Where Is Carney On Autism?

The Age of Autism is reporting that Chris Carney will be attending Rep. Carolyn Maloney's (D-NY) briefing on vaccines and autism this coming Wednesday.

Rep. Maloney has long been focused on autism, and her intention to address autism is certainly admirable--one that most members of Congress have not highlighted. Yet, Maloney has been fighting the wrong team on this issue by continuing to attack vaccines and encouraging parents to question their effects. Maloney has said, "I remain committed to passing vaccine safety legislation and to fighting to ensure that the voices of all the parents and children who participated in today’s rally [Green Our Vaccines Rally] are heard within the halls of Congress."

In the scientific community, study after study (also good information here) has demonstrated that there is no causal relationship between vaccines and autism.

From the CDC's own website:

"Many studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between vaccines and autism. The weight of the evidence indicates that vaccines are not associated with autism."

The questioning of vaccines by prominent leaders and groups in the autism circle appears to have already produced unintended, negative consequences. For instance, take the recent outbreak of measles across the country, infecting 131 children to date, over half of whom were not vaccinated by their parents. Even though the MMR vaccine is proven to have no connection to autism in children, resident experts largely cited parents concerns about autism with their failure to get children vaccinated.

This is not productive to the overall autism debate. While this debate has been settled in the scientific arena, it is still causing damage to our children's health.

I would be extremely interested in hearing more about Chris Carney's views on this issue because it is important and largely underdiscussed.

Carney's website makes note of the fact that he is committed "to increase research funding and raise awareness of autism." I would argue that if Carney is earnestly trying to help on this issue, he must break from the Maloney crowd and take this issue in a different direction rather than rehashing debates of the past.

In Other News

As the country turns its attention to a 17-year-old pregnant girl and Hurricane Gustav hammering the Gulf Coast, one piece of news that seems to be lacking its fair share of coverage is the recent transfer of security responsibilities in Anbar province.

In a ceremony yesterday, the United States military officially handed over the responsibilities to Iraqi forces and is part of the continued military effort to transfer all provinces to Iraqi control.

A few years ago, many thought the security situation in Anbar was not salvageable and demonstrated why the United States could never succeed in Iraq.

Now, the security improvements in Anbar leading to the transfer of power stand as a testament to our brave men and women in uniform.

From the famous Washington Post September 2006 story which leaked a memo from Pete Devlin, the Marine's chief intelligence officer:

"Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force, said the Army officer, who has read the report. Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar."

Things even reportedly got worse later that year:

"The Marines recently filed an updated version of that assessment that stood by its conclusions and stated that, as of mid-November, the problems in troubled Anbar province have not improved, a senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday. 'The fundamental questions of lack of control, growth of the insurgency and criminality' remain the same, the official said."

Putting yesterday's event in proper context demonstrates just how much the situation in Iraq has improved.

Today's Wall Street Journal editorial does a better job at aligning that history with yesterday's ceremony:

For U.S. politics, it is worth recalling that that 2006 Washington Post story became part of a Beltway consensus that defeat in Iraq was inevitable. Democrats made withdrawal the center of their campaign to retake Congress, Republicans like Senator John Warner became media darlings for saying the war couldn't be won, and the James Baker-Lee Hamilton Iraq Study Group laid out a bipartisan road to retreat. According to memos disclosed Sunday in the New York Times, even senior officials at the State Department and Pentagon opposed the surge. President Bush, heeding Generals David Petraeus and Ray Odierno as well as John McCain, overruled the defeatists and ordered a renewed U.S. commitment to Iraq.

The Anbar handover is above all a tribute to the hundreds of Americans who have fought and died in places like Fallujah, Ramadi and Hit over these last five years. Over the horizon of history, we tend to recall only the successes in previous wars at such places as Guadalcanal, Peleliu and the Chosin Reservoir. We forget that those wars and battles were also marked by terrible blunders and setbacks, both political and military. What mattered is that our troops, and our country, had the determination to fight to an ultimate victory. So it is with the heroes of Anbar.

Change Agent?

A real agent of "change" would simply work with the aliens, not question their political party affiliation.

Time Away

This next week you won't see a lot of new content on Local Values due to vacation time. There may be a couple new posts, but likely days without. Everything should return back to normal on the 28th.

Over The Top

After the Heller decision yesterday, I figured there would be some good Editorial comments on the subject in today's papers.

Furthermore, I expected the New York Times to be most critical of the decision, but their Editorial this morning far exceeded anything I expected.

The Editorial takes two primary issues with the decision. First, that the majority's interpretation is wrong. Second, the decision will be detrimental to public health.

The interpretation argument is an issue unto itself, but the Times' concern that the decision will result in increased homicides is unfounded.

Some selected passages from the Editorial:

"The Supreme Court on Thursday all but ensured that even more Americans will die senselessly with its wrongheaded and dangerous ruling striking down key parts of the District of Columbia's gun-control law."

"This is a decision that will cost innocent lives, cause immeasurable pain and suffering and turn America into a more dangerous country. It will also diminish our standing in the world, sending yet another message that the United States values gun rights over human life."

Maybe the Times is relying upon the 1991 study in the New England Journal of Medicine by Colin Loftin, Brian Wiersema and Talbert J. Cottey. In their study, Loftin and company concluded that the restrictive licensing of guns result in a prompt decline in homicide rates. The study looked at the 9 years before the D.C. gun ban and the 9 years after and found:

"In Washington, D.C., the adoption of the gun-licensing law coincided with an abrupt decline in homicides by firearms (a reduction of 3.3 per month, or 25 percent) and suicides by firearms (reduction, 0.6 per month, or 23 percent). No similar reductions were observed in the number of homicides or suicides committed by other means, nor were there similar reductions in the adjacent metropolitan areas in Maryland and Virginia. There were also no increases in homicides or suicides by other methods, as would be expected if equally lethal means were substituted for handguns."

Striking, isn't it? Except for the fact that the causal relationship has been proven untrue.

The Loftin study failed to use per-capita statistics which was particularly important due to D.C.'s declining population at the time. From Dean Payne's analysis of the Loftin study:

"Loftin suggests that the District's 1976 restrictive handgun licensing, effectively a ban on new handguns, prevented an average of 47 deaths per year. Inexplicably, the report fails to mention the rapid shrinkage of the District's population, or the rising population of the surrounding community in Maryland and Virginia. When homicides and suicides rates are expressed as per-capita rates, any apparent post-1976 benefit enjoyed by the District vanishes."

Furthermore, Washington D.C.'s homicide rate per 100,000 climbed after the District implemented their strict gun regulations. The rate was 10.6 in 1960 and stood at 35.4 in 2005.

Even by comparison to other larger cities, Washington D.C. is much worse.

However, the New York Times provides no data or statistical measure to back their alarmist claim that homicides will begin to drastically climb as a result of the Supreme Court's decision in Heller. The Times simply relies upon emotional appeal and their disdain for any reasoning which supports gun rights.

On A Sad Note

Uni-Mart convenience stores filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. If you've ever lived or visited Pennsylvania, you're probably well aware of this store. Uni-Mart is a chain that is primarily scattered throughout Pennsylvania with a few other locations in Maryland, New York, and Delaware.

Just How Bad Its Gotten

Governor Ed Rendell will allow those gas stations with non-digital fuel dispensers to display the prices for a 1/2 gallon of gas since their pumps cannot display prices above $3.99/gallon.

Buy Me Some Peanuts and Cracker Jacks

An interesting article on the importance of Little League and athletics in the civic development of children:

This lesson—that hard work can lead to excellence—is one that can transform lives. Almost all of life in a capitalist society involves some form of competition. Young athletes learn the formula for success in a market-based system. And the evidence says they outperform their peers throughout their lifetimes...When citizens believe that hard work determines success, they tend to build leaner and more economically efficient governments.

Get those kiddies out on the ball field!

The New G.I. Bill

Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) introduced a bill seeking to update the original G.I. Bill from World War II. Formally called "the Post 9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008," it would increase the amount of educational assistance to service members who have enrolled after September 11, 2001. Members who have served three years of cumulative active duty service will be rewarded with a full ride to any public university in the nation. It would roughly double the benefit size under current law.

Morally, the bill would be a great way to support the troops fighting abroad.

However, there are several important points of consideration to keep in mind. First, this proposed legislation would increase recruits but decrease retention. Hence, it's not an outright net gain for the military. According to the Congressional Budget Office:

Educational benefits have been shown to raise the number of military recruits. Based on an analysis of the existing literature, CBO estimates that a 10 percent increase in educational benefits would result in an increase of about 1 percent in high-quality recruits. On that basis, CBO calculates that raising the educational benefits as proposed in S. 22 would result in a 16 percent increase in recruits...Literature on the effects of educational benefits on retention suggest that every $10,000 increase in educational benefits yields a reduction in retention of slightly more than 1 percentage point. CBO estimates that S. 22 (as modified) would more than double the present value of educational benefits for servicemembers at the first reenlistment point—from about $40,000 to over $90,000—implying a 16 percent decline in the reenlistment rate, from about 42 percent to about 36 percent.

Second, it would cost $52 billion over ten years in mandatory spending. In a case such as this, the monetary value doesn't solely imply whether it should or shouldn't become law. Obviously, it's a larger financial commitment from the government, but when the money is put on auto-pilot that's a concern. This bill would be the largest entitlement increase since Medicare Part D. Mandatory spending is already projected to grow at an alarming rate in the coming decades so adding a program with no mechanism to control growth is somewhat alarming.

Finally, this is not an "emergency" and shouldn't be tabled with war supplemental spending. Administration officials thought the war in Iraq would be short and relatively inexpensive. Originally estimating $50-$60 billion for the Iraq War, the Bush Administration planned the money would be budgeted as an emergency since it wouldn't be a reoccurring requirement. However, the war has now cost over a half a trillion dollars but hasn't changed how the war is budgeted even though its costs can easily be foreseen. This is problematic in itself, but to further include an entitlement program like the new GI bill within the emergency spending to avoid paygo rules and an outright vote on the floor is wrong. These are planned expenses that should be budgeted for.

While it's difficult to argue against more benefits for our veterans (as they certainly need them), the current process for passing this bill must be reconsidered. The bills effect on our current military size, its future unchecked growth, and its attachment to a emergency spending bill make it rough to swallow.

Earth Day

Being Earth Day, it seemed appropriate to tackle an eco-oriented topic. As I'm sure you're familiar with, global warming is a popular buzzword in modern politics. While some refuse to believe in global climate change, the current scientific evidence is pretty solid in demonstrating its existence. Much of the reluctance to accept the theory of global warming seems to exist because of the disdain for the messenger (Al Gore) rather than the substance of the message itself, but that is irrelevant for this entry.

Saving any substantive debate over global warming for another day, it is clear that we are moving forward as a country to confront and address the problem. Currently, green collar jobs have become a popular talking point for politicians along the campaign trail, especially from Senators Clinton and Obama. Green collar jobs are those jobs aimed at helping the country move towards more environmental friendly practices and energy sources. Certainly, this is an admirable goal, but what must be defined is the government's role in facilitating and/or creating such positions.

On Senator Clinton's Presidential Website, she desires to implement a green collar jobs training program, and Senator Obama has presented a similar proposal. Both proposals aspire to create 5 million green jobs.

Additional components of their environmental platforms involve the implementation of a cap-and-trade program to limit carbon emissions. There could be better proposals, but the cap-and-trade structure at least provides an incentive to reduce carbon emissions--either reduce emissions below the cap or purchase credits elsewhere for the failure to do so. There is also further incentive to cut emissions below the cap so that one can bank the credits for later use or sell them for a profitable gain.

Since there exists an incentive to go green within the cap-and-trade platform, I fail to see any additional benefit for throwing billions of dollars into a government training program. Granted, much of the money to pay for green job training will come from cap-and-trade revenues. However, that money could be better invested. The private sector is already responding to the popularity of "green." Consumers are making decisions based on which products are more environmentally friendly, and corporations images are tarnished if they are even perceived to be uncommitted to improving the environment. From this one could even argue that a cap-and-trade structure would not be needed because the private sector will respond to this public demand and cut CO2 emissions. However, from a fiscal perspective, the cap-and-trade system only provides a framework for the private sector to operate within and doesn't necessarily require any large monetary commitments from the government.

The most frustrating aspect of the Democrats' proposals is the way they address the issue: more government involvement. It is clear the private sector is responding, and the free market is working. These jobs are opening up all over the country, and people who never expected to be in such fields are now green collared workers (see a recent Newsweek article). But to hear Democrats talk, nothing is being done. It seems the profits of oil companies has clouded the Democrats' vision and pushed them to believe this can only be a government effort rather than a communal involvement.