- Administration tees up massively expensive regulation docket for after election [Sam Batkins, American Action Forum]
- More on FedEx’s resistance to fed demands that it snoop in boxes [WSJ Law Blog, earlier]
- Ethics war escalates between Cuomo and U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, but is sniping in press suitable role for prosecutor? [New York Post, Ira Stoll]
- “Mom Hires Craigslist Driver for 9-Year-Old Son, Gets Thrown in Jail” [Lenore Skenazy]
- One-way fee shifts, available to prevailing plaintiffs but not defendants: why aren’t they more controversial? [New Jersey Lawsuit Reform Watch]
- Water shutoff woes sprang from Detroit’s “pay-if-you-want culture” [Nolan Finley, Detroit News]
- “CPSC Still Trying to Crush Small Round Magnet Toys; Last Surviving American Seller Zen Magnets Fights Back” [Brian Doherty]
Posts Tagged ‘Detroit’
Detroit’s city government can’t prevent crime
So instead it will require private businesses to invest in security measures. I explain in a new Cato post. In January I noted an unsuccessful bill in the Maryland legislature to require gas station owners to maintain videocamera system.
Labor and employment roundup
- Los Angeles officials push SEIU-backed scheme to fasten unions on nonunion workforce at LAX airport [Brian Sumers, Contra Costa Times]
- Want to empower cities? Reform binding labor arbitration [Stephen Eide, Urbanophile]
- “Explainer: What Does President Obama’s Equal Pay Day Executive Order Change?” [Rachel Homer, On Labor]
- One lawyer’s advice: “when an employee complains about discrimination, or otherwise engages in protected conduct, you must treat that employee with kid gloves” [Jon Hyman on Sixth Circuit retaliation case]
- Detroit juggles pension numbers to fix deficit, papers over the real problem [Dan Kadlec, Time; Shikha Dalmia, Washington Examiner]
- No room left to cut budget, part 245,871: federal grants promote labor unions [Examiner]
- More on EEOC’s campaign to limit employment criminal background checks [Coyote, Daniel Schwartz]
February 11 roundup
- If you’ve answered a consumer survey about which pharmaceuticals you take, you may be hearing from this guy’s staff [Paul Barrett, Business Week on mass tort “lead generator”]
- Jury awards $9 million to Vancouver, Wash. man imprisoned for 20 years after wrongful child abuse conviction [Insurance Journal; The Columbian/Seattle Times 2009]
- Product liability: jury awards $18 million in fatal fire attributed to altered space heater [Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, outcome subject to confidential agreement]
- $500 million California verdict in competition case between two drug companies [Kyle White, Abnormal Use, Daniel Fisher (Actelion case)]
- Short film tackles city of Detroit’s decline, GM bailout, with commentary from bank economist David Littmann, Todd Zywicki [“Bankrupt”]
- Hardee’s CEO: Easier to open a new restaurant in Shanghai than in Los Angeles [Legal NewsLine]
- Fooled ya! “I intend to reverse” trend of President bypassing Congress to bring power into executive branch, said Obama in 2008 [Tom Rogan/The Week, Jim Powell/Forbes] Constitutional issues of federal contractor minimum wage executive order [Eugene Kontorovich and followup, On Labor, Gene Healy, Peter Kirsanow]
Public employment roundup
- Detroit: pension trustees’ sins come home to roost [Steve Malanga, City Journal; Aaron Renn/Urbanophile; Steven Greenhut (CALPERS next?)] Role of binding arbitration [Malanga, IBD]
- Since declaring bankruptcy San Bernardino has given police $2 million in raises [Scott Shackford] Twenty-eight members of Santa Monica police force made more than $200K last year [Ira Stoll, Future of Capitalism] “Do other big city balance sheets resemble Detroit’s?” [Public Sector Inc.]
- Phoenix firefighters sue insurance company over workers’ comp denials [ABC 15]
- Under new California law, county worker who stole $360,000 may forfeit pension [San Diego Union-Tribune]
- “Crime Rate in Camden, NJ Going Down After Unionized Police Force Sacked” [Ed Krayewski, Reason (“On any given day, 30 percent of the force was absent because of the liberal sick policies.”)]
- Trying to drop one’s membership in the Michigan Education Association can be a long-drawn business [Sean Higgins, Washington Examiner]
- Lawrence Harmon, Boston Globe; Police unions fight to protect even worst of bad apples [Greenhut, City Journal on California and use of “Brady lists”]
Another Michigan structuring case
Headline, from WWJ: “Sterling Heights Gas Station Owner Says IRS Grabbed $70K From His Bank Account For No Reason” Mark Zaniewski, “owner of Metro Marathon in [suburban Macomb County], said the IRS emptied out his bank account twice over the course of a week this spring.” No charges have been filed; Larry Salzman of the Institute for Justice, representing Zaniewski, says the accounts were seized on suspicion of bank “structuring” (knowingly arranging deposits to fall below $10,000), even though some deposits were over that threshold. Salzman says his client has been waiting seven months for his cash and in the mean time is unable to get a hearing before a judge. IJ recently took on a structuring case involving a grocer in nearby Fraser, Mich. Earlier on structuring and its intersection with forfeiture law here, here, here, etc.
Update via Dan Alban on Twitter: “BREAKING: IRS voluntarily dismisses Michigan forfeiture cases, will return seized money to owners of family grocery store and gas station. Doesn’t get feds out of IJ’s separate constitutional lawsuit re: right to prompt hearing, Dehko v. Holder.”
Labor and employment roundup
- “Can The EEOC Troll For Plaintiffs By Sending A Blast Email To Business Email Addresses?” [Christopher DeGroff, Seyfarth Shaw Workplace Class Action Blog, on Case New Holland v. EEOC]
- Just one of those things? Special holiday bonus giveaways could’ve plugged $1.9 billion of Detroit fiscal gap [Megan McArdle, Coyote] The police and fire departments that ate Motown [Coyote] Fire department expenditures have risen even in cities where fires have declined 90 percent [Tabarrok]
- EEOC sues employer for failing to accommodate employee’s religious belief linking hand scanner to “Mark of the Beast” [EEOC release, West Virginia Record, Exponent-Telegram]
- Claim that FDR opposed collective bargaining in public sector rated “True” [Politifact]
- Worker who tore down employer poster can sue under California law banning adverse workplace treatment based on political belief [Volokh]
- You’re paying through taxes for the work of the eatery-harassing Restaurant Opportunities Center [Eric Boehm/Reason, Washington Times, Diana Furchtgott-Roth/RCM]
- Before the Supreme Court in Unite HERE Local 355 v. Mulhall: Does federal labor law prohibition on employer’s giving “thing of value” to union prohibit furnishing cooperation during a campaign to unionize? [SCOTUSBlog, Cato Institute amicus brief with National Federation of Independent Business, Jack Goldsmith and Benjamin Sachs at new labor blog On Labor] More: Trevor Burrus, Cato.
“Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing…”
“…can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes.” Sarah Stillman’s new article in the New Yorker is making a stir, and I write up some of its highlights at Cato at Liberty, including the traffic-stop scandal in Tenaha, Texas, a curious raid on a Detroit art museum, and the plight of a Philadelphia couple whose son sold $20 of pot from their front porch (& Don Boudreaux, Cafe Hayek).
Bonus: “The Civil Forfeiture Implications of the DEA-NSA Spy Program” [Eapen Thampy, Americans for Forfeiture Reform]
Detroit’s dismal decades, cont’d
“Detroit had the highest property tax rates of all 50 [largest U.S.] cities” [Chris Edwards/Cato, Alex Tabarrok] Some of the city’s weaknesses go back far enough that Jane Jacobs was pointing them out in 1961 [Urbanophile] How other cities avoided Detroit’s fate, and why, as Boeing shrank, “Will the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?” turned out to be such a misplaced joke [Ed Glaeser, 2011 via Amy Alkon] And in two Cato podcasts on the city’s plight, Caleb Brown interviews Megan McArdle (Daily Beast, Bloomberg) and Emily Washington (Mercatus Center). Plus: Some reasons Baltimore is not Detroit [Frank DeFilippo, Splice Today] And Stephen Eide on the pension-negotiating strategies of emergency manager Kevyn Orr [Public Sector Inc.]
Police and prosecution roundup
- Detroit police blasted for arresting Free Press photographer who filmed arrest with her iPhone [Poynter]
- “The discomfort of principles” in criminal defense matters [Gideon’s Trumpet]
- House Judiciary panel on overcriminalization and mens rea shows genuinely useful bipartisanship [Jonathan Blanks, Cato] One in four new bills these days to create criminal liability lacks mens rea [Paul Rosenzweig/Alex Adrianson, Heritage]
- Auburn, Alabama: “Cop Fired for Speaking Out Against Ticket and Arrest Quotas” [Reason TV]
- Film project on overturned Death Row convictions [One for Ten] “Forensics review reveals hair evidence was possibly exaggerated in 27 capital cases” [ABA Journal]
- Critics of Stand Your Ground seem to be having trouble coming up with examples to back their case [Sullum]
- Maine: “Hancock County prosecutor admits violating bar rules in sexual assault trial” [Bill Trotter, Bangor Daily News]