Some of the stranger regulations I’ve dug up recently:
- In Delaware, it is a felony to wear a disguise while committing a felony.
- In New Orleans, it is illegal to inflate meat.
- In England, it is illegal to turn off someone else’s lamp if you’re both on or near a city street.
- In Connecticut, it is illegal to use a white cane unless you can’t see it.
- Minnesota regulations prohibit washing Teflon-coated cookware with abrasive sponges.
- In Indiana, it is a class B misdemeanor to dye birds and rabbits.
- Vertical integration has been a regulatory no-no for a long time. In 16th century England, it was illegal to be both a tanner and a currier.
- If you’ve ever been in a duel, you may not work as a first responder in Kentucky.
CEI Weekly is a compilation of articles and blog posts from CEI’s fellows and associates sent out via e-mail every Friday. Also included in the weekly newsletter is a brief description of CEI’s weekly podcast and a feature on a major CEI breakthrough made during the week. To sign up for CEI Weekly, go to http://cei.org/newsletters.
CEI Weekly
August 19, 2011
>>Featured Story
According to Americans for Tax Reform, August 12 is the day Americans have to work until to pay for taxation and regulation at state and local levels. In The Washington Times this week, CEI Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews explained ways we can cut back on this enormous cost burden. Read his op-ed here.
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In response to Jacob Heilbrunn’s August 12 opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times entitled, “Berlin Wall: A blessing in disguise,” I submitted the following letter to the editor, which was published on Tuesday:
I am appalled by Heilbrunn’s characterization of the Berlin Wall as a “blessing in disguise.” I wonder if the estimated 169 (and very likely many more) East Germans killed while trying to flee their prison of a country would agree.
Luke Pelican
Alexandria, Va.
Tech:
Court Ruling Opens The Door To Rejecting Many Software Patents As Being Mere “Mental Processes”:
“Well, this is getting interesting. Last year, when the Supreme Court ruled very narrowly in the Bilski case, without making any explicit statement (as precedent) on overall software or business model patents, many people were frustrated. Here was a situation where the Supreme Court could have drawn a much clearer map, but it declined to do so. Of course, we wondered if this would just mean that another case would have to make its way to the Supreme Court to get a clearer ruling on software patents. In effect, with Bilski, the Supreme Court basically said “this one test you use is fine, but it’s not the only test.” It didn’t say what those other tests should be, but basically left it up to the courts to decide. However, it did reject the specific Bilski patent for being an “abstract” idea, saying that this was not patentable under Section 101 of the Patent Act.”
IBM unveils chips that mimic the human brain:
“It terms the machines built with these chips “cognitive computers”, claiming that they are able to learn through experience, find patterns, generate ideas and understand the outcomes.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
Bad news from NASA: If we don’t reduce carbon emissions, the aliens might come and kill us:
“This is really just the story of Sodom and Gomorrah repackaged with a scientific patina for the green agenda, no? An omnipotent super-being looks down upon mankind, is angry at what it sees, and resolves to smite the sinners. Can the angels at NASA find 50 righteous world leaders willing to strike a deal at Copenhagen II before it’s too late?”
Insurance / Gambling:
Tribes, officials discuss changes to gambling laws:
“The meeting, which will continue through Friday, is part of the commission’s regulatory review process to solicit input from tribes on drafts of proposed rule changes.”
Health / Safety:
School District Offering Drug Testing Kits To Parents:
“The test kids will be available to parents of middle school students in the Hempfield School District.”
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Today, once again, the market is crashing largely due to events in the European Union. President Obama and other policy makers wring their collective hands and say: “It’s not our fault. Our options are limited in preventing the European contagion.”
But Europe’s woes should not be an excuse. If anything, they present an opportunity to for the U.S. to capture the capital that is fleeing there, which would fuel job and business growth on our shores. This is exactly what happened 15 years ago, as capital fleeing the Asian crisis helped fuel the U.S. boom of the 1990s.
The problem is of course is that just as Europe is imploding, we’ve become more like Europe. As I argued earlier this month in National Review, “As a result of this Europeanization, we are more tied than ever to its woes. The good news is there is still time to let America be America again and break the chains tying us unnecessarily to the euro crisis.”
As I noted in NR, “In the mere two years President Obama has been in office, America’s workforce has declined in flexibility due to new laws and mandates. The National Labor Relations Board’s actions preventing Boeing from opening a new plant in right-to-work South Carolina has sent chills through U.S. and international employers that potentially could create nonunion jobs. This undercuts the cost differential that has traditionally existed between U.S. and European workers.”
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The City of Salem, Oregon, is cracking down on yard sales — even if they are a citizen’s last option to pay for expensive medical bills.
Jay Cline, a Salem resident diagnosed with a debilitating form of bone cancer, held several weekend yard sales to help pay for her treatment. However, the city has a strict rule that a resident may hold no more than three yard sales per year.
A city bureaucrat came by to shut down her last independent means of fighting cancer and informed her that violating the regulation again would be considered a misdemeanor and also result in a $300 fine.
The city told her, “I’m sorry. Rules are rules.” But this is to be expected from Big Government, in which adherence to procedure is more important than outcome.
Here’s a letter I sent to The New York Times.
TO THE EDITOR:
You write (“Where Will Growth Come From?,” August 11, 2011) that proposed budget cuts in the U.S. and EU are “misguided,” and that less government spending will “prolong their economic stagnation.” Yet it is precisely government profligacy that caused their economic woes.
Keynesian stimulus has yet to succeed. Even President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors admitted that the 2009 stimulus was an $823 billion failure. How will cutting wasteful spending condemn the US and Europe to economic frustration if it didn’t have any positive effect to begin with?
With its debt-to-GDP ratio now above 100 percent, the US will soon become Greece if it does not begin reducing spending. America and Europe’s entitlement expenses are unsustainable. Realizing that will only speed economic recovery.
Matthew Melchiorre
Washington, Aug 11, 2011
The writer is an Adjunct Analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Washington Examiner columnist (and former CEI Warren Brookes Fellow) Tim Carney has a must-read column today on Texas Governor Rick Perry’s economic policies. They appear suspiciously similar to Bush and Obama’s policies:
“I’m a pro-business governor — I don’t make any apologies about it,” Rick Perry told the crowds in Iowa this week. He’s right, but we can get more specific. Perry is pro-Merck, pro-Boeing, pro-Mesa Wind, pro-Texas Instruments, pro-Convergen, and pro-dozens of businesses that donate to his campaigns and hire his aides as lobbyists.
Perry promises to “get Americans back to work,” but his policies — from backroom drug company giveaways to green energy subsidies — eerily mirror the unseemly big business-big government collusion that has characterized President Obama’s presidency. Judging by his record in Texas, Perrynomics might just be low-tax Obamanomics.
Pro-business politicians are a dime a dozen. What the economy needs to recover are more pro-market politicians. Instead of putting their thumbs on the competitive scales to favor one business or another, Congress and the president should allow an open, competitive market process.
That means the rules of the game would be both clear and few; they would also be consistently enforced. Unlike politicians, markets respect no special interest. If they did, no company would bother with a Washington office.
Consumers do a much better job of picking winners and losers than politicians with campaigning and fundraising on the brain. They should be allowed to try it sometime.
What a shame that few politicians are likely to admit that; such is the curse of “do-something” bias.
Joining Americans for Tax Reform, National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Prosperity, and others, the Competitive Enterprise Institute signed a letter [PDF] sent to House Speaker John Boehner urging him to resist attempts to increase taxes on air transportation. Congress is currently considering enacting a new takeoff and landing tax for all general aviation aircraft, as well as raising the current commercial airline ticket tax. While there is a strong argument to be made that the current revenue mechanisms that fund the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) — specifically, those that direct the flow into the Airport and Airway Trust Fund — are woefully inadequate, the letter points out:
The current tax and fee structure of the general and commercial aviation industry should be addressed holistically, as part of a systemic reform effort. It should not serve as a politically expedient “revenue-raiser.”
CEI is in favor of major reforms to civil aviation. A few reforms that should be taken immediately are: (1) privatize, or at the very least spin-off, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization; (2) allow for more airport privatizations; (3) replace existing excise taxes and other fees (such as the “September 11 Security Fee”) with a simple, transparent user-based fee system; and, (4) prohibit general-revenue funding of FAA. As we note, there are indeed problems with the current air transport system in the United States, but virtually all of them are the result of federal government mismanagement. It is time to finally get serious about solutions: let’s get the incentives right! But we must first prevent the FAA from enlarging its already bloated, ineffectual bureaucracy.
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