New York’s 1895 Bakeshop Act … banned bakery employees from working more than 10 hours per day or 60 hours per week. In its 5-4 decision [Lochner v. New York (1905)], the Court nullified this provision for violating the liberty of contract secured by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. …

George Mason University legal scholar David Bernstein has thoroughly documented, the mainstream version of the Lochner story, which pits evil bosses against viciously exploited workers, bears zero resemblance to the historical evidence. The real origins of the Bakeshop Act lie in an economic conflict between unionized New York bakers, who labored in large shops, and their non-unionized, mostly immigrant competitors, who tended to work longer hours in small, old-fashioned bakeries. As Bernstein observed, “a ten-hour day law would not only aid those unionized workers who had not successfully demanded that their hours be reduced, but would also help reduce competition from nonunionized workers.”

To put it another way, Lochner v. New York secured a fundamental right against arbitrary government interference while undercutting an act of naked economic protectionism.

This is an example of what economist Bruce Yandle calls “Bootleggers and Baptists”:

Here is the essence of the theory: durable social regulation evolves when it is demanded by both of two distinctly different groups. “Baptists” point to the moral high ground and give vital and vocal endorsement of laudable public benefits promised by a desired regulation. Baptists flourish when their moral message forms a visible foundation for political action. “Bootleggers” are much less visible but no less vital. Bootleggers, who expect to profit from the very regulatory restrictions desired by Baptists, grease the political machinery with some of their expected proceeds. They are simply in it for the money.

Examples I can think of include:

• How Mattel benefits from new requirements for testing toys.  It gives them a competitive advantage over small toy manufacturers.
• Judge Jim Gray on The Six Groups Who Benefit From Drug Prohibition (Reason.tv video): drug lords, juvenile gangs, law enforcement, tough-talking politicians, prison industry, terrorist organizations.
• Anti-trust laws to squash competition. See Antitrust Policy: the case for repeal, by Dominick T. Armentano. For example, page 10 of Armentano’s book on Google and his 2009 op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor.
• Medical licensing.

Drop the charges. Even if Brigham’s refusing the police officer’s requests justified his arrest, it’s not worth it. Our tax dollars are better spent on prosecuting criminals who actually hurt people, rather than on an eccentric guy who might drag the city in a costly lawsuit for being silenced at a City Council meeting.

Two minutes. That’s how long the Council could have waited to avoid the controversy. Brigham spoke for one minute before Council members asked the arresting officer to, in the officer’s words, “remove Brigham from the room.” The Channel 8 video (on the Camera site) shows that Bringham remained polite when speaking and knew of his three-minute time allotment.

The City Council website says that members of the public “may address any city business” during the public participation segment. Before being cut off, the one issue Brigham explicitly mentioned concerned campaign contributions accepted by Council member Suzy Ageton.  Mayor Osborne said “It’s not appropriate to call out any individual Council members.”  This isn’t “city business”? Brigham wasn’t there to discuss a Council member’s hair style or taste in movies, after all.

Even if you think Brigham’s issue was not “city business,” there must have been a better way than to involve the police. Brigham was not intimidating or threatening anyone. Even rudeness would have been an improvement. For example, the Council members could have started texting or web-surfing on their phones while Brigham finished. We’d all be better off.

They are critical votes., as the March 5 Denver Post relates

President Barack Obama has laid out the path for Democrats’ last-ditch effort to save health care reform, and despite some relief among lawmakers that a final strategy is set, it’s almost certainly headed for a white-knuckle finish.

The sticky choices faced by Democratic Reps. Betsy Markey of Fort Collins and Diana DeGette of Denver show the hurdles confronting House leaders as they try to wrangle the votes to approve the Senate version of the bill, then fix key elements through a maneuver known as reconciliation. …

As co-chair of the Pro Choice Caucus and a fierce abortion-rights advocate, DeGette is facing strong pressure from national groups not to approve a health care bill with the current language restricting insurance coverage of abortion contained in the Senate bill — but the reconciliation process allows no clear way to change it. …

Markey, who declined requests to be interviewed for this story, is a vulnerable Democrat who last year voted against a reform bill viewed skeptically by moderates and conservatives in her Republican-leaning district.

But that vote has cost her dearly with party loyalists back home, and she’s now squeezed between the unpleasant prospect of alienating either her base Democratic voters or the independents she’ll need in a tough 2010 fight.

Read the rest of the article: Markey, DeGette in middle of health care reform quagmire.

Contact Betsy Markey here.  Contact Diana DeGette here.

President Obama finally made it official yesterday:  he wants Congress to ignore Senate rules – and the American people – and use a parliamentary trick called “reconciliation” to pass his health care takeover legislation.  Fortunately, there’s a catch: before the Senate can use reconciliation to force through Obama’s tweaks, the House would have to pass the Senate health care bill.  And we must stop them.

In his remarks the president demanded that Congress cave in and vote “in the next few weeks.”

The key vote will now occur in the House of Representatives – perhaps within 10 to 12 days – and we have to win it.  That’s because it’s impossible for the Senate to make changes via reconciliation until after the Senate bill has passed the House.  Of course, once the Senate bill passes the House, President Obama will sign it and it will become the law of the land – whether or not the reconciliation trick makes some changes around the edges. …

I’m asking you to take 3 steps.

1. Call and email your member of Congress in the next 24 hours.  CLICK HERE to email your member, and CLICK HERE to call your member; – based on your zip code we can provide the right information for your representative.  Tell them to vote NO on the corrupt, big government Senate health care takeover bill and tell them Americans do not want this parliamentary trick called “reconciliation.”

2.  Forward this email to your friends, family, co-workers, and fellow activists across the nation asking them to do the same thing.  They may not know how much the House vote matters. Your friends and family need to hear from someone they know and trust that now is a crucial time on health care and protecting our freedoms.

3.  Commit to being a part of the ”Honk Against the Health Care Takeover” event on March 16.  Here’s how it will work.  On March 16 at 12 noon your time, we’re asking you to drive to your nearest congressional district office CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICE NEAREST YOU and drive around the office for at least 15 minutes occasionally honking your horn. Our goal is to have Americans across the nation telling the politicians to keep their hands off our health care through this “Honk Against the Health Care Takeover” effort.

Read the whole post: The biggest health care vote yet.

School reformers generally agree that the most important education resource is the teacher. But one of the biggest obstacles to putting a good instructor in every classroom is a tenure system that forces principals to hire and retain teachers based on seniority instead of performance.

California grants tenure to teachers after merely two years in the classroom. New York, like most other states, makes teachers wait a grand total of three years before giving them a job for life. In most cases tenure is granted automatically unless administrators object, which is rare.

A recent report in the Los Angeles Times revealed that the LA school district, the nation’s second-largest after New York City’s, “routinely grants tenure to new teachers after cursory reviews—and sometimes none at all.” According to the Times, “the district’s evaluation of teachers does not take into account whether students are learning. Principals are not required to consider testing data, student work or grades.”

Read the rest: No (Tenured) Teacher Left Behind.

For suggestion on more choice, quality, and competition in education, see the Cato Institute’s school choice page.  This includes James Tooley’s research on how parents in impoverished countries are forgoing “free” government-run education for schools that charge $1 per week.  John Stossel reports:

See the rest of John Stossel’s recent show on education.

Here’s a longer video about private schools in slums around the world out-performing government-run schools:

Adaptable commuter transit routes, reducing traffic congestion with demand-sensitive road pricing, and minimizing both free-riders and forced funding. These goals should guide transportation policy. Taxing everyone to fund static commuter rail puts FasTracks on the wrong track.

RTD’s low-ball cost estimate is not surprising. In “16 Ways RTD Deceived Voters About FasTracks” economist Randal O’Toole notes that Southwest and Southeast light-rail lines costs 28% and 59% more than original estimates, respectively.

The controversy should not stop here, however. O’Toole shows how RTD has sold FasTracks with false advertising.

If FasTracks reduces traffic congestion, it would be negligible and short-lived given increasing vehicle traffic. It won’t reduce pollution, either. Denver’s light-rail trains emit more carbon dioxide per passenger mile than SUVs. “FasTracks adds almost six times as much nitrogen oxides into the air as all the cars it takes off the road,” O’Toole concludes.

The proposed Northwest rail corridor between Longmont, Boulder and Denver compares poorly to bus rapid transit. O’Toole summarizes RTD’s investment study: “Bus rapid transit was ten times more cost-effective at relieving congestion than commuter rail: it cost less than 60 percent as much to build, cost half as much to operate, and provided almost six times as much congestion relief.”

Bus rapid transit is just one alternative O’Toole discusses in his on-line “Mobility Plan for Denver” and new book Gridlock. Adding express toll lanes, coordinating traffic signals, and lifting restrictions on private transit services can also reduce traffic congestion and increase our mobility.

HB 1193 requires out-of-state online retailers to collect sales tax from Colorado customers if those businesses have a relationship with a local “affiliate.” …

Democratic lawmakers are sleepwalking toward approval of a bill that could have the state dunning tens of thousands of Coloradans for unpaid sales tax on Internet purchases with retailers such as Amazon. Now won’t that be a popular election-year gift to voters?

…  For any on the fence, let me offer a short list of the bill’s deficiencies.

* It is almost certain to put Coloradans out of work.

* It won’t produce nearly the promised $4.7 million in tax revenue for the next fiscal year.

* It could result in the state harassing citizens for often paltry sums that most didn’t even know they officially owed – and which almost no one actually pays.

Carroll writes that “[f]our House Democrats did break ranks to oppose House Bill 1193, which survived by just a single vote in its journey to the Senate.”  Read the whole article: Amazon buyers, beware: State has it in for you.

Also see this post from ReveNews: Overstock Threatens to Terminate Colorado Affiliates Over Pending Legislation.

And don’t forget to contact your Colorado state senator!

Regarding this case, the left is perfectly consistent with its Marxist roots. Marx wrote, “The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”

In simpler terms, you are just too stupid to independently evaluate a film or ad funded by a corporation. You need the benevolent nannies of the left to help you think straight.

… However, trying to save people from their own stupidity only entrenches stupidity. People cannot choose wisely if they lack the capacity to choose badly. In terms of free speech, people must be free to say and believe stupid things, if we wish to preserve the right and ability to say and believe profundities.

Read the whole article.  See also:

Dispelling the Top Five Citizens United Decision Myths – Institute for Justice

When Individuals Form Corporations, They Don’t Lose Their Rights, Ilya Shapiro, Cato-at-Liberty. Great arguments, and links to others.

Why we’re “crazy” about health care choice

By Brian T. Schwartz and Linda Gorman

Sentinel Editor Dave Perry dismisses the Colorado Right to Health Care Choice Initiative as “crazy” and says its supporters “clearly have lost” their minds (Opinion, January 21).

The Initiative would prohibit Colorado government from requiring you to purchase health insurance.

Mr. Perry thinks that mandatory insurance is justified because “those without health insurance are driving up the cost of health care for every American.” But these added costs are trivial compared to the amount that mandatory insurance would increase premiums and taxes.

Read the rest of the article at PatientPowerNow.org:  Why we’re “crazy” about health care choice.

How times have changed. Now the president reads the address, but others write it. Nor is the address to Congress. It’s an infomercial for the president and his party targeting the electorate. President Barack Obama said “we can’t wage a perpetual campaign.” Yet he just had to mention that he reads letters from children “each night.”

Mentioning “the children” has become typical of presidential addresses, as have other themes. As Ted DeHaven’s blog post titled “Bush’s Third Term” shows, Obama’s statements on jobs, energy, housing, and other topics sound so similar to Bush’s, you might think they have the same speechwriters.

Typical of modern State of the Union addresses, Obama’s made grand promises including special-interest tax breaks, tax “credits” for those who pay no income taxes, new government programs, and more government fixes to problems made worse by previous fixes.

To deliver the change he promised, the president should have shown Congress a rap video: “Fear the Boom and Bust” by EconStories.tv. With insight, wit, and rhyme, Friedrich Hayek explains how Keynesian fiscal policy fuels economic booms and busts. “It’s legit, it’s really good rapping,” Ke$ha told NPR.

Congressmen would see in themselves what Nobel Laureate Hayek calls the “fatal conceit.” Says Hayek: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

The Daily Camera (Boulder) published this article on January 30, 2010.