Category: reason

Kanye West shook up many of his pop star colleagues and many fans by going very public on Twitter last month with enthusiastic support of President Donald Trump, symbolized by photos of West wearing a MAGA hat. West didn’t say much about policy, merely that he was attracted to Trump’s “Dragon energy”, by which West seemed to mean his glamour, swagger, and power, the sheer unlikelihood of his bold rise to the presidency when everyone thought it was impossible at first.

The only part of that controversial tweetstorm that seemed to have any particular ideological edge was one that said merely that “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.”

Owens is a black conservative YouTube celebrity who promotes the idea that blacks who complain about racism keeping them down are allowing themselves to be trapped on a Democratic Party/liberal plantation. Kanye has begun hanging out with her in public. Owens was present at the industry listening party for the release last week of his new EP Ye, and she seemed to be acting as his political spokeswoman.

Owens now sees the out-of-the-box huge public interest Ye as a sign that the world is embracing freedom from anti-conservative political correctness, tweeting:

You deserve it.
The mob can longer dictate who we are allowed to love.
We are free. https://t.co/0gTAXHzrms

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) June 4, 2018

Kanye follows only three people on Twitter: his wife Kim Kardashian, Owens, and Parkland survivor and anti-gun activist Emma Gonzalez.

Gonzalez complicates the notion that wearing a MAGA hat means Kanye supports every policy of Trump or the Republican Party. It’s a complication that West surely intends. After the controversy over his love for Trump broke, West rush-released a rough, revelatory debate track, “Ye v. the People,” which was not included on Ye. On that track, West said he believes he’s shifting the hermeneutics of MAGA: “Actually, wearin’ the hat’ll show people that we equal….Make America Great Again had a negative perception. I took it, wore it, rocked it, gave it a new direction/Added empathy, care and love and affection.”

Owens is delighted that America’s pop music audience still craves Kanye’s music. The tweet she embedded had a link showing that within two days of its release, all seven of Ye‘s tracks top charts on both iTunes and Spotify. Billboard reports that this week Ye, like every West album after his debut, will be debuting at number one.

This means at the very least, as Owens tweeted, that Kanye has not lost much in the way of audience for daring to admire Trump. Ye will likely have a first week with 175,000 “album equivalent units” (AEU) compared to the 94,000 of his previous 2016 LP The Life of Pablo. But Pablo‘s first official week on Billboard did not reflect the many hundreds of thousands of downloads he got on streaming service Tidal in the first two months of its release, West isn’t nearly doubling his first-week audience from that album to Ye; his quarter million Tidal downloads in week one would have amounted to around 166,000 AEUs.

But Kanye’s post-MAGA controversy clearly isn’t diminishing public interest in his music in any noticeable way.

It’s hard to be sure that Kanye has attracted a huge new audience of Trumpsters curious about this controversial pop icon who is now on their side, but it certainly seems likely he’s attracted some at least.

What might people without a deep knowledge of Kanye be getting if Ye is their introduction? Is the man who rapped of himself in 2013’s “I Am A God,” “Soon as they like you, make ’em unlike you/’Cause kissing people’s ass is so unlike you?” going out of his way to reach out to MAGA-ites?

Well, Ye begins with the unbelievably raw and admission-against-interest honest “I Thought About Killing You.” In that track the always extraordinarily self-aware Kanye lets us, and the unnamed loved one he’s speaking to/of, know that he had genuinely murderous thoughts about her. Further, although he loves her, he loves himself more (andhe’s thought of killing himself too, so that’s no comfort).

West is consistently his own smartest commentator and critic. Here he’s meta-intelligent enough to say out loud that he knows he ought to say something to ameliorate the harshness of that admission, perhaps vulnerably complaining that he has trouble loving himself. Alas, he admits that wouldn’t be true.

The admission is there, first thing: He’s a man with a dark and troubled mind, he refuses to seek sympathy for it, and he wants that to frame your understanding of everything that follows.

Nor does he do much explain what his MAGA love is all about, though in an album that he claims to have made entirely in the past month—and not finished until literally the day of release—he alludes to the controversy in various ways.

For example, in “All Mine,” West drops Trump-era references to Stormy Daniels, using her in a perhaps Trump-defending way to say that even if he had a woman as great as Naomi Campbell he could still imagine himself wanting Stormy Daniels.

And in “Yikes,” a song rooted in his shifting attitudes toward his own mental problems, he mentions going to North Korea as something wildly improbable he might do, analogous to getting together for a smoke with Wiz Khalifa with whom he’s been publicly feuding (as have Trump and Kim Jong Un?).

The general sound and feel of Ye, even when touching on the sonic pleasures of old soul vocal pop, is generally hazy, dreamy, laid back and opiated in the same way his magnum opus My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy sounded coked up. Even what could be declarations of sunshiney joy like “Ghost Town”‘s “nothing hurts anymore, I feel kinda free/We’re still the kids we used to be” feel ironically fuzzed-out, more druggy than genuinely youthfully exuberant, even delivered by young guest rapper 070 Shake.

On the conservative tip, some Ye lyrics do touch on some classic pro-family themes. On “Wouldn’t Leave,” he says his wife has chosen to stick with him even as his Trump-friendly public declarations apparently made her feel scared he was destroying their public image and eventually their fortune.

The last track, “Violent Crimes,” is mostly about how a man who used to feel free to use and disrespect women changes once he has daughters (West has two). Such a man, Kanye says, starts seeing “women as something to nurture” and worries about how pervs on the internet will treat them, hoping they want to pursue piano and karate more than yoga and Pilates. That should appeal to a social movement that cheers images of men holding guns in front of their daughters and their dates.

The notion that Christian Americans in the Trump age get upset about propriety sexual or otherwise is outdated, so it’s unlikely the frequent (but not as frequent as in the past) references to sex and drugs on the EP will turn off a MAGA audience. The closest Kanye gets to really trying to explain any of his MAGA turn, however, comes on “Wouldn’t Leave.” On that song, he notes that when he said “Slavery’s a choice,” people replied “Why Ye?” but “just imagine if they caught me on a wild day.” In other words, he’s saying that he can be out of line, that he knows it, and that his concerned fans should realize it could have been, and perhaps someday will be, worse.

A general awareness that he’s aware he comes across as a loon suffuses the record. As “Ghost Town” puts it, “been trying to make you love me/but everything I try just takes you further from me.” In “Wouldn’t Leave” he grants that when he thinks he’s being next-level futuristic he might just come across as an outmoded greedy bougie businessman: “You want me workin’ on my messagin’/When I’m thinkin’ like George Jetson/But soundin’ like George Jefferson.”

I’m pretty sure Candace Owens was wrong to believe that two months ago no one could be pro-Trump and top the pop charts. But it is undeniable that after Kanye, already a pop star with a very bad reputation as an arrogant loon, made himself famous for his somewhat vague support of Trump, he held his audience.

It is also true that Kanye continues on this record to be Kanye, a pop futurist and brilliantly self-revelatory writer working out his own issues and attitudes toward life and fame in public in irresistibly compelling ways that are definitely not designed to generate easy affection. For all his surface self-love, his writing has always shown a man haunted by demons; he doesn’t want us to casually pat him on the head. He fights for the public’s attention and love but he never makes it easy for himself or his listeners.

Kanye’s ambiguity about his policy preferences is no more clear after this record. That lack of clarity continues to make it tricky to declare what his decision to go all in on Trump should mean to us—or what it means to him.

Trump for his part has already shown some signs of what Kanye means to him, believing the support of West and Kardashian is helping him with black voters and might influence a very much-deserved presidential pardon to Alice Johnson, a great-grandmother in jail for life on drug charges.)

But the Trump controversy hasn’t harmed West’s ability to make an endlessly compelling record about what all his records are about: what it’s like to be Kanye West.

Yesterday Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper vetoed the latest attempt to give recreational cannabis consumers in his state someplace aside from private residences where they can legally use the marijuana they have been legally buying since the beginning of 2014. Hickenlooper erroneously claimed that H.B. 18-1258, which would have allowed “tasting rooms” where customers of marijuana shops could sample the merchandise, conflicted with Amendment 64, the 2012 ballot initiative that legalized recreational use.

“Amendment 64 is clear,” Hickenlooper says in his veto letter. “Marijuana consumption may not be conducted ‘openly or publicly’ or ‘in a manner that endangers others. We find that HB 18-1258 directly conflicts with this constitutional requirement.”

Amendment 64, now part of the state constitution, actually says “nothing in this section shall permit consumption that is conducted openly and publicly or in a manner that endangers others.” The conjunction is significant because it implies that cannabis consumption can be permitted if it is merely open or merely public but not if it is both. Depending on how open and public are understood, smoking pot on the patio of a restaurant, which is on private property but visible to passers-by, could be legal. So could vaping in a wooded area of a public park, which is on public property but shielded from passers-by.

Even if you don’t buy those interpretations, it hardly seems reasonable to claim that vaping or sampling edibles in a tasting room that is located on private property and shielded from passers-by qualifies as “openly and publicly” consuming cannabis. Maybe that is why Hickenlooper changed the and to an or.

As for endangering others, Hickenlooper worries that “HB 18-1258 sends the wrong message by permitting people to consume marijuana in a public setting, a practice that may increase the number of impaired drivers on our roadways.” The same logic, of course, condemns bars, restaurants, and other businesses that serve alcohol, including Wynkoop Brewing Company, the Denver brewpub that Hickenlooper cofounded three decades ago. In fact, given that alcohol has a much more dramatic impact on driving ability than cannabis does, establishments like Wynkoop pose a bigger hazard to public safety.

The sponsors of HB 18-1258 hoped that the idea of marijuana tasting rooms would make sense to Hickenlooper because of his experience with his own business, which not only serves beer along with food but offers brewery tours that include samples of Wynkoop’s products. Instead he is insisting on an irrational distinction between beer and bud in the name of enforcing a ballot initiative that says “marijuana should be regulated in a manner similar to alcohol.”

Howard Schultz, the longtime Starbucks executive who helped turn the Seattle-based coffeeshop chain into a globe-dominating brand, has announced that he’s stepping down from the company at the end of the month. After flirting with the idea of running for president in 2016, Schultz’ decision to step away from Starbucks is fueling talk that he might seek the Democratic nomination in 2020, and the businessman is happily encouraging the speculation.

If Schultz runs, he’s sure to face a crowded primary field; you’d be wise to be skeptical about his chances. Still, he’s someone worth keeping an eye on, if for no other reason than the fact that he’s willing to say what needs saying about the national debt and the country’s out-of-control spending.

“There’s no for-profit business in the world that could sustain itself or survive with $20 trillion in debt,” Schultz tells Time in a piece that is basically a trial balloon for the potential presidential bid. “And we can’t keep pushing this. It’s just not responsible.”

Responsibility figures strongly in Schultz’ political views, it seems. In the same interview, he bashes “both parties” for “a lack of responsibility” on everything from the national debt to global warming. But there’s also a strong undertone of political naivety in his worldview. “If you just got people in the room who left their ideology outside the room and recognized that we’re here to walk in the shoes of the American people,” he says, “we could solve these problems.” Shades of another CEO-candidate, Ross Perot, who repeatedly promised in 1992 that he would solve one problem or another by getting the best experts together in a room to come up with a plan to tackle it.

That approach may sound great. But this sort of radical centrism has failed to catch on with voters before—looking at you, Michael Bloomberg—in part because voters, especially the ones who participate in the primaries and caucuses, frequently don’t want to leave ideology outside the room.

In a general election, Schultz, who stepped down as Starbucks’ CEO last year but still serves as the company’s executive chairman, could put his résumé up against Donald Trump’s and come out ahead on almost every front. During his time running Starbucks, Schultz grew the company from a chain of 11 stores in the Seattle area to a global brand with more than 28,000 locations in 77 countries. As Ed Carson, news editor at Investor’s Business Daily (and a former Reasoner) put it this morning on Cheddar, “before Starbucks, coffee was really not that good.” His company has literally changed the world. Donald Trump only wishes he had that sort of business record.

But Democratic primary voters are the biggest hurdle facing Schultz—and other businessmen, like Mark Cuban or hedge fund manager (and former Massachusetts governor) Deval Patrick, who is also reportedly considering a presidential run. With the party veering to the left in the wake of a disastrous loss in 2016, will primary voters be willing to pull the lever for someone with “CEO” at the top of his C.V.?

Though he did not provide details to Time about what he would do to reduce the country’s $20 trillion national debt, he did mention the need for a “centrist approach” to entitlement spending and bashed the GOP-passed tax cuts. His comments are too vague to know exactly what Schultz is thinking on this front, but it’s good to hear someone talking about the problem that entitlements pose for America’s long-term fiscal situation. If that hardens into a more serious proposal to reduce entitlement spending, it’s difficult to imagine Democratic voters lining up behind him. If it’s just a platitude, on the other hand, he may have a political future after all.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope Democrats will recognize that the Republicans have abandoned the high ground of fiscal responsibility and craft a campaign that aims to put entitlements (and the rest of the federal budget) on a more sustainable trajectory. But right now, “Schultz 2020: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, America” seems like a longshot at best.

The issue of prostitution decriminalization has divided candidates in the District of Columbia.

In October 2017, David Grosso, an at-large D.C. council member, drafted a decriminalization measure, called the “Reducing Criminalization to Promote Public Safety and Health Act of 2017.” The bill would make the District of Columbia the first municipality in the United States to decriminalize prostitution—that is, to remove all criminal penalties for adults consensually selling or paying for sex. (In Nevada, where some counties have legalized prostitution, buying and selling sex is allowed but only under strictly regulated circumstances; those engaging in prostitution outside these circumstances can still be found guilty of a crime.)

As the majority Democratic city prepares to effectively determine its mayor and city council members in the upcoming June 19 primary, discussion surrounding Grosso’s legislation has grown. Recently, candidates responded to a questionnaire from the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance (GLAA), a DC LGBT advocacy group, which included a question about the measure.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), who is seeking re-election, refused to provide a definitive answer about her position. “The issue of commercial sex, sex trafficking, and prostitution in general is highly complicated, generates a lot of responses, and requires careful consideration,” said Bowser.

Bowser’s Democratic-primary opponents—James Butler and Earnest Johnson—were split in their responses. Butler opposes the legislation, while Johnson supports it.

Overall, only 16 of 26 candidates replied to the questionnaire, including Martin Moulton, the Libertarian Party’s candidate for D.C. mayor. Moulton not only supports decriminalization efforts but believes in expunging the records of non-violent sex workers and customers who have previous prostitution convictions.

Ed Lazare (D), a candidate for D.C. Council Chair, also responded in support of Grosso’s legislation. “We should not jail people who have turned to sex work,” said Lazare, “especially because discrimination and exclusion have prevented many from supporting themselves in the formal economy.”

Lazare and Moulton join several other candidates, including Ward 1 council member Anita Bonds (D), in supporting Grosso’s decriminalization effort. Lori Parker (D), former DC Superior Court Judge, and two other at-large council candidates oppose the legislation.

“The Council has amended the current law over the years (principally during my chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee 2005-2012) to recognize that sex workers are often the victims of trafficking and establish the penalties for first-time offenders as minor,” said DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D), also seeking re-election, in reply to the GLAA questionnaire. Mendelson acknowledged his support for the bill’s provision to “establish a task force to improve community safety and health through the lens of commercial sex.”

GLAA President, Guillaume Bagal, told the Washington Blade, “I was pleased to see that many were open to sex work law reforms, but still disappointed at the conflation of sex work and trafficking displayed in many responses, and the lack of urgency in addressing the criminalization of individuals doing what they can do to survive.”

The World Health Organization, UN Women, Human Rights Watch, and the Open Society Foundations have all publicly supported decriminalizing sex work. Amnesty International has endorsed Grosso’s legislation. District voters have an opportunity to take public health and safety for sex workers to the next level. Will they take it?

A prank caller made a false report to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in Florida this morning, claiming there was a hostage situation unfolding at a certain address. The address was the family residence of Parkland survivor and activist David Hogg.

Thankfully, no one was home—Hogg is in Washington, D.C., with his mother, accepting an award.

In a statement to the media, Hogg brushed off the “silly prank.” “It’s not going to take our focus off what we’re super excited about; the March for Our Lives bus tour to get young people to vote and promote gun law reform” he said.

But swatting—the practice of reporting a false but serious crime at a certain location, in hopes that a SWAT team will show up—is a very serious matter that can get people seriously injured or killed. Plenty can go wrong when law enforcement officers are sent, under false pretenses, to what they believe is the scene of an ongoing crime.

Consider what happened to Andrew Finch, a 28-year-old resident of Wichita, Kansas. On December 28, 2017, two online gamers—Casey Viner and Shane Gaskill—began arguing over the internet. Eventually, Viner threatened to swat Gaskill. Gaskill dared him to do it, and even gave Viner an address. Gaskill then contacted a third man, Tyler Bariss, who was known for swatting people. Bariss contacted the police and told them he had killed his father, was holding another family member hostage, and had doused his home in gasoline. He then gave the police the address.

But Gaskill had tricked them. He no longer lived at the address he supplied; its current occupant was Finch. Police shot him to death as he opened the door for them.

Bariss, Gaskill, and Viner were all arrested. Authorities charged Bariss with involuntary manslaughter, and Gaskill and Viner with wire fraud, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice.

Obviously, a cop who shoots an innocent and unarmed man has made a grave mistake, and police need to be held accountable for their actions. But there’s a strong case to be made that swatters are also morally culpable for the actions of the cops. The officer who shot Finch might have been recklessly negligent, but he didn’t intend for an innocent person to come to harm. Bariss, Viner, and Gaskill were all fully aware that their criminal actions could very well get somebody killed—indeed, the whole purpose of the prank call was to cause harm. Philosophically, that’s the difference between manslaughter and attempted murder.

Reason contributing editor Ken White has written previously in support of revising the California penal code to make swatting a felony, and he thinks other states should do the same.

“Calling an armed law enforcement response to someone’s house is attempted murder,” he wrote.

I am always hesitant to recommend a legislative remedy. But in the case of swatting, it seems plausible that existing laws are simply not equipped to deal with this frightening method of hurting another person.

Last night, President Donald Trump announced that he was rescinding his White House invitation to the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles after only a fraction of the team planned to attend today’s 3 p.m. ceremony. “They disagree with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country,” he claimed.

In a follow-up tweet, the president gave the false impression that the recalcitrant Eagles were among those National Football League players who have been staging protests during the pre-game playing of the national anthem:

The Philadelphia Eagles Football Team was invited to the White House. Unfortunately, only a small number of players decided to come, and we canceled the event. Staying in the Locker Room for the playing of our National Anthem is as disrespectful to our country as kneeling. Sorry!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2018

In fact, no Eagle stayed in the locker room or kneeled during the anthem throughout the 2017-2018 season, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. (Safety Malcolm Jenkins, an outspoken political activist, raised a fist for part of the season.) That didn’t stop Fox News from illustrating the story with pictures of Eagles kneeling—in prayer, not anthem-protest. (The cable network later apologized.)

The president’s misleading, self-serving frame—that the players’ reluctance to attend was only about the NFL’s controversial anthem policy, a conflict he has taken an open delight in exacerbating—was quickly parroted by some of his supporters, including self-styled free speech champion Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA:

If you refuse to stand for the national anthem you have no business being honored at the White House or by our President

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) June 4, 2018

Last month, when I wrote that, “Saying ‘How high?’ when a president says ‘Jump!’ is behavior suitable for a royal subject, not an American citizen,” many interpreted my criticism as being pointed at NFL owners (who, they also maintained, were merely reacting rationally to market signals). But I was talking specifically about members of the public whose passion about and interpretation of this remarkably trivial issue seem tethered directly to the president’s Twitter feed.

Again, no member of the Philadelphia Eagles refused to stand for the National Anthem in 2017-2018, so portraying Trump’s decision as a defense of the Star-Spangled Banner is like volunteering to sit on a ventriloquist’s lap. Though at least Kirk, unlike Trump, didn’t suggest that non-compliant players leave the country (speaking of which, where are they supposed to go, given that less than 3 percent of the league was born outside of the United States?).

So was the players’ reticence all about the anthem? No. In fact, many Eagles declined the prospective White House invitation long before the recent reanimation of that controversy, and they cited plenty of other reasons. “It’s not about politics. It’s just about—I don’t think the president is a good person,” wide receiver Torrey Smith said in February. “I don’t want to go out of my way to go see someone who isn’t even welcoming the men in this locker room and our different cultures.”

Jenkins pinned his disinterest on the lack of opportunity to talk policy. “Because it is not a meeting or a sit-down or anything like that, I’m just not interested in the photo op,” he told the Inquirer. “Over the last two years, I have been meeting with legislators, both Republican and Democrat, don’t matter. If you want to meet to talk about advancing our communities, changing our country, I am all for that. But this isn’t one of those meetings.”

Defensive lineman Chris Long and running back LeGarrette Blount both skipped last year’s White House ceremony as members of the New England Patriots as well, and were planning to do so again this year. “[When] my son grows up—and I believe the legacy of our president is going to be what it is—I don’t want him to say, ‘Hey Dad, why’d you go when you knew the right thing was to not go?'” Long said in 2017. Echoed Blount then: “I will not be going to the White House. I don’t feel welcome in that house. I’ll leave it at that.”

The anthem-wars no doubt played a role in souring players on Trump—after all, the president of the United States did say last September, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired. He’s fired!'” That is surely no way to talk about a man’s mother. And as Jenkins recently observed, “Quite frankly, guys in our league don’t like being told what to do, what they can and can’t do.” After Trump’s inflammatory comments, Jenkins noted, “We went from, like, nine guys [protesting] to over 200.”

Which is all to the good as far as the president is concerned. Trump was delighted by the reaction to his comments last September, and followed it up by dispatching Vice President Mike Pence for anthem theatrics, and name-checking the controversy during his State of the Union Address. Axios in February, quoting an unnamed source close to the White House, reported that the president’s approach toward whipping up Republican enthusiasm before the midterms “will be looking for ‘unexpected cultural flashpoints’—like the NFL and kneeling—that he can latch onto in person and on Twitter.” Trump looks upon cultural divides and sees how he can make them wider, for personal gain.

In a statement released late this morning, the White House accused the Eagles of backing out of their original plan to have 81 members of the organization attend, and of trying to get the event rescheduled at the last minute. We shall see how those claims hold up. But, as Jonah Goldberg and Ben Shapiro (among others) have noted, the notion that the refuseniks are stubborn anthem-protesters is just false. “The attempt to make the Eagles event cancellation about the national anthem is just a complete act of deceitful propaganda,” Goldberg wrote, “and conservatives should have zero to do with it.”

San Francisco voters head to the polls today for the city’s municipal elections, where they will elect a new mayor and a council member, known as a supervisor. Also before voters is a pair of initiatives that offer the electorate a choice between sharply increasing taxes…and sharply increasing taxes.

Proposition D—better known as the Housing for All initiative—would boost the city’s gross receipts tax on commercial rents from the current 0.3 percent to 1.7 percent (a 460 percent increase). The city controller estimates that the measure will rake in an extra $70 million in new revenue, which is earmarked for homelessness services and affordable housing.

The measure has attracted a number of prominent endorsements, including ones from the San Francisco Chronicle‘s editorial board and mayoral candidate and City Supervisor London Breed, as well as pro-development group SF YIMBY, all of whom say the new tax revenue is necessary to address the city’s twin housing and homelessness crises.

But Prop D also has its opponents. Over half of the city’s board of supervisors has come out against it, as has the local chapter of the Service Employees International Union. The San Francisco chapter of the Democratic Socialists also opposes it, dismissing the measure as “a crass attempt to break working class solidarity.”

These critics have thrown their support behind Proposition C.

Like Prop D, Prop C would also boost the city’s gross recipients tax, only it would raise it even higher, to 3.5 percent. That raise is anticipated to generate an additional $146 million a year, 85 percent of which would be earmarked for child care services. The other 15 percent would go into the general fund.

Also like Prop D, Prop C has the backing of its own mayoral candidate, City Supervisor Jane Kim.

Because Prop D was put on the ballot by the city’s board of supervisors, it requires a supermajority to pass. Prop C, by contrast, was placed on the ballot by a signature gathering campaign, so it needs only a bare majority to pass. As both are trying to tap the same revenue source, only one can go into effect. Should both measures reach their requisite vote thresholds, the one with more affirmative votes will win.

In the local press, the dueling measures are being described as representative of the left-leaning city’s political fault lines. The San Francisco Chronicle describes Prop D as having the backing of the “moderate wing” of the city’s political class while Prop C is attracting the support of the “progressive bloc.”

The San Francisco Weekly featured a similar analysis, quoting Jason McDaniel, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University, who said, “the dueling propositions reflect a combination of a) the polarization between the two major political factions in S.F., and b) close level of competition between them for control of government and policy.”

Yet at the end of the day, both of these ostensibly polarized factions are supporting the same sort of high taxes to pay for the same sort of government activities. This “fight” between moderates and progressives looks a lot like Coke versus Pepsi.

That’s a shame because both Prop C and Prop D are terrible ideas that deserve to fail.

Gross receipts taxes—which tax all incoming funds as opposed to taking profits—fell out fashion in tax policy circles long ago, given the seeming inefficiency and unfairness of imposing the same tax burden on all businesses regardless of their profitability.

“While buildings cannot leave San Francisco, tenants can. To the extent that this tax would be passed on to tenants, some business tenants might move to other cities, impacting the strength and diversity of San Francisco’s economy,” observed the San Francisco-area think tank SPUR in its June voter guide.

Office rents in San Francisco are the second highest in the nation, behind only New York. The office vacancy rate, at 9 percent, is also much lower than in the wider Silicon Valley (16 percent) and the nation as a whole (14 percent).

This suggests that demand for office space in the city is high and that any increase in taxes on commercial rent will be passed on to tenants, not eaten by landlords. San Francisco’s thriving tech firms can probably survive such a rent hike. Lower margin businesses making just enough money to keep the lights on, however, will find themselves in a much tighter spot.

Both initiatives could fail today, but that seems unlikely. The only groups opposing both measures are the city’s irrelevant Republican Party and the Building Owners and Managers Association of San Francisco (a trade group representing commercial landlords).

Diego Aguilar-Canabal of the Bay City Beacon predicts a loss for Prop D given its supermajority requirement and its failure to attract the support of the business community. That leaves Prop C as the likely winner. Should that analysis prove correct, San Franciscians would be stuck with the worst of two bad options.

I’m old enough to remember when the Republican Party claimed to be the party of free trade and free markets. So are you, if you can recall any year prior to 2016.

To be sure, the GOP’s commitment to laissez faire was always more aspirational than actual, but Republicans and high-profile conservatives aren’t even faking it anymore. When it comes to defending and promoting basic capitalist ideas such as free trade, allowing workers to move and employers to hire them freely, and ending subsidies that distort market forces while paying off politically connected interests, Trump-era Republicans and conservatives are all wet.

Over the weekend, the president displayed his ignorance about what matters in trade with this statement bemoaning all the cheap imports Americans have chosen to buy when given the opportunity.

When you’re almost 800 Billion Dollars a year down on Trade, you can’t lose a Trade War! The U.S. has been ripped off by other countries for years on Trade, time to get smart!

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

As Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, the rare Republican who routinely voices disagreement with the president, countered, “I’m way down on trade with restaurants, grocery stores, malls, and movie theaters. I keep buying from them, but they never buy from me. I must be getting ripped off, right?”

Amash is a lonely voice on the right side of the aisle. Here’s Fox News’ Laura Ingraham weighing into the “Koch brothers” like some ThinkProgress intern with half-a-semester of Econ 101 under his belt (disclosure: David Koch is a trustee of Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website, and we are the recipient of grants from the Charles Koch Institute). The brothers’ sin? A principled commitment to free trade that puts them sideways with President Trump. Here’s how Ingraham responded to reports with headlines such as “Kochs to Spend Millions Fighting Against Trump’s Trade-War Agenda.”

Of course Koch Brothers “will spend millions” fighting tariffs. Status quo globalist trade imbalance worked great for super rich, not great for the middle class. @realDonaldTrump stand firm.

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) June 4, 2018

As The Washington Post‘s Catherine Rampell writes, Trump has been trying to “strong-arm the invisible hand” since before he officially took office (remember that air-conditioning plant in Indiana?). Reason‘s Ronald Bailey has reported on the president’s most-recent attack on basic laws of supply and demand, which involves forcing power utilities to buy energy from money-losing coal and nuclear-energy companies. That’s the very definition of cronyism, argues Bailey. Rampell notes that, too, while zeroing in on the bogus “national-security” motivation behind related “buy American” rhetoric and policy coming from the White House and tariffs that take aim at such deadly foreign enemies as Canada, the European Union, and Mexico. Then there’s the bully pulpit, which this president has weaponized against specific companies whenever he wants:

He urged National Football League teams to “fire or suspend” players who kneel during the national anthem, comments that at least one team owner admitted in a deposition affected his personnel policy.

He attacked Nordstrom for dropping his daughter’s clothing line.

He publicly berates Amazon—whose chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, independently owns The Post—and has reportedly demanded that the Postal Service double prices on Amazon packages.

Rampell suggests that Trump’s willingness to break “a sacred data embargo” on jobs-report numbers also illustrates his willingness to game markets unfairly. Whether you buy that or not, there’s little doubt that the president’s constant attacks on the media and his own government’s analysis “has eroded confidence in the integrity of government data and fairness of financial markets.”

Of course, that erosion started long before Trump and will likely continue long after he’s moseyed to whatever pasture he ends up in. Indeed, if Salena Zito and Brad Todd, authors of The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping America Politics, are correct, Trump is an effect of such a breakdown in confidence and integrity, not a primary cause. As Zito recently told me, in many cases, the same folks who voted for Trump in 2016 had voted for Barack Obama because they had lost faith in the ability or willingness of more-conventional candidates to represent their concerns. What isn’t up for discussion is that Trump has changed the Republican Party position on trade:

Democrats’ new faith in the power of free markets may be situational, but there’s no reason to doubt that Republicans have definitively shifted on the matter. Even before Trump was elected, upwards of 85 percent of Republicans were saying that free trade had cost more jobs than it created. Add to that growing hostility to immigration among conservatives and GOP lawmakers who want to cut legal immigration in half while keeping tight caps on work visas for skilled and unskilled workers alike. Back in the days of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, such restrictions would have been seen for what they plainly are: sure-to-fail attempts by the government to dictate and control labor markets.

Which is of a piece with the way Trump and the contemporary GOP see their role not as facilitators of free and open markets, but as technocrats who get to decide more and more of what goes on in the economy. It wasn’t a good look when Democrats used to talk about the need for tighter and tighter regulation and more “consensus” on who gets to make what or hire whom. And it sure as hell isn’t any prettier when it’s Donald Trump, ostensibly flanked by gone-missing party leaders Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, barking out orders.

An apartment developer paid millions for prime real estate in Edgewater, New Jersey, with a beautiful view of Manhattan. Nearly 2,000 apartments would be built. The developer also offered to build public parks, parking, a ferry terminal, and a pier, all at no cost to taxpayers.

But Edgewater’s mayor, Michael McPartland, and city council said: No, you may not build!

That’s not that unusual. Local officials often keep new developments out.

But in this case, they also voted to seize the developer’s land using eminent domain. John Stossel asks: Why would they do that?

Click here for full text and downloadable versions.

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The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel, his independent production company, Stossel Productions, and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.

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Voters in San Francisco will go to the polls on Tuesday to decide whether the city should ban flavored nicotine products, including vaping fluids.

The ban on flavored tobacco and vaping products is being presented as a necessary measure designed to improve public health and as a way to keep nicotine away from children. But if Proposition E is approved by voters, it could make it more difficult for smokers to kick their tobacco habit. By prohibiting relatively safer and more attractive options, San Francisco could create a set of incentives that leaves nicotine-addicted residents sucking on the cancer sticks.

San Francisco’s proposed ban is the most high profile example yet, but it’s merely part of an ongoing trend of cities across California taking steps to prohibit flavored nicotine products from being sold to anyone regardless of age. Sonoma, Berkeley, and Manhattan Beach have passed ordinances banning the sale of flavored tobacco products and some flavored vaping fluids. Similar bans have been passed but not yet implemented in Beverley Hills, Palo Alto, San Mateo, and elsewhere.

As I wrote in April, there cities are moving in exactly the wrong direction, as a growing body of scientific and medical evidence demonstrates that vaping helps smokers quit.

In January, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine issued an advisory opinion to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showing that e-cigarettes could be life-savers. “E-cigarette aerosol contains fewer numbers and lower levels of most toxicants than smoke from combustible tobacco cigarettes does,” wrote University of Washington toxicologist David Eaton, who authored the report. “Laboratory tests of e-cigarette ingredients, in vitro toxicological tests, and short-term human studies suggest that e-cigarettes are likely to be far less harmful than combustible tobacco cigarettes.”

A victory for Prop E would be a big loss for public health, says Michelle Minton, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank in Washington, D.C.

“They are using the specter of big tobacco targeting children to convince voters to institute stricter regulations that will make e-cigarettes harder to get, more expensive, and less attractive than actual cigarettes,” Minton writes.

In San Francisco, backers of the ban have claimed opposition comes from Big Tobacco and have disregarded the many small businesses that could be forced to close or move if Prop E passes. Tobacco companies have “shrewdly allowed local shop owners to serve as the sympathetic face of the campaign, arguing that local pols looking to beat up on Big Tobacco are actually putting mom and pop out of business,” the San Francisco Chronicle claims in its editorial advocating for a “yes” vote on Prop E.

It’s true that big tobacco companies like R.J. Reynolds have spent more than $11 million opposing Prop E. But that doesn’t begin to compare to the more than $75 million the California Department of Health has spent on a new anti-vaping campaign—funded by taxpayers—that’s been hitting California TVs since January.

And the Prop E advocates basically ignore the fact that the ban on flavored nicotine products will do real damage to real businesses in San Francisco. Dozens of business owners protested the proposed ban outside of city hall in April.

“We just legalized marijuana. Now you want to ban menthol cigarettes?” Shawn Richard, one of those protesters, told a local TV station. “I mean come on. For real? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Only in California, Shawn.