June 30, 2000
EPA Regulations Out Of Gas?
U.K. Gun Policy Backfires
Cookiegate: Agencies Ignore Privacy Policy
According to The New York Times, a group of Republican state legislators in Wisconsin yesterday sued the Environmental Protection Agency over clean-air regulations that they said had brought high gasoline prices to southern Wisconsin. The lawsuit asserts that the agency failed to consider the price consequences of requirements for a new formulation for cleaner-burning gasoline and seeks suspension of the rules.
Scott R. Jensen, speaker of the State Assembly, said the reformulated gasoline was costing consumers in some areas of the state 25 to 50 cents more per gallon. Officials of the environmental agency had calculated the additional cost of the ethanol-blended gas at 1.2 cents a gallon.
In "Bad Policies Fuel Midwest Gasoline Prices," Director of Natural Resource Studies Jerry Taylor explains that the culprits behind high gas prices "are former President George Bush and the 102nd Congress, the proud parents of the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990," because the Act imposes costly requirements on refiners.
In "The EPA's Clean Air-ogance," Steven J. Milloy and Michael Gough, commenting on air standards, show how "a close inspection of the EPA proposal shows that it lacks a sound basis in science." In "Time to Reopen the Clean Air Act: Clearing Away the Regulatory Smog," K.H. Jones and Jonathan Adler make the case for revisiting the Clean Air Act to reduce EPA regulations such as "mandatory carpooling and enhanced inspection and maintenance programs to technology standards for factory emissions and new emissions controls on lawn mowers, snow blowers, chain saws, and the like."
The London Daily Telegraph yesterday reported that high crime in England and Wales can be linked to restrictions on guns. A new survey shows that the risk of contact crime is higher in England and Wales than anywhere else surveyed.
"The main reason for a much lower burglary rate in America," the paper stated, "is householders' propensity to shoot intruders. They do so without fear of being dragged before courts and jailed for life."
In "Fighting Back: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun," an analysis of a 1987 Florida law that allowed citizens to carry concealed firearms in public, Jeffrey R. Snyder found that there was a decrease in violent crime, not the increase many people had predicted.
Last week, the Cato Institute hosted the book forum featuring legal scholar John R. Lott, Jr., author of "More Guns, Less Crime." His updated book presents the most comprehensive analysis ever done on crime statistics and the right-to-carry laws. Video of the forum is available on the Cato Web site.
Cookiegate: Agencies Ignore Privacy Policy
As reported here last week, the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy had been secretly tracking visitors to its Web site, according to The Washington Post. Users of the site had electronic "cookies" dropped into their hard drives which then relayed information to the government agency about their Internet usage. The administration promptly ordered the activities to stop.
Today, Wired News reports that Federal agencies are ignoring stern White House instructions not to use cookies on government Web sites. Dozens of U.S. government sites, including ones operated by the Justice Department, the Defense Department, and the Energy Department continue sending cookies to the computers of unsuspecting visitors.
An investigation by Wired News shows that these agencies and many others appear to be violating a Clinton administration directive that halted the controversial practice last week. Government use of cookies may also run afoul of a 1974 privacy law.
In "How Big Brother Began,"
Director of Information Studies Solveig Singleton writes that seemingly
innocuous measures by government can lead to an Orwellian state. In testimony
before Congress, Singleton discussed the dangers of government collection
of individuals' data because it "alone has the power or arrest and prosecution,
and to demand asset forfeitures. Abuses of information collected by government
in the past show that that government will not observe safeguards intended
to prevent the abuse of the power to collect information."
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