Recent decades have seen the rise of a new “antiquities law” in which museums and private collectors have come under legal pressures to hand over (“repatriate”) ancient artifacts and archaeological finds to governments, Indian tribes and other officially constituted bodies, even when those artifacts have been in legitimate collector hands for 100 or more years with no hint of force or fraud. Some advocates frankly advance the view that government should entirely ban the private ownership of antiquities or limit it to authorized nonprofit institutions. The latest victim of the trend are numismatists, as the 1983 Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act authorizes the federal government to restrict importation of some ancient coins based on the expressed wishes of countries that participate in the convention. A federal judge has just rejected a challenge to the law, which — as I argue in a recent op-ed in the Examiner — should not put an end to the controversy.

Or, as Timothy Egan titles it at the New York Times: “Nature Without the Nanny State.” After reporting on a higher level of deaths this year at Yosemite, and an increased level of warnings and lawsuits, Egan notes:

My experience, purely anecdotal, is that the more rangers try to bring the nanny state to public lands, the more careless, and dependent, people become.

That point might have broader application than national parks.

Internet site Gawker says that Ashton Kutcher’s editorship of Details magazine was “a brazenly self interested and highly misleading act of journalism.” He helped produce a special online version of the mag that featured tech companies he’s invested in without disclosing that fact.

Having disclosed it for him—the article is called “Ashton Kutcher Is a Massive Whore”—Gawker now reports on how federal officials are looking over their glasses at the television personality and entrepreneur.

“It’s certainly a possibility that a case like this could be investigated,” assistant Federal Trade Commission director Richard Cleland tells the Times of Kutcher’s Details special online issue, in which eight of 12 recommended products in one article were Kutcher investments. “If you’re out there promoting individual products that you have a specific investment in, it needs to be disclosed… If you have a significant economic investment that is not otherwise apparent, that may potentially affect the credibility of your endorsement, and I see that as a potential problem.” The FTC has made a priority out of online conflicts of interest.

It’s also possible Kutcher violated SEC rules. You’re not supposed to promote a company you partly own—say, in a magazine—if you know it’s soon to go public. And if a company’s shares trade on private secondary markets you must abide by federal rules on deceptive marketing, which a former SEC lawyer told the Times were “very broad… These rules apply any time there is a securities transaction.”

<sarcasm>You see, in the land of the free—where the government’s founding charter says it “shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech”—you can’t just say any old stuff you want to in a magazine! Say things that help your business interests too much and you are obviously outside of what the quaint old Constitution says. The First Amendment is fuzzy on this. “[M]ake no law” might mean “make a law if you have a good reason.” Duh, Ashton! You’re pretty, but maybe not very smart, saying what you want in the United States of America.</sarcasm>

This episode itself illustrates why “make no law” works despite the fact that it allows sharp business practices. Gawker and other media outlets are actively curing any information deficit with plainly worded articles like “Ashton Kutcher Is a Massive Whore.” This is in aid of the caveat emptor rule, which works even better when people know they need to think for themselves and look for assistance from outlets like Gawker, of which there are an endless supply thanks to the Internet.

Caveat supplicantem if you think that the government is going to protect your interests as a consumer better than you can. Not even close. So there is no good reason for overturning the First Amendment here.

Rhetorically, President Obama is a champion of industry—as long as it’s green. To put our money where his mouth is, the president has already devoted over $100 billion in direct subsidies and tax credits to promote investment in solar panel, wind harnessing, lithium ion battery, and other industries he deems crucial to “winning the future.” (See Economic Report of the President, 2011, P. 129, Box 6–2 “Clean Energy Investments in the Recovery Act” for a list of some of those subsidies.) Concerning those industries, the president said in his 2010 SOTU address:

Countries like China are moving even faster… I’m not going to settle for a situation where the United States comes in second place or third place or fourth place in what will be the most important economic engine of the future.

To be sure, I am opposed to industrial policy, which presumes that one person or a cabal of self-anointed soothsayers knows how the future will unfold. But the story I am about to share is, I think, instructive in describing endemic policy dissonance within this administration and speaks to what even the president’s staunchest supporters describe as half-heartedness and an incapacity or unwillingness to follow through. Some chalk it up to indifference, but it’s really an aversion to making choices that could offend potential supporters.

While the president talks up the solar panel industry and commits our resources to its development, other policies of his administration undermine its success and encourage offshoring of production and the jobs that go with it. Dow Corning is one of the world’s largest producers of silicones, which are the most crucial components of solar panel production. The foremost ingredient in these silicones is silicon metal, which costs nearly twice the world market price in the United States because of antidumping restrictions on imports of the raw material from China and Russia (two of the world’s largest suppliers). Under U.S. antidumping law, Dow Corning and all other consumers of silicon metal were forbidden from participating formally in the proceedings that lead to the imposition of the duties.

As I described in a recent Cato policy paper, this is more than just tough luck for a few companies. This is economic self-flagellation on a grand scale. The antidumping statute prohibits consideration of the impact of prospective duties on downstream industries or on the economy as a whole, yet policymakers—having been steamrolled by the pro-antidumping lobby—have given scant consideration to the idea that this is plainly stupid policy, particularly in a globally integrated economy characterized by transnational supply chains and cross-border investment. In such an environment, if one hopes the best for the country’s value-added industries, there should be no restrictions on raw material inputs ever (a policy being embraced by other governments around the world).

Alas, the silicon metal restrictions constitute a big problem for Dow Corning and other industrial consumers of silicon metal, but a bigger problem for the economy. To compete with producers of silicones—the solar panel industries—in Europe, Japan, Canada, and China, Dow Corning is forced to consider moving production abroad so that it is not at such a large cost disadvantage from the outset. As Dow Corning officials put it in a very informative letter:

If Dow Corning were to move the production occurring within its Kentucky operations to any country outside the U.S., it would be more competitive by simply having access to the same global supply of raw materials as all other competitors.

Dow Corning could move offshore, a move it would prefer not to make, and probably recover the costs of the transition in short order. But doing so would reduce U.S. economic activity and destroy U.S. jobs, which would have a more lasting adverse impact. So, in an effort to avoid offshoring its operations—a move that one would think the administration would welcome—Dow Corning submitted an application to have some of its silicone production facilities in Kentucky designated as a Foreign Trade Subzone. The key policy objective of foreign trade zones, according to the former president of the National Association of Foreign Trade Zones is:

The optimization of economic development in the United States creating jobs, investment and value-added activity. The current regulations strike a balance that considers antidumping and countervailing duty petitioners, importers and U.S. manufacturers. Imported products that are made with components that may be dumped or subsidized are not subject to antidumping duty or countervailing duty. If these duties can be avoided by locating a factory in a foreign country, the Board should at least consider allowing it to happen here for export so that American workers can benefit. That is what the regulation achieves.

Basically, Dow Corning was proposing that to balance its need for access to world-priced silicon metal with the country’s need for economic activity and jobs, it would bring in silicon metal from foreign sources, including silicon metal from China and Russia, to be transformed into silicons in that subzone. Antidumping duties on silicon metals that were used to make silicones that were subsequently exported without first “entering the commerce of the United States” would be waived, while antidumping duties on silicon metals used to make silicones sold in the United States would be subject to the full payment of duties.

But during the period in which the FTZ application was pending, an army of professional antidumping law supporters—the Committee to Support U.S. Trade Laws (CSUSTL), the United Steelworkers Union, the Steel Manufacturers Association, Senator Charles Schumer (D‑NY), and others—argued that granting the designation would serve only to circumvent the antidumping order, and that the well-being of the petitioner was all that mattered under the antidumping law.

After hearings, several comment periods, and deliberation the Foreign Trade Zones Board granted Dow Corning’s FTZ request, but “subject to a restriction prohibiting the admission of foreign status silicon metal subject to an antidumping or countervailing duty order,” thereby negating the entire purpose of the application and effectively daring Dow Corning to shut down its Kentucky operations and move abroad. That decision was signed by the acting assistant secretary for import administration—the same person charged with overseeing the Commerce Department’s notoriously pro-petitioner, antidumping regime, and, for the record, a person who answers to President Obama.

Did the president know what was at stake and look the other way? Or did he not even know? Neither answer reflects particularly well on a man claiming to have a plan for job creation and economic growth.

Something as simple as the concept of tradeoffs can cause cognitive dissonance to good-hearted people who want too hard to drive the society toward their perception of the good.

A nice illustration of that is the cost in lives of making cars that use less gasoline. How can doing good for the environment possibly be harmful? Oh, it can be deadly.

Nicely illustrated by CEI’s Sam Kazman on John Stossel’s show.

Everyone agrees that it’s rather stupid for a federal funding dispute to idle about 70,000 workers on airport-related construction. Just as absurd, there have been 20 stop-gap funding bills passed for the FAA since 2007. News stories are digging into the political disputes surrounding the FAA, but they aren’t addressing the root problem.

The root problem is that we have federalized the funding of airports in this country, when there is absolutely no need to. Airports are generally owned by state and local governments, and it should be up to them to figure out how to finance them. By federalizing infrastructure financing, we are simply encouraging the misallocation of resources through the political pork barrel.

We should get the federal government out of financing airports. Then state governments should look to the advantages of airport privatization, which is a reform that has swept the world from London to Sydney. Private airports can plan their investment programs in an efficient manner, balancing costs and the market demand for services. Privatized airports can raise revenue from debt, equity, fees on airlines and passengers, advertising, retail concessions, and other items. There is no need for taxpayer funding of airports.

The FAA dispute doesn’t affect current air traffic control operations, but it is affecting investments in ATC upgrades. Our ATC system needs large new investments in technology, but it is a battle in Congress to secure funding and to make sure the funding is spent efficiently. The FAA has a very poor record at making cost-efficient investments. The solution is to privatize our ATC system, as Canada has done.

When the federal government is like an octopus with tentacles stretching into every area of the economy, the economy gets dragged down by political dysfunction in Washington. We see the same sort of dysfunction in the federal government’s other business activities, such as passenger rail and mail delivery.

A lot of people worry about the quality and quantity of the nation’s infrastructure investments. But we don’t need to rely on disorganized and indebted governments to fix the problems. We can move ahead with privatization and let America’s entrepreneurs take on the challenge.

Centrist and liberal columnists are lamenting the lack of tax increases in the debt deal. But the hollowness of the deal itself provides a good justification for Republicans to oppose all tax increases in such bipartisan deals.

The federal debt crisis is being caused by spending increases, not revenue shortfalls. When the economy recovers, revenues will rise to the normal level of about 18 percent of GDP, even with all current tax cuts in place. It is spending that is projected to rise to abnormal levels, as I discussed in my recent Senate testimony.

However, let’s say a fiscal conservative in Congress was willing to swap, say, $1 of tax increases for $3 of spending cuts in a deficit-reduction deal. Most likely, the tax increases would turn out to be real and damaging, but the spending cuts would probably be phony or overstated, as the deal just passed illustrates.

In the debt-limit deal, discretionary spending rises over time. It isn’t cut.  Economist Larry Summers seems to agree that the cuts in the deal aren’t real:

Despite claims of spending reductions in the range of $1 trillion, the agreements reached so far are likely to have little impact on actual spending over the next decade. The deal confirms the very low levels of spending already negotiated for 2011 and 2012 and caps 2013 spending about where most would have expected this Congress to end up. Beyond that, outcomes are anyone’s guess — Congress votes on discretionary spending annually, and the current Congress cannot effectively constrain future actions. True, there are caps and sequester threats in the debt deal, but these are virtually certain to be reformulated in 2013.

Deficit deals during the Reagan and Bush I years typically promised the public more spending cuts than tax increases. But the tax increases stuck, while the spending cuts were either smoke-and-mirrors or they didn’t last.

Consider the big budget deal in 1990, the one where Bush I infamously reneged on his “read my lips” promise. Bush claimed that the deal delivered two and a half dollars of spending cuts for each dollar of tax increases. But the cuts to defense in the deal were against an inflated baseline, and nondefense spending increased 15 percent in the two years following the deal.

Looking ahead to the special congressional committee that will report in November, I don’t see any incentive for a fiscal conservative to agree to tax increases. Democrats will call for a “balanced” plan, but that makes no sense because the cause of the government’s problems is not balanced. In addition, the idea that giving in a bit on taxes in order to leverage larger spending cuts has not worked in the past, as noted.

I’d like to be an optimist about spending cuts in a November deal, but most current political leaders show no interest in real cuts. Leaders in both parties continue to be positively allergic to naming any actual programs that they want to cut. Indeed, in the Washington Post today, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner calls for more federal spending, not less. He wants more for “education and innovation.” He wants to “strengthen” Medicare. He decries the “extreme agenda” of policymakers who want to “dismantle” programs for the elderly and less fortunate. And he wants “short-term measures to strengthen the economy,” by which he means spending on infrastructure and unemployment subsidies.

Good grief. Geithner’s op-ed reflects the administration’s intransigence in defending the bloated welfare state, not any willingness to make serious budget reforms.