Wired welcomed a new author to its Science Blogs on Monday afternoon — Kristian von Bengtson, an aerospace engineer and co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals. His three year-old group is working on ways of achieving suborbital spaceflights with rockets. As its website indicates, the effort is supported entirely by private donations, sponsors, and the work of part-time specialists.
von Bengtson’s discusses in his inaugural piece what makes their effort unique in today’s environment:
This is not a business, nor is it an attempt to race against being the first doing private space travel in Europe. It is truly a project pushing the limits of a small group of individuals.
Human space flight has always been “untouchable.” It has been for big companies or governments only to take on. But Copenhagen Suborbitals would like to show the world that it can be done by thinking unconventionally in all areas, not only in terms of research and development but also on the financial side. We want to find the old spirit of the pioneer and entrepreneur in ourselves and in the process hopefully inspire as many as possible.
Amid the uncertainty about the start of commercial suborbital flights and gloom surrounding the termination of NASA’s shuttle program, there’s something refreshing about Copenhagen Suborbitals. It represents the power of innovative dynamism — as von Bengtson observes, spaceflight is no longer a realm restricted to large corporations or nation states. Their effort is reminiscent of the Wright Brothers at Kill Devil Hills — a group of people with a dream getting together, enduring the trials and tribulations of working on a small budget to achieve something great, and ultimately changing the world.
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The people of Illinois don’t expect their government to be corrupt; they insist on it. That’s why nary an eyebrow was raised when it recently came out that two lobbyists for the Illinois Federation of Teachers were able to qualify for generous teachers’ pensions by working as substitute teachers for one day.
One man could receive up to $3.8 million if he lives to age 84. This is in addition to the 401(k) the union gives him as an employee. The Chicago Tribune reports:
Preckwinkle’s one day of subbing qualified him to become a participant in the state teachers pension fund, allowing him to pick up 16 years of previous union work and nearly five more years since he joined. He’s 59, and at age 60 he’ll be eligible for a state pension based on the four-highest consecutive years of his last 10 years of work.
His paycheck fluctuates as a union lobbyist, but pension records show his earnings in the last school year were at least $245,000. Based on his salary history so far, he could earn a pension of about $108,000 a year, more than double what the average teacher receives.
Nationwide spending on K-12 education is around $13,000 per child per year. Not all of that spending is actually for the children, contrary to popular rhetoric. Fortunately, it appears only two people took advantage of this scheme. But the real kicker is that one of the two actually helped write the legislation that made it possible.
President Obama is announcing his plan today to bypass Congress with new government intervention to save the housing market through the entities that destroyed it: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. For different reasons, thoughtful members of both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street should be up in arms at many of the plan’s aspects.
For the Tea Party, which was sparked by the 2009 rant of CNBC’s Rick Santelli against “pay[ing] for your neighbors’ mortgage that has an extra bathroom” through Obama’s first mortgage “rescue” program, this is a similar bailout for big borrowers. And for OWS, which is concerned with policies that favor those at the top, there should be consternation that this could benefit owners of McMansions worth up to $730,000. And both movements should be concerned that this plan lets banks off the hook for shoddy loans they sold to investors such as pension funds,which serve middle-class workers and retirees.
The plan is, from early details, to open the gates to massive refinancing for borrowers with loans owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Since Fannie and Freddie are under conservatorship by the federal government, the loans are actually backed by the U.S. taxpayer. And many of the loans guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie are actually owned by private investors, including middle-class investors who participate in pensions and 401(k)s. Although banks handle paperwork with these mortgages, they often don’t own them. They are merely “servicers” who collect fees from owners of the loans.
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National: Phusion Projects, the makers of the now-infamous alcoholic energy drink Four Loko, have reportedly reached an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). After making nice with the FDA/TTB by removing the stimulants from their product, the FTC warned that the size of the can could constitute a deceptive act. To avert another government attack, the makers of Four Loko have agreed to add a resealable top to indicate that the drinks hold multiple servings.
Also at the national level, Ken Burns’s newest documentary, “Prohibition,” has the media all atwitter with articles on modern-day issues from marijuana, jobs, and the ongoing discussion about removing the constitutional protection alcohol currently has, as do most economic activities, from discriminatory state laws. See my discussion of Prohibition’s present incarnations here.
California: Gov. Brown signs a law solving a nonexistent problem of alcohol purchase through automated checkout lines at grocery stores. As I wrote about last month, the California grocery store workers’ union has pushed this measure as a way to pressure on one of the state’s largest chains to allow workers to unionize.
Iowa: Higher-proof beer is now on tap in Iowa as the law that capped beer alcohol content at 5 percent was raised to 15 percent when former Iowa Gov. Chet Culver signed a bill into law in March 2010.
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Art Carden has an excellent column about immigration, and not just because the first third is about The Simpsons. One key point:
Also, making something illegal isn’t the same thing as stopping it. The formal barriers to legal immigration are so onerous and the opportunities in the United States are so great that there is a thriving underground market in smuggling people across the border. I fear that the institutional steps that would be required to completely stop illegal immigration would make the current excesses of the Transportation Security Administration look like child’s play. Even if we grant the assumptions of immigration opponents about the costs of immigration, it is by no means clear that Fortress USA would bear any resemblance to a “land of the free.”
Read the whole thing. My colleague Alex Nowrasteh and I made a similar point last year.
Historically, most colleges used a “clear and convincing” evidence standard in student and faculty discipline cases, to safeguard due process. As Nicholas Trott Long noted in 1985 in the Journal of College and University Law, “Courts, universities, and student defendants all seem to agree that the appropriate standard of proof in student disciplinary cases is one of ‘clear and convincing’ evidence.” (Long, The Standard of Proof in Student Disciplinary Cases, 12 J.C. & U.L. 71 (1985)).
But in recent years, this due process safeguard has come under attack, most prominently in a legally-flawed April 4, 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter from the head of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, Russlynn Ali, who has demanded that colleges dilute the presumption of innocence in sexual harassment and assault cases by instead using a “preponderance of the evidence” standard that defines as guilty people who are as little as 50.001 percent likely to have committed the offense. I explained earlier why this demand was legally baseless, and not supported by either the Title IX statute or federal court rulings dealing with sexual harassment. (I was once a staff attorney at the Office for Civil Rights (OCR))
Now, the Senate draft bill to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (by Sen. Leahy’s Office) has inexplicably sought to expand the assault on due process. The draft VAWA bill would give OCR the power to set the “standard of proof” not only in harassment and rape cases, but also in other kinds of cases like “domestic violence,” “stalking,” and inappropriate behavior in dating relationships. It would do this even though OCR has jurisdiction (and expertise) only in certain kinds of discrimination cases (like sex discrimination and sexual harassment), not things like domestic violence.
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Recently, ActionAid USA and CEI filed a correction request under the Data Quality Act targeting misleading claims made by the EPA regarding the effects of ethanol mandates and subsidies, claims that have obscured how government policies have contributed to world hunger, malnutrition, disease, and death. This legal request, which was filed shortly before World Food Day, can be found here.
According to one recent study, ethanol diversion to fuel has caused nearly 200,000 excess deaths annually. Marie Brill, Senior Policy Analyst at ActionAid USA, stated: “High and volatile prices are already causing misery. The real price of a typical global food basket is up nearly 50% over the last year. With poor people in developing countries spending between 50-80% of their income on food, it is no surprise that 44 million people fell into extreme poverty from June 2010-February 2011 because of high food prices. The big surprise is that the EPA still fails to acknowledge the human impact of the Renewable Fuel Standard and still refuses to cite the plethora of reports that reveal the significant role of biofuels in global food price volatility.” According to Sam Kazman, CEI general counsel: “EPA’s refusal to address this issue has gone on long enough, and there isn’t a more appropriate time for the agency to change its approach than in the wake of World Food Day.”
What do the Wall Street protesters want? According to a survey of 200 protesters encamped in New York’s Zuccotti Park and reported by pollster Doug Schoen in The Wall Street Journal: “What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is…opposition to free-market capitalism…”
So we know that they are opposed to the free market. But what does that mean, exactly?
Obviously they are not opposed to “markets” as such, because that would be tantamount to being against human economic activity of almost any kind — as long as homo sapiens has existed, he has traded with others of his kind. Plus, I see a lot of laptops and smartphones being used and shared among the throngs of protesters, so I know they are not opposed to all markets in principle.
Fine, so it appears that the modifier “free” is offending word here. A free market is one in which people are allowed to trade with one another at their own discretion for mutual benefit without interference from a third party. So the protesters are against this: They want a third party — specifically, the government — to have the power to control the how, when, and who of our economic transactions.
So let us be clear: The protesters are against the “free” part of free markets, and are therefore, in a very real sense, against freedom itself. Or at least they are in theory. But if a sufficiently totalitarian government took hold in America, and told them what kind of computers they could buy and when, what kind of food they could eat and when, what kind of clothes they could wear and why, do you think they would really accept this in practice?
Doubt it. As the sage Yogi Berra is reported to have said, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”
In a recent article for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, I make the case that many elements of Prohibition did not fade away after the repeal of the 18th Amendment. In his October 13 opinion piece for The Detroit News, former police chief Jerry Oliver proves my point by digging up an old alcohol myth — one that was used to force Prohibition on the nation. In short, Mr. Oliver expresses the belief that producers of alcohol only seek to have customers consume as much alcohol as possible, thereby making it necessary for the government to intervene in the name of “moderation.”
Historically, it was unscrupulous alcohol producers selling directly to consumers or in cahoots with bars to sell only their products, sometimes at artificially low prices, that fostered an environment for abusive alcohol consumption. It was these excesses that helped trigger the Prohibition backlash.
…Today, most states require producers to sell to state-licensed distributors who in turn sell to local retailers. Exceptions abound where specific states allow direct-to-consumer shipments from wineries…
Critics of this time-tested approach argue the system is antiquated, citing its roots to the last days of Prohibition. That’s like arguing the Constitution is antiquated because it was written in the 1700s.
While Chief Jerry Oliver is correct that Prohibition was a backlash against Americans’ increasing alcohol use (or at least the perception of increasing use) there is no evidence that the system of direct sales or “unscrupulous” producers were the cause of increased consumption. His claim that “tied houses” (saloons owned or operated by alcohol producers) caused people to drink more is the same old myth used by the Temperance movement to push Prohibition on the country. However, we now have a large body of historical evidence that seems to debunk this presumption. Using cirrhosis of the liver as a proxy, historians have found that drinking sharply decreased in the decade preceding Prohibition — even though tied houses still abounded. While incidences of cirrhosis declined further at the start of Prohibition, they rose again toward its end.
This myth of “unscrupulous” producers has been used to maintain the mandatory three-tier system that forces alcohol producers, like brewers, to rely on a middlemen — wholesalers — to get their products into bars, restaurants, and stores. The only real reason not to shift to a voluntary system is to protect the profits of middlemen, who wield considerable political power. A voluntary distribution system would allow small producers to skip the middleman and cut costs, resulting in lower prices for consumers.
Enjoy a fresh batch of regulatory bloopers:
- In Belvedere, California, “No dog shall be in a public place without its master on a leash.” Think about that for a minute.
- It is against the law to eat more than three sandwiches at a wake in Boston, Massachusetts.
- Tennessee law specifically forbids catching fish with a lasso.
- It is illegal for St. Louis, Missouri, firefighters to rescue a woman if she is wearing a nightgown.
- In Providence, Rhode Island, drugstores are allowed to sell toothpaste on Sundays, but not toothbrushes.
- In Ohio, it is illegal for donkey riders to go faster than 6 miles per hour.
- In Tennessee, it is illegal to buy or sell cotton after dark.
- It is illegal to slurp your soup in New Jersey restaurants. You can be arrested, fined, and even jailed.
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