Russell Roberts's Blog, page 213

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 382 of Jonah Goldberg’s 2008 book, Liberal Fascism:

Ultimately, however, environmentalism is fascistic not because of its airy and obscure metaphysical assumptions about the existential plight of man. Rather, its most tangible fascistic ingredient is that it is an invaluable “crisis mechanism.” Al Gore constantly insists that global warming is the defining crisis of our time. Skeptics are called traitors, Holocaust deniers, tools of the “carbon interests.” Alternately, progressive environmentalists cast themselves in the role of nurturing caregivers. When Gore appeared before Congress in early 2007, he proclaimed that the world has a “fever” and explained that when your baby has a fever you “take action.” You do whatever your doctor says. No time to debate, no room for argument. We must get “beyond politics.” In practical terms this means we must surrender to the global nanny state and create the sort of “economic dictatorship” progressives yearn for.

DBx: Yep. And so it is also now with Covid-19. Authoritarians love widespread fear and the sense of crisis that such fear fuels. Fearful people in a panic are much more likely to allow themselves to be ordered about by the power-mad. Indeed, Covid-19 has been a far greater gift to the power-mad than has the emission of carbon. “Do exactly as I say, or you and your loved ones will die by the end of the week!” is a much more alarming assertion, if believed, than “Do exactly as I say, or your yet-to-be born descendants will die by the end of the century!”

Some Non-Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Scott Lincicome and Ilana Blumsack point out an especially devious bit of cronyism lurking in the so-called “Build Back Better” legislation.

The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board digs into the October jobs numbers. A slice:

Vaccine mandates won’t help. And neither will other government disincentives to work, including the $300 monthly child allowances, sweetened food stamps and ObamaCare subsidies. The latter are especially generous for seniors and may have encouraged more to retire before they qualify for Medicare. The St. Louis Federal Reserve recently estimated that there have been three million “excess” retirements during the pandemic.

Democrats are trying to expand these benefits, which will slow the labor-market recovery and economic growth. President Biden would have a better economy to boast about if his $4 trillion spending bill is defeated.

Robby Soave writes about the media’s illiberal reaction to “Let’s go Brandon!”

John Cochrane is rightly grumpy about wokeness.

David Henderson shares his excellent letter to the Carmel Pine Cone.

Ilya Somin proposes that November 7th be “Victims of Communism Day.”

My GMU Econ colleague Vincent Geloso reports on research that finds evidence that J.M. Keynes was indeed correct to predict a great increase in leisure time. Here’s Vincent’s conclusion:

Those who have lambasted Keynes for his prediction share the common pessimistic trait of our age, which consists in believing that we are not so much better off than our ancestors. In reality, when one takes the time to consider the multiple dimensions of what constitutes human well-being just as Crafts did, it is hard not to engage in hyperboles such as “We are infinitely better off than our close ancestors.” Yet, these hyperboles are not far off and Keynes understood at least that.

James Pethokoukis asks if we really need to worry about the inequality impact of superentrepreneurs.

GMU Econ grad student Dominic Pino reports that the situation at the L.A./Long Beach port isn’t improving much.

Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Reason‘s Jacob Sullum dives into the details of the legal arguments against Biden’s abominable vaccine mandate. A slice:

More specifically, the plaintiffs argue that “COVID-19 is not a toxic substance or agent,” adding that “OSHA cannot attempt to shoehorn this disease into the phrase ‘new hazards.'” That phrase, they say, should be understood in context to exclude airborne viruses: “Because Congress expressly allowed for an ETS to be issued for ‘substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful,’ the catch-all phrase to encompass other hazards must be read in light of, and limited to, items similar to those that come before it.”

Otherwise, the brief says, OSHA “would have unbridled power to promulgate any regulation that would have the arguable effect of preventing the spread of a communicable disease.” Such measures could include “a shutdown of an entire industry [such as meatpacking] that might harbor a high [incidence] of COVID-19,” “a nationwide shutdown of all employers engaged in interstate commerce,” “a nationwide mask mandate on all customers visiting OSHA-regulated businesses,” or even “a rule mandating [an] appropriate regimen of vitamins” aimed at boosting employees’ immune responses.

el gato malo explains the basic economics of why Covid death counts in the United States are likely inflated.

hospitals got paid massive sums for finding covid cases. there was a huge pool of federal money that went to them and vastly boosted revenues. states got aid based on covid counts and covid deaths, so they found ways to get more covid on more death certificates. it’s just simple math. you do what pays.

even family members were recruited into the act and medical fees were paid for by the government if it was covid (but not, for example, if it was pneumonia).

even funerals got into the act.

Max Borders explores vaccine authoritarianism. A slice:

Vaccine mandates introduce unnecessary risks to the scores of millions of Americans who are Covid recovered. Study after study (after study) demonstrates that people who have recovered from Covid-19 have robust, durable immunity, which is as good or better than vaccine immunity. There is no reason people with natural immunity should be compelled to undergo any therapy whose long-term effects are unknown. Never mind that the magnitude of the known risks is still being studied. (One Covid recovered law professor [George Mason University’s Todd Zywicki] sued his university for just such a mandate.)

University of California at San Francisco professor Vinay Prasad justifiably accuses CDC Director Rochelle Walensky of publicly telling “a lie, and a truly unbelievable one at that.” Here’s his conclusion:

No matter how you feel about these issues; these are dangerous times. Truth and falsehood is not a matter of science but cultural power— the ability to proclaim and define the truth. If this continues, dark times lie ahead. Someday soon, we may not like who defines the truth.

Eric Hussey describes the terrible damage of masking children.

Boo for Big Bird proselytizing for the vaccination of children against Covid-19.

Here’s a recent tweet by the great Jay Bhattacharya:

When @MartinKulldorff, @SunetraGupta, and I wrote the @gbdeclaration, we offered concrete ideas to protect the vulnerable.

In response, influential public health deans pushed inapt analogies and lockdown. They own the abject failure that ensued.

https://newsweek.com/we-should-focu

In response to James Surowiecki’s baseless assertion that the Focused Protection called for in the great Great Barrington Declaration is impractical, Carneigie Mellon University’s Wes Pegden tweets:

“It’s impossible to effectively target public health efforts at those facing the greatest risks from COVID” was one of the most toxic knee-jerk reactions from one of the most politicized stages of the pandemic.

It was nonsense then, is still now, and repeating it is beneath you.

Also tweeting in response is Great Barrington Declaration co-author Martin Kulldorff:

Across the board #COVID19 restrictions instead of focused protection: The biggest public health mistake in history.

Weighing in too on Twitter is Nobel laureate Michael Levitt:

From my own personal experience, I totally agree.

This rejection of alternative narratives started in March 2020.

We had and still have to fight to be heard.

This opponent of the great Great Barrington Declaration concludes about its authors: “Doubt they actually cared about protecting the vulnerable”. Well. Thomas Sowell long ago pointed out (I forget just where) that enthusiasts for government interventions are more likely than are skeptics of government interventions to accuse their opponents of moral turpitude rather than of intellectual error. Accusing those with whom we disagree of moral turpitude – of having bad motivations rather than of reasoning or researching poorly – is a symptom of intellectual laziness (or of simple childishness). In addition, such an accusation saves those who fling it from experiencing any obligation to engage seriously with opponents’ arguments and evidence.

Who’d a-thunk it?

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 183 of Armen Alchian’s brilliant 1968 International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences essay, “Cost,” as this essay is reprinted in The Collected Works of Armen A. Alchian (2006), Volume 1 (“Choice and Cost Under Uncertainty”; Daniel K. Benjamin, ed.):

The use of money prices does not mean that money is all that counts, or that people love money. It means simply that money is the medium of exchange and therefore is the convenient denominator of interpersonal exchange values of events or options.

Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s Ilya Somin on yesterday’s temporary stay, issued by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, against enforcement of Biden’s abominable vaccine mandate. A slice:

I said previously that, while I think the vaccination mandate has significant legal vulnerabilities and might set a dangerous precedent if upheld, I also don’t really know how courts will react to the legal arguments against it. We still don’t know the answer to that question with anything like certainty. But the Fifth Circuit’s statement that “the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate” is at least a sign that the judges think there is a serious case to be made against the mandate. They clearly do not believe the case is a slam dunk for the federal government.

Jeffrey Tucker ponders Biden’s abominable vaccine mandate. Here’s his conclusion:

Famed quarterback Aaron Rodgers explained as much when he pushed back against the mob that denounced him for declining to get vaccinated. He had previously said that he was immunized – an excellent word choice to describe the reality of natural immunity. After further refusing the shot, the mob became angrier, demanding that he be immediately fired.

The Aaron Rodgers controversy is a microcosm of a larger public health mess that has encouraged stigmatization, segregation, spying, and generalized brutality that is dividing companies, communities, and friends, spreading mistrust and anger without precedent in our lifetimes. A more incompetent conduct of public health is hard to imagine.

The Institute of Economic Affairs’s Christopher Snowdon, writing for the Telegraph, decries the failure to hold ‘Covid pessimists’ to account for their consistent errors and reckless peddling of panic-porn. Two slices:

After predicting that 100,000 Covid cases a day were “almost inevitable” if the Government went ahead with “freedom day” in England, Professor Neil Ferguson later admitted that he had got it wrong, but his words were telling. “I’m quite happy to be wrong if it’s wrong in the right direction,” he said.

He must be a happy man because he and his fellow modellers could hardly have been more wrong this year. Time and again, they produce a range of scenarios with such broad margins of error that almost any outcome short of the dead rising from their graves seems to be covered. And yet they still manage to be wrong – and always wrong in the same direction. Always too pessimistic.

…..

There was no apology because there was no threat of comeuppance. The people who falsely claimed that herd immunity had been reached last summer became laughing stocks, but those who have been consistently “wrong in the right direction” (i.e. pro-lockdown) have lost no status whatsoever. The Today programme still has them on speed dial.

It is not as if pessimism comes without consequences. Ferguson’s prediction led Keir Starmer to oppose the lifting of restrictions in July. So-called Independent Sage called for the reintroduction of Step 2 of the roadmap (no meeting indoors). Thankfully, the Government ignored these demands, but what if it hadn’t? It would have cost the economy billions and ruined what was left of the summer.

With the same people now lobbying to ruin the winter, let’s keep their track record in mind. The “direction” in which they erred isn’t important. What matters is that they were wrong.

Barry Brownstein encourages us to resist tyranny. Here’s his opening:

Social psychologist Roy Baumeister begins his book Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, with a proposition that will be counterintuitive to many: “Evil usually enters the world unrecognized by the people who open the door and let it in. Most people who perpetrate evil do not see what they are doing as evil.”

Dismissing evildoers as “insane” is an attempt to absolve both them and you of responsibility. Baumeister observes, “People do become extremely upset and abandon self-control, with violent results, but this is not insanity.” If only “insane” people commit “evil” acts, you might reason there is no need to strengthen spiritual and moral muscles. You might skip the reflection, study, and practice that builds spiritual and moral strength.

Abbas Panjwani exposes the media’s continuing context-free – and, hence, highly misleading – panic-porn ‘reporting’ on Covid.

Sophia Yan reports on China’s dystopian ‘zero-Covid’ tyranny. (This straw man is quite persistent and muscular.) A slice:

With the Shanghai Disney shutdown, a woman who had visited last Saturday was alerted by her hometown authorities that she was the close contact of a confirmed case.

By then she was on a train home, but was immediately transferred to a hospital at the next stop where she later tested positive on Sunday, prompting Chinese authorities to unleash stringent measures.

Other visitors who had also already left the park were ordered to self-quarantine at home and arrange for tests.

A few days earlier, authorities stopped two high-speed trains travelling to Beijing, because a single passenger on each was considered a close contact of a confirmed case.

All 350 train travellers were shuttled into centralised quarantine, even though none were confirmed to be at risk or positive.

In Inner Mongolia, 2,000 tourists were also recently locked up in 14-day quarantine after a handful of cases.

Local officials have gone so far as to chain people into their homes during lockdowns and anyone found to be non-compliant have been arrested and thrown in detention.

Pharmacies are also required to report individuals coming into buy over-the-counter cold and flu medicines as those symptoms could potentially indicate coronavirus; those failing to do so have been shut down.

Jay Bhattacharya decries Covidocratic tyranny in Santa Monica.

Pascal Bruckner worries about one of the many possible, and awful, consequences of what I call “Long Lockdown.” Two slices:

It’s not clear, in other words, that everyone will experience the return to normal as a liberation. The pandemic caused us to worry, but it also delivered us for a while from a still-greater worry: the anxiety of freedom. To parody Pascal, who explained that the misfortune of humanity consisted in the inability to sit quietly in one’s room, alone, we might say that the misfortune of humanity after Covid will perhaps be to be shut up in one’s room—and like it.

…..

We will perhaps find that Covid has given birth to a new anthropological type: the curled-up and hyper-connected human being with no further need of others or of reality. We might then interpret the famous verse of Rimbaud, “real life is absent,” in the following way: “real life is the absence of life.” For all those who still promote the spirit of exploration and a taste for connection with others, this would be a double catastrophe: to the deaths from the virus we would add, as a kind of expiation, the penitence of shrinkage.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from pages 336-337 of the American jurist James Coolidge Carter’s remarkably profound, yet unfortunately neglected, (posthumous) 1907 book, Law: Its Origin, Growth and Function:

There is no clearly perceivable line which enables us in every case to clearly determine how far society may go in limiting and directing individual conduct. It changes with the changing conditions of life. But there is a guide which, when kept clearly and constantly in view, sufficiently informs us what we should aim to do by legislation and what should be left to other agencies. This is what I have so often insisted upon as the sole function both of law and legislation, namely, to secure to each individual the utmost liberty which he can enjoy consistently with the preservation of the like liberty to all others. Liberty, the first of blessings, the aspiration of every human soul, is the supreme object. Every abridgment of it demands an excuse, and the only good excuse is the necessity of preserving it.

DBx: I disagree only with Carter’s claim that liberty is “the aspiration of every human soul.” Sadly, the world is full of human souls who aspire to no such thing. Many individuals wish to be ruled, to be commanded, to be treated from cradle to grave as if only their bodies, but never their minds and character, leave their cradles. A great achievement would be to discover and implement some form of government that would allow such people to be lorded over as they wish while leaving those of us who do treasure liberty to pursue it in the ways that I believe America’s founders envisioned it would, and should, be pursued.

When Benefits Are Reckoned Absent Their Costs, Policy Becomes Deranged

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal:

Editor:

Attempting to justify Pres. Biden’s mandate that many employers require that their employees be vaccinated or be tested weekly for Covid-19, Deputy White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declared that “This is about saving people’s lives … and making sure that their workplace is safe” (“Federal Appeals Court Temporarily Blocks Biden Administration Vaccine Rules for Private Employers,” Nov. 6).

Well. By this logic, if Biden mandated a maximum speed limit for motor vehicles of zero mph, his spokespeople would justify the policy by saying that “This is about saving people’s lives and making sure their roads are safe.”

Why does anyone take such people seriously?

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

Hooray for the Fifth Circuit

(Don Boudreaux)

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Breaking good news! The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit just issued a temporary stay on the enforcement of Biden’s abominable vaccine mandate.

My guess is that this issue will eventually be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court. Let us hope that this appalling mandate is soon buried forever.

Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Writing at UnHerd, Jonathan Sumption explains why fear fuels tyranny. A slice:

The real threat to democracy’s survival is not major disasters like war. It is comparatively minor perils, which in the nature of things occur more frequently. This may seem paradoxical. But reflect for a moment. The more routine the perils from which we demand protection, the more frequently will those demands arise. If we confer despotic powers on government to deal with perils, which are an ordinary feature of human existence, we will end up doing it most or all of the time. It is because the perils against which we now demand protection from the state are so much more numerous than they were that they are likely to lead to a more fundamental and durable change in our attitudes to the state. This is a more serious problem for the future of democracy than war.

It arises because of the growing aversion of western societies to risk. We crave protection from many risks which are inherent in life itself: financial loss, economic insecurity, crime, sexual violence and abuse, sickness, accidental injury. Even the late pandemic, serious as it was, was well within the broad range of mortal diseases with which human beings have always had to live. It is certainly within the broad range of diseases with which we must expect to live with in future.

Matt Welch decries the disruption that Covid hysteria, along with government-school-officials’ appalling disregard for anyone but themselves, continue to inflict on K-12 “schooling.” A slice:

Did you know that Loudoun County Public Schools District—yes the Loudoun County, ground zero of the parental revolt against Democratic school governance—was 100 percent distance learning this week due to “staffing shortages,” and that Wednesday and Friday were called off just days in advance?

Chicago Public Schools late Thursday announced that next Friday would be a previously unplanned (paid) day off, for “Vaccine Awareness Day.” Following the same script was the San Diego Unified School District, which also informed parents yesterday that next Friday would likely be off, to “pause” for mental health. “The last 20 months of the pandemic have challenged all of us in different ways. We have heard from many parents and students that their mental health has suffered,” Interim Superintendent Lamont Jackson wrote in a letter announcing the proposal. “That is why we have decided to take the extraordinary step of providing every family with additional recovery time next week.”

The “recovery time” seems more geared toward teachers than for the public school families who are dealing with a third school year marred by capricious learning interruptions. Virginia Beach, Virginia, decided late last month that at least seven Wednesdays going forward will be cut by two hours. In Maryland, both Howard County and Baltimore City have also recently cut back on in-person schooling for teacher “wellness” and “relief.”

Many school closures this fall have been attributed to staffing shortages, despite the record amounts of federal money sloshing through local districts. A tight labor market, plus vaccine mandates, have contributed to the K-12 squeeze.

Let’s hope that J.D. Tuccille is correct.

But at least these children enjoyed a (presumably) reduced risk of being exposed to the one danger that is utterly intolerable: Covid-19.

Thirteen months after the authors of the great Great Barrington Declaration were criticized for allegedly slaying a straw man, the straw man is now stomping through China.

The New York Times reports on dystopian ‘life’ in zero-Covid-seeking China. A slice:

The southwestern Chinese city of Ruili is small, remote and largely unknown internationally. It is also, when it comes to the coronavirus, perhaps the most tightly regulated place on earth.

In the past year, it has been locked down four times, with one shutdown lasting 26 days. Homes in an entire district have been evacuated indefinitely to create a “buffer zone” against cases from elsewhere. Schools have been closed for months, except for a few grades — but only if those students and their teachers do not leave campus.

Many residents, including 59-year-old Liu Bin, have gone months without income, in a city that relies heavily upon tourism and trade with neighboring Myanmar. Mr. Liu, who ran a customs brokerage before cross-border movement essentially stopped, estimated he had lost more than $150,000. He is tested on a near-daily basis. He borrows cigarette money from his son-in-law.

“Why do I have to be oppressed like this? My life is important too,” he said. “I’ve actively followed epidemic control measures. What else do we normal people have to do to meet the standards?”

As the rest of the world shifts to a strategy of living with the coronavirus, China has remained the last country chasing full elimination, for the most part with success. It has recorded fewer than 5,000 virus-related deaths, and in parts of the country without confirmed cases, the outbreak can feel like a hazy memory.

But the residents of Ruili — a lush, subtropical city of about 270,000 people before the pandemic — are facing the extreme and harsh reality of living under a “Zero Covid” policy when even a single case is found.

The northern California town of Oroville resists the tyranny of the Covidocracy.

Jay Bhattacharya tweets in response to this report in the Economist:

The school closures will catapult wider race and income inequality into the next generation.

Of the many egregious blunders the lockdowners and Dr. Fauci made during the pandemic, pushing to keep schools closed could be the single worst.

Some Non-Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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David Henderson exposes the economic ignorance that infects Josh Hawley’s arrogant scheme to cure America’s supply-chain web woes. A slice:

Hawley is right that we have a relatively free flow of capital into and from the United States. He is wrong to suggest that this has hurt American workers. He himself notes elsewhere in the article that America has a high trade deficit with the rest of the world. But he doesn’t take the next logical step and point out what this trade deficit necessarily implies: an inflow of capital. It’s a mathematical certainty that when we spend more on other countries’ goods and services than they spend on ours, there is a capital account surplus. People and corporations in other countries that receive more dollars for their exports than they spend on our imports use those dollars to buy US bonds, typically US-government bonds, buy stock, or directly invest in the United States. They might even hold on to the dollars but, if so, that’s a particularly good deal for us because the cost of producing a $100 bill is only 14 cents. As Jay Leno put it in a 1989 ad for Doritos, “Crunch all you want; we’ll make more.” The US government can easily replace those hundred-dollar bills.

More likely, though, foreigners will invest those dollars here. To the extent they directly invest in plant and equipment, they raise the ratio of capital to labor. The more capital that laborers have to work with, the higher are their real wages. So Hawley gets the causal effect of the free flow of capital wrong. More capital makes workers better off, not worse off.

Also weighing in on supply-chain web woes – and also correcting some of the many economic fallacies peddled by Josh Hawley – is Robert Tracinski.

Wall Street Journal columnist Allysia Finley highlights how supply-chain web woes are worsened by government in California. A slice:

Inland California cities, where land is abundant, flat and relatively inexpensive, have had enormous warehouse growth over the past decade amid the boom in e-commerce. The number of inland “big box” distribution centers increased 54% between 2009 and 2020 to 711, according to Statista. Some cities encouraged development because warehouses provide relatively high-paying jobs for less-educated workers, including immigrants.

But in California warehouse growth ignited opposition from environmental groups, which complain of pollution and noise. Many cities have limited new logistics facilities. Colton, in San Bernardino County, has imposed a moratorium on new warehouses and truck facilities through early May 2022.

One trucking company this year withdrew a plan for a 54,000-square-foot warehouse and parking facility for 475 trucks and containers atop a former landfill in Carson amid political opposition. Some cities have limited the hours when trucks can unload containers at stores, which makes it harder to free up warehouse space—another reason Mr. Biden’s 24/7 call has had little effect.

State officials have also pressed localities to attach green mandates to permits for new warehouses, which can be poison pills. Former Attorney General Xavier Becerra issued guidance with a long list of “best practices and mitigation measures” for warehouses to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act. Among them: “prohibiting off-road diesel-powered equipment from being in the ‘on’ position for more than 10 hours per day,” “forbidding idling of heavy equipment for more than two minutes,” “requiring on-site equipment, such as forklifts and yard trucks, to be electric with the necessary electrical charging stations provided,” and “constructing electric truck charging stations proportional to the number of dock doors at the project.”

My GMU Econ colleague Bryan Caplan makes a strong case that his past criticisms of local governments were too generous.

Kevin Williamson is correct that the Democratic Party today is the political party for affluent “Progressives” – people who are far less informed and objective, and far more greedy and arrogant, than they realize themselves to be. A slice:

These affluent progressive Democrats are the people who think of themselves as “the anointed,” in Thomas Sowell’s description, and they believe that they are entitled to various kinds of public benefits, including financial benefits, because they live lives of virtue and work in careers that serve some higher good while making them rich and secure.

We could be spending a few billion dollars helping poor people who want to work relocate to take good jobs or to give poor kids in Chicago and Washington the same educational opportunities the Obamas and the Clintons and the Pelosis gave their own children, but what is actually at the top of the Democrats’ to-do list? Tax subsidies for affluent homeowners in the Bay Area and other citadels of new money, to be sure, but also student-loan forgiveness for people in relatively high-income households, green subsidies that benefit relatively well-off businessmen and their clients, etc.

Randy Holcombe explains that Biden’s scheme to “tax the rich” will cost America’s middle-class. A slice:

Once a tax is implemented for some, it becomes easier to extend it to everyone. Nobody should think that a tax, once placed on the rich, will not eventually apply to them. And, it can happen very fast, as the income tax experience during World War I showed.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy talks with John Batchelor about the global-minimum-tax scheme.

Chris Edwards points out that the Democrats’ tax scheme “would corrupt financial statements.”

Pierre Lemieux offers a defense of some insensitive speech.

Eric Boehm celebrates the defeat of several proposals to compel taxpayers to pay for stadiums – that is, facilities at which some business owners conduct their private businesses.

Colin Grabow presents yet further evidence of the failure of the cronyist Jones Act.