An editorial in today's New York Times about roller coasters offers a perfect glimpse of the newspaper's reflexive attitude in favor of more government regulation. The editorial says that recent injuries and one death "suggest that the amusement park industry needs stricter oversight and that riders need stronger protections." The editorial concludes that "For the millions of Americans who enjoy amusement parks, roller coasters and other rides are statistically safer than riding in a car. But that does not mean that Congress should not move quickly to make these rides even safer." (Nothing like not avoiding the double negative for a stirring concluding sentence of an editorial.) The Times gives no estimate of what it would cost the taxpayers to set up a network of federal roller-coaster inspectors. And it doesn't consider whether that money could save more statistical life-years if, instead of being deployed on roller-coaster inspections, it were spent on, say, high blood-pressure screening, or seat-belt awareness campaigns, or cancer research. It's as if, to Times editorialists, spending priorities and cost-benefit analysis aren't worth considering. To them, the fact that someone has been injured is in and of itself sufficient justification to call for an expansion of the federal government's regulatory regime in an effort to prevent such injuries.
Talking Union: The lead article in the city section of this morning's New York Times is about an organizer for the Laborers' International Union of America. The article mentions that the local was tarnished by a scandal in the early 1990s, but it makes no reference at all to the more recent scandals at the national level of the union involving its president in the late 1990s, Arthur Coia, who pleaded guilty in 2000 to evading taxes on his $275, 000 1991 Ferrari , his $1,050,000 1972 Ferrari, and his $215,000 1973 Ferrari.
The article notes in passing that illegal immigrants are "about 60 percent" of the workers the union is trying to organize. Talk about burying the lead. More interesting than a profile of the union organizer might be a story that put the business owners on the spot about employing illegal immigrants.