by Steven Greenhut, Purpose, February 14, 2025.
Excerpts:
Relating to brush clearance, the governor has agreed that we have to step up the method. The California Environmental High quality Act, or CEQA, and different legal guidelines require Environmental Influence Studies (EIRs) for clearance initiatives and two to a few approvals for managed burns. The state prioritizes such boutique “local weather” initiatives over its elementary tasks, and even these initiatives are suffering from value overruns and delayed timelines.
The wildfires have additionally highlighted California’s counterproductive insurance coverage laws. It will probably take many months for insurers to wade by means of the method of hearings, charge critiques, and opposition to such hikes by consumer-attorney “intervenors” who earn massive charges for his or her efforts. This course of is so cumbersome that it reduces competitors, resulting in too few insurers.
The issue goes again to Proposition 103, the 1988 poll initiative that made the state insurance coverage commissioner an elected place, instituted the prior-approval system for charge will increase, and rolled again charges. It created a price-control system. Unable to simply modify charges to replicate danger, insurers quietly—after which not so quietly—started exiting.
And:
We’ve seen criticisms about an insufficient variety of firefighters. Public databases present an abundance of LA firefighters incomes complete compensation packages above $500,000 a 12 months, with one captain incomes greater than $900,000. If pay mirrored market charges, California governments might afford to rent extra of them moderately than counting on underpaid jail labor.
DRH feedback: In a chat I gave final month to the native Libertarian Get together chapter, I highlighted the position of CEQA and commented that it was one in every of Ronald Reagan’s worst legacies as governor. Additionally, these pay figures are wonderful. Simply assume how a lot we might save if the union weren’t so protectionist and if governments might rent former prisoners.
by Editorial Board, Wall Avenue Journal, February 11, 2025. (February 12 print version.)
Excerpt:
Properly, that was quick. The identical individuals who predicted Donald Trump could be a dictator now say a “constitutional disaster” has already arrived, barely three weeks into his Presidency. They’re overwrought as regular, and readers could recognize a much less apocalyptic breakdown about Mr. Trump’s actions and whether or not they do or don’t breach the conventional checks and balances.
Mr. Trump’s domestic-policy choices to date strike us as falling into three classes. Most relaxation on robust authorized floor. Some are legally debatable and will go both approach in court docket. In nonetheless others Mr. Trump seems to be breaking present regulation intentionally to tee up circumstances that may go to the Supreme Court docket to revive what he considers to be constitutional norms. None of those is a constitutional disaster.
DRH remark: You already know what I like greatest about this editorial, in addition to the substance? It’s good grammar within the final sentence. “None of those is,” not “None of those are.”
by Eric Boehm, Purpose, February 13, 2025.
Excerpt:
For a very long time after the CFPB was created in 2010, there have been severe questions concerning the constitutionality of that construction. That lastly obtained resolved final 12 months, when the Supreme Court docket dominated that Congress was inside its powers at hand off the purse strings. So, funding the CFPB through the Federal Reserve just isn’t unconstitutional—it’s simply unorthodox and silly.
Right here’s the place the hubris enters the story. When Warren and Obama created the CFPB, they designed that unorthodox funding construction particularly to forestall a future Republican-led Congress from making an attempt to defund the bureau. Bear in mind, this was within the age when Republicans had been working across the nation telling voters they meant to repeal Obamacare too. By isolating the CFPB from Congress’ budgetary powers, Warren was making an attempt to make it invulnerable to assault.
As a substitute, she merely gave it a deadly flaw.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration submitted its CFPB funding request to the Federal Reserve. It requested for…$0.
DRH remark: I LOVE this. However I’d have beloved much more for the Supreme Court docket to have decided the opposite approach. If Congress has sure powers, it could actually’t give them up. The Structure doesn’t say, “Congress has these powers but when it decides it doesn’t need them, it can provide them away.”
by Veronique de Rugy, Purpose, February 14, 2025.
Excerpt:
It’s not as if monetary fraud was authorized earlier than the CFPB swooped in to save lots of the day. There have been already loads of companies “policing” monetary misconduct. The Securities and Trade Fee, for instance, has lengthy been chargeable for defending buyers, large and small, from fraud. The Federal Reserve has a safety perform. Then there may be the Federal Deposit Insurance coverage Company, which supervises monetary establishments to forestall reckless banking practices. The Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee oversees the futures, choices, and swaps markets; it’s alleged to ensure that buying and selling in commodities like oil, wheat, gold, and monetary derivatives isn’t rigged by unhealthy actors or overly destabilized by extreme hypothesis. The Federal Housing Administration enforces truthful lending practices within the mortgage market, whereas companies just like the Federal Commerce Fee and the Workplace of the Comptroller of the Foreign money have traditionally dealt with misleading monetary practices. And so many extra are additionally on the beat, together with common-law actions towards fraud.
But the CFPB was created underneath the premise that these companies and the regulation had been one way or the other asleep on the wheel as evidenced by the monetary disaster, and solely a brand new, unaccountable paperwork might lastly rescue customers from their very own monetary choices. The truth is that no new safety was created for customers by the CFPB. Creating the CFPB was merely replication, duplication, centralization, and the employment of 1000’s of individuals. What we obtained was merely fussier harassment of monetary actors, all of which raised prices to customers.
