L.A. Liberty

I'm saddened to write of the death of libertarian economist Walter E. Williams. He passed away Wednesday morning at the age of 84, less than a day after teaching a class at George Mason University, where he worked for 40 years and helped transform his department into a highly respected center of free market scholars. ...

Williams was so libertarian that he refused to accept the term as a descriptor. I interviewed him in 2011 and asked him whether he saw himself as part of the libertarian movement to which he had contributed so much. No, he said. "I just do my own thing." ...

The state, Williams argued, typically forced blacks into hopeless situations, provided ineffective relief, and then blamed the victims for failing to rise above their circumstances, all while consolidating power into elite hands. Seemingly beneficial interventions such as minimum wage laws that priced unskilled blacks out of the labor markets, public housing in crime-ridden projects, and mandatory schooling at terrible public institutions were particularly pernicious because they came wrapped in a rhetoric of beneficence.

Drugs are winning the war on drugs. It's the morning after the 2020 election, and the result everyone is waiting for—will Donald Trump best Joe Biden, or vice versa?—is still a mystery wrapped in a clusterfuck. But there was one absolutely certain loser last night: the war on drugs. If Americans across the country provided a clear mandate for anything this year, it's ending the hold that drug prohibition has on our country.

Of nine drug decriminalization or legalization measures on state ballots last night—including two addressing hallucinogens and one covering all illegal drugs—not a single one failed. These were decisive victories, too, not close calls. And unlike some previous waves of pro-marijuana votes, which were concentrated in predictable areas, successful anti–drug war measures in 2020 spanned a diverse array of states.

Ballot measures making marijuana legal for recreational purposes passed in three: Arizona, Montana, and New Jersey. South Dakota approved both recreational and medicinal marijuana. In addition, Mississippi voters approved a medical marijuana measure.

Measures to OK consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms got a green light from voters in the District of Columbia and in Oregon.

The reasons people give for why they vote—and why everyone else should too—are flawed, unconvincing, and occasionally dangerous. The case for voting relies on factual errors, misunderstandings about the duties of citizenship, and overinflated perceptions of self-worth. There are some good reasons for some people to vote some of the time. But there are a lot more bad reasons to vote, and the bad ones are more popular.

A bit dated in the specifics now, but never dated in the overall thrust: Think Outside the Ballot Box.

Also, this: 

You might also feel some pressure to suck it up and vote for “the lesser of two evils.” Well, I have a simple message for you: Don’t.

"You see my legs shakin', man? I'm nervous!" says a black man in handcuffs at a traffic stop in Berkley County, South Carolina. Cpl. Steve Zubkoff has detained him because he smelled marijuana in the car. The unidentified suspect is on probation, and it will turn out he has a blunt in his shoe, which he will eventually disclose to Zubkoff.

This is all captured on cameras on the most recent, and possibly last, episode of Live PD, a popular show on A&E that documents police responses to calls across the country. On Wednesday, in the midst of growing anger about police conduct in America, the show was cancelled. That announcement comes just a day after the Paramount Network cancelled Cops, the decades-old series that pioneered the police-reality-show format.

Good riddance.

These shows, and others like them, have turned human misery into entertainment while perpetuating narratives about alleged the need for the drug war and for the strong hand of the police to keep the people in line. In the Berkley County clip, the deputy seems almost amused at the young man's nervousness; the audience is primed to find his reactions comical. But his nervousness comes from a real place. Even as Americans turn more and more against the drug war, especially for marijuana, there are places in America where the young man could still be sent back to jail for a long time for that blunt in his shoe. Many encounters on these shows revolve around drug possession.

That doesn't happen here, or at least not onscreen. But Cpl. Zubkoff, amazingly, lectures the man on how to have "better interactions" with police—and the man apologizes for being nervous. There will be no introspection on camera about whether any of what just happened helped in any way to protect public safety.

These programs have been terrible for our understanding of policing and criminal justice, and we should not treat them as some sort of innocent victims of cancel culture. Shows like these turned their cameras on desperate people living on the margins of society, then made them grist for spectacles of mockery. They present themselves as windows into the world of policing, but what they really do is show snippets of people on the worst days of our lives. And despite a bland disclaimer reminding us that these people are innocent until proven guilty, they invite us to judge them for how they behave during a short television segment. ...

I’ve previously discussed my brief time - during a writer’s strike - working on a couple of cop “reality” shows and my refusal to cooperate in glorifying cops or skewing reality to hide cop misdeeds. See a short account of that here.

For the first time in U.S. congressional history, a bill has support from a Libertarian-Democratic-Republican coalition of lawmakers.

Introduced by Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.), the Ending Qualified Immunity Act seeks to squash a legal doctrine that allows public officials to violate your civil rights with impunity if those rights have not yet been "clearly established" by preexisting case law.

"It is the sense of the Congress that we must correct the erroneous interpretation of section 1983 which provides for qualified immunity, and reiterate the standard found on the face of the statute," the bill reads, "which does not limit ability on the basis of the defendant's good faith beliefs or on the basis that the right was not 'clearly established' at the time of the violation."

Rep. Tom McClintock (R–Calif.) signed on to cosponsor, joining Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D–Mass.) and a lengthy list of other Democratic legislators who support Amash's legislation. The death of George Floyd, the unarmed black man who was killed by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, prompted the Republican lawmaker to back the bill.

"Whatever his motive, the killer of George Floyd had 18 complaints for misconduct, and one of his accomplices had six. Why is such misconduct tolerated by big city police departments?" he asked. "Is it because the doctrine of qualified immunity shields corrupt officials from accountability for a wide range of crimes?"

#cops

Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.) wants to end qualified immunity.

The insidious legal doctrine allows police officers to violate your civil rights with absolute impunity if those rights have not been spelled out with near-identical precision in preexisting case law. Theoretically, it protects public officials from bogus civil suits, but practically it often allows egregious misconduct.

George Floyd's death at the hands of former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin forced new life into the debate, shining light on a doctrine that many people say has contributed to an environment of police abuse. Amash announced late Sunday that he would introduce the End Qualified Immunity Act, with Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D–Mass.) signing on as a cosponsor Thursday.

"It is the sense of the Congress that we must correct the erroneous interpretation of section 1983 which provides for qualified immunity," the bill reads, "and reiterate the standard found on the face of the statute, which does not limit liability on the basis of the defendant's good faith beliefs or on the basis that the right was not 'clearly established' at the time of the violation."

That "clearly established" bit is what's most important, as the standard has become increasingly impossible to meet. Two cops in Fresno, California, were afforded qualified immunity after allegedly stealing $225,000 while executing a search warrant because it had not been "clearly established" in case law that stealing is wrong. An officer with the Los Angeles Police Department was given qualified immunity after shooting, without warning, an unarmed 15-year-old boy who was on his way to school, because the boy's friend was holding a plastic airsoft gun replica. A sheriff's deputy in Coffee County, Georgia, received qualified immunity after shooting a 10-year-old boy while aiming at a nonthreatening dog. The list, unfortunately, goes on.

The courts' decisions in those cases mean that each appellant had no legal recourse to seek compensation for lost assets or medical bills.

As of Friday, 16 additional legislators had signed on to Amash's proposal. Not a single one of them is a Republican.

Too often, when police wantonly use deadly force, police unions slow or prevent justice. In March, undercover police raided a Louisville, Kentucky, home. They used a battering ram to break down the door in the middle of the night and then fatally shot one of the occupants, an unarmed emergency room tech named Breonna Taylor. Police were investigating two men believed to be selling pot out of another home, but a judge also allowed police to search Taylor's home, because they believed the men were using it for package delivery. The raid was executed under a no-knock warrant that gives police permission to break into a private residence without identifying themselves. 

Taylor's death resulted in calls for the officers involved to be fired, but Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer warned that the process would be slow. A significant part of why he expected it to take so long, he said, was the city's collective bargaining agreement with the police union. Fischer lamented the process, saying he recognizes "the system is not a best practice for our community."

The city's police union, meanwhile, has expressed outrage that a city council member described Taylor's boyfriend, who fired on police during the raid, as a hero. This is the union's focus: not demanding justice for a woman killed by police in her home but demanding an apology from a local politician who had the temerity to praise a citizen for defending himself and his girlfriend during a botched police maneuver. The union's goal, it seems, is to protect the police from public criticism, not to protect the public from bad policing. That's what police unions do.

These are anecdotes, but the evidence bears the point out. The Police Union Contract Project, which collects and compares police union contracts across the country, notes that the agreements are generally designed to make it difficult to hold police accountable, in part by giving them privileges that are not afforded to the broader public. For example, the contracts often prevent officers from being questioned quickly after incidents and often give them access to information not accessible to private citizens. Cities are often required to shoulder the financial burdens of officer misconduct, and disciplinary measures are often restricted. Forthcoming research out of the University of Victoria's economics department finds that the introduction of collective bargaining produces somewhat higher compensation for police officers. It does not correlate with a reduction in total crime—but it does eventually correlate with higher numbers of killings by police, especially of minorities. ...

Unions aren't the only problem plaguing American police forces; there are plenty of other reforms worth pursuing, from demilitarization to ending qualified immunity. But they have consistently proven to be a force of organized resistance to calmer, safer, less aggressive policing, in part because of how they perceive the nature of the job.