Tag Archives: regulation

Not All It Can Do

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Progressive-Democrat Mayor Eric Adams’ New York City government has a new way to spy on American citizens resident in that city, or even just visiting.

New York City drivers buckle up because Big Brother (aka the MTA) is keeping a watchful eye on you by installing cameras along New York City streets to track you. But why? Well, it all boils down to money, of course. The MTA is rolling out a controversial $15 per day congestion fee for all drivers venturing south of 60th Street. They’ve even given this area of Manhattan a snazzy name: the toll congestion zone.

That’s its publicly stated—look, a squirrel—purpose.

Another purpose, one Adams and his city government don’t want to mention, is to track those drivers to see where they go; where they park and shut down, presumably getting out of their cars; what shops they go to, at least identifying the shops within walking distance; and how long they’re there.

Because inquiring Government minds want to know.

More Reasons to Disband

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Now the Biden administration is actively seeking to undermine our friends and allies on top of destroying our energy industry.

The White House on Friday announced a temporary pause on pending decisions of exports of liquefied natural gas to non-free trade countries, until the Energy Department can factor climate change into its reviews of the projects.

Two changes (for starters) are badly needed, and these changes badly need significant majorities in the House and Senate and a Republican in the White House (which puts a premium on the elections this fall).

One of those changes is enactment of a statute giving the relevant approval authority(s) 10 calendar days in which to approve an export application or to provide a detailed explanation for denial, which explanation must have only concrete, measurable reasons, be devoid of generalities, and be publicly available NLT the 11th day. Absent such a decision, the application must be deemed approved.

The other change is the disbandment of the Department of Energy with all Department personnel returned to the private sector, not reassigned elsewhere in the Federal government. The only functions remotely worth retaining are ARPA-Energy and Science and Innovation, which should be folded into ARPA with circumscribed funding authorities.

Another change, in furtherance of the concept of the second change, is the disbandment of the Environmental Protection Agency, with its personnel also returned to the private sector, rather than reassigned within the Federal government. This agency—the managers in charge of it, along with its employees, have for too long conflated environmental protection with climate “protection,” with its cockamamy decisions exemplified by its ruling that plant food in our atmosphere—CO2—is a pollutant.

Valid Arguments

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Several States’ Attorneys General have filed an amicus brief in a Supreme Court case centered on whether Texas and Florida statutes that limit Big Tech’s ability to censor speech done on their platforms are legitimate. The analogy they draw is one valid argument.

[Summarized by Fox News]: [G]iving Big Tech the ability to moderate or censor users’ content would be like giving cable or telephone companies permission to cut phone lines on speech at their discretion. The AGs note that under federal “must-carry requirements,” those companies are banned from subjugating any speech on their lines.

And:

The Eleventh Circuit concluded social media companies could censor content because they have “historically exercised” power to refuse transmission of disfavored ideas.
But telegraph companies have a much longer history of censorship. Social media is less than two decades old. Congress did not impose must-carry requirements on telegraphs until 1888, 50 years after their invention[.]
Yet it is well recognized today that those must-carry regulations were constitutional—even though this Court declared that telegraph companies are “not common carriers.” History thus provides no basis for dismissing the striking similarities between social media companies and telegraph and telephones by dubbing social-media censorship “editorial judgment[.]”
While the earlier laws applied to telegraphs and telephones, it is no different when the companies carrying other people’s speech are digital rather than analog[.]
The States thus have a paramount interest in urging this Court to affirm that longstanding, historic authority of States to protect freedom of speech and enable representative government by prohibiting dominant communication networks from censoring[.]

There is one more argument that is, IMNSHO opinion, dispositively on point. This is the status of those Big Tech platforms—X (nee Twitter), Meta’s Facebook, and Alphabet’s YouTube, for instance—as public forums. Indeed, some of these platforms have explicitly stated that they intend to be public squares for public discourse, even as they also provide mechanisms for exchanging private correspondence.

The public square is precisely where speech may not be censored except within a very few very narrowly defined boundaries—incitement to riot, explicit threats of violence against particular persons. Whether any Big Tech platform has explicitly styled itself a public square, each of these platforms have grown so large—become so dominant—that each one of them is, de facto, a public square. Their censorship practices must be barred.

Bank Capital Requirements

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The Federal Reserve is looking hard at increasing the amount of capital that banks must hold in the Fed’s effort to boost bank liquidity, or their ability to handle sharply increased withdrawal rates.

There is pushback against this proposal, including objections that it might make it harder for banks to lend to folks on the lower economic tiers, even that it might make American banks less competitive than foreign competitors. That last often (not always) is just political Newspeak for “be more like Europe.”

However, the problem can be preempted—or at least pushed a considerable way down the road, allowing for more thought—by doing something different that IMNSHO is a better move, anyway.

Rather than increasing capital requirements, require all banks to mark to market (semiannually? quarterly?) all of the debt instruments the banks hold in satisfaction of existing capital requirements.

Then leave that requirement in place for some period of time (5 years, say) in order to get a serious look at how well, or poorly, that requirement supports bank liquidity during economic downturns.

Racism, Arrogance Against Election Integrity

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In the aftermath of the 2020 election confusions in Georgia (both general and runoff), that State passed its Election Integrity Act that, among other things, shortened Georgia’s early voting period from nine weeks to four, reduced the window for mail-in ballots, and moved the deadline for registering to vote to 29 days before an election.

The Sixth Dist. of the Afr. Methodist Episcopal Church, the Ga. State Conf. of the NAACP, and The Concerned Black Clergy of Metro. Atlanta Inc., joined by the Federal government’s DoJ, sued to strike the law as voter suppressing—the stricter voting period unfairly discriminates against Black voters, among other complaints.

This was a nakedly racist suit that used a manufactured racism beef as the core of their argument. Federal District Judge JP Boulee issued a preliminary injunction upholding the law. With particular reference to the Act’s runoff requirements, he wrote,

Plaintiffs presented evidence that Black voters are more likely to vote early. Plaintiffs did not present any evidence, however, which would show why Black voters would disproportionately struggle to vote during the new early voting period

And [emphasis added]

In short…the Court is not persuaded that evidence showing that black voters use early voting more often is sufficient to show that the Runoff Provisions, which shorten the early voting period, will have a disparate impact on black voters. In other words, without more, generalized evidence related to the use of early voting is not sufficient to automatically show that this particular provision, which pertains to one aspect of runoff elections, is discriminatory.

And

Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to show that the Runoff Provisions have a disparate impact on black voters. Indeed, Plaintiffs failed to show that eliminating the registration period before a runoff election disproportionately impacts black people. Plaintiffs also failed to show that reducing the early voting period and not mandating weekend voting has a disparate impact. The Court thus weighs this factor in favor of Defendants and against a discriminatory purpose finding.

“Plaintiffs” just expected their unsubstantiated claim to be taken as dispositive fact. Their arrogance runs as deep as their racism.

Regarding the specific question of Plaintiffs not getting their preferred way, Boulee noted the 11th Circuit’s precedent, binding on his court (the 11th Circuit includes Georgia):

The Court acknowledges that the Legislature did not include the alternative option that Plaintiffs would have preferred [a one- or two-week longer voter registration period]. Importantly, the Eleventh Circuit has held that the failure to “‘include the alternative option[s] that Plaintiffs would have preferred’ is not evidence of discriminatory intent.”

That’s the arrogance of Plaintiffs being handled.

The dishonest nature of the plaintiff’s beef is illustrated in Footnote 6 of the Boulee’s ruling [emphasis added, cites omitted]:

6 As to the other named organizations, the Court is not convinced that Plaintiffs established an injury based on a diversion of resources. By way of example, Plaintiffs argued that “[i]t is false that Common Cause ‘says nothing about runoffs,’ . . . Common Cause testified about its voter participation efforts in both the ‘2020 Primary and Runoff election cycles.'” A close look at Plaintiffs’ evidence, however, does not show that Common Cause diverted its resources to counteract the Runoff Provisions. Instead, Common Cause’s representative stated that “[a]s part of the organization’s voter participation efforts, Common Cause GA provided free personal protective equipment (PPE), food, and water to persons, including voters, at or around polling sites, in Fulton County during the 2020 Primary and Runoff election cycles.” Simply put, the fact that Common Cause elected to give out water and other gifts during a runoff election does not show that it diverted resources away from its ordinary activities to counteract the Runoff Provisions.

These plaintiffs, their judgments clouded by their racism and arrogance, are just making things up and claiming them to be true without even a pretense of substantiation.

The judge’s ruling can be read here.