Opéra bouffe:

MILAN, Italy (AP) – First it was the film and the book. Now the next stop for Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” is opera.

La Scala officials say the Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to produce an opera on the international multiformat hit for the 2011 season at the Milan opera house. The composer is currently artistic director of the Arena in Verona.

(Hat tip: Mark Hemingway.)

U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab has announced a challenge to the European Union’s duties being imposed on certain high-tech products, invoking the WTO’s dispute resolution since these products are supposed to be duty free under the WTO Information Technology Agreement. (Schwab news release here, and her statement is here.)

The EU’s behavior is your basic protectionism, but in trying to shield its high-tech manufacturers from competitors it violates a trade agreement that sought to encourage global trade and innovation. Specifically, the products included in the technology agreement but now facing duties.

The EU’s action would, for example, redefine computer monitors that can receive video signals to be television sets, hitting them with a 14 percent duty. And the stakes are high: Schwab said global exports of these products are estimated at more than $70 billion.

As the NAM’s John Engler said in a news release,

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. Exports of high technology goods such as integrated circuits and related products are the largest U.S. export. Maintaining an environment that supports the U.S. high tech manufacturing sectors is critical to the future of U.S manufacturing.

You would think the EU has learned by now that walling yourself off from the world is no way to encourage innovation. Computers are morphing into cell-phones are transmogrifying into televisions becoming who-knows-what and the EU thinks it gains an edge by keeping out new products its consumers want? In the short term, perhap its manufacturers benefits, but in the long term protectionism invites stagnation.

Of course, it’s not our concern if the EU adopts stupid policies that damage its member countries. That’s their business, especially since no politicians here in the United States regard the European Union as a superior model for trade or labor policy, right? But when the EU violates agreements and harm manufacturers based in the United States, it is time to act – and the WTO provides us a rules-guided venue in which to do so.

From Cummins Inc.

Columbus, IND. – Cummins Inc. (NYSE: CMI) announced today that Joe Loughrey, President and Chief Operating Officer, will retire from Cummins in March 2009. Effective this Aug. 1, Loughrey will become Cummins Vice Chairman and remain a member of the Board of Directors until his retirement.

“Shortly after my 35th anniversary with Cummins, I will retire from the Company,” Loughrey told Cummins employees today. “I have planned the date of my departure for more than two years as part of ongoing and regular succession discussions with the Board of Directors.

“With Tim [Solso] continuing in his role as Chairman, and the two of us being too close in age for me to replace him, my retirement gives the Board ample opportunity to observe and evaluate potential future leaders of the Company,” Loughrey added.

Loughrey has been President and COO of Cummins, the world’s largest independent diesel engine manufacturer, since May 2005.

Joe and Cummins are national leaders on workforce issues, and he helped really energize and focus the Manufacturing Institute’s efforts in this area during his tenure as the Institute’s president.

As noted here, environmental and public health groups are suing the Environmental Protection Agency for its ozone rules, arguing that the EPA should have followed the recommendations of staff scientists and advisors in setting a more stringent emissions standard.

The National Association of Manufacturers and other business associations are joining private utilities to also sue the EPA. Now posted at the NAM’s Legal Beagle website is a summary of the litigation and a copy of the petition for review..

Ozone NAAQS Litigation Group v. EPA (D.C. Circuit active) — Environmental
Validity of EPA’s ozone regulation

The NAM is a member of the Ozone NAAQS Litigation Group, which filed a petition for review 5/27/08 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenging the validity of the EPA’s final regulation lowering certain ozone limits under the Clean Air Act. The American Lung Association, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and others are also challenging the rule, and are expected to argue that the EPA did not follow the advice of their scientific advisers to issue a tougher standard. No statement of issues has yet been filed, but the suit is expected to raise questions relating to the EPA’s process and the validity of the data underpinning the stricter standard.

Related Documents:
Ozone NAAQS Litigation Group petition for review (5/27/2008)

From the other side comes an NRDC news release, noting, “The public interest law firm Earthjustice is filing the lawsuit on behalf of the American Lung Association, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Defense Fund, National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), and Appalachian Mountain Club.” The groups’ petition for review is available here.

From Dow Chemical, a news release, “Dow Responds to Surging Energy Costs.”

MIDLAND, Mich., May 28, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ — The Dow Chemical Company [DOW] announced today that on June 1 it will raise the price of all of its products by up to 20 percent – depending on their exposure to rising energy, feedstock and transportation costs – and will review all terms to all customers.

Andrew N. Liveris, Dow chairman and CEO, said the sweeping price increases and reviews are essential as the Company attempts to mitigate the extraordinary rise in energy and related raw material costs.

“Our first quarter feedstock and energy bill leapt a staggering 42 percent year over year, and that trajectory has continued, with the cost of oil and natural gas climbing ever higher,” Liveris said. “The new level of hydrocarbons and energy costs is putting a strain on the entire value chain and is forcing difficult discussions with customers about resetting the value proposition for our products.”

Dow spent $8 billion on energy and hydrocarbon-based feedstock costs in 2002. At the current rate, those costs would climb to $32 billion this year.

“For years, Washington has failed to address the issue of rising energy costs and, as a result, the country now faces a true energy crisis, one that is causing serious harm to America’s manufacturing sector and all consumers of energy. The government’s failure to develop a comprehensive energy policy is causing U.S. industry to lose ground when it comes to global competitiveness, and our own domestic markets are now starting to see demand destruction throughout the U.S.,” Liveris said.

“In addition to these price increases,” Liveris said, “the Company is continuing its aggressive cost-control plan internally and is accelerating its existing top-down competitiveness review for all of its businesses and manufacturing facilities in the light of these new feedstock and energy prices.”

News coverage:

The Supreme Court’s two rulings this week in employment discrimination cases brought a startling response today from the Washington Post’s editorialists in an opinion piece, “Flawed Victory.” The cases were CBOCS West, Inc. v. Humphries — in which a court majority created a law to ban employer retaliation — and Gomez-Perez v. Potter, Postmaster General, in which the court found reasons in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) to give federal employees the right to sue claiming retaliation. The Post concluded:

Protecting employees from retaliation makes sense, but it is not the province of judges to create such protections on the basis of their own beliefs of what is right or wrong, or even on the basis of their intuitive sense of what Congress meant to do or should have done. And those who today praise the outcome shouldn’t be upset if in the future justices read into the law new principles that lead to results they may find less acceptable.

The New York Times took a different point of view. From “In Defense of Workers“:

The Supreme Court handed down a pair of well-reasoned, fair-minded rulings this week upholding the rights of employees who charge age and race discrimination. The decisions, which forbid employers from retaliating against such workers, are a welcome break from some of the recent rulings by this court that have ignored precedent and common sense to throw out legitimate claims of unfair treatment.

We really like the New York Times’ editorial page. It’s so predictable you don’t have to waste your time reading it.

More…

And a Washington Post news analysis by Robert Barnes, headlined, “Justices Show Ability to Move to the Center.” And, after all, being in the center is what counts, right?

Crossposted from Point of Law.com

We’ve commented before that support of the Employee Free Choice Act is a losing issue in general election campaigns because most Americans will recoil from the idea of eliminating secret ballots in the workplace. Polling conducted for the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace indicates as much.

So, yes indeed, candidates would be smart to hammer away at candidates who have voted for or endorsed card check.

And here we go….

In Oregon, The Employee Freedom Action Committee has run an ad against the new Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, State House Speaker Jeff Merkley, who just won the primary to challenge incumbent Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR). The group is affiliated with the Center for Union Facts, which publishes the Laborpains.org blog we often link to around here.

The ad in The Oregonian states:

Jeff Merkley won the Democratic primary Tuesday through a mailed private ballot by Oregon Citizens. Yet he supports eliminating the right to a private vote when unions are enlisting new members. Hard to believe?

Gets right to the point.

Merkley’s response, reported in PolitickerOR.com:

Gordon Smith should renounce this rogue and the special interests that are bankrolling this organization…Shadowy groups like this are planning to come into Oregon and mislead voters about important issues at stake in this election. Smith has fought hard to protect these interests and now they are protecting him.

How does the ad mislead voters about important issues at stake in this election? What is inaccurate about it?

There’s also some misdirection by Merkley’s camp about the Employee Free Action Committee connection to Rick Berman, a tobacco lobbyist, a charge that’s apparently supposed to trump all discussion of policy and campaign issues.

Seems to us, rather, that the most important question is: “Jeff Merkley won the Democratic primary Tuesday through a mailed private ballot by Oregon Citizens. Yet he supports eliminating the right to a private vote when unions are enlisting new members. Hard to believe?”

P.S. The Eugene Register-Guard covered the story here, a solid piece that goes to the AFL-CIO to defend the merits of the Employee Free Choice Act. A Merkley aide protests shadowy groups, but he does manage to express platitudes: “This is one of many ways to allow working men and women to thrive, to assure good quality jobs with health care and child care benefits.”

A good idea, a punchy slogan, and the right idea on energy from Newt Gingrich’s outfit, American Solutions.

The website for the “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.” campaign includes a video of Gingrich making the case for domestic energy production, arguments we certainly share here at the NAM.

You know that Brazil has found two large oil fields in the Atlantic Ocean.

You know that the Brazilians are now independent of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Russia…that the Brazilians are free of the Middle East and free of OPEC.

And you know that today, it is illegal to look for oil in the Atlantic, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, in the Pacific, in northern Alaska, in the shale oil that’s available in the Rocky Mountains. Every one of those has been locked up by our politicians , and you know that it’s time that Americans had a chance to produce more oil and gas, to have refineries here and not be dependent on foreign dictators.

And stop the Warner-Lieberman bill, too.

The site includes an online petition in support of legislation, which Gingrich expects to be introduced in June. So go ahead and sign…$4.00 a gallon gas has a way of focusing one’s thinking, even Congress, and action is indeed possible to increase domestic supply.

In all the finger-pointing over the not-quite-a-recession the economy is currently struggling through, how is that the United Auto Workers have so successfully escaped any blame? In case you missed it over the Memorial Day weekend, this Detroit News piece is quite striking, so to speak:

The American Axle strike and separate walkouts this month at two General Motor Corp. plants will take $2.8 billion off the automaker’s bottom line, and cost the U.S. economy $8.2 billion — shaving nearly a percentage point off the gross domestic product, an economist said Friday.

The 87-day walkout against American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc, which ended Thursday, cost GM 330,000 units of production, including 230,000 units in April and May, the automaker reported in a Security and Exchange Commission filing Friday. United Auto Workers strikes against GM plants near Lansing and Kansas City erased 33,000 production units in the second quarter.

The loss of that factory output and related fallout, represents a 0.9 percent decline in the country’s GDP, said Mike Montgomery, an economist with Global Insight Inc.

Was it worth it? From a UAW news release:

“This has been a difficult process for American Axle workers and there is no doubt that they stood strong through it all,” said UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles, director of the union’s American Axle Manufacturing Department.

Well, that doesn’t answer the question, does it?

From the Clarksville, Tenn., newspaper, The Leaf-Chronicle, comes a report of the problems that the EPA’s more stringent ozone rules will cause local governments and taxpayers…and commuters, and manufacturers, and pretty much everbody. A good story about how after working toward compliance, the county could again become non-compliant, and noting the impact on infrastructure projects, too. From “City Could Fail EPA Standards.“

Clarksville will be judged on the new standards when the state reports its scores to the EPA in the summer of 2009. The EPA will then report in 2010 — based on three years of air quality data — who passed and who failed.

And if Clarksville fails?

“You jeopardize your federal highway funds for road projects,” Williams said.

Williams calls it a Catch-22, as those federal funds are used on road projects that relieve congestion, and fewer idling cars means cleaner air.

As an example, Williams said four local intersections are on target for remodeling this year to to increase traffic flow using federal CMAQ (Congestion Mitigation Air Quality) funds. If the city was not meeting the EPA’s air-quality standards, a position known as “nonattainment,” such construction would not be possible.

And in Utah…

Under this “8-hour standard,” areas that have ozone concentrations higher than 75 ppb too often must look for new ways to cut ozone pollution.

The old standard was 80 ppb, and all Utah communities barely met it. The new limits are expected to pose big challenges for Salt Lake, Davis, Weber, Box Elder, Tooele and Utah counties and more than 300 other U.S. counties.

Pro-regulation advocates among environmental and public health groups are suing the EPA, arguing the restrictions should be tougher.

So more people can pay the price of being out of compliance.