Tag: news

On
Tuesday, January 28, please join me and the D.C.-based staff of
Reason at a party for former Reason Editor Virginia Postrel’s new
book, The
Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual
Persuasion.

Virginia’s latest work is a meditation on how our
perception of glamour shapes our culture, determines the choices we
make, and reveals our inner-selves. The book is an entertaining
romp, analyzing the deeper significance of the glamorous people and
places that have shaped the last century of American
culture.

The Power of Glamour will be available for sale
and signing by Virginia, a columnist for Bloomberg View  who has
been called “a master D.J. who sequences the latest riffs from the
hard sciences, the social sciences, business, and technology, to
name only a few sources.”

We’re also
welcoming the Foundation
for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) to
Washington, D.C., as the group sets up its first office in the
Capital City (conspiracy theorists, please note that Postrel is on
FIRE’s board of trustees).

FIRE’s President Greg Lukianoff, whose own great
book Unlearning
Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate
is coming out in paperback, will outline the group’s goals in
D.C.

Light snacks, wine, beer, and soft drinks will be
served.

What: Happy Hour with Virginia Postrel, FIRE,
& Reason

When: Tuesday, January 28th from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Where: Reason DC headquarters, 1747 Connecticut
Ave. NW (map)

Attendance is free but RSVPs are required. Please let us
know if you can make it by filling out our Eventbrite
form: http://bit.ly/1dw7Ni1

If you have questions about the event, please contact
Cynthia Bell at cynthia.bell@reason.org.

During a speech to a conference of sheriffs
in Washington, D.C., last week, Michele Leonhart, head of the
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), reportedly criticized
President Obama for
saying marijuana is safer than alcohol. Bristol County,
Massachusetts, Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson
gave this account to the Boston Herald:

She’s frustrated for the same reasons we are. She said she felt
the administration didn’t understand the science enough to make
those statements. She was particularly frustrated with the fact
that, according to her, the White House participated in a softball
game with a pro-legalization group….But she said her lowest point
in 33 years in the DEA was when she learned they’d flown a hemp
flag over the Capitol on July 4. The sheriffs were all shocked.
This is the first time in 28 years I’ve ever heard anyone in her
position be this candid.

Kern County, California, Sheriff Donny Youngblood, president of
the Major Counties Sheriffs’ Association, the group Leonhart
addressed, confirmed that she “called out Obama for what Youngblood
described as ‘irresponsible’ comments that were a ‘big slap in the
face’ to cops who have lost their lives keeping drugs off the
street.” He said she received a standing ovation.

For Leonhart to describe Obama’s statement as unscientific is
pretty rich. Like all of her predecessors, Leonhart has steadfastly

refused to reclassify marijuana, which
for no rational reason remains on Schedule I of the Controlled
Substances Act, a category supposedly reserved for drugs with a
high potential for abuse that have no accepted medical applications
and cannot be used safely, even under medical supervision. In
response to questions from Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) in 2012,
Leonhart famously declined to say
whether marijuana was more or less dangerous than crack, heroin, or
methamphetamine (which is actually less restricted), repeating the
mantra that “all illegal drugs are bad.” Mmmkay?

Leonhart’s objection to the hemp flag reflects the DEA’s
unyielding opposition not only to marijuana itself but to anything
associated with it. Although many countries manage to ban marijuana
while allowing production of industrial hemp, which is not
psychoactive, the DEA has always insisted those two policies cannot
coexist, which is why the hemp for that flag had to be imported.
The DEA’s fear and loathing of anything it associates with cannabis
culture explains its bizarre, lawless attempt to ban all edible
hemp products (such as the hemp seeds and hemp oil you can buy at
Costco). That anti-hemp crusade was ultimately blocked by
a federal appeals court, which said it had no statutory basis,
since the Controlled Substances Act specifically excludes hemp
seeds from its definition of marijuana.

You can call Leonhart’s revulsion at the thought of a hemp flag
flying over the Capitol many things. But “scientific” is not one of
them. Likewise, her refusal to
concede that alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana has

no scientific basis. Tellingly, Sheriff Youngblood calls
Obama’s statement about the two drugs’ relative hazards
“irresponsible” and offensive to drug warriors. He does not call it
inaccurate.

Leonhart, of course, was Obama’s
pick to head the DEA, and he surely knew what he was getting,
since she had been running the agency as acting administrator since
November 2007 and had served as its deputy administrator before
that. As acting administrator, she overruled a
DEA administrative law judge’s recommendation that University of
Massachusetts at Amherst scientists be allowed to produce marijuana
for research, a function currently monopolized by the National
Institute on Drug Abuse, which is more interested in showing how
dangerous marijuana is than in exploring its medical utility. That
monopoly, unique to marijuana, is even harder to defend than the
drug’s Schedule I status—which, by the way, Obama has the power to
change without new legislation. It is fitting that Obama, having
opted to stay the
course in the war on drugs despite pre-election statements
promising something else, has to endure sniping from the hardline
prohibitionists he appointed now that has managed to utter an
inconvenient truth.

A slavish devotion to
narrow ideology has led many people to reject overwhelming
scientific consensus as nothing but a plot by malevolent forces to
control ordinary people’s lives. If you think that sentence
describes conservative skeptics of global warming, congratulations
— you’re right. If you think it describes liberal opponents of
genetically modified crops, congratulations — you’re right again.
Progressives have gotten a lot of mileage mocking conservatives’
truculent refusal to accept scientific conclusions. But, A. Barton
Hinkle points out that the left has exhibited similar truculence on
another subject: genetically modified organisms

View this article.

When FIFA awarded Brazil the 2014 World Cup in
2007 (more or less a given because FIFA rules required the
tournament to be held in South America, and the South American
soccer body endorsed Brazil’s bid), Brazilians took to the streets
to celebrate. Last year the mood turned sour; local protests over
rising bus fares eventually spread across the country, carried by

frustration over government spending on the World Cup. Those
protests continue; anti-World Cup demonstrations in Sao Paolo
reportedly
became violent over the weekend.

The Brazilian government insisted preparations for the World Cup
would cost less than $1 billion, and be financed largely by private
investor, when it first launched its bid. Thanks in large part to
cronyism, the costs have ballooned; building up the infrastructure
for the World Cup cost Brazil $3.5 billion as of
last summer, when the opening game was still a year away. The
tournament is now less than six months from kicking off, and six of
the 12 stadiums promised in the bid are still
under construction.  Last week, part of the roof of one of
those uncompleted stadiums
collapsed because of heavy rains and winds, while FIFA issued
an
ultimatum to the city where another uncompleted stadium is
located giving them four weeks to finish or risk having games
scheduled there moved to another city. Just another reason you
might want to
hold off on buying tickets to the tournament just yet.

Related: The Brazilian national soccer team is only ranked #10
in the latest FIFA rankings which may be why the AP is asking today
what
might happen if Brazil doesn’t win the World Cup, as it failed
to do the last time it hosted it, in 1950, in a finals loss a
deputy sports minister insisted remained a “trauma” for the
country.

More Reason on Brazil.

Sacramento is considering
contributing $258 million to a stadium to keep the Kings around
(following failed efforts to move the team to Seattle or Anaheim,
Calif.), bringing them downtown. By this point, hopefully we know
the arguments about sports arena subsidies. The city says the
stadium will revitalize the downtown area and spur new development
and wealth creation. Critics say the predictions of development are
wildly optimistic based on evidence from previous stadium
developments and that stadiums really just shift money from one
part of the city to another and don’t actually cause growth.
The Sacramento Bee delved deep into both sides of the
arguments today. Read
here.

California has a robust – but also complicated – ballot
initiative system. Opponents of the subsidy collected more than
20,000 signatures to get a two-part vote on the ballot. The first
part would have required all city subsidies for sports arenas to be
put up for a vote. Then if that vote had passed in June, the city
would then be required to put the Kings subsidy up for another
vote. Unfortunately, according to the Sacramento City Clerk, they
didn’t do a good job at following the law. On Friday, she ruled
that the petitions weren’t
up to snuff:

City Clerk Shirley Concolino ruled that petitions circulated by
Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork (STOP) and Voters for a Fair
Arena Deal contained numerous violations of state and city
elections code. Those deficiencies included the omission of key
legal language on the petitions and differences in how nine
different versions of the petitions were worded.

“I’ve never seen a petition with as many flaws as this one,”
Concolino said.

Sacramento Bee columnist Marcus Breton has been
critical of opposition as being funded by “outsiders,” as if there
was a way to get enough money from “insiders” to fight a city’s
acts of corporate cronyism from wealthy business leaders unworried
about retaliation from Sacramento in terms of contracts, official
harassment, or more likely, threats to their own corporate crony
deals. We really do need to see an end to the “It’s outside money!”
argument. It helps give voice to the otherwise voiceless. That
outsiders may have additional agendas is not as relevant as critics
think. If the anti-arena argument isn’t compelling, it will still
lose. Money doesn’t buy elections, especially for ballot
initiatives, but it allows for both sides to make their cases to
more people.

Anyway, Breton’s latest
column, while pointing out that a judge will have the final say
as to whether the subsidy initiative will go up for vote, lambasted
the anti-arena group for its lack of competence in their
efforts:

Left off all the petitions, according to Concolino, was required
language notifying all voters that the measure proposed on the
petition would be enacted into law if passed by a public vote.

You read that correctly: These Einsteins asked people to sign
petitions that never stated what would happen if they signed.
Duhhhh.

You might say: People understood that signing the arena petition
would lead to a vote whose outcome could become city law.

OK, but how you can we assume everyone knew that?

“Just because people signed (the petitions) doesn’t mean you
don’t have to follow the provisions,” Levinson told The Bee.

“There is absolutely case law that says, ‘This might sound
picky, but we have these provisions for a reason,’ ” she
said.

It does sound picky, but having encountered signature-gatherers
outside of grocery stores in California who have absolutely no idea
what they’re asking people to sign, I have to agree. Some ballot
initiatives are advisory and don’t actually lead to new laws.

But, having agreed to a regulation that makes the ballot
initiative even more complicated, this is why the “outside money”
complaint is pure bullshit. State regulations make it extremely
difficult for average people to operate on their own to get ballot
initiatives passed (would the sarcastic Breton had known that
language was needed if the clerk hadn’t said so?). Of course these
folks are going to need outside assistance.

Reason is all over the corporate cronyism of publicly funded
sports stadiums. In our January issue, Nick Gillespie interviewed
sports economists J.C. Bradbury about why stadium subsidies keep
winning (“They always underestimate the costs and overestimate the
benefits”). You can also watch the interview below:

Libertarians the world over have had their eye on Honduras as it
experiments with the notion of special economic zones that allow
great liberty in some respects than the rest of the nation.

Over the weekend the administration of new president Juan
Orlando Hernandez
issued a press release hyping them.

From the release:

Innovative “Zones for Economic Development and
Employment” (ZEDE) are designed
to be the most competitive new jurisdictions in the CAFTA
space.

Unlike traditional special zones that just address a single
dimension by using only economic incentives, the
Honduran ZEDE considers four critical dimensions and addresses
the legal, economic, administrative,
and political (LEAP) factors that in the CAFTA
region are vital for winning investment leadership….

The advantage for Honduran workers is real:

By building competitiveness across all the
LEAP factors, the Honduran ZEDE avoids the “race to the bottom”
that is driven by the lowest wage countries
of Asia and Africa and instead adds greater
value and security for investors seeking the most credible
“near-shore” production and employment platform in a new,
first-class jurisdiction in the CAFTA region….

the Honduran ZEDE jurisdiction competes for world
investment with additional advantages unique in the CAFTA
region:

— International legal standards, dispute resolution mechanisms
and institutions, using Common Law, mandatory arbitration, and
special judges.

— A 21st century, business-efficient, non-politicized,
transparent, stable, system of administration, plus a special
police and security institutionality to overcome regional issues
and meet world standards….

— For high value brands, a modern and transparent export
jurisdiction able to provide superior confidence and
predictability. For innovative sectors that work with new
technologies, processes and markets, an agile new jurisdiction with
a unique, rapid customization capacity.

— A durable and transparent investment regime secured by a
strong law, guaranteed by a constitutional amendment, reinforced by
an international treaty, and further protected by international
trade agreements including CAFTA and others.

I wrote of the history of this idea in Honduras back in
Reason‘s June issue, “The
Blank Slate State.”

Libertarians the world over have had their eye on Honduras as it
experiments with the notion of special economic zones that allow
great liberty in some respects than the rest of the nation.

Over the weekend the administration of new president Juan
Orlando Hernandez
issued a press release hyping them.

From the release:

Innovative “Zones for Economic Development and
Employment” (ZEDE) are designed
to be the most competitive new jurisdictions in the CAFTA
space.

Unlike traditional special zones that just address a single
dimension by using only economic incentives, the
Honduran ZEDE considers four critical dimensions and addresses
the legal, economic, administrative,
and political (LEAP) factors that in the CAFTA
region are vital for winning investment leadership….

The advantage for Honduran workers is real:

By building competitiveness across all the
LEAP factors, the Honduran ZEDE avoids the “race to the bottom”
that is driven by the lowest wage countries
of Asia and Africa and instead adds greater
value and security for investors seeking the most credible
“near-shore” production and employment platform in a new,
first-class jurisdiction in the CAFTA region….

the Honduran ZEDE jurisdiction competes for world
investment with additional advantages unique in the CAFTA
region:

— International legal standards, dispute resolution mechanisms
and institutions, using Common Law, mandatory arbitration, and
special judges.

— A 21st century, business-efficient, non-politicized,
transparent, stable, system of administration, plus a special
police and security institutionality to overcome regional issues
and meet world standards….

— For high value brands, a modern and transparent export
jurisdiction able to provide superior confidence and
predictability. For innovative sectors that work with new
technologies, processes and markets, an agile new jurisdiction with
a unique, rapid customization capacity.

— A durable and transparent investment regime secured by a
strong law, guaranteed by a constitutional amendment, reinforced by
an international treaty, and further protected by international
trade agreements including CAFTA and others.

I wrote of the history of this idea in Honduras back in
Reason‘s June issue, “The
Blank Slate State.”

Supporters of Obamacare have
pointed to California as one of the law’s biggest success stories.
After some initial glitches, the health exchange has, by most
accounts, been mostly functional. The state’s exchange accounted
for the lion’s share of private health insurance sign-ups
nationally during the early months of open enrollment. And reports
suggest that, even in 2014, is has continued to add new sign ups at
a solid clip. Earlier this month reported that just over 500,000
people had signed up for policies in the exchange by the end of
2013, and that early reports indicated that about 625,000 had
signed up by January 15. That put the state on track to meet its
enrollment target of about 500,000 to 700,000 for the year.

But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. For one thing,
they don’t tell you how many people have actually paid for their
plans. Insurance industry consultant Robert Laszewski has
said that he expects that 10-20 percent of sign-ups will not
result in an enrollment because of non-payment.

The headline numbers also don’t tell you how many people signing
up for coverage in the state’s exchange are actually getting
coverage for the first time, and how many were previously
covered—and are simply moving into the exchanges because their old
policies were canceled.

When you factor in cancellations, the picture no longer looks
quite so bright. In October, a spokesperson for the state’s
exchange
estimated that about 900,000 individual market plans would be
canceled in the state by January 1 of this year as a result of
Obamacare—a figure that the state exchange recently
confirmed to The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack (who
wrote about the gap between sign-ups and cancellations last
week).

So even if the state hits the top end of its enrollment target,
the state will still have had more canceled existing policies than
exchange enrollments—in a state that
received more than $900 million in federal grants to build and
advertise its exchange. In context, California’s experience with
Obamacare so far looks less like a success story and more like a
reminder of how low the bar for success under the law has been
set. 

Supporters of Obamacare have
pointed to California as one of the law’s biggest success stories.
After some initial glitches, the health exchange has, by most
accounts, been mostly functional. The state’s exchange accounted
for the lion’s share of private health insurance sign-ups
nationally during the early months of open enrollment. And reports
suggest that, even in 2014, is has continued to add new sign ups at
a solid clip. Earlier this month reported that just over 500,000
people had signed up for policies in the exchange by the end of
2013, and that early reports indicated that about 625,000 had
signed up by January 15. That put the state on track to meet its
enrollment target of about 500,000 to 700,000 for the year.

But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. For one thing,
they don’t tell you how many people have actually paid for their
plans. Insurance industry consultant Robert Laszewski has
said that he expects that 10-20 percent of sign-ups will not
result in an enrollment because of non-payment.

The headline numbers also don’t tell you how many people signing
up for coverage in the state’s exchange are actually getting
coverage for the first time, and how many were previously
covered—and are simply moving into the exchanges because their old
policies were canceled.

When you factor in cancellations, the picture no longer looks
quite so bright. In October, a spokesperson for the state’s
exchange
estimated that about 900,000 individual market plans would be
canceled in the state by January 1 of this year as a result of
Obamacare—a figure that the state exchange recently
confirmed to The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack (who
wrote about the gap between sign-ups and cancellations last
week).

So even if the state hits the top end of its enrollment target,
the state will still have had more canceled existing policies than
exchange enrollments—in a state that
received more than $900 million in federal grants to build and
advertise its exchange. In context, California’s experience with
Obamacare so far looks less like a success story and more like a
reminder of how low the bar for success under the law has been
set.