Inhaltsverzeichnis für October 2021 in Reason

“MORE MONEY, MORE problems” might as well be the slogan for how San Francisco and Los Angeles approach homelessness. Voters in both cities recently approved billions of dollars in new spending for supportive housing and services for homeless residents. Although the intentions are good and the resources are there, projects in both cities have suffered from major delays and cost overruns. Meanwhile, their homeless populations continue to grow. San Francisco’s “safe sleeping” open-air tent encampments were supposed to get homeless people out of crowded, dangerous indoor shelters while still providing them with meals, showers, security, and social services. The funding for these sites came from Proposition C, a 2018 ballot initiative that imposed the largest tax increase in San Francisco’s history, raising $300 million for homelessness services. The initiative won…

I SPENT THE second half of the 1990s hanging out with people who operate unlicensed radio stations. That was partly because I was covering them as a reporter, and it was partly because I was active in a movement to legalize their illicit transmissions. I didn’t see anything wrong with that dual role—I wasn’t pretending to be objective, and anyone who read my articles could see where I stood—but sometimes the lines got a little blurry. Like the night in 1998 when I found myself standing on a nondescript West Philly block with a crew of crunchy anarchists. An outlet called Radio Mutiny was hosting an East Coast gathering of pirate broadcasters, and we had just been through a day of workshops, speeches, and press interviews; now some of us…

REVOLVING BAIL FUNDS are the closest thing there is in activism to a perpetual motion machine. A bail fund steps in on behalf of a defendant to pay the bail bond set by a court. With bail paid, arrestees can go home, keep their jobs, and resist pressure to accept a plea deal in order to leave jail. As long as the defendants show up for their trial dates, the bail money is returned to the fund and can be used again and again and again, as long as bail exists. That last is the reason that the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund (BCBF) blew up its own successful model in 2019. The organization announced it would stop paying individual criminal bails (though it would continue to pay immigrant detention bonds).…

HISTORIANS WOULD LABOR to explain the 1920s without reference to World War I, even if that era’s Americans preferred to forget it. Same with the 1980s and Vietnam: Ronald Reagan’s partisans somehow simultaneously disowned, denied, and defended Nixonera excesses that no longer burdened them. Today, Trumpism is both the glib repudiation and the shameless vindication of Bushism. Spencer Ackerman’s Reign of Terror, a refreshing if distressing account of contemporary continuities and fractures, brings war back to the center of politics. Its narrative of the modern right is textured and damning, its treatment of the national-security blob and liberal Democrats unsparing. When pundits manage to avoid caricaturing the right, they often overemphasize former President Donald Trump’s alleged noninterventionism. Ackerman tells a more convincing story. Under George W. Bush, the neoconservatives united…

The Pennsylvania Court of Judicial Discipline has found Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Lyris Younge guilty of “repeated, clearly improper conduct” and added that her misconduct while presiding over family court was “blatant and inexcusable.” The court found Younge illegally jailed parents, had parents improperly handcuffed in her courtroom, and belittled people who appeared before her. The court suspended Younge for six months and placed her on probation for the rest of her term, which runs through 2026. She may no longer preside over family court and must write letters of apology to those she wronged. Norway’s new marketing rules will require advertisers and social media influencers to label any photos they post or publish that have been retouched. Those who fail to do so could face fines or even…

WHEN HONG KONG passed its controversial national security law in June 2020, opponents warned that it would lead to censorship of voices critical of China’s Communist government, which sought to bring the semi-autonomous city back under its control. Those fears were vindicated in mid-June, when police stormed the offices of Apple Daily, one of the last pro-democracy newspapers and an unapologetic defender of Hong Kong’s autonomy. Hundreds of Hong Kong police officers raided the paper’s offices, arresting the editor in chief, opinion writers, and executives, along with employees of Apple Daily’s parent company, Next Digital. When the publication announced that it was closing due to staff safety concerns and an inability to pay salaries after the government froze its bank accounts, Hongkongers lined up at newsstands early on June 24…

#FREEBRITNEY HAS BECOME a rallying cry of people who support Britney Spears’ efforts to end a court-appointed conservatorship that had imposed nearly absolute control over the pop singer’s life for 13 years. A court granted Spears’ father control over her personal affairs and her considerable assets in 2008, after an apparent mental break. This year Spears asked a judge to release her from the conservatorship, complaining that her conservators would not let her have a birth-control device removed, that she had no say over her grueling tour schedule, and that she was not even allowed to choose her own attorney. “It makes no sense whatsoever for the state of California to sit back and literally watch me with their own two eyes, making a living for so many people and…

IMAGINE LIVING IN a world where every one of your noncash financial transactions—a restaurant meal, a Venmo transfer to a friend, maybe some bitcoin bought on the dips—was automatically reported to a beefed-up, audit-hungry IRS. That dystopia will become a reality if President Joe Biden gets his way. Biden, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and key Capitol Hill allies such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) are pushing a vast, intrusive financial surveillance system in the name of closing the “tax gap.” But don’t worry: There’s no need to fear if you’ve got nothing to hide. “For already compliant taxpayers, the only effect of this regime is to provide easy access to summary information on financial accounts and to decrease the likelihood of costly ‘no fault’ examinations,” the Treasury Department said this…

IN MARCH, A man opened fire at Young’s Asian Massage, just north of Atlanta. Later, he shot up two more Atlanta-area Asian spas. All told, eight people were killed. Six of them were Asian women. Was this a hate crime? Clearly, it targeted a certain sort of business. In the immediate aftermath, people chalked the killings up to anti-Asian sentiment. Many were quick to implicate the Trump administration’s anti-Chinese rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic. After all, the shootings came amid a much-discussed uptick in alleged anti-Asian crimes. But neither the Atlanta massage parlor murders nor the broader narrative around anti-Asian incidents is so easily categorized. The Atlanta shooter—Robert Aaron Long—told police he struggled with sex addiction. He was a devout Christian who felt guilty about visiting sex workers at Asian…

ON DECEMBER 12, 1941, the literary agent Paul Reynolds contacted Edward Asner, one of the top editors at the publishing house Harper & Brothers, with what should have come as welcome news. “Here,” Reynolds announced, “is the new novel by Richard Wright.” A year earlier, Harper & Brothers had published Native Son, Wright’s searing novel of racism and violence, and watched as the book ascended the bestseller lists and launched its author into literary stardom. “Few other recent novels have been preceded by more advanced critical acclamation, or lived up to the expectations they aroused so well,” gushed The New York Times. Expectations were running even higher for Wright’s next fictional outing. Yet Asner was aghast at what his star author had just submitted. The Man Who Lived Underground told…

TODD BENSMAN’S AMERICA’S Covert Border War faces several challenges right out of the gate. First, it’s a work of speculative nonfiction about how terrorists plotting to kill Americans could cross the U.S.-Mexico border, even though none are known to have done so. Second, it was published 15 years after fear of Islamic terrorism peaked. Third, the Trump administration—the biggest source of public speculation about Muslim terrorists crossing the border—is over. Only the best of writers would have overcome those challenges to produce a good book. Bensman overcame none of them. This book’s biggest problem is that the author has nothing to write about. Not a single terrorist has illegally crossed the Mexican border and then committed an attack on U.S. soil. Bensman systematically exaggerates threats, selectively excludes information, and blurs the…

THIS SUMMER, THE U.S. government finally set an official end date for America’s two-decade military misadventure in Afghanistan. After announcing a drawdown of the U.S. troop presence there in April, President Joe Biden declared at a July 8 press briefing that the U.S. “military mission in Afghanistan will conclude on August 31.” Fulfilling a campaign promise, Biden admitted what the U.S. should have admitted more than a decade ago: “The United States did what we went to do in Afghanistan,” he said. The goal, he explained, was “to get the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 and to deliver justice to Osama bin Laden and to degrade the terrorist threat to keep Afghanistan from becoming a base from which attacks could be continued against the United States.” He added that…

AFTER THOUSANDS OF Cubans poured into the streets in early July to protest the island nation’s Communist government, President Joe Biden said America “stands firmly” with the people of Cuba. The demonstrations were prompted by short-term shortages of food and COVID-19 vaccines, as well as long-term dissatisfaction with the hardships created by Cuba’s strict economic controls. Protesters clashed with Cuban police, and the government cracked down on the island’s already-limited internet access in order to quell the uprisings that were organized spontaneously over social media. Biden’s words of support for the protesters—some of whom waved American flags as they demanded “libertad”—are nice. Actions would be better. And there is plenty the U.S. could, and should, do to aid Cubans in their fight against authoritarian communism. For starters, Congress could lift…

IN 2019, A California appeals court said a police officer may always enter a suspect’s home without a warrant if the officer is in “hot pursuit” and has probable cause to believe the suspect has committed a misdemeanor. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court gave that decision the benchslap it deserved. “We are not eager—more the reverse—to print a new permission slip for entering the home without a warrant,” declared Justice Elena Kagan in Lange v. California. The case originated when a California Highway Patrol officer observed Arthur Gregory Lange repeatedly honking his horn and playing his car stereo at a loud volume, both of which are traffic infractions at worst. The officer followed Lange’s car and switched on his overhead lights just a few seconds before Lange pulled into…

I TRULY BELIEVE we’re in a moment where history is going to look back on this time as a fundamental choice that had to be made between democracies and autocracies,” President Joe Biden declared during a March 31 speech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. What exactly could be so vitally important that not only America’s future but the entire project of liberal democracy hangs in the balance? “Infrastructure. Well, “infrastructure.” In Biden’s telling, everything hinged on passing a multi-trillion-dollar spending package that was ostensibly meant to upgrade America’s basic infrastructure but that also contained a wide range of unrelated spending on new social programs, industrial policy, and other forms of federal bureaucracy. Previous generations may have fought civilization-defining battles against tyrannical rulers and such toxic ideas as slavery and Nazism. But the…

MANY A BOOK has touted the importance of tradition in the pursuit of the good life. To my mind, the measure of such a work’s success is the likelihood that it will persuade someone who comes in unconvinced. The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos, by the New York Post firebrand and Catholic convert Sohrab Ahmari, initially offers high hopes on this front. Ahmari is an excellent writer, and his first few chapters are able examples of the genre. To support the notion that there’s more to knowledge than scientific fact or that a belief in God is logical, he employs the sorts of arguments and examples you might expect to find in, say, Bishop Robert Barron’s well-regarded Catholicism documentary series. But the project…

Over six searing Sundays in the summer of 1969, nearly 300,000 people flocked to Mount Morris Park to attend the Harlem Cultural Festival, a concert series that featured the likes of Nina Simone, B.B. King, and Stevie Wonder. It was a triumphant, jubilant, and vibrant celebration of black culture. And then it was forgotten. Summer of Soul (….Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s filmmaking debut, gives the festival another day in the light. Footage of the series sat untouched in a basement for nearly 50 years, hostage to the charged and divisive era it came from, until it came into Thompson’s care. What the musician found was breathtaking: artists in their glorious prime, stunning homages to lost civil rights leaders, and the roots of modern…

Working at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) probably isn’t much fun, but the board game Pandemic found success letting gamers indulge in a little epidemiological roleplay. A cooperative game where participants win or lose together as they work to fight disease, a game can typically be finished in 45 minutes. With plenty of time to pass in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, those who wanted to dive deeper turned to Pandemic’s trio of legacy games, where elements of each gameplay carry over into the next session. It can get quite complicated, with rule changes, challenges, upgrades, and plot developing over the course of a “year” (with each “month” comprising one or two game sessions). In Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, for example, players can become medics,…