Minor Thoughts from me to you

Life is full of risk. No matter how hard we try, we can't eliminate that risk. Nor should we. Risk leads directly to rewards. Not all of the time. Sometimes risk leads to failure. But those failures teach us what we need to know in order to reach the rewards. More than that, it's impossible to reach a reward without taking a risk along the way.

Each crisis that comes along gives us a chance to learn a lesson and reach for a bigger reward. But we have another option. Instead of striving forward, we can cower in fear of what's around the bend. Instead of striving forward, we can attempt to stay exactly where we are, praying that things don't get worse.

That's where we are with this election. Michael Barone wrote today about Obama's vision for the country. It's a vision of fear. It's a vision that says we need to freeze things where they are, before they get any worse. It's a vision that seeks to remove all risk by franctically holding tight to what we have. It's a vision that just may prevent us from getting poorer. But it's also a vision that we'll ensure that we don't get richer.

Is this the vision you want?

The purpose of New Deal legislation was not, as commonly thought, to restore economic growth but rather to freeze the economy in place at a time when it seemed locked in a downward spiral. Its central program, the National Recovery Administration (NRA), created 700 industry councils for firms and unions to set minimum prices and wages. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), the ancestor of our farm bills, limited production to hold up prices. Unionization, encouraged by NRA and the 1935 Wagner Act, was meant to keep workers in jobs that the unemployed would have taken at lower pay.

These policies did break the downward spiral. But, as Amity Shlaes points out in The Forgotten Man, they failed to restore growth. Double-digit unemployment continued throughout the 1930s; despite population growth, the economy failed to rebound to 1920s production levels. High taxes on high earners (a Herbert Hoover as well as Franklin Roosevelt policy) financed welfare payments ("spread the wealth around") but reduced investment and growth.

Obama seems determined to follow policies better suited to freezing the economy in place than to promoting economic growth. Higher taxes on high earners, for one. He told Charlie Gibson he would raise capital-gains taxes even if that reduced revenue: less wealth to spread around, but at least the rich wouldn't have it -- reminiscent of the Puritan sumptuary laws that prohibited the wearing of silk. Moves toward protectionism like Hoover's (Roosevelt had the good sense to promote free trade). National health insurance that threatens to lead to rationing and to stifle innovation. Promoting unionization by abolishing secret ballot union elections.

Roosevelt in the 1930s had some extremely competent social engineers, like Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes and Fiorello LaGuardia, who could enroll 750,000 people on welfare in three weeks and build an airport in less than a year. But even they could not spur the economic growth produced by utterly unknown and unconnected people, as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates were in 1970.

Reject social engineering. Reject the temptation to believe that somewhere out there is some One that can lead us into a brighter tomorrow. No One person can understand the American economy well enough to plan a brighter tomorrow. We only have one hope. And I won't lie: it entails risk.

We must place our hope in the thousands of inventors and entrepreneurs that will create the world of tomorrow. We don't know who they are. We don't know what they'll create. We don't know where they'll come from or where they'll take us. But if American history teaches us one thing, it teaches us this. The American entreprenurial spirit will take us somewhere we never expected, somewhere we never could have imagined, but somewhere far better than we dared dream. Just contrast the world of 1908 with the world of 2008. Wasn't it worth a little risk? Even with a Great Depression in the middle, didn't it turn out far better than our great-grandparents would have ever dreamed?

Reject fear and embrace hope. Reject those who would tie our economy down with new rules, with new regulations, with new concepts of "fairness". Embrace change, embrace risk, and look forward to the future with confidence. Looking back, I see no reason to fear looking forward.

I always like a story that points out how supposedly wise government employees manage to destroy the very thing they're trying to protect. Today, the Wall Street Journal fingered the Federal Reserve for much of the turmoil of the last year.

But the larger story is that the global economy is fast popping its latest monetary bubble, the one over the last 14 months in commodity prices and non-dollar currencies.

The original bubble was in housing prices and mortgage-related assets, which the Federal Reserve helped to create with its negative real interest rates from 2002 into 2005. This was Alan Greenspan's tragic mistake, not that the former Fed chief will acknowledge it.

As for the second bubble, this one began in August 2007 with the onset of the credit panic. This is Ben Bernanke's creation. The Fed chose to confront the credit crunch as if it were mainly a problem of too little liquidity, not fear of insolvency. To that end it flooded the economy with money, while taking short-term interest rates down to 2% from 5.25% in seven months. The panic only got worse, and this September's stampede finally led the Treasury and Fed to address the solvency problem by supplying public capital and numerous guarantees to the financial system.

The Fed's liquidity burst nonetheless sent markets for a 14-month loop, as the nearby charts indicate. The Fed created a commodity bubble of record proportions, with oil doing a round trip in a single year from $70 up to $147 and back down to $69 yesterday. The dollar also plunged along the way against most global currencies, notably the euro, as the bottom chart illustrates.

The dollar price of oil and the dollar-euro exchange rate are probably the two most important prices in the world. They represent a huge share of global commerce, sending signals that shape trade and capital flows. When those two prices move up and down so sharply in so short a time -- based more on fear and expectations than on economic realities -- they distort price signals and can lead to a misallocation of resources. Commodity prices have now fallen back to Earth, as the reality of global recession hits home and the Fed can't ease much further. Meanwhile, the euro has fallen from the stratosphere as Europe heads into recession and the dollar becomes a safer haven in a world of fear.

Many people are blaming the mortgage crash on the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act -- the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Biley Act. But did Gramm-Leach-Bliley cause the crash? I don't think so.

First, Glass-Steagall created a "wall of separation" between investment banking and commercial banking. Investment banks create and sell securities in the investment markets. Commercial banks earn money by offering deposits and making loans (home, auto, business, etc). Glass-Steagall said that commercial banks couldn't offer securities in the investment markets and investment banks couldn't offer loans or deposit accounts.

The law had been steadily weakened before being repealed:

The 1933 Glass-Steagal Act that prohibited commercial banks from owning investment banks, and vice versa, had been steadily weakened since the 70s by an increasingly diverse and complex new financial reality. Waivers from regulators for merger became routine and the 1998 merger between Travelers and Citigroup functionally repealed the law. Gramm-Leach-Bliley only put a de jure stamp of approval on a de facto regulatory framework.

Second, how did allowing a merger between investment banks and commercial banks cause the crisis? Investment banks were primarily buying mortgages from commercial banks. Commercial banks weren't creating the mortgage backed securities, they were selling mortgages to investment banks who then created the securities.

The rest of the previous link offers more details:

In fact, the evidence so far shows that Gramm-Leach-Bliley has helped soften the blow to taxpayers by allowing commercial banks to take over trouble investment firms. Just look at which organization's have failed:

• Bear Stearns was an investment bank before it was sold to JP Morgan Chase (which includes a commercial bank).
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were government sponsored entities before the government bought them.
• Lehman Brothers was an investment bank before it want bankrupt.
• Merrill Lynch was an investment bank befor it was sold to Bank of America (which is a commercial bank).
• AIG is an insurance company with no commercial banking division.

Remember, Glass-Steagal was passed to protect commercial banks from failure by forbidding them from investment bank practices like trading in securities and underwriting stocks and bonds. As you can see above non of the failed institutions are commercial banks that got in trouble through risky investment banking. Instead, it is the commercial banks that are providing some stability to the system by purchasing troubled investment banks. Without Gramm-Leach-Bliley they would not even be allowed to technically do this.

Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen say the same thing, but both include links to scholarly sources and papers to back up their point. Megan McArdle also dubunks this myth and includes these interesting notes:

They can't say it more directly because it's moronic. Even if you ignore the economic history indicating that Glass-Steagall didn't help the crisis it was meant to solve--even if you assume, arguendo, that the repeal was a bad idea--there's simply no logical reason to believe it had anything to do with the current mess.

Securitization was not introduced in the 1990s; it was invented in the 1970s and became popular in the 1980s, as chronicled in Liar's Poker. (As an aside, if you haven't read it, you really must. Especially now).

GLB had nothing to do with either lending standards at commercial banks, or leverage ratios at broker-dealers, the two most plausible candidates for regulatory failure here.

Most importantly, commercial banks are not the main problems. If Glass-Steagall's repeal had meaningfully contributed to this crisis, we should see the failures concentrated among megabanks where speculation put deposits at risk. Instead we see the exact opposite: the failures are among either commercial banks with no significant investment arm (Washington Mutual, Countrywide), or standalone investment banks. It is the diversified financial institutions that are riding to the rescue.

The Southeast has been experiencing drought conditions for over two years now. Many residents don't want to watch their lawns turn brown or their flowers die off. So, they're drilling their own wells.

While Atlanta's main water source, Lake Lanier, has sunk 15 feet below desired levels and ordinary families have let their lawns go brown, affluent residents are paying thousands of dollars to hydrogeologists and drilling companies to scout their estates for underground water to draw from whenever they please. The Fulton County Department of Health and Wellness in Atlanta has issued 305 well permits to homeowners and businesses since the beginning of this year -- 36% more than for 2006 and 2007 combined. Homeowners who have obtained permits include film director Tyler Perry and Atlanta Braves pitcher Tom Glavine, according to county records. In Raleigh, N.C., 95 permits have been issued this year, compared with 46 last year and 19 in 2006. And Orange County, N.C., which includes Chapel Hill, has had such an influx of applications that it raised the price of a permit 65% to $430 on July 1.

Sadly, many people are angry about this display of initiative and investment.

Jason Cooper, who lives in Asheville, N.C. and whose lawn is currently the color of straw, is frustrated by rich people pampering their grass. "The fact that people would circumvent water restrictions in order to keep their lawns green amazes me," Mr. Cooper says. "But I realize that around the world, the people with the most money tend to hoard scarce resources."

Hoarding scarce resources? Hardly. These people are increasing the amount of usable water in their neighborhoods. Rather than taking water away from their neighbors, they're producing new water.

The new wells in Atlanta and Raleigh aren't the shallow wells that are sometimes found in backyards, particularly in areas that aren't on sewer lines. Building one of the new deep wells is a messy and noisy process: Drilling companies bore holes usually 300 to 600 feet deep into fractured rock and then extract the water with an electric pump discreetly hidden in the shrubbery or concealed by a $400 faux rock. Sometimes residents buy plaques with gold lettering to politely and unabashedly tell folks they're using their own well water, not the city's supply. Total installation cost ranges from $5,000 to $25,000 -- a drop in the bucket for the type of owner who spends several hundred thousand dollars on landscaping.

Ironically, there is no opportunity for profits that would allow this water to be shared with the rest of the area. Water rates are regulated by local governments and don't rise and fall according to supply and demand. If water rates did rise according to supply and demand, the cost of water would be sky-high across the Southeast. That would give these residents an incentive to drill the wells and sell the water to their neighbors. Instead of using the water for their own lawns, they'd have an incentive to distribute the water to someone else.

Sadly most of the U.S. is covered by regressive, in-humane laws and no one is allowed to profit off of water supplies. What a shame.

No More Mike's Hard Lemonades For Me:

OK, perhaps it is a guilty pleasure, but I enjoy downing a couple of Mike Hard Lemonade's on a hot afternoon. Now, it seems, the Food Nazi's at the Center for Science in the Public Interest want to stop me.

Public Citizen's blog announced that CSPI plans to sue the beverage sellers, asking for disgorgement of profits from flavored malt beverages, unless they agree to take them off the market. Their theory? By making flavored alcoholic beverages that taste good, they are effectively marketing to children.(Because, after all, adults don't like beverages that taste good.)

(Via Coyote Blog.)

Mike's Hard Lemonade is one of the few alcoholic drinks that I actually like. (The other, Smirnoff Ice, is almost certainly on their hit list too.) I'm going to be quite ticked if any judge actually rules in favor of these know-nothing busybodies.

How's this for economic freedom:

The state of Pennsylvania has shut down the eBay business of Mary Jo Pletz, who started the endeavor so she could earn money at home while caring for daughter, who had developed a brain tumor.

Not content with merely running her out of business, state officials are also prosecuting her. One inspector who visited her home threatened that they were "drawing a line in the sand."

Her crime? Selling goods on the Internet without an "auctioneer's license." Weirdly, they're also threatening to take away her dental hygienist's license.

(Via The Agitator.)

I think someone once complained about that type of thing.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance

From Redneck Peril, Lack of Realism in Evan Almighty Dept.:

And it came to pass, in the fourth day of the sixth month, that Noah settled in the land of Massachusettes. And behold, the LORD spake unto Noah and said, "Again hath the earth become wicked, and it repenteth me that ever I made man, and behold, I see the end of all flesh before me. In three years, I shall cause to open the floodgates of heaven, and every living thing that walks on the earth shall perish. But thou, Noah, shalt build thee an ark, and thou and thy family shall I save. Thou shalt take onto the ark two of every living kind of animal; male and female shalt thou take onto the ark with thee, and thus shall I replenish the earth when after I have caused the waters to recede and the dry land again to appear."

And God did give Noah plans for the ark. And God said, "On this day three years hence shall I come to you again. Be thou ready."

And it came to pass that on the appointed day God returned to Noah, in dark clouds and great wind. But Noah was found standing alone before his tent, weeping in dismay, for there was no ark.

And God waxed wroth, and demanded of Noah that he justify himself before God. And Noah pleaded for God's mercy, saying, "Oh LORD, thou knowest that I am now a stranger in the strange land of Massachusettes. And I began to build the ark as thou didst command. But the rulers of this land demanded of me a building permit, and the marshall of fires required of me that I install a sprinkler system, and my neighbors did brandish before mine eyes the covenants of building and did show therein restrictions of height. Therefore did I seek justice from the Development Appeal Board; but they have scheduled my hearing for next month."

There's more. And I love the ending...

The city of Madison believes that if it limits your freedom it can truly make you safer. Next up on their agenda: plastic water bottles.

The city of Madison, enamored of bans on everything from smoking to phosphorus fertilizers, may be setting its regulatory sights on another target -- plastic.

In coming months, the city's Commission on the Environment is likely to begin discussing bans on the sale of bottled water at public events and the use of plastic grocery bags.

Jon Standridge, chairman of the commission, said members voted unanimously at the end of last year to place both items on upcoming agendas.

"Each year toward the end of the calendar year we sit down and talk about what people are interested in," Standridge said. "We ask if something is an environmental problem and if it is worth taking up. And if it is worth taking up, is there something we can do?"

...

Regardless of what happens, Dreckmann said, discussion of the issue is important because it will make people more aware.

"Whether or not we actually do something about it, it's just good to raise the consciousness of people, to have them think about the environmental consequences of drinking bottled water instead of just turning the tap."

If water bottles are really, truly a problem let's fix the problem. Calculate how much they add to the cost of the city's garbage costs. Count how many of them are sold in the city. Put a city tax on each water bottle sold, equal to the disposal cost. In other words, put a price on the damage that the water bottles are doing. Then, let consumers decide whether or not they want to pay that price.

Maybe a per-bottle trash tax isn't the best way to pass the cost along to the consumers. But it's a better way than simply banning the bottles and leaving consumers no choice at all. Why is the Madison city government so opposed to choice and freedom?

This story (Ban Sought on Cold Medicine for Very Young - New York Times) made my pharmacist wife shake her head.

It seems more than a little overkill to ban an entire class of medicines just because a few doctors start jumping up and down and yelling "There's no proof that it works! No proof!"

And look at the number of children supposedly killed by these medicines in a 37 year period: 123. That's about 3.3 children per year. Far, far more than that are killed via accidents every year (such as parents backing over kiddies with the SUV) than by baby dimetap. Some perspective might be in order here.

I've discussed before how toy companies are using "safety" as an excuse to pile more and more regulations on top of their competitors. Mattel has been blaming China for a recent spate of recalls and using the accusations as leverage to push for more safety regulations.

Turns out, China wasn't to blame.

Mattel Inc. made a public apology to China for damage to the country's reputation stemming from a spate of toy recalls. It was an extraordinary attempt to placate Mattel's most important supplier, but it is likely to shift the spotlight to the company's own responsibility in the crisis.

In its apology, the world's largest toy maker said its own "design flaw" was responsible for the biggest recall by far, involving around 18 million playsets studded with potentially dangerous magnets.

Oops. I'm guessing that regulation wouldn't have done much to catch Mattel's design flaws. Maybe we don't actually need regulation after all.

Toy manufacturers want to regulate toys coming into the United States, looking for dangerous materials like lead paint. But what's the real cause of dangerous toys?

Design flaws, not Chinese manufacturing problems, are the cause of the vast majority of American toy recalls over the last two decades, according to a new study by two Canadian professors.

The study, which looked at toy-recall data going back to 1988, showed that some 76 percent of the recalls in that period involved design flaws that could result in hazards like choking or swallowing small parts, while 10 percent were caused by manufacturing flaws, like excessive levels of lead paint.

The study, written by Hari Bapuji, a professor at the Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba and Paul W. Beamish, from the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, suggests that while China's manufacturing troubles were a serious problem, toy companies needed to take more responsibility for the growing number of recalls.

"I'm not saying there is no problem with Chinese manufacturing," Professor Bapuji said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I'm just saying there is a bigger problem with designs."

Sounds like regulation wouldn't help nearly as much as the big companies want you to think it would. But it would still hurt their competitors plenty.

Needless to say, I'm still opposed to the idea.

Mattel, Hasbro, and Lego have figured out how to use the government to hurt their competitors. They'll ask for more government regulation.

Acknowledging a growing crisis of public confidence caused by a series of recent recalls, the nation's largest toy makers have taken the unusual step of asking the federal government to impose mandatory safety-testing standards for all toys sold in the United States.

The toy manufacturers, of course, claim that they're only doing this in the interests of public safety and in reassuring the public before the Christmas shopping season. Of course, they're might be another reason.

Instead, companies would be required to hire independent laboratories to check a certain portion of their toys, whether made in the United States or overseas. Leading toy companies already do such testing, but industry officials acknowledge that it has not been enough.

... Small companies that currently do little or no testing would be required to pay for testing as well.

So, the large companies already do testing. Recent events have proven that testing isn't always enough to catch dangerous toys. No matter. They'll use the cover of recent events to force their smaller competitors to pay for testing as well. This won't necessarily do anything to improve the safety of toys, but it will do a lot to raise the manufacturing costs (and retail prices) of toys from their competitors.

How clever.

You know, if Mattel, Hasbro, and Lego believe in stronger testing, they could start doing it all by themselves, without the force of the federal government behind them. They could then run an intensive ad campaign talking about their new testing system and what they're doing to make their toys safe for children. This would accomplish their stated goals, they wouldn't have to wait for the government to act, and they could probably increase sales as well.

But it wouldn't hurt their smaller competitors like government regulation would. So, they won't do it. Government regulation -- it's just another way to say "legal mugging".

While in Massachusets, Mitt Rimney created the "RomneyCare" mandated health plan. Now that he's running for President, he's getting ready to push for a free market solution.

Romney to Pitch a State-by-State Health Insurance Plan - New York Times

It relies on federal incentives for market reforms, tax deductions and other changes to encourage people to buy health insurance and drive down costs.

There is no individual mandate in Mr. Romney's plan for the rest of the country. Instead, it concentrates on a "federalist" approach, premised on the belief that it is impossible to create a uniform system for the entire country. Along these lines, the federal government would offer incentives to states to take their own necessary steps to bring down the cost of health insurance.

According to a preview of the presentation provided by Mr. Romney's policy advisers yesterday, Mr. Romney will highlight how the nearly 45 million uninsured in the country can be divided into roughly three groups: about a third are eligible for public programs but are not enrolled; a third are low income but ineligible for public programs and need some help from the government to purchase health insurance; a third are middle income but have chosen not to buy health insurance.

In his plan, Mr. Romney proposes taking federal money currently being used to help states cover the cost of medical care for the uninsured and offering that money to states to help low-income people who are not eligible for Medicaid and other public programs to buy their own private health insurance.

The same pool of money will be wielded as a carrot for states to reform their health insurance regulations to help drive costs down and make plans affordable. That would include reducing the number of requirements for coverage that states impose on health insurance providers or lifting restrictions in some states on health maintenance organizations.

Mr. Romney, who helped found a hugely successful private equity firm, argues that the existing tax system penalizes those who do not acquire their health insurance through their employer, and that has prevented the development of a vigorous, affordable health insurance market. Those who acquire health insurance from their employers pay for their premiums with pre-tax dollars, but those who do not must use post-tax dollars to buy it. So Mr. Romney wants to allow people who buy their own health insurance to be able to deduct premiums, deductibles and co-payments from their income.

Eventually, Ms. Canfield said, the goal would be for people to be able to opt out of employer plans if they do not like them and go out on the individual market to buy health insurance on their own.

These all sound like really good ideas from the bare bones descriptions. It's a shame that Governor Romney didn't push for a plan like this while he was in Massachusets. It's possible that he didn't do so because the Massachusets legislature never would have gone along with it. On the other hand, his actions as governor leave me unsure of how President Romney would react to a stubborn Democratic Congress.

Drugstore Clinics Spread, and Scrutiny Grows - New York Times

The concept has been called urgent care "lite": Patients who are tired of waiting days to see a doctor for bronchitis, pinkeye or a sprained ankle can instead walk into a nearby drugstore and, at lower cost, with brief waits, see a doctor or a nurse and then fill a prescription on the spot.

With demand for primary care doctors surpassing the supply in many parts of the country, the number of these retail clinics in drugstores has exploded over the past two years, and several companies operating them are now aggressively seeking to open clinics in New York City.

But many regulators and doctors are only interested in one thing -- shutting down these low cost competitors.

New York State regulators are investigating the business relationships between drugstore companies and medical providers to determine whether the clinics are being used improperly to increase business or steer patients to the pharmacies in which the clinics are located.

And doctors' groups, whose members stand to lose business from the clinics, are citing concerns about standards of care, safety and hygiene, and they have urged the federal and state governments to step in to more rigorously regulate the new businesses.

"We've got big problems in health care, and this is not the answer," said Dr. Rick Kellerman, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

State officials acknowledged the clinics' appeal. But they said they were looking into possible violations of state law prohibiting unauthorized corporations like pharmacies, which are licensed only to provide pharmaceutical services, from delivering medical care.

"If we determine the business corporations are practicing medicine, then they are illegally practicing the profession and we have the authority to investigate," said Frank Munoz, associate commissioner of the State Education Department's Office of the Professions.

The American Medical Association, contending that patients might be sacrificing quality for convenience or seeking help at drugstore clinics for problems that should be addressed by their doctors or a hospital, has proposed a series of guidelines, including a requirement that the clinics have a "well-defined and limited scope." The association has also urged federal and state governments to investigate how the clinics operate.

But New York State officials are still looking at these "physician based models," Mr. Munoz said, to determine whether there were any inappropriate connections between the prescribing doctors at the clinics and the pharmacy's bottom line.

It sounds to me like someone is afraid of a little competition. Rather than doing whatever possible to improve healthcare, they're all focused on attacking and shutting down the new kid on the block. Is that any way to help lower the cost of healthcare?

I'm disappointed in Life Promotions, the organization that organizes the Lifest Festival each summer in Oshkosh, WI. (Full disclosure: I attended Lifest 2007 with my sister.)

Last year and this year, Lifest hosted the "Air Glory" ride at the festival. Air Glory is a bungee-jump type of ride, available for $25 a ride to festival attendees. Unfortunately, a girl died on the ride this year. Fond du Lac Reporter - Girl dies after fall from Air Glory free-fall ride at Lifest

A girl was killed in a fall from the Air Glory ride Saturday afternoon at Lifest.

The victim, who was not immediately identified, was taken to a local hospital, but Lifest officials made an announcement from the Main Stage about 9:35 p.m. that she had died.

The State of Wisconsin licenses all rides that operate in the state. The license is supposed to ensure that the ride is safe and that all operators meet the relevant criteria (being 18 or older). For the past month, state officials have been investigating the ride.

A few days ago, Lifest representatives said that Lifest bore no responsibility for the accident.

Mitch Lautenslager, vice president of operations and programming for Life! Promotions in Oshkosh, last week said the organization had no responsibility to check to see if Air Glory was registered or inspected in Wisconsin before it opened. "Everything we had done with Air Glory, all the homework, showed they had been cleared to go," Lautenslager said. "We didn't have any reason to believe otherwise."

Life! Promotions spokesman Wes Halula said Air Glory also appeared at last year's Lifest. "It's between the state and Air Glory," Halula said. "The onus is on Air Glory to keep up on all that paperwork."

I'm sorry, but I find this attitude unacceptable. Lifest invited Air Glory to appear at the event. Lifest promoted the event to thousands of parents and youth leaders as a fun, safe time. By putting Air Glory into their promotional materials, Lifest gave their stamp of approval to the ride. Like it or not, Lifest bore a responsibility to ensure that the ride was well-maintained, well-run, and -- above all -- safe.

It's not simply a matter of "keep[ing] up on all that paperwork". By it's very nature, state regulation is always going to be a hit or miss affair. Parents trusted Lifest -- not the State of Wisconsin -- to provide a fun, safe atmosphere for their children.

I believe Lifest had their own responsibility to check the ride before promoting it as an integral part of Lifest. That responsibility was a moral one, not a legal one. I would not sue Lifest for failing in that responsibility. Instead, I'll take my own responsible course: I no longer trust Lifest to provide a safe, fun event. I no longer trust Lifest to have executed due diligence before promoting an event.

Until Lifest takes responsibility for what happens at their festival, I will not be attending. My daughter will not be old enough to attend festivals for another 10-12 years. Lifest has that long to earn back my trust and prove that they're willing to do whatever it takes to keep her safe.

Panel Votes to Allow Regulation of Cigarettes - New York Times

A Senate committee approved legislation that would allow federal regulation of cigarettes for the first time.

Bravo for the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. There's just one little problem. Regardless of how long I pore over Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, I can't find anything granting Congress the power to regulate cigarettes. Nor do I found -- anywhere in the Constitution -- anything granting Congress the authority to grant itself more authority.

Quite the contrary. The Constitution grants Congress a very limited, specific, and well-defined list of powers.

If Congress does ultimately start regulating cigarettes, who's disobeying the law? Those that ignore the new regulations or the Congress that illegally passed the regulations in the first place?

America is so rich that it's possible to make a living off of our trash. (You say wasteful, I say rich. It boils down to the same thing.) Madison's Capital Times published an article about the burgeoning art of dumpster diving.

So much is discarded, in fact, that it is possible to live almost entirely off of trash, or as New York dumpstering organizer and founding member of the Web site freegan.info Adam Weissman puts it, the excesses of capitalism. Weissman sustains himself almost exclusively by dumpstering, or as he refers to it, "urban foraging." Though he also trades items and gardens, the bulk of his sustenance is from garbage, he says in a phone interview.

He quotes Marx and talks about "opt[ing] out of the capitalist economic system." So, he's a bit of a nut. 'Cause, really, he'd be homeless and starving if it wasn't for the capitalist economic system that he' opting out of. Still, there is a lot of waste in a rich society. Some are using that waste to help others.

"The first time I saw it I was amazed and taken aback. There was more food than you've ever seen, just there. ... Sometimes it still hits you -- all this food is still good," says Spike Appel, frequent dumpster diver and chief organizer of the local chapter of Food Not Bombs, an "anarchist community project" that provides free vegetarian meals to the public.

Much of the food donated to Food Not Bombs is one step from the dumpster. This is not to say the produce, dips and baked goods are in any way spoiled. Ripe, organic produce is a hallmark of the meals provided by Food Not Bombs, as is the fact that they do not serve meat.

While the Food Not Bombs Web site advocates dumpstering as a way of obtaining food, the Madison chapter works with local businesses for donations. Food Not Bombs has an international following, and each chapter varies according to the resources in their community.

Interesting, no? Dumpstering is illegal. Many of the business that dump food, rather than donating it, do so out of fear of lawsuits and food safety regulations. The vast majority of that food is still perfectly safe. Why shouldn't we relax the regulations and remove the fear of lawsuits? Why not let that food be legally donated to the hungry rather than forcibly wasted?

A band and its 'forced march'

Starting in mid-June, members of the Oregon Marching Band and the Sound of Sun Prairie begin what they call "everydays": 12-hour practices, sometimes six days a week, often in sweltering conditions.

"I would say I probably put in 16 hours a day a good six days a week until the season's over," said Rachel Lisius, 16, Oregon's drum major.

And we need child labor laws, why? These 96 students are voluntarily "working" 72-96 hours a week. Of course, they're doing it for fun and hoping for a future career. State labor law says that these teenagers can only work a maximum of 50 hours a week. They're allowed to sweat, march, and practice for as many hours as they want, playing in a band. But try to work at McDonald's or a construction site for that many hours and the State will get you.

How does that make sense?

Proponents for NFL retiree benefits get say before Congress

Advocates demanding improved benefits to retired NFL players will have their say Tuesday before Congress.

Increased attention the past few years about the medical and financial plight of some former players finally prompted Congress to look at the perceived problem. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law will hold a hearing Tuesday at the Rayburn House Office Building.

I must have missed the clause in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution that gave Congress oversight of the NFL. How is this any of their business? I get that NFL retirees have a lot of medical and financial problems. I just don't get where Congress has the responsibility to fix it. That responsibility properly rests with the NFL.

The players union is pretty powerful, the league is rich, and the league loves to have a squeaky clean image. Let the league take care of the problem.

The Supreme Court handed down a decision in FEC vs Wisconsin Right to Life today. The case revolved around the McCain-Feingold restrictions on free speech. I'm still in the process of reading the opinion and figuring out what it all means. Since I don't have an opinion yet, I turned to SCOTUS Blog for their analysis.

First though, a note about the makeup of the justices who decided the case. Bomb Throwers and Dismantlers.

Scalia and Thomas seem to be pursuing a different path than Roberts and Alito. The former want to blow things up quickly; the latter want to take them apart slowly. (Kennedy, the swing Justice, does whatever the hell he wants-- because, as a swing Justice-- he can.)

In all three cases, we see that Scalia and Thomas are much more willing to overturn existing doctrines that they oppose. Roberts and Alito, on the other hand, want to chip away at the doctrines slowly, using distinctions that make little sense on their own, but undermine older precedents-- leaving the possibility that they will be ripe for overruling later on.

It is the difference between bomb throwing and dismantling.

Frankly, I'm more of a bomb thrower than a dismantler myself. That's why I like Judge Janice Rogers Brown so much. On the other hand, Roberts and Alito may be able to accomplish more through a slow, gradual chipping process. Take today's decision in WRTL today.

WRTL: A Constitutional Sea Change

The 5-4 decision in WRTL is a blockbuster. Effectively, though silently, it overrules a central element in the Court's most recent prior confrontation with the campaign-finance problem at issue, the 5-4 decision in McConnell, issued only four years ago when Justice O'Connor (and Chief Justice Rehnquist) were on the Court. There is no doubt today's decision reflects a constitutional sea change that is likely to have dramatic effects on upcoming elections. Some will celebrate that change, others will bemoan it, but that the change is dramatic cannot be doubted.

Now, we are likely to see a return of the kinds of ads we saw before McCain-Feingold: ads that contain a fig-leaf of reference to issues that is just enough to give them constitutional protection, even if the ads are close to hard core efforts to influence election outcomes. For First Amendment libertarians, this outcome will be celebrated. For those who fear "undue influence" of corporations and/or unions over federal officeholders, this outcome will be a major blow.

WRTL: Big Win for Campaign Finance Deregulation

In my writings on campaign finance, I have analogized the Supreme Court's campaign finance cases to the swing of a pendulum. We began with Buckley, which was a multi-authored schizophrenic opinion offering something (a ban on independent campaign expenditures by individuals) to those who believe that most campaign finance laws conflict with First Amendment rights of speech and association, and something else (upholding of campaign contribution limits) to those who believe that the government's interest in preventing corruption, insuring the integrity of the electoral process or promoting electoral equality (though the Buckley court itself eschewed that interest). The early post-Buckley cases, such as Bellotti, and NCPAC were deregulationist, and were followed by the period I've called the New Deference, where the four liberals on the Court, joined by Justice O'Connor, upheld a wide range of campaign finance laws, including major provisions of the McCain-Feingold law (the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Act, or BCRA) in a number of different cases. Last year's Randall decision showed Justice Breyer trying to salvage the campaign finance regime and prevent the Chief and Justice Alito from going to the deregulationist side. Today it is clear that those efforts have failed.

What's next? Expect a full, frontal attack on McConnell, likely manufactured by Jim Bopp, as invited by Justice Alito (not to mention Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas). Within a few years, expect the Court to take another campaign contributions case, revisit Randall, and reconsider whether even higher contribution limits violate the First Amendment.

Wisconsin Right to Life in a Nutshell.

Today's decision in effect eviscerates that 60-year-old rule for all practical purposes -- it overrules Austin in all but name, and for the first time in 60 years establishes a constitutional regime in which corporations are entitled to the same First Amendment protections as individuals, notwithstanding that, as the Court stressed in Austin, corporations' "voice" in public debate is magnified considerably by virtue of numerous advantages that state law provides to such artificial entities.

That is to say: This is a very good day for the speech rights of corporations, and for the ability of government officials to engage in speech that favors religion -- but not such a good day for the speech rights of students who would "celebrate" drug use rather than debate whether it should be lawful.

WRTL: The Anti-McConnell

FEC v. WRTL is the anti-McConnell. The majority and plurality opinions -- Chief Justice Roberts's opinion speaks for the Court only in the introductory and jurisdictional sections; the sections dealing with the challenge to electioneering communication section of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) were joined only by Justice Alito — breaks with McConnell at every level in the general approach to campaign finance regulation; in the doctrinal analysis of corporate electioneering communications; and in its specific holding concerning the constitutionality of the electioneering communication restriction.

At the highest level, WRTL rejects the view that campaign finance restrictions can be justified and sustained as democracy-promoting measures that advance government integrity. Where McConnell saw campaign finance jurisprudence as entailing the reconciliation of competing constitutional values — democracy and free speech — Chief Justice Roberts flatly proclaimed that WRTL is "about political speech" only. So much for Justice Breyer's theory of Active Liberty.

Do I know what all of that means? Not yet. But it's clear that a lot changed with today's case. As one of the "First Amendment libertarians", I'm overjoyed at the outcome of this case. I'd have preferred that the court blow up McCain-Feingold entirely, but I'll settle for a simple gutting.