Tag Archives: Keystone Kops

When Will We Learn?

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Two cases in point.

Case One:

The Yale School of Public Health reports that

Some “non-menthol” cigarettes that are being marketed as a “fresh” alternative in states where traditional menthol cigarettes are banned use synthetic chemicals to mimic menthol’s distinct cooling sensations, researchers at Yale and Duke University have found.

The synthetic additives could undermine existing policies and a U.S. Food and Drug Administration ban on menthol cigarettes expected later this year that is intended to discourage new smokers and address the harmful health effects of tobacco use.

https://tinyurl.com/35r7t7wz

….

Hundreds of municipalities across the United States and some states – Massachusetts and California – have already restricted the sale of flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes.

In a study published Oct. 9 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from the Yale School of Public Health, the Center for Green Chemistry & Green Engineering at Yale, and Duke School of Medicine identified a synthetic flavoring agent known as WS-3 in the newly introduced “non-menthol” cigarettes that delivers similar, or stronger, cooling sensations as menthol but without the minty aroma or taste.

….

Flavored tobacco products such as menthol cigarettes tend to reduce tobacco’s harsh effects making them particularly popular among young people and those just starting to smoke. Historically, menthol cigarettes have also been aggressively marketed towards African Americans, with up to 90% of African Americans who smoke using menthol cigarettes.

It seems likely that this “gap” in the regulatory regime for death-dealing cigarettes results from the regulations being based on specific chemicals rather than on the effects of flavor-enhancing chemicals regardless of type. The lesson to be learned from this, yet again, is that industries looking to make money regardless of impacts on public health will always look for an escape route and finding such routes is always easier when the “thing to avoid” is named rather than relying on the effects of the danger factor or the way it influences behavior.

The historical conduct of the tobacco industry, among others, should be a lesson for governments at all levels that you have to think very deeply about what you’re trying to prevent and how such prevention may be avoided. This doesn’t seem that hard.

Case Two:

The Virginia Highway Use Fee (the “HUF”).

I only recently learned about this assessment even though we bought a highly fuel-efficient hybrid vehicle in late 2020. The fee is not a lot of money, but the purpose of the fee is offensive and counter to other goals, or what should be other goals, as we try to offset some of the worst environmental effects of our dependency on automobiles.

The fee is $25 a year. The Virginia law provides a way of saving, maybe, $5 of the fee but is very complicated and, in my judgment, not worth the effort that involves obtaining another “reader” for your windshield, taking and reporting readings, etc. No thanks. Not to save $5.

More troubling is the motivation for this fee.

According to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles,

     You pay the HUF if you register a:

    • Fuel-efficient vehicle, which is a vehicle that has a combined fuel economy of 25 miles per gallon (MPG) or greater
    • Vehicle made in a year in which the average combined MPG rating for all vehicles produced in that year is 25 MPG or greater
    • Low Speed Vehicles, pay an annual $25 HUF

The highway use fee (HUF) helps make up for the fuel taxes that drivers with fuel-efficient and electric vehicles spend less on, because they’re not using as much fuel.

Among the vehicles exempted from the HUF are:

  • Vehicles with a combined MPG rating less than 25 MPG
  • Autocycles
  • Motorcycles
  • Mopeds

The HUF was started in 2020 but in July 2022,

the state launched an alternative program to let drivers pay the fee at a per-mile rate — a cost savings for those who drive less than the average amount, which officials peg at 11,600 miles annually. For drivers of battery-powered cars, that fee works out to a penny per mile. [https://tinyurl.com/yh4kt6tx]

In plain English, Virginia wants to penalize you for using a fuel-efficient vehicle (like a hybrid or fully electric, that, by the way, costs more than a regular gas-using vehicle) by forcing you to pay taxes based on gasoline consumption you don’t use, BUT you can potentially reduce the penalty slightly by signing up for the complex pay-per-mile program.

Or you can have what’s behind Curtain No. 1.

Seriously, this crazy scheme is a product of multiple conflicting forces, including Congress’s failure to increase gas taxes since 1993, the attraction of fuel-efficient vehicles and the inability of states to see the clear alternative of just taxing vehicles sufficiently to provide the revenue they need for road maintenance without depending on gasoline consumption. The current system must be beloved in the hallowed halls of the oil companies as it disincentivizes the purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles.

The more one looks at these systems of regulation, the more our government looks like something created by the Keystone Kops. If you don’t know what they are, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Cops

 

Keystone Kops Meet Three Stooges – Three Weeks of Trump Administration

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Those of you old enough to have seen the old film clips know that the Keystone Kops and Three Stooges comedy shtick involved a lot of bumping into each other, falling down, bopping on the head and nose pulling to what, in the case of the Stooges, were regarded as amusing sounds. In those days such things were indeed considered very funny by millions of fans.

Now we have a modern day version of the same thing playing out in the administration of Donald Trump. But it’s not funny.

The sheer incompetence of Trump’s management style is playing out for the world to see. The latest episodes have him and members of his inner circle huddled over a dinner table in the main dining room at Mar-a-Lago discussing national security and military issues arising from North Korea’s latest missile test. There are photos taken by another guest, not part of the government, showing papers, presumably highly confidential, being lit up by cell phones. The Prime Minister of Japan is at the table and part of the conversation.

While the issue certainly affects Japan and our relations with it, you would think our top government people would first want to discuss the situation among themselves before talking it over with the leader of a foreign power. Press Secretary Sean Spicer said today that all that activity just related to organizing a press conference and that Trump had been advised before the dinner about the missile launch in secure quarters. Maybe. Hard to know what to believe when everyone in Trump’s house has a different version of events, as in, for example, the conflict between Spicer and Kellyanne Conway over whether Michael Flynn was fired or resigned. More alternative facts, I suppose. Take your pick.

Trump has been in power less than one month and chaos reigns around him. The great business leader appears to be thrashing around trying to look like a tough guy who’s on top of his agenda, while the work product is mostly a bunch of Executive Orders that accomplish very little actual change and were mostly unnecessary, including, of course, that masterwork on immigration that has been soundly repudiated by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The travel ban EO appears to have been written by people with no legal degrees. One of the chief authors, Stephen Miller (Senior Advisor to the President), just finished a round of weekend interviews in which he decreed that the authority of the president may not be questioned. Mr. Miller was smart enough to graduate from Duke University, no easy feat if you’re not an athlete, but went to work in politics for the likes of Michelle Bachman. Now, at age 31, he is one of Trump’s closest advisors. With all due respect, Mr. Miller probably should have gone to law school first, or at least a graduate program involving constitutional learning.

Trump’s reliance on Miller, Stephen Bannon (Chief Strategist), Reince Preibus (Chief of Staff) and Kellyanne Conway (Counselor to the President) has produced constant chaos and gaffes at every level, an embarrassment to the United States here and abroad. In case you missed the interview, here is the exact Miller statement:

“Well, I think that it’s been an important reminder to all Americans that we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become, in many cases, a supreme branch of government. One unelected judge in Seattle cannot remake laws for the entire country. I mean this is just crazy, John, the idea that you have a judge in Seattle say that a foreign national living in Libya has an effective right to enter the United States is — is — is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.

The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”

Is there something about judges in Seattle we don’t know? Miller smirked when he mentioned Seattle, as if a judge from Seattle was somehow a ridiculous idea that merited no respect? The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sits in four Western cities, covering nine states plus Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. It rejected the government’s attempt to overturn the District Court’s injunction pending further litigation. That apparently is not good enough to satisfy Mr. Miller’s concept of judicial authority either.

What exactly does Miller mean that as a result of “further actions,” the powers of the president to protect our country will not be questioned?” It sounds like a direct threat to the role of the judiciary in our tripartite system of checks and balances established by the Constitution. Maybe all he meant to say was that next time the Executive Order will be competently and narrowly written so that there is no real question of its legitimacy. Maybe. Mr. Miller should choose his words carefully. Threats to reject the authority of the judiciary as the third co-equal branch of government are more serious than Mr. Miller appears to understand. Oh, and the judge in Seattle did not say that “a foreign national living in Libya has an effective right to enter the United States.”

At the time of the weekend interviews Mr. Miller had ample time to read the 9th Circuit opinion rejecting the government’s request to overturn the decision of the “unelected judge in Seattle.” The court’s opinion eviscerates the government’s arguments one by one, including these findings:

“… although courts owe considerable deference to the President’s policy determinations with respect to immigration and national security, it is beyond question that the federal judiciary retains the authority to adjudicate constitutional challenges to executive action.” [Opinion Part IV]

and

“The procedural protections provided by the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause are not limited to citizens. Rather, they “appl[y] to all ‘persons’ within the United States, including aliens,” regardless of “whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent.” Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 693 (2001). These rights also apply to certain aliens attempting to reenter the United States after travelling abroad. Landon v. Plasencia, 459 U.S. 21, 33-34 (1982).”  [Opinion Part VI]

Again, a few years in law school would have helped Mr. Miller grasp these Constitutional fundamentals. Why is the President of the United States relying on this person to speak for his administration in matters of this nature?

Just today a USA Today reported that

“review of presidential documents shows at least five cases where the version of an executive order posted on the White House website doesn’t match the official version sent to the Federal Register. The discrepancies raise further questions about how thorough the Trump administration has been in drafting some of the president’s most controversial actions.”

I won’t belabor this further. The Trump administration is led by a man who claims to be a master business leader, disciplined organizer and super-decisive “very smart” person. In today’s press briefing, Sean Spicer went out of his way to emphasize how “decisive” the President has been in all things. Yet everywhere one looks through the first three weeks of his administration, we see people bumping into each other, heads being bopped and noses yanked. This made for good comedy way back when, but it’s no way to lead a government. Despite months to prepare, all the President’s men seem to have little idea of what they are doing.

#RESIST