Tag: in-the-news

Conservative critics of Roe v. Wade have long argued that it is wrong in part because the right to abortion is nowhere written in the Constitution. Thus, it’s no surprise that the issue came up in today’s oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that could lead to the overruling of Roe. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor offered the following response, while questioning Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor turned to Mississippi’s arguments that Roe v. Wade should be overturned because abortion rights are not explicitly laid out in the text of the Constitution.

Sotomayor noted that several key decisions – such as Marbury v. Madison, which established the judicial review – are not in the Constitution, nor are decisions guaranteeing the right to birth control and same-sex marriage.

“I fear none of those things are written in the Constitution,” Sotomayor said. “They have all, like Marbury v. Madison, been discerned from the nature of the Constitution.”

Neither the initial argument, nor Sotomayor’s critique are as compelling as they might seem. It is true that a right to abortion is nowhere specifically mentioned in the Constitution. If it were, that would Roe and subsequent cases much easier to decide. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that there is no constitutional right to abortion.

Some parts of the Constitution establish very clear and specific rules, such as the each state gets two senators, and that the president must be at least 35 years old. But many others state broad, general principles that courts must then apply to specific cases. The Constitution doesn’t specifically establish a right to criticize the president in vitriolic terms. But it does include a general right protecting “freedom of speech,” which courts can then readily apply to protect people who put up signs saying things like “Fuck Biden” and “Biden sucks.”

Similarly, the case for a right to abortion comes down to whether that right comes within the scope of broadly phrased parts of the text, such as the “liberty” protected by the Due Process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, or the “equal protection of the laws” (also part of the Fourteenth Amendment). Some defenders of Roe argue that a right to abortion is necessary to ensure “equal protection” for women.

For her part, Justice Sotomayor is wrong to suggest that judicial review isn’t written in the Constitution, but must be inferred from its “nature.” The idea that judicial review is an atextual power that was somehow invented by John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison is a longstanding trope. But it’s wrong nonetheless. Article III of the Constitution specifically states that “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority.”

The power to decide “all Cases… arising under this Constitution” necessarily includes the power to rule that state and federal laws violate the Constitution and therefore cannot be enforced. Judicial review was widely understood to exist long before Marbury, and that case was far from the first time federal courts invalidated a law because of its unconstitutionality. State courts also had a long history of judicial review, including pathbreaking decisions striking down slavery as a violation of the Massachusetts Constitution.

As for the other cases Sotomayor cites, they like the argument for a right to abortion, are based on interpretations of broad, general rights guaranteed by the Constitution. For example, the right to same-sex marriage was grounded by the Court in a combination of the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses. In my view, it would have been better justified based as a more straightforward application of equal protection rules barring sex discrimination. But, either way, the case for that right relies on interpretation of broad textual guarantees of liberty and equality, not inferences from the inherent “nature” of the Constitution.

None of the above by itself determines whether the Constitution protects a right to abortion (an issue I will leave to others). But it can help clear away some of the underbrush bad arguments surrounding the question. The issue cannot be resolved simply by pointing out that abortion isn’t specifically mentioned in the Constitution, or by appealing to widely believed, but badly wrong understandings of the origin of judicial review.

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Usually, Justice Kagan is one of the Court’s most effective questioners. Indeed, she can easily measure the climate of the Court. Her questions are often designed to recruit the Court’s moderates to her position. Yet, during Dobbs, Justice Kagan was missing in action.

Her first question didn’t appear till page 32 of the transcript. And it wasn’t really a question. She went on a long, rambling rant about stare decisis. It stretched more than two full pages in the transcript. She was about as concise as Justice Breyer. At the end, she said “So I guess I just wanted to hear you react to that.” Huh? Kagan seemed so unfocused and undisciplined with this question. All of this valuable time could have been used to bolster Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Gorsuch. But Kagan wasted it. And there was no follow-up.

Kagan’s second question came during the seriatim round. She asked what the intermediate standard would look like. Again, there was no follow-up question. Or any effort to appeal to the Court’s moderates.

Kagan had no questions for Julie Rikelman, counsel for the clinic. She had one question for Solicitor General Prelogar. Again no follow-up question, and nothing during the seriatim round.

What gives? My suspicion is that Kagan exercised her right to remain silent in order to ensure maximum space for negotiation at conference. She will do her level best to moderate the outcome. Kagan may even be willing to uphold Mississippi’s law to avoid making any broader pronouncement about Roe and Casey.

I will have much more about the case in a Newsweek piece soon.

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President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act is likely to end up costing taxpayers about double what the official price tag suggests, and much of that hidden cost will end up being added to the national debt.

That’s the conclusion from two independent analyses of the proposal released in recent weeks. Both rely on a key assumption that did not figure into the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) analysis of the bill: that the Build Back Better plan’s various policies will be in place for at least the next 10 years.

“The Build Back Better Act relies on a number of arbitrary sunsets and expirations to lower the official cost of the bill,” explains the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a nonprofit that advocates for balanced budgets. The group’s newly updated analysis of the Build Back Better plan finds that the package will cost an estimated $4.8 trillion over 10 years if all provisions are made permanent—double the price tag applied by the CBO last month.

As Reason has repeatedly pointed out, several key parts of the bill are designed to game the CBO’s method for scoring the cost of legislation by setting arbitrary expiration dates even though lawmakers obviously intend for those policies to be permanent fixtures. Probably the best example is the expanded child tax credit, which would expire after just a single year. Other parts of the bill, including the universal pre-K funding and new subsidies for child care, would expire after six years. Expanded subsidies through the Affordable Care Act would last until 2025.

With all those gimmicks in place, the CBO assessment of the bill projects that it will cost about $1.8 trillion and add about $367 billion to the deficit over the next decade.

If all the Build Back Better plan’s proposals were made permanent, however, the final price tag would be $4.8 trillion, and the bill would add about $2.8 trillion to the deficit, according to the CRFB.

“To be sure, lawmakers may choose not to extend some or all of these provisions,” the CRFB analysis states. “However, if they do, they would need to more than double current offsets in order for the bill and the extensions to be paid for. The alternative would be a substantial increase in the debt.”

The CRFB’s projections closely match a similar analysis of the bill conducted in November by the Wharton Budget Model, a number-crunching project housed at the University of Pennsylvania. Making the temporary provisions of the BBB plan permanent, the Wharton analysis found, would raise the overall cost of the package to about $4.6 trillion.

The Wharton analysis also provides a useful illustration of why policy makers engage in this sort of budget gimmickry to pass big spending bills—and, to be sure, this is a game that both Republicans and Democrats are adept at playing.

As currently written—with all those early expiration dates and temporary provisions—the Wharton Budget Model projects that the BBB proposal would add about $274 billion to the deficit over the next decade. It would also result in a 0.2 percent reduction in GDP (relative to expected GDP growth in a reality where the bill does not pass).

Those figures change dramatically when the full scope of the spending package is revealed. If all provisions in the BBB plan are made permanent, “federal debt increase by 24.4 percent and GDP would fall by 2.9 percent relative to current law.” The decline in GDP is due to the fact that higher levels of debt will likely sap future economic growth, because the government will have to pay larger sums of money—extracted via taxes from productive parts of the economy—to service the debt.

In short, by hiding the true cost of the Build Back Better plan’s provisions over the long term, Congress is also able to hide the long-term economic impact of hiking government spending by trillions of dollars.

The Biden administration’s pitch to Americans—and to key holdouts in Congress like Sen. Joe Manchin (D–W.Va.)—has been that the BBB plan won’t add to the deficit and that it will boost the economy. It’s becoming clear that neither is true, no matter how hard Congress tries to hide the true cost of the legislation.

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With apologies to Elvis Presley: Can 75 million Kenny G fans be wrong to love the man who inspired the “smooth jazz” genre? That’s the question at the heart of the brilliant new HBO documentary, Listening to Kenny G.

Best known for such instrumental hits as “Songbird” and “Silhouette,” the saxophonist formerly known as Kenneth Gorelick has sold 75 million records since the 1980s and has recently enjoyed new fame by collaborating with such artists as Kanye West and the Weeknd. Yet one constant throughout his career has been the incredible amount of bile that jazz artists and critics have spewed his way.

Listening To Kenny G is, director Penny Lane tells Nick Gillespie, “an exploration of why Kenny G is the most popular and successful and best-selling instrumentalist of all time and why that success makes a certain subset of people like really mad.” It’s by turns funny and deep as jazz critics rail against the title character, who seems to take everything in stride.

Lane also talks about her previous documentaries, including Our Nixon (2013) and Hail Satan? (2019; watch a Reason interview about it here), why Errol Morris is her guiding light as a nonfiction filmmaker, and what she likes about Reason, which she started reading in college. “Society,” she explains, “needs people who are annoying, who stand outside and say, yeah, but what about this? You know? I’ve always identified with that kind of personality.”

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In Doe 1 v. Northshore Univ. Healthsystem, decided yesterday by Judge John F. Kness (N.D. Ill.), the court began by acknowledging the general rule that people may not sue pseudonymously:

Under Rule 10 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, “[t]he title of the complaint must name all the parties.” That rule “instantiates the principle that judicial proceedings, civil as well as criminal, are to be conducted in public.” Subject to the “strong presumption of public access,” the use of fictitious names is thus “generally frowned upon.” …

“Judicial proceedings are supposed to be open, as these cases make clear, in order to enable the proceedings to be monitored by the public. The concealment of a party’s name impedes public access to the facts of the case, which include the parties’ identity.” …. The presumption against pseudonymity is amplified by the public’s constitutionally guaranteed right of access to court proceedings…. “[T]he people have a right to know who is using their courts.”

Parties seeking to overcome the presumption against proceeding pseudonymously “must demonstrate ‘exceptional circumstances’ that outweigh both the public policy in favor of identified parties and the prejudice to the opposing party that would result from anonymity.” The party requesting pseudonymity “bears the burden of proof to show that” such exceptional circumstances “outweigh[] the ordinary presumption of judicial openness.”

Plaintiffs’ identities are among the “facts of the case” to which the public is entitled. Plaintiffs thus “bear[] the burden” of showing that the “strong presumption of judicial openness” is overcome in this case.

Nonetheless, plaintiffs offered three arguments in support of pseudonymity:

1. “Plaintiffs argue that their decisions not to get vaccinated ‘relate to sensitive and private medical decisions.'”
2. “[T]hey contend that those decisions stem from their ‘private religious beliefs.'”
3. “Plaintiffs appeal to ‘their legitimate fear of ostracism, humiliation and retaliation from co-workers, supervisors and the public at large.'”

And the court agreed:

Although the issue is close, the Court agrees that Plaintiffs have met their burden and should be allowed to proceed pseudonymously. The bulk of Plaintiffs’ concerns are built into their third argument for pseudonymity: namely, they “legitimately fear that public disclosure of their quintessentially private religious beliefs and medical decisions will make them the targets of intensified and focused scorn and humiliation directed at them and their families.” Plaintiffs have offered sufficient support for the harms they will allegedly suffer if their identities are revealed during this litigation, so the Court finds their argument overcomes the “strong presumption of public access.”

Plaintiffs cite news articles and online comments about this case in which commenters ridicule or insult Plaintiffs and call for them to be fired. Plaintiffs also refer to the “broader sentiment around the country,” and “threats, ridicule, ostracism, harassment, scorn and opprobrium directed more generally at those who, like [Plaintiffs], have religious objections to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.” Plaintiffs’ appeals to online comments on national news sources—The Hill and MSN—and “broader sentiment[s]” demonstrate “risk of serious social stigmatization surpassing a general fear of embarrassment.”

Moreover, Plaintiffs offer additional offline examples in support of their concerns. Plaintiffs represent that they “have suffered pressure, intimidation and harassment from their superiors who know (from NorthShore) that they are religiously opposed to vaccination.” Plaintiffs describe a “peaceful protest” at which one of the Plaintiffs “was harassed by an individual to the point where law enforcement [was] required to come and rescue [Plaintiff] from that situation, and remove the person harassing her from her proximity.” Such examples, if true, do present cause for concern. {NorthShore disputes at least some of the assertions in Plaintiffs’ counsel’s declaration.} In addition to the arguments involving medical records and the private nature of religious beliefs, these concerns suffice to overcome the “strong presumption of public access.” …

Moreover, some guidance should be taken from the Supreme Court—which recently addressed pseudonymous litigation by plaintiffs challenging a vaccine mandate. Neither the concurrence nor the dissent from denial of the preliminary injunction in Does 1–3 v. Mills discussed the issue of pseudonymity; rather, the plaintiffs’ pseudonymity was accepted, if only tacitly. Given the charged atmosphere concerning vaccinations and vaccine mandates, and for the other reasons discussed above, the Court is persuaded that this is the rare case where a party should be permitted to proceed pseudonymously….

It’s hard to reconcile this, I think, with the many cases denying pseudonymity to people who face much more stigma from being identified, such as (1) civil defendants being accused of rape, sexual harassment, malpractice, fraud, embezzlement, and the like, or (2) employment plaintiffs who are afraid of getting a reputation for litigiousness, which might lead future employers not to hire them. Nor is this covered by the precedents that allow facial legal challenges to government policies, where the facts related to the plaintiffs are comparatively unimportant; this challenge turned in large measure on the facts, both about the defendants and about the plaintiffs. Still, the pseudonymity caselaw is badly split in all these areas (and indeed a few very rare cases allow pseudonymity even for the civil rape / sexual harassment / etc. defendants). This is one of the cases that comes out more in favor of pseudonymity.

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From Doe 1 v. Northshore Univ. Healthsystem, decided yesterday by Judge John F. Kness (N.D. Ill.):

A group of hospital workers face termination for their refusal, on religious grounds, to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 disease…. Plaintiffs registered religious objections to receiving any of the available COVID-19 vaccines because, Plaintiffs say, the vaccines were developed using cell lines derived from aborted fetuses. Plaintiffs offered NorthShore an alternative: in lieu of becoming vaccinated, Plaintiffs would instead submit to full-time masking and weekly COVID-19 testing. But NorthShore insisted that Plaintiffs either get vaccinated or find work elsewhere.

Plaintiffs now seek a judicial order preventing NorthShore from firing them based on their unvaccinated status. According to Plaintiffs, NorthShore’s policy violates … Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ….

[A]lthough Plaintiffs have demonstrated some likelihood of success on the merits of their Title VII claim—employers are required to make reasonable accommodations of religious practices and views—Plaintiffs cannot meet the additional prerequisites for preliminary injunctive relief of showing irreparable harm. Put another way, if Plaintiffs succeed at trial, their damages can be fully compensated through the traditional legal remedy of a damages award. Because that remedy is available, the Court cannot lawfully enter a preliminary injunction….

To make out a prima facie case of religious discrimination under Title VII “based on an employer’s failure to provide reasonable accommodation, a plaintiff ‘must show that the observance or practice conflicting with an employment requirement is religious in nature, that she called the religious observance or practice to her employer’s attention, and that the religious observance or practice was the basis for her discharge or other discriminatory treatment.'” … Title VII’s reasonable-accommodation requirement is meant “to assure the individual additional opportunity to observe religious practices, but it [does] not impose a duty on the employer to accommodate at all costs.” …

[T]he defendant’s burden of proof to justify an adverse employment action (rather than to provide an accommodation) requires that the defendant “show, as a matter of law, that any and all accommodations would have imposed an undue hardship.” As the Supreme Court has explained, an undue hardship exists when an accommodation imposes more than a de minimis burden on an employer.

Assessing the undue-hardship question on the merits typically requires factual development, because whether an employer can “reasonably accommodate a person’s religious beliefs without undue hardship ‘is basically a question of fact.'” …

At this preliminary stage, it is by no means settled that NorthShore has done all it can to reasonably accommodate Plaintiffs. This finding flows in part from NorthShore’s own conduct during this affair: initially, NorthShore told its employees that it could and would accommodate those with religious exemptions. NorthShore allowed each of the Plaintiffs to perform their roles with masking and testing throughout much of the ongoing public health emergency. Even accounting for the widespread availability of vaccines for hospital workers beginning in early 2021, almost a full year passed during which NorthShore apparently considered masking and testing to be sufficient to keep its patients, visitors, and employees safe.

Plaintiffs contend that they seek to continue to comply with “all reasonable requirements that work as alternatives everywhere else, including masking, PPE, regular testing, self-monitoring, self-reporting, and all other reasonable safety protocols.” Even as late as September 2021, NorthShore was prepared to accommodate its religiously-exempt employees by allowing them indefinitely to undergo routine testing.

NorthShore has presented little justification for its abrupt policy change. Patients, visitors, and even employees of other hospital groups that provide medical or religious accommodations to their employees will still be permitted to enter NorthShore facilities, just as they were before the policy change. Indeed, under the new policy, a Plaintiff who is fired for being unvaccinated would nonetheless be permitted to visit a NorthShore patient even if that Plaintiff remained unvaccinated. And although NorthShore purports to rely on a new workplace rule from OSHA as a justification for its new policy, that rule allows the option of masking and testing.

Whether NorthShore will ultimately succeed in meeting the de minimis burden test … is uncertain. At this stage of the case at least, where no discovery has occurred and where complex and significant factual issues have been presented under a tightly compressed timeframe, the Court cannot usurp the factfinder’s role and definitively say that NorthShore will fail in showing that Plaintiffs’ requested accommodations presents an undue hardship.

But by the same token, it cannot be said that Plaintiffs have no reasonable chance of success on the merits. Especially in the light of the present record—where NorthShore changed its policy in an arguably arbitrary manner, other NorthShore employees who sought an exemption on nonreligious grounds were (at least initially) treated differently, and other hospitals comparable to NorthShore have not categorically foreclosed any accommodation short of vaccination—a factfinder could determine that the accommodations Plaintiffs seek are not undue burdens. Plaintiffs have thus established some likelihood of success on the merits….

[Yet p]reliminary injunctive relief is uncommon in the context of employment discrimination actions under Title VII …. This is because, in the ordinary case, money damages are available as compensation for the loss of income and other employment-related harms….

This opinion joins recent rulings from other courts facing similar arguments that strongly suggest Plaintiffs cannot demonstrate irreparable harm…. {[I]t bears emphasis that neither the defendant in Sambrano nor NorthShore are government actors; accordingly, the First Amendment is not implicated.} …

Loss of employment “is not irreparable because it is fully compensable by monetary damages.” Indeed, “permanent loss of employment, standing alone, does not equate to irreparable harm.” Because Plaintiffs complain about harms that are compensable through money damages, the Court cannot lawfully find that Plaintiffs face irreparable harm.

In making this finding, the Court is mindful of the dilemma Plaintiffs face. It is undeniable that any recovery of damages by Plaintiffs—even an across-the-board victory—is months or perhaps even years away. During that interval, Plaintiffs will still need to provide food, shelter, and myriad other necessities for themselves and, often, their dependents. The contingent hope of a future recovery does nothing to meet present needs, and that uncertainty may indeed cause some Plaintiffs to choose to get vaccinated despite their religious views.

But in that sense, Plaintiffs are situated no differently than other Title VII plaintiffs who may face the same choice—who may feel compelled to tolerate invidious discrimination at work based on personal needs, and yet for whom precedent establishes that money damages are a sufficient remedy.

The post No Preliminary Injunction for Health Care Workers Seeking Religious Exemption from Vaccine Mandate appeared first on Reason.com.

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In advance of the Court’s official transcript, you can use this automated, rush transcript. I ran the YouTube feed through Otter.ai. I can’t vouch for its accuracy. Please, if you are writing an Op-Ed or blog post about the case, quote from the transcript, and not your recollection of the transcript. Now, I will begin to write my op-ed, which will appear in Newsweek tomorrow.

(It will take some time to process, so please refresh the page if the entire transcript isn’t loaded yet).

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Soviet culture officials in the late 1940s attempted to downplay the accomplishments of Europe and America by renaming imported foods to make them seem Russian and by claiming credit for various innovations. Camembert was renamed zakusochnyi (“snack cheese”) to disguise its French origins. A newspaper declared that the Palace of Versailles was a knockoff of palaces built by Peter the Great. Soviet encyclopedias incorrectly attributed the first successful airplane flight not to the Wright brothers but to Russian inventor Alexander Mozhaysky.

Following World War II, Josef Stalin approved the expansion of car production for individual purchase. But with only 6,000 produced in 1946 and 10,000 produced in 1947, there weren’t enough to go around. Trade unions organized waiting lists that stretched as long as 6 years.

In 1970, a Soviet criminologist determined that—due to widespread scarcity of housing, consumer goods, and materials needed for manufacturing—corrupt economic practices like bribery and embezzlement accounted for one-quarter of all crimes in the Soviet Union.

To deal with agricultural shortcomings, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev promoted the expansion of corn as a crop well-suited to feeding both people and livestock. From 1954 to 1955, the amount of corn the country grew boomed from 4.3 million to 18 million hectares. It reached 37 million hectares by 1962. But while the country focused on increasing the amount of corn it grew, it did not emphasize efficient or sustainable farming or give much consideration to appropriate growing conditions. In 1962, a cool, rainy spring and summer killed off 70–80 percent of the plantings.

In 1966, the Soviet Union mandated that all companies begin spending 1 percent of their revenue on advertising, despite the absence of market competition or even goods to promote.  From 1967 to 1991, the country’s only advertising agency produced ads for minced chicken, hot air showers, cars, and more than 6,000 other products, many of which did not actually exist, would never be produced, and Russian citizens could not buy.

Humorous game show KVN, which featured teams of competing college students, launched on Soviet television in 1961. Part quiz show, part improvisational comedy, it quickly became a national craze. But as the Soviet political climate grew more repressive in the late 1960s and early 1970s, censors grew hostile to the show’s humor. It was canceled in 1972 despite its popularity. It returned to the airwaves in 1986 and is still on today.

Under Khrushchev, a “thaw” allowed state-funded Soviet artists to experiment in styles other than the utopian propaganda of Socialist Realism. But at an art exhibition in Moscow in 1962, Khrushchev condemned and insulted the experimental and abstract artwork that his policies had led to. He suggested that several of the artists were “pederasts” and “parasites” and threatened them with imprisonment. Though he didn’t follow through on his threats, the thaw faded and adherence to Socialist Realism was once again enforced.

In 1985, not long after taking charge of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev began a campaign to try to reduce alcoholism. He prohibited alcohol sales before 2 p.m. and shut down distilleries and vineyards in republics such as Moldavia (now Moldova) and Georgia. Like America’s attempts at prohibition, the efforts resulted in spikes in organized crime and black markets. The state also lost revenue, enough to cause budget deficits, and Gorbachev abandoned the campaign in 1987.

Sources: “Seventeen Moments in Soviet History” archive, Michigan State University; “Soviet Spiel: Why the U.S.S.R. Produced Ads for Non-existing Products,” Rakesh Krishnan Simha, Russia Beyond; “Political Corruption in the U.S.S.R,” J.M. Cramer, Western Political Quarterly, Volume 30, Issue 2

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I’ve reported how Facebook censors me.

Now I’ve learned that they also censor environmentalist Michael Shellenberger, statistician Bjorn Lomborg, and former New York Times columnist John Tierney.

Facebook’s “fact-checkers” claim we spread “misinformation.”

In my new video, Tierney argues that the “people guilty of spreading misinformation are Facebook and its fact-checkers.”

He’s right.

Facebook doesn’t do its censoring alone. It partners with groups approved by something called the Poynter Institute, a group that claims “a commitment to nonpartisanship.”

But Poynter isn’t nonpartisan. It promotes progressive jargon like “decolonize the media,” and it praises left-leaning journalists. Once they even proposed blacklisting conservative news sites.

One “fact-checker” Poynter approved is a Paris-based group calling itself “Science Feedback.”

Science Feedback objected to an article Tierney wrote that says forcing children to wear masks can be harmful. He cited a study, which later passed peer review, in which parents complained about masks “giving their children headaches and making it difficult for them to concentrate.” Facebook calls Tierney’s article “partly false.”

That “partly false” label is nasty because it leads Facebook to stop showing Tierney’s work to many people.

But his article was accurate. Science Feedback censored it because parents’ comments are not a random sample. But it’s obvious that such comments are not random. Tierney acknowledges that in his article.

What should be labeled “false” is Science Feedback’s sloppy fact-check. It includes a “key takeaway” that says that masks are fine for children over 2. But “that’s not something that most scientists believe,” says Tierney. “Not what the World Health Organization believes.”

Again, he’s right. The World Health Organization says kids under 5 should generally not be required to wear masks.

“There are all kinds of well-documented effects of wearing a mask,” adds Tierney. “Workers who wear masks for a couple hours in Germany have to stop and take a half-hour break. This shouldn’t be a controversial thing to say.”

No, it shouldn’t.

Facebook often censors things that should be talked about. They banned discussion of the idea of that COVID-19 escaped from a lab, only reversing course when the Biden administration did.

Science Feedback also doesn’t like articles questioning the “climate crisis.” That’s what got Shellenberger punished.

“They censored me for saying we’re not in a sixth mass extinction,” Shellenberger complains. “We’re not!”

Lomborg was censored for pointing out “rising temperatures have actually saved lives.” That’s because cold weather kills more people than warm weather.

No scientific study has yet proven that a recent drop in deaths was caused by the temperature rise. But so what? His main point—temperature-related deaths fell while the planet warmed—is true.

Yet Science Feedback works with Facebook to keep that out of your Facebook feed.

Lomborg says the “fact-checkers” want people alarmed by climate change. “It makes it a lot easier to get people to donate money.”

Science Feedback’s leader now plans to expand his censorship powers—so he can censor not only Facebook, but other social media.

That’s frightening.

I sympathize with Facebook. Some users spread lies. Politicians blame Facebook and demand the company “do something.”

But there’s no way Facebook can police all the posts, so it does destructive things like partnering with Poynter Institute “fact-checkers.”

The fact-checkers “have a mission outside just facts,” says Lomborg. “They also want you to not know stuff. That’s not fact check. That’s simply saying, ‘We don’t want to hear this opinion in the public space.’ Frankly, that’s terrifying….The goal is nice…less misinformation on the internet. But you could very well end up in a place where we only have approved facts that fit the current narrative. That would be a terrible outcome.”

But that’s the outcome we’ve got.

Facebook and its censors are now the enemy of open debate.

“They’re trying to suppress people whose opinions and whose evidence they don’t like,” concludes Tierney. “They’re not fact-checkers, they’re fact-blockers.”

The world doesn’t need fact-blockers.

We need more freedom to speak, not less.

COPYRIGHT 2021 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

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An interesting article cowritten by a UCLA Public Policy school colleague of mine, Police Force Size and Civilian Race, forthcoming from Aaron Chalfin, Benjamin Hansen, Emily K. Weisburst and Morgan C. Williams, Jr. (I quote below from the May 4, 2021 draft). I’m not an expert on this subject, but I thought it worth passing along; I’d be glad, of course, to also excerpt and link to any articles that point out flaws in this one.

The background:

While there is now a strong consensus in the academic literature that the number of police officers (McCrary, 2002; Evans and Owens, 2007; Chalfin and McCrary, 2018; Mello, 2019; Weisburst, 2019b) combined with their presence and visibility (Sherman and Weisburd, 1995; Di Tella and Schargrodsky, 2004; Klick and Tabarrok, 2005; Braga et al., 2014; MacDonald et al., 2016; Weisburd, 2016) reduces crime, whether the effect of additional law enforcement is heterogeneous across Black and white Americans remains a surprisingly open question…. Using national data on police employment for a sample of 242 large U.S. cities over a 38-year period, this research provides novel evidence on the racial differences in public safety returns to law enforcement expansion in the United States….

The homicide findings:

We find that each additional police officer hired abates between 0.06 and 0.1 homicides [per year] …. The estimates suggest that investments in police manpower can save a life at a cost of between $1.6 and $2.7 million, far lower than common for accepted estimates of the value of a statistical life which typically exceed $7 million.

Although the total reduction in homicide is roughly equal across Black and white victims, the decline in homicide is twice as large for Black victims in per capita terms. {On a per capita basis, police force expansion has a larger effect on homicide victimization for Black civilians (0.006 − 0.012 homicides per 100,000 population [for each officer per year]) than for white civilians (0.002 − 0.008 homicides per 100,000 population). The per capita racial disparity in the effect of police force size on homicide victimization is significant … (p < 0.001).}

{On average, individuals living in the cities in our sample are 24% non-Hispanic Black, 19% Hispanic, and 49% non-Hispanic white…. In an average city-year in our data, there are 244 homicide victims, of which 138 (57%) are non- Hispanic Black and 64 (26%) are non-Hispanic white. Nationally, approximately half of homicide victims are Black—the proportion in our sample is slightly higher as we focus on large cities. In per capita terms, Black residents are approximately 4 times as likely to be the victim of a homicide compared to white residents….}

The quality of life arrest findings:

Next, we consider the extent to which investments in police manpower expand civilian interactions with the criminal justice system, or create “net widening” effects, focusing on differences by race in police enforcement activity. Here, we find that investments in police manpower lead to larger total numbers of low-level “quality of life” arrests, with each additional officer making 7-22 new arrests. These increases are driven by an increase in arrests for liquor violation and drug possession, with effects that imply that increases in these types of arrests are 2.5-3 times larger for Black civilians.

{[W]hile the racial disparity that we estimate is not significant at conventional levels, this test is likely conservative since, due to arrest data limitations, Hispanic arrestees are overwhelmingly classified as white for this outcome. As research indicates important Hispanic-white disparities with respect to policing outcomes (Sanga, 2009), the white estimate which includes Hispanic arrestees estimate is likely to be larger than the non-Hispanic white estimate.}

{To the extent that policymakers conclude that the costs of making large numbers of arrests for “quality of life” offenses outweigh the potential public safety benefits, we note that a number of different avenues for reform could address racial disparities in the burdens of police enforcement. Consistent with our finding that the racially disparate effects of investments in police manpower are particularly large for drug possession arrests, the decriminalization of the possession of small amounts of drugs may be a particularly promising avenue for reducing racial disparities.}

And the findings on serious “index crimes” (“murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, grand larceny and motor vehicle theft”):

At the same time, we find that arrests for the most serious offenses (so-called “index crimes”) fall with investments police manpower. {Consistent with the prior literature (Evans and Owens, 2007; Kaplan and Chalfin, 2019; Weisburst, 2019b), we find that each police officer abates approximately 18-24 index crimes, an estimate which implies an elasticity of index crimes with respect to police is approximately -1.1. Since larger police forces lead to reductions in index crimes, the decline in index crime arrests that we observe suggests that larger police forces reduce serious crime primarily through deterrence rather than by arresting and incapacitating additional offenders (Nagin, 2013; Chalfin and McCrary, 2017; Kaplan and Chalfin, 2019).}

On a per capita basis, the decline in index crime arrests that we observe is between 4-6 times greater for arrests involving Black suspects. This finding is consistent with the idea that police hiring has the potential to create a “double dividend” (Bratton, 2011; Cook and Ludwig, 2011; Durlauf and Nagin, 2011) for both Black and white Americans by generating reductions in both crime and arrests for serious offenses.

The authors’ remarks on the broader policy implications:

Our estimates capture the historical opportunity cost of policing, by including controls that hold municipal spending fixed. In this vein, our results suggest that “de-funding” the police could result in more homicides, especially among Black victims.

Of course, reducing funding for police could allow increased funding for other alternatives. An array of high-quality research suggests that crime can, in certain contexts, be reduced through methods other than policing or its by-product, incarceration. Among the many alternatives to police for which there is promising evidence are place-based crime control strategies such as increasing the availability of trees and green space (Branas et al., 2011), restoring vacant lots (Branas et al., 2016, 2018; Moyer et al., 2019), public-private partnerships (Cook and MacDonald, 2011), street lighting (Doleac and Sanders, 2015; Chalfin et al., 2019), and reducing physical disorder (Sampson and Raudenbush, 2001; Keizer et al., 2008). There is also evidence that social service-based strategies such as summer jobs for disadvantaged youth (Heller, 2014; Gelber et al., 2016; Davis and Heller, 2017), cognitive behavioral therapy (Blattman et al., 2017; Heller et al., 2017), mental health treatment (Deza et al., 2020; Jácome, 2020) and local non- profits more generally (Sharkey et al., 2017) can have important crime-reducing effects. While social service interventions are often difficult to scale (Mofiitt, 2006; Ludwig et al., 2011), the increasing number of studies which show that there are ways to reduce crime outside the deterrence channels of the traditional model of Becker (1968) is encouraging.

Whether communities should invest less in law enforcement and more in alternative strategies remains an open question, as such a material change in our society’s approach to public safety has yet to be implemented at scale. Our research focuses on one crucial aspect of this policy debate—the effect of reducing police employment—an outcome which would likely result if proposals to reduce funding for municipal police departments are adopted in the future. This study provides an estimate of the historical trade-offs of investments in law enforcement and, critically, the resulting implications for communities of color.

To be sure, hiring police officers might also increase the number of blacks killed by police officers; the study notes that it “exclude[s] homicides committed in prisons or jails as well as felons killed in the commission of a crime as these are likely to fall under the legal definition of justifiable homicide” (and of course it’s possible that some of the “felons killed in the commission of a crime” were actually innocent, or at least innocent of any serious crime). It’s also possible that it might decrease that number, for instance by reducing the number of arrests for the serious index offenses, which may be especially likely to lead to police shootings.

But in any event, this feature is unlikely to affect the overall results of this study: The total number of blacks killed by police officers in 2020 was 241 (as compared to 457 whites), for a national average of about 0.5 per 100,000 population. Even if such shootings were positively correlated with additional police officers, that correlation is likely to be swamped by the 0.006-0.012 per 100,000 per police officer decline in homicides that the study observes. (Note that the total number of black murder victims in the U.S. was 9,913, as compared to 7,029 whites.)

 

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