Sightline Daily explores the perversity of requiring bars and other drinking establishments to provide copious car parking. Nearly every city does it, despite the fact that drunk driving kills 11,000 people in the US every year. If there’s anywhere we should nix parking minimums, it’s the places we go specifically to get drunk…
Tag: law
Star CSP Hotline for Bicyclists
Bicyclists are encouraged to use the *CSP hotline to report aggressive drivers to the Colorado State Police (just dial *277 on your mobile). You must obtain the license plate of the vehicle and describe the aggressive behavior. Location, direction of travel, and a driver description are good too, but not mandatory. After 3 reports of the same vehicle, the registered owner gets a warning letter. Subsequent reports will result in a state trooper visiting them in person and taking “appropriate enforcement action”, whatever that means. If you’re not on a state highway, make sure you get them to enter the info into the database before you’re transferred to local law enforcement to make a report. Hopefully they’ll make some kind of annual report as to what actions this system has actually resulted in.
Obama DOJ Leaves Medical Marijuana Patients Sick and Suffering
Obama DOJ Leaves Medical Marijuana Patients Sick and Suffering. So apparently the Obama DOJ is now going to pursue marijuana producers, even if they are in compliance with state regulations. This is a reversal of the administration’s previous position, and it’s absurd. People are going to use weed. Nobody takes the “reefer madness” BS seriously, and it’s been illegal for close to 100 years, and usage has only increased. You can either have it produced by tax paying, locally owned small businesses, or you can funnel a lot of that cash to drug cartels in Mexico and the domestic tax-exempt boutique black marketeers.
A license to lie, backdated
Investment management firms have license to lie, backdated, courtesy of the Supreme Court decision in the Janus case. It’s hard to believe, but the court decided that ultimately, nobody could be held accountable for misleading statements made in the mutual fund’s prospectus. All the more reason to go with Vanguard, as it is the only mutual fund company which is wholly owned by the people whose money they manage, making it in effect a large investing cooperative.
191 Days Without Charge on Vimeo
After more than six months, Assange has yet to be charged with a crime in any nation, and he remains under house arrest.
Virtual prison labor gangs in China
China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work. Prisoners are coal mining by day, gold farming by night… to the benefit the prison guards. Don’t earn enough gold? Get beaten with a pipe. Yet another indication we are living in a cyberpunk novel.
Bike Helmets Not Warranted
A concise explanation from Urban Country on why bike helmets really aren’t warranted. First, cycling just isn’t that dangerous, and we do most safe things without a helmet. Second, strongly promoting or legally requiring them discourages cycling in general, and fewer bikes on the road is less safe for cyclists, less healthy for society, more expensive in terms of infrastructure, pollution, etc. Third, bike helmets aren’t really designed to deal with serious accidents — the ones that kill or maim you. And fourth, focusing the blame for what danger does exist for cyclists on the cyclists themselves, distracts from the real bicycle safety issue, which is cars.
US Ikea workers complain about factory conditions
There’s some controversy over working conditions at an Ikea plant in Virginia. Apparently wages start at $8/hr, with 12 days of paid vacation (8 of which are determined by the company). Oh, and also you’ll often be informed Friday evening that you have no choice but to work over the weekend too. And don’t even think about unionizing. Sweet! It’s just like we keep saying about all those workers in China that make our cheap plastic crap. “At least they’ve got jobs.” I sense that we’re going to have to re-learn all of the lessons about balancing the rights of labor and capital that we already learned so bloodily about 100 years ago. Only now, maybe we get to learn it in the context of becoming an exploited low-wage nation in a global economy. Ikea workers doing the same jobs in Sweden make $19/hr and get 5 weeks of paid vacation a year. And they’re all unionized.
A bicycle reverie from Clever Cycles
Oregon’s plans to legislatively enable peer-to-peer car sharing have put cargo bike retailer Clever Cycles into some kind of (wonderful) bicycle trance, envisioning a world where the motorcars simply rust away. They already sit 92% idle after all.
High-Tech Flirting Turns Explicit
High-Tech Flirting Turns Explicit. Virtually all the damage resulting from “sexting” is done by the law, not the digital nudity. Eighth graders get naked. With each other. Theyve been doing this for a long time actually. And unlike getting pregnant at 14, having some nude pictures floating around is only serious if we choose to make it serious. It wasn’t so long ago that that was the age when people started getting married, after all. Instead of destroying their lives by registering them as sex offenders and trying to scare the other teens, why not accept it and change our norms surrounding nudity?