Tag: posts

The Austin,
Texas, city council will meet next Thursday to consider a
resolution that could eventually ban “fast-food food restaurants
from locating near areas that children frequent.” Specifically, the
ban, or “Healthy Food Zone ordinance,” would restrict fast food
restaurants from locating anywhere near “schools, municipal parks,
child care centers, libraries and recreation centers” in the city.
At best, writes Baylen Linnekin, it’s a protectionist measure
shielding existing businesses from competition. But it also
undermines parental control without offering any health
benefits.

View this article.

Earlier this week Ron
Bailey made note of the excellent investigation by the Associated
Press about the amount of environmental harm caused by the federal
government’s insistence on pushing forward with mandated
ethanol in gasoline.

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it wants to

scale back the mandate that determines how much ethanol fuel
producers will be required to add to gasoline. Back to the
Associated Press:

The Obama administration on Friday proposed to reduce the amount
of ethanol in the nation’s fuel supply for the first time,
acknowledging that the biofuel law championed by both parties in
2007 is not working as well as expected.

While the proposal highlights the government’s struggle to ramp
up production of homegrown biofuels that are cleaner-burning than
gasoline, it is unlikely to mean much for consumers at the
pump.

The change would reduce by almost 3 billion gallons the amounts
of ethanol and other biofuels blended into gasoline in 2014 than
the law requires.

Ethanol representatives are threatening to sue, of course. The
cynic in me theorizes some backdoor federal subsidy will reimburse
them of any losses should corn prices drop due to oversupply.

Read the whole story
here.

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Albania has rejected an
American request to host the dismantling of the Assad regime’s
chemical weapons.

From the
BBC:

Albania will not allow the destruction of Syrian chemical
weapons on its soil, the country’s prime minister says.

Edi Rama was responding to two days of protests in Tirana and
other cities.

The Balkan nation recently destroyed its own chemical stockpile,
and the US had requested that it host the dismantling of Syria’s
arsenal.

Under the deal brokered by Russia to remove Syria’s chemical
weapons, it was agreed that they should be destroyed outside the
country if possible.

Following protests in Tirana Prime Minister Edi Rama
said that, “It is impossible for Albania to get involved in
this operation,” adding, “We lack the necessary capacities to get
involved in this operation.”

Today was the deadline for plan between the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the Syrian government on
the destruction of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons. A source
from the OPCW told
Reuters that U.S. has alternative countries where the stockpile
could be destroyed in mind. If the next country asked rejects the
American request to host the destruction of Syria’s chemical
weapons it will be the third to do so (Norway has already
rejected a request to host the destruction of the weapons).

Read more from Reason.com on Syria here. 

Albania has rejected an
American request to host the dismantling of the Assad regime’s
chemical weapons.

From the
BBC:

Albania will not allow the destruction of Syrian chemical
weapons on its soil, the country’s prime minister says.

Edi Rama was responding to two days of protests in Tirana and
other cities.

The Balkan nation recently destroyed its own chemical stockpile,
and the US had requested that it host the dismantling of Syria’s
arsenal.

Under the deal brokered by Russia to remove Syria’s chemical
weapons, it was agreed that they should be destroyed outside the
country if possible.

Following protests in Tirana Prime Minister Edi Rama
said that, “It is impossible for Albania to get involved in
this operation,” adding, “We lack the necessary capacities to get
involved in this operation.”

Today was the deadline for plan between the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the Syrian government on
the destruction of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons. A source
from the OPCW told
Reuters that U.S. has alternative countries where the stockpile
could be destroyed in mind. If the next country asked rejects the
American request to host the destruction of Syria’s chemical
weapons it will be the third to do so (Norway has already
rejected a request to host the destruction of the weapons).

Read more from Reason.com on Syria here. 

• The
  Keep Your Health Plan Bill passed the House, with the
  support of 39 Democrats.
• Toronto city councilors voted overwhelmingly to strip Mayor
  
  Rob Ford of some powers earlier today. Ford has threatened
  legal action.
• 
  FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wants carriers to allow their
  customers to unlock their phones.
• 
  Albania won’t host the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons,
  despite a request made by the U.S.
• Anonymous hacker
  Jeremy Hammond has been handed a 10-year jail sentence for
  hacking private intelligence firm Stratfor.
• Detroit homeowner
  Theodore P. Wafer has been charged with the second-degree
  murder of Renisha McBride, who was shot in the face on Wafer’s
  porch. Wafer has told police he believed someone was breaking into
  his house.

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We learned a few interesting things from
President Barack Obama’s rambling, analogy-filled news conference
Thursday. We learned that there was a fumble. We learned that
technology is hard. We learned that buying insurance is complex
business. David Harsanyi says we learned all this and much more
about how President Obama sees himself fitting into the healthcare
debacle.

View this article.

We learned a few interesting things from
President Barack Obama’s rambling, analogy-filled news conference
Thursday. We learned that there was a fumble. We learned that
technology is hard. We learned that buying insurance is complex
business. David Harsanyi says we learned all this and much more
about how President Obama sees himself fitting into the healthcare
debacle.

View this article.

The Chinese
government
plans to further relax its restrictions on reproduction by
allowing families living in cities to have two children if one
parent has no siblings. The so-called “one child” policy already
makes exceptions for urban parents when both are single children,
for rural couples whose first child is a girl, and for certain
ethnic groups. The shift is part of the government’s grudging
acknowledgment that its draconian limits on family size, supposedly
necessary to prevent overpopulation, have had serious unintended
consquences, including a lopsided ratio of old to young and a
shortage of women (the result of sex-selective abortions by
boy-preferring parents). “By 2050, more than a quarter of the
population will be over 65,” the BBC reports. “By
the end of the decade, demographers say China will have 24 million
‘leftover men’ who, because of China’s gender imbalance, will not
be able to find a wife.” As Vice President Joe Biden explained
a couple of years, ago, the “one child” policy is “not
sustainable.” 

It also happens to be cruel,
tyrannical, and in many instances appallingly brutal.
Although Diane Francis and Thomas Friedman may
be upset, anyone who values liberty and human dignity should
welcome what appears to be the gradual (very gradual) reversal of a
policy that entails violating people’s basic rights on a huge
scale. 

In a 2007 Reason article, I
considered the relationship between China’s reproductive
restrictions and its international adoption program.

The Chinese
government
plans to further relax its restrictions on reproduction by
allowing families living in cities to have two children if one
parent has no siblings. The so-called “one child” policy already
makes exceptions for urban parents when both are single children,
for rural couples whose first child is a girl, and for certain
ethnic groups. The shift is part of the government’s grudging
acknowledgment that its draconian limits on family size, supposedly
necessary to prevent overpopulation, have had serious unintended
consquences, including a lopsided ratio of old to young and a
shortage of women (the result of sex-selective abortions by
boy-preferring parents). “By 2050, more than a quarter of the
population will be over 65,” the BBC reports. “By
the end of the decade, demographers say China will have 24 million
‘leftover men’ who, because of China’s gender imbalance, will not
be able to find a wife.” As Vice President Joe Biden explained
a couple of years, ago, the “one child” policy is “not
sustainable.” 

It also happens to be cruel,
tyrannical, and in many instances appallingly brutal.
Although Diane Francis and Thomas Friedman may
be upset, anyone who values liberty and human dignity should
welcome what appears to be the gradual (very gradual) reversal of a
policy that entails violating people’s basic rights on a huge
scale. 

In a 2007 Reason article, I
considered the relationship between China’s reproductive
restrictions and its international adoption program.

Residents in a wealthier part
of Oakland, California have turned to private security forces to
their neighborhoods safe.

Oakland, already a perennial candidate for the most dangerous
city in the US, has seen an uptick in
robberies over the last year. Complementing this problem is the
fact that the Oakland Police Department is short
200 officers.

Residents of the Rockridge neighborhoods took the matter into
their own hands, set up three crowd-sourcing campaigns, and hired
VMA Security Group to conduct 12-hour, 6-day-a-week patrols.

NPR
reports that one resident, Dakin Ferris, was inspired to take
action after a string of robberies hit close to his home, making
his family feel vulnerable. He brought 600 households together,
each of them paying $20 a month for the private patrols.

Private security in businesses and college campuses is common
enough, but the idea of private patrols in public areas can be
hazier and can raise questions, since different jurisdictions have
different laws and regulations about what a private security
personnel are allowed to do. For example, some community patrols
are armed; Lower
Rockridge‘s is not.

Some neighborhood residents have voiced concerns about
accountability. Nicole Aruda, another Rockridge resident, told NPR
that “if there are problems with patrols in the neighborhood, we
have no one to go to because we’re not contractees,” and that the
decision-making process undemocratically “left out hundreds, if not
thousands, of neighbors who were not part of the discussion.”
Understandably, VMA Security is only obligated to protect the
members of the community who pay for the service, and presumably
Aruda could still call the police if she saw problems with the
private security.

Similar experiments in other cities have not always
lasted. For
example, a similar arrangement in Philadelphia recently fell
apart after less than a month of patrolling. Tensions arose between
police and private security. There were also allegations that the
private security overstepping their authority and driving
unregistered vehicles while on duty.

But the private patrols in Lower Rockridge have the support of
the police. “We welcome the extra set of eyes and ears,” Oakland
Police Department spokeswoman Johnna Watson tells NPR. “Any help
that we can receive to reduce crime in our city is good for all of
us.”