Gaetz on Tucker names person he claims is extorting his family, claims it’s a former DOJ official named David McGee
Gaetz again categorically denies having ever dated a 17-year-old
ftr, I think any of this (the teen, the extortion, the FBI involvement, etc) could be true, any of it could be lies, and one part being true doesn’t necessarily negate the other parts
The New York Times et al say Matt Gaetz is under investigation for violating "sex trafficking laws" for allegedly inducing someone under age 18 across state lines for sex. But if there was no *prostitution* involved, he's not under investigation for sex trafficking...
And if there was prostitution & a minor involved, state lines are irrelevant.
I know most people will find the distinction irrelevant. But I think it's important that things can be morally wrong and/or against criminal laws surrounding sex without automatically being labeled as sex trafficking...
Lots of fun stuff in a recent @voxdotcom & @DataProgress poll on billionaires — turns out, most people don't think they should be abolished, nor that they're destroying democracy! — but the best parts related to tech companies & CEOs reason.com/2021/03/30/ame…
Bill Gates and Elon Musk elicited significantly more *favorable* views than not—55% favorable v. 35% unfavorable for Gates & 50% v 23% for Musk.
The only tech CEOs in the poll that people viewed more unfavorably than favorably was Mark Zuckerberg, with 54% seeing him negatively & just 31% seeing him positively reason.com/2021/03/30/ame…
I am generally Twitter’s #1 fan but I find myself able to stomach it less & less recently. The “anti woke” — if they ever weren’t — have become just as tedious & predictable & tribal & omnipresently obnoxious as those they claim to oppose....
... People tell me I don’t understand how bad it’s gotten... but I’ve been in feminist & social justice spaces online since 2004. What I understand— better than anyone who thinks this is a new or rising phenomenon—is how bankrupt people will go becoming its foil —
—tuning themselves into nothing else but opposing the excesses of the progressive left—and how little that will make one dam bit of difference. You can temporarily become a centrist hero for it, sure, but the drama gadflys still buzz right on & the problems of the world persist
This is a thing in the U.S. too. @Polaris_Project has for years been pushing for laws that won't let massage parlors take basic precautions under the guise that this will help stop sex trafficking...
And U.S. authorities *routinely* use things like locked doors during business hours, women using assumed names, multiple entrances & exits, etc., as "evidence" of sex trafficking and prostitution in cases against the workers there...
Things that any normal person might view as basic precautions to keep people safe in a workplace w/all female staff & largely male clientele (who may have unrealistic expectations for service) are listed in police reports again and again as evidence of "human trafficking"
All of the men — of different races, and most not rich — had the charges dropped. I wish people would stop framing the Kraft stories in such simplistic terms...
The Kraft story is best understood as part of the gov't war on sex workers, period.
This crusade falls disproportionately on women, people of color, & the poor.
Asian massage parlors have been one huge target of it
But neither they *nor their clients* should be criminalized
Socolow is right that the Fla. massage parlor busts & their outcomes show discrimination against Asian women in the US. But it also goes far beyond that...
The deadline for ERA ratification expired almost 40 years ago, but Democrats refuse to let it go reason.com/2021/03/16/att…
Suspiciously, none say what the ERA today would actually change—just present it as self-evidently necessary, & Republican opponents as evil sexists... Almost like this is just politics + performative social justice, not something to materially help women! reason.com/2021/03/16/att…
So, at best, the ERA today is a meaningless political charade. At worst, it would turn into Title IX for grown-ups, letting the feds bully & sue states for basically anything under the guise of stopping sex discrimination