Category: reason

Quebec has proposed a new law to tax unvaccinated people. No, there is no mandate. Still, Canadian Civil Libertarians worry that the tax would in fact operate as a mandate:

Cara Zwibel, acting general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said it might however violate Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms if viewed as “a way of compelling people to get vaccinated”.

It was not clear if the tax’s goal is to convince more people to get vaccinated or to finance health care, she said.

The Canadian Supreme Court could follow the lead of the NFIB saving construction.

The post Quebec doesn't mandate vaccination; it taxes the unvaccinated! appeared first on Reason.com.

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Wednesday evening, the House Rules Committee posted a 735-page draft bill that includes a hodgepodge of voting rights provision. Derek Muller posted a thread that explains some of the more important changes from prior version of the bill. And Chris Walker flagged Section 8006, which creates a new independent Office of Democracy Advancement and Innovation. This office would be headed by a single director, who serves a six-year term. The statute imposes this restriction on his tenure:

The Director may be removed from office by the President. If the President removes the Director, the President shall communicate in writing the reasons for the removal to both Houses of Congress not later than 30 days before hand.

With this statute, it would be impossible for the President to remove the director right away. There must be at least a thirty-day lead-time, in which the President provides a written justification for that removal. And, presumably the President has zero control during that thirty-day window when the “independent” Director knows he is on his way out.

Chris and Aaron Nielsen wrote a new paper suggesting that the Congress can discourage the President from using his removal power, short of imposing for-cause protection. But their article is skeptical of the thirty-day restriction. Aaron and Chris explain that current law require thirty-days notice before removing Inspectors Generals. But Presidents Obama and Trump evaded that requirement by placing the IGs on administrative leave for thirty days, then removing them. Yet the D.C. Circuit upheld this workaround, finding that “placement on administrative leave . . . did not constitute removal from office.” Aaron and Chris raise the obvious constitutional difficulties:

Because a pre-firing notice requirement strikes us as raising constitutional questions and is easily side-stepped by the president through paid administrative leave, we do not include it in Congress’s anti-removal power toolkit outlined in Part III infra.

I can’t see how this tenure protection survives after Seila Law. For a full month, the President is stuck with an “independent” Director that cannot be controlled. Moreover, the Director already knows he will soon be out of a job. That expiration date could provide even more incentive to misbehave. Sort of like when George Costanza was trying to get fired, but Steinbrenner wouldn’t get rid of him.

There is another related area of federal law. The National Defense Authorization Act required the executive branch to provide Congress with thirty-days advance notice before transferring certain detainees from Guantanamo Bay. But in 2014, President Obama did not provide advance notice before he transferred six detainees. At the time, these released detainees were part of a trade to bring back Bowe Bergdahl. How did Obama get around this statute? Initially, at least, the Executive Branch said that the thirty-day restriction infringed on the President’s Article II powers. I wrote about the constitutional issues with the release in an unpublished article:

Initially, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel justified the release on the President’s inherent Article II powers, as a rationale for his failure to comply with the law: “we believe that the president of the United States is commander in chief, [and] has the power and authority to make the decision that he did under Article II of the Constitution.” White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice—a Sunday-morning show stalwart—similarly alluded to the President’s inherent powers during an interview on This Week, “We had reason to be concerned that this was an urgent and an acute situation, that his life could have been at risk. We did not have 30 days to wait. And had we waited and lost him, I don’t think anybody would have forgiven the United States government.”

Alas, the anti-Article II Obama Administration walked back that statement.

Shortly thereafter, the Administration attempted to walk back that position, and the National Security Council released a more refined statement, not based on inherent powers: the “Administration determined that the notification requirement should be construed not to apply to this unique set of circumstances.” Further, “Because such interference would significantly alter the balance between Congress and the President, and could even raise constitutional concerns, we believe it is fair to conclude that Congress did not intend that the Administration would be barred from taking the action it did in these circumstances.” The White House Press Secretary likewise explained, “The administration determined that given the unique and exigent circumstances, such a transfer should go forward notwithstanding the notice requirement of the NDAA, because of the circumstances.”

At the time, Jack Goldsmith eviscerated this rationale.

I suspect the Biden Administration would oppose this thirty-day restriction on similar grounds.

The post The New Voting Rights Bill Creates The Independent Office of Democracy Advance and Innovation appeared first on Reason.com.

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I mean, when we’re done with the Greek letters, we’ve got to be done, right? Right?

The bad news: You think o-micron is contagious, just wait until o-mega.

The post The Good News About Coronavirus: We Have Less Than Half the Greek Alphabet Left! appeared first on Reason.com.

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On December 17, 2021, San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the city’s Tenderloin district, which will lead to an increased police presence in the epicenter of the city’s growing homelessness and addiction crisis. 

“It is time for the reign of criminals to end,” she said in a press conference. “It comes to an end when we are more aggressive with law enforcement & less tolerant of all the BULLSHIT that has destroyed our city.” It was a sharp turnaround for Breed, who after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 called for “ending the use of police in responding to non-criminal activity.”

Breed was roundly criticized by progressive politicians and groups like the Coalition on Homelessness, who castigated the move as an “expansion of strategies that have been tried and failed” that would contribute to the “instability and poor public health outcomes” of people living on the streets. 

Michael Shellenberger, the author of the controversial new book San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, has called Mayor Breed’s new “tough love” approach a “big step in the right direction.” Better known as a pro-nuclear-power environmentalist, Shellenberger appeared on The Reason Interview in July 2020 to discuss his book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.

Today, Shellenberger talks with guest host Zach Weissmueller about the homelessness crisis in America’s big cities, which the environmentalist says is actually an addiction-and-mental-health crisis enabled by progressive policies that permit open-air drug scenes on public property, prevent police from enforcing the law, and undermine the creation of a functional mental health system. Zach talks with Shellenberger about his foray into social policy, his critiques of both progressive and libertarian politics, and how he thinks America’s big cities can clean up their streets without grossly violating civil liberties.

The post Michael Shellenberger: How Progressives Ruined American Cities appeared first on Reason.com.

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When it comes to spurring remediation of the log4j bug, the FTC’s other foot, I argue, is lodged firmly in its mouth.  It has published what can only be described as a regulatory blog post, reminding everyone of the $700 million in fines imposed on Equifax and threatening “to use its full legal authority to pursue companies that fail to take reasonable steps to protect consumer data from exposure as a result of Log4j.” Tatyana Bolton defends the agency from a charge of heavy-handedness, arguing that this is the best way to get companies to patch quickly and that only “reasonable steps” are required. I think we’ll hear “we only asked for reasonable steps” a lot from the FTC, now that it turns out that fixing the Log4j mess is going to require a lot more that regulatory muscle flexing. I also argue that the FTC’s tough-guy pose is just that; when talking about the open source maintainers who actually have to generate many of the patches, the FTC doesn’t threaten them with its “full legal authority. Instead, it acknowledges that open source coders “don’t always have adequate resources and personnel,” something the FTC “will consider as we work to address the root issues that endanger user security.” Hmm, maybe Equifax should have pleaded inadequate resources and saved itself $700 million.

Speaking of fallible regulators, Glenn Gerstell gives us a tour of China’s tech regulatory landscape, and the remarkable decline it has caused in the fortunes of consumer tech firms there, something the NYT covered in detail last week. Is that good news for Silicon Valley or for US competitiveness? Sadly, probably not, I conclude.

Mark MacCarthy explains why a proposal to combine cryptocurrency with Signal is causing angst among Signal’s supporters, who fear an expansion of the end-to-end encrypted service’s “regulatory attack surface.”

Glenn covers the latest story about security risks and telecom gear from China.

Mark and I dig into the growing enthusiasm for regulating big Silicon Valley companies as gatekeepers.  The Germans are about to apply that approach to Google. And the South Koreans are doing the same to Apple and its app store payment policies.

Tatyana notes the press coverage about possible tensions between two talented and strong cybersecurity officials in the White House: Anne Neuberger and Chris Inglis. I put Glenn on the spot about claims that Anne has “a particular tendency to clash with lawyers.” That would only make me love her more, but to my regret, Glenn (who, as NSA’s top lawyer, worked with her for years) absolves her of the charge.

Mark and I handicap the probability that the plaintiff will succeed in a highly charged lawsuit against Facebook/Meta for bringing together the boogaloo conspirators who killed a federal protective officer. It’s a long shot, but if “negligent design” turns out to create liability for software and algorithms, Signal will have an even greater attack surface than its fans are now worried about.

Glenn explains the charges brought in China against Walmart for breaches of cybersecurity laws (hint: it’s mostly not breaches of cybersecurity laws). Speaking of surprises that aren’t surprises, Glenn also covers the announcement by Lloyd’s of London that cyber insurance won’t cover cyber-attacks attributable to nation-states. 

Finally, I devote a few minutes to a rant about the Justice Department’s decision to expand charges against Joe Sullivan, Uber’s former CISO, for his role in paying “bug bounties” to hackers who looked more like crooks than bounty hunters when they compromised a bunch of Uber records. More than a year after charging Sullivan with obstruction of justice for using the “bug bounty” justification to keep the whole thing quiet, Justice piled on new charges of wire fraud for more or less the same thing. Glenn and I both question the decision to do this without any new facts to base the new charges on. And I point out the logical consequence of telling breach responders that they could face wire fraud charges if they decide not to disclose the breach (or maybe delay notice too long). The new Justice tack will (or should be) fatal to the FBI’s desire to be called in to assist and observe while companies are dealing with breaches.  If  there’s even a small risk that a decision to delay or withhold notice could lead to a criminal investigation, why would any GC want to have an FBI agent sitting in the room while the decision is being made?

Download the 389th Episode (mp3)

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Rent control is not a good idea. Today we learned it’s not a funny one, either.

This morning, The New York Times released a short documentary starring self-described video journalist, comedian, and democratic socialist activist Jeff Seal attempting to make the comedic case for a controversial “good cause eviction” bill currently under consideration in the New York Legislature.

The bill, sponsored by socialist state Sen. Julie Salazar (D, WF–New York City), would require landlords to renew lease agreements with their current tenants, and prevent them evicting renters except for a few enumerated instances of “good cause.”

Should the bill pass, tenants could only be removed for things like engaging in criminal behavior on the property, creating nuisances, violating substantive provisions of their lease, damaging their unit, or not paying their rent. That latter provision comes with a major asterisk, however.

Salazar’s bill would still protect tenants from eviction for non-payment of rent if their rent rose by the lesser of 3 percent or 150 percent of inflation. Should that happen, they’d have the right to argue in eviction proceedings that said rent increase wasn’t “reasonable.” Landlords would be required to prove their rent increase was in fact reasonable.

This functionally makes the bill rent control by another means. Though Salazar has protested that description, it’s hard to see what else to call it.

1. Evictions are legal proceedings. This is true under current law. Good Cause would not change this fact.
2. A “rebuttable presumption” against unreasonable rent increases is not a rent cap.
3. Nuisance, criminal acts, etc also constitute Good Cause to evict in this bill.

— Julia Salazar (@JuliaCarmel__) January 7, 2022

(No one is arguing, for instance, that a near-identical policy in St. Paul, Minnesota, which caps rent increases at 3 percent but allows landlords to apply for exemptions, is not rent control.)

Landlord groups have therefore levied all the standard criticisms of rent control at Salazar’s bill. They argue that the policy disincentives developers from building new housing, and encourages landlords of existing units to either take properties off the rental market or spend less money maintaining them.

“Strict regulations lead to reduced quality and lower quantity of rental housing,” Joseph Condon, general counsel for landlord group the Community Housing Improvement Program, told RealDeal earlier this week. “There’s no example throughout history showing otherwise.”

These arguments, and the research supporting them, gets short shrift in Seal’s mini-documentary. Instead, he spends 12 minutes (it feels longer) alternating between his two roles as funny man and newsman, while not doing a particularly good job at either.

The opening minutes has Seal, dressed up as a School House Rock! bill, singing about Salazar’s eviction legislation. We then transition to his interviews with one set of tenants being evicted so that their landlords can “gut, renovate, and fill the building with new, higher-paying tenants,” and another who says she lives with broken appliances and fixtures out of fear that her landlord will evict her if she demands repairs.

Whether it’s a good thing that markets provide property owners with reasons to improve their buildings goes unexplored. The documentary also fails to explain how limiting the amount landlords can make from their properties would lead them to spend more money on them.

But before the viewer has too much time to dwell on these questions, Seal is back in his School House Rock! costume asking Salazar herself hard-hitting questions about her bill, including “why is the landlord lobby so dead set against it?” and “Basically, you need as many New Yorkers as possible to know about it?”

He’s then off performing dance numbers about good cause evictions for bewildered subway riders, and listing details of the bill during a game of charades to raise awareness about the legislation.

The video does contain a truncated back-and-forth between Seal and good cause eviction critic Sherwin Belkin, a real estate lawyer, but it’s not particularly substantive. Seal says that tenants who pay their rent shouldn’t have their rent increase faster than inflation, while Belkin counters that that’s just what happens in a capitalist system.

The video then closes with Seal urging people to support the bill and even to contact specific members of the state legislature who are still on the fence about it.

That last segment cements the video as not just cringe but cringe activism.

Perhaps that’s permissible given that the video is clearly labeled as a work of ‘opinion.’ It’s nevertheless notable that the Times‘ straight news coverage of Salazar’s good cause eviction bill—which might present readers with a little more substantive criticism of it—has been pretty skimpy. It’s gotten a passing reference in one article so far this year.

Seal isn’t wrong to highlight that housing costs in New York, and particularly New York City, are incredibly high and add a lot of uncertainty to the lives of lower-income renters.

Nevertheless, his video spends no time at all exploring the role of government-imposed limits on new housing supply or how those constraints affect housing supply and prices. If he’d dug a little deeper, he might’ve learned that prior to the pandemic, New York City was adding jobs at an impressive rate while the city itself and its New York suburbs were not building close to enough housing to accommodate these new workers.

Experts blame that discrepancy on low- and non-residential zoning, parking requirements, and other policies that limit the construction of housing in areas where people want to live. New Jersey—which has far fewer restrictions on supply and a more modest good cause eviction policy with no rent cap—is responsible for building the bulk of the region’s new housing. Consequently, it’s a much more affordable place to live as well.

Seal wants New York to adopt more a stringent version of New Jersey’s eviction protections. Copying its more relaxed rules on new development would be the better option, and one supported by empirical research that shows building more housing will lead to lower housing prices. Renters with means have the option of moving into newly constructed buildings instead of outbidding lower-income tenants for an insufficient number of existing (and, yes, often dated) units.

That lowers the chances that the tenants profiled in Seal’s video will face the kinds of unaffordable rent increases that would force them out of their long-time homes. Landlords, forced to compete with new supply, would also have to fight harder to retain existing tenants by keeping their units in a better state of repair.

One doesn’t need a subway dance number to get this idea across.

The post <em>The New York Times</em> Posts Pro-Rent-Control Cringe appeared first on Reason.com.

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