Month: June 2018

The issue of prostitution decriminalization has divided candidates in the District of Columbia.

In October 2017, David Grosso, an at-large D.C. council member, drafted a decriminalization measure, called the “Reducing Criminalization to Promote Public Safety and Health Act of 2017.” The bill would make the District of Columbia the first municipality in the United States to decriminalize prostitution—that is, to remove all criminal penalties for adults consensually selling or paying for sex. (In Nevada, where some counties have legalized prostitution, buying and selling sex is allowed but only under strictly regulated circumstances; those engaging in prostitution outside these circumstances can still be found guilty of a crime.)

As the majority Democratic city prepares to effectively determine its mayor and city council members in the upcoming June 19 primary, discussion surrounding Grosso’s legislation has grown. Recently, candidates responded to a questionnaire from the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance (GLAA), a DC LGBT advocacy group, which included a question about the measure.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), who is seeking re-election, refused to provide a definitive answer about her position. “The issue of commercial sex, sex trafficking, and prostitution in general is highly complicated, generates a lot of responses, and requires careful consideration,” said Bowser.

Bowser’s Democratic-primary opponents—James Butler and Earnest Johnson—were split in their responses. Butler opposes the legislation, while Johnson supports it.

Overall, only 16 of 26 candidates replied to the questionnaire, including Martin Moulton, the Libertarian Party’s candidate for D.C. mayor. Moulton not only supports decriminalization efforts but believes in expunging the records of non-violent sex workers and customers who have previous prostitution convictions.

Ed Lazare (D), a candidate for D.C. Council Chair, also responded in support of Grosso’s legislation. “We should not jail people who have turned to sex work,” said Lazare, “especially because discrimination and exclusion have prevented many from supporting themselves in the formal economy.”

Lazare and Moulton join several other candidates, including Ward 1 council member Anita Bonds (D), in supporting Grosso’s decriminalization effort. Lori Parker (D), former DC Superior Court Judge, and two other at-large council candidates oppose the legislation.

“The Council has amended the current law over the years (principally during my chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee 2005-2012) to recognize that sex workers are often the victims of trafficking and establish the penalties for first-time offenders as minor,” said DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D), also seeking re-election, in reply to the GLAA questionnaire. Mendelson acknowledged his support for the bill’s provision to “establish a task force to improve community safety and health through the lens of commercial sex.”

GLAA President, Guillaume Bagal, told the Washington Blade, “I was pleased to see that many were open to sex work law reforms, but still disappointed at the conflation of sex work and trafficking displayed in many responses, and the lack of urgency in addressing the criminalization of individuals doing what they can do to survive.”

The World Health Organization, UN Women, Human Rights Watch, and the Open Society Foundations have all publicly supported decriminalizing sex work. Amnesty International has endorsed Grosso’s legislation. District voters have an opportunity to take public health and safety for sex workers to the next level. Will they take it?

A prank caller made a false report to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in Florida this morning, claiming there was a hostage situation unfolding at a certain address. The address was the family residence of Parkland survivor and activist David Hogg.

Thankfully, no one was home—Hogg is in Washington, D.C., with his mother, accepting an award.

In a statement to the media, Hogg brushed off the “silly prank.” “It’s not going to take our focus off what we’re super excited about; the March for Our Lives bus tour to get young people to vote and promote gun law reform” he said.

But swatting—the practice of reporting a false but serious crime at a certain location, in hopes that a SWAT team will show up—is a very serious matter that can get people seriously injured or killed. Plenty can go wrong when law enforcement officers are sent, under false pretenses, to what they believe is the scene of an ongoing crime.

Consider what happened to Andrew Finch, a 28-year-old resident of Wichita, Kansas. On December 28, 2017, two online gamers—Casey Viner and Shane Gaskill—began arguing over the internet. Eventually, Viner threatened to swat Gaskill. Gaskill dared him to do it, and even gave Viner an address. Gaskill then contacted a third man, Tyler Bariss, who was known for swatting people. Bariss contacted the police and told them he had killed his father, was holding another family member hostage, and had doused his home in gasoline. He then gave the police the address.

But Gaskill had tricked them. He no longer lived at the address he supplied; its current occupant was Finch. Police shot him to death as he opened the door for them.

Bariss, Gaskill, and Viner were all arrested. Authorities charged Bariss with involuntary manslaughter, and Gaskill and Viner with wire fraud, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice.

Obviously, a cop who shoots an innocent and unarmed man has made a grave mistake, and police need to be held accountable for their actions. But there’s a strong case to be made that swatters are also morally culpable for the actions of the cops. The officer who shot Finch might have been recklessly negligent, but he didn’t intend for an innocent person to come to harm. Bariss, Viner, and Gaskill were all fully aware that their criminal actions could very well get somebody killed—indeed, the whole purpose of the prank call was to cause harm. Philosophically, that’s the difference between manslaughter and attempted murder.

Reason contributing editor Ken White has written previously in support of revising the California penal code to make swatting a felony, and he thinks other states should do the same.

“Calling an armed law enforcement response to someone’s house is attempted murder,” he wrote.

I am always hesitant to recommend a legislative remedy. But in the case of swatting, it seems plausible that existing laws are simply not equipped to deal with this frightening method of hurting another person.

Last night, President Donald Trump announced that he was rescinding his White House invitation to the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles after only a fraction of the team planned to attend today’s 3 p.m. ceremony. “They disagree with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country,” he claimed.

In a follow-up tweet, the president gave the false impression that the recalcitrant Eagles were among those National Football League players who have been staging protests during the pre-game playing of the national anthem:

The Philadelphia Eagles Football Team was invited to the White House. Unfortunately, only a small number of players decided to come, and we canceled the event. Staying in the Locker Room for the playing of our National Anthem is as disrespectful to our country as kneeling. Sorry!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2018

In fact, no Eagle stayed in the locker room or kneeled during the anthem throughout the 2017-2018 season, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. (Safety Malcolm Jenkins, an outspoken political activist, raised a fist for part of the season.) That didn’t stop Fox News from illustrating the story with pictures of Eagles kneeling—in prayer, not anthem-protest. (The cable network later apologized.)

The president’s misleading, self-serving frame—that the players’ reluctance to attend was only about the NFL’s controversial anthem policy, a conflict he has taken an open delight in exacerbating—was quickly parroted by some of his supporters, including self-styled free speech champion Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA:

If you refuse to stand for the national anthem you have no business being honored at the White House or by our President

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) June 4, 2018

Last month, when I wrote that, “Saying ‘How high?’ when a president says ‘Jump!’ is behavior suitable for a royal subject, not an American citizen,” many interpreted my criticism as being pointed at NFL owners (who, they also maintained, were merely reacting rationally to market signals). But I was talking specifically about members of the public whose passion about and interpretation of this remarkably trivial issue seem tethered directly to the president’s Twitter feed.

Again, no member of the Philadelphia Eagles refused to stand for the National Anthem in 2017-2018, so portraying Trump’s decision as a defense of the Star-Spangled Banner is like volunteering to sit on a ventriloquist’s lap. Though at least Kirk, unlike Trump, didn’t suggest that non-compliant players leave the country (speaking of which, where are they supposed to go, given that less than 3 percent of the league was born outside of the United States?).

So was the players’ reticence all about the anthem? No. In fact, many Eagles declined the prospective White House invitation long before the recent reanimation of that controversy, and they cited plenty of other reasons. “It’s not about politics. It’s just about—I don’t think the president is a good person,” wide receiver Torrey Smith said in February. “I don’t want to go out of my way to go see someone who isn’t even welcoming the men in this locker room and our different cultures.”

Jenkins pinned his disinterest on the lack of opportunity to talk policy. “Because it is not a meeting or a sit-down or anything like that, I’m just not interested in the photo op,” he told the Inquirer. “Over the last two years, I have been meeting with legislators, both Republican and Democrat, don’t matter. If you want to meet to talk about advancing our communities, changing our country, I am all for that. But this isn’t one of those meetings.”

Defensive lineman Chris Long and running back LeGarrette Blount both skipped last year’s White House ceremony as members of the New England Patriots as well, and were planning to do so again this year. “[When] my son grows up—and I believe the legacy of our president is going to be what it is—I don’t want him to say, ‘Hey Dad, why’d you go when you knew the right thing was to not go?'” Long said in 2017. Echoed Blount then: “I will not be going to the White House. I don’t feel welcome in that house. I’ll leave it at that.”

The anthem-wars no doubt played a role in souring players on Trump—after all, the president of the United States did say last September, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired. He’s fired!'” That is surely no way to talk about a man’s mother. And as Jenkins recently observed, “Quite frankly, guys in our league don’t like being told what to do, what they can and can’t do.” After Trump’s inflammatory comments, Jenkins noted, “We went from, like, nine guys [protesting] to over 200.”

Which is all to the good as far as the president is concerned. Trump was delighted by the reaction to his comments last September, and followed it up by dispatching Vice President Mike Pence for anthem theatrics, and name-checking the controversy during his State of the Union Address. Axios in February, quoting an unnamed source close to the White House, reported that the president’s approach toward whipping up Republican enthusiasm before the midterms “will be looking for ‘unexpected cultural flashpoints’—like the NFL and kneeling—that he can latch onto in person and on Twitter.” Trump looks upon cultural divides and sees how he can make them wider, for personal gain.

In a statement released late this morning, the White House accused the Eagles of backing out of their original plan to have 81 members of the organization attend, and of trying to get the event rescheduled at the last minute. We shall see how those claims hold up. But, as Jonah Goldberg and Ben Shapiro (among others) have noted, the notion that the refuseniks are stubborn anthem-protesters is just false. “The attempt to make the Eagles event cancellation about the national anthem is just a complete act of deceitful propaganda,” Goldberg wrote, “and conservatives should have zero to do with it.”

San Francisco voters head to the polls today for the city’s municipal elections, where they will elect a new mayor and a council member, known as a supervisor. Also before voters is a pair of initiatives that offer the electorate a choice between sharply increasing taxes…and sharply increasing taxes.

Proposition D—better known as the Housing for All initiative—would boost the city’s gross receipts tax on commercial rents from the current 0.3 percent to 1.7 percent (a 460 percent increase). The city controller estimates that the measure will rake in an extra $70 million in new revenue, which is earmarked for homelessness services and affordable housing.

The measure has attracted a number of prominent endorsements, including ones from the San Francisco Chronicle‘s editorial board and mayoral candidate and City Supervisor London Breed, as well as pro-development group SF YIMBY, all of whom say the new tax revenue is necessary to address the city’s twin housing and homelessness crises.

But Prop D also has its opponents. Over half of the city’s board of supervisors has come out against it, as has the local chapter of the Service Employees International Union. The San Francisco chapter of the Democratic Socialists also opposes it, dismissing the measure as “a crass attempt to break working class solidarity.”

These critics have thrown their support behind Proposition C.

Like Prop D, Prop C would also boost the city’s gross recipients tax, only it would raise it even higher, to 3.5 percent. That raise is anticipated to generate an additional $146 million a year, 85 percent of which would be earmarked for child care services. The other 15 percent would go into the general fund.

Also like Prop D, Prop C has the backing of its own mayoral candidate, City Supervisor Jane Kim.

Because Prop D was put on the ballot by the city’s board of supervisors, it requires a supermajority to pass. Prop C, by contrast, was placed on the ballot by a signature gathering campaign, so it needs only a bare majority to pass. As both are trying to tap the same revenue source, only one can go into effect. Should both measures reach their requisite vote thresholds, the one with more affirmative votes will win.

In the local press, the dueling measures are being described as representative of the left-leaning city’s political fault lines. The San Francisco Chronicle describes Prop D as having the backing of the “moderate wing” of the city’s political class while Prop C is attracting the support of the “progressive bloc.”

The San Francisco Weekly featured a similar analysis, quoting Jason McDaniel, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University, who said, “the dueling propositions reflect a combination of a) the polarization between the two major political factions in S.F., and b) close level of competition between them for control of government and policy.”

Yet at the end of the day, both of these ostensibly polarized factions are supporting the same sort of high taxes to pay for the same sort of government activities. This “fight” between moderates and progressives looks a lot like Coke versus Pepsi.

That’s a shame because both Prop C and Prop D are terrible ideas that deserve to fail.

Gross receipts taxes—which tax all incoming funds as opposed to taking profits—fell out fashion in tax policy circles long ago, given the seeming inefficiency and unfairness of imposing the same tax burden on all businesses regardless of their profitability.

“While buildings cannot leave San Francisco, tenants can. To the extent that this tax would be passed on to tenants, some business tenants might move to other cities, impacting the strength and diversity of San Francisco’s economy,” observed the San Francisco-area think tank SPUR in its June voter guide.

Office rents in San Francisco are the second highest in the nation, behind only New York. The office vacancy rate, at 9 percent, is also much lower than in the wider Silicon Valley (16 percent) and the nation as a whole (14 percent).

This suggests that demand for office space in the city is high and that any increase in taxes on commercial rent will be passed on to tenants, not eaten by landlords. San Francisco’s thriving tech firms can probably survive such a rent hike. Lower margin businesses making just enough money to keep the lights on, however, will find themselves in a much tighter spot.

Both initiatives could fail today, but that seems unlikely. The only groups opposing both measures are the city’s irrelevant Republican Party and the Building Owners and Managers Association of San Francisco (a trade group representing commercial landlords).

Diego Aguilar-Canabal of the Bay City Beacon predicts a loss for Prop D given its supermajority requirement and its failure to attract the support of the business community. That leaves Prop C as the likely winner. Should that analysis prove correct, San Franciscians would be stuck with the worst of two bad options.