Was Austan Goolsbee’s First Visit to the Oval Office Almost His Last? - Freakonomics - "LEVITT: Well, a great example is one of the silliest datasets I’ve ever used, which was a dataset offered to me by an ex-economist who had quit the profession and decided that his job should be to deliver bagels and donuts to office parks. And of course, when he first mentioned the dataset to me, it sounds so silly. But what was so interesting is that because this guy was so O.C.D., he had entered into a spreadsheet the exact number of bagels and donuts he had delivered. He had incredible cost data. He had written down exactly how much each bagel and donut had cost him, even the cost of the cream cheese that he put with the bagels. And in the end, it allowed me to write a silly paper because it was about bagels and donuts, but it shed light on decisions about prices and quantities that actually were really interesting because typical firms can never provide you with the kind of data that he provided me...
GOOLSBEE: I haven’t been that big of a fan of universal basic income. U.B.I. is a policy designed for a world where everyone has lost their job and the robots have replaced us all. So, in a world where no one has a job and four people own all the robots and make all the money of the world, you know what the policy has to be. We have to raise taxes on those four people and use the money to keep everyone else alive. But that’s not the world we’re in. The unemployment rate is 4.2 percent, the job market’s extremely tight. So, that leads me to my first question about how U.B.I. will work. If what the U.B.I. does is lead a bunch of people who have a job to say, “I’m going to quit my job, because I only had this job because I needed to pay the bills, but now I can pay the bills without it.” Would people still be willing to pay the money for the U.B.I. if they were like, “Wait a minute, I was going to pay a person whose job was lost to a robot and he couldn’t find something else, I wasn’t paying for you to quit.”
Second, I think there’s potentially a fear among the really needy that right now, they receive benefits that are more generous than what the U.B.I. would be, but there’s strict means testing. So, if you are disabled, you get more than what you would get under the U.B.I. The question of, should the redistribution money go primarily to the truly needy or should it be divided up into smaller packets and handed out to everyone? You could see how people that are advocating for the truly needy are going to be nervous about a situation like that. And then the third is if your view is kind of the libertarian fantasy of this, that a U.B.I. would replace the safety net, ask yourself: why does the safety net exist? And the safety net exists because once countries become rich enough, people are fundamentally deeply uncomfortable with the thought that you could walk in and be like, “I’m sick, I’m dying, but I don’t have money.” And therefore, you would be told, “No, you have to die because you don’t have money.” Or, “My kids are starving because I don’t have money.” We invent things like food stamps, like emergency rooms, where they must take you, because we’re rich enough that we don’t want society to be that way.
The thing about the U.B.I. is if you replace a safety net, you’re going to reinvent the safety net because somebody’s going to come into the emergency room and be like, “I’m dying. But I don’t have insurance and I don’t have any money.” And then they’re going to say, “But that’s what your U.B.I. was for.” And he’s going to be like, “Well, I blew my U.B.I. Like I shouldn’t have, and now I don’t have anything.” And the same thing that got us the safety net now is going to reinvent the safety net. So, I don’t think the U.B.I. would solve that, but I applaud the like, let’s think through other ways to do redistribution and separate the most threatening parts of the future from what people’s fears are. But if we applied a tax of $10,000 on every person that we then turned around to give $10,000 to every person, we would all agree that doesn’t do anything. So, then you got to ask yourself, how is the U.B.I. not that, and usually what you have in mind is, we’ll get high-income people to pay more. But now once you’re in that world, where you’re going to tax rich people and ask, “What should we do with the money?” Is the best investment of half of that money to give it to people who are above average income, because the U.B.I. does that with the money. And I kind of don’t think it makes sense...
Carbon tax, in theory, seems interesting... The issues with all climate change stuff is back to these practical considerations. There’s 200 something countries. Are all the countries going to agree to it? Are they monitoring the carbon sufficiently that they’re going to pay the tax? And if not, you could be like Vermont. Vermont has very strict emissions regulations on Vermont companies. We can all agree that doesn’t reduce overall emissions, it just moved the emissions out of Vermont. So, if just the U.S. put on a carbon tax, I don’t think that would work... If you’re trying to address climate, carbon content seems like an obvious tariff, but then there will be people who say, “Let’s have a human rights tariff.” Religious countries, that’d be like, “Let’s have a heathen tariff. The people who made this do not worship the true God. So, they should pay more.”...
There’s an old book called The Difference. It’s about the narrow research question of what makes the best teams for judgment. And what it shows is that teams of people with different views, destroy teams, even of experts, precisely because when experts go to make a decision, if they make a mistake, they’re all prone to making the same mistake and that there’s somebody who comes at it from a totally different point of view can be in the moment super annoying. It’s like, “Oh no, why are they harping on that again?” But actually, it helps you prevent the biggest mistakes. And it’s not true for factual things. A panel of expert plumbers is going to do a lot better at how do we fix the dripping pipe than a collection of non-plumbers. But anything that has to do with judgment, you’re better off trying to branch out your network beyond just people who look, think, or work just like you"
Bombs Away - Freakonomics - "FIHN: In countries like Russia and the United States, the president has all authority to use nuclear weapons. And of course, they will have to have people who implement those decisions, but the military has to comply with the orders. So, it’s just up to the good judgment of a few individuals really.
LEVITT: Yeah, absolutely. And you saw at the end of the Trump administration, various members of the U.S. military already — in a preparatory way — talking about how don’t worry, we’re not going to do anything, even if Trump does something, which was really interesting as an American to see.
FIHN: Yeah, but also isn’t that bizarre, right? That U.S. military would commit treason and not implement the orders of our democratically elected president. That’s basically a coup, right? So, are we celebrating that as well? No, but yes, but no, but yes. It’s just completely irrational. All of this...
The ban on cluster munitions — there’s been all these accusations that Russia has been using cluster munitions — these illegal weapons. And President Zelensky of Ukraine said in a speech a few weeks ago that Putin needs to go in front of the international criminal court for his illegal use of cluster bombs. Despite the fact that Russia has not signed this treaty, Ukraine has not signed this treaty, and the U.S. ambassador call them “these illegal weapons,” despite the U.S. haven’t signed this treaty. And they all opposed...
We might have a moment now with the war on Ukraine, where we see the consequences of our nuclear weapon state using its nuclear weapons to enable an illegal invasion. And how people all over — especially here in Europe, people are terrified of nuclear war. With all the pharmacies are out of like iodine tablets. People are Googling like, “Where’s the closest bomb shelter?” People are really scared right now. And I think we can hopefully use this awareness to really start that kind of push towards politicians to do something because it’s completely fixable, this issue."
The people calling the Capitol Riot an "insurrection" cheered the coup, of course
People are scared of nuclear war. So the solution is unilateral disarmament so Putin can bomb them without fear of retaliation. Genius
Turning Work into Play - Freakonomics - "GILBERT: We put people in a room with a shock machine and they got to feel the shocks. So, they could find out that they were pretty intense and they hurt. And we even asked them how much money they would pay to avoid being shocked. And they were willing to pay a reasonable amount of money... when they’re in a room alone — no phone, no wristwatch, no books — and they’re just asked to sit and entertain themselves with their own thoughts. But they’re told that if they want, they can certainly shock themselves. Guess what happens? The majority of men and a healthy number of women, do so... these data fit very nicely with all the other data we’ve collected. Lots of it, people in their everyday lives. People don’t want to be alone with their thoughts. Most people just find it very aversive. They can be trained to find it appetitive by being given little lessons in how to structure their thought. How to think. “Here’s some things you could think about.” As if the average person doesn’t realize they could close their eyes and play a baseball game. Or imagine their upcoming vacation. Or go back through their last conversation with their grandparents. There’s a whole world of things you can do with your mind. But at least at present, in the year 2022, people don’t seem to be capable of this. They’re looking for external stimulation and they find it aversive to not have any.
LEVITT: I wish we could go back in time and do this experiment in 1975 when there were four T.V. stations and there was no internet, no cell phones. We would have suffered horribly back in those days if we weren’t able to be alone with our thoughts. Do you think is a — very much a product of modern technology?
GILBERT: Well, you’re sure right that you say I wish I could go back. So, none of us are going to be able to give a databased answer to your question. But my intuition is yours. Let’s go back a little further. You think of a family living in a small log cabin in the middle of Montana, going through the winter, barely going outside. They’re in one room. There’s no T.V. There might be a Bible. Who knows if anybody can read. Oh my gosh, there’s nothing to do. And yet, as far as we can tell, there are no reports of people killing themselves out of boredom. So, my guess is people were — once upon a time — much better at closing their eyes and entertaining themselves, than we are today in a world that’s just so full of entertainment that we barely have a chance to close our eyes. I think imagination is a remarkable capacity. And that in all past generations it was required. Very little imagination is required to live in the 21st century...
LEVITT: “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren’t Spending It Right.” So, what’s the gist of that argument?...
GILBERT: We are the single most social species on this planet. And it is no wonder that the source of most of our happiness is our relationships with other people. But how many people do you know who when they get a big salary boost say, “I’m going to use this to buy myself more time with my wife.” “I’m going to use this money to have a weekly party for my friends.” No. They use that money to put themselves in a position to earn even more of it. They buy material goods. Which tend to stop bringing you happiness fairly quickly after you buy them, which is why you have to keep upgrading them. If somebody said, “Give me your advice,” I’d say, “Look, invest in your social relationships. They’re a better predictor of your happiness than your wealth, than your health, than your age, than your gender, than almost anything else.”"
Don't Let Police, Media Mislead You About Fentanyl Exposure Overdoses - "the Tavares Police Department distributed to the local press body camera footage of Officer Courtney Bannick appearing to collapse and pass out after encountering what turned out to be fentanyl and meth in a rolled-up dollar bill she found in a routine traffic stop... In none of the initial stories does anybody so much as question whether what they're seeing is actually being caused by exposure to fentanyl. The officer was wearing gloves, but it was windy, and police argue that it's possible she breathed the fentanyl in. Officers on the scene say they gave her three doses of Narcan. They brought her to the hospital, where she fully recovered. She is now fine. The Tavares Police Department is very clear that it's releasing the body camera footage for the purpose of scaring people about fentanyl... "Something as simple as the wind could expose you and just like that, your life could end." This just isn't true. Add it to the pile of many, many examples of police attempting to convince the public that any possible exposure to fentanyl may be deadly. It does not simply pass through the skin when you touch it. As for the claim that the officer might have inhaled it, a study from the American College of Medical Toxicology and American Academy of Clinical Toxicology calculated that a person would have to stand next to a massive amount of fentanyl for two and a half hours to feel its effects. In other words, based on what we know about fentanyl exposure, it is extremely unlikely that what we saw was Bannick overdosing from inhaling fentanyl in a gust of wind. Obviously something happened—possibly a panic attack brought on by all the insistence that any exposure to fentanyl is potentially deadly"
Meme - "Chinese kid on Christmas getting the same toy he made 5 hours ago"
Terrifying moth found in North America that looks like tarantula - "A terrifying picture of an insect resembling a huge winged tarantula has been scaring people on social media... A caption read: “Antheraea polyphemus, basically a tarantula with wings.”... The moths are entirely harmless to humans"
Dungeons & Dragons is Apparently Banned in Federal Prisons - "Any rationale for the ban, if given, is buried under redactions, but D&D and other roleplaying games are widely banned in state prison systems under the dubious rationale that they present a security threat or encourage gang behavior. As I noted in a 2017 Reason feature on D&D's resurgence, this has resulted in some unusual case law... It's all silly, but it does illustrate how counterproductive and dumb prison book bans can be. Of all the things you could be doing in prison, D&D is one of the better and less offensive ways to pass the time. It's social, encourages teamwork and empathy, and as one former incarcerated man told me, gives "the vilified an opportunity to be the 'Good Guy' that the world in which we live rarely does."... Several former and current federal inmates sent me messages saying that, if D&D and similar games like Pathfinder are technically banned, correctional officers tend to look the other way... 'Honestly, if you want to keep inmates out of trouble then letting them play a multi-year long roleplaying campaign is a pretty good strategy'"
Meme - Ben Fischman: "THIS IS LITERALLY THE FUCKlN SIGN AT THE PIE SHOP *2 Soyjacks pointing*"
Canadians honestly have no idea when and how much to tip servers in restaurants - "The willingness to leave a tip appears to vary based on factors beyond just service, including the type of restaurant, the age of the customer, and how busy an establishment is. Approximately one-third of those polled said they would leave a tip ranging from 15 to 19 per cent for exceptional service regardless of how busy a place is. Roughly one-third also said they would leave a tip of 20 per cent or higher for exceptional service at a busy establishment. When the level of service declines, so too does the gratuity, as 41 per cent said they would leave a tip in the 10-14 per cent range for average service, compared to just 28 per cent in the 15-19 per cent range. More than one-third polled, at 36 per cent, would tip just 10-14 per cent for below-average service in understaffed establishments. Almost one-third of those polled, at 31 per cent, would leave servers absolutely nothing if they received below-average service in an establishment that was not clearly busy... just over two-thirds of Canadians (at 67 per cent) believe that servers expect a tip but don’t work hard enough to earn it."
Meme - Brittany Nicole: "Confessions of a waiter/waitress
1. I dont actually care how you are."
Vr Vee: "Confessions from a paying customer.
1. You don't deserve more than a 15% tip
2. Those in this industry are the most self entitled people in any industry that ever existed.
3. Your only job is to refill my drinks, after you bring me my food
4. I'm on my phone. Get used to it. I'm not as the restaurant to acknowledge your existence or pay your bills.
5. Get over yourself."
Cathy Cronin Wheaten: "If people don't want to tip for being severed, stay home and leave the table available for someone else that will tip the server, it's how they make their living"
Tipping culture is so toxic
Tricks restaurant servers are using to get you to tip better - "When 21-year-old Bella Woodard first saw a viral TikTok video in which a restaurant server described how she doubled her tips by wearing pigtails, she was skeptical. But, when the nursing student at East Tennessee State University tried wearing the hairstyle at her own serving job, she quickly saw results. One male customer alone tipped her $135... Female restaurant workers from across the country told The Post they have noticed an increase in tips when talking with a Southern accent, dyeing their hair blond, wearing their hair down, applying plenty of shiny lip gloss, having their nails manicured and strutting around in booty or biker shorts. Such anecdotal evidence dovetails with extensive academic findings. Professor William Michael Lynn from Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration has researched tipping for years and has outlined 20 techniques that servers can employ to rake in more cash. They include wearing something unusual; complimenting a customer’s food choices; writing “thank you” or drawing a picture on the check; squatting down next to the table or standing physically close to a customer; and smiling. Lynn hasn’t explored pigtails in his research, but the hairstyle’s effectiveness doesn’t surprise him. “I believe that if it makes the waitress look younger … it increases her sexual appeal,” he told The Post. “That’s probably why it increases tips.” Not surprisingly, Lynn said, “a number of studies find that attractive women get better tips than less attractive women.” In his own research, he’s also found that customers tend to favor women who wear makeup... “The goal is to make both sexes wanna take you home, or go get a beer with you,” she said. Her approach tends to work, though she dreams of a different work scenario."
Domino's Driver Asks Customer for Tip Before Handing Them Pizza
The “Mask Effect” on the tips that customers leave restaurant servers - "Masks have become the custom among restaurant workers and bartenders as a form of protection against COVID-19. Yet, given the rapid introduction of masks to the uniforms of restaurant servers there is a dearth of extant scholarship that has explored the effects of face coverings on customers’ behaviors. In response, this research offers a preliminary test of the effect of server masks on a common consumer behavior in the full-service restaurant industry—tipping. We review theoretical and empirical reasons suggesting that a mask may have a negative effect on customers’ tipping practices. Potential mask effects on tipping are then explored with a survey experiment that was administered to a large and diverse sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk “workers.” Our results suggest that wearing a mask is not likely to, on average, have a meaningful effect on how much restaurant customers tip their servers. However, we do observe a negative indirect effect of a mask on customer reported tip amount through diminished perceptions of a hypothetical servers’ friendliness. This effect was found to be attenuated among those who are altruistically motivated to tip servers as a way to help them financially. The implications of our results and directions for future research are discussed."
Effects of the new COVID-19 normal on customer satisfaction: Can facemasks level off the playing field between average-looking and attractive-looking employees? - "The attractiveness of service employees can have a significant impact on customer attitudes and behaviors. While frontline employees can reduce the risk of the COVID-19 transmission and infection by wearing facemasks, doing so can also influence customers’ perceptions of employees’ attractiveness and thus affect customer satisfaction. Based on the Gestalt theory, this study explores the impact of hotel employees’ facemask-wearing on customer satisfaction through two experimental studies. The results indicate that average-looking frontline employees who wear facemasks induce high levels of customer satisfaction. However, while the impact of wearing facemasks on customer satisfaction is not significant for attractive-looking male frontline employees, attractive-looking female frontline employees who wear facemasks induce lower customer satisfaction. Customers’ perception of employees’ physical attractiveness fully mediates the effects of wearing facemasks on customer satisfaction in the case of average-looking employees. Customers’ self-perceived physical attractiveness moderates the mediated effects. Implications that can help hotel managers improve customers’ service evaluations during the COVID-19 pandemic are provided."
College students arrested for not paying tip - "They were with a half-dozen friends at the Lehigh Pub in Bethlehem last month, so the establishment tacked what it called a mandatory 18 percent gratuity onto the bill of about $73"
A lot of Americans got very upset over this, naturally. Apparently they've never seen mandatory gratuities for groups
Restaurant Bans Tips—And Profits Nearly Triple - "Here's a revolutionary idea, and one that completely goes against the foundation of the American restaurant industry: What if restaurants did away with tipping and owners paid their staff at least $35,000 a year and provided health insurance, vacation days, company shares, and annual bonuses? That's exactly what Pittsburg restaurant Bar Marco did this spring. "We do not accept gratuity," the Bar Marco website says. "Our kitchen and front of house teams are paid a salary. Our prices reflect this."... while the bottom line for Bar Marco owner Bobby Fry has improved, his employees seem to be satisfied as well. "This kind of mentality allows us to think of this as a career instead of just a side job," says Andrew, one of the workers at Bar Marco. "I've started to realize this is something I want to do for a longer period of time. Pittsburgh is a city I want to be in, and the food and drink scene is a really exciting place. So I want to put down roots, and it's pretty hard to get a mortgage when I'll make money sometimes, but I'm not sure how much. If you say that to the bank—ha!”"
Has Tipping Culture in North America Gone Too Far? - "Although tipping is now widely accepted in North America, it wasn't always the case. The country's wealthiest citizens first popularized the practice of leaving tips in the 1860s, but most diners found it condescending and classist. For instance, in 1897, The New York Times called tipping "the vilest of vices," and Mark Twain added his comment, saying, "We pay that tax knowing it to be unjust and an extortion." In 1915, six U.S. states outlawed tipping, only to bring it back eventually... The strongest argument against tipping is that it encourages inequality, racial and gender biases, and significant pay differences. A New York Times article says younger blonde women receive more tips than older brunettes. Tipping can lead to sexist interactions between male customers with money and female servers. In the ride-sharing industry, female drivers receive 12% more tips than male drivers. Additionally, Latino and African-American servers make considerably fewer tips than white servers. Tipping also causes significant pay gaps within the hospitality sector. Employees who work with customers directly make a lot more money than those who work behind the scenes (line cooks, dishwashers). Danny Meyer, a well-known restaurant owner in New York City, claims that his tip-earning staff earns 2.4 times as much as their non-tipped counterparts in the back of the house. Many states in the U.S. do not permit tips to be accumulated and distributed among back-of-house employees, further worsening the pay differences. Tip requests are becoming more common, especially with the help of newer POS technology that promotes tipping... But tipping does have a benefit, though. A gratuity-based structure, for example, encourages employees to go above and beyond to deliver excellent customer service. This is backed up by research, which shows that when restaurants stop accepting tips, the quality of the service suffers. Furthermore, servers might consider promoting more pricey items to customers to increase the final bill and, consequently, the tip, which is a bonus for restaurant owners. Then again, the other option available than tipping, known as hospitality-included pricing, comes with its particular bundle of issues, the most noticeable of which is sticker shock. People are now used to seeing lower prices with a tip added rather than increased prices that already incorporate the tip. Due to this perception alone, higher prices discourage customers from visiting, even though they pay the same amount."
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Should the US abandon tipping? - "‘Over two thirds of tipped workers are women. They struggle with three times the poverty rate, in fact of the rest of the US workforce. And they use food stamps at double the rate of the rest of the US workforce.’
‘And one of the reasons for this is something called the tipped wage, a unique salary system where restaurants are allowed to pay service very little, as long as they make enough tips.’...
'Joshua Chaisson has been working as a waiter, or a server, as they call them in the states for 22 years. He's also the president of the Restaurant Workers of America, a group that campaigns to keep the tipped wage'...
‘You've got a mostly female workforce having to tolerate inappropriate customer behavior to feed their families almost entirely in tips. And not just tolerate. Our research shows that so many of these women report that their managers tell them dress more sexy, show more cleavage, wear tighter clothing in order to make more money and tips, which means they're not tolerating harassment, they're encouraged to encourage harassment. Now when you couple that with race in this country, and you have women of color, who not only are segregated into more casual restaurants because of employer discrimination - they're not in fine dining. There tend to be in very casual restaurants and chains where you earn a lot less in tips. All of that results in a $5 per hour wage gap between black women tipped workers and white men tipped workers like Joshua Chaisson’...
‘The reason that the seven states that have a full minimum wage as proposed by the raise the wage act, have one half the rate of sexual harassment is that women in those states do not rely entirely on tips to feed their families. And so if a man tries to grab them, a customer or says something to them, they could say goodbye, or they could say no to what the man is asking them to do, because they can count on a wage from their employer like every other worker in every other industry. If you talk to any expert on sexual harassment, the source of harassment is the power dynamic between a woman and her harasser’...
‘Most people in America don't even know there is a sub minimum wage for tipped workers. And the polling shows that once they find out there is a sub minimum wage, there's overwhelming support from people of both parties, for these workers to be paid a full minimum wage and for tips to be on top of the wage, rather than for consumers to be subsidizing employers by paying for their wages through their tips.’"
Yet you always see tipped workers claiming they prefer tipping. They can't imagine that not everyone is as lucky as them (or overestimate their earnings). Maybe that speaks to individualism in the US
The Anti-Waiter Sentiment That Made Automat Restaurants Go Mainstream - "People in the late 1800s really did not like waiters. Though waiters were still a novelty—they sprung up with the rise of the restaurant earlier that century—they had come to be regarded as a burden to service and, especially in the United States, were assailed for their unpleasantness... waiters represented a special kind of annoyance: in a restaurant, a customer is “preyed upon by the thought that [his waiter] is hovering over him, watching his every movement, and ready to ‘size him up’ in proportion to the amount of his order.” Another driver of the anti-waiter sentiment was the expectation of tipping, a European import that was maligned in the United States as “offensively un-American.” Because waiters were already viewed as a strain on customers, the prospect of tipping them was outrageous. A popular 1916 book, The Itching Palm: A Study of the Habit of Tipping in America, noted that “the gift of a quarter to a waiter as a tip is an unsound transaction because the patron receives nothing in return—nothing of like substantiality.” Harper’s Monthly Magazine in 1913 said tipping was “a gross and offensive caricature of mercy… it curses him that gives and him that takes,” and as far back as 1877, the New York Times lamented, “When the waiter rushes forward to take your coat, hang it up, drag out your chair … for this wonderful galvanization of the waiter, what does it mean? Merely that he considers it probable, nay certain, that some of the silver change in your pocket will be transferred to his.”... Beginning in the late 1800s, restaurants went to great lengths to develop “waiterless” systems to please their customers. These mostly failed attempts tried replacing waiters with a mix of conveyer belts, dumbwaiters in the centers of tables, and—in one particularly odd case—500 mini electric cars... The way Automats worked was simple. The walls inside each store were lined with a series of small windows, each of which contained an item of food. Customers inserted a coin, and the window unlocked, allowing them to pull out a meal. There were no waiters, no tips, and food came fast... By 1927, there were 15 Automats in New York City. Around World War II, at the height of the Automat’s popularity, Horn & Hardart had over 80 locations in Philadelphia and New York. They were serving 350,000 customers per day... By the middle of the 20th century, the wave of anti-waiter hysteria that catapulted Automats to prominence seems to have dissipated. Around the same time, Automats were losing their ubiquity as other, more convenient fast-food restaurants—like McDonald’s—began cropping up. But though the last Horn & Hardart Automat closed in 1991, anti-waiter sentiment hasn’t faded completely: just read Yelp reviews"
Dad Facing Criminal Charges For Accusing Woke Activist Of ‘Grooming’ - "The charges come even as Fairfax County prosecutor Steve Descano — a progressive who narrowly won his primary election with the help of funding from George Soros — has pledged not to prosecute minor crimes that “disproportionately hurt people of color,” and routinely declines to pursue crimes he deems minor. Last month, Descano’s office let off a woman who allegedly violently abused an infant. On March 18, the office told the judge it would not pursue the woman because “there are no ACA’s [prosecutors] available for a four-day jury trial beginning on March 21, 2022.”... Magistrate Richard M. Miller issued two misdemeanor summons against Jackson citing Section 18.2-417, an obscure law enacted in 1950 making it illegal to “slander and libel” the chastity of a woman. In the 1970s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the criminalization of speech protected by the First Amendment, but the Virginia statute has remained in code. In 2020, the Democrat-controlled Virginia legislature changed the language to make it illegal to express “words derogatory” about a “person’s character for virtue and chastity,” instead of a “female’s character.” The summons said Jackson’s words could break the law by being insults that “tend to violence and breach of the peace.”"
When justice is politicised
