January 2012

Congratulations Sam Dealey

by Fred Smith on February 2, 2010

in Odds & Ends

I would like to congratulate Sam Dealey in his appointment as The Washington Times‘ new editor. An innovative, hard-working journalist, Sam has never shied away from going where he needed to get a story – from Afghanistan to Sudan.

Sam’s work has maintained a high standard across several major media outlets – from Time to the PBS “News Hour” to U.S. News & World Report. I expect that he will bring the same level of excellence to his new charge at the Times. I wish him the best, and look forward for CEI to act as a resource for Sam and the paper he will now be leading.

No, two stimulus plans are enough!

by Michael Fumento on February 2, 2010

in Features, Stimulus to Nowhere, Zeitgeist

In rolling out his (Cough, cough!) $3.8 trillion budget proposal even as we’re facing a historic national debt, Pres. Obama has included $100 million for a third stimulus package. (A lot of people forget that we had one under Pres. Bush.)

True, the Obama administration has made great claims about what an incredible success his first stimulus was, but the claims haven’t withstood the facts. You don’t need 20 economists to crunch a million numbers to see that.

Back in August I wrote that Cristina Romer, chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, declared “Absolutely” the stimulus package was working. Yet she accompanied her talk with contradictory evidence.

Along with her speech, Romer presented a table with calculations of the percentage of 2009 GDP “discretionary fiscal stimulus” spending in various countries. It showed that the U.K. spent 1.5% of its GDP on stimulus, the same as Germany and more than twice that of France at 0.6%.

Nevertheless, even as the German and French economies grew by 0.3% in the second quarter, the British economy plummeted 0.8%. Sweden spent more than twice the proportion of its GDP on stimulus (1.4%), as did France, yet had no growth.

And the U.S.? It outspent everybody, Romer boasted. Her table shows we spent 2.0% of GDP. In her talk, she said “roughly 5% of GDP.”

“Choose whichever figure tickles your fancy,” I wrote. “It remains the case that for all President Obama’s personal back-slapping and media crowing of ‘disproved’ stimulus skeptics, the U.S. economy shrank 1% in the second quarter. It was remarkable only in being a major improvement from the previous quarter.”

This proposed stimulus is just political fodder for the November elections. The fact is the economy is on the mend and jobless rates will start going down.

Believe me, I have more sympathy for jobless people than you can know. But I’ll just point out that my brother is unemployed and my wife spent a good part of last year unemployed. But this latest stimulus plan won’t help. It will just help dig us deeper into long-term debt that will threaten not just jobs and the economy as a whole but America’s standing as a world power.

Return to moon program scrapped. Good.

by Michael Fumento on February 2, 2010 · 1 comment

in Economy, Odds & Ends

The Obama administration is killing Constellation, NASA’s ambitious back-to-the moon program, the Washington Post reports. Although in the overall scheme of things the moon program wasn’t that big of contributor to deficit spending (when it comes to that, just keep thinking “entitlements, entitlements, entitlements”) it is needless.

Yes, I know a lot of people out there are really fascinated by space travel in any form. And a lot of people want to attack Obama for absolutely anything, when there are so many good things to go after him for.

“The president’s proposed NASA budget begins the death march for the future of U.S. human spaceflight,” Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) said. “If this budget is enacted, NASA will no longer be an agency of innovation and hard science. It will be the agency of pipe dreams and fairy tales.”

Rep. Pete Olson (R-Tex.) said, “This is a crippling blow to America’s human spaceflight program.”

Baloney. There are tons of worthy space projects that will go untouched, and the next goal for manned space travel should be a place we haven’t been before – namely Mars.

Fact is, the most important aspect of the original Apollo program was to demoralize the Soviets during the Cold War – just as they demoralized us with Sputnik. No, we really didn’t learn that much from the incredibly expensive undertaking. And despite the urban legend, neither Velcro nor Teflon came out of the program. Neither did Tang – although it’s probably true for those horrible “space food sticks.”

The best response to the inexplicable desire to go back to the moon and collect more rocks, other than we can’t afford it, is “Been there, done that.”

LibertyWeek 79: Where Are the Jobs?

by Richard Morrison on February 1, 2010

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Richard Morrison, Marc Scribner and Josh Barro join forces to being you Episode 79 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We take on barriers to job creation, anti-capitalist murmurs in Davos, the iPad’s unapproved technology, laws against motorized texting and why it’s all or nothing in the healthcare debate.

Why Supreme Court Justice May Have Been So Annoyed at the President’s State of the Union Address

by Hans Bader on February 1, 2010

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

At the president’s recent State of the Union address, he misleadingly attacked the Supreme Court for supposedly “reversing a century of law“ restricting corporate spending on political campaigns in its ruling this month in Citizens United v. FEC.

In response, an annoyed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was attending the speech as an invited guest, apparently mouthed the words “not true,” although his words were not audible and did not interrupt the president’s speech.  (Obama was criticizing a Supreme Court ruling that struck down a recent federal restriction on corporations’ ability to criticize politicians.  The ruling, which was based on the First Amendment, said it was not invalidating a century-old 1907 law that bans corporations from making donations to politicians, who have long leaned on corporations to give money to their pet causes.  The ruling also did not lift restrictions on foreign corporations.  I earlier explained in the New York Times why corporations logically do have free speech rights.)

Maybe Justice Alito’s annoyance was cumulative, and based as much on the president’s past lies about an earlier Supreme Court ruling authored by Alito, as on his misleading criticism of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling.   Past lies make later falsehoods seem less like innocent mistakes.

In his 2008 campaign, and again in 2009, Obama criticized Justice Alito’s decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, which did not, contrary to the president’s claims, create a rigid 180 day deadline for bringing pay discrimination claims after an employee’s pay is set, regardless of whether the worker couldn’t have discovered the discrimination until years later.  (The deadline was 180 days, with various common-sense exceptions for hoodwinked employees, under one federal law, called Title VII.  But it is generally three years under another federal law, the Equal Pay Act, that also has more generous accrual rules.  Most employees could evade the short deadline of Title VII simply by having the sense to sue under the Equal Pay Act as well.  Alito’s ruling left workers with ample time to sue over discrimination, contrary to what Obama claimed.  Lilly Ledbetter lost her discrimination case because she waited until 1998 to file a complaint, despite admitting in her deposition that she knew her pay was low by 1992.)
I documented this in my commentary about the Supreme Court last year.  National Journal’s Stuart Taylor (a critic of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in favor of corporations), and lawyers Paul Mirengoff and Ed Whelan, also described how Obama repeatedly distorted what the Supreme Court said in the Ledbetter case.

The Nation Confirms Craig Becker’s Radicalism

by Ivan Osorio on February 1, 2010 · 1 comment

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Labor, Regulation

Former Service Employees International Union (SEIU) associate general counsel Craig Becker, who has been nominated to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by President Obama, could make drastic changes in labor law to favor unionization, were he confirmed and appointed to the Board. Critics of Becker – mostly conservative and libertarian – have made this argument. Senate Republicans oppose his nomination. But don’t take from us. Now two pro-union lawyers, writing in The Nation, acknowledge the far-reaching nature of the changes Becker could make. Steven Hill, of the New America Foundation, and labor attorney Dmitri Iglitzin note:

Most legal scholars and labor experts believe that the NLRB has the authority to enact procedural changes that could, among other things:

•?drastically shorten the time frame for holding union elections;

•?eliminate cumbersome pre-election procedures that allow employers to dispute who is eligible to vote in such elections;

•?require the employer to turn over employee names, addresses and phone numbers early in any union organizing drive;

•?require equal access to both workers and the workplace for unions during campaigns; and

•?increase the penalties on companies that violate their workers’ legal rights.

The NLRB even could make it easier for workers to unionize based on a card check showing of majority support–just as the EFCA [Employee Free Choice Act] would.

Such changes could be made a radical enough Board member, so what kind of member is Becker likely to make? Hill and Iglitzin write:

Becker has argued that employers “should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees’ election of representatives.” In practice, this means that employers could no longer oppose union organizing drives through NLRB or other administrative proceedings but would instead become mere bystanders in that process, removing one of the most powerful tools in the employer arsenal of antiunion strategies. It is because of these types of opinions that the Wall Street Journal has called Becker “labor’s secret weapon” and accused him of wanting to “rig the rules to favor unionization.”

The stakes are high indeed. As the nation claws out of recession, the last thing we need is a more burdensome labor law regime hindering job growth.

For more on labor, see here.

For more on EFCA, see here.

Fighting for Freedom of Music in Cuba

by Ivan Osorio on February 1, 2010 · 1 comment

in Culture, International, Personal Liberty

At Freemuse.org, Kristina Funkeson reviews the documentary film Cuba Rebelion!, which chronicles the underground music scene that has been thriving in Cuba in recent years, despite the government’s disapproval.

To get accepted by the state owned musical companies the groups need approval by the Cultural Ministry. One of the refused groups isQva Libre. Despite being one of the most ambitious and popular groups they are not signed at any record label.

Since the music played on Cuban radio stations mostly consists of traditional music, such as salsa, the alternative music scene is spread through word of mouth. The musicians witness about how music videos often are censored and that there is nothing to do about it.

“I’m fed up with it”, says Gorki Luis Águila Carrasco from Porno Para Ricardo in the film. He has spent more than four months in a maximum security prison without a trial. According to him, people are put into prison only “for making art which is not politically correct”. He will never forget the terrible conditions and how he suffered in jail.

Despite the persecution, Gorki has consistently refused to tone down his criticism of the Castro regime. As he noted in a reason.tv interview last year, police came into his band’s rehearsal space and arrested him for “pre-criminal behavior.” Luckily, his case got substantial international attention, which put pressure on the regime. That helped get him released, something that Gorki described as unprecedented. The video of the full interview is below (disclosure: I translated for the subtitles).

The High Cost of Project Labor Agreements

by Ivan Osorio on February 1, 2010

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Labor, Regulation

At Biggovernment.com, Mandy/Liberty Chick provides a comprehensive overview of project labor agreements (PLAs), which impose onerous conditions on contractors who wish to bid on government projects. They may be required to employ workers from union hiring halls, acquire apprentices from union apprentice programs, and require employees to pay union dues. Clearly, this disadvantages non-union contractors who would otherwise not face those costs. Focusing on California, she notes how unions are using regulatory and legal maneuvers to get public officials to agree to PLAs.

While PLAs were once largely embraced in a marketplace when unions represented a greater majority of workers in the US, today’s PLAs must claim other benefits to be reasonably received by a general public that is no longer largely unionized.  Today’s PLAs purport to extend jobs to non-union workers, when in reality they place new impositions on both employers and workers, such as mandatory union-hall hiring, forcing non-union workers to pay union dues and make contributions to others’ pension funds. With the advent of the strict standards of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), PLAs now typically promise union sanctioned “environmental expertise”, adding another weapon to big labor’s arsenal.  Since most unions receive public funding for environmental training and mitigation, union bosses use it to assert their perceived authority by challenging projects on environmental grounds. They effectively hold a project hostage until the parties agree to a PLA and allow union shops to take control of the project’s labor requirements.  It’s nothing less than blackmail, which is how a new spin on the old term “greenmail”came to be mainstream.

Worse, we are likely to see PLAs on more federal projects.

In February 2009, as one of his first duties in office, President Obama signed an executive order that authorized federal executive agencies to use project labor agreements on federal construction contracts with a total cost of $25 million or more.  The order also revoked President Bush’s prior ban on mandatory PLAs, an action he’d taken after congressional hearings produced evidence that PLAs were discriminatory against open-shops and non-union workers, increased costs on most projects and were too often vehicles for abuse .  When the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed only days after Obama’s order, agencies were encouraged to mandate PLAs for all stimulus projects.

Even worse yet, we are likely to see greater costs on public projects as the country struggles out of recession. California’s experience with PLAs is not a good one.

In California, where 18.3% of the overall workforce is covered by a union, much of the recovery opportunities, including PLAs, are focused disproportionately on creating union jobs.  Where does that leave the other 81.7% of non-union workers who are fighting California’s 12.4% unemployment rate?  In construction, California’s union rate is higher than average 23.1%, which makes it even more difficult for private construction to compete. Despite popular belief that the construction industry is overwhelmingly unionized, only about 16% of America’s construction workers belonged to a union in 2009.  That’s a lot of workers left out of the competition when they need the work most.

Mandy also makes the important point that PLAs put minorities at a disadvantage, as most minority contractors are non-union. As National Black Chamber of Commerce President Harry Alford said at a panel I attended last year,“very few people in southeast Washington” worked on the Nationals Park baseball stadium, which was built under a PLA.

For more on project labor agreements, see here.

School Choice: Mankind’s Doom

by Ryan Young on February 1, 2010

in Environment, Global Warming, Mobility, Personal Liberty

Caleb Brown points to a study that finds a novel reason to oppose school choice: global warming. In a competitive educational marketplace, it is likely that fewer children would attend schools in their own neighborhood. That would mean less busing, and more driving in cars to get children to school. School choice, then, would contribute to global warming.

The study does not appear to be satire.

An alternative to laws against texting while driving?

by Wayne Crews on February 1, 2010

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation

You can put on makeup while driving, fiddle with your GPS and iPod or reach back to pinch your annoying kid in the back seat, but don’t get caught texting or making cell phone calls. I remember texting-while-driving once, passing a cop, seeing him spin out of his little perch — thinking he was about to pull me over — but he stopped someone else instead (who had a similar car….hmmm! Or maybe he was just irritated that I was driving a hybrid) Anyway, a new study claims that laws prohibiting against handheld cell phones don’t reduce crashes. The appropriateness of bans has been a debate raging for a long time now.

What always seems to be missing from the popular treatements is any analysis of what market pressures could influence people not to text while driving. In the extreme, on fully private roads in a libertarian society, the activity might be banned altogether. More concretely, on our public roads, automobile insurance companies could team with cellphone companies to discipline.

OK, I admit weekend laziness and that I could’ve gone and googled it, but it would be interesting to know if there are policies that might inhibit insurers from taking self-protective (and people protective) approaches to highway risk reduction that don’t involve the perverse option of speeding policemen blasting down the road. It would seem that carriers and insurers would have mutual interests here; The cell company doesn’t benefit from a dead carrier; the insurance company doesn’t want to pay for people who are needlessly careless or reckess.

Automobiles are increasingly electric in every aspect apart from how they’re powered; onboard monitoring systems can record accident data; maybe that could be (or is?) matched up with cell phone diagnostics on whether somebody was monkeying with the keys or touchpad simultaneously. You could be warned ahead of the time, before you purchase your policy, that you aren’t covered if you’re texting while driving.

It’s food for thought, especially if the laws against texting don’t work anyway. More importantly, all technologies bring risks, and we must always explore disciplines apart from lazy legislation. So far, I haven’t texted while riding my motorcycle, but I do have a little carrier for the Blackberry there on the handlebar. Bookmark and Share

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