Portland, Oregon, is banning city government employees from wearing perfume or cologne at work. The ban also covers “aftershave or other scented products like hair sprays and lotion.”
Violators will be disciplined.
Oregon
Bob Russ is 66 years old. Last weekend, he and his wife went to the Oregon Brewer’s Festival in Portland. Or rather, they tried to. He was denied entry. The reason? He was unable to prove that he was over 21 years old. At 66, Mr. Russ is Medicare-eligible.
In a letter to the Oregonian, he writes that “At two entry gates, staff told us the OLCC [Oregon Liquor Control Commission] requires a current photo ID for large alcoholic events, period.”
In addition to an apology, Mr. Russ asks for “the use of common sense by the OLCC and the city of Portland that will prevent entering into festival permit agreements that deny entry to unsuspecting “underage” senior citizens.”
The goal of photo ID laws is to prevent underage drinking. Keeping 66-year old men out of festivals for lack of valid photo ID does not prevent underage drinking. If anything, it wastes resources that could otherwise be spent stopping underage drinking.
This is one regulation where the OLCC should allow for some discretion. Doing so might prevent a lot of bad PR.
(Hat tip to Jacob Grier)
On June 1st the Oregonian published an opinion piece by the editorial staff, titled “Legalization would be a gamble, too”
The basis for the editorial board’s logic as well as some of the facts cited in the article are questionable, if not downright incorrect. The main argument the editors make is that legality of an activity should be based, not on the constitution, free will of man, or other such concepts, but rather “public” perception of the activity; if the general public finds distasteful an activity that a minority enjoys it is perfectly fine to prohibit the activity.
We still aren’t convinced that what this country needs is more legalized gambling…There are still too many unanswered questions and unknown social impacts with legalizing online betting.
Basing the law on such a tenuous foundation is only a good bet if you plan to always be in the majority, otherwise the editors at the Oregonian might one day find their favorite activities have been prohibited, say for example, off-the cuff opinion articles that haven’t been fact-checked?
According to the article:
Like alcohol during Prohibition, Internet gambling is rampant even though it is banned in the United States. Thousands of online gambling sites are available to anyone anywhere with Internet access. All of them are based in other countries outside the reach of U.S. laws and law enforcement.
Internet gambling has never been banned in the US. Though no law makes it legal, no federal law criminalizes the activity. The state of Oregon does have laws governing Internet gambling that say, “Anyone engaged in Internet gambling may not knowingly accept a credit payment from another engaged in “unlawful gambling using the Internet,” but that makes the law dependent on a definition for what constitutes unlawful gambling. Since Oregon has no other laws regulating online gambling the law is not yet in effect.
Another error committed by the article is the description of “unregulated Internet gambling”
…legalizing online gambling could provide billions of federal tax dollars every year and serve to clean up some of the dark, unregulated alleyways of Internet gambling, where identity theft, sleazy financial practices and underage players are common.
While it’s true that the US hasn’t regulated the activity, most Internet casinos are regulated by the country they’re based in and the rare instances of crime occurred in regulated casinos. Laws won’t stop criminals, but criminalizing players creates victims without recourse.
A new federal law aimed at quashing Internet gambling by requiring banks to block suspected online gaming transactions took effect Tuesday. The restrictions may have some short-term impact on the Internet gambling industry, but players will get credit cards from overseas and find other ways around the law.
But if it isn’t possible to stamp out or even slow Internet gambling, does that mean the federal government should license it, tax it and profit from it?
The issues isn’t about money. It is about whether or not it’s government’s role to criminalize an activity adults willingly choose to participate in and the answer is a resounding: No.
Yes, millions of Americans already are gambling on the Internet. But does anyone know whether legalization of the most accessible, convenient gambling opportunity ever invented — available with a few clicks of a mouse wherever there’s Internet access — would greatly increase gambling activity and problems associated with gambling?
So, if this is clearly an activity that “millions of Americans” want to engage in, what gives the state government, the feds, or the editors at the Oregonian the right to prevent consenting adults from playing games online with their own money?
While we don’t know the exact repercussions of explicitly legalizing online gambling in the US, we do know that sacrificing our liberty is a much riskier bet.
Note: After writing a letter to the Oregonian expressing my displeasure with the message of the article and misrepresentation of online gambling, I received an email from the public access editor, explaining that “…except in unusual instances, we reserve our letters page for local correspondence, and your letter would not qualify”
Oregon Senators this week have voted down regulations that could have led consumers to less safe, glass baby bottles. Three Democrats in the Senate joined the Republicans to defeat a ban on baby bottles, sippy, cups, and other products made with the chemical Bisphenol A. CEI’s friends at the Cascade Policy Institute provided educational materials (in partnership with CEI) on the science and apparently legislators decided that reason and the facts should prevail over all the hype. And the hype has been significant, as noted here on Open Market: See here, here, and here. This is a tremendously important victory for reason and freedom. Unfortunately, most states are moving in the opposite direction.
Public employee unions, as I’ve noted previously, make up a permanent lobby for bigger government. Now they have a major victory. Oregonians who went to the polls just voted themselves higher taxes. The explanation shouldn’t be that surprising. As The Wall Street Journal notes:
[A] deluge of money. Local and national public employee unions bankrolled the “yes” campaign, with a $6.5 million blitz in TV and radio ads. That was $2 million more than the business community and taxpayer advocates raised. The cash helped the tax increase roll up a 71% margin in the liberal precincts in and around Portland, even as it lost in most of the rest of the state.
The union message was also as clever as it was disingenuous: All of these taxes will be paid by someone else, such as Wall Street bankers, out-of-state credit card companies, CEOs. Only the richest 2.5% will pay a little more in taxes, the unions also claimed.
An opponent of this tax increase put it well, in The New York Times:
“It was a pretty good offer the proponents were making,” Pat McCormick, a spokesman for the lead opposition group, Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes, said sarcastically. “Here’s a way of paying for things that’s not going to cost you anything.”
As Reason‘s Ron Bailey aptly observes, for government employee unions, class warfare pays. (Thanks to Julie Walsh.)
In Oregon, it is illegal to set up a tent at most beaches.
A beach would not be my first choice for a place to spend the night. It would be cold and wet, especially in Oregon. Sand would get into all kinds of places I’d rather it wouldn’t.
But is a law necessary? Before the tent ban, was there an epidemic of cold, wet, and sandy people on Oregon’s beaches, who would gladly turn to safer, more comfortable accommodations if only a law would nudge them in that direction?
Or should the Solons of Oregon turn their attention to more important matters?
Imagine a state in which the public records retrieval process is so convoluted that the government needs to publish a user manual explaining how to apply the public records law works. You would assume that the state would make this manual freely available online, right?
Not in Oregon. In that state, the printed how-to manual for accessing public records is available for $25, a fee they claim helps them cover the printing costs.
Apparently it’s still 1992 in Oregon, and widespread public adoption of the Internet hasn’t yet taken place. In all seriousness, though, it appears state officials could use a reminder that the marginal cost (MC) of distributing a document to over the internet is $0.
Recently a University of Oregon economics professor has come under fire for trying to improve access to state law. Bill Harbaugh scanned the entire 326-page book and made it available for free on his website. The Oregon Department of Justice has threatened to take legal action on copyright infringement grounds if Professor Harbaugh doesn’t remove the manual from his website.
Professor Harbaugh accuses the state of using copyright to restrict the public’s access to government documents, saying that “trying to use copyright law to keep the public from getting information about how to get public records strikes me as wrong.” Making it difficult for citizens to access and understand the law is pretty shady, no doubt. Producing a helpful manual explaining the law and then using copyright to keep it from being distributed it is just asinine.
Your host Richard Morrison brings you Episode 51 of the LibertyWeek podcast, along with special guest co-host Jeremy Lott and Fellow in Regulatory Studies Ryan Young. We start with Judge Sotomayor in the Senate hot seat, a privacy threat from “smart” passports and why Rep. Dan Lipinski has decided your suitcase is too big. The discussion continues with Rep. John Murtha’s expanding corruption scandal, beer news from the Beaver State and the arrival of Wal-Mart in India. We wrap up with this week’s dose of brothel-themed Olympic News.
Your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist bring you Episode 32 of the LibertyWeek podcast with special guest Sam Kazman and surprise guest co-host Jeremy Lott. We start by looking into the possible future of the Federal Communications Commission with nominee Julius Genachowski about to ascend to the chairmanship, and then take another stroll through the New Great Depression with high-level financial talks between unpopular British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and über-popular President Barack Obama. Oregonian brewers fight a proposed fifteen cents a pint tax in Beer News, and the Lady Madoff tries to stash away tens of millions from the feds in this edition of Scandal Watch. We hit our stride with an interview with CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman and his tales of the icy global warming rally staged earlier this week here in Washington, D.C. Finally, a little belt-tightening Olympic News from the USOC.
Listen here!
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