In today’s Washington Post Book World, “Heating System,” a review of “The Bridge at the End of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing From Crisis to Sustainability,” by James Gustave Speth.

In Speth’s view, the accelerating degradation of the Earth is not simply the result of flawed or inattentive national policies. It is “a result of systemic failures of the capitalism that we have today,” which aims for perpetual economic growth and has brought us, simultaneously, to the threshold of abundance and the brink of ruination. He identifies the major driver of environmental destruction as the 60,000 multinational corporations that have emerged in the last few decades and that continually strive to increase their size and profitability while, at the same time, deflecting efforts to rein in their most destructive impacts.

“The system of modern capitalism . . . will generate ever-larger environmental consequences, outstripping efforts to manage them,” Speth writes. What’s more, “It is unimaginable that American politics as we know it will deliver the transformative changes needed” to save us from environmental catastrophe. “Weak, shallow, dangerous, and corrupted,” he says, “it is the best democracy that money can buy.”

Too bad I-94 has reopened in Minnesota. Once again, commerce flows.

The Wall Street Journal reaches the conclusion last week’s Senate consideration of the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have lifted all statutes of limitation on employment discrimination suits, was intended more as a political statement and loyalty pledge than an earnest legislative proposal. From “The Foul Play Act“:

Ms. Ledbetter took the novel view that decisions made decades ago by her now-deceased former boss affected her pay all the way up to her retirement, so each paycheck was a new discriminatory act. On this theory, there would be no statute of limitations at all. Cases could be brought long after relevant evidence and witnesses had passed from the scene. In practice, every such suit would become a new trial lawyer pay day, as employers settled cases they would find impossible to defend.

And in The Washington Post, a letter to the editor from David A. Drachsler, vice chairman of the Virginia Council on Human Rights.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which you support, would permit an employee to file a pay discrimination lawsuit years after the pay decision was made, even if the employee was aware of that decision. Indeed, in Lilly Ledbetter’s case, her lower pay, compared with that of men doing similar work, was caused by low performance evaluations of which she was aware years before she filed her charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

A simple solution would be to amend Title VII to make the statute of limitations run from the date the employee discovered, or with due diligence should have discovered, the discrimination that caused the pay disparity.

Marking the 25th anniversary of the Nation At Risk report on the failings of U.S. education, long-time analyst and reformer Chester Finn identifies four key lessons that should be more broadly applied. From today’s Wall Street Journal:

First, don’t expect Uncle Sam to manage the reform process. Not only does Washington lack the capacity to revamp thousands of schools and create alternatives for millions of kids, but viewing education reform as a federal obligation lets others off the hook. Yet some things are best done nationally – notably creating uniform standards and tests in place of today’s patchwork of uneven expectations and noncomparable assessments. These we have foolishly resisted.

Second, retain civilian control but push for more continuity. Governors and mayors remain indispensable leaders on the ground – but the instant they leave office, the system tries to revert. The adult interests that rule it – teacher unions, yes, but also colleges of education, textbook publishers and more – look after themselves and fend off change. If three consecutive governors or mayors hew to the same agenda, those reforms are more apt to endure.

Third, don’t bother seeking one grand innovation. Education reform is not about silver bullets. But huge gains can be made by schools that are free to run (and staff) themselves, attended by choice, expected to meet high standards, and accountable for their results.

Consider the more than 50 schools in the acclaimed Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) network. We don’t have nearly enough today, but we’re likelier to grow more of them outside the traditional system than by trying to alter the system itself.

Finally, content matters. Getting the structures, rules and incentives right is only half the battle. The other half is sound curriculum and effective instruction. If we can’t place enough expert educators in our classrooms, we can use technology to amplify the best of them across the state or nation. Kids no longer need to sit in school to be well educated.

Apropos Lesson No. 3, NAM President John Engler often makes the point that we know what works, but in isolation. Program X does a great job in a Kentucky school system, Initiative Y achieved results in Arizona, and Reform Z works wonders in Washington. We need to bring these efforts together.

Finn appears on this week’s “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick“, the NAM’s national radio program.

This week marked the 25th anniversary of the “Nation at Risk” report, awakening the public and policymakers to the failures of American public education. Have things improved since then?

In this week’s video podcast of “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick,” we’ll hear from Chester “Checkers” Finn, a leading educational thinker and reform and president of the Thomas Fordham Institute.

Finn sees lots and lots of problems still affecting our schools.

For more on this week’s interview with Finn and the entire radio broadcast, please visit www.americasbusiness.org

WASHINGTON, April 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leaders sent the following letter today to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman William E. Kovacic urging him to investigate record gas prices. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 gives the FTC the authority to probe possible market manipulation of gas prices, but to date, the Commission has failed to exercise its power to protect consumers from skyrocketing energy costs.

The letter’s text is here.

Seems familiar, this line of argument. Very familiar. In fact, why don’t we respond to it by just reposting our post of September 19th, 2007, entitled, “Stop the Presses: Still No Price-Gouging!”

Certain elected officials get months of headlines every other year or so beating up on the people who supply fuel to consumers, claiming that the evil oil companies are manipulating the prices of gasoline. News conferences, congressional hearings, table pounding and news releases — we get the whole spiel. Repeatedly.

But when the FTC issues yet another report showing that higher prices for gasoline resulted from market forces and no gouging occurred, it’s a one-day story. A low-profile story.

Take the August 30th release, with the attention-grabbing headline, “FTC, Antitrust Division Send Report to President on Factors Explaining National Average Gasoline Price Increases During Spring and Summer of 2006.” (August 30th, the Thursday before Labor Day. Almost like the FTC wanted the story buried.) Conclusion: “Market factors explain increases in the national average retail price for gasoline during the spring and summer of 2006…” That is, no price gouging.

We make these observations as a set-up to and praise for Paul Greenberg’s opinion column, “Economics vs. politics.” As usual, Greenberg pulls no punches.

[Every] time gas prices go up, a certain kind of politician is shocked, shocked. Or at least pretends to be. And demands an investigation, which is a lot easier than taking Economics 101 all over again.

Naturally the politician blames some vague, amorphous monster out there like Big Oil rather than the real-life owner-operator of your neighborhood filling station. After all, the little guy votes. If there’s an avaricious cartel setting oil-and-gas prices, it’s called OPEC. But oil sheiks and Venezuelan caudillos are scarcely subject to a congressional investigating committee.

If there’s a conspiracy at work here, it’s the dismal science itself — economics. It has been refuting demagogues ever since they’ve been taking advantage of our anger, suspicion and ignorance.

Thanks for the reminder, Mr. Greenberg.

Trouble is, the demagoguery has left its legislative mark. The Senate passed version of the energy bill (H.R. 6) includes anti-price gouging language, which will discourage companies from responding to the market’s price signals, and inevitably lead to shortages. (Heritage looked at the issue here.) So we need to continue paying attention, just as Paul Greenberg has.

Or expect yet another FTC report, demanded in, oh, August 2008, but only to be finished after the November elections.

Well, April instead of August, but otherwise…

Education is a top priority for manufacturers who need a skilled workforce to operate increasingly complex shop floor computers and equipment.

But has America’s public education system improved in the 25 years since the National Commission on Excellence in Education released its “Nation at Risk” report? That report gave our schools a mediocre grade.

Chester Finn, a guest on this week’s edition of “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick,” said things haven’t gotten much better. “I guess the big issue for me is that the reforms to date haven’t yielded much by the way of improved achievement,” said Finn, who is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Trade agreements have recently gotten a bad rap in Congress and the media but exports create American jobs. Miguel Cruz from Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Inc. will join Mike to talk about how his company is taking advantage of Latin American business opportunities.

“National Small Business Week” is officially ending. Kristy Schloss, president of Schloss Engineered Equipment, will visit “America’s Business” to talk about issues important to small businesses such as hers.

MeadWestvaco Corp., which makes packaging materials, is repackaging itself under the new name MWV. Company Vice President of Communications Donna Cox will tell us why the company decided to make the change.

And to honor “Earth Day” Ed Kiczek, global business director at Air Products and Chemicals Inc., will discuss his company’s push into the hydrogen fuel market. Hydrogen could turn out to be a promising alternative form of energy.

In our regular segments, Renee Giachino of the American Justice Partnership gives us the latest on tort reform and commentator Hank Cox recalls the “The Way It Was.” And the National Association of Manufacturers President Gov. John Engler will close the program with “The Last Word.”

For more about “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” and to listen to the program online, please click here. And for video highlights and more, check out www.americasbusiness.org.

From the USTR, releasing its annual “301 Report” highlighting shortfalls in intellectual property protection:

There are nine (9) countries on this year’s Priority Watch List: China, Russia, Argentina, Chile, India, Israel, Pakistan, Thailand, and Venezuela. Countries on the Priority Watch List do not provide an adequate level of IPR protection or enforcement, or market access for persons relying on intellectual property protection, in absolute terms and/or relative to a range of factors such as their level of development. Priority Watch List countries will be the subject of particularly intense engagement through bilateral discussion during the coming year.

Canada has actually been a significant concern in recent years, so this is good news: “Canada has taken some significant steps in the past year and, given the importance of the outstanding issues and maturity of its economy, we look forward to additional action in the coming months on the IP reforms identified as key priorities by the Government of Canada.”

Full report is here.

From Investor’s Business Daily, an editorial, “Free Trade For New Orleans“:

At this week’s Three Amigos summit in New Orleans, where Mexico, the U.S. and Canada met to discuss and defend free trade, President Bush was right to also bring forth New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

The mayor of the hurricane-hit city made an impassioned plea to Congress to pass the Colombia free trade agreement for New Orleans’ sake. He knows how badly his city needs every break it can get, three years after the biggest disaster to ever hit a U.S. metropolitan area.

“New Orleans is becoming an even greater international city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina,” Nagin wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last November, “and we are making every effort to capitalize on trade liberalization that will flow from these FTAs (free trade agreements). Our port system is ideally situated to take advantage of the Latin American FTAs.”

IBD notes the close connections, historically and geographically, between New Orleans and Colombia: “New Orleans is situated on a direct shipping route just 1,640 miles to Cartagena and Barranquilla on Colombia’s Atlantic coast.”

(Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds, who observes, “Congress is unmoved because free trade produces less graft than massive aid projects. But it’s funny that this hasn’t gotten much attention from the press.”)

So it IS a Sopranos’ character in the new ad from the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace. Brain Faughnan explains at The Weekly Standard’s blog:

As a Sopranos fan, I was disappointed to be cheated out of a great death scene to end a superb series. Insult was added to injury however, when one of the more show’s more interesting characters — Johnny Sac — was revealed to be a Clinton fan.

Now at least, Johnny Sac is pushing a cause I can get behind:

Card Check is likely to be a significant issue in a number of Congressional races this year. The Curatola ad plays well on his Sopranos image, and does a good job of illustrating why workers might not want to lose the right to a secret ballot on unionizing. Do they really want their employers and union bosses to know how they stand on such a decision?

UPDATE (10:15 a.m.): More from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, who calls it “perhaps one of the most effective ads in recent political history to demonstrate the dangers represented by Card Check, thanks to instantly-recognizable Sopranos star Vincent Curatola.”

Yesterday in the post “Anatomy of a Beltway Takedown” we reported on how an environmental activist group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, “entrusted” a Washington Post reporter with a story, which begot congressional hearings, and successfully turned a policy dispute about Endangered Species Act listings into a Washington, D.C., “scandal” that drove an official from her job. Outrageous. Typical.

This week the Union of Concerned Scientists released a new survey making similar claims about the Administration “politicizing science,” citing EPA staffers who said their work was being interfered with. Struck us as a whole lot of nothing, anonymous staffers objecting to people disagreeing with them. But given the environmentalist group’s ability to network like-minded Capitol Hill types, we concluded, “Let’s see how this one becomes a scandal.”

Here you go.

These survey results suggest a pattern of ignoring and manipulating science in EPA’s decisionmaking. At May’s hearing, the Committee will examine one apparent example of this disturbing trend: EPA’s recent revision of the national air quality standards for ozone. You should also expect members of the Committee to ask about these survey results and other evidence of political interference with science at EPA.

That’s from a letter from House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson. (Copy of the letter here.)

We’ll see what happens next. Would guess subpoenas for this or that.