As we come up on the final days of the election, I have a couple pieces out on how I’m voting. If you’ve followed this blog from the beginning, you know that I’m a long-time libertarian. This year, however, I’ll be casting my first vote for a Democratic presidential candidate. From my latest in Arc Digital, “A Pox on One of Their Houses“:

This decision has less to do with the Democrats or the Libertarians than it does with the Republicans. The Democrats nominated a moderate centrist with a 50-year career in public service. The Libertarians nominated an obscure psychology lecturer at Clemson. In a normal year, I would vote for the Libertarian.

But this is not a normal year.

In 2020, I cannot in good conscience proclaim, “A pox on both their houses!” and vote third party. One of the major parties has become far more deserving of pox than the other, and not just because of the literal plague it seems intent upon spreading. The GOP has hitched its wagon to an aspiring if not yet actual authoritarian, and as a lover of freedom and liberal democracy, the desire to see him thoroughly defeated has taken precedence over other competing values.

Here in Oregon, I’ve also written on Measure 108, which will drastically raise taxes on cigarettes and impose substantial new taxes on vaping. Every major paper in Portland endorsed the measure, but the Oregonian gave me space to make an argument against it:

If there were a measure on the Oregon ballot to raise taxes on products that help people quit smoking, such as nicotine patches and gums, there would be no doubt that this would be bad for public health. Oregon’s Measure 108, which would impose substantial new taxes on vaping products, is misguided for precisely the same reason. By raising the cost of the most effective smoking cessation devices ever invented, it will unintentionally perpetuate cigarette smoking.

Lastly, on the fun side of things, I have a piece up at Inside Hook on why I love chocolate bitters:

It wasn’t that long ago that even tracking down orange bitters was an ordeal. Now you can probably find them at your local Whole Foods alongside untold other varieties of bitters, tinctures and shrubs to dash into your cocktails. This plenitude is one of the welcome developments of the cocktail renaissance, but it can be hard to know where to begin. Celery? Habanero? Rhubarb? They all have their uses, but if I could add just one bottle of bitters to the holy trinity, it would be chocolate.