Would the Health Reform Prescriptions Offered by President Obama and Congressional Leaders Help Patients?

Would the Health Reform Prescriptions Offered by President Obama and Congressional Leaders Help Patients? By Thomas P. Miller, Scott Gottlieb, M.D., Robert B. Helms, Joseph Antos, Doug Badger, Robert A. Book, James C. Capretta, Greg D'Angelo, Stephen J. Entin, John C. Goodman, Linda Gorman, John R. Graham, Paul Guppy, John S. Hoff, Merrill Matthews, Amy Menefee, Robert E. Moffit, Nina Owcharenko, Sally Pipes, Peter Pitts, Roy Ramthun, Grace-Marie Turner.
Health Policy Consensus Group Statement
AEI, Wednesday, April 1, 2009

The Health Policy Consensus Group warns that health care reform should not include a new government health insurance plan; an employer "play-or-pay" mandate, a uniform; government-defined package of benefits; a mandate that individuals must purchase insurance; a National Health Insurance Exchange extending federal regulatory powers over private insurance; or federal interference in the practice of medicine through a federal health board, comparative effectiveness review, and other government intrusions into medical decision-making. These elements are present in proposals by President Obama and congressional leaders but would ultimately reduce patient well-being.

Click here to view this statement as an Adobe Acrobat PDF with full notes

President Obama repeatedly has reassured the American people, "If you've got health care already, and probably the majority of you do, then you can keep your plan if you are satisfied with it. You can keep your choice of doctor."[1] Research shows 82 percent of Americans rate the health care they receive as good to excellent.[2]

At the same time, there are serious problems of cost, value, and access throughout our health sector. It is vital to address these problems. But any health reform proposal to change what needs fixing also must preserve the freedom, innovation, and quality of American medical care that people value. We believe a better functioning, more competitive, and transparent marketplace would cover more people and deliver the higher-value care we seek.

We are gravely concerned that several of the proposals offered by the President and the Congressional leadership would make matters worse, not better. These flawed prescriptions for radical change should not be accepted as part of any serious and sustainable health reform proposal:

• A new government health insurance plan
• An employer "play-or-pay" mandate
• A uniform, government-defined package of benefits
• A mandate that individuals must purchase insurance
• A National Health Insurance Exchange extending federal regulatory powers over private insurance
• Federal interference in the practice of medicine through a federal health board, comparative effectiveness review, and other government intrusions into medical decision-making

We explain below why we believe these ideas would diminish individual Americans' freedom and control over their personal health decisions.

A New Government Health Insurance Plan: A new national health plan, to be operated by the federal government, is being proposed with the claim that it would give Americans a choice between public or private health plans. While there may be initial assurances that the plans would operate on a level playing field, the government inevitably will use its regulatory, pricing, and taxing authority to favor its plan. Congress would give the government plan the power to dictate prices so it can artificially under-price private plans and drive them out of this one-sided "marketplace."

Many people then would be left with little or no choice, as employers would drop their current coverage and send their workers into the public plan. Research by The Lewin Group[3] shows that as many as 118.5 million Americans would lose or be switched out of private health coverage. This massive crowding out of private health insurance would undermine the employment-based coverage that most Americans under age 65 have today.

Once private plans have been driven out of the market, people will realize that the government plan will not be able to sustain the quality and quantity of benefits they were promised. Government instead will begin to ration care and services, driving out innovation, competition, and patient-centered quality.

A "Play-or-Pay" Mandate That Employers Must Provide or Pay for Health Coverage for Their Workers: Employers would be required to pay an unspecified "meaningful contribution" toward their workers' health insurance or pay a new tax to fund the government plan. If they are not "playing" in the new system by directly providing health insurance, then they will be "paying" to fund the government plan. It is a political certainty that the option to "pay" this new health insurance tax will be set lower than the current levels at which employers now "play" by providing their own coverage, enticing many of them to transfer their employees' insurance coverage to the mercies of the new government plan.

Whether they choose to pay or to play, small employers will be hit especially hard by a new mandate to finance all or part of the health insurance premiums for their employees, directly or through new taxes. Any initial subsidies to them will quickly be overtaken by higher mandated costs. As they absorb new tax burdens they cannot control, the result will be more lost jobs and lower wages for workers.

A Uniform, Government-Defined Package of Benefits: Decades of experience in the states confirm that whenever benefit packages are determined politically rather than by the marketplace, legislators find it very difficult to say no to anyone asking that their services and products be included. People would have a "choice" of only the expensive one-size-fits-all plan mandated by government, significantly increasing the cost of health coverage. Workers would pay for this more expensive coverage through lower wages, lost jobs, higher taxes, and lower-value health care.

A Mandate That Individuals Must Purchase Insurance: If the federal government requires everyone to purchase health insurance, it must define what qualifies as insurance. All signals indicate this would be a very expensive benefits package, designed as one-size-fits-all in theory but delivered as one-size-fits-none in practice. Sweeping government mandates create a conflict between escalating costs, limited resources, and the false guarantee of rich coverage – triggering price and supply controls.

Many individuals will need subsidies to receive coverage that otherwise would be unaffordable to them, but taxpayers will resist filling an abyss. As a result, political leaders will try to cover rising costs indirectly and invisibly – through general revenue subsidies, tax increases, deficit spending, and escalating fees, fines, and taxes imposed on employers. And to make the mandate work, the government also must establish and enforce binding penalties for individuals who do not comply.

A National Health Insurance Exchange Extending Vast Federal Regulatory Powers over Private Insurance: A new National Health Insurance Exchange is being proposed to "streamline the purchase of health insurance." It actually would steamroll over private choice and patient preferences by providing a vehicle to extend sweeping federal regulation into virtually every corner of our health sector. This would reduce choice for patients and discourage or prohibit innovation and flexibility in health insurance offerings that today are helping many companies and families balance their health costs with other needs.

Federal Interference in the Practice of Medicine through a Federal Health Board, Comparative Effectiveness Review, and Other Government Intrusions into Medical Decision-Making: Congress appropriated $1.1 billion in taxpayer funding for comparative effectiveness research in the economic stimulus bill, establishing the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, which will assess medical treatments available to Americans. This provides an irresistible temptation for politicians to go beyond providing better information and start restricting the treatment choices available to patients. House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) said the intent was that drugs and treatments "that are found to be less effective and in some cases, more expensive, will no longer be prescribed."

The clear and present danger is that any centralized health board will use the cover of comparative effectiveness findings to meet budgetary bottom lines, at the expense of patients' medical needs and personal preferences. This is a particular danger to the health of people who suffer from rare conditions or who need access to specific medicines and treatments but who may lack the political power to influence the reviewers' decisions.

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There are many problems that need to be addressed in the health sector, and the signatories to this statement have written extensively about our ideas for reform.[4] Because the reform agenda is moving rapidly through Congress, we believe the American public should be aware of the likely impact of the policies described in this statement which are under active consideration by elected leaders.

We believe that the proposals put forth by the Administration and Congressional leaders would harm, not help, patients and would not fulfill the goals and promises made to the American people.

The Health Policy Consensus Group is an affiliation of the policy experts from the major market-oriented think tanks and others who work together to advance patient-centered ideas for health reform. Joseph Antos* is the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at AEI. Doug Badger is a senior fellow at the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. Robert A. Book is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. James C. Capretta* is a fellow at the Etics and Public Policy Center. Greg D'Angelo is a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. Stephen J. Entin is the president of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation. John C. Goodman is the president of the National Center for Policy Analysis. Linda Gorman is a senior fellow at the Independence Institute. Scott Gottlieb, M.D., is a resident fellow at AEI. John R. Graham is the director of health care studies at the Pacific Research Institute. Paul Guppy is the vice president for research at the Washington Policy Center. Robert B. Helms* is a resident scholar at AEI. John S. Hoff is a trustee of the Galen Institute. Merrill Matthews is the director of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance. Amy Menefee* is the director of communications at the Galen Institute. Thomas P. Miller* is a resident fellow at AEI. Robert E. Moffit* is the director of the center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Nina Owcharenko* is a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. Sally Pipes is the president of the Pacific Research Institute. Peter Pitts is the director of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. Roy Ramthun is the president of HSA Consulting Services. Grace-Marie Turner* is the president of the Galen Institute. Affiliations of those signing this statement are listed for identification purposes only. The views in this statement do not necessarily reflect those of their organizations. The health policy experts whose names are followed by an asterisk served on the drafting committee for this statement.

Click here to view this statement as an Adobe Acrobat PDF with full notes

Statement On Bilateral Meeting With President Hu Of China

Statement On Bilateral Meeting With President Hu Of China
White House, Apr 01, 2009

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
____________________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 1, 2009

STATEMENT ON BILATERAL MEETING WITH PRESIDENT HU OF CHINA

On 1 April 2009, President Barack Obama of the United States and President Hu Jintao of China met on the sidelines of the G20 Financial Summit in London, the United Kingdom. The two heads of state had an extensive exchange of views on U.S.-China relations and global issues of common interest, and reached the following points of agreement:


I. Toward Enhanced U.S.-China Relations

The two sides agreed to work together to build a positive, cooperative, and comprehensive U.S.-China relationship for the 21st century and to maintain and strengthen exchanges at all levels. President Hu Jintao invited President Obama to visit China in the second half of this year, and President Obama accepted the invitation with pleasure.

The two sides decided to establish the "U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue." U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo will chair the "Strategic Track" and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan will chair the "Economic Track" of the Dialogue, each as special representatives of their respective presidents. The two sides will hold the first round of the dialogue in Washington DC this summer. The two sides stated that they will continue to advance mutually beneficial cooperation in economics and trade through the mechanism of the high-level Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade.

The two sides agreed to further deepen mutually beneficial cooperation in a wide range of areas, including economy and trade, counterterrorism, law enforcement, science and technology, education, culture and health. They also agreed to resume and expand consultations on non-proliferation and other international security topics. They welcomed further exchanges between the national legislatures, local authorities, academics, young people and other sectors. The two sides agreed to resume the human rights dialogue as soon as possible.

Both sides share a commitment to military-to-military relations and will work for their continued improvement and development. The two sides agreed that Admiral Gary Roughead, U.S Chief of Naval Operations, will visit China upon invitation in April to attend events marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Navy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. The U.S. looks forward to visits by senior Chinese military leaders this year.

The two sides agreed to maintain close communication and coordination and to work together for the settlement of conflicts and reduction of tensions that contribute to global and regional instability, including the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the Iranian nuclear issue, Sudan humanitarian issues, and the situation in South Asia.

The two sides agreed to intensify policy dialogue and practical cooperation in energy, the environment and climate change building on the China-US Ten Year Energy and Environment Cooperation Framework, carry out active cooperation in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean energy technologies and work with other parties concerned for positive results at the Copenhagen conference.


II. Strengthening Economic and Financial Cooperation

The two presidents discussed challenges facing the global economy and financial system. They pledged that, as two major economies, the U.S. and China will work together, as well as with other countries, to help the world economy return to strong growth and to strengthen the international financial system so a crisis of this magnitude never happens again.

The two presidents welcomed the fiscal stimulus measures taken by the other, and agreed that these measures were already playing a stabilizing role for the global economy. They also agreed that strong financial systems were essential for restoring growth, and they welcomed the commitment of both countries to address issues in this area. President Obama underlined the commitment of the United States to implement the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Financial Stability Plan. He underscored that once recovery is firmly established, the United States will act to cut the U.S. fiscal deficit in half and bring the deficit down to a level that is sustainable. President Hu emphasized China’s commitment to strengthen and improve macroeconomic control and expand domestic demand, particularly consumer demand, to ensure sustainable growth, and ensure steady and relatively fast economic development.

The two presidents agreed the international financial institutions should have more resources to help emerging market and developing nations withstand the shortfall in capital, and the two countries will take actions toward this goal. China and the United States agreed to work together to resolutely support global trade and investment flows that benefit all. To that end, they are committed to resist protectionism and ensure sound and stable U.S.-China trade relations.

President Hu and President Obama discussed regulatory and supervisory changes needed to reform and strengthen the global financial system, including regulatory standards. President Hu welcomed the recent U.S. announcement of a comprehensive financial regulatory reform agenda. President Obama welcomed the commitment of China to continue the development and reform of its financial system.

The Presidents agreed on the need for sweeping changes in the governance structure of international financial institutions. President Obama underscored that such changes were needed so that these organizations better reflect the growing weight of dynamic emerging market economies in the global system

President Hu and President Obama concluded that continued close cooperation between the United States and China was critical at this time to maintain the health of the world economy and would remain so in the future. They both recognized that as major economies, the United States and China have a need to work together, as well as with other countries, to promote the smooth functioning of the international financial system and the steady growth of the world economy. To this end, the two sides will exchange views and intensify coordination and cooperation on global economic and financial issues, climate change and energy, and other important issues through the Strategic and Economic Dialogue that the two countries have decided to establish.

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Conservatives, Public Schools, and Pedagogy

Conservatives, Public Schools, and Pedagogy. By Andrew J. Coulson
Cato at Liberty, Apr 01, 2009

I’ve received a fair bit of e-mail in response to my commentary yesterday on the recent defunding of the Bush administration’s Reading First program. Several people questioned my assertion that the program failed to yield a significant nationwide improvement in literacy. I cited a 2008 federal government report in support of that assertion, but questions were raised as to the validity of that study and other research seeming to contradict it was presented.

Taking the latter point first, it was pointed out that an EDS study of California found a positive impact to the program, as did an NWREL study of 5 other Western states. Note that there is not necessarily any contradiction between the federal study and the California and Western states studies. It’s possible that, nationwide, Reading First was associated with academic improvements in some schools, no effect in others, and lower performance in still others, resulting in the overall lack of impact reported by the federal government study. If so, it could be that schools in which Reading First proved effective are unevenly distributed around the country, and happen to be concentrated in the West.

Another possibility is that the federal study was so flawed that it failed to find a significant positive effect to Reading First when there actually was one. For the sake of argument, let’s say that this is true and that Reading First is actually working, overall, at improving student literacy nationwide. If so, what confidence should we have that it would continue to be effectively implemented in the long term, and not displaced by something else, or altered so as to become ineffective?

The answer is: not much. As I’ve noted in the case of the Follow Through experiment of the 60s and 70s, which is typical, even when a proven method is adopted in public school classrooms and yields great success it tends to be discarded for one reason or another. Since nothing fundamental has changed in the incentive structure of public schooling since the 1970s, there is no reason to believe that Reading First would buck the trend and somehow survive in perpetutity.

But all of this is of course academic, because Congress has already defunded the program. Democrats were not interested in continuing to evaluate the program to make absolutely sure of its impact. They killed it almost immediately because it is a traditionalist pedgaogical program that appeals to conservatives rather than “progressives.”

And that was the second point of my commentary: even when effective methods are implemented in public schools they remain subject to the inconstant winds of politics. If you want to find fields where better methods roiutinely displace worse ones rather than vice versa, you have to look to the free enterprise sector of the economy. Without the freedoms and incentives of the marketplace, stagnation and declining productivity are the norm. Education is no different in this regard from any other field.

And just to be clear, I am convinced by the earlier research that the pedagogical ideas behind Reading First are sound, and that when properly implemented its systematic use of phonics is superior to most of what it would have displaced. I’m simply pointing out that there was never good reason to expect a government-protected monopoly consistently implement it effecitvely, and that even if it did for some period of time Reading First would eventually have fallen victim to shifting political winds. While some may choose to disagree on the first point, the second has already come to pass.

If we want schools around the country to continually adopt and refine the best methods available, we must create the freedoms and incentives that will cause that to happen… or get used to disappointment.

Social Security Is Running a Surplus…Oops

Social Security Is Running a Surplus…Oops. Michael D. Tanner
Cato at Liberty, April 1, 2009 @ 9:02 am

For years, opponents of Social Security reform have told us that there is no need to rush into changing the program because, after all, Social Security is running a surplus today. Well, according to a new report by the Congressional Budget Office, not so much.

CBO reports that the Social Security surplus, originally expected to be $80-90 billion this year and next will shrink to $16 billion this year and just $3 billion next year (essentially a rounding error) as a result of the recession and rising unemployment. And those estimates may be far too optimistic. In February of this year, for example, Social Security actually ran a deficit—spending more than it took in through taxes and interest combined.

And, while CBO expects a return to modest surpluses after 2010, as the recession ends and unemployment falls, that is betting on the success of the unproven Obama economic program. If unemployment stays at current levels, Social Security will begin running permanent cash flow deficits in 2011 (eight years earlier than previously predicted).

Opponents of personal accounts have pointed out recent declines in the stock market as a reason why private investment should no longer be considered an option for Social Security reform. The evidence suggests that, even with recent market declines, private investment would still produce higher returns than Social Security. The new surplus numbers provide yet another lesson: if the economy is in such a mess that it hurts private investment, traditional Social Security isn’t going to be in any better shape.

The case for personal accounts remains as strong as ever.

Making sense of the “killer meat” study

Making sense of the “killer meat” study. By Rebecca Goldin Ph.D and Trevor Butterworth
Modest risk suggests meat in moderation, but cancer researchers warn that too much is being made of the link between diet and cancer at the expense of smoking and obesity.
stats.org, March 30, 2009

Hundreds of news stories last week warned people that eating red meat raised their risk for cancer and death. The headline in the Los Angeles Times health section was succinct: “Killer meat,” and the opening graph warned:

“Before you dig into another hamburger, consider this: Americans who ate the most red meat boosted their overall risk of death by 30% during a 10-year period compared to those who ate the least, according to a new study. And before you switch to cold cuts instead, keep in mind that people who consumed the most processed meat raised their overall risk of death by at least 16%.”

Actually, the study didn’t quite say this. While this large prospective study did find a modest association between dying and eating meat, the risks cited were not due to one hamburger. “Meat Intake and Mortality: A Prospective Study of Over Half a Million People” which was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine didn’t, as many other studies on diet have done, pool numerous, smaller studies to achieve a high number of participants. The study tracked over half a million Americans aged 50 – 71 from eight states over ten years and started with a common baseline evaluation of diet, which was then tracked through questionnaires. Naturally, self-reporting always raises questions as to whether the participants are capable of complete fidelity and recall, but the researchers appear to have conducted spot checks, as well as adjust for confounders like smoking.

The researchers compared high levels of red and processed meat consumption (meaning those people in the top 20 percent for meat consumption as a proportion of their calories) to those eating low levels of red and processed meat (i.e. those in the bottom 20 percent consumption level). To give a sense of the difference among the two groups, people with the highest red meat consumption ate almost seven times as much meat as those in the lowest group. For a man, that amounted to 68.1g/1000kcal of meat per day, which is almost a 1/3 lb burger a day (based on the 2116 calorie diet these men typically ate). Those in the lowest quintile of meat consumption ate on average 9.3g/1000, which comes out to approximately the same burger once a week. So before you panic, consider how your red meat intake compares to the people in the study.

On the other hand, there was some good news for meat lovers as well: high levels of white meat consumption seem to lower your chance of death. For those in the highest quintile of white meat consumption (which includes poultry and fish), the risk of death was associated with an approximately eight percent lower chance of death in the ten years of the study, for both men and women. But a curious feature that might temper the benefits of white meat to nonsmokers is that high levels of white meat consumption seems to raise rather significantly their risk of cardiovascular disease. You’re in luck if you’re a smoker, however; for this group, white meat intake seemed to have no relationship to cardiovascular disease.

These were the results driving the interest in the study, although weirdly, the strangest association was between high red meat consumption in men versus low red meat consumption and mortality due to “injuries and sudden death.“

That result – a hazard ratio of 26 percent (meaning 26 percent more likely) – was buried by the media. The category included death from unintentional injury, adverse effects, suicide, self-inflicted injury, homicide, and legal intervention. The authors note that the number of deaths was low, but the mechanism is not clear. The finding is a reminder that mining epidemiological data can produce strange relationships. In particular, since it seems difficult to argue for causality, it suggests that red meat consumption may be linked to other behaviors that were not controlled for by the study. Are male red meat eaters likelier to take risks? Are suicidal old men more likely to eat red meat?

While the study has rather convincingly linked high levels or red meat to increased mortality, the purported risk increase is much lower than it is, for example, between smoking or obesity and cancer. Inevitably, this means that the causal link is weaker. As with any observational study, there are some limitations to drawing a causal line between red meat and cancer mortality. The study attempted to control for these factors, but it is impossible to control for everything. There is also no way to discern from this study whether eating less meat would provide the direct benefit of the magnitude of the study. One can only assume that the people who reported high levels of meat consumption had been eating that amount of meat for their entire lives.

Wider problems in nutrition research

The other, wider problem is that while red meat has provided figurative red meat for nutrition researchers, there has been increased criticism of the dramatic claims being made for the nutritional basis of cancer from actual cancer researchers. Many of the news stories said the study supported the claims by the World Cancer Research Fund linking red meat and cancer. For example, Forbes noted:

“Though nutrition experts frequently recommend eating less meat, Mozaffarian says research linking red and processed meat consumption and mortality weren't consistent. But last year, when the World Cancer Research Fund International reviewed the scientific literature on red meat intake and cancer, researchers determined a link between the two.”

Reuters quoted Ian Olver, Chief Executive Officer of Cancer Council Australia, saying that:

“This large study provides further evidence to support the recommendations by groups such as the World Cancer Research Fund in demonstrating an association between a high consumption of red and processed meats and a increase risk of death from cancer.”

But as STATS previously noted, the World Cancer Research Fund only managed to do achieve this link by excluding the largest ever study examining the association, whose publication had been delayed for three years after the results were initially made known. Those results did not show a link between cancer and meat consumption. The Harvard Pooling Project, which conducted that meta-analysis, and other recent research have thrown a wrench into the conventional scientific wisdom about nutrition and health, and the exclusion of some of its key studies from the World Cancer Research Fund has left some cancer researchers troubled.

A recent editorial in the Journal of Oncology written by the director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (Boyle et al, Oct 2008) warned that smoking and obesity as significant causes for cancer were being minimized in the face of weak evidence for diet.

"In presenting its summary and recommendations, the [World Cancer Research Fund] report implicitly downplays the key importance of tobacco smoking in cancer causation. Contrary to that stated in the press release (the best advice for cancer prevention is to avoid weight gain), avoiding tobacco smoking and use of tobacco in other forms is the single best advice to reducing cancer risk as one-third of cancer deaths in high-income countries is attributable to tobacco use. Failure to include ‘stop smoking’ and ‘avoid exposure and exposing others to second-hand smoke’ among the 10 key recommendations undermines the most important message in cancer control. The ‘best advice’ also fails to mention the importance of a variety of established cancer risk factors including sun behaviour, occupational exposures, chronic infections and use of exogenous hormones."

At the same time, the evidence presented by the WCRF for diet’s role in cancer had gotten weaker:

"‘We think we know’ or, more accurately, ‘we thought we knew’ that a high-fat diet and low consumption of fruits, vegetables and fibres were associated with increased risks of common cancers. However, faith in the cancer prevention properties of fruits and vegetables began to crack when all the available evidence was critically reviewed by an International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Working Group. Subsequently, it has crumbled as major analyses of prospective studies have continued to demonstrate consistently a lack of association between intake of fruits and vegetables and risk of several cancers. This major change in classification of one the few agents classified by WCRF in the category of strongest evidence in 1997 casts doubt on the rationale to classify ‘convincing’ to the evidence linking high meat intake to colorectal cancer risk in the current report. This also raises questions about the evaluation process and about the robustness of the classification system."

But the IARC noted

"The substantial review of the evidence in the WCRF report demonstrates that there is no discernible association between many forms of cancer and specific dietary practices. There are still some very interesting hypotheses to pursue, such as the value of an approach on the basis of the food patterns (e.g. the Mediterranean diet score) rather than individual foods and nutrients, but the cupboard is remarkably bare."

The failure of science to come up with robust conclusions about diet and cancer is one of the emerging "inconvenient truths" in public health (the other is that diets don't really work), and both are at odds with giving the public clear, comprehensible guidelines for diet. This new study has been hailed for building on existing evidence that red meat consumption is linked to cancer, but good reporting would include the naysayers as well as the yaysayers; scientific consensus is never built with one study alone.

How efficient are the solar panels that were inspected by President Obama?

How efficient are the solar panels that were inspected by President Obama? By Todd Shepherd
The Denver Museum of Science isn't telling. But you are helping to foot the bill for the solar array that won't pay for itself until the year 2118.
The Independence Institute, Mar 31, 2009

Before signing the $787 billion stimulus package into law on Feburary 17, 2009, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden toured an array of solar panels on top of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The photo-op allowed the President to once again extol the virtues of the coming “green” economy.

According to the Denver Post's article on the event, “The sun generates enough energy on the museum rooftop to power about 30 homes.” However, that claim cannot be verified at this time, and in fact, seems to be belied by the scant information provided by the museum and other sources.[1] Laura Holtman, Public Relations Manager for the Museum said in an email, “Because the array generates less than 5 percent of the Museum's power, [the purchased energy] is not a particularly large bill.”

The Independence Institute asked the Denver Museum of Science and Nature to provide certain statistical information regarding the now-famous solar array. Specifically, the Institute asked for:

1 ) Two years worth of electric bills prior to the installation of the solar array,
2 ) All electric bills following the completion of the installation.

The Museum denied those requests.

The solar array is not owned by the Museum, however. It is owned by Hybrid Energy Group, LLC. HEG owns the solar array, sells the electricity to the Museum, and receives tax incentives from the state and federal governments, while also receiving “rebates” from Xcel Energy. The rebates are funded by a surcharge collected on the monthly bill of every Colorado Xcel customer.

A 2008 article in the Denver Business Journal sheds further light on the subject. The article notes the total price of the solar array was $720,000. And Dave Noel, VP of operations and chief technology officer for the Museum, was quoted as saying, “We looked at first installing [the solar array] ourselves, and without any of the incentive programs, it was a 110-year payout.” Noel went on to say that the Museum did not purchase the solar array because it did not “make sense financially.”

Additionally, most solar panels have an expected life-span of 20 to 25 years.

So how can Hybrid Energy Group afford to own a solar array that not even the museum would buy? In part, HEG gets “rebates” from Xcel's “Solar Rewards” program. The Solar Rewards program is a response to Colorado voters passing Amendment 37 in 2004. The Amendment mandated that Colorado utilities procure a certain percentage of their power generation from renewable resources like wind and solar.

“Amendment 37 really should have been called a tax,” said Independence Institute President Jon Caldara. “And it would have been interesting to see whether it would have passed if the ballot language had started off with the phrase, 'shall there be an increase in energy taxes?' For those of you who are Xcel customers, look at your bill and find the line that says 'Renew. Energy Std. Adj.' Then realize that you are paying this “adjustment” to buy solar panels which the museum has admitted that without any government subsidization wouldn't pay for themselves until the year 2118.”

[table]

HEG also uses state and federal tax “incentives” in order to be able to own a $720,000 solar array that produces such a minute cash flow, compared to the rest of the Museum's monthly power expenses.

The fact that solar energy may currently only be viable due to engineering of the tax code means that citizens may not have all the information when weighing the costs of “green” projects, says Barry Poulson, Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado, and Senior Fellow at the Independence Institute.

“Colorado citizens need to know that these policies will result in a significant dislocation of our industries, a fall in income and employment, and rising costs to consumers. These burdens will fall primarily on low income families. Nowhere in these proposals for a 'new Energy Economy' is there any discussion of the costs that these policies will impose on Colorado citizens.”


Notes

[1] Additionally, the claim in the Post article that “The sun generates enough energy on the museum rooftop to power about 30 homes,” is regretfully lacking a crucial time context. Does the power for 30 homes last one hour, one day, one week, one month?

Journalism Professor Rates Health News

Journalism Professor Rates Health Studies. By Ruth Kava, Ph.D., R.D.
American Council on Science and Health, March 31, 2009

Here at ACSH we’ve complained for years that health-related stories in the popular media often pay scant attention to the scientific accuracy and importance of the studies they report on. For example, we’ve seen preliminary studies reported at scientific meetings given equal weight with studies that have undergone peer review and are published in respected scientific journals. As we’ve noted in several publications, problems range from misleading and alarmist headlines to a basic misunderstanding of the difference between association and causation in the results of epidemiologic studies.

Now we’ve come across some valuable help -- an Internet site published by journalism professor Gary J. Schwitzer at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Professor Schwitzer has an extensive background in journalism and puts it to good use on his Health News Review site. The good professor analyzes and critiques health-related news stories, explaining why a particular article presents its topic accurately and clearly -- or why it doesn’t. He rates stories with up to five stars, and details what the standards are for the ratings. We’re pleased to find such a useful resource and hope our readers find it valuable as well.

Ruth Kava, Ph.D., R.D., is Director of Nutrition at the American Council on Science and Health

Industry views: Climate Bill Envisions Future with Less Energy, Fewer Jobs, Worse Economy

Road to Serfdom: Climate Bill Envisions Future with Less Energy, Fewer Jobs, Worse Economy
Institute for Energy Research, Mar 31, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Institute for Energy Research president Thomas J. Pyle issued the following statement today after the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee formally released a draft of legislation that seeks to affect the world’s climate by rationing Americans’ use of carbon dioxide:

“Those who would characterize this draft as a blueprint for higher energy prices, fewer jobs, and reduced economic output are unfortunately missing the whole truth. In reality, the bill introduced today is part of an agenda whose mandate extends well beyond utility bills and unemployment rolls. Quite simply, this bill envisions the wholesale reordering of American society, where those who produce are punished, those who remain idle are rewarded, and those who require affordable energy to live are forced to subsidize those who require political pull to survive.

“Today, Americans were granted a sneak peak at what that future might look like. It’s future where grids are judged ‘smart’ not by their ability to deliver low-cost, reliable electricity to consumers, but by their inability to do so; where fuels are deemed ‘acceptable’ only insofar as they don’t fuel anything; and where a company is considered a ‘success’ not by any objective standard of economic output, but by arbitrary standards of carbon output.

“The draft bill introduced today not only portends that future, it provides the tools and timetables politicians will need to deliver it. Thankfully, for the rest of us, it also advances this debate to a new stage of dialogue – one where supporters of government-imposed energy rationing are forced to account for and defend that position in terms of dollars and cents, not polar bears and butterflies. It’s a debate, frankly, that’s been a long time coming. And it’s one in which we plan to make a significant and substantive contribution as the year goes on.”

Key elements of the Waxman-Markey draft carbon legislation:

• Cap-and-Raid: Seeks to implement a “market-based program for reducing global warming pollution” – carbon – that will force hundreds of thousands of American businesses to obtain federal permission (via carbon credit) before creating a new job or manufacturing a new product. Although the draft is silent on how the federal permit procurement process would work, analysts predict the final version will require businesses to purchase those credits directly from the federal government, resulting in the expropriation of potentially trillions of dollars from the productive sectors of the economy.
• Low-Carbon Fuel Standard: Also known as the “Weak Fuel Mandate” or “Fuel Dillution Standards,” LCFS seeks to impose new rules on the carbon-content of fuels produced by American refiners. The upshot is the creation of a weaker fuel, with less energy content, at a higher price – both in absolute terms, and on a per/BTU basis.
• Renewable Electricity Mandate: Less than a year removed from Congress’s rejection of a national mandate seeking to force utilities to generate 15 percent of their electricity from politically preferred sources, the Waxman bill seeks to add an additional 10 percent to that charge – envisioning a final mandate of 25 percent, and setting in motion a massive redistribution of wealth from the southeast United States to the regions along the coast.
• Green Jobs: Requires the secretary of Education to create a grant program specifically to award colleges and universities who get their students to enroll in “green jobs” training courses. The section of the text focused on what services the government will provide to the millions of American workers who will lose their jobs as a result of this policy “remains to be provided,” according to the draft.

State Sec Clinton Remarks at The International Conference on Afghanistan

Remarks at The International Conference on Afghanistan. By Hillary Rodham Clinton, US Secretary of State
The Hague, Netherlands, March 31, 2009

Thank you very much, Minister Verhagen, and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Special Representative Kai Eide, President Karzai, Minister Spanta, friends and colleagues, I want to thank all of you, and especially the United Nations and the Government of the Netherlands for hosting us. I also want to acknowledge the extraordinary contribution of the government and people of the Netherlands to the mission in Afghanistan.

And I want to also acknowledge President Karzai, who fills a critical leadership role in his nation, and whose government helped to shape the shared comprehensive and workable strategy that we are discussing today.

We are here to help the people of Afghanistan prevail against a ruthless enemy who poses a common threat to us all. Afghanistan has always been a crossroads of civilization, and today we find our fate converging in those plains and mountains that are so far and yet so near in this interconnected world to all of us.

Thanks to the efforts of the international community, the perpetrators of the horrific terrorist attacks of 9/11 – attacks which killed citizens from more than 90 countries – were driven from Afghanistan, and the Afghan people made a promising start toward a more secure future. But since those first hopeful moments, our collective inability to implement a clear and sustained strategy has allowed violent extremists to regain a foothold in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, and to make the area a nerve center for efforts to spread violence from London to Mumbai.

The range of countries and institutions represented here is a universal recognition that what happens in Afghanistan matters to us all. Our failure to bring peace and progress would be a setback not only to the people of Afghanistan, but to the entire enterprise of collective action in the interest of collective security. Our success, on the other hand, will not only benefit Afghanistan, Pakistan and the region, but also the blueprint for a new diplomacy powered by partnership and premised on shared interests.

So as we recommit ourselves to meet our common challenge with a new strategy, new energy, and new resources, let us be guided by an ancient Afghan proverb, “patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”

The plan I outline today is the product of intensive consultations with nations that have donated troops and support; Afghanistan’s neighbors and international institutions that play a vital role in Afghanistan’s future. The results of these consultations are clear: Our strategy must address the challenge in Afghanistan and Pakistan; it must integrate military and civilian activities and support them with vigorous international diplomacy; and it must rest on the simple premise that while we can and will help, Afghanistan’s future ultimately rests with the Afghan people and their elected government. Security is the essential first step; without it, all else fails. Afghanistan’s army and police will have to take the lead, supported by the International Security Assistance Force.

President Obama has announced that the United States will deploy 17,000 more soldiers and 4,000 additional military trainers to help build up Afghan security forces. The international community will also have to help. We should provide every army and police unit in Afghanistan with an international partner that can provide training and help build capacity. Our collective goal should be standing up an army of at least 134,000 soldiers and a police force of at least 82,000 officers by 2011. These steps will provide the people of Afghanistan with an opportunity to fight and win their own battle for their nation’s future.

We must also help Afghans strengthen their economy and institutions. They know how to rebuild their country, but they need the raw material of progress – roads, public institutions, schools, hospitals, irrigation, and agriculture. The United States is supporting the Government of Afghanistan’s National Development Strategy, the National Solidarity Program, and other initiatives that help Afghans improve their lives and strengthen their own communities.

In consultation with the Afghan Government, we have also identified agriculture – which comprises 70 percent of Afghanistan’s economy – as the key for development. In the 1970s, Afghans exported food to their neighbors. They were often called the garden of Central Asia. Today, this sector lags far behind, and its problems feed the deadly malignancy of the narcotics trade. The United States is focusing its efforts on rural development in provinces near the Afghan-Pakistan border, and we hope that others gathered here will heed the United Nations’ and Afghan Government’s call for help throughout the country with job creation, technical expertise, vocational training, and investments in roads, electrical transmission lines, education, healthcare, and so much else.

As we work with the Afghan people to supply these building blocks of development, we must demand accountability from ourselves and from the Afghan Government. Corruption is a cancer as dangerous to long-term success as the Taliban or al-Qaida. A government that cannot deliver accountable services for its people is a terrorist’s best recruiting tool.

So we must work with bodies such as Afghanistan’s Independent Directorate of Local Governance to ensure that the government at all levels is responsible and transparent. The international community, gathered here, can help by providing auditors and governance experts and training a new generation of civil servants and administrators.

To earn the trust of the Afghan people, the Afghan Government must be legitimate and respected. This requires a successful election in August – one that is open, free, and fair. That can only happen with strong support from the international community. I am, therefore, pleased to announce today that to advance that goal, the United States is committing $40 million to help fund Afghanistan’s upcoming elections.

We must also support efforts by the Government of Afghanistan to separate the extremists of al-Qaida and the Taliban from those who joined their ranks not out of conviction, but out of desperation. This is, in fact, the case for a majority of those fighting with the Taliban. They should be offered an honorable form of reconciliation and reintegration into a peaceful society if they are willing to abandon violence, break with al-Qaida, and support the constitution.

Just as these problems cannot be solved without the Afghan people, they cannot be solved without the help of Afghanistan’s neighbors. Trafficking in narcotics, the spread of violent extremism, economic stagnation, water management, electrification, and irrigation are regional challenges that require regional solutions.

The United Nations has a central role in this effort to coordinate with the Government of Afghanistan and neighbors in the region to make sure that programs are properly prioritized and well focused. We are committed to working with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UN Special Representative Kai Eide to achieve that goal. The United States Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, will lead American efforts as we move forward, and we welcome the appointment of special representatives by other countries.

If we are to succeed, we will need the help of all the nations present here. As President Obama has pointed out, “the world cannot afford the price that will come due if Afghanistan slides back into chaos.” While there is great temptation to retreat inward in these difficult economic times, it is precisely at such moments that we must redouble our effort. And as we make commitments and contributions, we must ensure they are flexible enough to respond to immediate needs and evolving opportunities. And we all must be willing to coordinate those efforts together.

The challenge we face is difficult, but the opportunity is clear if we move away from the past. All too often in the past seven years, our efforts have been undermanned, under-resourced and underfunded. This goal is achievable. We know we have made progress where we have made adequate investment and worked together.

The status of Afghanistan’s army, the lives of women and girls, the country’s education and health systems are far better today than they were in 2001. So if all of us represented here work with the government and people of Afghanistan, we will help not only to secure their future, but ours as well.

Now the principal focus of our discussions today is on Afghanistan, but we cannot hope to succeed if those who seek to reestablish a haven for violence and extremism operate from sanctuaries just across the border. For this reason, our partnership with Pakistan is critical. Together, we all must give Pakistan the tools it needs to fight extremists within its borders.

The Obama Administration has made a strong commitment through our support for legislation called the Kerry-Lugar assistance program. And in a few weeks, we will have a chance to join together in Tokyo for a meeting of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan to provide the support that the Pakistani Government and people need. I urge the nations here today in support of Afghanistan to join us in Tokyo on April 17th to help the people of Pakistan.

This effort has already required great sacrifice and it will require more. But in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we face a common threat, a common enemy, and a common task. So let us use today, this conference, to renew and reinvigorate our commitment and our involvement, and to lay a firm foundation for a safer region and a safer world. It is in the interests of all of the people who we represent as we sit around this conference table here in The Hague, and for the kind of world that we wish to help create.

Thank you very much.

PRN: 2009/T5-2

The Implications of the European Contribution to the Global Financial Crisis for the G-20 Summit

The Implications of the European Contribution to the Global Financial Crisis for the G-20 Summit. By Ted R. Bromund and Daniella Markheim
Heritage WebMemo #2369
March 30, 2009

The story that Europe is telling about the global financial crisis is untrue: The crisis is not simply the fault of the United States. European policies, on both the national and the EU levels, contributed to the buildup of systemic risk that led to the crisis. These policies reduced European competitiveness, led to high levels of leverage at European banks, helped to create property bubbles across Europe, and--through both the Euro and the broader policy of European integration--introduced moral hazard into European markets.

The basic fallacies of European policies are their emphasis on top-down control and their advocacy of a one-size-fits-all model. The policies the EU is advancing for the G-20 summit repeat these errors on a larger scale. Instead of blaming the U.S., Europe should address its lack of competitiveness and growing entitlements burden. Doubling down on centralized control will result in lower growth and a less stable world economy at a time when Europe needs to promote a sustained recovery.


The European Myth

Europe is telling a story about the origins of the global financial crisis. The story is simple: It is America's fault. The BBC reports that the European resistance to stimulus spending derives from its reluctance to go deeper into debt "to rescue the US economy, which they argue was the country that caused the crisis in the first place."[1] The Economist concluded in October that the European approach to the crisis was based in part on the "flawed" assumption that the financial system is chiefly suffering from "transatlantic contagion."

The first signs of the current global financial crisis did appear in the U.S. But the collapse of the U.S. real estate market, though important, was merely the first stone in an avalanche. As the Economist pointed out, the view that only the U.S. is to blame "fails to take account of ... slowing [European] economies ... the slumping housing markets in countries such as Spain and Ireland ... [and] European banks' dependence on wholesale funding."[2]

The origins of the global financial crash, not surprisingly, are global. Some factors affected some countries more than others, but no country has cause to claim that it was damaged solely by the actions of others. Yet it is those actions that must now face scrutiny. If there is a common theme in the crisis, it can be found in the interaction between politics and economics that created perverse and ultimately dangerous incentives.


The European Reality

In spite of the desire of the EU to pretend otherwise, the European states are very different. Thus, at the national level, the problems these states must confront are not identical. Nevertheless, four features that are present in more than one European state deserve to be highlighted:

1. A loss of competitiveness. European states such as Ireland and Italy have lost competitiveness. In these states, public expenditure has grown faster than private sector pay and productivity. In Ireland, for instance, public spending doubled between 1997 and 2003. This caused inflation to rise two-and-a-half times faster than in the Euro zone as a whole.[3] The loss of competitiveness was the result of government policies that placed excessive burdens on productive employment.
2. The level of leverage in European banks. Leverage is the ratio of a bank's total liabilities to shareholder equity. Higher leverage means the bank is doing more business on a relatively narrower base. Leverage can be excessive, but it is not evil--on the contrary, it is necessary for the functioning of the banking system. There is wide debate on the best way to measure leverage. But it is clear that many European banks were more highly leveraged than their American counterparts. A survey by the Centre for European Policy Studies found that the average leverage ratio of Europe's twelve largest banks as of September 2008 was 35 to 1, compared to less than 20 to 1 in the U.S. The survey described Europe's ratios as "a disaster in waiting."[4] Higher levels of leverage do make more credit available and thus reduce its cost. This was appealing in Europe, because cheaper credit fueled growth in its generally sluggish economies.
3. The European property bubbles. But this rapid expansion of credit in Europe played an important role in the creation of European real estate bubbles. The IMF has pointed out that, in the run-up to the crisis, "credit aggregates grew extremely fast in the United Kingdom, Spain, Iceland, and several Eastern European countries. As in the U.S., these credit expansions fueled real estate booms. House prices rose rapidly in most of the Eastern and Western European countries now caught in the financial turmoil."[5] The bubbles in Europe were as unsustainable as those in the U.S.
4. The moral hazards of the Euro and the EU. These factors speak to the same underlying cause. The years after the Cold War saw high global growth and benign conditions that "fed the build up of systemic risk." As the IMF puts it, "[l]ow interest rates, together with increasing and excessive optimism about the future, pushed up asset prices ... [in] a broad range of ... advanced countries and emerging markets." The result was a search for yield and the creation of ever-riskier assets.[6]

In Europe, the creation of the Euro was both consequence and cause of that excessive optimism. The case for the currency was always fundamentally political: that it would weld Europe closer together. But the Euro zone is not an optimal currency area. The Euro represents the triumph of politics over economics. It is a one-size-fits-all model for a continent where, in fact, one size does not fit all.

Moreover, the Euro was, in essence, a seal of approval on countries such as Spain, Portugal, and Greece. This encouraged investors to regard these markets as less risky than they in fact were. The admission of many of the now-troubled Eastern European states into the EU also created moral hazard in the market by encouraging investors to treat these states as if they ranked with the established economies of the West. This approach did not accord with reality.


The False European Solutions

In short, a series of policies--some national, some European--created a framework that encouraged risky decisions by investors and weakened the national foundations on which the resulting bubbles grew. The irony is that Europe is now proposing to double down on these failed policies in response to the crisis.

Europe's call for a global regulator with a mandate to ensure the stability and balance of the world economy would be a tremendous step toward forcing its slow growth model on the rest of the world. Its campaign against "tax havens" is another part of this effort to force other nations to adopt Europe's own anti-growth, anti-competitive tax regime.[7]

These policies are a return to the concept of one size fits all and to the belief that politicians and unelected bureaucrats on the global level can effectively manage the world's economy. Europeans should ask why, if this model works so well, it failed to stop the build-up of systemic risk in Europe. The campaign to blame the U.S. is a form of denial: By refusing to look in the mirror, Europe seeks to avoid facing the unpleasant reality of failure.

This reality includes the fact that the European states are not all alike. Nothing underlines this more effectively that the fact that Germany, having been one of the cheerleaders of European integration, is now reluctant to bear a disproportionate share of the Europe-wide costs of stabilizing that system.[8] From the national point of view, this reluctance makes sense. But it is a sign of the incoherence of European integration that its leading advocate is not willing to pay the bills for the policies it claims to wholeheartedly back.


The True Solutions

It is legitimate to discuss measures that should be taken in immediate response to the crisis. But neither these measures nor the crisis itself should divert Europe from addressing its underlying problems. These begin with its lack of competitiveness and the entitlements burden that, as in the U.S., poses what will in the long term be an unbearable burden.[9] Instead of turning--as it and its trading partners are now doing--to protectionism, Europe needs to move away from the faith in centralized control and the ability of governments to manipulate markets that has brought turmoil to the U.S. and Europe alike.[10]

Ted R. Bromund, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, and Daniella Markheim is Jay Van Andel Senior Trade Policy Analyst in the Center for International Trade and Economics at The Heritage Foundation.

Full text w/notes here.

Activism in the Time of Cholera: Anti-GMO groups keep the poor from getting help

Activism in the Time of Cholera: Anti-GMO groups keep the poor from getting help. By Henry I. Miller
Wall Street Journal, March 29, 2009

The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe has sickened more than 100,000 and killed at least 4,500, with more cases reported daily. The disease remains all too lethal elsewhere, too, having killed about 120,000 people in 2007, according to the World Health Organization. But thanks to a simple innovation, those kinds of statistics could soon be a relic of the past, like deaths from smallpox and polio -- if not for the interference of a few influential politicians and activist groups.

Cholera is a diarrheal disease caused by contamination of food and water by feces. For those of us who live in industrialized countries, diarrhea is little more than a nuisance, most often involving some discomfort and bloating. But in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America and Asia with poor access to health care, clean water and other resources, diarrhea is the No. 2 infectious killer of children under the age of five, accounting for two million deaths a year.

Since the 1960s, the standard of care for childhood diarrhea in the developing world has been a glucose-based, high-sodium liquid that is administered orally and is known as a "rehydration solution." This low-tech product was revolutionary. It has saved millions of lives and reduced the need for costly -- and often unavailable -- hospital stays and sterile intravenous fluids. However, this product has done nothing to lessen the severity or duration of the condition, which over time leads to malnutrition, anemia and other chronic health risks.

The answer may be an affordable innovation that combines high and low technology. It consists of adding two human proteins, lactoferrin and lysozyme, which are produced inexpensively in genetically modified (GM) rice plants, to rice-based oral rehydration solution. Studies performed in Peru show that when this is done, the duration of children's illness is cut from more than five days to three and two-thirds. The rate of recurrence also falls. This advance could save many of those who are dying in Zimbabwe and elsewhere.

What made this approach feasible was a private company's invention of a method to produce human lactoferrin and lysozyme in gene-spliced rice, a process dubbed "biopharming." This is an inexpensive way to create the proteins necessary to fortify millions of liters of rehydration solution.

Sounds like a great success, right? Not yet; maybe not ever. The company has been trying for more than six years to get the product approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has raised no real safety concerns but has dithered over the appropriate regulatory route for approving the product. Because a panel of experts has already deemed the proteins safe, the best guess is that internal FDA politics and lobbying by NGOs and the company's competitors are causing the delays.

Virtually every biotech breakthrough brings the antitechnology, antibusiness fabulists out of the woodwork, and this one is no exception. One radical biotech opponent, Hope Shand, remonstrated, "The chance this will contaminate traditionally grown crops is great. This is a very risky business."

Nonsense. Rice is self-pollinating, so interbreeding with other rice varieties is virtually impossible. But even in the worst case, "contaminate traditionally grown crops" with what? With two human proteins normally present in tears, breast milk and saliva? The only contamination here is of public discourse, from the lies and misrepresentations of antibiotech activists.

Another miraculous product made with gene-splicing techniques, and which has also had to endure the slings and arrows of wrong-headed activists and regulators, is "Golden Rice." This collection of new rice varieties is enriched by the introduction of genes that produce beta-carotene, which the body can convert into vitamin A.

Vitamin A deficiency is epidemic among poor people in the tropics whose diet is dominated by rice (which contains neither beta-carotene nor vitamin A) or similar foods. World-wide, 200 million to 300 million children of preschool age are at risk of vitamin A deficiency, which increases susceptibility to infections such as measles and diarrheal diseases and is the leading cause of childhood blindness in developing countries. About 500,000 children become blind due to vitamin A deficiency each year, and 70% of them die within a year.

The concept is simple: Although beta-carotene is not normally found in the seeds of rice plants because of the absence of two enzymes needed to make the substance, rice plants do make it in the green portions of the plant. When GM techniques are used to introduce the two missing genes, the rice grains become capable of producing and accumulating large amounts of beta-carotene.
Like the protein additives to the rehydration solution, Golden Rice is being blocked from the market by regulatory delays -- both by unscientific, draconian requirements concocted by United Nations agencies and by regulators in several Asian countries.

Despite their vast potential to benefit humanity, and negligible likelihood of harm to human health or the environment, the gene-spliced rice varieties remain in regulatory limbo with no end in sight. Activists have spread wild tales of gene-spliced crops causing illness and baldness, and of giving rise to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There is absolutely no evidence for such claims.

In contrast to GM plants, those constructed with older, less precise techniques for genetic improvement are subject to no government scrutiny or requirements -- or opposition from activists. As a result, companies are systematically discouraged from adopting the best technologies, and when feasible prefer to use older, inferior techniques to achieve the desired result.

In an April 2008 editorial in the journal Science, Nina Fedoroff, a plant geneticist who serves as senior scientific adviser to the U.S. secretary of state, wrote: "A new green revolution demands a global commitment to creating a modern agricultural infrastructure everywhere, adequate investment in training and modern laboratory facilities, and progress toward simplified regulatory approaches that are responsive to accumulating evidence of safety." The story of GM rice makes it clear that we do not yet have the will and the wisdom to make that happen.

Dr. Miller, a physician and fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, headed the FDA's Office of Biotechnology from 1989 to 1993.

Daiichi Sankyo R&D Head Confident About New Blood Clot Drug

Daiichi Sankyo R&D Head Confident About New Blood Clot Drug. By Kazuhiro Shimamura
Dow Jones, Mar 31, 2009

TOKYO -(Dow Jones)- Daiichi Sankyo Co.'s (4568.TO) research and development chief said Tuesday the Tokyo-based pharmaceutical company is confident about the competitiveness of its new blood clot prevention drug currently in clinical studies.

By comparing its clinical data so far with those of rival products by Bayer HealthCare of Bayer AG and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Daiichi Sankyo's edoxaban, previously known as DU-176b, has shown a very favorable profile of safety as well as efficacy in a dose-dependent manner, Kazunori Hirokawa, the head of the company's R&D division said at a news conference.

Edoxaban is for preventing potentially fatal blood clots in people suffering from atrial fibrillation, a type of irregular heartbeat, and venous thromboembolism, which causes blood clotting in veins.

It is one of Daiichi Sankyo's promising new drug candidates which have a potential to become a blockbuster drug with annual sales topping $1 billion.

Edoxaban, Bayer's rivaroxaban and apixaban jointly developed by Bristol-Myers and Pfizer Inc. work by inhibiting so-called factor Xa enzime involved in the blood coagulation process.

While the two rival drugs are closer to commercialization as an atrial fibrillation treatment as long as no serious problems occur in their clinical trials, edoxaban's safety profile has been proven in a longer phase of studies in which no serious side effect is observed, he said.

Other advantages of edoxaban include the precise amount of doses already set for final use in patients, Hirokawa said.

2008 U.S. Official Development Assistance

2008 U.S. Official Development Assistance
Bureau of Public Affairsm, Office of the Spokesman
US State Dept, Washington, DC, March 30, 2009

United States Official Development Assistance (ODA) increased substantially across social and economic sectors worldwide in 2008 based on preliminary U.S. data provided to the OECD this week. Once again, the United States is the largest single donor in the world on the basis of net annual disbursements. The United States will provide final ODA data in November.

· U.S. ODA totaled $26.0 billion in calendar year 2008, a $4.2 billion, or 19 percent increase from calendar year 2007.

· Development assistance continues to be high – U.S. 2008 ODA is the second largest net level historically for any donor country, after the record U.S. level in 2005 of $27.9 billion.· U.S. ODA growth is due to expanded U.S. programs in a wide variety of areas, including global health and HIV/AIDS, humanitarian assistance, and economic development.

· U.S. ODA to the Least Developed Countries increased by over 40 percent to $6.9 billion, from $4.8 billion in 2007.

ODA is only one source of support for development; net private resource flows from the U.S. – trade, capital, remittances, and grants – dwarf global ODA. Development depends on effective, accountable governance and economic policies that stimulate private sector growth.

· The United States has both increased assistance levels and increased its effectiveness through foreign assistance reform and implementation of programs including the Millennium Challenge Account and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. We are committed to making bilateral and multilateral assistance effective and results-oriented, avoiding aid dependency and promoting long-term and sustainable economic growth.

PRN: 271

The G-20 London Summit 2009: Recommendations for Global Policy Coordination

The G-20 London Summit 2009: Recommendations for Global Policy Coordination
The Brookings Institution, Mar 30, 2009

Leaders of the Group of 20 (G-20), representing 85 percent of the global economy’s output, face a long list of agenda items when they gather on April 2 in London for their second summit. As the world combats a “great recession,” the leaders must address how to help stabilize financial markets and re-start economic growth, reform the global financial system, and aid developing and emerging economies.

Amidst this background of critical issues, Brookings’ global economic and development experts explore a range of recommendations for global policy coordination in advance of the summit and note which issues the leaders should address at the table—and beyond—in order to stem the crisis and avoid future ones.

Download the full report »

Industry Views: Seven Myths About Green Jobs

Seven Myths About Green Jobs. By Andrew P. Morriss, William T. Bogart, Andrew Dorchak, and Roger E. Meiners
IER, March 30, 2009

Executive Summary. [Full report here]


Overview

An aggressive push for a green economy is well underway in the United States. Policymakers now routinely assert that “green jobs” can simultaneously improve environmental quality and reduce unemployment. Our team of researchers from universities around the nation surveyed four often-cited reports (the “literature”) that were sponsored by interest groups, industry associations, and international NGOs. We analyzed their assumptions and found that the groups promoting the idea of green jobs had buried dubious assumptions and techniques within their analysis. We conclude that the massive expenditures demanded by special interest groups and politicians under the green jobs banner are not justified.

Rather than spend hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars on unproven technologies chosen through a political process, we favor market processes to increase conservation of energy and other resources, a strategy proven effective by experience. New green technologies should be explored and expanded by market forces, not government mandates. Before committing massive resources to chasing the green jobs these reports suggest, the special interests advocating strategies that impose costs on every American should expose their models and calculations to peer-reviewed scrutiny, making their process transparent.

We found seven underlying myths within the literature we studied. We believe it is important that these myths be exposed so that we can debate the facts as we move forward toward investing in a more eco-friendly nation.


The Myths And The Facts

Myth 1: Everyone understands what a “green job” is.

Fact 1: No standard definition of a “green job” exists.

According to the studies most commonly quoted, green jobs pay well, are interesting to do, produce products that environmental groups prefer, and do so in a unionized workplace. Such criteria have little to do with the environmental impacts of the jobs. To build a political coalition, “green jobs” have become a mechanism to deliver something for members of many special interests in order to buy their support for a radical transformation of society. Committing hundreds of billions of dollars to promoting something lacking a transparent definition cannot be justified.

Myth 2: Creating green jobs will boost productive employment.

Fact 2: Green jobs estimates in these oft-quoted studies include huge numbers of clerical, bureaucratic, and administrative positions that do not produce goods and services for consumption.

These green jobs studies mistake any position receiving a paycheck for a position creating value. Simply hiring people to write and enforce regulations, fill-out forms, and process paperwork is not a recipe for creating wealth. Much of the promised boost in green employment turns out to be in non-productive - and expensive - positions that raise costs for consumers. These higher paying jobs that fail to create a more eco-friendly society dramatically skew the results in both number of green jobs created and salary levels of those jobs.


Myth 3: Green jobs forecasts are reliable.

Fact 3: The green jobs studies made estimates using poor economic models based on dubious assumptions.

The forecasts for green employment in these studies optimistically predict an employment boom that will take us to prosperity in a new green world. The forecasts, which are sometimes amazingly detailed, are unreliable because they are based on:
a) Questionable estimates by interest groups of tiny base numbers in employment,
b) Extrapolation of growth rates from those small base numbers, that does not take into consideration that growth rates eventually slow, plateau and even decline, and
c) A biased and highly selective optimism about which technologies will improve.

Moreover, the estimates use a technique (input-output analysis) that is inappropriate to the conditions of technological change presumed by the green jobs literature itself. This yields seemingly precise estimates that give the illusion of scientific reliability to numbers that are actually based on faulty assumptions.


Myth 4: Green jobs promote employment growth.

Fact 4: By promoting more jobs instead of more productivity, the green jobs described in the literature actually encourage low-paying jobs in less desirable conditions. Economic growth cannot be ordered by Congress or by the United Nations. Government interference in the economy - such as restricting further progress with already successful technologies in favor of speculative technologies favored by special interests - will generate stagnation.

Green jobs estimates promise greatly expanded (and pleasant and well-paid) employment. This promise is false. The green jobs model is built on promoting inefficient use of labor. The studies favor technologies that employ large numbers of people rather than those technologies that use labor efficiently. In a competitive market, the factors of production, including labor, are paid for their productivity. By focusing on low productivity jobs, the green jobs literature dooms employees to low wages in a shrinking economy. The studies also generally ignore the millions of jobs that will be destroyed by the restrictions imposed by governments on disfavored products and technologies.

Myth 5: The world economy can be remade by reducing trade and relying on local production and reduced consumption without dramatically decreasing our standard of living.

Fact 5: History shows that individual nations cannot produce everything its citizens need or desire. People and countries have talents that allow specialization in products and services that make them ever more efficient, lower-cost producers, thereby enriching all people .
The green jobs literature rejects the benefits of trade, ignores opportunity costs, specialization, and fails to include consumer surplus in its welfare calculations. This is a recipe for an economic disaster. Even the favored green technologies, such as wind turbines, require expertise and intellectual property rights largely provided by foreigners. The twentieth century saw many experiments in creating societies that did not engage in trade and did not value personal welfare. The economic and human disasters that resulted should have conclusively settled the question of whether nations can withdraw inside their borders.

Myth 6: Government mandates are a substitute for free markets.

Fact 6: Companies react more swiftly and efficiently to the demands of their customers/markets, than to cumbersome government mandates.

Green jobs supporters want to reorder society by mandating preferred technologies and expenditures through government entities. But the responses to government mandates are not the same as the responses to market incentives. We have powerful evidence that market incentives prompt the same resource conservation that green jobs advocates purport to desire. For example, the rising cost of energy is a major incentive to redesign production processes and products to use less energy. People do not want energy; they want the benefits of energy. Those who can deliver more desired goods and services by reducing the energy - and thus the cost of production - will be rewarded. On the other hand, we have no evidence to support the idea that command-and-control regimes accomplish conservation.

Myth 7: Wishing for technological progress is sufficient.

Fact 7: Some technologies preferred by the green jobs studies are not capable of efficiently reaching the scale necessary to meet today’s demands.

The green jobs literature’s preferred technologies face significant problems in scaling up to the levels they propose. These problems are well documented in readily available technical literature, yet are resolutely ignored in the green jobs reports. At the same time, existing viable technologies that fail to meet the green jobs supporters’ political criteria are simply rejected out of hand. This selective technological optimism/pessimism is not a sufficient basis for remaking society to fit the dream of planners, politicians, or special interests who think they know best, despite empirical evidence to the contrary.


Summary of Findings

As you can see in our seven myths listed above, our report finds that the analysis provided in the green jobs literature is deeply flawed. The reports rest on a series of exaggerated, inadequate, or incorrect economic, environmental, and technological assumptions. Moreover, the scale of social change that would be required to implement the proposed programs would be unprecedented.


Our key findings are:

No agreed, coherent definition of a “green job” exists in the public debate. Many of the jobs classified as “green” in these four most popular studies produce no environmental results.

Green jobs ultimately will not promote employment growth or improve production because many are concentrated by design in low productivity occupations.

Green jobs proponents rely on highly problematic assumptions about constant prices and lack of technological change that render their “multiplier effect” misleading and, therefore, useless.

Green job advocates incorrectly assume that government mandates are a substitute for free markets. Their models are based on the assumption that politicians can predict what technologies are best and what the markets will bear.

Many green jobs proposals are an effort to implement anti-trade policies and reduced consumption scenarios that would be unacceptable to most Americans.

Libertarians disagree with federal president on global warming urgency

Libertarians disagree with federal president on global warming urgency
Cato, Mar 28, 2009


"Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change.The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear."
— PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA, NOVEMBER 19 , 2008

With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true.

We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated. Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now.1,2 After controlling for population growth and property values, there has been no increase in damages from severe weather-related events.3 The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior.4 Mr. President, your characterization of the scientific facts regarding climate change and the degree of certainty informing the scientific debate is simply incorrect.

See press ad here.


Footnotes

1 Swanson, K.L., and A. A. Tsonis. Geophysical Research Letters, in press: DOI:10.1029/2008GL037022.
2 Brohan, P., et al. Journal of Geophysical Research, 2006: DOI: 10.1029/2005JD006548. Updates at http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature.
3 Pielke, R. A. Jr., et al. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2005: DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-86-10-1481.
4 Douglass, D. H., et al. International Journal of Climatology, 2007: DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651.

Libertarian: Teacher Unions vs. Poor Kids

Teacher Unions vs. Poor Kids. By Nat Hentoff
Cato, Mar 28, 2009

The "education president" remained silent when his congressional Democrats essentially killed the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) in the city where he now lives and works.
Of the 1,700 students, starting in kindergarten, in this private-school voucher program, 90 percent are black and 9 percent are Hispanic.

First the House and then the Senate inserted into the $410-billion omnibus spending bill language to eliminate the $7,500 annual scholarships for these poor children after the next school year.

A key executioner in the Senate of the OSP was Sen. Dick Durbin, Illinois Democrat. I have written admiringly of Durbin's concern for human rights abroad. But what about education rights for minority children in the nation's capital?

Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Cato Institute (where I am a senior fellow) supplied the answer when he wrote: "Because they saw it as a threat to their political power, Democrats in Washington appear willing to extinguish the dreams of a few thousand poor kids to protect their political base."

Teachers unions are a major part of that base. Among those demanding that Congress kill the voucher scholarship program was the largest teachers union, the National Education Association.

Two of the kids affected by the action, Sarah and James Parker, attend Washington's prestigious Sidwell Friends School. Their scholarships will end with the next school year. The classmates they'll be leaving will include Sasha and Malia Obama. The Obama children, of course, do not need voucher money to avoid Washington D.C.'s failing and sometimes dangerous public schools.

As New York Times columnist David Brooks noted, the congressional Democrats even refused to grandfather in the kids already in the voucher program, "so those children will be ripped away from their mentors and friends ... ." President Obama, he added, "has, in fact, been shamefully quiet about this."

Doesn't Obama at least have something to say publicly to those children and their parents when his own Secretary of Education Arne Duncan opposed the congressional shutdown of Opportunity Scholarships?

Said Duncan (New York Post, March 6): "I don't think it makes sense to take kids out of a school where they're happy and safe and satisfied and learning. I think those kids need to stay in their school."

Duncan suggests that donors provide financial assistance through graduation to those kids stripped of their Opportunity Scholarships. Perhaps our "education president," from his continuing royalties from the sale of his books such as "The Audacity of Hope," might help out.

One of the recipients of the Opportunity Scholarships, teenager Carlos Battle (VoicesOfSchoolChoice.org) said that in a D.C. public school she'd "have to think more about protecting myself than about learning."

As for the Sidwell Friends School, its headmaster, Bruce Stewart, told the Wall Street Journal that the school has welcomed the OSP students. He said that when parents get more educational choices for their children, their kids and the whole community benefit.

Virginia Walden-Ford, executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, offered an excellent suggestion for members of the White House press corps:

"I'd like to see a reporter stand up at one of those nationally televised press conferences and ask President Obama what he thinks about what his own party is doing to keep two innocent kids from attending the same school where he sends his?"

I wish Jay Leno had thought to ask Obama that question.

In a March 2 editorial, the Washington Post — not a conservative newspaper —summed up the Congressional Democrats' scholarship shutdown in these words: "It's about politics and the stranglehold the teachers unions have on the Democratic Party. Why else has so much time and effort gone into trying to kill off what, in the grand scheme of government spending, is a tiny program?"

US State Dept on Afghanistan Supreme Court Ruling

Afghanistan Supreme Court Ruling. By Gordon Duguid, Acting Deputy Department Spokesman, Office of the Spokesman
US State Dept, Bureau of Public Affairs, Washington, DC, March 30, 2009

The Afghan Supreme Court has endorsed the continuation after May 22 of President Karzai’s term of office until free and fair elections have been held and a duly elected successor can take office. The United States strongly supports and welcomes this ruling.
We believe that continuity of government in the critical period before elections is vital and contributes to creating stability.

We urge all Afghans to support this ruling by the Supreme Court and to focus on the elections to be held on August 22, rather than continuing to question the status of their government.

The United States calls on the Government of Afghanistan, joined by its international partners, to make every effort to ensure that the conditions are created for genuinely free and fair elections that will reflect the will of the Afghan people. For its part, the United States neither supports nor opposes any legitimate candidate and will concentrate its efforts on helping to create a level playing field for all candidates.

WSJ Editorial Page: Cap and Trade War

Cap and Trade War. WSJ Editorial
Team Obama floats a carbon tariff.
WSJ, Mar 30, 2009

One of President Obama's applause lines is that his climate tax policies will create new green jobs "that can't be outsourced." But if that's true, why is his main energy adviser floating a new carbon tariff on imports? Welcome to the coming cap and trade war.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu made the protectionist point during an underreported House hearing this month, when he said tariffs and other trade barriers could be used as a "weapon" to force countries like China and India into cutting their own CO2 emissions. "If other countries don't impose a cost on carbon, then we will be at a disadvantage," he said. So a cap-and-trade policy won't be cost-free after all. Apparently Mr. Chu did not get the White House memo about obfuscating the impact of the Administration's anticarbon policies.

The Chinese certainly heard Mr. Chu, with Xie Zhenhua, a top economic minister, immediately responding that such a policy would be a "disaster" and "an excuse to impose trade restrictions." Beijing's reaction shows that as a means of coercing international cooperation, climate tariffs are worse than pointless. China and India are never going to endanger their own economic growth -- and the chance to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty -- merely to placate the climate neuroses of affluent Americans in Silicon Valley or Cambridge, Massachusetts. And they certainly won't do it under the threat of a tariff ultimatum.

But give Mr. Chu credit for candor. He had previously told the New York Times that "The concern about cap and trade in today's economic climate is that a lot of money might flow to developing countries in a way that might not be completely politically sellable." He is admitting that one byproduct of cap and trade is "leakage," by which investment and jobs are driven to nations that have looser or nonexistent climate regimes and therefore lower costs. At greatest risk are carbon-heavy industries such as steel, aluminum, paper, cement and chemicals that are sensitive to trade and where business is won and lost on the basis of pennies per unit of product. But the damage could strike almost any industry when energy prices "necessarily skyrocket," as Mr. Obama put it last year.

So in addition to all the other economic harm, a cap-and-trade tax will make foreign companies more competitive while eroding market share for U.S. businesses. The most harm will accrue to the very U.S. manufacturing and heavy-industry jobs that Democrats and unions claim to want to keep inside the U.S. A cap-and-tax plan would be the greatest outsourcing boon in history. And it may even increase CO2 emissions overall, because the developing nations where businesses are likely to relocate -- if they don't simply close -- tend to use energy less efficiently than does the U.S.

Meanwhile, carbon trade barriers would almost certainly violate U.S. obligations in the World Trade Organization. Since carbon energy cuts across so many industries, a tariff would presumably have to hit tens of thousands of products. Any restriction the U.S. imposes on imports can also just as easily be turned around and imposed on U.S. exports, whatever their carbon content.

Run-of-the-mill protectionism is already adopting a deeper shade of green. In January, the president of the European Commission said he may slap tariffs on goods from the U.S. and other non-Kyoto Protocol nations to protect European business. After Mr. Chu's comments, the U.S. steel lobby began calling for sanctions against Chinese steelmakers if Beijing doesn't commit to its own carbon limits, knowing full well that it won't. Look for more businesses to claim green virtue to justify special-interest pleading, a la the 54-cent U.S. tariff on foreign ethanol.

Democrats are already careless about trade -- i.e., the Mexican trucking spat, the "Buy America" provisions in the stimulus, and blocking the Colombia and South Korea free-trade pacts. Now cap and nontrade may lead to a retreat from the open global markets that have done so much to boost economic growth and innovation. The closer we get to the cap-and-trade dreams of Mr. Obama and Congress, the more dangerous they look.