Category: reason

The Controlled Substance Act, passed in 1970 and signed by
President Nixon as a part of a “comprehensive” plan on drug abuse
prevention, made marijuana an illegal substance in the United
States, the culmination of decades of increased regulation and
prohibition of marijuana and other narcotics around the country.
Some states followed up federal efforts with draconian laws of
their own, like New York, whose governor, Nelson Rockefeller, gave
his name to some of the harshest anti-drug laws in the country. By
1978,
New York and nine other states had set up some kind of
decriminalization of marijuana—in Alaska via a state supreme court
decision that found Alaskans had a right to privacy that
protected using marijuana in the home but in other states via
legislation.

But then nothing happened until a few states passed medical
marijuana laws beginning in the late 1990s. Over the last decade,
buoyed by a steady and significant shift in
public opinion toward marijuana, several states have moved
toward more decriminalization and, where pushed hardest by voters,
to legalization. In 2012, voters in Washington and Colorado
approved initiatives to legalize marijuana in the state. Tomorrow,
voters in Oregon, Alaska and D.C. do, while voters in Florida and
Guam vote on medical marijuana.

Check out the graphic below:

For larger still images, check out:

1970-1989 | 1990-1999 | 2000-2009 | 2010-2014 

The new Congress hasn’t even been elected
yet, but it’s already under pressure to add billions of dollars in
new government spending to pay for “infrastructure.” According to
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, for example, “We
have huge infrastructure needs, especially in water and
transportation, and the federal government can borrow incredibly
cheaply…. So borrowing to build roads, repair sewers and more
seems like a no-brainer.” In response, Ira Stoll offers nine
reasons why a burst of federal borrowing or taxing to pay for
roads, bridges, sewers, and airport terminals would be a disastrous
idea.

View this article.

Phoenix voters tomorrow will
get a chance to
push through some more reforms for its public employee pension
program, which is currently underfunded to the tune of $1.5
billion.
Proposition 487 (pdf) aims to shift new city employees to a
defined contribution (401k-style) plan rather than a defined
benefit (pension) plan in order to get rid of these liabilities.
Slowly. Eventually. Current employees won’t be affected by the
changes, so the city will still be obligated to pay these pension
debts.

The debate in Phoenix has centered on whether it affects police
and firefighter pensions (it’s not supposed to because they have
their own pension funds) and whether it would save money or cost
more money. That second battle seems the odd one. Anybody who
grasps how pensions work would understand that this will save money
in the long run by essentially eliminating future debt for
retirements. The fiscal argument against the change appears to be
something along the line that making this change would require the
city to actually pay its debts more quickly instead of dragging it
out, and more importantly, they wouldn’t be able to take from Peter
(new employees) to pay Paul (current and retired employees), which
seems kind of like admitting that public pensions as they stand
right now are a big pyramid scheme.

Our co-workers at the Reason Foundation (the non-profit that
publishes this web site and Reason magazine) have been
heavily involved in analyzing the finances of the reform
initiative, and they’re actually quoted on the page for Proposition
487 at the ever-useful Ballotpedia site. In August, Reason
Foundation’s Adrian Moore and Anthony Randazzo attempted to

dispel some of the arguments that this particular pension
reform would cost more than it saved:

Our actuarial analysis of the reform accounts for all elements
of the November ballot initiative and finds taxpayers are likely to
save as much as $1.6 billion over the next 25 years. In fact, the
raw savings could be used to pay down the current pension debt
faster and save Phoenix money in the long run, a move the city’s
actuaries actually recommended in their analysis.

Similar reforms in other states have been successful, but
opponents of the initiative are telling half-truths to make you
believe otherwise.

They say that Michigan had its unfunded liabilities increase
after making a similar switch in 1997. It is true that Michigan saw
its pension debt increase dramatically, but it is purposefully
misleading to claim that it had anything to do with the adoption of
a 401(k)-style pension plan.

The increase in Michigan’s pension debt occurred in the 2000s,
well after the reforms, and is entirely attributable to the legacy
defined benefit system. Michigan officials chose to underfund their
old-style system and to assume massive returns from Wall Street
would cover the underpayment. As was the case in many states, this
big gamble did not pay off and Michigan wound up with a much larger
pension debt. Meanwhile, the reformed pension system has been
financially stable and debt free since 1997, and there has even
been talk of moving teachers into a similar system. The story is
almost identical for the pension reform efforts in Alaska and West
Virginia.

Read more from the Reason Foundation about Phoenix’s pension
situation
here.

If Phoenix’s initiative passes tomorrow, don’t rush to celebrate
too quickly. Just as with nearly every effort by cities and states
to reduce the dangers of pension debts by shifting out of these
easily abused (by all sides) system, lawsuits are sure to
follow.

This Tuesday, voters in Colorado and North
Dakota will decide whether to grant rights to “unborn human beings”
while Tennessee residents consider a constitutional amendment
allowing the state legislature more power to regulate abortion.
Here’s a quick look at the three abortion-related measures on
Election 2014 ballots:

COLORADO – Amendment 67

In both 2008 and 2010, more than 70 percent of Colorado voters
rejected Personhood USA’s attempt to give fertilized eggs, embryos,
and fetuses full rights under the Colorado constitution. This year
the anti-abortion group is back at it with an updated, less-broad
ballot measure. If
Amendment 67 passes, it will amend the state’s constitution to
include “unborn human beings” under the definition of “person” with
regard to Colorado criminal code and the Colorado Wrongful Death
Act. The previous personhood measures would have amended the
definition of person unilaterally. 

Supporters of Amendment 67, also known as the Brady Amendment,
have been trying to keep focus on Heather Surovik, a woman whose
car was hit by a drunk driver when she was eight months pregnant.
Surovik lived, but her unborn baby “Brady” didn’t. The driver
responsible was charged with vehicular assault and driving under
the influence, but not for Brady’s death.

“In honor of her son, Heather Surovik has initiated the Brady
Amendment to recognize unborn babies as persons in law,” sates
Personhood Colorado.

Opponents say the measure is an attempt to criminalize abortion.
 

NORTH DAKOTA – Measure 1

North Dakota residents will also vote this Tuesday on a
constitutional amendment concerning personhood.
Measure 1, also known as the “Life Begins at Conception” or
“Human Life” Amendment, would change the state constitution to
provide for the “inalienable right to life of every human being at
any stage of development.”

Some supporters of Measure 1, led by a group called North Dakota
Choose Life, insist that it’s not meant to address abortion per
se and would merely change the state constitution to
“recognize that human life is a gift”. This is necessary, according
to North Dakota Choose Life, because “wealthy out-of-state special
interest groups” are trying to overturn restrictions on abortion
that the state has already passed, such as a parental notification
requirement for abortion-seeking teens.

State Sen. Margaret Sitte (R-35), however, claims “this
amendment is intended to present a direct challenge to Roe v.
Wade. By passage of this amendment, the people of North Dakota
are asking government to recognize what science already
defined.”

Opponents of the measure say it’s so vague it could be used in
any manner of ways, including to criminalize in-vitro
fertilization or taking terminally-ill patients off life support.

TENNESSEE – Amendment 1

Amendment 1, also known as the “Tennessee Legislative Powers
Regarding Abortion” amendment, would add the following to the state
constitution: 

Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to
abortion or requires the funding of an abortion. The people retain
the right through their elected state representatives and state
senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion,
including, but not limited to, circumstances of pregnancy resulting
from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the
mother.

The amendment would have no immediate effect, but supporters say
it would allow the legislature to more intensely regulate abortion
in the future. Specifically, they believe it would neutralize a
2000 Tennessee Supreme Court ruling which struck down several laws
restricting abortion access—including a 48-hour waiting period for
women seeking abortions and a requirement that second-trimester
abortions be performed in hospitals—as unconstitutional.

“For those thinking that a state constitutional amendment may be
overkill, in fact its need comes from the state court itself,” said
Dan McConchie, vice president of government affairs at Americans
United for Life. 

Opponents of Amendment 1 point out that the goal of its backers
is to make all abortion illegal. “Their pitch is that this would
make the constitution neutral on abortion,” said former Tennessee
Sen. Roy Herron. “How would they like the Constitution neutral on
the Second Amendment so legislators could outlaw the right to bear
arms? How about making the First Amendment neutral?”

Amendment 1 was placed on the ballot by the state
legislature, under the guidance of State Sen. Mae Beavers (R-17)
and U.S. Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), who was a state senator at the
time. As a legislatively-referred constitutional amendment, it must
earn a majority vote from those voting on the
amendment and those voting for Tennessee
governor. For this reason, Amendment 1 supporters have been urging
residents not to cast a vote in the gubernatorial
race.

Some schools
secretly spy on their students. Others make it official
policy.

Last week the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) joined together to
send a
letter to a Tennessee school board accusing the district’s
technology
policy of grossly violating its students’ First and Fourth
Amendment rights.

The Williamson County Board of Education’s “Acceptable Use,
Media Release, and Internet Safety Procedures” grant school
administrators broad, vaguely defined discretionary powers over the
electronic devices and communications of some 35,000 students.
These powers include the authority to restrict off-campus speech on
social media sites, to search any electronic devices on school
grounds without reasonable suspicion, and to access any
communications sent or stored on the school’s network.

The policy ominously states that “students are subject to
consequences for inappropriate, unauthorized, and illegal use of
social media,” even when off-campus. The consequences include “loss
of network privileges, confiscation of computer equipment,
suspension…and/or criminal prosecution.”

The policy also gives the district the ill-defined power to
“collect and examine any device at any time for the purpose of
enforcing the terms of this agreement, investigating student
discipline issues, or for any other school-related purpose.” Which
roughly translates to “for any reason whatsoever.”

More worrisome yet, administrators have the authority to
search and read student communications on the district
network, also without a modicum of reasonable
suspicion: “All network users may be monitored at any time by
authorized personnel.”

All of this is done in the name of (surprise!) protecting The
Children: “The district has taken measures designed to protect
students and adults from obscene information and restrict access to
materials that are harmful to minors.”

In their letter, the ACLU and the EFF argue that the authority
claimed by the district “infringes on students’ fundamental
constitutional rights” of free speech and freedom from unreasonable
searches and seizures—rights that more than one judge has ruled
don’t stop at the school door.

The two civil liberties organizations picked up the case from
parent Daniel Pomerantz, who says he was effectively coerced into
signing a waiver subjecting his daughter to the district’s
policies, Wired
reports:

He initially refused to sign the policy at the start of the
school semester, but relented after the school prohibited his
5-year-old daughter from using the computers at Nolensville
Elementary School without the agreement.

“The first time they were using the computers [in her
classroom], they told her she had to go sit aside and do something
else and she started to cry and complain…It was not a pleasant
experience as a family. They told her it was all because of me,
that [because] I wouldn’t do this was why she couldn’t learn on
computers with all the other students.”

The letter notes that “requiring students to sign an agreement
waiving constitutional protections in order to participate in
fundamental school activities is not permissible.”

But perhaps the administrators are just preparing their charges
for the world after school, where free speech
isn’t always free, unreasonable searches and seizures are
considered
reasonable, and all your communications belong to the government.

Former Reason intern Jeff Winkler takes a close,
though in the usual course of these sort of articles a bit comedic,
look for the Texas Monthly at the
people running for governor in Texas who are not Democrat Wendy
Davis or Republican Greg Abbott.

There’s Libertarian Kathie Glass, whose exclusion from the
debates because she isn’t polling well in polls from which she’s
excluded is discussed at length. She’s only raised about $141,000,
and only about $40,000 of that was from people other than herself.
But this return candidate is still fighting, campaigning harder
than most L.P. candidates:

Glass ran in the 2010 gubernatorial race and placed third, with
2.18 percent of the vote. This time, she’s upped her game and
turned it into a real professional outfit. Her campaign manager
husband, Tom, does logistics. She has a full-time staffer with more
than a dozen steady volunteers statewide. They’ve conducted
“internal polling.” She even produced an ad in Spanish. And then
there’s her ambitious tour through all 254 counties in Texas in
a Straight-Talk-Express-sized
campaign bus .

“We go to places and events and things and go visit the TV
stations and newspapers. And that’s what we do [in every county].
We try to get coverage and get connected to an event,” Glass said.
“In smaller counties there’s just nothing that we can really make
happen there. But every county has a county courthouse.”

The campaign also stops at nearly every single radio station
they come by. “I’m not talking about the talk radio shows. I’m
talking the tiny rock shop, country-western, Christian music,
whatever they’ve got there.”…..

Some libertarian-minded folks task themselves with the Sisyphean
effort of dismantling governmental overreach brick-by-brick; Glass
wants to bulldoze, presumably with private contracts, the whole
structure to the ground. As someone who is a libertarian
sympathizer, even I cringed during an exchange in which she said
that if the Supreme Court issued a decision she didn’t like, she
would simply ignore it. “I’m going to be guided by my own
conscience,” she explained.

Smith followed up with what seemed an appropriate query: ”Are
you running for governor or to be queen? Because this sounds like a
monarchical view of government.”

“I’m sorry it sounds that way,” Glass replied. “It only sounds
like that because we haven’t followed [the Constitution] for so
long that it can seem extreme.”

Smith said he was “trying to take this serious.” But this was
particularly hard since Glass would politely say, “I don’t know”
when asked a question for which she didn’t have an answer. Real
politicians never do that.

Then there’s the Green Party’s Brandon Parmer, who, as Winkler
relates at length, is impossible to contact or find, for either
media or his own party.

Then there is officially registered write-in candidate Sara
Pavitt:

Becoming a write-in candidate for Texas governor requires 5,000
signatures or $3,750. Since Pavitt’s basic campaign strategy is
“sitting back and [getting] into it in the fourth quarter, like a
football game,” she paid the fee. “My friends think I’m crazy to
run,” said Pavitt, “but I’m bipolar.”

….She’s pushing for legalization of marijuana because, yes,
like millions of Americans she enjoys getting high, but also
because it provides medical relief. The VA doctors had her on
medications, the antipsychotic Risperdal, which has a whole
smorgasbord of side-effects (Parkinson-like symptoms, drooling,
constipation, vomiting, etc.). “Risperdal is the one making men
grow tits. And I said, ‘if it’s doing that to guys what do you
think it’s going to do to me?’” (The answer, I discovered, is
amenorrhea, which in English means no menstruation.)…..

Pavitt is practiced in hand-to-hand politics, too. She worked
for Representative Lloyd Doggett three years ago and volunteered
for Wendy Davis before “she pissed me off.” Apparently, Davis
“bolted” when Pavitt once tried to talk to her about marijuana.
Then came the limelight and greed.

“You can’t even email her, she’ll go gimme money, gimme
money, gimme money,” said Pavitt. “And I thought, ‘you’re
supposed to be representing the people. Some of us don’t have
money.’ Like I say, she got off the mark. I don’t even know what
she represents because all she does is bitch about Greg Abbott and
that’s not helping.”

…..“I’m not planning on probably being governor. I just
wanted to screw with them.” But even Pavitt follows the rules. Her
campaign flyers, which she’ll pass out soon, are all stamped with
“Political Ad Paid for by: Sarah M. Pavitt,” as is required by law.
“If you don’t take care of it, they fine you $5,000. I’m trying to
do everything legal.”

If she does get elected, Pavitt said she will “light that bong
up and tell everybody they can smoke marijuana.” And if she
doesn’t? “I’m going to lay up [on my new deck] naked and smoke
marijuana.”

Winkler ends with a stirring quote from Libertarian Glass,
presenting the best spirit of the ideologically committed third
party candidate: “That’s another thing in our Texas history. We
just don’t accept long odds as a reason not to try.”

It’s that time again, when cheerful boosters of political
participation start chirping a familiar Election Day tune:

If you don’t vote, you can’t complain!

This sentiment has become such a cliché you probably barely
notice it anymore, right? But it’s popping up everywhere from the
Santa Monica
Daily Press to random New
Jersey signboards.

In everyday life the admonition makes sense, of course: I asked
you what you wanted for dinner earlier today and you didn’t have
any good ideas, so now you’d better sit down, shut up, and eat your
tofu stroganoff, thankyouverymuch.

But this same notion, when applied to behavior at the ballot box
is actually a troubling perversion and conflation of the concepts
of consent and free speech. 

From my November 2012 Reason cover
story, “Your
Vote Doesn’t Count“:

For someone who complains about politics, policy, and
politicians for a living, the prohibition on complaining by
nonvoters strikes close to home. Again, this Election Day cliché is
intuitively appealing. If someone invests in an enterprise, we
generally recognize that he has more right than an outsider to
determine the course of that enterprise. And voting feels like an
investment: It takes time and perhaps costs money.

In his 1851 book Social Statics, the English
radical Herbert Spencer neatly describes the rhetorical jujitsu
surrounding voting, consent, and complaint, then demolishes the
argument. Say a man votes and his candidate wins. The voter is then
“understood to have assented” to the acts of his representative.
But what if he voted for the other guy? Well, then, the argument
goes, “by taking part in such an election, he tacitly agreed to
abide by the decision of the majority.” And what if he abstained?
“Why then he cannot justly complain…seeing that he made no
protest.” Spencer tidily sums up: “Curiously enough, it seems that
he gave his consent in whatever way he acted—whether he said yes,
whether he said no, or whether he remained neuter! A rather awkward
doctrine this.” Indeed.

Whether there is a duty to be civically engaged, to act as a
good citizen, is a separate question from the issue of voting. But
if such a duty exists, there are many ways to perform it, including
(perhaps especially) complaining. According to Mankiw’s argument,
the ignorant voter is a far less admirable citizen than the
serial-letter-writing Tea Partier who can’t be bothered to show up
on Election Day.

The right to complain is, mercifully, unrelated to any
hypothetical duty to vote. It was ensured, instead, by the
Founders, all of whom were extraordinary bellyachers
themselves. 

Read
the whole piece for handy replies to other Election Day
commonplaces, such as “every vote counts!” and “voting is a civic
duty” and “voting is fun.”

Dan
Malloy Is Progressives’ Dream Governor. So Why Isn’t He
Winning?

From immigration to gun control and the minimum wage, Connecticut’s
Dan Malloy signed into law a wish list of lefty priorities. But
he’s locked in a tie with his Republican challenger.

That’s the actual headline and sub-head to a Daily
Beast piece about Dan Malloy, the incumbent governor of
Connecticut whose re-election
is looking pretty shakey.

Higher taxes on the rich? Check. A state earned income tax
credit for the poor? Check. A higher minimum wage? Connecticut was
the first state to raise it to $10.10 an hour after President Obama
called for it. There is more: mandatory paid sick leave, repeal of
the death penalty…strict new gun control laws, and massive new
spending on public education, higher education, and
infrastructure.

Full Beast piece here.

Here’s a hint as to why Malloy is in a pickle: Most of the
things he did, especially when it comes to taxing and spending
more, are genuinely unpopular. Indeed,
just 23 percent of Americans (a recent high, by the way) see
themselves as liberal.

He’s not in a tight race despite his legislative
victories but because of them. You know, kind of like the
way Barack Obama’s first two years of complete free run led to a
GOP-controlled House.

Voting is important, writes Ed Krayewski, who’ll
be voting in his 39th consecutive election tomorrow. There are a
lot of shitty reasons to vote, and there’s reason to think
low-information voters can be dangerous. Being a low-information
voter is one of several great reasons not to vote. And
trying to intimidate people into voting, as some groups around the
country are doing, is ridiculous. True, individual votes matter
very little. They almost certainly never tip an election.
Nevertheless, writes Krayewski, voting is important, because in a
democratic system the absence of a vote enforces the illusion of
the consent of the governed.

View this article.

Attention, D.C. residents! On
Wednesday, I’ll be part of a great program at The Newseum being put
on by the great Brit site Spiked. Tickets are free and all are
welcome!

Details:

Across the Western world, it is no longer just governments that
see a free and rowdy press as a bad thing. So, increasingly, do
many ostensibly liberal campaigners, and even many writers and
journalists. There are many new threats to press freedom; not only
laws, but also conformism, pressure from reformers, and a tendency
to blame tabloid media in particular for every social and
intellectual ill of our age. The modern, democratic West was born
from the efforts of people who believed passionately in a free
press – from England’s Levellers to America’s founding fathers to
Europe’s men of the Enlightenment – yet today, it is often the
upper echelons of Western intellectual society who feel most
uncomfortable with the ideal of a free press.

Why has press freedom fallen so far out of favour? Why are some
people so riled by the existence of muck‐raking, trouble-causing
papers and other outlets, when that is the very business hacks have
been involved in for centuries? If the modern West sprung from a
renewed belief in freedom – including, crucially, press freedom –
does today’s discomfort with a free press tell us something about
the corrosion of Western values more broadly? Can we recover the
Jeffersonian view of press freedom being essential to democracy and
stability?

Joining me on the panel will be Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill, Al
Jazeera’s Ray Suarez, and the Committee to Protect Journalists’
Courtney C. Radsch.

10am – 4pm

Weds 5 November

The Newseum
555 Pennsylvania Avenue
NW Washington
DC 20001

RSVP here.

Here’s an interview I did with Spiked about the issues we’ll
discuss:
“The best answer to bad speech? More speech.”