August 2013 – Page 58

Obama Begins To Undo The Drug War? Ctd

Holder announced yesterday that the administration will scale back mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders:

Kleiman supports the change:

It’s hard to tell from the bare-bones official statement just how much of a difference today’s announcement will make. It doesn’t go as far as I might have gone, by requiring that a prosecutor who wants to ask for more than five years in a case not involving violence specifically justify that decision and have it approved in Washington. But in principle it’s the right thing to do, and the fact that Holder now thinks he can do it safely (unlike the situation with five-year crack mandatory, a problem that also could have been fixed administratively without waiting for legislation) suggests that some aspects of drug policy, and criminal-justice policy more generally, are – slowly and belatedly – recovering from their forty years of agitated delirium.

Waldman adds:

The most important change in the last 20 years is that crime has fallen so dramatically (see here for instance), and in response we’ve seen a real cultural shift. I’m sure there are still politicians who’d love to tar their opponents as soft on crime. But they know it probably wouldn’t work. And that means there’s at least a chance we can make real policy change.

Ilya Somin wants more details on Holder’s new policy:

The key question, it seems to me, is whether the exceptions for defendants who have “significant ties to large-scale gangs or cartels” and those who have a “significant criminal history” are likely to swallow the new rule. How close do ties to a gang or cartel have to be before they qualify as “significant”? Do previous convictions for drug trafficking count as a “significant” criminal history?

How much evidence is enough to conclude that the defendant really does have ties to a gang; is a preponderance of evidence or proof beyond a reasonable doubt required, or is circumstantial evidence going to be enough? In many inner city neighborhoods, a high proportion of all drug offenders probably have at least some ties to gangs or cartels. The nature of illegal markets makes it dangerous and difficult to function within them without such connections.

Jacob Sullum also focuses the new policy’s loopholes:

The practical impact of this change will depend on details such as what Holder means by “no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs, or cartels.” Many marijuana dealers and pretty much all cocaine and heroin dealers arguably would fail that test. According to a memo that Holder sent to U.S. attorneys today, another requirement is “no significant criminal history.” The memo adds that “a significant criminal history will normally be evidenced by three or more criminal history points but may involve fewer or greater depending on the nature of any prior convictions.” In practice, a “significant” criminal history can be quite minor: An offense for which a defendant received a 60-day sentence, for instance, counts as two points, so a New Yorker who is caught with more than seven rounds in his gun after getting busted for “public display” of marijuana may be ineligible for Holder’s mercy.

Plumer breaks down the economic reasons why the DOJ would start liberalizing drug policy:

The rapid growth in federal prisons was putting a serious strain on the Justice Department’s budget. The number of federal inmates has quadrupled since 1980 and now surpasses 218,000. Housing all those prisoners isn’t cheap: The average minimum-security inmate now costs $21,000 a year, while the average high-security inmate costs $33,000 a year.

Add it all up, and the Obama administration had to request $6.9 billion for the Bureau of Prisons in fiscal 2013. That may not sound like much in the context of trillion-dollar deficits. But a recent report (pdf) from the Urban Institute pointed out that if the current rate of incarceration continues, federal prisons will keep taking up a bigger and bigger chunk of the Department of Justice’s budget — rising to 30 percent by 2020 …

Dylan Matthews points out that the new policy will only make a small dent in the prison population:

[T]he federal system isn’t really where the action is. The most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) estimates find that there are 1,353,198 people incarcerated at the state level and 217,815 incarcerated federally. So about 13.9 percent of U.S. prisoners are in federal institutions; the other 86.1 percent are in state facilities. And most prisoners at the state level are not there for drug crimes.

And Keith Humphreys suggests another policy change that would further reduce the prison population:

I would rather have sentences determined by people with personal knowledge of individual criminal cases than by elected officials in a faraway city. For that reason I would like to see the Congress endorse even more governmental discretion by restoring parole within the federal prison system, which it abolished in 1984. If we are willing to have correctional officials make judgments about who deserves compassionate early release because of illnesses and family tragedies, then we should be equally willing to let the same officials make judgements about who might be released because they are rehabilitated and unlikely to re-offend.

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

I’m growing quite tired of the calls for gay athletes to lead some sort of civil disobedience in Russia during the Sochi Olympics. Most of these are coming out of members of the press with stars in their eyes, I get that. But I am surprised that you are not more circumspect.

Vladimir Putin is not Bull Connor. The worst gay rights activists in Russia would face is not being sprayed with firehoses and thrown in the county jail for a few days. The Russian prison system has scarcely changed since the days of the old Soviet Gulag. Having spent time in Lithuania, I had the opportunity to talk with people whose relatives were shipped off to Siberia and never heard from again. Asking other people to go over and risk a similar fate while enjoying complete freedom of speech – and a vastly better climate towards gay rights – here in our cushy Western democracy is the very height of irresponsibility. Unless you yourself are willing to board a plane wearing a rainbow t-shirt and face the possibility of arrest and detention without trial in a country where the concept of habeas corpus is a dicey proposition at best, I would respectfully request that you back off.

For that matter, Putin’s deal right now is pretty transparent. He’s trying to win favor at home by flipping the bird to the rest of the world, particularly the US and Western Europe. Can’t you see how sending gay protesters there and daring him to arrest them would play right into his hands? He could go to his citizens and the rabidly conservative Orthodox Church and say, “See! The decadent West has sent these gays to destabilize our country!” Why give him more ammunition?

Finally, internal civil disobedience is one thing; I fully support those Russian activists who are risking arrest even now. But disobedience from outside is phenomenally dangerous. How would the US have reacted if the civil rights leaders of the sixties had enlisted help from the Soviet Union? I’m going to go out on a limb and say probably not well. Would it have been a good idea for the world to have protested the Nuremburg Laws by telling Jews to travel to Germany in 1938 and give Hitler all the bad press he could stomach? Come on.

My reader makes some sharp points, especially about the glibness of that post. I regret that tone in retrospect. I didn’t mean to urge others to go to Siberia while I sit in comfort in the West. But, equally, I cannot imagine the Russian authorities rounding up foreign Olympic athletes if they find a way to express opposition to the demonization of gay people now enshrined in Russian law. Frank Bruni’s suggestion is perhaps the best way to do this – have athletes from countries that respect human rights for gay people wear some small tokens or signs of solidarity:

As the television cameras zoom in on Team U.S.A., one of its members quietly pulls out a rainbow flag, no bigger than a handkerchief, and holds it up. Not ostentatiously high, but just high enough that it can’t be mistaken.

The reason this may be the best form of civil disobedience is that it would have the maximum television exposure and therefore the maximum visibility. Chuck Schumer endorsed it today. It would also be against Olympic rules. But if the issue became one of athletes versus the IOC as much as athletes versus Putin, so much the better. The IOC needs a kick in the ass for its blithe acquiescence to authoritarianism.

As for non-athletes exercizing civil disobedience, I should not have urged others to do something I’m not doing myself. But I can admire, celebrate and cover such civil disobedience – and the prospect of having to jail many foreigners under the anti-gay law in a moment of huge visibility might well even cause Putin to think twice before cracking down. It’s not as if this is the first time this happened. The courageous Peter Tatchell has faced down Putin before and lived to tell the tale. And I doubt Peter is going to stay away from Sochi when the moment comes.

(Photo: a dummy from an August 10 London protest against Putin. By Andrew Cowie/Getty.)

Yes, Of Course It Was Jihad, Ctd

The Fort Hood gunman’s testimony to a panel of military mental health experts is a rare glimpse into the motives of a Jihadist mass murderer. He says he wished he had been killed in the rampage because that would have made him a martyr. Then this:

In the documents, he described in blunt and unapologetic terms how he killed soldiers as he stepped into a medical processing building on Nov. 5, 2009. He said he wore earplugs to muffle the sound of his semiautomatic weapon, and shot into areas that had the “greatest density of soldiers.” In the end, 13 people were dead. “I don’t think what I did was wrong because it was for the greater cause of helping my Muslim brothers,” he told the military panel.

The three pages of documents were from a 49-page report of a military panel known as a sanity board, which concluded that Major Hasan was fit to stand trial.

Right-vs-wrong is a less potent concept in his sane mind than Muslim-vs-infidel. In fact, Muslim-vs-infidel is his version of right-vs-wrong. This is the appeal of fundamentalism – giving one group inherently more moral value than another. It is a strong current Islam, but obviously common to all groups, and made much more dangerous by religion. But that it is a function of fundamentalist religion is indisputable.

The View From Your Window

Bolinas, California, 9.45 am

Celebrating The Blogger

Am I wrong to be entranced by this scene from the cutting edge of future journalism?

Greenwald lives and works in a house surrounded by tropical foliage in a remote area of Rio de Janeiro. He shares the home with his Brazilian partner and their 10 dogs and one cat, and the place has the feel of a low-key fraternity that has been dropped down in the jungle. The kitchen clock is off by hours, but no one notices; dishes tend to pile up in the sink; the living room contains a table and a couch and a large TV, an Xbox console and a box of poker chips and not much else. The refrigerator is not always filled with fresh vegetables. A family of monkeys occasionally raids the banana trees in the backyard and engages in shrieking battles with the dogs. Greenwald does most of his work on a shaded porch, usually dressed in a T-shirt, surfer shorts and flip-flops.

Whatever your view of the merits of Edward Snowden, the fact that this description is now printed in the New York Times is a BFD. The whole concept of journalism is shifting with technology, the old newsrooms and “boys on the bus” ceding to a dude in surfer shorts, surrounded by monkeys, yelling “Shut up, everyone!”

By the way, the driness of the sentence – “The refrigerator is not always filled with fresh vegetables” – made me guffaw. The life of the blogger is not kind to the fridge.

Peering Into The Rotting Entrails Of The Intellectual Right

Is there a point at which a “movement” actually hits bottom? You know: like an addict? My only true experience with this was observing the British left in the 1970s and 1980s, reacting to the tectonic shift toward less state control in Britain and America. Instead of examining their own biases, challenging their own assumptions and thinking constructively about policy, they simply began talking to each other, split into factions, and, with each passing day, they got loopier and loopier. American liberalism had a less surreal intellectual collapse as well – degenerating into interest group leftism, as Reagan re-made the polity.

Reading the current conservative press (with the obvious exception of The American Conservative), it’s hard not to see the parallels. What was once Joe-Farah-style looniness is now mainstreamed; Newsmax is all over NRO; David Brooks’ idea of a revived version of early neo-conservatism is almost poignant in its level of denial. There appears to be nothing ever too far to the right, and the fervor of the true believers increasingly eclipses the worries of the doubters. Reading conservatives like Pete Wehner or David Brooks feels worthy but irrelevant. Watching conservatives like George Will and Charles Krauthammer effectively go over the cliff with the party is just dismaying. Seeing Peggy Noonan morph into Michelle Malkin may be entertaining in its incoherence, but it’s still not good for the republic.

And then you get to what one might call a “whole new level”. Take a new book by Diana West about how the Soviet Union “occupied” America under FDR and dictated foreign policy to serve communist interests. Here’s how the book advertizes itself:

If the Soviet penetration of Washington, D.C., was so wide and so deep that it functioned like an occupation …

If, as a result of that occupation, American statecraft became an extension of Soviet strategy …

If the people who caught on – investigators, politicians, defectors – and tried to warn the American public were demonized, ridiculed and destroyed for the good of that occupation and to further that strategy …

And if the truth was suppressed by an increasingly complicit Uncle Sam …

Would you feel betrayed?

Probably. But why all the question marks? And then you begin to inquire further and your eyes widen a little. A few paragraphs into reading the debate, you realize that all of this is connected with the claim of a current huge conspiracy lying in plain sight – the Muslim Brotherhood’s grip on the White House. Obama is a closet Islamist, just as FDR was a closet Stalinist. It all makes sense now!

If you’re like me and steeped in this kind of ideological stew for a few decades, you immediately check on the slightly calmer voices in the anti-Communist historical universe. The result is both a relief – not everyone has gone bonkers – which is followed by more dismay, as you realize that even the people who lived their intellectual lives as passionate, revisionist anti-Communists and anti-anti-anti-Communists are now outliers in the conservative ranks.

So do yourself a favor and get a glimpse of the insanity now dominating what was once a vibrant intellectual culture by reading Ron Radosh’s devastating review of the book. (David Horowitz gives his side of the kerfuffle here.) Front Page offered West equal space to respond but she wisely refused (see her position here). After reading Radosh, you realize why. She’s got nothing. But she still has much of the movement right on her side. Radosh:

As a historian I normally would not have agreed to review a book such as this one. But I changed my mind after seeing the reckless endorsements of its unhinged theories by a number of conservative individuals and organizations.

These included the Heritage Foundation which has hosted her for book promotions at a lunchtime speech and a dinner; Breitbart.com which is serializing America Betrayed; PJ Media which has already run three favorable features on West; Amity Shlaes, who writes unnervingly that West’s book, “masterfully reminds us what history is for: to suggest action for the present”; and by conservative political scientist and media commentator Monica Crowley, who called West’s book “A monumental achievement.”

Shlaes, whom I recall as previously sane, even calls West (presumably without irony) the “Michelangelo of denial.” Then you think this has to be the rock-bottom of the loony right, but stupidly read the comments under Radosh’s painstakingly thorough demolition. The “best” and first comment has this throw-away line:

Incidentally, Joe McCarthy was right.

Within a few more comments, we have a Birther; then we have this, claiming that these past affairs are not worth reading into because they pale in comparison with the treason in Washington today:

How about the fact that a number of mid East advisers working in the sate department [sic] are connected with CAIR or the Moslem Brotherhood?

Mercifully, there is some sanity among some Front Page readers and it elbows its way to the front at times. But check out the Amazon reviews. Anyone with any serious understanding of history gives it one star at most. The rest? Five stars! Seriously. There is no middle ground. My favorite review:

Where West’s contribution differs from anything else, thus far available, is that in addition to assimilating all of the most important aspects of the Soviet infestation she illustrates a parallel action on the part of the Islamists today. An understanding of the current Islamic penetration into our society, government and culture alike, is vitally important, and should be readily apparent.

My second favorite:

History that I never got in school.

You can say that again.

Yglesias Award Nominee

“I understand that congressmen say stupid things from time to time. And I understand that Mr. Farenthold is an obscure back-bencher who doesn’t speak for most of his colleagues. Still, the fact that a member of the House of Representatives would treat lunatic theories as serious is a problem. It does reflect poorly not only on Farenthold but the party he represents. And what he said is damaging, since it will confirm in the minds of rational people that at least among some of its elected representatives, the Republican Party is comprised of conspiratorial nuts,” – Pete Wehner, Commentary.

Be The Climate Change You Want To See

Johannes Urpelainen parses a new report on whether green domestic policy gets us closer to international agreements on climate change:

According to the report, domestic policy action could spill over to international climate negotiations and create a critical mass of key countries willing to commit to emissions reductions. The authors conjecture that ambitious national actions will ultimately prove popular and successful in their countries because they produce co-benefits such as improved energy security and energy efficiency, and this change allows national negotiators to engage in meaningful bargaining without crippling domestic constraints.

At the same time, domestic national actions can also undermine bargaining.

David Victor argues in his recent book Global Warming Gridlock that if countries implement national policies that are unconditional, they give away their bargaining leverage. When the European Union chooses to reduce carbon dioxide emissions regardless of what other countries do, other major emitters have few incentives to negotiate with it. If Europe’s contribution to climate mitigation does not depend on what China and the United States do, the outcome could be that the latter two decide to free-ride on Europe’s actions.

Brian Merchant singles out Obama’s recently announced policy to end funding for coal projects abroad, which resulted in the World Bank and the European Investment Bank following suit:

Just like that, the outlook for coal dimmed. A new Bloomberg report details the ways that those announcements lead to crumbling support for coal financing worldwide. Investors are increasingly leary of backing an energy source that has quickly become a sort of power non grata on the international stage. Furthermore, the writing’s on the wall—climate change is so widely agreed to be a threat that investors know it’s only a matter of time before carbon-curtailing policies will start hampering coal projects, even abroad.

Of course, economic giants like China and India don’t need the World Bank to build coal, so projects will likely continue to come online for the immediate future. Then again, outlets like the South China Morning Post are reporting that it appears that the nation’s coal consumption appears to have peaked.

Update from a reader:

You quote Brian Merchant, who references the South China Morning Post:

Of course, economic giants like China and India don’t need the World Bank to build coal, so projects will likely continue to come online for the immediate future. Then again, outlets like the South China Morning Post are reporting that it appears that the nation’s coal consumption appears to have peaked.

Note that the South China Morning Post actually says the exact opposite, despite a misleading title. They are saying that the rate of increase of demand has peaked, but demand itself will continue to increase. The article predicts that demand will increase by “just over 25 per cent from last year to 2020.” If you remember your maths, they are saying that the rate of acceleration of demand, or 2nd derivative is decreasing, while demand (1st derivative) will continue to increase at least through 2020.

The Rubbish Is Spying On You

High-tech recycling bins in London have recorded data from more than 1 million passing smartphones:

Renew, the startup behind the scheme, installed 100 recycling bins with digital screens around London before the 2012 Olympics. Advertisers can buy space on the internet-connected bins, and the city gets 5 percent of the airtime to display public information. More recently, though, Renew outfitted a dozen of the bins with gadgets that track smartphones. The idea is to bring internet tracking cookies to the real world. The bins record a unique identification number, known as a MAC address, for any nearby phones and other devices that have Wi-Fi turned on. That allows Renew to identify if the person walking by is the same one from yesterday, even her specific route down the street and how fast she is walking.

Why? Advertising, of course:

The scope for new advertising methods offered by this data is remarkable. For example, If Costa Coffee knows that the iPhone with MAC address A8-23-RR-XX usually stops in around 8 in the morning for a coffee and a croissant (don’t forget, this technology could be extended into the stores themselves) is now heading to Pret for a morning pick-me-up, then they might pay to flash an advert on a relevant bin just as the A8-23-RR-XX is approaching, reminding him of a loyalty scheme or a special offer.

Matt Brian is worried about confidentiality:

Renew’s approach is likely to attract attention — both U.K. and E.U. privacy laws require companies to notify consumers they are being tracked and allow them to opt out. Even if the company fixes notices around its trash cans or uses digital signage to warn people walking past it, Renew isn’t able to provide an easy way for them to immediately tell the company that they don’t wish to participate.

David Meyer calls this “yet another reminder of the growing tensions between big data and privacy”:

If you’re trying to harness the vast amounts of data emanating from smartphones and other personal computing devices – even if you anonymize that data once you’ve collected it – it’s very difficult to guarantee that personal data can’t be extracted afterwards. And in this case, the identifying information can’t even be easily stripped out, because it’s the very information the data-gathering exercise is designed to collect.

Lex Berko, who dug up the above promotional video, is just weirded out:

While there are several aspects to this plan that are unsettling, the one that vexes me the most is how little Renew seems to grasp that this idea is unsettling in the first place. On a certain level, it’s understandable—it’s a business and it’s probably not be the best practice for a business to publicly admit that something it’s doing is sneaky. … Renew doesn’t seem to comprehend that most people wouldn’t like to be followed everywhere they go by anything, no matter what it is, let alone by a series of recycling bins with ulterior motives.

Following such criticisms, the bins have been shut down.

A Decade Without Sex

Sophie Fontanel, whose new memoir The Art of Sleeping Alone records a decade spent celibate in France, reflects on the social stigma she faced:

I was discovering conventional behavior in the most liberated milieus: broad-minded people, against any form of censorship or constraint, who boasted about how they pushed boundaries. Well, I blasted them back in the other direction, and they flung their hands up. They had ingested the most useless hodgepodge of drugs, blitzing themselves so completely that they’d forgotten I’d seen them do it, whereas I was mainlining the purest of ideals, of the very highest quality–and this shocked them.

Hanna Rosin reviews Fontanel’s book:

American books about abstinence end with important feminist lessons about dating and advocating for yourself. Fontanel’s ends, of course, with the sudden, final-chapter appearance of a mysterious beau who asks intriguing, loaded questions: What would happen if we fell in love? I suppose we should not be surprised that Fontanel’s ultimate revelation is no revelation at all. She does not emerge more empowered, enlightened, or even necessarily more in control of her own desires or body.