Category: regulation

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom regulation

Criminal Discrimination?

The Joker, Uncle Sam, racism, business, regulations, quota

It’s okay.

You don’t have to associate with criminals. You don’t have to employ them and worry how they’ll act on the job. It’s not your duty to give criminals or persons with a criminal record access to your life or property and hope for the best.

If only we could leave it at that. 

That’s not our world though. In our world, our government, working hard to rip America apart in every way possible, is suing the Sheetz chain of convenience stores because it doesn’t hire applicants with a criminal record.

The “problem” is that too many such failed applicants are nonwhite.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accuses Sheetz of “disproportionately screening out Black, Native American/​Alaska Native and multiracial applicants.” The agency babbles that “employment practices causing a disparate impact because of race or other protected classifications must be shown by the employer to be necessary to ensure the safe and efficient performance of the particular jobs at issue.”

Of course, the “disparate impact” exists not because of these classifications but because the denied applicants have criminal records. Sheetz didn’t decline these applicants because of their skin colors.

Nevertheless, Sheetz is supposed to have somehow “shown” that refusing to hire applicants with criminal records reduces Sheetz’s own risks and the risks for customers.

Elon Musk, commenting on this story, has it right: “You know The Joker is running things when the law-​abiding are being prosecuted by the government for not hiring criminals!”

These days Uncle Sam and The Joker do look alarmingly similar.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense national politics & policies regulation subsidy

Electric Class Warfare

Star Trek, electric car, gas car, regulations, climate

Star Trek may have adversely affected American politics. Its techno-​communist utopian militarism was one thing, its attitude towards engineering? Perhaps worse.

In how many episodes did Captain Kirk demand that Scotty push the warp drives further, or decrease the time required for a task — arbitrarily according to his need, not actual possibility?

And, because television: presto, it was done; just in time for the finale!

We see that in the push for electric vehicles (EVs). 

The EV mandates, explains The Epoch Times, “will likely cause a sizable wealth transfer from rural red regions of the United States to urban blue sections, and to wealthy Democrats who reside in them.…”

For while Democrats say they’re trying to “save the planet” from an increase in atmospheric carbon, really, analyst Robert Bryce counters, “it’s a type of class warfare that will prevent low- and middle-​income consumers from being able to afford new cars.”

How? The EPA’s new “rules are the strictest in history and will effectively force carmakers to have one-​third of new car sales be plug-​in EVs by 2027 and more than two-​thirds by 2032.” But according to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, “as much as $48,000 of the cost of the average EV sold in the United States is paid not by the owner but in the form of ‘socialized costs’ that are spread out among taxpayers and electricity consumers over a 10-​year period.”

So the new rules will reduce the supply of gas-​powered vehicles, driving up costs. And the increased number of already-​subsidized vehicles will also be paid by taxpayers at large, while the benefits go to … mostly Democrats in the bluest counties of the bluest states, as statistics show.

In recent years, Democrats have prided themselves that their “blue states” subsidize “red states,” mocking the “rugged individualist” pretensions of the hapless bubbas in flyover country. But now such boasts ring hollow. 

This is the far-​flung future? 

Subsidy and regulation spoil the Star Trek promise.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets regulation

Dining Out on Cause and Effect

California, minimum wage, hamburgers, economics, wages, jobs

Could a barren, charred, devastated landscape be the actual intended goal?

In California as in Washington, lawmakers and chief executives apparently have a long list of nice things to destroy and are crossing them off one by one, as if on the payroll of aliens from outer space wanting to conquer earth without doing very much conquest-​work themselves.

Part 99‑C of the plan is to price entry-​level labor and entry-​level restaurant dining out of the market by hiking the minimum wage of fast-​food workers even further beyond the market rate for the labor and its actual productive value to employers: now to $20 an hour.

Already, prices for restaurant meals are going up, and restaurant workers are being laid off.

The $20 minimum is a compromise that restaurant owners accepted in lieu of probably paying a $22 per hour minimum. Like letting burglars take only most of the silverware and letting them return at will.

Even more looting of employers is to come, if employee and activist Angelica Hernandez has her way. “We’re going to have to keep speaking up and striking to make sure we are heard.” She wants her dough and doesn’t care about the consequences for others. Policymakers rush to appease her and those like her.

So is omni-​destruction the actual intended goal?

Or is it that the mental powers of the crusaders and politicians and too many voters don’t extend so far as the relationship between cause and effect?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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regulation subsidy

The Hail of It

Joe Biden, energy, green energy, spending

Early yesterday, an out-​of-​control container ship ran into the Francis Scott Key Bridge over the Patapsco River in Baltimore. Early reports claimed that a dozen vehicles and 20 people went into the cold water, with only two survivors, so far, being rescued; last I heard, however, the total went down to six missing after the initial rescues.

It looks like an accident, and accidents happen, sometimes horrific ones. There’s a reason “thoughts and prayers” are mentioned at such times, all other talk seeming vastly inappropriate.

Nevertheless, President Joe Biden immediately promised that the federal government would pay to replace the bridge.

Eleven days earlier a more humdrum disaster gave us greater license to speculate. “Thousands of panels on a solar farm southwest of Houston, Texas, were damaged by a powerful hailstorm on March 15,” a Newsweek report informs us. “Aerial footage showed rows of cracked photovoltaic cells at the Fighting Jays Solar Farm near Needville in Fort Bend County.…” A vast array of solar panels, ruined by something not unheard-​of in Texas: “baseball-​sized hail stones” falling from the sky.

And seeping out of the panels? Toxic chemicals.

This is something that we, the voting public, must confront: the fact that most “green energy” replacements are fragile and often environmentally hazardous. Compared to natural gas they are ecological disasters.

While Joe Biden yammers about funding a new bridge, we need to force a more important conversation, about removing subsidies for pseudo-​green alternative energy sources. 

To save us from the poorhouse as well as from environmental disaster.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom regulation

Monopoly vs. Monopoly

monopoly octopus, Joe Biden, Apple

The Biden Administration makes much of its pro-​consumer actions. President Sleepy Joe never tires of boasting about how his regulations favor consumers over credit card companies. Considering the massive taxation that his administration supports, however, saving a few bucks on overdraft fees looks a bit absurd in context.

As does the administration’s ramped-​up anti-​trust actions.

The federal government has now attacked Apple. On anti-​trust grounds. For being a monopoly.

The humor in this was noted by anti-​intellectual property theorist Stephan Kinsella, tweeting on X: “‘U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly’ We grant you patent and copyright monopoly privileges and you use them to build up a monopoly? How dare you!”

Jeffrey A. Tucker of the Brownstone Institute was less amused, and less concerned with Apple’s reliance upon intellectual property, which he claims is secondary to the company’s useful products: “The very notion that the government is trying to protect consumers in this case is preposterous. Apple is a success not because they are exploitative but because they make products that users like, and they like them so much that they buy ever more.”

At issue is how Apple products work so well together but not so well with other manufacturers’ products. “The Justice Department calls this anticompetitive even though competing is exactly the source of Apple’s market strength,” insists Tucker.

Maybe it’s really about this principle: the government giveth; the government taketh away: blessed be the name of the Biden.

In full disclosure, I have an iPhone, which I hate, and a Microsoft Surface Book, which I also hate. I’m open to any of their competitors, which I might hate less.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment national politics & policies regulation

Stop the Work Stoppers

Labor Department, gig economy, freelancing

Republican Representative Kevin Kiley of California has introduced H.J. Resolution 116 to block “the rule submitted by the Department of the Labor relating to ‘Employee or Independent Contractor Classification Under the Fair Labor Standards Act.’ ”

116 is a legislative attempt to thwart legislation by regulators.

Labor’s rule is modeled on the AB5 Act passed in California several years ago. Catering to unions, AB5’s idea was to kill the livelihoods of many gig workers or freelancers by making it much harder for companies and independent contractors to deal with each other.

The new rule, too, aims to kill competition with unions and expand the pool of employees who can be unionized.

AB5 caused a firestorm, leading to citizen initiatives, court battles, and victories and setbacks for besieged employers and freelancers. There’s been some backtracking of AB5, in part because sponsoring lawmakers realized that it hurt even favored constituencies. But California is still a land mine for would-​be freelancers.

The Labor Department is trying to impose AB5-​style reclassification on the national level now that national lawmakers have failed to pass legislation to do it.

These days, the many dictators in our government often regard legislative means of passing legislation as an option only of first resort. If that fails, well, stick it to the people some other way.

So Kiley — and, hopefully, an effective congressional majority — must pass a law saying no, regulators, you may not pass this law in the guise of a regulation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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