Various media outlets are trying to scare the bejesus out of us by reporting on a new study published in this month’s issue of Injury Prevention, a leading peer-reviewed journal focused on — you guessed it — research related to reducing injuries. “Deaths of Headphone-Wearing Pedestrians Increase, Study Finds,” was the title of Bloomberg’s article on the research paper. This is one of the more accurate headlines I’ve seen on the study, although even this one is likely being misinterpreted by many, as I’ll explain in a moment. An example of an inaccurate, sloppy, scaremongering title comes from the Toronto Sun, “Wearing headphones while walking can be deadly: Study.” Please. Wearing headphones while walking will almost certainly not kill you.

Many in the media have been conflating what the researchers found, that more pedestrians involved in vehicle collisions have been reported to have been wearing headphones, with “headphone-wearing increases pedestrian-vehicle crash risk.” While the authors note that there is most likely a link between increased risk of pedestrian-vehicle collision and the pedestrian wearing headphones, they specifically point out in their conclusion: “Also, since this is a retrospective case series, neither causation nor correlation can be established between headphone use and pedestrian risk” [emphasis added]. This is because the methodology used by researchers to determine the number of collisions in recent years relied heavily on searches of news databases, such as LexisNexis and Google News, which is not the most scientifically robust way to tabulate incidents given media biases.

It is also worth noting, as the researchers themselves note in their paper, that while these headphone-wearing-pedestrian collisions more than tripled over the six years studied, MP3 player ownership quadrupled over the same period. Simply because more pedestrian-vehicle collisions involving headphone-wearing pedestrians while ownership of headphone-dependent devices increased at a greater rate does not prove headphones necessarily increase pedestrian-vehicle collision risk by much. If a greater proportion of pedestrians are wearing headphones, you would expect that more vehicle-pedestrian collisions would involve pedestrians wearing headphones.

This is not meant to dispute the researchers. After reading it, their study is quite sound given the limitations of data collection. I believe that wearing headphones while walking, all else being equal, almost certainly increases the risk of vehicle collision both by increasing distraction and blocking out the audible environment. Rather, I am trying to highlight another example of media irresponsibly misinterpreting health and safety research in order to unduly frighten the public. As is always the case, the devil is in the details and many reporters have no time for details.

For an infamous example of media stoking the walking-with-headphones-will-kill-you-dead! flames, see this story from a few years back:

The death of a pedestrian in Cranbrook, B.C., on Tuesday has raised the question of how loud is too loud when it comes to listening to iPods and other personal music players.

Isaiah Otieno, a 23-year-old student, was killed when he was struck and dragged by a helicopter that crashed to the ground as he was walking to the mailbox.

That’s right, bipedal music-lovers. Not only will cars almost certainly run you down the moment you set foot on the sidewalk with a functioning iPod, helicopters will be randomly targeting you from above for execution. You are not safe, anywhere, ever!

“Big Brother.” When commentators use that phrase to describe a government agency, it is most often not meant as a compliment.

Rather, it is wielded as the ultimate criticism of the government’s overreach. The pejorative use of this phrase, after all, dates back more than 60 years to George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” in which “Big Brother” was the symbol of a totalitarian collectivist dictatorship.

Whenever a government agency is called “Big Brother” — whether by liberals regarding the NSA, by conservatives regarding the EPA, and regarding the TSA by just about everyone who doesn’t work there — most defenders of the entity push back against the use of the phrase. They angrily deny that the entity’s action can be described as anything close to that of “Big Brother.”

Yet amazingly, Michelle Singletary, The Washington Post‘s nationally syndicated personal finance columnist, has embraced the phrase in describing her desires for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “Watchdog Should Act Like a Big Brother,” reads the headline of her latest column in the Post.

After interviewing Richard Cordray, whom President Obama installed as director of the bureau in an unprecedented “recess” appointment when the Senate was not actually in recess, Singletary argues that the bureau has a mandate to be a “big brother” to American consumers. “The agency, under his lead, is supposed to be the big brother (or sister) consumers need to enforce federal consumer financial protection laws and, if necessary, create rules that will head off unfair, deceptive or abusive financial practices and products,” she writes.

Singletary’s column, it should be noted, usually contains more folksy financial advice than politics. She no doubt would say that she is using the term “big brother” in a benign way, and she gives a touching example of when she protected her younger brother from a school bully.

Yet regardless of motivation, any call for a government agency to act like a “big brother’ or “big sister” is also a call for the government to treat its subjects as if they were small children. Singletary confirms her preference for paternalism when she admonishes the bureau to “beat back the many bullies who for too long have taken advantage of consumers,” adding “even those [consumers] who should know better.”

This paternalism is enshrined in the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” law that created the bureau and many other “big brother” bureaucracies and mandates. As Singletary notes, Dodd-Frank gives the bureau the power to ban not just financial practices and products that are “unfair” or “deceptive,” but also those that the bureau simply deems “abusive.” As George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki has written, “abusive” is a vague and subjective legal term that allows the bureau’s director to “effectively ban many nontraditional lending products … if he thinks, for example, that consumers using that form of lending are too dumb to appreciate the full cost and risk of those products.”

This turns Singletary’s justification of a “big brother” agency — to “beat back the many bullies” — on its head. As many younger siblings know all too well, big brothers and big sisters can sometimes be bullies themselves. And when the government is denying adults the right to engage in a consensual activity in which no fraud or deception is alleged, it is the government itself that is acting as the bully.

We’ve seen examples of this government bullying in the Obama administration and predating it. “Big Brother” bullies you by forbidding you from buying an incandescent light bulb, gambling online, or building a house on a suburban lot that the EPA suddenly and arbitrarily declares to be a “wetland.”

As Ohio Attorney General, Cordray gave some indication that he will continue in this Big Brother/Big Bully tradition. Take payday loans, which President Obama has also condemned and presented as a justification for the bureau.

In a press conference posted on YouTube, Cordray tellingly admitted, that if paid back on time, the loans are more than manageable. “391 percent interest doesn’t sound quite so bad when it’s $15 ever two weeks for a one-time loan,” he said. “But we know and we’ve seen that what happens is many people fall into a debt cycle trap. It’s just not sustainable for many families in our community.”

So there you have it. “Many people” (and he didn’t specify how many) fall into debt with certain products, and Cordray’s answer is not more disclosure, not more financial education, but having Big Brother deem the products as “not sustainable” and banning them for everyone, including the “many people” who are satisfied with the product. Indeed, a slew of academic studies, most recently from Kelly Edmiston of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, have found that payday loans can be much less expensive than the other alternatives for short-term emergency credit — namely overdraft and late payment fees.

And should this “big brother” bureau choose to engage in paternalistic and bullying behavior, Dodd-Frank is written so that no one can discipline it. Congress lacks oversight through the appropriations process, since the bureau automatically can get more than $500 million each year from the Federal Reserve. And as C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel under George H.W. Bush, notes, even the courts can’t “fully review the CFPB’s actions,” because “Dodd-Frank requires the courts to defer to CFPB’s legal interpretations.”

But in this country, the Founding Fathers did give us the ultimate remedy for Big Brother: the U.S. Constitution. Both the non-recess “recess” appointment and the bureau’s very structure are an affront to the checks and balances the Framers envisioned and very likely violate specific constitutional provisions. Look for lawsuits to be filed. In the meantime, we “little siblings” should express loudly and clearly to Cordray, Singletary, and all others who think they “know better” about our financial decisions that they need to take a permanent “time out.”

Just in time for the holiday travel season,Vanity Fair’s Charles C. Mann took a trip through airport security with security expert Bruce Schneier. Mann used a fake boarding pass that he printed at home with a little bit of Photoshopping and some coaching from Schneier; it worked.

In fact, there are only three security measures that are effective, and they’re all already in place. They are “locking and reinforcing the cockpit doors, so terrorists can’t break in, positive baggage matching” — ensuring that people can’t put luggage on planes, and then not board them — “and teaching the passengers to fight back. The rest is security theater.”

It’s also time to allow passengers to keep their shoes on:

Taking off your shoes is next to useless. “It’s like saying, Last time the terrorists wore red shirts, so now we’re going to ban red shirts,” Schneier says. If the T.S.A. focuses on shoes, terrorists will put their explosives elsewhere. “Focusing on specific threats like shoe bombs or snow-globe bombs simply induces the bad guys to do something else. You end up spending a lot on the screening and you haven’t reduced the total threat.”

Schneier goes on to show, point-by-point, why almost every aspect of TSA’s security apparatus is spectacularly ineffective. Body scanners, behavioral detection officers, air marshals, and all the rest are the kind of big-budget production that doesn’t actually produce much in the way of increased safety. Fortunately, terrorism is rare; we are still safe.

Read the whole thing. And when you’re done, pick up a copy of Schneier’s book, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World.

With holiday cooking on most of our minds this week, it’s worth celebrating some good news about one of the most beleaguered food ingredients: table salt. For years, consumers and food producers have been bombarded with demands to reduce sodium consumption by nanny state regulators hoping to improve public health, even though the evidence linking high sodium diets and serious health concerns has always been ambiguous at best. But this year alone, several major scientific studies have cast that link in even further doubt.

The folks over at the Salt Institute — the trade association representing salt producers and commercial users — are touting these results as “The Biggest Health & Nutrition Story of 2011.” ”In 2011, half a dozen medical studies quantified the health benefits of salt or revealed the significant risks of low-sodium diets, making it a year of vindication for this essential nutrient and the people who love it. … The latest data should raise fresh questions about the federal government’s effort to put all Americans on a low-salt diet that could do far more harm than good.”

This wasn’t surprising to us. For years, we at CEI have been pointing out that the belief that sodium consumption in the United States has reached extreme and unhealthy levels is mistaken. And, as more and more high-quality research has been conducted on this subject during the past 40 years, the link between high-sodium diets and negative health effects has become more tenuous, not more certain.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has recommended a Tolerable Upper Intake Level of just 2,300 mg of sodium per day and an Adequate Intake of just 1,500 mg per day. And regulators are concerned that average sodium intake per person in the U.S. is approximately 3,300 mg per day. Yet decades of scaremongering have had little effect on consumer behavior, as sodium consumption has remained essentially flat since the 1950s. As my colleague Dan Compton wrote nearly two years ago, U.S. sodium consumption isn’t particularly high by global standards. And efforts to reduce the salt content in foods is typically frustrated by consumers who adjust their dietary intake by seeking out foods with more salt — even when they’re not aware that the salt content of the foods they’ve been eating has been reduced.

Last month, CEI submitted comments on a joint Food and Drug Administration-U.S. Department of Agriculture query about the effectiveness of various approaches to reducing sodium consumption. We argued that:

Public health analysts who continue to advocate for mandatory sodium reductions have selectively highlighted only those research results that suggest a clear and direct link between sodium consumption and higher blood pressure. They have ignored or attempted to explain away contrary findings. In some cases, analysts even appear to have cherry-picked individual observations from within studies that reveal both positive and negative associations between salt consumption and blood pressure in order to bolster arguments that the link is definitive.

In some ways, this type of behavior is unsurprising. It is well-established that researchers often exhibit what is sometimes known as “White Hat Bias,” the propensity to give preferential treatment to studies or data that confirm a widely held “politically correct” view on scientific issues. A study of White Hat Bias published last year in the International Journal of Obesity found that, when referring to the results of previously published research, authors frequently cite data incorrectly and cite only findings that confirm the commonly accepted or politically correct view. An accompanying editorial explained further that “negative results may be ignored and secondarily positive analyses are cited as the conclusions of the study.”

Of course, some people do unequivocally benefit from reducing their sodium intake: many individuals with high blood pressure, for example, as well as African Americans (who tend to have higher blood pressure). But reducing salt consumption does not lower every individual’s blood pressure, even those with hypertension. A Cochrane Collaboration review published this year, examined 167 studies in the peer reviewed literature and found that reducing salt consumption lowered average systolic blood pressure in healthy individuals by just 1 millimeter of mercury (mmHg), and reduced systolic blood pressure among hypertensives by 3.5 mmHg. That’s not a heck of a lot.

More importantly, lowering blood pressure by reducing salt intake does not clearly improve overall health (see here and here, for example). Lowering blood pressure substantially does appear to be associated with a reduction in heart disease, particularly among hypertensives. However, the blood pressure-reducing effect of eating less salt is so small that it does not appear to be associated with morbidity or mortality benefits. Another of the major studies published this year, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that, while higher sodium consumption was associated with slightly higher blood pressure, this “association did not translate into a higher risk of hypertension or [cardio-vascular disease] complications.” More surprising, however, the authors found that lower sodium consumption was associated with higher cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality. The third of study subjects who consumed the least salt had three times the mortality as the third who consumed the most salt.

None of this suggests that those with average sodium consumption should switch to a high-salt diet. And again, some consumers should indeed try to cut back. But the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence does suggest that we have a lot less to worry about than the public health nannies would like us to believe.

I didn’t have a chance to write about it then, but a few weeks back the Food and Drug Administration denied a citizen petition submitted by environmental activists asking the agency to forbid the “sub-therapeutic” use of certain antibiotics in food animals. The petition — initially filed in 2005, and fundamentally identical to one submitted in 1999 and rejected in 2001 — argued that using antibiotics for growth promotion, rather than to treat infected animals, contributes to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten human health.

The issue is a complicated one, with serious implications for medical treatment and consumer well-being more broadly. We know that development by human pathogens of resistance to medically important antibiotics poses serious public health concerns. And, although a clear link between animal antibiotics use and human disease has not been proven, there are good theoretical reasons to believe, and some real world evidence suggesting, that it does — or at least could — occur.

Nevertheless, I would still argue that FDA made the right call, but for an incomplete reason. In response to both the 1999 and 2005 petitions, the agency essentially said that going through the formal legal process to revoke the approvals for a drug is intensive, time consuming, and a poor use of FDA resources. And because the agency already monitors the development of resistance and has both nominally voluntary and explicitly mandatory programs in place to restrict uses that may pose realistic threats to human health, FDA argued that beginning the revocation process isn’t worth it.

I would further argue, though, that the agency simply does not have sufficient information on which to base a decision to revoke the approvals in question, but that it should begin a less formal investigation to shed some light on the matter. The agency has never before compared the risks that arise from animal antibiotics uses to those that would arise from restricting them. But doing so should be mandatory before any bans or further restrictions are put in place.

The use of antibiotics in animals is only one factor (and a small one at that) in the emergence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, and it contributes far less to the development of resistance than does misuse among human patients. More importantly, though, the use of antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals delivers substantial benefits for both animal and human health. Even the often criticized sub-therapeutic uses of these drugs contribute to reduced pathogen loads in animal-derived foods and have a positive impact on human safety. The question that few have even bothered to ask, and that the scientific community has not yet answered is whether, on balance, forbidding sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock would do more good than harm. There is good, though by no means conclusive, reason to believe the answer is no.

Generally, even when antibiotic-resistant bacteria are present in livestock, the likelihood of human exposure is remote, in part because risk management strategies to minimize and contain resistant pathogens have been implemented throughout the food chain. But, even when human consumers are exposed to resistant bacteria, the effect of the drug-resistance is typically inconsequential. General intestinal enteritis caused by Salmonella, for example, is rarely treated with antibiotics, leaving little opportunity for a therapeutic failure. And, in other cases where antibiotic treatment is indicated, bacteria that are resistant to one or more antibiotics remain sensitive to others. While not zero, the risk of a treatment failure in human patients arising from the development of antibiotic-resistant pathogens in food animals is quite low (See here, here, here, and here).

But is it worth tolerating even a small risk merely for the benefit of cheaper food? Some would argue “no.” The New York Times, for example, editorialized that rejecting the petitions was “a bad decision that runs counter to the F.D.A.’s own research.” And “The drugs make the animals grow faster, but their overuse increases the likelihood of antibiotic-resistant pathogens.” But posing the question that way ignores other important benefits.

Consumers benefit from lower prices, to be sure. But humans also derive health benefits from the presence of safer and healthier livestock animals. Sub-therapeutic antibiotics use helps to control and reduce the spread of a number of zoonotic diseases, and it is associated with a generalized reduction in health problems in the animals in which they are used. Carcasses from slaughtered animals not treated with antibiotics are more likely to be contaminated with human pathogenic microorganisms than those from treated animals (See here and here). And, because sub-therapeutic antibiotics use increases feed conversion efficiency, it lets farmers produce more food with fewer animals and less feed, which has significant environmental benefits — including, but not limited to, a need for less land in raising livestock and animal feed crops, and less waste from the animals.

Furthermore, experience in foreign countries that have banned or heavily restricted sub-therapeutic use is decidedly mixed. So, it is not clear whether a ban in the U.S. would result in less resistant bacteria or improved human health outcomes. Denmark, for example, began restricting sub-therapeutic uses in 1995. But over the following decade, while resistance to some antibiotics decreased among some pathogens in some livestock animal species, resistance among other pathogens to other antibiotics in other animals rose (See here and here). And there is little evidence that the occurrence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens in humans was affected at all.

Similar results were seen following the European Union-wide restriction on sub-therapeutic uses. “The expected decrease in the incidence of resistant human pathogens did not occur. Instead, prevalence of many resistant human pathogens increased, in some cases up to 49 percent of the pre-ban incidence.”

There is no doubt that the rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria is a serious problem. And it may even be wise to ban the use of new antibiotic classes — or existing classes that are considered antibiotics of last resort — in livestock, or at least to postpone their use for a period of years following their introduction. But it’s not remotely clear that consumers would experience net positive benefits from a ban on essentially all sub-therapeutic uses.

The TSA has allegedly strip-searched an elderly woman for wearing a back brace. They suspected it was a money belt; turns out it was a back brace, just as the woman said. Two points to make here:

One, how degrading for the poor woman. Life is hard enough with a bad back.

Two, this strip-search was security-unrelated. Suppose the woman was wearing a money belt. Even the crispest of $100 bills can’t bring down a plane. Currency does not pose a safety threat of any kind.

The TSA is also explicitly disallowed from searching for criminal evidence unrelated to passenger safety. And there isn’t even anything criminal about carrying hidden cash. If anything, it’s probably safer to carry it that way.

Fortunately, the GOP is stepping in with a strong response that cuts to the heart of the problem: a new bill that would remove badges from official TSA uniforms. Agents might also lose the stripe on the side of their pants.

If you were planning to go-a-Wassailing along this Christmas, you may want to read this post carefully so that you can plan your booze-buying accordingly this holiday season. The “blue laws,” that still exist in many states, were originally intended to enforce religious worship. While most states have done away with the anachronistic rules, many still maintain bans on sales of liquor on Sundays, election days, and certain holidays. Since this Christmas falls on a Sunday this year, about 27 states in the union have some kind of blue law or another that will severely limit its residents’ ability to get booze, regardless of whether or not they are religious or celebrate Christmas. Most of the states listed below have limitations on off-premise sales of alcohol (that is liquor shops) but some also limit or prohibit all liquor sales, including serving in bars and restaurants on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Most of the states on the list below have state-wide prohibitions, but for some states the laws governing liquor are county-by-county. Even if your state doesn’t make the list, individual stores may elect to close on Christmas Day so you should prepare head of time so you won’t be forced to take drastic measures.

Alabama only allows off-premise sales of liquor through state-run stores, all of which will be closed from 4pm on Christmas Eve until the following Tuesday.

Arkansas not only prohibits sales of take-away liquor, but also prohibits

Colorado lifted the Sunday sales ban in 2008, however, off-premise alcohol sales are banned on Christmas Day. If you’re really in need you’ll be happy to know that you’ll be able to buy 3.2 percent ABV beer at grocery stores (if they’re open) on Xmas.

Connecticut bans Sunday liquor sales *except “for alcoholic liquor that is served where food is also available…or by casino permittees at casinos.” In addition, if Christmas falls on a Sunday, off-premise sales are also prohibited on the following Monday.

The District of Columbia, oddly, bans Sunday sales of liquor unless Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday — then stores are allowed to open on December 24. Of course, since Christmas Day is on Sunday people in the district will have to get whatever alcohol they want from grocery/convenience stores (or neighboring states).

Georgia: All alcohol sales are generally prohibited on Christmas Day. However, cities with more than 400,000 residents may allow alcohol sales after 12:30pm on Christmas.

Indiana liquor stores are forced to close while restaurants and bars are banned from Christmas Day alcohol sales, but may serve alcohol by the glass on Christmas Eve.

Kansas While some counties may permit Sunday sales as of 2005, liquor stores are prohibited from selling on Christmas.

Maryland: Oh, Maryland. The state that I currently call home has a labyrinthine system of liquor laws, which means that rules vary widely from county to county. Particularly confusing is the fact that while the state itself is not a “control state” meaning that the state doesn’t own or operate liquor stores, Montgomery County is a “control county” that shuts down its liquor stores on Christmas Day (according to the Chief Operator of the Montgomery Dept. of Liquor Control). Other counties in Maryland, such as Prince George’s, will have sales on Christmas.

Massachusetts like Connecticut prohibits off-premise sales on Christmas day as well as the following Monday if Christmas falls on a Sunday.

Michigan: Last year, Michigan undid the state ban on Christmas day alcohol sales but many municipalities, such as Flint, chose to maintain the ban.

Minnesota prohibits off-premise sales of alcohol on Sunday and Christmas.

Mississippi has a number of dry counties and many wet counties prohibit Sunday sales. There is a state-wide ban on off-premise liquor sales.

New Hampshire: Wine and beer can be purchased in NH grocery stores, but as a “control state” liquor can only be sold at state-run stores. While there’s no official prohibition on the books, the office of the Liquor Commissioner informed me that the liquor stores will not be open on Christmas.

New Mexico allows businesses with a “valid food establishment permit” to sell alcohol for on-site consumption; liquor stores may not sell alcohol on Christmas Day.

New York prohibits off-premise alcohol sales “on the twenty-fifth day of December, known as Christmas Day.”

North Carolina, a control state that prohibits liquor stores from selling on Sundays as well as on Christmas day.

North Dakota No Christmas Day on-sale, nor sales on Christmas Eve after 6pm.

Ohio (edit): According to a state official at the Ohio Division of Liquor Control, “In Ohio, all Agency Outlets (spirituous liquor) are privately owned and operate on a Contract with the Division.  By policy the outlets are closed on Christmas Day.”

Oklahoma makes it illegal to sell on Sundays as well as on holidays, including Christmas.

Pennsylvania liquor stores must close on holidays, including Christmas. Stores will be closed on Christmas.

South Carolina: While there is no official ban, yet, on Christmas Day sales in SC the department of revenue has stated several times over the years that liquor stores must not operate on Christmas Day. South Carolina also bans the serving of spirits or liquor stores from opening on Sundays (with a few exceptions).

South Dakota allows sales of malt beverages, like beer, but on Christmas Day liquor and wine may not be served or sold.

Tennessee: Liquor stores must be closed on Sundays.

Texas law bans the sale and serving of hard liquor on Sundays and Christmas and when Christmas falls on Sunday as it will this year the law requires liquor stores to close Monday as well. There is, however, a handy loophole in the law that will let you order liquor with food between 10am and 12 on Sundays, so you can still have your Bloody Mary or Mimosa with brunch.

Utah state stores are closed on Sundays and Christmas. Bars and restaurants that choose to stay open on Christmas are allowed to serve alcohol according to agents at the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

Virginia is a control state, for now, so hard liquor may only be purchased in state stores, which will be closed on Christmas day. Beer and wine are sold in many grocery stores throughout the state.

Washington: State-run stores, which will soon be no more, are closed on Christmas, while state-contracted stores have the option to remain open on Christmas Day.

Ten years ago today, Enron Corp. filed for bankruptcy. Today, with all of its dealings with banks, it would probably have been deemed “too big to fail.”

But luckily, this was before Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner occupied the Treasury Department. Enron was allowed to fail, and its executives were punished for fraud under decades-old securities laws.

While there was certainly damage to employees and, temporarily, to surrounding businesses in Houston, the bankruptcy barely caused a blip to the larger economy. The economy, already reeling because of the 9/11 attacks three months earlier, soon had a remarkable recovery.

Rather, the most damaging action of the Enron affair occurred in the aftermath of post-Enron reform. This would be the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Ten years later, even the Obama administration agrees that Sarbox’s crushing burden of accounting mandates is holding back economic growth.

And Sarbox has little to show in results for investors, having failed to stop Lehman Brothers, Countrywide and now MF Global, which was run into the ground by a former politician who had championed the 2002 law. Jon Corzine’s bio on the website BigThink.com states glowingly, “As a member of the United States Senate, Corzine co-authored the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a piece of legislation designed to crack down on corporate malfeasance crafted in the wake of accounting scandals surrounding Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, and other major corporations.”

Yes, it turns out Corzine may have been more of an expert than we thought on alleged “corporate malfeasance.”  And as noted  in the October report of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness,  Sarbox has crushed the dreams of thousands of honest entrepreneurs for every scandal it may have stopped (and I don’t know that it has stopped any.)

Pointing out that “the data clearly shows that job growth accelerates when companies go public,” the Obama jobs council noted with dismay that there were fewer U.S. venture-backed initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2008 and 2009 than in any year since 1985. As I have noted previously, the data also show that even the recession years of the early ’90s had more IPOs than any year since Sarbox went into effect.

Obama’s council blamed, among other things, “unintended consequences stemming from . . . Sarbanes-Oxley regulations.” It then amazingly called for exemptions from many provisions of Sarbox for companies with up to $1 billion in market capitalization.

Yet just as amazingly, exemptions that did not go as far as the Obama jobs council recommended were killed this week by three GOP House members who seemed to be in the grip of the powerful accounting industry, which gets rich off the mandates that are so costly to entrepreneurs and the economy as a whole.

This Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee was scheduled to vote on H.R. 3213, a bill by Rep. Stephen Fincher that would exempt firms with market cap of $350 million and below from the “internal control” mandates of Section 404. This was a far lower figure than the $1 billion put forward by Obama’s council and applied to just one section — albeit the most costly section – of the law.

Yet as I reported Tuesday in National Review and The Wall Street Journal writes up in an editorial today, GOP Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) and Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) had actively worked against the bill. House sources also told me that Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) was leaning no, and his office did not return my query to confirm or deny.

And, as noted by the WSJ and Ben Smith’s column in Politico, committee member Michele Bachmann apparently would not return from her presidential campaign to break the tie, even though she — like fellow candidates Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Jon Huntsman — has called for repeal of Sarbox. Smith notes that in contrast, Paul, also a committee member, was ready to return. So the Fincher bill granting modest Sarbox relief had to be yanked.

As I noted in NR:

A claim made by … Pearce, Campbell, and the accounting lobby is that internal-control audits are essential for fraud detection. Yet financial analysts looking at the subprime scandals in Sarbox’s wake have come to the almost opposite conclusion. By requiring resources to be spent on auditing “internal controls” that were trivial for shareholders yet lucrative for auditors — such as employee passwords and possession of office keys – Sarbox Section 404 actually diverted attention away from ensuring accurate reporting of a company’s financial condition.

Commenting on corporate misstatements during the mortgage bubble, respected analyst Janet Tavakoli had this to say on Sarbox to housing journalist Robert Stowe England in his new book Black Box Casino: “Sarbanes-Oxley did nothing. It didn’t work. It was a total waste.”

But who knows? Maybe Sarbox is doing exactly what its champion Jon Corzine wanted it to do!

Millions of Americans are taking to the skies to spend time with their families over Thanksgiving. Many of them will be carrying leftovers on their return trips. Fortunately, the TSA is fully prepared to defend the airways against terrorist turkeys and rogue desserts. Here is a list of food and other holiday-themed items that run afoul of the TSA’s 3-1-1 rule:

Cranberry sauce, creamy dips and spreads (cheeses, peanut butter, etc.), gift baskets with food items (salsa, jams and salad dressings), gravy, jams, jellies, maple syrup, oils and vinegars, salad dressing, salsa, sauces, soups, wine, liquor and beer.

That means you’ll have to put them in checked baggage if you have a decent amount. They are far too dangerous to bring on the plane in a carry-on.

There are also specific guidelines for pies and cakes:

Note: You can bring pies and cakes through the security checkpoint, but please be advised that they are subject to additional screening.

I feel safer already.

According to Bloomberg News, North Carolina Democratic Senator Kay Hagan is set to introduce a bill that would create new “progressive” and “exceptional” approval processes for new drugs to treat unmet needs. These would be similar to the FDA’s existing “accelerated approval” process, open primarily to AIDS and cancer drugs, which permits the agency to grant a conditional approval once intermediate clinical trials demonstrate improvement in a so-called “surrogate end-point” such as tumor shrinkage. Once granted accelerated approval, these drugs must still complete more rigorous Phase III clinical trials to demonstrate improvement in the ultimate clinical end-point of patient survival, or the agency may revoke the conditional approval.

Details of the bill are not yet available, but I understand that “progressive approval” would function essentially like accelerated approval does now, but that the pathway would be open to any drug that would be the first approved treatment for a given disease or condition, or for an identifiable sub-population with the disease or condition. “Exceptional approval” would be available in cases where standard controlled clinical trials would be unfeasible to conduct, such as when the patient population is so small that enrolling a large clinical trial of thousands of patients would be nearly impossible. It would also be open to cases in which it would be unethical to conduct a standard placebo-controlled trials because that entails some patients getting no active treatment.

The accelerated approval process has been somewhat controversial, inasmuch as it can result in the withdrawal of an approved drug that has benefited some, but not all, patients taking it. That’s what happened with the breast cancer indication for the drug Avastin, which I wrote about earlier this year. It also becomes difficult for manufacturers to enroll clinical trials once a product may be legally sold to any patient whose doctor prescribes it. There’s a critical discussion of accelerated approval here.

The process is by no means perfect. But to the extent that it helps get needed drugs to market sooner, accelerated approval has been a tremendous boon for patient health. So, I look forward to seeing Sen. Hagan’s bill, and I applaud her efforts to help expedite the availability of new treatment options.