Category Archives: regulation

The Biden No-Fracking Plan

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…and his assault on our oil industry and our energy production sector generally.

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden said, in last Thursday’s debate,

I would transition from the oil industry, yes.

Then he repeated his promise.

I will transition. It is a big statement. Because I would stop.

Here’s how he intends to prosecute his assault.

  • ban on drilling leases and development on federal land
  • “robust federal standards” on methane releases from pipelines as well as storage facilities
  • use the Endangered Species Act and National Monuments Act to limit lands open to development
  • all infrastructure projects that require federal approval or receive federal funds would have to undergo a “climate test” including federal agencies projecting costs from carbon emissions attributable to every new pipeline or liquefied natural gas terminal
  • choke demand by requiring, among other things, expensive carbon sequestration technologies on power plants
  • increase subsidies for wind and solar power in parallel with eliminating existing subsidies and credits for oil and natural gas production, reducing demand for the oil and gas

Fracking ban by a thousand cuts. And slashes.

Labor Rights

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Whose rights are they, anyway?

Last Thursday, a California First Appellate District court upheld a State district court’s order that Uber and Lyft must reclassify their gig drivers as actual employees and so must add to their labor costs with benefits, paid leave of various sorts, payroll taxes, and so on. Never mind that this will reduce gig-oriented companies’ ability to recover from the State’s Wuhan Virus-related lockdowns and cost thousands of Californians access to additional income.

The time is fast approaching when it’ll be most useful for Uber, Lyft, and other gig-oriented businesses to leave California altogether.

It gets worse. As Uber noted in part,

…rideshare drivers will be prevented from continuing to work as independent contractors….

Indeed. The California court’s order (and AB5, the State statute that originally levied the classification requirement) go far beyond restricting gig-oriented businesses.

They’re attacks on gig workers themselves by denying them control over their own labor and the price and other parameters under which they’re willing to market their labor. The ruling and the statute convert those who wish to work in California into labor wards of the State’s government.

Almost like they’re State plantation laborers. But it’s all good, though; it’s for the workers’ own good.

The court’s opinion can be read here.

Follow the Narrative–I Mean Science

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Here’s some science—the Great Barrington Declaration.

James Freeman, in his Tuesday Wall Street Journal column, opened with this:

This week dozens of esteemed medical experts with blue-chip academic credentials published a warning about the destructive policies adopted to address Covid-19. Since the Sunday publication of this Great Barrington Declaration more than a thousand biological scientists and more than 1,500 medical practitioners have added their names to the petition. Yet it’s been almost entirely ignored by the media outlets that spend much of their days presenting themselves as obedient to science.

The declaration says this, in part:

Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings, and deteriorating mental health—leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.

The declaration closes with its recommendation for how we should deal with the virus [emphasis added].

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home.  …
Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish….

Of course the Great Barrington Declaration and its Focused Protection proposal have been ignored by the media outlets. They’re also being ignored by Progressive-Democrats everywhere from Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer on down.

The Great Barrington Declaration is the wrong science to follow; it’s too politically inconvenient to settled narrative.

Economic Evolution?

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In a Wall Street Journal Letters offering, one writer, in supporting the Chamber of Commerce’s change of position regarding massive government intervention into our private economy, wrote

The 2020 economy is far different than that of 1980, and so what is good for business now is necessarily different.

This is wrong on two counts. The first is that the reason the economy of 1980 seems different from that of 2020 is the explosion of government intervention and intrusive regulation over those 40 years. That’s not actually an economic difference, though; it’s a government behavior difference, with the economy changing in result, not from its own intrinsic evolution.

The other is that what’s good for business is a constant: a free market that’s competitive among businesses, a free market with government intervention and regulation limited to ensuring that business managers don’t lie in their contracts or their advertising and that those managers don’t abuse whatever monopoly power might come their way. Sound economic principles don’t change.

“You Do Not Need….”

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In Canada, too. There’s a petition—one that drew a record number of signatures—in Canada calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to withdraw his Order in Council (roughly analogous to our Presidents’ Executive Orders) regarding his gun control overreach [emphasis added, but that’s a side issue].

We, the undersigned, citizens of Canada, call upon the Prime Minister to immediately scrap his government’s May 1, 2020, Order in Council decision related to confiscating legally owned firearms and instead pass legislation that will target criminals, stop the smuggling of firearms into Canada, go after those who illegally acquire firearms, and apologize to legal firearms owners in Canada[.]

Trudeau’s Order was instituted through taking cynical advantage of the upset over a mass murder in Nova Scotia a short time earlier, and he executed it in the absence of Parliament, which was not sitting due to the Wuhan Virus situation in Canada. His Order banned more than 1,500 models and variants of rifles, including AR-15s, Mini-14s, and firearms that the Nova Scotia gunman used. Trudeau, in the arrogance of government, rationalized his Order:

You do not need an AR-15 to take down a deer[.]

Those in government can’t conceive of the need for those being ruled over to defend themselves against criminals, including home invaders, rioters, looters—and crazed gunmen—when it’s so plainly the government’s police who are solely responsible for such defense, and it’s the responsibility of the attacked citizens to wait patiently on the government’s police’s arrival.

Those in government can’t conceive of the need for those being ruled over to defend themselves against that very government.

Those in power are oblivious to their own arrogance. That obliviousness itself creates an entirely separate need for the citizenry to define for themselves their need for and their purpose in having weapons.

That obliviousness itself creates an entirely separate need for an armed citizenry, one armed with the weapons of their individual choice, not those permitted by government.