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Posted 8/16/11 by Common Good

Today’s Read: The WSJ on How to Smother Infrastructure

If you wanted to subvert investment in national infrastructure projects, where would you start? One idea would be to regulate where construction workers are supposed to sleep (campers or motels?). Another would be to prohibit construction during the mating season of non-endangered birds.

Today, the Wall Street Journal reports on how a myriad of regulations added to the delay and cost overruns of a recent natural gas project. At a time when politicians agree that we need infrastructure investments, we’re squandering opportunity:

…all of this—spending years in government pre-planning, rerouting an energy corridor to avoid rock piles—carries a large economic price. Capital expenditures on archeologists and bird courtship could be put to more productive use elsewhere in the economy. The Ruby saga isn't remarkable except in how unremarkable it is, how routine, and this ordeal replicated countless times across the entire economy helps to explain why the recovery is so mediocre.

Regulations are important for protecting against exploitation and abuse. But all too often, and particularly in the aggregate, they defy common sense, costing jobs and money for little to no good reason. The Start Over campaign wants to bring common sense back into the regulatory equation, giving officials the authority to support the common good and then holding them accountable for their choices. Aren’t the consequences worse to not do so?

Posted 8/12/11 by Common Good

Providence Journal Editorial: Join Start Over

In a Friday editorial, the Providence Journal endorses the Start Over campaign and encourages its readers to join the effort. A snippet:

The initiative promotes such reforms as (our favorite!) ‘sunset sessions’ of legislatures to get rid of outdated laws; making laws briefer and easier to read; and creating health courts to bring more medical science and rationality to medical disputes now dominated by trial lawyers.

Voters and candidates in this election cycle should pay close attention to Start Over for proposals on how to create a more efficient, more rational, more courteous and less costly society. Again, see www.startover.org and join the campaign. (The site has some hilarious examples of legal overreach. And you can send your own.)

This is not a right vs. left issue. It’s about common sense.

Read the editorial in full and leave your feedback in the comments section below.

Posted 8/11/11 by Common Good

Today’s Read: How to Combat an ‘Overlawyered’ and ‘Overregulated’ America

Writing for the American Spectator, Ryan Young and Jacqueline Otto argue that America's regulatory system—which "is geared towards passing laws and regulations, not repealing them”—needs be changed. They write:

In an average year, Congress will pass about 200 bills and agencies will enact over 3,500 regulations. Each one is viewed as an accomplishment to be touted in front of cameras and microphones. It's good for business. Voters like it when politicians 'do something.' Agencies gauge their success by how much they spend and how many rules they pass, as opposed to actual accomplishments.

Repeal is much more politically expensive. Almost every program and regulation has its vocal defenders. Many regulations give some companies an unfair advantage over their competitors. They will fight tooth and nail to keep government's thumb on the scales. Rare indeed is the lobbyist who asks to get rid of special treatment. In short, the rules of the game are stacked in favor of regulation, and against repeal.

Young and Otto go on to suggest a few ways to “change the rules,” including adding a 'repeal amendment' to the Constitution, establishing 'repeal committees' within Congress, adding automatic sunset provisions to all new regulations, and adopting Britain's 'one in, one out' approach.

Start Over agrees that law- and rulemaking should not be a one-way street and that laws and regulations need to be revisited and repealed if they’re found to be overly burdensome or otherwise unneeded. We are calling for a spring cleaning of outdated law, and for certain future laws and regulations to contain sunset provisions. Read more here.

And read Young and Otto’s piece in full and leave your feedback in the comments section below.

Posted 8/10/11 by Common Good

Start Over Campaign Touted in Providence Journal Editorial

In an editorial from this past weekend, the Providence Journal wrote that a proposed rule in Massachusetts which would require craft breweries in the state to grow or acquire locally at least 50% of the grains and hops they use to produce beer is an example of “regulatory overkill” that should belong on www.startover.org.

Posted 8/9/11 by Benjamin Miller

Paying $54 Million For A $1 Million Job

The Syracuse Post-Standard reports that New York State is about to hand out a $54 million tax credit for a cleanup project that probably cost less than $1 million. Why? A little thing called the Brownfield Cleanup Program:

Created in 2003, the program was intended to encourage the re-use of sites where pollution was making development difficult. But critics blast the program for giving developers of large projects benefits that far exceed the cost of any cleanup.

In this instance, a real estate developer named Robert Congel planned a $540 million shopping mall expansion on polluted land that, with a tax credit worth ten percent of the total project cost, would net him $54 million. The kicker? Cleaning up the contamination—which consisted of excavating land he’d have to dig up anyway to build the expansion’s foundation—cost at most $1 million. In other words, the state just paid Congel $54 million to do a $1 million job.

So brownfield is a dumb program. But there are lots of dumb programs in every state. What makes this windfall even more absurd is that the mall project was going forward even without the subsidy. Then, when the state told Congel that the project wouldn’t be covered by the program, he sued:

When [Congel’s company] applied for entry to the program in 2005, the DEC [Department of Environmental Conservation] turned it down, saying Destiny’s cleanup costs would be insignificant compared with the total cost of the expansion and, thus, did not qualify as a brownfield because the pollution was not great enough to prevent the developer from going ahead with the project.

Congel sued the department in 2007, alleging it overstepped its authority by establishing criteria not included in the 2003 law that created the Brownfield Cleanup Program.

Guess who won?

So not only is the state paying $54 million, it’s paying that money to support commercial development that would’ve happened anyway. The state agency even tried to use its discretion to prevent the wasteful payment—only to be shut down by a lawsuit essentially claiming that common sense shouldn’t be used.

No law can anticipate all its consequences—so shouldn’t authorities at least be allowed to make common sense judgments?

Posted 7/27/11 by Common Good

Today’s Read I: USA Today Says ‘Allow Postal Service To Make Tough Choices’

The USA Today editorial board today criticizes Congress for its pushback on the U.S. Postal Service’s plans to trim costs—plans which include eliminating Saturday delivery and closing unprofitable branches. The paper writes:

A significant part of the problem is that Congress wants the Postal Service to act like a private, for-profit business but imposes edicts and regulatory constraints that prevent it from doing so.

By law, for example, the mail must be delivered six days a week to most addresses. Postal officials want to cut that back to five days a week by ending delivery on Saturdays, which they say would save $3 billion a year.
…

Congressional resistance to ending Saturday delivery is a microcosm of how lawmakers talk about fiscal responsibility but balk at necessary, though unpopular, actions.

…

And this is happening even as the House and Senate indulge in needless squabbling over the debt limit. How about making tough choices instead?

Governing is about making choices—and Start Over agrees with the USA Today that Postal Service should be allowed to make tough ones, free from congressional politicking or outdated law.

Read the entire editorial and leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

Posted 7/27/11 by Common Good

Today’s Read II: Dr. Amy Tuteur on Defensive Medicine and America’s Aversion to Risk

In a blog entry at KevinMD, Dr. Amy Tuteur points to defensive medicine as the reason for “the explosion in the rate of C-sections and inductions” and reduction in number of VBACs (vaginal births after C-section). She goes on, however, to make a larger point about how defensive medicine fits into American society, writing:

There’s an important subtext that undergirds defensive medicine that often goes unrecognized and therefore unanalyzed. Defensive medicine is driven by the fact that we live in a ‘risk society,’ a society that is organized around a new understanding of risk.

There have always been risks, of course, but they have traditionally been viewed as outside the control of human beings. The risk society has arisen because of new beliefs that we can and (especially) that we should control every aspect of risk.

In our risk society, we are obsessed with the risk of auto accidents and outfit our cars with ever more airbags and safety features. We are obsessed with risks to our children, and restrict their play outdoors and their independence, and we are obsessed with illness and death, literally passing laws to control personal habits like smoking.

Dr. Tuteur goes on to point out that having doctors practice defensively poses its own risks—as does American’s efforts to eliminate risks from other areas of society:

So what’s wrong with defensive medicine? Defensive medicine rests on the premise that we must do things to reduce risk. It completely ignores the risks posed by doing things. But that’s not only a feature of defensive medicine, it is a feature of every aspect of a risk society.

Yes, we make cars safer by putting in more safety features, but we increase the price of cars. Yes, we reduce the risk of kidnapping if we don’t let our children play outdoors, but it’s not good for children to grow up cowering inside their houses. Yes, we reduce the risk of illness when we pass laws regulating private habits, but we also reduce freedom. And when we do more inductions for postdates we lower the risk of postdates stillbirth, but raise the risk of C-section.

Dr. Tuteur concludes by stating what must be done to combat defensive medicine and risk aversion in general—it’s an argument with which Start Over agrees, particularly the idea that realistic boundaries of acceptable risk (for doctors in particular) need to be defined. 

Read the entire blog entry and share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Posted 7/21/11 by Common Good

Model Recreation Liability Statute

As related by the New York Times this week, there’s a growing consensus among researchers that sheltering children from normal playground risks can pose its own, greater risks. But before park and playground providers—municipalities and schools in particular—can provide opportunities for more invigorating play, they need to be confident that doing so won’t expose them to legal liability. (The Times also notes that a significant reason for today’s “safety-first playgrounds” is legal fear.)

To this end, Common Good has drafted a model recreation liability statute that would provide play providers greater protection from lawsuits from normal recreation accidents. Click here to access the draft.

Posted 7/20/11 by Common Good

“Gang of Six” Deficit-Reduction Plan Calls for Medical Liability Reform

Included in the deficit-reduction plan released yesterday by the “Gang of Six”—which is comprised of U.S. Senators Chambliss, Coburn, Conrad, Crapo, Durbin, and Warner—is a call for Congress to find cost savings through medical liability reform.

The senators’ overall plan resembles that of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform’s, which was released in December 2010 and of which Senators Coburn, Conrad, Crapo, and Durbin were members. The Commission’s plan specifically calls for “creating specialized ‘health courts’ for medical malpractice lawsuits.”

Start Over argues that health courts hold the best promise for bringing reliability, efficiency, and fairness to medical liability disputes—and for limiting the costly practice of defensive medicine. Contact Congress and tell them that you support the renewed call for liability reform, and for health courts specifically. 

Posted 7/19/11 by Common Good

Today’s Read I: USA Today Examines Federal Employees’ Job Security

A USA Today analysis of government employment data from 2010 reveals that “federal employees’ job security is so great that workers in many agencies are more likely to die of natural causes than get laid off or fired.” Specific findings include:

• Only 0.55% of the federal workforce was fired in the last budget year

• None of the government’s 3,000 meteorologists, 2,500 health insurance administrators, 1,000 optometrists, 800 historians, or 500 industrial property managers were fired in 2010

• Of the government’s 35,000 attorneys, only 27 were fired in 2010—while 33 died

The paper quotes management expert John Sullivan who argues that “the low departure rates show a failure to release poor performers and those with obsolete skills.” He states: “Rather than indicating something positive, rates below 1% in the firing and layoff components would indicate a serious management problem ….”

Start Over argues that public employment needs a complete overhaul—one in which government employees are freed from bureaucratic strictures in exchange for greater accountability. It is the only way to make government work. 

Read the entire USA Today article and leave your thoughts in the comments section below.