This case highlights the problem with so-called right-to-know laws that claim to educate people about risks.  These laws don’t really perform that function too well.  They more often are misleading and confusing.  This proposed CPSC database, as Grossman so aptly demonstrates, would be among the most unreliable sources of information. 

I disagree with Grossman on only one point.  He suggests that a House bill to “study” the possibility of a database offers an acceptable compromise on the issue.  However, once a government agency is given money to study the possibility of increasing its own budget, we can be pretty sure what it will conclude.  In any case, this unscientific and sloppy database is clearly a waste of money, so why spend taxpayer dollars to study it?

I am not pointing this out because I lament the loss of research funding, I think this type of funding belong in the private arena and should be funneled through 503(c)’s. I am pointing this out because this is a great story about the end results of the horse-trading that goes on in Congress.

This man’s laboratory might be the $100,000 spent by Congress on the High Falls Film Festival in Rochester, NY or the $200,000 spent on the American Cotton Museum in Greenville, TX. Not that I mind buying rich congress people tickets to museum openings and film festivals, but do they have to be so expensive?

The upcoming CEI dinner is a great alternative. It is amuch cheaper for taxpayers and we can offer speaking presidents, authors, great food, and great company.

FDA is going to increase their staff with 1,300 people by October, which will be paid for increased industry fees. It is pretty drastic that a government agency increase their staffing with 13 percent, but industry can afford the increased fees right? It actually only means that the increased cost will be passed down to you and me, also known as Joe and Jill consumer. Grandma will have more expensive drugs at the pharmacy and your sister’s friend who is a single mom will not be able to afford that breast milk pump she needs to go back to work.

FDA also announced a blackmail plan, ehem, I mean incentive plan, to encourage industry to develop more medications against tropical diseases. If they do develop this, FDA will issue them a tradable voucher that will guarantee them a 6-month review time on other medications. That sounds like a great deal right? 6 months is the maximum review time that FDA is allowed for a drug application according to the law, the fact that they routinely disregards this means that people are suffering and dying, waiting for FDA to approve the drugs that helped them immensely when they participated in the trials. While FDA is dragging its feet on approving drugs that could save lives and alleviate suffering for regular people, the bureaucracy is bloating up like a balloon.

We have an obesity epidemic in the federal bureaucracy in my opinion.

I believe you that congestion pricing has not worked in reducing traffic during London’s rush hour. Here’s my question: how can Virginia’s just-started project to build High Occupancy Toll Lanes on the beltway work where London’s has failed? I’m skeptical, personally, of many “private” infrastructure proposals because, in more cases than not, the private party gets the upside but taxpayers get stuck with the bill if the project fails.
Here’s one problem I see: the price needed to achieve the optimal reduction in congestion–every car can drive at the speed limit for the entire length of a given area–may be different than the price needed to achieve the greatest return on investment. One could just argue that the optimal level of congestion, by definition, is when the ROI is the greatest. But, obviously, that may not be what many people are thinking of when they support High Occupancy Toll lanes and other public-private partnerships intended to reduce congestion. It seems, indeed, like London has made an explicit effort to maximize its Return on Investment while ignoring the public purpose of reduced congestion. Government appears to be running like a business–to the benefit of nobody.

SOME people would just as soon ignore the culinary potential of the Carolina flying squirrel or the Waldoboro green neck rutabaga. To them, the creamy Hutterite soup bean is too obscure and the Tennessee fainting goat, which keels over when startled, sounds more like a sideshow act than the centerpiece of a barbecue.

But not Gary Paul Nabhan. He has spent most of the past four years compiling a list of endangered plants and animals that were once fairly commonplace in American kitchens but are now threatened, endangered or essentially extinct in the marketplace. He has set out to save them, which often involves urging people to eat them.

The principle is simple.  If there is demand for something, and money to be made from creating and protecting it, it–whatever “it” is–will prosper.  If only politicians would remember this lesson before interferring everywhere else in the economy.

Reports the New York Times:

Soaring gas prices have turned the steady migration by Americans to smaller cars into a stampede.
In what industry analysts are calling a first, about one in five vehicles sold in the United States was a compact or subcompact car during April, based on monthly sales data released Thursday. Almost a decade ago, when sport utility vehicles were at their peak of popularity, only one in every eight vehicles sold was a small car.

The switch to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles has been building in recent years, but has accelerated recently with the advent of $3.50-a-gallon gas. At the same time, sales of pickup trucks and large sport utility vehicles have dropped sharply.

In another first, fuel-sipping four-cylinder engines surpassed six-cylinder models in popularity in April.

“It’s easily the most dramatic segment shift I have witnessed in the market in my 31 years here,” said George Pipas, chief sales analyst for the Ford Motor Company.

Cordelia Ashton is an angry woman; she feels that her insurance company is treating her unfairly. She feels this way because once her insurance company found out that she’d been keeping three horses on her property, they gave her an ultimatum: get rid of the horses, or we’re dropping your policy.

For her part, Ashton said she wouldn’t be able to afford a higher insurance premium if she had to look for another provider.

“Everything is high enough as it is,” Ashton said. “It’s not fair at all. Why are they picking on me?”

The type of sentiment expressed by Cordelia illustrates how the concept of “fairness” has been lost in society these days.  Is her insurance company “picking” on her by using the facts of reality to determine what to charge her (or as the case may be, that the facts make it impossible for the company to know what to charge her)? Would it be fair to let Cordelia keep paying the same rates though the company cannot know whether they are charging her enough or whether other customers will end up paying for her?  Is it fair for Cordelia to ask others to subsidize a risky lifestyle she admittedly can’t afford?

She claims that the horses pose no additional risk, but this is a ludicrous assertion; one which her insurance company is clearly not willing to believe.  As an owner of horses, I can say from personal experience that, even if a horse isn’t being ridden it can still do plenty of damage to anything or anyone within kicking range. From wild kicking fits to cribbing (a common activity horses engage in, consisting of biting and pulling on objects like fences and barn doors) horses are large, unpredictable liabilities.

When insurers neglect to account for certain risks, they inevitably transfer the burden of paying for such behavior from those who take the risks onto those who do not. Making non-horse owners pay the costs for those who own horses would truly be unfair.