Tag: posts

U.N. Reports ‘Staggering Rise in Climate-Related Disasters’

HurricaneDreamstime

“We are turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people,” assert the authors of “Human Cost of Disasters 2000-2019,” a new report issued on behalf of the United Nations (U.N.) Office of Disaster Risk Reduction. “This report focuses primarily on the staggering rise in climate-related disasters over the last twenty years,” the authors add. The report is based on data collected in the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) curated by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters located at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

The U.N. and Louvain researchers tally the toll of death and destruction from all natural disasters over the past 20 years. Between 2000 to 2019, there were 7,348 major recorded natural disaster events killing 1.23 million people with economic losses amounting to approximately $2.97 trillion. In contrast, between 1980 and 1999 there were only 4,212 natural disasters that killed 1.19 million people and resulted in $1.63 trillion in losses.

The report observes that floods and storms were by far the most prevalent events. “The last 20 years has seen the number of major floods more than double, from 1,389 to 3,254, while the incidence of storms grew from 1,457 to 2,034,” notes the accompanying press release. “This is clear evidence that in a world where the global average temperature in 2019 was 1.1 ̊C above the pre-industrial period, the impacts are being felt in the increased frequency of extreme weather events including heatwaves, droughts, flooding, winter storms, hurricanes, and wildfires,” declares the report. It is worth noting that 58 percent of disaster deaths between 2000 and 2019 were the result of earthquakes.

Let’s take a look at the evidence for how rising average global temperature specifically is affecting humanity. First, the report observes that between 2000 and 2019, there were 510,837 deaths associated with 6,681 climate-related disasters. However, the researchers note 3,656 climate-related disasters recorded between 1980 and 1999 resulted in 995,330 deaths. In other words, according to EM-DAT data, climate-related deaths in the two periods fell by nearly half while such disasters nearly doubled.

What about the upward trend in economic losses from natural disasters? According to the Human Cost report, such cumulated losses increased by 82 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars between the two 20-year periods. Interestingly, gross world product roughly grew by 82 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars between 1999 and 2019.

To get a better handle on the question of whether climate change is adding to the destruction wreaked by natural disasters, researchers seek to “normalize” the losses by attempting to estimate direct economic costs from a historical storm as if that same event were to occur under contemporary social conditions. For example, far more people live in Florida now than 50 years ago, with lots more houses and businesses, so hurricanes that strike there today are more likely to cause more significant economic losses than those than hit that state in the 1920s.

In a July 2020 article in Environmental Hazards reviewing the findings of 54 different disaster loss normalization studies, University of Colorado researcher Roger Pielke, Jr. reports, “A very strong, bottom-line conclusion across the normalisation literature is that evidence of a signal of human-caused climate change in the form of increased global economic losses from more frequent or more intense weather extremes has not yet been detected. This does not mean that such a signal does not exist, but rather, it may be too small to yet detect.”

Pielke adds, “Regrettably, scientific and public discussion of normalisation research and associated extreme weather has become deeply politicised, with opponents to climate action sometimes misusing normalisation research results to suggest human-caused climate change is not occurring. Similarly, some advocates for climate action see the results of normalisation research as a threat to an agenda that emphasizes the influence of accumulating greenhouse gases on every extreme event, with claims often going well beyond what science presently supports.”

The upshot is that humanity is losing more houses and infrastructure to bad weather largely because a richer and more populous world has put much more property in harm’s way. Once you adjust for that, the proportion of assets damaged by storms and floods possibly amplified by climate change is not yet appreciably increasing. Even better news is that as a result of rising wealth and improving technologies, fewer people over the past decades are dying from weather disasters. Pielke is right when he concludes, “Overall, improved adaptive capacity and declining vulnerability suggest optimism for our collective ability to respond to a changing and uncertain climate future.”

Perhaps the world will not become an uninhabitable hell after all.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3k2Swdp
via IFTTT

Public Opinion Supports Covid Vaccine Challenge Trials

COVIDvaccineDreamstime

Back in May, I outlined the moral case for using “challenge trials” to speed up the process of testing and deploy possible coronavirus vaccines. In a challenge trial, volunteers would be given the vaccine and then deliberately infected with the virus, to see if the vaccine gives them immunity.

As economist Alex Tabarrok explains, challenge trials could potentially make vaccines available months earlier than it would be otherwise. And if we can make vaccination happen even a few weeks sooner than would be the case for conventional trials, we can save many lives, and avoid large economic and social costs, as well.

A recent article by Berkeley political scientist David Broockman and several coauthors finds widespread public support for challenge trials in numerous countries, including the US. Here is the abstract (HT: Tyler Cowen]:

A vaccine for COVID-19 is urgently needed. Several vaccine trial designs may significantly accelerate vaccine testing and approval, but also increase risks to human subjects. Concerns about whether the public would see such designs as ethically acceptable represent an important roadblock to their implementation, and the World Health Organization has called for consulting the public regarding them. Here we present results from a pre-registered cross-national survey (n= 5; 920) of individuals in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The survey asked respondents whether they would prefer scientists to conduct traditional trials or one of two accelerated designs: a challenge trial or a trial integrating a Phase II safety and immunogenicity trial into a larger Phase III efficacy trial. We find broad majorities prefer for scientists to conduct challenge trials (75%, 95% CI: 73-76%) and integrated trials (63%, 95% CI: 61-65%) over standard trials. Even as respondents acknowledged the risks, they perceived both accelerated trials as similarly ethical to standard trial designs, and large majorities characterized them as “probably” or “definitely ethical” (72%, 95% CI:70-73% for challenge trials; 77%, 95% CI 75-78% for integrated trials). This high support is consistent across every geography and demographic subgroup we examined, including people of diverging political orientations and vulnerable populations such as the elderly, essential workers, and racial and ethnic minorities. These findings bolster the case for these accelerated designs and can help assuage concerns that they would undermine public trust in vaccines.

I do not claim that such widespread public support proves that challenge trials are morally justified. As the author of Democracy and Political Ignorance, I recognize that public opinion on policy issues is often influenced by ignorance, partisan and ideological bias, and other dubious considerations. Thus, my moral justification for challenge trials doesn’t depend on how popular they are.

That said, the popularity of challenge trials is potentially significant because it might alleviate politicians’ and business leaders’ fears that holding such trials would lead to a public backlash. If Broockman and his coauthors are correct, the vast majority of people are likely to support challenge trials, despite the possible risks.

One limitation of the study is that the authors did not ask respondents whether they approve of paying challenge trial volunteers, which I argue is also justified, but some may object to on “commodification” and “exploitation” grounds, similar to those raised against legalization of organ markets. But even if payment to participants is limited to compensation for time and expenses and free health care for any complications they might suffer, it is likely we can still attract a large number of volunteers. The impressive 1 Day Sooner website has already signed up over 38,000 challenge trail volunteers from around the world (that figure may grow even higher by the time you read this).

Covid vaccines are, of course, already being tested in the US and elsewhere. But the progress is impeded by the inherent slowness of the process, and in some cases by a shortage of volunteers from specific demographic categories. Challenge trials could help address both problems.

The faster the better. Time is money. And in this case it’s literally a matter of life and death, as well.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3lM6As7
via IFTTT

Public Opinion Supports Covid Vaccine Challenge Trials

COVIDvaccineDreamstime

Back in May, I outlined the moral case for using “challenge trials” to speed up the process of testing and deploy possible coronavirus vaccines. In a challenge trial, volunteers would be given the vaccine and then deliberately infected with the virus, to see if the vaccine gives them immunity.

As economist Alex Tabarrok explains, challenge trials could potentially make vaccines available months earlier than it would be otherwise. And if we can make vaccination happen even a few weeks sooner than would be the case for conventional trials, we can save many lives, and avoid large economic and social costs, as well.

A recent article by Berkeley political scientist David Broockman and several coauthors finds widespread public support for challenge trials in numerous countries, including the US. Here is the abstract (HT: Tyler Cowen]:

A vaccine for COVID-19 is urgently needed. Several vaccine trial designs may significantly accelerate vaccine testing and approval, but also increase risks to human subjects. Concerns about whether the public would see such designs as ethically acceptable represent an important roadblock to their implementation, and the World Health Organization has called for consulting the public regarding them. Here we present results from a pre-registered cross-national survey (n= 5; 920) of individuals in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The survey asked respondents whether they would prefer scientists to conduct traditional trials or one of two accelerated designs: a challenge trial or a trial integrating a Phase II safety and immunogenicity trial into a larger Phase III efficacy trial. We find broad majorities prefer for scientists to conduct challenge trials (75%, 95% CI: 73-76%) and integrated trials (63%, 95% CI: 61-65%) over standard trials. Even as respondents acknowledged the risks, they perceived both accelerated trials as similarly ethical to standard trial designs, and large majorities characterized them as “probably” or “definitely ethical” (72%, 95% CI:70-73% for challenge trials; 77%, 95% CI 75-78% for integrated trials). This high support is consistent across every geography and demographic subgroup we examined, including people of diverging political orientations and vulnerable populations such as the elderly, essential workers, and racial and ethnic minorities. These findings bolster the case for these accelerated designs and can help assuage concerns that they would undermine public trust in vaccines.

I do not claim that such widespread public support proves that challenge trials are morally justified. As the author of Democracy and Political Ignorance, I recognize that public opinion on policy issues is often influenced by ignorance, partisan and ideological bias, and other dubious considerations. Thus, my moral justification for challenge trials doesn’t depend on how popular they are.

That said, the popularity of challenge trials is potentially significant because it might alleviate politicians’ and business leaders’ fears that holding such trials would lead to a public backlash. If Broockman and his coauthors are correct, the vast majority of people are likely to support challenge trials, despite the possible risks.

One limitation of the study is that the authors did not ask respondents whether they approve of paying challenge trial volunteers, which I argue is also justified, but some may object to on “commodification” and “exploitation” grounds, similar to those raised against legalization of organ markets. But even if payment to participants is limited to compensation for time and expenses and free health care for any complications they might suffer, it is likely we can still attract a large number of volunteers. The impressive 1 Day Sooner website has already signed up over 38,000 challenge trail volunteers from around the world (that figure may grow even higher by the time you read this).

Covid vaccines are, of course, already being tested in the US and elsewhere. But the progress is impeded by the inherent slowness of the process, and in some cases by a shortage of volunteers from specific demographic categories. Challenge trials could help address both problems.

The faster the better. Time is money. And in this case it’s literally a matter of life and death, as well.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3lM6As7
via IFTTT

Judging From His Grilling of Amy Coney Barrett, Sen. Richard Durbin Thinks Voting Is More Important Than Staying Alive

Durbin-and-Barrett-10-13-20-C-SPAN

When Sen. Richard Durbin (D–Ill.) grilled Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett about her critique of categorical bans on gun ownership by people with felony records yesterday, he misrepresented her view of voting rights. He also made a dubious statement about the relative importance of casting a ballot vs. exercising the fundamental right of self-defense that betrays a casual disregard for the latter.

In the 2019 case Kanter v. Barr, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upheld state and federal laws that ban gun possession by people convicted of felonies, regardless of whether their crimes involved violence. Rickey Kanter, a Wisconsin man who had been convicted of mail fraud, argued that such bans violate the Second Amendment because they deprive people of the right to arms even when they have never demonstrated any violent tendencies.

In her dissent from the 7th Circuit’s rejection of that argument, Barrett challenged the idea that the original public understanding of the Second Amendment was consistent with “virtue-based restrictions” on the right to arms. Historically, she said, “such restrictions applied to civic rights like voting and jury service, not to individual rights like the right to possess a gun.”

Durbin latched onto that distinction to suggest that Barrett has no problem with disenfranchising people when they are convicted of felonies. “You said disqualifying a person from voting…because of a felony is OK, but when it comes to the possession of firearms, wait a minute, we’re talking about the individual right of the Second Amendment,” he said. “I don’t get it.”

According to Durbin’s gloss, Barrett thinks “a felony should not disqualify Ricky from buying an AK-47, but using a felony conviction in someone’s past to deny them the right to vote is all right.” That conclusion “is hard to swallow,” he said. “I think the right to vote should be given at least as much respect as any Second Amendment right. Do you?”

Barrett gently suggested that Durbin, who said he had “read and reread” her opinion, “might be taking my statement in Kanter out of context.” While “the Supreme Court has repeatedly said that voting is a fundamental right,” she noted, “the Constitution contemplates that states have the freedom to deprive felons of the right to vote,” which is “expressed in the constitutional text.”

Section 2 of the 14th Amendment reduces the congressional representation of states that deny or abridge the voting rights of U.S. citizens “except for participation in rebellion, or other crime.” The Supreme Court has interpreted that provision as allowing states to take away people’s voting rights when they are convicted of felonies.

“I expressed no view about what the constitutional limits of that might be or whether the law should change with respect to felon voting rights,” Barrett noted. “Obviously, that’s a contested issue in some states that are considering it right now. And I have no view on that, and it wasn’t the subject of Kanter.”

While misleadingly portraying Barrett as untroubled by the consequences of felon disenfranchisement, Durbin himself seemed completely untroubled by the consequences of permanently disarming people without any evidence that they are prone to violence. That policy makes sense, he said, because distinguishing between violent and nonviolent felonies would be impractical (even though courts make that sort of distinction all the time, as Barrett pointed out). Yet the policy Durbin supports, like the one he opposes, is unjust and has a disproportionate racial impact, since one-third of African-American men have felony records, compared to 8 percent of the general population.

“Many felony voting bans were passed in the late 1860s and 1870s, when implementation of the 15th Amendment and its extension of voting rights to African Americans were ardently contested,” Durbin noted. “The felony conviction was used to disqualify African Americans from voting in the South and in many other places.” He said felon disenfranchisement reflects the “thinking in the 19th century that resulted in voter suppression and taking away the right to vote from millions of African Americans across this country,” which “still continues to this day.”

By the same token, the policy challenged by Kanter could be viewed as a continuation of 19th-century attempts to deprive African Americans of the right to arms—the right that Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of Dred Scott v. Sandford, warned they would be allowed to exercise if they were recognized as citizens. That right was crucial to blacks facing white supremacist terror and intimidation in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it was intertwined with the right to vote. During the civil rights movement, activists registering black voters in the South relied on firearms to defend themselves against racists who wanted to stop them.

While Durbin says “the right to vote should be given at least as much respect as any Second Amendment right,” the basic human right of self-preservation will strike many people as more important than the right to cast a ballot. You can’t vote if you’re dead.

Durbin views felon disenfranchisement as especially disturbing because it has a disproportionate impact on African Americans. Yet Durbin has no qualms about a policy that permanently deprives 7 million African-American men of the constitutional right to armed self-defense, even when they pose no plausible danger to the general public—including people who were convicted of violating drug laws that criminalize peaceful transactions between consenting adults. I don’t get it.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3dt3bvq
via IFTTT

Judging From His Grilling of Amy Coney Barrett, Sen. Richard Durbin Thinks Voting Is More Important Than Staying Alive

Durbin-and-Barrett-10-13-20-C-SPAN

When Sen. Richard Durbin (D–Ill.) grilled Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett about her critique of categorical bans on gun ownership by people with felony records yesterday, he misrepresented her view of voting rights. He also made a dubious statement about the relative importance of casting a ballot vs. exercising the fundamental right of self-defense that betrays a casual disregard for the latter.

In the 2019 case Kanter v. Barr, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upheld state and federal laws that ban gun possession by people convicted of felonies, regardless of whether their crimes involved violence. Rickey Kanter, a Wisconsin man who had been convicted of mail fraud, argued that such bans violate the Second Amendment because they deprive people of the right to arms even when they have never demonstrated any violent tendencies.

In her dissent from the 7th Circuit’s rejection of that argument, Barrett challenged the idea that the original public understanding of the Second Amendment was consistent with “virtue-based restrictions” on the right to arms. Historically, she said, “such restrictions applied to civic rights like voting and jury service, not to individual rights like the right to possess a gun.”

Durbin latched onto that distinction to suggest that Barrett has no problem with disenfranchising people when they are convicted of felonies. “You said disqualifying a person from voting…because of a felony is OK, but when it comes to the possession of firearms, wait a minute, we’re talking about the individual right of a Second Amendment,” he said. “I don’t get it.”

According to Durbin’s gloss, Barrett thinks “a felony should not disqualify Ricky from buying an AK-47, but using a felony conviction in someone’s past to deny them the right to vote is all right.” That conclusion “is hard to swallow,” he said. “I think the right to vote should be given at least as much respect as any Second Amendment right. Do you?”

Barrett gently suggested that Durbin, who said he had “read and reread” her opinion, “might be taking my statement in Kanter out of context.” While “the Supreme Court has repeatedly said that voting is a fundamental right,” she noted, “the Constitution contemplates that states have the freedom to deprive felons of the right to vote,” which is “expressed in the constitutional text.”

Section 2 of the 14th Amendment reduces the congressional representation of states that deny or abridge the voting rights of U.S. citizens “except for participation in rebellion, or other crime.” The Supreme Court has interpreted that provision as allowing states to take away people’s voting rights when they are convicted of felonies.

“I expressed no view about what the constitutional limits of that might be or whether the law should change with respect to felon voting rights,” Barrett noted. “Obviously, that’s a contested issue in some states that are considering it right now. And I have no view on that, and it wasn’t the subject of Kanter.”

While misleadingly portraying Barrett as untroubled by the consequences of felon disenfranchisement, Durbin himself seemed completely untroubled by the consequences of permanently disarming people without any evidence that they are prone to violence. That policy makes sense, he said, because distinguishing between violent and nonviolent felonies would be impractical (even though courts make that sort of distinction all the time, as Barrett pointed out). Yet the policy Durbin supports, like the one he opposes, is unjust and has a disproportionate racial impact, since one-third of African-American men have felony records, compared to 8 percent of the general population.

“Many felony voting bans were passed in the late 1860s and 1870s, when implementation of the 15th Amendment and its extension of voting rights to African Americans were ardently contested,” Durbin noted. “The felony conviction was used to disqualify African Americans from voting in the South and in many other places.” He said felon disenfranchisement reflects the “thinking in the 19th century that resulted in voter suppression and taking away the right to vote from millions of African Americans across this country,” which “still continues to this day.”

By the same token, the policy challenged by Kanter could be viewed as a continuation of 19th-century attempts to deprive African Americans of the right to arms—the right that Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of Dred Scott v. Sandford, warned they would be allowed to exercise if they were recognized as citizens. That right was crucial to blacks facing white supremacist terror and intimidation in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it was intertwined with the right to vote. During the civil rights movement, activists registering black voters in the South relied on firearms to defend themselves against racists who wanted to stop them.

While Durbin says “the right to vote should be given at least as much respect as any Second Amendment right,” the basic human right of self-preservation will strike many people as more important than the right to cast a ballot. You can’t vote if you’re dead.

Durbin views felon disenfranchisement as especially disturbing because it has a disproportionate impact on African Americans. Yet Durbin has no qualms about a policy that permanently deprives 7 million African-American men of the constitutional right to armed self-defense, even when they pose no plausible danger to the general public—including people who were convicted of violating drug laws that criminalize peaceful transactions between consenting adults. I don’t get it.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3dt3bvq
via IFTTT

The Media Does Not Want You To Read, Share, or Discuss The New York Post’s Hunter Biden Scoop

zumaglobalnine867553

On Wednesday, The New York Post published an attention-catching original report: “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad.” In the previously unreleased email, which was allegedly sent on April 17, 2015, an executive with Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company, thanks Hunter Biden for “giving an opportunity” to meet Joe Biden, according to The NY Post.

It’s a story that merits the attention of other journalists, political operatives, national security experts, and also the public at large—not least of all because there are serious questions about its accuracy, reliability, and sourcing. And yet many in the media are choosing not just to ignore the story, but to actively encourage others to suppress any discussion of it.

Indeed, two mainstream reporters who acknowledged (and criticized) the Post‘s scoop—The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman and Politico’s Jake Sherman—faced thunderous denunciation on Twitter from Democratic partisans simply for discussing the story. Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden accused Haberman of promoting disinformation, and New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg told Sherman that he was helping nefarious conservative activists “launder this bullshit into the news cycle.” Historian Kevin Kruse asked why they were “amplifying” the story.

Note that both Haberman and Sherman raised serious questions about the veracity of the story, questions that certainly deserve answers. According to The New York Post, the email was obtained from the hard drive of a computer that may or may not have belonged to Hunter Biden. Someone allegedly gave the laptop to a computer repair store owner in Delaware in 2019. The FBI took possession of the laptop in December 2019, according to The New York Post—but not before the store owner copied the hard drive and sent it to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for President Donald Trump and a central figure in the Trump-Ukraine-Biden kerfuffle. Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon then learned about the email and contacted The New York Post.

Giuliani and Bannon are political operatives with a long history of shady activity, so the fact that they were the intermediary sources for this story does raise red flags. But that doesn’t mean the story is untrue. For what it’s worth, The New York Post included photographs from the hard drive that allegedly confirms its authenticity. However, even if everything contained within the story turned out to be true, it still would not prove that the sought-after meeting with Joe Biden actually took place. A spokesperson for Biden said on Wednesday that according to Biden’s schedule, he never met with the Burisma official.

This is the work of journalism—to ask questions, to probe, to find and share the truth. Haberman and Sherman were right to let their audiences know that The New York Post story exists, and they were right to challenge it. Many others in the media apparently believe the public cannot be trusted with such a challenging article. They have not merely shamed people for sharing it online, but also want to make it difficult for people to read the report at all.

Facebook Communications Director Andy Stone, a former Democratic staffer, announced that the social media platform would limit the article’s distribution pending a fact-checker’s review. He directed users to Facebook policy, which states that “in many countries, including in the US, if we have signals that a piece of content is false, we temporarily reduce its distribution pending review by a third-party fact-checker.”

While Facebook is within its rights to take action against content it believes is factually misleading, this seems like a tough standard to enforce evenly. News articles in the mainstream press frequently contain information that is thinly or anonymously sourced, and sometimes proves to be inaccurate. It’s one thing for social media platforms to take swift action against viral content that is very obviously false or incendiary, like conspiracy theories about coronavirus miracle cures or voter fraud. It’s quite another for the platform to essentially make itself a gatekeeper of legitimate journalism, or a very selective media watchdog that appears to be more concerned about bad reporting when it comes from right-leaning outlets than left-leaning outlets, given the partisan leanings of social media company’s internal policy setters.

The obvious result will be a double standard, and an unsustainable one: The right will claim (correctly) that social media companies are biased against questionable conservative content, while the left will claim (also correctly) that plenty of misinformation eludes the moderators. Of course, the oft-proposed solution to the problems with platform content curation is to reform or repeal Section 230, which immunizes online platforms from some lawsuits. This idea is popular with everybody from Trump and Biden to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), even though the obvious result of removing tech platform’s liability protection would be even more aggressive moderation. New York Post op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari tweeted that Facebook’s handling of the Hunter Biden scoop makes the case for modifying Section 230, but without Section 230, Facebook would—for legal reasons—be even more reticent about letting users share unverified claims.

Such an outcome would be bad for a free and open society, for the same reason that it is wrong for the mainstream media to attempt to keep the public wholly ignorant of stories they would rather not tell. The information will get out, and its better for journalists to contextualize—to add to our understanding—rather than pretend it doesn’t exist.

In defending his decision to publish the Steele dossier, which contained unverified, dubious, and speculative information, then-BuzzFeed News Editor in Chief Ben Smith (now a media critic for The New York Times) wrote the following: “You trust us to give you the full story; we trust you to reckon with a messy, sometimes uncertain reality.” That’s a lesson the entire media should take to heart, and apply evenly, no matter the inconvenience of the narrative.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/34SFadq
via IFTTT

Amy Coney Barrett Testifies on the ACA Severability Case

Amy-Coney-Barrett-hearing-10-13-20-C-SPAN
Judge Amy Coney Barrett testifies at her Senate confirmation hearing.

 

In a post published yesterday, I explained why Amy Coney Barrett is unlikely to vote to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act in Texas v. California, the case on that subject currently before the Supreme Court. In that post, I also described the background of the case and the issues at stake, in some detail.

Yesterday and today, Judge Barrett answered a number of questions about the ACA at her confirmation hearings. What she said doesn’t definitively tip her hand on how she might vote. But it does further reinforce my impression that she is unlikely to give the plaintiff Republican states and the Trump administration what they want. Most notably, she confirmed that she had voted to strike down the residual individual mandate but also sever it from the rest of the ACA in a recent moot court on the subject:

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett said she did not strike down the Affordable Care Act (ACA) but did find its individual mandate unconstitutional in a recent moot court case, while stressing her actions in the moot court case did not actually reflect how she might rule on ObamaCare if confirmed to the high court….

“The vote was, in the panel, the majority said that the mandate was now a penalty and was unconstitutional but severable,” Coney testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, referencing a moot court case she participated in at William & Mary Law School. “I voted to say that it was unconstitutional but severable.”

Barrett stressed that the moot court was just a hypothetical exercise and does not necessarily reflect her actual views of the case. But it is still at least somewhat indicative.

In addition, Barrett repeatedly stressed that the case currently before the Supreme Court comes down to severability, which is a different issue from the constitutionality of the individual health insurance mandate (a question on which she had been critical of Chief Justice Roberts’ 2012 ruling that the mandate should be upheld because it could be interpreted as a tax). This distinction is a crucial one, and Barrett’s emphasis on it further reinforces the view that she is unlikely to strike down the ACA as a whole.

I am far from the only commentator to reach this conclusion about Barrett’s position on the ACA case. Indeed, this seems to be an emerging consensus among experts. Yesterday, prominent liberal constitutional law scholar Eric Segall (who is no fan of Barrett’s) wrote that he “agree[s] with my libertarian friend on this” (the friend in question is me). That is at least somewhat notable, because he and I don’t agree on very many other constitutional law issues.

Earlier today, famed liberal Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe tweeted that “[d]espite the great harm a Justice Coney Barrett will do, I predict she’ll join a 7-2 Supreme Court majority in holding the individual mandate severable from the rest of the ACA, including the protection of preexisting conditions. But she’ll join a 5-4 invalidation of the mandate.” I think the majority in favor of severability might well be even bigger than 7-2, and that the vote on invalidation of the mandate is likely to be 6-3 (with Roberts joining the other conservatives in holding that the residual mandate is now unconstitutional because it can no longer be considered a tax). But Tribe and I agree on the likely outcomes of the two parts of the case.

In my earlier post, I also explained why it’s highly unlikely that the plaintiffs will prevail on severability even if Barrett does vote in favor of their position. At least three of the other conservative justices signaled their hostility to that view in the recent robocall case, decided in June.

In my view a ruling striking down the residual individual mandate would be a significant decision enforcing constitutional limits on federal power. But it will have virtually no effect on the state of the ACA, given that the then-Republican controlled Congress rendered the mandate toothless in 2017. The fate of the ACA is what concerns the vast majority of other people interested in the case. ACA supporters should be happy to know that the law isn’t actually in real peril—at least not from this case.

Co-blogger Jonathan Adler points out that Barrett might potentially recuse herself from participating in the ACA case, because of her earlier involvement in the moot court on the subject. Unlike lower-court judges, Supreme Court justices have near-total discretion over recusal issues. I am skeptical that the moot court creates bias or conflict of interest sufficient to necessitate recusal. But I’m not an expert on recusal ethics, and therefore could be missing something here. If Barrett does recuse, she would, of course, have even less impact on the outcome of the case than I currently expect!

As I have emphasized previously, the history of ACA-related litigation is littered with failed expert predictions, including some of my own. In this instance, however, the evidence of the justices’ attitudes on severability is very strong, and the expert agreement on the subject cuts across ideological lines (which was not true in the debate over  most previous ACA cases).

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to complain about the rushed nature of this confirmation process (I share some of those concerns myself), and also plenty of room for disagreement about Barrett’s jurisprudence (a topic I plan to write more about later this week). But she is unlikely to vote to strike down all of the ACA, and even more unlikely to have a decisive impact on the resolution of that issue.

 

 

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/34QPMt6
via IFTTT

Interview with David Ignatius

In our latest episode I interview David Ignatius about the technology in his latest spy novel, The Paladin. Actually, while we do cover such tech issues as deepfakes, hacking back, Wikileaks, and internet journalism, the interview ranges more widely, from the steel industry of the 1970s, the roots of Donald Trump’s political worldview, and the surprisingly important role played in the Trump-Obama-Russia investigation by one of David Ignatius’s own opinion pieces.

Download the 333rd Episode (mp3)

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! Our thanks to Ken Weissman of Weissman Sound Design for the new theme music.

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/34VH2lz
via IFTTT

The Media Does Not Want You To Read, Share, or Discuss The New York Post’s Hunter Biden Scoop

zumaglobalnine867553

On Wednesday, The New York Post published an attention-catching original report: “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad.” In the previously unreleased email, which was allegedly sent on April 17, 2015, an executive with Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company, thanks Hunter Biden for “giving an opportunity” to meet Joe Biden, according to The NY Post.

It’s a story that merits the attention of other journalists, political operatives, national security experts, and also the public at large—not least of all because there are serious questions about its accuracy, reliability, and sourcing. And yet many in the media are choosing not just to ignore the story, but to actively encourage others to suppress any discussion of it.

Indeed, two mainstream reporters who acknowledged (and criticized) the Post‘s scoop—The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman and Politico’s Jake Sherman—faced thunderous denunciation on Twitter from Democratic partisans simply for discussing the story. Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden accused Haberman of promoting disinformation, and New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg told Sherman that he was helping nefarious conservative activists “launder this bullshit into the news cycle.” Historian Kevin Kruse asked why they were “amplifying” the story.

Note that both Haberman and Sherman raised serious questions about the veracity of the story, questions that certainly deserve answers. According to The New York Post, the email was obtained from the hard drive of a computer that may or may not have belonged to Hunter Biden. Someone allegedly gave the laptop to a computer repair store owner in Delaware in 2019. The FBI took possession of the laptop in December 2019, according to The New York Post—but not before the store owner copied the hard drive and sent it to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for President Donald Trump and a central figure in the Trump-Ukraine-Biden kerfuffle. Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon then learned about the email and contacted The New York Post.

Giuliani and Bannon are political operatives with a long history of shady activity, so the fact that they were the intermediary sources for this story does raise red flags. But that doesn’t mean the story is untrue. For what it’s worth, The New York Post included photographs from the hard drive that allegedly confirms its authenticity. However, even if everything contained within the story turned out to be true, it still would not prove that the sought-after meeting with Joe Biden actually took place. A spokesperson for Biden said on Wednesday that according to Biden’s schedule, he never met with the Burisma official.

This is the work of journalism—to ask questions, to probe, to find and share the truth. Haberman and Sherman were right to let their audiences know that The New York Post story exists, and they were right to challenge it. Many others in the media apparently believe the public cannot be trusted with such a challenging article. They have not merely shamed people for sharing it online, but also want to make it difficult for people to read the report at all.

Facebook Communications Director Andy Stone, a former Democratic staffer, announced that the social media platform would limit the article’s distribution pending a fact-checker’s review. He directed users to Facebook policy, which states that “in many countries, including in the US, if we have signals that a piece of content is false, we temporarily reduce its distribution pending review by a third-party fact-checker.”

While Facebook is within its rights to take action against content it believes is factually misleading, this seems like a tough standard to enforce evenly. News articles in the mainstream press frequently contain information that is thinly or anonymously sourced, and sometimes proves to be inaccurate. It’s one thing for social media platforms to take swift action against viral content that is very obviously false or incendiary, like conspiracy theories about coronavirus miracle cures or voter fraud. It’s quite another for the platform to essentially make itself a gatekeeper of legitimate journalism, or a very selective media watchdog that appears to be more concerned about bad reporting when it comes from right-leaning outlets than left-leaning outlets, given the partisan leanings of social media company’s internal policy setters.

The obvious result will be a double standard, and an unsustainable one: The right will claim (correctly) that social media companies are biased against questionable conservative content, while the left will claim (also correctly) that plenty of misinformation eludes the moderators. Of course, the oft-proposed solution to the problems with platform content curation is to reform or repeal Section 230, which immunizes online platforms from some lawsuits. This idea is popular with everybody from Trump and Biden to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), even though the obvious result of removing tech platform’s liability protection would be even more aggressive moderation. New York Post op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari tweeted that Facebook’s handling of the Hunter Biden scoop makes the case for modifying Section 230, but without Section 230, Facebook would—for legal reasons—be even more reticent about letting users share unverified claims.

Such an outcome would be bad for a free and open society, for the same reason that it is wrong for the mainstream media to attempt to keep the public wholly ignorant of stories they would rather not tell. The information will get out, and its better for journalists to contextualize—to add to our understanding—rather than pretend it doesn’t exist.

In defending his decision to publish the Steele dossier, which contained unverified, dubious, and speculative information, then-BuzzFeed News Editor in Chief Ben Smith (now a media critic for The New York Times) wrote the following: “You trust us to give you the full story; we trust you to reckon with a messy, sometimes uncertain reality.” That’s a lesson the entire media should take to heart, and apply evenly, no matter the inconvenience of the narrative.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/34SFadq
via IFTTT

Amy Coney Barrett Testifies on the ACA Severability Case

Amy-Coney-Barrett-hearing-10-13-20-C-SPAN
Judge Amy Coney Barrett testifies at her Senate confirmation hearing.

 

In a post published yesterday, I explained why Amy Coney Barrett is unlikely to vote to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act in Texas v. California, the case on that subject currently before the Supreme Court. In that post, I also described the background of the case and the issues at stake, in some detail.

Yesterday and today, Judge Barrett answered a number of questions about the ACA at her confirmation hearings. What she said doesn’t definitively tip her hand on how she might vote. But it does further reinforce my impression that she is unlikely to give the plaintiff Republican states and the Trump administration what they want. Most notably, she confirmed that she had voted to strike down the residual individual mandate but also sever it from the rest of the ACA in a recent moot court on the subject:

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett said she did not strike down the Affordable Care Act (ACA) but did find its individual mandate unconstitutional in a recent moot court case, while stressing her actions in the moot court case did not actually reflect how she might rule on ObamaCare if confirmed to the high court….

“The vote was, in the panel, the majority said that the mandate was now a penalty and was unconstitutional but severable,” Coney testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, referencing a moot court case she participated in at William & Mary Law School. “I voted to say that it was unconstitutional but severable.”

Barrett stressed that the moot court was just a hypothetical exercise and does not necessarily reflect her actual views of the case. But it is still at least somewhat indicative.

In addition, Barrett repeatedly stressed that the case currently before the Supreme Court comes down to severability, which is a different issue from the constitutionality of the individual health insurance mandate (a question on which she had been critical of Chief Justice Roberts’ 2012 ruling that the mandate should be upheld because it could be interpreted as a tax). This distinction is a crucial one, and Barrett’s emphasis on it further reinforces the view that she is unlikely to strike down the ACA as a whole.

I am far from the only commentator to reach this conclusion about Barrett’s position on the ACA case. Indeed, this seems to be an emerging consensus among experts. Yesterday, prominent liberal constitutional law scholar Eric Segall (who is no fan of Barrett’s) wrote that he “agree[s] with my libertarian friend on this” (the friend in question is me). That is at least somewhat notable, because he and I don’t agree on very many other constitutional law issues.

Earlier today, famed liberal Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe tweeted that “[d]espite the great harm a Justice Coney Barrett will do, I predict she’ll join a 7-2 Supreme Court majority in holding the individual mandate severable from the rest of the ACA, including the protection of preexisting conditions. But she’ll join a 5-4 invalidation of the mandate.” I think the majority in favor of severability might well be even bigger than 7-2, and that the vote on invalidation of the mandate is likely to be 6-3 (with Roberts joining the other conservatives in holding that the residual mandate is now unconstitutional because it can no longer be considered a tax). But Tribe and I agree on the likely outcomes of the two parts of the case.

In my earlier post, I also explained why it’s highly unlikely that the plaintiffs will prevail on severability even if Barrett does vote in favor of their position. At least three of the other conservative justices signaled their hostility to that view in the recent robocall case, decided in June.

In my view a ruling striking down the residual individual mandate would be a significant decision enforcing constitutional limits on federal power. But it will have virtually no effect on the state of the ACA, given that the then-Republican controlled Congress rendered the mandate toothless in 2017. The fate of the ACA is what concerns the vast majority of other people interested in the case. ACA supporters should be happy to know that the law isn’t actually in real peril—at least not from this case.

Co-blogger Jonathan Adler points out that Barrett might potentially recuse herself from participating in the ACA case, because of her earlier involvement in the moot court on the subject. Unlike lower-court judges, Supreme Court justices have near-total discretion over recusal issues. I am skeptical that the moot court creates bias or conflict of interest sufficient to necessitate recusal. But I’m not an expert on recusal ethics, and therefore could be missing something here. If Barrett does recuse, she would, of course, have even less impact on the outcome of the case than I currently expect!

As I have emphasized previously, the history of ACA-related litigation is littered with failed expert predictions, including some of my own. In this instance, however, the evidence of the justices’ attitudes on severability is very strong, and the expert agreement on the subject cuts across ideological lines (which was not true in the debate over  most previous ACA cases).

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to complain about the rushed nature of this confirmation process (I share some of those concerns myself), and also plenty of room for disagreement about Barrett’s jurisprudence (a topic I plan to write more about later this week). But she is unlikely to vote to strike down all of the ACA, and even more unlikely to have a decisive impact on the resolution of that issue.

 

 

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/34QPMt6
via IFTTT