Tag: news

I previously wrote about
Alexander Chier, a Pewaukee, Wisconsin, 17-year-old who was
disciplined by his high school for smoking a cigarette. This caused
the police to search his vehicle, where they found his hunting
rifle. Since the weapon was technically on school grounds, he was
suspended and arrested.

Chier spoke with me via e-mail to relate his side of the story.
There are no key details in dispute; even so, it’s hard not to
sympathize with the teenager, who was jailed for a night and denied
food for 36 hours, according to his account.

“I had to spend a night in jail after the interrogation, and
didn’t receive food that I could eat for 36 hours,” Chier
told Reason. “You see I have life threatening food
allergies to the point where legally I have a disability
(Anaphylaxis to peanuts, nuts, milk and eggs). 1/8 of a peanut
would have me dead in 10 minutes or less. I had 2 different
physicians and my allergist call the Waukesha County Jail to convey
this and I was still denied editable food.”

Other pieces of new information: Chier was caught smoking an
e-cigarette, not a regular cigarette, at school; the weapon found
in his car was a “bolt action mosin-nagant from 1937,” which he
uses to hunt coyotes; and he voluntary granted the cops access to
all his text messages and social media activity.

According to Chier, he turned himself over to the police,
subsequently enduring a four-hour interrogation and a famishing
night in jail.

Police agree that Chier was not planning to hurt anyone.

“We have no information at all that would have led us in that
direction,” a spokesperson for the Village of Pewaukee Police
Department told Reason.

The good news is that Chier expects the charges to be
dropped.

“Basically as long as I show up to my next court date and commit
no crimes I’m a clear man,” he said.

He is still suspended, however, and could be expelled. He’s not
happy about that, obviously.

“The fact that I’m facing expulsion in so extreme in every way,”
he said. “They will punishing a hunter who made a mistake, had no
ill intent, harmed no one, and never planned to do so; and if the
Pewaukee Police Department and the State of Wisconsin both gave
determined I am no threat to anyone I should be allowed to go back
to school!”

Copying the right’s success, the left
is taking its tax agenda directly to the people. This November,
voters will again have the chance to decide on taxes. But as Ira
Stoll reports, in a number of cases, the questions they will be
voting on are not aimed at limiting taxes or at cutting them, but,
instead, at increasing them.

View this article.

• Nearly
  10,000 American troops will remain in Afghanistan after 2014,
  promises the country’s newly elected president Ashraf Ghani
  Ahmadzai. The U.S. will also likely keep its
  secret prisoners when the war “ends.”
• State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki says that when
  President Barack Obama said his administration “underestimated” the
  threat of ISIS he
  didn’t really mean it. We’ve “long been tracking this,” she
  insists. So, we knew what was happening and just dropped the
  ball?
• Grab your popcorn: The White House gave
  a thumbs up to the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which
  are
  still growing in spite of tear gas and officials’ demands.
• The bankruptcy judge overseeing Detroit’s woes said that
  
  shutting off water to non-paying customers can continue,
  because he has no jurisdiction to act otherwise.
• Elizabeth Warren wants a
  congressional investigation of the New York Federal Reserve
  after recently secret recordings suggest some foul play by the
  financial authority.
• American consumer spending rose 0.5 percent last month. The
  
  housing sector remained an exception, and not in a good
  way. 
• Top Obama adviser Valarie Jarrett apparently isn’t busy. She
  made her debut on a television drama this weekend, and it
  was pretty
  ugly.

Follow Reason and Reason 24/7 on
Twitter, and like us on Facebook. You
can also get the top stories mailed to you—sign up
here.

It’s hard to keep up with the
privacy-threatening shenanigans at the Internal Revenue Service,
but let’s give it a try. Just days after revealing that the tax
agency’s failure to follow its own rules
put the private data of 1.4 million people at risk, the
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration publicized the
sentencing of Tax
Examining Technician Missy Sledge for aggravated identity theft
and mail fraud, and IRS employee
Monica Hernandez for making and subscribing a false income tax
return, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

According to the Inspector General’s Office, “as part of her
official IRS duties, Sledge had access to taxpayers’ personal
identifiers, including names, Social Security Numbers (SSN), dates
of birth, and addresses, as well as information about tax
professionals. Sledge used this access in furtherance of an
identity theft scheme which included the filing of fraudulent tax
returns and the subsequent theft of refunds.”

For her part, “Hernandez regularly handled and processed tax
returns on behalf of the IRS by entering taxpayers’ tax information
into the IRS computer system. During the course of her IRS
employment, Hernandez stole tax information in order to file
fraudulent tax returns and claim large tax refunds.”

Sledge received 57-months imprisonment, followed by five years
of supervised release. Hernandez got 53-months imprisonment,
followed by three years of supervised probation. Both have to pay
restitution to the IRS.

But that was last month. This month, we hear about former IRS
employee Taylor
Knight who “inappropriately accessed information maintained by
the IRS for three taxpayers, in each case for her personal reasons
and not for official Government business. The defendants then used
the identifications of these three taxpayers to fraudulently induce
the IRS into issuing tax refund payments.”

Knight hasn’t ben sentenced yet, but faces up to five years in
prison.

Again, IRS records prove themselves to be a bonanza of personal
information for identity thieves who trawl through the less than
securely maintained data looking for a dishonest payday.

Have I mentioned that people signing for health coverage under
the Affordable Care Act are supposed to
update the government on any major life changes, including
marriage status, employment, finances…? Oh wait,
yes I have.

I wonder if that information will be better protected.

It’s hard to keep up with the
privacy-threatening shenanigans at the Internal Revenue Service,
but let’s give it a try. Just days after revealing that the tax
agency’s failure to follow its own rules
put the private data of 1.4 million people at risk, the
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration publicized the
sentencing of Tax
Examining Technician Missy Sledge for aggravated identity theft
and mail fraud, and IRS employee
Monica Hernandez for making and subscribing a false income tax
return, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

According to the Inspector General’s Office, “as part of her
official IRS duties, Sledge had access to taxpayers’ personal
identifiers, including names, Social Security Numbers (SSN), dates
of birth, and addresses, as well as information about tax
professionals. Sledge used this access in furtherance of an
identity theft scheme which included the filing of fraudulent tax
returns and the subsequent theft of refunds.”

For her part, “Hernandez regularly handled and processed tax
returns on behalf of the IRS by entering taxpayers’ tax information
into the IRS computer system. During the course of her IRS
employment, Hernandez stole tax information in order to file
fraudulent tax returns and claim large tax refunds.”

Sledge received 57-months imprisonment, followed by five years
of supervised release. Hernandez got 53-months imprisonment,
followed by three years of supervised probation. Both have to pay
restitution to the IRS.

But that was last month. This month, we hear about former IRS
employee Taylor
Knight who “inappropriately accessed information maintained by
the IRS for three taxpayers, in each case for her personal reasons
and not for official Government business. The defendants then used
the identifications of these three taxpayers to fraudulently induce
the IRS into issuing tax refund payments.”

Knight hasn’t ben sentenced yet, but faces up to five years in
prison.

Again, IRS records prove themselves to be a bonanza of personal
information for identity thieves who trawl through the less than
securely maintained data looking for a dishonest payday.

Have I mentioned that people signing for health coverage under
the Affordable Care Act are supposed to
update the government on any major life changes, including
marriage status, employment, finances…? Oh wait,
yes I have.

I wonder if that information will be better protected.

Over at Splice
Today, millennial Nicky Smith announces that the future is only
so bright because of the likely nuclear flash that’s going to
happen before 2100. He’s responding to novelist Bret Easton Ellis’
recent Vanity Fair jeremiad against millennials as “Generation
Wuss.” Ellis is right, says Smith. “Millennials are
over-sensitive, narcissistic, unrealistic and anxious. No mystery
why: we grew up in the midst of an unprecedented end-of-the-century
party in the Western World.”

Smith
continues:

What Ellis cannot comprehend is the unspoken certainty amongst
people my age that the world will not make it to 2100. There is
just absolutely no way—climate change, earthquakes, massive
expulsions of methane, radioactive fallout, dramatic terrorist
attacks—and the human experiment is nearing its end. It’s not
pessimism, but it’s easy to forget that the Cuban Missile Crisis
was only 52 years ago next month. That’s a blip of human history,
and it only takes one loon, or a group of organized and legitimate
loons and psychopaths in positions of power to orchestrate mass
death or total annihilation. Let’s assume we all behave ourselves
and refrain from blowing or mutating everything away: there’s a
consensus in the scientific community that climate change is at too
advanced a stage to stall, and its effects will be irreversible and
make coastal cities uninhabitable very, very soon.

Ellis is 50; he’s in the September of his years. He’ll most
likely be fine, and he doesn’t have to worry about what the air in
Los Angeles will be like in 2067. When pressed, Boomers blow it off
as sophomoric fatalism and go on about the sanctity and durability
of life. They can’t help it—that was their world, their narrative.
We’re living in the Age of the Comedown, and very soon everyone
will be feeling it worse than they could’ve ever imagined.

As someone who turned 50 a year ago, I prefer to
think of Ellis as being in the June of his years (if not
late May).

But wow, what a Debbie Downer Young Goodman Smith is! Doesn’t he
read Reason.com enough to know that we not only survived the Cuban
Missile Crisis but we won the Cold War to boot (for god’s sake, the
25th anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall is coming up
this fall); ISIS and assorted Islamist-themed jackasses need to be
taken out, but they’re not an existential threat to the civilized
world. 

Climate change isn’t the bugaboo he seems to think,
either. To paraphrase Reason‘s Science Correspondent
Ronald Bailey, it’s happening; humans are involved; and we’ll
figure out how to cope with anything that gets thrown our way, just
like we’ve been doing for thousands of years. The air in Los
Angeles today is vastly cleaner than it was in 1967 and there’s
absolutely no reason to believe it will be dirty again in 2067.
Indeed, the air in Bejing, which is dirtier than it was 40 years
ago due to the sort of economic production that has lifted millions
of Chinese up from subsistence, will be cleaner in 2067 than it is
now.

As the parent of millennials myself—and the
younger brother of a sibling who graduated college in the grim year
of 1981—I feel sympathy for young adults these days due to economic
malaise and looming fiscal issues. But if the past is prologue and
if the political class does the bare minimum to rein in
entitlements and the like (yes, a big if), even the
near-future will be upbeat. When I graduated college just four
years after my brother, things had already turned the corner.

While it will take a lot of effort to make sure that politicians
give in to the Libertarian Moment and start enacting the sort of
common-sense reforms to right the ship of state and allow economic
markets to get cranking again, there’s every reason to believe
things are going to be all right. For god’s sake, the Libertarian
Moment is so happening that conservative-types are
hauling out Hitler arguments to combat it. In the meantime,
Nicky Smith, take a moment to talk to your elders about how shitty
things were for them at various times back in the day.

For a different perspective on millennials, check out
Reason.com’s incredible
landing page dedicated to the subject.

Over at Splice
Today, millennial Nicky Smith announces that the future is only
so bright because of the likely nuclear flash that’s going to
happen before 2100. He’s responding to novelist Bret Easton Ellis’
recent Vanity Fair jeremiad against millennials as “Generation
Wuss.” Ellis is right, says Smith. “Millennials are
over-sensitive, narcissistic, unrealistic and anxious. No mystery
why: we grew up in the midst of an unprecedented end-of-the-century
party in the Western World.”

Smith
continues:

What Ellis cannot comprehend is the unspoken certainty amongst
people my age that the world will not make it to 2100. There is
just absolutely no way—climate change, earthquakes, massive
expulsions of methane, radioactive fallout, dramatic terrorist
attacks—and the human experiment is nearing its end. It’s not
pessimism, but it’s easy to forget that the Cuban Missile Crisis
was only 52 years ago next month. That’s a blip of human history,
and it only takes one loon, or a group of organized and legitimate
loons and psychopaths in positions of power to orchestrate mass
death or total annihilation. Let’s assume we all behave ourselves
and refrain from blowing or mutating everything away: there’s a
consensus in the scientific community that climate change is at too
advanced a stage to stall, and its effects will be irreversible and
make coastal cities uninhabitable very, very soon.

Ellis is 50; he’s in the September of his years. He’ll most
likely be fine, and he doesn’t have to worry about what the air in
Los Angeles will be like in 2067. When pressed, Boomers blow it off
as sophomoric fatalism and go on about the sanctity and durability
of life. They can’t help it—that was their world, their narrative.
We’re living in the Age of the Comedown, and very soon everyone
will be feeling it worse than they could’ve ever imagined.

As someone who turned 50 a year ago, I prefer to
think of Ellis as being in the June of his years (if not
late May).

But wow, what a Debbie Downer Young Goodman Smith is! Doesn’t he
read Reason.com enough to know that we not only survived the Cuban
Missile Crisis but we won the Cold War to boot (for god’s sake, the
25th anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall is coming up
this fall); ISIS and assorted Islamist-themed jackasses need to be
taken out, but they’re not an existential threat to the civilized
world. 

Climate change isn’t the bugaboo he seems to think,
either. To paraphrase Reason‘s Science Correspondent
Ronald Bailey, it’s happening; humans are involved; and we’ll
figure out how to cope with anything that gets thrown our way, just
like we’ve been doing for thousands of years. The air in Los
Angeles today is vastly cleaner than it was in 1967 and there’s
absolutely no reason to believe it will be dirty again in 2067.
Indeed, the air in Bejing, which is dirtier than it was 40 years
ago due to the sort of economic production that has lifted millions
of Chinese up from subsistence, will be cleaner in 2067 than it is
now.

As the parent of millennials myself—and the
younger brother of a sibling who graduated college in the grim year
of 1981—I feel sympathy for young adults these days due to economic
malaise and looming fiscal issues. But if the past is prologue and
if the political class does the bare minimum to rein in
entitlements and the like (yes, a big if), even the
near-future will be upbeat. When I graduated college just four
years after my brother, things had already turned the corner.

While it will take a lot of effort to make sure that politicians
give in to the Libertarian Moment and start enacting the sort of
common-sense reforms to right the ship of state and allow economic
markets to get cranking again, there’s every reason to believe
things are going to be all right. For god’s sake, the Libertarian
Moment is so happening that conservative-types are
hauling out Hitler arguments to combat it. In the meantime,
Nicky Smith, take a moment to talk to your elders about how shitty
things were for them at various times back in the day.

For a different perspective on millennials, check out
Reason.com’s incredible
landing page dedicated to the subject.