Category Archives: Business

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Other Shoe Drops

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A press release from CEI:

Penn State Climate Scientist Michael Mann Demands Apology From CEI

CEI Refuses to Retract Commentary

Washington, D.C., August 24, 2012 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute received a letter on August 21 from an attorney representing Penn State University Professor Michael E. Mann that demands that CEI retract and apologize for a post on CEI’s blog, Openmarket.org, written by CEI adjunct scholar Rand Simberg. The letter also threatens that they “intend to pursue all appropriate legal remedies on behalf of Dr. Mann.”

“The Other Scandal in Unhappy Valley,” the July 13, 2012 blog post at issue, criticized Professor Mann, a climate scientist who is recent years has become a leading advocate in the public debate for global warming alarmism. Mann was the lead author of research that fabricated the infamous hockey stick temperature graph. The hockey stick was featured in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Third Assessment Report (2001), but was dropped in its Fourth Assessment Report (2007). E-mails from and to Professor Mann featured prominently in what became known as the Climategate scandal.

In response to the letter from Mann’s attorney, CEI offered the following statements.

Statement by CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman:

This week CEI received a letter from Michael Mann’s attorney, John B. Williams of Cozen O’Connor, demanding that CEI fully retract and apologize for a July 13th OpenMarket blog post concerning Mann’s work. Shortly after that post was published in mid-July, CEI removed two sentences that it regarded as inappropriate. However, we view the post as a valid commentary on Michael Mann’s research. We reject the claim that this research was closely examined, let alone exonerated, by any of the proceedings listed in Mr. Williams’s letter.

National Review, which earlier got a similar letter from Mann’s attorney, has expertly summed up the matter in a response by the editor and the publication’s attorney.

And regardless of how one views Mann’s work, his threatened lawsuit is directly contrary to First Amendment law regarding public debate over controversial issues. Michael Mann may believe we face a global warming threat, but his actions represent an unfounded attempt to freeze discussion of his views.

In short, we’re not retracting the piece, and we’re not apologizing for it.

Statement by Myron Ebell, Director of CEI’s Center for Energy and Environment:

Penn State Professor Michael Mann’s lawyer claims that nine investigations of academic fraud have all exonerated Professor Mann. Most of these investigations did not examine Professor Mann’s conduct or even mention him, and Penn State University’s investigation was typical of that institution’s unfortunate tendencies.

The fact that Professor Mann’s hockey stick research is still taken seriously in the public debate is an indication that people haven’t read the Wegman Report to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the National Research Council’s report, or the analysis of Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick.

Professor Mann’s political advocacy is no more reliable than his scientific research. His recent book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, repeats numerous factual errors, some of them about CEI.

> View the Michael Mann attorney letter.pdf

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org. Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.

As this is now a legal matter directly involving me, I will have no further comment.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The “New Normal”

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Jimmie Pethokoukis isn’t buying it:

…the president’s a recent convert to this religion of low expectations. He certainly didn’t buy it when he took office. Back then, he predicted a quick and powerful economic rebound — if only lawmakers implemented his policies, such as the $800 billion stimulus. Which Congress, then with strong Democratic majorities, quickly did.

In 2009, for instance, the White House said the economy would be growing at a brisk 4.3 percent annual clip this year, with unemployment down to 5.6 percent. Indeed, Obama’s top economists predicted we’d be smack in the middle of a fat streak of high-growth years: 4.3 percent in 2011, followed by 4.3 percent growth in 2012 and 2013, too. And 2014? 4 percent growth.

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton would have nothing on Obama, these predictions suggested. Back then, Team Obama scoffed at the dismal New Normal faith.

Yet we’re still waiting on the boom that they promised. Now they’re evangelizing for “the New Normal” — and hoping enough voters buy the excuse.

It’s almost as though they don’t know WTF they’re doing.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Punching Back Twice As Hard

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Mitt should stay on the offensive on Medicare:

The Obama cuts also rely on grinding, year-after-year reductions in payments to doctors and other providers. This is a way to maintain that there are technically no changes in “benefits,” though access to and quality of care inevitably will be affected.

No one concerned with the health of Medicare would go about it in this fashion. But “Obamacare” was helter-skelter legislating, a desperate attempt to make the numbers temporarily add up.

Medicare’s actuaries consistently sound the alarm about the consequences. A May 2012 report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said, “The large reductions in Medicare payments rates to physicians would likely have serious implications for beneficiary access to care.”

It also noted the punishing effect on hospitals, nursing facilities and home-health agencies, which “would have to withdraw from providing services to Medicare beneficiaries, merge with other provider groups or shift substantial portions of Medicare costs to their non-Medicare, non-Medicaid payers.”

Oh, is that all? If a Republican president had done this, The New York Times would have called for impeachment proceedings.

Is the Republicans’ counter-assault on Medicare hypocritical? No. How — not whether — to restrain Medicare is the question. The Democratic approach, now and in the future, is blunt-force price controls. Republicans want to get savings through competition and choice.

Leftists hate competition and choice. It doesn’t give them enough power over our lives.