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WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 30: U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) poses a question to witnesses at a hearing of ... [+] the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on June 30, 2020 in Washington, DC. The committee is examining efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic while putting people back to work and kids back in school. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)

The Internet is having a bit of fun with Rand Pauls claim during a Tuesday Senate committee hearing that We shouldnt presume that a group of experts somehow knows whats best (heres Tommy Beer with more). After all, theyre the experts. Shouldnt we get out of the way and do as the experts tell us?

No. Rand Paul is right.

Friedrich Hayek was famously skeptical of experts because they have a tendency to stretch beyond their expertise and make claims, recommendations, or policies that are beyond the narrow confines of their expertise. They also tend to collapse social problems into frameworks and models that seem easy to manipulate but that leave out a lot of important on-the-ground knowledge that, Hayek argued, is of a kind that is inaccessible to an outside observer. In short, it is easy to mistake a model for the actual underlying reality. It is just as easy to identify important considerations and act as if they are the only

In a 2014 book, William Easterly highlighted and criticized The Tyranny of Experts (I reviewed it for Regulation here). His subtitle is revealing and relevant to the present moment: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor. Experts can identify facts and make recommendations, certainly, but theyre not well-positioned to know the specific trade-offs and decisions people should make in light of what they know.

Probably the best illustration of this that I've seen is not a dense academic treatise but the February 6, 2013 installment of the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. A gentleman in a coat and tie stands in front of a tank of fluid in which someone is floating like Luke Skywalker in the bacta tank in The Empire Strikes Back. He says Weve encased everyone in a vat of gelatin, with nutrition fed directly into their mouths. Once a day, the gelatin is electrically excited so as to stimulate their bodies to aerobic exercise! They all live to at least 150.

The cartoons caption says fortunately, public health advocates have no legislative power.

Thats the important point relevant to Rand Pauls statement on Tuesday. In the cartoon, the experts have created and are enthusiastic about a technology that will lead to long lives. However, I think most of us would agree that floating in a tank of gelatineven if youre hooked up to Robert Nozicks experience machineisnt really living.

Paul makes the important point that a bit of humility is in order. An expert is very well-positioned to say if you do these things, then you can expect the following effects with the following probabilities. Only in the most extraordinary of circumstancesand even then, I'm still extremely skepticalshould they presume to tell others exactly which choices they should make.

On this, I think this passage from Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations is relevant. Ill let him have the last word:

The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

Read more here:
Rand Paul Is Right About Experts - Forbes

A Senate hearing over the nations coronavirus response got pretty heated on Tuesday, with Sen. Rand Paul questioning whether the countrys top infectious disease experts have been doing more harm than good during the pandemic.

It is a fatal conceit to believe any one person or small group of people has the knowledge necessary to direct an economy or dictate public health behavior, the Republican and libertarian from Kentucky said during the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing. We shouldnt presume that a group of experts somehow knows whats best for everyone.

His argument was that health experts and government planners are weighing in on subjects and expressing opinions that affect everyday public life before getting all of their facts straight. Its important to realize that if society meekly submits to an expert and that expert is wrong, a great deal of harm may occur when we allow one mans policy or one group of small men and women to be foisted on an entire nation, he said.

And Paul, who tested positive for the coronavirus in March, when he drew flak for not quarantining while he was awaiting his test results, directed some of his sharpest rebukes toward Anthony Fauci on Tuesday.

Dr. Fauci, every day, virtually every day, we seem to hear from you things we cant do, he said. But when youre asked, Can we go back to school? I dont hear much certitude at all. Well, maybe. It depends.

All I hear, Dr. Fauci, is, We cant do this, we cant do that. We cant play baseball. Well, even thats not based on the science.

We just need more optimism, Paul said.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responded by noting he agrees with a lot of what Paul said, particularly with regards to people sharing opinions not backed by scientific data.

He also said that we need to do whatever we can to get the children back in school. But, Fauci continued, Sometimes you have to make extrapolations because youre in a position where you need to give some sort of recommendation.

And he noted that his recommendations are often interpreted in ways that he did not intend.

The only thing that I can do is, to the best of my ability, give you the facts.

I never said we cant play a certain sport, he said. (Although it should be noted that he did recently warn that football may not happen this year on CNN.) I agree with you. I am completely unqualified to tell you whether you can play a sport or not, he continued. The only thing that I can do is, to the best of my ability, give you the facts and the evidence associated with what I know about this outbreak. Thank you.

Watch some of that exchange here

The back-and-forth had Pauls name trending on Twitter TWTR, +3.42% on Tuesday afternoon, as the debate illustrated the split opinions Americans have had to the widespread closures and social distancing guidelines across the country since the pandemic began. And that drew plenty of heated reactions online.

More than 2.5 million Americans have been infected with COVID-19, and 129,545 and counting have died as of Tuesday afternoon. And as cases continue to climb across many parts of the country, Fauci also warned on Tuesday that the number of confirmed coronavirus infections could go up to 100,000 a day.

Related:Fauci makes dire warning for America in the ongoing fight against coronavirus

Read more of MarketWatchs coronavirus coverage here.

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WATCH: Rand Paul boils Dr. Faucis coronavirus response down to we cant do this, we cant do that - MarketWatch

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Dear Editor: In response to Dave Zweifel's "Plain Talk: The latest proof the world has been turned upside down: Rand Paul's objection to an anti-lynching bill":

Lynching is still not a federal hate crime in this country due to the objections that one senator, Rand Paul, had to the bill. His argument is that the definition of lynching is too broad. He says the breadth of the definition both cheapens the issue of lynching and could lead to miscarriages of justice by sentencing those tried to 10 years in prison for inflicting only minor injuries.

To require a threshold of how effectively a hate crime is carried out is to misunderstand the purpose and precedent of hate crimes. Hate crimes are about intent and motive. Indeed, this is the power of its legal status and what would differentiate this crime in many ways from murder and attempted murder. Ten and 20-year sentences for hate-based death threats and arson attempts are common.

Rand Paul's argument that you need to be lynched enough to use the term seems a textbook double-standard and a sinister example of the system telling Black people, "it's not that bad," "stop complaining," "get over it."

Confusing this double-standard slightly is that cross burning is a hate crime with origins tied up in much of the same white-on-black racial terror as lynching. Louie Revette was just sentenced to 11 years in federal prison in November 2019 for a cross burning carried out near the homes of African American residents. It seems we have managed to appropriately criminalize cross burning, but not the act its threatening presence implies.

Original post:
Annette Ritchie: Objection to anti-lynching bill sets a sinister double standard - Madison.com

SLAVERY POLITICS-Emancipation Day celebrations concluded this weekend, accompanied by significant talk among elected officials about finally recognizing Juneteenth as a national holiday.

However, the specter of the stalled federal Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Actshould remind us of the continuing struggle by Black Americans to obtain not only freedom, but also security.

After the Civil War, Black Americans enjoyed a precarious freedom in which extralegal violence was a common problem. For the newly freed, exercising their liberty could bring violent rebuke.

Juneteenth should not only be a commemoration of emancipation, but also a reminder of the work ahead in making the promise of freedom and equality that so many Black Americans fought and died for a reality.

Such was the case in July 1867 when Union War veteran William Obie Evans was lynchedin Delaware. Enslaved near Fredericksburg, Maryland, Evans initially asserted his freedom under the Emancipation Proclamation. Like nearly 180,000 other Black Americans, he later enlisted in the Union Army. He served in the U.S. Colored Troops and on July 30, 1864, was wounded during the Battle of the Crater outside of Petersburg, Virginia.

After mustering out of the service in 1865, Evans faced the same challenge as other Black Union veterans. They awaited payment on enlistment bounties without an immediate means of making a living. Evans travelled to Delaware, where he bartered with a local farmer by putting up his bounty papers in exchange for a cash loan that he would presumably pay off with his labor.

When he later learned that the bounties were being paid, Evans asked the farmer to release him from his bond so that he could claim his bounty and repay the loan. The farmer, however, was more interested in retaining Evanss labor and refused. A few days later, a mysterious fire destroyed one of the farmers barns and outhouses. Although no evidence connected Evans to the fire, suspicion immediately fell on him.

A few nights later, a party of masked men arrived on the farm to mete out their own form of justice. The next day, Evanss body was discovered dangling from the limbs of a willow tree a short distance from the farmers home. Despite his service to the Union Army, Evans was buried in a common grave. A Black woman with whom Evans was familiar was ultimately tried and acquitted for the arson.

Evanss murder predates the thousands of lynchingsthat occurred in the United States between 1882 and 1968 that normally occupy our attention. In a recent study, Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson documentedmore than 2,000 lynchings between 1865 and 1877, underscoring the longer history of such extralegal violence and its impact on Black communities.

Stevensons work demonstrates the importance of examining the long history of racial violence in America. The pain that comes from learning about unpunished and forgotten acts of terror like lynchings can be as impactful as witnessing acts of violence against Black and brown bodies in our own time.

It passed the House of Representatives in February after more than 100 years of efforts by a vote of 410 to 4, only to be obstructed in the U.S. Senate by a single lawmaker, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul.This work of historical recovery can support activists efforts. In addition to honoring celebrations such as Juneteenth and pushing for police abolition, we must draw on history to push for the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act and demonstrate the necessity for such legislation in its strongest form.

The proposed bill, which would establish lynching as a federal crime, is now stalledin Congress. It passed the House of Representatives in February after more than 100 years of efforts by a vote of 410 to 4, only to be obstructed in the U.S. Senate by a single lawmaker, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul.

Finding constructive ways to reckon with painful chapters in our history is also a powerful tool for addressing the underlying trauma that informs so many of our discussions of race, violence, and criminal justice in America. It can unite communities in the search for truth and invite conversations about changing values that should inform memorials that decorate the public spaces we share. In either case, historical recovery is a critical step.

Without the knowledge of what came before, it is difficult to assess and address what must be done now to reform and/or eradicate those barriers to equal justice that have allowed stories like William Obie Evanss to be lost. This is exactly why stories, like that of Evans, must be recovered and shared.

Evanss lynching is not currently recognized as an act of racial violence in Delaware. This means the state also does not formally acknowledge the murder of a veteran as a wrongdoing.

Let that sink in.

Juneteenth should not only be a commemoration of emancipation, but also a reminder of the work ahead in making the promise of freedom and equality that so many Black Americans fought and died for a reality -- which includes the passage of legislation like the proposed anti-lynching bill.

(Yohuru Williams is an education activist and professor of history at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut. He is the author, editor,or co-editor of several books, including Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights Black Power and Black Panthers in New Haven (Blackwell,2006), Teaching Beyond the Textbook: Six Investigative Strategies (Corwin Press, 2008), and Liberated Territory: Toward a Local Historyof the Black Panther Party (Duke, 2008). He also served as general editor for the Association for the Study of African American Life andHistorys 2002 and 2003 Black History Month publications, The Color Line Revisited (Tapestry Press, 2002) and The Souls of Black Folks:Centennial Reflections (Africa World Press, 2003).

Savannah Shepherd is the founder of the Delaware Social Justice Remembrance Coalition which works to discover and memorialize victims of racial violence in the state. She's a graduate of Sanford School and will attend Swarthmore College in fall 2020.) This piece appeared in Common Dreams. Photo: Photo: Ron Cogswell/flickr/cc. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Read more here:
There's No Excuse for Blocking the Anti-Lynching Bill - City Watch

Todays SYSTEM UPDATE episode about this topic with guests Krystal Ball and Nathan Robinson can be viewed onThe Intercepts YouTube channelor on the player below.

A significant ideological split withinGOP politicsis as clear andvitriolicas the one within the Democratic Party. Andthat growing division meansthat, along with vehement differences, there is ample agreement on specific, consequential issues between the factions that identify as the populist left and populist right. Oftenthere is more agreement between them than either group finds with the establishment wing of the political party with which they most identify.

In 2016, Donald Trump campaigned on (though he most certainly did not ultimately govern) in opposition tonumerous long-standing Republican orthodoxies: he railed against job-killing free trade agreements, vowed to raise taxes on the rich and eliminate corporate lobbyist control over the legislative process, venerated the need to protect and even increase social programs, and most viciously scorned the Bush familys imperialism and regime change wars.That he won the GOP nomination against highly-funded, establishment-backed candidates such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio demonstrates that there is at least now tolerance, if not outright support, for those positions that had been taboo in mainstream Republican politics.

Polling shows that classic left-wing economic positions such as universal health care coverage and raising the minimum wage command majority support, proving those views extend beyond left-wing precincts.One of the political officials most devoted to and passionate about breaking up monopolistic power long a central left-wing goal is the right-wing Senator Josh Hawley, who also opposes international free trade organizations such as the WTO (the defining goal of the left-wing 1999 Seattle protests).

When Bernie Sanders wanted to impose limits on Trumps ability to bomb Yemen, he found key support with theright-wing Tea PartySenator Mike Lee; the same was true of Dennis Kucinichs partnership with Ron Paul to audit the Fed and Cory Bookers work with Rand Paul to usher in radical criminal justice reform. The host of the most-watched Fox News program, Tucker Carlson, has railed against the evils of predatory capitalism, supported AOCs efforts to impede tax breaks to Amazon, given a sympathetic hearing to a pro-Maduro journalist opposed to regime change in Venezuela, and played a significant role in stopping air strikes against both Syria and Iran.

The reason these two factions have different names left-wingpopulism andright-wing populism is that, in addition to these convergences, they have serious and meaningful divergences. Trump as President adhered to almost none of his orthodoxy-busting campaign rhetoric. Hawleys economic populistbranding can ring hollow when set next to his support for corporate tax cuts that benefit the rich and his opposition to liveable wage legislation. And Carlsons repellent-to-liberalism views led byhis support for authoritarian responses toprotesters and his racially divisive rhetoric are legion.

But none of those serious divergencesnegates the fact that the left which does not come close to claiming a majority of the population finds common ground with thepopulist faction of the right on some of its most important political positions. And there are millions of people across the country who identity as conservative or on the right due to their views on social issues and immigration but hold economically left-wing populist views.

The question then becomes: what should the left do in those cases? Should it work in conjunction with those on the right to build a majority and implement those policies, and engage in dialogue with opinion leaders and media figures on the right to reach more people who can be persuaded to think in trans-partisan, working-class terms? Or should it declare anyone associated with the populist right off-limits even for issue-by-issue collaboration on the ground that other views they hold are pernicious? And if holding pernicious views renders those on the populist right radioactive and off-limits, why is the same not true of establishment Democrats who have led the way to construct and champion the racist prison state, the drug war, jobs-destroying free trade agreements, regime change wars from Iraq to Libya, blind support for Israeli aggression, and a whole slew of other crucial policies utterly anathema to the left (all of which applies to Joe Biden, among others)?

This debate has been lurking for years as anti-establishment fervor and political realignment emerge not just in the U.S. but across the democratic world in the wake of the destruction wrought by the dominant neoliberal ideology. But in the U.S., it erupted over the last couple of weeks as the result of a vitriolic exchange between two smart, prominent left-wing commentators. Intwo separatearticles, Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson compared right-wing populist media figures such as Carlson and Rising co-host Saager Enjeti to Bolsonaro, Mussolini and even Hitler to insist that right-wing populism is simply a lie and nobody who is on the Left should have anything to do with it. That provokeda stinging response from one of the principal targets of Robinsonscritique, Enjetis Rising co-host Krystal Ball, who says the left should take yes for an answer as she argued that it is morally irresponsible not to find allies where one can and not to communicate with as many people as possible in order to implement a left-wing populist agenda.

Todays episode of SYSTEM UPDATE on The Intercepts YouTube channelis devoted to exploring this vital question, and I speak to both Robinson and Ball about their very different views on this question.

Continue reading here:
Should the Populist Left Work With the Populist Right Where They Have Common Ground, or Shun Them? - The Intercept - First Look Media