Category: regulation

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election law judiciary regulation U.S. Constitution

Fifty Years After Buckley

campaign finance reform, consequences, Tufte inspired

Congress began regulating campaign finances in the 1960s.

In 1976, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Buckley v. Valeo reined in such regulation … in part.

This month, at a symposium marking the 50th anniversary of the ruling, John Samples — a former Vice President at the Cato Institute and currently a Member of Meta’s Oversight Board — compared what happened after the 1976 ruling to what might have happened had the ruling been better or worse.

The alleged point of campaign finance regulation was to “level the playing field.” The actual point, Samples observed, has been to “protect the political status quo” by making it harder “to spend enough money to effectively challenge congressional incumbents.”

In Buckley, the court ruled that contribution limits were indeed valid (they aren’t) for the sake of combatting corruption or the “appearance of corruption.” But it also ruled that limits on campaign spending are limits on speech, hence invalid — thereby saving democracy, argued former Federal Election Commission chair Bradley Smith, in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago: “The Buckley court understood that effective political speech requires resources.”

The Court also upheld compulsory disclosure of donors and donations. This led to chronic calumniation of donors, helping to poison public discourse.

Samples suggeststhat a more libertarian Buckley might have enabled major reform, even perhaps privatizing of New Deal and Great Society spending programs in the 1980s.

On the other hand, had the decision been worse, “validating spending limits” as well, Congress would likely have continued to hobble challengers. And thus, perhaps, prevented the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan and the emergence of a GOP majority in the U.S. Senate.

Unwarranted restrictions on freedom of speech should be removed completely. Substantially removed is better than not at all, sure. But now let’s finish the job.

Something Brad Smith’s Institute for Free Speech works on every day.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Internet controversy regulation

Hating X: The Naked Truth

DEMS, censorship, Senate, EU, X, Twitter

Why do so many U.S. Democrats, like some Europeans, want to outlaw X?

The current stage of the U.S. assault on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter takes the form of senatorial demands that X be removed from iOS and Android app stores.

Why the enmity? 

Well, under the ownership of Elon Musk, X lets people say and write stuff that Democrats dislike. Such as criticism of Democratic policies and politicians, just the kind of speech the First Amendment was drafted to protect. (Criticism of Republican, Libertarian, communist, and anarchist policies and politicians? Also protected.)

The rationalization for the proposed ban is that X’s AI software, Grok, can generate pictures of nude or nearly nude people.

The ability to generate such images is hardly unique to this particular chatbot. If X is to be banned from app stores because of the possibility that users may post generated nudes on the platform, many more social media platforms would, logically, also have to be snared by the censorship net.

Yet, reports Reclaim the Net, the letter sent to the CEOs of Apple and Google “by Senators Ron Wyden, Ben Ray Luján, and Ed Markey asked the tech giants only about X and demanded that the companies remove X from their app stores entirely.”

Unsurprisingly, X has announced that the nude-​ifying feature of Grok has been limited. I asked Grok, and it said that “there is now a taboo/​restriction on generating or editing nudes (or near-​nudes/​revealing attire) of real, existing people from photos. It will refuse prompts to digitally ‘undress’ or sexualize identifiable real individuals. Attempts often result in refusal, blurring, or error messages.”

Fixed?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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political economy property rights regulation too much government

Too Damn High?

unintended consequences, renter, landlord, regulations, private property, property

It’s getting tougher to rent a place to live.

Applications now often entail fearsomely intrusive scourings of financial history. And, writes Jeffrey Tucker, “if you are unbanked or missed a payment at some point, you can forget it.”

This is about more than digital intrusiveness or the end of privacy. It’s about aversion to risk. 

The aversion may have many causes. Tucker stresses a factor that’s pretty glaring once you think about it: the federal government’s assault on private property rights during the COVID-​19 pandemic. Some tenants eagerly exploited a federally imposed moratorium on rent payment — plus ban on evictions — only finally stopped by a 5 – 4 decision by the Supreme Court. 

At the state level, evictions continued to be outlawed until 2022.

So property owners assume that they cannot at all count on government to be in their corner. If a tenant fails to pay rent, folks in government (who include the ones with guns) protect the person who cannot or will not pay his or her bills. 

The concern must be even more intense if an owner’s property is located in a town with a track record of demonizing landlords and in the process of launching further assaults on property rights. (Example: New York City, where high rents are now officially called rip-​offs.)

Landlords want to avoid tenants who would use any law or bureaucratic tendency to rationalize skipping rent payment. Since owners can’t count on government to protect their property rights, they are becoming ultra-cautious. 

That is why conscientious prospective tenants who may have a blot or two in their financial history are paying the price.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture international affairs regulation social media

U.S. Bans EU Censors

EU, censorship, free speech, Visa

European leaders are condemning American use of visa bans to penalize European enemies of American freedom of speech.

Which is understandable, since the U.S. State Department more than merely condemned the European Union.

In the words of Marco Rubio, the five just-​sanctioned persons “have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”

Thierry Breton. Former EU commissioner and top proponent of the Digital Services Act, which seeks to force U.S. tech giants to “police illegal content more aggressively” or face big fines. “Illegal” here doesn’t mean speech deployed to commit bank robberies; it’s speech EU censors dislike.

Josephine Ballon and Anna-​Lena von Hodenberg. Leaders of HateAid.

Clare Melford. Leader of Global Disinformation Index, which, the State Department observes, exhorts “censorship and blacklisting of American speech and press.”

Imran Ahmed. Leader of Center for Countering Digital Hate, described by Breitbart as the “deplatforming outfit which defined its central mission as ‘Kill Musk’s Twitter.’ ” CCDH also worked hard to get Breitbart and other sites blacklisted from social media.

Maybe none of these villains was planning a trip to the United States anytime soon.

And, doubtless, much more could be done to combat overseas attempts to censor Americans. But at least this much action against enemies of our First Amendment rights is warranted, even if mostly symbolic.

Just give us a little more time, European leaders. We’ll do more to oppose and thwart your obnoxious global censorship agenda. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people regulation too much government

Submit to Our Plans, Shivering Peasant

Colorado, natural gas, climate, energy, fuel, regualtions

How to defuse resistance to tyranny: helpful information.

Colorado now mandates that emissions from burning natural gas be cut, over the next ten years, by 41 percent — the perfect percentage, elsewise it would’ve been rounded to 40. 

No more natural gas emissions at all by 2050. 

“News that Colorado has set hard target dates for an end to burning natural gas in our daily lives prompted many ‘wait, what?’ questions from Colorado Sun readers,” says Sun columnist Michael Booth. He is here to help.

Propane tanks? These may not be banned by the current law, but do try to convert to electrical appliances. (If the power goes out, Coloradans can always use some other electrical thing as backup. Think batteries, lots of batteries!)

Also, the “new rules are not aimed at homeowners,” Coloradans will be relieved to know. Just at utilities … which serve homeowners. “Under current rules, no one is showing up at your door to rip out a gas water heater against your will.” 

Those helpful government agents will show up at your utility’s door with a court order forcing your utility to rip up natural gas lines, instead.

What if the switchover happens too slowly for regulators? 

Column for another day.

Any advice on reversing the ban? 

Mr. Booth might protest that it’s not his job to lead any rebel alliance, only to give information on things. Oh, sure. Well, he might have offered info on how to contact Colorado state legislators and the governor’s office. 

Not for any purpose but just to keep readers well-informed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs regulation

Billionaire Baby Ploy

birthright citizenship, China, immigration, foreign policy

A Chinese billionaire tried. Give him that. But do we have to like what he was up to?

The trier in question is fantasy video-​game mogul Xu Bo, and The Wall Street Journal reports that he is trying to gain a foothold in the United States in a somewhat novel way … for a rich man, anyway. 

He’s fathering children in America. Many children.

And by non-​wives who are under surrogacy contracts to bear his children for him.

While domestic surrogacy is illegal in China, it’s not in the U.S. So, being a resourceful billionaire, and inspired by Elon Musk’s fathering of 14 known children, he took action.

A family court in California noticed. When it realized the man was petitioning for parental rights “to at least four unborn children,” explains the Journal, and “learned he had already fathered or was in the process of fathering at least eight more through surrogates, it raised alarm,” and his request was denied.

A “rare rebuke to a little-​known trend in the largely unregulated U.S. surrogacy industry” — and it’s a trend that the Chinese super-​wealthy are taking advantage of. 

What advantage? Birthright citizenship: “Babies born via surrogacy in the U.S. are U.S. citizens by virtue of the 14th Amendment.” 

This issue, which looms rather large as tens of millions flocked to America during the Biden years, is key. It allows for all sorts of abuse. 

Because the world has changed in 157 years.

Now that the “millionaires and billionaires” are horning in on the act, will Democrats re-​think their commitment to birthright citizenship?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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property rights regulation too much government

The Regulatory Flex

Gavin Newsom, YIMBY, California, Pacific Palisades

If you’re a homeowner devastated by wildfires, you may want to rebuild. Since you have also suffered a financial setback, especially if your property insurance was canceled just before the fire, you may also want to earn money by renting a part of your new home.

Such are the considerations that motivate some property owners devastated by last January’s conflagrations in California to want to build a duplex. 

So what’s the problem?

The governor is the problem.

That he’s listening to other property owners in your neighborhood — the Pacific Palisades — who dislike duplexes makes the problem worse. 

Your property is not their property, mind you. But they’re acting as if it were.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order letting cities ban duplex construction in neighborhoods affected by last January’s wildfires. A pro-​development group called YIMBY Law was willing to refrain from filing a lawsuit if the governor issued a new order to let property owners build duplexes after a year had passed.

But Newsom won’t budge. So YIMBY Law is suing. 

A spokesman for the governor says that letting owners build duplexes (on their own property) amounts to an “attack” on the Pacific Palisades and an undermining of “local flexibility to rebuild.”

“Local,” here, seems to mean the sum total of all neighbors who are loath to allow you to enjoy the flexibility of building on your own property. 

But the individual and his rights are as local as it gets. 

And reducing options, as a prohibition on building duplexes where single-​family homes once stood, is the very opposite of “flexibility.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly international affairs regulation

Denmark’s Cows Must Die

Denmark, climate change,global warming, methane, cows, bureaucrats

Sorry, cows. The planet comes first.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression. No order has been issued requiring Danish farmers to kill their cows. The state is merely requiring that they feed the cows poison.

The purpose of the wonder-​additive, Bovaer, produced by a company called Elanco Animal Health, is to limit the methane that cows produce as they digest their food. Then, says Elanco, the amount of methane that the cows emit — by a method too indelicate to mention — will be reduced 30 percent. Elanco must have done some kind of testing to figure this out, I suppose.

What is the point, though? Why does anybody want to accomplish this?

Well, the central planners who mandate such things believe or say they believe that even a smidgen less methane in the air will enable them to fine-​tune the global climate thus wise and so and thereby, something something something, a perfect optimization. Well, not perfectly perfect, not until all the bovines everywhere are gobbling Bovaer. Denmark is not the only country pushing the drug though.

Alas, some Danish farmers are being obstreperous, complaining that their cows are getting sick: lethargy, diarrhea, miscarriages, drops in milk production. Etc. Some are even dying as result of the additive.

It is sad. But I’d rather have a few dead cows than a dead planet with nonstop hurricanes and tornadoes. And that’s what’s gonna happen if we don’t find a way to inhibit the cows’ … methane emissions.

This is Common Sense!! I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs political economy regulation

Rents After the Chainsaw

Javier Milei, Argentina, free markets, regulations, housing

Argentina’s Ministry of Deregulation — yes, it now has one — reports that by June 2024, little more than half a year after chainsaw-​wielding libertarian candidate Javier Milei won the presidential election, the housing market boomed … into a magnificent recovery.

Back in March, Reason magazine observed that listings on the Argentinian real-​estate platform Zonaprop had increased from 5,500 before Milei’s deregulation “to 15,300 today, a staggering 180 percent rise.”

Why the big jump?

Strict national rent controls had been imposed in 2020, by the previous administration. When Milei lifted them, replacing them “with nothing,” tenants and landlords could then make whatever arrangements they could agree upon.

One method of evading the punishing controls had been switching to an Airbnb model of renting, with contracts renewable every three months. Such expedients were almost mandatory … given Argentina’s galloping inflation. But they introduced their own kinds of uncertainty.

Owners also took units off the market.

Annual rentals plummeted under this anti-​market regime. In late 2023, Valentina Morales saw maybe “12 apartments advertised in the entire Palermo neighborhood,” a region with a population of almost 250,000.

Rents on the few apartments available with annual contracts skyrocketed. Tenancies were required by regulation to last for three years, with arbitrary and unrealistic caps on rent increases. And rent had to be paid only in pesos. But since inflation did not pause under the pre-​Milei regime, owners were forced to guess how high inflation would go over the three years … and they charged accordingly.

Now? All such nonsense is gone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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regulation

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Overkill

butter, Costco, regulations, Common Sense

Butter is made from cream, which is derived from milk. Not a new truth; it’s never been anything but.

B‑but — some people are allergic!

And we must protect them.

Under the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA) of 2004, milk is one of nine major allergens that must be explicitly declared — either in parentheses after the ingredient (e.g., “cream (milk)”) or in a separate “Contains: Milk” statement. 

Which is why Costco had to recall 79,200 pounds of butter. A labeling oversight meant that perfectly good and safe butter was placed on the big box store’s shelves without the explicit warning that butter contains milk. The FDA issued a Class II recall, and Costco began the process on October 11.

“Voluntarily,” we’re told. 

No doubt “voluntary” because neither Costco nor the bulk of its customers wants to get into arguments about government regulation designed to protect people with cows’ milk allergies.

In a world run by common sense and not a federal bureaucracy, however, even the most litigious lawyers would surely be satisfied by extra signage at point of sale — something like

ALL BUTTER IS MADE FROM MILK.
PEOPLE WITH ALLERGIES KNOW THIS.
THIS BUTTER IS NO EXCEPTION.
USE WITH CUSTOMARY CAUTION!

But even this may strike us as bending too far backward for people whose responsibility is to know what the stuff they ingest is made from. They must protect themselves. If milk makes you ill, you’ll forswear all butter and reach for some good oil, or even margarine.

Something like I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter … but only in its original spray and vegan versions … all others contain milk!

I can’t believe this isn’t Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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