Tech:
Verizon Video launches. Bandwidth capped buyers beware:
“Yesterday Verizon rolled out an updated version of its V Cast app, rebranding it to Verizon Video. This is more than just an app update though; the service itself seems to have been rebooted.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
Hurricane Irene strengthens to Category 3 storm: NHC:
“At 8 a.m. EDT, Irene was located about 55 miles southeast of Acklins island, Bahamas, and about 335 miles southeast of Nassau and was packing maximum sustained winds of 115 miles per hour (185 km/h).”
Insurance / Gambling:
California USA Celebrity Cassavetes Challenges Poker Laws:
“For those avid fans of online poker and even those who just like to watch the spectacle, poker is a major entertainment entity. When it comes to entertainment one must admit the American culture is alive and well and poker and gambling has been a big part of it. Say what you want, parts of America can be a paradise for gambling and great entertainment possibilities.”
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If you are a moderate or conservative, don’t expect to get a job with the Justice Department during the Obama administration. All 15 of the attorneys hired by the Justice Department’s Employment Litigation Section were ardent leftists — no moderate or conservative, let alone libertarian, hires at all. Some of the hires were fresh out of law school with no real world legal experience. Meanwhile, “the liberal ideologues hired in the Special Litigation Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division” engaged in conduct that “is a per se violation of the professional codes of conduct governing lawyers” in order to pursue their ideological agenda. “Every one of the 23″ Special Litigation Section “attorneys hired since Obama took office” has “liberal credentials.”
Left-wing Justice Department lawyers are abusing their position to enforce ideological double standards. The Justice Department is prosecuting a peaceful anti-abortion protester whose speech is protected by the First Amendment under court rulings like Hoye v. City of Oakland and Snyder v. Phelps. Unlike two Obama supporters in Philadelphia that the Justice Department refused to prosecute, the abortion protester “was not carrying a nightstick, and he was not yelling racial epithets or blocking the entrance to a polling place. Yet this is the same Justice Department that dismissed a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther party, whose members engaged in exactly that behavior” outside a Philadelphia polling place (one of them did so while working as a poll watcher for the Obama campaign. The New Black Panther party is a racist, anti-semitic hate group).
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In July, President Obama issued an executive order requiring independent agencies to comb through their books and axe obsolete or harmful rules. A similar order for cabinet-level agencies in January saved an estimated $1.5 billion in regulatory costs, or a little less than 0.1 percent of total annual federal regulatory costs.
The order gives agencies 100 days to act. The FCC struck a little early by announcing yesterday it was getting rid of 83 rules. The White House is expected to release the final package for all independent agencies today. Total estimated savings are $10 billion over five years. Combined with the earlier executive order, federal regulatory costs could go from $1.752 trillion per year to about $1.749 trillion per year.
One of the rules the FCC is chucking is the Fairness Doctrine, which empowers the FCC to regulate the ideology of political programming. It hasn’t been enforced since 1987 because it violates the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech”). But until now, nobody thought to actually remove it from the Code of Federal Regulations. It’s been sitting there the whole time!
Other hygienic measures the FCC is taking include “the deletion of obsolete “broadcast flag,” cable programming service tier rate, and broadcast applications and proceedings rules,” according to an FCC press release.
The repeals will become official upon publication in the Federal Register.
Left-leaning journalists are urging more mortgage bailouts to try to increase consumer spending, since they erroneously think that inadequate consumer spending is the principal cause of the current bad economy. This is a fallacy: As economist Mark Calabria has noted, consumer spending is currently high as a percentage of the economy compared to most periods in American history, and is low only compared to the unsustainably high levels reached during the housing bubble, when people borrowed rather than saved. It is corporate investment, not consumption, that is too low and needs to rise. Companies, and even Democratic businessmen, are afraid to invest and create new jobs now, because they fear costly, unpredictable new federal regulations and mandates from the Obama administration (such as the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law, and the health care reform law, whose estimated cost just went up by another $50 billion annually and which will reduce the size of America’s work force by hundreds of thousands of people).
Apparently thinking that the government can create money out of thin air through mortgage bailouts, The New York Times‘s editorial board yesterday urged the Obama administration to pressure banks to cut the principal balances of people who imprudently borrowed too much money, even as it admits that such “principal reductions are seen as rewarding reckless borrowers,” since doing so will “free up money for borrowers to use for paying down principal or consumer spending.” But doing that doesn’t create any new wealth, or free up new money, all it does is transfer money from savers to borrowers. Enriching borrowers at investors’ expense results in investors feeling poorer and spending less money, reducing economic activity related to their purchases. The Times just ignores the fact that forcing banks to write off loans will harm bank shareholders, resulting in them spending less money. Thanks to my recent losses in the declining stock market, which will make it harder for me to ever retire, I have already reduced consumer spending, and to save money, I no longer eat out in restaurants.
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When you’re in a pinch, sometimes you make a deal with the Devil. In the early years after America’s entry into World War II, America was in a pinch when stalking Nazi U-boats that posed a real, ongoing threat to America’s East Coast port operations and merchant ships. In his latest novel, “The Devil Himself, ” crisis communications guru Eric Dezenhall weaves a tale around around the historically true wartime partnership between the American government and mob bosses aimed at combating this Nazi threat. It’s a story told by a young political operative serving in the Reagan Administration in 1982 and by the young man’s “uncle,” notorious Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky, in lengthy vignettes of the past.
In fact, the story is mostly told from Lansky’s point of view and depicts a patriotic, shrewd businessman who loves America, deplores Nazis (for obvious reasons), and engages in straight dealing (for the most part) with his Italian mobster brethren. If you’re going to have a mobster on your team, this is the one to have. I’m not sure what to make of that loving portrayal, since Lansky was no doubt involved in some dastardly and bloody deeds, especially in his hey-day, the Prohibition Era. Which is not to say that diminishes any aid he provided to this country during wartime.
I also don’t have any great pearls of wisdom concerning a central theme of the book. The uneasy alliance between reputation-wary government officials and Jewish and Italian organized crime bosses eventually leads the narrator to conclude that “everybody gets screwed ” in such partnerships. Politicians don’t want the bad PR that comes with public exposure of these shady alliances and any rewards that flow to bad guys doing good deeds. In fact, the chief government operative in the Dezenhall story, Charles R. Haffenden, winds up, not recognized for any success in crafting the unlikely and arguably successful partnership, but dispatched to the South Pacific and gravely injured at Iwo Jima.
From a policy perspective, it’s interesting to consider in the context of other such uneasy alliances the US has made throughout the years. From a strategic, cost/benefit perspective, it’s an interesting bit of analysis from one of the great communications wizards of our times. From an historical perspective, the book portrays yet another facet of a war and an era brimming with so many compelling and poignant personal stories.
It’s time to deregulate the practice of law, write Clifford Winston and Robert W. Crandall of the Brookings Institution in The Wall Street Journal. [Ungated version here.] They note that law students commonly accumulate “as much $150,000 in law school debt” on “top of undergraduate debt,” even though many “services by lawyers do not require three years of law school” to perform, since they are simple enough to be performed by a non-lawyer, or by consumers themselves with the aid of online companies like LegalZoom.com, which sells forms for simple legal documents like “wills, uncontested divorce documents, patent applications, and the like.”
As they point out, “every other U.S. industry that has been deregulated, from trucking to telephones, has lowered prices for consumers without sacrificing quality. For example, most regulated airlines used to operate with large numbers of empty seats, particularly on longer flights. Once deregulation allowed Southwest Airlines, a smaller regional carrier, and other new carriers to offer service on any route, airline fares declined dramatically and the industry operated with far fewer empty seats and more employees. Deregulation of wireless, cellular telephone services and the entry of new carriers has led to the lowest wireless rates in the developed world and stimulated huge expenditures and associated employment in constructing new networks…. Allowing accounting firms, management consulting firms, insurance agencies, investment banks, and other entities to offer legal services would undoubtedly generate innovations in such services and would force existing law firms to change their way of doing business and to lower prices.”
Eliminating the requirement that students attend law school to be lawyers would also force law schools to reduce exorbitant tuition (which has risen nearly 1,000 percent in inflation-adjusted terms since 1960). As Winston and Crandall note, “established law schools would face pressure to reduce tuition and shorten the time to obtain a degree, which would substantially reduce the debt incurred by those who choose to go to those schools.” It would also force law schools to teach students actual legal skills and blackletter law, rather than outmoded legal theories or ideological fads (I learned almost nothing of value in my three years at Harvard Law School). A tenured law professor at a well-ranked law school says that law school is a “scam” and that his faculty colleagues include “overpaid,” “inadequate teachers,” who work just a few hours a day. Two law schools are being sued for fraudulent placement data in class-action lawsuits.
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In an editorial last week Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote about a supposed “economic revolution” happening in Cuba. It seems the Cuban government has just liberated the economy to allow individuals to buy and sell houses. This marks a huge step forward from the existing (since 1986) policy of allowing individuals to own homes, while limiting their property interest to exchanging those homes, not buying and selling them.
The “right to buy and sell homes”?! You’d think a truly liberal government would be granting the right to wear hats in this advanced age. As long as the government is in the business of holding tight to the reigns and meting out nominal positive rights, a liberal economy is a long way off.
Here is a letter to the editor I sent to the WSJ arguing just that:
Dear Editor: To paraphrase Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s question in her Monday editorial: “What it will mean when Cubans are allowed to ‘buy homes’?” (“Is Cuba Going Capitalist?” The Americas, August 15). Raul Castro touts an economic revolution in Cuba, but as O’Grady points out, this is a government that has turned chicken into an endangered species in its own country.
The Cuban government has a long way to go to embrace a liberal economic worldview. In fact, Cuba’s emerging “capitalism” is just another verse of Cuba’s same tired song. Even in this “capitalist revolution,” Cuba still does not embrace the natural rights underlying economic freedom. Instead, that tropical big-government sinkhole is continuing to violate individuals’ natural rights by assigning rights to individuals, just like it has for years.
The New York Times gives an accurate summary in its “Cuban capitalist revolution” headline: “Cubans Set For Big Change: Right to Buy Homes” (Aug. 2). Sure, the right to buy homes is an important right, and this marks a huge step from the previous (since 1986) policy that Cubans could finally own homes but could not buy or sell them.
Granting the right to buy homes is a step in the right direction, but there is no revolution happening here. A revolution requires a change in mentality. Liberty belongs with individuals, and the revolution Cubans are waiting for is a dramatic shift towards natural rights.
By doling out one right at a time, the Cuban government keeps a tight hold on the liberty cake, leaving individuals to fight over scraps. As long as the government is in that business, a liberated Cuban economy is a long way off.
Kathryn Ciano
Tech:
Booksellers are wary as Amazon tries to have it all:
““Amazon is doing to the world of book publishing what iTunes did to major record labels,” Trelease said. “This is an alarm bell to the giant publishers, and if they fail to heed the warning, they will lose.””
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
GE uranium enrichment plans raise fears: report:
“US conglomerate General Electric is seeking permission to build a $1 billion plant for uranium enrichment by laser, a process which has raised proliferation fears, The New York Times said Sunday.”
Insurance / Gambling:
Cash-starved states may run into trouble with Internet gambling:
“It’s an idea gaining currency around the country: virtual gambling as part of the antidote to local budget woes. The District of Columbia is the first to legalize it, while Iowa is studying it, and bills are pending in places like California and Massachusetts.”
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Tomorrow, parents and children across the country will set up lemonade stands in their neighborhoods. More info here. And they’re going to do it without getting licensed, inspected, poked, and prodded by regulators. But not everyone is happy about it. Esther Cepeda writes:
By all means, let’s celebrate Lemonade Freedom Day — make it a teaching moment. Those who actually care about preparing the next generation to become profitable businesspeople should take their favorite youngster down to city hall to jump through the necessary hoops and learn what it really takes to become a successful entrepreneur.
Sounds more likely to discourage than encourage young entrepreneurs.
Still not a bad idea, though. A trip to city hall would be an excellent way to teach the young ones about opportunity costs. Show them the forms they have to fill out. The licenses they have to apply for. How long permits take to process. Take them to the store and show them how long it takes to buy and install a handwashing station; many towns require lemonade stands to have at least one.
Then tell them they could have spent all that time actually selling lemonade.
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