Monthly Archives: September 2011

Parts of PATRIOT Act Declared Unconstitutional

Posted on September 30, 2011 | Comments Off on Parts of PATRIOT Act Declared Unconstitutional

In yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Turley blasted President Obama’s record on civil liberties:

Historically, this country has tended to correct periods of heightened police powers with a pendulum swing back toward greater individual rights. Many were questioning the extreme measures taken by the Bush administration, especially after the disclosure of abuses and illegalities. Candidate Obama capitalized on this swing and portrayed himself as the champion of civil liberties.

However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly.

Today brought better news. MSNBC reports that the U.S. Circuit Court struck down two PATRIOT Act provisions dealing with probable cause-less searches. The case centered around Brandon Mayfield, an attorney in Portland who was falsely linked to the 2004 Madrid bombings.

Mayfield was arrested and fingerprinted. His fingerprint was falsely matched to a print found in Madrid. After that, the FBI put him “under 24-hour surveillance, listened to his phone calls and surreptitiously searched his home and law office.” This , according to Judge Ann Aiken, crossed the line.

Two provisions down, many more to go. Until then, President Bush’s third term continues.

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Posted in Law, Security Theater

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Regulation Roundup

Posted on September 30, 2011 | Comments Off on Regulation Roundup

Here’s a fresh batch of regulatory bloopers:

  • In Michigan, it is legal to kill ducks during hunting season, but not to scare them.
  • In Pateros, Washington, it is illegal for dogs to be nuisances.
  • Massage parlors are illegal in well-named Horneytown, North Carolina.
  • In Salem, West Virginia, it is illegal to eat candy if you’re going to church in the next 90 minutes.
  • In Maine, it is illegal to walk on any street with untied shoelaces.
  • In New Britain, Connecticut, fire trucks on their way to a fire may not go faster than 25 mph.
  • In Brooklyn, New York, it is against the law for horses to sleep in bathtubs.
  • In South Dakota, it is illegal to fall asleep inside a cheese factory.

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Right on Cue

Posted on September 29, 2011 | Comments Off on Right on Cue

In this morning’s CEI Podcast, my colleague John Berlau predicted that the new price cap on debit card swipe fees would lead to the end of free debit cards and free checking. He pointed out that while this is an unintended consequence, it is also entirely foreseeable.

It didn’t take long for that prediction to come true. Bank of America just announced that it will start charging its debit card users $5 per month. They are not the only ones:

JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo are testing $3 fees for debit cards in select areas, and Citibank recently announced it is raising its fees for checking accounts. Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Thomas McCrohan said last week that Visa and MasterCard, the top two debit card companies, may increase drastically increase (sic) fees on small purchases to offset the losses.

Thanks, Congress.

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Posted in Economics, Price and Wage Controls

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Herbert Hoover, Father of the New Deal

Posted on September 29, 2011 | Comments Off on Herbert Hoover, Father of the New Deal

Whether you love the New Deal or loathe it, its policies were not entirely new. FDR’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover, set the precedent. History remembers him as a laissez faire president; a do-nothing who simply let the Great Depression happen. This requires an odd definition of “laissez faire” and an even stranger understanding of “do-nothing” to actually be true.

A new Cato paper from St. Lawrence University economics professor Steve Horwitz takes a closer look:

In fact, Hoover had long been a critic of laissez faire. As president, he doubled federal spending in real terms in four years. He also used government to prop up wages, restricted immigration, signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff, raised taxes, and created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation—all interventionist measures and not laissez faire. Unlike many Democrats today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advisers knew that Hoover had started the New Deal. One of them wrote, “When we all burst into Washington … we found every essential idea [of the New Deal] enacted in the 100-day Congress in the Hoover administration itself.”

Read the whole paper here.

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Posted in Business Cycles, Economics, History

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CEI Podcast for September 29, 2011: The End of Free Debit Cards

Posted on September 29, 2011 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast for September 29, 2011: The End of Free Debit Cards

Have a listen here.

Every time you use your debit card, the merchant has to pay a fee to the company that issued your card, usually about 1 percent of the purchase price. On October 1, that price will be capped by law to 21 cents. John Berlau, Director of CEI’s Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs, explains the unintended consequences that will hurt consumers, merchants, and banks alike. John has written on interchange fees for The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, The American Spectator, and other outlets.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Economics, Price and Wage Controls

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DC’s Capital Bikeshare Program

Posted on September 27, 2011 | 7 comments

If you walk around DC, you’ll see bright red bike racks here and there, along with matching bicycles. They were installed about a year ago, and anyone can use them. It’s the city’s way of encouraging people to use bicycles instead of cars.

It hasn’t worked as planned. According to my colleague Marc Scribner, before the Bikeshare program, about 1.6 percent of person-trips in the city were on bikes. Now it’s 1.9 percent.

That 0.3 percent gain comes at a steep price:

The Capital Bikeshare bikes cost around $1,000 a piece and have a life cycle of six years. Annual operating costs are somewhere closer to $2,000 per bike. In the past two years, I have spent approximately $500 on my personal bike that I commute to work on daily — $250 a year. Capital Bikeshare’s costs given the benefits are simply absurd.

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Posted in Economics, Spending

Time to Abolish DHS

Posted on September 27, 2011 | Comments Off on Time to Abolish DHS

Gene Healy makes a good case in his latest column:

In a new book, “Terror, Security, and Money,” professors John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart closely examine that question and, using a set of assumptions weighted in favor of the government, conclude that, to justify the increased post-Sept. 11 spending, we “would have to deter, prevent, foil, or protect against 1,667 otherwise successful [attempted Times Square car bomb-type] attacks per year, or more than four per day.”

Terrorism is rare. Much rarer than 4 attacks per day. We already have military and police forces to deal with that rare threat. DHS is redundant at best. It would be both good policy and good politics to shutter the department and hand its legitimate functions over to other agencies.

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Posted in Security Theater

Brewers Win NL Central

Posted on September 24, 2011 | Comments Off on Brewers Win NL Central

The magic number is 0. They did it.

Ryan Braun’s 3-run homer sealed the Marlin’s fate, bring it down to 1. When the Cubs beat the Cardinals 25 minutes later, the Brewers officially became the 2011 NL Central champs.

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Posted in Sports

Regulation Roundup

Posted on September 23, 2011 | 1 comment

Here’s another batch of regulatory bloopers:

  • In Seattle, Washington, the maximum length allowed for concealed weapons is 6 feet.
  • The federal government has a Shell Egg Surveillance Program.
  •  In Pocatello, Idaho, “The carrying of concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public view.”
  • In Memphis, Tennessee, it is against the law for frogs to croak after 11:00pm.
  • In Oregon, it is illegal to wipe your dishes with a cloth or towel to dry them. They must drip-dry.
  • In Norfolk, Virginia, it is illegal for hens to lay eggs outside the hours of 8am-4pm.
  • In Jamestown, New York, dentists can be fined $250 for hypnotizing their patients.
  • In Utah, birds always have right of way on all state highways.

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Posted in regulation

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$16 Muffins a Hoax?

Posted on September 23, 2011 | 1 comment

The Justice Department’s auditors have been getting a lot of press lately. They found that the department paid $16 each for muffins at a recent event in Washington. At another event in San Francisco, the department spent $76 per person on lunch.

According to the Hilton hotel chain, which hosted the DC muffin event, the auditors didn’t read the invoice very carefully:

Hilton Worldwide, which manages and franchises hotels including the Capital Hilton where the conference took place, says the price included not only breakfast baked goods but also fresh fruit, coffee, tea, soft drinks, tax and tips. It says the report misinterpreted its invoices, which often use shorthand and don’t reflect the full menu provided.

So it appears that part of the story has been exaggerated. The $76-per-person lunch in San Francisco, also held at a Hilton, included “slow-cooked Berkshire pork carnitas, hearts-of-romaine salad — and coffee at $8.24 a cup.” That one still looks dodgy. A bit fancy for a government conference. But the muffins do seem to have been blown out of proportion.

In related news, after an assistant told Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that the muffins didn’t actually cost $16, he was reportedly overheard muttering to himself, “soon…”

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Posted in Economics

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