Tag: hit&run

If you’re a fan of comic books
or other types of serial fiction, you’re probably familiar with the
concept of the “retcon”—a made-up word that stands for “retroactive
continuity.”

For the not-so-geeky, the basic idea is that the authors of some
long-running storyline change previously established facts within
the narrative. Often the idea is to facilitate new storylines,
or, less generously, to help struggling serial writers work
themselves out of some difficult plot corner they’ve written
themselves into.

Fans sometimes complain about the way the practice can upend
complex stories that have been developing for years. But in
general, they’re expected to just go along and accept that the old
story is gone, and the new story is what really happened.
 

I wonder if President Obama is a comic book fan. Because with
the updated version of his oft-repeated promise that individuals
who like their health plans can keep them, he’s essentially
retconned himself.

Here’s how Obama
described his promise yesterday: “Now, if you had one of these
plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really
liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t
changed since the law passed.”

This isn’t just an update. It’s a backwards revision. Obama is
not just changing his claim going forward—he’s attempting to alter
what he said in the past as well. 

Let’s look through some back issues for a moment. Here’s what
Obama used to say about the circumstances under which you can keep
your health plan, via New York Magazine. 

Got that? If you’re happy with your plan, nobody’s changing it.
If you like your plan, you can keep it. You will keep it. Nobody’s
changing it. 

There are no exceptions here, no qualifications or caveats. It’s
a promise, as Obama has said, period.
No matter what. 

This is what Obama actually said. But now he’s saying it’s not.
He’s covering for his old lie with a new one—an insistence that he
never misled in the first place. And he’s hoping that everyone just
goes along. The most ardent fanboys might buy it. But most people,
I suspect, will see it for the artless and desperate revisionism
that it is. 

Libertarian gubernatorial
candidate Robert Sarvis’ campaign slogan: “Open Minded and Open for
Business” has to be one of the most copacetic I’ve ever
encountered. If Sarvis can clear the 10 percent electoral benchmark
that would give the Libertarian Party a line on the ballots of the
Old Dominion through 2021, offering Virginians a way to get beyond
the intellectually bankrupt so-called major parties. The
Danville Register and Bee
summed up the situation well in its editorial endorsement of
Sarvis:

Both the Democrats and Republicans failed to come up with good
gubernatorial candidates this year. If we were to endorse either
McAuliffe or Cuccinelli, we would be playing their game. “If you
always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve
always got,” the saying goes.

Robert Sarvis offers a real alternative this year, a break from
the two-party paradigm that has not served us well.

As a Libertarian, Sarvis favors restraints on the size and scope
of government. We’re comfortable with that.

“I realized that the Republican Party, at least in Virginia, in
the current era, is not a good vehicle for liberty candidates,”
Sarvis told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in August. “Republicans are
very strident on personal issues. When they talk about liberty,
they don’t mean any personal issues, there is very little respect
for personal autonomy.

“And on economic issues, it’s almost like they don’t believe in
what they talk about. They talk about limited government, but they
are just as bad as the other party at cronyism, raising taxes and
growing government.”

If there is one knock on Sarvis’ record, it is this: He has
never held elected office. If he wins on Tuesday, he would have to
navigate a swamp of partisan politics in Richmond.

But as a conservative, he would be a political kindred spirit
with many of the Republicans in the General Assembly. We believe he
could be more than just a novelty candidate in 2013, but the kind
of governor who inspires confidence from Virginians and respect
from other members of the General Assembly.

What we won’t get from Sarvis is a big-government agenda. In a
year when so many other things have gone wrong, a young man with a
new way of looking at our old problems is just what the Old
Dominion needs. We’re not interested in what Robert Sarvis can do
for the Libertarian Party; we’re interested in what this young,
intelligent and highly-motivated family man can do to change the
two-party trap we’ve gotten ourselves into.

I’m off to the polls in a bit to cast my ballot for a candidate
who offers more than the usual lesser-of-two-evils electoral
choice.

Former Reason man Mike Riggs writes at The
Atlantic on some
interesting issues to watch for libertarians in local elections
happening today–vote early and often, if that’s the sort of thing
you enjoy.

After a bunch of stuff on mayoral races, he gets down to the
ballot initiatives where such Reason-y issue as pot, GMO
foods, the hapless aftermath of huge civic spending projects,
public pensions, the minimum wage, and development are being
subject to electoral whim hither and yon across this land of
ours:

Marijuana: Question 1 in Portland, Maine,
would remove all legal penalties for possession of marijuana so
long as the possessor is over 21 and has less than 2.5 ounces of
pot. Even if Question 1 passes, Portland law
enforcement can
still arrest people under state law if they so choose.
Proposition AA in Colorado asks voters to approve the official tax rates
and regulatory schemes for the state’s recreational
marijuana industry. 

Development: Propositions B and C in San
Francisco will determine whether
developers can build luxury condos along the water at 8
Washington Street. Proponents say developers will pay into San
Francisco’s affordable housing fund and develop open space;
opponents say the development will be worse than the Embarcadero
Freeway. 

GMO Labeling: Initiative 522 in Washington
state would require companies that use genetically modified
organisms in their products to say that on their labels. Most of
Washington’s newspapers oppose the measure, as do corporations like
Kraft and Monsanto. The American Association for the
Advancement of Science, the World Health Organization, and the
European Union all
agree that GMOs are safe. The response of I-522
proponents boils
down to: What’s the harm in a label? 

Minimum Wage: A question on today’s ballot
would allow New Jersey residents to raise the minimum wage from
$7.25 to $8.25 an hour, and enshrine annual cost of living
increases in the state constitution. While business owners have
said the measure’s passage might
force them to lay people off, the measure had quite
a bit of support earlier this year. 

Pensions: The passage of issue 4 would
result in a massive overhaul for Cincinnati’s public
pensions. According
to Governing magazine, Issue 4 “would affect
about 7,500 workers, retirees and their beneficiaries and would
close off the city’s defined benefits plan to new hires and enroll
them in a 401(k) style plan.”

The Astrodome: Years after it was
abandoned by the Astros, today Houstonians will
decide what
to do with Astrodome. The ballot measure would raise property
taxes by
a half-cent per $100 of home value; that money would then be
used to turn the Astrodome into a convention center.

Who can build what where on their property, who can smoke what
when, what mutually agreed deals you can make with your fellow
humans, how much you’ll be on the hook for deals government makes
with its workers, what to force other people to pay for for a
“convention center”–all these and more, decided by the whims of a
very few of the people around you. Look around you, America. Do you
trust them on this? Doesn’t matter!

The deadline for Reason magazine’s
Spring internship, which begins in January, is next week (November
13). Applications have been coming in already, but given that I am
expecting some applications to be sent in at the last possible
moment, I thought it would be worth highlighting some
words of wisdom from my former colleague Mike Riggs, who back
in March outlined five tips on how to land an internship. If you
don’t feel like reading Mike’s post in full (you really should),
here are the tips in brief:

• Follow instructions
• Write the hell out of your cover letter
• Show some familiarity with the publication
• Tell me what you can do for us, because we know what we can do
  for you
• Be Patient

I know it sounds easy, but otherwise good applicants have
jeopardized their chances of securing an internship here in the
past by not following these simple tips. Those lucky enough to get
an internship here have the chance to write for Reason
magazine and Reason.com, conduct research, and proofread. 

The instructions for how to apply for the internship are
here.
 

Check out the work done by our current interns Jess
Remington and Zenon Evans.

Good luck wannabe Reason interns. I look forward to
hearing from you soon. 

The final frontier is the harshest, most
hazardous and most unforgiving one humanity has confronted. Rand
Simberg explains that he looks forward to commercial space flight
in this dangerous environment, because the government prioritizes
excessive safety over actual development and exploration. Just hope
that private space enterprise isn’t smothered before it
launches.

View this article.

• President Obama has
  added a caveat to his pledge that you can keep your health care
  plan if you like it.
• 
  Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wants Instagram to stop its users from
  selling guns.
• 
  Ebay is considering accepting bitcoins.
• Republican New Jersey Governor
  Chris Christie, who is expected to win re-election today, could
  use the victory to show the GOP that he is a strong 2016
  contender.
• Congolese officials say that the
  M23 rebels in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo have
  been defeated.
• 
  A gunman who opened fire at a New Jersey mall last night is
  dead after shooting himself in the head. No one other than the
  gunman, identified as Richard Shoop, was killed or injured.

Follow Reason and Reason 24/7 on
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The whole point of Obamacare—aka the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act—was to protect patients from greedy insurers
who lure them when they are healthy only to use some arcane fine
print to jack prices or dump them when they fall sick, notes Reason
Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia. But the administration has
engaged in similar subterfuge, showing that the profit motive is
not the only corrupter in human affairs.

View this article.

Our entire November
issue is now available online. Don’t miss: Jacob Sullum on what the
end of pot prohibition looks like in Colorado; Steven Greenhut,
Shikha Dalmia, Eric Boehm, Scott Shackford, and Ed Krayewski on how
to break an American city; an interview with neuroscientist Carl
Hart on the fundamental ignorance that shapes our national
conversation about drug policy; plus our complete Citings and
Briefly Noted sections, the Artifact, and much more.

Click here to
read Reason’s complete November 2013 issue.

Like
other third parties, Libertarians have never won much of anything
in American politics.  But as they have since the party was
founded in the 1970s, their candidates keep pressing on with a
message of limited government, lower taxation and limited
regulation. The Libertarian candidates in Tuesday’s gubernatorial
elections in New Jersey and Virginia represent the two sides of
third-party politics in America. On one hand, they are principled,
committed and willing to forge ahead despite virtually no chance of
success. On the other hand, write Eric Boehm and Kathryn Watson, in
a nation growing more dissatisfied with the two traditional
political parties, with Democratic promises that never seem to be
delivered and Republican ideals that seem rooted in the 20th
century, they represent a new way forward.

View this article.

Highland Park High School in
Illinois allows students to wear costumes to class on Halloween.
But when Mashon Sanders showed up as Jesus,
officials pulled him out of class and made him change. They said
some teachers found the costume offensive.