Senior Fellow Greg Conko breaks down the fight over Avastin, a drug used to treat several types of cancer. The FDA is poised to rescind Avastin’s approval for treating breast cancer. It will retain its approval for other cancers. This will make life difficult, and possibly shorter, for some breast cancer patients. Conko believes this battle boils down to one question: who decides which treatments patients can use? Will it be the FDA, or doctors and patients?
January 2012
Over at the Daily Caller, CEI policy analyst Alex Nowrasteh and I tell the story of Jeffrey Lin. He is a Ph.D student at CalTech who holds three patents, has invented a device that would cure glaucoma, and is planning to start his own business to make his device and get it to people who need it. Who knows how many jobs he’ll create in the coming years?
Under current immigration law, Jeffrey might well be kicked out of the country. What did he do wrong? He was born in Taiwan.
Jeffrey came to the U.S. because of its top-notch universities. He’d like to stay here because the entrepreneurial environment and available engineering talent are better than anywhere in the world. He can create new jobs and new technologies here in America. Or, as under the current immigration system, he can create them elsewhere. This situation cries for reform.
Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona has proposed just such a reform. His new bill, the STAPLE Act, would basically staple a green card to the diploma of any international student who earns a Master’s or a Ph.D from a U.S. university in fields like the sciences, technology, engineering, or mathematics.
It isn’t comprehensive immigration reform. But it would help hundreds of thousands of people like Jeffrey Lin, and it would help boost an ailing U.S. economy.
You can read our entire article here.
Emily Washington of Market Urbanism highlights this Los Angeles Times article on the latest — depending on your outlook: hilarious or pathetic — development in California’s high-speed rail saga: Ray LaHood’s Department of Transportation won’t even let them attempt to slightly improve on economic/success grounds the proposed line, which is quite literally a rail corridor segment to and from nowhere. Here’s a nice quote:
Rail officials plan to build the first section of the 500-mile system between Bakersfield and the tiny town of Borden in Madera County. The initial leg, which would pass through Fresno and Corcoran, has been criticized as a “train to nowhere” because high-speed trains would not operate on it until the route could be extended to major population centers.
In a letter to the rail authority, the Transportation Department stated that general appropriations law and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act require that construction begin in 2012, the last year the funds would be available.
The Transportation Department “has no administrative authority to change this deadline and does not believe it is prudent to assume Congress will change it,” wrote Roy Kienitz, a department undersecretary. “We recommend that policy makers in California proceed on the basis that this deadline will remain fixed.”
Kienitz said the federal government views the Central Valley as a logical place to begin construction of a core line that can be completed quickly and later extended to San Francisco and the Los Angeles Basin. He described the location as a “wise choice” that was made after careful consideration.
Of course DOT believes the segment-to-nowhere is a good place to start. Its head, delusional former Big Porker Congressman Ray LaHood, has made no secret his unwillingness to accept reality. Forcing California to use stimulus money to build a nonsensical, scaled-up toy train set in the rural Central Valley is straight from LaHood’s play book (this latest development is not at all shocking). This administration, thanks to ridiculous appointees such as LaHood, has shown that it is not serious about addressing real transportation problems: rather, they’re obsessed with “livability” pipe-dreams and spending money like junkies during The End of Days.
It won’t happen, but it is really time for President Obama, LaHood, California, et al. to call out for their Carmelitas and start coming down from the stimulus high. Zevon got it. GG Allin maybe got it:
“The people in general are more conservative and in particular are more liberal. That is to say, if you ask the people in general, what do you think of government, ‘Get it off my back, less taxes.’ If you ask in particular what about health, national health; what about full employment, government is the employer of last resort,” by Michael Harrington.
Fiscal conservatives must heed Harrington’s advice and turn the policy debate toward the general. Over the weekend, congressional Republicans introduced, “The House Republican Plan For America’s Job Creators,” politically shifting spotlight to the general: the economy and job creation. It is this instance of a jobs plan where fiscal conservatives must tell citizens what they will take away from them; regulations hindering job growth and overbearing taxes.
Fiscally conservative congressmen need to realize their party’s message cannot be what entitlements they will take away from citizens. The threat of reducing Medicare benefits in the recent congressional election in New York swayed the voters toward populist Democrat Kathy Hochul (who is stridently anti–entitlement reform and anti-trade), a considerable underdog. This upset should set the precedent for fiscally conservative candidates going forward: keep it general. For the upcoming 2012 election, they should emphasize the general and the economy as a whole. Liberal candidates, as we’ve seen with the budget debate, do not need a plan. They only have to highlight that they will continue to preserve entitlements and other reckless spending.
Last year we watched as the FDA used its regulatory might to institute a de-facto ban on alcoholic energy drinks like Four Loko, Joose, and Sparks because it said the high alcohol, sugary drinks were being marketed toward underage drinkers. As I noted in my post, the biggest sin the makers of Four Loko and other banned “alcopops” committed was marketing their products as good-tasting and fun — a mortal sin these days in America.
Now, the New York City Department of Health is continuing the “war on fun” by asking for a ban on the sale of flavored, carbonated, pre-mixed malt beverages like Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice in convenience stores and delis. The reason, they say, is because the drinks “attract underage drinkers.” That may very well be true.
The reason these drinks attract underage drinkers is because they taste good and, yes, they look fun. But so what? If that is the only standard one applies to whether or not we should ban products then the ultimate conclusion is that products that have “fun” and colorful advertising must be 100 percent healthy for everyone, like broccoli or apples. It also means that adults should be relegated to living in a world of nothing but bland or harsh tasting alcoholic beverages packaged in clear or brown bottles like we’re living in communist-era Russia.
There’s no end in sight as states like Texas, Alabama, North Carolina, and many more continue to use “the children” as an excuse for banning adult products that are in any way advertised as tasty or fun for adults.
It is time for adult consumers to stand up for their right to have fun, too. Just because children want to abuse adult products (nothing new there) doesn’t mean we ought to eliminate those products. If minors are able to get their hands on alcoholic beverages, the blame shouldn’t rest with the manufacturer for creating a product that is just too good for kids to resist. Blame ought to be put on parents for not educating their children on the dangers of alcohol, on the person who sold the drink to the minor, and, to some extent, on the child. Despite what adults seem to think children are not helpless automatons doing the bidding of advertisers and if they make a conscious decision to consume a product they know was meant for adults and is potentially hazardous they ought to be held responsible and accountable, at least in part.
Tech:
PBS Sites Hacked: Attackers Publish False News Story and Login Data:
“Late Sunday night, hackers gained access to several areas of PBS Web servers and were able publish a fake news story on a PBS news blog. The hackers also published PBS internal user login information that they were able to siphon from PBS databases. The fake story was about rapper Tupac Shakur, who died in 1996 after being shot in Las Vegas, being been found alive and well in a small resort in New Zealand. (See screenshot as the story was taken down).”
Conservative group accuses Education Dept of invading students’ privacy with new FERPA rules:
“A conservative non-profit is raising privacy concerns over a Department of Education (DoED) rule change that will allow for “personally identifiable information” about students to be shared with other government departments. Personally identifiable information that could potentially be shared includes hair color, blood type, family health history and students’ grades and other academic records.”
Cyber Combat: Act of War:
“The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
German government wants nuclear exit by 2022 at latest:
“The coalition, sensitive to accusations it may increase dependence on highly polluting brown coal, said it planned to cut power use by 10 percent by 2020 and further expand the use of renewables such as wind and solar power.”
TV, Internet harming protection of biodiversity: UN:
“Young people’s fascination with television, the Internet, video games and other electronic entertainment is making it more difficult to protect the world’s biodiversity, a UN official warned Tuesday.”
The Supreme Court has ruled against the Chamber of Commerce’s challenge to an Arizona law punishing businesses that hire illegal aliens by taking away their business licenses, and requiring use of E-Verify. The vote in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting was 5-to-3, with the five “conservative” justices voting against the Chamber of Commerce. So much for the erroneous claim that the Supreme Court is dominated by pro-business conservatives.
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick falsely claimed in 2009 that in the Supreme Court, “big business always prevails, environmentalists are always buried, female and elderly workers go unprotected, death row inmates get the needle, and criminal defendants are shown the door.” Supreme Court reporters for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other liberal newspapers also peddle this same false caricature.
Contrary to Lithwick’s claims, environmentalists have won many cases, including one of the most economically-significant decisions ever — the 5-to4 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), which arguably opened the door to EPA regulation of virtually every human activity, on the grounds that virtually all activity (from industrial production to farming) emits carbon dioxide. That decision also created a special rule of standing to allow state attorneys general to bring lawsuits that would otherwise be thrown out as non-justiciable.
Some of the zanier happenings in the world of regulation:
- The Texas legislature was poised to pass a bill classifying the TSA’s pat-downs as misdemeanor sexual harassment — until the TSA threatened to ground all flights out of the state. The agency claimed it would be unable to guarantee passenger safety without the pat-downs. The legislature promptly backed down.
- Denmark has banned Marmite, a paste-like substance made from brewer’s yeast that is popular in Britain. The reason for the ban is that the paste has added vitamins and minerals. In Denmark, that’s a no-no.
- Don’t sell rabbits without a license. The Dollarhite family of Nixa, Missouri, found that out the hard way. The federal government has fined them over $90,000 for breeding rabbits and selling them to pet stores.
- Members of Congress have unusual investment acumen. A new paper finds that “A portfolio that mimics the purchases of House Members beats the market by 55 basis points per month (approximately 6% annually).” The study covers the period from 1985 to 2001. The subsidies, tax breaks, and other forms of corporate welfare that Congress indulges in couldn’t possibly have anything to do with their personal investment decisions, could it?
Tech:
EBay and PayPal sue Google over trade secrets:
“EBay and its online payment unit, PayPal Inc, on Thursday sued Google Inc and two executives for stealing trade secrets related to mobile payment systems.”
Amazon challenges Apple with Mac app download store:
“Amazon today launched a Mac-specific application download store that will compete with Apple’s nearly five-month-old Mac App Store.”
Google unveils mobile wallet service:
“Google on Thursday unveiled a mobile wallet platform and field tests in New York and San Francisco that will let people with special phones pay for goods in retail shops by tapping the phones against a payment terminal.”
China Confirms Existence of Elite Cyber-Warfare Outfit the ‘Blue Army’:
“China set up a specialized online “Blue Army” unit that it claims will protect the People’s Liberation Army from outside attacks, prompting fears that the crack team was being used to infiltrate foreign governments’ systems.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
Seismologists Tried for Manslaughter for Not Predicting Earthquake:
“Earthquake prediction can be a grave, and faulty science, and in the case of Italian seismologists who are being tried for the manslaughter of the people who died in the 2009 L’Aquila quake, it can have legal consequences.”
In its “Home and Garden” section yesterday, The New York Times did it again: in what should have been a straight-forward puff piece about incandescent light bulb hoarding, the writer, Penelope Green, rather than shedding light on the subject, provided some misleading information.
The article focused on decorators and stylists buying large quantities of standard light bulbs because they think they are going to be phased out. Not at all, Green writes, that’s wrong – that’s not what the law says.
Late in his second term, George W. Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which requires light bulb makers to improve the efficiency of incandescent bulbs by 25 percent. The details of the law dictated a phase-out of the manufacture of certain bulbs in their current incarnation, starting with 100-watt bulbs next January.
The law does not ban the use or manufacture of all incandescent bulbs, nor does it mandate the use of compact fluorescent ones. It simply requires that companies make some of their incandescent bulbs work a bit better, meeting a series of rolling deadlines between 2012 and 2014. [bf added]
That bold-face sentence contradicts what the NYT itself said in a linked article in Green’s story. Here’s what NYT said:
In the United States, the Energy Act of 2007 established efficiency standards that will render most incandescent bulbs unmarketable by 2014.
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