Ahistorical headline of the day, from Breitbart:
Congressman King also says the Supreme Court has made it legal for a man to marry his lawmower.
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Justice? What’s that?
I would certainly consider that. I would certainly consider that. Send him to Gitmo. I would certainly consider it.
– Donald Trump, in reply to a question about whether he would consider detaining the suspect in the NYC attack Tuesday in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
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I’m going to take half of Chloe’s candy tonight & give it to some kid who sat at home. It’s never to early to teach her about socialism. pic.twitter.com/3ie9C0jv2G— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 31, 2017
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Of course, the faulty premise is that the toddler “earned” her loot by being born to an incredibly wealthy family who could have filled a wheelbarrow with candy just trolling the neighbors in their building.
Poor girl, being raised by a moron and having another for a grandfather. As Justice Holmes wrote in 1927, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
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More than half of Americans (59 percent) said they consider this the lowest point in U.S. history that they can remember — a figure spanning every generation, including those who lived through World War II and Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
When asked to think about the nation this year, nearly six in 10 adults (59 percent) report that the current social divisiveness causes them stress. A majority of adults from both political parties say the future of the nation is a source of stress, though the number is significantly higher for Democrats (73 percent) than for Republicans (56 percent) and independents (59 percent).
“We’re seeing significant stress transcending party lines,” said Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD, APA’s chief executive officer. “The uncertainty and unpredictability tied to the future of our nation is affecting the health and well-being of many Americans in a way that feels unique to this period in recent history.”
The most common issues causing stress when thinking about the nation are health care (43 percent), the economy (35 percent), trust in government (32 percent), hate crimes (31 percent) and crime (31 percent), wars/conflicts with other countries (30 percent), and terrorist attacks in the United States (30 percent). About one in five Americans cited unemployment and low wages (22 percent), and climate change and environmental issues (21 percent) as issues causing them stress.
Adults also indicated that they feel conflicted between their desire to stay informed about the news and their view of the media as a source of stress. While most adults (95 percent) say they follow the news regularly, 56 percent say that doing so causes them stress, and 72 percent believe the media blows things out of proportion.
“With 24-hour news networks and conversations with friends, family and other connections on social media, it’s hard to avoid the constant stream of stress around issues of national concern,” said Evans. “These can range from mild, thought-provoking discussions to outright, intense bickering, and over the long term, conflict like this may have an impact on health. Understanding that we all still need to be informed about the news, it’s time to make it a priority to be thoughtful about how often and what type of media we consume.”
The survey also found that 51 percent of Americans say that the state of the nation has inspired them to volunteer or support causes they value. More than half (59 percent) have taken some form of action in the past year, including 28 percent who signed a petition and 15 percent who boycotted a company or product in response to its social or political views or actions.
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A new paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy by Bisschop, Kastoryano, and van der Klaauw looks at the opening and closing of prostitution zones (tippelzones) in 25 Dutch cities.
Our empirical results show that opening a tippelzone reduces sexual abuse and rape. These results are mainly driven by a 30–40 percent reduction in the first two years after opening the tippelzone. For tippelzones with a licensing system, we additionally find long-term decreases in sexual assaults and a 25 percent decrease in drug-related crime, which persists in the medium to long run.
Cunningham and Shah studied decriminalization of indoor prostitution in Rhode Island and found very similar results.
We exploit the fact that a Rhode Island District Court judge unexpectedly decriminalized indoor prostitution in 2003 to provide the first causal estimates of the impact of decriminalization on the composition of the sex market, rape offenses, and sexually transmitted infection outcomes. Not surprisingly, we find that decriminalization increased the size of the indoor market. However, we also find that decriminalization caused both forcible rape offenses and gonorrhea incidence to decline for the overall population. Our synthetic control model finds 824 fewer reported rape offenses (31 percent decrease) and 1,035 fewer cases of female gonorrhea (39 percent decrease) from 2004 to 2009.
In addition a working paper by Riccardo Ciacci and María Micaela Sviatschi studies prostitution in New York and also finds that prostitution significantly reduces sex crimes such as rape:
We use a unique data set to study the effect of indoor prostitution establishments on sex crimes. We built a daily panel from January 1, 2004 to June 30, 2012 with the exact location of police stops for sex crimes and the day of opening and location of indoor prostitution establishments. We find that indoor prostitution decreases sex crime with no effect on other types of crime. We argue that the reduction is mostly driven by potential sex offenders that become customers of indoor prostitution establishments. We also rule out other mechanisms such as an increase in the number of police officers and a reduction of potential victims in areas where these businesses opened. In addition, results are robust to different data sources and measures of sex crimes apart from police stops.
It’s become common to think that rape is about power and not about sex. No doubt. But some of it is about sex. Quoting Ciacci and Sviatschi again:
We find evidence consistent with the fact that potential perpetrators substitute towards indoor prostitution establishments instead of engaging in sex crimes….This mechanism is in line with a survey of men who had purchased sex from women in London. About 54% of these men stated that if prostitution did not exist then they would be more likely to rape women who were not prostitutes. This belief was clearly held by one man who even stated: “Sometimes you might rape someone: you can go to a prostitute instead” (Farley et al., 2009).
In short, a wide variety of evidence from different authors, times and places, and experiments shows clearly and credibly that prostitution reduces rape. This finding is of great importance in considering how prostitution should be rationally regulated.
Our empirical results show that opening a tippelzone reduces sexual abuse and rape. These results are mainly driven by a 30–40 percent reduction in the first two years after opening the tippelzone. For tippelzones with a licensing system, we additionally find long-term decreases in sexual assaults and a 25 percent decrease in drug-related crime, which persists in the medium to long run.
Cunningham and Shah studied decriminalization of indoor prostitution in Rhode Island and found very similar results.
We exploit the fact that a Rhode Island District Court judge unexpectedly decriminalized indoor prostitution in 2003 to provide the first causal estimates of the impact of decriminalization on the composition of the sex market, rape offenses, and sexually transmitted infection outcomes. Not surprisingly, we find that decriminalization increased the size of the indoor market. However, we also find that decriminalization caused both forcible rape offenses and gonorrhea incidence to decline for the overall population. Our synthetic control model finds 824 fewer reported rape offenses (31 percent decrease) and 1,035 fewer cases of female gonorrhea (39 percent decrease) from 2004 to 2009.
In addition a working paper by Riccardo Ciacci and María Micaela Sviatschi studies prostitution in New York and also finds that prostitution significantly reduces sex crimes such as rape:
We use a unique data set to study the effect of indoor prostitution establishments on sex crimes. We built a daily panel from January 1, 2004 to June 30, 2012 with the exact location of police stops for sex crimes and the day of opening and location of indoor prostitution establishments. We find that indoor prostitution decreases sex crime with no effect on other types of crime. We argue that the reduction is mostly driven by potential sex offenders that become customers of indoor prostitution establishments. We also rule out other mechanisms such as an increase in the number of police officers and a reduction of potential victims in areas where these businesses opened. In addition, results are robust to different data sources and measures of sex crimes apart from police stops.
It’s become common to think that rape is about power and not about sex. No doubt. But some of it is about sex. Quoting Ciacci and Sviatschi again:
We find evidence consistent with the fact that potential perpetrators substitute towards indoor prostitution establishments instead of engaging in sex crimes….This mechanism is in line with a survey of men who had purchased sex from women in London. About 54% of these men stated that if prostitution did not exist then they would be more likely to rape women who were not prostitutes. This belief was clearly held by one man who even stated: “Sometimes you might rape someone: you can go to a prostitute instead” (Farley et al., 2009).
In short, a wide variety of evidence from different authors, times and places, and experiments shows clearly and credibly that prostitution reduces rape. This finding is of great importance in considering how prostitution should be rationally regulated.
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Sockless Dick Burr proves, once again, that in the pantheon of North Carolina senators, he’s not Sam Ervin:
9:45 am ET: As he gaveled in the hearing, the Republican leader of the Senate Intelligence Committee — Richard Burr — issued a broadside against reporters and others who have tried to explicitly link Russia’s disinformation campaign the election of Donald Trump as president.
To Burr, that narrative is too simplistic and reports tying the two together lack evidence. “What we cannot do,” he said, “is calculate the impact of foreign media had on social media in this election.”
Some of Burr’s criticisms focused on reports that suggested Facebook ads purchased by Russian agents specifically targeted Michigan and Wisconsin in a bid to boost Trump. In reality, the GOP lawmaker said, media actually had “failed” to put those and other ads into the right “frame of reference.” For example, Burr said more ads on Facebook actually targeted the state of Maryland. And a notable slice of the 3,000 total ads purchased by Kremlin trolls had been viewed after Election Day.
To be sure, Burr noted that Russian interference, conspiracy minded posts, fake news and worse do present major threats to tech giants and the country alike. “Very clearly, this kind of national security vulnerability represents an unacceptable risk, and your companies have a responsibility to reduce that vulnerability,” he said.
To Burr, that narrative is too simplistic and reports tying the two together lack evidence. “What we cannot do,” he said, “is calculate the impact of foreign media had on social media in this election.”
Some of Burr’s criticisms focused on reports that suggested Facebook ads purchased by Russian agents specifically targeted Michigan and Wisconsin in a bid to boost Trump. In reality, the GOP lawmaker said, media actually had “failed” to put those and other ads into the right “frame of reference.” For example, Burr said more ads on Facebook actually targeted the state of Maryland. And a notable slice of the 3,000 total ads purchased by Kremlin trolls had been viewed after Election Day.
To be sure, Burr noted that Russian interference, conspiracy minded posts, fake news and worse do present major threats to tech giants and the country alike. “Very clearly, this kind of national security vulnerability represents an unacceptable risk, and your companies have a responsibility to reduce that vulnerability,” he said.
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Verizon has asked the Federal Communications Commission to preempt any state laws that regulate network neutrality and broadband privacy.
The FCC's Republican majority is on course to overturn two-year-old net neutrality rules, perhaps by the end of the year. Broadband privacy rules passed by the FCC during the Obama administration were already undone by Congress and President Donald Trump early this year.
With the two sets of rules either gone or on their way out, it's possible that state governments might impose similar rules to protect consumers in their states. Verizon told the FCC in a filing last week that the commission should preempt laws in any state that does so.
But "some supporters of stringent regulation of ISPs are now looking to states and localities to frustrate these achievements," Verizon wrote. State broadband laws "pose a real and significant threat to restoring a light-touch, uniform regulatory framework for broadband service," Verizon said. "This white paper explains why the Commission can and should preempt these problematic state broadband laws and identifies several potential sources of authority for the Commission to do so."
The FCC's Republican majority is on course to overturn two-year-old net neutrality rules, perhaps by the end of the year. Broadband privacy rules passed by the FCC during the Obama administration were already undone by Congress and President Donald Trump early this year.
With the two sets of rules either gone or on their way out, it's possible that state governments might impose similar rules to protect consumers in their states. Verizon told the FCC in a filing last week that the commission should preempt laws in any state that does so.
But "some supporters of stringent regulation of ISPs are now looking to states and localities to frustrate these achievements," Verizon wrote. State broadband laws "pose a real and significant threat to restoring a light-touch, uniform regulatory framework for broadband service," Verizon said. "This white paper explains why the Commission can and should preempt these problematic state broadband laws and identifies several potential sources of authority for the Commission to do so."
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