Category: Government

It No Longer Pays to Recycle

(p. B1) Oregon is serious about recycling. Its residents are accustomed to dutifully separating milk cartons, yogurt containers, cereal boxes and kombucha bottles from their trash to divert them from the landfill. But this year, because of a far-reaching rule change in China, some of the recyclables are ending up in the local dump anyway.
In recent months, in fact, thousands of tons of material left curbside for recycling in dozens of American cities and towns — including several in Oregon — have gone to landfills.
. . .
(p. B5) Recycling companies “used to get paid” by selling off recyclable materials, said Peter Spendelow, a policy analyst for the Department of Environmental Quality in Oregon. “Now they’re paying to have someone take it away.”
In some places, including parts of Idaho, Maine and Pennsylvania, waste managers are continuing to recycle but are passing higher costs on to customers, or are considering doing so.
“There are some states and some markets where mixed paper is at a negative value,” said Brent Bell, vice president of recycling at Waste Management, which handles 10 million tons of recycling per year. “We’ll let our customers make that decision, if they’d like to pay more and continue to recycle or to pay less and have it go to landfill.”
Mr. Spendelow said companies in rural areas, which tend to have higher expenses to get their materials to market, were being hit particularly hard. “They’re literally taking trucks straight to the landfill,” he said.

For the full story, see:
Livia Albeck-Ripka. “Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not?” The New York Times (Thursday, May 31, 2018): B1 & B5.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 29, 2018.)

Trump’s Judges Constrain the Administrative State

(p. A1) WASHINGTON — It has been practically a given that anyone nominated for a federal judgeship by a Republican president had to pass an unspoken litmus test — usually on abortion but often on any number of divisive social issues.
The Trump administration has a new litmus test: reining in what conservatives call “the administrative state.”
With surprising frankness, the White House has laid out a plan to fill the courts with judges devoted to a legal doctrine that challenges the broad power federal agencies have to interpret laws and enforce regulations, often without being subject to judicial oversight. Those not on board with this agenda, the White House has said, are unlikely to be nominated by President Trump.
. . .
(p. A13) That the concept of “the administrative state” has become so central to politics today shows how successful the Trump administration has been in elevating to the mainstream ideas that once thrived mainly on the edges of conservative and libertarian thought.
A year ago it was a term known mostly among academics to describe the vast array of federal departments and the unelected functionaries who run them. It entered the mainstream political lexicon last year after the president’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, pledged a “deconstruction of the administrative state” under Mr. Trump.
. . .
But this thinking has been advanced by many libertarian-minded conservatives who have long doubted whether the founders envisioned the creation of many New Deal and Great Society programs and the abundance of regulations that flowed from them.
“A lot of this, if you unpack it, I think it will get back to fundamental fairness,” said Mark Holden, general counsel for Koch Industries, which is led by Charles G. and David H. Koch, two of the biggest financial backers of the effort to elect office holders committed to deregulation and free-market enterprise.
The Trump judicial selection process, Mr. Holden added, was ultimately focused on “the size and scope of government and scaling it back, to the extent that it’s counterproductive and contrary to due process.”

For the full story, see:
Jeremy W. Peters. “New Litmus Test for Trump’s Court Picks: Taming the Bureaucracy.” The New York Times (Wednesday, March 28, 2018): A1 & A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 26, 2018, and has the title “Trump’s New Judicial Litmus Test: Shrinking ‘the Administrative State’.”)

Firms Transship to Avoid Tariffs

(p. B1) SHANGHAI — Want to avoid American tariffs? In China, a company called Settle Logistics says it knows a way.
Specifically, that way goes through Malaysia — a 4,600-mile diversion compared with sending a shipping container from China straight across the Pacific to the United States. But when those Chinese products arrive at an American port, they will look as if they had come from Malaysia, according to the company, and will be spared tariffs aimed at Chinese goods.
“For those unfair trade barriers targeting our industries from certain countries,” Settle Logistics says on its website, “we can adopt other approaches to bypass those trade tariffs in order to expand markets.”
Such zigzagging routes are called transshipments, and President Trump has used them to justify the trade fight he has picked with a number of countries. They could also take on new relevance should the United States and China carry out their threats to levy a total of more than $200 billion in tariffs against each other.
. . .
(p. B6) Stamping out such transshipments could prove difficult. The United States made a big effort in the late 1990s to address the relabeling in Hong Kong of garments that had been made in mainland China, said Patrick Conway, a textiles trade specialist.
But after American officials gathered enough evidence to put companies on a watch list, the companies quickly disappeared, said Mr. Conway, who is the chairman of the economics department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Some of the same people involved emerged later, but at other companies.
“We can anticipate a game of Whac-a-Mole,” Mr. Conway said.

For the full story, see:
Keith Bradsher. “Dodging Tariffs With a Handy Detour.” The New York Times (Monday, April 23, 2018): B1 & B6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 22, 2018, and has the title “Tariff Dodgers Stand to Profit Off U.S.-China Trade Dispute.”)

“Some Things Are True Even if Donald Trump Believes Them!”

(p. A21) One of the hardest things to accept for all of us who want Donald Trump to be a one-term president is the fact that some things are true even if Donald Trump believes them! And one of those things is that we have a real trade problem with China. Imports of Chinese goods alone equal two-thirds of the global U.S. trade deficit today.
. . .
. . . , I sat down with David Autor, the M.I.T. economist who’s done some of the most compelling research on the impacts of China trade. The first problem he raised has to do with the “shock” that China delivered to U.S. lower-tech manufacturers in the years right after Beijing joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, when it gained more open access to the U.S. and other world markets.
. . .
Autor and his colleagues David Dorn and Gordon Hanson found in a 2016 study that roughly 40 percent of the decline in U.S. manufacturing between 2000 and 2007 was due to a surge in imports from China primarily after it joined the W.T.O. And it led to the sudden loss of about one million factory jobs in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Trump won all of those states.
This “China shock,” said Autor, led not only to mass unemployment but also to social disintegration, less marriage, more opioid abuse and more people dropping out of the labor market and requiring government aid. “International trade creates diffuse benefits and concentrated costs,” he added. “China’s rapid rise, while enormously positive for world welfare, has created identifiable losers in trade-impacted industries and the labor markets in which they are located.”
The second problem has to do with access to China’s market for the goods U.S. companies sell. There, noted Autor, “China has not only taken our lunch, they’ve opened a restaurant that’s serving it to their citizens.”
. . . China kept a 25 percent tariff on new cars imported from the U.S. (our tariff is 2.5 percent) and similarly steep tariffs on imported auto parts.

For the full commentary, see:

Friedman, Thomas L.. “Trump’s Right About China, To a Point.” The New York Times (Wednesday, March 14, 2018): A21.
(Note: ellipses added; italics in original.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 13, 2018, and has the title “Some Things Are True Even if Trump Believes Them.” My print edition is in this case, and is almost always, the National Edition. I have discovered that sometimes the page number, and even the title and date, differ between the National and the New York print editions.)

The Autor co-authored paper mentioned above, is:

Autor, David H., David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson. “The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade.” Annual Review of Economics (2016): 205-40.

“Politicians Use Economics the Way a Drunk Uses a Lamppost”

(p. A13) Mr. Blinder cites what he calls the Lamppost Theory: “Politicians use economics the way a drunk uses a lamppost–for support, not for illumination.”

For the full review, see:
Matthew Rees. “BOOKSHELF; What They Don’t Teach in Econ 101.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, April 17, 2018): A13.
(Note: italics in original.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date April 18, 2018, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘Advice and Dissent’ Review: What They Don’t Teach in Econ 101.”)

The book under review, is:
Blinder, Alan S. Advice and Dissent: Why America Suffers When Economics and Politics Collide. New York: Basic Books, 2018.

Government Uses Cruel Painful Snare Traps to Kill Gorgeous Respectful Foxes

(p. A18) BRIGANTINE, N.J. — Red foxes can be found all over New Jersey, wandering out of the woods and poking through garbage at dusk in search of a meal. In many places, they might be overlooked, if not seen as a disease-carrying nuisance. But not in Brigantine, an island community where the fox has become an unofficial ambassador.
Many residents warmly share stories of their encounters, like the fox that would routinely come up to a back door or the time a children’s soccer game had to pause so one could cross the field. A fox makes an appearance on the cover of the city’s tourism guide, as much of an attraction as its golf course and pristine beaches. A real estate company regularly sends its mascot, Briggy the Fox, to community events.
Yet the island is also the seasonal home to piping plovers, a small bird that returns every year to dig its nests on the beach. The bird is an endangered species in New Jersey that state wildlife officials closely watch and fiercely protect, including from foxes, creating a bitter conflict that has caused an uproar as residents protest the trapping and killing of the animals.
Some are challenging the use of snare traps, a contraption that they describe as cruel and painful. The contretemps has also stirred a wider debate: Is it fair to kill one animal for the sake of protecting another?
“It disgusts me,” said Donna Vanzant, who owns a marina. “Why go after these gorgeous animals? Just let nature take its course.”
State lawmakers recently wrote a letter to wildlife officials expressing their “deep concern,” and the City Council passed a resolution condemning the “inhumane and indiscriminate killing of red foxes.” Briggy the Fox attended the meeting and held a sign: “Please stop killing my friends.”
“Everyone on the island cherishes the foxes and does not want them killed,” said Donna Grazioli DeAngelis, a retired teacher who started a petition online, which about 90,000 people have signed. “They have been so respectful, so perfect in every way,” she said of the foxes. “People paint them, photograph them. They haven’t been a nuisance in any way.”
. . .
“It’s an overreach and overreaction,” Philip J. Guenther, Brigantine’s longtime mayor, said of the fox trapping. “It just doesn’t seem to make any sense from a protection standpoint.”

For the full story, see:
Rick Rojas. “To Save One Precious Animal, a Town Must Sacrifice Another.” The New York Times (Monday, May 7, 2018: A18.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 6, 2018, and has the title “Trapping Foxes to Save Plovers Sets Off Showdown at Jersey Shore.” The online version says the print version appeared on May 6 on p. A17 of the New York Edition. My print version, as usual, was the National Edition.)

“Wilson’s Betrayal of Black Americans”

(p. C6) Instead of “The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made,” Patricia O’Toole could have titled her new book “The Hypocrite.”
After all, as she herself points out, to lay claim to the moral high ground as often and as fervently as President Wilson did during his eight years in the White House was to court charges that he failed to live up to his own principles. He called for an end to secret treaties while negotiating secretly with the Allies in World War I. He declared himself unwilling to compromise with belligerents abroad while showing himself very willing to compromise with segregationists at home. He pursued a progressive economic agenda while approving a regressive racial one. He spoke of national self-determination in the loftiest terms while initiating the American occupation of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
. . .
“The Moralist” suggests that Wilson’s betrayal of black Americans was born from simple expedience — that he allowed the segregation of the Civil Service because he desperately needed the votes of Southern congressmen in order to pass his progressive economic agenda, including the introduction of a federal income tax.
“He knew the segregation was morally indefensible, but ending it would have cost him the votes of every Southerner in Congress,” O’Toole writes.
The second part of her sentence is largely correct, but how can she be so sure about the first? As evidence she cites Wilson’s own pleas to his critics. “I am in a cruel position,” he told the chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., insisting he was “at heart working for these people.” The testy exchange apparently left Wilson so rattled he took to his bed for a week.
But as O’Toole herself shows, his cries of political constraints were later followed by his claims that politics were irrelevant to racism anyway. In 1914, Wilson told the African-American editor William Monroe Trotter that eliminating segregation wouldn’t do anything for racial animus, which he called “a human problem, not a political problem.” (Wilson took to his bed after that “bruising quarrel” with Trotter, too.).

For the full review, see:
Jennifer Szalai. “BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Woodrow Wilson’s Flawed Idealism.” The New York Times (Wednesday, May 2, 2018): C6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 1, 2018, and has the title “BOOKS OF THE TIMES; In ‘The Moralist,’ Woodrow Wilson and the Hazards of Idealism.”)

The book under review, is:
O’Toole, Patricia. The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Finnish Public Push to End Universal Basic Income Experiment

(p. B1) LONDON — For more than a year, Finland has been testing the proposition that the best way to lift economic fortunes may be the simplest: Hand out money without rules or restrictions on how people use it.
The experiment with so-called universal basic income has captured global attention as a potentially promising way to restore economic security at a time of worry about inequality and automation.
Now, the experiment is ending. The Finnish government has opted not to continue financing it past this year, a reflection of public discomfort with the idea of dispensing government largess free of requirements that its recipients seek work.

For the full story, see:
Peter S. Goodman. “Finland Will Stop Offering Unconditional Pay for Jobless.” The New York Times (Wednesday, April 25, 2018): B1 & B4.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 24, 2018, and has the title “Finland Has Second Thoughts About Giving Free Money to Jobless People.” The print version cited above is the National Edition.)

Clues to How Macron Achieves Major Free Market Reforms in France

(p. A9) PARIS — The plush red velvet seats of France’s National Assembly are filled with lawmakers who owe just about everything to President Emmanuel Macron.
Three-quarters of the 577 members are brand new, swept into power in the wake of his election last year. More than 60 percent are in his camp. Nearly one-third have never held public office, and 38 were under the age of 31 when they entered office.
. . .
On Thursday [March 22, 2018], tens of thousands of railway workers, teachers and air traffic controllers went on strike across France to protest salary freezes for civil servants and Mr. Macron’s pledge to cut 120,000 public-sector jobs and introduce merit-based pay and use more private contractors.
. . .
The assembly has become a showcase of Mr. Macron’s forceful powers of persuasion and the ways he wants to reshape and update all of France.
“There’s been a complete cultural shock,” said Jean-Paul Delevoye, a senior official in Mr. Macron’s government who helped pick his candidates for Parliament.
“We’ve completely overturned the sociology of the assembly,” he added.
Diet Coke replaced wine as the most popular item at the assembly’s bar. Wine sales had plummeted, stunning the barmen, though they are creeping back up under the influence of long days. Mr. Macron’s acolytes sit through them, unlike their predecessors.
Before the rule for a deputy was, arrive Tuesday morning and go home Wednesday evening. Now, many say, Mr. Macron’s deputies come for the whole week.
So assiduous are they that “now, it’s hard to find a spot at the restaurant, that’s what strikes me,” said Brigitte Bourguignon, another ex-Socialist who joined Mr. Macron.
Among the youthful deputies, common positions are worked out in advance on applications like Telegram, befuddling the old-timers. There is little patience for them in any case.
. . .
Parliament was barely to be seen last year when Mr. Macron forced through changes to France’s rigid labor code to allow companies more flexibility in negotiating directly with workers, and to limit payouts after layoffs.
Instead, the president proceeded by special decree, using a rarely used procedure that allowed the National Assembly merely to vote thumbs up or down on the labor reforms — it voted up — but without the power to change or even discuss them.
Then, Mr. Macron rammed through the lifting of a tax on wealth, insisting that it was necessary to free capital for investment. Many economists agreed. But apart from a few opposition whimpers there was hardly any debate.
In coming weeks he proposes to take on the railway workers — the bête noir of many a French government — again by special decree. Mr. Macron wants to end the hiring-for-life, early retirement and enhanced medical insurance that have contributed to a whopping deficit. But he doesn’t necessarily want Parliament debating it.
. . .
For his dedicated supporters in Parliament, subordination is not an issue. Asked whether he had been in disagreement with the government, Mr. Potterie replied: “Ah, no. No. At the margins maybe. But for the moment, no.”
In the National Assembly, “it’s true that we don’t challenge the government,” he added. “It’s because we were elected to carry out their program.”
That sense of purpose runs deep.
“It’s not true that we are simply puppets,” insisted Ms. Bourguignon, the former Socialist. “We’ve got a government that reforms, and we’ve got to follow the government.”

For the full story, see:
ADAM NOSSITER. “Macron Fills the Role Of French Strongman.” The New York Times (Friday, March 23, 2018): A9.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 22, 2018, and has the title “Emmanuel Macron Becomes France’s Answer to Strongman Populism.” The online version says that the article appeared on p. A13 of the New York edition. It appeared on p. A9 of my National edition.)

Big Pharma Is Mellow about FDA Obstacles to Innovation

It sometimes appears that big pharma is comfortable with the hugely expensive FDA drug approval process. Perhaps big pharma firms have learned how to navigate the process and have the resources to do so. And perhaps the process discourages disruptive innovations from small medical startups that have not learned how to navigate the process, and do not have the resources to do so. If so, then the puzzling indifference of big pharma indicated in the passages quoted below, becomes easier to understand.
(There’s a wonderful recent TV ad from big pharma supporting innovation by quoting the Dylan Thomas poem saying we should “rage, rage against the dying of the light.” If only they really meant it.)

(p. A13) In recent years, the arrival of breakthrough drugs for everything from cancer to rare diseases has led to a surge in the number of patients wanting early access to treatments. The pleas — sometimes driven by viral social media campaigns — have proved vexing for companies that have invested millions to get a drug to market and are wary of doing anything to jeopardize their chances.

Today, companies’ policies on granting early access to drugs are a confusing patchwork that tends to favor affluent and well-connected patients at leading medical centers, who have the resources and know-how to navigate the system.
“You have to be pretty sophisticated,” said Dr. Arthur L. Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University who has been working with companies, including Johnson & Johnson, to develop better early-access programs. But the bill passed this week, he said, “does somewhere between nothing and absolutely nothing to help you.”
The bill’s passage represented a victory for proponents of “right to try,” a campaign championed by Vice President Mike Pence and initiated by the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank that favors limiting the scope of the F.D.A. At least 38 states have passed local versions of right-to-try laws, which allow patients to sidestep F.D.A. approval once they have received permission from a company.
The right-to-try measures are opposed by a broad coalition of groups, which contend the bill will not help patients and will undermine the authority of the primary regulatory agency, the F.D.A. Four former F.D.A. commissioners, including two each from Democratic and Republican administrations, oppose the bills, as do dozens of patient groups, including the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and the American Lung Association.
The pharmaceutical industry, while not taking a position on the issue, has been circumspect. A spokesman for its main lobbying group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said on Friday, “We believe any legislation must truly benefit and protect patients and not disrupt the future of clinical trials, U.S. Food and Drug Administration oversight and the research and approval of new medicines.”
. . .
The F.D.A. already approves 99 percent of such applications, and the agency has streamlined the approval process. Drug companies also have many other reasons to bar access — often, companies do not have enough extra product to give to patients, or they worry that the logistical work of granting access could slow efforts to get the drug approved, when it would become available to any patient who needed it.
There is also the possibility that the drug does not work — many experimental products fail in late-stage trials.
. . .
“In our view, the F.D.A. plays a really important role,” Dr. Joanne Waldstreicher, the chief medical officer of Johnson & Johnson, said in an interview Thursday. Johnson & Johnson initiated a program in 2015 that delegates decisions about early access to a program set up by Dr. Caplan. The F.D.A., Dr. Waldstreicher said, has “information that we don’t have necessarily; they see safety and efficacy information on products that may be similar.”

For the full story, see:
KATIE THOMAS. “For Terminally Ill People, a Convoluted Procedure Just to Give Drugs a Try.” The New York Times (Saturday, March 24, 2018): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 23, 2018, and has the title “Why Can’t Dying Patients Get the Drugs They Want?”)

“A Litigious, Protective Culture Has Gone Too Far”

(p. A1) SHOEBURYNESS, England — Educators in Britain, after decades spent in a collective effort to minimize risk, are now, cautiously, getting into the business of providing it.
. . .
Limited risks are increasingly cast by experts as an experience essential to childhood development, useful in building resilience and grit.
Outside the Princess Diana Playground in Kensington Gardens in London, which attracts more than a million visitors a year, a placard informs parents that risks have been “intentionally provided, so that your child can develop an appreciation of risk in a controlled play environment rather than taking similar risks in an uncontrolled and unregulated wider world.”
This view is tinged with nostalgia for an earlier Britain, in which children were tougher and more self-reliant. It resonates both with right-wing tabloids, which see it as a corrective to the cosseting of a liberal nanny state; and with progressives, drawn to a freer and more natural childhood.
. . .
(p. A12) Britain is one of a number of countries where educators and regulators say a litigious, protective culture has gone too far, leaching healthy risks out of childhood. Guidelines on play from the government agency that oversees health and safety issues in Britain state that “the goal is not to eliminate risk.”

For the full story, see:
ELLEN BARRY. “In Britain, Learning to Accept Risk, and the Occasional ‘Owie’.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, March 11, 2018): A1 & A12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 10, 2018, and has the title “In Britain’s Playgrounds, ‘Bringing in Risk’ to Build Resilience.”)