Archives for December, 2006
The Lohachara Incident
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Geoffrey Lean of The Independent on Sunday adds a new element to the catastrophist case:
“Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India’s part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.”
One slight problem with this; Lohachara vanished 20 years ago:
“Lohachara and Bedford islands, with an area of more than six square kilometres between them, ‘vanished from the map’ two decades ago.”
More at Tim Blair’s site.
Expect this one to appear in the catastrophist litany as something that happened this year. A new slide for the Al Gore roadshow?
Bear-baiting
CEI Adjunct Fellow Steve Milloy has more on the polar bear issue in his weekly must-read FoxNews column:
“Let’s keep in mind that polar bears have survived much warmer times than we are now experiencing – like 1,000 years ago when the Vikings farmed Greenland during the Medieval Climate Optimum and 5,000-9,000 years ago during the period known as the Holocene Climate Optimum.
“But even giving the proposal the benefit of the doubt, will it accomplish anything?
“When I asked Secretary [of the Interior Dirk] Kempthorne that question – pointing out that even if the polar bear habitat was shrinking because of melting ice there isn’t a credible climate scientist in the world that believes anything could be done to stop the ice from melting, and that legalized polar bear harvesting seems to contradict any seriousness concerning threatened species status – the response delivered by the FWS director was not very reassuring.
“In a bureaucratic tone that only government functionaries can muster, he said they were just following the law. But even that is debatable since the proposal’s origins lie in the dubious deal cut with environmental activist groups.
“The reporters at the ill-conceived and poorly-executed press conference were eager to interpret the proposal as a weakening of President Bush’s position against global warming regulation. While Secretary Kempthorne and [Fish and Wildlife Service] staff repeatedly denied that the proposal was any sort of reflection on President Bush’s policy, their denials sounded evasive rather than sincere.”
This proposal is a disaster in the making.
Taste and Trans fats
Nobel laureate Gary Becker has some thoughts on the New York City trans-fats ban (reflecting on comments by his co-blogger, Judge Richard Posner):
“Posner also gives a kind of lower bound estimate of the benefits as $100 million, and also suggests a much lower cost to restaurants of becoming trans fat-free — I take this as $30 million. With a small taste benefit from the use of trans fats — the New England Medicine Journal article I cited earlier does admit positive effect of trans fats on ‘palatability’ — the total cost of the ban would equal or exceed total benefits. For example, suppose 1 million persons on average eat 200 meals per year in NYC restaurants with trans fats. If they value the taste of trans fats in their foods only by 35 cents per meal, the taste cost to consumers of the ban would be $70 million per year. Then the total cost of the ban would equal the benefits from the ban.
“Does one really want to go down the road of a ban on trans fats when the net gains to consumers are dubious, and probably negative, and when reversing directions is politically difficult? As an example of the difficulty in adapting politically, new evidence indicates that requiring child car seats may increase their risk of injury in accidents, yet there is no movement to reverse these laws.”
This is back-of-the-envelope stuff and dependent on utilitarian philosophy, but it is highly suggestive that the ban on trans-fats is mere political posturing, of no benefit to New Yorkers.
Jamaican Malaria: Blame Rachel Carson, not global warming
One problem with this theory! The disease was never “rare” in Jamaica until man-made DDT, despised by enviros from Rachel Carson onward, wiped it out there in the 1960s. Malaria has long been a part of Jamaica’s “natural” climate, which is very attractive to the mosquitoes that spread the disease. It has only been since the spraying of the man-made insecticide DDT, so hated by enviros from Rachel Carson on, that malaria had been eliminated there.
As Malcolm Gladwell, best-selling author of The Tipping Point and Blink, wrote in an excellent article in the New Yorker, Jamaica was part of the World Health Organization’s Global Malaria Eradication program in the 1950s and ’60s, in which countries with endemic malaria were subject to extensive spraying of DDT in the areas where disease-spreading mosquitoes congregate.
In the article, Gladwell had a fasicinating interview with Jesse Hobbs, who helped the Jamaica anti-malria campaign for the WHO in the early ’60s. ”What we all had was a handheld pressure sprayer of three-gallon capacity,” Hobbs told Gladwell. ”Generally, we used a formulation that was water wettable, meaning you had powder you mixed with water. Then you pressurized the tank. The squad chief would usually have notified the household some days before. The instructions were to take the pictures off the wall, pull everything away from the wall. Take the food and eating utensils out of the house. The spray man would spray with an up-and-down movement–at a certain speed, according to a pattern. You started at a certain point and sprayed the walls and ceiling, then went outside to spray the eaves of the roof. A spray man could cover ten to twelve houses a day. You were using about two hundred milligrams per square foot of DDT, which isn’t very much, and it was formulated in a way that you could see where you sprayed.”
Because of DDT, malaria was eliminated in much of the world, including parts of the United States. But with decades of no DDT spraying due to the bans and restrictions inspired by Carson’s hysteria in Silent Spring, malaria has returned to areas where it once disappeared, such as Sri Lanka, Jamaica, and the highlands regions of Kenya.
The malaria incidents are a resurgence, not rare new outbreaks, as the Associated Press continues to misreport. What’s causing this malaria is not global warming, but nature. And the problem in these cases is not human interfering too much with natural systems, but the fact that, due to environmentalist pressure, we are not interfering enough to stop deadly but perfectly “natural” diseases. As I note in Eco-Freaks: Envrionmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health, which this week became an Amazon non-fiction best-seller, Because technology has shielded us from the natural world, we don’t perceive simple dangers from nature as easily as our grandparents did. … And long before we had cars, electricity, or any of the other products that allegedly contribute to global warming, humans knew Mother Nature could be harsh.”
Let’s lift the DDT ban to protect the health Jamaica, Kenya, and possibly the United States from the old-fashiones ravages of nature.
Bear-faced Opportunism
With the bald eagle poised to come off the endangered species list (huzzah!), another species of charismatic megafauna is needed to replace it as the Endangered Species Act’s totem. Step forward, the polar bear:
The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world’s most recognizable animals out of existence.
The proposal–described by an Interior Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity–stems from the fact that rising temperatures in the Arctic are shrinking the sea ice that polar bears need for hunting.
Just one problem with that. Here’s Dr Mitchell Taylor, polar bear biologist for the Government of Nunavut in Canada:
One polar bear population (western Hudson Bay ) has declined since the 1980s and the reproductive success of females in that area seems to have decreased. We are not certain why, but it appears that ecological conditions in the mid-1980s were exceptionally good.
Climate change is having an effect on the west Hudson population of polar bears, but really, there is no need to panic. Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada , 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.
It is noteworthy that the neighbouring population of southern Hudson Bay does not appear to have declined, and another southern population ( Davis Strait ) may actually be over-abundant.
I understand that people who do not live in the north generally have difficulty grasping the concept of too many polar bears in an area. People who live here have a pretty good grasp of what that is like to have too many polar bears around.
One might suspect, given the ESA’s success in trumping the Constitution in recent years, that certain people are trying to use the Endangered Species Act to force regulation of greenhouse gases. The fact that polar bears are not really affected by global warming doesn’t seem to affect this logic.
EU Honesty
Some remarkable statements about the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions performance in an official EU document by Eija-Riitta Korhola, Vice-Chair of Kokoomus (Finnish National Coalition Party), and EPP (EU center-right party grouping) Rapporteur on Energy Policy and Member of the European Parliament:
“[T]he EU’s political decisions and rhetoric are sound but their implementation is becoming problematic.”“The truth is that unless something radical is devised the EU will soon have to admit that it cannot achieve its Kyoto goals.”“Now that the internal emissions trading regime in Europe has been in effect for more than a year and a half, most of the European stakeholders in energy intensive industries are remarkably unanimous about the whole system being a mistake. In the beginning of 2006, the German steel industry demanded that trading be interrupted. Many companies have given rising costs, deriving from the emissions trading, as the reason for closing down factories and moving production elsewhere. The biggest problem in emissions trading is considered to be the effect on electricity prices…Legislators are slow to admit that they made a mistake. Only last December in Montreal, the European emissions trading system was introduced as a fine example of the successful European climate policy.”“How can Europe make mistakes like these? One reason lies in the former Commission’s addiction to directives; they wanted to be in control, as if they were parents of the European family.”“After one and a half years of experience, the EU ETS is an immature and volatile market…The result of the EU ETS is a massive redistribution of income from power intensive industries to power generators. The price of electricity increases because of the increased marginal costs of producing power. For further long-term energy investments, this kind of market environment is difficult. There continues to be uncertainty about how the market will develop and how the problems will be fixed. It is because of this that the EU’s energy selfsufficiency can be expected to weaken further.”“The UK prides itself on emission reductions in the 1990s but that was simply because gas largely replaced coal in the UK’s energy mix.”“The Montreal meeting one year later did not make much progress either. The most important topic of the Montreal meeting was to define the post-Kyoto guidelines, which take effect after 2012. In public, the results have been described as a success and as considerable progress, but in the light of practical results, there is no reason to celebrate. There was still no agreement on any binding targets for developing countries and it is hard to see why those growing economies would say yes to the restrictions.““In my own career as a legislator, I have never before seen a proposal for an EU directive so unfinished and incomplete as the emissions trading directive of 2001. The plan, which was to be the basis of the whole European economy, its competition and climate strategy, had huge gaps in it. Hardly any theoretical studies had been carried out on the impact of emissions trading yet Europe stepped into this unknown in a tremendous hurry.”
Awards Season
From Numberwatch, the Sixth Annual Numby Awards. Readers will be glad to know every effort was made to preserve the planet’s delicate ecosystem:
Once again the Chairman of the Judges was that paragon of urbanity, Sir Hugh Jerrors, Professor of Modelling Those Little Fluffy Bits Round The Edges Of Clouds at the Metropolitan University of Nether Wallop. There was a murmur of disapproval as he took out an electric torch in order to read his notes, but this turned to rapturous applause when he announced that it had been charged from his own personal wind generator. After all, he might just have saved the planet.
He was outdone, however, by the evening’s special guest, Sir Hamish McTwaddle, who had arranged for the light on his lectern to be powered by two small boys on an adapted tandem. Before anyone could question the procedure, he was able to announce that not only had they been previously fed on five portions of organic vegetables, but they were breathing into tubes that conducted their exhalations to a specially constructed absorption vessel. This would be taken immediately after the ceremony by a special motor cycle courier to Middle Wallop Airfield, whence it would be transported by helicopter to the North Atlantic Deep, where it would be buried for time immemorial.
Naturally the audience were ecstatic. You do not often save the planet twice in one evening.
Bully for them!
Horsepower to the People
The great boon that is automobility is set to spread to India, with the introduction of a family car that will cost only $2000. Naturally, the rajahs of the environmental lobby is apoplectic at this keenly-anticipated extension of people power:
“It will be a total disaster,” said Anumita Roychoudhury, an associate director at the Centre for Science and the Environment in New Delhi. “One person dies every hour in Delhi from air pollution-related diseases and most Indian cities have pollution levels that are twice the permissible limits.”
Sudhir Bisht, a Delhi resident, said: “India doesn’t need more cars. It needs better public transport.”
The people of India seem satisfied that the benefits of automobility outweigh the possibility of increased emissions:
India has only about 10 cars per 1,000 of its 1.1 billion population, compared with Britain’s 445 per 1,000. There are just 11.7 million cars on Indian roads, but that figure is increasing by a million each year, thanks to the country’s skyrocketing economy.
Ratan Tata, 69, the chairman of the family-owned company, believes he has hit upon a “dream” design, which, if successful, will inject even more dynamism into India’s economy by giving millions of people independent means of travel around their vast country.
Throughout history, it has been the rule that a richer country is a cleaner country, as richer people are able to afford environmental improvements. Mr Tata may not only have provided a spark that will eventually clean up India’s air, but he may have provided the impetus for a richer country being able to build sea defenses around the Ganges delta, eradicate infectious disease, provide greater food and water security and protect endangered species (for instance, by the radical Indian solution of privatizing tigers). That’s the power of wealth for you.
Government Has No First Amendment Right to Discriminate
In November, Michigan voters adopted Proposal 2, a state constitutional amendment that bans racial preferences in state university admissions and in government contracts and employment. State universities like the University of Michigan are now flouting the will of the voters by claiming that they have a First Amendment right to discriminate based on race, no matter what the Michigan Constitution says.
They have now challenged Proposal 2 in court, making the audacious claim they have a First Amendment “right” to use race in admissions. They cite Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), a Supreme Court decision which found a compelling interest in using race in college admissions to promote “diversity,” for that claim. The Grutter decision was based partly on concepts of academic freedom that are, in turn, rooted partly in the First Amendment. But the Grutter decision, which they grossly exaggerate, does not support their argument.
The fact that Grutter may have found a First Amendment interest in using race does not mean it found a First Amendment right to use race, as the Center for Individual Rights (CIR) points out in its brief defending Proposal 2. As CIR notes, the First Amendment exists to protect citizens against the government, not the government against citizens. That is why the courts have repeatedly held that government agencies, such as state universities, don’t have First Amendment rights. See, e.g., CBS v. DNC, 412 U.S. 94, 139 (1973) (concurring opinion); Warner Cable Communications, Inc. v. City of Niceville, 911 F.2d 634, 638 (11th Cir. 1990); NAACP v. Hunt, 891 F.2d 1555, 1565 (11th Cir. 1990); Student Government Ass’n v. Board of Trustees, 868 F.2d 473, 481 (1st Cir. 1989); Estiverne v. Louisiana State Bar Ass’n, 863 F.2d 371, 379 (5th Cir. 1989).
This distinction between interests and rights has been made time and again by the courts, by finding compelling First Amendment interests even when there is manifestly no right protected by the First Amendment.
For example, private employers rightly aren’t limited by the First Amendment, since the Supreme Court has emphasized “that the constitutional guarantee of free speech is a guarantee only against abridgment by government, federal or state.” Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U.S. 507, 513 (1976). But the Supreme Court has nevertheless observed that “statutory or common law may in some instances extend protection or provide redress against a private corporation or person who seeks to abridge the free expression of others.”
Thus, in Novosel v. Nationwide Ins. Co., 721 F.2d 894, 899 (3d Cir. 1985), an appeals court, while recognizing that the First Amendment itself doesn’t limit private employers, nevertheless allowed an employee to sue a private employer under state common law for his discharge for publicly speaking out, because “the protection of an employee’s freedom of expression” involves a “compelling” “societal interest.” Using similar reasoning, other judges held that a city ordinance could validly protect a private employee who testified at a public hearing. See Carl v. Children’s Hospital, 702 A.2d 159, 183 (D.C. 1997) (Schwelb, J., concurring).
Similarly, Corry v. Stanford University (1995) upheld a state law that provided students at private colleges with the same rights that they would enjoy at state universities, even though students at private colleges have no free speech rights, because the state had a strong interest in protecting free expression on private college campuses.
Another area of law that illustrates that interests do not equate to rights is the Supreme Court’s decision to carve out an unwritten exception to the antitrust laws for political activity, somewhat similar to its decision in Grutter to carve out an unwritten exception to the civil rights laws for certain voluntary racial preferences.
This is called Noerr-Pennington immunity, which immunizes political activity from the reach of the antitrust laws, based on First Amendment values. See, e.g., Eastern Railroad Conf. v. Noerr-Motors, 365 U.S. 127, 136-38 (1961).
Although Noerr-Pennington immunity is based on First Amendment interests in protecting political activity from lawsuits, the immunity is broader than, and not “coextensive” with, the First Amendment,” protecting some political activity “even though it is not conduct protected by the First Amendment.” Cow Palace, Inc. v. Assoc. Milk Producers, 390 F.Supp. 696, 701 (D. Colo. 1975).
Thus, even when political activity turns out to be unprotected by the First Amendment, it may still be immune from antitrust liability under Noerr-Pennington to avoid chilling political activity; “even independently illegal acts” are sometimes immune from antitrust liability under Noerr-Pennington, even where “separate civil or criminal actions might lie against the perpetrator.” Schenley Industries, Inc. v. N.J. Wine & Spirit Wholesale Ass’n, 272 F.Supp. 872 (D. N.J. 1969).
Note that the Grutter decision that the state universities rely on to challenge Proposal 2 involved Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which regulates both private and public colleges alike, not just the Fourteenth Amendment, which regulates public colleges only.
Private colleges, unlike public colleges, do have academic freedom “rights” (as opposed to just “interests”) and thus it made sense for the Supreme Court to limit the reach of Title VI so as not to intrude upon colleges’ academic freedom. But while academic freedom may be a “right” for private colleges, it is merely an “interest” for state universities, which, as state actors, do not have First Amendment rights (as opposed to interests).
The distinction between First Amendment interests and rights, and the fact that civil rights laws may be limited to protect mere interests, is also reflected in the administrative practices of the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, where I once worked as an attorney administering civil rights statutes such as Title VI.
For example, although private colleges are not limited by the First Amendment, and private students do not have First Amendment protections against private colleges, the Department of Education’s harassment regulations place the same limits on liability for both public and private colleges. Thus, the scope of liability under Title IX and Title VI is limited by First Amendment principles, regardless of whether those principles are directly enforceable rights. See Office for Civil Rights, Revised Sexual Harassment Guidance, 65 Fed. Reg. 66092, 66106 n. 109 (Nov. 2, 2000) (“The First Amendment applies to entities and individuals that are State actors. The receipt of Federal funds by private schools does not directly subject those schools to the U.S. Constitution…However, all actions taken by OCR must comport with First Amendment principles, even in cases involving private schools that are not directly subject to the First Amendment”).
Since state universities have, at most, a First Amendment interest in using race to promote diversity, rather than an enforceable right to do so, the voters of Michigan can adopt a state constitutional provision, such as Proposal 2, that bans using race, without violating any rights held by the Universities. The Grutter decision conferred on state universities no “rights” to use race, as it made clear by pointing out that university racial preferences must contain sunset provisions that will terminate the use of race within 25 years. First Amendment “rights” don’t have expiration dates. Grutter also pointed out that some states, such as California, already ban state colleges from using race in admissions, without expressing any disapproval of that fact. That is hard to reconcile with the Michigan colleges’ claims that they have a vested right to use race.
Indeed, it is absurd that Michigan state colleges – which are treated by the Constitution’s Eleventh Amendment as arms of the state of Michigan, not separate entities – would even think of suing the State of Michigan to strike down a constitutional provision of their very own state. (Of course, even before Proposal 2, a college’s ability to use race was not unlimited. The Supreme Court struck down more race-conscious admissions policies than it upheld, invalidating the University of Michigan’s undergraduate admissions policy in the 2003 Gratz case, and a University of California law school’s admissions policy in the 1978 Bakke case).
This is certainly the understanding of Justice O’Connor, the author of the Grutter decision, who publicly stated after Proposal 2 passed that it was “entirely within the right and privilege of voters” to enact it, as John Fund noted in his November 20 column, “Preferences Forever?”, for The Wall Street Journal’s online OpinionJournal.
The courts should reject state colleges’ claim that they have a “right” to racially discriminate against their students.
Scenario planning writ large in the UK
I came across a UK government site that looks into the future across a range of issues. It’s part of the UK’s Foresight Program. Herewith a description:
Foresight, and its associated horizon scanning centre aims to provide challenging visions of the future, to ensure effective strategies now. It does this by providing a core of skills in science-based futures projects and unequalled access to leaders in government, business and science.
Now, it appears that Foresight’s Horizon Scanning Centre has two current scans: The Sigma Scan and the Delta Scan. The Sigma Scan is herewith described on its site:
The Sigma Scan is a quality assured synthesis of some of the world’s best Horizon Scanning sources. It covers future issues and trends across the full public policy agenda. It is drawn from a range of sources including think tanks, academic publications, mainstream media, corporate foresight, expert/strategic thinkers, government sources, alternative journals, charities/NGOs, blogs, minority communities, and futurists.
Personally, I like the Delta Scan better – the issues are more clearly defined, the groups working on the issues are noted, and resources are listed. Plus, it seems lighter on political correctness and looks like it has people who know something contributing:
The Delta Scan: The Future of Science and Technology, 2005-2055 is an overview of future science and technology issues and trends, with contributions by over 200 science and technology experts from the worlds of government, business, academia and communication in the UK and US.
It’s kinda interesting to take a look at some of the science and tech issues on the Delta site and where the experts think they’re going.
Subsidies don’t work
A good story in the New York Times about how subsidies to domestic oil and gas producers are a waste of taxpayer dollars:
Analysts said the meager impact of royalty incentives was not surprising: for oil and gas companies deciding whether to drill in deep water, the potential money involved in royalty incentives is small compared with the money at stake in changes of market prices.
Eliminating royalties on oil or gas will save a company 12 to 16 percent on some of its production. But those savings are minuscule compared with the nearly fourfold increase in oil prices from $15 a barrel in 1999 to more than $70 this summer.
CEI has long opposed federal subsidies to oil and gas companies. As it’s Christmas, we’ll use Dave Barry to illustrate why:
You will also be thrilled, as a taxpayer, to learn that the Farm Security Act provides new subsidies for producers of lentils and chickpeas. And not a moment too soon. This nation has become far too dependent on imported lentils and chickpeas. Try to picture the horror of living in a world in which foreigners, in foreign countries, suddenly cut off our lentil and chickpea supply. Imagine how you would feel if you had to look your small child in the eye and say, “I’m sorry, little Billy or Suzy as the case may be, but there will be no lentils or chickpeas tonight, and all because we taxpayers were too shortsighted to fork over millions of dollars in support for domestic lentil and chickpea producers, who thus were forced to compete in the market like everybody else, and . . . HEY, COME BACK HERE!”
Subsidies reward those who are powerful enough to extort, erm, extract them from government. in some cases, such as fishing subsidies, they are seriously damaging. We’re better off without them.
Hat-tips: Env-econ and Greg Mankiw, two sources always worth reading even if we don’t always agree with them…
Farming is big business – with big government handouts
The Washington Post continued its hard-hitting series attacking farm subsidies today. The article notes that some important counter-forces to the big-bucks farm lobbies are emerging to offer the moral high ground arguments.
Yesterday’s article pointed out how the biggest share of farm support goes to large-scale farmers, not the small family farm:
Large family farms, defined as those with revenue of more than $250,000, account for nearly 60 percent of all agricultural production but just 7 percent of all farms. They receive more than 54 percent of government subsidies. And their share of federal payments is growing — more than doubling over the past decade for the biggest farms.
Farewell to Frank
Frank Johnson, the Thatcherite journalist and wit, died recently at the tragically early age of 63. It has been a bad year for Thatcherites - we lost Ralph Harris and Milton Friedman as well this year - but John O’Sullivan reminds us of the zeal with which Thatcherites opposed the nanny state in the 1970s in his excellent obituary for Frank in ConservativeHome. A sample:
No one present when the TUC’s Len Murray attended one of Bill Deedes’s Telegraph drink parties could have doubted that Frank had digested the full Thatcherite creed. Murray was arguing that the workers in a failing company deserved financial compensation because they had “invested their lives” in it.“I would be a little wary of that argument, Lord Murray,” I said politely, “because if that were so…”
”When the company went bankrupt, the workers would all drop dead,” interjected Frank.
Murray had been one of the most powerful men in Britain when he headed the TUC (Trades Union Congress). Interestingly, I do not know who the current General Secretary of the TUC is. We have men like Frank Johnson to thank for that.
TSA — Unsafe at Any Altitude
If you’re flying this holiday season, once you’re on board the plane – after getting through with the stripping of belt and shoes, the unfolding of laptops, the confiscation of liquids, and possible patdowns – you may want to whip out a book the Transportation Security Administration doesn’t want you to read.
The new book that lays bare the TSA’s sorry record at flight security is called Unsafe at Any Altitude. Don’t let the sensational title fool you. Being the author of Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health – another great stocking stuffer – I know the virtue of strong titles to grab attention.
Written by husband and wife Joseph and Susan Trento — respectively, a former CNN reporter and a former Congressional staffer – and published by the prestigious independent Steerforth Press, Unsafe at Any Altitude is the exact opposite of a Naderite expose and a call for more government regulation. This book exposes government bungling at its worst, while showing that the private security firms performed better in almost every respect when it came to ensuring flight safety. As such, makes one of the most compelling cases for privatization in air travel in years.
The Trentos obtained non-public documents they say show the TSA passes random safety tests — detecting weapons in bags – only 50 percent of the time. By contrast, the pre-911 private security firms would regularly pass 80 to 95 percent of the time. The Trentos also defend the much-maligned Argenbright Security, who they show was actually a pioneering firm in baggage screening that Europeans countries learned from. And they show how John McCain was largely to blame for pushing the GOP to go along with the Democrat-pushed plan to create an Army of unionized TSA workers.
The Trentos also show how there was more accountability. Not just from regulatory agencies, but also the airlines. The airlines would push to fire a service that didn’t have a satisfactory screeing record. The TSA, by contrast, answers to virtually no one.
The airport system wasn’t perfect. Largely, because, unlike countries from Great Britain to Mexico, the U.S. had barely any airports that had been privatized or corporatized. But the Trentos show that we can learn from the semi-private system of the recent past to make for a safer system of air travel in the future.
The Trentos also have a web site. Have a nice flight!
Making Job Losses Bad Politics
Yesterday, President Bush announced that he may go along with Congressional Democrats’ proposal for an increase in the federal minimum wage, in exchange for some tax and regulatory. Today, I note in The American Spectator that this may not be a politically wise move.
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