Category: reason

When the Chilean government announced on October 4 that it was hiking subway fares by roughly 4 cents in the capital city of Santiago, high school students started jumping turnstiles en masse. Adults soon joined in, sparking protests that have injured more than 2,500 and killed 20.

Protesters have set subway stations on fire. They have looted grocery stores. And some have even raided La Asuncion, a Catholic church, dragging pews and statues of Christ into the streets and incinerating them. Many protesters are using cacerolazo, or the banging of pots and pans, a form of protest spawned in 1971 by food shortages during President Salvador Allende’s administration.

The fare hike—since rescinded—kicked off the protests, but the movement is animated by deeper populist forces. Chile’s economy has grown significantly in the past few decades and fewer Chileans now live in poverty than ever before. But protesters say the cost of living is too high and wealth is distributed too unequally. In June, for example, the price of electricity rose by 10 percent. Many poor Chileans say health care and education are prohibitively expensive and that pensions for the elderly are too meager. (Chile lacks the state subsidies that other Latin American countries provide to reduce the cost of living.)

Protesters are calling on President Sebastián Piñera to resign and demanding an end to Chile’s “neoliberal” economic policies, which they claim are responsible for the disparity between rich and poor. It doesn’t help that Chile’s government, led by the right-wing billionaire Piñera, seems out of touch. When faced with escalating protests, he declared a state of emergency and used the military to restore order. He also implemented curfews in major cities and is closely surveilling protesters, undermining citizens’ constitutionally guaranteed speech and privacy rights.

For many Chileans, Piñera’s heavy-handed response is reminiscent of the tragedy they faced in 1973, when the U.S. helped overthrow the democratically elected Allende and replaced him with Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Though he sold off many state-owned companies and opened the country to free trade, Pinochet is better remembered for torturing, executing, and disappearing thousands of political opponents over 17 brutal years.

While most Chileans are better off thanks to the free market, Piñera’s decision to meet their protests with military violence threatens to jeopardize the country’s economic and humanitarian gains.

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Eighteen Detroit firefighters are being investigated after posing for a group photo outside of a burning house on New Year’s Eve. The house was vacant, and it was deemed too dangerous to enter. But Detroit Fire Commissioner Eric Jones said the photo was still “inappropriate and unprofessional.” “Behind every fire is a devastated family or property owner,” he said. The firefighters were reportedly celebrating the retirement of a battalion chief.

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In June 2018, President Donald Trump attended the groundbreaking ceremony for a Foxconn factory in Wisconsin. Ever exuberant in his comments, he called the project the “eighth wonder of the world” and “one of the great deals, ever.” Always a bragger, his praise was directed at himself for orchestrating the use of state subsidies and tax credits to bring the Taiwanese multinational electronics company to Wisconsin for it to manufacture high-resolution LCD screens.

To make this deal happen, the state legislature offered a subsidy package of $4.5 billion, mostly in direct cash payments, and lower-priced land acquired through eminent domain. In exchange, Foxconn promised to create more than 13,000 middle-class manufacturing jobs, a revived manufacturing sector and loads of tax revenue—the combination of which was projected to produce economic returns ranging from $39 billion to $78 billion over the next 15 years. If these returns sound like a great deal, you’ve been conned.

A year and a half after Trump paraded at the site with his golden shovel, the reality isn’t as bright. First, a few days before the ceremony, Foxconn announced that the factory would ultimately be smaller than the one initially promised. It would also be highly automated, with almost all of the assembly work done by robots, and would only require 3,000 employees—90 percent of them “knowledge workers” such as engineers, programmers and designers. There’s nothing wrong with such a modern factory, except that it’s not what Trump and other government officials thought they were buying with taxpayers’ money.

And what about the promised economic growth? Even under the deal’s original terms, there’s no way it would have produced much growth. That’s because, as is often the case, the original projections offered by economic development consultants only considered the expected benefits from the subsidies; the costs were ignored. In the real world, however, these subsidies don’t fall from the sky. Every single cent comes from additional taxes paid by actual people. When you consider these costs, the economic outlook for the project dims quite a bit.

In a recent paper on the issue, my Mercatus Center colleagues Matthew Mitchell and Michael Farren did the math and found that “the $3.6 billion in taxes needed to fund the subsidies will likely decrease Wisconsin’s long-run GDP by about $20 billion over the 15-year life of the handout. And this estimate doesn’t include the local utility infrastructure, and federal subsidies that total another $1.4 billion.” These numbers are harder to sell to taxpayers than the la-la land ones we hear about before every big subsidy deal.

Many might have assumed that this particular deal was going to be a disaster because it was orchestrated by Trump and Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s Republican governor at the time. Yes, it’s true that our current president believes in economic engineering and cronyism—which is another way to describe this kind of deal. Trump has failed elsewhere when trying to spark growth with subsidies. Take, for instance, the Carrier air conditioner plant in Indianapolis, which received large state handouts under Trump’s pressure, only to end up laying off hundreds of workers. But in such matters, many politicians on both sides of the aisle have a similarly lousy record.

And so, it would be a mistake to assume that this debacle is specific to Trump or to Foxconn.

A new paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives by Cailin Slattery of Columbia University and Owen Zidar of Princeton University looks at state and local business tax incentives and finds yet again that narrow, firm-specific tax breaks aimed at attracting businesses and boosting employment aren’t the way to go. The study shows that larger, more profitable companies are more likely to get bigger handouts. The largest deals benefit the recipients, according to their research, but not the overall state economy. Lower-income states also tend to be more generous with their handouts, only to jack up the cost per job created, sometimes up to as much as $400,000 per job.

This study is only one of many on the topic. They all find that these narrowly targeted subsidies don’t work as advertised and are typically counterproductive. Unfortunately, a slogan like “subsidized projects aren’t worth the money you pay for them” doesn’t make for a great sound bite at ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) on Wednesday strongly criticized Sens. Mike Lee (R–Utah) and Rand Paul (R–Ky.) after his two Republican colleagues argued that Congress should exercise its role as a lawful check on President Donald Trump’s military action against Iran.

“Whether you mean to or not, you’re empowering the enemy,” Graham told reporters, referring to Lee and Paul’s suggestion that the Senate formally discuss the constitutionality and necessity of Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. “We live in the real world here,” Graham added.

The South Carolina senator made his comments immediately following a press conference where Lee railed against what he called “the worst briefing [he’s] seen on a military issue.” During the meeting, Defense Department officials reportedly told members of Congress to fall in line with the Trump administration’s course of action.

“What we were told over and over again was that…we can’t have division, we can’t have dissension within our ranks, within our government, or else it sends the wrong signal to the Iranians,” Lee said. “I think that’s completely wrong.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D–Va.) today introduced a resolution that orders “the President to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of its government or military, by not later than the date that is 30 days after the date of the enactment of this joint resolution unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) introduced a similar measure in the House that will receive a full vote on Thursday.

Lee further said that when members of Congress presented Pentagon officials at the briefing with different potential war scenarios, the officials consistently demurred at going through Congress. “They were asked a number of hypotheticals about situations in which they might have to appropriately come and ask for authorization from Congress,” he said. “Not once did they say yes.”

After Lee’s press conference, Graham sought to dismiss the Utah senator’s concerns about the administration’s intransigence by saying that Soleimani was a bad guy “by any definition of the law,” and that “if we hadn’t done something, and Americans had been killed, all of these people would be tarred and feathered.”

While no elected member of either party has disputed that Soleimani was responsible for deadly violence across the Middle East, there is bipartisan concern that American military aggression against Iran will further destabilize the area and possibly the wider world. The administration has provided no evidence that Soleimani was plotting an attack on Americans, as Graham and Trump have claimed. New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi, who covers ISIS and the War on Terror, says the idea that he posed an imminent threat was an “illogical leap.”

5. But as one source put it a) + b) + c) is hardly evidence of an imminent attack on American interests that could kill hundreds, as the White House has since claimed. The official describes the reading of the intelligence as an illogical leap.

— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) January 4, 2020

History suggests that House and Senate votes on the Iran question will fall largely along party lines. Whether or not politicians express hawkish or dovish proclivities often depends on whoever is in the White House, but Lee and Paul’s anti-war dispositions provide a relatively rare exception to that rule. It was actually Graham who explained it best: “You know, they’re libertarians.”

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In Williams v. ROC Nation, LLC, filed yesterday in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, former Philadelphia police officer Saqueta Williams (sometimes called Sequeta Williams) is suing over statements in Free Meek, a documentary about the criminal conviction of rapper Meek Mill. The defendants include Meek Mill himself, Jay-Z, Wenner Media (publishers of Rolling Stone), and amazon.com.

According to the Complaint, in 2017, Williams was involved in an off-duty incident in which she drew a gun on four women who she says beat her companion. She was prosecuted but eventually acquitted in February 2019. (For a story on the arrest, see here.)

Williams also ended up on a “Do Not Call List” maintained by the Philadelphia DA’s office:

The Office of the Philadelphia District Attorney maintains a list identifying police officers who have histories of arrests, disciplinary actions, or providing false testimony.

Upon information and belief, the list divides the police officers names appearing on the list into groupings, classifying the police officers whose serious misconduct rendered them problematic as witnesses and others whose offenses were less serious.

Upon information and belief, the Philadelphia District Attorney directed employee prosecutors not to call some of the police officers whose names appear on the list as witnesses to offer testimony in criminal prosecutions….

But, the complaint says, the List indicates exactly what each officer was accused of; her entry didn’t mention anything about “acts of dishonesty or corruption”; and she “was a police officer who was permitted to be called as witness by prosecuting Philadelphia Assistant District Attorneys with the approval of a Deputy Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney.” (Indeed, as I read the List, it notes that she was charged for TT [presumably terroristic threats, though the List also mentions “IT,” perhaps a typo for “TT”] and SA [simple assault], and the instructions, presumably to prosecutors, are “Disclose Arrest” and “Do not call without Depty approval.”)

Yet, despite that, the complaint claims, Free Meek (which premiered in August 9, 2019), wrongly accused her of being “dirty and dishonest”: allegedly, in season 1, episode 4,

[R]eporter Paul Solotaroff [said,] “There is a reason why people call this town Filthadelhia.”

[Solotaroff said,] “Now there is a new District Attorney in town, and just the last couple of months we have been learning from the District Attorney’s Office about a list of dirty and dishonest cops.”

[Bradley Bridge said,] “The DA’s Office generated a specific list that has 66 names of police officers on it. There have been findings by the police department the officers have lied to internal affairs, to other police officers, or in court.”

[During Bridge’s commentary,] a graphic of an image of the plaintiff Saqueta Williams is displayed on screen.

This, the complaint argues, “imputes the impression in the minds of the average persons among whom it is intended to circulate that the plaintiff Saqueta Williams was a dirty and dishonest police officer,” which is false and defamatory. An interesting libel case, which I plan to watch over the coming months.

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From Mullane v. Breaking Media, Inc., decided Monday by Judge Patti B. Saris (D. Mass.), the facts:

Plaintiff, Jonathan Mullane, a former student of the University of Miami Law School, brings this action against Breaking Media, Inc., and journalist Elie Mystal alleging that an article on the legal website “Above the Law” was defamatory….

Mullane was a student at the University of Miami School of Law beginning in the fall of 2017. During the spring of 2018, Mullane served as a legal intern with the United States Attorney’s Office (“USAO”) in the Southern District of Florida.

While employed with the USAO, Mullane was party to a pro se civil lawsuit involving a credit card dispute pending before Judge Federico Moreno in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. In April 2018, Mullane entered Judge Moreno’s chambers, allegedly to request that the clerk make an entry of default in connection with this personal civil dispute.

Judge Moreno subsequently summoned Mullane to a hearing on April 10, 2018. During the hearing, Mullane appeared to acknowledge that he had sought to file a writ of mandamus in his pending case. See Docket No. 57-1 at 13:14-18 (“THE COURT: Did you mention the word petition for mandamus? … MR. MULLANE: I did.”); id. at 25:17-19 (“THE COURT: What was the question? MR. MULLANE: I can’t remember exactly. It was about how to file the mandamus request or something.”). But see id. at 7:19-20 (“MR. MULLANE: I said that I had a specific question about the entry of default.”). Judge Moreno reprimanded Mullane for his actions. Mullane was terminated from his internship at the USAO soon after the hearing…..

On April 30, 2018, the legal news publication “Above the Law” published an article, titled “Judge Detonates Pro Se Law Student So Hard I Now Must Defend a Dumb Kid.” The Article was authored by Mystal, the Executive Editor of “Above the Law.” …

The Article describes the April 10, 2018 hearing. It states, [among other things]:

“[Mullane] was trying to file a petition of mandamus—which basically asks an appellate court to order Judge Moreno to work on his case faster. That’s pretty rude. He didn’t know where to file the petition, and ended up asking the judge’s career clerk, in the judge’s chambers, ex-parte, what to do about it. That’s pretty dumb. Initially, the clerk wasn’t even going to let him in, but Mullane said he worked for the U.S. Attorney’s office (he’s an intern), which gained him access to the chambers to discuss his own personal case. That’s pretty unethical.”

“Basically Mullane was an idiot ….”

“[T]o gain entry into those chambers, he dropped his USAO cred, even though he was just an intern, and even though he was there for reasons that had nothing to do with his internship.”

“It also appears that Mullane is a little entitled ponce ….”

“Turns out the kid’s father is also an attorney … wonder if that helped him get his sweet internship.”

“Okay, so Jon Mullane is a little brat who [sic] with a USAO internship who had an ex-parte conversation in judge’s chambers while trying to file a motion arguing that the judge was lazily ignoring his pro se complaint.”

“If Mullane is a dauphin ….”

“The kid wasn’t trying to upend the wheels of justice, he made a series of dumb mistakes.”

Following the publication of the Article, the Securities Exchange Commission  … rescinded Mullane’s invitation to serve as a “Student Honors Volunteer.” Mullane later withdrew from the University of Miami School of Law….

Mullane sued Above The Law for libel, but the court held that much of the article was a fair report of a judicial proceeding:

Massachusetts recognizes “a privilege for fair and accurate reports of official actions and statements.” The privilege provides immunity “from liability for claims arising out of such reports.” To qualify as “fair and accurate” reporting, an article need only give a “rough-and-ready summary” that was “substantially correct.” Importantly, “accuracy” refers to “the factual correctness of the events reported and not to the truth of the events that actually transpired.” The Fair Report Privilege encompasses reports on judicial proceedings, even if the reports are not “in technically precise language.” Massachusetts requires “that the privilege be construed liberally and with an eye toward disposing of cases at an early stage of litigation.”

Notwithstanding the Fair Report Privilege, a Massachusetts statute “permits a plaintiff to recover for a truthful defamatory statement published in writing (or its equivalent) with actual malice … except as confined by” the First Amendment. Under the state statute, “actual malice” is defined as “ill will” or “malevolent intent” … ([which distinguishes] “actual malice” under the Massachusetts statute from the First Amendment standard for “actual malice” as defined in New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 280 (1964)). The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has declared [this “actual malice” exception to the privilege] unconstitutional as applied to matters of public concern. Shaari v. Harvard Student Agencies, Inc. (Mass. 1998)….

The Fair Report Privilege protects many of the statements challenged by Mullane, including the portions of the Article that directly quote the court reporter’s transcript of the April 10, 2018 hearing and the portions that summarize the topics discussed in that hearing. These statements provide a “rough-and-ready summary” of the hearing that was “substantially correct.”

Mullane’s arguments [that the article is inaccurate] fail because “‘accuracy’ for fair report purposes refers only to the factual correctness of the events reported and not to the truth about the events that actually transpired.” As to the question of what Mullane sought to file in his Florida case, Mullane stated during the April 2018 hearing that he was seeking a petition for mandamus. As to potential accusations of “criminal conduct,” the Article only summarized statements made by Judge Moreno. The reporting sections of the Article are therefore protected by the Fair Report Privilege.

Plaintiff argues that Massachusetts’ “actual malice” exception applies in this case because of the pejorative language in the Article {“homophobic, pejorative language and personal slights”}. [But] Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 231 § 92 is inapplicable here because the Article reported on a matter of public concern—a court proceeding. A contentious interaction between a federal judge and a law student can be “fairly considered” as a matter of “concern to the community.” …

The court also held that the article’s criticisms of Mullane were constitutionally protected opinion:

Mullane also challenges Defendants’ statements referring to Mullane as “rude,” “dumb,” “unethical,” a “little entitled ponce,” and a “dauphin.” … Statements of pure opinion are constitutionally protected because “they are not susceptible of being proved true or false.” A statement “couched as an opinion” may be actionable if it “presents or implies the existence of facts which are capable of being proven true or false.” Thus, “the relevant question is not whether challenged language may be described as an opinion, but whether it reasonably would be understood to declare or imply provable assertions of [defamatory] fact.” The court may determine as a matter of law whether a statement is a pure opinion or a verifiable fact. This requires examining “the totality of the circumstances in which the specific challenged statements were made, including the general tenor and context of the conversation.”

Even if an opinion implies a provably false assertion of fact, that statement will not be actionable if “it is plain that the speaker is expressing a subjective view, an interpretation, a theory, conjecture, or surmise, rather than claiming to be in possession of objectively verifiable facts.” A speaker is thus protected from defamation liability if he “communicates the non-defamatory facts that undergird his opinion.” … “[W]hen an author outlines the facts available to him, thus making it clear that the challenged statements represent his own interpretation of those facts and leaving the reader free to draw his own conclusions, those statements are generally protected by the First Amendment.” … The “crucial distinction” is whether the speaker’s statements can reasonably be interpreted to suggest that the speaker had access to information not accessible to others.

“[R]idicule and simple verbal abuse” do not give rise to liability for defamation. Many of the challenged statements—such as those referring to Mullane as “rude,” “dumb,” “unethical,” a “little entitled ponce,” or a “dauphin”—are mere “epithets” that are “insufficiently fact-based” to ground a defamation claim.

Mullane argues that the Defendants’ use of the word “ponce” is actionable because it is a “homophobic and derogatory” manner of “referring to [Mullane] as an ‘effeminate man.'” But the First Amendment “shield[s]” such “figurative language.”

The Article also contains this statement: “Turns out [Mullane’s] father is an attorney—wonder if that helped him get his sweet internship.” This statement might imply a defamatory fact. But here, “although the allegation of [nepotism] might be provable as true or false, the sum effect of the format, tone, and entire content of the [Article] is to make it unmistakably clear that the author was expressing a point of view only, rather than stating actual facts” about how Mullane obtained his internship. The statement is an opinion protected by the First Amendment.

Defendants are also protected from defamation liability because they do not suggest that the statement was “arrived at on the basis of undisclosed facts. On the contrary, the [Article] set forth the facts on which the conclusion[] purported to be based.” Because the Article provided the “full factual basis” for the statement—namely, that Plaintiff’s father is an attorney—the Article “cannot reasonably be interpreted to suggest that the author had access to information about plaintiff’s claim that was not accessible to others.” The Article “simply posed [a] question[] and suggested [an] answer[], as a matter of opinion.” The Defendants’ statement is “speculative” and at most amounts to a “personal conclusion[] about the information presented.”

The court also rejected Mullane’s claims for tortious interference with contract and with prospective business relations, and for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

And it rejected the claim that the article was “unlawful discrimination based on sexual orientation” (“ostensibly referring to the Article’s use of the word ‘ponce'”) in violation of the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act, which bars “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce”—”where allegedly defamatory statements do not support a cause of action for defamation, they also do not support a cause of action under [the Act],” and even “statements that allegedly implied that plaintiff was homosexual” (not that the court held that the statements here did so imply) “could not be construed as defamatory.”

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