Euphemism of the Month: Fairness in Ticketing
Posted: March 19, 2013 Filed under: Policy 1 Comment »
While there are some positive aspects of the so-called Fairness in Ticketing Act working its way through the Tennessee state legislature, it is disappointing to see Tennessee Performing Arts Center CEO Kathleen O’Brien embrace the bill so wholeheartedly in a Tennessean op-ed this morning. Railing against a ticket “resale market rife with bad actors” who “make lots of money at the expense of real fans,” O’Brien wants us to see TPAC as part of a coalition working to give consumers “transparency and protection and the opportunity to buy the best tickets at face value prices.” These are lovely goals, but ones that the bill will do very little to accomplish.
The legislation (SB609/HB1000) does have some salutary features. Requirements that the resellers (be they ticket brokers or online marketplaces such as StubHub) disclose on their websites the face value and exact location of seats offered for sale, and say whether or not tickets are actually in their position and ready for delivery, strike me as eminently reasonable. Regulating the industry by having brokers register with the state may also be an improvement, although the requirement that a registered broker “maintain a permanent office or place of business in this state” seems a tad twentieth century.
As originally introduced it was a terrible bill, but the bill may be shedding some of its worst parts. A Senate committee last week approved an amended version that omits absurd provisions in the original bill eliminating ticket holders’ property rights and giving venues and original ticket issuers (such as Ticketbastard) unbridled power to monopolistic control over the resale market. A House committee takes up the measure later this week.
Even with the worst parts amended out, the bill still does nothing to meet the promise by TPAC’s O’Brien that it will help fans obtain the best tickets at face value prices. As news reports have amply documented, event promoters and ticket issuers not only don’t object to scalping, they are at times in cahoots with scalpers. The industry trumpets paperless ticketing as the answer to scalper bots that scarf up all the good seats when a show goes on sale, but most fans see paperless ticketing as an enormous inconvenience that makes it very cumbersome to do what you want with the ticket you buy. Lobbyists for the secondary ticket industry (StubHub and brethren) point out that that if Ticketmaster really wants to lessen the impact of bots on ticket buying, as they righteously claim, then they could easily inform authorities and request prosecution under an existing Tennessee law — but they never do.
On both sides of this issue we find well-funded corporate interests pretending that this is really about consumer protection, when it’s actually about the protection of each side’s business model. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The legislation as amended in the state Senate would inject some consumer-friendly transparency into the secondary ticket market, but does nothing to dilute the excesses of event promoters and original ticket issuers whose claims to be looking out for fan interests ring hollow. A horrible bill is apparently being amended into a weak bill. Even if it passes, you still won’t get those highly sought tickets you want at face value unless you happen to be very very lucky on some given Saturday morning at 10:01 am.
A version of this post appears on the Nashville Scene‘s Pith in the Wind blog.
Definitely A Trend
Posted: March 18, 2013 Filed under: Policy Leave a comment »No longer just a surge.
Hey Memphis, You’re Doing This Parks Thing Wrong
Posted: February 25, 2013 Filed under: Policy Leave a comment »
The latest effort by Republicans in the Tennessee legislature to throw local government control under the bus comes in the form of the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act of 2013, slated for a vote in the state House later today. Rep. Steve McDaniel says the point of his bill, which bars changes to just about anything named for or commemorating military history is “to preserve our history.” The real aim, of course, is to prevent further moves like those in Memphis rebranding parks away from names that celebrate the Confederacy.
The sweep of McDaniel’s bill is breathtaking:
No statue, monument, memorial, nameplate, or plaque which has been erected for, or named or dedicated in honor of, the French and Indian War, American Revolution, War of 1812, U.S.-Mexican War, the War Between the States, Spanish American War, the Mexican border period, World War I, World War II, the Korean conflict, the Vietnam War, Operation Urgent Fury (Grenada), Operation El Dorado Canyon (Libya), Operation Just Cause (Panama), Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm (Persian Gulf War I), Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), and Operation Iraqi Freedom (Persian Gulf War II), and is located on public property, may be relocated, removed, altered, renamed, rededicated, or otherwise disturbed.
The other key paragraph says that “no statue, monument, memorial, nameplate, plaque, historic flag display, school, street, bridge, building, park, preserve, or reserve” that has been named for any historical military figure, event, or organization can be renamed.
Aiming to get ahead of this bill, the Memphis City Council in recent weeks has renamed multiple parks. Nathan Bedford Forrest Park is now Health Sciences Park (that’s catchy), Confederate Park is now Memphis Park, and Jefferson Davis Park has become Mississippi River Park. Interestingly, Memphis NAACP branch head Keith Norman opposes name changes for historically themed parks: “We believe that history should be kept as history.”
The Memphis City Council is missing a real opportunity here. There is a way they could rename parks to end glorification of racism and the Confederacy, retain the historical references that McDaniel and Norman want preserved, and send a “go to hell” message to state lawmakers gleefully dismantling local control, all at the same time. It’s simple: give the parks names that tell it like it is.
So, for instance: “Racist Nathan Bedford Forrest Park.” “Blow Me Jefferson Davis Park.” And how about “Ashamed to Have Been Part of the Confederacy Park.” Perhaps while they’re at it the good folks in Memphis can find a patch of grass to dedicate as “Ronald Reagan’s Illegal Grenada War Park.”
So get to work, Memphis City Council. And then go ahead, Rep. McDaniel, pass your bill. Let’s preserve us some real history.
A version of this post appears on the Nashville Scene‘s Pith in the Wind blog.
Hypocrite of the Week
Posted: February 1, 2013 Filed under: Policy Leave a comment »
The world according to Tennessee state Sen. Bill Ketron: It’s okay to let local communities make their own decisions when it comes to deciding who can sell what, but it’s not okay to let local communities make their own decisions when it comes to deciding who can employ whom.
How else to reconcile Ketron’s views on discriminating tastes with his views on discrimination? Discussing his proposed legislation allowing voters in individual municipalities to decide whether to allow wine sales in grocery stories, Ketron told a news conference that “This bill puts the decision directly in the hands of the voters, where it belongs.”
Yet Ketron cheerfully voted with his fellow state house bigots back in 2011 to pass Senate Bill 632 as a way to bar local governments and local voters from outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation. Cloaking their anti-gay animus in a business climate pretext, the “Equal Access to Intrastate Commerce Act” was pitched as something needed to help businesses enjoy regulatory consistency. Though pushed by the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, SB 632 was opposed by a number of large corporations.
For Ketron, selling hooch is an issue you put “directly in the hands of the voters, where it belongs.” Expanding and defending individual rights, on the other hand, is something he’d rather take from the hands of the voters, where it doesn’t belong.
A version of this post appears on the Nashville Scene‘s Pith in the Wind blog.
Gun Control: The Evidence
Posted: January 4, 2013 Filed under: Policy Leave a comment »
In my piece on gun control in this week’s Nashville Scene, I observe that empirical evidence helps make the case for gun control. Space limitations prevented me from doing much on that point beyond mentioning the well-known fact that the U.S. is far more gun happy and far more gun-violent than other countries. So let me point more specifically here to three forms of evidence.
First, U.S. rates of gun violence vastly outpace those in other countries where firearms are more controlled and less ubiquitous. Here is a graphical view, showing that even as assault deaths in the U.S. per 100,000 population have dropped in recent decades, that rate remains far above that of essentially every OECD nation.
Second, a form of evidence I didn’t mention is the fact that over the last 30 years, the vast majority of mass shootings in the U.S. involved guns acquired legally, and most have involved precisely the kinds of weapons targeted by gun control legislation. The argument by gun rights types that the ten-year run of the 1994 so-called assault weapon ban proves the ineffectiveness of gun control is diminished by two facts: First, there is evidence that deaths from mass shootings were lower during the period the law was in effect. And second, the fact that the 1994 law was riddled with exceptions and loopholes (described in depth here) argues for better gun control, not against it. The gun lobby advocates strenuously for exceptions, and then argues afterwards that a ban can’t work because of all the exceptions? Please.
Third, sociologist Richard Florida shows that gun deaths are lower in states with stricter gun control legislation. This is illustrated in a map of the states that overlays firearm deaths above with gun control restrictions. He finds substantial negative correlations between firearm deaths and assault weapons bans, trigger lock requirements, and safe storage mandates.
As with the bulk of research on gun regulation, the evidence I cite here speaks mainly to correlation not causation. Given other things that change in the demography of violence over time, the rarity of cleanly constructed gun control legislation, and the inevitable problem of interstate weapons flow, it is virtually impossible to either demonstrate or refute causation on this subject. What we have is pretty good correlational evidence from multiple angles that firearms regulation can matter and make a difference.
For a rather different take on gun regulation and control from any offered in the Scene‘s collection of essays, check out Nashvillian John Harkey’s analysis of firearms as a public health issue akin to tobacco. Harkey advocates for “a response comparable to the tobacco crisis identified two generations ago with the 1964 Surgeon General Report.” His argument is worth a look.
A version of this post appears on the Nashville Scene‘s Pith in the Wind blog.
Lobbyists Schmobbyists
Posted: December 31, 2012 Filed under: Policy Leave a comment »
Winner of this month’s award for the most annoying statement by a Tennessee lobbyist: Chip Christianson, vice president of legislative affairs for the Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Association, who had this to say in a Tennessean state legislature preview piece the other day on the matter of allowing wine sales in grocery stores:
“This is 100 percent pushed by the grocers. Polls, schmolls. There’s no groundswell of people trying to get this done.”
Multiple polls-schmolls have found that upwards of two-thirds of Tennesseans want this to happen, so Christianson’s view can be not-so-loosely translated as “up yours, consumers.” Look, I get it — the TWSRA represents liquor store owners, and the last thing they want to see is the competition and downward price pressure that will come with grocery store sales. (And there is empirical evidence that retail wine prices will drop with grocery store availability.)
It’s quite remarkable that a conservative state legislature continues to find it so difficult to make this happen. What principles are more bedrock conservative than letting the people have what they clearly want, by way of more rather than less market competition? House Speaker Beth Harwell sounds almost reasonable when she says “I believe it’s time for grocery stores to be allowed to sell wine — and I believe Tennesseans want that — but we want to do it in a way that creates an equal playing field for the mom-and-pop stores as well.” But where is her “equal playing field for mom-and-pop stores” vibe when big-box retailers are decimating the mom-and-pop economies of small towns and cities?
And by the way wine in grocery stores is hardly novel or adventurous. More than two-thirds of states allow this in one form or another, including such bastions of radical progressivism as Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Montana, and North and South Carolina.
A version of this post appears on the Nashville Scene‘s Pith in the Wind blog.
Supremes on Medicaid: “Loaded Gun”?
Posted: July 3, 2012 Filed under: Healthcare, Policy Leave a comment »
Although the insurance mandate gets most of the attention, many believe that it’s the Supreme Court outcome on Medicaid expansion within ACA that could have the longest lasting impact. Stanford professor Pamela Karlan wrote in last Sunday’s Times that the Roberts court ruling on Medicaid contributes to a neutering of federal power that should have liberals worrying big time:
For the first time since the New Deal, the court struck down an exercise of Congress’s spending power. It held that Congress lacked the power to deny Medicaid funds to states that refuse to expand their coverage. Chief Justice Roberts — joined by the liberal justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan — held that while the government can deny additional Medicaid funds to states that refuse to expand their coverage, it cannot penalize them by rescinding current Medicaid payments. This is a loaded gun indeed.
Prof. Karlan notes that this is just the latest in a string of rulings curbing federal power, with cases coming down the pike next term on voting rights, affirmative action, same-sex marriage, and environmental affairs giving the Court opportunities to chip away further.
Without discounting Prof. Karlan’s conclusion that the trend at the Court gives “Americans who care about economic and social justice a reason to worry,” I do think after reading the Roberts opinion and the Ginsburg dissent carefully that she overstates a bit the ruling’s logic and argument on Medicaid (though granted, not the effect!). The Court held that the federal government can penalize states by rescinding current payments if the expansion is modest and incremental rather than radical. There is a fundamental difference of opinion between Roberts and Ginsburg over whether this particular expansion is modest or radical. To use the language in their back and forth in their opinions, is it a difference in kind (Roberts) or degree (Ginsburg)? Personally I’m inclined to side with Ginsburg and Sotomayor on this point, though it isn’t necessarily a simple or straightforward call.
It’s fascinating that this aspect of the case split the liberal wing of the Court — with Kagan and Breyer joining Roberts to find that it’s a difference in kind, not degree, and accordingly conclude that its overly coercive on the states. Perhaps they genuinely bought the Roberts formulation that the Medicaid expansion really is a difference in kind. But I am guessing that what tilted them might have been Roberts’ willingness to keep the ruling narrow — to say that the finding of undue coercion on the states invalidates only the threat to revoke all Medicaid funding to a state that rejects the new funding and conditions, but doesn’t (as the Scalia/Kennedy/Alito/Thomas cabal would have) invalidate the whole kit-n-kaboodle. Of course, Ginsburg and Sotomayor expressly at the end of their dissent bought into that limiting principle regarding what gets invalidated, making it possible for that narrow effect to prevail (otherwise the whole thing would could have been tossed). The coalition dynamics on the Court were fascinating on the Medicaid issue, arguably moreso than on the mandate.
A conspiracy theorist might argue that Roberts sold his conservative brethren out on the mandate in order to buy Breyer and Kagan’s support on the Medicaid aspect, getting what he really wanted most of all — Prof. Karlan’s loaded gun: the potentially huge dent in federal spending power that some construe in the Medicaid outcome. Hard to say, though, because these kinds of SCOTUS “turns” take a decade or two to really see in full.
