NAM President John Engler was back home in Michigan yesterday to deliver a eulogy for former Congressman Guy Vander Jagt, who died last Friday. The Grand Rapids Press account of the ceremonies is here. WOOD-TV’s story, video included, is available here. In it, Governor Engler says, “There’s got to be a way to work through some of these difficulties and these problems, and it takes men and women of good will. Guy Vander Jagt was such a person.”

Following up on yesterday’s post on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., it should be noted that most media outlets got the story right. Yes, the predictable L.A. Times wrote that the Supreme Court OK’d price-fixing, but the Washington Post (story here) and New York Times both made the proper distinctions. Here’s the Times’ story:

WASHINGTON – Striking down an antitrust rule that’s nearly a century old, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that it was not automatically unlawful for manufacturers and distributors to agree on minimum retail prices.

The decision will give producers significantly more, though not unlimited, power to dictate retail prices and restrict the flexibility of discounters.

Significantly? Well, maybe, but the lede is perfect.

The Washington Post reporting on yesterday’s news conference by House leadership:

As the price of benchmark West Texas crude oil topped $70 a barrel for the first time in 10 months, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) yesterday affirmed her support for the tougher fuel-economy standards recently passed by the Senate.

Charles Krauthammer, America’s best columnist, commenting on the earlier Senate debate:

You get what you pay for. When you build lighter cars with more fuel efficiency, you know that ultimately — even with the best (let alone Chinese) technology — safety is compromised. That happened three decades ago when U.S. mileage efficiency rose dramatically in response to the oil shocks of the ’70s. It will probably happen again.

Now we may, as a society, decide that the trade-off is worth it. We may reason that fuel inefficiency leads to dependency on foreign oil which in turn leads us to lives lost in other ways — such as wars to defend our interests in the oil-rich Middle East and elsewhere. But what we cannot deny is that there are trade-offs. What is fundamentally wrong with the energy bill the Senate passed last week and with the debate leading up to it is the chronic, almost pathological, refusal to recognize that there are such trade-offs.

The Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival has started up on the Capitol Mall, with one of the three grand cultural/historical/culinary/economic themes being Northern Ireland.

So to keep in step (but sans arm movements) with the events we offer as this week’s Friday Follies, the Riverdance Rap, a goof of Michael Flatley with a breakout rap from L.L. Bean O’Reilly, the lyrical leprauchan. (Or is that not a Northern Irish icon? We’ll find out this weekend.) Cheers!

P.S. Got this from Will Ferrell’s new comedy website, Funny or Die, which got a nice write-up this week from The Washington Post, although a lot of content providers work blue. We’ll spare you a link to the potty-mouthed toddler.

From The New Musical Express:

Part of the forthcoming Live Earth concerts have been cancelled due to lack of funds and timing.

The Turkish leg of the world event, which aims to highlight climate change, has been shelved and will be now be replaced by giant TV screens projecting concerts from the other eight cities.

Gore was in Turkey a few weeks ago drumming up interest. Guess it didn’t work.

“Live Earth is taking place across all seven continents because the climate crisis affects us all – and all of us must be a part of the solution,” Gore said. “Live Earth will engage individuals, corporations and governments to take action against the climate crisis.”

In Istanbul today, Gore, actress and Live Earth Istanbul spokesperson Sebnem Donmez, and representatives from local concert organizer Purple Concerts, gathered at the Cirigan Palace to inform the public about the latest developments of Live Earth Turkey, which is being staged at The Seven Towers Fortress, a historic Byzantine site in Istanbul.

Representatives from Live Earth Turkey’s NGO partners – the World Wide Fund for Nature Turkey; TEMA – The Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion, Reforestation and the Protection of Natural Habitats; the Doga Dernegi Nature Foundation; and Deniz Temiz, the Turkish Marine Environment Protection Association, spoke at the press conference in support of Live Earth’s environmental message.

The message remains, it’s only the songs that are dead.

A colleague wandered by to offer the prediction that, in the wake of today’s Supreme Court ruling in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., the media storyline would be something like, “Justices legalize price fixing.” Something like that — simple, inflammatory, wrong.

In today’s ruling (available here as download), justices overturned the 1911 precedent in Dr. Miles Medical Co. v. John D. Park & Sons Co., 220 U. S. 373, that makes vertical price restraints a per se violation of the Sherman Act. The NAM filed an amicus brief (download here) urging the Court to derail the precedent. The key? Courts must apply antitrust law using “The Rule of Reason,” rather than automatically finding a violation because of price maintenance. From our news release:

“Despite what others may report, this ruling does not legalize resale price maintenance,” said Quentin Riegel, NAM’s vice president for litigation. “It merely puts the practice on a par with other acceptable restraints that some manufacturers may impose on dealers. Resale price maintenance will be illegal, and subject to triple damages and attorneys’ fees, if the manufacturer can provide no reasonable, pro-competitive justification for it. The ruling means that manufacturers will at least have a chance to say in court why their pricing policy is good for competition.”

It’s been a good Supreme Court term this year for the rational application of the law to business issues (as this Washington Post story avers). Judicial appointments do matter.

UPDATE 4 p.m.: Well, that didn’t take long. The online headline from The Los Angeles Times: Supreme Court OKs retail price fixing by manufacturers.

UPDATE II 4:10 p.m.: Gary Shapiro of the Consumer Electronics Association praises the ruling.

“The Supreme Court holding that the ‘rule of reason’ should apply to the legality of manufacturer pricing decisions, means simply that all the facts will be examined before a finding of illegality – replacing a black and white rule of illegality in every case.”

“In the consumer electronics industry,” Shapiro continued, “where sales training, industry marketing, and after-sales service are highly valued by manufacturers and reputable retailers, it makes perfect sense to consider these factors when evaluating a manufacturer’s requirement that threshold prices be maintained.”

UPDATE III (4:15 p.m.): Tyler Cowan comments at the Volokh Conspiracy law blog.

Even when cartelization is the motive, I don’t worry that Colgate will monopolize the market for toothpaste. Most or all retail products face lots of competition from the products of other manufacturers. I also don’t think that so many business decisions should become primarily legal decisions; our government has enough real crimes to look after. So in my view RPM should be close to per se legal (certainly not per se illegal), with some possible exceptions for resource-based monopolies, not that I can think of any relevant exceptions in the retail context. Arguably government should not enforce RPM agreements, though product pulling is in any case the major means of implementation.

Interesting hearing going on at this moment at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, “Examining Global Warming Issues in the Power Plant Sector.” (Live Internet broadcast here.) Testifying at the hearing are utility executives who see wisdom in regulating carbon dioxide emissions.

In his opening statement, Ranking Minority Member Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) disagrees with that approach, but offers a cooperative, productive discussion on the matter. And he states what should be obvious to all but the utopianists:

A key aspect of [Inhofe's Clean Skies] legislation is something that too often gets sugar-coated in this debate – we cannot get ahead of the technology and we must not disrupt energy markets.

I also believe our nation needs more energy and more diverse energy. While we continue to move toward greater efficiency, we will continue to need more energy to supply our growing nation. We need more nuclear generation, more natural gas exploration, more coal and more hydro. We need clean coal and coal-to-liquids. And the legislation I have supported makes it clear that I back up my beliefs with action.

Next week: A hearing on global cooling? From Investor’s Business Daily:

Chicken Little may have to be measured for a winter coat, if the observations of R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre of Canada’s Carleton University, are accurate. Writing in Toronto’s National Post, Patterson reported on his research that involved analysis of core samples of more than 5,000 years of mud recovered from the bottom of Western Canada’s fjords.

In summary, his research showed “a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called proxies).” Patterson notes that hundreds of other studies using proxies from tree rings in Russia’s Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile show exactly the same thing.

UPDATE 11 a.m.: CSPAN-3 is carrying the hearing, available online.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, a view of Michael Moore’s new propaganda film from a Canadian perspective:

TORONTO–”I haven’t seen ‘Sicko,’ ” says Avril Allen about the new Michael Moore documentary, which advocates socialized medicine for the United States. The film, which has been widely viewed on the Internet, and which will officially open in the U.S. and Canada on Friday, has been getting rave reviews. But Ms. Allen, a lawyer, has no plans to watch it. She’s just too busy preparing to file suit against Ontario’s provincial government about its health-care system next month.

Her client, Lindsay McCreith, would have had to wait for four months just to get an MRI, and then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. Instead, frustrated and ill, the retired auto-body shop owner traveled to Buffalo, N.Y., for a lifesaving surgery. Now he’s suing for the right to opt out of Canada’s government-run health care, which he considers dangerous.

Ms. Allen figures the lawsuit has a fighting chance: In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that “access to wait lists is not access to health care,” striking down key Quebec laws that prohibited private medicine and private health insurance.

Elsewhere, the AFL-CIO aligns itself with Michael Moore and socialism. (Yes, yes. We know it’s considered bad manners and politically crude to refer to socialism in these debates. But what else do you call eliminating the private sector from health care? Universal coverage? That may describe the end, but it certainly doesn’t describe the system.)

A report from an AFL-CIO rally in Cincinnati, President John F. Sweeney talking:

Sweeney said the AFL-CIO will require any candidate it supports for president to back the Employee Free Choice Act.

Clear enough.

Meanwhile, for a roundup of union leaders and politicians bemoaning the survival of the secret ballot, please head to this post from the AFL-CIO Blog.

The President’s authority for effectively negotiating trade agreements expires at midnight, June 30th. Now, we have no illusion that Congress is going to suddenly jump in and renew Trade Promotion Authority in the next day or so, but TPA deserves serious attention — and action — if the United States wants to retain its leadership in global trade.

The NAM has put together a resource page on TPA. Here are two key facts:

Under TPA the U.S. free trade agreements, including NAFTA, now account for close to half our manufactured goods exports — but only $30 billion out of our $530 billion manufactured goods trade deficit.

The deficit with our TPA free trade partners hasn’t grown in five years, but the deficit with countries that have not agreed to have free trade agreements has soared.

The most pressing need is the reauthorization of TPA to allow continued negotiations on the Doha Round. There’s precedent for this targeted action; in January 1993, a Democratic-controlled Congress extended the authority for the Uruguay Round. Without the authority, U.S. Trade Rep Susan Schwab loses her ability to negotiate an ambitious agreement to level the playing field for America’s manufacturers, service providers and farmers. Six years of hard work goes for naught.

The NAM will be pushing trade issues during the Fourth of July recess and in August, so check back here for more on the topic over the next few months.

And for a good, if occasionally depressing scene-setter, check out this Daily Analysis from the Council on Foreign Relations, “A Tough Month on Trade.” A useful primer.