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If you’re traveling
by air today, well, good luck to you. A storm is paralyzing a good
chunk of the Northeast and once airports in Boston, Philly, New
York, and Newark get even a little bit backed up, the ripples fan
out like a cannonball hitting a fat guy in the stomach in
super-slow-mo.

As you’re cooling your jets in airports (which approximate
homeless shelters on the holidays), consider this: It’s not just
weather that screws up air travel so much. The simple fact is that,
as Reason Foundation’s Bob Poole says in the video above, “The air
traffic control system in the United States is technologically
obsolete. This model is basically the same model that we have
used since the beginning of air travel.”

Click above to watch “Your Flight Has Been Delayed…And It’s
Washington’s Fault.” Click here for
downloadable versions and more links and resources.

If you’re traveling
by air today, well, good luck to you. A storm is paralyzing a good
chunk of the Northeast and once airports in Boston, Philly, New
York, and Newark get even a little bit backed up, the ripples fan
out like a cannonball hitting a fat guy in the stomach in
super-slow-mo.

As you’re cooling your jets in airports (which approximate
homeless shelters on the holidays), consider this: It’s not just
weather that screws up air travel so much. The simple fact is that,
as Reason Foundation’s Bob Poole says in the video above, “The air
traffic control system in the United States is technologically
obsolete. This model is basically the same model that we have
used since the beginning of air travel.”

Click above to watch “Your Flight Has Been Delayed…And It’s
Washington’s Fault.” Click here for
downloadable versions and more links and resources.

Criticized by its own Inspector General earlier
this year on the IRS targeting of tea party groups for special
scrutiny, the Treasury Department appears to be doubling down,
proposing a new rule to restrict political speech by non-profits.
The Washington Post
reports: 

Under the proposed rule, groups such as Crossroads GPS,
co-founded by GOP strategist Karl Rove, and the Democratic-allied
League of Conservation Voters would no longer be able to claim some
of their routine activities as part of their work as “social
welfare” organizations.

Instead, the new Treasury Department regulation would define things
such as distributing voter guides, registering people to vote and
running ads that mention elected officials close to Election Day as
“candidate-related political activities.” The rule would
substantially roll back the level of political activity open to
“social welfare” groups.

Unmentioned by the Washington Post is one of the
biggest 501(c)4s  of them all, Organizing for Action (OFA,
former Obama for America), which still operates the website
barackobama.com and the president’s Twitter feed.  OFA has
been very active since the 2012 election in promoting President
Obama’s and the Democrats’ agenda. See some of their, uh, “social
welfare” work here.
 

Other non-profit groups have gone to bat for Obama’s policies
too, sometimes under the guise of being non-partisan yet
specifically tailored in support of a distinctly political agenda.
Capital City Project
reports, for example, that Families USA, a “non-partisan”
non-profit focusing on “affordable health care for all Americans”
received a $1 million grant to collect pro-Obamacare stories.
Capital City Project points out those stories then get picked up by
media outlets who source them to an “independent” or non-partisan
group, even though it’s a group whose mission lines up neatly with
the title of the president’s signature legislation. 

It’s a safe bet non-profits that support the agenda of the
ruling party (for now Democrats) won’t be as negatively affected by
the proposed rule and other attempts at government regulation as
non-profits challenging those in power. The IRS’ targeting of Tea
Party and “patriot” groups speaks to that. Money facilitates
speech, and in this country at least, the exercise of speech is
free. The Treasury Department ought to be disengaging from the
practice of regulating what amount to groups exercising free
speech, not proposing new rules to further restrict political
speech it doesn’t favor.

Los Angeles Unified School
District has stumbled upon a revolutionary concept in disciplining
young schoolchildren: Maybe don’t treat them the way the police
department treats parolees? That is to say, LAUSD is pulling back
on responding to common child misbehavior with police citations.
From the
Los Angeles Daily News:

Starting Dec. 1, elementary and some middle school students in
Los Angeles Unified will no longer receive police citations for
most misbehavior.

According to the new policy, Los Angeles School Police will
refrain from writing criminal citations for infractions such as
fighting and writing on desks, instead turning students to school
officials for campus-based punishment that is more in line with
their age and nature of the violations.

“This is an important step, but it also raises concerns that
there is more to be done,” said Manuel Criollo, director of
organizing for the nonprofit Community Rights Campaign, an L.A.
group that has lobbied for the decriminalization of many
school-based offenses. “Some of this should be common sense, and
the next thing is to expand it in the middle schools. Thirteen- and
14-year-olds should also be covered by this.”

This “new policy” smells remarkably old actually, like how
schools handled discipline when those of us who are adults now
attended school. Officials have finally realized that treating
students like criminals discourages them from doing things like
attending school (important, because that’s how school funding is
determined):

The directive from LAUSD Police Chief Steven Zipperman asks
school-based officers to look at misbehavior of students under the
age of 13 as a teaching opportunity rather than a reason to hand
out citations that could discourage them from attending class
altogether.

If a ticket is issued, officers should have an articulated
reason for doing so, as well as the permission of a supervisor. The
policy does not cover possession of contraband.

The Community Rights Campaign calculated that school police have
handed out more than 4,700 citations to students under the age of
14 for the 2012-13 school year.

“Banning Doorknobs, Frat Parties, and ‘God Bless America’
Signs?! Nanny of the Month (‘13-11)” is the latest video from
ReasonTV. Watch above or click on the link below for video, full
text, supporting links, downloadable versions, and more Reason TV
clips.

View this article.

“Banning Doorknobs, Frat Parties, and ‘God Bless America’
Signs?! Nanny of the Month (‘13-11)” is the latest video from
ReasonTV. Watch above or click on the link below for video, full
text, supporting links, downloadable versions, and more Reason TV
clips.

View this article.

If you thought all those assassination anniversary
posts would end after November 22 was over, think again: We’re
just moving on to another assassination. Look what happened 35
years ago today:

On November 27, 1978, the ninth day after Jonestown,
Daniel James White, ex-cop, former paratrooper, and superjock, an
All-American Boy from everybody’s favorite city, strapped on his
police special .38, loaded his pockets with extra hollow-point
bullets that explode upon impact, and went to San Francisco City
Hall to settle some political differences.

That’s from Warren Hinckle’s great piece “Dan White’s San
Francisco,” published in the libertarian magazine Inquiry
in the wake of White’s murder of Mayor George Moscone and City
Supervisor Harvey Milk. The double assassination would be followed
by one of the most infamous psychiatric legal arguments of recent
history — the “Twinkie defense,” in Paul Krassner’s famous phrase
— and then by the White Night riots, when the city’s gay community
reacted to the assassin’s acquittal.

The whole Hinckle article is worth a read.
If you need a soundtrack while you peruse it, here is the Dead
Kennedys’ (*) response to the White verdict:

(* You just can’t escape the JFK references.)