Category: reason

Two More Vaccines Prove Effective Against COVID-19

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Two new, although somewhat less effective, vaccines may soon be joining the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Johnson & Johnson announced today that its Janssen subsidiary’s one-dose vaccine was 66 percent effective overall in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19, 28 days after vaccination. Protection against the virus began as early as two weeks after inoculation among trial participants.

“The level of protection against moderate to severe COVID-19 infection was 72% in the United States, 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa, 28 days post-vaccination,” noted the company’s press release. Although not as high as the 95 percent efficacy thresholds achieved by the already-approved Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is considered a fairly strong vaccine. For example, seasonal flu vaccines are typically 40 to 60 percent effective.

An additional encouraging result reported by Johnson & Johnson is that the vaccine “demonstrated complete protection against COVID-related hospitalization and death” by one month after inoculation. Also, the vaccine was 85 percent effective in preventing severe disease across all regions studied and no severe cases of the disease occurred among those vaccinated after seven weeks. “In a pandemic, if you can, with a single-dose vaccine, very quickly eliminate the severe consequences of death, hospitalization, and severe disease, that’s what’s important for society,” Paul Stoffels, Johnson & Johnson’s chief scientific officer, told the biomedical news site STAT.

The prevalence of different and more contagious COVID-19 variants is likely responsible for the disparity in effectiveness in the regions where the vaccine was tested. Other studies also suggest diminished effectiveness against that the South African strain by the COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Novavax.

Johnson & Johnson said that the company intends to file for a U.S. Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in early February and expects to have doses available to ship immediately following an authorization. The one-dose vaccine can be shipped via standard vaccine channels, making it much less finicky than the two-dose Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines that must be shipped in ultra-cold containers.

The company also said that it will be able to meet its 2021 supply commitments. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report earlier this week reported that Johnson & Johnson could deliver 2 million doses immediately upon receiving an EUA. The company has contracted with the U.S. government to make 100 million doses available before the end of June.

A day earlier, the vaccine maker Novavax reported promising preliminary results for its two-dose COVID-19 vaccine. The company’s vaccine was nearly 90 percent effective in the United Kingdom arm of its clinical trials. However, interim results from its South African clinical trial find that its vaccine is about 60 percent effective in preventing mild, moderate, and severe COVID-19 disease among the 94 percent of South African volunteers who were HIV-negative. Again, like the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the Novavax inoculation seems to be less effective in preventing COVID-19 caused by the more contagious South African strain.

Novavax did not say when it might seek an EUA from the FDA. It is noteworthy, however, the company began a rolling approval submission to the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) earlier this month. One urgent suggestion: If the U.K. approves the Novavax vaccine, the FDA should immediately authorize its distribution here. The company notes that its vaccine does not require special handling and can be distributed through existing vaccine supply chains. The company has been contracted to supply 100 million doses to the U.S. government, but has not said how quickly they could be made available if it receives an EUA.

Considering the proliferation of more contagious (and possibly more deadly) COVID-19 strains, it is reassuring that new weapons in the fight against the pandemic may soon become available.

 

 

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Two More Vaccines Prove Effective Against COVID-19

CovidVacJovanmandicDreamstime

Two new, although somewhat less effective, vaccines may soon be joining the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Johnson & Johnson announced today that its Janssen subsidiary’s one-dose vaccine was 66 percent effective overall in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19, 28 days after vaccination. Protection against the virus began as early as two weeks after inoculation among trial participants.

“The level of protection against moderate to severe COVID-19 infection was 72% in the United States, 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa, 28 days post-vaccination,” noted the company’s press release. Although not as high as the 95 percent efficacy thresholds achieved by the already-approved Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is considered a fairly strong vaccine. For example, seasonal flu vaccines are typically 40 to 60 percent effective.

An additional encouraging result reported by Johnson & Johnson is that the vaccine “demonstrated complete protection against COVID-related hospitalization and death” by one month after inoculation. Also, the vaccine was 85 percent effective in preventing severe disease across all regions studied and no severe cases of the disease occurred among those vaccinated after seven weeks. “In a pandemic, if you can, with a single-dose vaccine, very quickly eliminate the severe consequences of death, hospitalization, and severe disease, that’s what’s important for society,” Paul Stoffels, Johnson & Johnson’s chief scientific officer, told the biomedical news site STAT.

The prevalence of different and more contagious COVID-19 variants is likely responsible for the disparity in effectiveness in the regions where the vaccine was tested. Other studies also suggest diminished effectiveness against that the South African strain by the COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Novavax.

Johnson & Johnson said that the company intends to file for a U.S. Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in early February and expects to have doses available to ship immediately following an authorization. The one-dose vaccine can be shipped via standard vaccine channels, making it much less finicky than the two-dose Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines that must be shipped in ultra-cold containers.

The company also said that it will be able to meet its 2021 supply commitments. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report earlier this week reported that Johnson & Johnson could deliver 2 million doses immediately upon receiving an EUA. The company has contracted with the U.S. government to make 100 million doses available before the end of June.

A day earlier, the vaccine maker Novavax reported promising preliminary results for its two-dose COVID-19 vaccine. The company’s vaccine was nearly 90 percent effective in the United Kingdom arm of its clinical trials. However, interim results from its South African clinical trial find that its vaccine is about 60 percent effective in preventing mild, moderate, and severe COVID-19 disease among the 94 percent of South African volunteers who were HIV-negative. Again, like the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the Novavax inoculation seems to be less effective in preventing COVID-19 caused by the more contagious South African strain.

Novavax did not say when it might seek an EUA from the FDA. It is noteworthy, however, the company began a rolling approval submission to the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) earlier this month. One urgent suggestion: If the U.K. approves the Novavax vaccine, the FDA should immediately authorize its distribution here. The company notes that its vaccine does not require special handling and can be distributed through existing vaccine supply chains. The company has been contracted to supply 100 million doses to the U.S. government, but has not said how quickly they could be made available if it receives an EUA.

Considering the proliferation of more contagious (and possibly more deadly) COVID-19 strains, it is reassuring that new weapons in the fight against the pandemic may soon become available.

 

 

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Americans Abandoning Free Speech Better Brace for the Consequences

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In the panicked aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the powers-that-be dusted off wish lists of surveillance-state powers and began monitoring and tracking us in ways that affect our lives two decades later. The political turbulence of recent years, culminating in the Capitol riot on January 6, may similarly liberate the political class to do its worst—this time with free speech as the target. The effort will likely again enjoy support from members of the public eager to surrender their freedom.

“We need to shut down the influencers who radicalize people and set them on the path toward violence and sedition,” argued columnist Max Boot in The Washington Post. His solution? Carriers should drop Fox News and other conservative cable news outlets if they don’t stop spreading “misinformation.” Boot also believes that “Biden needs to reinvigorate the FCC” to impose British-style controls over the news—never mind that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) doesn’t have the authority to regulate cable outlets that it has over broadcasters that use public airwaves.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) agrees that the public needs to be protected from speech she considers false and misleading. “We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation,” she insisted.

Challenging the value of unrestrained speech and debate has become something of a cottage industry. After the ugly exchanges that erupted in the Capitol riot, CNN pointed out that “questions emerge about unrestrained free expression, long championed by First Amendment theorists as a benefit to society, no matter how ugly and hateful.” The network quoted scholars who conclude that the Internet and free speech protections make it too easy to exchange bad ideas.

None of these fans of speech restrictions explicitly advocate suppression of activists or ideologies; they favor controls on what they claim are false, extremist, or misleading communications. But they don’t explain why reversing speech protections would accomplish their goals when misinformation existed long before modern jurisprudence, filling the pages of the country’s newspapers and fueling political contests despite legal peril. Nor do they explain why they’re so eager to hand more control over speech to government officials who have a historically rocky relationship with truth.

There’s former President Donald Trump himself, of course, who is at the center of much of the current controversy over speech and who has a history as a serial fabulist on matters from trade to immigration to elections. A “reinvigorated” FCC exercising the powers of Max Boot’s imagination would have been run by commissioners appointed, in part, by him.

That more-intrusive FCC would also have been run by commissioners appointed by Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama. Obama, too, had a problem telling the truth about issues ranging from health care to government records and earned “the lie of the year” label from PolitiFact in 2013.

Government officials even lie to each other, as then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper did to Congress to conceal the inconvenient truth about domestic surveillance by the NSA.

Protections for free speech, it’s worth pointing out, aren’t some perfect counter to false and extreme ideas. Instead, they’re a recognition of core individual rights. But they’re also a pragmatic acknowledgment that putting government agencies in charge of suppressing misinformation just gives one team of bullshit artists an advantage over their less-powerful competitors.

Some fans of speech suppression think they’ve found a solution in privatized muzzling.

“Large cable companies such as Comcast and Charter Spectrum, which carry Fox News and provide much of its revenue in the form of user fees, need to step in and kick Fox News off,” urges Boot. CNN emphasizes that “the First Amendment protects against government, not private organizations, stymieing expression.”

It’s absolutely true that private companies have the right to control who uses their platforms and how they do so. But let’s remember that there’s an unpleasant history of them exercising the censor’s pencil as proxies for dominant political factions, either out of sympathy or as a result of legal arm-twisting.

After evolving First Amendment jurisprudence made it safer for print media to criticize politicians, then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt infamously held radio licenses hostage in return for positive coverage. “It did not take long for broadcasters to get the message,” historian David Beito wrote for Reason in 2017. “NBC, for example, announced that it was limiting broadcasts ‘contrary to the policies of the United States government.'”

That practice has become increasingly popular as a means for governments to evade accusations that they’re muzzling critics.

“Of course, Twitter is a private company,” Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny cautioned after the tech giant suspended Donald Trump’s account in the wake of the Capitol riot. “But we have seen many examples in Russian and China of such private companies becoming the state’s best friends and the enablers when it comes to censorship.”

The ultimate risk is that respect for free-wheeling speech is devalued in the eyes of many as a thing to be cherished in itself. Instead, it may become a resented obstacle to be worked around by innovators who aren’t bound by allegedly archaic legal protections. They can then feel virtuous in suppressing expression they consider bad, or hateful, or an example of “misinformation.”

If popular support for free speech continues to erode, it’s difficult to see how legal protections survive for long without foundations in the wider society. A culture of free speech can’t prevail if the culture comes to prefer censorship. Eventually, people who’ve come to believe it’s better to challenge “bad” ideas not with other ideas but with a muzzle will erase or reinterpret protections for speech.

Then, government officials with wish lists of expanded powers ready to go will eagerly step in to save the country from “influencers who radicalize people.” The influencers will take their communications to underground channels or else adopt the martyr role of dissidents. And officials will try to suppress misinformation from those influencers in favor of misinformation of their own.

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Americans Abandoning Free Speech Better Brace for the Consequences

zumaamericastwentyseven785466

In the panicked aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the powers-that-be dusted off wish lists of surveillance-state powers and began monitoring and tracking us in ways that affect our lives two decades later. The political turbulence of recent years, culminating in the Capitol riot on January 6, may similarly liberate the political class to do its worst—this time with free speech as the target. The effort will likely again enjoy support from members of the public eager to surrender their freedom.

“We need to shut down the influencers who radicalize people and set them on the path toward violence and sedition,” argued columnist Max Boot in The Washington Post. His solution? Carriers should drop Fox News and other conservative cable news outlets if they don’t stop spreading “misinformation.” Boot also believes that “Biden needs to reinvigorate the FCC” to impose British-style controls over the news—never mind that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) doesn’t have the authority to regulate cable outlets that it has over broadcasters that use public airwaves.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) agrees that the public needs to be protected from speech she considers false and misleading. “We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation,” she insisted.

Challenging the value of unrestrained speech and debate has become something of a cottage industry. After the ugly exchanges that erupted in the Capitol riot, CNN pointed out that “questions emerge about unrestrained free expression, long championed by First Amendment theorists as a benefit to society, no matter how ugly and hateful.” The network quoted scholars who conclude that the Internet and free speech protections make it too easy to exchange bad ideas.

None of these fans of speech restrictions explicitly advocate suppression of activists or ideologies; they favor controls on what they claim are false, extremist, or misleading communications. But they don’t explain why reversing speech protections would accomplish their goals when misinformation existed long before modern jurisprudence, filling the pages of the country’s newspapers and fueling political contests despite legal peril. Nor do they explain why they’re so eager to hand more control over speech to government officials who have a historically rocky relationship with truth.

There’s former President Donald Trump himself, of course, who is at the center of much of the current controversy over speech and who has a history as a serial fabulist on matters from trade to immigration to elections. A “reinvigorated” FCC exercising the powers of Max Boot’s imagination would have been run by commissioners appointed, in part, by him.

That more-intrusive FCC would also have been run by commissioners appointed by Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama. Obama, too, had a problem telling the truth about issues ranging from health care to government records and earned “the lie of the year” label from PolitiFact in 2013.

Government officials even lie to each other, as then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper did to Congress to conceal the inconvenient truth about domestic surveillance by the NSA.

Protections for free speech, it’s worth pointing out, aren’t some perfect counter to false and extreme ideas. Instead, they’re a recognition of core individual rights. But they’re also a pragmatic acknowledgment that putting government agencies in charge of suppressing misinformation just gives one team of bullshit artists an advantage over their less-powerful competitors.

Some fans of speech suppression think they’ve found a solution in privatized muzzling.

“Large cable companies such as Comcast and Charter Spectrum, which carry Fox News and provide much of its revenue in the form of user fees, need to step in and kick Fox News off,” urges Boot. CNN emphasizes that “the First Amendment protects against government, not private organizations, stymieing expression.”

It’s absolutely true that private companies have the right to control who uses their platforms and how they do so. But let’s remember that there’s an unpleasant history of them exercising the censor’s pencil as proxies for dominant political factions, either out of sympathy or as a result of legal arm-twisting.

After evolving First Amendment jurisprudence made it safer for print media to criticize politicians, then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt infamously held radio licenses hostage in return for positive coverage. “It did not take long for broadcasters to get the message,” historian David Beito wrote for Reason in 2017. “NBC, for example, announced that it was limiting broadcasts ‘contrary to the policies of the United States government.'”

That practice has become increasingly popular as a means for governments to evade accusations that they’re muzzling critics.

“Of course, Twitter is a private company,” Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny cautioned after the tech giant suspended Donald Trump’s account in the wake of the Capitol riot. “But we have seen many examples in Russian and China of such private companies becoming the state’s best friends and the enablers when it comes to censorship.”

The ultimate risk is that respect for free-wheeling speech is devalued in the eyes of many as a thing to be cherished in itself. Instead, it may become a resented obstacle to be worked around by innovators who aren’t bound by allegedly archaic legal protections. They can then feel virtuous in suppressing expression they consider bad, or hateful, or an example of “misinformation.”

If popular support for free speech continues to erode, it’s difficult to see how legal protections survive for long without foundations in the wider society. A culture of free speech can’t prevail if the culture comes to prefer censorship. Eventually, people who’ve come to believe it’s better to challenge “bad” ideas not with other ideas but with a muzzle will erase or reinterpret protections for speech.

Then, government officials with wish lists of expanded powers ready to go will eagerly step in to save the country from “influencers who radicalize people.” The influencers will take their communications to underground channels or else adopt the martyr role of dissidents. And officials will try to suppress misinformation from those influencers in favor of misinformation of their own.

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San Francisco Residents Balk at Decision To Scrub Lincoln, Washington, Feinstein from School Names

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Changes to school names in San Francisco have gone too far for even some of the city’s many progressive residents. The changes—which wiped out the names of historical leaders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Paul Revere, and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) from public school names—earned condemnation from San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

“This is an important conversation to have, and one that we should involve our communities, our families, and our students,” said Breed in a Tuesday statement.

What I cannot understand is why the School Board is advancing a plan to have all these schools renamed by April, when there isn’t a plan to have our kids back in the classroom by then.

Let’s bring the same urgency and focus on getting our kids back in the classroom, and then we can have that longer conversation about the future of school names.

On Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Education voted 6-1 in favor of the name changes, which affect 44 schools.

School board members said the names being removed from schools were figures who “engaged in the subjugation and enslavement of human beings; or who oppressed women, inhibiting societal progress; or whose actions led to genocide; or who otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those among us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“This is a moral message. It’s a message to our families, our students and our community. It’s not just symbolic,” school board member Mark Sanchez said.

A full list of figures removed from school names and the rationale behind those changes can be found here.

The New York Times collected comments from some San Franciso parents. “Liberals by definition believe that government can do good things. If we do laughable things then we make a mockery of the movement,” pediatrician and parent Adam Davis, who describes himself as “a strong Elizabeth Warren liberal,” told the paper. “I don’t know anybody personally who doesn’t think it’s embarrassing. [It’s] a caricature of what people think liberals in San Francisco do.”

Noah Griffin told the Times he didn’t object to Lincoln and Washington being excluded, but thinks Feinstein’s name should be able to stay.

A petition to stop the changes has gained nearly 10,000 signatures.

FREE MINDS

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana is suing the state’s Jackson County over a man being banned from a public library over a pro-Trump poem. The man, Richard England, “says he was banned from the library in November after he wrote what his attorney called a ‘short and unoffensive’ poem about former President Donald Trump,” WFYI explains.

England left the poem for a library employee with whom he was friends.

“When that individual was not there, he left it on a basket in the circulation desk,” said attorney Gavin Rose.

“When he got home, he had a voicemail from an officer with the Seymour police department saying the library essentially trespassed him,” Rose added.

The lawsuit, filed in Indiana’s Southern District court, asks a judge to lift the ban.

FREE MARKETS

Smoking rates stop falling. “Before the pandemic, U.S. cigarette unit sales had been falling at an accelerating rate, hitting 5.5% in 2019, as smokers quit or switched to alternatives like e-cigarettes,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “The pandemic put the brakes on that slide. In 2020, the U.S. cigarette industry’s unit sales were flat compared to the previous year, according to data released Thursday by Marlboro maker Altria Group Inc.”

QUICK HITS

• Requiring proof of sex reassignment surgery before someone can change their driver’s license gender is unconstitutional, says a federal court ruling on a case in Alabama.

• New legislation aims to end the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine sentences.

• The Secret History of Clubhouse: “The tale of a pivotal weekend for the platform and the beginning of the end of both the Burning Man ethos and a ‘big tent’ approach to community.”

• More than 1,000 prostitution and loitering cases in Brooklyn will be dismissed, the Brooklyn District Attorney announced yesterday. “The news is a part of a formal announcement that Gonzalez’s office now plans to decline to prosecute or dismiss cases on both charges,” says Buzzfeed.

• In Connecticut, state Sen. Will Haskell (D–New Canaan) has “introduced a bill in the State Senate that would penalize you with a fine if you do not vote in an election.”

• Eight women in Ohio were “rescued and arrested” in a “human trafficking sting.“

• A new study suggesting COVID-19 can diminish male fertility is raising alarms. But “being ill from any virus such as flu can temporarily drop your sperm count (sometimes to zero) for a few weeks or months. This makes it difficult to work out how much of the reductions observed in this study were specific to COVID-19 rather than just from being ill,” cautions Channa Jayasena, a researcher with Imperial College London, on CNN.

• Protecting and serving:

• South Carolina’s Senate just voted in favor of outlawing almost all abortion in the state.

• In a new lawsuit backed by the National Rifle Association (NRA), plaintiffs are trying to get a Maryland handgun licensing law declared unconstitutional.

• A Woman’s Strike event in Poland saw “thousands of women [taking] to the streets of Polish cities after an extensive ban on abortion took effect, three months after a court ruled that it was unconstitutional to terminate pregnancies because of fetal abnormalities.”

• Thailand is legalizing early-term abortion.

• Are rent control laws unconstitutional?

• The Supreme Court’s next big free speech showdown.

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via IFTTT

San Francisco Residents Balk at Decision To Scrub Lincoln, Washington, Feinstein from School Names

admphotostwo732526

Changes to school names in San Francisco have gone too far for even some of the city’s many progressive residents. The changes—which wiped out the names of historical leaders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Paul Revere, and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) from public school names—earned condemnation from San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

“This is an important conversation to have, and one that we should involve our communities, our families, and our students,” said Breed in a Tuesday statement.

What I cannot understand is why the School Board is advancing a plan to have all these schools renamed by April, when there isn’t a plan to have our kids back in the classroom by then.

Let’s bring the same urgency and focus on getting our kids back in the classroom, and then we can have that longer conversation about the future of school names.

On Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Education voted 6-1 in favor of the name changes, which affect 44 schools.

School board members said the names being removed from schools were figures who “engaged in the subjugation and enslavement of human beings; or who oppressed women, inhibiting societal progress; or whose actions led to genocide; or who otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those among us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“This is a moral message. It’s a message to our families, our students and our community. It’s not just symbolic,” school board member Mark Sanchez said.

A full list of figures removed from school names and the rationale behind those changes can be found here.

The New York Times collected comments from some San Franciso parents. “Liberals by definition believe that government can do good things. If we do laughable things then we make a mockery of the movement,” pediatrician and parent Adam Davis, who describes himself as “a strong Elizabeth Warren liberal,” told the paper. “I don’t know anybody personally who doesn’t think it’s embarrassing. [It’s] a caricature of what people think liberals in San Francisco do.”

Noah Griffin told the Times he didn’t object to Lincoln and Washington being excluded, but thinks Feinstein’s name should be able to stay.

A petition to stop the changes has gained nearly 10,000 signatures.

FREE MINDS

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana is suing the state’s Jackson County over a man being banned from a public library over a pro-Trump poem. The man, Richard England, “says he was banned from the library in November after he wrote what his attorney called a ‘short and unoffensive’ poem about former President Donald Trump,” WFYI explains.

England left the poem for a library employee with whom he was friends.

“When that individual was not there, he left it on a basket in the circulation desk,” said attorney Gavin Rose.

“When he got home, he had a voicemail from an officer with the Seymour police department saying the library essentially trespassed him,” Rose added.

The lawsuit, filed in Indiana’s Southern District court, asks a judge to lift the ban.

FREE MARKETS

Smoking rates stop falling. “Before the pandemic, U.S. cigarette unit sales had been falling at an accelerating rate, hitting 5.5% in 2019, as smokers quit or switched to alternatives like e-cigarettes,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “The pandemic put the brakes on that slide. In 2020, the U.S. cigarette industry’s unit sales were flat compared to the previous year, according to data released Thursday by Marlboro maker Altria Group Inc.”

QUICK HITS

• Requiring proof of sex reassignment surgery before someone can change their driver’s license gender is unconstitutional, says a federal court ruling on a case in Alabama.

• New legislation aims to end the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine sentences.

• The Secret History of Clubhouse: “The tale of a pivotal weekend for the platform and the beginning of the end of both the Burning Man ethos and a ‘big tent’ approach to community.”

• More than 1,000 prostitution and loitering cases in Brooklyn will be dismissed, the Brooklyn District Attorney announced yesterday. “The news is a part of a formal announcement that Gonzalez’s office now plans to decline to prosecute or dismiss cases on both charges,” says Buzzfeed.

• In Connecticut, state Sen. Will Haskell (D–New Canaan) has “introduced a bill in the State Senate that would penalize you with a fine if you do not vote in an election.”

• Eight women in Ohio were “rescued and arrested” in a “human trafficking sting.“

• A new study suggesting COVID-19 can diminish male fertility is raising alarms. But “being ill from any virus such as flu can temporarily drop your sperm count (sometimes to zero) for a few weeks or months. This makes it difficult to work out how much of the reductions observed in this study were specific to COVID-19 rather than just from being ill,” cautions Channa Jayasena, a researcher with Imperial College London, on CNN.

• Protecting and serving:

• South Carolina’s Senate just voted in favor of outlawing almost all abortion in the state.

• In a new lawsuit backed by the National Rifle Association (NRA), plaintiffs are trying to get a Maryland handgun licensing law declared unconstitutional.

• A Woman’s Strike event in Poland saw “thousands of women [taking] to the streets of Polish cities after an extensive ban on abortion took effect, three months after a court ruled that it was unconstitutional to terminate pregnancies because of fetal abnormalities.”

• Thailand is legalizing early-term abortion.

• Are rent control laws unconstitutional?

• The Supreme Court’s next big free speech showdown.

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California Law Limiting Private Employers’ Restriction on Employee Speech

I’ve written about this before, most recently with regard to the employee allegedly fired for being at the (she says) non-riot protest that led to the Capitol riot. But Wednesday, Judge Edward M. Chen issued an interesting decision about the law arising in a different context. From Hamilton v. Juul Labs, Inc. (N.D. Cal.):

Plaintiff Marcie Hamilton worked at Juul … as its Director of Program Management. Plaintiff Jim Isaacson served as JUUL’s Senior Director of Design Assurance …. This [Private Attorneys General Act] suit is brought on behalf of more than 3,000 aggrieved employees….

[Plaintiffs’] Claim 7 is brought under Labor Code § 1101, which forbids employers from adopting any rule, regulation, or policy which: (a) “[f]orbid[s] or prevent[s] employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office” or (b) “[c]ontrol[s] or direct[s], or tend[s] to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees.” It is also brought under Labor Code § 1102, which provides that no employer shall “influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.”

Labor Code §§ 1101 and 1102 are “designed to protect the fundamental right of employees in general to engage in political activity without interference by employers.” The purpose of these sections is to prevent employers from “misus[ing] their economic power” to interfere with their employees’ political activities, namely their “espousal of a candidate or a cause.” …

The provisions of the [Juul External Communications Policy] … exhibit the strict control over Juul employees’ political opinions which the Labor Code forbids. Section 6.4.6.3 provides “[a]ll JUUL Labs Personnel must be aware that any communication about the Company or its products, staff, policies, research, relationships, or competitors generally constitutes a Company Communication and is covered by this Policy.” Section 6.2.1 provides “[a]ll Company Communications must receive internal approval,” and Section 6.2.2 provides “[c]onfidential information, any information marked or intended only for internal communication or use within the Company, and any other information obtained during the course of employment must not be disclosed or used in any Company Communication or personal communication without prior approval.”

Together, these provisions operate to place prior restraints on Juul employees’ communications about any matter related to the company, including their espousal of causes relating to vaping products. The ECP thereby interferes with the opinions of Juul employees’ in a manner that violates the Labor Code ….

Juul’s day-to-day policies and practices are just as restrictive. Plaintiffs allege that “JUUL’s Non-Contractual Policies and Practices … establish that JUUL made, adopted, and enforced a policy that prevented employees from engaging in political activity in violation of Labor Code § 1101 and 1102. This illegal policy is evidenced by JUUL’s written instruments, employee training, and JUUL’s culture of concealment.” For instance, Juul instructs employees “that they cannot—among other things—correct political candidates spreading alleged ‘misinformation’ about JUUL, ‘engage with youth on the topics of tobacco and nicotine,’ ‘engage in social media,’ discuss vaping, cigarettes, drinking, or any age-restricted products in the ‘earshot of youth,’ share or laugh at JUUL Labs-related memes, or help a young family member quit smoking.”

Accepting these allegations as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in Plaintiffs’ favor, the Court finds that these allegations state a plausible claim for unlawful suppression of protected political activities …. Even without the ECP, these policies and practices operate as a prior restraint on Juul employees’ espousal of a candidate or a cause. These policies and practices prevent Juul employees from promoting (or even engaging with) a political candidate, and they prevent employees from engaging with vaping-related causes on the internet…..

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A Higher Minimum Wage Lowers Opportunities for America’s Poorest Workers

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As part of their effort to promote a higher minimum wage, some liberal academics shared their stories recently on Twitter about how their previous low-wage jobs were much tougher than the jobs they now hold. No doubt, roofing a house and flipping burgers are more physically demanding tasks than writing a legal brief or giving a lecture on American history, but the comparison doesn’t really mean very much.

Frankly, I was taken aback by some commenters’ negative responses to my obvious point: Wages are not determined by the strenuous nature of any job, but by supply and demand. If pay were tied to physical endurance, then California’s farm laborers would all own mansions on the Pacific Coast. All honest work is honorable, but mastering a high-demand skill remains the key to financial success. That, apparently, is now a controversial point.

The minimum wage has once again become a hot topic now that the Biden administration is looking to increase it nationally to $15 an hour—echoing the base labor rate that California lawmakers established a few years ago. Note that California has the highest poverty rate in the nation based on the Census Bureau’s cost-of-living-adjusted standard.

Our minimum wage isn’t the sole reason for this travesty, but it hasn’t helped. That mandated wage hasn’t alleviated poverty because of something known as the “substitution effect.” When I moved to California, most quality car washes were full service. You hand over your keys and attendants vacuum the carpet and run it through an automated wash. Afterwards, hordes of workers descend on the washed cars to dry them and clean the windows while you enjoy a cup of coffee.

Last time I used one of those washes it cost 30 bucks. In the last year, I’ve noticed the proliferation of quality self-service washes. You often pay via an automated system and then drive into the wash. After the scrubbing, you pull into a vacuum station and finish the job on your own. It costs $8 to $17, yet the result is the same. These car washes operate with a skeletal crew.

This automated trend has proliferated following California’s minimum-wage increases and benefit mandates. Do you suppose there’s a connection? Do you think the wage hikes helped the workers who no longer have jobs doing the drying? Don’t blame companies. Consumers make the ultimate decision. At $30 a pop (plus tip), I’ll wash it myself, wash it less, or seek out a cheaper alternative.

As a teen-ager, I worked on an assembly line making buttons. In the morning, I’d place heavy trays on a machine that dispensed plastic goop. In the afternoon, I’d punch dried plastic into buttons. By evening, I was drained—far more than I am after writing papers and columns. It’s no surprise that I’m paid much more for my current work than for my past backbreaking labor.

The biggest problem with a minimum-wage boost is that it would hurt the least-skilled workers the most. “These low-skill employees lose their jobs because of increased competition from more experienced and higher-skilled employees attracted to the new wage,” noted economist Craig Garthwaite in congressional testimony. That competition will obliterate entry-level opportunities for those without experience or many skills, he added.

I didn’t work in a button factory because it epitomized my career aspirations, but because it was the only job that I could find at the time. Likewise, those academics who shared their entry-level job stories quite obviously moved on to more satisfying and lucrative work. That touches on another key point: Minimum wage jobs aren’t supposed to be career choices, but stepping stones on the way to other things. Everyone has to start out somewhere.

Consider this recent conclusion from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office: “Increasing the federal minimum wage would have two principal effects on low-wage workers. For most low-wage workers, earnings and family income would increase, which would lift some families out of poverty. But other low-wage workers would become jobless, and their family income would fall – in some cases, below the poverty threshold.” It predicted a loss of 1.3 million jobs.

As CBO explained, the federal minimum wage is only $7.25 an hour—and hasn’t changed in a dozen years. But only 1.9 percent of American workers earn that measly wage. Most live in low cost-of-living states in the Deep South and are young, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Can you imagine what would happen to teen-age fast-food workers in Mississippi if the mandated wage suddenly doubled? The word “unemployed” jumps to mind.

Sorry, but there’s no getting around the ironclad principle of supply and demand. It’s the subject for another column, but the best way to help low-skilled workers enter the economic mainstream is to help them (through trade schools and other educational opportunities) gain the kind of higher-demand skills that will command a bigger paycheck.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

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California Law Limiting Private Employers’ Restriction on Employee Speech

I’ve written about this before, most recently with regard to the employee allegedly fired for being at the (she says) non-riot protest that led to the Capitol riot. But Wednesday, Judge Edward M. Chen issued an interesting decision about the law arising in a different context. From Hamilton v. Juul Labs, Inc. (N.D. Cal.):

Plaintiff Marcie Hamilton worked at Juul … as its Director of Program Management. Plaintiff Jim Isaacson served as JUUL’s Senior Director of Design Assurance …. This [Private Attorneys General Act] suit is brought on behalf of more than 3,000 aggrieved employees….

[Plaintiffs’] Claim 7 is brought under Labor Code § 1101, which forbids employers from adopting any rule, regulation, or policy which: (a) “[f]orbid[s] or prevent[s] employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office” or (b) “[c]ontrol[s] or direct[s], or tend[s] to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees.” It is also brought under Labor Code § 1102, which provides that no employer shall “influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.”

Labor Code §§ 1101 and 1102 are “designed to protect the fundamental right of employees in general to engage in political activity without interference by employers.” The purpose of these sections is to prevent employers from “misus[ing] their economic power” to interfere with their employees’ political activities, namely their “espousal of a candidate or a cause.” …

The provisions of the [Juul External Communications Policy] … exhibit the strict control over Juul employees’ political opinions which the Labor Code forbids. Section 6.4.6.3 provides “[a]ll JUUL Labs Personnel must be aware that any communication about the Company or its products, staff, policies, research, relationships, or competitors generally constitutes a Company Communication and is covered by this Policy.” Section 6.2.1 provides “[a]ll Company Communications must receive internal approval,” and Section 6.2.2 provides “[c]onfidential information, any information marked or intended only for internal communication or use within the Company, and any other information obtained during the course of employment must not be disclosed or used in any Company Communication or personal communication without prior approval.”

Together, these provisions operate to place prior restraints on Juul employees’ communications about any matter related to the company, including their espousal of causes relating to vaping products. The ECP thereby interferes with the opinions of Juul employees’ in a manner that violates the Labor Code ….

Juul’s day-to-day policies and practices are just as restrictive. Plaintiffs allege that “JUUL’s Non-Contractual Policies and Practices … establish that JUUL made, adopted, and enforced a policy that prevented employees from engaging in political activity in violation of Labor Code § 1101 and 1102. This illegal policy is evidenced by JUUL’s written instruments, employee training, and JUUL’s culture of concealment.” For instance, Juul instructs employees “that they cannot—among other things—correct political candidates spreading alleged ‘misinformation’ about JUUL, ‘engage with youth on the topics of tobacco and nicotine,’ ‘engage in social media,’ discuss vaping, cigarettes, drinking, or any age-restricted products in the ‘earshot of youth,’ share or laugh at JUUL Labs-related memes, or help a young family member quit smoking.”

Accepting these allegations as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in Plaintiffs’ favor, the Court finds that these allegations state a plausible claim for unlawful suppression of protected political activities …. Even without the ECP, these policies and practices operate as a prior restraint on Juul employees’ espousal of a candidate or a cause. These policies and practices prevent Juul employees from promoting (or even engaging with) a political candidate, and they prevent employees from engaging with vaping-related causes on the internet…..

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A Higher Minimum Wage Lowers Opportunities for America’s Poorest Workers

dpaphotos365886

As part of their effort to promote a higher minimum wage, some liberal academics shared their stories recently on Twitter about how their previous low-wage jobs were much tougher than the jobs they now hold. No doubt, roofing a house and flipping burgers are more physically demanding tasks than writing a legal brief or giving a lecture on American history, but the comparison doesn’t really mean very much.

Frankly, I was taken aback by some commenters’ negative responses to my obvious point: Wages are not determined by the strenuous nature of any job, but by supply and demand. If pay were tied to physical endurance, then California’s farm laborers would all own mansions on the Pacific Coast. All honest work is honorable, but mastering a high-demand skill remains the key to financial success. That, apparently, is now a controversial point.

The minimum wage has once again become a hot topic now that the Biden administration is looking to increase it nationally to $15 an hour—echoing the base labor rate that California lawmakers established a few years ago. Note that California has the highest poverty rate in the nation based on the Census Bureau’s cost-of-living-adjusted standard.

Our minimum wage isn’t the sole reason for this travesty, but it hasn’t helped. That mandated wage hasn’t alleviated poverty because of something known as the “substitution effect.” When I moved to California, most quality car washes were full service. You hand over your keys and attendants vacuum the carpet and run it through an automated wash. Afterwards, hordes of workers descend on the washed cars to dry them and clean the windows while you enjoy a cup of coffee.

Last time I used one of those washes it cost 30 bucks. In the last year, I’ve noticed the proliferation of quality self-service washes. You often pay via an automated system and then drive into the wash. After the scrubbing, you pull into a vacuum station and finish the job on your own. It costs $8 to $17, yet the result is the same. These car washes operate with a skeletal crew.

This automated trend has proliferated following California’s minimum-wage increases and benefit mandates. Do you suppose there’s a connection? Do you think the wage hikes helped the workers who no longer have jobs doing the drying? Don’t blame companies. Consumers make the ultimate decision. At $30 a pop (plus tip), I’ll wash it myself, wash it less, or seek out a cheaper alternative.

As a teen-ager, I worked on an assembly line making buttons. In the morning, I’d place heavy trays on a machine that dispensed plastic goop. In the afternoon, I’d punch dried plastic into buttons. By evening, I was drained—far more than I am after writing papers and columns. It’s no surprise that I’m paid much more for my current work than for my past backbreaking labor.

The biggest problem with a minimum-wage boost is that it would hurt the least-skilled workers the most. “These low-skill employees lose their jobs because of increased competition from more experienced and higher-skilled employees attracted to the new wage,” noted economist Craig Garthwaite in congressional testimony. That competition will obliterate entry-level opportunities for those without experience or many skills, he added.

I didn’t work in a button factory because it epitomized my career aspirations, but because it was the only job that I could find at the time. Likewise, those academics who shared their entry-level job stories quite obviously moved on to more satisfying and lucrative work. That touches on another key point: Minimum wage jobs aren’t supposed to be career choices, but stepping stones on the way to other things. Everyone has to start out somewhere.

Consider this recent conclusion from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office: “Increasing the federal minimum wage would have two principal effects on low-wage workers. For most low-wage workers, earnings and family income would increase, which would lift some families out of poverty. But other low-wage workers would become jobless, and their family income would fall – in some cases, below the poverty threshold.” It predicted a loss of 1.3 million jobs.

As CBO explained, the federal minimum wage is only $7.25 an hour—and hasn’t changed in a dozen years. But only 1.9 percent of American workers earn that measly wage. Most live in low cost-of-living states in the Deep South and are young, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Can you imagine what would happen to teen-age fast-food workers in Mississippi if the mandated wage suddenly doubled? The word “unemployed” jumps to mind.

Sorry, but there’s no getting around the ironclad principle of supply and demand. It’s the subject for another column, but the best way to help low-skilled workers enter the economic mainstream is to help them (through trade schools and other educational opportunities) gain the kind of higher-demand skills that will command a bigger paycheck.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

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