It's this sort of thing that makes me want to ask some prominent libertarians how the unfettered free market is supposed to solve such a problem.

Gentlemen, we cannot afford to have a "lead paint gap" with Pakistan!

If Bush and/or Rove got the notion it was a net plus politically they would gladly ADD lead to baby food. Their own grandchildren's baby food.

Brian, many, perhaps most, libertarians understand quite well that externalities like lead pollution need to be dealt with by the state, either via torts, or by regulation, or some combination thereof. The caricatures of libertarianism that frequently appear in this forum are really very silly.

Kevin, lead abatement is a fine idea, and might well indeed improve the political culture of a nation like Pakistan. I don't think the middle class physicians and engineers who try to blow up cars, buildings, and airplanes, however, are suffering from lead poisoning.

Remember also that these malicious and destructive clowns want to increase the amount of mercury available for ingestion by pregnant women.

Every time you think that you have hit the outrage limit, they extend the range 50%.

that the Bush administration is apparently in favor of loosening lead regulations in the United States,
children have dangerous levels of lead in their bloodstream, which in turn affects childhood development and, presumably, intelligence.

In other words, loosening lead regulations would cause the birth of more liberals. *snicker*

"Brian, many, perhaps most, libertarians understand quite well that externalities like lead pollution need to be dealt with by the state, either via torts, or by regulation, or some combination thereof. The caricatures of libertarianism that frequently appear in this forum are really very silly."

Really? I don't think that's correct, as far as liberatarians who are crossed with repukeliscum go. Remember that Newt Gingrich called the FDA the "number 1 job killer." For many in the Repukeliscum ranks, regulation per se is bad, and any reduction in regulation is good.

After all, if a pharmaceutical company can save money by doing it's product evaluation after approval, that's a good thing for the stockholders.

In other words, loosening lead regulations would cause the birth of more liberals. *snicker*

In today's world, Al, you pernicious piece of shit, you have to be an idiot to vote Repukeliscum. The Repukeliscum Party is increasingly the Party of Stupid. And you're a prime example of that fact.

In other words, loosening lead regulations would cause the birth of more liberals. *snicker*
Posted by: Al

Al, ladies and gentlemen ... proof positive that lead levels cause brain damage.

"In other words, loosening lead regulations would cause the birth of more liberals. *snicker*"
Posted by: Al on July 10, 2007 at 12:53 PM

I can forgive you Al, because we all know it's just the lead (in your bloodstream) talking.

Really, without the lead nobody could be as stupid as you.

Really, without the lead nobody could be as stupid as you.

Egbert gives Al a run for his money in the stupid sweepstakes.

We need a "You go First" policy for the Little George Administration. Whenever there is a policy which will affect public health, it must first be tested on political appointees and elected officials.

Relax lead restrictions? OK - first thing - go down to Crawford and replace all the plumbing with lead pipes, and paint the Western White Houst with Lead Based Paint.

Come to think of it, test Little G himself, could be he has a long history of lead contamination - there has to be some explanation for his kind of pathology; Cheney too!

Will Allen

Have you been to Pakistan? I wouldn't be so sure--rich and poor live quite cheek by jowl.

In the city where they are separated the most, the Brasilia like postwar creation of Islamabad, it's the rich areas that have the highways and the traffic.

And of course rich people use more paint on their houses-- you don't run lead tests on it, you get your manservant to buy some paint and hire some painters (and everybody gets their 10% cut-- that's how 3rd world states work).

Brian: It's this sort of thing that makes me want to ask some prominent libertarians how the unfettered free market is supposed to solve such a problem.

To a libertarian, it may be a situation, not a problem. Poor kids eat lead paint. Poor kids get stupid. Poor kids stay poor. Where's the downside to that for rich people?

POed Lib: Remember also that these malicious and destructive clowns want to increase the amount of mercury available for ingestion by pregnant women.

Yes, but they also alleviated the awful arsenic shortage in the streams below gold mines.

POed lib, surely you favor the European regulatory approach to new drugs, don't you?

Brian, many, perhaps most, libertarians understand quite well that externalities like lead pollution need to be dealt with by the state, either via torts, or by regulation, or some combination thereof.

Many, perhaps most, libertarians will mouth that in the abstract, while at the same time advocating specific barriers that prevent addressing those externalities through those means, such as advocating an expansive conception of regulatory takings which would utterly defeat the ability to use regulation to internalize externalities since it would require compensation that would precisely re-externalize the externalities involved, advocating limits on some or all classes of compensatory damages in some or all types of tort cases.

The people who advocate the same general principles, at the slogan/outline level, as libertarians but temper that with more than abstract recognition of externalities generally do not self-identify as "libertarians".

I don't think the middle class physicians and engineers who try to blow up cars, buildings, and airplanes, however, are suffering from lead poisoning.

If 80% of the population is experiencing dangerous levels of exposure, than they are certainly products of a social environment distorted by the widespread effects of lead poisoning.

This isn't a question of whether or not this reduces the moral accountability of those who personally engage in terrorist attacks; no one is arguing that it does. The pressing issue is not "who is at moral fault", but "how do we move forward", and that requires understanding the factors, including the social, economic, and environmental factors, that contribute to the problem so that a sensible course of action to address them can be developed and implemented.

ah, kevin. you mommy-state liberals will buy any crap someone with a PhD tells you. I myself ate a lot of lead paint chips when i was young and it in no way affected my ability to shoehorn banana blimp.

I hope someone took away Bush's lead-painted Thomas the Train so he doesn't chew on it.

The problem is that lead production was allowed to continue 60+ years after we knew it harmed people. Here in Texas Republicans like Joe Barton continue to fight for profits over health.

Regardless of the connection with terrorism, we should be getting rid of toxics products.

Kevin:
The Kleiman post actually laid responsibility for wanting to ease lead standards on the first Bush administration -- the regulatory reform panel that Dan Quayle used to run, specifically.

...many, perhaps most, libertarians understand quite well that externalities like lead pollution need to be dealt with by the state, either via torts, or by regulation,....Will Allen at 12:48 PM
Let's link the Libertarian FAQ
...As with printed words, broadcast words can and should be regulated by the free market. Americans should be able to freely choose what they will watch or listen to, without Big Brother making those decisions for them. ...

That 'free market is dominated by a few mega-corps run by a few billionaires and all promulgating a similar world view: conservative, pro-corporate, low tax, no regulation.

... The way to help both producers and consumers is to remove government programs
and restrictions which have damaged America's free enterprise system. ... business could operate in a free market and all of us could be better fed, clothed and housed at lower cost....

This is delusional. As we have seen time and time again, without regulation corporations form monopolies and trusts to distort and contort markets for their advantage. Prices go up not down.
Among the most important restrictions are for consumer and environmental safety, and business transparency for investors.
A consumer cannot depend on torts. Those poorly regulated companies selling shoddy merchandise or unsafe foods and buying government laws that restrict your right to sue and limit your right to recovery while calling it 'tort reform.'
Libertarianism is just another word for corpocracy

How many unborn children have been harmed by Bush allowing higher mercury emissions by power plants? How many will be harmed by Bush wanting to ease restrictions on lead emissions? How many unborn Iraqi and Afghani children will be spontaneously aborted or stillborn or born with hideous, incapacitating birth defects, due to Bush allowing the Army to shoot depleted uranium all over their country?

George W. Bush - the greatest enemy of the unborn this world has ever seen!

bcinaz

I don't know if there is a petroleum refinery in Crawford or Midland, but GWB was growing up in Crawford just when leaded gasoline was really taking off (mid 1960s).

Somebody please just make these people go away.

Make the executive management and major shareholders eat their illegally dumped toxic waste. I say we start with the PCB's GE dumped in the Hudson.

Irony alert: Will Allen wrote: The caricatures of libertarianism that frequently appear in this forum are really very silly.

Oh, indeed, Will. Indeed.

You know there is a simple way to get the public riled up over lead in the environment.

As Faux news showed the other day, through a twisted argument you can show that a national health care system causes terrorists to invade your country (i.e. latest Brit crisis).

So if lead causes dumbness and violence, aka terrorism, then if we don't want the terrorists over here we simply need to remove the lead in our environment.

Hmmmm wonder if we can use this scheme to catch Bin Ladin ....... sprinkle a little lead here, a little lead there, hear a lead, there a lead, everywhere a lead, lead.

80% is a huge and troubling number of children with elevated lead levels in Pakistan. At the same time, Kevin doesn't provide details about how elevated the levels are across that 80%, over what timeframe etc., and then throws out the "dumb and violent" line. I'm sure there's a reasonable and important point to make here, but at the same time it's not so elegant to paint (lead paint?) a picture where 80% of Pakistani children are "dumb and violent." Careful there, Kevin.

When Musharraf is assassinated and the nukes are in the hands of the wackos it'll be all that easier to pre-emptively nuke them if they're pre-cast as Evil by American lead eating fundies, and as "dumb and violent" by more reasonable types. We'll all need sense and poise as our fringes are consumed by heavy metals and memes.

Sounds like Joel Schwarz deserves a medal or monument. What a joy it must be to know you have done something so good.

Kevin, this "loose lead" push has been getting plenty of airplay for months from environmental activism groups...

Somebody please just make these people go away.

Simulpeachment is the answer.

Or maybe a mob of villagers with torches and pitchforks.

Somebody please just make these people go away.
Drum

You'll have to shoot a few, or they won't leave.
Besides, Kev, who would protect us from the "Jihadis"?

Interesting point: Ralph Nader opposed the introduction of unleaded gas. Ralph thought the introduction of catalytic converters was just a scheme by Detroit and Big Oil to drive up the price of gas. For a guy who is perfect he is sure wrong a lot.

Bush never met a heavy metal he didn't like: remember the arsenic levels in water fight an eon or two ago?

The idiocy of these people can only be explained by the fact that they must have had, and continue to maintain, high blood lead levels. The idea that lead polluted air and water can be completely avoided by the rich is a fallacy.

It is true that if you drink only bottled water and live in less smoggy areas, both of which are easier for those with money, lead exposure is lessened. It is not completely avoided, however. I'm not sure that this nation can afford to have its monied leadership class become less intelligent and more violent than they already are.

OTOH, this may explain Bush's idea of colonizing space a while back. He's going to make this planet unlivable and then take off for the moon.
Makes perfect sense.

"Lead was banned from gasoline during the 1980s. The job was done by the Reagan Administration."

This is false. Lead was not banned from use in over-the-road automobiles until 1996. (It remains legal in other applications). By that time it had become almost completely unavailable due to regulations imposed twenty years earlier.

EPA mandated that as of 1975 new cars had to be built to use only unleaded gasoline. New cars had to be fitted with narrow gas tank pipes that could not accept traditional spouts. The new unleaded gas was dispensed from new, narrower spouts.

For years, all gas stations sold leaded and unleaded gas. As older cars were taken off the road and demand for leaded declined, most stations stopped stocking it.

And the decision to take the lead out of gasoline had nothing to do with the hazards of lead. It was done because, in order to reduce air pollution, carmakers were ordered to install catalytic converters on all new cars. These devices break down nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants. Lead in gas poisons them so that they quickly and permanently fail.

So Kleiman is just making shit up when he says that the Reagan Administration banned lead in gasoline. The original decision was taken in the Nixon administration and enforced in the Ford administration, and the final ban was adopted in the Clinton administration.

Wonder whether Bushco would like to legalize "lead additives" for NASCAR? Big money in selling that stuff!

Here's how one company in the UK gets around the law:

"Through the hard work of the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs, the Government has overruled the EU directive and allowed the continued sale of leaded fuel for special-interest groups. TetraBOOST is a genuine lead additive, so it falls outside the European Union legislation on leaded fuels."

http://www.tetraboost.com/info/faq/#q25

Is this what is meant by "industry pandering"?!

"The Kleiman post actually laid responsibility for wanting to ease lead standards on the first Bush administration"

Yes, but the Plumer article that Kevin references cites several instances of the Bush administration trying to relax regulations on lead.

Economist's View reported on this two days ago:
To Reduce Crime, Get the Lead Out:
July 8, 2007

typepad.com/economistsview/2007/07/get-the-lead-ou.html

Triumph of the Worst.

Digby links to this article, and remarks that since lead poisoning makes people stupid and violent, then reducing restrictions on lead is Karl Rove's plan to get more people into the Republican Party.

Digby said it better.

Digby links to this article, and remarks that since lead poisoning makes people stupid and violent, then reducing restrictions on lead is Karl Rove's plan to get more people into the Republican Party.

Digby said it better.

It's this sort of thing that makes me want to ask some prominent libertarians how the unfettered free market is supposed to solve such a problem.

Don't bother. Those people are idiots who generally don't understand economics - at least not beyond Econ 101.