January 2012

Obama’s Call for Light Bulb Regulation Not a New or Bright Idea

by Alex Hankins on June 30, 2009 · 3 comments

in Environment, Global Warming, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation

Eager to sustain his regulatory whirlwind, President Obama is now calling for efficiency standards for household and business lighting.  As if the climate-themed energy rationing bill that just blew through the House wasn’t enough, the White House now wants to force lamp and light bulb manufacturers to make their products use less energy.  This plan appears modeled after the ambitious fuel efficiency standards applied to the now decimated auto industry and Obama’s order to the Department of Energy to mandate increased efficiency for household appliances.  It’s almost funny — the government, of all entities, telling private enterprises to be more efficient.

Are these the winds of change we’ve been anticipating?  Something is floating on the breeze, but it smells disappointingly familiar.  That’s because all this has been done before, and by the administration of George W. Bush, no less.  In late 2007, then-President Bush signed an energy bill into law that established long-term efficiency standards for automobiles and household appliances and ordered a phasing-out (ban) of the incandescent light bulb by 2014.  For all his hot air about changing the country’s direction and breaking from the strides of the previous administration, Obama hasn’t even shown originality in his determination to send the economy into a tailspin.

As with his predictions regarding jobs and unemployment, Obama’s stated expectations for this new light bulb bill are, quite frankly, hogwash.  He says consumers will save up to $4 billion annually in energy costs, erroneously assuming away the greatly increased energy and light bulb prices that would result, which would drive down purchases.  Also, any replacements that do take place would be piecemeal — replacement and installation costs alone would be enough to encourage most consumers to hang on to their incandescent bulbs and older appliances for as long as they can.  Why pay and risk more for light when you can avoid it?

The biggest problem with this legislation, as with most government intrusions into the economy, is its total disregard for business incentives and consumer self-interest.  Businesses fully recognize that efficiency, especially energy efficiency, is consistently in high demand throughout the market, so any serious drive toward boosting profits must necessarily focus on innovations that they can use to entice cash-strapped consumers.  An added benefit brought by the resulting savings is that consumers have more money to spend.  So the incentives are there.  Improving technology is a win-win situation all around, but only if it is voluntary.

Simply commanding progress does not make it happen.  If some imagined and desired technology does not exist, ordering people to work harder will not make it arrive faster.  It’s not as if any industry wants to lag behind technologically.  The incentives are there.  Sure, a business can seize upon an underdeveloped idea like, for example, a car motor fueled by something that produces water vapor as its only exhaust, and pour its resources into making the motor work, but the fact that the idea is still inadequately understood would mean inevitable waste and likely failure for the business.  Maybe it turns out that the motor has to be too big to make it worth installing in a car.  Maybe it depletes this clean fuel more quickly than current motors expend current fuel.  Maybe it’s more dangerous.  Maybe only a certain car model can effectively use this motor, and consumers don’t like its size or shape.  Maybe a better idea comes along, or the motor and fuel cost too much even for die-hard environmentalists to use regularly.  The bottom line is that taking such a leap is a huge risk that no savvy investor would touch with a ten foot pole.  Even if something profitable finally does come out of such an investment, so much money would be wasted in the process of developing, refining, and marketing this unfamiliar product that the business may go bankrupt by the time the car hits the market.

So it is with lamps.  Energy efficiency is great, but without market efficiency, any products that do come out of this forced innovation (there’s no shortage of oxymorons in government) will be dead on arrival.

Then again, the economic illiteracy of the aformentioned bills’ supporters is only part of the problem.  Without even trying to understand how such regulations would affect their constituents or considering the idea that private expenses are private matters, the government is already charging ahead with more controls, more limits on liberty.  The private sector has solid incentives to innovate.  The government does not.  That is why it should come as no surprise when this legislation, which is mystifyingly supposed to help prevent climate catastrophe, ultimately inflicts more damage on the United States than a category 5 hurricane.  At this point, any change in the winds would be welcome.

Obama Silences Science: Is This the Change We Were Promised?

by William Yeatman on June 30, 2009 · 1 comment

in Features, Odds & Ends, Zeitgeist

President Barack Obama rode into the White House promising open and honest government. So why did his administration bully a career official at the Environmental Protection Agency into silence?

Last week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released a 98 page report written by Alan Carlin, a 38 year veteran of the EPA, on the shaky science employed by global warming alarmists. Mr. Carlin had submitted the report to his superiors for the EPA to consider as it deliberated whether or not carbon dioxide “endangers” human health and welfare. As noted by my colleague Marlo Lewis, an “endangerment” finding isn’t mere bureaucratese. Instead, it’s a legal tripwire that would spark an economically ruinous regulatory chain reaction under the Clean Air Act (to read more, click here).

But the EPA would not consider Carlin’s report. In a series of incriminating emails, Carlin’s boss bluntly informed him that his report would remain secret for political reasons.

Late Thursday night, CEI went ahead and posted a draft version of the document, which you can read here.

In a not-so-subtle dig at the supposed scientific backwardness of his predecessor four months ago, President Obama said that science is “about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology.” Now we learn that his administration has done just that by silencing Mr. Carlin’s voice at the EPA. Is this the change we were promised?

Members of Congress are suitably outraged. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), cited the report on the floor of the House of Representatives last Friday. Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) told FoxNews that he intends to investigate the matter further.

The story has made waves in the media. For accounts, click on the following links: New York Times, San Francisco Examiner, Michelle Malkin, Dow Jones (Subscription Req’d), American Spectator, and National Review.

Obama Backs Dictatorship in Honduras

by Hans Bader on June 30, 2009 · 1 comment

in Economy, International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

Honduras removed its bullying, autocratic President after he began behaving as a dictator, and its Congress replaced him with a less power-hungry member of his own political party. Now Obama is joining the Cuban dictator Castro and Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez in demanding the Honduran ruler’s return. This is simply outrageous.

As Investors Business Daily notes, Honduras had ample reason to remove its dangerous, out-of-control President, who had repeatedly violated his country’s constitution and laws:

“Honduras’ now ex-president, Mel Zelaya, last Thursday defied a Supreme Court ruling and tried to hold a “survey” to rewrite the constitution for his permanent re-election. It’s the same blueprint for a rigged political system that’s made former democracies like Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador into shells of free countries. Zelaya’s operatives did their dirt all the way through. First they got signatures to launch the “citizen’s power” survey through threats — warning those who didn’t sign that they’d be denied medical care and worse. Zelaya then had the ballots flown to Tegucigalpa on Venezuelan planes. After his move was declared illegal by the Supreme Court, he tried to do it anyway. As a result of his brazen disregard for the law, Zelaya found himself escorted from office by the military Sunday morning, and into exile. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro rushed to blame the U.S., calling it a “yanqui coup.” President Obama on Monday called the action ‘not legal,’ and claimed that Zelaya is still the legitimate president. There was a coup all right, but it wasn’t committed by the U.S. or the Honduran court. It was committed by Zelaya himself. He brazenly defied the law, and Hondurans overwhelmingly supported his removal (a pro-Zelaya rally Monday drew a mere 200 acolytes).”

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal call’s Zelaya’s ouster a “triumph” of the law:

“Many foreign observers are condemning the ouster of Honduran President Mel Zelaya, a supporter of Hugo Chavez, as a ‘military coup.’ But can it be a coup when the Honduran military acted on the orders of the nation’s Supreme Court, the step was backed by the nation’s attorney general, and the man replacing Mr. Zelaya and elected in emergency session by that nation’s Congress is a member of the former president’s own political party? Mr. Zelaya had sacked General Romeo Vasquez, head of the country’s armed forces, after he refused to use his troops to provide logistical support for a referendum designed to let Mr. Zelaya escape the country’s one-term limit on presidents. Both the referendum and the firing of the military chief have been declared illegal by the Honduran Supreme Court. Nonetheless, Mr. Zelaya intended yesterday to use ballots printed in Venezuela to conduct the vote anyway. All this will be familiar to members of Honduras’ legislature, who vividly recall how Mr. Chavez in Venezuela adopted similar means to hijack his country’s democracy and economy. Elected a decade ago, Mr. Chavez held a Constituent Assembly and changed the constitution to enhance his power and subvert the country’s governing institutions. Mr. Zelaya made it clear that he wished to do the same in Honduras and that the referendum was the first step in installing a new constitution that would enhance his powers and allow him to run for re-election.”

The press coverage of the Honduran crisis, which refers to the ex-president’s removal as a “military coup,” is amazingly biased. As Tom Palmer, who has helped promote democracy abroad, notes, what really happened in Honduras is that “a President who seeks dictatorial powers in an illegal move” was “removed by the Congress and by the Supreme Court“:

“Imagine that George Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan or some other American president had decided to overturn the Constitution so that he could stay in power beyond the constitutionally limited time. To do that, he orders a nationwide referendum that is not constitutionally authorized and blatantly illegal. The Federal Election Commission rules that it is illegal. The Supreme Court rules that it is illegal. The Congress votes to strip the president of his powers and, as members of Congress are not that good at overcoming the president’s personally loyal and handpicked bodyguards, they send police and military to arrest the president. Now, which party is guilty of leading a coup?”

If Richard Nixon had been impeached and convicted for Watergate, and then refused to leave office, until being forced out by the military, would that have been a “military coup”? Of course not. But Obama and many in the press are taking a similarly extreme position in demanding the reinstatement of Honduras’s would-be despot.

Even the Cato Institute, which espouses antiwar positions and a dovish, liberal foreign policy, approved of Honduras’s removal of its oppressive ruler. Cato’s Juan Carlos Hidalgo notes that “the removal from office of Zelaya on Sunday by the armed forces is the result of his continuous attempts to promote a referendum that would allow for his reelection, a move that had been declared illegal by the Supreme Court and the Electoral Tribunal and condemned by the Honduran Congress and the attorney general. Unfortunately, the Honduran constitution does not provide an effective civilian mechanism for removing a president from office after repeated violations of the law, such as impeachment in the U.S. Constitution. Nonetheless, the armed forces acted under the order of the country’s Supreme Court, and the presidency has been hastily bestowed on a civilian figure — the president of Congress — as specified by the constitution.”

While Obama is busy ignoring the Honduran President’s violation of his citizens’ constitutional rights, he is busy extending U.S. Constitutional rights to foreign terrorists overseas. The Obama Administration is needlessly making investigators give Miranda warnings to captured terrorists and enemy combatants in Afghanistan. It is doing that even though Miranda rights do not apply to aliens captured in Afghanistan, a foreign country, and neither Afghan law, nor human-rights treaties like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, mandate such warnings.

Regulation of the Day: Cap and Trade

by Ryan Young on June 30, 2009

in Economy, Energy, Global Warming, Regulation, Regulation of the Day

The tenth in an occasional series that shines a bit of light on the regulatory state.

Today’s Regulation of the Day comes to us from the U.S. House of Representatives (435 employees, $4 trillion budget).

The Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill that passed the House last week contains 397 new regulations, according to CEI Energy Policy Analyst William Yeatman and former CEI Warren Brookes Fellow Jeremy Lott. The legislation now heads off to the Senate.

It is worth noting that just minutes after the final vote came in, Washington was hit by a fierce hail storm; not that Congress’ doings have any cause-and-effect relationship with the weather (ahem).

You can read the bill — Congress didn’t — by clicking here.

Goodbye, Mary Lou: Tribute to a great journalist and editor

by John Berlau on June 30, 2009

in Odds & Ends

CEI President Fred Smith yesterday expressed all of our condolences on the death of Washington Times Commentary editor and veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mary Lou Forbes.

I was a colleague of Mary Lou’s when I worked at the Washington Times’ magazine Insight. She could always tell a great remembrance of her 50 years in Washington journalism. She mentored Carl Bernstein and others at the now-defunct Washington Star. In a future post, I will relate her explanation about how FCC rules banning the ownership of a newspaper and TV station in the same city — aimed at prventing monopolies — actually  killed the Star by denying the newspaper the TV station’s revenue — making Washington a one-newspaper town until the Times came along.

It was after I came to CEI in 2004, however, that I got to work with her as an editor when I submitted op-eds to the Times. She was the best kind of editor a very light touch. You wouldn’t even notice her changes, unless you compared what ran in the paper to your original copy, and notice how much better her “little” changes made you sound.

There is one particular anecdote that illustrate her incredible stamina even in her 80s (She was 83). A couple of years ago she and I and others were at a party on American Sentinel newsletter editor Lee Bellinger’s yacht/houseboat known as the “Off the Record.” To get to the upper deck — the very roof of the boat — you needed to climb this set of stairs that was more like a ladder. Almost 50 years younger, I even had trouble navigating those stairs. But MaryLou — grabing someone’s hands — insisted climbing up.

Anyway, here is Fred’s statement on behalf of CEI.

Washington, D.C., June 29, 2009— Lou
Statement by CEI President Fred L. Smith, Jr. on the Passing of Mary Lou Forbes
The Competitive Enterprise Institute mourns the passing this week of Mary Lou Forbes, a distinguished journalist with a career that spanned over 50 years.  Throughout, she possessed the key qualities of perceptiveness and curiosity. In 1959, she became one of the first female reporters to garner a Pulitzer Prize, for her coverage of desegregation for the Washington Star.
In the 1980s, she created the multi-page Commentary section of the Washington Times, which she continued editing up until her passing.  She opened the Washington media to voices of free-market economics and sound science and, in fact, was one of the first to publish the iconoclastic writings of my friend, Warren T. Brookes.  After his death, Mary Lou helped us establish the Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellowship at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.   In the years that followed, she was invaluable to CEI in reviewing and publishing many an opinion article from CEI scholars.  She was also a frequent guest and sometime-integral presenter at CEI’s annual dinners.  Indeed, she just attended our 25th Silver Anniversary dinner on June 11 this year.  She will be sorely missed as a vital voice in the free market of ideas, and her helpful guidance to news writers and policy scholars will always be remembered.  Washington has lost a fine journalist and a great lady.

LibertyWeek 49: Censoring Science at the EPA

by Richard Morrison on June 29, 2009 · 1 comment

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Welcome to Episode 49 of the LibertyWeek podcast, in which your host Richard Morrison is joined by recurring guest co-hosts Jeremy Lott and William Yeatman and special guest interviewee Hans Bader. We begin with discussion of the abominable Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, the scandal of suppressed science at the EPA and some liberating technology news. We then move on to some heartening beer news, regime change in Honduras and up-to-the minute analysis of the Supreme Court’s verdict in Ricci v. DeStefano with CEI Senior Attorney Hans Bader. As always, we wrap the program up with a little forward-looking Olympic News.

Strange Bedfellows? Maybe Not

by Kevin Hilferty on June 29, 2009 · 1 comment

in Insurance

Insurance regulation is one of the most complicated areas of legislation, and following the pros and cons of different bills is often a difficult task. Some regulations can actually benefit the free market, while others obviously hinder it. But as often as is the case with legislation, political support for otherwise complex laws can be explained with simple economics.

Generally speaking, most politicians try to support legislation that brings the most money to their districts while spreading the tax costs across the unknowing public. In formal terms this is referred to as the principle of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. This explains the political support for most programs, legislation, and pork spending, and insurance legislation is no exception.

Case in point: The Homeowner’s Defense Act proposed by Representative Ron Klein (D-Fla.). The bill proposed by Rep. Klein would, among other things, set up a large “catastrophe” fund for state insurers in the Gulf, particularly for Florida. The fund would be a pre-funded bailout of state run insurers in the event of a hurricane disaster. The special fund would allow state insurers to continue charging below-market rates for the risks being taken without having to collect enough assets to stay solvent in the event of a large disaster. The benefits of the fund would come specifically to those living along the coastlines of the Gulf, yet the costs would be spread out across the entire U.S. It should come as no big shock then that the act’s main supporters are a congressman from Florida and Florida Governor Charlie Crist.

Given that one group is getting all the benefits of the bill, it should also be no surprise that many groups would stand up against it, including some very unlikely partners.  As reported in a piece in Politico last week, both environmentalist and free market groups are uniting to oppose the legislation. Free market groups like CEI are against the legislation on the basis that it intervenes in the market process and spreads the burden of risk on undeserving parties. Furthermore, the subsidizing of insurance rates for these Gulf States incentivizes building homes in areas at higher risk during hurricane disasters, as well as the construction of less safe homes.  Environmentalist groups, despite their different mission, are opposed to the bill on the grounds that it would incentivize building homes in environmentally sensitive habitats, like those where sea turtles lay their eggs.

While these may seem like unlikely partners for just this one occasion, perhaps it needn’t be so.  Since so often the legislation free market advocates oppose involve dispersed costs on everyone, maybe we should look more often for support in unlikely places. You just never know when the sea turtles might want to join your cause.

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“Treason on the House floor,” says Krugman

by Fran Smith on June 29, 2009 · 5 comments

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Politics as Usual

Noted atmospheric scientist and Nobel Prize winner in Physics, Paul Krugman, has a rant in the New York Times today saying that House members — the “deniers” who voted against the pork-filled energy bill — were guilty of “treason against the planet.”

As Krugman wrote:

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

He must have been watching a different debate. I was most taken with the fact that the Democrats didn’t seem at all perturbed about voting on a bill with 300 pages of amendments missing. But the Republicans were, and repeatedly asked how they were supposed to vote on a bill that no one had read in its entirety.

But no, Krugman didn’t think that the Dems were acting irresponsibly in blatantly bribing recalcitrant Members to vote “aye” to get the necessary votes for a bill that would drastically restrict energy use, increase energy prices, subsidize every remote technology favored by Dems’ constituents, and, incidentally, would have a negligible effect on the earth’s temperature.

He was too busy ranting about “the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial.” In his apocalyptic view:

. . . the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.

Note: Krugman is not an atmospheric scientist and did not receive a Nobel Prize for Physics.

“Saving the world?”

by Tatiana Kryzhanovskaya on June 29, 2009 · 1 comment

in Environment, Odds & Ends, Trade

So many people declare that they want to “save the world!” A candidate for Miss Universe declared that to be the main purpose of her life, a candidate for the presidency announced that to be his top priority goal after the election, et cetera. Recently, 219 congressmen who voted in favor of the Waxman-Markey energy bill H.R. 2454 on Friday seemed to be driven by the best intentions of making this planet a better place to be as well.

Ambitions to save the world are always dominant for big political figures. However, politicians generally represent their constituents—or at least make an attempt—and their interests locally may be at odds with what is best for the world as a whole.

The Obama administration announced that Waxman-Markey will make the world cleaner and better by reducing pollution and the risk of global warming. But if their intention is to protect the world, then why is the American federal government the only beneficiary of “border adjustments?” If the main purpose of Waxman-Markey is to get the largest CO2-emitting countries to “contribute equitably to the reduction of greenhouse gas,” then why is the U.S. going to collect the fees and payments from the rest of the world?

It is pretty surprising that the international community has yet to begin demanding answers. Perhaps they are still reading the 1,500-page bill? Well, the consequences will influence everyone, so maybe it is time to start reading before it reaches the Senate floor.

Obama Blunders in Honduras and Afghanistan

by Hans Bader on June 29, 2009

in International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

The U.S. is meddling in Honduras to prop up an anti-American ruler backed by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. After Honduran president Manuel Zelaya attempted to expand and perpetuate his rule by holding a referendum declared illegal by his country’s supreme court, and ignored objections by his country’s Congress (and even members of his own party), he was removed by his country’s military and replaced by the Congress. Now, Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are seeking his reinstatement.

This makes no sense at all. How would we in the United States feel if foreigners attacked us for removing our President (as Congress came close to doing with Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, who were both impeached), for seeking to make himself a dictator? Why should the U.S. meddle in other countries to help hostile rulers who have mismanaged their own countries and never helped us?

The Obama Administration is also needlessly undermining our intelligence-gathering capabilities by giving Miranda warnings to terrorists in Afghanistan. That can only harm our national security. Nothing in the Constitution or international law gives such enemy combatants Miranda rights on foreign soil.

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