Not Part of the Remit? Part II

by the Sandwichman

The Sandwichman submitted the following comments to the "Middle Class Task Force" (formerly the White House Task Force on Working Families):

The Middle Class Task Force staff report on Green Jobs, issued today, cites the UN Environmental Programme's report, "Green Jobs: Towards Decent Work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World." I would like to call your attention to two brief but absolutely crucial sections in the UNEP report: "Rethinking Consumption" and "A New Approach to Work Hours".

In the section on rethinking consumption, the authors state, "Sooner rather than later… we need to confront the specter of insatiable consumerism itself. There is a danger that the consumer juggernaut will overwhelm even the most sophisticated methods and technologies that can be devised to make consumption lean and super-efficient. Consuming better does not obviate the need to consider moderation in overall consumption levels."

What this means, to be perfectly clear, is that if we DON'T confront the economic growth imperative all the rest of the good work we do to create green jobs will be moot.

That's a rather strong statement, tucked in inconspicuously in a one-page section of a 376-page document and, significantly, excluded from the summary report "for decision makers."

We know why this matter wasn't discussed more fully because the report tells us. The question about what to do about excessive consumption was "not part of the remit of this report." Let me repeat, it was "not part of the remit of this report" to look into a matter that could overwhelm (that is to say: bury, crush, submerge completely) all of the sophisticated methodological and technological innovations discussed in the other 375 pages of the report.

May I point out that is like getting ready to do a twelve-hour brain surgery without making sure there are double and triple back-ups in case of a power outage? As John Kenneth Galbraith remarked fifty years ago, it is like having a discussion about how to prevent traffic accidents while agreeing not to talk about speed.

There's a name for this bizarre phenomenon of skirting around the forbidden question. It's called "the elephant in the room." The White House blog mentioned the good-natured jockeying among cities and states for who was "greenest." By coincidence, earlier this week the City of Vancouver launched a program with the goal of making Vancouver "the greenest city in the world." In response to that, I started a facebook group called "The Greenest Elephant in the Room" because so much of the talk about green jobs sidesteps the single most direct and immediate way to cut greenhouse gas emissions (among other things) – reduce consumption, reduce the hours of work, share the work and spare the planet!

That brings me to the other brief section in the UNEP report, "A New Approach to Work Hours":

Industrial economies are extraordinarily productive-meaning that the same quantity of output can be produced with less and less human work. In principle, this can translate into either of two objectives: raising wages (in line with productivity) while holding working hours constant, or providing greater leisure time while holding income from wages constant. In practice, it has mostly been the former. Most people have been locked into a "work-and-spend" pattern.

Since the rise of mass industrialization in the late 19th century, there has been an ongoing tug-of-war between employers and unions over working hours… Employees have struggled for less work time – in the form of shortened workdays or weeks, extended vacation time, earlier retirement, or paid leave. These efforts were primarily motivated by a desire to improve the quality of life and to create more jobs. While environmental issues have not played a central role, channelling productivity gains toward more leisure time instead of higher wages that can translate into ever rising consumption also increasingly makes sense from an ecological perspective.

It is crucial to retool not only the economy, but also economic thought. Right now, economic actors are primed to respond to quantitative growth signals… A sustainable economy needs a different way of measuring human activity and of providing signals to investors, producers, and consumers. It needs a different theory, abandoning the outdated assumption that quantitative growth is unconditionally desirable and embracing instead the notion of qualitative growth.

The UNEP report "is correct when it states that it is crucial to retool not only the economy, but also economic thought." But then, amazingly, the report doesn't follow through on what could be done to retool economic thought! It focuses exclusively on the technological fix.

It takes courage to talk about what has become taboo to mention – to name the elephant in the room. The brief sections in the UNEP report that discuss "rethinking consumption" and "a new approach to work hours" are pithy. Their brevity, though, and lack of follow-through speaks volumes.

Not Part of the Remit? Part I

by the Sandwichman

Sooner rather than later, however, we need to confront the specter of insatiable consumerism itself. There is a danger that the consumer juggernaut will overwhelm even the most sophisticated methods and technologies that can be devised to make consumption lean and super-efficient. Consuming better does not obviate the need to consider moderation in overall consumption levels.

Notwithstanding the "danger that the consumer juggernaut will overwhelm even the most sophisticated methods and technologies that can be devised to make consumption lean and super-efficient," how to tame that consumer juggernaut was "not part of the remit of this report", this report being the United Nations Environment Programme's "Green Jobs: Towards Decent Work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World."

Is there an elephant in the room? I see one. Do you? But it is not part of the remit of this report to talk about the Greenest Elephant in the Room!.

When dealing with the juggernaut that could overwhelm even the most sophisticated methods and technologies is not in the remit, there is something fundamentally, radically, pathologically wrong with the remit.

Do Keynesian Economists Believe in Fairy Tales?

Oliver Staley and Michael McKee have a nice article entitled Yale’s Tobin Guides Obama From Grave as Friedman Is Eclipsed. John Cochrane is quoted as claiming the following:

while Tobin made contributions to investing theory, the idea that spending can spur the economy was discredited decades ago. “It’s not part of what anybody has taught graduate students since the 1960s,” Cochrane said. “They are fairy tales that have been proved false. It is very comforting in times of stress to go back to the fairy tales we heard as children but it doesn’t make them less false.” To borrow money to pay for the spending, the government will issue bonds, which means investors will be buying U.S. Treasuries instead of investing in equities or products, negating the simulative effect, Cochrane said.

Maybe Professor Cochrane is not aware that Dr. Tobin was including Keynesian economics in his graduate classes at Yale University. I’m sure other the macroeconomic classes in other graduate programs also spend considerable time explaining the contributions of Keynes, Tobin, et al. And we see that Professor Cochrane is still stuck on this discredited Treasury view. To claim that Keynesian economic represents a fairy tale that has been proven false shows how out of the loop Professor Cochrane happens to be.

Update: Brad DeLong wonders if Cochrane has an economic model to back up his argument for complete crowding-out. As Brad tries to fill in the blanks left by Cochrane, he realizes the following:

If Cochrane were to present his model and argument for crowding out, it would sound--to me at least--pretty silly. It would carry the implication not just that government spending can't spur the economy, but that private spending by high-tech startups in the 1990s or by homebuilding compaanies in the 2000s did not spur the economy either--that it was simply chance that high-tech investment spending boomed in the late 1990s and the unemployment rate fell at the same time and that it was simply chance that home construction spending boomed in the mid 2000s and the unemployment rate fell at the same time. And Cochrane's position had not to my knowledge been seriously advanced--certainly Milton Friedman did not advance the view that there was always 100% crowding-out of fiscal policy--since R.G. Hawtrey and the "Treasury View" of the 1920s.

Pieces of Mind - Kyoto Protocol

Piece One:
Global models that include the feedbacks between climatic change and the carbon cycle have all shown decreased carbon sinks over the next century. [1]



Piece Two:
Growing trees absorb net quantities of CO2, and the higher levels of CO2 and nitrogen in the atmosphere are themselves stimulating tree and plant growth…. But the researchers expect these effects to reach saturation point and cease to have an effect. [2]

Piece Three:
What the researchers found limited the trees' capacity to respond to carbon fertilisation was a shortage of other nutrients, especially nitrogen. The availability of water was also important. ….The US and the other members of the so-called Umbrella Group (Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Norway, New Zealand and Russia) wanted to rely considerably on sinks in meeting their Kyoto targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that may be warming the global climate. The European Union and others opposed this, arguing that open-ended use of sinks to absorb CO2 could allow countries to avoid making any actual emission cuts at all. [3]

Piece 4:
[Tree] respiration increases in response to temperature rises, which are triggered by the rising levels of CO2. Many scientists believe that respiration may be about to accelerate, turning the forests from sinks to sources of carbon…. They failed to recognise that this could happen because, although CO2 take-up is instantaneous, the warming that triggers respiration has a built-in delay of about 50 years, mainly because of the oceans' thermal inertia. So planting more trees could soon prove a quick way of speeding up climate change, not of moderating it. Bob Scholes, of the South African Government's research agency, CSIR, says it could be a costly mistake. "The carbon cycle has a very long equilibrium time. The consequences of actions taken now will persist for many centuries." [4]


[1] The First State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR)
The North American Carbon Budget and Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle
The Carbon Cycle in Land and Water Systems, Part III Overview.
Lead Author: R.A. Houghton, Woods Hole Research Center
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap2-2/final-report/sap2-2-final-part3overview.pdf

[2] Forests 'only temporary carbon absorbers'.
Wednesday, 7 November, 2001, 19:13 GMT
By Alex Kirby. BBC News Online environment correspondent
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1643156.stm

[3] Tree planting warning over global warming
Tree at sunset BBC
Trees may not live up to expectations for storing carbon dioxide
By BBC News Online's environment correspondent Alex Kirby
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1347068.stm

[4] Trees 'will not avert climate change'
Wednesday, October 20, 1999 Published at 22:49 GMT 23:49 UK
Sci/Tech
The world's forests can buy a little time, before they start adding to the warming
By Environment Correspondent Alex Kirby
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/480339.stm

The Greenest Elephant in the Room

by the Sandwichman

The Sandwichman has started a facebook group called Greenest Elephant in the Room and fondly invites all EconoSpeak readers to join. There will be a Greenest Elephant in the Room contest, too!

No one can avoid noticing an elephant in the room. But respectable folks somehow know it's not polite to mention that it's there.

In response to the City of Vancouver's upcoming "Greenest City in the World" initiative (it will be announced sometime this week), the Greenest Elephant in the Room is dedicated to raising the "forbidden question" of reducing the workweek.

It's the most immediate and direct way to reduce material throughput while preserving and even creating jobs. Yet even as the current economic and environmental crises make the reduction of working time more urgent, serious proposals to do so are treated as curiosities from the fringe. Why is this so?

The Greenest Elephant in the Room suspects that there are a lot of economists, politicians and other respectable folks who would rather be silly than look silly by marching out of step with their silly peers. As John Maynard Keynes remarked of bankers, "Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally."

Jindal’s Reply to Obama’s Speech: I Have No Clue What You Intend To Do

As I post this, the President is speaking to the Congress on the economy. The Republican response will be delivered by a clueless person:

To solve our current problems, Washington must lead. But the way to lead is not to raise taxes and put more money and power in hands of Washington politicians ... Democratic leaders say their legislation will grow the economy. What it will do is grow the government, increase our taxes down the line, and saddle future generations with debt. Who among us would ask our children for a loan, so we could spend money we do not have, on things we do not need?

Jindal cannot argue that the stimulus bill raises taxes today as it cuts taxes at least in the short-run. Yes – the present value of future government spending plus any current debt must be financed by the present value of future taxes. So if the President was proposing a permanent increase in government spending, then Jindal might have a point. But had Jindal bothered to actually listen to what the President has been saying – the long-run plan is for fiscal restraint following the current temporary fiscal stimulus.

Jindal is seen by many in Republican circles as their next leader. Yes – Republicans does have a habit of letting economic know-nothings rise to the top of their party.

Update: I did not stay up to actually watch Jindal but some folks at Faux News did and they were not impressed. As David Weigel notes:

Brutal. No one seems to think Jindal performed well.

Is There a Speculative Bubble in Gold?

The price of gold topped $1,000 per ounce this past Friday, only the second time it has done that, the last being last March for a few days. Yes, I think there is a bubble, but some other observers disagree (Patrick Heller: "Gold Reaches $1,000 Again: This Time It's Different"). Heller claims that "this is different" (from last March), with "prudent buyers" still buying, and various "mainstream pension funds" getting into the act, with him forecasting a major "shortage" of gold coins and loose jewelry later this spring. He suggests we will not see a price below $1,000 again any time soon.


Quite aside from my vague sense from people coming up to me randomly with this sort of frenzied tone when asking me about gold (always a bad sign), there are some aspects of this that do not smell right. Sure, I would not be surprised if the price rises some more. This bubble could bubble away for some time more, even some months. But usually the drive to gold is a flight from currency based on fears of inflation. Now, maybe there are people fearing hyperinflation from the fiscal stimulus, but a lot of forward swap markets still show expectations of deflation. Jim Hamilton at econbrowser is all pleased that there was a slightly positive increase in the US CPI in January, but is still hoping for much more inflation (his favored target is a 3% rate), and the price of oil has only gone down since then.

Of course, a deeper possibility here is probably a fear of just total collapse of everything, call it fleeing from nameless black swans that may be flying towards us. The same sort of thing probably explains the newly recent highs we are seeing on the US dollar, this absurd "flight to quality" to the dollar, when it is facing massive foreign imbalances and indebtedness, rather like what happened in mid-September when we briefly saw negative nominal interest rates. However, the most likely Awful Event still does not look like the sort of hyperinflation that feeds the gold bugs's mania, but a deep decline into deep depression, which would mean deflation. This would mean a collapse of the price of gold. Sure looks like a speculative bubble to me.

Update on "Gradual Decline Before the Crash"

Last July 12 I posted here on both old and recent work of mine on modeling how most bubbles experience "period of financial distress" after a peak during which they gradually decline for awhile before crashing. I noted the declines in deriviatives markets, identifying August 2007 as the peak. I warned of the danger of a crash, while holding back from outright forecasting one or when it might occur. Well, it occurred in mid-September with the general global meltdown after the failure of Lehmann Brothers, and was followed by a pretty steep crash of stock markets around the world.

I also note that housing continues to follow my forecast, that it is in a gradual decline since its peak in mid-2006, with no sign of a full-scale crash, although we are pretty clearly still well above a bottom. The other pattern for bubbles, of a crash immediately following a peak still looks like what happened to oil this past summer. Again, for the record, in the fourth edition of his Manias, Panics, and Crashes, of the 47 historical bubbles identified by Charles Kindleberger in his Appendix B, 37 of them followed the "period of financial distress" pattern, including all the really big ones, with the remainder about evenly split between the other two patterns.

Does Rick Newman Understand Either Moral Hazard or Option Valuation?

Rick Newman calls the possibility of temporarily nationalizing troubled banks “scary” for reasons that are being properly ridiculed – a topic we’ll come to in a moment. But let’s start with this claim:

It wouldn’t solve the underlying problem. The main problem at struggling banks like Citigroup is a mountain of losses – which the banks may not have enough cash to cover … The government can pump taxpayer dollars into banks to help cover losses, which it’s already doing. But even if it owns the banks, “the government can’t make embedded losses go away,” says economist James Barth of the nonprofit Milken Institute. “The question is how to prevent additional losses.” If troubled banks were making wild decisions that were exacerbating their problems, then a government takeover might be one way to install more prudent management. But by most accounts, government regulators are now watching troubled banks so carefully that they’re effectively clamping down on any risky moves anyway.

The problem is not past decisions but the possible future decisions of zombie banks, that is, banks with liabilities exceeding the value of their assets. The fact that the government can observe a troubled bank does not erase the moral hazard dilemma inherent in letting the owners of these zombies continue to make management decisions. But the claim that is getting the most ridicule is as follows:

A government takeover would vaporize a lot of wealth. This is why the markets freak out every time there’s a rumor, or a rumor of a rumor, about nationalization. If the government took over a bank, public shares would suddenly be worthless and shareholders would lose everything. With Citi and Bank of America shares down more than 90 percent over the last 12 months, many shareholders have already lost a fortune. But there’s still a chance they’ll get some of it back if the bank recovers. That potential upside would disappear if the feds stepped in.

TPM reader AC nails this:

the only reason that the 90% to 95% losses that many have taken is not 100% is because of the chance that the feds bail out the banks but leave some equity outstanding (e.g., the 40% Citi solution). This, of course, is just a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to bank shareholders--like Paulson's funding of Citi greater than their market cap, to take meaningfully less than a 100% stake.

Paul Krugman recently made the same point:

And the market caps of these banks did not reflect investors’ assessment of the difference in value between their assets and their liabilities. Instead, it largely — and probably totally — reflected the “Geithner put”, the hope that the feds would bail them out in a way that handed a significant windfall gain to stockholders. What’s happening now is a growing sense that the federal government, in return for rescuing these institutions, will demand the same thing a private-sector white knight would have demanded — namely, ownership.

While Newman is correct in the claim that there is some remote possibility that the future cash flows of these banks will turn positive, there is also the strong possibility that the future cash flows will turn even more negative. The difference between the current market price of these bank shares and this Geithner put option is the current expected present value of cash flows – with each element of the probability matrix accounted for. Dr. Krugman et al. argues that the present value is negative. What I guess scares Mr. Newman is that the bank shareholders might lose the value of this Geithner put option, which of course is what we taxpayers would be giving away for free if we do not nationalize these troubled banks.

The Kyoto Protocol. Oh No!

"Under Kyoto, emissions are allocated to the country where they are produced. By these rules, the UK can claim to have reduced emissions by about 18% since 1990 - more than sufficient to meet its Kyoto target. But research published last year by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) suggests that, once imports, exports and international transport are accounted for, the real change for the UK has been a rise in emissions of more than 20%...." [1]

"VICTORIA'S bushfires have released a massive amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - almost equal to Australia's industrial emission for an entire year. Mark Adams, from the University of Sydney, said the emissions from bushfires were far beyond what could be contained through carbon capture and needed to be addressed in the next international agreement. "Once you are starting to burn millions of hectares of eucalypt forest, then you are putting into the atmosphere very large amounts of carbon," Professor Adams said. In work for the Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre, he estimated the 2003 and 2006-07 bushfires could have put 20-30million tonnes of carbon (70-105 million tonnes of carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere. "That is far, far more than we're ever going to be able to sequester from planting trees or promoting carbon capture," he said..... [2]

Whatever were the chances of success of the Kyoto forum? The Australian (Labor) Government appointed the heads of the Australian National Association of Forest Industries (NAFI) as members of the official Australian delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Bali in December 2007. [3] Prime Minister, Rudd, placed little value on selecting delegates with an appropriate background of study on climate change dynamics. NAFI CEO, Catherine Murphy was then free to spout her usual ill-informed logic at this critical international forum "Forestry is the only carbon positive industry and plays a significant role in reducing greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere....” [4]

James Lovelock would have been a much better forestry delegate: ". "Carbon offsetting? I wouldn't dream of it. It's just a joke. To pay money to plant trees, to think you're offsetting the carbon? You're probably making matters worse. You're far better off giving to the charity Cool Earth, which gives the money to the native peoples to not take down their forests." [5]

In these times of rapid and threatening climate change we can still enjoy life...for now...with the lights off.



[1] West blamed for rapid increase in China's CO2
[Consumer exports behind 15% of emissions - study]
Duncan Clark. The Guardian, Monday 23 February 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/23/china-co2-emissions-climate

[2] Bushfires release huge carbon load
Asa Wahlquist, Rural writer | February 13, 2009
Article from: The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25047322-11949,00.html

[3] NAFI represents Australian forest industry at Bali climate change meetings
http://www.nafi.com.au/news/view.php3?id=1788

[4] NAFI welcomes ratification of Kyoto Protocol by the Australian Government. December 2007. http://www.nafi.com.au/news/view.php3?id=1789

[5] 'Enjoy life while you can'
* Decca Aitkenhead * The Guardian, * Saturday March 1 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

Senator McConnell: For Short-term Fiscal Restraint But Against Long-Term Fiscal Restraint

Advocates of long-term fiscal restraint often argue ala the Solow growth model that increases in national savings lead to more investment as long as we can assume full employment is maintained. During periods of weak aggregate demand (such as the current one), a strong case for short-term fiscal expansion can be made. The Obama stimulus bill was designed to reverse the slide in aggregate demand. However, Senator McConnell and other Washingtonian Republicans – aka the neo-Hooverites - opposed this fiscal stimulus on the grounds that it sacrificed fiscal responsibility.

President Obama has trumped these fools by arguing for long-term fiscal responsibility. John King asked Senator McConnell about the President’s proposal to reduce the government deficit over the long-run in part by letting the Bush tax cuts for the very rich sunset:

So we have got to ask ourselves whether increasing capital gains taxes, dividend taxes and taxes on small businesses is a great thing to do in the middle of a deep recession.

Excuse me but recessions do not last forever and the President was clear that he has been talking about a mix of short-term fiscal stimulus and long-term restraint. Is McConnell really this stupid? I doubt it as his hypocrisy has been standard Republican practice for over a generation. They justified the 1981 tax cut on the grounds that we had a recession to deal with – never mind the fact that fiscal policy was operating at cross purposes with Volcker’s monetary policy. We would have had more national savings had we had less fiscal stimulus and a quicker path to lower interest rates. Bush43’s tax cuts may have been sold as dealing with the 2001 recession but the truth was they were not as much about immediate fiscal stimulus and more backloaded in their impact on aggregate demand. We continued to hear GOP calls for making the tax cuts permanent even as the economy rebounded and the Federal Reserve chose to raise interest rates.

For McConnell to use the recession as an excuse not to eventually raise taxes is pure hypocrisy. But it is also standard Republican rhetoric – as stupid as this rhetoric may be.

Unemployment Rates in the States Where the Governors Reject Federal Unemployment Assistance

We noted the silly argument made by Louisiana’s governor as to why he wants to turn down the $98 million in federal unemployment assistance – which amounts to less than 2% of the total stimulus going to his states. CNN reports that Jindal has company:

Though they support some federal action to help their states recover from the recession, several Republican governors said Sunday they plan to turn down a portion of what's offered in the stimulus bill that President Obama signed last week. "If we were to take the unemployment reform package that they have, it would cause us to raise taxes on employment when the money runs out -- and the money will run out in a couple of years," Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. The Republican governors of Idaho, Alaska, Texas, South Carolina and Louisiana have expressed similar concerns.

I guess Barbour got the same talking points that were given to Jindal. Steve Benen reports on the nonsense coming from the governor of South Carolina:

As for Sanford's notion of a "fundamental misdiagnosis," what does the South Carolinian believe is the wisest course of action? "When times go south you cut spending," Sanford recently explained. "That's what families do, that's what businesses do, and I don't think the government should be exempt from that process." It is Neo-Hooverism in its most obvious form.

As these governors decide that the unemployed of their states are less important than a little political pandering to the rightwing, maybe we should check with this source as to how much the unemployment rate has increased from December 2007 to December 2008:

Alaska: 6.5% to 7.5%

Idaho: 2.7% to 6.4%

Louisiana: 4.0% to 5.3%

Mississippi: 6.3% to 8.0%

South Carolina: 6.2% to 9.5%

Texas: 4.2% to 6.0%

Crop Scientists Say Biotechnology Seed Companies Are Thwarting Research.

Pollack, Andrew. 2009. "Crop Scientists Say Biotechnology Seed Companies Are Thwarting Research." New York Times (19 February).
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/business/20crop.html?ref=business

"Biotechnology companies are keeping university scientists from fully researching the effectiveness and environmental impact of the industry’s genetically modified crops, according to an unusual complaint issued by a group of those scientists. “No truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions,” the scientists wrote in a statement submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency. The E.P.A. is seeking public comments for scientific meetings it will hold next week on biotech crops."



"The researchers, 26 corn-insect specialists, withheld their names because they feared being cut off from research by the companies. But several of them agreed in interviews to have their names used. The problem, the scientists say, is that farmers and other buyers of genetically engineered seeds have to sign an agreement meant to ensure that growers honor company patent rights and environmental regulations. But the agreements also prohibit growing the crops for research purposes. So while university scientists can freely buy pesticides or conventional seeds for their research, they cannot do that with genetically engineered seeds. Instead, they must seek permission from the seed companies. And sometimes that permission is denied or the company insists on reviewing any findings before they can be published, they say. Such agreements have long been a problem, the scientists said, but they are going public now because frustration has been building. “If a company can control the research that appears in the public domain, they can reduce the potential negatives that can come out of any research,” said Ken Ostlie, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota, who was one of the scientists who had signed the statement."

"The companies “have the potential to launder the data, the information that is submitted to E.P.A.,” said Elson J. Shields, a professor of entomology at Cornell."

"The growers’ agreement from Syngenta not only prohibits research in general but specifically says a seed buyer cannot compare Syngenta’s product with any rival crop. Dr. Ostlie, at the University of Minnesota, said he had permission from three companies in 2007 to compare how well their insect-resistant corn varieties fared against the rootworms found in his state. But in 2008, Syngenta, one of the three companies, withdrew its permission and the study had to stop. “The company just decided it was not in its best interest to let it continue,” Dr. Ostlie said."

"Mark A. Boetel, associate professor of entomology at North Dakota State University, said that before genetically engineered sugar beet seeds were sold to farmers for the first time last year, he wanted to test how the crop would react to an insecticide treatment. But the university could not come to an agreement with the companies responsible, Monsanto and Syngenta, over publishing and intellectual property rights. Chris DiFonzo, an entomologist at Michigan State University, said that when she conducted surveys of insects, she avoided fields with transgenic crops because her presence would put the farmer in violation of the grower’s agreement."

"Dr. Shields of Cornell said financing for agricultural research had gradually shifted from the public sector to the private sector. That makes many scientists at universities dependent on financing or technical cooperation from the big seed companies. “People are afraid of being blacklisted,” he said. “If your sole job is to work on corn insects and you need the latest corn varieties and the companies decide not to give it to you, you can’t do your job".”

Gov. Jindal Rejects $98 Million in Unemployment Assistance – Senator Landrieu Must Just Be Smarter than the Governor

Jan Moller has a very insightful story with respect to what the headline notes as Jindal rejects $98 million in stimulus spending:

Saying that it could lead to a tax increase on state businesses, Gov. Bobby Jindal announced Friday that the state plans to reject as much as $98 million in federal unemployment assistance in the economic stimulus package.

Rather that go off on what at first glance appears to be a knne-jerk GOP preference for business owners over the average working class family down on their luck, let’s pull what might appear to be Jindal’s reasons for this stance:

Jindal, who has emerged as a leading Republican critic of the $787 billion spending and tax-cut bill signed into law this week by President Barack Obama, said the state would accept federal dollars for transportation projects and would not quarrel with a $25-per-week increase in unemployment benefits. Both of those items are financed entirely with federal dollars and require the state only to accept the money. The part that Jindal rejected would require permanent changes in state law that the governor said makes it unacceptable. "You're talking about temporary federal spending triggering a permanent change in state law," Jindal said ... At issue are two pots of federal money that states can access only if they agree to change their laws to make it easier for unemployed workers to qualify for benefits. To access the first pot of money, worth $32.8 million over 27 months, Louisiana would have to offer benefits to workers who have held jobs for as little as three months before becoming unemployed. Workers now have to hold a job for at least a year before they are eligible to collect unemployment. The Louisiana Workforce Commission, which administers the state's unemployment insurance system, estimates that an additional 4,000 former workers would become eligible for benefits under that change. A second pot of money, valued at $65.6 million, would be available to Louisiana only if it agreed to other, larger expansions of benefits. For example, the state could extend benefits to part-time workers or change the law so that people could collect unemployment if they voluntarily left their job for "compelling" family reasons. As the Jindal administration interprets the law, Louisiana would be required to keep providing the expanded benefits even after the federal stimulus dollars run out at the end of 2010. That, in turn, would lead to higher costs on businesses, whose taxes finance the state's unemployment compensation fund. According to the Workforce Commission, the expanded benefits would cost Louisiana companies $12 million a year after the federal money ends. The businesses, in turn, would pass those costs on to their workers. “I don't think it's good policy to take temporary federal dollars to create a permanent state spending obligation,” Jindal said.

Senator Landrieu has another view:

But U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., disputed the governor's interpretation and said the new unemployment benefits are designed to be temporary. "This bill is an emergency measure designed to provide extra help during these extraordinarily tough times, " Landrieu said. "To characterize this provision as a 'tax increase on Louisiana businesses' is inaccurate." … A senior aide to Landrieu agreed that the state would have to change the law to take advantage of the windfall but said the change would not have to be permanent. Instead, the Legislature could write the new law with a "sunset provision" so it expires when the federal stimulus dollars run out.

Republicans should understand sunset provisions – it’s how they claimed that the 2001 tax cuts would not permanently drive up the deficit. The governor of Louisiana is turning down almost $100 million in federal unemployment assistance becomes he cannot think out of the box? Isn’t this complete incompetence grounds for his removal from public office?

The perversion of humanitarian activities

The United States has a long history of using humanitarian ventures as a cover for promoting its own self-interest. Here is an example I found from the early 20th century regarding Herbert Hoover's relief work following World War I.

Andelman, David A. 2008. A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today (New York: J. Wiley).

31: "Colonel Edward House recognized that the peace was likely to be won by the power that had the best understanding of the situation on the ground of each of the territories that the delegates were about to carve up and remodel. So in mid-November House and Van Deman hit on an original approach to the rapid establishment of an effective spy network throughout Europe. Van Deman described it in his own words: "It will be remembered at the time Herbert Hoover had been given charge of providing food and relief for certain devastated sections of Europe. We desired to send with Mr. Hoover's workers going into those areas certain intelligence agents who were familiar with the country, but to this Mr. Hoover violently objected."



31: "It was a brilliant system of the utmost simplicity. Herbert Hoover, who would become the 31st president of the United States, then headed network of private relief workers in the defeated nations. They could move with total freedom and without a scintilla of suspicion among all the subject people of Europe. Indeed, as the dispensers of life-giving food and water they would be welcomed as saviors. The only remaining problem was to persuade Hoover himself. House insisted as his allies you Gibson, a gifted young American diplomat. While serving as principal aide to Hoover and his relief efforts in Belgium during the war, and Gibson also managed to distinguish himself in gathering battlefield intelligence by wriggling through German lines. House now promised Gibson a cushy post as coordinator of the intelligence effort at the U. S. Legation in Vienna if he would persuade Hoover to go along with the plan."

32: "Gibson was surpassingly discreet, but he and House prevailed. In a face-to-face showdown in Paris was Col. House, Hoover, who never really managed to overcome his roots as a simple mining engineer from Iowa was forced to give in. The coordinator of the largest international relief effort ever mounted was persuaded to the use of his pan-European organization as a cover for the first network of spies the United States ever fielded in a coordinated fashion across the continent."