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In the NY Daily News, Philip K. Howard from Common Good discusses needed changes in the government.
…What’s required to revive America is major structural overhaul. This is a task of historic proportions – not unlike the simplification of law by Justinian in ancient Rome. Our founding fathers never imagined that democracy would become a one-way ratchet – always adding laws but never repealing them. Nor did they intend law to be a form of central planning. …
The core principle of this overhaul should be this: Restore free choice at every level of responsibility.
For example, let all public schools operate with the same freedoms, and accountability, as charter schools. Give officials the responsibility to balance different interests – not be forced by legal threats to give away scarce common resources to whoever threatens a lawsuit. …
…Cleaning out old mandates and entitlements would allow political leaders to make choices to meet today’s needs. Radically simplifying law would allow people, including members of Congress, to actually understand it. …
Michael Barone interviews Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels about a possible presidential run.
…And he says that, if he runs, he’ll be a different kind of candidate. As for “the federal fiscal picture…can we agree that the arithmetic doesn’t work? We’re going to have higher and higher levels of debt.”
He goes on. “This is a survival-level issue for the country. We won’t be a leader without major change in the federal fiscal picture. We’re going to have to do fundamental things you say are impossible.”
…He’s also got some more short-term proposals — a payroll tax holiday to stimulate the economy, reviving the presidential power of impoundment (not spending money Congress has appropriated), a moratorium on federal regulations. …
Robert Costa reports that Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey just won the first Tea Party poll.
The New Jersey governor wins a 2012 straw poll in Richmond:
Attendees of the inaugural Virginia Tea Party Patriots Convention selected New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as their number one choice for President in 2012 by a narrow margin in one of the first presidential straw polls of the 2012 campaign, giving Gov. Christie early recognition in a potentially crowded field of candidates. A total of 1,560 individuals cast ballots in the straw poll that was conducted here Oct. 8-9.
Former Alaska Governor and GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin came in second, and Congressman Ron Paul was third in the unofficial poll, the first Tea Party straw poll ever conducted and an early indicator of preference for individuals affiliated with Tea Party organizations. …
Investor’s Business Daily editors update us on the latest chapter of the global warming scandal.
…Michael Mann, director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center, took to the pages of the Washington Post Friday…
Mann warns that Republicans would launch “a hostile investigation of climate science.” But investigation is, in fact, warranted.
Harold Lewis, physics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been a member of the American Physical Society, the second-largest association of physicists in the world, for 67 years — most of the organization’s existence. A couple of days before Mann’s piece appeared, Lewis tendered his resignation.
…Lewis’ letter charged that climatologists have a monetary motive to promote global warming. Then he jabbed none other than Mann, arguing that Penn State “cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for” pouncing on Mann for his role in Climate-gate.
That scandal found prominent scientists unscientifically conspiring to keep dissenting researchers from publishing their findings. As to next month’s elections, the public clearly has a stake in sending people to Washington who keep the taxpayers’ money from such charlatans.
In the Telegraph Blogs, UK, James Delingpole posts Dr. Harold Lewis’ resignation letter in full. It is well worth reading, as it may help to restore faith that there are still honorable scientists who seek the truth.
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society.
Anthony Watts describes it thus:
This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.
It’s so utterly damning that I’m going to run it in full without further comment. …
In Popular Mechanics, Kalee Thompson discusses the dangers of commercial fishing and one economic activity where the media needs to shed more light.
…the Bureau of Labor Statistics ranks commercial fishing as America’s most lethal job. Adjusted to the size of the workforce, the 2008 fatality rate for U.S. fishermen was five times that of truck drivers, eight times that of police officers and 19 times that of firefighters.
…Between 1992 and 2007, a staggering 1903 American commercial fishing vessels sank, according to a comprehensive Coast Guard report. As a direct result, 507 people died, accounting for more than half of the 934 commercial fishing deaths during that 16-year period. Most of the remaining fatalities were due to falls overboard or a variety of grisly equipment-related accidents.
It’s no coincidence that the number of lost boats and lives is far higher for fishing than for any other type of waterborne industry. Passenger ferries, cargo ships and virtually all other commercial boats are held to much higher regulatory standards. All but the largest factory-style fishing vessels remain uninspected, which means that ensuring a boat’s seaworthiness—including the strength of its hull, the stability of its design and the integrity of its watertight compartments—is solely up to the ship’s owners. …
…Hiscock helped to draft legislation, now languishing in Congressional committee, that is crucial to lowering fishing’s unacceptable death toll. If the bill passes, the new regulations would require Coast Guard inspections for all fishing boats more than 50 feet, as well as stronger construction requirements for new boats, more stringent regulations for officer licensing and mandatory crew training. Meanwhile, boats keep sinking. ……That single federal law governing commercial fishing boats—the Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Safety Act of 1988—mandates that ships carry life rafts, fire extinguishers, signal flares and a registered emergency position-indicating radio beacon (EPIRB). In cold waters, a full-body neoprene survival suit is required for every person on board. Modest as it is, the law has had a big impact. After its implementation in the early 1990s, the death rate among shipwrecked crewmen fell by close to 50 percent. …