January 2012

Fumento yells “Sooo-eeeee!” on Liddy

by Michael Fumento on October 21, 2009

in Health and Illness

I bent G. Gordon Liddy’s ears back today on his radio show (easy to find them, given his lack of hair) on my current crusade to get people to understand that it’s not just that the risk of swine flu has been exaggerated but that it’s being exaggerated for political reasons. Even battle-hardened veterans like Liddy are surprised to hear that the World Health Organization didn’t create a pre-fab pandemic just to gather more power and increase its budget but rather is using it to promote social engineering and redistribution of wealth between nations, as I noted in Forbes Online.

Yes, it really is that bad.

More Hypocrisy Regarding FTC Blog Regulations

by Elizabeth Jacobson on October 21, 2009

in Health and Illness, Healthcare, Regulation

Michael Masnick at Techdirt offers up another incidence of government inconsistency in light of the FTC’s blog-watching rules, reminding us that “clinical research on drugs isn’t even remotely trustworthy, as it all-too-often seems to involve doctors who have serious conflicts.”

Doctors with conflicts-of-interest, who push and promote certain drugs while receiving all kinds of goodies from pharmaceutical companies, seems, at the very least, like a more justifiable place for regulators to stick their noses (although there’s definitely an argument to be made about the medical industry being over-regulated already). Forgive me if it’s difficult to digest the claim  that a mommy blogger with a free bottle of toilet bowl cleaner is somehow a bigger menace to the public than a doctor who pushes his patients into clinical trials without disclosing his “material relationship” with the drug maker.

Obama Accepts “Blasphemy” Exception to Free Speech

by Hans Bader on October 21, 2009

in International, Labor, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

In USA Today, liberal law professor Jonathan Turley is criticizing the Obama administration for endorsing a “blasphemy” exception to free speech: “Around the world, free speech is being sacrificed on the altar of religion. Whether defined as hate speech, discrimination or simple blasphemy, governments are declaring unlimited free speech as the enemy of freedom of religion. This growing movement has reached the United Nations, where religiously conservative countries received a boost in their campaign to pass an international blasphemy law. It came from the most unlikely of places: the United States.”

Granted, blasphemy may be patently offensive to significant numbers of people, but it is precisely such hard cases for which First Amendment protection is most important. Consider the fate of those unfortunate enough to live in countries without such protections. (Note: Some readers may find the following examples shocking.)

Religious minorities have often been persecuted for “blasphemy” in Islamic countries for disagreeing with Islam, or interpreting Islam’s holy book, the Koran, differently than the majority of Muslims do. Turley says that Western blasphemy cases have included the arrest of a Dutch cartoonist for depicting a Christian fundamentalist and a Muslim fundamentalist as zombies who want to marry and attend gay rallies; the investigation of an Italian comedian for joking at a rally that in 20 years, the Pope will be in hell, tormented by gay devils; the exclusion of a Dutch politician from Britain because he made a movie describing the Quran as a “fascist” book and Islam as a violent religion; and the prosecution of writers in Austria, India, and Finland for calling Mohammed a “pedophile” because of his marriage to 6-year-old Aisha (which was consummated when she was 9).

Earlier, conservatives and civil libertarians criticized the Obama administration for endorsing restrictions on so-called “hate speech” at the United Nations. The administration is backing proposals to classify hate speech as a violation of international human rights law. Left-wing lawyers are now likely to argue that these proposals constitute “customary international law” binding on the U.S., as a consensus interpretation of treaties the U.S. has already signed, like the CEDAW equal rights treaty. The U.S. courts are unlikely to accept such arguments in the near future, although if Obama manages to appoint enough left-wing judges, the chances of such arguments prevailing will increase.

In Canada, hate speech laws have been used to punish ministers for anti-gay sermons. In the U.S., college hate-speech codes have been used to discipline students for criticizing affirmative action, defending the death penalty against racism charges, and calling homosexuality immoral. Ironically, hate speech laws have often been used against minorities in the Third World, with prosecutors arguing that advocating the rights of minorities is an inflammatory form of racial separatism.

Left-wing lawyers claim that “customary international law” dictates a host of controversial requirements that few countries would voluntarily adopt on their own, like mandating quota-based affirmative action. For example, the CEDAW equal-rights treaty has been construed by an international committee as requiring “redistribution of wealth,” “affirmative action,” “gender studies” in academia, government-sponsored “access to rapid and easy abortion,” “comparable worth,” and “the application of quotas and numerical goals and measurable targets aimed at increasing women’s political participation.”

The UN is quite hostile to human rights, as is its “Human Rights Council,” which has included genocidal dictatorships among its members.  The U.N. recently declared Fidel Castro, the longtime Communist dictator of Cuba, a “World Hero.” Castro killed thousands and thousands of people during his rule, torturing some to death (including a few American citizens), and Cuba remains an oppressive dictatorship even today.

While advocating bans on hate speech, the Obama administration has turned a blind eye to hate speech and hate crimes by its allies and supporters.  It turned a blind eye to voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party, which is a racist, anti-Semitic hate group that backed Obama and included an Obama poll-watcher and Democratic Party official in Philadelphia.  It was silent about the violent, racially-charged SEIU assault on a black conservative critic of Obama’s health care proposals.  The administration and its allies use the SEIU as shock troops at town hall meetings, and Obama recently appointed a high-ranking SEIU official, Craig Becker, to the NLRB.  (The SEIU is closely linked with, and even overlaps with, the controversial group ACORN, which gave Obama his start, and whose affiliate received $800,000 from his campaign.  ACORN was recently involved in a high-profile scandal promoting underage prostitution.)

While turning a blind eye to hate and prejudice from the Left, the administration has backed a bill in Congress, now virtually certain to become law, that will allow some people found innocent of hate crimes in state court to be reprosecuted all over again in federal court, taking advantage of a loophole in Constitutional protections against double jeopardy.

Banning Bake Sales

by Angela Logomasini on October 21, 2009 · 1 comment

in Health and Illness, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

The American Enterprise Institute held a panel discussion yesterday on food safety. They discussed congressional proposals aimed at addressing contaminants in our food, such as pathogens like Salmonella and E. Coli. Panelists actually agreed on a few things … well, actually, they agreed on what they don’t know.

First, no one could answer the question as to whether legislation would significantly reduce risks, nor could anyone determine where the real risks lie. And no one could provide an adequate justification for increased government action because food safety has not declined in recent years—it is more likely improving.

Nonetheless, David W. K. Acheson of Leavitt Partners (a former FDA official) and the Consumer Federation of America’s Carol Tucker Foreman strongly supported increased federal action simply because they “believed” it would work. Walter Olson of the Manhattan Institute and Overlawyered.com noted some serious, potential pitfalls, such as reduced competition, destruction of small businesses, and the expansion of crazy regulations on bake sales and other food-related activities. He used the disaster created by the Consumer Protect Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) as an example.

Michelle Worosz professor from Auburn University argued that we need more information before regulating. Worosz is correct about holding off. However, we can’t simply wait for better information because we will never have it.

By definition, public officials are too far away from process to make reasonable one-size-fits-all decisions about myriad, varied, ever-changing, and situation-specific problems. As F.A. Hayek pointed out, it is a fatal conceit to believe otherwise. Only the multitude of individuals in a dynamic market process–which holds each accountable–produces desired results. Regulators, on the other hand, simply second-guess all those private decisions. They might have good or bad motivations—but it doesn’t matter. They simply don’t have the information they need, nor can they design a one-sized fits all rule that will address all problems.

Despite claims to the contrary, private parties are also more accountable. They must live with the consequences of their own choices, and businesses in particular must address the impacts they have on others. After all, no one profits from making their customers sick. Businesses are held liable in courts or suffer substantial losses of market share where problems, or the perception of problems, exist. They act more quickly than government, and their solutions are more precise.

In contrast, regulators can pass misguided rules based largely on political tides rather than good information. They often do more harm than good and are expensive, yet few people trace the problems back to government. Then regulators go back to Congress for bigger budgets to fix the problems they created. They don’t lose their jobs or go out of business when they make fatal mistakes. This is, as Olsen points out, pretty much what’s happening with the CPSIA law.

Indeed, the disciplines of the marketplace explain why our food supply is amazingly safe and getting better considering all the opportunities for contamination from farmyard to table. And no government regulator will do any better in correcting problems as they emerge. In fact, this is why we don’t have the government growing and distributing our food. If we did, we probably would all starve!

Photo attribution: Rachel Kramer Bussel’s photostream, on Flickr.

Science and the Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture

by Greg Conko on October 21, 2009

in Agriculture, Environment, Nano & Biotech, Natural Resources, Precaution & Risk

The UK Royal Society’s long-awaited study on improving agricultural productivity and increasing food security was released this morning.  Although I’ve only had a chance to skim the report, it seems to have lived up to its promise of eschewing politically correct pop-environmentalism and instead embracing the use of science and technology for producing more food on less land.  The report acknowledges that farming is an inherently un-natural and ecologically disruptive endeavor.  But, it suggests that a healthy concern for protecting the environment necessitates the greater adoption of sophisticated agricultural technologies, including fertilizers, pesticides, and bioengineered (or GM) crops.  Why?  Because protecting the environment will require growing vastly more food without bringing new land into agriculture–what the report calls “sustainable intensification.”

“Past debates about the use of new technologies for agriculture have tended to adopt an either/or approach, emphasising the merits of particular agricultural systems or technological approaches and the downsides of others. This has been seen most obviously with respect to genetically modifi ed (GM) crops, the use of pesticides and the arguments for and against organic modes of production. These debates have failed to acknowledge that there is no technological panacea for the global challenge of sustainable and secure global food production. There will always be trade-offs and local complexities. This report considers both new crop varieties and appropriate agroecological crop and soil management practices and adopts an inclusive approach.”

Read the whole report here.

Data deflates threat-multiplier hype

by Marlo Lewis on October 21, 2009 · 1 comment

in Features, Global Warming, Zeitgeist

“Climate change is a threat multiplier” is the new trendy rationale for Kyoto-style energy rationing. One hears little these days about Al Gore’s nightmare vision of death and destruction from ever more powerful and frequent hurricanes, catastrophic sea-level rise, or a warming-induced climate shift into a new ice age. This story line is too implausible for most grownups to swallow or patronize, no matter how desperate they are to look green.

The new, more ‘nuanced’ rationale for energy rationing is that global warming will aggravate several pre-existing environmental and health threats that cause or contribute to instability and conflict. We’re supposed to fear that a warming world will be much more violent and dangerous. Supposedly, “even the generals are worried” that U.S. security forces will be overstretched, even overwhelmed, by crisis after crisis after crisis. Unless, of course, Congress comes through with bigger and bigger appropriations for DOD! 

This is bunkum, as I discuss here, here, and here. Today, I want to pour more cold water on threat-multiplier hype, courtesy of my colleague, environmental researcher Indur Goklany.

Goklany (“Goks” to his friends) recently responded to an article in the Economist arguing that global warming exacerbates conditions (drought, flooding, hunger, insect-borne disease) in poor countries that already impede their development. From which it follows (although the article doesn’t spell it out) that climate change increases the likelihood of state failure, violence, and war.

Chief among the conditions that will allegedly become worse in a warming world are drought and flooding. ”Regardless of whether this is the case,”  Goks writes in his letter to the Economist, “deaths from droughts have declined 99.9% since the 1920s, and 99% from floods since the 1930s” [1]. Yet alarmists tell us that the warming of the latter half of the 20th century was unprecedented in the past 1300 years.

In view of the long-established and overwhelming trends towards greater safety, despite allegedly unprecedented warming, it is difficult to believe that droughts and floods will be a major cause of violent conflict in coming decades. That is especially the case when, as noted previously, nations faced with water shortages typically cooperate and trade, not come to blows.

More broadly, Goks points out, all the long-term trends in environmental factors affecting development are positive:

In fact, access to safe water, improved sanitation, crop yields, and life expectancy has never been higher in the history of mankind.[2] This is true for both the developing and developed worlds. Much of this has been enabled, directly or indirectly, by economic surpluses generated by the use of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas generating activities such as fertilizer usage, pumping water for irrigation, and use of farm machinery. And crop yields, in particular, are also higher today than ever partly because of higher concentrations of CO2, without which yields would be zero.

Some day — who knows when?– “even the generals” will outgrow climate hysteria and get back to worrying about threats they actually know how to do something about.

Is Cognitive Dissonance an Insured Condition?

by Ryan Young on October 21, 2009

in Economy, Healthcare, Legal, Regulation

Rep. Diana DeGette is, without any apparent cognitive dissonance or trace of irony, proposing:

1) Require, by law, that people buy health insurance.

2) Remove health insurers’ antitrust exemption. But only after legally requiring everyone to buy their product.

You figure it out. Insurers are set to receive one of the largest coroporate welfare grants in history. No wonder so many firms are salivating over this year’s health care legislation. But they may pay an antitrust price for their legally mandated windfall.

Perhaps this is a warped Washington version of what one hand giveth, the other taketh away.

Bank of America to Impose Annual Fees on Some Credit Cardholders, Thanks to New Credit Card Law

by Hans Bader on October 20, 2009 · 1 comment

in Bailout Watch, Legal, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

Bank of America recently announced that it will impose annual fees on some of its cardholders.  This is in response to the CARD Act (Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009), which effectively shifts costs to responsible people from irresponsible people, forcing banks to increase charges to responsible credit card holders.

The CARD Act has also wiped out many cash-back and rewards programs and rebates on credit cards, something earlier chronicled here.  Despite that fact, its passage was trumpeted by President Obama and liberal congressional leaders, who are engaging in a form of class warfare against financially responsible people.

Earlier, the government pushed through $250 billion in mortgage bailouts, to bail out even reckless high-income borrowers, and forced financial institutions the government took over in the name of fiscal responsibility, like Freddie Mac, to run up billions in losses bailing out irresponsible borrowers.  It also pushed through $70 billion in auto bailouts to enrich the United Auto Workers union, bailouts that ripped off taxpayers and pension funds and illegally diverted funds from the bank bailout to an auto bailout.  (The bailouts would not even have been necessary if the companies had obtained regulatory relief and greater wage concessions, and may not even succeed, requiring billions more in taxpayer dollars by 2010.)

In today’s Washington Post, Allan Sloan writes about how the government has deliberately ripped off responsible people to bail out irresponsible people over the last year, by spending trillions of dollars to force down interest rates.  That has resulted in extremely low interest rates on savings accounts and bonds, while also, to a lesser extent, reducing interest rates paid by irresponsible borrowers, despite their rising default rates.

American Society Now Responsible for Saving Journalism

by Elizabeth Jacobson on October 20, 2009

in Odds & Ends, Sanctimony

Creative destruction is never easy for an economy to digest, especially when the industry involved has an exceptionally loud megaphone to amplify its screaming. In a report released on Monday, former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie Jr. (with co-author Michael Schudson) insists that Americans take “collective responsibility” for fostering journalism and news reporting (saving unprofitable, poorly-managed news outfits). Of course, Downie doesn’t directly ask citizens for money – that would be uncouth. Instead, he suggests that universities and nonprofits, internet service providers and telecoms, and (of course) the government cough up the dough.

Downie’s idea of putting news in the hands of universities is destined to fail. Calling on universities to become news institutions is asking already-hard-up-for-cash colleges to take on a responsibility for which they have absolutely no obligation. Universities’ core function is to transform high school graduates into employable professionals or academic researchers (granted, some colleges and certain disciplines achieve this end better than others). Outside of that, many universities already support student journalism in the form of campus newspapers and radio stations. Some student journalists even go as far as to report on local and state issues. However, student reporters can only do so much, and in the wake of this year’s tuition hikes, taking on the responsibilities of failed newspapers is an expense that most public universities can’t afford.

Outrageously, Downie also wants to put telecoms on the hook for bailing out reporting, suggesting that the FCC collect fees from internet service providers to be used for a national “Fund for Local News.” He’s blind to the fact that telecoms and ISPs have done nothing but help disseminate news and information. There is more reporting, more information, more news available to us today than there ever has been in the history of civilization. It’s true that there’s a lot of garbage out there, but there’s a lot of very good online journalism as well. Nearly everything published online is subject to peer-review from a massive amount of people, and the success of sites like Wikipedia are proof that accountability, credibility, and accuracy matter just as much online as they do offline.

Downie’s most unbelievably bad idea is that the government should save journalism by fixing the tax code so that newspapers can operate as nonprofit entities. Whether the government directly bails out big newspapers or allows them nonprofit status, the result is the same: tax money doled out to one group has to be taken from another. But setting aside arguments against higher taxes, there’s an even more important question here: don’t these whining establishment journalists realize that government-supported journalism completely goes against the very idea of the 4th estate, the estate that Burke deemed “more important than them all?” The press are supposed to be the good guys, the ones keeping their eyes on the government, not the guys asking for government handouts. Only a fool would think that direct subsidies or preferential tax status won’t come with any political sanctions, explicit or implied.(And this administration isn’t above threatening legal action against companies that say things it doesn’t like).

It’s no secret that “Big Journo” can’t survive in the information age with its current business model. In his recent WaPo column, Downie proclaims that “preserving independent, original, credible reporting” is paramount to maintaining civil society. Yet his proposed methods for doing so are so far out of line with that goal that it calls his credibility into question, and instead makes him look like a shill for the big papers. CEI’s own Iain Murry explains the situation best: “American society can step in to preserve journalism by buying the papers. If they don’t, they have already said that they don’t want to preserve journalism as it stands. If a paper falls on the doorstep, and no one reads it, does it have a point?”

Regulation of the Day 63: Sports Agents in New Hampshire

by Ryan Young on October 20, 2009 · 1 comment

in Regulation, Regulation of the Day

It is illegal to be a sports agent in New Hampshire without a Secretary of State-issued certificate (see page 14). Don’t forget your biennial renewal!

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