Inhaltsverzeichnis für May 2022 in Reason

REASON WORKS WITH a contractor who lives in small-town Siberia. As Vladimir Putin’s tank convoy rolled toward Kyiv in early March and a flurry of economic sanctions were imposed on Russia by public and private actors, I found myself asking if we could still pay our guy, whether we should do so in bitcoin, and what the consequences might be if we did. Most of this issue of Reason was already edited when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started, so this is the only place in these pages you’ll see mention of the potentially earth-shattering conflict involving a nuclear nation. (For breaking news, check out reason.com.) But as this magazine goes to press, the most urgent concern is not whether the U.S. will send troops to the front lines of a…

WHEN THE POLITICAL philosopher Yoram Hazony took the stage at the inaugural National Conservatism Conference in 2019, he sounded a giddy note. “Today I feel good, because I know that today is our independence day!” he said. “Today we declare independence from neoconservatism, from neoliberalism, from libertarianism, from what they call classical liberalism.” By the time the second National Conservatism Conference rolled around last fall, Hazony, one of the events’ leading organizers, had changed his tune. “America’s in a tough spot. The democratic world is in a tough spot,” he said. “We’re not going to make it through if there’s no alliance between anti-Marxist liberals and hardcore, serious conservatives.” By going from purging anyone who does not pledge allegiance to the nationalist agenda to welcoming all comers, the “natcons” have…

RECORD NUMBERS OF Venezuelan migrants have crossed into the United States from Mexico in recent months, hoping to apply for asylum. U.S. immigration authorities reported 24,819 Venezuelan border crossers in December 2021, compared to just 200 one year prior. Despite the compelling case many Venezuelans have for seeking refuge in the U.S., the Biden administration is denying many of them that opportunity. Instead it is quietly deporting them to Colombia—a policy that resembles a controversial Trump administration practice. Citing 42 USC 265, a public health provision that was also invoked by President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden thus far has expelled more than 1 million migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, preventing Venezuelans and many others from applying for asylum. Colombia will be a deportation destination for Venezuelans who…

IN JULY 2014, five New York City police officers approached Eric Garner on a Staten Island sidewalk and accused him of illegally selling “loosies”—individual cigarettes without a tax stamp. Garner resisted handcuffs, and a scuffle ensued. Officer Daniel Pantaleo placed Garner in a prohibited chokehold while pushing him down to the ground face-first. After protesting 11 times that he could not breathe, Garner lost consciousness and died within the hour, sparking national outrage and raising awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement. American policy regarding tobacco-based products has become considerably more restrictive since Garner’s death, putting illicit market participants on a collision course with law enforcement. Even as the country finally begins to acknowledge the disastrous consequences of the war on drugs, government officials are increasingly taking a prohibitive approach…

15 YEARS AGO May 2007 “What do these four ‘public health’ problems—smoking, playing violent video games, overeating, and gambling—have in common? They’re all things that some people enjoy and other people condemn, attributing to them various bad effects. Sometimes these effects are medical, but they may also be psychological, behavioral, social, or financial. Calling the habits that supposedly lead to these consequences ‘public health’ problems, ‘epidemics’ that need to be controlled, equates choices with diseases, disguises moralizing as science, and casts meddling as medicine. It elevates a collectivist calculus of social welfare above the interests of individuals, who become subject to increasingly intrusive interventions aimed at making them as healthy as they can be, without regard to their own preferences.” JACOB SULLUM “An Epidemic of Meddling” 20 YEARS AGO May…

SINCE LATE 2020, a steady hum has emanated from the 15 large metal containers installed next to an electricity substation in the unincorporated rural community of Limestone in Washington County, Tennessee. The boxes make up a bitcoin “mine.” Inside each one, computers work to solve equations that keep bitcoin’s decentralized network up and running. In exchange for solving these equations, the computers are rewarded with bitcoin. That operation is now engaged in a life-or-death struggle with local officials, ostensibly because of noise complaints. The dispute illustrates a nationwide trend that pits bitcoin miners—many of whom are looking for new homes in the U.S. as foreign governments ban their business outright—against regulators who likewise find them intolerable. Bitcoin-mining computers consume a lot of energy and thus give off a lot of…

ON THE FIRST anniversary of the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced legislation that would make lying about election results a crime in the Evergreen State. Inslee, a Democrat, said the bill is necessary to protect democracy from “an ongoing coup attempt” fueled by former President Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election. “The defeated president as recently as an hour ago is yelling fire in the crowded theater of democracy,” Inslee said in January, invoking every censor’s favorite analogy. Trump’s mendacity continues to have a negative impact on our political system. Polls indicate that many of his supporters still believe the election was “stolen” by Democrats. But Inslee’s bill would create an even bigger problem: a government empowered to punish opposition…

WHEN PRESIDENT BILL Clinton tapped Stephen Breyer to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1994, he told the country Breyer would “strike the right balance between the need for discipline and order, being firm on law enforcement issues but really sticking in there for the Bill of Rights.” Breyer’s impending retirement at the close of the Supreme Court’s current term provides an opportunity to weigh Clinton’s words against Breyer’s record. Alas, the former president proved only half right. Breyer was frequently “firm” in his deference to the government. But that same deference often led Breyer to do the opposite of “sticking in there for the Bill of Rights,” especially in major Fourth Amendment cases. Take the 2014 case Navarette v. California. At issue was an anonymous and…

TRAVIS PETERSON, AN Air Force veteran who spent 21 years on active duty and four years as a military contractor, knew that America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan would leave behind thousands of Afghans who had helped both U.S. and NATO coalition forces. These Afghan contractors and soldiers, he says, “fought to the death for us.” So Peterson teamed up with private citizens, retired veterans, and U.S. government personnel to create the Moral Compass Federation, a group that works to get America’s allies out of Afghanistan before the Taliban finds them. In January, he spoke with Reason’s Noor Greene about his efforts. Q: Afghan allies ran missions with U.S. government personnel all along, so why was it a private effort to help them escape the Taliban? A: That’s a question that everybody’s…

WHEN I STARTED driving, my folks planted me behind the wheel of a nearly unbreakable late-’70s Jeep Wagoneer. “The tank” got me to work, rock concerts, and parties. It got me through snowstorms that stranded lesser vehicles on the roadside. In a pinch, it could fit me, 10 of my friends, and a keg of beer in relative comfort (at least for the keg). I miss the tank. Unlike our newer SUV, it would have barely suffered a scratch when my 16-year-old son hit a signpost. But I’m glad my kid, even without the tank to learn in, has taken to life behind the wheel and the freedom that comes with driving. His experience, to say nothing of my own, is becoming less common. In 1981, the year I turned…

SCORES OF MILLIONS of Americans have zero memory of living under a White House of, by, and for Big Labor. So we are going to have to make new memories to accurately assess President Joe Biden. After repeatedly promising on the campaign trail to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen,” Biden has broken with all recent Democratic predecessors by actually governing like he means it. On his first day in office, the 46th president fired National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Peter Robb, replacing him with former Communications Workers of America attorney Jennifer Abruzzo. On the same day, he rescinded some of Donald Trump’s federal civil service reforms, declaring, “It is also the policy of the United States to encourage union organizing and collective bargaining.” Three…

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER Chuck Schumer claims to favor repealing the federal ban on marijuana. The New York Democrat nevertheless helped sink legislation that would have removed federal obstacles to banking services for state-licensed marijuana businesses. Even stranger, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), which has long supported marijuana legalization, joined Schumer in demanding that the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act be excised from the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2022, which President Joe Biden signed into law on December 27. “We have less than 72 hours to keep the SAFE Banking Act OUT of this omnibus bill,” Maritza Perez, the DPA’s director of national affairs, warned in a December 3 “urgent action” alert, “and the only way to stop it is if advocates like you speak up…

“I TOO YEARN for universal justice,” wrote Zora Neale Hurston in her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, “but how to bring it about is another thing.” The black novelist’s remarks prefaced a passage where she grappled with the historical legacy of slavery in the African-American experience. Perhaps unexpectedly, Hurston informed her readers that she had “no intention of wasting my time beating on old graves with a club.” Hurston did not aim to bury an ugly past but to search for historical understanding. Her 1927 interview with Cudjoe Lewis, among the last living survivors of the 1860 voyage of the slave ship Clotilda, contains an invaluable eyewitness account of the middle passage as told by one of its victims. Yet Hurston saw only absurdity in trying to find justice…

TV OZARK PETER SUDERMAN In Netflix’s Ozark, no one is ever too far from government power. The show tells the story of the Byrdes, an ordinary Chicago family that ends up laundering money for a drug cartel. It bears all the hallmarks of post-Sopranos prestige TV, refracting the pedestrian concerns of America’s semi-privileged upper-middle class through the lens of violent genre television. The result is a kaleidoscopic look at the breakdown of American institutions. It’s not just that the Byrde family works for a drug lord. They also work for and against the FBI, and are embroiled in local politics via dealings with an eccentric political kingmaker and in national politics via their Chicago connections to the Obama campaign. They scheme to overcome regulatory burdens and corruption to open a…

Shane Lee Brown, then 23, spent six days in a Las Vegas jail in 2020 after cops arrested him on a warrant for Shane Neal Brown, then 49. In addition to the age difference, Shane Neal Brown is both white and taller than Shane Lee Brown, who is black. Shane Lee Brown is now suing the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the Henderson Police Department, which made his initial arrest, for civil rights violations, false imprisonment, negligence, and other wrongful conduct. Erie County, New York, District Attorney John J. Flynn has charged Amber and Michael Naab with second-degree felony charges of criminal possession of a forged instrument. Naab said the two used fake COVID-19 vaccine cards to get into a Buffalo Bills game at Highmark Stadium. The Naabs face…