Category: reason

After a couple of close losses at the Supreme Court this week, President Donald Trump went on a Twitter tirade demanding “NEW JUSTICES” and joined other conservatives in demanding that the court be even more politicized than it already is.

The recent Supreme Court decisions, not only on DACA, Sanctuary Cities, Census, and others, tell you only one thing, we need NEW JUSTICES of the Supreme Court. If the Radical Left Democrats assume power, your Second Amendment, Right to Life, Secure Borders, and…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020

…Religious Liberty, among many other things, are OVER and GONE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020

This venting followed two major rulings announced this week. On Monday, the Supreme Court held that employers cannot fire workers for being gay or transgender. Trump didn’t seem to disagree at first, but later changed his tune. And yesterday, the court upheld the Obama-era Deferred Action Against Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, which protects some illegal immigrants who entered the country as children from being deported; Trump has tried to scrap it.

But this Twitter rant is more than that. Trump is also outlining what could be a central campaign issue as he heads into re-election. Four years ago, the promise that he would appoint a conservative to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia was one of the main reasons that Trump was able to hold the conservative coalition together despite his obvious shortcomings. It may have been the main reason, to judge from my own conversations with conservatives who were less than enamored with Trump but voted for him anyway.

The stakes were more well-defined in 2016 because there was a vacant seat on the bench. But with the economy in a coronavirus-induced snooze and Trump losing ground in national polls, the president seems eager again to make the Supreme Court a major part of the argument for his re-election.

The idea is re-energize turned-off conservatives: “Vote Trump, or everything you love and value will be gone!”

On the other hand, some conservatives may be less likely to back Trump because Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, authored the majority opinion in the workplace discrimination case. It’s not hard to imagine Trump scaring them back into line with the threat of what a Democratic presidency would do to the court. But it is also not necessarily wise for an incumbent to campaign against his own appointees.

Turning every presidential election into a referendum about the future of the federal judiciary—which is supposed to be a mechanism for settling disputes, not a means for owning the libs—seems imprudent, but both major parties have all but abandoned any pretense of seeing the court as neutral or apolitical. Probably the best we could hope for is exactly what the nine justices displayed this week: a willingness to rule with independence from the gale-force political winds constantly whipping around them.

---

FREE MINDS

A labor council in Seattle that represents 150 unions and more than 100,000 workers voted to expel the Seattle Police Officers Guild. Getting booted from the county-wide labor council means the police union will no longer benefit from typical union solidarity as it heads into its next contract negotiation with the city, The Seattle Times notes. The apparent aim is to weaken police unions’ political power, as nationwide protests bring new attention to these unions’ role in protecting bad cops.

---

FREE MARKETS

The modern supermarket is a miracle—one that we might more fully appreciate after the past few months, writes Bianca Bosker for The Atlantic:

Yet in recent months, the supermarket has assumed a new centrality in Americans’ lives. Cashiers, stockers, distributors, wholesalers, packers, pickers, and truck drivers have, even in the absence of adequate health safeguards, continued working to ensure that shelves stay stocked. Foodtowns, Nugget Markets, and Piggly Wigglys have emerged as crucial lifelines, spawning a broad reappreciation for one of the most distinctly American institutions. Grocery shopping is no longer one in a long list of mundane errands. For many people, it’s the errand—the only one—and it now seems not inevitable, but somewhat amazing to be able to do at all.

The evolution of small-town grocers and city markets into the 50,000-square-foot behemoths of today is an innovation that could only have happened in America, Bosker argues. And what you see on the shelves is the product of massive supply chains, obsessive commitment to efficiency, and careful scrutiny of shoppers’ psychology. Bookmark this one for your Saturday morning coffee.

---

ELECTION UPDATE

She may be the last person to realize it, but Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) announced that she will not be Joe Biden’s running mate:

BREAKING: Sen. Klobuchar announces she is withdrawing from consideration to be Joe Biden's vice presidential choice: "I think this is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket." pic.twitter.com/xk4zZIP7Yd

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 19, 2020

Klobuchar was reportedly on Biden’s shortlist for the veep slot, but her time as a prosecutor in Minneapolis has become a major red flag in recent weeks: She declined to prosecute cops involved in a fatal shooting in 2007, even though she’d garnered a reputation for ramping up prosecutions across the board.

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is asking for more presidential debates this fall. Three are currently scheduled: September 29 at the University of Notre Dame, October 15 at the University of Michigan, and October 22 at Belmont University.

---

QUICK HITS

• Happy Juneteenth!

• Australia was hit by a massive cyberattack.

• AMC Theaters, the world’s largest theater chain, is hoping to re-open some locations by July 15, just in time for the planned releases of Disney’s live-action Mulan and Christopher Nolan’s Tenet.

• Remember when social distancing mattered?

NYC is expecting 1 million people for the largest #BlackLivesMatter protest ever at City Hall tomorrow. Don’t miss it.

— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) June 19, 2020

• When the National Basketball Association resumes playing next month, players will wear smart rings to track their locations monitor for COVID-19 symptoms.

• The color of money.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/37L8CCZ
via IFTTT

There have been a series of recent incidents in which individuals who offended one or more members of the far left have been “canceled,” i.e., social media mobs have attacked them until they lost their livelihoods. On a scale of egregiousness, let’s say it ranges from James Bennett of the New York Times, forced to resign for publishing a controversial op-ed by a U.S. Senator,  as a “1” to Emmanuel Cafferty, a Mexican-American blue collar worker who lost his “dream job” after a Twitter witch-hunter falsely accused him of flashing a white power gesture at a BLM rally, as a “10.”

I suspect the vast majority of us, on all points of the political spectrum, don’t want to live in a society where Twitter Stasi are constantly looking for wrongthink to report to one’s employer; and in the long-run, cancel culture is bound to move from private channels to the government. So the following paragraphs with which I concluded my 2003 book, You Can’t Say That! were not exactly about “cancel culture” which wasn’t a thing then, but are close enough to be quite relevant:

Finally, if civil liberties are to be preserved Americans will need to both develop thicker skin, and to expect other to be reasonably thick-skinned. A society that has a legal system that expects such thick skin is likely to get it. On the other hand, if the legal system gives people a legal remedy for insult, they are more likely to feel insulted. This is true for two reasons. First, as economists point out, if you subsidize something, you get more of it. If the legal remedies of antidiscrimination law, particularly monetary remedies, subsidize feelings of outrage and insult, we will get more feelings of outrage and insult, a net social loss. Economists have also noted the psychological endowment effect: once people are endowed with a right, they lose far more utility once that right is interfered with than if it had never been granted at all.

Unfortunately, Americans increasingly increasingly coddle and even reward the hypersensitive, perversely encouraging more people to be hypersensitive. In one notorious incident, a Washington, D.C. official, was forced to resign for using the word “niggardly” at a meeting because the word sounded like a racial epithet, even though it is not (it’s a synonym, of Scandinavian origin, for “miserly”). It should hardly be surprising, then, that people are suing and winning damages when offended at work, when excluded by a private club or turned down as a roommate, or for being fired from a church-run school after refusing to obey church doctrine.

Yet preserving liberalism, and the civil liberties that go with it, requires a certain level of virtue by the citizenry. Among those necessary virtues is tolerance of those who intentionally or unintentionally offend, and sometimes, when civil liberties are implicated, who blatantly discriminate. A society that puts equality—in terms of the enforcement of draconian enforcement of antidiscrimination laws to alleviate every slight—ahead of civil liberties will end up with neither equality nor civil liberties. The violation of civil liberties to achieve equality will eat away at all constitutional restraints on the government, and the additional power garnered by the government, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests. In these days of the Oprahization of public discourse, with even presidential candidates swearing that they feel the public’s pain, asking for a measure of fortitude in the face of offense and discrimination is asking a lot. Yet, in the end, it is a small price to pay for preserving civil liberties.

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

However grudgingly, most government officials have come to the realization that many Americans are sincerely concerned about abusive policing practices and the disparate treatment of minority communities by law enforcement. That means we’re seeing competing proposals from lawmakers as they race to get on the right side of the national movement for reform. But not all proposals are equally worthy, or even serious.

The most promising of the proposals so far is the Ending Qualified Immunity Act from Rep. Justin Amash (L-Mich.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). At four pages long, dealing with one subject, and clearly written, the bill is a model piece of legislation.

The bill would abolish qualified immunity, which “protects a government official from lawsuits alleging that the official violated a plaintiff’s rights, only allowing suits where officials violated a ‘clearly established’ statutory or constitutional right,” in the words of Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute. It’s a much-abused doctrine that has shielded police from consequences for abusive actions for decades.

The strength of the Ending Qualified Immunity Act could also be its weakness: it deals with one concern, not the host of problems that beset modern policing. There’s nothing in here about civil asset forfeiture, racial bias, militarization, no-knock raids, etc. But that should limit the opportunity for debate and delay; lawmakers either support the one proposed reform in the bill, or they don’t.

The main reform proposal from Democrats is the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, sponsored in the House by Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), which takes on rather more topics than the Amash-Pressley bill. In 134 pages, it addresses racial profiling, data collection and the tracking of police misconduct, body cameras for law-enforcement officers, no-knock warrants, chokeholds, and the distribution of military equipment to police departments. Going beyond qualified immunity, which applies to state and local cops, the bill also seeks to rein-in use of force by federal officers.

There’s a lot in here to like, such as the core reforms. There’s also quite a bit to argue about, such as dramatically expanding the federal government’s role in ways that may prove counterproductive (more federal funding for policing will inevitably result in more policing). And there’s much to wonder over the fate of, such as a police misconduct registry and extensive data collection that, as years pass, are likely to be as neglected as those never-published excessive-force reports.

If it can win approval, the Justice in Policing Act of 2020 has the potential, on balance, to nudge policing in a healthier direction. But this is far from perfect legislation and it’s easy to envision it stalling in the Senate over disagreements about any of a dozen different proposals.

By contrast, the Republican JUSTICE Act is weaker tea. The bill doesn’t address qualified immunity at all—sponsor Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) called such a provision a “poison pill” for his party. It does make federal funding for police departments conditional on restricting the use of chokeholds, requires the use of body cameras by officers, punishes falsified police reports, and criminalizes cops having sex with prisoners (which, it’s hard to believe, actually has to be addressed). It also (despite much initial sparring over the issue) makes lynching a federal crime just as the Democrats’ bill does.

Most of the GOP bill, though, is about kicking the can down the road. It proposes gathering data on police conduct, requires reports about the use of no-knock warrants, sets record-retention standards, and creates training programs for officers that will, hopefully, eventually improve their conduct. And it would create commissions, apparently to hold lots of meetings to determine if something else should be done in the future.

Take a crack at predicting the fate of those databases, reports, programs, and commissions 10 or 15 years down the line. The JUSTICE Act is less a piece of legislation than it is 106 pages dedicated to establishing new federal approaches to gathering dust.

An important caveat to keep in mind for all proposed policing and justice reforms is that policies passed in the heat of the moment will be interpreted and implemented by government employees long after popular enthusiasm fades. We’ve had reformist moments in the past that were sabotaged by bureaucrats and politicians.

In 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, otherwise a gift to law enforcement agencies, included a section requiring data collection on the use of excessive force by police departments and the publication of annual reports. But “we still don’t know how many of these incidents occur each year … the reports were never issued,” as famed police whistleblower Frank Serpico pointed out in 2015.

“The brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police has been condemned by former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama,” noted USA Today columnist James Bovard recently. “However, police violence spiraled out of control in part because each of those presidents failed to obey a law compelling the feds to track police killings around the nation.”

Ultimately, any programs meant to monitor or limit the government’s enforcement power will be administered by officials not especially committed to such restrictions. Temper your expectations accordingly.

At present, the bar for police reform is set by the Amash-Pressley bill. Given its limited but important focus and the fact that it’s a one-time change that doesn’t have to be administered over the course of years by disinterested or even hostile bureaucrats, the legislation is a no-brainer. Any lawmaker unwilling to support abolishing qualified immunity is not serious about reforming policing.

The Justice in Policing Act of 2020 is probably worthy of passage for its core reforms, even though it could really do with less dedication to subsidizing that which it’s supposedly trying to restrain. The ultimate effectiveness of data-gathering and the misconduct registry will require both continuing public attention and government efficiency—which is to say, don’t place your hopes on those parts of the legislation.

The JUSTICE Act is not seriously in the running unless it gets major revisions. Forget it.

Will any of these bills change the nature of policing in a positive way? Polls find that a clear majority of Americans want to retain police departments as we know them, but with major overhauls to address abuses. Two of these bills offer some hope for just that, which is a start in the right direction.

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

We have edited DHS v. Regents of the University of California down to 22 pages. It will (likely) be used in the 2020 Barnett/Blackman supplement.

You can download it at this link: https://bit.ly/RegentsEdited.

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

The coronavirus pandemic has been devastating for the nation’s restaurants, as health concerns and forced closures dry up most of their business. The phased reopenings that most cities and states are now implementing are proving too little, too late for many eateries to hope of being profitable again.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has now announced the details of an executive order that would allow the city’s restaurants—which have been forced to subsist on takeout and delivery service since March—to open outdoor dining by Monday.

The Mayor’s Open Restaurants plan would let restaurants set up tables and chairs in curb lanes and sidewalks, reports the New York Post, as well as patios and backyard spaces if they have them. Come July, they’ll be able to start serving alfresco meals on streets that have been temporarily closed to traffic.

Indoor dining rooms would remain closed during this second phase of the city’s reopening.

“At a very difficult time for the bar & restaurant industry, this program will help them stay afloat,” tweeted City Councilmember Keith Powers. “It also gives us a vision for a city where we better use outdoor space and streets.

Several other cities and states have been letting restaurants spill out onto sidewalks, parking spaces, and even streets as part of a partial easing of their lockdown orders. Other jurisdictions are going farther by allowing indoor dining rooms to open, albeit with the requirement that they operate at reduced capacity and follow social distancing protocols.

The hope is that this will let businesses start making money again while mitigating the risks that come with packed dining rooms. More likely, many restaurants will be left operating in the red.

Restaurants that have had to subsist on takeout and delivery are like “a person being on 25 percent lung capacity,” says industry analyst Aaron Allen. “You can sustain that for a period of time but it’s not healthy to do it over an extended period. With a few more chairs on the patio, you just went from 25 percent capacity to 28 percent. You need to be at a minimum of 90 percent lung capacity.”

A May survey of restaurant owners conducted by the New York City Hospitality Alliance found that two-thirds of them said they would need to reach 70 percent occupancy in order to survive.

The Open Restaurant guidelines released today specify that business can place tables on the sidewalk only directly in front of their storefront, and that they must maintain eight feet of distance between their seating and the curb.

“I’m only excited for Phase Two because it gets us closer to Phase Three when we can have a 50 percent capacity indoor crowd,” one restaurant owner told the Post.

Even indoor dining isn’t necessarily a full cure, says Nick Zukin, who owns the Mexican restaurant Mi Mero Mole in downtown Portland, Oregon.

“Most floor plans pre-Covid were designed for efficiency,” he tells Reason via email. In other words, restaurants did their best to fit as many diners into their space as possible. In normal times, Zukin says, he was able to have 60 seats for patrons while still complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act requirement that walkways be at least 30 inches wide. After redesigning his floor plan to abide by the state’s social distancing guidelines—which require six feet between customers at all times—Zukin says he’s now only able to fit 20 seats in his restaurant. He’s also had to close down his bar seating.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation has created Healthy Business permits that allow restaurants to apply for permission to set up seating on sidewalks and streets. Outdoor tables would still have to be six feet apart.

That’s feasible for Zukin—his restaurant has a nice, wide 14-foot sidewalk in front of it, by virtue of being next to a light rail line. But that’s hardly typical. “Most sidewalks do not allow this. If the city strictly enforces the new outdoor seating guidelines, I would guess at least 95 [percent] of all sidewalk seating is eliminated,” he says.

Countrywide, restaurant reservations are down about 60 percent from where they were last year, according to data from the reservation website OpenTable. Even in Florida and Arizona, which have gone further in easing their lockdown orders, restaurants are down by about half.

Allen says that a lot of restaurants will be able to survive by cutting costs, slimming down menus, and experimenting with new business models and delivery options. He still predicts that 20 percent of restaurants will closer permanently without a massive government bailout.

Today, Sen. Roger Wicker (R–Miss.) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D–Ore.) proposed a $120 billion bailout fund for restaurants.

An analysis by Allen’s firm found that two-thirds of publicly traded restaurant chains have debt burdens high enough to put them at risk of bankruptcy.

Zukin puts his restaurant’s odds of survival at 50–50, given that he’s operating in a downtown where most nearby businesses and offices are still closed. “The suburbs with lots of parking and outdoor seating or a drive-thru window is definitely the place to be now,” he says.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3enh0LO
via IFTTT

While growing up around Philadelphia in the 1970s, I had a number of interactions with police—none of which were particularly harrowing. On the night before Memorial Day, for instance, a friend and I were drinking beer (yes, we were underage) in a cemetery by the Delaware River when we saw lights flashing and were approached by officers.

Apparently, the police had gotten a tip that someone might be stealing the brass placards from the gravestones and we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We didn’t have any ID, so my friend handed a stuffed animal with his name on it to the officer. The policeman laughed, realized that we weren’t up to any serious mischief, made sure we were OK to drive home, and sent us on our way.

Quite frankly, I couldn’t imagine that scenario playing out in the same benign way today. I thought of that interaction as I’ve watched the angry, nationwide protests unfold over the disturbing death of George Floyd, where a Minneapolis officer placed his knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Many of my conservative friends, especially those who grew up in the world similar to the one I described above, have been caught off-guard by the depth of anger.

Even if some left-wing activists used the crisis to promote riots and mayhem, such mass protests do not happen in a bubble. Tens of thousands of people don’t take to the streets because of outside agitators, but because they are angry about things they’ve often experienced themselves. And many Americans—especially in minority communities—have experienced the brunt of an overall policing approach that has become overly militaristic.

Police strategies have changed dramatically in the past few decades—and not because of soaring crime. Despite recent spikes, crime rates now are much lower than at any time since the 1960s, and police can absolutely take some credit for that. I’m not naïve here. Police abuse has been a problem as long as there have been police. I’ve read about the segregated South and the way police routinely terrorized African-Americans. But something significant has happened in the years following my cemetery experience.

I point to the nation’s War on Drugs as a prime culprit. Recent commentary has correctly focused on various reasons for our current policing mess. Just as teachers’ unions make it impossible to fire bad teachers, police unions make it impossible to fire overly aggressive and even corrupt officers. Then “limited immunity” protects cops from being sued even when they violate people’s constitutional rights.

The federal 1033 program provides decommissioned military-style hardware to police departments. So, instead of sending a beat cop to deal with a routine arrest or disturbance, police nowadays like to bring out the toys—i.e., those tank-like vehicles, SWAT teams and flash-bang grenades that are more appropriate for invaders than peace officers.

But few people have talked about the war on drugs, which started in the 1980s, and conditioned police departments to behave in this more militarized way. Police first took this approach during alcohol Prohibition, as others have noted, and then stepped up the efforts after America’s leaders looked for ways to combat a spreading drug epidemic. This issue isn’t only about race, of course, given how aggressive police behave even in suburban Southern California. But these ham-fisted policies fall disproportionately on minority communities.

One of the earliest drug-war policies is “civil asset forfeiture,” which lets law enforcement quickly snatch the proceeds of drug kingpins. Police don’t need to prove that you did anything wrong before they confiscate your car or other property. The police agency merely needs to assert that the property was used in the commission of a drug crime.

“Today, the old speed traps have all too often been replaced by forfeiture traps, where local police stop cars and seize cash and property to pay for local law enforcement efforts,” wrote two federal officials who helped create the program, in a 2014 Washington Post column. “This is a complete corruption of the process, and it unsurprisingly has led to widespread abuses.” It’s led to widespread anger, too, as police mainly seize poor people’s cars rather than cartels’ assets.

It wasn’t hard to predict what would happen when police take on a siege mentality and are provided with military hardware and exempted from constitutional limitations. In a 1996 editorial, William F. Buckley’s conservative National Review wrote that “the war on drugs has failed” and is “encouraging civil, judicial and penal procedures associated with police states.”

Twenty-four years later we’re seeing the fruits of those policies, even if most observers don’t see the connection. By all means, let’s review police-disciplinary procedures, union protections, racial bias, and other causes of police abuse—but let’s not forget the way the drug war has often turned minor interactions like the one I had into violent confrontations.

This column was first published in the Orange County Register.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Ni6JUV
via IFTTT