It's not often that there's much overlap between the idea of the Ayn Rand Institute and those of the Authors Guild, but both organizations don't think highly of the decision by the Obama administration's Justice Department to pursue an antitrust case against five big publishers and Apple. (The five big publishers are the "big six" publishers minus the one that made President Obama almost all of his money, Random House, which stayed out of the "agency pricing" deal with Apple.)
Here's the Authors Guild's president, Scott Turow:
Let's hope the reports are wrong, or that the Justice Department reconsiders. The irony bites hard: our government may be on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition.
This would be tragic for all of us who value books, and the culture they support.
The Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call has an investigation (actually, from September, but someone just linked to it today) of work conditions at Amazon's warehouse in Lehigh Valley, which reads a lot like the New York Times investigation of the FoxConn plant in China that makes Apple devices. The newspaper reports, based on interviews over two months with "20 current and former warehouse workers who showed pay stubs, tax forms or other proof of employment":
During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn't quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals.
Hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb gave a brief talk Wednesday night at Columbia College, where he was one of five alumni honored for distinguished professional achievement. I find it amazing that Columbia would be insensitive enough to schedule this event for the night of the Jewish holiday of Purim, but I guess I should know better than to be amazed by that sort of thing from Columbia at this point. Anyway, Mr. Loeb's speech did the service of calling attention to a speech at Occupy Wall Street by Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs, in which Professor Sachs advised the Occupy crowd to go to the 1% and "Tell 'em they're paying, whether they like it or not." The Sachs speech is embedded below and is really something, even for a Columbia professor.
Barack Obama has attended 191 political fundraisers as president through March 6, 2012, USA Today reports, more than George W. Bush (134), Bill Clinton (96), George H.W. Bush (109), Ronald Reagan (75), or Jimmy Carter (49).
After President Obama's call in the State of the Union address, this site published some thoughts on ROSLA, or "raising of school leaving age." The Associated Press, via the Boston Globe, has an update reporting that the education committee of the Massachusetts state legislature is scheduled to vote today on a bill to "raise the compulsory school attendance age to 18" from 16. "The dropout age has been raised to 18 in 21 states, including Rhode Island last year," the article says.
The University of Chicago's John Cochane has a new post up at his "Grumpy Economist" blog about the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law:
This point really nails the fundamental flaw of Dodd-Frank. It never really thought about what the most important core problems were, and how to fix them. Instead, it basically thinks we didn't have "enough" regulation, so proceeds to "regulate" more, and to regulate anything vaguely associated with "finance." But, not knowing what went wrong really, it's approach is just to deputize appointed officials great power to write rules, or, more basically, direct affairs in real time.
John Hinderaker of Powerline has a post with some of the Powerline site's best criticism of Paul Krugman over the years.
The reason Professor Krugman is attacking Mr. Hinderaker at the moment is that David and Charles Koch apparently wanted to get Mr. Hinderaker on the board of the Cato Institute, along with Washington lawyer Ted Olson.
My former New York Sun colleague Jacob Gershman has been all over the story of this effort to have the Supreme Court rule New York City's rent stabilization laws unconstitutional. His latest piece is here.
Michelle Malkin has a column full of examples: "it's the progressive left in this country that has viciously and systematically slimed female conservatives for their beliefs."
The lawsuit against the IRS by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary NetJets to avoid paying $643 million in taxes that the IRS said it owed was the subject of a post here back in November. Now, the Huffington Post reports, NetJets paid $2.5 million to lobbyists who got Congress to change the law so the company doesn't owe the tax. From the bio of Jeff Munk, who the Huffington Post says led the lobbying effort:
Richard Epstein's latest column is up at the Hoover Institution's Web site. It says the modern administrative state and the rule of law are "ultimately incompatible." On the rule of law:
No matter what the substantive issue, the rule of law imposes a set of key procedural and substantive guarantees that all political authorities must accept. It requires that there be clear notice of the outer bounds of legal conduct so that people can confidently organize their affairs without crossing the line into forbidden territory.
Paying for recreational sex is the obligation of the individuals engaging in it....
Recreational sex is an optional way to pass one's time or express one's affection. It is not related to the medical healing of disease (the presumptive reason to favor health insurance for all).
Everyone who's physically able and unbound by moral or religious beliefs is free to indulge in recreational sex, but no one else should have to underwrite it. Why not have insurance bankroll the hotel room and room service while we're at it? Car service? Flowers? Champagne? Chocolate-dipped strawberries?
The argument that the supporters of this policy tend to come back with here is that the contraceptives (unlike the chocolate-dipped strawberries) actually save the insurance companies (and the other insured premium-payers) money, because the contraceptives are cheaper than either an abortion or obstetrics and pediatric care if the sex results in pregnancy.
Writing at Forbes, Benn Steil also finds the lack of a copay in ObamaCare's contraceptive mandate suspicious:
oral contraceptives are singled out, among thousands of drugs, for special treatment through the ban on co-pay requirements. Women will continue to bear co-pays for antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals whose use bears a far more imminent relationship with their health...banning co-pays clearly goes well beyond making them affordable.
My column this week is about the policy that triggered the flap between Rush Limbaugh and that Georgetown Law student — namely, that all health insurance policies, under ObamaCare, must provide free — no copay — prescription birth control pills. I also offer a few suggestions on how Sandra Fluke and her friends might reduce the costs of contraception, which they say is running them more than $3,000 over the course of law school. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), or Newsmax (here).
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