Tag Archives: regulation

An Adjacent Issue

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A group wants to paint the message “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on a street outside a Planned Parenthood site near Capitol Hill in DC. The city’s government has refused to issue the necessary permit, and police arrested two folks who tried just to chalk the message rather than paint it. The group now has sued in Federal court over the refusal and subsequent prevention of painting; the suit reads, in pertinent part,

Your original decision to paint “Black Lives Matter” on the street is government speech. However, your decision to allow protestors to paint “Defund the Police” opened the streets up as a public forum. You are not permitted to discriminate on the basis of viewpoint in making determinations relating to public assemblies in public fora[.]

That raises the adjacent issue. Government speech wants citizen speech in answer, also, or what’s a First Amendment for?

Another Thought on Defunding

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This one concerns the US Marshals Service.

The US Marshals Service released a statement Friday noting they have recovered 27 missing and exploited children in Virginia as a result of what they called “Operation Find Our Children.”

There’s this, too, from Jeffrey Rosen, Deputy Attorney General, concerning “Operation Find Our Children” more generally:

While this Virginia operation is the most recent recovery of endangered and missing children led by the US Marshals Service this year, we have also recovered more than 440 kids in Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, Louisiana, and other states. Because of this initiative, the recovered children are now out of harm’s way.

This is the sort of thing that will be lost should the Progressive-Democrats’ police defunding movement reach the Federal level.

This list of local police agencies that have been supporting “Operation Find Our Children” illustrates the depth of the risk from the Left’s police defunding movement:

  • Metro Transit Police Department
  • Virginia State Police,
  • Alexandria Sheriff’s Office
  • Chesterfield County Police Department
  • Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office
  • Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office
  • Hampton Police Department
  • Henrico County Police Department
  • Norfolk Police Department
  • Prince William County Police Department
  • Portsmouth Police Department
  • Richmond City Police Department
  • Roanoke City Police Department
  • Virginia Beach Police Department
  • Virginia Department of Corrections

Free Speech

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During last week’s Senate Commerce Committee hearings on Facebook’s, Alphabet’s, and Twitter’s seeming censorship of speech of which those entities’ MFWICS—Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Jack Dorsey—disapprove, Senator Ed Markey (D, MA) said this:

The issue is not that these companies before us today are taking too many posts down. The issue is that they are leaving too many dangerous posts up.

This, from the Senator who also said this about the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett:

Originalism is racist. Originalism is sexist. Originalism is homophobic. Originalism is just a fancy word for discrimination.

This is the assault on freedom of speech—on our Constitution—we can expect from a Progressive-Democrat-controlled Congress and White House.

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.