Tag: hit&run

A Florida sheriff believes that marijuana is killing people daily.

No, really. “There absolutely is a price to pay for pot,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd declared on Fox & Friends this morning. “It’s not a minor, nonviolent felony. It’s ruining families and killing people every day across the United States.”

Judd did not provide any evidence to back up his claim, probably because there isn’t any. Though it’s possible to overdose on weed, the Drug Enforcement Agency said in 2017 that “no deaths from overdose of marijuana have been reported.” In fact, it’s virtually impossible to die from a pot overdose: You’d need to consume 1,500 pounds of the stuff within 15 minutes to O.D., according to David Schmader, author of Weed: The User’s Guide.

Marijuana can contribute to death in other ways. People who get behind the wheel after smoking, for instance, run a far higher risk of crashing than people who drove sober. Of course, the same is true of alcohol and other legal substances.

Judd, who was on Fox to discuss a Polk County 12-year-old whose classmates went to the hospital after he gave them weed gummies, didn’t let any of that get in the way of his fearmongering. “I’ve been telling people in the State of Florida for years that whenever you take a substance like marijuana, and you put the [tetrahydrocannabinol] into gummies, it’s going to end up in children’s hands,” he said.

Judd’s “What about the children?” argument is common among the opponents of legal marijuana. While it’s conceivable that legalized weed can lead to increased underage consumption, that’s still not a good reason ban it. As Reason‘s Jacob Sullum pointed out in 2016: “If Americans were denied access to everything that is appropriate only for adults, we would all be reduced to the status of children.”

It’s also worth noting that marijuana laws in Florida, where weed is legal for medical but not recreational use, had nothing to do with this most recent incident. Judd even admits that the gummies originated in California, where recreational pot is legal.

But the Fox & Friends hosts had no problem going along with it all. “You haven’t even kissed a boy at that point,” Ainsley Earhardt said of middle-schoolers being exposed to weed. “Are you seeing more of this…where they’re getting their hands on drugs?”

Judd didn’t provide a straight answer to that question. But he noted that the 12-year-old criminal mastermind who handed out the gummies is now facing six felony charges. The victims “weren’t even teenagers,” he added in apparent justification.

At that point, co-host Brian Kilmeade stepped in to rail against the addictive nature of THC. Judd expressed agreement. “We stand here every day in denial thinking that it’s not a gateway drug to drugs that’s killing people,” he said.

Earhardt put it simply: “You don’t start on cocaine, you probably start with marijuana and it leads to other things, right?” she asked. “That’s absolutely right,” Judd responded:

Fox & Friends goes full Reefer Madness, claiming that cannabis is:

-“addicting”
-“not a minor, non-violent felony”
-“killing people every day across the United States”
-“a gateway drug”
-used by meth addicts to help “kill themselves, or overdose, or kill someone else” pic.twitter.com/euvjB4h3Dr

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) December 3, 2018

In reality, numerous studies show that opioid addiction does not start with marijuana (Reason‘s C.J. Ciaramella rounded up six of them back in February). And if that’s not enough, you can read Sullum’s 2003 comprehensive article on the “gateway drug” myth here.

But it’s all par for the course for Judd, who’s been the subject of more than one Reason article since assuming office. Last year, Judd threatened to imprison Hurricane Irma refugees with active warrants. In 2016 his department arrested and jailed a man for having a milk crate attached to his bike. In 2015 he publicly mocked the appearances of sex workers arrested for engaging in consensual sex. In 2014 he brought felony charges against two girls—ages 12 and 14—accused of cyberbullying a girl who had committed suicide. (The charges were later dropped.)

Reason‘s Scott Shackford has accurately labeled Judd “Florida’s Joe Arpaio.” But unlike Arpaio, who lost a reelection bid two years ago, Judd’s reign continues to the present day.

Thirteen years after South Carolina scrapped its longstanding requirement that bars and restaurants serve distilled spirits exclusively from tiny bottles, a Boston suburb has prohibited merchants from selling the 50-milliliter containers, a.k.a. nips. It says something about the elastic logic of meddling moralists that banning nips, like mandating them, is supposed to serve the cause of temperance.

The nip ban in Chelsea, Massachusetts, which local retailers recently challenged as an illegal modification of their licenses, is aimed at curtailing public drunkenness and littering. “Far too often we have made observations of individuals in an inebriated state in the area of Bellingham and Chelsea Square because of the overconsumption of these particular alcoholic beverages,” Chelsea Police Chief Brian Kyes said after the city imposed the ban in May. “They have secreted the containers in their clothing only to be tossed in the street after their use. This local measure should go a long way towards reducing open-air intoxication in our vibrant downtown neighborhoods.”

Robert Mellion, executive director of the Massachusetts Package Store Association, told The Boston Globe nips are “not even in the top five” of items found in litter, saying cigarette butts, food wrappers, and water and sports drink bottles are more common. “It’s our opinion that Massachusetts has a litter problem, not necessarily a portion-control-sizing problem,” he said. “It’s a general litter problem in the state that has to be addressed.”

As for public drunkenness, nip haters complain that the tiny bottles are inexpensive and easy to conceal. In addition to nixing nips, Chelsea imposed a “voluntary ban” on alcoholic beverages that cost less than $3. What the city views as a liability, of course, strikes most consumers as an advantage. “If you don’t have enough money to get a full bottle or an expensive bottle,” a local clothing store employee told the Globe, “a nip you drink in moderation. A nip helps you loosen up.”

Moderation was the aim of the 1972 constitutional amendment that legalized the sale of distilled spirits by the drink in South Carolina but limited bottles to no more than two ounces. Until then people would bring their own liquor to bars and restaurants, which sold mixers and ice. The idea was that people would get less drunk if they had to buy single-serving mini-bottles. But things did not work out that way, because bartenders would pour all 1.7 ounces into drinks that otherwise might have had one, 1.25, or 1.5, and South Carolina became known for its potent cocktails. By the time the nip mandate was repealed in 2005, the opposition included South Carolina’s Baptist Convention and Mothers Against Drunk Driving as well as the state’s hospitality industry.

Now Chelsea, employing reverse logic, is anticipating that forcing local drunks to buy larger bottles of liquor will reduce “open-air intoxication.” What could possibly go wrong?

Should you have to pay thousands of dollars before you’re allowed to move back into your own home?

That’s the question raised by a new lawsuit filed against the City of Oakland, California, where a local regulation requires landlords to pay as much $12,000 to tenants if they wish to reoccupy their property. The plaintiffs are Lyndsey and Sharon Ballinger, an active duty military couple who rented out their three-bedroom Oakland home in September 2016 after Sharon was stationed in the D.C. area.

In January of this year, while the Ballingers were out east, the Oakland City Council passed its Uniform Relocation Ordinance, part of which requires that landlords looking to end a rental agreement for the purposes of reoccupying their home pay their tenants a set relocation fee.

The fee is largely determined by the size of the rental property. Renters vacating a studio or single-bedroom unit are entitled to a $6,875 relocation fee. The cost is $8,462 for a two-bed unit, $10,445 for a three-bed or larger unit. Tenants who are low-income, are elderly, or have children are entitled to an additional $2,500.

Renters are entitled to two thirds of the above fees after living in a unit for a year, and they’re entitled to the whole amount if they’ve rented a property for more than two years.

Despite renting out their home well over a year before the city passed its ordinance, the Ballingers were forced to pay their tenants $6,582. before they were allowed to end the lease—which at the time was being renewed on a month-to-month basis.

The intention of the Oakland rental ordinance—giving renters a break in the midst of a severe housing shortage—is noble, says Meriem Hubbard of the Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm representing the Ballingers. The problem, she says, is that it unfairly shifts the burden for addressing this shortage onto property owners who played no role in creating it.

“Instead of the city figuring out how to get more housing or to get less expensive housing or to develop more properties,” says Hubbard, “what they’re doing is they’re making the landlord pay the tenant to leave.”

Being forced to pay $6,582 to their tenants is hardship for the Ballingers, a young military couple with two small children. It’s more than the military paid the family to move across the country—and according to Hubbard, it’s unconstitutional. It violates the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments by taking property, in this case the $6,582, without compensation and without a public purpose. The complaint also claims that the law imposes unconstitutional conditions on the Ballingers’ use of their property by requiring they pay the relocation fees before retaking possession of their home, something they are otherwise entitled to do.

Oakland’s relocation regulation is similar to rules on the books in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Berkeley, all of which could be endangered should the Ballingers win their case.

The lawsuit was filed last week, and it will be a while before any decision on its merits is handed down.

Two Minneapolis police officers apparently thought it would be funny to decorate the Fourth Precinct Christmas tree with items often stereotypically associated with African Americans. The decorations included a cup from Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, empty bags of Funyuns and Takis tortialla chips, two Newport cigarettes containers, and malt liquor cans:

This is a photo of a racist and derogatory Christmas tree at the Minneapolis 4th precinct. @jeremiah4north @CunninghamMPLS @Jacob_Frey We must demand an apology and commitment to build better community relations. This is unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/xNq4CUZUu5

— North by Northside (@northxnorthside) November 30, 2018

Councilman Phillipe Cunningham, who represents the city’s Fourth Ward, reports that the offending ornaments were added after the tree had already been decorated by an assigned officer.

The tree has since been taken down. Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, who is black, said in a statement he was “ashamed and appalled by” such behavior, according to WCCO. Mayor Jacob Frey initially promised that the “offending party will be fired” by the end of Friday, but his spokesperson, Mychal Vlatkovich, later clarified to the Minneapolis Star Tribune that there’s a “legally required process that must be followed” before an officer can be terminated.

Two officers are currently on paid administrative leave while internal affairs investigates.

Local activists see the Christmas tree incident as just the latest sign of a broken culture within the police department. “If you understand the history and the attitude that the police have toward the citizens here, you’d understand that there was a meaning behind it,” community activist Mel Reeves tells WCCO. Following the November 2015 police shooting of Jamar Clark, an unarmed black man, protesters camped around the Fourth Precinct headquarters for 18 days. The department ended up clearing two officers of wrongdoing in the shooting.

It’s hard to tell how long the ornaments in question were up before the tree was taken down. Inspector Aaron Biard, who leads the Fourth Precinct, reportedly told Cunningham that the ornaments came down the same day they went up. But when reached by Reason, a police spokesperson refused to comment on the timeline, citing the open investigation.

Last week, CNN cut ties with Marc Lamont Hill, a professor at Temple University and leftist pundit for the network, after he made comments about Israel that some consider anti-Semitic. Now some officials at Temple University want to do the same thing.

Hill’s comment came at a November 28 United Nations meeting, where he called for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea”—a phrase sometimes used by groups, such as Hamas, that support the destruction of Israel. Hill later apologized, insisting that he did not favor violence or an end to Israel’s existence, but the CNN honchos were unmoved.

CNN is under no obligation to employ Hill; his bosses can fire him because they don’t like his opinions. The same is not true for Temple, a state-related research university in Philadelphia, where Hill has tenure. Nevertheless, Patrick O’Connor, the chairman of Temple’s board, tells Philly.com that “no one is happy with [Hill’s] comments.” More concerning, O’Connor—described as a prominent lawyer in the article—also said, “Free speech is one thing. Hate speech is entirely different.”

This distinction between “hate speech” and “free speech” is nonsense. No Supreme Court decision has ever recognized hate speech as a separate, unprotected category of speech, and any attempt to regulate hate speech at a public university would assuredly be struck down as unconstitutional.

But O’Connor sounds like he wants Hill gone. “We’re going to look at what remedies we have,” he tells Philly.com. Temple President Richard Englert said in a statement that some people view Hill’s remark as a “perceived threat.” And a trustee, Leonard Barrack, has accused Hill of using coded language to call for the destruction of Israel.

Temple administrators should stand down immediately. They can criticize Hill all they want, but anti-Israel statements are protected speech, hateful or not.

This incident is a useful reminder that attempts to limit the scope of permissible speech on campus due to nebulous safety concerns—”hate speech,” “perceived threats,” etc.—will always backfire on the left. The administrative doublespeak deployed by universities in service of keeping Ben Shapiro off campus can and will be weaponized against people like Hill.

At the same time, I would like to see more conservatives stand up for fairness here. If you were outraged about Twitter (briefly) banning Jesse Kelly, or The Atlantic terminating Kevin Williamson, or ABC cancelling Roseanne, you ought to have something to say about CNN firing Hill, too.

In October 2007, we launched Reason TV, which publishes interviews, documentaries, parodies, and other online videos. Reason TV was the brainchild of TV legend and The Price Is Right host Drew Carey, who sits on the board of trustees of Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website. Drew had taken an interest in documentary filmmaking and, in a world of ever-cheaper cameras and editing software and burgeoning online distribution, urged us to get into video years before most other publications considered “pivoting” in that direction. In all, we released over a dozen documentaries with Drew, including the award-winning, hour-long Reason Saves Cleveland: How to Fix the Mistake on the Lake and Other Once-Great American Cities.

Reason‘s videos are now watched over 2 million times a month at YouTube and even more often at Facebook. Part of Drew’s original vision was that documentaries in particular would allow us to dramatize our points more effectively and more immediately. To that end, I’d like to point your attention to a doc we released in October. Produced by Jim Epstein and boasting nearly 500,000 views, it looks at the negative impact that a $15 minimum wage is causing for workers in New York City’s car wash industry. This is exactly the sort of work that wins hearts and minds to a libertarian point of view. And this is exactly the kind of work that your tax-deductible donations fund.

We’ve only got a couple of more days left in our annual webathon, and we’re closing in our goal of raising $200,000 from visitors to Reason.com. Here’s what different gift levels get you:

$50 A Reason bumper sticker.

$100 That PLUS a Reason magazine subscription (includes print or digital; digital includes access to archives of 50 years of Reason magazine) and invitations to Reason events in your area.

$250 All of the above PLUS a newly designed Reason T-shirt.

$500 All of the above PLUS books by Reason authors.

$1,000 All of the above PLUS a private lunch in Washington, D.C., with a Reason editor and an invitation to Reason Weekend 2019 in Phoenix, Arizona.

$5,000 All of the above PLUS one ticket to Reason Weekend for first-time attendees

$10,000 All of the above PLUS two tickets to Reason Weekend for first-time attendees.

Please give today.

When you’re in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

That’s probably the best takeaway from the trade agreement between the United States and China that was announced Saturday at the G20 conference in Buenos Aires. The main outcome of the deal between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping is that the United States won’t escalate the trade war on January 1, the date when tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese imports were set to increase to 25 percent from 10 percent. Instead, those tariffs will remain in place but at the current, lower rate.

That’s surely good news, and it’s the first indication since the U.S.–China trade war began in July that the two countries both want to reach a truce.

Still, describing this as an agreement—or even, indeed, as a truce—is probably giving it too much credit. Trump and Xi have agreed to avoid further escalation, but there is nothing in the read-outs provided by each nation that indicates a move towards reducing the current tariffs that have caused significant economic pain by raising prices for American manufacturers and by reducing American markets for Chinese exporters.

Take, for example, what the White House is holding up as a major part of the deal: that China “will agree to purchase a not yet agreed upon, but very substantial, amount of agricultural, energy, industrial, and other product[s] from the United States to reduce the trade imbalance between our two countries.”

That’s vague and rather unenforceable language. It also shows that Trump continues to be fixed on the so-called “trade deficit”—which has increased since his Chinese tariffs were imposed in July and sits at a record $300 billion over the first nine months of the year. It’s unlikely that a one-time boost in purchasing American exports will change that, and it’s not at all clear that China will be able to pressure domestic businesses into making those purchases while the tariffs it erected against American farm products are still in place.

For a look at what else the two sides have agreed to, check out this handy side-by-side from Bloomberg reporter Peter Martin.

Confused about what exactly Xi and Trump promised each other yesterday?

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the readouts from both sides. The U.S. on the left, China on the righthttps://t.co/5N7aISEdew@LucilleLiu @JDMayger @Jeffrey_Black pic.twitter.com/kVVCB8wiqI

— Peter Martin (@PeterMartin_PCM) December 2, 2018

The lack of specificity is not limited to the promise that China will purchase more agricultural goods. Throughout the entire “agreement,” about the only quantifiable detail is the promise that America will go ahead and increase tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent in 90 days if a better deal is not reached. But as trade lawyer and Cato Institute scholar Scott Lincicome points out, “with no joint statement and list of actual/concrete deliverables, how will both sides (and the public) measure success or failure in 90 days?”

The White House wants this agreement to be seen as a first step towards a real trade deal—and as evidence that its tariffs are bringing China to the negotiating table. But the details here suggest that Saturday’s deal is a strategic retreat by the Trump administration. Trump gets a small political win and China gets to delay further escalation of the trade war by making vague promises about trying to buy more American farm goods. That’s exactly what China wants, because time is on its side. As the costs of the trade war continue to pile up for American businesses—and if the recent stock market wobbles turn into something worse—Xi will be in a stronger bargaining position relative to Trump, who will face mounting political pressure to abandon the tariffs if there aren’t solid results to show for them.

Delaying those 25 percent tariffs on Chinese imports will help American businesses and consumers, but it’s too soon to determine if that delay brings us closer to the end of the trade war or if we’re merely entering a temporary lull in hostilities.

The feds are now targeting “social media influencers” who promote cryptocurrencies. Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced charges in its very first cases involving crypto initial coin offerings (ICOs), fining music producer DJ Khaled and boxer Floyd Mayweather for social-media posts that “may have appeared to be unbiased, rather than paid endorsements” of new coins.

“Mayweather failed to disclose promotional payments from three ICO issuers, including $100,000 from Centra Tech Inc.,” said an SEC press release.

Khaled failed to disclose a $50,000 payment from Centra Tech, which he touted on his social media accounts as a “Game changer.” Mayweather’s promotions included a message to his Twitter followers that Centra’s ICO “starts in a few hours. Get yours before they sell out, I got mine…”

Mayweather agreed to pay $614,775 in fees as part his penalty and Khaled agreed to pay $152,725. Steven Peikin, co-director of the SEC’s enforcement division, commented that “social media influencers are often paid promoters, not investment professionals, and the securities they’re touting, regardless of whether they are issued using traditional certificates or on the blockchain, could be frauds.”

Beginning last year, the SEC advised that “any celebrity or other individual who promotes a virtual token or coin that is a security must disclose the nature, scope, and amount of compensation received in exchange for the promotion.” But what crypto counts as a security isn’t quite clear.

SEC Chair Jay Clayton said last week:

We don’t believe Bitcoin is a security. Many of the ICOs that you see and you talk about, they are securities. And if you’re going to offer or sell securities, you have to do so in compliance with our laws. We’ve been clear about that.

Hacked.com reports that “several SEC officials have also said that Ethereum is considered a non-security.”

Since the 2017 announcement, the SEC has been cracking down on ICOs; “a top official said earlier this year that dozens of cases are pending,” points out the cryptocurrency news site CCN. One result of the SEC’s new interest is that it’s become harder for platforms such as Coinbase to offer new coins:

In May, Coinbase announced its interest in listing Stellar (XLM), Cardano (ADA), 0x (ZRX), Zcash (ZEC), and Basic Attention Token (BAT). Fast forward nearly seven months, the exchange has only been able to add three out of the five cryptocurrencies it set out to integrate.

Coinbase has been cautious in ensuring that a digital asset is not recognized as a security by the SEC because in a hypothetical case that an asset listed by an exchange is declared a security by the U.S. government, the exchange could be prosecuted for illicitly distributing unregistered securities.

The “next wave” of the SEC’s crypto crackdown will hit “social media influencers who have promoted ICOs to the general public,” CCN predicts.

FREE MINDS

The First Amendment Problems With Prosecuting Julian Assange And Wikileaks https://t.co/uyEYrqSWL3 pic.twitter.com/kYDxO00oix

— Doug Mataconis (@dmataconis) December 3, 2018

FOLLOW-UP

Trump’s transgender troops ban has been dealt another blow. The Defense Department had requested “a stay of the Court’s October 30, 2017 preliminary injunction which prevents Defendants from enforcing a ban on transgender individuals serving in the military,” or, at a minimum, “a stay of the nationwide scope of the injunction pending the outcome of their appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit,” where oral arguments are scheduled for December 10.

“The Court finds that Defendants do not have a likelihood of success of the merits of their appeal, that Defendants do not face irreparable harm, that Plaintiffs would be harmed by staying the Court’s preliminary injunction, and that public interest does not favor a stay,” the court ruled on Friday. “Accordingly, Defendants’ motion for a stay of this Court’s preliminary injunction is DENIED.”

QUICK HITS

• “I will be formally terminating Nafta shortly,” President Trump announced to reporters over the weekend. “Congress will have a choice of the [newly agreed-upon trade deal with Mexico and Canada] USMCA or pre-Nafta, which worked very well.”

• Yikes—a bipartisan “privacy bill” (i.e., tech and web regulation) is being drafted for early next year.

• This week in Congress, former FBI director James Comey will testify—in private, alas—before the House Judiciary Committee.

• “Virginia may be for lovers, but it’s not for lovers of free speech.”

• An interesting case is coming before the U.S. Supreme Court week and could upend the country’s more than 150-year-old policy of allowing people to be prosecuted by the feds and by state sources for the same crimes.

• Sigh. Predictably but still disappointingly, Trump turns out to be a fair-weather sentencing reformer:

No public pressure from Trump on McConnell vis a vis criminal justice reform. WH sources say POTUS endorsement was more a distraction from midterm losses than an expression of heartfelt support – https://t.co/K4KLYlSmfV

— Eliana Johnson (@elianayjohnson) December 3, 2018

Looking for the perfect Festivus gift, or just for the right TV show to binge-watch over the holidays? As we approach the end of 2018, we’ve asked Reason‘s staff to select some of the best books, TV, games, music, and other media released this year. Our picks range from a stoner rock album to a memoir by the son of a quiz-show champion, from a true-crime book to an interactive western.

View this article.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced that ads for junk food and sugary beverages will be banned from Transport for London buses, trains and stations. Khan says the move is aimed at reducing obesity in children.