How Many More People Have to Die From Heroin and Fentanyl Before We Try Something Different?

A panel of experts recently projected that 500,000 Americans could die of opioid-related overdoses between now and 2027, surpassing the annual death toll from AIDS during the worst years of that epidemic. Some of the experts polled put the potential opioid-related death toll at 650,000 over the next 10 years.

We can reach that grizzly milestone with our eyes closed if we just keeping doing what we’ve done for the last decade. But a future in which opioid and opiate-related overdoses claim more lives than a deadly communicable disease is no more inevitable than our present moment was a decade ago.

We got here by reacting poorly to the increase in prescription opioid abuse and associated deaths. There may be no point in asking how many more people would be alive today if we had made different choices when we first recognized this problem, but it’s instructive to revisit the early days of this crisis anyway.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, just over 2,000 people died from heroin-related overdoses in 2005. In 2015, heroin killed 12,989 people. The total number of drug overdose deaths in 2005 was 29,813. In 2015, 52,404.

We have a pretty good idea of what happened between 2005 and 2015. Law enforcement cracked down on pill mills, the Food and Drug Administration admonished pharmaceutical companies to make their drugs harder to snort and inject, and the CDC and Health and Human Services discouraged doctors from prescribing pain medication.

In addition to being public health policies, these were also price signals. The black market responded accordingly with cheap heroin and then cheap illicit fentanyl. As Vox recently reported, there are many places throughout the U.S. where black market heroin and fentanyl now kill far more people than prescription pills.

With each new death record—and we are setting them every year now—the overdose problem moves further out of a realm regulators can control into one they can’t and never will. Oddly enough, they don’t seem to realize it.

Earlier this summer, Kentucky’s legislature passed a law creating a three-day limit on opioid prescriptions for acute pain, meaning that no prescription can be for more than three days worth of pain relievers. In Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker wants a five-year mandatory minimum for any person who provided the illicit drugs that led to an overdose death.

The Justice Department recently asked the U.S. Sentencing Commission to require every person convicted of distributing fentanyl to serve prison time, regardless of how little fentanyl is involved, whether they knew they were distributing fentanyl at all, and whether anyone died as a result. As Dr. Jeffrey A. Singer writes at Townhall, there’s also a push to conduct more surveillance of doctors and their patients.

These are the same strategies that got us here.

The list of things we refuse to try, meanwhile, is depressingly long. Heroin maintenance programs—of which there is not a single one in the U.S.—would provide fentanyl-free gear to people who can’t or don’t want to enter medication-assisted therapy; and safe injection sites—which we also don’t have, despite their success in our neighbor to the north (and, uh, Iran)—would provide a place for those people to use under medical supervision.

We should be removing barriers to offering medication-assisted therapy; there should be no limit on how many patients a doctor can help at one time and HHS shouldn’t require days’ worth of training in order to administer the associated medicines.

Anybody should be able to buy naloxone wherever they can buy Tylenol. No one should face incarceration or arrest for reporting a drug overdose.

There are more libertarian policies, of course, but the ones I’ve just listed wouldn’t require the U.S. to do something novel or break any international agreements. They would require us to accept that our problems with drugs, like most problems that universally afflict our species, cannot be eradicated at the population level.

If we don’t try these things now, we shouldn’t expect a future that’s better than our present.

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Antifa is Playing Right Into the Hands of a Burgeoning Police State

Many people involved in politics swear by the notion that “the ends justify the means,” which is typically the sign of a self-serving actor attempting to justify questionable if not downright evil action in order to get what he or she wants. While pursuit of “the greater good” is often put up for public consumption, the driving force behind this sort of action is almost always personal gain of some sort. This is what most politicians do for a living, which is why they are justifiably hated by the general public.

The moment you justify one very wrong action to achieve a noble goal, what’s to stop you from next even more unethical action, or the next and the next? Nothing. This is what’s so dangerous about going down such a path. Indeed, those who fight monsters often end up becoming the exact thing they claim to be fighting. The world doesn’t benefit from this, only the person who has gained power as a result does, at least superficially. Ultimately, even that person doesn’t benefit when all is said and done. A person who attains their goal by sacrificing principles is a tormented, miserable person. They may seem to “have it all” from the outside, but deep down they hate themselves and what they’ve become. There is no peace. I believe karma eventually catches up to everybody one way or the other.

– From May’s post: Do Ends Justify the Means?

One of the primary motivating factors that drove me to start writing publicly on a daily basis, was a recognition that the chaos and cultural lack of cohesion resulting from the thievery of the financial crisis and the increasingly corrupt, socioeconomic paradigm we live under would provide the pretext for “the state,” whether governed by a Democrat or Republican, to further dismantle civil liberties and usher in a country increasingly defined by less freedom. This was a motivating concern under Obama and it remains a motivating concern under Trump.

As I’ve warned repeatedly over the years, at some point the “war on terror” would be brought home to the good ol’ USA, with all enemies suddenly being labeled domestic terrorists. This is happening right now, thanks in large part to all the media hysteria about antifa and neo-Nazis.

Personally, I try to keep things simple and think it’d be wise if others did did the same for the sake of our future. I believe offensive violence is almost never justified, while self-defense almost always is. The purported objective of any group is irrelevant. The worst tyrants in the world always claim to be working for “the people” as they lock people up in gulags or concentration camps to torture and kill them. Ends don’t justify the means. The means are everything.

continue reading

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First Amendment Protects Cinema’s Right to Show Unicorn Masturbation Scene While Serving Alcohol, Says Judge

A Utah movie theater that dared to serve alcohol during a sexually explicit movie has won its legal battle against the state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (DABC).

“The State has violated the First Amendment by bringing an administrative enforcement action against a mainstream motion picture theater showing an R-rated movie,” U.S. District Judge David Nuffer wrote for the court Thursday.

The case stems from a 10-day suspension of an alcoholic beverage license and/or a fine of $1,000 to $25,000 issued to a Salt Lake City cinema called Brewvies for screening the superhero movie Deadpool.

In April 2016, the DABC sent a letter to Brewvies informing the owners they had broken a Utah law against DABC-licensed venues “showing a depiction of an act or simulated act of sodomy, bestiality, or oral copulation and (2) a scene wherein a person displayed his or her genitals.”

Any place or event regulated by alcoholic-beverage authorities in Utah is prohibited from allowing conduct “considered contrary to the public health, peace, safety, welfare, and morals,” including “showing a film, still picture, electronic reproduction, or other visual reproduction” that depicts sex or simulated sex acts, a person displaying their genitals or butt, or “a person being touched, caressed, or fondled on the breast, buttocks, anus, or genitals.”

After receiving the letter about the R-rated Deadpool, Brewvies owners filed a lawsuit against Utah’s alcohol-control agency and its leadership. “The film Deadpool is not obscene, and Defendants and the DABC have not claimed the film is obscene, under applicable constitutional standards,” noted Brewvies in the complaint. Thus Brewvies’s showing of the film Deadpool and the other “mainstream” movies are constitutionally protected speech, it argued.

Nuffer agreed. And since Deadpool is constitutionally protected speech, the state can only regulate it if it does so using minimally restrictive means in the service of a compelling government interest. In this case, Utah’s DABC failed.

The law “is overinclusive because it captures mainstream content,” writes Nuffer. And because it “is not the least restrictive means for effectuating the State’s interest, it fails strict scrutiny. Brewvies is entitled to declaratory and injunctive relief.”

To crack this important case, two Utah Bureau of Investigation agents had gone undercover at Brewvies, where they ordered Bud Lights and watched Deadpool. In a crime report, Officer Sean Cannon noted numerous violations of the public-morals clause, pointing out, “the main character in the film is shown on his back under bed sheets briefly engaged In masturbation or simulated masturbation using a stuffed unicorn toy.”

Cannon included in his report:

In the final credits, a drawing of the main character (male) is shown “as he rides on the back of a unicorn, he rubs its horn briefly until the horn shoots outs rainbows (simulating orgasm).” The tail of the unicorn raises slowly as he rubs the horn simulating arousal until the horn shoots out the rainbows.

Cannon’s review (the random capitalization and quotations suggests he might have been flustered) continued:

The main character (male) In the film is shown numerous times engaging in acts or simulated acts of sexual intercourse with the female counterpart during a holiday themed sex-montage. They “are shown having sex while nude (we see the woman sitting on the man’s groin In bed, rocking on his lap as he fondles her bare breasts and she gasps). He is then shown behind her while she’s on her hands and knees” engaged in sexual intercourse or simulated sexual intercourse.

[…] During the holiday themed sex montage, it shows the main character (male) nude “on his hands and knees on a bed while a woman wearing a leather bikini (with an strap-on penis that isn’t shown) has her groin area pressed against the man’s posterior; the camera then cuts to his face, he Is sweating and grimacing as she says to relax before the scene ends. She bends down to him and says “Happy Women’s Rights Day” during the sodomy or simulated sodomy scene.

This isn’t the first time the department has targeted Brewvies. In 2011, the cinema was investigated for showing The Hangover Part II. At the time, Brewvies parent company, CinemaPub, agreed to pay a $1,500 fine pus $127 in administrative fees. In 2015, DABC said the cinema could not show the films Magic Mike and Ted 2.

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Hurricane Harvey Isn’t About Climate Change, It’s About Bad Federal Policy (Podcast)

As the media and politicians rush to blame the intensity of and damage from Hurricane Harvey on climate change and zoning, Ray Lehmann of R Street wants to talk about a more obvious villain: public policies that use tax dollars to subsidize development and population growth in flood-prone areas.

Harvey, he says, isn’t a weather problem, it’s a “people problem.”

“More than half the US population now lives in coastal counties,” says Lehmann, who believes that climate change is happening and that human activity contributes to it. “That’s up about 45% over the decades from 1970 to 2010.”

One of the major reasons for that shift is that in the late 1960s, the federal government started offering federal flood insurance priced below market rates, which made it far cheaper for developers and people to build and live in areas more prone to extreme weather. Even worse, as Reason’s Ronald Bailey has reported, the same program allows people to rebuild in flood-prone areas. “There was a great journal piece in Nature in 2003 [that projected global losses from weather events] would, by 2050, rise to about $60 billion, Lehmann tells Nick Gillespie. Even “if you did not include the impacts of climate change or sea level rise at all, it would still be expected to rise to about $50 billion dollars, just from economic development and growth in coastal populations.”

Is Houston’s lack of zoning is part of the problem? Lehmann points out the most of the areas destroyed by Superstorm Sandy were heavily restricted when it came to land-use, zoning, and planning. As an instructive alternative, he talks about Port Aransas, south of Houston the Gulf Coast. When Harvey made landfall then, it was a Category 4 hurricane, stronger than when it smacked Houston. Yet due to a 1980 law, the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, the area is less develped because all federal subsidies—for roads, electricity, water, flood insurance, and more—were barred. When people are faced to pay full price for where they want to live, they tend to choose areas less likely to get wiped out.

Lehmann believes that climate change is real and that human activity adds to it. Controversially among many libertarians and free-marketers, he and R Street support a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gases, even as he says any reductions will likely have minimal effects on the climate. Ideally, says Lehmann, the carbon tax would be used to reduce corporate income taxes to zero, freeing up resources for the sort of economic growth and technological innovation that will allow us to cope more easily with all sorts of problems, including extreme weather. “The greatest response to climate change is to be wealthy and to have the resources to be able to deal with the effects,” he says.

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This is a rush transcript—check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: Hi, I’m Nick Gillespie, and this is the Reason podcast. Today we’re talking with Ray Lehmann, he’s a senior fellow at R Street and he’s also the co-founder of R Street, which is a public policy think tank that talks about environmental and other kinds of policy issues. Ray Lehmann, thanks for talking.

Ray Lehmann: Thanks for having me.

Gillespie: Okay, so we’re talking about Hurricane Harvey, which has slammed Houston and is actually taking on other parts of the Gulf Coast right now. One of the things that we’re hearing a lot … and this has certainly gotta be the most politicized hurricane in history, even more than Katrina as its unfolding … but we’re hearing that Hurricane Harvey, and especially the damage in Houston, is evidence of climate change. The LA Times, this is a representative headline, in a house editorial they said, “Harvey should be a warning to Trump that climate change is a global threat.” Is that the right way to be talking about Hurricane Harvey, and especially the damage in Houston?

Lehmann: It’s not that … Obviously we believe climate change is a global threat. Whether any particular storm can be attributed to climate change is more controversial. It’s not entirely clear that climate change, in and of itself, would change hurricane patterns in this way. There’s various impacts that climate change could have on hurricanes. Sort of general consensus is that warmer sea temperatures will drive more powerful storms. There’s mixed opinion on whether they will cause more frequent storms, and there’s pretty much consensus, at least in the Atlantic basin, that the long-term effects of climate change would actually be to make fewer storms make US landfall, because the ones are gonna be weakening, so fewer storms are gonna get that northeast lift to take them off the Caribbean and into the United States. Unfortunately that means they’ll mostly be hitting Latin America, where they don’t have the same resources we do to recover.

Gillespie: Well that seems-

Lehmann: But what you can is … Yeah, that’s a problem. What you can say for sure is that sea level rise is a threat. That has already happened and there are other causes of sea level rise beyond just climate change, all of which contribute both in this storm and flood risks more generally.

Gillespie: What are the other causes of sea level change? And I’m working at this from a layman’s perspective, but you, like Reason believes that climate change is happening, that temperatures are warming and that human activity has a t least something to do with that, but then, if it’s not just the polar ice caps and whatnot, what’s causing sea level rise?

Lehmann: If you go to southern Louisiana, it is erosion, soil erosion in general, which … or what you would call “land subsidence,” which is the land falling as much as the sea rising, so that’s happening in a number of areas including here. I live in Florida. That’s happening even without change in the absolute level of the sea. In Louisiana, actually one of the major … not major, but contributing causes is the nutria rat eating away at a bunch of vegetations and that causing greater erosion. There are other definitely other causes besides just climate change that are relevant in these contexts.

Gillespie: To go back to this question of the effects of climate change on the number and intensity of storms, is there yet … I mean, there’s a lot of theory out there but is there yet evidence that … because you also hear this, that, “Get used to this, there are gonna be more hurricanes. There are gonna be more big storms and they’re gonna be more intense.” And you’re saying the evidence on that is a little bit mixed or ambivalent right now.

Lehmann: It’s mixed.

Gillespie: Yeah.

Lehmann: Yeah, I mean the truth is we just came off a dozen years without a major hurricane making landfall in the United State. There had not been one since 2005. Sandy was a very large storm but it wasn’t even a hurricane when it made landfall. It was a tropical storm, just a physically enormous one. You had Hurricane Ike, and that was a 2 and last year you had a couple 1s, but there hadn’t been a 3 or larger, is a major hurricane.

Gillespie: But each big storm, and I guess whether it’s a tropical storm or a hurricane and what category of hurricanes varies, but it seems that each big storm sets damage records and that’s often kind of … That kind of gets equated with, “Well the storms are more powerful, they’re more dangerous.” But is the damage record, is that mostly because more people are living near places … like are living on the coast or in areas that are at risk? So it is really a weather problem or is it kind of a location and demographic problem?

Lehmann: It is primarily a people problem. As I mentioned, I live in Florida. It is a low-lying peninsula that juts out into the most hurricane-prone region in the world. If you go back to World War 2, Florida was the smallest, least-populated state in the south, and it is now the third-largest state in the country. More than half the US population now lives in coastal counties. That was up about 45% over the decades from 1970 to 2010. In fact, there was a great journal piece in “Nature” back in 2003, and they projected the global food losses would, by 2050, rise to about 60 billion dollars. That’s about ten times what they have been, it’s about 6 billion dollars. But if you did not include the impacts of climate change or sea level rise at all, it would still be expected to rise to about 50 billion dollars, just from economic development and growth in coastal populations.

Gillespie: Well, and Houston is like that. In 1950, Houston only had about 600,000 people I think. Something like that, and it’s now got about 2.3 million people. It’s nipping at the hills of Chicago to become the third-largest city in the country and then the metro area itself or the larger county is big as well. So it’s clear that like, if a hurricane hits, a big storm hits in Houston now, it’s gonna to affect magnitudes of order more people than it would have 50 years ago or 40 years ago, or property.

Other things that I’ve read that say, that attribute to the ferocity of the storm there though, is that the amount of pavement and developed surfaces around Houston is just gigantic because the more people you have, the more roads you have, the more houses you have, the more buildings, and that all makes it harder for water to dissipate. Is that sort of development a contributing factor to the effects of these storms?

Lehmann: I can’t say it’s not a contributing factor. Beyond just the fact that there are more people, more surface area making it more difficult for groundwater to be absorbed definitely contributes to the size of the flood. The thing that people have been bringing up specifically is noting that Houston doesn’t have zoning, right? But zoning, if you look nationwide, the actual impact of zoning tends to be to fight dense housing as opposed to encouraging it. If everyone in Houston lived in the kinds of high-rises they live in in San Francisco or New York City or Chicago, then theoretically you could have that same-size city with less covered space, more open land. But you can’t assume that that’s what a zoning board in Houston would do, right? That’s not how zoning boards usually act. People don’t like density, and when you give governments power to control land use like that, they usually act in the opposite direction, which is where the politics are. So I think what you can say is that like, there are probably flood mitigation measures that they could still take.

I know there are two major reservoirs that date back to like the ’40s, and they’ve held up pretty well given the intensity of this storm, but they probably could use some updating. The army corps might want to look at that, and when it comes to storm water runoff, maybe they’re not … The market on its own may not be pricing the externality of that appropriately. There’s actually an interesting system in DC. In DC itself, they have something like a cap and trade system for storm water, where if you’re downtown and it’s really expensive to retrieve storm water runoff, you can buy credits from people up in Cleveland Park or whatever to get your share of the runoff through their properties. That’s a thing. Either a tax on total paving or that sort of thing, that might be a way to move it in a more flood-friendly direction, but I don’t think you can say it’s zoning or development in and of itself.

Gillespie: Yeah. Well, and zoning it’s, as Houston climbs the list of the most populated cities, the most popular cities in the country, zoning keeps coming up. “That’s why it’s so ugly. That’s why it has no character. That’s why it has flooding.” And it’s odd for a city that is almost universally rebuked by zoning czars and land planners and aesthetic architects, it seems to be quite popular, popular enough that more people keep moving there. It’s strange and yeah, the whole notion that zoning somehow is the thing that separates us from the animals is kind of bizarre, to say the least.

Lehmann: Right, right.

Gillespie: You know, you have talked about, that right near Houston and actually in the storm, there is an alternative to … a story that’s not really being talked a lot about that has to be with Port Aransas. Tell me about what is going there and why that kind of is a counter example of how we might seriously mitigate the effects of extreme weather.

Lehmann: Right. One thing that’s interesting about this is that it’s not actually the case that you should conceive of the damage we’re gonna see from Harvey as primarily hurricane damage, because it’s set over Houston for all these days as a tropical storm or even a sub-tropical storm, so all the flooding was not by a hurricane. It was done by just a massive and unprecedented amount of water. It was a hurricane when it landed. It was a category 4, and there’s only been a few category 4s we’ve ever had. It landed near Port Aransas, which is just north of Corpus Christi, and you certainly saw damage down there, right?

Gillespie: And Corpus Christi is a few hours south down the Gulf of Mexico coast from Galveston and Houston.

Lehmann: From Houston. Yeah, from … Right, exactly. You definitely saw damage there. The early, the insurance modeling firms that do this kind of thing expect about two billion dollars in wind damages there, but for a category 4 storm hitting a coastal region, that’s actually remarkably low, and the reason it’s remarkably low is there’s not much development there, and there’s a good reason there’s not much development there, which is that area is part of the coastal barrier resources system, which was set up in the early ’80s. It was a Republican proposal, came from John Chafee of Rhode Island. It was signed by President Reagan, and what the Coastal Barrier Resources Act does, is any land within this zone of 270 million acres … if you put them together, they’d be like the third-largest national park in the country … any development in that area, you’re free as a private citizen to invest your own money. What you can’t get is federal subsidies.

There’s no federal highways. There’s no federal public housing. You’re not eligible for flood insurance in this zone of barrier islands and coastal wetlands that were undeveloped as of the early ’80s, and they’ve mostly stayed under-developed, because developers don’t want to do it. They don’t want to invest if they can’t get the subsidies, and that’s pretty key to our resilience from these sorts of storms because barrier islands serve the purpose of being a buffer. They absorb a lot of water. They can flood. They can be underwater for some period of time.

We saw, in places where barrier islands are developed, say the Jersey shore in Hurricane Sandy, the difference between … They’re right next to each other, but Island Beach State Park and Seaside Heights. Seaside Heights is just north of Island Beach State Park. Island Beach State Park is part of the coastal barrier resources system. It serves its function of absorbing water. Seaside Heights is where Snooki goes and it served its function of getting knocked to hell when Sandy came through.

Gillespie: Yeah. Well, it’s funny when you talked about the shift towards people living in coastal counties and whatnot. I, like you, grew up in New Jersey a painful number of years ago, but I can remember even in the ’70s where … I grew up in Monmouth County by Sandy Hook, which is the first ocean beach. It’s about 30 miles or 35 miles north of Seaside Heights, and I always felt kind of bad for … It was common, like the people who lived by the beach tended to have lower-income jobs. They were blue-collar workers. I mean, it was kind of a hard scrabble existence, and within 10-20 years all of a sudden everybody wanted to live on the beach. Similar in California, even. I lived in LA and Santa Monica during the course of the late ’60s and ’70s, went from kind of a sleepy working-class town to a playpen for Hollywood royalty. How much did federal policy or state policies kind of change to make the beach or the shore more attractive for people to live there? Was is that a bunch of policies went into place that helped soak up all of these high costs that people wouldn’t be willing to pay out of pocket?

Lehmann: In 1968 we created the National Flood Insurance Program. Prior to that, there really wasn’t very much insurance coverage for floods. There had been some market in like, the late 19th century and the early 20th century. There was a series of Mississippi River floods in the ’20s that kinda ended that, and after that it became very difficult to get insurance coverage for floods. Some of that is things that are sort of accidents of the history of the insurance market in the United States. It’s always been state-regulated, and so historically most insurance companies were local. We didn’t have the national companies that you do now, back then, and so local companies would face extreme … unlike a fire, which is a fortuitous thing, it tends to only affect one property at a time, maybe two or three if it’s a major blaze … a flood can destroy an entire city. So insurance companies that were local didn’t want to be exposed like that. The re-insurance market, which is insurance for insurance companies, wasn’t yet as developed as it is now, and so you didn’t have very much private flood insurance.

In the ’60s, we created the National Flood Insurance Program, which extended under-priced flood insurance offered by the federal government, to pretty much everyone, to any community that wanted to participate and met certain basic standards. The original idea was that it was going to encourage communities to invest in flood mitigation. I think it did a little bit of that early on, but it has not really served that purpose in the long run. It served the purpose of making it possible to live in places people never lived before, because now you have a mechanism to bail you out once things go wrong. The state of Florida, for sure, was built on the National Flood Insurance Program. It’s about one-third of national insurance program policies are here in Florida.

Gillespie: Wow, and is there any movement to restrict that or to peel it back? I mean, it sounds like farm subsidies in a way where … and obviously it’s not the only reason people flock to the water. It’s also true that construction methods get better.

Lehmann: It’s nice.

Gillespie: Yeah. People like the water and the weather and all of that, but it’s a contributing factor and it’s certainly one that’s under our control. Is there any sense that these are policies that can’t stand and why the hell are people who live in either parched areas of the country or places not prone to flooding are bailing out? People who tend to be wealthy are living on Long Island, living on the Jersey Shore, living in Florida?

Lehmann: Back in 2002, we had a bill called the Bigger Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, that passed and was signed by President Obama, and Bigger Waters took those policies that were not paying appropriate rates and put them on a path to gradually see their rates increase. Then just about immediately after that bill passed, you started getting scare stories that were distributed with the help of FEMA by not responding to them. Served the interest of home-builders and realtors who did not like that this was going to have an impact on housing markets, and people were told that their rates might increase to $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 … There was no evidence of this. Just none at all, but FEMA did not really do anything to provide clarity, and in the middle of that hysteria, we then got a second bill in 2014 called the Grim Waters Act, which is I think appropriately named. Also appropriate that Maxine Waters, who sponsored the original bill, was then on the second bill that largely repealed the Bigger Waters Act, or at least it slowed it down enormously. That was unfortunate.

It’s still the case that over the long term, these properties are seeing rate increases. They’re pretty modest and we will get to a point eventually where they’re paying what they should, and there’s also encouraging signs that we’re getting a private flood insurance market. It’s still new. It’s not very large. It’s not yet enough to take over completely, but it’s building and we’ll get there. There is legislation right now, flood insurance programs’ authorization expires at the end of September. There’s legislation right now that passed through the House Financial Services Committee a couple months ago, that would help with some of the key questions on private flood insurance like, “If you have a mortgage, does the private flood insurance count? What kind of private flood insurance do you need that would be equivalent to the NFIP?” There’s also rules like … Currently the NFIP policies are sold by private insurance agents who are usually affiliated with insurance companies. If you are an insurance company that takes part in that, what’s called the “write your own” program, then you are not permitted to write private flood insurance, so that’s another rule that would change in the House bill. And also just getting the data available from FEMA to the private market about flood losses and underwriting. All of that I think we will push forward towards a more robust private market that will hopefully more appropriately price

Gillespie: Right, and the goal of that is just that, to the extent that insurance is a risk management tool, we’ll get a fairer pricing of the cost and benefits of living in areas that are prone to extreme weather.

Lehmann: And if that happens, then there are projects that might otherwise take place if they’re subsidized by the government, that won’t take place as you see in the coastal barrier resources system, because if you have to pay your full freight, if you have to take account of what the real risks are, then at the margin, you’re gonna adjust your behavior. Which doesn’t mean no one lives at the coast. That’s sort of how the commanding control environmental movement would approach this. There are efficient ways to live at the coast. There are efficient losses to take, but at the same time, we don’t want this to be on the backs of taxpayers.

Gillespie: What are some other policies that would mitigate the effects, say, of hurricanes, of extreme weather and floods that we should be pursuing and that we should be talking about rather than arguing over whether or not Melania Trump should have worn stilettos or sneakers when she was leaving to visit Houston?

Lehmann: Right. Like Shakespeare said, “First kill all the lawyers,” I say, “First kill all the subsidies, then we can move on to stage two.” I think Libertarians will differ on the degree to which they think a lot of things are government responsibilities. I’m more or less okay with things like levies and other public construction. I’d like to see more things done at the local level where they can be more responsive, but I think that those are appropriate infrastructure projects to help protect communities. I think you can have some degree of land uses planning where it’s things like, for instance, if you have a repetitive loss property and the government’s gonna buy it and move this person somewhere else. Say, “Okay, you’ve flooded too much or you’ve suffered whatever sort of disaster too frequently, we’re gonna buy you out and move you somewhere else,” then maybe you don’t allow people to build there anymore. Move that money. Otherwise you’re creating an incentive to just keep moving in and taking the buyout.

Gillespie: Does that happen frequently? I seem to recall, somewhat dimly, stories about like whole towns on the Mississippi kind of getting bought out, people being relocated …

Lehmann: There are two programs within FEMA. One is within the flood insurance program and one is just disaster and mitigation in general, that do have authority to do buyouts. In the National Flood Insurance Program, it was back in 2004, Congress passed this bill … I can’t even remember the name, Jim Bunning and Earl Blumenauer were two of the sponsors … that, the intent was that if you had three losses, then you would be bought out. You would either have to raise your home or be bought out, but I don’t think they ever funded it, and so lacking any funding, it never really happened. So there’s a limited number of buyouts that happened through FEMA, but it’s not terribly much.

Gillespie: Right. What about on a … and I’m thinking three … and especially Jim Bunning, a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher, you would think three strikes and you’re out, like you get nothing, you are now officially owned by the government or something.

Lehmann: Of course that was the name of the bill.

Gillespie: Three strikes and then …

Lehmann: “Three strikes and you are out of the National Flood Insurance Program.”

Gillespie: I thought it was like, “Three strikes and we bring out the tee and you just keep hitting until you get on base.”

Lehmann: Right, exactly.

Gillespie: What about on a global level? What are your preferred ways to deal with climate change? It seems to me there are, within the broader Libertarian community or the broadly-defined Libertarian community, there are some people who still say that global warming isn’t happening or it happens all the time and we have nothing to do with it, and so why talk about it at all? Most people I know who are Libertarians say, “You know what? Climate change is happening. It’s observable. Human activity is contributing to it, and then, what do you next?” One of the things that I find very attractive is the idea that, to the extent if … I mean if we go with a massive global program that slows down economic innovation and economic activity, suddenly instead of living in South Florida we’re living in Bangladesh, and we have fewer resources to kind of be resilient and to build better buildings and come back with weather events. Is that kind of your approach to global warming, or what are the ways that we should deal with climate change as a planet?

Lehmann: What we certainly agree with is that we think the greatest response to climate change is to be wealthy and to have the resources to be able to deal with the effects, which are still largely, right? You can’t know what you’re going to need to do, but having more money always helps. We also … This is not a secret. We support a carbon tax, one that does not in any way raise taxes. In fact, we have proposed replacing the corporate income tax entirely with a carbon tax. Carbon tax, we will fully admit, does not actually reverse global warming. It may help at the margin, but it is unlikely to mean that we have no effects. We’re gonna have effects that we’re gonna have to deal with, but if you do it in the right way, if you de-regulate, you use this to get rid of the existing regulatory structure, and to zero out a tax that is more destructive to capital. We think that you can still grow and still be prosperous and at the margin, control some of the worst effects.

Gillespie: So in R Street’s plan for slowing carbon emissions, it would be … I mean, you tax everybody who is emitting carbon, you raise the price of carbon so you get less of it, that’s the plan.

Lehmann: Yes, correct.

Gillespie: The purpose of the tax then is to shut down carbon emissions or to lower that in the hope or the idea that it will on some level help mitigate climate change. What happens to that money? Does that just go into a general revenue stream or does it get earmarked or does it … What happens?

Lehmann: There’s a lot of proposals that have come forward by a lot of different people. Al Gore wants to use it to offset the payroll tax. There’s others who come up with what they call a taxing dividend system, which essentially means you apply the tax and then you give it back to people, presumably based on their income. We have proposed using it to replace the corporate income tax, and what we think is an advantage of that is, replacing the corporate income tax actually raises some money in and of itself. If you just repealed it, because of how inefficient it is, and so that helps take care of some of the problem, because if you got rid of the corporate income tax, then a good portion of that income would instead be earned by corporate CEOs or shareholders through dividends and through capital gains and you could capture the money that way at the individual level. We think it’s always gonna be the case that corporations will have more lobbying power than people, and so any time you create a new corporate tax, any time you try tax reform, it does not take very long for that get mucked up with all sorts of exemptions and special treatment. Get rid of the corporate tax. Use this tax instead.

Gillespie: How do you levy a carbon tax? How do you identify the sources and then say, “Okay, you owe this much, you owe that much”?

Lehmann: Generally you want to do it as close to the source as possible, at the level of, either say the refiner if you’re talking about motor fuels, or at the level of the generator if you’re talking about electricity. There are other sources of carbon, other sources of greenhouse gases. Smarter people than I would tell you the most efficient way to deal with them, but that’s the broad strokes of it.

Gillespie: But essentially it would be like putting a meter on devices that produce carbon so it’s kind of like an electric meter or gas meter, something like that.

Lehmann: Right, and you want it as far from the consumer as possible. You don’t want it to be like, at the pump the way a gas tax is, because the further down the stream it is, first of all the more chances that it’s gonna get multiplied, and also that you change behavior in ways that are inefficient.

Gillespie: Do you worry at all in … I mean, it almost sounds the way you’re talking about it is that the way you see the carbon tax as almost a way of buying off environments, especially if it’s not gonna have a profound impact. It’s more like, “Okay, here’s a way that we can shut them up for a while and get rid of the corporate tax,” which virtually … even a lot of progressive economists will say, is almost completely a stupid tax. It doesn’t raise as much money as it should because of lobbying power and it just gets in the way of business development.

Lehmann: I think we … That’s not unfair as a characterization. If you go back to the Waxman-Markey bill, the cap and trade bill, they wanted to do the same things. It was just with their own priorities. They wanted to use cap and trade to raise some money, spend it on solar projects and other things that were important to their base and their donors. Climate change was the issue, but cap and trade was the mechanism to get other things they wanted done. Well, there’s other things we want done and we can think we can use this to get those things done.

Gillespie: Alright. Well, as long as we’re keeping dry. Last question. We have had, at least each of the previous two presidents, George Bush with Katrina which was his response … and he certainly was not the only major political figure going back to the governor Louisiana as well as the mayor of New Orleans, they all handled Katrina very poorly … Barack Obama, it’s not clear to me I think, or a lot of people whether or not Sandy was his finest hour, but also the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico where he talked about he was gonna go looking for asses to kick in his administration, because the federal response was terrible to it. What’s the essential thing? What does Donald Trump as president need to do to kind of break the chain of bad responses to major breaking environmental events?

Lehmann: One thing you notice with … certainly with George W. Bush, and that is an issue now with Donald Trump, is that at the time of the storm, they were already fairly unpopular. So I think from a political perspective, the first thing you should do is no harm. Donald Trump would help himself to show more empathy than he has, but otherwise, he has a pretty good FEMA director, which is something that you could not have said probably of anybody since James Lee Witt, with Clinton. Craig Fugate under Obama was also quite competent, but it is pretty common for the FEMA director to be some political hack, and Director Brock under Trump is a guy who has experience from FEMA, has experience as Alabama’s manager during the oil spill, and Texas, I’d say more than Louisiana, has competent state government and they are gonna be able to respond more competently, so Trump should mostly stay out of the way, but rather than being weatherman and bragging about the size of the storm, I think he’d do himself some favors to try to show that he’s a human being who actually is concerned about other human beings.

Gillespie: So that may be his toughest challenge yet, right?

Lehmann: Yes.

Gillespie: So we will leave it there. I want to thank Ray Lehmann. He’s a senior fellow at R Street, where you can check out, rstreet.org. He’s also a co-founder. Ray, thanks for talking to us about Houston and the causes and best responses to massive flooding in the Gulf of Mexico.

Lehmann: Thank you.

Gillespie: This has been the Reason podcast. I’m Nick Gillespie. Thanks so much for listening. Please subscribe to us at iTunes and rate and review us while you’re there.

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August ISM Data Suggests U.S. GDP Growth Might Hit 4%

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

 

Remember when critics lambasted Trump for daring to forecast 3%+ GDP growth?

Yeah, those people just got eternally beatdown.

Second quarter GDP was revised up to 3%. The only thing the left could do is peddle out Warren Buffett, a person who has never said a bad thing about the US economy ever, to say ‘it doesn’t feel like a 3% economy.’

Here’s Warren telling America that it ‘feels’ like a 2% economy. Moreover, he tries to convince people into accepting such anemic growth as not only acceptable, but exemplary. Bear in mind, 2% growth doesn’t keep up with inflation, which is now clocking in at 2.6%.

Fucking really?

If Warren thinks this ‘doesn’t feel’ like a 3% economy, I wonder what he’ll say when if it registers in at 4%? According to today’s ISM data, that’s exactly where it might be heading.

Source: CNBC

President Donald Trump’s hopes for growth as high as 4 percent may come true, if only for one quarter.
&nbsp
An economic report released Friday morning, and overshadowed by the higher-profile nonfarm payrolls number, actually points to GDP gains in excess of 4 percent in the third quarter, said Andrew Hunter, U.S. economist at Capital Economics, as the firm showed in this chart:

&nbsp

The ISM data came in at 58.8, the highest reading since 2011. It even caught the evergreen bear, Rick Santelli off guard this morning.

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Why Houston Doesn’t Need Federal Flood Relief (In Four Charts)

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

In his article today, Christopher Westley noted that Texas's economy — when measured by GDP — is larger than Canada's. In other words: If Texas were an independent country, it would be the world's 10th largest economy (totaling $1.6 trillion), and its citizens would be more than capable of addressing natural disasters of the magnitude of a major flood. Texas's economy is also larger than those of Russia and Australia.

By why stop our analysis at the state of Texas? Indeed, if we look at the GDP of the Houston metropolitan area, we find it comes in at $503 billion. This total is similar to the GDPs of Poland, Belgium, and Austria. It's significantly larger than the GDPs of Norway and Denmark.

texasgdp.png
texasgdppercap.png
houstongdp.png

Nor is Texas's GDP largely driven by federal spending — so we can't say that Texas's economy depends on federal spending to stay afloat. When we look at federal spending in Texas compared to the federal taxes paid by Texans, we find it's nearly a one-for-one relationship. So, if the Federal government stopped spending in Texas — but allowed Texans to keep their money, Texas would be fine. 

dollar_2.JPG

Indeed, as Westley notes, the Houston area has benefitted from its relatively laissez-faire politicies in recent decades, and this will enable the region to more easily confront its troubles: "What makes Houston different has to do with property rights institutions taking root and developing there over decades, making it a center for capital investment, because capital always flows to those areas where it is most secure."

Nevertheless, because there's money there for the taking, the Texas state government and countless local governments in Texas will be more than happy to take the federal aid that Donald Trump was recently promising as he posed for photo ops near the flood zone. After all, if taxpayers from the other 49 states are being forced to hand over money to Texans, why refuse "free" money? 

This free cash promised for Texas has already lit up the usual leftwing outlets with charges of hypocrisy and foolishness on the part of GOP politicians who have in the past allegedly been stingy with federal disaster-relief funds. One New Orleans columnist opines that "Texas Republicans will have some explaining to do" since nearly the entire GOP Texas delegation in Congress " voted against a $50.5 billion relief package for victims after 2012 superstorm Sandy slammed into New York and other parts of the Northeast." 

Now that Texas "needs" Federal funds, the shoe is on the other foot! Or so we're told. 

It's true enough that GOP Texas politicians have themselves in a political bind here. If they refuse the funds, local voters who think the federal funds are essentially without cost to them will largely be angry their Congressmen and Senators didn't grab the cash. 

But, of course, the politicians themselves — and the voters who supported their reluctance to shell out more federal spending on disaster funds — will look like hypocrites. 

Now, in a properly-functioning confederation of states, the Texas delegation could simply say this: "Hey Congress and Trump, we don't actually need your money. Instead of giving us money from the taxpayers in other states, how about you just give us back a big chunk of all the federal taxes you drained from our economy this year? Thanks in advance." 

Unfortunately, direct federal taxation of Texans makes this a logistical impossibility, so all the tax funds must be trafficked through Washington, the bureaucrats will take their cut, and then some dollars will filter back to Texas in the form of disaster-relief funds. 

It likely that many Texas taxpayers see the situation as a matter of getting back funds already paid. They're thinking "I pay federal taxes constantly, so I might as well get some of it back to rebuild the infrastructure the floods washed away. With my taxes, I already paid to rebuild New Orleans and the Hurricane Sandy victims, anyway." 

There is a certain soundness to this logic, in spite of its lack of precision. In any case, the whole situation reminds us it would be best to simply do away with all the constant robbing of Peter in State X to pay Paul in State Y.

Of course, we'll be told that federal disaster relief programs are all about "sharing" and "cooperation" and "kindness." In reality, it's all just about forcing one group of people to hand over money to another group of people. There is no doubt that Texas and Houston now face significant challenges in rebuilding after the flood. But, when we demand that other regions and states pay for the rebuilding of Texas, we're acting as if those other states and communities don't have problems of their own. Needs related to poverty, infrastructure, and education in, say, Michigan did not magically disappear because Texas experienced a flood. The only reason it now seems right to take money from people in Michigan, and hand it over to Houstonians, is because Houston's problems are in the headlines, and Michigans mundane daily problems are not. The central planners have decided that Houstonians deserve Michigan's money. But the rationale for this decision is purely political, and thus arbitrary. 

This isn't to say real sharing and kindness are a bad thing. It's excellent that private charities have already been hard at work helping with the cleanup in Houston. If one wants to insist that governments be involved, there's nothing stopping other states from handing over funds to Texas directly. The federal government need not be involved at all.

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Movie Review: Unlocked : New at Reason

Imagine the melancholy passage this picture has endured in the three years since it was shot: Left to snooze on a high shelf, occasionally pulled down to be poked and prodded by a team of editors in search of a graceful narrative through-line, or at least a few shapely scenes…all in vain. Finally, defeated, the filmmakers gave up and just put the damn thing out. And here it is.

Unlocked is an international-espionage thriller in the very long line of the Bond and Bourne movies, and I hear you stifling a yawn. But this one’s different. Because in this one, the international kickass at the center of things is…a woman. That’s right. And that might’ve sounded sort of bold three years ago, but now it’s come a little late—Atomic Blonde kicks this movie’s butt all over the lot.

It’s not just that dragon-tattoo girl Noomi Rapace is about five inches shorter than Charlize Theron—she’s about seven inches shorter than Orlando Bloom, the most action-y of her costars here. And so she never seems in any way formidable—a quality that Theron can summon with just a lopsided lift of her lip, writes Kurt Loder in his latest review for Reason.

View this article.

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Trump Blinks Again, Won’t Shut Down Government Over Wall Funding

Last Tuesday, during his rally in Phoenix, Trump promised the fawning public that he will follow through on his biggest campaign promise and “build that wall,” saying that “now the obstructionist Democrats would like us not to do it. But believe me, if we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall.”

The promise spooked already nervous traders, who saw in Trump’s promise the catalyst for either an extended government shutdown, or worse, a technical default as the US breached the debt ceiling in early October. That said, Trump had already flopped once on the border wall funding, and – we wrote last week – it was very likely he would do so again once his economic advisors explained to him the severity and consequences of his latest public boast.

That’s precisely what happened as moments ago, the WaPo reported that White House officials quietly notified Congress that the $1.6 billion in wall funding would not need to be in the September continuing resolution that was meant to fund government operations from October until sometime in early December, a senior GOP congressional aide said. In other words, contrary to his vow less than two weeks ago, Trump won’t shut down the government over the wall funds after all.

So how will Trump explain this latest flip-flop? The same way he did last time: by kicking the can:

White House officials have signaled to lawmakers, however, that the wall’s eventual construction remains a top priority for Trump. He wants this funding to be included in the December budget bill, GOP congressional aides said.

By then, however, nobody will care what Trump has to say:

Trump could still follow through on a threat to shut down the government in December, but this marks the second time he has pulled back from the wall demand in order to allow lawmakers to pass a budget bill. The first time came in May, when lawmakers voted to authorize government funding through September and refrained from including money that would allow for the construction of a new wall. That law, however, did allow the U.S. government to replace existing border wall with a new barrier where necessary.

What has made the bizarre situation especially “sad” is that Trump has been threatening to shut down the government for months. In May, he said in another tweet that the government needed a “good shutdown” to break the gridlock in Congress. The issue for Trump, is that every time he has the chance to enforce a “good shutdown”, he backs out.

While all democrats will be delighted by the latest retreat by the president, so will many republicans:

That’s one reason many Republicans in Congress have told Trump to focus on other parts of his agenda and postpone having a fight about constructing the border wall for now.

So does Trump have any, well, trump cards left? Not really:

If Trump decided to veto a funding bill passed by Congress, it would lead to a partial government shutdown. National parks would close, and many government agencies would send employees home without pay, causing delays at Social Security, the Internal Revenue Service, and at numerous other agencies. The last time there was a government shutdown was in 2013.

Finally, confirming the WaPo’s report, this is what a White House aide told Bloomberg:

  • TRUMP WON’T PUSH BORDER WALL MONEY IN GOVT FUNDING BILL: AIDE

Curiously, while 10Y yields have risen modestly on the report, the T-Bill dislocation remains, with the October 5th bills still +9.5bps, indicating that the market remains distinctly nervous about the possibility of a debt ceiling crisis in just one month.

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The 4 Ways To Access Money For “Harvey” Repairs

Authored by Houston resident Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

The effects of Hurricane Harvey are going to linger for years, likely decades.

According to the Consumer Federation of America, approximately 80% of those affected by flood damage do not carry flood insurance protection.

If you have suffered damage and do not carry flood insurance or seek proceeds in addition to coverage, here are four options to consider.

Apply For Assistance Through FEMA (Yes, Even Grants)

Already, over $37 billion has been allocated to assist victims of this disaster and 68,000 applications approved. FEMA partners with the U.S. Small Business Administration to help disaster survivors secure funding.

Low-interest loans to cover losses are available up to $200,000 for primary residences. Loans up to $40,000 are also available for personal property replacement, including renter losses. Interest rates on these loans generally tend to be less than 4%. The maximum loan term is 30 years. Unfortunately, interest is not tax deductible.

Secondary homes, pleasure boats, airplanes and recreational vehicles are not covered unless they’re used for business purposes. Amounts for landscaping and backyard items like swimming pools are going to be limited at best. Remember the primary purpose of the money allocated is to get primary residences livable again.

There are multiple FEMA grants available for victims. FEMA’s Housing Assistance program is available regardless of household income. Aid for other losses such as personal property, vehicle repair, replacement and moving and storage expenses is income dependent.

A rule of thumb to consider is that grants may help recipients repair damage; an SBA disaster loan can return a home to pre-disaster condition.

Consider Home-Equity Lines Or Cash Value Life Insurance

If you have the ability to tap the equity in your home, using an existing home equity line of credit is an expedited source of funds, generally available through a check book or ‘credit’ card.

With HELOCs, credit is utilized only when needed, and at interest rates much lower than those on credit cards. Credit line rates are variable over the life of the loan. Currently, interest rates tend to range between 4.25 and 5.24% but can change depending how long the loan is outstanding and moves in the Prime Rate. Also, interest on these loan types is tax deductible, which is a benefit over the SBA Disaster Loan option.

If you were lucky enough to have a HELOC established on a primary residence, it still would be best to apply for the SBA loan, initially. Then, compare your SBA loan rate to the after-tax rate on the HELOC. If anything, you may ultimately use the fixed-rate SBA loan proceeds to pay off or reduce the home equity line obligation.

Funds are quickly available through a HELOC which makes it extremely convenient. It can take 5 days at the quickest to obtain the first disbursement from the Small Business Administration, which may feel like an eternity to a displaced hurricane victim.

The cash value of permanent life insurance like whole or universal as examples, may be easily accessible recovery money. Every policy’s loan provision varies – generally proceeds withdrawn ‘tax free,’ are indeed loans (you’re borrowing against yourself, in essence), that are not required to be paid back. Your life insurance provider may offer interest rates that are lower than traditional institutions, like a bank. Some policies allow loans free of interest.

As unpaid loans are deducted from a policy’s death benefit, it’s a good idea to use this option as a temporary bridge until additional funding is secured. Once the dust settles (no pun intended), I would recommend a strategy to pay off the policy loan to ensure the full death benefit remains intact or your cash value is replenished for possible future needs such as retirement distributions.

What About Loans Against My 401(k)?

You may be eligible to borrow up to 50% of your account balance up to $50,000 that requires repayment within five years. Interest rates are set by your retirement plan provider. Generally, they’re the prime rate plus 1%.

A few caveats – Many Americans do not have enough saved for retirement in first place or lack job security which makes this a less than desirable option for hurricane relief.

Similar to permanent life insurance distributions, the money withdrawn is in essence, ‘borrowing from yourself.’ Access to the funds can be quick, and of course tax-free. Loans are typically paid through automatic paycheck deductions.

Disadvantages outweigh the positives – there’s the opportunity cost of a withdrawn balance no longer working for the end goal – retirement, interest is not tax deductible (unlike the HELOC), loan payments do not count as contributions therefore you may be frozen out of -contributing to the plan until the loan is paid off, and most important, changing employers or termination will accelerate the pay-off date.

If not fully paid within 60 days of the official termination or change date, a loan will be classified a distribution thus taxed the same as ordinary income. Under 59 ½? Be prepared to cough up an additional 10% in premature distribution penalties. Needless to say, only those confident of job security should consider this alternative.

A 401(k) loan should be perceived as a temporary, immediate source of cash. Once SBA or conventional source payments are received, it’s highly recommended to retire the retirement plan loan (see what I did there?).

What About “Hardship Withdrawals” From 401k’s?

This alternative is my least favorite but thought to share the details only because the IRS has provided “relief” to taxpayers affected by Hurricane Harvey through Announcement 2017-11.

Between August 23, 2017 and January 31, 2018, the IRS will allow victims of Hurricane Harvey to take hardship distributions from their employer-sponsored retirement plans such as 401(k), 403(b), and 457 plans.

Usually, hardship withdrawal options are restrictive. The IRS announcement allows rules to be broadened. However, other than that, I don’t see an advantage to this alternative as pre-tax distributions are considered taxable. A 10% early distribution penalty will also likely apply.

Funding for Hurricane Harvey repair efforts is now top priority.

Whether on the public or private level, it’s going to take money, lots of it, to get those adversely affected back to living their lives.

However, weigh your options carefully before taking action, as sometimes the “cure” can be worse than the “disease” in the long-run.

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Arkema Releases List Of Toxic Chemicals Stored At Doomed Texas Plant

One day after two explosions rocked its flooded plant in Crosby, Texas, French chemicals giant Arkema said it was on “high alert” as more fires could start at the doomed facility at any moment, according to VP of US manufacturing Daryl Roberts who spoke to reporters on Friday morning. In a separate statement, that company said that “we continue to monitor the temperature in the remaining trailers and there is evidence suggesting that other trailers will soon burn, but there have been no reports of any fires or smoke.”

Residents in the vicinity of the Crosby plant, and not only, have grown especially worried about the chemicals contained in the plant, which until recently was only known for holding various forms of organic peroxides. While Arkema executive Richard Rennard said in a press conference Thursday morning that the plant was emitting “noxious” smoke, he would not respond to a question as to whether the smoke from the burning substances was toxic. Incidentally, the following clip shows what happens to the substance if not cooled properly.

Responding to the rising environmental damage concerns, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement on Thursday night they concluded the best course of action was to allow the trailers containing organic peroxide to burn out instead of putting emergency responders in harm’s way. It also claimed that its aerial surveillance aircraft did not detect toxic concentrations of chemicals at the site.

“Following this fire, EPA sent aerial surveillance aircraft to test resulting smoke and did ground-level air quality monitoring,” read a statement. “EPA’s plane instrumentation is capable of measuring 78 different chemicals, including peroxides. Neither testing methods found toxic concentration levels in areas away from the evacuated facility.”

The EPA’s blanket dismissal of concerns, however, did little to comfort the local population which has been ordered to evacuate a 1.5 mile perimeter around the plant.

The questioning continued on Friday, when Roberts refused to disclose the exact volumes and location of the chemicals contained in the plant, citing security and terrorism as reasons why.

Instead, aggravating concerns, Arkema said it expects all 500,000 pounds of peroxides on the site to burn. In terms of timing, Arkema Americas CEO Rich Rose said containers filled with chemicals would likely ignite “in a few days” and was unsure how long the situation could last, adding that 1 out of 9 containers with chemicals have already caught fire at Crosby.

Finally, while refusing to provide more details, the company did publish a list of the toxic chemicals stored at the doomed facility on its web site, reposted below.

  • 2-ETHYLHEXANOYL CHLORIDE DISTILLED
  • ACETIC ACID 84%
  • ACETONE
  • AROMATIC 100
  • BENZOYL CHLORIDE
  • CAUSTIC POTASH 45%
  • CAUSTIC SODA 50%
  • CUMENE HYDROPEROXIDE
  • CUMENE HYDROPEROXIDE
  • DIMETHYL HEXADIENE
  • DIMETHYL HEXANEDIOL DH-S
  • EPSOM SALTS
  • HEXANE
  • HYDROGEN PEROXIDE 70%
  • ISOAMYLENE
  • ISOAMYLENE
  • ISOBUTYLENE     ISOPROPYL ALCOHOL
  • MINERAL OIL, WHITE
  • MINERAL SPIRITS ODORLESS
  • MONOSODIUM PHOSPHATE
  • NEODECANOYL CHLORIDE >=98.0% UNDISTILLED
  • PIVALOYL CHLORIDE 95-100%
  • PROPYLENE GLYCOL
  • SODIUM BICARBONATE
  • SODIUM CARBONATE ANHYDROUS LIGHT
  • SODIUM SULFATE ANHYDROUS
  • SODIUM SULFITE ANHYDROUS
  • SULFUR DIOXIDE
  • SULFURIC ACID 93% REAGENT ACS
  • T-BUTYL HYDROPEROXIDE 70%

All of these substances are now expected to burn down, many in volatile, explosive fashion, in the coming days.

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