ADA

Many New Job-Killing Regulations from the Obama Administration

by Hans Bader on August 30, 2011 · 1 comment

in Economy, International, Legal, Regulation

Andrew Stiles describes “Ten Job-Destroying Regulations” from the Obama administration that will wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs. Another job-killing regulation is the Obama administration’s recent demand that trucking companies employ alcoholics as truckers rather than assigning them to less safety-sensitive positions — a demand that will lead to costly lawsuits against trucking companies by accident victims, and thus discourage anyone from setting up new trucking companies.

Still another is the Obama EEOC’s current practice of suing some employers who consider applicants’ arrest records and criminal convictions in hiring — a practice it is now considering broadening, through agency guidance further restricting consideration of applicants’ criminal histories in hiring decisions. If you were thinking of starting a new business, wouldn’t you be less likely to do so if you thought you would have no freedom as to whom you could hire, and no freedom to consider someone’s dangerousness or the content of their character before hiring them? If you don’t hire a criminal, the EEOC may sue you for “disparate impact”; but if you do hire the criminal, you may later be sued under a state law for “negligent hiring” if the criminal harms someone on the job or while doing errands for your company.

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Regulation of the Day 191: Sippy Cups

by Ryan Young on August 1, 2011 · 4 comments

in Nanny State, Regulation, Regulation of the Day

Post image for Regulation of the Day 191: Sippy Cups

Children are messy. That’s why Richard Belanger, one of mankind’s unsung heroes, invented the sippy cup. By taking advantage of surface tension, liquid won’t spill out even if the cup is held upside down.  Even the most determined toddler has a hard time making a mess.

Then came the lawyers.

New York’s state legislature just passed a bill requiring warning labels to be put on all sippy cups sold in the state. It isn’t because sippy cups are dangerous. They don’t have sharp edges. They aren’t toxic. Nor are they a choking hazard. No, it’s because sometimes parents sometimes fill sippy cups with liquids that contain sugar, such as fruit juice. The labels warn that giving your child such drinks will cause tooth decay.

A similar bill passed last year, but fell victim to then-Gov. David Paterson’s veto pen. Current Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s stance on sippy cup policy is unknown. He will see some interest group pressure, though:

“I can show you photos of children who go to bed with sippy cups,” said Mark Feldman, executive director of the state Dental Association, which pressed for the bill.

“All you see is little black stumps that is all that is left of the teeth,” he added.

And I can show you a busybody who spends entirely too much time worrying about other people’s children. If his strongest argument is anecdotal hyperbole (possibly photoshopped?), then his case is weak indeed.

Either that, or the ADA felt the need to have a legislative accomplishment to brag about in its newsletter to prove its clout.

When it Comes to Climate Change, Errors Abound

by William Yeatman on February 24, 2009 · 5 comments

in Environment, Global Warming

“A Matter of Fact,” a new report from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, challenges the Washington Post to correct George F. Will’s “Dark Green Doomsayers” column, published February 15th. The report, by CAP’s Brad Johnson, asserts that George Will made three factual errors:

  • Current “global sea ice levels” equals those of 1979
  • There hasn’t been warming in “more than a decade”
  • “Global cooling” joins a list of well publicized “planetary calamities that did not happen.”

Will’s column is not perfect, and Johnson raises some valid questions. For the sake of intellectual honesty, however, Johnson should broaden his fact-checking scope to incorporate misstatements on both sides of the global warming debate—including his own fudging of the truth.

But first, let’s address CAP’s critique of Will’s column.

Error 1. It seems that Will is guilty of delay. On the one hand, the University of Illinois Arctic Climate Research Center, the source of his assertion that global sea ice levels haven’t changed in 30 years, publically disavowed Will’s claims. On the other, ACRC reported on January 1, 2009 that global sea ice levels were “near or slightly lower than those observed in late 1979.” Will’s column appeared 45 days later, during which the discrepancy between current levels and 1979 levels grew by 8%.  If anything, this demonstrates the perils of reporting on an ever-changing global climate.

Error 2. CAP and George Will have it wrong. Will wrote that it hasn’t warmed in “more than a decade,” while Brad Johnson claims that “global warming is continuing.” According to data from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, compiled by NASA’s Dr. Roy Spenser, there has been no statistical warming of lower atmosphere temperatures over the past seven years, despite the fact that global greenhouse gas emissions have increased.

Error 3. Will is right and CAP is wrong. Johnson notes that there was never a “scientific consensus” on global cooling, but that’s not what Will claimed. He only wrote that some scientists and media outlets warned of global cooling, which is true.

I am an unabashed global warming “denier,” but I nonetheless applaud Brad Johnson’s efforts. On the topic of global warming, misrepresentations of the science abound, and we in the energy/global warming policy community should root them out and expose them with vigilance.

With that in mind, I have a “Matter of Fact” list of my own:

Fiction: Al Gore claims in his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, that “there is one relationship that is more powerful than all the others and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer ….”

Fact: It hasn’t warmed in 7 years, despite a steady increase in global greenhouse gas emissions. Where’s the Warming, Al?

Fiction: Dr. James Hansen, ultra-alarmist, has suggested that a 2-3 degree warming would cause sea levels to rise by 80 feet. Hansen then lowered his estimation to 20 feet. His most recent estimate is “at least” 3.2 to 6.4 feet.

Fact: The preeminent body of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suggests that a 2-3 degree warming would cause sea levels to rise 7 to 23 inches.

Fiction: In 1986, Dr. John P Holdren, President Barack Obama’s choice to become White House Science Adviser, is quoted as having said that global warming could cause the deaths of 1 billion human beings by 2020. During his confirmation hearing two weeks ago, Holdren was questioned about this claim, and said that “it is still possible.”

Fact: To fulfill Holdren’s alarmist warning, climate change would have to kill twice as many people as died in World War Two, each year, for the next ten years.

Fiction: The Center for American Progress’s Brad Johnson last summer reported that the death of two Boy Scouts in Iowa was “evidence” of “the consequences” of global warming.

Fact: As recently noted on Roger Pielke Jr’s Prometheus, the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters cautions that “justifying the upward trend in hydro-meteorological disaster occurrence and impacts essentially through climate change would be misleading.”

Being Male Is a Disability Under ADA, Says Prominent Lawyer

by Hans Bader on October 10, 2008 · 6 comments

in Economy, Legal, Politics as Usual

Earlier, I wrote about how I legally qualified as disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act because of my difficulty sleeping and (in the past) because of my shyness.  Amazingly, Congress recently broadened the ADA even further in response to whining by “civil-rights” groups that the law didn’t define “disability” broadly enough.

Now, a prominent lawyer has concluded that being male is a disability, too, reports the National Law Journal.  “If sleep disorders and sex problems can be used as criteria for filing disability claims, as courts have held, “being male” could also be a legally recognized disability.  So claims Louis Solomon, a partner and co-head of the Global Litigation Department at Proskauer Rose, who believes ‘maleness’ is on its way to becoming a new category for disability claims.   Men, he argues, have a greater susceptibility to certain diseases, a shorter life expectancy and a testosterone level that predisposes them to more aggressive behavior — all factors that could be classified as a disability.”

There are additional reasons why males may qualify as disabled.   Statutory amendments to the ADA now define impairment of bodily functions as a disability per se.  But men go deaf faster than women, and generally have inferior senses of smell.  My wife smokes, and I don’t.  But she has still has a vastly greater sense of smell than I do.  And my baby daughter can smell things I don’t even notice.  It sounds like I’m disabled on that basis, too.

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