Month: September 2018

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been thoroughly criticized for its poor preparation, wastefulness, and ineffective responses to natural disasters. Now, it faces a management scandal involving FEMA Administrator Brock Long. An internal investigation from the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that Long used over $150,000 in government money for personal expenses.

The heavily redacted report tracked Long’s actions between December 2017 and April 2018 and was obtained by the Washington Post. According to the paper’s findings, Long commissioned staff and government vehicles for personal trips. The unapproved trips included being driven from Washington, D.C., to his home in Hickory, North Carolina, on the weekends. The aides would then stay in hotels so they could drive Long either back to Washington, D.C., or to Charlotte Douglas International Airport. On at least one occasion, an aide picked up Long’s children from their school.

Government-funded personal trips also extended beyond chauffered rides from D.C. back to his home. Long also took a trip to Hawaii with his family during his children’s spring break. Following business-related activities, an aide drove Long and his family to visit a pineapple plantation and a volcano.

A policy states that Long is only permitted to travel in government vehicles during national emergencies with approval from DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Nielsen was reportedly made aware of the situation because of Long’s absences from his office, due, in part, to his frequent travel home. She confronted Long to inform him that agency resources were not for personal use.

Long spent about $151,000 on unauthorized travel, according to an estimate in The Wall Street Journal. Two officials have since been suspended in connection with the travel. Long remains in his position, but was ordered by Nielsen to pay the government back.

Legalization of recreational marijuana in California means there’s very little action airport police can take against travelers caught with small amounts of weed. Leave it to federal law—and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)—to complicate things.

At Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), anyone 21 and over can “possess up to 28.5 grams of marijuana and 8 grams of concentrated marijuana for personal consumption,” according to a “marijuana policy” posted on the airport’s website. As Marijuana Moment‘s Tom Angell pointed out on Twitter, the policy has been up on the website since at least April. Los Angeles Airport Police spokesperson Alicia Hernandez told McClatchy the policy has been in effect since January, when recreational weed officially became legal in the state.

Other California airports don’t have stated policies regarding marijuana, but police have essentially said there’s nothing they can do if travelers aren’t violating California law. “We’re really not in a place to do anything,” Sgt. Ray Kelly of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, which has jurisdiction over Oakland International Airport, told CNBC in December. Lieutenant Mark Gonzales of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department told USA Today in February the same goes for Orange County’s John Wayne Airport.

According to Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), LAX’s marijuana policy is a sign that marijuana use in California isn’t a big deal to local authorities. “It exemplifies the widespread cultural shift and acceptance of marijuana that is ongoing in the state of California,” Armentano told Leafly.

But while local cops don’t seem to care, marijuana is still illegal under federal law. That means TSA agents have to flag fliers in possession of weed, even if that won’t accomplish anything. “TSA’s response to the discovery of marijuana is the same in every state and at every airport—regardless of whether marijuana has been or is going to be legalized,” TSA spokesperson Lorie Dankers tells Reason via email. “Airport law enforcement will be notified if marijuana is discovered by a TSA officer during the security screening process of carry-on and checked baggage.” Law enforcement will then decide “whether or not the passenger is allowed to travel with marijuana.”

Particularly at LAX, though, airport police have made it clear they’re not going to do anything. So what’s the point of the TSA making a fuss? In the end, travelers with weed will still be allowed to fly. Whether or not they’ll be able to catch their flights is another question, depending on how long they’re held by the TSA and local police.

Even though it’s easy to blame the TSA here, the oft-maligned agency doesn’t even deserve most of the blame. The TSA’s job is to enforce federal laws, even the bad ones. And in this case, the federal law is very, very misguided.

Back in 2010, Reason‘s Nick Gillespie offered three reasons why weed should be legalized. One, because the government could collect billions of dollars in tax revenue and save billions more in law enforcement costs. Two, because Americans increasingly support weed legalization, and three, because pot prohibition infringes on bodily autonomy. Those arguments are just as true today as they were eight years ago.

Since 2010, nine states (plus Washington, D.C.) have legalized weed for recreational use. But the federal ban continues to complicate matters, especially for travelers. There’s a simple fix, of course: Remove marijuana from Schedule I, and allow the states to set their own pot policies.

Bonus link: Is the TSA actually chiller about weed than the city of San Francisco? It’s possible, wrote Reason‘s Christian Britschgi in November.

President Donald Trump’s freewheeling press conference on Wednesday evening included a number of truly surprising moments, like when the president identified a reporter from a Kurdish news agency as “Mr. Kurd,” and when he offered probably the most honest assessment of his own presidency—”I was saying things that nobody in the room even understood,” Trump said of a conversation with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Japanese officials.

What’s not surprising is that the press conference also contained a number of outright lies about the status of the Trump administration’s trade policies, and the ways in which tariffs are affecting the domestic economy and America’s relationship with key trading partners. It’s not surprising because the Trump administration has spent months peddling misleading claims and outright fabrications (“trade wars are good and easy to win!”) to defend policies that are economically indefensible.

This is the same man who, according to Bob Woodward’s recently released book, couldn’t even offer a solid explanation for why he wanted tariffs in the first place. “I just do,” Trump reportedly told Gary Cohn, the White House’s economic adviser. “I’ve had these views for 30 years.”

Here are the three biggest departures from reality Trump offered on Wednesday.

1. “A lot of money is coming into our coffers, and it’s had no impact on our—absolutely, by the way—no impact on our economy, which I said it wouldn’t.”

Trump is half-right about the first part. Tariffs have brought more than $1.4 billion into the federal goverment, because they are taxes. Those payments are being made by American importers, not by China. In fact, if the current set of tariffs remain in place for a full year, they will suck more money out of the economy than the major taxes included in the Affordable Care Act.

The second clause is the big whopper here. Just hours before Trump’s press conference on Wednesday, Ford CEO Jim Hackett said the tariffs were costing his company more than $1 billion in the form of higher prices for steel and aluminum—two things that you need a lot of if you want to build cars. Even though Ford sources most of its steel and aluminum in the United States, Hackett said, the tariffs on imported steel and aluminum were causing domestic producers to hike their prices as well.

This is, well, exactly what everyone knew would happen when Trump slapped a 25 percent tariff on steel and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum earlier this year. But it’s not just Ford paying the price. Businesses from coast to coast have announced plans to close, lay off workers, delay expansions, move overseas, or postpone investments because of the tariffs. While the economy as a whole continues to perform well, the tariffs are an undeniable drag on dynamism, and economists warn that the latest round of tariffs on Chinese imports could have a significant impact on consumers and retailers during the upcoming holiday season.

And, of course, tariffs are meant to bend consumer behavior towards politically favored industries and firms. If tariffs truly were having no impact on the economy, they would be failing to achieve their one and only goal.

Absolutely no impact? Absolutely false.

2. “Steel is incredible. U.S. Steel is opening up a minimum of eight plants. NuCor is opening up plants. And these are big plants…What’s happening with the steel industry is very exciting to me. It’s being rebuilt overnight.”

This claim requires significantly less parsing, because Trump helpfully provides us with clear, exact numbers. They are also completely made up. While some American steelmakers have announced plans to increase production at existing plants, there are no plans to build new steel plants—and even if there were, they aren’t exactly the sort of thing that can be built overnight (or in the span of a few months).

Trump has previously claimed that U.S. Steel would open six new plants because of the newfound success they are having under his trade policies. That was false. Then he started claiming that U.S. Steel would open seven new plants. Also false. Trump’s claims keep inflating, but the number of new steel plants opening continues to remain the same.

What U.S. Steel and Nucor are doing is using their political influence to direct parts of the Trump administration’s protectionism. Businesses affected by the steel and aluminum tariffs can appeal to the Commerce Department for waivers from those taxes, but both major American steelmakers seem to be using their influence to block waiver claims.

Rep. Jackie Walorski (R–Ind.), whose office has conducted a review of the waiver applications granted and denied by the Commerce Department, found that not a single application has been accepted if U.S. Steel or another domestic steelmaker had objected to its granting. It’s a far cry from the “fair and transparent process” that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross promised in March when the steel and aluminum tariffs were unveiled.

To summarize: Trump’s trade protectionism isn’t causing steelmakers to open new plants, but it is causing them to engage in more cronyism. This, too, should have been expected.

3. “His tariffs are too high and he doesn’t seem to want to move, and I told him ‘fuhgeddaboutit’…We’re very unhappy with the negotiations and the negotiating style of Canada.”

Asked whether he had canceled a planned one-on-one meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to discuss the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement—something that is supposedly a priority for Trump—the president admitted in the most casual way possible to standing up Trudeau.

Canada says this whole thing is a lie and there was no plan for a meeting.

Maybe so. But the bigger lie here is that Canada’s tariffs “are too high.” Trump is fixated on a few Canadian tariffs—a tariff on dairy products is a favorite target—and while those are admittedly not good, the vast majority of trade between the U.S. and Canada is tariff-free.

Sinking the entire negotiation over a single issue seems like an odd way to reach an agreement, but it’s no more outlandish than Trump’s claim that Canada is negotiating in bad faith. After all, Trump admitted just weeks ago to having deliberately undermined NAFTA negotiations with Canada simply because he could.

If Trump wants foreign leaders to negotiate in good faith with the United States, perhaps he ought to demonstrate an ability to recognize the reality of his trade policies.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will convene today to hear from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and research psychologist Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who has accused him of sexual assault when both were in high school in the early 1980s (her opening statement is printed here in full). Over the past two weeks, all manner of charges have been lobbed at Kavanaugh, including suggestions that he not only was a drunken slob in high school and college but participated in and helped to organize gang rapes during his years at Georgetown Preparatory School. He has admitted to drinking heavily but flatly denied all accusations of sexual impropriety.

It was clear going into the confirmation process that no Democratic senators would vote for Kavanaugh, who is widely seen as being staunchly anti-abortion and almost certainly in favor of limiting its practices through added restrictions if not an actual overturning of legal precedent granting women a right to terminate pregnancies in their early stages. Only three Democratic senators voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch (Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota), presumably out of political concerns, not ideological sympathy with him. And it was similarly clear that all Republicans would vote in favor of Kavanaugh, especially if he assuaged fears among one or two senators (especially Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) that he wouldn’t challenge the core ruling in Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions guaranteeing a right to an abortion. From a libertarian point of view, it’s disturbing that Kavanaugh’s bad positions on the Fourth Amendment and related issues didn’t rise to a higher level of scrutiny.

All of that is politicized enough, but the Kavanaugh confirmation has fused with a number of other potent cultural currents, especially widespread partisan hatred for Donald Trump, the upcoming midterm elections, and the #MeToo movement.

We know where political partisans stand, but what about the rest of us who do not identify primarily in partisan terms? The latest Gallup poll on party identification finds just 26 percent of us identifying as Republican and 27 percent as Democratic. Forty-four percent call ourselves independent, a near-record high. Here are three questions political independents should be asking ourselves before today’s Senate proceedings get underway:

1. Is there any evidence or testimony that would change your mind about Kavanaugh? Some of the accusations are credible on their face, though there has been little in the way of concrete corroboration. Kavanaugh has flatly denied everything and said that even though he drank heavily at times, he never blacked out. If old letters from him confessing guilt and the like emerged, that would undermine his protestations of innocence in a definitive way. The last-minute nature of the gang-rape accusations from Julia Swetnick and her representation by publicity-hungry lawyer Michael Avenatti—whose language is oddly imprecise when actually saying Kavanaugh did this or that—raises doubts. At this point, at least two men have supposedly emerged claiming that they were the men who attempted to rape Ford, but how can anyone really verify their accounts? This battle has very much emerged as a marker for forces that overwhelm the specific individuals at the center of the drama. Even stories about the lurid atmosphere at elite prep schools in the D.C. area (such as this one in Vanity Fair, which has been relentlessly anti-Trump and Republican since at least 2016) cannot locate Kavanaugh at the scene of specific crimes. Most Americans (59 percent) think he should not be confirmed if Ford’s allegation is true, but a majority of Republicans think he should be confirmed even if he did assault her.
2. Is there any way to depoliticize the selection of Supreme Court justices? Almost certainly not, and it probably would be inadvisable in any case. The Supreme Court is part of the government after all, and the justices read the opinion polls and headlines too. They are selected by one politician (the president) and vetted by others (senators). Getting politics out of the process is impossible and ultimately, elections do indirectly change the makeup of the bench. One argument that Kavanugh is guilty as charged is that the sexual assault accusations didn’t come up against Neil Gorsuch (also an alum of Georgetown Prep, by the way). Conservatives counter that activists are targeting Kavanaugh because the seat he might be taking will change the balance of the Court, the midterms are nigh, and this is a way for Democrats to derail Trump’s presidency. There’s no question that Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee who knew about and disregarded Ford’s allegations since July, acted poorly in the matter. Had she raised these concerns when they first surfaced—or even during the actual confirmation hearings—they could have been dealt with in a less super-charged way. But maybe that was the point of withholding them until the last minute? It’s also true that Supreme Court nominations have always been flash points for politicking, even before the watershed moment of Robert Bork back in the 1980s. Yet if there is no way to completely drain politics out of the process, there are surely ways to make Supreme Court nominations less ridiculously and obviously politicized. The problem here resides with the Senate, which in recent memory flipped back and forth between getting rid of the filibuster rule for judicial appointees. Democrats and Republicans have reversed sides on this issue in the most brazen ways possible, reducing legislative process to mere politics. Both houses of Congress have shown themselves to be tied to their parties first, and Congress, a branch of government that should be fully independent of the White House, second. The hyper-politicization of this is all on the Senate’s head and it is up to them to fix it.
3. Will things ever get back to “normal”? At least since the 2000 election, which was ultimately decided by a coin flip, there has been a pervasive sense of unreality in American politics that calls to mind the novels of Philip K. Dick. The 2016 election, in which the eventual victor promised to contest the results if he lost and the loser is now claiming Donald Trump is illegitimate, is simply the latest episode. But all of this started in earnest at least during the early 1990s, when literally any charge, however unsubstantiated, was being lobbed at Bill Clinton. By 1994, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, erstwhile preacher, president of Liberty Baptist University, and the head of the Moral Majority, was hawking a completely insane documentary that said the president was directly implicated in “countless” murders in Arkansas (and let’s not even start talking about Vince Foster). Falwell was not a fringe player and by the time George W. Bush was “selected” president a few years later, similarly grandiose conspiracy theories about him and stolen elections were being showcased in well-regarded news outlets. We have crossed a line where if someone can dream it, someone will publish it. And there doesn’t seem to be any directional change on the horizon. We have made it acceptable to say anything, believe anything, and still flourish in the political arena.

It’s the tragicomedy of America that we get the government deserve. If there is any grand takeaway from not just the past few weeks but the past few years, it’s that all of us, but especially the growing ranks of non-partisan independents need to insist on and demand better from the representatives of the dying major political parties, who have shown a willingness to lie to the American people about everything from state surveillance and war to policy implications to basic biographical details.

The House and Senate have agreed on compromise legislation reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The legislation must pass by the end of the month to prevent the aviation safety agency from shutting down.

On Wednesday, the House passed H.R. 6897 which gives the FAA the legal authority to operate for the next five years and appropriates some $17 billion a year for its mission. The Senate is expected to pass the same bill this weekend.

At 1,200 pages, this year’s FAA reauthorization is a brick of a bill, dealing with everything from mandated rest breaks for flight attendants, to designating an official national airmail museum. Despite its length, the legislation contains few substantive reforms.

“Overall, it’s a rag bag of everything under the sun, but largely status quo. There’s no major policy changes,” says Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website.

Notably missing from the bill are long sought reforms to spin off the operation of the air traffic control system from the FAA to a nonprofit corporation, and an increase in the limit on fees—called “passenger facility charges”—that airports collect from passengers to pay for things like expanding airport terminals.

A coalition of free market groups, airlines, pilots, and even the air traffic controllers union had lobbied hard to include corporatizing the air traffic control system in this year’s reauthorization bill, arguing that separating it from the FAA—and by extension the Congressional appropriations process—would enable quicker adoption of new technology, making for a more efficient air traffic control system.

The proposal gained traction in the House, and even got a personal endorsement from President Donald Trump, but was ultimately shunned by Senate Republicans and died on the vine.

Increased limits on passenger facility charges also went nowhere, sunk by opposition from airlines—who saw an increase in this independent revenue stream as weakening their bargaining power with airports—and some conservative groups who viewed the change as an impermissible tax increase.

Coupled with these missed opportunities, however, were some dodged bullets.

Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Ed Markey (D–Mass.) introduced an amendment that would have given the FAA the ability to regulate fees charged by airlines for ticket changes. Consumer rights groups, meanwhile, demanded a provision requiring the FAA to regulate the size, width, and pitch of airline seats. These policy changes could have opened the door for even more regulation down the road.

Neither made it into the bill as proposed. The seat regulations will require only that the FAA regulate seat size to prevent potential safety hazards (which will likely leave seat size unchanged), while the change-fee amendment was stripped out entirely at the last minute, which Poole considers a real victory.

“We’re not going to start down the slippery slope of reregulation of the price to fly on planes,” he tells Reason.

The bill also paves the way for emerging aerial technologies, including commercial drone operations, which have been in a holding pattern for years. The new bill directs the FAA to come up with final rules for cargo-carrying drones within a year, instructs the agency to expedite rules for certifying air traffic control systems for unmanned vehicles, and adopts a risk-based approach to drone regulation. All of these policies have delighted the commercial drone industry.

“What this bill says is it’s time to move forward with a robust, path for commercial UAS [unmanned aerial systems],” says Marc Drobac of the Small UAV Coalition, a trade group.

In opening the door for commercial drone operators however, the FAA has also put the squeeze on model aircraft enthusiasts, requiring them to take online knowledge tests, register their vehicles/toys, and also forbids them from flying above 400 feet.

Supersonic flight, currently prohibited in the United States, also might be on track toward legalization. This new legislation directs the FAA to consult with the aviation industry on what a regulatory framework for supersonic flight should look like, and issue a report to Congress within a year.

“From our perspective, this is the most forward-leaning language from Congress on supersonics since the 1960s,” says Eli Dourado of Denver-based aviation company Boom, which is working on creating an airliner capable of going Mach 2.2. “It’s clear that Congress wants a supersonic renaissance, and we think that, with policymaker support, the return of commercial supersonic flight is only a matter of time.”

While this language about supersonic flight and commercial drone operations is encouraging, says Marc Scribner, a transportation expert with Competitive Enterprise Institute, it also insufficient without the broader aviation reforms that Congress punted on this year.

Our outdated air traffic control system, relying on World War II-era radar technology, forces planes to fly farther apart. Caps on passenger facility charges constrain the ability of airports to fund expansions of terminal facilities. Between those two outdated policies, airports can handle only so many passengers and planes, which in turn makes flying slower, and more expensive.

“Until we have a modern air traffic control system and until our airport policies modernize to deal with terminal area congestion, you’re not going to see the benefits of supersonic, particularly transcontinental, because they’re going to have to slow way down as they approach terminal areas,” says Scribner.

Mass market supersonic flights and commercial drone deliveries are still a ways off, but so, too, are chances for further reforms. Provided the FAA bill passes—a near certainty at this point—it will be likely another five years before Congress takes up these issues again.

That could well feel like a lifetime for technologists trying to innovate in compliance with outdated government regulations.