government

Edward "Baron" von Kloberg
January 9, 1942 - May 1, 2005

Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo got its name in 590 AD, after St. Gregory the Great, while leading a procession to pray for the cessation of the plague, saw the archangel Michael sheathing his sword on top of the fortress. This vision, he believed (accurately, as it would turn out) announced the end of the plague.

It took only about four seconds for Edward von Kloberg III, another kind of plague altogether, to travel from a parapet atop Castel Sant’Angelo to his unfriendly end on a street 52 yards below, but an exit had been on his mind for some time. Months earlier, this lobbyist of choice for dictators, tyrants, and mass executioners had called the Washington Post to arrange an interview that he hoped would lead to “a better understanding of his life.”

Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney
January 30, 1941 - Late yesterday afternoon

Principle is OK up to a certain point, but principle doesn't do you any good if you lose,” Dick Cheney, first appointed to office by Richard Nixon, told journalist Tim Russert in 1976. And it could be argued that until his 8th and final heart attack late yesterday afternoon at his Wyoming ranch, Dick Cheney never did truly lose, despite bringing scandal, ethics investigations, and eventual doom to just about every administration he worked for. By demonstrating his loyalty to an aggressive and frequently extra-legal realpolitik intentionally divorced from the realm of ethics--and getting away with it--this avid chili lover, “stump” of a high school football player from Wyoming, who dropped out of Yale, was twice nabbed for drunk driving, and who shot rabbits, birds, a hunting partner, and other animals in his free time, became a grimacingly enduring icon of American business and politics.

Climate change is causing the sea to rise far faster than expected, potentially a meter or more by 2100. Perhaps that doesn't seem so dire to you. Perhaps you read that sentence and think: "Pity; there go some beaches and beach-front real estate." Maybe you think: "You know, I've always liked the ocean more than New York City anyway..."

In July of 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did something unprecedented in its history: It lowered its official estimated value of an "average American life", from $8.04 million to $7.22 million.

Why?

Mostly because the EPA performs a cost-benefit analysis when evaluating and creating policy and regulation. To do this, they have to agree on the value of a human life and weigh that value against the cost of regulation. The less a life is worth, the less statistical need exists for regulation.