Category: reason

President Joe Biden’s administration has made the fight against climate change a central part of its $2 trillion infrastructure plan. This legislation, if it ever sees the light of day, would shovel more than $100 billion of subsidies toward boosting the market for electric vehicles, as well as updating the country’s electric grid to make it allegedly more resilient to climate disasters.

All of these “investments” sound well and good on paper, but if you genuinely care about the environment, don’t hold your breath for any real progress. For one thing, Biden’s plan is mostly a giant handout to corporations that are already heavily investing in infrastructure. It’s also a gift to unions, most of which will do nothing to encourage the type of activities the president claims to support, and they’ll make the cost of producing infrastructure more expensive, so we’ll probably see less of it.

Consider the way the plan is currently funded with taxes on income. As Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute notes, that’s pretty much the exact opposite of the way a green plan should be funded. He writes, “Biden’s plan relies on income taxes to pay for infrastructure subsidies, and that approach does not moderate consumption or reduce resource use.” What the president should do instead, Edwards suggests, is allow states to “fund infrastructure…through user charges that restrain consumer demand.”

Those higher income taxes on top of the many costly labor and environmental mandates in the bill would also raise production costs in the United States. That would shift production of many products to other countries that have more competitive tax rates and lower production costs—but also, oftentimes, questionable environmental standards. This was nicely highlighted in a recent Kite & Key Media video that explains how our already burdensome labor, health, and climate regulations make it impossible to open a mine or to operate one profitably in the United States. This matters because the greener our lives, the more we need minerals like graphite, lithium, and manganese.

The good news is that regulatory reform of, among other things, the National Environmental Protection Act of 1970 has bipartisan support. Scholars on both sides of the aisle agree that these reviews delay and drive up the costs of infrastructure projects while rarely delivering on the promise of environmental protection. Less expensive infrastructure projects mean more investment at home and more resources to innovate toward a greener future.

The Biden administration’s commitment to the protectionist tariffs of the Trump administration is also counterproductive for the environment. The reason free trade is good for the environment is simple: Countries will only produce things at what economists call a “comparative advantage.” This is just a fancy way to say that, with free trade, each good is produced with as few resources as possible. That’s a win for the environment. It’s time to make trade as free as possible by removing all the Trump tariffs and more—and signing as many free trade agreements as are politically feasible.

While the administration is at it, it should end the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. Also known as the Jones Act, this cronyism is a protectionist provision that restricts the waterborne transport of cargo within the United States to vessels that are U.S.-flagged, U.S.-crewed, U.S.-owned, and U.S.-built. This act’s main effect is to increase the cost of waterborne transportation within the United States, which in turn encourages the use of alternative forms of transportation such as trucks and rail—modes of freight transportation that are worse for the environment than shipping on water. The Jones Act also encourages the use of older and, hence, less fuel-efficient vessels.

The administration could also signal that it’s serious about the environment by ending all federal subsidies to oil and gas, both at home and abroad. That includes the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s financing of oil and gas companies abroad to buy goods from American companies, which represents 25 percent of the bank’s portfolio.

But there’s an even larger point: Ultimately, we know that the best green policy is the prosperity made possible only by economic growth. The wealthier we are, the more we can afford to attend to the environment. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s preferred path of more taxes, and more politically motivated spending and regulations will not just make us financially poorer; it also comes at a high cost for the environment.

COPYRIGHT 2021 CREATORS.COM

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Since the novel coronavirus first showed up in America in January 2020, the U.S. government has routinely impeded scientists, public health officials, and citizens from coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. Early on, the surgeon general admonished Americans for buying masks. As late as last August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was downplaying broad-based testing among asymptomatic people. It wasn’t until this April—more than a year into the pandemic—that the agency finally acknowledged what had become clear only a few months in: COVID-19 is rarely spread by surface contact. It’s primarily an airborne disease.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stood in the way as independent labs worked to quickly develop COVID-19 tests that would allow individuals to know if they were infected and should self-quarantine, and it wasn’t until this spring that the agency finally approved an at-home test you could get without a prescription. The FDA also temporarily pulled Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine from the U.S. market because one out of every 1.13 million recipients developed blood clots. Those are the same odds of being struck by lightning.

The one clear policy victory—Operation Warp Speed, which promised payments to developers of coronavirus vaccines—was based on biomedical innovations such as “messenger RNA” vaccines—that were already underway before the novel coronavirus appeared. “The horrors of the last year have spurred humanity to quickly develop an unprecedentedly flexible and powerful toolkit that may well make COVID-19 the last true pandemic,” writes Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey in the May cover story for the magazine.

“The amazing thing is that we’ll be able to forestall any further pandemics in the future because so many great advancements in vaccine treatments…have come out of that,” he tells Reason TV. “Now you can just slip any piece of genetic information into that lipid and now you have a vaccine.”

Safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines were produced far faster than any expert expected. Yet almost all of the time that it took to bring the vaccines to market was due to safety testing and other governmental mandates that could have been sped up without endangering anyone. By January 13, 2020—only two days after the Chinese researchers shared the genetic sequence of the COVID-19 virus and before most Americans had heard of the disease—the biotech company Moderna had devised the formula for its vaccine. BioNTech launched its COVID-19 vaccine program in January and had partnered with Pfizer to manufacture it by mid-March of last year. The first volunteer was injected with Moderna’s vaccine on March 16, 2020, yet it was only approved by the FDA last December 17th, a week after Pfizer’s vaccine met the agency’s approval. Had the agency been faster off the mark and used human-challenge trials and other innovative testing techniques, the vaccines could have been brought to market months earlier with no compromise in safety. That would have conceivably saved hundreds of thousands of lives globally.

Bailey stresses that mRNA vaccines represent a whole new way of fighting diseases. “It’s a platform vaccine,” he says. “If we have another microbe, virus, or bacteria, we’ll be able to quickly identify its genetics and just plug it into the particles that are the base of the vaccine and roll it out within three to four months as opposed to a year.”

mRNA vaccines are currently in human trials for HIV, rabies, and influenza. They may also prove effective against malaria, tuberculosis, hepatitis B, and cystic fibrosis. A team of colorectal cancer experts are testing the mRNA technology in a Phase II clinical trial as a possible cancer treatment. 

Will our government allow a vaccine based on this plug-and-play model to be deployed not within months, but in a matter of weeks, to stop the next pandemic in its tracks? “My answer is to let us deploy the technologies as quickly as possible, and then we won’t have to make any of these trade-offs ever again,” says Bailey. “If we have another pandemic and another failure [like with COVID-19], it will be a policy failure. Our bureaucracies need to get out of the way and let vaccines be deployed in an expeditious way.”

Produced by Noor Greene; additional graphics by Isaac Reese; audio by Ian Keyser; narrated by Nick Gillespie.

Animation: Scientific Animations/scientificanimations.com; Abbott Laboratories.

Music: Pave the way by Lux Inspira via Artlist.

Photos: ZUMA Press/Newscom ID 807358,140221 ©; Polaris Images ID 784557-784557© /Newscom; Reuters Photo Archive ID 181417 © /Newscom; Splash News ID 194588 © /Newscom. Twenty 20 Photos/Envato; ID 22740662 © Andreus | Dreamstime.com; ID 60394307© Incomible| Dreamstime.com.

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As if we need any more evidence of police officers being reckless with human life, here’s an especially horrifying story out of Mississippi and Louisiana. Police shot more than 20 bullets at a car in which they knew there was a four-month-old baby, killing the child along with his father, Eric Derell Smith.

Smith, of Baton Rouge, was suspected of killing his ex-girlfriend’s nephew and his ex-girlfriend and fleeing with the couple’s child on Monday. “Our top priority is locating that child safely,” East Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said in a press release.

Police did eventually locate the child safely.

Then they killed him.

Authorities had been notified that Smith was driving east on I-10 near Gulfport, Mississippi, prompting police from Gulfport, the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office, and Mississippi Highway Patrol to begin chasing him. After Smith drove into a highway median and got stuck, police began shooting.

Another motorist, Patrisha Ramos, took a video of the incident:

“That baby didn’t have a chance at all in that situation and it’s terrible,” Ramos told WLOX. “At least give the person in the car either a chance to get out or surrender or something. Especially if there was an innocent life in that car.”

According to a press release from the Biloxi Police Department, Smith was exiting his car when police started shooting. Yet this isn’t apparent from the video.

“It’s possible that the driver—the baby’s father who has just kidnapped the baby after murdering the mother/ex and her relative—shot at the cops. The video is unclear,” tweeted Fordham University law professor John Pfaff. “But they KNEW the baby was there. They are supposed to be trained for this. A 20-shot fusillade? At a hostage?”

In typical fashion, some media outlets have refused to assign agency or blame for the child’s death to law enforcement. “Baby in suspect’s car during I-10 police pursuit dies,” read a Biloxi Sun Herald headline. “A murder suspect and his kidnapped baby son die after police shootout in Mississippi,” reported CNN.

“A baby boy died from injuries suffered when Mississippi police gunned down his murder-suspect father,” NBC News tweeted, sharing an article titled “Baby boy killed during attempted arrest in Mississippi.”

You mean to say that police shot and killed a baby https://t.co/tJOPhNX6aZ

— Olayemi Olurin (@msolurin) May 5, 2021

Here’s a remarkable case of the exonerative voice.

Do you know how this baby died? From some of the 20 bullets the police fired into the car, knowing the baby was in the car. pic.twitter.com/wJi5byLjGn

— John Pfaff (@JohnFPfaff) May 6, 2021

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FREE MINDS

Florida passes an unconstitutional and biased social media bill. Reason‘s Scott Shackford highlights a bit of cronyism at its worst:

Florida lawmakers have done Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ bidding by passing a bill that would forbid social media companies from deplatforming candidates who are running for office. But an exception tossed in the bill to exempt certain major companies like Disney and Comcast highlights the bill’s many legal and constitutional issues.

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FREE MARKETS

Corporate tax increase targets small businesses and workers, too. While campaigning, President Joe Biden pledged not to raise taxes on small businesses. But now, “Biden is pushing a series of tax increases that raise small business taxes,” notes John Kartch of Americans for Tax Reform. For instance, “Biden’s corporate income tax rate hike from 21 percent to 28 percent targets one million small businesses across the country organized as corporations,” Kartch points out:

As noted by the Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, there are 31.7 million small businesses in the U.S. Of those, 25.7 million have no employees, while 6 million have employees. Of these 6 million small employers, 16.8 percent, or 1 million of these businesses are classified as c-corporations. The SBA classifies a small employer as any independent business with fewer than 500 employees.

Biden claims his spending plan makes large corporations pay their “fair share.” However, the plan will raise taxes on many small businesses that are structured as corporations.

As National Federation of Independent Business Vice President for Federal Government Relations Kevin Kuhlman told CNBC:

…There are big concerns about the C corp issue for the smallest corporations because the corporate tax hike is not being discussed in terms that would be graduated for smaller companies with lower levels of income.

“The target here is the largest corporations, many listed as paying no corporate tax, but the problem with that is that two-thirds or even more than that of corporations are small businesses,” Kuhlman said, noting that the majority of C corps have receipts of less than $1 million.

Corporate taxes in general may amount to taxes on the lower- and middle-income workers, not just wealthy shareholders. “The puzzle to me about the entire debate is just how quickly the corporate tax got mired in this issue of fairness when we know the [effect] is so unclear,” Harvard Business School professor Mihir A. Desai told The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Desai said lawmakers concerned about income distribution should focus more on assisting poorer households and less on raising corporate taxes that could slow investment.

Even models that show most of the corporate tax burden falling on capital affect middle-income households with retirement funds. They also show a modest longer-term effect on workers.

The bottom 80% of households pay more than one-quarter of corporate taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center. The Biden administration, which says it won’t raise taxes on households making under $400,000, doesn’t consider those effects as breaking its pledge.

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QUICK HITS

New today at @libertarianism, we've added an entry on "Sex Work" to the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, contributed by @ENBrown. https://t.co/BrxZ6wqdSb

— Aaron Ross Powell (@ARossP) May 5, 2021

• “In 1970, about 36% of federal spending, net of interest payments, was benefits to individuals—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (new programs at the time), unemployment compensation, means-tested welfare benefits,” notes Christopher DeMuth, a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. “Benefits spending then grew mightily, roughly in tandem with deficit spending, and is now about 76% of spending, heading briskly toward 80%.”

• South Carolina is bringing back death by firing squad.

• A federal appeals court is considering whether 18- to 20-year-olds should have the right to buy a gun.

• An extremist abortion law has cleared the Texas House:

Okay, here we go. I'll live-Tweet ????: The Texas House is now taking up #SB8, a six week #abortion ban that amounts to a near-total ban. It would grant breathtaking authority to *anyone* interested in suing a provider or a group/person that "aids and abets" abortion care. #txlege

— Mary Tuma (@TumaTime) May 5, 2021

• Reason‘s Jacob Sullum tackles the Supreme Court’s crack versus cocaine sentencing disparity case.

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Please feel free to write comments on this post on whatever topic you like! (As usual, please avoid personal insults of each other, vulgarities aimed at each other or at third parties, or other things that are likely to poison the discussion.)

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I blogged a few weeks ago about a COVID-related libel and privacy lawsuit by former Electronic Privacy Information Center head Marc Rotenberg against Politico, LLC, Protocol Media, LLC, and Robert L. Allbritton and Tim Grieve (who run Politico and Protocol). One of the things I noted was the possible jurisdictional problem: The lawsuit is in federal court on a “diversity of citizenship” theory, which doesn’t work if plaintiff and any of the defendants share the same state citizenship (“state” here including D.C.); and both Rotenberg and, it appeared, Allbritton or Grieve or both were D.C. citizens.

A week ago, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan noted this problem, and ruled:

Plaintiff brings this diversity action against two corporate entities and two individuals. However, the venue, jurisdiction and parties sections of the Complaint do not set forth the facts necessary to establish that this court has jurisdiction pursuant to 29 U.S.C. Section 1332. Plaintiff has not alleged the states where the individual defendants are citizens. Additionally, Defendant has not alleged where Politico LLC has its principal places of business, nor where Protocol Media, LLC is incorporated or has its principal place of business. Accordingly, by May 5, 2021 Plaintiff shall file an Amended Complaint that contains the facts necessary for this court to establish jurisdiction.

Yesterday, Rotenberg’s lawyer responded by voluntary dismissing the individuals, and refiling an Amended Complaint asserting that each LLC defendant is “a Delaware corporation.” But as best I can tell, that was in error: They are indeed registered on the Delaware Department of State Division of Corporations site, but as LLCs, not as corporations.

“Unincorporated associations, including LLCs, have the citizenship of each of their members,” which defeats diversity jurisdiction if any of them have the same citizenship as the opposing party. And the Notice of Removal in a different case against Politico—Patel v. Politico, LLC (E.D. Va. Nov. 26, 2019—notes that Politico LLC is indeed an LLC, and its members include several D.C. citizens. (That case was indeed eventually remanded to state court, precisely because it later turned out that plaintiff there was a D.C. citizen, as were some of Politico’s members.) I’m pretty sure that defendants’ lawyers will move to dismiss on jurisdictional grounds, and I don’t see what Rotenberg’s lawyer will be able to say in response.

Of course, Rotenberg’s lawyercan re-file in D.C. Superior Court, but that would be mighty perilous: As I’ve suggested in my earlier posts (on the disclosure of private facts claim and the libel and false light claims), the lawsuit is likely to be an uphill battle. And D.C.’s anti-SLAPP statute makes matters perilous for plaintiffs with weak libel and privacy claims; that statute, like others in various states,

• allows early dismissal of lawsuits based on speech “in connection with an issue of public interest,” if the court concludes that plaintiff’s claim is legally unfounded;
• generally suspends discovery until the motion is resolved;
• requires expedited hearings and rulings in such cases;
• provides for immediate appellate review; and
• presumptively requires a losing plaintiff to pay the prevailing defendant’s attorney fees.

I’m skeptical that Rotenberg will want to risk that, but I might be wrong.

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