Saturday, May 09, 2015
The Property Rights Newsletter Issue #804
May 8, 2015 - Issue #804"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line." - Oscar Levant |
After 13 years of wariness, FDA approves five potentially harmful new diet drugs. Agency's about-face comes after drug companies spend $60 million on lobbying, payments to medical societies and doctors. The agency approved the drugs despite the potential for serious side effects - including suicidal thinking, increased heart rate and cancer risk - and no proof the drugs improve the main health concern posed by obesity: heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems. Critics worry the new products will repeat the diet-drug mistakes of the past, which have led to decades of injuries, deaths and, in the end, products forced off the market.
The Government Poisons Ethanol so You Don't Make Drinks with It. The feds use poison to prop up price discrimination. Price discrimination means charging different prices to different consumers for the same product. It most often occurs when a monopolist has an opportunity to increase profits by charging higher prices to consumers with a more inelastic demand for its product (because the higher price won't greatly affect how much they buy) and lower prices to consumers with a more elastic demand (because they are more sensitive to price). 
The Cesspool Effect. Herself was browsing around Farcebook the other evening. "Good Grief!" says she [or words to that effect] "Take a look at this!" I took a look and this is what I saw - E-cigs have 10x more cancer causing ingredients than regular cigarettes. Both these sites had written their bilge laden nonsense on foot of the infamous Guardian article which has been widely and rightly discredited as a steaming pile of elephant dung. Don't take anything at face value from Farcebook.
Why Would The Government Want to Spy On Me? After all the debating over privacy rights violation, justification, and the technical hows of government spying, there is one question to answer: why? Glenn Sulmasy of CNN argues here that the U.S. government’s motivation for collecting information on individuals is genuinely about protecting the citizens from "Jihadists". But considering the U.S. government has a lot to lose here, it's a little naive to take their explanation blindly. Let’s go a little deeper. Arizona Town Secretly Installs Plate Scanning Cameras in Fake Cactuses. After persistent questioning, town leaders finally admitted that the cameras are license plate readers which will cross check license plates against a hotlist database. The cameras are being funded by a $2 million "technology upgrade" that passed through city council last year. It is unclear is Department of Homeland Security is helping to fund these readers as they have in other cities. Any reporter who puts in a public records request is immediately denied citing that every scan is part of an active investigation, while maintaining that they are not violating the rights of American citizens as a license plate has no expectation of privacy. IL. Cutting vandalism off at the source. City leaders are trying to stop vandalism, but the way they want to do it might be considered a little radical. They're considering cutting off power to people's homes. If you live in Farmer City and your son or daughter is guilty of vandalism, you'll be asked to pay restitution. If you don't, the city wants to add it to your power bill. And, if you can't pay that, it's lights out. Oklahoma man accused of punching neighbor over cigarette. Joshua Steven Kiehl, 27, was arrested on assault complaints, Oklahoma City police reported. He is accused of punching a man who is legally blind and uses a cane. The man said he wanted his pack of cigarettes to last all week because he was out of money. Australia. The Illegal tobacco business is booming. ILLEGAL tobacco is booming across Australia with a 30 per cent increase in black market trade in the past two years costing taxpayers more than $1.35 billion, a new report has found. "Illegal tobacco is mainly smuggled into Australia from overseas and sold at much lower prices than legal cigarettes, avoiding tobacco excise tax obligations," he said. China orders Muslim shopkeepers to sell alcohol, cigarettes, to 'weaken' Islam. Facing widespread discontent over its repressive rule in the mainly Muslim province of Xinjiang, and mounting violence in the past two years, China has launched a series of "strike hard" campaigns to weaken the hold of Islam in the western region. Quebec Bar owners plan to fight proposed ban on smoking, vaping. If it becomes illegal to light up on terrasses, clients will be forced onto the sidewalk and bars will be deluged with noise complaints, he added. "It's nice to say we're going to ban smoking, but where are we going to put these people? On the sidewalk? It's going to cause us a heck of a lot of trouble with the neighbours." USA. Smoking Ban To Be Overturned in Indiana. It's not often you see a smoking law overturned, but it's about to happen in Indiana and Cigar Lounges couldn't be happier. As it stands now if you walk into a new cigar lounge it is illegal to smoke indoors even if the only product sold is tobacco. In order to light up you need to walk outside at least 8 feet from the door, and in winter that isn't too accommodating. |
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Friday, May 01, 2015
The Property Rights Newsletter Issue #803
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May 1, 2015 - Issue #803 "Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance." -Woodrow Wilson |
Smoking in Cars with Children Called Child Abuse. The bigger issue with these bans and proposed laws is that they’re meant to drive smokers underground more while giving them fewer places to legally smoke, ultimately leading to preventing people from smoking in their homes, says Theodore King, the Oklahoma state coordinator for the Citizens Freedom Alliance, a smokers’ rights group. "If they want to pull you over with your kid in your car, they will safely assume that the kid is in your house and that you probably smoke in your house," he says. One of the ultimate goals behind these laws is to collect a smoker’s name and address, and later send a representative from Child Protective Services to the home and determine that the home isn’t safe for the child to live in, King says. "Basically, it’s trying to get into your house," he says.
The plight of the Smoking Man. Given such restrictions, would I have been reduced to furtive smoking in alleys or puffing with the windows open and a towel over my head? Would I quit? Or would I, like the members of the Cambridge Citizens for Smokers' Rights, have said enough is enough and resisted? Countries Where Vaping is Banned and Why. It's hard to see why anybody who was aware of e-cigarettes and has done some basic research on them could possibly conclude that they should be banned, but several countries have made that exact decision. You might be wondering why anybody would move to ban something with so much potential to reduce the harm associated with smoking, but the reasons don't really stand up to much scrutiny. Here’s a list of the countries where e-cigarettes are banned, and a look at the most common reasons.  Project Name: Civil Justice Reform. Lorillard, Inc. v. FDA. On April 27, 2015, WLF filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, urging it to authorize affected businesses to challenge federal agencies when the agencies appoint advisory committees whose members have financial conflicts of interest. WLF argued that the federal government's efforts to prevent such challenges from going forward would effectively end all meaningful judicial enforcement of federal statutes designed to ensure impartial federal decision-making. The case involves an FDA advisory committee created by Congress to provide health-related advice regarding whether the use of menthol flavoring in cigarettes ought to be prohibited. Three of FDA appointees to the advisory committee were doctors who have been paid substantial sums to testify on a regular basis on behalf of plaintiffs in cigarette product liability litigation. WLF argued that such blatant violations of federal conflict-of-interest laws ought to be judicially reviewable. Tobacco ban foe wins seat on Westminster Board of Health. Mr. Popik said he decided in November to run for office. He said he is not a smoker and does not favor smoking but was incensed by how the possible tobacco ban was handled. "We have to respect people's rights," he said. Jackass Simon Chapman retires. Can academics ever really retire? When academics retire it’s far from clear what this means. Some things are obvious. They stop taking on the supervision of new postgraduate research students, although often agree to keep assisting those who have not yet graduated. They greatly reduce their teaching, now reserved for guest lectures and making appearances in seminars where a reflective voice of experience is called for. 
Trey Radel, Busted On Cocaine Charge, Voted For Drug Testing Food Stamp Recipients. The fate of the food stamp drug testing provision is in the hands of a House-Senate conference committee hashing out differences between food stamp and farm legislation that passed the two chambers. It's got a chance. Last year, Congress passed a law to let states drug-test some unemployment insurance recipients. Radel apologized Tuesday for his cocaine bust and said he'd seek treatment.
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