Category: reason

Cuomo’s Office Covered Up Nursing Home Death Toll Last Summer

sipaphotoseleven492034(2)

Cuomo aides kept nursing home death numbers quiet. A damning new report from The New York Times suggests Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office knew as early as last June how deadly the governor’s plans were proving for nursing home residents, but still concealed this information from the public.

Early in the pandemic, Cuomo had ordered that nursing homes could not reject patients from returning to those facilities after testing positive for COVID-19 and being hospitalized. He also barred the deaths of COVID-19 patients transferred from nursing homes to hospitals after catching the virus from being counted among nursing home COVID-19 deaths.

At this point, New York has seen more than 47,000 deaths from COVID-19, including more than 15,000 deaths among nursing home residents.

Last June, a report from New York health officials listed 9,000 COVID-19 fatalities among the state’s nursing home residents. The number “was not public, and the governor’s most senior aides wanted to keep it that way,” the Times reports.

They rewrote the report to take it out, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The extraordinary intervention, which came just as Mr. Cuomo was starting to write a book on his pandemic achievements, was the earliest act yet known in what critics have called a monthslong effort by the governor and his aides to obscure the full scope of nursing home deaths.

When Cuomo finally released the data this year, he blamed the delay on concern that the Trump administration would play politics with the information. But according to the Times, “Cuomo and his aides actually began concealing the numbers months earlier, as his aides were battling their own top health officials, and well before requests for data arrived from federal authorities, according to documents and interviews with six people with direct knowledge of the discussions, who requested anonymity to describe the closed-door debates.”

Cuomo’s office told the Times this week that they excluded the data because they “could not confirm it had been adequately verified.”

FREE MINDS

A solution in search of a problem? These days, one of the trendiest ways for state lawmakers to perform conservatism is by introducing bills to ban transgender female athletes from playing on girls’ sports teams. “Legislators in more than 20 states have introduced bills this year that would ban transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams in public high schools,” notes NBC.

Yet in almost every case, sponsors cannot cite a single instance in their own state or region where such participation has caused problems.

The Associated Press reached out to two dozen state lawmakers sponsoring such measures around the country as well as the conservative groups supporting them and found only a few times it’s been an issue among the hundreds of thousands of American teenagers who play high school sports.

FREE MARKETS

Utah lawmakers say all phone and tablet manufacturers must pre-install anti-porn filters on their devices. Opponents of the new measure, which is on its way to the state’s governor, “argued the proposal is unworkable and could raise constitutionality concerns,” notes The Salt Lake Tribune.

“State Sen. Jake Anderegg told his colleagues that the proposal won’t work because it tasks manufacturers with turning on the filters — even though the software to do so hasn’t yet been loaded onto the devices,” the paper points out. “The option to activate the adult content blockers isn’t available until further down the supply chain, he said.”

Nonetheless, Anderegg voted for the bill, saying it “sends a good message.”

“According to analysts, international manufacturers of phones and computers like Apple or Google could face civil liability if they don’t comply,” notes Gustavo Turner at XBiz, pointing out that the bill was sponsored “by staunch anti-porn crusader Wayne A. Harper” and then “speedily passed by the House only hours after it had cleared the committee stage by the narrowest of margins (a 6-5 vote)” earlier in February.

It passed the state Senate in a 19-6 vote yesterday.

QUICK HITS

• Some good news on the jobs front this month:

• Last week, Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic, Reason‘s Peter Suderman, and I did a Clubhouse panel discussion on the intersection of journalism, technology, and advocacy, organized and moderated by Ivy Astrix. You can now listen here.

• Kentucky is trying to make it illegal to taunt police officers if it provokes police to violence.

• A Dallas police officer has been charged with two counts of capital murder. Officer Bryan Riser “is charged in the murders of Lisa Saenz, who was found shot dead in the Trinity River in March 2017, and of Aubrey Douglas, who was reported missing in Feb. 2017 but whose body was never found,” reports NBC News.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3ep00Yr
via IFTTT

California’s Zero-Emission Car Mandate Is Empty Virtue Signalling

dreamstime_xl_24258057

Recent news reports contained some eye-opening news, at least for those of us who are car aficionados: “In a stunning announcement, GM says it will stop making all diesel and gas-powered cars,” according to Motor Biscuit. The planned implementation date is 2035, which isn’t particularly far into the future.

I’m still grumpy about the disappearing manual transmission, and will give up my 332-horsepower 370Z when they peel the shifter from my cold, dead fingers. Whatever one’s views of electric vehicles, private industry is perfectly capable of transitioning away from internal-combustion engines without the heavy hand of California’s bumbling state government.

Flash back to September, when Gavin Newsom signed an executive order that, amid much fanfare, promised “bold action” on the “climate crisis.” It would require every new car sold in the state by 2035 to be emission free, which means a mandate for electric vehicles. “Cars shouldn’t give our kids asthma. Make wildfires worse. Melt glaciers. Or raise sea levels,” the governor tweeted.

The state should only implement such far-reaching regulations through proper legislative channels, not via gubernatorial fiat. Furthermore, Newsom’s virtue signaling ignores some crucial points—e.g., the state’s poor land-management practices have more to do with the then-raging wildfires than the sale of modern vehicles. Most significantly, Newsom’s grandiose order is largely meaningless.

Even though the 2035 phase-out date is the same, General Motors did not make its recent announcement because of Newsom’s edict. The governor and lawmakers who propose similar things in the United States and abroad understand the great advances that the private sector already is making. This is a typical progressive strategy: Pass a “bold” measure that conforms to what industry already is doing and then take credit for being visionary.

Journalists will often take the bait. A recent editorial from The Los Angeles Times used the GM decision as evidence that Newsom’s order wasn’t “fantastical.” Then it called for the state to “spend big now” on an electric-vehicle future—something the administration is gladly obliging.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office recently released a report on Newsom’s 2021-2022 budget as it relates to fees and funding streams to support zero-emission vehicle infrastructure. The governor plans to securitize revenue from Assembly Bill 8, which funds alternative energy and renewable fuel programs, to spend as much as $1 billion on zero-emission vehicle-fueling infrastructure.

In California’s $202-billion budget, a billion bucks may be a rounding error. But it’s still an unnecessary use of tax dollars given that, once again, private industry is busy investing heavily in an electric-vehicle network. If manufacturers want to sell these newfangled cars, they need to provide ways for drivers to charge them. Many people might buy an EV if carmakers could ease their “range anxiety”—the fear of getting stranded without a charge.

Tesla provides a better infrastructure model than the California state government, the latter of which is spending more than $79-billion building a “High Speed Rail” line through the Central Valley that no one (other than bureaucrats and contractors) seems to want.

“The reason why consumers still choose Teslas … is perhaps surprisingly simple. They can drive their Teslas for long distances in full confidence that they will find convenient locations at which to recharge their vehicle,” as the Harvard Business Review explained. Unlike old-line car manufacturers, Tesla invested heavily in a charging network. Others will surely follow.

One of the oddest elements of the governor’s EV plan is, as the LAO explains, its mandate that 50-percent of Clean Transportation Program funds go to low-income and disadvantaged communities. You might have noticed that electric vehicles are popular mainly in high-income areas—and not for any nefarious reason. The median price of a new vehicle in the United States is above $36,000, but it tops $55,000 for an electric vehicle.

Poor people can’t afford new cars and certainly aren’t buying new EVs. EV prices are dropping significantly (13 percent in one year) as competition heats up, but leave it to the government to spend our money to build infrastructure where it isn’t yet needed—rather than to meet the current demands of consumers. And don’t get me started on EV subsidies.

“The vast majority of money in the Baker administration’s electric vehicle subsidy programs is being paid out to households living in the state’s wealthiest ZIP codes,” according to a Massachusetts study by Streetsblog. “(T)he program has barely made a dent in the overall composition of the state’s vehicle fleet” with EVs representing “about one-half of one percent” of the Bay State’s passenger fleet.

It’s not even a slam dunk that EVs will combat climate change, given that they shift pollutants from the tailpipe to the power plant. “Your battery-powered vehicle is only as green as your electricity supplier,” as Scientific American explained. Maybe we should leave it up to carmakers rather than pretend that California lawmakers have the wherewithal to save the planet?

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3qgTvcd
via IFTTT

California’s Zero-Emission Car Mandate Is Empty Virtue Signalling

dreamstime_xl_24258057

Recent news reports contained some eye-opening news, at least for those of us who are car aficionados: “In a stunning announcement, GM says it will stop making all diesel and gas-powered cars,” according to Motor Biscuit. The planned implementation date is 2035, which isn’t particularly far into the future.

I’m still grumpy about the disappearing manual transmission, and will give up my 332-horsepower 370Z when they peel the shifter from my cold, dead fingers. Whatever one’s views of electric vehicles, private industry is perfectly capable of transitioning away from internal-combustion engines without the heavy hand of California’s bumbling state government.

Flash back to September, when Gavin Newsom signed an executive order that, amid much fanfare, promised “bold action” on the “climate crisis.” It would require every new car sold in the state by 2035 to be emission free, which means a mandate for electric vehicles. “Cars shouldn’t give our kids asthma. Make wildfires worse. Melt glaciers. Or raise sea levels,” the governor tweeted.

The state should only implement such far-reaching regulations through proper legislative channels, not via gubernatorial fiat. Furthermore, Newsom’s virtue signaling ignores some crucial points—e.g., the state’s poor land-management practices have more to do with the then-raging wildfires than the sale of modern vehicles. Most significantly, Newsom’s grandiose order is largely meaningless.

Even though the 2035 phase-out date is the same, General Motors did not make its recent announcement because of Newsom’s edict. The governor and lawmakers who propose similar things in the United States and abroad understand the great advances that the private sector already is making. This is a typical progressive strategy: Pass a “bold” measure that conforms to what industry already is doing and then take credit for being visionary.

Journalists will often take the bait. A recent editorial from The Los Angeles Times used the GM decision as evidence that Newsom’s order wasn’t “fantastical.” Then it called for the state to “spend big now” on an electric-vehicle future—something the administration is gladly obliging.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office recently released a report on Newsom’s 2021-2022 budget as it relates to fees and funding streams to support zero-emission vehicle infrastructure. The governor plans to securitize revenue from Assembly Bill 8, which funds alternative energy and renewable fuel programs, to spend as much as $1 billion on zero-emission vehicle-fueling infrastructure.

In California’s $202-billion budget, a billion bucks may be a rounding error. But it’s still an unnecessary use of tax dollars given that, once again, private industry is busy investing heavily in an electric-vehicle network. If manufacturers want to sell these newfangled cars, they need to provide ways for drivers to charge them. Many people might buy an EV if carmakers could ease their “range anxiety”—the fear of getting stranded without a charge.

Tesla provides a better infrastructure model than the California state government, the latter of which is spending more than $79-billion building a “High Speed Rail” line through the Central Valley that no one (other than bureaucrats and contractors) seems to want.

“The reason why consumers still choose Teslas … is perhaps surprisingly simple. They can drive their Teslas for long distances in full confidence that they will find convenient locations at which to recharge their vehicle,” as the Harvard Business Review explained. Unlike old-line car manufacturers, Tesla invested heavily in a charging network. Others will surely follow.

One of the oddest elements of the governor’s EV plan is, as the LAO explains, its mandate that 50-percent of Clean Transportation Program funds go to low-income and disadvantaged communities. You might have noticed that electric vehicles are popular mainly in high-income areas—and not for any nefarious reason. The median price of a new vehicle in the United States is above $36,000, but it tops $55,000 for an electric vehicle.

Poor people can’t afford new cars and certainly aren’t buying new EVs. EV prices are dropping significantly (13 percent in one year) as competition heats up, but leave it to the government to spend our money to build infrastructure where it isn’t yet needed—rather than to meet the current demands of consumers. And don’t get me started on EV subsidies.

“The vast majority of money in the Baker administration’s electric vehicle subsidy programs is being paid out to households living in the state’s wealthiest ZIP codes,” according to a Massachusetts study by Streetsblog. “(T)he program has barely made a dent in the overall composition of the state’s vehicle fleet” with EVs representing “about one-half of one percent” of the Bay State’s passenger fleet.

It’s not even a slam dunk that EVs will combat climate change, given that they shift pollutants from the tailpipe to the power plant. “Your battery-powered vehicle is only as green as your electricity supplier,” as Scientific American explained. Maybe we should leave it up to carmakers rather than pretend that California lawmakers have the wherewithal to save the planet?

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3qgTvcd
via IFTTT

Global Freedom Is Losing Ground

hennie-stander-oYnu-eGYhs8-unsplash

Not that it’s surprising after a year of lockdowns, travel restrictions, and emergency powers, but the world is becoming less free. A new report says that pandemic-era authoritarianism is an acceleration of a pre-existing trend rather than a new phenomenon. For years, liberal democracy has been losing ground, not just in the way governments treat their subjects, but also in the favor of the public at large. 

“As a lethal pandemic, economic and physical insecurity, and violent conflict ravaged the world in 2020, democracy’s defenders sustained heavy new losses in their struggle against authoritarian foes, shifting the international balance in favor of tyranny,” Freedom House, an 80-year old watchdog group, announced in a report published this week. “These withering blows marked the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The countries experiencing deterioration outnumbered those with improvements by the largest margin recorded since the negative trend began in 2006.”

Based on an assessment of 25 political rights and civil liberties including political pluralism, freedom of expression, and personal autonomy, Freedom House’s report finds dwindling numbers of countries qualifying as “Free,” stagnation in the numbers of those rated “Partly Free,” and an increase in those assessed as “Not Free.”

While struggling democracies and overtly authoritarian states take the worst hits in the rankings, established democracies do poorly, too. “Over the past 10 years, the United States’ aggregate Freedom in the World score has declined by 11 points, placing it among the 25 countries that have suffered the largest declines in this period.” The chaos of the Trump years plays a big role and is emphasized in the report, but America’s shift toward authoritarianism began before the last president took office. 

Freedom House isn’t the only organization to see freedom eroding internationally. While less dramatic, the Human Freedom Index 2020, co-published in December by the Cato Institute and Canada’s Fraser Institute, also reports that “the level of global freedom has decreased slightly” since 2008 based on data through 2018. We’ll have to wait to see how pandemic-era actions affect the findings.

Even more troubling is that governments aren’t necessarily swimming against public opinion when they become authoritarian—they’re doing so as their populations lose faith in democratic government.

In the United States, only 16 percent of Americans say democracy is working “extremely/very well” according to a February AP/NORC poll. About 45 percent say it’s working “not too/not well at all.”

The United States isn’t alone in the erosion of faith in liberal democratic systems.

“Dissatisfaction with democratic politics among citizens of developed countries has increased from a third to half of all individuals over the last quarter of a century, according to the largest dataset ever created on global attitudes to democracy,” Cambridge University researchers reported last year. “In fact, researchers found that across the planet – from Europe to Africa, as well as Asia, Australasia, both Americas and the Middle East – the share of individuals who say they are ‘dissatisfied’ with democracy has jumped significantly since the mid-1990s: from 47.9% to 57.5%.”

Since then, panic fueled by COVID-19 has handed both nominally liberal and overtly authoritarian governments an excuse to tighten the screws on the people under their power.

“Freedom of personal expression, which has experienced the largest declines of any democracy indicator since 2012, was further restrained during the health crisis,” observes Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2021. “Governments around the world also deployed intrusive surveillance tools that were often of dubious value to public health and featured few safeguards against abuse.” 

Freedom House expects that “official responses to COVID-19 have laid the groundwork for government excesses that could affect democracy for years to come.” The report likens the likely legacy of the pandemic to the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the resulting erosion of due process and rise of the surveillance state around the world.

That can only inspire further dissatisfaction with democracy even where it’s long-established. If you’re already disillusioned with your political system and it’s delivering oppressive results anyway, why not look for something different? Authoritarian regimes are certainly eager to exploit the opportunity.

“The enemies of freedom have pushed the false narrative that democracy is in decline because it is incapable of addressing people’s needs,” warns Freedom House. “Those claiming the inferiority of democracy now go beyond countries such as China and Russia to include ‘antidemocratic actors within democratic states who see an opportunity to consolidate power,’ such as in Poland, Hungary and Turkey.”

Recent events have only expanded the opening for authoritarians. After the January 6 Capitol riot by supporters of former President Donald Trump, Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, sniffed that “the electoral system in the United States is archaic.”

“What we saw in the United States last night showed annihilation of Western democracy in the world,” gloated Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani.

“Annihilation” is a wild exaggeration, but confidence in liberal democratic institutions is certainly shaky.

“[I]s democracy itself as vulnerable as the buildings that were breached in Budapest, Berlin and now, Washington DC?” Germany’s state-owned Deutsche Welle asked experts in January. They answered with a broad “yes.” As an indication that they might be overlooking what makes liberal democracy valuable, one of them recommended enhanced Internet surveillance as a countermeasure.

“Authoritarianism and nationalism are on the rise around the world,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged this week in comments that cited Freedom House. “Governments are becoming less transparent and have lost the trust of the people. Elections are increasingly flashpoints for violence.  Corruption is growing.  And the pandemic has accelerated many of these trends.” 

But Blinken spoke as an official in the cabinet of President Joe Biden, who started out with a record flurry of executive actions bypassing Congress. And Biden just accused states lifting pandemic restrictions of engaging in “neanderthal thinking.”

We can’t battle authoritarian systems by emulating their autocracy and their disrespect for personal freedom. Democracies are going to have to do better at exercising their core liberal values to prove their worth and win back support.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/38usa0n
via IFTTT

Global Freedom Is Losing Ground

hennie-stander-oYnu-eGYhs8-unsplash

Not that it’s surprising after a year of lockdowns, travel restrictions, and emergency powers, but the world is becoming less free. A new report says that pandemic-era authoritarianism is an acceleration of a pre-existing trend rather than a new phenomenon. For years, liberal democracy has been losing ground, not just in the way governments treat their subjects, but also in the favor of the public at large. 

“As a lethal pandemic, economic and physical insecurity, and violent conflict ravaged the world in 2020, democracy’s defenders sustained heavy new losses in their struggle against authoritarian foes, shifting the international balance in favor of tyranny,” Freedom House, an 80-year old watchdog group, announced in a report published this week. “These withering blows marked the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The countries experiencing deterioration outnumbered those with improvements by the largest margin recorded since the negative trend began in 2006.”

Based on an assessment of 25 political rights and civil liberties including political pluralism, freedom of expression, and personal autonomy, Freedom House’s report finds dwindling numbers of countries qualifying as “Free,” stagnation in the numbers of those rated “Partly Free,” and an increase in those assessed as “Not Free.”

While struggling democracies and overtly authoritarian states take the worst hits in the rankings, established democracies do poorly, too. “Over the past 10 years, the United States’ aggregate Freedom in the World score has declined by 11 points, placing it among the 25 countries that have suffered the largest declines in this period.” The chaos of the Trump years plays a big role and is emphasized in the report, but America’s shift toward authoritarianism began before the last president took office. 

Freedom House isn’t the only organization to see freedom eroding internationally. While less dramatic, the Human Freedom Index 2020, co-published in December by the Cato Institute and Canada’s Fraser Institute, also reports that “the level of global freedom has decreased slightly” since 2008 based on data through 2018. We’ll have to wait to see how pandemic-era actions affect the findings.

Even more troubling is that governments aren’t necessarily swimming against public opinion when they become authoritarian—they’re doing so as their populations lose faith in democratic government.

In the United States, only 16 percent of Americans say democracy is working “extremely/very well” according to a February AP/NORC poll. About 45 percent say it’s working “not too/not well at all.”

The United States isn’t alone in the erosion of faith in liberal democratic systems.

“Dissatisfaction with democratic politics among citizens of developed countries has increased from a third to half of all individuals over the last quarter of a century, according to the largest dataset ever created on global attitudes to democracy,” Cambridge University researchers reported last year. “In fact, researchers found that across the planet – from Europe to Africa, as well as Asia, Australasia, both Americas and the Middle East – the share of individuals who say they are ‘dissatisfied’ with democracy has jumped significantly since the mid-1990s: from 47.9% to 57.5%.”

Since then, panic fueled by COVID-19 has handed both nominally liberal and overtly authoritarian governments an excuse to tighten the screws on the people under their power.

“Freedom of personal expression, which has experienced the largest declines of any democracy indicator since 2012, was further restrained during the health crisis,” observes Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2021. “Governments around the world also deployed intrusive surveillance tools that were often of dubious value to public health and featured few safeguards against abuse.” 

Freedom House expects that “official responses to COVID-19 have laid the groundwork for government excesses that could affect democracy for years to come.” The report likens the likely legacy of the pandemic to the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the resulting erosion of due process and rise of the surveillance state around the world.

That can only inspire further dissatisfaction with democracy even where it’s long-established. If you’re already disillusioned with your political system and it’s delivering oppressive results anyway, why not look for something different? Authoritarian regimes are certainly eager to exploit the opportunity.

“The enemies of freedom have pushed the false narrative that democracy is in decline because it is incapable of addressing people’s needs,” warns Freedom House. “Those claiming the inferiority of democracy now go beyond countries such as China and Russia to include ‘antidemocratic actors within democratic states who see an opportunity to consolidate power,’ such as in Poland, Hungary and Turkey.”

Recent events have only expanded the opening for authoritarians. After the January 6 Capitol riot by supporters of former President Donald Trump, Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, sniffed that “the electoral system in the United States is archaic.”

“What we saw in the United States last night showed annihilation of Western democracy in the world,” gloated Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani.

“Annihilation” is a wild exaggeration, but confidence in liberal democratic institutions is certainly shaky.

“[I]s democracy itself as vulnerable as the buildings that were breached in Budapest, Berlin and now, Washington DC?” Germany’s state-owned Deutsche Welle asked experts in January. They answered with a broad “yes.” As an indication that they might be overlooking what makes liberal democracy valuable, one of them recommended enhanced Internet surveillance as a countermeasure.

“Authoritarianism and nationalism are on the rise around the world,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged this week in comments that cited Freedom House. “Governments are becoming less transparent and have lost the trust of the people. Elections are increasingly flashpoints for violence.  Corruption is growing.  And the pandemic has accelerated many of these trends.” 

But Blinken spoke as an official in the cabinet of President Joe Biden, who started out with a record flurry of executive actions bypassing Congress. And Biden just accused states lifting pandemic restrictions of engaging in “neanderthal thinking.”

We can’t battle authoritarian systems by emulating their autocracy and their disrespect for personal freedom. Democracies are going to have to do better at exercising their core liberal values to prove their worth and win back support.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/38usa0n
via IFTTT

Current Cassis

minicurrentcassis

In 1911, the logging industry lobbied for a national ban on black currants, arguing that they were hosts for certain forms of fungal diseases that threatened pine trees. The lobbyists succeeded in passing this prohibition, but botanists developed disease-resistant varieties of the berries as the century progressed. The feds eventually allowed states to legalize the plants, and various states started doing so in the ’60s. New York only repealed its ban in 2003.

The use of black currants in cocktails has lagged, as delicious domestically produced liqueurs are still hard to come by. That makes Current Cassis, a new small-batch product from the Hudson Valley, all the more exciting.

Having tasted this tangy, bittersweet liqueur in many different drinks, I’ve concluded that the best way to imbibe it is in a glass, over a single large ice cube. It can also be paired with champagne to make a kir royale, but don’t overcomplicate it. Enjoy the drink and revel in the fact that the government has finally stopped holding black currants hostage and made them available to consumers.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3eciPxy
via IFTTT

Current Cassis

minicurrentcassis

In 1911, the logging industry lobbied for a national ban on black currants, arguing that they were hosts for certain forms of fungal diseases that threatened pine trees. The lobbyists succeeded in passing this prohibition, but botanists developed disease-resistant varieties of the berries as the century progressed. The feds eventually allowed states to legalize the plants, and various states started doing so in the ’60s. New York only repealed its ban in 2003.

The use of black currants in cocktails has lagged, as delicious domestically produced liqueurs are still hard to come by. That makes Current Cassis, a new small-batch product from the Hudson Valley, all the more exciting.

Having tasted this tangy, bittersweet liqueur in many different drinks, I’ve concluded that the best way to imbibe it is in a glass, over a single large ice cube. It can also be paired with champagne to make a kir royale, but don’t overcomplicate it. Enjoy the drink and revel in the fact that the government has finally stopped holding black currants hostage and made them available to consumers.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3eciPxy
via IFTTT

Wollstonecraft

minisWollstonecraft_Princeton

If you’ve heard of the 18th century English writer Mary Wollstonecraft, it’s likely because of her 1792 book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a much-cited entry in both the feminist and the classical liberal canons. In Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics, the Cambridge historian Sylvana Tomaselli aims to reveal the rest of Wollstonecraft’s worldview, demonstrating that she was more than just an early advocate for women’s education and women’s rights.

Wollstonecraft, Tomaselli shows, had an oeuvre “impressive in its variety, originality, and indeed volume, given her tumultuous existence” and “her life’s brevity.” (Wollstonecraft died at age 38, shortly after the birth of her daughter, Frankenstein author Mary Shelley.) The book details its namesake’s views on such topics as reason, human nature, God, sex, revolution, slavery, her intellectual contemporaries, vanity, theater, inheritance laws, marriage, and more.

One chapter, laying out Wollstonecraft’s “likes and loves,” paints a rather dour portrait: She may have enjoyed music and the outdoors, and she thought sexual relationships were OK under the right circumstances, but Wollstonecraft was still moralistic and polemical, with very strong and precise ideas about how individuals and societies should strive to be. But that impulse—especially when turned toward politics and social conventions—is precisely what makes her worth reading, whether she’s arguing against slavery, deconstructing myths about gender roles, musing about Scandinavian housewives, or eviscerating Edmund Burke’s conservative reflections on the French Revolution.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3eaJMSo
via IFTTT