I came across a story the other day that really captured the spirit of the season, and wouldn’t you know it, a small-town manufacturer was right at the heart of it.

In Clarksville, Tennessee, the local Kiwanis Club has been collecting Christmas gifts for members of the 101st Airborne Division deployed in Iraq.

Leading this effort is Ron Smithfield, the president of Smithfield Manufacturing, a small, family-owned precision machining company. Ron chairs the Kiwanis’ Memories of Service and Sacrifice Project.

Thinking of our troops a half-a-world away form their families during the holidays, Ron and the Kiwanis collected all those things that add a touch of home: DVDs, paperbacks, stationery…cookies.

Clarksville businesses donated 400 soccer balls for the troops to give for Iraqi children, too – the spirit of giving crosses many borders.

Of course, there are community projects like this all across the country, all year long, and odds are, a manufacturer’s involved. Manufacturers are civic leaders, employers, good corporate citizens — friends and family.

So, in the spirit of giving and the spirit of the season, let me wish all of you a Merry Christmas and the best holiday greetings om all of us here at the National Association of Manufacturers.

Congress this week is safely tucked in their beds, while visions of earmarks, er, sugar plums, dance in their heads. Except the Senate returns on Boxing Day and Friday for pro forma sessions to prevent President Bush from making recess appointments.

The President and First Lady are in Camp David for Christmas and then Crawford, Tex., for the rest of the week. Here’s the President’s Christmas message.

A few economic reports this week, including quarterly hogs and pigs on Thursday and a report on new home sales Friday.

Meanwhile, NORAD will track Santa’s arrival from the North Pole on Christmas eve. Thank goodness the omnibus spending bill passed.

Environmental protester ends 107-day fast! And for Ted Glick, every day is the airing of grievances.

And these people are evil. I called the Bush/Cheney gang “climate criminals” on Democracy Now during a December 11th interview. That’s what they are, liars, deceivers, obstructionists–evil.

Sure, Ted, but we bet they know that a real fast means not eating …anything…at all.

And what precisely is the symbolic impact of a liquids-only diet, anyway?

More excellent analysis from Jonathan Adler of the EPA’s decision to reject California’s application for a waiver, which would have allowed the state to regulate vehicle emissions for carbon dioxide.

Several news outlets report that EPA career staff recommended that Administrator Stephen Johnson approve California’s waiver request. According to these accounts, the “unanimous opinion” of EPA legal and technical staff supported the waiver request. Does this matter? Some bloggers think so. I don’t. Agency expertise is important, but it is not the end-all-be-all of agency decision-making, and it is no substitute for politically accountable policy decisions by political appointees.

If EPA staff argued that the unambiguous language of the Clean Air Act obligated the EPA to grant California’s waiver request, I think they were simply wrong on the merits, for the reasons I have outlined in prior posts. I think there is some ambiguity in the relevant Clean Air Act language, which gave the agency some wiggle room, but (if anything) the language supports Johnson’s decision to deny the waiver. In my view, neither Section 209 of the Act or the EPA’s prior waiver decisions dictated a different result.

If the EPA staff were arguing that, in their view, the agency should grant the waiver either because (a) their preferred interpretation of the relevant statutory language required granting the waiver, or (b) they believed granting the waiver was better environmental policy, then there was nothing improper with Johnson adopting a different conclusion. Insofar as the Clean Air Act grants the EPA some discretion in how to interpret the Act’s requirements or whether to grant the waiver request, it vests the ultimate decision-making authority in the hands of political appointees, like Johnson, not career staff. In such circumstances, the policy views of EPA career staff are only relevant to the extent an Administrator wishes to take their counsel. If we disagree with the Administrator’s conclusion, it is because we prefer a different policy, not because the Administrator failed to follow the lead of agency staff.

Adler, a law professor at Case Western, follows with a discussion of the Chevron rule and deference to agencies’ regulatory decisions.

Still waiting for a major media outlet writing on this issue to cite Adler in its coverage (and Adler says he would have granted the waiver as a matter of policy). Unfortunately, discernment about the proper role of regulatory very policy-making bodies is not a strength of the mainstream media.

Amid the usual chastisement and chiding, The New York Times strikes a sort-of sensible position editorially today in “Trade and Prosperity.”

Trade, like technological change, can produce wrenching dislocations that hurt some workers. But trade barriers are not the proper tool to deal with these changes. What is needed is a bold strategy to rebuild a functioning safety net, deploying some of the vast wealth this nation has gained through globalization to assist those hurt by the forces of economic change. This will allow Americans to embrace globalization, rather than fear it.

Agreed, wrenching dislocations do occur, hitting specific industry sectors, regions and communities. But if these dislocations are specific, then shouldn’t the remedies be targeted? Despite its fair analysis of the politics of trade, the Times’ recommended and utterly predictable solution, a massive expansion of the government, is an overreach.

The Los Angeles Times’s editorial page harshly criticizes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for punting on foreign intelligence surveillance legislation, letting Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) set the terms of the debate through Dodd’s opposition to telecom immunity. (“Wait! I’ve just returned from campaigning in Iowa! Start all over!”) The Times’ criticism seems a little too process-oriented, but given the Feb. 1st expiration date in current law, the delays weren’t a positive development.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey spoke on the FISA rewrite last week at the American Bar Association’s National Security Law Breakfast. His prepared remarks are here. He highlights several specific provisions in the legislation concerning immunity for the telecommunications companies that assisted in federal surveillance of foreign communications:

Some, however, argue that we should not provide blanket immunity because the private sector will have less incentive in the future to insist on the Government’s compliance with applicable statutes. The liability protection offered in the Intelligence Committee bill, however, is not blanket immunity.

It applies only in a very narrow set of circumstances—if the Attorney General certifies to a court that the company either (1) did not provide the alleged assistance, or (2) did provide assistance between September 2001 and January 2007 with communications intelligence activities designed to detect and prevent a terrorist attack, and only after receiving a written request from a high-level Government official indicating that the activity was authorized by the President and determined to be lawful.

A court must review this certification before an action may be dismissed, and the immunity does not extend to the Government, Government officials, or any criminal conduct. In short, the provision in the Intelligence Committee’s bill would provide protection only in circumstances where such protection is appropriate.

A useful clarification left out of much of the discussion on telecom immunity.

Ten years from now, we’d guess 2007 will stand as a landmark year in the (revived) history of nuclear energy in the United States. New applications, new projects, a more positive public sentiment …there have been many good developments. Just the latest, reported in today’s Washington Post:

It’s just one paragraph, tucked amid a mountain of legislation passed last week by Congress, but to proponents of nuclear power in Calvert County, it speaks volumes.

The paragraph authorizes the U.S. Energy Department to give loan guarantees to private lenders for up to $18.5 billion worth of new reactor projects. A big chunk of that protection could go toward financing a proposed third reactor at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Lusby.

“This is a huge step,” said Michael J. Wallace, executive vice president of Constellation Energy. The Baltimore company wants to build the reactor, expected to cost $4 billion or more.

We’ll certainly need the electricity.

A review and preview of Washington’s economy in The Seattle Times:

Exports were by far the strongest sector of the U.S. economy last quarter, growing at a blistering pace that would reach 19.1 percent if continued all year.

That’s good news for Washington, the nation’s most export-dependent state. In the first three quarters of 2007, the state exported nearly $47 billion worth of goods, a 23.4 percent increase over the same period last year. Airplanes and parts made up nearly two-thirds of the state’s exports — and nearly 80 percent of Boeing’s 2007 orders through November were from outside the U.S.

So much of the media coverage — national TV especially — emphasizes the weaknesses of the economy, housing in particular. Washington’s governor, Christine Gregoire, appears to detect the same thing, judging by an interview with the Vancouver Columbian’s editorial board.

“It’s not a time for new programs,” she said. “While we’re strong, and our import-export market is booming ? I don’t know, in the end, that we can control the angst in our consumers based on what they are seeing on national television about what’s going on elsewhere.”

We’d guess the doom-mongering comes mostly from the media’s preference for bad news, heightened during an election year when reporters get to allot blame according to their political leanings. Don’t let bias beat down balance, friends.

P.S. And here’s a piece in the Boca Raton News: “Long term economic health here looks good”

Merry Christmas!

PORTLAND, Maine – Remember those $50 gift cards that Aunt Irene and Uncle Harry gave you two Christmases ago? The ones you slipped into your sock drawer and forgot?

If the cards were purchased in Maine, the state is claiming $60 of their $100 combined value under Maine’s unclaimed property law.

Other states have used similar laws to tap the value of unused gift cards issued by in-state companies, but state Treasurer David Lemoine believes Maine is the first to seriously pursue national retailers. Keeping tabs on the cards shouldn’t be difficult because retailers have sophisticated tracking systems to determine where they were sold and when they’re redeemed, he said.

Well, as long as it’s for a good purpose. It’s not like it’s somebody’s property…

The American Tort Reform Association’s annual report, “Judicial Hellholes,” reacts to developments in the civil justice system and policymaking to add and subtract locations from its listing of anti-business, anti-justice locations.

In Alabama, when judges acted to impose some measure of rationality to jury awards, ATRA noticed — but more importantly, so did business. (The case involved correcting an outrageous $12 billion finding against Exxon-Mobil in a breach of contract suit.) And if the Legislature follows suit with reasonable tort reform, more notice will follow.

The Huntsville Times does a good job of highlighting the positive legal development and what they mean for the state in this editorial, “Out of the hellhole.”

Few people expected the initial award to be upheld. Even so, the fact that juries, egged on by skillful trial lawyers, would return such verdicts gave outside industries and businesses reason to be concerned about moving here. Now, at least, they know the entire judicial system isn’t completely out of control. But it should be noted that just because Alabama has dropped out of the infamous hellhole category for the moment, it could find itself back next year or the year after. It depends on what happens in the courts.

And the Legislature.

If we don’t want this particular blemish to return, the Legislature must find more ways to rein in runaway juries while protecting the people’s right to seek redress. It’s a difficult balancing act, but in the end we’ll all benefit from it. How many plaintiffs, after all, ever collect the millions and billions of dollars Alabama juries have been prone to impose?

Good question.