Category Archives: regulation

Business Decision, or…?

Posted on by
Reply

Legislation lately getting the backing of the Trump administration would

give merchants the option to choose a different card network to process transactions when their customers use a credit card.

Banks object.

[They] say that the fees are what power credit-card rewards, like cash back and travel points, and that passing the bill would force them to change those programs consumers love.

The banks may be correct in that, but their beef also is irrelevant to the situation.

Offering those rewards (and finding the funds to pay for them) is a business decision subject to free market imperatives, not any sort of inherent right that wants government protection.

It’s a Start

Posted on by
Reply

If it passes, a draft bipartisan Federal permit reform bill that’s circulating in the Senate would be a good start. As is the usual case in politics, it wants improvement, but first pass this first step, then return forthwith with improvements, and pass those.

What the bill has, if the Senate as a whole can pass it and then the House do so, too:

  • strict deadlines for agencies to complete environmental reviews—two years for bigger projects and one for smaller ones—and lets developers sue if their reviews are delayed
  • requiring plaintiffs to challenge permits within 150 days of their publication—they now have six years—and to have suffered direct harm or face imminent injury
  • 150-day statute of limitations would apply to challenging so-called biological opinions
  • if a judge faults an environmental review, agencies could correct the purported lapse rather than restart the permitting process
  • repair and replacements of critical infrastructure, including transportation, water, grid and energy projects, would be exempt from NEPA reviews
  • generally prohibit federal agencies from rescinding or suspending permits and allow permit holders to sue for damages if they do

I suggest the following improvements for enactment in the next legislative session:

  • one year to complete large project environmental review, six months for smaller projects. If the deadline passes without Agency action, the permit is deemed issued with no caveats or conditions and cannot be challenged in court. Agencies also must have the burden of proving they didn’t just rubber stamp a rejection in order to meet the deadline. Agencies have these newfangled devices called computers along with software with which to facilitate reviews. There’s no need to mosey along with manually done procedures
  • require plaintiffs to challenge within 60 days. They also have access to modern computers and software with which to review the permit and produce their challenges
  • 60-day statute of limits to challenge all opinions, not just biological ones. See the above about computers and software
  • generally prohibit federal agencies from rescinding or suspending permits, period

I know; it’s a pipedream to get the initial step passed, much less the improvements. But I dream.

An Appropriate Move

Posted on by
Reply

The Trump administration is adjusting its interpretation of Title IX as it concerns sexual assault, including rape. The change greatly reduces the requirement for colleges and universities to themselves investigate sexual assaults, including rape, where those occurred off campus. Critics, of course, complain that the move will simply increase the likelihood of further moves like the alleged Cornell student who lately has filed a civil suit against the school and the seven students she alleges raped her at an off-campus party.

The move may well encourage fee-seeking lawyers and deep pockets civil suits by alleged victims, but the plain matter is centered on who has the jurisdiction for investigation and criminal charges.

If the assault occurs off campus, even if in an off-campus fraternity or sorority house, it’s still primarily a city police matter, not a campus police mater. The fraternity and sorority house is off campus almost exclusively because it’s not supported or even sanctioned by the school, perhaps even evicted from the school’s campus. That severely limits campus police authority regarding those places, and campus police have no authority at all anywhere else off campus. Beyond that, off-campus means off campus, and so outside the jurisdiction of school authority of any sort.

Outside school jurisdiction, though, does not mean the alleged victim has no protections against assaults or no means of redress after the assault as some of the more hysterical criticisms would have it. Those protections and means of redress remain where they have always been: in the local, State, and Federal laws against any crime, including sexual assaults of any form, in the hands of local and State police to investigate, and in the hands of the State and Federal criminal trial courts.

A Clear Statement

Posted on by
Reply

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on protecting women’s sports from male participation by gender identity last Wednesday. Progressive-Democratic Party committee members boycotted the hearing a’fter the committee’s Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D, IL) pooh-poohed the risk of boys and men playing against girls in girls’ sports, calling the hearing a vendetta against trans athletes.

This is Party’s overt, clear statement in favor of boys and men playing in what used to be girls’ sports, denying those girls the privacy of their own bathrooms and locker rooms, denying those girls the self-confidence that comes from competing against other girls and winning or otherwise doing well rather than being dominated by the boys and men against whom they’re competing—to use that term very loosely in this context. It denies girls access to the accolades, scholarships, and money that would otherwise accrue to them from success.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party. It proudly adds misogyny to their platform.

Another Brief Thought on Responsibility

Posted on by
Reply

A WSJ Letters letter writer representing Share our Strength wrote to protest the paring back of Federal outlays to State SNAP programs. He had this early in his missive, and he was right:

We can agree that states should ensure eligible families get the proper benefits.

In the very next sentence, though, he had this contradiction:

But penalizing states without providing the resources to improve administration leaves more children hungry by pushing more parents away from SNAP.

The latter part of that may be true, but it’s not the Federal government’s responsibility to improve any State’s SNAP administration, nor is it the Federal government’s responsibility to provide resources for that improvement. Both of those requirements lie strictly and solely with the State involved.

And, using New York as his example, he offered this naked excusal for States’ failure to perform:

Honest mistakes can happen when overworked caseworkers using outdated technology to calculate benefits have to factor in a gig worker’s fluctuating income or a parent picking up occasional extra shifts.

If [New York] truly were serious about those error rates, it would satisfy its own (not the Federal government’s) responsibility and hire more (well-trained) caseworkers and upgrade the technology those caseworkers must use.

At bottom here is a State’s own decision regarding its own spending allocations. Nothing is stopping any State from changing what it chooses to fund and what set of Federal dollars it chooses to try to freeload off of.

All the Federal government can do, all it should do in our federal republic, is provide incentives to States to carry out their own responsibilities. Withholding financial transfers from States that choose to shirk their own responsibilities is a perfectly fine incentive, and one the Federal government should apply more broadly regarding money transfers to States.