From the Centre Daily Times:

Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor Emily Stover De- Rocco sees Penn State as a driver of innovation and the Pennsylvania economy — something she plans to highlight in her new role as visiting senior policy fellow in Penn State’s Office of Workforce and Economic Development.

DeRocco, who is senior vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Manufacturers, said this will be an opportunity to use her education and experience to shape the university’s role on a broader level.

“Higher education and universities around the country are taking on a much higher role in the transformation that’s occurring in education, our economy and the work force,” she said. “Penn State has for a long time had a substantial impact on the regional economy.”

DeRocco is an alumna of Penn State and will receive the university’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

Emily is also president of the Manufacturing Institute, of course.

This week’s “Cool Stuff Being Made” takes us to the American cigar capital of …Scranton, Pa.? You bet. As Dominic Keating, company president, tells us on our factory tour, Avanti Cigar Company is the nation’s largest producer of all-tobacco cigars, exclusively. From the company’s website:

With prices that start at 45 cents each and top out at a dollar and a quarter, the cigar lines produced by Avanti Cigar Company are not status symbols. But for the serious connoisseur who wants to experience a unique, mild, and flavorful smoke, these Italian style cheroots are anything but a step down. “We feel it’s our turn now to be part of the cigar phenomenon” says Tony Suraci, Jr., marketing director and part of the third generation of the Scranton, Pennsylvania-based clan that produces Parodi, DeNobili, Avanti, Petri, and several other regionally recognized brand names for the Toscano-style cigar market. All told, the company manufactures and distributes over 30 million 100% U.S. tobacco cigars annually. While those numbers might sound impressive, the company routinely sold two to three times that number during its heyday in the 1960s. Nonetheless, Avanti still produces more all-tobacco cigars than any other U.S. company.

Mr. Keating does a nice job of explaining the machinery and processes and people, with lots of detail along the way. To Pennsylvania Cable Network, we say grazie for providing the video.

From The National Center for Public Policy Research:

Washington, DC – Just as the U.S. Senate is poised to vote on the Lieberman-Warner America’s Climate Security Act (S. 2191), a new poll finds an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose the higher energy costs that Lieberman-Warner would impose.

The poll, conducted by the Public Opinion and Policy Center of the National Center for Public Policy Research, found that 65% of Americans reject spending even a penny more for gasoline in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The number rejecting raising gas prices in an effort to combat global warming has increased by 17 percentage points — or 35% — in just over two months. The National Center conducted a similar survey in late February.

There’s more here, including the questions and crosstabs, a sign of confidence in the poll and its results.

Congressman Bart Gordon (D-TN) helped push passage of legislation that will create an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy. That agency will harness some of the best minds in America to help the nation develop solar, nuclear and other alternative energy, Gordon says.

“Bring in a program director, get the public sector, the private sector, the national labs, the universities, everyone together in trying to really break through,” says Gordon, a guest on this week’s “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” radio program. “We’re going to have to have some major breakthroughs.”

Gordon, who is also chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, also talked about that panel’s examination of ways to improve electronics recycling, or e-waste management.

Washington Post Columnist Bob Samuelson regularly gives his readers the straight dope on politics and the economy. Samuelson has been a guest on “America’s Business” before. He returns to talk about presidential candidates, free trade, and an issue on many people’s minds – sky high gasoline prices.

Americans love their gadgets but when our laptops, cellphones and video games break or go obsolete they end up in the garbage can. However, Mike will talk to Electronics Recyclers International Chief Executive Officer John Shegerian about how his company is turning a lot of that electronic junk into gold.

Keeping your tires properly inflated is one way to improve gas mileage. But did you know filling tires with nitrogen can improve gas mileage even more? Branick Industries President Brian Brasch will visit “America’s Business” to talk about his company’s nitrogen tire inflation systems.

In our regular segments, Renee Giachino of 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.

While the U.S. Congress blocks trade agreements that would lower tariffs against U.S. exports, other countries busily reach deals. From Colombia Reports:

The Free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia will be ready in the first week of June, Colombian Minister of Agriculture told Caracol Radio.

The two countries finished another round of talks this weekend and are almost ready presenting a final agreement. ‘The most difficult issues are dealt with,” he said. “We hope that in the first week of June the treaty between the two countries is ready,” he said.

The original report in Spanish is here.

Also, Peru signed free trade agreements with Canada and Singapore yesterday.

The National Review’s editor, Rich Lowry, cites NAM Chief Economist David Huether to issue a bipartisan critique of the presidential candidates’ position on energy and global warming. Well, mostly a critique of McCain. From The Corner:

The Party of Cheap Energy? [Rich Lowry]

Higher energy prices are threatening to stoke broader inflation and are eating into workers’ paychecks, as USA Today noted yesterday: “Already, says David Huether, economist for the National Association of Manufacturers, soaring energy prices mean that the average worker’s wages have fallen, when adjusted for inflation. `If you exclude energy, real wages would be rising now,’ Huether says.” Wouldn’t it be a great time for the GOP to favor cheap, abundant energy? Especially when the nomination of Barack Obama is creating an opening among working-class voters who are especially feeling the pinch? Alas, the GOP nominee supports a scheme to make energy more expensive in an ineffectual gesture toward addressing a theoretical threat from global warming. What a missed opportunity.

05/30 11:09 AM

From a Union of Concerned Scientists’ fundraising letter:

With the global warming crisis reaching a critical point, each of us must strengthen our commitment to meeting this threat. Please donate today to ensure your donation will be doubled.

UCS is uniquely positioned to seize the opportunities presented by heightened public awareness about global warming, strong pressure on policy makers to take action, and a new president in the White House. We are a trusted voice among the scientific community and in Washington, DC, and our groundbreaking scientific analysis helps steer policy makers toward the best solutions before it is too late.

Your donation will allow us to respond quickly to the rapidly changing policy landscape in the coming months. Please make a generous donation to the UCS Matching Gift Fund today.

Trusted, eh?

The full letter is here. OK, granted the letter lacks the more refined touches, you know, the weeping polar bears, but… “before it is too late.” Apocalypse, now.

With the Senate to begin the debate Monday on the Lieberman-Warner cap and trade, tax and spend legislation, much excellent commentary is appearing around the web.

And here’s the plan for Senate consideration. From The Congressional Record, Daily Digest:

Senate Chamber
Program for Monday: Senate will resume consideration
of the motion to proceed to consideration of S. 3036, Climate
Security Act, and vote on the motion to invoke cloture
on the motion to proceed at approximately 5:30
p.m.

Investor’s Business Daily today praises Exxon-Mobil for having a refreshing point of view, that is, the company is in the business of producing energy.

Speaking to reporters after the annual meeting of Exxon stockholders Wednesday, CEO Rex Tillerson shoved political correctness aside and insisted the science on climate change is not settled and “that to not have a debate on it is irresponsible” and that to “suggest we know everything about these issues is irresponsible.”

Also irresponsible is to ignore the growing energy requirements of the U.S. and world economy, hoping they will be met solely by sources such as biofuels which actually harm the environment by leading to cutting down forests and disturbing the soil to plant crops destined for our gas tanks, releasing huge amounts of CO2 in the process.

Tillerson says that “everyone agrees that notwithstanding the growth in all other options for supplying energy, renewables, nuclear, biomass alternatives, you are still going to require substantial fossil fuels to meet energy needs, and two-thirds is going to come from oil and natural gas.”

Oil sands, the Bakken formation, oil shale ….if we developed our domestic energy resources, we can meet that demand.

More at The Chilling Effect.

And speaking of the Bakken formation:

NEW YORK (Associated Press) – North Dakota’s mineral resources director says a $1.85 billion deal between two Texas companies is the biggest oil transaction on record for the state’s part of the Williston Basin.

In 1996 the United States and other countries accounting for over 90 percent of world trade in computers, semiconductors, and other information technology products agreed in the World Trade Organization to eliminate their import tariffs on all such products. As a result, the United States became a huge exporter of these products. Now, over 10 years later, the European Union (EU) has decided to start imposing 14 percent import duties on new information technology products in violation of the agreement.

Their rationale is that these new products didn’t exist in 1996 and many of them, such as computer monitors that can receive TV signals could be considered consumer goods. Duh! As NAM President John Engler just told the press, “Integration of electronics into more and more multifunction products is the future of the electronics industry. We need to encourage this product evolution with liberal tariff treatment, not discourage it with protectionism. If the EU is permitted to make its own definitions of what is covered, everyone else will do so too – and pretty soon the Information Technology Agreement will just be history.”

The U.S. Trade Representative said she had enough, and has initiated dispute settlement consultations with the EU in the WTO. (Ambassador Susan Schwab’s news release here, and her statement is here.) Japan has joined as a co-complainant. While we hope that EU will see that it has violated its sworn agreement and will retract, if it does not then we want to see a dispute case adjudicated by the WTO. We play by the rules and we want the EU to do so also. High-tech products such as these are our largest export, and we struck a bargain that the EU and others have to live up to.

Crossposted from The Hill Blog.