Month: March 2020

Coronavirus update: Cases of COVID-19, or coronavirus, continue to climb in the U.S., and the disease seems to pose a special risk to older adults, especially if they’re in poorer health to start. But fears about coronavirus death rates are likely inflated.

The numbers: Over 100 U.S. cases of coronavirus have been confirmed now, including six cases that were fatal. The deaths all occurred in King County, Washington, including four residents at a single nursing home. Overall, 15 states have reported coronavirus cases but only Washington has so far seen fatalities.

Where in the U.S. has coronavirus been diagnosed?: Cases are being treated in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Why it’s still not time to panic: “Misleading arithmetic,” as the Cato Institute’s Alan Reynolds puts it:

Assuming the number of people who have reportedly died from COVID-19 is reasonably accurate, then the percentage of infected people who die from the disease (the death rate) must surely have been much lower than the 2–3% estimates commonly reported. That is because the number of infected people is much larger than the number tested and reported.

The triangle graph [here], from a February 10 study from Imperial College London, shows that most people infected by COVID-19 are never counted as being infected. That is because, the Imperial College study explains, “the bottom of the pyramid represents the likely largest population of those infected with either mild, non‐​specific symptoms or who are asymptomatic.”

As the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom, explained in his February 28 briefing, “Most people will have mild disease and get better without needing any special care.” Several studies have found that about 80% of all the COVID-19 cases have relatively minor symptoms which end without severe illness and therefore remain unreported.

As of yesterday, there were 89,253 confirmed cases worldwide (about 96 percent of them in Asia). Reynolds also points out that there have “been 45,393 known recoveries from COVID-19 (compared to 3,048 cumulative deaths) and, importantly, recoveries have been outnumbering new cases.”

To put that in perspective:

… the SARS coronavirus killed 774 people out of 8,096 known cases in 2003, which was a death rate of 9.6% before it vanished the next year. Bird flu in 1997 was predicted to be a deadly pandemic, but it killed very few people before it disappeared.

More from Reason:

• Podcast: Will Coronavirus Be the Sweet Matzo Ball of Death?
• Jacob Sullum: Are Quarantines a Proportionate Response to the Coronavirus?
• Myth-busting: No, Trump Didn’t Cut the CDC’s Coronavirus Budget. No, People Aren’t Blaming Corona Beer for the Disease.
• Protecting and serving: Police Use Coronavirus To Try To Trick Meth Users Into Getting Themselves Arrested
• “Never let a good crisis go to waste”: Political Opportunists Are Using Coronavirus Fears To Push Whatever Policies They Already Wanted
• Coronavirus and culture war: Students Demand Censorship of ‘Coronavirus’ Theme Party
• Coronavirus in court: Can U.S. Cities Be Forced To House Coronavirus Patients?
• Think positive: Big Biotech Is Hustling To Beat Coronavirus

FREE MINDS

Today is International Sex Worker Rights Day (ISWRD). And this year, there’s actually something to celebrate, suggests sex worker, author, and Reason contributor Maggie McNeill. “In the past two years, the tide of sex worker rights has completely turned,” she writes on her blog, The Honest Courtesan. More:

The government’s violent suppression of sex workers has, instead of winning more support for bigotry, instead turned a majority of Americans against the prohibitionists for the first time since such polls have been a thing; a few politicians (even at the presidential election level) have begun to recognize that sex workers and or clients are voters, and that among younger voters support for sex worker rights is as normal as support for LGBT rights was among that age cohort a generation ago.  Even “sex trafficking” hysteria has begun to backfire… Sex workers of all business models and socioeconomic levels are organizing and speaking out, and most people who aren’t dyed-in-the-wool racists are finally being forced to recognize how much more severely the consequences of criminalization fall upon people of color, trans women, migrants, and other marginalized groups.  Even mainstream feminism, which has been trying to destroy sex workers since the late ’80s, is beginning to fragment as more and more chapters of old-guard feminist organizations forsake the pearl-clutching harridans who pretend to speak for everyone with a vagina.

Read the rest here. And check out the #ISWRD hashtag on Twitter for information about sex work criminalization and sex worker rights activism around the world.

FREE MARKETS

Federal drug warriors get grabby in Ohio. “Federal prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of more than $356,000 from an Akron man they say made money from trafficking drugs,” reports Cleveland.com. They also seized marijuana edibles, a gold Rolex watch, and $67,000 worth of jewelry. But the man, Cory Grandison, “has not been charged with a drug crime.”

Grandison did plead guilty to owning a gun and some ammunition, which is prohibited since he has a felony conviction in his past. The gun charge comes with at least two and a half years in federal prison and possibly a bit over three years.

QUICK HITS

• It’s Super Tuesday!
• Some good bail reform news from Tennessee:

New: Tennessee legislators have advanced a bill to shrink Tennessee's draconian drug-free school zones, citing data @laurenkrisai and I put together showing that more than 25% of area within city limits in the state is within an enhanced sentencing zone https://t.co/4GesHHVlrR

— CJ Ciaramella (@cjciaramella) March 2, 2020

• At least seven people were killed by a tornado in Nashville last night.
• Nick Gillespie talks to Gloria Alvarez:

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Part of Bernie Sanders’ pitch is that by motivated voters to turn out, he can beat Trump. Today, I and quite a few people I know who normally don’t vote in Democratic primaries turned out to vote for Biden or Bloomberg because we are so appalled by the prospect of Bernie Corbynizing the Democratic Party. I know other people who turned out to vote for Bernie because they think he’s Trump’s easiest-to-beat opponent. (I think that’s a mistake for the same reason it was a mistake for Democrats to root for or even help Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries.) So mazel tov, Bernie, you increased turnout.

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From Judge Tanya Walton Pratt’s decision Friday in Kimberlin v. U.S. (S.D. Ind.); note that there’s an interesting First Amendment twist as to the impersonation conviction:

In February 1979, Kimberlin was charged in a 34-count indictment with crimes related to a series of bombings in Speedway, Indiana. Over the course of three trials in 1980 and 1981, Kimberlin was convicted of numerous felonies arising out of his impersonation of a Department of Defense police officer and eight explosions that occurred in Speedway, Indiana in September 1978. Kimberlin has challenged his convictions on numerous occasions. He served his sentences and was released from imprisonment in 2001.

In addition to the convictions challenged in this case, Kimberlin has incurred a 1974 felony perjury conviction …; and the Government asserts and Kimberlin has not disputed a 1979 felony conviction for conspiracy to distribute marijuana in Texas. {Based on [references to the conspiracy conviction] in this record, the Court concludes that the felony conviction still exists.}

Kimberlin is challenging the validity of some of his past convictions, but that’s hard to do for convictions that are decades old, such as these ones. The time for direct appeal has run out. Any appeal via a petition for habeas corpus is no longer available because his sentences have long expired. His only remedy is therefore under the writ of coram nobis, “an extraordinary remedy, allowed only where collateral relief is necessary to address an ongoing civil disability resulting from a conviction” (emphasis added)—and the reversal of the convictions would have to eliminate the civil disability.

“[C]oram nobis relief is available when: (1) the error alleged is of the most fundamental character as to render the criminal conviction invalid; (2) there are sound reasons for the defendant’s failure to seek earlier relief; and (3) the defendant continues to suffer from his conviction even though he is out of custody.” …

[Kimberlin] seeks relief from [his past] convictions asserting that they have interfered with his ability to obtain government grants, sit on a jury in his home state of Maryland, and renew his pilot’s license, among other impediments.

The Court assumes, without deciding, that these alleged impediments cause Kimberlin more than merely incidental harm. But because he has been convicted of multiple felonies in separate trials, including a 1974 perjury conviction in this Court, and the 1979 conspiracy to distribute marijuana conviction in Texas, neither of which are at issue here, a successful challenge to any one conviction will not relieve him of these impediments. See United States v. Keane (7th Cir. 1988) (“a single felony conviction supports any civil disabilities and reputational injury [a convicted felon] may have to endure”).

As discussed in detail below, Kimberlin’s challenge to his convictions for impersonating a Department of Defense official fail. Even if he were to successfully overturn his other bombing-related convictions, he would remain a convicted felon on at least the impersonation convictions, and likely his felony perjury and felony drug conspiracy convictions which he does not challenge here. Those felony convictions interfere with his ability to sit on a jury in Maryland state court, renew his pilot’s license, and obtain government grants whether his convictions related to the explosions in Speedway are overturned.

“Courts must conserve their scarce time to resolve the claims of those who have yet to receive their first decision.” United States v. Sloan (7th Cir. 2007). Kimberlin’s liberty is not at stake and overturning his bombing-related convictions would not relieve him of the civil impediments discussed above. Therefore, the Court will analyze Kimberlin’s challenge to his false impersonation convictions, but not his other claims.

Kimberlin challenges his convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 912, for falsely impersonating a Department of Defense … official. He argues that these convictions violate the First Amendment under United States v. Alvarez (2012) …. Specifically, Kimberlin argues that his convictions under § 912 violate the First Amendment because his wearing of the uniform and DOD patch while conducting commercial transactions constitutes expressive speech protected by the First Amendment. He seeks to extend the reasoning of Alvarez and United States v. Swisher (9th Cir. 2016), cases which dealt with the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 to his convictions under § 912.  {In addition, Mr. Kimberlin challenges his convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 701 for unlawfully possessing an official DOD insignia, and 18 U.S.C. § 713 for illegal use of the presidential seal violate the First Amendment under Alvarez, but the Court need not reach these arguments.}

In Alvarez, the United States Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of the Stolen Valor Act, 18 U.S.C. § 704(b) (which prohibits lying about being awarded military medals) and held it to be invalid under the First Amendment. In Swisher, the Ninth Circuit extended the holding in Alvarez to § 704(a) (which criminalizes the unauthorized wearing of such medals). However, [n]either Alvarez nor Swisher held convictions under § 912 or § 701, the statutes Kimberlin was convicted under, to be unconstitutional.

Last year, the Seventh Circuit addressed an argument similar to Kimberlin’s in United States v. Bonin (7th Cir. 2019). In Bonin, the Seventh Circuit rejected the defendant’s attempt to extend the reasoning of Alvarez to overturn his conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 912 for impersonating a United States Marshal. The Seventh Circuit squarely held that the acts-as-such clause of § 912 is narrowly drawn to serve the government’s compelling interests of protecting the integrity of government processes.

Undeterred, Kimberlin argues that Bonin left the door open for challenges to § 912 in less egregious cases such as his, but this Court disagrees. The Seventh Circuit rejected Bonin’s argument that, if allowed to stand, 18 U.S.C § 912 could be used to prosecute people for simply wearing Halloween costumes. But that was in the context of Bonin’s void for vagueness challenge, not his facial challenge under Alvarez, and the Seventh Circuit ultimately avoided evaluating his void for vagueness challenge because his conduct—claiming to be a U.S. Marshal and displaying a weapon in a theater as a way to intimidate other moviegoers who asked him to stop talking on his cell phone—clearly violated § 912.

The same can be said of Kimberlin’s conduct. He was not on his way to a Halloween party when he stopped to have a calendar or party invitations printed. The evidence at his trial demonstrated that he wore a DOD patch on his shirt and attempted to have copies made of the presidential seal.

It makes no difference that the copies were never made for Kimberlin. It was reasonable for the jury to conclude that he wore the DOD patch to deceive the copy store employee so that he or she would copy the presidential seal for him and the impersonation was to falsely imply that he was government official. Bonin held that public safety and protection of the reputation of law enforcement were compelling interests and § 912 is narrowly drawn to protect that interest. Thus, Kimberlin’s First Amendment challenge is foreclosed by Bonin….

Kimberlin has not shown that a fundamental error renders his convictions under § 912 invalid. Because these felony convictions, and his other unrelated felony convictions are valid, the Court need not address Kimberlin’s arguments regarding the alleged errors in his second and third trials which resulted in his conviction on charges related to the explosions in Speedway in the fall of 1978….

The court also rejected Kimberlin’s challenge to his felon-in-possession-of-explosive convictions:

In Rehaif v. United States (2019), the United States Supreme Court held that to convict an individual of illegal firearm possession under 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g) and 924(a)(2), the Government must prove (1) the individual knew he or she possessed a firearm, and (2) the individual knew that he or she belonged to the relevant category of persons banned from possessing a firearm. Kimberlin asserts that his felon in possession of explosive convictions (violations of 18 U.S.C. § 842(i)(1)), as charged in Counts 23 and 24 of the 34-count indictment, must be vacated because the government never proved at trial that “he had any criminal intent or that he knew he had been convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year.” The evidence presented at Kimberlin’s trial does not support this assertion.

For more on Kimberlin’s lawsuits against the bloggers (which I mention chiefly because I think some of our readers may have followed them in the past), see here, here, here, and here.

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Bill Weld, the former Massachusetts governor and 2016 Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee, is facing some brutal odds this Super Tuesday in his Quixotic quest to wrest the GOP presidential nomination from incumbent Donald Trump.

Weld, who lost to Trump by nearly 96 percentage points in Iowa and nearly 77 in New Hampshire, then watched helplessly as Nevada and South Carolina ceded all delegates to the president rather than hold elections, has not as an official candidate polled higher than 14 percent in any of the 13 states (worth a combined 785 delegates) voting Tuesday. Trump’s margin in national polls has not dipped below 80 percentage points since October, and his approval rating among Republicans rests at 93 percent. The president’s combined campaign-finance juggernaut is outraising Weld by a ratio of 300 to 1.

And yet the perpetually chipper redhead still sees some upside to his long shot bid. More than half of Super Tuesday states, including Trump-averse Utah, have not been polled. In his home state of Massachusetts, Weld was endorsed by the Boston Globe, in an effort “to salvage time-honored conservative principles and to change the shabby tone of the Trump era.”

And though he no longer dreams of being 1992 Pat Buchanan or 1968 Eugene McCarthy, Robert Mueller’s old boss does hold out hope that his minor electoral contribution might yet be enough to derail the 2020 Trump train.

“Steve Bannon said that if the president loses four percent of the traditional Republican vote, he cannot be re-elected,” Weld told me in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “If that’s true, that’s a marker I can meet. And it would not pain me to think that I had some responsibility for bringing it about that Donald J. Trump was not re-elected president.”

Weld, who has campaigned consistently on reducing debt/deficits, updating 1990s-flavored moderate-conservative reform for the 21st century, and railing against Trump’s unfitness, also told me that he still thinks the Republican Party might go the way of the Whigs, and that a “strong third party” including “centrist Democrats” and “centrist libertarians” might rise from the ashes in 2021 or 2022. He also said he would back Joe Biden or Michael Bloomberg if they became the Democratic presidential nominee, though not Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) at this time.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation:

—

Reason: What results do you need to see tomorrow to stick in until Wednesday?

Weld: Well, I’ll be sticking in anyway. I mean, we’ve got Michigan coming up on the 10th. We’ve got Florida coming up on the 17th. So I don’t want to miss those.

In terms of tonight, I would say my top three states are probably Vermont, Massachusetts, and Utah. I’ve been endorsed by Evan McMullin, who got 20 percent-plus in Utah last time. Had some very nice visits out there with the [Latter Day Saints] folks, who I get along with very well. So that’s why that’s in the top three. […]

Colorado is an open primary, and I think unpredictable—I’m not predicting victory there, but that could be an interesting state. California, likewise, not predicting victory, because it’s a closed primary, but Trump has really declared open war on California, so that could be of interest. Otherwise, I’d like to see what happens in Texas and North Carolina, Tennessee. It should be an enjoyable evening.

Reason: What have you learned in this process since you jumped in?

Weld: I’ve learned that the duopoly in Washington, D.C., is every bit as bad as Gary Johnson and I thought it was four years ago. It’s really paralyzing the country and preventing forward motion. When you have a president of the United States who shares that poisonous view and is vengeful into the bargain, that makes it even worse. So that’s what I’ve learned!

It’s all about Washington, D.C., the bad stuff—it’s not about the state capitals and states, it’s not about the Trump voters. I think it’s about Donald Trump, the increased negativity.

Reason: What have you observed on a state-by-state level, including even in Massachusetts to the extent that it’s relevant, about the way that Trump and the national GOP has muscled in on state GOPs, or that just state GOPs know that in order to be popular you need to stay in good with the president?

Weld: Well, no, it’s not that they’re inferring anything, it’s that they’re told things. Because once the Republican National Committee merged its operations with the Trump campaign, then from that point forward the Republican state committee in every single state was, is, and remains the Trump organization. So it doesn’t pay me to try to bark up that tree.

My strategy needs to be, and has been, to try to increase the number of people voting in the Republican primary—more women, more younger voters, more minorities, et cetera, et cetera. Just voters who are perhaps marginally more likely to rally to my flag than a classical Republican voter who’s voted in the last five Republican primaries.

Reason: You mentioned that the duopoly is every bit as strong, if not stronger. And yet we’re on the verge of having Trump, who was an outsider, take over the Republican Party and mold it in his image, largely. And Bernie Sanders is on the verge of being a democratic socialist independent who might do the same with the Democratic Party. What do you make of that paradox? So, the duopoly is super strong and yet vulnerable to takeover by kind of anti-establishment figures?

Weld: Well, I’m not sure Sanders is going to get there, frankly. Most people seem to think that he will.

I think Donald Trump essentially cemented his takeover of what I’ll call the Trump faction of the Republican Party…when 52 Republican senators not only said, “We don’t want to hear any evidence,” they also said, “We really don’t want to consider whether you should be removed from office, although the Constitution requires us to do so.” That was not a good showing.

And I know that a number of them have said to the press on background since their vote, “I did it because of fear. I did it because I was fearful the president would run somebody against me to my right in the primary, and I would lose my seat.” I’ll tell you, if that was the case with me, I would never have admitted that to anybody on or off the record! That’s a shameful admission.

Reason: You and I talked a lot in 2017 and 2018 when you were still doing a lot of activities within the Libertarian Party; you had an analysis of the Republican Party facing a future in which maybe they go the way of the Whigs, maybe they kind of split apart and get reborn anew into something else, or explode. I want you to re-evaluate that analysis. And then also, might that be happening on the Democratic side as well?

Weld: Well, victory is a wonderful salve. And if the Democrats win the election, I don’t think that’ll happen, Democratic side.

On our side, yeah, no, I think the same thing I did last time. And this time, because of their votes to acquit without hearing any evidence, I think the Republican senators are vulnerable this year.

I saw this happen with the Nixon impeachment when people who had gone through the draining exercise of defending President [Richard] Nixon all summer long and saying, “There’s insufficient evidence that he knew about the Watergate conspiracy to tank the Jaworski investigation”—they lost their seats. Including people like Rep. Wiley Mayne from Iowa, who had won handsomely [before] but was voted out. I mean, they looked kind of ridiculous.

I’m not sure that a number of the Republican senators this time around don’t look ridiculous. So I think there’s a decent chance that the Republicans will lose the Senate.

Then you could see some finger-pointing and forces at play that could cause a split-up of the party, similar to the split-up of the Whigs in the 1850s with the Know-Nothing faction, which was founded on anti-immigrant prejudice. It was all the Catholics from Germany and Italy and Ireland that they hated, and they had violent rallies and they had conspiracy theories. It’s a carbon copy of the Trump faction now. But they did pinwheel out into outer space and were never heard from again. Except for Speaker Nathaniel Banks of the Massachusetts House, who also became speaker of the U.S. House, I think. But he was an outlier. So I think that could happen again, and I’m not sure it’d be a bad thing.

You might see a third party—a strong third party, not a single-issue third party—emerge out of the remnants of traditional Republicans. Some centrist Democrats, some centrist libertarians. That could be an interesting party. I’ll just call it the Unity Party for the time being. That’s something that could happen. But it’s not going to happen in 2020. It would be 2021, 2022.

Reason: It’s not hard to look at your situation and see some pretty bad math…So what are some glass-half-full analyses of the numbers going into tomorrow, even if there are some lopsided defeats?

Weld: Well, although you’d always like to win any contest you get into, and I’m no stranger to long odds—my first governor’s race, I won, even though I started at sub-asterisk levels and everyone laughed and said, “You got to get out of this race”—however, I do think that of the reasons that I’m running, number one is I think I could start Monday on the job, and I have half a dozen things that I think desperately need doing. But number two is—and the reason I ran as a Republican this time as opposed to a Libertarian—one of the reasons is that every vote for me, even a write-in vote for me, is not a vote for Trump.

Steve Bannon said that if the president loses 4 percent of the traditional Republican vote, he cannot be re-elected. I don’t know whether Bannon was being serious or not, but he’s usually serious. And if that’s true, that’s a marker I can meet. And it would not pain me to think that I had some responsibility for bringing it about that Donald J. Trump was not re-elected president.

Reason: I know you don’t spend a lot of time commenting on the Democratic race, for obvious reasons, but is it safe to assume that if it’s candidate Biden or Bloomberg, you would vote or encourage people to vote Democrat? And if it’s candidate Sanders, you’re going to wait and see who the Libertarians nominate?

Weld: That’s exactly correct.

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