Archive for the 'law' Category

A pie by any other name…

Published by
Aaron
at April 21, 2008 in bluegrass, food, frankfort, kentucky and law. Closed

I would like to live in a world where carpenters make their money by building things, filmmakers make money by producing movies and kitchens make money by preparing food. Unfortunately this is not the case.

Kern’s Kitchen owns the copyright to “Derby Pie,” meaning they and only they control the rights to produce that specific pie, and only they can refer to their creation as such. If you manage to create a strikingly similar (read: exact) pie in your home or restaurant, you might well be infringing on their legal rights.

Chef Rick Paul found this out this week. Kern’s Kitchen sent a private investigator into his Frankfort restaurant to catch Paul in the nefarious and outrageous act of selling food to customers. The nerve.

Kern’s has promptly gotten the courts involved, a practice they are not at all shy about employing. Having pacified Iraq, stopped global terrorism, bolstered the economy, achieved energy independence and made our public schools the envy of the world, the government now has plenty of resources for pie-gate.

Over the years, Cox said Kern’s has probably filed 25 lawsuits, “and we have prevailed on every single one. We tend to get larger settlements when it’s a second offense.”

At first, “we put people on notice and ask them to sign a letter agreeing not to infringe,” Cox said. “When they sign the letter, we keep a record. The next time, we sue them.”

Kern’s biggest cash award in a court case “has probably been $25,000 or $30,000,” Cox said.

Thus says the Frankfort State-Journal. Kern’s Kitchen isn’t the only one pouring money into litigation as opposed to gastronomy. If you hold a raffle for a big screen TV to watch the NFL’s well known championship game, you better not refer to it as the Super-you-know-what. That name’s copyrighted. The NFL can and will ask you to stop. The same applies to the large college basketball tournament commonly held in the third month of the year.

So if anyone needs me, I will be in my kitchen trying out pie recipes and thinking of popular-sounding names for them. I’m thinking of some kind of lemon custard thing with a light egg foam on top, but nothing is solid yet. I could make a fortune charging other people for the right to sell it…

In the meantime, I will let Chef Paul have the last word, since he usually does anyway:

“I think they probably would be better served going after some of these people on the Internet that are advertising Derby Pie as their own recipe, every day.”

I am recently unemployed.

Published by
Aaron
at March 31, 2008 in fluid, labor and law. Closed

Yes, I feel rather silly and naive but it only took me about six months to realize that I was employed in something less than a noble and forthright endeavor. I am not one to speak badly of that which is in the past, so I will simply leave it at that.

So being young and unemployed in America today I know what I have to do: blog about it until someone comes along and bestows upon me a job that I find suitable to my imagined station in life. Clearly.

Well, maybe not. But I am on the job market and am actively pinging several employment sources. So if anyone knows of any economists with exceptionally sharp computer skills, written communication and mathematics skills who are retiring, please do let me know. I am their replacement.

Inadequate Constitutional Reverence?

Published by
Caleb
at March 14, 2008 in constitution, kentucky, law, lawmaker, spending and taxes. 0 Comments

I believe they’re doing it again. The General Assembly is violating the state constitution before our very own eyes and they’re doing it by passing an unconstitutional budget. Not surprisingly, 84 members of Kentucky’s House voted for it. Here’s the key phrase, which actually describes the budget:

AN ACT relating to appropriations and revenue measures

You might be surprised to learn that the state constitution actually prohibits the comingling of appropriation measures and revenue measures. Here’s a key phrase that every lawmaker swears to support when he or she is sworn in:

All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives, but the Senate may propose amendments thereto: Provided, No new matter shall be introduced, under color of amendment, which does not relate to raising revenue.

Emphasis mine. In layman’s terms, it means that bills to raise revenue can’t do anything else. They have to raise revenue only. That means, in translation, that a bill that spends state money may not also raise money, since a bill to raise money can’t also spend money. But the state constitution goes further:

No law enacted by the General Assembly shall relate to more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title, and no law shall be revised, amended, or the provisions thereof extended or conferred by reference to its title only, but so much thereof as is revised, amended, extended or conferred, shall be reenacted and published at length.

What does that mean? It actually, in part, restates the restriction I quoted earlier. Bills may not relate to more than one subject. Revenue is a subject. Appropriation is a subject. They may not comingle.

And yet, the state constitution makes this idea even more clear, but I won’t quote the whole section:

… The Governor shall have the power to disapprove any part or parts of appropriation bills embracing distinct items, and the part or parts disapproved shall not become a law unless reconsidered and passed, as in case of a bill.

Emphasis mine. Kentucky’s governor, like many governors, has the right to veto distinct portions of appropriation bills. This bill, as stated by the general assembly, relates to raising revenue. So it’s either unconstitutional or the title of the bill is wrong.

You’d think Harry Moberly would have been more careful in crafting this budget.

I wrote on this subject for the Bluegrass Institute a few years ago.

Taxpayer-Funded Freebies

Published by
Caleb
at February 6, 2008 in law, liberty, policy and pork. 2 Comments

David Adams of the Bluegrass Institute, in opposing a bill to restore voting rights for ex-cons, says that “we hardly need to expand the base of voters electing themselves bigger entitlements from taxpayers.”

Skeptical Cat is fraught with skepticism. After all, if the main objection to restoring voting rights to folks who have done their time is that they might vote for candidates promising free goodies, then would David endorse repealing voting rights for Medicaid and food stamp recipients, state workers (retired and otherwise), public school teachers, members of the military, overtaxed entrepreneurs, mooching war widows or anyone else likely to vote for politicians promising taxpayer-funded freebies?

The problem is that wanting to deny ex-cons the right to vote because they might vote for free stuff doesn’t separate ex-cons from, well, anyone.

Currently, state workers may take a half day so that they have time to vote. I’ve been in favor of the following deal for them: Give state workers a full day off (which they may use at any time) and $500 … if they pledge not to vote.

Wine and value-added products

Published by
Caleb
at February 4, 2008 in kentucky, law, policy and wine. 0 Comments

Following up on what Aaron said, it’s possible that Mr. Meyer doesn’t understand the concept of value added. In his Herald-Leader response to Aaron, Mr. Meyer writes:

Wine, which typically contains between 11 percent and 14 percent alcohol by content, is an alcoholic beverage, not a value-added agricultural product. Grape juice is a value-added agricultural product.

Wikipedia has a fair defintion of value added:

In modern neoclassical economics, especially in macroeconomics, [value added] refers to the contribution of the factors of production, i.e., land, labor, and capital goods, to raising the value of a product and corresponds to the incomes received by the owners of these factors.

In Mr. Meyer’s view, the labor and capital employed to turn grapes into grape juice delivers value to the final product. But somehow - transubstantiation, perhaps - the labor and capital used by vintners to turn wine grapes into wine simply doesn’t deliver any value … no matter how much more profitable wine might be over a big pile of wine grapes.

In the very next paragraph, Mr. Meyer says this:

Beverage alcohol products — distilled spirits, beer and wine — are the only products sold in the marketplace that are the subject of two amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Because of the potential harmful effects of abuse of these products, the government stringently regulates their sale and consumption.

It’s probably worth noting that the two amendments to which Mr. Meyer refers are the 18th and 21st. Technically speaking, the 18th Amendment is no longer a part of the U.S. Constitution. The 21st Amendment repealed it. Given that the 21st Amendment is little more than an open admission that the 18th Amendment was a terrible mistake, what point is Mr. Meyer trying to make?

The headline of his article is, “Regulation of wine sales protects public.” It doesn’t help his case to say that the one time an amendment to the U.S. Constitution was repealed was to abolish a particularly stringent regulation on alcohol.

You Got Your Spending in My Revenue Bill!

Published by
Caleb
at January 21, 2008 in constitution, kentucky, law, lawmaker, pensions, policy and politics. 0 Comments

David Adams at the Bluegrass Institute revives a portion of Kentucky’s constitution that lawmakers would rather forget.

That’s Some Top Drawer Discourse, Right There

Published by
Caleb
at January 11, 2008 in kentucky, law, lawmaker, liberty and policy. 1 Comment

David Adams at the Bluegrass Institute takes a bizarre shot at legislative analysis:

Rep. Charlie Hoffman eats boogers

The headline you just read could get me thrown in jail for up to ninety days if the above-referenced booger-eater from Georgetown has his way.HB 281 prohibits communication via the internet “which causes annoyance or alarm and serves no purpose of legitimate communication.”And since I’m clearly unrepentent, my soon-to-follow second offense would land me in jail for up to a year.In 2008, it should go without saying that we err on the side of liberty and thick skin on the internet.Given that it costs municipalities in Kentucky up to $88.44 a day to put someone in our already-overcrowded jails, maybe we can call this the Thin Skinned Tax-Raising Ninny Act of 2008. 

I suppose the post is meant to suggest that Rep. Hoffman should reread Section 1 of the Kentucky Constitution (not to mention the First Amendment) and perhaps he’d realize that he should either begin filing bills that comport to the documents to which he has sworn an oath … or choose another line of work.Actually, that sounds like a pretty civil way to say the same thing David did. Perhaps that post was meant for David’s less-reserved other blog. Let’s hope so.

Poor public policy ideas for 2008

Published by
Caleb
at December 31, 2007 in kentucky, law, policy and politics. 0 Comments

David Adams of the Bluegrass Institute (my former employer) is asking for nominees for the worst public policy idea for 2008. My suggestion (so far, anyway) is this:

“The governor supports a constitutional amendment limiting the governor’s pardoning power, but whether it is taken up during this session or next has yet to be determined,” said Vicki Glass, spokeswoman for [Gov. Steve] Beshear.

First, I have serious doubts about that Beshear actually supports limiting his own power to pardon. That may be why he supports that particular restriction coming only in the form of a constitutional amendment. Otherwise, he might simply opt to sign an affidavit indicating that he will not execute pardons in the manner that he would like to see prohibited. That’s a quick fix that doesn’t require an unlikely constitutional amendment.

But the bigger problem on restricting a governor’s ability to pardon is that the pardon power is meant to be a check on a legislative or judicial action that has imprisoned or charged someone unjustly. If the pardon power is restricted, that check is less effective.

I’ll admit: Beshear may simply be another Ernie Fletcher when it comes time to consider a pardon. He may use the pardon power to shield his friends from scrutiny. The idea has fallen out of favor, but I still believe that it is better that 99 guilty men go free than one be imprisoned unjustly. I have a feeling that after seeing how Ernie Fletcher’s pardons worked out for him politically, Beshear and future governors will think twice before using a pardon to stem a burdensome investigation.