Tag: law

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies

First, Fire All the Freelancers

freelance, law, Congress

Congress is about to make the lives of an awful lot of people an awful lot harder.

So what else is new?

But the legislation in play does seem new — in suddenness and scope. 

It would impose massive newfangled regimentation on how we make a living. And it would kill the livelihoods of millions of people.

I refer to people who do gigs and freelance assignments for a living. One might ask why Democrats have it in for this kind of worker. Is it to appease unions? Is it the result of the same ideological forces that drove Karl Marx to despise the professional classes, needing to turn everyone into a prole? 

After all, this anti-​freelancer agenda is not new. Similar legislation, called AB5, was tried a few years ago in California, instituted at the behest of activists eager to reduce competition with union work and remove chances for non-​9-​to‑5 ways of making a living.

The premier target was ride-​share companies Uber and Lyft. But many were caught in the net. AB5 created havoc throughout the state. Even socialist freelancers hated its mass murder of options and opportunity.

AB5-​style congressional legislation to outlaw gig or freelance work except under very restricted circumstances is now being discussed in the U.S. Senate after having passed the U.S. House. It would also give unions many ugly new weapons to use to impose themselves on employees and employers.

In California, AB5 was mostly repealed by a citizen initiative.

Will there be a national citizen initiative to also promptly repeal the Protecting the Right to Organize Act? Unlikely, since Americans currently lack the right to enact national citizen initiatives.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment

Pardon All the Non-Criminals

laws, police state, authoritarianism, totalitarian

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is pardoning mask and social-​distancing scofflaws.

He says the pandemic mitigation rules amount to overreach. “These things with health should be advisory, they should not be punitive.”

I agree. But could he (and other governors) do more to help non-criminals?

At Reason​.com, Billy Binion argues that there’s lots of over-​criminalization that DeSantis could tackle. Consider the drug war. If you’re arrested in Florida for possessing up to 20 grams of pot, you “face a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison”; more than 25 grams, three to 15 years in the hoosegow.

DeSantis rejects the idea of legalizing recreational cannabis, so his “overreach” critique of public health law is limited.

Severely. 

Yet it is not as if the states don’t take numerous punitive actions against persons guilty only of naivety, carelessness, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time:

  • Depending on the state, it can be a bad idea to drive down the road with guns you legally own in your car trunk.
  • Collecting signatures for an initiative petition has sometimes been treated as a prison-​worthy offense.
  • It can be a lousy idea to carry your life savings in the form of cash if there is any chance an official might notice and confiscate it. 

That latter problem, of civil asset forfeiture, would be tricky to fix at the back end, since if you’re not arrested for having the money, you can’t exactly be pardoned. But surely chief executives could take other actions to right such obvious wrongs.

Any state governor (or president) could do worse than spend, say, half of his or her time issuing pardons and finding other ways to help people caught by unjust government snares.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

Doubling Down on Time Jiggering

daylight savings time, astronomical clock

Daylight Saving Time was designed to trick us into spending more free time in daylight during summer. The trick? Set our clocks forward in the spring, meaning — if we keep to our old-​clocked schedules — waking up and going to work earlier, leaving more recreational and home life (and shopping time) in sunnier late afternoons and evenings.

Kind of cheating.

Most folks find it a bother.* Switching one’s clocks back and forth means upsetting sleep rhythms, which can trigger negative health outcomes. 

Commonsensical people prefer to chuck the program — and several states have opted out, having no Daylight Saving Time at all. The program’s benefits — and negatives — often prove hard to find in actual statistics.

Enter Senators Patty Murray (D‑Wash.) and Marco Rubio (R‑Fla.). They want to get rid of all the Spring-​Forward/​Fall-​Back nonsense.

And there’s a bill in the House to push the policy forward.

But they want to do it the Nixonian way, making Daylight Savings Time universal and year-​long. This effectively shifts time zones permanently east by one hour. And ensures that no one will experience 12:00 at solar noon, with the Sun directly above.

Surely we can change our schedules to fit whatever sunlight we want and we don’t need Washington to tell us when to get up … even as they manipulate time.

Regardless, you can check out Murray’s and Rubio’s arguments in USA Today.

The switching has got to go. But the permanent evasion of astronomical timekeeping sure smacks of … the opposite of … 

Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Daylight Saving Time was first instituted in wartime by Woodrow Wilson, but repealed by popular demand during peacetime; this was repeated under FDR for WWII. Richard M. Nixon pushed it in during the Seventies as an energy conservation program. It still exists federally, with 16 state exceptions.

Note: corrections made in the text after initial publication, with thanks to Thomas Knapp, below.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Needed Theft

Seattle, Capitol Hill, crime, law, theft

Some Seattle city council members want to legalize theft when the thief is thereby meeting an “immediate basic need.”

A KOMO News reporter elaborates: “If someone … steals power tools with the intent of reselling them online in order to pay for a basic need like food or rent, the city of Seattle may be OK with that.”

This “principle” discards the principle that individuals have rights, including property rights, which it is wrong to violate by, for example, stealing. With the principle discarded, no line can be drawn to limit the amount of stealing one may do or the means of doing so. The needs of the person being robbed are somehow deemed irrelevant.

The Seattle plan might have spared Hugo’s Jean Valjean decades of being pursued by Javert. But the injustice there wasn’t that Valjean was punished for stealing a loaf of bread but that his punishment — 19 years as a galley slave — was so disproportionate.

Food is a continuing cost. Rent is. The immediacy keeps recurring. What if you have a $2,500 monthly rent?

Well, just gotta steal lots of power tools, and do so regularly. According to the babblers on the Seattle city council, “need” trumps the rights and lives of the innocent. So it’s okay to terrify somebody in a dark alley and grab their stuff even if the victim has an immediate basic need to be left alone.

Seattle has an immediate basic need for a new government that respects lives and property. Until then, let’s hope the “city limit” signs are well marked.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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too much government

Sweet Grape Victory of 2020

grapes, regulation, law

Raise a long-​stemmed glass to the wineries of Minnesota. And to the Institute for Justice, which fought for their rights in court.

Minnesota wine makers may now make wine with whatever grapes they like! They may make wines that were illegal for them to make before.

Early in September, a federal judge struck down a 1980 Minnesota law which prevented Minnesota wineries from crushing grapes into wine unless most of the grapes being used had been grown in Minnesota. Winemakers were thus thwarted from producing popular varietals requiring grapes that can’t be grown in the state. Temporary exemptions from the law were possible but could not be counted on.

Judge Wilhelmina Wright’s ruling may well inspire challenges to similar prohibitions in other states. You know you’re a fifth of the way into the twenty-​first century when dramatic modernistic advancements like letting wineries buy whatever grapes they wish have become possible.

You may be thinking: “Huh? I had no idea that wine makers in Minnesota were not allowed to buy grapes from other states. That’s painfully stupid!”

Of course, that is probably not the opinion of the proponents of the law. At least some Minnesota grape growers no doubt believe that persuading lawmakers to block out-​of-​state grapes was a smart move. 

But is it really so very wise to hobble business competitors for the sake of short-​term advantages regardless of the long-​term costs to the freedom — not to mention the palates — of all?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment

Who is Responsible?

Breonna Taylor is dead. She was shot five times by Louisville police, who were returning fire after forcibly entering her apartment.

“[T]he department had received court approval for a ‘no-​knock’ entry,” reports The New York Times, but “the orders were changed before the raid to ‘knock and announce,’ meaning that the police had to identify themselves.” There is disagreement as to whether police did so.

It appears that shortly after midnight on March 13, police knocked down Ms. Taylor’s front door and her boyfriend fired his gun at what he thought was an old boyfriend of Breonna’s.

That old boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, who has a “2015 drug trafficking conviction” and “several pending drug and weapons cases against him,” Louisville’s WAVE‑3 TV informs, “was named on the March 13 warrant that sent officers to Taylor’s apartment.”

But three lawmen came through the door instead. One was hit in the leg and they opened fire.

Another of them, already terminated by the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department, was charged yesterday with “wanton endangerment” for firing his weapon indiscriminately. But no charges for Breonna Taylor’s death.

While the apparent police misconduct must not be excused, it is too easy to blame police. Breaking down doors — whether after “no-​knock” or a brief wee-​hours rap on the door and yodeled announcement (when the target is likely asleep) — leads to gun battles and lost lives … of innocent citizens as well as police officers.* 

And the drug laws that ultimately brought Louisville’s battering-​ram-​wielding cops to Breonna’s door were not written by those policemen.

They were written by politicians, and it is they who must change the laws and the policies that led to Breonna Taylor’s death.

But they will never do it unless we make them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* I remember Cory Maye in Mississippi, who was on death row for years after killing a policeman in a late-​night no-​knock raid on his home. No drugs found. Wrong house. Thankfully, Cory was finally released. But the policeman is still dead; his wife and kids lost a husband and father.

Note: As we put this commentary to bed, two Louisville policemen have been shot and a suspect arrested. Both officers are receiving treatment at a local hospital.

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