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free trade & free markets media and media people too much government

Time & Tide & Race

The big news? Daylight Saving Time may soon be history. “The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the Sleep Research Society and other medical groups have advocated for ending the practice, calling for the adoption of a permanent standard time that would not involve shifting forward each spring and falling back each autumn.”

That’s an important organizational voice for getting rid of Congress’s current jury-​rigging scheme for commerce and recreation in America.

It has costs. Imposed on us. On our sleep patterns.

But the passage quoted from CNN was not the news angle that the “Cable News Network” story, by Jacqueline Howard, emphasized.

The deleterious effects of lurching back and forth twice a year is not what CNN headlined. The fact (and commonsense conjecture) that these bi-​annual shifts are bad for us? Not as interesting as that it could all be racist.

The title of Howard’s piece is “Daylight Saving Time sheds light on lack of sleep’s disproportionate impact in communities of color.”

The key piece of information? “Growing evidence shows that lack of sleep and sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnea, remain more prevalent in Black, Asian, and Hispanic or Latino communities, and these inequities can have long-​term detrimental implications for physical health, even raising the risk of certain chronic diseases.”

If true, this is a political reason to get the Social Engineering Class to finally balk at the pseudo-​Saving chronometer-​jiggering laws.

But what does that say about said class? (A class not limited to, but somehow paradigmatically represented by, Democrats?) That they don’t care about the harm they do unless it can be shown to accrue predominantly to racial minorities?

There’s something sick here, oddly racist.

But we can accept this nonsense for the win, if it helps stop our ritual springing forward and falling back.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets

Allowed to Make a Living

In 2014, Sally Ladd started a service to help clients in the Poconos rent out their vacation homes. She posted notices on Airbnb, arranged for cleaning, and performed other chores.

But then, in 2017, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs — one of the many government agencies in the world that should not exist — told her that she was operating in Pennsylvania as a real estate broker without a license and must get one or shut down.

The obstacle was senseless. Ladd was already satisfying her customers. And getting the license would have entailed more than 300 hours of schooling, two exams, three years of apprenticeship, and opening an office in Pennsylvania. (Ladd lives in New Jersey.)

She had to shut down.

But she didn’t give up. 

She teamed up with Institute for Justice, which filed suit, arguing, in IJ’s words, that “forcing her to get a full-​blown real-​estate license violated her right to earn an honest living under the Pennsylvania Constitution.”

At first, a lower court would not even consider the case, a decision overruled by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2020. Finally, on October 31, 2022, a trial court affirmed that the “licensing requirements are unreasonable, unduly oppressive, and patently beyond the necessities of the case,” and therefore unconstitutional.

Once again, it’s IJ to the rescue! 

In a world filled with government agencies that shouldn’t exist, the Institute for Justice exists to check them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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free trade & free markets national politics & policies

The Biden’s War on Independents 

They know. They aren’t complete idiots. When enemies of the market routinely try to stop people from earning a living through restrictions like minimum wage laws and arbitrary licensing to thwart such dangerous activities as hair-​braiding, few are ignorant of the disastrous consequences.

Case in point? 

The Biden administration is on the verge of using a federal version of California’s AB5 law to mass-​slaughter the opportunities of millions of gig workers and freelancers. The administration hasn’t managed to do it legislatively. So it’s trying to inflict the damage with a Department of Labor regulation.

The idea is to stop companies from classifying independent contractors as independent contractors. Passed in California a few years ago, AB5 prohibited companies and many contractors from working with each other unless companies took them on as regular employees.

To avoid the costs of doing that, many companies instead simply ended their relationships with hundreds of thousands of gig workers. For example, Rev, a transcription service, stopped working with all freelancers residing in California.

California lawmakers knew how destructive AB5 would be when they passed it — proof-​positive being the many exceptions for politically connected groups that were stipulated as part of the law. AB5 has now been repealed and replaced by AB2257, which increases the varieties of worker exempt from the new requirements. But it still leaves many other people, like California-​based truckers, in legal limbo.  

It’s okay though, because all truckers do is deliver the stuff that all the rest of us need to survive.

This madness should not be imposed on everybody throughout the country.

And certainly not by back-​room bureaucratic machinations.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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crime and punishment First Amendment rights free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture

Okay Not to Harm

A recent appeals court ruling means that (some) doctors and other medical practitioners won’t be forced to violate their ethical principles against doing harm.

The Fifth Circuit ruling affirms a lower-​court decision “permanently enjoining [HHS] from requiring Franciscan Alliance to perform gender-​reassignment surgeries or abortions in violation of its sincerely held religious beliefs.”

What is troubling about the decision is its apparent incompleteness.

In a truly free society, no private professionals or organizations would be coerced to offer their services to anybody. Everybody would be free to participate or to decline to participate in any transaction with a prospective customer related to any medical procedure. Just as any person is now (mostly) free to patronize or not patronize any provider of a good or service.

We don’t live in that free society. But at least we can hope that no person will be compelled to provide the types of services that violate the person’s moral conscience.

Like services they believe harm others.

That harm children … including the unborn.

So the court’s ruling is fine — as far as it goes. But it seems to protect only persons making religious objections, or only members of the Franciscan Alliance, not also non-​religious medical practitioners who also morally object to providing abortions or sex-​change operations.

Which means that there is more legal work to be done to protect the rights of all of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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free trade & free markets national politics & policies political economy

Big Oil, Big Profits — Big Deal?

When President Joe Biden accused oil companies of excessive profiteering, and those profits as a cause of inflation, reactions were … mixed.

Democrats love that kind of talk. Ronald Reagan, back in his Democrat days, pitched precisely that sort of rhetoric when he campaigned for Truman’s re-election.

Republicans, along with most other Americans, are skeptical. Or just plain incredulous.

Meanwhile, what did Big Oil say?

Chevron’s CEO, Mike Wirth, took special care to complain of the president’s rhetoric, characterizing the administration as having “largely sought to criticize, and at times vilify, our industry.”

Perhaps Biden’s worst vilification was that Exxon had “made more money than God” — as if spending more money than God were his job and that he resented any money he couldn’t spend. 

EXXON responded by noting that the multinational had continued investing in infrastructure even during the pandemic lockdowns when the company “lost more than $20 billion and had to borrow more than $30 billion to maintain investment to increase capacity to be ready for post-​pandemic demand.”

In a helpful mode, the company offered that “government can promote investment through clear and consistent policy that supports U.S. resource development, such as regular and predictable lease sales, as well as streamlined regulatory approval and support for infrastructure such as pipelines.”

Biden, who ran on decreasing oil production by regulatory crackdown, received a square hit.

Nonetheless, the Democrats double-​down on their worn-​out “windfall profits” alarmism. 

After a huge hit to consumption during the lockdowns, the profits are there not as recompense for Big Oil’s regrettable big losses, but as incentives to get out of the Great Suppression. 

We should want profits to entice more investment.

Could it be that Biden wants neither?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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The Woke Mob’s Capitalism

A prominent rating system has gone “woke.”

“Exxon is rated top ten best in world for environment, social & governance (ESG) by S&P 500,” Elon Musk tweeted a few weeks ago, “while Tesla” — the billionaire’s high-​end electric car company — “didn’t make the list! ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”

We could quibble. Is “phony” the right word? “Social justice” has always been slippery. It’s a “mirage,” explained Hayek, really just a stalking horse for power.

What Musk is objecting to, though, is worth thinking about. The ESG standard is supposed to mean something … based on objective criteria. The reasons to eject Tesla from its Top Ten and place Exxon at the pinnacle are laughably transparent. It’s a woke power grab. The leftist ideology has taken over another capitalist institution, the better to create …

What?

Socialism? Fascism?

Michael Rectenwald, in a fascinating essay, calls it “woke corporatism.” 

The plan is, he writes, to “establish a woke monopolistic cartel.” Musk’s company has been “subjected to the S in ESG — the ‘social’ or ‘social justice’ quotient.”

Musk, Rectenwald argues, “has been deemed a deplorable, and thus his company does not pass ‘social justice’ muster.” In other words, the putatively pro-​inclusion folks are excluding him from the ranks of the favored.

And all because he wants free speech on a social media platform!

Laissez-​faire grew out of economists’ objections to the grinding inefficiency and over-​politicization of business. Adam Smith, back in 1776, called the pre-​liberal, insider-​based trade system “mercantilism.”

The leftist mob now pushes a neo-neo-​mercantalism, mobocracy capitalism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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