Month: June 2023

The law barring felons from owning firearms suffered another significant judicial blow in a decision yesterday in U.S. v. Bullock. Generally knows as the “felon in possession law,” U.S. Code 922(g)(1) prohibits firearm ownership for those found guilty of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year. Jessie Bullock filed a motion in August 2022 to have such charges against him dismissed, and Judge Carlton W. Reeves of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi granted that motion yesterday.

Bullock had served about 15 years in state prison for manslaughter and aggravated assault after killing someone in a 1992 bar fight. The government indicted him in 2018, when he was 57 years old, for possessing a firearm despite his felon status, and wanted to give him another 10 years.

As Reeves sums up the history of Bullock’s felon-in-possession case, a magistrate judge thought it was “‘downright silly’ to claim that Mr. Bullock ‘poses a danger to his wife, contrary to her own sworn testimony, contrary to the time that he’s been out on bond from this very incident’….Mr. Bullock has remained on bond ever since, without incident.”

Bullock’s claim, as Reeves put it, is that since he “finished serving his sentence long ago, and the available evidence indicates that the firearm the government complains of was kept in the sanctity of his home,” the charge against him violated his Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Reeves explicitly says that his decision involves an “as applied” challenge to 922(g)(1). He states outright that despite dismissing the case against Bullock, “the federal government may continue to prosecute other persons for violating § 922(g)(1).”

Still, the arguments he presents make a strong case for saying the law is unconstitutional in its entirety as written.

Reeves’ reasoning is based on the 2022 Bruen decision, which overturned some New York restrictions on the public carrying of weapons. That case declared that to stand up under Second Amendment scrutiny, a law must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” (Reeves makes it clear with near-sarcasm throughout the decision that he wishes the Supreme Court had not set the precedent requiring him to dismiss the case against Bullock; he has done this kind of “you idiots in the Supreme Court made me do this ridiculous thing” decision making in an earlier case upholding qualified immunity for a police officer, as Billy Binion reported here at Reason in 2020.)

Reeves cannot help (though he clearly would like to) but notice that the 120 previous U.S. district court cases the federal government relied on to prove that such laws are totally constitutional do not adequately demonstrate the required post-Bruen “historical tradition” to prop up the law. “In none of those cases did the court possess an amicus brief from a historian. And in none of those cases did the court itself appoint an independent expert to help sift through the historical record,” Reeves notes.

Reeves also spells out later in his decision that the Justice Department has itself admitted in filings in other cases that the felon-in-possession law is, as stated in particular in an appellee brief in U.S. v. Pettengill, “firmly rooted in the twentieth century and likely bears little resemblance to laws in effect at the time the Second Amendment was ratified.”

The facts that lead Reeves to toss the case against Bullock are surprisingly simple: “The federal felon‐in‐possession ban was enacted in 1938, not 1791 or 1868—the years the Second and Fourteenth Amendments were ratified. The government’s brief in this case does not identify a ‘well‐established and representative historical analogue’ from either era supporting the categorical disarmament of tens of millions of Americans who seek to keep firearms in their home for self‐defense.”

That bald statement does imply to this layman that the law should not be able to stand any constitutional scrutiny, though Reeves insists he’s not saying that. His granting an actual violent felon, Bullock, the right not to be prosecuted for owning a gun follows on a June en banc decision from the 3rd Circuit in the case of Range v. Attorney General. That decision found the law unconstitutional as applied to a particular nonviolent felon who had merely lied on a food stamp application and never actually spent a day in jail—though he could have been sent up for more than a year, per 922(g)(1).

Reeves says there might be room for states to do things the federal government should not, or to legitimately keep certain felons from owning guns, even after Bruen; he posits that “American history might support state‐level felon disarmament laws; that at least would align with principles of federalism. It might support disarmament of persons adjudicated to be dangerous….And it likely does support disarmament of persons convicted of death‐eligible offenses. The power to take someone’s life necessarily includes the lesser power to disarm them.”

Reeves made news in this case last November by passive-aggressively complaining that he might need to appoint a historian to assist him in understanding the case, since the Bruen decision requires him to “play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication.” Neither party in the case agreed that this was necessary; Bullock’s team asserted that it was the government’s burden to prove the historical validity of the felon possession laws, and the government just insisted that “the prohibition against felons possessing firearms is so thoroughly established as to not require detailed exploration of the historical record.”

Reeves did not agree.

To preview how the Supreme Court might ultimately consider the issue Reeves’ decision has brought to renewed prominence, he quotes extensively from a pre–Supreme Court dissent from now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the 2019 7th Circuit decision Kanter v. Barr, in which she agrees that sweeping prohibitions on all felons, though possibly not demonstrably dangerous ones, should not stand under the Second Amendment. (Rickey Kanter got a Trump pardon.) Elsewhere in Reeves’ decision in Bullock, the judge quotes Bruen concurrences from Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh in which they both say out loud that Bruen in and of itself did not cast doubt on existing laws prohibiting felons from owning guns. Reeves thinks references by Justice Antonin Scalia in the 2008 Heller decision (which first established that the Second Amendment meant individual citizens had a right to keep commonly owned weapons for self-defense in the home; Bruen extended that to public carrying) to “law abiding, responsible citizens” are mere dicta with no power to prevent a decision like his.

Reeves goes on to somewhat slyly speculate about how the Supreme Court might look upon what he’s done, while concluding that “this Court will refrain from counting the Justices’ votes today.”

But Reeves does explain that “another common method of denying these motions”—that is, previous motions such as Bullock’s that did not succeed—”is to tally the felon‐in‐possession votes implied by Bruen‘s concurrences and dissent. Recall that in these separate opinions, six Justices endorsed felon disarmament. Five of those Justices are still on the Court. As a result, some district courts have assumed that as a simple matter of realpolitik, there is no chance the Supreme Court will find § 922(g)(1) unconstitutional in a future case….It certainly is tempting for busy trial judges to try and resolve complicated issues via this kind of calculation. But this Court cannot honor an advisory opinion on an issue that was not before the Supreme Court.”

Some facts about felon-in-possession laws from FY 2021 from the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC): 7,454 such convictions came before the USSC, and the number from 2017 through 2021 was always over 6,000 a year.

Over 97 percent of such violators were men, 56 percent were black, 95 percent were U.S. citizens, and their average age was 34. Over 96 percent of such offenders were sentenced to prison, with an average sentence of 60 months.

Through a complicated point system, the USSC divides offenders’ “criminal history category” into six categories; of those sentences under 922(g)(1), 39 percent were in one of the three lower categories.

While the figures cannot be known for certain, one analysis surmises up to 100,000 convicted felons in the U.S. still own guns, despite the fact that the federal government insists (and most courts agree) that it is categorically illegal to do so—although this Bullock decision and the 3rd Circuit’s Range decision are chipping away at that certainty.

The post Another Judge Chips Away at Laws Barring Felons From Owning Guns appeared first on Reason.com.

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The federal government is on pace to borrow $116 trillion over the next 30 years, and merely paying the interest costs on the accumulated national debt will require a staggering 35 percent of annual federal revenue by the end of that time frame.

And that’s likely an optimistic scenario.

Those sobering figures were published Wednesday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as part of the number-crunching agency’s new long-term budget outlook. The report once again points to an unsustainable fiscal trajectory driven by a federal government that’s addicted to borrowing—even as it becomes readily apparent that the bill is coming due.

“Such high and rising debt would have significant economic and financial consequences,” the CBO warns. Among other things, the mountain of debt will “slow economic growth, drive up interest payments to foreign holders of U.S. debt, elevate the risk of a fiscal crisis, increase the likelihood of other adverse effects that could occur more gradually, and make the nation’s fiscal position more vulnerable to an increase in interest rates.”

The formula for massive deficits and unsustainable levels of borrowing is actually pretty simple: federal spending that far exceeds what the government collects in tax revenue. Over the past 30 years, federal spending has averaged 21 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), a rough measure of the size of the whole American economy, while tax revenue has averaged 17.2 percent, the CBO notes. That’s not great, but the future looks much worse. By 2053, the CBO expects federal spending to grow to 29.1 percent of GDP, while revenue climbs to just 19.1 percent.

Entitlements are the main driver of that future spending surge. Social Security spending will rise from about 5 percent of GDP to about 6.2 percent over the next 30 years. Costs for Medicare and Medicaid will jump from 5.8 percent of GDP to 8.6 percent by 2053.

Financing the national debt itself will become a major share of federal spending in the next few decades. The CBO projects that interest payments on the debt will cost $71 trillion over the next 30 years and will consume more than one-third of all federal revenue by the 2050s.

“America’s fiscal outlook is more dangerous and daunting than ever, threatening our economy and the next generation,” Michael A. Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which advocates for fiscal responsibility, said in a statement. The group responded to the new CBO report by renewing its calls for a bipartisan fiscal commission to consider plans for stabilizing the debt.

As a share of GDP, the national debt reached a record high of 106 percent during World War II. The CBO projects the record to be broken in 2029, and the debt will keep climbing—to 181 percent of GDP by 2053.

The CBO bases these projections on current law, which suggests this might actually be a rosy scenario. Obviously, the CBO cannot account for new future spending or tax cuts that might be financed by borrowing, and it does not include the possibility of another national emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic that could serve as an impetus to borrow heavily on a temporary basis. But the projections also leave out other things, like the possibility that Congress will extend the Trump administration’s tax cuts past their planned expiration in 2025—which would add to the deficit and require more borrowing in the future—or the possibility that Social Security’s impending insolvency will be papered over with yet more borrowing. And do you really believe that no Congress or president will hike spending without offsetting tax increases in the next three decades?

Under an alternative scenario in which the Trump administration’s tax cuts are extended and federal spending grows at the same rate as the economy (rather than in line with inflation, as the CBO assumes), the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects the debt to hit 222 percent of GDP by 2053.

There’s one shred of good news inside the CBO’s latest report, however. Compared to last year, long-term borrowing is expected to be slightly lower. That’s the result of the debt ceiling deal struck last month between Congress and the White House. The deal included spending caps on nondefense discretionary spending for the next two years, and even that very limited bit of fiscal responsibility can have a measurable impact on future deficits.

Still, the modest decline in future deficits mostly serves to illustrate the daunting size of the federal government’s debt problem. By 2053, the debt will more than double the size of America’s economy—and, again, that’s only if you assume borrowing won’t increase for any reason in the next three decades.

“This level of debt would be truly unprecedented,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in a statement. “Time is of the essence; we simply cannot afford to keep borrowing at this unsustainable rate.”

The post CBO Projects Huge Deficits, $116 Trillion in New Borrowing Over the Next 30 Years appeared first on Reason.com.

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From Justice Alito’s opinion in today’s Groff v. DeJoy:

Since its passage, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has made it unlawful for covered employers “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges [of] employment, because of such individual’s … religion.”  As originally enacted, Title VII did not spell out what it meant by discrimination “because of … religion,” but shortly after the statute’s passage, the EEOC interpreted that provision to mean that employers were sometimes required to “accommodate” the “reasonable religious needs of employees.” … [But] EEOC decisions did not settle the question of undue hardship. In 1970, the Sixth Circuit held (in a Sabbath case) that Title VII as then written did not require an employer “to accede to or accommodate” religious practice because that “would raise grave” Establishment Clause questions….

Responding to [this] …, Congress amended Title VII in 1972. Tracking the EEOC’s regulatory language, Congress provided that “[t]he term ‘religion’ includes all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, unless an employer demonstrates that he is unable to reasonably accommodate to an employee’s or prospective employee’s religious observance or practice without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.”

This thus created a duty on employers to exempt religious objectors from generally applicable rules (e.g., work schedules, dress and hairstyle codes, particular job tasks, etc.) when that can be done “without undue hardship,” but what does that mean? The Court’s leading precedent interpreting this, Hardison v. Trans Word Airlines (1977), has been requiring only accommodations that would involve only “a de minimis cost,” but the Court’s opinion today concludes that this was an offhanded remark that didn’t capture the true scope of the Title VII provision:

We hold that showing “more than a de minimis cost,” as that phrase is used in common parlance, does not suffice to establish “undue hardship” under Title VII. Hardison cannot be reduced to that one phrase. In describing an employer’s “undue hardship” defense, Hardison referred repeatedly to “substantial” burdens, and that formulation better explains the decision. We therefore, like the parties, understand Hardison to mean that “undue hardship” is shown when a burden is substantial in the overall context of an employer’s business. This fact-specific inquiry comports with both Hardison and the meaning of “undue hardship” in ordinary speech…. [U]nder any definition, a hardship is more severe than a mere burden…. [I]t means something very different from a burden that is merely more than de minimis, i.e., something that is “very small or trifling.” … [C]ourts must apply the test in a manner that takes into account all relevant factors in the case at hand, including the particular accommodations at issue and their practical impact in light of the nature, “size and operating cost of [an] employer.” …

[T]oday’s clarification may prompt little, if any, change in the [EEOC’s] guidance explaining why no undue hardship is imposed by temporary costs, voluntary shift swapping, occasional shift swapping, or administrative costs. But it would not be prudent to ratify in toto a body of EEOC interpretation that has not had the benefit of the clarification we adopt today. What is most important is that “undue hardship” in Title VII means what it says, and courts should resolve whether a hardship would be substantial in the context of an employer’s business in the commonsense manner that it would use in applying any such test….

The court also specially discussed the question when harms to coworkers may qualify as “undue hardship”:

[T]he language of Title VII requires an assessment of a possible accommodation’s effect on “the conduct of the employer’s business.” As the Solicitor General put it, not all “impacts on coworkers … are relevant,” but only “coworker impacts” that go on to “affec[t] the conduct of the business.” So an accommodation’s effect on co-workers may have ramifications for the conduct of the employer’s business, but a court cannot stop its analysis without examining whether that further logical step is shown in a particular case.

On this point, the Solicitor General took pains to clarify that some evidence that occasionally is used to show “impacts” on coworkers is “off the table” for consideration. Specifically, a coworker’s dislike of “religious practice and expression in the workplace” or “the mere fact [of] an accommodation” is not “cognizable to factor into the undue hardship inquiry.” To the extent that this was not previously clear, we agree. An employer who fails to provide an accommodation has a defense only if the hardship is “undue,” and a hardship that is attributable to employee animosity to a particular religion, to religion in general, or to the very notion of accommodating religious practice cannot be considered “undue.” If bias or hostility to a religious practice or a religious accommodation provided a defense to a reasonable accommodation claim, Title VII would be at war with itself. Contra, EEOC v. Sambo’s of Georgia, Inc. (ND Ga. 1981) (considering as hardship “[a]dverse customer reaction” from “a simple aversion to, or discomfort in dealing with, bearded people”).

Second, as the Solicitor General’s authorities underscore, Title VII requires that an employer reasonably accommodate an employee’s practice of religion, not merely that it assess the reasonableness of a particular possible accommodation or accommodations. This distinction matters. Faced with an accommodation request like Groff’s [which sought an exemption from having to work Sundays], it would not be enough for an employer to conclude that forcing other employees to work overtime would constitute an undue hardship. Consideration of other options, such as voluntary shift swapping, would also be necessary….

The Court left to lower courts to decide whether Groff’s particular request for exemption from having to work Sundays  (delivering mail) would indeed impose an “undue hardship” to the post office:

The Third Circuit assumed that Hardison prescribed a “more than a de minimis cost” test, and this may have led the court to dismiss a number of possible accommodations, including those involving the cost of incentive pay, or the administrative costs of coordination with other nearby stations with a broader set of employees. Without foreclosing the possibility that USPS will prevail, we think it appropriate to leave it to the lower courts to apply our clarified context-specific standard, and to decide whether any further factual development is needed.

Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Jackson, joined the Court’s opinion but added, among other things:

Petitioner Gerald Groff asks this Court to overrule Hardison and to replace it with a “significant difficulty or expense” standard. The Court does not do so. That is a wise choice because stare decisis has “enhanced force” in statutory cases. Congress is free to revise this Court’s statutory interpretations. The Court’s respect for Congress’s decision not to intervene promotes the separation of powers by requiring interested parties to resort to the legislative rather than the judicial process to achieve their policy goals. This justification for statutory stare decisis is especially strong here because “Congress has spurned multiple opportunities to reverse [Hardison]—openings as frequent and clear as this Court ever sees.” Moreover, in the decades since Hardison was decided, Congress has revised Title VII multiple times in response to other decisions of this Court, yet never in response to Hardison.

The Court also flagged but didn’t resolve the question whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act provides even more protection for federal government employees. RFRA, which applies to federal government generally (without separately discussing federal employment) mandates religious exemptions from government action unless denying the exemption “is the least restrictive means of furthering [a] compelling governmental interest”—on its face, a much more pro-claimant test than “undue hardship.” The Court wrote,

Courts have not always agreed on how RFRA’s cause of action—which does not rely on employment status—interacts with Title VII’s cause of action, and the Third Circuit has treated Title VII as exclusively governing at least some employment-related claims brought by Government employees. Compare Francis v. Mineta (CA3 2007), with Tagore v. United States (CA5 2013) (federal employee’s RFRA claim could proceed even though de minimis standard foreclosed Title VII claim). Because Groff did not bring a RFRA claim, we need not resolve today whether the Government is correct that RFRA claims arising out of federal employment are not displaced by Title VII.

And the Court seemed to reject the argument that the Establishment Clause precluded employee religious exemption rights: The Court noted, seemingly approvingly, that EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc. (2015) had “clarified that ‘Title VII does not demand mere neutrality with regard to religious practices’ but instead ‘gives them favored treatment’ in order to ensure religious persons’ full participation in the workforce.”

The post S. Ct. Unanimously Broadens (Somewhat) Employees’ Rights to Religious Exemptions from Neutral Work Rules appeared first on Reason.com.

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World’s worst dad? A Florida police officer was reportedly under investigation after jailing his 3-year-old son over potty-training trouble. The officer, Michael Schoenbrod, told the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) he had done the same thing with his other child when that child was age 4 and acted up at preschool.

Last year, the younger boy “was brought to the Daytona Beach Shores Public Safety Department on successive days last October and placed in jail,” reports The Daytona Beach News-Journal. “On the second occasion, Oct. 6, 2022, the child was also handcuffed.”

Schoenbrod told a DCF case worker the boy “was crying. I was getting the response I expected from him.” The boy allegedly promised to never poop his pants again.

In the grand scheme of bad cops and bad parents, Schoenbrod’s actions are relatively minor. Still, they stand out as yet another example of “quirky” police tomfoolery—like pulling people over to give them gift cards at Christmastime or turkeys at Thanksgiving—that hints at larger issues with police culture.

In this case, it’s Schoenbrod’s sense of entitlement (he seems to think it’s his right to use the public jail as a personal parenting tool) and his belief that scaring and confining people (including small children!) is the best way to help them learn. He actually said that tears from the child was the response that he wanted.

The situation has also revealed bigger issues surrounding secrecy within local law enforcement agencies.

“It is unclear whether Schoenbrod and another high-ranking Daytona Beach Shores officer, Det. Sgt. Jessica Long, who brought their child to the jail on Oct. 5, faced discipline from the city,” notes the News-Journal. “While the city has not made public any internal affairs findings, Both Schoenbrod and Long had 20 hours of leave without pay on their May pay stubs.”

The paper did obtain “copies of memos written by Public Safety Director Michael Fowler to each informing them of a professional standards investigation,” but could not obtain further information about it because the records are supposedly sealed. But why and how the records are off limits remains something of a mystery.

A city clerk told the paper the records had been sealed by a judge; meanwhile, a court administrator said the judge had not sealed the records. Then someone with the Volusia County Clerk of Court’s Office said the records were “confidential due to motions for confidentiality filed within the cases.” But according to Michael Barfield, director of public access initiatives for the Florida Center for Government Accountability, the city is improperly withholding the records, since “a party cannot make a record that is subject to production under Chapter 119 (of the state public records law) confidential by merely filing a lawsuit requesting confidentiality and then not setting a hearing on the motion.”

In any event, Schoenbrod apparently faced a child services inquiry as well. Bodycam footage from a Volusia County Sheriff’s Office deputy present during his interview with a child caseworker finds Schoenbrod saying it was “disgusting that somebody would drag our family through the mud like this” and Long calling the investigation “insane.” Local reporters and residents have also had trouble obtaining records about this investigation.

“For months, Daytona Beach Shores-area residents who have seen the body-cam video or heard about it have been asking City Hall for records related to the matter, but the results of investigations remain largely shrouded in secrecy,” notes the News-Journal.

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FREE MINDS

Snapchat isn’t responsible for a teacher sending sexually explicit images to a student just because the social media platform features disappearing communications. U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal threw out a case alleging as much last year, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit just upheld her decision.

The student had argued that “sexual predators” were drawn to Snapchat “by the privacy assurances granted by the disappearing messages feature of the application.” He sued Snapchat along with the teacher and the school district. But Section 230 of federal communications law shields Snapchat from civil liability for content posted by users, the appeals court pointed out.

A number of civil suits, including this one, have attempted to get around Section 230 by accusing tech companies of negligence in their product design. But courts have routinely thrown out these cases, noting that fashioning the claim as one of product design rather than speech doesn’t make sense.

Section 230 provides “immunity…to Web-based service providers for all claims stemming from their publication of information created by third parties,” noted the district court.

“As Doe’s claims against Snap were based on Mazock’s messages, the district court found Snap immune from liability,” pointed out the 5th Circuit in its June 26 decision:

On appeal, Doe asks us to revisit this issue. He cites several authorities in support of his contention that the broad immunity provided by the CDA goes against its plain text and public policy. However, as Doe himself acknowledges, this argument is contrary to the law of our circuit: “Parties complaining that they were harmed by a Web site’s publication of user-generated content…may sue the third-party user who generated the content, but not the interactive computer service that enabled them to publish the content online.”

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FREE MARKETS

New Hampshire embraces universal licensing reciprocity. Republican New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu just signed into law a measure allowing professionals licensed in other states to legally work in their fields in New Hampshire without obtaining a new occupational license.

????UNIVERSAL LICENSE RECIPROCITY is now the law of the land in NH!

We took on the special interests and are cutting red tape.

Licensure reform is common sense:
Lowers costs for customers
Promotes free-market competition
Grows our workforce

This is a BIG WIN for NH. pic.twitter.com/Tjaff3cOeW

— Chris Sununu (@GovChrisSununu) June 28, 2023

Known as universal licensing reciprocity, the “practice will now apply to all professions licensed in New Hampshire as long as their out-of-state requirements are ‘substantially similar’ to New Hampshire’s,” reports the New Hampshire Bulletin. The measure (House Bill 594) “will leave it to the state Office of Professional Licensure and Certification to consult with professional boards, commissions, and councils to determine what counts as ‘substantially similar.'”

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QUICK HITS

• Join Reason‘s Nick Gillespie on YouTube and Facebook at 1 p.m. today for a discussion with Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

• Marijuana legalization is coming to Maryland. The state’s law legalizing recreational marijuana use takes effect July 1, making Maryland the 20th state to legalize weed.

• A federal court has paused enforcement of a Tennessee law banning gender transition treatments for minors.

• Filter has a dispatch from the latest Psychedelic Science conference.

• “A nonprofit prison ministry is suing an Indiana Jail after it instituted a policy that effectively banned the organization from sending books to incarcerated individuals,” reports Reason‘s Emma Camp. “In their lawsuit, Unshackled Hearts argues that the policy, which prohibits books from being sent through Amazon and online distributors, violates their First Amendment rights.”

• Greensboro, North Carolina, police officer Miguel Garcia is accused of sexually assaulting a developmentally disabled woman he met after she was reported missing from a group home.

• A reminder that qualified immunity doesn’t only protect bad cops:

Recent 6th Circuit decision holds qualified immunity protects a state building inspector from Takings Clause liability. A good reminder that abusive police are far from the only state officials protected by awful QI doctrine. https://t.co/mQWu0DYV8s

— Ilya Somin (@IlyaSomin) June 28, 2023

• More on 1950s wages and spending versus 2023 wages and spending:

The way I prefer making the opportunity cost point is that couples have voted with their actions and chosen “more stuff” over “1950s family”. They can get more stuff today than in the past. Social conservatives’ job is to convince people they’ve chosen badly. Tough sell. https://t.co/snHVfMZkBp

— Scott Winship (@swinshi) June 28, 2023

Families spend less on food today than any point in the past https://t.co/Nk9Vw6Jmmf pic.twitter.com/tFHVUTg3oU

— Jeremy Horpedahl ????‍ (@jmhorp) June 28, 2023

The post Florida Cop Jails Toddler Son for Poopy Pants appeared first on Reason.com.

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