CEI Today: Crushing chemical innovation, PolitiFact = Liar of the Year?, and caging Hemingway’s cats

CHEMICAL REGULATION vs INNOVATION – ANGELA LOGOMASINI

Openmarket.org: Wheels In Motion To Crush Chemical Innovation

Chemical industry groups say they want to “modernize” the nation’s chemical law by applying reasonable reforms that would prevent states from passing a patchwork of conflicting state chemical laws. But industry groups should be careful of what they wish for. In fact, regulatory trends are clearly moving in a dangerous direction, one that threatens to undermine innovation, reduce profits for chemical companies, raise prices, and reduce choice for consumers. And there is little reason to believe that these regulatory changes will yield any benefits for public health or the environment.

POLITIFACT – HANS BADER

Openmarket.org: PolitiFact Is The Liar Of The Year

PolitiFact falsely depicted Michael Cannon, the director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, as suggesting that state law overrides federal law, erroneously attributing to him a radical claim that he never made (that states can forbid the federal government from setting up health insurance exchanges). Cannon merely observed that state law in 14 states forbids “state employees” to set up Obamacare health insurance exchanges, and he never said that federal employees could not set them up.

In 2012, slanted, dishonest PolitiFact made innumerable false claims in the course of branding people as liars or giving them “pants on fire” ratings. Some of the worst are described in a November 2012 Forbes commentary.

REGULATION ROUNDUP – RYAN YOUNG

Openmarket.org: Caging Hemingway’s Cats

Ernest Hemingway famously owned polydactyl cats, which have six toes instead of the usual five. Descendants of those cats still live at the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum in Florida. The USDA is insisting that the museum “obtain an exhibitor’s license; contain and cage the cats in individual shelters at night, or alternatively, construct a higher fence or an electric wire atop the existing brick wall, or alternatively, hire a night watchman to monitor the cats; tag each cat for identification purposes; construct additional elevated resting surfaces for the cats within their existing enclosures; and pay fines for the Museum’s non-compliance with the AWA.”