Category: reason

Tom Price wasted more than $300,000 of government money traveling on chartered planes during his seventh-month tenure as secretary of health and human services, according to a report released Friday by the department’s Office of Inspector General.

The report also revealed that 20 of the 21 trips Price took that the agency looked into “did not comply with Federal requirements.” Those 21 trips cost the federal government nearly $1.2 million, including more than $480,000 for chartered flights and an additional $700,000 for travel on military planes.

Federal officials are supposed to travel in a cost-efficient way, but Price rarely did. The result, the report says, was a “waste of Federal funds totaling at least $341,000.” The vast majority of this waste—$333,014—was due to Price’s preference for chartered planes over commercial flights.

Price took at least 12 trips on chartered planes, and in each case he could have saved a considerable amount of money by flying commercial instead. In the most egregious example, a chartered flight from Seattle to D.C. cost the government $121,500, even though the average commercial cost for the same flight was less than $2,500. And Price still could have saved more than $45,000 by choosing a chartered flight that cost less than $76,000.

Price has already reimbursed the government more than $59,000 for his travel on private planes. The report recommended that the government attempt to recoup the remainder of the wasted funds as well.

In response to the report, Deputy Health and Human Services Secretary Eric Hargan put out a statement that the department “has instituted new travel review procedures applicable to all political appointees.” But Hargan also made sure to point out that “none of the travel at issue was unauthorized.”

Price, who resigned last September amid the controversy, is far from the only Trump administration official to face criticism for shamelessly wasting taxpayer money. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, for example, ordered a $31,000 dining room set for his office late last year. Scott Pruitt’s tenure as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, which ended last week, was plagued by similar financial scandals, from installing an expensive soundproofed telephone booth in his office to regularly traveling first class on airlines and taking a security detail on personal trips.

Matt Furie owns the copyright to the original Pepe the Frog comic strips that he drew in 2005. But does that mean he also has the right to tell Pepe’s far-right fans that they can’t create their own versions of the character, or are they protected by the fair use doctrine? Declan McCullagh makes the case for the appropriators’ freedom of speech.

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An Arizona politician has been caught on camera bragging that he’s exempt from the law. The body-cam video, first shared by Parker Live Online, shows a sheriff’s deputy speaking with state Rep. Paul Mosley (R–Lake Havasu City) after pulling him over for speeding.

“I informed Mosley that 97 mph in a 55 mph zone is considered criminal speed,” the deputy wrote in his written report. “Mosley stated he was just in a hurry to get home to surprise his family in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Mosley also told me that I should just let him go and that I shouldn’t waste anymore of my time dealing with him due to his immunity as a government official.”

In the video, the deputy asks Mosley to watch his speed regardless of the reason. Mosley responds, “Well, I was doing 120 earlier.” He then continued to brag about his vehicle’s ability to speed and why he preferred the mode of transportation seen in the video over his Prius. The deputy asked Mosley if he sped just because he knew he could get away with it. Mosley answered that he broke the law because he was trying to get home.

After a brief argument about speeding, the deputy walks away without appearing to give Mosley a speeding ticket. A search of traffic violations by the Associated Press does not show Mosley receiving a ticket that day.

The legislative immunity that Mosley touted is found in Article 4, Part 2, Section 6 of the Arizona Constitution. It states, “Members of the legislature shall be privileged from arrest in all cases except treason, felony, and breach of the peace, and they shall not be subject to any civil process during the session of the legislature, nor for fifteen days next before the commencement of each session.”

House Speaker J.D. Mesnard criticized Mosley’s use of immunity, saying, “Nothing short of an emergency justifies that kind of speeding, and assertions of immunity in that situation seem outside the intent of the constitutional provision regarding legislative immunity.”

The Arizona Fraternal Order of Police also responded by rescinding its endorsement of Mosley: “Potentially lethal speeding isn’t a joke. We will not stand with those who think it’s acceptable or funny to risk the lives of others while behind the wheel of a lethal weapon.”

Mosley’s colleagues, both Republican and Democrat, have also responded negatively to the video. Rep. Mark Finchem (R–Oro Valley) filed an ethics complaint, adding that the “misbehavior” needed “to be called out as unbecoming.”

On Thursday, Mosley apologized for his conduct in a Facebook post:

The World Cup may seem like a celebration of tribalism, with all the national flags, anthems, and pride on display. But look closer. The story of this World Cup, which concludes Sunday with a championship match between France and Croatia, has been written by immigrants. European national teams may have dominated the event—all four semifinalist sides hailed from Europe, as did six of the eight quarterfinalists—but the teams themselves are anything but ethnic monoliths. This year’s tournament is a tale of cultural blending.

French forward Kylian Mbappe has been the breakout star of the tournament and a favorite to win the Golden Ball as the World Cup’s most valuable player. His father is from Cameroon and his mother came to France from Algeria. Samuel Umtiti, who scored the game-winning goal in France’s semifinal victory over Belgium, was born in Cameroon. France’s standout midfielders, N’Golo Kante and Paul Pogba, are the children of Malinese and Guinean immigrants, respectively.

Nearly half the English team, which captured much attention with its run to the semifinals, are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. Perhaps none have a story as compelling as Jamaican-born Raheem Sterling, whose mother worked janitorial jobs after moving to England when her son was just 5 years old.

“I’ll never forget waking up at five in the morning before school and helping her clean the toilets at the hotel in Stonebridge,” he told The Players Tribune last month. “England is still a place where a naughty boy who comes from nothing can live his dream.”

This World Cup’s most thrilling game—Belgium’s wild second-half comeback from two goals behind to defeat Japan in the second round—was a joint effort of natives and immigrants. It’s hard to find a player with a more traditionally Belgian name than Jan Vertonghen, who scored the first goal to spark the rally. But without a perfectly placed header from Marouane Fellaini and a last-second goal by Nacer Chadli, both of whom were born to Moroccan parents, the comeback would have fallen short. Belgium’s run to the semifinals would not have been possible without four goals from Romelu Lukaku, whose parents emigrated from Congo and were so poor that he recalls countless childhood lunches consisting of bread and watery milk.

Swiss-born Ivan Rakitić scored the game-winning goal in two of Croatia’s three come-from-behind wins that helped the tiny Balkan nation reach its first-ever World Cup final. He is one of four foreign-born players representing Croatia at the tournament.

The Swiss-Balkan pipeline runs in both directions. A pair of players, Xherdan Shaqiri and Granit Xhaka, born to parents who fled the ethnic unrest and civil war in Yugoslavia during the 1990s, helped key a surprising run to the second round for Switzerland, one of the few Western European nations without much of a history of football glory.

The story has a darker side too. After scoring goals against Serbia, both flashed Albanian double-eagle signs with their hands, which nearly led to both players getting suspended. The incident is a reminder that immigrants do not leave their old customs, sympathies, and rivalries at the door when they settle somewhere new.

The free flow of people across national borders can bring danger. But the anti-immigrant parties that highlight (and exaggerate) those dangers ignore the benefits that immigration also brings. Newcomers enliven existing culture while also providing valuable labor, often in jobs that natives refuse to do. In places like Europe, with its falling birth rates, they lift a nation’s population, and its tax coffers. And they produce the next generation of football stars too.

That’s not why the parents of this year’s World Cup stars moved to England or Belgium or anywhere else. When she was scrubbing toilets, Sterling’s mum probably didn’t imagine her son would one day be a star on his adopted nation’s football team—and Lulaku’s parents, watering down the milk to make it last longer, probably didn’t dream so big either. But surely they believed they were giving their children a shot at something better than what they would have had otherwise.

You probably wouldn’t know their names if Raheem and Romelu had gone on to start successful business or if they did nothing more than create a moderately better life for their own kids. That they are international soccer stars is something of a happy accident, but those other outcomes—paths that millions of other immigrants around the world have anonymously followed—would arguably have done even more to boost their new homelands.

France’s immigrant-heavy lineup has drawn comparisons to that nation’s 1998 World Cup squad, which this year’s team will try on Sunday to join as World Cup champions. For its time, that team was surprisingly diverse, with players hailing from France, the Caribbean, and several African nations.

That’s now the norm, rather than the exception, for the world’s top teams. An analysis by The Washington Post found that 82 of the more than 700 players on this year’s World Cup rosters represent countries where they were not born. That’s possible, in part, because the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has looser rules about which nations players can represent than, say, the International Olympic Committee. Once a soccer player makes one appearance on the roster of a national team, he cannot transfer to another. But before that first appearance, players are eligible for any nation where they are citizens, or for countries where their parents have citizenship, and in some circumstances even for their grandparents’ lands. Belgian midfielder Adnan Januzaj may have been eligible for as many as seven different national teams, according to the Post.

That makes modern international football less a test of national bloodlines and more a competition over who has the best melting pot. “In England we’ve spent a bit of time being lost as to what our modern identity is, and I think as a team we represent that modern identity,” English coach Gareth Southgate told ITV before the tournament started.

After England’s best World Cup run since 1990, few could argue that diversity was a problem for the team.

America did not qualify for this World Cup this year. Our best hope to avoid that shame in 2022 rests with young players like Christian Pulisic, whose grandparents came to America from what is now Croatia, and Timothy Weah, who was born in New York to Liberian parents. (His father is currently president of the west African nation.) It may rest with future stars whose parents are just now trying to find their way here, struggling to scratch out a life.

They’ll be American, just like Lukaku is a Belgian.

“I grew up in Antwerp, and Liège and Brussels. I dreamed of playing for Anderlecht,” Lukaku writes in a self-profile for The Players Tribune. “I’ll start a sentence in French and finish it in Dutch, and I’ll throw in some Spanish or Portuguese or Lingala, depending on what neighborhood we’re in. I’m Belgian. We’re all Belgian. That’s what makes this country cool, right?”

That’s what makes the World Cup cool, too.

Donald Trump suggested today that a bombshell report published Thursday in a British tabloid—featuring audio of an exclusive interview with the president—is “fake news.”

In his interview with The Sun, Trump said he disagreed with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s approach to Britain’s departure from the European Union. “I would have done it much differently. I actually told Theresa May how to do it but she didn’t agree, she didn’t listen to me,” Trump said of Brexit. “She should negotiate the best way she knows how. But it’s too bad what’s going on.”

But at a joint press conference with May today, Trump praised Britain’s prime minister and pushed back on the Sun‘s reporting. “I didn’t criticize the prime minister. I have a lot of respect for the prime minister. And unfortunately there was a story that was done, which was, you know, generally fine,” Trump said. “But it didn’t put in what I said about the prime minister. And I said tremendous things.”

Trump went on to suggest The Sun‘s report was fake news, claiming he had a recording of the interview to back that up. “Fortunately, we tend to record stories now, so we have it for your enjoyment if you like it. But we record when we deal with reporters. It’s called fake news,” Trump said.

The Sun also recorded the interview and posted the audio of Trump’s comments with its story.

Trump still said he apologized to May for his remarks. “She’s a total professional,” the president said. “I said, ‘I want to apologize because I said such good things about you,’ And she said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s only the press.'”

The Sun wasn’t the only outlet that drew Trump’s ire on Friday. During the press conference, a CNN reporter tried to ask Trump a question, but the president wasn’t having it. “CNN is fake news. I don’t take questions from CNN. John Roberts from Fox. Let’s go to a real network,” Trump said.

“CNN is fake news. I don’t take questions from CNN. John Roberts from Fox. Let’s go to a real network.” pic.twitter.com/e2TcEu6G7e

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) July 13, 2018

When Rep. Jim Jordan (R–Ohio), Rep. Mark Meadows (R–N.C.), Rep. Justin Amash (R–Mich.), and six other colleagues co-founded the House Freedom Caucus in January 2015, there was ample reason for libertarians to cheer. Unlike the soft-spined conservatism of the larger Republican Study Committee, the Freedom Caucus promised to be much more hardcore about spending, war, constitutionalism, and oversight of the executive branch. With the rise of Donald Trump, the Freedom Caucus has lost its way writes Matt Welch.

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FBI agent Peter Strzok was in the hot seat for 10 hours Thursday, as members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee grilled him on texts sent to another agent in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. At the time, Strzok was a principal team member on investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails and into possible collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia. Text messages obtained by Special Counsel Robert Mueller show Strzok making disparaging remarks about Trump and, in one message, assuring colleague and romantic partner Lisa Page that “we’ll stop” Trump from becoming president.

“Strzok said under aggressive questioning that a much-discussed August 2016 text…followed Trump’s denigration of the family of a dead U.S. service member,” the Associated Press notes.

He said the late-night, off-the-cuff text reflected his belief that Americans would not stomach such “horrible, disgusting behavior” by the presidential candidate. But, he added in a raised voice and emphatic tone: “It was in no way—unequivocally—any suggestion that me, the FBI, would take any action whatsoever to improperly impact the electoral process for any candidate. So, I take great offense, and I take great disagreement to your assertion of what that was or wasn’t.”

Republicans on the Congressional committee, including chair Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), refused to budge on the now-popular GOP narrative that Gowdy tried to throw the election for Clinton. “Agent Strzok had Hillary Clinton winning the White House before he finished investigating her,” Gowdy told the committee. “Agent Strzok had Donald Trump impeached before he even started investigating him. That is bias.”

Goodlatte threatened Strzok with contempt. Gohmert accused Strzok of perjury and mentioned his wife and affair. And Darrell Issa forced Strzok to read his own text messages aloud—including ones that included vulgarities. A look at today’s “3-ring circus”: https://t.co/LZROSOCc7p

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) July 13, 2018

By the day’s end, the hearing “devolved into shouting matches, finger-pointing and veiled references to personal transgressions,” says the AP. Throughout the circus, Strzok insisted that his personal feelings about Trump didn’t affect his job, pointing out that he had also criticized Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders in his messages but had never leaked information or let negative views of any candidate bias his work.

“What I am telling you is I and the other men and women of the FBI, every day take our personal beliefs, and set those aside in vigorous pursuit of the truth—wherever it lies, whatever it is,” said Strzok.

“And I don’t believe you,” responded Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas).

FREE MINDS

A collective “right to attention”? Our increasingly paranoid national discourse on “Russian influence” on U.S. elections reveals a strange new statist tendency: governments (and those that love them) asserting “a collective right to attention.” Those with “fears over ‘election-hacking’ in the 2016 U.S., U.K., French and German elections,” laments Julia Slupska, seldom stop to ponder a more fundamental question: “If a state interferes with another state’s politics, is it wrong? On what grounds?“

More from Slupska’s recent Libertarianism.org post:

[H]ow can we object to foreign interference without implicitly justifying information control? Complaints over foreign propaganda have uncomfortable implications: if funding online advertisements counts as unacceptable foreign meddling, why doesn’t funding radio stations like Radio Free Europe (as Russia Today points out)? What—precisely—is unethical about interference anyway? This blog posts suggests that we might be able to find some clarity on these issues from an unexpected source: the emerging literature on digital design ethics.

Digital environments are often designed to pilfer your attention. The ‘…’ that comes up when you’re waiting for someone to text you back keeps you at your screen, waiting for a reward. Facebook and Twitter feeds auto-refresh without prompting to keep you scrolling. Bright red notifications remind us of our desire for social interaction. Persuasive design might be annoying, but is it also in some sense unethical?

Many say yes. “An emerging literature on the ethics of attention seeks to…create ethical guidelines for technology designers, primarily those whose business model is based on advertising” and “suggests that attention-grabbing intrusions can be unethical,” especially “when systematic distractions infringe on individual freedom and agency,” notes Slupska. She believes these concerns present “a useful framework for understanding disruptive and confusing phenomena in modern politics,” such as fears over “election-hacking.”

Current debates underappreciate the extent to which election-hacking is about conflict over attention rather than information. Leading scholars of state propaganda have noted that states are increasingly focusing on amplification of government opinion rather than censoring specific information. Our limited ability to consume information is key to these strategies; consequently, political theory needs to incorporate the ethics of attention. This suggests a startling new reality: just as states traditionally competed for resources like territory or oil, they now seem to be competing for attention.

Read the whole thing here.

FREE MARKETS

We’re losing tens of millions of dollars per year minting U.S. pennies. In 2017, “the U.S. Mint produced more than 8.4 billion pennies for circulation,” reports Government Executive. “Between production costs and shipping, they cost $0.0182 each, which totaled to $69 million…in losses compared to their total value—the biggest in nine years.” The rising cost of zinc, which makes up the bulk of penny composition, is one of the culprits. Nickels are also money-losers for the government, but “the Mint makes up the losses incurred on pennies and nickels with its 10- and 25-cent coins, and last year reported making $391.5 million in seigniorage.”

FOLLOW-UP

Daniels dances again. The charges against Stormy Daniels for allegedly violating an Ohio strip-club law while dancing in Columbus this week have been dropped. Daniels performed at a different Columbus club Thursday night, saying that proceeds would go to the defense of the two other dancers arrested with her. The arrests are part of what Columbus cops have called an ongoing “human trafficking” operation.

Saddened to hear the other 2 dancers arrested with me last night did not have their charges dropped. All tips from my stage performance tonight at Sirens in Columbus will go towards their legal fees. Come support the working women of this city. #letussurvive

— Stormy Daniels (@StormyDaniels) July 12, 2018

QUICK HITS

• The Trump administration says it “has complied with the first part of a court order to return the nearly 3,000 migrant children separated from their parents in recent months,” NPR reports.
• An update on the World Health Organization’s alleged inclusion of sex addiction and gaming addiction as mental disorders.
• The Justice Department is fighting the planned merger of AT&T and Time Warner.
• Asians have displaced blacks “as the most economically divided group in the U.S.,” according to a new study from Pew Research.
• Woodchucks #Resist Paul Ryan.

If you shampoo hair for pay at, say, elderly people’s homes or at a salon—and haven’t spent as much as $19,000 at a barbering and cosmetology school—then you are an outlaw.

It’s illegal to do so in California. The Board of Barbering and Cosmetology posts this Frequently Asked Question on its website: “I would like to hire a person for the sole purpose of shampooing or preparing consumers services; can I do this?” The answer: “No, only a licensed barber, cosmetologist or apprentice can wash a consumer’s hair or prepare a consumer for services.”

Getting that license requires 1,500 hours of training, whereas a first responder/emergency medical technician only needs 120 to 150 hours of training.

This year Sen. Mike Morrell (R-Rancho Cucamonga) introduced legislation that targeted the licensing rules involving people who want to shampoo, arrange, dress, and curl (but not cut) hair for a living. The Morrell bill passed the full Senate with only two “no” votes, but was killed last week in the Assembly Business and Professions Committee on a 14-3 vote in spite of the fact that most of us have shampooed our own hair for years without calamity.

The hearing room was packed with students from local cosmetology schools. It should surprise no one that the main beneficiaries of the current rules are the schools that charge hefty tuitions for such training, nor should it be a surprise that the state bureaucracy (the Department of Consumer Affairs) estimated excessive fee-revenue losses if the bill became law. Those estimates are hard to fathom given how unimaginable it is that people currently go through the whole licensing rigmarole and then only use the degree mainly to shampoo and arrange hair.

But government agencies see any kind of minor regulatory rollbacks as a threat to their authority, writes Steven Greenhut.

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If you’re already a dead-end alcoholic, probably the last thing you need is a booze-fueled highway crash that severs your spine and leaves you a quadriplegic, right? Like, what next?

This is what happened to the late cartoonist John Callahan, who subsequently adopted a harsh, jokey tone in dealing with physical impairment (and everything else) in his work. In Gus Van Sant’s new movie, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, we see Callahan, played by Joaquin Phoenix, as a young wastrel shuffling around Portland, Oregon, in never-ending search of a drink, writes Kurt Loder.

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Raphael Sanchez, a former attorney for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Sanchez stole the identities of aliens in removal proceedings and used them to obtain credit cards and open lines of credit he used to buy things.