Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i Reason

Fly, Don’t Run, Away IF YOU’RE TIRED of election bickering and would love to escape to a spot that isn’t in the middle of campaign season, the Reason Sindex has good news for you: Flights are cheap! After a pandemic nosedive, airfares spiked in early 2022 but have since fallen below their prepandemic levels, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since January 2020, airline fares are down 10.2 percent, and in the last year alone are down 2.8 percent. Aside from the COVID-19 era, flights haven’t been this cheap since mid-2009, amid the Great Recession. Consider what you’re getting on those flights too: Airlines are increasingly offering free Wi-Fi and movies or TV to watch, even to flyers with the cheapest tickets. These and the rest of the numbers…

TWO TO THREE miles below our feet lies a nearly inexhaustible source of energy, and a number of startups are working to harness it to provide carbon-free electricity. Unlike solar and wind generation, which depend upon a shining sun or a stiff breeze, geothermal power could offer consistent 24/7 energy derived from heat that increases the deeper into the earth’s crust we go. “Recovery of just 1–2% of the thermal energy stored in hot rock at 3 to 10 km depths would be sufficient to meet world energy consumption for many centuries,” noted a report at the World Geothermal Congress in 2021. The geothermal gradient averages 25–30 degrees Celsius per kilometer, originating from the decay of radioactive elements and residual heat from the earth’s formation. The most easily accessible geothermal…

O LEG TISHCHENKO LOGGED onto the Digital Combat Simulator fan forum in 2011 and posted an innocuous request: “Help needed with eBay item shipping.” Tishchenko was the lead avionics programmer for Eagle Dynamics, which produces the simulation game, and he had found an old F-16 fighter jet flight manual for sale. But the seller wasn’t shipping outside of the United States, so Tishchenko needed someone to pick up the book and mail it to Russia. It made sense. Tishchenko’s job at Eagle Dynamics was “to make a picture that looks like what you’d see in real life,” he told the Russian opposition magazine Meduza. “If a certain device displays velocity in real life, it should display velocity in our games too.” He had ordered dozens of flight manuals before without…

MACHINE AMERICAN ROUNDS JOE LANCASTER American Rounds has rolled out vending machines in a halfdozen grocery stores in the South, with plans to expand later in 2024. The machines are not for lottery tickets or gumballs, but for bullets. I trekked to a Fresh Value grocery store in Pell City, Alabama, to try one out. Shoppers choose from the available stock on a giant touch screen. Selection is limited to common gauges and calibers, with more variety for handguns than for long guns. I grabbed a box of bullets for my .38 special revolver. But for the 1936 16-gauge shotgun passed down from my grandfather, I was out of luck: Only 12- and 20-gauge shells were on offer. Federal law puts the same age limits for legal purchase of ammunition…

ACROSS 1. Prefix with “colon” or “conductor” 5. D.C.’s NHL team, for short 9. “And more like this”: abbr. 12. What’s often missing behind politicians’ promises 14. Bohm of the Phillies 15. Seized via eminent domain, perhaps 17. Zola who wrote “J’Accuse…!” 18. Corriere della ___ (Italian newspaper) 19. Turned in circles 20. 2024 presidential candidate who claims to have “aced” his cognitive tests 23. Agency that leaked asylum seekers’ info in 2022 24. Join the Army, say 25. Café con ___ 27. “Whip It” band 28. Ruby or emerald 29. Had a legislative session 32. Get a lower mortgage rate, for short 34. Prepared an article for publication 38. Field of study 40. 2024 presidential candidate who once dumped a dead bear in Central Park 42. News magazine since…

THE FEAR THAT millions of newly arrived illegal immigrants are swaying federal elections by voting unlawfully has become a recurring theme in debates over immigration. The idea has so much buy-in that earlier this year, House lawmakers passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which calls for states to “take affirmative steps on an ongoing basis to ensure that only U.S. citizens are registered to vote” in federal elections. Sen. Thom Tillis (R–N.C.), who co-sponsored the Senate version of the SAVE Act, implied that it was a timely—and urgent—attempt to ensure election integrity. “As millions of illegal immigrants enter our country because of President [Joe] Biden’s failed border policies,” Tillis said, “it is crucial we safeguard our democratic process by ensuring only American citizens can register and vote in…

BILLIONAIRE ENTREPRENEUR, CO-HOST of ABC’s Shark Tank, and Dallas Mavericks co-owner Mark Cuban’s latest venture is the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company. It aims to tackle the high cost and lack of transparency in the pharmaceutical industry by offering cheap generic drugs. When Cuban spoke with Eric Boehm for the second season of Reason’s limited series podcast Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, he shared the origins of Cost Plus Drugs, the challenges of disruption in the health care sector, and what it means to be a “good” billionaire. Q: If you were a contestant on Shark Tank, how would you explain the idea of Cost Plus Drugs? What’s the elevator pitch? A: Who do you trust within the medical supply chain? Your doctor. Do you think the health care…

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY made history this year by nominating a presidential candidate who supports marijuana legalization. And when Vice President Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, she doubled that distinction. Walz, who in 2023 signed a bill that legalized recreational marijuana in Minnesota, has a longer and more substantial record of supporting drug policy reform than does Harris, a latecomer to the cause. But both Democrats are bolder on this issue than their Republican opponents or President Joe Biden, who endorsed Harris after dropping out of the race in July. As USA Today notes, “Harris has been criticized for aggressively prosecuting weed-related crimes when she was California’s attorney general and San Francisco’s district attorney, particularly given the racial disparities in punishment nationwide.” She opposed a…

IS KAMALA HARRIS running the first ever YIMBY (“yes in my backyard”) campaign for president? She’s certainly talking like she is, even though her housing platform is riddled with policy proposals that will make high housing costs worse. “There’s a serious housing shortage in many places. It’s too difficult to build, and it’s driving prices up,” said Harris in a mid-August campaign speech laying out her economic policy agenda. “As president, I will work in partnership with industry to build the housing we need, both to rent and to buy. We will take down barriers and cut red tape, including at the state and local levels.” The vice president promised to deliver 3 million units of housing affordable to middle-class families by the end of her first term. Her mention…

IN APRIL 1980, two candidates were leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination—Ronald Reagan, who went on to win the election, and George H.W. Bush, who became his vice president. They participated in a presidential forum that month in Houston, and the very first question from the border-state audience touched on the topic of illegal immigration. “Do you think the children of illegal aliens should be allowed to attend the Texas public schools free,” asked the questioner, “or do you think that their parents should pay for their education?” The problem of illegal immigration “has to be solved,” Bush replied. But because “we have kind of made illegal some kinds of labor that I’d like to see legal,” he continued, “we are creating a whole society of really honorable,…

AS A YOUNG medical student, I admired Tony Fauci. I bought and read Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, a vital textbook that Fauci co-edited. In reading his new memoir, On Call, I remembered why I admired him. His concern about his patients’ plights, especially HIV patients, comes through clearly. Unfortunately, Fauci’s memoir omits vital details about his failures as an administrator, an adviser to politicians, and a key figure in America’s public health response to infectious disease threats over the past 40 years. His life story is a Greek tragedy. Fauci’s evident intelligence and diligence are why the country and the world expected so much of him, but his hubris caused his failure as a public servant. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to read Fauci’s memoir and not believe he was genuinely…

When Kelly Titchenell of Greene County, Pennsylvania, called 911 to report that her mother was unresponsive and turning yellow, dispatcher Leon Price at first agreed to send an ambulance but then repeatedly said he needed her mother’s consent, even though she could not speak. He never sent an ambulance, and Titchenell’s mother died the next day from internal bleeding. A Georgia grand jury indicted Hall County Solicitor General Stephanie Woodard on 24 felony counts amid allegations that she spent nearly $4,200 of taxpayer money on herself and family members, which included using the funds to have her dog cremated. Woodard remained in office nearly two more months before resigning. Myanmar’s military government has arrested at least 62 people for selling rice above the maximum mandated price. One of the people…

DESPITE SUFFERING A decisive defeat at the Supreme Court last year, the Biden administration is making a second attempt at sweeping, automatic student loan forgiveness. These new efforts are less ambitious than the previous attempt but still might cost taxpayers billions if enacted. Student loan forgiveness has long been key to President Joe Biden’s education policy. In August 2022, the Education Department unveiled a plan for broad loan forgiveness, seeking to discharge up to $20,000 in federal student loans for individual borrowers earning less than $125,000 and couples earning less than $250,000 annually. The cost of one-time forgiveness was estimated at $360 billion and was quickly challenged in court. The Supreme Court formally blocked the plan in June 2023, ruling it was an unconstitutional exercise of spending authority. The Court…

IN A DECISION issued at the dawn of Prohibition, the Supreme Court quietly gutted a freedom guaranteed in the Bill of Rights: the protection against unwarranted search and seizure. The 100th anniversary of that decision is a perfect time to kill the open fields doctrine. In 1919, revenue agents spotted Charlie Hester selling a quart of moonshine outside his South Carolina home. When confronted, Hester and the buyer each dropped their jugs, which shattered but retained a portion of their contents. That allowed the agents to determine the jugs contained illegally distilled whiskey. Hester challenged his arrest as a violation of the Fourth Amendment: The agents had hopped a fence and traipsed across a pasture, without a warrant, to get to him. In 1924, the Supreme Court sided with the…

KAMALA HARRIS’ MOST consistent political trait may be a lack of consistency. Over the course of her long career, first in California and then in Washington, D.C., the Democrats’ 2024 presidential nominee has been plagued by plausible allegations that she’s hard to pin down and lacks a stable ideological core. She’s a flip-flopper—or, if you want to be charitable, she evolves quickly. Over the summer, Harris’ evolutions kept on coming, with her campaign issuing rapid-fire disavowals of many of her previous positions. Because she ran her failed 2020 presidential primary bid on an ultraprogressive, big-government platform, many of her new positions are noticeably more oriented toward the mainstream—and freedom. Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have even embraced “freedom” as a central theme of their 2024 campaign.…

IT MIGHT SEEM at odds with Florida’s hard-partying reputation that uptight states like Virginia and Missouri legalized recreational pot before it did. After all, Florida is a place where sea turtles get entangled in floating bales of cocaine and the Legislature recently named a highway after Jimmy Buffett. Yet Florida Man still can’t get high for fun—at least not legally. The reason the Sunshine State is one of the last major holdouts for cannabis prohibition is because it is also one of the toughest states to pass a constitutional amendment. Amendments require a 60 percent supermajority vote to be ratified. It’s the highest bar in the country among states with a ballot initiative process, and it has proven fatal to previous legalization campaigns. The first time marijuana legalization was on…

THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE of two decades ago seems almost unrecognizable now. Back then, opposing wars and the surveillance state was so completely coded as left-wing that Republicans regularly denounced Ron Paul as a liberal squish. Some of the same cable news pundits who cheer for Democrats today were almost universally viewed as paladins of the right. Vaccines weren’t really seen as a left/right issue at all—and if you pushed people to tell you which tribe was more open to anti-vaxxism, they’d likely as not point to the crunchy left. Some of the changes since then simply reflect shifts in particular individuals’ images or opinions. (If you think too hard about what the politics of the Taylor Swift/Kanye West beef used to be, you’ll get a headache.) But there’s been a…

10 YEARS AGO November 2014 “On July 14, The New York Times reported that scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had mishandled dangerous strains of anthrax and bird flu, failed to follow correct safety procedures after employees were exposed, and neglected to notify the appropriate supervisors for about one month. This is not the first time we’ve heard about lax oversight and dangerous disregard at the CDC. In 2006, for instance, the agency ‘accidentally sent live anthrax to two other labs, and also shipped out live botulism bacteria.’” VERONIQUE DE RUGY “Government Failure Is Baked In” 15 YEARS AGO November 2009 “Despite all the layoffs, buyouts, and shutdowns that have afflicted the newspaper industry in the last year, there are still 46,700 newsroom employees working at the…