January 2012

Connecticut Legislation Seeks to Unconstitutionally Restrict Political Speech by Employers

by Hans Bader on March 4, 2011

in Labor, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation

A Connecticut legislator is seeking to restrict the speech of employers on “religious or political” topics in pending legislation  (House Bill 5460). The bill reads, “No employer, and no . . . representative . . . of such employer, shall require its employees to attend an employer-sponsored meeting with the employer or its agent, representative or designee, the primary purpose of which is to communicate the employer’s opinion concerning religious or political matters.” This content-based regulation of speech violates the First Amendment by singling out political and religious speech for special restrictions.

Employers have free speech rights even in the labor-union context, where free speech protections are at their weakest for employers under the Gissel line of cases. For example, the federal appeals courts have ruled that the First Amendment protected a manager telling his subordinates that they lost benefits by voting for a union (Roper Corp. v. NLRB (1983)), and an employer’s assertion that unionization, by increasing costs, might lead to a plant’s closing in the future (NLRB v. Douglas Division (1978)), even though these statements were very offensive to pro-union employees. These rulings apply with added force to core political and religious speech.

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Human Achievement of the Day: Mosquito-Zapping Lasers

by Michelle Minton on March 4, 2011

in Features, Health and Illness, Precaution & Risk, Tech & Telecom

Post image for Human Achievement of the Day: Mosquito-Zapping Lasers

It’s hard to deny that lasers are cool, but a lasers that can blast mosquitoes out of the sky, protecting us from the malaria spreading insects, is as inventor Nathan Myhrvold, said “very satisfying” to see.

The laser was demonstrated earlier this year during a TED talk (Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) is a non-profit organization) presented by “professional jack-of-all-trades” Nathan Myrvold, the former Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft.

While lasers are fun and cool the impetus for creating the device is deadly serious. As noted in the presentation, malaria, the mosquito-borne blood infection sickens more than 250 million people every year and kills a child every 43 seconds. Though DDT had been extremely successful in eradicating malaria in many parts of the world, baseless environmental concerns ultimately resulted in the banning of the technology, resurgence in the spread of malaria, and skyrocketing numbers of people infected.

While DDT has since been re-legalized, many countries, particularly African nations, are wary of using the chemicals. While DDT is still an option, Myhrvold, who created the laser with his team at Intellectual Ventures Laboratory, has truly created a technology that represents a leap forward in pest-control.

For example, as noted in the demonstration, the technology is actually two-fold. First, there is a non-lethal which tracks and analyses insects in flight. It can tell based on size and wing motion whether the insect it is tracking is “friend” or “foe,” even differentiating between the non-harmful male mosquito and the blood-thirsty female mosquito. The second laser then picks out the female mosquitoes and “shoots them out of the sky.” As Myhrvold notes, technology has become so cheap that, “we can weigh the cost of an individual insect’s life.” With this laser — which was built with parts bought on eBay, scientists can pick off harmful bugs while leaving other insects in the ecosystem alone.

High-speed video of the mosquitoes in flight shows just how deadly accurate these laser are and how devastating it is to the insect.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/death-star-laser-zaps-mosqitoes-dead/

WSJ Revisits Ethanol

by Brian McGraw on March 4, 2011

in Energy, Ethanol, Features

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The Wall Street Journal interviewed Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack who suggested the ethanol industry might be able to wean itself off of federal subsidies. Not too quickly, obviously.

The WSJ took this as a positive sign:

Still, Mr. Vilsack may be the first Agriculture Secretary in generations to concede that ethanol subsidies are not immutable. That’s progress.

I do not share their view that this is progress. As they admit, there’s a chance the industry will receive new forms of support without ditching the old. Obama will still have a potentially tough re-election in 2012. Virtually all of the potential Republican candidates have praised the industry, and Obama will certainly acquiesce and do the same.

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Compensate Donors for Giving Their Organs

by Jacqueline Otto on March 4, 2011

in Health and Illness, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation

My letter to the editor in today’s Washington Post:

The Feb. 24 front-page article “New kidney transplant rules would favor younger patients” reported on a proposal to modify the transplant distribution system. It would evaluate the worth of the 110,000 Americans who need a kidney in terms of quality-of-life years. This favors the young at the expense of the elderly and dehumanizes the very people who need others to show their humanity. The proposal would also fail to solve the chronic shortages caused by current organ policy.

Compensating organ donors would give more people an incentive to give — thereby increasing the supply and saving lives. While the idea of selling one’s organs is not a subject broached in polite conversation, it is certainly fairer than this new proposal. It deserves proper consideration.

Jacqueline Otto, Washington

The writer is a research associate at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Morning Media Summary

by Lee Doren on March 4, 2011

in Odds & Ends

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Tech:

Student Files Lawsuit Over FBI’s GPS tracking:

Teenagers jailed for running “criminals equivalent of Facebook”:
“Three teenagers in the UK have been sentenced for up to five years in jail for creating and operating Gh0stMarket.net, one of the world’s largest English-language internet crime forums. The Gh0stMarket website, which had about 8,000 members, was dubbed by the court as the “criminal equivalent of Facebook”, or “Crimebook,” according to The Guardian:”

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CEI Podcast for March 3, 2011: Citizens United, Annie Leonard, and Free Speech

by Ryan Young on March 3, 2011 · 2 comments

in Personal Liberty, Podcast

Have a listen here.

Did the Citizens United decision place corporations ahead of democracy? Activist Annie Leonard thinks so. CEI’s Communications Coordinator Lee Doren disagrees. Leonard views a strong government as an opposing force to corporate power. Doren points out in a new video that the more government does, and the more it spends, the more companies will flock to Washington to get a piece of the action. If you want to keep money out of politics, then keep politics out of our money.

Watch Lee’s video, “Story of Citizens United v. FEC, The Critique,” below:

*Atlas Shrugged* Movie #Succeed

by Christine Hall on March 3, 2011

in Culture, Features, Zeitgeist

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After 45-some years of anticipation, it turns out the Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 movie is…not bad. Making a movie of Ayn Rand’s epic 1957 novel about capitalists under attack and on strike couldn’t have been easy, especially on a mere $10 million or so budget. After all, this is a book that features a 90 minute (!) radio lecture on the virtues of capitalism/evils of statism by one of the main characters, international man of mystery John Galt.

The movie is set a moment into the future, 2016 (dashing my hopes for a 1940s-style film noir), and begins with a blitz of rapid-fire TV news blips – all of it bad. Modern civilization is cracking apart due to a relentless onslaught of government controls on industry and a prevailing world-view that scorns individuals who excel in business. The world’s successful entrepreneurs are forced to carry and subsidize all the rent seekers and moochers. But change is afoot. Capitalists have suffered enough abuse, and they aren’t going to take it anymore: they’re going on strike. Vanishing from society. And, they do it all so calmly. Which is probably just as well, since the greater crime would’ve been doing something overwrought.

I must say, the movie was well-cast, despite having no big name stars (what, no Angelina Jolie?!). The actors all turned in respectable performances, and they all looked the part, with railroad mogul “Dagny Taggart” flawlessly beautiful and “Hank Rearden” just the chiseled sort of handsome you’d expect.

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Texas Needs Real Eminent Domain Reform, Not More Empty Rhetoric

by Marc Scribner on March 3, 2011

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Property Rights

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Last month, I briefly discussed the bogus eminent domain “reform” legislation that unanimously passed the Texas Senate. Over at RedState, Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) Vice President for Research Bill Peacock — who also directs TPPF’s Center for Economic Freedom – has a post on the problems with the bill, SB 18, and what can be done to improve it and actually enhance property rights protections for all Texans:

While it offers improvement over the status quo, the problem with SB 18 is that it has been highly negotiated  by special interests over the last three legislative sessions, resulting in an “agreed upon” bill that people are reluctant to change less someone jump off the bandwagon. However, when one of those on the bandwagon is the Texas Municipal League, how good SB 18 can be? After all, it was TML that proclaimed that Kelo “simply confirms what cities have known all along: under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, economic development can be as much a ‘public use’ as a road, bridge, or water tower.”

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Economic Consequences of Bed Bugs and EPA Policy

by Angela Logomasini on March 3, 2011

in Environment

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The greens and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson have dismissed the nation’s bed bug problem as a nuisance because the critters don’t transmit diseases as they feed on humans while they sleep. Accordingly, they think it’s fine to continue using government regulations to limit access to pesticide products that could help solve the problem.

Jackson might not think itchy welts or the stress associated with being eaten by bugs at night don’t pose problems, but what about the economic effects on hotels and businesses struggling with these pests? The Connecticut legislature is actually considering a bill that would require hotels to disclose whether they have ever had bed bugs before — a move that will simply chase away business. Consumers can already check the privately run bed bug registry online. Trip Advisor also includes notes by hotel guests. Asking hotels to do such disclosure directly is absurd. It sounds like a fair consumer right-to-know bill, but in reality it doesn’t solve a thing. Instead, it will harm good businesses that may have done everything possible to control such problems.

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What Comes with Public Sector Collective Bargaining

by Brian McGraw on March 3, 2011 · 1 comment

in Labor, Regulation

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The left has been successful in framing Governor Walker’s efforts to end collective bargaining rights in the public sector as an assault on children, invoking sympathy from the rationally ignorant public. Stewart and Colbert have taken the lefts side.

It is both morally wrong and counterproductive (in my opinion!) to attack the teachers who work in the public school system. But let us not forget what the public-sector education unions have brought us over the years. These institutions (which in many areas may arguably help teachers be more effective) are far from innocent:

They have made it very difficult and expensive to fire ineffective teachers all over the country. Reason (PDF) has covered the insane process administrators must go through to fire teachers in NYC, as has the Chicago Tribune and a D.C. paper (PDF). Don’t forget the well covered “rubber rooms debacle” in New York City, where teachers sit around twiddling their thumbs while the city goes through a long, difficult and expensive process attempting to fire them for ineffectiveness. Los Angeles has had the same experience.

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