Tag: hit&run

A Japanese court has
ordered Google to remove search
results that might reveal unflattering information about
the past of one man. The man, who was not named by local media,
said the results hinted relations with an criminal
organization.

Oh hey look, here’s the cover of the latest issue of
Time magazine:

And here’s
Reason‘s June 2011 cover: 

Interesting.

Vice President Joe Biden has been one of the most
strident drug warriors of my lifetime. Mandatory minimum sentences,
the crack/powder disparity, federal asset forfeiture, the RAVE
Act—they all have Biden’s fingerprints on them. The man may
be responsible for
the very phrase “drug czar.” If the Drug War had its own Mount
Rushmore, Biden’s face would be carved on it, right next to Richard
Nixon and Bill Bennett.

Guess why his son got
kicked out of the Navy Reserve?

Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was discharged
from the Navy Reserve this year after testing positive for cocaine,
according to people familiar with the matter.

Hunter Biden, a lawyer by training who is now a managing partner at
an investment company, had been commissioned as an ensign in the
Navy Reserve, a part-time position. But after failing a drug test
last year, his brief military career ended.

While I’m sure it’s no fun to be booted from the Navy, I’m glad
the younger Biden hasn’t had to suffer any formal penalty greater
than that. It’s a shame his father’s laws have wrecked the lives of
so many people who did no more than he did.

New York’s Attorney General’s office has just issued a
report on “Airbnb in the City,” studying the impact of the
service that allows humans to easily find other humans who might
want to pay to stay in their domiciles for short periods.

Since this sort of lodging service has largely heretofore been
dominated by businesses calling themselves “hotels,” regulated and
taxed in specific ways by localities and states, entrenched
interests in both business and government feel bedeviled by this
innovation of the tech-enabled “sharing economy” that makes finding
paying use for idle resources easier and cheaper for everyone.

Some of the AG’s findings, examining Airbnb from 2010-June 2014,
include a tenfold increase in Airbnb bookings, $282 million in
revenue (including both the service and the hosts), and, hmm, 72
percent of Airbnb units violating some local law or another (again,
while, overwhelmingly, making both renters and temporary tenants
happy).

Also, the AG report finds a small number of people controllling
lots of units dominate the NYC market:

Ninety-four percent of Airbnb hosts offered at
most two unique units during the Review Period. But the
remaining six percent of hosts dominated the platform during
that period, offering up to hundreds of unique units, accepting 36
percent of private short-term bookings, and receiving $168
million, 37 percent of all host revenue. ….Each of
the top 12 New York City operations on Airbnb during that period
earnedrevenue exceeding $1 million

This, naturally, makes fewer units available for long-term
lodging. This seems like an obvious bad thing, to people who have
decided more long-term lodging is better for them, or the city, or
just their sense of how things should go.

Why that value judgement should mean anything when lively demand
for that many short term rentals clearly exists is unclear, but the
AG’s office seems to think that to merely state this fact is
tantamount to some sort of call to action.

The reports details some of the specific regulations likely
being broken by Airbnb operators, and notes, again as if this
should matter to you, that:

Bookings in just three Community Districts in
Manhattan—the Lower East Side/Chinatown, Chelsea/Hell’s
Kitchen, and Greenwich Village/SoHo—accounted for
approximately $187 million in revenue to hosts, or more than
40 percent of private stay revenue to hosts during the Review
Period. By contrast, all the reservations in three boroughs
(Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx) brought hosts revenue
of $12 million—less than three percent of the New York City
total.)

I mean, the AG’s office doesn’t need to rub it in to Queens,
Staten Island, and the Bronx that way fewer people want overnight
visits there, but his office is cruel and judgmental.

The AG’s office notes it finds the growth in the use of Airbnb
“staggering.” Some might just call it useful, nice, good for them,
or who cares? (Or, sure, I’m pissed seeing a new couple stagger in
to the apartment next door every night.) But the AG is
staggered.

Mostly, I suspect, staggered by the $33 million in taxes his
office believes the city of New York should be owed on all this
making-people-happy, the vast majority of which it isn’t getting
because it’s a pretty easy tax to evade with Airbnb’s
technology.

The report goes on to groan a lot about the alleged shifting of
property use from long term rental to short term in the city, which
again may annoy someone personally or upset their sense of the “way
things ought to be.”

But Airbnb allows for people to express their true desires, as
both property controllers and property users, and needn’t be
condemned just for that reason. Unless you are the sort of civic
busybody type who just knows exactly how everyone else’s
property should be used and what choices everyone else should make.
Alas, America’s government and media are all too full of those
sorts of civic busybodies.

Gothamist joins in an attempt to make really great
things seem really bad by throwing
in arbitrary negatively valued phrases such as that
the concentration of Airbnb rentals in lower Manhattan means that
“Lower Manhattanites are taking a beating” and that it’s
“startling” that some people controlling lots of units use Airbnb
to fill them with willing guests.

A ReasonTV video from last August on Airbnb—and its enemies:

Six
months after Officer Christopher Manney shot and killed an unarmed
Dontre Hamilton, the officer’s been fired by the Milwaukee Police
Department for, the police chief Edward Flynn says, instigating the
fight that ended with Hamilton being shot at 14 times.

“There’s got to be a way for us to hold ourselves accountable
absent putting cops in jail for making mistakes,” Flynn said,
saying Manney shouldn’t have tried to frisk Hamilton just because
he seemed mentally ill but that he didn’t think there was any
“malice” involved in the shooting.

Flynn’s decision was based on an internal affairs review but
other investigations are continuing. The Associated Press
reports:

Hamilton’s family has said he was diagnosed with schizophrenia
but was not violent, and they doubt he struck Manney. They called
Wednesday for police to release photographs documenting the
officer’s injuries. They also said that while the firing was “a
victory,” they would continue to lead and participate in marches in
an effort to persuade the district attorney to bring criminal
charges.

“Yes, he was fired, but he took a man’s life,” Hamilton’s
mother, Maria, said during a separate news conference.

While the A.P. reports about the independent investigation
required under a new state law in the past tense, the results of
that investigation have not yet been released. The father of a
previous Wisconsin police shooting victim
used a portion of his settlement to lobby for the law.

Unfortunately, Milwaukee TV station WISN
reports that a number of the “outside” investigators working
for the state are retired Milwaukee Police Department
employees.

The Milwaukee police union protested Manney’s firing. Cops fired
in Milwaukee have gotten their jobs back
before thanks to the police bill of rights.

The Freedom Socialist Party wants the minimum
wage to be $20 an hour. However, they don’t feel compelled to
compensate their own workers with that kind of cash.

The party is looking for a web developer, and posted a job
listing on Craigslist
a week ago and
Indeed.com yesterday, and it’s been raising
eyebrows on social media.

Although the average annual salary of a web developer in the
U.S. is around $62,500,
the Freedom Socialist Party only wants to pay $13 an hour, which
would be $26,000 a year. Except that the party won’t hire someone
full-time, so their next web developer’s total compensation won’t
even be that modest chunk of change. Perhaps they’re just trying to
protect their employees from the temptations of “capitalist
greed.”

In case it vanishes or gets amended, the
entire listing is below:

According to
the party’s last presidential platform, these self-described
Marxists want:

“jobs program at union wages with childcare available”

“no cuts to Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare. Raise the
minimum wage to $20 an hour. Provide a guaranteed annual income.
Free medical care for all, including reproductive services and
abortion.”

Reason contacted the party and confirmed that the
listing is legitimate, and that in spite of the party’s commitment
to unionizing laborers, the available position is not a
union job. Don’t count on any of those other sweet benefits either,
part-timer.

The Freedom Socialist Party applauded the push for a $15 minimum
wage in Seattle earlier this year,
stating that the city is unlivable otherwise, “compromise
destroys solidarity,” that the party must “leave no one
behind.”

One could argue that it’s not fair to pick on small
organizations like the Freedom Socialist Party, because they can’t
afford high-pay web developers. Given the requirements they list,
chances are they’re looking for a high school or college student
who is just starting out in the field. But, these are exact reasons
why people argue against artificially high minimum
wages. It’s not “capitalist greed,” but the understanding that it
puts a barrier between a small organizations with limited funding
and low-skill workers who want to earn experience. 

From the moment they were reported, the Edward Snowden leaks
captured the public’s attention and raised the specter of mass
surveillance. That surveillance is not just being carried about by
large clandestine intelligence organizations like the National
Security Agency (NSA), either. Following the lead of their federal
counterparts, local police departments are now getting in on the
action.

One example is Monroe County, New York, where police are using
high-speed cameras to monitor and record the whereabouts of
vehicles. The scale of this surveillance is reminiscent of the

NSA’s “collect it all” motto. From
The Intercept:

As of July, the County’s database contained 3.7 million records,
with the capability to add thousands more each day.

Monroe County justified its warrantless surveillance by claiming
that people have no expectation of privacy when they drive in
public. This is despite a 2012
Supreme Court ruling in which the majority held that
individuals do have an expectation of privacy when it comes to
their long-term whereabouts, even when driving in public.

But no need to worry—Monroe County is committed to protecting
your privacy­. At least that’s what it claimed when the
Democrat & Chronicle filed a freedom of information
law (FOIL) request for the records on seven of its journalists.
Again from The Intercept:

The request was denied on the basis that releasing the data
could be an invasion of personal privacy or could interfere with a
law enforcement investigation.

Even putting aside the unlikely possibility that all seven
journalists are subjects in ongoing criminal investigations, this
justification makes little sense. How can Monroe County police
claim that no expectation of privacy exists when they conduct
surveillance, and then claim that it would be a violation of
privacy for people to access the records of their own
whereabouts?

If Monroe County actually respects residents’ privacy, it should
end warrantless surveillance and cease violating people’s
Fourth Amendment rights. Failing that, it could at least
mandate that whoever handles the county’s FOIL requests undergo
some training in basic logic.

Already bored of the endless, exhaustive,
never-ending analysis of which party will control the Senate after
the midterms? Maybe it’s because you realize it’s probably not
going to change anything substantial about how Congress or the
president behaves anyway.

Perhaps take a gander at some ballot initiatives instead. There
are hundreds of ballot initiatives—on the state, county and
municipal level—that will go before voters in November. Reason
can’t possibly outline all of them. But we can draw attention to
many of interest to libertarian or independent voters. Reason’s
Scott Shackford takes a look at how subjects like guns, drugs, and
as always, money, are driving what’s on the November ballot besides
the candidates.

View this article.

Americans are becoming
increasingly skeptical that strategic US military interventions
abroad won’t eventually backfire. The latest
Reason-Rupe poll finds that 55 percent of Americans oppose
arming Syrian rebels in efforts to fight against ISIS, while 35
percent support such action.

One reason Americans oppose sending weapons to the rebels may be
that they believe there’s a 78 percent chance those weapons will
eventually be turned around and used against American soldiers or
US allies.

Public reluctance to arm Syrian rebels to fight ISIS may be
indicative of a broader hesitancy to be as involved in the Middle
Eastern region. Reason-Rupe finds only 28 percent of Americans want
to increase US military presence around the world. Another 36
percent want to decrease American global military presence, and
another third are content with the status quo.

Perhaps one reason Americans aren’t more supportive of expanding
US involvement is disillusionment with US handling of the 2003 Iraq
War. Only 14 percent believe the war actually reduced the threat of
terrorism; another 38 percent think it instigated even more
terrorism. Forty-five percent think the Iraq war had little effect
protecting US citizens from terrorist threats.

Foreign policy hawkishness cuts across demographic groups and
party lines but is certainly more pronounced among Republicans. In
fact, Republicans are nearly twice as likely as both Democrats and
independents to favor increasing US military presence
abroad (41% versus 20% and 26% respectively). In reverse, Democrats
and independents are almost twice as likely as Republicans to want
to decreasemilitary presence (42% and 39% versus 25%
respectively.)

Consistent with findings that young
people are the only group to oppose air strikes against ISIS,
Americans under 34 are about half as likely (21%) as Americans over
55 (37%) to desire an expanded global military presence. Instead,
41 percent of younger Americans want to reduce US military presence
abroad compared to 27 percent of those over 55. A third of both
groups support the status quo.

Opposition to arming Syrian rebels, however, is generally
non-partisan. Sixty-one percent of Republicans, 58 percent of
independents, and 51 percent of Democrats oppose the US providing
weapons to rebel groups to fight ISIS.

Again, younger people are more skeptical of intervention. Only
28 percent of 18-29 year olds support arming Syrian rebels, and 62
percent oppose doing so. In contrast, 45 percent of seniors favor
providing weapons and 47 percent oppose.

Americans are beginning to believe there are limits to the US’s
ability to engineer favorable outcomes through military
interventions abroad. There are fears that weapons we provide to
assumed allies will be the very weapons we are fighting against in
the future. There are also serious concerns that our past military
strategies have not achieved their desired outcomes, and have not
reduced the threat of terrorism.

The Reason-Rupe national telephone poll, executed
by Princeton Survey Research Associates International,
conducted live interviews with 1004 adults on cell phones (503) and
landlines (501) October 1-6, 2014. The poll’s margin of error
is +/-3.8%. Full poll results can be found here including
poll toplines (pdf) 
and crosstabs (xls).