Category: regulation

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free trade & free markets general freedom regulation

Leave Us Alone to Do Our Work

contract work, Uber, gig economy, California, regulations

Drearily, an appeals court has dismissed Uber’s challenge to California’s anti-​gig-​work law.

According to the 9th Circuit, the ride-​sharing company couldn’t show that the California anti-​freelancer law AB5, which took effect in 2020, unfairly targeted Uber while allowing other types of contract work to continue unhindered.

In fact, the many exceptions to AB5 — determined by abundance or lack of political pull of various groups — mean that Uber is hardly alone in suffering from uneven application of the law.

But suppose AB5 had in fact been evenly imposed on everybody. Suppose every single gig worker in California, without exception, had been forced to become a regular employee of all of his clients — with all the additional costs for employers that this entails — or else lose all work altogether.

This would be worse, not better. 

Inconsistent tyranny is bad for the victims. Absolutely consistent and uniform tyranny is bad for the victims — which would be greater in number.

Maybe the 9th’s misjudgment won’t stand. If the case makes its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, maybe the high court will unambiguously affirm our right to contract with each other in order to make a living and get stuff done.

Meanwhile, the fate of Uber also hinges on another court case, one determining the fate of Proposition 22, a 2020 California initiative affirming Uber’s right to contract with drivers.* A labor union says Prop 22 is unconstitutional. The state supreme court is deciding whether this is so. 

It is not so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Citizens in Charge, a pro-​initiative and referendum group, for whom I serve as president, filed an amicus or friend of the court brief with the California Supreme Court in this case.

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ideological culture national politics & policies regulation

DEI Virally Decoded

DEI, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

Is “Didn’t Earn It” — the latest scam-​decoding translation of officialdom’s acronymic jargon for race-​conscious and gender-​conscious affirmative-​action policies, DEI — really catching on?

If so, maybe we’ll get back all the sooner to sanity. 

That is, in universities, workplaces, and other hunting grounds of the DEI dictators who have inherited the mantle of reverse discrimination first inflicted on Americans via the affirmative-​action quota policies of the 1970s.

John Tierney suggests that the popularizers of the apt “Didn’t Earn It” meme may well help rid us of “today’s most egregiously indefensible phrase: ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.’”

These woozy words are supposed to divert our attention from what DEI policies really mean: systematic discrimination against academic, professional, and other merit in favor of typically irrelevant physical characteristics like skin color and gender.

DEI discrimination is being imposed on ever more of our institutions, even at the cost of risking our lives. If unqualified applicants are being admitted into UCLA Medical School in order to appease the arbiters of DEI, then failing basic tests of medical knowledge after they get in — what happens if and when they start treating patients?

A single telling phrase (Tierney credits journalist Ian Cheong and cartoonist Scott Adams) can’t shoulder the whole burden of stopping DEI. True enough.

Fortunately, it’s got help. 

In Congress, Republicans have introduced legislation to shut down DEI offices and forbid federal contractors from imposing the ugly indoctrination of DEI training and DEI statements.

We can all pitch in.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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judiciary national politics & policies regulation

Regulatory Pressure?

gun control, Supreme Court, regulations, regulators, persuasion

Should government regulators be able to urge financial institutions to cancel clients that regulators dislike for political reasons? Such as oil companies and groups advocating Second Amendment rights?

Although a court of appeals has said Yes, the Supreme Court has just said Maybe No in a case involving the National Rifle Association (NRA v. Vullo).

The NRA hasn’t won final victory. But the court is unanimously letting it proceed with its lawsuit, which argues that by pressuring banks and insurance companies to cancel their business with the NRA, New York regulator Maria Vullo violated its freedom of speech.

The Supreme Court seems to accept an artificial distinction, though, between a regulator’s “persuading” an organization to hurt a client and “forcing” it to do so.

An official with power over a company who seeks as a government official to “persuade” that company to do something is engaging in coercion. The implicit threat is: “I have the power to hurt you if you don’t do this little favor for me.”

Moreover, in sending the case back to the lower court, the Supreme Court has also said that it may consider whether Ms. Vullo is protected by qualified immunity, the get-​away-​with-​anything card that government officials are too often able to rely on when they commit wrongdoing.

So this decision is hardly a final, definitive victory for the NRA and other victims of thug-​regulators. But at least the NRA can keep fighting — for itself and the rest of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture regulation

To Die for DEI

hospital, doctor, D.E.I. DEI, diversity, equality, inclusion

Next time you’re being operated on, you probably don’t want your doctor to be someone trained and hired solely because he satisfied affirmative-​action criteria.

We’ll have to especially worry about this possibility, though, if trends at certain institutions continue — including at universities such as UCLA Medical School. There, up to half the students are now flunking basic tests of medical knowledge.

By design.

In November 2021, a new dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, “exploded in anger” because an admissions officer had doubts about admitting a black applicant whose academic credentials were way below the average of other students at the school.

“Did you not know African-​American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?” she wanted to know, demonstrating a capacity for non sequiturs. Forget scores: “we need people like this in the medical school.”

The time for UCLA professors and admissions officers to raise hell about Lucero’s illegally race-​conscious admissions policies was then, or sooner. At least now, though, many are speaking out.

“I don’t know how some of these students are going to be junior doctors,” one instructor tells the Free Beacon. “Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students.”

“I wouldn’t normally talk to a reporter,” says another. “But there’s no way to stop this without embarrassing the medical school.”

Well, word is out now — and in abundant detail. Let’s hope it’s not too late to set this school and others back on the right track.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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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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