Tag: hit&run

In an attempt to combine his hatred for knife ownership with a disregard for privacy, London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced today some knife offenders will be fitted with GPS trackers upon their release from prison.

It’s all part of an “innovative pilot scheme” meant “to reduce reoffending,” according to a press release from Khan’s office. But there are some troubling aspects of the program, which will affect “up to 100 offenders” in four London boroughs that have been “most affected by knife crime.”

For one thing, Khan’s office notes that the program’s subjects will include not only people who committed serious crimes like robbery or grievous bodily harm, but also those convicted of “knife possession.”

“Carry[ing] a knife in public without good reason, unless it has a folding blade with a cutting edge 3 inches long or less,” is forbidden by the British government. The same goes for simply owning one of the many knives the U.K. has banned, including switch blades. Violators can face up to four years behind bars, as well as “an unlimited fine.”

There are, of course, plenty of good reasons to own a knife, not the least of which is self-defense. The anti-knife folks appear to disagree. “A lot of young people say carrying a knife is for protection, but how does a knife actually PROTECT you?” asks the website for an almost comical anti-knife campaign. “Does it put up a force-field, or make you invincible?” Of course not, but civilians with knives can put up a fight against the criminals who probably weren’t going to follow the anti-weapon laws anyway.

Back to London’s pilot program: “Under the scheme, offenders who are deemed more likely to reoffend will have their movements automatically checked against the location of reported crimes, with significant matches shared with local police,” the press release reads. Khan’s office did not explain how officials will determine who is likely to be a repeat offender.

“This innovative pilot will build on the good work of the City Hall funded Violent Crime Taskforce by helping offenders integrate back into society and reducing the risk of reoffending, as well as giving the police the information they need to thoroughly investigate reported crimes,” Khan said in a statement.

This all seems very similar a nationwide pilot tagging program that affected some U.K. prisoners released between October 2016 and October 2017. Both programs appear to have been mandatory, and both sent the same message to released offenders: You’d better stay out of trouble, because we’re watching everything you do.

This latest program is all the more egregious because it’s part of London’s misguided war on knives. While the city may have a problem with violence, cracking down on knife ownership is not likely to help. As Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist A. Barton Hinkle suggested in a piece for Reason last year, even if the knife crackdown works, criminals will just turn to legal instruments of violence, like lead pipes.

There’s no guarantee that the British Government, much like America’s, won’t wildly overreach in the name of “safety.” In the U.K., it’s clear which concept police value more. Look no further than a cringeworthy commercial encouraging people to report their fellow citizens for supposedly suspicious behavior, like buying a hammer.

California’s latest effort to allow for more housing construction in the state’s urban areas is quickly gaining steam, suggesting that this year’s stab at reform might succeed where past attempts have failed.

A new poll from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce found that 74 percent of people in San Francisco support a state bill that would override local controls to allow for the construction of apartment buildings near transit, the San Francisco Chronicle reported today.

The Chronicle says that the poll did not give an explicit name to this state bill, but it is obviously a reference to SB 50.

That bill, filed by state Sen. Scott Weiner (D–San Francisco), would give developers waivers to local zoning controls, allowing them to build apartment buildings up to 55 feet tall within a quarter mile of transit stops, or up to 45 feet tall within a half mile of transit stops. Weiner’s legislation would also override some local zoning controls in “job-rich areas,” defined in the bill as areas with high median income and good schools.

It’s very similar to a more ambitious bill Weiner introduced at the beginning of 2018, which was killed in committee after stiff opposition from construction unions, tenant advocates, and local governments.

This year, Weiner is gambling that the new SB 50, which is more modest in the kinds of development it would allow, and which makes several important concessions to powerful interest groups and will garner enough support to make it through the legislature.

Those concessions include a requirement that any developers taking advantage of SB 50’s waivers pay a “prevailing” wage, a gift to the state’s labor unions.

The waivers could not be used on project sites that had rental housing on them within the last seven years. That provision is in response to critiques of upzoning from tenant advocates, who fear it will be used to tear down existing rental housing and replace it with bigger, more expensive units.

The more modest approach of SB 50 appears to be working so far. The State Building and Construction Trades Council—which represents construction unions at the state level—played a critical roll in killing SB 827, but has since endorsed SB 50. Low income housing groups that came out strongly against SB 827 from the beginning are either holding their fire or even offering some muted praise of the bill.

San Francisco was a hotbed of opposition to SB 827 when it was proposed. The city’s Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 on a resolution condemning the proposal in April 2018, and supporters of SB 827 performed much worse than expected in the city’s November municipal elections.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce—who asked about support for the bill as part of a wider annual poll of city residents—is keen to represent this latest survey as proof that opposition to SB 50 is coming from a loud minority.

“It’s time to talk about what real solutions are for housing and not get distracted by a couple of loud voices that can drown out what people actually want across the city,” said Juliana Bunim, senior vice president at the chamber, to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Whether the coalition assembling behind SB 50 will be enough to get it over the finish line this time remains to be seen. And while the bill is certainly flawed, it is far better than other housing proposals being floated, which include either more money for public housing or rent control.

The bill is currently idling in the California Senate’s Committee on Housing and Government and Finance. No hearings have been held.

Last Friday the Houston Police Department released the inventory of items seized during the January 28 drug raid that killed a middle-aged couple and injured five narcotics officers. Strikingly absent is any evidence that Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas were selling drugs from their house at 7815 Harding Street, notwithstanding Police Chief Art Acevedo’s portrayal of them as scary, heavily armed, locally notorious heroin dealers.

According to the warrant affidavit, a confidential informant bought heroin from a man matching Tuttle’s description at the house the day before the raid, when he reported seeing a “large quantity of plastic baggies” containing heroin. Instead police found “approximately 18 grams of marijuana” and “approximately 1.5 grams of an unknown white powder” that Acevedo later identified as cocaine. These are personal use quantities that are not consistent with drug dealing. Nor did police find any equipment, supplies, or cash indicative of drug sales. The inventory does not mention scales, bags, or heroin paraphernalia. It does not even mention the police-supplied money that the C.I. supposedly used to buy heroin from Tuttle, which should have been identifiable by serial numbers recorded before the purchase.

The other four items in the inventory are guns: a 20-gauge Beretta ALS shotgun, a 12-gauge Remington 1100 shotgun, a Remington 700 bolt-action rifle, and a .22-caliber Winchester 190 semi-automatic rifle. The list does not include the .357 Magnum revolver that police say Tuttle fired at the officers who broke into his home, shot his dog, and killed his wife. Nor does it mention the 9mm semi-automatic handgun that the C.I. supposedly saw in the house the day before, which apparently disappeared along with the heroin and the money.

“There’s nothing identified in [the] search warrant return as scales or baggies, or anything that would be used to distribute heroin—or any other drugs, for that matter,” Val Zuniga, a local defense attorney who specializes in drug cases, noted in an interview with KTRK, the ABC station in Houston. “It’s not the amount of drugs that would be associated with distribution. I think in this case the officer probably relied on an unreliable informant.”

That much seems pretty clear, but it does not get the narcotics officer who applied for the warrant off the hook. “The confidential informant has provided informant [sic] and assistance to officers in the past on at least ten (10) prior occasions which has lead [sic] to narcotic arrests and seizures,” wrote the officer, whose name is blacked out in the publicly released copy of the affidavit. “The confidential informant has proven to be credible and reliable on many prior occasions.” Before sending the C.I. into the house, the officer told him that “narcotics were being sold and stored” there, so it was clear what he wanted to prove and what kind of “assistance” was required.

The officer swore that he searched the C.I. prior to the controlled buy and watched him as he entered the house and emerged from it, which implies that the “quantity of brown powder” (later identified as black-tar heroin) the C.I. presented must have come from there. The officer also said the house was subsequently put under “surveillance,” so someone presumably would have noticed if people arrived there to buy all of Tuttle’s heroin or if Tuttle came out to dispose of a 9mm pistol between the alleged transaction and the raid the following evening. These inconsistencies may help explain why the HPD recently suspended an officer who was involved in the raid, reportedly because of questions about the search warrant.

Acevedo on Friday reiterated his promise to conduct a thorough investigation of the raid and the events leading to it. “When we are done with our investigation, we will have uncovered and turned over every stone to get at the truth,” he said. “We owe that to the involved officers. We owe that to the family of the deceased suspects, and at the end of the day we owe it to the community.”

Yet Acevedo seems to have prejudged the outcome of an important aspect of the investigation by claiming “the neighborhood thanked our officers” for raiding Tuttle and Nicholas’ home, “because it was a drug house” and “a problem location.” He also paraphrased an anonymous informant who called police on January 8 to complain that “her daughter was in the house, and there were guns and heroin.” According to Acevedo, “The informant stated she did not want to give any information because they were drug dealers and they would kill her.” By contrast, the neighbors who have spoken to the press say they never noticed any suspicious activity at the house and thought Tuttle and Nicholas, who had no criminal records to speak of and had lived on the block for more than two decades, were “wonderful people.”

Part of the investigation into the raid will involve sorting through the evidence to support these dueling portraits. We already know which one Acevedo favors.

Someone who’s trained as a nurse in California doesn’t magically forget those skills when they cross the border into Arizona. The same is true for plumbers, electricians, makeup artists, and pretty much any person working in any other licensed profession—and Arizona might soon be the first state to stop pretending otherwise.

A bill introduced Monday in the Arizona General Assembly would allow anyone with an occupational license from a different state to automatically qualify for the same license in Arizona without having to retake classes and pass tests again—though they would have to pay a fee to the state board that administers the license, and would have to demonstrate that they were in good standing with the licensing authorities in their previous state. So-called “universal licensing recognition” would make it easier for licensed workers to move to Arizona and would do away with time-consuming and expensive requirements for license-holders who want to move across state lines.

In short, it makes a lot of sense. And it makes particular sense for Arizona, a growing state that expects to gain more than 100,000 residents this year.

“If you’ve been licensed to work in another state and want to move here, let it be known: Arizona will not stand in your way,” Gov. Doug Ducey said during his State of the State address last week. Ducey, a Republican, called for the state legislature to pass the bill quickly. “As people move here, we want them to be able to work from day one,” he said.

The bill will have its first hearing in front of the state House Regulatory Affairs Committee this afternoon.

Arizona already recognizes licenses from beyond its own borders for military families, and the new bill would extend that same privilege to other workers.

“This helps workers across the country who want to move to better their lives and helps Arizona businesses by allowing them to recruit licensed/certified workers nationwide,” says Paul Avelar, an Arizona-based attorney with the Institute for Justice, which is advocating for the reform.

As it stands, most licenses aren’t transferable between states, and research in recent years has shown a link between growing levels of occupational licensing—more than one-third of all jobs in the United States is now subject to some form of licensing, up from just one in 10 jobs in 1970—and a decline in workers’ mobility.

Nationwide, workers whose jobs require a state-issued license lose out on between $178 million and $711 million they could have earned by moving to a different state, according to a 2017 paper by Janna Johnson and Morris Kleiner, a pair of labor economists at the University of Minnesota. Johnson and Kleiner examined 22 professions that are licensed across most states, and found that workers in those professions were, on average, 36 percent less likely to move across state lines than workers in non-licensed professions.

“For example, a licensed public schoolteacher with a decade of teaching experience in New Hampshire is not legally allowed to teach in an Illinois public school without completing significant new coursework and apprenticeships,” they wrote. “The existence of such requirements could constitute a significant cost to migration across state lines for those in licensed occupations, and these costs could prevent individuals from moving if the costs of re-licensure had been lower.”

In fact, the numbers are likely larger. As Johnson and Morris note, their research fails to capture the lost productivity and earnings for people who are forced out of the labor force entirely because they cannot (or choose not to) get re-licensed in a new state. If a wife moves to a new state for a better-paying job, for example, her husband who previously worked in a licensed profession might have to change careers entirely.

“For qualified professionals who move to our state looking to work, let’s get government out of the way and let them get to work,” says state Rep. Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert), the sponsor of the universal licensing bill.

Arizona’s proposed reform is the most direct way to address this problem. It’s also the latest salvo in an ongoing fight between Ducey and some of the state’s licensing boards—which are often controlled by members of the very profession they are supposed to regulate and, unsurprisingly, have not taken kindly to Ducey’s efforts to roll back onerous licensing laws.

The most heated battles have been between the governor and the state’s cosmetology board, which for two years has been fighting a proposal to let people blow-dry hair without a license—something that could land you in jail for up to six months in Arizona. Ducey has called the board “a group of special interest bullies,” but opposition from the board and licensed hair stylists killed an effort at repealing the blow-dry licensing requirements last year. A new blow-dry licensing reform bill passed a key state Senate committee last week.

The boards are likely to throw up opposition to Petersen’s bill as well, since it would undercut their ability to require, for example, 1,000 hours of training before someone could be licensed to blow-dry hair. But recognizing out-of-state licenses will make Arizona an even more appealing destination for workers.

“Standing in their way of earning a living in Arizona? Our own licensing boards and their cronies, who tell them ‘you can’t work here; you haven’t paid the piper,'” Ducey said last week. “Let’s stop this foolishness.”

Democratic presidential candidate and California Sen. Kamala Harris stopped by I Heart Radio morning show The Breakfast Club for a chat about her campaign ambitions. She found a friendly questioner in Charlamagne tha God, and they talked at length about the kind of attacks she’s been facing over her record as a former prosecutor in San Francisco and the state’s attorney general.

Part of the interview appeared to be a bit of straw man attacking, or at least time spent on claims that weren’t actual critiques of her record. There’s apparently a meme out there that states that Kamala Harris as a prosecutor “set a state record” for prosecuting black men. I can find little evidence of this meme online other than a single picture and a response on Medium from somebody saying that this likely isn’t true. California’s prison population declined during the time that Harris was attorney general.

There are a lot of legitimate critiques of Harris’ background as a prosecutor, so picking the most absurd claim to give her space to hit back on is a little odd. In addition, he lets her weigh in on some absurd claim out there that she’s not really black and was raised in Canada. The 44-minute interview does delve into a few more issues, and he gives her space to promote the criminal justice reforms she really does support. She mentions crafting legislation to try to eliminate the use of cash bail in the states—an effort on which she’s partnered up with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to try to send federal grants to states to research changes.

But then things get truly odd when Charlamagne funnels her into pretty much flat-out deceiving us about her record on marijuana legalization. Here’s the clip:

Hear what #KamalaHarris thinks about legalizing marijuana pic.twitter.com/YGZlCAKUZ0

— The Breakfast Club (@breakfastclubam) February 11, 2019

For those who can’t watch, Charlamagne says there’s a rumor going around that she’s against marijuana legalization and she says that’s “not true.” If you listen carefully, the two of them are circumspect about how they’re approaching this. They are talking about Harris’ current position on marijuana legalization. She states very clearly that she is in favor of legalizing marijuana.

But that’s a significant change of her position in the last 10 years, and the show simply does not grapple with any of it, treating Harris as though she’s ahead of the curve on legalization.

She’s not. She is playing catch-up and has been publicly supporting legalization for all of a year.

Harris has a lengthy history as a prosecutor in California of opposing marijuana legalization. She opposed Proposition 19, the first failed attempt in California to legalize recreational use of marijuana. Here’s a quote from her campaign manager when she was running for attorney general in 2010, when Prop. 19 was on the ballot: “Spending two decades in court rooms, Harris believes that drug selling harms communities. Harris supports the legal use of medicinal marijuana but does not support anything beyond that.”

In 2014 she actually laughed at a reporter in response to the very idea (pushed by her Republican opponent) of legalized recreational use.

For almost the entirety of Harris’ political career, she has been against legalizing pot. Like a lot of politicians, she has only recently come around to recognize the reality that whatever damage marijuana use might cause pales in comparison to the harms created by the government enforcing marijuana laws.

It’s not all that much different from various Democratic leaders coming around over the past decade to support same-sex marriage recognition. The issue here in this interview is that Harris is clearly wanting to present herself as being some sort of cutting edge candidate (she admits to smoking pot once in college) when her actual record on marijuana is anything but.

For an actual critique of Harris’ record that doesn’t rely on random memes, check out Reason TV’s recent analysis. This is the stuff that people are actually thinking about before deciding whether to cast a vote for her:

Watch the full interview with The Breakfast Club here.

A map and dataset of 2,753 cameras owned by private and public operators in San Francisco was published last week by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The vast majority—2,406 never-blinking lenses—are private, or nominally private, cameras installed by private businesses, individuals, and associations.

They’ve been installed to deter crime and to help police catch criminals after the fact. It’s a peek into the complicated world of the modern surveillance state, which is largely driven by good intentions, private fears, and innovative entrepreneurs vying for government contracts.

View this article.

“The financial crisis of 2008 was caused mainly by government-induced distortion of markets rather than caused mainly by intrinsic market failure.”

That’s the proposition under debate at the next Soho Forum, which takes place in New York City on Wednesday, February 20.

The Soho Forum is a monthly debate series that features topics of special interest to libertarians, and the series aims to enhance social and professional ties within the NYC libertarian community. It’s moderated by Gene Epstein, the longtime economics editor of Barron’s, and tickets, which cost between $12 and $24, must be purchased online and in advance. Reason is proud to be a sponsor of The Soho Forum and all debates are subsequently released as Reason videos and podcasts (go here for an archive). The debates are “Oxford style,” meaning that the audience is polled before and after arguments are made and the winner is the person who moves more people in his or her direction.

Here’s more information about the evening’s debaters.

For the affirmative:

John Allison is an executive in residence at the Wake Forest School of Business. He is a member of the Cato Institute’s Board of Directors and chairman of the Executive Advisory Council of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives. Allison was president and CEO of the Cato Institute from October 2012 to April 2015. Prior to joining Cato, Allison was chairman and CEO of BB&T Corporation, the 10th largest financial services holding company headquartered in the United States. He was recognized by Harvard Business Review as one of the top 100 most successful CEOs in the world over the last decade. He is also the author of The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism Is the World Economy’s Only Hope.

For the negative:

Mark M. Zandi is chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, where he directs economic research. He conducts regular briefings on the economy for corporate boards, trade associations, and policymakers at all levels. Dr. Zandi is a cofounder of Economy.com, which Moody’s purchased in 2005. He is also the author of Paying the Price: Ending the Great Recession and Beginning a New American Century, which provides an assessment of the monetary and fiscal policy response to the Great Recession. His other book, Financial Shock: A 360º Look at the Subprime Mortgage Implosion, and How to Avoid the Next Financial Crisis, is described by The New York Times as the “clearest guide” to the financial crisis.

And here are details about the event and venue:

Cash bar opens at 5:45 p.m.
Event starts at 6:30 p.m.
Subculture Theater
45 Bleecker St,
NY, 10012

Seating must be reserved in advance.

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein.

Watch last month’s debate, “Government Caused Housing Segregation. Do We Need More Government to Fix the Problem?,” which featured Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute and Howard Husock of The Manhattan Institute. Podcast version here.

New members of Congress clash with GOP leader over Israel. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is calling for Democrats to sanction two freshmen members for their sass on Israel. McCarthy told Democrats they must “take action” against Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, both elected last fall and the first two Muslim women in Congress. If Democrats don’t do something, said McCarthy, “I think you’ll see action from myself”—though it’s not clear what he could actually do.

McCarthy is mad over (separate) comments Omar and Tlaib have made about Israel. He said their comments were more offensive than Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) sticking up for white nationalism.

Omar accused Republican policy on Israel of being driven by funding from lobbyist groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). As John Bresnahan explains at Politico, AIPAC “is a non-profit that doesn’t donate directly to candidates. AIPAC, however, does relentlessly push a pro-Israeli message on Capitol Hill and inside the executive branch, and its members donate to pro-Israel lawmakers and candidates while seeking to defeat those it considers a threat to U.S.-Israeli relations.”

In January, Tlaib came under fire for saying some members of Congress “forgot what country they represent” after they voted for a bill targeting boycotts of Israel. Tlaib was accused of dog whistling the old “two loyalties” accusation that was once frequently deployed about Jews and Israel (or Catholics and the Pope). She was roundly accused of anti-Semitism by many conservativse, including the bill’s sponsor, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. In response, Tlaib tweeted “Sen. Rubio, it’s clear my earlier tweet was critical of U.S. Senators like yourself, who are seeking to strip Americans of their Constitutional right to free speech.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald called it “obscene” to compare these comments from Tlaib and Omar with defenses of white nationalism. “In the US, we’re allowed to criticize our own government: certainly foreign governments. The GOP House Leader’s priorities are warped,” Greenwald tweeted. He continued:

Sorry, but you’re not going to turn the two first Muslim women to serve in the US Congress into overnight Jew-haters because of their criticisms of Israel. What’s actually anti-Semitic is conflating the Government of Israel with Jews, so those of you doing that should stop.

Rep. Omar in turn retweeted this with the comment “It’s all about the Benjamins baby” and a music-notes emoji—prompting more cries of bigotry. Alyssa Farah, Mike Pence’s press secretary, called it “textbook antisemitism” and an “astonishing statement from a sitting member of Congress.”

A lot of mentions of money and Israel tend to get shutdown in this manner. Activist Imraan Siddiqi questioned why it’s “perfectly fine to talk about paid trips, influence peddling and money in DC” when it comes from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, or the United Arab Emirates. But Israel “is off limits?”

As with Democrats seeing white supremacy in every “OK” hand gesture, and racist dog whistles everywhere, a lot of people on the right are determined to see coded anti-Semitism in any criticism of Israel or its U.S. supporters.

GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy threatens punishment for @IlhanMN and @RashidaTlaib over their criticisms of Israel. It’s stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans https://t.co/It1fGm1b70

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 10, 2019

ELECTION 2020

Both Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) announced their 2020 presidential campaigns over the weekend. With each new Democratic Party contender—a group that also includes Sens. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard—criticism of the candidates is often met with swift appeals to consider: aren’t they better than Trump on this regard? But even for those who think the two-party system should get their votes regardless, now surely isn’t the time to gloss over candidate flaws and resort to reflexive whataboutism. Now is precisely the time to air as much as we can about who these candidates are and how they fare in the national spotlight.

With Klobuchar, whose alleged mistreatment of staff became an issue last week, “it’s not clear that this news alone will sink Klobuchar. It’s still early, and she wouldn’t be the first intense boss to become president,” writes David Byler yesterday in the The Washington Post. “But this kind of story, and the primary campaign as a whole, can be bruising. That’s the entire point of the process—or at least, before the Trump era, it was supposed to be.”

QUICK HITS

Klobuchar, an ardent Drug Warrior, also brought felony charges for quality-of-life offenses and child support nonpayment and helped lead a drive to make drunk driving a felony. Minnesota’s prison population soared. https://t.co/Env4iZHjSV

— Walter Olson (@walterolson) February 11, 2019

• “Females had a younger brain age relative to males” in a new study of brain metabolism as we age.
• It looks like Westworld won’t return for season three until 2020.
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has retracted a “draft” of the Green New Deal that was she said wasn’t meant to be uploaded to her website.

I am confused by this article. Didn’t her staff send the FAQ document to NPR and other journalists? That’s what NPR claimed at least. That’s easy to prove so why would AOC claim otherwise. And if it was an unfinished document that NPR published, why did they send it? https://t.co/2shPE4koAh

— Veronique de Rugy (@veroderugy) February 10, 2019

• Cathy Young tackles Candace Owens, communications director for Turning Point USA, and “her Hitler flap.” Owens suggested last week that Hitler would’ve been OK if he didn’t have such a globalist streak.

Over the past 20 years, arguably no libertarian thinker has cut a broader or deeper intellectual swath across American public policy and culture than Tyler Cowen.

The 56-year-old New Jersey native holds the Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and acts as chairman and general director of the Mercatus Center, a think tank based at the school. Cowen also co-founded the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and is a regular contributor to Bloomberg. He is the host of Conversations with Tyler, a podcast series that includes interviews with people as diverse as tennis pro Martina Navratilova, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and comedian Dave Barry, and he is the author of a shelf full of books, including 1998’s In Praise of Commercial Culture, 2007’s Discover Your Inner Economist, and 2017’s The Complacent Class.

His work covers everything from the literal and figurative prices of fame to how globalization empowers Mexican folk artists to whether public funding for the arts has been more successful than most free marketers would grant. A recurring theme over the past decade is a fear that the West may have entered a period he calls “the great stagnation,” in which technological innovation and economic growth have slowed even as risk taking and moonshot-type ventures are demonized or ignored altogether.

In October, Reason‘s Nick Gillespie spoke with Cowen about his latest book, Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals (Stripe Press). The work is an unapologetically libertarian argument for what he calls long-term sustainable economic growth and, more importantly, for intellectual and cultural attitudes devoted to freedom and prosperity.

View this article.

A York County, Penn., police officer has been charged with simple assault for shooting a handcuffed suspect in the back seat of a patrol car. Officer Stuart Lee Harrison says he thought he was reaching for his Taser and did not realize he had pulled out his gun until he heard the shot.