January 2012

Raise Awareness on Your Own Time

by Trey Kovacs on May 12, 2011

in Labor, Regulation

The Washington Examiner had a piece that hits close to home, as I have seen this waste firsthand. I’m sure many in D.C. area are familiar with the “Fill the Boot” collection that firefighters perform each year. Waiting for the stop light to turn green in your local town, you are solicited by a fireman. The firefighter is in the middle of the road requesting donations for charity to fight muscular dystrophy. Charitable and altruistic acts are of course needed and worthwhile. However, the duties of firefighters are not to raise money for charity.

Taxpayers who are being solicited to donate to charity are paying for the fireman’s salary to put out fires, not to support whatever charitable cause the fireman deems worthy. Taxpayers in the private sector commit their time to volunteer to raise awareness and raise money for charitable causes as well. They just aren’t paid for it. This example of government waste is less egregious than most concerning government employees performing non-government work while on government time. Nevertheless, if public sector employees believe strongly in the cause, they can ‘volunteer’ their time just like everyone else — and not expect a check from their employer to do it.

Government waste by public sector employees in this fashion has been exposed of late. A proposed bill in Congress, the Federal Employee Accountability Act, would eliminate government workers, specifically union officials, from bargaining, going to conferences, or doing any work on official government time that is not government work. This has set off a chain reaction that is driving state and local government to examine imposing the same restrictions.

Millions of hours each year at all levels of government are wasted paying public employees to do non-work. Eliminating this waste costs nothing to the taxpayer — they are not losing government service. Employee accountability is needed and elected officials are started to realize how little there is in the public sector.

There is No More Fat to Trim from Government Budgets, Part 3

by Ryan Young on May 12, 2011

in Health and Illness, Nanny State

The USDA is spending $2 million to take pictures of what San Antonio school children eat for lunch.

TSA Pats Down Infant

by Ryan Young on May 12, 2011

in Precaution & Risk, Regulation

Post image for TSA Pats Down Infant

Apparently its stroller failed an explosives screening. Surprisingly, no explosives were found during extra screening, including what a TSA  official describes as a “modified pat-down” of the suspicious infant.

Morning Media Summary

by Lee Doren on May 12, 2011

in Odds & Ends

Tech:

Google Lobbies Nevada To Allow Self-Driving Cars:
“Google, a pioneer of self-driving cars, is quietly lobbying for legislation that would make Nevada the first state where they could be legally operated on public roads.”

Global Warming / Environment / Energy:

Mary Landrieu, Mark Begich Defend Oil Companies Against Democrats:
“The Democratic attempt to take on the major oil companies is being challenged from within, with representatives of producing states rushing to the defense of the dirty-energy industry, complicating the plan to present a stark contrast between the two parties.”

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Is Trade Adjustment Assistance a Pre-Condition for Pending Trade Agreements?

by Fran Smith on May 11, 2011

in Agenda for Congress, International, Labor, Trade

Today, at the Senate Finance Committee’s hearing on the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the committee chairman, ranking Republican, and the U.S. Trade Representative’s witness all endorsed the importance of this trade pact, but emphasized a non-trade related issue — trade unions and worker rights in Colombia and the Labor Action Plan that Colombia agreed to as a condition for the FTA to be considered by Congress. Several committee members also said that reauthorization of Trade Adjustment Assistance — that provides subsidies for U.S. workers who ostensibly lose their jobs because of trade — must go hand in hand with consideration of the pending FTAs — with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia.

Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont), the committee’s chairman, in opening the hearing, noted that Colombia is a friend, ally, and partner, both economically and geopolitically. Despite this support for the FTA and trade, however, he did praise the Action Plan that tells Colombia just what that country has to do with respect to its workers. As Baucus said: “The FTA commits both parties to protect fundamental labor rights. This commitment is fully enforceable, just like the commercial provisions in the agreement. And this commitment is far stronger than those in Colombia’s FTAs with other countries, including Canada and the European Union.”

Ranking Member Senator Orrin Hatch made a forceful statement in support of the FTA and tried to pin down Miriam Sapiro, Deputy United States Trade Representative, about the Administration’s commitment to submit the agreement this summer. He pressed the witness on whether the vote on the Colombia FTA is contingent on an extension of Trade Adjustment Assistance. “Is it a pre-condition?” to considering the trade pact, he asked. Although he got no direct answer to his query, the tenor of the responses seemed to indicate that it is.

In his questioning of witnesses, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) said that he had previously opposed the FTA with Colombia on the same grounds as the AFL-CIO witness, who said that the Labor Action Plan does not go far enough.  But, Kerry said, it is time to ratify the treaty — “This is the moment,” he said.

Sen. Baucus emphasized that TAA must move in conjunction with the FTA — “the two must go together,” he reiterated.  However, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) pointed out that the “goal posts keep moving” in terms of when the pending FTAs will be considered.  He noted the irony that four years and one day ago, the Bush Administration reached an agreement with the Democratic Congress that was supposed to allow the Colombia trade pact to move ahead.

From the way much of the hearing went, it sounds like Colombia still has to prove that it is living up to U.S.-imposed mandates for labor rights. It also sounds like TAA is going to have to move concurrently with the FTAs if they are going to get past the pro-union blockage.

Who’s Afraid of Walmart?

by Ivan Osorio on May 11, 2011

in Economy, Employment, Labor, Regulation

As surely as summer follows spring, it seems like every new Walmart store opening announcement in a major city is now followed by protests.  The nation’s capital is no exception.

Walmart announced late last year that it plans to open four stores in the District of Columbia. Predictably, the local union of the United Food and Commercial Workers was not enthused. UFCW Local 400 President Thomas McNutt went so far as to call Walmart “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” because it’s nonunion. In reality, UFCW doesn’t want greater competition for its own employers.

However, union self-interest isn’t the only motivation that animates some Walmart critics. Self-styled community activists decry Walmart for … well, changing things. A typical such critique is a Washington Post letter to the editor by D.C. restaurateur Andy Shallal, who raises the alarm that Walmart would change the “character” of neighborhoods and add to a pattern of “destroying” local businesses, while preemptively dismissing “any academic research” that would contradict his assertions.

Try as Shallal might, he cannot dismiss research that contradict his opinions so easily. As a CEI study that analyzes the history and economics behind the anti-Walmart hysteria notes, the cant about Walmart killing downtowns is just that. Its author, Zachary Courses, says:

A handful of academic studies have analyzed the impact of Wal-Mart and other large discount retailers’ effects on the communities they enter. One of the ? rst studies, by John Ozment of the University of Arkansas and Greg Martin of the University of Wisconsin, used U.S. Economic Census data to determine the effects of what they called discount retail chains (DRCs) on rural business environments in three southern states. Looking at the period 1977–1982, and looking at county level data, they determined that overall DRCs bene?ted the communities they entered by increasing wages and employment, and strengthening other businesses that did not compete directly with the new DRC. Counties that did not have a DRC experienced an overall decline in per capita retail sales and payroll. And while counties with DRCs experiences a 3.5 percent reduction in the number of retail establishments over five years, counties without a DRC experienced a much greater loss of 10.9 percent. The authors conclude that the presence of DRCs “may create alternative opportunities for businesses that are unable to compete with large discount retail chains,” and “new businesses emerge that provide either services or products that complement the DRC’s offerings.” The picture of rural business implied by their research is a much more adaptable one, in which rather than shutting down retail activity, the presence of DRCs actually stimulates dynamic local retail growth.

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Rail Transit Pipe Dream is Alive and Not-So-Well in Portland

by Marc Scribner on May 11, 2011

in Economy, Mobility

If you’ve been following the free-market critiques of rail transit, you know that Portland, while frequently touted as “the city that works” by lefty urbanite wastrels and official city government signage and stationary, is anything but. Cato’s Randal O’Toole, a former Portland resident, did a great job debunking these claims in his 2007 study titled, appropriately, “Debunking Portland: The City That Doesn’t Work.”

Now John Charles, president of Portland’s libertarian Cascade Policy Institute, has a new report that shatters the “if we build it, they will come aboard” mindset of the current enviro-urbanist regime by attacking the completely ridiculous claim that Portland’s rail transit services offer a much-needed “high-capacity” alternative to bus rapid transit, which is often made by the TriMet Kool-Aid-drinkers. Here’s an excerpt from Charles’ conclusion in “Lightrail, Streetcars, and the Myth of ‘High-Capacity Transit’“:

The 92% market share for auto use at the circus punctures the myth that fixed-guideway transit is critical to the development of the South Waterfront District. In fact, at those few hours when large numbers of people need to be moved, the private automobile does the heavy lifting. Moreover, forthcoming research by the author demonstrates that on a daily basis, when accounting for all trips in and out of the South Waterfront district by all modes, the streetcar carries only 9% of passenger-trips, while autos and trucks account for 79% of passenger-trips and 100% of freight tonnage. The district is highly auto-dependent and will remain so regardless of planner fantasies.

Charles points out that, despite the best efforts of the greens, the metropolitan area is too dispersed and increasingly polycentric for fixed-line transit to make sense. Read the whole report here (PDF).

Also worth noting: John Charles and I earlier this year appeared on a Fox Business Network segment where we discussed the problems with rail transit, which you can watch here.

Hormones in Milk: They Do a Body Good

by Greg Conko on May 11, 2011

in Agriculture, Environment, Features, Health and Illness, Nano & Biotech, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

Post image for Hormones in Milk: They Do a Body Good

Today’s Washington Post Food section contains a number of articles following up on the Post’s “The Future of Food” conference that I wrote about last week. There’s enough misinformation and uninformed opinion there to keep a food policy scholar like myself busy for a week. But one item that’s really gotten my panties in a bunch is the repetition of a pet peeve of mine, which is featured in a quote from Stonyfield Farm CEO Gary Hirshberg:

“I have yet to meet the consumer who says, ‘I want the milk with more synthetic hormones, please.’”

I assume that Hirshberg is referring to the use of recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST) to boost milk production in cows, but the language he and other opponents use to turn consumers against a pretty darn good technology is so misleading that it often makes me assume they’re being intentionally deceitful.

Leave aside, for a moment, that rbST is administered to the cows, not put into the milk, and that there is no detectable rbST in the milk itself. And never mind that milk is loaded with plenty of the cow’s own natural hormones, including endogenous somatotropin. The most egregious problem with Hirshberg’s claim is that Stoneyfield Farms actually adds synthetic hormones to its own dairy products, and they advertise that fact right on the cartons, as well as on the company website — presumably in the belief that consumers will find their presence in Stoneyfield Farms milk a feature, not a bug.

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Regulation of the Day 173: Yellow Pages

by Ryan Young on May 11, 2011

in Regulation, Regulation of the Day, Tech & Telecom

It’s creative destruction in action. San Francisco is phasing out the distribution of hard-copy Yellow Pages. About 1.6 million of the doorstops are delivered to San Francisco homes every year. Most people no longer use them. Between YellowPages.com, Google, Craigslist, and other online tools, consumers now have better options for finding what they need.

Next week, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors will hold a vote to ban delivery of hard-copy Yellow Pages to anyone who doesn’t specifically request one.

This issue doesn’t really need a regulatory solution, though. The books depend on ad sales to be profitable. As people use them less and less, advertisers become more reluctant to pay for ads. When revenues drop enough, it will no longer be worthwhile to print hard copies. This transition will happen just fine on its own.

Time to Recharter Executive Agencies

by Iain Murray on May 11, 2011

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Environment, Features

Post image for Time to Recharter Executive Agencies

Several government agencies are mightier today than traditional departments like the Treasury. For instance, the EPA is one of the major regulatory bodies and yet it recently admitted it doesn’t care about the effect of its regulations on employment.  These agencies have ceased to serve America and now only serve themselves.

It is time Congress for Congress to rein in these agencies by giving them a detailed charter enumerating their powers.  For example, Congress never created the EPA. It was created by a departmental reorganization by President Nixon. The original idea was that the Council on Environmental Quality should be the oversight body for the nation’s environment, with the EPA acting as an administrative body.  That state of affairs needs to be restored with the CEQ regaining its policy role.  The EPA would need to seek express congressional approval for every expansion of its powers and justify its enforcement actions to an independent body.

In each case, these administrative agencies would be rechartered under a series of principles that Mrs. Thatcher used to reduce the size of the British bureaucracy.  In an initiative called Next Steps, Mrs. Thatcher and her successor John Major transferred the purely administrative functions of government departments to these agencies.  Each was expected to run its affairs as a business rather than a bureaucracy, and in many cases experienced private sector figures, with no loyalty to the bureaucratic way of doing things, were brought in to head them.  Policy functions were left to a much smaller core of, for the most part, very clever people.

A good example was what happened to the UK Department of Transport while I worked there. When I joined, the Department employed 14,000 people. Over just a couple of years, the administrative functions were hived off. The British national version of state DMVs, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Center, was completely separated from the Department to become the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, which was then able to use its freedom from central control to significantly update its IT resources, which had become something of a joke.  The other main DMV function — driving exams — was split off to become the Driving Standards Agency, while vehicle certification was entrusted to the tiny Vehicle Certification Agency, demonstrating that an effective agency could be run with a staff of around 60.[i] Finally, the work of building and maintaining the nation’s freeways was entrusted to the Highways Agency. That Agency moved its headquarters and staff out of London, significantly reducing costs. By the time I left the Department of Transport, it employed only around 2000 civil servants. With career prospects significantly reduced, many of them, like me, took voluntary severance or early retirement options when they were offered, which means that such reform could be a viable way of shrinking the federal bureaucracy.

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