Category: privacy

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crime and punishment education and schooling folly general freedom moral hazard privacy responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Ecstatic with Independence

free range, freedom, Utah, children, walk, outside, law, hysteria

Utah’s legislature unanimously passed it; the governor signed it — the nation’s first measure protecting what’s become known as “free-range parenting.”

It was once known simply as “parenting.”

Certain activities are now exempt from a state law criminalizing child neglect. Children may legally “walk, run or bike to and from school, travel to commercial or recreational facilities, play outside and remain at home unattended” — thereby allowing “a child, whose basic needs are met and who is of sufficient age and maturity to avoid harm or unreasonable risk of harm, to engage in independent activities . . .”

Back in the day, we apparently played outside in a sort of statutory limbo.

Do we really need a law saying kids can walk on a public street?

Sadly, yes: government agencies across the country are grossly violating the most basic rights of parents to rear independent children.

Regular readers may recall my 2015 defenses* of the Meitiv parents against the absurd charge of “unsubstantiated neglect” leveled against them by Montgomery County (Maryland) Child Protective Services. Ultimately, Maryland authorities acknowledged that permitting one’s kids (in the Meitivs’ case, a 10- and a 6-year-old) to walk on a public sidewalk (from a local park) wasn’t prima facie evidence of a crime. 

The current free-range parenting movement was launched in 2008 when Lenore Skenazy publicly admitted — to mass shock and condemnation — to allowing her 9-year-old son to take a trip alone on New York City’s subway.

“My son got home,” she wrote in the New York Sun, “ecstatic with independence.”

Notice how rare it is to find anyone ecstatic with dependence.

Lesson? An old one: Happiness must be pursued with freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* My writings on the Meitivs’ battle to keep their kids:

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crime and punishment general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy too much government U.S. Constitution

Unlovely Congress

Craigslist, HR 1865, "FOSTA", Trump, Congress, censorship, liability

If you recently tried to post a personal ad on Craigslist, the popular classified-ad site, you were in for a shock. Craigslist has suddenly discontinued all personals. You can still sell your used rototiller, but forget about telling the world you’re lost in Louisville looking for love.

The company doesn’t want to be prosecuted for helping people find each other en route to becoming partners in outlawry.

Congress has just passed legislation subjecting site publishers to criminal and civil liability when their users “misuse online personals unlawfully.” The president’s signature is expected. Craigslist doesn’t want all that open-ended liability. “Any tool or service can be misused,” it observes.

Indeed. If the principle underlying this law were consistently applied, any good or service that facilitates communication (or other human activity!) would expose providers to liability for any illegal conduct abetted by their products. Would curtain manufacturers be exempt? We all know how bad guys plotting evil pull their curtains. Freedom of speech, freedom of casual encounters, freedom of curtain-trafficking, it’s all at risk.

What about Congress’s goal of discouraging prostitution?

Will all U.S. prostitutes now retire?

Not if the last several thousand years are any clue. Especially as other sites follow Craigslist’s lead, prostitutes who had escaped the streets thanks to online means of client-hunting will tend to return to those streets. If so, neighborhoods less seedy and less dangerous thanks to Craigslist etc. will now tend to reacquire such unlovely qualities.

Thanks to (unlovely) Congress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

He Applied Himself

pre-crime, PKD, guns, gun control, shooting, Parkland, Florida, prevention, freedom

“I need to make this count,” wrote a young man in Everett, Washington.

Unfortunately, it looks like he wasn’t attempting a big career-oriented project. He was planning a mass shooting.

“I need to get the biggest fatality number I possibly can,” is one of many damning journal passages the police have made public. Apparently he had settled on attacking the high school he attended. “I’ve been reviewing many mass shootings/bombings (and attempted bombings) I’m learning from past shooters/bombers mistakes.”

Ambition and rigor: missapplied.

Fortunately, his grandmother read his journal and discovered a rifle in his guitar case. She turned him into the police the Tuesday before the Florida shooting I wrote about last week. And maybe just in time.

Meanwhile, last week’s Parkland, Florida, shooting dominates the headlines. Fellow students and neighbors of the Florida shooting victims have ramped up their condemnations and demands — including at a horrorshow “town hall” on CNN.

Yet the nature of the difficulties in preventing such atrocities has become lost in the rhetoric and anger.*

In a free society, we cannot arrest people before they commit a crime. In the Everett case, officials were “lucky”: despite the young man’s lack of a criminal record, they were able to charge him with a burglary they allege he committed the day before arrest — and his extensive planning notes are being taken as evidence for intent. He’s also been charged with attempted murder.

We should be in inquiry mode, right now. It could be helpful to know the exact motivations for both the Florida shooter and the Everett wannabe — and similar cases.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Law enforcement is tasked with uncovering spree shooting plots today — and to protect, too. But the armed, uniformed school resource officer at the Parkland high school failed to protect. He heard the gunshots but never entered the building, while the shooter killed 17 innocents.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies privacy property rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Thwarting Cops Who Are Robbers

asset forfeiture, corruption, police, traffic, theft, robbery, traffic stop

“Carrying cash is not a crime,” Institute for Justice attorney Dan Alban informs us, “yet too often the government treats it like one.”

Musician Phil Parhamovich learned that the hard way. He was porting his life savings, almost $92,000 — earmarked for a down payment on a recording studio — when cop-robbers of the Wyoming Highway Patrol stopped him for not wearing a seat belt.

It turned out to be an extremely expensive infraction. The officers intimated that it was illegal to travel with so much cash and pressured him to hand it over. Scared and believing that his alternative was jail, Phil signed a preprinted waiver letting them grab his life savings.

Preprinted waiver? This means it’s routine for these guys to try to legitimate their actions as they premeditatedly intimidate and rob people.

The state of Wyoming tried to keep the money. Fortunately, the Institute for Justice took Phil’s case, and a judge accepted the facts presented by Phil and his IJ lawyer. After months of tribulation and suspense, the robbery victim got his money back.

Another win for the good guys.

Thankfully, the Institute for Justice’s freedom-defenders have won a great number of such cases. Yet, IJ lawyers certainly cannot litigate all the forfeiture injustices being committed by government  authorities all across the country.

That’s why the group is pushing to reform civil asset forfeiture laws, requiring a criminal conviction before property can be forfeited. 

And you can help. How? Launch efforts in your town or state, or work to push infant efforts to a higher level. Take the initiative. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall nannyism national politics & policies privacy property rights Second Amendment rights Tenth Amendment federalism too much government U.S. Constitution

Winning Too Much?

The Human Freedom Index for 2017, CATO, Fraser Institute, and the Liberales Institut at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom Switzerland, US, United States

“We’re Number 17!!!”

This lacks a certain triumphant note.

It is nothing like the “We’re Number 1!” the Swiss are now hollering as they pump their arms into the air, waving giant #1 foam fingers against the backdrop of snow-covered Alps.

Actually, knowing the Swiss, they are probably a bit more restrained. Still, you get the point.

Number 1 in what, you ask? Creamy, delicious chocolate, perhaps? Banking? Skiing?

Freedom.

The Human Freedom Index 2017, jointly published by the institutes Cato, Fraser, and Liberales, is hot off the presses. The report ranks the countries of the world on “personal, civil, and economic freedom.”

This year, Switzerland switched places with Hong Kong, which had come in first the year before. The U.S. moved up from 23rd place in 2016, but down from 2008, when we were challenging Top 10 status at Number 11.

“Weak areas [for the U.S.] include rule of law, size of government, the legal system and property rights,” according to a Cato video.

Let’s compare Switzerland to the United States. The 1848 Swiss Constitution creates 26 sovereign cantons (states), greatly influenced by our system of federalism. In the 20th century, Americans in 26 states and most localities borrowed from the Swiss, establishing a system of direct democratic checks on government — what we call ballot initiatives and referendums.

Both countries have constitutional limits on government, protecting individual rights — even from fully democratic tyranny. But in the freest nation in the world, Switzerland, citizens possess a powerful direct democratic check on their government at all levels . . . while we do not.

After all, we’re Number 17.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly general freedom local leaders moral hazard nannyism privacy responsibility too much government

The Winds of Regulation

occupational, licensing, permission, unions, protectionism, regulation, license, law

Among the many goofy occupational licensing laws in these United States, Arizona’s licensing for professional blow-drying services is up there with the silliest. 

“Under current law, using a blow-dryer on someone else’s hair, for money, requires more than 1,000 hours of training and an expensive state-issued license,” we learn at Reason. “Blow-drying hair without a license could — incredibly — land you in jail for up to six months.”

This came into the news because of a campaign to deregulate the cosmetology industry — just a bit, anyway. Gov. Doug Ducey, in his recent State of the State address, “mocked the state agency that licenses stylists, barbers, nail technicians and affiliated professionals in Arizona, and endorsed legislation to remove training requirements for those who simply wash, brush and blow-dry customers’ hair.”

Licensed cosmetologists — well, at least some organized ones — have gone into a tizzy.

Hardly surprising, since occupational licensing, though usually argued for on consumer safety grounds, rarely finds consumers clamoring for it. 

It’s groups of established businesses, professionals.*

Brandy Wells, the sole non-cosmetologist on the state board overseeing the regulation of the industry, supports the liberalizing bill. So of course she has been called every name in the book. But even she was amused by one stylish denigration: “your logic on deregulation of cosmetology is much like your hair, dull and flat.”

The issue may seem trivial, with not all that much on the line — though jobs are . . . and freedom is. 

But it doesn’t lack for hot air.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* As Adam Smith argued, whenever businessmen (“dealers”) in the same industry group together, their proposals should be listened to “with great precaution.”

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