The Unbroken Window

And then they came for … YOUR children.  HT to the indomitable Radley Balko. Here is the last episode in the series.

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And then they came for the … dog paddlers: People who hope to beat the summer heat by swimming, floating or boating on rivers in King County must wear a life vest or face an $86  fine. … Swimmers or people wading more than 5 feet from shore or in water more than 4 feet [...]

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And then they came for the … incense and perfume! You cannot make this up” Yesterday I pointed to Portland’s pending ban on perfumes and colognes in city buildings, and noted that this is how bans on smoking in all public places began. Your turn, Nevada: Critics say a Nevada bill banning air fresheners and candles [...]

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… the bath salts. I read this as I was trying to take two wimpy Sudafeds. Here is the last entry in the series. If Chuck gets his way, we’ll ban the salts, and then the burnouts will turn to some other household item to snort … and then after that one gets banned, they’ll [...]

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Fatherhood.gov. It’s a effort of NRFC, which is a division of ACF which is an office of OFA which is a branch of HHS, which of course is a department of the Executive branch of the USA. Phew. Now that we have that out of the way. Here is what it does: NRFC Activities The [...]

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“Libertarian” paternalists (it pains one to write this) make the strong claim that they only hope to improve the lives of people by “nudging” them to make better decisions than their irrational selves allow. Former commissioner of baseball (and evil Ephman) Fay Vincent makes an interesting point in tomorrow’s WSJ: that it is unusual that [...]

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Bob Frank was a professor of mine in graduate school at Cornell. He is perhaps most well known for his argument in favor of a progressive consumption and income tax. Why? He argues that much of the consumption of goods by the rich (and perhaps middle class too) takes place over status competition and “positional” [...]

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And then they came for the Happy Meal toys. The ordinance, which would go into effect in December of next year, prohibits toy giveaways in fast-food children’s meals that have more than 640 milligrams of sodium, 600 calories or 35 percent of their calories from fat. The law also would limit saturated fats and trans [...]

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As if the guys in Albany were elected just to prove everything I say on this site correct: State tax officials, under orders from cash-strapped Albany to ramp up their audit and compliance efforts, have begun to enforce one of the more obscure distinctions within the state’s sales tax law. In New York, the sale [...]

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I do not believe that it is possible to be both a paternalist (libertarian or otherwise) and also be a strong advocate of government schooling. The argument that Thaler and Sunstein make in their book Nudge is that many individuals make bad decisions when left to their own devices because they are short-sighted, ill-informed, undisciplined, [...]

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