January 2012

Will Durant on Human Achievement

by Ryan Young on May 31, 2010

in Culture, Odds & Ends, Zeitgeist

I spent a good chunk of the long weekend engrossed in Will Durant’s autobiography, Transition. Durant and his wife Ariel are best known for their 11-volume The Story of Civilization series, which is a fine introduction not just to history, but to literature, philosophy, art, music, science, and all the other cantos in the poem of human life.

Transition is mainly the tale of Durant’s transition from seminarian to secularist, and from his youthful flirtations with socialist anarchism to a gentler, more tolerant and mature worldview that saw humanity as a good but flawed creature, set in his ways, yet capable of breathtaking progress and achievement. This passage, describing Durant’s first trip to Europe in 1912 aboard an oceanliner, captures that transition in microcosm:

One night there was no moon, nor any star; then our great ship, ghastly alight in the engulfing dark, seemed like a phosphorescent insect struggling in the sea. But as we neared the rocks of Britain’s ancient shore the mood of my thinking changed, and I marveled not at the vastness of the ocean but at the courage of man, who had ribbed it everywhere with the paths of his floating cities; who had dared to make great arks of heavy iron and fill them with thousands of tons of the products of human hands; who had built upon these frames luxurious homes for many hundred men; who had made engines capable, through the expansion of a little steam, of propelling this enormity of steel and flesh safely and quickly across the widest seas, making the rage of the ocean impotent. It was man that was marvelous, I said, as I stood secure and relieved on the solid soil of England.

(Transition, pp. 218-19)

CEI Weekly: CEI Sues NASA to Uncover Key Global Warming Docs

by Ryan Lynch on May 28, 2010

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Environment, Features, Global Warming, Natural Resources, Odds & Ends, Zeitgeist

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

May 28, 2010

>>CEI Sues NASA to Uncover Key Global Warming Docs

CEI is suing NASA in federal court! We have asked the court to order NASA – which has evaded our Freedom of Information Act requests for three years – to turn over documents related to global warming activities undertaken by federal employees. Chris Horner, along with the law firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, is leading the charge to determine whether NASA facilities and staff were employed to push a specific policy agenda. As Congress ponders legislation that would increase the price of energy, thereby creating a massive new tax on Americans, it is vital that the general public know the extent to which the government’s own scientists have been fueling the alarmist political agenda while ostensibly being paid by taxpayers for impartial climate research. The text of CEI’s court filing is here (PDF). The Washington Times covered our lawsuit in a front page story, which can be read here.

>>Shaping the Debate

Kerry-Lieberman plan has ‘something to harm everyone’and lacks bipartisan support.

Myron Ebell’s quote in The Orange County Register

Regarding climate change, Kerry should heed science

William Yeatman’s letter in The Hill

Liberate to stimulate – Live in the UK!

Iain Murrary’s op-ed in The Examiner Opinion Zone

Pests over people

William Yeatman’s op-ed in The Washington Times

Cuccinelli Is Following the Law; Mann Up, UVa

Chris Horner’s op-ed in The Richmond Times-Dispatch

John Kerry* Imitates the Onion

William Yeatman cited in The Wall Street Journal

The Other Blumenthal Scandal

CEI cited in The Wall Street Journal

Outlook for broadband policy and net neutrality grim

Wayne Crews’ quote in San Jose Mercury News

>>Best of the Blogs

CEI Statement on Senate Passage of Restoring American Financial Stability Act

by John Berlau

Senate Passes Financial “Reform” Bill, 59-39; Will Wipe Out Jobs and Increase Credit Card Costs

by Hans Bader

In Letter and Spirit: Equal Treatment Under the Law

by Angela Logomasini

>>LibertyWeek Podcast

Episode 94: The Nanny State Diaries

Richard Morrison and Jeremy Lott welcome guests Marc Scribner, William Yeatman, Lee Doren, and Angela Logomasini to episode 94. We tackle politics in the Aloha state, freedom of information at the University of Virginia, Bureaucrash’s best and brightest, and the attack of the nanny state.

>>Support CEI

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Massive Fare Hike in Washington, D.C. Subway System; Public Sacrifices, Overpaid Union Doesn’t

by Hans Bader on May 28, 2010 · 7 comments

in Labor, Mobility, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

The mismanaged Washington, D.C. Metro system is pushing through huge fare hikes,  not only increasing subway and bus fares, but adding a new 20 percent additional surcharge for rush hour.

But it’s refusing to engage in any sensible cost-cutting, such as service cuts that few passengers would ever notice, like ending subway service after 2 a.m. on weekends that results in virtually empty trains (but more high-paid work for unionized D.C. Metro employees).

Metro is almost unbelievably indulgent towards incompetent employees, who are allowed to drive buses despite a steady stream of accidents and traffic violations. Many Metro employees have $100,000-plus compensation and incredibly generous pensions.

Metro is padding its payroll while cutting funds for routine maintenance and safety (despite recent highly-publicized Metro crashes that killed passengers).

Metro’s Board includes Chris Zimmerman, an Arlington County Board member and tool of the public-employee unions who recently raised Arlington County taxes 10 percent to increase government spending in the middle of a recession, and take the Arlington County government on a billion-dollar spending spree.   Lazy board members like Zimmerman have long refused to conduct vigorous oversight over the Metro system or ask necessary and probing questions of incompetent D.C. Metro employees, which might offend their transit union.

The public interest takes a back seat to union special interests at the national level as well.  The Obama administration wants airline security and Amtrak to become more like Washington’s inefficient Metro, by increasing the power of unions and making it harder to get rid of problem employees.

A study found that the TSA is more than twice as likely to fail to detect a bomb as the private security firms it replaced. And TSA’s failure rate is three or four times as high as the few remaining private firms still allowed to handle airline security. In tests, TSA failed to detect fake bombs 60 percent of the time at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, and 75 percent of the time in Los Angeles. Yet the Obama administration backs collective bargaining for the TSA, even though collective bargaining makes it even harder to get rid of lazy employees and demand high performance.  The Obama administration is also undermining the security of railroad passengers by gutting an expert, highly-rated, anti-terror agency at Amtrak, which Amtrak’s unions hate, despite its efficiency, because it is not unionized.

D.C.’s Metro engages in massive racial discrimination in employment against non-black applicants.  Its workforce statistics go well beyond giving rise to a prima facie case of intentional, pattern-or-practice discrimination under the Supreme Court’s Teamsters decision.  (Note that I said “intentional.”  I am not talking about “disparate impact” or advocating racial proportionality or quotas relative to the general population.  Disclosure: I used to bring discrimination class-actions before working at CEI.)

Myths About Green Energy: The Truth Is, It’s Corporate Welfare That Destroys American Jobs

by Hans Bader on May 28, 2010

in Agriculture, Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, Energy, Environment, Ethanol, Global Warming, International, Natural Resources, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere, Trade, Zeitgeist

In The Washington Post, Robert Bryce debunks five myths about green energy: it won’t create jobs, won’t help the environment, and won’t make America less dependent on despotic foreign regimes.

The $800 billion stimulus package is using taxpayer subsidies to replace U.S. jobs with foreign green jobs. It is also destroying jobs in America’s export sector.

The global warming legislation backed by President Obama would also drive jobs overseas, since it would impose a costly cap-and-trade carbon rationing scheme on American industry, while leaving foreign plants operated by multinational corporations unregulated.  That’s one reason why many big companies with plants overseas are lobbying for the global-warming legislation, which would give them an advantage over competitors that make their products largely in America.

Although Obama and other backers of this “cap-and-trade” concept claim it will cut greenhouse gas emissions, it may perversely increase them by driving industry overseas to places with fewer environmental regulations, resulting in dirtier air, and damage to forests and water supplies.   It would enrich politically-connected corporations, and result in massive destruction of the world’s forests.   By expanding ethanol subsidies and mandates, it would cause enormous “damage to water supplies, soil health and air quality.” Ethanol subsidies have already resulted in forests being destroyed in the Third World.

The Washington Examiner earlier explained how the global-warming bill backed by Obama will lead to deforestation, and thus increase greenhouse gas emissions in the long run.  Obama’s so-called “cap-and-trade” bill is full of pay-offs for special interests.

Such cap-and-trade energy rationing schemes would lead to big tax increases, administration officials privately have conceded, even though they publicly claim otherwise.  “Officials at the Treasury Department think cap-and-trade legislation would cost taxpayers hundreds of billion in taxes, according to internal documents circulated within the agency and provided to The Washington Times” by CEI.  It could raise household taxes by $1761 per year, equivalent to a 15 percent tax increase.   It would also result in “loss of steel, paper, aluminum, chemical, and cement manufacturing jobs.”

Obama earlier admitted that “under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” since its costs would be passed “on to consumers.”

Citizens would be wise not to trust Obama’s utopian claims about mythical green jobs, given that the foreign green jobs programs he seeks to imitate have completely failed.  Obama’s past claims about job-creation have turned out to be false. Obama falsely claimed that the $787 billion stimulus package was needed to prevent “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admitted that it would actually shrink the economy “in the long run”.  Unemployment has skyrocketed past European levels, as big-spending countries have fared worse than thrifty ones.  As the Examiner notes, “If his stimulus program was approved, Obama promised, unemployment would not go above 8 percent . . . The reality is that it passed 10.3 percent.”  In 2008, Obama promised a “net spending cut,” but as soon as he was elected, he proposed massive spending increases.

Federal Register hits 30,000 Pages

by Ryan Young on May 28, 2010

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Politics as Usual

With a notice from the Defense Department that it is selling $122 million of equipment to Great Britain, the 2010 Federal Register passed 30,000 pages.

After 103 working days, the total page count is 30,265. Assuming 250 working days in a year, this year’s Federal Register is on pace for 73,459 pages.

The average count during the Bush administration was 73,416 pages.

Like most of President Obama’s policies, this represents less than a one percent change from the Bush years.

New York Winemakers Forced to Market Out-of-State

by Angela Logomasini on May 28, 2010

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty

Scott Osborn–proprietor of Fox Run Vineyards located in the Finger Lakes wine region in New York–poured samples of his great wines at the Gainesville, Virginia Wegmans supermarket last Friday. The store stocks his wines and a host of other New York State wines. Ironically, many resident New Yorkers lack such convenient access to these wines because of their state’s special-interest regulations.

Not only it is against the law for supermarkets to sell wine in the state, the state has a relatively low number of liquor stores thanks to an arduous licensing process and regulations limiting one retail license per person—policies that discourage entrepreneurship. Many–but not all–existing liquor stores support these regulations to reduce competition, and they lobby hard to keep them in place.

To add insult to injury, some existing stores refuse to stock products from political competitors: wineries that advocate supermarket sales. An article in the Wine Spectator addresses how some shops have tried to strong-arm state wineries via what amounts to unofficial boycotts of their wines.

The impacts of such foolish regulations are severe for many wineries. After all, how can any business survive when there are too few retail outlets? Osborn detailed the results of such policies in the Buffalo News earlier this week:

New York lost nine wineries from 2008 to 2009—the only major wine producing state that did not see a net increase in the number of wineries. Our grape farmers are going out of business or being forced to sell off valuable farmland to pay their bills. Also, when wineries go out of businesses, there is a ripple effect that reaches all the way back to the supply companies and small businesses that support the industry. New York’s wine industry will be destroyed if our lawmakers do not do the right thing and open up the markets for us to be able to sell our product and compete.

Osborn and other wine industry groups called on the state legislature to act on this issue at a press conference earlier this week. “This is an issue that is critical to the sustainability and growth of the New York wine industry,” he noted in a press statement. “My wines are sold in grocery stores throughout the country, but not here in my own state,” he explained.

Susan Hayes of Miles Wine Cellars, agreed: “This proposal [to allow grocery wine sales] will help my business grow—creating much-needed jobs here in the Finger Lakes. It will also help the other 1000-plus grape growing farms and more than 270 wineries in New York have more outlets to sell their wines.”

The conference speakers also pointed to public opinion polls showing how residents overwhelmingly support supermarket sales.

new_york-wegmens

However, at least one winery expressed concerns that supermarkets might not carry state wines. But the evidence suggests the contrary. In fact, the New York State-based supermarket chain—Wegmans—already carries a good bit of New York Wine in Virginia stores, which demonstrates that they understand its marketability. Moreover, the legislation could also expand the number of retail shops. More shops, means more shelf space—and more opportunities to market the state’s wines.

I am glad to have Fox Run and other New York wine available here in Virginia! Yet it is a sad state of affairs when a state’s own entrepreneurs have to travel several states away to market their wares. Wine regions usually serve local markets first and then grow to national and maybe even global prominence. But silly regulations mean that New Yorkers have limited opportunity buy and enjoy many great wines produced in their own state.

Concessions Can Bridge Budget Gaps

by Marc Scribner on May 27, 2010

in Economy, Mobility

In 1958, Chicago opened the 7.8-mile Chicago Skyway, an elevated tollway linking the downtown Chicago Loop with the Indiana Toll Road. Due to poor transportation planning and fiscal mismanagement, the city was unable to repay construction revenue bonds into the 1990s. After years of heated debate, the city finalized a $1.83 billion 99-year concession agreement in 2005 with a consortium consisting of Macquarie and Cintra, a Spanish infrastructure developer.

The $1.83 billion infusion to City of Chicago coffers allowed the city to repay $855 million in debt, fill a $375 million budget shortfall, and improve its debt rating to save millions annually in interest payments. It also funded a $500 million long-term reserve and a $375 million medium-term reserve for the city.

Opened in 1956, the Indiana Toll Road (ITR) spans the 157-mile width of the state, from the Ohio and Illinois state lines. After his election in 2004, Governor Mitch Daniels (R) ordered the Indiana Finance Authority (IFA) to investigate the feasibility of leasing the ITR to a private concessionaire. Macquarie and Cintra formed the consortium ITR Concession Company and made the winning bid, agreeing to pay the state $3.8 billion in exchange for a 75-year concession.

The authorizing legislation mandated that the $3.8 billion generated from the ITR concession be used almost entirely for transportation-related funding. It is difficult to say whether this is a positive aspect or not. On one hand, the City of Chicago dedicated a significant amount of its $1.83 billion on arguably wasteful discretionary spending. On the other, committing $3.6 billion to future transportation expenditures will likely incentivize the development of more poorly planned public transportation projects in Indiana.

But as states scramble to balance their budgets, shifting some of their transportation burdens to the private sector should be seen as a viable alternative to both tax increases and service cuts.

For more on road concessions, see here and here.

Sudden Acceleration in Media Falsehoods Regarding Toyota

by Michael Fumento on May 27, 2010 · 2 comments

in Nanny State, Regulation

“Now that the dust has begun to settle on Toyota’s recall fiasco, it’s being made clear that the toll on human life was greater than initially reported,” reports U.S. News & World Report online. The title: “NHTSA: 89 Deaths Caused by Unintended Acceleration in Toyota Vehicles.”

Not exactly true. Says who? NHTSA. Here’s an email I received this morning from their press office.

Please remember these are customer generated complaints of alleged unintended acceleration that have not been verified by NHTSA:
“As of May 20, 2010, NHTSA has received complaints covering a total of seventy-one (71) fatal incidents that allegedly involve unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles since 2000. These reports covering incidents dating back to 2000 include eighty-nine (89) fatalities and fifty-seven (57) injuries.”

The emphasis is original. They used both bold and italics to try to make the point. And it just doesn’t seem to take, does it?

tort-related-claims-for-blog

In fairness, often news outlets do make it clear these are mere allegations, but they never make it clear enough how tenuous the link is. You can send NHTSA a complaint online or by phone and claim absolutely anything you want. You say that your Toyota become a giant Transformer, wreaked havoc on Manhattan, and then became a Civic again? That’s fine. The computer won’t spit your complaint back out.

I went through the process on the NHTSA complaint page myself and was one keyboard tap away from turning those 89 deaths into 93 deaths.

And that’s how 19 deaths associated with Toyota sudden acceleration in November, before the first class action suit was filed, has become 89 deaths. No, more people haven’t died. More people have simply come to the conclusion that a death in their Toyota over the last decade was caused by sudden acceleration. The offer of lucre has a way of jogging the ol’ memory.

I’ll be writing more on this. Meanwhile, I’ve published 10 articles on the hysteria and there’s a lot more where that came from.

Obama Justice Department Sued Over Stonewalling and Cover-Up in Black Panther Case

by Hans Bader on May 26, 2010 · 2 comments

in Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Judicial Watch is suing the Obama administration over its stonewalling in the Black-Panther voter intimidation case, where the administration has flouted the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in order to hide how it protected members of the racist, anti-Semitic New Black Panther Party. Although FOIA requires that documents be released within 20 days, the administration has withheld for over a year the records Judicial Watch requested about how the administration dismissed a lawsuit that career Justice Department lawyers had won against Black Panthers who used a nightstick and racial epithets to drive white voters away from a polling place.

Earlier, a career Justice Department lawyer resigned after the Obama administration illegally defied a subpoena from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The Civil Rights Commission is investigating the administration’s politicization of the Justice Department and its selective refusal to enforce the Voting Rights Act against the Black Panthers and black political bosses.

A former Justice Department lawyer describes the Obama administration’s stonewalling, cover-up, and deceit at this link. The Black Panthers that the Obama administration sought to protect by dropping the lawsuit included a local Democratic official and Obama poll-watcher.

One of the Panthers, who has been videotaped saying “that he wanted to kill white people,” is shown in a recent documentary talking about “how much he hates and wants to kill white people, including white babies.” He called a terrified black poll watcher a “race traitor,” and told him there would be “hell to pay” if he interfered with the Panthers’ campaign of voter intimidation.

In their campaign of voter intimidation, the Panthers told a white former civil-rights lawyer and former publisher of the liberal Village Voice, “Now you are going to find out what it is to be ruled by the black man, cracker.” They called a white poll watcher who lives nine blocks from the polling place a “white devil” and a “cracker,” telling him he would be ruled by the black man the next day, and he would have to get used to “living under his boot.”

The New Black Panther Party, which has a venomous hatred for what it refers to as “bloodsucking Jews,” is designated as a hate-group even by the liberal SPLC, because of its anti-Semitism.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that discrimination against whites is prohibited under federal law (including voting discrimination). The Obama administration seemingly disagrees with those rulings (which include a 9-to-0 Supreme Court decision).

LibertyWeek 94: The Nanny State Diaries

by Richard Morrison on May 26, 2010

in CEI Projects, Features, Podcast, Zeitgeist

Richard Morrison and Jeremy Lott welcome guests Marc Scribner, William Yeatman, Lee Doren and Angela Logomasini to Episode 94 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We tackle politics in the Aloha state, freedom of information at the University of Virginia, Bureaucrash’s best and brightest and the attack of the nanny state.

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