regulation — VOICES for REASON

Want a sample of the burdens that employers must endure in resisting suits under the various “civil rights” laws that bar discrimination on the basis of race, sex, age, disability, etc.?

A postal worker sued his employer, alleging age discrimination. To mount a successful suit, a plaintiff must prove he suffered tangible harm from an “adverse employment action.” Normally, that’s a discharge, demotion, pay cut, or other obvious detrimental event.

This particular plaintiff, however, claimed in effect that the adverse action was making him do some work. That is, he was transferred from a job with no duties to a job with some duties. Don’t believe me? Here’s his testimony, describing his job before the transfer:

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s U.S. Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, on March 26th, 2009 before the House Financial Services Committee on “regulating risk”, when he outlined his plan for a “comprehensive framework for regulatory reform”:

Supervision and regulation failed to prevent these problems…U.S. law left regulators without good options for managing failures of systematically important non-bank financial institutions…We must end the practice of allowing banks and other financial companies to choose their regulator simply by changing their charters; regulators must choose who to regulate. Moreover, our regulatory system must be comprehensive and eliminate gaps in coverage. Our regulatory structure must assign clear regulatory authority, resources, and accountability for each of the key regulatory functions….

What’s Geithner really saying here? Consider the following as a translation: Read the rest of this entry »

First there was the drug czar, then the energy czar, and (possibly) a car czar. Now we can add to the list: Cass Sunstein, Obama’s new “federal regulatory czar.”

Sunstein is a well-known law professor and author of numerous books, including his recent work Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, co-authored with Richard Thaler. (Eric Daniels has a devastating review of the book in the Fall 2008 issue of The Objective Standard.)

If you want a hint of what Sunstein brings to the table, consider his proposal for what he called “fairness-doctrine-type mandates on Web sites.”

[The Internet Fairness Doctrine proposal] suggested that it’s reasonable for government to think about creating the equivalent of linking obligations and pop-ups, so that you’d be on one site–say, a conservative site–and there’d be a pop-up from a liberal site.

Not to worry, though. It turns out that Sunstein eventually saw the light and decided his proposal was–his word–”stupid.”

Was it because he came to see that the government shouldn’t be forcing Americans to promote ideas they disagree with? Not at all. Rather, he backtracked, saying “the Internet is too difficult to regulate.”

Welcome to the mind of a regulator: I will decide what’s best for individuals. If I think conservatives don’t read enough liberal articles, I’ll devise some clever way to make them. Sure, sometimes I’ll come up with “stupid” ideas, but that’s okay. I’ll just wave my regulatory wand the next day and try something else.