Category: reason

A former Veterans Affairs employee has been convicted on federal fraud charges after using his position to write himself into a disabled veteran’s will.

A press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Tennessee details Kenneth Richard Devore’s long list of crimes, beginning with the attempted defrauding of a disabled veteran. The veteran, identified by the government as D.N., was discharged from the military in 1986. After D.N. was officially declared incompetent, Devore, a VA field examiner, was tasked in 2013 with making sure D.N. received his VA benefits and that his assets were managed responsibly.

But that’s not what Devore did. Instead, he concocted a plan that would make himself rich. Devore convinced the unsuspecting veteran that he needed a will and then helped him write the document, listing himself as the sole beneficiary of D.N.’s assets. Devore then drove D.N. to the post office to have the documents notarized. He also forged D.N.’s initials in a notice sent to Regions Bank, which the DOJ says was D.N.’s legal guardian. Devore was poised to defraud the veteran of more than $680,000.

Devore was forced to resign for misconduct in 2015 after the forged documents were uncovered. He then applied for a position with the National Background Investigations Bureau, which conducts investigations into candidates for government positions that require security clearance. (Its website promises “efficient and effective background investigations to safeguard the integrity and trustworthiness of the Federal workforce.”) He failed to disclose his misconduct at his old job, and he also claimed to have attended Canterbury University, a school that was fabricated by Devore himself. Despite all this, he was hired.

But the misdeeds don’t end there. While working for both the VA and the National Background Investigations Bureau, Devore was drawing a separate income from the VA after claiming in 2009 that he was 100 percent disabled, which suggests that the federal government is perhaps an even easier mark than a mentally incompetent veteran.

As Public Information Officer Sharry Dedman-Beard explained to Reason, Devore was indicted in February 2017 after the Veterans Administration Office of Inspector General began an investigation into his behavior. Dedman-Beard also confirmed that Devore was “unsuccessful in his efforts to obtain the victim’s money.”

On July 25, a federal jury convicted Devore of “six counts of wire fraud, one count of theft of public money over $1,000, one count of willful mail fraud, one count of conflict of interest of a federal employee, two counts of making or using a false writing and one count of making a false statement.” His sentencing is scheduled for November 5.

“Bias Response Team” doesn’t violate student rights, federal court rules. The University of Michigan’s “Bias Response Team” (BRT) isn’t an implicit threat to student free speech rights, said U.S. District Court Judge Linda V. Parker. The program relies on student reports of “biased” speech on campus and contacts the alleged speaker to offer guidance on speaking in a school-approved way. Students who are contacted are not required to respond.

The issue may seem relatively minor, but it was big enough for the U.S. Department of Justice to get involved in May, issuing a statement of interest that accused the University of Michigan of imposing “a system of arbitrary censorship of, and punishment for, constitutionally protected speech.”

Under the school’s bias response program, “a student who voices a controversial or unpopular opinion—or who seeks to use humor, parody, or satire when discussing sensitive topics—could face severe punishment,” argued Speech First, a D.C.-based advocacy group that filed the lawsuit in May.

But the school countered that the team isn’t a disciplinary body and student participation is dependent on their consent. So long as administrators at the state school are only offering helpful hints on how students can make their speech and opinions more “inclusive,” no one’s First Amendment Rights have been threatened the school argued—and Judge Parker agreed.

Last year, Liz Wolfe wrote here about college bias response teams and a self-congratulatory study from academics finding that they “created a safer, more welcoming campus community.” Robby Soave has covered the topic many times, noting how these bodies fail to distinguish between speech that could actually be considered harassing—at the University of Michigan, for instance—and speech that is merely “bothersome to an individual.”

In June, the University of Michigan changed its definitions of biased speech, narrowing the definitions of bullying and harassing..

This was already in the works and not in response to DOJ’s intervention, the school told Michigan Radio. “When the Speech First lawsuit called out some of the things we were already working on, we were well-prepared to update and simplify these definitions,” said University President Mark Schlissel. But he also contended that the group’s lawsuit had mischaracterized the school’s Bias Response Team, offering as support the fact that similar situations were in place at “many schools.”

FREE MINDS

Powerful Pegasus spy software targets Amnesty International. The human rights group Amnesty International said that spying software linked to the Israeli company NSO Group was sent to an Amnesty staffer and to a Saudi Arabian rights activist via WhatsApp in June.

“NSO Group is known to only sell its spyware to governments,” said Joshua Franco, Amnesty International’s head of technology and human rights, in a Wednesday statement.

The potent state hacking tools manufactured by NSO Group allow for an extraordinarily invasive form of surveillance. A smartphone infected with Pegasus is essentially controlled by the attacker – it can relay phone calls, photos, messages and more directly to the operator. This chilling attack on Amnesty International highlights the grave risk posed to activists around the world by this kind of surveillance technology. … Amnesty International is concerned that these could be used to bait and spy on activists in countries including Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo and Hungary, in addition to the Gulf.

An Amnesty International investigation connected the link in the Pegasus-spreading message to hundreds of other “suspicious websites which had been previously connected to NSO Group,” it said. In addition:

Last year Toronto-based research group Citizen Lab uncovered NSO Group’s involvement in a similar spyware scheme in Mexico. Activists, journalists and opposition party leaders were targeted by false messages containing Pegasus software in an attempt to silence government opposition. Pegasus was also used to target the Emirati award-winning human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor, who has been in prison in the United Arab Emirates since March 2017.

FREE MARKETS

NYC says no thanks to $100 million from ride-sharing companies. Uber and Lyft offered to bail out struggling New York City taxi drivers in exchange for city regulators backing off plans to require a minimum wage for drivers and cap the number of new Uber and Lyft vehicles permitted in the city.

The $100 million “hardship fund” would “support individual taxi medallion owners,” reports The Verge. But it was “summarily rejected” by Mayor Bill de Blasio and city leaders. “It’s a little bit astonishing to us,” Lyft’s vice president of public policy Joe Okpaku told the publication.

Uber and Lyft claim a cap on vehicle licenses would send wait times soaring and driver earnings plummeting. They also say a cap would disproportionately affect outer borough residents, including low-income communities and people of color. “The cap bill would set things back to a time when service levels were horrible in the outer boroughs,” Okpaku said.

QUICK HITS

BREAKING: Pope changes church teaching on death penalty, says it is always inadmissible because it “attacks” human dignity.

— The Associated Press (@AP) August 2, 2018

• The end of Sen. Ted Cruz? The Texas Republican is “neck and neck” in a race for reelection with Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, The Hill reports.
• U.S. activists say they’re being targeted by Facebook’s crackdown on alleged Russian bots.

Pressure on social media companies to allow only certain kinds of “political content” means the government always wins.

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/594555/facebook-quietly-deleted-homeland-security-ads-from-political-content-archive

Ron Wyden: “I just want to be clear, as the author of section 230, the days when these [platforms] are considered neutral are over.” cc: all of Silicon Valley

— David McCabe (@dmccabe) August 1, 2018

• The Trump administration is considering “doubling proposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25 percent from 10 percent.“

Charles Koch of Koch Brothers, who claims to be giving away millions of dollars to politicians even though I know very few who have seen this (?), now makes the ridiculous statement that what President Trump is doing is unfair to “foreign workers.” He is correct, AMERICA FIRST!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 2, 2018

• A broad new study on “the possible protective effect of light-to-moderate alcohol use on risk of dementia” finds that people who drink a “light-to-moderate” amount of alcohol—defined as one-to-14 drinks per week, with wine being better than beer or liquor—are less likely to suffer cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease than non-drinkers.
• Testing the low limits of predatory academic publishers, The Independent’s Gary Lewis published a paper examining the theory that “politicians from the right would surely wipe with their left hand, and those from the political left with their right hand.” The resulting article, “Testing inter-hemispheric social priming theory in a sample of professional politicians – a brief report” from a fiction professor at the “Institute of Interdisciplinary Political and Fecal Science,” was published by the U.K.’s Crimson Publishers, he says.

They are literally arguing that dairy farmers are going to disappear if the Almond Milk scourge is allowed to spread. https://t.co/nFt4gcztlQ

— Conn Carroll (@conncarroll) August 1, 2018

• In the wake of a federal court ruling that President Trump can’t block critics on Twitter, two anti-vaccination activists are suing their state senator, California Democrat Richard Pan, because he blocked them from viewing his Twitter account.
• Most Americans say they don’t pay attention to nutrition labels, according to a new Gallup poll.
• This has to be a trick, right? “TSA considering eliminating screening at smaller airports.“
• Someone’s got a new crush…

Thank you to Chairman Kim Jong Un for keeping your word & starting the process of sending home the remains of our great and beloved missing fallen! I am not at all surprised that you took this kind action. Also, thank you for your nice letter – l look forward to seeing you soon!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 2, 2018

The Equity Office in Austin, Texas, recently published a report on Confederate monuments. It compiled a list of parks, streets, and facilities named for slaveholders, Confederate veterans, and other symbols of the antebellum South, and it provided cost estimates for changing names and removing statues.

One of the people mentioned is Stephen F. Austin, who played a central part in the founding of Texas. Though he owned no slaves and died long before the Civil War, the report notes that he “fought to defend slavery in spite of Mexico’s effort to ban it” and feared that freed slaves would be “a nuisance and a menace.” Among the things named after him are a street, a high school, a recreation center and…a city of nearly a million people.

The unlikely idea of changing the city’s name, which the report raised, has provoked outrage and incredulity, observes Steve Chapman. “I am no fan of Confederate statues, flags, and nostalgia, but the critics have a point,” Chapman writes. “Carting off a bronze sculpture of Stonewall Jackson is one thing. Renaming a city is another.”

View this article.

Republicans and President Trump are talking about tax reform 2.0. Unfortunately, writes Veronique de Rugy, it’s futile without first having a real conversation about controlling spending. Indeed, the White House isn’t just unserious about cutting spending; it’s contributing to the problem. It’s time for a broader approach.

View this article.

The city of Seattle spent $52 million on 10 new streetcars. Now, city officials have found the new streetcars are heavier and longer than the ones they have been using. Officials say it isn’t clear if the new streetcars will work on the current track or even fit in the maintenance barn.

A Canadian province’s planned three-year experiment with a universal basic income (UBI) is ending after just one year.

Ontario’s previous government implemented the pilot program last July, estimating that it would cost about CA$150 million. Instead of traditional welfare benefits, around 4,000 randomly selected low-income or jobless residents would be provided with yearly stipends of CA$16,989 per person (or CA$24,027 per couple). Participants with jobs had to give the government half of their work income. According to The Guardian, the experiment was meant to determine “whether the funds would improve health, education and housing outcomes.”

But Ontario just ousted the Liberal Party and elected a new Progressive Conservative government, and the new regime had other ideas. Provincial Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod said yesterday that Ontario would be ending the “quite expensive” experiment. “It was certainly not going to be sustainable,” MacLeod said. She didn’t provide any data to back that up, so it’s not clear whether the program was costing more than expected or if the new government just has different ideas about how this was likely to end.

The announcement came several months after Finland decided not to extend its own UBI experiment, which distributed monthly stipends of 560 euros to about 2,000 residents. But other countries are still considering a UBI. Italy and the Netherlands are both implementing UBI trials, and some Scottish cities are mulling it over as well. And a privately funded basic-income experiment is now underway in Kenya.

The UBI’s basic premise is not new. (Reason‘s Jesse Walker has documented the idea’s history here.) But it remains controversial, even among libertarians. Some libertarians are firmly against the idea, arguing that it is as unjust as any other forms of wealth redistribution. Others say a UBI would be less intrusive and more cost-effective than a traditional welfare state, and therefore would be a step toward smaller government.

In the United States, the idea is far from dead. Stockton, California, is ready to test its own version of a UBI, and lawmakers in Chicago have proposed a similar experiment.

Yesterday Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri responded to criticism that he had misrepresented Florida’s “stand your ground” self-defense law while explaining his decision not to arrest Michael Drejka for fatally shooting Markeis McGlockton. But in attempting to set the record straight during a press conference that lasted nearly an hour, Gualtieri misrepresented his own public comments about the case and the test for arresting someone who uses deadly force.

Drejka shot McGlockton during an altercation at a convenience store in Clearwater on July 19. Surveillance video shows McGlockton, responding to an argument between his girlfriend and Drejka over her decision to park in a handicapped spot, pushing Drejka to the pavement. Drejka, still sitting on the ground, draws a pistol, prompting McGlockton to back away, at which point Drejka shoots him in the chest.

Under Florida law, the shooting was justified only if Drejka “reasonably believe[d]” it was “necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.” At a press conference the day after the shooting, Gualtieri said this test is “largely subjective,” a claim that was contradicted this week by three key legislators who had a hand in writing the law and the National Rifle Association lobbyist who helped get it passed.

Now the sheriff says he was misunderstood. “It is an objective standard,” he said yesterday, “but it has a subjective component to it because it has to be considered through the lens of the person who used force.” In other words, he explained, “what that person knew, how they knew it, and other factors that are in their heads” are relevant in deciding whether his actions were objectively reasonable “under the circumstances of the time.” That formulation is fine as far as it goes, since the law requires a judgment based on what a reasonable person would have done in the same situation. But that is not what Gualtieri said at his July 20 press conference.

“‘Stand your ground’ allows for a subjective belief by the person that they are in harm’s way,” the sheriff said then, and “we don’t get to substitute our judgment for Drejka’s judgment.” The question, he said, is not “what I would do, what you would do, what the public would do, what someone else would do.” What really matters, he suggested, is “the person’s subjective determination of the circumstance they were in” and “the fear that they had.”

The implication is that if Drejka sincerely feared for his life, he was justified in killing McGlockton, even if that fear was not reasonable in the circumstances. That is plainly not what the law says. Yet Gualtieri continues to imply that it is improper to second-guess Drejka’s assessment of the situation. “Do I think that I would have shot in that situation?” he said in an interview with The New York Times yesterday. “No. But just because I would not have, or don’t believe I would have, doesn’t mean he’s not within the boundaries of the law.”

At yesterday’s press conference, Gualtieri added to the confusion by claiming that Drejka was immune from arrest because it was not “absolutely clear” that the shooting was unlawful. “To arrest,” he said, “it must be so clear that as a matter of law ‘stand your ground’ does not apply in any way to the facts and circumstances that you’re presented with. That is not the situation here. The facts are not so clear that this is absolutely outside the boundaries of ‘stand your ground.'”

Again, that is not what the law says. It says a law enforcement agency “may not arrest the person for using or threatening to use force unless it determines that there is probable cause that the force that was used or threatened was unlawful.” Probable cause, usually defined as a “fair probability,” is by no means the same as absolute clarity or certainty. Even if you assume that probable cause means something is more likely than not to be true (and it’s not at all clear that it does), it looks like Gualtieri would have been justified in arresting Drejka, since he conceded that Drejka “probably could have” defended himself by brandishing the gun without firing it.

Gualtieri cited the Florida Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Dennis v. State, which established that defendants raising a self-defense claim have a right to a pretrial hearing on that question, since people who use force lawfully are immune from prosecution under the 2005 “stand your ground” law. The law “grants defendants a substantive right to not be arrested, detained, charged, or prosecuted as a result of the use of legally justified force,” the court said. “The statute does not merely provide that a defendant cannot be convicted as a result of legally justified force.” According to Gualtieri, that means the “stand your ground” law “has taken away law enforcement discretion to arrest unless there is no ‘stand your ground’ [defense] as a matter of law.”

In other words, if Drejka had said he shot McGlockton because he did not like his looks, Gualtieri could have arrested him, because that is not a legal justification. But since Drejka said he shot McGlockton because he reasonably feared for his life, Gualtieri was legally barred from arresting him, because that is a valid justification, no matter how implausible it might seem in this particular case. That reading of the law flies in the face of the authority to arrest someone when there is probable cause to believe his use of force was unlawful. Two weeks ago, Gualtieri said “we don’t have probable cause” to arrest Drejka. Now he seems to be saying something more than probable cause is necessary.

Muddying the waters further, Gualtieri said a 2017 law that changed the rules for pretrial self-defense hearings factored into his decision. Defendants used to have the burden of proving by “a preponderance of evidence” that their use of force was lawful. Now prosecutors have the burden of proving by “clear and convincing evidence” that the defendant’s use of force was not lawful. “The recently created burden that the state has to prove the shooter is not entitled to ‘stand your ground’ immunity by clear and convincing evidence is relevant at this stage too,” Gualtieri said, because people like Drejka have a right “not to sit in jail while all this is sorted out on an issue where the burden on the state is high.”

The logic here is murky. The prosecution’s burden at trial, which is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant’s use of force was unlawful, remains unchanged. So does the standard for an arrest, which is still probable cause.

“Absent that immunity from arrest and the recently created burden on the state to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Drejka is not entitled to this immunity,” Gualtieri said, “Drejka would be sitting in jail right now, and the system would be working to figure it out.” In Gualtieri’s view, “when the legislature created Florida’s ‘stand your ground’ law, it said we don’t want people who have arguably acted within [the] law to sit in jail while the state attorney’s office spends weeks or months considering whether to file formal charges.”

Much depends on what Gualtieri means by “arguably,” since someone could have an arguable self-defense claim even if there was probable cause to doubt it. Rejecting the charge that Drejka got a pass because he is white and McGlockton was black, the sheriff noted that he had recently arrested white shooters in cases that the state attorney for Pinellas and Pasco counties, Bernie McCabe, decided not to pursue. But those examples illustrate a point that Gualtieri seems bent on obscuring: The standard for arresting someone who uses deadly force is much weaker than the standard for going to trial or winning a conviction.

Gualtieri emphasized that the McGlockton case is still open and that McCabe will ultimately decide whether to charge Drejka. But if there really is no probable cause to arrest Drejka, how could McCabe hope to convict him?

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed on Wednesday that President Trump supports bans against 3D-printed plastic guns.

As Reason‘s Brian Doherty previously reported, Defense Distributed is “a collective that organizes, promotes, and distributes technologies to help home gun-makers.” In early July, the Department of Justice (DOJ) reached a settlement with Defense Distributed in a long-running lawsuit based on government officials maintaining that the sharing of the gun-making files violated munitions export rules located in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Defense Distributed argued that the legal fight was a First Amendment issue, since what they wanted to distribute were computer software information already widely distributed in the public domain, not actual munitions.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik ruled in favor of eight states that sued in opposition of the federal government’s settlement with Defense Distributed. Lasnik issued a temporary restraining order against the website’s ability to distribute the files on the basis of that states’ “clear and reasonable fear that the proliferation of untraceable, undetectable weapons will enable convicted felons, domestic abusers, the mentally ill, and others who should not have access to firearms to acquire and use them.”

During a Wednesday press conference, Sanders answered a question about the president’s support of 3D printed plastic guns by saying that the DOJ made a deal without Trump’s approval. Still, Trump approved of the 1988 legislation that banned such devices if they are untraceable by metal detectors.

“This administration supports the decades-old legislation already on the books that prohibit the wholly ownership of a plastic gun,” she told reporters.

Trump previously tweeted that 3D printed plastic guns didn’t “make much sense.”

I am looking into 3-D Plastic Guns being sold to the public. Already spoke to NRA, doesn’t seem to make much sense!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2018

Following the court’s Tuesday decision, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson announced that his website, DEFCAD.com, would go dark in compliance. Wilson removed the plans from the internet. Since that time, a mirror site from called CodeIsFreeSpeech.com appeared. Considering that the advocacy groups behind the new site were not listed as defendants in the suit, they are free from the ruling.

Bonus link: Watch Reason‘s February interview with Cody Wilson here.

Donald Trump is basically gaffe-proof. But that doesn’t mean his factual flubs have nothing to tell us about the man or his policies.

Take what happened in Tampa Tuesday night. Speaking at a rally, the president freewheeled into a rant about the need for Voter ID laws. This is a pretty mainstream Republican idea. Long before Trump was the party’s figurehead, GOP politicians were rattling off the same talking point that Trump hit last night: You have to show ID to buy booze or smokes, you have to show ID before you can board a plane, so why shouldn’t you have to show ID before entering the Holy of Holies of American democracy, the voting booth?

But Trump added something new to the mix. “You know, if you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card, you need ID,” he said. “You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID and you need your picture.”

To clarify: You do not have to show a photo ID before buying bread, eggs, and milk at the local Kroger.

The media jumped on the gaffe, because it was funny and because it made him seem out of touch. But in the same speech Trump said something just as stupid and far more consequential, and it got much less attention. Dismissing worries about his tariffs, Trump claimed that farmers have reacted to China’s retaliatory trade barriers by saying “it’s OK, we can take it.”

In fact, farmers tend to be pretty unhappy about being caught in the middle of Trump’s trade war. In Iowa alone, the tit-for-tat tariffs with China could cost them more than $600 million this year, according to an Iowa State study. Farmers and their representatives have been some of the loudest voices opposing Trump’s barriers to trade.

Most people in the White House know this. Presumably the president does too. That’s why he’s sending $12 billion in aid to farmers hurt by the tariffs, an effort that hasn’t necessarily won many of them over. “Imagine someone destroys your car and then says I’ll give you a ride to the next place you need to go. Well gee, thanks,” farmer Mike Petefish told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune last week.

Trump and his top economic advisers continue to be brush off the consequences of his trade war. The president has told supporters not to believe stories about steel-consuming businesses having to lay off workers or close their doors, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has claimed that job losses and higher prices are merely “hiccups along the way.”

But Trump has seemed genuinely stupified by the reaction. After being told by Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) that farmers “want markets, and not really a payment from the government,” the president expressed surprise. “I’ve never heard of anybody who didn’t want a payment from the government,” he said, according to an account Moran gave to the Associated Press. That’s way more worrying that Trump’s peculiar ideas about buying groceries.

I’m not sure many of Trump’s supporters will really care about his grocery gaffe. Where most politicians try to fake being a regular guy, Trump happily flaunts the extent to which he isn’t like everyone else. He puts his name on the side of huge buildings, rides golden escalators to press conferences, and brags about having never changed a diaper. Almost everything about his personal brand suggests that yes, he’s completely out of touch. That’s been true for years. It hasn’t held him back so far.

Almost anyone who has been successful in national politics is out of touch with regular life. When Hillary Clinton admitted in 2014 that she hadn’t driven a car since 1996, it was treated as a major gaffe. But she was just being honest. You can’t go grocery shopping or pick up your dry cleaning when you’re constantly in a motorcade.

It’s not ultimately very important that politicians can quote the price of milk—a classic “gotcha” question, particularly in Britain. But understanding how their policies affect the people who do have to go to the grocery store every week: That’s important.

Andrea Rich, for decades the skilled and indefatigible operator of the vitally important libertarian bookselling service Laissez Faire Books, has died.

Her career in the libertarian movement was long and varied. Among other things, she was national vice chair for the Libertarian Party in the mid-1970s, worked with the Center for Libertarian Studies in its early years, helped craft a successful national TV ad campaign for Ed Clark’s 1980 Libertarian presidential run, and served on the boards of directors of the Foundation for Economic Education (the first modern libertarian promotional organization), the Atlas Network (which helps free-market institutes around the world), and the Institute for Humane Studies (which trains and supports academics in libertarian thought). She also founded the libertarian book publishing imprint Fox & Wilkes and managed the Thomas Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties (which, disclosure, I won in 2011). And her Center for Independent Thought distributed John Stossel’s highly influential market-themed videos to classrooms across America.

In the pre-Amazon age, Laissez Faire Books was often the only way for a far-flung national audience of libertarians to learn of books of interest to them. Its existence, and Andrea’s tough negotiating, made the publication of many libertarian books possible and access to them affordable.

Reason‘s Nick Gillespie eulogized Andrea on Facebook, summing up well the importance of Laissez Faire Books in the pre-Web days:

Every issue of the catalogue was crammed with squibs about books by and about Milton and Rose Friedman, Hayek, Rand, Mises, Rothbard, Rose Wilder Lane (the daughter of Little House author Laura Ingalls Wilder), Lysander Spooner, Voltairine de Cleyre, Tom Szasz, you name it, all held together by mind-blowing essays by Roy Childs and other contributors.

Even more than magazines, catalogues captivated me as a kid growing up in suburban New Jersey….Catalogues offered up endless possibilities, each entry a window into a different world I could imagine living in for a few minutes or hours.

More than any other, the [Laissez Faire Books] catalogue gave me a sense of the world that I would eventually live in for my professional life. At a time when the nearest real bookstore (a tiny Waldenbooks in a mall) was miles away, it gave me tons to look at and think about, broadening my world and options.

David Nott, president of the Reason Foundation (which publishes this magazine) hit on two of Andrea’s prominent qualities in a letter he wrote to her on her retirement. One was her honest but winning ability to have “busted my chops when it has been necessary, speaking truth in a polite way.” The other was her enduring and tolerant “love of the quirky and eccentric characters that make up this movement.” The “networks you have forged,” he wrote, “continue to change the world.”

On a personal note, Andrea and I were on the first-name basis I adopt in this note ever since she agreed back in the mid-1990s to take a chance on this tyro libertarian journalist who’d never written anything longer than a few thousand words. She provided funding via the Roy Childs Memorial Scholars Fund (after an introduction from Chris Whitten, who first convinced me I could write such a thing) for some of the research expenses associated with my book Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.

Her hard-earned and universally good relationships with nearly everyone else in the libertarian world is what likely inclined the vast majority of my over 100 interview subjects to agree to speak to me on the record. Andrea put up with a process that took a lot longer than she anticipated (12 years from her decision to back the book until its publication in 2007) with grace and continued help and encouragement.

Her tireless work, dedication to libertarian thought, and buoyant personality were key to that book working at all, and I am forever in her debt. Any libertarian who bought from Laissez Faire or had his or her education buoyed by the authors she sold and promoted, or any of the work of the many libertarian institutions she supported and guided, are as well.

Andrea is survived by her husband Howard Rich, her longtime partner in supporting libertarian causes.