Quotulatiousness

November 5, 2014

Alaska, Oregon, and Washington DC vote to legalize marijuana

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:24

Jacob Sullum on the success of two more state legalization campaigns (oh, and the imperial capital, too):

Yesterday Alaska became the fourth state to legalize marijuana for recreational use. With 74 percent of precincts reporting, 52 percent of voters favored legalization. Alaska joins Oregon and Washington, D.C., which legalized marijuana on the same day, and Colorado and Washington state, where voters approved legalization in 2012.

Alaska has taken a unique approach to marijuana since 1975, when the Alaska Supreme Court decided that the state constitution’s privacy clause allows people to possess small amounts of cannabis at home for personal use without fear of arrest or punishment. But that ruling raised an obvious question: Where are people supposed to get the pot they are allowed to use?

Measure 2 answers that question with a system similar to Colorado’s. It allows adults 21 or older to possess up to an ounce of marijuana at a time, grow up to six plants at home, and transfer up to an ounce at a time to other adults “without remuneration.” It authorizes state-licensed growers, cannabis product manufacturers, and retailers, to be regulated by Alaska’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board or a separate agency created by the state legislature.

Adrian Peterson’s legal situation now clear … NFL disciplinary situation less so

Filed under: Football, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:04

Yesterday, Adrian Peterson agreed to a plea deal that would reduce the charges he faced from a felony to a misdemeanor (thereby also reducing the maximum punishment from jail time to a fine, probation, and community service). He pleaded no contest to the lesser charges and if he completes the probation without incident, he won’t have a criminal record. He will also be subject to random drug testing but no travel restrictions. Despite this, his situation with the NFL is still up in the air — he’s been on the commissioner’s exempt list since week two, getting paid but not being allowed to practice with the team — and the only way he’ll be allowed back on the field is after Roger Goodell decides on what league discipline is now called for.

Ford Nation – retooling, reloading?

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:03

As I’ve said in posts during the election campaign, I probably wouldn’t have voted for either of the Ford brothers were I still living in Toronto, but I understand why a lot of Toronto voters feel differently. That much being acknowledged … I don’t think a Doug Ford campaign for leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party would be a good idea (and not just because the front-runner in the race is my MPP). Richard Anderson seems to feel the same way, but he bases his objections on reality rather than just inchoate feelings:

At the final tally Doug Ford captured 34% of the popular vote in the recent Toronto election. With more time he would likely have captured another 5% to 10% of the vote. It’s unlikely that any member of the Ford family would reach 50% in a three way race. In a two way race, against a half-way competent moderate, they’d almost certainly lose. But Toronto is not Ontario. Not even close.

While the Imperial Capital is certainly more Leftist than the rest of the province, it’s also more working class. That’s the Ford base, the low and semi-skilled workforce that can really only exist in a large dense city. In the vast sprawl lands of Mississauga and Markham the Fords are incredibly toxic.

[…]

A provincial premier is not a mayor. The Premier of Ontario is the second most powerful individual in the country. In a real and practical sense it is the ruler of Queen’s Park who acts as the Leader of the Official Opposition of Canada. The only thing Tom Mulcair can do is rant and rave at Stephen Harper. Kathleen Wynne can thwart a whole range of federal policy initiatives. That’s the power that comes from leading a province with 40% of the population and nearly half the national economic output.

Now imagine Doug Ford negotiating with Stephen Harper or Jim Prentice. You can’t really. Even if there is a bit of ideological overlap their styles are so radically different. For all his faults Harper is loaded to the rafters with gravitas and intelligence. Jim Prentice is a smooth old political operator. Either man can move with ease through the Petroleum Club or the Empire Club. They can deal with Obama, Cameron, Putin and whatever animatronic robot is currently ruling China.

It’s not a paradox after all – Easterlin refuted

Filed under: Economics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:02

Tim Worstall explains that the so-called Easterlin Paradox — that economic growth did not make people happy — is clearly not supported by the evidence:

As background here: the basic paradox that Easterlin pointed to is that, past a certain level (roughly when we’ve become rich enough to solve the supply of basic creature comforts like food, shelter, clothing etc, something like a GDP per capita of $15,000 say), a country getting richer doesn’t seem to make the population any happier. While we’ve now got rather better data than he could work with, and thus we know that people do keep getting happier but at a much lower rate, that basic idea has proven very popular. Of course it has: for it’s allowed all sorts of people to argue that we don’t have to chase that Great God, GDP, and we can thus do things that make people happier and not richer. It’s a lovely argument to use when someone objects that taxing the heck out of the rich will reduce growth for example. For one can just riposte that more growth wouldn’t make people happier while taxing the heck out of the rich would. It’s used as the opening argument in The Spirit Level in this manner: as higher GDP doesn’t make people happier we can therefore concentrate upon inequality instead. And there’s many other such uses around and about.

I’ve never thought that was quite right and I said so. My argument being that it’s not the level of economic wealth that makes people happy or unhappy (above that basics level that is). Rather, it’s the direction of change of it. If a country is gradually getting richer then people will be happier than if the economy is stagnant or shrinking. And the association of greater happiness with the richer countries is not really because they are richer, but because in becoming rich those countries have obviously had decades, if not centuries, of gradually rising incomes: that very thing that makes people happy.

QotD: Bullying

Filed under: Media, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Any form of disputation is now “Bullying,” as if the act of being less than supportive is a passive version of pushing someone down in the mud in the playground. The spread of the term beyond school infantilizes everyone and dilutes the term. Criticism is bullying; failure to agree with someone else’s precepts is “hate.” The internet did not invent this; it just allowed people with mushy noggins to retreat into supportive spaces where everyone outside the wall was a meany.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2014-03-07

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