Out of Control

Is Google adjusting its stance on network neutrality? Something’s up.

Speaking at the Tech Policy Summit this week in San Jose, Calif., Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s head of global public policy walked a narrow line between favoring regulation and free-market competition in a call to move policymaking on the issue to the Federal Trade Commission, according to Tech Daily (no link):

"Cutting the FCC out of the picture would be a smart move," Andrew McLaughlin said. Net neutrality, the concept of requiring cable- and telephone-based high-speed Internet providers to treat content equally, "will ultimately be solved by competition in the long run," he predicted. Google and other Silicon Valley firms have lobbied for legislation, while companies like Comcast and Verizon Communications have opposed it, arguing that such a measure would stymie broadband growth. “None of us want any kind of heavy-handed regulation,” McLaughlin said, adding that sponsors are refining bill language. "There may be details where the legislation ought to move in a different direction, [but] it should move forward."

Two weeks ago, Alan Davidson, Google’s Washington policy counsel, told an FTC policy workshop that not all network management is anticompetitive. That followed a statement made over in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, by Vincent Dureau, Google’s head of TV technology, who said the Web infrastructure “is not going to offer the quality of service customers expect.” Ironically, Dureau offered to work together with cable companies to combine its technology for searching video and TV footage and its tailored advertising with the cable networks high-quality delivery of programming. This very idea, however, could run afoul of a network neutrality law.

One thing’s for sure, a year ago, Google was taking a much harder line. Here’s an excerpt from Senate testimony by Vint Cerf, Google’s vice president and chief Internet evangelist, in February 2006, which presents a much starker picture of competition and emphatically calls for strong Congressional action:

“For the foreseeable future most Americans will face little choice among broadband carriers. Enshrining a rule that permits carriers to discriminate in favor of certain kinds or sources of services would place those carriers in control of online activity. Allowing broadband carriers to reserve huge amounts of bandwidth for their own services will not give consumers the broadband Internet our country and economy need.”

I’m not here to bash Google. It’s just fun to watch its policy side try to keep up with its aggressiveness in seeking revenue opportunities in the digital economy. In line with that, perhaps Google is realizing the truth of what critics are saying: as it is currently proposed, network neutrality will pre-empt beneficial business models, such as the ad-supported cable TV search idea above. Invoking the FTC, the company seems to be leaning toward the more reasonable position that net neutrality rules should be constructed to address problems when they actually occur, not on supposition. Google's actual position might be more clear when we learn what exactly is the "different direction" it's urging with Congressional legislation. Stay tuned.

Thanks to James Gattuso at Technology Liberation Front for the pointer.

Over the decades, driving has been getting much safer (as measured by declining highway fatality rates). But how can we make roads safer still?

Teenagers, especially boys, are (big surprise) some of the most dangerous drivers. Maybe we could yank their keys? Or just mount some cameras?

There is a curve in the road near Alexander Mougin's house near Oxford, Iowa. The high-school senior used to like to take it hard and sharp -- but that was before his car was fitted with a camera capable of recording his driving habits.

Mr. Mougin, 18 years old, has been participating in a University of Iowa study to see whether the device and the data it provides can help improve teen driving. The camera, attached to the rear-view mirror, has one lens facing the road and another aimed at the driver. It runs constantly, and slips into recording mode if, for example, the car accelerates rapidly or brakes suddenly. It then preserves about 10 seconds before and after the event that triggered it.

"You don't want to set it off," Mr. Mougin says. After 10 months of taking part in the study, he says, "I know I'm a safer driver."

Starting tomorrow, American Family Mutual Insurance Co., the nation's 10th largest car insurer, will offer some of its customers the same system, known as DriveCam, in an effort to improve driving behavior among teens, a population that is particularly at risk on the roads. More teenagers die in car crashes than from any other single cause.

Customers with teenage children in Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin will be able to request that the system be installed in their cars, free of charge. Parents will receive regular reports on incidents that trigger a recording, which they can then review with their kids.

The system, made by DriveCam Inc., a privately held firm in San Diego, is the latest in a line of tools that can help parents track their teenagers' behavior.

The company says it won't watch the videos, but you can bet Mom and Dad will. And often that's often enough to provoke safer driving habits:

The Iowa study includes 25 teenagers who have driven 300,000 total miles in 10 months. The researchers first let the teens drive with the device, but hid the light that lets a driver know the recording has been triggered. After several weeks, they uncovered the light, and began sending results to parents.

Those most prone to trigger a recording during the preliminary period saw a 72% drop in safety-related events after using DriveCam for the next two months, says Daniel McGehee, director of the Human Factors & Vehicle Safety Research division of the university's Public Policy Center.

The self-interested reasons for offering the free service: It's a great way to lure customers, and:

If the program reduces the number of crashes, that could contribute to lower insurance payouts. In 2005, the last year for which data are available, nearly 5,700 16-to-20 year olds died on the roads, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, about 13% of all crash deaths. Another 53,000 suffered incapacitating injuries.

WSJ (subscription req'd) article here.

Related: Driving with Big Brother: Three, Two, One

Adrian let me know about this recent Harris poll:

Just over one-third (37%) say that traffic congestion is a serious problem in their community…

Not surprisingly, opinions varied by region:

Just one-quarter (26%) of those who live in the Midwest and 32 percent of those in the South say traffic congestion is a serious problem. In the East, over one-third (37%) say traffic congestion is a serious problem. Compare this to the West where over half (56%) believe traffic congestion is a serious problem.

More here.

Related: More griping about gridlock

Prince Charles today said banning McDonald's fast food was the key to a healthy lifestyle.

His comments came as he attended the launch of a public health awareness campaign.

Charles, a strong advocate of organic food, was touring the Imperial College London

Diabetes Centre in Abu Dhabi with the Duchess of Cornwall.

He asked nutritionist Nadine Tayara: "Have you got anywhere with McDonald's, have you tried getting it banned? That's the key."

Royal observers said that Charles would have been aware that his comments would be picked by the media.

"He knew there was a reporter there and this is a subject close to his heart," said one source.

Article here; via Andrea Woodmansee

And has Charles actually been to a McDonald’s lately?

Public health activists revile McDonald's for what it does to our insides and architects revile it for how it looks on the outside. To these critics McDonald's is unhealthy, superficial, repetitious, and ugly—nearly everything they hate about suburbia wrapped up neatly in an American icon.

But now executives aim to deemphasize the familiar Golden Arches in favor of a sleeker, sexed up exterior. Once inside you can still grab on with both hands and shove a 560-calorie Big Mac down your throat, but today's McDonald's also offers plenty of heart-healthy salads and such. Diners may even squirt low-fat sesame ginger dressing from the head of the famously progressive Paul Newman.

More from my take on evolving suburbia here.

This article by John Graham at PRI provides a different look at the data on insured and uninsured health care. The key points:

--California Governor Schwarzenegger, Massachusetts Governor Patrick, and other state politicians believe – wrongly – that “covering the uninsured” will eliminate a “hidden tax” that the privately insured pay to subsidize the uninsured.

--The financial crisis of hospital emergency rooms has little to do with the uninsured; rather, there is a far greater "cost shift" from beneficiaries of government health care to the privately insured.

--As a group, the uninsured voluntarily pay about $60 billion worth of extra federal income taxes – explicit taxes which dwarf the hidden tax of uninsurance.

--Because they use only half the health services, per person, that insured Americans use, the uninsured pay a kind of “hidden subsidy” to the insured, who over-consume health services.
--
The hidden tax of overinsurance – which the insured unconsciously levy on each other, is far greater than the relatively insignificant hidden tax of uninsurance.

As the deadline for bills to be introduced in the California legislature came and went last week, many noted a promising frontrunner for the wackiest bill of the year: the How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb Act (AB722). The bill, which would ban the sale of incandescent light bulbs in the state beginning in 2012, was brought to us by Assemblymember Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys), who last year sponsored the legislative crackdown on plastic grocery bags.

This legislation and similar “if you can’t beat them, ban them” proposals announced recently in New Jersey, Ontario and Australia are intended to boost sales of compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs).

New York and Philly have banned it, and if a new bill passes Connecticut could be the first state to ban the hyped-up threat of the moment—trans fats:

Dr. David Katz, one of several experts to present testimony on trans fat Monday during a public hearing before the state legislature's Public Health Committee, said trans fat is a poison that should be banned from restaurant use.

Why not ban beef and milk too? After all, the "poison" is in them as well.

Not that the health police care much, but some restaurant owners point out some economic downsides:

John Strom, the owner of Billy Beans Cafe in Danbury, said that while he also made the switch, alternative oils that don't contain trans fat tend to be more expensive and have to be replaced more often.

And now this:

[S]ome nutrition and health analysts say the preoccupation with trans fats has gone too far.

They say that in some cases, trans fats simply are being replaced with other unhealthy oils. And at a time when 66% of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, the analysts say the nation's fixation with trans fats is drawing attention away from other important reasons that Americans' diets are so bad for their hearts: They continue to consume too many calories, too much junk food and not enough fruits and vegetables.

"It is important to remind ourselves that changing oils and removing trans fat does not magically turn a deep-fried food into a health food," says Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian at Northwestern Memorial Wellness Institute in Chicago and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.

This LAT article highlights the fact that California state officials buckled to pressure to release more Prop 1 B bond dough sooner.

In November, voters approved a massive bond package that will eventually provide about $20 billion for transportation projects, and critics of the Feb. 16 proposal had argued that the state needed to move much faster to start fixing gridlocked freeways and roads.

The California Transportation Commission bumped up this year’s allocations from $2.8B to $4.5B. But what’s also noteworthy (but hardly surprising) is that much of the moola will be used to expand something that should have been ditched a long time ago—carpool lanes:

In Riverside County, the state is now recommending spending $134 million out of a total of nearly $173 million to add carpool lanes along the 91 Freeway through Riverside, which like the 405 is one of Southern California's most congested freeways.

…

Much of the state's planned increase — $730 million — has been earmarked for a carpool lane on the northbound 405 though the Westside, part of a major plan to create a continuous carpool lane from Irvine to the northern end of the San Fernando Valley.

…

In addition, Los Angeles County would get $387 million to start construction of a carpool lane on the 5 from the Orange County line to near the 605, now considered a major traffic bottleneck. The initial recommendation was for $157 million.

Washington Post columnist Fred Hiatt:

Imagine your county supervisor or state delegate telling you, "I know your schools are overcrowded. Too bad."

Or: "We could build classrooms to replace the portables, but then more children would move into the neighborhood, so why bother?"

Unimaginable, right? And yet that's essentially what we hear all the time about overcrowded roads. In fact, the challenge of traffic is not by its nature more intractable than that of school crowding, but -- as the continuing disagreement between the General Assembly and governor in Virginia shows -- it is far harder to address.

One reason is the myths that have grown up around the issue of congestion -- chief among them that it cannot be fixed.

Another is a well-organized constituency less interested in solving the problem than in using it for other ends.

And a third -- an obstacle that contains within it the seeds of possible salvation -- is the fact that any real answer will be two-pronged, with one of the prongs offending the right and the other just as suspect to the left.

A useful debunking of the myths associated with traffic is provided by Ted Balaker and Sam Staley of the Reason Foundation in their recent book, "The Road More Traveled," from which I stole the overcrowded-schools analogy. Traffic is "fiercer than ever," they say, "but that's not because congestion can't be beat. It's because our leaders stopped fighting it."

More here.

Four major Hollywood studios have signed agreements to license content on BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer Web site, which until now made its name among users as an easy source of unauthorized movies downloads.

The deal, covered here and elsewhere Monday, makes BitTorrent a legitimate site for rental of film and TV titles from Twentieth-Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Brothers and, on a limited basis MGM.

While this deal won’t end all P2P pirating on BitTorrent, it will be interesting to see if Culver City, Calif., which has been blocking P2P sites on its municipal wireless system since last year, makes the site available. Although it is not clear if BitTorrent specifically was censored, the city proudly announced that it was blocking all popular P2P sites (of which BitTorrent, which accounts for 1 million illegal downloads a day, surely qualifies) in order to battle piracy and pornography. Others, including myself, said it was a thinly-disguised excuse for dealing with the massive congestion problems free bandwidth, coupled with a self-imposed policy of network neutrality, created for the city officials tasked with managing the wireless network.

So now we’ll see. Now that BitTorrent has joined the side of the angels, will its site be unfiltered? Don’t bet on it.

Tomorrow, the state committee charged with advising the California Air Resources Board on design for a “market-based compliance program” to implement California’s Global Warming Solutions Act will hear comments from author and socially-responsible-tech-entrepreneur Peter Barnes. In his 2001 book, Who Owns the Sky?, Barnes staked out a bold position in the debate on how to allocate atmospheric property rights by advocating that dividends be paid out of a carbon cap-and-trade system to a public trust, similar to oil dividends paid out of the Alaska Permanent Fund. His answer to the question of initial entitlement is that the atmosphere’s carbon storage capacity should be a common asset controlled through a “Sky Trust”—as opposed to a state-owned asset or an asset to be given away to corporate users.

The gist of Barnes’ planned remarks, posted on EcosystemMarketplace.com:

The economic value of the atmosphere is a form of common wealth—no corporation created it, and it belongs to everyone. This common wealth can and should be used for the benefit of all.

There are several ways this can be done. The first and most obvious way is for the state to auction carbon emission permits, rather than give them free to historic polluters….

A second way the economic value of the atmosphere can be used for the common good is to distribute 'carbon shares' to the citizens of California, as has been proposed by the Climate Protection Campaign of Sonoma County. Each 'carbon share' would be equal to the total number of permits issued divided by the number of eligible California citizens. Citizens would sell their shares to banks or brokerage firms, who in turn would sell them to emitters. In this way, a carbon market would develop without a state auction, and all Californians would equally share the windfall that arises from carbon capping. The committee should carefully consider this elegant option.

Recognition of the painfully inelegant allocation of carbon emission entitlements in the European carbon trading model thus far is important, but there is also a huge cringe factor for me in Barnes’ usual assertion that the economic value of the atmosphere is a “gift from our common creator.” Where’s the discussion of all the private assets (well-managed forests and agricultural land, etc.) that are producing uncompensated positive externalities in the form of carbon sinks even as we speak?

So says Adam Thierer on the PFF blog in one of a flurry of responses to an FCC petition by Skype, the principle of which is supported in a recent paper by Columbia University Professor Timothy Wu, that calls for network neutrality rules to be applied to wireless networks.

The best thing that could be said is that this development further sharpens the network neutrality debate—getting away from the “Save-the-First-Amendment” rhetoric and placing discussion on the real question: Should the government impose price controls, limitations third-party agreements, and other regulations on the transmission of Internet content in the name of protecting consumers?

Until now, net neutrality was aimed only at the wireline companies, which indeed were once neutral carriers, but by technical necessity, not law. By calling for regulation of wireless carrier business, Wu and Skype have opened a new front—against a network service where neutrality never existed. Their call for wireless net neutrality exceeds what’s contained in the Snowe-Dorgan Internet neutrality bill or the neutrality agreement the FCC extracted from AT&T in return for approval of its BellSouth acquisition.

Wu’s paper and the Skype petition take issue with the way wireless carriers work closely with both handset manufacturers and content providers to deliver voice and data services. They are correct in that carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone and Sprint Nextel work closely with hardware and software vendors to design browsers and bundle services. But its highly questionable when. without any real evidence, they declare, as Skype does, that these agreements are “to the detrmint of customers.”

An I-told-you-so moment from yesterday's Associated Press article on the high price of tobacco products inside California's prisons since the July 2005 ban:

California's ban on tobacco in prisons has produced a burgeoning black market behind bars, where a pack of smokes can fetch up to $125....At Folsom State Prison, a cook quit last year after he was caught walking onto prison grounds with several plastic bags filled with rolling tobacco in his jacket. He told authorities he was earning more smuggling tobacco – upwards of $1,000 a week – than he did in his day job.

And the shockingly sensible conclusion:

Chuck Alexander, executive vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, said lawmakers should either roll back the prohibition or add stronger penalties....“It didn't do anything but make (tobacco) a lucrative business,” he said.

For those who still say there is no real competition in broadband and that the broadband market has failed:

Although I’m not prone to anecdotal blogging, I can’t resist this. Cable modem service was off-line in large parts of Sugar Land all day yesterday. I am not sure of the reason, but I will withhold company names, because the outage may have been due to external factors. With all the housing and road construction going on in the area, a backhoe could have easily snagged a cable or knocked over an electronics box.

Still, first thing this morning my local phone company (which is neither AT&T nor Verizon) had telemarketers on the loose touting a DSL offer of two month’s free for switching, plus another two months free if I took a long-distance package wit the deal. The numbers were good enough to have me considering the prospect. I spent more time with the rep than I probably have with any since I set up basic service.

I haven’t made a decision, but I am impressed with the speed and aggressiveness the local telephone company moved. I’ve experienced outages before, but never a targeted competitive response. Goes to show that even with just two companies, competition can be more than vigorous.

Why so glum, Lou Dobbs, Sen. Webb, and George W.? Nick Gillespie sighs at the “war on the middle class!” meme:

The rich are indeed getting richer (the bastards). As Steven Lagerfeld points out in the Winter 2007 issue of The Wilson Quarterly (not yet online), those 130,000 households at the very top of the earnings pyramid have increased their share of pretax wage and salary income from 2 percent in 1973 to just under 7 percent in 2004. Folks in the top 5 percent of households--those making more than $166,000--have seen their inflation-adjusted annual income jack up by a hefty two-thirds since 1970.

But everyone is getting richer. In real dollars, every quintile has posted significant annual increases over the past 35 years, ranging from $3,000 for the lowest quintile to $13,000 for the middle quintile to over $25,000 for next-to-highest one. And the individuals in those quintiles change all the time, something even The New York Times, which wrings its hands on class matters like an obsessive-compulsive, admits. Urban Institute economists Daniel P. McMurrer and Isabel V. Sawhill estimate that between 25 percent to 40 percent of individuals switch quintiles in a given year and that "rates of mobility have not changed over time."

Article here.

Previous installments of “why do I feel so lousy?” here.

Russell Roberts writing it the LA Times:

LABOR UNIONS' importance in the workplace has fallen steadily since 1950, when roughly a third of American workers were unionized. Today, that number is well below 10% in the private sector.

The Employee Free Choice Act, now before Congress, aims to reverse that trend by making it easier for unions to gain certification and stiffening penalties for interfering with a unionization drive. After all, supporters argue, without union representation, how can individual workers have the bargaining power needed to get their fair share of the economic pie?

But maybe unions aren't so crucial to worker well-being. When more than 90% of the private-sector labor force isn't unionized, why do 97% of us earn above the minimum wage? If our bargaining power is so pitiful, why don't greedy employers exploit us and drive wages down to the legal minimum?

The simple answer is that bargaining power comes from having alternatives. Even in the absence of unions, employers have to treat workers well to attract and keep them. In a workplace as dynamic as that of the United States, where millions of jobs are destroyed and created every quarter, a company's ability to exploit workers is greatly limited by how easy it is to find another job.

Of course voters like to do what they can to limit “exploitation.” They pull the lever (or punch the hole) for minimum wage hikes, thinking of how pleased the workers who will get a raise will be. But what about those other workers?

After Arizona voters hiked the minimum wage some businesses are finding that they’re better off with fewer workers, especially fewer teen workers:

Mark Messner, owner of Pepi's Pizza in south Phoenix, estimates he has employed more than 2,000 high school students since 1990. But he plans to lay off three teenage workers and decrease hours worked by others. Of his 25-person workforce, roughly 75 percent are in high school.

"I've had to go to some of my kids and say, 'Look, my payroll just increased 13 percent,' " he said. " 'Sorry, I don't have any hours for you.' "

San Francisco restaurant owners must figure out how to deal with a triple-threat: a recent minimum wage hike, a new requirement that they provide sick leave, and (coming in July) health care as well:

"They may call themselves progressive,'' Mark Pastore, the owner of Incanto Restaurant on Church Street, said of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. "But their actions are paving a path for only large, ruthless, profit-driven corporations to survive in San Francisco. Is this the San Francisco we want to build?''

…

Gayle Pirie, the chef and co-owner of Foreign Cinema, a moderately priced Mediterranean bistro on Mission Street, also is staring at potential additional annual costs of more than $200,000.

She and partner John Clark like to give year-end bonuses to the kitchen staff. Now those are threatened.

"With these mandatory benefits, we have less control over giving benefits to our employees," Pirie said. "You are forced to restrain your generosity in ways that are not your style.''

Tres Agaves is a partnership between Manzare, the chef, Sammy Hagar, the rocker who heads Cabo Wabo Enterprises, and Julio Bermejo, owner of Tommy's Mexican Restaurant on Geary Boulevard. Its 38 investors put more than $2 million into the 10,000 square-foot place. The partnership is considering another location -- but it won't be in the city.

"I can tell you that as of right now, we are not looking to expand in San Francisco,'' said Eric Rubin, a managing partner. He called the city's business environment "onerous."

Article here.

Related: NBER lit review on minimum wage

The founder and managing director of the biggest national consultancy for municipal wireless systems has ripped left-wing activists in San Francisco for their attempts to get the city dump its deal with EarthLink and Google and pursue a multi-million dollar, taxpayer-financed city-owned wireless network.

In what amounts to a repudiation of San Francisco’s chapters of the Institute of Self-Reliance, Media Alliance and the American Civil Liberties Union, Greg Richardson, head of Civitium, which provides consulting services for cities that are pursuing and evaluating municipal wireless systems, accused both groups of promoting a political agenda at the expense of a sound business plan that would create a metropolitan wireless system that could provide free service to low-income residents.

Last week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to put the EarthLink-Google contract on hold in order to study the feasibility of a government-owned system. As a result, many feel that EarthLink and Google will ultimately pull out.

Civitium was hired by San Francisco to evaluate the bids for its citywide wireless plan. The company also is working with Chicago, Corpus Christi, Tex., Houston, Philadelphia and Phoenix. A list of client cities is available here.

“For the record, Civitium supports private-ownership of Wi-Fi for San Francisco, and we support the recommendations for public-ownership of fiber (with an open, wholesale model) presented by our partner, CTC,” Richardson wrote Feb. 14 on Civitium’s blog.

A Friday LA Times article "State preschools short of space, survey says" opens with:

Classroom space in California public preschools is at such a premium that 21% of eligible 4-year-olds would be unable to attend if they all attempted to enroll, according to a statewide study released Thursday.

Yikes! you say. But wait. As Steve Frank puts it:

The key phrase is, "if they all attempted to enroll".

Yes, and if all drivers decided to be on the Hollywood Freeway at two in the morning we would have gridlock. That is not going to happen.

This is a classic effort by government to create what is not needed or wanted. Pretend there is a crisis, use good sounding statistics and then beg for mercy to save the day.

In this case, government wants all children to go to "approved" day care. If they don’t, space needs to be available for them anyway, build a bureaucracy.

First New York; now Philadelphia:

Mayor John Street signed a ban Thursday on the use of trans fats in restaurants and food establishments throughout Philadelphia.

…

The bill Street signed calls for a total elimination of all trans fat from restaurants by September and in bakeries a year later.
…

Health officials and doctors say trans fats increase the risk of heart disease and stroke by increasing bad cholesterol.

Yet will the fats that replace trans fats be any better?

ACSH addresses this in the course of naming “Trans fatty acids cause obesity and heart disease” the top unfounded health scare of 2006:

Some scientists and activists now speak of TFAs as though they were acutely poisonous, or supremely dangerous. And they speak as though TFAs are uniquely responsible for heart disease being the number one cause of death in the United States …

The topic of TFAs is a difficult one for media to present accurately as these ingredients are certainly not beneficial to health, but are not as supremely dangerous as some would have us believe. Exaggeration of the negative health effects is not conducive to a reasonable approach to diet …

[T]he consumption of trans fats by Americans is low and likely to become even smaller since the FDA ruled that packaged foods must list the TFA content on their nutrition labels. Manufacturers have responded by limiting the amounts of TFAs in their products. Thus the risk to heart health from TFAs is likely to decrease—but we do not know that the fats that will replace TFAs (quite possibly some form of saturated fats) will be any less detrimental—and this is the problem with overzealous rules to ban TFAs outright. Further, since TFAs contain the same number of calories per gram, as do all other fats, their removal will not necessarily result in lower calorie consumption—which is what is needed to deal with the soaring prevalence of obesity in the United States.

ACSH’s complete Top 10 list here.

And here’s a look at part of California legislators’ to-do list:

Ban parents from spanking their toddlers. Force restaurants to disclose calories on menus. Forbid school cafeterias from cooking with trans fats. Prohibit smoking on state beaches. Make homeowners switch to energy-efficient light bulbs.

And whatever happened to the bill that would bar Californians from gunning down animals over the internet?

The debate over network neutrality further intensified as the Federal Trade Commission held a two-day workshop this week on whether to regulate the way U.S. phone and cable handle the transmission of Internet data as it crosses their networks.

Network neutrality would prohibit Internet service providers such as Verizon and Comcast from charging companies like Google, eBay and Sony—which seek to use the Web to provide content-rich, bandwidth intensive applications—higher fees to boost the quality and reliability their services are likely to require.

Over the course of the two-day workshop, many net neutrality advocates conceded that some degree of prioritization and QoS will be required as Internet services evolve. This represented major progress in the debate. Only a few months ago net neutrality fans were insisting there would never be any rightful role for management and prioritization in the transport layer—where the service provider fall.

I’ll let slide the fact that this shift coincides with a recent statement by Google, standard bearer for the net neutrality movement, that expressed true concern that the surging amount of video crossing the Internet endangers efficient operation and quality. I’d rather credit the work of AEI scholars Robert Hahn and Robert Litan in documenting the long history of debate within the Internet community about the “end-to-end principle” as well as this rather pointed blog post at the Progress & Freedom Foundation about how applications and content providers have long been using discriminatory server networks available from companies such as Akamai.

Arnold Kling wrote on TCS Daily "'Just-in-Case': How to Think About Uncertainty and Global Warming/"

Obviously, we have nothing to worry about if the models are too pessimistic. If it turns out that over the next decade global temperatures edge down, or rise more slowly than the models predict, then we will be relieved.

The troublesome possibility is that the models are not pessimistic enough. In fact, Weitzman would argue, and I concur, that the case for doing something today about global warming rests on the fear of the scenario of accelerated near-term climate change -- increases in temperature at a rate that is on the high end of the range being forecast by climate models.

Writing in the Washington Post, Gio Batta Gori, a former deputy director of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention, addresses the Surgeon General report that has helped fuel many a smoking ban:

Last July, introducing his office's latest report on secondhand smoke, then-U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona asserted that "there is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure," that "breathing secondhand smoke for even a short time can damage cells and set the cancer process in motion," and that children exposed to secondhand smoke will "eventually . . . develop cardiovascular disease and cancers over time."

The report was a meta-analysis, and here’s how the studies from which it draws were conducted:

Typically, the studies asked 60--70 year-old self-declared nonsmokers to recall how many cigarettes, cigars or pipes might have been smoked in their presence during their lifetimes, how thick the smoke might have been in the rooms, whether the windows were open, and similar vagaries. Obtained mostly during brief phone interviews, answers were then recorded as precise measures of lifetime individual exposures.

In reality, it is impossible to summarize accurately from momentary and vague recalls, and with an absurd expectation of precision, the total exposure to secondhand smoke over more than a half-century of a person's lifetime. No measure of cumulative lifetime secondhand smoke exposure was ever possible, so the epidemiologic studies estimated risk based not only on an improper marker of exposure, but also on exposure data that are illusory.

…

In addition, results are not consistently reproducible. The majority of studies do not report a statistically significant change in risk from secondhand smoke exposure, some studies show an increase in risk, and—astoundingly--some show a reduction of risk.

Some prominent anti-smokers have been quietly forthcoming on what "the science" does and does not show. Asked to quantify secondhand smoke risks at a 2006 hearing at the UK House of Lords, Oxford epidemiologist Sir Richard Peto--a leader of the secondhand smoke crusade--replied, "I am sorry not to be more helpful; you want numbers and I could give you numbers..., but what does one make of them? ...These hazards cannot be directly measured."

Article here.

This Regulation piece by Thomas Lambert also delves into the SG’s report, pointing out some discrepancies between the press release (which claims “even brief expose to secondhand smoke has immediate adverse effects”) and the report itself (which considers only long-term exposure).

The SG’s report also omits a 2003 study published in the British Journal of Medicine which used 39-years-worth of data collected on 35,000 never-smokers married to smokers. The conclusion: there was “no causal relationship between exposure to [Environmental Tobacco Smoke] and tobacco-related mortality.”

Related: Anti-smoking crusader: "It's getting to the point where we're trying to protect people from something that's not a public health hazard."

Now let's step up the crackdown on dihydrogen monoxide!

North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner, Roger Johnson, is presenting paperwork from two prospective North Dakota hemp farmers licensed under the state’s new (and nationally unprecedented) industrial hemp licensure law to the DEA this week. The process is costing these farmers a premium in application fees, including:

* Fingerprinting and criminal background check ($52)
* State license fee ($150)
* DEA import application fee ($1,147)
* DEA manufacturing application fee ($2,293)

—especially considering that these are, for the most part, annual, non-refundable fees, and few expect the applications to be approved by the DEA, a requirement of the North Dakota licensure law. One of the applicants is North Dakota state legislator and farmer, David Monson, who wants to plant ten acres of hemp on his farm. For his part, he says getting fingerprinted and GPSing his field for the license was “kind of fun,” but fellow farmers are calling the $400 per acre licensing and security costs “kind of spendy.”

Related: A weed to watch out for

In last Friday’s very quick “debate” between muniwireless.com founder Esme Vos and myself on CNBC (view it here), Vos did not rise to my observation that the push by some San Francisco city council members to dump the EarthLink-Google muni wireless proposal—with a free wireless component—in favor of a taxpayer funded, city-operated system, was “ridiculous.”

I was hoping she would come down on one side or the other—and I am sufficiently curious as to which. Vos agreed that the private sector contracts have become the preferred approach among most municipalities, but her Web site tends toward criticism of the carrier industry and a faith in that big government can affectively address social needs.

She elegantly sidestepped the question about how muni wireless operations have started to filter peer-to-peer applications because of the congestion they create by stating that “wireline” ISPs filter and censor, too. If you count phone companies in China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, sure. But in the U.S. I’m hard-pressed to find any private sector ISP blocking legal web sites.

Emboldened by the passage of cell phone bans for drivers in some communities, states are turning their attention to other things that drive motorists to distraction.

Vermont lawmakers are considering a measure that would ban eating, drinking, smoking, reading, writing, personal grooming, playing an instrument, "interacting with pets or cargo," talking on a cell phone or using any other personal communication device while driving. The punishment: a fine of up to $600.

Similar bills are under consideration in Maryland and Texas, and Connecticut has passed one that generically bans any activity that could interfere with the safe operation of a motor vehicle.
Emboldened by the passage of cell phone bans for drivers in some communities, states are turning their attention to other things that drive motorists to distraction.

Article here.

Related: Watch out for those unintended consequences

Related: Ban Wagon--distracted walking edition

WorldatWork:

A growing number of American workers are reporting that their employers allows them to work remotely at least one day per month, according to a recent survey by WorldatWork.

The survey found that 12.4 million workers reported that their employer allowed them to work remotely at least one day per month in 2006, up from 9.9 million in 2005 and 7.6 million in 2004. WorldatWork estimates that about 8 percent of American workers have an employer that allows them to telecommute at least one day per month.

The organization says the increase is likely the result of a combination of factors, including the proliferation of high speed/broadband and other wireless access (which has made it both less expensive and more productive to work remotely) and the willingness of more employers to embrace flexibility.

More here.

Related: Telecommuting no big deal anymore

Related: Wait’ll all those MySpacers become managers

George Passantino dissects Gov. Schwarzenegger's healtcare reform plan on Flashreport.:

[L]ke a bad doctor, he has diagnosed the cost and availability of health insurance as the disease, when, in fact, it is the symptom of a larger problem.

CNBC's Power Lunch has asked me to debate noted muni wireless consultant Esme Vos, editor and publisher of muniwireless.com, on its "Power Lunch" program Friday. More likely we'll be just trading sound bites in a five-minute segment slated to go on between 1:30 and 2 p.m ET.

Tune in if you can. Should be fun!

An the excellent analysis of the folly of network neutrality by economists Robert Litan and Hal J. Singer appeared last month in The Journal on Telecommunications and High Tech Law and has since been available on the Web from a number of sources.

Litan and Singer warn that restricting the ability to customize service would drive network providers toward offering only a single level of “blended” service that does not fully meet the needs of real time application providers or their customers.

“As a result, the U.S. broadband industry would begin slouching towards mediocrity,” they conclude.

Litan and Singer also do much to document how the “end-to-end principle,” the major tenet of network neutrality, has been robustly debated since the ‘Net’s earliest days.

Furthermore, Criterion Economics, a free-market group Singer heads and with whom Litan is affiliated, points out that the market that network neutrality seeks to enjoin—the business providing transmission quality and reliability above and beyond best effort IP—is already thriving.

The study notes that such restrictions would represent a step backwards because enhanced QoS offerings, such as caching and prioritization for providers of multiplayer online games, are already commonplace.

“Tiered QoS offerings are already here at different layers of an access provider's network, and for legitimate technical and economic reasons. Content providers are voluntarily entering into contracts with access providers because content providers (and their customers) value these service enhancements more than the prices for these enhancements,” they say. Rather than requiring an access provider to deal with content providers for priority delivery on the same terms, as would be the case for standard non-discrimination conditions, the proposed legislation would generally eliminate contracting for prioritization with content providers at any level of the access provider's network.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Yorkers who blithely cross the street listening to an iPod or talking on a cell phone could soon face a $100 fine.

New York State Sen. Carl Kruger says three pedestrians in his Brooklyn district have been killed since September upon stepping into traffic while distracted by an electronic device. In one case bystanders screamed "watch out" to no avail.

Kruger is introducing legislation to ban the use of gadgets such as Blackberry devices and video games while crossing the street.

"Government has an obligation to protect its citizenry," Kruger said in a telephone interview from Albany, the state capital. "This electronic gadgetry is reaching the point where it's becoming not only endemic but it's creating an atmosphere where we have a major public safety crisis at hand."

Article here.

Um, aren’t lawmakers cracking down on the so-called obesity epidemic? Might yanking iPods make people less inclined to walk and jog? My hunch is that more New Yorkers die from obesity-related illness than from iPod mishaps.

Come to think of it, the Senator could probably drop some lbs.

Related: Distracted driving crackdown here and here

Related: The Singaporization of NYC

Related: My outdated Ban Wagon

Check out the starlet in a revealing CNN interview. Be sure to stick around for the bizarre ending.

BTW, here’s what Human Rights Watch says about Cuba. Seems a tad different than what goes on in the US.

Related: Trendy Che

Yes, BUT, PPIC has asked a similar question before and and got worse results:

May 2006: higher taxes and more services (55%), lower taxes and fewer services (38%), don't know (7%)
Jan. 2006: higher taxes and more services (61%), lower taxes and fewer services (31%), don't know (8%)

The low was Nov. 2003, as we were certifying our recall of Gov. Davis: higher taxes and more services (38%), lower taxes and fewer services (54%), don't know (8%)

And last fall, they asked a similar question:

In general, which of the following statements do you agree with more—I’d rather pay higher taxes and have the state government spend more money on infrastructure projects; or: I’d rather pay lower taxes and have the state government spend less money on infrastructure projects?
(PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and the Future, September 2006)

Results:
44% want higher taxes and more money for infrastructure projects
47% want lower taxes and less money for infrastructure projects
9% don't know

And last summer they asked:

Do you think the people in state government waste a lot of the money we pay in taxes, waste some of it, or don’t waste very much of it?
(PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and the Future, August 2006)

Results:
58% said "a lot "
35% said "some"
4% said "don't waste very much"
3% don't know

In these polls, Californians were never asked, "Would you like to have lower taxes and higher services?" I think all they might be saying when they advocate higher taxes and more services is that they want their roads and other basic infrastructure to work, and they don't know of any other way to do it except higher taxes.

We don't need to puke until Californians poll overwhelmingly in favor of "higher taxes and fewer services."

I've been fighting the urge to puke all day.

Latest Public Policy Inst of CA survey includes this gem:

"In general, which of the following statements do you agree with more--I'd rather pay higher taxes and have a state government that provides more services, or I'd rather pay lower taxes and have a state government that provides fewer services?"

OK, not the best worded question around, but reasonable. Result?
53% of all adults (69% of dems, 27% of reps, 53% of ind) prefer "higher taxes and more services"!!!

Holy cow! when was the last time you paid higher taxes and actually got more services? CA is not the land of the fruits and nuts, it is the land of the gullible.

As David Nott, prez of Reason, pointed out to me, this shows the folks who support limited government in CA have their work cut out for them. And if you need more proof the Republican Party is intellectually bankrupt in CA (at least) 27% of them want "higher taxes and more services"!

The LA Time’s effort to separate conventional wisdom from fact.

Soft porn films are being shown on giant video screens at a bus station in Bulgaria.

The plasma TVs at the terminus in the capital Sofia show bus times during the day but switch to porn at night.

A station spokesman said: 'We wanted to give the passengers something to take their minds off the cold and to pass the time while waiting for a bus.'

However, some people are outraged by the move and claim station security guards now spend their time watching the screens rather than patrolling for troublemakers.

That's the whole article, but if you want the link, it's here.

Related: How not to attract riders to transit; also this

Network World’s Bob Brown interviews Tom Mulhall, co-owner of The Terra Cotta Inn, a clothing optional resort and spa in Palm Springs, CA.

Any advice to those looking to give naked telework a whirl?

Get a laptop with good screen resolution. Since Palm Springs is very sunny, we have seen guests with a towel over there head and laptop to cut down glare. Otherwise you will be forced to work in the shade. Also don't use a laptop at the edge of the pool while you are in the water. Laptops, a few cocktails and pool water do not mix as we have seen a few times.

Do you know of people who have sought out telecommuting jobs to satisfy their desire to work naked?

Yes, we have some guests mainly in the high-tech field that purposely freelance so that they can live nude at home. They just dislike wearing clothes, and freelancing out of their homes is the best thing that has ever happened to them. I would say, however, that most of our guests do not consider themselves nudists. They are regular people who just enjoy nude sunbathing on their vacations.

Related: How many of them are there?

Back in the clothed world of telecommuting, the online classroom is becoming mainstream:

[There are] 1 million kindergarten through high school student enrollments in virtual schooling across the nation, according to the North American Council for Online Learning, a nonprofit organization for administrators, teachers and others involved in online schooling.

Enrollment, counted as the total number of seats in all online classes, not the number of students, has grown more than 20 times in seven years, and the group expects the numbers to continue to jump 30% annually.

Article here.

Related: Telecollege gets a boost

The other day Sam and I had a piece in the Washington Post. It touches on five of the 10 myths about driving and suburbia that we address in our book. The piece is reprinted here.

And how about congestion relief moving up the federal to-do list? First the DOT announces a major new effort to tackle gridlock and now this:

With much of his domestic agenda stalled by Congress, President Bush is embracing a new cause he is hoping will cross party lines and leave him with an end-of-term accomplishment: easing rush-hour traffic.

In his annual budget blueprint to be unveiled today, Mr. Bush intends to showcase a highway "congestion initiative," according to White House documents, with grants for state and local governments to experiment with anti-jam strategies.

In a surprise that could foreshadow how Mr. Bush might reach out to Democrats -- and disappoint conservatives -- for the rest of his term, the centerpiece of the traffic plan involves an initiative that some critics say amounts to a tax, a plan depicted by administration officials as "congestion pricing." The administration will award $130 million in grants starting this spring to help cities and states build electronic toll systems that would charge drivers fees for traveling in and out of big cities during peak traffic times. The money also could go to other congestion strategies such as expanded telecommuting, but administration officials make it clear they think congestion pricing is the most powerful tool they have. The White House will seek an additional $175 million for congestion initiatives in next year's budget.

More here.

Related: The Quiet Success: Telecommuting's Impact on Transportation and Beyond (pdf)

You’ve got to admire Google for its consistency. Its idea of the Internet business model is, “Anything of yours I can use to bolster my bottom line should be free.” It disguises its tactics through dazzle, hype and self-promotion, wherein it fashions itself at the vanguard of the business disruption and upheaval brought on by the Internet. The old rules don’t apply, Google tells us. And we’re the ones making the new ones.

Except when powerful interests roar back. And so, to avoid a lawsuit, Google has agreed to take down some 100,000 unauthorized video clips belonging to Viacom from its YouTube site. Viacom’s holdings include Paramount, MTV, and Comedy Central.

The two companies could not come to an agreement over licensing the material. Google claims to be chagrined, asserting that Viacom doesn’t know a good thing when it sees it. But Google’s claims that YouTube promotes Viacom’s content by increasing its visibility didn’t wash. Viacom said it did not find any evidence that YouTube postings contributed anything additional value to Viacom’s products.

“YouTube and Google retain all of the revenue generated from this practice, without extending fair compensation to the people who have expended all of the effort and cost to create it,” Viacom said in a statement reported in the San Francisco Chronicle.

This appears to be a troubling trend at Google. It’s the same tack the company took with publishers who have demanded royalties for participation in the sweeping Google Print project. Google Print aims to build a massive literary search engine--to use as a platform for commercial advertising sales--by scanning the contents of every printed work. Just as did with Viacom, Google is trying to tell copyright owners—and copyright lawyers and judges--that they just don’t “get” the Internet model, that they are too concerned with protecting “old business models,” and that demanding a sexy, bleeding-edge 'Net pioneer like Google (market cap: $143b) actually pay them for commercial use of their property is not in the publishers’ best interests. And like Viacom, publishers aren’t buying it.

Google is pulling the same thing with network neutrality. Internet service providers who say they have a right to collect fees from Google for prioritizing delivery of its commercial services are labeled monopolists trying to cling to a dying business model. With that reasoning, and little else, Google is aggressively lobbying Congress to prohibit service providers from charging large Web hosts like itself for the additional quality, reliability and partitioning resources their services and applications will need as they cross the network.

It’s pretty much been established point of law that you simply can’t appropriate someone’s property for your own financial gain. The disconcerting aspect is that many otherwise sensible people who world never buy this if applied to brick-and-mortar commerce, are taken in when it’s applied to the on-line world. Google’s founders may indeed be business wizards, but there best trick is, by reciting the incantion, “The Internet changes everything,” how they get lawmakers and media to forget basic property rights and contract law.

In my post yesterday on the Gov's budget = bullshit I was just pissed about his lying about it being balanced.

George P. and I dissect the budget proposal and its failings in more detail over at California Political News and Views. Lies about it being balanced are the least of its ills.

Tom Hazlett, as always, writes a witty and spot-on commentary on U.S. floundering on telecom policy in the Financial Times.

Some juicy bits.

Our buzz-coloured shades block out key drivers of innovation. Take wireless. While 2.5bn people were subscribing to mobile networks, the tech spotlight was on … WiFi. While a handy way to make a DSL connection cordless, the disruptive technology claims – that the exclusive rights used for wide area cellular networks were now eclipsed by unlicensed spectrum governed by power limits and regulatory standards – were wrong. Not many folks dropping their mobile subscription to talk from their “hotspot.”

Yet US regulators, focusing on the WiFi “commons,” let most of a decade slip away before auctioning 3G licenses in 2006. Not only did this stunt the growth of wireless networks, it now sets the stage for vast bandwidth to be wasted in the TV Band. There policymakers are pushing to expand unlicensed spectrum allocations, when the evidence is compelling that opportunity costs far outweigh benefits.

In India, meanwhile, recent deregulatory moves have produced intense cellular competition.

. . .

The point is not that “closed” beats “open,” but that capitalism accommodates both. Rules need not be changed to embrace the revolution. Markets thrust revolutions upon us, boldly and magnificently, far more often than we care to remember.

I recently wrote at NPR's Talking Justice blog about how some states are starting to work on deregulating the cable TV market.

The bottom line:

Cable and video reform is a nonpartisan issue. In today's age of web videos and on-demand services, there are so many phone and tech companies itching to enter markets across the country that Democrats and Republicans are finding they can save taxpayers a lot of money by simply allowing competition in the video service industry.

I don't know why I let this stuff make me so mad. . .

When Governor Schwarzenegger presented his budget plan, he was full of boasts. Including, "I’m very happy to announce today that in this new budget our new operating deficit has been reduced to zero. You heard me right. We have reduced the operating deficit to zero."

Wow! Realy? That would be major progress after too many years of spending more than comes in. But no, of course not, it was a big fat lie.

The first clue came form state Finance Director Mike Genest pointing out that the budget "spends $1,863,000,000 more than it takes in."

Ring the clue bell. That means we have NOT reduced the operating deficit to zero.

Word games ensue. More details here. But short story is Genest says the $1.8 billion shortfall is "a gross operating deficit" and the governorwas talking about the "net operating deficit." Huh? Well, that means the governor was not counting one time expenses like paying back debt. Huh? again!

Well hell. I can balance my budget that way. I just won't count one time expeses like paying the taxes I owe on April 15th!

Ring the clue bell again. A budget is an accounting of all revenue and spending. SImply "not counting" something doesn't make it balance. Well, maybe in the movies.