Category: reason

“3 Reasons Eric Cantor Lost—And Why Republicans Will Continue to
Lose” is the latest video from Reason TV. Click above to watch here
or click below for full text, links, and downloadable versions.

About 2 minutes. 

View this article.

One of the more gross and annoying aspects of modern liberal
intellectuals is how vital and proper they think it is to piss on
every new technique that allows more people to accomplish more
things, because, well, near as I can tell the dominant “thought”
behind this is that it limits the cultural power of gatekeepers,
which for some reason are dearly loved by people who a) see
themselves as culturally “on the side” of the gatekeepers or at the
very least not on the side of those making and using the
techniques.

Or b), they just really get off on penning people in behind
gates.

I’ve written on this phenomenon before as it applied to the
New Republic‘s
sneering at the terrible offense of Kickstarter (which allows
people to easily and cheaply raise funds for their particular
version of cool stuff) and the New Yorker being

alarmed and annoyed by the “maker movement” (which
encourages the use and spread of techniques and ideas that allow
more people to, again, make more cool stuff). Anything that allows
more choices and abundance outside a context that’s political or
that fails to enforce “social consciousness” just gripes some
writers’ guts a whole bunch. I genuinely don’t get it—and neither
do they get what they are complaining about.

The latest annoying example of this trend is from the U.K.
Guardian, by Alan Skinner, titled “Self-Publishing
is not Revolutionary–It’s Reactionary” and sneers at the rise
of the “authorpreneur.”

Some excerpts w/arguments:

self-publishing is neither radical nor liberating. And, as
revolutions go, it is rather short on revolutionaries. It is
actually reactionary, a contracted version of the traditional
publishing model in which companies, who produce for a wide range
of tastes and preferences, are replaced by individual producers
each catering to very narrow range.

No, in fact they are replaced by a wide range of individual
producers producing whatever they want to for everyone in the
world.

But while traditional publishing, in Skinner’s read, is nicely
and sweetly centralized by experts (and don’t worry he
writes—anyone can submit a book to a trad publisher! Well,
not really), the ability for every writer to reach every reader is
something much, much worse: individualistic.

By definition, self-publishing is an individualistic pursuit in
which each writer is both publisher and market adventurer, with
every other writer a potential competitor and the reader reduced to
the status of consumer. Publishing then becomes timid, fearing to
be adventurous and revolutionary lest it betray the expectations of
its market. This is a natural tendency in traditional publishing
but it is one restrained by the voices of its authors who are free
to put their work first and entrepreneurship a distant second. With
authorship and entrepreneurship now equal partners,
the new
authorpreneurs have thrown off the dictatorship of the
editor to replace it with the tyranny of the market.

What makes an author able to but work first and entrepreneurship
a distant second? Well, I guess mistakes made by editor and
publishers, at times. A point that Skinner might find too vulgar to
mention is that an author through trad publishing gets at best
around 10-15 percent of the income from his work, as opposed to
easily 4-5 times that through e-book platforms, so the amount any
writer needs to sell to be recompensed for her work is actually far
lower with self-publishing.

Cross-subsidies from commercial titles support poets, academics
and writers of new and daring literary fiction who will never
appear on bestseller lists. Such concerted action is impossible in
a fragmented world where each writer pursues individual
success.

One hears this a lot. He provides no evidence of it,
specifically. The whole notion of “cross-subsidies” may happen on
occasion, though generally when publishers print books that don’t
make a lot of money it’s because they made a mistake, and generally
a pretty cheap one, given size of most advances and lack of any
expense on promotion, not because they are nobly supporting
literature. The “support” that reaches writers in a self-published
e-book market is enormously higher per reader/customer reached than
in a traditional model.

But how do you know self-publishing is
really wrong, when the weakness of assuming that
traditional publishing will somehow find or distribute
more great literature (presuming we are in a world
where anyone is writing great literature) with more support to the
author (as opposed to themselves) becomes obvious with about 10
seconds of thought? Because, Ayn Rand!

he individualism of the self-publishing authorpreneurs, is
disturbingly close toAyn Rand’s
Objectivism, in which the greatest goal is individual
fulfilment. No wider context needs to be considered because these
wider goals will take care of themselves if every individual
pursues a personal objective without regard to anyone else. It is
the philosophy of pure laissez-faire capitalism that rejects
community and mutual responsibility.

No, self-publishing is the philosophy of “I write whatever I
want, and I have the means to find out if anyone out there in the
community wants it” rather than the philosophy of “God I hope I can
fool an editor and a marketing board into paying me an advance far,
far more than the book will ever earn back.” The “wider context” he
worries doesn’t exist is one where authors are unfettered, get more
for their work, and are recompensed based on how much the literary
community writ large chooses to support them.

Better, thinks Skinner (and I hope there is no mass audience
that was on his side), that authors be tended and managed by huge
international conglomerates who will, as most authors who pay any
attention know, take 85 percent or more of the income on your work
for no consideration other than a loan (which they, kindly enough,
generally will not try to dragoon out of you at any cost if it
doesn’t technically recoup) and are every step of the way more
interested in maximising their income over gaining you either
income or readers (note their general unwillingness to do or spend
anything at all on promoting your work once they’ve paid
the bills to print it and ship it to Amazon, and their desire to
keep
e-book prices as high as they think they can, and that’s not to

help the author.)

There is so little substance to his argument I can’t imagine
what would inspire him to write and publish this unless it’s having
big ownership stakes in French or
German
megaconglomerates. Because this guy nattering about community and
attacking individualism and laissez-faire is doing so in service of
arguments that don’t help readers and don’t help writers. They only
help publishers.

I made fun of a similar gatekeeper attack
on self-publishing for Suck.com back in the go-go 00s. As I
wrote then and as most professional authors not at the
tippy-toppermost of the poppermost know:

Indeed it is true that, as Bissell and Younce write, “without an
editor, marketing or publicity, [a] book will enter the world with
a silence that makes a tree falling in the woods sound like Chinese
New Year in comparison.” What they don’t mention is that the great
majority of books published by even Manhattan-based publishers with
lovingly crafted colophons and well-situated offices face the same
deafening disinterest. While these books don’t qualify as “vanity
publishing,” the great majority of professional published authors
will find their efforts to have been in vain…..

As a service sought out, gatekeeping is noble enough. As an
impermeable barrier, it’s a cultural crime. Only those afraid of
what’s out there, or convinced they can’t defend themselves, crave
impregnable gatekeepers. 

That said, the cultural and technological changes of the past
decade have made it easier, though of course never actually easy,
for any writer anywhere to reach any reader, and for communities of
affinity and communication to arise and thrive that will provide
each of us with self-crafted means of “gatekeeping” about what we
might like or want to read.

These new systems don’t involve paying high salaries and giving
midtown Manhattan offices to a bunch of people who could not
possibly care less about author or reader, and that’s, um, a shame,
I guess.

Bonus “disgusting examples of the intellectual twists people
will go through to justify state action to restrict our
possibilities” in this
huge Nation think piece on how marketplace choice is
objectively bad for us and needs to be stopped.

The electric car company Tesla Motors has
announced it would allow its patents to be used in good faith and
not pursue legal action against those who do use them. Tesla’s CEO
Elon Musk announced
on the company blog:

Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable
transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling
electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines
behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to
that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone
who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought
patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe
they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely
to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations
and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual
inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent
really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I
avoided them whenever possible.

Musk goes on to explain that Tesla collected patents despite his
avowed aversion to them out of a (misplaced, he says) fear that big
car companies would squeeze him out of the electric car business.
Instead he’s found little interest in joining the electric car
marketplace.

Another Elon Musk company, SpaceX, apparently
holds almost no patents. In that case, Musk said filing patents
would be “farcical,” as the company’s main competitors are in
China, he believes “the Chinese would just use them as a recipe
book.”

More
Reason on intellectual property.

h/t Scott F.

There’s
no shortage of explanations for why Eric Cantor became the
first House majority leader to lose a primary since the job was
created in 1899. But while it’s useful to ask why Cantor lost, it’s
also worth wondering about the flip side: Why did Dave Brat,
Cantor’s barely funded, little-known challenger, win?

Obviously these questions are highly related, but they are not
exactly the same. The first views the primary contest result
through the prism of Cantor’s many weaknesses; the second views it
through the prism of Brat’s strengths. To put it another way: It’s
not just about what Cantor did poorly; it’s also about what Brat
did well.

One of the most interesting possible answers to that second

question comes from The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, who
describes Brat as “the Elizabeth Warren of the right”—a populist
crusader who targeted the wealthy, connected, and powerful rather
than campaigning against welfare moocherism:

From what I’ve observed, Brat has not talked like a
forty-seven-per-cent conservative complaining about how tax dollars
are being shovelled to the undeserving poor (although maybe he does
believe that and didn’t emphasize it in the campaign). He comes
across, instead, like a ninety-nine-per-cent conservative who sees
the real villain as corporate America and its addiction to
government largesse. One of his biggest applause lines is about how
bankers should have gone to jail after the 2008 financial crisis.
Brat is the Elizabeth Warren of the right.

The divisions within the Republican Party since 2010 are not
always obvious from the shorthand we commonly use: Tea Party versus
establishment, conservatives versus moderates, outsiders versus
insiders. Brat’s stump speech, inspired by the country’s top
corporate-lobbying group, was notable for the clarity with which it
defined these often opaque categories. Eric Cantor “is running on
the Chamber of Commerce growth plan,” Brat told a small
gathering at the Life Church in Hanover, Virginia, last April. “The
Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable. If you’re in big
business, he’s good for you. But if you’re in any other group, it’s
not good for you.”

What Wall Street was asking from Washington was, “Just keep it
stable for us so we can make profits.” Brat went on: “I’m an
economist. I’m pro-business. I’m pro-big business making profits.
But what I’m absolutely against is big business in bed with big
government. And that’s the problem.”

It’s certainly possible to take the Warren analogy too far; Brat
doesn’t have the same devoted following as Warren or her Ivy League
academic prestige, and he lacks a parallel position within the
conservative firmament. But it’s not a bad comparison, as far as it
goes. And it touches on some of the ways that liberal populism and
conservative or libertarian-tinged populism often overlap—the
distrust of elites, frustration with those in power, and anger over
the ways that big government and big business, so often assumed to
be titanic opponents, work in tandem against the interests of the
masses.

It also suggests the political power of this populist critique,
even on the right. In recent years, liberals have successfully
channeled anger against the joining of businesses interests and
political power, but Republican politicians have not been nearly as
effective in their attempts to do so, despite the current of
anti-elite sentiment that runs through the Tea Party. There are
many reasons why the GOP hasn’t been as successful (its reliance on
corporate donors, its professional connections with corporate
lobbying groups, the fact that many of its candidates are
themselves part of the business class), but one reason why is that
criticism of business, big or small, is simply not part of the
identity the GOP has built for itself over the last several
decades. That’s not the language it speaks; the GOP is the party
that represents business, not the party that criticizes corporate
power.

Dave Brat, on the other hand, knew how to speak that language,
and it turned out to be particularly effective against an eager,
ambitious establishmentarian widely viewed as out of touch with the
local interests of his constituents.

In the coming months, I suspect we’ll see more Republican
politicians follow his lead and attempt to mount a similar critique
of intertwined corporate and business power. That would be a
positive development, in my view, for a party that has too often
been narrowly beholden to large corporate interests at the expense
of larger governing priorities.

But simply mimicking Brat’s rhetoric won’t be enough. Brat’s win
showed the power of this approach as a critique, especially against
a high-status business-friendly politician like Cantor, but what
free-market populists and the ninety-nine-percenters of the right
need is more than a critique; they also need an agenda. Brat so far
seems to be surprisingly weak on even basic policy details: Asked
about his position on the minimum wage yesterday, he declined to
answer directly, begging off by citing
lack of sleep. That’s not the sort of sign that suggests firm
legislative commitments, much less a clear and motivating
agenda.

Elizabeth Warren’s influence and popularity have as much to do
with what she’s for—both in the big picture and in terms of
specific policy goals—as what she’s against. What Brat did well was
critique his own party, and channel frustration with its current
leadership. But for Brat or any other Republican to become the
Warren of the right, they’ll need to offer more than a critique;
they’ll need to suggest a forward direction as well. 

Should misbehaving kids who attend Berkeley,
California, schools be forced to scrub public restrooms as
punishment? The parent of an 11-year-old boy who was given such a
punishment says no.

Ishmael Perry was accused of using “bullying” language at an
after school program, although the boy claimed he was merely an
innocent bystander and it was a different child who made the
remark. Nevertheless, Perry was given the choice of suspension or
bathroom–cleaning duty.

Now, his mother is claiming that the punishment was
inappropriate and made the boy sick.
According to KCBS:

“Why is cleaning bathrooms an option? It should never happen,”
said Magdalene Kingori, Ishmael’s mom.

Kingori said her son came down with whooping cough and missed
four days of school.

“He was compromised. He was touching pee pee for a week,” she
said. “And now he’s sick!”

She took her case all the way to the district superintendent,
who said that discipline was inappropriate, and students will no
longer be punished that way. But the district refuses to discuss
the case with KCBS and considers the matter closed.

In fairness to the district, another parent disputed Kingori’s
account, telling local reporters that Perry was only made to pick
up trash in the bathroom, not scrub it.

On
last night’s episode of The Independents, Ron Paul
argued that David Brat’s victory was good for libertarians, and
that the Bowe Bergdahl swap was on balance the right thing to do
(unlike opening a Cuban prison camp in the first place).
Watch:

Later in the show, Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) talked about how
Cantor’s defeat affects his longstanding tussles with the GOP
establishment, whether Brat will line up with the Liberty Caucus,
and how Amash is faring in his primary challenge against a Chamber
of Commerce-backed opponent:

See more past Independents video at this
link.

It’s coming down to the wire at the U.S. Supreme
Court. With less than three calendar weeks remaining before the
justices depart for their summer break, 17 cases are still
undecided. Among them are several of the term’s biggest potential
blockbusters, including major showdowns over executive power,
police power, political speech, and the 2010 Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act. Here’s a rundown of the cases to watch as the
Supreme Court’s 2013-2014 term comes to a close.

National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning

The Constitution allows the president to make temporary
appointments to fill vacant government offices when the Senate is
in recess and is thus unavailable to provide the “advice and
consent” mandated by the Constitution. Yet President Barack Obama

flaunted that rule by making three “recess” appointments to the
National Labor Relations Board when the Senate was not—according to
its own rules—in recess. In fact, the Senate was then holding
pro forma sessions for the very purpose of preventing
Obama from making any and all recess appointments. According to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which
ruled against the Obama administration in January 2013, Obama’s
approach “would demolish the checks and balances inherent in the
advice-and-consent requirement, giving the President free rein to
appoint his desired nominees at any time he pleases, whether that
time be a weekend, lunch, or even when the Senate is in session and
he is merely displeased with its inaction. This cannot be the law.”
Judging by the recent oral argument, a majority of the Supreme
Court may well
agree with that assessment.

Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 contains
a provision commonly known as the contraceptive mandate. It
requires most employers to cover birth control in their health care
plans. Churches, however, are exempted from that requirement, and
church-affiliated institutions, such as Catholic hospitals, are
granted an accommodation. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a family-owned
chain of arts and crafts retailers, says it also operates according
to religious values, and should therefore
not be forced to cover four methods of birth control that it
deems tantamount to abortion. The Obama administration, by
contrast, maintains that for-profit corporations should never be
allowed to mount a free exercise challenge to a federal statute.
During oral argument, however, that argument by the White House met
with fierce resistance from the Court. “Take five Jewish or Muslim
butchers,” Justice Stephen Breyer told Solicitor General Donald
Verrilli. “What you’re saying to them is if they choose to work
under the corporate form,” they lose access to the Free Exercise
Clause. “Looked at that way,” Breyer continued, “I don’t think it
matters whether they call themselves a corporation or whether they
call themselves individuals.”

Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus

It’s a criminal offense in the state of Ohio to make “false
statements” about political candidates. Who gets to decide what
counts as false? A state agency, that’s who. And that agency is
staffed with political appointees wielding the power to silence
their political enemies. The Susan B. Anthony List, a conservative
anti-abortion group, would like to challenge this law on
constitutional grounds. But a lower court threw out the case,
arguing that the group lacked standing to sue, despite the fact
that Susan B. Anthony List had already been
hauled before the Ohio Elections Commission and accused of
violating the law, suffering what our legal system normally
recognizes as a justiciable injury. During oral argument, a
majority of the Court appeared ready to give the conservative group
its day in court. “Don’t you think,” Justice Anthony Kennedy told
Ohio State Solicitor Eric Murphy, “there’s a serious First
Amendment concern with a state law that requires you to come before
a commission to justify what you are going to say and which gives
the commission discovery power to find out who’s involved in your
association, what research you made, et cetera?”

Riley v. California and United States v.
Wurie

The Fourth Amendment protects our “persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” There are,
however, a few exceptions. For example, when the police place you
under arrest, they don’t need a warrant to search you for weapons
or evidence. But what about the cellphone that you may be carrying
in your pocket at that time? May the police also conduct a
warrantless search of that phone, including the many private
emails, messages, photos, videos, and GPS tracking data it
undoubtedly contains? These
two cases raise those very questions. According to the Obama
administration, which has taken the side of aggressive law
enforcement, “Although cell phones can contain a great deal of
personal information, so can many other items that officers have
long had authority to search, and the search of a cell phone is no
more intrusive than other actions that the police may take once a
person has been lawfully arrested.” During oral argument, however,
several justices appeared deeply troubled by the implications of
that position. “Take an offense like failing to buckle up, even
driving under the influence,” observed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
to California Solicitor General Edward Dumont. “It’s your
rule…that the cell phone is fair game no matter what the crime,
no matter how relatively unimportant the crime.” That, Ginsburg
stressed, “opens the world to the police.”

In 2012 Officer Darren Moody of the Dothan,
Alabama police department shot and killed unarmed Christopher
Jerome Thomas in his SUV after a 12-block pursuit that ended in a
parking lot. The Houston County District Attorney ruled the
shooting
justified, pointing to Thomas’ refusal to stop as the reason he
died. He also told the press Thomas had multiple bags of marijuana
in his car and marijuana in his system. What he didn’t say, but has
now come out in a lawsuit by the family, is that Moody mistakenly
believed he was pursuing a convicted felon, Jerry Jerome Hill, when
he shot Thomas. Via
WDHN in Dothan:

In the lawsuit it’s alleged that Moody initially believed he was
chasing someone other than Thomas. Radio transmissions in a
video/audio of the chase obtained exclusively by WDHN/DothanFirst
confirm that Moody thought he was chasing Jerry Jerome Hill, a
convicted felon also known as “Booty Bop”. Moody indicated he
believed Hill had charges outstanding against him. 

Katherine Thomas claims her son was killed when Moody jumped
from his car and began firing shots before giving Christopher
Thomas an adequate chance to surrender.

Some witnesses claim Moody ran toward Thomas’ car and fired at
nearly point blank range with the officer never in the path of
Thomas’ vehicle. Other witnesses dispute those claims.

The lawsuit accuses the Dothan Police Department of being
neglectful in hiring Moody, who it alleges had multiple personnel
violations while previously employed at the police department in
Pensacola, Florida. In its lawsuit, the family is seeking an
unspecified amount in damages.

• Iraq is in chaos. President Obama announced this
  afternoon that he’s “looking
  at all the options” available to remedy the situation.
• Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has been at a military hospital in
  Germany, is
  returning to the U.S. today.  
• Who will replace Eric Cantor (R-Va.) as House Majority Leader?
  It’s
  looking like it’ll either be House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy
  (R-Calif.) or House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions
  (R-Texas).
• The White House
  won’t fire anybody over the big oopsy that revealed who the
  CIA’s top agent in Afghanistan is.
• The Pew Research Center conducted its largest ever political
  survey and determined that Americans
  are more polarized than ever.
• Former President George H.W. Bush jumped
  out of a helicopter today to celebrate his
  90^th birthday. He’s been doing a celebratory
  skydive every five years since he turned 75. 
• The World Cup just started!
  Hopefully the cops are done
  teargasing protesters, but probably not.

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Remember Peoria, Illinois, Mayor Jim
Ardis, who
tasked local law enforcement with finding and destroying a
Twitter account that insulted him?

The American Civil Liberties Union just filed a lawsuit against
Ardis, other city officials, and the police department on behalf of
29-year-old Jon Daniel, the creator of the Twitter account that
parodied the mayor.

Daniel’s home was raided, his property confiscated, and his
friend charged with marijuana possession. Authorities initially
wanted to charge Daniel with falsely impersonating a public
official, even though it was obvious that the Twitter account did
not actually belong to Ardis. The state attorney general ultimately
agreed and declined to prosecute.

According to an
ACLU press release:

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court yesterday
afternoon, charges that Mayor Ardis, along with Peoria’s City
Manager, the Assistant City Manager, the Chief Information Officer,
former Chief of Police and two police detectives violated Mr.
Daniel’s First and Fourth Amendment rights by launching a police
investigation based on his speech and then searching his home as
part of that investigation.

… “Political parody is a great tradition in the United
States — from Thomas Nast to Jon Stewart,” said
Harvey Grossman, legal director for the ACLU of Illinois and the
lead attorney representing Mr. Daniel. “In a number of public
statements, the Mayor and Peoria officials have been unapologetic
about their activities,” added Grossman. “The only way to hold
these government officials accountable is to have a federal court
rule that their actions violated the fundamental constitutional
rights of our client.”

Ardis was excoriated by national news media for his actions. He
doesn’t think he did anything wrong, however. In fact, he thinks
he is the victim, and his free speech
was violated:

“I still maintain my right to protect my identity is my right,”
Ardis said in an interview with the Journal
Star before the council meeting.

“Are there no boundaries on what you can say, when you can say
it, who you can say it to?” Ardis said. “You can’t say (those
tweets) on behalf of me. That’s my problem. This guy took away my
freedom of speech.”

Note to mayors: If you arrest people for saying things on the
Internet, you are the ones taking away freedom of speech.