“In 2017, ABC7 and the Chicago Sun-Times discovered that most of the drivers cited for running the light were actually making right turns, some even doing so after making a complete stop. In 2019, ABC 7 also found that the Chicago intersections that racked up the most fines had shorter timed lights, giving drivers less time to pass through legally. The investigation identified one intersection where the green and yellow lights were only up for a combined 20 seconds.”
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“The final straw, the press release indicated, was a federal investigation into red light contractor SafeSpeed.
Both the Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune have reported on SafeSpeed’s chumminess with local officials, including connections to a county commissioner’s chief of staff as well as a former police chief; the latter was fired from his job in the police department after his relationship with the company came to light. These local officials worked as consultants to negotiate SafeSpeed’s presence in various communities. At least one of the officials went on record saying that he received a kickback for every fine paid in certain communities.”
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“In addition to concerns about corruption, studies all across the country have found that their local red light cameras have made little positive impact on safe driving practices. In 2014, Reason reported that Chicago’s red light cameras may have traded in one traffic accident for another: While the rate of right-angle crashes causing injury at intersections decreased by 15 percent (much lower than the city’s touted 47 percent), rear-end collisions causing injury rose by 22 percent. Additionally, 40 percent of the cameras were placed in intersections with low rates of injury-causing collisions.”
“According to the New York Police Department, reports of hate crimes against Jews in that city rose 26 percent last year, from 186 in 2018 to 234 in 2019, after rising nearly as much (23 percent) in the previous year. According to Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, the 2019 total was the highest seen in New York City since the FBI began reporting hate crime data in 1992.
Nationwide, however, the FBI’s tally indicates that the number of anti-Jewish criminal incidents (each of which may include more than one offense) fell from 938 in 2017 to 835 in 2018—an 11 percent drop. The total in 2018, the most recent year for which national data are available, was lower than the totals in 21 out of the previous 26 years.”
“the lawsuits raise free speech concerns. As Reason’s Jacob Sullum has observed, there’s a difference between unfair press coverage and libel. The media undoubtedly treated the Covington kids unfairly, but the main culprit here was not CNN or The Washington Post, but Phillips. He was the one who provided bad information to the press. If journalists have to fear massive libel lawsuits for reporting bad information supplied to them by sources they had no reason to distrust, it might make them wary of covering important stories. If successful, Sandmann’s suits could have a chilling effect on necessary and consequential journalism.
In any case, the Covington incident was a debacle for the media, and showed that the tendency of social media to inspire quick reactions is the Achilles’ heel of journalism in the digital age.”
https://www.vox.com/2020/1/14/21066219/impeachment-lev-parnas-evidence-ambassador
“In a recent paper on the issue, my Mercatus Center colleagues Matthew Mitchell and Michael Farren did the math and found that “the $3.6 billion in taxes needed to fund the subsidies will likely decrease Wisconsin’s long-run GDP by about $20 billion over the 15-year life of the handout. And this estimate doesn’t include the local utility infrastructure, and federal subsidies that total another $1.4 billion.” These numbers are harder to sell to taxpayers than the la-la land ones we hear about before every big subsidy deal.”
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“A new paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives by Cailin Slattery of Columbia University and Owen Zidar of Princeton University looks at state and local business tax incentives and finds yet again that narrow, firm-specific tax breaks aimed at attracting businesses and boosting employment aren’t the way to go. The study shows that larger, more profitable companies are more likely to get bigger handouts. The largest deals benefit the recipients, according to their research, but not the overall state economy.”
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“This study is only one of many on the topic. They all find that these narrowly targeted subsidies don’t work as advertised and are typically counterproductive. Unfortunately, a slogan like “subsidized projects aren’t worth the money you pay for them” doesn’t make for a great sound bite at ribbon-cutting ceremonies.”
“Allegheny Technologies, which employs about 100 people, is the type of company that is especially vulnerable to Trump’s tariffs. It imports stainless steel slab from Indonesia and turns it into sheet metal, which it then sells to other manufacturers who incorporate it into car parts, kitchen appliances, and more.
Being in the middle of the supply chain is rough when you’re also in the middle of a trade war. Companies like Allegheny Technologies have to pay for Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on imported steel, and then have little choice but to pass on that cost increase to their customers. But, as Wetherbee laments, that makes it difficult for a company like his to compete against foreign manufacturers who can make and sell sheet metal without having to account for an extra 25 percent import tax.
Buying American doesn’t work, either, since U.S. steel is more expensive. One domestic supplier, Wetherbee writes, “quoted us a price for 60-inch slabs that was so high, the raw materials would have cost us more than we charge for the finished product.””
“Matthew Luckhurst of the San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) tried to feed a homeless man a sandwich made of dog feces. While Luckhurst was initially fired for such crappy behavior, Reason reported in March 2019 that his employment was fully restored.
Luckhurst was able to rejoin the force following an arbitration hearing required by the collective bargaining agreement the San Antonio Police Officers Association has with the city. Since the department could not prove the exact date of the crap sandwich incident, the department had no choice but to accept that it missed the 180-day window in which it could discipline Luckhurst, and the arbitration panel ruled in Luckhurst’s favor.
The San Antonio Current reported this week that Luckhurst’s story is not an exception to the rule. Twenty-seven of the 40 SAPD police officers fired between 2010 and 2019 have managed to get their jobs back through arbitration. Only 13 firings were upheld in that entire time.”
“one day in jail plus probation for a lie that nearly cost a man 15 years of his life. Contrast that with the fate of low-income people trapped behind bars because of expensive pre-trial bail. Though the law considers them innocent until proven guilty, they often spend far more time in jail than Bergmann while waiting for their day in court. In one infamous case, Kalief Browder spent three years in Rikers Island without a trial because his bail was set at an unaffordable $3,000.”
“After piling up trillions of dollars in deficit spending during the last recession, the federal government took some modest steps towards reducing that red ink during the middle years of the 2010s. But after Republicans took full control in 2017, spending skyrocketed and the deficit inflated again.
Since Trump was inaugurated, Washington has added $4.7 trillion to the national debt—almost entirely the result of a gigantic spending binge, but with a small assist from the 2017 tax cuts, which reduced revenues without offsetting spending cuts.”
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“”Debt threatens our economic health and hinders our ability to make important investments in our future. If we want to tackle big issues like climate change, student debt or national security, then we shouldn’t saddle ourselves with growing interest costs.””
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“Compare all this with early 2001, at the end of the second-longest economic expansion in history. The federal government was running a surplus. The national debt was falling and amounted to only 31 percent of GDP. That’s what you’d expect to see now, since deficits typically fall when the economy is growing and grow when the economy is rotten.
Indeed, since the end of World War II, the U.S. has seen deficits greater than 4 percent of GDP only in years when the country was either deep in the throes of a serious recession or emerging from one.”
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“If we’re running a trillion-dollar deficit in the good years, what happens when the next downturn occurs?”
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“The Trump administration and current crop of Republicans in Congress have made the problem worse than it already was. Some of them—like former deficit hawk Mick Mulvaney and former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who made his name in Congress as the GOP’s budget-maker—deserve special ignominy for abandoning their fiscal conservatism when it was most needed. Trump came into office promising to eliminate the national debt in eight years, and that’s even more of a joke now than it was then.
Meanwhile, Democrats’ aversion to spending reductions and their refusal even to consider changes to entitlement programs—the biggest driver of the national debt—are equally large obstacles to any meaningful attempt at fixing this mess. The party’s progressive wing is pushing for Medicare for All and expanding Social Security benefits, while elevating economic theories that say we should ignore the deficit.”