- Bad move for GOP to call disappointed litigant as witness at Sotomayor hearing [Taranto via Barnett] Nominee’s disavowal of Legal Realism and identitarian/viewpoint-based judging should be seen as a victory for legal conservatism [Copland at PoL, related Examiner and NRO "Bench Memos"; Adler/WaPo; coverage in NYT] Why do Senators speechify instead of asking questions? “Why does the rain fall from up above?” [Althouse]
- “Illinois Law Dean Announces New Admission Policy in Wake of Scandal” [NLJ; earlier] “U of I Law School Got Scholarship Cash for Clout Admissions” [ABA Journal]
- Weird warning sign in Swedish elevator [BoingBoing; commenters there disagree as to whether the elevator in question is of an old continuous-motion type called a Paternoster which has fallen out of use in part because of its high accident risk, or an elevator of more conventional design but lacking an inner door]
- “Gambler Appeals; Wants More of His Money Back From Casino” [South Korea; Lowering the Bar]
- The price of one Ohio Congresswoman’s vote on Waxman-Markey [Washington Times via Coyote, who has a followup]
- “Want to live like tort king Melvin Belli?” [real estate listing in Pacific Heights; WSJ Law Blog]
- Fierce moral urgency yada yada: “Put nothing in writing, ever” advised Carol Browner on CAFE regs [Mark Tapscott, D.C. Examiner] Alex Beam zings Obama on signing statements [Boston Globe]
- Constitution lists only three federal crimes: treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. How’d we get to 4,500 today? [Ryan Young, CEI "Open Market"]
Tagged as:
CAFE,
crime and punishment,
elevators and escalators,
gambling,
law schools,
Sonia Sotomayor,
South Korea
Under a regulation known as the “two-fleet rule”, automakers must meet CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards separately for their domestically produced and for their imported vehicles, rather than just hitting the same overall number through an average of both. The economics of production and transport tend to favor the domestic production of large cars and the importation of small economy cars. “For 30 years, to make and sell the large vehicles that earn their profits, the Detroit Three have been effectively required to build small cars in high-wage, UAW factories, though it means losing money on every car,” writes the WSJ’s Holman Jenkins, Jr. It’s “nonsensical” and “a naked handout to the UAW at the expense of the companies and their customers.” (”Yes, Detroit Can Be Fixed”, Nov. 5).
P.S. Of course the actual legislative responses we’re in for will probably be very different. Mickey Kaus: “So the UAW wants a $25 billion bailout and an end to the secret ballot … Because Wagner Act unionism clearly worked out so well for Detroit.”
Tagged as:
autos,
CAFE,
Detroit,
labor unions,
United Auto Workers
Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) believes that government must force automakers to increase the fuel-efficiency of the vehicles they sell. Here’s part of a letter that he has in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, explaining:
Your editorial opposing fuel economy standards (”Not So Grande CAFE,” May 
that the standards amount “to the government dictating the kind of cars Americans will be able drive, even if those cars aren’t safe on the road.” This is wrong.
First, the goal of fuel economy standards is to enable Americans to drive the cars they want — but that the automakers aren’t producing. And what Americans want is the full range of vehicles available now, including SUVs, but with greater gas mileage. The technology exists to create those vehicles affordably, car buyers want them, and the nation needs them. The fact that they are not on sale is a classic market failure.
…..
Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R., N.Y.)
Chairman
House Committee on Science
Washington
…………………………………………………..
Rep. Boehlert whips the term “market failure” about too cavalierly. The believable existence of genuine market failure requires an institutional setting in which a significant number of individual decision-makers each bears too few of the consequences of his or her choices — such as when, for example, an owner of a factory upstream pollutes a river in ways that harm downstream owners of riverside land because downstream owners have no effective way to enforce their property rights to an unpolluted river.
But the situation decried by Rep. Boehlert has none of the institutional prerequisites for “classic market failure.” If a sufficient number of consumers truly are willing to pay for more-fuel-efficient cars (as Rep. Boehlert asserts), surely at least one of the 20-plus automakers now supplying new cars to the U.S. market would discern this fact — and, out of pure self-interest, act to satisfy this consumer demand. After all, if increasing a car’s fuel-efficiency would cost an automaker $X and if consumers are willing to pay $X+Y for such a car, then profits are to be had satisfying this consumer demand.
Rep. Boehlert doesn’t divulge in this letter his source of information about this alleged consumer demand, but surely now that he’s unearthed this valuable information, automakers will act on it voluntarily — assuming, of course, that the information’s source is credible.
Alas, I suspect that Rep. Boehlert’s source of information on this point is not credible — for, again, if Rep. Boehlert’s claim were credible, automakers wouldn’t have to be forced by government to satisfy their customers’ demands.
The arrogance and conceits of Rep. Boehlert and his ilk make me want to vomit.
Tagged as:
CAFE
