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Next week the
Austin chapter of America’s Future Foundation is sponsoring a
screening of America’s
Longest War, the Reason Foundation documentary about the
war on drugs, directed by Paul Feine and edited by Alex
Manning. Reason Senior Editor Jacob Sullum will
participate in a Q&A after the screening. Details:

7 p.m., Thursday, January 16

Alamo Drafthouse Village,  2700 West Anderson, Lane,
Austin

Tickets are available
here.

In the first case of its kind,
the Supreme
Court of Kentucky has upheld a ruling that probihits one man
from taking the state bar exam because he is a registered sex
offender.

Despite graduating high in his law school class and receiving an
endorsement from the law firm for which he works, Guy Padraic
Hamilton-Smith is forbidden by the Kentucky Office of Bar
Admissions from even taking the test that could allow him to
practice law. The office believes that Hamilton-Smith’s status as a
registered sex offender as justification enough for keeping him
away.

According to the Associated Press (AP), the Kentucky
Office of Bar Admissions director Elizabeth Feamster contended that
“the seriousness of the charge as well as Hamilton-Smith’s
acknowledgement of sexual addiction and ‘destructive and harmful
behaviors when it comes to sex and sexuality.’ Also, law school
students are warned early in their legal education that behavioral
issues could exclude them from being admitted to the bar.”

The bar association hoped that the court would not only rule
against Hamilton-Smith, but also affirm a rule that would ban all
sex offenders from admittance to the bar. The court struck down the
latter, stating that it would prefer each convict be dealt with on
a case-by-case basis.

In 2007, Hamilton-Smith was convicted
for possession of matter portraying a sexual performance of a
minor. Hamilton-Smith’s attorney, Scott White, argues that although
his client may be a “sex addict,” he is facing harsh treatment for
a mistake. The case is a “classic example is somebody who just
downloads buckets of pornography. In that download, there just
happened to be child pornography,” White said, explaining that
Hamilton-Smith participates in Sex Addicts Anonymous and has never
repeated his child porn crime. Likewise, he said that
Hamilton-Smith wanted to make his education and legal career part
of his rehabilitation. Hamilton-Smith’s career prospects will
likely be severely limited at least until 2027, when his name will
be taken off the sex offender registry.

The case raises questions about the
appropriate punishments for sex criminals.

Shelley Stow of the advocacy group Reform Sex Offender Laws told
the AP that penalties often outweigh crimes. “It is so difficult
for registrants to even get jobs and support themselves and
function day to day, let alone pursue a law career,” she said.

Reason‘s Jacob Sullum has previously argued
that “policies regarding sex offenders mark them as a special
category of criminals for whom no stigma is too crippling, no
regulations are too restrictive, and no penalty is too severe. This
attitude, driven by fear and outrage, is fundamentally irrational,
and so are its results, which make little sense in terms of justice
or public safety.”

For other sex-crime stories in which the punishment outweighed
the crime, read about one man who is fighting to be removed from a
registry after having
consensual sex with his to-be wife, a man who was subjected to
examinations of
his erections, and a teen who
killed himself for fear of ending up on a registry after
streaking.

During my appearance earlier on
the
Thom Hartmann show, Hartmann emphasized cigarette taxes as a
means of offsetting the “externalities” in terms of lost
productivity and health costs caused by tobacco consumption. “Lots
of lifestyle choices cause externalities,” I told him. “But if you
show up to work with a hangover, your employer suffers the lost
productivity, but the government gets the taxes.” Measuring costs
and benefits and offsetting costs with taxes might work as a
classroom exercise, but it’s a non-starter in a world where costs
(and subjective benefits, such as pleasure) are distributed all
over the place and we don’t all (yet) work for the government.
That’s probably why most cigarette tax advocates stick with a
simple social-engineering argument for discouraging tobacco use by
hiking the cost through the roof with taxes. But even they can’t
explain how tobacco is going to be the one popular good or service
ever discovered that doesn’t breed a massive black market when
larded with high taxes and tight regulations.

The socially molding possibilities of taxes came up again,
recently, in an article in the
New England Journal of Medicine that called for
tripling the government’s take on cigarettes around the world. The
authors, Prabhat Jha, M.D., D.Phil., and Richard Peto, F.R.S.,
write:

Tripling inflation-adjusted specific excise taxes on tobacco
would, in many low- and middle-income countries, approximately
double the average price of cigarettes (and more than double prices
of cheaper brands), which would reduce consumption by about a third
and actually increase tobacco revenues by about a third. In
countries in which the government owns most of the industry, as in
China, the distinction between taxes and profit is fairly
arbitrary, but doubling the average prices would still
substantially reduce consumption and increase revenue.

But this isn’t a hypothetical policy proposal. We already know,
because it’s been done, that hiking cigarette taxes breeds black
markets in smuggled and counterfeited (illegally produced knock-off
cigarettes sold under phony labels) smokes. New York has the
highest cigarette taxes in the country, at $4.35 per pack, plus
another $1.50 levied in New York City. The
result is that 60.9 percent of cigarettes sold in the state are
black market, according to the Mackinac Center for Public
Policy. Washington state has high cigarette taxes, relative to
its neighbors, and a
massive smuggling problem (48.5 percent of the state’s
cigarettes come from the black market).

You could, I suppose, impose globally uniform taxes to
discourage the easy sort of smuggling from low-cost jurisdictions
to high-cost ones. But that would just create an incentive for
illegally produced cigarettes, just as black markets supply
cocaine, heroin, and marijuana where they’re completely banned.

How do the authors address this problem? In one paragraph.

Smuggling is a concern when tobacco taxes rise; about 10% of all
cigarettes manufactured worldwide are already untaxed. Use of
specific excise taxes on tobacco (rather than ad valorem taxes),
stronger tax administration, and practicable controls on organized
smuggling can, however, limit the problem. Even with some
smuggling, large tax increases can substantially reduce consumption
and increase revenue (Figure 4), especially if supported by better
tax enforcement.

The solutions are “stronger tax administration” and “practicable
controls on organized smuggling”? Really? It’s a shame nobody ever
thought of that before through all the efforts to suppress black
markets throughout history.

Well…Maybe black markets are just an externality that can be
offset by a wee bit more tax.

During my appearance earlier on
the
Thom Hartmann show, Hartmann emphasized cigarette taxes as a
means of offsetting the “externalities” in terms of lost
productivity and health costs caused by tobacco consumption. “Lots
of lifestyle choices cause externalities,” I told him. “But if you
show up to work with a hangover, your employer suffers the lost
productivity, but the government gets the taxes.” Measuring costs
and benefits and offsetting costs with taxes might work as a
classroom exercise, but it’s a non-starter in a world where costs
(and subjective benefits, such as pleasure) are distributed all
over the place and we don’t all (yet) work for the government.
That’s probably why most cigarette tax advocates stick with a
simple social-engineering argument for discouraging tobacco use by
hiking the cost through the roof with taxes. But even they can’t
explain how tobacco is going to be the one popular good or service
ever discovered that doesn’t breed a massive black market when
larded with high taxes and tight regulations.

The socially molding possibilities of taxes came up again,
recently, in an article in the
New England Journal of Medicine that called for
tripling the government’s take on cigarettes around the world. The
authors, Prabhat Jha, M.D., D.Phil., and Richard Peto, F.R.S.,
write:

Tripling inflation-adjusted specific excise taxes on tobacco
would, in many low- and middle-income countries, approximately
double the average price of cigarettes (and more than double prices
of cheaper brands), which would reduce consumption by about a third
and actually increase tobacco revenues by about a third. In
countries in which the government owns most of the industry, as in
China, the distinction between taxes and profit is fairly
arbitrary, but doubling the average prices would still
substantially reduce consumption and increase revenue.

But this isn’t a hypothetical policy proposal. We already know,
because it’s been done, that hiking cigarette taxes breeds black
markets in smuggled and counterfeited (illegally produced knock-off
cigarettes sold under phony labels) smokes. New York has the
highest cigarette taxes in the country, at $4.35 per pack, plus
another $1.50 levied in New York City. The
result is that 60.9 percent of cigarettes sold in the state are
black market, according to the Mackinac Center for Public
Policy. Washington state has high cigarette taxes, relative to
its neighbors, and a
massive smuggling problem (48.5 percent of the state’s
cigarettes come from the black market).

You could, I suppose, impose globally uniform taxes to
discourage the easy sort of smuggling from low-cost jurisdictions
to high-cost ones. But that would just create an incentive for
illegally produced cigarettes, just as black markets supply
cocaine, heroin, and marijuana where they’re completely banned.

How do the authors address this problem? In one paragraph.

Smuggling is a concern when tobacco taxes rise; about 10% of all
cigarettes manufactured worldwide are already untaxed. Use of
specific excise taxes on tobacco (rather than ad valorem taxes),
stronger tax administration, and practicable controls on organized
smuggling can, however, limit the problem. Even with some
smuggling, large tax increases can substantially reduce consumption
and increase revenue (Figure 4), especially if supported by better
tax enforcement.

The solutions are “stronger tax administration” and “practicable
controls on organized smuggling”? Really? It’s a shame nobody ever
thought of that before through all the efforts to suppress black
markets throughout history.

Well…Maybe black markets are just an externality that can be
offset by a wee bit more tax.

Liz
Cheney has ended her Senate campaign. The daughter of former Vice
President Dick Cheney announced that she would no longer pursue a
GOP primary campaign against Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi. National
Journal’s Josh Kraushaar
has the right takeaway: 

But most significantly, Cheney found that her calling card in
public life as a spokesperson for a muscular, hawkish foreign
policy just wasn’t playing politically—even in a Republican primary
in a deeply conservative state. Cheney entered the race as a go-to
conservative expert on the Middle East, but she barely talked about
foreign policy on the campaign trail. Voters were more interested
in her views on gay marriage than her bromides against the Obama
administration over Benghazi.

Her dropping out is a symbolic nail in the coffin to the
politics of the Bush-Cheney administration, when foreign policy
trumped all and aggressive tactics to combat Islamic extremism were
initially greeted with public support. 

Cheney dropped out because she had no chance. And she had no
chance in part because of the declining influence of the Republican
Party’s most hawkish members. Her run was, as much as anything,
intended as a way to make some noise about the foreign policy
issues that party hawks thought were getting lost in the shuffle,
and to serve as an opposing voice to what is easiest to describe as
the Rand Paul wing of the GOP, which is more worried about civil
liberties and less interested in overseas adventurism or maximizing
defense-sector spending. That Cheney’s campaign gives a sense of
the electoral landscape within the GOP. It’s hard out there for a
hawk.

Cheney’s decision to drop out hinged on all sorts of factors
that don’t necessarily transfer to other races. But if there’s a
broader lesson here, it’s that the party’s hawkish old guard may be
having more trouble than it used to keeping its candidates afloat.
The interest just isn’t there. If that’s the case, then New Jersey
Governor, and likely GOP presidential candidate in 2016, Chris
Christie is the most obvious potential loser. He’s already settled
into the role of the anti-Rand Paul, the anti-libertarian, and

the establishment favorite. That’s not to say he can’t take the
nomination. But it does mean that he could have a harder time than
someone in that position would have in previous races. 

Liz
Cheney has ended her Senate campaign. The daughter of former Vice
President Dick Cheney announced that she would no longer pursue a
GOP primary campaign against Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi. National
Journal’s Josh Kraushaar
has the right takeaway: 

But most significantly, Cheney found that her calling card in
public life as a spokesperson for a muscular, hawkish foreign
policy just wasn’t playing politically—even in a Republican primary
in a deeply conservative state. Cheney entered the race as a go-to
conservative expert on the Middle East, but she barely talked about
foreign policy on the campaign trail. Voters were more interested
in her views on gay marriage than her bromides against the Obama
administration over Benghazi.

Her dropping out is a symbolic nail in the coffin to the
politics of the Bush-Cheney administration, when foreign policy
trumped all and aggressive tactics to combat Islamic extremism were
initially greeted with public support. 

Cheney dropped out because she had no chance. And she had no
chance in part because of the declining influence of the Republican
Party’s most hawkish members. Her run was, as much as anything,
intended as a way to make some noise about the foreign policy
issues that party hawks thought were getting lost in the shuffle,
and to serve as an opposing voice to what is easiest to describe as
the Rand Paul wing of the GOP, which is more worried about civil
liberties and less interested in overseas adventurism or maximizing
defense-sector spending. That Cheney’s campaign gives a sense of
the electoral landscape within the GOP. It’s hard out there for a
hawk.

Cheney’s decision to drop out hinged on all sorts of factors
that don’t necessarily transfer to other races. But if there’s a
broader lesson here, it’s that the party’s hawkish old guard may be
having more trouble than it used to keeping its candidates afloat.
The interest just isn’t there. If that’s the case, then New Jersey
Governor, and likely GOP presidential candidate in 2016, Chris
Christie is the most obvious potential loser. He’s already settled
into the role of the anti-Rand Paul, the anti-libertarian, and

the establishment favorite. That’s not to say he can’t take the
nomination. But it does mean that he could have a harder time than
someone in that position would have in previous races. 

Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, I review
Brad Ricca’s new biography of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster,

Super Boys (Yes, this review went up a few weeks ago,
but I missed it it at first.)

Excerpts:

More people could likely identify Perry White and Lex Luthor
than could identify the men who created Superman: two Jewish kids
from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. They were classic
schlemiels, awkward and almost delusionally dreamy, bad with women,
and so bad with business they sold one of the most valuable
inventions in literature for $130, 75 years ago. Superman’s owner,
DC Entertainment, has been celebrating this anniversary with, among
other things, a new movie, Man of Steel, alone
grossing over $650 million worldwide….

Ricca has nonetheless produced a sad pleasure of a book….We
meet teen Jerry in the early 1930s, helping invent the idea of the
science fiction fan publication; dominating his high school
newspaperThe Torch with his clever teenage wit (more
clever, from the many detailed examples that are one of this book’s
treasures, than much of his professional comic book writing in the
early days); meeting artist Joe Shuster (who like Jerry, seemed to
almost degenerate in his artistic skills from high school amateur
to comic book pro); writing a fanzine story about a villain dubbed
a “superman” with Joe’s art; and then, after failing for years to
gain the newspaper syndication they craved, finally in 1938 selling
the heroic Superman we all know for $130 to the nascent DC
Comics…

Then, the triumph and the tragedy: watching their character
capture the imagination of a nation (there was a Superman Day at
the World’s Fair by 1940); the radio waves; and the newspaper
comics where they always dreamed he’d flourish. Trying, and
failing, to reverse their bad business decision through lawsuits,
they were fired because of that first suit in the late 1940s.
Shuster fell into drawing some grim softcore porn comics (with
characters that looked pulled directly
from Superman), and a long downward spiral began, the
pair’s destitution and anger becoming the stuff of legend….

Ricca’s a good writer both on the sentence level, and at selling
the emotion he’s out to sell, though he relies overmuch on
novelistic scene setting, delivering his character’s interior
thoughts and perceptions, and perhaps fooling the reader into
forgetting that the biographer is, to put it kindly, merely
guessing….

These are mostly the cavils of one deeply enmeshed in the
historiography of comics. For a normal curious reader, Ricca did
the Clark Kent/Lois Lane reporter job well: he went out and got the
story (if not always the scoop) and tells it like it was.

What it was, was sad. The bizarrely crummy quality of Siegel’s
unpublished 1980s attempt to write a “graphic novel” was strangely
depressing. From its title, Zongolla the
Ultroid, and Ricca’s description, it sounds like
something Daniel Clowes might invent as a bitter joke about the
stunted imagination of the superhero comic creator.

But that’s an outsider’s judgment. I hope it’s true, as Ricca
reports, that Jerry Siegel died happy….

Me in Reason on Shuster’s
softcore porn career, and on the enduring
power of their superhero idea, even in “literary” comics, and
beyond.

Yet another reason why you should really try your absolutely
hardest to settle any non-clearly-life-threatening issues with your
family or friends without calling the cops.

The
Bearing Arms site has a good compliation of various
news reports on how a North Carolina police officer shot and killed
teenage Keith Vidal, said to be suffering from schizophrenia,
after Vidal had already been tased and was pinned down by
two other cops.

Vidal’s original crime? Refusing to put down a screwdriver.

Some excerpts:

[Mark] Wilsey said his family called the police to help with his
schizophrenic son Keith Vidal who had a small screwdriver in his
hand. Officers used at Taser on Vidal and then shot him, according
to Wilsey….

Wilsey said officers had his son down on the ground after the
teen was tased a few times and an officer said, “we don’t have time
for this.” That’s when Wilsey says the officer shot in between the
officers holding the teen down, killing his son.

Then there was this story submitted by a family friend
on CNN’s
iReport:

“…..Two Officers responded to the scene and started
negotiating with Vidal. After about 10 mins the situation started
defusing itself with Vidal becoming more rational. At that very
moment an Officer From another Town Entered the residence and
instructed the officers to stop talking and tase Vidal. As Vidal
tried to flee into the bathroom adjacent to where he was standing
the two officers simultaneously shot him with their tasers. As
Vidal Collapsed backwards on to the floor the two officers jumped
on top of the 5ft 3 100 lb Vidal to restrain him.. As Vidal’s
Father tried to step in and grab the screw driver The Southport
Police Officer that had instructed the other officers to use their
tasers, moved between the father and the pile of people on the
floor and said ” We don’t have time for this” And shot Vidal Once
in the chest as the other two Officers held him on the floor.
Vidal’s father then grabbed the officer as he was lining himself up
for another shot.”

Local district attorneys’ office is
investigating the incident.

Protecting and serving Americans, to the grave.