A healthy dose of post-election skepticism has surfaced lately in response to the anticipated push in Congress to allow — or rather, expand — the importation of prescription drugs from Canada. The proponents, including many politicians of both parties from northern tier states, contend that allowing patients to reimport U.S.-manufactured pharmaceuticals from Canada would bring great relief to consumers from the high costs of prescription drugs. Canada’s socialist health-care system imposes caps on drug prices.

Over the long Thanksgiving holiday, The Associated Press carried an excellent and somewhat skeptical piece about the real impact and political prospects of drug reimportation. Best MSM roundup piece we’ve seen.

Amity Schlaes, Bloomberg columnist and currently visiting senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, makes the essential argument in her new column on reimportation. In the short term, some consumers, especially senior citizens, might benefit; in the long term, the practice would undermine drug company research and development. Many of us might not notice until we need new drugs several decades from now:

Every year that Americans pay full price for drugs is a year that innovation continues. So even little steps, such as protecting U.S. patents or rejecting imports, including cheap knock-off drugs, are a help.

In other words, there is an additional contract at issue here, beyond the short-term one between the octogenarian and the Internet pharmacy. It is the intergenerational contract between senior citizens and their great-grandchildren. If cheaper drugs today mean no new drugs tomorrow, seniors may reconsider whether the Canada deal is one they want the Democrats to make.

Schlaes also notes the one issue that the AP story omitted: Canadian pharmacists are fighting the idea. From the CP:

Canadian pharmacists are bracing for widespread drug shortages as U.S. Democrats in the new Congress discuss legalizing imports from Canada.

A coalition of Canadian pharmacy and patient advocacy groups is now asking Ottawa to ban prescription drug exports to the U.S., fearing that if U.S. chains start filling their prescriptions with cheaper Canadian drugs, prices will rise at home.

The NAM issued a position paper on the topic in July 2005.

In their coverage of yesterday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the Massachusetts v. EPA regulation case, both The Washington Post and New York Times framed the conflict as one of the states and environmental groups fighting the EPA.

Neither story mentioned a salient fact, prominently reported in other media coverage: There are states who agree with the EPA that the federal agency does not have authority to regulate vehicle emissions of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. Here is the respondents’ brief to the Supreme Court from the states of Michigan, North Dakota, Utah, South Dakota, Alaska, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas and Ohio. (Idaho is also on their side, but did not join in the brief.)

The Post and Times’ coverage leaves a false impression that the regulation-supporting states — those brave defenders of federalism — are opposed by the insensitive, unresponsive, pro-pollution, pro-global-warming EPA and their masters — or is it minions? — among business groups. But in fact, the states listed above agree with the EPA’s position. States are on BOTH sides of the issue.

You wouldn’t know that from reading today’s WaPo or NYT.

UPDATE: NAM’s Vice President for Litigation Quentin Riegel talks about the case in this mp3 sound file. About three minutes worth.

We visited Deception Island today, which is part of the South Shetland Islands. What a cool name, eh? On the island, there is a place called Whalers Bay, between Fildes Point and Port Foster. It is here where we got to check out a former whaling station. The area had some remains of a few houses and some large tanks for storing food and processed whale oil. Oh, and don’t forget the whale bones! While walking around the beach, you can see the mostly-intact skeletal remains of several very large Blue Whales.

(continue reading…)

Good piece by wise man Bob Samuelson in today’s WaPo by the above title, rightfully fretting about the new growing hostile climate toward free trade. Says Samuelson:

“Just last week Democratic congressional leaders signaled that they may oppose new trade agreements with Colombia and Peru. Who, if anyone, would benefit is unclear. As The Post reported, the agreements’ darkened prospects have already led to layoffs in Colombia. In the United States, manufacturers believe the agreements would expand their exports. Peru’s tariffs average about 10 percent, Colombia’s about 11 percent, says Frank Vargo of the National Association of Manufacturers. Most of these would go to zero under the agreements.”

We’ve made this point here repeatedly: Trade agreement lower barriers to entry of US-made goods. That’s good for US manufacturers. It’s a multilateral world out there. As Samuelson points out. If we don’t negotiate trade agreements with these countries, other countries will. “If we take ourselves out of the trade negotiation game,” says one trade expert, “U.S. exporters will be the losers.” Those “US exporters” are our members, American manufacturers large and small.

In conclusion, Samuelson says, “The next Congress must decide whether it embraces the symbolism or the reality of trade. If it chooses symbolism, it will perversely harm many of the workers it’s trying to help.”

Lou Dobbs, are you listening….?

It seems that Hollywood just can’t make a kids’ movie — or any movie — these days without some political angle worked into it. When we first saw the trailers for “Happy Feet,” we assumed it was just another animated film about a bunch of cute little penguins who sing and dance. Of course, we were wrong.

It all started when someone sent us this page from a Warner Brothers’ story board. When we looked at it closely, we realized that the lead penguin (voiced in the movie by Robin Williams) has a six-pack ring around his neck. “Uh-oh,” we thought, “Where are they going with this?” Where they were going, of course, is to the place they always go in kids movies — to propaganda-town. Wrote a regular blog reader:

“The Robin Williams character, Lovelace, is shown wearing a littered six pack ring around its neck. Early in the movie, the device is presented as a talisman bestowed upon him. Later, he is shown near death because he has grown into the rings, choking off his air and rendering him unable to eat. Then, the rings become caught on a buoy and later a whale nearly drags him to his death by clamping on to the rings. Does Hollywood send a message that people should care more for the planet and not litter? No! Instead, the movie suggests the rings should be banned.”

Of course it does. But what are the facts? From the people who make the rings, we know this:

Of course, the film doesn’t stop at six-pack rings. One preachy — and wildly inaccurate — message just ain’t enough. From James Lileks we find out that preachy message number two is about fishing. Crikey. Now we gotta stop fishing, too.

In any event, we just want to set the record straight. Hollywood isn’t really known for its rigorous fact checking. And, this film is a cartoon, after all. We just wanted to make sure that everyone’s clear on the facts: Penguins don’t really sing, they don’t dance, — at least in the same way that humans do — they don’t talk, and six-pack rings don’t choke ‘em. What’s next, global warming?

Maybe in “Happy Feet Two.”

Comes now a lefty enviro group with a study about you-know-what in New York state. And somehow it earns an AP story.

As with every other story on global warming, the lead lefty enviro is quoted as saying, “We’ve gotten beyond questioning the science on this.” Well, of course you have. Certainly Al Gore has. It’s so much easier to declare the debate over than to try to win the debate in the face of all the contrary opinions.

And so we ask again: Why does a predictable study from a partisan group merit a story? Why are they so quick to dismiss the opposing views and in the Eliot Spitzer era, what else is New York going to do to run business out of the state?

Today we begin a new feature here that we plan to run weekly, although frequency will likely increase as business blog content increases. As you might know, many businesses — and specifically, many of our members — have started blogs. Some have been hugely successful while others are still in the early stages.

Our own Michael Zak is busy checking out these blogs and will do a weekly roundup of what’s going on around the various manufacturers’ blogs out there. His first installment is below.

Blogs have become a serious, integral part of the business world. More than a hundred corporations already have blogs, and many more plan to enter the corporate blogosphere in 2007.

The Securities and Exchange Commission gave its seal of approval a few weeks ago when its chairman, Christopher Cox, posted a comment on the Sun Microsystems blog. Though not yet green-lighting use of the Internet to disseminate material information, Mr. Cox signaled that the SEC is favorably inclined, writing: “The Commission encourages the use of websites as a source of information to the market and investors.”

Corporations are discovering blogs to be a low-cost and effective means of promoting their communications and marketing goals. A Harvard Business School newsletter summarized things nicely: “It’s time to think of the blog as your friend. Skillful blogging can boost your company’s credibility and help it connect with customers.”

As could be expected for the Internet, first to blog in corporate America were technology companies. This greeting — “Welcome to Blogs.sun.com! This space is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything.” — sets the tone for the hundreds of bloggers at Sun Microsystems. Jonathan Schwartz, President and COO, is a corporate blogging pioneer. In his November 13th post, he touts the advantages of open source software. Some 24, 000 IBM employees blog on the company’s internal platform, in addition to the dozens of bloggers on the corporate website. While most technology blogs impart information about new products, Big Blue Bloggers also show a deft touch for comedy with three videos posted to YouTube. Other blogging technology companies include Microsoft and Intel.

Corporations find a variety of reasons to blog. One of the most important is to influence the company’s public image, unfiltered by the media. Responding to the many blogs commenting about General Motors, the company set up its own blog. GM’s vice chairman, Bob Lutz, is among the leaders of the corporate blogging pack. Recently, he blogged about accepting a State Department award for social responsibility in Colombia, an achievement which NAM also heralded.

A popular blog by Boeing’s vice president of marketing, Randy Baseler, communicates directly with the people who fly in Boeing aircraft. In his November 22 posting, he favorably compares the 777 and 787 with the Airbus A350. Baseler certainly deserves some of the credit for recent decisions by Korean Airlines and Fedex to cancel their orders for the A350 and buy Boeing instead. USA! USA!

The latest post to Xerox’s Big I, Little T Blog describes how the company is in the prototype stage with “transient documents,” copier paper that can be re-used many times. There is also a link to a New York Times article about this important environmentally conscious new technology.

Another reason companies blog is to humanize their corporate image and advertise their products. DuPont’s innovative website, Real Families, Real Fun, is a good example of this. Updated daily by a mother chitchatting about her family, the blog Citizen Mom’s Family Journal draws readers to website links promoting the DuPont corporation and its products. Hallmark uses a similar marketing approach with a blog about food and another about books.

Establishing a dialogue with their customers is the purpose of many corporate blogs. For example, in addition to Verizon’s Poliblog for discussions about telecommunications, the company plans to create another blog for feedback from customers. Responding to posts to this new blog will be a 24-hour response team. According to Jerri DeVard, senior vice president of marketing and brand management, Verizon will spend at least 15 percent of its marketing budget on-line.

The NAM will be blogging every week about what’s what in the blogs of American manufacturers and other corporations. It’s a big blogosphere out there and it’s going to get a lot bigger, so contact Michael Zak, mzak@nam.org, with blog news you’d like covered here at ShopFloor.org.

Oyez, oyez, oyez! It sounds like the U.S. Supreme Court justices doled out the questioning fairly and forcefully to both sides in today’s oral arguments to decide whether the EPA can and should regulate vehicle emissions under the Clean Air Act.

The NAM has issued a news release on the case, with our Vice President of Litigation Quentin Riegel observing, “Congress has enacted several laws to begin to address the global warming debate, but the Clean Air Act is not one of them.”

The AP coverage of the oral arguments is here. Marketwatch reporting is here. Slate/NPR “Day by Day” scene-setter with Slate’s legal correspondent, Dahlia Lathwick, is here.

Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, witnessed the arguments and opines in the CEI’s Open Market blog:

I would predict that the EPA will win on the basis of Massachusetts not having standing. Moreover, even if EPA were to act on regulating CO2, the result would only be a minor reduction in emissions over the coming years. After all, it would take years to manufacture and sell new cars that have reduced CO2 emissions.

Case Western law professor Jonathan Adler, posting at the Volokh Conspiracy, covers the issue of standing, as well, sensibly enough to our non-legalized reading:

[The] overall structure of the Clean Air Act is a poor fit with greenhouse gas regulation. By this, I do not mean simply that it would be “inefficient,” but that it would not work. Certain provisions that could be triggered by a finding that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Act make no sense if applied to globally dispersed pollutants with global effects. In sum, if the FDA did not have the authority to regulate tobacco, as the Court found in Brown & Williamson, I think there is a strong argument that the EPA lacks the authority.

And Iain Murray of The National Review punches a hole in an argument full of, well, hot air:

From the Mass v EPA oral arguments today, I give you James R. Milkey of the State of Massachusetts:

Your Honor, once these [greenhouse gases] are emitted the laws of physics take over, so our harm is imminent in the sense that lighting a fuse on a bomb is imminent harm.

Now that’s climate science!

The crew woke us up at 7 a.m. to have us observe an interesting formation on the sea: grease ice. As I may have mentioned in a past entry, in Antarctica, ice freezes at -1.8 degrees Celsius. But when its slightly warmer, ice begins to form on the water in small pieces, the effect of which is that the waves appear to flow like molasses. It looks as though there is a thin layer of oil slick on the ice. Hence. the name, grease ice.

This morning, our first zodiac excursion was to George’s Point, at the northern tip of Ronge Island, off the West Coast of Graham Land.

(continue reading…)

One of the issues the lame duck Congress and the new Congress will face is energy, an issue that has bedeviled generations of policy-makers. For our part, we think Congress should reconcile the House and Senate energy bills in lame duck and get it done. (If you’ve not already weighed in, click here to do so.)

There was a good editorial in Investors Business Daily on Monday on the topic of the Democrats’ energy agenda. Says the IBD, “Soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to put energy independence at the top of next year’s agenda, but his party is pushing the same solutions that have failed for decades to make a dent in oil imports.” To bolster their argument, they make some salient points:

Finally, says the IBD in conclusion, “If Reid and his fellow Democrats are serious about energy independence, they will have to do something more than push costly remedies that have already been tried and proved ineffective.”

For the record, we agree with alternate fuels and efficiency — as we’ve said many times in this space, we drive the latter and invent the former. And, we ought to tap the resources we have here, in the Outer Continental Shelf and in ANWR. No other country has a moratorium on their own energy supply.

However, in the spirit of bipartisanship that is sweeping Washington these days, we do have a new solution on the alternative fuel side. Thanks to our own James Skelly, we have this photo. We hope you can make it out. Yes, that’s the Capitol building and yes, those are windmills. We figure it might be a good way to harness some of the, uh, natural energy emanating from that building as the 110th Congress convenes.