An interesting new poll from Public Policy Polling shows strong support for marijuana reform in New Hampshire:
For legalization (taxing and regulating marijuana like alcohol, with licensed stores): 53%. Opposed: 37%.
For decriminalization (replacing criminal penalties for possession of less than an ounce with a fine): 62%. Opposed: 27%.
For medical marijuana (allowing seriously or terminally ill patients to use marijuana if their doctors recommend it): 68%. Opposed: 26%.
Posted in state politics | Tagged Marijuana, new hampshire | 4 Comments »
In Canada, provincial parties are totally organizationally independent of federal parties and may not even have the same names. Thus, the British Columbia Liberal Party has generally been right-of-center, and British Columbia Liberals tend to vote Conservative at the federal level. Quebec Liberals have generally been more Quebec-nationalist/decentralist than the federal Liberals. Most provinces have parties named “Progressive Conservative,” even though there is no longer any federal Progressive Conservative Party. And so on.
Of course, it doesn’t work that way in the U.S. State (and even local) elections feature Republican and Democratic candidates, except in Nebraska, where state legislative elections are nonpartisan. As a result, state election results are driven by national trends. Surprisingly, political scientists had not formalized this insight until recently. Here is a paper from Steven Rogers:
State legislative elections are not referendums on state legislators’ own performance but are instead dominated by national politics. Presidential evaluations and the national economy matter much more for state legislators’ elections than state-level economic conditions, state policy outcomes, or voters’ assessments of the legislature. Previous analyses of state legislative elections fail to consider which party controls the state legislature and whether voters know this information. When accounting for these factors, I discover that even when the legislature performs well, misinformed voters mistakenly reward the minority party. Thus, while state legislatures wield considerable policy-making power, elections are ineffective in holding state legislative parties accountable for their own performance and lawmaking.
Tyler Cowen calls this “the problem with federalism.” But it isn’t a problem with federalism as such. It’s a problem with U.S. federalism. In Canada, you can’t send a message to the federal government by voting against the incumbent federal party at the provincial level. (In fact, provincial elections are not held on the same days as federal elections.) Changing the perverse accountability dynamic of U.S. state legislatures may require something as simple as changing the names of state parties.
State parties may even have an incentive to do this. For instance, the Republican Party in New Hampshire could change its name to something like “New Hampshire Conservative Party” or “New Hampshire Party.” By doing so, it could help to insulate itself from the partisan swings at the national level that are beyond its control.
In the last election, New Hampshire Republicans lost majorities in the state house and the executive council. The reason for this was the Continue Reading »
Posted in 2012 election, electoral behavior, federalism, state politics, state politics | Tagged democratic theory, Federalism, new hampshire, party politics, voting behavior | 5 Comments »
I just got word that the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan has passed away. The intellectual world has lost a lion and an owl.
Here is a brief bio.
Buchanan’s works laying out the foundations of Public Choice Theory (the Virginia School of Political Economy) are obviously seminal. However, my favorite Buchanan pieces include the oft-cited (here on Pileus) “Afraid to be Free” (that Marc only mentioned just this morning in the comments to his post on drugs), “Classical Liberalism and the Perfectability of Man,” and “Federalism as an Ideal Political Order and an Objective for Constitutional Reform.”
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Let’s start with the good: the Obama administration is considering removing all US troops from Afghanistan at the end of 2014 (rather than leaving a force of 6,000-15,000 behind). As coverage in WaPo notes, this option “defies the Pentagon’s view that thousands of troops may be needed to contain al-Qaida and to strengthen Afghan forces.” If the Senate confirms Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary, I would assume there would be an additional voice for complete withdrawal.
And now the bad: As of Tuesday, there have been six drone strikes so far this year. Total death toll: 35 and counting. As Spencer Ackerman (Wired) notes:
Obama has provided the CIA with authority to kill not only suspected militants, but unknown individuals it believes follow a pattern of militant activity, in what it terms “signature strikes.” The drone program has killed an undisclosed number of civilians. A recent study conducted by Center for Civilians in Conflict and Columbia Law School’s human-rights branch explored how they’ve torn the broader social fabric in tribal Pakistan, creating paranoia that neighbors are informing on each other and traumatizing those who live under the buzz of Predator and Reaper engines. Those traumas are raising alarm bells from some of the U.S.’ most experienced counterterrorists.
And the ugly: a crony capitalist may rise up against its political patron. AIG is contemplating joining a lawsuit against the US government. Now that it has repaid the $182 billion it owed, it may want to make a claim on some $22 billion in profits that were generated in the interim. As the NYT reports:
At issue is the possibility that [the] insurer may join a lawsuit filed by its former chief executive, Maurice R. Greenberg, claiming that the 2008 bailout shortchanged investors and violated their Fifth Amendment rights.
The alternative to the bailout would have been liquidation. A.I.G. embraced the bailout on the terms offered in 2008. It seems a bit odd to cry foul at this point in the game, particularly given that the collapse that A.I.G. helped create reduced the median net worth of American families by nearly 40 percent (from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010), according to the Fed.
Posted in corporate welfare, foreign policy | 1 Comment »
From Grantland:
. . . someone asked Saban a simple question: Why? In other words, why keep doing this, and why keep striving, and why not pull a Spurrier and slip off to the golf course on some August afternoon during a two-a-days and delegate to one’s coaching staff? Like, why so uptight, man? And Saban sort of stared down the questioner for a second, and then he said this: “Why do you do what you do? Are you driven to be the best at what you do?”
And as Saban’s eyes bored into the deepest recesses of the reporter’s conscience, he replied, “Yes, sir.”
From there, Saban wound into a story that centered on an old Martin Luther King sermon about a shoeshine man who took pride in his work, and he said something about being the best street sweeper you could be, and I think we got a little glimpse of why Saban is one of the best living-room recruiters who ever blew through the South.
(Unless we find out at some point as we have with so many college coaches that he’s been cheating on the rules…)
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
That’s the title of a new book from America’s Cato Institute, Canada’s Fraser Institute, and Germany’s Liberales Institut, which aims to create an index of personal freedom around the world. This is a welcome addition to the Fraser Institute’s Index of Economic Freedom, and I dare suspect that William Ruger’s and my personal and economic freedom index of the American states, published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, might have something to do with inspiring it. I haven’t read the new study yet but look forward to doing so.
HT: Pete Jaworski
Posted in freedom | 2 Comments »
I find this to be an interesting and frustrating topic. Let me take a somewhat different approach to it, one that I use when I engage the issue in a policy class I teach.
I begin with two assumptions.
From this point, I believe that one can make a strong case that regulations should be designed to channel the universal desire for intoxication toward those intoxicants that are the least harmful (and thus carry fewer negative externalities). One might imagine that this could be accomplished via taxation. This would be good news for those who enjoy psilocybin mushrooms or marijuana; bad news for those who smoke cigarettes or crystal meth. One might assume that such a regime—rather than a blanket prohibition of anything other than alcohol and tobacco—would create incentives for those seeking intoxication to replace a more toxic drug with a less toxic drug.
As a generalization, I am far more comfortable with laws that focus on the activities one does while intoxicated rather than criminalizing the mere fact that one gets intoxicated or is in the possession of intoxicants.
For example, while I would not criminalize the possession or use of intoxicants, I would have no problem with a zero-tolerance policy on driving while intoxicated (or engaging in other activities that require sobriety) backed with significant criminal penalties.
One can also imagine that the market would come to play a significant role. Some private insurers already have risk-based schemes in place (for example, life insurance is more expensive for cigarette smokers—and yes, they will take a urine sample—than for non-smokers). Given that this is a private and voluntary transaction between adults, I have no problem with setting rates based on risk. One can imagine that if we had drug regulations that focused on the toxicity of intoxicants, insurers would follow suit. Certainly, employers, landlords, car rental agencies…you name it…could adopt comparable schemes. They are free to control their property and those wishing to engage in voluntary transactions with these firms are free to walk away from any arrangement they find overly invasive.
There are other unresolved questions. If we moved toward a harm-based regime for drug regulation, would the government or some third party need to assume a role in regulating or certifying the purity of the drugs in question? There is a strong case for this.
Let me give a brief anecdote. A few years ago, the price of cocaine had fallen dramatically. While demand was relatively stable, there was an oversupply (more evidence of our successful war on drugs). Dealers who could no longer make a profit selling cocaine, moved into heroin. Unfortunately, they did not have sufficient experience in cutting the heroin so there was both wild variability in the purity of the heroin and the stuff that was being used to cut it. As one might predict, the end result was a spike in deaths due to overdoses in Connecticut and other states in the New York area. I knew one of the victims quite well. Regulation of purity would have prevented such an occurrence. If we are intent on reducing harm, then regulation of drug purity would appear to be a necessity.
While I still mourn the death of the young man who died from a heroin overdose, I also mourn the deaths of several friends who died from consumption of legal intoxicants (for example, three of my friends have died of lung cancer in the past few years, aged 51, 60 and 64). There is strong statistical evidence that the legal intoxicants they consumed impose a far greater cost on society than many of the alternatives that are criminalized.
Bottom line: A harm-based regime that channeled the universal desire for intoxication into less toxic alternatives won’t solve all the problems. But it seems like a reason-based approach that would be a massive improvement over our pyrrhic war on drugs.
Posted in Regulation | 5 Comments »
