Tag: posts

L.A. Suburban School District Forbids To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, and More in High School Readings

The L.A. Times (Dorany Pineda) reports:

During a virtual meeting on Sept. 9, middle and high school English teachers in the Burbank Unified School District received a bit of surprising news: Until further notice, they would not be allowed to teach some of the books on their curriculum.

Five novels had been challenged in Burbank: Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” Theodore Taylor’s “The Cay” and Mildred D. Taylor’s Newbery Medal-winning young-adult classic “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”

The challenges came from four parents (three of them Black) for alleged potential harm to the public-school district’s roughly 400 Black students [2.6% of the total enrollment]. All but “Huckleberry Finn” have been required reading in the BUSD….

And at its root, it stems from a painful personal story. Destiny Helligar, now 15 and in high school, recently told her mom about an incident that took place when she was a student at David Starr Jordan Middle School. According to Destiny’s mother, Carmenita Helligar, a white student approached Destiny in math class using a racial taunt including the N-word, which he’d learned from reading “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”

Another time, a different boy went up to Destiny and other students and said: “My family used to own your family and now I want a dollar from each of you for the week.” When the principal was notified, the boy’s excuse was that he had read it in class—also in “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.” …

[T]he parents’ objections are not merely over language. They also worry about the way these books portray Black history and the lessons they might impart to modern readers.

“The Cay” and “Huckleberry Finn” feature white children learning from the suffering and wisdom of older Black men. “To Kill a Mockingbird” famously stars Atticus Finch, a white lawyer who defends a Black man accused of raping a white woman. Its white-savior story line reads much differently nearly 60 years after its publication.

“Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” may have instigated Helligar’s complaint, but it is something of an outlier. Narrated by a young Black girl growing up in the South during the Great Depression and Jim Crow era, it’s the only novel on the list by a Black author….

I don’t think the decision violates the First Amendment. A public school district may decide what to include in its curriculum, and that decision could be made by the school board rather than by teachers. Public universities have a long tradition of faculty control over what is taught and how it is taught, and various court cases recognize that; but in public K-12 school, the tradition is of administrative control, and court cases recognize that, too.

Nonetheless, these particular decisions strike me as unwise and narrow-minded, and they show just how broad a range of great literature can be excluded. The objection isn’t just that the books include racial slurs (though I don’t think books should be excluded for that). It’s that some sophomoric students may read a book about slavery and use it to insult the descendant of slaves; how are you going to avoid that by excluding books, unless you exclude all books that mention American slavery? It’s that the books “feature white children learning from the suffering and wisdom of older Black men”; but don’t we want all children to learn to be open to the wisdom of people from all races? It’s that books show whites trying to help blacks who are being oppressed; but aren’t we trying to teach members of majority groups (and, I hope, of minority groups) that they should stand up for oppressed minorities? A pretty poor move by the School District, it seems to me.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3kqbgD7
via IFTTT

L.A. Suburban School District Forbids To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, and More in High School Readings

The L.A. Times (Dorany Pineda) reports:

During a virtual meeting on Sept. 9, middle and high school English teachers in the Burbank Unified School District received a bit of surprising news: Until further notice, they would not be allowed to teach some of the books on their curriculum.

Five novels had been challenged in Burbank: Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” Theodore Taylor’s “The Cay” and Mildred D. Taylor’s Newbery Medal-winning young-adult classic “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”

The challenges came from four parents (three of them Black) for alleged potential harm to the public-school district’s roughly 400 Black students [2.6% of the total enrollment]. All but “Huckleberry Finn” have been required reading in the BUSD….

And at its root, it stems from a painful personal story. Destiny Helligar, now 15 and in high school, recently told her mom about an incident that took place when she was a student at David Starr Jordan Middle School. According to Destiny’s mother, Carmenita Helligar, a white student approached Destiny in math class using a racial taunt including the N-word, which he’d learned from reading “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”

Another time, a different boy went up to Destiny and other students and said: “My family used to own your family and now I want a dollar from each of you for the week.” When the principal was notified, the boy’s excuse was that he had read it in class—also in “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.” …

[T]he parents’ objections are not merely over language. They also worry about the way these books portray Black history and the lessons they might impart to modern readers.

“The Cay” and “Huckleberry Finn” feature white children learning from the suffering and wisdom of older Black men. “To Kill a Mockingbird” famously stars Atticus Finch, a white lawyer who defends a Black man accused of raping a white woman. Its white-savior story line reads much differently nearly 60 years after its publication.

“Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” may have instigated Helligar’s complaint, but it is something of an outlier. Narrated by a young Black girl growing up in the South during the Great Depression and Jim Crow era, it’s the only novel on the list by a Black author….

I don’t think the decision violates the First Amendment. A public school district may decide what to include in its curriculum, and that decision could be made by the school board rather than by teachers. Public universities have a long tradition of faculty control over what is taught and how it is taught, and various court cases recognize that; but in public K-12 school, the tradition is of administrative control, and court cases recognize that, too.

Nonetheless, these particular decisions strike me as unwise and narrow-minded, and they show just how broad a range of great literature can be excluded. The objection isn’t just that the books include racial slurs (though I don’t think books should be excluded for that). It’s that some sophomoric students may read a book about slavery and use it to insult the descendant of slaves; how are you going to avoid that by excluding books, unless you exclude all books that mention American slavery? It’s that the books “feature white children learning from the suffering and wisdom of older Black men”; but don’t we want all children to learn to be open to the wisdom of people from all races? It’s that books show whites trying to help blacks who are being oppressed; but aren’t we trying to teach members of majority groups (and, I hope, of minority groups) that they should stand up for oppressed minorities? A pretty poor move by the School District, it seems to me.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3kqbgD7
via IFTTT

Pennsylvania Court Orders That Certain Ballots May Not Legally Be Counted

The order is here (Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Boockvar):

Respondent Kathy Boockvar, in her official capacity as Secretary of the Commonwealth, lacked statutory authority to issue the November 1, 2020, guidance to Respondents County Boards of Elections insofar as that guidance purported to change the deadline in … the Pennsylvania Election Code … for certain electors to verify proof of identification ….

{In Pennsylvania Democratic Party v. Boockvar, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court exercised its extraordinary jurisdiction to adopt a three-day extension of the received-by deadline for absentee and mail-in ballots for the 2020 General Election, thereby allowing Respondents County Boards of Elections to count all such ballots that were postmarked by 8:00 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, 2020, and received by the County Boards no later than 5:00 p.m. Friday, November 6, 2020.

Secretary Boockvar’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s decision as requiring a corresponding three-day extension of the proof of identification deadline highlights the cascading effect that altering one deadline in the Election Code can have on other statutory deadlines. Mindful of this, the petitioners in Pennsylvania Democratic Party, i.e. , the Pennsylvania Democratic Party and several Democratic elected officials and candidates, asserted that the Supreme Court “has the authority to alter [post-election] deadlines to be consistent with the relief granted” in that case. The petitioners’ observation persuades the Court that an amendment of the Supreme Court’s order is necessary to achieve Secretary Boockvar’s objective.}

[T]he Court hereby ORDERS that Respondents County Boards of Elections are enjoined from counting any ballots that have been segregated pursuant to paragraph 1 of this Court’s order dated November 5, 2020 ….

Here is the explanation from Ronn Blitzer (Fox News):;

A Pennsylvania judge ruled in favor of the Trump campaign Thursday, ordering that the state may not count ballots where the voters needed to provide proof of identification and failed to do so by Nov. 9.

State law said that voters have until six days after the election—this year that was Nov. 9—to cure problems regarding a lack of proof of identification. After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots could be accepted three days after Election Day, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar submitted guidance that said proof of identification could be provided up until Nov. 12, which is six days from the ballot acceptance deadline. That guidance was issued two days before Election Day….

[The court’s decision] was in line with the Trump campaign’s argument, which was that there was no basis in the state’s law to extend the identification deadline, and that Boockvar did not have the power to unilaterally change it.

I don’t know enough about Pennsylvania law to opine on whether the decision is correct; and I can’t speak about whether this order, coupled with any other requests that might be pending, would affect the bottom-line result in the election. But I thought readers might be interested in seeing the order, so I’m passing it along.

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

Foreign Affairs Was Key to the Latino Vote in Florida

latinosfortrump_1161x653

For Republicans, catering to South Florida’s Latino vote used to mean reaching out to the Cuban community in Miami-Dade County. This required a candidate to visit Café Versailles on Calle 8, whose denizens tend to like a cortadito—the Cuban version of an espresso—and a hard line against the regime established by Fidel Castro. 

In 2020, however, it became apparent to both Republicans and Democrats that the Cubans aren’t the only game in town.

Colombian Americans are now the second-largest Hispanic community in Miami-Dade County, according to the County’s Commission, with 114,701 residents in the 2010 Census. In the state of Florida, Colombians rank third behind Cubans and Puerto Ricans in terms of Latin American voter registration according to Equis Research. Venezuelan-Americans rank seventh in terms of Florida voters of Latin American descent, but, as the Miami Herald reports, their numbers increased 352 percent nationwide from 2000 to 2017. As the Democrats in particular learned last week, these other Latin American blocs tend to dislike a lurch toward socialism as much as any long-established Cuban emigré.

Thus, it was easy enough for Donald Trump to appeal to both communities in Florida by assailing “Castro-Chavismo.” Latin American progressives despise and ridicule this term as an electioneering bogeyman, yet the Cuban regime and the cadre that misrules Venezuela act as one: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is in power thanks to help from a ruthless Cuban security apparatus, and Cuba’s economy is kept afloat with Venezuelan oil subsidies. 

What’s more, Fidel Castro did have clear regional ambitions. It was no fluke that his henchman, Ernesto “El Che” Guevara, was gunned down while attempting to spur a socialist revolution in Bolivia. Castro eyed Venezuela’s oil wealth since he took power in Cuba, and he mentored former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at least since 1994. Once he controlled Venezuela’s vast resources, Chávez followed Castro’s lead and intervened in almost every country in the hemisphere under an “anti-imperialist” banner. To label such a project of regional dominance with its architects’ surnames is accurate. 

Meanwhile, the degree to which Trump exploited current Colombian politics in order to gain votes in Florida was remarkable. At a rally in Jacksonville on September 25th, for instance, Trump attacked “the Obama-Biden-Santos deal with Colombian drug cartels,” which he described as “a surrender to the narco-terrorists.” He was referring to the supposed peace deal between former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Colombia’s communist FARC guerrillas, widely acknowledged as the world’s largest drug trafficking organization.

The issue is contentious because Santos, who began negotiating with the FARC soon after taking office in 2010, declared a referendum in 2016 where he presented voters with the chance to approve a peace deal with the FARC. Both Santos and many pollsters assumed that a vast majority of Colombians would ratify his deal, which was hammered out in Cuba—with Venezuela as an “accompanying country”—and included 10 non-elected seats for FARC leaders in Colombia’s Congress. On October 2nd of that year, however, 50 percent of voters rejected the Santos-FARC deal. The former president proceeded to ram the agreement through Congress, where he held a sizable majority.

Since then, the FARC themselves have lent further blows to the deal’s questionable democratic legitimacy. Ivan Marquez and Jesus Santrich, two of the FARC’s top negotiators who met with the Santos government in Havana, were accused of trafficking drugs after the agreement was reached. Instead of taking up their free seats in Congress, they went into hiding and renewed their war against the Colombian government. Far from an exception, though, Marquez and Santrich are part of the 4,600 FARC “dissidents” who are still up in arms according to the Colombian Defense Ministry. As some critics of the agreement maintained during the referendum campaign, the Santos-FARC deal wasn’t about peace; it was about power and impunity for guerrilla bosses. 

Cannily, Trump linked the Obama-Biden administration to the FARC deal because one of its crucial components was support from the U.S. government. This was in line with Obama’s main priority in Latin America, namely normalizing relations with the Cuban regime, which was the main broker between Santos and the FARC. Since Venezuela was also involved in the negotiations, the Obama and Santos administrations legitimized Nicolás Maduro’s autocracy just when its methods of repression were becoming most brutal. In turn, Trump’s critique of the FARC deal buttressed his hard stance against both Cuba and Venezuela. In Florida, this combination proved politically successful.

Colombia’s political scandal du jour also lent Trump an opportunity. On August 4, the Colombian Supreme Court put former president Alvaro Uribe under house arrest during an ongoing investigation into his alleged witness tampering. Uribe, who governed Colombia from 2002 to 2010, is best known for leading a successful military onslaught against the FARC when they were at the height of their power. Although often labeled a “neoliberal” in the international press, Uribe’s policies combine elements of social and Christian democracy with heavy doses of protectionism and state meddling in the economy. The former president himself denounces “neoliberalism” for purportedly neglecting the community; in its stead, he promotes what he calls the “communitarian state,” a pleonasm that justifies massive redistribution schemes.

Despite their ideological affinities, the Colombian left has never forgiven Uribe for combating the FARC and standing up to Hugo Chávez. Although his approval ratings have fallen steeply as of late in Colombia, he remains popular among expats in the United States. While Uribe was maneuvering his way out of house arrest by resigning from the Colombian Senate, which meant his case passed from the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction to that of the Attorney General (who was conveniently named by the current pro-Uribe president), Miami-Dade County commissioners decided to rename 117th Avenue S.E. “Alvaro Uribe Way.” The former president, argued the Commission, “has made direct, significant lifetime contributions to (the Colombian American) community.”

Vice President Mike Pence echoed this sentiment on August 14, when he praised Uribe as a hero and called for the Colombian authorities to allow him to “defend himself as a free man.” On October 10, when a municipal judge ruled that Uribe should be free while he stands trial, Trump himself congratulated him on Twitter, where he lauded Uribe as “an ally of our Country in the fight against CASTRO-CHAVISMO.” Trump also stated that he would “always stand with our Colombian friends!”

Unsurprisingly, leftist politicians in Colombia proceeded to denounce American interventionism in national politics, although many of them soon intervened in the U.S. election by openly supporting Biden. Claudia Lopez, the Green Party mayor of Bogota, went as far as declaring “we won” when the media announced Biden’s victory. In turn, high profile “Uribista” politicians campaigned publicly for Trump. Juan David Vélez, a member of Uribe’s party who represents Colombians living abroad in the Colombian House of Representatives, is a dual citizen who voted for Trump and promoted his reelection, thus highlighting how blurred the boundaries of national politics have become. Perhaps ironically, the Trump camp appeared to benefit a good deal from porous borders. 

On October 7, the Biden campaign made a direct appeal to the Colombian American vote when their candidate penned an op-ed in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Colombia, Biden assured, “is the keystone of U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Biden also emphasized his support in the Senate for Plan Colombia, a military aid program launched under the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations in order to fend off the FARC. This message was ineffective, not least because of the recent rise of an avowedly socialist wing within the Democratic Party.

The Washington Post‘s Lizette Alvarez attributes Trump’s gains in Miami-Dade County, where he increased his share of the 2016 vote by 23 percentage points, to his tough talk against Maduro and his message “that a vote for Biden was a vote for the hardcore, liberty-stealing, privacy-filching socialism they had fled.” But the result might also reveal weaknesses in the broader left-wing narrative beyond the attempt to sell collectivist policies to those who escaped their devastation. 

In the Colombian case in particular, race-obsessed politics falls flat. In the territory that became Colombia, historian David Bushnell wrote, an “extensive assimilation” of indigenous people into the Spanish colonial structure “categorically reduced a potential obstacle for national integration.” Since the rise of its independence movement, the country’s politics has created strong divisions along mostly ideological and sometimes religious lines, but seldom if ever racial ones.

Respice polum (“look to the north”), former Colombian president Marco Fidel Suarez (1918–1921) advised his countrymen, a reference to the growing power and influence of the United States. If the Latino vote is to determine America’s future, it might help both parties to look southward and attempt to understand the people they want to sway on their own terms.

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

Pennsylvania Court Orders That Certain Ballots May Not Legally Be Counted

The order is here (Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Boockvar):

Respondent Kathy Boockvar, in her official capacity as Secretary of the Commonwealth, lacked statutory authority to issue the November 1, 2020, guidance to Respondents County Boards of Elections insofar as that guidance purported to change the deadline in … the Pennsylvania Election Code … for certain electors to verify proof of identification ….

{In Pennsylvania Democratic Party v. Boockvar, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court exercised its extraordinary jurisdiction to adopt a three-day extension of the received-by deadline for absentee and mail-in ballots for the 2020 General Election, thereby allowing Respondents County Boards of Elections to count all such ballots that were postmarked by 8:00 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, 2020, and received by the County Boards no later than 5:00 p.m. Friday, November 6, 2020.

Secretary Boockvar’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s decision as requiring a corresponding three-day extension of the proof of identification deadline highlights the cascading effect that altering one deadline in the Election Code can have on other statutory deadlines. Mindful of this, the petitioners in Pennsylvania Democratic Party, i.e. , the Pennsylvania Democratic Party and several Democratic elected officials and candidates, asserted that the Supreme Court “has the authority to alter [post-election] deadlines to be consistent with the relief granted” in that case. The petitioners’ observation persuades the Court that an amendment of the Supreme Court’s order is necessary to achieve Secretary Boockvar’s objective.}

[T]he Court hereby ORDERS that Respondents County Boards of Elections are enjoined from counting any ballots that have been segregated pursuant to paragraph 1 of this Court’s order dated November 5, 2020 ….

Here is the explanation from Ronn Blitzer (Fox News):;

A Pennsylvania judge ruled in favor of the Trump campaign Thursday, ordering that the state may not count ballots where the voters needed to provide proof of identification and failed to do so by Nov. 9.

State law said that voters have until six days after the election—this year that was Nov. 9—to cure problems regarding a lack of proof of identification. After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots could be accepted three days after Election Day, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar submitted guidance that said proof of identification could be provided up until Nov. 12, which is six days from the ballot acceptance deadline. That guidance was issued two days before Election Day….

[The court’s decision] was in line with the Trump campaign’s argument, which was that there was no basis in the state’s law to extend the identification deadline, and that Boockvar did not have the power to unilaterally change it.

I don’t know enough about Pennsylvania law to opine on whether the decision is correct; and I can’t speak about whether this order, coupled with any other requests that might be pending, would affect the bottom-line result in the election. But I thought readers might be interested in seeing the order, so I’m passing it along.

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

Foreign Affairs Was Key to the Latino Vote in Florida

latinosfortrump_1161x653

For Republicans, catering to South Florida’s Latino vote used to mean reaching out to the Cuban community in Miami-Dade County. This required a candidate to visit Café Versailles on Calle 8, whose denizens tend to like a cortadito—the Cuban version of an espresso—and a hard line against the regime established by Fidel Castro. 

In 2020, however, it became apparent to both Republicans and Democrats that the Cubans aren’t the only game in town.

Colombian Americans are now the second-largest Hispanic community in Miami-Dade County, according to the County’s Commission, with 114,701 residents in the 2010 Census. In the state of Florida, Colombians rank third behind Cubans and Puerto Ricans in terms of Latin American voter registration according to Equis Research. Venezuelan-Americans rank seventh in terms of Florida voters of Latin American descent, but, as the Miami Herald reports, their numbers increased 352 percent nationwide from 2000 to 2017. As the Democrats in particular learned last week, these other Latin American blocs tend to dislike a lurch toward socialism as much as any long-established Cuban emigré.

Thus, it was easy enough for Donald Trump to appeal to both communities in Florida by assailing “Castro-Chavismo.” Latin American progressives despise and ridicule this term as an electioneering bogeyman, yet the Cuban regime and the cadre that misrules Venezuela act as one: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is in power thanks to help from a ruthless Cuban security apparatus, and Cuba’s economy is kept afloat with Venezuelan oil subsidies. 

What’s more, Fidel Castro did have clear regional ambitions. It was no fluke that his henchman, Ernesto “El Che” Guevara, was gunned down while attempting to spur a socialist revolution in Bolivia. Castro eyed Venezuela’s oil wealth since he took power in Cuba, and he mentored former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at least since 1994. Once he controlled Venezuela’s vast resources, Chávez followed Castro’s lead and intervened in almost every country in the hemisphere under an “anti-imperialist” banner. To label such a project of regional dominance with its architects’ surnames is accurate. 

Meanwhile, the degree to which Trump exploited current Colombian politics in order to gain votes in Florida was remarkable. At a rally in Jacksonville on September 25th, for instance, Trump attacked “the Obama-Biden-Santos deal with Colombian drug cartels,” which he described as “a surrender to the narco-terrorists.” He was referring to the supposed peace deal between former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Colombia’s communist FARC guerrillas, widely acknowledged as the world’s largest drug trafficking organization.

The issue is contentious because Santos, who began negotiating with the FARC soon after taking office in 2010, declared a referendum in 2016 where he presented voters with the chance to approve a peace deal with the FARC. Both Santos and many pollsters assumed that a vast majority of Colombians would ratify his deal, which was hammered out in Cuba—with Venezuela as an “accompanying country”—and included 10 non-elected seats for FARC leaders in Colombia’s Congress. On October 2nd of that year, however, 50 percent of voters rejected the Santos-FARC deal. The former president proceeded to ram the agreement through Congress, where he held a sizable majority.

Since then, the FARC themselves have lent further blows to the deal’s questionable democratic legitimacy. Ivan Marquez and Jesus Santrich, two of the FARC’s top negotiators who met with the Santos government in Havana, were accused of trafficking drugs after the agreement was reached. Instead of taking up their free seats in Congress, they went into hiding and renewed their war against the Colombian government. Far from an exception, though, Marquez and Santrich are part of the 4,600 FARC “dissidents” who are still up in arms according to the Colombian Defense Ministry. As some critics of the agreement maintained during the referendum campaign, the Santos-FARC deal wasn’t about peace; it was about power and impunity for guerrilla bosses. 

Cannily, Trump linked the Obama-Biden administration to the FARC deal because one of its crucial components was support from the U.S. government. This was in line with Obama’s main priority in Latin America, namely normalizing relations with the Cuban regime, which was the main broker between Santos and the FARC. Since Venezuela was also involved in the negotiations, the Obama and Santos administrations legitimized Nicolás Maduro’s autocracy just when its methods of repression were becoming most brutal. In turn, Trump’s critique of the FARC deal buttressed his hard stance against both Cuba and Venezuela. In Florida, this combination proved politically successful.

Colombia’s political scandal du jour also lent Trump an opportunity. On August 4, the Colombian Supreme Court put former president Alvaro Uribe under house arrest during an ongoing investigation into his alleged witness tampering. Uribe, who governed Colombia from 2002 to 2010, is best known for leading a successful military onslaught against the FARC when they were at the height of their power. Although often labeled a “neoliberal” in the international press, Uribe’s policies combine elements of social and Christian democracy with heavy doses of protectionism and state meddling in the economy. The former president himself denounces “neoliberalism” for purportedly neglecting the community; in its stead, he promotes what he calls the “communitarian state,” a pleonasm that justifies massive redistribution schemes.

Despite their ideological affinities, the Colombian left has never forgiven Uribe for combating the FARC and standing up to Hugo Chávez. Although his approval ratings have fallen steeply as of late in Colombia, he remains popular among expats in the United States. While Uribe was maneuvering his way out of house arrest by resigning from the Colombian Senate, which meant his case passed from the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction to that of the Attorney General (who was conveniently named by the current pro-Uribe president), Miami-Dade County commissioners decided to rename 117th Avenue S.E. “Alvaro Uribe Way.” The former president, argued the Commission, “has made direct, significant lifetime contributions to (the Colombian American) community.”

Vice President Mike Pence echoed this sentiment on August 14, when he praised Uribe as a hero and called for the Colombian authorities to allow him to “defend himself as a free man.” On October 10, when a municipal judge ruled that Uribe should be free while he stands trial, Trump himself congratulated him on Twitter, where he lauded Uribe as “an ally of our Country in the fight against CASTRO-CHAVISMO.” Trump also stated that he would “always stand with our Colombian friends!”

Unsurprisingly, leftist politicians in Colombia proceeded to denounce American interventionism in national politics, although many of them soon intervened in the U.S. election by openly supporting Biden. Claudia Lopez, the Green Party mayor of Bogota, went as far as declaring “we won” when the media announced Biden’s victory. In turn, high profile “Uribista” politicians campaigned publicly for Trump. Juan David Vélez, a member of Uribe’s party who represents Colombians living abroad in the Colombian House of Representatives, is a dual citizen who voted for Trump and promoted his reelection, thus highlighting how blurred the boundaries of national politics have become. Perhaps ironically, the Trump camp appeared to benefit a good deal from porous borders. 

On October 7, the Biden campaign made a direct appeal to the Colombian American vote when their candidate penned an op-ed in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Colombia, Biden assured, “is the keystone of U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Biden also emphasized his support in the Senate for Plan Colombia, a military aid program launched under the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations in order to fend off the FARC. This message was ineffective, not least because of the recent rise of an avowedly socialist wing within the Democratic Party.

The Washington Post‘s Lizette Alvarez attributes Trump’s gains in Miami-Dade County, where he increased his share of the 2016 vote by 23 percentage points, to his tough talk against Maduro and his message “that a vote for Biden was a vote for the hardcore, liberty-stealing, privacy-filching socialism they had fled.” But the result might also reveal weaknesses in the broader left-wing narrative beyond the attempt to sell collectivist policies to those who escaped their devastation. 

In the Colombian case in particular, race-obsessed politics falls flat. In the territory that became Colombia, historian David Bushnell wrote, an “extensive assimilation” of indigenous people into the Spanish colonial structure “categorically reduced a potential obstacle for national integration.” Since the rise of its independence movement, the country’s politics has created strong divisions along mostly ideological and sometimes religious lines, but seldom if ever racial ones.

Respice polum (“look to the north”), former Colombian president Marco Fidel Suarez (1918–1921) advised his countrymen, a reference to the growing power and influence of the United States. If the Latino vote is to determine America’s future, it might help both parties to look southward and attempt to understand the people they want to sway on their own terms.

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

Department of Energy Rolls Back Obama’s Dishwasher Restrictions

dpaphotosfour159290

President Donald Trump has scored a win against regulations that limit how much water a dishwasher can use—but those reforms could get scrubbed away by President-elect Joe Biden.

In October, Trump’s Department of Energy finalized a rule establishing a new product class for residential dishwashers that will have a normal cycle time of up to one hour and that can use five gallons of water per cycle. Those rules effectively roll back an Obama-era rule limiting standard dishwashers to use no more than 3.1 gallons of water per cycle.

That limit forced dishwasher companies to adjust their products’ cycle lengths. And the supposedly more efficient but less useful dishwashers have been a punchline at Trump’s rallies for years.

“Anybody have a new dishwasher?” Trump asked the audience at a rally in January. “I’m sorry for that, it’s worthless. They give you so little water….You end up using it 10 times…then you take them out and do them the old-fashioned way, right?”

It’s probably been a long time since the president used a dishwasher or did his dishes “the old-fashioned way,” but Trump’s complaints reflect a frustrating reality. According to data from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a pro-market think tank, the average dishwasher cycle time has jumped from the one-hour cycle that was common a decade ago to more than two hours today.

The tighter rules didn’t lead to energy savings for customers. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers estimated that they actually increased water consumption by 63 billion gallons, as households would have to run their dishwashers multiple cycles, or pre-rinse their dishes by hand, in order to get dishes actually clean.

Under the new rules finalized last month, consumers will have more options. The upcoming generation of dishwashers will take less time to get dishes clean, and they’ll actually get those dishes clean in the first place. As The Wall Street Journal notes, this isn’t “peace in the Middle East or a Covid-19 vaccine.” But it is the sort of rule-making that Americans should want from Washington.

Unfortunately, the new rules may not last. While the incoming administration has been vague about which deregulatory efforts they intend to undo, they have spoken in favor of tightening environmental regulations—and the new dishwasher rules could be a casualty.

If so, that’ll be bad news for consumers. People should also be able to buy the products that best suits them.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/32Gf2lP
via IFTTT

Trump v. CNN Libel Suit Dismissed for Now

From today’s decision by Judge Michael L. Brown in Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. CNN Broadcasting, Inc.:

On June 13, 2019, CNN contributor Larry Noble published an article entitled “Soliciting dirt on your opponents from a foreign government is a crime. Mueller should have charged Trump campaign officials with it.” After discussing Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, President Trump’s response to the investigation, and subsequent statements by President Trump, Rudy Giuliani (one of President Trump’s attorneys), and Jared Kushner (President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor) about potential (or hypothetical) involvement by foreign governments in the 2020 election, Mr. Noble wrote: “The Trump campaign assessed the potential risks and benefits of again seeking Russia’s help in 2020 and has decided to leave that option on the table.”

The Trump campaign sued for libel; the judge agreed that the statement was a factual claim, not opinion, and thus potentially actionable, but held that the campaign didn’t adequately allege “actual malice,” which in libel law means that the statement was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

Most of the allegations in the complaint regarding actual malice are conclusory. Plaintiff, for example, alleges in a purely conclusory manner that Defendants “clearly had a malicious motive” and “knowingly disregarded all … information when it published the Defamatory Article.” The complaint’s allegation that Defendants were “aware at the time of publication” that the Statement was false due to “[e]xtensive public information” is also conclusory and without factual support. {Even so, the Supreme Court has held that “mere proof of failure to investigate, without more, cannot establish reckless disregard for the truth.} Allegations such as these amount to little more than “[t]hreadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements,” which are insufficient to support a cause of action.

Plaintiff’s only other allegation of actual malice is that Mr. Noble had “a record of malice and bias against the President” as evidenced by a tweet and previous articles he had written. In the tweet, Mr. Noble wrote: “Trump cheats and lies, and when caught, lies again and claims the right to make the rules. He claims defeats as victories, takes credit for anyone’s success and blames his failures on others ….”

The Supreme Court has emphasized “that the actual malice standard is not satisfied merely through a showing of ill will or ‘malice’ in the ordinary sense of the term.” The tweet might show Mr. Noble’s ill will towards the President, but it fails to plead actual malice in the constitutional sense—that is, it does not show Mr. Noble made the Statement with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false.

In the previous articles, Mr. Noble “accus[ed] the President of criminal activity[] and of campaign finance and ethics violations.” Plaintiff argues this is sufficient because [Palin v. New York Times Co. (2d Cir. 2019)] held “that actual malice could be proven by … the New York Times’ prior stories which showed that it was aware of the true facts, but published the false facts in the piece at issue, in reckless disregard for the truth.” That is not the case here.

In Palin, the prior articles directly related to the topic of the defamatory statement at issue. Here, however, the prior articles allegedly relate to criminal activity and campaign finance/ethics violations. They cover different topics than the Statement, meaning the prior articles did not touch directly on whether Plaintiff “assessed the potential risks and benefits of again seeking Russia’s help in 2020” and whether Plaintiff “decided to leave that option on the table.” The prior articles mentioned in the complaint simply do not show or suggest Mr. Noble “was aware of the true facts” regarding the Statement and published false facts in reckless disregard of the truth. For these reasons, Plaintiff did not adequately plead that the Statement was published with actual malice.

The Court, however, allows Plaintiff the opportunity to file an amended complaint.

Thanks to Prof. Enrique Armijo for the pointer.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3pmMB63
via IFTTT

Department of Energy Rolls Back Obama’s Dishwasher Restrictions

dpaphotosfour159290

President Donald Trump has scored a win against regulations that limit how much water a dishwasher can use—but those reforms could get scrubbed away by President-elect Joe Biden.

In October, Trump’s Department of Energy finalized a rule establishing a new product class for residential dishwashers that will have a normal cycle time of up to one hour and that can use five gallons of water per cycle. Those rules effectively roll back an Obama-era rule limiting standard dishwashers to use no more than 3.1 gallons of water per cycle.

That limit forced dishwasher companies to adjust their products’ cycle lengths. And the supposedly more efficient but less useful dishwashers have been a punchline at Trump’s rallies for years.

“Anybody have a new dishwasher?” Trump asked the audience at a rally in January. “I’m sorry for that, it’s worthless. They give you so little water….You end up using it 10 times…then you take them out and do them the old-fashioned way, right?”

It’s probably been a long time since the president used a dishwasher or did his dishes “the old-fashioned way,” but Trump’s complaints reflect a frustrating reality. According to data from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a pro-market think tank, the average dishwasher cycle time has jumped from the one-hour cycle that was common a decade ago to more than two hours today.

The tighter rules didn’t lead to energy savings for customers. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers estimated that they actually increased water consumption by 63 billion gallons, as households would have to run their dishwashers multiple cycles, or pre-rinse their dishes by hand, in order to get dishes actually clean.

Under the new rules finalized last month, consumers will have more options. The upcoming generation of dishwashers will take less time to get dishes clean, and they’ll actually get those dishes clean in the first place. As The Wall Street Journal notes, this isn’t “peace in the Middle East or a Covid-19 vaccine.” But it is the sort of rule-making that Americans should want from Washington.

Unfortunately, the new rules may not last. While the incoming administration has been vague about which deregulatory efforts they intend to undo, they have spoken in favor of tightening environmental regulations—and the new dishwasher rules could be a casualty.

If so, that’ll be bad news for consumers. People should also be able to buy the products that best suits them.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/32Gf2lP
via IFTTT

Trump v. CNN Libel Suit Dismissed for Now

From today’s decision by Judge Michael L. Brown in Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. CNN Broadcasting, Inc.:

On June 13, 2019, CNN contributor Larry Noble published an article entitled “Soliciting dirt on your opponents from a foreign government is a crime. Mueller should have charged Trump campaign officials with it.” After discussing Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, President Trump’s response to the investigation, and subsequent statements by President Trump, Rudy Giuliani (one of President Trump’s attorneys), and Jared Kushner (President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor) about potential (or hypothetical) involvement by foreign governments in the 2020 election, Mr. Noble wrote: “The Trump campaign assessed the potential risks and benefits of again seeking Russia’s help in 2020 and has decided to leave that option on the table.”

The Trump campaign sued for libel; the judge agreed that the statement was a factual claim, not opinion, and thus potentially actionable, but held that the campaign didn’t adequately allege “actual malice,” which in libel law means that the statement was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

Most of the allegations in the complaint regarding actual malice are conclusory. Plaintiff, for example, alleges in a purely conclusory manner that Defendants “clearly had a malicious motive” and “knowingly disregarded all … information when it published the Defamatory Article.” The complaint’s allegation that Defendants were “aware at the time of publication” that the Statement was false due to “[e]xtensive public information” is also conclusory and without factual support. {Even so, the Supreme Court has held that “mere proof of failure to investigate, without more, cannot establish reckless disregard for the truth.} Allegations such as these amount to little more than “[t]hreadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements,” which are insufficient to support a cause of action.

Plaintiff’s only other allegation of actual malice is that Mr. Noble had “a record of malice and bias against the President” as evidenced by a tweet and previous articles he had written. In the tweet, Mr. Noble wrote: “Trump cheats and lies, and when caught, lies again and claims the right to make the rules. He claims defeats as victories, takes credit for anyone’s success and blames his failures on others ….”

The Supreme Court has emphasized “that the actual malice standard is not satisfied merely through a showing of ill will or ‘malice’ in the ordinary sense of the term.” The tweet might show Mr. Noble’s ill will towards the President, but it fails to plead actual malice in the constitutional sense—that is, it does not show Mr. Noble made the Statement with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false.

In the previous articles, Mr. Noble “accus[ed] the President of criminal activity[] and of campaign finance and ethics violations.” Plaintiff argues this is sufficient because [Palin v. New York Times Co. (2d Cir. 2019)] held “that actual malice could be proven by … the New York Times’ prior stories which showed that it was aware of the true facts, but published the false facts in the piece at issue, in reckless disregard for the truth.” That is not the case here.

In Palin, the prior articles directly related to the topic of the defamatory statement at issue. Here, however, the prior articles allegedly relate to criminal activity and campaign finance/ethics violations. They cover different topics than the Statement, meaning the prior articles did not touch directly on whether Plaintiff “assessed the potential risks and benefits of again seeking Russia’s help in 2020” and whether Plaintiff “decided to leave that option on the table.” The prior articles mentioned in the complaint simply do not show or suggest Mr. Noble “was aware of the true facts” regarding the Statement and published false facts in reckless disregard of the truth. For these reasons, Plaintiff did not adequately plead that the Statement was published with actual malice.

The Court, however, allows Plaintiff the opportunity to file an amended complaint.

Thanks to Prof. Enrique Armijo for the pointer.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3pmMB63
via IFTTT