And in other marijuana-related news …

… former GOP Rep. Bob Inglis thinks that the facts about global warming will eventually persuade his co-partisans. “You can hold back the facts only for so long and eventually they overwhelm you. I think that is happening on climate change. The science is pretty clear.”

Not sure where he’s getting whatever he’s smoking, but it must be pretty potent.

… former GOP Rep. Bob Inglis thinks that the facts about global warming will eventually persuade his co-partisans. “You can hold back the facts only for so long and eventually they overwhelm you. I think that is happening on climate change. The science is pretty clear.”

Not sure where he’s getting whatever he’s smoking, but it must be pretty potent.

I do note that Inglis’s mind isn’t entirely free of its Republican shackles. He wants a carbon tax to be “revenue-neutral,” with the deficit near all-time highs, federal revenue as a share of GDP near post-war lows, and his fellow Republicans busy explaining that we can’t “afford” to maintain our infrastructure, educate our kids, or take care of the needs of those who can’t earn their own way.

 

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com

9 thoughts on “And in other marijuana-related news …”

  1. James Hansen wants it to be revenue neutral as well, see his fee and dividend approach, adding $10 per ton to CO2 emissions per year until we get to $100/ton, with all revenue returned to legal US residents monthly. If you actually want to solve or at least dent the problem, it’s a proposal that merits serious study.

    1. If you actually want to solve or at least dent the problem, it’s a proposal that merits serious study.

      I agree with your assertion, and I wonder whether anything being implemented will look like Hansen’s proposal (nothing will be implemented in the US until after the filibuster goes away). We can’t have brown people receiving any additional money, yasee.

    1. Classical utilitarians (like the British Treasury) oppose hypothecation on Keith’s grounds. For a benevolent dictator or Legislator, it’s just a hindrance to rational allocation, at very best a distraction. In real democracies, it isn’t so simple; especially no tin the USA, with a checks-and balances constitution with deliberately divided authority. FDR’s hypothecated Social Security is stably supported by a majority of US citizens, while most European countries run simple unfunded PAYGO state pension schemes.

      Take the revenue-neutral Australian carbon tax, introduced at the start of this month against bitter opposition, and scare stories about rising prices and the poor spending the rebates on poker machines. Tony Abbott, the climate denier leader of the opposition, has sworn to reverse the carbon tax. But he won’t come clean on reversing the rebates. It’s all magic pony stuff about cutting waste and fraud. This absurd position leads him vulnerable. As most Australians discover the carbon tax doesn’t affect their pocketbooks, I expect the currently unpopular Julia Gillard to recover ground before the next election. The hypothecation was good politics.

      In the USA, what’s the baseline? Current law implies the ending of all the Bush tax cuts, an aggressively deficit-cutting fiscal stance. That leaves plenty of room for a revenue-neutral carbon tax: restore the middle-class tax cuts, balanced by a carbon tax. Current government policy is to end only the tax cuts on high income brackets, a moderately expansionary fiscal stance. That doesn’t leave the same room.

  3. Notice that Inglis lost the primary to “a conservative upstart.” If Inglis were running for re-election, do you think he would have made this statement?

  4. The key word in the description of Mr. Inglis is “former.” That is, he was defeated in 2010 in the Republican primary in large measure because he supported cap and trade policies.

    Inglis is simply wrong that the Republican Party will “come around” to supporting any form of carbon limitation, at least any time soon. The reason is quite simple-the Republican Party relies carbon-extractive industries for much of its funding. Remember, it took the tobacco industry until about 1997 to finally admitted that tobacco use caused cancer. There is no reason to expect that the carbon-extractive industries will make a similar sort of admission in the foreseeable future.

  5. How does that saying go? Never expect a man to understand something when he paycheck depends on him not understanding it. I think. At any rate, it seems like his paychecks stopped…

  7. Sure, climate change will persuade the Republicans with evidence….just like evolution!

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