Category: reason

On Tuesday night, The New York Times alleged that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R–Fla.) is “under investigation over possible sex trafficking” of a minor. Gaetz has denied the allegations and spun some accusations of his own, involving a former federal prosecutor attempting to extort his family.

According to “three people briefed on the matter,” Gaetz “is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him,” the Times reported. “Investigators are examining whether Mr. Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws, the people said.”

The Times doesn’t go into any more specifics about Gaetz’s alleged relationship or how the activity described constitutes sex trafficking. But on Fox News last night, Gaetz denied traveling with a 17-year-old (“people can look at my travel records and see that that is verifiably not the case,” he told Tucker Carlson) or having a relationship with a 17-year-old (“that’s totally false,” Gaetz said).

Gaetz went on to say that he was being extorted by people demanding $25 million from his dad “in exchange for making horrible sex trafficking allegations against me go away.”

For more than a decade, sex trafficking has occupied a central place in modern crime panic and fears for child safety. To many, it conjures images of abduction, smuggling across borders, confinement, and physical violence. As a legal matter, it needn’t actually involve any of these things. No matter which version we go by, however, it’s hard to see how the conduct alleged in this case—while morally suspect and quite possibly a violation of some criminal laws—qualifies.

The federal prohibition on sex trafficking (18 U.S. Code § 1591) specifically relates to commercial sex—a.k.a. prostitution—involving force, fraud, or coercion and/or people under age 18. Passed in 2000 and expanded every few years since, it implicates anyone who “recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides, obtains, advertises, maintains, patronizes, or solicits by any means a person” knowing that force, threats of force, fraud, or coercion “will be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act, or that the person has not attained the age of 18 years and will be caused to engage in a commercial sex act.” Commercial sex act is defined under federal law as “any sex act, on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.”

Some have argued that if Gaetz paid for someone he was having sex with to travel with him, this constitutes commercial sex. But the key thing when it comes to “commercial sex acts”—whether we’re talking about activity between consenting adults or activity that would qualify as criminal sex trafficking—is that any payment must be in exchange for sex. The payment needn’t be a direct monetary exchange, but it must be quid pro quo.

If two adults go on a trip together, one of them pays for the plane tickets and hotel room, and the pair winds up having sex, that is not considered commercial sex. Nor is it commercial sex if someone buys a date dinner or some sort of gift and later that night the pair hooks up. And, obviously, if an adult pays for a 17-year-old to travel with them and no sexual activity takes place, that is not commercial sex, either.

But what about the activity alleged here: an adult paying for a 17-year-old to travel with him and also engaging in a sexual relationship with her?

That certainly could run afoul of a number of criminal laws. However, prosecution for child sex trafficking seems unlikely unless it could be proved that paying for the girl’s travel was explicitly conditioned on her engaging in sexual activity, or that money or something else of value was specifically promised in return for these sex acts.

Saying that what Gaetz is accused of isn’t child sex trafficking doesn’t mean it’s perfectly fine behavior for a member of Congress or that it shouldn’t be condemned. But our modern tendency to describe any and all morally suspect and/or criminalized sexual activity as sex trafficking leads us not to moral righteousness but moral panic.

It’s how we get masses of people believing insane conspiracy theories like those spread by QAnon, in which the highest levels of government and business are supposedly controlled by child sex traffickers who harvest kids’ blood. It’s how we get oodles of nonsensical Facebook memes about traffickers trailing people around supermarkets. It’s how we end up with dangerous laws like the 2018 Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which criminalizes online speech surrounding consensual sex and makes it more difficult for workers in commercial sex sectors to stay safe. And it’s how we end up with ever more police, FBI, and ICE stings targeting all forms of sex work, which ruin lives and drive up arrests and incarceration without actually protecting anyone.

None of this is to say that a man who is in his thirties “dating” a teenager is something to be condoned. Most people can probably agree that it is, at the very least, creepy. Many people would agree that it crosses a moral line. And depending on where the relationship took place, it could also violate a number of criminal laws.

In D.C., the age of sexual consent is 16 (meaning a sexual relationship between an adult man and a 17-year-old girl would be legal). But the age of sexual consent in many states (including Florida) is age 18, so an adult having sex with a 17-year-old in these places would be guilty of statutory rape (a state-level crime). And if state, country, or territorial lines were crossed, prosecution under a federal law known as the Mann Act is also possible.

The Mann Act of 1910—which is distinct from the federal prohibition on sex trafficking passed this century—prohibits bringing anyone, including adults, across state lines “with intent that such individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.”

This law—which once banned helping someone cross state lines for any “debauchery” or “immoral purposes”—has a dark history of being used against interracial couples, LGBTQ people, immigrants, immodest women, and others whom authorities considered de facto suspect. It also became a catchall tool to justify federal police surveillance and action. Today, it is still used in cases where no force, fraud, coercion, or minors are involved and can be levied against adult sex workers who travel in pairs or aid each other with travel plans.

In addition to crossing borders for prostitution purposes, the Mann Act also bans an array of other acts, some involving minors and some not. One section bans the transportation of minors across state lines “with intent that the individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.” If the Times report on Gaetz’s relationship and activities is true, it’s this part that seems like the most applicable federal statute (provided the age of consent in any of the areas traveled to was above 17). It’s perhaps the only applicable federal statute unless the feds want to argue that paying for the travel constitutes engaging in a commercial sex act.

The New York Times does not say what statutes Gaetz is allegedly suspected of violating, but it does report that it “is part of a broader investigation into a political ally of his, a local official in Florida named Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on an array of charges.”

Where this investigation—and Gaetz’s counterclaims—will ultimately lead is anyone’s guess. But for now, it seems like prime example of how sex trafficking allegations have become a catchall to capture all sorts of perceived sexual misconduct.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/39vRGCE
via IFTTT

It’s 10:45 a.m. and the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, taking place inside the Hennepin Courthouse in downtown Minneapolis, has entered day two. Outside the courthouse, a handful of people have gathered near a cyclone fence festooned with paper hearts and lined with paintings of Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. “All cops are bastards!” chant the assembled. “Indict! Convict! Send that killer cop to jail! The whole damn system is guilty as hell!”

One person not chanting at the moment is Kaia Hirt, who is busy adjusting the heavy chain that she has lashed across her chest and locked to the cyclone fence. A tenth grade English teacher in Champlin, 25 miles north of Minneapolis, Hirt tells me that while she had previously attended “multiple protests throughout the suburbs and in the Twin Cities areas,” the death of George Floyd catalyzed for her the urgent need to fight racist policies and actions.

With the temperature at around 35 degrees and an icy wind making one wish for mittens, Hirt, of Korean extraction and wearing a Black Lives Matter face mask, allows herself to be covered in a blanket as she tells me where she was when George Floyd was killed and why she is here today. Her comments have been edited for length and clarity.

“I am a local activist and organizer and I decided to chain myself to this fence to draw attention to the fact that there are 450 people who were killed by the police in Minnesota since 1984. Their families are still seeking justice for those police homicides. I’ve always protested and I’ve always considered my job as an educator to be an anti-racist and to include [anti-racist] narratives in my curriculum. I always hoped that teaching would help me make a difference in people’s lives and in the world, but after George Floyd, I really felt I needed to do more.” 

Do you remember where you were when you learned George Floyd had died in police custody? 

“I think I was at home and I was on social media when I first saw it, and obviously, like all of us, it was devastating. I was speechless. I cried. And you know, when you teach young black men, and you see the way they’re treated, even in schools, you know that they could be next. The research has been done that people tend to see black males as much older than they are. And treat them as such, even when they’re just boys. Look at Tamir Rice. And so my fear for my students is part of what drives me to be involved. I live in a suburb that is fairly privileged and affluent, Minnetonka, and I’m frustrated with the lack of involvement that I see in the community and sort of an apathy towards things that are happening. And so I began by hosting events out there.”

You were in Minnetonka after Floyd’s death. Did you see much violence in your area?

“Not personally, no. I mean, I definitely protested in the city during that period of time, and I actually protested on a couple of days that later became quite tumultuous. I have friends who were very fearful, who lived in the neighborhood [where Floyd died] at the time, and the constant helicopters; sleeping in the basement instead of the bedroom; sleeping with weapons that they could find around the house, like a hammer or a golf club. 

I believe they were afraid of the unrest that was occurring, and also very afraid of police. My friends were BIPOC [black, indigenous, and people of color]. I was told there were citizen patrols trying to protect their blocks from vandalism or looters or whatever, and I said to a friend, ‘Are you gonna go out?’ And he said, ‘You know, it’s a little different when you’re not white, to go out and try to protect your neighborhood and carry weapons. I could easily be mistaken in some way and be harmed myself.'” 

The reaction to Floyd’s death has been enormous and profound, hundreds of millions of people around the world responding or being affected by what happened to one person in Minneapolis. What would you say to any naysayers who question this response, who say, there’s something going on that is out of proportion to the killing itself?

“I would say those naysayers are absolutely ridiculous and do not understand white supremacist history. I would say those naysayers have not studied slavery. African people were abducted from Africa, taken away from their families on slave ships, brought to this country to labor for free, tortured, humiliated, dehumanized, raped, and killed, followed by a century of lynching; 8,000 people in this country were lynched without trial, without accusation, sometimes with the police being involved. Segregation, which you have from the 1860s to 1960s, essentially legalized racism, where people of color were compared with dogs; the restaurant signs would say, ‘No Dogs, No Mexicans, No Negroes.’ There were segregated water fountains, segregated schools, and it was all hidden under the guise of separate but equal, which we all know is a lie because those things were not equal. 

And then we take a look at the disparities today, particularly here in Minnesota. What you are talking about is disparities in health care, disparities in education, disparities in housing, disparities in employment. How can you say, how can these naysayers—or dare I say white supremacists—say that there is an overreaction to a cop kneeling on a man’s neck, for nine minutes, killing him, over a $20 forged bill? I’m not even gonna say the words that come to mind because you’re recording me, but I’ll tell you what, that is unacceptable. Those people should be ashamed.” 

What do you expect to happen on the ground now? I was told there were thousands of activists from other cities descending on Minneapolis for the trial.

[Hirt laughs.] “There’s five of us now.”

Five, exactly. What are you expecting to happen?

“Listen, the people of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the activists, we’re tired. We are very tired because we have been fighting for justice not just for George Floyd, but for these 450 people who have lost their lives to police homicide, and you know what? If we’re angry, we have every right to be angry. We are a peaceful group. We are about peace, we are about safety, and we are about love. We don’t burn our own community down, but I’ll tell you what, Martin Luther King Jr. said that riots are the language of the unheard. People of color have been asked to wait. ‘A right delayed is a right denied,’ OK? And so what we’re talking about is the language of the unheard. The idea that, oh, the liberal white moderate says, ‘Follow proper channels. Wait, this isn’t the right time. Can you do it like this and not like that? Can you please do it in a way that’s pleasing to us; that isn’t scary to us?’ 

We follow proper channels. We try to use democracy. Now we run into obstacles to voting, right? Voter suppression. We try to do it through…I can’t even, I’m so enraged right now. We have followed proper channels and they’re not working. Nothing is changing. Black people are being killed for holding a cellphone while mass shooters, white mass shooters, are apprehended without a hair hurt on their head. There is a disparity and a double standard there that is unacceptable, and anyone who is paying attention can see it.” 

If the trial has a dissatisfying outcome, what happens in the city?

“We are peaceful activists. You need to understand American history, white supremacist history, to understand the suffering and oppression of black people and other people of color, Native indigenous people, okay?” 

I have a Native daughter. 

“But you’re still white.” 

True.

“If there is rioting, that would be completely understandable and that is what Martin Luther King Jr. tells us. He says that we have been unheard; we have been told to wait; we have been told that we’re not resisting in the right way. What is the right way? We kneel during the national anthem. Well, that’s not okay. What is okay? What is peaceful?” 

How long do you plan to stay chained here? 

“As long as I fucking feel like it. These locks are peaceful. This is a peaceful demonstration. It does not destroy the property. It is not violent. It isn’t even loud. Every lock has the name of a person who was killed by the police [written on it]. A person who was killed by the police, along with their story. These aren’t just names. There are stories behind how they were killed.

I’m not saying there will be, but I’m saying, if there are riots [after the trial], you need to understand American history. You need to understand hundreds of years of flat-out oppression and efforts to change everything in a peaceful way. It doesn’t justify anything, but it explains it. And I would not judge one single person if this city burns.”

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

Local politicians in Washington, D.C., are choosing to involve themselves in a conflict between tradition and newcomers that could easily solve itself.

In response to mounting complaints from new District residents about loud street music seeping into their homes, several members of the city council have introduced legislation that requires developers to include noise-canceling designs in apartments built near music venues and other hubs of sound-producing activity.

“This legislation seeks to address the rising tension that we are seeing between performers and neighbors who live in buildings or homes that are not adequately soundproofed,” said Councilmember Brianne Nadeau of her Harmonious Living Amendment Act of 2021, which was introduced last week. “The District is a dynamic city with a rich musical heritage and I believe this bill is a path forward to finding harmony.”

Councilmembers Christina Henderson, Janeese Lewis George, and Brooke Pinto are also sponsoring the legislation.

Nadeau’s bill, DCist reports, is being offered as an alternative to a more punitive proposal, the Amplified Noise Amendment Act, which was first floated in 2018, and would have fined people $300 for playing amplified music in public that could be heard beyond 100 feet.

That proposal sparked a stiff backlash from street performers who saw the bill, and the fines contained within it, as an attempt to squash traditional D.C. culture for the benefit of overly sensitive newcomers.

“This will push music out of the District,” musician and community organizer Aaron Myers told DCist at the time. “Music is a very important part of the community. People want to get off the Metro and hear music.”

Controversy flared up again in 2019 when a noise complaint from a neighbor forced a Metro PCS storefront to stop playing the go-go music it’d been blasting without incident for decades.

The music eventually returned, but only after a viral #dontmutedc campaign on social media and the intervention from the T-Mobile CEO himself (the company owns Metro PCS).

That episode helped kill the Amplified Noise Amendment Act, but underlying tensions continued to simmer.

Enter Nadeau’s proposal. Beginning in January 2022, her Harmonious Living Amendment Act requires that all residential construction on parcels abutting “activity areas”—defined as parcels zoned for particular types of mixed uses— incorporate design features that reduce sound levels below specific decibel targets.

The bill also includes sound-reduction design requirements for residential construction in “entertainment areas,” defined as parcels with exterior boundaries within 300 feet of an entertainment venue.

Lease or purchase agreements for existing residential units within those areas would have to include notifications about nearby entertainment venues as well as descriptions of the sound reduction measures the building has in place.

The bill would create a grant program to incentivize music venues to install noise mitigation measures. Property owners would also get tax breaks for soundproofing their buildings.

Nadeau says in a press release that her bill is informed by the “agent of change” principle that London incorporated into its planning code after a large number of music venues there were closed down by noise complaints from the residents of new apartments. This basically adopts a first-come, first-served rule for determining who should have to bear the costs of noise mitigation.

The policy, as explained by the London mayor’s office, requires the city’s boroughs to consider refusing proposals for new residential development near existing entertainment venues that don’t incorporate soundproofing features. On the flipside, buildings that are converted to music venues or other loud uses near existing residential areas are required to adopt noise mitigation measures.

As far as social expectations go, putting the onus on newcomers to acclimate themselves to local norms is entirely reasonable. Witness the justified outrage when a local tourism board suggested in 2019 that D.C. locals adopt the irritating tourist habit of standing on the left side of Metro escalators.

But imposing such a norm via regulation creates all the problems that top-down solutions typically do. Balancing people’s desires for making noise versus their tolerance for hearing it can easily be done through the price mechanism.

Soundproofing new residential units, as Nadeau’s bill would require, will obviously raise the costs of those units. Tenants who’d gladly accept a little more noise—and a lower price to live next to bustling commercial areas—will instead be forced to pay for a benefit they don’t really want.

Developers will either have a harder time filling up buildings made more expensive by regulation or alternatively have to accept less profit renting out soundproofed units that no one was ready to pay for. Either way, their incentive to create more housing in an already expensive city is marginally reduced.

If there really is a market demand for quiet, insulated units in noisy areas, then builders need no government encouragement to soundproof.

There would be some amount of schadenfreude in seeing Nadeau’s bill pass. People who moved into a major city famous for its amplified street music would have their petty noise complaints rebound on them in the form of higher rents.

But that would be a shameful joy for a reason. The solution to overly sensitive newcomers isn’t to placate their complaints with coercive regulation. Rather, it should be to foster a more tolerant atmosphere of the sounds, sights, and, yes, even smells of the city through voluntary means.

People who are still bothered by hearing go-go music can seek out apartments in quieter parts of the city, or seek out pricier units that come with the soundproofing they demand. If that proves too expensive, there’s always the option of decamping to Arlington.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3cF9opa
via IFTTT

President Joe Biden will outline plans for $2.25 trillion in new spending on infrastructure, financed by massive tax hikes on businesses and individuals, during a speech scheduled to be delivered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, later today.

Yes, “Infrastructure Week” has finally arrived.

Citing congressional sources briefed on the plan Tuesday, The New York Times reports that Biden will propose $625 billion in federal spending on traditional infrastructure items like roads, bridges, mass transit, railroads, and ports. Additional spending will be earmarked for upgrading utilities, improving power grids, and expanding rural broadband internet service. There will also be funding for some items that seem to have little to do with infrastructure, including $400 billion for “home care for the elderly and disabled,” $300 billion to “revive U.S. manufacturing,” and another $300 billion to provide for more affordable housing, according to The Washington Post.

The infrastructure package will also be tied to the White House’s plans for tackling climate change, including the goal of putting America on course for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. To that end, Biden will reportedly propose electrifying the entire federal government vehicle fleet.

To pay for all this, the White House will propose raising the corporate income tax from 21 percent to 28 percent. That would generate an estimated $2.1 trillion over 10 years, but it would also reduce America’s future economic growth and likely cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. When you include state-level corporate income taxes, a federal rate of 28 percent would mean American businesses would incur the highest tax rates in the developed world.

“As the details come out, you’ll hear advocates claim these new investments will actually pay for themselves through new growth or that deficits don’t matter,” predicts Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit that advocates for smaller deficits. She notes that a recent analysis from the Congressional Budget Office and Penn Wharton Budget Model suggests that debt-financed infrastructure spending produces a net negative return on the initial investment.

Already, the usual suspects are pushing for Biden to propose even more spending.

This is not nearly enough. The important context here is that it’s $2.25T spread out over 10 years.

For context, the COVID package was $1.9T for this year *alone,* with some provisions lasting 2 years.

Needs to be way bigger. https://t.co/eTQ7cxuTzF

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 30, 2021

More spending is indeed likely to be coming down the pike behind the infrastructure bill—as are more tax increases. The Times reports that what Biden will announce Wednesday afternoon is merely the first half of a two-part “Build Back Better” agenda that will ultimately cost about $4 trillion.

Splitting the package in half makes quite a bit of political sense. Infrastructure spending enjoys bipartisan support in Congress because it allows lawmakers to shower money on contractors in their districts—and because it provides an excuse for putting up big signs everywhere reminding constituents that their tax dollars are being used effectively for once.

Hiking the corporate income tax will be far less popular, but that’s been Democrats’ biggest tax policy priority since Republicans lowered the rate from 35 percent to 21 percent in 2017. Attaching that to the infrastructure bill gives it the best chance of passing.

Still, there is plenty to critique about what Biden is rolling out on Wednesday. For one, American manufacturing doesn’t need $300 billion in government spending to be “revived” when outputs are already at or near record highs. Removing the Trump administration’s tariffs on imported steel and aluminum would be a far less expensive boost for manufacturers. Likewise, making housing more affordable doesn’t require pumping Americans’ tax dollars into subsidies for developers and builders, but sweeping away government mandates that drive up the cost of construction.

FREE MINDS

Most Americans are more likely to seek out COVID vaccines at local pharmacies than at government-run mass vaccination sites.

Who would have guessed? Not the Biden administration, which has spent more than $4 billion to set up 21 “vaccination hubs” in California, Florida, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Texas and more than 1,000 government-run sites in community centers all over the country—but is now reconsidering that plan, Politico reports:

FREE MARKETS

New York will be the 14th state to legalize recreational marijuana as soon as Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs a bill now sitting on his desk. Perhaps he’s hoping that New Yorkers will forget that he’s been a terrible governor if they can finally buy some legal weed?

My statement on the legislation passed tonight by the NYS Legislature to legalize adult-use cannabis: pic.twitter.com/CqYs6oLWTn

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) March 31, 2021

Unfortunately, President Joe Biden is still living in the 1990s and opposes federal legalization, Reason’s C.J. Ciaramella reports.

QUICK HITS

• Rep. Matt Gaetz (R–Fla.) is being investigated by the FBI for allegedly violating federal sex trafficking laws by paying for a 17-year-old girl with whom he was romantically involved to travel with him. Gaetz claims the investigation is part of an extortion plot led by a former Department of Justice employee.

• The Minneapolis trial of former cop Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd after kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes, included damning testimony from eyewitnesses on Tuesday.

• Former Nixon henchman G. Gordon Liddy, mastermind of the Watergate burglary, is dead.

•Andrea O’Sullivan has some answers if you’re wondering whether non-fungible tokens are a scam (or secretly useful).

• Want to feel really old?

Independence Day will be 25 years old this summer. pic.twitter.com/QSofr5TMGH

— Ryan Vooris (@ryanvooris) March 31, 2021

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

Last week, Rutgers University announced that returning students must be vaccinated against COVID-19. The policy states that “Students may request an exemption from the vaccination requirement for medical or religious reasons.” The scope of those exemptions, however, is unclear.

As we speak, law schools are no doubt holding discussions about whether they can impose vaccine mandates. State schools will have less latitude than private schools, in light of the Free Exercise clause, as well as state RFRAs. But I suspect schools, in general, will decide to impose some form of a vaccine mandate.

Imagine if every student in a 1L section is vaccinated. The school could eliminate the need for six (or three) feet of distancing. Students could once again sit in close proximity to their classmates. Masks would not be required. Professors could walk around the room without fear of infection. And instruction could return to what it was in 2019.

But what about students who refuse to be vaccinated? They may be stuck on Zoom. Perhaps those dynamics will provide a cudgel for students to get the jab over the next few months.

I recently received my first dose. I had a bit of fatigue, but no adverse symptoms. My arm was sore, but I quickly forgot about it. In class, I encouraged my students to get vaccinated, and explained (per school policy) any absence related to the shot would be excused. I hope other professors can likewise encourage their students. In Texas, all adults are eligible for the shot. And more and more states are moving in that direction.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Pqb2lM
via IFTTT