Reason的May 2021目录

LAST YEAR, HASHTAG activists were ready to #AbolishICE, in part over the deaths of about 20 immigrants in custody in 2020. Protesters called on the government to “defund the police” over more than 1,000 killings by law enforcement during the same period. Those deaths are tragic, and many could have been prevented with better policy. But they pale in comparison to the blood on the hands of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the last 12 months. Faced with the challenge of COVID-19, the FDA screwed up on nearly every level. When the agency did do something right, it was almost always by making exceptions to its normal policies and procedures. In this month’s cover story (page 18), Ronald Bailey describes some specific targeted changes at the FDA and…

NOT LONG AFTER taking office, President Joe Biden released an executive order to fight climate change and called for evaluating the impact of environmental policies on the poor. Yet in a separate executive order, Biden affirmed his support for the 1920 Jones Act, a maritime law that harms both the environment and disadvantaged communities. It seems the residents of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Alaska are no match for an entrenched industry and union cronyism. The Jones Act—technically the Merchant Marine Act of 1920—shields the American shipping industry from foreign competition by requiring that ships engaging in trade between multiple U.S. ports be made in America and owned and crewed by American citizens. Supporters say the Jones Act is necessary for national security, but research from the Cato Institute has shown…

A YEAR AGO, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was a pandemic hero. As of this writing, he is clinging to his job as calls to step down crescendo within his own party. Several women allege the Democratic governor sexually harassed them—a particularly inconvenient situation for Cuomo, considering he has publicly positioned himself as a champion for women in the #MeToo era. The accusations deserve to be taken seriously. But they should not be considered the biggest scandal Cuomo faces. That distinction goes to his pandemic-related job performance, which resulted in so many unnecessary deaths in his state that he appears to have felt the need to obscure the record from the public. “PEOPLE VALUE THE truth,” Cuomo said in a January interview on MSNBC. “Incompetent government kills people. More people…

WHEN THE TRANSIT agency that serves Washington, D.C., replaced its aging trains during the last decade, it ended up paying about $400 million more than global averages—the equivalent of an additional 150 cars. One major reason for the higher costs, according to economists with the American Action Forum who studied the D.C. Metro’s procurement process, was a federal mandate first imposed in 1982. It requires that equipment purchased by federally subsidized transit agencies contain at least 60 percent American-made components. Such “Buy American” rules for government purchases, which apply to a wide range of goods, have been around since the heyday of protectionism in the 1930s. They are political tools that drive up costs and distort markets while allowing politicians to claim credit for defending domestic industries from foreign competition.…

“THEY’RE TAKING AWAY fundamental rights,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) declared during a pro-choice rally outside the Supreme Court last spring. Turning to point at the building behind him, an outraged Schumer delivered another warning: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price! You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Schumer’s vague threat against Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s first and second Supreme Court nominees, drew a rare public rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts. “Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous,” Roberts said…

UNDER ORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES, no self-respecting Floridian would consent to someone intentionally unleashing mosquitoes on their neighborhood. But a genetically engineered version of Aedes aegypti created by the bioscience firm Oxitec is changing that. The company’s Friendly™ male mosquitoes pass a genetic self-destruct code to all of their blood-drinking and dengue-transmitting female offspring, which over time suppresses the local Aedes aegypti population. The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District is undertaking a collaborative pilot project using Oxitec’s Friendly™ mosquitoes in small areas of the Florida Keys in spring 2021.…

IN THE 1969 case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited public school officials from punishing students for exercising their First Amendment rights on school grounds unless the speech at issue “would materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline and in the operation of the school.” This year, the Court will hear arguments in a new case that asks whether that rule should be interpreted to let school officials punish students for off-campus social media posts. Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. originated in 2017, when a high school freshman and junior varsity cheerleader went on Snapchat to complain about her failure to make the varsity cheerleading squad. The student—known by the initials B.L. because she is a minor—posted a picture…

NOT LONG AFTER the January 6 Capitol riot, politicians began lining up to call for more laws and broader government surveillance powers. Less than a week later, soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) held a press conference at which he proposed expanding the federal no-fly list, which bars people from boarding airplanes, to include individuals accused of participating in the riot. “The insurrectionists who breached the U.S. Capitol fall under the definition of threats to the homeland,” Schumer told news cameras, holding up a piece of paper with an image of a “no” symbol over an airplane as a visual aid. “We are calling on the authorities…to put them on the no-fly list immediately.” Schumer’s recommendation was supported by other Democrats, including the chair of the House Homeland…

CARL HART IS a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Columbia University. He served in the United States Air Force, earned a Ph.D., and raised three children to adulthood. As he writes in his new book: “Each day, I meet my parental, personal, and professional responsibilities. I pay my taxes, serve as a volunteer in my community… and contribute to the global community as an informed and engaged citizen.” So it may surprise some people to learn that not only has Hart been responsibly using heroin regularly for more than five years but he’s willing to tell people about it. He says his experiences with heroin make him a more forgiving and empathetic person, partner, and father. Hart’s path to drug use started in Miami in the 1980s—not by taking…

IN NOVEMBER, VOTERS in San Francisco reelected California Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat, over his opponent, democratic socialist Jackie Fielder. Wiener is a YIMBY, which stands for “yes in my backyard.” Unlike Fielder and many other powerful California Democrats, he believes that making it easier for private actors to build more housing in the state’s densest and most expensive cities is key to relieving California’s housing shortage. One of Wiener’s signature legislative attempts would have preempted local control of zoning to allow mid-rise apartments near transit and to allow fourplexes almost everywhere. Those efforts didn’t clear the Senate, but a smaller pro-development piece of legislation, Senate Bill 10, passed out of the Senate and might’ve passed the California Assembly had unrelated political wrangling not killed a host of bills at…

FIREFIGHTER. LION TAMER. Nurse. Teacher. Cop. Those are the careers most young people are familiar with. In a world where you can spend your life designing beer bottles, inspecting sewers, prepping cadavers, or programming robot dogs, you’d think we might spend a little more time introducing young people to the wide, wide world of work, instead of just leaving it all to Mike Rowe and his Dirty Jobs. What we need is something beyond career day but a little less time-intensive than semesterlong internships. I propose Job Tourism, an idea I’m basically stealing from author David Epstein—and the U.S. Army. In Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (Macmillan), Epstein talks about the advantages reaped by folks who switch careers, or at least seriously pursue other interests beyond the…

ON JANUARY 28, 2019, plainclothes narcotics officers broke into a house on Harding Street in Houston and killed all three occupants: Dennis Tuttle, a retired 59-year-old machinist; his 58-year-old wife, Rhogena Nicholas; and their dog. The couple’s families marked the two-year anniversary of that deadly home invasion by filing federal civil rights lawsuits against the city, its police chief, and 13 officers implicated in the operation. The raid, which was triggered by a phony tip, was based on a no-knock search warrant that Officer Gerald Goines obtained by falsely portraying Tuttle and Nicholas as dangerous drug dealers. Thec enter piece of Goines’sear chw arrant affidavitw asa fictional hero in purchase by a non-existent confidential informant. Another narcotics officer, Steven Bryant, backed up Goines’ story. Goines and Bryant eventually were charged…

THE POPULAR POST-9/11 slogan “See Something, Say Something” is getting a digital makeover in Congress. A bill introduced by Sens. Joe Manchin (D–W. Va.) and John Cornyn (R–Texas) would repurpose the war on terror’s prosnitching mantra by requiring that tech companies monitor their customers more closely and share user data with the federal government. The bill, dubbed the See Something, Say Something Online Act, also would let people report “suspicious” social media posts and any other content they don’t like directly to the Department of Justice (DOJ). A new DOJ office would handle these “suspicious transmission activity reports” (STARs). The tips would be exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests, and tech companies would not be allowed to publicly acknowledge or discuss the information reported. Each STAR submitted by an…

ON FEBRUARY 1, Myanmar’s military arrested the country’s democratically elected leader and announced a one-year state of emergency. The nation’s brief respite from military rule—which had previously lasted from 1962 to 2011—had come to an abrupt end. Military leaders claim the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s head of state and leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party, failed to properly investigate voting irregularities in the November parliamentary elections. The NLD says there is no evidence of widespread fraud. Suu Kyi’s elected government was not a beacon of liberal policy. Press freedom was constrained, and the government blocked access to certain news sites. Critics also say Suu Kyi created a cult of personality around herself and persecuted the Rohingya ethnic minority. The slow pace of liberalization can…

TYPICAL NIGHT IN Portland 2020. The sun is down and a few hundred people, nearly all in their 20s and 30s, start to congregate, by twos and threes, at a prearranged location, usually a city park but sometimes at the U.S. Immigration and Customs building, or City Hall, or, as they are tonight, on the strip of downtown that is home to local and federal courthouses and the city’s central police station, known as Justice Center. The drumming starts, there are some Black Lives Matter slogans shouted but mostly it’s calls of “FUCK THE POLICE,” none of whom are in evidence. They almost never are during the nightly protests, or not until things get hot, when windows are smashed and, for what will end up being nearly 200 nights in…

Raphael Andre, 51, came to the Open Door shelter in Montreal, where he got a meal and a shower. Staff say he would have stayed the night, but due to local rules they had to turn him back out onto the street, where he froze to death. In order to reduce the spread of COVID-19, Quebec has barred the shelter from allowing people inside after 9:30 p.m. Following complaints from some parents, Ritenour, Missouri, school district superintendent Chris Kilbride says he may reconsider a policy of sending armed police officers to the homes of students who are failing classes to discuss the reasons they are failing. In March 2020, the government of Singapore rolled out its TraceTogether cellphone app, which can tell when two phones have been close to each…