In a wonderful editorial today titled "Unworthy Pandering by Mr. Gore," the New York Times criticizes Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman for suggesting more government regulation of music, movies, television shows and video games that promote sex and violence. The Times says that "advocating new legal restrictions on commercial speech is a dangerous assault on civil liberties and the Constitution." The editorial concludes by saying, "An unwarranted expansion of federal regulatory power over advertising content is not the solution."
Great. They finally get it. So, is the Times now going to renounce its editorial support for restrictions on tobacco advertising? Or, is it going to cease its advocacy of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" bill and of other bills that would impose disclosure requirements on issue-advocacy groups that run television commercials in a designated period before an election? The Times' editorial today puts the newspaper in the absurdly contorted position of opposing any additional regulation on ads for violent or vulgar movies and video games as "a dangerous assault on civil liberties," but favoring new legal restrictions on political speech, which is the very sort of speech that the Founders had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment.
This may be just knee-jerk liberalism at work: defend Hollywood, support campaign-finance reform, oppose tobacco. It's probably just a coincidence that the Times arts section is fat with ads for movies, and that campaign finance reform, by restricting political TV commercials while leaving the Times' news columns and editorials unfettered, would have the effect of sharply increasing the value of the Times and other newspaper companies.
Congestion Pricing: An article in the metro section of today's Times declares that the New Jersey Turnpike will become "the nation's first major highway to use so-called variable pricing. The system that rewards drivers who avoid rush hour by charging them lower tolls."
Leave aside the sentence fragment. A June 24 article in the Economist, which runs under the headline "Tolled You So," reports that there are already variable-pricing schemes at work on two major highways in California, one in Texas and another in Florida. The Economist reports that SR-91 in Orange County. Calif. "allows drivers to pay an amount that depends on the time of day to jump into an HOV lane." The Economist also reports that on Interstate 15 north of San Diego, the toll in a special lane varies from 50 cents to four dollars, "depending on the volume of traffic." There may be some narrow semantic point by which the New Jersey system will qualify as the first of its kind in the nation, but it is not the nation's first major highway to use variable pricing.