Tag: news

George Floyd’s Horrifying Death Highlights Stark Racial Disparities in the Use of Police Force

The cellphone video of George Floyd’s fatal encounter with three Minneapolis police officers—during which one of them kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes, ignoring Floyd’s anguished pleas, bystanders’ objections, and the concerns of a colleague who twice suggested that Floyd should be rolled from his stomach to his side—is horrifying enough on its own. But the anger expressed in the nationwide protests triggered by that incident goes far beyond this case or the litany of others in which cops killed unarmed black men. It reflects a general pattern of racially skewed law enforcement that is clear from data on the use of force by police in Minneapolis and elsewhere. These numbers show that African Americans have good reason to believe their complexions make them especially vulnerable to police abuse.

Whenever a Minneapolis officer draws his gun, deploys a dog, or grabs, shoves, slaps, punches, kicks, tackles, pins, strangles, tases, or pepper-sprays someone, he is supposed to report that use of force. Blacks, who account for a fifth of the city’s population, were on the receiving end of such violence nearly three-fifths of the time during the last five years, according to official records analyzed by The New York Times. Whites, who account for more than three-fifths of Minneapolis residents, were involved in less than a quarter of those incidents.

To put it another way, the Times says, “police in Minneapolis used force against black people at a rate at least seven times that of white people.” While the contrast is especially striking in Minneapolis, researchers have documented such racial disparities in cities across the country.

In a 2016 National Bureau of Economics paper, Harvard economist Roland Fryer analyzed information about police encounters from New York City’s “stop and frisk” program, from a nationally representative survey of the general public, and from reports on incidents in which officers fired their weapons, based on records provided by law enforcement agencies in Austin, Dallas, Houston, six Florida counties, and Los Angeles County. Although he found no evidence of racial disparities in shootings, he reported that “blacks and Hispanics are more than 50 percent more likely to experience some form of force,” such as grabbing, handcuffing, slapping, baton strikes, pepper spraying, and pushing to the ground or against a wall.

According to a 2015 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on data from a supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, 3.5 percent of blacks who reported contact with the police said they had been threatened with or subjected to force during the most recent encounter, compared to 1.4 percent of whites. Among respondents who said they had been stopped by police on the street, blacks were twice as likely to report the use of force. They were also twice as likely to be manhandled during searches. During traffic stops, blacks were three times as likely to be threatened with or subjected to force.

Blacks are also more likely than whites to be searched during traffic stops. A 2018 analysis of stops in Portland, Oregon, found that black drivers were subjected to discretionary searches 9 percent of the time, compared to a rate of 3 percent for white drivers. Based on data collected by the Pennsylvania State Police, The Philadelphia Inquirer found that “troopers were roughly two to three times more likely to search black or Hispanic drivers than white drivers.” And when searches were conducted, “troopers were far less likely to find contraband” if the drivers were black or Hispanic rather than white, suggesting that the evidentiary threshold for searching blacks and Hispanics was lower.

In a 2017 analysis of data from 20 states, researchers at Stanford University found that “white drivers are searched in 2.0% of stops, compared to 3.5% of stops for black motorists and 3.8% for Hispanic motorists.” After the researchers controlled for stop location, date and time, and driver age and gender, they calculated that “black and Hispanic drivers have approximately twice the odds of being searched relative to white drivers.” They were also twice as likely to be arrested. The study found that “black and Hispanic drivers are searched on the basis of less evidence than white drivers, suggestive of bias in search decisions.”

After surveying drivers in the Kansas City area in 2003 and 2004, Charles Epp and two other researchers at the University of Kansas classified police encounters based on the legal justification (or lack thereof) and the amount of discretion involved. They found that black drivers were no more likely than white drivers to report clear-cut “traffic safety stops” (e.g., for running a red light or stop sign, driving at night with headlights off, or exceeding the speed limit by seven or more miles an hour) but were nearly three times as likely to report seemingly pretextual “investigatory stops” (e.g., for an unilluminated license plate, driving too slowly, or no reason mentioned by the officer).

During investigatory stops, Epp and his colleagues reported, black drivers were five times as likely as white drivers to be searched. They were also more likely to be handcuffed and threatened with arrest, and more likely to describe the officer’s demeanor as rude, hostile, or insulting. Blacks perceived investigatory stops as less legitimate than traffic safety stops, while whites made no such distinction. The more stops black drivers had experienced, the less they trusted the police, an effect that was not apparent among white drivers.

Highly publicized incidents like the death of George Floyd are the most extreme manifestations of a quotidian reality. “There is no question that there is residual racism in America,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) acknowledged yesterday. “This is a vexing issue. If we could have figured out exactly what to do, I think we’d have done it years ago. It’s one of our continuing, persistent problems in our society that we’re all acutely aware of.” Some of us more than others.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2zWhuJy
via IFTTT

What Happened to the Public Health Emergency?

Remember when all the politicians and talking heads were telling us we had to listen to the allegedly unanimous opinion of public health experts that nothing, literally NOTHING, was more important that social distancing to prevent the spread of Coronavirus? And that anyone who raised objections to the scope or persistence of lockdowns was a misanthropic, anti-science troglodyte. That was yesterday. Today, protesting against racism is more important.

I agree that it’s important (regardless of whether the particular incident of excessive use of force by police in question was a product of racism or just race-neutral police brutality). I also think that putting 30% of the public out of work is important, indeed more important, especially given that racism is a persistent issue that will create plenty of protest opportunities, whereas destroying millions of people’s livelihoods was immediate with the lockdown.

Some of my social media friends have been insisting for some time that many of the hardcore lockdown/social distancing advocates were less concerned about public health and more about imposing their own value system against what they considered an unenlightened public, and some subset of those people actually welcomed the lockdown because they prefer people to live on the government dole that to allow “capitalist exploitation.” I’m not, to say the least, a big fan of the political and public health establishment, but I nevertheless thought this was too cynical, and I did (and still do) think that many aspects of the lockdown were justified by public health needs.

Yet today we see Mayor DeBlasio arguing that protesting racism is more important than being banned from attending religious services indefinitely, and Governor Murphy of New Jersey stating that protests against racism may flout social distancing rules, but he’s going to continue to enforce them against lockdown opponents.

Worse yet, Slate reports that:

Facing a slew of media requests asking about how protests might be a risk for COVID-19 transmission, a group of infectious disease experts at the University of Washington, with input from other colleagues, drafted a collective response. In an open letter published Sunday, they write that “protests against systemic racism, which fosters the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on Black communities and also perpetuates police violence, must be supported.”… By Tuesday afternoon, more than 1,000 epidemiologists, doctors, social workers, medical students, and other health experts had signed the letter.

So much for the “expert public health community.”

I don’t think anyone who knows me would describe me as at all credulous, but I think I need to get even more cynical.

A final thought: For many of the left, anti-racism is basically a religion, and they don’t want the Covid crisis to interfere with an important anti-racism ritual, protest. But when it comes to accommodating actual religion, like having a religious quorum at a funeral? Feh, that’s not important.

(Cross-posted from Instapundit, with a few minor changes and additions.)

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2zOJnDC
via IFTTT

George Floyd’s Horrifying Death Highlights Stark Racial Disparities in the Use of Police Force

The cellphone video of George Floyd’s fatal encounter with three Minneapolis police officers—during which one of them kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes, ignoring Floyd’s anguished pleas, bystanders’ objections, and the concerns of a colleague who twice suggested that Floyd should be rolled from his stomach to his side—is horrifying enough on its own. But the anger expressed in the nationwide protests triggered by that incident goes far beyond this case or the litany of others in which cops killed unarmed black men. It reflects a general pattern of racially skewed law enforcement that is clear from data on the use of force by police in Minneapolis and elsewhere. These numbers show that African Americans have good reason to believe their complexions make them especially vulnerable to police abuse.

Whenever a Minneapolis officer draws his gun, deploys a dog, or grabs, shoves, slaps, punches, kicks, tackles, pins, strangles, tases, or pepper-sprays someone, he is supposed to report that use of force. Blacks, who account for a fifth of the city’s population, were on the receiving end of such violence nearly three-fifths of the time during the last five years, according to official records analyzed by The New York Times. Whites, who account for more than three-fifths of Minneapolis residents, were involved in less than a quarter of those incidents.

To put it another way, the Times says, “police in Minneapolis used force against black people at a rate at least seven times that of white people.” While the contrast is especially striking in Minneapolis, researchers have documented such racial disparities in cities across the country.

In a 2016 National Bureau of Economics paper, Harvard economist Roland Fryer analyzed information about police encounters from New York City’s “stop and frisk” program, from a nationally representative survey of the general public, and from reports on incidents in which officers fired their weapons, based on records provided by law enforcement agencies in Austin, Dallas, Houston, six Florida counties, and Los Angeles County. Although he found no evidence of racial disparities in shootings, he reported that “blacks and Hispanics are more than 50 percent more likely to experience some form of force,” such as grabbing, handcuffing, slapping, baton strikes, pepper spraying, and pushing to the ground or against a wall.

According to a 2015 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on data from a supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, 3.5 percent of blacks who reported contact with the police said they had been threatened with or subjected to force during the most recent encounter, compared to 1.4 percent of whites. Among respondents who said they had been stopped by police on the street, blacks were twice as likely to report the use of force. They were also twice as likely to be manhandled during searches. During traffic stops, blacks were three times as likely to be threatened with or subjected to force.

Blacks are also more likely than whites to be searched during traffic stops. A 2018 analysis of stops in Portland, Oregon, found that black drivers were subjected to discretionary searches 9 percent of the time, compared to a rate of 3 percent for white drivers. Based on data collected by the Pennsylvania State Police, The Philadelphia Inquirer found that “troopers were roughly two to three times more likely to search black or Hispanic drivers than white drivers.” And when searches were conducted, “troopers were far less likely to find contraband” if the drivers were black or Hispanic rather than white, suggesting that the evidentiary threshold for searching blacks and Hispanics was lower.

In a 2017 analysis of data from 20 states, researchers at Stanford University found that “white drivers are searched in 2.0% of stops, compared to 3.5% of stops for black motorists and 3.8% for Hispanic motorists.” After the researchers controlled for stop location, date and time, and driver age and gender, they calculated that “black and Hispanic drivers have approximately twice the odds of being searched relative to white drivers.” They were also twice as likely to be arrested. The study found that “black and Hispanic drivers are searched on the basis of less evidence than white drivers, suggestive of bias in search decisions.”

After surveying drivers in the Kansas City area in 2003 and 2004, Charles Epp and two other researchers at the University of Kansas classified police encounters based on the legal justification (or lack thereof) and the amount of discretion involved. They found that black drivers were no more likely than white drivers to report clear-cut “traffic safety stops” (e.g., for running a red light or stop sign, driving at night with headlights off, or exceeding the speed limit by seven or more miles an hour) but were nearly three times as likely to report seemingly pretextual “investigatory stops” (e.g., for an unilluminated license plate, driving too slowly, or no reason mentioned by the officer).

During investigatory stops, Epp and his colleagues reported, black drivers were five times as likely as white drivers to be searched. They were also more likely to be handcuffed and threatened with arrest, and more likely to describe the officer’s demeanor as rude, hostile, or insulting. Blacks perceived investigatory stops as less legitimate than traffic safety stops, while whites made no such distinction. The more stops black drivers had experienced, the less they trusted the police, an effect that was not apparent among white drivers.

Highly publicized incidents like the death of George Floyd are the most extreme manifestations of a quotidian reality. “There is no question that there is residual racism in America,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) acknowledged yesterday. “This is a vexing issue. If we could have figured out exactly what to do, I think we’d have done it years ago. It’s one of our continuing, persistent problems in our society that we’re all acutely aware of.” Some of us more than others.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2zWhuJy
via IFTTT

What Happened to the Public Health Emergency?

Remember when all the politicians and talking heads were telling us we had to listen to the allegedly unanimous opinion of public health experts that nothing, literally NOTHING, was more important that social distancing to prevent the spread of Coronavirus? And that anyone who raised objections to the scope or persistence of lockdowns was a misanthropic, anti-science troglodyte. That was yesterday. Today, protesting against racism is more important.

I agree that it’s important (regardless of whether the particular incident of excessive use of force by police in question was a product of racism or just race-neutral police brutality). I also think that putting 30% of the public out of work is important, indeed more important, especially given that racism is a persistent issue that will create plenty of protest opportunities, whereas destroying millions of people’s livelihoods was immediate with the lockdown.

Some of my social media friends have been insisting for some time that many of the hardcore lockdown/social distancing advocates were less concerned about public health and more about imposing their own value system against what they considered an unenlightened public, and some subset of those people actually welcomed the lockdown because they prefer people to live on the government dole that to allow “capitalist exploitation.” I’m not, to say the least, a big fan of the political and public health establishment, but I nevertheless thought this was too cynical, and I did (and still do) think that many aspects of the lockdown were justified by public health needs.

Yet today we see Mayor DeBlasio arguing that protesting racism is more important than being banned from attending religious services indefinitely, and Governor Murphy of New Jersey stating that protests against racism may flout social distancing rules, but he’s going to continue to enforce them against lockdown opponents.

Worse yet, Slate reports that:

Facing a slew of media requests asking about how protests might be a risk for COVID-19 transmission, a group of infectious disease experts at the University of Washington, with input from other colleagues, drafted a collective response. In an open letter published Sunday, they write that “protests against systemic racism, which fosters the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on Black communities and also perpetuates police violence, must be supported.”… By Tuesday afternoon, more than 1,000 epidemiologists, doctors, social workers, medical students, and other health experts had signed the letter.

So much for the “expert public health community.”

I don’t think anyone who knows me would describe me as at all credulous, but I think I need to get even more cynical.

A final thought: For many of the left, anti-racism is basically a religion, and they don’t want the Covid crisis to interfere with an important anti-racism ritual, protest. But when it comes to accommodating actual religion, like having a religious quorum at a funeral? Feh, that’s not important.

(Cross-posted from Instapundit, with a few minor changes and additions.)

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2zOJnDC
via IFTTT

Who will write the remaining major Supreme Court decisions?

The Supreme Court generally gives each Justice roughly the same number of majority opinions. For example, in a given sitting (roughly a month), the Court may hear nine cases. Each Justice would be assigned one majority opinion. If there are more than nine cases in a sitting, invariably some Justices will get multiple assignments.

This practice allows us to use the process of elimination to guess who will write the majority opinion in outstanding cases. This guess work is often unreliable. In some cases, where a case flips–that is, a dissent becomes a majority opinion–a Justice will lose his or her assignment. But, speculate, we can.

In the October setting, nine cases were argued. Malvo, which involved juvenile life without parole, was dismissed from the docket. The Title VII cases–Bostock and Harris–will likely be consolidated with a single opinion. From that sitting, Justices Ginsburg, Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice Roberts have not yet written a majority opinion. One of those justices was likely assigned Malvo, but lost the case. I am skeptical the Chief would give the junior justice the Title VII cases. My prediction: Roberts writes both Bostock and Harris. And Kavanaugh lost Malvo.

In the October sitting, ten cases were argued. Only one case is outstanding, and one only Justice has not yet written a majority opinion. My prediction: Chief Justice Roberts will write the majority opinion in Regents, the DACA case.

In the November sitting, twelve cases were argued. NY Rifle & Pistol was decided per curiam. Roberts wrote twice from this sitting, so he is probably done. There are no more outstanding decisions from that session.

In the January sitting, eight cases were argued. Only Espinoza, the Montana religious school funding case, remains outstanding. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Breyer have not written from that session. My prediction: Roberts writes the majority opinion. Though it is possible that Breyer, who split the difference in the Ten Commandments case, draws a majority.

Nine cases were argued in February. In theory, each Justices should get one decision. So far, Ginsburg, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh wrote from that sitting. It is too early to predict the rest of the cases. But I’ll predict that Roberts writes Seila Law.

Ten cases were argued in May. The faithless electors case will likely be consolidated in a single decision. (Though I think there are important distinctions between the cases). And the tax return cases will also be consolidated in a single decision. So there will only be eight majority opinions. One Justice will likely be left out. And we have two recusals, which helps us narrow it down. It is way too early to make any predictions. But I’ll make some anyway.

  1. Roberts writes both tax-return cases, Mazars and Vance. Because of course he will.
  2. Thomas writes Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants–his NIFLA decisions suggests a very pro-Free Speech view in the corporate realm. I am also keen to see how he approaches severability, in light of Murphy.
  3. Ginsburg writes Booking.com, because she likes IP cases. And she can rule for her former clerk, Lisa Blatt, who argued it.
  4. Breyer writes both faithless electors case, because he likes Democracy cases. (Sotomayor is recused in the Colorado case).
  5. Alito writes the follow-up Little Sisters of the Poor case. (The original is always better than the sequel.)
  6. Sotomayor writes Open Society. (Kagan is recused).
  7. Gorsuch writes McGirt. The Court’s only Westerner likes Indian law.
  8. Kavanaugh writes Guadalupe. He had a strong concurrence last year in the cross case.
  9. Kagan is left without a majority opinion.

These predictions are worth what you paid for them. It is going to be a long June. And maybe July.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2XshEBm
via IFTTT

Breaking Bad – Valuations Are Screaming “Danger”

Breaking Bad – Valuations Are Screaming “Danger”

Tyler Durden

Wed, 06/03/2020 – 14:25

Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,

Well, they’ve done it again. The Fed has once again managed to erase the larger market pain. This time it was not the standard correction that was erased, this time they erased a market crash as $NDX is trading at all time human history highs.

I, for one, have to say I am surprised how effective central banks have been in squeezing markets higher again. I thought after 10 years of this monetary nonsense they would finally lose effectiveness in their ability to manipulate markets. Clearly I was wrong. But then I also didn’t see $3 trillion in Fed balance sheet expansion coming in a matter of a few months.

So one has to clearly acknowledge central banks continue to hold complete control over these markets. But it comes at a price that will remain ignored for now, but nevertheless I’m aiming to highlight some of the issues I see.

In my view central banks, in their quest to conduct a successful rescue operation, are killing the patient in the process. And nobody holds them to account, except some perplexed voices like myself are trying to at least raise the issues. (See also Stock Market Straight Talk)

And it’s not over of course. The ECB will announce more stimulus and there are more fiscal stimulus efforts coming as well and in process they are literally manufacturing the largest market bubble ever.

Bottomline: The distortions have become more extreme than expected.

And these distortions can be seen and measured in a number of ways.

First off the most obvious but also most ignored: Valuations are SCREAMING danger:

Yesterday we closed at 145.6% market cap to GDP, today markets are trading at 146%.

These are not only historically extreme valuations they are also entirely incompatible with any valuation history in context of the economic backdrop we have: 20% unemployment, massively regressive earnings, you name it.

Some will justify the highest valuations with a coming  “V” shape recovery. Even if you get a “V” you have to assume new record high valuations from here.

But there is no “V”. The CBO came out out with a projection yesterday suggesting it may take a decade to recover from all this:

The only V is in the stock market driven by artificial liquidity and it’s dividing the haves and have nots ever farther apart.

And the layoff  announcements keep coming. See this tweet thread for some of the ones I’ve been tracking:

And they keep mounting and they are sizable.

Which brings me back to a larger point I’ve been making for a while: Wealth inequality

2020 has seen the largest expansion in wealth inequality yet. Jay Powell may deny all he wants that the Fed’s policies are contributing to wealth inequality, but that’s just a lie.

If he hasn’t noticed, but America is Breaking Bad.

While the current protests in America were triggered by a specific event, the horrid killing of George Floyd, the protests represent something deeper: Anger and anxiety and a sense of injustice in general.

In past recessions everybody got hurt to some extent, even the top 1% at least in the form of dropping asset prices. Not this time, stocks are saved, jobs are not. And as the top 1% own the majority of stocks and the bottom 50% own virtual no stocks the correlation with the wealth inequality curve only appears to escape Jay Powell.

Now it is the bottom 50% which has predominantly lost their jobs and thanks to the Fed’s monstrous interventions the top 1% can take comfort that their asset values have been largely protected. An as perverse distortion as we’ve ever seen.

While the Fed continues to deny the obvious market participants of course know better.

As Mohammed El-Erian recently wrote:

“By contributing to higher wealth inequality and dragging the Fed deeper into “quasi fiscal” funding operations, the central bank also risks its credibility and political autonomy.”

From my perch of course they Fed has no credibility and Powell’s denial of negative rates as a policy tool is already challenged by one of the Fed’s own economists knowing there is no V coming:

So the jury is out, but I for one would not be surprised to see the Fed eventually implement negative rates. Especially if markets were to drop hard again.

As it stands we’re staring at the biggest and fastest stock market recovery in history, especially considering the context of the economic and valuation backdrop.

Sustainable? I suppose it’s in the eye of the beholder.

We can observe that the infamous megaphone pattern has once again been reached:

But the squeeze may not be over yet as we can note on the futures contract that trend line is a bit higher still, along with the .786 fib:

My view here: This liquidity, FOMO, TINA rally, whatever you want to call it, is not sustainable. It has no foundation in earnings, growth or future expected growth. It is Fed manufactured and yes I believe what I say:

If vertical equity prices were the intended or unintended consequences they are not producing growth or a V shaped recovery. There will be a recovery yes, but to a smaller normal. But in process the Fed has vastly disconnected asset prices from the economy and only multiple expansion can keep investors on the safe side. To me this action is not sustainable, the disconnect and distortion too large setting markets up for a nasty reversion to come.

And that reversion itself will then cause a massive dampening in sentiment. In short: They have set markets and the economy up for a deepening of the malaise as the liquidity is going to all the wrong places but the real economy.

And the protests on the streets of America they are the real economy and the voices we’re hearing are saying: We can’t breathe. And the message they are sending is: America is Breaking Bad.

But the Fed’s strategy appears to be to deny it all and to repeat the same policies that have brought us to this point, but with even more intensity. And that intensity has paid off. For the top 1%. Congratulations.

This rally is crystal blue meth. Consider with caution.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36XGtIx Tyler Durden

Minnesota AG “Elevates” Murder Count Against Chauvin, Charges 3 Officers With Abetting Floyd’s Killing

Minnesota AG “Elevates” Murder Count Against Chauvin, Charges 3 Officers With Abetting Floyd’s Killing

Tyler Durden

Wed, 06/03/2020 – 14:09

In keeping with the wishes of both the George Floyd’s family and the expectations of the public, Minnesota’s attorney general has just charged the three other officers seen in the video of Floyd being killed while being taken into custody, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

Minnesota AG Keith Ellison, a longtime hero of the Democratic left who was closely involved with Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president, has reportedly decided to elevate the charges against Derek Chauvin while also  adding charges of aiding and abetting murder against the other three officers at the scene.

Keith Ellison

The other officers at the scene included two white man and an Asian man, who will be charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder, while Chauvin’s charge is elevated from third-degree murder – a kinda-sorta murder charge that only exists in three states – to second degree murder, along with a manslaughter charge.

The other three officers at the scene — Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane — will also be charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder, according to the sources, who spoke on conditions of anonymity. Chauvin was arrested last Friday and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

The charges come just days after Minnesota’s Democratic Governor, Tom Walz, asked Ellison to take over the prosecution, which at the time was being led by  the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, amid public outcry over what many saw as charges against Chauvin that were too lenient. A lawyer representing Floyd’s family has said the family would like to see Chauvin face 1st degree charges, which would indicate a premeditated killing.

Floyd’s killing, which occurred amid a string of other racially-tinged incidents, has set off the worst social unrest in the US in 50 years.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2zOEPNy Tyler Durden

Five Ways To Improve Social Media (And The Internet)

Five Ways To Improve Social Media (And The Internet)

Tyler Durden

Wed, 06/03/2020 – 14:05

Authored by Peter Klein via The Mises Institute,

There are two mainstream positions on Trump’s recent Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship and section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA):

1) the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)/Techdirt liberal/libertarian view that Twitter, Facebook, etc. are private firms and can do what they want and

2) the Trump/Hawley/social conservative view that social media platforms should lose section 230 immunity and be regulated as public utilities with mandatory viewpoint neutrality.

Position 1 is also supported by empirical claims that without section 230 protection the internet as we know it would never have developed (see The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet).

My propertarian libertarian view is close to position 1 but with caveats. Social media platforms are indeed private firms and can publish or edit (they cannot censor, a term that refers exclusively to state actors) whatever they like—subject of course to the terms of service between the platform and users who generate content. However, I think section 230 is bad policy on procedural or rule-utilitarian grounds. Congress should not give particular firms blanket immunity from common-law civil causes of action via statute. Rather, these issues should be handled by contract law as enforced by courts, not by legislation.

Without legislation, disputes between platforms and users about content moderation can be handled by reference to the terms of service. If Twitter says that it will remove posts that it considers against its community guidelines and those turn out to be disproportionately libertarian or conservative leaning, so be it. If Gab.com or some other site pledges not to moderate content but does anyway, then the user would have a cause of action against the platform for violating the terms of service. You don’t need Section 230 to protect against that; you just need contract law.

What about the claim that without 230 the internet would never have grown and flourished?

First, even if that were true, it wouldn’t make the statute just. And the claim may even be wrong. To me, these are like the Mazzucato-style arguments for NASA (or, closer to the subject at hand, DARPA [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]). Remember the broken window fallacy? We don’t know what the counterfactual, non-230 internet would have looked like. Maybe the technology would have developed differently. Maybe there are no comment sections. Maybe no social media platforms. Maybe that’s terrible (or isn’t). Or maybe entrepreneurs would have found other solutions, e.g., decentralized encrypted P2P platforms that are impossible to sue. Maybe there would be a flood of defamation and copyright lawsuits against whatever sites and platforms existed, but courts would reject these claims because of the sheer difficulty of enforcing the claims. Maybe that would spur debate and legal reform toward a more libertarian position. Who knows? My point on this is simply that we should decide on rights-based, deontological grounds, not because of what we predict would happen, given the difficulty of anticipating entrepreneurial market outcomes.

Second, the claim that internet would not have developed into what it is without the section 230 provisions opens the door to critics saying “Okay, but we have some new legislation here that will make the internet even greater!” I don’t want to have an empirical debate about which (positivist) legal rules would give us more traffic or more reliable ISPs (internet service providers) or larger (or smaller) platforms or whatever. Let’s keep the discussion focused on property rights!

So what are my preferred policies? I haven’t worked through all the details, but to me the most obvious ones are:

  1. Repeal the CDA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), etc.

  2. Enforce contractual agreements between platforms and users.

  3. Avoid all attempts at viewpoint neutrality regulation.

  4. Remove government-created entry barriers for new entrants (see also no. 1).

  5. Don’t treat information as property (e.g., don’t act as if users “own” “their data” and don’t force platforms to make data “portable”).

Finally, as a practical matter, Trump’s executive order is unlikely to have any impact and is in my humble opinion a silly political stunt. What Trump should do is simply move to Gab.com or a similar platform.

Many of his 85 million followers would follow, and this would do more to “punish” Twitter (and encourage new competitors) than any legal action.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MsVKIa Tyler Durden

Architect Of Sweden’s ‘No Lockdown’ Strategy Admits Mistakes As Mortality Rate Soars

Architect Of Sweden’s ‘No Lockdown’ Strategy Admits Mistakes As Mortality Rate Soars

Tyler Durden

Wed, 06/03/2020 – 13:45

As growing numbers of Italians ditch their masks and have declared  the pandemic response a scam, The architect of Sweden’s controversial ‘no lockdown’ coronavirus response admitted on Swedish radio that his strategy – which sought rapid herd immunity to COVID-19 through mass exposure – resulted in too many deaths, according to Bloomberg.

That said, he wouldn’t go as far as other countries whose strict lockdowns have cratered the global economy in the span of three months.

“If we were to encounter the same illness with the same knowledge that we have today, I think our response would land somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done,” said Sweden’s top epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, who recommended keeping the country open aside from gatherings of more than 50 people. Otherwise, Swedes have been able to visit restaurants, shop, work out at the gym and send their children to school during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result, Sweden eclipsed its Nordic neighbors in coronavirus deaths at nearly four-times per capita, while the rolling seven-day average for confirmed deaths per million people is nearly twice that of the US and five times that of France, per the Independent.

Sweden’s mortality rate is 43 deaths per 100,000 – among the highest globally. Countries which enacted early lockdowns, such as New Zealand, have virtually eliminated the virus.

“Clearly, there is potential for improvement in what we have done in Sweden,” said Tegnell.

The comments appeared to frustrate some members of the government. Sweden’s minister of health and social affairs, Lena Hallengren, said Tegnell “still can’t give an exact answer on what other measures should have been taken. That question remains, I think,” the minister said, according to Dagens Nyheter. –Bloomberg

Tegnell has changed his argument that severe and sudden lockdowns were unsustainable over the long term, while on Monday, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven vowed to launch an inquiry into the handling of the crisis before the summer.

Still, there is scant evidence that leaving the country open actually helped the economy, as Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson warned recently that the country is facing its worst economic crisis since WWII as GDP is set to fall 7% this year – in line with the rest of the EU.

Conservative Swedish lawmaker Jimmie Akesson – leader of the anti-illegal immigration Sweden Democrats, tweeted that Tegnell’s comments are “astonishing.”

“For months, critics have been consistently dismissed. Sweden has done everything right, the rest of the world has done it wrong. And now, suddenly, this,” he said.

Perhaps someone will finally propose a strategy to quarantine the most at-risk, while allowing the rest of the country to make their own decisions regarding their health.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3gON64D Tyler Durden

Who will write the remaining major Supreme Court decisions?

The Supreme Court generally gives each Justice roughly the same number of majority opinions. For example, in a given sitting (roughly a month), the Court may hear nine cases. Each Justice would be assigned one majority opinion. If there are more than nine cases in a sitting, invariably some Justices will get multiple assignments.

This practice allows us to use the process of elimination to guess who will write the majority opinion in outstanding cases. This guess work is often unreliable. In some cases, where a case flips–that is, a dissent becomes a majority opinion–a Justice will lose his or her assignment. But, speculate, we can.

In the October setting, nine cases were argued. Malvo, which involved juvenile life without parole, was dismissed from the docket. The Title VII cases–Bostock and Harris–will likely be consolidated with a single opinion. From that sitting, Justices Ginsburg, Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice Roberts have not yet written a majority opinion. One of those justices was likely assigned Malvo, but lost the case. I am skeptical the Chief would give the junior justice the Title VII cases. My prediction: Roberts writes both Bostock and Harris. And Kavanaugh lost Malvo.

In the October sitting, ten cases were argued. Only one case is outstanding, and one only Justice has not yet written a majority opinion. My prediction: Chief Justice Roberts will write the majority opinion in Regents, the DACA case.

In the November sitting, twelve cases were argued. NY Rifle & Pistol was decided per curiam. Roberts wrote twice from this sitting, so he is probably done. There are no more outstanding decisions from that session.

In the January sitting, eight cases were argued. Only Espinoza, the Montana religious school funding case, remains outstanding. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Breyer have not written from that session. My prediction: Roberts writes the majority opinion. Though it is possible that Breyer, who split the difference in the Ten Commandments case, draws a majority.

Nine cases were argued in February. In theory, each Justices should get one decision. So far, Ginsburg, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh wrote from that sitting. It is too early to predict the rest of the cases. But I’ll predict that Roberts writes Seila Law.

Ten cases were argued in May. The faithless electors case will likely be consolidated in a single decision. (Though I think there are important distinctions between the cases). And the tax return cases will also be consolidated in a single decision. So there will only be eight majority opinions. One Justice will likely be left out. And we have two recusals, which helps us narrow it down. It is way too early to make any predictions. But I’ll make some anyway.

  1. Roberts writes both tax-return cases, Mazars and Vance. Because of course he will.
  2. Thomas writes Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants–his Janus decisions suggests a very pro-Free Speech view in the corporate realm. I am also keen to see how he approaches severability, in light of Murphy.
  3. Ginsburg writes Booking.com, because she likes IP cases. And she can rule for her former clerk, Lisa Blatt, who argued it.
  4. Breyer writes both faithless electors case, because he likes Democracy cases. (Sotomayor is recused in the Colorado case).
  5. Alito writes the follow-up Little Sisters of the Poor case. (The original is always better than the sequel.)
  6. Sotomayor writes Open Society. (Kagan is recused).
  7. Gorsuch writes McGirt. The Court’s only Westerner likes Indian law.
  8. Kavanaugh writes Guadalupe. He had a strong concurrence last year in the cross case.
  9. Kagan is left without a majority opinion.

These predictions are worth what you paid for them. It is going to be a long June. And maybe July.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2XshEBm
via IFTTT