Sallie James hit the nail on the head in her blog post today: ”business deals, and not formally negotiated trade agreements, are driving globalization.”

That made me think of this Deutsche Post webpage I came across. 

It sounds spectacular: The world’s largest shipping and logistics hub at the world’s largest airport, all in low-tax, freewheeling Dubai.

America used to do great stuff like this. But while we’ve still got a moribund and bloated government postal service, Germany’s privatized Deutsche Post seems to be at the leading edge in global shipping and business services.  We’ve got congested, government-owned, and union-dominated seaports, while Dubai will be host to a huge and efficient intermodal system.

America still has lots of world-beating companies such as FedEx and Intel. The problem is in Washington: federal policymakers sit on their hands doing little to improve economic productivity while ambitious upstarts such as Dubai and Ireland are providing more freedom and more opportunity for businesses to grow.

The August 13 Time cover story on Katrina begins:

The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn’t a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics.

I blogged about the arrogance of some members of Congress during last week’s farm debate in the House.

Let me add to Sallie’s observations on the House farm bill battle.

I watched the action on CSPAN over the pro-reform Kind/Flake amendment and was really struck by the arrogance of the anti-reform members. They repeatedly said essentially: “How dare members like Flake criticize the hard work of the Agriculture Committee — he’s not on the committee, he’s not a farmer, and so what does he know about farming!”

You often need a crisis, real or imagined, to get major policy changes enacted. There are two looming challenges in our backwards and bureaucratic air traffic control system that might nudge Congress toward reform. The first is that the government system is having a hard time keeping up with the continued growth in air travel.

The second, as Government Executive magazine reports today, is that a large group of controllers are nearing retirement and the government might have a hard time finding replacements.

These challenges add to the woes of the Federal Aviation Administration, which has mismanaged the air traffic control (ATC) system for decades. The FAA has struggled to modernize ATC technology in order to improve safety and expand capacity. Its upgrade projects are often behind schedule and far over budget, according to the Government Accountability Office. (Discussed in here). 

Privatization of U.S. air traffic control is long overdue. During the past 15 years, more than a dozen countries have partly or fully privatized their ATC, and provide some good models for U.S. reforms.

My toddlers have recently been having fun with the phrase “liar, liar, pants on fire.” I’d like to set them loose on the farm bill debate in Congress. 

“Liar” is not a very scholarly word, but I don’t know how else to describe some of the comments that come from public officials. It’s not just the farm bill, check out this paragraph from a Washington Post story today on the Virginia highway project:

In Washington, no word is more overused and abused than “reform.” But a Washington Post story today shows the abuse taken to new heights:

Farm bloc lawmakers yesterday offered the U.S. fruit and vegetable industry $1.8 billion in new federal grants over the next five years as part of a farm bill that would leave in place far larger subsidies for grain, cotton and dairy producers.

The concessions were part of a balancing act by House Democrats to craft a bill that will satisfy politically powerful farm interests while also bearing a Democratic imprint of reform. The House Agriculture Committee was set to vote on the legislation late last night…

I suppose when a federal agency has 105,000 employees, it has a lot of folks just sitting around wondering what they can regulate next. For the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it’s six-toed cats in Key West.

In researching my new bulletin, Milk Madness, the weirdest document I came across was this 2003 note from then New York Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer.

Spitzer was going after retailers of milk for “price gouging,” or charging prices that were “excessive.”

Talk about regulatory chutzpah. The federal government runs a milk cartel system, called “marketing orders,” which has the direct goal of raising prices. A federal price support program and import barriers are designed to raise milk prices. It has been federal policy for 70 years to screw milk consumers for the benefit of milk producers.

And the government of New York is going after retailers for overcharging?