By now, this story about the city of Portland, Oregon, deciding to drain nearly 8 million gallons of water from one of its reservoirs is old news. Portland Water Bureau administrator David Shaff decided to flush the water after a man was caught on a security camera urinating into the reservoir. There’s already been lots of commentary on the utter senselessness of the decision. One comment on the Portland Oregonian‘s website nicely observed that:
“More than 1 billion people worldwide do not have reliable access to clean drinking water, and here we are tossing away nearly 8 million gallons of water just to appease the ignorant residents who believe their tap water will otherwise turn yellow.”
Though I think Shaff himself said it best when he told the Oregonian, “The consensus appears to be that I am an idiot.”
After all, urine from a healthy adult is sterile, it’s already composed mostly of water, and a few ounces of human urine diluted into 8 million gallons of water would expose drinkers to a minute quantity of contaminants measured in the parts per billion range, if not parts per trillion. And the Water Bureau even acknowledged that the reservoir water is commonly exposed to large quantities of animal urine and fecal matter, animal carcasses, trash, and other “pollutants.”
What I think is most telling, though is Shaff’s explanation for the decision: “Nobody wants to drink pee, and I don’t want to deal with the 100 people who would be unhappy that I’m serving them pee in their water.” How fantastic is that? The Water Bureau decides to waste a few thousand dollars and a few million gallons of perfectly fine water just because the administer doesn’t want to get a few angry phone calls.
[click to continue…]
The TSA has a habit of confiscating security-unrelated items. Over at The American Spectator, I recall just such an experience that I had at O’Hare. After years of wondering what became of my beloved Leatherman, I was able to find a likely answer: it probably found its way to a government surplus store. One store alone made $300,000 just from TSA-confiscated items. As I conclude:
So rest easy the next time a TSA screener takes away your spear gun (yes, that’s on the verboten list). You’re not just making air travel safer by leaving it behind. You’re also doing your part to reduce government deficits.
TSA policies are an over-reaction to a rare threat that kills fewer people each year than lightning strikes. Unfortunately, the human mind is not entirely rational when calculating the risk from rare but conspicuous threats, so the TSA is probably here to stay.
President Obama made a big show about cutting “red tape” government regulations that kill jobs and hurt the economy. In addition, members of the Obama administration, including his wife, Michelle, claim they want to improve the health and well-being of Americans. If these are genuine policy goals of the current administration then a good place to start would be to stop the FDA from instituting any new policies.
A news story today told the good news that the FDA approved a device for the iPhone that would combine a plug-in blood pressure monitor with an application purchased in the app store to monitor the health of the user. According to a two-year long study conducted by the Brookings Institution and the Kauffman Foundation, remote medical reporting such as blood pressure monitoring could save the nation nearly $200 billion in health care costs over 25 years.
According to remarks by economist Robert E. Litan, the study’s author, who is the Vice President for Research at the Kauffman Foundation and Senior Fellow at Brookings:
Widespread use of remote monitoring over broadband networks, located in both institutions and homes, to track vital signs of patients with chronic diseases such as congestive heart failure and diabetes is a critical and urgent development. “Remote monitoring can spot health problems sooner, reduce hospitalization, improve life quality and save money.”
Litans made his remarks earlier this year at a health forum sponsored by the Better Health Care Together coalition (BHCT). Participants at that forum suggested that the way to achieve wide-spread usage of devices like the cuff is to have larger insurance payouts for hospitals in order to fiscally incentivize their integration.
[click to continue…]
Schools in right-to-work states (where unions are weak) are getting better and better over time compared to schools in heavily-unionized states.
As Walter Russell Mead notes in “Blue State Schools: The Shame Of A Nation“:
When it comes to excellence in education, red states rule — at least according to a panel of experts assembled by Tina Brown’s Newsweek. Using a set of indicators ranging from graduation rate to college admissions and SAT scores, the panel reviewed data from high schools all over the country to find the best public schools in the country. The results make depressing reading for the teacher unions: the very best public high schools in the country are heavily concentrated in red states. Three of the nation’s ten best public high schools are in Texas — the no-income tax, right-to-work state that blue model defenders like to characterize as America at its worst. Florida, another no-income tax, right-to-work state long misgoverned by the evil and rapacious Bush dynasty, has two of the top ten schools. Newsweek isn’t alone with these shocking results. Another top public school list, compiled by the Washington Post, was issued in May. Texas and Florida rank number one and number two on that list’s top ten as well … On both lists only one of the top ten public schools was located in a blue state.
Last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld a state law limiting collective bargaining with teachers’ unions and other government-employee unions in Wisconsin. To justify collective bargaining, Wisconsin union supporters, such as the Democratic National Committee, had falsely claimed that Virginia, which bans collective bargaining in state agencies, ranks 44th in the nation in ACT/SAT scores, compared to Wisconsin ranking 2nd. In reality, Virginia actually beat Wisconsin in ACT scores in 2010, with Virginia ranked 12th and Wisconsin ranked 17th. Unlike Wisconsin, Virginia is a right-to-work state that bars forcing employees to pay union dues. A law professor noted that “in Virginia, test scores have steadily improved since collective bargaining for teachers was ended.”
As my colleague Angela Logomasini noted in a post in January, the EPA has rebuffed the desperate pleas of lawmakers and residents to un-ban certain pesticides for the treatment of bed bugs. When asked why Ohio’s Gov. Ted Strickland’s request for an emergency exemption to use two very effective, but banned pesticides to fight the parasites, Lisa Jackson, head administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency replied that bed bugs were simply “a nuisance.” “We’re lucky – bed bugs don’t carry disease. But if you have to sleep in a bed and worry about being bitten all night, it sort of messes with your mind. And we get that,” said Jackson. How nice.
Clearly Ms. Jackson hasn’t spent much time speaking with people who have had bed bugs. More than a mere nuisance, they can force families to shell out thousands of dollars in repeat treatments, hospital visits (if reactions to the bites are severe), medication such as antibiotics, damaged relationships, damaged psyches, and damaged careers. Despite her sympathy, Ms. Jackson denied Ohio’s request for an emergency exemption.
At the time, Jackson believed that bed bugs do not carry disease. Unfortunately, we know better now. A recent study out of Canada found bed bugs carrying the drug-resistant strain of the Staphylococcus bacterium (also known as the MRSA and a “superbug”). While they have not been able to conclusively prove that the bed bugs are spreading the disease to their human hosts, their carrying the disease while causing the host to scratch the skin certainly seems like it would increase the likelihood of infection. In an article in the June 2011 issue of Emerging Infectious Disease, a CDC public health journal, discussed the possible correlation between increasing rates of MRSA infection and increasing infestations of bed bugs.
[click to continue…]
Tech:
F.B.I. seizes web servers, knocks sites offline:
“The F.B.I. seized Web servers in a raid on a data center early Tuesday, causing several Web sites, including those run by the New York publisher Curbed Network, to go offline.”
Pentagon gets cyberwar guidelines:
“President Barack Obama has signed executive orders that lay out how far military commanders around the globe can go in using cyberattacks and other computer-based operations against enemies and as part of routine espionage in other countries.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
Gore Faults Obama on Global Warming:
“Former Vice President Al Gore is going where few environmentalists — and fellow Democrats — have gone before: criticizing President Barack Obama’s record on global warming.”
Gore promoting fewer children to curb pollution:
“The global warming debate has always been a touchy one for both sides, and when the world’s top global warming activist is talking about the size of population and how that contributes to the choices societies make, it might be worth taking note.”
[click to continue…]
As those engaged in the policy battlefield, our focus is often on taking apart arguments used to advanced proposed solutions we disagree with.
But sometimes it is useful to try to do the same with arguments being used to advance policies we happen to agree with. This is because if these arguments are flawed or incomplete, they may very well fail to convince those on the fence that the policy prescription we advocate is the correct one.
An example is the argument that the economy doing so poorly because of “uncertainty.” This is true — but only to a point.
With the thousands of pages of regulations from Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, there is certainly uncertainty about how these will be interpreted. Manufacturers, for instance, are delaying investment decisions while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission determines whether they will be subject to the end user exemption in Dodd-Frank, or whether under the law they will be forced to put up millions more in cash for the margin requirement of a new derivatives exchange.
But in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week, Clifford Asness, managing and founding principal of AQR Capital Management, made a convincing case that sometimes it is the devil we do know that is the biggest stumbling block to economic growth.
Asness writes: ”Imagine assorted government agencies passed more burdensome regulations than we anticipated, increasing both the cost of doing business and the drag of crony capitalism. But all uncertainty was resolved by passing them today.” Resolving this uncertainty would not get the economy going. It would in all likelihood slow it further.
[click to continue…]
Yet another online gambling bill to add to the pile, Rep. Jim McDermott introduced the igaming taxation and regulation bill that he unsuccessfully introduced in 2009. While McDermott’s bill wouldn’t legalize online gambling, it is companion legislation to the bill HR 1174 introduced earlier this year by Reps. John Campbell and Barney Frank, which would legalize and regulate online wagering.
This time around, The Internet Gambling Regulation and Tax Enforcement Act, (HR 2230), which was introduced today by Reps. Jim McDermott, John Campbell, and Barney Frank, would require gambling platforms to report to the federal government on players’ financial activities and withhold a 2 percent federal tax on deposits received each month. The bill gives states the option to tax the sites an additional 6 percent on deposits. Both of these taxes would be paid by the websites and would not be paid by players.
A report from H2 Gambling Capital, released after McDermott introduced his first online gambling tax bill, looked at online wagering over a five-year period. According to the report, legalized online gambling could create 32,000 jobs, $94 billion in economic activity, and an additional $57.5 billion in tax revenue.
[click to continue…]
Today the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) proposed a new regulation that would speed up the union election process from 45-60 days to about 10-21 days. So called “quickie elections” will result in workers not being given all the information they need to make a decision on whether or not to join a union. Employers generally do not know if a union is trying to organize them until a majority of the workers sign cards.
During the election process the employer has an opportunity to make their case to their workers — this is after the union has likely campaigned for months. Shortening the election will decrease the employers ability to make their case.
If the process were an election for president, Candidate A has could have over six months to campaign, while Candidate B would only get around 45-60 days. The new rule would only give Candidate B 10-21 days to campaign. The results would be heavily skewed in the union’s favor.
Congressional Republicans have already blasted the new regulations.
[click to continue…]
Get ready to see nine sensationalistic images depicting the dangers of smoking on cigarette packs beginning September 2012. Rotted lungs and teeth, chest holes, dead and grieving people are just a few of the lurid photos in living color that the Food and Drug Administration will require on packages. (I have deliberately suppressed the display of the ghoulish photos here to protect children and the more sensitive from these images and to avoid promoting the FDA’s overkill on warnings.)
According to the FDA:
The introduction of these warnings is expected to have a significant public health impact by decreasing the number of smokers, resulting in lives saved, increased life expectancy, and lower medical costs.
That approach, of course, assumes that smokers and others aren’t aware of the dangers of smoking, but that’s far from the case. Here are the results of a representative study of smokers’ knowledge of the hazards:
The average percentage of knowledge items correct for each disease category included cardiovascular (93%), pulmonary (94%), oral health diseases (89%), smoking-related cancers (71%), and reproductive risks (44%). Premature death was identified as a risk by 95% of smokers yet only 63.5% reported that disability could also result from smoking. Knowledge was associated with perceived risk of smoking-related illnesses across disease categories.
As CEI’s Sam Kazman wrote:
The medical hazards of cigarette smoking are well established and well known. In fact, they’re so well known that adults who smoke are justifiably viewed as willingly taking those risks. In a free society that respects individuals, that should end most political battles over smoking: let’s prohibit kids from lighting up, punish whoever sells or markets cigarettes to them… and let grown-ups live their lives as they please.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. Yes, adults can smoke, but they’re constantly bombarded by higher taxes, more restrictions on the products available to them, more limits on advertising, and more rules on where they can light up.
And soon they’ll be exposed to the lurid cigarette packs. Maybe they’ll become collectibles with the ghouls among us.
RSS Updates 
RSS E-Mail Updates 
Twitter 
Facebook 
CEI.org 
WorkPlaceChoice.org 
GlobalWarming.org 
CEI On Demand Video 
Liberty Week Podcast 