Tag: news

I’ve already denounced Democratic Socialist presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders for his ignorant attacks on fracking and natural gas production. Now the editors of the Washington Post join in with a terrific excoriation of Sen. Sanders’ opposition to using natural gas and nuclear power to generate electricity. The Post notes that the senator wants to ban all fracking and retire all nuclear power plants in the U.S. As the Post editors observe:

In fact, if we are serious about global warming, we will ignore Mr. Sanders’s sloganeering.

When burned, natural gas produces about half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal. The recent fracking boom contributed to a reduction in national carbon dioxide emissions over the past several years, as utilities switched from cheap coal to now-cheaper gas. It is true that some concerns remain. Methane leaks from natural gas wells and pipelines. Many worry about drinking water near fracking operations. But the government can require drillers to address these issues without shutting the industry. It is also true that natural gas is a waystation; though it is cleaner than coal, natural gas still produces carbon dioxide emissions. Yet gas’s price and emissions profile is still attractive enough that the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, the most aggressive global warming policy the country has ever had, relies on gas displacing coal to meet medium-term emissions goals.

Mr. Sanders’s rhetoric on nuclear power is even more concerning. Nuclear accounts for about a fifth of the country’s electricity, and it is practically emissions-free. Shutting down that much clean electricity generation would put the country into a deep emissions hole. Mr. Sanders argues that he will invest heavily in renewables. Yet every dollar spent to replace one carbon-free source with another is a dollar that could have been spent replacing dangerous and dirty coal plants (emphasis added). Under Mr. Sanders’s vision, either the country would fail to maximize emissions cuts, or it would waste huge amounts of money unnecessarily replacing nuclear plants. Unsurprisingly, the Clean Power Plan relies on nuclear, too, assuming that the country will get about the same amout of electricity from nuclear in 2030.

Mr. Sanders is right that climate change demands an aggressive response, and he is right to favor a carbon tax. He should leave it at that: put a price on carbon, insist on adequate regulation and let the market find the fastest and most efficient road to slowing the warming of the planet.

Actually, for consistency, the Post’s editors might well have further argued that the whole panoply of subsidies for renewables and the Clean Power Plan mandates promoted by the Obama administration and other progressives could be entirely replaced by a revenue neutral carbon tax.

For more background on environmentalist progressives’ counterproductive war against nuclear power see my 2009 article, “The Cultural Contradictions of Anti-Nuke Environmentalists.”

On Thursday, constitutional scholars Ilya Shapiro and Ilya Somin will debate the constitutionality of President Obama’s executive order immigration in an event at Reason’s Washington, DC office moderated by Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia. 

Both scholars are previewing their arguments at Reason.com today. Here’s Ilya Shapiro’s argument that the Obama administration’s movie is not constitutional: 

One test of the integrity of legal scholars is when they can cite an example of a good policy they find illegal or unconstitutional. An example of that for me is President Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Citizens and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA).

Immigration is quite possibly the most feckless part of the federal government. More than advancing bad policy, our immigration system consists of schizophrenic laws that don’t advance any particular goal.  If you tried to draw up rules for how foreigners enter a country, how long they can stay, and what they can do here, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with anything worse than our hodge-podge of conflicting regulations.

This immigration non-policy serves nobody’s interest, except perhaps lawyers and bureaucrats. And yet Congress has shamelessly refused to fix it. 

This unfortunate circumstance, however, doesn’t give the executive branch the power to rewrite the law itself. Yet in November 2014, President Obama did exactly that when he unveiled DAPA, which officially defers deportations and grants temporary legal status to more than four million illegal aliens, entitling them to work authorizations and other benefits. 

View this article.

Claremont McKenna College’s student programming board cancelled a planned screening of Zoolander 2 because the film’s humor is inappropriate and comes “at the expense of individuals of marginalized identities.” 

The college ultimately decided to show Deadpool instead. 

Of course, many people would probably find the R-rated Deadpool a whole lot more offensive than the PG-13 rated Zoolander 2. I’ve seen Deadpool. It’s incredibly violent, graphically sexual, and contains plenty of offensive humor of its own. (It’s also a great film.) 

The difference, it seems, is that Zoolander 2 offends “marginalized identities.” 

“Though ‘Deadpool’ is a R-rated movie it does not target marginalized identities the way Zoolander did,” the programming committee wrote in an email to The College Fix. “Our choice to cancel the film was a calculated choice that we felt would support and respect our community on campus.” 

I’ve seen Zoolander, but not it’s sequel. The second film has been criticized for the problematic manner in which it introduces a possibly transgender character, “All,” played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Owen Wilson’s character asks “All” whether he/she “has a hot dog or a bun.” This isn’t the greatest joke ever, and I’m open to the argument that Zoolander 2 might just be a terrible film, or at least, a vastly inferior film to Deadpool. 

But the idea that “marginalized identities”–the trans community, in this case—can’t handle one stupid joke is more than a little insulting to them. No one should strive to be so fragile. 

Can We Take a Joke? a new documentary produced by former Reason staffer Ted Balaker and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education asks whether college campuses are where humor goes to die. Increasingly, the answer seems to be yes. 

Maybe next time the college should just show Paddington. 

The Earth Day Texas 2016 opens at the Dallas Fair Park on April 22nd and runs through the weekend. I will be on a moderated open-to-the public panel with U.S. EPA General Counsel Avi Garbow discussing public policy related to climate change. Garbow will be focusing on the Obama administration’s regulatory efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. According to the organizers I am supposed to address wider policy and energy technology issues related to man-made global warming. From the event website:

Please join the General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Avi S. Garbow, for a discussion of what EPA hopes to accomplish in the last 8 months of the Obama administration as EPA implements The President’s Climate Action Plan, publishes and finalizes regulations, defends its major initiatives in court, continues its efforts on the international front, and prepares for the anticipated impacts of climate change.

What are the legal challenges ahead? What are the next steps in the legal arena if the Clean Power Plan is not upheld? What should we expect from the anticipated heavy duty vehicle emission standards to be published in the next few months, and what impact will these standards have on the environment? What can businesses and citizens do to participate as these critical issues are addressed?

Joining Mr. Garbow will be Ronald Bailey, a leading author on the subject of climate change, whose recent work includes the widely praised 2015, “The End of Doom, Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century.” Mr. Bailey will offer his observations on the most recent science describing climate change, available technologies to reduce carbon, the timing and costs of unleashing innovation, and the role that the federal government might play in supporting research and development.

Mr. Bailey will also discuss the polarized and contentious history of the climate change debate, explore the role of cultural values, and suggest a productive approach for businesses and citizens to take as they continue to participate in these important policy decisions. In the town hall format, the speakers will take questions from the audience and discuss paths forward.

The panel is on Earth Day, Friday April 22 in the Hall of State (next to the Cotton Bowl stadium) in the 2nd floor library at the Fair Park (see map). The event begins at 1:30 pm and runs until 3 pm. RSVP not required but appreciated, bruce@earthdaytx.org.

Yesterday federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged the leader of a volunteer neighborhood patrol in Borough Park, Brooklyn, with bribing New York City police officers to facilitate pistol permits. According to the criminal complaint prepared by FBI Special Agent Joseph Downs, Alex Lichtenstein bragged about obtaining 150 permits through his connections with the NYPD License Bureau, reportedly charged his clients $18,000 each, and last week offered one officer (who was secretly recording the conversation) $6,000 for every license he helped expedite.

“Corruption in any part of government cuts at the very fabric of our society,” says U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. “It is particularly damaging when it undermines public safety.” But there is not much evidence that Lichtenstein’s operation endangered public safety, and the bribery charges represent an indictment of New York City’s unconstitutionally restrictive and burdensome gun policies as well as Lichtenstein and the officers who assisted him.

Why, after, all would people be willing to pay as much as $18,000 for the privilege of exercising a constitutional right? You might surmise that many or most of Lichtenstein’s clients were legally disqualified from owning guns. But prosecutors cite just one example of a customer with a problematic background, and it sounds like even he did not meet any of the federal criteria for disqualification. “Prior to his application for a gun license,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office says, “License Holder-1 had been arrested for forgery, received approximately 10 moving violations and three vehicle-related summonses, and had been the subject of at least four domestic violence complaints, including one in which he was accused of threatening to kill someone.” Unless one of those domestic violence complaints resulted in a conviction (which prosecutors presumably would have mentioned), this man had a legal right to own a gun under federal law.

But not in New York City, which requires a license not just for carrying a gun in public but for keeping one at home or work. Despite the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to “bear” as well as “keep” arms, the former type of license is reserved for celebrities and people whose jobs require them to carry guns. The latter type of license is notionally available to ordinary citizens, but the application process is expensive, complicated, time-consuming, and uncertain—so much so that attorneys specialize in guiding people through the ordeal. Bharara’s office notes that even when you jump through all the hoops, including the fees, the fingerprinting, the documentation of your identity and residence, the letters of reference, the confession of every brush with the law, and the in-person interview, the NYPD may reject your application based on fuzzy discretionary criteria: 

Certain findings, such as a prior felony conviction, result in the automatic disapproval of an applicant. Pursuant to New York State Law, the NYPD License Division has discretion to reject gun license applications for additional reasons, such as moral character, mental health issues, or substance abuse issues. On its website, the NYPD License Division indicates that it may reject applications if the investigation reveals a history of arrest, driving infractions, or domestic violence incidents, among other reasons. Typically, the processing, investigation, and approval or disapproval of an application takes several months and, for licenses to carry guns, at times in excess of one year.

Given how the licensing process works (or doesn’t), you can start to understand the business opportunity that Lichtenstein perceived. According to Agent Downs’ complaint, Lichtenstein told the cop who turned him in “his customers needed assistance obtaining licenses…because the License Division denies Applications ‘for the biggest stupidity,’ such as ‘somebody got a moving violation.'” That detail is supposed to make Lichtenstein look bad; it actually makes the License Division look bad.

Downs says Lichtenstein “maintained that his customers were deserving of gun licenses, and that all he was asking…was to ‘expedite’ the process, which I believe to be a reference to foregoing the full investigation typically conducted before the NYPD License Division approves or disapproves an Application.” The problem is that “the full investigation” goes well beyond the highly questionable federal criteria for owning a gun, which are unfair and largely illogical but at least objective. By piling on requirements in the name of public safety and giving police the power to reject applications based on subjective criteria such as “moral character” and “mental health issues,” New York City not only creates a market for license facilitation that leads to official corruption; it arbitrarily deprives people of their Second Amendment rights.