- Feinstein-Collins bill (“Personal Care Products Safety Act”) to regulate soap, lotions, and cosmetics is best left to swirl down drain [Eric Boehm/Reason, earlier, Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetics Guild and ICMAD (mid-sized and smaller companies), Modern Soapmaking, my appearance on KPCC “AirTalk”]
- Standing in the need of standing: federal judge denies motion to dismiss suit over global warming against federal government and business groups on behalf of 21 young persons and scientist James Hansen [Phuong Le, AP/ABC News]
- Seattle home buyers, it’s okay to choke a little at what your money could have bought in low-regulation Houston instead [Randal O’Toole, more] Land use regs impede economic mobility: you could have read it at Cato first [David Boaz]
- “Why Industrial Farms Are Good for the Environment” [Jayson Lusk]
- “Suit claiming air emissions that fall to the ground constitute hazardous waste under Superfund proves too ambitious even for the Ninth Circuit” [WLF’s summary of Kevin Haroff and Zachary Kearns, Marten Law]
- “State social justice groups did not feel consulted” in carbon tax proposal on Washington ballot, which failed [Coyote, AP/KIRO]
Posts Tagged ‘Seattle’
They’ll be watching you (and your kibble purchases)
King County (Seattle) uses grocery loyalty card data to figure out who owns pets, according to a new report from local station KOMO. It then sends them letters warning of a $250 fine if they do not license the animals. The “county said they pay the company who pays stores such as Safeway …for access to customer data contained in every one of those reward card swipes.” And “the mailers work. Just last year they brought in more than $100,000 in new pet licenses.”
But remember, government needs access to Big Data to fight terrorism. [cross-posted from Cato at Liberty]
Labor roundup
- Want or need to contract out of the rules set by Seattle’s new worker-scheduling ordinance? You’ll have to unionize. Cute, no? [Bruce M. Cross et al., Perkins Coie] Also in Seattle: ostensible safety initiative aims to force hotels to unionize, would require blacklisting of guests even absent legal complaint [Carla Murray, CrossCut]
- “NLRB GC now wants to legalize intermittent and partial strikes” [Michael VanDervort]
- Boston city hall to private firms: nice little outfit you got there, shame if it didn’t unionize [Steve Malanga, earlier here, here on alleged extortion scheme]
- Less a university and more a shop floor: NLRB ruling on teaching/research assistants did more harm than good [Jon Hyman, earlier here, here]
- NLRB makes it as quick and easy as it can for workers to join a union. But should they wish instead to leave… [Diana Furchtgott-Roth]
- “Will NLRB’s New ‘Joint Employer’ Standard Discourage Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives?” [Seth Borden]
Environment roundup
- Finally, some progress? White House releases “Housing Development Toolkit” urging local policymakers to expand by-right development, accessory dwelling units, pro-density rezoning [Jonathan Coppage, Washington Post; Vanessa Brown Calder, Cato]
- And see related: “Parking Requirements Increase Traffic And Rents. Let’s Abolish Them.” [Brent Gaisford, Market Urbanism] “America’s Ugly Strip Malls Were Caused By Government Regulation” [Scott Beyer]
- And yet more, stranded in Seattle: “Micro-Housing, Meet Modern Zoning” [Vanessa Brown Calder, Cato]
- California: “Coastal Commission Abuse Smacked Down by Court” [Steven Greenhut]
- “If firms refused to take direction, FDR ordered many of them seized.” For climate change advocate Bill McKibben, RICO-for-deniers is only the start [New Republic] Fan at New York Times eyeing McKibben to win Nobel [Timothy Egan]
- “Midnight Monuments: The Antiquities Act and the Executive Authority to Designate National Monuments” [Federalist Society podcast with Donald Kochan and Charles Wilkinson]
Wage and hour roundup
- “Study: Minimum Wage Cost Germany 60,000 Jobs” [Axel Schrinner, Handelsblatt]
- Even they can’t comply: federal Department of Labor settles overtime claims with its own employees [J. William Manuel, Bradley Arant]
- “50 Business Groups Sue Feds Over Upcoming Overtime Rule” [Connor Wolf, Inside Sources, related, Daniel Fisher on suit by 21 states] “With all these efforts to block it, can employers relax?” [Robin Shea]
- Translation: it’s time to throw many more disabled persons into involuntary unemployment [proposal to end sub-minimum wage exemption in disabled work centers, earlier here and here]
- Dems’ $15-and-index platform plank would set a “policy written for the nation’s very wealthiest enclaves, but incoherent for economically distressed regions.” [IBD]
- Efforts to measure early impacts of Seattle minimum wage hike [Charles Hughes/Cato, Tim Worstall, Sean Higgins/Washington Examiner]
Supreme Court roundup
- High court should review Washington coastal exaction as a taking without just compensation [Ilya Shapiro and Jayme Weber, Cato, on Common Sense Alliance v. San Juan County]
- Redistricting: unanimous Court declines to strike down population variance that may have assisted Arizona plan in VRA compliance [ABA Journal]
- “Supreme Court Should Protect Workers Against Government-Union Collusion” [Ilya Shapiro and Jayme Weber, Cato on D’Agostino v. Baker, challenge to Massachusetts law designating day-care providers as state employees for purposes of unionization]
- Followup on CRST Van Expedited v. EEOC: “An open love letter to Justice Clarence Thomas” [Marcia McShane, earlier]
- “Supreme Court declines to reconsider deference to agency interpretations of agency regulations” [Jonathan Adler on cert denial in United Student Aid Funds, earlier here and here]
- “Supreme Court Kills Minimum Wage Lawsuit Against Seattle” [Connor Wolf/Daily Caller, earlier]
Public employment roundup
- Union representing Seattle school cafeteria workers threatens church for giving free pizza to students [Shift WA, KOMO]
- Portland: “Police chief, police union urge officers not to attend citizen review panel hearings” [Oregonian] “The Most Inappropriate Comment from A Police Union Yet?” [Kate Levine, PrawfsBlawg; Tamir Rice case, Cleveland] “Maryland’s Police Union Rejects ‘Any and All’ Reforms” [Anthony Fisher, Reason back in January]
- On-the-job porn habit got Wheaton, Ill. cop fired, but if he nabs psychiatric disability, he’ll draw 65% of $87K+ salary with no income tax [Chicago Tribune]
- “Why TSA Lines Have Gotten So Much Longer” [Gary Leff, View from the Wing; Robert Poole, WSJ]
- Unions are biggest beneficiaries of Congress’s transit subsidy spigot. Time to apply terms and conditions [Steven Malanga]
- “HUD Can’t Fire Anyone Without Criminal Charges, Even Interns” [Luke Rosiak, Daily Caller] “Here’s Why It’s All But Impossible To Fire A Fed” [Kathryn Watson, Daily Caller]
Court strikes down Seattle snoop-in-residents’-garbage law
“A judge has ruled that snooping trash collectors in Seattle cannot simply go through garbage bins without any sort of warrant to determine whether its citizens are putting food in the wrong place. It’s a win for the property-rights-focused lawyers of the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF).” [Scott Shackford, earlier] While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in California v. Greenwood that an expectation of privacy does not apply to garbage, the Supreme Court of Washington has ruled that a provision in its own state’s constitution provides privacy protection that extends beyond the federal guarantee. [Eugene Volokh]
Seattle’s minimum wage law and the Constitution
All minimum wage laws are bad economics, but Seattle’s new law adds its own potentially unconstitutional twist: harsher terms for out-of-state businesses [Ilya Shapiro and Jayme Weber, Cato]
Labor roundup
- “NLRB: Unions have a right to know employees home phone numbers. If firms don’t have them, they must obtain them.” [@JamesBSherk summarizing Sean Higgins/Washington Examiner on Danbury Hospital case]
- Subpoenas get NLRB into redaction fight with McDonald’s [Sean Higgins/Examiner; more on joint-employer battle from International Franchise Association via Connor Wolf, Daily Caller]
- George Leef reviews Daniel DiSalvo’s book on public sector unionism, Government Against Itself [Forbes]
- “Seattle May Soon Force Uber And Lyft Drivers To Unionize” [Connor Wolf/Caller]
- Your periodic reminder that the “add union organizing to protected classes under civil rights law” formula is one of the worst ideas ever [Jon Hyman, Wolf/Caller on Workplace Action for a Growing Economy (WAGE) Act sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.)]
- Sen. Orrin Hatch: my proposed Employee Rights Act would “allow workers a greater role in how their union represents them” [Washington Times, background at Washington Examiner]
- Philadelphia union extortion and violence episode is a reminder it’s past time to revisit 1973 SCOTUS case of U.S. v. Enmons which tended to give a green light to such things [Mark Mix, Washington Times]