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Celebs vs. Amnesty: Do The Entertainment Elite Hate Women?

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English: Sex workers demonstrating for better ...
Sex workers demonstrating for better working conditions at the 2009 Marcha Gay in Mexico City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pin it on the pimps, say the signers of an open letter to Amnesty International . “[H]uman beings bought and sold in the sex trade, who are mostly women, must not be criminalized …. However, what your ‘Draft Policy on Sex Work’ is incomprehensibly proposing is the wholesale decriminalization of the sex industry, which in effect legalizes pimping, brothel owning and sex buying.”

Prostitution probably isn’t “the world’s oldest profession,” as some like to call it — hunting and gathering likely briefly preceded it — but it’s certainly close. Anything that people value, they’ll buy and sell.

Most people value sex,  exchanging it through various barter systems. Dinner and a movie for a one-night stand. Perhaps a set of rings and commingling of property as part of a lifetime arrangement understood to include, among other benefits, physical intimacy.

Or, back to that movie, the price of a ticket for a vicarious but nonetheless titillating experience featuring the likes of Debra Winger, Lena Dunham, Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway and Kate Winslet, all signers of the letter.

Amnesty’s critics have it backward. There’s no sex work without sex workers. Pimps can’t broker transactions in, nor can “Johns” purchase, something that isn’t for sale. And as the public-facing part of the business, the workers are the easy ones to detect and to persecute. Where prostitution remains illegal, it is they who suffer.

On the other hand, if prostitution is legal, the specter of “human trafficking” will inevitably decline.

As we’ve learned from alcohol and drug prohibition, criminalizing trade in something people want merely pushes that trade into the domain of players who are willing to risk arrest — and resort to violence — for profit.

Legal prostitution might or might not be pretty, depending on one’s personal moral views. But pretty or not, criminalizing it only makes things worse. It actively harms the women who are the vast majority of sex workers. It corrupts law enforcement. It exposes sex workers (and their customers) to unnecessary dangers. And it empowers violent pimps and human traffickers by making their way of doing things profitable.

I prefer to give the celebrities who signed this letter, and who have taken up “stopping human trafficking” as a personal crusade, the benefit of doubt. I don’t think they actually hate women in general, or even female sex workers. But if they don’t, they should support Amnesty’s call for decriminalization.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“Defense” Spending: Time For More Than Cosmetic Cuts

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Military expenditure as percent of GDP, data t...
Military expenditure as percent of GDP, data taken from the CIA factbook. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The US Army is on track to reduce its size from current levels (490,000 troops) to 450,000 in 2017 and 420,000 by 2019. In a July 24 editorial, the New York Times came out in mild support of the half-measure and against “maintaining bases and a level of troops that go beyond what the country needs and can afford.”

The Times doesn’t go far enough. The cuts are, at best, a good start. By any reasonable “need and affordability” standard, military (euphemistically referred to as “defense”) spending cuts should go far deeper. A worthwhile goal would be to cut US military spending by 75% between now and 2025.

If those cuts seem unduly deep, keep in mind that military spending is the single largest item in the federal budget, and that the US has now shouldered the burden of defending western Europe and the Pacific Rim since the end of World War II.

We’ve been waiting for our promised “peace dividend” for nearly a quarter of a century since the collapse of the  Warsaw Pact. It’s time to furl the US “defense umbrella” and let Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan and other US clients assume responsibility for (and cover the costs of) their own defenses.

Through the first half of this decade, the partisan fight over military spending has devolved from an argument over how much to increase that spending (the Obama administration proposed 10% growth by 2018; congressional Republicans referred to that proposal as a “draconian cut” and demanded 18% growth) to acceptance of actual minor cuts. It’s time to take the next step.

A 75% reduction would still leave the US in the position of, by far, top military spender in the world (the cut would have to be more like 90% to match China, the second place spender). Given the American weapons technology edge, an existing arsenal that can be mothballed and re-activated at need, a reserve and National Guard system which can deliver well-trained troops on relatively short notice, and a buffer zone of two oceans between the US and its most likely future enemies, 25% of current spending levels would remain an embarrassment of riches.

Politicians of both parties perpetually promise balanced budgets — some day. They’ll never get there without first reining in a military-industrial complex which has sucked America’s economy dry for three quarters of a century now.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Police Violence: An Anti-Obscenity Proposal

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NYPD Communications Division van #4018 at Hera...
NYPD Communications Division van #4018 at Herald Square. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s not surprising when Ed Mullins leaps to the defense of police officers accused of murder or other criminal abuses. After all, he’s president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, a New York City police union. Protecting cops is his job.

In a July 14 column for the New York Post, Mullins decries the city’s $5.9 million settlement with the family of Eric Garner, who died at the hands — literally, from a “chokehold” — of officer Daniel Pantaleo. The settlement, wrote Mullins, is “obscene.”

I agree with Mullins. It IS obscene. The taxpayers of New York City should never have been forced to compensate Garner’s family for his death. Those taxpayers didn’t kill Eric Garner. Daniel Pantaleo did.

Of course, Mullins wouldn’t agree with how I put that. He doesn’t call the settlement obscene because he wants Pantaleo to pay. He objects because taxpayer money paid to Pantaleo’s victims can’t be paid to members of the Sergeants Benevolent Association.

Still, I have to credit Mullins with inspiring my proposal for consideration by his association, by New York City, and by police unions and city governments everywhere: Insurance.

Yes, insurance. Cities should require every police officer in their employ to carry a $10 million liability policy for torts inflicted while on duty. Prosecuting cops for crimes committed in uniform is always a dicey proposition, but there’s no reason the civil end can’t work like any other insurance situation. There’s a claim. If it’s denied, there’s a lawsuit, a verdict or a settlement, and the insurer coughs up any damages instead of sticking the taxpayers with the check.

With unionized departments, of course, the insurance requirement will have to be negotiated into the labor contract. As will a clause making uninsurable cops subject to immediate dismissal from the force and ejection from the union.

If that sounds like a bitter pill for an Ed Mullins to swallow, here’s the sugar coating: There’s no reason the unions can’t provide the insurance policies themselves: Collect the premiums as part of each member’s union dues and set them aside in trust for rainy days when claims get paid. Eventually — if the actuaries get it right — profits will flow into the union’s general fund. That prospect should warm any union president’s heart.

An insurance scheme of this kind will also incentivize the thin blue line to police its own. If insurance premiums go up, cops and union reps will know which comrades to have a “come to Jesus” talk with.

Pandemic police violence is a problem that will be solved, one way or another. This is a way for Mullins to stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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