Tag: ban

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies

Newsom Defends Gas-​Car Ban

California, electric cars, climate change, global warming, regulations, ban

Last week, the U.S. Senate voted 51 to 44 to repeal a Biden-​era waiver that let California set its own standards for regulating air pollution, stricter than national standards. 

Congress’s action means that California may no longer ban sale of new gas-​powered cars by 2035.

With presidential prospects in mind, Governor Gavin Newsom has recently been trying to position himself as one of the less-​unhinged Democrats; he has a podcast and talks (!) to conservatives. To keep up this act, he would have had to accept defeat of his autocratic attempt to circumvent markets and outlaw consumer choice in the auto industry.

Instead, Newsom is suing to overturn Congress’s good deed, which he says is all about “making America smoggy again.”

“This is not about electric vehicles,” he says. “This is about polluters being able to pollute more.” More than what? Gas cars aren’t a new thing. And electric cars, for all their novelty and appeal, come with a host of trade-​offs from high price to extra weight to battery-​charging problems — and EV pollution. 

Slogans don’t change that.

The tradeoffs hardly make electric cars automatically preferable to consumers free to make up their own minds what kind of car to buy.

When electric cars sell and develop in competition with gas vehicles, fine; no problem. But when government makes gas vehicles disappear by fiat? The salutary incentives provided by direct competition will also disappear. And our roads become filled with ill-​fit technology.

The most fundamental issue here is not electric vehicles. And it’s not pollution. 

It’s freedom. 

To which Governor Newsom, sad to say, remains staunchly opposed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

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general freedom too much government

Les Climate Lockdowns

France, ban, heat, freedom

It’s hot outside. In southern France, very hot. Obviously (?), then, regional governments there are justified in prohibiting various outdoor activities.

Following the pandemic-​lockdown model, it is apparently now acceptable to annul the rights of French citizens if some persons may be hurt by the heat. Once again, adults are being treated as if not responsible for making their own judgments about personal risks.

In the Bordeaux area of France — the Gironde department, a “department” being a sort of county — officials recently banned various outdoor events, including concerts and commemorations of resistance to Germany during World War Two.

The department also prohibited indoor events in places that lack air conditioning.

“Everyone now faces a health risk,” one official explained, as if summer were a new thing.

We care about weather when deciding whether to proceed with events we have planned. We think nothing of calling off a parade on account of rain. By “we” I mean the organizers, who may or may not be a government entity.

But there’s a big difference between deciding oneself to cancel an event one is responsible for and a government’s decision to outlaw events produced by others.

Summer is just starting. Next comes winter. Cold.

Governments seem to be regarding the COVID-​19 lockdowns as evidence of just how much pushing around we’ll accept in the name of eliminating all risk but the risk to freedom.

A lot, seems to be the conclusion. 

We must show them otherwise. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability media and media people national politics & policies

The Worshipful and the Incurious

Fauci, Covid, Facebook, ban

Did the recent pandemic begin as a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China?

Who knows?

But in these United States there suddenly appears serious — even bipartisan — interest in finding out.

I’ve been curious for some time, but why wasn’t more of the media interested from the beginning? Why were questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology as well as the questioners often attacked?  

“[T]he newspapers I read and the TV shows I watched had assured me on many occasions that the lab-​leak theory wasn’t true,” Thomas Frank, the progressive historian and author, explains in The Guardian, “that it was a racist conspiracy theory, that only deluded Trumpists believed it, that it got infinite pants-​on-​fire ratings from the fact-​checkers,” adding that he “always trusted the mainstream news media.”

Thank goodness Senator Rand Paul confronted Dr. Fauci, again, leading to Fauci acknowledging the need for further investigation into the Wuhan lab that performed research on bat coronaviruses, arguably including gain-​of-​function research, with indirect U.S. funding. 

“Renewed focus on Wuhan lab scrambles the politics of the pandemic,” was one of several recent explanatory Washington Post articles.

Politics? 

You don’t say!

“The shifting terrain highlights how much of the early debate on the virus’s origins was colored by America’s tribal politics,” the paper reported, “as Trump and his supporters insisted on China’s responsibility and many Democrats dismissed the idea out of hand …”

The Post should include itself when referring to Trump-​blaming “Democrats.” 

Another article The Post dangled before readers captures the moment — “Facebook: Posts saying virus man-​made no longer banned.” 

In addition to the media and social media failure on this lab-​leak story, let’s not forget the “expert fail.” Mr. Frank fears that if Big Science is found to be the cause of the pandemic, it “could obliterate the faith of millions” in “the expert-​worshiping values of modern liberalism.”

We should be so lucky. 

What’s next: a release of Fauci’s emails?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

Pick Your Poison

cigarette, menthol, racism

Are cigarettes containing menthol-​flavored tobacco racist?

Follow the science! It is an absolute fact that those menthol smokes “disproportionately addict — and kill — Black Americans.”

The reason? “Only 29 percent of White smokers choose menthol, as opposed to 85 percent of African American smokers, according to a National Survey on Drug Use and Health,” The Washington Post explains, “fueled by more than half a century of Big Tobacco aggressively marketing them specifically to Black Americans.”

Catch that causation claim? The black-​and-​white difference between racial group affinity with this flavor is the fault of cunning (white?) advertising execs with a racist penchant for hooking unsuspecting blacks. 

Never addressed — or apparently even considered? The possibility that tobacco companies are targeting their promotional efforts in relation to the obvious preferences of their customers.

It is in the news because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration must officially address, by April 29, a formal regulatory petition “demanding menthol cigarettes be banned.”

Support for outlawing menthol-​flavoring based on racial justice rationales meets plenty of opposition based on racial … sanity.

“Opposition,” notes The Post, “come[s] from GOP and Democratic officials as well as civil rights groups.” 

The idea of providing another police enforcement flashpoint by outlawing an addictive substance used overwhelmingly by blacks seems a non-​starter. “We do not think kids should be put in jail or given a ticket for selling menthol,” offered Rev. Al Sharpton.* “You’re going to give the police another reason to engage our people?”

“Banning a certain type of cigarettes because black people tend to favor them is stupid and patronizing,” one Post reader commented. “Either have the courage of your convictions and ban all cigarettes (lol) or leave this alone.”

Leave us alone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Sharpton acknowledged to The Post that his National Action Network has received funding from “R.J. Reynolds, which makes Newport cigarettes, the most popular menthol cigarette and the No. 2 U.S. cigarette brand overall.”

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nannyism too much government

Politicians & Pain

opioid, crisis, pain, drug, law, politician, ban, prohibition, control, medicine,

Whenever a new panic runs through corporate media and the grapevine — and especially when the lesson is supposed to be ‘we’ve gotta do something!’ — it is time to slow down. And look at the facts.

The opioid crisis is one of those panics.

The almost immediate reaction from politicians has been to point their quivering fingers at doctors and drug companies on the theory that doctors have been over-​prescribing opiates, instigated by pharmaceutical companies.

Seems a ‘round up the usual suspects’ approach to public health.

Now there appears to be good research to back up our skepticism. According to Cato’s Jeffrey A. Singer, recent studies show “there is no correlation between opioid prescription volume and non-​medical use or opioid use disorder among persons age 12 and over.” Nevertheless, Dr. Singer notes, “policymakers and law enforcement continue to pressure health care practitioners into undertreating patients in pain.” 

An under-​treatment result is scarier, to me, than the desperate and dangerous self-​medication problem that must lie at the core of the crisis we read about. Patients in too much pain because doctors are afraid of government harassment are pushed to unsupervised pain management … which looks an awful lot like a simple description of the opioid crisis itself.

Singer provides confirmation of an unintended effect: the fentanyl and heroin overdose rate “continues apace” even as the opioid prescription volume plummets.

“At a recent international breast cancer conference experts stated the under-​prescribing of opioids to breast cancer patients in the U.S. is now comparable to treatment in third world countries,” warned Singer. 

One word: yikes.

I am tempted to define today’s politics itself as a kind of pain mismanagement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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opioid, crisis, pain, drug, law, politician, ban, prohibition, control, medicine,

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Won But Not Over

smoking, vaping, ban, prohibition, teenager,

The Office on Smoking at Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is not telling the truth about the war on tobacco use.

In an article at Reason, Jacob Sullum convincingly argues that the CDC persists on portraying tobacco use amongst teens as in crisis.

According to the CDC, past progress has been “erased.”

Looked at one way, the stats are alarming: “The share of high school students who reported using e‑cigarettes in the previous month jumped from 11.7 percent in 2017 to 20.8 percent in 2018,” Sullum summarizes. 

Sounds bad, eh?

But Sullum noticed something: 

  1. the increase tobacco use is wholly the result of increased e‑cigarette usage, which is less harmful than smoking;
  2. very few of the increased number of vapers actually vape regularly, with less than 6 percent vaping daily; and
  3. smoking has dropped dramatically, with “past-​month cigarette smoking among high school students [falling] from 28.5 percent to 5.8 percent.”

So, why isn’t the CDC proclaiming victory?

Well, there is something called “Spencer’s Law.” Taken from Herbert Spencer’s essay “From Freedom to Bondage,” it goes like this: 

“The degree of public concern and anxiety about a social problem or phenomenon varies inversely as to its real or actual incidence.” 

“In plain English,” philosopher Stephen Davies explains, “this means that when a social problem is genuinely widespread and severe it will attract little notice or discussion. It will only become the object of attention, concern, and controversy precisely when it is in decline and its severity is diminishing.”

Why?

In the CDC’s case, could it have something to do with unlikely funding for a war already won?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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smoking, vaping, ban, prohibition, teenager,

From a photo by Airman 1st Class Brittany Perry

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national politics & policies Popular too much government

E‑Panic

vape, vaping, law, ban, prohibition,

One of the better arguments for government relies upon sobriety: we want rational, measured responses to threats, not panicky, hot-​headed reactions. We have a rule of law to prevent revenge and vendetta, replacing them with justice and civil order.

But when we expand the concept of “threat” far beyond interpersonal violence and to dangers from our own foolish or merely misguided behavior, “sobriety” too often doesn’t even seem an option.

Take drugs. 

Specifically, take “vaping.” 

That is the innovative technology of “e‑cigarettes” that can be used to replace the smoking of tobacco and other drugs with inhaling drug-​laced water vapor.

Vaping is far less dangerous than tobacco, at least for emphysema and lung cancer, but it is not harmless. Several hundred people across several of these United States have become very ill and a few have died of a mysterious lung disease.

So of course the Surgeon General calls it an epidemic, and the White House and Congress take up the cause to regulate and even prohibit vaping. And India just “became the latest country to ban electronic cigarettes,” according to Bloomberg. 

Whoa, the subject has barely been studied, and what we know so far is that it was not major-​brand nicotine e‑liquid, but, instead, boutique product that has caused most of the casualties. 

The leap to legislation has been too quick for consumers to alter their own behavior with new information.

Besides, prohibition and regulation haven’t worked to prevent the current opiate overdose crisis.

The rush to “do something very, very strong,” as President Trump puts it, is the very opposite of why we say we want government.

Its lack of sobriety is … sobering.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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vape, vaping, law, ban, prohibition,

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crime and punishment

Prisoners All

drug war, prison, jail, prohibition, ban, freedom,

The logic for drug prohibition is direct: to keep people from hurting themselves with recreational drugs, we must prevent them from accessing those drugs.

Voilà!

There are a number of things wrong with that, though, and one is this: governments cannot even keep illegal drugs out of prisons. 

In California, nearly 1,000 men and women overdosed last year in “an alarming spike in opioid use by those behind bars,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Steven Greenhut, writing in Reason, notes that confinement centers are “among the most tightly controlled environments on Earth, yet correction officials can’t figure out how to deal with dramatic spikes in the number of inmates who are dying from drug overdoses and alcohol poisoning.”

Doesn’t this make the prohibitionist “solution” absurd?

“If they can’t keep heroin off of death row,” Greenhut concludes, “then maybe they should rethink their ability to control the rest of us.”

There is a problem, here, though — it is easier to control “the rest of us.”

As with gun control laws, it is the law-​abiding folks who fall in line. It is the edgier, less civic-​minded people who tend to rebel. 

But the two issues remain distinct: generally lawful and level-​headed citizens still need to defend themselves from criminals, but do not feel a need to take drugs that can be deadly even in innocent hands. Thus the War on Drugs seems a bit less obviously tragic than gun control. 

Which is why conceiving of the War on Drugs as unworkable prison policy writ large remains important.

Why would we want to make our society more like drug-​ridden prisons?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

drug war, prison, jail, prohibition, ban, freedom,

Photo credit: Thomas Quine

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First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people Regulating Protest

James Woods, Parody, and a Pillow

James Woods, Twitter, censorship, free speech, ban, parody, satire

The beginning of the end of actor James Woods’s time on Twitter likely occurred on July 20, 2018.

Only recently discovering a tweet that he posted then, Twitter has locked Woods out of a forum where his right-​leaning messages have been followed by 1,730,000 people.

His delinquent tweet forwarded an image of giddily grinning guys promising to abstain from voting so that a woman’s vote would be “worth more.” Woods tweeted: “Pretty scary that there is a distinct possibility this could be real. Not likely, but in this day and age of absolute liberal insanity, it is at least possible.”

Twitter told the actor that if he agreed to the deletion of this fake-​news tweet — simple enough — it would let him tweet once again.

Woods refuses.

“Free speech is free speech — it’s not [Twitter CEO] Jack Dorsey’s version of free speech,” Woods says. “The irony is, Twitter accused me of affecting the political process, when in fact their banning of me is the truly egregious interference.… If you want to kill my free speech, man up and slit my throat with a knife, don’t smother me with a pillow.”

There’s lots more where that came from, but you get the idea. I don’t, um, strictly agree with everything Woods says here. But I can only applaud the spirit of his refusal to submit to Twitter’s arbitrary standards of acceptable speech.

Oh, and one other thing: somebody tell Twitter that parodies are inherently fake.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom media and media people moral hazard responsibility

Blame the App?

WhatsApp, India, murder, responsibility, cause, effect, law, ban, blame

Who spreads “fake news”?

Gossips, politicians, publicity agents, Twitter eggs, partisan bloggers, lying news journalists?

Or … the medium of communication they use? 

Do envelopes, stationery, telephones, email, and messaging apps have moral agency?

And who commits the crimes that news (true or false) is used to rationalize?

A New York Times story discusses “How WhatsApp Leads Mobs to Murder in India,” which is like saying that civilization, flying lessons and boarding passes “led” terrorists to 9/​11.

The Times reports that fake news about children being kidnapped — dramatized by doctored video clips and forwarded via WhatsApp, a messaging app — provoked anger and fear in many Indians. Some were then willing to attack anyone who “seemed” about to kidnap children. 

In recent months, dozens of people have been murdered for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Without social media and the mega-​popular WhatsApp, the murders probably would not have happened, at least not the way they happened. That seems certain. But this doesn’t mean that without WhatsApp, nobody in India would spread false stories or assault innocent people. 

Mob violence in the country antedates the Internet.

Perhaps a thousand material circumstances directly or indirectly enable any particular act of wrongdoing. But no such prerequisites “lead to” anything without individual choices.

If someone pretends it’s okay to kill innocent persons — or persons whose guilt or innocence he doesn’t care to know — he, the killer, is the guilty party. The telecommunications network or messenger app used to provide grist for excuse-​making is innocent.

Apps don’t murder people. People murder people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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