Fiscal Fallout: Washington state government spending surges 116% since 2015

by T J Martinelli, The Center Square, July 14, 2025.

Excerpt:

Washington state faces deficit spending by 2028 as lawmakers just hit taxpayers with the state’s largest combined tax increase – all driven by massive state spending increases over the past decade, an investigation of state budgets by The Center Square found.

Washington state spent about $80 billion in the 2013-15 budget but is set to spend more than $173 billion in 2025-27, a more than 116% increase over that time. U.S. inflation since 2015 has risen [sic] just 35.63%.

New Evidence Underscores the Value of Tobacco Harm Reduction

by Jeffrey A. Singer, Cato at Liberty, July 16, 2025.

Excerpt:

A study published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicineby researchers at the University of New South Wales found that nicotine e‑cigarettes are more effective than nicotine lozenges or gum in helping people quit smoking. This study reinforces earlier research, including a 2023 Cochrane comprehensive review and meta-analysis, as well as a 2021 systematic review of seven randomized controlled trials.

Today, an article in Filter highlights a study from Italy showing that people who quit smoking using nicotine e‑cigarettes or heated tobacco products experienced a significant increase in VO2max, the maximum amount of oxygen the body can use during intense exercise—a key measure of cardiovascular fitness and endurance. The 12-week randomized controlled trial found “quitters showed the greatest improvement in VO2max at both week 4 and week 12.” They observed no significant differences between those who used e‑cigarettes to quit and those who used heated tobacco products.

DRH note: This finding shouldn’t be that surprising. Nicotine e-cigarettes are a much closer substitute for cigarettes than nicotine lozenges and gum are.

A Free Speech Lesson From Karl Marx

by Damon Root, Reason, July 17, 2025.

Excerpts:

There’s a basic principle of free speech that the censors always seem to forget. Namely, the act of suppressing speech only tends to add more fuel to the speaker’s fire.

Don’t believe me? Just ask Karl Marx.

And:

Take the case of the great Salmon P. Chase. In the summer of 1836, Chase was a successful young lawyer living in Cincinnati, Ohio. On July 12, a proslavery mob forced its way into the offices of a local abolitionist newspaper called the Philanthropist and destroyed the printing press. Two weeks later, the mob went hunting for the paper’s editor, the abolitionist James G. Birney.

“I heard with disgust and horror the mob violence directed against the Anti-Slavery Press and Anti-Slavery men of Cincinnati in 1836,” Chase later wrote. “I was opposed at this time to the views of the abolitionists, but I now recognized the slave power as the great enemy of freedom of speech [and] freedom of the press and freedom of the person. I took an open part against the mob.”

So began Chase’s extraordinary antislavery career, which included arguing against the Fugitive Slave Act before the U.S. Supreme Court, helping found the antislavery Free Soil Party (whose catchy motto, “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men,” he coined), and eventually replacing the hated Roger Taney, author of the disgraceful Dred Scott decision, as chief justice of the United States.

It all started with Chase’s outrage at the sight of proslavery thugs on the rampage against abolitionist speech. “From this time on,” Chase recalled of the violent summer of 1836, “I became a decided opponent of Slavery and the Slave Power.”

DRH note: One impressive thing about Chase is that as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he found unconstitutional a measure that he had earlier initiated as Secretary of the Treasury. I believe that it was about whether paper money, which he had introduced, was legal tender. In Hepburn v. Griswold, he was part of the Supreme Court majority in finding that paper money was not legal tender.

Conservatives Shouldn’t Oppose California’s Potential Zoning Reforms

by Steven Greenhut, Reason, July 18, 2025.

Excerpts:

Everything in this world does seem nonsensical, especially as we consider the issue of land-use regulation and California’s efforts (led by progressives) to jump-start housing construction by—yes, you heard this right—reducing the role of government in dictating what we can do with our property. Meanwhile, many conservatives have dug in their heels as they defend ham-fisted progressive-era rules that are anathema to our freedoms. It’s curiouser and curiouser.

These conservatives act as if the founders would approve of a system where bureaucrats determine the proper use of every tract in their communities and dictate what owners can do with their land down to the tiniest detail. And where owners must, with tail between their legs, lobby their elected officials for discretionary approval of any building project. They act as if one’s right to use government to control what other people do nearby is in the Constitution up there with the Second Amendment.

And:

Zoning is a government-created power, so it’s odd seeing opponents of deregulation act as if there’s some fundamental right to it. As such, the government can change the rules when it chooses. For a better approach, let’s let freedom and markets work—in land use and every other aspect of society.

Note: Image of Karl Marx was created by ChatGPT.