The Yale Cultural Cognition Project recently released a new study with surprising findings. According to the data of their national survey, people who are more “scientifically literate and numerate” are more skeptical of “climate change as a serious threat” than those who are less scientifically literate and numerate. Of course, this flew in the face of the presumed scientific consensus that climate change is a threat.
To most rational people this would indicate that since the “smart” people of this study are most skeptical of the evidence, then maybe the evidence is not so definitive. This did not detour the experts at Yale, however, as they concluded that,
The data in this study suggest that the impact of cultural cognition on perceptions of scientific evidence only grows in strength as individuals become more knowledgeable about science and develop greater facility with technical reasoning.
That’s right, according to this study, the better grip a person has on the facts, the more likely they are to ignore them in favor of their personal bias. Apparently,
This evidence reflects a conflict between two levels of rationality: The individual level, which is characterized by citizens’ effective use of their knowledge and reasoning capacities to form risk perceptions that express their cultural commitments; and the collective level, which is characterized by citizens’ failure to converge on the best available scientific evidence on how to promote their common welfare. Dispelling this, “tragedy of the risk-perception commons,” we argue, should be understood as the central aim of the science of science communication.
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A political party in Switzerland is seeking to ban Microsoft PowerPoint presentations in meetings. The Anti-PowerPoint Party (APPP), founded in May by Matthias Poehm, claims that wasted time from sitting through PowerPoint presentations costs the Swiss economy $2.5 billion per year. The party estimates Europe-wide costs to be $160 billion.
In Switzerland, 100,000 signatures is enough to trigger a referendum on almost any issue. The 245-member (and growing!) APPP is currently rounding up signatures for a referendum on PowerPoint presentations. Poehm, who founded the party to promote his new book, The PowerPoint Fallacy, urges public speakers to use flipcharts instead.
Poehm deserves credit for being a creative promoter. And I share many of his sentiments about PowerPoint. But PowerPoint policies are best set by individuals, not binding referenda. His book, now available in several languages, will hopefully persuade many individuals to spare their colleagues some tedium. But politicizing the issue, humorous though it is, might not be the best way to improve the quality of public speaking in Switzerland.
Hopefully, this Independence Day weekend you liberated some nice libations from their containers. As Founding Father Ben Franklin said, “there can’t be good living where there is not good drinking.” If he’s right, then this week’s alcohol regulation roundup would probably bring a smile to old Ben’s mug — as the changes in most states’ alcohol laws mean that the quality of life in this country is clearly improving.
Alabama: At the end of May, the Alabama legislature approved the Craft Brewery Modernization Bill after much effort from the state-based beer rights group Free The Hops (FTH). Just last month, Governor Robert Bently signed the bill into law, allowing breweries to give visiting patrons a taste while they tour the brewery. Unfortunately, another bill that would have allowed residents to brew for at-home consumption without a license (illegal only in Alabama and Mississippi), failed to make it through the legislature.
Kansas:* When it comes to selling alcohol to patrons, convenience and grocery stores in Missouri are restricted to 3.2 percent ABV beer and wine coolers. Liquor stores may sell liquor and wine, but are banned from selling groceries. However, efforts to change the outdated laws are underway. Republican Senator Tim Owens has been pushing a bill that, if passed, would abolish both prohibitions, allowing grocery stores to sell full-strength beer and liquor and permitting liquor stores to sell grocery food items.
Maryland: Good and bad news for Maryland’s drinkers, as laws passed earlier in the year went into effect last week. Liquor taxes went up by 50 percent, with projected revenue increases of $85 million. On the positive side, the state’s new laws allowing direct shipping for wine also went into effect.
Michigan: A bill that would eliminate a 1.85 percent sales tax on distilled spirits is making its way through the Michigan legislature.
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The cozy relationship between liberal governors in Northeast states and Big Labor is becoming strained. Elected Democrats are realizing how strongly strings were attached to the campaign contributions from unions and are seeing resistance to any kind of fiscally responsible reform. To Big Labor’s chagrin and taxpayer’s glee, governors from Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts are currently focused on fiscal responsibility, not reelection.
Gov. Dannel Malloy of Connecticut tried to negotiate with state unions to balance his state’s budget, stating he was the antithesis of Gov. Chris Christie and his attacks on unions. This move has backfired. Gov. Malloy believed that Big Labor would be reasonable and take the concessions to keep state workers employed. Now with a $1.6 billion budget gap, the layoffs will begin. The true test of Gov. Malloy’s resolve to protect the taxpayer will come during his reelection campaign. Will the fiscal solvency of Connecticut be Gov. Malloy’s top priority or will maintaining the steady stream of cash from government employee unions?
In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick is reviewing the budget that was approved by lawmakers (made up of a Democratic majority). One detail of the budget that has sparked angry reactions from public-sector unions is curbing collective bargaining for municipal employees’ health care benefits. Gov. Patrick has only a few days remaining to sign the bill. His decision should be simple: sign the bill. Or as House Speaker Robert DeLeo (D) put it, “[T]his common-sense reform will save $100 million for cities and towns and preserve the jobs of fire-fighters, police officers and teachers.” However, Gov. Patrick is facing considerable union pressure to reject the budget, which saves $100 million, and it might not be as easy as commonsense would lead you to believe.
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The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) turns 76 today. This day should give pause to those who have been following the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Department of Labor (DOL), and the National Mediation Board’s (NMB) attacks on American business. I am thinking specifically of the Boeing lawsuit, the repeated attempt to unionize Delta employees, the lawsuit against Arizona’s secret ballot law, the NLRB’s new “quickie election“ rules, and the DOL’s new regulations.
When the NLRA was signed into law in 1935, the law’s very constitutionality was challenged. The law was upheld in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp (1937) by a 5-4 decision. In the opinion, the majority acknowledged the limited scope, saying the “Act does not compel agreements between employers and employees.” The opinion continues, “[t]he Act does not interfere with the normal exercise of the right of the employer to select its employees or to discharge them.”
In another opinion, the court recounts the Senate Committee on Education and Labor’s sentiment when they passed the NLRA in 1935:
The committee wishes to dispel any possible false impression that this bill is designed to compel the making of agreements or to permit governmental supervision of their terms. It must be stressed that the duty to bargain collectively does not carry with it the duty to reach an agreement, because the essence of collective bargaining is that either party shall be free to decide whether proposals made to it are satisfactory.
It was with this limited scope that the bill was originally passed by congress. The NLRA has been continually reinterpreted to give more and more power to unions. This has in turn taken away businesses’ ability to tell their side of the story. As we look back to the signing of the NLRA, it is also pertinent to look to the future. The House of Representatives is considering several bills that would reign in the power of the NLRB. To commemorate the original intent of the NLRA, Congress should act on these pieces of legislation and reinstate the balance between unions and business.
A lot of blood has been spilled in protests against Greece’s rollback of its incredibly generous welfare state, yet the media routinely refer to those protesters as “largely peaceful,” notes A. Barton Hinkle of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The media’s indulgent treatment of these big-government supporters, which occasionally hints that violence by the protesters is understandable in light of Greek austerity measures, contrasts sharply with its unrelentingly negative depiction of Tea Party protesters, who have yet to kill anyone or burn down any buildings, but who aroused media ire by opposing the 2010 health care law, which they perceived as a government takeover of the health care system.
Rioting protesters in Greece killed three bank employees in their rage over possible budget cuts. “The protesting civil servant workers trapped the bank employees in a burning building.”
But as Hinkle notes,
According to one story in The Wall Street Journal, the demonstrations “began peacefully.” According to another, last week Constitution Square in Athens “seethed with indignant, but peaceful, demonstrators.”
“The day began noisily but peacefully,” intoned The New York Times on Wednesday. The Washington Post likewise observed that “a peaceful protest . . . quickly degenerated into violence.” Reuters reported that, regardless of “clashes between stone-throwing masked youths and riot police . . . thousands of peaceful protesters demonstrated against the austerity plan.”
Sure, blood was spilled. But don’t blame the protesters. As the Journal reported, it was Greece’s parliament that approved a “widely hated austerity package” despite “the best efforts of peaceful grass-roots activists, megaphone-touting [sic] labor unionists, and stone-throwing anarchists.”
This is a sharp contrast from how, say, Tea Party protests against the passage of ObamaCare were treated.
The D.C. protests in March of last year were nonviolent affairs, without a single arrest despite one disputed episode in which someone allegedly hurled a racial slur at Rep. John Lewis and spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. (No independent report could verify the allegations.) But that didn’t stop ABC’s David Muir from reporting that “shouted words turned very ugly,” and reporting on “late word from Washington tonight about just how ugly the crowds gathered outside the Longworth office building have become.”
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Tennessee State Rep. Gary Moore must be a very busy man. This year alone, he has solved the state’s budget troubles, fixed the broken education system, slashed the crime rate, and ended poverty.
Granted, I didn’t see any headlines about any of those things. No, the evidence for Rep. Moore’s achievements is much more indirect: he found the time to introduce a bill banning offensive bumper stickers. Surely he wouldn’t spend time on something like that unless he’d already solved his state’s more pressing matters?
There’s no way that fining drivers $50 if another driver takes issue with their bumper sticker would take precedence over reforming TennCare. The bumper sticker bill also covers movies being shown inside vehicles; surely Nashville’s solons wouldn’t worry about what cartoons parents are showing their kids in the back of their minivans until they found a way to raise stagnant standardized test scores.
On the other hand, maybe Tennesseans would be better off if their elected officials spent all of their time on minutiae. Whenever legislators do try to tackle the big issues of the day, wallets across the state get a lot lighter.
In a letter to the Washington Post over this past weekend, a “food safety consultant” in northern Virginia named Thomas L. Schwarz lambastes the Post for a documentary movie review that “trivialized the 15 or more potentially deadly organisms that can be found in raw milk.”
Among other topics, the movie “Farmageddon” raises questions about the appropriateness of our federal government spending many millions of taxpayer dollars cracking down on small farmers who dare to sell a product that consumers want and are willing to pay for. The movie, while high on emotionalism, is rather light on accuracy. But it does make an important point about heavy-handed government getting between willing buyers and sellers.
Admittedly, most of of the consumers of raw milk are unwilling to acknowledge the risks associated with consuming raw milk — but that’s not because the information is unavailable. It is unfortunate that so many raw milk advocates are unwilling to face facts. After all, pasteurization was seen as a remarkable scientific breakthrough and public health miracle for a reason: raw milk can harbor any number of nasty bacteria — including S. typhimurium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, E. coli O157:H7, Listeria, Campylobacter, and Brucella.
That said, there’s no good reason why consenting adults should not be able to buy and consume raw milk.
That’s why it irked me so much when Mr. Schwartz, the Post‘s correspondent, wrote that “Filmmaker Kristin Canty has a lot of gall to substitute her beliefs for the scientific expertise of food safety experts and disregard the deadly historical record of raw milk and raw milk products.” On the contrary, Mr. Schwartz, it is you who have a lot of gall to substitute your choice for that of others.
Late last week, the Department of Transportation announced it was launching a third round of TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery — I feel queasy just typing that) Discretionary Grants. The first two, which funded such brilliant projects as the “commuter” bike trails in northwest Arkansas and a streetcar line in Salt Lake City (context: about 5.5 percent of commuters in Salt Like City proper use transit; the metro area’s share is about 3 percent; most of the ridership is projected to come from those who currently ride far cheaper and more efficient buses), were complete duds: little more than giveaways to the local politicians who filled out the applications the best.
“Livability,” that meaningless term that recently infected the already annoying lexicons of many New Urbanist technocrats, is the major theme and it is driving all sorts of silly investment decisions. And it is likely that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s next $527 million will bolster the same types of waste investment.
As I noted last October when TIGER II grants were announced, only a third of funding went to road projects. “Livability,” you see, really means, “go to hell, drivers!” This vague and vacuous concept also has about as much logical and moral justification as yuppies slumming in 1980s New York. More power to you, folks, but others shouldn’t have to subsidize your temporary preferred way of life.
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