Category: reason

Republicans have retaken control of Congress on a
promise to reverse President Obama’s failed policies. They should
start by honing in on an initiative now synonymous with federal
overreach and creeping nationalization of local education matters:
the new Common Core national curriculum standards, which
give parents
everywhere nightmares about their kids’ trendy,
incomprehensible math homework assignments, according to Robby
Soave.

The GOP should tell Obama to back off and stop forcing the
standards down the throats of various state legislatures. In doing
so, Republicans would draw praise from Common Core’s many
critics—including conservatives and libertarians, parents, and even
teachers—but also some of its most devout proponents, who believe
federal involvement has resulted in nothing but bad PR for the
initiative.

If Congressional Republicans pick a fight with Obama over Common
Core and federal coercion, they will have everyone on their
side—except the president. That sounds like a fight well worth
having, writes Soave.

View this article.

• Meet Rich Weinstein, the guy who
  keeps finding
  Obamacare architect Jon Gruber saying damaging things like the
  mandates were only meant for states who ran their own exchanges and
  that details about Obamacare was deliberately kept non-transparent
  because voters are “stupid.”
• Today is
  Veterans Day, where politicians acknowledge the sacrifices made
  by members of our military while simultaneously figuring out how to
  use them to advance their own agendas.
• The New York City doctor diagnosed with Ebola
  has been cured and is now free to bowl again. There are now no
  more Ebola cases within the United States.
• Somehow the governor of Missouri is involved in explaining
  
  how law enforcement is going to respond when a grand jury
  announces whether the officer who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson
  will face charges.
• Eight women have died in central India as a result of
  government-backed sterilization surgeries intended to help
  control the population, though apparently not this directly.
• Spain’s government has rejected
  Catalonia’s call for self-determination.
• Russia has managed to
  push CNN out of the country while expanding its own state-run
  media services.

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Being sexually dominated. Having sex with
multiple people at once. Watching someone undress without their
knowledge. These are just a few of the totally normal
sexual
fantasies uncovered by recent research published in the
Journal of Sexual Medicine. The overarching takeaway from
this survey of about 1,500 Canadian adults is that sexual kink is
incredibly common. 

While plenty of research has been conducted on
sexual fetishes, less is known about the prevalence
of particular sexual desires that don’t rise to the level of
pathological (i.e., don’t harm others or interfere with normal life
functioning and aren’t a requisite for getting off). “Our main
objective was to specify norms in sexual fantasies,” said lead
study author Christian Joyal. “We suspected there are a lot more
common fantasies than atypical fantasies.” 

Joyal’s team surveyed about 717 Québécois men and 799
women, with a mean age of 30. Participants ranked 55 different
sexual fantasies, as well as wrote in their own. Each fantasy was
then rated as statistically rare, unusual, common, or
typical. 

Rare fantasies: Only two of the 55 sexual
fantasies—sex with children and sex with animals—were found to be
rare, occurring in less than 2.3 percent of the survey
population. 

Unusual fantasies: Nine fantasies were
determined to be unusual: urinating on or being urinated on by a
sexual partner, crossdressing, forcing someone to have sex,
“sexually abusing a person who is drunk, asleep, or unconscious”,
watch two men have sex, being naked or partially naked in a public
place, having sex with three or more men, and having sex with a
stripper or prostitute. Less than 16 percent of all
respondents said they fantasize about these things, although there
were some notable gender differences. For instance, nearly a third
of women have fantasized about having sex with three or more men,
compared to 13 percent of men who’ve fantasized about it. Nearly 40
percent of men have fantasized about fucking a sex worker, compared
to 12.5 percent of women. Men were also more likely to fantasize
about forcing someone to have sex (22 percent versus 10.8
percent). 

Common/typical fantasies: Sexual scenarios that
appealed to 50 percent or more of respondents were deemed common,
and those that appealed to more than more than 84.1 percent of the
sample were deemed typical. These included: 

• Sex in “an unusual place (e.g., office, public
  toilets)”: 82 percent women + 82 percent men
• Having sex with two women: 37 percent women +
  84.5 percent men
• Watching two women have sex: 42 percent women
  + 82 percent men
• Having sex with a stranger: 49 percent women +
  72.5 percent men
• Being dominated sexually: 65 percent women +
  53 percent men
• Dominating someone sexually: 47 percent women
  + 60 percent men
• Being tied up during sexual activity: 52
  percent women + 46 percent men
• Having anal sex: 32.5 percent women + 64
  percent men
• Having sex with more than three women: 25
  percent women + 75 percent men
• Watching someone undress without them knowing:
  32 percent women + 63 percent men
• Having sex with more than three people, including men
  and women: 56.5 percent women + 16 percent men

Sexual fantasies that fell short of being “common” but weren’t
rare enough to be considered unusual included: 

• Being photographed or filmed during sex: 32
  percent women + 44 percent men
• Being ejaculated on by a partner: 41 percent
  women + 29 percent men
• Having sex with someone much younger: 18
  percent women + 57 percent men
• Spanking or whipping someone “to obtain sexual
  pleasure”: 24 percent women + 43.5 percent men
• Being spanked or whipped: 36 percent women +
  28.5 percent men 
• Being forced to have sex: 29 percent women +
  31 percent men
• Having sex with a fetish or non-sexual object:
  26 percent women + 28 percent men

Notably, men were more likely than women to say they wanted
their sexual fantasies to become sexual realities. “Approximately
half of women with descriptions of submissive fantasies specified
that they would not want the fantasy to materialize in real life,”
the researchers note. “This result confirms the important
distinction between sexual fantasies and sexual wishes, which is
usually stronger among women than among men.” 

The researchers also found a number of write-in “favorite”
sexual fantasies that were common among men had no equivalent in
women’s fantasies. These included having sex with a trans woman
(included in 4.2 percent of write-in fantasies), being on the
receiving end of strap-on/non-homosexual anal sex (6.1 percent),
and watching a partner have sex with another man (8.4 percent).

Next up, the researchers plan to map subgroups of sexual
fantasies that often go together (for instance, those who reported
submissive fantasies were also more likely to report domination
fantasies, and both were associated with higher levels of overall
sexual satisfaction). For now, they caution that “care should be
taken before labeling (a sexual fantasy) as unusual, let alone
deviant.”  

Goliath fought with a javelin. Unilever, producer of Hellmann’s
mayonnaise, fights with a decades-old Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) definition.

The consumer goods company thinks that Hampton Creek, maker of
Just Mayo, shouldn’t be allowed to call its eggless vegan spread
“mayonnaise” because there ain’t no such thing as mayo without
eggs. According to an FDA definition for mayo made holy
back in 1957, that is. The Washington Post
reports:

The global food giant argues that Hampton Creek’s Just
Mayo is not, as Unilever lawyers wrote, “exactly,
precisely, only and simply mayonnaise,” as defined by the
dictionary and the Food and Drug Administration, which
says mayo must include “egg yolk-containing
ingredients.”

Just Mayo uses Canadian yellow peas in lieu of eggs.

Not one to stand idly by as a scourge of faux mayo threatens
benighted American consumers, Unilever has taken it upon itself to
sue its upstart rival for false advertising and fraud. Unilever
argues that Hampton Creek is misleading customers into thinking
they’re buying traditional mayo filled with eggy goodness because
the product’s logo resembles an egg.

But money tells a more creditable tale. Unilever is also upset
that this wanton deception is cutting into its profits:

The Just Mayo identity crisis, Unilever lawyers said, has
hurt Hellmann’s market share, “caused consumer deception and
serious, irreparable harm to Unilever” and the mayo industry as a
whole.

The multinational corporation valued at $60 billion and boasting
45 percent of a $2 billion mayo market is out for blood,
reports The New York Times:

Unilever wants Hampton Creek…to pay three times its profit in
damages plus the legal fees of the plaintiff…It also is asking the
court to require Hampton Creek to stop using the egg on its label;
recall all products, ads and promotional materials that might
confuse consumers; and stop claiming that Just Mayo is superior to
Hellmann’s.

In other words, Unilever wants Hampton Creek to go out of
business and forget about the whole thing.

Analysts, pointing out the obvious, opine that this move
reflects entrenched industry’s fear of competition from
nontraditional startups. Particularly scary are startups with
substantial financial support making market inroads: Hampton Creek
counts Bill Gates and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing among its
investors.

This isn’t the first time the FDA’s protectionist regulations
have been wielded by food industry leaders to whack-a-mole
competitors. Earlier this year, candlemakers
Mediterranean food company Sabra
petitioned the FDA to establish rules defining what constitutes
“real” hummus. The biggest hummus manufacturer in the United States
claimed that, in total contravention of the laws of gods
and men, renegade hummus producers were
using black
beans or lentils instead of the traditional
chickpeas.

In its 11-page petition, Sabra
demanded that “hummus must be comprised…predominately of
chickpeas, and must be no less than 5% tahini.” The company cited
the standing definitions for other foodstuffs—including
mayonnaise—as justification for codifying a hummus definition.

Count these as two more examples of protectionist regulations
guaranteeing that industry leaders
will defend their market
positions within the halls of federal
bureaucracies—and not on the
battlefield of consumer preference.

Once upon a time, you could buy
illegal drugs anonymously online from a site called Silk Road. The
postman would show up at your door with your gas bill, maybe a
birthday card from mom, and some carefully packaged pot or heroin.
Even though you had never met the person you bought the drugs from,
the delivery came just as you ordered it. The FBI tore up the Silk
Road, writes Brian Doherty. But they could not end the practice of
selling drugs anonymously on the Dark Web.

View this article.

The good: Minneapolis Public Schools want
to decrease total suspensions for non-violent infractions of school
rules.

The bad: The district has pledged to do this by implementing a
special review system for cases where a black or Latino student is
disciplined. Only minority students will enjoy this special
privilege.

That seems purposefully unconstitutional—and is likely illegal,
according to certain legal minds.

The new policy is the result of negotiations between MPS and the
Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Minority
students are disciplined at much higher rates than white students,
and for two years the federal government has investigated whether
that statistic was the result of institutional racism.

Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson has been working to decrease
suspensions district-wide. She has encouraged other forms of
mediation to take precedence in cases where a student’s behavior is
merely inappropriate, rather than violent. That’s all well and
good; public schools have gone discipline-crazy over the years,
punishing students all-too-harshly for silly reasons every day. Any
respite from overcriminalization is welcome.

Any respite, except this one:

Moving forward, every suspension of a black or brown student
will be reviewed by the superintendent’s leadership team. The
school district aims to more deeply understand the circumstances of
suspensions with the goal of providing greater supports to the
school, student or family in need. This team could choose to bring
in additional resources for the student, family and school.

That comes directly from Johnson’s
desk. I suppose it’s well-intentioned—but don’t all students,
regardless of skin color, deserve to have their disciplinary issues
adjudicated under the same standards? And yet Johnson is committed
to reducing suspensions for minority students by a specific
percentage, irrespective of the facts of the individual cases:

MPS must aggressively reduce the disproportionality between
black and brown students and their white peers every year for the
next four years. This will begin with a 25 percent reduction in
disproportionality by the end of this school year; 50 percent by
2016; 75 percent by 2017; and 100 percent by 2018.

Hans Bader, a senior attorney at the Competitive Enterprise
Institute and former Office for Civil Rights lawyer, tells me that
this disciplinary quota system violates 7th Circuit Court precedent
established in a 1997 case, People Who
Care v. Rockford Board of Education. In that decision, the
court determined that it was unconstitutional for a school to
mandate that black students be disciplined at identical rates as
white students. That policy was discriminatory on its face, since
it would result in children receiving different punishments
depending on their race.

Instead of doing to high school discipline what activists have
done to college admissions, let’s relax zero tolerance for
everyone.

Last week President Obama said he wanted an
authorization for the use of military force against ISIS, the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,
after all. Up to then the White House argued the U.S.-led
campaign against ISIS in Iraq and in Syria fell under the
authorization for the use of military force against Al Qaeda and
its affiliates passed in September, 2001. The president continues
to maintain he doesn’t need explicit authorization from Congress
for the war against ISIS but since the elections are over he
thought it was a good time to ask for it anyway.

While the U.S.-led coalition is seeing some successes—the Iraqi
army
claims to have critically injured Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the
leader of ISIS, and to have
driven ISIS out of Beiji, a major oil refinery town—it has also
galvanized support for ISIS among the region’s population. More
fighters than ever before are
reportedly going to join ISIS since U.S. airstrikes started.
And now, The Daily Beast
reports, representatives from Al Nusra, the Al Qaeda affiliate
in Syria, ISIS, and the Khorasan group, another Al Qaeda offshoot
few people heard of before it was targeted during U.S. airstrikes
in Syria, are meeting to discuss re-uniting with the aim of driving
more “moderate” U.S.-backed rebels out of Syria, groups whose
members nevertheless
condemned U.S. airstrikes in Syria, and not just because of the
claim that civilians were killed.

After the “thumping” in the 2006 elections, President George W.
Bush announced a surge in Iraq, one that ended up being used in
part to negotiate the eventual end of the Iraq war. After the 2014
elections, President Obama insisted he heard the American people,
following it up a few days later by sending
1,500 more troops to Iraq, who he claims won’t be in combat
roles.

Texas is creating jobs and reducing
unemployment faster than the nation as a whole, reports the Federal
Reserve Bank of Dallas. The Lone Star State also outstrips the
country in terms of exports. Could it be that this dynamic economy
is the result of the state’s healthy business environment and
generally strong regard for economic freedom? If so, state
officials better take care, because Texas has slid a bit in the
rankings, and may risk losing its advantage.

In the
latest monthly survey, the Dallas Fed reports that “employment
rose at a 3.2 percent annualized pace in September, faster than the
nation’s 2.2 percent increase.” Notably, the
strongest job growth sector is private non-farm employment.
That brings the unemployment rate down to 5.2 percent, lower than
the national 5.9 percent jobless rate.

Separately, the Dallas Fed also reports that
export growth from the state outstrips that in the United
States as a whole.

If you’re a believer that prosperity has a little something to
do with leaving people the hell alone to make (and keep) their
payday, it’s no surprise that Texas gets kudos for generally
restraining politicians’ temptation to screw things up. Chief
Executive magazine has ranked the state as having the
strongest business environment in the country for ten
years running. Texas rates a solid
10 out of 50 states in the Tax Foundation’s ratings of business
tax environments. In overall taxes, WalletHub ranks Texas as the

7th least burdensome. Canada’s Fraser Institute puts
the state in fourth place in terms of economic freedom among
states and provinces in Canada and the United States—and second
among U.S. states.

That’s all good, and isn’t just to state residents’ credit, but
their profit, too.

But there’s a warning in there. In
the Mercatus Center’s combined rankings of social and economic
freedom, Texas has dropped six places
since 2009, to 14. “Like many southern states, Texas performs
better on economic freedom than personal freedom,” Mercatus notes,
“Yet despite its reputation as a low-regulation state, it is only
average for regulatory policy.” The state also has a debt problem
at the local level that may make low tax rates a challenge to
maintain.

If politicians are going to be meh in terms of their respect for
personal freedom, they really need to emphasize that commitment to
not getting handsy with people’s wallets.

The Fraser Institute also notes that the top-scorers in their
ratings hold their place largely due to relative advantage—not
because things are getting better. In fact, Canadian provinces, on
average, are ranked better than their American counterparts, but
only because “their economic freedom is declining more slowly than
in the US states.”

The signs aren’t all ominous. Texas implemented
strong eminent domain reform just three years ago. That’s an
indicator that state officials retain at least some
respect for the conditions that keep the place from turning into
Bulgaria by the
Sea California.

If they want the prosperity to keep coming, they’ll continue to
stay out of the way of the people and businesses that create
it.

So President Obama has announced that the
Internet should effectively be regulated as a public utility along
the lines of the old-time Ma Bell phone system. He’s
asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to
reclassify internet traffic from information services (or Title I
services under current Communications Act rules) to
telecommunication services (or Title II services).

Obama is old enough to know better. If you think cable
companies and internet service providers (ISPs) absolutely suck at
customer service (and they pretty much do), they’re simply faint
echoes of the old Bell system, which set the standard for
awfulness. “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone
company,” joked the
comedian Lily Tomlin back in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Public
utilities and government-granted monopolies — the only sort that
actually stick around for very long — are rarely famous for their
customer service and innovative practices. “The Phone Company” was
enough of a cultural shorthand for all that was bad, rotten, and
bureaucratic in American life that it was the
super-villain in the 1967 black
comedy The President’s
Analyst. 

That’s from my new
Time column.

One of the
main arguments undergirding calls for reclassification and Net
Neutrality more generally is the idea that ISPs are monopolies and
thus immune to market forces that increase customer choice and
satisfaction. That’s simply not true.

According to the FCC’s own
findings, the speed and variety of American Internet
connections are growing substantially every year. Despite claims
that monopolistic ISPs don’t have to listen to customers, 80% of
households have at least two providers that can deliver the
internet at 10Mbps or faster, which is FCC’s top rating. It’s in
the increasingly intense battle over customers that a thousand
flowers will bloom; all sorts of interesting, stupid, and dumb
innovations will be tried; users will be empowered; and tomorrow’s
Internet will look radically different from today’s.

And maybe, just maybe, customer service will be light years
better than what was offered by the phone company of Obama’s
youth.

Read the whole thing here.

The smartest minds on the center-right are
circulating lists of legislation for the new Republican Congress to
pass. George Will, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, and Charles Krauthammer
have all published their recommendations. Some focus on repealing
or eliminating regulations, but there are also new policies they
want to put into place. Ira Stoll has his own suggestion: Don’t.
Setting “zero” as at least the symbolic goal for new laws in the
new Congress would have the virtue of being humble, Stoll notes. It
would be a signal that Congress understands the law of unintended
consequences: that actions intended to improve matters may wind up
making them worse in ways initially unimagined.

View this article.