Tech:
Google Blames Human for Robot Car Crash:
“A woman claiming to have witnessed the accident involving one of Google’s robot-controlled cars says that five cars were involved, not two, as Google asserts in a statement.”
Having a satellite dish ‘is a human,’ says European court:
“It is regarded as a luxury that allows people to watch top sport and blockbuster movies from the comfort of their armchairs.”
8 Technical Methods That Make the Protect IP Act Useless:
“Hiding your IP address, using a proxy, using the onion router and obtaining an IP address to a website so you won’t have to rely on a public DNS server – these seem like a very intimidating tasks for the unprepared. To be honest, when I first chose to try and figure these out, it seemed intimidating even to me – especially given that I don’t really even make use of proxy servers (or do any of the above for that matter). So really, I felt that I could relate to a number of moderately informed users on these topics.”
Communication breakdown: Thousands of Verizon workers up and down east coast go on strike:
“More than a fifth of the wireless giant’s work force has gone on strike as contract negotiations for the wireline division broke down last night.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
As Sun Storms Ramp Up, Electric Grid Braces for Impact:
“Storms are brewing about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away, and if one of them reaches Earth, it could knock out communications, scramble GPS, and leave thousands without power for weeks to months.”
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The false left-wing meme of the day is that the modest spending cuts in Sunday’s debt limit deal are bad, because spending cuts caused the 1937-38 Roosevelt Recession. But while spending cuts did occur in 1937, many more important things happened in 1936-37, like tax hikes, increased reserve requirements for banks, and the Supreme Court’s 1937 rulings upholding costly liberal laws that had been struck down by judges in the lower courts, including laws that made it more expensive for businesses to operate and employ workers. I discussed those court rulings recently in the New York Times:
In 1937, the Supreme Court upheld anti-business legislation that had been struck down by lower courts, like the National Labor Relations Act, in decisions like National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation. That made unions more powerful, led to a wave of costly strikes and discouraged hiring. The increased wages demanded by unions resulted in employers’ laying off many workers . . .If government spending alone could end a recession, then why did the Great Depression deepen under Herbert Hoover, who increased government spending to $4.7 billion from $3.1 billion?
Left-wingers also erroneously claim that Herbert Hoover cut spending to balance the budget in the Great Depression. For example, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, an economist who received a Nobel for his writings on international trade, claimed that Hoover made the decision “to slash spending . . .in the face of the Great Depression,” in a January 23, 2009 op-ed. [click to continue…]
CEI Weekly is a compilation of articles and blog posts from CEI’s fellows and associates sent out via e-mail every Friday. Also included in the weekly newsletter is a brief description of CEI’s weekly podcast and a feature on a major CEI breakthrough made during the week. To sign up for CEI Weekly, go to http://cei.org/newsletters.
CEI Weekly
August 5, 2011
>>Featured Story
With only a month to go before the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, union workers at the World Trade Center site are refusing to work and are threatening a full-on strike. The union is hoping to bully their way into their ideal contract—meanwhile, they’re upsetting people in New York City and across America. Labor Policy Counsel Vincent Vernuccio appeared on Fox Business to talk about the union workers’ tone deaf bungling of their labor dispute at Ground Zero. Watch the interview here.
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A pregnant woman who suffers from diabetes got into trouble with the TSA in Denver. They allowed her to take through her needles and syringes. But they confiscated her insulin, claiming it was an explosives risk.
The woman and her husband have filed a formal complaint with the TSA. She spoke to Denver’s ABC affiliate on condition of anonymity; as a frequent traveler, she fears retaliation.
Tech:
Interference Unlocks Faster Mobile Data:
“While demand for wireless data grows exponentially, the supply of available radio spectrum remains stubbornly fixed. A new technology could get more from that precious resource by turning a conventional piece of engineering wisdom on its head.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
Report: EPA should push ‘sustainability,’ track ‘social’ policy outcomes:
“The National Research Council (NRC) has released a report laying out a framework for the Environmental Protection Agency to incorporate sustainability into its policies this week. The report advises the EPA to make policy decisions using a three-pillar system, examining environmental, economic, and social impacts.”
Insurance / Gambling:
A-Rod’s Poker Game Is Illegal:
“Alex Rodriguez is under investigation by Major League Baseball for allegedly participating in poker games held at a record executive’s Beverly Hills mansion. ESPN.com has called these private affairs “illegal.” Does that mean my home poker game is against the law, too?”
Health / Safety:
Living to see 100 is just luck, not lifestyle:
“Those who are lucky enough to qualify for a telegram from the Queen have simply been dealt a good genetic hand at birth, the study indicates.”
Economics:
Global stocks tumble amid recession fears:
“Stocks around the world tumbled Friday ahead of crucial U.S. jobs figures, continuing a losing streak reminiscent of the aftermath of the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008.”
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Finally. It looks like Congress will actually be moving to approve the three pending FTAs after it returns from the summer recess according to a recent report by Politico.
Apparently the Trade Adjustment Assistance program (TAA) will be voted on separately from the FTAs.
Months of bipartisan discussions “have provided a path forward in the Senate after we return for passage of the bipartisan compromise on the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, followed by passage of the three FTAs,” Reid said in a statement.
For quite some time, CEI has been critical of Congress and the White House’s failure to support the long standing FTAs without the inclusion of TAA. While it’s good to see that TAA won’t be tied directly to any one FTA, it’s disappointing to note that the approval of TAA has essentially become a pre-condition to their endorsement. As CEI has mentioned several times before, free trade agreements should be voted up or down based upon their own merits.
Have a listen here.
Congress is likely to take up stalled free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea when it returns from its August recess. Adjunct Fellow Fran Smith talks about the good and bad parts of the agreements. Billions of dollars of economic benefits are offset by trade-unrelated provisions, such as labor and environmental standards. These erode our trading partners’ lawmaking sovereignty. An increase in trade adjustment assistance also seems likely. This gives money and training to workers who lose their jobs because of international trade.
Even the biggest possible cuts in Pentagon spending under the recent deal between Obama and Congressional leaders would be quite small compared to the reductions in military spending that occurred after Korea, Vietnam, and the end of the Cold War. (That deal lifted the federal debt ceiling in exchange for modest spending cuts over the next decade, plus additional, supposedly automatic cuts to both domestic and national security spending if Congress can’t reach a consensus in the future on which specific programs to cut.)
In The Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria has an op-ed entitled “Why defense spending should be cut“:
Serious conservatives should examine the defense budget, which contains tons of evidence of liberalism run amok that they usually decry. [. . .] Most of the federal government’s spending is transfer payments and tax expenditures, which are — whatever their merits — highly efficient at funneling money to their beneficiaries. The exception is defense, a cradle-to-grave system of housing, subsidies, cost-plus procurement, early retirement and lifetime pension and health-care guarantees. There is so much overlap among the military services, so much duplication and so much waste that no one bothers to defend it anymore. Today, the U.S. defense establishment is the world’s largest socialist economy.
There’s plenty of waste and duplication at the Pentagon. “As former defense secretary Robert Gates pointed out, there are more members of military marching bands than make up the entire U.S. foreign service.” After Fort Hood, the military had plenty of money to waste aiding a politically correct, whitewash report that deliberately obscured the causes of the Fort Hood shootings, the motivations of the killer, and how military brass ignored obvious warning signs of danger to come.
As Zakaria notes,
we spend more on defense than the planet’s remaining countries put together [. . .] It is not unprecedented for defense spending to fall substantially as we scale back or end military actions. After the Korean War, President Dwight Eisenhower cut defense spending 27 percent. Richard Nixon cut it 29 percent after Vietnam. As tensions declined in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan began scaling back his military spending, a process accelerated under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Given the enormous run-up in spending under George W. Bush, even if President Obama made comparable cuts to that of those presidents today, defense spending would remain substantially above the levels under all those presidents. The Bowles-Simpson commission’s plan proposed $750?billion in defense cuts over 10 years. Lawrence Korb, who worked at the Pentagon for Ronald Reagan, believes that a $1 trillion cut over 10 to 12 years is feasible without compromising national security.
Before we even come close to paying off our current government-sponsored enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) or recoup taxpayer dollars from Federal bailouts (General Motors & Chrysler) Congress wants to put the taxpayer on the hook again.
How much taxpayer money should be handed out to a bankrupt monopoly? According to certain members of Congress, the United States Postal Service will only need $100 billion to keep from failing. That’s cheap compared to Freddie & Fannie. What will the taxpayer receive for this generous financial backing? USPS employees keep inflated wages, layoff protections from collective bargaining negotiations, contribute less to health care costs than other federal and private sector workers, and allow an unsustainable business model to remain intact.
USPS has hit the brink of insolvency. USPS discontinued its contractual obligations to contribute to the Federal Employees Retirement System, citing their $8.51 billion deficit last year. This legally questionable action by USPS is not a solution to their fiscal crisis and only saves revenue in the short term.
USPS projected annual losses and deficits in the near future are astounding, by 2020 USPS will incur annual losses of $33 billion by 2020 and projected deficits of $8.3 and $8.5 billion in the upcoming years. Considering this data, the Postal Service has called on Congress to act to alleviate their financial constraints.
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You may get some extra-special attention from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in the near future — but this isn’t just another pat-down or body scanner. Agents will be randomly interrogating flyers waiting in line at the security checkpoints of an expanded number of American airports, asking routine questions in the hopes of picking up on facial expressions that signify “deception” or “malicious intent.”
Costing over $200 million per year since its implementation in 2007, The Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program has deployed over 3,000 Behavioral Detection Officers (BDOs) to 161 US airports. Despite the official-sounding moniker, these CIA-style lie-detectors go through a mere four days of classroom training and 24 hours of working experience before they may claim their BDO title.
Lina Texiera, a 41 year old nurse with psychiatric experience, expressed her doubts about the adequacy of the preparation: “You’re telling me someone with a three-week training course is going to be able to do that?… I just don’t think the training they’re getting is enough.”
In spite of its $1-billion three-year price tag and its several thousand BDOs, SPOT’s effectiveness has never been scientifically established and the program has never caught a terrorist. But that didn’t stop President Obama from increasing its funding by $232 million in his 2011 budget. As I explain in the Daily Caller, this backwards mentality of rewarding ineffectiveness and failure is the standard within government.
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