How Ignorant and Misguided Can Charles Schumer Be?

Think big. Gigantic. This is the latest from Charles Shumer, the Democrat from New York:

When he found out that Adidas was planning to outsource manufacturing of NBA jerseys he “called on the league to terminate its contract with the German-based sportswear giant unless it halts plans to transfer production of game-day jerseys from an upstate New York facility to Thailand.”

Great idea! Let’s make sure that we force companies to produce stuff at the highest possible cost in the name of some lame “buy and make American” nonsensical theory. I am sure that forcing Adidas to give up on the possibility to reduce its production costs will do wonders for this economy.

Besides, as George Mason University’s Don Boudreaux noted in a still unpublished letter to the editor of the New York Daily News yesterday:

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Tags: Adidas, Census Bureau, Charles Schumer, comparative advantage, David Ricardo
Posted Dec 4th 2009 at 10:23 am in Congress, Economics, News, Politics | 4113475 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/vderugy/2009/12/04/how-ignorant-and-misguided-can-charles-schumer-be/How+Ignorant+and+Misguided+Can+Charles+Schumer+Be%3F2009-12-04+17%3A23%3A56Veronique++de+Rugy

BPA: The Tangled Web of Green

The duplicity surrounding news coverage of bisphenol A, a common and long-used chemical component of plastic, is evidenced by the media’s penchant for lavish coverage of specious claims of danger and a paucity of interest in peer-reviewed research showing no harm from the chemical.  This double standard extends to taxpayer funding of BPA research and raises questions about the pending research.

A particularly curious tale begins with a September 21 letter to Margaret Hamburg, the new Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Director Linda Birnbaum who, among others, was copied on the correspondence.  The letter was penned by Thomas Zoeller, a member of the 2007 Chapel Hill Consensus that advanced theories of danger associated with BPA, and 32 additional signatories.  The letter opens by stating that its signatories are “a group of independent (mostly university) researchers with extensive experience working with endocrine disrupting compounds and in particular bisphenol A (BPA)” but then gives a curious warning to Commissioner Hamburg regarding plans for $10 million in BPA studies by FDA.

“We find it troubling that the FDA is proposing to spend such a large amount of money on such a well-researched chemical,” the letter notes.  It goes on to claim that plans to further research BPA are “disturbing” and that “there is sufficient research and independent review available for the agency to make a decision as to whether, as the law dictates, there is ‘reasonable certainty’ that this chemical is ‘not harmful.’”

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Tags: BPA, Chapel Hill Consensus, FDA Commissioner, George Mason University, Margaret Hamburg
Posted Nov 30th 2009 at 9:57 pm in Environment, News | 3854230 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/mgrabar/2009/11/30/bpa-the-tangled-web-of-green/BPA%3A+The+Tangled+Web+of+Green2009-12-01+04%3A57%3A16Mary+Grabar

Anatomy of a Green Scare: Consumer Reports or Distorts Facts About BPA?

It’s a chemical that has been used in everyday plastic products like eyeglasses, medical equipment, bottles, and food can linings for over fifty years.  But the compound Bisphenol A (BPA) has been the target of scare campaigns over the last few years.  On one hand critics contend that BPA at low doses can affect endocrine systems and reproduction, and cause birth or developmental effects, as well as cancer.  On the other hand, a search of the literature finds no single case of illness or death related to BPA.

Most recently, BPA came under attack November 2 when Consumers Union, the parent organization of the respected Consumer Reports, sent out a press release announcing the results of its lab tests that purportedly showed high levels of the suspect compound in 19 food products.  The authors of the Consumers Report article did not claim that they had found any harmful effects in anyone, just that BPA had been detected.

The Consumers Union press release inspired panic-inducing headlines.  ABC News, the Los Angeles Times, Fox News, and the New York Times dutifully announced the “results” with alarm.  In a separate commentary, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff compared the danger of BPA to those he has faced as a reporter of “threats from warlords, bandits and tarantulas.”

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Tags: BPA, Chapel Hill Consensus, chemical exposure, Consumers Union, EPA
Posted Nov 27th 2009 at 4:41 pm in Environment, Healthcare, Media Criticism, News, Politics | 3781059 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/mgrabar/2009/11/27/anatomy-of-a-green-scare-consumer-reports-or-distorts-facts-about-bpa/Anatomy+of+a+Green+Scare%3A+%3Cem%3EConsumer+Reports%3C%2Fem%3E+or+Distorts+Facts+About+BPA%3F2009-11-27+23%3A41%3A05Mary+Grabar

The Economy is Growing. Right. And I Don’t Have a French Accent.

We should be happy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a 3.5 percent growth in this year 3rd quarter. Yet, most of us aren’t. At least I know I am not. Why? Because I have no faith in the numbers.

First, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers include government spending. So, when the government pumps thousands of billions of dollars into the economy it will look as if GDP is growing.

What’s more, the way the GDP accounts for government spending is totally biased: It assumes that if the government is spending $200,000 on a contractor to repave a road in the middle of nowhere that it will create $200,000 of genuine economic value.  By contrast, GDP measures are tougher on private-sector spending. As my George Mason university colleague Garett Jones explained to me recently “So if Exxon Mobil pays an engineer $200,000 per year, that only shows up in GDP if the engineer finds an extra $200,000 of oil to sell, or builds a new machine that sells for $200,000, something like that.  So our GDP measures of “government spending” are awful–and when the government is in a race to spend money as quickly as possible, these measures are going to be even worse than usual.”

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Tags: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Economy, executive compensation, GDP, George Mason University
Posted Oct 30th 2009 at 10:43 am in Economics, News | 2293431 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/vderugy/2009/10/30/the-economy-is-growing-right-and-i-dont-have-a-french-accent/The+Economy+is+Growing.+Right.+And+I+Don%27t+Have+a+French+Accent.2009-10-30+17%3A43%3A59Veronique++de+Rugy