January 2012

Total deaths since Aug. 30 from “Influenza and Pneumonia-Associated” illness are 2,029 reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Web site FluView. But only 292 of those have been laboratory-confirmed as flu of any type. (And yes, people die of pneumonia from many causes other than flu.) By comparison, the CDC estimates about 260 Americans die each day from “regular” flu during each season.

And the Swine Flu Count Website shows about as many swine flu deaths worldwide in the last six months as the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates die every six days from seasonal flu. The FluTracker Web site provides a running tally of new worldwide cases and deaths, telling us they are no more frequent than a month ago.

The massive outbreak on college campuses you’ve been heard about? The American College Health Association’s latest weekly survey at this writing shows a steady decline in cases over the last four weeks. The “explosion” has been imploding.

What we’re seeing is “pandemic panic.” FluView reports that only 29 percent of samples from surveillance laboratories are testing positive for swine flu. That means that fewer than a third of the samples that even doctors (much less scared patients) suspect may show swine flu actually show influenza of any type.

Another indicator of hysteria is that the percentage of visits to emergency rooms and outpatient clinics by people worried they have the flu – and worried enough to seek medical attention – is incredibly high: almost 7 percent of all US emergency visits now.

That’s the most it’s been since 2004 and it’s skyrocketing.

I predicted the Council’s projections regarding swamped emergency rooms would be the only accurate part of the report. Don’t call me Nostradamus. Just a guy with a few IQ points and a modicum of honesty.

As evidence continues to mount that swine flu is more of a piglet than a raging razorback, why isn’t curiosity mounting as to why the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic? And definitions aside, why does the agency continue to insist we’re going to get hammered?

As I write in my new article, it just might be related to a speech the WHO chief gave last months in which she said “ministers of health” should take advantage of the “devastating impact” swine flu will have on poorer nations to tell “heads of state and ministers of finance, tourism and trade” that:

  • The belief that “living conditions and health status of the poor would somehow automatically improve as countries modernized, liberalized their trade and improved their economies” is false. Wealth doesn’t equal health.
  • “Changes in the functioning of the global economy” are needed to “distribute wealth on the basis of” values “like community, solidarity, equity and social justice.”
  • “The international policies and systems that govern financial markets, economies, commerce, trade and foreign affairs have not operated with fairness as an explicit policy objective.”

There’s a lot of WHO dirty underwear revealed in this piece. Wear a clothespin while you read it.

President Bush’s $400 billion budget deficits were the largest in history. He deserved every bit of criticism he got for his big-spending ways.

Now comes news that the budget gap is up to $1.4 trillion. President Obama has broken Bush’s record by a trillion dollars. It took him less than a year.

A trillion.

Wow.

My weekend is starting out fine, thanks to this happy news.

Peter Glaser, an environmental attorney with Troutman Sanders, just sent around his analysis. Here it is:

California Federal Court Dismisses Global Warming Common Law Nuisance Lawsuit

In another chapter in the continuing saga of whether energy companies can be sued under tort law for emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs), a federal district court in California yesterday dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Kivalina Alaska Native Village and others against a large number of energy companies.  The Court became the fourth federal district court to find, in essence, that there is no common law nuisance tort of global warming.  One of those district court decisions, however, was recently reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the Connecticut v. AEP case, which we reported on extensively in a previous client alert available at the link provided below. 

The lawsuit dismissed yesterday alleged that the defendants’ GHG emissions contribute to global warming that has diminished the Artic sea ice that protects the Kivalina coastline.  As a result, the plaintiffs argued that their protection from winter storms has diminished, resulting in erosion and destruction of the land which will require that Kivalina’s residents be relocated.  Plaintiffs sought monetary damages for these impacts, which they estimated in a range of $95-400 million.

The United States District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed the lawsuit on the ground that the case involved a political question more properly decided by the legislative and executive branches.  The court also concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing.  On the political question issue, the Court ruled that:

Regardless of the relief sought, the resolution of Plaintiff’s nuisance claim requires balancing the social utility of Defendants’ conduct with the harm it inflicts.  That process, by definition, entails a determination of what would have been an acceptable limit on the level of greenhouse gases emitted by Defendants….the allocation of fault – and cost of global warming is a matter appropriately left for determination by the executive and legislative branch in the first instance.

On standing, the court ruled that “[i]n view of the undifferentiated nature of greenhouse gas emissions from all global sources and their worldwide accumulation over long periods of time, the pleadings make clear that there is no realistic possibility of tracing any particular alleged effect of global warming to any particular emissions by any specific person, entity, group at any particular point in time.”

The decision will undoubtedly be appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a court known for its liberal outlook.  At the same time, one of the other lawsuits, involving allegations that energy companies’ emissions contributed to Hurricane Katrina, is now pending and awaiting decision in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.  Defendants in the Second Circuit Connecticut v. AEP case are currently considering whether to seek rehearing.  Ultimately, this issue may end up in the Supreme Court.

See our discussion of the Second Circuit Connecticut v. AEP case and the issues these global warming tort lawsuits raise.

* * *

P.S., I also blogged on the Second Circuit case here.

George Mason University Professor Ilya Somin explains how the Obama administration is expanding the awful policies that caused the mortgage crisis, like having taxpayers effectively underwrite risky-mortgage loans by bailing out GSEs at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.  Now, the administration is stepping up Federal Housing Administration subsidies for risky, junky mortgage loans that are likely to default in large numbers.

(The Obama administration doesn’t seem to have learned history’s lessons overseas, either.  White House Communications Director Anita Dunn cites as her favorite political philosopher the Chinese communist tyrant Mao Zedong. That may explain why it has sometimes pursued left-wing policies overseas.)

President Obama is also pushing for financial regulations that reinforce the worst features of the status quo.  They would increase pressure on lenders to make the risky, low-income loans that helped spawn the financial crisis.  At the same time, they would worsen the credit crunch by shutting down banking operations known as “industrial loan corporations,” that are convenient for consumers.  Earlier, Obama backed a new law that is wiping out many credit-card rewards programs and rebates, and leading to the return of annual fees on some credit cards.

Even though Obama’s proposals would lead to even more junky loans in the future, both he and Senate banking chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) claim that his proposals would fight the “status quo.”  But they are part of the status quo.  Dodd is famously corrupt, having received sweetheart loans from the reckless, bankrupt subprime lender Countrywide, and having received a massive gift from a crook, Edward Downe, in the form of a luxurious “cottage” in Ireland he received in a “cut rate real estate deal” for hundreds of thousands of dollars less than fair market value.  Obama was the third biggest recipient in Congress of campaign contributions from the government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which went broke, costing taxpayers perhaps $200 billion.  (Fannie Mae was a corrupt bully that engaged in massive accounting fraud and used intimidation to fight reform.)

Banks will now be pressured to make even more risky, low-income loans. Obama has sent to Congress his proposal to create a politically-correct entity called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. “The agency would be in charge of enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act, a law that prods banks to make loans in low-income communities.”

Government pressure on banks to make low-income loans was a key reason for the mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis. Yet Obama’s disturbing proposal would empower the new agency to enforce the Community Reinvestment Act without regard for banks’ financial safety and soundness.  The Community Reinvestment Act was a key contributor to the financial crisis.

The mortgage crisis was also caused by the reckless government-sponsored mortgage giants (“GSEs”) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and by federal affordable-housing mandates.

But Obama’s proposed financial rules overhaul does absolutely nothing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, admits Obama’s Treasury secretary, tax cheat Timothy Geithner, even though he admits that “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system.”

Worse, Obama’s plan is “largely the product of extensive conversations” with two lawmakers responsible for the corrupt status quo, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, and it expands the reach of regulations that have been used by left-wing groups to extort pay-offs from banks.

James Buchanan was one of the founding fathers of public choice theory, along with Gordon Tullock and some others (Bill Niskanen, Mancur Olson, et al). Public choice, despite the obscure name, is quite simple. It says that market behavior does not end where government begins. Politicians and other government actors are not angels. They are just as self-interested as you or I. Public choices are subject to the same incentives as private choices.

Buchanan’s simple, powerful insight won him the economics Nobel in 1986. Don Boudreaux made some brief remarks at Buchanan’s recent 90th birthday celebration. They’re worth reading, especially if you aren’t familiar with Buchanan and his very distinguished place in the history of economic thought. Also worth reading is his Nobel lecture.

CEI Weekly is a compilation of articles and blog posts from CEI’s fellows and associates sent out via e-mail every Friday. Also included in the Weekly newsletter is a brief description of CEI’s weekly podcast and a feature on a major CEI breakthrough made during the week. To sign up for CEI Weekly, go to http://cei.org/newsletters.


CEI Weekly
October 16, 2009


>>[Video] CEI’s John Berlau On C-Span Discusses the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency
On Monday, October 12th, John Berlau was invited to C-Span’s ”Washington Journal” to talk about the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Berlau hits on several points of concern with the new agency, such as its broad jurisdiction over anything labeled a “financial product.” Berlau was also featured in the National Journal arguing against the new agency and proposed removing regulation as a way to improve the economy.


>>Shaping the Debate
Scientists Return Fire at Climate Skeptics in ‘Destroyed Data’ Dispute
Sam Kazman’s Quotation in the New York Times, Greenwire

Rationalizing Rationing
Marlo Lewis, Jr’s Op-ed in the Washington Times

Our Nobel Prize Winning Immigrants
Alex Nowrasteh’s Op-ed in Real Clear Markets


>>Best of the Blogs
Senate Finance Passes Health Reform Bill
by Greg Conko
Snowe may be getting more (or less) than she bargained for.  Once a bill is reported out of committee, it gets to be amended after debate by the entire Senate, and again when the final Senate compromise goes to conference and has to be reconciled with the House bill.  You may think you’re playing nice with your Senate Finance Committee colleagues and getting as good a deal as can be expected from that nice old Max Baucus.  But, trust me, Henry Waxman is ruthless.

Regulation of the Day 61: Big Screen TVs – Mankind’s Doom!
by Ryan Young
On November 4, California regulators may vote to ban big-screen televisions. The large sets use more energy than they would prefer. Commissioner Julia Levin claims the ban “will actually save consumers money and help the California economy grow and create new clean, sustainable jobs.” It is easy to imagine the ban costing TV manufacturing jobs; less so the jobs that would take their place.

How Much Harm Do Teacher Unions Do?
by Ivan Osorio
Plenty, according to the new film, The Cartel. The film purports to show “educational system like we’ve never seen it before. Behind every dropout factory, we discover, lurks a powerful, entrenched, and self-serving cartel.” In fact, the power of teachers unions is part of an even greater problem: the growing ranks of unionized government workers, a phenomenon that creates a permanent constituency favoring the growth of government — one that is well organized, motivated, and well funded.


>>Liberty Week Podcast
Episode 64: Regulators Gone Wild!
We start with the big vote on health care legislation, squeezing more energy from the ground and the warming that wasn’t there. We continue with the British expense scandal, and the Obama administration’s love for new rules and regulations.


>>Support CEI
Like what you read?
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Charles Huang
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Competitive Enterprise Institute
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The Socialist International’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society has sent an interesting account of their recent meeting and release of their report, “From a high carbon economy to a low carbon society.” As revealed by Steve Milloy earlier this year, Carol Browner, former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton Administration and now President Barack Obama’s “climate czar,” is a long-time member of Socialist International . Here’s what Socialist International said about their meeting held at the UN in September:

“Holding its second yearly meeting in conjunction with the opening of the general debate of the General Assembly at the United Nations, the Presidium of the Socialist International, together with a number of Heads of State and Government, Heads of international institutions, and the members of the SI Commission for a Sustainable World Society and the SI Commission on Global Financial Issues, met at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on September 23 to address two of the major issues on the international agenda today: Climate Change and The Global Financial Crisis.

“Amongst the Heads of State or Government and Ministers joining Presidium members at the meeting were Tarja Halonen, President of Finland; Jalal Talabani, President of Iraq; Toomas H. Ilves, President of Estonia; Alvaro Colom, President of Guatemala; Boris Tadic, President of Serbia; Navim Ramgoolam, Prime Minister of Mauritius; Laurent Gbagbo, President of Cote d’Ivoire; Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Home Affairs Minister of South Africa, Mohamed El Yazghi, Minister of State from Morocco; Maged George, Environment Minister of Egypt; Marco Hausiku, Foreign Minister of Namibia and Abdelwaheb Abdallah, Foreign Minister of Tunisia.

“Also taking part, as guests, were Juan Somavía, Director-General of the International Labour Organisation (ILO); Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); José Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organisation of American States (OAS) and Alicia Bárcena, Director of the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)….

“…[The] Report was introduced by Commission Co-Chair Ricardo Lagos, Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General on Climate Change and former President of Chile. Commission members Sergei Mironov, Chairman of the Council of the Russian Federation and Chair of the Just Russia Party; Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister; Beatriz Paredes, President of the Institutional Revolutionary Party of Mexico, and Mohamed El Yazghi, Moroccan Minister of State, added to the presentation of the Report….”

I guess Browner was too busy implementing many of the report’s recommendations to make it to the meeting.

Recently, the US Food and Drug Administration, working with the Institute of Medicine, has been considering a change in the regulatory status of salt.  The FDA cannot currently restrict the amount of salt that can be added to processed foods, and the proposed change would allow them to do so.

Advocates of the proposed regulation, like former FDA commissioner David Kessler and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, argue that reducing the sodium in foods would improve people’s health and cut public health spending.  Opponents argue that the evidence supporting health benefits of sodium reduction is by no means conclusive, and that attempts to reduce sodium intake could actually be harmful.

But a recent study by University of California, Davis nutritionists concludes that it may not even be possible to reduce salt intake through regulation.  The study shows that people are naturally inclined to regulate salt intake to physiologically determined levels by unconsciously selecting foods to meet their needs.

According to the study, measurements collected from over 19,000 individuals from 33 countries worldwide indicate that daily sodium intake is confined to the relatively narrow range of 2,700 to 4,900 mg, with the worldwide average of 3,700 mg.  This challenges the widely held belief that daily sodium consumption in the United States, which averages about 3,400 mg, has reached extreme levels.

The study also cites decades of research describing the specific mechanism by which the central nervous system, acting together with several organ systems, controls our appetite for salt.

In one cited study, a group of nearly 600 participants took part in what was to be a 3 year sodium intake intervention, with the goal of reducing daily intake to 1,850 mg.  After the first 6 months, researchers noted that participants were unable to reduce sodium intake below about 2,750 mg per day—close to the bottom of the range the UC Davis study identified.

Another study had similar findings.  In this study, subjects, through intensive dietary counseling, reduced their daily sodium intake to an average of 1,775 mg over 4 weeks.  The subjects were then randomized to receive either a 2,300 mg sodium tablet or a placebo, while still receiving counseling.

When taking the placebo, average sodium intake stabilized around 2,750 mg—again very close to the bottom of the identified range.  This means that subjects naturally increased their sodium intake when blinded to their treatment.  When this group was switched over to receive the 2,300 mg sodium supplement, daily intake rose to only 4,050 mg, far less than the predicted 5,050 mg.  This suggests that subjects naturally reduced their dietary sodium intake without consciously intending to do so.

The UC Davis study goes on to cite a number of surveys indicating that sodium intake in the United Kingdom has “varied minimally” over the past 25 years, despite a costly Food Standards Agency  campaign to reduce sodium intake in the UK.
The Institute of Medicine says that daily sodium intake should not exceed 2,300 mg, and new guidelines to be released in 2010 may set the recommended maximum even lower. Any regulatory action taken by the FDA would presumably aim to reduce intake at least to this 2,300 mg level, even though it is 17 percent lower than the bottom of the range the UC Davis study identified, and a full 38 percent lower than the worldwide average.

Given the findings of this study, it seems likely that regulation restricting sodium in foods would be ineffective because people would unconsciously adjust their diets to compensate.  As the study puts it, “[sodium intake] is unlikely to be malleable by public policy initiatives”, and attempts to change consumption would “expend valuable national and personal resources against unachievable goals.”

Updated 10/16/09

Today [Oct. 15, 2009], Rep. Darrell Isa (R-CA), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. James Sensenbrenner, ranking member of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, released a joint minority staff report titled, The Politics of EPA’s Endangerment Finding.

I’ll say more about the report after reading the 146-page document. Key findings include:

  • EPA prejudged the outcome of its endangerment finding to advance the Obama administration’s policy agenda.
  • EPA’s effort to control greenhouse gas emissions will give the Agency authority over the entire U.S. economy. 
  • EPA did not conduct its own analysis. Instead, the Agency deferred to the judgment of two external literature surveys — the IPCC reports and the U.S. National Assessment of Climate Change. 
  • EPA erected internal barriers to stifle dissent within the Agency.
  • EPA apparently refused to read the thousands of comments submitted in response to the previous administration’s Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.
  • EPA punished and demoted whistleblower/skeptic Alan Carlin and retaliated against the office in which he works.
  • Energy and Environment Czar Carol Browner may have violated the Presidential Records Act during fuel-economy negotiations between EPA, the Department of Energy, the State of California, and the auto industry.

These points seem spot on to me. The report, however, contains details I have not seen elsewhere. As aforesaid, I’ll blog about this later.

Update

Having read the Issa-Sensenbrenner report, I’d like to share a few details.

Non-responsiveness to congressional inquiries

  • In a letter of March 12, 2009, Rep. Issa asked EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson for various information relating to public comment on the Agency’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR), such as how many comments EPA received, how many of those were in favor of an endangerment finding, how did the Agency determine which comments were “key” and required a response. Ms. Jackson’s letter of May 18 was completely non-reponsive to these queries. Issa and Sensenbrenner justifiably conclude that EPA may not have read most of the comments on the ANPR. 
  • Jackson’s May 18 letter was also non-responsive to Mr. Issa’s question as to whether EPA had ever before found a pollutant to “endanger human health” solely on the basis of indirect effects on weather and climate, and to his request for a list of precedents on which EPA relied to classify CO2 emissions as a health hazard due to their supposed indirect effects.
  • All her letter says on this matter is: “EPA’s notice of the proposed endangerment finding identifies the precedents the agency relied on its making the proposal.” If so, then why not quote the relevant passage, or cite the pertinent pages? The public health discussion (pp. 18901-18902) in EPA’s endangerment proposal discusses no precedents and lists no previous examples of pollutants deemed health hazards by virtue of their indirect effects.

Bad-mouthing SBA

  • On April 24, 2009, EPA posted an OMB-coordinated inter-agency review of its proposed endangerment finding. The review warned of “serious economic consequences” for small business, noted that EPA had not “undertaken a systematic risk analysis or cost-benefit analysis,” and said that EPA seemed to “stretch the precautionary principle” in making the case for endangerment.
  • Obama officials dismissed these criticisms as irrelevant, claiming the author was “a Bush holdover.” In fact, the so-called holdover was a career civil servant originally hired by the Small Business Administration during the Clinton Administration. Her previous job was as an aid to a Democratic Member of Congress.
  • OMB also disclosed the name of the “Bush holdover,” violating its own protocol designed to protect professional staff from political retaliation. OMB claimed it divulged the analyst’s identity to “correct inaccurate and misleading media reports.” However, the reports simply quoted the OMB document. OMB never clarified what “inaccuracies” its breach of protocol corrected.

Mistreatment of Dr. Alan Carlin

  • Dr. Carlin, a 37-year EPA analyst, wrote a comment critical of the science on which EPA proposed to base its endangerment finding. Al McGartland, director of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE), the office in which Carlin works, refused to transmit Carlin’s comment to EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, told Carlin not to discuss the endangerment proceeding with anyone outside of NCEE, ordered Carlin to discontinue all work on climate change, removed him from NCEE’s Climate Workgroup, and cut him from the group’s email list.
  • In addition, McGartland reassigned Carlin to tasks (updating a grants database and an economic incentives report) previously performed by a junior staffer and an outside contractor.
  • McGartland’s behavior appears to have been motivated by fear of reprisal from Agency higher-ups. His email to Carlin of March 17 states: “The Administrator and the administration has [sic] decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”

EPA efforts to discredit Dr. Carlin

  • To discredit Carlin’s comment, EPA initially stated that Carlin was “not a scientist” and “not part of the working group dealing with the issue.”
  • However, Carlin holds a degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology, was a member of NCEE’s Climate Workgroup, and is listed as an author of the original (2007) endangerment finding Technical Support Document (TSD).
  • In response to a July 17 letter from Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), EPA confirmed that “Dr. Carlin was one of several members of the NCEE workgroup that reviewed the [2009] draft TSD for EPA’s proposed endangerment finding for greenhouse gases.”

On July 8, 2009, EPA finally included Dr. Carlin’s comment in its endangerment docket — almost one month after the comment period closed. Alan Carlin still has a job — although he no longer works on climate issues. NCEE has not been defunded, despite concerns expressed by Carlin’s colleague John Davidson (and hinted at in McGartland’s March 17 email) that Agency brass could punish NCEE for committing climate heresy.

Public outcry over the treatment of Alan Carlin and the ongoing investigations by Reps. Issa, Sensenbrenner, and Barton have not produced an atmosphere of open and free intellectual discourse at EPA. Nonetheless, the outcry and the investigations can only help deter future acts of retaliation against climate skeptics.

For further discussion of these issues, see my blog post, John Broder’s spin job on Alan Carlin.