Month: September 2018

Yesterday Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who wrote the federal “assault weapon” ban that expired in 2004 and in recent years has been pushing a new, broader version of that law, asked Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to explain why he concluded that such legislation is unconstitutional. After Kavanaugh recapped his reasoning (more on that in a minute), Feinstein replied, “How do you reconcile what you’ve just said with the hundreds of school shootings using assault weapons that have taken place in recent history?”

Feinstein’s response was striking for two reasons. First, there have been nothing like “hundreds of school shootings using assault weapons,” whether you look at “recent history” or go back half a century. Second, the shootings are irrelevant to the question of whether banning so-called assault weapons is consistent with the Second Amendment.

According to a database maintained by Mother Jones, there have been 101 “indiscriminate rampages in public places resulting in four or more victims killed by the attacker” since 1982. A Washington Post tally published last October, based on the FBI’s definition of mass murder, identified “154 shootings in which four or more people were killed” since 1966. Only a small share of these attacks—16 of 101 in the Mother Jones database—occurred at schools, including universities. Just six of those 16 school attacks involved “assault weapons,” which account for about a quarter of the firearms used by mass shooters, most of which are handguns.

Even if Feinstein had in mind a broader definition of school shooting, it is hard to see how she could get to “hundreds” involving “assault weapons.” By her own count, 385 people were killed with “assault weapons” from 2004 through 2011 (which is about 0.5 percent of gun homicides during that period), and the vast majority of those murders did not occur in schools. If we assume that something like 16 percent of them did (in line with the Mother Jones numbers), that would be 60 or so murders involving “assault weapons” at schools over eight years, and the number of separate incidents would be even lower. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Feinstein is just making shit up when she refers to “hundreds of school shootings using assault weapons that have taken place in recent history.”

In any case, the number of school shootings has no bearing on the question Kavanaugh was answering, which was why he dissented from a 2011 D.C. Circuit decision upholding the District of Columbia’s “assault weapon” ban, which (as he noted) covered a “haphazard” set of arbitrarily selected guns “with no particular explanation or rationale for why some made the list and some did not.” As Kavanaugh explained to Feinstein, the Supreme Court held in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep handguns for self-defense, while allowing that bans on “dangerous and unusual” weapons—firearms that are not “in common use” for “lawful purposes”—would be constitutional. “Most handguns are semi-automatic,” Kavanaugh observed. “The question was can you distinguish, as a matter of precedent,” between semi-automatic handguns and semi-automatic rifles. He noted that “semiautomatic rifles are widely possessed in the United States; there are millions and millions.” To Kavanaugh, that means the guns that Feinstein wants to ban are “in common use” for “lawful purposes” such as self-defense and hunting, meaning possession of them is protected by the Second Amendment.

Feinstein implausibly insisted that “assault weapons are not in common use,” even though Americans own more than 16 million of them, only a tiny percentage of which will ever be used to commit crimes. She also suggested that Kavanaugh needed to “reconcile” his constitutional reasoning with the fact that such guns are sometimes used in school shootings, which makes no sense. As Kavanaugh noted in his dissent, handguns are used to murder people much more often than “assault weapons” are. The Supreme Court nevertheless held in Heller that Americans have a constitutional right to own handguns.

Either Kavanaugh applied Heller correctly or he didn’t. The “hundreds of school shootings using assault weapons” that Feinstein invented have no bearing on that question.

Cynthia Nixon wants millionaires to pay their fair share of taxes. Also, Cynthia Nixon does not know how much millionaires pay in taxes already.

On Wednesday, the former Sex and the City actress and New York gubernatorial candidate sat down with the New York Daily News editorial board to discuss the finer points of her sweeping, progressive policy agenda, which includes spending billions more on education, transit, and healthcare.

To pay for all these policies, Nixon is looking at soaking the rich. Her #fixthesubway plan would rely in part on a millionaire’s tax. The Medicare-for-all bill Nixon’s endorsed would require high income earners and their employers to spend thousands more on healthcare than they currently do. And her $7.4 billion education plan? Fat cats will be on the hook for that one, too.

“That sounds expensive,” Nixon said of her education plan to the Wall Street Journal. “You know what? It is, and it should be. We can do it by requiring that millionaires, and billionaires and corporations, who this economy has blessed, pay their fair share for all of our children.”

Yet when the Daily News Ed. Board asked Nixon some basic questions about the burden already shouldered by New York’s high-income earners, the candidate was reportedly flummoxed.

“Though she has made imposing a millionaire’s tax to help fund education and the subways a central theme to her campaign, Nixon, who is a first-time candidate with no state government experience, did not know the top income tax rate in New York, which is 8.82%. She also couldn’t say how much of the income taxes raised for the state budget comes from millionaires—it’s 40%—or offer a ballpark figure.

She said she worries there could be a breaking point where the wealthy decide to leave the state, but doesn’t believe New York has hit that situation yet. She also said that by offering corporations and the wealthy tax breaks, it’s starving the state of needed revenue to improve schools and infrastructure, all things businesses look for when deciding where to locate.”

For someone who has made squeezing more money out of high income earners the lynchpin of her progressive campaign, this is a shocking and telling display of ignorance. It reveals an unfounded belief—not uncommon among many on the progressive left—that all that is needed to erect a Nordic-style social welfare system is higher and more progressive income taxes.

Yet, the fact is paying for expansive healthcare and educational benefits for everyone requires taxing everyone, not just a small but wealthy slice of corporations and high-income earners. Indeed, countries like the Denmark and Sweden manage to pay for their welfare states only through higher rates of taxation applied to a very broad base of people.

According to a 2015 Tax Foundation study, Denmark’s top marginal income tax bracket of 60 percent kicks in for income earners making over 120 percent of national median income (which would be about $70,000 here in the United States), and the country charges a 25 percent value added (sales) tax. In the U.S. one has to make about 700 percent of the national median income ($400,000) before they’re subject to top marginal tax rates. The U.S. also has no value added tax, with the steepest sales taxes in the country barely cracking 10 percent.

Despite this, leading lights of the progressive left continue to talk about their plans for the welfare state’s expansion as if it can be born on the backs of the wealthy alone.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.)—America’s most prominent self-identified socialist—continues to call tax hikes on millionaires and billionaires “the fairest way…to guarantee health care as a right,” and his plan for funding Medicare-for-all includes a whole section on “options to make the wealthy pay their fair share.”

Yet when one totals up the money Sanders expects to raise from those options, it amounts to $4.5 trillion over ten years. That’s a princely sum that still pales in comparison to the $32.5 trillion costs of his Medicare-for-all legislation.

At best, this focus on taxing the rich by Nixon, Sanders, and co. on taxing the rich to pay for their chosen policies demonstrates a naiveté about the costs of these programs. At worst, it’s a craven attempt to win office using bait-and-switch plans that won’t actually deliver what progressive candidates promise.

A shooter opened fire at a skyscraper in downtown Cincinnati this morning, killing three people and injuring at least two more. The suspect later died after exchanging gunfire with police.

The shooting occurred at the loading dock and lobby area of the Fifth Third Center, according to Fox News. The building serves as the corporate headquarters of Fifth Third Bank.

It’s not clear what the shooter’s motives were. “[The gunman] was actively shooting at innocent victims, it appears, and our officers were able to kill him and stop the threat,” Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley said at a press conference. No officers were injured in the shooting.

The victims were taken to University of Cincinnati Medical Center. One of the injured is in serious condition, while the other is in critical condition.

Authorities have yet to release the identity of the shooter, but the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office told WLWT that police are currently searching the suspect’s home in North Bend, Ohio.

Witnesses described the terrifying scene. Leonard Cain tells The Cincinnati Enquirer that he was about to walk into the bank until someone told him about the shooting. Passersby tried to similarly warn a woman not to enter the building, but she couldn’t hear them over her headphones. “She walked in the door and he shot her,” Cain says.

Some didn’t have to see the shooter to know something was wrong.”We did hear a gun shooting from the 29th floor,” a manager at the bank tells WXIX. “We could quickly see there was a large police presence and could see them blocking Fountain Square. We knew immediately something was wrong. We’re a bit rattled.”

By the Enquirer‘s count—which defines “mass shooting” by the total number of victims, not the number of people killed—this is the 15th mass shooting in the area since 2013, and also the deadliest.

In a communist country like Cuba, you have to be innovative to make up for the absence of goods more widely available in open markets.

According to a Reuters report, latex condoms are one such vector for problem solving. Cubans have found uses for them that include fishing, fermenting wine, and tying up hair.

Last year, the Associated Press interviewed Orestes Estevez, a Cuban winemaker who used condoms to ferment his fruit wines. “Putting a condom on a bottle is just like with a man,” he told AP. “It stands up, the wine is ready, and then the process is completed.”

Reuters goes on to explain that a box of three latex condoms are as cheap as one Cuban peso, the equivalent to four cents. This is especially significant when considering that the average state wage on the island is $30 a month. The product is cheap because of a mix of government subsidies and a heightened focus on sexual health. As for how condoms became an acceptable replacement for products such as hair ties, Cuban consumers can look to a centralized economy and foreign economic interventions such as U.S. sanctions and embargoes, all of which have led to desolate markets and expensive imports.

A number of American politicians have spoken out against the American government’s role in this. Before Sen. Jeff Flake (R–Ariz.) accompanied former President Barack Obama on a historical trip to the island in 2016, Flake told Reason that “It always bothered me that as a Republican we preach the gospel of contact and commerce and trade and travel, yet with Cuba we turn around and say, ‘No, it’s not going to work there.'” Flake also observed that economic interventions have affected American citizens by limiting their freedom to travel to the island. In 2017, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) argued in Reason that the embargo placed on Cuba over half a century ago has done “absolutely nothing” to remove figures like the now-deceased Fidel Castro from power. In fact, Paul said the embargoes may have indirectly kept him in power longer.

Bonus link: John Stossel encourages President Trump to embrace free trade with Cuba.

An upcoming iteration of Law & Order will focus on hate crimes, that nebulous category of criminal offense that has become a locus of debate since Donald Trump’s election. NBC announced on Tuesday that it had commissioned 13 episodes of Law & Order: Hate Crimes, a series based on the Hate Crimes Task Force within the New York City Police Department (NYPD).

This “elite, specially trained team of investigators” is housed within the department’s Special Victims Unit (SVU), which also houses creator and executive producer Dick Wolf’s longest-running franchise, the launched-in-1998 Law & Order: SVU. And, boy, does Wolf sound sanctimonious about his new project.

“I want to depict what’s really going on in our cities,” said Wolf in a statement.

Twenty years ago when SVU began, very few people felt comfortable coming forward and reporting these crimes, but when you bring the stories into people’s living rooms … a real dialogue can begin. That’s what I hope we can do with this new show in a world where hate crimes have reached an egregious level.

In addition, NBC programming exec Lisa Katz said in a statement Law & Order: Hate Crimes is extremely timely “considering that last year there was a double-digit rise in hate crimes in our 10 largest cities—the highest total in over a decade.” The FBI defines hate crime as any “offense against a person or property” that is “motivated in whole or part by an offender’s bias against a race, religions, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity” (and would be better named bias-based offenses).

But there’s actually no evidence, save for misleading media headlines, that there’s been an “egregious” spike in bias-based offenses, not since Trump was elected nor over the past decade. In 2016, the most recent year for which the FBI has data, the national hate-crime rate was significantly lower than had been reported in 2001, 2006, 2008, or 2012.

“Hate crimes in 2016 were down 19.7 percent over the previous 10 years,” noted professors Brian Levin, James J. Nolan, and John David Reitzel in a June article at The Conversation, and “far below 2001’s record high.”

Levin—who is director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernardino—and his colleagues conducted their own research to get a measure of hate-crime reports in 2017, since the FBI data is not due out until November. They’re the ones who broke down data from America’s 10 largest cities, finding the “double-digit rise in hate crimes” that Katz mentioned—albeit just barely. On average, incidents were up 12 percent (from 923 incidents to 1,038).

In New York City specifically, hate crimes last year were down two percent from 2016, and lower than they had been in 2010 (339 reports last year, versus 350 at the start of this decade). Hate crime rates fell in other top-10 cities last year, too, including Chicago (down 14 percent) and San Antonio (down 60 percent).

But these drops were offset by larger increases in some cities. Overall, the 2017 study found an additional 115 incidents reported in the 10 biggest cities, with 49 percent of these coming from Phoenix and about one-fifth apiece coming from Los Angeles and San Jose.

So far, their 2018 data shows more city-specific drops, in New York City—96 reported hate crimes through April 30 this year, versus 132 at that time in 2017—as well as cities such as Washington, D.C. and Seattle. They note that “only a small number of agencies have partial year data for 2018, but most are down significantly.”

Between their data and the FBI’s, there’s little to hint at a cohesive explanation for fluctuations (though the authors do try to pin any recent increases on Russian influence). Many areas have shifted back and forth between slight annual increases and slight annual decreases. Some show dramatic spikes or falls all of a sudden, in contrast to areas around them. Some report no such incidents officially, though such incidents make local news.

The problem with Law & Order: Hate Crimes isn’t just that it’s premised on tortured statistics, however. If there’s anything this country does not need right now, it’s more stoking of identity-based tensions and televised depictions of discord based on them.

To be clear, I’m not worried that people otherwise unbiased and unmotivated to commit crimes will suddenly get a hankering to go spray paint their local park with swastikas after watching the show.

I am worried that people’s perceptions of the prevalence of bias-based incidents and the likelihood of fair treatment from cops and the criminal justice system will be shaped by it in unsavory ways (remember the CSI effect?). And these ways tend to reinforce calls for carceral solutions, that wind up entrenching state power and strengthening systems of abuse at the expense of vulnerable and minority groups.

If Law & Order: Hate Crimes must exist, however, I do have some recent ripped-from-the-headlines suggestions for plot lines:

• Chicago on Edge as Officer Who Shot Laquan McDonald 16 Times Faces Trial
• NYC Cop Arrested For Assaulting Homeless Man In Custody.
• CPD officer who shot, killed woman during undercover operation subject of ‘criminal investigation.’
• Fired cop who shot fleeing man in back charged with homicide
• Gwinnett County deputy arrested for punching female inmate “in the head three times with a closed fist.”
• Teen shot by police is paralyzed and facing charges, officials said
• Arrested Cobb officer strangled mentally delayed woman during sex.
• Officer Who Shot Black Teen Was ‘Trigger Happy‘.
• Officer who fatally shot mentally ill woman suspended for protocol breaches.
• Officer who shot naked man not entitled to immunity.
• Prosecutor won’t charge officer in deadly shooting.
• Officer who killed unarmed black man responds to critics of her ‘critical incident’ course.
• “It sickens me”: Westminster officer-involved shooting rocks Colorado’s Nepali community.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) followed through today on his vow to risk expulsion from the Senate by releasing confidential emails from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

“I understand the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate,” Booker stated. “I openly invite and accept the consequences of my team releasing that email right now.”

The emails in question, dating back to Kavanaugh’s time as a lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, had been labeled “committee confidential,” meaning only senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee had access to them. But Booker released the messages anyway, arguing they’re not “national security-related.”

Booker made public twelve pages of emails, including a thread with the subject line “Racial Profiling.” In one of the emails, dated January 17, 2002, Kavanaugh wrote that while he “generally favor[s] effective security measures that are race-neutral,” it’s still necessary to “grapple…with the interim question of what to do before a truly effective and comprehensive race-neutral system is developed and implemented.”

Booker’s acknowledgement that he’s “knowingly violating” Senate rules is the latest development in Kavanaugh’s contentious confirmation hearing before the Judiciary Committee. Booker questioned Kavanaugh over the emails yesterday, prompting a protest from Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah), who pointed out that Booker was grilling Kavanaugh over documents he “can’t see.”

According Sen. Chuck Grassley (R–Iowa), there was a clear process in place for senators to request that certain documents be cleared for public release. Booker disagreed, referring to “this process as a bit of a sham.” The New Jersey Democrat indicated that by releasing the documents, he’s engaging in “civil disobedience.”

Republicans condemned Booker, accusing him of grandstanding. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R–Texas) even read the Senate rules to his colleague during the hearing. But Booker said it didn’t matter. “Bring it. Bring it. Apply the rule and bring the charges. Bring it,” he replied to Cornyn.

Booker got some backup in his act of “civil disobedience” from many of his Democratic colleagues. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (R–N.Y.) and Minority Whip Dick Durbin (R–Ill.) as well as Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D–R.I.), Richard Blumenthal (D–Conn), and others expressed their support for Booker.

While Booker has been praised by liberals for releasing the emails, one can’t ignore his ulterior motives. Though he hasn’t said yet if he’ll run for president in 2020, he’s expected to be one of the top democratic contenders if he does. Making a scene at a high-profile confirmation hearing can only boost his profile and improve his chances of one day winning the Democratic nomination.