to a thousand journalists who have lost their jobs, and for them to find employment in media jobs, jobs in journalism in Hong Kong is next to impossible….Why would anyone in their right mind want to employ someone who worked for any organization that was being essentially shut down under the national security law, let alone a newspaper, let alone the flagship pro-democracy newspaper.”

“We’re seeing sort of a creeping extension of the Great Firewall and the censorship that you see in mainland China.” But, he said, “people are savvy and VPN use is widespread.”

“If people in Hong Kong want to access information that is critical of the government, they are going to be able to do so, even though we are descending into kind of an Orwellian, 1984 situation,” said Hazlewood.

Still, Hazlewood tells Reason that he fears “remaining pro-democracy news outlets like Stand News and Citizen News will just get picked off one by one.” 

Hong Kong, which has operated under the “one country, two systems” policy following Britain’s handover of the territory to China, has long enjoyed a robust culture of free speech and due process. China’s attempt to bring Hong Kong more tightly under its control has provoked widespread protests in the past few years, with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people marching in the streets attempting to engage in mostly nonviolent resistance to preserve the freedoms they hold dear.

Earlier this year, I wrote:

“When a vague national security law was imposed in June, many Hongkongers feared it would give China cover to undermine the political freedoms they had long enjoyed. Since then, there have been steady, gradual encroachments: Public universities have culled dissident faculty members, police have arrested the pro-democracy media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, and protesters who attempted to flee by boat to Taiwan have been sentenced to prison.”

Lai, it’s worth noting, founded Apple Daily in 1995 and developed a reputation as an iconoclastic media mogul unafraid of criticizing the Chinese government. That his publication is practically forced to shutter is a sign of just how much Hong Kong’s political freedoms have atrophied, crushed under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party.

More on Hongkongers’ fight for freedom from Reason‘s Zach Weissmueller:

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Hong Kong’s Free Press Is Dying


sipaphotoseleven842527

When Hong Kong’s national security law was passed in June 2020, the law’s many critics warned it would have a chilling effect that would lead to the death of free speech, the suppression of a free press, and the censorship of people deemed disloyal by the state. These fears have been sadly vindicated with a newsroom raid last week that ended with the arrest of some of Hong Kong’s top journalists and one of the last bastions of pro-democracy thought shuttering its doors permanently.

Last Thursday, hundreds of cops raided the offices of one of Hong Kong’s most committed and widely read pro-democracy publications, Apple Daily, and arrested the editor in chief and other top executives, as well as those at the publication’s parent company, Next Digital. When arrests continued yesterday and authorities arrested one of the paper’s top opinion writers, the publication announced it would be closing immediately, citing staff safety concerns and the inability to pay salaries due to bank accounts being frozen.

“Apple Daily continued to report on the raid even as police officers declared the newsroom a crime scene,” The New York Times‘ Austin Ramzy and Tiffany May wrote. “When officers prevented the reporters from livestreaming the raid from inside the office and forced them to leave, the paper set up a camera on the building’s roof that watched the operation from a distance. Once they were allowed to return to their seats, reporters whose desktop computers had been seized wrote articles on their mobile phones instead.”

“The Chinese Communist Party and its National Security Law clearly view being Chinese and being frank about the current political system to be mutually incompatible, and are currently aiming to force this foreign dishonesty and unfreedom on the city of Hong Kong in the name of ‘return,'” wrote former Apple Daily columnist Kevin Carrico on his Substack. “The results are, not to mince words, tragic for many who persist in being honest, critical, and free.”

“From the moment the national security law was introduced, we knew this day would come,” said Apple Daily columnist Jack Hazlewood to the BBC. “It’s close to a thousand journalists who have lost their jobs, and for them to find employment in media jobs, jobs in journalism in Hong Kong is next to impossible….Why would anyone in their right mind want to employ someone who worked for any organization that was being essentially shut down under the national security law, let alone a newspaper, let alone the flagship pro-democracy newspaper.”

“We’re seeing sort of a creeping extension of the Great Firewall and the censorship that you see in mainland China.” But, he said, “people are savvy and VPN use is widespread.”

“If people in Hong Kong want to access information that is critical of the government, they are going to be able to do so, even though we are descending into kind of an Orwellian, 1984 situation,” said Hazlewood.

Still, Hazlewood tells Reason that he fears “remaining pro-democracy news outlets like Stand News and Citizen News will just get picked off one by one.” 

Hong Kong, which has operated under the “one country, two systems” policy following Britain’s handover of the territory to China, has long enjoyed a robust culture of free speech and due process. China’s attempt to bring Hong Kong more tightly under its control has provoked widespread protests in the past few years, with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people marching in the streets attempting to engage in mostly nonviolent resistance to preserve the freedoms they hold dear.

Earlier this year, I wrote:

“When a vague national security law was imposed in June, many Hongkongers feared it would give China cover to undermine the political freedoms they had long enjoyed. Since then, there have been steady, gradual encroachments: Public universities have culled dissident faculty members, police have arrested the pro-democracy media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, and protesters who attempted to flee by boat to Taiwan have been sentenced to prison.”

Lai, it’s worth noting, founded Apple Daily in 1995 and developed a reputation as an iconoclastic media mogul unafraid of criticizing the Chinese government. That his publication is practically forced to shutter is a sign of just how much Hong Kong’s political freedoms have atrophied, crushed under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party.

More on Hongkongers’ fight for freedom from Reason‘s Zach Weissmueller:

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This Cop Conducted 3 Warrantless Searches in Under 3 Years. He Gets To Keep His Job.


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A Baton Rouge Police Department (BRPD) officer will keep his job after conducting his third warrantless search in under three years.

Ken Camallo will be demoted from sergeant to corporal, The Advocate notes. He will also undergo a 75-day unpaid suspension.

But the officer will ultimately stay employed after racking up a slew of similar offenses and demonstrating a wanton disregard for the constitutional rights of those in his community.

BRPD declined to provide further comment.

Camallo’s conduct attracted significant national attention after a Reason report last month first released body camera footage of a traffic stop on January 1, 2020, set in motion by Camallo because he spotted a car driving “suspicious[ly].” He’d seen it parked at a “known drug house,” he said.

During that traffic stop, he and four other cops strip-searched a minor on a public street. In a recent press conference, BRPD said none of the officers will face discipline for that move.

But Camallo and Officer Troy Lawrence Jr. proceeded to conduct a warrantless search of the family’s home, resulting in disciplinary reviews. Lawrence’s is still ongoing.

Documents obtained by Reason show that this is not Camallo’s first offense, however. An internal affairs history of his time on the force shows that he has a stain on his record for another warrantless entry in 2019.

Yet even that wasn’t his first foray into unconstitutional searches. In 2017, a federal judge threw out all of the evidence in a case against a man indicted on illegal weapons charges after Camallo was found to have obtained the evidence earlier that year without a warrant. That case was eventually dropped.

Camallo’s disciplinary history shows no demerit against him for that misconduct.

His most recent warrantless search resulted in criminal charges against Clarence Green, then 23, who sat in jail for five months after Camallo found a firearm on his person during the traffic stop. Green was prohibited from owning one while he was on probation for possession of oxycodone, according to the initial incident report.

But those police reports would come to change almost a dozen times after Camallo and Lawrence illegally searched Green’s home—something that drew the scrutiny of a federal judge as he approved the state’s request to drop the charges against Green. One of the altered police reports notes that Tanya Green, Clarence’s mother, gave “written consent” to the search. She says that isn’t true, and the body camera footage shows no such exchange.

“The state agents in this case demonstrated a serious and wanton disregard for Defendant’s constitutional rights, first by initiating a traffic stop on the thinnest of pretext, and then by haphazardly invading Defendant’s home (weapons drawn) to conduct an unjustified, warrantless search,” wrote Judge Brian A. Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana. “Such an intrusion, in abject violation of the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which protects citizens against unwarranted governmental intrusions in their homes, may justifiably be considered to be a trespass subject to prosecution under” Louisiana law.

Thomas Frampton, an attorney for the Green family, agrees. “The Supreme Court has said that officers may conduct a ‘frisk’—meaning a brief pat-down of the outer garments—if the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the individual is armed,” Frampton told Reason last month. “The reason that’s okay, according to the Court, is because a properly conducted pat down is ostensibly non-invasive. A strip search on a public sidewalk, however, is something else altogether.” The family recently settled for $35,000 against the city of Baton Rouge.

But real accountability will apparently be elusive for the Greens. That entire sum will come out of taxpayer dollars and was only reached after the family agreed to drop a civil suit. Camallo will not have to explain his actions in civil court—and he gets to keep his job.

Instead, the city is trying to hold Frampton accountable for sharing the body camera footage with the press. During May’s BRPD press conference, the Parish Attorney’s Office for East Baton Rouge notified him that it would seek to hold him in contempt of court and jail him for up to six months for disseminating the video, although the government had already made it publicly available in November of 2020.

Holding a rogue officer to account is no easy feat. At the center of the debate is qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that prohibits victims of government abuse from suing state actors if the precise way a public official violated your rights has not been explicitly ruled unconstitutional in a prior court precedent. That explains, for instance, why the cops who allegedly stole $225,000 while executing a search warrant, or the cop who shot a man who’d been sleeping in his car, or the cop who led a botched drug raid on the wrong house were all protected from civil liability. The victims were not permitted to bring their claims before a jury.

Firing a bad cop is perhaps even harder. The process is mired in safeguards enshrined by labor precedents and police unions, which have a history of defending their workers’ most unsavory misdeeds. That is the purpose of any union, after all: to stick up for its people. That principle comes at a cost to the public they are supposed to protect, though, when considering that police unions represent the monopoly on state power.

The BRPD and the city of Baton Rouge did their best to produce the veneer of accountability. But in just two and a half months, Camallo will be back on patrol, protecting and serving.

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This Cop Conducted 3 Warrantless Searches in Under 3 Years. He Gets To Keep His Job.


thumbnail

A Baton Rouge Police Department (BRPD) officer will keep his job after conducting his third warrantless search in under three years.

Ken Camallo will be demoted from sergeant to corporal, The Advocate notes. He will also undergo a 75-day unpaid suspension.

But the officer will ultimately stay employed after racking up a slew of similar offenses and demonstrating a wanton disregard for the constitutional rights of those in his community.

BRPD declined to provide further comment.

Camallo’s conduct attracted significant national attention after a Reason report last month first released body camera footage of a traffic stop on January 1, 2020, set in motion by Camallo because he spotted a car driving “suspicious[ly].” He’d seen it parked at a “known drug house,” he said.

During that traffic stop, he and four other cops strip-searched a minor on a public street. In a recent press conference, BRPD said none of the officers will face discipline for that move.

But Camallo and Officer Troy Lawrence Jr. proceeded to conduct a warrantless search of the family’s home, resulting in disciplinary reviews. Lawrence’s is still ongoing.

Documents obtained by Reason show that this is not Camallo’s first offense, however. An internal affairs history of his time on the force shows that he has a stain on his record for another warrantless entry in 2019.

Yet even that wasn’t his first foray into unconstitutional searches. In 2017, a federal judge threw out all of the evidence in a case against a man indicted on illegal weapons charges after Camallo was found to have obtained the evidence earlier that year without a warrant. That case was eventually dropped.

Camallo’s disciplinary history shows no demerit against him for that misconduct.

His most recent warrantless search resulted in criminal charges against Clarence Green, then 23, who sat in jail for five months after Camallo found a firearm on his person during the traffic stop. Green was prohibited from owning one while he was on probation for possession of oxycodone, according to the initial incident report.

But those police reports would come to change almost a dozen times after Camallo and Lawrence illegally searched Green’s home—something that drew the scrutiny of a federal judge as he approved the state’s request to drop the charges against Green. One of the altered police reports notes that Tanya Green, Clarence’s mother, gave “written consent” to the search. She says that isn’t true, and the body camera footage shows no such exchange.

“The state agents in this case demonstrated a serious and wanton disregard for Defendant’s constitutional rights, first by initiating a traffic stop on the thinnest of pretext, and then by haphazardly invading Defendant’s home (weapons drawn) to conduct an unjustified, warrantless search,” wrote Judge Brian A. Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana. “Such an intrusion, in abject violation of the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which protects citizens against unwarranted governmental intrusions in their homes, may justifiably be considered to be a trespass subject to prosecution under” Louisiana law.

Thomas Frampton, an attorney for the Green family, agrees. “The Supreme Court has said that officers may conduct a ‘frisk’—meaning a brief pat-down of the outer garments—if the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the individual is armed,” Frampton told Reason last month. “The reason that’s okay, according to the Court, is because a properly conducted pat down is ostensibly non-invasive. A strip search on a public sidewalk, however, is something else altogether.” The family recently settled for $35,000 against the city of Baton Rouge.

But real accountability will apparently be elusive for the Greens. That entire sum will come out of taxpayer dollars and was only reached after the family agreed to drop a civil suit. Camallo will not have to explain his actions in civil court—and he gets to keep his job.

Instead, the city is trying to hold Frampton accountable for sharing the body camera footage with the press. During May’s BRPD press conference, the Parish Attorney’s Office for East Baton Rouge notified him that it would seek to hold him in contempt of court and jail him for up to six months for disseminating the video, although the government had already made it publicly available in November of 2020.

Holding a rogue officer to account is no easy feat. At the center of the debate is qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that prohibits victims of government abuse from suing state actors if the precise way a public official violated your rights has not been explicitly ruled unconstitutional in a prior court precedent. That explains, for instance, why the cops who allegedly stole $225,000 while executing a search warrant, or the cop who shot a man who’d been sleeping in his car, or the cop who led a botched drug raid on the wrong house were all protected from civil liability. The victims were not permitted to bring their claims before a jury.

Firing a bad cop is perhaps even harder. The process is mired in safeguards enshrined by labor precedents and police unions, which have a history of defending their workers’ most unsavory misdeeds. That is the purpose of any union, after all: to stick up for its people. That principle comes at a cost to the public they are supposed to protect, though, when considering that police unions represent the monopoly on state power.

The BRPD and the city of Baton Rouge did their best to produce the veneer of accountability. But in just two and a half months, Camallo will be back on patrol, protecting and serving.

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The CDC Eviction Moratorium Is Extended for a 4th Time


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In response to mounting pressure from progressive lawmakers and tenant advocates, the Biden administration has once again extended the federal government’s eviction moratorium for another month.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a historic threat to the nation’s public health. Keeping people in their homes and out of crowded or congregate settings—like homeless shelters—by preventing evictions is a key step in helping to stop the spread of COVID-19,” said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a statement today.

Today’s order extends the moratorium until July 31. The CDC said in a statement that this is intended to be the final extension of its eviction ban.

The CDC first issued a partial ban on evictions back in September 2020 under former President Donald Trump. The moratorium was originally supposed to last through the end of 2020. It has since been extended three times; once by Congress in December 2020, and twice by the Biden administration in January and March 2021.

The moratorium prohibits the eviction of tenants for non-payment of rent provided they sign hardship declarations saying that they’ve lost income, employment, or suffered unexpected medical expenses and that their removal would result in them moving into a more crowded living situation. Any individual making up to $99,000 a year (or joint filers making up to $198,000) is eligible for its protection.

A perennial concern among supporters of the CDC’s moratorium, and a reason for its continual extension, is that a “wave” of evictions would follow its expiration, as newly liberated landlords move en masse to give delinquent tenants the boot.

In a Tuesday letter to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, 44 U.S. representatives, all Democrats, urged her to extend the eviction ban “to prevent a historic wave of evictions and keep renters safely in their homes.”

“Allowing the moratorium to expire before vaccination rates increase in marginalized communities could lead to increased spread of, and deaths from, COVID-19,” they continued.

A March 2021 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that eviction moratoriums do, unsurprisingly, reduce evictions. It also found that evictions were below historic averages in places without moratoriums during the pandemic.

That’s because landlords generally don’t have an incentive to evict otherwise good tenants who are behind on their bills during down economic times, given the cost and uncertainty of finding a replacement, says Salim Furth, a researcher at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

But “if we’re getting back to normal, then evictions, like everything else, will get back to normal. If the moratoria go away,” he says, “there might be a temporary jump as landlords who’ve wanted to get rid of people do so.”

The last two COVID-19 relief bills have collectively authorized $46 billion for rent relief that was supposed to negate the need for an eviction moratorium. Tenants would use this money to pay the back rent they accrued during the pandemic and landlords would no longer have an incentive to evict them.

But the slow, troubled implementation of this rent relief has thrown a wrench into the plan. The states and localities responsible for distributing aid have generally had to set up their own programs from scratch, producing confusion and technical difficulties along the way.

When New York launched its federally funded rental assistance program earlier this month, for instance, tenants were greeted with crashing web application pages, while landlords were asked to provide tenant information they didn’t have.

Some 60 percent of respondents in a recent survey of emergency rental assistance administrators said a lack of staff was a significant barrier to getting funds out the door, while 49 percent said their technical ability to scale up these programs was posing major issues. About half of respondents said that a lack of responsiveness from landlords and/or tenants was also slowing implementation.

According to some advocates, the rocky rollout of rent relief necessitates another extension of the CDC’s eviction moratorium so that these programs can get up and effectively running.

Extending the ban is “critical to ensuring that state and local governments have the time to properly design, implement, and scale up the distribution of ERA to renters at risk of losing their homes,” said National Low Income Housing Coalition President Diane Yentel in a June 14 letter to Biden administration officials.

Some landlords counter that maintaining the eviction moratorium is driving down participation in rent relief programs, particularly given the technical barriers to accessing assistance.

Kathy Howard, of Baltimore-area property management company Regional Management, told Reason earlier this month that about 100 of her company’s 5,000 tenants are neither paying rent nor trying to sign up for rent relief. “Those people tend to concern us very deeply because they don’t appear to be accessing these programs and they are not talking to us either,” she said.

The Washington Post had a story about tenants in Hyattsville, Maryland, who—protected by an eviction moratorium and frustrated with the slow release of relief funds—have gone on a rent strike.

The continual extension of the federal eviction moratorium does give more time for numerous legal challenges to play out. The most recent ruling on these cases came from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which issued a ruling in favor of the legality of the moratorium.

One landlord group suing to overturn the CDC’s eviction moratorium has already asked the Supreme Court to take up the case.

The original justification for a nationwide eviction moratorium was that it would prevent millions of out-of-work renters from being evicted in the middle of a deadly pandemic when they should be sheltering at home. The availability of both rent relief and vaccines seems to cut against the idea that this kind of blanket limitation on landlords’ property rights is still necessary.

Furth says there are a lot of things local policymakers can do to smooth the return to a normal, post-pandemic, housing market, from facilitating arbitration between landlords and tenants to using federal relief funds to pay down rent debt. Blanket bans on evictions are a blunt tool, he says.

“What a lot of people want to do is use this crisis to deal with a long-standing problem, which was a high rate of evictions,” says Furth. “A moratorium is never going to be a solution to a place with a high rate of evictions.”

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The CDC Eviction Moratorium Is Extended for a 4th Time


CDCheadquarters

In response to mounting pressure from progressive lawmakers and tenant advocates, the Biden administration has once again extended the federal government’s eviction moratorium for another month.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a historic threat to the nation’s public health. Keeping people in their homes and out of crowded or congregate settings—like homeless shelters—by preventing evictions is a key step in helping to stop the spread of COVID-19,” said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a statement today.

Today’s order extends the moratorium until July 31. The CDC said in a statement that this is intended to be the final extension of its eviction ban.

The CDC first issued a partial ban on evictions back in September 2020 under former President Donald Trump. The moratorium was originally supposed to last through the end of 2020. It has since been extended three times; once by Congress in December 2020, and twice by the Biden administration in January and March 2021.

The moratorium prohibits the eviction of tenants for non-payment of rent provided they sign hardship declarations saying that they’ve lost income, employment, or suffered unexpected medical expenses and that their removal would result in them moving into a more crowded living situation. Any individual making up to $99,000 a year (or joint filers making up to $198,000) is eligible for its protection.

A perennial concern among supporters of the CDC’s moratorium, and a reason for its continual extension, is that a “wave” of evictions would follow its expiration, as newly liberated landlords move en masse to give delinquent tenants the boot.

In a Tuesday letter to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, 44 U.S. representatives, all Democrats, urged her to extend the eviction ban “to prevent a historic wave of evictions and keep renters safely in their homes.”

“Allowing the moratorium to expire before vaccination rates increase in marginalized communities could lead to increased spread of, and deaths from, COVID-19,” they continued.

A March 2021 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that eviction moratoriums do, unsurprisingly, reduce evictions. It also found that evictions were below historic averages in places without moratoriums during the pandemic.

That’s because landlords generally don’t have an incentive to evict otherwise good tenants who are behind on their bills during down economic times, given the cost and uncertainty of finding a replacement, says Salim Furth, a researcher at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

But “if we’re getting back to normal, then evictions, like everything else, will get back to normal. If the moratoria go away,” he says, “there might be a temporary jump as landlords who’ve wanted to get rid of people do so.”

The last two COVID-19 relief bills have collectively authorized $46 billion for rent relief that was supposed to negate the need for an eviction moratorium. Tenants would use this money to pay the back rent they accrued during the pandemic and landlords would no longer have an incentive to evict them.

But the slow, troubled implementation of this rent relief has thrown a wrench into the plan. The states and localities responsible for distributing aid have generally had to set up their own programs from scratch, producing confusion and technical difficulties along the way.

When New York launched its federally funded rental assistance program earlier this month, for instance, tenants were greeted with crashing web application pages, while landlords were asked to provide tenant information they didn’t have.

Some 60 percent of respondents in a recent survey of emergency rental assistance administrators said a lack of staff was a significant barrier to getting funds out the door, while 49 percent said their technical ability to scale up these programs was posing major issues. About half of respondents said that a lack of responsiveness from landlords and/or tenants was also slowing implementation.

According to some advocates, the rocky rollout of rent relief necessitates another extension of the CDC’s eviction moratorium so that these programs can get up and effectively running.

Extending the ban is “critical to ensuring that state and local governments have the time to properly design, implement, and scale up the distribution of ERA to renters at risk of losing their homes,” said National Low Income Housing Coalition President Diane Yentel in a June 14 letter to Biden administration officials.

Some landlords counter that maintaining the eviction moratorium is driving down participation in rent relief programs, particularly given the technical barriers to accessing assistance.

Kathy Howard, of Baltimore-area property management company Regional Management, told Reason earlier this month that about 100 of her company’s 5,000 tenants are neither paying rent nor trying to sign up for rent relief. “Those people tend to concern us very deeply because they don’t appear to be accessing these programs and they are not talking to us either,” she said.

The Washington Post had a story about tenants in Hyattsville, Maryland, who—protected by an eviction moratorium and frustrated with the slow release of relief funds—have gone on a rent strike.

The continual extension of the federal eviction moratorium does give more time for numerous legal challenges to play out. The most recent ruling on these cases came from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which issued a ruling in favor of the legality of the moratorium.

One landlord group suing to overturn the CDC’s eviction moratorium has already asked the Supreme Court to take up the case.

The original justification for a nationwide eviction moratorium was that it would prevent millions of out-of-work renters from being evicted in the middle of a deadly pandemic when they should be sheltering at home. The availability of both rent relief and vaccines seems to cut against the idea that this kind of blanket limitation on landlords’ property rights is still necessary.

Furth says there are a lot of things local policymakers can do to smooth the return to a normal, post-pandemic, housing market, from facilitating arbitration between landlords and tenants to using federal relief funds to pay down rent debt. Blanket bans on evictions are a blunt tool, he says.

“What a lot of people want to do is use this crisis to deal with a long-standing problem, which was a high rate of evictions,” says Furth. “A moratorium is never going to be a solution to a place with a high rate of evictions.”

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Biden Tells States To Use COVID-19 Relief Funds To Hire Cops


covphotos142153

Once a crime warrior, always a crime warrior. President Joe Biden yesterday urged state officials to throw more money at U.S. cops. But with the drug war falling (at least somewhat) out of fashion, Biden has had to get creative about how to ramp up federal funds for local policing. Will using a perennial progressive target—guns—and money meant to combat COVID-19 do the trick?

The administration apparently hopes so. At a Wednesday press conference, Biden told state and local leaders that they could use money provided to them as part of the pandemic relief package to fund more police officers and hours.

“We’re now providing more guidance on how [state and local governments] can use the $350 billion nationally that the American Rescue Plan has available to help reduce crime and address the root causes,” said Biden. “For example, cities experiencing an increase in gun violence were able to use the American Rescue Plan dollars to hire police officers needed for community policing and to pay their overtime.”

Biden has always been a Tough on Crime guy, spending much of the ’80s and ’90s spearheading congressional efforts to create new federal crimes, ramp up punishments for drug offenses, provide more resources to police and prosecutors, and generally find new ways to spend more federal funds on putting people behind bars. This is what made conservative fearmongering during the 2020 election about Biden being some radical “defund the police” type especially laughable.

Throughout his career, Biden has specialized in using social justice and progressive causes to push conservative and reactionary law enforcement responses. He’s frequently capitalized on moral panics to procure more funding for police and prosecutors. Still, some on the left inexplicably hoped he might actually be a changed man, caught up in the zeitgeist around criminal justice reform, ending mass incarceration, and giving police fewer opportunities to commit abuse.

That Biden wants to take some of the massive spending approved as pandemic relief and funnel it to cops only shows how sadly mistaken they were.

The American Rescue Plan “means more police officers, more nurses, more counselors, more social workers, more community violence interrupters to help resolve issues before they escalate into crimes,” said Biden at yesterday’s press conference, during which he also announced new plans to police guns.


FREE MINDS

First Amendment rights prevail in cheerleader Snapchat rant case. In Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., decided yesterday by the U.S. Supreme Court, justices held 8–1 that the school district had no right to punish a high school student for using profanity on the app Snapchat after she failed to make the cheerleading squad. Fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything,” the student—known in court filings by the initials B.L.—wrote. More from Reason‘s Damon Root:

“It might be tempting to dismiss [the cheerleader’s] words as unworthy of…robust First Amendment protections,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority. “But sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary.”

The matter of Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. originated with these words: “Fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything.” They were posted to Snapchat on a Saturday night and were accompanied by a picture of B.L. (known by her initials in court filings because she was a minor at the time) and a friend with their middle fingers raised. To say the least, B.L.’s cheerleading coaches did not like that post when it was later brought to their attention. As punishment for it, B.L. was suspended from the junior varsity cheerleading team for a full year. The question before the Supreme Court was whether school officials may punish her for this off-campus speech.


FREE MARKETS 

Supreme Court rules against intrusive unions. The Court yesterday issued an opinion in a case concerning whether union organizers could enter a company’s property against the company’s wishes in order to talk to employees about unionizing. It was filed by a California strawberry farming business. In a 6–3 opinion, the Court sided with the company, “finding that the government unconstitutionally took the growers’ property right to say ‘get off my lawn,'” as the National Review‘s Dan McLaughlin puts it.

Under current California regulations, union organizers have “a right to physically enter and occupy the growers’ land for three hours per day, 120 days per year,” noted the court. “Rather than restraining the growers’ use of their own property, the regulation appropriates for the enjoyment of third parties the owners’ right to exclude. The right to exclude is ‘one of the most treasured’ rights of property ownership.”


QUICK HITS

• Democrats and Republicans in Congress are reportedly close to reaching a deal on another massive spending measure, this one done under the mantle of infrastructure.

RIP John McAfee.

• Arvada, Colorado, Police Chief Link Strate described John Hurley—who interrupted a Denver-area shooting—as “a true hero who likely disrupted what could have been a larger loss of life.” Arvada police also killed him.

• The diversity, equity, and inclusion “industry is accordingly doing well, but is it doing any good?” Phoebe Maltz Bovy of The Signal and Zaid Jilani discuss.

• Yet another “human trafficking sting” where the only people arrested are a few men attempting to pay for sex.

• Inside the battle over the soul of the Libertarian Party.

• A new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute asks, “What is the solution to social media content moderation failures?”

• Ammon Bundy is running for governor of Idaho on a platform of cutting almost all taxes and ending incarceration for nonviolent crime.

• “Seven cops swarmed the home of an Alabama mom charged with the dastardly crime of taking a painkiller prescribed by her doctor while she was pregnant with her son—who, by the way, is perfectly fine and now eight-months-old.” Lenore Skenazy with more on the story.

• Anti–sex work advocates continue trying to rebrand the discredited “Nordic Model” of policing sex work (in which people who pay for sex are criminalized but offering sex for pay is not) as the “Equality Model”:

• A win for due process at the Supreme Court.

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via IFTTT

Biden Tells States To Use COVID-19 Relief Funds To Hire Cops


covphotos142153

Once a crime warrior, always a crime warrior. President Joe Biden yesterday urged state officials to throw more money at U.S. cops. But with the drug war falling (at least somewhat) out of fashion, Biden has had to get creative about how to ramp up federal funds for local policing. Will using a perennial progressive target—guns—and money meant to combat COVID-19 do the trick?

The administration apparently hopes so. At a Wednesday press conference, Biden told state and local leaders that they could use money provided to them as part of the pandemic relief package to fund more police officers and hours.

“We’re now providing more guidance on how [state and local governments] can use the $350 billion nationally that the American Rescue Plan has available to help reduce crime and address the root causes,” said Biden. “For example, cities experiencing an increase in gun violence were able to use the American Rescue Plan dollars to hire police officers needed for community policing and to pay their overtime.”

Biden has always been a Tough on Crime guy, spending much of the ’80s and ’90s spearheading congressional efforts to create new federal crimes, ramp up punishments for drug offenses, provide more resources to police and prosecutors, and generally find new ways to spend more federal funds on putting people behind bars. This is what made conservative fearmongering during the 2020 election about Biden being some radical “defund the police” type especially laughable.

Throughout his career, Biden has specialized in using social justice and progressive causes to push conservative and reactionary law enforcement responses. He’s frequently capitalized on moral panics to procure more funding for police and prosecutors. Still, some on the left inexplicably hoped he might actually be a changed man, caught up in the zeitgeist around criminal justice reform, ending mass incarceration, and giving police fewer opportunities to commit abuse.

That Biden wants to take some of the massive spending approved as pandemic relief and funnel it to cops only shows how sadly mistaken they were.

The American Rescue Plan “means more police officers, more nurses, more counselors, more social workers, more community violence interrupters to help resolve issues before they escalate into crimes,” said Biden at yesterday’s press conference, during which he also announced new plans to police guns.


FREE MINDS

First Amendment rights prevail in cheerleader Snapchat rant case. In Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., decided yesterday by the U.S. Supreme Court, justices held 8–1 that the school district had no right to punish a high school student for using profanity on the app Snapchat after she failed to make the cheerleading squad. Fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything,” the student—known in court filings by the initials B.L.—wrote. More from Reason‘s Damon Root:

“It might be tempting to dismiss [the cheerleader’s] words as unworthy of…robust First Amendment protections,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority. “But sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary.”

The matter of Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. originated with these words: “Fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything.” They were posted to Snapchat on a Saturday night and were accompanied by a picture of B.L. (known by her initials in court filings because she was a minor at the time) and a friend with their middle fingers raised. To say the least, B.L.’s cheerleading coaches did not like that post when it was later brought to their attention. As punishment for it, B.L. was suspended from the junior varsity cheerleading team for a full year. The question before the Supreme Court was whether school officials may punish her for this off-campus speech.


FREE MARKETS 

Supreme Court rules against intrusive unions. The Court yesterday issued an opinion in a case concerning whether union organizers could enter a company’s property against the company’s wishes in order to talk to employees about unionizing. It was filed by a California strawberry farming business. In a 6–3 opinion, the Court sided with the company, “finding that the government unconstitutionally took the growers’ property right to say ‘get off my lawn,'” as the National Review‘s Dan McLaughlin puts it.

Under current California regulations, union organizers have “a right to physically enter and occupy the growers’ land for three hours per day, 120 days per year,” noted the court. “Rather than restraining the growers’ use of their own property, the regulation appropriates for the enjoyment of third parties the owners’ right to exclude. The right to exclude is ‘one of the most treasured’ rights of property ownership.”


QUICK HITS

• Democrats and Republicans in Congress are reportedly close to reaching a deal on another massive spending measure, this one done under the mantle of infrastructure.

RIP John McAfee.

• Arvada, Colorado, Police Chief Link Strate described John Hurley—who interrupted a Denver-area shooting—as “a true hero who likely disrupted what could have been a larger loss of life.” Arvada police also killed him.

• The diversity, equity, and inclusion “industry is accordingly doing well, but is it doing any good?” Phoebe Maltz Bovy of The Signal and Zaid Jilani discuss.

• Yet another “human trafficking sting” where the only people arrested are a few men attempting to pay for sex.

• Inside the battle over the soul of the Libertarian Party.

• A new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute asks, “What is the solution to social media content moderation failures?”

• Ammon Bundy is running for governor of Idaho on a platform of cutting almost all taxes and ending incarceration for nonviolent crime.

• “Seven cops swarmed the home of an Alabama mom charged with the dastardly crime of taking a painkiller prescribed by her doctor while she was pregnant with her son—who, by the way, is perfectly fine and now eight-months-old.” Lenore Skenazy with more on the story.

• Anti–sex work advocates continue trying to rebrand the discredited “Nordic Model” of policing sex work (in which people who pay for sex are criminalized but offering sex for pay is not) as the “Equality Model”:

• A win for due process at the Supreme Court.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2SUEFha
via IFTTT

Humans Defeat A.I. in Debate. For Now.


topicsscience

Stand aside, Siri and Alexa. An IBM team led by artificial intelligence (A.I.) researcher Noam Slonim has devised a system that does not merely answer questions; it debates the questioners.

In a contest against champion human debaters, Slonim’s Project Debater, which speaks with a female voice, impressed the judges. She didn’t win, but that could change.

As her developers explain in a March Nature article, Project Debater’s computational argumentation technology consists of four main modules. The argument mining module accesses 400 million recent newspaper articles. The argument knowledge base deploys general debating principles. The rebuttal module matches objections to the points made by the other side. The debate construction module filters and chooses the arguments deemed most relevant and persuasive.

Project Debater was paired with three champion human debaters in parliamentary-style public debates, with both sides offering four-minute opening statements, four-minute rebuttals, and two-minute closing statements. Each side got 15 minutes to prepare once the topic was chosen.

In one contest before a live audience, Project Debater went against 2016 World Universities Debating Championship grand finalist Harish Natarajan on the motion that the government should subsidize preschool. The YouTube video and transcript of the debate show Project Debater fluently marshaling an impressive amount of research data in support of that proposition. Natarajan largely counters with principled arguments, calling attention to opportunity costs (paying for this good thing means not paying for that other, perhaps better thing) and arguing that politics inevitably will target subsidies to favored groups.

That contrast is not surprising, since Project Debater had access to millions of articles during her 15 minutes of preparation, while Natarajan had to rely more on general principles. Slonim and his colleagues report that expert analysts, who read transcripts without knowing which side was human, thought that Project Debater gave a “decent performance” but that the human debaters generally were more persuasive.

An April Nature editorial, however, predicted that computational argumentation will improve. “One day,” the journal suggested, such systems will be able to “create persuasive language with stronger oratorical ability and recourse to emotive appeals—both of which are known to be more effective than facts and logic in gaining attention and winning converts, especially for false claims.”

University of California, Berkeley A.I. expert Stuart Russell rightly tells Nature that people have the right to know whether they are interacting with a machine, especially when it is trying to influence them. Persuasion machine creators who conceal that fact should be held liable for any harm they cause.

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