A Stitch in Haste

We never seem to run out of material:

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ITEM: The New York City Council is set to quash an entire new industry — pedicabs –

It’ll likely soon be the last ride for about half of the city’s freewheeling pedicabs after the City Council voted to start licensing the drivers Wednesday, allowing just 325 in the city.
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[Councilman Leroy] Comrie said the licenses will be given out by lottery, with special consideration for current pedicab owners, of which there are an estimated 500 to 600.
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The legislation was driven by complaints from hotel and theater owners, who said the pedicabs were creating congestions [sic] outside their businesses.

MY TAKE: Pedicabs are a (silly, in my opinion) niche market that will never achieve the critical mass necessary to generate true “congestions” (i.e., negative externalities). I’m far more tempted to believe that this interventionist licensing quota was purchased from the Council by cab drivers rather than by hotels and theaters. But either way, this is a just another blatant and obnoxious example of the Politics of Pull.

One side note:

“When you craft an agreement where everyone is a little unhappy, then you know you’ve done a good job,” said [Comrie].

All politicians are, by definition, moral defectives.

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ITEM: More “price gouging” nonsense –

Although gasoline prices have dropped sharply from last summer, 79 lawmakers sought to send a message Wednesday, introducing a bill that would impose stiff penalties on oil and gas companies for price gouging.

The bill introduced by [Michigan Representative Bart] Stupak and 78 other members of the House would establish the first federal law against price gouging by oil and gas companies, imposing criminal penalties and fines of up to $150 million for corporations and $2 million on individuals.
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[FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras] said a federal law against oil company price gouging would be difficult to enforce and could hurt consumers by causing fuel shortages. She said price gouging is difficult to define and courts have refused to address the question of what is a “reasonable” price in a free market. She maintained it may be difficult to determine what price hikes are legitimate.

Impose massive criminal penalties for a crime that does not exist and is impossible to objectively define, while economist after economist and court after court (and blogger after blogger) keep trying to explain it to you. Remind me again how politicians are the good guys and oil executives the villains?

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ITEM: The next destination on the sex offender mania highway? Mandatory fluorescent green license plates. Why not make them just wear bright orange bulls-eye vests on their backs?

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ITEM: I rarely — okay, never — blog about transgender issues. It’s just not on my radar screen. Until now:

Steve Stanton loved this city [Largo, Florida] he ran for 14 years. This week, he asked the city to love him back — to accept his plans to pursue sex-change operation and let him keep his $140,000 job as city manager.

It didn’t.

Almost 500 people packed into City Hall Tuesday night for a special meeting to decide if they would accept Susan instead of Steve as their top official. And while many spoke eloquently in his defense, more called for his ouster.

“If Jesus was here tonight, I can guarantee you he’d want him terminated,” said Pastor Ron Saunders of Largo’s Lighthouse Baptist Church. “Make no mistake about it.”

At the end of the 3 1/2 hour meeting, the City Commission voted 5-2 to begin the legal process of firing Stanton, only a week after he was forced to reveal his secret by a local newspaper.

MY TAKE: Primitive, irrational cruelty is of course to be expected from a radical Christian cleric. But aren’t politicians supposed to be “enlightened” relative to their constituents? Not in Florida, it seems. I wonder: would a heterosexual female city manager be fired over breast implants? A male heterosexual over pectoral implants? A burn victim over skin grafts? How, exactly, is this any different? What a miserable collection of evil, spiteful neanderthals. It almost makes you wish that there were a Hell — so that they could all burn in it. Because God loves them. Or something. (More thoughts at Pam’s House Blend.)

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ITEM: Let’s end on a more light-hearted note –

Call it Arkansas’ apostrophe act — or, as Rep. Steve Harrelson would have it, “Arkansas’s apostrophe act.”

Harrelson filed a resolution Tuesday to declare the correct possessive form of the state as “Arkansas’s.” The resolution carries no legal weight, Harrelson acknowledged, but said a family friend who works as a historian asked him to carry the grammar fight to the floor.

“This is merely a favor,” said Harrelson, a Democrat. “He’s been asking me to do this for years and years.”

Introducing meaningless gobbledygook bills, that consume legislative resources and waste taxpayer dollars, all because a friend is pestering you about a topic that no rational person gives half a damn about? All politicians are, by definition, moral defectives. (Incidentally, in case anyone indeed gives half a damn: Harrelson is wrong — Arkansas’ is of course the correct usage. His historian friend insists that, surprise, history is determinative. Okay, fine — then perhaps “Congrefs” should intervene in the matter.) (Via Fark.)

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