Month: November 2014

You think the federal government
wastes taxpayer dollars? You don’t know the half of it. During the
past year alone, observes A. Barton Hinkle, Washington has shelled
out billions to give bureaucrats paid vacations in lieu of
discipline; to ship coal to Germany for no reason; to design better
golf clubs; to help farmers market manure; and to give bunny
rabbits massages—among many other things.

View this article.

This morning
less than 800 votes separate Republican Carl DeMaio from
incumbent Democrat Scott Peters in San Diego. With late mail and
provisional ballots uncounted, this means it’s too soon yet for
DeMaio to grab a surfboard and join to Republican wave.

If the numbers hold up, Carl DeMaio will become the first openly
gay man elected to Congress as a Republican (retired Jim Kolbe of
Arizona is the actual first gay Republican congressman, but he came
out while in office). DeMaio is also a libertarian pension reformer
(full disclosure: DeMaio is an independent contractor for the
Reason Foundation research division’s pension reform project). I
profiled DeMaio back in
July, and he’s featured in my preview
of the midterms in the December issue of Reason on stands
now.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, there could
be as many as 50,000 provisional and late mail-in ballots to count,
so this may take a while. We won’t see another tally until
Thursday.

The race also turned nasty and personal toward the end. DeMaio
ended up mired in scandals. A former campaign worker accused DeMaio
of sexual harassment. DeMaio’s camp, though, said the man was
retaliating because he was fired for his alleged role in
plagiarizing some content for the campaign’s website. DeMaio also
accused him of responsibility for a
break-in at their campaign office earlier in the year, but the
city’s district attorney determined there wasn’t enough evidence to
file charges. Then another former staffer came forward just

days before the election with similar sexual harassment
accusations. DeMaio’s camp has again denied the claims.

Polls had barely put DeMaio ahead back in October so the
closeness of the race should not come as a surprise, and it’s not
clear whether the late scandal affected the vote in any way. DeMaio
dismissed the scandals again last night. From the
Union-Tribune:

“I’ve also, particularly in the past several weeks, received
such amazing support and love from San Diegans who reject the
politics of personal destruction. They don’t want smears, they want
solutions.”

Unfortunately, should he win, DeMaio will not be joined by
Richard Tisei of Massachusetts in the House of Representatives.
Tisei, also an openly gay, libertarian-leaning Republican, lost to
Democrat newcomer Seth Moulton. Moulton was one of the few
challengers to
toss out an incumbent in the primaries, as voters handed
scandal-tainted John Tierney his walking papers. Moulton ended up
trouncing Tisei 54 percent to 41 percent, despite late
polls showing Tisei ahead. Looks like earlier polls in
September proved more accurate. He conceded
last night, saying he has “no regrets.”

President Barack Obama had hoped to make
addressing climate change and the transformation of the U.S. energy
generation system one of the chief legacies of his administration.
The Republican takeover in the Senate and the increased Republican
majority in the House of Representatives will likely stymie the
president’s efforts to impose various forms of energy
rationing.

Keystone Pipeline: No less than three
environmental reviews have found that this pipeline that would
transport nearly 1 million barrels per day of Canadian oilsands
crude to the Gulf Coast for refining is adequately safe. In a
perfect example of cowardly political calculation, the president
has been afraid to nix the project because it would alienate the
crucial union voting bloc. Now both the House and the Senate will
pass legislation approving the pipeline which the president may
well veto. Who’s causing gridlock now?

U.N. Climate Change negotiations: The nations
of the world are supposed to adopt a binding treaty limiting the
emissions of greenhouse gases at the 2015 U.N. climate change
conference in Paris. The president has long recognized that there
was no way that such a treaty would obtain the required two-thirds
vote of the Senate for ratification. Instead, the president has
devised a plan in which a U.S. pledge to cut its greenhouse gas
emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and 83 percent by
2050 would be tacked onto the existing U.N. Framework Convention on
Climate Change. The president argues that such pledges do not need
further ratification by the U.S. Senate. The new Republican
majority will beg to differ.

EPA’s Plan to Cut Electric Power Carbon Dioxide
emissions: In June, the Obama administration proposed
regulations that aim to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the
nation’s power plants 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. The
Republicans denounced this as Obama’s War on Coal. The election of
Shelley Moore Capito as the first Republican senator from West
Virginia in nearly 55 years suggests that the war is not going so
well for the president; not to mention the re-election of Mitch
McConnell from Kentucky.

Environmentalist PAC Spending: Billionaire Tom
Steyer’s NextGen Climate PAC reportedly spent $74 million attacking
Republicans he regards as climate change “deniers.” The
National Journal succinctly notes, “He
Didn’t Get Much to Show For It.” The New Republic
grouses that the voters have made “climate change denier” Sen.
James Inhofe “the
most powerful senator on the environment.”

The day before the mid-term elections, The Hill

reported:

Nearly half of voters in the midterm election want the federal
government to adopt more policies to fight climate change,
according to a new poll.

The Huffington Post/YouGov
survey concluded that 49 percent of people likely to vote in
Tuesday’s election want stricter climate policies. Thirty-five
percent opposed climate rules.

Well, maybe. But it’s pretty clear that as worried as Americans
might be about future climate change, they regard other issues as
more pressing.

Alabama voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly
favored a revision to the state constitution which will provide
greater legal protections for the right to keep and bear arms. By a
vote of
73 percent to 27 percent, voters amended the state constitution
to include the following provision:

(a) Every citizen has a fundamental right to bear arms in
defense of himself or herself and the state. Any restriction on
this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.

(b) No citizen shall be compelled by any international treaty or
international law to take an action that prohibits, limits, or
otherwise interferes with his or her fundamental right to keep and
bear arms in defense of himself or herself and the state, if such
treaty or law, or its adoption, violates the United States
Constitution.

Strict scrutiny is the most exacting level of judicial review
employed by the courts. For a gun control law to survive strict
scrutiny, the state must prove that it has a compelling interest
that both justifies and necessitates the regulation in question.
Among lawyers, strict scrutiny is frequently characterized as
“strict in theory, fatal in fact.” Lawmakers receive no deference
from the courts under this approach.

Put differently, this new constitutional provision is a huge win
for gun rights and a major defeat for gun control advocates in
Alabama.

Voters in the Oregon and
Colorado were asked to vote on ballot initiatives that would
require many foods made with ingredients derived from modern
biotech crops to be labeled as such. Science won in Colorado with
voters
rejecting the mandatory labeling requirement by 68 to 32
percent. The Oregon vote is still too close to call, but the vote
was
51 percent against labeling and 49 percent in favor. The final
results in Oregon may not be known until Friday.

Both initiatives are egregiously unscientific, but the Oregon
Measure 92 is particularly dishonest. Measure 92
misleadingly asserts that the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration…

…does not require or conduct safety studies of genetically
engineered foods. Instead, any safety consultations are voluntary,
and genetically engineered food developers may decide what
information to provide to the agency. Market approval of
genetically engineered food is based on industry research
alone.

Of course, this is precisely the way in which new
pharmaceuticals are regulated and approved. Companies keep
providing information about each new crop variety to the FDA
regulators until they have no more questions. In any case, this
process is unnecessary. If a trait (pest resistance or herbicide
resistance) is safe in one crop it is safe in all crops. There
should be no need for approval for each new variety.

Another false Measure 92 finding and declaration is …

The genetic engineering of plants and animals often causes
unintended consequences. Manipulating genes via genetic engineering
and inserting them into organisms is an imprecise process. The
results are not always predictable or controllable. Mixing plant,
animal, bacterial and viral genes through genetic engineering in
combinations that cannot occur in nature may produce results that
lead to adverse health or environmental consequences.

The proponents of Measure 92 offer no examples of “adverse
health or environmental consequences.” Why? Because none have been
reported. As I have
noted elsewhere:

The World Health Organization
flatly states, “No effects on human health have been shown as a
result of the consumption of such foods by the general population
in the countries where they have been approved.”

In 2010, a European Commission review
of 50 studies on the safety of biotech crops found “no scientific
evidence associating GMOs with higher risks for the environment or
for food and feed safety than conventional plants and
organisms.”

At its annual meeting in June, 2013 the American Medical
Association endorsed a report on the
labeling of bioengineered foods from its Council on Science and
Public Health. The report concluded that “Bioengineered foods have
been consumed for close to 20 years, and during that time, no overt
consequences on human health have been reported and/or
substantiated in the peer-reviewed literature.”

And one other bit of misinformation is the claim that …

The cultivation of genetically engineered crops can have serious
effects on the environment. For example, in 2013, 93 percent of all
soy grown in the U.S. was engineered to be herbicide resistance. In
fact, the vast majority of genetically engineered crops are
designed to withstand herbicides, and therefore promote
indiscriminate herbicide use. As a result, genetically engineered,
herbicide resistant crops have caused 527 million pounds of
additional herbicides to be applied to the nation’s farmland.

Actually, the USDA released in May, 2014 its report, Pesticide
Use in U.S. Agriculture: 21 Selected Crops, 1960-2008, in
which it analyzed the trends in herbicide and pesticide use. The
study found that herbicide applications peaked at 478 million
pounds in 1981 and since drifted down to 394 million pounds in
2008, the latest year for which the agency has figures.
Interestingly, Measure 92 fails to mention that pesticide
applications peaked in 1972 at 158 million pounds and has now
fallen to 29 million pounds. Why? Because of crops genetically
engineered to resist insect and other pests.

Colorado’s
Proposition 105 is more succinct in its misleading
assertions:

(3) U.S. FEDERAL LAW DOES NOT PROVIDE FOR THE REGULATION ON THE
SAFETY AND LABELING OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD;

(4) THE LONG TERM HEALTH, SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES
OF GROWING AND CONSUMING GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD ARE NOT YET
FULLY RESEARCHED AND ARE NOT YET WELL UNDERSTOOD BY SCIENCE
….

Measure 92 would require that “Genetically Engineered” clearly
and conspicuously appear on the front or back of the package of
foods using ingredients from biotech crops by January, 2016.
Similarly, Proposition 105 would mandate “PRODUCED WITH GENETIC
ENGINEERING” APPEAR IN A CLEAR AND CONSPICUOUS MANNER ON ITS LABEL”
by July, 2016.

Addendum: A referendnum in Maui County in Hawaii passed 50 to 48
percent to
ban the growing of biotech crops in the jurisdiction. For more
background on the scientifically idiotic campaign against biotech
crops in Hawaii see my article, “The
Fable of Hawaiian Frankencorn.”