Odds & Ends: Hot XXX Insider Trading; Paul Newman’s Own Green; Gilder’s Wisdom; A Sunny Mourning

50 EGGS IN AN HOUR? UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED!

Hollywood legend Paul Newman hosted a fundraiser in his New York home for Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Why is Nader running? Because, as Willie Sutton famously observed about banks, that’s where the money is. According to NPR, Nader doesn’t harbor any illusions about winning. The network reports he just hopes to qualify for federal matching funds.

GET ON THE BUSc

The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced its proposed rules for diesel vehicles. EPA claims that fumes from diesel trucks and buses cause untold cancers. How ironic. After all, it’s the same EPA which has been pushing mass transit, including buses, under the Clean Air Act and through its smart growth plans.

GEORGE ORWELL, CALL YOUR OFFICE

The Doublespeak of the Month Award goes to Comrade Castro down in Cuba. Incensed by recent UN condemnation of Cuba’s abysmal human-rights record, Fidel harangued a group of farmers in an address where he claimed, “This is the freest country in the world.” Of course, in a perverse way, he may be on to something. In Cuba, citizens enjoy many freedoms–freedom from prosperity, freedom from progress, freedom from basic liberties, etc.

NO ABSENTEE BALLOTING

To counter claims his is a police state, according to the Associated Press, Castro cajoled members of the audience to “raise your hand if you know of a single disappearance” of dissidents in Cuba. Not surprisingly, no hands went up. “No one can raise their hand!” he shouted triumphantly. Of course, many of those with evidence to contradict Fidel weren’t there. Such is the condition of the disappeared.

BUT IT TASTES SO GOOD!

A symposium of the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare made international headlines with the announcement that cockroaches are capable of feeling pain. That hardly strikes us as novel, but what caught our attention were the comments of the representative who argued that sheep can recognize and differentiate among faces, similar to how humans do. Why do we care? Because of his, um, sheepish acknowledgement that he occasionally eats lamb, despite his findings.

ONLY THE LITTLE PEOPLE OBSERVE THE LAW

Guess who’s not wearing his seatbelt? Yup, President Clinton. He reportedly refused to wear his seatbelt on an Air Force One takeoff in direct contravention of federal law. Given his administration’s enthusiasm for forcing regulations on the public at large, it’s odd that the Commander-in-Chief has decided he’s not obligated to follow the annoying mandates the rest of us must observe.

WEALTH, AND NOT POVERTY, OF WISDOM

“Any time in human history that people have projected existing trends, they have predicted catastrophe. If you imagine that the only resources you will ever have are the resources that you have now, then inevitably you will predict their exhaustion. Malthus did it. Ricardo did it. In the 1970s, an international group of scientists, gathered under the auspices of the Club of Rome, declared that within a century there would be famine everywhere, energy resources exhausted, pollution risen to impossibly toxic levels, and, I believe, a new Ice Age on the way. What the doomsayers don’t understand is that the reason humans prevail is creativity, and creativity always comes as a surprise.”

~George Gilder, quoted in The New Yorker, May 29, 2000

I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW

Another wondrous advance in medical science, this time from north of the border. According to United Press International, Canadian scientists have successfully implanted spider genes in a herd of goats, which has led to the production of silky strands in goat milk that can provide sutures for delicate eye surgery. The novel advance, pioneered by Quebec’s Nexia Biotechnologies, also can be used to reconstruct tendons or ligaments and to repair bones. One wonders how the Jeremy Rifkins, the folks at Greenpeace, and the other professional protestors of biotechnology will find a cloud in this silver lining.

THE FREE STATE?

The Maryland State Bar Association refused to add the Federalist Society to the links page on its web site because it deems the Society partisan. “We try to maintain a non-biased resource of information and facts to our membership and do not want to appear to be endorsing a specific point of view,” wrote the MSBA’s webmaster. So who does get to link to their page? Groups like the Women’s Law Center of Maryland, which takes blatant positions on issues such as the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 1999 and the Child Custody Protection Act. Other groups include the Maryland Gay and Lesbian Law Association and the Alliance of Black Women Attorneys.

GOOD NEWS! NOT A CLOUD IN THE SKY!

An ethical dilemma for greens is shaping up in the wake of news reports from India that a solar-powered crematorium is being built. Apparently the 540 foot solar dish will be able to reduce a body to ashes in just three hours, assuming it’s sunny. It will also save 600 pounds of firewood. Environmental boosters will now have to figure out how to balance cheerleading for solar power with the need for material to compost.

MAYBE THEY JUST NEED A GOOD LAWYER

Writes Walter Olson on his excellent site Overlawyered.com: “Most federal agencies win most of the time when their regulatory decision making is challenged in federal court, but the Environmental Protection Agency in recent years has been a glaring exception, losing a large share of the cases it has defended, including high-profile battles over electric car mandates, gasoline reformulation, and Clean Water Act permit-granting, among many others.”

WHAT’S NEXT? SNUFF FILMS WITH STOCK SHORTERS?

How the mighty are falling. We have commented a number of times how the new economy is loosening the grip of Wall Street movers and shakers, who are stunned at how they may be losing their master of the universe status. The Internet, particularly, is rendering large aspects of the traditional financial services industry irrelevant and anachronistic. So it didn’t really surprise us to hear that Kathryn Gannon had been arrested by authorities for her part in a Wall Street insider trading scheme. Gannon is better known as Marilyn Star, which is the name she has used in many pornographic films.

PLASTIC BOTTLES SAVE LIVES!

From a May 17 Reuters report: “A man alleging contaminated soda was shipped to eastern Europe threatened to kill himself with broken soda bottles at a congressional hearing…before being overcome and taken from the Capitol. The unidentified man…broke two large glass soda bottles and threatened to cut himself with the jagged edges.” No word yet on whether the Consumer Product Safety Commission is moving to outlaw or regulate those dangerous glass bottles.

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN BELL?

Sure, the Spanish-American War has been history for a century. But sometimes it takes that long for Congress to act. The House of Representatives just approved legislation to repeal a special “temporary” federal phone tax passed in 1898 to finance the war.  Interestingly, it was passed originally to appeal to national soak-the-rich sentiments. Fewer than 1,500 households had phones when the tax was passed.

TROUBLE FOR AL GORE?

Perhaps the Ralph Nader candidacy really is shaping into something of an electoral juggernaut. The president of the United Auto Workers, Stephen Yokich, declared recently that Nader is more deserving of the coveted UAW endorsement than Gore, given the veep’s support for normalized trade relations with Communist China.

TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER

Not that we place too much faith in it, but a reader wrote in to note an interesting coincidence. The correspondent, who shall remain anonymous, points out that on July 8, 1947, a spaceship with five aliens aboard reportedly crashed on a ranch outside Roswell, NM. Exactly what happened at Roswell has been the subject of intense speculation for decades. But we do know that roughly nine months later, on March 31, 1948, young Al was born to Senator Albert Gore and his wife, Pauline. Says our faithful reader, “I don’t know about you, but for me, that clears up a lot of things.”

WHO CARES?

Reuters reported recently that the Canadian government was assembling a huge master database of information on its citizens, containing a great amount of highly personal information–“up to 2,000 pieces of information on every Canadian citizen.” One CEI wag says that rather than being alarmed at the invasion of privacy, he wonders what part of the average Canadian’s life could possibly be of interest to anyone. Hmmm. That may be overdoing it. Still, public outcry in Canada led the government to scrap the plan.