'Pink Tax' Problem Is Overblown, Suggests GAO Report on Gender Bias in Product Pricing: Reason Roundup

Plus: President Trump defends NSA leaker Reality Winner, setbacks for prison reform bills, and the evolution of Burning Man

Christopher Corr IKON Images/Newscom

Federal bureau of razor-pricing oversight? A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) explores price differentials in products targeted toward men and women. Lately, some Democratic legislators have been sounding the alarm about a so-called "pink tax" on women's goods that make them more expensive, a situation they blame on gender bias.

But "whether the price differences are due to gender bias is unclear," reports the GAO. Plenty of evidence suggests that when such differences exist, they can be blamed on variations in product advertising, packaging, etc., that could account for non-discriminatory price hikes.

Examining prices and attributes of various toiletries, the researchers found that "prices for half of the personal care items we looked at are higher for women, including deodorants and fragrances. Some men's items cost more," including shaving gel and non-disposable razors.

"One category—razor blades—had mixed results based on two price measures analyzed, and two others—disposable razors and mass-market perfumes—showed no significant gender price differences."

Even for items that did see significantly gendered prices, you can't simply assume the issue is discrimination, notes the GAO. Different advertising costs could come into play, for instance. "Though the analysis controlled for several observable product attributes, such as product size and packaging type, all underlying differences in costs and demand for products targeted to different genders could not be fully observed."

Despite the current outcry over "gender discrimination" in product pricing, the three federal agencies that oversee anti-discrimination complaints (the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development) saw "limited consumer complaints about gender-related price differences" from 2012 through 2017.

Read the whole report here.

FREE MINDS

Reality Winner gets five years in prison. The former NSA contractor who leaked classified election about attempted Russian hacking was sentenced Thursday to five years in federal prison. As Buzzfeed points out, "it's the longest civilian sentence in US history for leaking classified government information to the public."

This morning, Winner got a surprising champion:

Ex-NSA contractor to spend 63 months in jail over "classified" information. Gee, this is "small potatoes" compared to what Hillary Clinton did! So unfair Jeff, Double Standard.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2018

FREE MARKETS

The evolution of Burning Man. In a piece that quotes heavily from a book by Reason's Brian Doherty, The New Republic looks at corporatization and other changes at the annual desert festival Burning Man. "In recent years…people [have been] paying more and more to get in," TNR notes. "Ticket prices now range from $190 up to $1,200, making it perhaps the consummate capitalistic countercultural happening of our time. The festival…has suffered from a perception that it's a utopian playground for privileged white people."

In its early years, Burning Man

was intimate and somewhat lawless; to begin with, the group didn't have a permit, and they often took drugs, drove cars at high speeds, and shot guns. At the same time, it grew steadily, and certain civic structures fell into place: a layout for the camp, rangers, tickets, radio stations. In 1995, 4,000 people attended. In 1996, a man named Michael Furey died during the setup for the event, when his motorcycle collided with a truck. That year marked a turning point for Burning Man—it became more formalized, starting to take shape as the site of highly contained chaos that it is today.

Read the whole thing here.

JUSTICE WATCH

Prison reform may have to wait. Two criminal justice reform bills have for now lost President Trump as a spokesman, according to Axios.

President Trump has stymied a plan to push prison and sentencing reform before the midterms, according to an administration source with direct knowledge. In a White House meeting on Thursday afternoon, Trump decided that the compromise package that Jared Kushner, Sen. Chuck Grassley and others have been advocating for is too politically difficult to endorse before the elections, the source told Axios.

The reforms were already facing reluctance from various factions in Congress, but support from Trump and Kushner had given them a bit of momentum. Axios notes that "the collapse of the bill is a win for…law-and-order hardliners Sen. Tom Cotton and Attorney General Jeff Sessions."

PUSHING BACK

Can cops keep detainee data? A U.S. woman detained at Newark International Airport in February is demanding that border control agents delete the data they copied from her cell phone. Rejhane Lazoja's lawyers recently filed a Motion to Return Property over the information, which federal authorities have stored.

"Normally," notes Ars Technica, the rule they invoked is used "for tangible items seized as part of a criminal investigation, not for digital data that can easily be copied, bit for bit. Here, Lazoja has asked the judge to return data that she already has—after all, federal authorities eventually returned her iPhone after 90 days, fully intact."

"They provided no justification for why they took the phone," one of Lajzoja's attorneys tells Ars. "They've never accused her of a crime."

QUICK HITS

• Millennials love email?
• The rise of "the Depressed Former Internet Optimist."
• Activists say "harsh new anti-protest laws" are being used to restrict the speech of environmental activists.
• People in the Pennsylvania town of Ross can now be fined for feeding deer on their own property.
• How U.S. schools are handling undocumented students.
• Reason contributor Lenore Skenazy tackles stranger danger in a new Wall Street Journal op-ed.
• Read Eric Boehm on our ever-escalating trade war with China.
• Justin Amash weighs in on President Trump's culpability. Whole thread here.

We don't impeach simply because we dislike a person or disagree with his policies. If you're unhappy about @POTUS, then don't vote for him in 2020. The electoral process should determine who holds the executive power.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) August 23, 2018

Comments

[Kivlor]

Still nothing about South Africa, even after the trump tweet freakout.

Reason is too damn scared to touch that one it seems like.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Hello.

It's awesome and welcomed that Trump brought up South Africa's genocide of white farmers. It's a brutal, barbaric and heinous crime against humanity and should ABSOLUTELY be covered at Reason.

[DiegoF]

Is this a new moral low for the Times?

[Rufus The Monocled]

My God. It's just plain sad at this point.

When blacks rape, torture and murder 13 year-old white girls and then boil them in water is not enough to even make some NYT readers sympathize, you know it's a morally lost place.

I was reading the comments and but can shake my head in dismay. 'I want facts' and all that shit. It's there for you to see and research you assholes. Get off your shitty self-righteous perch and just google it.

My sister visited South Africa many times. It's real. Very real.

[Palin's Buttplug]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/201.....s/10013298

19,000 murders.

about 50 white farmers

[Brian]

Oh, please.

Now we start doing stats on the body counts, just in case the targeted minority group is too small to care about?

That's liberal.

[Scarecrow Repair & Chippering]

So freaking out over a few murders of your favored skin color when vast numbers of other skin colors are murdered is conservative?

?sarc? I cannot tell who is sarcing whom.

[Earth Skeptic]

The NYT and its core readership have gone beyond post-modern to full-on deranged. Almost every report and editorial demonstrates profound partisan bias, with naratives based on progressive, socialist fantasies (and spiced with extreme TDS).

In reference to current South Africa politics, the problem is not that the Times ignores or white-washes (sorry) the racially-motivated expropriation of private property; the problem is that they endorse it (and dream of seeing it in the US).

[loveconstitution1789]

If there was 1 single Tranny in that cauldron, the US media would be non-stop talking about it.

Reason would send Shikha on location. Gillespie would auction off his jacket for the cause.

[Weigel's Cock Ring]

The Sarah Jeongian lefty scumbags think the 13 year old girl sort of has it coming to her because of the legacy of colonialism that she had absolutely nothing to do with.

The whites should all just leave and let the entire country collapse into a primitive, backwards shithole, but I realize this probably isn't possible or feasible for many of them.

[Enjoy Every Sandwich]

When the white farmers are either killed off or flee, South Africa will join in the Starvation Derby. And then all the smart folks on cable will plaintively ask "how did this happen?"

[Kivlor]

Then, several years after the mass famine, Reason will finally run some articles about how this was all foreseeable and should have been stopped. If only governments didn't do evil things like this.

But until then, they will remain silent.

[Palin's Buttplug]

What genocide?

I know you believe any bullshit that the Con Man feeds you but don't.

[Weigel's Cock Ring]

Have you made the appointment to see the dermatologist yet Weigs?

"Dang, dude. You need a dermatologist to help you with that rosacea."
-Angela Edwards - August 11, 2018

[Palin's Buttplug]

Quit licking my cock ring, boy.

[Giant Realistic Flying Tiger]

Just fuck already and leave the rest of us alone.

[loveconstitution1789]

Buttplugger, you misspelled vagina piercing.

[Rufus The Monocled]

How is murdering a community/race in order to steal property not a genocide regardless of numbers?

I just go by what what I'm told from people who actually saw with their own two eyes. It's happening.

People like you were the ones who told Dallaire he was crazy. He pleaded there was a genocide going and at every turn there was a Palin's Buttplug saying, 'you watch too much Fox! Only 32 people dead! What's 32 people among friends?!'

[Palin's Buttplug]

You could also say that there is a genocide on African Americans here in the USA based on the numbers of them killed by police every year.

You would be wrong on that too.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Never mind the facile redirection, and this takes away from what's happening over there because...?

[Brian]

So what you're saying is, we need a National political movement, with protests and rioting over this, right?

[Brian]

Maybe we could call it White Lives Matter?

[chemjeff radical individualist]

How is murdering a community/race in order to steal property not a genocide regardless of numbers?

What are you even talking about?

[Rufus The Monocled]

Sometimes I wonder if some of you are just 12 year-olds.

[Brian]

We can't have anarchy pink. It must be taxed, regulated, safe and rare.

[Rich]

"all underlying differences in costs and demand for products targeted to different genders could not be fully observed."

"We forgot to account for gender-fluidity."

[Antilles]

This whole 'pink tax' controversy is so retarded. The question I have that never gets answered is if the men's products are exactly the same but cost less, why don't women just buy the men's product? Now, how about the 'blue tax?' Over the course of their lives men pay way more money to the government than we receive in benefits. Women, on the other hand, receive benefits and handouts that exceed what they pay in. How come the SJWs aren't complaining about that inequity?

[Rufus The Monocled]

They completely gloss over the laws of supply and demand.

And the figure they use is from a 1995 study. 23 years and the number stayed fixed. So much for CPI.

Very retarded and points to the general illiteracy of people today when it comes to basic math/finance/economics.

I bet you the average person today doesn't realize interest is the rate charged to borrow money and that you have to pay that. More complicated, they probably don't even know how to calculate interest on their credit cards.

These were things we were taught and became aware of by our mid-teens.

[Earth Skeptic]

But math is hard!

[I'm Not Sure]

"The question I have that never gets answered is if the men's products are exactly the same but cost less, why don't women just buy the men's product?"

Exactly. It's not a "pink tax", it's more like a "stupid tax".

[Rufus The Monocled]

I also gather there are cost of input variables that lead to price differences.

Men's and women's products are not the same.

[Rich]

"That *does* it. BAN TAMPONS!!"

[DiegoF]

There are two types of gendered consumer products. One is like those lady razors that are specially made for legs and armpits, versus the regular men's Gilettes. The other are the ones that are basically the men's products in pretty pink casing or whatever. In neither case, when you think about it, is sexism a remotely plausible diagnosis, nor are women being oppressed, if you only think about it for two seconds. The "pink tax" narrative only makes sense if you buy the radical feminist narrative in its extreme totality--of modern society, whose engine only appears to be the profit motive, actually being run by mustache-twirling villains dedicated to the deliberate oppression of women. Or, perhaps more "moderately," that men have hypnotized women into the irrational womenly desires that they exhibit, like one giant planetwide Stockholm (or gaslight, or whatever) that only the women's studies departments have had the strength to resist.

[Rossami]

I always thought of it more as a 'lazy tax' than a 'stupid tax'. As in, 'too lazy to go look in the next aisle'.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Feminist thots bitching about the comparative price of razors is even dumber. There's plenty of safety razor models out there that use double-blades costing about 30 cents apiece, and can be used by both men AND women!

The "Pink Tax" is just another way for bitter catladies and dangerhairs to take out their anger on the rest of society, over their lack of sexual desirability to good-looking, emotionally stable men.

[Enjoy Every Sandwich]

I don't know why a feminist would complain about the cost of razors anyway. I thought women shaving their legs and armpits was supposed to be submission to The Evil Patriarchy.

[perlchpr]

Ooooooooh, excellent point!

[Microaggressor]

That's why they're called Legbeards (a spinoff of Neckbeard).

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Because leftists are anarcho-tyrannists. They want to shave when they think it will humiliate their enemies, and they refuse to shave when they think it will humiliate their enemies. The goal remains the same, however.

[perlchpr]

So is "anarcho-tyranny" like basically the real life equivalent of "chaotic evil"?

[Ken Shultz]

Fuck anybody that's concerned about "gender bias" in consumer pricing, and fuck anybody who thinks it's the government's responsibility to centrally plan the economy so as to stamp out gender bias.

[jcw]

Did you know that in fancier restaurants back in the day (and even in a few now) they have a "female" menu that is the exact same thing as the regular menu but it does not include prices?

I don't think it's the government's responsibility to centrally plan the economy, but there's nothing crazy in my opinion in having a conversation about the possibility of a "pink tax," especially based off what I know happens in some industries (historically and now).

[jcw]

FWIW, I generally agree with the GAO that the pink tax concept is really overblown; however, I think that the conversation itself is worth having.

[Ken Shultz]

I might have the conversation, for the sake of academic argument, once everybody realizes that the government has no business interfering with the economy to address gender bias. Talking about these topics without making that abundantly clear is to undermine the libertarian cause.

I wouldn't discuss the economic efficiency of slavery or the economic upsides of the holocaust without the same disclaimer--I will in no way condone any activity that fundamentally violates people's rights regardless of whether there are upsides to doing so.

Do Jews control the media?

Do blacks have lower IQs?

Is there gender bias in consumer pricing?

No, these conversations aren't worth having--because our conclusions don't depend on the premises.

If you're talking about violating the rights of Jews, then it doesn't matter if they control the media.

If you're talking about violating the rights of blacks, then it doesn't matter where their average IQs land.

If you're talking about government interfering in the economy, then it doesn't matter whether they market and price to women differently.

If you want to violate someone's rights, then the utility of doing so is a red herring.

[DesigNate]

Do you think its possible that back in the day women didn't pay for their own food when they went out with a man, and thus didn't need to know how much the food cost?

[Ken Shultz]

When they didn't see the price list, they didn't feel compelled to order to cheapest thing on the menu.

"Not unless he buys me dinner first", used to be a real thing, and when guys were paying for the date, a cad might anticipate that paying for something expensive meant that he was owed something.

Being a "cheap date" wasn't something a woman wanted to be either.

The social norms of the time associated cost considerations with all sorts of icky things, and giving women a menu without the price list alleviated some of that.

[Ken Shultz]

Did you know that cosmetic stocks are typically classified as consumer non-cyclicals? When there's a recession, enough women will eat less, etc.--rather than go without makeup--and that fact manifests itself in cosmetic companies' earnings.

http://markets.on.nytimes.com/.....?sector=54

Click on "personal products", and you'll find Avon, Estee Lauder, . . .

My 90 year-old grandmother, frugal as anybody, still went to the "beauty parlor" once a week.

If women behave differently than men and consumer product companies didn't take that into account, then that might be indicative of sexism.

P.S. Why do you think restaurants gave women a menu without a price list?

[Ron]

My 90 year-old grandmother, frugal as anybody, still went to the "beauty parlor" once a week.''

A few years back I was the family member who took my 90 Year old grandmother for her weekly shopping and every other week she wanted to go to the ladies see thru frilly undergarment section. I would try to let here be alone but i still had to be near, otherwise my Dad would have blamed me if she fell. she always had a thing for nighties even buying my girlfriends see thru garments which I didn't complain about at all

[Rossami]

re: "cosmetic stocks are typically classified as consumer non-cyclicals"

Yeah? And?

Lots of products are non-cyclical or have very weak correlations to broader economic factors. The economic description for consumers of those products is "price insensitivity" or "inelasticity of demand".

[Ken Shultz]

The point is that if this is in contrast to the way men buy things like that, then why would we expect the market to treat women's products the same as men's?

[H. Farnham]

"Government Accountability Office (GAO) explores price differentials in products targeted toward men and women"

These are the critically important issues for which our tax dollars are used. Those (few) crazy fiscal hawks in congress would cut budgets when the cupboard is obviously already bare.

[Rich]

How about exploring price differentials in toys targeted toward adults and toys targeted toward kids?

[H. Farnham]

Well first they have to determine the demarcation between kids and adults. It seems it's getting more and more ambiguous as people move from parental guardianship to government caretaking.

[DesigNate]

Obamacare already decided this. It's 26.

[Rich]

workers between ages 25 and 34 spend 6.4 hours a day checking their email

Bullshit. Define "checking".

[DiegoF]

checking, n; ger. of check: an action taken to preclude future wrecking, e.g. adverse health consequences such as shotgun bullets [sic], big dicks in your ass, etc.

[DesigNate]

So they spend more time checking their emails then actually working each day?

Maybe that was supposed to be week.

[Happy Chandler]

orkers between ages 25 and 34 50 and 150 spend 6.4 hours a day checking their email commenting on Reason.

[Rich]

"If you want to feed birds and other animals, that's fine," DeMarco said. "But you're going to have to figure out a way to do it so the deer aren't getting the food."

***cough***rifle***cough***

[Shirley Knott]

Do you have a permit for that deer carcass? No?
That's gonna cost you more than feeding it would have.

smdh
"Keep the deer out of things they like to eat." Sure. Easy peasy, home gardeners have no problem with deer.
Sheesh.

[Shirley Knott]

From (one of) the linked article(s):
"Presumably they're not surveilling the energy companies."
Right. Energy companies have zero oversight and operate unchecked by any government agencies. We've never seen perp walks of energy company executives charged with crimes.
Some people live in a very special isolated little world.

[bevis the lumberjack]

The pipeline protesters are a special kind of stupid. Pipelines are the safest, most environmentally-friendly way to move hydrocarbons around. These protesters are the kind of people that can't take a piss without getting it all over themselves.

[Giant Realistic Flying Tiger]

It's harder than you'd think when you don't know how to use a zipper.

[perlchpr]

Have you seen kids these days? They're too ignorant to use a belt. I don't know how you'd imagine they might manage a zipper.

[Earth Skeptic]

But like, sacred indian burial grounds or something!

[Incomprehensible Bitching]

Back in my day, Burning Man was you grabbed a guy and burned him! Probably some no good asshole who has it coming! And the screams would haunt you for years, both from the Burning Man and the horrific crowd that cheered it on!

Kids these days are soft!

[Shirley Knott]

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a few hours.
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

[Antilles]

Brilliant!

[Ken Shultz]

"Ticket prices now range from $190 up to $1,200, making it perhaps the consummate capitalistic countercultural happening of our time. The festival...has suffered from a perception that it's a utopian playground for privileged white people."

That's just self-contradictory.

If so many people want to go, now, that they'll pay premium prices to attend, then, objectively, the festival isn't suffering at all. If someone is suggesting that the event was better when it was smaller, that doesn't have anything to do with capitalism. In fact, higher prices keep the event smaller than it would be otherwise.

I don't understand why this argument is being given any oxygen here. It's just a stinking pile of New Republic.

[Mickey Rat]

Being a free market hipster is a contradiction.

Once it has grown in popularity to such an extent that you need rules to enforce community standards, as shame only works in intimate groups, and setting limits on growth comes at a cost. You can say this is a lab experiment on how a civilization develops.

[Scarecrow Repair & Chippering]

Same people argue that Cuba will be ruined by an influx off McDonalds and modern cars.

[Rich]

Up on stage, standing in front of the entire ninth grade this spring, Deena took a deep breath to quiet her racing thoughts. She willed her mind to go blank and ignored the feelings welling up inside her throat. She reversed the placard around her neck, making visible the side that said "undocumented." She listened for the gasps of her classmates.

WTF?

[bevis the lumberjack]

99 years ago today, pitcher Ray Caldwell of the Indians was one out away from completing a complete game 2-1 victory over the Philadelphia A's when he was struck by lightning on the mound and knocked out. The force of the lightning was enough to knock off the mask and cap of the catcher, and also the cap that the umpire was wearing. After five minutes of unconsciousness, Caldwell was revived and finished the game, getting a ground ball to third from the last A's hitter.

This is the grit that America is sorely missing today.

[Ken Shultz]

Waking up from a lightening strike doesn't impress me.

I once plowed through a race riot to get to work in South Central Los Angeles.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Waking up isn't the accomplishment. He finished the game immediately after he was damn near electrocuted.

[Ken Shultz]

Race riot.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Re pink tax.

Always relevant: I, Pencil. In movie form.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE

[Antilles]

Excellent short. Everyone should watch this.

[Rufus The Monocled]

I do wonder, though, what regulatory hurdles - if any- it may encounter along the way. I find it hard to believe producers of pencils don't have to face some regulations.

Regardless, yes, a must watch.

[Brian]

Justin Amash is so adorably naive.

[Rich]

Those often defined as millennials and Gen-Z were among the most obsessed with reaching 'inbox zero,' otherwise known as deleting, responding or delegating an email as soon as its received.

There's an app for that.

[Sevo]

Well, the new super-dooper Bolivar will get you something to eat:

"As electricity fails, desperate Venezuelans buy spoiled meat"
[...]
"MARACAIBO, Venezuela ? In a city once called the Saudi Arabia of Venezuela for its vast oil wealth, residents of Maracaibo now line up to buy spoiled meat as refrigerators fail amid nine months of rolling power outages that recently got worse.
[...]
Socialist President Nicolas Maduro blames the strife on an economic war waged by the United States and other capitalist powers. The governor of Maracaibo's Zulia state, Omar Prieto, recently said the rampant blackouts were being repaired, but relief has yet to come."
https://www.columbian.com/news/2018
/aug/23/as-electricity-fails-desperate-
venezuelans-buy-spoiled-meat/

I know I've been a soldier in that 'war'!

[perlchpr]

I get that they have to blame someone (anyone!) else for their woes, but seriously... we don't need to wage any sort of "economic war" on Venezuela. They've done that quite effectively to themselves.

I mean, seriously. Gasoline is damn near $3 a gallon right now. How fucking incompetent to you have to be to go completely broke while living in a gold mine?

[Palin's Buttplug]

(WJBF) - Some voters in Randolph County, Georgia are outraged because the board of elections is trying to close 7 of its 9 voting precincts, before the November general election.

We're talking about precincts that were used in the July runoff.

Randolph County is 60-percent african american and many voters do not have transportation.

So if the precincts are shut down, those voters would have to walk about 3 and a half hours to get to the closest polling place.

Georgia election officials to blacks 'YO VOTE NOT WANTED HEAH IN GAWJA!'

[Brian]

A country with 300 million people.

Only about 14% are black.

Shrug.

[DesigNate]

That's pretty fucked up.

[Isaac Bartram]

Yes, it would be fucked up if this was an actual case of voter suppression. Until I hear something to the contrary, the following is what seems to have happened:

1) Board of Commissioners in majority black county in Georgia (racial makeup of board not determined) hires consultant to advise on possible cost-saving measures.

2) Consultant advises closure of 7 of 9 polling places on the grounds that "that closing the polling stations would save the county money, and that some of the sites suggested for closure did not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act." Whether any other "cost-saving" measures were advised by said consultant is not mentioned in any of the news coverage that I found.

3) Outrage ensues (generally justified, more, and hopefully better and more convenient polling stations are a good thing IMO).

4) Board of Commissioners fires consultant (because?) and County Board of Elections (appointed by Board of Commissioners) votes down closure of polling stations (even though no actual polling stations had been closed, because!)

[DesigNate]

I'd like to lie and say what I said was in reference to what Buttplug wrote, mostly cause it works either way, but I was too lazy to really look into it.

Thanks for enacting my labor for me! (No seriously, thanks for the information.)

[Isaac Bartram]

I felt that "Palin's Buttplug", a well known troll needed some kind of response.

Yes, it is possible that there are people (even evil white people) who want to suppress the black vote, but this does not seem to have been one of those.

[creech]

Why are the blacks in a 60% black county taking any shit from a wypipo Board of Elections?

[perlchpr]

Because their turnout at the board elections is nonexistent?

(I mean, I'm just guessing, because my turnout at those elections is nonexistent too.)

[mad.casual]

Also, the board is 60% black.

Something happened with the VP position and they hired a shyster lawyer to sit in until it could be resolved.

[Happy Chandler]

Board members are appointed not elected.

[loveconstitution1789]

Its a remote county. I am sure other remote Georgia counties have only a few voting precincts too.

Did y'all know that Georgia uses churches for some of their polling locations?

Buttplugger would not believe that black people in the South seem to be like everyone else.

[mad.casual]

So if the precincts are shut down, those voters would have to walk about 3 and a half hours to get to the closest polling place.

Or 6 mos. prior to any given election apply for an absentee ballot and get it mailed to their home.

[Happy Chandler]

So have the future vision to know that they would close your polling place?

The post hoc rationalization for why it's okay to close polling places so close to an election is astounding. Just say it: They tried to use the power of the state to influence the election results by making it harder for their political opponents to vote, and came up with a fig leaf to do it.

[loveconstitution1789]

Didnt you hear? Slavery is making a come back too.

You Lefties and your ridiculous racism. You people still hate black people to this day.

[Isaac Bartram]

UPDATE, stop the presses!!!!!!

Elections board takes less than a minute to reject proposal to close 7 of 9 polling places in majority-black county

[loveconstitution1789]

Buttplugger thinks black people walk.

Hahaha.

I bet he thinks dem poor niggers in the South dont have shoes either.

[E. Zachary Knight]

Trump isn't defending Reality Winner or making a complaint that her sentence is too harsh. He is just complaining that other people aren't being given harsher sentences, or any sentence at all.

[Giant Realistic Flying Tiger]

Not impressed by the Reality Winner thing. If Trump really thought what she did wasn't that bad, he'd pardon her (?) or at least make a promise to pardon her after a few months (let the time fit the crime).

[mad.casual]

Why not wait for them to drop the hammer on Manafort and then pardon both on the same day?

[DesigNate]

Stephanie
? @stepf_p
16h16 hours ago
Replying to @justinamash @POTUS

But what if the POTUS became President because of his criminal actions? I dont see how being President automatically means you cannot be a criminal if the actions occured before being sworn in and in order to be elected.

How do people still think that anything that's been leaked actually helped him win the fucking election?

[perlchpr]

People complaining about this 'Pink tax' thing really don't have a leg to stand on.

Either the two items are different, in which case why are you bitching that they have a different price.

Or the items are the same, in which case why aren't you just buying the brown one instead of the pink one and saving yourself the money instead of complaining?

[lap83]

"Lately, some Democratic legislators have been sounding the alarm about a so-called "pink tax" on women's goods that make them more expensive, a situation they blame on gender bias."

In the Brave New Progtopia you can only buy pink razors if you're a cis-gendered woman or trans-woman. And if you're not a trans-man or cisgendered-man you can't buy non-pink razors.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Yeah, the whole 'pink tax' thing is a very stupid idea.

[mad.casual]

Fucking Pinkos.

[DiegoF]

These Burning Man prices do not seem particularly outrageous to me. It is a weeklong festival. The average three day mega summer music festival (most of which are day festivals, with no camping) nowadays has a sticker price of several hundred dollars. Various VIP level options are often offered at many many times that price.

Granted these festivals are doing a different thing. They're for profit, and don't have much of an official "ethos," and feature expensive prominent professional entertainment acts rather than being formed around fellowship and cooperation and a DIY approach to entertainment or whatever. But the fact is whatever you are getting, you are still paying a shit ton to go there. If Burning Man is attracting an audience that seems more snooty and rarified and crunchy-yuppie bourgeois-bohemian than the standard EDM bridge-and-tunnel fist-pumpers at the commercial music fests, "capitalism" has little to do with it.

[perlchpr]

I dunno about "capitalism", per se, but the massive increase in prices is straight up market action.

A few years ago, Burning Man finally hit the entrance cap that BLM had set for the event. (2012, I believe, was the first year that BM actually "sold out".) Next year was an absolute clusterfuck for ticket sales, and while they've ironed out some of the bugs, the price of tickets has gone up a lot.

[Dillinger]

>>>capitalistic countercultural

can't be both. that's why they're dorks.

[DiegoF]

I always thought when people talked about a "pink tax" they were talking about that fee your girlfriend charges you every time you are intimate. My buddies had this ongoing prank where they constantly tried to convince me that that wasn't really a thing, that they weren't paying it to their own girlfriends, and that Candi is not actually my girlfriend at all. I told them--kinda teasing back but not really maybe--that they were just jealous because unlike me they do not make enough to afford the higher "brown tax" once every other month or so. But now this post has got me confused. What do you guys think?

[colorblindkid]

Amash is my favorite politician in Washington.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Reason contributor Lenore Skenazy tackles stranger-

Yes! Totally badass.

-danger in a new Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Tricked me.

[Weigel's Cock Ring]

"Ticket prices now range from $190 up to $1,200, making it perhaps the consummate capitalistic countercultural happening of our time. The festival...has suffered from a perception that it's a utopian playground for privileged white people."

By the way, this is pretty funny and awesome stuff coming from the site that is pushing a $250,000 "Apollo 7 sponsorship" for the big 50th anniversary shindig. Sold any of those yet by the way?

A bit more self-awareness might be in order here!