Category: reason

Reason.com food columnist Baylen Linnekin

sounds off over at Fox New about the unsavory treatment in the
United States of our right to eat and drink the goodies of our
choice.

In fact, 2014 may go down as the worst year for food freedom
since the New Deal era, when Congress, President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt and the Supreme Court conspired to strip Americans of
many basic food rights. Just how ludicrous was that period? In
1942, the Supreme Court actually upheld a New Deal law that
prohibited farmers from using wheat they grew on their own farms to
bake bread to feed their own families.

While we haven’t matched that historic low yet, there are still
nine months left in the year.

Linnekin points to rules requiring chefs and bartenders to wear
gloves, bans on trans fats, nagging nannies adopting tech tools so
that it’s increasingly difficult to escape their concerns, and more
issues you may have already found cringe-worthy through his pieces
and those of other great Reason writers.

It just may inspire you to stock the pantry with
soon-to-be-forbidden treats.

Read the
whole thing here.

More zero tolerance run
amok, via KEYC, a
CBS-affiliated station in Minnesota:

On Tuesday Wells Police reportedly found a small pocket
knife in [high school junior] Alyssa Dresher’s purse during a
routine locker search.

Which led school officials to suspend her for three days. The
school has a very strict weapons policy and according to that, the
punishment could lead to a 12 month suspension after further
advisement from the school board. The superintendent was not able
to speak specifically to the case concerning Drescher but did tell
KEYC that in any situation the safety and welfare for all students
is their primary concern. 

The school board will decide on Thursday whether to kick her out
of school for mistakenly (according to her) bringing a pocket knife
used to complete farm chores to school. Her father says the schools
superintendent, Jerry Jensen, wants to push for a 12-month
suspension or expulsion at Thursday’s meeting and that his daughter
had never had any disciplinary problems before.

The knife was found while the school was put on “lockdown” so a
drug dog could sniff students lockers for drugs,
according to The Albert Lea Tribune, which also
reported that police said they found no drugs in the school during
the search. Drescher’s locker was nevertheless singled out.

Her family and friends set up a
Facebook page in support of Drescher on Thursday. It’s garnered
about 1,100 fans.

Thanks to Anthony Sanders for the tip

Obamacare is often described as an attempt to
make sure that most everyone has, or at least has access to, health
insurance. But it’s more than that: It’s an attempt to make sure
that everyone has a specific kind of health insurance. It’s not
enough for the law’s authors and administrators to tell you that
you need to be covered. They also want to tell you how.

Case in point, a regulation proposed last month by the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which would prohibit
people in most states from purchasing standalone fixed indemnity
insurance. Fixed indemnity coverage is a form of limited, low-cost
insurance that pays out a flat rate in response to certain
prescribed events—say $75 for a doctor’s visit or $15 for a
prescription—regardless of the cost. Because the coverage payouts
aren’t variable, and because some major medical costs aren’t
covered at all, monthly premiums are often quite low, meaning that
it offers a way for people to have some coverage at relatively
affordable rates.

It may not be an option for much longer. The proposed
regulation would essentially outlaw standalone indemnity
policies,
making it illegal to sell them except as an addendum to the
more robust, more expensive plans that meet the law’s minimum
essential benefits requirements.  Under the proposed rules,
indemnity insurance sold by itself would be classified in such a
way that it has to meet all the requirements for “major medical
coverage.”

It’s as if regulators suddenly decided that anyone selling
scooters had to make sure those scooters were as powerful (and thus
expensive) as motorcycles. Otherwise, scooters could only be sold
as sidecars to people who already owned motorcycles.

The result is that scooters probably won’t be available at all.
Basically, the indemnity policies would have to meet a slew of
Affordable Care Act requirements that would increase their cost
and, in the process, make them too expensive and troublesome to
sell.

In some ways it’s really sort of bizarre. Prior to this
proposal, the expectation was that individuals would be able to pay
the mandate penalty and then purchase fixed indemnity insurance on
the side. If this proposal goes through, that won’t happen. Which
would likely mean fewer people with some kind of coverage.

In other ways, of course, it makes a certain sort of sense. If
you understand that the goal of the law is not merely to drive
people into some form of health coverage, but also to specify what
type of coverage they have, then this certainly fits the bill.

It’s another example of the many ways the law attempts to
control and limit the flexibility of insurance carriers to offer a
variety of plans and coverage types. The health law’s supporters
have regularly sold it as a market-based system that promotes
private insurer competition. But as we see with these sorts of
rules, it in fact ends up heavily restricting the kinds of
insurance market competition that is acceptable, and transforming
the individual insurance market into what is effectively a
quasi-public regulated utility. 

As a postscript to
this morning’s item about Joe McCarthy, here’s a fun
question for you: What role did the Communist Party play in
McCarthy’s rise to federal office? No, I’m not talking about
some crazy Manchurian Candidate scenario—just the
accidental effects of the party’s activities in the 1946
election.

Before then, Wisconsin was represented in the Senate by Bob
LaFollette, Jr. The senator had been affiliated with the Progressive
Party, a left-wing outfit, but in the mid-’40s the Progressives
merged with the GOP. (That sounds extremely weird today, I know.
But it was possible to be an overtly liberal Republican back then.)
After the merger, LaFollette lost to McCarthy in the Republicans’
1946 primary.

Why did McCarthy beat LaFollette? The main reason is that the
Democratic candidate, Howard McMurray, campaigned hard for the
state’s liberals to vote for him in the Dem primary (where he was
running unopposed) rather than for LaFollette in the contested
Republican race. He was fairly successful in this: Not every member
of the old Progressive Party was eager to follow LaFollette into
the GOP, and even if they wanted to support LaFollette there were
candidates for other offices that they could back only if they
voted in the Democratic race.

Organized labor in particular decided, for the most part, to
vote for McMurray rather than LaFollette. And among the forces
pushing the unions in that direction were the Wisconsin Communists,
who hated LaFollette—like many people on the non-Marxist left, he
was strongly anti-Communist. (McCarthy, meanwhile, had not yet
embraced the issue that would make him famous. He appeared at this
point to be member of the
moderate, internationalist wing of the Republicans,
attacking LaFollette for “voting in opposition to world
co-operation.”)

Did the Communist Party play the deciding role in LaFollette’s
loss? LaFollette himself thought so, but he was probably wrong:
Patrick Maney’s bio
Young Bob makes a good case that other factors were
more important. But the Communists did play a role in
McCarthy’s win. If you’re a fan of juicy historical ironies, you
can add that to your file.

Good news: thanks
to a ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Monday, the “most transparent administration in history” is going
to have to tell American citizens when it believes it’s legally
entitled to kill them. Gene Healy writes that in matters of
transparency, the Obama Team can always be counted on to do the
right thing—after exhausting all other legal options and being
forced into it by the federal courts.

View this article.

A new poll shows that Texas is
the latest state flipping for gay marriage. A poll put together by
Texas Tech University showed
48 percent of Texans supporting same-sex marriage recognition
and 47 percent opposed. It’s nearly a 10 percent increase in
support in Texas since the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down
part of the Defense of Marriage Act last year. A federal judge also

struck down Texas’ ban on same-sex marriage recognition in
February, though the ruling is stayed for appeals.

But polls be damned, the same gay marriage opponents who have
been fighting against gay marriage from the start are still trying
to insist that Republicans need to keep embracing this culture war
battle in order to please their base. They put together a poll of
Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to bolster their
claims.
Politico notes:

The survey by the GOP polling firm Wilson Research Strategies
was of Republican and Republican-leaning independents and was taken
over a month ago, sampling 801 people from March 18 through March
20, with a 3.5 percent margin of error.

The survey showed 82 percent agreeing with a statement that
marriage should be between “one man and one woman.” It also found
75 percent disagreed that “politicians should support the
redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples.”

First of all, the wording of the questions matter. Reason-Rupe
poll director Emily Ekins has previously noted that polls that ask
whether people want to
“redefine” marriage get greater disapproval numbers than polls
that ask whether people want to “legalize” gay marriage. Both the
questions address only the idea of “defining” or “redefining”
marriage and nothing to do with policies or principles. It doesn’t
ask whether the government should recognize same-sex marriages or
whether government benefits or privileges should be extended to
same-sex couples. The question was designed to get more negative
responses.

And then there’s this
graph reminder from Gallup:

It’s a reminder that the Republican Party has been bleeding
members since 2005. Only 25 percent of Americans identify as
Republicans, while 42 percent identify as independents and 31
percent identify as Democrats.
This marriage poll included independents who said they leaned
toward the Republican party, but doesn’t indicate how many
independents they surveyed leaned toward the GOP. Another chart
from Gallup shows Democrats still outnumbering Republicans
significantly when independent “leaners” were included.

Even as the popularity of President Barack Obama and his
policies plunge, and the likelihood of the Republican Party taking
control of the Senate following midterms increases, the GOP is
still struggling with this issue. The Nevada Republican Party

removed opposition to gay marriage (and abortion) from its
party platform earlier in the month. And yesterday the Consumer
Electronics Association, a trade association, announced it was
going to provide financial support to the
Log Cabin Republicans, a group of gay conservatives, apparently
the first tech group to do so. As the
Mozilla controversy has shown, there is political diversity
within the tech community, but it is nevertheless largely
supportive of same-sex marriage. Would any GOP operative look at
the shifts in this country on gay marriage (especially among the
young) and actually recommend listening to these guys?

Revealed: Government keeps
growing because we’re purchasing it at an apparent discount.
Between 2009 and 2013, for instance, the federal government
borrowed 33 cents of every dollar it spent. That makes it seem as
if we’re only shelling out 67 cents for every dollar of government
goods and services.

Since 1974, when new budget accounting rules went into effect,
the government has paid out of pocket for just 84 cents per dollar
of spending, giving us all a sweet 16 percent discount. Who
wouldn’t buy more at those low, low prices? In my latest Daily
Beast column, I call this “The
Golden Age of Groupon Government.”

The idea behind Groupon is pretty simple: If you discount the
price of something, then people are more likely to buy it. While we
may not be willing to shell out $34 for artery-clogging amounts
of Cherry Garcia, Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, and Chubby Hubby,
we might sign on if the cost is just $17.

For decades now, we’ve been
getting much more government than we’re actually willing to pay
for. Which leads to…more government. About a decade ago, two Cato
Institute scholars—Peter Van Doren and the late William
Niskanen—reported on “Some Intriguing Findings About Federal
Spending.” Basically, they found that when the government
appears to charge citizens less money in the form of current taxes
and fees, people are happy to purchase more government.
“Controlling for the unemployment rate, federal spending [between
1981 and 2000] increased by about one-half percent of GDP for each
one percentage point decline in the relative level of federal tax
revenues.” Does anyone else remember a simpler, more parsimonious
America? “Gas, grass, or ass—nobody rides for free” is only a
bumper sticker these days….

At least with a Groupon deal, you settle your
bill up at the exact moment of the sale. Those heavily discounted
gallons of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream may give you a stroke, but
it’s not as if you—or your descendants—are still on the hook for
the other 50 percent of the purchase 10, 20, or 30 years down the
line. Yet that’s exactly where we are with Groupon Government: We
buy more than we can afford now, with no good idea of how we’re
ever going to pay up when the rest of the bill finally comes due.
Because if we’re lucky, we’ll be long gone before that day arrives.
As Keynes once quipped, “In the long run, we are all dead.”
You bet, but who’s paying for our funeral? And will they be paying
retail?

Read the whole thing here.

The New York Times today features a lengthy
article
profiling individuals who chose to remain uninsured this year under
Obamacare.

For most of the people who appear in the story, it’s a financial
decision. They have tight budgets, and health insurance remains
expensive under the Affordable Care Act, even with whatever
subsidies they may qualify for. 

Cost is the most frequently raised issue, but it’s not the only
one. One Kentucky man featured in the story says he was put off by
technical troubles; he had decided to purchase insurance, and he
had selected a plan with what he thought was a fairly low
deductible. But that deductible, the Times reports, was
“miscalculated because of a programming error.” He ended up
deciding not to enroll in new coverage through the exchange this
year. 

And then there’s the story of Tammy Williams, a woman from
Washington state who “based her decision to opt out partly on
philosophical resistance to the law.” Here’s her story:

“The government comes into our life and makes these decisions
for us without even asking us,” said Ms. Williams, 56. “It just
makes me want to rebel.”

Ms. Williams, who earns less than $40,000 a year at a small
marketing firm in Seattle, said she did not want to hand over what
little discretionary money she had after rent and other living
expenses to an insurance company. She has been uninsured since
moving a year ago from Ohio, where she had a job with health
benefits.

She qualified for a subsidy to help buy coverage through
Washington’s marketplace, but said that she still would have had to
pay around $135 a month for the least expensive plan, with a $6,000
deductible that she said made it unfeasible.

“I am opting out,” she said on the last day of the enrollment
period, adding that she might instead buy dental coverage outside
the marketplace to take care of a chipped crown and a cavity.

A political independent, Ms. Williams said she at first chided
herself about not buying coverage, thinking, “There’s plans out
there that make it a good thing for people, and I’m just going for
rebelling against the government.”

But when she looked closely at the costs, she decided her
resentment was justified.

“If given a voice — ‘Do you want to participate or not?’ — I
would have said no,” Ms. Williams said. “But I don’t remember being
asked.”

The piece ends with the story of Cindy Whitely, a Kentucky woman
who had initially thought she might go without insurance, but did
end up getting covered after her work with a home improvement
company dried up last winter. Less work meant less income, which in
turn meant a bigger-than-expected subsidy for her and her
family. 

But now she’s worried that she might lose her new coverage if
work picks back up, her incomes rises, and the subsidy is no longer
as big as it is now. “If work picks back up and I jump right back
up there,” she told the Times, “then I’m stuck.” 

That’s a pretty good illustration of the tradeoff the law sets
up between working more and keeping benefits. When people talk
about Obamacare’s potential negative effects on employment, this is
the sort of thing they’re talking about. 

But it’s actually worse than that. If Whitely’s
income rises enough this year, not only will her subsidy for next
year go away, but she may have to repay part of this year’s
subsidy. People who underestimate their income and therefore
qualify for a larger subsidy than their actual income allows can be
dinged by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for repayment.

This is not a small issue. As many as 40 percent of the
beficiaries who receive subsidies under the law may end up on the
hook for repayment, according to a 2013
Health Affairs study. Which means that if she ends up
with more work than expected this year, the extra subsidy that
Whitely was counting on to help pay for coverage might not really
be there at all.

Maybe all this will get sorted out as the law settles into
place. The IRS may just go easy on people who are on the hook for
repayment. But I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the years ahead,
these are the sorts of stories we hear more of when asking why some
people are still choosing to remain uninsured. 

Bringing us one step closer to a
Jetsons-esque future, powdered alcohol is now, in fact, a
thing. But whether it’s a legal thing remains to be
seen.

Various media reported earlier this week
that the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) had
approved seven varieties of “Palcohol,” powdered alcohol
packs that can be combined with water or other mixers to form
“instant cocktails.” The Palcohol website itself says “we are
excited by the approval of our powdered alcohol product,” and that
the TTB “approved it some time ago.”

Palcohol creator Mark
Phillips told Behrman Beverage Law that it took the
company nearly four years to get the TTB approval.

But a spokesman for the TTB
told the Associated Press that the approvals had been
issued in error.

Robert Lehrman, who runs the Behrman Beverage
Law site, said this oversight “does not ring true.” He
suggested to AP that the agency may be backtracking after the
approval was publicized and worried lawmakers started getting in
touch. 

In an update yesterday, Palcohol said it’s been in touch with
the TTB and “there seemed to be a discrepancy on our fill level,
how much powder is in the bag.” This doesn’t mean that Palcohol
isn’t approved, just that the labels aren’t (“we will re-submit
labels,” the company said).

If all goes according to plan, Palcohol expects its powdered
cocktails to hit the market this fall, in flavors such as Mojito
and “Powderita,” along with powdered vodka and rum. I, for one,
have no desire to actually try these newfangled libation
aberrations. But it should be fun to watch the moral panic that
ensues! 

Thaddeus
Russell looks back on the harmful mythmaking about “white slavery”
in the Progressive Era. It helped create, expand, and strengthen
the police powers of an array of government agencies. Since the
onset of the panic, those agencies have imprisoned and sterilized
hundreds of thousands of women who worked as prostitutes, taken
their children from them, forced them onto the streets and into
dependent relationships with male criminals, and made their jobs
among the most dangerous in the world.

View this article.