Deregulation

SCOTUS Furthers Deconstruction Of The Administrative State

July 4, 2024 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. Educate! Chevron Deference, Deregulation, Rightwing Politics, Supreme Court

On June 28, the six reactionary members of the Supreme Court put a final nail in the coffin of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, in the companion cases of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce. By overruling Chevron, the court dramatically curtailed the power of federal agencies to interpret statutes they administer, ruling that courts should provide their own interpretations of ambiguous statutes. This decision will imperil the rights of workers and consumers and threaten the environment and our health and safety, while providing a boon to corporations.

The Supreme Court May Give Us Another 2008 Financial Crisis

April 4, 2024 Katya Schwenk, The Lever. Educate! 2008 Financial Crisis, Banking, Deregulation, Finance and the Economy, US Supreme Court

The United States Supreme Court will soon decide a case that could decimate consumer protections against abusive banking practices — potentially allowing banks to disregard state laws meant to prevent the kind of predatory lending that led to the 2008 financial crisis. Legal experts say that the case, Cantero v. Bank of America, could invalidate a host of state laws that protect people from predatory lending, junk fees, and other financial scams. The case is ostensibly about a New York statute that forces banks to pay interest to consumers on certain mortgage accounts — but big banks are fighting for the court to rule they are exempt from that law and many others in states across America.

Deregulation Is Turning Oklahoma Into A Factory Farm Sacrifice Zone

January 2, 2024 Ben Felder, In These Times. Educate! Deregulation, Factory Farms, Food and Agriculture, Oklahoma, sacrifice zone

As Barbara Dozhier prepared a ham before the arrival of her great-grandchildren and the rest of her family last Christmas Eve, she prayed for a weather forecast with wind out of the south. A breeze in the opposite direction meant her home four miles outside the east Oklahoma town of Kansas would be overcome with the stench of chicken litter. Ever since a six-building poultry farm opened across the street in 2018 — where 336,000 birds are raised at a time — family gatherings at the Dozhier home have been forced inside. “Sometimes the wind is out of the north and you just hurry up, get in the house and shut your door,” Dozhier said. “At first I was upset all the time but after all these years there is nothing you can do.”

Right-Dominated Supreme Court Is Poised To Do Grave Harm

October 2, 2023 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. Educate! Deregulation, Gerrymandering, Right-Wing, Supreme Court

The 2023-2024 Supreme Court term will begin on Monday, October 2. Dominated by six right-wingers, the court has agreed to review cases in which voting rights, consumer protection, and the regulation of health and safety, workers’ rights and the environment are in jeopardy. The cases present the issues of gerrymandering and the power of administrative agencies. In light of its recent conservative rulings, we should be wary about how the court will rule on these critical matters. Besides the cases already on the Supreme Court’s docket, the court will add more cases by mid-January. Their decisions will be issued by the end of June or beginning of July 2024.

The True Dangers Of Long Trains

April 11, 2023 Dan Schwartz and Topher Sanders, ProPublica. Educate! Capitalism, Derailments, Deregulation, Railroads, worker safety

Just before 5 a.m., Harry Shaffer’s wife called to him from across the living room, where he’d fallen asleep on the couch, exhausted from installing an aboveground pool. Did he hear that sound, that metallic screeching from up the valley? She opened the door of their double-wide trailer and walked outside as Shaffer closed his eyes. A moment later came a thunderous crack of splintering lumber. Debris shot through the living room. Shaffer opened his eyes again to find a hulking train car steps from where he lay. It had shorn off the roof, exposing the murk of the pre-dawn sky. He jumped up and ran outside and saw the garage next door in flames.

US Bank Bailout Benefited Billionaires, Exposing Corruption

April 10, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Bailout, Banking Crisis, Deregulation, Silicon Valley Bank

When current US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen served as chair of the Federal Reserve in 2017, she confidently predicted that there would not be another financial crisis “in our lifetimes”. Less than six years later, in March 2023, three US banks collapsed in just one week. Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were the second- and third-largest banks to go under in US history. And after they crashed, the government immediately bailed out their wealthy depositors. Among the main beneficiaries of this bailout were billionaires and big corporations. The government’s Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insures US bank deposits up to $250,000 per customer.

Major Train Derailments Nationwide During Last Week Of March

April 3, 2023 Railroad Workers United, Popular Resistance. Educate! Derailments, Deregulation, Railroads, Workplace Safety

Starting with a runaway train in Southern California on Monday, March 27th, the week was not a good one for the Class One railroads of the United States. Five Class One carriers — BNSF, Canadian National, Canadian Pacific, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific, plus Regional Montana Rail Link — saw major derailments in six states - Alabama, California, Minnesota, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Montana — throughout the course of the week. According to locomotive engineer and RWU General Secretary Jason Doering, “The recent uptick in derailments across the US highlights the dire need for stricter regulations on the length and weight of trains, as well as a focus on preventing unsafe operational practices such as Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) which prioritizes short-term financial gains for Wall Street over the safety of communities and railroad workers.

How Foreign Private Equity Hooked New England’s Fishing Industry

July 18, 2022 Will Sennott, Pro Publica. Educate! Deregulation, Fishing, Massachusetts, Worker Rights and Jobs

New Bedford, Massachusetts - Before dawn, Jerry Leeman churned through inky black waters, clutching the wheel of the fishing vessel Harmony. The 85-foot trawler, deep green and speckled with rust, was returning from a grueling fishing trip deep into the Atlantic swells. Leeman and his crew of four had worked 10 consecutive days, 20 hours a day, to haul in more than 50,000 pounds of fish: pollock, haddock and ocean perch, a trio known as groundfish in the industry and as whitefish in the freezer aisle. As sunrise broke over New Bedford harbor, the fish were offloaded in plastic crates onto the asphalt dock of Blue Harvest Fisheries, one of the largest fishing companies on the East Coast. About 390 million pounds of seafood move each year through New Bedford’s waterfront, the top-earning commercial fishing port in the nation.

SCOTUS EPA Ruling Signals Court Will Strike Down Rules Limiting Profits

July 3, 2022 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. Educate! Corporatism, Deregulation, EPA, Supreme Court

On the last day of its term, the Supreme Court handed down a case no less impactful than its shameful ruling a week earlier that overturned Roe v. Wade. In West Virginia v. EPA, the court’s right-wing members confirmed they are in the pockets of the fossil fuel companies. The 6-3 majority sided with coal companies and Republican-led states to restrain the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) power to regulate carbon emissions. “Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,’” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote on behalf of himself, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Trump’s EPA Weakens Justification For Life-Saving Mercury Pollution Rule

April 21, 2020 Olivia Rosane, Ecowatch. Educate! Air Pollution, Deregulation, EPA, health

As many Americans fight for their lives in the midst of a respiratory pandemic, the Trump administration Thursday axed the justification for a mercury pollution rule that saves more than 10,000 lives and prevents as many as 130,000 asthma attacks each year. The new rollback leaves mercury emission standards in place for now, but changes how their benefits are calculated so that the economic cost takes precedence over public health gains, The New York Times reported. The move provides a legal opening to challenge other pollution controls even as evidence suggests that exposure to air pollution might increase one's chances of dying from the new coronavirus. "This is an absolute abomination," former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head under Obama and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) president Gina McCarthy said in a statement.

New Monsanto Papers Reveal ‘Ghostwriting’ For Members Of US Congress In Attempt To Defund IARC

August 19, 2019 Staff, Sustainablepulse.com Educate! Congress, Deregulation, glyphosate, Monsanto, Reform

The latest batch of documents reveal Monsanto’s efforts to defund IARC by writing letters on behalf of sitting members of Congress to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which oversees government funding to IARC. Monsanto’s PR teams at FTI Consulting also worked behind the scenes to draft language for legislation aimed at defunding IARC. The ghostwritten letters to NIH cite articles by Reuters reporter Kate Kelland, a key mouthpiece for Monsanto in its bid to discredit IARC. In 2017, Kelland wrote a story that parroted IARC talking points she received from Monsanto executive Sam Murphey. The talking points, given to Kelland with an exclusive quote from Monsanto’s Vice President Scott Partridge, fueled the impression that IARC deliberately ignored data that would have changed the glyphosate classification.

Get Ready For Another Crash

September 26, 2018 By John Feffer, Inequality.org Educate! Capitalism, Crisis, Deregulation, New Economy, Uneven Development

You might remember that phrase from the 1990s. Alan Greenspan, the head of the Federal Reserve at the time, was describing how the tech boom was creating a bubble by generating enthusiasm way out of proportion to the actual value of the new companies. Such an unwarranted economic boom was hardly something new, so it was easy to predict what would happen next. Periods of irrational exuberance — whether the dot-com expansion, Dutch tulipmania in the 17th century, or the housing bubble in America of the 2000s — have always led to a sudden crash and a serious hangover. And now, here we go again. Trump, always exuberant when talking about himself and his putative accomplishments, loves to boast about how well the American economy is chugging along.

Scott Walker Set To Sign Koch Anti-Regulations Bill In Wisconsin

July 12, 2017 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Deregulation, Legislation, Wisconsin

By Steve Horn for Desmog - A bill with the potential to hobble government agencies' ability to propose regulations, known as the REINS (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) Act, has passed in both chambers of the Wisconsin Legislature and Republican Governor Scott Walker's office has told DeSmog he intends to sign it into law. REINS has been pushed for years at the federal level by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the conservative advocacy group funded and founded with money from Koch Industries, and a federal version of it currently awaits a U.S. Senate vote. The House bill, H.R. 26, passed on January 5 as one of the current Congress's first actions. Wisconsin's version mandates that if a proposed regulation causes “$10 million or more in implementation and compliance costs” over a two year period, that rule must either be rewritten or go by the wayside. Known as Senate Bill 15, the Wisconsin bill passed the state Senate on a party-line vote, 62-34 and would be the first state-level REINS bill on the books in the country. “Governor Walker has thanked the Legislature for sharing his commitment to bold regulatory reform and looks forward to signing the bill into law,” Jack Jablonski, a spokesperson for Governor Walker, said in a statement provided to DeSmog. Jablonski did not provide a timeline as to when Walker plans to sign the bill.

Who Benefits From Regulation Rollback?

April 17, 2017 Heidi Shierholz and Celine McNicholas, www.epi.org Educate! Deregulation, Trump Administration

By Heidi Shierholz and Celine McNicholas for EPI - Research on the relationship between employment and regulations generally find thatregulations have a modestly positive or neutral effect on employment. How could regulations create jobs? Though regulations sometimes reduce jobs in one area, they create jobs in another. For example, factories making lead paint shut down after regulations banning lead paint were issued in the late 1970s, but enterprises manufacturing lead-free alternatives arose in their place. And some of the older factories hired people to retool their machinery to begin manufacturing lead-free paint. Mass layoffs are not caused by regulations. “Mass layoff events” are incidents in which at least 50 unemployment insurance claims are filed against an employer during a 5-week period. According to the latest data available (2011 and 2012), employers cite regulations as the reason for mass layoffs in just a tiny share of mass layoff events—one-quarter of one percent.

«1 2 »

Daily movement news and resources