It’s rather…ambitious. [Esguerra/EFF, BoingBoing, h/t reader Keith D.]
Author Archive
Shaker abstinence: FDA to regulate salt in food
The Food and Drug Administration is planning a crackdown meant to lead to “the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products,” reports the Washington Post. We’ve been warning of such developments for a while, and they come as little surprise given President Obama’s pick of hyper-regulator Margaret Hamburg as FDA commissioner.
P.S. Perhaps we should invite comment from the New York Times journalist who sternly admonished an interview subject recently: “You shouldn’t trivialize issues of health and safety by calling them nanny issues.”
Our socially concerned business leaders
Amid wall-to-wall reporting on the SEC’s action against Goldman Sachs over an aromatic mortgage-securities deal, this bit of NYT coverage of one of the central figures in the investigation, hedge funder John Paulson, should not pass without notice:
Amid criticism of investment strategies that profited from mortgage defaults, home foreclosures and other miseries, Mr. Paulson has also given $15 million to the Center for Responsible Lending for a center devoted to providing foreclosure assistance to troubled borrowers.
At the time of the donation, Mr. Paulson said of the center and its work, “We are pleased to help them provide legal services to distressed homeowners, many of whom have been victimized by predatory lenders.”
More on Paulson and the CRL in a March paper by Sean Higgins for the Capital Research Center. Background: Eric Gerding, The Conglomerate.
P.S. Pattern here? Ira Stoll at Future of Capitalism notes later news developments involving the contributor of a Financial Times op-ed piece that ran under the headline, “Obama Must Act to Curb Executive Greed.”
P.P.S.: And more: At Pajamas Media, Stoll takes a closer look at Paulson’s public policy involvements. And yet more. To summarize the modus operandi: Place huge bets that mortgage portfolios will suffer losses in value. Then plow millions into advocacy efforts whose effect is to worsen those losses. Maybe this is business as usual in some sense, but it’s curious to imagine lauding Paulson for his public-spiritedness.
April 20 roundup
- Tossed: “Zulu coconut lawsuit thrown out on appeal” [NOLA.com; earlier on this Mardi Gras tradition and the law Louisiana passed to protect it]
- Maryland: “Felony Charges for Recording a Plainclothes Officer” [Rittgers, Cato at Liberty]
- More on decline of local slaughterhouses under federal regulation [Zachary Adam Cohen, NYT “Room for Debate”; earlier]
- “Now Brussels has declared that tourism is a human right” [Times Online via Coyote]
- Three taxes that are a more immediate danger than a VAT [David Frum; my take, at National Journal blogger poll]
- “WorldNetDaily Sues White House Correspondents Association Over Dinner Tables” [MediaBistro, more]
- Department of Labor vs. internship programs: one target’s view [Terry Michael, Reason; earlier]
- Allegedly easy way bloggers can comply with FTC endorsement regs [Chris Pirillo]
Update: British chiropractors drop lawsuit against Simon Singh
They’re dropping the case rather than pursuing an appeal, so aside from having dragged him through a miserable and expensive process, it’s a happy ending. [Respectful Insolence, Popehat; earlier here, etc.]
“New York’s most obnoxious lawyer” charged with tax rap
AmLaw Daily has the story. Although we’ve covered Heller before, it’s never been entirely clear why the coveted title should have been conferred on this one guy against so many rivals, at least absent some American Idol-like competition of obnoxious NYC lawyers.
Choking off angel funding for startups?
Concerns are raised about a provision in the Dodd financial services reform bill. [Robert Litan, HuffPo via Timothy Lee, Cato at Liberty and Mike Masnick/TechDirt; John Mauldin, Frontlinethoughts.com/ Business Insider]
New at Point of Law
Things you’re missing if you’re not keeping up with my other site:
- Despite New Yorkers’ outrage over railroad retirement disability abuses, Cuomo probe accomplishes little;
- Founded by America’s Most Irresponsible Public Figure® RFK Jr., the Waterkeeper Alliance is with reason a highly controversial group. Should the University of Maryland be enlisting students regularly in its litigation campaigns?
- NYT relies on plaintiff lawyer source in accusatory story about Pope, then has to walk the story back;
- Louisiana judge: “gradual”, “environmental” insurance exclusions don’t apply to bad-drywall claims;
- New CPSC product complaint database could invite erroneous or even malicious submissions, critics say;
- CBS “60 Minutes” stonewalls Columbia Journalism Review critique of its Chevron-Ecuador segment.
Backs propeller boat into victim, manufacturer liable
Jacob Brochtrup jumped into the water to retrieve a tow rope, and was gravely injured when the boat’s driver, who didn’t know he was there, backed the boat up. A Texas federal jury has now found the Brunswick Corp. partly to blame and told it to pay $3.8 million. His attorney argued that “manufacturers could make boats and motors safer by installing guards on propellers and placing a shield over the back,” something that current boat designs do not do. [Austin American-Statesman via Continuous Wave] Related: March 19 (tablesaw design not adopted by industry). More: Abnormal Use.
Las Vegas lawyer’s radio ad “grossly misstated the law”
The ten-second commercial for Anthony “Tony the Tiger” Lopez Jr. on Spanish-language radio told listeners: “If you have had an auto accident, by law you have the right to receive at least $15,000 for your case.” The Nevada Supreme Court reprimanded Lopez, upholding the findings of a bar disciplinary panel that said his marketing had “harmed the public by fostering unnecessary and unwarranted litigation by people who were not necessarily entitled to any recovery.” [Las Vegas Review Journal via ABA Journal]