Tag: law

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crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom nannyism too much government

Beaver State Bliss

gas, Oregon, freedom, invisible hand, law, pump, control

The Great State of Oregon is not at DEFCON 1. Nor are Beaver State residents gnashing their teeth over a new law that went into effect earlier this week. 

News reports proclaimed: “People in Oregon are freaking out about the thought of pumping their own gas under a new law.” But don’t believe everything you read. 

For starters, Oregon’s new law doesn’t actually force anyone to do anything. It merely allows “retailers in counties with a population of less than 40,000 … to have self-​service gas pumps.” 

But a Facebook post by KTVL CBS 10 News in Medford took it an apparently frightening step further, asking, “Do you think Oregon should allow self-​serve gas stations statewide?” The post went viral nationwide because of responses such as this:

I’ve lived in this state all my life and I REFUSE to pump my own gas . . . 

This [is] a service only qualified people should perform. I will literally park at the pump and wait until someone pumps my gas.

Oregon is one of only two states — New Jersey, the other — where gas stations are banned from permitting customers to put gas in their own cars. Folks in the other 48 states have managed, as one Facebooker explained, “to pump gas without spilling the whole tank and triggering a Star Wars-​style explosion.”

Still, if Oregonians so revere their regulatory regime, protecting them from the indignity of pumping gas, why change the law even partially? 

Well, for economic reasons. As you might expect, gas stations across rural Oregon were closing at night, stranding many motorists.

Freer markets offer greater protection for real people … those not too perplexed by the prospect of pumping their own petrol. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism

Loco Micro Repression

Close but no cakewalk prize.

Modern social justice advocates sometimes come up with legitimate complaints … only to wander off terra firma and into cloud-​cuckoo land.

“Microaggressions” is one of these airy wanderings, and Katherine Timpf has spotted another in the ever-​growing catalog of social justice beefs:

The size of our society’s chairs is now being considered a “microaggression” against overweight people, according to a guide released by The New School, a private college in New York City. 

Proponents of this cause, Timpf notes, insist that “Microaggression is not ‘Micro’ in Impact,” and that the best response to faux pas, slights, indelicacies, and what-​have-​you is snitching to the administration and intervention from same. Quite overbearing, if you ask me. During my too brief college stint it would have been considered an insult — a microaggression? — to think that young adults could not handle minor affronts such as so helpfully listed at The New School.

But let’s get real here. Microaggressions do not justify treating adults as children and setting up college administrators as in loco parentis tribunals — much less Molotov cocktails, sucker punches or bike locks in socks. At best, as has been pointed out elsewhere, Ned’s microaggression justifies Zed’s microretaliation. Nothing more.

So how does one micro-respond? 

Manners; etiquette.

In olden times, a well-​mannered person, when snubbed or otherwise insulted had the option of responding with a cutting remark … without any actual cutting, without even raising the tone of his or her voice. 

Activists and collegians really should look into it.

And not bring up chair size: the micro-​chair/​macro-​posterior issue has too many “microaggressive” jokes built into it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom local leaders moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government

Decriminalizing Balloon Release

California, Jerry Brown, law, balloon, metallic, criminal liability

I’m sure I disagree with most of the policies California Governor Jerry Brown seeks to propose and impose. But let’s give credit where credit is due. He’s right that people should not be treated like criminals when in a burst of celebratory excess they commit the sin of unleashing helium balloons.

California lawmakers thought it would be smart to make criminals out of toddlers and other Snidely Whiplashes who “willfully release” helium balloons made of electrically conductive material.

The potential problem is real enough. When the balloons collide with power lines, they may cause power surges or brief power outages. Squirrels and birds can also cause power outages, and are far more likely to do so. Luckily, though, nobody (so far) has thought of prosecuting wayward warblers.

In vetoing the legislation to criminalize balloon release, Governor Brown said he didn’t believe “that expanded criminal liability is the best solution to the problem of electrically conductive balloons interfering with power lines. As I have said before, our Penal Code is already far too complex and unnecessarily proscriptive. Criminal penalties are not the solution to every problem.”

Correct.

Brown’s veto message may seem like simple common sense. But in an age in which kids can be suspended from school for doodling a gun or carrying a maple leaf, we have learned that rudimentary reasonableness is not necessarily standard operating procedure. 

Hence, any instance of firmly refraining from lunacy must receive our heartfelt thanks and appreciation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom local leaders national politics & policies political challengers U.S. Constitution

Wag that Tail, Dog

Maine, ranked choice voting, democracy, constitutionality, law,

Last November, Maine voters passed a ballot measure, Question 5, to begin electing their federal representatives to Congress, and their governor and state legislators, using Ranked Choice Voting. This selection mechanism allows voters to rank their choices, thereby removing the “spoiler effect” that often pushes citizens to support the lesser of two popular evils.*

Last month, Maine’s State Senate submitted advisory questions to the Maine Supreme Court about the new law’s constitutionality. 

It is indeed constitutional. “Those who argue that ranked-​choice voting conflicts with the Constitution,” explained Marshall Tinkle** in the Bangor News, “seem to be reading things into it that simply are not in the text.”

Last week, the Maine Supreme Court heard oral arguments. Justices Donald Alexander and Joseph Jabar seemed concerned about ranked-​choice voting making it easier to vote for the person and not the party. 

That’s not unconstitutional. But is it somehow bad?

“We are going to have a lot of people abandoning the political parties if ranked-​choice voting remains,” argued Alexander. Or perhaps the parties might better serve voters?

The attorney representing the Committee for Ranked Choice Voting, James Kilbreth, reminded the justices that the voters have spoken, and as to the resistance by legislators in implementing their will, he remarked, “This is the tail-​wagging-​the-​dog kind of problem.” 

The courtroom broke out in laughter when Chief Justice Leigh Saufley responded, “Mr. Kilbreth, it’s a fairly large tail.” 

I’m a big fan of ranked choice voting***, but the court’s decision is not about the policy. It’s about whether the dog (the people) will wag the tail (the legislators) or vice-versa.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Portland, the state’s largest city, has used ranked choice voting since 2011.

** And Tinkle should know, since he “wrote the book” on the subject — the reference book, The Maine Constitution.

*** I serve on the Board of Directors of FairVote, an organization that promotes ranked choice voting and other methods to make every person’s vote count.

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crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom meme moral hazard national politics & policies too much government

Which is more dangerous?

corporations, government, power, danger, government vs. corporation, which is more dangerous, law, corruption, meme, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense
Corporations cannot and do not tax, conscript, and kill under claim of legal authority to do so.
Only governments do that. 
Click below for a high resolution version of the image:
corporations, government, power, danger, government vs. corporation, which is more dangerous, law, corruption, meme, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense
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crime and punishment folly general freedom media and media people national politics & policies too much government

Not Buying a Stairway to Riches

Led Zeppelin, copyright, lawsuit

I am not a writer by trade. I don’t make a living off of these daily and weekly writing gigs. I give this stuff away, for free. The donations I ask for are there to cover bandwidth, website expertise, artwork, etc. They don’t cover my contributions.

But that doesn’t disqualify me from my occasional wonder and amazement (and worse) at how intellectual “property” is handled in America.

This week a Los Angeles jury found that the great rock band “Led Zeppelin did not plagiarize the opening chords of the rock epic Stairway to Heaven from the U.S. band Spirit,” the BBC reports. “It said the riff Led Zeppelin was accused of taking from Spirit’s 1967 song Taurus ‘was not intrinsically similar’ to Stairway’s opening.”

So, my surprise, and perhaps yours too, is that a riff, a mere riff, taken from one song and put into another, could be actionable at law. It seems to me that this would be like suing over an essay title (one has no private property rights to your headlines, no matter how original), or clever turn of phrase. Writers copy this stuff all the time. Even more commonly, they inadvertently regurgitate these writerly “riffs” from the far corners of their minds, or even think up these things separately.

But honestly, I didn’t think one could sue over a riff. Riffs and chord progressions vary in originality, but some of the best songs use the same three chords, so there is a lot of apparent “stealing” going on.

Thankfully, the jury wisely knew the difference between What Is and What Should Never Be.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Led Zeppelin, copyright, lawsuit