Ross Marchand for E21: The nation’s space program often entails sucking billions of taxpayer dollars into black holes. President Trump’s fiscal 2019 budget proposal, released Feb. 12, gives taxpayers a pleasant break from space oddities. The budget proposes the removal of government funding for the International Space Station by 2024, turning the project over to the private sector. Already this proposal is receiving criticism from some fiscal hawks blindsided by their love for federal forays into space.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called space station privatization backers “numbskulls,” reasoning that “as a fiscal conservative … one of the dumbest things you can to is cancel programs after billions in investment when there is still serious usable life ahead.” Cruz is normally no fan of federal funding, but Texas is home to Houston’s Johnson Space Center, which oversees the space station. All politics is local.
Cruz and others suggest that privatizing the the International Space Station would mean squandering the $80 billion to $100 billion already invested in it over the past few decades. But just because the government invests in basic research does not mean that it has to fund and manage the project forever. By privatizing its share of the Space Station, the government could save the approximately $3 billion spent in annual upkeep by NASA. NASA dubiously justifies the drain on its budget by pointing to a myriad of scientific advancements coming from research conducted at the Space Station, even though those could be undertaken by private companies.
First Amendment protects anonymous political speech
Trevor Burrus and Reilly Stephens for the Cato Institute: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has currently set his sights on Citizens United, a Virginia nonprofit that produces conservative documentaries. While Citizens United has solicited donations in New York for decades without any problem, Schneiderman now demands that they name names, telling him who has chosen to support the group. Citizens United challenged this demand in court, arguing that to disclose this information would risk subjecting its supporters to harassment and intimidation.
These fears are not mere hyperbole. If the name “Citizens United” rings a bell, it’s because the organization, and the Supreme Court case of the same name, has become the Emmanuel Goldstein of the American Left, complete with Democratic senators leading a ritualistic two minutes hate on the Senate floor. In 2010, the Supreme Court upheld its right to distribute “Hillary: The Movie,” and ever since, “Citizens United” has been a synecdoche for what Democrats consider to be the corporate control of America. Is it unwarranted to think that its donors might be subjected to the sort of targeted harassment suffered by lawful gun owners, or that Schneiderman might “accidentally” release the full donor list to the public, as Obama’s IRS did with the confidential filings of gay marriage opponents?
The Supreme Court has long recognized the dangers inherent in applying the power of the state against the right of private association. The cornerstone here is 1958’s NAACP v. Alabama. For reasons that hardly need be pointed out, the NAACP did not trust the state of Alabama, in the 1950s, to be good stewards of its membership lists. …
But the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has decided it knows better than the Supremes. … It ruled that Citizen United’s challenge should be thrown out without even an opportunity to prove its case. In the process, it effectively turned NAACP into a “Jim Crow” exception to a general rule of unlimited government prerogative to panoptic intrusion into citizens’ political associations. While there can be no doubt that the struggle for civil rights presented a unique danger for its supporters, that should not mean that only such perils warrant First Amendment protection.
How to fix Facebook’s Russia problem
Dean Baker for the Center for Economic and Policy Research: It seems that bad guys (Russians and others) are using Facebook to spread all sorts of nonsense under false identities.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO and very rich person, tells us that he is very concerned about the problem but doesn’t know exactly what to do. Congress can help out Facebook and Zuckerberg. …
There are many aspects to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, but the key part is that it imposes harsh punitive damages for anyone who allows copyrighted material to be transferred through their site. If a copyright holder notifies the owner of the site that they have posted their material without authorization, the owner of the site must remove it within 48 hours or face steep penalties.
The site owner is liable for damages even if a third party posted the infringing material. That means that if someone were to post a copyrighted song in the comments section to this blog, the Center for Economic and Policy Research would be liable if it were not removed after notification.
It is important to note that the damages are punitive, not just actual. Suppose someone posts a minor hit from 30 years ago that 20 people download from this site. Given the prices commanded for downloads of old music, the actual damages would be a few cents. Nonetheless, under the DMCA, the center could be liable for thousands of dollars in damages. This can be a great model for Facebook and other potential purveyors of fake news.
