When President Obama and his family took a recent vacation to Hawaii, paparazzi snapped some pictures of the big guy playing a game of pickup football on the beach. It’s a good thing he wasn’t in Los Angeles, or he might have been fined. A recent ordinance made it illegal to throw balls and even Frisbees on the city’s beaches.

After the public raised a hue and cry, the city’s Board of Supervisors liberalized the ordinance. Kind of. Now Angelenos are allowed to play a game of catch on the beach — if they ask the lifeguard first, or get a permit. And if they don’t follow orders, they can still be fined. This lighter touch is still awfully heavy.

You can read the entire 37-page ordinance here.

Other highlights:

• “No person shall dig a hole deeper than eighteen inches (18”) into the sand… except at Director’s discretion, in consultation with Fire Chief, for film and/or television production purposes only.” (p. 16)
• “[A] person shall not camp on or use for overnight sleeping purposes any beach[.]” (p. 20; Oregon has a similar law)
• “No person shall operate any model airplane, boat, helicopter, or similar craft… except in an area that may be established and/or designated for such use by the Director, and subject to all rules and regulations pertaining to such area.” (p. 28)
• “A person shall not use, possess, or operate in the Pacific Ocean opposite any beach regulated by this Part 3 a fishing pole, spear, sling, or other spear fishing equipment… within 100 feet of any person[.]” (p.34. Worth asking: is the “opposite any beach” clause sending a message to spear fishers in Japan, China, and other countries on the opposite side of the Pacific?)

Four of air travelers’ five biggest complaints are about the TSA. Right up there on the list with everyone’s favorite sexy-searchers has to be airlines’ habit of nickel-and-diming customers for checked baggage, blankets and pillows, and most anything else that isn’t bolted to the cabin floor.

This business practice, called unbundling, does help keep ticket prices low, as I’ve previously explained. But it’s still annoying; people are transaction-averse.

The Department of Transportation, knowing a good PR opportunity when it sees one, recently passed a rule forbidding one type of extra charge. Airlines may no longer charge re-booking fees if passengers re-book their flights within 24 hours of first purchasing them. Many passengers will no doubt welcome the change. The trouble, which the DOT does not acknowledge, is that it isn’t free. CNN’s Aaron Cooper explains:

The airline says the regulation forces them to hold the seat for someone who may or may not want to fly. As a consequence, someone who really does want to fly wouldn’t be able to buy that seat because the airline is holding it for someone who might or might not end up taking it.

In other words, there will be more empty seats, which costs the airline potential revenue. Passengers will also have a harder time finding a seat on nearly-full flights. That’s why Spirit Airlines, a low-fare airline that practices an extreme form of unbundling, is adding a $2 “Department of Transportation Unintended Consequences Fee.” Re-bookers’ gains come at everyone else’s loss.

It isn’t often that businesses stand up to regulators. More and more, they can be seen holding hands and gazing into each others’ eyes while dreams of increased budgets and decreased competition dance through their heads.

That’s why Spirit’s pointed sense of humor here is refreshing. The DOT isn’t taking too kindly to Spirit’s Economics 101 lesson, but then again, they’re the ones who forgot about tradeoffs. They’re everywhere.

First drain cleaner, now cold medicine. These are lousy times for Illinoisians with sluggish drains and runny noses. Just as they are now required to present valid ID when buying drain cleaner, the people of Illinois have had to do the same thing since 2009 when buying cold medicine. But according to a bill signed into law Friday, “Now stores will transmit those records electronically to state police. The information sent to authorities will include the customer’s name and address.”

No person may buy “more than 7.5 grams of pseudoephedrine in 30 days — or more than a month’s supply of 24-hour Claritin-D for a single person.” Stores must refuse such sales.

Everyone catches a cold now and then. Which means almost everyone buys cold medicine now and then. Which means this database will basically have Illinois’ entire 13-million strong population within a year or two. This is a rather wide net.

The goal is to put a damper on methamphetamine production. The regulation is easy to evade, though. Instead of one person buying large amounts of medicine, several people can buy smaller amounts. Or our drug-addled friends can take a short drive to Indiana, Wisconsin, or another border state. Or they could make meth from different ingredients. Or they could switch to a different drug entirely. The total net impact on drug production and consumption is likely to be almost precisely zero. The legislature clearly didn’t think this one through; prohibition doesn’t work.

This regulation is something else besides ineffective. It also reveals an ugly attitude that no state should have towards its people, that everyone is a suspect. Talk about adding insult to illness.

If you have a sluggish drain and you live in Illinois, the government wants to keep track of you. As one of the 40,000 new laws across the country that took effect on January 1, the state of Illinois now requires consumers to show valid ID to buy drain cleaner. That’s not all:

Merchants must then log the buyer’s name, address, date and time of the purchase, the product and the product’s brand and net weight.

The bill was passed in response to a Taliban-style acid attack on two Chicago women. It is also an anti-drug law; drain cleaner can be used to make methamphetamine. It is unclear how showing ID and putting pen to paper would physically prevent either acid attacks or drug use.

Francis Scott Key wrote the national anthem in 1814. He set his lyrics to an old English drinking song with an intentionally difficult melody. The range spans roughly an octave and a half, which is a challenge for any singer. Revelers in pubs would challenge each other to sing the melody without screwing it up; punishments for mistakes would often involve beer.

Even professional singers can’t always get through “The Star-Spangled Banner” unscathed, as Christina Aguilera found out at last year’s Super Bowl.

We’ll never know what Key would have thought of contemporary singers’ habit of improvising and embellishing his song with their own touches. But we do know that Indiana state Sen. Vaneta Baker, an Evansville Republican, is not a fan.

Sen. Baker introduced a bill that would require singers “to sign a contract agreeing to follow the guidelines and would set a possible $25 fine for violators.” It only affects performances at the state’s public schools and universities, as well as private schools that receive state funds. If her bill passes, it would not affect this year’s Super Bowl, which will be played in Indianapolis.

Singing out of key does not violate the terms of the contract. Not singing it “the way that we normally have it sung or heard throughout most of our state and our country” would. The bill would let schools set their own standards. But they will also be required to keep archives of every national anthem performance going back at least two years.

Given the amount of paperwork schools already have to deal with, this is just a bad idea. Surely Sen. Baker has better things to worry about in these troubled economic times.

Self-checkout lanes have been popping up in grocery stores across the country over the last several years. Some people worry that without the adult supervision of a cashier, underage kids might be able to illegally buy alcohol at these self-checkout lanes. California state Rep. Fiona Ma even introduced a bill that took effect on January 1 that prohibits Californians of any age from using self-checkout lanes to purchase alcoholic beverages.

Has this been a huge problem in the past? Two independent studies have been done to find out. A 2009 UCLA study, cited by Rep. Ma to support her bill, found that underagers failed in 80.5 percent of their attempts. A separate study done by researchers at UC San Diego, found that young hooligans had a 90.6 percent failure rate.

So yes, kids can buy booze at self-checkout lanes. But it’s probably less successful than other methods. As Joe Eskenazi put it in SF Weekly’s blog, “The best way to get alcohol remains to rely on a fake ID, theft, or someone’s skeezy 23-year-old cousin.”

Of course, there is another factor in play here, and likely Rep. Ma’s real motivation. That factor is rent-seeking. Many grocery cashier jobs are unionized. The more people use self-checkout lanes, the less they use the cashiers. Unions don’t appreciate the competition, so they work with lawmakers like Rep. Ma to legislate their preferences over those of consumers.

According to Maplight.org, labor interests donated $150,450 to Rep. Ma’s campaign fund in 2009-10. They are by far her largest contributors.

This is an example of what economist Bruce Yandle calls a Baptist-and-bootlegger problem. Back in the old days, many Baptist preachers favored Prohibition because they believed drinking was morally wrong. Bootleggers favored Prohibition, too. Black market profits are far higher than in legal markets. So the bootleggers would manipulate the Baptists into favoring a bad policy by using the language of morality.

Fast-forward to today. Almost nobody wants increased underage drinking. And unions don’t want competition. So the bootleggers make up a story about how automated checkout lanes are causing runaway underage drinking. Social conservatives jump on board, wanting to strike a blow for morality. The bill gets passed, the Baptists feel good, and the bootleggers financially benefit. So do legislators.

Consumers, of course, are left out of this coalition.

It isn’t often that one sees Nobel-winning economist Ronald Coase’s name and pig farts in the same sentence. Thanks to a recent court decision in Germany, this is one of those times.

There is a farmer in Osnabrück, Germany, who owns 1,500 pigs. They might be clean creatures in the wild, but farm pigs can be smelly. This man’s pigs are especially malodorous, possibly because he feeds them raw onions. It got so bad for his downwind neighbors that they went to the city council.

Authorities ordered him to stop feeding onions to his pigs, and fined him €2,500. After his day in court, a judge sided with the farmer and against his neighbors, and rescinded the fine.

Enter Coase. He believed that disputing parties should be treated as equals. There doesn’t necessarily have to be one winner and one loser. They can both be made better off.

Coase also had the insight that the neighbors would be willing to pay some price for, ahem, improved air quality. And the farmer would be willing to pay some price to keep feeding onions to his pigs; maybe he believes that yields better-tasting ham or has some other benefit.

Knowing all that, the parties can reach a mutually agreeable solution by sitting down and bargaining with each other. What actually happened in this case was that the judge took the farmer’s side. There was a winner and a loser. If the farmer and his neighbors had been allowed to engage in Coaseian bargaining, both sides could have won.

If the neighbors paid the farmer not to use onions, the farmer would lose the benefits of onion-fed pigs, but would be compensated for that loss. So he wouldn’t be any worse off, and might even be better off, depending on the price. And the neighbors would be better off, too.

If the farmer paid his neighbors to endure the bad air, they’d still be holding their noses, but now they would do it willingly. And the farmer could still enjoy the economic benefits of his onion-fed pigs.

Either case would give a fairer outcome than the court decision.

Whichever option they decide on at the Coaseian bargaining table, both parties would walk away happy. That’s why, when it’s feasible — when transaction costs are low, in economics jargon  – Coaseian bargaining is superior to top-down regulations or judicial decisions. Finding the missing market and letting the parties make an exchange in it can make everyone better off. Why have a winner and a loser when there can be two winners?

In the meantime, I’m glad I don’t live in Osnabrück.

Quebec officials are starting to listen in on what children are talking about on school playgrounds during recess. Are they trying to catch wind of terrorist plots? Stamp out juvenile drug use? Put a stop to bullying? None of the above, actually:

Diane De Courcy, the board’s chairwoman, said the approach will be persuasive, not punitive.

“There will be no language police,” she said. Instead, monitors who overhear children using their mother tongue during recess will simply remind them of the rules.

“If they are automatically switching to another language, (the monitor) will gently tap them on the shoulder – not on the head – to tell them, ‘Remember, we speak French. It’s good for you.’

Yes, speak French. It’s good for you.

A kindlier, more tolerant, and more realistic view is that people — even children — are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves which language they shall speak. Let them.

Millions of Americans are taking to the skies to spend time with their families over Thanksgiving. Many of them will be carrying leftovers on their return trips. Fortunately, the TSA is fully prepared to defend the airways against terrorist turkeys and rogue desserts. Here is a list of food and other holiday-themed items that run afoul of the TSA’s 3-1-1 rule:

Cranberry sauce, creamy dips and spreads (cheeses, peanut butter, etc.), gift baskets with food items (salsa, jams and salad dressings), gravy, jams, jellies, maple syrup, oils and vinegars, salad dressing, salsa, sauces, soups, wine, liquor and beer.

That means you’ll have to put them in checked baggage if you have a decent amount. They are far too dangerous to bring on the plane in a carry-on.

There are also specific guidelines for pies and cakes:

Note: You can bring pies and cakes through the security checkpoint, but please be advised that they are subject to additional screening.

I feel safer already.

Carlos Rafael owns over 40 fishing boats that work the waters off of New Bedford, Connecticut. One his boats recently caught an 881-pound bluefin tuna — one of the biggest catches ever made (the record is 1,496 pounds). Authorities quickly confiscated the fish.

Fishing is a heavily regulated industry, and Rafael took every precaution to make sure his giant catch was within the rules:

Rafael, who in the last four years purchased 15 tuna permits for his groundfish boats to cover just such an eventuality, imme­diately called a bluefin tuna hot line maintained by fishery regu­lators to report the catch.

When the weather offshore deteriorated, the Apollo decided to seek shelter in Provincetown Harbor on Nov. 12. Rafael imme­diately set off in a truck to meet the boat…

However, when Rafael rolled down the dock in Provincetown there was an unexpected and unwelcome development. The authorities were waiting.

So he had a permit, he let authorities know right away, let them know it was an accidental catch, and they still took it away. Why?

Because Rafael’s men caught it with a net. Bluefin tuna are only allowed to be caught with fishing rods.

A dejected Rafael told the Cape Cod Times, “We didn’t try to hide anything. We did everything by the book. Nobody ever told me we couldn’t catch it with a net.”

At this point, it appears that Rafael will not be charged with a crime. The government, however, will sell his fish and keep the money. Most people would call this stealing; the government calls it asset forfeiture.