Altria, the parent company of cigarette-maker Philip Morris, is shutting down its headquarters in New York City and will no longer employ the “vast majority” of its employees there. At the same time, it is spinning off its profitable overseas business to an independent entity (Philip Morris International), to be headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, and shifting its U.S. headquarters to Richmond, Virginia.

It is spinning off its overseas operations in order to shield them from lawsuits in the U.S., like the ones that have…

Read the full story

Drudge today links to Jake Tapper’s “Political Punch” column at ABC News, where he reports on a speech given by Bill Clinton yesterday in Denver. In it, Bill refers to the question of global warming and economic growth in surprising new terms. Instead of talking about the hundreds of thousands of high-paying green collar jobs we’ll supposedly be generating by shunning the cheapest and most reliable energy sources on the planet, he issued a surprising recommendation.

In a long, and interesting speech,…

Read the full story

The multi-dimensional debate over political correctness at The Smithsonian (everything from exactly how many children Thomas Jefferson fathered to the proper display of the Enola Gay) has another entry: climate science at the Museum of Natural History. From today’s Inside the Beltway:

Suffice it to say, the Smithsonian Institution is not buying into the “global warming” hysteria being spread by Al Gore.

While in the District in recent days, professor Jeff Bennett of the Crawford School of Economics and Government at Australian National University…

Read the full story

Those hilarious Europeans. They are threatening to ban patio heaters. Too big a carbon imprint, it seems. So much for convenience, choice, and individual liberty. Reports the Times of London:

Britain’s growing café culture and taste for alfresco drinking and dining may be under threat from MEPs who want to ban the patio heater.

A vote in Brussels today is expected to call on the European Commission to abolish the heaters to help to tackle climate change. Such a move could cost…

Read the full story

C. Boyden Gray, the U.S. Envoy to the European Union, said Tuesday (Jan. 28) that U.S. and EU adoption of carbon “offset” taxes (aka carbon tariffs) is “inevitable” if China, India, and other developing countries refuse to limit their greenhouse gas emissions.

Gray spoke to European-based reporters in a telephone news conference. As reported by Joe Kirwin of BNA (Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.), Gray said the United States and the EU would eventually “have no choice” but to impose carbon tariffs…

Read the full story

At EconLog, Bryan Caplan sums up succinctly the method whereby President Bush this week was able to sound more predisposed toward a global treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions — that is, ration carbon-based energy — without really being so:

If you don’t like telling people No, a convenient alternative is setting conditions you know other people won’t accept. Then the impasse is their fault, you see.

He cites many liberal Democrats’ opposition to trade agreements, which they claim is “qualified,” not because…

Read the full story

Last night, ABC News lavished sympathy on a North Carolina couple whose mortgage payments had risen to just over $2,000 a month, owing to the fact that they had an adjustable rate mortgage whose interest had recently risen from an introductory 9 percent rate to a hefty 14 percent rate.

Math is obviously not something that ABC News journalists understand. The ABC evening news program hosted by Charles Gibson credulously accepted the couple’s claim that they were being forced to devote…

Read the full story

The House has overwhelmingly voted to pass the “stimulus” bill I discussed earlier, which would increase the deficit, provide “rebates” that did nothing in past recessions to revise the economy, and give Fannie Mae, which engaged in Enron-style accounting and helped create the housing bubble, broad new lending powers.

Michelle Malkin points out the the Senate version of the “stimulus” bill is even worse than the version passed by the House, containing a lot of welfare, and that even its less controversial components,…

Read the full story

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s multibillion dollar health care plan was rejected as too expensive by the California State Senate’s Health Committee, putting him to the left of even that predominantly Democratic body.

The Schwarzenegger plan would dramatically increase the role of the state in the health care system, relying on tax increases and manipulation of the federal Medicaid system to increase federal subsidies.

Like many proposals to expand states’ role in health care, the Schwarzenegger plan probably violated the federal ERISA law through…

Read the full story

President Bush didn’t mention Blanca Gonzalez, the mother of jailed Cuban dissident Normando Hernandez Gonzalez, after all. But the film Shootdown, which I also mentioned in the same post yesterday, is Michael Moynihan at Reason today. The film profiles the blowing out of the sky by Cuban air force MiGs of two planes from the Brothers to the Rescue operation.

An event soon overshadowed by the saga of Elian Gonzales, the attack on the unarmed Brothers to the Rescue planes is…

Read the full story

A toothache is never fun. It is likely to be particularly painful in Great Britain. Reports Investor’s Business Daily:

Since April 2006, one in every 10 dentists have stopped offering treatment under Great Britain’s national health care system. Who can blame them? The government changed its contract with 21,000 dentists almost two years ago, and the result was more work for the dentists and limits on their earnings.

Because of the shortage, 2.7 million Britons have gone nearly two years without dental…

Read the full story

The “stimulus” plan devised by House leaders and the White House at a price tag of nearly $150 billion is now being rejected as too small by Senate Finance Committee head Max Baucus. His plan would give out much more welfare benefits, and provide tax “rebates” to millions more people who don’t even pay taxes, than the House plan proposed. (I described yesterday how other Senators are busy proposing all sorts of welfare for inclusion in the stimulus plan, and…

Read the full story

Well, President Bush has given his final State of the Union address and the news stories analyzing it are soon to be legion. Among the most anticipated topics was what he would say about global warming and what the U.S. government should do about it. A couple of weeks ago, the flagship of UK leftism, The Guardian, confidently predicted that Bush would reverse himself and “make a historic shift in his position on global warming.” Sorry, Guardian readers. I’m sure staff writers…

Read the full story

Over at reason.tv, Fred Smith tackles climate change, from Reason’s recent conference in Washington, DC, as part of a panel also featuring Reason science correspondent Ron Bailey (CEI’s inaugurual Warren Brookes Fellow) and Northwestern University economist Lynne Kiesling.

Read the full story

Earlier today, I wrote about how Senators are busy “larding up the bloated ’stimulus’ plan with more welfare” by proposing added government spending on frills such as taxpayer-financed “mortgage counseling.”

Commenting on that post, Michelle Malkin noted that left-wing groups like ACORN and La Raza would likely receive much of the money for such “counseling,” and that their counseling is likely to duplicate existing mortgage programs.

It’s not the first time these groups have received subsidies at the public’s expense. Consumer class…

Read the full story

The guest list for the First Lady’s Box for tonight’s State of the Union speech provides a preview of individuals to whom the President may give a public nod or even praise. One such individual to look out for is Blanca Gonzalez.

Blanca Gonzalez, Mother of Cuban Political Prisoner; (Miami, Florida)
Blanca Gonzalez is the mother of Normando Hernandez Gonzalez, a political prisoner suffering under the regime of Fidel and Raul Castro. In 2002, Blanca Gonzalez fled Cuba and applied for political asylum in…

Read the full story

Language expert Bill Poser criticizes the Federal Communications Commission’s recent ruling that “ABC violated decency standards by briefly showing a woman’s naked buttocks, and finds it wanting. In particular Poser critiques the FCC’s claim that buttocks are a ’sexual organ,’” as the FCC’s own indecency regulations require. (The FCC fined ABC $1.4 million over an NYPD Blue episode).

In essence, he argues that the FCC reinterpreted its rules to retroactively expand the definition of indecency, in order to ensnare ABC.

…

Read the full story

In the last few days, I’ve been following the saga of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick with the same fascination I often reserve for car crashes. Briefly, even as his city has continued its never-ending stream of economic hard luck, Kilpatrick allegedly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds to carry on an affair with another city worker and then fired several police officers who might have exposed him. The officers sued, Kilpatrick denied having an affair, and a jury…

Read the full story

Earlier this month, House leaders reached a deal with the White House on a $150 billion “stimulus” plan that would increase the deficit to give rebates to people who pay little or no taxes, but not people who currently pay a lot of taxes.

As if that deal didn’t contain enough welfare already, the Senate is preparing to lard up the “stimulus” plan with billions more for mortgage counseling, aid to state governments in the red, food stamps, extended jobless benefits in…

Read the full story

Thus responds Homer Simpson to Marge when she complains about his not paying the gas heating bill, on tonight’s new episode of “The Simpsons,” which kicks off with the family huddled around the fireplace trying to keep warm.

Read the full story