Category: reason

Brickbat: Netflix and Chill

It took four calls to 911 and a little over 30 minutes before a Coral Springs, Fla., dispatcher sent police to a report of a shooting. Guadalupe Herrera reported that a bullet had pierced the back windshield of her car and struck her front windshield and almost hit her in the head. But the call was logged as a “suspicious incident,” not as a shooting, which would have been a high priority. When investigators pulled the data from the work station of the 911 supervisor who was on duty, they found a movie on Netflix had been playing for almost two hours when the call came in. The supervisor, Julie Vidaud, said she plays movies in the background, but that doesn’t mean she was watching one when the call came in. She is expected to receive a two-day suspension without pay.

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Brickbat: Netflix and Chill

It took four calls to 911 and a little over 30 minutes before a Coral Springs, Fla., dispatcher sent police to a report of a shooting. Guadalupe Herrera reported that a bullet had pierced the back windshield of her car and struck her front windshield and almost hit her in the head. But the call was logged as a “suspicious incident,” not as a shooting, which would have been a high priority. When investigators pulled the data from the work station of the 911 supervisor who was on duty, they found a movie on Netflix had been playing for almost two hours when the call came in. The supervisor, Julie Vidaud, said she plays movies in the background, but that doesn’t mean she was watching one when the call came in. She is expected to receive a two-day suspension without pay.

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When the Government Creates Mandatory Shortages

Governments create problems. Then they complain about them.

“A public health crisis exists,” says Kentucky’s government, citing a report that found “a shortage of ambulance providers.”

Local TV stations report on “people waiting hours for medical transportation.”

“Six-year-old Kyler Truesdell fell off his motorcycle,” reported Channel 12 news. “The local hospital told (his mother) he should be transported to Cincinnati Children’s to check for internal injuries.” But there was no ambulance available. Kyler had to wait two hours.

Yet Kyler’s cousin, Hannah Howe, runs an ambulance service in Ohio, just a few minutes away. “We would’ve (taken him) for free,” she says in my new video. “But it would’ve been illegal.”

It would be illegal because of something called certificate of need (CON) laws.

Kentucky and three other states require businesses to get a CON certificate before they are allowed to run an ambulance service. Certificates go only to businesses that bureaucrats deem “necessary.”

CON laws are supposed to prevent “oversupply” of essential services like, well, ambulances. If there are “too many” ambulance companies, some might cut corners or go out of business. Then patients would suffer, say the bureaucrats.

Of course, Kentucky patients already suffer, waiting.

It raises the question: If there’s demand, then who are politicians to say that a business is unnecessary?

Phillip Truesdell, Hannah’s father, often takes patients to hospitals in Kentucky, “I drop them off (but) I can’t go back and get them!” he told me. “Who gives the big man the right to say, ‘You can’t work here’?!”

Government.

Phillip and Hannah applied for a CON certificate and waited 11 months for a response. Then they learned that their application was being protested by existing ambulance providers.

Of course it was. Businesses don’t like competition.

“We go to court, these three ambulance services showed up,” recounts Howe.

“They hammered her, treated her like she was a criminal,” says Truesdell. “Do you know what you’re going to do to this company?!…To this town?!”

“It wasn’t anything to do with us being physically able to do it. (They) just came through like the big dog not trying to let anybody else on the porch,” says Howe.

Three other ambulance companies also applied for permission to operate in Kentucky. They were rejected, too.

Truesdell and Howe were lucky to find the Pacific Legal Foundation, a law firm that fights for Americans’ right to earn a living.

Pacific Legal lawyer Anastasia Boden explains: “Traditionally we allow consumers to decide what’s necessary. Existing operators are never going to say more businesses are necessary.”

One Kentucky ambulance provider who opposed the new applications sent me a statement that says “saturating a community with more EMS agencies than it can…support (leads) all agencies to become watered down.”

Boden replies: “That’s just absurd. We now recognize that competition leads to efficient outcomes.”

It’s not just ambulance companies and people waiting for ambulances who are hurt by CON laws. Thirty-five states demand that businesses such as medical imaging companies, hospitals, and even moving companies get CON certificates before they are allowed to open.

Boden warns: “Once you get these laws on the books, it’s very hard to get them off. Monopolies like their monopoly. This started back in the ’70s with the federal government.”

But the feds, amazingly, wised up and repealed the mandate in 1987, saying things like, “CON laws raise considerable competitive concerns (and) consumers benefit from lower prices when provider markets are more competitive.”

Unfortunately, politicians in Kentucky and many other states haven’t wised up.

When Virginia tried to abolish its CON law, local hospitals spent $200,000 on ads claiming competition will force hospitals to close. Somehow, hospitals operate just fine in states without CON laws. But the Virginia scare campaign worked. The state still has a CON law.

In health care, and all fields, it’s better to see what competition can do rather than letting the government and its cronies decide what to allow.

COPYRIGHT 2019 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

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When the Government Creates Mandatory Shortages

Governments create problems. Then they complain about them.

“A public health crisis exists,” says Kentucky’s government, citing a report that found “a shortage of ambulance providers.”

Local TV stations report on “people waiting hours for medical transportation.”

“Six-year-old Kyler Truesdell fell off his motorcycle,” reported Channel 12 news. “The local hospital told (his mother) he should be transported to Cincinnati Children’s to check for internal injuries.” But there was no ambulance available. Kyler had to wait two hours.

Yet Kyler’s cousin, Hannah Howe, runs an ambulance service in Ohio, just a few minutes away. “We would’ve (taken him) for free,” she says in my new video. “But it would’ve been illegal.”

It would be illegal because of something called certificate of need (CON) laws.

Kentucky and three other states require businesses to get a CON certificate before they are allowed to run an ambulance service. Certificates go only to businesses that bureaucrats deem “necessary.”

CON laws are supposed to prevent “oversupply” of essential services like, well, ambulances. If there are “too many” ambulance companies, some might cut corners or go out of business. Then patients would suffer, say the bureaucrats.

Of course, Kentucky patients already suffer, waiting.

It raises the question: If there’s demand, then who are politicians to say that a business is unnecessary?

Phillip Truesdell, Hannah’s father, often takes patients to hospitals in Kentucky, “I drop them off (but) I can’t go back and get them!” he told me. “Who gives the big man the right to say, ‘You can’t work here’?!”

Government.

Phillip and Hannah applied for a CON certificate and waited 11 months for a response. Then they learned that their application was being protested by existing ambulance providers.

Of course it was. Businesses don’t like competition.

“We go to court, these three ambulance services showed up,” recounts Howe.

“They hammered her, treated her like she was a criminal,” says Truesdell. “Do you know what you’re going to do to this company?!…To this town?!”

“It wasn’t anything to do with us being physically able to do it. (They) just came through like the big dog not trying to let anybody else on the porch,” says Howe.

Three other ambulance companies also applied for permission to operate in Kentucky. They were rejected, too.

Truesdell and Howe were lucky to find the Pacific Legal Foundation, a law firm that fights for Americans’ right to earn a living.

Pacific Legal lawyer Anastasia Boden explains: “Traditionally we allow consumers to decide what’s necessary. Existing operators are never going to say more businesses are necessary.”

One Kentucky ambulance provider who opposed the new applications sent me a statement that says “saturating a community with more EMS agencies than it can…support (leads) all agencies to become watered down.”

Boden replies: “That’s just absurd. We now recognize that competition leads to efficient outcomes.”

It’s not just ambulance companies and people waiting for ambulances who are hurt by CON laws. Thirty-five states demand that businesses such as medical imaging companies, hospitals, and even moving companies get CON certificates before they are allowed to open.

Boden warns: “Once you get these laws on the books, it’s very hard to get them off. Monopolies like their monopoly. This started back in the ’70s with the federal government.”

But the feds, amazingly, wised up and repealed the mandate in 1987, saying things like, “CON laws raise considerable competitive concerns (and) consumers benefit from lower prices when provider markets are more competitive.”

Unfortunately, politicians in Kentucky and many other states haven’t wised up.

When Virginia tried to abolish its CON law, local hospitals spent $200,000 on ads claiming competition will force hospitals to close. Somehow, hospitals operate just fine in states without CON laws. But the Virginia scare campaign worked. The state still has a CON law.

In health care, and all fields, it’s better to see what competition can do rather than letting the government and its cronies decide what to allow.

COPYRIGHT 2019 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

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Puppies and Kittens Trump the Constitution

I guess I should say at the outset that I do not favor torturing puppies and kittens. But there is a difference between opposing cruelty to animals, which is already illegal in all 50 states, and supporting a law that makes such conduct a federal felony.

That distinction seems to have eluded every member of Congress, which unanimously approved the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act, a bill that President Donald Trump is expected to sign soon. The PACT Act exemplifies the widely accepted but pernicious belief that Congress has free-ranging authority to address anything that bothers its members, regardless of whether it is already addressed by state law and regardless of whether it plausibly fits within their enumerated powers.

The bill, which the House passed by a voice vote last month and the Senate passed by unanimous consent last week, makes it a crime, punishable by up to seven years in prison, “for any person to purposely engage in animal crushing in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce.” The PACT Act counterintuitively defines “animal crushing” to include not only crushing but also burning, drowning, suffocation, impalement, or any other action that causes “serious bodily injury.”

That puzzling nomenclature reflects the bill’s roots in the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act, a 2010 law that criminalized production and distribution of images that cater to a highly specific sexual fetish epitomized by the deployment of high-heeled shoes against small furry creatures. That law banned the trade in such videos, provided they qualify as “obscene,” but it did not address the acts they record.

Although critics who thought the 2010 law did not go far enough saw that omission as a glaring defect, there was a constitutional rationale for limiting the ban to images “distributed in, or using a means or facility of, interstate or foreign commerce.” In passing the ban, Congress was relying on its power to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states.”

Under the PACT Act, by contrast, Congress is not simply regulating interstate commerce. It is purporting to prohibit any act of animal cruelty “affecting” interstate commerce, whatever that means. This understanding of the Commerce Clause converts it into the sort of general police power that the Constitution reserves to the states.

While the Supreme Court for many years has stretched the Commerce Clause to accommodate nearly everything Congress might want to do, there are still supposed to be some limits. In 1995, for instance, the Court struck down a federal law that made it a crime to possess a gun near a school, which the government defended based on the same sort of tenuous relationship to interstate commerce invoked by the PACT Act.

“If we were to accept the Government’s arguments,” Chief Justice William Rehnquist observed in the majority opinion, “we are hard pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress is without power to regulate.” The Court said the Commerce Clause extends only to “the use of the channels of interstate commerce,” regulation of “instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or person or things in interstate commerce,” and local commercial activity that has a “substantial relation” to interstate commerce.

Congress subsequently amended the Gun-Free School Zones Act, specifying that it applies only to a firearm “that has moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce.” According to several federal appeals courts, that tiny jurisdictional fig leaf was enough to save the law.

If those courts are right, the PACT Act may well be constitutional. But if merely alluding to interstate commerce is enough to justify congressional action that is not otherwise proscribed, “the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers,” as Justice Clarence Thomas warned in a 2005 Commerce Clause case.

Republican legislators who claim to defend the Constitution, including its limits on their own power, once viewed that prospect with alarm. The PACT Act shows that is no longer true.

© Copyright 2019 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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via IFTTT

Puppies and Kittens Trump the Constitution

I guess I should say at the outset that I do not favor torturing puppies and kittens. But there is a difference between opposing cruelty to animals, which is already illegal in all 50 states, and supporting a law that makes such conduct a federal felony.

That distinction seems to have eluded every member of Congress, which unanimously approved the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act, a bill that President Donald Trump is expected to sign soon. The PACT Act exemplifies the widely accepted but pernicious belief that Congress has free-ranging authority to address anything that bothers its members, regardless of whether it is already addressed by state law and regardless of whether it plausibly fits within their enumerated powers.

The bill, which the House passed by a voice vote last month and the Senate passed by unanimous consent last week, makes it a crime, punishable by up to seven years in prison, “for any person to purposely engage in animal crushing in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce.” The PACT Act counterintuitively defines “animal crushing” to include not only crushing but also burning, drowning, suffocation, impalement, or any other action that causes “serious bodily injury.”

That puzzling nomenclature reflects the bill’s roots in the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act, a 2010 law that criminalized production and distribution of images that cater to a highly specific sexual fetish epitomized by the deployment of high-heeled shoes against small furry creatures. That law banned the trade in such videos, provided they qualify as “obscene,” but it did not address the acts they record.

Although critics who thought the 2010 law did not go far enough saw that omission as a glaring defect, there was a constitutional rationale for limiting the ban to images “distributed in, or using a means or facility of, interstate or foreign commerce.” In passing the ban, Congress was relying on its power to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states.”

Under the PACT Act, by contrast, Congress is not simply regulating interstate commerce. It is purporting to prohibit any act of animal cruelty “affecting” interstate commerce, whatever that means. This understanding of the Commerce Clause converts it into the sort of general police power that the Constitution reserves to the states.

While the Supreme Court for many years has stretched the Commerce Clause to accommodate nearly everything Congress might want to do, there are still supposed to be some limits. In 1995, for instance, the Court struck down a federal law that made it a crime to possess a gun near a school, which the government defended based on the same sort of tenuous relationship to interstate commerce invoked by the PACT Act.

“If we were to accept the Government’s arguments,” Chief Justice William Rehnquist observed in the majority opinion, “we are hard pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress is without power to regulate.” The Court said the Commerce Clause extends only to “the use of the channels of interstate commerce,” regulation of “instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or person or things in interstate commerce,” and local commercial activity that has a “substantial relation” to interstate commerce.

Congress subsequently amended the Gun-Free School Zones Act, specifying that it applies only to a firearm “that has moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce.” According to several federal appeals courts, that tiny jurisdictional fig leaf was enough to save the law.

If those courts are right, the PACT Act may well be constitutional. But if merely alluding to interstate commerce is enough to justify congressional action that is not otherwise proscribed, “the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers,” as Justice Clarence Thomas warned in a 2005 Commerce Clause case.

Republican legislators who claim to defend the Constitution, including its limits on their own power, once viewed that prospect with alarm. The PACT Act shows that is no longer true.

© Copyright 2019 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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Tonight: Katherine Mangu-Ward Argues Capitalism is a Blessing at Intelligence Squared Debate

At an Intelligence Squared debate tonight in New York City, Reason Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward will argue for the motion that capitalism is a blessing. Here’s the proposition:

Recent polls show that two out of three Americans support capitalism. But with the wealth gap widening and democratic socialist politicians gaining support, some Americans are starting to consider socialism as a viable economic and political model. Supporters of capitalism claim that no other system has been as effective in creating value, increasing prosperity, and producing the wealth that has lifted billions of people out of poverty. The free market, they argue, encourages competition and human ingenuity, values individual choice, and organizes society in a fair and just way. Critics of capitalism, however, paint a different picture. They argue that capitalism is inherently exploitative and that business owners seek profits above all else, leading to the distortion of human worth as one distilled to an individual’s labor power. Further, they claim that a capitalist system is inherently rigged to benefit the wealthy and powerful, and the byproducts of which have created unsustainable waste and decimated the world’s wildlife and natural resources. Who is right, and is capitalism here to stay?

Also arguing in the affirmative is Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. Arguing against the motion that capitalism is a blessing is Jacobin Founding Editor Bhaskar Sunkara and University of Massachusetts Amherst Professor Emeritus of Economics Richard D. Wolff.

You can watch the debate live starting at 7 pm eastern today right here.

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Tonight: Katherine Mangu-Ward Argues Capitalism is a Blessing at Intelligence Squared Debate

At an Intelligence Squared debate tonight in New York City, Reason Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward will argue for the motion that capitalism is a blessing. Here’s the proposition:

Recent polls show that two out of three Americans support capitalism. But with the wealth gap widening and democratic socialist politicians gaining support, some Americans are starting to consider socialism as a viable economic and political model. Supporters of capitalism claim that no other system has been as effective in creating value, increasing prosperity, and producing the wealth that has lifted billions of people out of poverty. The free market, they argue, encourages competition and human ingenuity, values individual choice, and organizes society in a fair and just way. Critics of capitalism, however, paint a different picture. They argue that capitalism is inherently exploitative and that business owners seek profits above all else, leading to the distortion of human worth as one distilled to an individual’s labor power. Further, they claim that a capitalist system is inherently rigged to benefit the wealthy and powerful, and the byproducts of which have created unsustainable waste and decimated the world’s wildlife and natural resources. Who is right, and is capitalism here to stay?

Also arguing in the affirmative is Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. Arguing against the motion that capitalism is a blessing is Jacobin Founding Editor Bhaskar Sunkara and University of Massachusetts Amherst Professor Emeritus of Economics Richard D. Wolff.

You can watch the debate live starting at 7 pm eastern today right here.

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