January 2012

TSA Praises Itself After Year of Security Lapses; Obama Administration Backs TSA Unionization at Public Expense

by Hans Bader on December 31, 2009 · 1 comment

in Employment, International, Labor, Mobility, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk

In a year-end message to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) staff, the agency praised itself for a “very good year” in airline security, despite repeated security failures.  But, as ABC News notes,

The message made no mention of TSA snafus during 2009, including several highly critical reports by the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security and the inadvertent posting on the Internet of confidential documents revealing airport security procedures.

Recently, a Nigerian terrorist nearly managed to blow up an airliner, after being allowed on the plane despite being on a terror watch list.  He set fire to explosives, but was thwarted at the last minute when vigilant passengers put out the fire. Amazingly, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano claimed that the episode showed that “the system worked.”

The Obama administration is now trying to unionize the TSA., which will make it even more cumbersome, slow-moving, and bureaucratic.  The Washington Examiner explains why that is a very bad idea that would undermine travelers’ safety.  Union-mandated “collective bargaining would cripple the TSA,” stripping the TSA of “its flexibility to move people . . . and change protocols when it believes there is a terrorist threat,” requiring “TSA managers to share sensitive intelligence information with union negotiators . . . increasing the possibility of damaging leaks,” and restricting managers from rewarding ”high-performing screeners or fire those unable or unwilling to perform their duties in an efficient manner.”

The TSA is now reportedly planning to impose additional pointless restrictions on airline passengers, such as limiting access to blankets, and requiring passengers to stay in their seats during the last hour of flight, even though it was a passenger who got out of his seat during the last hour of flight who thwarted the recent attempted terrorist attack by putting out the fire the Nigerian terrorist had set to the explosives he carried on the plane.

For more on the TSA see here.

Louisiana auto insurance at a crossroads

by Michelle Minton on December 31, 2009

in Insurance

Louisiana drivers pay the third highest expenditures for auto insurance in the country (with N.J. taking second and D.C. taking the top honor). On average, consumers pay $1,096 a year for their insurance. This Friday it will get even more expensive as the new minimum coverage mandate is adjusted. The reason for the increase, among other things is due to the rising costs for medical care and accidents.

While the actual amount of increase is likely to be minimal (an additional $71 per year per policy according to the chief actuary for LA’s dept. ) the unintended consequence (as noted in the NYT article) could be the reduction in auto coverage state-wide not an increase. The folks who couldn’t afford more insurance before the mandate still won’t be able to afford it and instead of pinching pennies somewhere else in their budget they may choose to drop coverage all-together increasing the deficit of coverage in Louisiana–not increasing coverage.

Latest Victim of the State–Your Dog

by Angela Logomasini on December 31, 2009 · 2 comments

in Odds & Ends

It used to be that mostly Landfill operations and chemical plants were subject to the so-called NIMBY (which is short for “not in my backyard”) syndrome. Homeowners and even renters have fought siting of such facilities for decades–making it nearly impossible to open valuable businesses no matter how well-designed and unobtrusive the facilities were.

But NIMBY is now used to attack a wide range of private property uses. And some of the latest victims are not even human. Pet hotels and doggie daycare centers are increasingly relegated to industrial parks and rural areas, even in cities where dog owners need a place close to home or work for their pets to stay and play.

Sure, such facilities can pose issues for neighbors; but neighbors should not be able to preempt any business because it “might” annoy them. And the concerns of some neighbors should not trump all the rights of others–be they businesses or consumers of such businesses. For example, in one community, a resident complained about dog walkers from the nearby doggie day care. This resident was unhappy when the leashed dogs happened to bark. But don’t the dog walkers have rights to be on public streets? And what about the neighbors who paid for those services? Don’t they have rights? Or are we going to start banning dog walking?

Rather than preempting such businesses altogether, communities should work to balance rights of everyone. When problems arise, then neighbors should have opportunities to address verified public nuisances or trespasses. But preempting businesses outright is extreme and unfair. Many of these facilities are great neighbors that employ people in the community and provide solutions for many consumers. And many are good samaritans, such as Dogtopia, which hosts annual charities to help police K-9 units around the nation.

Such solutions have been been found for large regional landfills, which certainly are a bigger challenge than doggie daycare centers. Landfill aromas are controlled and sites hidden behind trees. In Virginia, the landfill in Charles City County is well hidden behind woods. When I got lost looking for it, I had to ask nearby residents for directions to the entrance. I had a hard time finding someone who could provide directions because few even knew the landfill was there! Yet, the facility provides an important social service–ensuring safe waste disposal and bringing income to the community.

Doggie daycare facilities should be even easier. Yet places like Hoboken bar them from certain areas of the city (probably because of politically powerful and wealthier residents). In Boston, the city initially permitted one doggie hotel and then pulled back because neighbors started to complain. Now the owner of Fenway Bark has to spend more time and money for a project that could be derailed by a group of loud and overbearing residents.

This issue highlights the serious pitfalls with many zoning laws. They eliminate a host of valuable activities. Technically, lemonade stands are not legal in many places, nor are farm stands in front of homes, nor can people legally have doggie daycares in the homes–not even for just a couple dogs a day. NIMBYism–powered by zoning regulations–has impeded affordable housing developments, golf courses, energy projects, and more.

Some people may never be happy with changes in their neighborhoods. But that has always been the case. If my neighbors put pink flamingos on their lawns, I might not like it, but it’s their right. People who can’t handle that should buy land around their homes or buy into into voluntary, restrictive, private home-owner associations.

Year-End Fun: Scroogenomics

by Ryan Young on December 31, 2009

in Culture, Odds & Ends, Zeitgeist

Today’s Washington Times contains my review of Joel Waldfogel’s book Scroogenomics: Why You shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays.

Here’s a taste:

“‘A cribbage board? You shouldn’t have,’ we tell our mothers-in-law. Indeed.” In those three short sentences, Joel Waldfogel describes the origin of what retailers call “return season” and what consumers call “the week after Christmas.”

Mr. Waldfogel has a point here. By his calculations, such gifts cost the U.S. economy about $85 billion in waste. That’s more than 124 countries’ entire gross domestic product, by the way.

Bibliophiles might also be interested in my year-end book bonanza post over at my personal blog.

Florida Attorney General Questions Constitutionality of Healthcare Bills in Congress

by Hans Bader on December 31, 2009

in Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is questioning whether it is constitutional to force people to buy health insurance, as the health care bills backed by the Obama administration require.  This “individual mandate” is unprecedented and appears to exceed Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

As the Congressional Budget Office noted in 1994“,

A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.

As the news story about the attorney general’s concerns notes, in Supreme Court decisions issued in 1995 and 2000, “the high court said the commerce clause is limited to economic activities that substantially affect interstate trade in goods and services.”  (I was involved as an attorney in the latter of those two decisions, United States v. Morrison (2000)).

The individual mandate does not regulate activities, much less economic activities, but rather regulates based on inactivity, by penalizing those who decline to buy a product, health insurance (a product that young people generally do not need — as a young man, I did not go to the doctor or dentist, or purchase any drugs, for a 10-year period, and if I had become ill, my family could have easily paid my expenses).

That exceeds Congress’s powers under its Morrison and Lopez rulings, as I explained yesterday in a more extended analysis of the issue.  However, it is likely that at least four members of the current Supreme Court would vote to uphold the individual mandate, since the Morrison and Lopez decisions were 5-to-4 decisions.

Other aspects of the health care bills have also attracted legal criticism, such as their racial preferences and racial discrimination (it discriminates against white applicants in some provisions, and against minority patients in others; both forms of discrimination drew criticism from the Civil Rights Commission), and the manner in which they regulate insurance companies.

Regardless of whether the individual mandate is constitutional or not, it is certainly controversial — as are other aspects of the health care bills, which most Americans oppose.  As noted earlier, the bills would reduce life-saving medical innovation, raise many taxes, drive up insurance premiums and the deficit, break many campaign promises, and impose heavy burdens on state budgets.  They would also jeopardize the quality of medical care for many, while imposing restrictions that failed when tried at the state level, and ignoring advice from federal and academic experts, and lessons from countries with universal health care, about how to keep costs down.

Regulation of the Day 92: Camping at the Beach

by Ryan Young on December 31, 2009

in Economy, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation, Regulation of the Day

In Oregon, it is illegal to set up a tent at most beaches.

A beach would not be my first choice for a place to spend the night. It would be cold and wet, especially in Oregon. Sand would get into all kinds of places I’d rather it wouldn’t.

But is a law necessary? Before the tent ban, was there an epidemic of cold, wet, and sandy people on Oregon’s beaches, who would gladly turn to safer, more comfortable accommodations if only a law would nudge them in that direction?

Or should the Solons of Oregon turn their attention to more important matters?

Swine flu also unexceptional in contagiousness

by Michael Fumento on December 30, 2009 · 1 comment

in Health and Illness, Odds & Ends

With a massive amount of data indicating swine flu is vastly milder than seasonal flu, a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine also puts the kibosh on the claims that it spreads like gangbusters.

Researchers found that in households in which one person had swine flu it spread to 10 percent of other household members. During the flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968, 14 percent to 20 percent of household members were infected while normal seasonal flu spreads to 5 percent to 40 percent of the rest of the family.

In other words, once again we see there is absolutely nothing “pandemic” about swine flu. It’s a term the World Health Organization applied to serve its own interests. It would serve our interests to replace the WHO with a body that cares more about health than politics and power-seeking.

No, yet again, cell phones do not cause cancer

by Michael Fumento on December 30, 2009

in Health and Illness

If you’re getting a headache from spending to much time on your cell phone, it’s probably from yakking too much. But it’s not from brain cancer. Not from the phone, anyway, as yet another shows. No, this wasn’t one of those “let’s put some mouse brain cells in a Petri dish and stimulate it with magnetic waves and see if it makes them do anything unusual” tests. This was an epidemiological study of lots and lots of Scandinavian cell phone users.

Specifically, as reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, “national registry data from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden from 1974 to 2003 showed rates of the brain cancers glioma and meningioma had either remained stable, decreased, or followed the same gradual increase observed before mobile phones became popular in the 1990s.

On average, it’s believed it takes about 20 years for a brain tumor to appear after the initial insult. But that’s spread over a wide bell curve of a few years to 40 years. Five to 10 years, if using a large enough population, is enough for trends to start showing up. Yet the four Scandinavian countries had a mobile phone network since 1981, two years before the service launched in the U.S. So there’s been plenty of time for tumors to show up. All that’s appeared is crummy science perpetrated by the usual anti-technology cell-out doomsayers.

MI Senate not “FAIR” and it’s a good thing

by Michelle Minton on December 30, 2009

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Employment, Healthcare, Insurance, Labor, Mobility, Odds & Ends

The Michigan Senate recessed last week without passing the proposed insurance reforms that would, among other things, prevent insurers from using factors such as education level, occupation, credit scores, and would prevent them from setting rates without approval from the state’s insurance commissioner. The proposal which was passed in the House hopes to reduce Michigan’s exorbitant premiums which rank among the highest in the nation.

Of course, simply suppressing rates insurers charge has never really worked in the long-run, usually causing more problems on a catastrophic scale. Additionally, this proposal completely ignores the actual reason for Michigan’s high premiums: the high cost of writing insurance in Michigan which is due in large part to the unlimited liability insurance are on the hook for. As Bob Hartwig noted in his press release earlier in the month:

While the cost drivers influencing the price of auto insurance in Michigan are similar to those in other states in most respects, there is one glaring exception—its unlimited threshold for no-fault auto insurance claims…No other state in the country provides unlimited no-fault benefits, and for good reason—with unlimited benefits come unlimited costs.”

Dr. Hartwig noted that the average no-fault auto insurance claim in Michigan rose an astounding 250 percent, to $31,883 in 2007 from $9,103 in 1998, because the “system operates with virtually no checks or balances.” Unlike almost any other state, Michigan has no medical fee schedules, no utilization controls or treatment protocols, and no state insurance fraud bureau to investigate and prosecute fraud and abuse in the no-fault system.
“Michigan’s unlimited no-fault threshold exposes the state’s drivers to the full force and fury of runaway health care costs,”
The average auto insurance policyholder in Michigan spent $928 in 2007 to insure his or her vehicle, compared with $795 for the typical U.S. driver in that same year, making Michigan’s rates the 11th highest in the nation.
As I noted in my article for the Detroit News, the higher premiums for Michigan drivers do not necessarily equal larger profits for the insurers as one might assume.

“While it’s true Michigan residents pay on average $150 more than the typical U.S. driver for insurance, it’s also true that during the last 10 years Michigan insurers made profits of just 2.1 percent compared with the national average return on profit of 8.4 percent.”

When the Michigan senate returns from recess, let’s hope that they take a stab at some auto insurance reform ideas that might actually reduce premiums for consumers, increase profits for insurance companies, and increase the vibrancy of a state in desperate need of revitalization.

For the Birds

by Ryan Young on December 30, 2009 · 1 comment

in Culture, Environment, Nanny State, Precaution & Risk, Zeitgeist

An environmental group is suing to cancel an upcoming AC/DC concert in Austria because they think loud music poses a threat to birds.

No further comment is necessary, or will be offered.

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