Category: reason

From gangster news to gamecock reviews, Reason takes a look at some of the most controversial underground magazines. Check out the whole thing at the link below.

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Now that President Donald Trump’s meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un is in the books, a new chapter in the tense relationship between the two countries can be written.

According to reporting by The New York Times, the United States has promised to stop war games in the region and to open diplomatic channels to the long-isolated nation, while North Korea has re-committed to de-nuclearization. It is important to remember that Monday’s meeting is really just one step towards lasting peace. Or at least a step away from nuclear war.

It’s also important to remember not to listen to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

On Sunday, Graham appeared on ABC’s This Week to try to create a false choice on North Korea that would put the United States at greater risk of military conflict with Kim’s regime. The outcome of the Trump-Kim meeting, Graham said, could be just one of two things: “Peace, where we have a win-win solution, military force where we devastate the North Korean regime and stop their program by force, or to capitulate like we’ve done in the past.”

“Donald Trump is not going to capitulate,” Graham concluded, “so there’s really only two options—peace or war.”

This is true in the strictest sense, of course, because the relationship between any two nations can be described as a state of peace or a state of war. But real life is hardly so binary, and those two outcomes exist at the extreme ends of a continuum with nearly limitless alternatives in between. Indeed, if the only two choices were “war” or “peace,” we might have to be mobilizing for a conflict with Canada after the spat that has unfolded during the past two weeks between Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. That obviously sounds absurd, and so does Graham’s assessment of international relations.

Trump’s meeting with Kim is unlikely to result in an immediate outbreak of peace. Beyond the nuclear weapons issue, there are horrific human rights violations for which the North Korean regime will eventually have to answer. Those have been off-the-table so far because they are seen as a third rail in the negotiations. There is a long way to go, but hopefully Monday’s conference in Singapore is a small step towards the “peace” end of the continuum.

And if it turns out that it was not a step in that direction, well, that doesn’t mean that war is the only alternative either.

“Lindsey Graham is a danger to the country by even proposing ideas like authorizing war with Korea,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told CNN on Monday, just hours before Trump and Kim were set to meet.

Paul said Graham’s comments reflect a “naive worldview where he believes that war is always the answer, and that means expenditures for war are always the answer.”

Graham’s binary thinking about how to deal with rogue states has not served the United States well in the past. The “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” rhetoric of the George W. Bush administration is something for which America is still paying a steep price—not only in Iraq, but in our ongoing efforts to avoid a repeat of the Iraq disaster with fellow “axis of evil” members Iran and, yes, North Korea.

Whatever missteps he’s made in other aspects of foreign policy, Trump deserves credit for making the effort to open diplomatic channels with North Korea. Graham’s binary worldview—one that he is not alone in holding—is too easy and too weak. It requires no critical thinking. Trump seems willing, for now, to consider a more nuanced understanding of war and peace.

In short, Trump has given peace a chance. Hopefully, he’ll give it a second chance and a third one too, if necessary.

Iran got the boot from Nike, with the sports equipment giant announcing Friday that it will no longer provide soccer cleats to the Islamic theocracy’s national soccer team for the upcoming World Cup.

The Washington Post reports that Nike will drop its sponsorship deal with Iran in order to comply with American sanctions.

Those sanctions have existed for decades, but Nike’s announcement follows the Treasury Department’s stern warning to allies that they will “face substantial risks” if they are found engaging in business with Iran. Last month, as President Donald Trump announced he was ditching the Iran nuclear deal, the Treasury Department said it would resume imposing the U.S. nuclear-related sanctions that were lifted as part of the Obama-era agreement.

In a speech last week, Treasury Under Secretary Sigal Mandelker indicated that steps to prevent Western resources from being “exploited” by Iranians must also be taken by private companies, which could explain Nike’s sudden change of heart, especially since the threat of sanctions did little to deter Nike from clothing Iran’s team in the past.

“Those risks are even greater as we reimpose nuclear-related sanctions,” Mandelker said. “We will hold those doing prohibited business in Iran to account.”

Knowingly violating these sanctions could result in a penalty of up to $1 million and 20 years behind bars, so Nike taking leave of the Iranian team is unsurprising.

The company’s withdrawal is a reminder that there’s more at stake than just Iran’s nuclear program. Sanctions also prevent Iranians from peaceably engaging with Americans through commerce. In a country rife with poverty and in desperate need of foreign investment, U.S. sanctions will only give the authoritarian regime material for anti-Western propaganda and breed further hatred towards liberal ideas. The U.S. should allow for the free flow of capital into Iran to stop the needless punishment of civilians in what is clearly a conflict between governments.

If a modern, democratic Iran is the goal, we should take a lesson from the Cold War and recognize that culture ultimately prevails, not punitive economic measures. Just as Reason’s Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch noted in a piece for The Washington Post, “For all the talk of boycotts and bombs, if the United States is interested in spreading American values and institutions, a little TV-land may go a lot further than armored personnel carriers.” Instead of penalizing people who have nothing to do with their government, we should encourage them to be a part of the global cultural revolution that technology and free trade has enabled, whether it’s watching reruns of Seinfeld or participating in the World Cup.

Philadelphia is hoping to join the growing rank of cities that seek to bring down housing costs by piling more taxes and fees on new housing development.

This week the Philadelphia City Council is expected to impose a 1 percent tax on new construction projects in the city.

The tax is supposed to raise roughly $22 million a year, which will be spent on building below-market housing units and subsidizing down payments for families making as much as $105,000 a year. The specifics of how this money will be spent have yet to be hashed out, but The Wall Street Journal reports that those down payment subsidies could reach as high as $10,000 per recipient.

Taxing the thing you want more of is not unique to the city of brotherly love.

Los Angeles passed a per-square foot “linkage fee” on new development with the intention of plowing the proceeds into affordable housing and homelessness services in late 2017, as did Denver in late 2016. (It’s called a linkage fee because of the supposed link between new development and rising home prices and homelessness.)

Just because these taxes are becoming more common does not make them a good idea, says Vanessa Brown Calder, a housing policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

“It’s a very silly and counter-productive idea to tax new development in order to somehow provide affordable housing down the line,” Calder tells Reason. “Taxes have the effect of reducing the supply of the thing that you are taxing.”

This is especially true of the housing market in Philadelphia, which is already heavily taxed compared to other cities, says Laura Gilchrist, a spokesperson for local commercial real estate trade association NAIOP.

“I speak with capital partners that are local, national, international that are looking to invest in Philly and they are going, these guys are already so high taxed, you were already weak demand,” says Gilchrist.

In addition to the potential construction tax, Gilchrist notes, Philadelphia property owners have seen massive hikes in the assessed values of their properties, which substantially increases their tax liabilities. Assessed values went up nearly 11 percent city-wide last year. Office properties, says Gilchrist, have seen their assessed values go up by some 38 percent, while multi-family properties have increased by 68 percent.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney has also been advocating for a 4.1 percent increase in the property tax, plus a slowdown in promised wage tax decreases.

“All of the sudden a construction impact tax layered in on that is just another onerous cost of doing business that could actually break the back of the market,” Gilchrist tells Reason. Construction taxes can’t raise money for affordable housing if new construction is deterred from happening in the city, she says.

The city’s construction unions have come out strongly against the tax. John Dougherty, the head of Philadelphia’s electrical workers union, sent what local news website Philly.com described as a “fiery” letter to the city council in which he decried “the terrible timing of this anti-business tax proposal given that the city, with significant assistance from the Trades, is on the short-list for Amazon’s second national headquarters. This onerous tax proposal at this crucial time essentially tells Amazon that we’re not interested in their business. Dumb.”

The city has “a pretty onerous taxing system,” Deputy Mayor for Policy James Engler told The Wall Street Journal. Like the unions, Engler expressed concern about scaring Amazon away. Mayor Kenney, for his part, is opposing the construction tax while pushing the property tax hike.

The plan has earned the enthusiastic backing of the city’s Building Industry Association, which represents residential developers who, while having to pay the tax, also stand to be net recipients of new revenue that is earmarked for residential housing construction. Support within the City Council for the tax is also strong. It has received the sponsorship of nine out of 17 councilmembers. The construction tax passed out of the budget finance committee last week on a six to three vote.

If city officials really want to tackle housing affordability issues, says Calder, they should be looking not at tax increases but rather at tax cuts and deregulation.

“When you are concerned about housing affordability you are really concerned with ensuring that housing supply meets housing demand, and that that happens as quickly as possible,” Calder tells Reason. Taxes on construction slow this process down, as do implicit taxes like zoning regulations.

“Remove all of the barriers to developing housing so that there is as much supply as possible,” she says. “As supply grows housing costs will fall and those people will be able to do more with their own money.”

The United States Department of Justice backed a lawsuit against the University of Michigan on Monday, taking the position that the public university’s vague anti-harassment policies violate the First Amendment.

“The United States has a significant interest in the vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms in institutions of higher learning,” said the statement in support of the lawsuit that the Justice Department filed in federal court. “In recent years, many institutions of higher education have failed to uphold these freedoms, and free speech has come under attack on campuses across the country.”

The group suing Michigan is a new free speech advocacy organization called Speech First. Its suit contends that the university’s bias response team punishes students for engaging in constitutionally protected expression, thereby chilling free speech. Michigan’s code of conduct prohibits harassment and defines it broadly as “unwanted negative attention.” Taken together, these well-intentioned policies chill free speech on campus and violate the First Amendment, according to the lawsuit.

Michigan’s administration has countered that the BRT merely provides voluntary support to students who need it, and does not formally sanction students. University spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald told The Detroit Free Press that both Speech First and the Justice Department have “seriously misstated University of Michigan policy and painted a false portrait of speech on our campus.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions evidently sees things differently.

“Freedom of speech and expression on the American campus are under attack,” said Acting Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio in a statement. “This Justice Department, under the leadership of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is committed to promoting and defending Americans’ first freedom at public universities.”

Assuming the lawsuit moves forward in court, it will be an important test of whether BRTs—which are in place at more than a hundred universities—are constitutionally permissible.

Historic summit opens path to peace and a lot of questions. President Trump promised that the U.S. will stop all “war games” on the Korean peninsula if North Korea’s Kim Jong Un will start the process of denuclearization—a process Trump expects Kim to get on “very quickly” after their historic meeting in Singapore today.

“We are going to take care of a very big and very dangerous problem for the world,” Trump said after the meeting in a joint statement with Kim. It said the U.S. is “committed to provide security guarantees” and that Kim “reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

“We had a historic meeting and decided to leave the past behind,” said Kim afteward. “The world will see a major change.”

The Trump-Kim summit “opened the door to ending seven decades of hostility between the two countries,” says The New York Times in a live briefing on all the nitty gritty details.

It may have also opened the door to Trump Towers Pyongyang.

In a news conference following the summit, Trump also praised North Korea’s beaches “from a real estate perspective.” You can see that the country has great beaches “whenever they’re exploding their cannons into the ocean,” said Trump. He continued:

I said, ‘Boy, look at that view. Wouldn’t that make a great condo?’ You could have the best hotels in the world right there. Think of it from a real estate perspective. You have South Korea, you have China and they own the land in the middle. How bad is that, right? It’s great.

Overall, the post-summit statements from Trump and Kim are “bold” yet lack detail, reports the Times.

In a post-summit interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Trump said North Korea was “going to get rid of certain ballistic missile sites and various other things” but that they would “put that out later.” He said they will “probably need another meeting.”

Kim did pledge to destroy one particular missile-engine testing site, according to Trump—though this was not in the agreement they signed. “I got that after we signed the agreement,” the president told reporters.

I said, ‘Do me a favor; we’ve got this missile-engine testing site. We know where it is because of the heat.’ It’s incredible the equipment we have, to be honest with you.

Reactions to the summit and to Trump’s post-summit statements have been predictably mixed. While North Korean denuclearization is undoubtedly a good thing, some worry that Kim is all talk. We’ll see.

Many are freaking out over Trump’s real estate comments, but it’s hard to tell how seriously he meant them and, hey, capitalist development has helped defang dictators at least as bad as Kim.

Trump’s complimentary words about Kim and North Korea have also raised cries of alarm—his statement that things were “rough” in North Korea but also “rough in a lot of places” echoed the “violence on many sides” that drew ire after protests last year in Charlottesville.

North Korea: the Charlottesville of the Pacific https://t.co/qAlVbyMbJi

— decidedly anti-flamethrower (@jesseltaylor) June 12, 2018

But others point out that there would be little good to come from the U.S. president publicly bashing Kim while attempting diplomacy, and suggest that this is Trump’s way of buttering up the brutal dictator. As long as Trump doesn’t start getting any ideas from Kim, we’re probably OK.

A few additional details of interest from and perspectives on the Trump-Kim summit:

So, um, summit journalists. Do not plug this in. Do not keep it. Drop it in a public trash can or send it to your friendly neighborhood security researcher. Call any computer science department and donate it for a class exercise. I’d be glad to take one off your hands, btw. https://t.co/vz8xjUIjVz

— Barton Gellman (@bartongellman) June 11, 2018

China a winner here too. North Korea halts nuclear tests, US halts military exercises — like the doulble freeze proposal floated by China and strongly rejected by US last year

— Meridith McGraw (@meridithmcgraw) June 12, 2018

Trump showed Kim Jong Un a video clip that resembled a movie trailer, telling the story of “two men, two leaders, one destiny.” https://t.co/ORsjmZTyFq

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) June 12, 2018

Oh, and Dennis Rodman was there.

If you had money on Dennis Rodman-touts-a-pot-based-cryptocurrency as the C-plot to Trump’s North Korea summit, see your bookie.

— Peter Suderman (@petersuderman) June 12, 2018

This is the most lit timeline

We got Dennis Rodman discussing North Korean foreign policy while crying live on CNN pic.twitter.com/6SII9clbjx

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) June 12, 2018

That so many people – even just on Twitter – are praising Dennis Rodman is disgusting. HE BEFRIENDED KIM JONG UN. COME ON

— Shoshana Weissmann, Sloth Committee Chair (@senatorshoshana) June 12, 2018

Dennis Rodman arrives in Singapore for the Trump-Kim summit in a T-shirt promoting a cannabis cryptocurrency.

We’ve reached peak 2018. pic.twitter.com/W6UcbF5BPj

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) June 11, 2018

FREE MINDS

Resisting “hate speech.” Cato Institute Vice President John Samples reviews former ACLU president Nadine Strossen’s new book, Hate Speech: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship, on the Cato blog this week. “Hate speech” laws very often “fall hardest on the very people they are intended to protect,” Samples writes. More:

Strossen draws attention to the fact that prohibitions of “hate speech” are characterized by unavoidable vagueness and overbreadth. A law is “unduly vague” (and unconstitutional) when people “of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning.” “Hate speech” laws are inherently subjective and ambiguous in their language, with the use of words like “insulting,” “abusive,” and “outrageous.” Specific to laws about speech, vagueness “inevitably deters people from engaging in constitutionally protected speech”.

FREE MARKETS

Ruling in AT&T/Time-Warner merger case comes today.

It’s judgment day for AT&T’s merger with Time Warner https://t.co/AF0eVSIMmP

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) June 12, 2018

QUICK HITS

• Domino’s pizza is now branding potholes.
• Behold the liberating power of commerce.
• “The Trump Doctrine is, ‘We’re America, Bitch.’ That’s the Trump Doctrine.”
• NXIVM founder Keith Raniere’s lawyers say the FBI “cherrypicked” texts between him and actress Allison Mack for the feds’ sex-trafficking case against them. “These communications are not evidence of sex trafficking or any other crime,” ​said attorney Marc Agnifilo.
• “‘Those who say it can not be done, should not interrupt those doing it.’ -Chinese Proverb” tweeted Ivanka Trump yesterday. There’s just one problem…
• The New York City Housing Authority used “elaborate ruses to fool federal inspectors” say federal prosecutors.

As Donald Trump plays nice with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, the United States government is treating possible asylum seekers inhumanely and separating children from mothers, according to Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).

The Washington Post reports that “lawmakers and public officials” recently met with 206 migrants being held in a federal detention center in SeaTac, Washington. Most of the people were from “Cuba, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, she said, but there were also people from as far away as Eritrea.” Jayapal said that many claimed to be fleeing from gang violence, rape, and political persecution, thus potentially making them eligible for legal asylum.

“It was absolutely heartbreaking. And I’ve been doing immigration-rights work for almost two decades. I am not new to these stories,” Jayapal told The Washington Post on Sunday. “I will tell you there was not a dry eye in the house. … Some of them heard their children screaming for them in the next room. Not a single one of them had been allowed to say goodbye or explain to them what was happening.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed Thursday it was temporarily moving 1,600 detainees into federal prisons “due to the current surge in illegal border crossings and implementation of the U.S. Department of Justice’s zero-tolerance policy.” Previously, ICE has held detainees in county jails or in privately contracted facilities….

“Just the abuse that they endured, being called filthy and stinky and being mocked for crying, Jayapal told The Post. “One woman said ‘I want to be with my children’ and the Border Patrol agent said: ‘You will never see your children again. Families don’t exist here. You won’t have a family anymore.'”

One can only hope that quote isn’t accurate, though as a description of current federal policy, it’s not so far off the mark. Due to an increase in the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, the Trump administration is trying to prosecute all people it catches crossing the border, even those who might have a legitimate case for asylum. As part of that process, which the ACLU argues is illegal, children are routinely separated from children. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has defended the separation of families, publicly declaring:

“If people don’t want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them… We’ve got to get this message out. You’re not given immunity.”

At the same time, Donald Trump has blamed the separation of families at the border on a “horrible law” passed by “DEMOCRATS”:

Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2018

The Post notes that the president’s claim is wrong, reporting “there is no law specifically requiring the government to take such action, and it’s also the policies of his own administration that have caused the family separation.”

I applaud Trump’s action with Kim Jong-un. While the North Korean leader is a tyrant and mass murderer, the larger goal the president is pursuing—averting possible nuclear war in a part of the world that is still technically at war—is laudable. That he can at the same time be separating children from their mothers (including those who might have legitimate claims for asylum) and blaming it on Democrats is unconscionable.

In the very near future, governments will lose the ability to keep guns, drones, and other forbidden goods out of the hands of their subjects. They’ll also be rendered impotent to enforce trade and technology embargoes. Power is shifting from the state to individuals and small groups courtesy of additive manufacturing—aka 3D printing—technology.

Additive manufacturing is poised to revolutionize whole industries—destroying some jobs while creating new opportunities. That’s according to a recent report from the prestigious RAND Corporation, and there’s plenty of evidence to support the dynamic and “disruptive” view of the future that the report promises.

It’s all pretty cool, writes J.D. Tuccille, if you look forward to a future that just won’t fit under rulers’ thumbs.

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Well, that didn’t take long. The European Union’s long-awaited (and commercially dreaded) privacy regulations, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), have already begun wreaking havoc online.

Before the rules took effect on May 25, commentators had warned that the GDPR would consolidate power in the hands of market titans while confusing businesses about what exactly the regulations require. Indeed, early signs show that Facebook and Google, despite the threat of fines, are the big regulatory market winners. And EU bureaucrats themselves don’t seem to know what “compliance” really looks like.

But the GDPR has caused chaos in more unexpected ways also. Andrea O’Sullivan documents just a few of the head-scratching unintended consequences that the GDPR has wrought across the globe.

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British prosecutors say they have dropped 47 rape cases after finding police and prosecutors did not share potentially exculpatory evidence with defense attorneys. Prosecutors reviewed all active rape cases after several high-profile rape cases collapsed after defense attorneys received evidence at the last minute that undermined the prosecution.