RATIONAL REVIEW NEWS DIGEST
The Freedom Movement's Daily Newspaper
Volume XVI, Issue #3,890
Steemit Edition -- Wednesday, January 17th, 2018
Web Edition: http://rationalreview.com
Email Edition: http://eepurl.com/bSo8ST
TODAY'S COMMENTARY
The demise of the jury trial
Is this the beginning of the end of the Bitcoin bubble?
Minimum wage hikes inflict maximum pain
The case for Oprah
For individual liberty, size does not matter — or so it seems
“Speaking Freely”: Partisan divides in attitudes toward the disinvitation of campus gust speakers
A liberal’s confession
The Instant Pot and how empathy is at the core of capitalism
Where are the Supreme Court’s opinions?
Work requirements in Medicaid will worsen the opioid crisis
President Trump’s first year made me rethink my American government class
Rise of the Superfluous Class, part 18
Lock her up
How do you say “shthole” in Norwegian?
Why Senator Cardin is a fitting opponent for Chelsea Manning
To complain about Lidl’s peeled onions means you think someone would like them
Trump and his haters: Battle of the vanities
Book reviews: The KKK’s attempt to define America
Neoconning the Trump White House
Our outlook for 2018 interest rates to stay low. The consensus view is that Europe’s banks are recovering but we are not so sure.
Self-reflection at the twilight of the US empire
#NotMe
Norway to Trump: Keep your gold-plated shthole
Racist mania II
The futility of government bans — Bitcoin always finds a way
Duck and cover
Watch Wormwood
Oprah for President … or for Queen?
Zimbabwe’s coconut coup installs a crocodile liberator
Not requiring evidence of jurisdiction is a violation of due process
The demise of the jury trial
Source: Cato Institute
by Jay Schweikert
“Imagine you were on trial for your life, but your lawyer insisted on telling the jury you were guilty. That’s what happened to Robert McCoy after he was charged with a triple homicide in Bossier City, La. When the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in McCoy v. Louisianaa on Wednesday, it will decide whether McCoy deserves a new trial. But it will also have a chance to vindicate the sanctity of the criminal jury trial itself. Criminal defense is deeply personal. The assistance of counsel is invaluable, but it is defendants, not their lawyers, who get to make fundamental decisions about their cases. … McCoy maintained innocence and demanded a jury trial, in which the state would have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But McCoy’s lawyer thought a better strategy would be to admit guilt to the jury and hope for leniency. McCoy adamantly opposed this idea, but his attorney pursued it anyway. The plan didn’t work, and McCoy was sentenced to death.” (01/16/18)
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/demise-jury-trial
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Is this the beginning of the end of the Bitcoin bubble?
Source: The Atlantic
by Derek Thompson
“Bitcoin’s price rises and falls like a plastic bag in a hurricane, so it’s silly to attach too much significance to one day’s fluctuation. But today’s news still reveals a subtle crack in the bull case for bitcoin. The digital currency was designed to be stateless and leaderless — ‘rules without rulers’ — to evade single points of failure, and to remain impervious to government control. But the great irony is that bitcoin is plunging today in part because it’s failing on all three accounts.” (01/26/18)
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/bitcoin-bubble-pop/550601/
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Minimum wage hikes inflict maximum pain
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille
“There’s probably no more popular way of patting yourself on the back for doing good while actually harming people than advocating for hiked minimum wage laws that forbid people to accept work that pays below a legally mandated floor. When you raise the price of something above what people are willing to pay, people buy less of it, or else they pass the costs down the line, when possible. This isn’t exactly a revelation; it’s one of the older known economic realities. Unfortunately, there’s always been a certain portion of the population that insists that labor is different and that you really can make people more prosperous by decree. But yet more recent evidence suggests that hiking the price of hiring people works just like raising the cost of everything else.” (01/16/18)
http://reason.com/archives/2018/01/16/minimum-wage-hikes-inflict-maximum-pain
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The case for Oprah
Source: Fox News Forum
by Juan Williams
“I know Oprah Winfrey. So I can say it: President Trump, sir, you are no Oprah. Trump said last week he’d beat Winfrey in the 2020 presidential race. And he dismissed the burst of talk about her possible 2020 candidacy with a belittling comment: ‘Oprah will be a lot of fun.’ Of course, that opened the door for a poll. Winfrey beat Trump by 10 percentage points, 48-38, according to Rasmussen. Even with the polling, my initial reaction to the ‘Oprah for President’ excitement was skepticism. After the disastrous first year of the Trump presidency, and his historic low standing in the polls, I thought Americans would have a new thirst for stable, experienced leadership. American voters also have a habit of picking a president who is the opposite of the incumbent. So why trust another TV celebrity as commander-in-chief?” (01/16/18)
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/01/16/juan-williams-case-for-oprah.html
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For individual liberty, size does not matter — or so it seems
Source: EconLog
by Pierre Lemieux
“Alberto [Mingardi] suggested that, if states are unavoidable, having more of them is better than fewer. One reason is that individuals will have more choices as to which state to live under according to their preferences. A related reason is that competing states will have an incentive to satisfy the preferences of their clienteles. More numerous and homogeneous states will thus offer public services more in line with what citizens want. … However, there are also good arguments for larger, more cosmopolitan societies. What Friedrich Hayek, in his trilogy Law, Legislation and Liberty, calls the Great Society, i.e. the abstract classical-liberal order, is more likely to flourish in a large, cosmopolitan society than under small-group tyranny. In a large and diversified society, Leviathan may be less effective at oppression. At any rate, smaller, homogeneous nation-states will typically not allow individuals to move freely between themselves.” (01/16/18)
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2018/01/for_individual.html
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“Speaking Freely”: Partisan divides in attitudes toward the disinvitation of campus gust speakers
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
by Kelsey Naughton
“In 2016, Gallup, the Knight Foundation, and the Newseum Institute surveyed American adults and college students on their views toward freedom of expression. They found that support for the liberties protected by the First Amendment is strong among college students, and ‘partisan differences in views [toward] the security of First Amendment freedoms are relatively minor among college students.’ For the first time, though, they found that although support is strong for these liberties, ‘students are willing to accept some limitations on free expression, particularly [expression] which is done to intentionally hurt or stereotype members of certain groups.’ This finding is supported by additional evidence from a recent Huffington Post survey, and by FIRE’s own survey of college students’ attitudes.”[editor’s note: “Free speech is OK as long as no one says anything I don’t like” isn’t “strong support” for free speech – TLK] (01/16/17)
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A liberal’s confession
Source: Empire Burlesque
by Chris Floyd
“I’m ashamed, but I’ll go ahead and admit it: For years, I thought Rupert Murdoch was the single worst poisoner of our political system. I thought the Civil Rights movement was a remarkable manifestation of the human spirit. But now, thanks to our sensible Democratic centrists, I know how wrong I was. Over the course of the past year, I’ve finally seen the light. Now I know that Vladimir Putin is behind every malign element in today’s political scene. What’s more, I’ve finally realized that Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks and all those other malcontents who moaned about social and economic and racial ‘injustice’ in America were just dupes — or agents! — of the Russians, sowing dissent and disruption in our exceptional land.” (01/16/18)
http://www.chris-floyd.com/home/articles/a-liberal-s-confession-16012018.html
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The Instant Pot and how empathy is at the core of capitalism
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Barry Brownstein
“You don’t have to search far to read claims that capitalism is centered on greed and selfishness. For some, the assertion seems self-evident as they read, for example, stories of pharmaceutical companies dramatically increasing the price of important drugs. Those who hold a ‘capitalists are greedy’ belief fail to distinguish between crony capitalists — who make their money through subsidies, mandates and government restrictions on competition — and entrepreneurs who make their money through fulfilling the most urgent needs of consumers. The Instant Pot is a little story of how entrepreneurs unselfishly better our world. If you don’t have an Instant Pot or don’t cook, you are probably wondering what the fuss is about. If you have one, you know.” (01/16/18)
https://fee.org/articles/the-instant-pot-and-how-empathy-is-at-the-core-of-capitalism/
—–
Where are the Supreme Court’s opinions?
Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
by Jonathan H Adler
“Some Supreme Court watchers were hoping the justices might return from their winter break with a few opinions in decided cases. No such luck. This morning, when the Court convened for argument, it released orders from last week’s conference, but no new opinions. Thus far this term, the Supreme Court has issued only one opinion in an argued case, a brief unanimous opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Hamer v. Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago. While we don’t ususally see a ton of opinions in the first half of a term, this is the slowest rate in a long, long time. According to data compiled by Adam Feldman at Empirical SCOTUS, the last time the Supreme Court did not issue a second opinion in an argued case until January was 1869.” (01/16/18)
http://reason.com/volokh/2018/01/16/where-are-the-supreme-courts-opinions
—–
Work requirements in Medicaid will worsen the opioid crisis
Source: Niskanen Center
by Samuel Hammond
“Advocates of work requirements in Medicaid have plausibly argued that employment, and ‘“community engagement’ more broadly, is an essential ingredient to a successful recovery. This paints a rosy picture of an opioid addict receiving coordinated case management, in which an initial detox therapy is followed up by a holistic rehabilitation program interspersed with small but meaningful acts of community service. In reality, Medicaid work requirements are unlikely to look anything like this.” (01/16/18)
https://niskanencenter.org/blog/work-requirements-medicaid-will-worsen-opioid-crisis/
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President Trump’s first year made me rethink my American government class
Source: USA Today
by Ross K Baker
“This week marks my 45th year teaching the introductory American Government course at Rutgers University. This is an ever changing field, and the half-life of lecture notes is vanishingly brief, so updates are always necessary — except for the fundamentals such as our Constitution and the events that led to its ratification. But this year is different. I usually go a bit overboard in praising the role of James Madison and discuss how well his design for our government has stood up to the challenges and crises of the past 230 years. After the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, I’ve revised my syllabus to reflect my concern over whether the values Madison wrote into the Constitution will survive the next three years. I teach a ‘mainstream’ course (neither distinctively left or right), and have always avoided indoctrinating my students. Although I am a registered Democrat, I serve as the adviser to the campus Republicans and during the 2016 GOP primaries was sponsor of ‘Students for Rubio.’” [editor’s note: Patting himself on the back for stumping for BOTH wings of the war party – SAT] (01/16/18)
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Rise of the Superfluous Class, part 18
Source: Freeman’s Perspective
by Paul Rosenberg
“Righteous-feeling youth does of course have a habit of damning all consequences and moving toward excess, but that’s less a natural problem and more a manufactured one. The young person being excessive soon learns from direct consequences that he or she is going too far … except if the enforcers of a jealous status quo get their hands on them first. That’s the kind of conflict I’ve been trying to keep my young friends away from, but I refuse to fight their enthusiasm.” (01/16/18)
https://www.freemansperspective.com/rosc-18-not-parasites/
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Lock her up
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“Under a seemingly click-bait headline in The Atlantic, ‘Can Government Officials Have You Arrested for Speaking to Them?’ Garrett Epps examines last week’s outrageous handcuffing and arrest of a Louisiana teacher, Deyshia Hargrave, for speech displeasing to the Vermilion Parish school board at a public meeting. … If respectfully challenging our so-called public servants in meetings designed for that can lead to being arrested, handcuffed and dragged off, we no longer live in ‘the land of the free.’” (01/16/18)
http://thisiscommonsense.com/2018/01/16/lock-her-up/
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How do you say “sh*thole” in Norwegian?
Source: The American Prospect
by Robert Kuttner
“In disparaging desperately poor countries whose ‘wretched refuse,’ in poet Emma Lazarus’s eloquent lyric, seek refuge on our shores, Donald Trump urged America to seek more immigration of the ‘best and the brightest,’ specifically mentioning Norway. The problem, of course, is that few Norwegians want to come. In fiscal year 2016, exactly 362 Norwegians became permanent legal residents of the United States. Short of kidnapping Norwegians and using extreme rendition to coerce them to enter our shores, there is no way to increase Norwegian immigration. And why should they come? Norway has full employment, a competitive private economy, one of the world’s most comprehensive welfare states, paid parental leave of a year after a child is born, universal health insurance, and free higher education. Its life expectancy far exceeds ours, its GDP per capita is $70,912, compared to $57,638 in the U.S. Citizen satisfaction surveys rate Norway as the world’s happiest country. And this was the case before they struck oil.” (01/16/18)
http://prospect.org/article/how-do-you-say-shithole-norwegian
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Why Senator Cardin is a fitting opponent for Chelsea Manning
Source: CounterPunch
by Norman Solomon
“The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin, has become a big star in national media by routinely denouncing Russia as a dire threat to American democracy. The senior senator from Maryland personifies the highly dangerous opportunism that has set in among leading Democrats on the subject of Russia. Chelsea Manning confirmed on Sunday that she is challenging Senator Cardin’s re-election effort in the Democratic primary this June. Her campaign has real potential to raise key issues. … As his party’s ranking member of the key Senate committee on foreign policy, Cardin is at the tip of the anti-Russia propaganda spear. After three decades in Congress including nearly a dozen years in the Senate, he’s an old hand at spinning. No one has worked harder to get political mileage out of ‘Russiagate.’” (01/16/18)
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To complain about Lidl’s peeled onions means you think someone would like them
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall
“There’s a certain paradox in complaining about what you insist no one will want: ‘Supermarket giant Lidl has faced a backlash for selling pre-peeled ‘naked’ onions in plastic packaging.’ There is no point in complaining about, nor campaigning against, what you insist no one will or could want. For, in a market economy, if no one wants it then it will quickly enough disappear for lack of demand. It is only if you think that people will buy it but that they shouldn’t that there is a case for banning or saying that people shouldn’t.” (01/16/18)
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Trump and his haters: Battle of the vanities
Source: spiked
by Tim Black
“You can’t fault the chutzpah of President Trump. No matter how fathomless his ignorance, he steadfastly refuses to let it get in the way of political decisions or, as he calls them, tweets. So it was that he cancelled his ‘working visit’ to the UK to open the new US embassy last week, because, as he put it, ‘I am not a big fan of the Obama administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for ‘peanuts,’ only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars.’ There was even the trademark campy and childlike flourish: ‘Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon — NO!’ As everyone with access to the internet has now pointed out, of course, Trump was once again using the wrong hole with which to speak.” (01/16/18)
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/trump-and-his-haters-battle-of-the-vanities/
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Book reviews: The KKK’s attempt to define America
Source: The New Republic
by Eric Herschthal
“Scholars and journalists who study the right walk a tightrope. Ignore the existence of white supremacy and rightwing populism in America, and you will fail to understand a significant portion of the voting population. But get too close up to the subject, and you risk painting too sympathetic a portrait of groups that promote hate. If you want to know how difficult it can be, just ask Richard Fausset, the New York Times reporter who, in November, faced intense blowback after writing a profile of a white supremacist that many readers felt ‘normalized’ the alt-right. … Two new books (Linda Gordon’s The Second Coming of the KKK and Felix Harcourt’s Ku Klux Kulture) emphasize that the Klan of the 1920s was not a ‘fringe’ group, but a popular, mainstream movement whose bigotry was so appealing precisely because its leaders recast it in a way many Americans found palatable. In their desire to condemn racism, earlier writers had failed to understand how it operates.” (01/16/18)
https://newrepublic.com/article/146616/kkks-attempt-define-america
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Neoconning the Trump White House
Source: The American Conservative
by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
“Over the last year critics have warned of the returning neoconservative influence on the executive branch’s national security apparatus, each day a little less confident that President Donald Trump will keep to the seeming anti-interventionist impulses he demonstrated during the 2016 campaign. News flash: We’re already there.” (01/16/18)
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/neoconning-the-trump-white-house/
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Our outlook for 2018 interest rates to stay low. The consensus view is that Europe’s banks are recovering but we are not so sure.
Source: Cobden Centre
by Gordon Kerr, Kevin Dowd & Cavin O’Driscoll, with Enrico Colombatto
“Despite their shortcomings, European banks do not seem on the verge of collapse and few commentators, analysts or policymakers think that there will be any systemic wobbles in 2018. We do not necessarily disagree; with ECB interest rates still zero to negative and a raft of generous credit facilities open to banks on softish terms there is little doubt that monetary policy has helped and will continue to help Europe’s banks. We would venture to say that supporting the banking system has been the main objective of ECB monetary policy for a decade now. Keeping rates at around zero not only ensures that mark-to-market profits are maximised, but also enables banks whose depositors might have lost confidence and withdrawn funds to fill the gap by borrowing from central banks at no cost.” (01/16/18)
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Self-reflection at the twilight of the US empire
Source: Liberty Blitzkrieg
by Michael Krieger
“American influence abroad, as defined by the power and status of the U.S. empire, has been in consistent decline for nearly two decades now. Indeed, when the history books are written it’ll be clear that the dotcom boom and bust at the end of the 20th century marked the peak of U.S. imperial strength. Shortly after that bubble burst our nation was faced with the brutal and traumatizing 9/11 attacks, and the overreaction to this event unleashed a mass insanity across the American public from which we have never recovered. Specifically, the attacks of September 11, 2001 were ruthlessly and immediately exploited by degenerate power hungry charlatans in D.C. and elsewhere to fear-monger an entire country to give up liberty in exchange for a promise of safety. With that devilish bargain our society committed cultural suicide.” (01/16/28)
https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/01/16/self-reflection-at-the-twilight-of-u-s-empire/
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#NotMe
Source: Kent’s “Hooligan Libertarian” Blog
by Kent McManigal
“If you are being victimized now, you have an absolute human right to defend yourself with whatever amount of force it takes to stop the violator. You have every right to expose your victimizers and to refuse to associate with them ever again. They owe you restitution. But to become an eternally broken victim just for the purpose of being a victim? That’s just sad — you have decided to violate yourself perpetually just because someone else violated you in the past.” (01/16/18)
http://blog.kentforliberty.com/2018/01/notme.html
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Norway to Trump: Keep your gold-plated sh*thole
Source: Our Future
by Miles Mogulescu
“So the Donald wishes more Norwegians would emigrate to America, instead of people from supposed ‘shthole’ countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America. I happen to have spent two weeks visiting beautiful, democratic socialist Norway last summer. And I’ve got news for the Donald. Norwegians are not exactly lining up to escape their democratic socialist country for an increasingly neoliberal America. Do you want to know how short the line is? Well, out of 763,060 green-card holders who became US citizens in 2016, exactly 93 were Norwegian. And, by the way, Donald, not all Norwegians are the blond-haired, blue-eyed Caucasians whom you seem so hot for. 16.8 percent of Norway’s population are immigrants, many from countries you would call ‘shtholes’ like Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Eritrea, and Pakistan.” (01/16/18)
https://ourfuture.org/20180116/norway-to-trump-keep-your-gold-plated-sht-hole
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Racist mania II
Source: Authority!
by Timothy J Taylor
“President Trump is a racist, they say. Anyone who agrees with any part of his politics is a racist. If you support Trump you are a racist. That’s the political and social atmosphere today. Every political or social motive is racist. Racists are irrationally seen behind every tree …” (01/16/18)
http://authoritycon.blogspot.com/2018/01/racist-mania-ii.html
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The futility of government bans — Bitcoin always finds a way
Source:Bitcoin.com
by C Edward Kelso
“Cryptocurrencies have been threatened at one point or another by nearly every country on the planet. Rarely does a government venture beyond rhetoric. Those resorting to crackdowns are often met with greater public appetite for decentralized virtual money, making all that initial fuss an exercise in futility. Be they communist strongholds or liberal democracies, bitcoin cannot be stopped.” (01/15/18)
https://news.bitcoin.com/the-futility-of-government-bans-bitcoin-always-finds-a-way/
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Duck and cover
Source: National Review
by Michael Brendan Dougherty
“During American history classes at my high school, we laughed at images of children learning to ‘duck and cover’ in case of nuclear attack during the 1950s. Our parents would laugh too when we told them about it, everyone having become accustomed to the idea that any nuclear exchange would probably end in both the United States and the Soviet Union emptying all their missile silos and potentially destroying all life on earth. … In many ways, the modern world is younger, dumber, and more innocent about these things than our grandparents were. We discovered that on Saturday in Hawaii. And now is the time to think it through.” (01/15/18)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455447/hawaii-missile-scare-cold-war-memories-return
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Watch Wormwood
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“I’ve got a movie recommendation for you: Watch Wormwood, a fantastic Netflix original. Set aside time for binge watching because once you start, you will want to continue watching to the end. Combining a documentary format with depictions of events with actors, the series focuses on the CIA’s execution of Frank Olson, an American citizen who worked for the U.S. national-security establishment. More accurately, the series revolves around his son, who has spent his life ascertaining the truth about what the CIA did to his father.” (01/16/18)
https://www.fff.org/2018/01/16/watch-wormwood/
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Oprah for President … or for Queen?
Source: Town Hall
by Jeff Jacoby
“Oprah Winfrey’s Speech at the Golden Globes last Sunday set off a gusher of giddy speculation that the much-loved TV host could be a Democratic contender for president in 2020, and if the idea of electing to the White House a celebrity billionaire with no political experience or public-policy expertise might have seemed like crazy talk not all that long ago — well, after the 2016 election cycle, who would be so foolhardy as to rule out Oprah’s chances? With the next election nearly three years away, it’s hard to believe that any sensible American (a category that excludes political junkies and media pundits) already has an appetite for dissecting the pros and cons of potential 2020 contestants. But perhaps, as Bloomberg’s Virginia Postrel suggests, the Oprah-for-president hoopla has nothing to do with public interest in the election of America’s chief executive, its head of government. Perhaps what really explains the whirl of excitement triggered by her speech (and not only among Democrats) is a fascination with designating America’s preeminent citizen its head of state.” (01/15/18)
https://townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby/2018/01/15/oprah-for-president–or-for-queen-n2434768
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Zimbabwe’s coconut coup installs a crocodile liberator
Source: Independent Institute
by George BN Ayittey
“Hours before dawn on November 15, a convoy of military tanks rolled into the outskirts of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital of 1.6 million, ending the reign of Robert Mugabe. The 93-year-old despot had ruled the country since its independence from Britain in 1980. For 37 years his tyrannical rule was characterized by vapid corruption and grotesque economic mismanagement. The military took pains to explain that its actions were not a coup d’etat, saying it wanted to purge reactionary and criminal elements surrounding Mugabe. But the coup, it was later learned, was triggered by the sacking of former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa a week earlier to pave the way for Grace Mugabe to become her husband’s successor.” (01/15/18)
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=9236
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Not requiring evidence of jurisdiction is a violation of due process
Source: Everything Voluntary
by Skyler J Collins
“Here’s a conversation I’ve had over the past week or two regarding jurisdiction. A number of themes are touched on throughout. This conversation began when a friend shared this success story of someone successfully defending themselves from an IRS attack by challenging jurisdiction, covering a six-year span.” (01/15/18)
http://everything-voluntary.com/not-requiring-evidence-jurisdiction-violation-due-process
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