Category: reason

After nearly 3 million deaths worldwide (and almost 600,000 in the United States), it looks like the end of the COVID-19 pandemic may be within sight as vaccines proliferate. In “The Last Pandemic,” the cover story of the new issue of Reason, Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey argues that technological breakthroughs and policy progress mean humanity may never again have to endure such a disaster.

“The greatly speeded-up biomedical innovation provoked by the current global scourge has provided future generations with tools to keep subsequent viral invasions at bay,” writes Bailey. “These include fast new vaccine production platforms, the development of better diagnostic and disease surveillance monitoring, and progress in the rapid design of therapeutics.”

The main potential sticking point? The role of governments, which continue to hamper the ability of scientists and medical providers to deal quickly and effectively with diseases. Bailey tells Nick Gillespie that while Operation Warp Speed—through which the United States government incentivized pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines with unprecedented speed—was wildly successful, bureaucratic inertia and turf wars still stand in the way of quicker, faster, more effective innovation.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3rFPZIY
via IFTTT

In September 2017, St. Louis police officers sought to quell riots in the city after a jury acquitted former officer Jason Stockley for the 2011 killing of Anthony Lamar Smith.

On September 15, a group of police zeroed in on one protester in particular. According to an indictment filed against former officers Dustin Boone, Randy Hays, Christopher Myers, and Bailey Colletta, they proceeded to beat him severely, even though the man was not participating in the riots themselves. The cops allegedly shoved him to the ground, struck him with a baton, kicked him in the face, and assaulted him so brutally that he required multiple surgeries. Another officer, Steven Korte, who is still employed by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, was charged separately.

But the man, Luther Hall, was not actually a protester. He was an undercover police officer dispatched to take down information about property destruction in the city.

“I couldn’t believe it was happening,” he told the jury in reference to the unprompted beating. Hall, who had been with the department 22 years at the time of the attack, lost 20 pounds as he was unable to eat solid foods for several weeks. He underwent spinal fusion to repair his neck, and doctors stitched his lip closed after the incident left a hole.

A jury on Monday declined to convict the three officers—Korte, Myers, and Boone—who pleaded not guilty. Specifically, they acquitted Korte and Myers of deprivation of rights and deadlocked on that count as it pertained to Boone. They also failed to reach a verdict on a charge against Korte for lying to the FBI and on a charge against Myers for destruction of evidence after he allegedly smashed Hall’s cell phone.

Hays, who pleaded guilty to one count of deprivation or rights, testified that he hit Hall repeatedly with his baton and saw Korte kick him in the face. When asked twice if Hall was resisting, he said no. “After hindsight and reflection, I was in the wrong,” he said on the stand, according to the local CBS affiliate.

Colletta also pleased guilty to making false statements to the grand jury.

Text messages in the indictment show some of the officers expressing a mix of glee and satisfaction at the idea of assaulting protesters without consequence.

“It’s gonna get IGNORANT tonight!!” reads a message from Boone. “But it’s gonna be a lot of fun beating the hell out of these shitheads once the sun goes down and nobody can tell us apart!!!!” He later added that “we really need these fuckers to start acting up so we can have some fun” and that “it’s still a blast beating people that deserve it.”

“This shit is crazy ……. but it’s fucking AWESOME too!” Boone wrote the day after he allegedly attacked Hall. He added unironically: “Except for cops getting hurt. People on the streets got FUCKED UP!”

On October 5, with some civil unrest still ongoing, Hays tried to share some strategy with the overeager Boone. “Remember were [sic] are in south city,” wrote Hays. “They support us but also cameras. So make sure you have an old white dude as a witness.” Hall is black.

Hall settled with the city in February for $5 million after suing both the department and the individual officers, and St. Louis was required to deliver that payout within 45 days.

Reason covered this story as the charges unfolded in 2018. Joe Setyon wrote:

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3sKmWWc
via IFTTT

Police investigators say Michael Forest Reinoehl, a Portland, Oregon, activist wanted for killing another man during ongoing street battles in that city last summer, likely shot at police before he was killed by a fugitive task force in Lacey, Washington, last September.

The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) in Washington issued a press release today summarizing the findings of its seven-month investigation into the fatal shooting of Reinoehl. The TCSO says Reinoehl refused to comply with commands to surrender and reached for a gun.

“Witness statements indicate that there was an exchange of gunfire, which was initiated by Reinoehl from inside his vehicle,” the TCSO press release says. “During the exchange, Reinoehl was struck by gunfire, and he died as a result.”

pic.twitter.com/qJT9RglcBj

— Thurston Co. Sheriff (@ThurstonSheriff) March 31, 2021

Reinoehl, a self-proclaimed anti-fascist, was charged with second-degree murder in the August 29, 2020, shooting death of Patriot Prayer supporter Aaron Danielson in Portland. Reinoehl had been wanted for five days when a federal fugitive task force caught up with him in Lacey. The circumstances surrounding Reinoehl’s shooting were murky. Task force agents said Reinoehl either pointed a gun or was in the process of drawing a gun when he was shot. However, civilian eyewitnesses said the police didn’t announce themselves before killing Reinoehl in a barrage of gunfire. None of the law enforcement officers in the task force were wearing body cameras. 

In the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, President Donald Trump frequently bragged about the killing.

Investigators found a .380 pistol in Reinoehl’s possession and a fired .380 shell casing in his vehicle. The casing in Reinoehl’s vehicle was fired from the pistol found in his possession, according to the TCSO.

“While it is very plausible and it does match up with the statements, we were not able to find the actual round from (Reinoehl’s pistol) to definitively say, ‘absolutely’ that he fired from that car,” TCSO Lt. Cameron Simper told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “Based on our investigation, based on the witness statements, the casing in the car, and officers’ statements, it is highly likely.”

Reason requested public records regarding the shooting last September, but a Washington state superior court judge issued a temporary restraining order against the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC), one of the agencies on the task force, to block their release until the TCSO completed its investigation. Reason is expecting to get those records shortly from the DOC and other agencies that participated in the task force.

The TCSO has referred its findings to the Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to determine if criminal charges will be filed.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3sH2qpx
via IFTTT

The Yale Journal on Regulation has an online symposium on Adam Cox and Cristina Rodriguez’s excellent recent book, The President and Immigration Law.  Contributors include a variety of constitutional law and immigration scholars. There are already contributions posted by Zachary Price, Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Shalini Bargava Ray, and myself. Jill Family and David Rubenstein have posted an Introduction to the symposium, which provides an overview of Cox and Rodriguez’s book, and of the various commentaries in the symposium.

Over the next few days, the Journal on Regulation will post additional contributions by Daniel Farber and Eisha Jain. Then, Cox and Rodriguez will post a response to their commentators and critics.

Here is the publisher’s description of the book:

Who controls American immigration policy? The biggest immigration controversies of the last decade have all involved policies produced by the President policies such as President Obama’s decision to protect Dreamers from deportation and President Trump’s proclamation banning immigrants from several majority-Muslim nations. While critics of these policies have been separated by a vast ideological chasm, their broadsides have embodied the same widely shared belief: that Congress, not the President, ought to dictate who may come to the United States and who will be forced to leave.

This belief is a myth. In The President and Immigration Law, Adam B. Cox and Cristina M. Rodriguez chronicle the untold story of how, over the course of two centuries, the President became our immigration policymaker-in-chief. Diving deep into the history of American immigration policy from founding-era disputes over deporting sympathizers with France to contemporary debates about asylum-seekers at the Southern border they show how migration crises, real or imagined, have empowered presidents. Far more importantly, they also uncover how the Executive’s ordinary power to decide when to enforce the law, and against whom, has become an extraordinarily powerful vehicle for making immigration policy.

This pathbreaking account helps us understand how the United States has come to run an enormous shadow immigration system-one in which nearly half of all noncitizens in the country are living in violation of the law. It also provides a blueprint for reform, one that accepts rather than laments the role the President plays in shaping the national community, while also outlining strategies to curb the abuse of law enforcement authority in immigration and beyond.

Here is an excerpt from my contribution to the symposium:

Adam Cox and Cristina Rodríguez have written what is likely to become the definitive work on presidential power over immigration. As they describe, the executive branch has come to wield vast discretionary authority over immigration policy, even though nothing in the text or original meaning of the Constitution grants it such authority….

Their diagnosis of the problem is sound, and so are many of their proposals for reform. But they understate the importance of eliminating constitutional double standards in immigration law. In addition, the issues they highlight cannot be properly addressed unless we make it easier for potential immigrants to enter the US in the first place, not just constrain deportation after the fact….

Some of this discretionary power is just one part of a broader problem with our legal system. There are far more laws than any administration can possibly enforce, and far more lawbreakers than can ever be caught and prosecuted. As a result, a large majority of adult Americans have violated federal criminal law (to say nothing of state law) at some point in their lives, and could potentially be prosecuted . Undocumented immigrants are far from the only people who remain free only because of resource constraints and the exercise of executive enforcement discretion. But the immigration situation is particularly severe, because of the grave consequences of deportation, and the weakness of due process protections in the immigration enforcement system…..

Cox and Rodríguez underestimate the importance of eliminating constitutional double standards under which immigration policy has largely been exempted from constitutional constraints that apply to nearly all other government policies….

Cox and Rodríguez contend that Trump v. Hawaii is an aberration and a “dramatic departure from the past.” In some respects, that is true, particularly in so far as it defends the immigration double standard much more blatantly than any other recent decision. But, unfortunately, the ruling is part of a much broader pattern in which both courts and executive branch officials refuse to apply rigorous constitutional constraints to immigration policy.

Among other things, immigration detention and deportation are not subject to anything like the same due process constraints as other severe deprivations of liberty. This results in such horrors as toddlers “representing” themselves in deportation proceedings, because there is no right to the provision of counsel to indigent migrants facing deportation…. Weak constitutional standards play a major role in the deportation and detention state that Cox and Rodríguez refer to as the “shadow system” of immigration law.

Ending such double standards would bring immigration policy more in line with the text and original meaning of the Constitution. It also would curtail some of the worst aspects of the immigration system – including some of the worst abuses of the shadow system….

But, ultimately, broad presidential discretion to exclude migrants can only be alleviated by making it easier for them to enter legally in the first place…..

If we restricted interstate movement in the same way as immigration, there would be massive enforcement discretion and associated abuses of power with respect to the latter, as well (as indeed occurred when state governments had greater power to exclude internal migrants in the nineteenth century)….

[T]here are many ways to make incremental progress by liberalizing immigration policy at the margin. Those who seek to reduce deportation, civil liberties violations, and excessive executive discretion associated with immigration policies would do well to focus on making it easier to make it easier for immigrants to legally enter the United States in the first place.

I discuss some of the issues raised in my contribution to the symposium in greater detail in my own recent  book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom.

I would like to thank the editors of the symposium for opportunity to contribute, and Adam and Cristina for writing an outstanding book!

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3uaLXKp
via IFTTT

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo today signed a bill that adds the country’s fourth most populous state to the list of jurisdictions that allow recreational use of marijuana. Counting New York, 16 states have approved general legalization, although South Dakota’s ballot measure is tied up in legal wrangling. New York’s law, which emerged from years of negotiations between Cuomo and legislators, is surprisingly permissive in some respects but includes high taxes and other provisions that compromise the interests of consumers.

Residents 21 or older will be allowed to possess up to three ounces of marijuana and up to 24 grams of cannabis concentrates in public. They also can legally transfer those amounts to other adults “without compensation.” New York’s limits are more generous than the rules in many other states that have legalized marijuana, where public possession typically is limited to one or two ounces. New Yorkers also will be allowed to possess up to five pounds at home.

Marijuana use will be permitted anywhere that tobacco smoking is allowed, plus in specially licensed “consumption sites,” which can operate in conjunction with dispensaries. Local governments will have the authority to prohibit consumption sites within their jurisdictions. Cannabis consumption in places where it is not permitted will be punishable by a $25 fine.

Cities also will be allowed to ban marijuana retailers, provided they act by the end of the year. But they will not be allowed to stop residents from ordering marijuana online and having it delivered by licensed companies.

The legislature wisely eschewed defining marijuana-impaired driving based on THC blood levels, which are not a reliable indicator of intoxication. As under current law, police instead would have to present evidence that a driver is “under the influence,” which can include blood test results, the smell of marijuana, erratic driving, and performance on sobriety tests.

New Yorkers will be allowed to grow up to six plants, half of them mature at any given time, for personal consumption, with a limit of 12 plants per household. But homegrown marijuana won’t be permitted until up to 18 months after the first recreational retailer opens, which may not happen until late next year. That means consumers will have to continue relying on the black market for a year or two and may not be able to legally grow marijuana until late 2023 or early 2024.

The long delay in allowing homegrown marijuana presumably is aimed at helping newly licensed retailers establish themselves and displace the black market. But when it comes to taxes, New York legislators do not seem very keen on helping the industry or consumers.

New York plans to impose an excise tax based on THC content. It also plans to tax concentrates and edibles at higher rates than flowers, which seems redundant and is inconsistent with the goal of taxing doses equally.

The rate per milligram of THC is half a cent for flowers, eight-tenths of a cent for concentrates, and 3 cents for edibles—six times the flower rate. In other words, the excise tax on a 10-milligram dose will be 5 cents for flowers, 8 cents for concentrates, and 30 cents for edibles. These taxes seem to be aimed at encouraging consumers to smoke marijuana rather than eating or vaping it, which does not make much sense if legislators are concerned about the health hazards associated with cannabis consumption.

The excise tax for flowers is 50 cents per gram at a THC concentration of 10 percent and a dollar per gram at a THC concentration of 20 percent. Assuming a retail price of $10 per gram, that amounts to a tax of 5 percent to 10 percent.

The THC content of concentrates such as wax and shatter can be as high as 80 percent. At that concentration, New York’s tax would be $64 per gram, which amounts to a tax of more than 100 percent, assuming a retail price of $40 to $60 per gram.

The excise tax on a chocolate bar that contains 100 milligrams of THC, which Medicine Man in Denver is currently selling for $10, would be $3. Assuming similar costs in New York, that amounts to a 30 percent tax.

But the THC tax is just the beginning. New York also is imposing a 9 percent tax on retail sales of cannabis products, plus an additional 4 percent tax earmarked for local governments. That combined 13 percent levy is on top of the general state and local sales taxes, which run as high as 8.9 percent. In New York City, the total sales tax would be nearly 22 percent, in addition to excise taxes ranging from 5 percent to more than 100 percent, depending on the type of product and its THC content.

New York’s marijuana-specific taxes—the THC tax plus the special sales tax—are much higher than the levies collected by several other states. Alaska, for example, imposes a wholesale excise tax of $50 per ounce of flowers; it has no statewide marijuana sales tax (or general sales tax), although some cities tax cannabis sales at rates ranging from 3 percent to 5 percent.

Illinois taxes wholesale transfers at 7 percent and collects a 10 percent marijuana sales tax on products with THC concentrations of no more than 35 percent. Michigan imposes the same statewide tax on retail sales. Massachusetts has a 10.75 percent state tax on retail marijuana sales, and cities can add their own taxes of up to 3 percent. Maine collects $335 per pound of flowers from growers and a 10 percent tax on retail sales.

These states seem to recognize that heavy taxes make it harder for licensed retailers to compete with black-market dealers. New York, not so much.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3ufZ1OR
via IFTTT

In a famous 2005 commencement speech, Apple’s Steve Jobs counseled graduates to “stay hungry, stay foolish.” He was quoting Stewart Brand, a man who has been called “the intellectual Johnny Appleseed of the counterculture” and is the subject of the new documentary We Are As Gods, co-directed by David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg.

Born in 1938, Brand was a Merry Prankster who helped conduct Ken Kesey’s legendary acid tests in the 1960s. His guerilla campaign of selling buttons that asked “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole earth yet?” pushed NASA to release the first image of the planet from space and helped inspire the first Earth Day celebrations. From 1968 to 1971, he published the Whole Earth Catalog, which quickly became a bible to hippies on communes and city-dwelling techno-geeks such as Jobs, whose commencement-day quote comes from the final issue of the magazine. The title of the new documentary comes from the first issue, which boldly announced, “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”

Brand helped shape early techno-culture and cyberspace by reporting on the personal computer revolution and interacting with many of its key figures in the early 1970s. His ideas were instrumental in the creation of the Well, one of the earliest online communities, and he helped found The Long Now Foundation, which seeks to lengthen and deepen the way we all think about the past and the future.

Now in his 80s, Brand’s current passion is Revive & Restore, an organization that is leading the “de-extinction movement” by using biotechnology to bring back plants and animals including the American Chestnut tree, the passenger pigeon, and the woolly mammoth. Unlike so many in the environmentalist movement he helped create, Brand has always viewed technology in positive, optimistic terms.

“Humans actually have been getting better at a lot of things for a long time in terms of heading off various diseases, heading off poverty and heading off a lot of things,” Brand tells Reason while explaining his support for nuclear energy, the de-extinction movement, and other controversial technologies. “You can’t count on the past ways of making it better to fix whatever the current problems are. You have to keep discovering new ones.” He also updates “stay hungry, stay foolish” for a world facing a global pandemic and environmental concerns: “Try everything,” he says. “Take nothing off the table.”

Produced and edited by Meredith Bragg; Illustration: Lex Villena; Source Image: Mark Mahaney

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3wewzP2
via IFTTT

From the majority opnion in Fabick v. Evers, decided today by a 4-3 vote of the Wisconsin Supreme Court:

Wisconsin Stat. § 323.10 specifies that no state of emergency may last longer than 60 days unless it “is extended by joint resolution of the legislature,” and that the legislature may cut short a state of emergency by joint resolution. The statute contemplates that the power to end and to refuse to extend a state of emergency resides with the legislature even when the underlying occurrence creating the emergency remains a threat. Pursuant to this straightforward statutory language, the governor may not deploy his emergency powers by issuing new states of emergency for the same statutory occurrence….

Read according to its plain language, in context, along with surrounding statutes, and consistent with its purpose, the best reading of Wis. Stat. § 323.10 is that it provides the governor the authority to declare a state of emergency related to public health when the conditions for a public health emergency are satisfied. But when later relying
on the same enabling condition, the governor is subject to the time limits explicitly prescribed by statute.

And from the dissent:

[T]he majority errs by purporting to engage in a straightforward statutory analysis. Yet, it omits any analysis of an essential word in Wis. Stat. § 323.02(16) that is outcome determinative. Left unanalyzed is the statutory term “occurrence,” which when included in the analysis, proves to undermine the majority’s conclusion and mandates a contrary result….

Applying our established definition of “occurrence” to Orders #82 and #90, it is apparent that each is based on a new set of on-the-ground facts, with each new set of facts posing a high probability of either “[a] large number of deaths or serious or long-term disabilities among humans” or “[a] high probability of widespread exposure to a biological … agent that creates a significant risk of substantial future harm to a large number of people.” Thus, the orders were issued in response to separate occurrences and are permissible under the plain language of §§ 323.02(16) and 323.10.

Unlike Order #72, which was premised on preparing Wisconsin for the fight against COVID-19, Order #82 declared a new public health emergency in response to a “new and concerning spike in infections” that without quick intervention “will lead to unnecessary serious illness or death, overwhelm our healthcare system, prevent schools from fully reopening, and unnecessarily undermine economic stability ….” …

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Og50nu
via IFTTT