The broken promises include his pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” his promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, and his promise not to sign bills without first giving the public five days of notice.

The Congressional Budget Office says that Obama’s proposed budgets will explode the national debt through massive spending increases, increasing the already large deficits left behind by the Bush administration from $4.4 trillion to $9.3 trillion. His record-setting budgets flagrantly violate his promise to propose a “net spending cut.”

Obama broke his campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year by signing into law a regressive excise tax increase to expand the SCHIP program, and by proposing a cap-and-trade energy tax that could charge up to $2 trillion, a massive cost that Obama himself has said will be passed “on to consumers,” as well as homeowners and motorists. (In 2008, Obama privately admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle that if he was elected, electricity bills would “skyrocket” under his administration, but it didn’t report that.)

He also broke his promise not to raise taxes by backing health-care bills that would impose a laundry list of new taxes on the middle class, including a tax on uninsured people.  Americans for Tax Reform earlier summarized the tax increases in ObamaCare: an individual mandate tax of $900 per individual or $3800 per family (if you don’t have health insurance); an employer mandate tax of $400 per employee if health coverage is not offered; an “excise tax on high-cost health plans”; a “medicine cabinet tax”; capping Flexible-Spending Accounts (FSA’s); abolishing most HSAs; and increasing tax penalties for HSAs.

The costly cap-and-trade energy bill supported by Obama would lead to big tax increases, administration officials privately have conceded, even though they publicly claim otherwise.  “Officials at the Treasury Department think cap-and-trade legislation would cost taxpayers hundreds of billion in taxes, according to internal documents circulated within the agency and provided to The Washington Times” by CEI.  It could raise household taxes by $1761 per year, equivalent to a 15 percent tax increase.   It would also result in “loss of steel, paper, aluminum, chemical, and cement manufacturing jobs.”  (Obama earlier admitted that “under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”)

Although cap-and-trade backers claim it will cut greenhouse gas emissions, it may perversely increase them and also result in dirtier air, as well as harming forests and water supplies.   It would enrich politically-connected corporations, and result in massive destruction of the world’s forests.   By expanding ethanol subsidies and mandates, it would cause enormous “damage to water supplies, soil health and air quality.” Ethanol subsidies have already resulted in forests being destroyed in the Third World, and by diverting cropland to fuel production away from food production, they have already caused famines that have killed countless people in the world’s poorest countries.

Over and over again, Obama has broken his campaign promise to give the public five days of notice before signing bills into law, including his very first law, the trial-lawyer backed Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Obama also repeatedly made false claims about the Supreme Court decision that the Ledbetter law overruled, misstating the facts of that case and how long it gives employees to sue over pay discrimination (the Court did NOT say that employees have to sue even before discovering discrimination).

Obama broke seven campaign promises dealing with transparency and clean government in signing the $800 billion stimulus package, much of whose contents were secret until shortly before Congress voted on it, and whose 1400 pages went unread by most Congressmen who voted on it.  (It repealed welfare reform and contained loads of welfare, pork, and waste, while wiping out jobs in the export sector.)

Obama’s broken promises are part of a larger pattern of dishonesty. Obama claimed his $800 billion stimulus package was needed to avert “irreversible decline.” But the Congressional Budget Office concluded before and after its passage that the stimulus package will actually cut the size of the economy in the long run. Obama’s budgets don’t add up, either, piling up $9.3 trillion in red ink, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a staggering $2.3 trillion more than Obama claimed.

The Washington Examiner explains how the bill will lead to deforestation, and thus increase greenhouse gas emissions in the long run.

The bill, which is loaded with pork for special interests, is backed by Obama, who once admitted that under his cap-and-trade scheme, electricity and utility bills would “skyrocket” and coal-fed power plants would go “bankrupt.”  Treasury Department analysts estimated it could increase taxes on the average American household by $1,761 per year.

The bill also contains environmentally harmful provisions, such as massive ethanol subsidies, which will result in “damage to water supplies, soil health and air quality.” Ethanol subsidies have resulted in forests being destroyed in the Third World, and caused famines that have killed countless people in the world’s poorest countries.

Now, Brand has written a new book, called Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, in which he takes on these environmental shibboleths in a more concerted fashion.  On American Public Radio’s Marketplace program yesterday, host Kai Ryssdal discussed the new book with Brand.  Asked what prompted him to write the book, Brand said that,

“My fellow environmentalists have been wrong about a couple of issues and were getting in the way of important things we should be doing, both with biotechnology and with nuclear technology, and in terms of how we think about cities, and in terms of how I know we’re going to think about geoengineering–that is, direct intervention in the climate.”

Ryssdal contrasted Brand’s earlier support for the back to the land movement with his current belief that big cities are better for the environment.

“Not only big cities, but big slums … that’s how [poor people in the developing world] are getting out of poverty.  They’re emptying out a lot of the subsistence farms that have been tough on the landscape all over the world, moving into towns for opportunity, building jobs for each other.  They’re also moving up what’s called the energy ladder, toward more and better grid electricity.  By and large the cities are probably the greenest thing that humans do.”

On his support for biotech crops, Brand said,

“Already, the crops we have now, the herbicide-tolerant and the insect-resistant crops … [are] getting what amounts to higher yields. You can raise more food on less land, and all of that is good for ecology in general and the climate particularly.”

Challenged that critics call them Frankenfoods, Brand replied,

“The idea there was that Dr. Frankenstein was doing something against nature, and that somehow the genetically engineered food crops are against nature.  And as a biologist, I’m just baffled by that line of argument because agriculture has been in that sense against nature for 10,000 years. That we’re finally able to do more precise tuning of the crops is a huge gain, not a loss.”

The federal government does, however, have a problem with big compensation packages at private banks like Bank of America and Citigroup, even for new executives and talented managers who had nothing to do with any financial mismanagement.  Obama’s pay czar, Ken Feinberg, a major donor to liberal politicians like Senator Chris Dodd (who recommended Feinberg for the job after he gave Dodd more than $9000), is now chopping compensation more at basically self-supporting institutions like Bank of America than at completely-bailed out entities like Chrysler.  (Many expect Chrysler to go under despite a $70 billion auto bailout.  Even the recently departed car czar, Rattner, admits Chrysler should perhaps have been allowed to go under, from a coldly economic point of view, given its gross mismanagement and dim prospects. Bank of America’s recently departed ex-CEO was a moderate Republican; by contrast, Chrysler is owned mostly by the left-wing United Auto Workers Union, which received majority ownership from the Obama administration at taxpayer expense, through a politicized bankruptcy process).

Some of the “bailed-out” banks subject to the pay czar weren’t really bailed out: they gave the federal government preferred stock in exchange for federal bailout money only under duress, after they were told that for them not to take federal bailout money would stigmatize the banks that truly needed it, and that if they failed to take the money, bank regulators would make their lives hell. As the Treasury Secretary told the banks, “if a capital infusion is not appealing, you should be aware your regulator will require it in any circumstance.” Regulators also forced Bank of America to take over failing investment bank Merrill Lynch, and pressured it to hide the resulting losses from its shareholders.

Feinberg’s actions have already left taxpayers worse off by forcing Citigroup to get rid of a profitable subsidiary. As finance professor Roy C. Smith noted in Sunday’s Washington Post, “Feinberg’s actions . . . are not going to improve either the government’s chances of getting its money back or the prospects of repairing these damaged companies. Because of his recommendations, Citigroup agreed to sell its profitable Phibro unit at an extremely low price of only one or two times earnings in order to avoid having to pay a talented trader a $100 million contractual share of the profits he had earned. The most successful of the remaining employees of Citigroup, AIG and Bank of America have been given an incentive to leave their posts, and the firms will be constrained in hiring replacements.”

Many competent executives whose pay is threatened by the pay czar are now leaving for other firms that (for the moment) are beyond his reach. The result is lousier management at banks that the FDIC insures, and that the federal government now owns stock in.

The pay czar’s political patron, Senator Dodd, received sweetheart loans from the reckless, bankrupt subprime lender Countrywide, and a massive gift from Edward Downe, in the form of a luxurious “cottage” in Ireland he received in a “cut rate real estate deal” for hundreds of thousands of dollars less than fair market value.

Banks will now be pressured to make even more risky, low-income loans. Obama has sent to Congress his proposal to create a politically correct entity called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. “The agency would be in charge of enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act, a law that prods banks to make loans in low-income communities.”

Government pressure on banks to make low-income loans was a key reason for the mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis. Yet Obama’s disturbing proposal would empower the new agency to enforce the Community Reinvestment Act without regard for banks’ financial safety and soundness.  The Community Reinvestment Act was a key contributor to the financial crisis.

The mortgage crisis was also caused by the reckless government-sponsored mortgage giants (”GSEs”) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and by federal affordable-housing mandates.

But Obama’s proposed financial rules overhaul does absolutely nothing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, admits Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, even though he admits that “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system.” (The government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went broke, costing taxpayers perhaps $200 billion.  Fannie Mae apparently has engaged in massive accounting fraud, and has used intimidation to fight reform).

Worse, Obama’s plan is “largely the product of extensive conversations” with two lawmakers responsible for the corrupt status quo, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, and it expands the reach of regulations that have been used by left-wing groups to extort payoffs from banks.

In other news, a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that the provisions in the Senate health care “reform” bill sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) would add $1,700 a year to the cost of family coverage in 2013 and $600 for a single person. By 2019, family premiums could be $4,000 higher and individual premiums could be $1,500 higher.

CEI’s Greg Conko calls the Baucus bill “worse than the disease.”  In a recently-released paper, “A Cure Worse than the Disease: Obama Care Won’t Cut Costs, But May Cut Quality,” Conko notes that most of the alleged cost-cutting measures in the Baucus bill merely shift costs from the federal government onto the states or private payers, without reducing long-term health care inflation.  The only measures that could conceivably reduce the annual rate of growth in health care costs would erect government barriers between patients and their doctors, while jeopardizing long-term medical innovation.

A new study by the Oliver Wyman consultancy found that provisions contained in the health-care reform bills, like guaranteed issue and community rating mandates, would drive up premiums by 50 percent for individual policies and 19 percent for small group plans.

A study from the Independence Institute says that ObamaCare would drive up inflation and medical-care costs, while shrinking the economy.

As CEI’s Conko notes, many states have highly concentrated markets.  In Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Alaska, for example, 95 percent or more of the health insurance market is served by just two insurers.  But Obama and congressional Democrats oppose letting insurers compete across state lines, blocking competition that could make health insurance cheaper.  Other countries with cheaper health insurance permit insurers to compete nationally.

ObamaCare would raise taxes.  It would also explode state and federal budget deficits, and would actually cost $2 trillion — far more than its promised $800 billion price tag.  It also ignores needed reforms that would actually reduce the costs of health care, like steps to reduce the cost of defensive medicine, which wastes $200 billion annually.  And it contains special-interest pork, like racial preferences.

Government pressure on banks to make more risky loans in low-income neighborhoods was a key reason for the mortgage meltdown. Yet President Obama’s disturbing proposal would empower the new agency to enforce the Community Reinvestment Act without regard for banks’ financial safety and soundness.  The Community Reinvestment Act was a key contributor to the financial crisis.

The mortgage crisis was also caused by the reckless government-sponsored mortgage giants (”GSEs”) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and by federal affordable-housing mandates.  But Obama’s proposed financial rules overhaul does absolutely nothing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, admits Obama’s Treasury Secretary, tax cheat Timothy Geithner, even though he admits that “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system.”

As Michael Barone notes, Congress is now seeking to pass costly legislation that could reinflate the housing bubble, threatening future financial meltdowns.

The Obama administration is also busy promoting the junky, risky mortgages that fueled the housing bubble, showing that it has learned nothing from history.

Obama has sent to Congress his proposal to create a politically-correct entity called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. “The agency would be in charge of enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act, a law that prods banks to make loans in low-income communities.”

Government pressure on banks to make low-income loans was a key reason for the mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis. Yet Obama’s disturbing proposal would empower the new agency to enforce the Community Reinvestment Act without regard for banks’ financial safety and soundness.  The Community Reinvestment Act was a key contributor to the financial crisis.

The mortgage crisis was also caused by the reckless government-sponsored mortgage giants (”GSEs”) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and by federal affordable-housing mandates.

But Obama’s proposed financial rules overhaul does absolutely nothing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, admits Obama’s Treasury Secretary, tax cheat Timothy Geithner, even though he admits that “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system.”

Worse, Obama’s plan is “largely the product of extensive conversations” with two lawmakers responsible for the corrupt status quo, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, and it expands the reach of regulations that have been used by left-wing groups to extort pay-offs from banks.

First, no one could answer the question as to whether legislation would significantly reduce risks, nor could anyone determine where the real risks lie. And no one could provide an adequate justification for increased government action because food safety has not declined in recent years—it is more likely improving.

Nonetheless, David W. K. Acheson of Leavitt Partners (a former FDA official) and the Consumer Federation of America’s Carol Tucker Foreman strongly supported increased federal action simply because they “believed” it would work. Walter Olson of the Manhattan Institute and Overlawyered.com noted some serious, potential pitfalls, such as reduced competition, destruction of small businesses, and the expansion of crazy regulations on bake sales and other food-related activities. He used the disaster created by the Consumer Protect Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) as an example.

Michelle Worosz professor from Auburn University argued that we need more information before regulating. Worosz is correct about holding off. However, we can’t simply wait for better information because we will never have it.

By definition, public officials are too far away from process to make reasonable one-size-fits-all decisions about myriad, varied, ever-changing, and situation-specific problems. As F.A. Hayek pointed out, it is a fatal conceit to believe otherwise. Only the multitude of individuals in a dynamic market process–which holds each accountable–produces desired results. Regulators, on the other hand, simply second-guess all those private decisions. They might have good or bad motivations—but it doesn’t matter. They simply don’t have the information they need, nor can they design a one-sized fits all rule that will address all problems.

Despite claims to the contrary, private parties are also more accountable. They must live with the consequences of their own choices, and businesses in particular must address the impacts they have on others. After all, no one profits from making their customers sick. Businesses are held liable in courts or suffer substantial losses of market share where problems, or the perception of problems, exist. They act more quickly than government, and their solutions are more precise.

In contrast, regulators can pass misguided rules based largely on political tides rather than good information. They often do more harm than good and are expensive, yet few people trace the problems back to government. Then regulators go back to Congress for bigger budgets to fix the problems they created. They don’t lose their jobs or go out of business when they make fatal mistakes. This is, as Olsen points out, pretty much what’s happening with the CPSIA law.

Indeed, the disciplines of the marketplace explain why our food supply is amazingly safe and getting better considering all the opportunities for contamination from farmyard to table. And no government regulator will do any better in correcting problems as they emerge. In fact, this is why we don’t have the government growing and distributing our food. If we did, we probably would all starve!

Photo attribution: Rachel Kramer Bussel’s photostream, on Flickr.

“Past debates about the use of new technologies for agriculture have tended to adopt an either/or approach, emphasising the merits of particular agricultural systems or technological approaches and the downsides of others. This has been seen most obviously with respect to genetically modifi ed (GM) crops, the use of pesticides and the arguments for and against organic modes of production. These debates have failed to acknowledge that there is no technological panacea for the global challenge of sustainable and secure global food production. There will always be trade-offs and local complexities. This report considers both new crop varieties and appropriate agroecological crop and soil management practices and adopts an inclusive approach.”

Read the whole report here.

“The fight to end hunger is being hurt by environmentalists who insist that genetically modified crops cannot be used in Africa, Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of software giant Microsoft, said on Thursday. Gates said GMO crops, fertilizer and chemicals are important tools — although not the only tools — to help small farms in Africa boost production.”

That’s great news, of course, but not the only good news on the food biotech front.  Today, the UK’s Telegraph reports that a year long investigation into food biotechnology by the Royal Society is expected to conclude in a report issued next week that:

“GM crops should be used in the future to alleviate food shortages. This study is going to move the debate forward. The Government will have to take notice of this. The world is undergoing dramatic change and it won’t be long before people are thinking ‘where is my next meal coming from?’ Where GM has been proved effective at either increasing yields or else resistant to diseases it should be used in the UK. GM crops need to be looked at one by one. They are not the only solution to world hunger but they are part of it.”

And Reuters reports that, even European Union Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has given a modicum of support to food biotech, suggesting that “EU countries should look at scientific evidence rather than emotions, as is now the case, when deciding on authorisations for new biotech products.”  Boel said last Thursday that “For the [EU] farm sector, the imbalance in GMO approval between the European Union and the rest of the world is a clear and present financial threat.”

All in all, I’d count that as a good week.

Congressional leaders are ignoring warnings from experts across the political spectrum, such as conservative Peter Wallison’s October 16 piece in the Wall Street Journal, titled “Barney Frank, Predatory Lender,” and liberal Charles Lane’s recent piece in the Washington Post, “Doubling Down On the Wrong Housing Policy.”  (Wallison, a banking expert, prophetically warned for years about the risky practices of the government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were at the core of the financial crisis, and later had to be bailed out by taxpayers at a cost of around $200 billion.)

The Obama administration is also busy promoting the junky, risky mortgages that fueled the housing bubble, showing that it has learned nothing from history.

In the Washington Examiner, Meghan Cox Gurdon explains how housing policies affected two sisters, one responsible and one irresponsible.  The financially-irresponsible sister, who was unable to manage her own finances, and had recently defaulted on a small car loan, ended up getting a taxpayer-subsidized mortgage.  Meanwhile, the responsible sister and her husband were unable to obtain a mortgage loan, despite having an “excellent credit rating” and money for a large downpayment.

(The Obama administration doesn’t seem to have learned history’s lessons overseas, either.  White House Communications Director Anita Dunn cites as her favorite political philosopher the Chinese communist tyrant Mao Zedong. That may explain why it has sometimes pursued left-wing policies overseas.)

President Obama is also pushing for financial regulations that reinforce the worst features of the status quo.  They would increase pressure on lenders to make the risky, low-income loans that helped spawn the financial crisis.  At the same time, they would worsen the credit crunch by shutting down banking operations known as “industrial loan corporations,” that are convenient for consumers.  Earlier, Obama backed a new law that is wiping out many credit-card rewards programs and rebates, and leading to the return of annual fees on some credit cards.

Even though Obama’s proposals would lead to even more junky loans in the future, both he and Senate banking chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) claim that his proposals would fight the “status quo.”  But they are part of the status quo.  Dodd is famously corrupt, having received sweetheart loans from the reckless, bankrupt subprime lender Countrywide, and having received a massive gift from a crook, Edward Downe, in the form of a luxurious “cottage” in Ireland he received in a “cut rate real estate deal” for hundreds of thousands of dollars less than fair market value.  Obama was the third biggest recipient in Congress of campaign contributions from the government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which went broke, costing taxpayers perhaps $200 billion.  (Fannie Mae was a corrupt bully that engaged in massive accounting fraud and used intimidation to fight reform.)

Banks will now be pressured to make even more risky, low-income loans. Obama has sent to Congress his proposal to create a politically-correct entity called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. “The agency would be in charge of enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act, a law that prods banks to make loans in low-income communities.”

Government pressure on banks to make low-income loans was a key reason for the mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis. Yet Obama’s disturbing proposal would empower the new agency to enforce the Community Reinvestment Act without regard for banks’ financial safety and soundness.  The Community Reinvestment Act was a key contributor to the financial crisis.

The mortgage crisis was also caused by the reckless government-sponsored mortgage giants (”GSEs”) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and by federal affordable-housing mandates.

But Obama’s proposed financial rules overhaul does absolutely nothing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, admits Obama’s Treasury secretary, tax cheat Timothy Geithner, even though he admits that “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system.”

Worse, Obama’s plan is “largely the product of extensive conversations” with two lawmakers responsible for the corrupt status quo, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, and it expands the reach of regulations that have been used by left-wing groups to extort pay-offs from banks.

The British Chiropractic Association was none too happy about these criticisms of themselves and their craft.  But, instead of accepting the Guardian’s offer to publish a 500-word response and a note in the “corrections” section of the newspaper, the BCA took advantage of Britain’s insane libel laws and sued Singh.  Singh, who of course has copious amounts of published scientific research to back up his claims, decided to fight the suit in court.  But, due to Britain’s insane libel laws, he lost.  Reasons include  the fact that, in the UK, any person or organization with almost any amount of national reputation may bring a libel action for even the slightest deprecation without having to show any actual damages.  Then, once in court, the normal burden of proof is switched, such that the defendant must prove his statements to be completely true, rather than the plaintiff proving them to be false. And UK judges tend to be very favorably inclined toward plaintiffs.

Although Singh’s article mentioned the BCA only once, the judge interpreted that key passage (”happily promotes bogus treatments”) as a direct allegation of purposeful dishonesty:

12. What the article conveys is that the BCA itself makes claims to the public as to the efficacy of chiropractic treatment for certain ailments even though there is not a jot of evidence to support those claims. That in itself would be an irresponsible way to behave and it is an allegation that is plainly defamatory of anyone identifiable as the culprit. In this case these claims are expressly attributed to the claimant. It goes further. It is said that despite its outward appearance of respectability, it is happy to promote bogus treatments. Everyone knows what bogus treatments are. They are not merely treatments which have proved less effective than they were at first thought to be, or which have been shown by the subsequent acquisition of more detailed scientific knowledge to be ineffective. Bogus treatments equate to quack remedies; that is to say they are dishonestly presented to a trusting and, in some respects perhaps, vulnerable public as having proven efficacy in the treatment of certain conditions or illnesses, when it is known that there is nothing to support such claims.

13. It is alleged that the claimant promotes the bogus treatments “happily”. What that means is not that they do it naively or innocently believing in their efficacy, but rather that they are quite content and, so to speak, with their eyes open to present what are known to be bogus treatments as useful and effective. That is in my judgment the plainest allegation of dishonesty and indeed it accuses them of thoroughly disreputable conduct.

Singh claims he merely intended to suggest that the BCA and other chiropractic supporters were “deluded and reckless,” not dishonest, and he notes that several other passages in the article support that interpretation.  But, even if that were not the case, since there is plenty of scientific evidence that chiropractic manipulation is bogus, you’d think that would be sufficient defense.  But, it is often said that, under UK libel law, the truth is no defense. Did I mention that the UK has insane lible laws?

This case would be bad enough if it were unique.  Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens all too often.  In a world of global print and Internet publishing, the UK has become a venue for so-called libel tourism, in which slighted plaintiffs from all over the world bring suit in British courts against defendants located outside the UK merely because their comments have been published or re-posted in magazines, books, or websites that happen to appear in Britain.  There is no doubt that British libel law exerts a chilling effect on free speech generally, and on criticism of quack science and bad governance more specifically.  Fortunately, the indispensible UK non-profit Sense About Science has begun a campaign to Keep Libel Laws Out of Science.  I encourage readers interested in defending the right of honest criticism to click the link and learn more.

The read about the flu in the mainstream media, you would think men are going through the streets with carts calling “Bring out your dead.” But to look at the statistics, there’s not even an epidemic yet. Read my article in the New York Post. “Swine Flu: the Real Threat Is Panic.”

The Supreme Court also recently agreed to hear a challenge to Chicago laws banning handguns, in a case called McDonald v. City of Chicago. I explained earlier why the lower court ruling upholding the ban was based on flawed reasoning about how Second Amendment rights apply to state and local governments.

The court will also hear a challenge to the imposition of life sentences without parole on teenage offenders who have repeatedly committed violent crimes (like rape and sexual battery) against victim after victim, but not yet succeeded in killing someone. If the challenge is successful, it may be harder for states to deter violent crimes by minors against children and adults alike. (The death penalty and life sentences are significant deterrents to those who commit violent crimes, reducing the murder rate.  For example, a recent Emory University study says that each execution deters approximately 18 murders.)

The Heritage Foundation explains why life sentences without parole are appropriate, and why it would be a bad idea for judges to make up limits on such sentences.

A gaggle of left-wing lawyers and religious groups are asking the Supreme Court to rule that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment restricts the imposition of life without parole on juveniles, even when they have repeatedly committed violent crimes. Their long-run goal is to make it as difficult to impose life sentences as it currently is to impose the death penalty, which cannot be carried out without years of endless and expensive appeals, most of which focus on aggravating or mitigating factors, rather than the defendant’s guilt or innocence (even admittedly-guilty death row inmates often succeed in delaying for years, or even overturning, their death sentences).  (Most murderers never even get the death penalty, even when they outrageously torture the dying victim.)

The left-wing lawyers and religious groups are also unjustifiably seeking to use fuzzy notions of “customary international law” to override U.S. law, as the Cato Institute and others have pointed out in their court brief.

“Customary international law” threatens America’s security and civil liberties.  Piracy flourished in the crucial shipping lanes off the coast of Somalia partly due to a treaty that the U.S. has not ratified yet — but which is often described as “customary international law” binding on all nations. Partly as a result of the LOST Treaty, billions of dollars worth of cargo, and human lives, have been lost due to piracy. Harold Koh, appointed by Obama to be the State Department’s chief lawyer, argues that “customary international law” like LOST is binding on the U.S., even when it is reflected in treaties that the U.S. has refused to sign.  (European human-rights conventions and an indecisive White House also have delayed action against the pirates.)  That’s just one reason U.S. policymakers should think twice before following vague “international norms.”

Since customary international law is vague, liberal lawyers invariably use that ambiguity to claim that it dictates a host of controversial requirements that few countries would voluntarily adopt on their own, like banning Mother’s Day as sexist, and mandating quota-based affirmative action. For example, the CEDAW equal-rights treaty has been construed by an international committee as requiring “redistribution of wealth,” “affirmative action,” “gender studies” in academia, government-sponsored “access to rapid and easy abortion,” “comparable worth,” and “the application of quotas and numerical goals and measurable targets aimed at increasing women’s political participation.”

One of the arguments in the animal-cruelty video case — that the government can prohibit an entire category of speech to promote a “compelling interest” — is quite dangerous, because courts now routinely find even trivial government goals to be “compelling interests.” It is almost considered bad manners for a judge to candidly say that a law passed by a legislature is not supported by a compelling interest, which is why judges usually strain to find that the other Supreme Court requirement for upholding a ban on speech (”narrow tailoring”) is missing instead. (In my 2007 law review article, I listed some of the not-very-crucial interests widely recognized by the courts as “compelling,” like “preventing splintered political parties and establishing professional standards.”  Courts sometimes find interests to be “compelling” even when they logically contradict each other — for example, courts have found “compelling” interests justifying both governmental discrimination against gay people, and governmental bans on discrimination against them (even purely private discrimination by religious groups or clubs).  Some court rulings finding “compelling interests” are just wrong.)

The Supreme Court cases challenging life without parole are Graham v. Florida and Sullivan v. Florida. The animal cruelty video case is U.S. v. Stevens.

But there is nothing more on those 21,000. Lots of talk about people swamping emergency rooms and school closings, yet not a single number regarding actual flu cases in a 765-word article.

What if it began “Flying saucers land on the White House lawn” and no flying saucers were mentioned again? And no, Fox fans, I’m not picking on your favorite network. Lots of people are tossing that number around; I just stumbled upon the Fox piece first.

Turns out the data are from the American College Health Association (ACHA) and are cumulative since August 22. So unless we assume that everybody who got the flu five weeks ago still has it, it’s hardly the snapshot implied by the present tense “are” and is worthless in determining whether the bug is “picking up steam” or “petering out.”

And the truly nifty thing about cumulative cases is they never go down. So next week they can use a higher figure and the week after a still higher one. Let’s play that with other diseases. “100 million Americans have cancer!” Or maybe, “10 million kids have polio!”

Cumulative figures are also useless for determining what’s happening right now - which is what this article and all the other scare stories are supposedly about. Nevertheless, the ACHA figures for the latest week at this writing show a 15% increase. Not exactly the end of the world, and in part it reflects that more institutions were reporting than the week before. Still, the increase for this week may prove much higher.

This is how you play the game, kids. But I’m guessing there are a lot of exhausted emergency room workers, along with truly ill patients being pushed aside by the worried well, who don’t really enjoy it.

Yet the Obama administration wants airline security and Amtrak to become more like Washington’s inefficient Metro, by increasing the power of unions and making it harder to get rid of problem employees.

As Radley Balko notes at Reason magazine’s Web site,

“Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Area Transit Authority fired Metro bus driver Carla A. Proctor this week after Proctor struck a jogger earlier this month. The jogger was just released from intensive care at a local hospital.

It’s good to know nearly killing someone was—finally—enough to get Proctor out from behind the wheel of a public bus. Her record to that point:

• Proctor had five off-the-job traffic tickets in January alone, including driving an unregistered, unlicensed vehicle.

• In 2003, Proctor got off a bus she had been driving to check a sticky door without first assuring the bus was parked. The bus rolled down a hill without her, damaging eight vehicles, including the bus. Metro paid out $27,000 in damages.

• Also in 2003, Proctor turned into oncoming traffic, at which point her car was struck by another vehicle. Proctor’s car went flying into a fast food restaurant, injuring two women.

• In 2004, Proctor crashed another Metro bus, this time into a parked vehicle, injuring a 72-year-old pasenger.

Given the impressive record of the Metro workers union in helping scofflaws avoid discipline, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see Proctor back on the job.”

Rather than try to improve or privatize metro, officials in the D.C. government have tried to restrict the growth of competing private buses.

A left-wing union is about to unionize the Transportation Security Administration, which is in charge of airline security. Thanks to the Obama administration, the union will now be able to demand job rules that make it harder to get rid of lazy, incompetent, and careless employees.

The Washington Times reports that the unions want to get rid of basic skills tests for employees, and to destroy records of poor job performance.  The unions have “urged TSA Acting Administrator Gale D. Rossides to suspend use of the agency’s skills test for screeners. Failure rates this year reached more than 50 percent and were as high as 80 percent at some airports. The skills test shows that large numbers of airport screeners are failing at jobs that are intrinsic to keeping our airports and commercial airplanes secure, and the union’s response is to get rid of the test. The government employees union is also pushing to have failed screeners’ records cleared because pay and bonuses are tied to performance and unsatisfactory employee records prevent those who were fired for poor performance from being reinstated. So much for worker accountability.”

In the aftermath of 9/11, a foolish Congress shifted airline security screening to the inept Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which fails to detect explosive ingredients and fake bombs, in performance tests.   Now, the Obama administration is making matters even worse by undermining both airline security and railroad safety.

A study found that the TSA is more than twice as likely to fail to detect a bomb as the private security firms it replaced. And TSA’s failure rate is three or four times as high as the few remaining private firms still allowed to handle airline security.

In tests, TSA failed to detect fake bombs 60 percent of the time at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, and 75 percent of the time in Los Angeles. Yet the Obama administration plans to make TSA even more bureaucratic by introducing collective bargaining, which will make it even harder to get rid of lazy employees and demand high performance.

Rather than having the federal government take over airline security screening, the Feds should have stepped up policing and monitoring of the private companies that performed it, to weed out bad companies and promote the best.

Bush initially objected to congressional demands for a federal takeover, but then knuckled under for political reasons.  Ironically, even in European countries governed by socialist parties, airline security and screening is generally in the hands of private companies, because private companies are usually more diligent and innovative and less bureaucratic and inefficient.

The Obama administration is also undermining the security of railroad passengers by gutting an expert, highly-rated, anti-terror agency at Amtrak, which Amtrak’s unions hate, despite its efficiency, because it is not unionized.  Political cronyism is also playing a role in the gutting of Amtrak’s Office of Security Strategy and Special Operations (OSSSO).  Ultimately, OSSSO’s “highly-specialized officers” will likely be replaced by unionized employees with ”alarmingly low pass rates” in “basic” classes.

Anyway, why consult the data when you can offer plenty of anecdotes about people suffering from a “flu-like illness?”

But for those who do care about how our alleged pandemic is progressing, I will begin herewith to provide a weekly summary.

Total deaths since August 30 from “Influenza and Pneumonia-Associated” illness generally are 936, but only 114 of those have been laboratory-confirmed as being flu of any type. And yes, people do die of pneumonia from many causes other than flu.

The CDC no longer separately tracks swine flu cases or deaths. However, the FluTracker website does, and as of today lists 136, 268 confirmed U.S. cases with 644 confirmed fatalities.

By comparison, the CDC estimates 36,000 Americans die annually of seasonal flu, or about 257 per day during the season of approximately 140 days.

The number of positive tests for swine flu is down this week, notwithstanding all those articles you’ve been reading about how swine flu is finally taking off. You can see the data here.

A word of caution, though. Those are reports from a sentinel system of laboratories. It’s possible the laboratories were overwhelmed with specimens and simply couldn’t keep up with the samples doctors forwarded to them.

But, the percentage of samples proving positive barely increased, from 22.55% to 23.87%.

Another way of looking at it is that over three-fourths of samples that even doctors (much less scared patients) suspect may show swine flu do not.

That’s one indicator of hysteria.

Another is that even though the number of actual flu detections tested is down, the percentage of visits to outpatient clinics by people who think they have the flu continues to rise. In fact, if you look at the curve it’s been practically shooting straight up for the past four weeks.

But apparently nobody but me has been looking at the data. Turns out that if you click on the link to take you to the underlying numbers, they’re four weeks behind the figures in the chart. The CDC press office didn’t even know about this until I asked. What does that tell you?

Finally, deaths from influenza and pneumonia are well within the normal bounds for this time of year.

So visits to emergency rooms and other outpatient facilities from people afraid they have the flu are way up while infections are apparently down. I don’t call it “pandemic panic over a piglet” for nothing.