Morning Ed: Government {2016.05.24.T}
A victim of child sex abuse asked for and received euthanasia in the Netherlands.
Italy is trying to streamline its parliamentary and federal systems to add a bit of stability.
Setting aside the question of the ethics of ecigarette bans, it says something pretty screwy about public health advocacy when a paper has to be written to say “Hey, let’s not withhold information and/or be dishonest unless you know we have a really good reason to.”
It’s not expected to become law, but the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee voted to allow medical marijuana. Meanwhile, in Louisiana it’s a done deal.
Decriminalization of marijuana has been good for white tokers, but not so good for minority ones or drivers.
The Secretary of Energy is concerned over the closures of nuclear power plants.
The Texas story isn’t about medical, but recreational marijuana, and is from last year’s session. It did not see the light of day in the legislature, unsurprisingly, given that this is Texas, and the legislature is overwhelmingly controlled by the conservative wing of the Texas GOP.Report
That makes it more surprising. Also weird that it blew up in my Twitter feed last week.Report
There have been a couple Texas lege people trying to get that bill, or one like it, passed for the last few sessions. I think that was the furthest they’ve gotten it, so it was a big deal, but sadly not a sign that Texas is likely to legalize pot anytime soon. I would be surprised if there weren’t another 10-15 states that beat Texas to it, if not more.Report
Trying to reduce the political power of Senators in Rome? That’s never backfired on anyone.Report
Reading the stoned driver article, it’s telling me that fatal accidents involving weed have more than doubled from 8% to 17%.
But it doesn’t tell me the number of fatal accidents. If there were 100 fatal accidents in 2013 and 8 involved marijuana and 100 fatal accidents in 2014 and 17 involved marijuana, we’d see those numbers.
But it’s also true that if we had 100 fatal accidents in 2013 and 8 involved marijuana and 48 fatal accidents in 2014 and 9 involved marijuana, we’d see those numbers (or something close, I eyeballed that) as well.
I’m sure that the change is not so drastic as what I’ve described but using the term “doubling” and using percentages rather than raw numbers is a trick I’ve seen used before and now I’m twice shy when I see it.Report
They also can’t tell if the accidents are the result of impairment, or if they are normal accidents where a driver just happened to have THC in his system.Report
Also the definition of “system” is not clear – is it circulating in the blood (i.e. the driver was at least somewhat high) or stored in body fat (i.e. the driver was high at some time in the past month or so and would not pee clean in a workplace drug test)?
Also it’s not very clear how much we can trust the pre-legalization numbers – did they test all drivers involved in fatal accidents before legalization or only some of them, and if the latter, how did they choose whom to test, and did they count non-tested drivers as ‘no marijuana involved’ or ‘probably .08 of a marijuana involved as extrapolated from the drivers we did test’?
Also there’s no estimate of a base rate provided. If the base rate of drivers with THC in their systems post-legalization was 2%, that would suggest driving high produces about an 8-fold increase in risk of fatal accidents. In the unlikely event the base rate was 34%, that would suggest that a joint is a more effective safety measure than a seat belt.Report
Re nukes… Three power grids in the US with minimal net transfers between them. In the Western, five reactors, likely to be three in the not-too-distant future when the owners of Diablo Canyon decide they can’t afford the cooling system upgrade, providing 8% of total electricity. In the Texas grid, four reactors providing 9% of total electricity. In the Eastern, 90+ reactors providing 24% of total electricity. When the Secretary expresses concern about aging reactors and nuclear power in the US, he’s talking about keeping the lights on in the East.Report
And yet the NRC still won’t let companies like Terrapower build prototypes…Report
Blame Congress for some of that. The NRC doesn’t have the authority to simply say, “Okay, Terrapower, you can build a 1,000 MWe reactor based on computer models rather than actual detailed designs.” Nor has Congress been generous in funding NRC programs to determine how to evaluate the risks associated with a fast-neutron reactor. Add to that finding a site for an experimental reactor — that’s usually done at the big national labs, but the states where those are located are generally fighting tooth and nail to keep new reactors out.Report
Oh, I doReport
He’s talking about keeping the lights on in the East – without overbuilding natural gas plants (which are cheap to build, currently cheap to operate, but are of course, not that carbon friendly), and while continuing the now over decade long drawdown of all the obsolete coal plants that have been running under capacity.Report
Exactly. Combine (a) only a small fraction of the existing nuclear plants get their licenses extended past 60 years, (b) any sort of reasonable depletion model applied to NG supplies, and (c) political pressure to finally make coal plants clean up their act (even without CO2), extend those trends 25-30 years into the future, and you are left with the question, “Where the hell are the Eastern states going to get electricity?”Report
Piezoelectric plates in the ground, triggered by the impacts of hipster tears when they realize there isn’t enough power to operate their lifestyle.Report
Or they could move to Idaho, where >80% of in-state power generation is renewable. Less than that for consumption, they import some non-renewable power. But they have unused renewable resources that could be built out at moderate cost.
Idaho, Hipster Capital of the World, has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?Report
You’re scaring me…Report
How Uber affects entrepreneurship.
tl;dl – Hypothesis is that when Uber comes to town, people working on startups drive for Uber and thus have more free time to work on their startup. Results show that when Uber comes to town, the people with really bad ideas for a startup go to work for Uber and let their ideas falter, which leaves room for good ideas to shine.Report
Perhaps. Most of the uber drivers I have had tend to be working-class and non-start up workers. Or they were laid off from their day job and using uber/lyft to make ends meet until landing another full time job.Report
That isn’t what the study was examining.Report
CBS2 Investigation Uncovers Votes Being Cast From Grave Year After Year
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2016/05/23/cbs2-investigation-uncovers-votes-being-cast-from-grave-year-after-year/
No vote fraud here.Report