Archives for May, 2007
Tensions within the FDA — Type I, Type II debate
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An internecine struggle apparently exists within the FDA, according to an article in the New York Times. Those tensions between drug approval officials and drug safety officials are expected to erupt in a House hearing scheduled for June 6.
The agency is taking a lot of heat from politicians for approving drugs that have had side effects, the latest being the diabetes drug Avandia, charged with increasing the risk of heart attacks.
Forget the Money - Follow the Emissions
It seems Hillary Clinton is defending herself against charges that she accepted private jet rides she shouldn’t have from a campaign contributor. She is maintaining, of course, that she did nothing wrong.
Sen. Clinton, who complained about corporate America’s largesse and skyrocketing executive pay during campaign events Wednesday, said she did not believe her message was undermined by her acceptance of the private flights. In line with Senate rules then in effect, Clinton’s campaign has said she reimbursed [InfoUSA Inc. chief executive Vinod] Gupta at the cost of a first-class flight, typically a significant discount off the expense of a private jet.
“Those were the rules. You’ll have to ask somebody else whether that’s good policy,” she said.
What she seems to be forgetting is that air travel, especially on private jets, is, in and of itself, immoral. Doesn’t she know about all the carbon dioxide she’s casuing to be spewed into the atmosphere? Doesn’t she realize she’s making herself into a climate criminal with all this jet travel, reimbursements or no?
Liberal Journalist Suggests All Women Think Alike
Linda Greenhouse, the liberal Supreme Court reporter for the New York Times, thinks she has the inside story as to why a recent Supreme Court decision came out the way it did: a female Supreme Court justice was replaced by a male. (She’s entirely wrong.)
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court voted 5-to-4 to enforce the 180-day statute of limitations in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. In doing so, it dismissed an untimely pay discrimination claim by Lilly Ledbetter against Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. under Title VII, suggesting that she should have brought her suit instead under the Equal Pay Act, which has a longer statute of limitations. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in dissent, suggested that the five justices in the majority (who happened to be male) were “indifferent” to the “way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.”
Greenhouse, who has a bad memory, suggests that the close 5-to-4 ruling would have been decided the other way if Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a woman, were still on the court, and had not been replaced by a man, Justice Samuel Alito. Justice O’Connor, she said, “would almost certainly have voted the other way.”
But Justice O’Connor rigorously enforced statutes of limitations, and she wasn’t the swing-vote on the Supreme Court in statute of limitations cases. A man, Justice Clarence Thomas, was. In a 2002 case, Justice Thomas joined the court’s four liberal justices in weakening the statute of limitations in discriminatory harassment cases in National R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Morgan. It was Justice O’Connor who wrote the dissent against that ruling, which was also decided by a 5-to-4 margin.
Greenhouse’s story on the Ledbetter decision is little more than an editorial in favor of the dissent, as the Wall Street Journal’s OpinionJournal points out.
That’s unfortunate, because the New York Times is a very influential newspaper, given its large national circulation. (Indeed, Greenhouse herself is, mystifyingly, influential: the phrase “the Greenhouse Effect” was coined by senior federal judge Laurence Silberman to describe the phenomenon of vain, once-conservative Supreme Court justices writing liberal decisions in order to get favorable coverage from Greenhouse and the Times).
Why the Supreme Court was right to enforce the law’s statute of limitations in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, and why the decision does not gut legal protections against discrimination, is explained in my post yesterday.
Buddy Cianci Pasta Sauce
Ivan,
Yes, Buddy Cianci was courrupt. Very courrupt. That’s beyond dispute. I had an encouter with him and several with his legacy. Along with Zell Miller, he may rank as the last truly colorful American politican.
When I first visited Providece to learn about its police department, Cianci decided he wanted to meet with me. No other mayor cared to meet with a 20-something researcher from a right-wing think tank in D.C. and I never sought meetings with elected officials. But I figured I had to go.
He was just what I expected: larger than life, full of energy, very smart, and very determined. And he loved his city. Despite his own illegal activities, or maybe because of them, he knew a lot about policing–more than any other mayor I’ve ever met.
During a later visit to the Providence Police Department, the new, post-Buddy chief (a friend of mine) explained how the city’s entire new police headquarters had been built via payoffs. But it’s important to note that the police building got built. Unlike a bevy of other crooked mayors (Washington’s Marion Barry, Detroit’s Coleman Young) Buddy got things done. Providence is booming and even his staunchest opponents admit that the boom has a lot to do with the ex-mayor.
An anecdote may sum things up. Last I was in Providence–more than two years into Buddy’s prison sentence–stores all over town still proudly displayed jars of the Mayor’s Own Pasta Sauce with his picture on the bottle. The sauce itself has a label that says it contains 50 Calories per serving, 60 of which (not a typo) come from fat. So the mayor lies even on his own label. And he lets you know that he lies. But, I couldn’t help it: I bought some. And I don’t regret it. The sauce is wonderful.
So here’s to crooked politicans! We need more pols like Buddy.
Time-Delayed TV Popularity
According to Television Week’s Jon Lafayette, broadcasters have begun taking note of the increasing difference between traditional Neilsen ratings vs. traditional ratings + DVR playback. Turns out The Office has one of the biggest ratings differentials, which, given its overall popularity, makes it one of the most frequently recorded shows. People who love The Office love their technology.
This change, however, has left advertisers and broadcasters haggling over ad rates. While people with DVRs can fast-forward through the commercials, not all of them do. Thus, DVR playbacks add somewhat to the value of a TV ad, though no one seems to agree on how much.
As next season’s upfront ad market unfolds, some media agencies have already said they plan to buy commercials based on live plus three commercial ratings, but most of the industry is still haggling over how much playback should be counted and how much those delayed impressions are worth.
Nielsen’s new Commercial Minutes Ratings take the average rating for the minutes in programs in which commercials appear, rather than calculating ratings for each of the individual commercials bought by advertisers. Many ad buyers say that average commercial minutes might be acceptable in the short term, but would prefer more granular data in the future.
Nielsen will be calculating data based on live viewing, live viewing plus DVR playback during the same day and live viewing plus DVR playback for one, two, three and seven days for broadcast, cable and syndicated shows.
As more households migrate to DVR-powered delayed viewing, expect these disputes to get more contentious.
Look Who’s out of Prison
Vincent “Buddy”‘ Cianci, the legendary, popular, and corrupt former mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, was released from prison today, after serving time for a 2002 racketeering conviction.
Like Washington, D.C. has Marion Barry, Providence had Buddy — a larger-than-life politician who remained popular even in the face of major corruption allegations.
A sign of the decline of American democracy? Hardly. I prefer to think of the benign toleration of guys like this as an unusal manifestation of Americans’ healthy suspicion of politics: If politics is something to be regarded with suspicion, then it naturally will attract cheats and rogues to its practice. Welcome back, Buddy!
Partial Nudity Delays Halo 2 For Vista
Halo 2 for Vista was found to have a hidden part of the code containing a character which moons the player. Much like GTA’s hidden Hot Coffee code, this “Easter egg” is a piece of the code, likely a joke from one programmer to another, is only accessible by someone who is very familiar with programming and has a lot of time on their hands. This should not be confused with unlockable levels or characters, which are common to many games and a completely kosher part of game design.
That said, after the fallout from the Hot Coffee controversy, the ESRB did change the terms of the contracts that it signs with software makers to mandate disclosure of this kind of inaccessible code. But was this change truly motivated by market forces?
The ESRB certainly isn’t operating in a political vacuum, but is rather well aware of its political circumstances. The ESRB, like the MPAA, knows that its voluntary rating structure, to some degree or another, operates at the pleasure of Congress. A few more Hot Coffee scenarios may result in Congress stepping in and mandating certain standards, like those proposed by Senator Brownback, which would cripple the ESRB system.
Anticipating possible moves of Congress is part of the ESRB’s policy and this can only harm the ratings systems efficacy. Good ratings are about conveying information, not about regulating content. If the ESRB continues to be encroached upon by legislation or the threat of legislation it will start to become crippled like the MPAA, which is now considering the presence of “glamorized smoking” in its ratings process and seems to be on the road back to the Hays Code, which inspired the formation of the MPAA’s current rating system three decades ago.
While I understand that the ESRB may make the same moves in the absence of an abusive and unconstrained Congress, it’s unfortunate that we’re living in a world where it’s impossible to know.
Ethanol mandates: The straw the broke the camel’s back
Ethanol mandates already made my steak cost more. Ditto my bacon, my eggs, and my cheese. In fact, the market ramifications of government-imposed demand for ethanol have made virtually all my groceries more expensive. Of course it stinks, but I have persevered, confident that Congress enacted ethanol mandates with the American consumer in mind, and not at the behest of an army of lobbyists employed by some huge multinational corporation, like, say, Archer Daniel Midland. After all, each gallon of ethanol produced by ADM gets us that much closer to energy independence, and thus to cheaper gasoline.
Today, however, the unintended consequences of ethanol mandates finally got to me. Now, I am officially outraged. Why? Because Congressional ethanol mandates have taken aim at my libido.
According to Reuters, Mexican farmers are busy setting ablaze agave fields. Agave plants, source of America’s favorite liquid courage, tequila, simply cannot compete with record corn prices. So, in order to make room for corn, Mexican farmers are burning off their existing agave stocks. As with anything bought and sold, when there is less of it, we pay more for it. We have seen this dynamic before with other grains which were also forsaken to accommodate more corn.
But I can live in a breadless world. Bread doesn’t make me funny. Not like fermented agave nectar does. Indeed, without cheap, abundant tequila, I am saddled with the same inhibitions that make me so awkwardly lame around women during the non-fun hours of the day. That is, before tequila time. I know I am not alone. I know millions of poor, somewhat attractive, balding guys the world over rely on tequila to give them self-confidence in social situations. Our day of reckoning is near, my brothers, and the time for commiseration is at hand. So let us raise a double shot of Montezuma high in the air and rue the day ADM got its way.
More Problems With Senate Immigration Deal
Earlier, I wrote about how the Senate immigration deal supported by Ted Kennedy and George Bush has been criticized for doing little to increase the supply of high-skilled immigrant labor, even as it opens the door to 12 million mostly low-skilled illegal immigrants ultimately becoming citizens (and thus receiving retirement and welfare benefits at taxpayer expense).
Today, The Wall Street Journal has an editorial on how “the Senate bill is worse than current law for skilled immigrants,” who are badly needed in a number of American industries.
In a recent column, George Will explained how the bill will benefit illegal aliens, who are often unskilled, at the expense of American taxpayers.
In an ideal world, America would have a liberal immigration policy, but those who come to America would have to agree to forego welfare benefits, and means-tested benefits, for life, and receive no more Social Security benefits than they pay in.
But such restrictions on welfare would be anathema to the liberal advocacy groups that are pushing hardest for passage of the Senate immigration deal. They may be described as supporting open borders, but what they really want is an open-wallet policy. They want American taxpayers to pay for welfare, affirmative action, and bilingual education for illegal immigrants from the Third World. They have little interest in the well-being of people like my wife, a trilingual, French and Spanish-speaking, legal immigrant.
Bureaucrats Block Voluntary Mad Cow Testing
Amazingly enough, the Agriculture Department is fighting a meat packer’s plan to voluntarily test all slaughtered cattle for mad cow disease.
The government doesn’t need to test all slaughtered cattle for mad cow disease, since the danger of mad cow disease from any given cow is extremely, astronomically low, verging on nonexistent. It would be a waste of taxpayer money and limited agency resources. Other food-borne illnesses are more of a reality and thus merit priority in screening.
But a small number of Americans won’t eat beef because of their mad cow fears, however irrational such fears may be. The market for beef would thus increase slightly if a meatpacker were allowed to cater to such idiosyncratic people by carrying out voluntary mad cow testing.
Moreover, the image of the government blocking mad cow testing looks bad. It could be seized on by foreign countries as a pretext to restrict imports of American beef, thus eliminating American jobs.
It also helps obscure the fact that American food safety is among the best, if not the best, in the world, with rates of food-borne illnesses steadily falling over the years.
Department of Pre-Regulation
One of the highlights of our big annual dinner last week was our faux public service announcement from a future where nanny-state regulators have taken over. Behold, the terrifying possibilities of the Department of Pre-Regulation:
Credits (in no particular order) include: Erin Wildermuth, Cord Blomquist, Ivan Osorio, Brooke Oberwetter, Jeremy Lott, Megan McLaughlin, William Yeatman, Julie Walsh, Kate McLaughlin, Dominick Saran, Jason Talley, Greg Conko, Christine Hall, Sam Kazman, Al Canata, Holly Jackson and Richard Morrison. Also, special thanks to Philip K. Dick and Scott Frank for a little inspiration.
Limbaugh reads CEI letter on the air
A little bird tells us that earlier today Rush Limbaugh read John Berlau’s letter urging the head of the Nobel Peach Prize committee to bestow the award, not on Al Gore, but on Rush Limbaugh. Mr. Limbaugh was nominated by the conservative Landmark Legal Foundation. As John Berlau argues in the letter:
I can say without reservation that on one of the most important issues facing the world — a threat far more immediate than global warming — Mr. Limbaugh has made the greater contribution to public health. In fact, Mr. Gore’s contributions regarding this issue, by contrast, have been detrimental to public health.
This issue I’m speaking of is the epidemic of malaria in third-world countries. As you know (or should know), malaria kills more than one million people a year and infects hundreds of millions every year. There is a scientific consensus that the best — and in many cases the only — effective way to control the mosquitoes that spread this deadly disease is with the insecticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, otherwise known as DDT. But DDT unfortunately has been vilified by advocacy groups and the popular press based on junk science.
Over the past decade and a half, Mr. Limbaugh has been at times almost a lone media voice correcting misinformation about DDT and also pointing out its life-saving benefits against diseases like malaria. Mr. Gore, by contrast, has continued to spread DDT myths as well as misleading information about the causes of the malaria epidemic.
Crying Wolf: Demagoguing About Discrimination
Yesterday, by a vote of 5-to-4, the Supreme Court actually enforced the 180-day statute of limitations contained in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, dismissing an employee’s claim that she had been subject to sex discrimination years earlier that affected her pay.
For enforcing the plain language of the statute, the justices in the majority were denounced by the dissent, which speculated that they were “indifferent to the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.”
Press accounts about the decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. have uncritically reported this allegation, without even noting that the majority didn’t prevent the plaintiff from obtaining relief: Her inept lawyers and the plain language of the statute under which she sued did.
The majority pointed out that the plaintiff could just as easily have sued under the Equal Pay Act, which specifically bans sex discrimination in pay, and has a longer statute of limitations — and broader definition of discrimination — than the statutory provision that the plaintiff sued under. If she had done that, she probably would have won her lawsuit. But she didn’t do that. Instead, she just sued under Title VII, alleging intentional discrimination.
Future Fred Greets You from 2107
For all of you who were unable to make it to CEI’s annual banquet/gala/extravaganza last Thursday, here’s the opening video. Fred greeted the crowd from the future, and gave us a few clues as to what we can expect from the next century.
And we’re the well-funded ones?
Banking firm HSBC is to give $100 million to various environmental groups to “respond to global warming.” According to the HSBC press release, much of the money is to expand the size and influence of the environmental organizations:
HSBC’s US$100 million partnership - including the largest donations to each of these charities and the largest donation ever made by a British company - has significant programme targets and offers transformational support for the environmental charities. The donation will help to deliver increased capacity, help the charities to expand across new countries and research sites, and increase their access to more people.
This is, of course, additional to the $150 million environmental groups are spending in the U.S. each year on global warming.
It might be noted that HSBC stands to benefit considerably if carbon trading becomes the $3 trillion market some have suggested it could be. The World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund), which has received $35 million in this deal, has lobbied for cap-and-trade in Europe.
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