Tag: hit&run

Hot
Air links to Eliot Cohen’s
Wall Street Journal op-ed attacking the Obama
administration for its supposedly “teenage sensibility.”

Teenagers expect to be judged by intentions and promise instead
of by accomplishment, and their style can be encouraged by
irresponsible adults (see: the Nobel Prize committee) who give
awards for perkiness and promise rather than achievement.

If the United States today looks weak, hesitant and in retreat,
it is in part because its leaders and their staff do not carry
themselves like adults. They may be charming, bright and
attractive; they may have the best of intentions; but they do not
look serious. They act as though Twitter and clenched teeth or a
pout could stop invasions or rescue kidnapped children in Nigeria.
They do not sound as if, when saying that some outrage is
“unacceptable” or that a dictator “must go,” that they represent a
government capable of doing something substantial—and, if
necessary, violent—if its expectations are not met.

Read the whole piece here.

Oh please, already. If the United States’ status in the world is
dipping, let’s not spare the previous administration for all it did
to show that America was not only incapable of winning wars but
incapable of admitting when it had massively screwed up. Have you
thought about Donald Rumsfeld lately? There’s a guy who acted like
a pre-teen, for god’s sake.

None of this is to let Barack Obama off the hook for his
disastrous foreign policy. It’s to point out that there’s a nearly
perfect consistency in foreign policy between Bush and Obama. And
you know what? Starting dumb wars and then prosecuting them
incompetently is no way to earn respect from around the globe.
Throw in ongoing drone attacks of dubious legality and various
sorts of secret spying programs and more, and well, there you have
why the U.S. is tough to take seriously.

As I wrote last week at Time, I don’t think the U.S.
should be particularly involved in rescuing the kidnapped Nigerian
school girls. But virtually all Republicans and Democrats in
Washington think we should be. Not much difference there, is there?
And no Republicans or Democrats actually say we should be doing
“something substantial—and, if necessary, violent” in the Ukraine,
are they?

The Obama administration isn’t immature because it won’t follow
through on threats of violence (it did by dropping bombs on Libya
and droning the hell out of Yemen and other spots), it’s that it
made them in the first place. The ultimate teenaged fantasy is that
the U.S. can actually be globocop.#mce_temp_url#

Glenn Greenwald’s
new book, No Place to Hide, detailing his meetings
with Edward Snowden and what he has subsequently learned about the
National Security Agency (NSA), is now on sale and racking up
reviews and interviews. There is still much to learn about what the
NSA is up to. In an
interview with GQ, Greenwald is promising one major
last story providing a “big missing piece.” The interview is
getting more attention for his critical comments about Hillary
Clinton, calling the likely presidential candidate “banal,
corrupted, drained of vibrancy and passion” and a “fucking hawk”
and “like a neocon.”

But much earlier in the interview, Michael Paterniti talks to
Greenwald about one of the inspirations for Snowden’s decision to
collect all this secret information and disseminate it. Snowden
apparently was inspired by protagonists in video games:

You mention in your book that Snowden’s moral universe
was first informed by video games.
In Hong Kong, Snowden told me that at the heart of most video games
is an ordinary individual who sees some serious injustice, right?
Like some person who’s been kidnapped and you’ve got to rescue
them, or some evil force that has obtained this weapon and you’ve
got to deactivate it or kill them or whatever. And it’s all about
figuring out ways to empower yourself as an ordinary person, to
take on powerful forces in a way that allows you to undermine them
in pursuit of some public good. Even if it’s really risky or
dangerous. That moral narrative at the heart of video games was
part of his preadolescence and formed part of his moral
understanding of the world and one’s obligation as an
individual.

It’s fun to imagine Snowden having to slay a series of
role-playing game bosses and getting NSA PowerPoint slides as
rewards.  It’s also interesting to think that critics who
invoke
moral panics about the negative content in video games probably
don’t even think (or know (or care)) about how the biggest chunk of
video game storytelling is about the player being the hero, not
some prostitute-punching lowlife.

Then again, obsession with princesses aside, video game
storytelling typically makes authority the bad guy to make sure the
stakes are nice and high for the hero. There’s an army between the
hero and his goal, and often it’s the corrupt guys in charge who
are the ones capable of putting such an army together. Clinton, who
apparently doesn’t understand how America’s whistleblower laws work
and must just be pretending that Snowden is not a wanted man in the
United States,
thinks its “odd” that Snowden fled the country, has said very
little one way or the other about her position on NSA surveillance.
It doesn’t seem likely that she shares the belief that Snowden is
acting out the hero’s journey from a video game. Though, given she
has also been known to
trash video games and wants to regulate them, her attitude
toward him might not change anyway.

The Fifth Circuit Court
ruled today that Texas could not proceed with tonight’s
scheduled execution of Robert Campbell, who the state found to be
mentally retarded, because he was mentally incompetent, in line
with the 2002 Supreme Court decision on such executions. From a
statement by one of Campbell’s attorneys:

Mr. Campbell has been fully evaluated by a highly
qualified psychologist – a member of the Texas Board of Examiners
of Psychologists, appointed to that post by Governor Rick Perry –
who confirms he is a person with mental retardation. Therefore,
according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 decision in Atkins v.
Virginia, he is ineligible for the death penalty. Given the state’s
own role in creating the regrettable circumstances that led to the
Fifth Circuit’s decision today, the time is right for the State of
Texas to let go of its efforts to execute Mr. Campbell, and resolve
this case by reducing his sentence to life
imprisonment.

The successful appeal was
one of two pursued by Campbell; the other targeted the
controversy surrounding the drugs used in lethal injections, which
led to a
botched execution in Oklahoma last month. Texas won’t say where
it got the drugs it uses in its lethal injection from; many
pharmaceutical companies have moved to stop selling such drugs to
governments using them to execute people. Last week, Jacob Sullum

explained how the medicalization of executions sanitizes them
and helps maintain a level of public opinion support for the death
penalty.

Companies like Airbnb, Lyft, and EatWith are undermining bad
government policies and in some cases provoking a backlash from
regulators, writes Reason TV’s Jim Epstein. But in these brewing
public policy battles, many advocates for limiting the role of
government don’t talk like libertarians. 

They refer to these new online marketplaces as “the sharing
economy,” a phrase that’s clever branding but too broad
to be very meaningful. They argue that these companies represent a
new paradigm for American capitalism in which trade (at last!)
benefits individuals instead of multinational corporations. The
higher purpose of these sharing economy ventures, they assert,
isn’t making people freer, richer, and happier as customers,
workers, and entrepreneurs, but reducing energy consumption and
staving off the Malthusian apocalypse. 

Sharing economy defenders may be on shaky ground intellectually,
but their effort to rebrand capitalism is winning converts and
swaying regulators. If mushy phrases and misguided ideas provide
cover for, say, Occupy Wall Street protestors to turn up at a
demonstration to save Airbnb, libertarians should rejoice.

View this article.

• Joe Biden’s son is joining the
  board of a
  gas company in Ukraine, which doesn’t complicate anything at
  all, I’m sure.
• The United States will not support a ransom or
  prisoner exchange for the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by
  Boko Haram, the White House says.
• A man claiming to be
  God reportedly crashed his truck into a television news station
  in Towson, Maryland. Why does God need a truck? Or a news
  station?
• Six Ukrainian soldiers
  were reportedly killed in an ambush by antigovernment forces. A
  rebel commander claims one dead among the militia men and a much
  higher death count among Ukrainians than reported.
• Congress has failed to negotiate passage of legislation
  authorizing construction of the
  Keystone XL pipeline. With the Obama Administration also
  failing to take a formal position on it as yet, don’t expect
  anything to happen for the rest of the year.
• Israel’s former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been
  sentenced to six years in prison for his role in a bribery
  scandal.

Follow us on Facebook
and Twitter,
and don’t forget to sign
up for Reason’s daily updates for more
content.

The son of a vice president
joined the board of directors of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma
Holdings… not the son of Ukraine’s or Russia’s vice president, but
our very own.
From Burisma Holdings’ statement:

R. Hunter Biden will be in charge of the Holdings’
legal unit and will provide support for the Company among
international organizations. On his new appointment, he commented:
“Burisma’s track record of innovations and industry leadership in
the field of natural gas means that it can be a strong driver of a
strong economy in Ukraine. As a new member of the Board, I believe
that my assistance in consulting the Company on matters of
transparency, corporate governance and responsibility,
international expansion and other priorities will contribute to the
economy and benefit the people of Ukraine.”

Burisma provides four paragraphs of bio for Biden, including the
tidbit that he’s a “well-known public figure” but doesn’t include
that he’s the son of the U.S. vice president. I guess they wouldn’t
want to make it appear like nepotism played a role, right? Burisma
describes itself as “one of Ukraine’s largest
independent gas producers.” BusinessWeek reports it is
based in Cyprus. Burisma Holdings says it has fields in all
three of Ukraine’s gas and oil regions, the Carpathian, Crimean,
and Dnieper-Donets basins, the latter two located in eastern
Ukraine, currently experiencing bouts of pro-Russian insurgency and
even the annexation of Crimea by Russia.

Ukraine, and most of Europe, relies heavily on gas piped in from
Russia for its energy needs.
According to Bloomberg 30 percent of Europe’s gas
comes from Russia, and half of that crosses Ukraine. The Russian
government’s gas company, Gazprom, hiked the price of gas for
Ukraine by 81 percent in April, bringing it to $485 per 1,000 cubic
meters, the highest price in Europe. Ukraine owes $3.5 billion for
Russian fuel delivered last year and in the first four months of
2014. The Ukrainian government has been trying to renegotiate a
deal struck with Russia in 2009 that the government it replaced
also tried to renegotiate. The Russians say they’re not open to
negotiation until Ukraine pays its bill. The country received its
first $3.2 billion of a $27 billion international aid package meant
to pay down its gas debt last week, but Russia’s deputy energy
minister says Ukraine hasn’t used any of it for that purpose
yet.

It’s good to excel at your
job—and if that excellence involves protecting the innocent and
rescuing children, so much the better. Good stuff. But if we’re
going to recognize individuals who have done awesome things, is it
entirely necessary to lavishly spread the praise so that their
entire trade is stroked as especially courageous, even when the
actual facts suggest it’s one job among many, done by people of
varying virtue?

Well, yeah. When it comes to cops and politicians, such mass
petting apparently is necessary. Like when President Obama
and Vice President Biden pasted on their smiles to honor the
National Organization of Police Organizations’ “Top Cops” winners at
the White House.

Said Biden: 

And the President and I, we recognize the bravery that you
display simply by putting on that shield every morning.  That,
all by itself, is an act of bravery.  Strapping on your
sidearm, kissing your husband or your wife goodbye at the door,
walking out knowing — because most of you are experienced —
knowing that you don’t know with any degree of certitude what’s
about to greet you.  You have no idea — except some of it may
not be good.

The officers we have here today have been singled out for going
above and beyond the call of duty, and we commend each and every
one of them.  And from my perspective, there’s no greater
honor that a law enforcement officer could have than being
recognized and nominated by his fellow officers — because you all
know what real courage is.  You all know what kind of steel in
your spine it takes to make the decisions that the men standing
behind me have made.

We also know that there are thousands and thousands of more law
enforcement officers out there on the job today and every day who
are taking risks that are hard for ordinary people to
imagine.  They take risks to protect the community, protect
the people they don’t know, protect people they’ve never met. 
But they go out there and you all do it anyway, regardless of
whether or not — where they’re from, who they are, whether you
know them or not.

“Bravery”? “Courage”? “Risk”? So this is the White House edition
of Deadliest
Catch?

That might make sense. For years, commercial fishing was the
most dangerous trade in which an American could engage. In 1995, risking
your life to gather fresh seafood carried a score of 21.3 on the
Bureau of Labor Statistic Index of Relative Risk. Police work came
in at 3.4. Driving a taxi scored at 9.5.

Even if you limit the danger to homicide, cashiers, cabbies, and
“Supervisors, proprietors, sales” carried greater risks of being
murdered on the job.

Have the relative dangers for police work increased since
1995?

Well…There’s a change. People are now falling out of trees
more often than they’re falling overboard. But law enforcement
still isn’t in the top rank of dangerous jobs.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial
Fund, there were 100 on-the-job
deaths in 2013, down from 183 in 1995 (and 280 in 1974).

Which doesn’t lessen the individual bravery involved in
“Storming an underground bunker to rescue a kidnapped five-year-old
boy”—one of the feats honored at the White House. And it’s good
when work gets safer.

But, reality TV aside, lumberjacks don’t draw the same kind of
official praise as police officers. Nor do commercial fishermen. Or
airline pilots. Or roofers.

And lumberjacks and company don’t wield the same sort of power
over their neighbors, not always for the sort of praiseworthy
purposes touted at the White House ceremony. Law enforcement is
increasingly
militarized, larded with
special authority, and prone to civil liberties
abuses. Police are also
increasingly resented by ther fellow Americans for the same,
even if politicians don’t quite get that lots of folks don’t
appreciate getting pushed around by uniformed enforcers.

Then again, maybe that’s politicians like them so much—at least,
so long as they know who butters their bread.

As Obama said:

And let me start by thanking Joe Biden not only for being a
great Vice President — which he is — but also being a lifelong
friend of law enforcement.  (Applause.)  Now, he and I
have a special reason for loving law enforcement, because we have
the unusual privilege of being surrounded by law enforcement every
minute of every day. (Laughter.)  And they also protect the
people we love most in the world — our families.  So we’re
incredibly grateful to them and to all the law enforcement officers
who serve and protect families and communities across the nation
every single day.

Too Praetorian for my taste. Better to praise the standouts—and
keep a close eye on the rest.

Alec Baldwin had a run-in with the New York City
Police Department (NYPD) today that resulted in some fine
frustrated tweeting from the notoriously blunt actor. Baldwin was
initially stopped for “riding his bicycle the wrong way” down
Fifth Avenue and eventually arrested for disorderly conduct,

according to the Wall Street Journal. 

“Officer Moreno, badge number 23388, arrested me and handcuffed
me for going the wrong way on Fifth Ave,” Baldwin tweeted around 12:30 p.m.
Tuesday.

“New York City is a mismanaged carnival of stupidity that is
desperate for revenue and anxious to criminalize behavior once
thought benign.” 

I wouldn’t say that’s an unfair characterization. Until
yesterday the city
criminalized carrying multiple condoms. Meanwhile,
NYPD cops can’t seem to stop getting smashed and firing off
their guns. And this morning, cops took a man to the police station
in handfcuffs for a biking infraction and not having ID on
him at all times.

Here’s more on Baldwin’s morning from the
Journal: 

Officers approached Mr. Baldwin told him he “was riding his
bicycle the wrong way,” an NYPD spokeswoman said.

Mr. Baldwin was not able to produce identification and “then he
got belligerent and started to argue with the officers,” the
spokeswoman said.

He was placed in handcuffs. Mr. Baldwin was taken to a local
police precinct and was later released, the official said.

His court date is July 24. Good thing NYPD is here to protect
from the scourge of celebrities riding bicycles in the wrong
direction. 

For the “why do libertarians get so mad at the state, which only
exists so the less well off won’t get screwed by the wealthy and
powerful?” file,
via NBC News.

In Daytona Beach, Florida, a couple—Debbie and Chico Jimenez—out
of the kindness of their hearts have for the past year on
Wednesdays offered full cooked meals to the city’s homeless in
Manatee Island park. Over 100 hungry are typically fed.

Naturally, they’ve been fined by the city for it, along with
some of their helpers—including a wheelchair-bound man who himself
just escaped homelessness. (Maybe this fine can push him back in
it! See this previous article from me about how even the
pettiest of state fines can ruin lives.)

The crew of criminal philanthropists owe a total of $2,238 in
fines.

Why? Some people don’t like what homeless people do in the park,
including human acts of excretion and drunkenness. (As if the
people feeding them invented the homeless, or provided or police
the park.)

Daytona Beach Police Chief Mike Chitwood stands by his act:

“They were told (the previous Wednesday) that if they come back
there, they would be cited and they could risk going to jail,”
Chitwood said. “There is a segment of the homeless population that
is homeless by choice. I don’t want to impugn them all. But some
are homeless because they are sex offenders, substance abusers and
bank robbers. That’s why we ask (Good Samaritans) to coordinate
with our social service agencies, because they know who needs to be
served.”

Daytona Beach isn’t alone in making sure care for the hungry is
centralized and bureaucratized:

According to a
report co-released by the National Coalition for the
Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty,
during the past seven years Gainesville, Fla., began “enforcing a
rule limiting the number of meals that soup kitchens may serve to
130 people in one day;” Phoenix, Ariz., “used zoning laws to stop a
local church from serving breakfast to community members, including
many homeless people, outside a local church;” and Myrtle Beach,
S.C., “adopted an ordinance that restricts food sharing with
homeless people in public parks.”

I
wrote for Reason back in 2013 about a lawsuit over a
similar situation in Dallas that ended with making feeding the
homeless a thoughtcrime, OK if done for a religious motive, not if
not.

According to polling from
Pew there has been a slight increase in support for the
European Union ahead of next week’s European Parliament elections
following an unsurprising drop in support in the wake of the euro
crisis.

The Pew article goes on to note that a median of 71 percent of
respondents from France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, and
the U.K. claimed that “my voice does not count in the EU.”

That the voices of citizens of E.U. member states don’t count is
not just a widely held belief, it is inevitable given the absurd
way the European Parliament functions.

You would be forgiven for believing that because the European
Parliament has the word “Parliament” in it that its 765
members have the power to propose legislation. However, this is
not the case. The European Parliament has the power to approve,
reject, and amend legislation, but it cannot initiate
it. However, the European Parliament’s
website notes that “the European Parliament has a right of
legislative initiative that allows it to ask the Commission to
submit a proposal.”

The European Commission, which has “legislative initiative,” has
28 members (one for each E.U. member state), none of whom of are
elected by the people of the E.U.

When you consider that a
decreasing number of people vote in European elections, that
the people elected to the European Parliament represent a
significant number of constituents who did not vote for them, and
that members of the European Parliament have no power to introduce
legislation it is easy to see why E.U. citizens don’t feel like
their voice counts in the E.U.