January 2012

Six Painless Ways to Cut Federal Red Tape

by Ryan Young on January 19, 2011

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Regulation

President Obama signed an Executive Order this week that will initiate a “government-wide review of the rules already on the books to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive.” Over at AOL News, Wayne Crews and I explain why this will hardly change a thing. We also offer six suggestions for reducing regulatory burdens with a minimum of political pain.

Here are three of them:

  • Appoint an annual bipartisan commission to comb through the books and suggest rules that deserve repeal. Congress would then vote up-or-down on the repeal package without amendment, to avoid behind-the-scenes deal-making.
  • Require all new regulations to have built-in five-year sunset provisions. If Congress decides a rule is worth keeping, it can vote to extend it for another five years.
  • Consider Sen. Mark Warner’s, D-Va., “one in, one out” proposal, which holds that for every new rule that hits the books, an old one must be repealed.

Read the rest here.

Afternoon Links: January 19, 2011

by Nicole Ciandella on January 19, 2011

in Zeitgeist

1. A California court of appeals has held that attorney-client privilege doesn’t extend to your work email account.

2. This is how rumors spread on Twitter.

3. Steve Jobs claims the iPad offers “freedom from porn”—but Hugh Hefner has promised an uncensored iPad version of Playboy.

4. The UK has banned an advertisement for Vitamin Water because it used the word “nutritious.”

5. Here’s more evidence that the drug policies of Portugal and the Netherlands are improving social welfare.

Photo Credit: Valley Library

King Ignores His “Principles”

by Trey Kovacs on January 19, 2011

in Labor

UAW’s president Bob King has already blatantly disregarded his “Principles for Fair Union Elections.” In his effort to unionize foreign automakers, it is clear the principles adhere only to management and corporations.

Bob King’s Principle #5 Equal access to the electorate

During the course of a union representational campaign, employees will have the opportunity to hear equally from both the union and management regarding this issue. There will be no mandatory meetings of employees on the issue of unionization unless the UAW is invited to participate in the meetings. Written and oral communications must be equal. The union must be granted the same ability as the employer to post campaign material.

First, they have had no invitation from Japanese automaker employees that they have interest in unionizing. However, they are already publicly promoting that they wish to unionize foreign automakers.

Another principle that has been ignored:

#6 Disavow any threats from community allies

Management will explicitly disavow, reject and discourage messages from corporate and community groups that send the message that a union would jeopardize jobs. Likewise, the UAW will explicitly disavow, reject and discourage messages from community groups that send the message that the company is not operating in a socially responsible way.

Bob King violating principle #6:

“If a company makes the bad business decision to engage in anti-union activity, suppress the rights of freedom of speech and assembly, we will launch a global campaign to brand that company a human-rights violator,” King said today during a speech in Detroit. “We do not want to fight, but we will not run from a fight.”

He is already speaking out against these companies calling them “human rights violators,” calling for protest against these companies, and has joined with community organizations — Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition — to speak against and protest automakers who do not want to unionize. Also, as can be seen from the near bankruptcy of the Big Three automakers, unions can jeopardize jobs.

Principle #9 is altogether against fair union elections:

# 9 Secret ballot election

The democratic right of workers to freely and collectively choose if they want to form their UAW local union is the workers’ First Amendment right. A secret ballot election incorporating these principles is an acceptable method of determining union representation if principles two through six have been adhered to, and if there is no history of anti-union activities. The parties may select an alternative method on a case-by-case basis that reflects the best process for demonstrating employee wishes. If the parties cannot agree on specifics of the procedure, an arbitrator may decide.

This is advocating for “card check,” the opposite of a fair election. This allows unions to coerce and intimidate employees to unionize. This goes against a basic freedom that Americans enjoy: the right to a private ballot.

The action on behalf of King and UAW should grab the attention foreign automakers and their employees. They will continue to attack these companies publicly and mislead employees in favor of unionization by promising favorable contract negotiations. Employees who wish to stay employed need only to look at the effects of unionization in the government and the Big Three. The government and the Big Three have had to make significant pay cuts and lay off employees to address their deficits.

Image credit: Pan-African News Wire File Photos’ flickr photostream.

Harper’s vs. UAW

by Ivan Osorio on January 19, 2011 · 1 comment

in Culture, Labor, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

When can one expect leftists to oppose unionization of a business? When it’s their own.

That’s the case at Harper‘s magazine right now, where some members of the staff are leading a union organizing drive, which publisher John “Rick” MacArthur is actively opposing.

The tale takes some strange, and sometimes even amusing, turns — and even provides some occasions for libertarian Schadenfreude. As New York magazine reports:

The current crisis began a year ago, when MacArthur fired the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Roger Hodge. The two men had once been close, but their relationship had frayed as the red ink mounted: Newsstand sales dropped, MacArthur’s appetite for losses waned, and Hodge tried to defend the staff from cuts.

Then things got weird, as MacArthur revealed some not-so-progressive views on online publishing and employee relations.

A couple of months after Hodge’s firing, senior editor Donovon Hohn helped to convene a meeting about publishing Harper’s on the iPad. MacArthur didn’t attend. But shortly thereafter, staffers began receiving xeroxed articles from MacArthur in their mailboxes that trashed the iPad and Kindle. One article from the Spectator had a hand-typed line at the top:

To: Hoipolloi
From: Rick

Last month, MacArthur wrote a column for the Providence Journal, subsequently posted on Harper’s‘ website, that bashed the Internet. “I never found e-mail exciting,” he wrote. “My skepticism stemmed from the suspicion that the World Wide Web wasn’t, in essence, much more than a gigantic, unthinking Xerox machine …”

Some staffers then contacted UAW Local 2110 (which also represents employees of Harper Colllins, The Village Voice, and The New Press). MacArthur wasn’t amused.

MacArthur contested the entire staff’s right to unionize, arguing that editors and assistant editors who make up about half of the editorial team were management and thus did not qualify. Staffers couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony: The staunch defender of unions, who in a 2009 Harper’s piece called the UAW “the country’s best and traditionally most honest mass labor organization,” was now on the other side of the table as the “worst kind of factory owner,” as one staffer put it to me.

MacArthur hired veteran employment lawyer Bert Pogrebin, who had previously faced off against the Village Voice union, to negotiate on his behalf. In August, the matter was taken up by the National Labor Relations Board. Pogrebin tried to get many of Harper’s‘ editors, including Metcalf and senior editors Donovon Hohn and Chris Cox, excluded from the union on the grounds that were in management positions. In September, the NLRB ruled that Metcalf and the others could join the union. In October, the NLRB denied MacArthur’s appeal, and the union went ahead with plans to hold elections that would certify the union. Staffers put up signs around the office and a ballot box was placed in the conference room.

MacArthur might elicit some sympathy for his efforts to keep his enterprise from being burdened with the bureaucratization and higher labor costs that unionization usually brings — but not much. That’s because a great deal of Rick MacArthur’s leftist advocacy — of which he has a long history — has been fueled by money that was never intended for the purposes to which he put it to use.

Rick MacArthur’s grandfather was John D. MacArthur, whose fortune went into the large foundation that now bears his name and is a big funder of progressive causes. Rick MacArthur’s father, Roderick MacArthur, led the foundation’s sharp turn to the left — an effort that Rick has carried on. However, as journalist Martin Morse Wooster explains, the elder MacArthur never envisioned that.

John D. MacArthur was a hardheaded entrepreneur who created Bankers Life and Trust, a pioneering insurance company. But when MacArthur died in 1978 at age 80, he made the worst mistake a donor could possibly make:  he left his fortune to charity without instructions on how it should be spent.

In a 1982 interview with Foundation News, MacArthur’s lawyer, William Kirby, said that MacArthur told him, “Bill, I’m going to do what I know best, I’ll make it.  But you people, after I’m dead, will have to learn how to spend it.”  Kirby said that on several occasions he asked MacArthur “to do something big for charities.”  MacArthur explained that he wanted to defer the disposition of his fortune until after his death: “If I was trying to decide who to give the money to right now, I couldn’t sit at this coffee table, because I’d be bothered day and night.  They’d all be after me to try and get my money, and I couldn’t lead the life I want to lead.  So leave me in peace.”

When the MacArthur Foundation began, conservatives, most notably William Simon, dominated its board.  But a titanic power struggle soon occurred, led by MacArthur’s far more liberal son, J. Roderick MacArthur. The conservatives were all ousted from the board by 1981, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has been a reliably liberal institution ever since.

A 2003 interview of Rick MacArthur in a Columbia University alumni magazine adds another detail:

“In the first couple of years, it’s just a pitched battle, except that my father loses every vote.” Then, Roderick persuaded the conservative board to add liberal academics “to make it more even ideologically.”

These days, the “balance” is entirely gone, and the foundation entirely leans left.

Now, as Rick MacArthur and his staff fight it out, the rest of us can sit back and watch the fireworks.

For more on labor, see here and here.

Don’t Believe Everything You Think!

by Marlo Lewis on January 19, 2011

in Odds & Ends

A fascinating article in the New Yorker (September 13, 2010) by Jonah Lehrer describes how publication bias, selective reporting, and sheer randomness mistaken for causal connections can mislead even the most disciplined researcher. The article is a sobering reminder of “how difficult it is to prove anything” even using carefully-constructed, replicable experiments such as double-blind clinical trials.

A few excerpts should whet the appetite to read the essay in full:

But the data presented at the Brussels meeting [on second-generation antipsychotic drugs] made it clear that something strange was happening: the therapeutic power of the drugs appeared to be steadily waning. A recent study showed an effect that was less than half of that documented in the first trials, in the early nineteen-nineties. Many researchers began to argue that the expensive pharmaceuticals weren’t any better than first-generation antipsychotics, which have been in use since the fifties. “In fact, sometimes they now look even worse,” John Davis, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told me.

But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology.

If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved? Which results should we believe?

[Biologist Michael] Jennions . . . argues that the decline effect is largely a product of publication bias, or the tendency of scientists and scientific journals to prefer positive data over null results, which is what happens when no effect is found.

[Publication] bias was first identified by the statistician Theodore Sterling, in 1959, after he noticed that ninety-seven per cent of all published psychological studies with statistically significant data found the effect they were looking for. A “significant” result is defined as any data point that would be produced by chance less than five per cent of the time. This ubiquitous test was invented in 1922 by the English mathematician Ronald Fisher, who picked five per cent as the boundary line, somewhat arbitrarily, because it made pencil and slide-rule calculations easier. Sterling saw that if ninety-seven per cent of psychology studies were proving their hypotheses, either psychologists were extraordinarily lucky or they published only the outcomes of successful experiments.

While publication bias almost certainly plays a role in the decline effect, it remains an incomplete explanation. For one thing, it fails to account for the initial prevalence of positive results among studies that never even get submitted to journals. It also fails to explain the experience of people like [Jonathan] Schooler, who have been unable to replicate their initial data despite their best efforts.

Richard Palmer, a biologist at the University of Alberta, who has studied the problems surrounding fluctuating asymmetry, suspects that an equally significant issue is the selective reporting of results—the data that scientists choose to document in the first place.

The problem of selective reporting is rooted in a fundamental cognitive flaw, which is that we like proving ourselves right and hate being wrong. “It feels good to validate a hypothesis,” Ioannidis said. “It feels even better when you’ve got a financial interest in the idea or your career depends upon it. And that’s why, even after a claim has been systematically disproven”—he cites, for instance, the early work on hormone replacement therapy, or claims involving various vitamins—“you still see some stubborn researchers citing the first few studies that show a strong effect. They really want to believe that it’s true.”

Although such reforms would mitigate the dangers of publication bias and selective reporting, they still wouldn’t erase the decline effect. This is largely because scientific research will always be shadowed by a force that can’t be curbed, only contained: sheer randomness. Although little research has been done on the experimental dangers of chance and happenstance, the research that exists isn’t encouraging.

EPA to Re-Brand Mortality Risk Reduction

by Brian McGraw on January 19, 2011

in Health and Illness, Regulation

A recent paper published by the EPA provides up to date governmental thoughts on attempts to put a value on a statistical life (VSL) in the context of “good” and “bad” environmental regulation. From the intro:

Valuing the reduced risks of mortality, 4 in particular, poses a special set of conceptual, analytical, ethical and empirical challenges for economists 5 and policy analysts. This white paper addresses current and recent U.S. Environmental Protection 6 Agency (EPA) practices regarding the valuation of mortality risk reductions…

One of the biggest problems associated with VSL estimates are that the general public really dislikes the idea that the government is willing to put a monetary value on a human life. In 2003 the Bush administration caught flack from the AARP as EPA contemplated using a lower VSL estimate for the elderly.The current estimate appears to be standardized, age-independent, at a value of $4.8 million in 1990 dollars (approx. $7.8 million in $2009).

On the individual level, most place a very high level on the value of their own life, but might place a much smaller value (even zero) on the life of someone they don’t know. The idea that individuals place a limitless value on their own life seems intuitively correct, though people engage in (slightly) risky behavior all the time: driving fast, smoking, boarding an airplane, bicycling, etc.

While some political activists would prefer an approach that includes much more risk reduction, this has an underappreciated downside. Burdensome regulations often reduce macro-level economic growth, and a world with more wealth is a world where everyone is healthier. As an example, compare life-expectancy in the third world with life expectancy in the United States. Wealth allows individuals to life less stressful lives, have better healthcare, drive safer vehicles, participate in less-risky occupations, etc. History is ripe with examples of government regulations that likely increased net mortality as the regulations did little to reduce mortalities but came with high costs.

To solve the public relations dilemma, EPA wants the “value of a statistical life” to be changed to “value of mortality risk.” I’m not convinced this will have much effect, as any explanation of the statistic will indicate that it still involves the government making decisions as to the cost/benefit ratio of statistical lives saved compared to the monetary cost inflicted upon businesses or individuals.

Ideally, the EPA would allow more of these cost/benefit analyses to be considered by individuals (or at least down to state policies), as differences in age, wealth, gender, ethnicity, etc. all have a large effect on the valuation of one’s risk preferences — a top down centralized approach is often too blunt an instrument.

Stossel and O’Reilly on Sports Betting

by Michelle Minton on January 19, 2011 · 1 comment

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty

Stossel hits the nail on the head in his recent blog post. Apparently, Bill O’Reilly reached out to him for feedback on the issue of legalized sports gambling. Let’s hope he listens to Stossel’s answers and comes to a similar conclusion. As I wrote on Forbes.com, Republicans aren’t always keen on consistently defending individual liberty once gambling becomes part of the equation.

Should sports betting be legalized? Should there be more casinos? Is it a legitimate way for the government to earn tax revenue? The boiled down, nutshell response Stossel provided was, “yes” to all three.

Adult Americans should have the right to do with their money whatever they choose. If there’s a market demand for more casinos and business is willing to build them, why not have more? And if any taxation is legitimate, then revenue from taxing casinos and bookies (whether online or offline) is as legitimate as taxing any other business.

And Stossel is right in calling out politicians who oppose gambling as hypocrites; they are the worst kind. Most states have a state-run lottery, which offers worse odds than almost any casino game. In addition, almost every politician claims to want to improve the economies and job markets in their state.  Well, gambling is a lucrative business that creates many opportunities for jobs within the industry and ancillary industries. In addition, skilled bettors can earn a steady income from their wagering, much like how investors earn money “playing” the stock market.

As I illustrated in my recent Washington Times article, there are thousands of average Americans, including parents, retirees, unemployed workers, etc. gambling online and making a steady income from that activity.

Of course, there are plenty of gamblers who lose money, but if you’ve ever bet on a game or played in a friendly game of poker, you know that they gained value. Going into the game they know they could lose a few bucks, but they’re almost guaranteed to get their money’s worth in entertainment. That’s more than most can say when they throw down $10 and two hours at the movie theater.

Banning sports betting, or any betting for that matter, is just a thinly veiled attempt to serve special interests — or worse, to force a brand of morality on supposedly free adults.

Morning Media Summary

by Lee Doren on January 19, 2011

in Economy, Energy, Environment, International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Regulation, Trade

Tech:

FCC signs off on Comcast’s bid to control NBC Universal:
“Federal regulators signed off on Comcast Corp.’s bid to control NBC Universal, imposing an array of conditions aimed at preventing the cable giant from hindering competitors while making some of its first moves to regulate the emerging online video market.”

UK government to offer PCs for 98 pounds, Internet for 9 pounds:
“The UK government wants to offer low-cost computers as part of a 12-month trial during Race Online 2012. The scheme, which aims to reach out to the 9.2 million adults that are not yet online, 4 million of whom are considered socially and economically disadvantaged, aims to “make the UK the first nation in the world where everyone can use the web.””

Global Warming / Environment / Energy:

Va. Lawmakers look to stop climate change probe:
“Now several members of the State Assembly say they’ve had enough and have introduced legislation to rein in Cuccinelli’s investigation.”

Insurance / Gambling:

State Senate to consider easing gambling laws for charities:
“Bills to legalize charitable raffles are headed to the state Senate floor, but a provision that allows “casino night” raffles is drawing opposition to the legislation.”

Health / Safety:

Effort to repeal health care law begins, will take ‘years’:
“Advocates for health care reform like to say they worked for more than a century to get a substantive bill through Congress and signed into law. Opponents say they can scrap the whole thing in two years.”

Where are All the Sick People Who Can’t Get Insurance?:
“I’m not saying that they don’t exist, but if they do, we should really be trying to find them. We’re not talking about a program that isn’t serving quite as many people as expected. We’re talking about a program that was supposed to serve almost 400,000 people, and is instead serving around 2% of that number. Nor have these people been turned away due to budget constraints; they don’t seem to have applied in the first place. This leads us to one of two conclusions:”

Republicans’ Health-Care Vote Opens Two-Year Campaign to Undermine Law:
“With a symbolic vote to repeal President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul, the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives is starting a two- year campaign to undermine the law through piecemeal dismantling tactics and efforts to weaken public support.”

Economics:

States Warned of $2 Trillion Pensions Shortfall:
“US public pensions face a shortfall of $2,500 billion that will force state and local governments to sell assets and make deep cuts to services, according to the former chairman of New Jersey’s pension fund.”

Soros tells Europe to bolster banks:
“US billionaire George Soros urged Europe on Wednesday to recapitalise its banks in addition to creating a new aid programme for heavily indebted countries.”

Gordon Brown to warn against global youth unemployment epidemic:
“Gordon Brown will warn on Thursday that the world faces youth unemployment of “epidemic proportions”, as he urges joint action by the G20 group of developed and developing nations to tackle rising joblessness.”

Legal:

Democratic leader wants to remove legislators from tobacco commission:
“For years, critics have speculated that House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong sought changes to the tobacco commission because he was bitter he was never appointed to the panel that doles out money from a settlement with the nation’s tobacco companies.”

US objects to Bolivia bid for licit coca-chewing:
“The United States will file a formal objection Wednesday to Bolivia’s proposal to end the ban on coca leaf-chewing specified by a half-century-old U.N. treaty, according to a senior U.S. government official.”

US Patent Office Grants Massively More Patents Than Ever Before:
“Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has made it clear that he wanted to US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to clear out some of the backlog on patents, and it quickly became clear early last year that the way the USPTO was doing this was by simply approving more patents while giving less scrutiny to the patents in question — meaning that we’re now getting a ton of bad patents approved. It seemed like an obviously bad sign when we passed the total number of patents approved in 2009 by October of 2010.”

Milestone: More than half of all states now suing to escape Obamacare:
“Today, another six states joined the legal battle to overturn the federal Obamacare mandate — pushing the total number to 26*. (*Heritage says 27.)”

Labor:

Venerable Lefties at Harper’s Divided by Union:
“Harper’s, one of the last bastions of old-line liberalism and a lonely defender of a certain idea of what literary culture should be, has long been supported by the largesse of its owner and patron, John “Rick” MacArthur, an author and heir to a ceramics fortune who has long supported liberal causes. And now, in a strange, ironic endgame, MacArthur finds himself fighting against his own side: His staff has unionized.”

Transportation/ Land Use:

Eminent domain again hot topic at MT Legislature:
“Landowners asked Montana legislators Monday to tilt eminent domain laws more toward their favor — less than a week after opposing industry interests asked the opposite.”

No more taxpayer cash for high-speed rail?:
“Republican U.S. Rep. John Mica met with Gov. Rick Scott Monday to discuss a high-speed rail project linking Tampa to Orlando and a commuter rail project from Jacksonville to Miami.”

Will UAW Seek Foreign Help to Unionize American Workers?

by Ivan Osorio on January 18, 2011 · 2 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Employment, International, Labor

America has a vibrant and successful auto industry — just largely outside of Detroit. For years, many foreign automakers’ American divisions have been successful at making cars profitably, while creating thousands of well-paying jobs. One reason for the foreign automakers’ success has been their ability to work without the burdensome work rules faced by the Big Three under their contracts with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.

Apparently, UAW President Bob King doesn’t like that one bit. In fact, he seems to feel so strongly about it that he recently announced that for companies that resist its organizing efforts, the UAW “will launch a global campaign to brand that company a human-rights violator.” What might such a campaign entail?

One indication can be found in the Obama administration’s report to the bad joke known as the U.N. Human Rights Council — whose members include such human rights champions as China, Cuba, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. In the report, submitted in August 2010, the State Department strongly suggests that the degree to which the law facilitates unionization should be a human rights matter — and that the U.S. falls short in that area.

The UAW — or any other union, for that matter — likely would cite the State Department document in any complaint filed to the International Labor Organization, World Trade Organization, or any other international body — maybe even the ridiculous U.N. Human Rights Council. And King’s recent remarks indicate this is an option the UAW might well pursue.

King also recently acknowledged that the UAW is in trouble. Speaking to an audience of 1,000 union members at a Washington political action conference, he said, “If we don’t organize these transnationals, I don’t think there’s a long term future for the UAW — I really don’t.” With those kind of stakes, it would be surprising for the UAW not to take some drastic action.

The upshot of all this is that we could end up seeing the UAW ask international bodies composed of foreign governments — including some undemocratic ones — for help in unionizing American workers. Stranger things have happened.

For more on labor, see here and here.

Afternoon Links: January 18, 2011

by Nicole Ciandella on January 18, 2011

in Zeitgeist

1. The makers of video game Dead Space 2 have launched a viral campaign which focuses solely on how much middle-aged mothers are disgusted by the game.

2. A new study by McGill University researchers analyzes how music stimulates the release of dopamine into the striatum region of the forebrain.

3. A French mansion that was locked up for 100 years and preserved as a time capsule has finally been opened.

4. This crematorium is using excess energy from their cremator furnace  to heat their headquarters.

5. Designer gas cans for women.

Photo Credit: Flickr Photostream

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