Category Archives: regulation

A Good Start

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President Donald Trump (R) has signed an Executive Order that sets up a mechanism for the US to mine and harvest minerals and metals from the ocean floor under international waters. It’s for more than just international waters, but this is the part of importance to me.

Environmentalists and legalists don’t like it, the former because they don’t want the pristine sea floors disturbed at all. It seems unimportant to them that the metals and minerals are critical to our nation’s economy and our defense establishment and that without them, we’d be unable to provide any sort of environment within which environmentalists could environmental.

The latter don’t like it because there’s no international law that regulates or even permits such mining. It’s apparently lost on these that the lack of regulation or permission means that the mining and harvesting is entirely legitimate to do.

At least one mining enterprise, The Metals Co, a Canadian firm that’s still interested in doing business with the US, has said that given the EO and a 40-ish year old American law, the Deep Sea Hard Mineral Resources Act, it can start mining in a year or so.

Given that, the first mines should be set up in the Gulf of America, and done so promptly. The second mines should be set up in the South China Sea, and done so just as promptly.

Another Blow against the Bigotry of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

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President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order last Wednesday, news of which the press is busily trying to spike. Titled RESTORING EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND MERITOCRACY, the EO gets right to the heart of the matter.

Section 1. Purpose. A bedrock principle of the United States is that all citizens are treated equally under the law. This principle guarantees equality of opportunity, not equal outcomes. It promises that people are treated as individuals, not components of a particular race or group. It encourages meritocracy and a colorblind society, not race- or sex-based favoritism. Adherence to this principle is essential to creating opportunity, encouraging achievement, and sustaining the American Dream.
But a pernicious movement endangers this foundational principle, seeking to transform America’s promise of equal opportunity into a divisive pursuit of results preordained by irrelevant immutable characteristics, regardless of individual strengths, effort, or achievement. A key tool of this movement is disparate-impact liability, which holds that a near insurmountable presumption of unlawful discrimination exists where there are any differences in outcomes in certain circumstances among different races, sexes, or similar groups, even if there is no facially discriminatory policy or practice or discriminatory intent involved, and even if everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. Disparate-impact liability all but requires individuals and businesses to consider race and engage in racial balancing to avoid potentially crippling legal liability. It not only undermines our national values, but also runs contrary to equal protection under the law and, therefore, violates our Constitution.
… As the Supreme Court put it, “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Disparate-impact liability is wholly inconsistent with the Constitution and threatens the commitment to merit and equality of opportunity that forms the foundation of the American Dream. Under my Administration, citizens will be treated equally before the law and as individuals, not consigned to a certain fate based on their immutable characteristics.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible to avoid violating the Constitution, Federal civil rights laws, and basic American ideals.

The EO proceeds from there, including removal of the LBJ administration’s approval of regulations implementing “disparate impact” and direction to the Attorney General to begin removal of related regulations implementing—Trump generously calls them pernicious, I say openly racist—Civil Rights Act of 1966 Title VI. Additionally, the EO instructs the EEOC, HUD, CFPB, FTC, and “other agencies” to take actions necessary to end the use of disparate impact in enforcement actions both ongoing and contemplated.

The EO can be read in its entirety here.

Finally

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HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr, is moving to remove the Wuhan Virus vaccines from the CDC’s list of vaccines recommended for children.

Finally. Regardless of what anyone—expert or not—thinks of the efficacy of the vaccines or of their side effects, the simple fact is that children, 16 years old, or so, and younger, almost never got infected by this virus, and that number drew even closer to zero as the age dropped.

There never was a need for the vaccine for children, and injecting anything into kids who don’t need it is monumentally stupid, to say nothing about the dangers involved.

Backwards

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The headline and lede demonstrate the utter misunderstanding (to the point of cynically offered distortion?) of the press in the ongoing fight between the Left and the Trump administration’s efforts to streamline our bloated Federal government, bring its spending into line with necessarily lowered income tax rates, and revamp our failed immigration behaviors.

Trump Floods Supreme Court With Appeals to Push Through Agenda
A cascade of Trump administration cases is flooding the Supreme Court, putting the justices on the spot over the administration’s aggressive moves to eliminate federal programs, abolish independent agencies, and recast immigration law without congressional approval.

No. Without the Left weaponizing all of our courts with their lawsuits over every step the Trump administration takes, there would be nothing to appeal to the Supreme Court, emergency or otherwise. This Leftist obstructionism is borne solely of their disdain for, if not hatred of, all things Trump, Republican, or Conservative.

Nor is President Donald Trump (R) seeking to bypass Congress with any of his moves. He and his Cabinet Secretaries understand full well that his moves alone cannot be expected to last past the next election of a Progressive-Democrat President. He and his know full well that Congress needs to statutorily codify his moves in order for them to have any durability.

Trump also knows full well that continuing to wait through Congress’ stately political pace will mean nothing continues to get done in any of those milieus and that waiting through the court system’s drawn out judicial deliberation, suit, countersuit ad nauseum will mean not very much will get done.

The businessman simply is moving at the pace of business rather than at the dither pace of politics and judges. That’s to the good of our nation, no matter the gnashing of the Left and its Progressive-Democratic Party obstructors.

Yet Another Thought

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President Donald Trump’s (R) moves against regulations regarding our showerheads, dishwashers, stoves and ranges, and other household appliances has triggered a thought in me regarding regulation and Congressional delegation.

As we all know, Congress has delegated rule-making to the Executive Branch agencies and Departments, and many of us think Congress has over-delegated. Congressmen have shown themselves loath to wholesale claw back that delegation and write their own regulations to give concrete effect to Congress’ statutes. Here’s an easier move Congress could make regarding that delegation and rule-making.

Let the agencies and Departments conduct their rule-making in the current way, with the requirement for a comment period, the regulators required to take seriously the public’s comments during that period, and the writing of the “final” rule. The added steps are these, and they are few:

1. The agency/Department is barred from implementing the rule at any time in draft form, including via “guidance” letter, before it takes formal, legal effect
2. When the agency/Department has finalized its rule, it must submit the rule to Congress for approval
3. Each house of Congress must approve the rule via floor debate and majority vote—this is the step that gives the rule legal effect, not agency/Department finalization
4. Each house of Congress must approve the rule within 10 calendar days of its submittal to Congress
5. If both houses do not approve the rule within 10 calendar days, the rule is deemed disapproved, and it cannot take effect
6. If the rule is disapproved, whether by overt disapproval or by failure to approve within 10 days, the rule and no rule similar to it can be brought up again for six years

That last rule is especially important: it allows for the possibility of a complete turnover of the House of Representatives three times, it allows for the possibility of a complete turnover of the Senate, and it allows for the possibility of a complete turnover of the White House and, by extension, of the leadership of those agencies and Departments.

NB: I posted the gist of this to DOGE’s Regulations.gov, which is DOGE’s call for, and Web site for receiving, suggestions for rule changes and rescission by us ordinary Americans.

Because when I got to the head of the line, they were all out of humility, so I made up for it with an extra helping of hubris.