Tag: hit&run

Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) wants to build America out of its housing woes with a huge infusion of federal dollars.

On Tuesday, Warren introduced the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act, which would spend roughly $500 billion over the next 10 years on a variety of new and existing federal housing programs. It would give an extra $45 billion a year to the Housing Trust Fund—a big increase from the $219 million allotted to that program in 2017. And additional $2.5 billion would be spent annually on the Capital Magnet Fund, used to leverage private funds for affordable housing funding. Another $2.5 billion would go each year toward housing in rural and tribal areas. The funds would come mostly from hiking the estate tax.

All told, this is a giant increase in federal housing spending, more than doubling the current annual Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) budget of $50 billion. In return, this spending will—according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics—produce 3 million housing units by 2028, shaving a whole percent off per-year rent increases and lowing rents for below-market units by about 10 percent. (Moody’s analysis assumes that each new unit will cost the federal government $175,000 to produce. That’s close to the average per-unit cost of new, federally-funded affordable housing, but it’s well below the $326,000 average cost of new affordable housing in a pricey state like California.)

The bill’s spending measures makes standard progressive fare, similar to proposals from Sens. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) and Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). Harris introduced her own housing bill in July that would offer a refundable tax credit to renters spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Sanders called for “significantly expanding” the Housing Trust Fund in June.

Unlike either Sanders’ or Harris’ ideas, Warren’s legislation calls out restrictive zoning laws for the upward pressure they put on housing costs. “Instead of supporting development and promoting competition, state and local governments have imposed needless rules that substantially raise the cost of buying or renting a home,” reads the summary of Warren’s bill.

To counteract these policies, Warren proposes a new grant program that would make $10 billion in infrastructure funding contingent on localities loosening their zoning rules.

It’s welcome to see the senator addressing the issue of zoning at all, given the outsized impact it has on housing costs. But her solution is unlikely to fix the problem. Those cities and neighborhoods that have the most restrictive zoning laws tend to be wealthier communities that are less dependent on federal funds in the first place, so they’re less likely to be swayed by promises of more cash.

More federal money for a new park or elementary school also seems unlikely to placate the concerns of most NIMBYs, whose opposition to new development usually can be reduced to narrow fears about unwanted construction noise, unwanted traffic, and unwanted neighbors (be they low-income tenants or gentrifying yuppies).

And while Warren’s bill aims to reduce regulation with one hand, it would creates a lot more regulations with the other. The legislation would impose prevailing wage requirements on projects, expand the Community Reinvestment Act’s requirements to more types of financial institutions, and broaden the Fair Housing Act’s anti-discrimination measures to include sexual orientation and gender identity. So despite the encouraging language about zoning, the meat of Warren’s proposal is more federal spending and more federal regulation.

At Highland Family Farms in southern Minnesota, Kristin Duncanson and her husband Pat were overseeing the planting of about 3,000 acres of corn, soy beans, and grains when the trade war began.

Since then, the value of those soy beans—which will be ready to harvest within the next few weeks—has plummeted by about 30 percent. Like many farmers across the country, Duncanson is preparing to take a major hit from the tariffs imposed by China this summer, a response to President Donald Trump’s decision to slap higher import taxes on $250 billion of Chinese-made goods (along with other tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from a variety of sources).

“We’ve developed customers in China and we’d like to continue to do business with them,” Duncanson told Reason on Tuesday. “Half our crop is soy beans, and that’s an important part of how southern Minnesota works. Soy beans are a major crop for us. To have that tariff and have that devaluation is tough.”

Farmers have been hit particularly hard by the early stages of the trade war because of how quickly prices can swing in commodities markets. While tariffs have also caused increases in the price of steel, which is passed along the supply chain by steel-consuming industries and eventually to consumers, farmers took a devastating hit from China’s tariffs almost immediately. To make matters even worse, surging demand from China led American farms to plant more acres of soybeans than corn this year for the first time ever.

China is the world’s largest consumer of soybeans, but tariffs are only part of an overall Chinese strategy to slash consumption of soybeans grown in the United States, which happens to be the world’s largest grower of the popular foodstuff. According to Reuters, Chinese officials have outlined a six-part plan to reduce dependence on American soybeans, by taking steps to substitute alternative protein sources like rapeseed or cotton seed for feeding pigs, tapping into a government-run strategic soybean reserve, and boosting imports from Brazil and Argentina.

Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture says U.S. soybean production in 2018-19 will hit 4.6 billion bushels, an all-time high. Reduced access to Chinese markets will increase the domestic surplus and further depress prices, The Wall Street Journal reported this week.

The surpluses could be sold to Europe—the E.U. announced this week that America is now the leading supplier of soybeans into Europe. Or to Argentina, which is now importing cheaper American soybeans for domestic consumption while selling their own soybeans to China, an arrangement Bloomberg describes as a trade merry-go-round.

Indeed, the Trump administration claimed to have achieved a major victory this summer by inking a “deal” with Europe that would prevent the E.U. from raising tariffs against soybeans—essentially guaranteeing that European markets could be an escape valve for a soybean surplus.

But that’s not as much help as the administration might think.

“It really bothers me when they say, ‘Well, you’re going to sell more commodities than you’ve ever, ever sold before,'” Zippy Duvall, a Georgia farmer and president of the American Farm Bureau said this week. “Well, yes, if I sell them at a reduced price, I’m no better off. Yes, we’d like to clear them out of inventories, but we still have got to make cost of production to make a living.”

In the face of those economic losses, the Trump administration has put forth a plan to subsidize farmers with $12 billion by resurrecting a New Deal-era crop insurance program. Some of those payments have already been made, but there’s already indications that it won’t be enough to cover all farmers—to say nothing of all the other industries negatively affected by the tariffs, some of which are also making noise about bailouts.

From the perspective of southern Minnesota, Duncanson says the bailouts won’t save farms in the long run.

“Granted, that will help pay some bills for some families and get them through for a while, but that’s not where we want to be,” she says. “We want to participate in the economy just like everyone else, and we want to benefit from trade.”

A lot of legislative lunacy is happening in Congress week—and it’s not getting enough media attention in the midst of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation circus. Today the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on a measure that would give the Department of Homeland Security power to shoot down citizen drones, plus a PATRIOT Act–parroting banking bill disguised as a measure to stop human traffickers (H.R. 6729).

Both of these terrible measures would increase the power of federal agents to terrorize and surveil innocent citizens without accountability and due process. Here’s a more detailed look at the alleged anti-trafficking bill.

The drone power comes from a wider (and 1,200-page) Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill. You can read more about its details here and here, but rest assured that it’s bad news (no matter how many times DHS officials insist it’s only about our safety). Provisions under a section titled “Preventing Emerging Threats” would “give the government virtually carte blanche to surveil, seize, or even shoot a drone out of the sky— whether owned by journalists or commercial entities—with no oversight or due process,” said Neema Singh Guliani of the American Civil Liberties Union in a statement.

“They grant new powers to the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to spy on Americans without a warrant,” she added. “Congress should remove these provisions from the bill.”

The House is also set to vote today or later this week on…

• a bill that would promote more meddling in digital currencies (to stop “terrorism,” obviously) and set a reward of up to $450,000 “to any person who provides information leading to the conviction of an individual involved with terrorsit use of digital currencies”;
• a bill that would increase scrutiny on financial institutions that do business with “state sponsors of terror”;
• a resolution “recognizing the important role of chefs in responding to natural disasters”; and
• a resolution “recognizing that allowing illegal immigrants the right to vote devalues the franchise and diminishes the voting power of United States citizens.”

Meanwhile, congressional committees are set to tackle a slew of weighty topics today, including U.S. strategy in Syria; fraud within the the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (aka “food stamps”) program; “First Amendment rights on campus“; an anti-SWATTING act; civil-rights abuses in China; “countering Iranian proxies in Iraq“; and “misconduct & retaliation within the TSA.”

In addition, representatives from Homeland Security and the Department of Justice will testify about “federal efforts to stop human trafficking” and former Fox News personality Greta Van Susteren will testify about genocide against the Burmese Rohingya.

It’s a weird day. Or maybe not. Yesterday, federal legislators tackled topics including the importance of “lumberjack sports,” a “border tunnel task force,” how “to expand and strengthen Federal sex offenses” (a perennial congressional favorite), how to set up an Amber Alert system for missing adults, regulatory standards for veterans’ service dogs, thwarting Hizballah, quantum science, a bill called the “Hack Your State Department Act” that is not nearly as fun as it sounds, and musical copyright practices.

FREE MINDS

“A Senator Gary Johnson could be good not just for Libertarians, but for the Senate too,” writes John Vaught LaBeaume, deputy communications director for the Libertarian presidential ticket in 2016, at The Hill. LaBeaume—who isn’t affiliated with Johnson’s current campaign for a seat in the U.S. Senate—suggests that having Johnson as a Libertarian Party candidate in the Senate

could serve up a welcome antidote to the polarized partisan atmosphere that’s paralyzing this country. And it could chart a new, more effective, course for Libertarian-branded politics that could give voice to voters nationwide who don’t “fit” comfortably—and aren’t welcome by tribalized bases—into the current Democratic and Republican electoral coalitions.

Read the whole thing here.

FREE MARKETS

U.S. cracks top ten for economic freedom.

BREAKING: For the first time in almost a decade, the United States ranks within the top ten economically freest countries! https://t.co/3sJtwPLAvi pic.twitter.com/TWcMEfbnwY

— Cato Institute (@CatoInstitute) September 25, 2018

FOLLOW-UP

Kavanaugh tales continue ahead of Thursday testimony. The latest in the saga of is-our-Supreme-Court-nominee-a-sexual-predator? Four friends of his first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, have come forward to “corroborate” her story (as USA Today put it), although none of the friends had heard the story until 2012.

In documents sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee and obtained by USA TODAY, Ford’s attorneys present declarations from Ford’s husband, Russell, and three friends who support the California college professor’s accusation that Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed, groped her and attempted to pull off her clothes while both were high school students in 1982.

Republicans in Congress have announced that prosecutor Rachel Mitchell, who is on leave from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in Arizona, will be the one to question Ford during Thursday’s scheduled testimony.

QUICK HITS

• A new report explores the “toxic culture” and “unchecked misconduct” within the federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Since at least 2015, “TSA leadership inappropriately used involuntary directed reassignments to retaliate against disfavored employees and whistleblowers, among other tactics,” as well as “obstructed various investigations” which might have exposed them.
• A federal court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by several nonprofit organizations against FOSTA.
• Bill Cosby was sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison on sexual assault charges.
• Facing sex crime charges, Cody Wilson has resigned as chief executive officer of the 3D-printed gun design company Defense Distributed.
• “The media can’t justify Botham Jean’s killing” by his police officer neighbor. “But they’re trying,” explains Hanif Abdurraqib at BuzzFeed.
• The U.S. divorce rate fell 18 percent between 2008 and 2016, according to a new study out of the University of Maryland. Lead researcher Philip Cohen found that “the divorce rate’s decline isn’t a reflection of a decline in marriages,” notes Bloomberg. “Rather, it’s evidence that marriages today have a greater chance of lasting than marriages did ten years ago.” Bloomberg points out that “young people get the credit for fewer divorces,” since the divorce rate among boomers has remained higher than among other generational cohorts.

Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) wants to build America out of its housing woes with a huge infusion of federal dollars.

On Tuesday, Warren introduced the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act, which would spend roughly $500 billion over the next 10 years on a variety of new and existing federal housing programs. It would give an extra $45 billion a year to the Housing Trust Fund—a big increase from the $219 million allotted to that program in 2017. And additional $2.5 billion would be spent annually on the Capital Magnet Fund, used to leverage private funds for affordable housing funding. Another $2.5 billion would go each year toward housing in rural and tribal areas. The funds would come mostly from hiking the estate tax.

All told, this is a giant increase in federal housing spending, more than doubling the current annual Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) budget of $50 billion. In return, this spending will—according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics—produce 3 million housing units by 2028, shaving a whole percent off per-year rent increases and lowing rents for below-market units by about 10 percent. (Moody’s analysis assumes that each new unit will cost the federal government $175,000 to produce. That’s close to the average per-unit cost of new, federally-funded affordable housing, but it’s well below the $326,000 average cost of new affordable housing in a pricey state like California.)

The bill’s spending measures makes standard progressive fare, similar to proposals from Sens. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) and Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). Harris introduced her own housing bill in July that would offer a refundable tax credit to renters spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Sanders called for “significantly expanding” the Housing Trust Fund in June.

Unlike either Sanders’ or Harris’ ideas, Warren’s legislation calls out restrictive zoning laws for the upward pressure they put on housing costs. “Instead of supporting development and promoting competition, state and local governments have imposed needless rules that substantially raise the cost of buying or renting a home,” reads the summary of Warren’s bill.

To counteract these policies, Warren proposes a new grant program that would make $10 billion in infrastructure funding contingent on localities loosening their zoning rules.

It’s welcome to see the senator addressing the issue of zoning at all, given the outsized impact it has on housing costs. But her solution is unlikely to fix the problem. Those cities and neighborhoods that have the most restrictive zoning laws tend to be wealthier communities that are less dependent on federal funds in the first place, so they’re less likely to be swayed by promises of more cash.

More federal money for a new park or elementary school also seems unlikely to placate the concerns of most NIMBYs, whose opposition to new development usually can be reduced to narrow fears about unwanted construction noise, unwanted traffic, and unwanted neighbors (be they low-income tenants or gentrifying yuppies).

And while Warren’s bill aims to reduce regulation with one hand, it would creates a lot more regulations with the other. The legislation would impose prevailing wage requirements on projects, expand the Community Reinvestment Act’s requirements to more types of financial institutions, and broaden the Fair Housing Act’s anti-discrimination measures to include sexual orientation and gender identity. So despite the encouraging language about zoning, the meat of Warren’s proposal is more federal spending and more federal regulation.

Compare and contrast two court cases. Both took place in Alaska, and both were tried this year.

One involves Justin Schneider of Anchorage, who offered a ride to a woman he did not know in August 2017. Instead of taking her to the place she requested, he pulled over to the side of a road, tackled her, choked her, threatened to kill her, and masturbated on her. He was charged with four felonies related to kidnapping and assault, plus a misdemeanor count of offensive contact with fluids.

The other involves Charlo Greene, whose real name is Charlene Egbe. She went viral in 2014 when she quit her job as a TV reporter live on the air, announcing in the process that she was the owner of a marijuana club and was moving on to fight for legalization. Greene worked with other activists to help Alaska become the third state to legalize recreational cannabis in November 2015. But a few months before legalization passed, Anchorage police raided her club. She initially pleaded not guilty to 8 felony counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance, but she changed her plea after the charges were raised to 14 counts, meaning she faced up to 54 years in prison.

Both defendants took plea deals. Schneider agreed to plead to a single felony count of assault, Greene to a single felony count of misconduct involving a controlled substance.

After spending a year wearing an ankle monitor and living with his family, Schneider learned last week that he will spend no additional time in jail for his crime. Schneider had lost his federal government job, and Anchorage Assistant District Attorney Andrew Grannik decided that this was already a “life sentence.” At one point, he slipped and referred to the sentence as a “pass.”

Greene’s fate is not yet determined. A judge will decide whether or not to accept her plea deal in November, well over three years after she was initially charged. But she will certainly pay $10,000 and forfeit all the items seized during the police investigation into her club. And because she pleaded guilty, she will no longer be able to work in the state’s cannabis industry.

So a man who committed a violent assault deserves more mercy than a woman who committed a completely nonviolent offense involving a drug that the state doesn’t even ban anymore? The message may be unintended, but it’s still stark.

Michael Bloomberg is once again threatening to run for president, this time as a Democrat. In the unlikely event that he seeks and wins the nomination, he will face off against a fellow New York billionaire who enthusiastically agrees with him about one of the most contentious law enforcement issues of the last two decades.

Like Bloomberg, Donald Trump credits the police strategy officially known as “stop, question, and frisk” (SQF) with the historic decline in crime New York has seen since the 1990s. Both men think that success justified the program and recommends it to other cities. They are wrong on both counts, Jacob Sullum says.

View this article

Two new shows premiere tonight: Melodramatic, soapy A Million Little Things and kind of fun, kind of dumb comedy Single Parents. Television critic Glenn Garvin reviews them both:

Everybody’s comparing ABC’s new melodrama A Million Little Things to its fellow feel-good-now-feel-bad soap This Is Us. No doubt the success of This Is Us (average weekly viewers: 17.4 million) encouraged ABC to take a shot on form of programming long considered moribund by the network suits.

But for a clue to the real origins of A Million Little Things, listen to ABC’s advertising pitch about a group of friends jolted by tragedy: “They discover that friends may be the one thing to save them from themselves.” If that sounds a bit like “In a cold world, you need your friends to keep you warm,” the advertising catchphrase for the 1983 movie The Big Chill, you’re onto the real inspiration of A Million Little Things.

View this article.

Do animals have rights? Michael Huemer and Daniel J. D’Amico battle this question out in the latest issue of Reason.

View this article.

University of Michigan professor John Cheney-Lippold rescinded an offer to write a letter of recommendation for a student applying for a study abroad program after he realized the student would be studying in Israel. Cheney-Lippold says he is taking part in an academic boycott of Israel.

Attention, friends o’ Reason anywhere near Austin, Texas: Let’s have some adult beverages and lively conversation TOMORROW from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. at a joint called Swift’s Attic!

I will be in town to moderate a panel at the Texas Tribune Festival featuring Libertarian Party National Chair (and Phoenix mayoral candidate) Nicholas Sarwark, Texas gubernatorial candidate Mark Tippetts, and Indiana Senate candidate Lucy Brenton, so we can talk about that stuff if you’d like. Or you could just regale me with stories about bats and bands and tacos. You decide! Here are the details (including all-important RSVPs):

Who: All 21-and-over friends and frenemies of Reason are welcome!
What: Happy Hour with Austin pals, featuring Matt Welch
When: September 26, 5:30-7:00 p.m. We may stay out later…
Where: Swift’s Attic, 315 Congress Ave, Austin, TX 78701
RSVP: abbey-dot-lee-at-reason-dot-org.

See you there!