- Pics of 50 of the strangest buildings of the world, some look as if Hobbits must live there [Village of Joy h/t @CoolPics] #
- Research drugmaker held liable for misrepresenting drug even though plaintiff took generic [Beck & Herrmann h/t @billchilds] #
- Rep. Rangel can’t find 1 law firm to sift his tax mess that isn’t conflicted (like by being his donor). [NY Post h/t @jeffnolan] #
- Pot/kettle award? RIAA, of kid- and grandma-suing fame, calls adversary vexatious [Kravets, Wired “Threat Level” h/t @VBalasubramani] #
- “Disabled” LIRR retirees also got free lifetime passes to state owned golf courses [A Blog for All] #
Archive for 2008
New at Forbes.com: RFK Jr. to EPA?
I’ve got a new opinion column just out at Forbes.com on the reports that president-elect Obama may be considering America’s Most Irresponsible Public Figure®, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Earlier this week I posted on the topic here and here (welcome Jonathan Adler/Volokh, Ron Coleman/Likelihood of Success readers).
More: Orac advises writing letters to the Obama transition team urging them to consider the harm to their credibility should a figure such as RFK Jr. get the nod. His comments section includes many good examples of such letters, and Kathleen Seidel, autism blogger extraordinaire, contributes one at her site as well. See also this perhaps unintentionally ironic dispatch by MSNBC’s Alan Boyle on Thursday listing as among president-elect Obama’s “top tasks” “taking the ideology out of scientific issues” and quoting Chris Mooney, author of “The Republican War on Science,” to the effect that “the war has ended, and science has won”. The Center for American Progress’s ScienceProgress site, to which Mooney contributes, doesn’t seem to have weighed in on the RFK Jr. matter.
And: tons of mostly helpful blog reactions. At ScienceBlogs, besides Orac, there are the influential P.Z. Myers/Pharyngula (“another irrational purveyor of woo and fluffy substanceless hysteria”), Chad Orzel, Uncertain Principles (“his highest-profile activity in recent years has been the promotion of nutbar conspiracy theories”), Mike the Mad Biologist (“every bit as ridiculous as creationism”), Around the Clock (“He is the typical paranoid, conspiracy-theorist, hyperbolic quack. A kind of person shunned, ignored and marginalized by the Democratic Party for decades now for two good reasons: such people’s judgment cannot be trusted, and such people give the party a bad name”), James Hrynyshyn (“More worrisome is the fact that Obama on at least one campaign occasion, pandered to the anti-vaccine crowd by describing the science on the subject as “inconclusive” despite loads of studies that show no link”, PalMD, ERV, Science Woman, Effect Measure, SunClipse, and Mark Hoofnagle. Plus: Skepchick, DarkSyde @ DailyKos, Rondi Adamson (“gives me the creeps…The guy’s a complete wingnut”), Wendy Williams, Steven Novella, Neurologica (“This would be an unmitigated disaster for science in government … Putting a known antiscientific crank in this position is inexcusable”), The Amateur Scientist (“an absolutely terrible idea … the guy’s bad news”), Brandon Keim, WiredScience (“America doesn’t need more political officials who skew science to fit personal beliefs.”), Thinking Outside, Science Avenger, Colossus of Rhodey, Politico. Liz Ditz has a great roundup of critical opinions.
Further: Edward John Craig at NRO “Planet Gore” here and here.
Welcome Instapundit (and Change.gov!) readers
Quite an eventful night here: after Glenn Reynolds linked to my item on the Obama transition website and the plans it outlined for mandatory national service, upwards of five thousand visitors read the item and, as I’ve noted in an addendum, the people at Change.gov silently edited the passage in question to replace the controversial “require” language with vaguer talk of a “goal”. (Update Sun. morning: and now they seem to have yanked “Agenda” entirely).
Also, my thanks to commenters for their patience. I went out for an evening in the city and when I got back there were seventy comments in the moderation queue. I approved the whole batch, but inevitably there was one reader who was sure he was being singled out when his comment (#19) didn’t appear after an hour or two. (Update: thanks for correction.)
Microblog 2008-11-07
- @bschuelke Happens a lot up North too — for years the only black pol who could win citywide in Boston had the surname O’Bryant #
- Satellite shot of erupting Alaskan volcano [NASA via @CoolPics] #
- SEC should leave journalists alone [WSJ op-ed via Securities Docket] #
- Jobless rate in 1938: 19.1% or 12.5%? Why people still get angry over the question [Tabarrok, MargRev] #
- Welcome to Twitter @billchilds of TortsProf blog #
Obama transition on health care costs
Coyote also points to this page, which magically promises simultaneously to reduce health premiums while requiring insurers to cover pre-existing conditions and doing lots of other generous stuff. Total discussion of medical liability issues consists of the following bullet point:
Prevent insurers from overcharging doctors for their malpractice insurance and invest in proven strategies to reduce preventable medical errors.
Yes, because suppressing current malpractice insurance rates by adopting artificially rosy premises as to future payouts worked out so well when tried in New York. Update Monday: transition yanks entire “Agenda”, this section and others.
“Community service”? Yep, mandatory (Update: they’ve revised)
Well, that didn’t take long. Coyote spots language on the Obama transition site that seems to make explicit what was left studiously vague during the campaign:
Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.
Update 12:15 a.m. Saturday: After my post was linked by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit (thanks!) and began drawing thousands of visitors, the Obama website administrators at change.gov silently replaced the “require” language with something new and different:
Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.
Robert Bidinotto noted the switch and Mike LaSalle saved the original page as a PDF for those who didn’t see it the first time. Glenn Reynolds did a second post taking note of the substitution and quoting the witty comment of reader Nancy Anne Potts: “Looks like the change.gov site is true to its title – it changes!” More: Acre of Independence. Update Monday: transition yanks entire “Agenda” from web, this section and others.
Reins of power dept.
ABA Journal: “Who Isn’t a Lawyer on Obama’s Transition Team?”
Exact-number demands in lawsuits
Reasons why a shrewd plaintiff might decide to demand $485,000 rather than $500,000 (Ron Miller, Maryland Injury Law, Oct. 22).
Religious discrimination claims on the rise
The biggest growth area has been in EEOC claims on behalf of Muslim employees over alleged discrimination or lack of accommodation to religious practice, but Catholics and Protestants are filing more claims too. (Ohio Employment Law, Oct. 6).
Asphyxiating Detroit, the UAW way
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.”