Category: reason

More Holes in the ‘Imminent Threat’ Story on Soleimani

NBC is reporting that President Donald Trump was mulling the hit on Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani seven months ago, with war hawks such as John Bolton urging him to go for it. This further erodes the administration’s claim that the assassination was done to stop an “imminent” attack on U.S. lives.

“According to five current and senior administration officials,” NBC reports, Trump gave the order in June 2019, “with the condition that Trump would have final signoff on any specific operation to kill Soleimani.” Trump said that signoff would come if any Americans were killed, their sources said, which “explains why assassinating Soleimani was on the menu of options that the military presented to Trump two weeks ago for responding to an attack by Iranian proxies in Iraq.” That proxy attack killed a U.S. contractor.

The strike was carried out on January 3. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo quickly and repeatedly attributed it not to retribution but to an alleged imminent threat to dozens (sometimes “hundreds”) of American lives.

The killing looked like something former National Security Advisor John Bolton would have hatced, but Bolton has been gone since September. Now it seems that Bolton’s imprint may have been on this operation after all. From NBC:

After Iran shot down a U.S. drone in June, John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser at the time, urged Trump to retaliate by signing off on an operation to kill Soleimani, officials said. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also wanted Trump to authorize the assassination, officials said.

Yesterday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told Face the Nation that he knew of no “specific evidence” to support the claim that Iran was planning embassy attacks. Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.) has been blasting the Trump administration for continuing to push this story:

FREE MINDS

Anti-Catholic law in Montana comes to Supreme Court. When it considers Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue later this month, the U.S. Supreme Court “has the opportunity to do more than just settle the fate of one controversial tax credit; it could also junk Montana’s Blaine Amendment, finding it in violation of the Constitution’s religious-freedom and equal-protection clauses,” writes Nick Sibilla at The Atlantic. “In doing so, it would set a strong precedent against any law born of bigotry.”

The case concerns “a modest tax-credit scholarship program in Montana,” notes Sibilla, but it “could have major ramifications for educational-choice programs across America, which help nearly half a million students attend private schools.”

FREE MARKETS

Times editorial board lays out plans to “fortify” the FDA. On Sunday, the New York Times editorial board praised the Food and Drug Administration while worrying over its (lack of) leadership and admitting that it often fails. Its proposed solutions for “fortifying” the agency? Giving it even more power, of course. (Sigh.) To fix the FDA’s flaws, the paper claims, “the agency needs to be made stronger, not weaker.”

“Fortunately,” they write, “options for fortifying the F.D.A. abound”:

For instance, laws that would make it easier for regulators to police the cosmetics industry and to hold medical device companies to account have been floating through Congress for years. A group of former F.D.A. commissioners last year proposed an even bolder fix: Restore the agency’s autonomy by extracting it from the Department of Health and Human Services. The F.D.A.’s decisions used to be final, but for decades now they have been subject to layers of political interference. Making the agency independent, as the Federal Reserve and the Social Security Administration are, could help reverse that trend.

ELECTION 2020

Vermin Supreme won the New Hampshire Libertarian Party convention’s pick for the party’s presidential nomination. Heavy explains what this means:

The Libertarian Party hosts a series of primaries and caucuses where non-binding votes are cast, indicating a state party’s preference for its presidential candidate. These preferences are not binding and delegates who are sent to the national convention can vote for whichever candidate they prefer. New Hampshire had the first primary. This self-funded presidential preference primary was actually conducted by mail, with results announced on January 11….

So the voting of Vermin Supreme was a statement of preference, but it does not bind the delegates when they vote at the national convention on May 21-25, 2020 in Austin, Texas.

QUICK HITS

  • It was sunny and reached 70 degrees in Washington, D.C., yesterday. The White House then tweeted this picture:

Presumably, it’s a picture from earlier last week, when it did snow, although the conspiracy theorists of Twitter are having a field day:

  • Baylen Linnekin explores the FDA’s changes to food nutrition labels.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/36Qfu0O
via IFTTT

What If a Citizenship Question Doesn’t Meaningfully Reduce Census Response Rates After All?

The Trump Administration’s decision to include a citizenship question in the 2020 Census provoked substantial outrage. Many feared that inclusion of the question would depress response rates, leading to an inaccurate Census, and that it would produce a substantial undercount of people in immigrant communities, particularly in households containing noncitizens. Indeed, many suspected that was the whole point.

Fears of a significant undercount, and its consequent effects on political representation and the distribution of federal funds, prompted many states and interest groups to file suit against the Trump Administration. As the Supreme Court explained when it discussed the plaintiffs’ claim of standing to bring the suit:

Respondents assert a number of injuries—diminishment of political representation, loss of federal funds, degradation of census data, and diversion of resources—all of which turn on their expectation that reinstating a citizenship question will depress the census response rate and lead to an inaccurate population count. Several States with a disproportionate share of noncitizens, for example, anticipate losing a seat in Congress or qualifying for less federal funding if their populations are undercounted. . . .

Several state respondents here have shown that if noncitizen households are undercounted by as little as 2%—lower than the District Court’s 5.8% prediction—they will lose out on federal funds that are distributed on the basis of state population. . . .

Justice Breyer’s separate opinion also stressed the arbitrariness of including a question that would produce a less accurate enumeration of people within the country.

How can an agency support the decision to add a question to the short form, thereby risking a significant undercount of the population, on the ground that it will improve the accuracy of citizenship data, when in fact the evidence indicates that adding the question will harm the accuracy of citizenship data?

As readers know, the Court decided, 5-4, that inclusion of the citizenship question was unlawful because the Administration’s explanation for why the question was to be added seemed “contrived” and did not match the available evidence.

In 2019, the Census nonetheless conducted a significant test of the effects of including a citizenship question, and the results were not what anyone (including the Census’s own experts) expected, as documented in a recently released report. As noted by Lyman Stone, the report tells a quite different story about the effects of a citizenship question than that  upon which the Census case was litigated.

Here is what the 2019 Census Test Report (from the Executive Summary):

In 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau decided to test the operational implications of a proposed question on citizenship status on the 2020 Census. In particular, experts and stakeholders raised concerns that such a question could depress self-response rates, increase cost, and reduce the quality of the 2020 population count. An indirect study by Census Bureau researchers predicted that “adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census would lead to lower self-response rates in households potentially containing noncitizens…” compared to households with all citizens (Brown, Heggeness, Dorinski, Warren, & Yi, 2018). However, the authors recommended the ideal analysis would be to conduct a randomized controlled experiment to compare response rates on questionnaires with and without a citizenship question. . . .

The major finding of the 2019 Census Test was that there was no statistically significant difference in overall self-response rates between treatments. The test questionnaire with the citizenship question had a self-response rate of 51.5 percent; the test questionnaire without the citizenship question had a self-response rate of 52.0 percent. Although these results differ from the predicted rates in Brown’s et al. study, the results of the two studies are not
comparable since this study benefits from the randomized controlled design, which isolates the treatment effect.

The Report also found statistically significant declines in response rates among some areas and among subgroups, including areas where more than are 4.9 percent noncitizens or more than 49.5 percent are Hispanic, as well as in the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas. This decline, however, was far lower than the Census and other experts had predicted. Whereas Census experts and the Administration’s critics had expected a greater-than-five percentage point decline (or more) among particular subgroups, the actual drop as in the neighborhood of one percent. According to the report, these differences are small enough that they would not have required staffing changes for the Census’ routine follow-up responses. It’s also lower than the point at which plaintiff states claimed they would lose out on federal funding.

While these findings challenge some of the assumptions upon which the legal challenge to inclusion of the citizenship question was based, they don’t undermine the Court’s ultimate holding, which was based upon the arbitrariness and lack of candor of the Commerce Department (of which the Census is a part), not any particular assumptions about the effect of including the question. They do, however, challenge some of the assumptions that caused so many to file suit against the Census in the first place, and will make it easier for a future administration to include a citizenship question in the decennial Census, if it should so choose.

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

What If a Citizenship Question Doesn’t Meaningfully Reduce Census Response Rates After All?

The Trump Administration’s decision to include a citizenship question in the 2020 Census provoked substantial outrage. Many feared that inclusion of the question would depress response rates, leading to an inaccurate Census, and that it would produce a substantial undercount of people in immigrant communities, particularly in households containing noncitizens. Indeed, many suspected that was the whole point.

Fears of a significant undercount, and its consequent effects on political representation and the distribution of federal funds, prompted many states and interest groups to file suit against the Trump Administration. As the Supreme Court explained when it discussed the plaintiffs’ claim of standing to bring the suit:

Respondents assert a number of injuries—diminishment of political representation, loss of federal funds, degradation of census data, and diversion of resources—all of which turn on their expectation that reinstating a citizenship question will depress the census response rate and lead to an inaccurate population count. Several States with a disproportionate share of noncitizens, for example, anticipate losing a seat in Congress or qualifying for less federal funding if their populations are undercounted. . . .

Several state respondents here have shown that if noncitizen households are undercounted by as little as 2%—lower than the District Court’s 5.8% prediction—they will lose out on federal funds that are distributed on the basis of state population. . . .

Justice Breyer’s separate opinion also stressed the arbitrariness of including a question that would produce a less accurate enumeration of people within the country.

How can an agency support the decision to add a question to the short form, thereby risking a significant undercount of the population, on the ground that it will improve the accuracy of citizenship data, when in fact the evidence indicates that adding the question will harm the accuracy of citizenship data?

As readers know, the Court decided, 5-4, that inclusion of the citizenship question was unlawful because the Administration’s explanation for why the question was to be added seemed “contrived” and did not match the available evidence.

In 2019, the Census nonetheless conducted a significant test of the effects of including a citizenship question, and the results were not what anyone (including the Census’s own experts) expected, as documented in a recently released report. As noted by Lyman Stone, the report tells a quite different story about the effects of a citizenship question than that  upon which the Census case was litigated.

Here is what the 2019 Census Test Report (from the Executive Summary):

In 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau decided to test the operational implications of a proposed question on citizenship status on the 2020 Census. In particular, experts and stakeholders raised concerns that such a question could depress self-response rates, increase cost, and reduce the quality of the 2020 population count. An indirect study by Census Bureau researchers predicted that “adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census would lead to lower self-response rates in households potentially containing noncitizens…” compared to households with all citizens (Brown, Heggeness, Dorinski, Warren, & Yi, 2018). However, the authors recommended the ideal analysis would be to conduct a randomized controlled experiment to compare response rates on questionnaires with and without a citizenship question. . . .

The major finding of the 2019 Census Test was that there was no statistically significant difference in overall self-response rates between treatments. The test questionnaire with the citizenship question had a self-response rate of 51.5 percent; the test questionnaire without the citizenship question had a self-response rate of 52.0 percent. Although these results differ from the predicted rates in Brown’s et al. study, the results of the two studies are not
comparable since this study benefits from the randomized controlled design, which isolates the treatment effect.

The Report also found statistically significant declines in response rates among some areas and among subgroups, including areas where more than are 4.9 percent noncitizens or more than 49.5 percent are Hispanic, as well as in the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas. This decline, however, was far lower than the Census and other experts had predicted. Whereas Census experts and the Administration’s critics had expected a greater-than-five percentage point decline (or more) among particular subgroups, the actual drop as in the neighborhood of one percent. According to the report, these differences are small enough that they would not have required staffing changes for the Census’ routine follow-up responses. It’s also lower than the point at which plaintiff states claimed they would lose out on federal funding.

While these findings challenge some of the assumptions upon which the legal challenge to inclusion of the citizenship question was based, they don’t undermine the Court’s ultimate holding, which was based upon the arbitrariness and lack of candor of the Commerce Department (of which the Census is a part), not any particular assumptions about the effect of including the question. They do, however, challenge some of the assumptions that caused so many to file suit against the Census in the first place, and will make it easier for a future administration to include a citizenship question in the decennial Census, if it should so choose.

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

Adding Jobs but Not Housing Is a Recipe for Urban Unrest

When it comes to the country’s urban housing shortage, California gets all the headlines. Yet the situation is not much better in New York City, where surging employment growth is outpacing new construction, leading to longer commutes and higher housing costs.

Since 2008, the 22.6-million-person New York metro area has added 924,000 jobs. Despite this growth, the region has built only 457,000 units of housing, or about one new home for every two jobs. The ratio is even more skewed in New York City, where only one unit of housing has been built for every 3.55 new jobs, according to the city’s Department of Planning.

Northern New Jersey is responsible for the lion’s share of new residential development, building 40 percent of the metro’s post-recession housing despite having only 30 percent of its population and adding only 15 percent of its jobs since 2008. By comparison, New York City overall has added 70 percent of the region’s new jobs since 2008 but only 40 percent of its new housing units.

Much of this is policy-driven. New Jersey is relatively accommodating of new development, while New York City has failed to zone for enough housing to keep pace with growth. The New York suburbs, meanwhile, are positively hostile to new building.

The result is that more people are making longer commutes. The New York metro area has the fourth worst traffic in the country, and trains across the Hudson are as overcrowded as they are late. Workers seeking to avoid this drudgery by moving closer to their jobs in the city can expect to pay some of the highest rents in the country.

“Cities are labor markets,” says Michael Hendrix, an urban policy scholar with the Manhattan Institute. “If we fail to scale housing and transportation to job centers, then we are failing the basic function of a city.”

Hendrix warns that if New York continues to see commute times and housing costs grow, the economic dynamism of the region will decline. Far from embracing necessary reforms, he says policy makers are making things worse by doubling down on rent stabilization, which limits how much landlords can raise rental prices. “They’ve chosen to preserve units for people who’ve already lucked out in the housing lottery and lock out newcomers and outsiders,” he says.

New York’s housing situation has not reached California levels of dysfunction, but housing crises also aren’t created overnight. Not building enough today can mean serious problems tomorrow.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2QRSo4t
via IFTTT

Adding Jobs but Not Housing Is a Recipe for Urban Unrest

When it comes to the country’s urban housing shortage, California gets all the headlines. Yet the situation is not much better in New York City, where surging employment growth is outpacing new construction, leading to longer commutes and higher housing costs.

Since 2008, the 22.6-million-person New York metro area has added 924,000 jobs. Despite this growth, the region has built only 457,000 units of housing, or about one new home for every two jobs. The ratio is even more skewed in New York City, where only one unit of housing has been built for every 3.55 new jobs, according to the city’s Department of Planning.

Northern New Jersey is responsible for the lion’s share of new residential development, building 40 percent of the metro’s post-recession housing despite having only 30 percent of its population and adding only 15 percent of its jobs since 2008. By comparison, New York City overall has added 70 percent of the region’s new jobs since 2008 but only 40 percent of its new housing units.

Much of this is policy-driven. New Jersey is relatively accommodating of new development, while New York City has failed to zone for enough housing to keep pace with growth. The New York suburbs, meanwhile, are positively hostile to new building.

The result is that more people are making longer commutes. The New York metro area has the fourth worst traffic in the country, and trains across the Hudson are as overcrowded as they are late. Workers seeking to avoid this drudgery by moving closer to their jobs in the city can expect to pay some of the highest rents in the country.

“Cities are labor markets,” says Michael Hendrix, an urban policy scholar with the Manhattan Institute. “If we fail to scale housing and transportation to job centers, then we are failing the basic function of a city.”

Hendrix warns that if New York continues to see commute times and housing costs grow, the economic dynamism of the region will decline. Far from embracing necessary reforms, he says policy makers are making things worse by doubling down on rent stabilization, which limits how much landlords can raise rental prices. “They’ve chosen to preserve units for people who’ve already lucked out in the housing lottery and lock out newcomers and outsiders,” he says.

New York’s housing situation has not reached California levels of dysfunction, but housing crises also aren’t created overnight. Not building enough today can mean serious problems tomorrow.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2QRSo4t
via IFTTT

Brickbat: Uncovering a Problem

Liusdan Martínez Lescaille, 12, has been bullied repeatedly for wearing a kippah to school in Nuevitas, Cuba. Education officials have reacted by banning him and his brother from wearing the kippah to school. His parents, who are Sephardic Jews, say prosecutors warned them they could lose their guardianship to their children if they violate the ban.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2QNh7Xp
via IFTTT

Brickbat: Uncovering a Problem

Liusdan Martínez Lescaille, 12, has been bullied repeatedly for wearing a kippah to school in Nuevitas, Cuba. Education officials have reacted by banning him and his brother from wearing the kippah to school. His parents, who are Sephardic Jews, say prosecutors warned them they could lose their guardianship to their children if they violate the ban.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2QNh7Xp
via IFTTT

Lawson on Conservatives versus Constitutionalists

Gary Lawson, writing on Gundy v. United States decision in the Cato Supreme Court Review discusses the potential difference between conservative jurisprudence and constitutionalist jurisprudence.

If one is truly an originalist—or, as I would prefer to term it, a constitutionalist—one will not worry too much about how rule-like or standard-like a norm the Constitution prescribes in any given setting. To a constitutionalist, that is the Constitution’s call to make, not the judge’s. If the Constitution gives you a vague and mushy standard, a constitutionalist will do his or her best to apply the vague and mushy standard. There is no a priori reason to suppose that the Constitution will always prescribe crisp and clear rules, and there is a great deal of empirical evidence to the contrary. Constitutionalists think that cases should be decided on the basis of the Constitution, whatever role for courts that turns out to prescribe.

But if one is less a constitutionalist than a conservative,145 one might worry a great deal about the “appropriate” judicial role, public perceptions of the Court, the dangers of judicial “activism,” and a host of other policy-laden considerations that are not grounded in constitutional meaning. Judicial conservatives, as opposed to judicial constitutionalists or originalists, have long worried about exactly these sorts of considerations. Indeed, those considerations are a large part of what defines someone as a judicial conservative.

In the particular context of delegation, Lawson explains how this distinction explains why Justice Gorsuch is more willing to consider whether there are constitutional limits on the delegation of authority to administrative agencies than was Justice Scalia. Although Scalia acknowledged that excessive delegation could pose constitutional problems, he did not believe there was a ready, judicially administrable test to distinguish permissible delegations from impermissible ones.

For more on this distinction, see Lawson’s article with Stephen Calabresi, The Rule of Law as a Law of Law, which is styled as a response to Scalia’s famous paper, The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2FFSK7Q
via IFTTT