Christina
Hoff Sommers claims that her freedom feminism is “libertarian.”
That’s odd, writes Sharon Presley. Nowhere in her book does she say
that. All she talks about are conservatives, including, in very
approving terms, Phyllis Schlafly, who is about as anti-feminist as
you can get and still be female. Sommers wants libertarians to
align with conservative “feminists,” including the ones that are
busy trying to destroy reproductive freedom. Any so-called “freedom
feminism” that includes Schlafly and the anti-choice wing of the
conservative movement is not any “feminism” Presley wants to be
part of.
Immigration reform has been on President Obama’s
election since it was deployed in 2012 to shore up support among
Latino voters. Congress spent much of its working 2013 on
legislation that ended up topping 1,000 pages, largely because, as
Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC)
noted supportively, lobbyists keep coming to legislators for
more carve outs. So a bill theoretically about legal status for
illegal immigrants becomes a bill about border security, jobs,
employment verification, subsidies, and who knows what else. It
shouldn’t come as a surprise that such a monstrosity is having
trouble getting passed. House Republicans are currently
working on unveiling an outline of broad immigration reform
principles.
Obama’s decision not to prioritize immigration reform during his
first term also lowered the odds it would pass. George W. Bush’s
similar effort at the end of his term also failed. An unpopular
president can have the effect of making popular legislation easier
to oppose. Bush’s efforts were torpedoed by a coalition of
conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, including Obama
himself, who as a senator in 2007 helped the attempt at immigration
reform fail by pushing pro-union amendments that would weaken the
bill and its support.
Most of the senate’s current immigration reform bill and
previous iterations is concerned with issues other than the human
factor in the issue. While I’ve argued previously for
amnesty for illegal immigrants, that solution is a non-starter
in the current political climate. Nevertheless, perhaps a smaller,
more focused bill that deals with the human cost of poor
immigration policy would have a better chance of passing. Such a
bill would not have to include e-verify, deal with any agricultural
work specifically, or reform border security.
What it would have to do is provide some kind of legal status
for the nations 7+ million illegal immigrants, the vast majority of
whom are otherwise law-abiding. Crossing the border
illegally, after all, is merely a misdemeanor. Opponents of
immigration reform, including some legal immigrants themselves,
complain that illegal immigrants didn’t “wait in line” like
everyone else. That line should be cut as part of immigration
reform. Entering the country legally ought to be simpler for those
seeking to immigrate to the US that have the means to do so.
Concerns about illegal immigrants seeking to abuse the welfare
system are largely unfounded, but could be alleviated by offering
expedited legal status for illegal immigrants willing to forgo
access to the welfare system. Every illegal immigrant I know (quite
a few) has said something along those lines; they want to be legal
in this country and couldn’t care less about getting welfare. They
want to work, and ought to be allowed to. To that end,
immigration reform should make it easier for employers to hire the
employees they want without having to worry about running afoul of
immigration law. If this kind of narrower immigration reform
couldn’t garner the support it needs to pass, reform supporters
ought to consider a concession that could dampen opposition: making
it easier to deport illegal immigrants convicted of violent crimes,
and perhaps even banning such immigrants from ever returning to the
US. Again, most illegal immigrants would be ok with this: they are
law-abiding people just as upset by illegal immigrants who drink
and drive and hit and run as legal immigrants and US citizens
are.
Getting immigration reform passed in a divided, hyperpartisan
Washington where each side is mostly interested in demonizing the
other is a difficult task. When it is in the form of a 1000+ page
bill that looks and feels like a clusterfuck that expands the power
of the federal government while promoting more profligate spending
and ignoring the actual human beings it is theoretically supposed
to help, it’s an impossible one.
When teams from the two states that have legalized marijuana for
recreational use clash at Sunday’s Super Bowl, so will activists on
both sides of the debate about pot prohibition. The Marijuana
Policy Project (MPP) is
sponsoring five billboards near MetLife Stadium in East
Rutherford, New Jersey, where the Denver Broncos will face the
Seattle Seahawks. The anti-pot group Project SAM is
responding with an ad that “will be placed on digital and vinyl
billboards throughout the New York-New Jersey area.”
Four of MPP’s
ads are variations on the marijuana-is-safer theme that played
a conspicuous role in Colorado’s legalization campaign and was
recently
echoed by President Obama. Two ads criticize the National
Football League’s anti-pot policy, showing generic players asking,
“Why does the league punish us for making the safer choice?” The
other two note that marijuana is safer than football as well as
alcohol. The fifth MPP ad shows a tally of attendance at the last
10 Super Bowls next to a tally of marijuana arrests in 2012 (about
750,000 in both cases).
How does Project SAM respond? It can’t very well deny that
marijuana is safer than alcohol, since its chairman
admitted as much on national television last week. Nor can it
deny that pot prohibition generates hundreds of thousands of
arrests each year, the vast majority for simple possession. Here is
what the group came up with instead:
That’s right: Project SAM—which stands, believe it or not, for
Smart Approaches to Marijuana—is warning Americans about
amotivational syndrome. In 2014. The theme reflected in this
billboard was hoary when it was first applied to marijuana in the
1960s, having figured prominently in anti-cigarette
propaganda two decades before the federal ban on
marijuana, which before it was portrayed as a soporific that
renders people lethargic and unambitious was feared as a “killer
drug” that made them aggressive and irrationally violent.
I am not sure what target Project SAM had in mind when it
created this ad, but even kids are apt to smell the bullshit here.
After all,
many NFL players use marijuana to relax or relieve aches and
pains, and it does not seem to have affected their motivation,
perseverance, or determination. It may even have helped. The
swimmer who won more Olympic medals than any other athlete in
history was a pot smoker, for crying out loud. Nor did marijuana
prevent our last three presidents from ascending to the highest
political office in the land. MPP has a list
of various other high-achieving cannabis consumers, in case you are
curious.
Many people who are not celebrities also manage to consume
marijuana without losing in the game of life. Yet Project SAM is
still trying to persuade Americans that if they smoke pot it will
kill their drive and prevent them from accomplishing anything
worthwhile. In a country where most people born after World War II
have tried pot, it is hard to make this tired slacker stereotype
stick. But I guess it’s the best pot prohibitionists have to
offer.
India watchers know that the country’s explosive economic growth
after it ended its daft autarkic policies and rolled back the
License Raj lifted nearly 300 million people out of poverty. The
country’s IT sector became the global outsourcing hub. And Indians
started harboring delusions of grandeur, talking loosely about
India becoming the next super power.
That was then.
Now, the country’s growth has plummeted to a mere 4 percent,
raising fears that India might be headed back to the days of the
dreaded Hindu rate of growth of 2 percent. Given that every one
percent drop in GPD growth consigns millions of Indians to poverty
– defined as living on $1.25 a day —jumpstarting India’s economic
miracle is not merely an academic question but a vital human
issue.
Given such stakes, it is no overstatement that national
elections this spring are the country’s most momentous since
Independence in 1947. The Congress Party, that formed a coalition
government in 2004, is facing a serious challenge from the
opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Narenda Modi. Although
tainted by his failure to prevent a massacre of the minority Muslim
population in 2002 in the state of Gujarat, where he remains chief
minister, Modi’s promise to fix India’s abysmal infrastructure,
tackle its hidebound bureaucracy, attract foreign investment and
end affirmative action has made him the darling of business.
But a new threat emerged in the form of the Aam Adami Party
(literally: Ordinary Man’s Party) in the state assembly elections
in December. AAP’s leader, Arvind Kejriwal, a political neophyte,
ran a populist campaign promising relief from inflation and rampant
corruption of the established parties, riding to victory in New
Delhi.
But do any of the parties or candidates have what it takes to
reignite India’s economy? Are they campaigning on the right issues?
Will this election produce a government that can fix India’s broken
governing institutions and restart its economic miracle? Will any
party gain the moral authority to enact the next wave of
liberalization? Or will the elections produce more political
fragmentation with no political party obtaining a clear mandate to
enact a bold reform agenda?
These are the questions that Reason Foundation plans to address
at a panel it is co-sponsoring with Asia Society and the South
Asian Journalists Association on Feb. 4, Tuesday, 6.30 p.m., at the
Asia Society’s Park Avenue premises. I’ll moderate a stellar lineup
that includes American Enterprise Insitute’s Sadanand Dhume, a Wall Street Journal columnist, Arvind Panagariya, a
Columbia University economist who has co-authored several books
with the inimitable Jagdish Bhagwati (and Amartarya Sen’s nemesis)
whom reason.tv interviewed here,
and Carnegie Endowment’s Milan Vaishnav.
Reason still has a few complimentary tickets to give away that
you can get if you rush to this
website and register now.
Bonus material: My column on the
noxious Narendra Modi and why India ain’t going to catch up with the
West any time soon.
Americans
have always treasured the freedom to pick up and go anywhere they
please. Our forebears had to travel to get here, often had to
travel more after they arrived and sometimes moved on to uncharted
territories out West only to return East. No one stopped them,
whatever direction they were going. They had the good fortune to
live and migrate before the creation of the all-encompassing
national security state. After the 9/11 attacks, Americans woke up
to find that their freedom to travel was not a fundamental right
but a vaporous privilege, bestowed by the government and revocable
at its whim. For more than a decade, writes Steve Chapman, the
federal government assumed it could consign thousands of Americans
to travel purgatory without justifying itself to anyone. But the
no-fly list as currently administered may be headed for its final
approach.
The LAPD is facing a lawsuit from Roy
Galvan, a 24-year-old father who spent more than a year in jail
before being tried and acquitted for a murder he says the LAPD
tried to frame him for.
Via NBC Los Angeles:
[The lawsuit] accuses LAPD Officers Miguel Terrazas,
David Nunn and Richard Arciniega of destroying evidence in the
case, falsifying reports and bribing witnesses for statements,
false arrest and malicious prosecution, among other claims of
misconduct and civil rights violations…
Galvan claims the officers who took him to trial strong-armed,
bribed and refused to investigate “several” potential witnesses,
including two homeless people – Mark Loving and Syrella Carpenter,
who had paranoid schizophrenia – living in a tent near the shooting
scene.
The lawsuit alleges Loving and Carpenter were paid nearly
$10,000 for their false testimony, and that the police requests for
city checks for the two were submitted into evidence during
Galvan’s trial. Other witnesses were allegedly promised they would
not face deportation if they provided false testimony. The lawsuit
also claims other eyewitnesses fingered a different suspect, but
that cops did not interview him.
The police officers named in the lawsuit appear to remain with
the LAPD. You can read the entire complaint here
(pdf), via NBC.
In a
response to the State of the Union Address published at
Time.com, I concluded that Barack Obama’s invocation of injured
soldier Cory Remsburg was “morally dubious” because the president
elided “any responsibility for placing the young man in
harm’s way.”
“Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings,” Bob
Dylan once
sang, updating Samuel Johnson’s dark maxim. Obama’s gesture in
the State of the Union will only accelerate the cynicism that
already understandably dominates public opinion. There is no more
serious decision that a government makes than to send its citizens
a war. And there is nothing more disturbing than a president using
soldiers’ sacrifices as a way of selling a grab-bag of domestic
policy agenda items.
Over the past couple of days, reactions to the use of Remsburg
in the speech has emerged as something of a litmus test toward
Obama, the military, and foreign policy. At Time.com’s
comments
section, this is very much on display, where responses from
Obama supporters and boosters of the military responded favorably
and libertarians reacted negatively to the invocation of
Remsburg.
For sheer moral obtuseness in the service of Obama fanboyism,
check out The New Yorker’s John Cassidy
who writes,
Obama’s underlying message has been that too much of what
happens in Washington is an insiders’ game that ignores, and often
tramples upon, the wishes and interests of ordinary
Americans….
By inviting Remsburg…Obama was taking part in what’s now a
traditional ritual for speech-givers. But he was also trying to
bridge the gaping chasm between politics and political
decision-making as experienced by its practitioners in the nation’s
capital and by the grunts out there in the factories, offices, and
Army battalions.
He was also invoking the concept of public service, which, in
Washington these days, is routinely subjugated to partisan
advantage. And, finally, he was saying that we can do better, and
we know we can—just look at this young man.
This, Cassidy argues, is “the
meaning of Cory Remsburg.” Equating sending men and women to
war with “grunts out there in the factories” and offices?” Or
public service more broadly? Are you freaking kidding, man? That’s
a pretty weird interpretation. Given that Obama has failed at every
turn to explain precisely what the U.S.’s goals were in Iraq and
Afghanistan especially (where Remsburg was injured and where Obama
tripled troops during his first year in office), I’d like to offer
a different and I think more accurate interpretation, one
unburdened with trying to constantly say good things about the
president.
Obama, just like Bush before him, sends a guy – hundreds of
thousands, actually – to war where they put their bodies and lives
on the line. Obama, just like Bush before him, doesn’t bother to
articulate the pressing national security interest in sending
soldiers to the far corners of the globe. He doesn’t give
yardsticks for success or failure or anything. Instead, he stumbles
along: War is war, you know, and it’s hell – just look at this guy
in the balcony. Now please clap for him – me, really – and good
night America. The meaning of Cory Remsburg? It’s that Obama and
Washington is more than happy to use citizens for whatever
political purpose they deem worthy of pursuing. And then when those
same citizens return from a tour of duty, politicians are still
ready, willing, and able to use them again, without serious regard
for their well-being. Contra Cassidy, “the meaning” here isn’t
about public service, it’s about the government’s grotesque
exploitation of its citizens.
What a disturbing moment and what a way to end a speech
otherwise dedicated to forgettable gestures such as the
“MyRa.” Obama should be ashamed of himself, especially
when you factor in that Obama’s Veterans Administration is
currently backlogged on 63 percent of benefits claims made by
returning soldiers:
Among talking heads, one of the most interesting discussions
came on Fox News’ The Five, where the hosts grappled with their
conflicting feelings about Obama (generally negative) and the
military (generally positive). Along the way, Greg Gutfeld
mentioned my piece in passing and averred (in
Mediaite’s gloss):
“This heroic man was somewhat disconnected from the limp litany
of grad school garbage that came before, and it felt like it was
placed at the end of the speech to armor against scrutiny.” He
added, “Everyone walks away thinking about this amazing hero and
not how lame the president’s speech was.”
“It was really moving at the end, but I felt like I was being
used,” Gutfeld said.
I suspect that more and more people, especially upon a couple of
days’ reflection will feel that way.
In a
response to the State of the Union Address published at
Time.com, I concluded that Barack Obama’s invocation of injured
soldier Cory Remsburg was “morally dubious” because the president
elided “any responsibility for placing the young man in
harm’s way.”
“Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings,” Bob
Dylan once
sang, updating Samuel Johnson’s dark maxim. Obama’s gesture in
the State of the Union will only accelerate the cynicism that
already understandably dominates public opinion. There is no more
serious decision that a government makes than to send its citizens
a war. And there is nothing more disturbing than a president using
soldiers’ sacrifices as a way of selling a grab-bag of domestic
policy agenda items.
Over the past couple of days, reactions to the use of Remsburg
in the speech has emerged as something of a litmus test toward
Obama, the military, and foreign policy. At Time.com’s
comments
section, this is very much on display, where responses from
Obama supporters and boosters of the military responded favorably
and libertarians reacted negatively to the invocation of
Remsburg.
For sheer moral obtuseness in the service of Obama fanboyism,
check out The New Yorker’s John Cassidy
who writes,
Obama’s underlying message has been that too much of what
happens in Washington is an insiders’ game that ignores, and often
tramples upon, the wishes and interests of ordinary
Americans….
By inviting Remsburg…Obama was taking part in what’s now a
traditional ritual for speech-givers. But he was also trying to
bridge the gaping chasm between politics and political
decision-making as experienced by its practitioners in the nation’s
capital and by the grunts out there in the factories, offices, and
Army battalions.
He was also invoking the concept of public service, which, in
Washington these days, is routinely subjugated to partisan
advantage. And, finally, he was saying that we can do better, and
we know we can—just look at this young man.
This, Cassidy argues, is “the
meaning of Cory Remsburg.” Equating sending men and women to
war with “grunts out there in the factories” and offices?” Or
public service more broadly? Are you freaking kidding, man? That’s
a pretty weird interpretation. Given that Obama has failed at every
turn to explain precisely what the U.S.’s goals were in Iraq and
Afghanistan especially (where Remsburg was injured and where Obama
tripled troops during his first year in office), I’d like to offer
a different and I think more accurate interpretation, one
unburdened with trying to constantly say good things about the
president.
Obama, just like Bush before him, sends a guy – hundreds of
thousands, actually – to war where they put their bodies and lives
on the line. Obama, just like Bush before him, doesn’t bother to
articulate the pressing national security interest in sending
soldiers to the far corners of the globe. He doesn’t give
yardsticks for success or failure or anything. Instead, he stumbles
along: War is war, you know, and it’s hell – just look at this guy
in the balcony. Now please clap for him – me, really – and good
night America. The meaning of Cory Remsburg? It’s that Obama and
Washington is more than happy to use citizens for whatever
political purpose they deem worthy of pursuing. And then when those
same citizens return from a tour of duty, politicians are still
ready, willing, and able to use them again, without serious regard
for their well-being. Contra Cassidy, “the meaning” here isn’t
about public service, it’s about the government’s grotesque
exploitation of its citizens.
What a disturbing moment and what a way to end a speech
otherwise dedicated to forgettable gestures such as the
“MyRa.” Obama should be ashamed of himself, especially
when you factor in that Obama’s Veterans Administration is
currently backlogged on 63 percent of benefits claims made by
returning soldiers:
Among talking heads, one of the most interesting discussions
came on Fox News’ The Five, where the hosts grappled with their
conflicting feelings about Obama (generally negative) and the
military (generally positive). Along the way, Greg Gutfeld
mentioned my piece in passing and averred (in
Mediaite’s gloss):
“This heroic man was somewhat disconnected from the limp litany
of grad school garbage that came before, and it felt like it was
placed at the end of the speech to armor against scrutiny.” He
added, “Everyone walks away thinking about this amazing hero and
not how lame the president’s speech was.”
“It was really moving at the end, but I felt like I was being
used,” Gutfeld said.
I suspect that more and more people, especially upon a couple of
days’ reflection will feel that way.
Last night, the official Twitter feed of MSNBC used a Cheerios
Super Bowl commercial to make a crack about non-lefties being
uncomfortable with race-mixing:
After an eruption of outrage on Twitter, including a volley of
colorful family snapshots under the hashtag
#MyRightWingBiracialFamily, MSNBC online chief Richard Wolffe withdrew
the Tweet:
The Cheerios tweet from @msnbc was dumb, offensive and
we’ve taken it down. That’s not who we are at msnbc.
But making broad and essentially pejorative generalizations
about giant swaths of non-Democrats is hardly the exclusive domain
of the racist-chasers at MSNBC and
Salon.com. Journalistic outlets at the highest levels have been
making non-jokey versions of the same accusation throughout the
Obama presidency, ever since the twin ascension in 2009
of the Tea Party and opposition to the Affordable Care Act.
For an example, check out this passage in New Yorker
Editor David Remnick’s extraordinarily long and often insightful
recent
profile of the president.
In the electoral realm, ironically, the country may be more
racially divided than it has been in a generation. Obama lost among
white voters in 2012 by a margin greater than any victor in
American history. The popular opposition to the Administration
comes largely from older whites who feel threatened,
underemployed, overlooked, and disdained in a globalized economy
and in an increasingly diverse country. Obama’s drop in the
polls in 2013 was especially grave among white voters.
Italics mine, to underscore what one of the
nation’s most decorated journalists felt zero need to substantiate
in a 16,000-word article. Do older white voters really feel more
“threatened” and “disdained” by a “globalized economy” and
“increasingly diverse country” than other age and
ethnic/pigmentation cohorts? I’m sure there’s plenty of interesting
poll data out there, but Remnick (a 55-year-old white guy,
FWIW) doesn’t need to cite any: He knows it’s true, his readers
know it’s true, and the only real question is how much you can
respectably
pin opposition to this twice-elected
black president on racism.
This isn’t just bad journalism, it’s bad tolerance. Attributing
a single set of personality traits to scores of millions of people
whose only commonality is age and race is the opposite of judging
people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their
character. It’s also a cheap way to wave off the substance of
anti-Obama criticism—why bother figuring out why a majority of
Americans have
consistently disliked the flawed
Affordable Care Act when you can just roll your eyes and assert
that the real reason is
white anxiety and worse? There is nothing tolerant about
assuming that those who have different ideas than you about the
size and scope of government are motivated largely by base ethnic
tribalism.
MSNBC, on whose shows I have
happily participated, engages daily in the othering
business, of making conservatism itself (and sometimes
libertarianism, and other non-Progressive ideological strains) a
disreputable condition, explicable in terms of pathology. That this
is done in the name of tolerance and sensitivity to punitive
stereotypes is one of the ironies of our age.
To his credit, Barack Obama himself seems to have a more nuanced
understanding of race and his own popularity than many of his
supporters and interlocutors. Here he is in the Remnick piece:
“There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really
dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President,”
Obama said. “Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks
and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the
benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black President.”
[…]
“There is a historic connection between some of the arguments
that we have politically and the history of race in our country,
and sometimes it’s hard to disentangle those issues,” he went on.
“You can be somebody who, for very legitimate reasons, worries
about the power of the federal government—that it’s distant, that
it’s bureaucratic, that it’s not accountable—and as a consequence
you think that more power should reside in the hands of state
governments. But what’s also true, obviously, is that philosophy is
wrapped up in the history of states’ rights in the context of the
civil-rights movement and the Civil War and Calhoun. There’s a
pretty long history there. And so I think it’s important for
progressives not to dismiss out of hand arguments against my
Presidency or the Democratic Party or Bill Clinton or anybody just
because there’s some overlap between those criticisms and the
criticisms that traditionally were directed against those who were
trying to bring about greater equality for African-Americans. The
flip side is I think it’s important for conservatives to recognize
and answer some of the problems that are posed by that history, so
that they understand if I am concerned about leaving it up to
states to expand Medicaid that it may not simply be because I am
this power-hungry guy in Washington who wants to crush states’
rights but, rather, because we are one country and I think it is
going to be important for the entire country to make sure that poor
folks in Mississippi and not just Massachusetts are healthy.”
There is plenty to disagree with here—not least of which is
Obama’s asymmetrical desire to have federalists answer for racism
while
Progressivism’s nasty history of same gets a pass, and also his
inability to process the substance of anti-Medicaid complaints. But
the president’s broad framing offers the modern left a useful
alternative for talking about race in 2014 America. Namely, that
it’s complicated, and that reducing entire population
blocs to caricatures does not necessarily improve the
conversation.
Last May, a 72-year-old man in the Fort
Worth, Texas, area was
shot to death by police investigating a burglar alarm across
the street from his home. They were on his property, unaware they
were at the wrong address, there was some sort of confrontation,
and the man, Jerry Waller, was armed, possibly thinking there were
intruders. Police shot him seven times.
Yesterday, a grand jury
declined to charge the officer responsible for the innocent
man’s death. Courtesy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:
The decision not to indict R.A. “Alex” Hoeppner in the death of
Jerry Waller came a week after prosecutors began presenting the
case.
Waller died May 28 after being shot multiple times by Hoeppner
as the officer and partner Ben Hanlon searched for a possible
suspect after being dispatched to a burglary alarm call across the
street.
Hanlon, who did not fire his gun, was dismissed from the
department in October in an unrelated matter.
Police Chief Jeff Halstead said the grand jury made the right
decision.
“I think it was proven through the autopsy and evidence that a
gun was pointed directly at officer Hoeppner and he was forced to
make his decision …” Halstead said, explaining that the trajectory
of Waller’s wounds shows that the homeowner had his arm
outstretched, as if pointing a gun.
That the police were trespassing is apparently irrelevant. They
claim they identified themselves to Waller before opening fire. The
family, of course, has doubts about the police’s story. Even the
chief of police couldn’t explain why Waller would open fire on the
officers if they had identified themselves. (Oh, and the unrelated
matter that Officer Hanlon was dismissed for was for allegedly
providing false information about an arrest at a traffic stop.)
Here’s an invitation to visualize the opposite happening. What
if Waller had killed Hoeppner, thinking the officer was an
intruder, instead of the other way around? Would the grand jury
have let Waller go?