by Guest Blogger Steve Vaughan
Our favorite Chinese restaurant is a five-minute drive from our house. For my money–which they get a lot of–it’s the best in town.
Whenever we order from–whether it’s dinner for eight adults or a snack for Alex and me–they give us the same delivery time, “45 minute.” And the food is always here in 30 minutes, tops. And the order is always correct and the food is always great. I’m pretty sure they know the delivery isn’t going to take 45 minutes, but they build in time to deal with complications. If the food gets here in 45 minutes, we’re satisfied.
That’s a smart way to run a business. It’s a smart way to run public policy too.
Unfortunately for us, our favorite restaurant is “closed until further notice.” I’m not sure why. It has a very tiny dining room. I’d think delivery and takeout makes up a big part of their business. I hope no one is ill.
So, when Alex and I wanted Chinese for dinner a couple of weeks ago, we had to try a new place. They were even closer to our house. With a decent size catapult they could literally have thrown the food to our porch.
They promised the food in 30 minutes and got it there in 20, but part of the order was wrong and the rest was awful. To be fair the new place confounded my Egg Roll Test for Chinese restaurants. The egg rolls were good and Alex said his hot and sour soup was delicious. (Yes, my 12-year-old eats hotter food than I do. Don’t judge.)
But when we turned to our entrees the corner cutting was obvious. Alex had his usual, chicken fried rice and I felt like something simple and had shrimp fried rice.
Okay, first, fried rice is supposed to be fried. This was white rice with a few peas and carrots thrown in.
Second, the protein is supposed to be cooked in the rice, at least briefly. Here it had been tossed on top of the previously prepared rice. My entree had tiny pink baby shrimp of the kind I would expect to find garnishing a salad. They tasted okay, but were wrong for the dish.
About 30 seconds after he started his rice, Alex held out a piece of chicken on a fork and said, “Try this.” He was doing that thing where you can’t believe how bad something tastes until you get a second opinion. Although we teach Alex never to spit out food, I spit it into the kitchen trash can. I don’t know what they did to that chicken but they made it foul, not fowl.
And so this restaurant will never get another dollar from us, showing that cutting corners is a bad way to run a business. Or to create public policy. Particularly public health policy.
If you’re following along this far, you probably know where I’m going with this.
The majority of the nation’s governors–Democrats and Republicans alike–and all of our leading healthcare experts are running a good restaurant. They know, that in the biggest public health emergency in 100 years, there are potentially a lot of “unknown unknowns“ out there. So they are setting goals for ending social distancing that are data-driven, which take into account how much we have flattened the curve and the danger of new outbreaks if restrictions are relaxed too soon.
Unfortunately, they are competing with an unlicensed food truck parked on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The administration’s response to this crisis has been driven by everything but the data. By Trump’s arrogance and insecurity. By partisanship. By wishful thinking. And by an almost instinctive anti-intellectualism from the president and his supporters.
Some are saying they are willing to die to restart the economy. You can count me out of storming that hill.
Others, “Corona Virus Resisters,” are flouting state regulations and gathering in large groups. As long as they keep to themselves, great. They will shortly prove Darwin (who they probably don’t believe in) right. However, if they endanger other people, they should be arrested like anyone else who is a threat to public safety.
What the emergence of these groups show is that in the Age of Trump, stupidity is no longer a character trait–it’s an ideology.
These people are fools. Let us not suffer fools gladly.
And let us demand that US public health policy is run at least as well as a good Chinese restaurant.
Steve Vaughan is a reporter and writer residing in Richmond, Virginia. He holds a degree in Political Science from VCU and a masters in Wise Ass from the School of Life.
Bernie has now dropped out of the race, leaving us with Biden as our candidate.
Look, I’m an old guy. The only time my choice in the primaries won the nomination and the presidency was with Obama. I’m used to not always getting my way — that’s how democracy works.
Biden wasn’t even in my top 5 this time, but he’s still going to be a gigantic improvement over Trump. (Hell, most Republicans would be an improvement, so that’s not saying much.)
Refusing to vote for him because he isn’t perfect is like a kid holding his breath till he turns blue and gets his way. Let’s be adults. Sometimes our choices aren’t perfect.
I currently have an appeal pending in the Pennsylvania Superior Court regarding our DUI laws as they relate to the presence of marijuana in one’s system. The Pennsylvania ACLU has joined my appeal.
Here’s the press release my law office has prepared:
The current DUI law punishes anyone with any amount of marijuana in their system and as such is unconstitutional, according to Fisher and Fisher Attorney Michael A. Ventrella of Stroudsburg. He has filed an appeal to the Pennsylvania Superior Court on this issue which has been joined by the Pennsylvania ACLU.
“The DUI law was written years ago, before there was legal marijuana in many states and before Pennsylvania provided for medical marijuana,” Ventrella explains. “The law says that if you have any amount of marijuana in your system while driving, you are automatically guilty of Driving Under the Influence even if the marijuana is no longer affecting you.”
The case on appeal concerns a driver who was pulled over for a taillight violation. The officer thought he smelled marijuana so requested the driver to give blood to prove he was not under the influence. No marijuana was found on the driver or in the car. The blood test came back with an inactive metabolite of marijuana in the driver’s system. He was charged and at his trial, the Commonwealth’s expert witness testified that an “inactive metabolite” meant that he had consumed the marijuana possibly days earlier and that the presence of the metabolite did not affect his driving in the slightest.
Under Pennsylvania DUI law, you can be charged with DUI if it is clear that your driving was impaired due to alcohol or drugs, but you can also be charged with DUI simply if there is the presence of marijuana in your system.
The court, bound by the law, found him not guilty of driving while impaired but guilty of DUI for having the marijuana in his system.
“This means that if you consume marijuana in a state where it is legal and then come to Pennsylvania, you can be prosecuted for DUI even if your driving was not impaired in the slightest,” Ventrella explained. “It also means that technically, anyone who has a medical marijuana card and uses their prescription legally can never drive in Pennsylvania.”
Ventrella pointed out in his brief to the Superior Court that the law punishes legal behavior and is therefore overbroad and unconstitutional. “The law needs to be rewritten to adjust to the changes that marijuana laws have had on society,” Ventrella says, “but the legislature of Pennsylvania has yet to do what other states have done to remedy the situation.”
The Pennsylvania ACLU joined in with the appeal and filed an amicus brief, emphasizing that the law does not define the word “metabolite” and is therefore vague and unconstitutional.
The Superior Court originally scheduled a hearing on the appeal for April but has cancelled it due to the corona virus shut-down. It is unclear whether it will be rescheduled or if the Court will simply make a decision based on the briefs.
UPDATE: The Superior Court denied the appeal by ignoring pretty much everything we had argued. The case is now before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which has not yet decided whether to accept it.
UPDATE 2 (JULY 2021): The Pennsylvania Supreme Court refused to take the case, and did not give a reason. So now my client has to go to jail even though he wasn’t driving impaired and the marijuana in his system was inactive.
At the recent Democratic debate, all of the candidates were asked if the convention should nominate the candidate with the most delegates even if it wasn’t a majority. Only Bernie said yes.
It used to be that each state would pick delegates to go to a convention and then, at the convention, they’d all debate and decide who should be the candidate. Then states started deciding that it would be better if delegates were committed to a specific candidate when they went, so they started having caucuses to decide this and then later primaries (which, in the history of this country, is a fairly new development). And even then, these committed delegates were allowed to change if no one candidate could get a majority.
Bernie and his supporters are now screaming and yelling that this is undemocratic and is just a ploy to keep Bernie from getting the nomination if he has the most delegates.
Apparently, this manipulative ploy is so devious that it was established long before Bernie was ever born, simply in an effort to keep him from becoming the candidate.
If Bernie doesn’t like the way the way the Democrats set their rules for the way they choose their candidate, maybe he should have worked to change it during all those years when he was a member of the party. Oh, right.
Here’s why we should not nominate whoever has the most delegates.
Suppose Bernie ends up with 32% of the delegates and Biden has 31%. This is not a glowing endorsement for Bernie, is it? Should we really be handing the nomination to someone who maybe only has a one delegate advantage, especially when the majority of delegates there support someone else?
Or worse yet: Suppose Bloomberg manages to convince 32%? Clearly, 68% of the delegates wanted someone else. Bloomberg shouldn’t get the nomination when a majority doesn’t want him, should he? No, what should happen is what works in a democracy: compromise. Negotiations. Working to find a candidate that the majority can support.
Now if Bernie ends up with 49.9% of the delegates, then yeah, politically it’s probably a good idea for him to be nominated on the second ballot. It would look terrible otherwise.
But to just make a blanket statement that it should go to the person with the most votes even if it is a minority of those voting is ridiculous.
ventrellaquest.com 