Danny Hakim of the New York Times tells us how state government works under Andrew Cuomo, in an in-depth investigation of the Empire State Development Corporation:

New York State’s economic development agency created a new position last June, and then found a candidate to fill it: a young man named Willard Younger, who had just graduated from Colgate University with a degree in classics and religion. He became a special projects associate, at a salary of $45,000 a year, according to state personnel records.

His father, Stephen P. Younger, is a lawyer and power broker in legal circles who was a member of one of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s transition teams. He has also donated $26,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns over the years, disclosure records show.

The next month, the agency hired 23-year-old Andrew Moelis, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, for another new position, strategic planning associate, at a salary of $75,000 a year.

Shortly before Mr. Moelis’s first day of work, his father, Ron Moelis, a prominent real estate developer, gave $25,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s re-election campaign, according to the records.

Check out the return on investment available to political donations: give $25,000, get $75,000 within a year. I wonder if any of Mr. Moelis’s real estate developments offered such an ROI. As I wrote many years ago in the Wall Street Journal:

Business people know that you have to invest to make money. Businesses invest in factories, labor, research and development, marketing, and all the other processes that bring goods to consumers and, they hope, lead to profits. They also invest in political processes that may yield profits.

If more money can be made by investing in Washington than by drilling another oil well, money will be spent there.…

Every dollar spent by the federal government ends up in someone’s pocket as a salary, a transfer payment, a subsidy, a purchase or a loan. But there are other valuable services available, too: regulations that eliminate or hamstring your competitors, for instance, or a tax provision that induces consumers to purchase your product.

But “jobs for the boys” can also be a way to reward political supporters. And if it’s a job for your own boy, so much the better.

Agencies like this can also be very helpful to a politician with larger ambitions:

Empire State has also hired friends of Mr. Cuomo who may help form his political brain trust should he decide to run for president in 2016.

James P. Rubin, a former State Department spokesman, was hired at the agency in 2011 as counselor on competitiveness and international affairs, with a salary of $150,000 a year. Mr. Rubin’s appointment was seen by political consultants as a move by Mr. Cuomo to add a foreign policy hand to his stable.

Empire State hired 49 people in the first 20 months of the Cuomo administration, according to personnel records obtained by The Times. Nearly a third were the governor’s political associates, donors and friends, or their relatives, the records and interviews show.

At least seven of the new hires with connections were placed in newly created positions.

We hear a lot about austerity in government today. We hear that “state and local government coffers [are] empty.” We hear that spending has been “cut to the bone.” I’d say that the Empire State Development Corporation would be a good place to save the New York taxpayers $741.8 million this year.

In an op-ed on the New York Times web site yesterday, I voice my belief that the gun control bill authored by Sens. Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey, if properly modified, can and should pass with the support of gun rights advocates.

In the interest of being as specific as possible, I’d like to expand upon the sentiments expressed in that piece.

When the Senate rejected the Manchin-Toomey compromise on gun background checks, opponents of the bill were condemned for ignoring polls signaling up to 90 percent public support. The stonewalling by gun rights supporters was indeed a mistake—not just on the politics, but on the substance as well. In exchange for the modest, reasonable, and constitutional augmentation of background checks, there was plenty in the legislation for gun rights proponents to embrace.

Manchin-Toomey may be re-introduced. Gun rights advocates can seize the opportunity to address some of their own priorities while avoiding being labeled as obstructionists once again.

Here are the parts of Manchin-Toomey that gun rights proponents should be happy about, with a few recommended changes: 

First, the bill allows interstate handgun sales through dealers—under roughly the same rules that now govern long gun sales. Current law does not permit buying handguns from out-of-state sellers. So the new provision represents a major development. 

Second, Manchin-Toomey confirms that a firearms registry by the attorney general is prohibited, and adds a 15-year prison term for violators. The attorney general limitation should be broadened to cover all government agencies, the bill should clarify that data from all sources are precluded, and civil damages should be available for misuse of database records. Justice Department regulations (which should be codified in Manchin-Toomey) state that government records of approved applicants must be destroyed within 24 hours. Dealers retain the data much longer, but law enforcement agencies have access only during a criminal investigation. Registry prohibitions may not be foolproof, but Manchin-Toomey adds a layer of protection. 

Third, the bill sets a 48-hour limit on performing background checks. That’s reduced to 24 hours after four years. Most gun shows are two-day events—incompatible with current law that allows up to 72 hours for checks. That’s one reason for fewer shows of late. Under Manchin-Toomey, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) would come closer to matching its name.

Fourth, Manchin-Toomey reinforces current law permitting interstate transportation of firearms and ammunition—unless a certain weapon or use is barred. Guns have to be unloaded and inaccessible or locked, but the re-write of existing rules helps. Most important, state laws against unlicensed possession are preempted.

Fifth, the bill immunizes sellers from litigation when a gun is used unlawfully, unless the seller knows or should have known that the buyer provided false information or was ineligible to get a gun.

Sixth, Manchin-Toomey improves NICS by expending $400 million over four years, withholding grants to states that don’t meet specified benchmarks, clarifying that mental health records in NICS do not violate the privacy provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and assuring due process for veterans facing loss of gun rights because of alleged mental illness.

Weighed against those pro-gun-rights provisions is a modest concession to gun controllers: Background checks—which already cover all sales through federally licensed dealers, whether at stores or gun shows, over the Internet, or by mail—would be extended to cover private sales at shows, over the Internet, and through published ads. Manchin-Toomey still wouldn’t cover non-commercial transfers such as gifts or bequests, in-person sales outside a gun show, or sales responding to postings on community bulletin boards. Moreover, buyers would be exempt from background checks if they had a carry permit issued within five years. Until NICS can function remotely, Manchin-Toomey should also exempt private sales to rural residents far from licensed dealers.

Finally, three suggested improvements: First, dealers impose fees for background checks ranging from $25 to $125. If those fees are deemed to promote public safety, the public (not just law abiding gun owners) should foot some of the bill. That could be accomplished by federal rebates of a stipulated amount to those who pass the NICS check.

Second, Manchin-Toomey instructs that NICS checks must prioritize gun shows over gun stores. As a result, backlogs could hamper stores during weekends when shows are held. That favoritism should be eliminated by increasing NICS personnel to expedite processing.

Third, existing law denies firearms to anyone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.” The maximum sentence is ten years in federal prison. Thus every would-be gun owner who lies to NICS about marijuana use, and every owner who smokes marijuana, could spend a decade behind bars—an unconscionable punishment that must be rectified. 

Manchin-Toomey is complex and controversial. Committee hearings are necessary and the public must have ample time to review the legislation. Still, considered as a package, a reworked Manchin-Toomey would offer substantial benefits to gun owners while imposing tolerable restrictions—none of which intrudes on core Second Amendment liberties.

David Brooks has a piece in the New York Times this morning that’s worth reading, “Health Chaos Ahead,” even if it misses a crucial aspect of its subject. Obamacare is off to a rough start, he argues, and it’s only going to get worse. He says he’s talked to a bipartisan group of health care experts, and even some of the law’s supporters “think the whole situation is a complete disaster”—many predicting that it will collapse. Yet “a clear majority,” he adds, including some of the law’s opponents, believe that after a few years of messiness we’ll all settle down to a new normal.

That’s hard to believe, given the “cascades” of problems Brooks goes on to discuss: structural, technical, cost, adverse selection, and provider concentration cascades. That last one is especially noteworthy because, as Brooks says, “the law further incentivizes a trend under way: the consolidation of hospitals, doctors’ practices and other providers.”

That it does. So why does Brooks himself seem to believe that the system will survive? It’s because, even if the law’s unpopularity costs President Obama and the Democrats control of the Senate in 2014, the giant insurance companies and health care corporations spawned by Obamacare will come to the fore to defend it. “Having spent billions of dollars adapting to the new system, they are not going to want to see it repealed or replaced.”

He’s doubtless right about that, but it’s not simply because they want to preserve their “sunk costs” in the new system that these “rent seekers,” as economists call them, are and will continue to be the system’s biggest defenders. These are the same institutions, after all, that were onboard with Obamacare from the start. And they were onboard because, working hand-in-hand with government, they sought to gain advantages over smaller competitors that invariably find it difficult and often impossible to compete in so highly regulated a market as we have here.

Call it “crony capitalism,” yet it’s not capitalism at all. Labeled most charitably, it’s cartelism. But the root of the problem is not with the corporate importunings of Congress. It’s with congressional acquiescence. They’re the people who take an oath to uphold our Constitution for limited government. I’ve always thought that the snake, in the Garden of Eden, got a bum rap. Yes, he was tempting Eve, but she could have just said “no.” Maybe the 114^th Congress will have enough members, viewing the health care disaster unfolding before them, who will just say “no.” Then we might start returning to real capitalism.

My latest oped, in the Indy Star:

Meanwhile, many [Medicaid] enrollees can’t even find a doctor. One-third of primary care physicians won’t take new Medicaid patients. Only 20 percent of dentists accept Medicaid. In 2007, 12-year-old Deamonte Driver died — yes, died — because his mother couldn’t find one of those dentists.

For more on why states should reject ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion, read my latest Cato white paper, “50 Vetoes: How States Can Stop the Obama Health Law.”

In the 19th Century, when railroads were being built across the West, the federal government granted significant land and benefits to the railroad companies. The Great Railroad Right-of-Way Act of 1875 allowed the government to give railroad companies easements to build tracks — that is, a right to use sections of another’s property without legally owning it. The Brandt family eventually acquired land in Wyoming that came with pre-existing railroad easements.

In 2001, the owner of the easement formally abandoned all claims to it, presumably returning the property to the Brandts. But the government wanted that land. In 2006, it sued for title to the former easement land on the theory that the government retained a residual claim to it after the railroad abandoned it. The Brandts argue that the government has no such right and that taking their land requires just compensation under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause.

Although this may seem like a small, unique problem, the scope of the Old West’s railway system was huge and those old easements criss-cross the land of thousands of property owners. In 1983, Congress amended the National Trails System Act to allow the government to take abandoned railroad easements and turn them into land for public recreation and “railroad banking.” Landowners have been fighting the taking of their property under the Trails Act ever since, claiming, as here, that the government’s original grant to the railroads contained no residual right of possession for the government.

Indeed, two federal courts of appeals, the Seventh and Federal Circuits, have held that the government didn’t retain any residuary rights. In the Brandts’ case, however, the Tenth Circuit held otherwise. This circuit split is untenable. Over 5,000 miles of abandoned track has been taken by the government since the Trails Act, and about 10,000 property owners are currently fighting in federal courts to hold onto their property.

Of course, given the possible benefits of not having to pay compensation to landowners, the government has responded to these claims by being aggressively litigious, reaching into its endless war-chest of taxpayer-provided resources to challenge the landowners on every tiny point. As the Federal Circuit said, the government’s behavior is “puzzling” in that it is “foregoing the opportunity to minimize the waste both of its own and plaintiffs’ litigation resources, not to mention that of scarce judicial resources,” but also by advancing arguments “so thin as to border on the frivolous.”

Cato, along with the National Association of Reversionary Property Owners, has filed an amicus brief supporting the Brandts and asking the Supreme Court to rectify the above situation. We argue that the Tenth Circuit ignored the reasoning of its sister circuits and instead relied on far less persuasive authority. Given the scope of land possibly involved — there are approximately 130,000 miles of abandoned track in the country, with 3,000 more being abandoned every year — it’s difficult to imagine a decision more unsettling to the expectation of thousands of property owners than the Tenth Circuit’s unjustified ruling here.

Ironically, given the scope of the problem, the Court’s resolution of this issue against the government might actually save the government money, even if it has to pay just compensation. The government’s behavior in challenging these claims demonstrates not only the need for the Court to rectify circuit splits, but also to uphold the property rights of citizens against opportunistic, self-interested, and powerful governmental forces that often just don’t play fair.

The government will now have a chance to respond to the cert petition in Brandt v. United States, and then this fall the Supreme Court will decide whether to take the case.

Global Science Report is a weekly feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”

As promised, we report here on yet another published estimate of the earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity that is towards the low end of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) range of possibilities.

Recall that the equilibrium climate sensitivity is the amount that the earth’s surface temperature will rise from a doubling of the pre-industrial atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. As such, it is probably the most important factor in determining whether or not we need to “do something” to mitigate future climate change. Lower sensitivity means low urgency, and, if low enough, carbon dioxide emissions confer a net benefit.

And despite common claims that the “science is settled” when it comes to global warming, we are still learning more and more about the earth complex climate system—and the more we learn, the less responsive it seems that the earth’s average temperature is to human carbon dioxide emissions.

The latest study to document a low climate sensitivity is authored by independent scientist Nic Lewis and is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Climate. Lewis’ study is a rather mathematically complicated reanalysis of another earlier mathematically complicated analysis that matches the observed global temperature change to the temperature change produced from a simple climate model with a configurable set of parameters whose actual values are largely unknown but can be assigned in the model simulations. By varying the values of these parameters in the models and seeing how well the resulting temperature output matches the observations, you can get some idea as to what the real-world value of these parameters are. And the main parameter of interest is the equilibrium climate sensitivity. Lewis’ study also includes additional model years and additional years of observations, including several years from the current global warming “hiatus” (i.e., the lack of a statistically significant rise in global temperature that extends for about 16 years, starting in early 1997).

We actually did something along a similar vein—in English—and published it back in 2002. We found the same thing that Lewis did: substantially reduced warming. We were handsomely rewarded for our efforts by the climategate mafia, who tried to get 1) the paper withdrawn, 2) the editor fired—not just from the journal, but from Auckland University, and 3) my (Michaels) 1979 PhD “reopened” by University of Wisconsin.

Lewis concludes that the median estimate of the equilibrium climate sensitivity is 1.6°C, with a 90% range extending from 1.0°C to 3.0°C. (That’s almost exactly what we found 11 years ago.)

Based on this result, we welcome Lewis (2013) to the growing list of results published in the scientific literature since 2010 which find the climate sensitivity to be on the low side of the IPCC. God knows what the climategaters are emailing today.

Figure 1 illustrates all the new results as well as the IPCC’s take. 

Take special note of the new findings (and their mean) in relation to the black bar at the top labeled “IPCC AR5 Climate Models.” Of the 19 state-of-the-art climate models used in the IPCC’s newest Assessment Report (which is still in its draft form) exactly zero have an equilibrium climate sensitivity that is as low as the mean value of estimates from the recent literature included in our Figure.

Based on the collection of results illustrated in our Figure, the future climate change projections about to be issued by the IPCC are off by an average of a whopping 70 percent.

No wonder the IPCC is reluctant to lower their best estimate of the actual value of the earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity. If they did, they would be admitting that the collection of climate models they have chosen (there is choice involved here) to project the earth’s future climate are, well, how should we put this, wrong!…which would mean that so too is the rate at which the sky is falling, according to the USGCRP and the US EPA.

We, at Cato’s Center for the Study of Science, will continue our efforts to portray the evolving state of climate science and to convince the powers-that-be that national and international assessments upon which EPA regulations are founded (and loony proposals for a carbon tax are based) are fatally flawed. Or as we put it, in our recent (April 12) review of the USGCRP’s draft “National Assessment,” in its current form, “the NCA [National Climate Assessment] will be obsolete on the day of its official release.”

References:

Aldrin, M., et al., 2012. Bayesian estimation of climate sensitivity based on a simple climate model fitted to observations of hemispheric temperature and global ocean heat content. Environmetrics, doi: 10.1002/env.2140.

Annan, J.D., and J.C Hargreaves, 2011. On the genera­tion and interpretation of probabilistic estimates of climate sensitivity. Climatic Change, 104, 324–436.

Hargreaves, J.C., et al., 2012. Can the Last Glacial Maximum constrain climate sensitivity? Geophysical Research Letters, 39, L24702, doi: 10.1029/2012GL053872

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Solomon, S., et al. (eds). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 996pp.

Lewis, N. 2013. An objective Bayesian, improved approach for applying optimal fingerprint techniques to estimate climate sensitivity. Journal of Climate, doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-12–00473.1.

Lindzen, R.S., and Y‑S. Choi, 2011. On the observational determination of climate sensitivity and its implica­tions. Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Science,47, 377–390.

Michaels, P.J., et al., 2002. Revised 21^st century temperature projections. Climate Research, 23, 1–9.

Ring, M.J., et al., 2012. Causes of the global warming observed since the 19th century. Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 2, 401–415, doi: 10.4236/acs.2012.24035.

Schmittner, A., et al. 2011. Climate sensitivity estimat­ed from temperature reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximum. Science, 334, 1385–1388, doi: 10.1126/science.1203513.

van Hateren, J.H., 2012. A fractal climate response function can simulate global average temperature trends of the modern era and the past millennium. Climate Dynamics,  doi: 10.1007/s00382-012‑1375‑3.

On the U.S. government’s targeted killing and drone-bombing program, in the past I have harped on the fact that despite the discrete and immediate effects of disrupting terrorist activity, no expert can conclusively answer whether such tactics materially reduce the threat of terrorism. But don’t just take my word for it:

• General James E. Cartwright, the retired, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said about drones undermining America’s long-term battle against extremism, “We’re seeing that blowback…If you’re trying to kill your way to a solution, no matter how precise you are, you’re going to upset people even if they’re not targeted.”
• General Stanley McChrystal, the retired, former commander in Afghanistan, has said about drones and anti-American sentiment, “The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes … is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level…”
• And John Bellinger, a former State Department legal adviser in the George W. Bush administration, has said that one day, drone strikes might “become as internationally maligned as Guantanamo.” 

Today, in a piece for U.S. News and World Report, I write about yet another relevant factor in the drone debate beyond the scope of the aforementioned issues: the Congressional prerogative to limit executive war powers. It explains why Senator Rand Paul (R‑KY) should keep fighting the good fight for more transparency over the program:

Today, our commander in chief, through a secretive decision-making process based on classified evidence, has declared the right to use lethal force against anybody, anytime, anywhere on earth. Although Paul’s effort to shine a harsh light on targeted killings has thus far been commendable, he has squandered many opportunities to explain how we get back to the constitution-based system he champions. In this respect, the liberty movement has been right to hold his feet to the fire. Thus, here comes the “teachable moment.”

Check it out!