A few weeks ago NAM President John Engler sat down with trade reporters to talk about NAFTA, Colombia, China and other trade and export issues. At one point, a question prompted the Governor to outline what he thought the President should be emphasizing in the closing months of his Administration. Engler:

The one thing that the president would be well served to focus on for the remaining nine months is what can be done on the energy security front. The whole climate debate hinges in part of energy availability. We represent a sector which absolutely cannot function without power. I don’t know much about manufacturing, but I do know the factories won’t work if they don’t have power. Where’s it going to come from? You’ve got these people who don’t want to use coal. You’ve got other people who are opposed to nuclear. You’ve got others who think it will all come from wind and solar. You’ve got others who want to take the hydro projects, the dams, down.

Message delivered? Well, probably not so directly, but today, President Bush led his news conference with remarks that focused on energy.

Americans are concerned about energy prices, and I can understand why. I think the last time I visited with you it was like — I said it was like a tax increase on the working people. The past 18 months, gas prices have gone up by $1.40 per gallon. Electricity prices for small business and families are rising, as well.

I’ve repeatedly submitted proposals to help address these problems. Yet time after time, Congress chose to block them. One of the main reasons for high gas prices is that global oil production is not keeping up with growing demand. Members of Congress have been vocal about foreign governments increasing their oil production; yet Congress has been just as vocal in opposition to efforts to expand our production here at home.

They repeatedly blocked environmentally safe exploration in ANWR. The Department of Energy estimates that ANWR could allow America to produce about a million additional barrels of oil every day, which translates to about 27 millions of gallons of gasoline and diesel every day. That would be about a 20-percent increase of oil — crude oil production over U.S. levels, and it would likely mean lower gas prices. And yet such efforts to explore in ANWR have been consistently blocked.

The President went on to call for new refinery capacity and expanded use of nuclear power, and he criticized those who would make energy more expensive by increasing taxes on its production.

Darn good message.

(P.S. NAM President Engler had more to say about energy and climate-change legislation in his chat with reporters. His observations are in the extended entry below.)

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How often is this kind of thing happening? From WIVB TV News, Buffalo, a story about the North Park Branch Library closing:

During a recent construction assessment to repair plaster walls, lead paint readings came back elevated. The highest elevated levels reported are confined to window areas of the libaray that are enclosed in plastic for energy savings.

As a precaution and to ensure the safety of staff and patrons, in consultation with the Library’s Board of Trustees, B&ECPL Director Bridget Quinn-Carey has decided to temporarily close the library. “While we do not believe that our staff or patrons are at risk for lead exposure, we have decided to err on the side of caution and temporarily close the facility until further assessments and remediation work can be done,” Quinn-Carey said.

And from Spanish Fort, Alabama:

SPANISH FORT, Ala. — For the first time since Christmas break, all classes at Spanish Fort Elementary are back on campus Monday morning. Officials moved classes to other locations after lead paint was found on campus. Some classes returned to campus last month.

When did lead paint become plutonium? The risks to children of occasionally entering a room with lead paint or even attending classes in a room that might have some paint, maybe, is so neglible as to be non-existent. For goodness sakes, in Buffalo the paint is on windowsills sealed away from the public. And yet we have closures, disruptions, exorbitant clean up costs.

Common sense has been run off the rails by the trial lawyers — aided by their political and activist allies — who win billions of dollars in legal suits for the mere possibility of a health risk. The attorney general in Rhode Island has been suing paint manufacturers, demanding they pay to mitigate the risks from lead paint to the tune of $2.4 billion. To stop the public from laughing at the absurdity of it all, he, too, has to hype the risks.

From Legal Newsline, “Lead poisoning at new low in Rhode Island“:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Legal Newsline) – The State of Rhode Island’s landmark lead paint lawsuit might be a lot of fuss over a receding problem, recently released figures show.

Incidents of lead poisoning among Rhode Island children have “declined dramatically” over the past 10 years, according to a report by the state Department of Health. This news comes with only a few weeks left before the state Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the State’s suit against three former manufacturers of lead paint.

OK, OK — just some environmentalists. But as this entry in the Wall Street Journal’s “Environmental Capital” blog details, California is afflicted with many, many people who like the idea of solar power in the abstract, it’s just that actual getting it to the consumers who might use it that’s unacceptable.

The L.A. Times reports that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is throwing his support behind a proposed 150-mile transmission line that would partially run through a state park. Gov. Schwarzenegger pressed the case in a December letter to California’s public utility commissioner Dian Grueneich, though the decision won’t be made until this summer. The “Sunrise Powerlink” would link solar power plants in the Colorado Desert with San Diego—but wold also mean hulking high-transmission towers snaking through a state park enjoyed by a million visitors a year.

It’s hardly a local phenomenon. From Texas to Scotland, new clean energy projects that might disrupt wildlife habitats (or vacation views) have become an internecine battleground among green warriors. Fighting climate change by adding renewable energy is good; but upsetting pristine landscapes is unconscionable.

At what point does NIMBY become NIABY, Not in Anyone’s Back Yard?

Related thoughts at The Chilling Effect.

From FERC:

FERC staff issues Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Sparrows Point LNG and Mid-Atlantic Express Pipeline Project (Docket Nos. CP07-62-000, CP07-63-000, CP07-64-000, and CP07-65-000)
Issued: April 25, 2008

FERC staff prepared a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for the AES Sparrows Point LNG, LLC and Mid-Atlantic Express, L.L.C. (collectively, AES) Sparrows Point LNG and Mid-Atlantic Express Pipeline Project. The liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal is proposed for an industrial port setting on Sparrows Point, in Baltimore County, Maryland, and consist of facilities capable of unloading LNG ships, storing up to 480,000 cubic meters (m3) of LNG, vaporizing the LNG, and sending out natural gas at a baseload rate of 1.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcfd). The pipeline would include about 88 miles of 30-inch-diameter natural gas pipeline (about 48 miles in Maryland and 40 miles in Pennsylvania), ending in Eagle, Pennsylvania.

FERC’s environmental staff concludes that the Sparrows Point LNG Terminal and Pipeline Project with appropriate mitigating measures, as recommended, would have limited adverse environmental impact and would be an environmentally acceptable action.

AES’s website for the Sparrows Point project is here, http://www.aessparrowspointlng.com. The brochure does a nice job.

The project is planned for the former Bethlehem Steel Plant site, replacing one industrial site with another. The locals and their elected officials are protesting, now relying on the last argument against any power facility — terrorist attacks.

(Adapted from a post at PointofLaw.com. See also this entry.)

Nearly every time a conservative think tank expert is quoted on a subject — think global warming — journalists are quick to identify the funding of the group: “Which has oil company support…” That kind of thing. But what about when the group has other leanings?

The Washington Post front-paged a story on Sunday sympathetic to activists’ claims the FDA relied too closely on studies funded by the chemical industry to determine that an ingredient in some consumer plastics, bisphenol A, or BPA, is more dangerous to the health than regulators would have you believe. It was more of the “politicization of science” thesis that Post editors and reporters consider a valid, IMPORTANT story. (See this post on another Page One story about Vioxx.)

Left out of the Post’s reporting was the dominant role that the trial lawyers have played in publicizing the claims about BPA’s supposed health threats and the related lawsuits being filed in another round of “jackpot justice.” (Such as this one, filed last week in California.)

And the identification of one of the chief sources in the story was woefully inadequate.

“Tobacco figured this out, and essentially it’s the same model,” said David Michaels, who was a federal regulator in the Clinton administration. “If you fight the science, you’re able to postpone regulation and victim compensation, as well. As in this case, eventually the science becomes overwhelming. But if you can get five or 10 years of avoiding pollution control or production of chemicals, you’ve greatly increased your product.”

A federal regulator, so he must have a valid insight, right? Except as his bio notes, Michaels was a Department of Energy official, responsible for the health and safety of those who come in contact with the nation’s nuclear weapons labs. Not quite as relevant, we think.

We learn further down in the story that Michaels “runs the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at George Washington University and wrote the book ‘Doubt is Their Product,’ which details how various industries have used science to stave off regulation.”

The Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy’s homepage is www.defendingscience.org. There’s a recent paper on the studies of BPA by Sarah Vogel, entitled, “Battles Over Bisphenol A,” which makes the basic argument accepted as the thesis in the Post story.

For decades, industry trade associations and their lawyers staved off the regulation of unsafe products like tobacco, lead and asbestos by arguing that scientific uncertainty precluded government action. [41] Similarly, the plastics and chemical industries seek to deny, delay, and dismiss the low dose research on bisphenol A.

The story does not make clear who is financing the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy, aka SKAPP. To its credit, the group explains:

Funding: Major support for SKAPP is provided by the Open Society Institute and the Common Benefit Trust, a fund established pursuant to a court order in the Silicone Gel Breast Implant Products Liability litigation. The opinions expressed on the DefendingScience website are ours alone. We do not provide our funders advance notice or the opportunity to review or approve the content of this site or any documents produced by the project.

So that’s who’s paying for this anti-industry “science”: George Soros’ Open Society Institute (www.soros.org) and some of the cash thrown off in class-action lawsuits against silicone breast implants — i.e., the largess of the trial bar.

A major point raised in the Post’s story is that the chemical industry finances studies, a notable if not objectionable conflict of interest. And when a left-wing billionaire and trial lawyers finance counterstudies, that doesn’t warrant a mention?

An op-ed in The Asian Wall Street Journal on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which reviews foreign acquisition of more than 10 percent of a U.S. company, generally. Joshua Trevino of the Heartland Institute’s Information Technology and Telecom News reports the system is clunky and may harm the economy.

By introducing an element of unpredictability into those capital flows, CFIUS does more harm than good. And this comes at a time when the U.S. economy is slowing and needs all the help it can get.

The number of “obvious” cases ripe for rejection – Iran buying centrifuges, for instance – is exceedingly rare. Among other reasons, this is because most of America’s post-Cold War state enemies are too poor to buy important U.S. assets. So CFIUS does most of its work on “marginal” cases where there might be some grounds for concern but the potential threat to security interests isn’t clear.

A reformed CFIUS would restrict itself to the scrutiny of deals involving actual enemies of the U.S. – for example, states on America’s list of terror sponsors. Barring that, it would subject itself to judicial appeal.

The burden is on CFIUS to prove its activities are in the interest of national security, not protectionism, Trevino writes.

UPDATE (8:40 a.m): Bumping this to the top of the page because we garbled the company’s name in the original post. Apologies to KME.

John Kovatch III, now president and CEO of KME Fire Apparatus — part of of the Kovatch group of companies — shows us the ins and outs of manufacturing custom firetrucks and other fire-fighting apparatus in this week’s Cool Stuff Being Made, a video from 2005. The company is another family business starting small, growing and expanding. As this feature story at Bystronic explains:

Kovatch Mobile Equipment Corporation, headquartered in Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania, builds custom-designed fire trucks, rescue trucks, industrial foam vehicles and aircraft refuelers….[Spirited] visionary, John “Sonny” Kovatch began his business as a modest two-car repair shop in 1946. Since then, with eleven manufacturing plants at this facility, annual production reaching 300-325 units and orders flowing in from around the world, this family owned and operated company stands as the largest privately held manufacturer of customized specialty vehicles in the United States.

Computer design, metal fabricating, custom painting, plumbing, etc. — there’s a lot that goes into building firefighting apparatus, including one we see in the video, a 2,000-gallons-a-minute pumping unit. And at KME, customers come to the facility to inspect their purchases.

And if you’re in the Harrisburg area in the middle of May, drop by the Fire Expo 2008. KME and many other great companies will be well represented.

Thanks again to PCN for supplying the NAM with a consistent flow of consistently interesting videos on manufacturing in Pennsylvania.

That’s a panel from Sunday’s comic strip, “Rex Morgan, M.D.” That nice Dr. Reed has just been served with a lawsuit, we presume a medical malpractice suit for letting that poor little Wagner boy die in the hospital from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). And not only does the lawyer advertise on TV, June Morgan, R.N., tells us he’s known as Max the Ax, Legal Warrior.

Does Dr. Morgan practice in Memphis? From an editorial in The Commercial Appeal, “Only a baby step:”

Supporters of tort reform in Tennessee are touting a measure approved by the General Assembly as a step toward eventual passage of comprehensive legislation that will revolutionize medical malpractice litigation.

That’s an optimistic assessment that might be borne out in the future, but it’s far from a certainty.

In the meantime, Max the Ax will continue warring against family physicians.

Truckers descend on Washington this morning, protesting high fuel prices by driving in symbolic excess. Will they demand an FTC investigation into price gouging? A joint session of Congress convenes Wednesday to hear from Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland. Movement is possible on the Farm Bill, given the conferees’ breakthrough on Friday.

On Tuesday, national leaders will gather at a “convocation” in Washington to weigh how much progress has been made in bolstering math and science education and strengthening the nation’s research enterprise in recent years. The National Academies is sponsoring the event, following up on its important 2005 report, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm.” New release.

The House convenes Tuesday and on Wednesday will start considering H.R. 5522, expanding worksite regulation against combustible dust, and H.R. 493, Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which passed the Senate unanimously last week. The House floor schedule is here.

The Senate convenes at 2 p.m. today and takes up the FAA reauthorization, H.R. 2881.

For a full list of this week’s committee hearings, see the Daily Digest pages here.

House hearings: Energy Independence/Global Warming on Tuesday considers the effects of global warming on the oceans. Also Tuesday, an Energy and Commerce subcommittee waxes on “The Heparin Disaster: Chinese Counterfeits and American Failures.” Government Oversight reviews defense department acquisitions. House Science disposes with the issue Tuesday of E-waste. Wednesday, House Small Business weighs in on the credit crunch and access to capital. The health subcommittee of Energy and Commerce Thursday kicks around the drug and device provisions of the draft “FDA Globalization Act.” House Judiciary subcommittee on Thursday holds a hearing on H.R.4081, the “Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act of 2007″; and H.R.5689, the “Smuggled Tobacco Prevention Act of 2008.” A separate Judiciary subcommittee considers the Protecting Americans from Unsafe Foreign Products Act, or PAUFP. And Thursday, Small Business reviews rail transportation access for small businesses and family farmers.

Senate hearings: Environment and Public Works hold an oversight hearing Tuesday on EPA Toxic Chemical Policies. (Details) Also Tuesday, Senate Finance considers customs and trade enforcement. The HELP Committee on Tuesday asks: “When a Worker is Killed: Do OSHA Penalties Enhance Workplace Safety?” A Senate Appropriations subcommittee holds a hearing Wednesday on the CPSC. On Thursday, Energy and Natural Resources holds a hearing on the adequacy of state and federal regulations for governing electric utility holding companies; the FERC commissioners have been invited.

Executive Branch: President Bush meets with the President of Guatemala today and later with the Co-Chairs of U.S.-Brazil CEO Forum. Commerce Secretary Gutierrez participates in the Brazil forum. Also today, Ambassador Susan Schwab speaks to the National remarks to the National Marine Manufacturers Association and later to the Korea FTA Business Coalition.

A Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story:

MILWAUKEE — Hampshire Co., a developer of touch-screen technology, has been puzzling since November over how to fill a couple of engineer openings.

Besides the more traditional avenues of career fairs, staffing companies, college recruiting and online want ads, the Brown Deer, Wis., company has been making classroom presentations to engineering student clubs and calling human resources departments that might be laying off engineers.

“I used all of my LinkedIn and Gmail networks,’’ said Carol Crawford, Hampshire’s general manager.

At the Milwaukee School of Engineering, more seniors are weighing multiple job offers and more employers are willing to cross-train the students they hire. The school expects its biggest graduating class in memory next month — 322 new engineers. But it’s not enough.

Engineers top the list of hard-to-fill positions according to a new, global survey released last week by Manpower, Inc., the temp and human resources firm.

Manpower Inc. (NYSE: MAN) released today the results of its third annual talent shortage survey, revealing that 31 percent of employers across the globe are finding it more difficult to fill jobs. The top three candidates most in-demand are: skilled manual trades, sales representatives and technicians (which are technical workers in the areas of production/operations, engineering and maintenance). Manpower surveyed nearly 43,000 employers across 32 countries and territories as a follow-up to its 2007 and 2006 surveys — including for the first time in the Czech Republic, Greece, Guatemala, Poland and Romania — to determine which positions employers are having difficulty filling this year due to lack of available talent.

Manpower’s Top 10 list, and here is the news release accompanying the survey.