Understanding Government

Businesses survive if they are healthy in every possible way.  They need ideas, energy, people, and the ability to solve problems. This includes problems posed by government regulation.  The head of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, is facing a lot of heat from business leaders, as John Broder’s thoughtful overview in the New York Times makes clear.   But whatever the EPA does, it’s not trying to make life difficult for businesses — it’s trying to protect the environment.  And in the end, as Elizabeth Shogren reports on NPR, EPA’s regulations don’t actually make life all that hard for businesses.

Darryl Fears reports on a realistic approach to climate change in a great Washington Post snapshot of the area around Hampton Roads, Virginia.  Including the cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach, this part of the country is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels because the land itself is sinking due to long-term geological processes. In a few generations, Virginia Beach could be left without a beach, and the Norfolk Naval Station could be more underwater than even the Navy likes to be. (more…)

In a radio story that would be just perfect on television, NPR’s Chris Arnold explores the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s decision to draft new safety regulations for table saws. Table saws injure more than 4000 people per year — meaning fingers and even hands getting cut off. Now an inventor has come up with a great new way to stop saw blades within 5/1000 of a second that they come into contact with human skin. It’s a great idea, and a great example of American ingenuity. But predictably, as Arnold reports, the power saw industry is opposing the CPSC’s decision to “a new regulation package which is likely to be released for public comment by the end of September.”

No one has been arrested for crimes related to the subprime mortgage crisis and the implosion of the U.S. economy.  Let’s face it — we don’t have enough of the comfortable kinds of jails to hold the thousands of denizens of Wall Street who were responsible for it (lightbulb! job creation through the construction of minimum security prisons!).

But as Chad Bray reports in the Wall Street Journal,the federal government is having some success prosecuting inside traders, with Messrs. Zvi Goffer, Emanuel Goffer, and Michael Kimelman the latest to be convicted of using non-public information to soak the investing public.  An appeal is expected, but if the conviction stands, these three individuals who sought to get rich quick could have 20 years in federal prison to think about where they went wrong.  And the SEC and the Justice Department have another success in fighting the latest species of organized crime.

It’s  a start.  In today’s world, $250 million is just not a lot of money, but as Brian Vastag reports in the Washington Post, anything that helps move America move beyond its “early-20th-century power grid” is a fairly drastic change from the status quo.  White House science adviser John Holdren has announced the Obama administration’s plan to upgrade rural electric lines with $250 million in loans and to “work closely with the nation’s power companies as they invest in new power technologies.”  There is also a concept for a “research hub” on smart grid strategies. (more…)