OpenMarket

The Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency cranked out so many bad major rules that it was hard to pay attention to all the also-bad, but relatively small, rules. One such measure set emissions standards for wood heaters. Thankfully, the Trump administration has proposed some useful revisions.    

A partial federal shutdown looks more likely than it did a week ago, the federal deficit will likely top $1 trillion next year, and Theresa May survived a confidence vote in the UK over Brexit. The 2018 Federal Register surpassed last year’s page count with two weeks to spare, and at its current pace could surpass last year’s final regulation count next week. Rulemaking agencies issued regulations ranging from forage seeding to Mexican bovine brands.

There is a concerted effort from elements on both sides of the political aisle to use antitrust law to regulate and ultimately break apart Big Tech companies. This is a grave mistake, and would represent one of the largest and most visible government interventions into the economy we’ve seen in decades.

Today’s Energy & Environment News (subscription required) has an article titled “Wheeler preaches federalism on water, not cars.” The gist is that various critics claim the Trump-era Environmental Protection Agency, under Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, is an “inconsistent” and “hypocritical” advocate of federalism in environmental policy.

My colleague Michelle Minton recently released an excellent new study on the health impact of e-cigarettes and why some people are misrepresenting the risks involved (watch Michelle’s interview with Reason TV’s John Stossel on the topic here). The full study, complete with all of the details and end notes, is 100 pages long, however, so for readers looking for the short version, we’ve prepared a blog summary and the infographic below.

Enacting legislation will be more difficult in next year’s divided Congress, but an infrastructure bill is something that could get done. Democrats and Republicans may be able to agree on a list of popular projects to fund, and President Trump has signaled his willingness to address perceived infrastructure shortcomings. 

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is in the process of implementing a regulation that would restore the traditional standard for when a worker is considered to be “jointly” employed by more than one entity. On September 13, the NLRB issued a proposed rule under which “an employer may be found to be a joint-employer of another employer’s employees only if it possesses and exercises substantial, direct and immediate control over the essential terms and conditions of employment and has done so in a manner that is not limited and routine.”

Katowice, Poland—“Le temps est mauvais,” an African delegate told a colleague as they wrapped themselves up against the early evening chill. The weather wasn’t as leaden and directionless as inside the twenty-fourth Conference of the Parties (COP-24) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

On December 5, 1933 the federal government’s nationwide prohibition against alcohol ended. Eighty-five years later, the beer market seems to have finally recovered. Today, there are more than 6,000 breweries—more than at any time before or since Prohibition—making a seemingly endless variety of beer for us enthusiasts to enjoy. But, while we may be living in the “golden age” of beer, the specter of Prohibition remains.

Columbia University professor Tim Wu is author of the new book The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age, which calls for a more active approach to antitrust regulation (see also Richard Epstein’s review in The Wall Street Journal). Wu wants to see more “big cases” along the lines of previous lawsuits against Standard Oil, AT&T, and IBM. The last such case was against Microsoft, nearly two decades ago.