You can read the bill, AB 234, here. The restrictions on pesticides have to be read to be believed. It doesn’t take much imagination to see regulations that burdensome leading to less pesticide use. That means more pests. It also means public places would be less healthy, not more.
What will legislators go after next in the War on Scent? Body odor? Because there will be a lot more of it in Nevada if this bill passes.
Over the weekend, I appeared on Fox Business Network’s “Tom Sullivan Show,” along with John Charles of the Cascade Policy Institute, to discuss transit waste and the light-rail lovefests taking place all over the country. Watch it here:
As has become tradition after a chamber or two changes hands, Congress is currently grappling over the extent of proposed budget cuts with the threat of a government shutdown looming. Now wouldn’t that be fun?
While congress continues to bicker and bargain their way toward a budget, many programs have been laid out on the chopping block. And — dare we be so hopeful — the massive, government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might finally be targeted for cuts. Should their elimination actually come to fruition, it is a change that has long been overdue.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the House Subcommittee on Capital Markets could produce legislation to this end as early as today. Although the Obama administration’s “Reforming America’s Housing Finance Market” report stated support to “wind down” Fannie and Freddie, it is yet to be seen if the administration will endorse any GOP proposal.
New Yorker econ writer John Cassidy created quite a stir last week with this blog post that attacked bike lanes in New York City. Many were outraged by Cassidy’s vitriolic attack on eco-friendly transport infrastructure, but mostly for nonsensical reasons. The Economist‘s Free Exchange blog drafted a fairly detailed response, and corrected several errors in Cassidy’s logic. However, they also missed a few key points that I’ll now discuss.
What The Economist Got Right
Given the way upkeep is currently financed, driving on existing road infrastructure in New York City produces negative externalities. The marginal automobile driver produces some congestion cost, which not only affects other personal road users, but goods delivery as well.
More automobiles in traffic ceteris paribus result in decreased air quality.
Unpriced parking drives inefficient land uses and distorts transportation choices. As UCLA economist Donald Shoup has argued, minimum parking zoning limits should be abolished and curbside parking should be adequately priced.
TechCrunch Interview: Senator Al Franken Talks Net Neutrality ( And His Morning Workout Routine ): “If you care about the well-being of the Internet, you care about net neutrality. You just might not realize it yet.” Cell phones are ‘Stalin’s dream,’ says free software movement: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/031411-richard-stallman.html?hpg1=bn “Nearly three decades into his quest to rid the world of proprietary software, Richard Stallman sees a new threat to user freedom: smartphones.”
We May Not Have a ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Online: “As the amount of information we share online grows along with the data that gets collected — with or without our permission — there is a growing call for more online privacy protection, both in the US and Europe.”
Hacker Group Anonymous Releases Claimed Bank of America Emails: “The loose-knit hacker collective known as “Anonymous” released emails early Monday that it obtained from a former employee of Bank of America Corp., accusing it of “fraud” and of improperly foreclosing on homes.”
Senior Journalist implicated in hacking scandal: BBC: “The ongoing newspaper phone-hacking scandal intensified Monday after the BBC’s Panorama programme accused a former senior journalist of hiring a private eye to illegally obtain army secrets.”
Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) introduced legislation last week to provide more support to the biofuel industry. This would counter a number of bills introduced recently intending curb biofuel incentives (here, here). Fortunately, support for this kind of bill does not seem to be in the pipeline, so it must mostly be for show.
The “Securing America’s Future with Energy and Sustainable Technologies Act” (SAFEST) is bold. Rather than picking one or two things the ethanol industry was interested in, it throws them everything they’ve ever dreamed of.
Let’s look at a few provisions:
It amends the definition of “advanced biofuel” to include corn starch-derived ethanol.
This would allow the corn ethanol industry access to a much larger share of the Renewable Fuel Standard, which is scheduled to increase from 9 billion gallons to 32 billion gallons by 2022. This would be one of the more damaging aspects of the legislation.
Imagine being able to simply spray new skin onto wounds, scars, or burns as if they never happened? We may be one step closer to that future. Researchers at Wake Forest’s Institute of Regenerative Medicine, inspired by the inkjet printer, have created a device that sprays on a layer of skin cells to heal burns and wounds. Initial tests show that the spray-on skin heals more than twice as quickly as traditional skin grafts and result in less scarring and more hair regeneration in the new skin.
The device itself consists of a tank holding a mixture of harvested skin cells, stem cells, and nutrients, and a computer-controlled nozzle that places the cells exactly where they need to go. The spray works similar to a color printer, first spraying down a layer of fibroblast skin cells as a substrate, and then blasting on a layer of protective keratinocyte cells.
The two-part technology first scans the wound to measure the depth and scope and then lets the “bioprinter” know what kind of layers of cells need to be sprayed on the affected area. If the cells are cultured from a donor and layered with the bioprinter, doctors hope the chance of rejection will be greatly reduced.
According to several Gulf Coast legislators, the idea of adding wind insurance to the National Flood Insurance Program is not going to happen anytime soon. The “Taylor bill,” named for the Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi, failed to pick up support despite several attempts by Taylor — a result that made all free-market supporters and anyone not wishing to pay for beach homes in Florida breathe a sigh of relief. Recently, in an interview with the Mobile Press-Register, Mississippi Republican Rep. Steven Palazzo, who defeated Taylor in the 2011 midterm elections, confirmed that he is not going to support the idea of adding wind coverage to NFIP: ”If that (Taylor) bill would have a chance of passing, I would support it. I would endorse it… I think that ship has sailed.”
Rep. Jo Bonner, from Mobile, also stated that he thought it was “highly unlikely” that Taylor’s proposal would be adopted.
Even former Rep. Gene Taylor himself expressed doubts that his proposed expansion of the national insurance program would go far, giving it a “snowball’s chance in hell.” The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which insures about 5.5 million Americans, is in serious trouble and has been for decades. Currently, the program — which is part of FEMA — is more than $18 billion in debt and is set to expire in September 2011. Part of the reason for NFIP’s dire situation can be attributed to Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, but the core problem is that insurance can’t operate when it is run by politicians (who, by their nature, care more about their popularity than the fiscal solvency of an insurance program). First of all, the maps that are used to set rates on policies are severely out-of-date. This means that homes that appear to be sitting in a place where they are not likely to flood actually could be in high-risk areas. The program undercharges these policyholders and thereby doesn’t have the money to cover the losses. Attempts to update the maps have been met with resistance because the result will be that some folks will find out that they are now in flood zones (as if they didn’t know already from annual flooding) and end up with higher rates.
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. has a novel idea for ending poverty: make it illegal. He explains in this short video of a speech he gave on the House floor:
The Constitution should be amended to guarantee everyone the right to a decent home. That way, everyone will get one. In a speech he gave on the House floor, he asks, “What would that do for home construction in this nation? What would that do for millions of unemployed people?”
The Constitution should also be amended to guarantee the right to decent health care. Jackson implores, “How many millions of doctors would such a right create?”
Education needs an amendment, too. “How many schools would such a right build, from Maine to California?” Jackson goes on to wonder how many jobs would be created by giving every student and iPod and a laptop.
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