Monthly Archives: January 2012

Obama,Cheney Surprisingly Similar on Civil Liberties

Posted on January 6, 2012 | Comments Off on Obama,Cheney Surprisingly Similar on Civil Liberties

Great column from Steve Chapman:

Back in 2007, when Barack Obama was running for president, a mildly surprising bit of news emerged: He and Dick Cheney were eighth cousins. Today, though, it appears that report was wrong. Judging from Obama’s record in office, the two are practically brothers.

As a candidate, Obama criticized the last administration for holding Americans as enemy combatants without trial. He faulted it for wiretapping citizens without a warrant. He rejected the Republican claim that the president has the “inherent power” to go to war without congressional consent. He depicted George W. Bush and his vice president as a menace to constitutional limits and personal freedom.

But look at him now. Last week, Obama signed a bill letting him detain U.S. citizens in military custody without convicting them of anything — not for a month or a year, but potentially forever.

Read the whole thing.

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Posted in Political Animals, The Partisan Mind

Regulation Roundup

Posted on January 6, 2012 | Comments Off on Regulation Roundup

The latest goings-on in the world of regulation:

  • The 2012 Federal Register is already over 1,000 pages long. After four working days, it’s already up to 1,007 pages.
  • The 2011 Federal Register weighs in at 82,419 pages. That’s 328 pages per work day. Adjusting the count for skips, jumps, and blank pages would probably yield around 81,000 pages. That adjusted count should come out soon. The all-time record adjusted page count is 81,405 pages, set in 2010.
  • My colleague Wayne Crews has set up TenThousandCommandments.com, which has daily Federal Register updates and other nifty features. Wayne talked to me about the site in this podcast; there is also a 10KC Facebook page and a Twitter feed. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for the public to keep an eye on the regulatory state. Of course, agencies and OMB should already be doing this already. Since they aren’t, CEI is doing it for them.
  • Sam Patterson compares the size of the 2011 Federal Register to a lengthy reading list of classic books totaling about 7.3 million words. How do they compare? “[Y}ou’d have to read every single one of these books ten times over to achieve the same word count that was added to the Federal Register in a single year.”
    Also worth noting: in the publishing industry, a manuscript page has 250 words. Or at least it’s counted that way; every page is different. So a 200-page manuscript is considered a 50,000-word book. The average Federal Register page has about 1,000 words. Patterson used 900 words per page to err on the side of caution. Using his numbers, a paperback edition of the Federal Register would be about 292,000 pages instead of 81,000.
  • It’s not pornography, it’s the TSA: “’When Bruch reached into Russell’s groin area he ‘lifted up to feel,’ ‘ wrote 9th Circuit Judge Margaret McKeown in the opinion.”
  • Having solved all of Indiana’s other problems, state Rep. Randy Frye wants to criminalize novelty lighters.
  • Jim Gattuso and Diane Katz list the ten worst federal rules of 2011. There are some doozies.

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Posted in regulation

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Regulatory Capture

Posted on January 6, 2012 | Comments Off on Regulatory Capture

Businesses, especially larger ones, aren’t afraid of regulation. They often welcome it. They can use rules to stifle competitors, or can pad their profits by forcing consumers to pay higher prices. There’s a reason so many businesses have a Washington office. They’re trying to influence regulations and regulators alike.

This is called regulatory capture, and George Washington University’s Susan Dudley gives some examples in the video below. Click here if the embedded video below doesn’t work.

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Posted in Economics, Public Choice, regulation

Economic vs. Political Processes, or Why More Students Should Major in Economics

Posted on January 6, 2012 | Comments Off on Economic vs. Political Processes, or Why More Students Should Major in Economics

Gernot Wagner, in the Washington Post:

Markets, in fact, work all too well. They are an aggregator of wishes and desires, however misguided they may be.

This is actually a more accurate description of democracy — especially the misguided wishes bit. There is little, if anything aggregate about the market process. It is the process of individuals making exchanges with other individuals, each individually trying to meet their individual wants and individual needs.

The first thing I learned in undergrad macro is that all economics is micro. GDP and other indicators try to sum up the results of that process. But it all happens at the individual level.

Every customer at a grocery store gets an individually customized bundle of goods. Usually, no two are the same. But in a democracy, there are usually only two bundles of policy stances to choose from. And almost nobody agrees with the entire contents of one of the bundles. Nobody gets what they want. The successful politician picks his positions based on aggregate opinion, and ignores individual opinion.

But I quibble. The point of Wagner’s piece is to steer young people towards studying economics, and he makes a good case. He also offers some great advice, though it does contradict most of the policy prescriptions he puts forth:

Economists ought to be more humble in what we know and how we teach it.

Precisely. Humility is at the core of the economic way of thinking, and should form the basis of any humane political philosophy. It’s ok to admit that it’s impossible to consciously push an economy in a given direction without unintended consequences. And it’s not ok to tell other people you know what’s best for them.

(via Russ Roberts)

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Posted in Economics

Profits and Losses

Posted on January 5, 2012 | 5 comments

Here’s a letter I recently sent to the New York Times:

TO THE EDITOR:

Amar Bhidé argues that “governments should fully guarantee all bank deposits — and impose much tighter restrictions on risk-taking by banks.” (“Bring Back Boring Banks,” Jan. 4).

The lure of profit is why banks take on risk in the first place. But the specter of loss encourages them to be prudent about it. When governments remove losses from the equation, banks lose any incentive to keep their risk-taking in check. Someone else will pick up the tab if a plan doesn’t work, so why not take a chance? Hence the financial crisis.

Capitalism is a system of both profit and loss. Wishing losses away would have consequences quite different from Bhidé’s good intentions.

RYAN YOUNG
Washingon, Jan. 4, 2012
The writer is a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

5 Comments

Posted in Bailouts, Economics

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CEI Podcast for January 5, 2012: The Iowa Caucuses

Posted on January 5, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast for January 5, 2012: The Iowa Caucuses

Have a listen here.

Associate Director of Technology Policy Studies and Iowa native Ryan Radia takes a look at how the different strains of Republican voters are deciding on their party’s presidential nominee. In the years to come, Radia believes that the GOP will need to reinvent itself ideologically if it is to remain politically relevant.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Elections, Political Animals

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Happy New Year

Posted on January 1, 2012 | Comments Off on Happy New Year

According to MSNBC, 40,000 new laws come into effect today.

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Posted in regulation

On to the Playoffs

Posted on January 1, 2012 | Comments Off on On to the Playoffs

What a game. Lots scoring, lots of lead changes, and there was even a streaker on the field in the fourth quarter, making this writer glad he listened to the game on the radio. When it was all over, the Packers backups beat a good Lions team 45-41 to finish the regular season 15-1 — the best record in franchise history.

The team went 13-3 in 1996 under Mike Holmgren and 13-1 in 1962 under Vince Lombardi. They won championships in both of those years.

Detroit remains winless in the state of Wisconsin since 1991.

Backup quarterback Matt Flynn also made himself a lot of money today. The team decided to rest Aaron Rodgers and give Flynn his second career start. He did not disappoint.

In addition to throwing 6 touchdown passes — something Rodgers has never done — he set the franchise record for most yards in a game with 480. The Packers have a long tradition of great quarterbacks, from Bart Starr to Lynn Dickey to Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers. None of them have thrown for as many yards in a game as Flynn did today.

He will be a free agent at season’s end, and should draw a lot of interest; hopefully he doesn’t sign with the Vikings.

The defense was missing its two best players today, Charles Woodson and Clay Matthews. It showed. Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford threw for 520 yards — meaning the opposing quarterbacks combined for precisely 1,000 passing yards. Receiver Calvin Johnson torched the Green Bay secondary for 244 yards, which is the most any receiver has ever put up on the Green Bay defense in the team’s 92-year history.

Despite all the yards allowed, the defense recovered two fumbles and intercepted Stafford twice. The second interception, courtesy of cornerback Sam Shields, clinched the game without about a minute left in the fourth quarter. It’s hard to win with four turnovers, but the Lions sure came close.

Both teams will be in the playoffs. The Packers get a bye week, and the Lions will find out who their next opponent will be shortly. If Detroit wins next week, they could well make a return trip to Lambeau Field in two weeks. The Packers will not be resting their starters in that game.

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Posted in Sports

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