“The owners of property seized as evidence in theft cases often have to sue to get it back, even if all charges are dismissed.” [John Eligon, New York Times]
Archive for 2010
Product liability as model for consumer finance regulation?
Let’s hope it doesn’t unfold that way, says Richard Epstein [Truth on the Market]
P.S. It looks as if from Congress will accord lawyers and some other professionals an exemption from Federal Trade Commission regulations on identity theft that would have lumped them in with more traditional lenders because they often do not bill clients at the time work is performed. Fair enough, one supposes, but also another indication of the truism that one’s success in dodging nonsensical regulation is often a function of one’s status as a potent lobby in Washington.
Money-laundering laws’ latest casualty: small embassies
I’ve got a new post up at Cato at Liberty about a snafu “embarrassing even by the standards of federal government foul-ups”: federal regulations intended to prevent “money laundering” are leading to dozens of mini-diplomatic crises as U.S. banks refuse to do business with smaller countries’ embassies for fear of tripping up under the regulations.
New Heartland Institute podcast on Schools for Misrule
Arin Greenwood interviewed me about my forthcoming book for this week’s installment of the Heartland Institute’s weekly FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) podcast. You can hear the results here.
Obama signs school nutrition bill
I joined host Garland Robinette today on New Orleans’ WWL to discuss the background to yesterday’s signing and the considerable shift from local to federal control that will result. As I pointed out, schools’ safety-driven fear of fresh ingredients (meat, poultry, eggs, greens, and so forth all pose some bacterial risk) has long been among the factors driving them toward bland and repetitive menus based on precooked, frozen or canned ingredients.
“Have you been denied a job based on your Criminal History?”
Class action lawyers are waiting by the phone. [Michael Fox]
Relentless growth of Washington, D.C.
I posted a few data points last week at Cato at Liberty (& welcome Glenn Reynolds, Ira Stoll readers).
Below-average cancer rates found in town of Brockovich fame
After alarmist coverage about how the water supply of rural Hinkley, Calif. is laced with carcinogenic chromium 6, it may have surprised some L.A. Times readers to learn that the town’s cancer rate is actually a bit below average. One interviewed local family blames the pollution for a variety of ills ranging from stroke to cognitive deficits to miscarriage to tumors in a pet dog. When the movie “Erin Brockovich” came out, it was pointed out that workers at the utility plant where the contamination originated had a life expectancy exceeding the California average.
P.S. I see that Tim Cavanaugh of Reason is on the case too.
“One nation, under too many laws”
Philip K. Howard’s latest, for the Washington Post:
Once enacted, most laws are ignored for generations, allowed to take on a life of their own without meaningful review. Decade after decade, they pile up like sediment in a harbor, bogging the country down – in dense regulation, unaffordable health care, and higher taxes and public debt.
Time, he says, to revisit the “sunset law” idea, under which laws would expire unless affirmatively reenacted, and radical simplification as well.
AgSec Vilsack: no intention of banning bake sales
As the Associated Press reported recently, the school nutrition bill to be signed by President Obama today includes provisions giving the federal government authority to regulate (among much else) the frequency of school bake sales. Following a public furor, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack now says he has no intention of using the authority to do that — which may or may not signify much over the long term, since cabinet secretaries depart regularly and his successors will be free to revisit the issue. [ABC/KBOI, Kyle Wingfield/Atlanta Journal-Constitution] Local governments in places like New York City and even Iowa have lately been regulating or abolishing bake sales on nutritionist grounds. I joined Ray Dunaway on Hartford’s WTIC NewsTalk 1080 this morning to discuss the update.