Tag: news

Among the many good times had at FreedomFest, the world’s largest gathering of libertarians and fellow travelers held in Las Vegas each July, was a debate over whether libertarians can or should support the presidential candidacy of Donald J. Trump.

Taking the pro side of the argument were 2008 Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee Wayne Allyn Root and investment advisor and commentator Dan Mangru. On the “no way, Jose” side were FEE’s Jeffrey Tucker and Reason’s own Matt Welch. I acted as the moderator of the “YUGE debate” (as it was advertised).

More than a few of the 2,000 attendees said it was the highlight of this year’s event or, same thing, that it was among the worst things they ever saw in their entire lives, partly because of my partisan moderating (I am and remain firmly anti-Trump as well as anti-Clinton).

The good folks at FreedomFest have made the whole spectacle available on YouTube, so take a look now and decide for yourselves.

And go here now to reserve a seat at next year’s FreedomFest, which will be the 10th edition and will feature William Shatner among many other special guests (including a day-long lineup of Reason journalists and policymakers). The discount rate ends soon, so don’t delay.

“The claim that the U.S. is ‘withdrawing’ is a convenient and self-serving one for advocates of activist foreign policy,” Daniel Larison writes, “since it lets them pretend that the U.S. is following a radically different foreign policy from the one that it is actually conducting and frees them from the responsibility for the results of incessant meddling abroad.” So as a reminder to the people who peddle that narrative—he’s calling out Fred Hiatt specifically, but Hiatt is hardly alone—Larison offers some quick reminders:

[T]he last three years in particular have seen the U.S. become much more involved in the conflicts in several countries, and its involvement around the world has stayed the same or increased in every case.

The U.S. is in its second year of bombing ISIS in Iraq, and has been bombing targets in Syria for almost as long. The U.S. has been actively aiding the Saudi-led devastation of Yemen for over a year, and it has done so precisely because it wants to “reassure” its awful clients in the region that it isn’t going anywhere. At the same time, the U.S. has been increasing its military presence in Europe and leaving its other commitments unchanged. Earlier this summer, an exasperated John Kerry said, “The United States of America is more engaged in more places with greater impact today than at any time in American history. And that is simply documentable and undeniable.” Yet hawkish interventionists have to deny it, because it contradicts the fairy tale they’ve been peddling for years. The main problem with Kerry’s assessment is that he thinks the “impact” of all this engagement is desirable and constructive when much of it clearly is not.

It is true that President Obama has not favored every intervention the Serious People have proposed over the last seven years—he hesitated to intervene in Syria and has refrained from going to war with Iran—and it is true that he, unlike his party’s presidential nominee, is willing to call the 2011 bombing of Libya a “mistake.” But that doesn’t make him a dove; it makes him a hawk who is capable of reluctance and regret. What’s depressing is the realization that in a year I may be nostalgic for even those small scruples.

Back in October 2009 there were plenty of reasons to think the Olympic torch would be lit in Chicago this summer. Instead, on Friday night, the flame will be lit in Rio de Janerio.

Chicago, and the rest of America, should breath a sigh of relief.

Chicago’s bid for the 2016 seemingly had everything. It had money, as the city promised to spend $4.8 billion for the Olympics, with a good chunk of that total going to build or upgrade sporting venues.

It had timing, as it would have been the first American city to host the Summer Games since Atlanta in 1996 and the first Olympics of any kind since Salt Lake City hosted the winter version in 2002 (since World War Two ended, America had never gone more than 20 years without hosting the Olympics).

It had star power, as three of the city’s most famous residents—President Barack Obama, basketball star Michael Jordan and talk show host turned business mogul Oprah Winfrey—lent their vocal support to the effort. Obama even traveled to Copenhagen, where the final vote took place, to lobby for his adopted hometown.

Up against Madrid, Rio, and Toyko in the final round of bidding, Chicago appeared to be a strong contender, if not the favorite.

Then, stunningly, Chicago was ousted in the first round of voting, getting just 18 of the 94 votes and finishing dead last in the four city field. Not even good enough for the bronze medal.

“This was the most frustrating defeat in Chicago’s recent sports history,” wrote Chicago Tribune columnist David Haugh, at the time.

This week, Haugh admits he was wrong about that assessment. That frustrating defeat was actually “the day the IOC saved Chicago from itself,” he says.

“As bad as things seem in a city already fighting violence and the financial collapse of its government and school system, consider how much worse things would be if officials were distracted by hosting an international event as gargantuan as the Games,” Haugh writes. “The Olympics likely would have added to the disrepair more than made it easier to fix.”

More cities should learn from Chicago’s experience. In fact, it seems like some are.

When city officials in Boston and the heads of the American Olympic Committee backed a bid for the Massachusetts capital to host the 2024 Olympics, it faced popular opposition unseen since residents of Denver voted to kill the city’s winning bid to host the 1976 Winter Games. Boston’s plan for the Olympics would have cost taxpayers a mere $2.7 billion, though independent analyses suggested the price tag would be north of $15 billion and maybe as much as $28 billion

Facing growing public opposition, Boston cancelled its bid last year.

Other cities haven’t learned yet. Los Angeles quickly swept in to replace Boston as the U.S. bidder for the 2024 games, where it is now seen as a favorite in a four-way contest that includes Budapest, Paris and Rome.

Los Angeles does have one thing going for it. Of the 17 Summer Olympics held since the end of the Second World War, only the 1984 event in Los Angeles turned a profit, The Economist reported this week, citing research by David Goldblatt, author of The Games: A Global History of the Olympics.

One could argue that the Olympic Games aren’t really meant to turn a profit, so that might be a flawed standard for measuring their success. But the Games have become staggering economic disasters for recent hosts. The 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens cost the Greek government $16 billion. As with Chicago’s lost bid, hindsight makes it clear that Greece never should have hosted the Olympics, history and tradition be damned.

Athens can take some small comfort in knowing that it’s hardly alone. Jim Pagels has a rundown of the ignominious fates that befell Olympic host cities—and the lavish stadiums built for the Games—in the most recent edition of Reason.

You don’t even need to wait a decade to reassess the wisdom of Rio de Janerio’s bid for the Games. The city planned to spend $18 billion for the Olympics, but already needed an $850 million federal bailout just to get everything ready in time. There are concerns about rising crime, unfinished facilities, unclean water and Zika. Brazil’s president has been impeached after allegedly manipulating the country’s budget to hide bad news (don’t forget: Brazil spent an estimated $13 billion to host the World Cup just two years ago).

Still, if Rio survives the next two weeks without a major security incident and without too many athletes getting sick from the fetid water, we’ll be told the Games were a success. But if Rio hadn’t staged the Olympics, those $18 billion could have been used to improve the lives of the people who live there, rather than paying for the world’s most expensive sporting event.

Even without winning its bid, Chicago is still paying for the 2016 Olympics. Chicago’s ABC affiliate reported this week that the city has paid $91 million over the past 10 years for the site of a former hospital which was bought as part of the bidding process and was supposed to serve as the athletes’ living quarters.

The city will be paying off that purchase until 2024.

“I hope we can learn from these mega-projects and, regardless of what happens to the Olympic movement, stop throwing money into all these concrete-driven mega projects that rob the poor and give money to the rich,” Tom Tresser, organizer of “No Games Chicago,” told ABC-7.

That’s unlikely, though skepticism about hosting the Olympics is growing.

Still, in Chicago’s case, it could have been much worse.

Esquire magazine has published a wide-ranging interview with movie icon and director Clint Eastwood and his son, actor Scott Eastwood. Over the years, Eastwood pere has identified as a small-L libertarian and he infamously appeared at the 2012 Republican National Convention to carry on a dialogue with an empty chair meant to represent Barack Obama.

This time around, the 86-year-old Eastwood says he has yet to endorse anyone but…he knows he really dislikes Hillary Clinton and is somewhat empathetic toward Donald Trump.

I mean, [Hillary would be] a tough voice to listen to for four years. It could be a tough one. If she’s just gonna follow what we’ve been doing, then I wouldn’t be for her….

What Trump is onto is he’s just saying what’s on his mind. And sometimes it’s not so good. And sometimes it’s … I mean, I can understand where he’s coming from, but I don’t always agree with it….

[If it’s a choice between Clinton and Trump,] I’d have to go for Trump…you know, ’cause she’s declared that she’s gonna follow in Obama’s footsteps. There’s been just too much funny business on both sides of the aisle. She’s made a lot of dough out of being a politician. I gave up dough to be a politician. I’m sure that Ronald Reagan gave up dough to be a politician.

The Esquire interviewer, Michael Hainey, didn’t bring up third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein and The Squint didn’t go there on his own. Yet just a year ago, Scott Eastwood volunteered that his father was “a total Libertarian—everyone leave everyone alone. Everyone live their own private life.” In fact, Clint’s politics certainly seem to lean that way rather than standard-issue Republican or socially conservative (he’s declared, “I don’t give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else!”) and he opposed the Iraq War from its inception.

Regardless of his likely vote in November, Eastwood seemed more annoyed by larger social trends than any particular election.

[Trump is] onto something, because secretly everybody’s getting tired of political correctness, kissing up. That’s the kiss-ass generation we’re in right now. We’re really in a pussy generation. Everybody’s walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren’t called racist. And then when I did Gran Torino, even my associate said, “This is a really good script, but it’s politically incorrect.” And I said, “Good. Let me read it tonight.” The next morning, I came in and I threw it on his desk and I said, “We’re starting this immediately.”…

Cineastes will recall that Eastwood’s character in 2008’s Gran Torino, Walt Kowalski, is a grouchy, racist Korean war vet who comes to bond with two teenaged Hmong siblings (that the sister gets brutally raped by gang members and the brother gets Walt’s prized car in the end is a sign of cinematic sexism, in my opinion). If the Esquire interview is any indication, Eastwood may still be having trouble snapping out of the reactionary character fully:

All these people out there rattling around the streets and stuff, shit. They’re boring everybody. Chesty Puller, a great Marine general, once said, “You can run me, and you can starve me, and you can beat me, and you can kill me, but don’t bore me.” And that’s exactly what’s happening now: Everybody is boring everybody. It’s boring to listen to all this shit. It’s boring to listen to these candidates….

I’d say get to work and start being more understanding of everybody—instead of calling everybody names, start being more understanding. But get in there and get it done. Kick ass and take names. And this may be my dad talking, but don’t spend what you don’t have. That’s why we’re in the position we are in right now. That’s why people are saying, “Why should I work? I’ll get something for nothing, maybe.” And going around and talking about going to college for free. I didn’t go to college for free. I mean, it was cheap, because I went to L. A. City College—it wasn’t like going to a major university. But it was okay.

Writing off an entire generation—I assume he means millennials, more or less—is an odd way to begin a dialogue, especially if the cure to the current “sad time in history” is to “start being more understanding of everybody.” Certainly Donald Trump is nobody’s idea of a good listener (or even a bad one). I’ll add that essentially every generation berates the ones that follow as soft and weak—as kiss-asses and pussies, if you will. Is political correctness a thing? For sure, but as even the curmudgeonly P.J. O’Rourke has noted, it’s also “a nicer, kinder, more decent society we live in today then the society when I was a kid.” Plus, we’ve got South Park, which has given younger generations the ability to read through P.C. pretty effectively.

We rely on celebrities and artists, even ones as accomplished as Eastwood, for guidance to life at our own peril. Yes, political correctness is a thing that needs to be beaten back, especially when it gets in the way of free expression. Yes, the students who benefit from going to college should pay all, most, or certainly some of the cost. Yes, working hard is better than being a slouch and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are fundamentally boring in how they talk about politics.

But to quote Edward Snowden, the subject of a September release featuring Scott Eastwood in the title role, “The individual is more powerful today than they have ever been in the past.” That is no small advance during the span of Clint Eastwood’s career, which began in the 1950s under the old studio system. While you can forgive an 86-year-old movie star for glossing over how much things have improved since his early days, that doesn’t mean we need to join in his downbeat assessment of the current moment.

Whole Q&A here.

Two years after efforts to reduce police violence began to be grouped under the “Black Lives Matter” banner, organizations that have also attached themselves to the banner are appropriating it for their own sectarian agendas. More than 50 political groups operating under the “Movement for Black Lives” (MBL) banner (which outlets like Vox.com appear to be trying to imply is another way to say ‘Black Lives Matter’ and not a new grouping) have released an “agenda” that’s only tangentially related to the issue of police violence. The agenda consists of standard left to far-left policy planks—things like re-instating Glass-Steagal, reparations, getting rid of body cameras, and even supporting boycotts of Israel.

Unfortunately, this agenda appears to be getting more play than Campaign Zero, an initiative launched by several leaders of Black Lives Matter a year ago that offered a number of policy proposals meant specifically to address the issue of police violence. Outlets like Time magazine incorrectly describe the MBL’s agenda as the “first time” Black Lives Matter has released an agenda—Reuters similarly incorrectly called the BML agenda a “first” Outlets like Fusion called it “unprecedented” when it wasn’t. The coverage of the MBL agenda suggests many reporters who cover Black Lives Matter were unaware of Campaign Zero. The MBL agenda has the effect of making black lives “matter less” by marginalizing the issue of police violence which has captured the attention of the nation in favor of a pre-existing sectarian, far-left agenda that was not created specifically to reduce police violence and which, through its demand for more government power, could actually increase it.

I spoke with one member of the Congressional Black Caucus at the DNC last week who told me he’d never heard of Campaign Zero and was surprised that a movement defined largely on street action had a serious policy agenda. They do, but it’s not the one released by the MBL. Campaign Zero’s policy platforms include ending broken windows policing, more community oversight, limiting the use of force, independent investigations and prosecutions, community representation, body cameras, new training, an end to asset forfeiture and for-profit policing, demilitarization, and fair police union contracts—policies that can variously be implemented at the local, state, or federal levels and that address specific issues that contribute directly to the problem of police violence. But Campaign Zero will only be effective if more people push more politicians to take it seriously. The far-left agenda of the MBL, instead, discourages coalition-building and works against the idea that a Black Lives Matter agenda can find broad support. Campaign Zero has a candidate tracker for the presidential election. It’s a shame more of the candidates don’t support more of the platform, and that Gary Johnson doesn’t appear at all, but a big part of that falls on the activists themselves too. When Black Lives Matter protesters were asked by Hillary Clinton what they wanted, they did not articulate the proposals of Campaign Zero. Now MBL has offered an agenda that will make it easy for politicians to dismiss.

The MBL’s attempt to attach their agenda to the police reform movement would be the equivalent of offering up the idea of dismantling government, and the policy proposals to make it happen, as a solution. There’s, of course, a powerful argument to be made that government is the greatest oppressor and does the most damage to marginalized people. But it would be unhelpful to attach it to a movement focused specifically on police violence because such broader arguments are largely preaching to the choir. And that’s what the “Movement for Black Lives” agenda does. It’s worse than suggesting ending government in order to end police violence and improve the lives of black people, because many of the ideas require vesting power in government or, in other words, permitting government to use even more violence.

The MBL agenda also pollutes an important conversation about police reform, one that went national with Ferguson in 2014 but did not star there. The 2011 killing of the homeless Kelly Thomas by police officers in Fullerton, California, led to a “citizen’s revolt” and bipartisan reforms. Residents in Albuquerque were protesting police—even trying to arrest the police chief—before Ferguson was put on the map and without ever receiving the same kind of attention. Such efforts will continue even if the Black Lives Matter banner is hijacked completely by a far-left interested in advancing its own agenda more than reducing police violence. While the Obama administration has tried to advance some police reforms (although it appears to be rolling back demilitarization already), because police departments are local institutions many of the most significant reforms will have to happen at the state and local level. So the good news is a lot of the noise generated at the national level, like the MBL agenda, is irrelevant to the important work of advancing reforms that would reduce police violence. The bad news is that in our current news cycle culture, an agenda like MBL’s can still go a long way in poisoning the well and making real reforms easier to dismiss by defenders of the status quo.