The Los Angeles Times takes editorial note of Colombia President Uribe’s extradition of paramilitary leaders to the United States, observing, “Congressional Democrats have for months been playing a bait-and-switch game with Uribe — they insist that Colombia show progress on human rights and union issues in order to win their support for the trade pact, and then when Uribe gives them what they want, they ask for something else. Uribe’s latest move should test their true motives.” More …

Democrats are ostensibly holding up a vote on the Colombia free trade pact because Bogota hasn’t done enough to protect union leaders, who have been targeted by the paramilitaries. If the extradition of a large group of paramilitary leaders doesn’t placate them, it’s hard to imagine what will. Moreover, the trade pact would boost jobs in both the U.S. and Colombia during an economic downturn and cement Colombia as a firm U.S. ally in a region teeming with anti-American sentiment. It looks increasingly as though the real reason Democratic leaders won’t vote on the Colombia deal is that they don’t want to alienate their organized-labor backers during an election year.

Another blow was dealt recently to the FARC, the communist/narcoterrorist guerillas, with the death in March of one of its founders, Manuel Marulanda. (WSJ story.) The U.S. Congress could apply more pressure, perhaps helping to end the murderous rebellion, with a strong show of support of Colombia’s democracy and market.

Do members of Congress really want to be seen as undermining a U.S ally because organized labor tells them to?

UPDATE: FARC, the global terrorists, as well. From Vivirlatino:

Colombian authorities revealed on Tuesday that an email had been found on the computer of fallen rebel leader Raul Reyes, in which the top FARC leader, Alfonso Cano, suggested that they “should plan a project” to carry out an attack in Madrid.

The email has intelligence organizations worried, because according to the initial analysis, FARC as planning to carry out attacks against prominent Colombian personalities in the Spanish capital. “I propose that you create a project that will get the comrades ready for the attack in Madrid,” says the message that Cano sent to the head of the FARC.

From the White House transcript of President Bush’s visit to Silverado Cable Co., a manufacturer of wire harnesses in Mesa, Arizona.

THE PRESIDENT: [These] guys were showing me a new laser machine they purchased this year, and they purchased it this year because the stimulus package provided a tax incentive to do that. And the reason why that’s important is when the economy slowed down, we wanted to stimulate activity.

And so the fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there’s jobs at the machine-making place — plus their employees are more productive, they’re more competitive. It makes it more likely they’re going to keep their business and expand their business.

Make tax relief permanent, the President says, so companies like Silverado don’t have to worry what their tax burden will be two years from now.

AP story.

The White House photo shows brothers are Bob Simpson Jr., President of Silverado Cable Company and Mitch Simpson, Vice President, who founded the company with five employees. They now employ 70.

The Investor’s Business Daily (5/23) recently editorialized that, though Congress is “alarmed by our ‘failed’ oil markets,” it is “mostly the fault of the Congress that we’re in this mess.” The “markets have failed” because of “Congress’s refusal to let oil companies drill on federal lands, thereby cutting sharply into our supply of crude as world demand grows and prices soar both here and abroad.” The Daily calls Congress’s “ignorance of basic laws of supply and demand…at once bizarre, breathtaking, and frightening,” and asserts that “this ridiculous blaming of oil companies must stop, and…the companies must be allowed to get back into the business of pumping oil.” Only then will “the markets that ignorant and demagogic politicians called ‘failed’ [begin to] again turn out plentiful energy at prices people can afford.”

Outstanding editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal, explaining the rationale behind cap-and-trade — letting politicians pick winners and losers is one great attraction. Trouble is, the entire country is the loser, so it’s really just a question of who’s marginally better off. From “Climate Reality Bites“:

[For] the most part, the politicians favor cap and trade because it is an indirect tax. A direct tax – say, on gasoline – would be far more transparent, but it would also be unpopular. Cap and trade is a tax imposed on business, disguising the true costs and thus making it more politically palatable. In reality, firms will merely pass on these costs to customers, and ultimately down the energy chain to all Americans. Higher prices are what are supposed to motivate the investments and behavioral changes required to use less carbon.

The other reason politicians like cap and trade is because it gives them a cut of the action and the ability to pick winners and losers. Some of the allowances would be given away, at least at the start, while the rest would be auctioned off, with the share of auctions increasing over time. This is a giant revenue grab. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that these auctions would net $304 billion by 2013 and $1.19 trillion over the next decade. Since the government controls the number and distribution of allowances, it is also handing itself the political right to influence the price of every good and service in the economy.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that this meddling would cause a cumulative reduction in the growth of GDP by between 0.9% and 3.8% by 2030. Add 20 years, and the reduction is between 2.4% and 6.9% – that is, from $1 trillion to $2.8 trillion.

Since its introduction last October, the Lieberman-Warner bill has been S. 2191. But now Senator Reid has identified next week’s debate to be over S. 3036, introduced May 20th. But maybe something else will come up.

From Congress Daily:

Environmental groups, industries, and possibly states today are filing their intent to sue EPA in federal court over the agency’s regulation limiting smog. Five groups represented by Earthjustice — including the American Lung Association, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Parks Conservation Association — will argue that EPA violated the Clean Air Act by not following the advice of their scientific advisers to issue a tougher standard. They will contend that the White House illegally intervened and allowed politics to trump the science. “The president personally engaged in an unprecedented level of intervention and interference,” NRDC’s John Walke said today. Today is the deadline for filing intent to sue.

The National Association of Manufacturers and other industry groups will counter that EPA issued a standard that is too costly to businesses, and that the agency did not objectively consider the science in deciding to replace a less-stringent requirement. “We believe that EPA cherry-picked the science to stack the deck, leading to the decision to a stricter standard,” said NAM’s Bryan Brendle. NAM officials declined to indicate who would join them in legal and administrative challenges to EPA’s March 13 rule until their notice of intent to sue the agency is filed today. “We’re a group with a bunch of people in it,” one NAM spokesman said. The Edison Electric Institute, which represents major electric utilities, and at least 14 governors are among those who have sided with NAM’s argument. Environmental groups will likely be seconded by governors from at least several Northeast states.

Supporters of even harsher, more jobs-killing regulation are contending that questions of immense importance to the American people, economy and manufacturers should be decided by some GS-14s* in the EPA, and don’t you dare question them.

More from the AP.

* And we say this as a former GS-14.

Immediately below we have a post about a new scientific study reporting on possible health consequences of exposure to carbon nanotubes. When injected into the abdomen of mice, some forms of the nanotubes cause lesions, similar to lesions in humans that are precursors to mesothelioma.

An early alert to potential health risks of nanoparticles encourages precautions and perhaps we can escape the real damage caused by asbestosis — deaths and disabilites of those exposed in past decades in the manufacturing process — as well as the damage of abusive litigation.

But litigation we expect. There are so many attorneys out there just looking for another target. From CyberWyre:

It’s been some time since I’ve updated my highest paying AdSense keywords list and I’m surprised by the results that I’ve found. It appears that mesothelioma attorneys are again paying the highest price for online advertising, at $69.10 per click! It has always been the trend that attorneys, insurance companies, and loan consolidation services are among those paying the most for online advertising, as they stand to make the most from a single client than many other businesses advertising online — which is the reason why the term “magazine subscription” is priced at $2.25/click and “mesothelioma treatment options” is over $69/click.

Below are the top-25 most expensive search keywords.

$69.10 mesothelioma treatment options
$66.46 mesothelioma risk
$65.85 personal injury lawyer michigan
$65.74 michigan personal injury attorney
$62.59 student loans consolidation
$61.44 car accident attorney los angeles
$61.26 mesothelioma survival rate
$60.96 treatment of mesothelioma

Etc.

Here’s a scientific study that makes our litigation antenna quiver: “Carbon nanotubes introduced into the abdominal cavity of mice show asbestos-like pathogenicity in a pilot study.” Published last week in the journal “Nature Nanotechnology,” the report prompted a rash of news coverage, which actually featured balance, caution and caveats.

The study’s basic finding was that long carbon nanotubes — in contrast to the short or curly ones — created conditions in mice abdomen that resembled lesions that lead to mesothelioma in humans.

Prominently featured in all was the study’s coauthor, Andrew Maynard, a physicist and chief science adviser to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. In The New York Times, Maynard said, “I think there is clear evidence for caution in how they are used and handled.” He told The Los Angeles Times that the greatest danger was to workers involved in the manufacturing of nanotubes who might inhale the dust.

The LAT story included useful perspective from a business source:

Sean Murdock, head of the NanoBusiness Alliance, an industry trade group based in Skokie, Ill., said precautions were now in place in many factories, usually requiring workers to wear respirators. Nanotubes are largely made in closed chemical reactors, he added.

“The good news is that we’re understanding the potential hazards before we have large-scale use of these products and not four decades later,” he said.

NPR’s “Science Friday” carried a 24-minute segment on the study, again, pretty balanced. But several of the callers displayed the kind of uncertainty and anxiety that can produce a cultural and political environment that invites litigation. The thought kept recurring: When do the suits start?

In reading up on the study, we encountered this blog, Nanotechnology Law Report, written by John C. Monica, Jr. and Michael E. Heintz of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur. In this post, Monica excerpts a 2005 paper he co-wrote for Nanotechnology Law & Business, “Preparing for Future Health Litigation: The Application of Products Liability Law to Nanotechnology.” And here, Heintz discusses a recent GAO report, “”Nanotechnology: Better Guidance Is Needed to Ensure Accurate Reporting of Federal Research Focused on Environmental, Health, and Safety Risks.” Looks like a good site to keep up on, nanotechnologywise.

And here’s a site that bills itself as the largest portal on the topic of nanotechnology, Nanowerk.com. Looks good.

Crossposted from Point of Law.com.

The Copenhagen Consensus is under way in Denmark, a gathering of economists who are going to attempt to create a reasonable list of priorities for spending money: Do we do more good spending $50 billion on potable water, curing AIDS, fighting maleria, combatting global warming or FILL IN THE BLANK SOCIAL GOOD? A thought-provoking exercise, given that a leading figure in the project is Bjorn Lomborg, the Skeptical Environmentalist who, even while acknowledging climate change, doubts the value of vast government expenditures on global warming that will serve mostly to make the world poorer.

Ronald Bailey of Reason Magazine is on hand, and he reports:

But the fact is that in a world of scarce resources, a couple of big issues will get the bulk of the available resources. Trade-offs have to be made. When Lomborg is speaking of resources, he is basically talking about foreign development aid. What the Copenhagen Consensus hopes to do is help donors, both public and private, to spend their money is ways that solve the most urgent problems.

To illustrate how issues might be ranked, Lomborg cited some findings from a paper dealing with the challenge of disease. Spending $1 billion on controlling tuberculosis would save 1 million lives and result in estimated benefits of $30 billion for a benefit-cost ratio of 30 to 1. Spending $200 million on treating heart disease in poor countries (which accounts for 25 percent of deaths in those countries) with an inexpensive “polypill” combining aspirin and statins would produce $5 billion benefits implying a 25 to 1 benefit-cost ratio. And a $1 billion spent on malaria produces a benefit-cost ratio of 20 to 1.

More at the U.K. Times.

Engaging in cost-benefit analyses is a bracing antidote to the mix of mysticism and apocalyptic thinking that now dominates public policy debate of the environment.

And in debating costs and benefits, we hope the economists also remember to keep the value of liberty central to their deliberations.

(Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds.)

The June 12 issue of The New York Review of Books includes a fascinating analysis of the global warming hysteria by Freeman Dyson in “The Question of Global Warming,” a review of two new books on the topic, one by economist William Nordhaus and the other a compendium of papers from a 2005 conference at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Dyson’s comments bear scrutiny because he is a serious environmentalist and The New York Review of Books is on no one’s list of participants in the great right-wing conspiracy.

“Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion,” Dyson writes, adding that he believes the ethics of environmentalism are “fundamentally sound.” However, he notes that “some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith that belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet.”

Dyson points out gently that many passionate environmentalists believe this emphasis is misplaced, that there are more serious dangers to the planet that should take precedence. “Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment,” he said. But in the history of science, “it has often happened that the majority was wrong and refused to listen to a minority that later turned out to be right. It may—or may not—be that the present is such a time.”

After taking a shot at some climate change propaganda dispensed by the Royal Society of Great Britain, the equivalent of our National Academy of Sciences, Dyson cites the ancient motto of the Royal Society that the present members have apparently lost touch with, “Nullus in Verga,” which means, “Nobody’s word is final.”

Books cited:

A contributor to Matthew Yglesias’ Atlantic blog – which leans Democratic — has a post entitled, “$150 million is a lot of money…” Excerpt:

Which is why it’s strange that almost three weeks after the Service Employees International Union announced that they’d spend precisely that amount both to swing the elections they’re targeting and to support a massive mobilization to push for health care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act in the first 100 days of the new administration, not a single major news organization has written about that decision. In fact, nobody’s really written about it all, unless Lab Law Weekly’s decision to reprint the press release counts.

The embattled SEIU is battling back; unfortunately it’s 68-year-old women they’re sending to the hospital.