Archives for November, 2006
Supreme Court Considers Whether to Preempt State Bank Red Tape
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On Thursday, November 29, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Watters v. Wachovia Bank, which will decide whether federal law preempts state regulators from compelling many national bank subsidiaries to register with them.
CEI filed an amicus brief with the Court on behalf of economists and legal scholars in support of the bank, pointing out that state lending regulations and red tape can increase the cost, and reduce the availability, of credit to borrowers.
The State of Michigan sought to compel a subsidiary of Wachovia, a national bank, to register with it (Wachovia’s subsidiary, Wachovia Mortgage, is chartered by the State of North Carolina).
95% of Americans in Favor of Increasing Other People’s Charitable Giving
Quick quiz: what political types are more likely to donate to charity - lefty liberals or crochety conservatives? The Chronicle of Philanthropy has an interesting article on the answer:
At the outset of his research, [economist Arthur] Brooks had assumed that those who favor a large role for government would be most likely to give to charity. But in fact, the opposite is true.
Several times throughout the book, Mr. Brooks quotes Mr. Nader, the political activist, who said during his 2000 presidential campaign: “A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.”
Mr. Brooks calls it a “bitter irony” that those favoring income redistribution are not doing much redistributing from their own bank accounts — and he blames liberal leaders like Mr. Nader for letting liberals off the hook.
“In essence, for many Americans, political opinions are a substitute for personal checks,” Mr. Brooks writes.
Seems like a rational choice, after all. Why spend your own money when you can support policies and elect politicians who will spend everyone else’s instead?
For Best Results, Drink Like a Sardinian
There’s more scientific evidence that moderate consumption of red wine is good for you:
New research from the William Harvey Research Institute and the University of Glasgow shows that red wines from areas of greater longevity in southwest France and Sardinia have higher levels of procyanidins - a type of flavonoid polyphenol with potent protective effects on blood vessels.
A number of population studies have revealed that moderate drinkers of red wine have less heart disease than non-drinkers. As a result it has become widely accepted that a glass or two of red wine per day is good for your heart.
The Q & A with one of the researchers also updates our understanding of a previous development in the wine-is-good-for-you literature:
Q: How much procyanidins would you have to consume to feel the benefits?
A: It is difficult to say as further work is required in clinical trials but the best evidence comes from clinical trials of grape seed extract, which have shown that 200 - 300 mg per day will lower blood pressure. Two small glasses (125 ml glass) of a procyanidin-rich red wine, such as a Madiran wine from southwest France, would provide this amount.
Note on Resveratrol
Resveratrol is often put forward as a key component of red wine, both in terms of reducing heart disease and increasing longevity (see: Kaeberlein & Rabinovitch Medicine: grapes versus gluttony. Nature 2006 Nov 16; 444: 280-1). But the levels of this polyphenol are so low (typically 1 – 2 mg/litre) that to consume sufficient daily amounts of resveratrol it would be necessary to drink around 1000 litres of wine per day.
And while perhaps entertaining at first, attempting to consume that much wine would assumably have other negative health effects. One man seems to have tried long ago, actually, and look what happened to him. Background on our booze-related policy work (health, labeling, marketing) can be found here.
The Global Warming Case–the cataclysm question
One comment from yesterday’s Supreme Court hearing that’s getting a lot of press is Justice Scalia’s question to the attorney for the petitioning states about the imminence of harm to the states: “I mean, when is the predicted cataclysm?”
The attorney answered: “The harm does not suddenly spring up in the year 2100; it plays out continuously over time.”
I suspect that this exchange will be portrayed, by some, as illustrating the gap between the scientifically uneducated and the scientifically erudite. After all, Justice Scalia himself later noted that he’s “not a scientist”, whereas counsel for the petitioning states was probably quite familiar with the underlying science.
But later in the argument that attorney said: “… our harm is imminent in the sense that lighting a fuse on a bomb is imminent harm ….”
That sounds pretty cataclysmic to me. If you’re delving into whether such a bomb exists, let alone whether its fuse has been lit, asking about when it will go off is a pretty important question.
Global Warming Hearings & Hurricanes
Yesterday the Supreme Court heard argument in the global warming case. Today is the last day of the 2006 hurricane season, the quietest in the a decade. Personally, I hope the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case ends up being as disappointing to global warming alarmists as this year’s hurricane season has been.
Of course, one quiet hurricane season doesn’t disprove the alarmist forecasts. On the other hand, Katrina didn’t support those apocalyptic forecasts either, but you didn’t see much in the way of forecasting restraint on the part of alarmists last year.
I’d like to correct a few points that were garbled when I first phoned them in soon after yesterday’s court hearing. The post below states that EPA was hammered by some justices “talking about issues that weren’t relevant.” What I meant to say was that the hammering involved justices questing the agency about its reliance on issues that were arguably outside the statutory scheme of the Clean Air Act and therefore irrelevant.
Secondly, my “prediction” wasn’t anything as lofty as a that; it was a guess, and it wasn’t a very well-founded guess at that. I wasn’t able to get in to see the hearing, and instead only heard it over the speakers in the lawyers’ lounge. That meant that I usually couldn’t tell how many justices were involved in a line of questioning, and I couldn’t observe any body language whatsoever. So I missed a lot!
Those clever Malthusians
There’s an op/ed in the New York Times today that essentially claims that Malthus was right and that Julian Simon just got lucky when he made his famous bet with Paul Ehrlich and his doomsinging colleagues. John Whitehead of the Environmental Economics blog has a perceptive comment:
Increases in energy prices, with the energy return on investment (EROI — a new term for me that showed up in the comments section on this blog) falling from 25 to 1 to 15 to 1 over the past 20 years in the oil industry (EROI is 4 to 1 for the Alberta oil sands) used as evidence that the current runup in oil prices is not a blip. The increase in energy prices is combined with technological pessimism about people’s ability to find alternative sources of energy. I need to do some homework on the EROI but long term trends in market prices are still a fine indicator of resource scarcity. My feel is that the EROI was developed by those who don’t trust markets to provide appropriate price signals.
I’ll bet he’s right. John also notes that the op/ed enthusiastically proclaims the Stern Review’s analysis of the cost of global warming as being up to 20 percent of global GDP and remarks:
As we know here, Stern says that the costs might range from 5% to 20% with the 20% number arising from using equity weights to somehow account for the maldistribution of climate change impacts around the world.
My neo-Malthusian rule of thumb has always been to discount any argument that doesn’t trust markets to provide appropriate price signals (except in the case of negative externalities and public goods) and says that technology can no longer keep up (the technological pessimists have always been wrong — why should we expect them to be right this time). My newest rule of thumb is to discount (at a rate higher than 0.1%), like a big baby, any argument that solely uses the Stern Review’s 20%-of-GDP cost of climate change.
Those are two pretty good rules of thumb…
Supreme Court grills Massachusetts, EPA in global warming case
CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman is on-site for two important cases being argued at the U.S. Supreme Court today. He phoned in his quick take on the EPA case:
The first, Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is a lawsuit brought by a group of state attorneys general, trying to force the EPA to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. The AGs aim to have CO2 emissions reduced and thus impede global warming.
Massachusetts went first. They got a lot of questions on standing from the justices: the states must show specific harm to themselves (from CO2 emissions) and that the harm would be redressed by the relief sought by the states. I don’t think Massachusetts did all too well under questioning. They were getting hammered with questions. An old case called SCRAP (United States v. SCRAP (1973)) is used by courts to establish standing in environment cases. One judge called that case “the far margin” of their standing cases. It’s possible the court will use the current case to re-address standing in environment cases and possibly cut back on it (if they rule against Massachusetts). The state was also questioned on why the EPA should not be able to prioritize issues and decide to address other matters before dealing with risks associated with CO2 emissions. There were also some questioning concerning the scientific uncertainty surrounding global warming.
When EPA got up, the agency had the same science questions thrown at them as well. One justice asked whether some scientists have engaged in selective citing of only certain portions of global warming reports. The EPA attorney referred to the amicus brief filed by CEI on behalf of a group of scientists with expertise in climate sciences. The brief disputes claims of global warming catastrophe made by Massachusetts and the other states involved in the case.
EPA got hammered quite a bit, as some justices spent time talking about issues that weren’t relevant. EPA argued that Congress never gave it authority to regulate CO2, and, even if it had, it would not be appropriate for the EPA to exercise that authority now. The justices queried the EPA on its shift in position since the Clinton administration, but agencies are probably within their right to change their mind.
I would predict that the EPA will win on the basis of Massachusetts not having standing. Moreover, even if EPA were to act on regulating CO2, the result would only be a minor reduction in emissions over the coming years. After all, it would take years to manufacture and sell new cars that have reduced CO2 emissions.
Usual suspects make the list — environmentalists of all time
Dr. C.S. Prakash alerted me to yesterday’s list in The Guardian of the top environmental campaigners of all time. Not surprisingly, Rachel Carson tops the list, and one of her chief achievements was the eventual banning of DDT. Readers might be interested in John Berlau’s DDT article today, which puts that “achievement” in a human context.
Here’s the list of the top twenty. One who really accomplished something that helped save the earth – the people on it – was number 19, Joseph Bazelgette, who realized that “foul water” not foul air was responsible for the cholera epidemics. He devised the London sewer system, advised others on sewers, and saved countless people from dying of cholera.
Some politicians made the list. Most notable in the U.S. are Al Gore, Number 9, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Number 29. ‘Nuff said.
1 Rachel Carson, Author of Silent Spring
2 EF Schumacher, Green economist, author of Small is Beautiful
3 Jonathan Porritt, Government adviser, Green party, FoE
4 David Attenborough, TV naturalist
5 James Lovelock, Biologist, Gaia theorist
6 Wangari Maathai, Conservationist, Africa’s “tree woman”
8 William Morris, Craftsman and writer
9 Al Gore, US politician
10 Gro Harlem Brundtland, Former Norwegian PM, sustainable development
11 Richard Sandbrook, Campaigner
13 Vandana Shiva, Campaigner, India
14 Ansel Adams, Wilderness photographer
15 Fritjof Capra, Austrian physicist (now in CA), Eastern mysticism
16 Aldo Leopold, US ecologist
18 David Bellamy, TV botanist
19 Joseph Bazalgette, Victorian engineer, architect of London’s sewer system
20 John James Audubon, US naturalist and artist
What’s needed — and not — in trade agreements
Today, both the U.S. Treasury Secretary and the U.S. Trade Representative vowed that the Bush Administration would push hard on global and regional trade agreements and reach out to the Democratic Congress. In separate speeches today, Secretary Henry Paulson (in London) and USTR Susan Schwab (in Washington, DC) said that the U.S. is committed to completing the World Trade Organization’s Doha Development Round.
In separate articles yesterday, journalists Morton Kondracke and the team of Cokie and Steven Roberts both strongly supported the need for more open trade as being in America’s national interest. Somewhat surprisingly the Roberts’ did a better job in showing the benefits of free trade for people, while noting:
“Even though free trade creates far more winners than losers, the losers tend to be louder and more visible. It’s easy to put a picture on TV of a shuttered factory or an unemployed worker. It’s much harder to show a family who earns more from expanding exports, or pays less because of inexpensive imports.
As a result, political demagogues, most of them Democrats, have exploited the anxieties that are inevitable in a rapidly changing economy.”
Kondracke, on the other hand, did a little bit of China-bashing — “an aggressive effort to fight trade cheating by China and other rivals” was needed, he said, as well as “a change of policy on including labor and environmental standards in future trade agreements.”
Kondracke and other journalists should check out the extensive labor and environmental mandates that already govern free trade agreements and are included in FTAs as a result of those mandates. See some reasons why those linkages aren’t a good idea.
Breast-Related Assurances from the First Lady of Illinois
Some Illinois political observers are raising their eyebrows about a stack of greeting cards that Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s office sent out before the election congratulating new parents on their bundles of joy (and reminding them to get their kids immunized). The implication here being that Blagojevich wanted to spend a little government money to get his name in front of potential voters just before the election. I kind of doubt that, but in any case, focusing on that ignores the much more amusing angle, which is that many of the cards were delivered over a year late:
“I thought it was laughable,” said 29-year-old Andrew Fitzgibbon of Lincoln. “Here my daughter is turning 1 and I get something congratulating me on her birth.”
But the mailings aren’t just feel-good fluff - they contain some very important advice as well:
The cards contain a list of recommended vaccinations as well as a record for parents to track when their children receive them. There is also a growth chart and a note from first lady Patti Blagojevich reminding mothers that state law allows them to breast-feed in public places.
Breast-feeding advice from the governor’s wife? The term Nanny State gets more literal everyday.
Money Violates Civil Rights Laws, Court Rules
A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has just ruled that America’s money bills, such as $1, $10, and $100 bills, discriminate against the blind, in violation of the federal Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits the federal government and recipients of federal funds from discriminating against the disabled.
Unlike some foreign currencies, such as the Euro, American money bills don’t vary in size, color, or texture based on denomination, making it harder for blind people to distinguish them. Blind people often end up folding each denomination differently in order to keep track of them.
The Rehabilitation Act has been construed to require agencies to make “reasonable accommodation” for the disabled unless doing so would cause “undue hardship.” The American Council for the Blind argued that it was reasonable to change the bills size or shape or texture, since other countries have been able to do that to their own currency. The Treasury Department argued in response that redesigning the bills would cause undue hardship by costing it tens of millions of dollars a year in additional printing costs, and increase the risk of counterfeiting (as the de facto international currency, the U.S. dollar is subject to counterfeiting that other currencies are often spared).
The judge has ordered that the bills be redesigned, while leaving the details to the Treasury Department. He himself concedes that the redesign is likely to cost at least $50 million per year, and judging from the Treasury Department’s protestations, the figure could be a lot higher.
Like other disabilities discrimination laws, the Rehabilitation Act is quite a broad (and vague) law, so the judge’s decision isn’t necessarily wrong (although the Treasury Department’s arguments seem at least as plausible as the judge’s). Indeed, the law’s concepts, such as “reasonable accommodation” and “undue burden,” are so vague and undefined it’s hard to know exactly what sorts of changes or accommodations it requires for the disabled, or how much institutions are expected to spend to accommodate them.
No doubt recognizing that vagueness, the judge has taken the unusual step of suggesting that the government appeal his decision immediately rather than waiting for the trial proceedings to finish, since, as he concedes in his ruling, the case “involves a controlling issue of law as to which there is substantial ground for difference of opinion.”
The outcome of this case may indirectly affect private businesses and how they can communicate, in writing or through web sites, when they have potential blind customers. The Rehabilitation Act itself doesn’t apply to most private businesses. But the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which does, is directly modelled on the Rehabilitation Act. As a result, cases decided under the Rehabilitation Act often end up dictating the result in ADA cases.
That’s not always a good thing, since it gives no weight to the property rights and autonomy that private businesses, unlike government agencies, enjoy. It makes perfect sense to require the government to take reasonable steps to accommodate all taxpayers, including the disabled, at some added cost. But a small business has neither the resources nor the moral obligation to accommodate every conceivable class of would-be customer.
Marketing principles involves having them
The current direction of the Conservative Party leadership in the UK could serve as a case study of how not to implement value-based communication (VBC). The idea of VBC is that you tune how you market your principles and policies to reflect the values people feel are most important in choosing leaders and/or policies. According to the classification of the late Aaron Wildavsky, there are three main values groups: libertarians, who value freedom; hierarchists, who value order; and egalitarians, who value fairness. Bill Clinton was a master in portraying his policies as reflecting all three values.
Now it is certainly true that the British Conservative Party was failing dismally in matching its policies to voter values. In the manifesto for the last election in 2005, by my calculation, 5 of the 6 main policies were marketed as hierarchist policies, 1 as libertarian and none whatsoever as egalitarian. To reconnect with the electorate, it was clear that the Tories were going to have to explain how their policies made life fairer and more free for people. It seemed, when he was elected party leader, that David Cameron understood that.
Instead what has happened has not been egalitarian marketing of conservative policies, but the junking of those policies in favor of policies that have previously appealed to egalitarians, like environmentalism, redefining poverty as relative rather than absolute, and being kind to muggers - “hug a hoodie” as they called it in the UK. As one Conservative representative said in my earshot when I was last in the UK, “I don’t see why we should have to adopt the entire agenda of the Albanian Communist Party.”
VBC theory, of course, would predict that such an approach would attract some egalitarians to the party, but at the expense of the hierachists who had been the party’s main core beforehand. That is exactly what appears to be happening. According to the latest poll, the Conservatives are behind Labour again, as voters whose main value is the hierachist one of security have gone to the Labour Party.
If David Cameron wants to gain a commanding poll lead over Labour, he could return to core principles such as economic liberalism and national security, while marketing those in terms of their fairness (e.g. a Western state built on a strong defense, civil society and religious liberty is the best champion of womens’ rights, for instance, or school choice ensures better schooling for all, or, dare I say it, the benefits of fossil fuel use lift all boats).
Instead, disenchanted Tories will vote for the party that most reflects their values, which may well be Labour. Other egalitarians will continue to vote Labour as long as its economic policy is redistributionist via its tax regime. Libertarians will have either the Liberal Democrats or the fledgling UK Independence Party to vote for as well as the Conservatives.
Unless there is a significant rethink, the current Tory communication effort will continue to fail to achieve its goals. Those of us who have spent years studying how to market liberty could have told them that.
What Spam? It’s against the law.
The European Union claims that unsolicited email –spam– accounts for between 50 and 80 percent of all Internet traffic. But that can’t be true, because a 2002 EU directive outlawed spam. Worse, an EU spokesman yesterday called the United States the biggest offender, blaming us for 22 percent of the torrent. That can’t be true either, since here in the U.S. we passed the CAN-SPAM Act in 2003, and as everyone knows, especially the politicians and activists who pushed for that legislation, there isn’t any spam here anymore.
Zimbabwe military wants “to listen” to make people safe
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, with 25-plus years of dictatorship under his belt, is now cracking down on cell phones in the name of national security. His military, with a record of expropriating land, torching and looting small businesses, and police brutality, now says that Zimbabwe’s citizens are endangering national security by having independent connections to the outside world.
According to their military spokesperson, the mobile phone providers should have to route their international calls through the state-owned TelOne so that people couldn’t “communicate without our knowledge.” This crackdown comes on the heels of a proposed law to monitor mail and Internet communications – again in the name of security. If the proposed law is passed by Mugabe’s hand-picked parliament and the new initiative goes through, then the military could monitor all forms of communication – in the name of security.
Says the military: “We want to listen, to make sure the nation is safe.”
Tony Bourdain: Recovering socialist
I’m a big fan of Tony Bourdain, but he describes himself as a socialist. At the same time, he clearly hates what the nanny state has done to food. Here’s an excerpt from his book A Cook’s Tour that I used in a debate on the Crunchy Con blog this March:
These are dire times to be a chef who specializes in pork and offal. The EU has its eye on unpasteurized cheese, artisanal cheese, artisanal everything, shellfish, meat, anything that carries the slightest, most infinitesimal possibility of risk - or the slightest potential for pleasure. There is talk of banning unaged cheese, stock bones, soft-boiled or raw eggs. In the States, legislation has been suggested, mandating a written warning when a customer requests eggs over easy or a Caesar salad. (’Warning! Fork - if placed in eye - may cause injury!’) A woman in the States won a lawsuit, claiming her coffee was too hot, scalding her as she stomped on the accelerator exiting the McDonald’s parking lot. (’Warning! Deep-fried Mars bar - if stuffed down pants - may cause genital scarring!’) The result of this unrestrained fear mongering, this mad rush to legislate new extremes of shrink-wrapped germ-free safety? Much like it was after Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle scared the hell out of early-twentieth-century meat eaters - the absorption of small independents into giant factory farms and slaughter domes. Try and eat an American chicken and you will see what looms: bloodless, flavorless, colorless, and riddled with salmonella - a by-product of letting the little guys go under and the big conglomerates run things their way. [Sounds crunchy, no? But note what Bourdain blames it on - ISM]…It’s war. On one side, a growing army of hugely talented young British, Scottish, Irish, and Australian chefs, rediscovering their own enviable indigenous resources and marrying them with either new or brash concepts or old and neglected classics. On the other? A soul-destroying tsunami of bad, fake reproductions of what was already bad, fake New York ‘Mexican’ food. Gluey, horrible nachos, microwaved, never-fried ‘refried’ beans, fabric softener margaritas. Limp, soggy, watery, and thoroughly dickless ‘enchiladas’ and catsupy salsas. Clueless ‘Pan-Asian’ watering holes where every callow youth with a can of coconut milk and some curry powder thinks he’s Ho Chi Minh. (Forget it. Ho could cook.) Sushi is almost nowhere to be found - in spite of the fact that the seafood in the UK is magnificent. You get more heart, soul, and flavor at an East End pie shop than at any of the rotten, fake, dumbed-down ‘Italian,’ ;Japanese fusion,’ or theme purgatories. Even the cod - the basic ingredient of fish and chips - is disappearing. (I raised that subject with a Portuguese cod importer. ‘The damned seals eat them,’ was his answer. ‘Kill more seals,’ he suggested.”)
Fortunately, Fergus and other like-minded souls are on the front lines, and they’re unlikely to abandon their positions. Sitting at St. John, I ordered what I think is the best thing I have ever put in my mouth: Gergus’s roasted bone marrow with parsley and caper salad, croutons, and sea sold.
Oh God, is it good. How something so simple can be so … so … absolutely luxurious. A few Flintstone-sized lenghts of veal shank, a lightly dressed salad … Lord … to tunnel into those bones, smear that soft gray-pink-and-white marrow onto a slab of toasted bread, sprinkle with some sel de gris … take a bite … Angels sing, celestial trumpets … six generations of one’s ancestors smile down from heaven. It’s butter from God.
Bourdain now hosts a show on the Travel Channel. Earlier this year there was an episode set in Peru, I think. He stayed with a very poor community, watching them labor hard to produce exceptionally meager fare. In the evening, he sat down with them and commented how beautiful their surroundings were as if they were compensation for the hard life. “You can keep it,” came the reply.
Bourdain indicated he was having second thoughts about the “benefits” of such lifestyles. Add the two pieces of evidence together and I suggest he may now be a recovering socialist.
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