HIT & RUN BLOG

UPDATED: After initial post, I learned that last week Feaster was indeed charged with involuntary manslaughter. More below.

I reported last year about the curious case of Officer Patrick Feaster, a California policeman with a loud public record of being really peeved with drunk drivers, who came upon and casually shot Andrew Thomas after Thomas flipped his truck in a drunk driving incident that killed Thomas' wife.

ep_jhu via Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Thomas was struggling to crawl out the window of his truck vertically when Feaster shot him. Feaster neglected to report to dispatch that anyone had been shot, merely referring to a man who (Feaster had just shot, which might explain what followed, but he didn't mention any of that) "refuses to get out" of the truck.

As I reported then, Feaster was at first found not worthy of charges in the incident by Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey on the curious grounds that, as I summed it up, the:

shooting seemed to [Ramsey] maybe not intentional and thus not criminally negligent. (It seemed pretty intentional to me, but those judging police see with eyes suffused with a soft gelscreen of bitter, bitter mercy.) Because [Feaster] didn't shoot him twice, according to Ramsey, that proves merely that Feaster is the kind of officer who pulls out his weapon, finger on the trigger, aims it at someone who represents no conceivable threat to himself or anyone else, and shoots him without meaning to, and that apparently is just fine and deserves no criminal punishment.

Why didn't he tell anyone he'd shot him? He was in shock and not even actually sure he'd shot him!

So, reckless to the point of possible actual insanity. That's fine in a cop. Certainly not worthy of charges.

Thomas died of his injuries shortly after my initial post.

Last week Paradise Post reported that Feaster has finally been relieved of his job, although Paradise Police Chief Gabriela Tazzari-Dineen "could not disclose why Feaster is no longer with the department." 

After Thomas died, D.A. Ramsey reconsidered his initial decision not to prosecute at all, and that investigation, Ramsey now tells the Paradise Post:

 hinges on Thomas’ autopsy report. One of the things Ramsey wanted an opinion on was whether immediate medical attention could have saved Thomas’ life. Feaster did not acknowledge to superior officers that he had shot Thomas until 11 minutes after the shooting.

UPDATED: Two days after that Paradise Post report last week, Ramsey announced that he was indeed charging Feaster:

The charge of involuntary manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of four years of custody in county jail (a change from state prison as a result of AB109 in 2011). The additional allegation of being armed with a firearm carries an additional year in custody.

The video of the incident, highly disturbing, can be found at this Action News Now story.

lifewiseThe WaPo is today reporting a study by the California Legislative Analyst Office (LAO) that reports the apparently astonishing fact that increasing the supply of a good tends to lower its price. The study concluded, "Encouraging additional private housing construction can help the many low–income Californians who do not receive [low-income housing] assistance. Considerable evidence suggests that construction of market–rate housing reduces housing costs for low–income households and, consequently, helps to mitigate displacement in many cases."

The Washington Post article begins:

To low-income residents and the groups that fight for them in expensive cities, new market-rate housing often feels like part of the problem. If San Francisco and Washington are becoming rapidly unaffordable to the poor, why build more apartments for the rich?

New housing, these voices fear, will only turn affordable neighborhoods into unaffordable ones, attracting yet more wealth and accelerating the displacement of the poor.

Then come along those pesky economists:

Economists typically counter with a lesson about supply and demand: Increase the sheer amount of housing, and competition for it will fall, bringing down rents along the way to the benefit of everyone.

It is understandable that skeptics raise their eyebrows at this argument. It’s theoretical, based on math models and not peoples’ lives. It seems counterintuitive — that building for people who are not poor will help the poor.

Not based on people's lives? Counterintuitive for whom? Never mind. The WaPo article goes on to observe:

In tight markets, poor and middle­-class households are forced to compete with one another for scarce homes. So new market-rate housing eases that competition, even if the poor are not the ones living in it. Over time, new housing also filters down to the more affordable supply, because housing becomes less desirable as it ages. That means the luxury housing being built today will contribute to the middle-class supply 30 years from now; it means today’s middle-class housing was luxury housing 30 years ago.

Well, yes. In addition, the LAO report points out that low-income housing set-asides and vouchers utterly fail to fix the shortage for housing that government policies, e.g., zoning and rent control, have produced. The only way to end shortages is to permit entrepreneurs operating in markets to increase supply of the good that is being demanded.

In any case, kudos to the WaPo for teaching its readers this elementary lesson in economics.

One of the more-interesting elements of Election 2016 is the genuinely weak rapport Hillary Clinton has with young, liberal, feminists voters of either sex (let's assume that most Democratic voters are feminists for the moment).

The former senator and secretary of state got walloped in Iowa and New Hampshire among folks south of 50 years old. In Iowa, for instance, Bernie Sanders won a whopping 84 percent of the vote in the 18 to 29 year-old range. In New Hampshire, the same thing happened. In fact, she only grabbed 24 percent of the under-44 vote! When it comes to women only, Hillary barely won the female vote in Iowa (53 percent) and lost it badly in New Hampshire (44 percent). No wonder there's a bunch of stories out there about Clinton's failing support among lady voters, even after Madeleine Albright threatened eternal damnation to women who didn't vote for Clinton.

Why aren't women en masse—or at least in Democratic primaries and polls—flocking in support of the first female president in U.S. history? Is it that "intersectionality" (the idea that race, class, and gender are so intertwined that even self-identified feminists no longer care first and foremost about gender) now reigns supreme in terms of cultural and political identity? Is it that women have achieved enough equality that the lure of voting for the first female president isn't as big a deal as it would have been even 10 years ago? Is it ageism? Or lack of gratitude by younger women for the struggles their mothers and grandmothers went through?

Or is it, as Maureen Dowd argues in The New York Times, a result of the leading role that Hillary Clinton played in revealing "feminism" to be a cyncial cover for more-important Democratic Party interests?

Hillary and Bill killed the integrity of institutional feminism back in the ’90s — with the help of Albright and [NOW co-founder Gloria] Steinem.

Instead of just admitting that he had had an affair with Monica Lewinsky and taking his lumps, Bill lied and hid behind the skirts of his wife and female cabinet members, who had to go out before the cameras and vouch for his veracity, even when it was apparent he was lying.

Seeing Albright, the first female secretary of state, give cover to President Clinton was a low point in women’s rights. As was the New York Times op-ed by Steinem, arguing that Lewinsky’s will was not violated, so no feminist principles were violated. What about Clinton humiliating his wife and daughter and female cabinet members? What about a president taking advantage of a gargantuan power imbalance with a 22-year-old intern? What about imperiling his party with reckless behavior that put their feminist agenda at risk?

To be sure, Dowd, who made her bones as a national columnist skewering the Clintons during the 1990s, goes easy on herself (she was hardly above slut-shaming and even fat-shaming Monica Lewinsky back in the day). But she is rightly unsparing when it comes to Clinton, Albright, and the rest:

Hillary knew that she could count on the complicity of feminist leaders and Democratic women in Congress who liked Bill’s progressive policies on women. And that’s always the ugly Faustian bargain with the Clintons, not only on the sex cover-ups but the money grabs: You can have our bright public service side as long as you accept our dark sketchy side.

Young women today, though, are playing by a different set of rules. And they don’t like the Clintons setting themselves above the rules.

Read more here.

In Dowd's telling, then, Hillary Clinton is not pulling stronger support from women (especially younger women) not because they are ungrateful but because they choose not to be the tool of a candidate who quickly tossed feminist concerns overboard when it mattered most.

That's a rare and flattering depiction of part of the American electorate (which reporters usually chide for being dumber than a bag of rocks). And it rings pretty true, too. None of it means that Clinton won't win among women in the general election or that she is somehow less suited to be president than various other candidates for various other reasons. But it suggests that past actions can't simply be willed away, which is a lesson all politicians should take to heart.

A 2012 lawsuit from the Illinois Libertarian Party (L.P.) has been resolved in their favor, with a decision for summary judgment on their behalf, reports Peoria Public Radio, making it easier for the L.P. to get on ballots without having to find candidates to run for a full slate of state offices or even county offices.

LP Illinois

Existing Illinois law required third parties who hadn't achieved full legal ballot access, but not Democrats or Republicans, to run a full slate to get any state or country candidates on the ballot.

Illinois Libertarian Party Chair Lex Green said that:

defenders of the law use "high-minded language, to say 'We're trying to keep whackos and nut jobs from getting on the ballot.'

"Which I would argue that just because they have an R or D after their name doesn't mean they're any more sane or less so than the Libertarians," he says. "To me you can say whatever you want but it hides a political agenda. Because if you make the burden of getting on the ballot higher for somebody than for somebody else, then this is obviously unequal treatment under the law, which in my book is wrong ... I personally think that it is all political maneuvering to keep the Democrats and Republicans in power in Illinois."

The order issued Friday by Judge Andrea R. Wood of the Northern District U.S. Court finds the full slate law unconstitutional. Her reasoning isn't yet known; a decision hasn't been published.

Richard Winger at the irreplaceable Ballot Access News site has more context on the history of Illinois' requirements, which came about to stymie the Communist Party back in 1931 when Illinois still had "cumulative voting" in state House races where voters had three votes they could distribute or concentrate among candidates as they pleased. They wanted to make sure that one Commie couldn't benefit unduly from concentrated votes.

Reason reported on the suit when it was filed back in 2012. A different federal judge from the beginning found the state's requirements questionable.

• The federal government is allegedly dispatching U.S. marshals to track down people with unpaid student loan debts.
• Behold: the most loathsome pro-censorship column ever written. (Plus: the would-be censor's smug, self-indulgent bio.)
• Donald Trump acquires JebBush.com.
• Remember when The Onion was purchased by a major Hillary Clinton backer? Well...
• Uh oh, a comedian told a non-PC joke at the BAFTA Awards.
• The International Students for Liberty Conference is next week. Members of the Alumni for Liberty can vote for the 2016 Alumnus of the Year. Go here to check out the nominees and cast a vote. (Yes, I was nominated. As a friend said, "The only time I thought I'd see Robby Soave listed next to Ross Ulbricht would be on an FBI Most Wanted poster.")

Credit: Kaihsu TaiPeter Tatchell is one of the most prominent and vocal gay rights activists in England, participating in causes and actions going back to the 1970s. He famously attempted a citizen's arrest of extremely anti-gay Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe when the leader was visiting London. He was actually attacked and injured by Mugabe's guards during a second attempt to arrest the man in Brussels in 2001. He has a lengthy history of support for LGBT causes, peaceful causes, and all sorts of left-leaning positions.

But he signed a letter opposing behavior by students in colleges in the United Kingdom who were attempting to deny the ability of speakers to discuss ideas with which they did not agree, so screw him. If Tatchell doesn't support driving out speakers who hold unpopular views, then he shouldn't get to speak either. So the argument apparently goes. Tatchell is supposed to give a speech today at Canterbury Christ Church University on "re-radicalizing queers." But his support for open platforms for free speech are not queer enough for the National Unions of Students' LGBT rep. From The Guardian:

In the emails, sent to the organisers of a talk at Canterbury Christ Church University on Monday on the topic of "re-radicalising queers", Cowling refuses an invitation to speak unless Tatchell, who has also been invited, does not attend. In the emails she cites Tatchell's signing of an open letter in the Observer last year in support of free speech and against the growing trend of universities to "no-platform" people, such as Germaine Greer, for holding views with which they disagree.

Cowling claims the letter supports the incitement of violence against transgender people. She also made an allegation against him of racism or of using racist language. Tatchell told the Observer that the incident was yet another example of "a witch-hunting, accusatory atmosphere" symptomatic of a decline in "open debate on some university campuses".

One of the founding members of direct action group OutRage!, which caused a storm in the 1990s by outing establishment figures it claimed were homophobic in public and homosexual in private, Tatchell is used to being in the establishment firing line. But the original radical queer is now finding himself having to think long and hard about free speech.

It is interesting that Tatchell is now having to think about free speech. You see, Tatchell has not exactly been a purist on free speech issues. He has been a major force behind opposition to the anti-gay lyrics of Jamaican dance hall music, a fight that was world news for a time back in the early part of the new millennium. A lot of the activism was a perfectly normal example of fighting bad speech with more speech—protests and calls for boycotts and attempts to apply social pressure to create change. But Tatchell also got British police involved in investigating the lyrics and shutting down concerts, arguing that the calls for violence with the lyrics were dangerous.

Now though, things have changed. Or perhaps Tatchell has at least found some nuances. Tatchell recently took a position on a bakery in Belfast that has been found guilty of anti-gay discrimination for refusing to write "Support Gay Marriage" on a cake because the message violated the baker's religious beliefs. Tatchell's position is in support of the bakery, not the customer. He originally condemned the bakers, but announced a change of position at the start of the month. He explained in The Guardian:

The judge concluded that service providers are required to facilitate any "lawful" message, even if they have a conscientious objection. This raises the question: should Muslim printers be obliged to publish cartoons of Mohammed? Or Jewish ones publish the words of a Holocaust denier? Or gay bakers accept orders for cakes with homophobic slurs? If the Ashers verdict stands it could, for example, encourage far-right extremists to demand that bakeries and other service providers facilitate the promotion of anti-migrant and anti-Muslim opinions. It would leave businesses unable to refuse to decorate cakes or print posters with bigoted messages.

In my view, it is an infringement of freedom to require businesses to aid the promotion of ideas to which they conscientiously object. Discrimination against people should be unlawful, but not against ideas.

This isn't taking it as far as defending (philosophically) the right for singers to wish death upon gay people, but baby steps.

UNDCan oil production be effectively cartelized over the long run? During the 1970s "energy crisis," the world quaked in fear from OPEC's every ukase concerning oil production quotas. But high prices brought in their wake more exploration and more technology and oil prices fell in the 1980s and stayed there for the next two decades. The last decade saw another super-cycle run up in petroleum prices. Again more exploration and new technology (horizontal drilling and fracking) boosted global oil production and the price of abundant crude has dropped steeply in the past year. Will the world now see a replay of something like the 1980s and 1990s with regard to crude oil prices? Very likely.

The "freeze" will fail to signficantly increase prices. Why? First, fracking technology now makes the U.S. and any other countries that permit the technology the real "swing" producers - they can ramp up production fairly easily whenever prices surge. Second, there are a lot of oil producing countries on the sidelines now due to political disarray -Libya, South Sudan, and Iraq - that will eagerly sell into global markets when their domestic situations eventually calm down.

InflationData

In fact, markets reacted initially to the freeze announcement by bumping up prices a bit, but West Texas Intermediate is once again trading under $30 per barrel.

And just as happened in the 1980s, bankruptcies and unemployment are already rising in the oil industry.

Update: From OilPrice.com Intelligence Report this afternoon:

Judging by the reaction in the markets – oil prices staged a brief rally but the gains were quickly erased as reality set in – oil traders are disappointed with the outcome.

Disappointed? Really?

family photoThe Austin Police Association released a statement today appearing to blame the Austin Police Department (APD) police chief's budget priorities for the shooting of David Joseph, a naked, unarmed teen who Officer Geoffrey Freeman alleged was charging at him when he shot Joseph twice in the chest.

The shooting last Monday has led to protests by local activists and an insistence by the police chief, Art Acevedo, that his department is committed to a transparent investigation.  "We aren't Ferguson; we're not another American city," Acevedo said. "We're the city of Austin and we stand together to hold each other's feet to the fire."

Nevertheless, Acevedo has resisted calls for an outside investigation, saying those were "premature" and that the APD was capable of conducting an impartial investigation.

In its statement today, the police association insisted that while the incident had not yet been fully investigated, "one question has risen above all others. Why didn't this officer use another option in dealing with this situation?" Their answer: a shortage of 145 police officers. The union claims it has lobbied APD administration "to deal with this problem before a tragedy occurs," and that there was not enough money to hire officers overtime to cover the shortage.

There were more than 100 vacancies in the APD last year, even though it is among the highest paying departments in the state of Texas. Back then, the police association blamed "tragedies over the last year and a half" that have made people question why they would want to be cops. The APD has previously blamed unspecified hiring practices as well as how long it takes to train a police officer.

The police association is also calling for more training in the wake of the David Joseph shooting. At today's press conference, the association's president also called for more hand-to-hand defensive combat training for officers. He also criticized the police chief for having Black Lives Matter activists present at a recent press conference about the David Joseph shooting, calling it "absolutely unacceptable," and for promising to have the investigation concluded within 30 days.

At the same conference, Freeman's attorney, who argues the unarmed, naked teenager made Freeman fear for his life, insisted the officer's "perspective" of the situation, and not race, was a factor in the shooting. Freeman is black, and a representative from the Texas Peace Officers Association, which says it was the first black police organization in the U.S., insisted he was "a good person" and a "good officer."

The racial dynamics of this case make it more difficult for certain police activists and police apologists to attempt to isolate the incident in an effort to sidestep engagement of the systemic issues surrounding police violence. The course of the investigation, including the disciplinary and legal measures available to the APD and those that it decides to exercise, will be illustrative of some of those wider systemic issues.

There is dashcam video of the shooting but the APD chief insists he won't release it out of because of his "responsibilities" to the Freeman and Joseph families. Dispatch audio, however, is available.

At the heart of so-called Net Neutrality, the official-though-hopelessly-vague-and-hopefully-illegal policy of the FCC, is the idea that all data streamed over the internet should be treated equally.

Simply as a description of how data is handled on networks, that's wrong for many reasons. And when it comes to "zero-rated" services, which allow users unlimited access to some subset of data, it can be obviously pernicious.

As Mike Godwin wrote here last year, opposition to zero-rated services—such as free Wikipedia or limited Facebook access in the developing world—plainly works againt the interests of impoverished end users, starving them of content and information in the name of some devotion to an abstract goal.

But what about here in the First World, or at least the United States? In league with Net Neutrality zealots, the FCC is taking a long look at T-Mobile's Binge On service, which allows users to stream Hulu, Netflix, HBO, Sling, and other video and music services without having that data count aganst their monthly usage caps. In order to facilitate that, T-Mobile downgrades the signals. It's that action that has groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which once employed Godwin and provided the legal oomph to help overthrown the awful Communications Decency Act in the 1990s, all upset.

From an interview  at Forbes with Tech Freedom's Evan Swartztrauber by the Manhattan Institute's Jared Meyers:

[Swartztrauber]: With Binge On, T-Mobile reduces video resolution to optimize it for smartphone screens. While the change in video quality is hardly noticeable to a consumer, as 480p (DVD-quality) streams look great on small screens, the optimization helps T-Mobile mitigate network congestion and improve overall customer experience....

The FCC’s Open Internet Order codified certain principles of net neutrality for broadband providers: No blocking of lawful content, no unreasonable discrimination or throttling, and no paid prioritization. But it did not make a clear judgment about free data given away through zero-rating programs, which include Binge On. Instead, the FCC said it will judge these offerings on a case-by-case basis. Net neutrality, in its most extreme form, requires that all Internet traffic be treated exactly the same with few, if any, exceptions. Under this interpretation, any type of zero-rating should not be allowed at all. This is why some self-styled “consumer advocacy” groups oppose Binge On. In other words, T-Mobile’s exemption of video streams from data caps is not the issue that EFF is fighting. EFF argues that when T-Mobile optimizes or downgrades video quality, it is in violation of the FCC’s no-throttling rule.

It isn't clear yet whether and how the FCC will rule in this case, though at Swartztrauber notes, because of the United States' outsize global influence, that ruling will have a world-wide impact (and India has already shut down Free Basics, a stripped-down, zero-rated version of Facebook). A proposed zero-rated plan at the old carrier Metro PCS was important in the development of Net Neutrality and the current head of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, seems very interested in flexing his muscles. As important, the idea of the FCC (or any government authority) working things out on a "case-by-case" basis is deeply troubling as it guarantees confusion and un-level playing fields by building in the possibility of government action.

As Meyer observes: "This is another war against consumer empowerment, in the name of consumer empowerment. Not only are regulators always at least one step behind innovators, but their vague language stands in the way of innovation and competition. If the FCC rules against T-Mobile, it will serve as another example of regulators myopically focusing on one objective, while ignoring all the nuances and negative consequences of their crusade." Whole thing here.

The purported standard for much government regulation of business is supposed to be whether a particular rule or practice helps the consumer, not its effect on existing firms. In reality, that standard is rarely kept front-and-center in deliberations and the case for or against something is discussed largely in whether it increases or decreases the number of companies in an often-arbitrarily defined market. Hopefully, this sort of case, in which T-Mobile customers are getting a free service that they can either accept or reject, will help show that Net Neutrality is unnecessary at best and counterproductive at worst. Do we have more choices or fewer choices for better or shittier services when it comes to Internet and mobile carriers?

Despite what you've heard (including often-fantastical comparisons to foreign countries), things are getting better all the time on that front.

Court challenges to the FCC's Open Internet Order are proceeding apace, so all of this may be water under the bridge. Indeed, it is far from clear that the FCC has the statutory authority to be doing what it's doing.

Last year, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who voted against Net Neutrality rules, called Net Neutrality "a solution that won't work to a problem that doesn't exist." Watch below. Read transcript here.

If you think that's hyperbolic you should take a look at his Expatriate Terrorist Act. It's a terrifying piece of DonkeyHotey / Foter / CC BYlegislation that would jeopardize the citizenship rights of ALL Americans under the guise of preventing 12 ISIS fighters from returning to the country. That's why Sen. Rand Paul, who had himself previously called for revoking the passports of Americans who join ISIS, is opposing the Cruz bill. So should all civil libertarians of all political persuasions.

 I note at The Week that Cruz's bill is dangerous because it is so unnecessary:

If the government has evidence that these folks [the alleged ISIS fighters] are indeed terrorists, then why should it merely strip them of their citizenship and stop them from returning home (or leaving if they are already here)? Why shouldn't it also prosecute them? And if it doesn't have evidence, then why should they face any consequences at all?

The only way to understand Cruz's bill is that it aims to give government the power to take away the citizenship not of Americans against whom it actually has hard evidence — but against whom it doesn't.

Go here to read the column and fully understand the awfulness this bill is.

family photoAnother cautionary tale about thinking twice before calling police. The Charleston Gazette-Mail out of West Virginia reports:

Donna Spry called her husband’s doctor, crying.

Curly Spry was refusing to go to his appointment. He was suicidal, off his medication and had a gun, his wife said.

Call 911, the doctor’s staff instructed her.

Less than an hour later, Curly Spry was dead. He had been shot 11 times by troopers with the West Virginia State Police, according to a lawsuit filed by Donna Spry last month in Kanawha County Circuit Court.

The family is suing for $11 million—their attorney told the Gazette-Mail that the agency’s insurance covers $1 million per incident.

Spry was shot in the head and chest, and his family claims in the lawsuit he was lying in bed when police shot him. At the time, police claimed Spry had pointed his gun at them. Spry’s wife says she called 911 and requested an ambulance, not cops, for her husband. She was on the phone with 911 when her husband was shot, and according to the lawsuit one of the troopers forced her to hang up the phone after he shot her husband.

Credit: Gage Skidmore / photo on flickrIn South Carolina Sen. Ted Cruz is trying to tighten his grip on evangelical conservatives by casting Sen. Marco Rubio and Donald Trump as being weaker in opposition to gay marriage recognition. He's wrong on both counts (though Trump is arguably the most pro-gay candidate remaining among the Republicans). Rubio is opposed to gay marriage recognition, has said so regularly, and wants to appoint Supreme Court justices that would return decision-making back to the states. But he apparently acknowledged the legality of the Supreme Court's ruling mandating recognition and this somehow puts Rubio on the same side as President Barack Obama, according to Cruz.

Over the holiday weekend, where we celebrated both our love of each other and of aggrandizing the role of the president (or lamented the absence of both and maybe played a lot of Grim Dawn), Rubio attempted to counter Cruz's attack by announcing his "Marriage and Family Advisory Board." The 13 members of the board have backgrounds (some quite lengthy) in culturally conservative defenses of marriage. The Washington Blade picked up that many people on the board have been significant opponents of same-sex marriage recognition.

But is that all they are? I'd say the Blade is not wrong to classify the group as a whole as anti-gay marriage. Most of the participants are either members of activist groups that oppose same-sex marriage or have written independently in opposition to gay marriage. One member, Bill Wichterman, was a proponent of the Federal Marriage Amendment, and even jumped ship from Fred Thompson's campaign to Mitt Romney's back in the 2008 presidential race because Thomson didn't support a constitutional ban. Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, recently had his college drop out of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities because two other colleges had decided to hire staff members in same-sex marriages.

But there is maybe more to the group than meets the eye. Whenever a social conservative brings up marriage and family issues, it's easy to assume he or she is talking about the culture war issues of same-sex relationships and abortion and that's pretty much it. But pay attention to Rubio's wonkishness (which can get lost in debates) and there is an interest in actual family-oriented economic policies that helps explain Rick Santorum's endorsement of Rubio beyond the shared interest in military intervention, domestic surveillance, and not liking gay marriage.

Rubio's issue page for families actually focuses on tax and economic issues, promoting a $2,500 tax credit for parents, eliminating the marriage penalty, and even a voluntary paid leave plan that would reward participating businesses with a non-refundable tax credit. He was asked to defend his tax plan in Saturday night's debate and said:

Here's what I don't understand, if a business takes their money and they invest in the piece of the equipment, they get to write to off their taxes. But if a parent takes money that they have earned to work and invests in their children, they don't? This makes no sense.

Parenting is the most important job any of us will ever have. Family formation is the most important thing in society. So what my tax plan does, is it does create - especially for working families, an additional Child Tax Credit. So that parents who are working get to keep more of their own money, not the government's money to invest in their children to go to school, to go a private school, to buy a new back pack.

So there's more to his family politics than just opposing abortion and gay marriage. The same can be said for at least some of the people in his new board. Robert Lerman and Bradford Wilcox, for example, both members of Rubio's board, put together a lengthy study showing the economic impacts and advantages of stable, intact families. The report did not pit straight couples versus gay couples; rather it was about analyzing the economics of married families versus unmarried families.

Kay Hymowitz, also on the board, wrote in 2004 an essay that critiqued the gay marriage movement as ignoring the historical roots of marriage as a social tool for promoting the proper rearing of children. But in 2015 Hymowitz signed on to the Marriage Opportunity Council, a bipartisan group that seeks to "make marriage achievable for all who seek it." Its co-directors are David Blankenhorn, who famously switched sides to support gay marriage in 2012, and Brookings Institute Senior Fellow and Reason contributor Jonathan Rauch, a notable supporter of gay marriage recognition. It is a group devoted to embracing marriage as a tool for improving social and economic opportunities for Americans, gay or straight.

Hymowitz's inclusion suggests there is more to this council than just harping on the gays. But whether she can serve as a counterbalance to some of the others in the group is an open question. I predict there's very little likelihood that the next president, no matter how conservative, will be successful in rolling back same-sex marriage recognition in any degree. So what matters is what sorts of policies they recommend that could actually get anywhere. Just imagine if Rubio got the marriage penalty revoked while same-sex recognition remained intact.

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"It makes sense politically, rationally, electorally, to gain political power by saying all sorts of terrible things about immigrant groups, but at a certain point, the math doesn't work out," says Joel Fetzer, a professor of Political Science at Pepperdine University, and author of the new book Open Borders and International Migration Policy: The Effects of Unrestricted Immigration in the United States, France, and Ireland.

Watch above, or click the link below for the full text, associated links, and downloadable versions of this video.

Run time approximately 8:43. Interview by Zach Weissmueller. Music by Cellar Dwellar and Kevin MacLeod.

Subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel for daily content like this.

With the South Carolina primaries and Nevada caucuses in plain view, there seems little to no question that 2016's key interlopers, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, are still a problem for their respective "parties" (I use scare quotes because neither of them is really a member of either group).

This reality is causing a huge problem for the parties' established candidates (that is, politicians who are clearly part and parcel of the Republican or Democratic clubs, whether they pretend to be insiders or outsiders). I totally understand why not just Hillary Clinton but the Democratic Party operation has got to be shitting a brick over Sanders' popularity and staying power. Same goes for Republican types, even those (such as the fellows at National Review) who rarely have a kind word for "establishment" GOP representatives. What the hell is going on, already? A fake Republican and a fake Democratic are not just threatening "real" partisans but absolutely kicking ass!

And get this: The parties' meltdowns are occuring at the same time that Gallup is finding that libertarian-minded voters now outnumber conservatives, liberals, and populists (more on that below).

As I argue in a new Daily Beast column, Sanders and Trump aren't leading their party in bold new directions. No, the candidates are making the parties look bad because they are presenting something close to the distilled, Platonic essences the Democratic and Republican platforms.

Bernie Sanders...is causing equal levels of discomfort among the Democratic Party establishment by admitting that he’s not really a socialist. He just wants to give away a ton of free stuff, most notably education, health care, and retirement but also paid family leave and a laundry list of whatever else he can think of. When he got into the race, he refused to apologize for being a tried-and-true socialist, which he redefined later as being a “democratic socialist” and now characterizes as simply wanting to import the very best Denmark has to offer before it becomes even more like the United States....

And of course, Sanders has no realistic way of paying for any of his new spending. He just waves away the bill for such new spending, suggesting that one way or another, he'll get the 1 percent to pay for it. Nobody buys that.

And then there's Trump, whose likelihood of actually winning the GOP nomination increases with each horrible thing he seems to say. 

For all of the he’s-not-one-of-us bluster against Trump, he does a passable impersonation of a National Review—style conservative Republican for most of us. He is by his own words strongly against immigration (which NR’s editors call a “defining” issue for today’s right-wingers). He is obsessed with displays of masculinity and dismisses opponents as “weak” and as pussies. His trucker-hat promise to “Make America Great Again” is simply a (slightly) dumbed-down version of conservative Republicans’ fixation on “American exceptionalism” and Barack Obama’s supposed contempt for the same.

Trump may indeed be “philosophically unmoored”—unlike Ted Cruz, he doesn’t know or care enough to sprinkle his applause lines with bon mots from Ludwig von Mises or Ronald Reagan—but nobody would confuse him with, say, a liberal Democrat, would they?

According to the latest Gallup figures on party identification, the Democrats are at a post-war historic low, with just 29 percent of Americans calling themselves Dems. At 26 percent, the GOP is just one percentage point above its all-time low.

Who can blame the 45 percent of us who are now saying that we don't identify with either of the two major parties?

DailyNewsIn order to be a good president, a candidate has to be able to evaluate data as part of the process of making good decisions. I scored six likely Republican presidential candidates on seven different science policy areas last March. Since the notion that reality-TV star and real estate mogul Donald Trump would actually run for president would have seemed, well, farfetched only a year ago, I didn’t evaluate his views in that article. Also, Trump didn’t actually announce his run until June of last year.

In my March analysis, I selected seven topics including a proposed ban on commercial travel from West African countries during the recent Ebola outbreak, climate change, genetically modified crops, the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility, vaccination, fetal pain legislation, and biological evolution. The candidates I covered in my earlier article were Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, and former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida.

I chose those topics because there is widely accepted data for each of them. Specifically, a major Ebola outbreak in the U.S. was unlikely and banning travel is counterproductive; the trend toward higher global average temperature over the past 50 years is at least partially the result of human activity; genetically modified crops are safe; Yucca Mountain in Nevada can safely store nuclear waste for tens of thousands of years; vaccinations do not cause autism; fetuses do not feel pain before 24 weeks of gestation; and biological evolution explains the diversity of life.

The candidates were scored as follows: Pass(able) equals 1 point; Incomplete earns ½ point; anything else is 0. The maximum score obtainable is 7 points.

So what how does Donald Trump fare with regard to these seven scientific policy topics?

Ebola: On October 24, 2014 Trump tweeted: "Ebola has been confirmed in N.Y.C., with officials frantically trying to find all of the people and things he had contact with. Obama's fault." - "I have been saying for weeks for President Obama to stop the flights from West Africa. So simple, but he refused. A TOTAL incompetent!" FAIL

Climate Change: On November 6, 2012 Trump tweeted: "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive." Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called Trump out on this tweet. A day later during a “Fox & Friends” interview Trump responded: "I think that climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money. I know much about climate change," Trump said. "I've received many environmental awards. And I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China — obviously I joke — but this done for the benefit of China."

More broadly, The Hill reported that Trump said last September: “And I think it’s very low on the list. So I am not a believer, and I will, unless somebody can prove something to me, I believe there’s weather. I believe there’s change, and I believe it goes up and it goes down, and it goes up again. And it changes depending on years and centuries, but I am not a believer, and we have much bigger problems.” Bigger problems notwithstanding, it’s a FAIL.

Biotech Crops: In October, when Ben Carson was beating him in the Iowa polls, Trump seemingly scorned voters by retweeting a GMO truther: "@mygreenhippo #BenCarson is now leading in the #polls in #Iowa. Too much #Monsanto in the #corn creates issues in the brain? #Trump #GOP"

However, Trump quite quickly retracted the retweet as an error, and tweeted: “The young intern who accidentally did a Retweet apologizes.” INCOMPLETE

Yucca Mountain: On March 11, 2011 after the tsunami-caused Fukushima nuclear disaster Trump told Fox News: “I am in favor of nuclear energy –very strongly in favor of nuclear energy. … You have to look very carefully – have the best people in terms of safeguards for nuclear energy, but we do need nuclear energy.”  On the other hand, during the December 15 Republican candidate debate, Trump apparently did not know what the nuclear triad is. It will be interesting to see if Yucca Mountain comes up as an issue during the lead up to the Nevada Republican caucuses on February 23.  PASS (able)

Vaccination: Trump has evidently long been a proponent of the theory that vaccination can cause autism.  Consider this tweet on September 3, 2014: “I am being proven right about massive vaccinations—the doctors lied. Save our children & their future.” During the September CNN presidential candidate debate Trump declared: “I’ve seen it … You take this little beautiful baby, and you pump — it looks just like it’s meant for a horse. … We’ve had so many instances ... a child went to have the vaccine, got very, very sick, and now is autistic." FAIL

Fetal Pain: In July, Trump evidently sent this statement to the Christian Broadcasting Network: “I support the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and urge Congress to pass this bill. A ban on elective abortions after 20 weeks will protect unborn children. We should not be one of seven countries that allows elective abortions after 20 weeks. It goes against our core values.”  FAIL

Evolution: No Information. But during his speech at Liberty University he did modestly rank his book The Art of the Deal as “a deep, deep second to the Bible. The Bible is the best. The Bible blows it away.” Let’s generously give him PASS.

Total Trump score: A generous 2½ out of 7 possible points.  The scores of the three remaining candidates evaluated back in March are: Ted Cruz at 3; Marco Rubio at 3; and Jeb Bush at 2 points.