CEI Today: TSA body scanners, Obama bailouts & jobs failures, and new global warming data

Today in the News

TSA BODY SCANNERS – ROBERT L. CRANDALL & MARC SCRIBNER

Tribune-Review: TSA flouts the law on body scanners

For more than five years, the Transportation Security Administration has been deploying full-body imaging scanners in our nation’s airports. About 700 scanners have been deployed in nearly 190 airports nationwide.

While the agency keeps installing these devices, there are real doubts whether these are actually making anybody safer. Yet because TSA failed to solicit public comments about the scanners — in violation of federal law — the agency is flying blind. >Read the full commentary on Triblive.com

 

ROMNEY OHIO ADS & AUTO BAIL OUTS – JOHN BERLAU & MARK BEATTY

National Review: Auto-Bailout Casualties – The Obama administration insisted on closing too many dealerships.

In the Obama auto bailouts, jobs were not all created equal. The administration moved heaven and earth to save the jobs and generous benefits of General Motors and Chrysler workers who belonged to the United Auto Workers, ripping up the contracts of bondholders and secured creditors to give the UAW an enlarged stake in the new companies.

But non-UAW workers affected by the bankruptcies were not so lucky. At a former GM subsidiary, Delphi, which manufactures automotive parts, 28,000 UAW workers were paid full pension benefits that GM had promised, but 41,000 other workers were not.

 

JOBS – MATT PATTERSON

The Washington Times: Obama’s jobs council a total flop, Anti-poverty programs are actually anti-prosperity

When President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness last gathered in January, he boasted, “This has not been a show council. This has been a work council. I have been tracking implementation of [the council‘s] recommendations. And we’ve seen substantial progress across the board.” Substantial progress? Six months after that meeting, unemployment remains stuck at 8.2 percent. The reality is even worse than this number suggests: Labor Department statistics only count those who have actively sought work in the preceding four weeks.

 

GLOBAL WARMING DATA – MARLO LEWIS

Globalwarming.org:John Christy: Climate Data Maven

Earlier this week, the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee held a hearing entitled “Update on the Latest Climate Change Science and Adaptation Measures.” Testimony by Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama Huntsville is too valuable not to share with the folks who visit this site.

Christy emphasizes that he is not using these data to prove that U.S. weather is becoming less extreme or colder. Rather, his point is that “extreme events are poor metrics to use for detecting climate change.”