WingRight

Lame-duck Senator John Warner (R?!?-VA) has asked the Energy Department to investigate the potential costs and benefits of a federally-mandated 55 mph speed limit everywhere.

One of the problems with having a geriatric legislature of life-tenured incumbents is that its members spend a lot of time thinking about the good old days. From 1974-1995, an identical law was in force. This was a bad idea of Richard Nixon (who also imposed wage/price controls in a futile effort to limit inflation) designed to get the U.S. through an oil crisis.

This law was universally broken, beginning with mild violations along the Eastern seaboard and increasing as one traveled westward with the highest speeds generally present in Western states like Nevada (which “enforced” the national speed limit with a $5.00 waste-of-resources fine for a period of time).

The practical question for drivers was not whether they would drive 55 or not (everyone drove faster), but rather how much faster could they drive without receiving a ticket. 5 mph over was a safe bet everywhere. West of the Mississippi, 10 mph over almost never caused problems and 15 mph over was frequently observed.
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Tags: Economy, Energy, Environment, Liberal Hypocrisy, Liberal Quirks, Liberalism, Oil, Welfare by Publius
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In an interesting column in Forbes, Steve H. Hanke reveals which speculators and hoarders are really driving up the price of commodities.

The answer: Governments (you should have guessed that one)

Scary rice and oil prices have sent politicians to their bag of tricks. Not surprisingly, they have pulled out one that has been a staple since the Middle Ages: blame the speculators and hoarders. But the politicos should be pointing fingers at themselves. Governments around the world buy and store commodities, especially rice and oil, with justifications stressing the value of everything and the cost of nothing. A notable proponent of commodity buffer stocks was John Maynard Keynes. As Keynes put it in 1942: “One of the greatest evils in international trade before the war was the wide and rapid fluctuations in the world prices of primary products.” He recommended that governments use buffer stocks to smooth out price fluctuations by purchasing commodities when prices were thought to be low and selling them when prices were thought to be high.

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Tags: Economy, Liberal Quirks by Publius
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