The list is long and so I’m doing this in two parts. The second part will be later today.
Prostitution Surveillance Tower Goes Up in San Diego
by Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Reason, August 5, 2024.
Excerpt:
The Ugly Truth’s website also states that there are “approximately 18,000 victims in the U.S.” If we take that at face value (and again, it’s dubious), that would mean that around 17 to 44 percent of all U.S. trafficking victims are in San Diego County. Why, it’s almost as if these numbers are completely made up… [italics in original]
And:
Local, national, and even international media have run with Bonta’s framing in their headlines. “14 Arrested at Comic-Con In Anti-Human Trafficking Sting,” NBC reported. “Fourteen arrests in undercover sex trafficking sting at San Diego Comic-Con convention,” Sky News said.
If you read a few paragraphs down into Bonta’s press release, you’ll see that no sex trafficking or labor trafficking arrest resulted from this trafficking sting. The 14 people arrested were picked up for trying to pay another adult for sex. That other adult, however, turned out to be an undercover cop. [italics in original]
‘Too Much Law’ Gives Prosecutors Enormous Power To Ruin People’s Lives
by Jacob Sullum, Reason, August 7, 2024.
Excerpt:
“Criminal laws have grown so exuberantly and come to cover so much previously innocent conduct that almost anyone can be arrested for something,” Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch observed in 2019. Gorsuch elaborates on that theme in a new book, showing how the proliferation of criminal penalties has given prosecutors enormous power to ruin people’s lives, resulting in the nearly complete replacement of jury trials with plea bargains.
“Some scholars peg the number of federal statutory crimes at more than 5,000,” Gorsuch and co-author Janie Nitze note in Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law, while “estimates suggest that at least 300,000 federal agency regulations carry criminal sanctions.” The fact that neither figure is known with precision speaks volumes about the expansion of federal law.
And:
Since keeping up with all that law is a challenge even for experts, the rest of us cannot hope to know exactly which conduct is a crime, even though “fair notice” is a basic requirement of due process. The civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate has suggested that “the average busy professional in this country” may unwittingly commit “several federal crimes” every day.
DRH note: I read the referenced book, Three Felonies a Day, and I can’t find Silverglate coming close to making that case. He came up with a catchy title but I don’t think his book lives up to the title. Moreover, almost every time I see the book referenced, the person referencing it claims that Silverglate makes that claim. He doesn’t. I suspect that the number of felonies per day is substantially fewer than the book’s title says.
Poll: 63% of Americans Want to Increase Trade with Other Nations, 75% Worry Tariffs Are Raising Consumer Prices
by Emily Ekins, Cato at Liberty, August 7, 2024.
A newly released national survey from the Cato Institute of 2,000 Americans conducted by YouGov finds that two-thirds (66%) of Americans say global trade is good for the US economy, and 58% say it has helped raise their standard of living. This may help explain why 63% of the public favors the United States increasing trade with other nations.
Three-fourths (75%) are concerned about tariffs raising the prices of products they buy at the store. Indeed, two-thirds (66%) of Americans would oppose paying even $10 more for a pair of blue jeans due to tariffs, even if they are intended to help US blue jean manufacturing.
US Citizens Were 80.2 Percent of Crossers with Fentanyl at Ports of Entry from 2019 to 2024
by David J. Bier, Cato at Liberty, August 8, 2024.
Many people wrongly believe that immigration is critical to the illicit supply of fentanyl in the United States. However, proponents of this view have offered little more than speculation to support it. New data obtained by the Cato Institute via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request calls this belief into question. The new dataset shows that US citizens comprised 80 percent of individuals caught with fentanyl during border crossings at ports of entry from 2019 to 2024.
The FOIA dataset contains individual records regarding each person encountered by officials at US ports of entry from whom fentanyl was seized. Figure 1 shows the citizenship of individuals arrested with fentanyl from fiscal year (FY) 2019 to 2024, as of June. Overall, the dataset reveals that out of 9,473 individuals associated with a fentanyl seizure, 7,598 were US citizens (80.2 percent).
READER COMMENTS
Ahmed Fares
Aug 11 2024 at 3:52pm
Contrary to popular belief, the US is not the world’s largest user of opioids. That credit goes to Israel, which truly shocked me because I just learned of this recently.
Finally recognizing the Israeli opioid disaster
Now world’s no. 1 opioid consumer per capita, Israel faces addiction epidemic
Are We Nearing an Opioid Epidemic in Israel?
David Henderson
Aug 11 2024 at 8:05pm
Interesting. Thanks.
Jon Murphy
Aug 11 2024 at 6:39pm
I’m glad you linked to the Cato poll on trade. Lots of interesting things in that report (I have a blog post on it coming). One of the things that I found interesting was how people said they wanted to buy American (75%) but how little they’re willing to pay to achieve that. Only 20% said they’d be willing to pay $2 more to buy American-made frying pans, all else held equal. Increase that to $10 more, and the figure drops to 11%. There are several versions of that question in the poll and they all show Americans simply do not want to pay more for goods.
David Henderson
Aug 11 2024 at 8:04pm
Thanks.
Yes, those data are broadly consistent with polling data on what people are willing to pay for anything, whether it’s dealing with global warming, extending health insurance to the uninsured, or many other things. What they’re willing to pay is at least one order of magnitude less than what it actually costs.
As Steven Rhoads put it, after reporting similar data in his excellent book The Economist’s View of the World, “People are quite willing to accept a free lunch, if someone is willing to offer it to them.” Actually, he said it better. I’m at home and my copy of his book is at work.
TMC
Aug 12 2024 at 9:15am
Gorsuch was a great selection for the Supreme Court. Even if you disagree with Silverglate’s numbers, the fact that you could be unwittingly committing a felony even once a week is unnerving.
A prosecutor in NYC has just recently waived his magic want over an unprosecutable misdemeanor and changed it into 34 felonies. No matter how you feel about Trump, he is correct in saying ‘if they can do it to me, they can surely do it to you.’
David Henderson
Aug 12 2024 at 9:41am
I agree. One of the things, though, that undercuts an argument is exaggeration. You don’t have to exaggerate to make his point and his early discussion of how prosectors sit around and play a game like “How can we nail Mother Theresa?” is eye-opening.
Comments are closed.