If lithium-battery-powered vehicles are the future, then why is the Obama Administration pursuing new regulations that would make shipping the batteries so burdensome and expensive? We’ve examined the issue before here and here, and were pleased to see The Washington Post cover the issue in its Saturday edition, “Everyday lithium batteries at center of debate about cargo handling.” Excerpt:

The new regulations could affect a massive web of companies, including manufacturers, shippers and retailers. They say costs would be staggering. UPS told PHMSA that complying with the rules would cost the company at minimum $264 million in the first year. And the company said each subsequent year would cost an additional $185 million.

Best Buy submitted a long list of products that would be affected, including portable GPS devices, portable DVD players and TVs, cellphones, cordless headphones, universal remote controls, cameras, camcorders, even electric razors and toothbrushes.

In today’s Post, Robert Samuelson digs into natural gas and hydrofracturing today in his column, “Shale gas: Hope for our energy future.” Good and necessary introduction to the issue. We recommend it to whoever writes and edits the editorial page for The Philadelphia Inquirer, who should be ashamed for the bizarre attack against former Gov. Tom Ridge.

Ridge was hired last week to advise and represent the Marcellus Shale Coalition, companies and groups involved with the production of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania. In an editorial Friday, “Shale’s shill,” The Inquirer throws out the term “shill,” when describing advocacy for a major and growing contributor to the state’s economy and employment.

Former governors can choose many career paths. Some of them become college presidents. Some go on the lecture circuit.

And then there’s Tom Ridge, who is set to become a paid shill for the natural-gas drillers swarming his native state.

The Inquirer’s argument boils down to “there’s something obnoxious” about a former governor representing an industry “that poses serious environmental risks, and has already spent millions on lobbying to forestall paying its fair share of state business taxes.” Risk! Risk! If there’s risk, we must never act! As for taxes, well, that’s a matter of dispute.

It’s always bizarre to read newspaper writers who are offended by the exercise of the First Amendment, which is what Ridge has been hired to do — express a point of view and petition the government. One’s almost tempted to call the paper’s editorialists “hacks,” but that would be lowering ourselves to their level.

So we’ll just close by referring the editorialists to the Oil & Gas Journal’s recent story, “Study projects boost in Marcellus shale jobs, economy.”

How dare they report that!

The Congressional health care debate reaches its climacteric week, and The Washington Post op-ed page offers two good columns on the topic.

Robert Samuelson, “Obama’s illusions of cost-control“:

Though it seems compelling, covering the uninsured is not the health-care system’s major problem. The big problem is uncontrolled spending, which prices people out of the market and burdens government budgets. Obama claims his proposal checks spending. Just the opposite. When people get insurance, they use more health services. Spending rises. By the government’s latest forecast, health spending goes from 17 percent of the economy in 2009 to 19 percent in 2019. Health “reform” would probably increase that.

Unless we change the fee-for-service system, costs will remain hard to control because providers are paid more for doing more. Obama might have attempted that by proposing health-care vouchers (limited amounts to be spent on insurance), which would force a restructuring of delivery systems to compete on quality and cost. Doctors, hospitals and drug companies would have to reorganize care. Obama refrained from that fight and instead cast insurance companies as the villains.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), “Rep. Paul Ryan on what real health reform should look like“:

Through any analytical lens, the legislation will not address the central problem of skyrocketing health-care costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that families’ premiums could rise 10 to 13 percent; private-sector actuarial estimates top these already high numbers. The higher costs are driven by federalizing the regulation of insurance, narrowing consumers’ options and reducing competition among providers. The health-care market would be dominated by government programs and the largest insurance companies, operating as de facto government utilities.

Rather than tackle the drivers of health inflation, the legislation chases the ever-increasing premiums with huge new subsidies. Already, Washington has no idea how to pay for the unfunded promises in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — and creating this new entitlement would accelerate our path to fiscal ruin.

The National Association of Manufacturers is a member of the Start Over! business coalition, which outlined its principles and priorities for health care reform in a Feb. 22 letter to President Obama. Cost control and global competitiveness figured prominently:

Central to the discussion among summit attendees must be how reform ideas affect the ability of
our nation’s economy to recover and businesses to create jobs. Even in ideal economic times
imposing costly regulations and taxes on business is a bad idea. A competitive global
environment and an already burdensome tax and regulatory structure offer enough challenges for
businesses of all sizes to invest and create jobs. We should be looking for ways to streamline
and modernize these structures, rather than layering additional costs on job creators. Moreover,
the dismal state of our nation’s fiscal house requires that proposals be weighed against the threat
that large-scale spending poses to long-term economic stability and competitiveness.

Robert Samuelson, writing in The Washington Post, “Obama’s Tire Tariff: Bad Policy, Right Message“:

Tit-for-tat retaliation could ignite a global trade war. If United States and China do it, why shouldn’t everyone else? Limits on tires, auto parts, chicken — or whatever — might inspire similar measures from other countries to prevent diversion of goods into their markets. Flirting with protectionism is dangerous. Announcing the tariffs shortly before Thursday’s economic summit of G-20 countries in Pittsburgh makes the predictable pious anti-protectionist pronouncements even less believable.

But tolerating China’s predatory trade practices is also dangerous. China’s cheap exports reflect more than low wages. Government actively promotes and subsidizes exports, especially through a deliberately undervalued currency. The undervaluation lowers the prices of Chinese goods. Economist Nicholas Lardy of the Peterson Institute figures the present price advantage at 15 to 20 percent. It might be more. Economist Eswar Prasad of Cornell University argues that cheap credit and subsidized land and energy enhance the price competitiveness of Chinese exports.

It’s a paradox, Samuelson writes: Tariffs as protectionism are bad policy. But in this case, the message they send to China is the right one: Cease and desist.

That’s a thoughtful analysis. Still, until the Administration starts enacting pro-trade policies — to correlate with all the pro-trade speeches — it’s difficult to distinguish between a discrete, tactical message and  nascent protectionism.

Outstanding, bracing dash of reality today from Robert Samuelson of The Washington Post, “Selling The Green Economy,” expressing skepticism about the political prospects of radically reworking the U.S. economy based on theory and computer models.

The selling of the green economy involves much economic make-believe. Environmentalists not only maximize the dangers of global warming — from rising sea levels to advancing tropical diseases — they also minimize the costs of dealing with it. Actually, no one involved in this debate really knows what the consequences or costs might be. All are inferred from models of uncertain reliability. Great schemes of economic and social engineering are proposed on shaky foundations of knowledge. Candor and common sense are in scarce supply.

Read the whole thing.

His Washington Post column today, “A New Specter: Deflation”

His new book, “The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath”

Ha.

More seriously, can’t think of a Post column Samuelson has written that wasn’t worth reading; he puts economic issues in understandable terms and insightful context.

The new book comes out tomorrow, and it’s primarily a history about the ’60s and ’70s with an analysis of how the inflationary period shapes our nation and economy today. (Or so we gather.) You can read Chapter 1 here.

For D.C. area residents, he speaks at the Politics & Prose bookstore November 15th.

Or maybe not. From AFP:

OECD hikes US growth forecast, sees UK recession

PARIS (AFP) — The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development on Tuesday raised its forecast for US economic growth this year but cut its estimates for Japan and the eurozone, and said Britain faced recession.

The OECD, the Paris-based grouping of 30 developed countries, said the US economy would expand 1.8 percent in 2008, a sharp upward revision from a prediction in June of 1.2 percent.

As the OECD’s news release states, “Weak activity to continue throughout 2008 – Interim economic assessment.” But weak growth IS growth, and with the United States leading the way among the industrialized countries, the relentless downgrading by some of the U.S. economy starts to appear fantastical and damaging and even malicious.

The reliably dispassionate Robert Samuelson took a closer look at the data in his Washington Post column today, “The Real Economic Scorecard.” He observes:

Though echoed by policy wonks, pundits and politicians — last week, Bill Clinton — the conventional wisdom is wrong or, at least, misleading. Here’s a more accurate assessment. For most Americans, living standards are increasing, albeit slowly, over any meaningful period. But rising health spending is eroding take-home pay, and immigrants are boosting both poverty and the lack of health insurance. Unless we control health spending and immigration, the economic report card will continue to disappoint. Unfortunately, neither Obama nor McCain seriously addresses these problems.

So here’s the real situation: The economy grows, mostly, and people are doing better, mostly. And here’s what we know, most definitely: Raising taxes, increasing regulations and sticking it to employers neither spurs growth nor addresses the immigration and health care issues that Samuelson identifies.