Tag: land of the free

New York Republicans want to ban cannabis use in public

Republicans in the state Legislature are calling for a ban on smoking and consuming cannabis in public places in New York as the legal marketplace is taking hold. 

The measure, backed by state Sen. George Borrello and Assemblyman Michael Novakhov, would allow local governments to put local laws in place to ban the public consuming of marijuana. 

“State residents, including children, are now regularly assailed with the pungent odor of marijuana on public sidewalks, in parking lots and other public spaces,” Borrello said. “Many New Yorkers don’t want to be exposed to either the effects of marijuana smoke or its smell and don’t want their children subjected to it.”

New York first legalized cannabis in 2021, though the marketplace for legal retail sales has been slow to build. Lawmakers who supported legalization have framed it around the need to reverse the enforcement of previously harsh marijuana laws that were previously in place. 

State lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this year moved to address the sale of cannabis without a license through civil fines and the potential closure of businesses. 

Regulators are also trying to encourage further legal cannabis sales, including allowing sales at public events.

Republicans want fines of up to $125 for consuming marijuana in a public space. The Clean Air Act, as well as local bans on smoking, already place limits on marijuana smoking in public. 

Keep reading

Alabama mother and son left ‘shocked’ after his lemonade stand was reported to state labor department

An Alabama eight-year-old had his sights set on Disney World and decided to open up a lemonade stand to help him get there. However, he and his mother received a surprising call that added a wrench in their plans.

Cam and his mother Cristal Johnson were contacted by the Alabama Labor Department over a complaint that the lemonade stand violated child labor laws. 

“Needless to say, I was very shocked and saddened by the fact that anyone found wrong in what I was trying to do. I was trying to do a good thing, give back to my community and to find out that someone insinuated that I was trying to labor minors, that was…it was pretty sad,” Cristal said on “Fox & Friends First” Thursday. 

Eight-year-old Cam said he started his lemonade stand as a way to make money to go to Disney World. 

“I tried to ask my mom, ‘can I go to the Disney World?’” Cam told host Todd Piro.

After Cam started his lemonade stand, his mother Cristal put up a flyer encouraging other kids to take up a “one-day apprenticeship” at the stand to learn the value of hard work and money.

The flyer said Cristal and Cam were looking to have two kids joins as a “smiler” and “greeter.”

Keep reading

As Violent Crime Skyrockets, Cops Arrest Innocent Man for Chalking Sidewalk Without a Permit

Earlier this year, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus presented his crime report to a public safety committee. It showed that crimes against people, property, and society skyrocketed in 2022 when compared to the previous year. McManus told city leaders he is ‘strongly concerned’ about the violence.

“With homicide, we saw a pretty dramatic increase of 43%,” said McManus. “[There were] 231 homicides in 2022.”

One would think that given this shocking increase in criminal behavior that police would turn their efforts to prevent such things. But one would be wrong.

In the throes of this stark rise in crime, where law enforcement officers can’t even be bothered to respond to 911 calls about serious offenses such as stolen vehicles and assaults, the Leon Valley Police Department found the time and resources to apprehend an innocent chalk artist. This artist was arrested on public property, moments before a storm, for the crime of sketching non-permanent designs on the sidewalk. Yes, you read it right.

Lakey Hinson, a chalk enthusiast and the victim of this absurd overreach of authority, was merely adorning a public pavement in front of the Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union one balmy afternoon on May 15. He was interrupted mid-art by officers Jorge Breton and Alan Gonzalez. The veteran officer and his trainee had embarked on this adventure in response to an anonymous tip of ‘public property defacement’, as narrated by the Express-News.

Keep reading

Even Pennsylvanians Can Now Buy Wine in Grocery Stores, but New Yorkers Still Can’t

When I lived in New York City a couple of decades ago, you could buy beer in grocery stores but not wine. Although that remains true, a bill introduced by state Sen. Liz Krueger (D–Manhattan) would finally allow New Yorkers to buy wine in stores that also sell food—an option that shoppers in most states (including Texas, where I live) already take for granted.

As usual, the opposition to alcohol liberalization in New York is led by independent liquor merchants, who see competition as an existential threat. The chief backer of Krueger’s bill is Wegmans, the Rochester-based grocery chain that also played a central role in making beer more accessible in my home state of Pennsylvania.

Both of these stories illustrate how a company pursuing profit can promote consumer choice while businesses that benefit from the legal status quo squeal in outrage at the possibility of new competition. These struggles against absurd alcohol rules also show how such irksome restrictions can inspire bipartisan support for deregulation, scrambling the usual assumptions about which party tends to favor government control over economic activity.

Pennsylvania’s alcohol regulations are even more restrictive and convoluted than New York’s. Distribution is controlled by the state, which operates stores that sell liquor and wine but not beer. Prior to 2007, Pennsylvanians had two options for buying beer: They could pick up an overpriced six-pack or two at a restaurant, or they could buy a keg or a case from a state-authorized distributor. But thanks to Wegmans and a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision triggered by its innovative end run around the state’s arbitrary rules, Pennsylvanians were able to begin buying beer at grocery stores, like the residents of all but a few other states.

Keep reading

Vermont bans owning, running paramilitary training camps

Vermont on Monday made it a crime to own or operate paramilitary training camps in the state after Republican Gov. Phil Scott signed legislation introduced in response to a firearms training facility built without permits that neighbors called a menace.

Violators face up to five years in prison or a fine up to $50,000 or both, according to the law. It prohibits a person from teaching, training, or demonstrating to anyone else the use, application, or making of a firearm, explosive, or incendiary device capable of causing injury or death that will be used in or in furtherance of a civil disorder. It also bans a person from assembling with others for such training, instruction or practice.

The gun violence prevention group led by former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, of Arizona, who was forced to give up her political career when she was disabled in a 2011 assassination attempt, praised Vermont’s law.

“Today, Vermont joins 25 other states that prohibit firearms training for anti-government paramilitary activity,” said Allison Anderman, senior counsel and the leader of Giffords’ Guns & Democracy project. “Private paramilitary activity is illegal in Vermont and has been associated with the intimidation of people exercising their constitutional rights across the US,” she said by email. “This is a commonsense policy that will help reduce the spread of dangerous, illegal, and anti-government firearms intimidation.”

The Vermont law does not apply to legitimate law enforcement activity or lawful activity by Norwich University or any other educational institution where military science is taught. it also doesn’t apply to self-defense instruction or practice without the intent of causing a civil disorder; firearms instruction that is intended to teach the safe handling and use of firearms; and any lawful sports or activities like hunting, target shooting and firearms collection.

Keep reading

A Home-Based Baker Shouldn’t Have To Choose Between Her Dog and Her Business

Hula is a good girl. She gets overly excited when guests visit, and sometimes she pokes her nose through the backyard fence and barks. But she follows one important rule: She avoids the room between the kitchen and driveway.

No dogs are allowed inside. Hula, a 7-year-old Belgian shepherd mix, learned quickly when her human parents renovated the space in November 2022, adding an oven, freezer, cooktop, and mixers. “She knows not to go in there,” says Hula’s mom, who uses the pet-free zone for a homemade cookie business and asked to remain anonymous for this piece.

The door mostly stays closed anyway, creating clear boundaries between the main kitchen for family meals and the workspace for “cottage food,” which refers to homemade food for sale. The setup eliminates any sanitation concerns about indoor pets.

Keep reading

Police Bust Into Arkansas Man’s Home for Piercing His Son’s Ear

A video that’s making its way around the web shows police busting into an Arkansas man’s home for piercing his son’s ear.

The video shows five police officers storming a Tontitown, Arkansas man’s home for “illegally” piercing his own son’s ear.

The man arrested in the video was Jeremy Sherland and in the video, Sherland is in disbelief that the police were arresting him for practicing “Body art without a license.”

Sherland’s son could also be heard in the video saying, “I wanted my ears pierced.”

Keep reading

Why These Popular Chocolate Easter Eggs Are Banned in the US, despite Being Legal Almost Everywhere Else

In January 2011, Manitoba resident Lind Bird was stopped at the US border in northern Minnesota and selected for a random search of her vehicle. During the search, US border officials found and seized a small piece of contraband. Bird was unaware that the item was illegal to bring into the US, but she was informed that she could face a $300 fine if she was caught with it in the country.

Bird was allowed to continue her trip, but a few days later she received a seven-page letter from the US government asking her to formally authorize the destruction of the item that was seized or pay $250 for them to store the item if she wished to contest the seizure.

The item in question was a small chocolate egg with a toy inside, called a Kinder Surprise.

Understandably, Bird found the entire ordeal quite bizarre.

“It’s just a chocolate egg,” Bird said. “And they were making a big deal…It’s ridiculous. It’s so ridiculous.”

When she got the letter, she had trouble taking it seriously. “I thought it was a joke,” she said. “I had to read it twice. But they are serious.”

A similar incident took place in June 2012, when two Seattle men were driving back into the US after a visit to Vancouver. After border officials discovered six Kinder Surprise eggs in their car, the men were detained for two hours and told by a border guard that they could be fined $2,500 per egg.

“I thought [the American border guard] had done his search and hadn’t found anything, and he was joking with us,” said Chris Sweeney, one of the men detained.

“He wasn’t joking.”

“We really didn’t know what was going to happen,” Sweeney continued. “I didn’t know if maybe this was some really important thing that I just wasn’t aware of and they were going to actually give us the fine of $15,000.”

After waiting for 2 hours, the men were allowed to carry on with their trip and take the eggs with them.

“If it was so important that we be stopped and scolded and threatened with thousands of dollars in fines, you’d think it would at least be important enough for them to take [the Kinder eggs], but they didn’t,” Sweeney said.

“Keeping the border secure is obviously important,” he continued, “but somebody needs to take a common sense look at this rule and probably just get rid of it.”

Keep reading

Massachusetts’ Tobacco Ban Went as Badly as You’d Expect

In November 2019, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to ban the sale of all flavored tobacco and nicotine products, including flavored electronic cigarettes and menthol cigarettes. Four additional states have since imposed flavor bans on some products and similar policies are under consideration in many other jurisdictions. Such bans are popular among legislators and anti-smoking groups, but the latest data from Massachusetts highlight the ban’s unintended consequences. The state’s experiment in prohibition has led to thriving illicit markets, challenges for law enforcement, and prosecution of sellers.

Massachusetts’ Multi-Agency Illegal Tobacco Task Force publishes an annual report providing insight into how the state’s high taxes and flavor prohibitions affect the illicit market. As opponents of the flavor ban predicted, the law has incentivized black market sales of menthol cigarettes and flavored e-cigarettes (“ENDS,” or “electronic nicotine delivery systems,” in the parlance of regulators). “The Task Force identifies the cross-border smuggling of untaxed flavored ENDS products, cigars, and menthol cigarettes as the primary challenge for tobacco enforcement in the Commonwealth,” according to the report. “Inspectors and investigators are routinely encountering or seizing menthol cigarettes, originally purchased in surrounding states, and flavored ENDS products and cigars purchased from unlicensed distributors operating both within and outside the Commonwealth.”

The Massachusetts Department of Revenue reports conducting more than 300 seizures in FY 2022, compared to 170 in 2021 and just 10 in 2020. Many of these involve substantial amounts of products and missed tax revenue. For example, a single search warrant yielded “a large quantity of untaxed ENDS products, [other tobacco products], and Newport Menthol cigarettes affixed with New Hampshire excise tax stamps” representing an estimated $940,000 in unpaid excise taxes.

Revenue officials are seizing so many illicit products, in fact, that they are running out of room to store them. The “Task Force’s increased investigative and enforcement activities during the past year have led to the seizure of large quantities of illegal tobacco products, resulting in a strain on the Task Force’s storage capacity,” says the report. But fear not, they are working on leasing additional space “that will significantly increase storage capacity and allow for continued increased enforcement.”

Keep reading

Large numbers of Americans want a strong, rough, anti-democratic leader

It might be comforting to think that American democracy has made it past the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. But our research shows that a wide range of the American people, of all political stripes, seek leaders who are fundamentally anti-democratic.

It’s true that many who participated in the insurrection are facing consequences, including prison time. Many candidates for state office who falsely claimed that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election lost their races. And the congressional committee investigating the insurrection voted to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal charges.

But more than 100 members of Congress who objected to the results of a free and fair election won their reelection campaigns. And at least seven people who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6 have been elected to state legislatures and two have been elected to Congress.

As scholars interested in how committed citizens are to democracy, we wanted to measure whether regular Americans want someone who will abide by democratic traditions and practices or dispense with them.

Using a nationally representative sample of 1,500 respondents, we found that a large proportion of Americans are willing to support leaders who would violate democratic principles.

Keep reading