NTSB recommends full ban on use of cell phones while driving…Tuesday’s recommendation, if adopted by states, would outlaw non-emergency phone calls and texting by operators of every vehicle on the road. It would apply to hands-free as well as hand-held devices…Chairwoman Hersman said the ban may inconvenience motorists, but would save lives…The NTSB said cell phone laws alone would not solve the problem, but must be accompanied by aggressive educational campaigns
Ah, our federal government. Usurping the role of the states, mandating a totally inappropriate and petty one-size-fits-all non-solution that encourages lawbreaking, and building an unnecessary education bureaucracy. An apt metaphor for the idiocy of the last three years. No wonder pretty much everybody has had it up to here with Washington.
Coca-Cola’s traditional Christmas cans disappeared this year. Wes Pruden:
Coca-Cola…withdrew the red cans and replaced them with snow-white cans as antiseptic as a bedpan. The white cans are decorated with shadowy images of polar bears, commemorating Coke’s contribution of $3 million to the World Wildlife Fund’s campaign to “save the polar bears.”
Maybe next year Coke will have cans illustrated with a hockey stick and no Medieval Warm Period. That’ll wow ‘em. (In our view, doctoring the data to remove the MWP was necessary in the minds of the global warming fraudsters so that they could claim that recent warming was “unprecedented” and would require spending vast unnecessary sums, which BTW would benefit them economically and professionally.)
EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration…EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact. Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict…
professors Dr Andreas Hahn and Dr Moritz Hagenmeyer…compiled what they assumed was an uncontroversial statement in order to test new laws which allow products to claim they can reduce the risk of disease, subject to EU approval. They applied for the right to state that “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration” as well as preventing a decrease in performance.
However, last February, the European Food Standards Authority (EFSA) refused to approve the statement. A meeting of 21 scientists in Parma, Italy, concluded that reduced water content in the body was a symptom of dehydration and not something that drinking water could subsequently control.
Just how many millions of euros were spent on conferences in Parma and other things for a “three-year investigation” of whether water is wet? Niall Ferguson may well be right.
Plan EJ 2014, which is meant to mark the 20th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 12898 on environmental justice, is EPA’s overarching strategy for advancing environmental justice. It seeks to: 1. Protect the environment and health in overburdened communities.
2. Empower communities to take action to improve their health and environment.
3. Establish partnerships with local, state, tribal, and federal governments and organizations to achieve healthy and sustainable communities
In July 2010, EPA introduced Plan EJ 2014 as a concept for public comment and initiated the development of implementation plans. This product is the culmination of nearly a year’s effort by EPA programs and regions, as well as engagement with stakeholders, to develop nine implementation plans with the goals, strategies, deliverables, and milestones outlined herein.
Plan EJ 2014 has three major sections: Cross-Agency Focus Areas, Tools Development Areas, and Program Initiatives. The following summaries outline the implementation plans for Plan EJ 2014’s five cross-Agency Focus Areas and four Tools Development Areas
This is the sort of nonsense we’re spending taxpayer money on in these troubled times? Tellingly, the 181 page brochure on “environmental justice,” whatever that is, has quite a few pages with the legend “this page left intentionally blank” — so you can waste paper when printing the document. Everyone connected with this should be fired immediately. HT: PL
The Obama administration, which gave the solar company Solyndra a half-billion-dollar loan to help create jobs, asked the company to delay announcing it would lay off workers until after the hotly contested November 2010 midterm elections that imperiled Democratic control of Congress, newly released e-mails show…the administration had held up Solyndra as a poster child of its clean-energy initiative, saying the company’s new factory, built with the help of stimulus money, could create 1,000 jobs. Six months before the midterm elections, Obama visited Solyndra’s California plant to praise its success, even though outside auditors had questioned whether the operation might collapse in debt.
As the contentious 2010 elections approached, Solyndra found itself foundering, and it warned the Energy Department that it would need an emergency cash infusion. A Solyndra investment adviser wrote in an Oct. 30, 2010, e-mail — without explaining the reason — that Energy Department officials were pushing “very hard” to delay making the layoffs public until the day after the elections. The announcement ultimately was made on Nov. 3, 2010 — immediately following the Nov. 2 vote.
Meanwhile: “Secretary of Energy Steven Chu vigorously defended the actions of the Department of Energy with regards $528 million in loans it gave the now-bankrupt solar energy company Solyndra. Chu told All Things Considered’s Melissa Block that neither he nor any of his staff working on DOE loans program was swayed by politics.” Charming bunch, aren’t they?
The US has enough smallpox vaccine to inoculate the entire population for three bucks a pop. But that’s not good enough. LAT:
the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work. Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor. When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company’s financial demands, senior officials replaced the government’s lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show. When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing…
the government could draw on $1 billion worth of smallpox vaccine it already owns to inoculate the entire U.S. population and quickly treat people exposed to the virus. The vaccine, which costs the government $3 per dose, can reliably prevent death when given within four days of exposure. Siga’s drug, an antiviral pill called ST-246, would be used to treat people who were diagnosed with smallpox too late for the vaccine to help. Yet the new drug cannot be tested for effectiveness in people because of ethical constraints — and no one knows whether animal testing could prove it would work in humans.
Smallpox is lethal and nasty. When Edward Jenner created the smallpox vaccine by using cowpox, he arguably contributed to saving more lives than any single man in history, yet we have found no record of him receiving a $433 million contract.
You will recall that some years ago, people worried about a smallpox terrorist attack. The US government created a plan to deal with it, and an idiotic plan it was. A group a bad guys flying on Southwest for a week before they keeled over would render the government’s plan useless. They’d also render ST-246 useless. So this is another big waste of money. Far better and cheaper to encourage voluntary vaccinations, but apparently this is not being done. We are given to understand, however, that the government officials in charge of smallpox response have all been vaccinated. How nice for them.
Several decades ago, back when Ugly George roamed Manhattan, there was a homeless fellow whom we’d often see in the vicinity of Broadway and 57th Street. He had a shopping cart with a drum in it. He’d play the drum occasionally and ask for handouts. For some reason, he wore what appeared to be shoe polish on his head outlining the part of the scalp normally covered by hair. We hadn’t thought of him in a long time, but he seems to now have successors galore.
Of all these parts of Obama’s executive order, the loan forgiveness aspect will have the least impact. By moving the timeline from 25 to 20 years, it could be significant in the long run — but it won’t be felt for decades. Remember, 82% of the current student loan debt outstanding was accrued in just the past decade. So it will be at least another 10 years before any of those borrowers have hit the 20-year mark…The monthly impact of the president’s new effort for most Americans paying off college debt will be between $4 and $8
More sleight-of-hand for the innumerate and the gullible. BTW, if this is not a photoshop, this girl needs more than just financial help. (Glenn Reynolds has a simple plan to deal with the debt problem.)
we will pursue the housing plan I’m outlining today. And through this plan, we will help between 7 and 9 million families restructure or refinance their mortgages so they can afford — avoid foreclosure. And we’re not just helping homeowners at risk of falling over the edge; we’re preventing their neighbors from being pulled over that edge, too — as defaults and foreclosures contribute to sinking home values, and failing local businesses, and lost jobs
In the real world, we all know that government-centric tinkering doesn’t work. Even Austan Goolsbee has finally figured that out: “If you look at Cash for Clunkers or the first home buyer tax credit…I don’t think you would do that.” The only thing that works is creating an environment where businesses can thrive, and the administration would have to abandon its ideology to do so. A year ago we were saying the same thing, and it’s only gotten worse since then.
So what do we have the administration doing now? More tinkering, yet again on mortgages, and on student loans too. Result: “Just 21% favor the forgiveness of student loans…18% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing…That’s the lowest level of Strong Approval ever.” Hey, it’s no small achievement to both govern ineffectively and against the will of the people at the same time.
“If you don’t want to be part of this group, then you can just leave,” yelled a facilitator in a button-down shirt, “Every week we clean our house.” Seth Harper, the pro-drummer proletarian, chimed in on the side of the sitters. “We disagree on how we should clean it. A lot of us disagree with the pile.”
Zetah, tall and imposing with a fiery red beard, closed debate with a sigh. “We’re all big boys and girls. Let’s do this.” As he told me afterwards, “A lot of people are like spoiled children.” The cure? A cold snap. “Personally, I cannot wait for winter. It will clear out these people who aren’t here for the right reasons. Bring on the snow. The real revolutionaries will stay in -50 degrees.”
“The sunshine protestors will leave,” said “Zonkers,” a 20-year-old cleaner and longtime occupier from Tennessee. (He asked that his name not be used due to a felony marijuana conviction.) “The people who remain are the people who care. You get a lot of crust punks, silly kids, people who want to panhandle … It disgusts me. These people are here for a block party.”
Another argument broke out next to the pile of appropriated belongings, growing taller by the minute. A man named Sage Roberts desperately rifled through the pile, looking for a sleeping bag. “They’ve taken my stuff,” he muttered. Lauren Digion, the sanitation group leader, broke in: “This isn’t your stuff. You got all this stuff from comfort [the working group]. It belongs to comfort.”
And as I spoke to Michael Glaser, a 26-year-old Chicagoan helping lead winter preparation efforts, a physical fight broke out between a cleaner and a camper just feet from us. “When cleanups happen, people get mad,” Glaser said. “This is its own city. Within every city there are people who freeload, who make people’s lives miserable. We just deal with it. We can’t kick them out.”
As some guy said: “The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side.” Pathetic.
They’re as knowledgeable as they are Tea-Party-like. Military spending is 17% of the budget, not largest part of the budget, as is thought by 94% of the OWS crowd. Yeah, just like the Tea Party. And of course, “we understand their struggles and we are on their side.” Pathetic. (BTW, that incident the other day — we think the teleprompter was trying to stage a getaway.)
Listen to just about any speech by a Republican presidential hopeful, and you’ll hear assertions that the Obama administration is responsible for weak job growth. How so? The answer, repeated again and again, is that businesses are afraid to expand and create jobs because they fear costly regulations and higher taxes. Nor are politicians the only people saying this. Conservative economists repeat the claim in op-ed articles, and Federal Reserve officials repeat it to justify their opposition to even modest efforts to aid the economy. The first thing you need to know, then, is that there’s no evidence supporting this claim and a lot of evidence showing that it’s false.
Vong, 47, left Vietnam in 1982, and after stops in Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong, settled in San Francisco and lived there for 20 years before coming here to open a nail salon with a difference. Her salon offered $30 fish therapy, wherein small fish from China nibble dead skin from people’s feet. Arizona’s Board of Cosmetology decided the fish were performing pedicures, and because all pedicure instruments must be sterilized and fish cannot be, the therapy must be discontinued. Vong lost her more-than-$50,000 investment in fish tanks and other equipment, and some customers. Three of her employees lost their jobs.
It’s not just people who are unemployed but the fish too. Maybe Arizona should team up with the National Science Foundation, which spent half a million dollars on exercise machines for shrimp.
China has sent the price of compact fluorescent light bulbs soaring in the United States. By closing or nationalizing dozens of the producers of rare earth metals — which are used in energy-efficient bulbs and many other green-energy products — China is temporarily shutting down most of the industry and crimping the global supply of the vital resources.
China produces nearly 95 percent of the world’s rare earth materials, and it is taking the steps to improve pollution controls in a notoriously toxic mining and processing industry. But the moves also have potential international trade implications and have started yet another round of price increases for rare earths, which are vital for green-energy products including giant wind turbines, hybrid gasoline-electric cars and compact fluorescent bulbs.
General Electric, facing complaints in the United States about rising prices for its compact fluorescent bulbs, recently noted in a statement that if the rate of inflation over the last 12 months on the rare earth element europium oxide had been applied to a $2 cup of coffee, that coffee would now cost $24.55. An 11-watt G.E. compact fluorescent bulb — the lighting equivalent of a 40-watt incandescent bulb — was priced on Thursday at $15.88
Actually, that’s the price for a pack of three. You can get a regular old light bulb for a dollar or less. But that’s a bad idea. Those old bulbs are terrible — they’re cheaper and they contain less poison than the new ones!
Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were among 17 banks sued by the U.S. to recoup $196 billion spent on mortgage-backed securities bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, filed 17 lawsuits yesterday…
The cases are Federal Housing Finance Agency v. Bank of America Corp. (BAC), 11-CV-6195; FHFA v. Barclays Bank Plc., 11-CV- 6190; FHFA v. Citigroup, 11-CV-6196; FHFA v. Credit Suisse Holdings (USA) Inc., 11-CV-6200; FHFA v. Deutsche Bank AG, 11- CV-6192; FHFA v. First Horizon National Corp., 11-CV-6193; FHFA v. Goldman, Sachs & Co., 11-CV-6198; FHFA v. HSBC North America Holdings Inc., 11-CV-6189; FHFA v. JPMorgan Chase & Co., 11-CV- 6188; FHFA v. Merrill Lynch & Co., 11-CV-6202; FHFA v. Nomura Holding America Inc., 11-CV-6201; FHFA v. SG Americas Inc., 11- CV-6203, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). Also: FHFA v. Ally Financial Inc.; FHFA v. Countrywide Financial Corp.; FHFA v. General Electric Co.; FHFA v. Morgan Stanley, New York State Supreme Court, New York County (Manhattan). And: FHFA v. Royal Bank of Scotland, 11-CV-1383, U.S. District Court, District of Connecticut (New Haven).
Comments and questions: (1) in the sub-prime debacle, everyone involved either looked the other way or had his hand in the cookie jar, so either throw them all in jail or move on; (2) as Roger Kimball noted, the government would do well to look in the mirror; (3) admittedly this is a great jobs program for lawyers, but exactly how is this going to help the housing industry and mortgage lending?
Bonus question: if the government wins the lawsuit, which part of the government will collect the $196 billion and which part of the government will bail out the banks to the tune of $196 billion?
The United States has a jobs problem and there’s not a lot President Barack Obama or Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke can do about it…Obama does plan a Midwestern bus tour from August 15 to August 17 to talk up jobs.
At the risk of repeating ourselves endlessly, the solutions to this problem are obvious to anyone who has recovered from his youth and the misinformation learned as an undergraduate.
The Omaha Public Schools used more than $130,000 in federal stimulus dollars to buy each teacher, administrator and staff member a manual on how to become more culturally sensitive…The authors assert that American government and institutions create advantages that “channel wealth and power to white people,” that color-blindness will not end racism and that educators should “take action for social justice.” The book says that teachers should acknowledge historical systemic oppression in schools, including racism, sexism, homophobia and “ableism,” defined by the authors as discrimination or prejudice against people with disabilities…
The book that OPS bought, “The Cultural Proficiency Journey: Moving Beyond Ethical Barriers Toward Profound School Change,” includes a worksheet for teachers to score themselves on a continuum of cultural sensitivity. The continuum ranges from “cultural destructiveness,” as evidenced by genocide and ethnocide, to “cultural proficiency,” depicted as the highest level of awareness. Only those educators who acknowledge the existence of white privilege in America, that “white” is a culture in America and that race “is a definer for social and economic status” can reach proficiency, the authors contend. Those who score poorly on the worksheet are asked in the book what they will do “to align yourself with the values expressed.”
No wonder the teachers and administrators have to cheat on their students’ tests. With all this rubbish, there’s no time for the three R’s. HT: BOTW
As part of its effort to combat the economic recession, the federal government pumped nearly $80 billion in direct investment and tax credits into the clean energy sector, catalyzing an unprecedented industry expansion. Solar energy, for example, grew 67 percent in the United States in 2010. The U.S. wind energy industry also experienced unprecedented growth as a result of the generous Section 1603 clean energy stimulus program. The industry grew by 40 percent and added 10 GW of new turbines in 2009…The global clean energy industry is set for a major crash. The reason is simple. Clean energy is still much more expensive and less reliable than coal or gas, and in an era of heightened budget austerity, the subsidies required to make clean energy artificially cheaper are becoming unsustainable…we need a comprehensive energy innovation strategy to develop, manufacture and deploy riskier but more promising clean energy technologies that may eventually compete with fossil energy
Oh, we get it. We need smarter subsidies for things that don’t work and are uneconomic. Apparently it’s true that common sense is uncommon.
