NPR

The ALEC Controversy — Much Ado About Nothing

by Marlo Lewis on July 22, 2011 · 11 comments

in Features, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Post image for The ALEC Controversy — Much Ado About Nothing

I listened to the NPR segment about The Nation magazine and Center for Media and Democracy’s (CMD’s) alleged exposé on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a national association of conservative state legislators. Calling their project “ALEC Exposed,” The Nation and CMD try to make hay out of the well-known fact that ALEC’s task forces, which include both public- and private-sector members, draft model legislation “behind closed doors.” As if any lawmaker ever places in the public record his deliberative discussions with staff and lobbyists on legislation he is drafting!

The Nation and CMD also neglect to mention that although private-sector members have a “voice and a vote” in the task forces that develop model legislation, only the public-sector (state-legislator) members of ALEC’s board of directors decide which proposals become ALEC model bills.

More importantly, ALEC model bills only become law if they go through the same process of hearings and debate that other bills introduced in state legislatures do.

I checked out The Nation‘s landing page, then “Business Domination, Inc.” (the first of five articles posted on the site), then the CMD site and its archive of 800-plus ALEC model bills. There’s no there there. What The Nation and CMD are waging is just another lefty campaign to drive the marketplace out of the marketplace of ideas.

In “Business Domination, Inc.,” the authors claim that ALEC believes that “Any force in civil society, especially labor, that contests the right of business to grab all social surplus for itself, and to treat people like road kill and the earth like a sewer, should be crushed.” Didn’t Karl Marx say stuff like that about all capitalists?

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NPR Covers Corn Ethanol Boondoggle

by Fran Smith on December 22, 2010 · 4 comments

in Energy, Ethanol

NPR’s “Morning Edition” has finally caught on to the ethanol boondoggle. It’s doing a three-part series on ethanol that started yesterday. And it gets into some of the real issues, especially relating to corn ethanol. CEI has been pointing out that the ethanol program involves a mandate setting the amount of ethanol that must be blended with gasoline, a tax credit that goes to blenders of ethanol, and a steep tariff on imported ethanol. (See CEI video, “The Insanity of Ethanol Policy.”)

NPR got this issue right:

The question is: Does it deserve a multibillion-dollar tax credit, on top of a tariff, on top of a huge and growing mandate to use it?

NPR’s second installment brought up the food vs. fuel issue, that is, all the incentives to grow corn for ethanol production are decreasing the supply of corn available for food and for feed and driving up those costs.

Here’s what a prominent agricultural economist said to NPR:

“I don’t see why we can really justify subsidies, when all that does is raises cost of producing food,” says economics professor Bruce Babcock, of Iowa State University.

Ethanol policies increase the cost of food at least 1.5 percent, Babcock says. And the impact on meat prices is significantly greater.

It’s economics 101, he says. Ethanol plants increase the demand for corn, driving up the prices for other buyers – like livestock producers. International demand is up, too – and we’re exporting more ethanol than ever before. Many grain farmers are seeing record incomes this year.

Yet how did policymakers deal with ethanol in the lame-duck Congress? In the omnibus tax bill, they voted to extend the ethanol tax credit and the tariff on ethanol imports for one year. Ducks and pork are a tasty treat for politicians.

HT: Iain Murray

Krugman Undermines Waxman-Markey Job Creation Claims

by Ivan Osorio on June 27, 2009 · 5 comments

in Economy, Employment, Environment, Features, Global Warming

Today, National Public Radio held a pep rally for the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, which narrowly passed the House last night, with Paul Krugman as head cheerleader. No critic of the bill was interviewed.

Krugman started out with a brief explanation of the bill. He acknowledged that it would bear some costs, and that some industries and parts of the country that rely on coal “are going to be hurt… somewhat.” He repeated the Democrat talking point that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the cost of the bill for the average household would be around$175 “a postage stamp a day.” (Never mind that people are buying fewer stamps because of email; let’s make them spend that money, anyway — for nothing.)

Then NPR host Guy Raz asked Krugman to comment on bill cosponsor Rep. Henry Waxman’s claim that his bill would create jobs. Krugman said:

There will be more wind farms built. There will be people retrofitting power plants to reduce their emissions. There will be people weatherproofing housing and commercial buildings.”

What economists would say is that employment would be just about the same as it would have been otherwise, but it will be a different mix of jobs. [Emphasis added]

That is not job creation, that is a transfer of wealth from a politically disfavored group of industries to a politically favored one. Notice the nebulous reference to “economists.” To which ones is Krugman referring to? Isn’t he one?

Now, back to that $175 per year figure that the bill’s supporters like to bandy about. They love that postage-stamp-a-day comparison so much that I thought it would be a good idea to come up with some of my own. For an average household, that $175 would also amount to:

  • An additional month of utilities;
  • One less plane ticket to visit family or go on vacation; or
  • One payment on a cheap used car

Other similar comparisons are welcome, so please post in the comments below.