Archive for May, 2015

Obama curtails police military surplus program

What, no more free surplus bayonets and grenade launchers? Radley Balko:

According to NBC News, the new policy will stop “tanks and other tracked armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft and vehicles, firearms and ammunition measuring .50-caliber and larger, grenade launchers and bayonets” from being given to local police agencies.

Additionally, the new policy would attach some restrictions and conditions to the transfer of other equipment, “including armored tactical vehicles like those used in Ferguson, as well as many types of firearms, ammunition and explosives.” These restrictions include requiring the agencies to present “a clear and persuasive explanation of the need for the controlled equipment,” adopt community-oriented policing strategies, agree to “close federal oversight and monitoring overseen by a new federal agency with the power to conduct local compliance reviews,” train officers who will be using the gear, and keep data on how the equipment is used and with what results.

A spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police has already promised to fight the plan. Despite the changes to the 1033 surplus program, so far as I can tell, municipalities and states will remain perfectly free to purchase most of the named categories of equipment; they’ll just have to do so on the open market with their own money. Of course, once they are constrained to weigh such purchases against other uses of public funds, most will probably have little interest in doing so — which is part of the point we critics have been making.

Radley Balko himself deserves applause for having led the way on the issue of police militarization, both when he was at the Cato Institute and more recently as an independent reporter and Washington Post commentator, above all in his book Rise of the Warrior Cop. More of his work on the issue at Cato’s Letter (2013), at this video, and in a white paper on paramilitary police raids, as well as a general link to Cato’s work on the subject by many authors. I’ve covered the subject in many posts here and elsewhere, as well as in a podcast.

Filed under: Barack Obama, Cato Institute, police

Labor and employment roundup

NLRB ruling: calling one’s boss “nasty m___f___” can be protected labor advocacy for which dismissal is unlawful [Pier Sixty LLC; Michael Schmidt, Cozen O’Connor, Jon Hyman]
“Declining Desire to Work and Downward Trends in Unemployment and Participation” [Tyler Cowen]
Public sector union negotiations need sunlight [Trey Kovacs, Workplace Choice]
“Is Non-Pregnancy a BFOQ [Bona Fide Occupational Qualification] for Exotic Dancers?” [Philip K. Miles III, Lawffice Space]
“EEOC Issues Long-Awaited Wellness Program Rules” [Daniel Schwartz]
Following New York Times investigation, Gov. Andrew Cuomo cracks down on employment at nail salons, and that will hurt immigrant workers [Alex Nowrasteh, New York Post; Elizabeth Nolan Brown/Reason and more, New York Times “Room for Debate”]
President Obama keeps promoting myths about Lilly Ledbetter case [Hans Bader, CEI; Glenn Kessler, Washington Post; earlier]

Filed under: Andrew Cuomo, EEOC, immigration law, labor unions, Lilly Ledbetter, National Labor Relations Board, public employment

“Have you counseled her about smoking cessation?”

An emergency physician’s take on electronic medical records [Philip Allen Green, The Health Care Blog via Coyote]

Filed under: emergency medicine, medical

“Texas Supreme Court: No tort liability for intentional misuse of a Genie lift”

In a case combining intentional product misuse, obviousness of risk, and extensive warnings, the Texas high court declines to look for some exception you could drive an aerial work platform through [Deborah LaFetra, Pacific Legal Foundation]

Filed under: personal responsibility, product liability, Texas

Schools roundup

Compulsory chapel (as you might call it) returns to British university life, this time in hopes of extirpating “lad culture” [Brendan O’Neill]
“Environmental history errors in a high school textbook” [Jonathan Adler] “Teachers’ union propaganda is creeping into California’s public school curricula.” [Larry Sand, City Journal]
University of Texas scandal included “attempt to get UT Regent…indicted for doing the work a regent is supposed to do” [Dallas Morning News] FERPA privacy angle: “UT-Austin Slapped Down for Withholding Docs in Admissions Scandal” [Greg Piper, The College Fix]
A proposal for reining in Rule By Dear Colleague Letter at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights [Mike Rappaport/Liberty and Law, earlier, more from Michael Greve]
Not a parody: “Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’… contains triggering and offensive material” [Columbia Daily Spectator, Legal Insurrection] “A new age of campus censorship” [Greg Lukianoff (FIRE), Minding the Campus]
“The statement is suggesting that, in CAIR’s view, ‘anti-Muslim speakers’ may already violate campus speech codes” [Volokh]
Quit giving your kid such a good start in life: two academics pursue egalitarian premises to their joyless conclusion [J.D. Tuccille, Crooked Timber riposte via A. Barton Hinkle, James Devereaux/Reasoned Liberty, Damon Root (on banning private schools)]

Filed under: colleges and universities, environment, schools, Texas

NYC taxi commission: we want to preclear ride apps

The Taxi and Limousine Commission of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s New York City administration plans to introduce rules that would fine anyone offering to city residents a taxi smartphone app or update that the commission had not preapproved. Web guys: you’re kidding, right? “We are gravely concerned by the unprecedented decision to subject software available around the world to pre-release review by a city agency” that is itself without expertise in software design, according to the letter, which is signed by Facebook, Google, Twitter, eBay and many other familiar names. [Fox NY, Internet Association letter of distress]

Filed under: cellphones, NYC, taxis and ridesharing

Collegiality rating: low

“A law professor who alleges he was bullied by colleagues and injured when a professor grabbed and squeezed his shoulder may pursue claims of assault and battery, but not intentional infliction of emotional distress, a federal judge has ruled.” [ABA Journal, Ohio Northern]

Filed under: law schools

Suit: United didn’t say wi-fi based services wouldn’t work offshore

The named plaintiff in a class-action suit, a New Jersey woman, paid $7.99 for in-flight DirecTV on a trip from Puerto Rico but could use only ten minutes of it because the flight was mostly over water, where the signals don’t reach. Her lawyers are suing United Airlines over its alleged failure to “disclose that the services will not work as advertised when the aircraft is outside the continental United States or is over water” and want to represent a class of all DirecTV or wi-fi users who might have been affected. [Road Warrior Voices]

Filed under: airlines, class actions

Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights laws, cont’d

Caleb Brown interviewed me for the Cato Daily Podcast on the rise of union-backed legislation in more than 15 states throwing up procedural barriers to investigating or firing police officers charged with misconduct. Maryland was the first state to pass such a law, back in the 1970s, and it has now been debating proposals to trim it back, which have intensified in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray story in Baltimore. Earlier on LEOBR/LEOBoR laws here and, generally, here, and be sure to check out Ken White’s annihilating post on the concept at Popehat, with comment discussion.

P.S. Perhaps not unrelated: charged officer “had been accused of theft four previous times” but was still on the Baltimore force [AP after surveillance cameras in federal sting operation allegedly showed officer pocketing thousands of dollars in a hotel room]

Filed under: Baltimore, Maryland, on TV and radio, police bill of rights laws

“Their town has become farcically overregulated”

Discontent at a land-use control process perceived as “condescending and obnoxious” helped fuel a surprise voter revolt in affluent Chevy Chase, Md., just across the D.C. border in Montgomery County. [Washington Post] Aside from intensive review of requests to expand a deck or convert a screened-in porch to year-round space, there are the many tree battles:

[Insurgents] cite the regulations surrounding tree removal as especially onerous. Property owners seeking to cut down any tree 24 inches or larger in circumference must have a permit approved by the town arborist and town manager attesting that the tree is dead, dying or hazardous.

If turned down, residents can appeal to a Tree Ordinance Board, which applies a series of nine criteria to its decision, including the overall effect on the town’s tree canopy, the “uniqueness” or “desirability” of the tree in question and the applicant’s willingness to plant replacement trees.

More: Philip K. Howard with ideas for fixing environmental permitting. [cross-posted at Free State Notes]

Filed under: land use and zoning, Maryland, trees