President Obama has belatedly realized that the “shovel-ready projects” he touted so much in his stimulus bill two years ago were anything but:
“Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected,” Obama said.
And just why weren’t they shovel-ready? Regulation, of course:
“How do we deal with making sure our regulations make sense, so that we start eliminating ones that don’t work, aren’t making consumers better off or aren’t improving our quality of life?” Obama told the employees.
Of course, some people — like CEI — knew that in February 2009, when I wrote:
So what should we do? There’s an inkling in the Washington Times today, from, of all people,George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson, and Gray Davis. They point out that “shovel-ready” projects are just maintenance work, because infrastructure projects are bogged down in environmental regulations. They don’t quite get to the conclusion, so let me say it for them: if you want to build infrastructure sharpish, you’re going to have to set aside those environmental regulations by law. Any “stimulus” bill that doesn’t include relief from the provisions of the National Environmental Protection Act, for instance, isn’t going to get any infrastructure project going any time soon.
So if you want to stimulate, you’re going to have to liberate. Similar arguments can be made as regards Davis-Bacon and 13C. There are a bunch of other such ideas, which will also get the economy moving by getting government out of the way. For example, finally suspending mark-to-market accounting properly, which will be a huge boon to the banks. Or getting rid of the burdens of SarbOx and other ridiculous and ineffectual regulations on small businesses. Antitrust reform would help, too. And you could even think about finally getting rid of the Corporate Income Tax, a hold-over from the days when income tax itself was unconstitutional, and which, at least before the 2005 reforms, probably cost more to collect than it raised in income.
If you want hope and change, rather than the same old pork barrel policies, that’s the way to go: liberate to stimulate (it’ll catch on).
The idea of “liberate to stimulate” has indeed caught on – with the voters. It’s the political establishment who are having problems with it…
Tech:
China’s Cyberassault on America:
“In justifying U.S. involvement in Libya, the Obama administration cited the “responsibility to protect” citizens of other countries when their governments engage in widespread violence against them. But in the realm of cyberspace, the administration is ignoring its primary responsibility to protect its own citizens when they are targeted for harm by a foreign government.”
Music pirates won’t rush to iCloud for forgiveness:
“Some people, including on this site, have suggested there’s a loophole in Apple’s new iCloud that will allow people who illegally download music to somehow “launder” their dirty music files, getting a nice clean, and legal, license to the music stored on iCloud. This argument is flawed for two main reasons.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
Wind Turbines Blamed for Mass Slaughter of Protected Golden Eagles:
“Over 60 eagles a year are killed by the wind turbines. UPI reported”
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The news of the passing of John Hospers brought renewed attention to his receiving an electoral vote in the 1972 presidential election, as the first nominee of the Libertarian Party. The man casting that vote, Roger MacBride (who passed away in 1995), has often been described as a “faithless” elector, because he was allegedly “committed” to voting for the incumbent, Richard Nixon.
Well, Roger would argue that he was neither a faithless nor renegade elector. He was an expert on the history of the Constitution and the thinking of the Founding Fathers, and once even did a research paper/thesis on the history of the Electoral College. In fact, he may have known more about it than any other person, since he literally wrote the book on it: The American Electoral College, which was published by Caxton Printers in 1963. Roger believed that there was no binding requirement for electors to uphold the popular vote, but that they were free to vote their conscience. He was doing his duty.
I knew Roger fairly well. We met in 1976, when I was in Boise, Idaho, doing radio and TV ads for the Steve Symms campaign. He flew in in his tricked-out private DC-3 campaign plane –which he piloted. I also knew Rose Wilder Lane very well starting back in 1959. She became a regular visiting teacher at Robert LeFevre’s Freedom School in Colorado. I had a dinner party for her and for all Los Angeles-area libertarians at my parents’ home around 1960. I used to go up and stay at her little cottage in Danbury, Connecticut, throughout the 1960s. She died in 1968.
As is well known, Roger became her unofficial adopted “grandson.” More importantly, he produced the “Little House on the Prairie” TV series and inherited the vast Laura Ingalls Wilder/Rose Wilder Lane literary estate, becoming immensely wealthy. Roger met Rose when he was a teenager. She wrote for Reader’s Digest, where Roger’s father was an editor. They became very close and he called her “grandma” (she was more than 40 years his senior). After graduating from Harvard Law, he became her attorney and then heir.
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In 2010, Obama administration allies proposed a trillion-dollar bailout for those lucky mortgage borrowers whose loans were owned by the government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — including wealthy borrowers who have no difficulty paying their mortgage — in order to increase their disposable income and temporarily pump up the economy through the next election. Now, Obama administration officials such as Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli are trying to achieve the same goal on a much smaller scale in settlement talks with the nation’s four biggest banks. Perrelli is demanding that they reduce the mortgages of certain favored underwater borrowers (many of whom are underwater because they didn’t make a substantial downpayment, the way thrifty people do), using the banks’ unrelated foreclosure paperwork violations as a pretext (benefiting lucky borrowers who were never foreclosed upon, much less treated improperly in any way).
But as Mark Calabria notes, this demand makes no sense at all economically. Any mortgage write-off that increases the disposable income of borrowers will reduce the disposable income of investors whose mortgage-backed securities are worth less after mortgages are partly written off. The government’s demand reflects irrational, magical thinking, a kind of voodoo economics. This proposed rip-off of investors would not create any wealth or income, but rather merely redistribute wealth and income from investors to borrowers (reducing the disposable income of the suddenly poorer investors), discouraging future investment.
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There are thousands of door-related accidents each year. The Consumer Product Safety Commission should do its bit by requiring that a professionally trained doorman open and shut all doors for door-users. That would create millions of jobs not just as doormen but as Doorman trainers (they’d have to be properly certified so that people aren’t exposed to the horrors of “cowboy” doormen) and also in the apparel industry as doormen need to look smart, with epaulettes and caps. The Amalgamated Union of Door Openers and Kindred Workers could have exclusive representation to ensure the doormen have adequate working conditions and to ensure demarcation from competing trades such as window openers. Of course the political power of the new union would be considerable — imagine the effects of a strike!
In related news:
On March 15, 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, proposed the first-ever standards that would require coal-fired power plants to reduce their emissions of toxic air pollutants, including mercury, arsenic, and lead. The public health benefits of limiting these emissions have been well-documented by both scientists and medical professionals. But a lesser-known fact is the proposed rules are expected to create nearly 360,000 jobs and generate almost $200 billion in capital improvements by 2015. These standards are also achievable: 60 percent of all coal-fired boilers that submitted stack test data to the EPA are already achieving the proposed mercury limits. (Emphasis added)
Only 360,000 jobs? These people don’t think big enough.
There may be a silver lining to the sordid Anthony Weiner drama: The sext-happy congressman has drawn much-needed media attention to state legislative efforts to reform teen sexting penalties.
The AP’s David Klepper puts the issue succinctly:
A congressman who sends an X-rated photo of himself jeopardizes his reputation and his job. But in many states, teens caught doing the same thing can risk felony charges, jail time and being branded sexual offenders.
That’s because a minor who transmits a sexually explicit photo of themselves according to many state laws, is manufacturing and distributing child pornography.
This year, 21 state legislatures will consider bills that seek to lower penalties for teenagers caught exchanging nude photos. In Rep. Weiner’s own New York State, lawmakers are pushing to give judges the discretion to assign counseling to sexting teens in lieu of jail time.
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As if we need more evidence that government feeds off itself in enlarging its size and scope, the Obama administration plans to create a new government bureaucracy to be tasked with overseeing how stimulus money is spent by private contractors. While this measure to instill greater accountability of use of federal money may appear at first glance to be a good thing, it perversely institutionalizes (through the creation of a new oversight agency) that fiscal stimulus is indeed an effective principle and results in even more spending (in order to expand govt) than was first outlayed in the original stimulus package.
Instead of continuing to legitimize the stimulus and continuing to spend more money in the name of spending money “efficiently,” the administration ought to admit the stimulus’ failure (I’m not holding my breath though…), stop spending stimulus money or other money in order to spend stimulus money, and move on.
Tech:
Google’s Android ambitions go beyond mobile:
“Andy Rubin, Google’s (GOOG) top mobile-phone executive, likes to talk about everything being “Android-ized.” Android has become the top smartphone operating system in the United States, but Google’s ambitions for it go well beyond tablet computers and smartphones, even beyond the mobile Web.”
House Bill Would Require Companies to Report Privacy Breaches:
“Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., is circulating draft legislation that would require companies to provide a basic level of protection for consumers’ personal information and notify the government when data is stolen.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
British Study: Electric Cars Not So Green:
“The past few days have been a one-two punch to the eco-friendly market. First we heard that biodegradable products are not nearly as environmentally friendly as advertised, and now this:”
Oil-giant Venezuela tries to limit energy use:
“Venezuela, one of the world’s leading oil producers, is trying to limit its power consumption as the country’s decrepit power utilities struggle to keep up with the demand.”
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The June publication of the American Sociological Review contained research on right-to-work states. The research in “Laws of Attraction: Regulatory Arbitrage in the Face of Activism in Right-to-Work States” reaffirms what many have known for years: that right-to-work (RTW) laws attract business. This is an assertion that labor unions have dismissed for years.
“The American Sociological Review is the American Sociological Association’s flagship journal.” The Association has nearly 15,000 members and is the national association for professional sociologists. The three researchers are widely published professors at Stanford University, University of Southern California, and Columbia University.
The research sheds light on the way Wal-Mart uses “regulatory variations to their advantage.” Translation: Wal-Mart looks for right-to-work states because they are generally better places to do business than forced-union states. The research focuses on how Wal-Mart places stores in relation to RTW/forced-unionization state borders and the effect of protesters. Wal-Mart has unique characteristics that make it an interesting case study. First, it is “arguably the most consequential firm in the U.S. economy.” Second, “[g]iven the gravity of a Walmart, it is possible to reach the same customers from any number of potential locations.” Wal-Mart is also afflicted by frequent protests to the opening of their stores, usually led by labor unions (who are disgruntled that Wal-Mart remains union-free).
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Last year, a New Mexico court issued a domestic-violence restraining order against David Letterman on behalf of a deluded woman who had never met David Letterman, but nonetheless believed he was harassing her through her TV and the content of his TV show, which supposedly contained “coded messages.” (When I was at a non-profit law firm, similarly kooky people would contact me claiming that the CIA, or their ex-spouse, was monitoring them through a chip implanted in their brain. I turned them away, a sign of skepticism which I guess makes me unfit for the bench.) Despite nationwide ridicule, the trial judge defended his restraining order, making clear that he had read the plaintiff’s claims and had not made a mistake, before eventually dissolving it when the ridicule only increased.
(Granting all requests for domestic-violence restraining orders — not merely the many that are well-founded — is wrong, but it is considered the politically-correct thing to do, since judges learn at judicial seminars put on by advocacy groups — and now subsidized by the Justice Department — that it is sexist to be skeptical of a claim of domestic violence. Many judges grant substantially all requests, and it seems as if no judge has ever lost his job for being too eager to grant such requests — although a few judges have been removed from the bench or pilloried in papers like the Washington Post for denying a request in a case where the victim later was harmed, even if the victim failed to document her claims or support them in detail at the time she requested the restraining order. The Post attacked one judge who had denied some requests — he granted about 90 percent of all requests that came before him, while denying about ten percent — while citing figures that showed that his colleagues in Montgomery County, Maryland, granted about 99 percent of the orders requested.)
The New Mexico courts seem to have learned little since then. Recently, a court commissioner recommended, and a court was expected to issue, a restraining order against a man’s anti-abortion billboard, in response to a request by his ex-girlfriend. The billboard did not mention her name, but lamented that abortion had supposedly taken the life of the man’s unborn child. Greg A. Fultz put up a billboard showing himself holding what appears to be empty space, with the words “This Would Have Been A Picture Of My 2-month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To Not KILL Our Child!” and some endorsements, later removed, from pro-life groups, including the words “PRO LIFE” and “RIGHT TO LIFE.”
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