REASON Express
January 17, 2000
Vol. 3 No. 3
1) Bad Seeds Can Do No Good
2) Big Media: Corporate or Czarist?
3) A Penny for Your Thoughts
4) Stock Options vs. the Labor Department
5) Quick Hits
- - Blind Leading the Blind - -
The timing is metronome perfect. Days after scientists say that genetically modified rice could cure blindness, along comes the Environmental Protection Agency to urge U.S. farmers to plant less genetically modified corn because, well, just because.
The gene-altered rice would have bits of vitamin A-producing code spliced in. And with vitamin A deficiency a leading cause of blindness worldwide, the thought is that the grain could help avert pain and misery for millions of people. Just among children less than 5-years-old, the United Nations estimates that vitamin A deficiency may cause 2 million deaths annually.
"We cannot reach very many of the malnourished in the world with pills. We have to build the nutrient content of the foods they eat," said Per Pinstrup-Andersen, director general of the International Rice Research Institute.
The EPA's corn worries revolve around the fear that pollen from genetically modified strains might, possibly, maybe somehow land on other plants and harm insects. So EPA wants to force farmers to plant 20 percent to 50 percent of their acreage in regular corn. This will inevitably push some farmers to conclude that since they have to tend to regular corn anyway, why go to the added up-front cost of growing genetically modified corn, even if it does require less pesticide use?
The EPA has also informed seed producers that they must monitor farmers' use of modified seeds and set up workshops to inform farmers of the possible harm caused by modified crops.
All this adds up to a big blinking stop sign to U.S. farmers who are already starting to shy away from planting modified seeds, fearful that consumers don't want modified foodstuffs.
That would be a huge tragedy. But perhaps the best thing is to do an end run on the EPA and concentrate on deploying such seeds where they can do the most good, in chronically underdeveloped countries. Luckily, the modified rice comes along just at the right time to make this possible.
Perhaps as the new strains help improve the health and well-being of millions in the Third World, the EPA's petty tyrannies and scare tactics at home will look very silly, if not downright evil.
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/16/206l-011600-idx.html http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/14/103l-011400-idx.html
Check out the new Reason Online Breaking Issue, the "Frankenfood" Frenzy, at http://www.reason.com/bi/bi-gmf.html
*************************************************************
- - That's a Wrap - -
What is the big deal about America's drug czar becoming the official re-write office for prime time television programming? Pretty soon that'll just mean writing questions for network game shows.
"True or false: crystal meth will wreck your life." Now for the lightning round.
Seriously, the revelation that TV was whoring itself to the drug war for a few million bucks just shows why so-called public-private partnerships are always so dangerous. They invariably devolve into spending public money--in this case money Congress wanted to go to anti-drug ads--in private, with little oversight and zero accountability.
Even now the drug czar's office denies it was editing scripts prior to the production of shows. The drug warriors maintain they only came in ex post facto, to award "credits" which the networks could redeem against their drug ad obligations. But officials at ABC insist scripts were sent to the drug office.
ABC President Patricia Fili-Krushel told reporters over the weekend that this season the drug office flatly required scripts to be sent in prior to broadcast in order to get credit for them. The drug office responded that the network must have "misunderstood" its policy and that at no point were changes in scripts required, but that suggestions may have been made.
But Salon, which broke the story, reported that ad buyers for the drug office could spot changes in scripts. One such change reportedly turned popular drug-using kids in WB's "Smart Guy" into unpopular losers huddled in a utility room at a party.
Only slightly less remarkable than the original Salon.com story itself was the fact that other media outlets, even the networks, aggressively picked up the story and advanced it. This stands in sharp contrast to standard operational procedure, which has big media doing little more than cheerleading for the drug war with little analysis of tactics or costs.
In fact, The New York Times buried a story on the in-kind possibilities of the drug office's media campaign back in 1998.
http://www.freedomforum.org/professional/2000/1/14washjournalists.asp
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2000/01/13/drugs/index.html
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/14/076l-011400-idx.html
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/17/055l-011700-idx.html
*************************************************************
- - Stuck in the Mails - -
The U.S. Postal Service wants to increase the cost of first-class stamps a penny, from 33 cents to 34 cents. But that is the simplest of the changes the Postal Rate Commission is contemplating. Business and bulk mailers would also get hit with increases. Overall the changes would bring the Postal Service $3.7 billion in additional revenue each year.
It was just a little over a year ago that the price of a first-class stamp rose by a penny, to 33 cents, leaving thousands of people stuck with 32-cent stamps which needed a penny stamp to be the least bit useful. Expect a replay if and when the new hike takes effect sometime next year.
As for the bulk mailers of magazines and advertisements, complex postal regulations make it hard to pinpoint what the rate increases would mean to them. But catalog mailers say their costs would go up by 15 percent while non-profit mailers would see a similar hike.
"I can't think of a more ill-timed decision and I can't think of a more wrongheaded decision," said Gene A. Del Polito, president of the Association for Postal Commerce, made up of direct-marketing and catalog companies.
Del Polito said the hike would push catalog companies to "do whatever you have to do to make your Web sites as interactive as possible . . . spend more on the Web."
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/12/104l-011200-idx.html
*************************************************************
- - Working for the Man - -
Last week it was telecommuting, this week it is stock options. Does anyone at the Labor Department have a calendar? How about a clue how 21st-century workers actually work?
The Labor Department has helpfully opined that granting stock options to lower-paid, non-salaried employees--in other words spreading the benefit of economic growth beyond the corporate boardroom--might run a company afoul of labor laws.
It works like this: The value of the stock options, itself a remarkably fluid thing, must be included in the employee's base pay for purposes of determining what the employee's overtime rate should be. Failure to do so could mean the employer is not really paying overtime rates, pretty much original sin as far as the Labor Dept. goes.
The truly twisted thing is that bonuses, profit sharing plans, and health insurance are specifically excluded from base pay for purposes of overtime by the agency. How stock options differ from those benefits no one at the Labor Department can explain.
Of course, the risk is that companies--faced with either taking on the enormous burden of trying to track what an employee does with his or her options and then trying to factor those gains across hourly overtime pay for as long as 104 months prior to when the options are exercised--will simply tank their option programs for hourly workers.
That'll show them who is boss.
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/12/168l-011200-idx.html
*************************************************************
QUICK HITS
- - Quote of the Week - -
"I tried marijuana, didn't like it particularly and unlike President Clinton I did inhale. But it wasn't part of my life then and that's what happened," British cabinet minister Marjorie Mowlam, 50, who heads the Labor Party government's campaign against drugs, on firing up as a student in the United States in the early '70s. Mowlam was studying politics at that counter-culture hotbed, Iowa State University. Yeah, baby.
http://www.nando.com/noframes/story/0,2107,500155262-500191883-500824326-0,00. html
- - Clinton Jr. - -
Benton (Arkansas) County Prosecutor Brad Butler apparently committed no crime according to Special Prosecutor John Everett even though Butler had a sexual relationship with a woman who came to him on a criminal complaint and an inappropriate personal relationship with another woman his office used as an informant in a capital murder case. Everett did refer his findings to the state Supreme Court Committee on Professional Conduct, which could discipline Butler.
http://www.foxnews.com/etcetera/011400/prosecutorsex.sml
- - Toll Collectors - -
Sens. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) and Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), top dogs at the antitrust subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, announced plans to hold hearings on the AOL-Time Warner merger. Steve Case can pay them now or pay them later.
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/11/144l-011100-idx.html
- - Barely Qualified - -
A federal judge in Canada has upheld an immigration official's finding that a Romanian woman could not have a work permit to dance totally nude in Toronto because her job as a dancer in a nightclub in Brasov only required her to appear topless. Hence, Loredana Silion, 24, does not possess the necessary skills to dance in the nude. Yet Canada is currently suffering through a shortage of nude female dancers.
http://www.nationalpost.com/home.asp?f=000114/176772
- - Wrong Team - -
Postal officials in Tampa sent a worker home to change clothes after he arrived wearing a Washington Redskins shirt on the eve of a NFL playoff game pitting the Redskins against the local Tampa Bay Bucs. But after the postal union intervened, the man was allowed to return with his Skins shirt.
http://www.sptimes.com/News/011400/TampaBay/Postal_worker_told__C.shtml
############################################################## REASON NEWS
For the latest on media appearances by Reason writers, visit http://www.reason.com/press.html.
Adrian Moore, Reason Public Policy Institute Director of Privatization and Government Reform will be speaking at the U.S. Water and Wastewater Summit, January 24th, at the Loews L'Enfant Plaza hotel, Washington DC. His topic will be "Water as a commodity vs. natural resource right." For more info, see http://www.cbinet.com/wconnect/wc.dll?CBEvent~GetMoreInfo~EB007
ARE YOU fascinated by innovation? Do you love new ideas? Would you like to stimulate your creative thinking? Do you want to explore the connection between freedom, enterprise, and progress?
Don't miss the 2nd Annual Reason Dynamic Visions Conference http://www.reason.com/dynamic/dynamic2000.html
"On the Verge: Creative Mixing on the Frontiers of Business, Society, Art, and Technology," takes place February 19 - 21, 2000 at the Santa Clara Marriott in Silicon Valley.
Founded by Reason Editor-at-Large Virginia Postrel, author of The Future and Its Enemies, the conference offers an opportunity for creative people from a variety of backgrounds to cross-fertilize, discover new ideas, and gain fresh insights into their work, home, and civic lives--and their futures. At ordinary conferences, people are exposed to a narrow pool of industry-specific expertise and concepts. At the Dynamic Visions Conference, attendees and speakers from biology, technology, management, ecology, media, public policy, education, design, and other fields converge, sparking brand new ideas--ideas that propel them beyond the traditional boundaries of their own disciplines.
The conference program and registration information are available at http://www.reason.com/dynamic/dynamic2000.html or by calling Erica Mannard at 310-391-2245.
Confirmed speakers and their topics include:
Jhane Barnes, designer - "Mathematics, Computers, and the Art of Textile Design"
Gregory Benford, UC-Irvine astrophysicist and author of Timescape, Deep Time, and Cosm - "Thinking Long in the Millennium"
Daniel Botkin, UC-Santa Barbara ecologist, president, Center for the Study of the Environment, author of Discordant Harmonies - "The Future of Nature: How to Have Both Civilization and Nature in the 21st Century"
Charles Paul Freund, senior editor, Reason, "Dark Verge? The Case of Vienna 1900"
Neil Gershenfeld, leader, physics and media group, MIT Media Lab, author, When Things Start to Think - "Things that Think"
Nick Gillespie, editor-in-chief, Reason - "Popular Culture on the Verge"
Lisa Graham Keegan, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction - "Innovations in Education"
Grant McCracken, Harvard Business School, author, Plenitude and Culture and Consumption - "Verge of Verges: Sir Francis Bacon at the Gates of Gibraltar"
Christena Nippert-Eng, sociologist, Illinois Institute of Technology, author, Home and Work - "Home and Work: Drawing the Boundaries"
Dan Pink, Fast Company contributor - "Free Agent Nation"
Steven Postrel, UC-Irvine Graduate School of Management -"The Geek and the Dilettante: Sharing Knowledge Across Specialities"
Virginia Postrel, editor, Reason, author, The Future and Its Enemies, - "On the Verge: Exploring the Frontiers of Creative Encounter"
Adam Clayton Powell III, vice president, technology and programs, The Freedom Forum - "Culture and Collision"
Richard Rodriguez, author, Days of Obligation and Hunger of Memory - "Some Thoughts on the Burrito and the Browning of America"
Lynn Scarlett, executive director, Reason Public Policy Institute - "Can Industry Save the Planet? The Rise of Industrial Ecology"
Michael Schrage, columnist, Fortune, senior associate, MIT Media Lab, author, No More Teams! and Serious Play - "Serious Play"
Robert Zubrin, author of The Case for Mars - "Mars Direct: Humans to the Red Planet within a Decade"
For full descriptions and speaker information, see http://www.reason.com/dynamic/speakers.html
To register, see http://www.reason.com/dynamic/dynamic2000.html
##############################################################
Reason Express is made possible by a grant from The DBT Group (http://www.dbtgroup.com), manufacturers of affordable, high-performance mainframe systems and productivity software.
Current Circulation: XXX We encourage you to forward Reason Express. If you received this issue from a forward, please subscribe.
Previous issues of Reason Express are available at http://www.reason.com/re/re.html
To subscribe visit http://www.reason.com/re/subscribe.html
Or:
To subscribe to the TEXT version just send a TEXT ONLY message to Majordomo@free-market.net with this in the body of the message:
subscribe Reason-Express youremail@yourdomain.com
For the HTML version the TEXT ONLY message would be:
subscribe Reason-ExpressHTML youremail@yourdomain.com
Your email and your domain would be something like gillespie@reason.com. To unsubscribe, use unsubscribe in place of subscribe.