Tag: hit&run

What Did Libertarians Learn from the Mueller Report?

Now that the smoke has cleared from the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump’s suspected (and now-disregarded) criminal conspiracy with Russia and his potential obstruction of the investigation thereof, there are many questions that still remain, including: Should we be alarmed by the role that counterterrorism-investigation leaks played in kickstarting this investigation? Are there specific trims to government power that this whole episode suggests, and if so why aren’t they being discussed? Is it useful to have conversations about having conversations about conversations?

All of these riddles and more are hotly debated on this week’s Editors’ Roundtable edition of the Reason Podcast, betwixt Katherine Mangu-Ward,  Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman and Matt Welch. The episode also features a name-that-Democratic-candidate pop quiz, a quick round of Biden-kicking, and—yes, nerds (sigh)—some discussion of that television show from last night.

Subscribe, rate, and review our podcast at iTunes.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

‘Lies Rise’ by Cullah is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Relevant links from the show:

“What’s Really in the Mueller Report,” by Scott Shackford

“Trump May Not Be Guilty of Obstruction, but He Is Guilty of Arrogant Stupidity,” by Jacob Sullum

“Trump May Not Have Obstructed the Mueller Investigation, but It Sure Looks Like He Tried,” by Peter Suderman

“In Defense of Trump Obstructing Justice (When There’s No Underlying Crime),” by Nick Gillespie

“If Either Party Cared About Limiting Executive Power, Trump’s Presidency Would Be Toast,” by Eric Boehm

“Standing on the Shoulders of Tyrants,” by Gene Healy

“The CBO Was Created to Provide a Check on Executive Power,” by Peter Suderman

“Joe Biden Is Probably Running for President. He’s Got a Lot of Baggage.” by Christian Britschgi

“Joe Biden Says He Didn’t Do Anything Wrong, Will Do Better From Now On,” by Christian Britschgi

“Hair-Sniffer Joe Biden Should Apologize for His Whole Career,” by Matt Welch

“All the Top Democrats Running for President Favor Legalizing Marijuana,” by Matt Welch

“Elizabeth Warren Wants You To Know She Totally Loves Game of Thrones. Especially Daenerys. Yay, Women!” by Robby Soave

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The First Amendment and the Hybrid Preliminary Injunction

[I’m continuing to serialize my forthcoming Penn Law Review article on Anti-Libel Injunctions.]

A. The Hybrid Preliminary Injunction

If I am right that the hybrid permanent injunction is constitutional—because it gives defendants all the First Amendment protections offered by valid criminal libel laws, and does so with less of a chilling effect on nonlibelous speech—then hybrid preliminary injunctions should be constitutional, too. They would adequately protect defendants, while giving plaintiffs the opportunity to deter libels starting shortly after they file a lawsuit, rather than having to wait until after the lawsuit is adjudicated.

Let us return to Paula and Don, and imagine that Paula gets a preliminary injunction. Shortly after she files her lawsuit, a judge concludes that she is likely to succeed on the merits: Don’s statement that Paula cheated him is likely true.

This is just a tentative decision, the judge acknowledges, based on limited time for briefing and likely no discovery. But that’s what the judge thinks, so the judge issues an injunction: “Don shall not libelously state that Paula cheated him”; and, as with the hybrid permanent injunction, the injunction provides that any criminal contempt trial for violating it shall be before a jury,

Like the hybrid permanent injunction, the hybrid preliminary injunction would provide all the procedural protections offered by criminal libel law: Don can’t be convicted of criminal contempt unless the criminal jury finds, beyond a reasonable doubt, that his post-injunction statements about Paula are indeed libelous; and Don would be entitled to a court-appointed defense lawyer to argue that the statements weren’t libelous. They thus lack the primary defect of specific preliminary injunctions—the punishment of speech without a prior finding on the merits that the speech is actually constitutionally unprotected.

Also like with the hybrid permanent injunction, Don would also be exposed to criminal punishment only for repeating specific statements. Unlike with the hybrid permanent injunction, those would be statements that the judge found libelous based on the abbreviated preliminary injunction process rather than after a full trial. But despite that, the hybrid preliminary injunction would still have less of a chilling effect than a catchall injunction or than a criminal libel law, which would put Don in jeopardy as to any libelous statements.

But unlike with the hybrid permanent injunction, the hybrid preliminary injunctions opens the door to criminal punishment—and therefore helps deter future libels—near the start of the lawsuit, rather than years later.

Hybrid preliminary injunctions, like hybrid permanent injunctions, haven’t yet been tested in appellate courts, or even issued by trial courts. But I think they would be consistent with the First Amendment, and often a good idea.

Indeed, one recent preliminary injunction does seem to lean in this direction. In 2 Sons Plumbing, LLC v. Herring, 2 Sons claimed that Romare Harring had criticized 2 Sons only while falsely claiming to be a customer (in some places) and a former employee (in others); they sued for, among other things, violating California law that bars such impersonation. The District Court concluded that there was enough to their claim to justify a temporary restraining order. But it crafted the injunction so that any impersonation would still have to be shown at a criminal contempt hearing, rather than treating his preliminary conclusion as binding in such a hearing:

(2) Defendant Romare Herring is barred, prohibited, and restrained from posting reviews of 2 Sons Plumbing, LLC and/or Joe’s Plumbing Co. claiming that Defendant was a customer of such business when Defendant was not actually a customer;

(4) Defendant Romare Herring is barred, prohibited, and restrained from posting on the Internet a webpage claiming to be affiliated with 2 Sons Plumbing, LLC and/or Joe’s Plumbing Co. if Defendant is not affiliated with those businesses.

If it turns out that Herring is indeed affiliated with 2 Sons or Joe’s, and he repeats that statement, the terms of provision (4) wouldn’t make him liable; likewise if he was indeed a customer, and posts reviews of 2 Sons or Joes so stating. The order isn’t as precise as it could be; for instance, the “when” in (2), unlike the “if” in (4), could be read as a statement that the court is conclusively finding that Herring wasn’t actually a customer, rather than a provision that the order applies only under the circumstances (to be found conclusively later) that Herring wasn’t a customer. Moreover, provisions (1) and (3) require the takedown of earlier posts without any such condition. Still, the order, and especially provision (4), points towards the approach that I describe here.

B, The Hybrid Ex Parte Temporary Restraining Order

In principle, even temporary restraining orders—including ones obtained ex parte—could be permissible so long as they only ban libelously repeating certain statements.

Such an order would, as with the hybrid preliminary injunction, punish no more speech than a criminal libel law would, since any criminal contempt punishment would be contingent on the jury finding (after a full trial) that the statements were indeed libelous. By its very terms, it would be limited to constitutionally unprotected speech; and whether any particular statement is unprotected and therefore forbidden would have to be determined at an adversary criminal contempt hearing. [Footnote: This makes such hybrid orders unlike the ex parte order in Carroll v. President & Comm’rs of Princess Anne, 393 U.S. 175 (1968), which by its terms prohibited speech that would generally be constitutionally protected, without an adversarial hearing at which the defendants could respond to the plaintiffs’ arguments that this protection should be lost on the facts of the case.]

But while such hybrid ex parte TROs may be constitutional, they should be avoided. The advantage of hybrid injunctions over catchall injunctions is that they are limited to speech that a judge has concluded is likely false and defamatory. This judicial conclusion doesn’t itself suffice for forbidding the speech outright, since the defendant should have an opportunity to argue his case to a jury (which is the advantage of hybrid injunctions over specific injunctions); but the conclusion is still an important protection for speakers. Any injunction should be entered based on the judge’s hearing both sides’ factual theories, both sides’ legal analyses, and both sides’ analyses of how the injunction should be crafted.

Sometimes, of course, such an adversary presentation is impossible, for instance if the defendants are anonymous and can’t be identified using reasonable pre-injunction discovery, or if they simply refuse to show up. But plaintiffs should be required to at least try to serve defendants and give them an opportunity to be heard before even a hybrid injunction is issued.

[You might also read my earlier posts on the subject,

Or you can read the whole article, which is forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, in PDF.]

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Giuliani Says There Was ‘Nothing Wrong With Taking Information From Russians,’ but Trump Clearly Thought Otherwise

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday, Rudy Giuliani made some valid points about the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower between a Russian lawyer offering “dirt” on Hillary Clinton and top Trump campaign figures. But as usual, the president’s lawyer overstated his case and spoke out of both sides of his mouth.

Giuliani told CNN’s Jake Tapper “there’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians” who may have obtained it illegally, although he would have advised against it “just out of [an] excess of caution.” Giuliani is right that there was nothing clearly criminal about the meeting, which figures prominently in the Mueller report. But “nothing wrong” goes too far, especially in light of Trump’s subsequent efforts to disguise the nature of the meeting, which included his son, son-in-law, and campaign chairman. It seems clear that Trump himself thought the meeting would look bad and reinforce the impression that the Russian government helped him win the presidential election.

“There’s no crime,” Giuliani said. “You’re assuming that the giving of information is a campaign contribution. Read the report carefully. The report says we can’t conclude that, because the law is pretty much against that.”

It would be more accurate to say it’s doubtful whether such information would qualify as an illegal foreign campaign contribution. Such fuzziness is a hallmark of campaign finance rules and a strong argument against concluding that Donald Trump Jr. et al. knowingly broke the law by agreeing to the meeting, during which no actual derogatory information about Clinton materialized.

The relevant statutory provision applies broadly to “anything of value.” Under Federal Election Commission regulations, that category includes at least some kinds of information, such as “membership lists” and “mailing lists.” The Mueller report cites cases in which courts have held that “anything of value” and “thing of value,” phrases that appear in other federal statutes dealing with crimes such as bribery and theft of government property, can include intangibles such as “confidential information about a competitive bid” or “law enforcement reports that would reveal the identity of informants.”

Those decisions, the report says, “would support the view that candidate-related opposition research given to a campaign for the purpose of influencing an election could constitute a contribution to which the foreign-source ban could apply. A campaign can be assisted not only by the provision of funds, but also by the provision of derogatory information about an opponent. Political campaigns
frequently conduct and pay for opposition research. A foreign entity that engaged in such research and provided resulting information to a campaign could exert a greater effect on an election, and a greater tendency to ingratiate the donor to the candidate, than a gift of money or tangible things of value.”

At the same time, however, “no judicial decision has treated the voluntary provision of uncompensated opposition research or similar information as a thing of value that could amount to a contribution under campaign-finance law.” The report notes that “such an interpretation could have implications beyond the foreign-source ban,” such as limits on campaign contributions by Americans, and “raise First Amendment questions.”

Giuliani noted that Russian hacking of emails from Clinton’s campaign chairman and the Democratic National Committee, while illegal, produced accurate, newsworthy information that was widely reported by journalists. “The information that was gleaned and disseminated, every newspaper printed it,” he said. “Why did The Washington Post print the information that came from a foreign source, when they knew it was hacked? Aren’t they just as wrong for doing that as the campaign wanting to use it?”

To the extent that Giuliani is making an argument about ethics, he is on pretty solid ground. As he noted, political campaigns are always eager to obtain information that can be used against the other side, and they have the same First Amendment right to share that information with the public as news outlets do, even if the information was originally obtained illegally. But Giuliani also implied there is something shady about that practice.

Referring to Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who on Friday reacted to the Mueller report by saying he was “sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office in the land, including the President,” Giuliani said, “I’d like to take a good look at Romney’s campaign and see if there were any immoral or unethical things done by the people working for him that he didn’t know about. If there weren’t, then it was the only campaign in history, because he’s maybe…holier than the holiest one. There’s no campaign in history that hasn’t done that.” It seems to me Giuliani is conceding too much here, since there is nothing “immoral or unethical” about sharing truthful, relevant information about your opponent, regardless of its provenance, as long as you did not commit a crime (such as stealing emails) to obtain it.

The president’s critics, of course, argue that Trump Jr. et al. did commit a crime when they agreed to the Trump Tower meeting, even if it did not produce the anticipated “dirt.” In that respect, they were situated differently from The Washington Post, which is not a political campaign and therefore is not constrained by the ban on foreign contributions. And the fact that Giuliani says he would have cautioned against the meeting “out of [an] excess of caution” suggests he would have anticipated that legal argument, even if he considered it dubious.

It seems unlikely that the president, who says he was not aware of the meeting when it happened, was well enough informed about campaign finance law to worry about that risk. But when news of the meeting broke in July 2017, Trump tried to obscure the motivation for it. “I was asked to have a meeting by an acquaintance I knew from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant with an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign,” Trump Jr. said in the original version of the statement. Trump instructed his communications director, Hope Hicks, to excise any reference to such information from the statement, and the version released to the public said the meeting focused “primarily” on Russia’s suspended foreign adoption program. “The statement did not mention the offer of derogatory information about Clinton,” the Mueller report notes.

Trump’s editing of his son’s statement does not necessarily indicate he understood the potential legal implications of the meeting. More likely, it was part of his efforts to counter the narrative that he managed to defeat Clinton only because he had the Russian government’s help—a claim that, as the Mueller report shows, drove Trump crazy. But it is hard to reconcile Trump’s subterfuge with Giuliani’s claim that “there’s nothing wrong” (as opposed to nothing illegal) “with taking information from Russians.” If so, why try to hide it?

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De Blasio to Skyscrapers: Drop Dead!

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said Monday he plans to crack down on “the classic glass and steel skyscrapers” because of their energy inefficiencies. While de Blasio does not appear to have plans to impose a blanket ban on glass and steel skyscrapers (i.e. all of them), he does intend to impose burdensome regulations that will hurt many building owners and discourage new construction.

De Blasio was asked on Morning Joe by co-host Joe Scarborough how New York’s “Green New Deal” can “provide a road map” for members of Congress looking to implement policies that will fight climate change. Congressional efforts—led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) and others—to pass a Green New Deal made headlines in February, though the measure failed in the Senate last month by a 57–0 vote.

“We’re actually making the Green New Deal come alive here in New York City,” de Blasio told Scarborough. “It’s three very basic ideas. One, the biggest source of emissions in New York City is buildings. We’re putting clear, strong mandates, the first of any major city on the Earth to say to building owners: ‘You gotta clean up your act. You gotta retrofit. You gotta save energy.'”

Building owners will have until 2030 to implement these changes, he added, or else face fines of up to or exceeding $1 million. That’s where the part about the skyscrapers came in. “This mandate is going to ensure that we reduce emissions,” he said.

“We’re going to ban the classic glass and steel skyscrapers which are incredibly inefficient,” de Blasio said. “If someone wants to build one of those things they can take a whole lot of steps to make it energy efficient, but we’re not going to allow what we used to see in the past.”

NYC’s government, de Blasio went on to say, will become completely reliant on renewable energy “in the next five years.”

The mayor’s remarks came four days after the New York City Council approved legislation that imposes new emissions standards on buildings bigger than 25,000 square feet (about the size of a grocery store, according to CNBC). The city, which wants to cut its carbon footprint by 80 percent in the next three decades or so, is hoping that big buildings will lower their carbon emissions 40 percent overall by 2030. Different types of buildings won’t be allowed to exceed various emissions caps. De Blasio planned to sign the legislation on Monday.

About 50,000 buildings will be affected, CNBC reported. Religious structures and hospitals will not have to meet all of the standards, and rent-controlled buildings will have more time to comply. Public buildings and low-income housing will also receive some exemptions.

There’s no question that the legislation will cost building owners a pretty penny—$4 billion in total, Mark Chambers, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, told The New York Times. And with so many buildings receiving exemptions, the costs will be borne by a smaller group of landowners.

“The real estate industry and other stakeholders support the goal of reducing carbon emissions 40 percent by 2030,” Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) President John Banks told Crain’s New York. “The bill that passed today, however, will fall short of achieving the 40-by-30 goal by only including half the city’s building stock.”

Building owners may also be hesitant to lease space to tenants who might use more energy. “The approach taken today will have a negative impact on our ability to attract and retain a broad range of industries, including technology, media, finance, and life sciences,” Banks told Crain’s New York.

“There’s a clear business case to be made that having a storage facility is a lot better than having a building that’s bustling with businesses and workers and economic activity,” REBNY general counsel Carl Hum added to the Times.

There’s also the issue of how realistic it is for some buildings to meet the new legislation’s stringent standards. Ed Ermler, the board president of a group of landlords that owns 437 apartment units in Queen, told the Times he’s already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to improve energy efficiency in those buildings. “To get down to even 20 percent from where I am today, with the technology that exists, there’s nothing more that I can do,” he said. “It’s not like there’s this magic wand.”

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Elizabeth Warren Wants You To Know She Totally Loves Game of Thrones. Especially Daenerys. Yay, Women!

What’s more cringe-inducing than Jaime Lannister coming face-to-face with the kid he pushed out a window in order to cover up the fact he was banging his sister? This article by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), titled “The World Needs Fewer Cersei Lannisters,” for starters.

Warren’s 2020 Democratic presidential nomination isn’t going so well, which has forced the senator to make desperate bids for attention. Her The Cut article is more of the same, ham-handedly name dropping a bunch of Game of Thrones characters and plot points in an eye-rolling, how-do-you-do-my-fellow-kids sort of way.

“Daenerys ‘Stormborn’ Targaryen has been my favorite from the first moment she walked through fire,” writes Warren. This is like saying George Washington is your favorite president, The Godfather is your favorite movie, and if you could have dinner with any person living or dead you would pick either Albert Einstein or Jesus. Yawn.

Why does Warren love Daenerys? Because she’s “a queen who declares that she doesn’t serve the interests of the rich and powerful … a ruler who doesn’t want to control the political system but to break the system as it is known.” But this is quite a stretch. Aside from her campaign to abolish slavery in Essos—a crusade that destabilized an entire region, claimed the lives of thousands of people, and may very well have failed (sound familiar?)—Daenerys is mostly a conventional monarch with conventional entanglements, goals, and tactics. She counted the extremely wealthy Tyrell family as among her most powerful allies until enemies wiped them out.

Warren also loves Daenerys because she sees something of herself in the strong female politician who has dared to play a man’s game. But she doesn’t love that other strong female politician: Indeed, much of the piece is about why Queen Cersei is bad. Banks! Too big to fail. Privatization! Seriously:

Unlike Dany, Cersei doesn’t expect to win with the people — she expects to win in spite of them. When Cersei’s brother (and lover) Jaime begs her not to wage a war — arguing that they don’t have the warrior strength of the Dothraki or the allegiance of the other houses, she replies with all the confidence in the Seven Kingdoms: “We have something better. We have the Iron Bank.” Rather than earn her army, Cersei’s pays for it. She buys 20,000 Golden Company mercenaries — though they arrive without their legendary elephants — with funds from the Iron Bank. But Cersei has no intention of sending her private army north to help defeat the army of the dead — that’s Jon and Dany’s problem. No, Cersei’s army will sit back and wait for whatever comes their way. Cersei’s betting on the strength of the bank to get her through the biggest fight of her life. It never crosses the mind that the bank could fail, or betray her.

Cersei is a tyrant who burned most of her enemies alive. But Daenerys has also roasted a lot of people—including some who already surrendered and were no longer a threat to her, as Samwell Tarly tearfully reminded viewers in the season premiere. If Daenerys displaces Cersei and captures the Iron Throne, for many inhabitants of Westeros it will feel a lot like swapping one tyrant for another. The same could be said, of course, in the event that Warren defies the odds and captures her own Iron Throne.

Related: “Of Course Hillary Clinton Identifies with Cersei Lannister. They Are the Same Person.”

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Supreme Court To Consider Whether Civil Rights Act Protects Gay and Transgender Workers

Lesbian, gay, and transgender activists have been working for decades to try to have sexual orientation and gender identity added to federal civil rights anti-discrimination protections. Now the Supreme Court is going to determine if those protections are, in fact, already there.

Today the Supreme Court agreed to combine and consider three cases that revolve around an unresolved legal question: Does the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964’s ban on employment discrimination on the basis of sex also forbid discrimination against somebody for being gay or transgender?

For many, the immediate response would likely be, no, sexual orientation and gender identity are different from sex. That’s why activists and friendly lawmakers have for years been introducing and reintroducing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and now the Equality Act to try to have those two classifications added.

However, it’s actually not that simple. In a Supreme Court decision from 1989, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, the justices ruled that discrimination on the basis of sex-based stereotypes counts as discrimination. That case revolved around a woman who claimed she was denied partnership in the accounting firm because she did not behave or dress femininely enough for them.

From that court precedent a new argument was crafted: Discriminating against somebody for being gay or transgender is similar to discrimination on the basis of whether a person exhibits “stereotypical” traits of a sex. After all, much of the workplace discrimination faced by transgender people is based on how they present themselves.

This argument has found legal traction in federal cases going all the way back to 2005. Under President Barack Obama, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) accepted and endorsed this position, and that’s what ultimately informed the administration’s position that public schools can’t tell transgender students which bathrooms they can use.

But the Supreme Court hasn’t truly established this interpretation as law, and so there’s been conflict on the federal level (and in federal courts). Under President Donald Trump’s administration, the DOJ reversed its position, stating that the Civil Rights Act’s sex discrimination protections don’t extend to gay or transgender discrimination. But the EEOC maintained its position, causing a split of attitudes in the executive branch of the federal government. Likewise, federal court rulings have been contradictory here. Two federal courts have ruled that federal laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex also cover discriminating against somebody because they’re gay or transgender. But a third court has disagreed, creating a split and plenty of federal confusion over the limits of the Civil Rights Act’s protections.

The Supreme Court had previously turned away requests to step in and rule on the conflict. But today they finally decided that they would hear three cases. Two of them involve workers alleging workplace discrimination for being gay. The third involves a transgender woman who was fired by the funeral home she was working at because she wanted to start wearing women’s clothing to work. The owner of the funeral home said it would “violate God’s commands” and would not accommodate the transgender woman’s clothing requests.

This ruling, whichever way it goes, is going to be politically significant due to efforts to pass the Equality Act, which would end the conflict by explicitly adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the Civil Rights Act. A ruling favorable to LGBT workers and students would end the pressure to pass the law. A ruling that the Civil Rights Act does not include sexual orientation and gender identity would most likely turn passage of the Equality Act into an election issue.

Read more about the cases involved here.

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Five Environmental and Human Trends Worth Celebrating This Earth Day

To celebrate the 49th Earth Day, below are some global trends indicate that the state of humanity and the natural world is on course to dramatically improve by the end of this century.

Peak Population: The world population will likely peak at 9.8 billion people at around 2080 and fall to 9.5 billion by 2100 in the medium fertility scenario calculated by demographer Wolfgang Lutz and his colleagues at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis.

Alternatively, assuming rapid economic growth, technological advancement, and rising levels of educational attainment for both sexes—all factors that tend to lower fertility—Lutz projects that world population will more likely peak at around 8.9 billion by 2060 and decline to 7.8 billion by the end of the 21st century. Global population stands at about 7.7 billion now.

Other global trends such as steeply falling child mortality rates, increased urbanization, rising incomes, and the spread of political and economic freedom all strongly correlate with families choosing to have fewer children. Instead of having many children in the hope that a few might survive, more parents around the world now at aim at providing those few that they do have with the skills and social capital that will enable them to flourish in a modern economy.

Forest Expansion: Global tree canopy cover increased by 2.24 million square kilometers (865,000 square miles) between 1982 and 2016, reported researchers at the University of Maryland in a September 2018 study in ​Nature​.

Using satellite data to track the changes in various land covers, they found that gains in forest area in the temperate, subtropical, and boreal climatic zones are offsetting declines in the tropics.

Tree canopy in Europe, including European Russia, has increased by 35 percent—the greatest gain among all continents. The researchers attribute much of that increase to the “natural afforestation on abandoned agricultural land,” which has been “a common process in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union.” The tree canopy in the U.S. and China has increased by 34 and 15 percent respectively.

Simon Resource Abundance Index: Data for 50 foundational commodities covering energy, food, materials, and metals was collected by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund between 1980 and 2017. Adjusted for inflation, the prices for 43 commodities declined, two remained equally valuable, and five commodities increased in price. On average, the real price of 50 commodities fell by 36.3 percent.

Between 1980 and 2017, the inflation-adjusted global hourly income per person grew by 80.1 percent. Therefore, in terms of the amount of work required, commodities became 64.7 percent cheaper. Put differently, commodities that took 60 minutes of work to buy in 1980, took only 21 minutes of work to buy in 2017.

U.S. Air Pollution Trends: The Environmental Protection Agency reports that between 1980 and 2017, U.S. gross domestic product increased 165 percent, vehicle miles traveled increased 110 percent, energy consumption increased by 25 percent, and U.S. population grew by 44 percent. During the same period, emissions of carbon monoxide fell by 72 percent; lead by 99 percent; nitrogen oxides by 61 percent; compounds from automobile exhaust associated with ozone by 54 percent; sulfur dioxide by 89 percent, and particulates by 61 percent. During the same time period, total emissions of the six principal air pollutants dropped by 67 percent.

Peak Farmland: Global arable land (annual crops like wheat and corn) and permanent crops (such as coffee and cocoa) were planted on 1,371 million hectares in 1961. That rose to 1,533 million hectares in 2009. Rockefeller University researcher Jesse Ausubel and his co-authors project a return to 1,385 million hectares in 2060, thus restoring at least 146 million hectares to nature. This is an area two and a half times that of France or the size of ten Iowas. While cropland has continued to expand slowly since 2009, the World Bank reports that land devoted to agriculture (including pastures) peaked in 2000 at 4,918 million hectares and had fallen to 4,862 million hectares by 2015. This human withdrawal from the landscape is the likely prelude to a vast ecological restoration over the course of this century.

Happy Earth Day!

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Conservative Twitter Pounces on Obama, Clinton for Expressing Sympathy for ‘Easter Worshippers’ Killed in Sri Lankan Attacks

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka that have left some 290 dead (and many more injured), a number of prominent Democratic politicians and ex-politicians have taken to Twitter to express sympathy and solidarity with the victims—many of whom were Sri Lankan Christians attending Easter church services.

At first read, these statements come across as perhaps boilerplate, but nevertheless sincere expressions of grief following the horrible attacks that struck the island nation.

Not for many conservatives on Twitter however, who saw in Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s use of the term “Easter worshippers” an attempt to minimize the Christian identity of many of the victims, and obfuscate the religious motivations of the recent attacks.

These barbs are little more than partisan point-scoring. The reference to “Easter worshippers,” while perhaps clumsy phrasing, is hard to see as anything but an attempt to highlight the religious motivations of these attacks, and the fact that they struck at Christian churchgoers as they were peacefully observing a religious holiday. What else is an Easter worshipper but a Christian?

Indeed, President Donald Trump’s failure to say the word “Christian” in his tweeted response to these attacks attracted notably less outrage.

Silly as this is, it is nevertheless an incredibly predictable response, whereby any tragedy around the globe is quickly filtered through the lens U.S. domestic politics as a way of opportunistically attacking one’s partisan opponents.

Often these attacks will seize on the most innocuous words or phrases in an effort to convert someone’s expressions of sympathy or sadness into dog whistles to a much more nefarious agenda.

This is not an exclusively right-wing tactic. Take, for instance, the left-wing attacks on Ben Shapiro, who responded to the Notre Dame cathedral fire by bemoaning the loss of “a magnificent monument to Western civilization.” This was reported as a covertly racist sentiment, meant to stir up violence against Muslims.

I can’t help but think that bickering over the precise phrases we need to use in the aftermath of the terroristic violence in Sri Lanka, even if it’s not being done for cynical or partisan reasons, is not the best way to express sympathy for the victims or their families.

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Sri Lankan Government Blocks Social Media Access Over Alleged Fake News

In the immediate aftermath of a series of Easter Sunday bombings that killed at least 290 people, the Sri Lankan government took the extreme step of blocking access to any social media sites, citing a desire to stop the spread of fake news.

“The government has decided to temporarily block social media sites including Facebook and Instagram,” read a post on news.lk, the Sri Lankan government’s official news portal. “Presidential Secretariat said in a statement that the decision to block social media was taken as false news reports were spreading through social media,” the post added, explaining that “the blockage would be effective until investigations [into the bombings] were concluded.”

In addition to Facebook and Instagram, social media services like Snapchat, YouTube, Viber, and WhatsApp were blocked as of Monday morning, according to a Twitter post from NetBlocks, a digital rights group. “Concerns have been raised over the impact to citizens’s ability to communicate and impart information in the midst of crisis,” the group wrote in a blog post. “Many Sri Lankan internet users are complaining about difficulty checking up on friends and family following the attacks.”

The government’s action came after nearly 300 people were killed and 500 more injured in the bombings, which targeted churches and hotels. Twenty-four people have been arrested in connection with the attacks, and the government has pinned the blame on National Thowheed Jamath, a small Islamist terror group, the BBC reported.

“We are aware of the government’s statement regarding the temporary blocking of social media platforms,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNN. “People rely on our services to communicate with their loved ones and we are committed to maintaining our services and helping the community and the country during this tragic time.”

Viber, a messaging service, posted on Twitter: “We encourage everyone to be responsible and rely on updates from official and trusted sources.”

Social media companies, particularly Facebook, have been criticized for allowing fake news and images of graphic violence to spread in the aftermath of tragedies. A perfect example is the shooting attacks carried out on a pair of New Zealand mosques last month. The alleged shooter livestreamed part of the shooting on Facebook, and the company struggled to remove the video and copies of it from the site.

“If I were #facebook and #whatsapp I’d take a moment to ask myself where I’d gone wrong,” Ivan Sigal, executive director of the journalism and digital advocacy group Global Voices, wrote on Twitter. “A few years ago we’d view the blocking of social media sites after an attack as outrageous censorship; now we think of it as essential duty of care, to protect ourselves from threat,” he added.

Vagelis Papalexakis, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, detailed what he sees as the problem of American social media companies trying to avoid the spread of misinformation in foreign nations. “What needs to be addressed is if I have a very well-polished system that works for English and is optimized for the U.S., how can I successfully ‘transfer’ it to a case where I’m dealing with a language and a locale for which I don’t have as many examples or human annotators to learn from?” he told The Guardian.

So what sorts of false reports were spreading on social media? The Washington Post provided two examples:

Sanjana Hattotuwa, a senior researcher at Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo who monitors social media for fake news…cited two instances of widely shared unverified information: An Indian media report attributing the attack to Muslim suicide bombers, and a tweet from a Sri Lankan minister about an intelligence report warning of an attack.

Notably, neither of those instances appears to have been fake news. As previously mentioned, the Sri Lankan government does indeed believe Muslim extremists were responsible for the attacks. And intelligence agencies had been warned about a possible terror attack in recent days, as CBS News reported.

While there may have been some misinformation spreading in the initial aftermath, the Sri Lankan government’s action highlights the danger of banning social media apps right after a tragedy. “What we’ve seen is that when social media is shut down, it creates a vacuum of information that’s readily exploited by other parties,” NetBlocks Executive Director Alp Toker told the Associated Press, explaining that “it can add to the sense of fear and can cause panic.”

“That’s going to be a problem for people trying to communicate with friends and family,” he added.

Joan Donavan, who leads the Harvard Kennedy School’s technology and social change research project at the Shorenstein Center, echoed those sentiments. “We know based on the past that in crises, everyone goes online to find information,” she told The Guardian. “When there are large-scale fatalities and multiple emergencies, it’s very important for people to be able to communicate and feel safe … This really puts people who already have vulnerable access to communication in a much worse position. It is a dangerous precedent to set.”

That’s not all. Banning social media to stop the spread of fake news means the misinformation might not get debunked. “While a ban on social media helps to contain the spread of rumors, it also hampers efforts by journalists to push back on them,” Hattotuwa told the Post.

It’s the second time in a little over a year that Sri Lanka has banned social media sites to stop the supposed spread of misinformation. The government took similar action in March of last year, claiming it was part of an effort to stop the spread of hate speech and fake rumors that some Buddhist extremists were using to target Muslims.

In December 2016, the Turkish government banned access to social media services like Facebook and Twitter after the Russian ambassador to Turkey was assassinated. As former Reason writer Ed Krayewski noted at the time, the Turkish government was “using any excuse, from mass arrests to attempted coups, to crack down on internet use.”

In Sri Lanka, it’s unclear whether the social media ban will even have the desired effect. Last March, many social media users (possibly up to half of them) bypassed the ban using virtual private networks (VPNs), according to The New York Times. Unfortunately, poor residents who don’t have access to VPNs will likely be in the dark until the ban is lifted.

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Are Food-Stamp Receipts Beyond the Reach of FOIA? Supreme Court Hears Arguments Today: Reason Roundup

A newspaper’s investigation into food stamp fraud lands at SCOTUS. Food stamps and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) collide in a case coming Monday to the U.S. Supreme Court (Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media).

“At stake,” writes Argus Leader investigative reporter Jonathan Ellis, “is more than 40 years of established case law on a key provision of the Freedom of Information Act.”

Back in 2011, the U.S. Department of Agriculture denied an Argus Leader FOIA request for information on reimbursements to South Dakota stores under the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Authorities cited one of the nine exemptions to FOIA-eligible information: a prohibition on “trade secrets or commercial or financial information that is confidential or privileged.”

The Sioux Falls paper objected. And in 2016, a judge sided with the paper, holding that simply sharing SNAP sales data would not cause “competitive harm” to these companies.

“It didn’t help USDA’s case that before trial, the agency surveyed all 321,988 SNAP retailers, and only a few hundred were opposed to releasing the food stamp sales numbers,” writes the editorial board at USA Today (which shares a parent company with the Leader). More:

USDA conceded defeat. But a trade and lobbying group, the Food Marketing Institute […] intervened and appealed. The institute hopes a majority of justices will diminish or even reject the “substantial competitive harm” standard that has been used in FOIA cases for decades.

Weakening FOIA with a wide exemption for “confidential” data would be a loss for the public. A decade after the act became law, the Supreme Court defined the objective of FOIA as ensuring “an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society, needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed.”

The government doesn’t need more ways to withhold information from taxpayers who deserve accountability and transparency.

But the Food Marketing Institute says that data on private business sales is outside the scope of FOIA, even when the customers are being financed by the federal government. FOIA “was created to shine a light on the government, not on private parties,” writes the Institute’s CEO Leslie Sarasin. “Congress expressly exempted confidential commercial information from mandatory disclosure because that disclosure can harm private interests without adding much insight about the government’s own work.”

To take this standard to its logical conclusion, however, would mean that no information on government activity could be turned over if that activity also involved a private business. This wouldn’t just let the government off the hook and keep citizens in the dark about totally benign business behavior, but it would also exclude crony corporations and shady business-political dealings from scrutiny, too.

The standard settled upon for FOIA—that information must cause “competitive harm” to a private business, not merely involve one—helps balanced the interests of privacy, accountability, and transparency.

“We’ve been at this a long time,” Argus Leader News Director Cory Myers said. “At every turn the courts have sided with our argument that this is public information. It’s unfortunate that FMI felt the need to intervene after government had agreed to release the public data, but I’m confident the U.S. Supreme Court will find in the public’s favor.”

FREE MINDS

Easter bombings in Sri Lanka killed hundreds. Now the country’s government is blaming the Islamic militant group National Thowheed Jamath for the attacks. So far, no group has admitted to the church and hotel suicide bombings Sunday that caused the deaths of 290 people and injured around 500 more.

As with other recent acts of violence, we’re seeing government respond to the chaos and violence by taking broader than necessary aim at speech and suspending civil liberties.

“Police arrested 24 people in a series of raids and the president’s office declared a state of national emergency,” reports the BBC. The  declaration “will give police and military extensive powers to detain and interrogate suspects without court orders.”

The government also “blocked access to Facebook and other social-networking sites,” in “a move meant to stop misinformation from inciting further violence in a country where online mistruths have fomented deadly ethnic unrest,” notes The Washington Post. “But the blackout also had the effect of eliminating a key means of communication during a major terrorist event—a problem Sunday for both Sri Lankans and foreigners desperate to get information about security and check in with loved ones.”

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