We happy few here at Open Market have really been in tune with the rock journalists of America recently. First Kurt Loder trashes Michael Moore’s Sicko, and now Rolling Stone blows the whistle on the ethanol scam:

As the king of ethanol hype, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, put it recently, “Everything about ethanol is good, good, good.”

This is not just hype — it’s dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn’t burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents…

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Over the last several days, my colleagues at CEI have pointed out some of the worst aspects of the Farm Bill — and it’s bad. But now The Wall Street Journal shines a spotlight on a little-noticed aspect of the bill that would make it even worse:

The overstuffed farm bill now waddling through Congress — toward a possible veto by President Bush — has attracted so much waste that everyone with a genuine interest in agriculture is feeling disheartened. Yet…

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An Associated Press story today on proposed “carried interest” tax hike legislation aimed at soaking private equity had this interesting description of what the proposals would do:

Congress is debating whether to force companies set up as limited partnerships — and their managers — to pay taxes at the same rate as income earned by ordinary Americans.

But reading the fine print of the press release of main sponsor Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) shows that the House bill would also hike the taxes…

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A recent upsurge in Dengue offers a depressing reminder that malaria is not the only serious mosquito-borne disease affecting the world. Dengue—a virus transmitted by mosquito bites—can lead to fever, severe joint pain, internal hemorrhaging, and death for some.

This year, many Asian nations—particularly Cambodia, Indonesia, and
Vietnam—are suffering from a serious outbreak. Regarding this year’s occurrence Kroeger Axel of the Dengue research coordinator for the World Health Organization notes: “We always think next year it will get better, but we always find…

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Fran,

Obviously, I’m sorry to see that Ingmar Bergman has died. But, beyond some half-praise for his visuals, I can’t think of much good to say about his movies. Bergman and, more importantly, the critics who adored him, did more than any other director to harm the reputation of foreign-made films here in the United States.

Heavily subsidized by the Swedish state for many of his films, most of what he did was boring, slow moving, and utterly unaware of the…

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Chris recently gave a presentation on his book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) before an eager audience here in Washington. The smart producers at C-SPAN sent a camera along and here is the result (total playing time 32:55).

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A small upstart company run by a Colorado multi-millionaire, GrandLuxe Rail Journeys, appears to have broken a major barrier and started providing scheduled, competitive rail service in the United States. While the company also provides “land cruises,” (that emphasize sightseeing by train) it also has a few services that would be useful for people looking to go from point a to point b. Although I have no idea if it has a viable business model, its existence seems to show…

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Some readers may remember the long-running defamation suit between John “Freedomnomics” Lott and Steven “Freakonomics” Levitt. Defamation suits are rarely settled in the plaintiff’s favor, so this (subsrciption required) may be regarded as more than a small victory for Lott:

John R. Lott Jr.’s defamation lawsuit against a fellow economist, Steven D. Levitt, has provisionally been settled — but it may yet roar back to life. In documents filed on Friday in federal court, the two parties outlined a settlement that…

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In recent years, some state attorneys general have used their offices to sponsor lawsuits that redistribute billions of dollars from businesses into the pockets of their trial lawyer cronies. CEI describes this in greater detail in The Nation’s Top Ten Worst State Attorneys General.

Now this problem has been criticized by reform-minded attorneys general as well. This subject (and CEI’s study of the worst state attorneys general) came up for repeated discussion in today’s Federalist Society forum, “Reaching Too Far: The…

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The Federalist Society helpfully hosted a panel discussion today on the on-going abuse of power by state attorneys general - otherwise known as attorney general activism. You know, the same group elected officials who brought the tobacco settlement down on us. The $240 billion partnership between the states and Big Tobacco (which CEI is challenging in court).

Not that it’s the only bogus lawsuit brought on by state AGs and their trial lawyer buddies. Apparently cranberries can be an AG target.…

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(Maria Callas in I Puritani)

Over at CafeHayek, Russell Roberts has a post on how opera companies and audiences are burgeoning in the U.S. He quoted from an article in The American about this phenomenon and asked the question — how reliant are opera companies on government funding?

It turns out that government funding represents about 5 or 6 percent of total U.S. opera companies’ funding, according to The American. For the arts in general, that amount is about 12 percent. The rest…

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Two great filmmakers died in succession this week. On Monday, Ingmar Bergman died at the age of 89; yesterday Michelangelo Antonioni at 94. The end of an epoch in innovative film-making that began in the 1950s and is imitated even today.

Both Bergman and Antonioni were favorites of my small clique of foreign-film buffs at the girls’ school I attended. In high school — still in our uniforms — we’d go to the downtown “art theatre” that showed Bergman’s early films. In…

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Friends of the Earth is trying to organize a YouTube “revolution” on global warming, starting with unhappy pop stars. Climate Resistance isn’t impressed:

We at Climate-Resistance have no time for celebrities lecturing us about climate change. None of the celebrities speaking on behalf of the campaign appear to have a clue what it is even about. It is the most shameful indictment of Friends of the Earth that they have to recruit pop-stars to endorse their project because it lacks…

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Dear Marlo:

I’ve received quite a lot of correspondence from people around the country about my July 13 email to you, and they have persuaded me how wrong I was.

No matter that I thought I was fighting for Free Speech and against what I saw as Paid Speech, I had no right in our American system of freedoms to threaten your career over it. As a moderate-conservative who believes in the Constitution and all it stands for, and as a moderate-liberal…

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WashingtonWatch today listed the cost of the farm bill (H.R. 2419) just passed by the House last Friday. It seems like the average American family will pay $2590.27 for this bloated program that the Democrats — in pushing it through — claimed had “something for everyone.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the House bill will bring total spending of programs administered by USDA to $286 billion for the period 2008-2012. It extends major farm income support programs for major commodities —…

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A masthead editorial (full text by subscription only) lays out a compelling case for mandatory purchase of catastrophe insurance. I’ve long supported something close to a mandate for health insurance purchase, but I’m not sure if anything like that makes sense for property insurance. Under all circumstances, I do think that government does have an obligation to rescue people in serious trouble (although it might well send them a bill if they’re able-bodied and ignored clear evacuation orders).

But, unlike health care…

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Openness–in our culture filled with feel-goodery and self congratulation openness is seen as a good thing–a trait that any liberal and modern person should hope to have. But is openness always the best policy?

Google sure thinks so. It’s advocating that the 700 Mhz spectrum–soon to be freed up by the transition to digital TV–should be auctioned with openness in mind. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, has asked FCC Chairman Martin to limit the auction to models that would include open applications,…

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A recent Reuters article and video noted the plight of the leatherbacked turtles as it reported on the release of hundreds of baby turtles on the east coast of Malaysia by conservationists. Yet, the article noted:

Despite strict laws banning egg sales, moves to safeguard nesting sites and efforts to build hatcheries, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) warned last year that the number of leatherback turtles had plummeted because of egg harvesting and turtle hunting.

Just last week at a CEI seminar, Barun…

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Advertisers are objecting to the bill that would subject the tobacco industry to FDA regulation, saying that its restrictions on tobacco advertising would violate the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down tobacco advertising restrictions in Lorillard Tobacco v. Reilly (2001).

They also claim that it would set a bad precedent for advertising restrictions in other industries.

There are many other objections to the bill, such as the fact that it would make it harder to sell smokeless tobacco to cigarette smokers, even though smokeless tobacco is less…

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Google’s Policy Blog today makes a succinct argument for why its purchase of DoubleClick should be approved. While I find their reasoning compelling and logical–in fact, I don’t think any justification should be necessary–I find it hard to be sympathetic to a plea for fairness when Google is asking DC to stack the deck in its favor on other issues.

Example: Google has issued an ultimatum to the FCC, asking it to offer up the 700 Mhz spectrum–the radio waves that…

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