Category: reason

Ever tried to bring attention to an issue close to your heart, but didn’t quite have the star power to do it? Well fret no more because rap supergroup Run the Jewels is here to help.

Through the music website Daylight Curfew, the famed duo of Killer Mike and El-P are offering an exclusive “Self-Righteousness for Sale” package, where for the price of $350,000, the two artists promise to spend six months “pretending to care about whatever you care about.”

This pretending to care will include “eloquent and timely speeches,” a co-authored info packet, a “heartfelt” video about the purchaser’s cause, and travel to a maximum of three events. As if all of this weren’t enough for any cash-laden social justice warrior, Run the Jewels will even compose an original song entitled “WE’VE GOT TO BRING _______ TO AN END” as part of the package.

Some terms and conditions do apply. The offer is apparently not available to “terrorists or cops” (sorry, #bluelivesmatter). Run the Jewels also reserves the right to “not fulfill any of its obligations as outlined in any package priced at 35k or more” which would, of course, include the self-righteousness package.

Run the Jewels’ offer to basically be a super PAC for hire, even if not actually redeemable, is patently hilariously and an excellent send-up of so much of today’s celebrity activism.

It’s also a little bit ironic given that Killer Mike was a vocal supporter of former presidential candidate and vociferous super PAC critic Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). If Sanders had his druthers when it came to campaign finance restrictions, Run the Jewels’ self-righteousness package might be illegal as well as phony.

Update 11/17/16: This article originally listed Sanders as a Democrat. He is apparently still an Independent.

For only the second time since the early 1950s, a Republican president will wield power with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress. With that incredible power, small-government advocates can’t help but hope that this change will bring about good policies and much less government than under President Barack Obama. Maybe.

The first time we had a unified Republican government since the ’50s occurred just a little more than a decade ago, when then-President George W. Bush enjoyed Republican control of Congress for 4 1/2 of his first six years in office. Four months into Bush’s first term, Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont declared himself an independent and caucused with the Democrats, thus breaking a 50-50 tie and giving Democrats slight control of the Senate until the GOP recaptured it just over a year later.

Most readers have probably forgotten about Jeffords, but what shouldn’t be forgotten is the massive growth in federal power under a Washington dominated by the GOP. Allow Veronique de Rugy to quickly refresh your memory.

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The American right has long been telling itself a simple morality tale that goes something like this: The white Christian establishment is the original source and continuing guardian of America’s tradition of liberty, free markets and limited government and minorities are a threat to it because they don’t share the same attachments. In their telling, minorities, especially those who come from quasi-socialist countries, are preternatural welfare queens happy to suck from the government’s teat. One of the major arguments that restrictionist right-wing pundits make for clamping down on immigration in fact is that immigrants, hailing from non-Euorpean countries, dilute these American principles.

But Trump’s triumph on a platform of special protections and handouts to his white base shows this morality tale to be a fairytale, notes Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia.

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There has been so much howling in the wind among my fellow non-Donald Trump voters over the last eight days that it’s been damn near impossible to hear any good news among the din. But good news there has been, even for hardcore Democrats, such as the bouncing of more than a half-dozen problematic law enforcement types by criminal justice reformers.

I write about that as my lead example in an L.A. Times column today devoted to helping wound-licking Californians strategize defense against Trumpian authoritarianism. Here is an excerpt from a piece that channels and quotes from this great post-election post by Ken “Popehat” White:

From speed limits to school tests to health insurance rules, the federal government spends too much time and money imposing one-size-fits-all frameworks onto state and local governments. This places way too much emphasis on the political values of whichever team holds temporary power in Washington.

So don’t just go looking for creative workarounds, like legalizing recreational marijuana or applying even stricter guidelines than the Environmental Protection Agency (if that’s your bag). Think about taking the next step, and severing unnecessary bonds between Sacramento and Washington. We’ve nationalized too much of American life and could stand to run more local experiments.

2) Be prepared to make ad hoc coalitions with people you might not otherwise like. Part of playing defense is working on an issue-by-issue basis with whoever is willing. You may not fancy Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), but he is the most influential voice in Congress opposing the nominations of John Bolton or Rudy Giuliani to secretary of State.

Read the whole thing here.

Marrakech – “Science tells us in order to bring reality to climate change rhetoric, we must keep fossil fuels in the ground,” declared Center for Biological Diversity associate conservation director Jean Su. Su moderated the Keep It in the Ground panel at the COP22 U.N. climate change conference. The idea is that in order to keep global average temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, humanity can only burn so much more coal, oil and natural gas.

How much more? According to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change humanity can only put an additional 870 to 1,240 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2050 in order to preserve a 50 percent chance of keeping the global average temperature below the 2 degree Celsius threshold. By one estimate, burning known coal, oil, and natural gas reserves by 2050 would put an additional 2,900 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A January 2015 study in Nature calculated that “globally, a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80 per cent of current coal reserves should remain unused from 2010 to 2050 in order to meet the target of 2 °C.”

In a major victory last year, the Keep It In The Ground campaign persuaded the Obama administration to block the construction of the Keystone pipeline that would have transported about nearly a million barrels of petroleum daily from Canada’s oilsands fields in Alberta. In his November 6, 2015 statement rejecting the Keystone pipeline’s construction permit request, President Obama declared, “If we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.”

The current Standing Rock protests against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline was a major touchstone of the Keep It In The Ground panel here in Morocco. The 1,172 mile Dakota Access pipeline would transport oil from the Bakken shale fields in North Dakota. During the session, Indigenous Environmental Network representative Alberto Saldamando read a statement from IEN Director Tom Goldtooth in which he characterized the pipeline as a “black snake threatening the Missouri River” and asserted “we are not protesters; we are protectors of our sacred waters.” The Goldtooth statement continued, “The black snake represents a world out of balance which views all life as private property and looks at Mother Earth as without a soul or spirit.” Saldamando added, “From a personal perspective, money is bad medicine.”

Earlier this week, the Army Corps of Engineers halted pipeline construction near the protest site. The Corps announced that additional discussion and analysis of the project is “warranted in light of the history of the Great Sioux Nation’s dispossessions of lands, the importance of Lake Oahe to the Tribe, our government-to-government relationship, and the statute governing easements through government property.”

Other Keep It In The Ground panelists included Lidy Nacpil, coordinator, Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development from the Philippines, who denounced the fact that her country is slated to build 45 new coal-fired power generation plants and has approved environmental certificates for 118 new coal mines. Filip Lovstrom, from the Swedish group Youth Platform for Corporate Responsibility, decried the act of taking things from the ground and giving them “a fictional value.” He declared, “The century we have before us can be a story of how we failed to live within planetary boundaries, and how we failed to maintain human rights. Or it can be the century in which we create a life worthy of all human beings and while preserving nature.”

Swedish Green Party European Parliament representative Max Andersson argued that fossil fuel companies should be thrown out of future COP meetings. In fact, the U.S. delegation at COP22 formally accepted on Wednesday a petition signed by 500,000 people from the Corporate Accountability International group urging that fossil fuel companies be excluded from future negotiations.

Going forward, it will be interesting to see how the Keep It In The Ground campaign will fare in the United States during the Trump administration. Already, the backers of the Keystone pipeline are suggesting that they will ask the Trump administration to overturn President Obama’s decision to reject its construction.

“A Broken Record”

Calm pervades the COP22 U.N. climate change conference. This is unusual. At previous COPs (Conference of the Parties) an air of crisis featuring frenzied denunciations from delegations and activists was the custom as the meetings wound down in their second week. The Paris COP21 last year has been described as the “commitment COP” at which countries hammered out the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and made promises with regard to how they were going to address man-made global warming. COP22 here at Marrakech is supposed to be the “action COP” where countries are supposed to figure out how to get on with meeting their commitments.

So why the tranquility? Two speculations. First, the meeting is still in shell shock over the results of the U.S. presidential elections. Second, and I think more the likely reason, is that the pressure is off. By that I mean that under the Paris Agreement countries do not have to make any further commitments with regard to how they are going to handle global warming until 2020.

For example, at the Keep It In The Ground session, the panel moderator commented on the low energy in the room and asked the audience were their outrage was? Of course, one can always count on predictable sources of ersatz anger. At a Friends of the Earth International press conference on Wednesday, Meena Raman, a representative from FOE Malaysia managed to gin some up and ritually declared COP22 is “a COP of broken promises” and “a COP of postponing ambition.” However, Raman herself acknowledged that she “sounded like a broken record.” Yes, she did.

Tomorrow: The end of COP22 and the Marrakech Action Proclamation.

In the final year of his presidency, Obama began commuting the sentences of hundreds of federal inmates at a time, most of them serving mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug crimes. However, the election of Donald Trump has left criminal justice activists and family members of inmates with pending clemency petitions fearing that the door is about to slam shut on Jan. 20, when Obama leaves office.

On the campaign trail, Trump called Obama’s clemency recipients “bad dudes” and said, “These are people who are out, they’re walking the streets. Sleep tight, folks.”

All this week, the criminal justice advocacy group #cut50 has been holding rallies in Washington, D.C. urging the Obama administration to step up its clemency efforts before time runs out. On Monday night, family members of federal inmates with pending clemency petitions, as well as several former inmates whose sentences were commuted, gathered outside the White House for a candlelight vigil.

Here are three people at Monday night’s vigil, in their own words.

Lavithia Howard

I’m a 33-year old disability case manager for Etna. I’m here on behalf of my mother, who’s been incarcerated for the past 22 years for a nonviolent crime. She’s been in prison since I was 11 years old. She had an aneurysm about two years ago, and she’s been fighting through recovery. She was convicted of one count of drug conspiracy. She was also a drug abuser.

Tonight we’re here to ask President Obama to take a better look at the clemency and commutations, look at the women particularly, and let those people go free who are serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes. Not only that, but, if needed, give them a lesser sentence so they can come home to their families. Because that’s what this is all about, giving second chances. If we gave a second chance to Donald Trump, then we can definitely give these women a second chance. Not just mine but everybody’s, because when one comes home, everyone comes home. There’s a young man walking around here who got commuted by President Obama. Some would have tears in their eyes because their family members aren’t home, but that gives me hope that my momma can still come home. Some people may be negative about Trump. I didn’t vote for Trump, but when you think negative you get negative results. Even if you ain’t got no hope in it, just have hope in your family member coming home.

We’ve applied for clemency, and we’ve been working with the president’s 2014 clemency initiative. Everything’s on hold. You just call and keep calling, and they won’t give you information. That was the same thing that happened to my mother when she was on life support. I couldn’t even get information on my mom while she was sitting up in the hospital in the ICU for 31 days. Some people will say ‘Oh, they’re criminals, they need to be there.’ I’m not the same person I was 15 years ago, so I know my momma’s not the same person that she was 22 years ago. We’ve recently been given the opportunity to have video visits. Her grandkids met her for the first time through a computer.

Anrica Caldwell

I’m the fiancé of David Barron. I’m a special ed school teacher for Pittsburgh public schools. I teach emotional support, so this is an extension of what I do professionally and what I do personally. My fiancé has been incarcerated eight-and-a-half years. He’s serving life plus twenty years for one count of drug conspiracy and 52 counts of money laundering.

We need him home. He had never been to prison before. He has no holds to any cartel. We have applied for clemency. We’re just waiting for Obama to hopefully grant him clemency to come home to his children, his mother, his father. They visit every weekend at Hazelton Prison. They’re 80 and 81, respectively. Time is always running out. When I start school in September it’s always a race to the state exams, and when I look at this with David, it’s a race to him being granted freedom.

When Trump was elected president, it was a pit in my stomach. In fact, it was a very somber moment in my classroom. Pretty much my whole building knows what’s going on, and they are rallying around Dave. When they found out Trump was going to be president, everyone was just like, wow, this might not happen.

Jason Hernandez, 39. Granted clemency on Dec. 19, 2013

To me it feel like a last battle cry. President Obama, if he wants to leave his legacy as far as clemency, he has fewer than 60, 70 days to do that because everyone feels that the door will close as soon as he leaves office.

I did nearly 18 years from 1998 to 2015 for drug conspiracy, crack cocaine. The person who supplied me ended up getting 12 years. I got life because I converted it to crack cocaine. I deserved to go to jail. I deserved to go to jail for a long time, but I didn’t deserve to die in there. Luckily, the president thought the same. I wasn’t a bad kid, but I was just a kid who made bad decisions, which is the same for a lot of the people with families here. They’re not bad people, and they shouldn’t die in there for what they’ve done.

It took approximately two years for my clemency petition to go through. I filed it in 2011, and right before Christmas in 2013, I was granted clemency. I had life without parole plus about 300 years. President Obama gave me an even 20, and of that I served 17.6 years. It’s not like what you always assume it will be like when that day comes, where you’re jumping up and down and doing flips. It was more like how I feel right now. Wow, it’s over, but then again, I lost nearly two decades of my life. I can’t get that back. But you know, since I’ve been released, I haven’t had a bad day. I’m just trying to do what I can to put a face to the statistics and show that these are human lives, not just numbers, that you’re dealing with.

• Donald Trump says he’ll require anyone who works on his transition team or in the coming Trump administration to agree not to work in lobbying for at least five years after leaving the government.
• The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed almost 40 percent fewer cases in fiscal year 2016 (which ended September 30) compared with the previous four fiscal years.
• New Jersey lawmakers want to make it a crime to get your cat declawed.
• A California judge issued a tentative ruling early Wednesday in favor of Backpage.com CEO Carl Ferrer and his co-defendants but will hear more information from both the state and the defense.
• “Facebook has never claimed to be a free speech platform,” says NPR. “The company is trying to create a safe space where, unlike Twitter, people can share without being trolled or shamed.”
• A former teacher who gained notoriety in the 1990s after being fired for transitioning from male to female has confessed to three murders in Oakland, California.
• Students for Liberty and New Republic advocate “a return of the ‘liberaltarian.'”
• Here is the best thing you will read about the election outside of Reason.com.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and don’t forget to sign up for Reason’s daily updates for more content.

Rachel O’Bryan was campaign manager for Protect Denver’s Atmosphere, which opposed Initiative 300, the local ballot measure that will allow specially licensed businesses in that city to create consumption areas for customers who bring their own cannabis. In a recent interview with Westword, O’Bryan raised several objections to the initiative, which was supported by about 54 percent of voters in last week’s election. If her points are representative of the arguments deployed against Initiative 300, it’s no wonder the measure passed. For instance:

1. “First and foremost, 300 is about bringing your own marijuana anywhere. But how we’re going to train these businesses to understand intoxication when they neither serve the marijuana nor have any control of its potency is beyond me.”

Under Amendment 64, the legalization initiative that Colorado voters approved in 2012, adults 21 or older already are allowed to carry up to an ounce of marijuana when they are out and about. Initiative 300 finally lets them consume that marijuana outside their homes, something the city has stubbornly refused to allow until now. But consumption will not be legal just “anywhere”—only in businesses that choose to allow it and obtain a permit from the city, which requires support from an “eligible neighborhood organization” such as a business improvement district or a registered neighborhood association.

A bring-your-own-cannabis (BYOC) consumption site is no different in principle from a bring-you-own-bottle restaurant or club. In both cases the establishment does not sell the intoxicant but still must deal with the potential problems associated with intoxicated patrons. Under Initiative 300, no business owner is forced to assume that burden, but any who think allowing cannabis consumption will attract customers are free to do so, provided they get the requisite approvals.

2. “You’ve also got the issue of mixing marijuana and alcohol, where impairment can be greater than using either of them alone.”

Bar patrons have been mixing marijuana and alcohol for many years (albeit surreptitiously), so it’s not as if this issue is new. But under Initiative 300, neighborhood organizations have the power to block cannabis consumption permits for businesses that sell alcohol or demand a policy that prevents BYOC customers from ordering drinks. They also can set various other conditions through “good neighbor agreements,” including advertising restrictions, employee training requirements, limits on outdoor smoking, restrictions on operating hours that go beyond the initiative’s ban on consumption between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m., and policies aimed at preventing impaired driving, such as a requirement that BYOC customers arrange transportation in advance.

3. “They’ll also have to deal with slow-acting edibles, where the effect may not peak for four hours. How do they deal with that? Are we going to have to keep people locked up for four hours before we can assess impairment?”

Consistent with the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act, Initiative 300 will allow pot smoking only in outdoor areas (which cannot be visible from the street), with the possible exception of cigar bars and tobacconists that decided to welcome cannabis consumers. Indoor consumption generally will be limited to vaporizers and edibles. It’s not clear how popular the latter option will be, for precisely the reason that O’Bryan mentions: The onset of the psychoactive effects is unpredictable and may take longer than the customer’s visit. In any case, if the issue is whether someone suspected of stoned driving is impaired, it’s his condition while behind the wheel that matters, not his THC blood level four hours later. While there is no scientific basis for relating specific THC blood levels to degrees of impairment, that problem applies to any source of THC, not just edibles.

4. “When you’re outside, how do you vent the air for odor?”

The same question applies to outdoor tobacco smoking, which Denver nevertheless manages to tolerate on bar and restaurant patios. If a neighborhood organization thinks a whiff of marijuana smoke is uniquely offensive, it can set conditions to minimize that risk, including restrictions or bans on outdoor consumption.

5. “Indoors…vapors, while different from smoke, may have health concerns as well…You have pollutant issues on surfaces, and we believe there may be other risks involved.”

It seems quite unlikely that any measurable harm will be traced to these vapor-related “pollutant issues.” But anyone worried about that possibility can always stay away from businesses that allow marijuana vaping.

6. O’Bryan fears portions of the city that didn’t vote in favor of 300…may find themselves being forced to play host to pot-friendly enterprises.

Requiring approval from a recognized neighborhood association is aimed at alleviating such concerns, which in any event are no more legitimate than complaints about any other business that offends some people. In the absence of measurable nuisances, such discomfort should not stop business owners from catering to cannabis consumers if that is what they want to do. Their success depends not on “force” but on the voluntary choices of people who patronize or avoid their businesses.

7. She feels that the new measure violates both the spirit and the letter of [Amendment] 64, which “said that consuming openly in public isn’t permitted.”

Amendment 64 did not legalize “consumption that is conducted openly and publicly,” which remains a petty offense punishable by a $100 fine. But the meaning of “openly and publicly” is a matter of dispute, and consumption on private property in an area that is open only to adults 21 or older and is not visible from the street does not seem to fit that description.

Reason TV covers Colorado’s cannabis consumption conundrum:

Boosting federal investment in infrastructure has never had so many enthusiasts. During the presidential campaign, it was the rare chorus that Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders could all join in singing.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi says she’s eager to work with Trump on it. Her GOP counterpart, Kevin McCarthy, expects Republicans to cooperate with their president.

But such investments don’t always work out the way they’re supposed to. Pouring funds into highways, bridges, airports, dams and other projects is easy. Spending money wisely is hard. What beckons on the horizon, as Obama discovered after getting his $840 billion stimulus in 2009, often turns out to be a mirage. Steve Chapman explains more.

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Investigators have found that appointments nurses at the Southern Arizona Veterans Affairs Health System continue to book false wait times for patients. VA nurses in the system booked false wait times for nearly half of all specialist consultations making it look as if they had shorter waits. The report also found that trainers taught scheduling practices clearly in violation of agency policy.