- Fraternal Order of Police asks Amazon to stop allowing sales of Black Lives Matter shirts after Walmart.com yields to similar request [Ben Rosen, Christian Science Monitor] FOP boss Chuck Canterbury, defending civil asset forfeiture: hey we could use the money [Scott Shackford] FOP chief vows to override Pennsylvania governor’s veto of bill that would shield names of involved police officers for 30 days after killings of civilians [CBS Philadelphia]
- Technology panel from Cato policing conference included law professors Tracey Meares of Yale and Elizabeth Joh of UC Davis, City of San Jose independent police auditor Walter Katz, and Maj. Max Geron of the Dallas PD, moderated by Cato’s Jonathan Blanks [video or podcast] “Police Spy Tools Evolve Faster Than Lawmakers Can Keep Up: Baltimore’s aerial surveillance continues unchecked” [Monte Reel, Bloomberg BusinessWeek]
- One effect of ban on smoking in New York City public housing: new excuse for cops to bust in [Scott Greenfield]
- “WSJ investigation: Of 3,458 US police officers charged with crimes, 332 (10%) kept their badges” [@johngramlich]
- “San Francisco has become a predatory government,” says its elected treasurer [José Cisneros, San Francisco Chronicle]
- Don’t let quest to increase police accountability worsen problem of intrusive surveillance [Matthew Feeney on Jake Laperruque presentation at Cato’s recent surveillance conference]
Posts Tagged ‘San Francisco’
Environment roundup
- YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) movement in San Francisco, other cities says build more housing to tame housing costs [Alex Tabarrok] Zoning laws sometimes respond to tiny-house movement, and sometimes don’t [Curbed]
- Federalist Society convention panel on Justice Scalia’s property rights jurisprudence with John Echeverria, James W. Ely, Jr., Roderick Hills, Jr., Adam Laxalt, Ilya Somin, Judge Allison Eid moderating;
- Your regulated residence: “Santa Monica Moves to Make All New Homes Net-Zero Energy” [Mental Floss]
- “King County, Washington, Caught Digging Through Residents’ Trash” [Christian Britschgi/Reason; see also on Seattle composting regulations]
- “EPA to big cities: Stop killing rats with dry ice” [Aamer Madhani, USA Today]
- “Policing for profit in private environmental enforcement” [Jonathan Wood; Clean Water Act citizen suits]
Can and should the classroom remain politically neutral?
It’s a common hope that public schools will maintain some semblance of broad political neutrality between the great parties and causes in U.S. society. But many have been failing badly at this [Frederick Hess and Chester Finn/U.S. News, AP/Fox News (San Francisco teachers’ union lesson plan)] Related: Washington Post [Montgomery County, Maryland; liberal excused-absence policy following street protests by high school students; dissident student injured]
I’ve got a letter in the Frederick News-Post responding to the paper’s editorial on these topics, which begins with the unfortunate headline “Hate speech is not free speech” and never recovers its footing from there. Related, from Eugene Volokh last year: “No, there’s no ‘hate speech exception to the First Amendment.” (& welcome Instapundit readers)
Housing roundup
- Under HUD deal, “Dubuque must now actively recruit Section 8 voucher holders from the Chicago area,” 200 miles away [Stanley Kurtz/National Review, Deborah Thornton/Public Interest Institute, July]
- Mandatory rental inspections: Can City Hall demand entrance to a home with no evidence of violations? [Scott Shackford] Nuisance abatement laws: “NYPD Throws People Out of Their Homes Without Ever Proving Criminal Activity” [same]
- Data point on scope of regulation: online marketing of sink faucets “seems targeted at assuring potential purchasers of regulatory and legal compliance,” both ADA and environmental [Ira Stoll]
- Public interest litigators’ “right to shelter” created today’s hellish NYC homeless program [NYT on murder at Harlem shelter, background at Point of Law]
- Flood insurance: “$7.8 Million Fee For Lawyers, 7-Cent Check For One Lucky Class Member” [Daniel Fisher]
- On eminent domain, some lefty lawprofs suddenly turn all skeptical on whether courts can fix injustice [Ilya Somin] Prof. Purdy defends the Kelo v. New London decision, but Prof. Kanner would like to correct a few of his facts;
- “The San Francisco artist who is being kicked out of his apartment after 34 years is a perfect example of why rent control is awful” [Jim Edwards, Business Insider] “Big-City Mayors Think They Can Mandate Their Way to Affordable Housing” [Matt Welch, Reason]
Who’s to blame for San Francisco’s housing cost spiral?
Bay Area progressives are fond of blaming new-arriving rich techies for the dizzying rise in San Francisco housing costs. Yet the trail just as plausibly leads back to the door of some of the same people doing the demonizing, who have resisted the building of serious new housing capacity in the city. [Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic]
Like me, Friedersdorf was also struck by the story (told on public radio’s This American Life) of a San Francisco after-school program’s school musical, an anti-“gentrification” propaganda effort, which trained kids as young as six to go on stage in a production portraying their parents’ class as moral monsters. Shouldn’t that wait for college?
Hit by enormous pine cone in San Francisco park
“A tourist visiting the Bay Area for Fleet Week last year was doing nothing more than reading and napping under a tree in a federal waterfront park in San Francisco when a 16-pound pine cone fell on him and crushed his skull, his lawyer said Monday.” According to the suit, coniferous Araucaria bidwillii trees, “more commonly known as bunya pines or false monkey puzzle trees…are not indigenous to the area” and their “seedpods, or pine cones, can grow to enormous sizes, reaching nearly 16 inches in diameter and weighing up to 40 pounds.” [SFGate] “Living under Bunya Pines is not for the faint hearted,” advises one 2014 account from Australia, where the trees are native. “You get a little bit of warning when they fall, says a farmer who has five old ones near his house. “They clatter through the branches, and you just start running.”
Seattle’s “Fight for 15” — in 1907
In 1907, unions helped convince Seattle to enact a 15-cent minimum price for restaurant meals, part of a backlash against inexpensive Japanese-run eateries that were providing unwelcome competition for existing restaurants and unions representing their employees. In San Francisco the same year, a mob attacked and destroyed the 10-cent Horseshoe Restaurant on Folsom Street, causing a diplomatic incident between the United States and Japan [H.D. Miller, Eccentric Culinary History; part 1 of his story]
June 17 roundup
- Skull and crossbones to follow: San Francisco pols decree health warnings on soft drink, Frappuccino billboards [Steve Chapman]
- Judge criticizes feds’ punitive handling of AIG rescue as unlawful, but says no damages are owed to Hank Greenberg [Bloomberg, Thaya Knight/Cato, Gideon Kanner who predicted outcome, W$J]
- Congress resisting Obama/HUD scheme to force communities to build low-income housing [Jonathan Nelson/Economics21, Marc Thiessen, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing or AFFH]
- California, following New York, proposes 50 hours of mandatory pro bono work for prospective lawyers [John McGinnis]
- Five part Renee Lettow Lerner series on historical role and present-day decay of juries [Volokh Conspiracy, introduction, parts one, two, three, four, five] Related: Mike Rappaport and follow-up on Seventh Amendment, Liberty and Law.
- Latest Scotland drunk-driving blood threshold: Drivers “warned that having ‘no alcohol at all’ is the only way to ensure they stay within the limit” [Independent via Christopher Snowdon]
- How not to argue for bail reform: Scott Greenfield vs. NYT op-ed writer [Simple Justice]
Minimum wage roundup
- “Oakland minimum-wage hike puts child caregivers in a jam” [Rachel Swan, San Francisco Chronicle]
- “Why Minimum Wage Increases are a Terrible Anti-Poverty Program” [Coyote, parts one and two] More: David Neumark;
- “[Robert] Reich Is Wrong on the Minimum Wage” [Don Boudreaux, Cato; more]
- “Marvel At The Effects Of The Minimum Wage In San Francisco” [Tim Worstall on Comix Experience comics shop]
- “Can Republicans Stick to Their Principles on the Minimum Wage?” [Michael Tanner]
- “To see the effects of the minimum wage hike, follow the pho” [Thanh Tan, Seattle Times] “Owner of pizza shop says new Seattle minimum wage law is forcing her to close” [KCPQ, David Henderson] “Minimum Wage Hikes and Restaurants: Who Gains? Who Loses?” Brian Doherty; Michael Saltsman, W$J]
- “The evidence that the most disadvantaged of society are those most [harmed] by minimum-wage legislation is abundant” [Philip Coelho and James McClure via David Henderson]
Environment roundup
- Environmental law’s oft-praised public trust doctrine may have made California drought worse [Gary Libecap, Regulation magazine, via Peter Van Doren, Cato] Blame Nestlé for California water crisis? Well, people can try [Coyote]
- True to “so-called Seattle Process of inclusive and abundant dialogue,” tunnel to replace Alaskan Way viaduct has developed into expensive fiasco [Karen Weise, Bloomberg]
- Jefferson’s method of surveying “abstract and commodifiable” land, well suited to flat Midwest, curbed litigation and greatly advanced American prosperity [Steve Sailer, Chronicles]
- RFK Jr.’s Waterkeeper “tightly intertwined with more than one of the players in [Skelos] investigation” [Scott Waldman, Capital New York]
- High overhead: “what they are doing is pricing people out of the ceiling fan market” [Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller, re: Rep. Marsha Blackburn criticism of energy regulations]
- Didn’t know San Francisco had such a high rate of vacant rentals: “America’s Rent-Controlled Cities Are Its Least Affordable” [Scott Beyer] Craziness of city’s housing policy long predates today’s war against techie newcomers [Coyote]
- “Chimpanzee almost gets habeas corpus — and in any event the Nonhuman Rights Project gets a court hearing” [Volokh, earlier on chimpanzees and rights]