by Christian Britschgi, Reason, April 24, 2025.
Excerpt:
The “abundance” discourse, sparked by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book of the same name, has directed a lot of attention to liberal America’s failure to build.
Blue cities and blue states can’t deliver projects on time and on budget, which is dragging down economic growth and sending people fleeing to red states that can.
As much truth as there is to that complaint, it ignores the other reason people hate progressive governance: the complete inability of politicians and bureaucrats to keep their noses out of individuals’ private business.
Earlier this week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on an in-the-works proposal from the city’s Commission of Animal Control and Welfare to ban the sale, and potentially even the use, of glue traps.
Per the Chronicle‘s reporting, the commission—an advisory body that makes policy recommendations to the San Francisco government—is considering such a ban because of the allegedly cruel nature of glue traps.
by John O. McGinnis, Law & Liberty, April 24, 2025.
Excerpts:
It seems remarkable that seemingly antisemitic protests by undergraduates, such as those at my own university of Northwestern, could threaten the biomedical research funding of its medical school. But the structure of civil rights laws as applied to universities has long allowed the federal government to cut off funding to the entire university based on the wrongful actions of particular units or departments.
Ironically, the left, now alarmed by the federal government’s intrusive reach, bears direct responsibility for crafting the very legal weapons wielded against the universities it dominates. Almost four decades ago, progressive legislators demanded sweeping amendments to civil rights law, expanding federal oversight over higher education. The sequence of events reveals a cautionary tale of political hubris: progressive confidence that state power would reliably serve their ends overlooked the reality that governmental authority, once unleashed, recognizes no ideological master. Today’s circumstances starkly illustrate how expansive federal control over civil society, originally celebrated by progressives, returns to haunt its architects. The left’s outrage ought to focus not on this particular administration but on its own reckless empowerment of the state.
And:
And Democratic administrations made aggressive use of this leverage to change practices at college campuses in heavy-handed ways. The Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter in 2011 effectively mandated that universities overhaul their procedures for sexual abuse and harassment cases or face total loss of federal funding. For instance, the letter asked that guilt be determined by a bare preponderance of the evidence standard, despite the heavy costs to a student from a guilty verdict and expulsion. It also undermined due process by discouraging cross-examination and mandating training in which investigators were encouraged to believe the accusers. The government was deploying its enormous power to dictate processes to universities and regulate their relations with their students and, by extension, students with each other.
The Obama administration did not limit itself to regulating conduct; it aggressively extended its authority to police campus speech. It argued that speech that listeners thought was of a sexual nature could lead to a finding of a hostile environment actionable under Title VI, even if that conclusion were not based on objective facts, but on subjective feelings. Such interventions encouraged speech codes and chilled debate.
In 2016, the Obama administration issued guidance interpreting Title IX to cover gender identity, advising schools that transgender students must be allowed to use facilities and participate in programs consistent with their gender identity or else be in violation of federal law. This requirement included access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams corresponding to their identity. Again, this interpretation represented an aggressive and expansive reinterpretation of Title IX. It seems plainly inconsistent with this language, which prevents discrimination based on sex—a concept that at the time of Title IX was passed—referred to biological sex. But colleges did not want to risk their federal funding by flouting such government ukases.
by Steven Greenhut, Reason, April 25, 2025.
Excerpt:
Up until the 1970s, California was a state known for its commitment to boundless opportunities, with the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown governorship reflective of the can-do spirit that drew people here from across the world. Given the degree to which modern California is noted for its ineffectiveness, wastefulness, and regulatory sclerosis, it’s difficult to imagine a California that took its Golden State moniker seriously.
Brown “envisioned a future in which economic growth would be driven by a network of state-of-the-art freeways to move people, reservoirs, and canals to capture and transport water and intellectual capital from low-cost institutions of higher education. He sold that vision to the public and, in doing so, as the late historian Kevin Starr wrote, putting California on “the cutting edge of the American experiment,” per a Hoover Institution retrospective. The state grew dramatically as a result.
The Brown administration built most of the State Water Project in less time than it would take to complete an Environmental Impact Report these days. California officials still have big dreams, of course, but they are more of the social-engineering variety than the civil-engineering type. Brown built freeways that people actually use, whereas today’s big project is a pointless high-speed rail line that’s way over budget and unlikely to serve any serious need.
by Richard Gunderman, Law & Liberty, April 25, 2025.
Excerpts:
In 1953, subscribers to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia received a replacement page, one of many examples of Soviet attempts to rewrite history to suit the ruling Communist party’s interests. The page in question extended the article on idealist philosopher George Berkeley, after whom Berkeley, California, is named. The page it replaced contained an article on Lavrentiy Beria, one of Stalin’s longest-serving secret police chiefs. After a successful coup led by rival Nikita Krushchev that same year, Beria was arrested, tried as a “traitor and capitalist agent,” and executed, the historical record of his existence having become a matter of embarrassment to those in power.
It is hard for the inhabitants of a free nation such as the United States, with its First Amendment protections for free speech, to appreciate the pervasiveness of state censorship within the Soviet Union. Accounts of such varying events as the starvation of Moscow’s population during the October Revolution, defeats of the Red Army, the civility and generosity of Westerners, and the advanced state of technology and high Western living standards were all rigorously repressed. Likewise, photos were doctored to remove repressed persons, films were edited to promote Soviet ideals, and newspapers and broadcast media were all subject to strict state control.
And:
One of the most intriguing means of thwarting the censors was known as roentgenizdat, sometimes referred to as “bone music.” “Roentgen” was Wilhelm Röntgen, the German physicist who received the first Nobel Prize in Physics for the 1895 discovery of x-rays. Medical x-ray film represented a relatively inexpensive and widely available medium onto which such audio recordings could be etched, enabling the production of homemade phonograph records. Three basic ingredients were required: the original audio of a live performance, a recording lathe, and a piece of x-ray film, onto which a circle could be traced using a compass, with a hole cut in the middle. Running at 78 rpm, most such discs could hold three to four minutes of material, enough to capture many of the most popular songs of the day.
Afina, April 23, 2025.
Excerpts:
Our bestselling model—manufactured in Asia (China and Vietnam)—sells for $129. But this year, as tariffs jumped from 25% to 170%, we wondered: Could we reshore manufacturing to the U.S. while maintaining margins to keep our lights on?
An important part to mention is that our most filter materials (KDF-55) is sourced from the US. So technically we partly source from Asia.
We found a U.S.-based supplier. The new unit cost us nearly 3x more to produce. To maintain our margins, we’d have to sell it for $239.
So we ran an experiment.
We created a secret landing page. The product and design were identical. The only difference? One was labeled “Made in Asia” and priced at $129. The other, “Made in the USA,” at $239.
And:
Add-to-carts for the U.S. version were only 24! Conversion? 0.0% (zero).
Not a single customer purchased the Made-in-USA version.
DRH note: This is zero for U.S. version vs. 584 for the Asia version. The vast majority of economists would not be surprised, and probably a majority of Americans would not be surprised.
HT2 Ross Levatter.
